Dr. Shih-chieh "Jay" Su

Dr. Shih-chieh "Jay" Su is working on the manuscript titled The Mnemons of the National Truth: Forgetting, Historical Profession and National Identities in the Nineteenth-Century Germany and France, which compares the German and French national historiographies in the nineteenth century. Placing Ranke and the German historicism in the context of European historiography, the project will clarify the distinctions between Ranke’s views and those of the French nationalist historian, Jules Michelet, one of the inspirations for the Annales.

Dr. Su’s future research will take the project as a template for further discussion of the role of national historians in the global development of national movements. He plans to concentrate on exploring the Rankean paradigm as it relates to the transnational development of the modern historical discipline, and institutionalization of historiography. He would like to explore the following areas. First, in the west, the various models of national histories based upon various images of nationhood essentially dictated the methodological approaches to studying the specific national pasts among the historical profession. These variations of practices not surprisingly reflected the competing national institutionalization of historical profession, as it evolved in the development of modern historiography since Ranke. Second, on a global platform, he expects to show how the Rankean paradigm has facilitated the construction of modern nation-states. This paradigm has been applied since the nineteenth century in the historiographies of modern Japan, China and Taiwan, the new nation-states of the former Soviet bloc, and the postcolonial nation-states of the non-Western world.