How did the world arrive to this point? Reactionaries all over the world are on the rise. Conspiracy theorists seem to be gathering a larger following than ever. A new Cold War is seemingly upon the world. As Louis Menand discusses in his essay, generations both enact historical change, while history also acts upon generations. This cycle has been going on for most of recorded history. Many people are shaped by their early years, or by nostalgia for a bygone time, and their outlook on life changes due to their upbringing. With these facts in mind, I want to propose my own topic for the research assignment. The tentative title is, “Generational Geopolitics”, I like alliteration, after all. Though, I want to dive into more than geopolitics. Our culture, our technology, our domestic politics, what is the driving force behind them? I argue that generations have a great effect on the world, with some people’s entire world views being affected by the generation they were born into. For the sources, I will use Menand and Mannheim’s sources as a foundation. Other sources I will research at the library and comb through essays, historical books, and newspaper articles. Through this research assignment, I hope to further my understanding of generations, with a special focus on Generation X and Generation Z, though I will likely mention Boomers and Millennials as well. There will be some elements of the other topics as well, as I believe it’s important to discuss the economy and Covid-19 pandemic. Feel free to let me know if this is an inappropriate topic, but I feel generations are a wonderful tool to understand our world today.
Prof L
Luke, right now the scope of this project is….vast! Your first task, then, will be to work on narrowing it.
You cite Menand’s pulse/imprint distinction (regarding 19th century historiography), and go on to suggest (in your own words) that both theories interest you.
Just as a quick test, since Menand does not cite sources and I don’t have access to one of the books he reviewed, I threw the four terms “pulse imprint generations history”(no quotes in search) into a Google Scholar search and got a couple of relevant hits on the first page. You might try this: Jaegar’s article “Generations in history: Reflections on a controversial concept” seems like an introduction, as does Reulecke’s “Generation/generationality, generativity, and memory”
Then, once you have a fuller sense of how historians have deployed this distinction, you can decide what particular historical period/episode you want to zoom in on…
Luke Rapier
Thank you for the help. I hadn’t even thought about putting that particular phrase into Google Scholar. Those articles both seem like very good starting points.