Edward Muir, of the Department of History and Department of French and Italian, has begun his term as the 139th president of the American Historical Association, the flagship organization for historians in the United States.
Muir is the Clarence L. Ver Steeg Professor in the Arts and Sciences at Northwestern, and he holds a Charles Deering McCormick Professorship of Teaching Excellence. Muir works in Italian social and cultural history, especially during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, with a special interest in the history of ritual and violence.
Muir is the first professor at Northwestern to hold this appointment, indicative of his high esteem as both a scholar and person. He is also the past president of the two principal academic societies in his specialty: The Sixteenth Century Society and Conference and The Renaissance Society of America.
Perspectives in History, the Association’s newsmagazine, published his first column as president on January 17. The article, “The History of Them, The History of Us,” recounts Muir’s journey as an Italian historian, nuanced by his role as an American from Utah.
“As one of “them,” a historian with no ethnic affinity to Italy but a fluent command of the language and years of experience in the country, I had no hope of penetrating the defensive wall of the history of “us.” Pride in identity trumped the truth. Pride in the truth, in contrast, is the historian’s identity.”
Read Muir’s full article.