Grand Narratives Reading Group

The group will read and discuss “On Agency” at Twenty" 2023 Special Forum on Walter Johnson's 2003 article "On Agency" in the Journal of Social History. 

The introduction to the Forum reads:

"In 2003, the Journal of Social History published “On Agency.” Walter Johnson’s short, sharp, nine-page reckoning with perhaps the foundational category of “history-from-the-bottom-up” has become a classic of methodological and theoretical self-reflection. Two decades on, it remains the Journal of Social History’s most cited article. To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of “On Agency,” the Journal asked ten leading historians to reflect once more “on agency” as a category of analysis; this symposium is the result." The Grand Narratives Reading Group will read and discuss the original piece and the ten new responses.