Under the sponsorship of the Xunta de Galicia and with the support of the most important local, regional and national institutions, Santiago de Compostela will celebrate the Compostelan Holy Year, Xacobeo 93, in 1993.

In the year 93 of the 20th century, Compostela will, once again, reenact a tradition which goes back to the eleventh century, becoming a place of pilgrimage for Christians, as well as a center for European and world culture. The city will also serve as an international forum for a pressing debate on the nature and role of science and culture on the eve of the approaching millenium.

Thus, we invite historians throughout the world to follow the Road to Santiago and to come to Compostela to discuss the present state of history. Special emphasis will be placed upon the most recent and innovative methodological, upon the questioning and/or the validity of the historiographical paradigms of the twentieth century and, beyond, to the queries that immediate history urgently poses.

We live in an exciting and paradoxical historical and historiographical moment. While some announce the end of history, the historical process itself accelerates. While collaboration with other social sciences helps stimulate a historiographical renovation, nineteenth century themes and approaches to historical research return to the forefront with a great deal of vitality. While the historical discipline is further fragmented by specialization, many voices have been raised to clamor for history as explication, promoting overarching syntheses and global history, new historical theories and epistemologies. The final outcome will depend, to a large extent, on our abilities as historians to opt for, to discover what disparate historiographical renovations have in common, in order to influence the shaping of these new developlments and to usher world history into the future.

We do not pretend to be able to sever this Gordian knot in 1993; this problem is, after all, inscribed in the social conflicts and diverse mentalities of today's world. We do wish, however, to avoid all intellectual narrowness, to promote and update the historiographical exchange from a pluralistic perspective. We would therefore be satisfied with the following results: to define present historical problems; to provide information on alternative methodological approaches; to channel debate; to explore the most current methodological contributions from within history and other disciplines; to demonstrate, in short, how history, in spite of everything, continues, struggles, and is renewed.

THEMATIC SESSIONS

I. Theory, Methodology, Historiography

1. Theoretical History, Philosophy and History

2. New questions, methods, and sources

3. Historical schools: crises and debates

II. History and Social Sciences

1. Historical Sociology

2. Historical Anthropology

3. Psychology and History

III. Social History from the subject's perspective

1. History of mentalities

2. Cultural history

3. Women, gender and history

4. Microhistory

IV. The return of past historiographical approaches: new focuses

1. Historical biography

2. Narrative history

3. Political history

ROUND TABLES

A. The end of history

B. Marxism and history in the 1990s

C. Crisis in Social and Economic History?

D. The "tournant critique" of "Annales"

E. Return of the subject (individual, event, revolt)

F. History and the revolutions of Eastern Europe

G. The making of Europe from history's perspective

H. Historical revisionism (1789; 1917; World War II, Holocaust and Resistance; the Franco period)

I. History: popular and specialized

J. History, research and scientific policy

K. History and the University

L. History in Secondary Education

LL. Spanish historiography Today

 

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