Welcome to the Social History Society

Narratives, Emotions and the Self

This strand invites papers that explore the historical intersection between culture, memory and the self. Mike Roper has argued that much recent work within cultural history has focused upon the 'public narrative forms and social practices through which personal accounts are composed' and, in the process, has treated subjectivity as 'no more than an artefact of representation'. Taking Roper's critique as a starting point, we want to encourage further interdisciplinary debate about the historical meanings and constitution of selfhood. To what extent should selfhood be conceptualised as a function of discourse or as a psychic process? Within what interpretive categories did individuals in the past make sense of or understand their lives? In what ways might historians approach the relationship between cultural formations and subject formations? How are these processes constituted through the work of memory, which is itself a form of representation? In asking these questions, we hope to emphasise the historically- and culturally-specific nature of those 'modern' notions of the self we take for granted today

Strand Convenors:
Joanna de Groot: jcdg1@york.ac.uk
Alison Oram: a.oram@leedsmet.ac.uk
Hilary Young: hilaryyoung30@googlemail.com

Enquiries about specific strands should be addressed to the relevant Strand Convenors.
For general enquiries about the conference, please contact Linda Persson, the Administrative Secretary: L.Persson@lancaster.ac.uk

Papers presented at the Conference can be submitted to the Society’s journal, Cultural and Social History, to be considered for publication. For details, see
http://www.socialhistory.gellius.net/Journal.php