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Books > Humanities > History > European history > General
(The open access version of this book has been published with the
support of the Swiss National Science Foundation.) The book
proposes a reassessment of royal portraiture and its function in
the Middle Ages via a comparative analysis of works from different
areas of the Mediterranean world, where images are seen as only one
outcome of wider and multifarious strategies for the public
mise-en-scene of the rulers' bodies. Its emphasis is on the ways in
which medieval monarchs in different areas of the Mediterranean
constructed their outward appearance and communicated it by means
of a variety of rituals, object-types, and media. Contributors are
Michele Bacci, Nicolas Bock, Gerardo Boto Varela, Branislav
Cvetkovic, Sofia Fernandez Pozzo, Gohar Grigoryan Savary, Elodie
Leschot, Vinni Lucherini, Ioanna Rapti, Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza,
Marta Serrano-Coll, Lucinia Speciale, Manuela Studer-Karlen, Mirko
Vagnoni, and Edda Vardanyan.
Richard Kaeuper's career has examined three salient concerns of
medieval society - knightly prowess and violence, lay and religious
piety, and public order and government - most directly in three of
his monographs: War, Justice, and Public Order (Oxford, 1988),
Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1999), and Holy
Warriors (Penn, 2009). Kaeuper approaches historical questions with
an eye towards illuminating the inherent complexities in human
ideas and ideals, and he has worked to untangle the various threads
holding together cultural constructs such as chivalry, licit
violence, and lay piety. The present festschrift in his honor
brings together scholars from across disciplines to engage with
those same concerns in medieval society from a variety of
perspectives. Contributors are: Bernard S. Bachrach, Elizabeth A.R.
Brown, Samuel A. Claussen, David Crouch, Thomas Devaney, Paul
Dingman, Daniel P. Franke, Richard Firth Green, Christopher Guyol,
John D. Hosler, William Chester Jordan, Craig M. Nakashian, W. Mark
Ormrod, Russell A. Peck, Anthony J. Pollard, Michael Prestwich,
Sebastian Rider-Bezerra, Leah Shopkow, and Peter W. Sposato.
Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe is a topic laced by prejudice on
one hand and apologetics on the other. Beginning in the Middle
Ages, Jews were often portrayed as criminals driven by greed. While
these accusations were, for the most part, unfounded, in other
cases criminal accusations against Jews were not altogether
baseless. Drawing on a variety of legal, liturgical, literary, and
archival sources, Ephraim Shoham-Steiner examines the reasons for
the involvement in crime, the social profile of Jews who performed
crimes, and the ways and mechanisms employed by the legal and
communal body to deal with Jewish criminals and with crimes
committed by Jews. A society's attitude toward individuals
identified as criminals - by others or themselves - can serve as a
window into that society's mores and provide insight into how
transgressors understood themselves and society's atttudes toward
them. The book is divided into three main sections. In the first
section, Shoham-Steiner examines theft and crimes of a financial
nature. In the second section, he discusses physical violence and
murder, most importantly among Jews but also incidents when Jews
attacked others and cases in which Jews asked non-Jews to commit
violence against fellow Jews. In the third section, Shoham-Steiner
approaches the role of women in crime and explores the gender
differences, surveying the nature of the crimes involving women
both as perpetrators and as victims, as well as the reaction to
their involvement in criminal activities among medieval European
Jews. While the study of crime and social attitudes toward
criminals is firmly established in the social sciences, the history
of crime and of social attitudes toward crime and criminals is
relatively new, especially in the field of medieval studies and all
the more so in medieval Jewish studies. Jews and Crime in Medieval
Europe blazes a new path for unearthing daily life history from
extremely recalcitrant sources. The intended readership goes beyond
scholars and students of medieval Jewish studies, medieval European
history, and crime in pre-modern society.
Irena Veisaite is held in deep esteem throughout her country. This
volume is an attempt to relate the difficult journey of her
remarkable life against the backdrop of the complex history of
Lithuania and its Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews). After being rescued by
Christian Lithuanian families and having survived the Holocaust
Irena Veisaite devoted herself to study and creative work. She was
a memorable lecturer, respected theatre critic, associate film
director, and also founder and chairman of the Open Society Fund
(Soros Foundation) which made an invaluable contribution to the
process of democratisation in Lithuania. Irena Veisaite made it her
life's work to speak up for dialogue and mutual understanding and
believes that even in the most difficult circumstances it is
possible to preserve one's humanity. Having lived through some of
the major atrocities of the twentieth century, her insistence on
the need for tolerance has inspired many.
In the face of an outpouring of research on Holocaust history,
Holocaust Angst takes an innovative approach. It explores how
Germans perceived and reacted to how Americans publicly
commemorated the Holocaust. It argues that a network of mostly
conservative West German officials and their associates in private
organizations and foundations, with Chancellor Kohl located at its
center, perceived themselves as the "victims" of the afterlife of
the Holocaust in America. They were concerned that public
manifestations of Holocaust memory, such as museums, monuments, and
movies, could severely damage the Federal Republic's reputation and
even cause Americans to question the Federal Republic's status as
an ally. From their perspective, American Holocaust memorial
culture constituted a stumbling block for (West) German-American
relations since the late 1970s. Providing the first comprehensive,
archival study of German efforts to cope with the Nazi past
vis-a-vis the United States up to the 1990s, this book uncovers the
fears of German officials - some of whom were former Nazis or World
War II veterans - about the impact of Holocaust memory on the
reputation of the Federal Republic and reveals their at times
negative perceptions of American Jews. Focusing on a variety of
fields of interaction, ranging from the diplomatic to the scholarly
and public spheres, the book unearths the complicated and often
contradictory process of managing the legacies of genocide on an
international stage. West German decision makers realized that
American Holocaust memory was not an "anti-German plot" by American
Jews and acknowledged that they could not significantly change
American Holocaust discourse. In the end, German confrontation with
American Holocaust memory contributed to a more open engagement on
the part of the West German government with this memory and
eventually rendered it a "positive resource" for German
self-representation abroad. Holocaust Angst offers new perspectives
on postwar Germany's place in the world system as well as the
Holocaust culture in the United States and the role of
transnational organizations.
Rather than being properties of the individual self, emotions are
socially produced and deployed in specific cultural contexts, as
this collection documents with unusual richness. All the essays
show emotions to be a form of thought and knowledge, and a major
component of social life - including in the nineteenth century,
which attempted to relegate them to a feminine intimate sphere. The
collection ranges across topics such as eighteenth-century
sensibility, nineteenth-century concerns with the transmission of
emotions, early twentieth-century cinematic affect, and the
contemporary mobilization of political emotions including those
regarding nonstate national identities. The complexities and
effects of emotions are explored in a variety of forms - political
rhetoric, literature, personal letters, medical writing, cinema,
graphic art, soap opera, journalism, popular music, digital media -
with attention paid to broader European and transatlantic
implications.
International Organizations play a pivotal role on the modern
global stage and have done, this book argues, since the beginning
of the 20th century. This volume offers the first historical
exploration into the formative years of international public
administrations, covering the birth of the League of Nations and
the emergence of the second generation that still shape
international politics today such as the UN, NATO and OECD.
Centring on Europe, where the multilaterization of international
relations played out more intensely in the mid-20th century than in
other parts of the world, it demonstrates a broad range of
historiographical and methodological approaches to institutions in
international history. The book argues that after several 'turns'
(cultural, linguistic, material, transnational), international
history is now better equipped to restate its core questions of
policy and power with a view to their institutional dimensions.
Making use of new approaches in the field, this book develops an
understanding of the specific powers and roles of
IO-administrations by delving into their institutional make-up.
This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It
contains classical literature works from over two thousand years.
Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore
shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the
cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical
literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the
mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from
oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of
international literature classics available in printed format again
- worldwide.
Alfred Nobel made his name as an inventor and successful
entrepreneur and left a legacy as a philanthropist and promoter of
learning and social progress. The correspondence between Nobel and
his Viennese mistress, Sofie Hess, shines a light on his private
life and reveals a personality that differs significantly from his
public image. The letters show him as a hypochondriac and
workaholic and as a paranoid, jealous, and patriarchal lover.
Indeed, the relationship between the aging Alfred Nobel and the
carefree, spendthrift Sofie Hess will strike readers as
dysfunctional and worthy of Freudian analysis. Erika Rummel's
masterful translation and annotations reveal the value of the
letters as commentary on 19th century social mores: the concept of
honour and reputation, the life of a "kept" woman, the prevalence
of antisemitism, the importance of spas as health resorts and
entertainment centres, the position of single mothers, and more
generally the material culture of a rich bourgeois gentleman. A
Nobel Affair is the first translation into English of the complete
correspondence between Alfred Nobel and Sofie Hess.
This book investigates perceptions, modes, and techniques of
Venetian rule in the early modern Eastern Mediterranean (1400-1700)
between colonial empire, negotiated and pragmatic rule; between
soft touch and exploitation; in contexts of former and continuous
imperial belongings; and with a focus on representations and modes
of rule as well as on colonial daily realities and connectivities.
Tsar and Sultan offers a unique insight into Russian Orientalism as
the intellectual force behind Russian-Ottoman encounters. Through
war diaries and memoirs, accounts of captivity and diplomatic
correspondences, Victor Taki's analysis of military documents
demonstrates a crucial aspect of Russia's discovery of the Orient
based on its rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. Narratives depicting
the brutal realities of Russian-Turkish military conflicts
influenced the Orientalisation of the Ottoman Empire. In turn,
Russian identity was built as the counter-image to the demonised
Turk. This book explains the significance of Russian Orientalism on
Russian identity and national policies of westernisation. Students
of both European and Middle East studies will appreciate Taki's
unique approach to Russian-Turkish relations and their influence on
Eurasian history.
A Companion to Medieval Lubeck offers an introduction to recent
scholarship on the vibrant and source-rich medieval history of
Lubeck. Focusing mainly on the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, the
volume positions the city of Lubeck within the broader history of
Northern Germany and the Baltic Sea area. Thematic contributions
highlight the archaeological and architectonical development of a
northern town, religious developments, buildings and art in a
Hanseatic city, and its social institutions. This volume is the
first English-language overview of the history of Lubeck and a
corrective to the traditional narratives of German historiography.
The volume thus offers a fresh perspective on the history of
medieval Lubeck-as well as a handy introduction to the riches of
the Lubeck archives-to undergraduates, graduate students, and
scholars in related fields. Contributors are Manfred Finke, Hartmut
Freytag, Antjekathrin Grassmann, Angela Huang, Carsten Jahnke,
Ursula Radis, Anja Rasche, Dirk Rieger, Harm von Seggern and Ulf
Stammwitz.
Reverberations of Nazi Violence in Germany and Beyond explores the
complex and diverse reverberations of the Second World War after
1945. It focuses on the legacies that National Socialist violence
and genocide perpetrated in Europe continue to have in
German-speaking countries and communities, as well as among those
directly affected by occupation, terror and mass murder.
Furthermore it explores how those legacies are in turn shaped by
the present. The volume also considers conflicting, unexpected and
often dissonant interpretations and representations of these
events, made by those who were the witnesses, victims and
perpetrators at the time and also by different communities in the
generations that followed. The contributions, from a range of
disciplinary perspectives, enrich our understanding of the
complexity of the ways in which a disturbing past continues to
disrupt the present and how the past is in turn disturbed and
instrumentalized by a later present.
This eye-opening study gives a nuanced, provocative account of how
German soldiers in the Great War experienced and enacted
masculinity. Drawing on an array of relevant narratives and media,
it explores the ways that both heterosexual and homosexual soldiers
expressed emotion, understood romantic ideals, and approached
intimacy and sexuality.
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