School
of Historical Studies
75th Anniversary Celebration
On Friday, April 8, the School of Historical Studies presented a symposium on The Matter of History that featured a special multimedia presentation entitled Text, Space & Object. It was chaired by Sir John Elliott, Regius Professor Emeritus of Modern History at Oxford University, and former Professor, Institute for Advanced Study.
This presentation explored the diversity of materials from which history has to be recovered and interpreted. Texts, in the form of books, manuscripts, and inscriptions, are only part of the historian's repertoire. The interaction of space and object were exemplified through early modern maps, medieval relics and processions, the Great Wall of China, and the architecture of Saddam Hussein's Baghdad. Documentary footage exposed the deliberations that lay beneath the surface of great historical events such as the Cuban missile crisis. The presentation placed the Institute itself among the materials of history, with particular reference to J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atom bomb. The fragility of history–the polyvalence of text, space, and object as well as history's susceptibility to manipulation or fraud–makes the necessity of getting it right all the more difficult and important. The future depends upon what we think and say about the past.
Multimedia from the presentation
