한국 서양사학 2009~2010: 숨 고르며 땅 다지기

Abstract

The two years 2009~2010 of the Korean world of western history experienced the visible slowdown of the rapidly growing trend which appeared during the previous several years in quantitative achievement, and the deepening and specialization of existing various themes in qualitative evaluation, all of which can be abbreviated as ‘a territorial consolidation’ of the Korean western history. The perceptible tendencies characteristic of the past two years in western history research can be sorted out in three categories. First, classical historical study such as political history, social history, intellectual history and history of thought extended its own boundary by appropriating the various trends of ‘new history’while maintaining the traditional methods. Second, cultural history(‘culture’ in its broad anthropological sens) came to have the wide range of case studies like women, gender, cult of heros, religious sensitivity, daily life and generation. Finally,history of every period and country, especially German history and British history was under the current stormy influence of a categorical series of ‘transnational history’such as Eurocentrism, immigration, memory, global history and environmental history. In sum, Korean scholars of western history for the last two years made a lot of efforts to extend and tamp the Korean territory of western history. However, we are faced with the imminent problem of sharp decrease in the recruitment of young scholars to continue the present active research capacities and to explore the ignored fields, which remains an urgent task to be overcome.