Abstract

gloknos is delighted to welcome Dr Johan Östling (Lund University) to present ‘Circulating Public Knowledge: Towards a New History of the Postwar Humanities’ as part of our annual series.

Johan Östling is a historian at Lund University, focused on the history of knowledge, but with expertise more broadly in ideas, culture, and politics in Europe’s modern history. Currently, he is exploring knowledge circulation in the Swedish press in the 1960s.

find the event on our website here: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/28169

Abstract: The purpose of this lecture is to demonstrate how a new history of the postwar humanities could be written. Drawing on approaches from the emerging field of the history of knowledge, I will outline a study of the conditions for the circulation of humanistic knowledge in the public sphere of Western Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. By introducing “arena of knowledge” as an analytical concept, I will highlight certain media platforms where circulation of humanistic knowledge occurred, for instance newspapers, paperback series and early television. All in all, the paper underlines the importance of the humanities for a kind of public knowledge in these years and thereby challenges a crisis narrative of the humanities of the postwar period that is prevalent both in autobiographical accounts and established historiography.

Attendance is free but spaces are limited, so please email to reserve your seat. Please be aware that we will take an audio recording of this event, which may include any questions and responses delivered by the audience.

gloknos is initially funded for 5 years by the European Research Council through a Consolidator Grant awarded to Dr Inanna Hamati-Ataya for her project ARTEFACT (2017-2022). ARTEFACT is funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (ERC grant agreement no. 724451). For information about gloknos or ARTEFACT please contact the administrator in the first instance.