Between 1970 and 1990 there was an evolving discussion of theory and method in women's history, which the articles in this volume represent. The articles span from the first articulation of a framework to be designated "women's history", to very recent discussion of the concept of gender in history. Also included are critiques of standard American history texts from the perspective of women's history, controversies among women's historians concerning the definition of the field, and assessments of its distinctiveness as compared to family and social history.

Processing the Past explores the dramatic changes taking place in historical understanding and archival management, and hence the relations between historians and archivists. Written by an archivist and a historian, it shows how these changes have been brought on by new historical thinking, new conceptions of archives, changing notions of historical authority, modifications in archival practices, and new information technologies. The book takes an "archival turn" by situating archives as subjects rather than places of study, and examining the increasingly problematic relationships between historical and archival work. The book sets the background to these changes by showing how nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians and archivists in Europe and North American came to occupy the same conceptual and methodological space. For both, authoritative history was based on authoritative archives and mutual understandings of scientific research. The authors then show how these connections changed as historians began to ask questions not easily answered by traditional documentation, and archivists began to confront an unmanageable increase in the amount of material they processed and the challenges of new electronic technologies. The book situates these changes in a review of contemporary historical concepts and archival practices. The authors contend that historians and archivists have divided into two entirely separate professions with distinct conceptual frameworks, training, and purposes, as well as different understandings of the authorities that govern their work. Processing the Past moves toward bridging this divide by speaking in one voice to these very different audiences as well as to general readers. The book concludes by raising the worrisome question of what future historical archives might be like if historical scholars and archivists no longer understand each other, and indeed, whether their now different notions of what is archival and historical will ever again be joined.

This collection of essays explores how historians of theatre apply ethical thinking to the attempt to truthfully represent their subject - whether that be the life of a well-known performer, or the little known history of colonial theatre in India - by exploring the process by which such histories are written, and the challenges they raise.

For those who study memory, there is a nagging concern that memory studies are inherently backward-looking, and that memory itself hinders efforts to move forward. Unhinging memory from the past, this book brings together an interdisciplinary group of prominent scholars who bring the future into the study of memory.

Silent Teachers considers for the first time the influence of Ottoman scholarly practices and reference tools on oriental learning in early modern Europe. Telling the story of oriental studies through the annotations, study notes and correspondence of European scholars, it demonstrates the central but often overlooked role that Turkish-language manuscripts played in the achievements of early orientalists. Dispersing the myths and misunderstandings found in previous scholarship, the book offers a fresh history of Turkish studies in Europe and new insights into how Renaissance intellectuals studied Arabic and Persian through contemporaneous Turkish sources. This story hardly has any dull moments: the reader will encounter many larger-than-life figures, including an armchair expert who turned his alleged captivity under the Ottomans into bestselling books; a drunken dragoman who preferred enjoying the fruits of the vine to his duties at the Sublime Porte; and a curmudgeonly German physician whose pugnacious pamphlets led to the erasure of his name from history. Taking its title from the celebrated humanist Joseph Scaliger's comment that books from the Muslim world are 'silent teachers' and need to be explained orally to be understood, this study gives voice to the many and varied Turkish-language books that circulated in early modern Europe and proposes a paradigm-shift in our understanding of early modern erudite culture.

How do the ethical implications of writing theatrical histories complicate the historiographical imperative in our current sociopolitical context? This volume investigates a historiography whose function is to be a mode of thinking and exposes the inner contradictions in social and ideological organizations of historical subjects.

What are the humanities? As the cluster of disciplines historically grouped together as "humanities" has grown and diversified to include media studies and digital studies alongside philosophy, art history and musicology to name a few, the need to clearly define the field is pertinent. Herman Paul leads a stellar line-up of esteemed and early-career scholars to provide an overview of the themes, questions and methods that are central to current research on the history of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century humanities. This exciting addition to the successful Writing History series will draw from a wide range of case-studies from diverse fields, as classical philology, art history, and Biblical studies, to provide a state-of-the-art overview of the field. In doing so, this ground-breaking book challenges the rigid distinctions between disciplines and show the variety of prisms through which historians of the humanities study the past.

While bookstore shelves around the world have never ceased to display best-selling "life-and-letters" biographies in prominent positions, the genre became less popular among academic historians during the Cold War decades. Their main concern then was with political and socioeconomic structures, institutions, and organizations, or-more recently-with the daily lives of ordinary people and small communities. The contributors to this volume-all well known senior historians-offer self-critical reflections on problems they encountered when writing biographies themselves. Some of them also deal with topics specific to Central Europe, such as the challenges of writing about the lives of both victims and perpetrators. Although the volume concentrates on European historiography, its strong methodological and conceptual focus will be of great interest to non-European historians wrestling with the old "structure-versus-agency" question in their own work. Contributors: Volker R. Berghahn, Hartmut Berghoff, Hilary Earl, Jan Eckel, Willem Frijhoff, Ian Kershaw, Simone Lassig, Karl Heinrich Pohl, John C. G. Roehl, Angelika Schaser, Joachim Radkau, Cornelia Rauh-Kuhne, Mark Roseman, Christoph Strupp and Michael Wildt.

"Ten essays, each with extensive citations, by prominent German and US scholars consider significant themes in German history.A clearly organized 'selected bibliography' adds to its importance for students and scholars interested in this path breaking shift toward a more balanced understanding of Germany's history. Highly recommended." . Choice A wonderful compendium, perfect for classroom use - and a terrific resource for scholars. The essays provide valuable original perspectives on some of the most significant controversies currently engaging historians of Germany, as they also document just how profoundly careful attention to questions of gender has infused and transformed many subfields in German history - including the study of religion, political protest, war, and colonialism. . Dagmar Herzog, Graduate Center, City University of New York Authors take on the big themes and debates of German history, providing unparalleled evidence -- including extensive footnotes and a bibliographical chapter -- that gender has not only challenged mainstream ("malestream") German history but has in many cases, indeed, rewritten it. This rich and thought-provoking book is a "must" for scholars and students concerned with historiographical debates, the transatlantic dialogue among scholars, and issues of theory and methodology. It will also attract a public interested in gender history and is intrigued by the effects of gender more generally. . Marion Kaplan, New York University This incisive collection of essays details the impact of a focus on women and gender on historical writing on modern Germany. Attuned to developments in the United States and Germany, the essays carefully distinguish points of convergence and divergence in approach and methodology between the two academic cultures and provide a nuanced overview of the current state of the field as well as desiderata for the future. Leading scholars illuminate how gendered perspectives have revolutionized understanding of the conventional stuff of history - such as nation, politics, military, religion, and the state - while opening up critical new avenues of analysis around citizenship, family, sexuality, colonialism, minority relations, and memory. An invaluable resource for students and scholars of German history and gender studies alike. . Heide Fehrenbach, Northern Illinois University Karen Hagemann is the James G. Kenan Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on modern German and European History and Gender History, in particular the history of labor, welfare, and education, the women's movements, and the nation, military, and war. Jean H. Quataert is Professor of German History and Women's Studies at Binghamton University, SUNY. Her research focuses on the history of the labor movement, the history of nation and gender, and most recently human rights history and global women's history in 19th and 20th century."

In historical terms, the Old Diplomacy is not really that old--many of its concepts and methods date to the mid-nineteenth century--while the practices of New Diplomacy emerged only a couple of generations later. Moreover, "Diplomacy 2.0" and other variants of the post-Cold War era do not depart significantly from their twentieth-century predecessor: their forms, particularly in technology, have changed, but their substance has not. In this succinct overview, historian Kenneth Weisbrode reminds us that to understand diplomatic transformations and their relevance to international affairs is to see diplomacy as an entrepreneurial art--and that, like most arts, it is adapted and re-adapted with reference to earlier forms. Diplomatic practice is always changing, and always continuous.

This edited volume addresses memory practices among youth, families, cultural workers, activists, and engaged citizens in Lebanon and Morocco. In making a claim for 'the social life of memory,' the introduction discusses a particular research field of memory studies, elaborating an approach to memory in terms of social production and engagement. The Arab Spring is evoked to draw attention to new rifts within and between history and remembrance in the regions of North Africa and the Middle East. As authoritarian forms of governance are challenged, official panoramic narratives are confronted with a multiplicity of memories of violent pasts. The eight chapters trace personal and public inventories of violence, trauma, and testimony, addressing memory in cinema, in newspapers and periodicals, as an experience of public environments, through transnational and diasporic mediums, and amongst younger generations.

This book explores the benefits and challenges of transnational history for the study of modern Ireland. In recent years the word "transnational" has become more and more conspicuous in history writing across the globe, with scholars seeking to move beyond national and local frameworks when investigating the past. Yet transnational approaches remain rare in Irish historical scholarship. This book argues that the broader contexts and scales associated with transnational history are ideally suited to open up new questions on many themes of critical importance to Ireland's past and present. They also provide an important means of challenging ideas of Irish exceptionalism. The chapters included here open up new perspectives on central debates and events in Irish history. They illuminate numerous transnational lives, follow flows and ties across Irish borders, and trace networks and links with Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Australia and the British Empire. This book provides specialists and students with examples of different concepts and ways of doing transnational history. Non-specialists will be interested in the new perspectives offered here on a rich variety of topics, particularly the two major events in modern Irish history, the Great Irish Famine and the 1916 Rising.

In this new study of George Eliot's fiction, textual attempts to imagine a coherent and unified national past are seen as producing a contradictory vision of Englishness. It is a historiographical national identity, constructed in the image of predominant, and conflicting, trends in the Victorian writing of history. The inherent uncertainty caused by the shift between different perceptions of English history leads, in the later fiction, to an abandonment of contemporaneous grand narratives. The consequence is a history that anticipates a more modern, radical philosophy of history.

This series aims at bridging the gap between historical theory and the study of historical memory as well as western and non-western concepts, for which this volume offers a particularly good example. It explores cultural differences in conceptualizing time and history in countries such as China, Japan, and India as well as pre-modern societies.

Jorn Rusen was Professor of Modern History at the Universities of Bochum and Bielefeld for many years. From 1994 to 1997 he was the Executive Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Study (Zif). Since 1997 he has been President of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities in Essen and Professor for General History and Historical Culture at the University of Witten-Herdecke.

More than a decade after the breakdown of the Soviet Empire and the reunification of Europe, historiographies and historical concepts still are very much apart. Though contacts became closer and Russian historians joined their Polish colleagues in the effort to take up western discussions and methodologies, there have been no common efforts yet for joint interpretations and no attempts to reach a common understanding of central notions and concepts. Exploring key concepts and different meanings in Western and East-European/Russian history, this volume offers an important contribution to such a comparative venture.

The Yiddish Historians and the Struggle for a Jewish History of the Holocaust identifies the Yiddish historians who created a distinctively Jewish approach to writing Holocaust history in the early years following World War II. Author Mark L. Smith explains that these scholars survived the Nazi invasion of Eastern Europe, yet they have not previously been recognized as a specific group who were united by a common research agenda and a commitment to sharing their work with the worldwide community of Yiddish-speaking survivors. These Yiddish historians studied the history of the Holocaust from the perspective of its Jewish victims, focusing on the internal aspects of daily life in the ghettos and camps under Nazi occupation and stressing the importance of relying on Jewish sources and the urgency of collecting survivor testimonies, eyewitness accounts, and memoirs. With an aim to dispel the accusations of cowardice and passivity that arose against the Jewish victims of Nazism, these historians created both a vigorous defense and also a daring offense. They understood that most of those who survived did so because they had engaged in a daily struggle against conditions imposed by the Nazis to hasten their deaths. The redemption of Jewish honor through this recognition is the most innovative contribution by the Yiddish historians. It is the area in which they most influenced the research agendas of nearly all subsequent scholars while also disturbing certain accepted truths, including the beliefs that the earliest Holocaust research focused on the Nazi perpetrators, that research on the victims commenced only in the early 1960s, and that Holocaust study developed as an academic discipline separate from Jewish history. Now, with writings in Yiddish journals and books in Europe, Israel, and North and South America having been recovered, listed, and given careful discussion, former ideas must yield before the Yiddish historians' published works. The Yiddish Historians and the Struggle for a Jewish History of the Holocaust is an eye-opening monograph that will appeal to Holocaust and Jewish studies scholars, students, and general readers.

Born in Germany, Georg Iggers escaped from Nazism to the United States in his adolescence where he became one of the most distinguished scholars of European intellectual history and the history of historiography. In his lectures, delivered all over the world, and in his numerous books, translated into many languages, Georg Iggers has reshaped historiography and indefatigably promoted cross-cultural dialogue. This volume reflects the profound impact of his oeuvre. Among the contributors are leading intellectual historians but also younger scholars who explore the various cultural contexts of modern historiography, focusing on changes of European and American scholarship, as well as non-Western historical writing in relation to developments in the West. Addressing these changes from a transnational perspective, this well-rounded volume offers an excellent introduction to the field, which will be of interest to both established historians and graduate students.

This study examines the historical and polemical writing of the late A.J.P. Taylor, Oxford don and television star. It provides a close examination of both historical interpretations and polemical arguments that appeared in books and essays for the popular press. The book covers Taylor's major historical and journalistic efforts from "The Italian Problem in European Diplomacy" in 1934 to "Beaverbrook" in 1972, looking for an explanation of his own judgement on his place within the historiographical community, that he was "the traitor at the gates." Other titles by Robert Cole include "Britain and the War of Words in Neutral Europe, 1939-45," "A Traveller's History of France" and "The Dissenting Tradition."

The Vietnam War ended over thirty years ago. Yet, it continues as a cultural reference point, shaping contemporary American society and culture, its impact felt in many different contexts. Vietnam precipitated a crisis in national self-confidence and a breakdown in political consensus out of which new ideological perspectives, including neo-conservatism, emerged. This book offers fresh perspectives on a defining event in "the American Century," examining its historical and political significance as well as its continuing cultural relevance.

Since the late-19th century, Japan has made remarkable strides in industrialization. Beginning with the economic vision of Miura Baien in the 18th century, and employing a detailed comparison with the West, this book delves into the economic thought of the scholars who played a pivotal role in Japan's modernization process. The author takes Fukuzawa Yukichi's theory of 'civilization' as the standard measure of Japan's modernization and compares it with differing visions from various critics whose research focused on rural poverty and social problems, such as Maeda Masana, early socialists, Yanagita Kunio and Kawakami Hajime. Further, the book explores new liberalism (Ishibashi Tanzan, Fukuda Tokuzo) and Marxism (Yamada Moritaro, Uno Kozo) in the 1920s and 1930s. After discussing the dilemmas faced by economists during wartime (Takata Yasuma, Ryu Shintaro, Shibata Kei), the author concludes this intellectual history with the country's post-1945 democratic reforms and their early demise. This book is valuable reading for students and researchers of Japan's intellectual history. However, due to the book's comparative perspective, as well as the universality of the modernization experience, it will also appeal to students and researchers of the history of economic thought and modern intellectual history.

This book explores women's editorial and salon activities in Southern Europe and provides a comparative view of their practices. It argues that women in Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece used their double role as editors and salonnieres to engage with foreign cultures, launch the careers of promising young authors and advocate for modernization and social change. By examining a neglected body of periodicals edited between 1860 and 1920, this book sets out to explore women's editorial agendas and their interest in creating a connection between salon life and the print press. What purpose did this connection serve? How did women editors use their periodicals and their salons to create opportunities for cross-cultural exchange? In what ways did women use their double role as editors and salonnieres to promote modernization and social progress in Southern Europe? By addressing these questions, this monograph contributes to the recent expansion of scholarship on nineteenth and twentieth-century periodicals and opens new avenues for theoretical reflection on European modernity. It also invites scholars and non-specialist readers to question the center vs. periphery model and to consider Southern European counties as cultural hubs in their own right.

* This collection builds a broad basis for a possible and necessary paradigmatic shift in the field of theater and performance historiography. * Would be recommended reading in for any undergraduate or master's level students studying theatre history, drama and dance. * The closest competitors do not explore the term 'entangled histories'. Therefore this collection breaks new ground by looking at this concept as a new paradigm in the field.

The British Sociological Association held a conference on the theme "Sociology and History". In 1964, E.H. Carr had called for an open frontier between the disciplines. This book examines the traffic across this frontier and in particular, what might be called the sociological uses of history.

"This book brings fresh light to previously marginalized subject in German history. It is an original approach, up-to-date written without scholarly jargon, easily accessible to students, both at undergraduate and graduate. It is highly focused departing from the usual "histories" of a single country arguing for the "two German states", and the three political systems."- Prof. Dr. Laszlo Kurti, Institute of Applied Social Sciences, University of Miskolc, Hungary This book contrasts three very different incarnations of Germany - the totalitarian Third Reich, the communist German Democratic Republic, and the democratic Federal Republic of Germany up to 1990 - in terms of their experiences with and responses to nonconformity, dissent, opposition, and resistance and the role played by those factors in each case. Although even innocent nonconformity came with a price in all three systems and in the post-war occupation zones, the price was the highest in Nazi Germany. . It is worth stressing that what qualifies as nonconformity and dissent depends on the social and political context and, thus, changes over time. Like those in active dissent, opposition, or resistance, nonconformists are rebels (whether they are conscious of it or not), and have repeatedly played a role in pushing for change, whether through reform of legislation, transformation of the public's attitudes, or even regime change.