Month: June 2014

Connecting Germany and Asia: A History

The relationship between the people of Germany and Asia strengthened in the second half of the twentieth century, resulting in the burgeoning of the academic field of Asian German studies in recent years. Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia is a collection of this scholarship. Following, editors Qinna Shen and Martin Rosenstock discuss their love of subject, the collection and how the field will grow in the future.

 

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What drew you to study the relationship between Germany and Asia? What inspired your love of your subject? When?

 

Qinna Shen: I’m a Chinese Germanist. I started to learn German in Beijing, then attended Heidelberg University before coming to the States for my doctoral degree.

Continue reading “Connecting Germany and Asia: A History” →

‘Exporting’ Women: Writing on French and German Women’s Colonial Settlement Movements

Historical ReflectionsThis is the third in a series of posts dedicated to celebrating the 40th volume of our journal Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques.

 

The latest issue of Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques is devoted to the special topic of “War, Occupation, and Empire in France and Germany.” This post is the transcript of an electronic interview between the issue’s Guest Editor, Jean Elisabeth Pedersen, and one of the six contributors, Krista Molly O’Donnell.

  Continue reading “‘Exporting’ Women: Writing on French and German Women’s Colonial Settlement Movements” →

Today In History

 

Statehood Day is a holiday that takes place on June 25th in Slovenia & Croatia to commemorate both countries’ declaration of independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.

On related subjects from Berghahn Central & Eastern Europe List:

 

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STRANGERS EITHER WAY
The Lives of Croatian Refugees in their New Home
Jasna Čapo Žmegač
Translated by Nina H. Antoljak and Mateusz M. Stanojević

 

Croatia gained the world’s attention during the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. In this context its image has been overshadowed by visions of ethnic conflict and cleansing, war crimes, virulent nationalism, and occasionally even emergent regionalism. Instead of the norm, this book offers a diverse insight into Croatia in the 1990s by dealing with one of the consequences of the war: the more or less forcible migration of Croats from Serbia and their settlement in Croatia, their “ethnic homeland.” This important study shows that at a time in which Croatia was perceived as a homogenized nation-in-the-making, there were tensions and ruptures within Croatian society caused by newly arrived refugees and displaced persons from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Refugees who, in spite of their common ethnicity with the homeland population, were treated as foreigners; indeed, as unwanted aliens. Continue reading “Today In History” →

Looking at Tourism through Anthropology’s Lens

Just in time for summer vacation, Tourism Imaginaries: Anthropological Approaches will soon be available for purchase. This collection features a diverse group of scholars who dive deeper into the idea of “tourist” around the world, from Cambodia to Belize to the Netherlands. Following, editors Noel Salazar and Nelson H. H. Graburn give a glimpse into their work with the volume, their histories with the topic, and where they themselves like to “play tourist.”

 

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What drew you to study the seductive draw of tourism?

 

Salazar: It may sound odd, but I became interested in tourism (as an object of study) while working for an NGO specialized in aiding refugees. At the end of the 1990s, the organization sent me on a mission to a remote refugee camp in northern Uganda, on the border with Sudan.

Continue reading “Looking at Tourism through Anthropology’s Lens” →

Crisis, Power, and Policymaking in the New Europe

This is a special post written by guest editor Bilge Firat on the thematic focus for Volume 23, Issue 1 of Anthropological Journal of European Cultures.

 

How does power work as an analytic, as a relational reality, and as a capacity to impose and resist through policymaking processes in contemporary Europe, and why should anthropologists care about this line of inquiry? These questions constituted the main pivot for contemplation for the five contributors in AJEC’s new special issue “Culture, Power, and Policy in the New Europe”.

 

Continue reading “Crisis, Power, and Policymaking in the New Europe” →

Women in History

Eighty six years ago on June 18, 1928, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger aboard a Fokker tri-motor aircraft that was piloted by Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon. Just four years later, in 1932 Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean. She completed her 2,026 mile journey in under 15 hours after departing from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland.

Forty five years later on same date, June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly to space as a crew member on space shuttle Challenger for STS-7.

To celebrate women in history we invite you to browse through some of our Gender Studies titles:

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GENDER HISTORY IN A TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Networks, Biographies, Gender Orders
Edited by Oliver Janz and Daniel Schönpflug Continue reading “Women in History” →

The Life of a Religious Movement: Steps in a Trajectory

Ruy Blanes’ A Prophetic Trajectory follows the life of Simão Toko and the dissemination of the religious movement he founded. While conducting his research, the author worked in Angola, Portugal, and the United Kingdom, where he gathered facts and a collection of photographs — which are introduced and displayed below.

 

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My recently published book, A Prophetic Trajectory, highlights the life and memory of an Angolan prophet, Simão Gonçalves Toko (1918-1984). Continue reading “The Life of a Religious Movement: Steps in a Trajectory” →

Rethinking the Family in Israel

 

This is a special post written by guest editor Sylvie Fogiel-Bijaoui on why the topic of the family in Israel was chosen for Volume 28, Issue 2 of Israel Studies Review.

 

 

Israel is a society of paradoxes. It defines itself as a Jewish and democratic state that strives to institutionalize equality for all the Israeli citizens, but does not accept the basic idea of Israel as a state for all its citizens. It declares that it wants to promote peace, even though it has been involved in war from its very inception, at the very beginning of the Zionist settlement. Moreover, the state of Israel was created so that the Jewish people would become a “normal” people, but de facto, its approach is that of “a people that will dwell alone and not think itself one of the nations”.

 

Continue reading “Rethinking the Family in Israel” →

In History

June 6th marked the 70th anniversary of The Normandy landings, the day when Western Allies landed in northern France, opening the long-awaited “Second Front” against Nazi Germany. The largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation began the invasion of German-occupied Western Europe, led to the restoration of the French Republic, and contributed to an Allied victory in the war.

 

On related topic, please take a look at some of Berghahn’s WWII books.

 

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EXPERIENCE AND MEMORY
The Second World War in Europe
Edited by Jörg Echternkamp and Stefan Martens

Modern military history, inspired by social and cultural historical approaches, increasingly puts the national histories of the Second World War to the test. New questions and methods are focusing on aspects of war and violence that have long been neglected. What shaped people’s experiences and memories? What differences and what similarities existed in Eastern and Western Europe? How did the political framework influence the individual and the collective interpretations of the war? Finally, what are the benefits of Europeanizing the history of the Second World War? Experts from Belgium, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, and Russia discuss these and other questions in this comprehensive volume.

 

 

Continue reading “In History” →

Cultivating Communication between Cultures

Later this month, Sonya Pritzker’s monograph Living Translation: Language and the Search for Resonance in U.S. Chinese Medicine will be published. Within this volume, Pritzker explains that translation is not a static exercise, but is instead a variable and experiential undertaking. Following, the author shares how she became enamored of Chinese culture and discovered the life of language.

 

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I went to China for the first time in 1995. I was 19. The skies in Beijing were blue then, and the remnants of a stark and closed era were everywhere. I look back on the things of that time with nostalgia, the ever-present red thermoses with flowers, cheap rubber shoes, mian bao che or “bread box” cars, flying pigeon bicycles. My passion for China, in particular the Chinese language, had arisen over time.

 

Continue reading “Cultivating Communication between Cultures” →