David Armitage, “Eating One’s Own: Examining Civil War” (Open Agenda, 2021)

Eating One’s Own: Examining Civil War is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and intellectual historian David Armitage, the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University. This conversation covers Prof. Armitage’s extensive research on the history of ideas of civil war from Ancient Rome to the present. A salient feature of his work is a strong focus on etymology as it relates to our understanding of how people interpreted (or misinterpreted) and perceived events in history which results in a fascinating exploration of how our understanding of various concepts has been prejudiced by past societies and past beliefs that we might not even be aware of, and how they, in turn, go on to influence other societies; and how this cumulative process frames our understanding of these ideas.

Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com.

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