The Bloomsbury Handbook of Microhistory - (Bloomsbury Handbooks) by Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon & Deivy Carneiro & Thomas V Cohen (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Microhistory provides the first detailed examination of a field which has rapidly expanded in the last three decades. Characterised by a focus on the very small, an obsessive thoroughness of investigation and an inventiveness of exposition, microhistory has matured significantly as an approach amongst historical researchers and practitioners over the past five decades. Consequently, an overview of this nature - surveying microhistory's origins, current state and future directions - is a critical development for this increasingly vibrant area of the discipline.

The Handbook is arranged in four thematic Parts: Decades of Insight into Microhistory, Microhistory around the World, Microhistory as an Epistemology, and Microhistory as a Conceptual Framework. With contributions from world-renowned scholars, including Natalie Zemon Davis, Carlo Ginzburg and Giovanni Levi, and the international involvement of experts based in Brazil, the United States, Canada, Iceland, Hungary, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Africa, and India, this collection innovatively merges the local and the global as it presents the most authoritative exploration of microhistory published to date.

Review Quotes

"This inspiring collection of essays from some of the leading and most creative historians writing history, is essential reading for every practicing historian and student of history. These contributions demonstrate why and how microhistory has become one of the most imaginative and popular approaches to writing history today." --Thomas Robisheaux, Professor of History, Duke University, USA

"Ranging widely across concepts, methods, and contexts, this book offers an incisive set of reflections from an impressive cast of contributors and connoisseurs. It brings together a set of studies that reflect with humanity and purpose on how historians have sought to conjure up forgotten worlds in marvellous ways at the intersection of the particular and the general." --John-Paul A. Ghobrial, Professor of Modern and Global History, University of Oxford, UK

"When going big seems to be the name of the game in history and beyond, this rich and thought-provoking book highlights the ongoing importance of the small and the micro even for the big and the macro. Microhistory in all its perspectives, locales, and deeper theoretical implications in this Bloomsbury Handbook shows how this innovative approach to history continues to break disciplinary boundaries and offer unique perspectives on and possibilities for history and life itself." --Guido Ruggiero, Professor of History and Cooper Fellow of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami

About the Author

Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon is Professor of Cultural History and Chair of the Center for Microhistorical Research at University of Iceland, Iceland. He has written 28 published books, including Archive, Slow Ideology and Egodocuments as Microhistorical Autobiography: Potential History (2021) and Emotional Experience and Microhistory (2020). He is also co-editor, with István M. Szijártó, of the Microhistories book series.

Deivy Ferreira Carneiro is Professor of History at Federal University of Uberlândia, Brazil. He has written six books and numerous articles published in Brazil, Italy, Portugal, and Chile. His interests extend to the history of violence and criminality, popular justice, Italian microhistory, the roles of spaces, norms, experience and interdependency in social action.

Thomas V. Cohen is Professor Emeritus of History and Humanities at York University, Canada. He is the author of Love and Death in Early Modern Italy (2004), which won the American Historical Association's Marraro Prize, and Roman Tales: A Reader's Guide to the Art of Microhistory (2019).