Thinking in the Past Tense: Eight Conversations

by Alexander Bevilacqua, Frederic Clark

If the vibrancy on display in Thinking in the Past Tense is any indication, the study of intellectual history is enjoying an unusually fertile period in both Europe and North America. This collection of conversations with leading scholars brims with insights from such diverse fields as the history of science, the reception of classical antiquity, book history, global philology, and the study of material culture. The eight practitioners interviewed here specialize in the study of the early modern period (c. 1400–1800), for the last forty years a crucial laboratory for testing new methods in intellectual history. The lively conversations don’t simply reveal these scholars’ depth and breadth of thought; they also disclose the kind of trade secrets that historians rarely elucidate in print. Thinking in the Past Tense offers students and professionals alike a rare tactile understanding of the practice of intellectual history. Here is a collectively drawn portrait of the historian’s craft today.

224 pages, Paperback

Published March 21, 2019

About the author

Alexander Bevilacqua, Assistant Professor of History, specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of early modern Europe (ca. 1450 to 1800). His research examines Western understandings of human diversity and of non-Western religious and intellectual traditions.

Reviews

[Josy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book as I am fundamentally interested on how one becomes an intellectual being. It also gave me courage for pursuing academia further: one does not always needs a precise vision for the next academic project - curiosity and drivenness seem to be enough.
Do what you love, as the great Glenn Most advised me once, seems to have worked out for all the interviewed intellectual historians. Visiting prestigious places with renowned scholars also extremely helps.
Also, most of them have been influenced by influential books, by supportive mentors and by an extremely good infrastructure for research (the Aby Warburg library is mentioned as a brilliant example) - which made me realize how much more seriously I should have taken my own craft from the very beginning of my studies, meaning the books I read, where and how I read them, the people I met, the ideas I had, what a good work environment is, how to take notes etc...

I've been always somewhat hesitant to engage with the history of ideas, but after reading this book, it does seem fascinating and innovative.
I am also wondering who else's interviews from the history of science/scholarship I would like to read next.

[Barry Torch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is truly interesting dive into the actual methodology and thinking patterns/practice of intellectual historians. Rather than approach methodology and historiography as an almost running list of names, figures, and an intellectual history in its own right, Bevilacqua and Clark use the interview process as a way of querying not only "what are the questions motivating intellectual history", but they flush out the commonalities and differences in how each of the intellectual historians actually practice and think with the data they study.

[Wu Shihfen · Rating 4 out of 5]

我閱讀的是台灣商務出版的中譯本
https://www.books.com.tw/products/001...
對照英文本多提供了受訪者的簡介以及相關作品書目彙編，還有從訪談內容抽取出可突出受訪史家治學特色的章節標題，可見編輯上的用心。有些已知其名的史家透過訪談更能了解其知識實踐的歷程與反思，而首次聽聞的史家治學問答則更是讓我大開眼界，特別是彼得·米勒(Peter N.Miller)。跟其它讀過的訪談錄(其實不多)相比，這本訪談錄在題目編排設計上有較一致的組織，很能夠呈現編者想達成的特定研究領域的「知識實踐口述歷史」，各位史家在研究上都有所呈現的博約風格(只是其中之一)讓我聯想到也是最近出版，由Peter Burke所寫的《博學者與他們的時代》。
只熟悉英文的我只能嘗試追蹤註腳裡豐富書目的英文部分，其實也只能淺嚐即止。不過看到路易‧貢當(Jean-Louis Quantin)針對Pascal《致外省人書》的接受史研究是用法文寫就的，還是再次遺憾之前的求學生活沒能多學一門語言。