Museums for Peace: In Search of History, Memory and Change highlights the multiple, often conflicting and entangled representations and goals at diverse peace museums and other sites around the world. Hailing from a variety of cultural and professional backgrounds, the contributing authors explore what sort of messages museums for peace are promoting, teaching and propagating, and what messages they are rejecting and opposing, suppressing and censoring. Investigating how institutions interact with political and cultural forces, the volume demonstrates that some museums resist authoritative tropes to reveal silenced histories, including peace histories, while others reinforce hegemonic narratives. Several contributions to the book reveal how the design of space, the choices to include or exclude artifacts, the presentation, and ‘performativity’ support or detract from museums’ vision and mission. Authors also consider the value of museums for peace for the health and well-being of humanity and the environment. Museums for Peace will appeal to academics and students in museum studies, heritage studies, peace studies, memory studies, social justice and human rights. Those working in cultural studies and trauma studies will also find this volume valuable.

The outbreak of the First World War saw an upsurge of patriotism. The Church generally saw the war as justified, and many clergy encouraged the men in their congregations to join the army. There was, however, already a strong strand of anti-war sentiment, opposed to the dominant theology of the Establishment. This was partly based on traditional Christian pacifism, but included other religious, social and political influences. Campaigners and conscientious objectors voiced a growing concern about the huge human cost of a conflict seemingly endlessly bogged down in the mud of the Flanders poppy fields. 'Subversive Peacemakers' recounts the stories of a strong and increasingly organised opposition to war, from peace groups to poets, from preachers to politicians, from women to working men, all of whom struggled to secure peace in a militarised and fragmenting society. Clive Barrett demonstrates that the Church of England provided an unlikely setting for much of this war resistance. Barrett masterfully narrates the story of the peace movement, bringing together stories of war-resistance until now lost, disregarded or undervalued. The people involved, as well as the dramatic events of the conflict themselves, are seen in a new light.

"The Role of Museums in the Transformation of a Culture of War and Violence to a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence": papers based on the 7th conference of the International Network of Museums for Peace, Barcelona Peace Resource Center, May 2011.