Category: Blog

The History of Sibirica from Associate Editor Alexander D. King

Alexander D. King served as Managing Editor of Sibirica for six years, and recently stepped into the role of Associate Editor in order to focus on his field research, which is being conducted in Kamchatka over the next ten months. In this post, he discusses the 30-year history of the journal as it moved from home to home and finally landed here at Berghahn, where it has been since 2006.

Sibirica is now finishing up its eleventh volume but it has existed for much longer than just 11 years. The journal started as an occasional publication of the papers from the British Universities Siberian Studies Seminar (BUSSS), which was a regular meeting of mostly historians and geographers starting in the 1980s. The very first issue is an unnumbered publication titled simply Sibirica, with the 1690 Siberian coat of arms and the subtitle British Universities Siberian Studies Seminar, Report of the second meeting held at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, 15-16 April 1983. These earliest Sibiricas, published through 1989, were edited and produced by Alan Wood at Lancaster University. The production was a modest affair, appearing as a typescript on A5 format, photocopied with a staple binding in the spine.
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Jonathan Magonet of European Judaism on the Past and Future of the Journal

For over 40 years, European Judaism has provided a voice for the postwar Jewish world in Europe. It has reflected the different realities of each country and helped to rebuild Jewish consciousness after the Holocaust. Jonathan Magonet took over as Editor in 2004. In this post, he details the foundation and evolution of the journal over its extensive history, as well as his visions for the future.

Given its title, European Judaism has to be as broad-based as its subject area. Every European country is different in history, language, culture and concerns, and the local Jewish community reflects all of these as well as its own particular experience and agenda. Yet across the European continent, there are also broader issues that have an impact on Jews, or to which Jews make significant contributions. How to reflect this complexity yet offer a (relatively) coherent voice has been the challenge faced by the editors over the journal’s now more than forty year history.

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António Medeiros on the Border Between Spain and Portugal

Berghahn has just released Two Sides of One River: Nationalism and Ethnography in Galicia and Portugal, an English translation by Martin Earl of the original Portuguese volume by António Medeiros. This book explores the historical intersections between nationalism and the emergence of ethnographic traditions in Portugal and Galicia, and plays this history against the author’s own ethnographic research in both places at the turn of the 20th century.

Hot Off the Presses: New Journal Releases from Berghahn

New journal releases from Berghahn:

Environment and Society: Advances in Research
Volume 3, Number 1, 2012
The six papers in this issue attempt to clearly describe the contemporary relationship between capitalism and the environment by reviewing five distinct and important literatures in the social sciences.

 

Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
Volume 21, Number 2, Autumn 2012
Celebrating and reflecting on 21 years of AJEC, with a Thematic Focus on “Europeanist Anthropology Beyond and Between”, as well as articles on Slovenia, Portugal, and Catalonia.

 

Cambridge Anthropology
Volume 30, Number 2, Autumn 2012
Including a special section on “Internal Others: Ethnographies of Naturalism”, with articles on a range of concrete empirical cases – from an international team of climate researchers working in Amazonia, to keepers in a Catalunyan chimpanzee sanctuary; from British ecologists studying earthworms, to behavioural scientists working in the Kalahari, and Guatemalan cooking schools specializing in Western style and taste.

 

Critical Survey
Volume 24, Number 3, Winter 2012
With articles on the ‘double-body of the sign’, the political engagement with modernity in Thomas Chatterton’s works, commemorating the 1916 Tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death, the history of the treadmill, and celebrity and politics in Gordon Burn’s Born Yesterday.

 

Durkheimian Studies
Volume 18, Number 1, Winter 2012
Featuring articles in English and French on the latest in Durkheimian scholarship, including Durkheim’s Lost Argument, Pragmatism and Sociology, ‘Dualism of Human Nature’, and understanding morality.

 

French Politics, Culture & Society
Volume 30, Number 3, Winter 2012
Special issue entitled “DOSSIER: The 2012 Elections in France”, also including an article on Franco-American cultures and a review essay on a film about Algerian independence.

 

Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society
Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 2012
Focusing on “Museums and the Educational Turn: History, Memory, Inclusivity”, this issue probes the claims of the new, purportedly inclusive and horizontal museologies, of catering for inclusive cultural citizenries and of empowering difference and encouraging empathy, in a variety of geographical and disciplinary settings.

 

Regions and Cohesion
Volume 2, Number 3, Winter 2012
With a special focus on the Arab Spring revolts and past uprisings, including articles on the history of revolts in the Middle East, perceptions of Arab revolts, the Syrian revolution, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 

Sartre Studies International
Volume 18, Number 2, Winter 2012
Featuring a theme section on Sartre and Theater, with articles on theatrical ambiguity, Sartre’s conception of theater, and the theatrical audience; also contains four short speeches by Sartre on the Peace Movement, and a piece about Sartre and Engels.

 

Social Analysis
Volume 56, Number 3, Winter 2012
Including articles on ‘Primitive Mentality’, Punu twin dancing, post-war Mostar, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, intergenerational relations, Agamben’s concept of ‘state of exception’, and the effect of geographic indication brands on jewelry production in Italy.

AJEC @ 21: Editor Ullrich Kockel Reflects on 21 Years of Scholarship

In the latest issue of the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, Ullrich Kockel opens the discussion on the 21 years of AJEC‘s history with his own reflections:

 

“As I settle down to put together this issue, it occurs to me that the development of AJEC in its various phases displays an uncanny correspondence with my personal professional trajectory so far. Its inception and first volume happened during my postdoctoral fellowship when I was happy to place one of my first (coauthored) academic articles in its inaugural issue. The remainder of AJEC’s first approximate decade coincides with my time as a lecturer. At the time I took up my first chair, the format of AJEC changed, eventually turning it, for a while, into a Yearbook rather than a journal. And in the year I moved to my second chair, I was invited to take on the editorship of AJEC, which would now be published by Berghahn and returning to the format of two issues per year. This correspondence raises a curious question: What significant turning point for the journal will correspond with my own as I am becoming an emeritus professor?”

 

To continue reading a free PDF of his editorial in its entirety, click here.

 

 

Discover the films of Michael Haneke

 

Michael Haneke’s latest film, Amour, premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and went on win the Palme d’Or, making it his second win of the award in four years (The White Ribbon won in 2009). At the 25th European Film Awards, Amour was nominated in six categories and won in four, including Best Film and Best Director. The acclaim for the film further confirms Haneke’s position as one of the most significant living filmmakers.

Catherine Wheatley’s detailed study of his work, Michael Haneke’s Cinema, was published by Berghahn in 2009.  Screen magazine described it as “a bold, lucid, fiercely intelligent book, a vital addition to the study of contemporary cinema by one of the UK’s brightest young film critics.” It was also Sight & Sound Magazine Book of the Month, September 2009.

“Wheatley provides excellent close readings of a number of films and crucial film scenes. The book as a whole could be used in conjunction with a film course on Haneke, or its various chapters would lend themselves to discussions in graduate and even undergraduate courses on contemporary European film…The writing style is clear and while it pursues a critical theoretical analysis, it remains free from jargon. “  ·  Monatshefte

 
 

 

Here’s the trailer for Amour, which can be seen in the United States starting December 21st.

Hot Off the Presses: New Journal Releases from Berghahn

New journal releases from Berghahn:

Nature and Culture
Volume 7, Number 3, Winter 2012
Including articles on the Second Darwinian Revolution, environmentalism in Iran, what is necessary for sustainability in the water sector, and the environmental impacts of militarization.

Transfers
Volume 2, Number 3, Winter 2012
Featuring a Special Section on Cultural Appropriation containing articles that comment on the “cultural appropriation” of, respectively, literary genres, stories, and sausages.

Theoria
Volume 59, Number 133, Winter 2012
With articles on the national debt to Africa, democracy and democide in the Weimar Republic, moral relativism, the politics of theatre, and the revival of political philosophy.

Journal of Romance Studies
Volume 12, Number 3, Winter 2012
With a special focus on Antonia Gramsci, exploring various intersections between culture and politics, fostering the cross-fertilization of new Gramscian specialisms and traditional disciplines.

Focaal
Volume 2012, Number 64, Winter 2012
Featuring a theme section on the anthropology and radical philosophy of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, as well as articles on issues in China, West Bengal, and South Korea.

Comics and Contradictions with Laurence Grove, co-editor of European Comic Art

Note: Berghahn recently released the paperback edition of Laurence Grove’s Comics in French and also publishes the journal European Comic Art, which he co-edits. Here he discusses his current work on an exhibit of comics for the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow.

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One of the inspiring things about co-editing European Comic Art, apart from the buzz of working with Ann Miller and Mark McKinney, is the connections it creates.  In recent times we have had the pleasure of receiving scholarship on comic art from England, France, Greece, Canada, Italy, Spain, Argentina and Germany, and from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first. It is not long before you are reminded that whatever your speciality, there are unexpected link-ins elsewhere and contradictions to the knowledge we might have taken for granted.

It may seem strange, therefore, that one of my current projects is to prepare an exhibition whose provisional title, Scotland and the Birth of Comics, could appear to bask in positivist certainties. The display, which will open in Glasgow’s Hunterian Art Gallery before touring, will bring to light a little-known work of primary importance, The Glasgow Looking Glass of 1825. The Looking Glass appears to be the world’s oldest comic, predating the earliest published ‘comics’ by Rodolphe Töpffer by eight years, Le Charivari by seven, and Punch by sixteen.  Building on the historic angle and taking the notion of graphic narrative in its widest sense, the exhibition will allow us to showcase Hunterian treasures from the Roman period to Hogarth and on to contemporary selections, as well as key manuscripts and printed works from Glasgow University Library’s Special Collections and certain related items from Glasgow’s museums.

“Consumption of Smoke: Present” and “Consumption of Smoke: Future” From Vol. 1, no. 8: Northern Looking Glass, 17th September 1825
With the permission of Special Collections, University of Glasgow Library. (Sp Coll Bh14-x.8)

At the initial research stage (I have the Glasgow Looking Glass in front of me as I write) I have been struck by the intertwining connections. The Looking Glass inspired Punch, but its characters—the street musicians, the clergymen, the medics, and so on—also offer firm reminders of the styles of Töpffer, Rowlandson, and Hogarth. It is thus inevitable that the exhibition will lure the visitor in with the promise of newly-found canonical certainties (comics started in a specific time and place, and that is Glasgow in 1825), only then to make it clear that the complexities are so that such certainties must be flawed.

“Domestic Intelligence: Home, Sweet Home”, From Vol. 1, No. 2: Glasgow Looking Glass, June 25th, 1825
With the permission of Special Collections, University of Glasgow Library (Sp Coll Bh14-x.8)

This week I am going to Geneva to meet with the Director of the Bibliothèque de Genève, Alexandre Vanautgaerden, and his team, with a view to a possible loan of a Töpffer manuscript. Ironically, having made the notion that Töpffer did not invent the comic strip (nor did anyone else) a central theme of my Comics in French (Berghahn Books), I am strangely excited about getting to see the Swiss schoolteacher’s creations in the flesh. It is the fact that life is a hybrid art full of contradictions that makes it such fun. A bit like comics.

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Laurence Grove is is Reader in French and Director of the Stirling Maxwell Centre for the Study of Text/Image Cultures at the University of Glasgow.

 

To view more images from the collection, visit the Glasgow University Library Special Collections Department.


Hurricane Sandy and the Climate Change Debate

This was the scene just down the street from the Berghahn offices in DUMBO the night of Hurricane Sandy – our office is just outside the frame of this particular photo:


(Photo: AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Over 3 million gallons of water have been pumped from the basement of our office building since then, and we are glad to report that everyone on staff made it through safe and sound (albeit without heat this week but we’re bundled up and hanging in there).

Though recovery has been fairly swift in our area, the images of the “Frankenstorm” and its aftermath have brought the issues of climate change and sustainability to the forefront of political discourse in the United States. Bloomberg Businessweek took the blunt approach:


(Photo: Bloomberg Businessweek)

At Berghahn Journals, we’re proud to publish a selection of journals that take a more scholarly approach to environmental issues.

In the next few weeks, we will be posting the online version of Environment and Society Volume 3, which focuses on Capitalism and the Environment. Preview the Table of Contents on the journal’s main page, here.

Next Spring, we are excited to be publishing Nature + Culture’s Special Symposium on “Nature, Science, and Politics, or: Policy Assessment to Promote Sustainable Development?”, the Table of Contents for which is posted on the journal’s main page, here.

 

In our most recent issue of Nature + Culture, several articles focus on approaches to sustainability:

Sustainability in the Water Sector: Enabling Lasting Change through Leadership and Cultural Transformation by Wendy Lynne Lee

The Environmental Impacts of Militarization in Comparative Perspective: An Overlooked Relationship by Andrew K. Jorgenson, Brett Clark, Jennifer E. Givens

Review Essay: Just Plain Disappointment: Why Contemporary Thinking About Environmental Sustainability Needs To Be More Courageous by Wendy Lynne Lee

 

Moving forward, we hope that the work of scholars such as those published in our journals will continue to contribute to the discourse on climate change.

 

Is There Such Thing as “Low-Brow?” Taking Pop Culture Seriously

by Martha Hoffman, Journals Editorial and Production Manager

 

Maybe it’s my age, but sometimes I feel like two different people inhabit my mind: there’s the person that was obsessed with sociology in college, reading Critical Race Theory for fun and over-scheduling classes I didn’t need because I was genuinely excited at the thought of learning and figuring out what I was most passionate about. This is the half of me that feels most at home at Berghahn, the intellectually curious and studious parts of me thriving as I help in the production of academic and scholarly journals.

But there’s also the other part of me: the girl that loves reality television, blockbuster movies and popular music. I can spend hours looking for fun dance songs, watching network comedies and am willing to pay NYC movie theatre ticket prices to see a rom-com if a friend is willing to do the same.

The other day, I was working on creating an ad for a new issue of Girlhood Studies. I was looking at the last issue, and an article title caught my eye: “Some Assembly Required: Black Barbie and the Fabrication of Nicki Minaj.” The topic of Minaj has come up in my life from time to time, though it’s usually on the internet, radio or tv, and if anyone’s discussing her it’s usually not her merits or her culture significance but rather her butt, face or the fact that she can’t rap. It’s not that I think Minaj can’t rap, I’ve just noticed that the most vocal commentors of the artist are those insisting she’s not an artist to begin with. With any type of fame, knee-jerk vitriol seems to follow. Admittedly, my comments about her have often fallen into similarly shallow categories, albeit positive: I think she’s beautiful, funny and a decent rapper. However, other than those cursory observations, I don’t think I’ve ever stood back and thought about her in a larger context, whether it be from a gender-, race- or cultural standpoint.

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