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By Subject: History (all titles)
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May 2011
The 1926/27 Soviet Polar Census Expeditions
Anderson, D. G. (ed)
In 1926/27 the Soviet Central Statistical Administration initiated several yearlong expeditions to gather primary data on the whereabouts, economy and living conditions of all rural peoples living in the Arctic and sub-Arctic at the end of the Russian civil war. Due partly to the enthusiasm of local geographers and ethnographers, the Polar Census grew into a massive ethnological exercise, gathering not only basic demographic and economic data on every household but also a rich archive of photographs, maps, kinship charts, narrative transcripts and museum artifacts. To this day, it remains one of the most comprehensive surveys of a rural population anywhere. The contributors to this volume – all noted scholars in their region – have conducted long-term fieldwork with the descendants of the people surveyed in 1926/27. This volume is the culmination of eight years’ work with the primary record cards and was supported by a number of national scholarly funding agencies in the UK, Canada and Norway. It is a unique historical, ethnographical analysis and of immense value to scholars familiar with these communities’ contemporary cultural dynamics and legacy.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) History (General)
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eBook available
August 2022
200 Years of Peace
New Perspectives on Modern Swedish Foreign Policy
Biltekin, N., Müller, L., & Petersson, M. (eds)
Since 1814 Sweden has avoided involvement in armed conflicts and carried out policies of non-alignment in peacetime and neutrality during war. Even though the Swedish government often describes Sweden as a ‘nation of peace’, in 2004 the 200-year anniversary of that peace passed by with barely any attention. Despite its extraordinary longevity, research about the Swedish experience of enduring peace is underdeveloped. 200 Years of Peace places this long period of peace in broader academic and public discussions surrounding claimed Swedish exceptionality as it is represented in the nation’s social policies, expansive welfare state, eugenics, gender equality programs, and peace.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Peace and Conflict Studies
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October 2003
The Abolitions of Slavery
From the L. F. Sonthonax to Victor Schoelcher, 1793, 1794, 1848
Dorigny, M. (ed)
These papers are intended to demonstrate the complexity of the historical processes leading up to the abolition of slavery in 1793-1794, and again in 1848, given that Bonaparte had restored the former colonial regime in 1802. Those processes include the slave insurrections and the many forms of resistance to slavery and servile work, the philosophical and political debates of the Enlightenment, the attitude of the Church, the action of anti-slavery associations and the role of revolutionary assemblies, not forgetting the importance of the economic interests that provided the backcloth to philosophical discussions in the matter.
The close interweaving of the colonial spheres of the majority of European powers inexorably raised slavery to an international plane: from then on anti-slavery too became a cosmopolitan movement, and these present studies strive to take account of this important innovation at the end of the eighteenth century.
This work, written in tribute to Léger Félicité Sonthonex, who was responsible for the first abolition in Santo Domingo in 1793, and to Victor Schoelcher, principal architect of the abolition of 1848, is intended to link two highly symbolic dates in the tragic history of the "first colonization": 1793 marks the beginning of the age of abolitions, yet it was not until half a century later that France, now republican once more, renewed links with the heritage of the Enlightenment and of Year II.
Subjects: Colonial History History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
May 2017
The Absent Jews
Kurt Forstreuter and the Historiography of Medieval Prussia
Hess, C.
For nearly a century, it has been a commonplace of Central European history that there were no Jews in medieval Prussia—the result, supposedly, of the ruling Teutonic Order’s attempts to create a purely Christian crusader’s state. In this groundbreaking historical investigation, however, medievalist Cordelia Hess demonstrates the very weak foundations upon which that assumption rests. In exacting detail, she traces this narrative to the work of a single, minor Nazi-era historian, revealing it to be ideologically compromised work that badly mishandles its evidence. By combining new medieval scholarship with a biographical and historiographical exploration grounded in the 20th century, The Absent Jews spans remote eras while offering a fascinating account of the construction of historical knowledge.
Subjects: Jewish Studies History: Medieval/Early Modern
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January 2005
Adolf Cluss, Architect
From Germany to America
Lessoff, A. & Mauch, C. (eds)
Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.
Adolf Cluss was born in 1825 into a middle-class family of master stonemasons, engineers and entrepreneurs in Heilbronn, Germany. A colleague and correspondent of Karl Marx, and a participant in the unsuccessful German revolution of 1848, he emigrated to the United States. Until 1858 he remained a member in the German Communist Party although by then he had established himself in both German-American life and in the professional and intellectual milieu of Washington where he was soon considered the most important architect. Thanks to Cluss’s imagination, technical skills, and vision of a new cityscape, Washington became a showcase for the nation through the handsome public buildings and private structures that expressed national confidence and international interest in improving the health, safety, and beautification of cities. Cluss’s work as an architect, civil engineer and urban planner in Washington represents a long neglected chapter in the development of the capital city during the social and physical rebuilding that followed the Civil War.
Major scholars in the field place Cluss’s life and career in a historical context. Their essays are enhanced by many previously unpublished illustrations drawn from years of research. A photo essay at the center of the book vividly illustrates Washington in Cluss’s time, Cluss’s contribution to Washington, and the fate of Cluss’s buildings and city.
Subjects: Urban Studies History (General)
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April 2023
Advocacy and Archaeology
Urban Intersections
Britt, K. M. & George, D. F. (eds)
Archaeologists have a history of being prime agents of change, particularly in advocating for protection and preservation of historical resources. As more social issues intersect with archaeology and historical sites, we see archaeologists and others continuing to advocate for not only historic resources, but for the larger social justice issues that threaten the communities in which these resources reside. Inspired by the idea of revolution and excitement about the ways archaeology is being used in social justice arenas, this volume seeks to visualize archaeology as part of a movement by redefining what archaeology is and does for the greater good.
Subjects: Archaeology History (General) Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
March 2022
The Aesthetics of Rule and Resistance
Analyzing Political Street Art in Latin America
Bogerts, L.
Effective visual communication has become an essential strategy for grassroots political activists, who use images to publicly express resistance and make their claims visible in the struggle for political power. However, this “aesthetics of resistance” is also employed by political and economic elites for their own purposes, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish from the “aesthetics of rule.” Through illuminating case studies of street art in Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Caracas, and Mexico City, The Aesthetics of Rule and Resistance explores the visual strategies of persuasion and meaning-making employed by both rulers and resisters to foster self-legitimization, identification, and mobilization.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Urban Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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July 1996
African Crossroads
Intersections between History and Anthropology in Cameroon
Fowler, I. & Zeitlyn, D. (eds)
Cameroon is characterized by an extraordinary geographical, cultural, and linguistic diversity. This collection of essays by eminent historians and anthropologists summarizes three generations of research in Cameroon that began with the collaboration of Phyllis Kaberry and E. M. Chilver soon after the Second World War and continues to this day. The idea for this book arose from a concern to recognize the continuing influence of E. M. Chilver on a wide variety of social, historical, political and economic studies. The result is a volume with a broad historical scope yet one that also focuses on major contemporary theoretical issues such as the meaning and construction of ethnic identities and the anthropological study of historical processes.
For more information on this title and related publications, go to
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Chilver/index.htmlSubjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History
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eBook available
April 2022
African Political Systems Revisited
Changing Perspectives on Statehood and Power
Bošković, A. & Schlee, G. (eds)
Reexamining a classical work of social anthropology, African Political Systems (1940), edited by Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, this book looks at the colonial and academic context from which the work arose, as well as its reception and its subject matter, and looks at how the work can help with analysis of current politics in Africa. This book critically reflects upon the history of anthropology. It also contributes to a political anthropology which is aware of its antecedents, self-reflexive as a discipline, conscious of pitfalls and biases, and able to locate itself in its academic, social and political environment.
Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Colonial History Development Studies
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eBook available
July 2012
After The History of Sexuality
German Genealogies with and Beyond Foucault
Spector, S., Puff, H. & Herzog, D. (eds)
Michel Foucault’s seminal The History of Sexuality (1976–1984) has since its publication provided a context for the emergence of critical historical studies of sexuality. This collection reassesses the state of the historiography on sexuality—a field in which the German case has been traditionally central. In many diverse ways, the Foucauldian intervention has governed the formation of questions in the field as well as the assumptions about how some of these questions should be answered. It can be argued, however, that some of these revolutionary insights have ossified into dogmas or truisms within the field. Yet, as these contributions meticulously reveal, those very truisms, when revisited with a fresh eye, can lead to new, unexpected insights into the history of sexuality, necessitating a return to and reinterpretation of Foucault’s richly complex work. This volume will be necessary reading for students of historical sexuality as well as for those readers in German history and German studies generally who have an interest in the history of sexuality.
Subjects: History (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
January 2021
After Auschwitz
The Difficult Legacies of the GDR
Heitzer, E., Jander, M., Kahane, A., & Poutrus, P. G. (eds)
From the moment of its inception, the East German state sought to cast itself as a clean break from the horrors of National Socialism. Nonetheless, the precipitous rise of xenophobic, far-right parties across the present-day German East is only the latest evidence that the GDR’s legacy cannot be understood in isolation from the Nazi era nor the political upheavals of today. This provocative collection reflects on the heretofore ignored or repressed aspects of German mainstream society—including right-wing extremism, anti-Semitism and racism—to call for an ambitious renewal of historical research and political education to place East Germany in its proper historical context.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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August 1996
After Socialism
Land Reform and Social Change in Eastern Europe
Abrahams, R. (ed)
The collapse of Soviet influence and the disillusionment with socialism in the early 1990s led to ambitious programs of economic reform throughout Eastern Europe. The papers in this volume, written by anthropologists and sociologists with detailed first-hand knowledge of the rural areas concerned, explore the situation in several countries; account is also taken of the differences between them. Not only are reform policies considered in the light of actual developments and reactions of villagers to changing circumstances; actual processes of land reform, the emergence of new family farms, and the creation of new forms of co-operative and joint stock company are described and examined well.
Subjects: History (General) Political and Economic Anthropology Development Studies
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April 2011
After the Event
The Transmission of Grievous Loss in Germany, China and Taiwan
Feuchtwang, S.
Two of the most destructive moments of state violence in the twentieth century occurred in Europe between 1933 and 1945 and in China between 1959 and 1961 (the Great Leap famine). This is the first book to bring the two histories together in order to examine their differences and to understand if there are any similar processes of transmission at work. The author expertly ties in the Taiwanese civil war between Nationalists and Communists, which included the White Terror from 1947 to 1987, a less well-known but equally revealing part of twentieth-century history. Personal and family stories are told, often in the individual’s own words, and then compared with the public accounts of the same events as found in official histories, commemorations, school textbooks and other forms of public memory. The author presents innovative and constructive criticisms of social memory theories in order to make sense both of what happened and how what happened is transmitted.
Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies Anthropology (General) History (General)
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March 2009
After the 'Socialist Spring'
Collectivisation and Economic Transformation in the GDR
Last, G.
Historical analysis of the German Democratic Republic has tended to adopt a top-down model of the transmission of authority. However, developments were more complicated than the standard state/society dichotomy that has dominated the debate among GDR historians. Drawing on a broad range of archival material from state and SED party sources as well as Stasi files and individual farm records along with some oral history interviews, this book provides a thorough investigation of the transformation of the rural sector from a range of perspectives. Focusing on the region of Bezirk Erfurt, the author examines on the one hand how East Germans responded to the end of private farming by resisting, manipulating but also participating in the new system of rural organization. However, he also shows how the regime sought via its representatives to implement its aims with a combination of compromise and material incentive as well as administrative pressure and other more draconian measures. The reader thus gains valuable insight into the processes by which the SED regime attained stability in the 1970s and yet was increasingly vulnerable to growing popular dissatisfaction and economic stagnation and decline in the 1980s, leading to its eventual collapse.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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September 1997
After Unity
Reconfiguring German Identities
Jarausch, K. H. (ed)
The unification of Germany is the most important change in Central Europe in the last four decades. Understanding this rapid and unforeseen development has raised old fears as well as inspired new hopes. In order to make sense out of the bewildering process and to help both expert and lay readers understand the changes and consequences, an American historian and a German social scientist put together this collection of central texts on German unification, the first of its kind. An invaluable reference tool.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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October 2013
Against the Grain
Jewish Intellectuals in Hard Times
Mendelsohn, E., Hoffman, S., & Cohen, R. (eds)
Highlighting the seminal role of German Jewish intellectuals and ideologues in forming and transforming the modern Jewish world, this volume analyzes the political roads taken by German Jewish thinkers; the impact of the Holocaust on the Central and East European Jewish intelligentsia; and the conundrum of modern Jewish identity. Several of German Jewry’s most outstanding figures such as Scholem, Strauss, and Kohn are discussed. Inspired by Steven E. Aschheim’s work, several contributors focus on the fraught relationship between German and East European Jews (the so-called Ostjuden) and between German Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors. More generally, this book examines how Central European Jewish thinkers reacted to the terrible crises of the twentieth century—to war, genocide, and the existential threat to the very existence of the Jewish people. It is essential reading for those interested in the triumphs and tragedies of modern European Jewry.
Subjects: Jewish Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
June 2021
The Age of Capitalism and Bureaucracy
Perspectives on the Political Sociology of Max Weber
Mommsen, W. J.
The historian Wolfgang Mommsen was one of the foremost experts on Max Weber as well as an insightful and accessible interpreter of his work. Mommsen’s classic book, first published in 1974 under the title The Age of Bureaucracy, not only concisely explains the basic concepts underlying Weber’s worldview, but also explores the historical, social, and intellectual contexts in which he operated, including Weber’s development as an academic, his relationship to German nationalism, and his engagement with Marxism. Supplemented with a new foreword, a bibliography that includes recent studies, and a postscript by Volker Berghahn that surveys the most important debates on Weber's work since his death, this short volume serves as an excellent resource for scholars and students alike.
Subjects: Sociology History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
July 2020
Agency in Transnational Memory Politics
Wüstenberg, J. & Sierp, A. (eds)
The dynamics of transnational memory play a central role in modern politics, from postsocialist efforts at transitional justice to the global legacies of colonialism. Yet, the relatively young subfield of transnational memory studies remains underdeveloped and fractured across numerous disciplines, even as nascent, boundary-crossing theories on topics such as multi-vocal, traveling, or entangled remembrance suggest new ways of negotiating difficult political questions. This volume brings together theoretical and practical considerations to provide transnational memory scholars with an interdisciplinary investigation into agency—the “who” and the “how” of cross-border commemoration that motivates activists and fascinates observers.
Subjects: History (General) Sociology Memory Studies
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February 2001
Alien Policy in Belgium, 1840-1940
The Creation of Guest Workers, Refugees and Illegal Aliens
Caestecker, F.
Belgium has a unique place in the history of migration in that it was the first among industrialized nations in Continental Europe to develop into an immigrant society. In the nineteenth century Italians, Jews, Poles, Czechs, and North Africans settled in Belgium to work in industry and commerce. They were followed by Russians in the 1920s and Germans in the 1930s who were seeking a safe haven from persecution by totalitarian regimes. In the nineteenth century immigrants were to a larger extent integrated into Belgian society: they were denied political rights but participated on equal terms with Belgians in social life. This changed radically in the twentieth century; by 1940 the rights of aliens were severely curtailed, while those of Belgian citizens, in particular in the social domain, were extended. While the state evolved into a "welfare state" for its citizens it became more of a police state for immigrants. The state only tolerated immigrants who were prepared to carry out those jobs that were shunned by the Belgians. Under the pressure of public opinion, an exception was made in the cases of thousands of Jewish refugees that had fled from Nazi Germany. However, other immigrants were subjected to harsh regulations and in fact became the outcasts of twentieth-century Belgian liberal society.
This remarkable study examines in depth and over a long time span how (anti-) alien policies were transformed, resulting in an illiberal exclusion of foreigners at the same time as democratization and the welfare state expanded. In this respect Belgium is certainly not unique but offers an interesting case study of developments that are characteristic for Europe as a whole.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Refugee and Migration Studies
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November 2013
Alienating Labour
Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capitalism in East Germany and Hungary
Bartha, E.
The Communist Party dictatorships in Hungary and East Germany sought to win over the “masses” with promises of providing for ever-increasing levels of consumption. This policy—successful at the outset—in the long-term proved to be detrimental for the regimes because it shifted working class political consciousness to the right while it effectively excluded leftist alternatives from the public sphere. This book argues that this policy can provide the key to understanding of the collapse of the regimes. It examines the case studies of two large factories, Carl Zeiss Jena (East Germany) and Rába in Győr (Hungary), and demonstrates how the study of the formation of the relationship between the workers’ state and the industrial working class can offer illuminating insights into the important issue of the legitimacy (and its eventual loss) of Communist regimes.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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eBook available
March 2010
Alsace to the Alsatians?
Visions and Divisions of Alsatian Regionalism, 1870-1939
Fischer, C. J.
The region of Alsace, located between the hereditary enemies of France and Germany, served as a trophy of war four times between 1870–1945. With each shift, French and German officials sought to win the allegiance of the local populace. In response to these pressures, Alsatians invoked regionalism—articulated as a political language, a cultural vision, and a community of identity—not only to define and defend their own interests against the nationalist claims of France and Germany, but also to push for social change, defend religious rights, and promote the status of the region within the larger national community. Alsatian regionalism however, was neither unitary nor unifying, as Alsatians themselves were divided politically, socially, and culturally. The author shows that the Janus-faced character of Alsatian regionalism points to the ambiguous role of regional identity in both fostering and inhibiting loyalty to the nation. Finally, the author uses the case of Alsace to explore the traditional designations of French civic nationalism versus German ethnic nationalism and argues for the strong similarities between the two countries’ conceptions of nationhood.
Subject: History (General)
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April 2008
Alternative Exchanges
Second-Hand Circulations from the Sixteenth Century to the Present
Fontaine, L (ed)
Exchanges have always had more than economic significance: values circulate and encounters become institutionalized. This volume explores the changing meaning of the circulation of second-hand goods from the Renaissance to today, and thereby examines the blurring of boundaries between market, gifts, and charity. It describes the actors of the market - official entities such as corporations, recognized professions, and established markets but also the subterranean circulation that develops around the need for money. The complex layers that not only provide for numerous intermediaries but also include the many men and women who, as sellers or buyers, use these circulations on countless occasions are also examined.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
November 2016
Ambassadors of Realpolitik
Sweden, the CSCE and the Cold War
Makko, A.
During the Cold War, Sweden actively cultivated a reputation as the “conscience of the world,” working to build bridges between East and West and embracing a nominal commitment to international solidarity. This groundbreaking study explores the tension between realism and idealism in Swedish diplomacy during a key episode in Cold War history: the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, culminating in the 1975 Helsinki Accords. Through careful analysis of new evidence, it offers a compelling counternarrative of this period, showing that Sweden strategically ignored human rights violations in Eastern Europe and the nonaligned states in its pursuit of national interests.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
July 2019
Ambiguous Transitions
Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania
Massino, J.
Focusing on youth, family, work, and consumption, Ambiguous Transitions analyzes the interplay between gender and citizenship postwar Romania. By juxtaposing official sources with oral histories and socialist policies with everyday practices, Jill Massino illuminates the gendered dimensions of socialist modernization and its complex effects on women’s roles, relationships, and identities. Analyzing women as subjects and agents, the book examines how they negotiated the challenges that arose as Romanian society modernized, even as it clung to traditional ideas about gender. Massino concludes by exploring the ambiguities of postsocialism, highlighting how the legacies of the past have shaped politics and women’s lived experiences since 1989.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Gender Studies and Sexuality
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January 2003
The Ambivalent Alliance
Konrad Adenauer, the CDU/CSU, and the West, 1949-1966
Granieri, R.
Whenever asked to name his most significant accomplishment as West Germany's first Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer would invariably reply: "The alliance with the free West." Scholars have echoed his assessment, citing the Federal Republic of Germany's successful integration into the American-led West (Westbindung) as the key to its postwar economic and political recovery. Behind this simple success story, however,lies a much more complicated history: Adenauer and the CDU/CSU remained ambivalent about the ultimate relationship between Europe, Germany, and the United States within the West, torn between visions of Continental European integration based on Franco-German reconciliation and of an Atlantic community linking Europe and the "Anglo-Saxons." These differences eventually erupted into a damaging public conflict between "Atlanticists" and "Gaullists," which colored Adenauer's last years and, after his retirement in 1963, led directly to the failure of his successor, Ludwig Erhard.
The opening of various personal and party archives over the past few years has now made the entire Adenauer Era accessible for historians. As one of the first efforts to use that material to re-examine existing conventional wisdom about the period, this book traces the roles of Adenauer and the CDU/CSU in shaping Westbindung. Adenauer emerges as a skilled and resourceful (if also mistrustful and devious) politician, and as a distinctly German statesman, maneuvering between allies and adversaries to shape both the Western community and the German role in it, leaving a legacy that still influences contemporary German-American and European-American relations.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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January 1995
The American Impact on Postwar Germany
Pommerin, R. (ed)
It is only with the benefit of hindsight that the Germans have become acutely aware of how profound and comprehensive was the impact of the United States on their society after 1945.This volume reflect the ubiquitousness of this impact and examines the German responses to it.
Contributions by well-known scholars cover politics, industry, social life and mass culture.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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November 2004
Americanization and Anti-americanism
The German Encounter with American Culture after 1945
Stephan, A. (ed)
The ongoing discussions about globalization, American hegemony and September 11 and its aftermath have moved the debate about the export of American culture and cultural anti-Americanism to center stage of world politics. At such a time, it is crucial to understand the process of culture transfer and its effects on local societies and their attitudes toward the United States.
This volume presents Germany as a case study of the impact of American culture throughout a period characterized by a totalitarian system, two unusually destructive wars, massive ethnic cleansing, and economic disaster. Drawing on examples from history, culture studies, film, radio, and the arts, the authors explore the political and cultural parameters of Americanization and anti-Americanism, as reflected in the reception and rejection of American popular culture and, more generally, in European-American relations in the "American Century."
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
December 2005
The Americanization of Europe
Culture, Diplomacy, and Anti-Americanism after 1945
Stephan, A (ed)
Recent tensions between the U.S. and Europe seem to have opened up an insuperable rift, while Americanization, deplored by some, welcomed by others, seems to progress unabated. This volume explores, for the first time and in a comparative manner, the role American culture and anti-Americanism play in eleven representative European countries, including major powers like Great Britain, France, (West) Germany, Russia/Soviet Union, and Italy as well as smaller countries like Austria, Denmark, Greece, Spain, Sweden, and Poland. Each contributor to the volume, all of them highly respected experts in their field, was asked to address the following four topics: the role of American public diplomacy, the transfer of American “high culture,” the impact of “popular culture” ranging from Hollywood movies and TV to pop music and life-style issues, and the country specific features and history of anti-Americanism. The volume is enhanced by a substantial introduction by the editor, which looks both at the general “culture clash” between the United States and Europe and at adaptations and blending processes that seem to have occurred in individual countries.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
May 2021
Analysing Historical Narratives
On Academic, Popular and Educational Framings of the Past
Berger, S., Brauch, N., & Lorenz, C. (eds)
For all of the recent debates over the methods and theoretical underpinnings of the historical profession, scholars and laypeople alike still frequently think of history in terms of storytelling. Accordingly, historians and theorists have devoted much attention to how historical narratives work, illuminating the ways they can bind together events, shape an argument and lend support to ideology. From ancient Greece to modern-day bestsellers, the studies gathered here offer a wide-ranging analysis of the textual strategies used by historians. They show how in spite of the pursuit of truth and objectivity, the ways in which historians tell their stories are inevitably conditioned by their discursive contexts.
Subject: History (General)
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January 2007
Anarchism, Revolution and Reaction
Catalan Labor and the Crisis of the Spanish State, 1898-1923
Smith, A.
The period from 1898 to 1923 was a particularly dramatic one in Spanish history; it culminated in the violent Barcelona “labor wars” and was only brought to a close with the coup d’état launched by the Barcelona Captain General, Miguel Primo de Rivera, in September 1923. In his detailed examination of the rise of the Catalan anarchist-syndicalist-led labor movement, the author blends social, cultural and political history in a novel way. He analyses the working class “from below” and the policies of the Spanish State towards labor “from above.” Based on an in-depth usage of primary sources, the authors provides an unrivalled account of Catalan labor and the Catalan anarchist-syndicalist movement and thus makes an important contribution to our understanding of early twentieth-century Spanish history.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
April 2022
Anglo-American Relations and the Transmission of Ideas
A Shared Political Tradition?
Dobson, A. & Marsh, S. (eds)
Too often, scholarship on Anglo-American political relations has focused on mutual social and economic interests between Britain and the United States as the basis for cooperation. Breaking new ground, Anglo-American Relations and the Transmission of Ideas instead explores how ideas, on either side of the Atlantic have mutually influenced each other. In those transnational interactions, there forms a shared tradition of political ideas, facilitating “a common cast of mind” that has served as the basis for transatlantic relations and socio-political values for decades.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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March 2023
Anthropology, Nationalism and Colonialism
Mendes Correia and the Porto School of Anthropology
Ferraz de Matos, P.
A major contribution to the history of European anthropology, this book highlights the Porto School of Anthropology and analyses the work of its main mentor, Mendes Correia (1888-1960). It goes beyond a Portuguese focus to present a wider comparative analysis in which the colonial empire, knowledge of origins, ethnic identity and cultural practices all receive special attention. The analysis takes into account the fact that nationalism, as associated with an ethno-racial paradigm, decisively influenced discourse and scientific and political practices.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
March 2006
Anti-americanism in Latin America and the Caribbean
McPherson A. (ed)
Whether rising up from fiery leaders such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro or from angry masses of Brazilian workers and Mexican peasants, anti U.S. sentiment in Latin America and the Caribbean today is arguably stronger than ever. It is also a threat to U.S. leadership in the hemisphere and the world. Where has this resentment come from? Has it arisen naturally from imperialism and globalization, from economic and social frustrations? Has it served opportunistic politicians? Does Latin America have its own style of anti Americanism? What about national variations? How does cultural anti Americanism affect politics, and vice versa? What roles have religion, literature, or cartoons played in whipping up sentiment against ‘el yanqui’? Finally, how has the United States reacted to all this?
This book brings leaders in the field of U.S. Latin American relations together with the most promising young scholars to shed historical light on the present implications of hostility to the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean. In essays that carry the reader from Revolutionary Mexico to Peronist Argentina, from Panama in the nineteenth century to the West Indies’ mid century independence movement, and from Colombian drug runners to liberation theologists, the authors unearth little known campaigns of resistance and probe deeper into episodes we thought we knew well. They argue that, for well over a century, identifying the United States as the enemy has rung true to Latin Americans and has translated into compelling political strategies. Combining history with political and cultural analysis, this collection breaks the mold of traditional diplomatic history by seeing anti Americanism through the eyes of those who expressed it. It makes clear that anti Americanism, far from being a post 9/11 buzzword, is rather a real force that casts a long shadow over U.S. Latin American relations.
Subject: History (General)
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December 2014
Anti-liberal Europe
A Neglected Story of Europeanization
Gosewinkel, D. (ed)
The history of modern Europe is often presented with the hindsight of present-day European integration, which was a genuinely liberal project based on political and economic freedom. Many other visions for Europe developed in the 20th century, however, were based on an idea of community rooted in pre-modern religious ideas, cultural or ethnic homogeneity, or even in coercion and violence. They frequently rejected the idea of modernity or reinterpreted it in an antiliberal manner. Anti-liberal Europe examines these visions, including those of anti-modernist Catholics, conservatives, extreme rightists as well as communists, arguing that antiliberal concepts in 20th-century Europe were not the counterpart to, but instead part of the process of European integration.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
August 2020
Antisemitism in Galicia
Agitation, Politics, and Violence against Jews in the Late Habsburg Monarchy
Buchen, T.
In the last third of the nineteenth century, the discourse on the “Jewish question” in the Habsburg crownlands of Galicia changed fundamentally, as clerical and populist politicians emerged to denounce the Jewish assimilation and citizenship. This pioneering study investigates the interaction of agitation, violence, and politics against Jews on the periphery of the Danube monarchy. In its comprehensive analysis of the functions and limitations of propaganda, rumors, and mass media, it shows just how significant antisemitism was to the politics of coexistence among Christians and Jews on the eve of the Great War.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Jewish Studies
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eBook available
January 2018
Archaeologies of Rules and Regulation
Between Text and Practice
Hausmair, B., Jervis, B., Nugent, R., & Williams, E. (eds)
How can we study the impact of rules on the lives of past people using archaeological evidence? To answer this question, Archaeologies of Rules and Regulation presents case studies drawn from across Europe and the United States. Covering areas as diverse as the use of space in a nineteenth-century U.S. Army camp, the deposition of waste in medieval towns, the experiences of Swedish migrants to North America, the relationship between people and animals in Anglo-Saxon England, these case studies explore the use of archaeological evidence in understanding the relationship between rules, lived experience, and social identity.
Subjects: Archaeology History: Medieval/Early Modern Sociology History (General)
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eBook available
December 2019
An Archaeology of Unchecked Capitalism
From the American Rust Belt to the Developing World
Shackel, P. A.
The racialization of immigrant labor and the labor strife in the coal and textile communities in northeastern Pennsylvania appears to be an isolated incident in history. Rather this history can serve as a touchstone, connecting the history of the exploited laborers to today’s labor in the global economy. By drawing parallels between the past and present – for example, the coal mines of the nineteenth-century northeastern Pennsylvania and the sweatshops of the twenty-first century in Bangladesh – we can have difficult conversations about the past and advance our commitment to address social justice issues.
Subjects: Archaeology History (General) Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
May 2017
Archeologies of Confession
Writing the German Reformation, 1517-2017
Johnson, C. L., Luebke, D. M., Plummer, M. E. & Spohnholz, J. (eds)
Modern religious identities are rooted in collective memories that are constantly made and remade across generations. How do these mutations of memory distort our picture of historical change and the ways that historical actors perceive it? Can one give voice to those whom history has forgotten? The essays collected here examine the formation of religious identities during the Reformation in Germany through case studies of remembering and forgetting—instances in which patterns and practices of religious plurality were excised from historical memory. By tracing their ramifications through the centuries, Archeologies of Confession carefully reconstructs the often surprising histories of plurality that have otherwise been lost or obscured.
Subjects: History: Medieval/Early Modern Memory Studies
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June 2008
Archives, Ancestors, Practices
Archaeology in the Light of its History
Schlanger, N. & Nordbladh, J. (eds)
In line with the resurgence of interest in the history of archaeology manifested over the past decade, this volume aims to highlight state-of-the art research across several topics and areas, and to stimulate new approaches and studies in the field. With their shared historiographical commitment, the authors, leading scholars and emerging researchers, draw from a wide range of case studies to address major themes such as historical sources and methods; questions of archaeological practices and the practical aspects of knowledge production; ‘visualizing archaeology’ and the multiple roles of iconography and imagery; and ‘questions of identity’ at local, national and international levels.
Subjects: Archaeology History (General) Heritage Studies
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eBook available
January 2019
The Arkansas Regulators
Gerstäcker, F.
Adams, C. & Irmscher, C. (eds)The Arkansas Regulators is a rousing tale of frontier adventure, first published in German in 1846, but virtually lost to English readers for well over a century. Written in the tradition of James Fenimore Cooper, but offering a much darker and more violent image of the American frontier, this was the first novel produced by Friedrich Gerstäcker, who would go on to become one of Germany’s most famous and prolific authors. A crucial piece of a nineteenth-century transatlantic literary tradition, this long-awaited translation and scholarly edition of the novel offers a startling revision of the frontier myth from a European perspective.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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December 2013
The Armenian Genocide
Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916
Gust, W. (ed)
In 1915, the Armenians were exiled from their land, and in the process of deportation 1.5 million of them were killed. The 1915-1916 annihilation of the Armenians was the archetype of modern genocide, in which a state adopts a specific scheme geared to the destruction of an identifiable group of its own citizens. Official German diplomatic documents are of great importance in understanding the genocide, as only Germany had the right to report day-by-day in secret code about the ongoing genocide. The motives, methods, and after-effects of the Armenian Genocide echoed strongly in subsequent cases of state-sponsored genocide. Studying the factors that went into the Armenian Genocide not only gives us an understanding of historical genocide, but also provides us with crucial information for the anticipation and possible prevention of future genocides.
Subjects: Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
October 2018
The Art of Resistance
Cultural Protest against the Austrian Far Right in the Early Twenty-First Century
Fiddler, A.
Well before the far-right resurgence that has most recently transformed European politics, Austria’s 1999 parliamentary elections surprised the world with the unexpected success of the Freedom Party of Austria and its charismatic leader, Jörg Haider. The party’s perceived xenophobia, isolationism, and unabashed nationalism in turn inspired a massive protest movement that expressed opposition not only through street protests but also in novels, plays, films, and music. Through careful readings of this varied cultural output, The Art of Resistance traces the aesthetic styles and strategies deployed during this time, providing critical context for understanding modern Austrian history as well as the European protest movements of today.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
November 2006
The Arts in Nazi Germany
Continuity, Conformity, Change
Huener, J. & Nicosia, F. (eds)
Culture and the arts played a central role in the ideology and propaganda of National Socialism from the early years of the movement until the last months of the Third Reich in 1945. Hitler and his followers believed that art and culture were expressions of race, and that “Aryans” alone were capable of creating true art and preserving true German culture. This volume’s essays explore these and other aspects of the arts and cultural life under National Socialism, and are authored by some of the most respected authorities in the field: Alan Steinweis, Michael Kater, Eric Rentschler, Pamela Potter, Frank Trommler, and Jonathan Petropoulos. The result is a volume that offers students and interested readers a brief but focused introduction to this important aspect of the history of Nazi Germany.
Subjects: History: World War II Cultural Studies (General)
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January 2002
'Aryanisation' in Hamburg
The Economic Exclusion of Jews and the Confiscation of their Property in Nazi Germany
Bajohr, F.
Much has been written about Nazi anti-Jewish policies, about atrocities of the Wehrmacht, and about the life of the Jews during the Third Reich. However, relatively little is known about the behavior of non-Jewish Germans. This book, published to wide acclaim in its original edition, shows how many "ordinary Germans" became involved in what they saw as a legally sanctioned process of ridding Germany and Europe of their Jews. Bajohr's study offers a major contribution to our understanding of this process in that it focusses on one of its most important aspects, namely the gradual exclusion of Jews from economic life in Hamburg, one of the largest centers of Jewish life in Europe and one in which many of them had been part of the Hanseatic patriciate before 1933. The sad conclusion of this study is that it was not necessarily antisemitism that motivated "ordinary burghers" but unrestrained greed that led them to betray their former co-citizens.
Subjects: History: World War II Jewish Studies
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March 2015
At Home in Postwar France
Modern Mass Housing and the Right to Comfort
Rudolph, N. C.
After World War II, France embarked on a project of modernization, which included the development of the modern mass home. At Home in Postwar France examines key groups of actors — state officials, architects, sociologists and tastemakers — arguing that modernizers looked to the home as a site for social engineering and nation-building; designers and advocates of the modern home contributed to the democratization of French society; and the French home of the Trente Glorieuses, as it was built and inhabited, was a hybrid product of architects’, planners’, and residents’ understandings of modernity. This volume identifies the “right to comfort” as an invention of the postwar period and suggests that the modern mass home played a vital role in shaping new expectations for well-being and happiness.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Urban Studies
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eBook available
March 2021
At the Edge of the Wall
Public and Private Spheres in Divided Berlin
Hochmuth, H.
Located in the geographical center of Berlin, the neighboring boroughs of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg shared a history and identity until their fortunes diverged dramatically following the construction of the Berlin Wall, which placed them within opposing political systems. This revealing account of the two municipal districts before, during and after the Cold War takes a microhistorical approach to investigate the broader historical trajectories of East and West Berlin, with particular attention to housing, religion, and leisure. Merged in 2001, they now comprise a single neighborhood that bears the traces of these complex histories and serves as an illuminating case study of urban renewal, gentrification, and other social processes that continue to reshape Berlin.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Urban Studies
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December 2014
Atlantic Automobilism
Emergence and Persistence of the Car, 1895-1940
Mom, G.
Our continued use of the combustion engine car in the 21st century, despite many rational arguments against it, makes it more and more difficult to imagine that transport has a sustainable future. Offering a sweeping transatlantic perspective, this book explains the current obsession with automobiles by delving deep into the motives of early car users. It provides a synthesis of our knowledge about the emergence and persistence of the car, using a broad range of material including novels, poems, films, and songs to unearth the desires that shaped our present “car society.” Combining social, psychological, and structural explanations, the author concludes that the ability of cars to convey transcendental experience, especially for men, explains our attachment to the vehicle.
Subjects: Mobility Studies History: 20th Century to Present Transport Studies
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March 2008
Austria, Germany, and the Cold War
From the Anschluss to the State Treaty, 1938-1955
Steininger, R.
In the 'Moscow Declaration' of 1943 the Allies officially propagated the notion of Austria as the first victim of Hitlerite aggression and announced their intention to set up a "free and independent Austria" after the war, which finally happened in 1955. By questioning why it took so long to get to this point, the author addresses issues such as the victim thesis, Austrians as perpetrators, Austrian anti-Semitism and official attempts to mitigate its effects after the war. He discusses the various proposals for post-war Austria and connects for the first time the issues of Anschluss, German question, Cold War, and the State Treaty. He makes it clear that the question of Austria was from the very beginning inextricably linked with the more important question of Germany.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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October 1996
Austrian Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Cross-disciplinary Perspectives
Good, D. F., Grandner, M., & Maynes, M. J. (eds)
This volume, the first of its kind in English, brings together scholars from different disciplines who address the history of women in Austria, as well as their place in contemporary Austrian society, from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives, thus shedding new light on contemporary Austria and in the context of its rich and complicated history.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History (General)
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November 1995
Authority, Identity and the Social History of the Great War
Coetzee, F. & M. (eds)
The unprecedented scope and intensity of the First World War has prompted an enormous body of retrospective scholarship. However, efforts to provide a coherent synthesis about the war's impact and significance have remained circumscribed, tending to focus either on the operational outlines of military strategy and tactics or on the cultural legacy of the conflict as transmitted bythe war's most articulate observers. This volume departs from traditional accounts on several scores: by exploring issues barely touched upon in previous works, by deviating from the widespread tendency to treat the experiences of front and homefront isolation, and by employing a thematic treatment that, by considering the construction of authority and identity between 1914 and 1918, illuminates the fundamental question of how individuals, whether in uniform or not, endured the war's intrusion into so many aspects of their public and private lives.
Subject: History: World War I
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eBook available
May 2009
Balkan Departures
Travel Writing from Southeastern Europe
Bracewell, W. & Drace-Francis, A. (eds)
In writings about travel, the Balkans appear most often as a place travelled to. Western accounts of the Balkans revel in the different and the exotic, the violent and the primitive − traits that serve (according to many commentators) as a foil to self-congratulatory definitions of the West as modern, progressive and rational. However, the Balkans have also long been travelled from. The region’s writers have given accounts of their travels in the West and elsewhere, saying something in the process about themselves and their place in the world. The analyses presented here, ranging from those of 16th-century Greek humanists to 19th-century Romanian reformers to 20th-century writers, socialists and ‘men-of-the-world’, suggest that travellers from the region have also created their own identities through their encounters with Europe. Consequently, this book challenges assumptions of Western discursive hegemony, while at the same time exploring Balkan ‘Occidentalisms’.
Subjects: History (General) Literary Studies
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eBook available
March 2009
Banned in Berlin
Literary Censorship in Imperial Germany, 1871-1918
Stark, G. D.
Imperial Germany’s governing elite frequently sought to censor literature that threatened established political, social, religious, and moral norms in the name of public peace, order, and security. It claimed and exercised a prerogative to intervene in literary life that was broader than that of its Western neighbors, but still not broad enough to prevent the literary community from challenging and subverting many of the social norms the state was most determined to defend. This study is the first systematic analysis in any language of state censorship of literature and theater in imperial Germany (1871–1918). To assess the role that formal state controls played in German literary and political life during this period, it examines the intent, function, contested legal basis, institutions, and everyday operations of literary censorship as well as its effectiveness and its impact on authors, publishers, and theater directors.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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April 2018
Basic and Applied Research
The Language of Science Policy in the Twentieth Century
Kaldewey, D. & Schauz, D. (eds)
The distinction between basic and applied research was central to twentieth-century science and policymaking, and if this framework has been contested in recent years, it nonetheless remains ubiquitous in both scientific and public discourse. Employing a transnational, diachronic perspective informed by historical semantics, this volume traces the conceptual history of the basic–applied distinction from the nineteenth century to today, taking stock of European developments alongside comparative case studies from the United States and China. It shows how an older dichotomy of pure and applied science was reconceived in response to rapid scientific progress and then further transformed by the geopolitical circumstances of the postwar era.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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May 2002
Becoming a Subject
Political Prisoners during the Greek Civil War, 1945-1950
Voglis, P.
Focusing on the Greek Civil War (1946-1949), the last major conflict in Europe before the end of the Cold War, this study examines the political prisoners whose fate encapsulates the dramatic conflicts and contradictions of that dark era. New sources such as prisoners' letters, memoirs, and official reports, the author describes the life of the prisoners and the effect the prison administration and the prisoners' collective had on their personality. Drawing comparisons to political prisoners in Germany and Spain, the author sheds new light on our understanding of the ideologies and policies and their effect on individuals, which marked European history in the 20th century.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
September 2013
Becoming East German
Socialist Structures and Sensibilities after Hitler
Fulbrook, M. & Port, A. I. (eds)
For roughly the first decade after the demise of the GDR, professional and popular interpretations of East German history concentrated primarily on forms of power and repression, as well as on dissent and resistance to communist rule. Socio-cultural approaches have increasingly shown that a single-minded emphasis on repression and coercion fails to address a number of important historical issues, including those related to the subjective experiences of those who lived under communist regimes. With that in mind, the essays in this volume explore significant physical and psychological aspects of life in the GDR, such as health and diet, leisure and dining, memories of the Nazi past, as well as identity, sports, and experiences of everyday humiliation. Situating the GDR within a broader historical context, they open up new ways of interpreting life behind the Iron Curtain – while providing a devastating critique of misleading mainstream scholarship, which continues to portray the GDR in the restrictive terms of totalitarian theory.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
January 2006
A Belle Epoque?
Women and Feminism in French Society and Culture 1890-1914
Holmes, D. & Tarr, C. (eds)
The Third Republic, known as the ‘belle époque’, was a period of lively, articulate and surprisingly radical feminist activity in France, borne out of the contradiction between the Republican ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity and the reality of intense and systematic gender discrimination. Yet, it also was a period of intense and varied artistic production, with women disproving the critical nearconsensus that art was a masculine activity by writing, painting, performing, sculpting, and even displaying an interest in the new "seventh art" of cinema. This book explores all these facets of the period, weaving them into a complex, multi-stranded argument about the importance of this rich period of French women’s history.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
September 2010
Berlin Divided City, 1945-1989
Broadbent, P. & Hake, S. (eds)
A great deal of attention continues to focus on Berlin’s cultural and political landscape after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but as yet, no single volume looks at the divided city through an interdisciplinary analysis. This volume examines how the city was conceived, perceived, and represented during the four decades preceding reunification and thereby offers a unique perspective on divided Berlin’s identities. German historians, art historians, architectural historians, and literary and cultural studies scholars explore the divisions and antagonisms that defined East and West Berlin; and by tracing the little studied similarities and extensive exchanges that occurred despite the presence of the Berlin Wall, they present an indispensible study on the politics and culture of the Cold War.
Subjects: Urban Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
April 2021
Bestsellers of the Third Reich
Readers, Writers and the Politics of Literature
Adam, C.
Despite the displacement of countless authors, frequent bans of specific titles, and high-profile book burnings, the German book industry boomed during the Nazi period. Notwithstanding the millions of copies of Mein Kampf that were sold, the era’s most popular books were diverse and often surprising in retrospect, despite an oppressive ideological and cultural climate: Huxley’s Brave New World was widely read in the 1930s, while Saint-Exupéry’s Wind, Sand and Stars was a great success during the war years. Bestsellers of the Third Reich surveys this motley collection of books, along with the circumstances of their publication, to provide an innovative new window into the history of Nazi Germany.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Literary Studies
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December 2016
Between Blood and Gold
The Debates over Compensation for Slavery in the Americas
Beauvois, F.
Today, a century and a half after the abolition of slavery across most of the Americas, the idea of monetary reparations for former slaves and their descendants continues to be a controversial one. Lost among these debates, however, is the fact that such payments were widespread in the nineteenth century—except the “victims” were not slaves, but the slaveholders deprived of their labor. This landmark comparative study analyzes the debates over compensation within France and Great Britain. It lays out in unprecedented detail the philosophical, legal-political, and economic factors at play, establishing a powerful new model for understanding the aftermath of slavery in the Americas.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History (General) Colonial History
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May 2006
Between Bombs and Good Intentions
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Italo-Ethiopian war, 1935-1936
Baudendistel, R.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have highlighted again the precarious situation aid agencies find themselves in, caught as they are between the firing lines of the hostile parties, as they are trying to alleviate the plight of the civilian populations. This book offers an illuminating case study from a previous conflict, the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935-36, and of the humanitarian operation of the Red Cross during this period. Based on fresh material from Red Cross and Italian military archives, the author examines highly controversial subjects such as the Italian bombings of Red Cross field hospitals, the treatment of Prisoners of War by the two belligerents; and the effects of Fascist Italy’s massive use of poison gas against the Ethiopians. He shows how Mussolini and his ruthless regime, throughout the seven-month war, manipulated the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – the lead organization of the Red Cross in times of war, helped by the surprising political naïveté of its board. During this war the ICRC redefined its role in a debate, which is fascinating not least because of its relevance to current events, about the nature of humanitarian action. The organization decided to concern itself exclusively with matters falling under the Geneva Conventions and to give priority to bringing relief over expressing protest. It was a decision that should have far-reaching consequences, particularly for the period of World War II and the fate of Jews in Nazi concentration camps.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Peace and Conflict Studies
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eBook available
May 2017
Between Empire and Continent
British Foreign Policy before the First World War
Rose, A.
Prior to World War I, Britain was at the center of global relations, utilizing tactics of diplomacy as it broke through the old alliances of European states. Historians have regularly interpreted these efforts as a reaction to the aggressive foreign policy of the German Empire. However, as Between Empire and Continent demonstrates, British foreign policy was in fact driven by a nexus of intra-British, continental and imperial motivations. Recreating the often heated public sphere of London at the turn of the twentieth century, this groundbreaking study carefully tracks the alliances, conflicts, and political maneuvering from which British foreign and security policy were born.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: World War I
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eBook available
November 2010
Between Left and Right
The 2009 Bundestag Elections and the Transformation of the German Party System
Langenbacher, E. (ed)
Germany remains a leader in Europe, as demonstrated by its influential role in the on-going policy challenges in response to the post 2008 financial and economic crises. Rarely does the composition of a national government matter as much as Germany’s did following the 2009 Bundestag election. This volume, which brings together established and up-and coming academics from both sides of the Atlantic, delves into the dynamics and consequences surrounding this fateful election: How successful was Chancellor Angela Merkel’s leadership of the Grand Coalition and what does her new partnership with the Free Democrats auger? In the face economic crisis, why did German voters empower a center-right market-liberal coalition? Why did the SPD, one of the oldest and most distinguished parties in the world self-destruct and what are the chances that it will recover? The chapters go beyond the contemporary situation and provide deeper analyses of the long-term decline of the catchall parties, structural changes in the party system, electoral behavior, the evolution of perceptions of gender in campaigns, and the use of new social media in German politics.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
December 2005
Between Marx and Coca-Cola
Youth Cultures in Changing European Societies, 1960-1980
Schildt, A. & Siegfried, D. (eds)
In the 1960s and 1970s, Western Europe's "Golden Age" (Eric Hobsbawm), a new youth consciousness emerged, which gave this period its distinctive character. Offering rich and new material, this volume moves beyond the easy conflation of youth culture and "Americanization" and instead sets out to show, for the first time, how international developments fused with national traditions to produce specific youth cultures that became the leading trendsetters of emergent post-industrial Western societies. It presents a multi-faceted portrait of European youth cultures, colored by differences in gender, class, and education, and points out the tension between emerging consumerism and growing politicisation, succinctly expressed by Jean-Luc Godard in his 1967 pairing of "Marx and Coca-Cola."
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies Sociology
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eBook available
July 2008
Between Mass Death and Individual Loss
The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany
Confino, A., Betts, P. & Schumann, D. (eds)
Recent years have witnessed growing scholarly interest in the history of death. Increasing academic attention toward death as a historical subject in its own right is very much linked to its pre-eminent place in 20th-century history, and Germany, predictably, occupies a special place in these inquiries. This collection of essays explores how German mourning changed over the 20th century in different contexts, with a particular view to how death was linked to larger issues of social order and cultural self-understanding. It contributes to a history of death in 20th-century Germany that does not begin and end with the Third Reich.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
June 2011
Between Prague Spring and French May
Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960-1980
Klimke, M., Pekelder, J. & Scharloth, J. (eds)
Abandoning the usual Cold War–oriented narrative of postwar European protest and opposition movements, this volume offers an innovative, interdisciplinary, and comprehensive perspective on two decades of protest and social upheaval in postwar Europe. It examines the mutual influences and interactions among dissenters in Western Europe, the Warsaw Pact countries, and the nonaligned European countries, and shows how ideological and political developments in the East and West were interconnected through official state or party channels as well as a variety of private and clandestine contacts. Focusing on issues arising from the cross-cultural transfer of ideas, the adjustments to institutional and political frameworks, and the role of the media in staging protest, the volume examines the romanticized attitude of Western activists to violent liberation movements in the Third World and the idolization of imprisoned RAF members as martyrs among left-wing circles across Western Europe.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
May 1998
Between Reform and Revolution
German Socialism and Communism from 1840 to 1990
Barclay, D. & Weitz, E. (ed)
The powerful impact of Socialism and Communism on modern German history is the theme which is explored by the contributors to this volume. Whereas previous investigations have tended to focus on political, intellectual and biographical aspects, this book captures, for the first time, the methodological and thematic diversity and richness of current work on the history of the German working class and the political movements that emerged from it. Based on original contributions from U.S., British, and German scholars, this collection address a wide range of themes and problems.
Subject: History (General)
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July 2011
Between the Avant-garde and the Everyday
Subversive Politics in Europe from 1957 to the Present
Brown, T. & Anton, L. (eds)
The wave of anti-authoritarian political activity associated with the term “1968” can by no means be confined under the rubric of “protest,” understood narrowly in terms of street marches and other reactions to state initiatives. Indeed, the actions generated in response to “1968” frequently involved attempts to elaborate resistance within the realm of culture generally, and in the arts in particular. This blurring of the boundary between art and politics was a characteristic development of the political activism of the postwar period. This volume brings together a group of essays concerned with the multifaceted link between culture and politics, highlighting lesser-known case studies and opening new perspectives on the development of anti-authoritarian politics in Europe from the 1950s to the fall of Communism and beyond.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2007
Between Tradition and Modernity
Aby Warburg and the Public Purposes of Art in Hamburg
Russell, M. A.
Aby Warburg (1866-1929), founder of the Warburg Institute, was one of the most influential cultural historians of the twentieth century. Focusing on the period 1896-1918, this is the first in-depth, book-length study of his response to German political, social and cultural modernism. It analyses Warburg's response to the effects of these phenomena through a study of his involvement with the creation of some of the most important public artworks in Germany. Using a wide array of archival sources, including many of his unpublished working papers and much of his correspondence, the author demonstrates that Warburg's thinking on contemporary art was the product of two important influences: his engagement with Hamburg's civic affairs and his affinity with influential reform movements seeking a greater role for the middle classes in the political, social and cultural leadership of the nation. Thus a lively picture of Hamburg’s cultural life emerges as it responded to artistic modernism, animated by private initiative and public discourse, and charged with debate.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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November 2004
Between Utopia and Disillusionment
A Narrative of the Political Transformation in Eastern Europe
Vogt, H.
Scholarly interpretations of the collapse of communism and developments thereafter have tended to be primarily concerned with people’s need to rid themselves of the communist system, of their past. The expectations, dreams, and hopes that ordinary Eastern Europeans had when they took to the streets in 1989, and have had ever since, have therefore been overlooked – and our understanding of the changes in post-communist Europe has remained incomplete. Focusing primarily on five key areas, such as the heritage of 1989 revolutions, ambivalence, disillusionment, individualism, and collective identities, this book explores the expectations and goals that ordinary Eastern Europeans had during the 1989 revolutions and the decade thereafter, and also the problems and disappointments they encountered in the course of the transformation. The analysis is based on extensive interviews with university students and young intellectuals in the Czech Republic, Eastern Germany and Estonia in the 1990s, which in themselves have considerable value as historical documents.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
October 2013
Between Yesterday and Tomorrow
German Visions of Europe, 1926-1950
Bailey, C.
An intellectual and cultural history of mid-twentieth century plans for European integration, this book calls into question the usual pre- and post-war periodizations that have structured approaches to twentieth-century European history. It focuses not simply on the ideas of leading politicians but analyses debates about Europe in “civil society” and the party-political sphere in Germany, asking if, and how, a “permissive consensus” was formed around the issue of integration. Taking Germany as its case study, the book offers context to the post-war debates, analysing the continuities that existed between interwar and post-war plans for European integration. It draws attention to the abiding scepticism of democracy displayed by many advocates of integration, indeed suggesting that groups across the ideological spectrum converged around support for European integration as a way of constraining the practice of democracy within nation-states.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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September 1997
Beyond 1989
Re-reading German literature since 1945
Bullivant, K. (ed)
With the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, four decades of separation seemed to have been brought to an end. In the literary arena as in many others, this seemed to be the surprising but ultimately logical end to the situation in which, after the extreme separation of the two Germanies' literatures during most of the period up to 1980, an increasing closeness could be observed during the 1980s, as relations between the two German states normalized. With the opening up of the East in the Autumn of 1989 claims were being made, on the one hand, that German literature had never, in fact, been divided, while others were proclaiming the end of East and West German literatures as they had existed, and the beginning of a new era. This volume examines these claims and other aspects of literary life in the two Germanies since 1945, with the hindsight born of unification in 1990, as well as looking at certain aspects of developments since the fall of the Wall, when, as on East German put it in 1996, rapprochement came to an end.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Literary Studies
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July 2014
Beyond Alterity
German Encounters with Modern East Asia
Shen, Q. & Rosenstock, M. (eds)
With the economic and political rise of East Asia in the second half of the twentieth century, many Western countries have re-evaluated their links to their Eastern counterparts. Thus, in recent years, Asian German Studies has emerged as a promising branch within interdisciplinary German Studies. This collection of essays examines German-language cultural production pertaining to modern China and Japan, and explicitly challenges orientalist notions by proposing a conception of East and West not as opposites, but as complementary elements of global culture, thereby urging a move beyond national paradigms in cultural studies. Essays focus on the mid-century German-Japanese alliance, Chinese-German Leftist collaborations, global capitalism, travel, identity, and cultural hybridity. The authors include historians and scholars of film and literature, and employ a wide array of approaches from postcolonial, globalization, media, and gender studies. The collection sheds new light on a complex and ambivalentset of international relationships, while also testifying to the potential of Asian German Studies.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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October 2011
Beyond Conversion and Syncretism
Indigenous Encounters with Missionary Christianity, 1800-2000
Lindenfeld, D. & Richardson, M. (eds)
The globalization of Christianity, its spread and appeal to peoples of non- European origin, is by now a well-known phenomenon. Scholars increasingly realize the importance of natives rather than foreign missionaries in the process of evangelization. This volume contributes to the understanding of this process through case studies of encounters with Christianity from the perspectives of the indigenous peoples who converted. More importantly, by exploring overarching, general terms such as conversion and syncretism and by showing the variety of strategies and processes that actually take place, these studies lead to a more nuanced understanding of cross-cultural religious interactions in general—from acceptance to resistance—thus enriching the vocabulary of religious interaction. The contributors tackle these issues from a variety of disciplinary perspectives—history, anthropology, religious studies—and present a broad geographical spread of cases from China, Vietnam, Australia, India, South and West Africa, North and Central America, and the Caribbean.
Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Anthropology (General) Colonial History
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eBook available
November 2012
Beyond Habermas
Democracy, Knowledge, and the Public Sphere
Emden, C. J. & Midgely, D. (eds)
During the 1960s the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas introduced the notion of a “bourgeois public sphere” in order to describe the symbolic arena of political life and conversation that originated with the cultural institutions of the early eighteenth-century; since then the “public sphere” itself has become perhaps one of the most debated concepts at the very heart of modernity. For Habermas, the tension between the administrative power of the state, with its understanding of sovereignty, and the emerging institutions of the bourgeoisie—coffee houses, periodicals, encyclopedias, literary culture, etc.—was seen as being mediated by the public sphere, making it a symbolic site of public reasoning. This volume examines whether the “public sphere” remains a central explanatory model in the social sciences, political theory, and the humanities.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History (General) Media Studies Literary Studies
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eBook available
October 2022
Beyond 'Hellenes' and 'Barbarians'
Asymmetrical Concepts in European Discourse
Postoutenko, K. (ed)
Forty years ago, German historian Reinhart Koselleck coined the notion of ‘asymmetrical concepts’, pointing at the asymmetry between standard self-ascriptions, such as ‘Hellenes’ or ‘Christians’, and pejorative other-references (‘Barbarians’ or ‘Pagans’) as a powerful weapon of cultural and political domination. Advancing and refining Koselleck’s approach, Beyond ‘Hellenes’ and ‘Barbarians’ explores the use of significant conceptual asymmetries such as ‘civilization’ vs. ‘barbarity’, ‘liberalism’ vs. ‘servility’, ‘order’ vs. ‘chaos’ or even ‘masters’ vs. ‘slaves’ in political, scientific and fictional discourses of Europe from the Middle Ages to the present day. Using an interdisciplinary set of approaches, the scholars in political history, cultural sociology, intellectual history and literary criticism bolster and extend our understanding of this ever-growing area of conceptual history.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: 18th/19th Century History: Medieval/Early Modern
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eBook available
November 2018
Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion
Jewish Experiences of the First World War in Central Europe
Crouthamel, J., Geheran, M., Grady, T., & Köhne, J. B. (eds)
During the First World War, the Jewish population of Central Europe was politically, socially, and experientially diverse, to an extent that resists containment within a simple historical narrative. While antisemitism and Jewish disillusionment have dominated many previous studies of the topic, this collection aims to recapture the multifariousness of Central European Jewish life in the experiences of soldiers and civilians alike during the First World War. Here, scholars from multiple disciplines explore rare sources and employ innovative methods to illuminate four interconnected themes: minorities and the meaning of military service, Jewish-Gentile relations, cultural legacies of the war, and memory politics.
Subject: Jewish Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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April 2011
Beyond Pleasure
Cultures of Modern Asceticism
Peeters, E., van Molle, L. & Wils, K. (eds)
Asceticism, so it is argued in this volume, is a modern category. The ubiquitous cult of the body, of fitness and diet equally evokes the ongoing success of ascetic practices and beliefs. Nostalgic memories of hardship and discipline in the army, youth movements or boarding schools remain as present as the fashionable irritation with the presumed modern-day laziness. In the very texture of contemporary culture, age-old asceticism proves to be remarkably alive. Old ascetic forms were remoulded to serve modern desires for personal authenticity, an authenticity that disconnected asceticism in the course of the nineteenth century from two traditions that had underpinned it since classical antiquity: the public, republican austerity of antiquity and the private, religious asceticism of Christianity. Exploring various aspects such as the history of the body, of aesthetics, science, and social thought in several European countries (Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria and Belgium), the authors show that modern asceticism remains a deeply ambivalent category. Apart from self-realisation, classical and religious examples continue to haunt the ascetic mind.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History (General) Sociology
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eBook available
February 2020
Beyond Posthumanism
The German Humanist Tradition and the Future of the Humanities
Mathäs, A.
Kant, Goethe, Schiller and other eighteenth-century German intellectuals loom large in the history of the humanities—both in terms of their individual achievements and their collective embodiment of the values that inform modern humanistic inquiry. Taking full account of the manifold challenges that the humanities face today, this volume recasts the question of their viability by tracing their long-disputed premises in German literature and philosophy. Through insightful analyses of key texts, Alexander Mathäs mounts a broad defense of the humanistic tradition, emphasizing its pursuit of a universal ethics and ability to render human experiences comprehensible through literary imagination.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Educational Studies
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July 2008
Beyond Prison
The Fight to Reform Prison Systems around the World
Othmani, A.
“This is an exceptional personal testimony and story of achievement – Ahmed Othmani tells of his own appalling treatment when in detention and how it informed and inspired a lifetime vocation to struggle for the rights of all prisoners everywhere. As the story demonstrates, Othmani is one of those rare individuals who moved from passion and conviction to effective action – he was responsible for the establishment of one of the world’s most reliable and mature human rights organizations, in the field of penal reform, Penal Reform International (PRI). His untimely death in Morocco in 2004 deprived the cause of a passionate advocate, but the work goes on.” [From the Preface]
Subjects: History (General) Sociology
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eBook available
March 2019
Beyond the Border
Young Minorities in the Danish-German Borderlands, 1955-1971
Wung-Sung, T. H.
In the nineteenth century, the hotly disputed border region between Denmark and Germany was the focus of an intricate conflict that complicates questions of ethnic and national identity even today. Beyond the Border reconstructs the experiences of both Danish and German minority youths living in the area from the 1950s to the 1970s, a period in which relations remained tense amid the broader developments of Cold War geopolitics. Drawing on a remarkable variety of archival and oral sources, the author provides a rich and fine-grained analysis that encompasses political issues from the NATO alliance and European integration to everyday life and popular culture.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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October 2015
Beyond the Divide
Entangled Histories of Cold War Europe
Mikkonen, S. & Koivunen, P. (eds)
Cold War history has emphasized the division of Europe into two warring camps with separate ideologies and little in common. This volume presents an alternative perspective by suggesting that there were transnational networks bridging the gap and connecting like-minded people on both sides of the divide. Long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were institutions, organizations, and individuals who brought people from the East and the West together, joined by shared professions, ideas, and sometimes even through marriage. The volume aims at proving that the post-WWII histories of Western and Eastern Europe were entangled by looking at cases involving France, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, and others.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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September 2008
Biography Between Structure and Agency
Central European Lives in International Historiography
Berghahn, V. R. & Lässig, S. (eds)
While bookstore shelves around the world have never ceased to display best-selling “life-and-letters” biographies in prominent positions, the genre became less popular among academic historians during the Cold War decades. Their main concern then was with political and socioeconomic structures, institutions, and organizations, or—more recently—with the daily lives of ordinary people and small communities. The contributors to this volume—all well known senior historians—offer self-critical reflections on problems they encountered when writing biographies themselves. Some of them also deal with topics specific to Central Europe, such as the challenges of writing about the lives of both victims and perpetrators. Although the volume concentrates on European historiography, its strong methodological and conceptual focus will be of great interest to non-European historians wrestling with the old “structure-versus-agency” question in their own work.
Contributors: Volker R. Berghahn, Hartmut Berghoff, Hilary Earl, Jan Eckel, Willem Frijhoff, Ian Kershaw, Simone Lässig, Karl Heinrich Pohl, John C. G. Röhl, Angelika Schaser, Joachim Radkau, Cornelia Rauh-Kühne, Mark Roseman, Christoph Strupp and Michael Wildt.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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August 2013
Bittersweet Europe
Albanian and Georgian Discourses on Europe, 1878-2008
Brisku, A.
From the late nineteenth century to the post-communist period, Albanian and Georgian political and intellectual elites have attributed hopes to “Europe,” yet have also exhibited ambivalent attitudes that do not appear likely to vanish any time soon. Albanians and Georgians have evoked, experienced, and continue to speak of “Europe” according to a tense triadic entity—geopolitics, progress, culture—which has generated aspirations as well as delusions towards it and themselves. This unique dichotomy weaves a nuanced, historical account of a changing Europe, continuously marred by uncertainties that greatly affect these countries’ domestic politics as well as foreign policy decisions. A systematic and rich account of how Albanians and Georgians view Europe, this book offers a fresh perspective on the vast East/West literature and, more broadly, on European intellectual, cultural, and political history.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
January 2013
Blood and Kinship
Matter for Metaphor from Ancient Rome to the Present
Johnson, C. H., Jussen, B., Sabean, D. W., & Teuscher, S. (eds)
The word “blood” awakens ancient ideas, but we know little about its historical representation in Western cultures. Anthropologists have customarily studied how societies think about the bodily substances that unite them, and the contributors to this volume develop those questions in new directions. Taking a radically historical perspective that complements traditional cultural analyses, they demonstrate how blood and kinship have constantly been reconfigured in European culture. This volume challenges the idea that blood can be understood as a stable entity, and shows how concepts of blood and kinship moved in both parallel and divergent directions over the course of European history.
Subjects: History (General) Anthropology (General)
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April 2006
The Body of the Queen
Gender and Rule in the Courtly World, 1500-2000
Schulte R. (ed)
How many “bodies” does a queen have? What is the significance of multiple “bodies”? How has the gendered body been constructed and perceived within the context of the European courts during the course of the past five centuries? These are some of the questions addressed in this anthology, a contribution to the ongoing debate provoked by Ernst H. Kantorowicz in his seminal work from 1957, The King’s Two Bodies. On the basis of both textual self-presentations and visual representations a gradual transformation of the queen appears: A sacred/providential figure in medieval and early modern period, an ideal bourgeois wife during the late-18th and 19th Centuries, and a star-like (re-) presentation of royalty during the past century. Twentieth-century mass media has produced the celebrity and film star queens personified by the contested and enigmatic Nefertiti of ancient Egypt, the mysterious Elizabeth (Sisi) of Austria, Grace Kelly as Queen of both Hollywood and Monaco and Romy Schneider as the invented Empress.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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January 2014
Bondage
Labor and Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries
Stanziani, A.
For the first time, this book provides the global history of labor in Central Eurasia, Russia, Europe, and the Indian Ocean between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries. It contests common views on free and unfree labor, and compares the latter to many Western countries where wage conditions resembled those of domestic servants. This gave rise to extreme forms of dependency in the colonies, not only under slavery, but also afterwards in form of indentured labor in the Indian Ocean and obligatory labor in Africa. Stanziani shows that unfree labor and forms of economic coercion were perfectly compatible with market development and capitalism, proven by the consistent economic growth that took place all over Eurasia between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. This growth was labor intensive: commercial expansion, transformations in agriculture, and the first industrial revolution required more labor, not less. Finally, Stanziani demonstrates that this world did not collapse after the French Revolution or the British industrial revolution, as is commonly assumed, but instead between 1870 and 1914, with the second industrial revolution and the rise of the welfare state.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
May 2008
Border Interrogations
Questioning Spanish Frontiers
Sampedro, B. & Doubleday, S. (eds)
Under the current cartographies of globalism, where frontiers mutate, vacillate, and mark the contiguity of discourse, questioning the Spanish border seems a particularly urgent task. The volume engages a wide spectrum of ambivalent regions—subjects that currently are, or have been seen in the past, as spaces of negotiation and contestation. However, they converge in their perception of the “Spanish” nation-space as a historical and ideological construct that is perpetually going through transformations and reformations. This volume advocates the position that intellectual responsibility must lead us to engage openly in the issues underlying current social and political tensions.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Refugee and Migration Studies History (General)
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eBook available
September 2022
Borders in East and West
Transnational and Comparative Perspectives
Berger, S. & Hashimoto, N. (eds)
How we define border studies is transforming from focussing on “a line in the sand” to the more complex notions of how constituting a border is practiced, sustained and modified. In the expansion of borders studies, the areas explored across Europe and Asia have been numerous, but the specific themes that arise through comparative case studies are novel when approach Europe and Asian borderlands. Comparing the border experiences in East Asia and Europe in a number of thematic clusters ranging from economics, tourism, and food production to ethnicity, migration and conquest, Borders in East and West aims to decenter border studies from its current focus on the Americas and Europe.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: 18th/19th Century Colonial History
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eBook available
November 2019
Born a Slave, Died a Pioneer
Nathan Harrison and the Historical Archaeology of Legend
Mallios, S.
Spectacular recent discoveries from the Nathan Harrison cabin site offer new insights and perspectives into the life of this former slave and legendary California homesteader.
“In many ways, it is a quintessential American story because of the fact that slavery was the American story.”—Julia A. King, St. Mary’s College of Maryland
Few people in the history of the United States embody ideals of the American Dream more than Nathan Harrison. His is a story with prominent themes of overcoming staggering obstacles, forging something-from-nothing, and evincing gritty perseverance. In a lifetime of hard-won progress, Harrison survived the horrors of slavery in the Antebellum South, endured the mania of the California Gold Rush, and prospered in the rugged chaos of the Wild West.
From the introduction:
According to dozens of accounts, Harrison would routinely greet visitors to his remote Southern California hillside property with the introductory quip, “I’m N——r Nate, the first white man on the mountain.” This is by far the most common direct quote in all of the extensive Harrison lore. If it is possible to get past current-day shock and outrage over the inflammatory racial epithet, one can begin to contextualize and appreciate the ironic humor, ethnic insight, and dualistically crafted identities Harrison employed in this profound statement.Subjects: Archaeology Heritage Studies History (General) Anthropology (General)
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May 2006
The Bourgeois Revolution in France 1789-1815
Heller, H.
In the last generation the classic Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution has been challenged by the so-called revisionist school. The Marxist view that the Revolution was a bourgeois and capitalist revolution has been questioned by Anglo-Saxon revisionists like Alfred Cobban and William Doyle as well as a French school of criticism headed by François Furet. Today revisionism is the dominant interpretation of the Revolution both in the academic world and among the educated public.
Against this conception, this book reasserts the view that the Revolution - the capital event of the modern age - was indeed a capitalist and bourgeois revolution. Based on an analysis of the latest historical scholarship as well as on knowledge of Marxist theories of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the work confutes the main arguments and contentions of the revisionist school while laying out a narrative of the causes and unfolding of the Revolution from the eighteenth century to the Napoleonic Age.
Subjects: History (General) History: 18th/19th Century
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September 1999
The Brave New World of European Labor
European Trade Unions at the Millennium
Martin, A. & Ross, G. (eds)
European union movements played a central role in promoting a "Europeanmodel of society", a humane industrial relations system, high labor standards, generous welfare states, and collective political representation which reached its pinnacle in the post-World War II era. The recent shift to lower growth, rising unemployment, renewed European integration, neo-liberalism, and globalization has challenged this "European Model" and the unions' place in it. These essays, written by some of the leading scholars in the field, examine responses of six major European union movements to the dramatic changes in economic and political conditions in the last two decades. They are the result of a group research effort and are based on a common framework which lends it quite an exceptional coherence.
Subject: History (General)
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March 2015
Bread from the Lion's Mouth
Artisans Struggling for a Livelihood in Ottoman Cities
Faroqhi, S. (ed)
The newly awakened interest in the lives of craftspeople in Turkey is highlighted in this collection, which uses archival documents to follow Ottoman artisans from the late 15th century to the beginning of the 20th. The authors examine historical changes in the lives of artisans, focusing on the craft organizations (or guilds) that underwent substantial changes over the centuries. The guilds transformed and eventually dissolved as they were increasingly co-opted by modernization and state-building projects, and by the movement of manufacturing to the countryside. In consequence by the 20th century, many artisans had to confront the forces of capitalism and world trade without significant protection, just as the Ottoman Empire was itself in the process of dissolution.
Subjects: History (General) Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
October 2022
Brewing Socialism
Coffee, East Germans, and Twentieth-Century Globalization
Kloiber, A.
Placing coffee at the center of its analysis, Brewing Socialism links East Germany’s consumption and food culture to its relationship to the wider world. Andrew Kloiber reveals the ways that everyday cultural practices surrounding coffee drinking not only connected East Germans to a global system of exchange, but also perpetuated a set of traditions and values which fit uneasily into the Socialist Unity Party’s conceptualization of a modern Socialist Utopia. Sifting through the relationship between material culture and ideology, this unique work examines the complex tapestry of traditions, history and cultural values that underpinned the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR).
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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March 2009
Bringing Culture to the Masses
Control, Compromise and Participation in the GDR
Richthofen, E. von
Cultural life in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was strictly controlled by the ruling party, the SED, who attempted to dictate how people spent their free time by prohibiting privately organized leisure time pursuits and offering instead cultural activities in state institutions and organizations. By exploring the nature of dictatorial rule in the GDR and analysing the population’s engagement with state-organized cultural activity, this book challenges the current assumptions about the GDR’s social and institutional history that ignore the interaction and inter-dependence between ‘rulers’ and ‘ruled’. The author argues that the people’s cultural life in the GDR developed a dynamic of its own; it was determined by their own interests and by the input of cultural functionaries, who often aimed to satisfy popular demands, even if they were at odds with the SED’s cultural policy. Gradually, these developments affected SED cultural policy, which in the 1960s became less focused on educationalist goals and increasingly oriented towards popular interests.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
July 2012
Building a European Identity
France, the United States, and the Oil Shock, 1973-74
Gfeller, A. E.
The Arab-Israeli war of 1973, the first oil price shock, and France’s transition from Gaullist to centrist rule in 1974 coincided with the United States’ attempt to redefine transatlantic relations. As the author argues, this was an important moment in which the French political elite responded with an unprecedented effort to construct an internationally influential and internally cohesive European entity. Based on extensive multi-archival research, this study combines analysis of French policy making with an inquiry into the evolution of political language, highlighting the significance of the new concept of a political European identity.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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May 2006
Building on Water
Venice, Holland and the Construction of the European Landscape in Early Modern Times
Ciriacono, S.
A fundamental natural resource, water and its use not only reflect "modes of production" but also that complex interplay between resources and their exploitation (and domination) by various social agents, who in their turn are inevitably influenced by the abundance or rarity of water supplies. Focusing on scientific, social and economic issues from the 16th to the 19th century, the author, one of Italy's leading historians in this field, looks at the innumerable conflicts that arose over water resources and the environmental impact of projects intended to control them. Venice and Holland are undoubtedly the two most fascinating cases of societies "built on water," with the conquest of vast expanses of marshland - either inland or on the coast (the Dutch polders or the Venetian lagoon) – not only stimulating agricultural production, but also nurturing a deeply-felt relationship between the local populations and the element of water itself. The author rounds off his study by looking at the influence the hydraulic technology developed in Holland would have on many European countries (France, England and Germany in particular) and at questions raised by contemporaries about the environmental impact of agricultural progress and its effects upon the social-economic equilibria within the communities concerned.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: Medieval/Early Modern Urban Studies
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April 2023
The Burden of German History
A Transatlantic Life
Jarausch, K. H.
As one of the leading historians of the post-1956 generation and an internationally acclaimed scholar for the past five decades, Konrad H. Jarausch’s autobiography presents a sustained academic reflection on the post-war German effort to cope with the guilt of the Holocaust amongst a generation of historians too young to have been perpetrators. Ranging from his war-time childhood in a chaotic country, to Americanization as a foreign student, and concluding with his mentorship of PhDs as a respected international scholar, he weaves together a self-critical historiography of a twentieth-century Germany that was wrestling with the responsibility for war and genocide. This self-reflexive work explores a wide range of topics including the development of German historiography and methodological debates, the interdisciplinary teaching efforts in German studies, and the development of scholarly organizations and institutions.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History History: World War II
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eBook available
May 2020
Bureaucracy, Work and Violence
The Reich Ministry of Labour in Nazi Germany, 1933–1945
Nützenadel, A. (ed)
Work played a central role in Nazi ideology and propaganda, and even today there remain some who still emphasize the supposedly positive aspects of the regime’s labor policies, ignoring the horrific and inhumane conditions they produced. This definitive volume provides, for the first time, a systematic study of the Reich Ministry of Labor and its implementation of National Socialist work doctrine. In detailed and illuminating chapters, contributors scrutinize political maneuvering, ministerial operations, relations between party and administration, and individual officials’ actions to reveal the surprising extent to which administrative apparatuses were involved in the Nazi regime and its crimes.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History
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March 2004
Business and Industry in Nazi Germany
Nicosia, F.R. & Huener, J. (eds)
During the past decade, the role of Germany's economic elites under Hitler has once again moved into the limelight of historical research and public debate. This volume brings together a group of internationally renowned scholars who have been at the forefront of recent research. Their articles provide an up-to-date synthesis, which is as comprehensive as it is insightful, of current knowledge in this field. The result is a volume that offers students and interested readers a brief but focused introduction to the role of German businesses and industries in the crimes of Hitler's Third Reich. Not only does this book treat the subject in an accessible manner; it also emerges as particularly relevant in light of current controversies over the nature of business-state relations, corporate social responsibility, and globalization.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History
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December 2001
Cameroon's Tycoon
Max Esser's Expedition and its Consequences
Chilver, E. M. & Röschenthaler, U. (eds)
Max Esser was an adventurous young merchant banker, a Rhinelander, who became the first managing director of the largest German plantation company in Cameroon. This volume gives a vivid account of the antecedents and early stages as experienced and described by Esser. In 1896 he ventured, with the explorer Zintgraff, into the hinterland to seek the agreement of Zintgraff's old ally, the ruler of Bali, for the provision of laborers for his projected enterprise. The consequences, many optimistically unforeseen, are illustrated with the help of contemporary materials. Esser's account is preceded by a look at his and his family's connections, added to by an account of newspaper campaigns against him, and completed by an examination of his Cameroon collection, which he gave to the Linden Museum in Stuttgart.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History
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eBook available
May 2020
The Candle and the Guillotine
Revolution and Justice in Lyon, 1789–93
Johnson, J. P.
As in a number of France’s major cities, civil war erupted in Lyon in the summer of 1793, ultimately leading to a siege of the city and a wave of mass executions. Using Lyon as a lens for understanding the politics of revolutionary France, this book reveals the widespread enthusiasm for judicial change in Lyon at the time of the Revolution, as well as the conflicts that ensued between elected magistrates in the face of radical democratization. Julie Patricia Johnson’s investigation of these developments during the bloodiest years of the Revolution offers powerful insights into the passions and the struggles of ordinary people during an extraordinary time.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
October 2020
Captives, Colonists and Craftspeople
Material Culture and Institutional Power in Malta, 1600–1900
Palmer, R.
Over the course of four centuries, the island of Malta underwent several significant political transformations, including its roles as a Catholic bastion under the Knights of St. John between 1530 and 1798, and as a British maritime hub in the nineteenth century. This innovative study draws on both archival evidence and archeological findings to compare slavery and coerced labor, resource control, globalization, and other historical phenomena in Malta under the two regimes: one feudal, the other colonial. Spanning conventional divides between the early and late modern eras, Russell Palmer offers here a rich analysis of a Mediterranean island against a background of immense European and global change.
Subjects: Colonial History Archaeology
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eBook available
August 2018
Carnage and Care on the Eastern Front
The War Diaries of Bernhard Bardach, 1914-1918
Bardach, B.
For nearly all of the Great War, the Jewish doctor Bernhard Bardach served with the Austro-Hungarian army in present-day Ukraine. His diaries from that period, unpublished and largely overlooked until now, represent a distinctive and powerful record of daily life on the Eastern Front. In addition to key events such as the 1916 Brusilov Offensive, Bardach also gives memorable descriptions of military personalities, refugees, food shortages, and the uncertainty and boredom that inescapably attended life on the front. Ranging from the critical first weeks of fighting to the ultimate collapse of the Austrian army, these meticulously written diaries comprise an invaluable eyewitness account of the Great War.
Subjects: History: World War I Jewish Studies
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October 1994
Cars
Analysis, History, Cases
Williams, K., Haslam, C., Johal, S. & Williams, J.
Through developing an original analytical framework that, for the first time, systematically relates productive, market and financial variables, the authors are able to rewrite the history of the car business since Henry Ford.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
March 2019
Categories in Context
Gender and Work in France and Germany, 1900–Present
Berrebi-Hoffmann, I., Giraud, O., Renard, L., & Wobbe, T. (eds)
Despite the wealth of empirical research currently available on the interrelationships of gender and labor, we still know comparatively little about the forms of classification and categorization that have helped shape these social phenomena over time. Categories in Context seeks to enrich our understanding of how cognitive categories such as status, law, and rights have been produced, comprehended, appropriated, and eventually transformed by relevant actors. By focusing on specific developments in France and Germany through a transnational lens, this volume produces insights that can be applied to a wide variety of political, social, and historical contexts.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History (General) Sociology
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December 2001
Celebrating Ethnicity and Nation
American Festive Culture from the Revolution to the Early 20th Century
Heideking, J., Fabre, G. & Dreisbach, K. (eds)
Arising out of the context of the re-configuration of Europe, new perspectives are applied by the authors of this volume to the process of nation-building in the United States. By focusing on a variety of public celebrations and festivities from the Revolution to the early twentieth century, the formative period of American national identity, the authors reveal the complex interrelationships between collective identities on the local, regional, and national level which, over time, shaped the peculiar character of American nationalism.
This volume combines vivid descriptions of various public celebrations with a sophisticated methodological and theoretical approach.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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May 2008
The Center-Left's Poisoned Victory
Briquet, J.-L., & Mastropaolo, A. (eds)
The year 2006 was by all means an "election" year: a significant proportion of voters were called to the polls three times. In at least two - the parliamentary elections of 9-10 April and the 25-26 June constitutional referendum - the voters' choices had extraordinary consequences. The parliamentary elections awarded victory to the center-left by the slimmest of margins, yet ushered in a radical change in government, whereas the referendum saw the rejection of the substantial revision of the Constitution that had been promoted by the previous center-right government. This volume deals with these elections and their effects, namely the changes in the government majority and the Presidency of the Republic, as well as the center-right's unsuccessful attempt at revenge in local elections through the constitutional referendum, both resulting in wide-ranging changes introduced by the new majority in foreign policy. Other significant events are also examined, such as the Russian natural gas crisis; the anti-high speed train movement; the capture of mafia don Bernardo Provenzano; the scandals that marred the world soccer in the year the national team won the World Cup; and the suspicious dealings involving telecommunications giant Telecom.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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May 2009
Central European Crossroads
Social Democracy and National Revolution in Bratislava (Pressburg), 1867-1921
Duin, P. C. van
During the four decades of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia a vast literature on working-class movements has been produced but it has hardly any value for today’s scholarship. This remarkable study reopens the field. Based on Czech, Slovak, German and other sources, it focuses on the history of the multi-ethnic social democratic labor movement in Slovakia’s capital Bratislava during the period 1867-1921, and on the process of national revolution during the years 1918–19 in particular. The study places the historic change of the former Pressburg into the modern Bratislava in the broader context of the development of multinational pre-1918 Hungary, the evolution of social, ethnic, and political relations in multi-ethnic Pressburg (a ‘tri-national’ city of Germans, Magyars, and Slovaks), and the development of the multinational labor movement in Hungary and the Habsburg Empire as a whole.
Subjects: History (General) History: 18th/19th Century
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December 1998
The Challenge of Globalization for Germany's Social Democracy
A Policy Agenda for the 21st Century
Dettke, D. (ed)
"Modell Deutschland," once admired worldwide, has lost much of its shine, due to a number ofinternal and external factors. This important and timely volume deals with the economic andpolitical pressures and challenges of globalization and is particularly concerned with their effecton social policy, labor markets, environmental policies and technological change. Distinguishedacademic experts and leading politicians discuss these problems both from an internationalperspective and against the background of debates currently going on in Germany.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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September 2014
The Challenges of Globalization
Economy and Politics in Germany, 1860-1914
Torp, C.
In the mid nineteenth century a process began that appears, from a present-day perspective, to have been the first wave of economic globalization. Within a few decades global economic integration reached a level that equaled, and in some respects surpassed, that of the present day. This book describes the interpenetration of the German economy with an emerging global economy before the First World War, while also demonstrating the huge challenge posed by globalization to the society and politics of the German Empire. The stakes for both the winners and losers of the intensifying world market played a major role in dividing German society into camps with conflicting socio-economic priorities. As foreign trade policy moved into the center stage of political debates, the German government found it increasingly difficult to pursue a successful policy that avoided harming German exports and consumer interests while also seeking to placate a growing protectionist movement.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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March 1999
The Chameleon State
Global Culture and Policy Shifts in Britain and Germany, 1914-1933
Liu, T-L.
The role of the state in capitalist societies has been a bone of considerable contention among scholars. The two founding fathers of sociology held radically opposing views on this subject which were reflected in the numerous debates over subsequent decades to this day. Yet, no answer has been found to the vexing question: on whose side is the state in capitalist societies? The author examines current theories and, comparing Britain and Germany, shows that they are unable to explain the contradictory social and industrial policies in these two countries during the twentieth century. Based on in-depth archival and secondary sources the author offers an alternative theoretical framework, one that focuses on the interactions among historical contingencies, the global cultural context, and political processes.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
October 2018
Changes in the Air
Hurricanes in New Orleans from 1718 to the Present
Rohland, E.
Hurricanes have been a constant in the history of New Orleans. Since before its settlement as a French colony in the eighteenth century, the land entwined between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River has been lashed by powerful Gulf storms. Time and again, these hurricanes have wrought immeasurable loss and devastation, spurring reinvention and ingenuity on the part of inhabitants. Changes in the Air offers a rich and thoroughly researched history of how hurricanes have shaped and reshaped New Orleans from the colonial era to the present day, focusing on how its residents have adapted to a uniquely unpredictable and destructive environment across more than three centuries.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History (General) Urban Studies
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December 2007
Changing Cultural Tastes
Writers and the Popular in Modern Germany
Waine, A.
Changing Cultural Tastes offers a critical survey of the taste wars fought over the past two centuries between the intellectual establishment and the common people in Germany. It charts the uneasy relationship of high and popular culture in Germany in the modern era. The impact of National Socialism and the strong influence from Great Britain and the United States are assessed in this cultural history of a changing nation and society. The period 1920-1980 is given special prominence, and the work of significant writers and artists such as Josef von Sternberg and Bertolt Brecht, Elfriede Jelinek and Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Erwin Piscator and Heinrich Böll, is closely analysed. Their work has reflected changing tastes and, crucially, helped to make taste more pluralistic and democratic.
Subjects: Literary Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
January 2019
The Changing Meanings of the Welfare State
Histories of a Key Concept in the Nordic Countries
Edling, N. (ed)
In discussions of economics, governance, and society in the Nordic countries, “the welfare state” is a well-worn analytical concept. However, there has been much less scholarly energy devoted to historicizing this idea beyond its postwar emergence. In this volume, specialists from Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland chronicle the historical trajectory of “the welfare state,” tracing the variable ways in which it has been interpreted, valued, and challenged over time. Each case study generates valuable historical insights into not only the history of Northern Europe, but also the welfare state itself as both a phenomenon and a concept.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present Political and Economic Anthropology Sociology
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July 2012
Changing Perceptions of the Public Sphere
Emden, C. J. & Midgley, D. (eds)
Initially propounded by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas in 1962 in order to describe the realm of social discourse between the state on one hand, and the private sphere of the market and the family on the other, the concept of a bourgeois public sphere quickly became a central point of reference in the humanities and social sciences. This volume reassesses the validity and reach of Habermas’s concept beyond political theory by exploring concrete literary and cultural manifestations in early modern and modern Europe. The contributors ask whether, and in what forms, a social formation that rightfully can be called the “public sphere” really existed at particular historical junctures, and consider the senses in which the “public sphere” should rather be replaced by a multitude of interacting cultural and social “publics.” This volume offers insights into the current status of the “public sphere” within the disciplinary formation of the humanities and social sciences at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
March 2010
Changing the World, Changing Oneself
Political Protest and Collective Identities in West Germany and the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s
Davis, B., Mausbach, W., Klimke, M. & MacDougall, C. (eds)
A captivating time, the 60s and 70s now draw more attention than ever. The first substantial work by historians has appeared only in the last few years, and this volume offers an important contribution. These meticulously researched essays offer new perspectives on the Cold War and global relations in the 1960s and 70s through the perspective of the youth movements that shook the U.S., Western Europe, and beyond. These movements led to the transformation of diplomatic relations and domestic political cultures, as well as ideas about democracy and who best understood and promoted it. Bringing together scholars of several countries and many disciplines, this volume also uniquely features the reflections of former activists.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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August 2012
Charismatic Leadership and Social Movements
The Revolutionary Power of Ordinary Men and Women
Stutje, J. W. (ed)
Much of the writing on charisma focuses on specific traits associated with exceptional leaders, a practice that has broadened the concept of charisma to such an extent that it loses its distinctiveness – and therefore its utility. More particularly, the concept’s relevance to the study of social movements has not moved beyond generalizations. The contributors to this volume renew the debate on charismatic leadership from a historical perspective and seek to illuminate the concept’s relevance to the study of social movements. The case studies here include such leaders as Mahatma Gandhi; the architect of apartheid, Daniel F. Malan; the heroine of the Spanish Civil War, Dolores Ibarruri (la pasionaria); and Mao Zedong. These charismatic leaders were not just professional politicians or administrators, but sustained a strong symbiotic relationship with their followers, one that stimulated devotion to the leader and created a real group identity.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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eBook available
September 2022
The Chernobyl Effect
Antinuclear Protests and the Molding of Polish Democracy, 1986–1990
Szulecki, K., Waluszko, J., & Borewicz, T.
The 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe was not only a human and ecological disaster, but also a political-ideological one, severely discrediting Soviet governance and galvanizing dissidents in the Eastern Bloc. In the case of Poland, what began as isolated protests against the Soviet nuclear site grew to encompass domestic nuclear projects in general, and in the process spread across the country and attracted new segments of society. This innovative study, combining scholarly analysis with oral histories and other accounts from participants, traces the growth and development of the Polish anti-nuclear movement, showing how it exemplified the broader generational and cultural changes in the nation’s opposition movements during the waning days of the state socialist era.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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May 2023
Chicanery
Senior Academic Appointments in Antipodean Anthropology, 1920–1960
Gray, G., Munro, D. & Winter, C.
Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humiliation and embarrassment for unsuccessful applicants and reveal unexpected allies and enemies. It is also a time when harsh assessments can be made about colleagues’ intellectual abilities and their capacity as a scholar and fieldworker. The assessors’ reports were often disturbingly personal, laying bare their likes and dislikes that could determine the futures of peers and colleagues. Chicanery deals with how the founding Chairs at Sydney, the Australian National University, Auckland and Western Australia dealt with this process, and includes accounts of the appointments of famous anthropologists such as Raymond Firth and Alexander Ratcliffe-Brown.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) History: 20th Century to Present Theory and Methodology
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eBook available
November 2013
Children of the Dictatorship
Student Resistance, Cultural Politics and the 'Long 1960s' in Greece
Kornetis, K.
Putting Greece back on the cultural and political map of the “Long 1960s,” this book traces the dissent and activism of anti-regime students during the dictatorship of the Colonels (1967-74). It explores the cultural as well as ideological protest of Greek student activists, illustrating how these “children of the dictatorship” managed to re-appropriate indigenous folk tradition for their “progressive” purposes and how their transnational exchange molded a particular local protest culture. It examines how the students’ social and political practices became a major source of pressure on the Colonels’ regime, finding its apogee in the three day Polytechnic uprising of November 1973 which laid the foundations for a total reshaping of Greek political culture in the following decades.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
March 2011
Children, Families, and States
Time Policies of Childcare, Preschool, and Primary Education in Europe
Hagemann, K., Jarausch, K. H. & Allemann-Ghionda, C. (eds)
Due to the demand for flexible working hours and employees who are available around the clock, the time patterns of childcare and schooling have increasingly become a political issue. Comparing the development of different “time policies” of half-day and all-day provisions in a variety of Eastern and Western European countries since the end of World War II, this innovative volume brings together internationally known experts from the fields of comparative education, history, and the social and political sciences, and makes a significant contribution to this new interdisciplinary field of comparative study.
Subjects: History (General) Educational Studies Gender Studies and Sexuality
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December 2015
Cinema in Service of the State
Perspectives on Film Culture in the GDR and Czechoslovakia, 1945-1960
Karl, L. & Skopal, P. (eds)
The national cinemas of Czechoslovakia and East Germany were two of the most vital sites of filmmaking in the Eastern Bloc, and over the course of two decades, they contributed to and were shaped by such significant developments as Sovietization, de-Stalinization, and the conservative retrenchment of the late 1950s. This volume comprehensively explores the postwar film cultures of both nations, using a “stereoscopic” approach that traces their similarities and divergences to form a richly contextualized portrait. Ranging from features to children’s cinema to film festivals, the studies gathered here provide new insights into the ideological, political, and economic dimensions of Cold War cultural production.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
October 2019
Cinema of Collaboration
DEFA Coproductions and International Exchange in Cold War Europe
Ivanova, M.
From their very inception, European cinemas undertook collaborative ventures in an attempt to cultivate a transnational “Film-Europe.” In the postwar era, it was DEFA, the state cinema of East Germany, that emerged as a key site for cooperative practices. Despite the significant challenges that the Cold War created for collaboration, DEFA sought international prestige through various initiatives. These ranged from film exchange in occupied Germany to partnerships with Western producers, and from coproductions with Eastern European studios to strategies for film co-authorship. Uniquely positioned between East and West, DEFA proved a crucial mediator among European cinemas during a period of profound political division.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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August 2000
Citizens and Aliens
Foreigners and the Law in Britain and German States 1789-1870
Fahrmeir, A.
From the last decade of the 18th century, European states began to define nationality more rigorously. Regulations covering matters as diverse as passports, residence permits, taxes, and admission to university examinations made clear that nationality mattered more than rank. Drawing on the files of central and regional administrations and on individual case studies and travel accounts, the author offers a detailed examination of the practical consequences of alien status in liberal England and in the comparatively restrictive German states. In the latter all citizens of other German states were considered foreigners, whereas in the United Kingdom Irish immigrants were by law British subjects along with all other persons born on British soil. These differences in legal definition of citizenship should have far-reaching consequences for the development of modern nation states, consequences the effects of which can be felt to this day.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Refugee and Migration Studies
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April 2023
Citizens into Dishonored Felons
Felony Disenfranchisement, Honor, and Rehabilitation in Germany, 1806-1933
de Groot, T.
Over the course of its history, the German Empire increasingly withheld basic rights—such as joining the army, holding public office, and even voting—as a form of legal punishment. Dishonored offenders were often stigmatized in both formal and informal ways, as their convictions shaped how they were treated in prisons, their position in the labour market, and their access to rehabilitative resources. With a focus on Imperial Germany’s criminal policies and their afterlives in the Weimar era, Citizens into Dishonored Felons demonstrates how criminal punishment was never solely a disciplinary measure, but that it reflected a national moral compass that authorities used to dictate the rights to citizenship, honour and trust.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
October 2008
Civil Society and Gender Justice
Historical and Comparative Perspectives
Hagemann, K., Michel, S. & Budde, G. (eds)
Civil society and civic engagement have increasingly become topics of discussion at the national and international level. The editors of this volume ask, does the concept of “civil society” include gender equality and gender justice? Or, to frame the question differently, is civil society a feminist concept? Conversely, does feminism need the concept of civil society?
This important volume offers both a revised gendered history of civil society and a program for making it more egalitarian in the future. An interdisciplinary group of internationally known authors investigates the relationship between public and private in the discourses and practices of civil societies; the significance of the family for the project of civil society; the relation between civil society, the state, and different forms of citizenship; and the complex connection between civil society, gendered forms of protest and nongovernmental movements. While often critical of historical instantiations of civil society, all the authors nonetheless take seriously the potential inherent in civil society, particularly as it comes to influence global politics. They demand, however, an expansion of both the concept and project of civil society in order to make its political opportunities available to all.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History (General)
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eBook available
May 2013
Civil Society in the Age of Monitory Democracy
Trägårdh, L., Witoszek, N., & Taylor, B. (eds)
Since the emergence of the dissident “parallel polis” in Eastern Europe, civil society has become a “new superpower,” influencing democratic transformations, human rights, and international co-operation; co-designing economic trends, security and defense; reshaping the information society; and generating new ideas on the environment, health, and the “good life.” This volume seeks to compare and reassess the role of civil society in the rich West, the poorer South, and the quickly expanding East in the context of the twenty-first century’s challenges. It presents a novel perspective on civic movements testing John Keane’s notion of “monitory democracy”: an emerging order of public scrutiny and monitoring of power.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
November 2012
Civilizing Nature
National Parks in Global Historical Perspective
Gissibl B., Höhler, S. & Kupper, P. (eds)
National parks are one of the most important and successful institutions in global environmentalism. Since their first designation in the United States in the 1860s and 1870s they have become a global phenomenon. The development of these ecological and political systems cannot be understood as a simple reaction to mounting environmental problems, nor can it be explained by the spread of environmental sensibilities. Shifting the focus from the usual emphasis on national parks in the United States, this volume adopts an historical and transnational perspective on the global geography of protected areas and its changes over time. It focuses especially on the actors, networks, mechanisms, arenas, and institutions responsible for the global spread of the national park and the associated utilization and mobilization of asymmetrical relationships of power and knowledge, contributing to scholarly discussions of globalization and the emergence of global environmental institutions and governance.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History (General) Heritage Studies
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April 2006
Claims to Memory
Beyond Slavery and Emancipation in the French Caribbean
Reinhardt C.
Why do the people of the French Caribbean still continue to be haunted by the memory of their slave past more than one hundred and fifty years after the abolition of slavery? What process led to the divorce of their collective memory of slavery and emancipation from France's portrayal of these historical phenomena? How are Martinicans and Guadeloupeans today transforming the silences of the past into historical and cultural manifestations rooted in the Caribbean? This book answers these questions by relating the 1998 controversy surrounding the 150th anniversary of France's abolition of slavery to the period of the slave regime spanning the late Enlightenment and the French Revolution. By comparing a diversity of documents—including letters by slaves, free people of color, and planters, as well as writings by the philosophes, royal decrees, and court cases—the author untangles the complex forces of the slave regime that have shaped collective memory. The current nationalization of the memory of slavery in France has turned these once peripheral claims into passionate political and cultural debates.
Subjects: Colonial History Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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June 2002
Class and Other Identities
Gender, Religion, and Ethnicity in the Writing of European Labour History
Voss, L. Heerma van & Linden, M. van der (eds)
With the onset of a more conservative political climate in the 1980s, social and especially labour history saw a decline in the popularity that they had enjoyed throughout the 1960s and 1970s. This led to much debate on its future and function within the historical discipline as a whole. Some critics declared it dead altogether. Others have proposed a change of direction and a more or less exclusive focus on images and texts. The most constructive proposals have suggested that labour history in the past concentrated too much on class and that other identities of working people should be taken into account to a larger extent than they had been previously, such as gender, religion, and ethnicity. Although class as a social category is still as valid as it has been before, the questions now to be asked are to what extent non-class identities shape working people's lives and mentalities and how these are linked with the class system. In this volume some of the leading European historians of labour and the working classes address these questions. Two non-European scholars comment on their findings from an Indian, resp. American, point of view. The volume is rounded off by a most useful bibliography of recent studies in European labour history, class, gender, religion, and ethnicity.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present Gender Studies and Sexuality
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December 2014
Clausewitz in His Time
Essays in the Cultural and Intellectual History of Thinking about War
Paret, P.
Anything but a detached theorist, Clausewitz was as fully engaged in the intellectual and cultural currents of his time as in its political and military conflicts. Late-eighteenth century thought helped shape the analytic methods he developed for the study of war. The essays in this volume follow his career in a complex military society, together with that of other students of war, both friends and rivals, providing a broad perspective that leads to significant documents so far unknown or ignored. They add to our understanding of Clausewitz’s early ideas and their expansion into a comprehensive theory that continues to challenge our thinking about war today.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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May 2000
Cold Fusion
Aspects of the German Cultural Presence in Russia
Barabtarlo, G. (ed)
While historical and political aspects of the Russo-German relationship over the past three to four centuries have received due attention from scholars, the range of the far more diverse, important, and peculiar cultural relations still awaits full assessment. This volume shows how enriching these cultural influences were for both countries, affecting many spheres of intellectual and daily life such as philosophy and religion, education and ideology, sciences and their application, arts and letters, custom and language. The German-Russian relationship has always been particularly intense. Oscillating as it has between infatuation and contempt, it has always been marked by a singular paradox: a German cultural presence in Russia resulting either in a more or less complete fusion, as in the case of Russifield German, or in a pronounced mutual repulsion, accompanied by the denigration of each other's culture as inferior. It is this curious paradox that determines the perspectives of the articles that were specially written for this volume, providing it with a unifying focus.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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eBook available
March 2012
Cold War Cultures
Perspectives on Eastern and Western European Societies
Vowinckel, A., Payk, M. M., & Lindenberger, T. (eds)
The Cold War was not only about the imperial ambitions of the super powers, their military strategies, and antagonistic ideologies. It was also about conflicting worldviews and their correlates in the daily life of the societies involved. The term “Cold War Culture” is often used in a broad sense to describe media influences, social practices, and symbolic representations as they shape, and are shaped by, international relations. Yet, it remains in question whether — or to what extent — the Cold War Culture model can be applied to European societies, both in the East and the West. While every European country had to adapt to the constraints imposed by the Cold War, individual development was affected by specific conditions as detailed in these chapters. This volume offers an important contribution to the international debate on this issue of the Cold War impact on everyday life by providing a better understanding of its history and legacy in Eastern and Western Europe.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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July 2009
Colette's Republic
Work, Gender, and Popular Culture in France, 1870-1914
Tilburg, P. A.
In France’s Third Republic, secularism was, for its adherents, a new faith, a civic religion founded on a rabid belief in progress and the Enlightenment conviction that men (and women) could remake their world. And yet with all of its pragmatic smoothing over of the supernatural edges of Catholicism, the Third Republic engendered its own fantastical ways of seeing by embracing observation, corporeal dynamism, and imaginative introspection. How these republican ideals and the new national education system of the 1870s and 80s - the structure meant to impart these ideals - shaped belle époque popular culture is the focus of this book. The author reassesses the meaning of secularization and offers a cultural history of this period by way of an interrogation of several fraught episodes which, although seemingly disconnected, shared an attachment to the potent moral and aesthetic directives of French republicanism: a village’s battle to secularize its schools, a scandalous novel, a vaudeville hit featuring a nude celebrity, and a craze for female boxing. Beginning with the writer and performer Colette (1873–1954) as a point of entry, this re-evaluation of belle époque popular culture probes the startling connections between republican values of labor and physical health on the one hand, and the cultural innovations of the decades preceding World War I on the other.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History: 18th/19th Century Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
November 2020
Collective and State Violence in Turkey
The Construction of a National Identity from Empire to Nation-State
Astourian, S. & Kévorkian, R. (eds)
Turkey has gone through significant transformations over the last century—from the Ottoman Empire and Young Turk era to the Republic of today—but throughout it has demonstrated troubling continuities in its encouragement and deployment of mass violence. In particular, the construction of a Muslim-Turkish identity has been achieved in part by designating “internal enemies” at whom public hatred can be directed. This volume provides a wide range of case studies and historiographical reflections on the alarming recurrence of such violence in Turkish history, as atrocities against varied ethnic-religious groups from the nineteenth century to today have propelled the nation’s very sense of itself.
Subjects: History (General) Genocide History Peace and Conflict Studies
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May 2013
Colonial Collecting and Display
Encounters with Material Culture from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Wintle, C.
In the late-nineteenth century, British travelers to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands compiled wide-ranging collections of material culture for scientific instruction and personal satisfaction. Colonial Collecting and Display follows the compelling history of a particular set of such objects, tracing their physical and conceptual transformation from objects of indigenous use to accessioned objects in a museum collection in the south of England. This first study dedicated to the historical collecting and display of the Islands' material cultures develops a new analysis of colonial discourse, using a material culture-led approach to reconceptualize imperial relationships between Andamanese, Nicobarese, and British communities, both in the Bay of Bengal and on British soil. It critiques established conceptions of the act of collecting, arguing for recognition of how indigenous makers and consumers impacted upon "British" collection practices, and querying the notion of a homogenous British approach to material culture from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Subjects: Museum Studies History (General) Anthropology (General)
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eBook available
February 2020
Colonial Seeds in African Soil
A Critical History of Forest Conservation in Sierra Leone
Munro, P.
“Empire forestry”—the broadly shared forest management practice that emerged in the West in the nineteenth century—may have originated in Europe, but it would eventually reshape the landscapes of colonies around the world. Melding the approaches of environmental history and political ecology, Colonial Seeds in African Soil unravels the complex ways this dynamic played out in twentieth-century colonial Sierra Leone. While giving careful attention to topics such as forest reservation and exploitation, the volume moves beyond conservation practices and discourses, attending to the overlapping social, economic, and political contexts that have shaped approaches to forest management over time.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) Colonial History History: 20th Century to Present
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February 2013
The Colours of the Empire
Racialized Representations during Portuguese Colonialism
Matos, P. F. de
The Portuguese Colonial Empire established its base in Africa in the fifteenth century and would not be dissolved until 1975. This book investigates how the different populations under Portuguese rule were represented within the context of the Colonial Empire by examining the relationship between these representations and the meanings attached to the notion of ‘race’. Colour, for example, an apparently objective criterion of classification, became a synonym or near-synonym for ‘race’, a more abstract notion for which attempts were made to establish scientific credibility. Through her analysis of government documents, colonial propaganda materials and interviews, the author employs an anthropological perspective to examine how the existence of racist theories, originating in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, went on to inform the policy of the Estado Novo (Second Republic, 1933–1974) and the production of academic literature on ‘race’ in Portugal. This study provides insight into the relationship between the racist formulations disseminated in Portugal and the racist theories produced from the eighteenth century onward in Europe and beyond.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History
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eBook available
July 2019
Comical Modernity
Popular Humour and the Transformation of Urban Space in Late Nineteenth Century Vienna
Hakkarainen, H.
Though long associated with a small group of coffeehouse elites around the turn of the twentieth century, Viennese “modernist” culture had roots that reached much further back and beyond the rarefied sphere of high culture. In Comical Modernity, Heidi Hakkarainen looks at Vienna in the second half of the nineteenth century, a period of dramatic urban renewal during which the city’s rapidly changing face was a mainstay of humorous magazines, books, and other publications aimed at middle-class audiences. As she shows, humor provided a widely accessible means of negotiating an era of radical change.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Media Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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June 2002
Coming Home to Germany?
The Integration of Ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in the Federal Republic since 1945
Rock, D. & Wolff, S. (eds)
The end of World War II led to one of the most significant forced population transfers in history: the expulsion of over 12 million ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1950 and the subsequent emigration of another four million in the second half of the twentieth century. Although unprecedented in its magnitude, conventional wisdom has it that the integration of refugees, expellees, and Aussiedler was a largely successful process in postwar Germany. While the achievements of the integration process are acknowledged, the volume also examines the difficulties encountered by ethnic Germans in the Federal Republic and analyses the shortcomings of dealing with this particular phenomenon of mass migration and its consequences.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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May 2016
Coming of Age
Constructing and Controlling Youth in Munich, 1942-1973
Kalb, M.
In the lean and anxious years following World War II, Munich society became obsessed with the moral condition of its youth. Initially born of the economic and social disruption of the war years, a preoccupation with juvenile delinquency progressed into a full-blown panic over the hypothetical threat that young men and women posed to postwar stability. As Martin Kalb shows in this fascinating study, constructs like the rowdy young boy and the sexually deviant girl served as proxies for the diffuse fears of adult society, while allowing authorities ranging from local institutions to the U.S. military government to strengthen forms of social control.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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eBook available
January 2021
Commerce as Politics
The Two Centuries of Struggle for Basotho Economic Independence
Maliehe, S. M.
This is the first comprehensive economic history of the Basotho people of Southern Africa (in colonial Basutoland, then Lesotho) and spans from the 1820s to the present day. The book documents what the Basotho have done on their own account, focusing on their systematic exclusion from trade and their political efforts to insert themselves into their country’s commerce. Although the colonial and post-colonial periods were unfavourable to the Basotho, they have, before and after colonial rule, launched impressive commercial initiatives of their own, which bring hope for greater development and freedom in their struggle for economic independence.
Subjects: History (General) Political and Economic Anthropology Colonial History
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March 2000
Common Destiny
A Comparative History of the Dutch, French, and German Social Democratic Parties, 1945-1969
Orlow, D.
Although the Socialist or Social Democractic parties played a key role in West European politics during the quarter century after the Second World War, they have been studied far less than their political rivals, the Christian Democrats. The story of West European Social Democracy after 1945 begins with a dilemma: Democratic marxism, which had been the parties' ideological and organizational principle until the Second World War, was becoming politically irrelevant. The three parties analyzed here represent the spectrum of reactions among Social Democratic parties to this realization. The debate over the parties' programs and ideologies did not, of course, take place in a vacuum: the author devotes considerable space to a comparative analysis of the parties' leaders and organizational structures as well as the evolution of Social Democratic domestic and foreign policies. Immensely readable, this book not only offers an in-depth analysis of the postwar period crucial for the history of Social Democracy but also, because of its cross-national treatment of these three major parties, adds significantly to our understanding of the processes of European integration and the evolution of the Atlantic Alliance.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
January 2018
Communist Parties Revisited
Sociocultural Approaches to Party Rule in the Soviet Bloc, 1956-1991
Bergien, R. & Gieseke, J. (eds)
The ruling communist parties of the postwar Soviet Bloc possessed nearly unprecedented power to shape every level of society; perhaps in part because of this, they have been routinely depicted as monolithic, austere, and even opaque institutions. Communist Parties Revisited takes a markedly different approach, investigating everyday life within basic organizations to illuminate the inner workings of Eastern Bloc parties. Ranging across national and transnational contexts, the contributions assembled here reconstruct the rituals of party meetings, functionaries’ informal practices, intra-party power struggles, and the social production of ideology to give a detailed account of state socialist policymaking on a micro-historical scale.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
March 2010
Comparative and Transnational History
Central European Approaches and New Perspectives
Haupt, H. & Kocka, J. (eds)
Since the 1970s West German historiography has been one of the main arenas of international comparative history. It has produced important empirical studies particularly in social history as well as methodological and theoretical reflections on comparative history. During the last twenty years however, this approach has felt pressure from two sources: cultural historical approaches, which stress microhistory and the construction of cultural transfer on the one hand, global history and transnational approaches with emphasis on connected history on the other. This volume introduces the reader to some of the major methodological debates and to recent empirical research of German historians, who do comparative and transnational work.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
September 2017
Compensation in Practice
The Foundation 'Remembrance, Responsibility and Future' and the Legacy of Forced Labour during the Third Reich
Goschler, C. (ed)
Founded in 2000, the German Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” is one of the largest transitional justice initiatives in history: in cooperation with its international partner organizations, it has to date paid over 4 billion euros to nearly 1.7 million survivors of forced labour during the Nazi Era. This volume provides an unparalleled look at the Foundation’s creation, operations, and prospects after nearly two decades of existence, with valuable insights not just for historians but for a range of scholars, professionals, and others involved in human rights and reconciliation efforts.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: World War II
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February 2020
Comrades in Arms
Military Masculinities in East German Culture
Smith, T.
Without question, the East German National People’s Army was a profoundly masculine institution that emphasized traditional ideals of stoicism, sacrifice, and physical courage. Nonetheless, as this innovative study demonstrates, depictions of the military in the film and literature of the GDR were far more nuanced and ambivalent. Departing from past studies that have found in such portrayals an unchanging, idealized masculinity, Comrades in Arms shows how cultural works both before and after reunification place violence, physical vulnerability, and military theatricality, as well as conscripts’ powerful emotions and desires, at the center of soldiers’ lives and the military institution itself.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2015
Comrades of Color
East Germany in the Cold War World
Slobodian, Q. (ed)
In keeping with the tenets of socialist internationalism, the political culture of the German Democratic Republic strongly emphasized solidarity with the non-white world: children sent telegrams to Angela Davis in prison, workers made contributions from their wages to relief efforts in Vietnam and Angola, and the deaths of Patrice Lumumba, Ho Chi Minh, and Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired public memorials. Despite their prominence, however, scholars have rarely examined such displays in detail. Through a series of illuminating historical investigations, this volume deploys archival research, ethnography, and a variety of other interdisciplinary tools to explore the rhetoric and reality of East German internationalism.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
April 2019
Concentrationary Art
Jean Cayrol, the Lazarean and the Everyday in Post-war Film, Literature, Music and the Visual Arts
Pollock, G. & Silverman, M. (eds)
Largely forgotten over the years, the seminal work of French poet, novelist and camp survivor Jean Cayrol has experienced a revival in the French-speaking world since his death in 2005. His concept of a concentrationary art—the need for an urgent and constant aesthetic resistance to the continuing effects of the concentrationary universe—proved to be a major influence for Hannah Arendt and other writers and theorists across a number of disciplines. Concentrationary Art presents the first translation into English of Jean Cayrol’s key essays on the subject, as well as the first book-length study of how we might situate and elaborate his concept of a Lazarean aesthetic in cultural theory, literature, cinema, music and contemporary art.
Subjects: Literary Studies Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present Memory Studies
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eBook available
June 2017
Conceptual History in the European Space
Steinmetz, W., Freeden, M., & Fernández-Sebastián, J. (eds)
The result of extensive collaboration among leading scholars from across Europe, Conceptual History in the European Space represents a landmark intervention in the historiography of concepts. It brings together ambitious thematic studies that combine the pioneering methods of historian Reinhart Koselleck with contemporary insights and debates, each one illuminating a key feature of the European conceptual landscape. With clarifying overviews of such contested theoretical terrain as translatability, spatiality, and center-periphery dynamics, it also provides indispensable contextualization for an era of widespread disenchantment with and misunderstanding of the European project.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
December 2018
Conceptualizing the World
An Exploration across Disciplines
Jordheim, H. & Sandmo, E. (eds)
What is—and what was—“the world”? Though often treated as interchangeable with the ongoing and inexorable progress of globalization, concepts of “world,” “globe,” or “earth” instead suggest something limited and absolute. This innovative and interdisciplinary volume concerns itself with this central paradox: that the complex, heterogeneous, and purportedly transhistorical dynamics of globalization have given rise to the idea and reality of a finite—and thus vulnerable—world. Through studies of illuminating historical moments that range from antiquity to the era of Google Earth, each contribution helps to trace the emergence of the world in multitudinous representations, practices, and human experiences.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Anthropology (General)
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eBook available
June 2019
The Configuration of the Spanish Public Sphere
From the Enlightenment to the Indignados
Jiménez Torres, D. & Villamediana González, L. (eds)
Since the explosion of the indignados movement beginning in 2011, there has been a renewed interest in the concept of the “public sphere” in a Spanish context: how it relates to society and to political power, and how it has evolved over the centuries. The Configuration of the Spanish Public Sphere brings together contributions from leading scholars in Hispanic studies, across a wide range of disciplines, to investigate various aspects of these processes, offering a long-term, panoramic view that touches on one of the most urgent issues for contemporary European societies.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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July 2007
Conflict, Catastrophe and Continuity
Essays on Modern German History
Biess, F., Roseman, M. & Schissler, H. (eds)
Bringing together some of the most prominent contemporary historians of modern Germany alongside innovative newcomers to the field, this volume offers new perspectives on key debates surrounding Germany’s descent into, and emergence from, the Nazi catastrophe. It explores the intersections between society, economy, and international policy, with a particular interest in the relations between elites and the wider society, and provides new insights into the complex continuities and discontinuities of modern German history. This volume offers a rich selection of essays that contribute to our understanding of the road to war, Nazism, and the Holocaust, as well as Germany’s transformation after 1945.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
May 2017
Conflict, Domination, and Violence
Episodes in Mexican Social History
Illades, C.
Conflict, domination, violence—in this wide-ranging, briskly narrated volume from acclaimed Mexican historian Carlos Illades, these three phenomena register the pulse of a diverse, but inequitable and discriminatory, social order. Drawing on rich and varied historical sources, Illades guides the reader through seven signal episodes in Mexican social history, from rebellions under Porfirio Díaz’s dictatorship to the cycles of violence that have plagued the country’s deep south to the recent emergence of neo-anarchist movements. Taken together, they comprise a mosaic history of power and resistance, with artisans, rural communities, revolutionaries, students, and ordinary people confronting the forces of domination and transforming Mexican society.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Peace and Conflict Studies
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eBook available
May 2007
Conflicted Memories
Europeanizing Contemporary Histories
Jarausch, K. H. & Lindenberger, T. (eds)
Despite the growing interest in general European history, the European dimension is surprisingly absent from the writing of contemporary history. In most countries, the historiography on the 20th century continues to be dominated by national perspectives. Although there is cross-national work on specific topics such as occupation or resistance, transnational conceptions and narratives of contemporary European history have yet to be worked out. This volume focuses on the development of a shared conception of recent European history that will be required as an underpinning for further economic and political integration so as to make lasting cooperation on the old continent possible. It tries to overcome the traditional national framing that ironically persists just at a time when organized efforts to transform Europe from an object of debate to an actual subject have some chance of succeeding in making it into a polity in its own right.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Memory Studies
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March 2014
Connecting Histories of Education
Transnational and Cross-Cultural Exchanges in (Post)Colonial Education
Bagchi, B., Fuchs, E. & Rousmaniere, K. (eds)
The history of education in the modern world is a history of transnational and cross-cultural influence. This collection explores those influences in (post) colonial and indigenous education across different geographical contexts. The authors emphasize how local actors constructed their own adaptation of colonialism, identity, and autonomy, creating a multi-centric and entangled history of modern education. In both formal as well as informal aspects, they demonstrate that transnational and cross-cultural exchanges in education have been characterized by appropriation, re-contextualization, and hybridization, thereby rejecting traditional notions of colonial education as an export of pre-existing metropolitan educational systems.
Subjects: Colonial History Educational Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
June 2020
Conservation’s Roots
Managing for Sustainability in Preindustrial Europe, 1100–1800
Dowling, A. P. & Keyser, R. (eds)
The ideas and practices that comprise “conservation” are often assumed to have arisen within the last two centuries. However, while conservation today has been undeniably entwined with processes of modernity, its historical roots run much deeper. Considering a variety of preindustrial European settings, this book assembles case studies from the medieval and early modern eras to demonstrate that practices like those advocated by modern conservationists were far more widespread and intentional than is widely acknowledged. As the first book-length treatment of the subject, Conservation’s Roots provides broad social, historical, and environmental context for the emergence of the nineteenth-century conservation movement.
Subjects: History (General) Environmental Studies (General)
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May 1996
Conservative Radicalism
A Sociology of Conservative Party Youth Structures and Libertarianism 1970-1992
Evans, T.
If you share the commonly-held notions about the New Right, which typically associate it with a reactionary ideology of social and economic change, then you are in for a surprise: this study - the first to be carried out from the inside - shows that, at least so far as its young members are concerned, their core values rest upon a radical agenda that is explicitly internationalist, individualist, culturally relativist and secularist. After examining the social background and political psychology of the young Libertarians, the author comes to the conclusion that in adhering to a world view that has more to do with individualism - or "property-rights anarchism"- than any form of collectivist ideology, such as Fascism; they represent the antithesis of traditional Burkean thought. For, while Conservatives have historically adhered to the authority of religion, prescription, instinct and communitarianism, Libertarians place their faith in the authority of reality, reason, mankind and capitalism. As a school whose epistemology is reason,ethics - self-interest and politics - and anarcho-capitalism, they represent, so the author argues, an important post-modern paradigm shift in both Conservative thought and activism.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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October 2004
The 'Conservative Revolutionaries'
The Protestant and Catholic Churches in Germany after Radical Political Change in the 1990s
Thériault, B.
During the forty years of division, the Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany were the only organizations to retain strong ties and organizational structures: they embodied continuity in a country marked by discontinuity. As such, the churches were both expected to undergo smooth and rapid institutional consolidation and undertake an active role in the public realm of the new eastern German states in the 1990s. Yet critical voices were heard over the West German system of church-state relations and the public role it confers on religious organizations, and critics often expressed the idea that despite all their difficulties, something precious was lost in the collapse of the German democratic republic. Against this backdrop, the author delineates the conflicting conceptions of the Protestant and Catholic churches' public role and pays special attention to the East German model, or what is generally termed the "positive experiences of the GDR and the Wende."
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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January 2011
Constitutionalism and Transitional Justice in South Africa
Lollini, A.
Over the last fifteen years, the South African postapartheid Transitional Amnesty Process – implemented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) – has been extensively analyzed by scholars and commentators from around the world and from almost every discipline of human sciences. Lawyers, historians, anthropologists and sociologists as well as political scientists have tried to understand, describe and comment on the ‘shocking’ South African political decision to give amnesty to all who fully disclosed their politically motivated crimes committed during the apartheid era. Investigating the postapartheid transition in South Africa from a multidisciplinary perspective involving constitutional law, criminal law, history and political science, this book explores the overlapping of the postapartheid constitution-making process and the Amnesty Process for political violence under apartheid and shows that both processes represent important innovations in terms of constitutional law and transitional justice systems. Both processes contain mechanisms that encourage the constitution of the unity of the political body while ensuring future solidity and stability. From this perspective, the book deals with the importance of several concepts such as truth about the past, publicly shared memory, unity of the political body and public confession.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
July 2010
Constructing Charisma
Celebrity, Fame, and Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Berenson, E. & Giloi, E. (eds)
Railroads, telegraphs, lithographs, photographs, and mass periodicals—the major technological advances of the 19th century seemed to diminish the space separating people from one another, creating new and apparently closer, albeit highly mediated, social relationships. Nowhere was this phenomenon more evident than in the relationship between celebrity and fan, leader and follower, the famous and the unknown. By mid-century, heroes and celebrities constituted a new and powerful social force, as innovations in print and visual media made it possible for ordinary people to identify with the famous; to feel they knew the hero, leader, or "star"; to imagine that public figures belonged to their private lives. This volume examines the origins and nature of modern mass media and the culture of celebrity and fame they helped to create. Crossing disciplines and national boundaries, the book focuses on arts celebrities (Sarah Bernhardt, Byron and Liszt); charismatic political figures (Napoleon and Wilhelm II); famous explorers (Stanley and Brazza); and celebrated fictional characters (Cyrano de Bergerac).
Subjects: History (General) History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
September 2019
Constructing Industrial Pasts
Heritage, Historical Culture and Identity in Regions Undergoing Structural Economic Transformation
Berger, S. (ed)
Since the 1960s, nations across the “developed world” have been profoundly shaped by deindustrialization. In regions in which previously dominant industries faced crises or have disappeared altogether, industrial heritage offers a fascinating window into the phenomenon’s cultural dimensions. As the contributions to this volume demonstrate, even as forms of industrial heritage provide anchors of identity for local populations, their meanings remain deeply contested, as both radical and conservative varieties of nostalgia intermingle with critical approaches and straightforward apologias for a past that was often full of pain, exploitation and struggle.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Heritage Studies
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November 2004
Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe
Judson, P. & Rozenblit, M. (eds)
The hundred years between the revolutions of 1848 and the population transfers of the mid-twentieth century saw the nationalization of culturally complex societies in East Central Europe. This fact has variously been explained in terms of modernization, state building and nation-building theories, each of which treats the process of nationalization as something inexorable, a necessary component of modernity. Although more recently social scientists gesture to the contingencies that may shape these larger developments, this structural approach makes scholars far less attentive to the “hard work” (ideological, political, social) undertaken by individuals and groups at every level of society who tried themselves to build “national” societies. The essays in this volume make us aware of how complex, multi-dimensional and often contradictory this nationalization process in East Central Europe actually was. The authors document attempts and failures by nationalist politicians, organizations, activists and regimes from 1848 through 1948 to give East-Central Europeans a strong sense of national self-identification. They remind us that only the use of dictatorial powers in the 20th century could actually transform the fantasy of nationalization into a reality, albeit a brutal one.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
December 2018
Contemplating Historical Consciousness
Notes from the Field
Clark, A. & Peck, C. L. (eds)
The last several decades have witnessed an explosion of new empirical research into representations of the past and the conditions of their production, prompting claims that we have entered a new era in which the past has become more “present” than ever before. Contemplating Historical Consciousness brings together leading historians, ethnographers, and other scholars who give illuminating reflections on the aims, methods, and conceptualization of their own research as well as the successes and failures they have encountered. This rich collective account provides valuable perspectives for current scholars while charting new avenues for future research.
Subjects: History (General) Theory and Methodology
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eBook available
September 2017
Contesting Deregulation
Debates, Practices and Developments in the West since the 1970s
Andresen, K. and Müller, S. (eds)
Few would dispute that many Western industrial democracies undertook extensive deregulation in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet this narrative, in its most familiar form, depends upon several historiographical assumptions that bely the complexities and pitfalls of studying the recent past. Across thirteen case studies, the contributors to this volume investigate this “deregulatory moment” from a variety of historical perspectives, including transnational, comparative, pan-European, and national approaches. Collectively, they challenge an interpretive framework that treats individual decades in isolation and ignores broader trends that extend to the end of the Second World War.
Subjects: History (General) Political and Economic Anthropology History: 20th Century to Present
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March 2007
Continental Britons
German-Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany
Berghahn, M.
Based on numerous in-depth and personal interviews with members of three generations, this is the first comprehensive study of German-Jewish refugees who came to England in the 1930s. The author addresses questions such as perceptions of Germany and Britain and attitudes towards Judaism. On the basis of many case studies, the author shows how the refugees adjusted, often amazingly successfully, to their situation in Britain. While exploring the process of acculturation of the German-Jews in Britain, the author challenges received ideas about the process of Jewish assimilation in general, and that of the Jews in Germany in particular, and offers a new interpretation in the light of her own empirical data and of current anthropological theory.
Subjects: Jewish Studies Refugee and Migration Studies History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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eBook available
May 2022
Continental Transfers
Cultural and Political Exchange among Spain, Italy and Argentina, 1914-1945
Fuentes Codera, M. & Dogliani, P. (eds)
Despite being separated by thousands of miles and shaped by distinctive national histories, the countries of Spain, Italy, and Argentina were intertwined in a variety of ways during the first half of the twentieth century. This collection brings scholars from each nation into conversation with one another to trace these complex historical connections over the period of the two World Wars. Deploying “Latinity” as a novel analytical framework, it gives a broad and dynamic perspective on cases of reciprocal exchange that include the influence of Italian Socialism on Hispanophone leftists; the roots of Argentine liberalism in Machiavelli and Spanish Nationalist thinkers; and the web of connections among Italian Fascism, Argentine Nacionalismo, and Spanish Francoism.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: World War I History: World War II
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eBook available
May 2012
Conversion and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Germany
Luebke, D. M., Poley, J., Ryan, D. C., & Sabean, D. W. (eds)
The Protestant and Catholic Reformations thrust the nature of conversion into the center of debate and politicking over religion as authorities and subjects imbued religious confession with novel meanings during the early modern era. The volume offers insights into the historicity of the very concept of “conversion.” One widely accepted modern notion of the phenomenon simply expresses denominational change. Yet this concept had no bearing at the outset of the Reformation. Instead, a variety of processes, such as the consolidation of territories along confessional lines, attempts to ensure civic concord, and diplomatic quarrels helped to usher in new ideas about the nature of religious boundaries and, therefore, conversion. However conceptualized, religious change— conversion—had deep social and political implications for early modern German states and societies.
Subject: History: Medieval/Early Modern
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August 2017
Cooperation and Empire
Local Realities of Global Processes
Bührer, T., Eichmann, F., Förster, S. & Stuchtey, B. (eds)
While the study of “indigenous intermediaries” is today the focus of some of the most interesting research in the historiography of colonialism, its roots extend back to at least the 1970s. The contributions to this volume revisit Ronald E. Robinson’s theory of collaboration in a range of historical contexts by melding it with theoretical perspectives derived from postcolonial studies and transnational history. In case studies ranging globally over the course of four centuries, these essays offer nuanced explorations of the varied, complex interactions between imperial and local actors, with particular attention to those shifting and ambivalent roles that transcend simple binaries of colonizer and colonized.
Subjects: Colonial History History (General)
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eBook available
October 2006
Coping with the Nazi Past
West German Debates on Nazism and Generational Conflict, 1955-1975
Gassert, P. & Steinweis, A. E. (eds)
Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.
Based on careful, intensive research in primary sources, many of these essays break new ground in our understanding of a crucial and tumultuous period. The contributors, drawn from both sides of the Atlantic, offer an in-depth analysis of how the collective memory of Nazism and the Holocaust influenced, and was influenced by, politics and culture in West Germany in the 1960s. The contributions address a wide variety of issues, including prosecution for war crimes, restitution, immigration policy, health policy, reform of the police, German relations with Israel and the United States, nuclear non-proliferation, and, of course, student politics and the New Left protest movement.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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May 2023
Coproducing Europe
An Ethnography of Film-markets, Creativity and Identity
Sideri, E.
Up until the 1990s, when the EU launched film policies intended to encourage political and cultural collaboration among its member states, film production was based on the cultural and national values of individual nations. Coproducing Europe explores the impact of these EU policies on the coproduction networks that now serve as a driving force in contemporary creative economies. By focusing on regional film markets in Thessasloniki, Sarajevo, and Tbilisi, this comparative ethnography looks beyond the economic nature of film coproductions to their role in Europeanisation, memories of the Cold War, and preconstructed political agendas.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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April 2012
Cosmos and Colonialism
Alexander von Humboldt in Cultural Criticism
Clark, R. & Lubrich, O. (eds)
Alexander von Humboldt explored the Spanish Empire on the verge of its collapse (1799–1804). He is the most significant German travel writer and the most important mediator between Europe and the Americas of the nineteenth century. His works integrated knowledge from two dozen domains. Today, he is at the center of debates on imperial discourse, postcolonialism, and globalization. This collection of fifty essays brings together a range of responses, many presented here for the first time in English. Authors from Schiller, Chateaubriand, Sarmiento, and Nietzsche, to Robert Musil, Kurt Tucholsky, Ernst Bloch, and Alejo Carpentier paint the historical background. Essays by contemporary travel writers and recent critics outline the current controversies on Humboldt. The source materials collected here will be indispensable to scholars of German, French, and Latin and North American literature as well as cultural and postcolonial studies, history, art history, and the history of science.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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November 1994
The Council on Foreign Relations and American Policy in the Early Cold War
Wala, M
Founded in 1921, the Council on Foreign Relations is still active today; in fact, the interest in its activities is growing. However, to date little is known about the major aspects of the organization. We are pleased to offer the first comprehensive evaluation of its impact on the decision-making process of American foreign policy, particularly in the immediate postwar period. Was the CFR, as richist critics claimed, "the nexus of the organized subversive effort in America"; or was it, as leftists claimed, "a central link binding American foreign policy to the corporate upper class"; or did it fall somewhere in between these rather extreme characterizations? Based on extensive analysis of primary sources, this book clearly delineates the Council's activities - its study and discussion groups and its publications - and the developing internation political, military, and economic situations. This ground-breaking study was highly acclaimed when it first appeared in German, and its availability in translation will be most welcome.
Michael Wala is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences of the University of Erlangen-Nurnberg. He previously edited Allen Dulles's The Marshall Plan (1993).
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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October 2003
Creating the Other
Ethnic Conflict & Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe
Wingfield, N.M. (ed)
The historic myths of a people/nation usually play an important role in the creation and consolidation of the basic concepts from which the self-image of that nation derives. These concepts include not only images of the nation itself, but also images of other peoples. Although the construction of ethnic stereotypes during the "long" nineteenth century initially had other functions than simply the homogenization of the particular culture and the exclusion of "others" from the public sphere, the evaluation of peoples according to criteria that included "level of civilization" yielded "rankings" of ethnic groups within the Habsburg Monarchy. That provided the basis for later, more divisive ethnic characterizations of exclusive nationalism, as addressed in this volume that examines the roots and results of ethnic, nationalist, and racial conflict in the region from a variety of historical and theoretical perspectives.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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July 2014
Creating Wilderness
A Transnational History of the Swiss National Park
Kupper, P.
The history of the Swiss National Park, from its creation in the years before the Great War to the present, is told for the first time in this book. Unlike Yellowstone Park, which embodied close cooperation between state-supported conservation and public recreation, the Swiss park put in place an extraordinarily strong conservation program derived from a close alliance between the state and scientific research. This deliberate reinterpretation of the American idea of the national park was innovative and radical, but its consequences were not limited to Switzerland. The Swiss park became the prime example of a “scientific national park,” thereby influencing the course of national parks worldwide.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Environmental Studies (General)
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November 2004
The Creation of the Modern German Army
General Walther Reinhardt and the Weimar Republic, 1914-1930
Mulligan, W.
Civil-military relations have been a consistent theme of the history of the Weimar Republic. This study focuses on the career of General Walther Reinhardt, the last Prussian Minister of War and the First Head of the Army Command in the Weimar Republic. Though less well known than his great rival, Hans von Seeckt, Reinhardt's role in forming the young Reichswehr and his writings on warfare made him one of the most important and influential military figures in interwar Germany. Contrary to the conventional view that civil-military relations were fraught from the outset, the author argues, Reinhardt's contribution to the military politics of the Weimar Republic shows that opportunities for reform and co-operation with civilian leaders existed. However, although he is primarily seen as a liberal General, this study demonstrates that he was motivated by professional military considerations and by the specter of a future war. His ideas on modern warfare were amongst the most radical of the time.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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March 2014
Creole Identity in Postcolonial Indonesia
Knörr, J.
Contributing to identity formation in ethnically and religiously diverse postcolonial societies, this book examines the role played by creole identity in Indonesia, and in particular its capital, Jakarta. While, on the one hand, it facilitates transethnic integration and promotes a specifically postcolonial sense of common nationhood due to its heterogeneous origins, creole groups of people are often perceived ambivalently in the wake of colonialism and its demise, on the other. In this book, Jacqueline Knörr analyzes the social, historical, and political contexts of creoleness both at the grassroots and the State level, showing how different sections of society engage with creole identity in order to promote collective identification transcending ethnic and religious boundaries, as well as for reasons of self-interest and ideological projects.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History
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eBook available
April 2018
A Creole Nation
National Integration in Guinea-Bissau
Kohl, C.
Despite high degrees of cultural and ethnic diversity as well as prevailing political instability, Guinea-Bissau’s population has developed a strong sense of national belonging. By examining both contemporary and historical perspectives, A Creole Nation explores how creole identity, culture, and political leaders have influenced postcolonial nation-building processes in Guinea-Bissau, and the ways in which the phenomenon of cultural creolization results in the emergence of new identities.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History Political and Economic Anthropology
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May 2014
Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany
Wetzell, R. F. (ed)
The history of criminal justice in modern Germany has become a vibrant field of research, as demonstrated in this volume. Following an introductory survey, the twelve chapters examine major topics in the history of crime and criminal justice from Imperial Germany, through the Weimar and Nazi eras, to the early postwar years. These topics include case studies of criminal trials, the development of juvenile justice, and the efforts to reform the penal code, criminal procedure, and the prison system. The collection also reveals that the history of criminal justice has much to contribute to other areas of historical inquiry: it explores the changing relationship of criminal justice to psychiatry and social welfare, analyzes representations of crime and criminal justice in the media and literature, and uses the lens of criminal justice to illuminate German social history, gender history, and the history of sexuality.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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April 2009
Crime Stories
Criminalistic Fantasy and the Culture of Crisis in Weimar Germany
Herzog, T.
The Weimar Republic (1918–1933) was a crucial moment not only in German history but also in the history of both crime fiction and criminal science. This study approaches the period from a unique perspective - investigating the most notorious criminals of the time and the public’s reaction to their crimes. The author argues that the development of a new type of crime fiction during this period - which turned literary tradition on its head by focusing on the criminal and abandoning faith in the powers of the rational detective - is intricately related to new ways of understanding criminality among professionals in the fields of law, criminology, and police science. Considering Weimar Germany not only as a culture in crisis (the standard view in both popular and scholarly studies), but also as a culture of crisis, the author explores the ways in which crime and crisis became the foundation of the Republic’s self-definition. An interdisciplinary cultural studies project, this book insightfully combines history, sociology, literary studies, and film studies to investigate a topic that cuts across all of these disciplines.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Literary Studies Film and Television Studies Sociology
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January 2007
Crime, Jews and News
Vienna 1890-1914
Vyleta, D.M.
Crimes committed by Jews, especially ritual murders, have long been favorite targets in the antisemitic press. This book investigates popular and scientific conceptualizations of criminals current in Austria and Germany at the turn of the last century and compares these to those in the contemporary antisemitic discourse. It challenges received historiographic assumptions about the centrality of criminal bodies and psyches in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century criminology and argues that contemporary antisemitic narratives constructed Jewish criminality not as a biologico-racial defect, but rather as a coolly manipulative force that aimed at the deliberate destruction of the basis of society itself. Through the lens of criminality this book provides new insight into the spread and nature of antisemitism in Austria-Hungary around 1900. The book also provides a re-evaluation of the phenomenon of modern Ritual Murder Trials by placing them into the context of wider narratives of Jewish crime.
Subjects: Jewish Studies History: 18th/19th Century Media Studies
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eBook available
December 2008
Crises in European Integration
Challenges and Responses, 1945-2005
Kuehnhardt, L. (ed)
While the major trends in European integration have been well researched and constitute key elements of narratives about its value and purpose, the crises of integration and their effects have not yet attracted sufficient attention. This volume, with original contributions by leading German scholars, suggests that crises of integration should be seen as engines of progress throughout the history of European integration rather than as expressions of failure and regression, a widely held assumption. It therefore throws new light on the current crises in European integration and provides a fascinating panorama of how challenges and responses were guiding the process during its first five decades.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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February 2002
Crisis and Renewal in France, 1918-1962
Mouré, K. & Alexander, M. S. (eds)
Since 1914, the French state has faced a succession of daunting and at times almost insurmountable crises. The turbulent decades from 1914 to 1969 witnessed near-defeat in 1914, economic and political crisis in 1926, radical political polarization in the 1930s, military conquest in 1940, the deep division of France during the Nazi Occupation, political reconstruction after 1944, de-colonization (with threatening civil war provoked by the Algerian crisis), and dramatic postwar modernization. However, this tumultuous period was not marked just by crises but also by tremendous change. Economic, social and political "modernization" transformed France in the twentieth century, restoring its confidence and its influence as a leader in global economic and political affairs. This combination of crises and renewal has received surprisingly little attention in recent years.
The present collection show-cases significant new scholarship, reflecting greater access to French archival sources, and focuses on the role of crises in fostering modernization in areas covering politics, economics, women, diplomacy and war.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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January 2005
The Crisis of the German Left
The PDS, Stalinism and the Global Economy
Thompson, P.
Using Nietzsche's categories of monumentalist, antiquarian and critical history, the author examines the historical and theoretical contexts of the collapse of the GDR in 1989 and looks at the positive and negative legacies of the GDR for the PDS (the successor party to the East German Communists). He contends that the Stalinization of the GDR itself was the product not just of the Cold War but of a longer inter-systemic struggle between the competing primacies of politics and economics and that the end of the GDR has to be seen as a consequence of the global collapse of the social imperative under the pressure of the re-emergence of the market-state since the mid-1970s. The PDS is therefore stuck in dilemma in which any attempt to "arrive in the Federal Republic" (Brie) is criticized as a readiness to accept the dominance of the market over society whereas any attempt to prioritize social imperatives over the market is attacked as a form of unreconstructed Stalinism. The book offers some suggestions as to how to escape from this dilemma by returning to the critical rather than monumentalist and antiquarian traditions of the workers’ movement.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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May 2005
Critical Junctions
Anthropology and History beyond the Cultural Turn
Kalb, D. & Tak, H. (eds)
The “cultural turn” has been a multifarious and pervasive phenomenon in Western universities and modes of social knowledge since the early 1980s.
This volume focuses on the conjunction of two disciplines where both the analytic promises as well as the difficulties involved in the meeting of humanist and social science approaches soon became obvious. Anthropologists and historians have come together here in order to recapture, elaborate, and criticize pre-Cultural Turn and non-Cultural Turn modes of analysing structures of experience, feeling, subjectivity and action in human societies and to highlight the still unexploited possibilities developed among others in the work of scholars such as Norbert Elias, Max Gluckman, Eric Wolf, E.P. Thompson and Raymond Williams.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
September 2022
Critical Public Archaeology
Confronting Social Challenges in the 21st Century
Westmont, V. C. (ed)
Critical approaches to public archaeology have been in use since the 1980s, however only recently have archaeologists begun using critical theory in conjunction with public archaeology to challenge dominant narratives of the past. This volume brings together current work on the theory and practice of critical public archaeology from Europe and the United States to illustrate the ways that implementing critical approaches can introduce new understandings of the past and reveal new insights on the present. Contributors to this volume explore public perceptions of museum interpretations as well as public archaeology projects related to changing perceptions of immigration, the working classes, and race.
Subjects: Archaeology Anthropology (General) History (General)
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October 2001
Crossing Boundaries
The Exclusion and Inclusion of Minorities in Germany and America
Jones, L. (ed)
"Crossing Boundaries" – these two words serve not only as the leitmotiv around which the following collection of essays has been organized but also as a metaphor for the life and career of the person who inspired their composition: Georg G. Iggers, whose entire life has been one of crossing boundaries: geographical, racial, and professional. Just as Iggers has done his best as a historian to break down professional and disciplinary boundaries, this volume examines, from different angles, the ways in which Germany and the United States have dealt with the inclusion and exclusion of minorities.
Comparing the respective fates of the Jews in Germany and the African-Americans in the United States, this collection offers new insight as to how and why the struggle for equality played out so differently in the two countries and in what ways the issues of migration, multi-ethnicity, discrimination, and integration have informed the historical discourse in the postmodern era.
Subjects: History (General) Refugee and Migration Studies
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eBook available
June 2019
Crossing Histories and Ethnographies
Following Colonial Historicities in Timor-Leste
Roque, R. & Traube, E. G. (eds)
The key question for many anthropologists and historians today is not whether to cross the boundary between their disciplines, but whether the idea of a disciplinary boundary should be sustained. Reinterpreting the dynamic interplay between archive and field, these essays propose a method for mutually productive crossings between historical and ethnographic research. It engages critically with the colonial pasts of indigenous societies and examines how fieldwork and archival studies together lead to fruitful insights into the making of different colonial historicities. Timor-Leste’s unusually long and in some ways unique colonial history is explored as a compelling case for these crossings.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History Sociology
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May 2003
Crossing the Aegean
An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey
Hirschon, R. (ed)
Following the defeat of the Greek Army in 1922 by nationalist Turkish forces, the 1923 Lausanne Convention specified the first internationally ratified compulsory population exchange. It proved to be a watershed in the eastern Mediterranean, having far-reaching ramifications both for the new Turkish Republic, and for Greece which hadto absorb over a million refugees. Known as the Asia Minor Catastrophe by the Greeks, it marked the establishment of the independent nation state for the Turks. The consequences of this event have received surprisingly little attention despite the considerable relevance for the contemporary situation in the Balkans. This volume addresses the challenge of writing history from both sides of the Aegean and provides, for the first time, a forum for multidisciplinary dialogue across national boundaries.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
May 2016
Crown, Church and Constitution
Popular Conservatism in England, 1815-1867
Neuheiser, J.
Much scholarship on nineteenth-century English workers has been devoted to the radical reform politics that powerfully unsettled the social order in the century’s first decades. Comparatively neglected have been the impetuous patriotism, royalism, and xenophobic anti-Catholicism that countless men and women demonstrated in the early Victorian period. This much-needed study of the era’s “conservatism from below” explores the role of religion in everyday culture and the Tories’ successful mobilization across class boundaries. Long before they were able to vote, large swathes of the lower classes embraced Britain’s monarchical, religious, and legal institutions in the defense of traditional English culture.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
November 2018
The CSCE and the End of the Cold War
Diplomacy, Societies and Human Rights, 1972-1990
Badalassi, N. & Snyder, S. B. (eds)
From its inception, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) provoked controversy. Today it is widely regarded as having contributed to the end of the Cold War. Bringing together new and innovative research on the CSCE, this volume explores questions key to understanding the Cold War: What role did diplomats play in shaping the 1975 Helsinki Final Act? How did that agreement and the CSCE more broadly shape societies in Europe and North America? And how did the CSCE and activists inspired by the Helsinki Final Act influence the end of the Cold War?
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Peace and Conflict Studies
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eBook available
August 2017
Cultural Borders of Europe
Narratives, Concepts and Practices in the Present and the Past
Andrén, M., Lindkvist, T., Söhrman, I. & Vajta, K. (eds)
The cultural borders of Europe are today more visible than ever, and with them comes a sense of uncertainty with respect to liberal democratic traditions: whether treated as abstractions or concrete realities, cultural divisions challenge concepts of legitimacy and political representation as well as the legal bases for citizenship. Thus, an understanding of such borders and their consequences is of utmost importance for promoting the evolution of democracy. Cultural Borders of Europe provides a wide-ranging exploration of these lines of demarcation in a variety of regions and historical eras, providing essential insights into the state of European intercultural relations today.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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December 2002
Cultural Encounters
European Travel Writing in the 1930s
Burdett, C. & Duncan, D. (eds)
The 1930s were one of the most important decades in defining the history of the twentieth century. It saw the rise of right-wing nationalism, the challenge to established democracies and the full force of imperialist aggression. Cultural Encounters makes an important contribution to our understanding of the ideological and cultural forces which were active in defining notions of national identity in the 1930s. By examining the work of writers and journalists from a range of European countries who used the medium of travel writing to articulate perceptions of their own and other cultures, the book gives a comprehensive account of the complex intellectual climate of the 1930s.
Subjects: Literary Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
November 2017
Cultural Topographies of the New Berlin
Bauer, K. & Hosek, J. R. (eds)
Since Unification and the end of the Cold War, Berlin has witnessed a series of uncommonly intense social, political, and cultural transformations. While positioning itself as a creative center populated by young and cosmopolitan global citizens, the “New Berlin” is at the same time a rich site of historical memory, defined inescapably by its past even as it articulates German and European hopes for the future. Cultural Topographies of the New Berlin presents a fascinating cross-section of life in Germany’s largest city, revealing the complex ways in which globalization, ethnicity, economics, memory, and national identity inflect how its urban spaces are inhabited and depicted.
Subjects: Urban Studies Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2002
Culture and Crisis
The Case of Germany and Sweden
Witoszek, N. & Trägårdh, L. (eds)
It is often argued that Germany and Scandinavia stand at two opposite ends of a spectrum with regard to their response to social-economic disruptions and cultural challenges. Though, in many respects, they have a shared cultural inheritance, it is nevertheless the case that they mobilize different mythologies and different modes of coping when faced with breakdown and disorder. The authors argue that it is at these "critical junctures," points of crisis and innovation in the life of communities, that the tradition and identity of national and local communities are formed, polarized, and revalued; it is here that social change takes a particular direction.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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May 2003
Culture and International History
Gienow-Hecht, J.E. & Schumacher, F. (eds)
Combining the perspectives of 18 international scholars from Europe and the United States with a critical discussion of the role of culture in international relations, this volume introduces recent trends in the study of Culture and International History. It systematically explores the cultural dimension of international history, mapping existing approaches and conceptual lenses for the study of cultural factors and thus hopes to sharpen the awareness for the cultural approach to international history among both American and non-American scholars.
The first part provides a methodological introduction, explores the cultural underpinnings of foreign policy, and the role of culture in international affairs by reviewing the historiography and examining the meaning of the word culture in the context of foreign relations. In the second part, contributors analyze culture as a tool of foreign policy. They demonstrate how culture was instrumentalized for diplomatic goals and purposes in different historical periods and world regions. The essays in the third part expand the state-centered view and retrace informal cultural relations among nations and peoples. This exploration of non-state cultural interaction focuses on the role of science, art, religion, and tourism. The fourth part collects the findings and arguments of part one, two, and three to define a roadmap for further scholarly inquiry. A group of" commentators" survey the preceding essays, place them into a larger research context, and address the question "Where do we go from here?" The last and fifth part presents a selection of primary sources along with individual comments highlighting a new genre of resources scholars interested in culture and international relations can consult.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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December 2012
Culture in Dark Times
Nazi Fascism, Inner Emigration, and Exile
Hermand, J.
BETWEEN 1933 AND 1945 MEMBERS OF THREE GROUPS—THE Nazi fascists, Inner Emigration, and Exiles—fought with equal fervor over who could definitively claim to represent the authentically “great German culture,” as it was culture that imparted real value to both the state and the individual. But when authorities made pronouncements about “culture” were they really talking about high art? This book analyzes the highly complex interconnections among the cultural-political concepts of these various ideological groups and asks why the most artistically ambitious art forms were viewed as politically important by all cultured (or even semi-cultured) Germans in the period from 1933 to 1945, with their ownership the object of a bitter struggle between key figures in the Nazi fascist regime, representatives of Inner Emigration, and Germans driven out of the Third Reich.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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December 2007
Cultures of Abortion in Weimar Germany
Usborne, C.
Abortion in the Weimar Republic is a compelling subject since it provoked public debates and campaigns of an intensity rarely matched elsewhere. It proved so explosive because populationist, ecclesiastical and political concerns were heightened by cultural anxieties of a modernity in crisis. Based on an exceptionally rich source material (e.g., criminal court cases, doctors’ case books, personal diaries, feature films, plays and literary works), this study explores different attitudes and experiences of those women who sought to terminate an unwanted pregnancy and those who helped or hindered them. It analyzes the dichotomy between medical theory and practice, and questions common assumptions, i.e. that abortion was “a necessary evil,” which needed strict regulation and medical control; or that all back-street abortions were dangerous and bad. Above all, the book reveals women’s own voices, frequently contradictory and ambiguous: having internalized medical ideas they often also adhered to older notions of reproduction which opposed scientific approaches.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Gender Studies and Sexuality Medical Anthropology
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eBook available
June 2012
Cultures of Colour
Visual, Material, Textual
Horrocks, C. (ed)
Colour permeates contemporary visual and material culture and affects our senses beyond the superficial encounter by infiltrating our perceptions and memories and becoming deeply rooted in thought processes that categorise and divide along culturally constructed lines. Colour exists as a cultural as well as psycho-physical phenomenon and acquires a multitude of meanings within differing historical and cultural contexts. The contributors examine how colour becomes imbued with specific symbolic and material meanings that tint our constructions of race, gender, ideal bodies, the relationship of the self to others and of the self to technology and the built environment. By highlighting the relationship of colour across media and material culture, this volume reveals the complex interplay of cultural connotations, discursive practices and socio-psychological dynamics of colour in an international context.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History (General) Sociology
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February 2006
Cultures of Technology and the Quest for Innovation
Nowotny, H. (ed)
Underlying the current dynamics of technological developments, their divergence or convergence and the abundance of options, promises and risks they contain, is the quest for innovation, the contributors to this volume argue. The seemingly insatiable demand for novelty coincides with the rise of modern science and the onset of modernity in Western societies. Never before has the Baconian dream been so close to becoming reality: wrapped into a globalizing capitalism that seeks ever expanding markets for new products, artifacts and designs and new processes that lead to gains in efficiency, productivity and profit. However, approaching these developments through a wider historical and cultural perspectives, means to raise questions about the plurality of cultures, the interaction between "hardware" and "software" and about the nature of the interfaces where technology meets with economic, social, legal, historical constraints and opportunities. The authors come to the conclusion that inside a seemingly homogenous package and a seemingly universal quest for innovation many differences remain.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) History (General) Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
December 2015
Cycling and Recycling
Histories of Sustainable Practices
Oldenziel, R. & Trischler, H. (eds)
Technology has long been an essential consideration in public discussions of the environment, with the focus overwhelmingly on creating new tools and techniques. In more recent years, however, activists, researchers, and policymakers have increasingly turned to mobilizing older technologies in their pursuit of sustainability. In fascinating case studies ranging from the Early Modern secondhand trade to utopian visions of human-powered vehicles, the contributions gathered here explore the historical fortunes of two such technologies—bicycling and waste recycling—tracing their development over time and providing valuable context for the policy successes and failures of today.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History (General) Transport Studies
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eBook available
May 2012
Czechs, Germans, Jews?
National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia
Capkova, K.
The phenomenon of national identities, always a key issue in the modern history of Bohemian Jewry, was particularly complex because of the marginal differences that existed between the available choices. Considerable overlap was evident in the programs of the various national movements and it was possible to change one’s national identity or even to opt for more than one such identity without necessarily experiencing any far-reaching consequences in everyday life. Based on many hitherto unknown archival sources from the Czech Republic, Israel and Austria, the author’s research reveals the inner dynamic of each of the national movements and maps out the three most important constructions of national identity within Bohemian Jewry – the German-Jewish, the Czech-Jewish and the Zionist. This book provides a needed framework for understanding the rich history of German- and Czech-Jewish politics and culture in Bohemia and is a notable contribution to the historiography of Bohemian, Czechoslovak and central European Jewry.
Subjects: Jewish Studies History (General)
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eBook available
May 2017
Daily Life in the Abyss
Genocide Diaries, 1915-1918
Tachjian, V.
Historical research into the Armenian Genocide has grown tremendously in recent years, but much of it has focused on large-scale questions related to Ottoman policy or the scope of the killing. Consequently, surprisingly little is known about the actual experiences of the genocide’s victims. Daily Life in the Abyss illuminates this aspect through the intertwined stories of two Armenian families who endured forced relocation and deprivation in and around modern-day Syria. Through analysis of diaries and other source material, it reconstructs the rhythms of daily life within an often bleak and hostile environment, in the face of a gradually disintegrating social fabric.
Subjects: Genocide History History: World War I
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eBook available
May 2014
The Dark Side of Nation-States
Ethnic Cleansing in Modern Europe
Ther, P.
Why was there such a far-reaching consensus concerning the utopian goal of national homogeneity in the first half of the twentieth century? Ethnic cleansing is analyzed here as a result of the formation of democratic nation-states, the international order based on them, and European modernity in general. Almost all mass-scale population removals were rationally and precisely organized and carried out in cold blood, with revenge, hatred and other strong emotions playing only a minor role. This book not only considers the majority of population removals which occurred in Eastern Europe, but is also an encompassing, comparative study including Western Europe, interrogating the motivations of Western statesmen and their involvement in large-scale population removals. It also reaches beyond the European continent and considers the reverberations of colonial rule and ethnic cleansing in the former British colonies.
Subjects: Genocide History History (General)
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December 2011
Dark Traces of the Past
Psychoanalysis and Historical Thinking
Straub, J. & Rüsen, J. (eds)
The relationship between historical studies and psychoanalysis remains an open debate that is full of tension, in both a positive and a negative sense. In particular, the following question has not been answered satisfactorily: what distinguishes a psychoanalytically oriented study of historical realities from a historical psychoanalysis? Skepticism and fear of collaboration dominate on both sides. Initiating a productive dialogue between historical studies and psychoanalysis seems to be plagued by ignorance and, at times, a sense of helplessness. Interdisciplinary collaborations are rare. Empirical research, formulation of theory, and the development of methods are essentially carried out within the conventional disciplinary boundaries. This volume undertakes to overcome these limitations by combining psychoanalytical and historical perspectives and thus exploring the underlying “unconscious” dimensions and by informing academic and nonacademic forms of historical memory. Moreover, it puts special emphasis on transgenerational forms of remembrance, on the notion of trauma as a key concept in this field, and on case studies that point the way to further research.
Subjects: History (General) Sociology
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eBook available
June 2012
Dark Trophies
Hunting and the Enemy Body in Modern War
Harrison, S.
Many anthropological accounts of warfare in indigenous societies have described the taking of heads or other body parts as trophies. But almost nothing is known of the prevalence of trophy-taking of this sort in the armed forces of contemporary nation-states. This book is a history of this type of misconduct among military personnel over the past two centuries, exploring its close connections with colonialism, scientific collecting and concepts of race, and how it is a model for violent power relationships between groups.
Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies Anthropology (General) History (General)
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September 2013
Death in East Germany, 1945-1990
Schulz, F. R.
As the first historical study of East Germany‘s sepulchral culture, this book explores the complex cultural responses to death since the Second World War. Topics include the interrelated areas of the organization and municipalization of the undertaking industry; the steps taken towards a socialist cemetery culture such as issues of design, spatial layout, and commemorative practices; the propagation of cremation as a means of disposal; the wide-spread introduction of anonymous communal areas for the internment of urns; and the emergence of socialist and secular funeral rituals. The author analyses the manifold changes to the system of the disposal of the dead in East Germany—a society that not only had to negotiate the upheaval of military defeat but also urbanization, secularization, a communist regime, and a planned economy. Stressing a comparative approach, the book reveals surprising similarities to the development of Western countries but also highlights the intricate local variations within the GDR and sheds more light on the East German state and its society.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
December 2003
Death of the Father
An Anthropology of the End in Political Authority
Borneman, J. (ed)
The death of authority figures like fathers or leaders can be experienced as either liberation or loss. In the twentieth century, the authority of the father and of the leader became closely intertwined; constraints and affective attachments intensified in ways that had major effects on the organization of regimes of authority. This comparative volume examines the resulting crisis in symbolic identification, the national traumas that had crystallized around four state political forms: Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and East European Communism. The defeat of Imperial and Fascist regimes in 1945 and the implosion of Communist regimes in 1989 were critical moments of rupture, of "death of the father." What was the experience of their ends, and what is the reconstruction of those ends in memory?
This volume represents is the beginning of a comparative social anthropology of caesurae: the end of traumatic political regimes, of their symbolic forms, political consequences, and probable futures.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) History: 20th Century to Present Memory Studies
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December 2007
Decentering America
Gienow-Hecht, J. C. E. (ed)
"Decentering" has fast become a dynamic approach to the study of American cultural and diplomatic history. But what precisely does decentering mean, how does it work, and why has it risen to such prominence? This book addresses the attempt to decenter the United States in the history of culture and international relations both in times when the United States has been assumed to take center place. Rather than presenting more theoretical perspectives, this collection offers a variety of examples of how one can look at the role of culture in international history without assigning the central role to the United States. Topics include cultural violence, inverted Americanization, the role of NGOs, modernity and internationalism, and the culture of diplomacy. Each subsection includes two case studies dedicated to one particular approach which while not dealing with the same geographical topic or time frame illuminate a similar methodological interest. Collectively, these essays pragmatically demonstrate how the study of culture and international history can help us to rethink and reconceptualize US history today.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
October 2018
The Decisionist Imagination
Sovereignty, Social Science and Democracy in the 20th Century
Bessner, D. & Guilhot, N. (eds)
In the decades following World War II, the science of decision-making moved from the periphery to the center of transatlantic thought. The Decisionist Imagination explores how “decisionism” emerged from its origins in prewar political theory to become an object of intense social scientific inquiry in the new intellectual and institutional landscapes of the postwar era. By bringing together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, this volume illuminates how theories of decision shaped numerous techno-scientific aspects of modern governance—helping to explain, in short, how we arrived at where we are today.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
March 2016
The Decolonial Mandela
Peace, Justice and the Politics of Life
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S.
A significant contribution to the emerging literature on decolonial studies, this concise and forcefully argued volume lays out a groundbreaking interpretation of the “Mandela phenomenon.” Contrary to a neoliberal social model that privileges adversarial criminal justice and a rationalistic approach to war making, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni identifies transformative political justice and a reimagined social order as key features of Nelson Mandela’s legacy. Mandela is understood here as an exemplar of decolonial humanism, one who embodied the idea of survivor’s justice and held up reconciliation and racial harmony as essential for transcending colonial modes of thought.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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August 1999
DEFA
East German Cinema 1946-1992
Allan, S. & Sandford, J. (eds)
Western scholars have not lost any of their fascination for East German culture. Cinema in particular continues to attract interest. This volume, the first one in English, traces the development of the main institution, the state-sponsored Deutsche Film Anstalt (DEFA), which was primarily responsible for film production in the former GDR from 1946, ceasing to exist in 1992. Although largely ignored outside the former GDR, the DEFA produced anumber of excellent films and scriptwriters that are examined here for the first time. This volume analyzes the representation of fascism and anti-fascism in the cinema of the 1940s and 1950s, the conflicts between the state and the film-makers of the 1960s, and the social-political criticism in the 1970s and early 1980s. Other key issues that arise from this comprehensive look at DEFA include its representation of women, the concept of "Heimat," the reception of the classical heritage, and the relation of DEFA cinema to other European film traditions.The comprehensive bibliography and a list of research sources on East German cinema make this volume an indispensable tool for students and scholars of the media.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
November 2021
Defeating Impunity
Attempts at International Justice in Europe since 1914
Rovetta, O. & Lagrou, P. (eds)
Over the course of the long and violent twentieth century, only a minority of international crime perpetrators ever stood trial, and a central challenge of this era was the effort to ensure that not all these crimes remained unpunished. This required not only establishing a legal record but also courage, determination, and inventiveness in realizing justice. Defeating Impunity moves from the little-known trials of the 1920s to the Yugoslavia tribunal in the 2000s, from Belgium in 1914 to Ukraine in 1943, and to Stuttgart and Düsseldorf in 1975. It illustrates the extent to which the language of law drew an international horizon of justice.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History
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October 1998
Democracy in Europe
Legitimising Politics in a Non-State Polity
Abromeit, H.
Since the beginning of the European Community students of international politics and of international, resp. Constitutional law, have been wondering what kind of animal it is, and will be, once integration has been completed. Whereas the EC Treaty of 1957 stressed the economic aspects and envisioned a steady and dynamic progress towards a Single Market, it was conspicuously silent about the political implications of integration and the new democratic order. What is needed, so the author argues in this powerful and original contribution to the debate on democratisation of the European Union, is a flexible system that supplements the European decision-making process with various direct democratic instruments such as the use of referenda. These would serve to increase the accountability of the politicians without demanding or requiring a definitive resolution of the exact constitutional status of the Union.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
June 2018
Democracy in Modern Europe
A Conceptual History
Kurunmäki, J., Nevers, J., & te Velde, H. (eds)
As one of the most influential ideas in modern European history, democracy has fundamentally reshaped not only the landscape of governance, but also social and political thought throughout the world. Democracy in Modern Europe surveys the conceptual history of democracy in modern Europe, from the Industrial Revolutions of the nineteenth century through both world wars and the rise of welfare states to the present era of the European Union. Exploring individual countries as well as regional dynamics, this volume comprises a tightly organized, comprehensive, and thoroughly up-to-date exploration of a foundational issue in European political and intellectual history.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
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May 2007
Demonstrating Reconciliation
State and Society in West German Foreign Policy toward Israel, 1952-1965
Hindenburg, H. von
During the 1950s and early 1960s, the West German government refused to exchange ambassadors with Israel. It feared Arab governments might retaliate against such an acknowledgement of their political foe by recognizing Communist East Germany–West Germany’s own nemesis–as an independent state, and in doing so confirm Germany’s division. Even though the goal of national unification was far more important to German policymakers than full reconciliation with Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust, in 1965 the Bonn government eventually did agree to commence diplomatic relations with Jerusalem. This was due, the author argues, to grassroots intervention in high-level politics. Students, the media, trade unions, and others pushed for reconciliation with Israel rather than the pursuit of German unification. For the first time, this book provides an in-depth look at the role society played in shaping Germany’s relations with Israel. Today, German society continues to reject anti-Semitism, but is increasingly prepared to criticize Israeli policies, especially in the Palestinian territories. The author argues that this trend sets the stage for a German foreign policy that will continue to support Israel, but is likely to do so more selectively than in the past.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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June 2016
Designing Worlds
National Design Histories in an Age of Globalization
Fallan, K. & Lees-Maffei, G. (eds)
From consumer products to architecture to advertising to digital technology, design is an undeniably global phenomenon. Yet despite their professed transnational perspective, historical studies of design have all too often succumbed to a bias toward Western, industrialized nations. This diverse but rigorously curated collection recalibrates our understanding of design history, reassessing regional and national cultures while situating them within an international context. Here, contributors from five continents offer nuanced studies that range from South Africa to the Czech Republic, all the while sensitive to the complexities of local variation and the role of nation-states in identity construction.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies
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eBook available
February 2016
Desires for Reality
Radicalism and Revolution in Western European Film
Halligan, B.
As with many aspects of European cultural life, film was galvanized and transformed by the revolutionary fervor of 1968. This groundbreaking study provides a full account of the era’s cinematic crises, innovations, and provocations, as well as the social and aesthetic contexts in which they appeared. The author mounts a genuinely fresh analysis of a contested period in which everything from the avant-garde experiments of Godard, Pasolini, Schroeter, and Fassbinder to the “low” cinematic genres of horror, pornography, and the Western reflected the cultural upheaval of youth in revolt—a cinema for the barricades.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
August 2008
Destination London
German-Speaking Emigrés and British Cinema, 1925-1950
Bergfelder, T. & Cargnelli, C. (eds)
The legacy of emigrés in the British film industry, from the silent film era until after the Second World War, has been largely neglected in the scholarly literature. Destination London is the first book to redress this imbalance. Focusing on areas such as exile, genre, technological transfer, professional training and education, cross-cultural exchange and representation, it begins by mapping the reasons for this neglect before examining the contributions made to British cinema by emigré directors, actors, screenwriters, cinematographers, set designers, and composers. It goes on to assess the cultural and economic contexts of transnational industry collaborations in the 1920s, artistic cosmopolitanism in the 1930s, and anti-Nazi propaganda in the 1940s.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Refugee and Migration Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
February 2016
The Devil's Riches
A Modern History of Greed
Poley, J.
A seeming constant in the history of capitalism, greed has nonetheless undergone considerable transformations over the last five hundred years. This multilayered account offers a fresh take on an old topic, arguing that greed was experienced as a moral phenomenon and deployed to make sense of an unjust world. Focusing specifically on the interrelated themes of religion, economics, and health—each of which sought to study and channel the power of financial desire—Jared Poley shows how evolving ideas about greed became formative elements of the modern experience.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
August 2016
The Devil's Wheels
Men and Motorcycling in the Weimar Republic
Disko, S.
During the high days of modernization fever, among the many disorienting changes Germans experienced in the Weimar Republic was an unprecedented mingling of consumption and identity: increasingly, what one bought signaled who one was. Exemplary of this volatile dynamic was the era’s burgeoning motorcycle culture. With automobiles largely a luxury of the upper classes, motorcycles complexly symbolized masculinity and freedom, embodying a widespread desire to embrace progress as well as profound anxieties over the course of social transformation. Through its richly textured account of the motorcycle as both icon and commodity, The Devil’s Wheels teases out the intricacies of gender and class in the Weimar years.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Gender Studies and Sexuality Transport Studies
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April 2010
Diamonds and War
State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine
De Vries, D.
The mining of diamonds, their trading mechanisms, their financial institutions, and, not least, their cultural expressions as luxury items have engaged the work of historians, economists, social scientists, and international relations experts. Based on previously unexamined historical documents found in archives in Belgium, England, Israel, the Netherlands, and the United States, this book is the first in English to tell the story of the formation of one of the world’s main strongholds of diamond production and trade in Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s. The history of the diamond-cutting industry, characterized by a long-standing Jewish presence, is discussed as a social history embedded in the international political economy of its times; the genesis of the industry in Palestine is placed on a broad continuum within the geographic and economic dislocations of Dutch, Belgian, and German diamond-cutting centers. In providing a micro-historical and interdisciplinary perspective, the story of the diamond industry in Mandate Palestine proposes a more nuanced picture of the uncritical approach to the strict boundaries of ethnic-based occupational communities. This book unravels the Middle-eastern pattern of state intervention in the empowerment of private capital and recasts this craft culture’s inseparability from international politics during a period of war and transformation of empire.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
November 2022
The Diary of Lt. Melvin J. Lasky
Into Germany at the End of World War II
Lerg, C. A. (ed.)
"'The Diary of Lt. Melvin J. Lasky' offers not only a panoramic view of a country poised between devastation and an uncertain future but a gripping self-portrait of a man poised between unresolved youthful bewilderment and a mature clarity of conviction." • Wall Street Journal
In 1945 Melvin J. Lasky, serving in one of the first American divisions that entered Germany after the country’s surrender, began documenting the everyday life of a defeated nation. Travelling widely across both Germany and post-war Europe, Lasky’s diary provides a captivating eye-witness account colored by ongoing socio-political debates and his personal background studying Trotskyism. The Diary of Lt. Melvin J. Lasky reproduces the diary’s vivid language as Lasky describes the ideological tensions between the East and West, as well as including critical essays on subjects ranging from Lasky’s life as a transatlantic intellectual, the role of war historians, and the diary as a literary genre.
Subjects: History: World War II History: 20th Century to Present Literary Studies
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eBook available
October 1999
Dictatorship as Experience
Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR
Jarausch, K. (ed)
A decade after the collapse of communism, this volume presents a historical reflection on the perplexing nature of the East German dictatorship. In contrast to most political rhetoric, it seeks to establish a middle ground between totalitarianism theory, stressing the repressive features of the SED-regime, and apologetics of the socialist experiment, emphasizing the normality of daily lives. The book transcends the polarization of public debate by stressing the tensions and contradictions within the East German system that combined both aspects by using dictatorial means to achieve its emancipatory aims. By analyzing a range of political, social, cultural, and chronological topics, the contributors sketch a differentiated picture of the GDR which emphasizes both its repressive and its welfare features. The sixteen original essays, especially written for this volume by historians from both east and west Germany, represent the cutting edge of current research and suggest new theoretical perspectives. They explore political, social, and cultural mechanisms of control as well as analyze their limits and discuss the mixture of dynamism and stagnation that was typical of the GDR.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
November 2022
Different from the Others
German and Dutch Discourses of Queer Femininity and Female Desire, 1918–1940
Sturgess, C.
For much of Europe, the interwar period was one of cultural expansion and diversion and increased visibility for lesbians. While historical research on Germany during the period immediately after the First World War has been extensively studied by historians through the lens of gender and sexuality—with an implicit emphasis on the “masculine” dimension of queer female sexuality—the Dutch context has been virtually ignored. Through careful and sensitive studies of medico‐social discourses, media representations, and literary depictions of queer femininity, Different from the Others recovers the submerged history of queer feminine women in both Germany and the Netherlands. Cyd Sturgess provides a theoretical analysis that makes key empirical contributions to the history of Dutch gays and lesbians while reframing our collective understanding of queer femininity more broadly.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History: World War I History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
December 2016
Different Germans, Many Germanies
New Transatlantic Perspectives
Jarausch, K. H., Wenzel, H., & Goihl, K. (eds)
As much as any other nation, Germany has long been understood in terms of totalizing narratives. For Anglo-American observers in particular, the legacies of two world wars still powerfully define twentieth-century German history, whether through the lens of Nazi-era militarism and racial hatred or the nation’s emergence as a “model” postwar industrial democracy. This volume transcends such common categories, bringing together transatlantic studies that are unburdened by the ideological and methodological constraints of previous generations of scholarship. From American perceptions of the Kaiserreich to the challenges posed by a multicultural Europe, it argues for—and exemplifies—an approach to German Studies that is nuanced, self-reflective, and holistic.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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August 1996
Different Restorations
Reconstruction and Wiederaufbau in the United States and Germany: 1865-1945-1989
Finzsch, N. & Martschukat, J. (eds)
This book responds to the frequently heard call for more comparative history .It does so by focusing on the problem of reconstruction in the national experience of the United States and Germany during three crucial periods: 1865-1945-1989. Accordingly, a group of internationally recognized experts was recruited to present their views on such themes as general problems of Reconstruction, on social issues such as race, class, and gender; on the question of war criminals and denazification and of national identity, sectionalism and regionalism.
Subject: History (General)
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January 2007
Disenchantment with Market Economics
East Germans and Western Capitalism
Müller, B.
The life-worlds and personal experiences of workers and employees in three enterprises in East Berlin at the moment of political and economic upheaval stand at the centre of the book. It sets out in 1989 at the moment of the fall of the Berlin Wall witnessing the confrontations with the market economy and examining the reinterpretations of the socialist past as the political and economic changes take place.
Disenchantment with Market Economics captures a unique moment in history and unveils myths and promises of liberal market economy from the perspective of those who lived through the break down of the planned economy at their workplaces in East Berlin. While Western managers regarded the expansion of their businesses towards Eastern Europe as a civilising mission, the East German employees reacted with complex strategies of individual adaptation and resistance.
Subjects: History (General) Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
March 2016
Disrupted Landscapes
State, Peasants and the Politics of Land in Postsocialist Romania
Dorondel, S.
The fall of the Soviet Union was a transformative event for the national political economies of Eastern Europe, leading not only to new regimes of ownership and development but to dramatic changes in the natural world itself. This painstakingly researched volume focuses on the emblematic case of postsocialist Romania, in which the transition from collectivization to privatization profoundly reshaped the nation’s forests, farmlands, and rivers. From bureaucrats abetting illegal deforestation to peasants opposing government agricultural policies, it reveals the social and political mechanisms by which neoliberalism was introduced into the Romanian landscape.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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March 2011
Diversity and Dissent
Negotiating Religious Difference in Central Europe, 1500-1800
Louthan, H., Cohen, G. B. & Szabo, F. A. J. (eds)
Early modern Central Europe was the continent’s most decentralized region politically and its most diverse ethnically and culturally. With the onset of the Reformation, it also became Europe’s most religiously divided territory and potentially its most explosive in terms of confessional conflict and war. Focusing on the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this volume examines the tremendous challenge of managing confessional diversity in Central Europe between 1500 and 1800. Addressing issues of tolerance, intolerance, and ecumenism, each chapter explores a facet of the complex dynamic between the state and the region’s Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Utraquist, and Jewish communities. The development of religious toleration—one of the most debated questions of the early modern period—is examined here afresh, with careful consideration of the factors and conditions that led to both confessional concord and religious violence.
Subject: History: Medieval/Early Modern
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eBook available
December 2010
Divided, But Not Disconnected
German Experiences of the Cold War
Hochscherf, T., Laucht, C. & Plowman, A. (eds)
The Allied agreement after the Second World War did not only partition Germany, it divided the nation along the fault-lines of a new bipolar world order. This inner border made Germany a unique place to experience the Cold War, and the “German question” in this post-1945 variant remained inextricably entwined with the vicissitudes of the Cold War until its end. This volume explores how social and cultural practices in both German states between 1949 and 1989 were shaped by the existence of this inner border, putting them on opposing sides of the ideological divide between the Western and Eastern blocs, as well as stabilizing relations between them. This volume’s interdisciplinary approach addresses important intersections between history, politics, and culture, offering an important new appraisal of the German experiences of the Cold War.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
August 2016
Divining History
Prophetism, Messianism and the Development of the Spirit
Svenungsson, J.
For millennia, messianic visions of redemption have inspired men and women to turn against unjust and oppressive orders. Yet these very same traditions are regularly decried as antecedents to the violent and authoritarian ideologies of modernity. Informed in equal parts by theology and historical theory, this book offers a provocative exploration of this double-edged legacy. Author Jayne Svenungsson rigorously pursues a middle path between utopian arrogance and an enervated postmodernism, assessing the impact of Jewish and Christian theologies of history on subsequent thinkers, and in the process identifying a web of spiritual and intellectual motifs extending from ancient Jewish prophets to contemporary radicals such as Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Zizek.
Subjects: Anthropology of Religion History (General)
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eBook available
June 2021
Do Not Forget Me
Three Jewish Mothers Write to Their Sons from the Thessaloniki Ghetto
Saltiel, L. (ed)
Following the Axis invasion of Greece, the Nazis began persecuting the country’s Jews much as they had across the rest of occupied Europe, beginning with small indignities and culminating in mass imprisonment and deportations. Among the many Jews confined to the Thessaloniki ghetto during this period were Sarina Saltiel, Mathilde Barouh, and Neama Cazes—three women bound for Auschwitz who spent the weeks before their deportation writing to their sons. Do Not Forget Me brings together these remarkable pieces of correspondence, shocking accounts of life in the ghetto with an emotional intensity rare even by the standards of Holocaust testimony.
Subjects: Jewish Studies History: World War II Genocide History
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February 2018
Doing Conceptual History in Africa
Fleisch, A. & Stephens, R. (eds)
Employing an innovative methodological toolkit, Doing Conceptual History in Africa provides a refreshingly broad and interdisciplinary approach to African historical studies. The studies assembled here focus on the complex role of language in Africa’s historical development, with a particular emphasis on pragmatics and semantics. From precolonial dynamics of wealth and poverty to the conceptual foundations of nationalist movements, each contribution strikes a balance between the local and the global, engaging with a distinctively African intellectual tradition while analyzing the regional and global contexts in which categories like “work,” “marriage,” and “land” take shape.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
June 2020
Don't Need No Thought Control
Western Culture in East Germany and the Fall of the Berlin Wall
Horten, G.
The fall of the Berlin Wall is typically understood as the culmination of political-economic trends that fatally weakened the East German state. Meanwhile, comparatively little attention has been paid to the cultural dimension of these dramatic events, particularly the role played by Western mass media and consumer culture. With a focus on the 1970s and 1980s, Don’t Need No Thought Control explores the dynamic interplay of popular unrest, intensifying economic crises, and cultural policies under Erich Honecker. It shows how the widespread influence of (and public demands for) Western cultural products forced GDR leaders into a series of grudging accommodations that undermined state power to a hitherto underappreciated extent.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies Cultural Studies (General) Film and Television Studies
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eBook available
April 2020
A Dramatic Reinvention
German Television and Moral Renewal after National Socialism, 1956–1970
Anderson, S.
Following World War II, Germany was faced not only with the practical tasks of reconstruction and denazification, but also with the longer-term mission of morally “re-civilizing” its citizens—a goal that persisted through the nation’s 1949 split. One of the most important mediums for effecting reeducation was television, whose strengths were particularly evident in the thousands of television plays that were broadcast in both Germanys in the 1950s and 1960s. This book shows how TV dramas transcended state boundaries and—notwithstanding the ideological differences between East and West—addressed shared issues and themes, helping to ease viewers into confronting uncomfortable moral topics.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Film and Television Studies Media Studies
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eBook available
December 2018
Dreams of Germany
Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor
Gregor, N. & Irvine, T. (eds)
For many centuries, Germany has enjoyed a reputation as the ‘land of music’. But just how was this reputation established and transformed over time, and to what extent was it produced within or outside of Germany? Through case studies that range from Bruckner to the Beatles and from symphonies to dance-club music, this volume looks at how German musicians and their audiences responded to the most significant developments of the twentieth century, including mass media, technological advances, fascism, and war on an unprecedented scale.
Subjects: Media Studies History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Performance Studies
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February 2007
Driving Germany
The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930-1970
Zeller, T.
Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.
Hitler's autobahn was more than just the pet project of an infrastructure-friendly dictator. It was supposed to revolutionize the transportation sector in Germany, connect the metropoles with the countryside, and encourage motorization. The propaganda machinery of the Third Reich turned the autobahn into a hyped-up icon of the dictatorship. One of the claims was that the roads would reconcile nature and technology. Rather than destroying the environment, they would embellish the landscape. Many historians have taken this claim at face value and concluded that the Nazi regime harbored an inbred love of nature. In this book, the author argues that such conclusions are misleading. Based on rich archival research, the book provides the first scholarly account of the landscape of the autobahn.
Subjects: Transport Studies History: 20th Century to Present Mobility Studies Environmental Studies (General)
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April 2017
Driving Modernity
Technology, Experts, Politics, and Fascist Motorways, 1922-1943
Moraglio, M.
On March 26th, 1923, in a formal ceremony, construction of the Milan–Alpine Lakes autostrada officially began, the preliminary step toward what would become the first European motorway. That Benito Mussolini himself participated in the festivities indicates just how important the project was to Italian Fascism. Driving Modernity recounts the twisting fortunes of the autostrada, which—alongside railways, aviation, and other forms of mobility—Italian authorities hoped would spread an ideology of technological nationalism. It explains how Italy ultimately failed to realize its mammoth infrastructural vision, addressing the political and social conditions that made a coherent plan of development impossible.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Mobility Studies Transport Studies
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May 2002
Dual Nationality, Social Rights and Federal Citizenship in the U.S. and Europe
The Reinvention of Citizenship
Hansen, R. & Weil, P. (eds)
Dual nationality has become one of the most divisive issues linked with the politics of migration in Germany and the US. This volume, the first one in decades to focus on this issue, examines the history, consequences and arguments for and against dual citizenship, and uses dual nationality as the basis of a reflection on important issues closely related to it: social rights, European citizenship and federal citizenship. It pays particular attention to questions such as: What are the major arguments in favor and against dual nationality? Why has dual nationality provoked such contrasting responses, being a non-issue in the UK, for instance, and an extremely controversial one in Germany? How is dual nationality used by states to influence politics and policy in other states? How does it relate to the aim of integrating ethnic migrants and to broader issues in social policy and European integration?
Subject: History (General)
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May 2006
The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America
The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley
Otto, P.
Employing a frontier framework, this book traces intercultural relations in the lower Hudson River valley of early seventeenth-century New Netherland. It explores the interaction between the Dutch and the Munsee Indians and considers how they, and individuals within each group, interacted, focusing in particular on how the changing colonial landscape affected their cultural encounter and Munsee cultural development. At each stage of European colonization - first contact, trade, and settlement - the Munsees faced evolving and changing challenges.
Understanding culture in terms of worldview and societal structures, this volume identifies ways in which Munsee society changed in an effort to adjust to the new intercultural relations and looks at the ways the Munsees maintained aspects of their own culture and resisted any imposition of Dutch societal structures and sovereignty over them. In addition, the book includes a suggestive afterword in which the author applies his frontier framework to Dutch-indigenous relations in the Cape colony.
Subjects: History: Medieval/Early Modern Colonial History Refugee and Migration Studies
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eBook available
August 2022
Dynamics of Emigration
Émigré Scholars and the Production of Historical Knowledge in the 20th Century
Berger, S. & Müller, P. (eds)
As a pioneering volume to consider the impact of exile on historical scholarship in the twentieth century in a systematic and global way, looking at Europe, North America, South America and Asia, Dynamics of Emigration asks about epistemic repercussions on the experience of exile and exiles. Analyzing both the impact that exile scholars had on their host societies and on the societies they had to leave, the volume investigates exiles’ pathways to integration into new host societies and the many difficulties they face establishing themselves in new surroundings. Focusing on the age of extremes and the realms of exile from fascist and right-wing dictatorships as well as communist regimes, the contributions look at the reasons scholars have for going into exile while providing side-by-side examination of the support organizations and paths for success involved with living in exile.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Refugee and Migration Studies
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October 2005
The Dynamics of German Industry
Germany's Path toward the New Economy and the American Challenge
Abelshauser, W.
Over the past decade, the "German Model" of industrial organization has been the subject of vigorous debate among social scientists and historians, especially in comparison to the American one. Is a "Rhenish capitalism" still viable at the beginning of the 21st century and does it offer a road to the New Economy different from the one, in which the standards are set by the U.S.? The author, one of Germany's leading economic historians, analyzes the special features of the German path to the New Economy as it faces the American challenge. He paints a fascinating picture of Germany Inc. and looks at the durability of some of its structures and the mentalities that undergird it. He sees a "culture clash" and argues against an underestimation of the dynamics of the German industrial system. A provocative book for all interested in comparative economics and those who have been inclined to dismiss the German Model as outmoded and weak.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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April 2013
Dynamics of Innovation
The Expansion of Technology in Modern Times
Caron, F.
BEST KNOWN AS THE LEADING HISTORIAN OF FRENCH RAILWAYS, François Caron has also conducted significant research on other aspects of economic development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as electricity, water and steam power, the theory of innovation, and the structure of enterprise. In this volume, he brings together different facets of his expertise to present a broad panorama of modern technological history. Caron shows how artisanal know-how was adapted, expanded, and formalized during the three industrial revolutions that swept over Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, resulting in a comprehensive analysis of this long, complex, and continuous historical process, leading up to the twenty-first century. He thereby illustrates the increasingly fruitful interaction between technological and scientific knowledge in modern times.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
March 2013
Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe
Langenbacher, E., Niven, B., & Wittlinger, R. (eds)
The collapse of the Iron Curtain, the renationalization of eastern Europe, and the simultaneous eastward expansion of the European Union have all impacted the way the past is remembered in today’s eastern Europe. At the same time, in recent years, the Europeanization of Holocaust memory and a growing sense of the need to stage a more “self-critical” memory has significantly changed the way in which western Europe commemorates and memorializes the past. The increasing dissatisfaction among scholars with the blanket, undifferentiated use of the term “collective memory” is evolving in new directions. This volume brings the tension into focus while addressing the state of memory theory itself.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Memory Studies
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March 2004
An Earth-colored Sea
'Race', Culture and the Politics of Identity in the Post-Colonial Portuguese-Speaking World
Vale de Almeida, M.
Although the post-colonial situation has attracted considerable interest over recent years, one important colonial power – Portugal – has not been given any attention. This book is the first to explore notions of ethnicity, "race", culture, and nation in the context of the debate on colonialism and postcolonialism. The structure of the book reflects a trajectory of research, starting with a case study in Trinidad, followed by another one in Brazil, and ending with yet another one in Portugal. The three case studies, written in the ethnographic genre, are intertwined with essays of a more theoretical nature. The non-monographic, composite – or hybrid – nature of this work may be in itself an indication of the need for transnational and historically grounded research when dealing with issues of representations of identity that were constructed during colonial times and that are today reconfigured in the ideological struggles over cultural meanings.
Subjects: Colonial History Anthropology (General) Sociology
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eBook available
April 2021
East German Film and the Holocaust
Ward, E.
East Germany’s ruling party never officially acknowledged responsibility for the crimes committed in Germany’s name during the Third Reich. Instead, it cast communists as both victims of and victors over National Socialist oppression while marginalizing discussions of Jewish suffering. Yet for the 1977 Academy Awards, the Ministry of Culture submitted Jakob der Lügner – a film focused exclusively on Jewish victimhood that would become the only East German film to ever be officially nominated. By combining close analyses of key films with extensive archival research, this book explores how GDR filmmakers depicted Jews and the Holocaust in a country where memories of Nazi persecution were highly prescribed, tightly controlled and invariably political.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present
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October 2010
The East German State and the Catholic Church, 1945-1989
Schaefer, B.
From 1945 to 1989, relations between the communist East German state and the Catholic Church were contentious and sometimes turbulent. Drawing on extensive Stasi materials and other government and party archives, this study provides the first systematic overview of this complex relationship and offers many new insights into the continuities, changes, and entanglements of policies and strategies on both sides. Previously undiscovered records in church archives contribute to an analysis of regional and sectoral conflicts within the Church and various shades of cooperation between nominal antagonists. The volume also explores relations between the GDR and the Vatican and addresses the oft-neglected communist “church business” controversially made in exchange for hard Western currency.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
October 2017
Eastern Europe Unmapped
Beyond Borders and Peripheries
Kacandes, I. & Komska, Y. (eds)
Arguably more than any other region, the area known as Eastern Europe has been defined by its location on the map. Yet its inhabitants, from statesmen to literati and from cultural-economic elites to the poorest emigrants, have consistently forged or fathomed links to distant lands, populations, and intellectual traditions. Through a series of inventive cultural and historical explorations, Eastern Europe Unmapped dispenses with scholars’ long-time preoccupation with national and regional borders, instead raising provocative questions about the area’s non-contiguous—and frequently global or extraterritorial—entanglements.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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eBook available
May 2021
Echoes of Surrealism
Challenging Socialist Realism in East German Literature, 1945–1990
Berendse, G.-J.
For many artists and intellectuals in East Germany, daily life had an undeniably surreal aspect, from the numbing repetition of Communist Party jargon to the fear and paranoia engendered by the Stasi. Echoes of Surrealism surveys the ways in which a sense of the surreal infused literature and art across the lifespan of the GDR, focusing on individual authors, visual artists, directors, musicians, and other figures who have employed surrealist techniques in their work. It provides a new framework for understanding East German culture, exploring aesthetic practices that offered an alternative to rigid government policies and questioned and confronted the status quo.
Subjects: Literary Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2010
The Economic Diplomacy of Ostpolitik
Origins of NATO's Energy Dilemma
Lippert, W. D.
Despite the consensus that economic diplomacy played a crucial role in ending the Cold War, very little research has been done on the economic diplomacy during the crucial decades of the 1970s and 1980s. This book fills the gap by exploring the complex interweaving of East–West political and economic diplomacies in the pursuit of détente. The focus on German chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik reveals how its success was rooted in the usage of energy trade and high tech exchanges with the Soviet Union. His policies and visions are contrasted with those of U.S. President Richard Nixon and the Realpolitik of Henry Kissinger. The ultimate failure to coordinate these rivaling détente policies, and the resulting divide on how to deal with the Soviet Union, left NATO with an energy dilemma between American and European partners—one that has resurfaced in the 21st century with Russia’s politicization of energy trade. This book is essential for anyone interested in exploring the interface of international diplomacy, economic interest, and alliance cohesion.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2010
The Economy in Jewish History
New Perspectives on the Interrelationship between Ethnicity and Economic Life
Reuveni, G. & Wobick-Segev, S. (eds)
Jewish historiography tends to stress the religious, cultural, and political aspects of the past. By contrast the “economy” has been pushed to the margins of the Jewish discourse and scholarship since the end of the Second World War. This volume takes a fresh look at Jews and the economy, arguing that a broader, cultural approach is needed to understand the central importance of the economy. The very dynamics of economy and its ability to function depend on the ability of individuals to interact, and on the shared values and norms that are fostered within ethnic communities. Thus this volume sheds new light on the interrelationship between religion, ethnicity, culture, and the economy, revealing the potential of an “economic turn” in the study of history.
Subjects: History (General) Jewish Studies
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eBook available
September 2022
Edible People
The Historical Consumption of Slaves and Foreigners and the Cannibalistic Trade in Human Flesh
Siefkes, C.
While human cannibalism has attracted considerable notice and controversy, certain aspects of the practice have received scant attention. These include the connection between cannibalism and xenophobia: the capture and consumption of unwanted strangers. Likewise ignored is the connection to slavery: the fact that in some societies slaves and persons captured in slave raids could be, and were, killed and eaten. This book explores these largely forgotten practices and ignored connections while making explicit the links between cannibal acts, imperialist influences and the role of capitalist trading practices. These are highly important for the history of the slave trade and for understanding the colonialist history of Africa.
Subjects: Food & Nutrition Anthropology (General) Colonial History
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December 2011
Education Policy and Equal Opportunity in Japan
Okada, A.
In many societies today, educational aims or goals are commonly characterized in terms of “equality,” “equal opportunity,” “equal access” or “equal rights,” the underlying assumption being that “equality” in some form is an intelligible and sensible educational ideal. Yet, there are different views and lively debates about what sort of equality should be pursued; in particular, the issue of equality of educational opportunity has served as justification for much of the postwar restructuring of educational systems around the world. The author explores different interpretations of the concept of equality of educational opportunity in Japan, especially as applied to post-World War II educational policies. By focusing on the positions taken by key actors such as the major political parties, central administrative bodies, teachers’ unions, and scholars, he describes how their concepts have developed over time and in what way they relate to the making of educational policy, especially in light of Japan’s falling birthrate and aging society.
Subjects: Educational Studies History (General) Sociology
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eBook available
November 2018
Embers of Empire
Continuity and Rupture in the Habsburg Successor States after 1918
Miller, P. & Morelon, C. (eds)
The collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy at the end of World War I ushered in a period of radical change for East-Central European political structures and national identities. Yet this transformed landscape inevitably still bore the traces of its imperial past. Breaking with traditional histories that take 1918 as a strict line of demarcation, this collection focuses on the complexities that attended the transition from the Habsburg Empire to its successor states. In so doing, it produces new and more nuanced insights into the persistence and effectiveness of imperial institutions, as well as the sources of instability in the newly formed nation-states.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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July 2008
Embodiments of Power
Building Baroque Cities in Europe
Cohen, G. B. & Szabo, F. A. J. (eds)
The period of the baroque (late sixteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries) saw extensive reconfiguration of European cities and their public spaces. Yet, this transformation cannot be limited merely to signifying a style of art, architecture, and decor. Rather, the dynamism, emotionality, and potential for grandeur that were inherent in the baroque style developed in close interaction with the need and desire of post-Reformation Europeans to find visual expression for the new political, confessional, and societal realities. Highly illustrated, this volume examines these complex interrelationships among architecture and art, power, religion, and society from a wide range of viewpoints and localities. From Krakow to Madrid and from Naples to Dresden, cities were reconfigured visually as well as politically and socially. Power, in both its political and architectural guises, had to be negotiated among constituents ranging from monarchs and high churchmen to ordinary citizens. Within this process, both rulers and ruled were transformed: Europe left behind the last vestiges of the medieval and arrived on the threshold of the modern.
Subjects: History: Medieval/Early Modern History: 18th/19th Century Urban Studies
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March 2002
Emerging Themes and Institutional Responses
Caciagli, M. & Zuckerman, A.S. (eds)
Italian politics continue to chart new institutional paths. As governments change without the apparent instability of previous decades, political parties transform themselves and personalist modes of governance emerge. New policy concerns - immigration and highway safety - join with perennial concerns - health reform, regional governments, and economic policy. A former Prime Minister, Roman Prodi, now serves as President of the European Commission, highlighting Italy's deepening integration into the European Union. The volume addresses core themes in the institutional transformation of the Italian Republic.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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April 2010
Emotions in American History
An International Assessment
Gienow-Hecht, J. C. (ed)
The study of emotions has attracted anew the interest of scholars in various disciplines, igniting a lively public debate on the constructive and destructive power of emotions in society as well as within each of us. Most of the contributors to this volume do not hail from the United States but look at the nation from abroad. They explore the role of emotions in history and ask how that exploration changes what we know about national and international history, and in turn how that affects the methodological study of history. In particular they focus on emotions in American history between the 18th century and the present: in war, in social and political discourse, as well as in art and the media. In addition to case studies, the volume includes a review of their fields by senior scholars, who offer new insights regarding future research projects.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
July 2018
Empathy and History
Historical Understanding in Re-enactment, Hermeneutics and Education
Retz, T.
Empathy and History offers a comprehensive and dual account of empathy’s intellectual and educational history. Beginning in an influential educational movement that implanted the concept in R.G. Collingwood’s re-enactment doctrine, the book goes back to reveal the fundamental role that empathy played in the foundation of the history discipline before tracing its reception and development in twentieth-century hermeneutics and philosophy of history. Attentive to matters of practice, it illuminates the distinct character of the historical context that empathetic understanding seeks to capture and sets out a new approach to empathy as a special variety of historical questioning.
Subjects: History (General) Educational Studies
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eBook available
August 2015
The Emperor's Old Clothes
Constitutional History and the Symbolic Language of the Holy Roman Empire
Stollberg-Rilinger, B.
For many years, scholars struggled to write the history of the constitution and political structure of the Holy Roman Empire. This book argues that this was because the political and social order could not be understood without considering the rituals and symbols that held the Empire together. What determined the rules (and whether they were followed) depended on complex symbolic-ritual actions. By examining key moments in the political history of the Empire, the author shows that it was a vocabulary of symbols, not the actual written laws, that formed a political language indispensable in maintaining the common order.
Subject: History: Medieval/Early Modern
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eBook available
October 2007
Empire and After
Englishness in Postcolonial Perspective
MacPhee, G. & Poddar, P. (eds)
The growing debate over British national identity, and the place of "Englishness" within it, raises crucial questions about multiculturalism, postimperial culture and identity, and the past and future histories of globalization. However, discussions of Englishness have too often been limited by insular conceptions of national literature, culture, and history, which serve to erase or marginalize the colonial and postcolonial locations in which British national identity has been articulated. This volume breaks new ground by drawing together a range of disciplinary approaches in order to resituate the relationship between British national identity and Englishness within a global framework. Ranging from the literature and history of empire to analyses of contemporary culture, postcolonial writing, political rhetoric, and postimperial memory after 9/11, this collection demonstrates that far from being parochial or self-involved, the question of Englishness offers an important avenue for thinking about the politics of national identity in our postcolonial and globalized world.
Subjects: Colonial History Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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eBook available
December 2015
Empire of Pictures
Global Media and the 1960s Remaking of American Foreign Policy
Kunkel, S.
In Cold War historiography, the 1960s are often described as a decade of mounting diplomatic tensions and international social unrest. At the same time, they were a period of global media revolution: communication satellites compressed time and space, television spread around the world, and images circulated through print media in expanding ways. Examining how U.S. policymakers exploited these changes, this book offers groundbreaking international research into the visual media battles that shaped America's Cold War from West Germany and India to Tanzania and Argentina.
Subjects: Media Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
June 2008
Empire, Colony, Genocide
Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History
Moses, A. D. (ed)
In 1944, Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” to describe a foreign occupation that destroyed or permanently crippled a subject population. In this tradition, Empire, Colony, Genocide embeds genocide in the epochal geopolitical transformations of the past 500 years: the European colonization of the globe, the rise and fall of the continental land empires, violent decolonization, and the formation of nation states. It thereby challenges the customary focus on twentieth-century mass crimes and shows that genocide and “ethnic cleansing” have been intrinsic to imperial expansion. The complexity of the colonial encounter is reflected in the contrast between the insurgent identities and genocidal strategies that subaltern peoples sometimes developed to expel the occupiers, and those local elites and creole groups that the occupiers sought to co-opt. Presenting case studies on the Americas, Australia, Africa, Asia, the Ottoman Empire, Imperial Russia, and the Nazi “Third Reich,” leading authorities examine the colonial dimension of the genocide concept as well as the imperial systems and discourses that enabled conquest. Empire, Colony, Genocide is a world history of genocide that highlights what Lemkin called “the role of the human group and its tribulations.”
Subjects: Genocide History Colonial History
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eBook available
June 2013
Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J.
Global imperial designs, which have been in place since conquest by western powers, did not suddenly evaporate after decolonization. Global coloniality as a leitmotif of the empire became the order of the day, with its invisible technologies of subjugation continuing to reproduce Africa’s subaltern position, a position characterized by perceived deficits ranging from a lack of civilization, a lack of writing and a lack of history to a lack of development, a lack of human rights and a lack of democracy. The author’s sharply critical perspective reveals how this epistemology of alterity has kept Africa ensnared within colonial matrices of power, serving to justify external interventions in African affairs, including the interference with liberation struggles and disregard for African positions. Evaluating the quality of African responses and available options, the author opens up a new horizon that includes cognitive justice and new humanism.
Subject: Colonial History
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eBook available
March 2020
Empty Signs, Historical Imaginaries
The Entangled Nationalization of Names and Naming in a Late Habsburg Borderland
Berecz, Á.
Set in a multiethnic region of the nineteenth-century Habsburg Empire, this thoroughly interdisciplinary study maps out how the competing Romanian, Hungarian and German nationalization projects dealt with proper names. With particular attention to their function as symbols of national histories, Berecz makes a case for names as ideal guides for understanding historical imaginaries and how they operate socially. In tracing the changing fortunes of nationalization movements and the ways in which their efforts were received by mass constituencies, he provides an innovative and compelling account of the historical utilization, manipulation, and contestation of names.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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July 2009
Encounter, Transformation, and Identity
Peoples of the Western Cameroon Borderlands, 1891-2000
Fowler, I. & Fanso, V. (eds)
Bringing together key historical and innovative ethnographic materials on the peoples of the South-West Province of Cameroon and the Nigerian borderlands, this volume presents critical and analytical approaches to the production of ethnic, political, religious, and gendered identities in the region. The contributors examine a range of issues relating to identity, including first encounters and conflict as well as global networking, trans-national families, enculturation, gender, resistance, and death. In addition to a number of very striking illustrations of ethnographic and material culture, this volume contains key maps from early German sources and other original cartographical materials.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History
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eBook available
June 2019
Encounters with Emotions
Negotiating Cultural Differences since Early Modernity
Gammerl, B., Nielsen, P., & Pernau, M. (eds)
Spanning Europe, Asia and the Pacific, Encounters with Emotions investigates experiences of face-to-face transcultural encounters from the seventeenth century to the present and the emotional dynamics that helped to shape them. Each of the case studies collected here investigates fascinating historiographical questions that arise from the study of emotion, from the strategies people have used to interpret and understand each other’s emotions to the roles that emotions have played in obstructing communication across cultural divides. Together, they explore the cultural aspects of nature as well as the bodily dimensions of nurture and trace the historical trajectories that shape our understandings of current cultural boundaries and effects of globalization.
Subjects: History (General) Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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June 2014
Encounters with Modernity
The Catholic Church in West Germany, 1945-1975
Ziemann, B.
During the three decades from 1945 to 1975, the Catholic Church in West Germany employed a broad range of methods from empirical social research. Statistics, opinion polling, and organizational sociology, as well as psychoanalysis and other approaches from the “psy sciences,” were debated and introduced in pastoral care. In adopting these methods for their own work, bishops, parish clergy, and pastoral sociologists tried to open the church up to modernity in a rapidly changing society. In the process, they contributed to the reform agenda of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Through its analysis of the intersections between organized religion and applied social sciences, this award-winning book offers fascinating insights into the trajectory of the Catholic Church in postwar Germany.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
December 2022
End Game
The 1989 Revolution in East Germany
Kowalczuk, I.-S.
The fall of the Berlin Wall, and the chain of events leading up to it, arguably constitute one of the most thoroughly documented episodes in recent history. Nonetheless, most accounts have focused predominantly on high-level politics and diplomacy along with the most dramatic and photogenic public displays. End Game, a rich, sweeping account of the autumn of 1989 as it was experienced “on the ground” in the German Democratic Republic, powerfully depicting the desolation and dysfunction that shaped everyday life for so many East Germans in the face of economic disruption and political impotence. Citizens’ frustration mounted until it bubbled over in the form of massive demonstrations and other forms of protest. Following the story up to the first free elections in March 1990, the volume combines abundant detail with sharp analysis and helps us to see this familiar historical moment through new eyes.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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January 2007
The End of the Berlusconi Era?
Amyot, G., & Verzichelli, L. (eds)
While Italian politics may appear on the surface to be evolving towards a Westminster model with right- and left-wing blocs alternating in power, this impression is belied by the often nervous and disconnected way in which events unfolded in 2005. In some respects, 2005 was a classic pre-electoral year, in which the pattern of 2000 repeated itself with the roles of government and opposition reversed: the center-left coalition scored a decisive victory in the regional elections in April, provoking a crisis that ended Silvio Berlusconi’s second government, the longest-serving cabinet since the foundation of the Republic in 1948. Berlusconi was able to quickly form a new government, and went on to reform the electoral system in a way that would give him the maximum advantage in the 2006 general election, and to introduce a series of policy initiatives geared more to his own re-election than to real reform. However, while the center-right majority was able to hold together and the center-left was strengthened by its electoral victories and the astonishing success of the primaries held to choose Romano Prodi as its candidate for prime minister, conflict and divisions persisted within both coalitions, leaving the prospect of the development of a stable bipolar system in Italy still in doubt.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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January 1998
Enemy Images in American History
Fiebig-von Hase, R. & Lehmkuhl, U. (eds)
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
April 2019
The Engaged Historian
Perspectives on the Intersections of Politics, Activism and the Historical Profession
Berger, S. (ed)
On the surface, historical scholarship might seem thoroughly incompatible with political engagement: the ideal historian, many imagine, is a disinterested observer focused exclusively on the past. In truth, however, political action and historical research have been deeply intertwined for as long as the historical profession has existed. In this insightful collection, practicing historians analyze, reflect on, and share their experiences of this complex relationship. From the influence of historical scholarship on world political leaders to the present-day participation of researchers in post-conflict societies and the Occupy movement, these studies afford distinctive, humane, and stimulating views on historical practice and practitioners
Subjects: History (General) Peace and Conflict Studies Sociology
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September 2019
Entangled Entertainers
Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
Hödl, K.
Viennese popular culture at the turn of the twentieth century was the product of the city’s Jewish and non-Jewish residents alike. While these two communities interacted in a variety of ways to their mutual benefit, Jewish culture was also inevitably shaped by the city’s persistent bouts of antisemitism. This fascinating study explores how Jewish artists, performers, and impresarios reacted to prejudice, showing how they articulated identity through performative engagement rather than anchoring it in origin and descent. In this way, they attempted to transcend a racialized identity even as they indelibly inscribed their Jewish existence into the cultural history of the era.
Subjects: Jewish Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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August 2023
Entertaining German Culture
German Cultural History and Contemporary Transnational Television and Film
Ehrig, S., Schaper, B. & Ward, E. (eds)
Audiences for contemporary German film and television are becoming increasingly transnational, and depictions of German cultural history are moving beyond the typical post-war focus on German’s problematic past. Entertaining German Culture explores this radical shift, building on recent research into transnational culture to argue that a new process of internal and external cultural reabsorption is taking place through areas of mutually assimilating cultural exchange such as streaming services, an increasingly international film market, and the import and export of Anglo-American media formats.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Media Studies History (General)
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April 2022
Environing Empire
Nature, Infrastructure and the Making of German Southwest Africa
Kalb, M.
Even leaving aside the vast death and suffering that it wrought on indigenous populations, German ambitions to transform Southwest Africa in the early part of the twentieth century were futile for most. For years colonists wrestled ocean waters, desert landscapes, and widespread aridity as they tried to reach inland in their effort of turning outwardly barren lands into a profitable settler colony. In his innovative environmental history, Martin Kalb outlines the development of the colony up to World War I, deconstructing the common settler narrative, all to reveal the importance of natural forces and the Kaisereich’s everyday violence.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Environmental Studies (General)
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eBook available
June 2006
The Environment and Sustainable Development in the New Central Europe
Bochniarz, Z. & Cohen G. (eds)
With the enlargement of the European Union, the accession countries are coming under pressure to develop and meet EU standards for environmental protection and sustainable development. In this ongoing process, global economic liberalization, regulatory policy, conservation, and lifestyle issues are all involved, and creative solutions will have to be found. Historians, geographers, economists, ecologists, business management experts, public policy specialists, and community organizers have come together in this volume and examine, for the first time, environmental issues ranging from national and regional policy and macroeconomics to local studies in community regeneration. The evidence suggests that, far from being mere passive recipients of instruction and assistance from outside, the people of Central and East Central Europe have been engaged actively in working out solutions to these problems. Several promising cases illustrate opportunities to overcome crisis situations and offer examples of good practices, while others pose warnings. The experiences of these countries in wrestling with issues of sustainability continue to be of importance to policy development within the EU and may serve also as examples for both developed and developing countries worldwide.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
August 2008
Environmental Organizations in Modern Germany
Hardy Survivors in the Twentieth Century and Beyond
Markham, W. T.
German environmental organizations have doggedly pursued environmental protection through difficult times: hyperinflation and war, National Socialist rule, postwar devastation, state socialism in the GDR, and confrontation with the authorities during the 1970s and 1980s. The author recounts the fascinating and sometimes dramatic story of these organizations from their origins at the end of the nineteenth century to the present, not only describing how they reacted to powerful social movements, including the homeland protection and socialist movements in the early years of the twentieth century, the Nazi movement, and the anti-nuclear and new social movements of the 1970s and 1980s, but also examining strategies for survival in periods like the current one, when environmental concerns are not at the top of the national agenda. Previous analyses of environmental organizations have almost invariably viewed them as parts of larger social structures, that is, as components of social movements, as interest groups within a political system, or as contributors to civil society. This book, by contrast, starts from the premise that through the use of theories developed specifically to analyze the behavior of organizations and NGOs we can gain additional insight into why environmental organizations behave as they do.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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October 2011
Ernst L. Freud, Architect
The Case of the Modern Bourgeois Home
Welter, V. M.
Ernst L. Freud (1892–1970) was a son of Sigmund Freud and the father of painter Lucian Freud and the late Sir Clement Freud, politician and broadcaster. After his studies in Munich and Vienna, where he and his friend Richard Neutra attended Adolf Loos’s private Bauschule, Freud practiced in Berlin and, after 1933, in London. Even though his work focused on domestic architecture and interiors, Freud was possibly the first architect to design psychoanalytical consulting rooms—including the customary couches—a subject dealt with here for the first time. By interweaving an account of Freud’s professional and personal life in Vienna, Berlin, and London with a critical discussion of selected examples of his domestic architecture, interior designs, and psychoanalytic consulting rooms, the author offers a rich tapestry of Ernst L. Freud’s world. His clients constituted a “Who’s Who” of the Jewish and non-Jewish bourgeoisie in 1920s Berlin and later in London, among them the S. Fischer publisher family, Melanie Klein, Ernest Jones, the Spenders, and Julian Huxley. While moving within a social class known for its cultural and avant-garde activities, Freud refrained from spatial, formal, or technological experiments. Instead, he focused on creating modern homes for his bourgeois clients.
Subjects: Urban Studies Cultural Studies (General) History (General)
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eBook available
April 2007
Escape From Hell
The True Story of the Auschwitz Protocol
Wetzler, A.
A shocking account of Nazi genocide and the inhuman conditions in Auschwitz, but equally shocking is the initial disbelief with which the revelations were met.
“Alfred Wetzler was a true hero. His escape from Auschwitz, and the report he helped compile, telling for the first time the truth about the camp as a place of mass murder, led directly to saving the lives of 120,000 Jews…. No other single act in the Second World War saved so many Jews from the fate that Hitler and the SS had determined for them.”—Sir Martin Gilbert
Together with another young Slovak Jew Rudolf Vrba, both deported in 1942, the author succeeded in escaping from the notorious death camp in the spring of 1944. There were some very few successful escapes from Auschwitz during the war, but it was these two who smuggled out the damning evidence – a ground plan of the camp, constructional details of the gas chambers and crematoriums and, most convincingly, a label from a canister of Cyclone gas.
The book is cast in the form of a novel to allow information not personally collected by the two fugitives but provided for them by a handful of reliable friends, to be included. Nothing, however, has been invented.
From the Introduction by Dr. Robert Rozett
Wetzler is a master at evoking the universe of Auschwitz, and especially, his and Vrba's harrowing flight to Slovakia. The day-by-day account of the tremendous difficulties the pair faced after the Nazis had called off their search of the camp and its surroundings is both riveting and heart wrenching. [...] Shining vibrantly through the pages of the memoir are the tenacity and valor of two young men, who sought to inform the world about the greatest outrage ever committed by humans against their fellow humans.Subjects: Jewish Studies History: World War II Literary Studies
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eBook available
September 2020
Estates and Constitution
The Parliament in Eighteenth-Century Hungary
Szijártó, I. M.
Across eighteenth-century Europe, political power resided overwhelmingly with absolute monarchs, with notable exceptions including the much-studied British Parliament as well as the frequently overlooked Hungarian Diet, which placed serious constraints on royal power and broadened opportunities for political participation. Estates and Constitution provides a rich account of Hungarian politics during this period, restoring the Diet to its rightful place as one of the era’s major innovations in government. István M. Szijártó traces the religious, economic, and partisan forces that shaped the Diet, putting its historical significance in international perspective.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
January 2018
The Ethics of Seeing
Photography and Twentieth-Century German History
Evans, J., Betts P., & Hoffmann, S.-L. (eds)
Throughout Germany’s tumultuous twentieth century, photography was an indispensable form of documentation. Whether acting as artists, witnesses, or reformers, both professional and amateur photographers chronicled social worlds through successive periods of radical upheaval. The Ethics of Seeing brings together an international group of scholars to explore the complex relationship between the visual and the historic in German history. Emphasizing the transformation of the visual arena and the ways in which ordinary people made sense of world events, these revealing case studies illustrate photography’s multilayered role as a new form of representation, a means to subjective experience, and a fresh mode of narrating the past.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies
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January 2001
Ethnic Conflict and Indoctrination
Altruism and Identity in Evolutionary Perspectives
Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. & Salter, F. (eds)
Violent ethno-nationalist conflicts continue to mar the history of the current century, yet no satisfactory answer to the question of why humans are susceptible to indoctrination by ideologies that lead to inter-group hostility has so far been found. In this volume an international team of leading scientists from many different fields approach this complex issue from a biological perspective, treating indoctrinability as a predisposition that has its roots in humanity's evolutionary past.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
June 2022
Ethnographers Before Malinowski
Pioneers of Anthropological Fieldwork, 1870-1922
Rosa, F. & Vermeulen, H. F. (eds)
Focusing on some of the most important ethnographers in early anthropology, this volume explores twelve defining works in the foundational period from 1870 to 1922. It challenges the assumption that intensive fieldwork and monographs based on it emerged only in the twentieth century. What has been regarded as the age of armchair anthropologists was in reality an era of active ethnographic fieldworkers, including women practitioners and Indigenous experts. Their accounts have multiple layers of meaning, style, and content that deserve fresh reading. This reference work is a vital source for rewriting the history of anthropology.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) History (General) Colonial History
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eBook available
June 2014
The Ethnographic Experiment
A.M. Hocart and W.H.R. Rivers in Island Melanesia, 1908
Hviding, E. & Berg, C. (eds)
In 1908, Arthur Maurice Hocart and William Halse Rivers Rivers conducted fieldwork in the Solomon Islands and elsewhere in Island Melanesia that served as the turning point in the development of modern anthropology. The work of these two anthropological pioneers on the small island of Simbo brought about the development of participant observation as a methodological hallmark of social anthropology. This would have implications for Rivers’ later work in psychiatry and psychology, and Hocart’s work as a comparativist, for which both would largely be remembered despite the novelty of that independent fieldwork on remote Pacific islands in the early years of the 20th Century. Contributors to this volume—who have all carried out fieldwork in those Melanesian locations where Hocart and Rivers worked—give a critical examination of the research that took place in 1908, situating those efforts in the broadest possible contexts of colonial history, imperialism, the history of ideas and scholarly practice within and beyond anthropology.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History
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eBook available
June 2018
The Ethos of History
Time and Responsibility
Helgesson, S. & Svenungsson, J. (eds)
At a time when rapidly evolving technologies, political turmoil, and the tensions inherent in multiculturalism and globalization are reshaping historical consciousness, what is the proper role for historians and their work? By way of an answer, the contributors to this volume offer up an illuminating collective meditation on the idea of ethos and its relevance for historical practice. These intellectually adventurous essays demonstrate how ethos—a term evoking a society’s “fundamental character” as well as an ethical appeal to knowledge and commitment—can serve as a conceptual lodestar for history today, not only as a narrative, but as a form of consciousness and an ethical-political orientation.
Subject: History (General)
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December 1994
Europe After Maastricht
American and European Perspectives
Lützeler, P. M. (ed)
During the era following the Second World War world peace was largely assured through American-European cooperation on the political, military, and economic level. This status quo was upset by the ratification of the Treaty on the European Union (Maastricht Treaty) which will, whatever obstacles still remain, inevitably lead to closer cooperation among (west)European countries and to a shift in Europe's position within world politics. This raises a number of questions that are discussed in this volume by an international team of experts from Europe (east and west), Russia and the United States.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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April 2009
Europe At the Seaside
The Economic History of Mass Tourism in the Mediterranean
Segreto, L., Manera, C. & Pohl, M. (eds)
Mass tourism is one of the most striking developments in postwar western societies, involving economic, social, cultural, and anthropological factors. For many countries it has become a significant, if not the primary, source of income for the resident population. The Mediterranean basin, which has long been a very popular destination, is explored here in the first study to scrutinize the region as a whole and over a long period of time. In particular, it investigates the area’s economic and social networks directly involved in tourism, which includes examining the most popular spots that attract tourists and the crucial actors, such as hotel entrepreneurs, travel agencies, charter companies, and companies developing seaside resort networks. This important volume presents a fascinating picture of the economics of tourism in one of the world’s most visited destinations.
Subject: History (General)
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January 2001
Europe in 1848
Revolution and Reform
Dowe, D., Haupt, H.-G., Langewiesche, D. & Sperber, J. (eds)
The events of 1989/90 in Europe demonstrated the renewed relevance of the mid-nineteenth century uprisings: both by showing, once again, how a revolutionary initiative could quickly spread through different European countries, but also by calling into question the nature of revolution and the criteria for a revolution's success and failure. To commemorate the 1848 revolution in a spirit of renewed critical inquiry, an international team of prominent historians have come together to produce what must be the most comprehensive work on this topic to date and to offer a synthesis that sums up the current state of scholarly research, emphasizing the many new interpretations that have developed over several decades.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
October 2012
Europe in Crisis
Intellectuals and the European Idea, 1917-1957
Hewitson, M. & D'Auria, M. (eds)
The period between 1917 and 1957, starting with the birth of the USSR and the American intervention in the First World War and ending with the Treaty of Rome, is of the utmost importance for contextualizing and understanding the intellectual origins of the European Community. During this time of 'crisis,' many contemporaries, especially intellectuals, felt they faced a momentous decision which could bring about a radically different future. The understanding of what Europe was and what it should be was questioned in a profound way, forcing Europeans to react. The idea of a specifically European unity finally became, at least for some, a feasible project, not only to avoid another war but to avoid the destruction of the idea of European unity. This volume reassesses the relationship between ideas of Europe and the European project and reconsiders the impact of long and short-term political transformations on assumptions about the continent’s scope, nature, role and significance.
Subject: History (General)
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August 2001
Europe in Exile
European Exile Communities in Britain 1940-45
Conway, M. & Gotovitch, J. (eds)
During World War II, London was transformed into a European city, as it unexpectedly became a place of refuge for many thousands of European citizens who through choice or the accidents of war found themselves seeking refuge in Britain from the military campaigns on the Continent of Europe. In this volume, an international team of historians consider the exile groups from Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Norway and Czechoslovakia, analysing not merely the relations between the plethora of exile regimes and the British government in terms of its military and social dimensions but also the legacy of this period of exile for the politics of post-war Europe. Particular attention is paid to the Belgian exiles, the most numerous exile population in Britain during World War II.
Subjects: History: World War II History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
August 2017
European Anthropologies
Barrera-González, A., Heintz, M. & Horolets, A. (eds)
In what ways did Europeans interact with the diversity of people they encountered on other continents in the context of colonial expansion, and with the peasant or ethnic ‘Other’ at home? How did anthropologists and ethnologists make sense of the mosaic of people and societies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when their disciplines were progressively being established in academia? By assessing the diversity of European intellectual histories within sociocultural anthropology, this volume aims to sketch its intellectual and institutional portrait. It will be a useful reading for the students of anthropology, ethnology, history and philosophy of science, research and science policy makers.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology Colonial History
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August 2004
European Business, Dictatorship, and Political Risk, 1920-1945
Kobrak, C. & Hansen, P. (eds)
For much of the twentieth century, the prevalence of dictatorial regimes has left business, especially multinational firms, with a series of complex and for the most part unwelcome choices. This volume, which includes essays by noted American and European scholars such as Mira Wilkins, Gerald Feldman, Peter Hayes, and Wilfried Feldenkirchen, sets business activity in its political and social context and describes some of the strategic and tactical responses of firms investing from or into Europe to a myriad of opportunities and risks posed by host or home country authoritarian governments during the interwar period. Although principally a work of history, it puts into perspective some commercial dilemmas with which practitioners and business theorists must still unfortunately grapple.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
June 2012
European Foundations of the Welfare State
Kaufmann, F.-X.
While social welfare programs, often inspired by international organizations, are spreading throughout the world, the more far-reaching notion of governmental responsibility for the basic well-being of all members of a political society is not, although it remains a feature of Europe and the former British Commonwealth. The welfare state in the European sense is not simply an administrative arrangement of various measures of social protection but a political project embedded in distinct cultural traditions. Offering the first accessible account in English of the historical development of the European idea of the welfare state, this book reviews the intellectual foundations which underpinned the road towards the European welfare state, formulates some basic concepts for its understanding, and highlights the differences in the underlying structural and philosophical conditions between continental Europe and the English-speaking world.
Subjects: History (General) Sociology
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March 1999
European Memories of the Second World War
Peitsch, H., Burdett, C. & Gorrara, C. (eds)
During the fifty years since the end of hostilities, European literary memories of the war have undergone considerable change, influenced by the personal experiences of writers as well as changing political, social, and cultural factors. This volume examines changing ways of remembering the war in the literatures of France, Germany, and Italy; changes in the subject of memory, and in the relations between fiction, autobiography, and documentary, with the focus being on the extent to which shared European memories of the war have been constructed.
Subjects: History: World War II Memory Studies
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eBook available
April 2010
A European Memory?
Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance
Pakier, M. & Stråth, B. (eds)
An examination of the role of history and memory is vital in order to better understand why the grand design of a United Europe—with a common foreign policy and market yet enough diversity to allow for cultural and social differences—was overwhelmingly turned down by its citizens. The authors argue that this rejection of the European constitution was to a certain extent a challenge to the current historical grounding used for further integration and further demonstrates the lack of understanding by European bureaucrats of the historical complexity and divisiveness of Europe’s past. A critical European history is therefore urgently needed to confront and re-imagine Europe, not as a harmonious continent but as the outcome of violent and bloody conflicts, both within Europe as well as with its Others. As the authors show, these dark shadows of Europe’s past must be integrated, and the fact that memories of Europe are contested must be accepted if any new attempts at a United Europe are to be successful.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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eBook available
July 2017
European Regions and Boundaries
A Conceptual History
Mishkova, D. & Trencsényi, B. (eds)
It is difficult to speak about Europe today without reference to its constitutive regions—supra-national geographical designations such as “Scandinavia,” “Eastern Europe,” and “the Balkans.” Such formulations are so ubiquitous that they are frequently treated as empirical realities rather than a series of shifting, overlapping, and historically constructed concepts. This volume is the first to provide a synthetic account of these concepts and the historical and intellectual contexts in which they emerged. Bringing together prominent international scholars from across multiple disciplines, it systematically and comprehensively explores how such “meso-regions” have been conceptualized throughout modern European history.
Subjects: History (General) Mobility Studies
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May 2004
The European Way
European Societies in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Kaelble, H. (ed)
A good social history of Europe has yet to be written though, given the developments over the last few decades, this seems more urgent than ever before. This volume presents an important step forward in that it brings together eight internationally known social historians from Europe and Israel, each of whom offer an overview of some key themes in European history during the last two centuries. While dealing with the great changes of this period, the authors reveal the commonalities that link European societies together but also important differences at a national level.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
May 2017
Evidence and Meaning
A Theory of Historical Studies
Rüsen, J.
As one of the premier historical thinkers of his generation, Jörn Rüsen has made enormous contributions to the methods and theoretical framework of history as it is practiced today. In Evidence and Meaning, Rüsen surveys the seismic changes that have shaped the historical profession over the last half-century, while offering a clear, economical account of his theory of history. To traditional historiography Rüsen brings theoretical insights from philosophy, narrative theory, cultural studies, and the social sciences, developing an intricate but robust model of “historical thinking” as both a cognitive discipline and a cultural practice—one that is susceptible neither to naïve empiricism nor radical relativism.
Subject: History (General)
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November 2003
Evidence, History and the Great War
Historians and the Impact of 1914-18
Braybon, G. (ed)
In the English-speaking world the Great War maintains a tenacious grip on the public imagination, and also continues to draw historians to an event which has been interpreted variously as a symbol of modernity, the midwife to the twentieth century and an agent of social change. Although much 'common knowledge' about the war and its aftermath has included myth, simplification and generalisation, this has often been accepted uncritically by popular and academic writers alike.
While Britain may have suffered a surfeit of war books, many telling much the same story, there is far less written about the impact of the Great War in other combatant nations. Its history was long suppressed in both fascist Italy and the communist Soviet Union: only recently have historians of Russia begun to examine a conflict which killed, maimed and displaced so many millions. Even in France and Germany the experience of 1914-18 has often been overshadowed by the Second World War.
The war's social history is now ripe for reassessment and revision. The essays in this volume incorporate a European perspective, engage with the historiography of the war, and consider how the primary textural, oral and pictorial evidence has been used - or abused. Subjects include the politics of shellshock, the impact of war on women, the plight of refugees, food distribution in Berlin and portrait photography, all of which illuminate key debates in war history.
Subject: History: World War I
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May 2023
Exchange and Markets in Early Economic Development
Informal Economy in the Three New Guineas
Conroy, J. D.
The idea of an informal economy emerged from, and is a critique of, the ideology of ‘economic development’. It originated from Keith Hart’s recognition of informal economic activity in 1960s Ghana. In the context of four colonialisms – German, British, Australian and Dutch – this book recounts Hart’s effort in 1972 to introduce the informal ‘sector’ into development planning in Papua New Guinea. This was problematic, because ‘the market’ was scarcely institutionalized, and traditional modes of exchange persisted stubbornly. Rather than conforming with post-colonial economic ideology, the subjected people pushed back against imposed bureaucracy to practice informal and hybrid modes of economic activity.
Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Development Studies Colonial History
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July 2003
Exiles From European Revolutions
Refugees in Mid-Victorian England
Freitag, S. & Muhs, R. (eds)
Studies on exile in the 19th century tend to be restricted to national histories. This volume is the first to offer a broader view by looking at French, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Czech and German political refugees who fled to England after the European revolutions of 1848/49. The contributors examine various aspects of their lives in exile such as their opportunities for political activities, the forms of political cooperation that existed between exiles from different European countries on the one hand and with organizations and politicians in England on the other and, finally, the attitude of the host country towards the refugees, and their perceptions of the country which had granted them asylum.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Refugee and Migration Studies
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eBook available
January 2018
Expeditionary Anthropology
Teamwork, Travel and the ''Science of Man''
Thomas, M. & Harris, A. (eds)
The origins of anthropology lie in expeditionary journeys. But since the rise of immersive fieldwork, usually by a sole investigator, the older tradition of team-based social research has been largely eclipsed. Expeditionary Anthropology argues that expeditions have much to tell us about anthropologists and the people they studied. The book charts the diversity of anthropological expeditions and analyzes the often passionate arguments they provoked. Drawing on recent developments in gender studies, indigenous studies, and the history of science, the book argues that even today, the ‘science of man’ is deeply inscribed by its connections with expeditionary travel.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) History (General) Travel and Tourism
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eBook available
December 2010
Experience and Memory
The Second World War in Europe
Echternkamp, J. & Martens, S. (eds)
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.
Subjects: History: World War II Memory Studies
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September 2003
Experiencing Wages
Social and Cultural Aspects of Wage Forms in Europe since 1500
Scholliers, P., & Schwarz, L. (eds)
When discussing wages, historians have traditionally concentrated on the level of wages, much less on how people were paid for their work. Important aspects were thus ignored such as how frequently were wages actually paid, how much of the wage was paid in non-monetary form - whether as traditional perquisites or community relief - especially when there was often insufficient coinage available to pay wages. Covering a wide geographical area, ranging from Spain to Finland, and time span, ranging from the sixteenth century to the 1930s, this volume offers fresh perspectives on key areas in social and economic history such as the relationship between customs, moral economy, wages and the market, changing pay and wage forms and the relationship between age, gender and wages.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
October 2006
Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder
Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940-1941
Kay, A.
Convinced before the onset of Operation "Barbarossa" in June 1941 of both the ease, with which the Red Army would be defeated and the likelihood that the Soviet Union would collapse, the Nazi regime envisaged a radical and far-reaching occupation policy which would result in the political, economic and racial reorganization of the occupied Soviet territories and bring about the deaths of 'x million people' through a conscious policy of starvation. This study traces the step-by-step development of high-level planning for the occupation policy in the Soviet territories over a twelve-month period and establishes the extent to which the various political and economic plans were compatible.
Subjects: History: World War II Genocide History
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eBook available
November 2018
Explorations and Entanglements
Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I
Berghoff, H., Biess, F., & Strasser, U. (eds)
Traditionally, Germany has been considered a minor player in Pacific history: its presence there was more limited than that of other European nations, and whereas its European rivals established themselves as imperial forces beginning in the early modern era, Germany did not seriously pursue colonialism until the nineteenth century. Yet thanks to recent advances in the field emphasizing transoceanic networks and cultural encounters, it is now possible to develop a more nuanced understanding of the history of Germans in the Pacific. The studies gathered here offer fascinating research into German missionary, commercial, scientific, and imperial activity against the backdrop of the Pacific’s overlapping cultural circuits and complex oceanic transits.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Colonial History
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October 2004
Fairness and Division of Labor in Market Societies
Comparison of U.S. and German Automotive Industries
Kwon, H.-K.
Contrary to the explanations offered by the theory of non-reflexive, path-dependent institutionalism, the U.S. and the German automotive industries undertook strikingly similar patterns of industry modification under tough international competition during the 1990s, departing from their traditional national patterns. By investigating the processes of the U.S. and German adjustments, the author critically reconsiders the prevalent paradigms of political economy and comes to the conclusion that the evidence does not confirm the neoliberal paradigm. In order to better account for the recomposition of new market relations, which the author terms "converging but non-liberal" and "diverging but not predetermined" markets, he proposes an alternative model of "politics among reflexive agents," emphasizing different kinds of problem-solving practices among those reflexive agents. He argues that different forms and regimes of market are established in the process of recomposition, in which agents reflect upon not only market rationality but also upon their own institutions, creating new norms.
Subject: History (General)
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January 2001
The Faltering Transition
Gilbert, M. & Pasquino, G. (eds)
In 1999, Italy experienced another year of political uncertainty. The centre-left coalition government was weakened by infighting throughout the year and paid a high electoral price for its failure to present a common front to the electorate. In June, Silvio Berlusconi's Liberty Pole coalition won substantial victories in local elections including a symbolic triumph in Bologna, a stronghold of the Italian left. In December, bickering inside his parliamentary majority forced Massimo D'Alema, the prime minister, to reshuffle his cabinet. This was the first government crisis to be handled by Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who became the tenth President of the Republic in May 1999. In the autumn, Giulio Andreotti, a seven-times prime minister, was acquitted of having colluded with the Sicilian Mafia, and with having ordered the murder.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
November 2019
Fame Amid the Ruins
Italian Film Stardom in the Age of Neorealism
Gundle, S.
Italian cinema gave rise to a number of the best-known films of the postwar years, from Rome Open City to Bicycle Thieves. Although some neorealist film-makers would have preferred to abolish stars altogether, the public adored them and producers needed their help in relaunching the national film industry. This book explores the many conflicts that arose in Italy between 1945 and 1953 over stars and stardom, offering intimate studies of the careers of both well-known and less familiar figures, shedding new light on the close relationship forged between cinema and society during a time of political transition and shifting national identities.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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May 1996
Fascism and Theatre
Comparative Studies on the Aesthetics and Politics of Performance in Europe, 1925-1945
Berghaus, G. (ed)
Since the 1920s, an endless flow of studies has analyzed the political systems of fascism, theseizure of power, the nature of the regimes, the atrocities committed, and, finally, the wars waged against other countries. However, much less attention has been paid to the strategies of persuasion employed by the regimes to win over the masses for their cause. Among these, fascist propaganda has traditionally been seen as the key means of influencing public opinion. Only recently has the "fascination with Fascism" become a topic of enquiry that has also formed the guiding interest of this volume: it offers, for the first time, a comparative analysis of the forms and functions of theater in countries governed by fascist or para-fascist regimes. By examining a wide spectrum of theatrical manifestations in a number of States with a varying degree of fascistization, these studies establish some of the similarities and differences between the theatrical cultures of several cultures in the interwar period.
Subjects: Performance Studies History: World War II Literary Studies
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eBook available
May 2017
Fascism without Borders
Transnational Connections and Cooperation between Movements and Regimes in Europe from 1918 to 1945
Bauerkämper, A. & Rossolińki-Liebe, G. (eds)
It is one of the great ironies of the history of fascism that, despite their fascination with ultra-nationalism, its adherents understood themselves as members of a transnational political movement. While a true “Fascist International” has never been established, European fascists shared common goals and sentiments as well as similar worldviews. They also drew on each other for support and motivation, even though relations among them were not free from misunderstandings and conflicts. Through a series of fascinating case studies, this expansive collection examines fascism’s transnational dimension, from the movements inspired by the early example of Fascist Italy to the international antifascist organizations that emerged in subsequent years.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
May 2016
Fascist Interactions
Proposals for a New Approach to Fascism and Its Era, 1919-1945
Roberts, D. D.
Although studies of fascism have constituted one of the most fertile areas of historical inquiry in recent decades, more and more scholars have called for a new agenda with more research beyond Italy and Germany, less preoccupation with definition and classification, and more sustained focus on the relationships among different fascist formations before 1945. Starting from a critical assessment of these imperatives, this rigorous volume charts a historiographical path that transcends rigid distinctions while still developing meaningful criteria of differentiation. Even as we take fascism seriously as a political phenomenon, such an approach allows us to better understand its distinctive contradictions and historical variations.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
April 2008
The Fateful Alliance
German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933: The Machtergreifung in a New Light
Beck, H.
On 30 January 1933, Alfred Hugenberg's conservative German National People's Party (DNVP) formed a coalition government with the Nazi Party, thus enabling Hitler to accede to the chancellorship. This book analyzes in detail the complicated relationship between Conservatives and Nazis and offers a re-interpretation of the Nazi seizure of power - the decisive months between 30 January and 14 July 1933. The Machtergreifung is characterized here as a period of all-pervasive violence and lawlessness with incessant conflicts between Nazis and German Nationals and Nazi attacks on the conservative Bürgertum, a far cry from the traditional depiction of the takeover as a relatively bloodless, virtually sterile assumption of power by one vast impersonal apparatus wresting control from another. The author scrutinizes the revolutionary character of the Nazi seizure of power, the Nazis' attacks on the conservative Bürgertum and its values, and National Socialism's co-optation of conservative symbols of state power to serve radically new goals, while addressing the issue of why the DNVP was complicit in this and paradoxically participated in eroding the foundations of its very own principles and bases of support.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
May 2015
Fault Lines
Earthquakes and Urbanism in Modern Italy
Parrinello, G.
Earth’s fractured geology is visible in its fault lines. It is along these lines that earthquakes occur, sometimes with disastrous effects. These disturbances can significantly influence urban development, as seen in the aftermath of two earthquakes in Messina, Italy, in 1908 and in the Belice Valley, Sicily, in 1968. Following the history of these places before and after their destruction, this book explores plans and developments that preceded the disasters and the urbanism that emerged from the ruins. These stories explore fault lines between “rural” and “urban,” “backwardness” and “development,” and “before” and “after,” shedding light on the role of environmental forces in the history of human habitats.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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January 2002
Federalism Doomed?
European Federalism between Integration and Separation
Heinemann-Grüder, A. (ed)
The conceptual uncertainty when dealing with processes of integration and disintegration in Europe is striking because traditional notions of the nation-state, constitutionalism, sovereignty, and federalism do not account for emerging realities in either Western or Eastern Europe.
This volume explores the complex inter-relationship between federal arrangements and their effects on integrating multi-ethnic societies in Europe, and takes stock of current debates on the effects of federalism on integration and disintegration in Eastern and Western Europe. For the first time federalism is addressed in a pan-European context and an attempt is made to look for remedies to overcome nationalism in both East and West within a federalist institutional framework.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
January 2020
Feelings Materialized
Emotions, Bodies, and Things in Germany, 1500–1950
Hillard, D., Lempa, H., & Spinney, R. (eds)
Of the many innovative approaches to emerge during the twenty-first century, one of the most productive has been the interdisciplinary nexus of theories and methodologies broadly defined as “the study of emotions.” While this conceptual toolkit has generated significant insights, it has overwhelmingly focused on emotions as linguistic and semantic phenomena. This edited volume looks instead to the material aspects of emotion in German culture, encompassing the body, literature, photography, aesthetics, and a variety of other themes.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Media Studies History: Medieval/Early Modern Literary Studies
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May 2015
Fellow Tribesmen
The Image of Native Americans, National Identity, and Nazi Ideology in Germany
Usbeck, F.
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Germans exhibited a widespread cultural passion for tales and representations of Native Americans. This book explores the evolution of German national identity and its relationship with the ideas and cultural practices around “Indianthusiasm.” Pervasive and adaptable, imagery of Native Americans was appropriated by Nazi propaganda and merged with exceptionalist notions of German tribalism, oxymoronically promoting the Nazis’ racial ideology. This book combines cultural and intellectual history to scrutinize the motifs of Native American imagery in German literature, media, and scholarship, and analyzes how these motifs facilitated the propaganda effort to nurture national pride, racial thought, militarism, and hatred against the Allied powers among the German populace.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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eBook available
July 2022
Field Manual for the Archaeology of Ritual, Religion, and Magic
Augé , C. R.
By bringing together in one place specific objects, materials, and features indicating ritual, religious, or magical belief used by people around the world and through time, this tool will assist archaeologists in identifying evidence of belief-related behaviors and broadening their understanding of how those behaviors may also be seen through less obvious evidential lines. Instruction and templates for recording, typologizing, classifying, and analyzing ritual or magico-religious material culture are also provided to guide researchers in the survey, collection, and cataloging processes. The bulleted formatting and topical range make this a highly accessible work, while providing an incredible wealth of information in a single volume.
Subjects: Archaeology History (General) Anthropology of Religion
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eBook available
August 2015
Final Sale in Berlin
The Destruction of Jewish Commercial Activity, 1930-1945
Kreutzmüller, C.
Before the Nazis took power, Jewish businesspeople in Berlin thrived alongside their non-Jewish neighbors. But Nazi racism changed that, gradually destroying Jewish businesses before murdering the Jews themselves. Reconstructing the fate of more than 8,000 companies, this book offers the first comprehensive analysis of Jewish economic activity and its obliteration. Rather than just examining the steps taken by the persecutors, it also tells the stories of Jewish strategies in countering the effects of persecution. In doing so, this book exposes a fascinating paradox where Berlin, serving as the administrative heart of the Third Reich, was also the site of a dense network for Jewish self-help and assertion.
Subjects: Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present
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November 2009
The 'Final Solution' in Riga
Exploitation and Annihilation, 1941-1944
Angrick, A., Klein, P. & Brandon R.
Ghetto, forced labor camp, concentration camp: All of the elements of the National Socialists’ policies of annihilation were to be found in Riga. This first analysis of the Riga ghetto and the nearby camps of Salaspils and Jungfernhof addresses all aspects of German occupation policy during the Second World War. Drawing upon a broad array of sources that includes previously inaccessible Soviet archives, postwar criminal investigations, and trial records of alleged perpetrators, and the records of the Society of Survivors of the Riga Ghetto, the authors have produced an in-depth study of the Riga ghetto that never loses sight of the Latvian capital’s place within the overall design of Nazi policy and the all-of-Europe dimension of the Holocaust.
Subjects: History: World War II Genocide History Jewish Studies
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eBook available
August 2020
Financialization
Relational Approaches
Hann, C. & Kalb, D. (eds)
Beginning with an original historical vision of financialization in human history, this volume then continues with a rich set of contemporary ethnographic case studies from Europe, Asia and Africa. Authors explore the ways in which finance inserts itself into relationships of class and kinship, how it adapts to non-Western religious traditions, and how it reconfigures legal and ecological dimensions of social organization, and urban social relations in general. Central themes include the indebtedness of individuals and households, the impact of digital technologies, the struggle for housing, financial education, and political contestation.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Political and Economic Anthropology History (General)
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April 2007
Finding Europe
Discourses on Margins, Communities, Images
Molho, A. & Ramada Curto, D. (eds)
In the last decade or so, many books have been devoted to the history of Europe.Two conceptual axes predominate in a large number of these accounts: a discourse focusing on Europe’s values, and another discourse, fashioned largely in opposition to the first, which emphasizes the process of European “construction.” The first conceives of Europe’s past teleologically, as a process by which certain values (Christian ethics, individualism, capitalism, tolerance, republicanism, due process, etc.) were affirmed and came to define European culture. The second approach rejects the discourse on values emphasizes the post-Enlightenment emergence of the concept of Europe, and the political and ideological implications in its continuous redefinitions (and re elaborations) during the past two or more centuries. This volume offers new approaches that integrate the long temporal dimension of the values-based approach, albeit devoid of its teleological element, with the “constructivist” interpretation.
Subject: History: Medieval/Early Modern
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December 2003
Flight of Fantasy
New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature 1933-1945
Donahue N.H. & Kirchner D. (eds)
During the Nazi era many German writers chose, or were forced into, exile. Many others stayed and, after the end of this period, claimed to have retreated into "Inner Emigration". The nature of this kind of emigration and the underlying motives of these writers have been hotly debated to this day. Though the reception of Inner Emigration has often been confounded by disputes over the term itself, the issue is ultimately not a matter of nomenclature, but of more far-reaching issues of literary evaluation, moral discernment and the writing of history. This volume presents, for the first time, to an English-speaking readership the complexity of Inner Emigration through the analysis of problematic individual cases of writers who, under constant pressure from a watchful dictatorship to conform and to collaborate, were caught between conscience and compromise.
Subjects: Literary Studies History: World War II
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eBook available
October 2022
Football Nation
The Playing Fields of German Culture, History, and Society
Dawson, R., Heinsohn, B., Knabe, O., & McDougall, A. (eds)
Over the past century, the impact of football on Germany has been manifold, influencing the arts, political debates, and even contributing to the construction of cultural memories and national narratives. Football Nation analyses the game’s fluid role in shaping and reflecting German society, and spans its focus on modern German history, from the Wilhelmine era to the early 21st century. Expounding on topics of gender, class, fandom, spectatorship, antisemitism, nationalism, and internationalism, a diverse group of interdisciplinary scholars offer a novel approach to understanding the many influences of football throughout its extensive history which until recently has only been available to a German-speaking readership.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2010
'For Their Own Good'
Civilian Evacuations in Germany and France, 1939-1945
Torrie, J. S.
The early twentieth-century advent of aerial bombing made successful evacuations essential to any war effort, but ordinary people resented them deeply. Based on extensive archival research in Germany and France, this is the first broad, comparative study of civilian evacuations in Germany and France during World War II. The evidence uncovered exposes the complexities of an assumed monolithic and all-powerful Nazi state by showing that citizens' objections to evacuations, which were rooted in family concerns, forced changes in policy. Drawing attention to the interaction between the Germans and French throughout World War II, this book shows how policies in each country were shaped by events in the other. A truly cross-national comparison in a field dominated by accounts of one country or the other, this book provides a unique historical context for addressing current concerns about the impact of air raids and military occupations on civilians.
Subject: History: World War II
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eBook available
September 2019
The Force of Comparison
A New Perspective on Modern European History and the Contemporary World
Steinmetz, W. (ed)
In an era defined by daily polls, institutional rankings, and other forms of social quantification, it can be easy to forget that comparison has a long historical lineage. Presenting a range of multidisciplinary perspectives, this volume investigates the concepts and practices of comparison from the early modern period to the present. Each chapter demonstrates how comparison has helped to drive the seemingly irresistible dynamism of the modern world, exploring how comparatively minded assessors determine their units of analysis, the criteria they select or ignore, and just who it is that makes use of these comparisons—and to what ends.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
March 2022
Forging Architectural Tradition
National Narratives, Monument Preservation and Architectural Work in the Nineteenth Century
Damjanović, D. & Łupienko, Al. (eds)
During the nineteenth century, a change developed in the way architectural objects from the distant past were viewed by contemporaries. Such edifices, be they churches, castles, chapels or various other buildings, were not only admired for their aesthetic values, but also for the role they played in ancient times, and their role as reminders of important events from the national past. Architectural heritage often was (and still is) an important element of nation building. Authors address the process of building national myths around certain architectural objects. National narratives are questioned, as is the position architectural heritage played in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.
Subjects: Heritage Studies History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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April 2010
Forging Political Identity
Silk and Metal Workers in Lyon, France 1900-1939
Mann, K.
Escaping the traditional focus on Paris, the author examines the divergent political identities of two occupational groups in Lyon, metal and silk workers, who, despite having lived and worked in the same city, developed different patterns of political practices and bore distinct political identities. This book also examines in detail the way that gender relations influenced industrial change, skill, and political identity. Combining empirical data collected in French archives with social science theory and methods, this study argues that political identities were shaped by the intersection of the prevailing political climate with the social relations surrounding work in specific industrial settings.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present Sociology Political and Economic Anthropology
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November 1996
Forging the Collective Memory
Government and International Historians through Two World Wars
Wilson, K. (ed)
When studying the origins of the First World War, scholars have relied heavily on the series of key diplomatic documents published by the governments of both the defeated and the victorious powers in the 1920s and 1930s. However, this volume shows that these volumes, rather than dealing objectively with the past, were used by the different governments to project an interpretation of the origins of the Great War that was more palatable to them and their country than the truth might have been. In revealing policies that influenced the publication of the documents, the relationships between the commissioning governments, their officials, and the historians involved, this collection serves as a warning that even seemingly objective sources have to be used with caution in historical research.
Subjects: History: World War I History: World War II Memory Studies
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October 2014
The Forgotten Majority
German Merchants in London, Naturalization, and Global Trade 1660-1815
Schulte Beerbühl, M.
The “forgotten majority” of German merchants in London between the end of the Hanseatic League and the end of the Napoleonic Wars became the largest mercantile Christian immigrant group in the eighteenth century. Using previously neglected and little used evidence, this book assesses the causes of their migration, the establishment of their businesses in the capital, and the global reach of the enterprises. As the acquisition of British nationality was the admission ticket to Britain’s commercial empire, it investigates the commercial function of British naturalization policy in the early modern period, while also considering the risks of failure and chance for a new beginning in a foreign environment. As more German merchants integrated into British commercial society, they contributed to London becoming the leading place of exchange between the European continent, Russia, and the New World.
Subjects: History (General) History: 18th/19th Century
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March 2023
Former Neighbors, Future Allies?
German Studies and Ethnography in Dialogue
Weber, A. D. (ed)
Although German studies scholars from various disciplines often use and reference ethnography, German studies rarely emphasizes ethnography as a core methodology and research approach. Through recent dialogue among Germanists, Former Neighbors, Future Allies shows the necessity of assessing the growing momentum in German studies for engaging in methods and theories of ethnography from a variety of perspectives including literature, folklore, history, sociology, and anthropology. By increasing the visibility of the pervasiveness of ethnography, this multi-modal volume illustrates how ethnography represents a transdisciplinary and international bridging of research.
Subjects: History (General) Anthropology (General)
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eBook available
February 2021
Four-Color Communism
Comic Books and Contested Power in the German Democratic Republic
Eedy, S.
As with all other forms of popular culture, comics in East Germany were tightly controlled by the state. Comics were employed as extensions of the regime’s educational system, delivering official ideology so as to develop the “socialist personality” of young people and generate enthusiasm for state socialism. The East German children who avidly read these comics, however, found their own meanings in and projected their own desires upon them. Four-Color Communism gives a lively account of East German comics from both perspectives, showing how the perceived freedoms they embodied created expectations that ultimately limited the regime’s efforts to bring readers into the fold.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies
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eBook available
September 2013
Fragmented Fatherland
Immigration and Cold War Conflict in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1980
Clarkson, A.
1945 to 1980 marks an extensive period of mass migration of students, refugees, ex-soldiers, and workers from an extraordinarily wide range of countries to West Germany. Turkish, Kurdish, and Italian groups have been studied extensively, and while this book uses these groups as points of comparison, it focuses on ethnic communities of varying social structures—from Spain, Iran, Ukraine, Greece, Croatia, and Algeria—and examines the interaction between immigrant networks and West German state institutions as well as the ways in which patterns of cooperation and conflict differ. This study demonstrates how the social consequences of mass immigration became intertwined with the ideological battles of Cold War Germany and how the political life and popular movements within these immigrant communities played a crucial role in shaping West German society.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Refugee and Migration Studies
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eBook available
December 2016
A Fragmented Landscape
Abortion Governance and Protest Logics in Europe
De Zordo, S., Mishtal, J., & Anton. J. (eds)
Since World War II, abortion policies have remained remarkably varied across European nations, with struggles over abortion rights at the forefront of national politics. This volume analyses European abortion governance and explores how social movements, political groups, and individuals use protests and resistance to influence abortion policy. Drawing on case studies from Italy, Spain, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the European Union, it analyses the strategies and discourses of groups seeking to liberalise or restrict reproductive rights. It also illuminates the ways that reproductive rights politics intersect with demographic anxieties, as well as the rising nationalisms and xenophobia related to austerity policies, mass migration and the recent terrorist attacks in Europe.
Subjects: Medical Anthropology History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
June 2013
Framing Africa
Portrayals of a Continent in Contemporary Mainstream Cinema
Eltringham, N. (ed)
The first decade of the 21st century has seen a proliferation of North American and European films that focus on African politics and society. While once the continent was the setting for narratives of heroic ascendancy over self (The African Queen, 1951; The Snows of Kilimanjaro, 1952), military odds (Zulu, 1964; Khartoum, 1966) and nature (Mogambo, 1953; Hatari!,1962; Born Free, 1966; The Last Safari, 1967), this new wave of films portrays a continent blighted by transnational corruption (The Constant Gardener, 2005), genocide (Hotel Rwanda, 2004; Shooting Dogs, 2006), ‘failed states’ (Black Hawk Down, 2001), illicit transnational commerce (Blood Diamond, 2006) and the unfulfilled promises of decolonization (The Last King of Scotland, 2006). Conversely, where once Apartheid South Africa was a brutal foil for the romance of East Africa (Cry Freedom, 1987; A Dry White Season, 1989), South Africa now serves as a redeemed contrast to the rest of the continent (Red Dust, 2004; Invictus, 2009). Writing from the perspective of long-term engagement with the contexts in which the films are set, anthropologists and historians reflect on these films and assess the contemporary place Africa holds in the North American and European cinematic imagination.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Anthropology (General) History (General)
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eBook available
July 2007
Framing the Fifties
Cinema in a Divided Germany
Davidson, J. & Hake, S. (eds)
The demise of the New German Cinema and the return of popular cinema since the 1990s have led to a renewed interest in the postwar years and the complicated relationship between East and West German cinema in particular. A survey of the 1950s, as offered here for the first time, is therefore long overdue. Moving beyond the contempt for "Papa's Kino" and the nostalgia for the fifties found in much of the existing literature, this anthology explores new uncharted territories, traces hidden connections, discovers unknown treasures, and challenges conventional interpretations. Informed by cultural studies, gender studies, and the study of popular cinema, this anthology offers a more complete account by focusing on popular genres, famous stars, and dominant practices, by taking into account the complicated relationships between East vs. West German, German vs. European, and European vs. American cinemas; and by paying close attention to the economic and political conditions of film production and reception during this little-known period of German film history.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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January 2015
France After 2012
Goodliffe, G. & Brizzi, R. (eds)
In May 2012, French voters rejected the liberalizing policies of Nicolas Sarkozy and elected his opponent, the Socialist François Hollande, president. In June 2012, the incumbent president’s center-right UMP party was swept out of government in the ensuing parliamentary elections, giving way to a new center-left majority in the National Assembly. This book analyzes the contexts and results of the 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections in France. It assesses the legacies of the Sarkozy presidency that informed the 2012 electoral campaigns, scrutinizing his domestic social and economic policies on the one hand and European and foreign policies on the other. In turn, the elections’ outcomes are also analyzed from the standpoint of various political parties and other institutional interests in France, and the results are situated within the broader run of French political history. Finally, the book examines the principal challenges facing the Hollande administration and new government of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, and assesses how effectively these have been met during their first year in office.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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June 1995
France and America in the Revolutionary Era
The Life of Jacques-Donatien Leray de Chaumont, 1725-1803
Schaeper, T. J.
This is the first detailed study account of the life and career of Chaumont whose chief claim to fame was the fact that from 1777 to 1785 Benjamin Franklin lived in his home in the Parisian suburb of Passy. Basing his work on documents from two dozen archives in the United States and France, Schaeper demonstrates that Chaumont was far more than merely a landlord. Prior to the American Revolution he had become one of the most powerful and respected businessmen of the Old Regime. For personal as well as patriotic reasons he aided the American insurgents and worked with a wide array of persons. In addition to Franklin, these included John Adams, Silas Deane, Caron de Beaumarchais, the marquis de Lafayette and the comte de Vergennes. Chaumont performed an astounding range of services - acting as intermediary, an adviser, and a supplier of arms and clothing. His most dramatic contribution to the American cause involved John Paul Jones. It was Chaumont who obtained the famous Bonhomme Richard for the commodore. Through looking at the activities of this intriguing individual the author is able to offer many new insights into both American and French history. Lively and well written this biography will appeal to both the historian and the general reader.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
December 2007
France and the Construction of Europe, 1944-2007
The Geopolitical Imperative
Sutton, M.
In the second half of the twentieth century France played the greatest role - even greater than Germany’s - in shaping what eventually became the European Union. By the early twenty-first century, however, in a hugely transformed Europe, this era had patently come to an end. This comprehensive history shows how France coupled the pursuit of power and the furtherance of European integration over a sixty-year period, from the close of the Second World War to the hesitation caused by the French electorate’s referendum rejection of the European Union’s constitutional treaty in 2005.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
July 2019
France and the German Question, 1945–1990
Bozo, F. & Wenkel, C. (eds)
In the immediate aftermath of World War Two, the victors were unable to agree on Germany’s fate, and the separation of the country—the result of the nascent Cold War—emerged as a de facto, if provisional, settlement. Yet East and West Germany would exist apart for half a century, making the "German question" a central foreign policy issue—and given the war-torn history between the two countries, this was felt no more keenly than in France. Drawing on the most recent historiography and previously untapped archival sources, this volume shows how France’s approach to the German question was, for the duration of the Cold War, both more constructive and consequential than has been previously acknowledged.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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November 2000
France At War in the Twentieth Century
Propaganda, Myth, and Metaphor
Holman, V. & Kelly, D. (eds)
France experienced four major conflicts in the fifty years between 1914 and 1964: two world wars, and the wars in Indochina and Algeria. In each the role of myth was intricately bound up with memory, hope, belief, and ideas of nation. This is the first book to explore how individual myths were created, sustained, and used for purposes of propaganda, examining in detail not just the press, radio, photographs, posters, films, and songs that gave credence to an imagined event or attributed mythical status to an individual, but also the cultural processes by which such artifacts were disseminated and took effect.
Reliance on myth, so the authors argue, is shown to be one of the most significant and durable features of 20th century warfare propaganda, used by both sides in all the conflicts covered in this book. However, its effective and useful role in time of war notwithstanding, it does distort a population's perception of reality and therefore often results in defeat: the myth-making that began as a means of sustaining belief in France's supremacy, and later her will and ability to resist, ultimately proved counterproductive in the process of decolonization.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: World War I History: World War II Media Studies
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eBook available
June 2011
France in the Age of Organization
Factory, Home and Nation from the 1920s to Vichy
Clarke, J.
In interwar France, there was a growing sense that ‘organization’ was the solution to the nation’s perceived social, economic and political ills. This book examines the roots of this idea in the industrial rationalization movement and its manifestations in areas as diverse as domestic organization and economic planning. In doing so, it shows how experts in fields ranging from engineering to the biological sciences shaped visions of a rational socio-economic order from the 1920s to Vichy and beyond.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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May 2005
France in the Era of Fascism
Essays on the French Authoritarian Right
Jenkins, B. (ed)
France's response to the rise of European fascism during the 1930s, and subsequently to the Nazi occupation 1940-44, has been a difficult subject for the nation’s historians. The consensus amongst leading French authorities on the period has been the claim that France was largely 'immune' to fascism in the 1930s, and that the Vichy regime was an aberration produced by defeat and occupation. Over the last 30 years, this position has gradually been undermined, mainly through the work of foreign scholars, but it nonetheless remains intact. This volume brings together for the first time the leading critics of the standard French interpretation, who have used these essays to refine and update their positions, or to move the debate onto new terrain.
Subject: History: World War II
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eBook available
January 2022
France, Germany, and Nuclear Deterrence
Quarrels and Convergences during the Cold War and Beyond
Badalassi, N. & Gloriant, F. (eds)
The legacy of World War II and the division of Eastern and Western Europe produced a radical asymmetry, and a variety of misgivings and misunderstandings, in French and German experiences of the nuclear age. At the same time, however, political actors in both nations continually labored to reconcile their differences and engage in productive strategic dialogue. Grounded in cutting-edge research and freshly discovered archival sources, France, Germany, and Nuclear Deterrence teases out the paradoxical nuclear interactions between France and Germany from 1954 to the present day.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
August 1997
The French Defeat of 1940
Reassessments
Blatt, J. (ed)
Why France, the major European continental victor in 1918, suffered total defeat in six weeks at the hands of the vanquished power of 1918 only two decades later remains moot. Why the stunning reversal of fortunes? In this volume thirteen prominent scholars reexamine the French debacle of 1940 in interwar perspectives, utilizing fresh analysis, original approaches, and new sources. Although the tenor of the volume is critical, the contributors also suggest that French preparations for war knew successes as well as failures, that French defeat was not inevitable, and that the Battle of France might have turned out differently if different choices had been made and other paths been followed.
Subject: History: World War II
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December 2004
The French Exception
Godin, E. & Chafer, T. (eds)
The notion of French exceptionalism is deeply embedded in the nation's self-image and in a range of political and academic discourses. Recently, the debate about whether France really is "exceptional" has acquired a critical edge. Against the background of introspection about the nature of "national identity," some proclaim "normalisation" and the end of French exceptionalism, while others point out to the continuing evidence that France remains distinctive at a number of levels, from popular culture to public policy. This book explores the notion of French exceptionalism, places it in its European context, examines its history and evaluate its continuing relevance in a range of fields from politics and public policy to popular culture and sport.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
August 2016
French Foreign Policy since 1945
An Introduction
Bozo, F.
When Charles de Gaulle declared that “it is because we are no longer a great power that we need a grand policy,” he neatly summarized France’s predicament on the world scene. In this compact and engaging history, author Frédéric Bozo deftly recounts France’s efforts to reconcile its proud history and global ambitions with a realistic appraisal of its capabilities, from the aftermath of World War II to the present. He provides insightful analysis of the nation’s triumphs and setbacks through the years of decolonization, Cold War maneuvering, and European unification, as well as the more contemporary challenges posed by an increasingly multipolar and interconnected world.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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June 2004
French Intellectuals Against the Left
The Antitotalitarian Moment of the 1970s
Christofferson, M. S.
In the latter half of the 1970s, the French intellectual Left denounced communism, Marxism, and revolutionary politics through a critique of left-wing totalitarianism that paved the way for today's postmodern, liberal, and moderate republican political options. Contrary to the dominant understanding of the critique of totalitarianism as an abrupt rupture induced by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, Christofferson argues that French anti-totalitarianism was the culmination of direct-democratic critiques of communism and revisions of the revolutionary project after 1956. The author's focus on the direct-democratic politics of French intellectuals offers an important alternative to recent histories that seek to explain the course of French intellectual politics by France's apparent lack of a liberal tradition.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
January 2014
The French Right Between the Wars
Political and Intellectual Movements from Conservatism to Fascism
Kalman, S. & Kennedy, S. (eds)
During the interwar years France experienced severe political polarization. At the time many observers, particularly on the left, feared that the French right had embraced fascism, generating a fierce debate that has engaged scholars for decades, but has also obscured critical changes in French society and culture during the 1920s and 1930s. This collection of essays shifts the focus away from long-standing controversies in order to examine various elements of the French right, from writers to politicians, social workers to street fighters, in their broader social, cultural, and political contexts. It offers a wide-ranging reassessment of the structures, mentalities, and significance of various conservative and extremist organizations, deepening our understanding of French and European history in a troubled yet fascinating era.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
May 2010
Friendly Enemies
Britain and the GDR, 1949-1990
Berger, S. & LaPorte, N.
During the Cold War, Britain had an astonishing number of contacts and connections with one of the Soviet Bloc’s most hard-line regimes: the German Democratic Republic. The left wing of the British Labour Party and the Trade Unions often had closer ties with communist East Germany than the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). There were strong connections between the East German and British churches, women’s movements, and peace movements; influential conservative politicians and the Communist leadership in the GDR had working relationships; and lucrative contracts existed between business leaders in Britain and their counterparts in East Germany. Based on their extensive knowledge of the documentary sources, the authors provide the first comprehensive study of Anglo-East German relations in this surprisingly under-researched field. They examine the complex motivations underlying different political groups’ engagement with the GDR, and offer new and interesting insights into British political culture during the Cold War.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
March 2020
Friendship without Borders
Women's Stories of Power, Politics, and Everyday Life across East and West Germany
Leask, P.
Across half a century, from the division of Germany through the end of the Cold War, a cohort of thirty women from the small German town of Schönebeck in what used to be the GDR circulated among themselves a remarkable collective archive of their lives: a Rundbrief, or bulletin, containing hundreds of letters and photographs. This book draws on that unprecedented resource, complemented by a set of interviews, to paint a rich portrait of “ordinary” life in postwar Germany. It shows how these women—whether reflecting on their experiences as Nazi-era schoolchildren or witnessing reunification—were united by their complex interactions with official power and their commitment to sustaining a shared German identity as they made the most of their everyday lives in both the GDR and the Federal Republic.
Subjects: History (General) Sociology Gender Studies and Sexuality
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eBook available
March 2009
The Frightful Stage
Political Censorship of the Theater in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Goldstein, R. J. (ed)
In nineteenth-century Europe the ruling elites viewed the theater as a form of communication which had enormous importance. The theater provided the most significant form of mass entertainment and was the only arena aside from the church in which regular mass gatherings were possible. Therefore, drama censorship occupied a great deal of the ruling class’s time and energy, with a particularly focus on proposed scripts that potentially threatened the existing political, legal, and social order. This volume provides the first comprehensive examination of nineteenth-century political theater censorship at a time, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, when the European population was becoming increasingly politically active.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Performance Studies Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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May 2013
From Berlusconi to Monti
Bosco, A. & McDonnell, D. (eds)
In 2011, Silvio Berlusconi’s government fell amid a severe financial crisis that called into question the sustainability of Italy’s enormous public debt. But Italy’s entire political class suffered a downgrade at the hands of Europe, the markets, national elites, and many Italian citizens. From the beginning of 2011, the parties appeared weak and lacking in any vision, capable only of reacting poorly to events and interpreting them within the tired pro-/anti-Berlusconi frame that had dominated politics for two decades. Throughout the year, those shaping the key events came from outside the main parties: the president of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano; the new president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi; the leader of Confindustria, Emma Marcegaglia; the new mayors of Milan and Naples; the promoters of the referendums in June; and, last but by no means least, the European Union, foreign leaders, and the markets. In November, the downgrade of Italy’s parties was made official by the installation of a technocratic government, led by Mario Monti. By the year’s end, it therefore seemed clear that while the Third Republic had not yet begun, the Second was breathing its last.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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December 1996
From Caligari to California
Eric Pommer's Life in the International Film Wars
Hardt, U.
Known as one of the great producers and promoters of the film industry, Eric Pommer had a life-long commitment to German film - despite his emigration in 1933 - and worked in France and Britian, as well as the United States.
As German producer, studio executive, and film politician in the pre-Hitler era Erich (later Eric) Pommer (1889-1966), a native of Germany, was an innovator and pioneer, a vital force in leading German cinema to international acclaim with successes such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, The Nibelungen and The Blue Angel. As Motion Picture Control Officer of the US Military Government he undertook , from 1946-49, the difficult task of rebuilding West Germany's film industry from the ashes of the Second World War. He succeeded brilliantly, but not without paying the hefty price of becoming embroiled in the turmoil of postwar German politics which made him many friends, but also many enemies. This book is the first detailed account in English of the remarkable career of Pommer who became a legend in his own lifetime.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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August 2001
From Chains to Bonds
The Slave Trade Revisited
Diène, D. (ed)
Most important issues of today's world - such as development, human rights, and cultural pluralism - bear the unmistakable stamp of the transatlantic slave trade. In particular Africa's state of development can only be properly understood in the light of the widespread dismantling of African societies and the methodical and lasting human bloodletting to which the continent was subjected by way of the trans-Saharan and transatlantic slave trade over the centuries. But this greatest displacement of population in history also transformed the vast geo-cultural area of the Americas and the Caribbean.
In this volume, one result of UNESCO's project Memory of Peoples: The Slave Route, scholars and thinkers from Africa, the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean have come together to raise some crucial questions and offer new perspectives on debates that have lost none of their urgency.
Subject: Colonial History
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eBook available
September 2016
From Craftsmen to Capitalists
German Artisans from the Third Reich to the Federal Republic, 1939-1953
McKitrick, F. L.
Politically adrift, alienated from Weimar society, and fearful of competition from industrial elites and the working class alike, the independent artisans of interwar Germany were a particularly receptive audience for National Socialist ideology. As Hitler consolidated power, they emerged as an important Nazi constituency, drawn by the party’s rejection of both capitalism and Bolshevism. Yet, in the years after 1945, the artisan class became one of the pillars of postwar stability, thoroughly integrated into German society. From Craftsmen to Capitalists gives the first account of this astonishing transformation, exploring how skilled tradesmen recast their historical traditions and forged alliances with former antagonists to help realize German democratization and recovery.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Political and Economic Anthropology Sociology
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eBook available
October 2017
From Eastern Bloc to European Union
Comparative Processes of Transformation since 1990
Heydemann, G. & Vodička, K. (eds)
More than 25 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, European integration remains a work in progress, especially in those Eastern European nations most dramatically reshaped by democratization and economic liberalization. This volume assembles detailed, empirically grounded studies of eleven states—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and the former East Germany—that went on to join the European Union. Each chapter analyzes the political, economic, and social transformations that have taken place in these nations, using a comparative approach to identify structural similarities and assess outcomes relative to one another as well as the rest of the EU.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Political and Economic Anthropology
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April 2013
From Fidelity to History
Film Adaptations as Cultural Events in the Twentieth Century
Scholz, A.-M.
Scholarly approaches to the relationship between literature and film, ranging from the traditional focus upon fidelity to more recent issues of intertextuality, all contain a significant blind spot: a lack of theoretical and methodological attention to adaptation as an historical and transnational phenomenon. This book argues for a historically informed approach to American popular culture that reconfigures the classically defined adaptation phenomenon as a form of transnational reception. Focusing on several case studies— including the films Sense and Sensibility (1995) and The Portrait of a Lady (1997), and the classics The Third Man (1949) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)—the author demonstrates the ways adapted literary works function as social and cultural events in history and how these become important sites of cultural negotiation and struggle.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Film and Television Studies
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January 1997
From Peace to War
Germany, Soviet Russia, and the World, 1939-1941
Wegner, B.
The German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 represents one of the major caesuras in European history. Its consequences could still be felt fifty years later. Thirty-five historians from nine different countries (including the former Soviet Union) offer a comprehensive survey of the origins, course and long-term impact of this event. The volume is not merely concerned with political and military history, but also with the experiences of ordinary soldiers and civilians.
Subjects: History: World War II
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September 1998
From Recovery to Catastrophe
Municipal Stabilization and Political Crisis
Lieberman, B.
Historians of the stabilization phase of Weimar Germany tend to identify German recovery after the First World War with the struggle to revise reparations and control hyperinflation. Focusing primarily on economic aspects is not sufficient, however, the author argues; the financial burden of recovery was only one of several major causes of reaction against the republic. Drawing on material from major German cities, he is able to trace the emergence of strong local activism and of comprehensive and functional policies of recovery on the municipal level which enjoyed broad political backing. Ironically, these same programs that created consensus also contained the potential for destabilization: they unleashed intense debate over the needs of the consumersand the purpose and extent of public spending, and with that of government intervention more generally, which accelerated the fragmentation of bourgeois politics, leading to the final destruction of the Weimar Republic.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
November 2010
From the Bonn to the Berlin Republic
Germany at the Twentieth Anniversary of Unification
Anderson, J. & Langenbacher, E. (eds)
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of East and West Germany in 1989/90 were events of world-historical significance. The twentieth anniversary of this juncture represents an excellent opportunity to reflect upon the evolution of the new Berlin Republic. Given the on-going significance of the country for theory and concept–building in many disciplines, an in-depth examination of the case is essential. In this volume, unique in its focus on all aspects of contemporary Germany - culture, historiography, society, politics and the economy - top scholars offer their assessments of the country’s performance in these and other areas and analyze the successes and continued challenges.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
November 2018
From Weimar to Hitler
Studies in the Dissolution of the Weimar Republic and the Establishment of the Third Reich, 1932-1934
Beck, H. & Jones, L. E. (eds)
Though often depicted as a rapid political transformation, the Nazi seizure of power was in fact a process that extended from the appointment of the Papen cabinet in the early summer of 1932 through the Röhm blood purge two years later. Across fourteen rigorous and carefully researched chapters, From Weimar to Hitler offers a compelling collective investigation of this critical period in modern German history. Each case study presents new empirical research on the crisis of Weimar democracy, the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship, and Hitler’s consolidation of power. Together, they provide multiple perspectives on the extent to which the triumph of Nazism was historically predetermined or the product of human miscalculation and intent.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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April 1999
From World War to Waldheim
Culture and Politics in Austria and the United States
Good, D. & Wodak, R. (eds)
The growing internationalization of the world poses a fundamental question, i.e., through what mechanisms does culture diffuse across political boundaries and what is the role of politics in shaping this diffusion? This volume offers some answers through the case study of the relationship between two quite different states during the Cold War era - Austria, a small neutral country, and the United States, the reigning superpower. The authors challenge naive notions of cultural diffusion that posit the submission of small "peripheral" areas to the dictates of hegemonic powers at the "core." "Americanization" has no doubt taken place since 1945; however, local forces crucially shaped this process, and Austrian elites enjoyed considerable leeway in pursuing "Austrian" political objectives. On the other hand, with the expulsion of Vienna's cultural and intellectual elite after the Anschluß, the United States, more than any othercountry, became heir to the rich cultural legacy of "Vienna 1900," which profoundly shaped politics and culture in both its "high" and popular forms in postwar America. The relationship climaxed and came full circle with the unfolding of the Waldheim affair, which forced Americans and Austrians to reinterpret the meaning of the Nazi era for their own history in a confrontation with the "other."
Subjects: History: World War I Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
June 2018
Frontiers of Civil Society
Government and Hegemony in Serbia
Mikuš, M.
In Serbia, as elsewhere in postsocialist Europe, the rise of “civil society” was expected to support a smooth transformation to Western models of liberal democracy and capitalism. More than twenty years after the Yugoslav wars, these expectations appear largely unmet. Frontiers of Civil Society asks why, exploring the roles of multiple civil society forces in a set of government “reforms” of society and individuals in the early 2010s, and examining them in the broader context of social struggles over neoliberal restructuring and transnational integration.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Political and Economic Anthropology History: 20th Century to Present
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February 2009
Frustrated Aspirations for Change
Donovan, M. & Onofri, P. (eds)
Uncertainty about the future of the government and strong anti-political sentiment dominated Italian politics in 2007. Following a government crisis in February, rooted in the question of Italy’s role in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Romano Prodi was able to re-establish his coalition, but in the spring it suffered a clear setback in local elections amidst a climate of growing unpopularity. Initial chapters in this volume analyse these events as well as some important initiatives aimed, in different ways, at containing public disaffection towards the political class: the establishment of the Democratic Party, the electoral referendum campaign, and Silvio Berlusconi’s announcement of the birth of a new, center-right political party. As demonstrated in following chapters, the government did still manage to achieve a degree of success during the year in combating tax evasion and reducing the budget deficit as a result of increased tax revenue and more effective control of public expenditure. A number of redistributive goals were achieved in this way, as the volume’s examination of government social policy makes clear. Final chapters complete the picture of the state of Italian society in a year characterized by a fragile government facing a number challenging issues subject to veto: the liberalization program and the uncompleted introduction of fiscal federalism, the ever-challenging management of the national health system, the role of the Bank of Italy, the relationship with the Catholic Church and the legislation on de facto couples, crime and security.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
November 2010
The Future of Memory
Crownshaw, R., Kilby, J. & Rowland, A. (eds)
Memory studies has become a rapidly growing area of scholarly as well as public interest. This volume brings together world experts to explore the current critical trends in this new academic field. It embraces work on diverse but interconnected phenomena, such as twenty-first century museums, shocking memorials in present-day Rwanda and the firsthand testimony of the victims of genocidal conflicts. The collection engages with pressing ‘real world’ issues, such as the furor around the recent 9/11 memorial, and what we really mean when we talk about ‘trauma’.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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April 1996
Futurism and Politics
Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909-1944
Berghaus, G.
"Futurism was the state of the Fascist regime" - this is the view one encounters in most books written on Futurist art and literature. Whilst there can be no doubt about Futurist involvement with the founding of the fascist movement, little is known about the internal relationship between Futurists and Fascists in the years 1918-22, nor about the reasons for the Futurists' departure from the Fascist movement in 1920, or about Futurist opposition to (and even armed struggle against) the Fascist regime after 1924. Whilst the public documents testifying to Futurist support of Mussolini are well known, little has been written about Futurist anti-fascism camouflaged as official adherence to the regime. This study, based primarily on unknown or unpublished documents discovered in state archives and private collections, presents a new andfar more complex picture of the relationship of the two movements than has previously been shown by critics and historians.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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February 1998
Gender and Germanness
Cultural Productions of Nation
Herminghouse, P. & Mueller, M. (eds)
Cultural Studies have been preoccupied with questions of national identity and cultural representations. At the same time, feminist studies have insisted upon the entanglement of gender with issues of nation, class, and ethnicity. Developments in the wake of German unification demand a reassessment of the nexus of gender, Germanness and nationhood. The contributors to this volume pursue these strands of the cultural debate in German history, literature, visual arts, and language over a period of three hundred years in sections devoted to History and the Canon, Visual Culture, Germany and Her "Others," and Language and Power.
Contributors: L. Adelson, A. Taylor Allen, K. Bauer, R. Berman, B. Byg, M. Denman, E. Frederiksen, S. Friedrichsmeyer, E. Kaufmann, L. Koepnick, B. Kosta, S. Lefko, A. M.O'Sickey, B. Mennel, H. M. Müller, B. Peterson, L. Pusch, D. Sweet, H. Watt, S. Zantop.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General) History (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality
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April 2014
Gender History in a Transnational Perspective
Networks, Biographies, Gender Orders
Janz, O. & Schönpflug, D. (eds)
Recent debates have used the concept of “transnational history” to broaden research on historical subjects that transcend national boundaries and encourage a shift away from official inter-state interactions to institutions, groups, and actors that have been obscured. This approach proves particularly fruitful for the dynamic field of global gender and women’s history. By looking at the restless lives and work of women’s activists in informal border-crossings, ephemeral NGOs, the lower management of established international organizations, and other global networks, this volume reflects the potential of a new perspective that allows for a more adequate analysis of transnational activities. By pointing out cultural hierarchies, the vicissitudes of translation and re-interpretation, and the ambiguity of intercultural exchange, this volume demonstrates the critical potential of transnational history. It allows us to see the limits of universalist and cosmopolitan claims so dear to many historical actors and historians.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History (General)
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May 2023
Gender in Germany and Beyond
Exploring the Legacy of Jean Quataert
Evans, J. V. & Rose, S. E. (eds)
Jean Quataert redefined the boundaries of at least five historical fields including European socialism, women’s history and gender history, and international law and human rights. In this volume dedicated to her pioneering work, established and emerging scholars showcase the signature ways in which Quataert, as one of the discipline’s first women’s historians, has influenced how subsequent generations think about history writing as a form of intellectual activism. Gender in Germany and Beyond presents cutting edge historiographical commentary alongside new work which address subjects such as the history of German colonialism and women’s colonial leagues, human rights advocacy during the Cold War, and the complexities of turn of the century gay and lesbian rights organizing.
Subjects: History (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality
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December 2011
Gendered Money
Financial Organization in Women's Movements, 1880-1933
Jonsson, P. & Neunsinger, S.
As economic citizenship was a pre-condition of full citizenship, the lack of economic autonomy was an important motivation during the early stages of the women’s movement. Independent of their class background, women had less access to not only financial resources but also social and cultural capital, i.e., member’s commitment. Resources are therefore of particular interest from a gender perspective, and this book sheds light on the importance of resources for women’s struggles for political rights. Highlighting the financial strategies of the first wave of Swedish middle-class and socialist women’s movements and comparing them with similar organizations in Germany, England, and Canada, the authors show the importance of class, gender, age, and the national context, offering a valuable contribution to the discussion of resource mobilization theories in the context of social movements.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History (General)
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eBook available
August 2007
Gendering Modern German History
Rewriting Historiography
Hagemann, K. & Quataert, J. H. (eds)
Writing on the history of German women has - like women's history elsewhere - undergone remarkable expansion and change since it began in the late 1960s. Today Women's history still continues to flourish alongside gender history but the focus of research has increasingly shifted from women to gender. This shift has made it possible to make men and masculinity objects of historical research too. After more than thirty years of research, it is time for a critical stocktaking of the "gendering" of the historiography on nineteenth and twentieth century Germany. To provide a critical overview in a comparative German-American perspective is the main aim of this volume, which brings together leading experts from both sides of the Atlantic. They discuss in their essays the state of historiography and reflect on problems of theory and methodology. Through compelling case studies, focusing on the nation and nationalism, military and war, colonialism, politics and protest, class and citizenship, religion, Jewish and non-Jewish Germans, the Holocaust, the body and sexuality and the family, this volume demonstrates the extraordinary power of the gender perspective to challenge existing interpretations and rewrite mainstream arguments.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
April 2019
Gendering Post-1945 German History
Entanglements
Hagemann, K., & Harsch, D., & Brühöfner, F. (eds)
Although “entanglement” has become a keyword in recent German history scholarship, entangled studies of the postwar era have largely limited their scope to politics and economics across the two Germanys while giving short shrift to social and cultural phenomena like gender. At the same time, historians of gender in Germany have tended to treat East and West Germany in isolation, with little attention paid to intersections and interrelationships between the two countries. This groundbreaking collection synthesizes the perspectives of entangled history and gender studies, bringing together established as well as upcoming scholars to investigate the ways in which East and West German gender relations were culturally, socially, and politically intertwined.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Gender Studies and Sexuality Sociology
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eBook available
September 2013
General de Gaulle's Cold War
Challenging American Hegemony, 1963-68
Martin, G. J.
The greatest threat to the Western alliance in the 1960s did not come from an enemy, but from an ally. France, led by its mercurial leader General Charles de Gaulle, launched a global and comprehensive challenge to the United State’s leadership of the Free World, tackling not only the political but also the military, economic, and monetary spheres. Successive American administrations fretted about de Gaulle, whom they viewed as an irresponsible nationalist at best and a threat to their presence in Europe at worst. Based on extensive international research, this book is an original analysis of France’s ambitious grand strategy during the 1960s and why it eventually failed. De Gaulle’s failed attempt to overcome the Cold War order reveals important insights about why the bipolar international system was able to survive for so long, and why the General’s legacy remains significant to current French foreign policy.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
October 2004
Genocide and Settler Society
Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History
Moses, A. D. (ed)
Colonial Genocide has been seen increasingly as a stepping-stone to the European genocides of the twentieth century, yet it remains an under-researched phenomenon. This volume reconstructs instances of Australian genocide and for the first time places them in a global context. Beginning with the arrival of the British in 1788 and extending to the 1960s, the authors identify the moments of radicalization and the escalation of British violence and ethnic engineering aimed at the Indigenous populations, while carefully distinguishing between local massacres, cultural genocide, and genocide itself. These essays reflect a growing concern with the nature of settler society in Australia and in particular with the fate of the tens of thousands of children who were forcibly taken away from their Aboriginal families by state agencies. Long considered a relatively peaceful settlement, Australian society contained many of the pathologies that led to the exterminatory and eugenic policies of twentieth century Europe.
Subjects: Genocide History Colonial History
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eBook available
February 2017
Genocide in the Ottoman Empire
Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, 1913-1923
Shirinian, G. N. (ed)
The final years of the Ottoman Empire were catastrophic ones for its non-Turkish, non-Muslim minorities. From 1913 to 1923, its rulers deported, killed, or otherwise persecuted staggering numbers of citizens in an attempt to preserve “Turkey for the Turks,” setting a modern precedent for how a regime can commit genocide in pursuit of political ends while largely escaping accountability. While this brutal history is most widely known in the case of the Armenian genocide, few appreciate the extent to which the Empire’s Assyrian and Greek subjects suffered and died under similar policies. This comprehensive volume is the first to broadly examine the genocides of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in comparative fashion, analyzing the similarities and differences among them and giving crucial context to present-day calls for recognition.
Subjects: Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present
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June 2015
Genocide on Settler Frontiers
When Hunter-Gatherers and Commercial Stock Farmers Clash
Adhikari, M. (ed)
European colonial conquest included many instances of indigenous peoples being exterminated. Cases where invading commercial stock farmers clashed with hunter-gatherers were particularly destructive, often resulting in a degree of dispossession and slaughter that destroyed the ability of these societies to reproduce themselves. The experience of aboriginal peoples in the settler colonies of southern Africa, Australia, North America, and Latin America bears this out. The frequency with which encounters of this kind resulted in the annihilation of forager societies raises the question of whether these conflicts were inherently genocidal, an issue not yet addressed by scholars in a systematic way.
Subjects: Genocide History Colonial History
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eBook available
June 2019
German Division as Shared Experience
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Postwar Everyday
Carter, E., Palmowski, J., & Schreiter, K. (eds)
Despite the nearly three decades since German reunification, there remains little understanding of the ways in which experiences overlapped across East-West divides. German Division as Shared Experience considers everyday life across the two Germanies, using perspectives from history, literary and cultural studies, anthropology and art history to explore how interconnections as well as fractures between East and West Germany after 1945 were experienced, lived and felt. Through its novel approach to historical method, the volume points to new understandings of the place of narrative, form and lived sensibility in shaping Germans’ simultaneously shared and separate experiences of belonging during forty years of division from 1945 to 1990.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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February 2004
The German Economy During the Nineteenth Century
Pierenkemper, T. & Tilly, R.
In the 19th Century, economic growth was accompanied by large-scale structural change, known as industrialization, which fundamentally affected western societies. Even though industrialization is on the wane in some advanced economies and we are experiencing substantial structural changes again, the causes and consequences of these changes are inextricably linked with earlier industrialization.This means that understanding 19th Century industrialization helps us understand problems of contemporary economic growth. There is no recent study on economic developments in 19th Century Germany. So this concise volume, written specifically with students of German and economic history in mind, will prove to be most valuable, not least because of its wealth of statistical data.
Subjects: History (General) History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
August 2013
German History 1789-1871
From the Holy Roman Empire to the Bismarckian Reich
Brose, E.
During recent years, there has been a noticeable increase in interest in the nineteenth century, resulting in many fine monographs. However, these studies often gravitate toward Prussia or treat Germany's southern and northern regions as separate entities or else are thematically compartmentalized. This book overcomes these divisions, offering a wide-ranging account of this revolutionary century and skillfully combining narrative with analysis. Its lively style makes it very accessible and ideal for all students of nineteenth-century Germany.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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October 2008
German Literature in a New Century
Trends, Traditions, Transitions, Transformations
Gerstenberger, K. & Herminghouse, P. (eds)
While the first decade after the fall of the Berlin wall was marked by the challenges of unification and the often difficult process of reconciling East and West German experiences, many Germans expected that the “new century” would achieve “normalization.” The essays in this volume take a closer look at Germany’s new normalcy and argue for a more nuanced picture that considers the ruptures as well as the continuities. Germany’s new generation of writers is more diverse than ever before, and their texts often not only speak of a Germany that is multicultural but also take a more playful attitude toward notions of identity. Written with an eye toward similar and dissimilar developments and traditions on both sides of the Atlantic, this volume balances overviews of significant trends in present-day cultural life with illustrative analyses of individual writers and texts.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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October 2003
German Public Policy and Federalism
Current Debates on Political, Legal, and Social Issues
Gunlicks, A. B. (ed)
Since unification German society and institutions have been challenged by various transformations and the need to adjust to changing conditions. While much has been accomplished, many political, legal, and institutional problems remain. This volume deals with selected aspects of domestic and European policy, political parties, the challenge of direct democracy, and federalism in unified Germany – all issues that have been the subject of much discussion, political posturing, legislation, and, to some extent, constitutional amendments and court decision for many years, if not decades. In conclusion, a British scholar looks at German federalism and a number of public policy issues from a comparative perspective and arrives at some surprising and encouraging results.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
July 2014
The German Right in the Weimar Republic
Studies in the History of German Conservatism, Nationalism, and Antisemitism
Jones, L. E. (ed)
Significant recent research on the German Right between 1918 and 1933 calls into question received narratives of Weimar political history. The German Right in the Weimar Republic examines the role that the German Right played in the destabilization and overthrow of the Weimar Republic, with particular emphasis on the political and organizational history of Rightist groups as well as on the many permutations of right-wing ideology during the period. In particular, antisemitism and the so-called “Jewish Question” played a prominent role in the self-definition and politics of the right-wing groups and ideologies explored by the contributors to this volume.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
June 2021
German Rule, African Subjects
State Aspirations and the Reality of Power in Colonial Namibia
Zimmerer, J.
Although it lasted only thirty years, German colonial rule dramatically transformed South West Africa. The colonial government not only committed the first genocide of the twentieth century against the Herero and Nama, but in their efforts to establish a “model colony” and “racial state,” they brought about even more destructive and long-lasting consequences. In this now-classic study—available here for the first time in English—the author provides an indispensable account of Germany's colonial utopia in what is present-day Namibia, showing how the highly rationalized planning of Wilhelmine authorities ultimately failed even as it added to the profound immiseration of the African population.
Subjects: Colonial History History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
January 2005
German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing, 1919-1945
Haar, I. & Fahlbusch, M. (eds)
Recently, there has been a major shift in the focus of historical research on World War II towards the study of the involvements of scholars and academic institutions in the crimes of the Third Reich. The roots of this involvement go back to the 1920s. At that time right-wing scholars participated in the movement to revise the Versailles Treaty and to create a new German national identity. The contribution of geopolitics to this development is notorious. But there were also the disciplines of history, geography, ethnography, art history, archeology, sociology, and demography that devised a new nationalist ideology and propaganda. Its scholars established an extensive network of personal and institutional contacts. This volume deals with these scholars and their agendas. They provided the Nazi regime with ideas of territorial expansion, colonial exploitation and racist exclusion culminating in the Holocaust. Apart from developing ideas and concepts, scholars also actively worked in the SS and Wehrmacht when Hitler began to implement its criminal policies in World War II.
This collection of original essays, written by the foremost European scholars in this field, describes key figures and key programs supporting the expansion and exploitation of the Third Reich. In particular, they analyze the historical, geographic, ethnographical and ethno-political ideas behind the ethnic cleansing and looting of cultural treasures.
Subjects: Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present
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October 1999
The German Skills Machine
Sustaining Comparative Advantage in a Global Economy
Culpepper, P. & Finegold, D. (eds)
In recent years the German economy has grown sluggishly and created few new jobs. These developments have led observers to question the future viability of a model that in the past seemed able to combine economic growth, competitiveness in export markets, and low social inequality. This volume brings together empirical and comparative research from across the social sciences to examine whether or not Germany's system of skill provision is still capable of meeting the economic and social challenges now facing all the advanced capitalist economies. At issue is the question of whether or not the celebrated German training system, an essential element of the high-skill, high-wage equilibrium, can continue to provide the skills necessary for German companies to hold their economic niche in a world characterized by increasing trade and financial interdependence. Combining an examination of the competitiveness of the German training system with an analysis of the robustness of the political institutions that support it, this volume seeks to understand the extent to which the German system for imparting craft skills can adjust to changes in the organization of production in the advanced industrial states.
Subject: History (General)
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February 2013
The German Student Movement and the Literary Imagination
Transnational Memories of Protest and Dissent
Rinner, S.
Through a close reading of novels by Ulrike Kolb, Irmtraud Morgner, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Bernhard Schlink, Peter Schneider, and Uwe Timm, this book traces the cultural memory of the 1960s student movement in German fiction, revealing layers of remembering and forgetting that go beyond conventional boundaries of time and space. These novels engage this contestation by constructing a palimpsest of memories that reshape readers’ understanding of the 1960s with respect to the end of the Cold War, the legacy of the Third Reich, and the Holocaust. Topographically, these novels refute assertions that East Germans were isolated from the political upheaval that took place in the late 1960s and 1970s. Through their aesthetic appropriations and subversions, these multicultural contributions challenge conventional understandings of German identity and at the same time lay down claims of belonging within a German society that is more openly diverse than ever before.
Subjects: Literary Studies History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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January 2001
The German-American Encounter
Conflict and Cooperation between Two Cultures, 1800-2000
Trommler, F. & Shore, E. (eds)
While Germans, the largest immigration group in the United States, contributed to the shaping of American society and left their mark on many areas from religion and education to food, farming, political and intellectual life, Americans have been instrumental in shaping German democracy after World War II. Both sides can claim to be part of each other's history, and yet the question arises whether this claim indicates more than a historical interlude in the forming of the Atlantic civilization.
In this volume some of the leading historians, social scientists and literary scholars from both sides of the Atlantic have come together to investigate, for the first time in a broad interdisciplinary collaboration, the nexus of these interactions in view of current and future challenges to German-American relations.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
October 2022
German–Jewish Studies
Next Generations
Wallach, K. & Elyada. A. (eds)
As a field, German-Jewish Studies emphasizes the dangers of nationalism, monoculturalism, and ethnocentrism, while making room for multilingual and transnational perspectives with questions surrounding migration, refugees, exile, and precarity. Focussing on the relevance and utility of the field for the twenty-first century, German-Jewish Studies explores why studying and applying German-Jewish history and culture must evolve and be given further attention today. The volume brings together an interdisciplinary range of scholars to reconsider the history of antisemitism—as well as intersections of antisemitism with racism and colonialism—and how connections to German Jews shed light on the continuities, ruptures, anxieties, and possible futures of German-speaking Jews and their legacies.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Jewish Studies
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August 2015
Germans Against Nazism
Nonconformity, Opposition and Resistance in the Third Reich: Essays in Honour of Peter Hoffmann
Nicosia, F. R. & Stokes, L. D. (eds)
Rather than being accepted by all of German society, the Nazi regime was resisted in both passive and active forms. This re-issued volume examines opposition to National Socialism by Germans during the Third Reich in its broadest sense. It considers individual and organized nonconformity, opposition, and resistance ranging from symbolic acts of disobedience to organized assassination attempts, and looks at how disparate groups such as the Jewish community, churches, conservatives, communists, socialists, and the military all defied the regime in their own ways.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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November 2015
The Germans and the Holocaust
Popular Responses to the Persecution and Murder of the Jews
Schrafstetter, S. & Steinweis, A. E. (eds)
For decades, historians have debated how and to what extent the Holocaust penetrated the German national consciousness between 1933 and 1945. How much did “ordinary” Germans know about the subjugation and mass murder of the Jews, when did they know it, and how did they respond collectively and as individuals? This compact volume brings together six historical investigations into the subject from leading scholars employing newly accessible and previously underexploited evidence. Ranging from the roots of popular anti-Semitism to the complex motivations of Germans who hid Jews, these studies illuminate some of the most difficult questions in Holocaust historiography, supplemented with an array of fascinating primary source materials.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Jewish Studies Genocide History
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March 2006
Germans No More
Accounts of Jewish Everyday Life, 1933-1938
Limberg, M. & Rübsaat, H. (eds)
Most books on Nazi Germany focus on the war years. Much less is known about the preceding years although these give important clues with regard to the events after November 1938, which culminated in the Holocaust. This book is based on eyewitness accounts chosen from the many memoirs that Harvard University received in 1940 after it had sent out a call to German-Jewish refugees to describe their experiences before and after 1933. These invaluable documents became part of the Harvard archives where the editors of this volume discovered them fifty years later. These memoirs, written so soon after the emigration when the impressions were still vivid, movingly describe the gradual deterioration of the situation of the Jews, the daily humiliations and insults they had to suffer, and their desperate attempts to leave Germany. An informative introduction puts these accounts into a wider framework.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Jewish Studies
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October 2001
Germany and America
Essays in Honor of Gerald R. Kleinfeld
Friedrich, W.-U. (ed)
Leading experts on German-American relations, German politics and German Studies from both sides of the Atlantic are contributing to this volume in honor of Gerry Kleinfeld, founder and executive director of the German Studies Association, founder and long-time editor of the German Studies Review. The essays cover a broad spectrum of German-American political, economic, and cultural relations, offering an up-to-date survey of recent developments in this highly topical field.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
July 2013
Germany and the Black Diaspora
Points of Contact, 1250-1914
Honeck, M., Klimke, M., & Kuhlmann, A. (eds)
The rich history of encounters prior to World War I between people from German-speaking parts of Europe and people of African descent has gone largely unnoticed in the historical literature—not least because Germany became a nation and engaged in colonization much later than other European nations. This volume presents intersections of Black and German history over eight centuries while mapping continuities and ruptures in Germans' perceptions of Blacks. Juxtaposing these intersections demonstrates that negative German perceptions of Blackness proceeded from nineteenth-century racial theories, and that earlier constructions of “race” were far more differentiated. The contributors present a wide range of Black–German encounters, from representations of Black saints in religious medieval art to Black Hessians fighting in the American Revolutionary War, from Cameroonian children being educated in Germany to African American agriculturalists in Germany's protectorate, Togoland. Each chapter probes individual and collective responses to these intercultural points of contact.
Subjects: History: Medieval/Early Modern History: 18th/19th Century Colonial History
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eBook available
December 2021
Germany and the Confessional Divide
Religious Tensions and Political Culture, 1871-1989
Ruff, M. E. & Großbölting, T. (eds)
From German unification in 1871 through the early 1960s, confessional tensions between Catholics and Protestants were a source of deep division in German society. Engaging this period of historic strife, Germany and the Confessional Divide focuses on three traumatic episodes: the Kulturkampf waged against the Catholic Church in the 1870s, the collapse of the Hohenzollern monarchy and state-supported Protestantism after World War I, and the Nazi persecution of the churches. It argues that memories of these traumatic experiences regularly reignited confessional tensions. Only as German society became increasingly secular did these memories fade and tensions ease.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
December 2018
Germany and the Middle East
From Kaiser Wilhelm II to Angela Merkel
Steininger, R.
For over a century, the Middle East has weathered seemingly endless conflicts, ensnaring political players from around the world. And perhaps no nation has displayed a greater range of policies toward, and experiences in, the region than Germany, as this short and accessible volume demonstrates. Beginning with Kaiser Wilhelm’s intermittent support for Zionism, it follows the course of German-Mideast relations through two world wars and the rise of Adolf Hitler. As Steininger shows, the crimes of the Third Reich have inevitably shaped postwar German Mideast policy, with Germany emerging as one of Israel’s staunchest supporters while continuing to navigate the region’s complex international, religious, and energy politics.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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April 2015
Germany and 'The West'
The History of a Modern Concept
Bavaj, R. & Steber, M. (eds)
“The West” is a central idea in German public discourse, yet historians know surprisingly little about the evolution of the concept. Contrary to common assumptions, this volume argues that the German concept of the West was not born in the twentieth century, but can be traced from a much earlier time. In the nineteenth century, “the West” became associated with notions of progress, liberty, civilization, and modernity. It signified the future through the opposition to antonyms such as “Russia” and “the East,” and was deployed as a tool for forging German identities. Examining the shifting meanings, political uses, and transnational circulations of the idea of “the West” sheds new light on German intellectual history from the post-Napoleonic era to the Cold War.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
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October 2019
Germany On Their Minds
German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988
Schenderlein, A. C.
Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, approximately ninety thousand German Jews fled their homeland and settled in the United States, prior to that nation closing its borders to Jewish refugees. And even though many of them wanted little to do with Germany, the circumstances of the Second World War and the postwar era meant that engagement of some kind was unavoidable—whether direct or indirect, initiated within the community itself or by political actors and the broader German public. This book carefully traces these entangled histories on both sides of the Atlantic, demonstrating the remarkable extent to which German Jews and their former fellow citizens helped to shape developments from the Allied war effort to the course of West German democratization.
Subjects: Jewish Studies Refugee and Migration Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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October 1999
Germany's Difficult Passage to Modernity
Breakdown, Breakup, Breakthrough
Lankowski, C. (ed)
Germany's institutional anatomy, its norms, and the spirits that animate it can only be properly understood if one takes into account such factors as its economic power and central position within Europe. This volume traces the difficult passage of German society to modernity, offering new perspectives on the "German question," largely characterized by the absence of key ideological underpinnings of democracy in the early modern period and a constitutional exceptionalism on the eve of the 20th century. The essays describe the organizational infrastructure and behavioral norms that account for the success of Germany's postwar economy and polity, but also register the tensions between the increasingly individualist outlook of post-1968 Germans and the country's highly organized and ritualistic decision-making structures, which often severely test the democratic foundations of the republic.
However, Germany is not unique in its efforts to find a balance between traditional and modern forces that have shaped its history. This volume demonstrates that Germany's experience, past and present, teaches broader lessons that speak to the central concerns of our time: what are the historical precursors of and vital attitudes towards democracy? How much structural variation will be feasible in political economies embedded in Europe after the introduction of the Euro and in the context of economic and other globalization? The considerable insights into these questions provided by this volume celebrate the inspiration given to colleagues and students who have worked with Andrei S. Markovits, to whom it is dedicated.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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January 1995
Germany's New Politics
Parties and Issues in the 1990s
Conradt, D., Kleinfeld, G. R., Romoser, G. K. & Søe, C. (eds)
Four years after unification, Germany completed what has been called the "super election year": no less than nineteen elections, culminating in the Bundestag vote on October 16, 1994. Four years after unification, the elections of 1994 reveal the state of German Unity and the interplay of new forces in post-Cold War Europe. This book analyzes the elections for specialists as well as for students, placing them in the wider context of political and economic developments in Germany in the 1990s. An appendix with full data on previous Bundestag elections and relevant charts on party developments enhances the value of this volume which students, scholars and the general reader interested in German affairs will find indispensable.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
October 2017
Global Exchanges
Scholarships and Transnational Circulations in the Modern World
Tournès, L. & Scott-Smith, G. (eds)
Exchanges between different cultures and institutions of learning have taken place for centuries, but it was only in the twentieth century that such efforts evolved into formal programs that received focused attention from nation-states, empires and international organizations. Global Exchanges provides a wide-ranging overview of this underresearched topic, examining the scope, scale and evolution of organized exchanges around the globe through the twentieth century. In doing so it dramatically reveals the true extent of organized exchange and its essential contribution for knowledge transfer, cultural interchange, and the formation of global networks so often taken for granted today.
Subjects: Mobility Studies History: 20th Century to Present Educational Studies
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eBook available
August 2020
Globalizing Automobilism
Exuberance and the Emergence of Layered Mobility, 1900–1980
Mom, G.
Why has “car society” proven so durable, even in the face of mounting environmental and economic crises? In this follow-up to his magisterial Atlantic Automobilism, Gijs Mom traces the global spread of the automobile in the postwar era and investigates why adopting more sustainable forms of mobility has proven so difficult. Drawing on archival research as well as wide-ranging forays into popular culture, Mom reveals here the roots of the exuberance, excess, and danger that define modern automotive culture.
Subjects: Transport Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Mobility Studies
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December 2006
God's Eugenicist
Alexis Carrel and the Sociobiology of Decline
Reggiani, A
The temptations of a new genetically informed eugenics and of a revived faith-based, world-wide political stance, this study of the interaction of science, religion, politics and the culture of celebrity in twentieth-century Europe and America offers a fascinating and important contribution to the history of this movement. The author looks at the career of French-born physician and Nobel Prize winner, Alexis Carrel (1873-1944), as a way of understanding the popularization of eugenics through religious faith, scientific expertise, cultural despair and right-wing politics in the 1930s and 1940s. Carrel was among the most prestigious experimental surgeons of his time who also held deeply illiberal views. In Man, the Unknown (1935), he endorsed fascism and called for the elimination of the "unfit." The book became a huge international success, largely thanks to its promotion by Readers' Digest as well as by the author's friendship with Charles Lindbergh. In 1941, he went into the service of the French pro-German regime of Vichy, which appointed him to head an institution of eugenics research. His influence was remarkable, affecting radical Islamic groups as well Le Pen’s Front National that celebrated him as the "founder of ecology."
Subject: History (General)
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March 2013
The Golden Chain
Family, Civil Society and the State
Nautz, J., Ginsborg, P., & Nijhuis, T. (eds)
The family can be viewed as one of the links in a “golden chain” connecting individuals, the private sphere, civil society, and the democratic state; as potentially an important source of energy for social activity; and as the primary institution that socializes and diffuses the values and norms that are of fundamental importance for civil society. Yet much of the literature on civil society pays very little attention to the complex relations between civil society and the family. These two spheres constitute a central element in democratic development and culture and form a counterweight to some of the most distressing aspects of modernity, such as the excessive privatization of home life and the unceasing work-and-spend routines. This volume offers historical perspectives on the role of families and their members in the processes of a liberal and democratic civil society, the question of boundaries and intersections of the private and public domains, and the interventions of state institutions.
Subjects: History (General) Sociology
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January 2010
Governing Fear
Baldini, G. & Cento Bull, A. (eds)
In 2008, Silvio Berlusconi returned to power — thanks to a decisive electoral victory — to head a slimmer coalition whose cabinet consisted of members very close to him. The year began with the garbage crisis in Naples and ended in a climate dominated by economic uncertainty. In between some unexpected events happened: during the administrative elections, held with the general elections in April, the right in Rome claimed many victories; for the first time ever, a woman, Emma Marcegaglia, was elected President of Confindustria; and the Alitalia airline had to be rescued from the brink of economic collapse. For consecutive months, opinion polls gave Berlusconi an unprecedented level of popular support; those polled attributed their approval to either his ‘decisionism’ or to what they viewed as a successful strategy of continual announcements. Others pointed to the executive’s success in ‘governing the fears’ of Italians, which was helped by a change of register in the way the media dealt with issues of security. This volume shows that the politics of vetoes, which characterised the previous center-left government, could not conceal the structural, economic and social problems that still need to be resolved, a situation not helped by the fact that the opposition parties were still unable to develop an effective political strategy by yearend. With the contribution of Italian and international experts, the volume also addresses the issues of the difficult integration of immigrants, the mismanagement of public health and the reform of the education.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2016
Governing Under Constraint
Carbone, M. & Piattoni, S. (eds)
In 2015, Matteo Renzi’s government continued to elicit contrasting reactions while dealing with both internal and external constraints. Some say it passed crucial reforms for economic development in fields such as the labor market, the banking system, education, and public administration, in addition to passing a new electoral law. However, others criticize the substance and, even more, the way reforms were passed by constructing variable parliamentary majorities according to the vote at hand, thus avoiding the need to build consensual decision-making relationships with interest groups and further centralizing power in the office of the prime minister. Be that as it may, the government was able to impose its own agenda in domestic affairs. Although the success of the 2015 Universal Exposition in Milan helped to bolster the image of the country, Italy continued to play a marginal role in key international areas, such as migration, European austerity policies, and the fight against terrorism.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2017
The Great Reform That Never Was
Chiaramonte, A. & Wilson, A. (eds)
In Italy, 2016 was meant to be the year of the “great reform,” a constitutional revision that would have concluded the never-ending transition from “First” to “Second” Republic, a long process involving several transformations in the electoral system and party system since the 1990s. It did not turn out this way. Instead, the Renzi-Boschi law for constitutional revision, which started its parliamentary procedure in April 2014 and saw its final reading in the Chamber of Deputies in April 2016, was eventually rejected by voters in a confirmative referendum held on 4 December.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
October 2003
The Great Tradition and Its Legacy
The Evolution of Dramatic and Musical Theater in Austria and Central Europe
Cherlin, M., Filipowicz, H. & Rudolph, R. L. (eds)
Both dramatic and musical theater are part of the tradition that has made Austria - especially Vienna - and the old Habsburg lands synonymous with high culture in Central Europe. Many works, often controversial originally but now considered as classics, are still performed regularly in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, or Krakow. This volume not only offers an excellent overview of the theatrical history of the region, it is also an innovative, cross-disciplinary attempt to analyse the inner workings and dynamics of theater through a discussion of the interplay between society, the audience, and performing artists.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Performance Studies Literary Studies
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September 2000
The Great Train Race
Railways and the Franco-German Rivalry, 1815-1914
Mitchell, A.
From their origins, railways produced an intense competition between the two major continental systems in France and Germany. Fitting a new technology into existing political institutions and social habits, these two nations became inexorably involved in industrial and commercial rivalry that eventually escalated into the armed conflict of 1914. Based on many years of research in French and German archives, this study examines the adaptation of railroads and steam engines from Britain to the continent of Europe after the Napoleonic age. A fascinating example of how the same technology, borrowed at the same time from the same source, was assimilated differently by the two continental powers, this book offers a groundbreaking analysis of the crossroads of technology and politics during the first Industrial Revolution.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Transport Studies
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January 2015
The Greater German Reich and the Jews
Nazi Persecution Policies in the Annexed Territories 1935-1945
Gruner, W. & Osterloh, J. (eds)
Between 1935 and 1940, the Nazis incorporated large portions of Europe into the German Reich. The contributors to this volume analyze the evolving anti-Jewish policies in the annexed territories and their impact on the Jewish population, as well as the attitudes and actions of non-Jews, Germans, and indigenous populations. They demonstrate that diverse anti-Jewish policies developed in the different territories, which in turn affected practices in other regions and even influenced Berlin’s decisions. Having these systematic studies together in one volume enables a comparison - based on the most recent research - between anti-Jewish policies in the areas annexed by the Nazi state. The results of this prizewinning book call into question the common assumption that one central plan for persecution extended across Nazi-occupied Europe, shifting the focus onto differing regional German initiatives and illuminating the cooperation of indigenous institutions.
Subjects: History: World War II Genocide History
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eBook available
April 2017
The Greek Exodus from Egypt
Diaspora Politics and Emigration, 1937-1962
Dalachanis, A.
From the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, Greeks comprised one of the largest and most influential minority groups in Egyptian society, yet barely two thousand remain there today. This painstakingly researched book explains how Egypt’s once-robust Greek population dwindled to virtually nothing, beginning with the abolition of foreigners’ privileges in 1937 and culminating in the nationalist revolution of 1952. It reconstructs the delicate sociopolitical circumstances that Greeks had to navigate during this period, providing a multifaceted account of demographic decline that arose from both large structural factors as well as the decisions of countless individuals.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Refugee and Migration Studies
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eBook available
September 2021
The Greek Military Dictatorship
Revisiting a Troubled Past, 1967–1974
Anastasakis, O. & Lagos, K. (eds)
From 1967 to 1974, the military junta ruling Greece attempted a dramatic reshaping of the nation, implementing ideas and policies that left a lasting mark on both domestic affairs and international relations. Bringing together leading scholars from a range of disciplines, The Greek Military Dictatorship explores the junta’s attempts to impose authoritarian rule upon a rapidly modernizing country while navigating a complex international landscape. Focusing both on foreign relations as well as domestic matters such as economics, ideology, religion, culture and education, this book offers a fresh and well-researched study of a key period in modern Greek history.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
January 2023
The Guardians of Concepts
Political Languages of Conservatism in Britain and West Germany, 1945-1980
Steber, M.
Since 1945, what ‘conservative’ means has troubled intellectuals, politicians and parties in the United Kingdom and West Germany. In Britain conservatism was an accepted term of the political vocabulary, denoting a particular tradition of political thought and practice. In West Germany, by contrast, conservatism was a difficult concept for the young democracy to swallow. It carried a heavy antiliberal and antidemocratic burden and led people to question whether there was a place for conservatism within democratic culture after all.
The Guardians of Concepts scrutinizes the debates about conservatism in the UK and the Federal Republic of Germany from the late 1940s to the early 1980s. Informed by historical semantics, it conceives of conservatism as a flexible linguistic structure, and shows the importance of language for the self-understanding of many conservatives, who not by chance, have regarded themselves as the guardians of concepts. The intense national and transnational debates about the meaning of conservatism had far-reaching consequences and continue to influence politics today.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
October 2021
Guido Goldman
Transatlantic Bridge Builder
Klingst, M.
A careful reconstruction of the life of Guido Goldman, founder of the German Marshall Fund and Harvard University’s Center for European Studies.
“In his distinguished career, Guido Goldman has made important contributions to both the American and German societies in art, education, and their political evolution. He has created essential institutions to enhance the interaction of America and Germany. And he has been an inspiring and reliable friend through a long life.”—Henry Kissinger
The son of Nahum Goldmann, who was the founder of the World Jewish Congress, Guido Goldman was one of the most distinguished protagonists of the reintegration of Germany into the international community after the defeat of Nazism in 1945. His large network of friends and interlocutors included Willy Brandt and Helmut Kohl, Henry Kissinger and Ronald Reagan, Harry Belafonte and Marlene Dietrich. His generous philanthropy extended to the preservation of non-Western cultures threatened by extinction, such as the IKAT project through which he revived the unique ancient textile arts of Central Asia.
From the preface
Almost no one knows about Goldman. Although not without vanity, he never sought the spotlight, preferring to hang back quietly, pulling strings from behind the scenes. Nonetheless, he was a key figure in contemporary history; his life story reflects the twists and turns of a century of German, Jewish, European, and American history. His biography allows us to observe the continued impact of the Nazi era, the Cold War, and American racism; as if through a magnifying glass, we can examine the abysses, hopes, longings, successes, and defeats of the twentieth century. These twentieth-century events and emotions have not disappeared; they continue to resonate in our own world.Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Peace and Conflict Studies
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eBook available
September 2018
Gulag Memories
The Rediscovery and Commemoration of Russia's Repressive Past
Bogumił, Z.
Though the institution of the Gulag was nominally closed over half a decade ago, it lives on as an often hotly contested site of memory in the post-socialist era. This ethnographic study takes a holistic, comprehensive approach to understanding memories of the Gulag, and particularly the language of commemoration that surrounds it in present-day Russian society. It focuses on four regions of particular historical significance—the Solovetsky Islands, the Komi Republic, the Perm region, and Kolyma—to carefully explore how memories become a social phenomenon, how objects become heritage, and how the human need to create sites of memory has preserved the Gulag in specific ways today.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Memory Studies
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eBook available
May 2019
Gustav Stresemann
The Crossover Artist
Pohl, K. H.
As a foreign minister and chancellor of Weimar Germany, Gustav Stresemann is a familiar figure for students of German history – one who, for many, embodied the best qualities of German interwar liberalism. However, a more nuanced and ambivalent picture emerges in this award-winning biography, which draws on extensive research and new archival material to enrich our understanding of Stresmann’s public image and political career. It memorably explores the personality of a brilliant but flawed politician who endured class anxiety and social marginalization, and who died on the eve of Germany’s descent into economic and political upheaval.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present History (General)
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eBook available
May 2017
Hairy Hippies and Bloody Butchers
The Greenpeace Anti-Whaling Campaign in Norway
Riese, J.
In the popular imagination, no issue has been more closely linked with the environmental group Greenpeace than whaling. Opposition to commercial whaling has inspired many of the organization’s most dramatic and high-profile “direct actions”—as well as some of its most notable failures. This book provides an inside look at one such instance: Greenpeace’s decades-long campaign against the Norwegian whaling industry. Combining historical narrative with systems-theory analysis, author Juliane Riese shows how the organization’s self-presentation as a David pitted against whale-butchering Goliaths was turned on its head. She recounts how opponents successfully discredited the campaign while Greenpeace struggled with internal disagreements and other organizational challenges, providing valuable lessons for other protest movements.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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eBook available
December 2007
Hannah Arendt and the Uses of History
Imperialism, Nation, Race, and Genocide
King, R. H. & Stone, D. (eds)
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) first argued that there were continuities between the age of European imperialism and the age of fascism in Europe in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). She claimed that theories of race, notions of racial and cultural superiority, and the right of ‘superior races’ to expand territorially were themes that connected the white settler colonies, the other imperial possessions, and the fascist ideologies of post-Great War Europe. These claims have rarely been taken up by historians. Only in recent years has the work of scholars such as Jürgen Zimmerer and A. Dirk Moses begun to show in some detail that Arendt was correct.
This collection does not seek merely to expound Arendt’s opinions on these subjects; rather, it seeks to use her insights as the jumping-off point for further investigations – including ones critical of Arendt – into the ways in which race, imperialism, slavery and genocide are linked, and the ways in which these terms have affected the United States, Europe, and the colonised world.
Subjects: Genocide History Colonial History History: 20th Century to Present
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April 1998
Haunted by History
Myths in International Relations
Buffet, C. & Heuser, B. (eds)
Europe is a continent weighed down by the shadows of its past, its wars, the traditional enmities, the suspicions of neighbours fuelled by historical memories. This has immediate consequences for the understanding and representation of the past: journalists, politicians, historians often apply simplistic, pre-conceived patterns, i.e., myths, to current events, resulting in distorted and misleading analyses. This volume exposes the way some historical myths, such as Balance of Power, Rapallo, the Special Relationship, the Franco-German Couple, the Peril of Islam, are used to blur, not to clarify our understanding of international affairs, even to manipulate contemporary politics.
Subjects: History (General) Memory Studies Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
August 2019
Hazardous Chemicals
Agents of Risk and Change, 1800-2000
Homburg, E. & Vaupel, E. (eds)
Although poisonous substances have been a hazard for the whole of human history, it is only with the development and large-scale production of new chemical substances over the last two centuries that toxic, manmade pollutants have become such a varied and widespread danger. Covering a host of both notorious and little-known chemicals, the chapters in this collection investigate the emergence of specific toxic, pathogenic, carcinogenic, and ecologically harmful chemicals as well as the scientific, cultural and legislative responses they have prompted. Each study situates chemical hazards in a long-term and transnational framework and demonstrates the importance of considering both the natural and the social contexts in which their histories have unfolded.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
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September 2016
Health and Difference
Rendering Human Variation in Colonial Engagements
Widmer, A. & Lipphardt, V. (eds)
Human variation represented a central research topic for life scientists and posed challenging administrative issues for colonial bureaucrats in the first half of the 20th century. By following scientists’ and administrators’ interests in innovating styles and tools for making and circulating documents, in reshaping landscapes and environments, and in fixing distances between humans, the book advances new understandings of the materiality of colonial institutional life and governance.
Subjects: Medical Anthropology Colonial History
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May 2023
Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe
The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus
Hirschon, R.
Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe is a landmark work in the areas of anthropology and migration studies. Since its first publication in 1989, this classic study has remained in demand. The third edition is published to mark the centenary of the 1923 Lausanne Convention which led to the movement of some 1.5 million persons between Greece and Turkey at the conclusion of their war. It includes updated material with a new Preface, Afterword by Ayhan Aktar, and map of the wider region. The new Preface provides the context in which the original research took place, assesses its innovative aspects and explores the dimensions of history and identity which are predominant themes in the book.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Refugee and Migration Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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February 2015
Helmut Kohl's Quest for Normality
His Representation of the German Nation and Himself
Wicke, C.
During his political career, Helmut Kohl used his own life story to promote a normalization of German nationalism and to overcome the stigma of the Nazi period. In the context of the cold war and the memory of the fascist past, he was able to exploit the combination of his religious, generational, regional, and educational (he has a PhD in History) experiences by connecting nationalist ideas to particular biographical narratives. Kohl presented himself as the embodiment of “normality”: a de-radicalized German nationalism which was intended to eclipse any anti-Western and post-national peculiarities. This book takes a biographical approach to the study of nationalism by examining its manifestation in Helmut Kohl and the way he historicized Germany’s past.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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July 2008
Helsinki 1975 and the Transformation of Europe
Bange, O. & Niedhart, G. (eds)
It was in Europe that the Cold War reached a decisive turning point in the 1960s, leading to the era of détente. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), with its Final Act in Helsinki in August 1975, led to a rapprochement between East and West in the fields of security, economy and culture. This volume offers a pilot study in what the authors perceive as the key issues within this process: an understanding over the ‘German problem’ (balancing the recognition of the post-war territorial status quo against a formula for the eventuality of a peaceful change of frontiers) and the Western strategy of transformation through a multiplication of contacts between the two blocs. Both of these arguments emerged from the findings of an international research project on ‘Détente and CSCE in Europe, 1966-1975’, funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung and headed by the two editors.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
April 2021
The Herero Genocide
War, Emotion, and Extreme Violence in Colonial Namibia
Häussler, M.
Drawing on previously inaccessible and overlooked archival sources, The Herero Genocide undertakes a groundbreaking investigation into the war between colonizer and colonized in what was formerly German South-West Africa and is today the nation of Namibia. In addition to its eye-opening depictions of the starvation, disease, mass captivity, and other atrocities suffered by the Herero, it reaches surprising conclusions about the nature of imperial dominion, showing how the colonial state’s genocidal posture arose from its own inherent weakness and military failures. The result is an indispensable account of a genocide that has been neglected for too long.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History
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eBook available
October 2021
Heritage under Socialism
Preservation in Eastern and Central Europe, 1945–1991
Gantner, E. B., Geering, C., & Vickers, P. (ed)
How was heritage understood and implemented in European socialist states after World War II? By exploring national and regional specificities within the broader context of internationalization, this volume enriches the conceptual, methodological and empirical scope of heritage studies through a series of fascinating case studies. Its transnational approach highlights the socialist world’s diverse interpretations of heritage and the ways in which they have shaped the trajectories of present-day preservation practices.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Heritage Studies Memory Studies
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eBook available
July 2022
Heritage, Gentrification and Resistance in the Neoliberal City
Hammami, F., Jewesbury, D., & Valli, C. (eds)
What happens when versions of the past become silenced, suppressed, or privileged due to urban restructuring? In what ways are the interpretations and performances of ‘the past’ linked to urban gentrification, marginalization, displacement, and social responses? Authors explore a variety of attempts to interrupt and interrogate urban restructuring, and to imagine alternative forms of urban organization, produced by diverse coalitions of resisting groups and individuals. Armed with historical narratives, oral histories, objects, physical built environment, memorials, and intangible aspects of heritage that include traditions, local knowledge and experiences, memories, authors challenge the ‘devaluation’ of their neighborhoods in official heritage and development narratives.
Subjects: Heritage Studies Cultural Studies (General) History (General)
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November 2013
The Hidden History of Crime, Corruption, and States
Bridenthal, R. (ed)
Renowned historical sociologist Charles Tilly wrote many years ago that “banditry, piracy, gangland rivalry, policing, and war-making all belong on the same continuum.” This volume pursues the idea by revealing how lawbreakers and lawmakers have related to one another on the shadowy terrains of power over wide stretches of time and space. Illicit activities and forces have been more important in state building and state maintenance than conventional histories have acknowledged. Covering vast chronological and global terrain, this book traces the contested and often overlapping boundaries between these practices in such very different polities as the pre-modern city-states of Europe, the modern nation-states of France and Japan, the imperial power of Britain in India and North America, Africa’s and Southeast Asia’s postcolonial states, and the emerging postmodern regional entity of the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, the contemporary explosion of transnational crime raises the question of whether or not the relationship of illicit to licit practices may be mutating once more, leading to new political forms beyond the nation-state.
Subject: History (General)
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June 2007
Historical Concepts Between Eastern and Western Europe
Hildermeier, M. (ed)
More than a decade after the breakdown of the Soviet Empire and the reunification of Europe historiographies and historical concepts still are very much apart. Though contacts became closer and Russian historians joined their Polish colleagues in the effort to take up western discussions and methodologies, there have been no common efforts yet for joint interpretations and no attempts to reach a common understanding of central notions and concepts. Exploring key concepts and different meanings in Western and East-European/Russian history, this volume offers an important contribution to such a comparative venture.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
June 2010
Historical Memory in Africa
Dealing with the Past, Reaching for the Future in an Intercultural Context
Diawara, M., Lategan, B., & Rüsen, J. (eds)
A vast amount of literature—both scholarly and popular—now exists on the subject of historical memory, but there is remarkably little available that is written from an African perspective. This volume explores the inner dynamics of memory in all its variations, from its most destructive and divisive impact to its remarkable potential to heal and reconcile. It addresses issues on both the conceptual and the pragmatic level and its theoretical observations and reflections are informed by first-hand experiences and comparative reflections from a German, Indian, and Korean perspective. A new insight is the importance of the future dimension of memory and hence the need to develop the ability to ‘remember with the future in mind’. Historical memory in an African context provides a rich kaleidoscope of the diverse experiences and perspectives—and yet there are recurring themes and similar conclusions, connecting it to a global dialogue to which it has much to contribute, but from which it also has much to receive.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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September 2003
The Historical Practice of Diversity
Transcultural Interactions from the Early Modern Mediterranean to the Postcolonial World
Hoerder, D., Harzig, C. & Shubert, A. (eds)
While multicultural composition of nations has become a catchword in public debates, few educators, not to speak of the general public, realize that cultural interaction was the rule throughout history. Starting with the Islam-Christian-Jewish Mediterranean world of the early modern period, this volume moves to the empires of the 18th and 19th centuries and the African Diaspora of the Black Atlantic. It ends with questioning assumptions about citizenship and underlying homogeneous "received" cultures through the analysis of the changes in various literatures. This volume clearly shows that the life-worlds of settled as well as migrant populations in the past were characterized by cultural change and exchange whether conflictual or peaceful. Societies reflected on such change in their literatures as well as in their concepts of citizenship.
Subjects: History: Medieval/Early Modern Cultural Studies (General) Colonial History
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July 2010
Histories of the Aftermath
The Legacies of the Second World War in Europe
Biess, F. & Moeller, R. G. (eds)
In 1945, Europeans confronted a legacy of mass destruction and death: millions of families had lost their homes and livelihoods; millions of men in uniform had lost their lives; and millions more had been displaced by the war’s destruction, and the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime. From a range of methodological historical perspectives—military, cultural, and social, to film and gender and sexuality studies—this volume explores how Europeans came to terms with these multiple pasts. With a focus on distinctive national experiences in both Eastern and Western Europe, it illuminates how postwar stabilization coexisted with persistent insecurities, injuries, and trauma.
Subject: History: World War II
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January 2005
History
Narration, Interpretation, Orientation
Rüsen, J.
Without denying the importance of the postmodernist approach to the narrative form and rhetorical strategies of historiography, the author, one of Germany's most prominent cultural historians, argues here in favor of reason and methodical rationality in history. He presents a broad variety of aspects, factors and developments of historical thinking from the 18th century to the present, thus continuing, in exemplary fashion, the tradition of critical self-reflection in the humanities and looking at historical studies as an important factor of cultural orientation in practical life.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
June 2018
History and Belonging
Representations of the Past in Contemporary European Politics
Berger, S. & Tekin, C. (eds)
In cultural and intellectual terms, one of the EU’s most important objectives in pursuing unification has been to develop a common historical narrative of Europe. Across ten compelling case studies, this volume examines the premises underlying such a project to ask: Could such an uncontested history of Europe ever exist? Combining studies of national politics, supranational institutions, and the fraught EU-Mideast periphery with a particular focus on the twentieth century, the contributors to History and Belonging offer a fascinating survey of the attempt to forge a post-national identity politics.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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May 1995
History and Modernity in Latin America
Barloewen, C. von
Why is it that Japan, with few natural resources, has become one of the world's leading economies but not Latin America, which is so rich in natural resources? This anthropological essay questions the Euro-centric notion of modernity and modernization and argues that Latin America has to find its own form of modernity, one which accepts and reflects its owntraditions. As long as a Western Model is grafted on to Latin American societies, modernization is bound to fail. After examining the history and peculiarities of these societies and their cultures, from the pre-Colombian era to the present, the author develops what could become the framework for a future, "indigenous" model.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
January 2012
History in the Plural
An Introduction to the Work of Reinhart Koselleck
Olsen, N.
Reinhart Koselleck (1923–2006) was one of most imposing and influential European intellectual historians in the twentieth century. Constantly probing and transgressing the boundaries of mainstream historical writing, he created numerous highly innovative approaches, absorbing influences from other academic disciplines as represented in the work of philosophers and political thinkers like Hans Georg Gadamer and Carl Schmitt and that of internationally renowned scholars such as Hayden White, Michel Foucault, and Quentin Skinner. An advocate of “grand theory,” Koselleck was an inspiration to many scholars and helped move the discipline into new directions (such as conceptual history, theories of historical times and memory) and across disciplinary and national boundaries. He thus achieved a degree of international fame that was unusual for a German historian after 1945. This book not only presents the life and work of a “great thinker” and European intellectual, it also contributes to our understanding of complex theoretical and methodological issues in the cultural sciences and to our knowledge of the history of political, historical, and cultural thought in Germany from the 1950s to the present.
Subject: History (General)
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April 2015
The History of Labour Intermediation
Institutions and Finding Employment in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Wadauer, S., Buchner, T., & Mejstrik, A. (eds)
Searching for a job has been an everyday affair in both modern and past societies, and employment a concern for both individuals and institutions. The case studies in this volume investigate job search and placement practices in European countries, Australia, and India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors explore how looking for work becomes a means by which participants (individuals, placement agents, trade unions, municipalities, administrations, state authorities, and schools) articulated specific interests, perspectives, and agendas. Taking an exploratory approach, the chapters illustrate different approaches to the history of employment and job searching, ranging from organizational and regulatory histories to the analysis of practices and autobiographical accounts. In the process, they uncover the interrelations of search practices and attempts to arrange placement services.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Sociology Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
November 2007
A History of Oxford Anthropology
Rivière, P. (ed)
Informative as well as entertaining, this volume offers many interesting facets of the first hundred years of anthropology at Oxford University.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology History (General)
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eBook available
June 2006
History of the Low Countries
Blom, J. C. H. & Lamberts, E. (eds)
The history of the smaller European countries is rather neglected in the teaching of European history at university level. We are therefore pleased to announce the publication of the first comprehensive history of the Low Countries - in English - from Roman Times to the present. Remaining politically and culturally fragmented, with its inhabitants speaking Dutch, French, Frisian, and German, the Low Countries offer a fascinating picture of European history en miniature. For historical reasons, parts of northern France and western Germany also have to be included in the "Low Countries," a term that must remain both broad and fluid, a convenient label for a region which has seldom, if ever, composed a unified whole. In earlier ages it as even more difficult to the region set parameters, again reflecting Europe as a whole, when tribes and kingdoms stretched across expanses not limited to the present states of Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
Nevertheless, its parts did demonstrate many common traits and similar developments that differentiated them from surrounding countries and lent them a distinct character. Internationally, the region often served both as a mediator for and a buffer to the surrounding great powers, France, Britain, and Germany; an important role still played today as Belgium and the Netherlands have increasingly become involved in the broader process of European integration, in which they often share the same interest and follow parallel policies. This highly illustrated volume serves as an ideal introduction to the rich history of the Low Countries for students and the generally interested reader alike.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
January 2014
The History of the Stasi
East Germany's Secret Police, 1945-1990
Gieseke, J.
A well-balanced and detailed look at the East German Ministry for State Security, the secret police force more commonly known as the Stasi.
“This is an excellent book, full of careful, balanced judgements and a wealth of concisely-communicated knowledge. It is also well written. Indeed, it is the best book yet published on the MfS.”—German History
The Stasi stood for Stalinist oppression and all-encompassing surveillance. The “shield and sword of the party,” it secured the rule of the Communist Party for more than forty years, and by the 1980s it had become the largest secret-police apparatus in the world, per capita.
Jens Gieseke tells the story of the Stasi, a feared secret-police force and a highly professional intelligence service. He inquires into the mechanisms of dictatorship and the day-to-day effects of surveillance and suspicion. Masterful and thorough at once, he takes the reader through this dark chapter of German postwar history, supplying key information on perpetrators, informers, and victims. In an assessment of post-communist memory politics, he critically discusses the consequences of opening the files and the outcomes of the Stasi debate in reunified Germany.
A major guide for research on communist secret-police forces, this book is considered the standard reference work on the Stasi.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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March 2023
The History of Thyssen
Family, Industry and Culture in the 20th Century
Schulz, G. & Szöllösi-Janze, M.
As a result of a multi-volume research project, funded by the Thyssen Foundations (Stiftung zur Industriegeschichte Thyssen and Fritz Thyssen Stiftung), ten books were published that served to greatly advance the available knowledge on the Thyssen family and their companies. The results of this project are summarized in this volume which provides both an explanation of how the project was conceptualized and executed and a detailed case study of a family and their business during the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It explains the development of both whilst addressing issues such as patriarchal succession; gender roles in the family; wealthy lifestyles in international communities of aristocrats and diplomats; operating across national legislation, institutions, and policies; and discussions of labor and capital. In doing so it connects corporate and family history to provide an all-inclusive view of the development of a business.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
September 2018
A History Shared and Divided
East and West Germany since the 1970s
Bösch, F. (ed)
By and large, the histories of East and West Germany have been studied in relative isolation. And yet, for all their differences, the historical trajectories of both nations were interrelated in complex ways, shaped by economic crises, social and cultural changes, protest movements, and other phenomena so diffuse that they could hardly be contained by the Iron Curtain. Accordingly, A History Shared and Divided offers a collective portrait of the two Germanies that is both broad and deep. It brings together comprehensive thematic surveys by specialists in social history, media, education, the environment, and similar topics to assemble a monumental account of both nations from the crises of the 1970s to—and beyond—the reunification era.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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July 2012
Hitler's Volksgemeinschaft and the Dynamics of Racial Exclusion
Violence against Jews in Provincial Germany, 1919–1939
Wildt, M.
In the spring of 1933, German society was deeply divided – in the Reichstag elections on 5 March, only a small percentage voted for Hitler. Yet, once he seized power, his creation of a socially inclusive Volksgemeinschaft, promising equality, economic prosperity and the restoration of honor and pride after the humiliating ending of World War I persuaded many Germans to support him and to shut their eyes to dictatorial coercion, concentration camps, secret state police, and the exclusion of large sections of the population. The author argues however, that the everyday practice of exclusion changed German society itself: bureaucratic discrimination and violent anti-Jewish actions destroyed the civil and constitutional order and transformed the German nation into an aggressive and racist society. Based on rich source material, this book offers one of the most comprehensive accounts of this transformation as it traces continuities and discontinuities and the replacement of a legal order with a violent one, the extent of which may not have been intended by those involved.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History
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eBook available
August 2012
Hitler's Plans for Global Domination
Nazi Architecture and Ultimate War Aims
Thies, J.
What did Hitler really want to achieve: world domination. In the early twenties, Hitler was working on this plan and from 1933 on, was working to make it a reality. During 1940 and 1941, he believed he was close to winning the war. This book not only examines Nazi imperial architecture, armament, and plans to regain colonies but also reveals what Hitler said in moments of truth. The author presents many new sources and information, including Hitler’s little known intention to attack New York City with long-range bombers in the days of Pearl Harbor.
Subject: History: World War II
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October 2010
Hitler's Slaves
Life Stories of Forced Labourers in Nazi-Occupied Europe
Plato, A., Leh, A. & Thonfeld, C. (eds)
During World War II at least 13.5 million people were employed as forced labourers in Germany and across the territories occupied by the German Reich. Most came from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldavia, the Baltic countries, France, Poland and Italy. Among them were 8.4 million civilians working for private companies and public agencies in industry, administration and agriculture. In addition, there were 4.6 million prisoners of war and 1.7 million concentration camp prisoners who were either subjected to forced labour in concentration or similar camps or were ‘rented out’ or sold by the SS. While there are numerous publications on forced labour in National Socialist Germany during World War II, this publication combines a historical account of events with the biographies and memories of former forced labourers from twenty-seven countries, offering a comparative international perspective.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2008
Hitler's War in the East, 1941-1945. (3rd Edition)
A Critical Assessment
Müller, R.-D. & Ueberschär, G.R.
This volume provides a guide to the extensive literature on the war in the East, including largely unknown Soviet writing on the subject. Indispensable for military historians, but also for all scholars who approach this crucial period in world history from a socio-economic or cultural perspective.
Subject: History: World War II
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eBook available
August 2012
The Holocaust and Historical Methodology
Stone, D. (ed)
In the last two decades our empirical knowledge of the Holocaust has been vastly expanded. Yet this empirical blossoming has not been accompanied by much theoretical reflection on the historiography. This volume argues that reflection on the historical process of (re)constructing the past is as important for understanding the Holocaust—and, by extension, any past event—as is archival research. It aims to go beyond the dominant paradigm of political history and describe the emergence of methods now being used to reconstruct the past in the context of Holocaust historiography.
Subjects: Genocide History History: World War II
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March 2005
Holocaust Monuments and National Memory
France and Germany since 1989
Carrier, P.
Since 1989, two sites of memory with respect to the deportation and persecution of Jews in France and Germany during the Second World War have received intense public attention: the Vélo d'Hiver (Winter Velodrome) in Paris and the Monument for the Murdered Jews of Europe or Holocaust Monument in Berlin. Why is this so? Both monuments, the author argues, are unique in the history of memorial projects. Although they are genuine "sites of memory", neither monument celebrates history, but rather serve as platforms for the deliberation, negotiation and promotion of social consensus over the memorial status of war crimes in France and Germany. The debates over these monuments indicate that it is the communication among members of the public via the mass media, rather than qualities inherent in the sites themselves, which transformed these sites into symbols beyond traditional conceptions of heritage and patriotism.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History Heritage Studies
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eBook available
October 2010
The Holy Roman Empire, Reconsidered
Coy, J.P., Marschke, B., & Sabean, D.W. (eds)
The Holy Roman Empire has often been anachronistically assumed to have been defunct long before it was actually dissolved at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The authors of this volume reconsider the significance of the Empire in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Their research reveals the continual importance of the Empire as a stage (and audience) for symbolic performance and communication; as a well utilized problem-solving and conflict-resolving supra-governmental institution; and as an imagined political, religious, and cultural "world" for contemporaries. This volume by leading scholars offers a dramatic reappraisal of politics, religion, and culture and also represents a major revision of the history of the Holy Roman Empire in the early modern period.
Subject: History: Medieval/Early Modern
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May 2013
Homemade Men in Postwar Austrian Cinema
Nationhood, Genre and Masculinity
Fritsche, M.
Despite the massive influx of Hollywood movies and films from other European countries after World War II, Austrian film continued to be hugely popular with Austrian and German audiences. By examining the decisive role that popular cinema played in the turbulent post-war era, this book provides unique insights into the reconstruction of a disrupted society. Through detailed analysis of the stylistic patterns, narratives and major themes of four popular genres of the time, costume film, Heimatfilm, tourist film and comedy, the book explains how popular cinema helped to shape national identity, smoothed conflicted gender relations and relieved the Austrians from the burden of the Nazi past through celebrating the harmonious, charming, musical Austrian man.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present Gender Studies and Sexuality
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eBook available
May 2022
Hotbeds of Licentiousness
The British Glamour Film and the Permissive Society
Halligan, B.
Hotbeds of Licentiousness is the first substantial critical engagement with British pornography on film across the 1970s, including the “Summer of Love,” the rise and fall of the Permissive Society, the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, and beyond. By focusing on a series of colorful filmmakers whose work, while omnipresent during the 1970s, now remains critically ignored, author Benjamin Halligan discusses pornography in terms of lifestyle aspirations and opportunities which point to radical changes in British society. In this way, pornography is approached as a crucial optic with which to consider recent cultural and social history.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
December 2019
A Human Garden
French Policy and the Transatlantic Legacies of Eugenic Experimentation
Rosental, P.-A.
Well into the 1980s, Strasbourg, France, was the site of a curious and little-noted experiment: Ungemach, a garden city dating back to the high days of eugenic experimentation that offered luxury living to couples who were deemed biologically fit and committed to contractual childbearing targets. Supported by public authorities, Ungemach aimed to accelerate human evolution by increasing procreation among eugenically selected parents. In this fascinating history, Paul-André Rosental gives an account of Ungemach’s origins and its perplexing longevity. He casts a troubling light on the influence that eugenics continues to exert—even decades after being discredited as a pseudoscience—in realms as diverse as developmental psychology, postwar policymaking, and liberal-democratic ideals of personal fulfilment.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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June 2001
Human Nature and the French Revolution
From the Enlightenment to the Napoleonic Code
Martin, X.
What view of man did the French Revolutionaries hold? Anyone who purports to be interested in the "Rights of Man" could be expected to see this question as crucial and yet, surprisingly, it is rarely raised. Through his work as a legal historian, Xavier Martin came to realize that there is no unified view of man and that, alongside the "official" revolutionary discourse, very divergent views can be traced in a variety of sources from the Enlightenment to the Napoleonic Code. Michelet's phrases, "Know men in order to act upon them" sums up the problem that Martin's study constantly seeks to elucidate and illustrate: it reveals the prevailing tendency to see men as passive, giving legislators and medical people alike free rein to manipulate them at will. His analysis impels the reader to revaluate the Enlightenment concept of humanism. By drawing on a variety of sources, the author shows how the anthropology of Enlightenment and revolutionary France often conflicts with concurrent discourses.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century
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December 2012
Human Rights Without Democracy?
Reconciling Freedom with Equality
Haller, G.
Do Human Rights truly serve the people? Should citizens themselves decide democratically of what those rights consist? Or is it a decision for experts and the courts? Gret Haller argues that Human Rights must be established democratically. Drawing on the works of political philosophers from John Locke to Immanuel Kant, she explains why, from a philosophical point of view, liberty and equality need not be mutually exclusive. She outlines the history of the concept of Human Rights, shedding light on the historical development of factual rights, and compares how Human Rights are understood in the United States in contrast to Great Britain and Continental Europe, uncovering vast differences. The end of the Cold War presented a challenge to reexamine equality as being constitutive of freedom, yet the West has not seized this opportunity and instead allows so-called experts to define Human Rights based on individual cases. Ultimately, the highest courts revise political decisions and thereby discourage participation in the democratic shaping of political will.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
December 2018
Humanitarianism and Media
1900 to the Present
Paulmann, J. (ed)
From Christian missionary publications to the media strategies employed by today’s NGOs, this interdisciplinary collection explores the entangled histories of humanitarianism and media. It traces the emergence of humanitarian imagery in the West and investigates how the meanings of suffering and aid have been constructed in a period of evolving mass communication, demonstrating the extent to which many seemingly new phenomena in fact have long historical legacies. Ultimately, the critical histories collected here help to challenge existing asymmetries and help those who advocate a new cosmopolitan consciousness recognizing the dignity and rights of others.
Subjects: Media Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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January 1997
Humanity's Soldier
France and International Security, 1919-2001
Chuter, D.
French security policy has posed a puzzle to many people outside France, including politicians and even defense specialists such as the author, who took time off from his administrative position in Whitehall in order to study French thinking about security in detail. As with many other studies, he takes as his point of departure the traumatic defeat of 1940 but argues that the origins of current French policy are grounded in events and ideas that go back hundreds of years. They are ideas that are scarcely known or often misinterpreted in the Anglo-Saxon world.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
September 2022
Humboldt Revisited
The Impact of the German University on American Higher Education
Brandser, G. C.
Humboldt Revisited offers a fresh perspective on the contemporary discourse surrounding reform of European universities. Arguing that contemporary reform derives its basis from pre-constructed truths about the so-called ‘Humboldt-university,’ this monograph traces the historical descent of these truths to the American reception of Humboldt's ideas from the mid-19th century up until the 1960s. Drawing from a rich selection of historical sources, this volume offers an alternative to conventional explanations of the forces behind the ongoing reform of European universities. It also challenges the conventional historical narrative on the Humboldt University, providing new insight into the American reception of the German ideas.
Subjects: Educational Studies History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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January 2001
Hunting the Gatherers
Ethnographic Collectors, Agents, and Agency in Melanesia 1870s-1930s
O'Hanlon, M. & Welsch, R. (eds)
Between the 1870s and the 1930s competing European powers carved out and consolidated colonies in Melanesia, the most culturally diverse region of the world. As part of this process, great assemblages of ethnographic artefacts were made by a range of collectors whose diversity is captured in this volume. The contributors to this tightly-integrated volume take these collectors, and the collecting institutions, as the departure point for accounts that look back at the artefact-producing societies and their interaction with the collectors, but also forward to the fate of the collections in metropolitan museums, as the artefacts have been variously exhibited, neglected, re-conceived as indigenous heritage, or repatriated. In doing this, the contributors raise issues of current interest in anthropology, Pacific history, art history, museology, and material culture.
Subjects: Museum Studies Theory and Methodology Colonial History Heritage Studies
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eBook available
October 2018
Ice and Snow in the Cold War
Histories of Extreme Climatic Environments
Herzberg, J., Kehrt, C., & Torma, F. (eds)
The history of the Cold War has focused overwhelmingly on statecraft and military power, an approach that has naturally placed Moscow and Washington center stage. Meanwhile, regions such as Alaska, the polar landscapes, and the cold areas of the Soviet periphery have received little attention. However, such environments were of no small importance during the Cold War: in addition to their symbolic significance, they also had direct implications for everything from military strategy to natural resource management. Through histories of these extremely cold environments, this volume makes a novel intervention in Cold War historiography, one whose global and transnational approach undermines the simple opposition of “East” and “West.”
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Environmental Studies (General)
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December 2002
Identities
Time, Difference and Boundaries
Friese, H. (ed)
"Identity" has become a core concept of the social and cultural sciences. Bringing together perspectives from sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, and literary criticism, this book offers a comprehensive and critical overview on how this concept is currently used and how it relates to memory and constructions of historical meaning.
Subjects: History (General) Literary Studies Anthropology (General) Sociology
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July 2023
If Cars Could Walk
Postsocialist Streets in Transformation
Duijzings, G. & Tuvikene, T. (eds)
In the last 25 years, the explosive rise of car mobility has transformed street life in post-socialist cities. Whereas previously the social fabric of these cities ran on socialist modes of mobility, they are now overtaken by a culture of privately owned cars. If Cars Could Walk uses ethnographic cases studies documenting these changes in terms of street interaction, vehicles used, and the parameters of speed, maneuverability, and cultural and symbolic values. The altered reality of people’s movements, replacing public transport, bicycles and other former ‘socialist’ modes of mobility with privatized mobility reflect an evolving political and cultural imagination, which in turn shapes their current political reality.
Subjects: Transport Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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December 2004
Images of Power
Iconography, Culture and the State in Latin America
Andermann, J. & Rowe, W. (eds)
In Latin America, where even today writing has remained a restricted form of expression, the task of generating consent and imposing the emergent nation-state as the exclusive form of the political, was largely conferred to the image. Furthermore, at the moment of its historical demise, the new, 'postmodern' forms of sovereignty appear to rely even more heavily on visual discourses of power. However, a critique of the iconography of the modern state-form has been missing. This volume is the first concerted attempt by cultural, historical and visual scholars to address the political dimension of visual culture in Latin America, in a comparative perspective spanning various regions and historical stages. The case studies are divided into four sections, analysing the formation of a public sphere, the visual politics of avant-garde art, the impact of mass society on political iconography, and the consolidation and crisis of territory as a key icon of the state.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History (General) Media Studies
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eBook available
July 2004
The Imaginary Revolution
Parisian Students and Workers in 1968
Seidman, M.
The events of 1968 have been seen as a decisive turning point in the Western world. The author takes a critical look at "May 1968" and questions whether the events were in fact as "revolutionary" as French and foreign commentators have indicated. He concludes the student movement changed little that had not already been challenged and altered in the late fifties and early sixties. The workers' strikes led to fewer working hours and higher wages, but these reforms reflected the secular demands of the French labor movement. "May 1968" was remarkable not because of the actual transformations it wrought but rather by virtue of the revolutionary power that much of the media and most scholars have attributed to it and which turned it into a symbol of a youthful, renewed, and freer society in France and beyond.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
January 2021
Imagining Bosnian Muslims in Central Europe
Representations, Transfers and Exchanges
Šístek, F. (ed)
As a Slavic-speaking religious and ethnic “Other” living just a stone’s throw from the symbolic heart of the continent, the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina have long occupied a liminal space in the European imagination. To a significant degree, the wider representations and perceptions of this population can be traced to the reports of Central European—and especially Habsburg—diplomats, scholars, journalists, tourists, and other observers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This volume assembles contributions from historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and literary scholars to examine the political, social, and discursive dimensions of Bosnian Muslims’ encounters with the West since the nineteenth century.
Subjects: History (General) Anthropology of Religion
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eBook available
November 2009
Immigration Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany
Negotiating Membership and Remaking the Nation
Klusmeyer, D. & Papademetriou, D.
German migration policy now stands at a major crossroad, caught between a fifty-year history of missed opportunities and serious new challenges. Focusing on these new challenges that German policy makers face, the authors, both internationally recognized in this field, use historical argument, theoretical analysis, and empirical evaluation to advance a more nuanced understanding of recent initiatives and the implications of these initiatives. Their approach combines both synthesis and original research in a presentation that is not only accessible to the general educated reader but also addresses the concerns of academic scholars and policy analysts. This important volume offers a comprehensive and critical examination of the history of German migration law and policy from the Federal Republic’s inception in 1949 to the present.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Refugee and Migration Studies
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eBook available
August 2020
Imperial Culture and Colonial Projects
The Portuguese-Speaking World from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries
Curto, D. R.
Beyond the immeasurable political and economic changes it brought, colonial expansion exerted a powerful effect on Portuguese culture. And as this book demonstrates, the imperial culture that emerged over the course of four centuries was hardly a homogeneous whole, as triumphalist literature and other cultural forms mingled with recurrent doubts about the expansionist project. In a series of illuminating case studies, Ramada Curto follows the history and perception of major colonial initiatives while integrating the complex perspectives of participating agents to show how the empire’s life and culture were richly inflected by the operations of imperial expansion.
Subjects: History: Medieval/Early Modern Colonial History
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January 2005
Imperial Germany 1871-1918
Economy, Society, Culture and Politics
Berghahn, V. R.
A comprehensive history of German society in this period, providing a broad survey of its development. The volume is thematically organized and designed to give easy access to the major topics and issues of the Bismarkian and Wilhelmine eras. The statistical appendix contains a wide range of social, economic and political data. Written with the English-speaking student in mind, this book is likely to become a widely used text for this period, incorporating as it does twenty years of further research on the German Empire since the appearance of Hans-Ulrich Wehler's classic work.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
September 2011
Imperial Germany Revisited
Continuing Debates and New Perspectives
Müller, S. O. & Torp, C. (eds)
The German Empire, its structure, its dynamic development between 1871 and 1918, and its legacy, have been the focus of lively international debate that is showing signs of further intensification as we approach the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. Based on recent work and scholarly arguments about continuities and discontinuities in modern German history from Bismarck to Hitler, well-known experts broadly explore four themes: the positioning of the Bismarckian Empire in the course of German history; the relationships between society, politics and culture in a period of momentous transformations; the escalation of military violence in Germany's colonies before 1914 and later in two world wars; and finally the situation of Germany within the international system as a major political and economic player. The perspectives presented in this volume have already stimulated further argument and will be of interest to anyone looking for orientation in this field of research.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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May 2015
Imperial Projections
Screening the German Colonies
Fuhrmann, W.
The beginning of filmmaking in the German colonies coincided with colonialism itself coming to a standstill. Scandals and economic stagnation in the colonies demanded a new and positive image of their value for Germany. By promoting business and establishing a new genre within the fast growing film industry, films of the colonies were welcomed by organizations such as the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (German Colonial Society). The films triggered patriotic feelings but also addressed the audience as travelers, explorers, wildlife protectionists, and participants in unique cultural events. This book is the first in-depth analysis of colonial filmmaking in the Wilhelmine Era.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Colonial History
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eBook available
October 2007
An Improbable War?
The Outbreak of World War I and European Political Culture before 1914
Afflerbach, H., & Stevenson, D. (eds)
The First World War has been described as the "primordial catastrophe of the twentieth century." Arguably, Italian Fascism, German National Socialism and Soviet Leninism and Stalinism would not have emerged without the cultural and political shock of World War I. The question why this catastrophe happened therefore preoccupies historians to this day. The focus of this volume is not on the consequences, but rather on the connection between the Great War and the long 19th century, the short- and long-term causes of World War I. This approach results in the questioning of many received ideas about the war's causes, especially the notion of "inevitability."
Subject: History: World War I
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eBook available
June 2021
In Memory of Times to Come
Ironies of History in Southeastern Papua New Guinea
Demian, M.
Drawing on twenty years of research, this book examines the historical perspective of a Pacific people who saw “globalization” come and go. Suau people encountered the leading edge of missionization and colonialism in Papua New Guinea and were active participants in the Second World War. In Memory of Times to Come offers a nuanced account of how people assess their own experience of change over the course of a critical century. It asks two key questions: What does it mean to claim that global connections are in the past rather than the present or the future, and what does it mean to claim that one has lost one’s culture, but not because anyone else took it away or destroyed it?
Subjects: Anthropology (General) History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
August 2019
In Search of European Liberalisms
Concepts, Languages, Ideologies
Freeden, M., Fernández-Sebastián, J. & Leonhard, J. (eds)
Since the Enlightenment, liberalism as a concept has been foundational for European identity and politics, even as it has been increasingly interrogated and contested. This comprehensive study takes a fresh look at the diverse understandings and interpretations of the idea of liberalism in Europe, encompassing not just the familiar movements, doctrines, and political parties that fall under the heading of “liberal” but also the intertwined historical currents of thought behind them. Here we find not an abstract, universalized liberalism, but a complex and overlapping configuration of liberalisms tied to diverse linguistic, temporal, and political contexts.
Subject: History (General)
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August 2006
In Search of Salt
Changes in Beti (Cameroon) Society, 1880-1960
Quinn, F.
Relatively recent Bantu-speaking migrants to central Cameroon, the Beti have had an eventful history. Based on extensive interviews and traditional Beti (Fang) poetry, in addition to German and French archival sources, the author of this readable study recreates the social structure of the Beti and their self-perceptions in pre-colonial times, their disruptive encounters with first German (1880-1918) and then French (1918-1960) colonialism, until Cameroon’s independence.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History
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eBook available
September 2016
In the Name of the Great Work
Stalin's Plan for the Transformation of Nature and its Impact in Eastern Europe
Olšáková, D. (ed)
Beginning in 1948, the Soviet Union launched a series of wildly ambitious projects to implement Joseph Stalin’s vision of a total “transformation of nature.” Intended to increase agricultural yields dramatically, this utopian impulse quickly spread to the newly communist states of Eastern Europe, captivating political elites and war-fatigued publics alike. By the time of Stalin’s death, however, these attempts at “transformation”—which relied upon ideologically corrupted and pseudoscientific theories—had proven a spectacular failure. This richly detailed volume follows the history of such projects in three communist states—Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia—and explores their varied, but largely disastrous, consequences.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Environmental Studies (General)
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eBook available
June 2022
In the Shadow of Auschwitz
German Massacres against Polish Civilians, 1939–1945
Brewing, D.
The Nazi invasion of Poland was the first step in an unremittingly brutal occupation, one most infamously represented by the network of death camps constructed on Polish soil. The systematic murder of Jews in the camps has understandably been the focus of much historical attention. Less well-remembered today is the fate of millions of non-Jewish Polish civilians, who—when they were not expelled from their homeland or forced into slave labor—were murdered in vast numbers both within and outside of the camps. Drawing on both German and Polish sources, In the Shadow of Auschwitz gives a definitive account of the depredations inflicted upon Polish society, tracing the ruthless implementation of a racial ideology that cast ethnic Poles as an inferior race.
Subjects: Genocide History History: World War II
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eBook available
January 2021
In the Shadow of the Great War
Physical Violence in East-Central Europe, 1917–1923
Böhler, J., Konrád, O., Kučera, R. (eds)
Whether victorious or not, Central European states faced fundamental challenges after the First World War as they struggled to contain ongoing violence and forge peaceful societies. This collection explores the various forms of violence these nations confronted during this period, which effectively transformed the region into a laboratory for state-building. Employing a bottom-up approach to understanding everyday life, these studies trace the contours of individual and mass violence in the interwar era while illuminating their effects upon politics, intellectual developments, and the arts.
Subjects: History: World War I History: 20th Century to Present Peace and Conflict Studies
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eBook available
October 2016
Incarceration and Regime Change
European Prisons during and after the Second World War
De Vito, C. G., Futselaar, R., & Grevers, H. (eds)
Political instability is nearly always accompanied by fuller prisons, and this was particularly true during the “long” Second World War, when military mobilization, social disorder, wrenching political changes, and shifting national boundaries swelled the ranks of the imprisoned and broadened the carceral reach of the state. This volume brings together theoretically sophisticated, empirically rich studies of key transitional moments that transformed the scope and nature of European prisons during and after the war. It depicts the complex interactions of both penal and administrative institutions with the men and women who experienced internment, imprisonment, and detention at a time when these categories were in perpetual flux.
Subjects: History: World War II History: 20th Century to Present
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March 2022
Indigenous Resurgence
Decolonialization and Movements for Environmental Justice
Dhillon, J.
From the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s resistance against the Dakota Access pipeline to the Nepalese Newar community’s protest of the Fast Track Road Project, Indigenous peoples around the world are standing up and speaking out against global capitalism to protect the land, water, and air. By reminding us of the fundamental importance of placing Indigenous politics, histories, and ontologies at the center of our social movements, Indigenous Resurgence positions environmental justice within historical, social, political, and economic contexts, exploring the troubling relationship between colonial and environmental violence and reframing climate change and environmental degradation through an anticolonial lens.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) Applied Anthropology Colonial History
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October 1998
Indoctrinability, Ideology and Warfare
Evolutionary Perspectives
Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. & Salter, F.K. (eds)
Violent ethno-nationalist conflicts continue to mar the history of the twentieth century; yet no satisfactory answer to the question of why humans are susceptible to indoctrination by ideologies that lead to inter-group hostility has so far been found. In this volume an international team of leading scientists from many different fields approach this complex issue from a biological perspective, treating indoctrinability as a predisposition that has its roots in humanity's evolutionary past.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
March 2019
The Indoctrination of the Wehrmacht
Nazi Ideology and the War Crimes of the German Military
Sait, B.
Far from the image of an apolitical, “clean” Wehrmacht that persists in popular memory, German soldiers regularly cooperated with organizations like the SS in the abuse and murder of countless individuals during the Second World War. This in-depth study demonstrates that a key factor in the criminalization of the Wehrmacht was the intense political indoctrination imposed on its members. At the instigation of senior leadership, many ordinary German soldiers and officers became ideological warriors who viewed their enemies in racial and political terms—a project that was but one piece of the broader effort to socialize young men during the Nazi era.
Subjects: Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present
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June 1999
Industrial Culture and Bourgeois Society in Modern Germany
Kocka, J.
Jürgen Kocka is one of the foremost historians of Germany whose work has been devoted to the integration of different genres of the social and economic history of Europe during the period of industrialization. This collection of essays gives a representative sample of his effort to develop, by reference to Marx and Weber, new and powerful analytical tools for understanding the dynamics of modern industrial societies.
Subjects: History (General) History: 18th/19th Century Sociology
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July 2023
Innovation and Implementation
Critical Reflections on New Approaches to Historic Mortuary Data Collection, Analysis and Dissemination
Veit, R. & Mytum, H. (eds)
Providing a comprehensive set of guidance to assist researchers wishing to carry out, curate and disseminate field research at a historic burial ground, chapters offer up to date methods for surface and subsurface survey and for the recording and archiving of burial monument data. Divided into three parts considering documentary research and recording of mortuary landscapes, reflections on memorial recording projects, and archiving and wider dissemination of data and interpretations. Also included is the archaeological potential of pet cemeteries and other pet memorials. Discussions therefore include how methodologies may or may not be applicable to both human and animal subjects.
Subjects: Archaeology History (General) Anthropology (General)
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February 2004
International Adventures
German Popular Cinema and European Co-Productions in the 1960s
Bergfelder, T.
West German cinema of the 1960s is frequently associated with the emergence of a new generation of filmmakers, collectively known by the 1970s as the "New German Cinema." Yet for domestic and international audiences at the time, German cinema primarily meant popular genres such as exotic adventure films, Gothic crime thrillers, westerns, and sex films, which were dismissed by German filmmakers and critics of the 1970s as "Daddy's Cinema."
International Adventures provides the first comprehensive account of these genres, and charts the history of the West German film industry and its main protagonists from the immediate post-war years to its boom period in the 1950s and 1960s. By analyzing film genres in the context of industrial practices, literary traditions, biographical trajectories, and wider cultural and social developments, this book uncovers a forgotten period of German filmmaking that merits reassessment.
International Adventures firmly locates its case studies within the wider dynamic of European cinema. In its study of West German cinema's links and co-operations with other countries including Britain, France, and Italy, the book addresses what is perhaps the most striking phenomenon of 1960s popular film genres: the dispersal and disappearance of markers of national identity in increasingly international narratives and modes of production.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
December 2016
International Organizations and Environmental Protection
Conservation and Globalization in the Twentieth Century
Kaiser, W. & Meyer, J.-H. (eds)
Pollution, resource depletion, habitat management, and climate change are all issues that necessarily transcend national boundaries. Accordingly, they and other environmental concerns have been a particular focus for international organizations from before the First World War to the present day. This volume is the first to comprehensively explore the environmental activities of professional communities, NGOs, regional bodies, the United Nations, and other international organizations during the twentieth century. It follows their efforts to shape debates about environmental degradation, develop binding intergovernmental commitments, and—following the seminal 1972 Conference on the Human Environment—implement and enforce actual international policies.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
August 2021
International Organizations Revisited
Agency and Pathology in a Multipolar World
Dijkzeul, D. & Salomons, D. (eds)
Despite the sustained scholarly attention that the United Nations and international NGOs have received in the twenty-first century, they still remain under-researched from a management studies perspective. This volume brings together rich analyses of these organizations’ functioning, arguing that they are best understood as intermediaries between international decision-making and funding bodies in the developed world and initiatives that take place on the ground, primarily in the Global South. Based on current management research, this follow-up to Rethinking International Organizations (Berghahn, 2002) provides a wealth of both empirical and theoretical insights, along with practical recommendations how these organizations can function more effectively.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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November 2004
The Inverted Mirror
Mythologizing the Enemy in France and Germany, 1898-1914
Nolan, M. E.
It is hard to imagine nowadays that, for many years, France and Germany considered each other as "arch enemies." And yet, for well over a century, these two countries waged verbal and ultimately violent wars against each other. This study explores a particularly virulent phase during which each of these two nations projected certain assumptions about national character onto the other - distorted images, motivated by antipathy, fear, and envy, which contributed to the growing hostility between the two countries in the years before the First World War. Most remarkably, as the author discovered, the qualities each country ascribed to its chief adversary appeared to be exaggerated or negative versions of precisely those qualities that it perceived to be lacking or inadequate in itself. Moreover, banishing undesirable traits and projecting them onto another people was also an essential step in the consolidation of national identity. As such, it established a pattern that has become all too familiar to students of nationalism and xenophobia in recent decades. This study shows that antagonism between states is not a fact of nature but socially constructed.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
November 2022
Invested Narratives
German Responses to Economic Crisis
Twark, J. (ed)
German economic crises from the past two hundred years have provoked diverse responses from journalists, politicians, scholars, and fiction writers. Among their responses, storylines have developed as proposals for reducing unemployment, improving workplace conditions, and increasing profitability when stock markets tumble, accompanied by inflation, deflation, and overwhelming debt. The contributors to Invested Narratives assess German-language economic crisis narratives from the interdisciplinary perspectives of finance, economics, political science, sociology, history, literature, and cultural studies. They interpret the ways German society has tried to comprehend, recover from, and avoid economic crises and in doing so widen our understanding of German economic debates and their influence on German society and the European Union.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
June 2012
Investigating Srebrenica
Institutions, Facts, Responsibilities
Delpla, I., Bougarel, X., & Fournel, J.-F. (eds)
In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb Army commanded by General Ratko Mladic attacked the enclave of Srebrenica, a UN “safe area” since 1993, and massacred about 8,000 Bosniac men. While the responsibility for the massacre itself lays clearly with the Serb political and military leadership, the question of the responsibility of various international organizations and national authorities for the fall of the enclave is still passionately discussed, and has given rise to various rumors and conspiracy theories. Follow-up investigations by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and by several commissions have dissipated most of these rumors and contributed to a better knowledge of the Srebrenica events and the part played by the main local and international actors. This volume represents the first systematic, comparative analysis of those investigations. It brings together analyses from both the external standpoint of academics and the inside perspective of various professionals who participated directly in the inquiries, including police officers, members of parliament, high-ranking civil servants, and other experts. Evaluating how institutions establish facts and ascribe responsibilities, this volume presents a historiographical and epistemological reflection on the very possibility of writing a history of the present time.
Subjects: Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
June 2019
Invisible Founders
How Two Centuries of African American Families Transformed a Plantation into a College
Rainville, L.
Literal and metaphorical excavations at Sweet Briar College reveal how African American labor enabled the transformation of Sweet Briar Plantation into a private women’s college in 1906. This volume tells the story of the invisible founders of a college founded by and for white women. Despite being built and maintained by African American families, the college did not integrate its student body for sixty years after it opened. In the process, Invisible Founders challenges our ideas of what a college “founder” is, restoring African American narratives to their deserved and central place in the story of a single institution — one that serves as a microcosm of the American South.
Subjects: Archaeology History (General) Educational Studies Heritage Studies
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eBook available
August 2021
Iron Landscapes
National Space and the Railways in Interwar Czechoslovakia
Jeschke, F.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the newly formed country of Czechoslovakia built an ambitious national rail network out of what remained of the obsolete Habsburg system. While conceived as a means of knitting together a young and ethnically diverse nation-state, these railways were by their very nature a transnational phenomenon, and as such they simultaneously articulated and embodied a distinctive Czechoslovak cosmopolitanism. Drawing on evidence ranging from government documents to newsreels to train timetables, Iron Landscapes gives a nuanced account of how planners and authorities balanced these two imperatives, bringing the cultural history of infrastructure into dialogue with the spatial history of Central Europe.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Transport Studies
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March 1998
Iron-making Societies
Early Industrial Development in Sweden and Russia, 1600-1900
Agren, M. (ed)
The title of this book has a double meaning: on the one hand, it deals with two very different societies both of which made iron in the early modern period. On the other hand, iron "made" these societies: the needs of iron production and the resistance to these demands from local peasant communities gave the societies a special kind of cohesion and rationality.
This volume presents the findings of a joint team of Swedish and Russian scholars examining the social organization of work in early modern iron industry and their respective societies. The comparison was carried out against the backdrop of the international discussion on proto-industrialization, its prerequisites and consequences. There has, however, been a certain bias in much of that debate, the focus being mainly on Western Europe, particularly on Britain, and on textile trades. This book offers an important contribution to the debate in that it widens the perspective by discussing Northern and Eastern Europe and by studying the iron industry. More particularly it examines actual production processes, the organization of work, social conflict, questions of ownership and its evolution, as well as the diffusion and organization of technical knowledge. The comparative approach is consistently applied throughout, with each chapter closely integrating the results relating to the two selected geographical areas, thus showing ways of solving some of the problems arising from comparative history.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
September 2021
Israel-Palestine
Lands and Peoples
Bartov, O. (ed)
The conflict between Israel and Palestine has raised a plethora of unanswered questions, generated seemingly irreconcilable narratives, and profoundly transformed the land’s physical and political geography. This volume seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the links between the region that is now known as Israel and Palestine and its peoples—both those that live there as well as those who relate to it as a mental, mythical, or religious landscape. Engaging the perspectives of a multidisciplinary, international group of scholars, it is an urgent collective reflection on the bonds between people and a place, whether real or imagined, tangible as its stones or ephemeral as the hopes and longings it evokes.
Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
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January 2008
Italian Neofascism
The Strategy of Tension and the Politics of Nonreconciliation
Bull, A. Cento
During the Cold War Italy witnessed the existence of an anomalous version of a civil conflict, defined as a 'creeping' or a 'low-intensity' civil war. Political violence escalated, including bomb attacks against civilians, starting with a massacre in Milan, on 12 December 1969, and culminating with the massacre in Bologna, on 2 August 1980. Making use of the literature on national reconciliation and narrative psychology theory, this book examines the fight over the 'judicial' and the 'historical' truth in Italy today, through a contrasting analysis of judicial findings and the 'narratives of victimhood' prevalent among representatives of both the post- and the neo-fascist right.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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February 2004
Italy Between Europeanization and Domestic Politics
Fabbrini, S. & Sala, V. Della (eds)
In 2003, the government headed by Silvio Berlusconi attempted to take Italian public policy in a new direction. In social and labor market policy it challenged concertation; in foreign policy, it tried to transform the country’s traditional Europeanist position into a pro-Atlantic stance; within the European Union, it promoted an inter-governmental position. The government's plans to alter the status quo did not always succeed, due to tensions within the majority. The opposition, in the meantime, mobilized around the issue of peace and the Iraq war. European Commission President Romano Prodi responded to the Ulivo coalition’s fragmentation by proposing a unitary list for the 2004 European elections. There were also repeated attempts to change the features of public policy and political competition, countered by noteworthy forms of resistance.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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May 2000
The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution, 1793-1795
Kennedy, M. L.
A pendant to two well-received books by the same author on the departmental clubs during the early years of the Revolution, this book is the product of thirty years of scholarly study, including archival research in Paris and in more than seventy departments in France. It focuses on the twenty-eight months from May 1793 to August 1795, a period spanning the Federalist Revolt, the Terror, and the Thermidorian Reaction. The Federalist Revolt, in which many clubs were involved, had momentous consequences for all of them and was, in the local setting, the principal cause of the Reign of Terror, a period in which more than 5,300 communes had clubs that reached the zenith of their power and influence, engaging in a myriad of political, administrative, judicial, religious, economic, social, and war-related activities. The book ends with their decline and final dissolution by a decree of the Convention in Paris.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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November 1995
Japan and Germany in the Modern World
Martin, B.
First study of the fascinating parallelism that characterizes developments in Japan and Germany by one of Germany's leading Japan specialists.
With the founding of their respective national states, the Meiji Empire in 1869 and the German Reich in 1871, Japan and Germany entered world politics. Since then both countries have developed in strikingly similar ways, and it is not surprising that these two became close allies during the Second World War, although in the end this proved a "fatal attraction."
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
July 2010
Jewish Life in Nazi Germany
Dilemmas and Responses
Nicosia, F. & Scrase, D. (eds)
German Jews faced harsh dilemmas in their responses to Nazi persecution, partly a result of Nazi cruelty and brutality but also a result of an understanding of their history and rightful place in Germany. This volume addresses the impact of the anti-Jewish policies of Hitler’s regime on Jewish family life, Jewish women, and the existence of Jewish organizations and institutions and considers some of the Jewish responses to Nazi anti-Semitism and persecution. This volume offers scholars, students, and interested readers a highly accessible but focused introduction to Jewish life under National Socialism, the often painful dilemmas that it produced, and the varied Jewish responses to those dilemmas.
Subjects: Jewish Studies History: World War II Genocide History
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September 2014
Jewish Medical Resistance in the Holocaust
Grodin, M. A. (ed)
Faced with infectious diseases, starvation, lack of medicines, lack of clean water, and safe sewage, Jewish physicians practiced medicine under severe conditions in the ghettos and concentration camps of the Holocaust. Despite the odds against them, physicians managed to supply public health education, enforce hygiene protocols, inspect buildings and latrines, enact quarantine, and perform triage. Many gave their lives to help fellow prisoners. Based on archival materials and featuring memoirs of Holocaust survivors, this volume offers a rich array of both tragic and inspiring studies of the sanctification of life as practiced by Jewish medical professionals. More than simply a medical story, these histories represent the finest exemplification of a humanist moral imperative during a dark hour of recent history.
Subjects: Genocide History History: World War II
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March 2001
The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800
Bernardini, P. & Fiering, N. (eds)
Jews and Judaism played a significant role in the history of the expansion of Europe to the west as well as in the history of the economic, social, and religious development of the New World. They played an important role in the discovery, colonization, and eventually exploitation of the resources of the New World. Alone among the European peoples who came to the Americas in the colonial period, Jews were dispersed throughout the hemisphere; indeed, they were the only cohesive European ethnic or religious group that lived under both Catholic and Protestant regimes, which makes their study particularly fruitful from a comparative perspective. As distinguished from other religious or ethnic minorities, the Jewish struggle was not only against an overpowering and fierce nature but also against the political regimes that ruled over the various colonies of the Americas and often looked unfavorably upon the establishment and tleration of Jewish communities in their own territory. Jews managed to survive and occasionally to flourish against all odds, and their history in the Americas is one of the more fascinating chapters in the early modern history of European expansion.
Subjects: Jewish Studies History: Medieval/Early Modern Colonial History Refugee and Migration Studies
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eBook available
May 2019
José Antonio Primo de Rivera
The Reality and Myth of a Spanish Fascist Leader
Thomàs, J. M.
There are few individuals in modern Spanish history that have been as thoroughly mythologized as José Antonio Primo de Rivera, a leading figure in the Spanish Civil War who was executed by the Republicans in 1936 and celebrated as a martyr following the victory of the Falangists. In this long-awaited translation, Joan Maria Thomàs provides a measured, exhaustively researched study of Primo de Rivera’s personality, beliefs, and political activity. His biography shows us a man dedicated to the creation of a fascist political regime that he aspired to one day lead, while at the same carefully distinguishing his aims from those of the Falangists and the Franco Regime.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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February 2003
The Journalism of Milena Jesenská
A Critical Voice in Interwar Central Europe
Hayes, K. (ed)
Milena Jesenská, born in Prague in 1896, is most famous as one of Franz Kafka's great loves. Although their relationship lasted only a short time, it won the attention of the literary world with the 1952 publication of Kafka's letters to Milena. Her own letters did not survive. Later biographies showed her as a fascinating personality in her own right. In the Czech Republic, she is remembered as one of the most prominent journalists of the interwar period and as a brave one: in 1939 she was arrested for her work in the resistance after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, and died in Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944.
It is estimated that Jesenská wrote well over 1,000 articles but only a handful have been translated into English. In this book her own writings provide a new perspective on her personality, as well as the changes in Central Europe between the two world wars as these were perceived by a woman of letters. The articles in this volume cover a wide range of topics, including her perceptions of Kafka, her understanding of social and cultural changes during this period, the threat of Nazism, and the plight of the Jews in the 1930s.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Literary Studies Jewish Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
August 2012
Journey Through America
Koeppen, W.
Amerikafahrt by Wolfgang Koeppen is a masterpiece of observation, analysis, and writing, based on his 1958 trip to the United States. A major twentieth-century German writer, Koeppen presents a vivid and fascinating portrait of the US in the late 1950s: its major cities, its literary culture, its troubled race relations, its multi-culturalism and its vast loneliness, a motif drawn, in part, from Kafka’s Amerika. A modernist travelogue, the text employs symbol, myth, and image, as if Koeppen sought to answer de Tocqueville’s questions in the manner of Joyce and Kafka. Journey through America is also a meditation on America, intended for a German audience and mindful of the destiny of postwar Europe under many Americanizing influences.
Subjects: Literary Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
June 2012
Journeys Into Madness
Mapping Mental Illness in the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Blackshaw, G. & Wieber, S. (eds)
At the turn of the century, Sigmund Freud’s investigation of the mind represented a particular journey into mental illness, but it was not the only exploration of this ‘territory’ in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Sanatoriums were the new tourism destinations, psychiatrists were collecting art works produced by patients and writers were developing innovative literary techniques to convey a character’s interior life. This collection of essays uses the framework of journeys in order to highlight the diverse artistic, cultural and medical responses to a peculiarly Viennese anxiety about the madness of modern times. The travellers of these journeys vary from patients to doctors, artists to writers, architects to composers and royalty to tourists; in engaging with their histories, the contributors reveal the different ways in which madness was experienced and represented in ‘Vienna 1900’.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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November 2007
Journeys Through Fascism
Italian Travel-Writing between the Wars
Burdett, C.
During the twenty years of Mussolini’s rule a huge number of travel texts were written of journeys made during the interwar period to the sacred sites of Fascist Italy, Mussolini’s newly conquered African empire, Spain during the Civil War, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia and the America of the New Deal. Examining these observations by writers and journalists, the author throws new light on the evolving ideology of Fascism, how it was experienced and propagated by prominent figures of the time; how the regime created a utopian vision of the Roman past and the imperial future; and how it interpreted the attractions and dangers of other totalitarian cultures.
The book helps gain a better understanding of the evolving concepts of imperialism, which were at the heart of Italian Fascism, and thus shows that travel writing can offer an important contribution to historical analysis.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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July 2013
Judging 'Privileged' Jews
Holocaust Ethics, Representation, and the 'Grey Zone'
Brown, A.
The Nazis’ persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust included the creation of prisoner hierarchies that forced victims to cooperate with their persecutors. Many in the camps and ghettos came to hold so-called “privileged” positions, and their behavior has often been judged as self-serving and harmful to fellow inmates. Such controversial figures constitute an intrinsically important, frequently misunderstood, and often taboo aspect of the Holocaust. Drawing on Primo Levi’s concept of the “grey zone,” this study analyzes the passing of moral judgment on “privileged” Jews as represented by writers, such as Raul Hilberg, and in films, including Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. Negotiating the problems and potentialities of “representing the unrepresentable,” this book engages with issues that are fundamental to present-day attempts to understand the Holocaust and deeply relevant to reflections on human nature.
Subjects: Genocide History History (General) Jewish Studies
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December 2012
Karl Marx
An Intellectual Biography
Hosfeld, R.
Is the Grand Old Man re-emerging? More than twenty years after the collapse of Communism, and in the midst of the crisis of Capitalism, Karl Marx’s ideas, at least in part, are back in vogue. He is often invoked, yet often misunderstood. In this award-winning biography Rolf Hosfeld offers a new, transparent, and critical view of Marx’s turbulent life. Linking the contradictory politician and revolutionary to his work—his errors and misjudgments as well as his pioneering ideas—Hosfeld presents a vivid account of Marx’s life between Trier and London. At the same time, he renders accessible Marx’s complex work, one of the world’s most important contributions to the history of ideas.
Subjects: History (General) Political and Economic Anthropology Sociology
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April 2023
Kharkov/Kharkiv
A Borderland Capital
Kravchenko, V.
Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second largest city and its former capital. Situated within 40 km of the Ukranian-Russian border it is one of those East-Central European “liminal” cities which became a center of modernization and pluralization in the borderland area, playing a prominent role in the process of nation building. Volodymyr Kravchenko’s expanded edition of Kharkov/Kharkiv, now in the English-language and including a new chapter on the reconfiguration of the Ukrainian-Russian borderland during and after the watershed Euromaidan event, uniquely uncovers the city’s long history, from the 17th century to today. Addressing issues of regional and national identities, Ukrainian-Russian relations, mental mapping, historical narratives and the ensuing de/reconstruction of national mythologies, this book, fills a unique gap in the literature on Kharkiv.
Subjects: History (General) Urban Studies
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July 1996
Kingdom on Mount Cameroon
Studies in the History of the Cameroon Coast 1500-1970
Ardener, E.
The Bakweri people of Mount Cameroon, an active volcano on the coast of West Africa a few degrees north of the equator, have had a varied and at times exciting history which has brought them into contact, not only with other West African peoples, but with merchants, missionaries, soldiers and administrators from Portugal, Holland, England, Jamaica, Sweden, Germany and more recently France.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History
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March 2011
The Kings and the Pawns
Collaboration in Byelorussia during World War II
Rein, L.
For many years, the history of Byelorussia under Nazi occupation was written primarily from the perspective of the resistance movement. This movement, a reaction to the brutal occupation policies, was very strong indeed. Still, as the author shows, there existed in Byelorussia a whole web of local institutions and organizations which, some willingly, others with reservations, participated in the implementation of various aspects of occupation policies. The very sensitivity of the topic of collaboration has prevented researchers from approaching it for many years, not least because in the former Soviet territories ideological considerations have played an important role in preserving the topic’s “untouchable” status. Focusing on the attitude of German authorities toward the Byelorussians, marked by their anti-Slavic and particularly anti-Byelorussian prejudices on the one hand and the motives of Byelorussian collaborators on the other, the author clearly shows that notwithstanding the postwar trend to marginalize the phenomenon of collaboration or to silence it altogether, the local collaboration in Byelorussia was clearly visible and pervaded all spheres of life under the occupation.
Subject: History: World War II
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eBook available
October 2007
Kinship in Europe
Approaches to Long-Term Development (1300-1900)
Sabean, D. W., Teuscher, S., & Mathieu, J. (eds)
Since the publication of Philippe Ariès’s book, Centuries of Childhood, in the early 1960s, there has been great interest among historians in the history of the family and the household. A central aspect of the debate relates the story of the family to implicit notions of modernization, with the rise of the nuclear family in the West as part of its economic and political success. During the past decade, however, that synthesis has begun to break down. Historians have begun to examine kinship - the way individual families are connected to each other through marriage and descent - finding that during the most dynamic period in European industrial development, class formation, and state reorganization, Europe became a “kinship hot” society. The essays in this volume explore two major transitions in kinship patterns - at the end of the Middle Ages and at the end of the eighteenth century - in an effort to reset the agenda in family history.
Subjects: History: Medieval/Early Modern Anthropology (General) History: 18th/19th Century
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December 2014
Kinship, Community, and Self
Essays in Honor of David Warren Sabean
Coy, J., Marschke, B., Poley, J., & Verhoeven, C. (eds)
David Warren Sabean was a pioneer in the historical-anthropological study of kinship, community, and selfhood in early modern and modern Europe. His career has helped shape the discipline of history through his supervision of dozens of graduate students and his influence on countless other scholars. This book collects wide-ranging essays demonstrating the impact of Sabean’s work has on scholars of diverse time periods and regions, all revolving around the prominent issues that have framed his career: kinship, community, and self. The significance of David Warren Sabean’s scholarship is reflected in original research contributed by former students and essays written by his contemporaries, demonstrating Sabean’s impact on the discipline of history.
Subjects: History (General) Anthropology (General)
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eBook available
September 2017
Laborers and Enslaved Workers
Experiences in Common in the Making of Rio de Janeiro's Working Class, 1850-1920
Badaró Mattos, M.
From the middle of the nineteenth century until the 1888 abolition of slavery in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro was home to the largest urban population of enslaved workers anywhere in the Americas. It was also the site of an incipient working-class consciousness that expressed itself across seemingly distinct social categories. In this volume, Marcelo Badaró Mattos demonstrates that these two historical phenomena cannot be understood in isolation. Drawing on a wide range of historical sources, Badaró Mattos reveals the diverse labor arrangements and associative life of Rio’s working class, from which emerged the many strategies that workers both free and unfree pursued in their struggles against oppression.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Sociology Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
May 2017
Labour, Unions and Politics under the North Star
The Nordic Countries, 1700-2000
Hilson, M., Neunsinger, S., & Vyff, I. (eds)
Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden today all enjoy a reputation for strong labour movements, which in turn are widely seen as part of a distinctive regional approach to politics, collective bargaining and welfare. But as this volume demonstrates, narratives of the so-called “Nordic model” can obscure the fact that experiences of work and the fortunes of organized labour have varied widely throughout the region and across different historical periods. Together, the essays collected here represent an ambitious intervention in labour historiography and European history, exploring themes such as work, unions, politics and migration from the early modern period to the twenty-first century.
Subjects: History (General) Political and Economic Anthropology
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April 2000
The Language Encounter in the Americas, 1492-1800
Gray, E. & Fiering, N. (eds)
When Columbus arrived in the Americas there were, it is believed, as many as 2,000 distinct, mutually unintelligible tongues spoken in the western hemisphere, encompassing the entire area from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego. This astonishing fact has generally escaped the attention of historians, in part because many of these indigenous languages have since become extinct. And yet the burden of overcoming America's language barriers was perhaps the one problem faced by all peoples of the New World in the early modern era: African slaves and Native Americans in the Lower Mississippi Valley; Jesuit missionaries and Huron-speaking peoples in New France; Spanish conquistadors and the Aztec rulers. All of these groups confronted America's complex linguistic environment, and all of them had to devise ways of transcending that environment - a problem that arose often with life or death implications.
For the first time, historians, anthropologists, literature specialists, and linguists have come together to reflect, in the fifteen original essays presented in this volume, on the various modes of contact and communication that took place between the Europeans and the "Natives." A particularly important aspect of this fascinating collection is the way it demonstrates the interactive nature of the encounter and how Native peoples found ways to shape and adapt imported systems of spoken and written communication to their own spiritual and material needs.
Subjects: History: Medieval/Early Modern Colonial History Cultural Studies (General) Refugee and Migration Studies
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eBook available
October 2010
Latin America Facing China
South-South Relations beyond the Washington Consensus
Fernández Jilberto, A. E. & Hogenboom, B. (eds)
The last quarter of the twentieth century was a period of economic crises, increasing indebtedness as well as financial instability for Latin America and most other developing countries; in contrast, China showed amazingly high growth rates during this time and has since become the third largest economy in the world. Based on several case studies, this volume assesses how China’s rise – one of the most important recent changes in the global economy – is affecting Latin America’s national politics, political economy and regional and international relations. Several Latin American countries benefit from China’s economic growth, and China’s new role in international politics has been helpful to many leftist governments’ efforts in Latin America to end the Washington Consensus. The contributors to this thought provoking volume examine these and the other causes, effects and prospects of Latin America’s experiences with China’s global expansion from a South - South perspective.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
January 2007
Launching the Grand Coalition
The 2005 Bundestag Election and the Future of German Politics
Langenbacher, E. (ed.)
This edited volume, which brings together the leading experts in German politics from around the US and Germany, combines rich descriptive data with insightful analyses regarding one of the most dramatic and important election years in postwar Germany. A variety of more specialized issues and perspectives is addressed, including the transatlantic relationship, EU policy, voting behavior and far Right parties. This book will be essential reading for students of German, European and comparative politics.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
March 2013
The Law in Nazi Germany
Ideology, Opportunism, and the Perversion of Justice
Steinweis, A. E. & Rachlin, R. D. (eds)
While we often tend to think of the Third Reich as a zone of lawlessness, the Nazi dictatorship and its policies of persecution rested on a legal foundation set in place and maintained by judges, lawyers, and civil servants trained in the law. This volume offers a concise and compelling account of how these intelligent and welleducated legal professionals lent their skills and knowledge to a system of oppression and domination. The chapters address why German lawyers and jurists were attracted to Nazism; how their support of the regime resulted from a combination of ideological conviction, careerist opportunism, and legalistic selfdelusion; and whether they were held accountable for their Nazi-era actions after 1945. This book also examines the experiences of Jewish lawyers who fell victim to anti-Semitic measures. The volume will appeal to scholars, students, and other readers with an interest in Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and the history of jurisprudence.
Subjects: History: World War II History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
December 2018
Law, History, and Justice
Debating German State Crimes in the Long Twentieth Century
Weinke, A.
Since the nineteenth century, the development of international humanitarian law has been marked by complex entanglements of legal theory, historical trauma, criminal prosecution, historiography, and politics. All of these factors have played a role in changing views on the applicability of international law and human-rights ideas to state-organized violence, which in turn have been largely driven by transnational responses to German state crimes. Here, Annette Weinke gives a groundbreaking long-term history of the political, legal and academic debates concerning German state and mass violence in the First World War, during the National Socialist era and the Holocaust, and under the GDR.
Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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July 2009
Learning Democracy
Education Reform in West Germany, 1945-1965
Puaca, B. M.
Scholarship on the history of West Germany’s educational system has traditionally portrayed the postwar period of Allied occupation as a failure and the following decades as a time of pedagogical stagnation. Two decades after World War II, however, the Federal Republic had become a stable democracy, a member of NATO, and a close ally of the West. Had the schools really failed to contribute to this remarkable transformation of German society and political culture?
This study persuasively argues that long before the protest movements of the late 1960s, the West German educational system was undergoing meaningful reform from within. Although politicians and intellectual elites paid little attention to education after 1945, administrators, teachers, and pupils initiated significant changes in schools at the local level. The work of these actors resulted in an array of democratic reforms that signaled a departure from the authoritarian and nationalistic legacies of the past. The establishment of exchange programs between the United States and West Germany, the formation of student government organizations and student newspapers, the publication of revised history and civics textbooks, the expansion of teacher training programs, and the creation of a Social Studies curriculum all contributed to the advent of a new German educational system following World War II. The subtle, incremental reforms inaugurated during the first two postwar decades prepared a new generation of young Germans for their responsibilities as citizens of a democratic state.
Subjects: Educational Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2007
Learning on the Shop Floor
Historical Perspectives on Apprenticeship
Munck, B. de, Kaplan, S. L. & Soly, H. (eds)
Apprenticeship or vocational training is a subject of lively debate. Economic historians tend to see apprenticeship as a purely economic phenomenon, as an ‘incomplete contract’ in need of legal and institutional enforcement mechanisms. The contributors to this volume have adopted a broader perspective. They regard learning on the shop floor as a complex social and cultural process, to be situated in an ever-changing historical context. The results are surprising. The authors convincingly show that research on apprenticeship and learning on the shop floor is intimately associated with migration patterns, family economy and household strategies, gender perspectives, urban identities and general educational and pedagogical contexts.
Subjects: History (General) Refugee and Migration Studies Gender Studies and Sexuality Sociology
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eBook available
September 2013
The Legacies of a Hawaiian Generation
From Territorial Subject to American Citizen
Schachter, J.
Through the voices and perspectives of the members of an extended Hawaiian family, or `ohana, this book tells the story of North American imperialism in Hawai`i from the Great Depression to the new millennium. The family members offer their versions of being “Native Hawaiian” in an American state, detailing the ways in which US laws, policies, and institutions made, and continue to make, an impact on their daily lives. The book traces the ways that Hawaiian values adapted to changing conditions under a Territorial regime and then after statehood. These conditions involved claims for land for Native Hawaiian Homesteads, education in American public schools, military service, and participation in the Hawaiian cultural renaissance. Based on fieldwork observations, kitchen table conversations, and talk-stories, or mo`olelo, this book is a unique blend of biography, history, and anthropological analysis.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
August 2011
The Legacies of Two World Wars
European Societies in the Twentieth Century
Kettenacker, L. & Riotte, T. (eds)
The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 was done mainly, if one is to believe US policy at the time, to liberate the people of Iraq from an oppressive dictator. However, the many protests in London, New York, and other cities imply that the policy of “making the world safe for democracy” was not shared by millions of people in many Western countries. Thinking about this controversy inspired the present volume, which takes a closer look at how society responded to the outbreaks and conclusions of the First and Second World Wars. In order to examine this relationship between the conduct of wars and public opinion, leading scholars trace the moods and attitudes of the people of four Western countries (Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy) before, during and after the crucial moments of the two major conflicts of the twentieth century. Focusing less on politics and more on how people experienced the wars, this volume shows how the distinction between enthusiasm for war and concern about its consequences is rarely clear-cut.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: World War I History: World War II
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December 2016
Legacies of Violence
Rendering the Unspeakable Past in Modern Australia
Mason, R. (ed)
Whether in the form of warfare, dispossession, forced migration, or social prejudice, Australia’s sense of nationhood was born from—and continues to be defined by—experiences of violence. Legacies of Violence probes this brutal legacy through case studies that range from the colonial frontier to modern domestic spaces, exploring themes of empathy, isolation, and Australians’ imagined place in the world. Moving beyond the primacy that is typically accorded white accounts of violence, contributors place particular emphasis on the experiences of those perceived to be on the social periphery, repositioning them at the center of Australia’s relationship to global events and debates.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: 18th/19th Century Colonial History
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eBook available
October 2013
The Legacy of Liberal Judaism
Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt's Hidden Conversation
Curthoys, N.
Comparing the liberal Jewish ethics of the German-Jewish philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt, this book argues that both espoused a diasporic, worldly conception of Jewish identity that was anchored in a pluralist and politically engaged interpretation of Jewish history and an abiding interest in the complex lived reality of modern Jews. Arendt’s indebtedness to liberal Jewish thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geiger, Hermann Cohen, and Ernst Cassirer has been obscured by her modernist posture and caustic critique of the assimilationism of her German-Jewish forebears. By reorienting our conception of Arendt as a profoundly secular thinker anchored in twentieth century political debates, we are led to rethink the philosophical, political, and ethical legacy of liberal Jewish discourse.
Subjects: Jewish Studies History (General)
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eBook available
May 2021
Legal Entanglements
Law, Rights and the Battle for Legitimacy in Divided Germany, 1945-1989
Gehrig, S.
During the division of Germany, law became the object of ideological conflicts and the means by which the two national governments conducted their battle over political legitimacy. Legal Entanglements explores how these dynamics produced competing concepts of statehood and sovereignty, all centered on citizens and their rights. Drawing on wide-ranging archival sources, including recently declassified documents, Sebastian Gehrig traces how politicians, diplomats, judges, lawyers, activists and intellectuals navigated the struggle between legal ideologies under the pressures of the Cold War and decolonization. As he shows, in their response to global debates over international law and human rights, their work kept the legal cultures of both German states entangled until 1989.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2006
Lela in Bali
History through Ceremony in Cameroon
Fardon, R.
Lela in Bali tells the story of an annual festival of eighteenth-century kingdoms in Northern Cameroon that was swept up in the migrations of marauding slave-raiders during the nineteenth century and carried south towards the coast. Lela was transformed first into a mounted durbar, like those of the Muslim states, before evolving in tandem with the German colonial project into a festival of arms. Reinterpreted by missionaries and post-colonial Cameroonians, Lela has become one of the most important of Cameroonian festivals and a crucial marker of identity within the state. Richard Fardon’s recuperation of two hundred years of history is an essential contribution not only to Cameroonian studies but also to the broader understanding of the evolution of African cultures.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Performance Studies Colonial History
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eBook available
May 2017
Let Them Not Return
Sayfo – The Genocide Against the Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean Christians in the Ottoman Empire
Gaunt, D., Atto, N., & Barthoma, S. O. (eds)
The mass killing of Ottoman Armenians is today widely recognized, both within and outside scholarly circles, as an act of genocide. What is less well known, however, is that it took place within a broader context of Ottoman violence against minority groups during and after the First World War. Among those populations decimated were the indigenous Christian Assyrians (also known as Syriacs or Chaldeans) who lived in the borderlands of present-day Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. This volume is the first scholarly edited collection focused on the Assyrian genocide, or “Sayfo” (literally, “sword” in Aramaic), presenting historical, psychological, anthropological, and political perspectives that shed much-needed light on a neglected historical atrocity.
Subjects: Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present
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September 2008
Liberal Imperialism in Germany
Expansionism and Nationalism, 1848-1884
Fitzpatrick, M. P.
In a work based on new archival, press, and literary sources, the author revises the picture of German imperialism as being the brainchild of a Machiavellian Bismarck or the "conservative revolutionaries" of the twentieth century. Instead, Fitzpatrick argues for the liberal origins of German imperialism, by demonstrating the links between nationalism and expansionism in a study that surveys the half century of imperialist agitation and activity leading up to the official founding of Germany’s colonial empire in 1884.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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April 2010
The Life of Property
House, Family and Inheritance in Béarn, South-West France
Jenkins, T.
In Béarn, a region of south-west France, longstanding and resilient ideas of property and practices of inheritance control the destinies of those living in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Based on extensive fieldwork and archival research that combines ethnography and intellectual history, this study explores the long-term continuities of this particular way of life within a broad framework. These local ideas have found expression twice at the national level. First, sociological arguments about the family, proposed by Frédéric Le Play, shaped debates on social reform and the repair of national identity during the last third of the nineteenth century – and these debates would subsequently influence contemporary European thought and social policy. Second, these local ideas entered into late twentieth-century sociological categories through the influential work of Pierre Bourdieu. Through these examples and others, the author illustrates the multi-layered life of these local concepts and practices and the continuing contribution of the local to modern European national history.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology History (General) Sociology
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eBook available
November 2007
The Limits of Loyalty
Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy
Cole, L. & Unowsky, D. (eds)
The overwhelming majority of historical work on the late Habsburg Monarchy has focused primarily on national movements and ethnic conflicts, with the result that too little attention has been devoted to the state and ruling dynasty. This volume is the first of its kind to concentrate on attempts by the imperial government to generate a dynastic-oriented state patriotism in the multinational Habsburg Monarchy. It examines those forces in state and society which tended toward the promotion of state unity and loyalty towards the ruling house. These essays, all original contributions and written by an international group of historians, provide a critical examination of the phenomenon of “dynastic patriotism” and offer a richly nuanced treatment of the multinational empire in its final phase.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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December 1999
The Lion and the Eagle
German-Spanish Relations Over the Centuries: An Interdisciplinary Approach
Kent, C., Wolber, T. & Hewitt, C. (eds)
The German and Spanish-speaking worlds have, over the centuries, developed an intrinsic relationship, one which predates the Habsburg dynasty and the Renaissance and baroque periods. The cross-fertilization and challenges have been both fruitful and complex with novel inventions surfacing in one culture often achieving their greatest prosperity in the other: Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation stimulated a response in Spain that was to define the European Counter Reformation; Spanish Baroque writers were seminal in the development of German Romanticism; Carl Christian Friedrich Krause and other nineteenth-century liberals provided the foundation for Spanish reformist efforts on the one hand, while German conservatives like Novalis and Adam Müller inspired conservatvies on the other; the music of Richard Wagner transformed Spanish music and the Spanish stage at the turn of the twentieth century; Pablo Picasso and other artists of the Spanish avant-garde sparkled the enthusiasm of the Germans before the Nazi era. Today, German and Spanish intellectuals and writers share a similar commitment to the creation of a European culture in the face of resistance from other members of the European Union.
Viewed from a variety of disciplines this volume explores the relentlessly consistent, albeit often forgotten connections between the two linguistic and cultural groups revealing the myriad of ways in which they have shared and transformed literature, art, culture, politics, and history.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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March 2001
Literature, the 'Volk' & the Revolution in Mid-19th Century Germany
Perraudin, M.
Between the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, poverty reached new extremes in Germany, as in other European countries, and gave rise to a class of disaffected poor, leading to the widespread expectation of a social revolution. Whether welcomed or feared, it dominated private and public debate to a larger extent than is generally assumed as is shown in this study on the reflections in literature of what was called the "Social Question."
Examining works by Heine, Eichendorff, Nestroy, Büchner, Grillparzer, and Theodor Storm, the author reveals an acute awareness of political issues in an era in literature which is often seen as tending to quiescence and withdrawal from public preoccupations.
Subjects: Literary Studies History: 18th/19th Century
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June 2011
The Lives of Chinese Objects
Buddhism, Imperialism and Display
Tythacott, L.
This is the biography of a set of rare Buddhist statues from China. Their extraordinary adventures take them from the Buddhist temples of fifteenth-century Putuo – China’s most important pilgrimage island – to their seizure by a British soldier in the First Opium War in the early 1840s, and on to a starring role in the Great Exhibition of 1851. In the 1850s, they moved in and out of dealers’ and antiquarian collections, arriving in 1867 at Liverpool Museum. Here they were re-conceptualized as specimens of the ‘Mongolian race’ and, later, as examples of Oriental art. The statues escaped the bombing of the Museum during the Second World War and lived out their existence for the next sixty years, dismembered, corroding and neglected in the stores, their histories lost and origins unknown.
As the curator of Asian collections at Liverpool Museum, the author became fascinated by these bronzes, and selected them for display in the Buddhism section of the World Cultures gallery. In 2005, quite by chance, the discovery of a lithograph of the figures on prominent display in the Great Exhibition enabled the remarkable lives of these statues to be reconstructed.
Subjects: Museum Studies History (General) Archaeology
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eBook available
February 2018
A Living Past
Environmental Histories of Modern Latin America
Soluri, J., Leal, C., & Pádua, J. A. (eds)
Though still a relatively young field, the study of Latin American environmental history is blossoming, as the contributions to this definitive volume demonstrate. Bringing together thirteen leading experts on the region, A Living Past synthesizes a wide range of scholarship to offer new perspectives on environmental change in Latin America and the Spanish Caribbean since the nineteenth century. Each chapter provides insightful, up-to-date syntheses of current scholarship on critical countries and ecosystems (including Brazil, Mexico, the Caribbean, the tropical Andes, and tropical forests) and such cross-cutting themes as agriculture, conservation, mining, ranching, science, and urbanization. Together, these studies provide valuable historical contexts for making sense of contemporary environmental challenges facing the region.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
January 2016
Lobbying Hitler
Industrial Associations between Democracy and Dictatorship
Bera, M.
From 1933 onward, Nazi Germany undertook massive and unprecedented industrial integration, submitting an entire economic sector to direct state oversight. This innovative study explores how German professionals navigated this complex landscape through the divergent careers of business managers in two of the era’s most important trade organizations. While Jakob Reichert of the iron and steel industry unexpectedly resisted state control and was eventually driven to suicide, Karl Lange of the machine builders’ association achieved security for himself and his industry by submitting to the Nazi regime. Both men’s stories illuminate the options available to industrialists under the Third Reich, as well as the real priorities set by the industries they served.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2015
The Long Aftermath
Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936-2016
Bragança, M. & Tame, P. (eds)
In its totality, the “Long Second World War”—extending from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War to the end of hostilities in 1945—has exerted enormous influence over European culture. Bringing together leading historians, sociologists, and literary and film scholars, this broadly interdisciplinary volume investigates Europeans’ individual and collective memories and the ways in which they have shaped the continent’s cultural heritage. Focusing on the major combatant nations—Spain, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, and Russia—it offers thoroughly contextualized explorations of novels, memoirs, films, and a host of other cultural forms to illuminate European public memory.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
February 2023
The Long Shore
Archaeologies and Social Histories of Californias Maritime Cultural Landscapes
Meniketti, M. (ed)
The archaeology of maritime cultural landscapes offers insights into cultural traditions, social transitions, and cultural relationships that reach beyond the narrow confines of waterfronts and beach strands and helps construct meaningful social histories. The long shore of California is not limited to the land that borders the Pacific Ocean, but includes the navigable waters that reach inland, the off-shore islands, and the riverways flow to the sea. Authors investigate the multifaceted character of maritime landscapes and maritime oriented communities in California’s equally diverse cultural landscape; viewed through an archaeological lens, and emphasizing social behavior and community as material culture in order to reveal intersections and commonalities.
Subjects: Archaeology History (General) Anthropology (General)
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eBook available
October 2016
Losing Heaven
Religion in Germany since 1945
Großbölting, T.
As the birthplace of the Reformation, Germany has been the site of some of the most significant moments in the history of European Christianity. Today, however, its religious landscape is one that would scarcely be recognizable to earlier generations. This groundbreaking survey of German postwar religious life depicts a profoundly changed society: congregations shrink, private piety is on the wane, and public life has almost entirely shed its Christian character, yet there remains a booming market for syncretistic and individualistic forms of “popular religion.” Losing Heaven insightfully recounts these dramatic shifts and explains their consequences for German religious communities and the polity as a whole.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Anthropology of Religion
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eBook available
June 2012
A Lover's Quarrel with the Past
Romance, Representation, Reading
Ghosh, R.
Although not a professional historian, the author raises several issues pertinent to the state of history today. Qualifying the ‘non-historian’ as an ‘able’ interventionist in historical studies, the author explores the relationship between history and theory within the current epistemological configurations and refigurations. He asks how history transcends the obsessive ‘linguistic’ turn, which has been hegemonizing literary/discourse analysis, and focuses greater attention on historical experience and where history stands in relation to our understanding of ethics, religion and the current state of global politics that underlines the manipulation and abuse of history.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
April 2019
Luso-Tropicalism and Its Discontents
The Making and Unmaking of Racial Exceptionalism
Anderson, W., Roque, R., & Ventura Santos, R. (eds)
Modern perceptions of race across much of the Global South are indebted to the Brazilian social scientist Gilberto Freyre, who in works such as The Masters and the Slaves claimed that Portuguese colonialism produced exceptionally benign and tolerant race relations. This volume radically reinterprets Freyre’s Luso-tropicalist arguments and critically engages with the historical complexity of racial concepts and practices in the Portuguese-speaking world. Encompassing Brazil as well as Portuguese-speaking societies in Africa, Asia, and even Portugal itself, it places an interdisciplinary group of scholars in conversation to challenge the conventional understanding of twentieth-century racialization, proffering new insights into such controversial topics as human plasticity, racial amalgamation, and the tropes and proxies of whiteness.
Subjects: Colonial History History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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eBook available
April 2019
Magical House Protection
The Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft
Hoggard, B.
Belief in magic and particularly the power of witchcraft was once a deep and enduring presence in popular culture.
“Diving into Brian Hoggard’s Magical House Protection is a remarkable experience… [It] provides an immersive and fascinating read.”—Fortean Times
People created and concealed many objects to protect themselves from harmful magic. Detailed are the principal forms of magical house protection in Britain and beyond from the fourteenth century to the present day. Witch-bottles, dried cats, horse skulls, written charms, protection marks and concealed shoes were all used widely as methods of repelling, diverting or trapping negative energies. Many of these practices and symbols can be found around the globe, demonstrating the universal nature of efforts by people to protect themselves from witchcraft.
From the introduction:
The most popular locations to conceal objects within buildings are usually at portals such as the hearth, the threshold and also voids or dead spaces. This suggests that people believed it was possible for dark forces to travel through the landscape and attack them in their homes. Whether these forces were emanations from a witch in the form of a spell, a witch’s familiar pestering their property, an actual witch flying in spirit or a combination of all of those is difficult to tell. Additional sources of danger could be ghosts, fairies and demons. People went to great lengths to ensure their homes and property were protected, highlighting the fact that these beliefs and fears were visceral and, as far as they were concerned, literally terrifying.Subjects: Archaeology History (General) Anthropology of Religion
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eBook available
September 2017
Making Nordic Historiography
Connections, Tensions and Methodology, 1850-1970
Haapala, P., Jalava, M., & Larsson, S. (eds)
Is there a “Nordic history”? If so, what are its origins, its scope, and its defining features? In this informative volume, scholars from all five Nordic nations tackle a notoriously problematic historical concept. Whether recounting Foucault’s departure from Sweden or tracing the rise of movements such as “aristocratic empiricism,” each contribution takes a deliberately transnational approach that is grounded in careful research, yielding rich, nuanced perspectives on shifting and contested historical terrain.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
November 2016
The Making of the Greek Genocide
Contested Memories of the Ottoman Greek Catastrophe
Sjöberg, E.
During and after World War I, over one million Ottoman Greeks were expelled from Turkey, a watershed moment in Greek history that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. And while few dispute the expulsion’s tragic scope, it remains the subject of fierce controversy, as activists have fought for international recognition of an atrocity they consider comparable to the Armenian genocide. This book provides a much-needed analysis of the Greek genocide as cultural trauma. Neither taking the genocide narrative for granted nor dismissing it outright, Erik Sjöberg instead recounts how it emerged as a meaningful but contested collective memory with both nationalist and cosmopolitan dimensions.
Subjects: Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
July 2017
Managing Ambiguity
How Clientelism, Citizenship, and Power Shape Personhood in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Brković, Č.
Why do people turn to personal connections to get things done? Exploring the role of favors in social welfare systems in postwar, postsocialist Bosnia and Herzegovina, this volume provides a new theoretical angle on links between ambiguity and power. It demonstrates that favors were not an instrumental tactic of survival, nor a way to reproduce oneself as a moral person. Instead, favors enabled the insertion of personal compassion into the heart of the organization of welfare.
Managing Ambiguity follows how neoliberal insistence on local community, flexibility, and self-responsibility was translated into clientelist modes of relating and back, and how this fostered a specific mode of power.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Peace and Conflict Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
February 2018
Managing Northern Europe's Forests
Histories from the Age of Improvement to the Age of Ecology
Oosthoek, K. J. & Hölzl, R. (eds)
Northern Europe was, by many accounts, the birthplace of much of modern forestry practice, and for hundreds of years the region’s woodlands have played an outsize role in international relations, economic growth, and the development of national identity. Across eleven chapters, the contributors to this volume survey the histories of state forestry policy in Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Germany, Poland, and Great Britain from the early modern period to the present. Each explores the complex interrelationships of state-building, resource management, knowledge transfer, and trade over a period characterized by ongoing modernization and evolving environmental awareness.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: Medieval/Early Modern History: 18th/19th Century
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September 2022
Managing Sacralities
Competing and Converging Claims of Religious Heritage
Hemel, E. van den, Salemink, O., & Stengs, I. (eds)
What happens when religious sites, objects and practices become cultural heritage? What are —religious or secular—sources of expertise and authority that validate and regulate heritage sites, objects and practices? As cultural heritage becomes an increasingly popular and influential frame, these questions arise in diverse and challenging manners. The question who controls, manages, and frames religious heritage, and how, arises with particular urgency. Case studies from Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom present an analysis of the paradoxes and challenges that arise when religious sites are transformed into heritage.
Subjects: Heritage Studies History (General) Anthropology of Religion
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eBook available
March 2014
Managing the Unknown
Essays on Environmental Ignorance
Uekötter, F. & Lübken, U. (eds)
Information is crucial when it comes to the management of resources. But what if knowledge is incomplete, or biased, or otherwise deficient? How did people define patterns of proper use in the absence of cognitive certainty? Discussing this challenge for a diverse set of resources from fish to rubber, these essays show that deficient knowledge is a far more pervasive challenge in resource history than conventional readings suggest. Furthermore, environmental ignorance does not inevitably shrink with the march of scientific progress: these essays suggest more of a dialectical relationship between knowledge and ignorance that has different shapes and trajectories. With its combination of empirical case studies and theoretical reflection, the essays make a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary debate on the production and resilience of ignorance. At the same time, this volume combines insights from different continents as well as the seas in between and thus sketches outlines of an emerging global resource history.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History (General)
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November 2010
Managing Uncertainty
Giuliani, M. & Jones, E. (eds)
In 2009 the political and social life of Italy featured high levels of uncertainty. Lackluster economic performance was the most obvious source of anxiety, but Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right coalition also had to contend with a series of sensational revelations about the prime minister’s personal life as well as more troubling divisions within the coalition itself. Meanwhile, the governing coalition faced additional challenges: the European elections, a referendum on electoral reform, and a controversial G-8 summit. The center-left opposition struggled as well: from the resignation of Walter Veltroni to the election of Pier Luigi Bersani, the Partito Democratico had difficulty uniting around a common platform or even a coherent mission. As many of the more salacious stories involving politicians faded from the public eye, debate revolved around the reform of welfare state institutions and administrative practices, while fundamental cleavages over religious values and immigration deepened. The popular mood was unsettled but events calmed markedly in the immediate aftermath of a violent attack on the prime minister, and as the year closed, Italians proved capable of managing the uncertainty that continued to hover over the country.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2006
The Many Faces of Clio
Cross-cultural Approaches to Historiography
Essays in Honor of Georg G. IggersWang, Q. E. & Fillafer, F. (eds)
Born in Germany, Georg Iggers escaped from Nazism to the United States in his adolescence where he became one of the most distinguished scholars of European intellectual history and the history of historiography. In his lectures, delivered all over the world, and in his numerous books, translated into many languages, Georg Iggers has reshaped historiography and indefatigably promoted cross-cultural dialogue. This volume reflects the profound impact of his oeuvre. Among the contributors are leading intellectual historians but also younger scholars who explore the various cultural contexts of modern historiography, focusing on changes of European and American scholarship as well as non-Western historical writing in relation to developments in the West. Addressing these changes from a transnational perspective, this well-rounded volume offers an excellent introduction to the field, which will be of interest to both established historians and graduate students.
Subject: History (General)
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April 2004
The Many Faces of Germany
McCarthy, J. A., Grûnzweig, W. & Koebner, T. (eds)
With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the shifting of American foreign policy away from "old" Europe, long-established patterns of interaction between Germany and the U.S. have come under review. Although seemingly disconnected from the cultural and intellectual world, political developments were not without their influence on the humanities and their curricula during the past century. In retrospect, we can speak of the many different roles Germany has played in American eyes. The Many Faces of Germany seeks to acknowledge the importance of those incarnations for the study of German culture and history on both sides of the Atlantic. One of the major questions raised by the contributors is whether the transformations in the transatlantic dynamics and in the importance of Germany for the U.S. have had a major influence on the study of things German in the U.S. internally. The volume gathers together leading voices of the older and younger generations of social historians, literary scholars, film critics, and cultural historians.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
May 2015
Marking Evil
Holocaust Memory in the Global Age
Goldberg, A. & Hazan, H. (eds)
Talking about the Holocaust has provided an international language for ethics, victimization, political claims, and constructions of collective identity. As part of a worldwide vocabulary, that language helps set the tenor of the era of globalization. This volume addresses manifestations of Holocaust-engendered global discourse by critically examining their function and inherent dilemmas, and the ways in which Holocaust-related matters still instigate public debate and academic deliberation. It contends that the contradiction between the totalizing logic of globalization and the assumed uniqueness of the Holocaust generates continued intellectual and practical discontent.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History Memory Studies
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eBook available
January 2023
The Marseille Mosaic
A Mediterranean City at the Crossroads of Cultures
Ingram, M. & Kleppinger, K. (eds)
Formerly the gateway to the French empire, the city of Marseille exemplifies a postcolonial Europe reshaped by immigrants, refugees, and repatriates. The Marseille Mosaic addresses the city’s past and present, exploring the relationship between Marseille and the rest of France, Europe, and the Mediterranean. Proposing new models for the study of place by integrating approaches from the humanities and social sciences, this volume offers an idiosyncratic “mosaic,” which vividly details the challenges facing other French and European cities and the ways residents are developing alternative perspectives and charting new urban futures.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Sociology Urban Studies
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April 2011
The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany
Sutton, K.
Throughout the Weimar period the so-called “masculinization of woman” was much more than merely an outsider or subcultural phenomenon; it was central to representations of the changing female ideal, and fed into wider debates concerning the health and fertility of the German “race” following the rupture of war. Drawing on recent developments within the history of sexuality, this book sheds new light on representations and discussions of the masculine woman within the Weimar print media from 1918–1933. It traces the connotations and controversies surrounding this figure from her rise to media prominence in the early 1920s until the beginning of the Nazi period, considering questions of race, class, sexuality, and geography. By focusing on styles, bodies and identities that did not conform to societal norms of binary gender or heterosexuality, this book contributes to our understanding of gendered lives and experiences at this pivotal juncture in German history.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
April 2012
Maternalism Reconsidered
Motherhood, Welfare and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century
Klein, M. van der, Plant, R. J., Sanders, Nichole, & Weintrob L. R. (eds)
Beginning in the late 19th century, competing ideas about motherhood had a profound impact on the development and implementation of social welfare policies. Calls for programmes aimed at assisting and directing mothers emanated from all quarters of the globe, advanced by states and voluntary organizations, liberals and conservatives, feminists and anti-feminists – a phenomenon that scholars have since termed ‘maternalism’. This volume reassesses maternalism by providing critical reflections on prior usages of the concept, and by expanding its meaning to encompass geographical areas, political regimes and cultural concerns that scholars have rarely addressed. From Argentina, Brazil and Mexico City to France, Italy, the Netherlands, the Soviet Ukraine, the United States and Canada, these case studies offer fresh theoretical and historical perspectives within a transnational and comparative framework. As a whole, the volume demonstrates how maternalist ideologies have been employed by state actors, reformers and poor clients, with myriad political and social ramifications.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Gender Studies and Sexuality Sociology
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May 2011
Max Liebermann and International Modernism
An Artist's Career from Empire to Third Reich
Deshmukh, M., Forster-Hahn, F. & Gaehtgens, B. (eds)
Although Max Liebermann (1847–1935) began his career as a realist painter depicting scenes of rural labor, Dutch village life, and the countryside, by the turn of the century, his paintings had evolved into colorful images of bourgeois life and leisure that critics associated with French impressionism. During a time of increasing German nationalism, his paintings and cultural politics sparked numerous aesthetic and political controversies. His eminent career and his reputation intersected with the dramatic and violent events of modern German history from the Empire to the Third Reich. The Nazis’ persecution of modern and Jewish artists led to the obliteration of Liebermann from the narratives of modern art, but this volume contributes to the recent wave of scholarly literature that works to recover his role and his oeuvre from an international perspective.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
August 2006
Meaning and Representation in History
Rüsen, J. (ed)
History has always been more than just the past. It involves a relationship between past and present, perceived, on the one hand, as a temporal chain of events and, on the other, symbolically as an interpretation that gives meaning to these events through varying cultural orientations, charging it with norms and values, hopes and fears. And it is memory that links the present to the past and therefore has to be seen as the most fundamental procedure of the human mind that constitutes history: memory and historical thinking are the door of the human mind to experience. At the same time, it transforms the past into a meaningful and sense bearing part of the present and beyond. It is these complex interrelationships that are the focus of the contributors to this volume, among them such distinguished scholars as Paul Ricoeur, Johan Galtung, Eberhard Lämmert, and James E. Young. Full of profound insights into human society pat and present it is a book that not only historians but also philosophers and social scientists should engage with.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
December 2020
The Meanings of a Disaster
Chernobyl and Its Afterlives in Britain and France
Kalmbach, K.
The disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was an event of obviously transnational significance—not only in the airborne particulates it deposited across the Northern hemisphere, but in the political and social repercussions it set off well beyond the Soviet bloc. Focusing on the cases of Great Britain and France, this innovative study explores the discourses and narratives that arose in the wake of the incident among both state and nonstate actors. It gives a thorough account of the stereotypes, framings, and “othering” strategies that shaped Western European nations’ responses to the disaster, and of their efforts to come to terms with its long-term consequences up to the present day.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Environmental Studies (General) Media Studies
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eBook available
February 2014
Media and Revolt
Strategies and Performances from the 1960s to the Present
Fahlenbrach, K., Sivertsen, E. & Werenskjold, R. (eds)
In what ways have social movements attracted the attention of the mass media since the sixties? How have activists influenced public attention via visual symbols, images, and protest performances in that period? And how do mass media cover and frame specific protest issues? Drawing on contributions from media scholars, historians, and sociologists, this volume explores the dynamic interplay between social movements, activists, and mass media from the 1960s to the present. It introduces the most relevant theoretical approaches to such issues and offers a variety of case studies ranging from print media, film, and television to Internet and social media.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies
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eBook available
September 2018
Medicinal Rule
A Historical Anthropology of Kingship in East and Central Africa
Stroeken, K.
As soon as Europeans set foot on African soil, they looked for the equivalents of their kings – and found them. The resulting misunderstandings have lasted until this day. Based on ethnography-driven regional comparison and a critical re-examination of classic monographs on some forty cultural groups, this volume makes the arresting claim that across equatorial Africa the model of rule has been medicine – and not the colonizer’s despotic administrator, the missionary’s divine king, or Vansina’s big man. In a wide area populated by speakers of Bantu and other languages of the Niger-Congo cluster, both cult and dynastic clan draw on the fertility shrine, rainmaking charm and drum they inherit.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History
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eBook available
May 2002
Medicine and Medical Ethics in Nazi Germany
Origins, Practices, Legacies
Nicosia, F.R. & Huener, J. (eds)
The participation of German physicians in medical experiments on innocent people and mass murder is one of the most disturbing aspects of the Nazi era and the Holocaust. Six distinguished historians working in this field are addressing the critical issues raised by these murderous experiments, such as the place of the Holocaust in the larger context of eugenic and racial research, the motivation and roles of the German medical establishment, and the impact and legacy of the eugenics movements and Nazi medical practice on physicians and medicine since World War II.
Based on the authors' original scholarship, these essays offer an excellent and very accessible introduction to an important and controversial subject. They are also particularly relevant in light of current controversies over the nature and application of research in human genetics and biotechnology.
Subjects: History: World War II Genocide History
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eBook available
November 2021
Medieval Intersections
Gender and Status in Europe in the Middle Ages
Weikert, K. & Woodacre, E. (eds)
Status and gender are two closely associated concepts within medieval society, which tended to view both notions as binary: elite or low status, married or single, holy or cursed, male or female, or as complementary and cohesive as multiple parts of a societal whole. With contributions on topics ranging from medieval leprosy to boyhood behaviors, this interdisciplinary collection highlights the various ways “status” can be interpreted relative to gender, and what these two interlocked concepts can reveal about the construction of gendered identities in the Middle Ages.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History: Medieval/Early Modern
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December 2002
Memoirs of a Mbororo
The Life of Ndudi Umaru: Fulani Nomad of Cameroon
Bocquene, H.
This remarkable book recounts the life of Ndudi Umaru, a pastoral nomadic Fulani, who was born in the Nigeria-Cameroon border zone, but spent most of his life in Cameroon where he was treated for leprosy. Left to his own devices at an early age—his illness having separated him from his kith and kin—Ndudi is befriended by Père Boquené, a French missionary who takes him on as a field assistant. Working closely with the young man, Père Boquené realizes Ndudi is a keen observer of his own pastoral society, with its links to a wider social setting, and suggests he record his observations on tape. The result is a rare and sensitive collaboration, which sheds new insight into the world of the Mbororo and the complex and ever-changing social mosaic of West African savanna societies. Ndudi's leprosy and his efforts to find a cure grant him the necessary perspective to analyze this complex world, while still remaining a part of it.
For the western public, the Mbororo have often been the photogenic subjects of "Disappearing World" documentaries or glossy coffee table books. However, this account renders "the exotic" comprehensible, preserving the cultural authenticity of Ndudi's story while making this unique world more accessible to outsiders.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History Memory Studies Literary Studies
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eBook available
May 2018
Memorializing the GDR
Monuments and Memory after 1989
Saunders, A.
Since unification, eastern Germany has witnessed a rapidly changing memorial landscape, as the fate of former socialist monuments has been hotly debated and new commemorative projects have met with fierce controversy. Memorializing the GDR provides the first in-depth study of this contested arena of public memory, investigating the individuals and groups devoted to the creation or destruction of memorials as well as their broader aesthetic, political, and historical contexts. Emphasizing the interrelationship of built environment, memory and identity, it brings to light the conflicting memories of recent German history, as well as the nuances of national and regional constructions of identity.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Urban Studies Heritage Studies
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August 2002
Memory and Amnesia
The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy
Aguilar, P.
Using a rich variety of sources such as official newsreels, school textbooks, the work of contemporary historians, memoirs, official documents, legislation, and monuments, this book explores how the historical memory of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) influenced the transition to democracy in Spain after Franco's death in 1975. The author traces the development of official discourse on the War throughout the Franco period and describes the régime's attempts to achieve political legitimacy. Although there was no universal consensus regarding the events of the Civil War, general agreement did exist concerning the main lesson which should be drawn from it: never again should Spaniards become embroiled in a fratricidal conflict.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Memory Studies
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November 2015
Memory and Change in Europe
Eastern Perspectives
Pakier, M. & Wawrzyniak, J. (eds)
In studies of a common European past, there is a significant lack of scholarship on the former Eastern Bloc countries. While understanding the importance of shifting the focus of European memory eastward, contributors to this volume avoid the trap of Eastern European exceptionalism, an assumption that this region’s experiences are too unique to render them comparable to the rest of Europe. They offer a reflection on memory from an Eastern European historical perspective, one that can be measured against, or applied to, historical experience in other parts of Europe. In this way, the authors situate studies on memory in Eastern Europe within the broader debate on European memory.
Subjects: History (General) Sociology Memory Studies
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eBook available
November 2016
Memory Unbound
Tracing the Dynamics of Memory Studies
Bond, L., Craps, S., & Vermeulen, P. (eds)
Though still a relatively young field, memory studies has undergone significant transformations since it first coalesced as an area of inquiry. Increasingly, scholars understand memory to be a fluid, dynamic, unbound phenomenon—a process rather than a reified object. Embodying just such an elastic approach, this state-of-the-field collection systematically explores the transcultural, transgenerational, transmedial, and transdisciplinary dimensions of memory—four key dynamics that have sometimes been studied in isolation but never in such an integrated manner. Memory Unbound places leading researchers in conversation with emerging voices in the field to recast our understanding of memory’s distinctive variability.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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eBook available
December 2019
Men Under Fire
Motivation, Morale, and Masculinity among Czech Soldiers in the Great War, 1914–1918
Hutečka, J.
In historical writing on World War I, Czech-speaking soldiers serving in the Austro-Hungarian military are typically studied as Czechs, rarely as soldiers, and never as men. As a result, the question of these soldiers’ imperial loyalties has dominated the historical literature to the exclusion of any debate on their identities and experiences. Men under Fire provides a groundbreaking analysis of this oft-overlooked cohort, drawing on a wealth of soldiers’ private writings to explore experiences of exhaustion, sex, loyalty, authority, and combat itself. It combines methods from history, gender studies, and military science to reveal the extent to which the Great War challenged these men’s senses of masculinity, and to which the resulting dynamics influenced their attitudes and loyalties.
Subjects: History: World War I Gender Studies and Sexuality
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eBook available
April 2021
Merchant Kings
Corporate Governmentality in the Dutch Colonial Empire, 1815–1870
Schrauwers, A.
In the nineteenth century, the Netherlands and its colonial holdings in Java were the sites of dramatically increased industrialization. Led by a group of “merchant kings” who exemplified gentlemanly capitalism, this ambitious trading project transformed the small, economically moribund Netherlands into a global power. Merchant Kings offers a fascinating interdisciplinary exploration of this episode and reveals not only the distinctive nature of the Dutch state, but the surprising extent to which its nascent corporate innovations were rooted in early welfare initiatives. By placing colony and metropole into a single analytical frame, this book offers a bracing new approach to understanding the development of modern corporations.
Subjects: Colonial History History: 18th/19th Century Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
September 2015
The Merkel Republic
An Appraisal
Langenbacher, E. (ed)
Chancellor Angela Merkel has dominated German and European politics for almost a decade. Her stellar reputation, sound political and economic management, and popularity inside of Germany resulted in one of the most decisive electoral victories for her conservative parties in postwar Germany—the country can rightfully be deemed the Merkel Republic. Bringing together German politics experts from both sides of the Atlantic, this volume addresses the campaign, results, and consequences of the 2013 Bundestag election. Chapters delve into a diverse array of themes, including immigrant-origin and women candidates, the fate of the small parties, and the prospects for the SPD, the new coalition partner, as well as more general structural trends like the Europeanization and cosmopolitanization of German politics.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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January 2014
Metallic Modern
Everyday Machines in Colonial Sri Lanka
Wickramasinghe, N.
Everyday life in the Crown colony of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) was characterized by a direct encounter of people with modernity through the consumption and use of foreign machines – in particular, the Singer sewing machine, but also the gramophone, tramway, bicycle and varieties of industrial equipment. The ‘metallic modern’ of the 19th and early 20th century Ceylon encompassed multiple worlds of belonging and imagination; and enabled diverse conceptions of time to coexist through encounters with Siam, the United States and Japan as well as a new conception of urban space in Colombo. Metallic Modern describes the modern as it was lived and experienced by non-elite groups – tailors, seamstresses, shopkeepers, workers – and suggests that their idea of the modern was nurtured by a changing material world.
Subjects: Colonial History Cultural Studies (General) Development Studies
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eBook available
February 2017
Metaphors of Spain
Representations of Spanish National Identity in the Twentieth Century
Moreno-Luzón, J. & Núñez Seixas, X. M. (eds)
The history of twentieth-century Spanish nationalism is a complex one, placing a set of famously distinctive regional identities against a backdrop of religious conflict, separatist tensions, and the autocratic rule of Francisco Franco. And despite the undeniably political character of that story, cultural history can also provide essential insights into the subject. Metaphors of Spain brings together leading historians to examine Spanish nationalism through its diverse and complementary cultural artifacts, from “formal” representations such as the flag to music, bullfighting, and other more diffuse examples. Together they describe not a Spanish national “essence,” but a nationalism that is constantly evolving and accommodates multiple interpretations.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
December 2016
Microhistories of the Holocaust
Zalc, C. & Bruttmann, T. (eds)
How does scale affect our understanding of the Holocaust? In the vastness of its implementation and the sheer amount of death and suffering it produced, the genocide of Europe’s Jews presents special challenges for historians, who have responded with work ranging in scope from the world-historical to the intimate. In particular, recent scholarship has demonstrated a willingness to study the Holocaust at scales as focused as a single neighborhood, family, or perpetrator. This volume brings together an international cast of scholars to reflect on the ongoing microhistorical turn in Holocaust studies, assessing its historiographical pitfalls as well as the distinctive opportunities it affords researchers.
Subjects: Genocide History History: World War II Jewish Studies
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November 2016
Migration, Memory, and Diversity
Germany from 1945 to the Present
Wilhelm, C. (ed)
Within Germany, policies and cultural attitudes toward migrants have been profoundly shaped by the difficult legacies of the Second World War and its aftermath. This wide-ranging volume explores the complex history of migration and diversity in Germany from 1945 to today, showing how conceptions of “otherness” developed while memories of the Nazi era were still fresh, and identifying the continuities and transformations they exhibited through the Cold War and reunification. It provides invaluable context for understanding contemporary Germany’s unique role within regional politics at a time when an unprecedented influx of immigrants and refugees present the European community with a significant challenge.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Refugee and Migration Studies Memory Studies
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eBook available
November 2013
Migration, Settlement and Belonging in Europe, 1500–1930s
Comparative Perspectives
King, S. & Winter, A. (eds)
The issues around settlement, belonging, and poor relief have for too long been understood largely from the perspective of England and Wales. This volume offers a pan-European survey that encompasses Switzerland, Prussia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Britain. It explores how the conception of belonging changed over time and space from the 1500s onwards, how communities dealt with the welfare expectations of an increasingly mobile population that migrated both within and between states, the welfare rights that were attached to those who “belonged,” and how ordinary people secured access to welfare resources. What emerged was a sophisticated European settlement system, which on the one hand structured itself to limit the claims of the poor, and yet on the other was peculiarly sensitive to their demands and negotiations.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies History (General)
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eBook available
September 2016
Migrations in the German Lands, 1500-2000
Coy, J., Poley, J., & Schunka, A. (eds)
Migration to, from, and within German-speaking lands has been a dynamic force in Central European history for centuries. Exemplifying some of the most exciting recent research on historical mobility, the essays collected here reconstruct the experiences of vagrants, laborers, religious exiles, refugees, and other migrants during the last five hundred years of German history. With diverse contributions ranging from early modern martyrdom to post–Cold War commemoration efforts, this volume identifies revealing commonalities shared by different eras while also placing the German case within the broader contexts of European and global migration.
Subjects: History (General) Mobility Studies Refugee and Migration Studies
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eBook available
May 2015
Militant Around the Clock?
Left-Wing Youth Politics, Leisure, and Sexuality in Post-Dictatorship Greece, 1974-1981
Papadogiannis, N.
During the 1970s, left-wing youth militancy in Greece intensified, especially after the collapse of the military dictatorship in 1974. This is the first study of the impact of that political activism on the leisure pursuits and sexual behavior of Greek youth, analyzing the cultural politics of left-wing organizations alongside the actual practices of their members. Through an examination of Maoists, Socialists, Euro-Communists, and pro-Soviet groups, it demonstrates that left-wing youth in Greece collaborated closely with comrades from both Western and Eastern European countries in developing their political stances. Moreover, young left-wingers in Greece appropriated American cultural products while simultaneously modeling some of their leisure and sexual practices on Soviet society. Still, despite being heavily influenced by cultures outside Greece, left-wing youth played a major role in the reinvention of a Greek “popular tradition.” This book critically interrogates the notion of “sexual revolution” by shedding light on the contradictory sexual transformations in Greece to which young left-wingers contributed.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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eBook available
August 2013
The Mind of the Nation
Völkerpsychologie in Germany, 1851-1955
Klautke, E.
Völkerpsychologie played an important role in establishing the social sciences via the works of such scholars as Georg Simmel, Emile Durkheim, Ernest Renan, Franz Boas, and Werner Sombart. In Germany, the intellectual history of “folk psychology” was represented by Moritz Lazarus, Heymann Steinthal, Wilhelm Wundt and Willy Hellpach. This book follows the invention of the discipline in the nineteenth century, its rise around the turn of the century and its ultimate demise after the Second World War. In addition, it shows that despite the repudiation of “folk psychology” and its failed institutionalization, the discipline remains relevant as a precursor of contemporary studies of “national identity.”
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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February 2006
Miners and the State in the Ottoman Empire
The Zonguldak Coalfield, 1822-1920
Quataert, D.
The story of the miners of Zonguldak presents a particularly graphic local lens through which to examine questions that have been of major concern to historians—most prominently, the development of the state, the emergence of capitalism, and the role of the working classes in these large processes. This book examines such major issues through the actual experiences of coal miners in the Ottoman Empire. The encounters of mine workers with state mining officials and private mine operators do not follow the expected patterns of labor-state-capital relations as predicted by the major explanatory paradigms of modernization or dependency. Indeed, as the author clearly shows, few of the outcomes are as predicted. The fate of these miners has much to offer both Ottoman and Middle East specialists as well as scholars of the developing world and, more generally, those interested in the connections between economic development and social and political change.
Subjects: History (General) History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
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eBook available
April 2022
Minority Discourses in Germany since 1990
Gezen, E., Layne, P., & Skolnik, J. (eds)
While German unification promised a new historical beginning, it also stirred discussions about contemporary Germany’s Nazi past and ideas of citizenship and belonging in a changing Europe. Minority Discourses in Germany Since 1990 explores the intersections and divergences between Black German, Turkish German, and German Jewish experiences, with reflections on the evolving academic paradigms with which these are studied. Informed by comparative approaches, the volume investigates social and aesthetic interventions into contemporary German public and political discourse on memory, racism, citizenship, immigration, and history.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Refugee and Migration Studies
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eBook available
May 2017
The Mirror of the Medieval
An Anthropology of the Western Historical Imagination
Fazioli, K. P.
Since its invention by Renaissance humanists, the myth of the “Middle Ages” has held a uniquely important place in the Western historical imagination. Whether envisioned as an era of lost simplicity or a barbaric nightmare, the medieval past has always served as a mirror for modernity. This book gives an eye-opening account of the ways various political and intellectual projects—from nationalism to the discipline of anthropology—have appropriated the Middle Ages for their own ends. Deploying an interdisciplinary toolkit, author K. Patrick Fazioli grounds his analysis in contemporary struggles over power and identity in the Eastern Alps, while also considering the broader implications for scholarly research and public memory.
Subjects: History: Medieval/Early Modern Theory and Methodology Archaeology
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January 1998
Mitteleuropa
Between Europe and Germany
Katzenstein, P. (ed)
German unification and the political and economic transformations in central Europe signal profound political changes that pose many questions. Will post-Communism push ahead with the task of institutionalizing a democratic capitalism? How will that process be aided or disrupted by international developments in the East and West? And how will central Europe relate to united Germany? Based on original field research this book offers, through more than a dozen case studies, a cautiously optimistic set of answers to these questions. The end of the Cold War and German unification, the empirical evidence indicates, are not returning Germany and central Europe to historically troubled, imbalanced, bilateral relationships. Rather changes in the character of German and European politics as well as the transformations now affecting Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia point to the emergence of multilateral relationships linking Germany and central Europe in an internationalizing, democratic Europe.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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October 2009
Mitterrand, the End of the Cold War, and German Unification
Bozo, F.
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this important book explores the role of France in the events leading up to the end of the Cold War and German unification. Most accounts concentrate on the role of the United States and look at these events through the bipolar prism of Soviet-American relations. Yet because of its central position in Europe and of its status as Germany’s foremost European partner, France and its President, François Mitterrand, played a decisive role in these pivotal international events: the peaceful liberation of Eastern Europe from Soviet rule starting in 1988, the fall of the Berlin Wall and Germany’s return to unity and full sovereignty in 1989/90, and the breakup of the USSR in 1991. Based on extensive research and a vast amount of archival sources, this book explores the role played by France in shaping a new European order.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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August 2014
Mixed Matches
Transgressive Unions in Germany from the Reformation to the Enlightenment
Luebke, D. M. & Lindemann, M. (eds)
The significant changes in early modern German marriage practices included many unions that violated some taboo. That taboo could be theological and involve the marriage of monks and nuns, or refer to social misalliances as when commoners and princes (or princesses) wed. Equally transgressive were unions that crossed religious boundaries, such as marriages between Catholics and Protestants, those that violated ethnic or racial barriers, and those that broke kin-related rules. Taking as a point of departure Martin Luther’s redefinition of marriage, the contributors to this volume spin out the multiple ways that the Reformers’ attempts to simplify and clarify marriage affected education, philosophy, literature, high politics, diplomacy, and law. Ranging from the Reformation, through the ages of confessionalization, to the Enlightenment, Mixed Matches addresses the historical complexity of the socio-cultural institution of marriage.
Subject: History: Medieval/Early Modern
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March 2023
Modeling the Past
Archaeology, History, and Dynamic Networks
Terrell, J., Golitko, M., Dawson, H., and Kissel, M.
How do researchers use dynamic network analysis (DYNA) to explore, model, and try to understand the complex global history of our species? Reduced to bare bones, network analysis is a way of understanding the world around us — a way called relational thinking — that is liberating but challenging. Using this handbook, researchers learn to develop historical and archaeological research questions anchored in DYNA. Undergraduate and graduate students, as well as professional historians and archaeologists can consult on issues that range from hypothesis-driven research to critiquing dominant historical narratives, especially those that have tended ignore the diversity of the archaeological record.
Subjects: Archaeology History (General) Anthropology (General)
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eBook available
October 2017
Modern Germany in Transatlantic Perspective
Meng, M. & Seipp, A. R. (eds)
Bringing together incisive contributions from an international group of colleagues and former students, Modern Germany in Transatlantic Perspective takes stock of the field of German history as exemplified by the extraordinary scholarly career of Konrad H. Jarausch. Through fascinating reflections on the discipline’s theoretical, professional, and methodological dimensions, it explores Jarausch’s monumental work as a teacher and a builder of scholarly institutions. In this way, it provides not merely a look back at the last fifty years of German history, but a path forward as new ideas and methods infuse the study of Germany’s past.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: World War II
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eBook available
July 2020
Modern Lusts
Ernest Borneman: Jazz Critic, Filmmaker, Sexologist
Siegfried, D.
As a jazz musician, filmmaker, anthropologist, sexologist, and crime novelist, the boundlessly curious German autodidact Ernest Borneman exemplified the conflicting cultural and intellectual currents of the twentieth century. In this long-awaited English translation, acclaimed historian Detlef Siegfried chronicles Borneman’s journey from a young Jewish Communist in Nazi Berlin to his emergence as a celebrated (and reliably controversial) transatlantic polymath. Through an innovative structure organized around the human senses, this biography memorably portrays a figure whose far-flung obsessions comprised a microcosm of postwar intellectual life.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Film and Television Studies Media Studies
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eBook available
December 2008
The Modernist Imagination
Intellectual History and Critical Theory
Breckman, W., Gordon, P. E., Moses, A. D., Moyn, S. & Neaman, E. (eds)
Some of the most exciting and innovative work in the humanities currently takes place at the intersection of intellectual history and critical theory. Just as critical theorists are becoming more aware of the historicity of theory, contemporary practitioners of modern intellectual history are recognizing their potential contributions to theoretical discourse. No one has done more than Martin Jay to realize the possibilities for mutual enrichment between intellectual history and critical theory. This carefully selected collection of essays addresses central questions and current practices of intellectual history and asks how the legacy of critical theory has influenced scholarship across a wide range of scholarly disciplines. In honor of Martin Jay's unparalleled achievements, this volume includes work from some of the most prominent contemporary scholars in the humanities and social sciences.
Subject: History (General)
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March 2006
Modernizing Bavaria
The Politics of Franz Josef Strauss and the CSU, 1949-1969
Milosch, M.
In 1949 Bavaria was not only the largest and best known but also the poorest, most agricultural, and most industrially backward region of Germany. It was further its most politically conservative region. The largest political party in Bavaria was the Christian Social Union (CSU), an extremely conservative, even reactionary, regional party. In the ensuing twenty years, the leaders of the CSU's small liberal wing (in particular Franz Josef Strauss, long-time party chair and the most colorful and polarizing politician in postwar Germany) broke with the anti-industrial traditions of Bavarian Catholic politics and made themselves useful to industry. With tactical brilliance the politicians pursued their individual political ambitions, rather than a coherent modernization strategy, which, by 1969, had turned Bavaria into a prosperous Land, the center of Germany's new aerospace, defense, and energy industries, with a disproportionate share of its research institutes.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
August 2017
Money in the German-speaking Lands
Lindemann, M. & Poley, J. (eds)
Money is more than just a medium of financial exchange: across time and place, it has performed all sorts of cultural, political, and social functions. This volume traces money in German-speaking Europe from the late Renaissance until the close of the twentieth century, exploring how people have used it and endowed it with multiple meanings. The fascinating studies gathered here collectively demonstrate money’s vast symbolic and practical significance, from its place in debates about religion and the natural world to its central role in statecraft and the formation of national identity.
Subject: History (General)
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eBook available
December 2016
The Monumental Nation
Magyar Nationalism and Symbolic Politics in Fin-de-siècle Hungary
Varga, B.
From the 1860s onward, Habsburg Hungary attempted a massive project of cultural assimilation to impose a unified national identity on its diverse populations. In one of the more quixotic episodes in this “Magyarization,” large monuments were erected near small towns commemorating the medieval conquest of the Carpathian Basin—supposedly, the moment when the Hungarian nation was born. This exactingly researched study recounts the troubled history of this plan, which—far from cultivating national pride—provoked resistance and even hostility among provincial Hungarians. Author Bálint Varga thus reframes the narrative of nineteenth-century nationalism, demonstrating the complex relationship between local and national memories.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
February 2021
More than Mere Spectacle
Coronations and Inaugurations in the Habsburg Monarchy during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Van Gelder, K.
Across the medieval and early modern eras, new rulers were celebrated with increasingly elaborate coronations and inaugurations that symbolically conferred legitimacy and political power upon them. Many historians have considered rituals like these as irrelevant to understanding modern governance—an idea that this volume challenges through illuminating case studies focused on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Habsburg lands. Taking the formal elasticity of these events as the key to their lasting relevance, the contributors explore important questions around their political, legal, social, and cultural significance and their curious persistence as a historical phenomenon over time.
Subject: History: 18th/19th Century
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eBook available
February 2022
Moving Frames
Photographs in German Cinema
Collenberg-González, C. & Sheehan, M. P. (eds)
As the building blocks of moving pictures, photographs have played an integral role in cinema since the dawn of the medium—a relationship that has grown more complexly connected even as the underlying technologies continue to evolve. Moving Frames explores the use of photographs in German films from Expressionism to the Berlin School, addressing the formal and narrative roles that photographs play as well as the cultural and historical contexts out of which these films emerged. Looking beyond and within the canon, the editors gather stimulating new insights into the politics of surveillance, resistance, representation, and collective memory functioning through photographic rupture and affect in German cinema.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2006
Mozart
The First Biography
Niemetschek, F.
Franz Xaver Niemetschek was born in 1766 in what is now the Czech Republic and came from a musical family, which gave him a deep appreciation and admiration for Mozart's genius. In 1798 he published his biography on Mozart, with a touching dedication to Haydn, the only one written by an eyewitness, and authorized by Mozart's widow Constanze. It is one of the earliest specimens of musical biography which, compared with other branches of biography, was still in its infancy even in the later part of the 19th century. In this sense, it is an important document of music history. However, this loving and intimate portrait of Mozart, based on documents, letters and other original sources, also conveys a vivid picture of the social and especially courtly life that formed the background of Mozart's sheer magical talents as composer and virtuoso.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century
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December 2011
Much Ado About Nothing?
Gualmini, E. & Pasotti, E. (eds)
The year 2010 marked the halfway point for Silvio Berlusconi’s fourth government with the solidity of its electoral mandate threatened on a number of occasions by strong clashes with the opposition, ultimately leading to a “divorce” from Gianfranco Fini. The upheaval that followed this rift dominated the second half of the year. This volume examines not only this rift but also the important political and social events of a period full of polemics and tensions, from the regional elections and the debate on fiscal federalism to the state of the opposition parties. The political agenda was consumed by everyday matters, such as the scandals surrounding the Civil Protection Service and the confrontations with the magistracy over phone tapping, and appeared to lack any strategic planning for the longer term. The reform of the university system was approved by a slim margin and still saw violent protests from its opponents. Then, all of the government’s actions were restricted by a return to austerity policies. Through the confidence vote of 14 December, the government retained its tenuous hold on power and left a sense of “much ado about nothing”. The crisis was averted, but possibly only postponed, and now there remains the unresolved, increasingly chronic problems of a country that is limping along without growth, more and more divided according to geographical areas, social and professional categories, and above all, torn between generations.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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