NCGS Workshop and Seminar Series #3 (Virtual)

Time of the Antechamber: A History of Waiting, 1500-1800

Speaker: Helmut Puff (Elizabeth L. Eisenstein Collegiate Professor of History and Germanic Languages, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)

While exploring the epistemological difficulties in studying time, the philosopher Henri Bergson cautioned his readers in 1888 that, “We necessarily express ourselves by means of words and we usually think in terms of space.” This observation notwithstanding, recent years have seen an unprecedented spate of studies on temporalities in history, anthropology, sociology, and related disciplines. Evidently, time as a category has never been absent from historical studies. Still, what distinguishes recent studies from previous scholarship? How does time in its different registers and rhythms structure societies? How do temporal modes structure politics, cultures, societies, and social interactions? This talk will seek to survey the historiography on times, temporalities, and temporizations with a particular eye to the history of waiting as a socially mandated and politically meaningful temporal mode in social interactions.

Comment: Jakob Norberg (Duke University, Department of German Studies)

Moderation: Terence V. McIntosh (UNC-Chapel Hill, Department of History)