Info Nuggets

Historiography

Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialised topic. Scholars discuss historiography topically – such as the "historiography of Catholicism," the "historiography of early Islam," or the "historiography of China" – as well as specific approaches and genres, such as political history and social history. Beginning in the nineteenth century, with the ascent of academic history, a corpus of historiographic literature developed.

Advertisement

The research interests of historians change over time, and in recent decades there has been a shift away from traditional diplomatic, economic and political history toward newer approaches, especially social and cultural studies. From 1975 to 1995, the proportion of professors of history in American universities identifying with social history rose from 31% to 41%, while the proportion of political historians fell from 40% to 30%. In the history departments of British universities in 2007, of the 5723 faculty members, 1644 (29%) identified themselves with social history while political history came next with 1425 (25%).

In the early modern period, the term historiography tended to be used in a more basic sense, to mean simply "the writing of history". Historiographer therefore meant "historian".

Arab Spring

The Arab Spring is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world that began on December 18, 2010. To date, there have been revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt; a civil war in Libya resulting in the fall of its government; civil uprisings in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen; major protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, and Oman; and minor protests in Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Western Sahara.

The protests have shared techniques of civil resistance in sustained campaigns involving strikes, demonstrations, marches and rallies, as well as the use of social media to organize, communicate, and raise awareness in the face of state attempts at repression and Internet censorship. Many demonstrations have met violent responses from authorities, as well as from pro-government militias and counter-demonstrators. A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world has been ash-shab yurid isqat an-nizam ("the people want to bring down the regime").