Cinematic Gazing ‘Beyond the Looking Glass’

Ana Salzberg’s newly published monograph, Beyond the Looking Glass: Narcissism and Female Stardom in Studio-Era Hollywood, takes a closer look into the private and public personas of classic Hollywood’s female stars. Following, the authors shares more about her subject and offers a fresh glimpse of the “narcissism” of the female star.

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What drew you to the study of the female star in classic cinema? And what inspired you to research and write on this topic?

One of the remarkable things about golden-age stars is that you meet them virtually everywhere these days: Turner Classic Movies, DVD box-sets, biographies, bio-pics – not to mention their digitally animated counterparts in commercials. On a very immediate level that we all – not just researchers – experience, old Hollywood has new life.

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War, Occupation, and Empire: Interview with Guest Editor Jean Elisabeth Pedersen

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

A recent 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 Berghahn blog editor Lorna Field and the Guest Editor of this special issue, Jean Elisabeth Pedersen.

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The Wounds of our Warriors

Just because one cannot see wounds does not mean they are not there. Pamela Moss and Michael J. Prince analyze war-derived psychological trauma in their co-authored volume, Weary Warriors: Power, Knowledge, and the Invisible Wounds of Soldiers. Following, the authors share their personal backgrounds and further insight into their volume.

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How were you drawn to the topic of invisible wounds of combatants?

Michael J. Prince: In a personal way, my interest in the subject of weary warriors comes from being the son of a Second World War veteran. My father served in the Royal Canadian Air Force overseas as flying officer, wireless operator and air gunner, so I grew up in a family in which these topics were, at times, discussed. In a professional way, my work on developments in welfare states highlighted the significant place of wars, soldiers, and veterans in the struggles around the formation of social programs.

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

This 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.

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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.

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Propaganda and Prostitution Reform During Germany’s Weimar Republic

This is the second in a series of posts dedicated to celebrating the 40th volume of our journal Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques.

Pedersen: What first drew you to the study of the “black horror” campaign?

Roos: My first book focuses on conflicts over prostitution reform during Germany’s Weimar Republic (1919-1933). It was in this context that I first came across the issue of the brothels for colonial French troops established in the occupied Rhineland during the 1920s. Middle-class German feminists and their conservative allies appealed to racialist fears and nationalist resentment over these brothels to discredit Germany’s own system of police-controlled prostitution. I realized that the protest against the brothels was an important facet of the broader propaganda campaign against France’s colonial occupation troops, which used the racist epithet, “black horror on the Rhine.” What fascinates me about the “black horror” campaign is the fresh light it sheds on the different ways in which World War I unsettled established racial stereotypes and hierarchies between whites/Europeans, on the one hand, and Africans and other colonized peoples, on the other hand. It also offers rich possibilities for exploring the legacies and postwar permutations of wartime propaganda discourses centered on women’s and children’s sexual victimization by racial “Others.”

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Discovering Van der Meersch: Themes of Race and Empire

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

The latest issue of the journal 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, W. Brian Newsome.

Pedersen: What drew you to the study of Maxence Van der Meersch and his novel Invasion 14?

Newsome: Several years ago, I was conducting research on the Young Christian Workers and its adult offshoots. Specifically, I was interested in the theology of the Mystical Body of Christ and the ways in which chaplains and lay leaders in Catholic Action groups absorbed and acted upon principles associated this theological concept. My research led to “The Mystical Body of Christ: A Vector of Engagement for French Catholic Action, 1926-1949,” an article that appeared in Politics in Theology, part of Transaction Publishers’ series Religion and Public Life, ed. Gabriel Ricci 38 (June 2012): 147-172.

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Conception to Delivery: Sharing an Account of Mizrahi Mothers

Smadar Lavie’s soon-to-be-published book Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture is a personally inspired account that stems from her own life as a single mother in Israel. Following, the author reveals how this inspiration became a book, and speculates about how this account will be received. This is the second of the author’s reflections on the Berghahn blog, read the first here.

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Berghahn Books: What inspired your love of your subject? When?

Smadar Lavie: My years in Israel as a welfare mother forced me to become my own informant. Those years were full of hardship. I am using the privilege of my U. C. Berkeley education and the power and proficiency of my English words to call attention to the plight of all Mizrahi single mothers in the State of Israel.

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A Lived Journey: Tracing ‘The Path to the Berlin Wall’

The Berlin Wall may have been erected in 1961, but the figurative foundation was laid in 1945, as the Soviet Union’s Communist Party and its allies made selections of their areas of influence. In The Path to the Berlin Wall: Critical Stages in the History of Divided Germany, author Manfred Wilke traces the events that led to the eventual construction of the Berliner Mauer. Wilke’s original volume was translated from German into English by Sophie Perl. Following is Perl’s interview with the author about his book.

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Uzbekistan, Social Network of Choice

In the Republic of Uzbekistan, being Uzbek has less to do with one’s lineage and more to do with one’s allegiance to a society. The advantages of this voluntary membership within the Uzbek “social network” are explored in Variations on Uzbek Identity: Strategic Choices, Cognitive Schemas and Political Constraints in Identification Processes. Below, Peter Finke discusses his attraction to Uzbekistan, his writing process, and the volume’s potentially controversial reception.

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Berghahn Books: What drew you to the study of Uzbekistan, specifically “Uzbek Identity”?

Peter Finke: My general interest in Central Asia goes back a long way into childhood fantasies of roaming horse riders and the like. Most of Uzbekistan does not really fit that well into this and indeed my early research in the region was on nomadic pastoralists in Western Mongolia. It was after I took up a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute to work on identity issues that I not only switched topics but also field sites.

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