1 | Name: | Dr. Hayden White | |
Institution: | University of California, Santa Cruz & Stanford University | ||
Year Elected: | 2000 | ||
Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
Subdivision: | 303. History Since 1715 | ||
Residency: | Resident | ||
Living? : | Deceased | ||
Birth Date: | 1928 | ||
Death Date: | March 5, 2018 | ||
Perhaps more than anyone since Collingwood, Hayden White has influenced the ways in which we think about historical writing. With his now classic Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe (1973) he almost single-handedly introduced the so-called "linguistic turn" into the study of historiography, showing that historical texts are decisively shaped by genre and narrative codes and that form and meaning are as inextricably entwined in history as in literature. In Germany, Holland, Italy, Great Britain and increasingly now also in Russia, Poland and Hungary, as well as in the U.S., Dr. White's work is an essential point of departure for reflection on the nature of history. He was University Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Bonsall Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University at the time of his death on March 5, 2018, at age 89. Dr. White was the author of works such as Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe (1973) and The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (1986). |