Allan Megill
Professor
Office Hours: In 2024, on leave but mostly in town; email megill@virginia.edu for an appointment (preference for Tues)
Field & Specialties
Modern Europe
Modern European History of Ideas
Historical Theory/Philosophy of History
Education
B.A. Saskatchewan 1969
M.A. Toronto 1970
Ph.D. Columbia 1975
Biography
For some indication of my academic work generally, see https://virginia.academia.edu/AllanMegill.
Fall Semester 2023: I shall be teaching a new class, HIEU 3501, Academic History, Public History, & Other Kinds. This class is primarily intended for beginning history majors, but is not limited to that group. Students will read, research, and write about the connections and tensions between academic history and non-academic histories, such as public history, memory-oriented and justice-oriented histories, as well as the burgeoning genres of mediatic history, in which past events and situations are re-presented in vivid ways in art installations, films, TV series, video games, and other, still-developing, digital and AI media. The first few weeks of the semester will offer an introduction to history as an evidence-based discipline. In the rest of the semester students will explore how this aspect of history relates to the various other aspects of our human interest in history -- affective, aesthetic, moral/ethical, and, of course, propagandistic. There will be considerable emphasis on students' own reading, researching, and writing/thinking, with well-signposted deadlines along the way. I shall also be teaching HIEU 3812: Marx as philosopher and social scientist. This class explores the development of Marx's thinking from its roots in his simultaneous engagement, as a young man born in Trier in southwestern Germany, with both the Western philosophical tradition and with the political and social conditions of his own time.
I am on research leave in Spring Semester 2024 and Fall Semester 2024. I shall become professor emeritus in January 2025. I expect to continue living in Albemarle County, Virginia, but with considerable time abroad. My working emails will remain megill@virginia.edu and amegill@gmail.com; use either, or both. Feel free to contact with me: when I am at home, I do expect to come into town fairly frequently. I can meet people in the public areas of the Nau/Gibson, in Shannon Library, or in a local coffee shop.
My Classes Generally (no longer being taught): Among my classes, HIEU 3802 (Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and others) and HIEU 3812 (Marx) have no particular prerequisites apart from an ability and willingness to work systematically and read attentively, immersing yourself in what is there in the text. It also helps to be able to follow the rules specific to the class, and not assume that the class is like other classes you have taken. While the material studied is in a broad sense philosophical, the method followed is historical: the aim is to see how a particular strain of ideas developed over time.
In the last ten or so years of my teaching at UVa I often taught HIEU 1502, which, by a history department rule, is restricted to first-year and second-year students. I generallly had a mix of students in that class. Most were not aiming to be history majors, but had an interest in history, philosophy, and/or social and political theory. It is not restricted to students who intend to major in history -- on the contrary, I welcomed first-and second-year students with a variety of academic and career goals. The class put a heavy emphasis on evidence-based thinking and on clear writing. These skills are useful for everyone. Further, the class will give you insight into how real historians think, which will be useful to you even if you do not take any other history class. However, I suggest that you do take some additional classes in the history department, not only for the information they will give you, but also for their modelling of evidence-based thinking concerning the wide diversity of human societies.
Various documents describing or otherwise connnected with these, and other, courses that I teach can be found on my academia.edu site: https://virginia.academia.edu/AllanMegill/Teaching-Documents .
Letters of reference: To save breath I indicate here what I ask students or former students in my classes to give me if I agree to write a letter of reference for them: I would possibly be open to writing a letter of reference for you if that is needed. I require the following from people for whom I write: information concerning what is required by the internship, job, fellowship, and so on that you are applying for; a copy of your unofficial transcript; a statement as to which professors and classes have had the most impact on you; an informal CV (which may include personal information that you would not put on a work-related CV or resume, if such information might be helpful to a reference-letter writer); and a statement concerning your central interests and talents as well as concerning your plans for the next few years. Students should send reminders, with deadlines clearly indicated in the e-mail subject line, as deadlines approach.
Visiting scholars: Over the years I have often hosted in my classes visitors from other countries (they have come from China [including Hong Kong], Brazil, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Norway, and Germany). This presence has often been illuminating for regularly-enrolled undergraduate and graduate students, offering a certain widening of vision. It is best, however, if I am teaching a relevant class--that is, a class relevant to the prospective visitor's interests--during the period the visitor will be here (most relevant to vistors' interests have been HIEU 3812 Marx, and HIEU 5062 Philosophy and Theory of History).
Publications
Books
NOTE: My complete CV, with a detailed publication list, is usually to be found at my academia.edu site: https://virginia.academia.edu/AllanMegill/CurriculumVitae, as well as under my OFFICE HOURS line, above (although sometimes this CV is less up to date than the academia.edu CV).
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, Aşirliğin Peygamberleri: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (Ankara: Bilim ve Sanat, 1998 [ISBN 975-7298-32-8]). New edition Ankara: Ayraç, 2009 [9789944732147]. Another new edition: Istanbul: Idefix, 2012 [9786050201697]. Fourth Turkish edition: Istanbul: Metis, July 2021.
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).
Some articles and other shorter pieces from ca. 2008 onward.
“Does Populism Challenge the Expertise of Academic Historians?,” 7400 wds., chapter 15, pp. 288–305, in Claiming the People’s Past: Populist Historicities and the Challenges to Historical Thinking, ed. Berber Bevernage, Eline Mestdagh, Walderez Ramalho, and Marie-Gabrielle Verbergt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, became available online in May 2024; print publication on Sept. 30, 2024. Available electronically via UVA Library home page | UVA Library (virginia.edu) or, when the stars align, through a Cambridge University Press link, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/claiming-the-peoples-past/69B0898B5A1EE94711EDD7F61B91E163.
"The Affective Dimension: What Theory of History Can Learn from Popular History,” chapter 6 in Philosophy of History: Twenty-First-Century Perspectives, ed. Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen (London: Bloomsbury Academic, Nov. 12, 2020), pp. 101–125, 241–244 [cited works data at 257–284], https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/philosophy-of-history-9781350111844/.
“History’s Unresolving Tensions: Reality and Implications,” Rethinking History: A Journal of Theory and Practice 23.3 (June 2019): 279–303, https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2019.1625544.
"Theological Presuppositions of the Evolutionary Epic: From Robert Chambers to E. O. Wilson,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Volume 58, Pages 1-122 (August 2016), Special Issue: Replaying the Tape of Life: Evolution and Historical Explanation, ed. Peter Harrison and Ian Hesketh, at pp. 24-32. Crossref DOI link for article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2015.12.005. URL for entire issue: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13698486/58/supp/C.
“On the Dual Character of Historical Thinking: Challenges for Teaching and Learning,” chapter 10 in Christine Counsell, Katharine Burn, and Arthur Chapman, eds., MasterClass in History Education: Transforming Teaching and Learning (London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming March 24, 2016, ISBN 9781472534873), 159-165.
“‘Big History’ Old and New: Presuppositions, Limits, Alternatives,” Journal of the Philosophy of History 9.2 (2015): 306–326 [in a Special Issue on “The Aesthetics of Scale,” ed. Ian Hesketh and Knox Peden].
Contribution to Marcin Moskalewicz, “The Old Nietzschean Question Raised Again: How much Past do we need for having a Healthy Life?” [with contributions by Frank Ankersmit, Sande Cohen, Jan van der Dussen, Allan Megill, and Jörn Rüsen], Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, published online 24 March 2014, DOI: 10.1080/13642529.2014.893666; to link to this article, use this URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2014.893666; print publication forthcoming in Rethinking History 18: 4 (2014), fall 2014 (my contribution amounts to about 1,300 words).
“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. Translated into Chinese by Xupeng Zhang as “理论在历史实践中的作用 [The Role of Theory in Historical Practice; Lǐlùn zài lìshǐ shíjiàn zhōng de zuòyòng],” Historiography Bimonthly [Beijing: Dept. of World History, CASS], 2021, no 6 (December), 4-11.
Phillip Honenberger and Allan Megill, with contributions by Jesse Dukes, Justin Reich, “John Norman,” Steven M. Shepard, and Hillary J. Bracken, “Inferência abdutiva e historiografia: uma conversa para historiadores e filósofos,” trans. Viviane Venancio Moreira, Intelligere, Revista de História Intelectual, vol. 1, nº1 (dez. 2015): 58-81, downloadable at http://revistas.usp.br/revistaintelligere. (instructional/scholarly hybrid).
“Introdução: Teoria da História ca.1870-1940: Objetividade e Antinomias da História em um Tempo de Crise Existencial [Introduction: Theory of History ca. 1870-1940: Objectivity and the Antinomies of History in a Time of Existential Crisis],” trans. Sérgio Campos Gonçalvos, in Jurandir Malerba, ed., Lições de história: Da história cientifica à razão metódica no limiar do século XX (Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV, and Porto Alegre: EdiPUCRS, 2013), 11-37.
Allan Megill and Xupeng Zhang, “Questions on the History of Ideas and Its Neighbours,” Rethinking History 17: 3 (Sept. 2013). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13642529.2013.774720. Chinese version: Allan Megill and Xupeng Zhang, “What is the History of Ideas? A Conversation with Professor Allan Megill”; Chinese title and publication data: “什么是观念史？——对话弗吉尼亚大学历史系阿兰·梅吉尔教授,”Historiography Quarterly (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing) [journal title in Chinese: 史学理论研究, in Pinyin: Shixue Lilun Yanjiu], Issue 2, 2012, pp. 108-119. Excerpt from this article published in Chinese Social Science Digest, Issue 9, 2012, pp. 71-72.
Review article, “History, Theoreticism, and the Limits of 'the Postsecular’” (on Dominick LaCapra, History and Its Limits), History and Theory 52 (Feb. 2013): 110-29. Chinese translation: 阿兰·梅吉尔：《历史、理论主义与“后世俗”的限度》，张文涛译、张旭鹏校，《新史学》第十三辑，2014年，第98—117页; in pinyin: Allan Megill, "Lishi, lilun zhuyi yu 'hou shisu' de xiandu", trans. by Wentao Zhang, revised by Xupeng Zhang, New History, Vol. 13, 2014, pp. 98-117.
“Epilogue” to Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol. 5 (5 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 5: 678-88.
“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, 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 200th 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.
“Некоторые размышления о проблеме истинностной оценки репрезентации прошлого; translation by Marina Kukartseva], Эпистемология & философия науки [Журнал Института философии Российской Академии наук] (Epistemology and Philosophy of Science [Journal of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences]), Vol. 15, no. 1 (2008): 53-61. (part of a “Panel Discussion” with responses by A. L. Nikiforov, H. M. Smirnova, A. C. Shchabelov, S. P. Shchabelov, and M. A. Kukartseva); Science [Journal of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences]), Vol. 15, no. 1 (2008): 53-61, reprinted in М. Кукартсева, ред., Способы постижения проплого: Методология и теория исторической науки (Moscow: Канон+, 2011), 117-28.
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.
Current Research
Currently I work mainly in the theory and philosophy of history. The most up-to-date publicly available version of my CV is usually to be found on my academia.edu site:http://virginia.academia.edu/AllanMegill. Search the CV publications list for recent years (e.g., 2020, 2019, etc.) to see my most recent publications. The CV can also be found, sometimes in a slightly more updated version, on my academia.edu site.
Awards & Honors
Member of the Bureau [governing committee] of the International Committee for the History and Theory of Historiography (part of the International Congress of Historical Sciences [CISH]), from September 2022
President, Journal of the History of Ideas, Inc., 2005--2014
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., fall semester 2016, spring and fall semesters 2024
Instructor, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor of History, University of Iowa, 1974-90.
University of Iowa Faculty Scholarship, 1985-88.
Research Fellow, Australian National University, 1977-79.
Courses Taught
HIEU 3802 ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT (on Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, and early Heidegger) and HIEU 3812 Marx, are the two centrally important undergraduate lecture classes that I teach. If you've “got” Marx, plus the Nietzsche to Heidegger sequence, you can go on and tackle just about anything; and if you don''t have them, what planet are you living on? I also teach a small, quite intensive HIEU 1502 seminar for first- and second-year undergraduates, intended to show students how historians work. A new class, HIEU 3501, is for students who wish to explore the differences and similarities of academic history and non-academic history. This class requires, from students, research into forms of non-academic history.
Some of my most rewarding pedagogical work has been done in connection with undergraduates (on rare occasion this work has included research collaboration, including on several occasions co-authorship of a published scholarly article or chapter). Many of these undergraduate students have gone on to greater things (these days the greater things usually do not include immediate graduate work in history).
I am open to advising senior theses in History or in Political and Social Thought; more rarely, I have also done some advising of PPL senior theses. However, a prerequisite for this is that the student would have taken at least one of my classes, ideally by their second year or by first semester of third year.
PROSPECTIVE HISTORY GRADUATE STUDENTS, AND GRADUATE STUDENTS ALREADY HERE, IN OTHER DEPARTMENTS OR IN THE LAW SCHOOL:
I am interested in working with history graduate students who are the advisees of another professor in the department and who feel that they would find my theoretical and methodological concerns and expertise useful for their empirical work. In addition, I am always interested in hearing from graduate students in other human sciences departments who directly share my theoretical interests. I do not expect to be advocating the admission of graduate students hoping to specialize in my own particular fields of history of European ideas and theory and philosophy of history. I am potentially open to expressions of interest from potential Visiting Scholars.
On the other hand, if you can establish a community of interest with another member of the Corcoran Department of History who is willing to be your advisor, and if the Graduate Committee also deems you worthy of admission, then we could certainly talk about what I could contribute to your education here. I should note that this department has some recently-tenured faculty who would be excellent advisors for the right student. It is easy to overlook these people because they will generally not be widely known in the broad academic community. We also have some excellent tenure-track faculty who are as yet untenured--the tenuring process is very long.
It continues to be difficult-to-impossible to get a tenure-track position in European history, which, rightly, is not a growth area. You should come well-equipped with at least relevant language that isn't English. In this age of global competition, there are many bright young Europeans or Israelis (and people from other places as well) who acquire a good knowledge of two or even three languages almost as a matter of course.
One seeming bright spot (will it continue?) is the increasing demand in East Asia and elsewhere for people who have a good American graduate training and have a serious commitment to making a career abroad. (However, it should be noted [observation of January 2018] than many young Chinese people, among others, are acquiring near-mastery of English, including its grammar, at a relatively early age. [observation of September 2022: At this time, competition strikes me as deserving of the description "global"]. )
If you are deeply interested in pursuing graduate work in history in general, or intellectual history in particular, and if you get admitted (which, these days, means getting full funding), I would say: go for it, if you really want to. But be expeditious about it. Above all, you need to find a short and manageable dissertation topic.
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Over the years I have 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; visiting scholars come with funding from scientific funding agencies in their own countries. At the current writing, the US Department of State requires a single foreign visitor to have funding of USD 1,550 per month to support himself or herself while here.