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Books > History > Theory & methods
This study analyzes history as performance: as the interaction of actors, plays, stages and enactments. By this, it examines women's politics in Habsburg Galicia around 1900: a Polish woman active in the peasant movement, a Ukrainian feminist, and a Jewish Zionist. It shows how the movements constructed essentialistically regarded collectives, experience as a medially comprehensible form of credibility, and a historically based inevitability of change, and legitimized participation and intervention through social policy and educational practices. Traits shared by the movements included the claim to interpretive sovereignty, the ritualization of participation, and the establishment of truths about past and future.
This book places the events and issues of the Revolutions of 1688, which deposed the Catholic James II and enthroned the Protestant William and Mary, in their broad historical context. Beginning with the dynastic revolution in England, it examines in turn the dependent kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland, the American colonies, the United Provinces, and the continental European background. Themes explored include the role of the Whigs in William of Orange's success, the shift in Tory opinion, the part played by the Scottish nobility, Ireland's reduction to colony status, the evolution of Dutch foreign and domestic policy, and transatlantic repercussions. The book concludes with an examination of 1688 and its place in the Whig theory of history. Drawing on the expertise of an international team of scholars, the volume makes an important contribution to the historiographical assessment of the revolutions of 1688 and their profound impact on subsequent history.
Across half a century, from the division of Germany through the end of the Cold War, a cohort of thirty women from the small German town of Schoenebeck in what used to be the GDR circulated among themselves a remarkable collective archive of their lives: a Rundbrief, or bulletin, containing hundreds of letters and photographs. This book draws on that unprecedented resource, complemented by a set of interviews, to paint a rich portrait of "ordinary" life in postwar Germany. It shows how these women-whether reflecting on their experiences as Nazi-era schoolchildren or witnessing reunification-were united by their complex interactions with official power and their commitment to sustaining a shared German identity as they made the most of their everyday lives in both the GDR and the Federal Republic.
Why do Froissart's Chroniques still find enthusiastic readers six hundred years after they were written? In this fresh reading Peter Ainsworth shows that their strength lies as much in their textual richness and complexity as in their appealing subject matter: the exploits of French and English noblemen during the Hundred Years War. A record of international chivalry that pretends to the title of `history', the Chroniques are in fact neither history nor romance, though they partake a little of both and are still valued by scholars as a historical source. Rather they constitute a variegated and enthralling narrative of vast proportions, veering from the historical to the outrageously fictional, from the journalistic travelogue to the moral tale, from self-effacement in the service of impartiality to unshamed self-celebration.
Auerbach was one of the foremost literary critics of the 20th century whose work has relevance within the fields of literary criticism, historiography and postcolonial theory. The opening chapter of this book explains how he understood the task of interpretation and his role as an interpreter. The following chapter outlines the important phases in his life with reference to the writers and thinkers who influenced him in his thinking and practice. The central chapters of the book focus on specific themes in his work: the historical grounding of the 'figural' imagination; the relation between the secular and the sacred; the emergence of tragic realism; and the notion of 'inner history' as a defining feature of early 20th-cenntury modernism. The final two chapters focus on broader issues relating to the development of Auerbach's understanding of the development of an educated readership within Europe and of his concerns regarding the emergence of what he terms 'a world literature'.
In the last few decades, professional historians have raised important questions regarding the theories, methods and practices of history extant since the earliest times. Oral and Visual History have assumed a new importance in our times. This book presents seven essays on history as it can be practised productively in India. It is pedagogically important to students and teachers of history in India. Meant primarily for undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students, it will also be appreciated by the lay public. Readers will certainly rethink their historical perspectives in response to the issues of theory raised critically in this book. This book is co-published with Aakar Books, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the print versions of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
This volume brings together important articles from the Cambridge historian A. G. Hopkins and reflect the enlargement and evolution of historical studies during the last half century. The essays cover four of the principal historiographical developments of the period: the extraordinary revolution that has led to the writing of non-Western indigenous history; the revitalization of new types of imperial history; the now ubiquitous engagement with global history, including a reinterpretation of American Empire, and the current revival of economic history after several decades of neglect.
Of the many innovative approaches to emerge during the twenty-first century, one of the most productive has been the interdisciplinary nexus of theories and methodologies broadly defined as "the study of emotions." While this conceptual toolkit has generated significant insights, it has overwhelmingly focused on emotions as linguistic and semantic phenomena. This edited volume looks instead to the material aspects of emotion in German culture, encompassing the body, literature, photography, aesthetics, and a variety of other themes.
This book shares little-known facts from and excerpts of primary source documents to correct popular misconceptions about Ancient Rome and to show how those misconceptions became widespread. Roman personalities and history have always had a larger-than-life profile in American popular culture, but most people think of this ancient civilization as merely decadent, cruel, and elitist. Most of our stereotypical conceptions of the empire and its people, however, are wrong. This book corrects popular misconceptions about the ancient Roman world, thus making ancient history relevant and accessible to modern readers and allowing modern critics of American politics and society to draw accurate comparisons. Each chapter discusses how a particular misconception developed, spread, and evolved into what we now believe to be the historical truth. Topics discussed include crucifixion, the destruction of Carthage, Julius Caesar's last words, and Roman hygiene. Excerpts from primary source documents provide evidence of both the rise of the historical fictions and the truths behind the myths. Discusses how historical misconceptions about Ancient Rome proliferated Explores a historical truth that runs counter to a misconception in individual chapters Helps readers to understand how misconceptions developed and provides evidence supporting our understanding of the facts in the form of excerpts from primary source documents Direct readers to additional print and electronic information resources
The post-apartheid era in South Africa has, in the space of nearly two decades, experienced a massive memory boom, manifest in a plethora of new memorials and museums and in the renaming of streets, buildings, cities and more across the country. This memorialisation is intricately linked to questions of power, liberation and public history in the making and remaking of the South African nation. Ali Khangela Hlongwane and Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu analyse an array of these liberation heritage sites, including the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum, the June 16, 1976 Interpretation Centre, the Apartheid Museum and the Mandela House Museum, foregrounding the work of migrant workers, architects, visual artists and activists in the practice of memorialisation. As they argue, memorialisation has been integral to the process of state and nation formation from the pre-colonial era through the present day.
What does obscene mean? What does it have to say about the means through which meaning is produced and received in literary, artistic and, more broadly, social acts of representation and interaction? Early modern France and Europe faced these questions not only in regard to the political, religious and artistic reformations for which the Renaissance stands, but also in light of the reconfiguration of its mediasphere in the wake of the invention of the printing press. The Politics of Obscenity brings together researchers from Europe and the United States in offering scholars of early modern Europe a detailed understanding of the implications and the impact of obscene representations in their relationship to the Gutenberg Revolution which came to define Western modernity.
This book focuses on the interpretations of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit that have proved influential over the past decades. Current readers of Hegel's Phenomenology face an abundance of interpretive literature devoted to this difficult text and confront a plethora of different philosophical presuppositions, research strategies and hermeneutic efforts.To enable a better orientation within the interpretative landscape, the essays in this volume summarize, contextualize and critically comment on the issues and currents in contemporary Phenomenology scholarship. There is a common set of three questions that each of the contributions seeks to answer: (1) What kind of text is The Phenomenology of Spirit? (2) What do the different strategies of interpretation conceptually bring to the text? (3) How do different interpreters justify their verdict on whether the Phenomenology is still a viable project?
Focusing on why neoliberalism gained such a unique strong hold in the United States, philosopher Bruce N. Waller in this book traces the source back to the country's origins and the entwined core values of the nation's Founding Fathers. Their extreme commitment to private property rights (as evinced in a unanimous vote for the Constitution's Fugitive Slave Clause), an aversion to widespread democracy, and a deep belief in the uniquely just nature of their new country together created the ideal conditions for neoliberalism's growth and success. Waller also provides a clear analysis of the moral and psychological conditions so hospitable to neoliberalism, including the compatibility of a faith in the "invisible hand" of the free market with the widespread belief - which remains prevalent in the United States - that the world is just and people generally get what they deserve. Waller examines how the ideal of moral responsibility in the United States provides the core belief that holds in place the basic principles of American neoliberalism. The book ends by shedding light on the deleterious effects of neoliberalism and shows that its replacement requires not only the amelioration of enormous inequity in wealth, but also the opportunity for all citizens to exercise autonomy, control, and critical thought in their lives and workplaces. Key Features Traces neoliberal values deep into American history and culture Uses empirical psychological research to explain the broad appeal of neoliberalism Describes the strong interconnected neoliberal value system of belief in a just world, personal responsibility, and radical individualism, and their combined influence on American culture Examines the influence of neoliberal values on the American criminal justice and educational systems
This book explores the demise of the grand narrative of European modernity. That once commanding narrative located the meaning of the past in the present and the meaning of the present in an ever-receding future. Today, instead, the present defines both the past and the future. The 'contemporary' has replaced 'modern' and 'post-modern' self-understandings. The times of the past and the future have been transformed into versions of 'now' while the present has acquired its own history. History of the Present describes the emergence of this 'contemporary' historical consciousness across a wide spectrum of cultural phenomena ranging from historiography to heritage and museum studies, and from the globalization of the novel to the rise of science fiction. The culture of the 'contemporary' appears particularly clearly in the merging of high and low culture along with art and fashion. This book will appeal to scholars of sociology, cultural and social theory, museum and heritage studies, and literary history and criticism.
This volume explores the multifarious representational strategies used by contemporary writers to textualise memory and its friction areas through literary practices. By focusing on contemporary narratives in English from 1990 to the present, the essays in the collection delve into both the treatment of memory in literature and the view of literature as a medium of memory, paying special attention to major controversies attending the representation and (re)construction of individual, cultural and collective memories in the literary narratives published during the last few decades. By analysing texts written by authors of such diverse origins as Great Britain, South-Korea, the USA, Cuba, Australia, India, as well as Native-American Indian and African-American writers, the contributors to the collection analyse a good range of memory frictions -in connection with melancholic mourning, immigration, diaspora, genocide, perpetrator guilt, dialogic witnessing, memorialisation practices, inherited traumatic memories, sexual abuse, prostitution, etc.- through the recourse to various disciplines -such as psychoanalysis, ethics, (bio)politics, space theories, postcolonial studies, narratology, gender studies-, resulting in a book that is expected to make a ground-breaking contribution to a field whose possibilities have yet to be fully explored.
Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was the product of the rich tradition of the Scottish Enlightenment but the book's fame immediately spread across the whole of Europe. This book looks at the long journey of Smith's ideas from Scotland to peninsular Spain, reconstructing in detail the reception, adaptation, interpretation, and application of Smith's central concepts from 1777 up to 1840. In light of methodological advances during the last two decades in the history of economic thought and the studies on the late Spanish Enlightenment and early Liberalism, the book tackles a series of significant issues and gaps in the historiography. In particular: this book sheds new light on the role of France as an intermediate step as the ideas spread from Britain southwards; the analysis draws not just on translations but also handwritten materials, book reviews, syntheses, summaries, plagiarism and rebuttals; a wide range of methods of dissemination are considered including the printing press and periodicals, parliamentary debates, academic chairs and societies; the role of individual translators and agents is given due prominence; the political interpretations of the Wealth of Nations and the ways in which the book was incorporated into the work of Spanish economists in the decades following publication are also considered. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on the reception of Smith's Wealth of Nations, studies of the Spanish Enlightenment and history of economic thought more broadly.
Based on rigorous film-analysis and historical comparisons, this book explorers the narrative filmmakers create by summarising complex historical issues, but which can lead to misconceptions about the past. Analysis of films such as Alexander Nevsky, Kryzact (1960)-also known as Knights of the Teutonic Order, The Black Knight, El Cid, The Great Warrior Skanderberg, Braveheart, The Seventh Seal, Spartacus, Gladiator, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Saladin, Kingdom of Heaven and 300 offers students a broad range of examples to consider alongside the history of antiquity and medieval Europe. This book explores how the past is portrayed in the present and offers students and general readers a framework to unpick 'historical' films to see how the facts are woven into fiction.
This book addresses the shifting status of the humanities through a national case study spanning two centuries. The societal function of the humanities is considered from the flexible perspective of knowledge politics in order to historicize notions of impact and intellectual organization that tend to be taken for granted. The focus on modern Sweden enables an extended but still empirically coherent historical analysis, inviting critical comparisons with the growing literature on the history of the humanities from around the world. In the Swedish case, the humanities were instrumental to the construction of modern societal institutions, political movements, and professional education in the second half of the 19th century, while in the 20th century, the sense of future-making shifted towards science and medicine, and later technology and economy. The very rationale of the humanities was thus put under pressure as their social contract required novel negotiations. Their state and connections to society were nevertheless of a complex and ambiguous character, as is demonstrated by this volume whose contributions explore the many faces and places of the modern humanities.
This book examines the legacies and depictions of monarchs in an international context, focusing on both self-representation and commemoration by others. Spanning ancient India through to eighteenth-century Russia, this volume offers several case studies to demonstrate trends and patterns in how different societies chose to commemorate and remember their rulers in a variety of mediums. Contributions highlight several lesser known rulers, alongside more famous ones such as Henry VIII of England, to develop a deeper understanding of how memory and monarchy functioned when drawn together. Memorialising Premodern Monarchs brings to the fore the importance of memory and memorialisation when considering the legacies and records of past rulers and their societies, and allows a deeper reflection on how these rulers live on through the historical record and popular culture.
Ancient critics called Herodotus `the father of history'. He was in fact the first to research and verify the events of the past (historie) and then to relate their consequences to the present. His Histories focus on the struggle between Persia and Greece from the time of Croesus to that of Xerxes, though frequent digressions provide a wealth of information on customs and cultures of peoples foreign to the Greeks. This new paperback edition of How and Wells's standard commentary (in print continuously since 1912) deals with the first four books (out of nine), covering Persia from Croesus to Cyrus, up to Darius' expedition against the Scythians and Libyans. In addition to the detailed commentary, aimed primarily at students, it includes short introductory summaries of certain sections of text, a full introduction describing Herodotus' life and composition of the Histories, and fifteen appendices dealing with problems concerning the text and content of these four books.
Information and communications technology is now an essential tool for the historian and for anyone engaging in historical study. Today's 'history workstation' includes computers, modems, scanners, printers, digital cameras and a wide range of software applications to access the World Wide Web and to analyse historical sources. Sonja Cameron and Sarah Richardson provide a clear, jargon-free introduction which demystifies the computing skills needed for historical research. This step-by-step guide covers all aspects of history and computing including: - presentation: from word-processing an article which conforms to scholarly protocols to presenting a slide show - history and the World Wide Web: hints and tips on accessing and evaluating the wide range of historical material available on the internet - databases: a clear introduction which guides you through the process of creating your own database of historical sources - spreadsheets: a lucid explanation of basic quantitative methods, data analysis, graphing and charting - digitised text and images: help on analysing digitised text, creating images and web pages. The text is supported throughout by worked examples using historical sources, comprehensive illustrations, a detailed glossary and signposts to further study where appropriate. Using Computers in History is an indispensable aid to all those studying and researching history. Students, family and local historians, and history enthusiasts will all find this book informative and easy-to-use.
This book examines 21st-century South African autobiographical writing that addresses the nation's socio-political realities, both past and present. The texts in focus represent and depict a South Africa caught in the midst of contradictory and competing images of the 'Rainbow Nation'. Arguing that recent memoirs question and criticize the illusion of a united nation, the study shows how these texts reveal the flaws and shortcomings not only of the apartheid past but of contemporary South Africa. It encompasses a broad range of autobiographical works, largely published since 2009, that engage with South Africa's past, present and future. At its centre is the quest for space and belonging, and this book investigates who can comfortably 'belong' in South Africa in its post-apartheid, post-Truth and Reconciliation, post-Mbkei and post-Zuma state.
Looks at a range of different sources, both institutional and private, usual and unusual, that can be used in writing the history of psychiatry and interrogates and analyses how they can be used so that the reader can get a sense of the range and complexity of the subject. Every student of history has to engage with sources and the history of medicine is very solidly popular - it will be useful for students to see how historians use different sources to interrogate one aspect of the history of medicine. There is nothing out there that discusses the range and breadth of sources available for the study of such a subject that is often difficult to interrogate at other than an institutional level, but which is becoming increasingly important.
Where nostalgia was once dismissed a wistful dream of a never-never land, the academic focus has shifted to how pieces of the past are assembled as the elements in alternative political thinking as well as in artistic expression. The creative use of the past points to the complexities of the conceptualization of nostalgia, while entering areas where the humanities meet the art world and commerce. This collection of essays shows how this bond is politically and socially visible on different levels, from states to local communities, along with creative developments in art, literature and religious practice. Bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, the book offers analyses from diverse theoretical perspectives, united by an interest in the political and cultural representations of the past in South-East Europe from a long-term perspective. By emphasising how the relationship between loss and creative inspiration are intertwined in cultural production and history writing, these essays cover themes across South-East Europe and provide an insight into how specific agents - intellectuals, politicians, artists - have represented the past and have looked towards the future.
This collection of essays by Indonesian and foreign contributors offers new and highly original analyses of the mass violence in Indonesia which began in 1965 and its aftermath. Fifty years on from one the largest genocides of the twentieth century, they probe the causes, dynamics and legacies of this violence through the use of a wide range of sources and different scholarly lenses. Chapter 12 of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com. |
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