Biography and Academy

Research Plan and Background

My Research Plan for the Next Few Years

Research Project in USA (spring 2002): The Methods of Microhistory

Work in Progress

The Reykjavik Academy

Summaries - books

Summaries - articles

Rumor, Scandals, Trials and Memory

The Contours of Social History — Microhistory, Postmodernism and Historical Sources

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My Research Plan for the Next Few Years (1998-):

I. Historiography and methology.

• 1. To attempt to study as much as possible the newest research in the fields of micro-history and Alltagsgeschichte, and get an opportunity to discuss it with other scholars abroud by networking on the internet. This is crucial since both of these fields are developing and a lot is to be learned by participating in a dialogue about the subject.
• 2. To make a systematic comparism between Alltagsgeschichte as it is practiced in Germany, micro-history as it is practiced in Italy, and "history from below" as it is practiced in the English speeking world, and come up with a synthesis which would both serve as an analytical tool for my research in the future and sharpen the defination of social history which I am planing to deal with in an article for a professional journal in the USA.
• 3. The main gool of this work would be to further the development of my own approach to micro-history and Alltagsgeschichte, which would take special notice of the extremely rich first person sources in Iceland. In other words, I would make an attempt to draw from the intellectual experience of German scholars and German historiography and applay it to Icelandic emperical data. The most important question which I would have to ask are:
  • A. What kind of source material has been used in the Alltagsgeschichte and how has it been applayed to the everyday life experience of ordinary people?
  • B. To what extent have historians used first person sources in their research and what is considered their stength and weaknesses?
  • C. How have historians connected the anthropological and ethnological approach to their studis of history? What are the connection between the theoretical approach of Alltagsgeschichte and micro-history interms of their use of anthropological and ethonlogical methods and models? How does "history from below" fit into that framwork?
  • D. How can first person sources best be used in micro-historical reseach? Or, in stead of reconstruct a text, using the methods of anthropology and ethnography with the intention of drawing out the subjective experience of the lower classes, is it possible to use first person sources as a substitute? If so, how, and what would be the real advantage?
  • E. How would a micro-historical approach best be applayed to a intensive study of a diary from the nineteenth century? Or a collections of letters?

II. Publications and future plans.

1. The general idea is to work on a theoretical paper which would explore the possibilities which Alltagsgeschichte and micro-history can give historians in the future. The main idea is to use the theoretical foundation from both of these approaches as they have been practiced in Germany along with what "history from below" has to offer and applay it to Icelandic source material and context. I have already discussed the idea of a paper like this with editors of two professional journals, who have shown some interest in the subject.

2. I am convinced that there is enormous work ahead in the area of personal documents and how they can be used for historical analysis, not only here in Iceland, but also in other parts of the world. Iceland is in the somewhat unusual position that the general public enjoyed universal literacy in spite of the total lack of infrastructures in the nineteenth century. For this reason, a lot of personal documents have survived from this time, documents which come from people who did not, traditionally, express their desires or world views in other peasant societies. This is extremely important for a historian who is working in the fields of social history, everyday life history and the history of mentality since these sources open up an opportunity to work on historical issues which we have, heretofore, only been able to wonder about at best. This is a new and exciting area in the field of history, but the need for a solid methodology is pressing and my hope is that I will get a chance to study the possibilities which these sources seem to offer.