Loading Events

« All Events

Historians and the Making of Meaning—with Robert Strayer, PhD

April 3 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Humans are meaning-making creatures. In the absence of meaning, we do not flourish. Historians too participate in this vast human effort. A large part of the historian’s craft involves identifying, describing, and explaining the meanings that individuals and societies in the past have ascribed to their experience and their behavior. But historians are more than observers of past meanings. They also join the rest of humankind in creating meaning as they give definition to the human past. This presentation will explore the various ways in which they have done so, drawing selectively and arbitrarily on examples from ancient to modern times.

At the grand level, many societies have understood the past in cyclical terms in which events and processes recur over and again. Others, particularly those shaped by Abrahamic religions, have found purpose inscribed in the historical record, generating a more linear or spiral view of history.

At a more prosaic level of analysis, many historians have found meaning without some grand purpose. Pointing to broad trends, assessing causation, defining particular periods of history, making comparisons, establishing context—in all of these ways historians seek to impose some shape and significance on the chaos of random events.

In doing so, they are insisting that history is more than “one damned thing after another,” that it is possible to find a measure of coherence in the record of humankind. Some might argue that any such “shape” is an illusion, an artificial product of human self-serving. Certainly, historians’ formulations are endlessly contested and debated. But we are apparently impelled to seek pattern, structure, or meaning in the past. An infinite array of miscellaneous historical “facts” is neither satisfying nor useful.

Robert Strayer is an historian with a particular focus on World History. He has taught at the high school level in Ethiopia with the Peace Corps and at the university level at SUNY: Brockport, UCSC, CSU Monterey Bay, and Cabrillo College. In addition, he was a visiting professor of world and Soviet history at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. His published works include books in African, Soviet, and World History. His most recent book is Ways of the World: A Brief Global History, now in its 5th edition. Bob and his wife Suzanne Sturn have been living in La Selva Beach since 2002.

Details

Date:
April 3
Time:
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Venue

McGowan House Center
381 High St
Monterey, CA 93940 United States
+ Google Map