Calderón Argelich, Alfonso

Studium

Degree in History, Universitat de Lleida (2012)

 

Master in History of the Spanish Monarchy, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2013)

PhD in History, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2019)

 

Wissenschaftliche Anstellungen bzw. Tätigkeiten

FI-DGR predoctoral scholarship (2016-2019)

Adjunct professor (2019-2023)

 

Wichtige wissenschaftliche Funktionen und Mitgliedschaften

Member of the Sociedad Española de Estudios del Siglo XVIII

Member of the Fundación Española de Historia Moderna

 

Laufzeit des Stipendiums

Wiedemann Fellowship for Enlightenment Studies

August 21-November 24 2023

An Impossible Regeneration? Writing the History of the Spanish Enlightenment during the Crisis of Liberalism (1874-1939)

 

My previous research focus is the history of historical writing, specifically 19^th-century interpretations of 18^th-century Spain. The project I will develop at the IZEA aims to delve deeper into perceptions of Spanish Enlightenment during the early 20th century. In late 19^th-century Europe, the interpretation of 18^th-century religious and political thought was conditioned, on the one hand, by the Kulturkampf between Catholicism and secular ideologies and, on the other hand, by the nationalization of historical culture. However, it was only during the interwar period that historians such as Paul Hazard and Franco Venturi, as well as philosophers like Ernst Cassirer, reevaluated the rational, secular, and cosmopolitan aspects of 18th-century thinkers in light of the emergence of Fascist and Nazi ideologies. My objective is to examine how these conditions influenced scholarship on Spanish 18th-century culture. Although there were numerous attempts by Spanish and foreign historians to uphold Spain contribution to the Enlightenment movement, by the 1930s it was commonplace to say that Spain was a "failed" nation which did not have its own Aufklärung or, at most, had only second-rate imitators. The National-Catholic ideology of Franco's dictatorship ratified the perception of the Enlightenment as a foreign and unorthodox import. My goal is to understand this long process of vindication, rejection, and undervaluing of Spain's relationship with the so-called "Age of Enlightenment" in its historical context.

 

-Olvido y memoria del siglo XVIII español, Madrid: Cátedra, 2022.

-«El hilo roto de la regeneración. El largo siglo XVIII español desde la época contemporánea (1808-1936)», in Juan Díaz Álvarez, Fernando Manzano Ledesma, Rodrigo Olay Valdés (coords.), Sobre España en el largo siglo XVIII, Gijón: Trea, 2022, pp. 265-274.

-«El duque de Ripperdá según Antonio Ferrer del Río: un intento olvidado de nacionalización», Cuadernos de Ilustración y Romanticismo, nº 27 (2021), pp. 355-380.

-«La polémica sobre la expulsión de los jesuitas por Carlos III en la España liberal (1856-1868): entre la indagación histórica y el combate político», Historia Social, nº 95 (2019), pp. 3-20.

-«Introducción», Edmund Burke, Reflexiones sobre la Revolución Francesa, Barcelona: Byron Books (accepted and to be published in 2023)