The Practical Past

Featuring Hayden White and Ethan Kleinberg

In History and Theory’s first entry in its Conversations in Theory series, Hayden White and Ethan Kleinberg discuss The Practical Past.

This conversation is split into two parts, both of which are available on the journal’s YouTube page and are embedded below.

In this first part, Kleinberg and White discuss The Practical Past, ways and forms of studying the past, and the state of disciplinary history today. In the second part, Kleinberg and White continue their discussion of The Practical Past as well as the relation between literary writing and fiction, the role of judgment in the investigation of the past, and Saul Friedlander's The Age of Extermination. They also field questions from Carolyn J. Dean, Michael S. Roth, and Paul Roth.