Performing the Past offers unparalleled insights into the philosophical, literary, musical, and historical frameworks within which the past has entered into the European imagination. The essays in this volume, from such internationally renowned scholars as Reinhart Koselleck, Jan Assmann, Jane Caplan, Marianne Hirsch, Leo Spitzer, Peter Burke, and Alessandro Portelli, investigate various national and disciplinary traditions to explain how Europeans see themselves in the past, in the present, and in the years to come.
Karin Tilmans is a historian and the academic coordinator of the Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies at the European University Institute. Frank van Vree is a historian and professor of journalism at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. Jay M. Winter is the Charles J. Stille Professor of History at Yale University.