Session Abstract

This panel explores the history of the human sciences from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. Tracing genealogies of knowledge production that traverse the boundaries both of the West and the non-West, panelists reflect critically upon the universalist assumptions, presentist agendas, and the neglect of everyday practices, that have marked the historiography of the human sciences. Exploring the lineaments of historical sociology, anthropology, science and technology studies, and the humanistic disciplines more broadly understood, panelists address a variety of historical lacunae with the history of the human sciences.  Interrogating such key concepts as critical realism, “the social,” race, and practice, panelists will situate their own contributions to the historiography of the human sciences within a broader meta-analytic framework.