Shami Ghosh is an

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

n-born historian who is Associate Professor at the

Centre for Medieval Studies Medieval studies is the academic interdisciplinary study of the Middle Ages. A historian who studies medieval studies is called a medievalist. Institutional development The term 'medieval studies' began to be adopted by academics in the opening ...

and Department of History at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

. He researches Marxist history and the history of

Germanic-speaking Europe There are over 250 languages indigenous to Europe, and most belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a demographics of Europe, total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European lang ...

Biography

Shami Ghosh was born in

. He received his BA (2003) in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

in 2003, his MA (2005) and

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

(2010) in

Medieval Studies Medieval studies is the academic interdisciplinary study of the Middle Ages. A historian who studies medieval studies is called a medievalist. Institutional development The term 'medieval studies' began to be adopted by academics in the opening ...

from the

, and his LMS (2016) from the

Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (PIMS) is a research institute in the University of Toronto that is dedicated to advanced studies in the culture of the Middle Ages. Governance The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Toronto, currently F ...

. Since 2016, Ghosh is Associate Professor at the

and Department of History at the University of Toronto.

Theories

The research of Ghosh centers on Marxist history and the history of

. He has published the monographs ''Kings' Sagas and Norwegian History'' (2011) and ''Writing The Barbarian Past'' (2015). In the latter monograph, Ghosh argues that the only thing early

Germanic peoples The Germanic peoples were tribal groups who lived in Northern Europe in Classical antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. In modern scholarship, they typically include not only the Roman-era ''Germani'' who lived in both ''Germania'' and parts of ...

had in common was speaking

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...

, but that these linguistic similarities are insignificant. He denies that early Germanic peoples shared a common

culture Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...

or identity, and believes that they only shared cultural similarities because

mutual intelligibility In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intelli ...

facilitated cultural exchanges between them.. "A central component of his argument throughout the book is the denial of anything that approaches a common Germanic culture or identity... Ghosh repeatedly downplays the significance of the Germanic languages... He views language as merely the means through which oral narratives circulated from one people to another... To this reader, at least, it seems that he concedes much of what constituted what some of us would call a common Germanic culture.". "The works studied in his monograph relate historical matter pertaining to peoples who spoke Germanic languages, and these works have traditionally been valued for their preservation of Germanic lore and legend, but Ghosh prefers to characterize the past represented in them as 'barbarian' rather than 'Germanic.'... Since these works are preserved in Germanic vernaculars, Ghosh entertains no doubts about their content deriving from Germanic oral traditions. Yet the anti-Germanic thread of his book is continued... e fact that medieval Germanic peoples told stories about other, distant Germanic peoples does not, according to Ghosh, reflect identification with those peoples or any perception of ethnic similarity. It is solely a matter of linguistic convenience... Ghosh’s anti-Germanic arguments are often plausible... It is doubtful, however, whether his arguments will have much of an impact... One must wonder whether any adjectives used to describe cultural phenomena in medieval studies (e.g., Celtic, Romance, Byzantine, Carolingian) could withstand the kind of scrutiny that Ghosh has applied to the term 'Germanic.' The term will doubtless continue to be used because it is useful... If 'Germanic' is to be abandoned because Germanic tradition contains non-Germanic elements, then all of the other ethno-linguistic adjectives employed in medieval studies must surely be scrapped as well.... Despite Ghosh’s claims to the contrary, the negative fixation on the term 'Germanic' among medieval historians such as himself still appears to be 'a matter of the ideological baggage it carries'... Although Ghosh’s predilection for anti-Germanic readings occasionally entangles him in improbabilities, ''Writing the Barbarian Past'' remains an excellent introduction to the principal early medieval sources for Germanic legend..." Ghosh advocates replacing the term "Germanic" with the term "

barbarian A barbarian is a person or tribe of people that is perceived to be primitive, savage and warlike. Many cultures have referred to other cultures as barbarians, sometimes out of misunderstanding and sometimes out of prejudice. A "barbarian" may ...

Selected works

* ''Kings’ Sagas and Norwegian History'', 2011 * ''Writing the Barbarian Past: Studies in Early Medieval Historical Narrative'', Brill’s Series on the Early Middle Ages, 24 (Leiden: Brill, 2016)

References

Sources

* *

External links

Andrew Gillett
at Academia.edu {{DEFAULTSORT:Ghosh, Shami 21st-century Indian historians Academic staff of the University of Toronto Alumni of King's College London Economic historians Historians of England Historians of Estonia Historians of Germany Historians of India Historians of Latvia Historians of Norway Historians of socialism category:Historiographers Living people category:Medievalists University of Toronto alumni Year of birth missing (living people)