A Humanist on the Frontier explores the remarkable life of Sebastian Ambrosius, a sixteenth-century Lutheran minister and intellectual from Kesmark (now Kezmarok) in present-day Slovakia, formerly on the borderland of the Kingdom of Hungary. Through an examination of Ambrosius' publications and correspondence, this book throws new light on the dynamics of urban communities in Upper Hungary, communication within the humanist Republic of Letters in both Central European and wider European networks, and ecclesiastical controversies. Adopting methods of microhistory and cultural history, it also reconstructs Ambrosius' life by positioning him in various contexts that trace his relationship to, and interpretations of, themes of power, tradition, vocation, communication and identity. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of early modern European history, as well as those interested in microhistory, cultural history, and the Republic of Letters.

Most discussions of oral history method are rooted in abstract ideas about what interviewing should be and should achieve. However, interviews are ultimately personal interactions between human beings, and as such they rarely conform to a methodological ideal. Nonetheless, oral history's complex, capricious nature is rarely addressed by its practitioners when they share their work with the world. The struggles and negotiations interviewers face while conducting interviews - ethical, political, personal - either go unacknowledged or are discussed only with trusted colleagues in informal settings. This groundbreaking collection shows that a full account of oral history methodology must include honest and rigorous analyses of actual practice, allowing us to embrace the uncertainties and remarkable opportunities that define a human-centered methodology. Here, fourteen practitioners draw connections between vastly different areas of study, including Holocaust memories, work with Aboriginal communities, Islamic studies, immigration, and conflict studies. All are united by the shared experience of encountering complex individuals with messy, difficult, and ultimately illuminating stories to tell.

An international range of chapters focuses on the role of public in public history, ironically not often looked at in public history texts which focus more on the history element, thus giving the reader a real insight int what public in public history means in all its diversity Public history is widely taught around the globe, often as the pathway to impact and vocational aspects of history, so a book looking at what public means in the subject goes to the very core of the subject and allows students to think more deeply about the subject. Most books on public history focus on the history bit, this takes a deep and international look at what the public means allowing readers a different perspective.

An international range of chapters focuses on the role of public in public history, ironically not often looked at in public history texts which focus more on the history element, thus giving the reader a real insight int what public in public history means in all its diversity Public history is widely taught around the globe, often as the pathway to impact and vocational aspects of history, so a book looking at what public means in the subject goes to the very core of the subject and allows students to think more deeply about the subject. Most books on public history focus on the history bit, this takes a deep and international look at what the public means allowing readers a different perspective.

Through the collection of letters sent by members of a Jewish family between 1923 and 1942, this fascinating book explores phenomenological and psychoanalytical aspects of the Holocaust and its associated trauma, and the impact on future generations of the same family. This book charts a postmemorial study of the Cohen family of Salonica which branched out to Paris and Tel-Aviv during the 1920s and 1930s. The exploration of the contents of four boxes containing hundreds of letters, pictures and other documents portray a microhistory of one family that was once a part of a thriving community. Showing how the shadows of trauma can be passed through the generations, the book uncovers the tragedies that befell the Cohen family, and how the discovery of these materials has affected existing family members. In an intriguing work of postmemory research and analysis, this book appeals to both scholars of the Holocaust and psychoanalysts interested in the unconscious impact of history.

Through the collection of letters sent by members of a Jewish family between 1923 and 1942, this fascinating book explores phenomenological and psychoanalytical aspects of the Holocaust and its associated trauma, and the impact on future generations of the same family. This book charts a postmemorial study of the Cohen family of Salonica which branched out to Paris and Tel-Aviv during the 1920s and 1930s. The exploration of the contents of four boxes containing hundreds of letters, pictures and other documents portray a microhistory of one family that was once a part of a thriving community. Showing how the shadows of trauma can be passed through the generations, the book uncovers the tragedies that befell the Cohen family, and how the discovery of these materials has affected existing family members. In an intriguing work of postmemory research and analysis, this book appeals to both scholars of the Holocaust and psychoanalysts interested in the unconscious impact of history.

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, family history is the place where two great oceans of research are meeting: family historians outside the academy, with traditionally trained, often university-employed historians. This collection is both a testament to dialogue and an analysis of the dynamics of recent family history that derives from the confluence of professional historians with family historians, their common causes and conversations. It brings together leading and emerging Australian and New Zealand scholars to consider the relationship between family history and the discipline of history, and the potential of family history to extend the scope of historical inquiry, even to revitalise the discipline. In Anglo-Western culture, the roots of the discipline's professionalisation lay in efforts to reconstruct history as objective knowledge, to extend its subject matter and to enlarge the scale of historical enquiry. Family history, almost by definition, is often inescapably personal and localised. How, then, have historians responded to this resurgence of interest in the personal and the local, and how has it influenced the thought and practice of historical enquiry?

This book explores how fieldwork has been used to research Chinese history in the past and new ways that others might use in it the future. It introduces the previous generations of scholars who ventured out of the archive to conduct local investigations in Chinese cities, villages, farms and temples. It goes on to present the techniques of historical fieldwork, providing guidance on how to integrate oral history into research plans and archival research, conduct interviews, and locate sources in the field. Chapters by established researchers relate these techniques to specific types of fieldwork, including religion, the imperial past, natural environments and agriculture. Combining the past and the future of the craft, the book provides a rich resource for scholars coming new to fieldwork in the history of China.

This book centers on two inquisitorial investigations, both of which began in the 1540s. One involved relations of Europeans and Native Americans in the Oaxacan town of Yanhuitlan (in New Spain, today's Mexico). The other involved relations of Moriscos (recent Muslim converts to Catholicism) and Old Christians (people with deep Catholic ancestries) in the Mediterranean kingdom of Valencia (in the "old" Spain). Although separated by an ocean, the social worlds preserved in these inquisitorial files share many things. By bringing the two inquisitions together, Hamann reveals how very local practices and debates had long-distance parallels, parallels that reveal larger entanglements of the early modern world. Through a dialogue of two microhistories, he presents a macrohistory of large-scale social transformation. We see how attempts in both places to turn old worlds into new ones were centered on struggles over materiality and temporality. By paying close attention to theories (and practices) of reduction and conversion, Hamann suggests we can move beyond anachronistic models of social change as colonization, and place early modern concepts of time and history at the center of our understandings of the sixteenth-century past. Overall, this project intervenes in major debates from both history and anthropology: about the writing of global histories, our conceptualizations of the colonial, the nature of religious and cultural change, and the roles of material things in social life and the imagination of time.

The principal theme of this volume is the importance of the public use of human remains in a historical perspective. The book presents a series of case studies aimed at offering historiographical and methodological reflections and providing interpretative approaches highlighting how, through the ages and with a succession of complex practices and uses, human remains have been imbued with a plurality of meanings. Covering a period running from late antiquity to the present day, the contributions are the combined results of multidisciplinary research pertaining to the realities of the Italian peninsula, hitherto not investigated with a long-term and multidisciplinary historical perspective. From the relics of great men to the remains of patriots, and from anatomical specimens to the skeletons of the saints: through these case studies the scholars involved have investigated a wide range of human remains (real or reputed) and of meanings attributed to them, in order to decipher their function over the centuries. In doing so, they have traversed the interpretative boundaries of political history, religious history and the history of science, as required by questions aimed at integrating the anthropological, social and cultural aspects of a complex subject.

Today Europe stands at a crossroads unlike any it has faced since 1945. Since the 2008 financial crash, Europe has weathered the Greek debt crisis, the 2015 refugee crisis, and the identity crisis brought about by Brexit in 2016. The future of the European project is in doubt. How will Europe respond? Reform and revolution have been two forms of response to crisis that have shaped Europe's history. To understand Europe's present, we must understand that past. This interdisciplinary book considers, through the prism of several landmark moments, how the dynamics of reformation and revolution, and the crises they either addressed or created, have shaped European history, memory, and thought.

For centuries, historians have narrated the arrival of Europeans using terminology (discovery, invasion, conquest, and colonization) that emphasizes their agency and disempowers that of Native Americans. This book explores firsting, a discourse that privileges European and settler-colonial presence, movements, knowledges, and experiences as a technology of colonization in the early modern Atlantic world, 1492-1900. It exposes how textual culture has ensured that Euro-settlers dominate Native Americans, while detailing misrepresentations of Indigenous peoples as unmodern and proposing how the western world can be un-firsted in scholarship on this time and place.

Roman Tales: A Reader's Guide to the Art of Microhistory explores both the social and cultural life of Renaissance Rome and the mind-set and methods of microhistory. This book draws the reader deep into eight stories: a Christian-Jewish picnic plus an ill-aimed stone fight, an embassy-driven attack on Rome's police, a magic prophetic mirror, an immured mad hermit, a stolen dwarf, and the bizarre misadventures of a stolen roll of velvet, a truly odd elopement, and a thieving child who treats his cronies to dinner at the inn. It meditates on the resources and lacunae that shape the telling of these stories and, through them, it models an historical method that contrives to turn the limits of our knowledge into an advantage by writing honestly and movingly, to bring a dead past back to life, exemplifying and stretching the genre of microhistory. It also discusses strategies for teaching through intensive use of old documents, with a particular focus on criminal tribunal papers. Engagingly written, Roman Tales outlines the main principles of microhistorical research and draws the reader outwards towards a wider exploration and discovery of sixteenth-century Rome. It is ideal for researchers of microhistory, and of medieval and early modern Italy.

Globalization has carried vast consequences for the lives of children. It has spurred unprecedented waves of immigration, contributed to far-reaching transformations in the organization, structure, and dynamics of family life, and profoundly altered trajectories of growing up. Equally important, globalization has contributed to the world-wide dissemination of a set of international norms about children's welfare and heightened public awareness of disparities in the lives of children around the world. This book's contributors - leading historians, literary scholars, psychologists, social geographers, and others - provide fresh perspectives on the transformations that globalization has produced in children's lives.

This volume considers the confluence of World History and historical materialism, with the following guiding question in mind: given developments in the field of historical materialism concerned with the intersection of race, gender, labour, and class, why is it that within the field of World History, historical materialism has been marginalized, precisely as World History orients toward transnational socio-cultural phenomenon, micro-studies, or global histories of networks? Answering this question requires thinking, in an inter-related manner, about both the development of World History as a discipline, and the place of economic determinism in historical materialism. This book takes the position that historical materialism (as applied to the field of World History) needs to be more open to the methodological diversity of the materialist tradition and to refuse narrowly deterministic frameworks that have led to marginalization of materialist cultural analysis in studies of global capitalism. At the same time, World History needs to be more self-critical of the methodological diversity it has welcomed through a largely inclusionary framework that allows the material to be considered separately from cultural, social, and intellectual dimensions of global processes.

What does it mean to be a social and cultural historian today? In the wake of the 'cultural turn', and in an age of digital and public history, what challenges and opportunities await historians in the early 21st century? In this exciting new text, leading historians reflect on key developments in their fields and argue for a range of 'new directions' in social and cultural history. Focusing on emerging areas of historical research such as the history of the emotions and environmental history, New Directions in Social and Cultural History is an invaluable guide to the current and future state of the field. The book is divided into three clear sections, each with an editorial introduction, and covering key thematic areas: histories of the human, the material world, and challenges and provocations. Each chapter in the collection provides an introduction to the key and recent developments in its specialist field, with their authors then moving on to argue for what they see as particularly important shifts and interventions in the theory and methodology and suggest future developments. New Directions in Social and Cultural History provides a comprehensive and insightful overview of this burgeoning field which will be important reading for all students and scholars of social and cultural history and historiography.

Games of History provides an understanding of how games as artefacts, textual and visual sources on games and gaming as a pastime or a "serious" activity can be used as sources for the study of history. From the vast world of games, the book's focus is on board and card games, with reference to physical games, sports and digital games as well. Considering culture, society, politics and metaphysics, the author uses examples from various places around the world and from ancient times to the present to demonstrate how games and gaming can offer the historian an alternative, often very valuable and sometimes unique path to the past. The book offers a thorough discussion of conceptual and material approaches to games as sources, while also providing the reader with a theoretical starting point for further study within specific thematic chapters. The book concludes with three case studies of different types of games and how they can be considered as historical sources: the gladiatorial games, chess and the digital game Civilization. Offering an alternative approach to the study of history through its focus on games and gaming as historical sources, this is the ideal volume for students considering different types of sources and how they can be used for historical study, as well as students who study games as primary or secondary sources in their history projects.

Games of History provides an understanding of how games as artefacts, textual and visual sources on games and gaming as a pastime or a "serious" activity can be used as sources for the study of history. From the vast world of games, the book's focus is on board and card games, with reference to physical games, sports and digital games as well. Considering culture, society, politics and metaphysics, the author uses examples from various places around the world and from ancient times to the present to demonstrate how games and gaming can offer the historian an alternative, often very valuable and sometimes unique path to the past. The book offers a thorough discussion of conceptual and material approaches to games as sources, while also providing the reader with a theoretical starting point for further study within specific thematic chapters. The book concludes with three case studies of different types of games and how they can be considered as historical sources: the gladiatorial games, chess and the digital game Civilization. Offering an alternative approach to the study of history through its focus on games and gaming as historical sources, this is the ideal volume for students considering different types of sources and how they can be used for historical study, as well as students who study games as primary or secondary sources in their history projects.

National history has once again become a battlefield. In internal political conflicts, which are fought on the terrain of popular culture, museums, schoolbooks, and memorial politics, it has taken on a newly important and contested role. Irrespective of national specifics, the narratives of new nationalism are quite similar everywhere. National history is said to stretch back many centuries, expressesing the historical continuity of a homogeneous people and its timeless character. This people struggles for independence, guided by towering leaders and inspired by the sacrifice of martyrs. Unlike earlier forms of nationalism, the main enemies are no longer neighbouring states, but international and supranational institutions. To use national history as an integrative tool, new nationalists claim that the media and school history curricula should not contest or question the nation and its great historical deeds, as doubts threaten to weaken and dishonour the nation. This book offers a broad international overview of the rhetoric, contents, and contexts of the rise of these renewed national historical narratives, and of how professional historians have reacted to these phenomena. The contributions focus on a wide range of representative nations from around all over the globe.

De-Illustrating the History of the British Empire aims to offer a timely and inclusive contribution to the evolving cross-disciplinary scholarship that connects visual studies with British imperial historiography. The key purpose of this book is to introduce scholars and students of British imperial and Commonwealth history to a clearly presented and diversely themed evaluation of several "visual manuscripts" - images of all genres depicting particular events, personalities, social and cultural contexts - that document the development of some of the British imperial and post-colonial visual literacies history. The concept of "visual manuscripts" alongside theories of visual anthropology and memory studies are addressed across the entire volume thus allowing the readers to approach with greater ease the discourse on imperial iconography and historiography.

Approaching Recent World History Through Film: Context, Analysis, and Research explores the relationships between twentieth-century world history and film by providing analysis of a diverse range of films organized by global history topics, including war and conflict, decolonization, political economy, and long-distance travel. This insightful text describes how to analyze films as original historical sources and how to carry out research projects using films. The text provides guidance on the types of world history films, their conventions, and how to analyze the historical arguments in movies. Scott C.M. Bailey incorporates in-depth discussions of the historical content and context of a wide range of international films connected with important twentieth-century global history topics. The book also offers many prompts for discussion, historical timelines, and suggestions for further reading and viewing, as well as instructions on how to construct research papers and projects which employ the use of films as historical sources. This book will be of interest to students in world history and film history courses.

The book describes humanism in a systematic and historical perspective. It analyzes its manifestation and function in cultural studies and its role in the present. Within the book, special attention is given to the intention of contemporary humanism to overcome ethno-centric elements in the cultural orientation of contemporary living conditions and to develop humane dimensions of this orientation. This is linked to a fundamental critique of the current post-human self-understanding of the humanities. Furthermore, the intercultural aspect in the understanding of humanism is emphasized; for non-Western cultures also have their own humanistic traditions. Two further aspects are also addressed: the Holocaust as the most radical challenge to humanistic thinking and the relationship of humanism to nature. Sitting at the intersection of history and philosophy, the book is perfect for those exploring humanism from an historical perspective.

According to Voltaire's Candide, Admiral John Byng's 1757 execution went forward to 'encourage the others'. Of course, the story is more complicated. This microhistorical account upon a macro-event presents an updated, revisionist, and detailed account of a dark chapter in British naval history. Asking 'what was Britain like the moment Byng returned to Portsmouth after the Battle of Minorca (1756)?' not only returns a glimpse of mid-eighteenth century Britain but provides a deeper understanding of how a wartime admiral, the son of a peer, of some wealth, a once colonial governor, and sitting member of parliament came to be scapegoated and then executed for the failings of others. This manuscript presents a cultural, social, and political dive into Britain at the beginning of the Seven Years' War. Part 1 focuses on ballad, newspaper, and prize culture. Part 2 makes a turn towards the social where religion, morality, rioting, and disease play into the Byng saga. Admiral Byng's record during the 1755 Channel Campaign is explored, as is the Mediterranean context of the Seven Years' War, troubles elsewhere in the empire, and then the politics behind Byng's trial and execution.

Departing from the present need for cultural models within the public debate, this volume offers a new contribution to the study of cultural icons. From the traditional religious icon to the modern mass media icon, from the recognizable visual icon to the complex entanglement of image and collective narratives: The Construction and Dynamics of Cultural Icons offers an overview of existing theories, compares different definitions and proposes a comprehensive view on the icon and the iconic. Focusing in particular on the making of iconic representations and their changing social-cultural meanings through time, scholars from cultural memory studies, art history and literary studies present concrete operationalizations of the ways different types of cultural icons can be studied.

Reconsidering Extinction in Terms of the History of Global Bioethics continues the Routledge Advances in the History of Bioethics series by exploring approaches to the bioethics of extinction from disparate disciplines, from literature, to social sciences, to history, to sustainability studies, to linguistics. Van Rensselaer Potter coined the phrase "Global Bioethics" to define human relationships with their contexts. This and subsequent volumes return to Potter's founding vision from historical perspectives, and asks, how did we get here from then? Extinction can be understood in terms of an everlasting termination of shape, form, and function; however, until now life has gone on. Where would we humans be if the dinosaurs had not become extinct? And we still manage to communicate, only not in proto-Indo-European, but in a myriad of languages, some more common than others. The answer is simple, after extinction events, evolution continues. But will it always be so? Has the human race set planet earth on a collision course with nothingness? This volume explores areas of bioethical interpretation in relation to the complex concept of extinction.