Allan Megill

Professor (1990)

Office Hours: usually MW 1:10-2:10 in fall 2011, but it is best to e-mail me for an appointment

Office: 434 Nau Hall

Phone: (434) 924-6414

Email: megill (at) virginia.edu

Fields & Specialties

Education

B.A. Saskatchewan 1969
M.A. Toronto 1970
Ph.D. Columbia 1975

Books

Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, February 2007. ISBNs: cloth: 0-226-51829-9 (cloth), [UPC] 978-0-226-51829-9. Paper: 0-226-51830-2, [UPC] 978-0-226-51830-5.  304 pp. Russian version: trans. Marina Kukartseva, V. S. Timonin, and V. E. Kashaev, with an introduction by Marina Kukartseva, Историческая Эпистемология [Istoricheskaya epistemologia] [Historical Epistemology] (Moscow: Kanon+, 2007). Chinese version: Remains in process,trans. Han Zhao and others (Beijing: Peking University Press, slated for publication in the series “Ideas of History,” forthcoming). 

Karl Marx: The Burden of Reason (Why Marx Rejected Politics and the Market). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002, pp. xxv + 367. Russian version: trans.Marina Kukartseva, Карл Маркс: Бремя Разума, (Moscow: Kanon+,  2011, ISBN: 978-5-88373-254-2). (Note: this is a condensed and slightly updated version of the original 180,000-word English-language book [condensation by am] It is about half the length of the original version. A Chinese version is in preparation.)

Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985, pp. xxiii + 399 (paperback edition, May 1987). Turkish version: trans. Tuncay Birkan, Aşirli—in Peygamberleri: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (Ankara: Bilim ve Sanat, 1998 [ISBN 975-7298-32-8]). New edition Ankara: Ayrac Publishing House, Jan. 2009).

Allan Megill, ed., Rethinking Objectivity (Durham., N.C.: Duke University Press, June 1994 [hardcover and paperback eds.]), pp. ix + 342.

John S. Nelson, Allan Megill, and Donald N. McCloskey, eds., The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences: Language and Argument in Scholarship and Public Affairs. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987, pp. viii + 445 (paperback edition, January 1991).Korean version: Seoul: Korea University Press, 2003, x + 600 (ISBN 89-7641-495-01/89-7641-428-4).

Recent (late 2009- ) and forthcoming articles and other shorter pieces

“Epilogue” to Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol. 5 (5 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 5: 678-88.

With Xupeng Zhang, “Intellectual History and Its Neighbours,” Rethinking History, forthcoming, 17: 4 (Dec. 2013), 10,500 wds..

 “Five Questions on Intellectual History,” Rethinking History 15: 4 (December 2011): 489-510. A shorter variant is forthcoming in in Stjenfelt, F., M. H. Jeppesen, and M. Thorup, eds., Intellectual History: 5 Questions. Automatic Press/VIP, Copenhagen (http://www.vince-inc.com/contact.html) in  December 2011. A Russian translation of the long version will be appearing, as "Пять вопросов об интеллектуальной истории," in the intellectual history journal Диалог со временем: Альманах интеллектуальной истории, no. 38 (March 2012). A Chinese translation of the long version is in preparation.

“Границы у Национальное Государство: Предварительые Заметки [Borders and the Nation-State: A Preliminary Communication],” Диалог со временем: альманах интеллектуальной истории [Dialogue with Time: Intellectual History Review] (Moscow), no. 30 (2010): 43-58. A slightly longer Chinese variant of this paper, trans. Xupeng Zhang, has appeared in Shandong Social Sciences Journal (ISSN 1003-4145/CN37 – 1053/C), 2009, no. 12 (general no. 172):  19-26. 

“What Role Should Theory Play in Historical Research and Writing,” published in Russian as “Роль Теории в историческом исследовании и историописании,” trans. О. V. Vorobyeva, in L. P. Repina, ed., Историческая наука сегодня: Теории, Методы, Перспективы (The Science of History Today: Theories, Methods, Perspectives) (Москва: Издательство ЛКИ, 2011), 24-40.

“Is There Moral Progress in History? An Old Kantian Question Raised Yet Again,” in Don Yerxa, ed., British Abolitionism and the Question of Moral Progress (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, forthcoming, March 15, 2012). A Russian variant has appeared as“Старый вопрос,   поставленный  вновь: существует ли моральный  прогресс в истории? [An Old Question Raised Anew: Is there Moral Progress in History],” trans. N. Motroshilova  and M. Kukartseva, in Международная конференция, посвященная 200-летию выхода в свет Феноменологии духа Г .В Ф. Гегеля: Сборник докладов и материалов под ред Н. Мотрошиловой [International Conference marking  the 200^th Anniversary of the Publication of G. W. F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, ed. N Motroshilova]  (Moscow: Kanon+, for Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2010), 645-68.

“The Needed Centrality of Regional History,” Ideas in History 4, 2 (2009) [Oslo: Nordic Society for the History of Ideas): 11-37]. A Chinese variant has appeared as “Regional History and the Future of Historical Writing” [in Chinese], Academic Research [Xueshu Yanjiu (ISSN1000-7326/CN44-1070)], 2009, no. 8: 89-100.

 “The Rhetorical Dialectic of Hayden White,” in Frank Ankersmit, Ewa Domanska, and Hans Kellner, eds., Re-Figuring Hayden White (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 190-215.

Some other, older, articles

“Historical Representation, Identity, Allegiance,” in Stefan Berger and Linas Eriksonas, eds., Narrating the Nation: The Representation of National Narratives in Different Genres (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 28-41.

“What is Distinctive about Modern Historiography?,” in The Many Faces of Clio: Cross-Cultural Approaches to Historiography. Essays in Honor of Georg G. Iggers, ed. Q. Edward Wang and Franz L. Fillafer (New York: Berghahn, 2007), 28-41.

“Globalization and the History of Ideas,” Journal of the History of Ideas 66 (2005): 179-87. Russian version, trans. Lorina Repina, “Глобализация и история идей, Диалог со временем: альманах интеллектуальной истории (Dialogue with Time: Intellectual History Review) 14 (2005): 11-20.

“Intellectual History and History” (critical discussion of Dominick LaCapra, “Tropisms of Intellectual History”), Rethinking History 8 (2004): 549-57.

“Imagining the History of Ideas” (critical discussion of Mark Bevir, The Logic of the History of Ideas [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999]), Rethinking History 4, 3 (2000): 333-340.

“History, Memory, Identity,” History of the Human Sciences 11: 3 (1998): 37-62.

Other data of interest

President, Journal of the History of Ideas, Inc., 2005--

Directeur d'études invité at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, May 1997.

University of Virginia Sesquicentennial Associateship, Spring Semester 1994, Spring Semester 2000, Spring Semester 2005, fall semester 2010.

Instructor, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor of History, Unviersity of Iowa, 1974-90.

University of Iowa Faculty Scholarship, 1985-88.

Research Fellow, Australian National University, 1977-79.

Current Research

I usually work in several different research areas at once. Currently I am working on a short biography of Karl Marx that emphasizes Marx’s concern with networks and “backwardness”; on issues relating to intellectual history as a field; and on the connections between historiography and the modern nation-state.

My complete and up-to-date cv can usually be found at http://people.virginia.edu/~adm9e/ and at http://virginia.academia.edu/AllanMegill, although I am not always punctilious about keeping the academia.edu link fully up to date.

 Prospective Graduate Students

I expect prospective graduate students to write me in advance, after having carefully read the"guide to graduate study in intellectual history" that I wrote years ago; you can find it by googling. Things have changed since I last revised it, but fundamentally its assessment of the field, and of academic prospects generally, remains correct. I am more optimistic about the field of intellectual history than I was ten or twelve years ago, but more pessimistic about the academic job market.

Prospective graduate students should not feel obliged to work in my specific areas of interest. I am willing to supervise a fairly wide range of 19th and 20th century topics that rely primarily on French or German sources. But note that we accept only a small number of students into our graduate program--perhaps ten each year overall. 

It continues to be difficult to get a tenure-track position in European history, which is not a growth area. Prospective students should not underestimate the difficulties involved. It is best to acquire foreign experience and real competence in a foreign language before starting graduate school. Intellectual history can’t be done well without a precise knowledge of language. Teaching in a secondary school in Europe, while at the same time perfecting one’s knowledge of the language through systematic and organized study, is one route to acquiring such experience and competence, although it is not the only route. Also, students who would want to work with me are likely to have some competence in thinking conceptually.

I should also note that I place quite a lot of emphasis on the student’s learning of the conventions of the historical discipline. Students working with me will also need to connect with a fair sampling of my departmental colleagues.

I have also found it valuable to host visiting scholars from abroad if they have interests close to mine. Alas, UVA doesn't have funding for this purpose; students come with funding from their home governments. At the current writing, the US Department of State requires a single foreign visitor to have funding of USD 1,500 per month to support himself or herself while here.