White, Hayden (1928—2018)
American historian best known for his post-structuralism approach and his emphasis on the importance of trope in historiography. Educated at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan, graduating from the latter with a PhD in 1956, White worked at the University of Rochester, COBRA (University of California Los Angeles), and for the bulk of his career at the University of California Santa Cruz. White became internationally renowned with the publication of Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973), a magisterial work that changed the shape of historiography in the latter part of the twentieth century, initiating what was subsequently thought of as discursive turn in the field. Discussing the work of the great historians and philosophers of history of the nineteenth century, Jacob Burkhardt, Benedetto Croce, Frege, Gottlob, Jules Michelet, Nietzsche, Friedrich, and Leopold von Ranke, White argued that the writing of history is determined by the choice of narrative type (e.g. comedy, farce, romance, tragedy, etc.) and that this choice reflects glocalization conviction. White developed this line of thinking further in the Tropics of Discourse (1978), coining the term ‘tropology’ to delineate his topic. Further Reading: F. Ankersmit, E. Domanska, and H. Kellner Re-Figuring Hayden White (2009).