Katherine Keats-Rohan: Prosopography Research

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1. Katharine Keats-Rohan
4. Theodore Mommsen (1807-1903) Founder of Prosopographia Imperii Romani (PIR) and father of modern prosopography
5. Prosopography is the investigation of the common background characteristics of a group of actors in history by means of a collective study of their lives. The method employed is to establish a universe to be studied, and then to ask a set of uniform questions – about birth and death, marriage and family, social origins and inherited economic position, place of residence, education, amount and source of personal wealth, occupation, religion, experience of office and so on. The various types of information about the individuals in the universe are then juxtaposed and combined, and are examined for significant variables. They are tested both for internal correlations and for correlations with other forms of behaviour or action.
7. Biography and Prosopography The art of Biography Is different from Geography. Geography is about maps, But Biography is about chaps. — Edmund Clerihew Bentley, Biography for Beginners Put another way: The art of Biography Is different from Prosopography Biography looks at individual chaps But Prosopography studies individuals in aggregate. ― Keats-Rohan, ‘Biography, Identity and Names’
12. •Central to prosopography are the concepts of individuals and groups - or networks. At its heart stands the idea of identity. A name record is not a person record until it has been analysed in the context of the source or sources. Identity • Data about individuals and groups come from sources describing context. Present the source and preserve the context. Context • To be effectively exploited, to be used both to frame and to answer questions, data must first be structured. That structure lies best ‘between the heterogeneity of too much splitting and the homogeneity of too much lumping’ (Kopytoff, 1984). Content
13. Convent membership 1600-1799: provisional view generated from FH Report on Petre family and Kin by Marriage (incl. Caryll members) 125 individual records 28 nuns 7 Jesuits 3 male RC clerics The nuns fall into following Orders: Carmelite 1 Augustinian 7 Benedictine 10 Franciscan 1 Poor Clare 6 Sepulchrines 4 Report on Caryll family and kin by marriage (inc. Petre and Bedingfield) 54 individual records 3 male RC clerics 2 Jesuits 21 nuns Carmelite 1 Augustinian 5 Benedictine 14 Sepulchrine 5 Report on Bedingfield family and kin by marriage (inc. Caryll) 170 individuals 39 nuns 1 canon of Lierre and a possible Jesuit Conceptionist 1 IBVM 5 Carmelite 12 Augustinian 10 Benedictine 8 Franciscan 1 Poor Clare 3
14. Convent membership 1600-1799: provisional view generated from FH Report on Petre family and Kin by Marriage (incl. Caryll members) 125 individual records 28 nuns 7 Jesuits 3 male RC clerics The nuns fall into following Orders: Carmelite 1 Augustinian 7 Benedictine 10 Franciscan 1 Poor Clare 6 Sepulchrines 4 Report on Caryll family and kin by marriage (inc. Petre and Bedingfield) 54 individual records 3 male RC clerics 2 Jesuits 21 nuns Carmelite 1 Augustinian 5 Benedictine 14 Sepulchrine 5 Report on Bedingfield family and kin by marriage (inc. Caryll) 170 individuals 39 nuns 1 canon of Lierre and a possible Jesuit Conceptionist 1 IBVM 5 Carmelite 12 Augustinian 10 Benedictine 8 Franciscan 1 Poor Clare 3
16.  Booth, Alison, 2004, How to Make it as a Woman, (University of Chicago Press)  Bradley, J., and H. Short 2002, ‘Using Formal Structures to Create Complex Relationships: The Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire--A Case Study’ in Resourcing Sources, ed. K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, Prosopographica et Genealogica 7 (Linacre College, Oxford)   Broady, D., 2002, ‘French prosopography. Definition and suggested readings’. Poetics 30, 381-385 (interpretation of Bourdieu and ‘Bourdieusian prospography)   Burke, P., 1991/2005, History and Social Theory, 2nd. edn. (Cambridge, Polity)   Caine, Barbara, 2010, Biography and History (Theory and History, Palgrave Macmillan)   Magdalino, P., ‘The Contribution of Prosopography: the Byzantine Empire or Why Prosopography? A Question of Identity’, Fifty Years of Prosopography. ed. A. Cameron (Oxford; New York, 2003), pp. 42-43   Paling, S. 2011, ‘‘Prosopography and the organization of literary works’: towards a new paradigm’, Advances in Classification Research Online  https://digital.lib.washington.edu/ojs/index.php/acro/article/view/12518, accessed 4 November 2011   Brigitte Le Roux, Henry Rouanet (2004). Geometric Data Analysis: from Correspondence Analysis to Structured Data Analysis. Springer, free e-book http://www.scribd.com/doc/76810770/Le-Roux-Rouanet-Geometric-Data-Analysis-2004   Smythe, Dion, 2007, ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale : Issues and Opportunities in Prosopography’, in Prosopography Approaches and Applications A Handbook, ed. K.S.B. Keats-Rohan (Prosopographica et Genealogica 13, Oxford), 127-37   Söderqvist Thomas and Arthur M. Silverstein, ‘Participation in Scientific Meetings: A New Prosopographical Approach to the Disciplinary History of Science - The Case of Immunology, 1951-72’, Social Studies of Science 24 (1994), 513-48 (quantitative analysis)  Verboven, K, Dumolyn, J and Carlier, M, 2007 ‘A Short Manual to the Art of Prosopography, in Keats-Rohan ed., Prosopography Approaches, 35-69, download at http://prosopography.modhist.ox.ac.uk/course_syllabuses.htm