How to Do Things with History is a collection of essays that explores current and future approaches to the study of ancient Greek cultural history. Rather than focus directly on methodology, the essays in this volume demonstrate how some of the most productive and significant methodologies for studying ancient Greece can be employed to illuminate a range of different kinds of subject matter. These essays, which bring together the work of some of the most talented scholars in the field, are based upon papers delivered at a conference held at Cambridge University in September of 2014 in honor of Paul Cartledge's retirement from the post of A. G. Leventis Professor of Ancient Greek Culture. For the better part of four decades, Paul Cartledge has spearheaded intellectual developments in the field of Greek culture in both scholarly and public contexts. His work has combined insightful historical accounts of particular places, periods, and thinkers with a willingness to explore comparative approaches and a keen focus on methodology. Cartledge has throughout his career emphasized the analysis of practice - the study not, for instance, of the history of thought but of thinking in action and through action. The assembled essays trace the broad horizons charted by Cartledge's work: from studies of political thinking to accounts of legal and cultural practices to politically astute approaches to historiography. The contributors to this volume all take the parameters and contours of Cartledge's work, which has profoundly influenced an entire generation of scholars, as starting points for their own historical and historiographical explorations. Those parameters and contours provide a common thread that runs through and connects all of the essays while also offering sufficient freedom for individual contributors to demonstrate an array of rich and varied approaches to the study of the past.

About the Author
Paul Christesen is William R. Kenan Professor of Ancient Greek History in the Department of Classics at Dartmouth College. He is the author of Olympic Victor Lists and Ancient Greek History and Sport and Democracy in the Ancient and Modern Worlds. He is also co-editor, with Donald Kyle, of The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman Antiquity, and author of more than 30 articles. He is currently working with Paul Cartledge of Cambridge University on the Oxford History of the Archaic Greek World. He regularly speaks about these topics to scholarly and general audiences in the United States and Europe. He holds a B.A. from Dartmouth, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Reviews
This remarkable collection of essays is both inspired by the work of, and dedicated to, Paul Cartledge.... All essays are very elegantly written and retain the immediacy of the occasion when they were originally delivered. They entertain the reader by approaching their respective topics from unusual perspectives. This collection of essays is a must in the library of everyone interested in ancient Greece and, more generally, in classics and in intellectual history. * Bryn Mawr Classical Review *
How to Do Things with History is a very interesting and well-designed book, featuring a multiplicity of approaches and methodologies. It provides many insights to all students of ancient history. * Classical Journal-Online *
As a tribute to a foremost ancient historian who did many things with history, the volume is a success. * The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought *
An Oxford volume, but for a Cambridge stalwart-Paul Cartledge, the inaugural Leventis Professor of Greek culture. The book began in a conference to mark his retirement in 2014, and the stellar cast-list is itself testimony to Cartledge's influence and esteem; these have been matched by his immense energy in communicating with a broader public, not least through his engagement with Friends of Classics and Classics for All. Paul deserves a tribute of the highest quality, and he gets one here. * Classics for All *
Big questions are recurrently put, new ways are found to look for answers, ancient and modern worlds intertwine, and simple models illuminate but also fall short of the rich messiness of life. And Paul Cartledge will welcome all those ideas with the infectious enthusiasm that he has shown about so much for so long. * Christopher Pelling, Classics for All *
Recommended. * CHOICE *



Book Information
ISBN 9780190649890
Author Danielle Allen
Format Hardback
Page Count 424
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 758g
Dimensions(mm) 239mm * 163mm * 29mm