This Project is now complete
You, the People: National Location and the Writing of American History – the Example of Europe
‘You, the People’ is an unprecedented network of European-based historians of the United States. It brings together twenty-three scholars from eleven countries to explore the effects of national location on the writing of American history, using Europe as a case study.
Thus the network will survey European historiography on the United States since 1945, considering the work of European historians up until the end of the 1980s against the backdrop of the Cold War, and since the 1990s, in the context of American academic hegemony and the internationalization of the US history project, and finally the contrasting political uses of this work on both sides of the Atlantic. The network will also reflect on the role of national institutional structures, taking into account differing teaching and working cultures, language and writing styles across European higher education. Finally, the network will consider some specific European entries into US history, analysing comparative, transatlantic and Atlantic approaches to history writing.