What is History Really About?

Peter Burke was, from 1962-79, one of the leading educational innovators in developing the inter-disciplinary School of European Studies at University of Sussex. He then moved to the University of Cambridge, where he now holds the title of Professor Emeritus of Cultural History and Fellow of Emmanuel College. He is celebrated world-wide as a historian both of the early modern era and as a writer and teacher who emphasizes the relevance of social and cultural history to modern issues. He is married o Brazilian historian Maria Lucia Garcia Pallares-Burke. His many influential works include The Italian Renaissance (1972); Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (1978); Sociology and History (1980); The Renaissance (1987); The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School 1929-89 (1990); History and Social Theory (1991); The Fabrication of Louis XIV (1992); The Art of Conversation (1993); Varieties of Cultural History (1997); The European Renaissance: Centres and Peripheries (1998); A Social History of Knowledge (2000); Eyewitnessing (2000); New Perspectives on Historical Writing (2001) (editor and contributor); A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet (2002) (with Asa Briggs); What is Cultural History? (2004); Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (2004); Cultural Hybridity (2009); and A Social History of Knowledge Volume II: From the Encyclopedie to Wikipedia (2012).

Introduction.
Section A. Theory.
1. The Art of Re-Interpretation: Michel de Certeau.
2. Performing History: the Importance of Occasions.
3. Translating Knowledge: Translating Cultures.
4. The History and Theory of Reception.
Section B. Practice.
5. Images as Evidence in Seventeenth-Century Europe.
6. Reflections on the Cultural History of Time.
7. The Cultural History of Intellectual Practices: an overview.
8. The Invention of Micro-history
9. A Short History of Distance.
10. Detachment and Involvement in Historical Writing.
11. Exemplarity and Anti-Exemplarity in Early Modern Europe.
12. Historical Discourse in Renaissance Italy.