Category: From Idea to Book

Key to Transformation is Understanding the ‘Fatherland’

The parallels between the political environment of the “Arab Spring” countries and Cold War Germany can be striking, according to Alexander Clarkson, author of Fragmented Fatherland: Immigration and Cold War Conflict in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1980. In these cases, when diaspora communities returned to their countries of origin, there was an energy for activism and a flurry of political activity. Following, Clarkson notes that taking a page from West German history could prove useful in modern Libyan, Syrian and Tunisian politics.

 

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In the chaotic days after the Ghadaffi regime lost control of the city of Benghazi in February 2011, hundreds of exiled Libyans returned to the liberated parts of their country to help play a role in the transformation of a state that had been under authoritarian rule for more than forty years.

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Reconstructing the Measure and Meaning of Obesity

Obesity is a worldwide problem, and affecting more people all the time. In their timely collection, editors Jessica Hardin and Megan McCullough examine this growing epidemic in their soon-to-be-released book, Reconstructing Obesity: The Meaning of Measures and the Measure of Meanings.The editors analyze the cultural causes and effects to open a new discussion about fatness and obesity.

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I asked my students, fresh off a lively discussion about dieting and religious fasting, if any of them would consider taking a new course I was designing called,“Fatness and Obesities.” Only one student raised her hand. What if I change the course’s title – but not its content – to “The Politics of Body Size”? At this suggestion, they all raised their hands. What is the difference?

-Jessica Hardin

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European Thought: The ‘Gift’ that Keeps Giving

Is the spread of Western, specifically European, thought truly a gift to the rest of the world, or is this dissemination simply a way of exerting cultural power? Vassos Argyrou seeks an answer to this question in his newly released volume The Gift of European Thought and the Cost of Living. Below, the author explains his inspiration for—and the challenges and rewards of—writing the book, published September 2013.

 

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Berghahn Books: What drew you to the study of “European Thought” and what are some examples of this?

 

Vassos Argyrou: “European thought” is a term that in a certain sense was imposed on me as it was used to make the highly contentious claim that it’s a gift to the rest of the world. It refers not only to an intellectual tradition but also to a way of life or culture—European or,  more broadly, Western culture.

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Opening Cassirer and Arendt’s ‘Hidden Conversation’

Hannah Arendt was a German-Jewish political theorist; Ernst Cassirer was a German-Jewish philosopher. The ‘liberal Jewish ethics’ of the two come together in Ned Curthoys’ The Legacy of Liberal Judaism: Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt’s Hidden Conversation. The author explains below his fascination of and engagement with the scholars.

 

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Berghahn Books: What exactly do you mean by the term ‘liberal Judaism’?

 

Ned Curthoys: Well it’s a diasporic phenomenon, a very interesting response to the twin challenges of secular modernization and inveterate Christian inspired anti-Judaism.

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Aloha to Beginnings: Writing ‘Legacies of a Hawaiian Generation’

A talk-story, or mo`olelo, is an informal and traditionally Hawaiian way of sharing stories to preserve them for posterity. In The Legacies of a Hawaiian Generation, to be published this month, author Judith Schachter pairs these informal conversations with fieldwork observations to give readers a view into the island culture post-U.S. annexation. Below she shares the story of her beginning in Hawai`i, and how her work took root. 

 

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My work in Hawai`i began “in small,” with the idea of adding a chapter to my book on American kinship, family, and adoption. I intended to see what happened to Polynesian customs when the U.S. brought its legal system to the Pacific Island state.

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A Matter of Morality

Originally published in 2009, The Anthropology of Moralities, edited by Monica Heintz, will be published in paperback this month. The collection deals with the collision of moralities as human beings exist on a more and more globalized scale. Below, the editor discusses what first interested her in a moral study and what made it, and keeps it, important to the field of anthropology.

 

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Somehow after 1989 the Eastern bloc got obsessed with values. How could it be otherwise for people who had lived with double sets of values in the public and private spheres and who saw all their public values officially collapse in one night?

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Remembering African-German Points of Contact

Eight centuries of German and African interactions up until World War I are often glossed over in historical literature.  The contributors to Germany and the Black Diaspora: Points of Contact, 1250-1914, published last month, seek to illuminate these intersections and share popular sentiments of the time. Below, co-editor Martin Klimke describes a significant—and still remarkable—relic of this pre-WWI period.

 

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For more than ten years now, visitors to the German Historical Museum in Berlin have paused in amazement before a painting unlike any other in the museum’s collection.

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A Moving Picture: The Evolution of Africa on Screen

The perception of Africa through the lens has certainly changed since the films of the 1950s. That change in the way viewers see Africa in twenty-first century film is the topic of Framing Africa: Portrayals of a Continent in Contemporary Mainstream Cinema, published in June 2013. Below, the collection editor Nigel Eltringham discusses the changing frame of Africa in mainstream cinema.

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In November 2004, I attended the annual meeting of the African Studies Association in New Orleans. A flier inserted into the conference programme invited participants to a private screening of a new film, Hotel Rwanda, at a small arts cinema nearby.

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On the Origin of “Supercinema”

It all started in 1999 with a camera that appeared to have superpowers, and that observation led to the publication of Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age in May 2013.  Below, author William Brown examines the digital techniques of modern cinema in his recently published work, in which he tells the story of popular cinema hiding behind analogue cinema techniques, “analogous to that of Superman hiding his powers behind the persona of Clark Kent.”

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My monograph, Supercinema, has two principal moments of origin.

 

The first moment came when watching Fight Club in 1999. I was intrigued by the way in which the camera passed – seemingly without a cut – through solid objects and empty space as if they were both permeable.

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