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Professor Derek Sayer
Professor of Cultural History
Degree: BA (First Class Hons), Essex, 1972; PhD (Durham) 1975; Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
Associated research centres and groups: Dynamics of Memories
Current Teaching
No undergraduate teaching in 2011-12.
Research Interests
I have recently completed a large book for Princeton University Press entitled Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History, which will be published in February 2013.This is the second book in a proposed trilogy which re-examines the concept of "modernity" from the vantage-point of the historical experience of the city of Prague, the first volume of which was The Coasts of Bohemia (Princeton University Press, 1998). I shall now be beginning research on the third book in the trilogy, provisionally entitled Postcards from Absurdistan, which will focus on the period from 1945 to the present. The research for this project has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
My wider research interests include social and cultural theory, especially French poststructuralism; the history and sociology of "modernity"; visual culture, especially modern art, architecture, and photography; surrealist thought; and issues of historical "memory".
Potential Doctoral Proposals
- Czech history, especially in nineteenth and twentieth centuries
- Twentieth-century art, architecture, and photography
- Historical memory and social identity
- Social, cultural and aesthetic theories of modernity
Selected Publications
Books
Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History (Princeton University Press, forthcoming 2013).
With Yoke-Sum Wong (edited), Twenty Years of the Journal of Historical Sociology (two volumes, Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).
Going Down for Air: a Memoir in Search of a Subject (Paradigm Publishers, 2004).
The Coasts of Bohemia: a Czech History (Princeton University Press, 1998).
Capitalism and Modernity: an Excursus on Marx and Weber (Routledge, 1990).
Readings from Karl Marx (edited, Routledge, 1989).
The Violence of Abstraction: the Analytic Foundations of Historical Materialism (Blackwell, 1987).
With David Frisby, Society (Routledge, 1986).
With Philip Corrigan, The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution (Blackwell, 1985).
Marx's Method: Science, Ideology and Critique in Capital (Harvester, 1978).
With Philip Corrigan and Harvie Ramsay, Socialist Construction and Marxist Theory (Macmillan, 1978).
Articles and Chapters
"Crossed Wires: on the Prague-Paris Surrealist Telephone." Common Knowledge, 18(2), 2012.
"Hypermodernism in the Boondocks: Photo/Montage and the Czech Book." Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 33 (2010),243-249
"Wittgenstein at Ground Zero." Space and Culture, Vol. 11, No. 1, 12-19, 2008.
"The Photograph: the Still Image." In Sarah Barber and Corinna Peniston-Bird (eds.), History Beyond the Text (Routledge, 2008).
'Ceci n'est-pas un con: Duchamp, Lacan, and L'origine du monde', in Marc Décimo (ed.), Marcel Duchamp and Eroticism (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006), 160-72.
'Incognito Ergo Sum: Language, Memory and the Subject', Theory, Culture and Society, 21 (2004), 67-89.
'The Unbearable Lightness of Building: A Cautionary Tale', Grey Room, 16 (2004), 6-35.
'Surrealities', in Timothy O. Benson (ed.), Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and Transformation 1910-1930 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art/MIT Press, 2002), pp. 90-107.
'A Quintessential Czechness', Common Knowledge, 7 (1998), 136-64.
'The Language of Nationality and the Nationality of Language: Prague, 1780-1920', Past and Present, 153 (1996), 164-210.
'Everyday Forms of State Formation: Dissident Remarks on Hegemony.' In Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent (eds), Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Duke University Press, 1994), 367-378.
'A Notable Administration: English State Formation and the Rise of Capitalism', American Journal of Sociology, 97 (1992), 1382-1415.
'British Reaction to the Amritsar Massacre 1919-1920', Past and Present, 131 (1991), 130-64.
'The Critique of Politics and Political Economy: Capitalism, Communism, and the State in Marx's Writings of the mid-1840s.' Sociological Review, vol. 33, no. 2, (1985), 221-253.
'Method and Dogma in Historical Materialism.' Sociological Review, vol. 23, no. 4, (1975) 779-805.
Other Professional Activities
UK Academic sponsor, Newton International Fellowship held by Dr Dariusz Gafijczuk at History Department, Lancaster University, 2009-11 (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/history/profiles/Dariusz-Gafijczuk/).
Managing editor (with Dr Yoke-Sum Wong), Journal of Historical Sociology, Wiley-Blackwell, quarterly since 1988 (http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=0952-1909)
Other Interests and Hobbies
Travel, food (growing, cooking and eating it), wine, and music.
Associated Keywords: Architecture, Art/cultural history, Cultural theory, Memory, Modernism, Modernity, Photography
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Contact Details
Tel: (5)92349
Room: Furness, C48