Across the humanities and the social sciences, disciplinary boundaries have come into question as scholars have acknowledged their common preoccupations with cultural phenomena ranging from rituals and ceremonies to texts and discourse. Literary critics, for example, have turned to history for a deepening of their notion of cultural products; some of them now read historical documents in the same way that they previously read 'great' texts. Anthropologists have turned to the history of their own discipline in order to better understand the ways in which disciplinary authority was constructed. As historians have begun to participate in this ferment, they have moved away from their earlier focus on social theoretical models of historical development toward concepts taken from cultural anthropology and literary criticism. Much of the most exciting work in history recently has been affiliated with this wide-ranging effort to write history that is essentially a history of culture. The essays presented here provide an introduction to this movement within the discipline of history. The essays in Part One trace the influence of important models for the new cultural history, models ranging from the path breaking work of the French cultural critic Michel Foucault and the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz to the imaginative efforts of such contemporary historians as Natalie Davis and E. P. Thompson, as well as the more controversial theories of Hayden White and Dominick LaCapra. The essays in Part Two are exemplary of the most challenging and fruitful new work of historians in this genre, with topics as diverse as parades in 19th-century America, 16th-century Spanish texts, English medical writing, and the visual practices implied in Italian Renaissance frescoes. Beneath this diversity, however, it is possible to see the commonalities of the new cultural history as it takes shape. Students, teachers, and general readers interested in the future of history will find these essays stimulating and provocative.

這是一本行道後進為該行開山祖師娜塔莉‧澤蒙‧戴維斯祝賀的論文集。負責編集的正是聲名如日中天，且擔任今年美國歷史學會會長的林‧亨特。 本書分成前後兩部分：「第一部」批判且又賞識地檢視現行的文化史模式；「第二部」所描述的具體例子則是關於當前進行中的新類型研究。在這些篇幅裡，讀者幾乎看不到有關社會學式的理論化，因為新文化史已將社會學理論從歷史研究中剔除。現在，取代社會學而具影響力的學科是人類學和文學理論。亦即從事新文化史工作的學者優先選擇文學批評和人類學為其盟友；新文化史學者的史學作品也強烈透露出「敘述史學」的寫作傾向。 因此，對歷史學、人類學和文學有興趣的人當然不能錯過這本書！