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White (Hayden V.) papers
MS.323
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Table of contents
Contributing Institution:
University of California, Santa Cruz
Title: Hayden V. White Papers
source:
Brose, Margaret
Creator:
White, Hayden V., 1928-2018
Identifier/Call Number: MS.323
Physical Description:
27.18 Linear Feet
(21 boxes)
Physical Description:
40.7 GB
(34,270 digital files)
Date (inclusive): 1950-2017
Language of Material: English, Italian, German,
French
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Access to the born digital materials of the Hayden White Papers is available on-site in the
UCSC Special Collections & Archives reading room. The software application QuickView
Plus is recommended for reading and viewing, and is provided for use in the reading room.
Note that some files stored may be inaccessible due to obsolete formats, lack of required
software, or file degradation.
Collection open for research. Digital files are available in the UCSC Special Collections
and Archives reading room. Some audiovisual materials and some digital files may require
reformatting before they can be accessed. Technical limitations may hinder the Library's
ability to provide access to some digital files. Access to digital files on original
carriers is prohibited; users must request to view access copies. Contact Special
Collections and Archives in advance to request access to digital and audiovisual files.
Copyright for the items in this collection is owned by the creators and their heirs.
Reproduction or distribution of any work protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair
use requires permission from the copyright owner. It is the responsibility of the user to
determine whether a use is fair use, and to obtain any necessary permissions. For more
information see UCSC Special Collections and Archives policy on Reproduction and Use.
Hayden V. White Papers. MS 323. Special Collections and Archives, University Library,
University of California, Santa Cruz.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Margaret Brose, 2019.
Hayden V. White (1928-2018) was a literary critic and historical theorist. During his
academic career, White made contributions to the study of narrative theory, historiography,
and hermeneutics. A central thread of White's research throughout his career was questioning
how historical events are constructed through writing and discourse. As a teacher and
researcher, White held the distinguished title of University Professor in the University of
California system, where he spent most of his career at the University of California, Santa
Cruz. He also taught at the University of Rochester, Wesleyan University, University of
California Los Angeles, University of California Berkeley, and Stanford University.
White was born July 12, 1928 in Martin, Tennessee. His family moved to Detroit in the early
1930s, during the Great Depression. Near the end of World War II, White enlisted in the Navy
and served as a pilot. He then attended Wayne State University (then Wayne University) on
the GI Bill, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History in 1951 before pursuing
graduate studies in the same subject at the University of Michigan and earning an M.A. in
1952, with a focus in medieval history. He would complete his doctoral dissertation in 1955,
after spending two years in Rome on a Fulbright Fellowship. His thesis, heavily influenced
by the sociological concepts and methodology of Max Weber, was on the institutional and
ideological causes of the papal schism of 1130.
White started his professional career at Wayne State University in 1955, and then moved to
the University of Rochester in 1958. In 1968, he began teaching at the University of
California, Los Angeles, where he remained for seven years. At Wesleyan University in
Connecticut, he was the Director of the Center for the Humanities from 1973 to 1976. In
1978, White started as a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was
instrumental in the development of the History of Consciousness program. He was named
Presidential Professor in 1985 and University Professor in 1990. After officially retiring
from the History of Consciousness department in 1996 (but remaining for advising and some
teaching duties thereafter), he taught Rhetoric at the University of California Berkeley
from 1996-1997 and Comparative Literature at Stanford University from 1996 to 2008.
Throughout his career, White traveled extensively, and was a Visiting Professor in Italy,
Germany, France, Poland, China, and Japan.
In 1972, while a history professor at UCLA, White sued the Los Angeles Chief of Police
Edward Davis for spending public funds in covert intelligence gathering on college campuses
by LAPD police offers. White reported that police officers were registering undercover as
UCLA students, attending classes, joining student organizations, and subsequently making
reports to the police department about discussions happening in classes and organization
meetings. This case,
White v. Davis, went to the California Supreme Court in
1975, where the court ruled unanimously in White's favor.
White v. Davis set
a precedent which established that police cannot engage in surveillance of political
activity without reasonable suspicion of a crime.
White's major published works include
Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in
Nineteenth-Century Europe
(1973);
Tropics of Discourse (1979);
The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation,
which contains "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality," (1987);
Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect (1999);
The Fiction
of Narrative: Essays on History, Literature, and Theory, 1957–2007
(2010); and
The Practical Past (2014). He was elected Fellow of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and received honorary doctorates
(Doctor of Humane Letters) from several institutions including the University of Michigan,
Wesleyan University, North Carolina State University, the University of Bucharest, Gdansk
University in Poland, and the Freie Universität of Berlin.
Hayden White passed away at the age of 89 on March 5, 2018 in Santa Cruz, California.
Additional reading:
White, Hayden, & Vanderscoff, C. (2013).
Hayden White: frontiers of
consciousness at UCSC.
Santa Cruz, Calif: University of California, Santa Cruz,
University Library.
Paul, Herman. (2008) "A Weberian medievalist: Hayden White in the 1950s,"
Rethinking
History
, 12:1, 75-102.
White, Hayden V. (1996) "Storytelling: Historical and Ideological", in
Centuries'
Ends, Narrative Means
, ed. Robert Newman. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
58-78.
The Hayden V. White papers document White's professional, teaching, and research career
from the 1950s to 2017. A significant portion of the collection contains White's research
files, which include his notes and writings, correspondence, and collected files on various
topics, authors and research themes. A small amount of White's undergraduate and graduate
work is included in the research files. The correspondence series contains letters and other
materials that were not filed with research files, and mainly contains conference
invitations, publication and review requests, communications with colleagues at UC Santa
Cruz regarding the History of Consciousness department, other professional communications,
documentation on the
White v. Davis legal case, and some personal
correspondence. Writings and publications include both typed and handwritten notes,
manuscripts, and annotated drafts of many of his works, as well as offprints of selected
published works. Teaching files include course notes, lecture notes and planning documents,
and some lecture audio recordings. White was professionally active in conferences and was
invited to speak on many occasions, the preparation and products of which are present in
this collection. Digital files include research files, talks, and writings from the
mid-1990s to the 2010s.
This collection is arranged in seven series:
- Series 1: Research Files
- Series 2: Correspondence
- Series 3: Writings and Publications
- Series 4: Talks, Speeches, and Conferences
- Series 5: Teaching Files
- Series 6: Awards, Degrees, and Photographs
- Series 7: Digital Files
Paper materials processed by Christian Alvarado in the Center for Archival Research and
Training (CART) with assistance from Alix Norton, 2019. Nearly all titles in this collection
were derived from the original folder titles as received from the donor. Original folders
were used when they were deemed to be serviceable, in order to retain notes that White had
written on the folders.
Digital materials processed by Patrick King in the Center for Archival Research and
Training (CART), under the direction of Kate Dundon and Alix Norton, 2019. Digital files
were transferred from carrier disks and hard drives in 2019. Some files were not able to be
transferred from the carrier disks due to technical constraints. Duplicate files, personnel
records, and other out of scope files were not retained. Files were not reformatted, and
file names are original to the creator. Original disks were retained and are included in the
collection.
The oral history of Hayden White,
Frontiers of Consciousness at UCSC, was
conducted by Cameron Vanderscoff and published in 2013 by the Regional History Project, UCSC
Library. Available online at https://escholarship.org/uc/item/20b91099
Hayden White's published works may be found in the UCSC Library by searching "White,
Hayden" in the Author/creator field in UCSC Library Search.
The collection of early printed books that Hayden White and his wife and UCSC professor
Margaret Brose donated to the UCSC Library can be found by searching "Gift of Hayden White
and Margaret Brose" in UCSC Library Search.
For a complete inventory of the contents of Series 7: Digital Files, see the following
guide:
To access redacted versions of the email messages in this collection, see the ePADD
Discovery site:
Subjects and Indexing Terms
College teachers -- California -- Santa
Cruz
Europe -- Civilization -- 19th
century
Historiography -- Europe
Faculty papers
Brose, Margaret
White, Hayden V., 1928-2018
University of California, Santa
Cruz