HIS 2251 - Narratives and Networks

Credits: 4
This course gives an introduction to a recent development in historical scholarship, network research, which attempts to build a bridge between mathematics and history. In order to evaluate this development, we will open with a survey of traditional major conceptual frameworks in historical scholarship, including class, culture, ethnicity, religion or more recently gender. This will permit us to discuss how various parallel or conflicting narratives both in scholarship and public history can be constructed around the same events, and even based on the same sources.

We shall also ask why some narratives have more impact on public discourses than others. We shall then focus on a development of the last two decades, the application of network theory to the social sciences and humanities. In historical scholarship one of the most widely-known works examining network theory is Niall Ferguson’s The Square and the Tower (Penguin, 2017). Ferguson, a university professor as well as highly visible public intellectual, employs two key concepts in this book: hierarchies and networks. Reading excerpts from his work, we will study how he attempts to use these concepts as a means of shaping historical narratives ranging from the Renaissance to the emergence of Silicon Valley. We will then consider critical assessments that challenge his work, both by questioning his deployment of narratives and his use of sources.
This course is offerd at the Budapest Campus.
McDaniel Plan: Social, Cultural, and Historical Understanding