Microhistory books

Microhistory carlo ginzburg
Microhistory examples
Carlo Ginzburg is Franklin D. Murphy Professor of Italian Renais- sance Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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Carlo Ginzburg

Related papers

Wheeling and dealing. The multiple networks of Umberto Zanotti-Bianco (1889-1963), social activist and dissident archeologist in fascist Italy

Nathalie de Haan

Incontri. Rivista europea di studi italiani

The rich life and manifold activities of Umberto Zanotti-Bianco (1889-1963), an Italian social activist, anti-fascist, archaeologist and senatore a vita, offer an interesting insight into the cultural and political worlds of Italy and beyond in the twentieth century. 1 With Zanotti-Bianco as our prism, it is possible to shed more light on the dynamics of various circles within Italian society that consisted of aristocrats, philanthropists, politicians, writers, journalists, publishers and scholars. Many of them were leading figures in their respective fields and played prominent roles in Italian society. As will become clear, their webs of relationships were never static but changed constantly, even if a nucleus of persons would remain. They partially overlapped and were sometimes part of larger Italian or international networks. Moreover, the dif

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Microhistory

Intensive historical investigation of a well-defined smaller unit of research

Microhistory is a genre of history that focuses on small units of research, such as an event, community, individual or a settlement. In its ambition, however, microhistory can be distinguished from a simple case study insofar as microhistory aspires to "[ask] large questions in small places", according to the definition given by Charles Joyner.^[1] It is closely associated with social and cultural history.

Origins

Microhistory became popular in Italy in the 1970s. According to Giovanni Levi, one of the pioneers of the approach, it began as a reaction to a perceived crisis in existing historiographical approaches.Carlo Ginzburg, another of microhistory's founders, has written that he first heard the term used around 1977, and soon afterwards began to work with Levi and Simona Cerutti on Microstorie, a series of microhistorical works.

The word "microhistory" dates back to 1959, when the American historian George R. Stewart published Pickett's Charge: A Microhist

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Carlo Ginzburg: ‘In history as in cinema, every close-up implies an off-screen scene’

This interview was originally published in Le Monde des livreson 3 October 2022.

Nicolas Weill, interview with Carlo Ginzburg

Carlo Ginzburg, born 1939, who taught at the École Normale Supérieure in Pisa, at the University of Bologna and then at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), is without doubt one of the most important historians of our time. For Le Monde des livres, he looks back at some of the major trends in his work.

Your name and your work are still associated with what is called ‘microhistory’. Why is that?

Let’s start by quoting the magnificent words of the Sinologist Marcel Granet: ‘The method is the path once you have travelled it.’ Microhistory was the result of a convergence and a common discussion among a group of Italian researchers, but each one arrived at it with different experiences. For me, it was the case study. When I was ten years old, my mother [the writer Natalia Ginzburg, 1916-91] regularly brought me the books published by Einaudi. One