Natalie Zemon Davis, who died on October 21 just short of her 95th birthday, was probably the best-known and most well-regarded of North American historians since the 1970s. But it is her distinctive methods and contributions to what came to be known as microhistory that are best remembered. Microhistory is a method and approach to historical writing that deploys close analysis of an incident, a life or a specific location as a way into writing about wider society. Microhistory brought a different scale and point of view to the writing of history, one based on closeness and familiarity as opposed to distance and strangeness. Davis continued writing this global microhistory in her unfinished but almost complete book, Braided Histories.

Source: The North Africa Journal November 02, 2023 18:18 UTC