CEU-HESP Comparitive History Project

This is a three-year project to develop Comparative History as a stream/grouping of courses within a set of target departments in our Region – Central Europe, South East Europe, Eastern Europe --, with CEU acting as the core and the co-ordinator of the group. We wish to place the teaching of and research in Comparative History firmly on the agenda and into the curriculum, by utilizing our considerable expertise and resources in this field.

CEU’s History Department and Pasts, Inc. Institute of Historical Studies have over the years developed a serious expertise in Comparative History and our systematic emphasis has made us one of the most active comparative history departments in Europe.

To develop a set of courses in Comparative History at each target department that can act (through the process of development and the results) as a model for further course and degree program development. The first set would act as a 'stream' within a degree program of the target department's choice (in consultation with CEU).

To develop a set of teaching materials for these courses that would then be available, together with the course syllabi, for wider dissemination to other History departments in the region and beyond.

To develop a group of researchers/teachers in Comparative History who can add to the teaching material available in the field. Research will only be conducted with this goal in mind.

To develop a group of researchers/teachers who are capable of placing their work into the context of their classroom.

To promote self-reflection in the researching/teaching process to facilitate onward development of the curriculum in Comparative History.

To develop researchers/teachers who are capable of good course design and have strong teaching skills set for the furtherance of teaching Comparative History now and in the future.

Despite much talk about the need to study history comparatively, historical studies have largely remained a national (and frequently parochial, nationalistic, state-controlled/-fixated) enterprise. While many Western European historical 'schools' and authors have been advocating the development of comparative history, this field is still in its incipient phase. Theoretically and methodologically, comparative history lags behind comparative research in other disciplines (such as comparative literature, comparative politics, comparative sociology, etc.); empirically, the situation is even worse, as the passionate calls for comparative history, launched by some world luminaries, have yet to inspire sound, accurate, well-documented, well-written monographs; for instance, the rather sophisticated theoretical-methodological debate on the units of comparison in comparative history has only started to make its way into routine empirical research.

In CEU's 'Region', comparative history is simply a scholarly, civic, and even political must: topics such as historical regions (sub-, inter-, trans- national/linguistic/ethnic/confessional, etc.), empires and their legacies, contested borders and borderlands, and so on need to be studied, and empirical material is abundant.

Besides the (occasionally dangerous) liaisons between historians and their nation-states (or to their regions understood as quasi-states, e.g. Kosovo, or hailed as former super-states, e.g. Greater Romania, Greater Hungary, etc.), other factors make comparative history a very difficult academic endeavor: the need for linguistic and cultural expertise, the sheer amount of data, sources, and secondary literature, the vast diversity of historical vulgates and historiographical canons.

The collapse of state communism occasioned an unprecedented opportunity for academic collaboration in Central, South Eastern, and Eastern Europe, and for convergence with general European and global developments. While the new openness has increased the possibility for interaction, inter-university relations have in fact diminished in many cases. Local universities do not have the resources or/and the institutional infrastructure to foster the relationships that are so essential to ensure a dynamic academic culture. Even among institutions in the same country, academic linkages are often lacking or week, and there are inadequate structures for sharing information and collaborate scholarly. The CHP will become a major part of the answer to these challenges and deficits in the field of comparative history. It will also develop our Region's contribution to the European and global discussion of these issues.

CEU's History Department and Pasts, Inc. have an excellent track record in comparative history research, teaching, and networking, which can be expanded and refined, while being 'exported' to other historical regions, not only European. CEU's position geographically and intellectually in this discipline allows us to contribute to debates both 'east' and 'west' whilst bringing both together to construct a more meaningful and complex debate.

Our empirical material, by its sheer intricate complexity and diversity, helps Western researchers overcome their own limitations, ranging from mechanistic frameworks of comparison between nations, through “entangled history”, histoire croisée, and similar models, down to some of their most recent “transnational history” models; 'world history', a paradigm that is being developed mainly by those disappointed with over-generalization and lack of focus, would greatly benefit from the CEU input, based on painstaking, (self-)reflexive work with and between scales (macro, meso, micro).

The wider relationships that CEU History has started to foster as a site for interdisciplinarity can also contribute to the CHP. Recent theoretical and methodological innovations stemming from the tradition of comparative history (“shared”, “connected”, “relational”, “transfer”, etc.) attempt to critically re-evaluate the comparative method and to shift the analytical emphasis on multiple levels of connectedness, at various sub-national and supra-national levels. These innovations urge researchers to take into account their own ideological position and involvement in the process of knowledge production, and to reflect on the plurality of viewpoints, academic traditions, terminologies, and categorizations. Such new research has started to inspire scholars in International Relations as well, as they shift their focus from large-scale historical actors and high politics to medium- and small-sized actors (groups, individuals), and to cultural and social trends, ranging from ideas to belief systems.

The partnerships we envisage for this complex project can be broken down into three groupings around CEU. Firstly, we start with a number of strategic partners organized around a HESP-funded core collaborative program, to which secondly, we plan to add self-funded strategic partners, and thirdly, if further external funding becomes available (in order to achieve this major strategic objective, we are now seeking funding from various sources) other partners, especially from emerging democracies (or even non-emerging, such as Belarus), where the lessons learned from our initiative are most vitally needed.

Group One are the primary recipients and partners in this enterprise. The goals of the project, and expected outcomes, are specifically addressed to these departments, though obviously we hope for a much wider effect. They are the beneficiaries, the sites for events and the primary targets of the project's activities.

The second (self-financing) category includes those departments, mainly from the European Union, with which CEU's History Department and its associated Pasts, Inc. Institute for Historical Studies have a long record of collaboration. Group Two will participate (on the basis of other sources of funding, typically provided by Pasts, Inc., foundations, our partners' own funding, etc.) in the most important activities, especially in conferences, parallel seminars, and publications.

Why include such a group? As noted above, the facilitation of inter-university relations is key to the formation of a dynamic disciplinary trend. We are offering our relationships to our CHP partners, and re-awakening old relationships. Further, our past activities with Group Two ensure that these departments are already part of the conversation that we wish to extend to our new partners. In other words, they act as an enrichment tool for our project.

Group Three is a more complex and less specific set at this juncture. CHP, we firmly believe, will become one of the most important academic (and, due to the strong presence of history in the public sphere, civic) initiatives in the field of historical studies. Contemporary societies are saturated by historical references -- frequently distorted, (re)invented, manipulated, and politically instrumentalized. Comparative history research, teaching, and publications can play a major role in the fostering and consolidation of open societies (West, East, North, and South: no society is open enough, or stays open automatically). Understanding that one's society is not unique in the normative and metaphysical sense is often the first step towards democratization (e.g., the German debate on the -- putative -- Sonderweg, paradigmatic for all the other cases of self-centered, self-serving identity politics). While the focus of CHP's work is on Europe (the comparison to Western Europe being the constitutive reference of our entire comparative work on Central, Southeastern, and Eastern Europe), some of our work is already devoted to Central Asia and the Middle East, as well as on Latin America. Our academic excellence and social relevance, we are persuaded, go together. Our model of comparative history can be successfully disseminated in other academic centers, in other academic cultures.

CHP will be endorsed by two outstanding international organizations: the International Committee of Historical Studies and the International Commission for the Theory and History of Historiography. Funding for the activities that are not financed by HESP will be secured from those strategic partners that can afford it, and from third parties.

The CHP functions as a consortium of departments, organized around a coordinating unit, CEU's History Department.

In the first phase, we intend to carefully screen and monitor all partners, so as to include only those departments that are most likely to participate actively, and function as transmitters of the consortium's accumulated experience to other departments, thereby ensuring the continued fostering of comparative history.

Note: At CEU, the project was initiated and drafted by Sorin Antohi; he was then joined by his former students and current colleagues at CEU, Constantin Iordachi and Balázs Trencsényi, Assistant Professors. This two-generational CEU core team will interact with their partners, and will develop all future projects jointly. Dr. Péter Apor, a Research Fellow at Pasts, Inc., also a CEU (and EUI) alumnus, also joins the team. Thus, a strong CEU core team, assisted by other CEU History faculty, especially those who direct the six specialised History Department (Central European Studies, Eastern European Studies, South East European Studies, Jewish Studies, Religious Studies, Archive and Museum Studies), will constitute the driving force of the entire project.

All CHP activities are planned over three years, starting in academic year 2006-2007.

In practice, the activities of learning, researching and teaching will be organized alongside each other and must inevitably intertwine. However, we wish to assign to each year a particular emphasis so that whilst course design is proceeding in year one, or research is being organized, the themes of the major events will include the review of the field to date. So this is both a horizontal and vertical set of activities, with the themes delineating the vertical element in order to achieve consistency, synergy, and focus:

1. 2006-2007: The State of the Art in Comparative History
2. 2007-2008: Fostering New Research in Comparative History
3. 2008-2009: Teaching Comparative History

The task of building the streams, gathering the 'state of the art' material, creating new research, and then placing this research and gathered materials into the context of the classroom is a daunting one, and does recognize that Comparative History is a wide field and that the point of the project is working together to build something innovative. It is clear that we need to 'break down' Group One in a variety of ways to facilitate R&D, as well as provide times when all can interact. To this end, we propose as a first activity the setting up of transnational project groups. The various departments will be organized/organize themselves into 'project groups' each of which will have their own transnational comparative history project. We envisage three such groups. Each group will then have one workshop together per year to develop their theme at a target department to ensure also the added effect of reaching out to the local (national and transnational) academic communities, especially to young scholars and graduate students. We hope also that by holding such events (each department would receive one using the above calculation) we would also be 'preparing the ground' for the introduction of the stream and raising awareness of Comparative History in each institution. Naturally, a CEU representative would be present at each, and equally naturally it will be key to move the conversation over the years from the broader issues, to specific research opportunities, to the need for products that can be used pedagogically, to the classroom itself.

To create and disseminate a specific CHP expertise (such as that produced by the project groups, for example) parallel faculty/student seminars will be organized by all participating departments.

The seminars will follow the theme of the year, and their syllabi and readers will be produced by the CEU team, in consultation with the best scholars from the participating institutions, and posted on our websites for all to use. Some of the reading materials will be later included in a comparative history textbook (see details below).

Thus, a simultaneous teaching experience will be achieved, to be improved every year on the basis of annual reports prepared by each participating institution and integrated in a CHP Teaching Report compiled by the CEU team.

Faculty exchanges between the parallel seminars will be organized. The best students from each seminar will be invited to attend classes at CEU, and will be encouraged to participate in all the other CHP activities. Such student mobility could help us foster a new generation of comparative history scholars and educators (as comparative history is a particularly demanding field, and training needs to start early).

Transnational workshops are smaller gatherings held throughout the target department group, with invited participants from local academic communities. The faculty/student seminars are in-house activities though with some mobility 'between' envisaged to enhance practice, etc. So, the missing 'link' in our activity chain is an occasional gathering together of our Group One, together with many Group Two partners, and some Group Three future partners. This is a necessity to bring experience together, nurture excellence in research, and gather together the group for capacity development in course and teaching skills. So although CHP will use Internet-based tools (ranging from websites to fora, calls for applications and newsletters, etc.) very extensively, some type of larger faculty and graduate student mobility is necessary to attain effective academic collaboration, and to socialize participants into the new paradigm of comparative history, into a specific, world-level academic ethos.

We propose, therefore, an annual event that will combine an annual review of the CHP (discussion of progress, future plans, etc) by all departments, a conference that obviously aims at research development, and a training element. We will aim to encourage in the training a direct link between skills development and the research and innovation component experienced in the conference section. The annual conferences will be major international events; all partner institutions will be represented by both senior and junior scholars (down to outstanding graduate students). To enhance the value of these meetings, leading world figures in comparative history will also participate (on the basis of non-HESP funding), and collective volumes will be prepared on the basis of conference proceedings (again non-HESP funding -- to be published with CEU Press or another publisher). The trainings will be conducted by the CRC and will follow a menu of modules selected by the Curriculum Research Center in collaboration with the CHP Steering Committee.

The annual meetings will also be the location of CHP Steering Committee meetings, as follows:

Sorin Antohi, Constantin Iordachi, Balázs Trencsényi, and Péter Apor will edit a Comparative History Textbook for universities; it will be written in English, published with CEU Press or another publisher, then probably translated in various languages. This will be the first such publication in the field. It will include a selection of the most important relevant texts in international literature, a thorough theoretical-methodological introduction by the editors, comments on each selected text, a major annotated bibliography. The advanced draft of the volume will be discussed and improved during the third year of the project. CHP-participating scholars will also contribute to the textbook (which could well develop into a two- or three-volume work, etc).

Kontakt:

INITIATED AND COORDINATED BY
Sorin Antohi
University Professor and Head, History Department, Director, Pasts, Inc. Institute of Historical Studies CEU
with
Constantin Iordachi and Balázs Trencsényi, Assistant Professors, History Department, CEU
and
Péter Apor
Research Fellow, Pasts, Inc. Institute of Historical Studies, CEU

URL for citation of this contributionhttp://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/eurhistxx.asp?id=171&pn=projekte

Institution:	Central European University, Budapest
Date:	01.11.2006

EurhistXX

The Network for the Contemporary History of Europe

CEU-HESP Comparitive History Project