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by Subject: History: 20th Century to Present

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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
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)
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
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
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
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
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)
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)
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
eBook available 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
eBook available 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
eBook available 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)
eBook available 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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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)
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
eBook available April 2015
Music and International History in the Twentieth Century

Gienow-Hecht, J. (ed)

Bringing together scholars from the fields of musicology and international history, this book investigates the significance of music to foreign relations, and how it affected the interaction of nations since the late 19th century. For more than a century, both state and non-state actors have sought to employ sound and harmony to influence allies and enemies, resolve conflicts, and export their own culture around the world. This book asks how we can understand music as an instrument of power and influence, and how the cultural encounters fostered by music changes our ideas about international history.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies Performance Studies
eBook available August 2017
The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-1938

Complicating the Picture

Wakabayashi, B. T. (ed)

First published in 2007, The Nanking Atrocity remains an essential resource for understanding the massacre committed by Japanese soldiers in Nanking, China during the winter of 1937-38. Through a series of deeply considered and empirically rigorous essays, it provides a far more complex and nuanced perspective than that found in works like Iris Chang’s bestselling The Rape of Nanking. It systematically reveals the flaws and exaggerations in Chang’s book while deflating the self-exculpatory narratives that persist in Japan even today. This second edition includes an extensive new introduction by the editor reflecting on the historiographical developments of the last decade, in advance of the 80th anniversary of the massacre.

Subjects: Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available June 2016
Narratives in Motion

Journalism and Modernist Events in 1920s Portugal

Trindade, L.

Interwar Portugal was in many ways a microcosm of Europe’s encounter with modernity: reshaped by industrialization, urban growth, and the antagonism between liberalism and authoritarianism, it also witnessed new forms of media and mass culture that transformed daily life. This fascinating study of newspapers in 1920s Portugal explores how the new “modernist reportage” embodied the spirit of the era while mediating some of its most spectacular episodes, from political upheavals to lurid crimes of passion. In the process, Luís Trindade illuminates the twofold nature of that journalism—both historical account and material object, it epitomized a distinctly modern entanglement of narrative and event.

Subjects: Media Studies History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available November 2016
Narratives in the Making

Writing the East German Past in the Democratic Present

Gallinat, A.

Despite the three decades that have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the historical narrative of East Germany is hardly fixed in public memory, as German society continues to grapple with the legacies of the Cold War. This fascinating ethnography looks at two very different types of local institutions in one eastern German state that take divergent approaches to those legacies: while publicly funded organizations reliably cast the GDR as a dictatorship, a main regional newspaper offers a more ambivalent perspective colored by the experiences and concerns of its readers. As author Anselma Gallinat shows, such memory work—initially undertaken after fundamental regime change—inevitably shapes citizenship and democracy in the present.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Anthropology (General) Memory Studies
eBook available August 2018
Nation Branding in Modern History

Viktorin, C., Gienow-Hecht, J. C. E., Estner, A., & Will, M. K. (eds)

A recent coinage within international relations, “nation branding” designates the process of highlighting a country’s positive characteristics for promotional purposes, using techniques similar to those employed in marketing and public relations. Nation Branding in Modern History takes an innovative approach to illuminating this contested concept, drawing on fascinating case studies in the United States, China, Poland, Suriname, and many other countries, from the nineteenth century to the present. It supplements these empirical contributions with a series of historiographical essays and analyses of key primary documents, making for a rich and multivalent investigation into the nexus of cultural marketing, self-representation, and political power.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Political and Economic Anthropology Media Studies
eBook available July 2016
National Policy, Global Memory

The Commemoration of the “Righteous” from Jerusalem to Paris, 1942-2007

Gensburger, S.

Since 1963, the state of Israel has awarded the title of “Righteous among the Nations” to individuals who risked their lives sheltering Jews during the Holocaust. This distinction remained solely an Israeli initiative until the late 1990s, when European governments began developing their own national categories, the most prominent of which was the “Righteous of France,” honoring those who protected Jews during the Vichy regime. In National Policy, Global Memory, Sarah Gensburger uses this dramatic episode to lend a new perspective to debates over memory and nationhood. In particular, she works to combine two often divergent disciplines—memory studies and political science—to study “memory politics” as a form of public policy.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History Memory Studies
eBook available March 2022
Nationalism and Internationalism Intertwined

A European History of Concepts Beyond the Nation State

Ihalainen, P. & Holmila, A. (eds)

It is commonplace that the modern world is more international than at any point in human history. Yet the sheer profusion of terms for describing politics beyond the nation state—including “international,” “European,” “global,” “transnational” and “cosmopolitan,” among others – is but one indication of how conceptually complex this field actually is. Taking a wide view of internationalism(s) in Europe since the eighteenth century, Nationalism and Internationalism Intertwined explores discourses and practices to challenge nation-centered histories and trace the entanglements that arise from international cooperation. A multidisciplinary group of scholars in history, discourse studies and digital humanities asks how internationalism has been experienced, understood, constructed, debated and redefined across different European political cultures as well as related to the wider world.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: 18th/19th Century
eBook available July 2014
Nationalism and the Cinema in France

Political Mythologies and Film Events, 1945-1995

Frey, H.

It is often taken for granted that French cinema is intimately connected to the nation’s sense of identity and self-confidence. But what do we really know about that relationship? What are the nuances, insider codes, and hidden history of the alignment between cinema and nationalism? Hugo Frey suggests that the concepts of the ‘political myth’ and ‘the film event’ are the essential theoretical reference points for unlocking film history. Nationalism and the Cinema in France offers new arguments regarding those connections in the French case, examining national elitism, neo-colonialism, and other exclusionary discourses, as well as discussing for the first time the subculture of cinema around the extreme right Front National. Key works from directors such as Michel Audiard, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Marcel Pagnol, Jean Renoir, Jacques Tati, François Truffaut, and others provide a rich body of evidence.

Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available May 2008
Nature of the Miracle Years

Conservation in West Germany, 1945-1975

Chaney, S.

After 1945, those responsible for conservation in Germany resumed their work with a relatively high degree of continuity as far as laws and personnel were concerned. Yet conservationists soon found they had little choice but to modernize their views and practices in the challenging postwar context. Forced to change by necessity, those involved in state-sponsored conservation institutionalized and professionalized their efforts, while several private groups became more confrontational in their message and tactics. Through their steady and often conservative presence within the mainstream of West German society, conservationists ensured that by 1970 the map of the country was dotted with hundreds of reserves, dozens of nature parks, and one national park. In doing so, they assured themselves a strong position to participate in, rather than be excluded from, the left-leaning environmental movement of the 1970s.

Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available March 2019
Negotiating the Secular and the Religious in the German Empire

Transnational Approaches

Habermas, R. (ed)

With its rapid industrialization, modernization, and gradual democratization, Imperial Germany has typically been understood in secular terms. However, religion and religious actors actually played crucial roles in the history of the Kaiserreich, a fact that becomes particularly evident when viewed through a transnational lens. In this volume, leading scholars of sociology, religious studies, and history study the interplay of secular and religious worldviews beyond the simple interrelation of practices and ideas. By exploring secular perspectives, belief systems, and rituals in a transnational context, they provide new ways of understanding how the borders between Imperial Germany’s secular and religious spheres were continually made and remade.

Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
eBook available February 2021
Nordic War Stories

World War II as History, Fiction, Media, and Memory

Stecher-Hansen, M. (ed)

Situated on Europe’s northern periphery, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden found themselves caught between warring powers during World War II. Ultimately, these nations survived the conflict as sovereign states whose wartime experiences have profoundly shaped their historiography, literature, cinema and memory cultures. Nordic War Stories explores the commonalities and divergences among the five Nordic countries, examining national historiographies alongside representations of the war years in canonical literary works, travel writing, and film media. Together, they comprise a valuable companion that challenges the myth of Scandinavian homogeneity while demonstrating the powerful influence that the war continues to exert on national identities.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies
eBook available March 2020
Not Even Past

How the United States Ends Wars

Fitzgerald, D., Ryan, D., & Thompson, J. M. (eds)

Offers essential perspectives on the Cold War and post-9/11 eras and explores the troubling implications of the American tendency to fight wars without end.

“Featuring lucid and penetrating essays by a stellar roster of scholars, the volume provides deep insights into one of the grand puzzles of the age: why the U.S. has so often failed to exit wars on its terms.”— Fredrik Logevall, Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University

Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan: Taken together, these conflicts are the key to understanding more than a half century of American military history. In addition, they have shaped, in profound ways, the culture and politics of the United States—as well as the nations in which they have been fought. This volume brings together international experts on American history and foreign affairs to assess the cumulative impact of the United States’ often halting and conflicted attempts to end wars.

From the introduction:
The refusal to engage in historical thinking, that form of reflection deeply immersed in the US experience of war and intervention, means that this cultural amnesia is related to a strategic incoherence and, in these wars, the United States has failed in its strategic objectives because it did not define, precisely, what they were. If Vietnam was the tragedy, Iraq and Afghanistan were repeated failures. The objectives and the national interests were elusive beyond issues of credibility, identity, and revenge; the end point was undefined because it was not clear what the point was. What did the United States want from these wars? What did it want to leave behind?

Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies History: 20th Century to Present History (General)
eBook available October 2016
The Nuclear Crisis

The Arms Race, Cold War Anxiety, and the German Peace Movement of the 1980s

Becker-Schaum, C., Gassert, P., Mausbach, W., Klimke, M., and Zepp, M. (eds)

In 1983, more than one million Germans joined together to protest NATO’s deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe. International media overflowed with images of marches, rallies, and human chains as protesters blockaded depots and agitated for disarmament. Though they failed to halt the deployment, the episode was a decisive one for German society, revealing deep divisions in the nation’s political culture while continuing to mobilize activists. This volume provides a comprehensive reference work on the “Euromissiles” crisis as experienced by its various protagonists, analyzing NATO’s diplomatic and military maneuvering and tracing the political, cultural, and moral discourses that surrounded the missiles’ deployment in East and West Germany.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
eBook available April 2018
Oil and Sovereignty

Petro-Knowledge and Energy Policy in the United States and Western Europe in the 1970s

Graf, R.

In the decades that followed World War II, cheap and plentiful oil helped to fuel rapid economic growth, ensure political stability, and reinforce the legitimacy of liberal democracies. Yet waves of price increases and the use of the so-called “oil weapon” by a group of Arab oil-producing countries in the early 1970s demonstrated the West’s dependence on this vital resource and its vulnerability to economic volatility and political conflicts. Oil and Sovereignty analyzes the national and international strategies that American and European governments formulated to restructure the world of oil and deal with the era’s disruptions. It shows how a variety of different actors combined diplomacy, knowledge creation, economic restructuring, and public relations in their attempts to impose stability and reassert national sovereignty.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present Political and Economic Anthropology
eBook available April 2014
On the Path to Genocide

Armenia and Rwanda Reexamined

Mayersen, D.

Why did the Armenian genocide erupt in Turkey in 1915, only seven years after the Armenian minority achieved civil equality for the first time in the history of the Ottoman Empire? How can we explain the Rwandan genocide occurring in 1994, after decades of relative peace and even cooperation between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority? Addressing the question of how the risk of genocide develops over time, On the Path to Genocide contributes to a better understand why genocide occurs when it does. It provides a comprehensive and comparative historical analysis of the factors that led to the 1915 Armenian genocide and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, using fresh sources and perspectives that yield new insights into the history of the Armenian and Rwandan peoples. Finally, it also presents new research into constraints that inhibit genocide, and how they can be utilized to attempt the prevention of genocide in the future.

Subjects: Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available May 2019
One Sound, Two Worlds

The Blues in a Divided Germany, 1945-1990

Rauhut, M.

For all of its apparent simplicity—a few chords, twelve bars, and a supposedly straightforward American character—blues music is a complex phenomenon with cultural significance that has varied greatly across different historical contexts. One Sound, Two Worlds examines the development of the blues in East and West Germany, demonstrating the multiple ways social and political conditions can shape the meaning of music. Based on new archival research and conversations with key figures, this comparative study provides a cultural, historical, and musicological account of the blues and the impact of the genre not only in the two Germanys, but also in debates about the history of globalization.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Performance Studies Cultural Studies (General)
eBook available July 2022
Oswald Spengler and the Politics of Decline

Lewis, B.

Oswald Spengler was one of the most important thinkers of the Weimar Republic. In Oswald Spengler and the Politics of Decline, Ben Lewis completely transforms our understanding of Spengler by showing how well-connected this philosopher was and how, at every stage of his career, he attempted to intervene politically in the very real-life events unfolding around him. The volume explains Spengler’s politics as the outcome of a dynamic interplay between his meta-historical considerations on world history on the one hand, and the practical demands and considerations of Realpolitik on the other hand.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available November 2021
The Paradoxical Republic

Austria 1945–2020

Rathkolb, O.

From its emergence out of the ashes of World War II through to the economic and political challenges of today, Austria has embodied many of the contradictions of recent European history. Written by one of the nation’s leading historians, this account of postwar Austria explores the tensions that have defined it for over seven decades, whether in its overlapping policies of engagement and isolationism, its grandiose visions and persistent sense of inferiority, or its position as a model social democracy that has suffered recurrent bouts of xenophobic nationalism. This newly revised edition also addresses the major developments since 2005, including a resurgent far right, economic instability, and the potential fracturing of the European Union.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available January 2018
Parallel Lives Revisited

Mediterranean Guest Workers and their Families at Work and in the Neighbourhood, 1960-1980

Bock, J. De

Originally coined in 2001 in a report on racial tensions in the United Kingdom, the concept of “parallel lives” has become familiar in the European discourse on immigrant integration. There, it refers to what is perceived as the segregation of immigrant populations from the rest of society. However, the historical roots of this presumed segregation are rarely the focus of discussion. Combining quantitative analysis, archival research, and over one hundred oral history interviews, Parallel Lives Revisited explores the lives of immigrants from six Mediterranean countries in a postwar Belgian city to provide a fascinating account of how their experiences of integration have changed at work and in their neighborhoods across two decades.

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
eBook available July 2019
Peace at All Costs

Catholic Intellectuals, Journalists, and Media in Postwar Polish–German Reconciliation

Frieberg, A. E.

Although it was characterized by simmering international tensions, the early Cold War also witnessed dramatic instances of reconciliation between states, as former antagonists rebuilt political, economic, and cultural ties in the wake of the Second World War. And such efforts were not confined to official diplomacy, as this study of postwar rapprochement between Poland and West Germany demonstrates. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Peace at All Costs follows Polish and German non-state activists who attempted to establish dialogue in the 1950s and 1960s, showing how they achieved modest successes and media attention at the cost of more nuanced approaches to their national histories and identities.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Peace and Conflict Studies Media Studies
eBook available August 2019
Perestroika and the Party

National and Transnational Perspectives on European Communist Parties in the Era of Soviet Reform

Di Palma, F. (ed)

Countless studies have assessed the dramatic reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, but their analysis of the impact on European communism has focused overwhelmingly on the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc nations. This ambitious collection takes a much broader view, reconstructing and evaluating the historical trajectories of glasnost and perestroika on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Moving beyond domestic politics and foreign relations narrowly defined, the research gathered here constitutes a transnational survey of these reforms’ collective impact, showing how they were variably received and implemented, and how they shaped the prospects for “proletarian internationalism” in diverse political contexts.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available October 2017
The Persistence of Race

Continuity and Change in Germany from the Wilhelmine Empire to National Socialism

Day, L. & Haag, O. (eds)

Race in 20th-century German history is an inescapable topic, one that has been defined overwhelmingly by the narratives of degeneracy that prefigured the Nuremberg Laws and death camps of the Third Reich. As the contributions to this innovative volume show, however, German society produced a much more complex variety of racial representations over the first part of the century. Here, historians explore the hateful depictions of the Nazi period alongside idealized images of African, Pacific and Australian indigenous peoples, demonstrating both the remarkable fixity race had as an object of fascination for German society as well as the conceptual plasticity it exhibited through several historical eras.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
eBook available February 2012
Peter Lorre: Face Maker

Constructing Stardom and Performance in Hollywood and Europe

Thomas, S.

Peter Lorre described himself as merely a ‘face maker’. His own negative attitude also characterizes traditional perspectives which position Lorre as a tragic figure within film history: the promising European artist reduced to a Hollywood gimmick, unable to escape the murderous image of his role in Fritz Lang’s M. This book shows that the life of Peter Lorre cannot be reduced to a series of simplistic oppositions. It reveals that, despite the limitations of his macabre star image, Lorre’s screen performances were highly ambitious, and the terms of his employment were rarely restrictive. Lorre’s career was a complex negotiation between transnational identity, Hollywood filmmaking practices, the ownership of star images and the mechanics of screen performance.

Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available July 2019
Planning for the Planet

Environmental Expertise and the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 1960–1980

Schleper, S.

During the 1960s and 1970s, rapidly growing environmental awareness and concern created unprecedented demand for ecological expertise and novel challenges for ecological advocacy groups such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). This book reveals how, despite their vast scientific knowledge and their attempts to incorporate socially relevant themes, IUCN experts inevitably struggled to make global schemes for nature conservation a central concern for UNESCO, UNEP and other intergovernmental organizations.

Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available April 2019
Planning Labour

Time and the Foundations of Industrial Socialism in Romania

Cucu, A.-S.

Impoverished, indebted, and underdeveloped at the close of World War II, Romania underwent dramatic changes as part of its transition to a centrally planned economy. As with the Soviet experience, it pursued a policy of “primitive socialist accumulation” whereby the state appropriated agricultural surplus and restricted workers’ consumption in support of industrial growth. Focusing on the daily operations of planning in the ethnically mixed city of Cluj from 1945 to 1955, this book argues that socialist accumulation was deeply contradictory: it not only inherited some of the classical tensions of capital accumulation, but also generated its own, which derived from the multivocal nature of the state socialist worker as a creator of value, as living labour, and as a subject of emancipatory politics.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Political and Economic Anthropology
eBook available June 2017
Poland Daily

Economy, Work, Consumption and Social Class in Polish Cinema

Mazierska, E.

Like many Eastern European countries, Poland has seen a succession of divergent economic and political regimes over the last century, from prewar “embedded liberalism,” through the state socialism of the Soviet era, to the present neoliberal moment. Its cinema has been inflected by these changing historical circumstances, both mirroring and resisting them. This volume is the first to analyze the entirety of the nation’s film history—from the reemergence of an independent Poland in 1918 to the present day—through the lenses of political economy and social class, showing how Polish cinema documented ordinary life while bearing the hallmarks of specific ideologies.

Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available October 2018
Polish Cinema

A History

Haltof, M.

First published in 2002, Marek Haltof’s seminal volume was the first comprehensive English-language study of Polish cinema, providing a much-needed survey of one of Europe’s most distinguished—yet unjustly neglected—film cultures. Since then, seismic changes have reshaped Polish society, European politics, and the global film industry. This thoroughly revised and updated edition takes stock of these dramatic shifts to provide an essential account of Polish cinema from the nineteenth century to today, covering such renowned figures as Kieślowski, Skolimowski, and Wajda along with vastly expanded coverage of documentaries, animation, and television, all set against the backdrop of an ever-more transnational film culture.

Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available July 2009
The Political Economy of Germany under Chancellors Kohl and Schröder

Decline of the German Model?

Leaman, J.

While unification has undoubtedly had major effects on Germany's political economy, the pattern of current policy-making preferences was established at an earlier stage, in particular, at the beginning of the 'Kohl-era' in 1982. This essentially neo-liberal pattern can be seen to have dominated the modalities chosen to guide Germany through the process of unifi cation and was mirrored in developments in other OECD countries and in particular within the EU. This book demonstrates that the three policy imperatives (neo-liberal structural reform, European monetary integration, and unification) produced a policy-mix which, together with other structural economic and demographic factors, has had disappointing results in all three areas and hampered Germany's overall economic development.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies
eBook available February 2021
Political Graffiti in Critical Times

The Aesthetics of Street Politics

Campos, R., Pavoni, A., & Zaimakis, Y. (eds)

Whether aesthetically or politically inspired, graffiti is among the oldest forms of expression in human history, one that becomes especially significant during periods of social and political upheaval. With a particular focus on the demographic, ecological, and economic crises of today, this volume provides a wide-ranging exploration of urban space and visual protest. Assembling case studies that cover topics such as gentrification in Cyprus, the convulsions of post-independence East Timor, and opposition to Donald Trump in the American capital, it reveals the diverse ways in which street artists challenge existing social orders and reimagine urban landscapes.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Urban Studies Cultural Studies (General)
eBook available October 2018
The Politics of Authenticity

Countercultures and Radical Movements across the Iron Curtain, 1968-1989

Häberlen, J. C., Keck-Szajbel, M., & Mahoney, K. (eds)

Following the convulsions of 1968, one element uniting many of the disparate social movements that arose across Europe was the pursuit of an elusive “authenticity” that could help activists to understand fundamental truths about themselves—their feelings, aspirations, sexualities, and disappointments. This volume offers a fascinating exploration of the politics of authenticity as they manifested themselves among such groups as Italian leftists, East German lesbian activists, and punks on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Together they show not only how authenticity came to define varied social contexts, but also how it helped to usher in the neoliberalism of a subsequent era.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available December 2020
The Politics of Personal Information

Surveillance, Privacy, and Power in West Germany

Frohman, L.

In the 1970s and 1980s West Germany was a pioneer in both the use of the new information technologies for population surveillance and the adoption of privacy protection legislation. During this era of cultural change and political polarization, the expansion, bureaucratization, and computerization of population surveillance disrupted the norms that had governed the exchange and use of personal information in earlier decades and gave rise to a set of distinctly postindustrial social conflicts centered on the use of personal information as a means of social governance in the welfare state. Combining vast archival research with a groundbreaking theoretical analysis, this book gives a definitive account of the politics of personal information in West Germany at the dawn of the information society.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available December 2010
Popular Historiographies in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Cultural Meanings, Social Practices

Paletschek, S. (ed)

Popular presentations of history have recently been discovered as a new field of research, and even though interest in it has been growing noticeably very little has been published on this topic. This volume is one of the first to open up this new area of historical research, introducing some of the work that has emerged in Germany over the past few years. While mainly focusing on Germany (though not exclusively), the authors analyze different forms of popular historiographies and popular presentations of history since 1800 and the interrelation between popular and academic historiography, exploring in particular popular histories in different media and popular historiography as part of memory culture.

Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
eBook available June 2010
Post-communist Nostalgia

Todorova, M. & Gille, Z. (eds)

Although the end of the Cold War was greeted with great enthusiasm by people in the East and the West, the ensuing social and especially economic changes did not always result in the hoped-for improvements in people’s lives. This led to widespread disillusionment that can be observed today all across Eastern Europe. Not simply a longing for security, stability, and prosperity, this nostalgia is also a sense of loss regarding a specific form of sociability. Even some of those who opposed communism express a desire to invest their new lives with renewed meaning and dignity. Among the younger generation, it surfaces as a tentative yet growing curiosity about the recent past. In this volume scholars from multiple disciplines explore the various fascinating aspects of this nostalgic turn by analyzing the impact of generational clusters, the rural-urban divide, gender differences, and political orientation. They argue persuasively that this nostalgia should not be seen as a wish to restore the past, as it has otherwise been understood, but instead it should be recognized as part of a more complex healing process and an attempt to come to terms both with the communist era as well as the new inequalities of the post-communist era.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Memory Studies
eBook available May 2013
Postwall German Cinema

History, Film History and Cinephilia

Frey, M.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there has been a proliferation of German historical films. These productions have earned prestigious awards and succeeded at box offices both at home and abroad, where they count among the most popular German films of all time. Recently, however, the country’s cinematic take on history has seen a significant new development: the radical style, content, and politics of the New German Cinema. With in-depth analyses of the major trends and films, this book represents a comprehensive assessment of the historical film in today’s Germany. Challenging previous paradigms, it takes account of a postwall cinema that complexly engages with various historiographical forms and, above all, with film history itself.

Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available March 2020
Postwar Soldiers

Historical Controversies and West German Democratization, 1945–1955

Echternkamp, J.

Contemporary historians have transformed our understanding of the German military in World War II, debunking the “clean Wehrmacht” myth that held most soldiers innocent of wartime atrocities. Considerably less attention has been paid to those soldiers at the end of hostilities. In Postwar Soldiers, Jörg Echternkamp analyzes three themes in the early history of West Germany: interpretations of the war during its conclusion and the occupation period; military veteran communities’ self-perceptions; and the public rehabilitation of the image of the German soldier. As Echternkamp shows, public controversies around these topics helped to drive the social processes that legitimized the democratic postwar order.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
eBook available May 2009
Power and Society in the GDR, 1961-1979

The 'Normalisation of Rule'?

Fulbrook, M. (ed)

The communist German Democratic Republic, founded in 1949 in the Soviet-occupied zone of post-war Germany is, for many people, epitomized by the Berlin Wall; Soviet tanks and surveillance by the secret security police, the Stasi, appear to be central. But is this really all there is to the GDR¹s history? How did people come to terms with their situation and make new lives behind the Wall? When the social history of the GDR in the 1960s and 1970s is explored, new patterns become evident. A fragile stability emerged in a period characterized by 'consumer socialism', international recognition and détente. Growing participation in the micro-structures of power, and conformity to the unwritten rules of an increasingly predictable system, suggest increasing accommodation to dominant norms and conceptions of socialist 'normality'. By exploring the ways in which lower-level functionaries and people at the grass roots contributed to the formation and transformation of the GDR from industry and agriculture, through popular sport and cultural life, to the passage of generations and varieties of social experience the contributors collectively develop a more complex approach to the history of East Germany.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available November 2018
Probing the Limits of Categorization

The Bystander in Holocaust History

Morina, C. & Thijs, K. (eds)

Of the three categories that Raul Hilberg developed in his analysis of the Holocaust—perpetrators, victims, and bystanders—it is the last that is the broadest and most difficult to pinpoint. Described by Hilberg as those who were “once a part of this history,” bystanders present unique challenges for those seeking to understand the decisions, attitudes, and self-understanding of historical actors who were neither obviously the instigators nor the targets of Nazi crimes. Combining historiographical, conceptual, and empirical perspectives on the bystander, the case studies in this book provide powerful insights into the complex social processes that accompany state-sponsored genocidal violence.

Subjects: Genocide History Jewish Studies History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available March 2011
Protest Beyond Borders

Contentious Politics in Europe since 1945

Kouki, H. & Romanos, E. (eds)

The protest movements that followed the Second World War have recently become the object of study for various disciplines; however, the exchange of ideas between research fields, and comparative research in general, is lacking. An international and interdisciplinary dialogue is vital to not only describe the similarities and differences between the single national movements but also to evaluate how they contributed to the formation and evolution of a transnational civil society in Europe. This volume undertakes this challenge as well as questions some major assumptions of post-1945 protest and social mobilization both in Western and Eastern Europe. Historians, political scientists, sociologists and media studies scholars come together and offer insights into social movement research beyond conventional repertoires of protest and strictly defined periods, borders and paradigms, offering new perspectives on past and present processes of social change of the contemporary world.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available March 2016
Protest Cultures

A Companion

Fahlenbrach, K., Klimke, M., & Scharloth, J. (eds)

Protest is a ubiquitous and richly varied social phenomenon, one that finds expression not only in modern social movements and political organizations but also in grassroots initiatives, individual action, and creative works. It constitutes a distinct cultural domain, one whose symbolic content is regularly deployed by media and advertisers, among other actors. Yet within social movement scholarship, such cultural considerations have been comparatively neglected. Protest Cultures: A Companion dramatically expands the analytical perspective on protest beyond its political and sociological aspects. It combines cutting-edge synthetic essays with concise, accessible case studies on a remarkable array of protest cultures, outlining key literature and future lines of inquiry.

Subjects: Sociology History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available December 2015
Protest in Hitler's “National Community”

Popular Unrest and the Nazi Response

Stoltzfus, N. & Maier-Katkin, B. (eds)

That Hitler’s Gestapo harshly suppressed any signs of opposition inside the Third Reich is a common misconception. This book presents studies of public dissent that prove this was not always the case. It examines circumstances under which “racial” Germans were motivated to protest, as well as the conditions determining the regime’s response. Workers, women, and religious groups all convinced the Nazis to appease rather than repress “racial” Germans. Expressions of discontent actually increased during the war, and Hitler remained willing to compromise in governing the German Volk as long as he thought the Reich could salvage victory.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available September 2010
Raising Citizens in the 'Century of the Child'

The United States and German Central Europe in Comparative Perspective

Schumann, D. (ed)

The 20th century, declared at its start to be the “Century of the Child” by Swedish author Ellen Key, saw an unprecedented expansion of state activity in and expert knowledge on child-rearing on both sides of the Atlantic. Children were seen as a crucial national resource whose care could not be left to families alone. However, the exact scope and degree of state intervention and expert influence as well as the rights and roles of mothers and fathers remained subjects of heated debates throughout the century. While there is a growing scholarly interest in the history of childhood, research in the field remains focused on national narratives. This volume compares the impact of state intervention and expert influence on theories and practices of raising children in the U.S. and German Central Europe. In particular, the contributors focus on institutions such as kindergartens and schools where the private and the public spheres intersected, on notions of “race” and “ethnicity,” “normality” and “deviance,” and on the impact of wars and changes in political regimes.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Educational Studies
eBook available March 2019
Rampart Nations

Bulwark Myths of East European Multiconfessional Societies in the Age of Nationalism

Berezhnaya, L. & Hein-Kircher, H. (eds)

The “bulwark” or antemurale myth—whereby a region is imagined as a defensive barrier against a dangerous Other—has been a persistent strand in the development of Eastern European nationalisms. While historical studies of the topic have typically focused on clashes and overlaps between sociocultural and religious formations, Rampart Nations delves deeper to uncover the mutual transfers and multi-sided national and interconfessional conflicts that helped to spread bulwark myths through Europe’s eastern periphery over several centuries. Ranging from art history to theology to political science, this volume offers new ways of understanding the political, social, and religious forces that continue to shape identity in Eastern Europe.

Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
eBook available September 2016
Re-Imagining DEFA

East German Cinema in its National and Transnational Contexts

Allan, S. & Heiduschke, S. (eds)

By the time the Berlin Wall collapsed, the cinema of the German Democratic Republic—to the extent it was considered at all—was widely regarded as a footnote to European film history, with little of enduring value. Since then, interest in East German cinema has exploded, inspiring innumerable festivals, books, and exhibits on the GDR’s rich and varied filmic output. In Re-Imagining DEFA, leading international experts take stock of this vibrant landscape and plot an ambitious course for future research, one that considers other cinematic traditions, brings genre and popular works into the fold, and encompasses DEFA’s complex post-unification “afterlife.”

Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available December 2020
Recognizing the Past in the Present

New Studies on Medicine before, during, and after the Holocaust

Hildebrandt, S., Offer, M., & Grodin, M. A. (eds)

Following decades of silence about the involvement of doctors, medical researchers and other health professionals in the Holocaust and other National Socialist (Nazi) crimes, scholars in recent years have produced a growing body of research that reveals the pervasive extent of that complicity. This interdisciplinary collection of studies presents documentation of the critical role medicine played in realizing the policies of Hitler’s regime. It traces the history of Nazi medicine from its roots in the racial theories of the 1920s, through its manifestations during the Nazi period, on to legacies and continuities from the postwar years to the present.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History Jewish Studies
eBook available September 2020
Reconciliation Road

Willy Brandt, Ostpolitik and the Quest for European Peace

Schoenborn, B.

Among postwar political leaders, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt played one of the most significant roles in reconciling Germans with other Europeans and in creating the international framework that enabled peaceful reunification in 1990. Based on extensive archival research, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of Brandt’s Ostpolitik from its inception until the end of the Cold War through the lens of reconciliation. Here, Benedikt Schoenborn gives us a Brandt who passionately insisted on a gradual reduction of Cold War hostility and a lasting European peace, while remaining strategically and intellectually adaptable in a way that exemplified the ‘imaginativeness of history’.

Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present Peace and Conflict Studies
eBook available February 2017
Reluctant Skeptic

Siegfried Kracauer and the Crises of Weimar Culture

Craver, H. T.

The journalist and critic Siegfried Kracauer is best remembered today for his investigations of film and other popular media, and for his seminal influence on Frankfurt School thinkers like Theodor Adorno. Less well known is his earlier work, which offered a seismographic reading of cultural fault lines in Weimar-era Germany, with an eye to the confrontation between religious revival and secular modernity. In this discerning study, historian Harry T. Craver reconstructs and richly contextualizes Kracauer’s early output, showing how he embodied the contradictions of modernity and identified the quasi-theological impulses underlying the cultural ferment of the 1920s.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies
eBook available October 2005
Remaking France

Americanization, Public Diplomacy, and the Marshall Plan

McKenzie, B.

Public diplomacy, neglected following the end of the Cold War, is once again a central tool of American foreign policy. This book, examining as it does the Marshall Plan as the form of public diplomacy of the United States in France after World War Two, offers a timely historical case study. Current debates about globalization and a possible revival of the Marshall Plan resemble the debates about Americanization that occurred in France over fifty years ago. Relations between France and the United States are often tense despite their shared history and cultural ties, reflecting the general fear and disgust and attraction of America and Americanization. The period covered in this book offers a good example: the French Government begrudgingly accepted American hegemony even though anti-Americanism was widespread among the French population, which American public diplomacy tried to overcome with various cultural and economic activities examined by the author. In many cases French society proved resistant to Americanization, and it is questionable whether public diplomacy actually accomplished what its advocates had promised. Nevertheless, by the 1950s the United States had established a strong cultural presence in France that included Hollywood, Reader’s Digest, and American-style hotels.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available December 2021
Repressed, Remitted, Rejected

German Reparations Debts to Poland and Greece

Roth, K. H. & Rübner, H.

Since unification, the Federal Republic of Germany has made vaunted efforts to make amends for the crimes of the Third Reich. Yet it remains the case that the demands for restitution by many countries that were occupied during the Second World War are unresolved, and recent demands from Greece and Poland have only reignited old debates. This book reconstructs the German occupation of Poland and Greece and gives a thorough accounting of these debates. Working from the perspective of international law, it deepens the scholarly discourse around the issue, clarifying the ‘never-ending story’ of German reparations policy and making a principled call for further action.

A compilation of primary sources comprising 125 annotated key texts (512 pages) on the complexity of reparations discussions covering the period between 1941 and the end of 2017 is available for free on the Berghahn Books website, doi: 10.3167/9781800732575.dd.

Subjects: History: World War II History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available April 2020
Resettlers and Survivors

Bukovina and the Politics of Belonging in West Germany and Israel, 1945–1989

Fisher, G.

Located on the border of present-day Romania and Ukraine, the historical region of Bukovina was the site of widespread displacement and violence as it passed from Romanian to Soviet hands and back again during World War II. This study focuses on two groups of “Bukovinians”—ethnic Germans and German-speaking Jews—as they navigated dramatically changed political and social circumstances in and after 1945. Through comparisons of the narratives and self-conceptions of these groups, Resettlers and Survivors gives a nuanced account of how they dealt with the difficult legacies of World War II, while exploring Bukovina’s significance for them as both a geographical location and a “place of memory.”

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Jewish Studies Refugee and Migration Studies Memory Studies
eBook available June 2020
Resisting Persecution

Jews and Their Petitions during the Holocaust

Pegelow Kaplan, T. & Gruner, W. (eds)

Since antiquity, European Jewish diaspora communities have used formal appeals to secular and religious authorities to secure favors or protection. Such petitioning took on particular significance in modern dictatorships, often as the only tool left for voicing political opposition. During the Holocaust, tens of thousands of European Jews turned to individual and collective petitions in the face of state-sponsored violence. This volume offers the first extensive analysis of petitions authored by Jews in nations ruled by the Nazis and their allies. It demonstrates their underappreciated value as a historical source and reveals the many attempts of European Jews to resist intensifying persecution and actively struggle for survival.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Jewish Studies Genocide History
eBook available May 2015
The Respectable Career of Fritz K.

The Making and Remaking of a Provincial Nazi Leader

Berghoff, H. & Rauh, C.

Entrepreneur and Nazi functionary Fritz Kiehn lived through almost 100 years of German history, from the Bismarck era to the late Bonn Republic. A successful manufacturer, Kiehn joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and obtained a number of influential posts after 1933, making him one of the most powerful Nazi functionaries in southern Germany. These posts allowed him ample opportunity to profit from “Aryanizations” and state contracts. After 1945, he restored his reputation, was close to Adenauer's CDU during Germany's economic miracle, and was a respected and honored citizen in Trossingen. Kiehn's biography provides a key to understanding the political upheavals of the twentieth century, especially the workings of the corrupt Nazi system as well as the “coming to terms” with National Socialism in the Federal Republic.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available June 2016
Rethinking Antifascism

History, Memory and Politics, 1922 to the Present

García, H., Yusta, M., Tabet, X., & Climaco, C. (eds)

Bringing together leading scholars from a range of nations, Rethinking Antifascism provides a fascinating exploration of one of the most vibrant sub-disciplines within recent historiography. Through case studies that exemplify the field’s breadth and sophistication, it examines antifascism in two distinct realms: after surveying the movement’s remarkable diversity across nations and political cultures up to 1945, the volume assesses its postwar political and ideological salience, from its incorporation into Soviet state doctrine to its radical questioning by historians and politicians. Avoiding both heroic narratives and reflexive revisionism, these contributions offer nuanced perspectives on a movement that helped to shape the postwar world.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Memory Studies
eBook available December 2017
Rethinking Holocaust Justice

Essays across Disciplines

Goda, N. J. W. (ed)

Since the end of World War II, the ongoing efforts aimed at criminal prosecution, restitution, and other forms of justice in the wake of the Holocaust have constituted one of the most significant episodes in the history of human rights and international law. As such, they have attracted sustained attention from historians and legal scholars. This edited collection substantially enlarges the topical and disciplinary scope of this burgeoning field, exploring such varied subjects as literary analysis of Hannah Arendt’s work, the restitution case for Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, and the ritualistic aspects of criminal trials.

Subjects: Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present Jewish Studies
eBook available November 2020
Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema

Hales, B. & Weinstein, V. (eds)

The burgeoning film industry in the Weimar Republic was, among other things, a major site of German-Jewish experience, one that provided a sphere for Jewish “outsiders” to shape mainstream culture. The chapters collected in this volume deploy new historical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to understanding the significant involvement of German Jews in Weimar cinema. Reflecting upon different conceptions of Jewishness – as religion, ethnicity, social role, cultural code, or text – these studies offer a wide-ranging exploration of an often overlooked aspect of German film history.

Subjects: Film and Television Studies Jewish Studies History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available July 2022
Rethinking Social Movements after '68

Selves and Solidarities in West Germany and Beyond

Davis, B., Brühöfener, F., & Milder, S. (eds)

The year 1968 has widely been viewed as the only major watershed moment during the latter half of the twentieth century. Rethinking Social Movements after ’68 takes on this conventional approach, exploring the spaces, practices, organization, ideas and agendas of numerous activists and movements across the 1970s and 1980s. From the Maoist Communist League to the women’s movement, youth center movement, and gay liberation movement, established and emerging scholars across Europe and North America shed new light on the development of modern European popular politics and social change.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
eBook available April 2020
Revisiting Austria

Tourism, Space, and National Identity, 1945 to the Present

Graml, G.

Following the transformations and conflicts of the first half of the twentieth century, Austria’s emergence as an independent democracy heralded a new era of stability and prosperity for the nation. Among the new developments was mass tourism to the nation’s cities, spa towns, and wilderness areas, a phenomenon that would prove immensely influential on the development of a postwar identity. Revisiting Austria incorporates films, marketing materials, literature, and first-person accounts to explore the ways in which tourism has shaped both international and domestic perceptions of Austrian identity even as it has failed to confront the nation’s often violent and troubled history.

Subjects: Travel and Tourism History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies
eBook available April 2016
The Revolution before the Revolution

Late Authoritarianism and Student Protest in Portugal

Accornero, G.

Histories of Portugal’s transition to democracy have long focused on the 1974 military coup that toppled the authoritarian Estado Novo regime and set in motion the divestment of the nation’s colonial holdings. However, the events of this “Carnation Revolution” were in many ways the culmination of a much longer process of resistance and protest originating in universities and other sectors of society. Combining careful research in police, government, and student archives with insights from social movement theory, The Revolution before the Revolution broadens our understanding of Portuguese democratization by tracing the societal convulsions that preceded it over the course of the “long 1960s.”

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
eBook available February 2010
Rhodes Scholars, Oxford, and the Creation of an American Elite

Schaeper, T. & Schaeper, K.

Each year thirty-two seniors at American universities are awarded Rhodes Scholarships, which entitle them to spend two or three years studying at the University of Oxford. The program, founded by the British colonialist and entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes and established in 1903, has become the world's most famous academic scholarship and has brought thousands of young Americans to study in England. Many of these later became national leaders in government, law, education, literature, and other fields. Among them were the politicians J. William Fulbright, Bill Bradley, and Bill Clinton; the public policy analysts Robert Reich and George Stephanopoulos; the writer Robert Penn Warren; the entertainer Kris Kristofferson; and the Supreme Court Justices Byron White and David Souter.

Based on extensive research in published and unpublished documents and on hundreds of interviews, this book traces the history of the program and the stories of many individuals. In addition it addresses a host of questions such as: how important was the Oxford experience for the individual scholars? To what extent has the program created an old-boy (-girl since 1976) network that propels its members to success? How many Rhodes Scholars have cracked under the strain and failed to live up to expectations? How have the Americans coped with life in Oxford and what have they thought of Britain in general? Beyond the history of the program and the individuals involved, this book also offers a valuable examination of the American-British cultural encounter.

Subjects: Educational Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
eBook available July 2015
The Rhythm of Eternity

The German Youth Movement and the Experience of the Past, 1900-1933

Adriaansen, R.-J.

The Weimar era in Germany is often characterized as a time of significant change. Such periods of rupture transform the way people envision the past, present, and future. This book traces the conceptions of time and history in the Germany of the early 20th century. By focusing on both the discourse and practices of the youth movement, the author shows how it reinterpreted and revived the past to overthrow the premises of modern historical thought. In so doing, this book provides insight into the social implications of the ideological de-historicization of the past.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
eBook available January 2021
Risk on the Table

Food Production, Health, and the Environment

Creager, A. N. H. & Gaudilière, J.-P. (eds)

Over the last century, the industrialization of agriculture and processing technologies have made food abundant and relatively inexpensive for much of the world’s population. Simultaneously, pesticides, nitrates, and other technological innovations intended to improve the food supply’s productivity and safety have generated new, often poorly understood risks for consumers and the environment. From the proliferation of synthetic additives to the threat posed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the chapters in Risk on the Table zero in on key historical cases in North America and Europe that illuminate the history of food safety, highlighting the powerful tensions that exists among scientific understandings of risk, policymakers’ decisions, and cultural notions of “pure” food.

Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Food & Nutrition
eBook available July 2017
Ruptures in the Everyday

Views of Modern Germany from the Ground

Bergerson, A. S. & Schmieding, L.

During the twentieth century, Germans experienced a long series of major and often violent disruptions in their everyday lives. Such chronic instability and precipitous change made it difficult for them to make sense of their lives as coherent stories—and for scholars to reconstruct them in retrospect. Ruptures in the Everyday brings together an international team of twenty-six researchers from across German studies to craft such a narrative. This collectively authored work of integrative scholarship investigates Alltag through the lens of fragmentary anecdotes from everyday life in modern Germany. Across ten intellectually adventurous chapters, this book explores the self, society, families, objects, institutions, policies, violence, and authority in modern Germany neither from a top-down nor bottom-up perspective, but focused squarely on everyday dynamics at work “on the ground.”

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available August 2021
The Russian Cold

Histories of Ice, Frost, and Snow

Herzberg, J., Renner, A., & Schierle, I. (eds)

Cold has long been a fixture of Russian identity both within and beyond the borders of Russia and the Soviet Union, even as the ongoing effects of climate change complicate its meaning and cultural salience. The Russian Cold assembles fascinating new contributions from a variety of scholarly traditions, offering new perspectives on how to understand this mainstay of Russian culture and history. In chapters encompassing such diverse topics as polar exploration, the Eastern Front in World War II, and the iconography of hockey, it explores the multiplicity and ambiguity of “cold” in the Russian context and demonstrates the value of environmental-historical research for enriching national and imperial histories.

Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Environmental Studies (General)
eBook available January 2016
Sacrifice and Rebirth

The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War

Cornwall, M. & Newman, J. P. (eds)

When Austria-Hungary broke up at the end of the First World War, the sacrifice of one million men who had died fighting for the Habsburg monarchy now seemed to be in vain. This book is the first of its kind to analyze how the Great War was interpreted, commemorated, or forgotten across all the ex-Habsburg territories. Each of the book’s twelve chapters focuses on a separate region, studying how the transition to peacetime was managed either by the state, by war veterans, or by national minorities. This “splintered war memory,” where some posed as victors and some as losers, does much to explain the fractious character of interwar Eastern Europe.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available September 2019
A Sad Fiasco

Colonial Concentration Camps in Southern Africa, 1900–1908

Kreienbaum, J.

Only in recent years has the history of European colonial concentration camps in Africa—in which thousands of prisoners died in appalling conditions—become widely known beyond a handful of specialists. Although they preceded the Third Reich by many decades, the camps’ newfound notoriety has led many to ask to what extent they anticipated the horrors of the Holocaust. Were they designed for mass killing, a misbegotten attempt at modernization, or something else entirely? A Sad Fiasco confronts this difficult question head-on, reconstructing the actions of colonial officials in both British South Africa and German South-West Africa as well as the experiences of internees to explore both the similarities and the divergences between the African camps and their Nazi-era successors.

Subjects: Genocide History Colonial History History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available September 2018
Screened Encounters

The Leipzig Documentary Film Festival, 1955-1990

Moine, C.

Established in 1955, the Leipzig International Documentary Film Festival became a central arena for staging the cultural politics of the German Democratic Republic, both domestically and in relation to West Germany and the rest of the world. Screened Encounters represents the definitive history of this key event, recounting the political and artistic exchanges it enabled from its founding until German unification, and tracing the outsize influence it exerted on international cultural relations during the Cold War.

Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available February 2019
Screening Art

Modernist Aesthetics and the Socialist Imaginary in East German Cinema

Allan, S.

With internationalist aspirations and wide-ranging historical perspectives, East German films about artists and their work became hotly contested spaces in which filmmakers could look beyond the GDR and debate the impact of contemporary cultural policy on the reception of their pre-war cultural heritage. Spanning newsreels, documentaries, and feature films, Screening Art is the first full-length investigation into a genre that has been largely overlooked in studies of DEFA, the state-owned Eastern German film studio. As it shows, “artist-films” played an essential role in the development of new paradigms of socialist art in postwar Europe.

Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
eBook available May 2011
Screening the East

Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Film since 1989

Hodgin, N.

Screening the East considers German filmmakers’ responses to unification. In particular, it traces the representation of the East German community in films made since 1989 and considers whether these narratives challenge or reinforce the notion of a separate East German identity. The book identifies and analyses a large number of films, from internationally successful box-office hits, to lesser-known productions, many of which are discussed here for the first time. Providing an insight into the films’ historical and political context, it considers related issues such as stereotyping, racism, regional particularism and the Germans’ confrontation with the past.

Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available February 2012
Sexual Knowledge

Feeling, Fact, and Social Reform in Vienna, 1900-1934

McEwen, B.

Vienna’s unique intellectual, political, and religious traditions had a powerful impact on the transformation of sexual knowledge in the early twentieth century. Whereas turn-of-the-century sexology, as practiced in Vienna as a medical science, sought to classify and heal individuals, during the interwar years, sexual knowledge was employed by a variety of actors to heal the social body: the truncated, diseased, and impoverished population of the newly created Republic of Austria. Based on rich source material, this book charts cultural changes that are hallmarks of the modern era, such as the rise of the companionate marriage, the role of expert advice in intimate matters, and the body as a source of pleasure and anxiety. These changes are evidence of a dramatic shift in attitudes from a form of scientific inquiry largely practiced by medical specialists to a social reform movement led by and intended for a wider audience that included workers, women, and children.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
eBook available January 2016
Shadowlands

Memory and History in Post-Soviet Estonia

Wulf, M.

Located within the forgotten half of Europe, historically trapped between Germany and Russia, Estonia has been profoundly shaped by the violent conflicts and shifting political fortunes of the last century. This innovative study traces the tangled interaction of Estonian historical memory and national identity in a sweeping analysis extending from the Great War to the present day. At its heart is the enduring anguish of World War Two and the subsequent half-century of Soviet rule. Shadowlands tells this story by foregrounding the experiences of the country’s intellectuals, who were instrumental in sustaining Estonian historical memory, but who until fairly recently could not openly grapple with their nation’s complex, difficult past.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Memory Studies
eBook available October 2017
Silenced Communities

Legacies of Militarization and Militarism in a Rural Guatemalan Town

Esparza, M.

Although the Guatemalan Civil War ended more than two decades ago, its bloody legacy continues to resonate even today. In Silenced Communities, author Marcia Esparza offers an ethnographic account of the failed demilitarization of the rural militia in the town of Santo Tomás Chichicastenango following the conflict. Combining insights from postcolonialism, subaltern studies, and theories of internal colonialism, Esparza explores the remarkable resilience of ideologies and practices engendered in the context of the Cold War, demonstrating how the lingering effects of grassroots militarization affect indigenous communities that continue to struggle with inequality and marginalization.

Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available May 2017
Sisters in Arms

Militant Feminisms in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1968

Karcher, K.

Few figures in modern German history are as central to the public memory of radical protest than Ulrike Meinhof, but she was only the most prominent of the countless German women—and militant male feminists—who supported and joined in revolutionary actions from the 1960s onward. Sisters in Arms gives a bracing account of how feminist ideas were enacted by West German leftist organizations from the infamous Red Army Faction to less well-known groups such as the Red Zora. It analyzes their confrontational and violent tactics in challenging the abortion ban, opposing violence against women, and campaigning for solidarity with Third World women workers. Though these groups often diverged ideologically and tactically, they all demonstrated the potency of militant feminism within postwar protest movements.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Gender Studies and Sexuality Sociology
eBook available March 2016
Social Movement Studies in Europe

The State of the Art

Fillieule, O. & Accornero, G. (eds)

Bringing together over forty established and emerging scholars, this landmark volume is the first to comprehensively examine the evolution and current practice of social movement studies in a specifically European context. While its first half offers comparative approaches to an array of significant issues and movements, its second half assembles focused national studies that include most major European states. Throughout, these contributions are guided by a shared set of historical and social-scientific questions with a particular emphasis on political sociology, thus offering a bold and uncommonly unified survey that will be essential for scholars and students of European social movements.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
eBook available March 2013
Socialist Escapes

Breaking Away from Ideology and Everyday Routine in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989

Giustino, C. M., Plum, C. J., & Vari, A. (eds)

During much of the Cold War, physical escape from countries in the Eastern Bloc was a nearly impossible act. There remained, however, possibilities for other socialist escapes, particularly time spent free from party ideology and the mundane routines of everyday life. The essays in this volume examine sites of socialist escapes, such as beaches, campgrounds, nightclubs, concerts, castles, cars, and soccer matches. The chapters explore the effectiveness of state efforts to engineer society through leisure, entertainment, and related forms of cultural programming and consumption. They lead to a deeper understanding of state–society relations in the Soviet sphere, where the state did not simply “dictate from above” and inhabitants had some opportunities to shape solidarities, identities, and meaning.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
eBook available November 2020
Sounds German

Popular Music in Postwar Germany at the Crossroads of the National and Transnational

Fulk, K. A. (ed)

For decades, Germany has been shaped and reshaped by the sounds of popular music—whether viewed as uniquely German or an ideological invader from abroad. This collected volume brings together leading figures in the field of German Studies, popular music studies, and cultural studies at large to survey the sociopolitical impact of music on conceptions of the German state and national identity, gender and sexuality, and transnational cultural production and consumption, expanding on the ways in which sounds, technologies, media practices, and exchanges of popular music provide a unique glimpse into the cultural dynamics of postwar Germany.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies
eBook available September 2014
Sounds of Modern History

Auditory Cultures in 19th- and 20th-Century Europe

Morat, D. (ed)

Long ignored by scholars in the humanities, sound has just begun to take its place as an important object of study in the last few years. Since the late 19th century, there has been a paradigmatic shift in auditory cultures and practices in European societies. This change was brought about by modern phenomena such as urbanization, industrialization and mechanization, the rise of modern sciences, and of course the emergence of new sound recording and transmission media. This book contributes to our understanding of modern European history through the lens of sound by examining diverse subjects such as performed and recorded music, auditory technologies like the telephone and stethoscope, and the ambient noise of the city.

Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies
eBook available June 2017
Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History

Lässig, S. & Rürup, M. (eds)

What makes a space Jewish? This wide-ranging volume revisits literal as well as metaphorical spaces in modern German history to examine the ways in which Jewishness has been attributed to them both within and outside of Jewish communities, and what the implications have been across different eras and social contexts. Working from an expansive concept of “the spatial,” these contributions look not only at physical sites but at professional, political, institutional, and imaginative realms, as well as historical Jewish experiences of spacelessness. Together, they encompass spaces as varied as early modern print shops and Weimar cinema, always pointing to the complex intertwining of German and Jewish identity.

Subjects: Jewish Studies History: 20th Century to Present History: 18th/19th Century
eBook available June 2022
Spanish Laughter

Humor and Its Sense in Modern Spain

Calvo Maturana, A. (ed)

Presenting a cultural and interdisciplinary study of humor in Spain from the eighteenth century to the present day, this book examines how humour entered public life, how it attained a legitimacy to communicate ‘serious’ ideas in the Enlightenment and how this set the seed for the key position that humor occupies in society today. Through a range of case studies that run from Goya’s paintings, humor, and gender representations in radio programmes during the first Franco regime, developmentalist cinema of the sixties and seventies, to the transformation of female humor in social media, the book traces the core role that the comical has played in the public sphere. The contributors to this volume represent a wide range of disciplines including gender studies, humour studies and Hispanic studies and offer international perspectives on Spanish laughter.

Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies
eBook available February 2008
Stardom in Postwar France

Gaffney, J. & Holmes, D. (eds)

The 1950s and 1960s were a key moment in the development of postwar France. The period was one of rapid change, derived from post-World War II economic and social modernization; yet many traditional characteristics were retained. By analyzing the eruption of the new postwar world in the context of a France that was both modern and traditional, we can see how these worlds met and interacted, and how they set the scene for the turbulent 1960s and 70s. The examination of the development of mass culture in post-war France, undertaken in this volume, offers a valuable insight into the shifts that took place. By exploring stardom from the domain of cinema and other fields, represented here by famous figures such as Brigitte Bardot, Johnny Hallyday or Jean-Luc Godard, and less conventionally treated areas of enquiry (politics [de Gaulle], literary [Françoise Sagan], and intellectual culture [Lévi-Strauss]) the reader is provided with a broad understanding of the mechanisms of popularity and success, and their cultural, social, and political roles. The picture that emerges shows that many cultural articulations remained or became identifiably "French," in spite of the American mass-culture origins of these social, economic, and cultural transformations.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General)
eBook available August 2011
State and Minorities in Communist East Germany

Dennis, M. & LaPorte, N.

Based on interviews and the voluminous materials in the archives of the SED, the Stasi and central and regional authorities, this volume focuses on several contrasting minorities (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, ‘guest’ workers from Vietnam and Mozambique, football fans, punks, and skinheads) and their interaction with state and party bodies during Erich Honecker’s rule over the communist system. It explores how they were able to resist persecution and surveillance by instruments of the state, thus illustrating the limits on the power of the East German dictatorship and shedding light on the notion of authority as social practice.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available November 2017
Subjects, Citizens, and Others

Administering Ethnic Heterogeneity in the British and Habsburg Empires, 1867-1918

Gammerl, B.

Bosnian Muslims, East African Masai, Czech-speaking Austrians, North American indigenous peoples, and Jewish immigrants from across Europe—the nineteenth-century British and Habsburg Empires were characterized by incredible cultural and racial-ethnic diversity. Notwithstanding their many differences, both empires faced similar administrative questions as a result: Who was excluded or admitted? What advantages were granted to which groups? And how could diversity be reconciled with demands for national autonomy and democratic participation? In this pioneering study, Benno Gammerl compares Habsburg and British approaches to governing their diverse populations, analyzing imperial formations to reveal the legal and political conditions that fostered heterogeneity.

Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Colonial History History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available June 2016
Sweden after Nazism

Politics and Culture in the Wake of the Second World War

Östling, J.

As a nominally neutral power during the Second World War, Sweden in the early postwar era has received comparatively little attention from historians. Nonetheless, as this definitive study shows, the war—and particularly the specter of Nazism—changed Swedish society profoundly. Prior to 1939, many Swedes shared an unmistakable affinity for German culture, and even after the outbreak of hostilities there remained prominent apologists for the Third Reich. After the Allied victory, however, Swedish intellectuals reframed Nazism as a discredited, distinctively German phenomenon rooted in militarism and Romanticism. Accordingly, Swedes’ self-conception underwent a dramatic reformulation. From this interplay of suppressed traditions and bright dreams for the future, postwar Sweden emerged.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available May 2018
Taking on Technocracy

Nuclear Power in Germany, 1945 to the Present

Augustine, D. L.

The German abandonment of nuclear power represents one of the most successful popular revolts against technocratic thinking in modern times—the triumph of a dynamic social movement, encompassing a broad swath of West Germans as well as East German dissident circles, over political, economic, and scientific elites. Taking on Technocracy gives a brisk account of this dramatic historical moment, showing how the popularization of scientific knowledge fostered new understandings of technological risk. Combining analyses of social history, popular culture, social movement theory, and histories of science and technology, it offers a compelling narrative of a key episode in the recent history of popular resistance.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Environmental Studies (General)
eBook available December 2019
Teaching Modernization

Spanish and Latin American Educational Reform in the Cold War

Martín García, Ó. J. & Gómez-Escalonilla, L. D. (eds)

In the 1960s and 1970s, the educational systems in Spain and Latin America underwent comprehensive and ambitious reforms that took place amid a "revolution of expectations" arising from decolonization, global student protests, and the antagonism between capitalist and communist models of development. Deploying new archival research and innovative perspectives, the contributions to this volume examine the influence of transnational forces during the cultural Cold War. They shed new light on the roles played by the United States, non-state actors, international organizations and theories of modernization and human capital in educational reform efforts in the developing Hispanic world.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Educational Studies
eBook available December 2012
Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in the Second World War

Goals, Expectations, Practices

Cattaruzza, M., Dyroff, S. & Langewiesche, D. (eds)

A few years after the Nazis came to power in Germany, an alliance of states and nationalistic movements formed, revolving around the German axis. That alliance, the states involved, and the interplay between their territorial aims and those of Germany during the interwar period and World War II are at the core of this volume. This “territorial revisionism” came to include all manner of political and military measures that attempted to change existing borders. Taking into account not just interethnic relations but also the motivations of states and nationalizing ethnocratic ruling elites, this volume reconceptualizes the history of East Central Europe during World War II. In so doing, it presents a clearer understanding of some of the central topics in the history of the war itself and offers an alternative to standard German accounts of the period and East European national histories.

Subjects: History: World War II History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available August 2021
Territory, State and Nation

The Geopolitics of Rudolf Kjellén

Björk, R. & Lundén, T. (eds)

Rudolf Kjellén, regularly referred to as “the father of geopolitics,” developed in the first decade of the twentieth century an analytical model for calculating the capabilities of great-power states and promoting their interests in the international arena. It was an ambitious intellectual project that sought to bring politics into the sphere of social science. Bringing together experts on Kjellén from across the disciplines, Territory, State and Nation explores the century-long international impact, analytical model, and historical theories of a figure immensely influential in his time who is curiously little-known today.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available June 2010
Terror From the Sky

The Bombing of German Cities in World War II

Primoratz, I. (ed)

In this first interdisciplinary study of this contentious subject, leading experts in politics, history, and philosophy examine the complex aspects of the terror bombing of German cities during World War II. The contributors address the decision to embark on the bombing campaign, the moral issues raised by the bombing, and the main stages of the campaign and its effects on German civilians as well as on Germany’s war effort. The book places the bombing campaign within the context of the history of air warfare, presenting the bombing as the first stage of the particular type of state terrorism that led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and brought about the Cold War era “balance of terror.” In doing so, it makes an important contribution to current debates about terrorism. It also analyzes the public debate in Germany about the historical, moral, and political significance of the deliberate killing of up to 600,000 German civilians by the British and American air forces. This pioneering collaboration provides a platform for a wide range of views—some of which are controversial—on a highly topical, painful, and morally challenging subject.

Subjects: History: World War II History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available November 2012
The Third World in the Global 1960s

Christiansen, S. & Scarlett, Z. (eds)

Decades after the massive student protest movements that consumed much of the world, the 1960s remain a significant subject of scholarly inquiry. While important work has been done regarding radical activism in the United States and Western Europe, events in what is today known as the Global South—Asia, Africa, and Latin America—have yet to receive the attention they deserve. This volume inserts the Third World into the study of the 1960s by examining the local and international articulations of youth protest in various geographical, social, and cultural arenas. Rejecting the notion that the Third World existed on the periphery, it situates the events of the 1960s in a more inclusive context, building a richer, more nuanced understanding of the era that better reflects the dynamism of the period.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology History (General)
eBook available August 2022
Towards a Collaborative Memory

German Memory Work in a Transnational Context

Jones, S.

Focusing on the memory of the German Democratic Republic, Towards a Collaborative Memory explores the cross-border collaborations of three German institutions. Using an innovative theoretical and methodological framework, drawing on relational sociology, network analysis and narrative, the study highlights the epistemic coloniality that has underpinned global partnerships across European actors and institutions. Sara Jones reconceptualizes transnational memory towards an approach that is collaborative not only in its practices, but also in its ethics, and shows how these institutions position themselves within dominant relationship cultures reflected between East and West, and North and South.

Subjects: Memory Studies Colonial History History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available October 2021
Transcending the Nostalgic

Landscapes of Postindustrial Europe beyond Representation

Jaramillo, G. S. & Tomann, J. (eds)

Even as the global economy of the twenty-first century continues its dramatic and unpredictable transformations, the landscapes it leaves in its wake bear the indelible marks of their industrial past. Whether in the form of abandoned physical structures, displaced populations, or ecological impacts, they persist in memory and lived experience across the developed world. This collection explores the affective and “more-than-representational” dimensions of post-industrial landscapes, including narratives, practices, social formations, and other phenomena. Focusing on case studies from across Europe, it examines both the objective and the subjective aspects of societies that, increasingly, produce fewer things and employ fewer workers.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Heritage Studies
eBook available September 2021
Traumatic Pasts in Asia

History, Psychiatry, and Trauma from the 1930s to the Present

Micale, M. S. & Pols, H. (eds)

In the early twenty-first century, trauma is seemingly everywhere, whether as experience, diagnosis, concept, or buzzword. Yet even as many scholars consider trauma to be constitutive of psychological modernity or the post-Enlightenment human condition, historical research on the topic has overwhelmingly focused on cases, such as World War I or the Holocaust, in which Western experiences and actors are foregrounded. There remains an urgent need to incorporate the methods and insights of recent historical trauma research into a truly global perspective. The chapters in Traumatic Pasts in Asia make just such an intervention, extending Euro-American paradigms of traumatic experience to new sites of world-historical suffering and, in the process, exploring how these new domains of research inform and enrich earlier scholarship.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Memory Studies Medical Anthropology
eBook available May 2016
Tropics of Vienna

Colonial Utopias of the Habsburg Empire

Bach, U. E.

The Austrian Empire was not a colonial power in the sense that fellow actors like 19th-century England and France were. It nevertheless oversaw a multinational federation where the capital of Vienna was unmistakably linked with its eastern periphery in a quasi-colonial arrangement that inevitably shaped the cultural and intellectual life of the Habsburg Empire. This was particularly evident in the era’s colonial utopian writing, and Tropics of Vienna blends literary criticism, cultural theory, and historical analysis to illuminate this curious genre. By analyzing the works of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Theodor Herzl, Joseph Roth, and other representative Austrian writers, it reveals a shared longing for alternative social and spatial configurations beyond the concept of the “nation-state” prevalent at the time.

Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available January 2016
Trust Us

Reproducing the Nation and the Scandinavian Nationalist Populist Parties

Hellström, A.

In Scandinavia, there is separation in the electorate between those who embrace diversity and those who wish for tighter bonds between people and nation. This book focuses on three nationalist populist parties in Scandinavia—the Sweden Democrats, the Progress Party in Norway, and the Danish People’s Party. In order to affect domestic politics by addressing this conflict of diversity versus homogeneity, these parties must enter the national parliament while earning the nation’s trust. Of the three, the Sweden Democrats have yet to earn the trust of the mainstream, leading to polarized and emotionally driven public debate that raises the question of national identity and what is understood as the common man.

Subjects: Sociology History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available July 2019
Twilight of the Merkel Era

Power and Politics in Germany after the 2017 Bundestag Election

Langenbacher, E. (ed)

Elections always have consequences, but the 2017 Bundestag election in Germany proved particularly consequential. With political upheaval across the globe—notably in Britain and the USA—it was vital to European and global order that Germany remain stable. And it did through the re-election of Angela Merkel as chancellor, now in her fourth term. Just under the surface, however, instability is mounting—exemplified by the entry of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) as the largest opposition party, the decline of the Social Democrats, the ever-restive Bavarians, and the growing factionalism within the Christian Democratic Union as the Merkel era comes to an end. Paying special attention to the rise of the AfD, this volume delves into the campaign, leading political figures, the structure of the electorate, the state of the parties, the media environment, coalition negotiations, and policy impacts.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available October 2006
Two Lives in Uncertain Times

Facing the Challenges of the 20th Century as Scholars and Citizens

Iggers, W., & Iggers, G.

Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.

Wilma and Georg Iggers came from different backgrounds, Wilma from a Jewish farming family from the German-speaking border area of Czechoslovakia, Georg from a Jewish business family from Hamburg. They both escaped with their parents from Nazi persecution to North America where they met as students. As a newly married couple they went to the American South where they taught in two historic Black colleges and were involved in the civil rights movement. In 1961 they began going to West Germany regularly not only to do research but also to further reconciliation between Jews and Germans, while at the same time in their scholarly work contributing to a critical confrontation with the German past. After overcoming first apprehensions, they soon felt Göttingen to be their second home, while maintaining their close involvements in America. After 1966 they frequently visited East Germany and Czechslovakia in an attempt to build bridges in the midst of the Cold War.

The book relates their very different experiences of childhood and adolescence and then their lives together over almost six decades during which they endeavored to combine their roles as parents and scholars with their social and political engagements. In many ways this is not merely a dual biography but a history of changing conditions in America and Central Europe during turbulent times.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available July 2013
United Germany

Debating Processes and Prospects

Jarausch, K. H. (ed)

Since the attempt to unite two parts of a country divided for four decades yielded contradictory results, this volume provides a balance sheet of the successes and failures of German unification during the first quarter century after the fall of the Wall. Five themes, ranging from the transfer of political institutions to the economic crisis, from the social upheaval for women’s movements to the cultural efforts at interpretation and the changes in foreign policy have been chosen to illustrate the complexity of the process. The contributors represent a broad interdisciplinary mix of political scientists, historians, and literary scholars. Because personal experiences tend to color scholarly judgments, they are drawn from West Germany, East Germany, and the United States. This collection is the most up-to-date and comprehensive assessment of the political, social, and intellectual consequences of the efforts to regain German unity.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available February 2020
Velvet Retro

Postsocialist Nostalgia and the Politics of Heroism in Czech Popular Culture

Pehe, V.

Scholars of state socialism have frequently invoked “nostalgia” to identify an uncritical longing for the utopian ambitions and lived experience of the former Eastern Bloc. However, this concept seems insufficient to describe memory cultures in the Czech Republic and other contexts in which a “retro” fascination with the past has proven compatible with a steadfast critique of the state socialist era. This innovative study locates a distinctively retro aesthetic in Czech literature, film, and other cultural forms, enriching our understanding of not only the nation’s memory culture, but also the ways in which popular culture can structure collective memory.

Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Film and Television Studies Memory Studies
eBook available October 2011
Vienna Is Different

Jewish Writers in Austria from the Fin-de-Siècle to the Present

Herzog, H. H.

Assessing the impact of fin-de-siècle Jewish culture on subsequent developments in literature and culture, this book is the first to consider the historical trajectory of Austrian-Jewish writing across the 20th century. It examines how Vienna, the city that stood at the center of Jewish life in the Austrian Empire and later the Austrian nation, assumed a special significance in the imaginations of Jewish writers as a space and an idea. The author focuses on the special relationship between Austrian-Jewish writers and the city to reveal a century-long pattern of living in tension with the city, experiencing simultaneously acceptance and exclusion, feeling “unheimlich heimisch” (eerily at home) in Vienna.

Subjects: Jewish Studies History: 20th Century to Present Literary Studies
eBook available October 2015
Viktor Frankl's Search for Meaning

An Emblematic 20th-Century Life

Pytell, T.

★“[T]his is a scholarly, commendable biography and intellectual history. Lay readers will be challenged; psychologists and historians will be grateful.”—Library Journal, starred review

First published in 1946, Viktor Frankl’s memoir Man’s Search for Meaning remains one of the most influential books of the last century, selling over ten million copies worldwide and having been embraced by successive generations of readers captivated by its author’s philosophical journey in the wake of the Holocaust.

This long-overdue reappraisal examines Frankl’s life and intellectual evolution anew, from his early immersion in Freudian and Adlerian theory to his development of the “third Viennese school” amid the National Socialist domination of professional psychotherapy. It teases out the fascinating contradictions and ambiguities surrounding his years in Nazi Europe, including the experimental medical procedures he oversaw in occupied Austria and a stopover at the Auschwitz concentration camp far briefer than has commonly been assumed.

Throughout, author Timothy Pytell gives a penetrating but fair-minded account of a man whose paradoxical embodiment of asceticism, celebrity, tradition, and self-reinvention drew together the complex strands of twentieth-century intellectual life.

From the introduction:
At the same time, Frankl’s testimony, second only to the Diary of Anne Frankin popularity, has raised the ire of experts on the Holocaust. For example, in the 1990s the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington purportedly refused to sell Man’s Search for Meaningin the gift shop…. During the late 1960s and early 1970s Frankl became very popular in America. Frankl’s survival of the Holocaust, his reassurance that life is meaningful, and his personal conviction that God exists served to make him a forerunner of the self-help genre.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available April 2018
The Virago Story

Assessing the Impact of a Feminist Publishing Phenomenon

Riley, C.

The 1970s witnessed a renaissance in women’s print culture, as feminist presses and bookshops sprang up in the wake of the second-wave women’s movement. At four decades’ remove from that heady era, however, the landscape looks dramatically different, with only one press from the period still active in contemporary publishing: Virago. This engaging history explains how, from modest beginnings, Virago managed to weather epochal transformations in gender politics, literary culture, and the book publishing business. Drawing on original interviews with many of the press's principal figures, it gives a compelling account of Virago’s place in recent women's history while also reflecting on the fraught relationship between activism and commerce.

Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available March 2012
Visions of the End of the Cold War in Europe, 1945-1990

Bozo, F., Rey, M.-P., Ludlow, N. P., & Rother, B. (eds)

Exploring the visions of the end of the Cold War that have been put forth since its inception until its actual ending, this volume brings to the fore the reflections, programmes, and strategies that were intended to call into question the bipolar system and replace it with alternative approaches or concepts. These visions were associated not only with prominent individuals, organized groups and civil societies, but were also connected to specific historical processes or events. They ranged from actual, thoroughly conceived programmes, to more blurred, utopian aspirations — or simply the belief that the Cold War had already, in effect, come to an end. Such visions reveal much about the contexts in which they were developed and shed light on crucial moments and phases of the Cold War.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available August 2009
Voyage Through the Twentieth Century

A Historian's Recollections and Reflections

Klemperer, K. von

The account of the author’s life, spent between Europe and America, is at the same time an account of his generation, one that came of age between the two World Wars. Recalling not only circumstances of his own situation but that of his friends, the author shows how this generation faced a reality that seemed fragmented, and in their shared thirst for knowledge and commitment to ideas they searched for cohesiveness among the glittering, holistic ideologies and movements of the twenties and thirties. The author’s scholarly work on the German Resistance to Hitler revealed to him those who maintained dignity and courage in times of peril and despair, which became for him a life’s pursuit. This work is unique in its thorough inclusion of the postwar decades and its perspective from a historian eager to rescue the “other” Germany—the Germany of the righteous rather than the Holocaust murderers.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available May 2022
The Walls of Santiago

Social Revolution and Political Aesthetics in Contemporary Chile

Gordon-Zolov, T. & Zolov, E.

A photo-illustrated record of Chilean protest art, along with reflections on artistic antecedents, global protest movements, and the long shadow cast by Chile’s authoritarian past.

From October 2019 until the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, Chile was convulsed by protests and political upheaval, as what began as civil disobedience transformed into a vast resistance movement. Throughout, the most striking aspects of the protests were the murals, graffiti, and other political graphics that became ubiquitous in Chilean cities.

Authors Terri Gordon-Zolov and Eric Zolov were in Santiago to witness and document the protests from their very beginning. The book is beautifully illustrated with over 150 photographs taken throughout the protests. Additional photos will be available on the publisher’s website.

From the introduction:
In the conclusion, we take stock of the crisis of the nation-state in the contemporary era. This chapter brings events into the present moment, noting the ways President Piñera took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to reclaim the streets of Santiago, a phenomenon echoed in countries across the globe. While most of the global protest movements were forced to go underground (or into the ether), the Black Lives Matter movement surged in the United States and drew massive amounts of support both domestically and abroad, suggesting a continued wave of grassroots protests. We close with reflections on the continued relevance of walls in a virtual world, the testimonial role that protest graphics play, and the future outlook for revolutionary movements in Chile and worldwide.

Subjects: Media Studies History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available January 2018
The Wars of Yesterday

The Balkan Wars and the Emergence of Modern Military Conflict, 1912-13

Boeckh, K. & Rutar, S. (eds)

Though persistently overshadowed by the Great War in historical memory, the two Balkan conflicts of 1912–1913 were among the most consequential of the early twentieth century. By pitting the states of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro against a diminished Ottoman Empire—and subsequently against one another—they anticipated many of the horrors of twentieth-century warfare even as they produced the tense regional politics that helped spark World War I. Bringing together an international group of scholars, this volume applies the social and cultural insights of the “new military history” to revisit this critical episode with a central focus on the experiences of both combatants and civilians during wartime.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available August 2016
Wartime Captivity in the 20th Century

Archives, Stories, Memories

Pathé, A.-M. & Théofilakis, F. (eds)

Long a topic of historical interest, wartime captivity has over the past decade taken on new urgency as an object of study. Transnational by its very nature, captivity’s historical significance extends far beyond the front lines, ultimately inextricable from the histories of mobilization, nationalism, colonialism, law, and a host of other related subjects. This wide-ranging volume brings together an international selection of scholars to trace the contours of this evolving research agenda, offering fascinating new perspectives on historical moments that range from the early days of the Great War to the arrival of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available August 2010
Weimar Publics/Weimar Subjects

Rethinking the Political Culture of Germany in the 1920s

Canning, K., Barndt, K. & McGuire, K. (eds)

In spite of having been short-lived, “Weimar” has never lost its fascination. Until recently the Weimar Republic’s place in German history was primarily defined by its catastrophic beginning and end - Germany’s defeat in 1918 and the Nazi seizure of power in 1933; its history seen mainly in terms of politics and as an arena of flawed decisions and failed compromises. However, a flourishing of interdisciplinary scholarship on Weimar political culture is uncovering arenas of conflict and change that had not been studied closely before, such as gender, body politics, masculinity, citizenship, empire and borderlands, visual culture, popular culture and consumption. This collection offers new perspectives from leading scholars in the disciplines of history, art history, film studies, and German studies on the vibrant political culture of Germany in the 1920s. From the traumatic ruptures of defeat, revolution, and collapse of the Kaiser’s state, the visionaries of Weimar went on to invent a republic, calling forth new citizens and cultural innovations that shaped the republic far beyond the realms of parliaments and political parties.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Gender Studies and Sexuality
eBook available April 2009
Weimar Radicals

Nazis and Communists between Authenticity and Performance

Brown, T. S.

Exploring the gray zone of infiltration and subversion in which the Nazi and Communist parties sought to influence and undermine each other, this book offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between two defining ideologies of the twentieth century. The struggle between Fascism and Communism is situated within a broader conversation among right- and left-wing publicists, across the Youth Movement and in the “National Bolshevik” scene, thus revealing the existence of a discourse on revolutionary legitimacy fought according to a set of common assumptions about the qualities of the ideal revolutionary. Highlighting the importance of a masculine-militarist politics of youth revolt operative in both Marxist and anti-Marxist guises, Weimar Radicals forces us to re-think the fateful relationship between the two great ideological competitors of the Weimar Republic, while offering a challenging new interpretation of the distinctive radicalism of the interwar era.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available June 2022
What Remains

Responses to the Legacy of Christa Wolf

Fetz, G. A. & Herminghouse, P. (eds)

Arguably the most important—and influential—German woman writer of the last century, Christa Wolf was long heralded as "die gesamtdeutsche Autorin," an author for all of Germany; but, after 1989 in unified Germany, Wolf found herself suddenly embroiled in controversies that challenged her integrity and consigned her to an ideologically suspect identity as "DDR Schriftstellerin” (GDR writer) or “Staatsdichterin” (state poet). What Remains: Responses to the Legacy of Christa Wolf asks the question of what truly remains of her legacy in the annals of contemporary German culture and history. Unlike most of what appeared in the wake of Wolf’s death, however, the contributions to this international volume seek neither to monumentalize her nor to dismantle her stature, but to employ a range of methodologies—comparative, intertextual, psychoanalytic, historical, transcultural—to offer sensitive assessments of Wolf’s major literary texts, as well as of her lesser known work in genres such as film and essay.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Literary Studies
eBook available May 2021
When They Came for Me

The Hidden Diary of an Apartheid Prisoner

Schlapobersky, J. R.

Apartheid and its resistance come to life in this memoir making it a vital historical document of its time and for our own.

In 1969, while a student in South Africa, John Schlapobersky was arrested for opposing apartheid and tortured, detained and eventually deported. Interrogated through sleep deprivation, he later wrote secretly in solitary confinement about the struggle for survival.

Those writings inform this exquisitely written book in which the author reflects on the singing of the condemned prisoners, the poetry, songs and texts that saw him through his ordeal, and its impact. This sense of hope through which he transformed his life guides his continuing work as a psychotherapist and his focus on the rehabilitation of others.

“[T]hetale of an ordinary young man swept one day from his life into hell, testimony to the wickedness a political system let loose in its agents and, above all, an intimate account of how a man became a healer.”—Jonny Steinberg, Oxford University

From the introduction:
I was supposed to be a man by the time I turned 21, by anyone’s reckoning. By the apartheid regime’s reckoning, I was also old enough to be tortured. Looking back, I can recognize the boy I was. The eldest of my grandchildren is now approaching this age, and I would never want to see her or the others – or indeed anyone else – having to face any such ordeal. At the time my home was in Johannesburg, only some thirty miles from Pretoria, where I was thrown into a world that few would believe existed, populated by creatures from the darkest places, creatures of the night, some in uniform. I was there for fifty-five days, and never went home again.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available April 2016
Whose Memory? Which Future?

Remembering Ethnic Cleansing and Lost Cultural Diversity in Eastern, Central and Southeastern Europe

Törnquist-Plewa, B. (ed)

Scholars have devoted considerable energy to understanding the history of ethnic cleansing in Europe, reconstructing specific events, state policies, and the lived experiences of victims. Yet much less attention has been given to how these incidents persist in collective memory today. This volume brings together interdisciplinary case studies conducted in Central and Eastern European cities, exploring how present-day inhabitants “remember” past instances of ethnic cleansing, and how they understand the cultural heritage of groups that vanished in their wake. Together these contributions offer insights into more universal questions of collective memory and the formation of national identity.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History Memory Studies
eBook available January 2018
The Witness as Object

Video Testimony in Memorial Museums

Jong, S. de

In recent years, historical witnessing has emerged as a category of "museum object." Audiovisual recordings of interviews with individuals remembering events of historical importance are now integral to the collections and research activities of museums. They have also become important components in narrative and exhibition design strategies. With a focus on Holocaust museums, this study scrutinizes for the first time the new global phenomenon of the "musealization" of the witness to history, exploring the processes, prerequisites, and consequences of the transformation of video testimonies into exhibits.

Subjects: Museum Studies History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies Memory Studies
eBook available November 2007
Women Migrants From East to West

Gender, Mobility and Belonging in Contemporary Europe

Passerini, L., Lyon, D., Capussotti, E. & Laliotou, I. (eds)

Based on the oral histories of eighty migrant women and thirty additional interviews with ‘native’ women in the ‘receiving’ countries, this volume documents the contemporary phenomenon of the feminisation of migration through an exploration of the lives of women, who have moved from Bulgaria and Hungary to Italy and the Netherlands. It assumes migrants to be active subjects, creating possibilities and taking decisions in their own lives, as well as being subject to legal and political regulation, and the book analyses the new forms of subjectivity that come about through mobility.

Part I is a largely conceptual exploration of subjectivity, mobility and gender in Europe. The chapters in Part II focus on love, work, home, communication, and food, themes which emerged from the migrant women’s accounts. In Part III, based on the interviews with ‘native’ women – employers, friends, or in associations relevant to migrant women – the chapters analyse their representations of migrants, and the book goes on to explore forms of intersubjectivity between European women of different cultural origins. A major contribution of this book is to consider how the movement of people across Europe is changing the cultural and social landscape with implications for how we think about what Europe means.

Cover image: Painting by Carla Accardi. Reproduced with the kind permission of Luca Barsi of the Galleria Accademia, Via Accademia Albertina 3/e, 10123 Torino.

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Gender Studies and Sexuality Mobility Studies History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available July 2017
The Women's Liberation Movement

Impacts and Outcomes

Schulz, K. (ed)

For over half a century, the countless organizations and initiatives that comprise the Women’s Liberation movement have helped to reshape many aspects of Western societies, from public institutions and cultural production to body politics and subsequent activist movements. This collection represents the first systematic investigation of WLM’s cumulative impacts and achievements within the West. Here, specialists on movements in Europe systematically investigate outcomes in different countries in the light of a reflective social movement theory, comparing them both implicitly and explicitly to developments in other parts of the world.

Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History: 20th Century to Present
eBook available July 2020
Working in Greece and Turkey

A Comparative Labour History from Empires to Nation-States, 1840–1940

Papastefanaki, L. & Kabadayı, M. E. (eds)

As was the case in many other countries, it was only in the early years of this century that Greek and Turkish labour historians began to systematically look beyond national borders to investigate their intricately interrelated histories. The studies in Working in Greece and Turkey provide an overdue exploration of labour history on both sides of the Aegean, before as well as after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Deploying the approaches of global labour history as a framework, this volume presents transnational, transcontinental, and diachronic comparisons that illuminate the shared history of Greece and Turkey.

Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
eBook available March 2022
The World beyond the West

Perspectives from Eastern Europe

Kałczewiak, M. & Kozłowska, M. (eds)

No matter how one defines its extent and borders, Eastern Europe has long been understood as a liminal space, one whose undeniable cultural and historical continuities with Western Europe have been belied by its status as an “Other” in the Western imagination. Across illuminating and provocative case studies, The World beyond the West focuses on the region’s ambiguous relationship to historical processes of colonialism and Orientalism. In exploring encounters with distant lands through politics, travel, migration, and exchange, it places Eastern Europe at the heart of its analysis while decentering the most familiar narratives and recasting the history of the region.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: 18th/19th Century Colonial History

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200 Years of Peace

New Perspectives on Modern Swedish Foreign Policy

Biltekin, N., Müller, L., & Petersson, M. (eds)

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Peace and Conflict Studies

The Aesthetics of Rule and Resistance

Analyzing Political Street Art in Latin America

Bogerts, L.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Urban Studies Cultural Studies (General)

After Auschwitz

The Difficult Legacies of the GDR

Heitzer, E., Jander, M., Kahane, A., & Poutrus, P. G. (eds)

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present

The Age of Capitalism and Bureaucracy

Perspectives on the Political Sociology of Max Weber

Mommsen, W. J.

Subjects: Sociology History: 20th Century to Present

Ambassadors of Realpolitik

Sweden, the CSCE and the Cold War

Makko, A.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present

Ambiguous Transitions

Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania

Massino, J.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Gender Studies and Sexuality

The Americanization of Europe

Culture, Diplomacy, and Anti-Americanism after 1945

Stephan, A (ed)

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)

Anglo-American Relations and the Transmission of Ideas

A Shared Political Tradition?

Dobson, A. & Marsh, S. (eds)

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)

The Art of Resistance

Cultural Protest against the Austrian Far Right in the Early Twenty-First Century

Fiddler, A.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)

At the Edge of the Wall

Public and Private Spheres in Divided Berlin

Hochmuth, H.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Urban Studies

Becoming East German

Socialist Structures and Sensibilities after Hitler

Fulbrook, M. & Port, A. I. (eds)

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present

Berlin Divided City, 1945-1989

Broadbent, P. & Hake, S. (eds)

Subjects: Urban Studies History: 20th Century to Present

Bestsellers of the Third Reich

Readers, Writers and the Politics of Literature

Adam, C.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Literary Studies

Between Empire and Continent

British Foreign Policy before the First World War

Rose, A.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: World War I

Between Left and Right

The 2009 Bundestag Elections and the Transformation of the German Party System

Langenbacher, E. (ed)

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present

Between Marx and Coca-Cola

Youth Cultures in Changing European Societies, 1960-1980

Schildt, A. & Siegfried, D. (eds)

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies Sociology

Between Mass Death and Individual Loss

The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany

Confino, A., Betts, P. & Schumann, D. (eds)

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Sociology

Between Prague Spring and French May

Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960-1980

Klimke, M., Pekelder, J. & Scharloth, J. (eds)

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present

Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

German Visions of Europe, 1926-1950

Bailey, C.

Subject: History: 20th Century to Present

Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion

Jewish Experiences of the First World War in Central Europe