Roger Chartier

Roger Chartier at CEFRES (Centre français de recherche en sciences sociales), Prague, 2011.

Roger Chartier, born on December 9, 1945 in Lyon, is a French historian and historiographer who is part of the Annales school. He works on the history of books, publishing and reading. He teaches at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Collège de France, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Biography

Originally from Lyon, he studied at the Ampère lycée (high school). Between 1964 and 1969, he was a student at the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud and, at the same time, he pursued a 3-year-degree (French licence) followed by a master's degree at the Sorbonne (1966–1967). In 1969, he succeeded at his agrégation in history.

He taught as an associate professor at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris between 1969 and 1970. In the same year, he became assistant in Modern History at the University of Paris I, then senior lecturer at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). He became a lecturer (from 1978–1983) and then director of studies at the EHESS until 2006. In 2006 he was appointed professor at the Collège de France, holder of the "Written Culture in Modern Europe" chair. He also hosts the show Les lundis de l'histoire on France Culture, in which he talks with historians who publish books on modern history (16th–18th centuries).

The works of Roger Chartier are described by Dorothea Kraus as follows: "Authors, texts, books, and readers are four poles linked by Roger Chartier's work on the history of written culture; poles between which he attempts to draw connections through a cultural history of social life. The concept of 'appropriation' makes it possible for this perspective not only to give rise to these research topics, but also put them in touch with reading practices that determine appropriation, and which, in turn, depend on the reading skills of a community of readers, author strategies, and text formats."[1]

Academic awards and honors

Selected works

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ Dorothea Kraus, "Appropriation et pratiques de la lecture. Les fondements méthodologiques et théoriques de l'approche de l'histoire culturelle de Roger Chartier", in : Labyrinthe n° 3, 1999, § 28 read online.