Studying Cultural History

New Book Series: Centre for Cultural History, University of Aberdeen, Studies in Cultural History

Scroll down for pictures from the launch party

No 1, published 13 December 2010: Explorations in Cultural History: Essays for Peter McCaffery

edited by David F. Smith and Hushang Philsooph

ISSN 2045-7650; ISBN: 978-0-9567059-0-7

Price £20 via University of Aberdeen internal post or collection by arrangement

Postage: £3.50 for UK; £5.00 for Europe; £6.50 for the rest of the world.

Available via the University of Aberdeen online store: click here

Contents

Section One: Peter and Aberdeen
NIGEL DOWER	Peter McCaffery: an appreciation
NICK FISHER	The Cultural History MA at the University of Aberdeen 1986–2011: a personal reflection
JOAN PITTOCK WESSON	A poem from the 1980s
MARIUS KWINT	The first cohort of cultural historians at Aberdeen: a brief memoir from a student’s perspective
NORMAN STOCKMAN	Sociological reflections on the history of a Sociology Department
Section Two: Varieties of Cultural History
PETER BURKE	The Polymath: a cultural and social history of an intellectual species
DAVID N. DUMVILLE	What is mediaeval Gaelic poetry?
WILLIAM SCOTT	Mountains and enlightenment
JAMES DARRIN RUSSELL	‘A living picture of Hell’: the eloquence of violence in seventeenth-century New France
ANDERS INGRAM	‘The glorious empire of the Turkes, the present terrour of the world’:Richard Knolles’s General History of the Turkes (1603) and the background to an early modern commonplace
ALASTAIR BAIN	Solitude and silence: some early modern English ‘landscapes’
PAUL DUKES	Sir Roderick Murchison and the Urals
Section Three: History and Sociology of Medicine, and Global Citizenship
ALEX SUTHERLAND	From ‘simples’ to scientific innovation: healthcare in the Scottish Highlands, ca 1620–ca 1820
EDWIN R. VAN TEIJLINGEN	Dutch maternity care: lessons learnt
DAVID F. SMITH	The rise and fall of multi-phasic screening services as a public health service during the 1960s and the emergence of ‘evidence based medicine’
NIGEL DOWER	Development, peace and global citizenship

This volume launches Studies in Cultural History at a time of change for Cultural
History at the University of Aberdeen. The pioneering MA in Cultural History,
which began in 1986, is being phased out, and the last student will graduate from
the programme in 2011. But in future a wide range of Cultural History courses
will be offered as part of the single and joint honours History, and of other MA
programmes. We also have an MLitt in Cultural History, opportunities for PhD
research, and a Centre for Cultural History which runs seminars and other events.
Appropriately, this volume is published in honour of the member of staff,
Peter McCaffery, who was associated with the Cultural History MA programme
for the longest period of time. And it includes contributions from six other
colleagues who were involved from the earliest days, as well as Peter Burke, one
of the early external examiners, and a student from the first cohort. The other
essays are provided by colleagues and students who were involved with the
programme at other points during its lifetime.

Essays in the first section add to the existing literature on the history of the
Cultural History programme, as well as providing accounts of Aberdeen’s
Sociology Department, into which Peter was first appointed. Another essay covers
Peter’s academic career. Anyone who knows Peter will be aware of his very wide
intellectual interests and abilities, which makes the inclusion of the essay by Peter
Burke, on the intellectual species of ‘Polymath’ especially fitting. The other papers
both reflect Peter’s broad interests and provide a small taster of the intellectual
vigour and creativity associated with the Cultural History programme.
We hope that this volume will be read by staff and alumni of the University
of Aberdeen but will also reach a world-wide audience through the now thriving
International Society for Cultural History, which was established following the
2007 ‘Varieties of Cultural History’ Conference in Aberdeen. Such readers will
learn that the Aberdeen Cultural History MA was born in very difficult academic
circumstances during the 1980s. We can only hope that, as universities elsewhere
face a new period of financial retrenchment over the next few years, this book can
inspire similar creative interdisciplinary collaborations.

PICTURES FROM THE LAUNCH ON 13 DECEMBER 2010