GRASSROOTS MEMORIALS

The Politics of Memorializing Traumatic Death

“This book is the definitive work on the political meanings a nd performativedynamics of grassroots memorials, a phenomenon that has increased in Western culture and that now expands globally…The topics discussed in the volume are of enduring importance and reflect issues of ultimate concern—death, memory, suffering, trauma, and the politics of memorialization. A great strength of the book is the diversity of relevant subjects analyzed by a range of international scholars and the interdisciplinary perspectives that they present.”  •  Daniel Wojcik, University of Oregon

more

BEYOND PLEASURE

Cultures of Modern Asceticism

Asceticism, so it is argued in this volume, is a modern category. The ubiquitous cult of the body, of fitness and diet equally evokes the ongoing success of ascetic practices and beliefs. Nostalgic memories of hardship and discipline in the army, youth movements or boarding schools remain as present as the fashionable irritation with the presumed modern-day laziness. In the very texture of contemporary culture, age-old asceticism proves to be remarkably alive. Old ascetic forms were remoulded to serve modern desires for personal authenticity, an authenticity that disconnected asceticism in the course of the nineteenth century from two traditions that had underpinned it since classical antiquity: the public, republican austerity of antiquity and the private, religious asceticism of Christianity. Exploring various aspects such as the history of the body, of aesthetics, science, and social thought in several European countries (Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria and Belgium), the authors show that modern asceticism remains a deeply ambivalent category. Apart from self-realisation, classical and religious examples continue to haunt the ascetic mind.

more

MAX LIEBERMANN AND INTERNATIONAL MODERNISM

An Artist's Career from Empire to Third Reich

Although Max Liebermann (1847–1935) began his career as a realist painter depicting scenes of rural labor, Dutch village life, and the countryside, by the turn of the century, his paintings had evolved into colorful images of bourgeois life and leisure that critics associated with French impressionism. During a time of increasing German nationalism, his paintings and cultural politics sparked numerous aesthetic and political controversies. His eminent career and his reputation intersected with the dramatic and violent events of modern German history from the Empire to the Third Reich. The Nazis’ persecution of modern and Jewish artists led to the obliteration of Liebermann from the narratives of modern art, but this volume contributes to the recent wave of scholarly literature that works to recover his role and his oeuvre from an international perspective.

more

RUSSIA BEFORE THE “RADIANT FUTURE”

Essays in Modern History, Culture, and Society

One of the major historians of prerevolutionary Russia has collected in this volume some of his most important essays. Written over a number of years, these pioneering works have been revised and updated and are complemented by others being published for the first time. Thematically, they cover major subjects in Imperial Russian history and in historical writing, such as ideas and their role in historical change; the intelligentsia, the nobility, and peasant society; and historiography. The twelve essays raise cardinal questions about current scholarship on Russian history before the upheavals of 1917 and offer original interpretations that are of interest to the educated layman as well as the professional historian.

more

THE 1926/27 SOVIET POLAR CENSUS EXPEDITIONS

“This a much-welcome addition to the modern English-language reference library on Siberian indigenous people and the first book-size effort to address their plight and status from the perspective of the Russian archival statistical and documentary records of the early 1900s. It is an outcome of a monumental collaborative project.”  •  Igor Krupnik, Smithsonian Institution

more

AFTER THE EVENT

The Transmission of Grievous Loss in Germany, China and Taiwan

"This is a remarkably creative work of scholarship. The stories told in it are at once personal and analytical, local and transnational, empirical and imaginative; the horizon of comparison these stories cover is both unusual and original. The result is a creative combination of intimate historical knowledge and comparative historical narratives, acute observations of historical forces and moving accounts of victims of historical injustice – there is simply nothing like this in the existing literature."  •  Heonik Kwon, London School of Economics

more

RACISM IN THE MODERN WORLD

Historical Perspectives on Cultural Transfer and Adaptation

"This volume ranges widely and creatively across time and space not only to investigate the history of racism, but also to interrogate its connections with related but distinct forms of oppression and subjugation. In almost every instance, the essays here reach a very high level—much higher than is typical for volumes of this kind."  •  Christopher Leslie Brown, Columbia University

more

CHILDREN, FAMILIES, AND STATES

Time Policies of Childcare, Preschool, and Primary Education in Europe

"This is a very strong collection of essays by some of the top scholars in the field of European social policy, including both historians and social scientists. The individual chapters are richly detailed, well written, and informative, documenting a wide range of thinking and practices about children, families, and states over more than two centuries.”  •  Sonya Michel, University of Maryland

more

DIVERSITY AND DISSENT

Negotiating Religious Difference in Central Europe, 1500-1800

Early modern Central Europe was the continent’s most decentralized region politically and its most diverse ethnically and culturally. With the onset of the Reformation, it also became Europe’s most religiously divided territory and potentially its most explosive in terms of confessional conflict and war. Focusing on the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this volume examines the tremendous challenge of managing confessional diversity in Central Europe between 1500 and 1800. Addressing issues of tolerance, intolerance, and ecumenism, each chapter explores a facet of the complex dynamic between the state and the region’s Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Utraquist, and Jewish communities. The development of religious toleration—one of the most debated questions of the early modern period—is examined here afresh, with careful consideration of the factors and conditions that led to both confessional concord and religious violence.

more

TRANSREGIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES IN EUROPE AND BEYOND

Experiences Since the Middle Ages

“The fundamental strength of this anthology lies precisely in its hubris. It invites the reader to put on a new and different set of glasses that reveal connections between kinship and historical turning points in ways never really considered before. Kinship takes on an agency that discombobulates the imperial and national geographies most historians take for granted.”  •  BesharaDoumani, University of California, Berkeley

more

SIBLING RELATIONS AND THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF EUROPEAN KINSHIP, 1300-1900

“The study of kinship remains a lively concern among historians, sociologists, and anthropologists. One of the very attractive features of the volume is its crossdisciplinary representation from these fields but also from literature… the mix of senior and junior scholars.”  •  Mary Lindemann, University of Miami

more

FRANCE IN THE AGE OF ORGANIZATION

Factory, Home and Nation from the 1920s to Vichy

"This book will change the way that historians think about the recent history of France. It challenges not only conventional narratives of the origins and nature of the French 'economic miracle', but the very categories that have been used to make sense of the social, economic and cultural history of theinterwar years, Vichy and beyond.  No longer will it be possible for
historians to use terms such as 'modernisation', 'technocracy' or even 'expertise' without careful reflection on their problematic meaning and their context. All that in a brilliantly written, accessible book"  •  Kevin Passmore, Cardiff University

more

THE MASCULINE WOMAN IN WEIMAR GERMANY

“The author makes an important contribution to the scholarship in that she has worked through the printed material systematically to give an authoritative account of a female sub-culture under the republic. As far as I am aware, she is the first to do so in the English language. The book therefore fills an important gap in Weimar cultural/gender studies.”  •  Anthony McElligott, University of Limerick

more

THE DEVIL'S CAPTAIN

Ernst Jünger in Nazi Paris, 1941-1944

Author of Nazi Paris, a Choice Academic Book of the Year, Allan Mitchell has researched a companion volume concerning the acclaimed and controversial German author Ernst Jünger who, if not the greatest German writer of the twentieth century, certainly was the most controversial. His service as a military officer during the occupation of Paris, where his principal duty was to mingle with French intellectuals such as Jean Cocteauand with visiting German celebrities like Martin Heidegger, was at the center of disputes concerning his career. Spending more than three years in the French capital, he regularly recorded in a journal revealing impressions of Parisian life and also managed to establish various meaningful social contacts, with the intriguing Sophie Ravoux for one. By focusing on this episode, the most important of Jünger’s adult life, the author brings to bear a wide reading of journals and correspondence to reveal Jünger’s professional and personal experience in wartime and thereafter. This new perspective on the war years adds significantly to our understanding of France's darkest hour.

more

THE KINGS AND THE PAWNS

Collaboration in Byelorussia during World War II

For many years, the history of Byelorussia under Nazi occupation was written primarily from the perspective of the resistance movement. This movement, a reaction to the brutal occupation policies, was very strong indeed. Still, as the author shows, there existed in Byelorussia a whole web of local institutions and organizations which, some willingly, others with reservations, participated in the implementation of various aspects of occupation policies. The very sensitivity of the topic of collaboration has prevented researchers from approaching it for many years, not least because in the former Soviet territories ideological considerations have played an important role in preserving the topic’s “untouchable” status. Focusing on the attitude of German authorities toward the Byelorussians, marked by their anti-Slavic and particularly anti-Byelorussian prejudices on the one hand and the motives of Byelorussian collaborators on the other, the author clearly shows that notwithstanding the postwar trend to marginalize the phenomenon of collaboration or to silence it altogether, the local collaboration in Byelorussia was clearly visible and pervaded all spheres of life under the occupation.

more

THE LEGACIES OF TWO WORLD WARS

European Societies in the Twentieth Century

The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 was done mainly, if one is to believe US policy at the time, to liberate the people of Iraq from an oppressive dictator. However, the many protests in London, New York, and other cities imply that the policy of “making the world safe for democracy” was not shared by millions of people in many western countries. Thinking about this controversy inspired the present volume, which takes a closer look at how society responded to the outbreaks and conclusions of the First and Second World Wars. In order to examine this relationship between the conduct of wars and public opinion, leading scholars trace the moods and attitudes of the people of four Western countries (Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy) before, during, and after the crucial moments of the two major conflicts of the twentieth century. Focusing less on politics and more on how people experienced the wars, this volume shows how the distinction between enthusiasm for war, and concern about its consequences, is rarely clear cut.

more

BETWEEN PRAGUE SPRING AND FRENCH MAY

Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960-1980

“Too often the protests of the 1960s are narrowly confined to the events of one year – 1968 – or to the same familiar set of countries.  This welcome book offers broader vistas that includes European countries, big and small, from both sides of the Iron Curtain.  In doing so, the authors allow us to transcend worn national narratives and reflect more broadly on how a whole continent was changed by the promise of global change and revolution.  This book is thus an important addition for anyone seriously studying Europe in the postwar period."  •  James C. Kennedy, Author of Building New Babylon: The Netherlands in the 1960s, Professor of Dutch History since the Middle Ages, University of Amsterdam

more

BETWEEN THE AVANT-GARDE AND THE EVERYDAY

Subversive Politics in Europe from 1957 to the Present

“The book engages important and intriguing questions about culture and politics and makes a contribution to contemporary history. The essays fit together well, with a nice trajectory that includes a chronological element. The topics engaged are generally “fresh” and new, but I was also impressed by the rich historiography...”  •  Jonathan Petropoulos, Claremont McKenna College

more

STATE AND MINORITIES IN COMMUNIST EAST GERMANY

Based on interviews and the voluminous materials in the archives of the SED, the Stasi and central and regional authorities, this volume focuses on several contrasting minorities (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, “guest” workers from Vietnam and Mozambique, football fans, punks, and skinheads)and their interaction with state and party bodies during Erich Honecker’s rule over the communist system. It explores how they were able to resist persecution and surveillance by instruments of the state, thus illustrating the limits on the power of the post-totalitarian East German dictatorship and shedding light on the notion of authority as social practice.

more

PROTEST BEYOND BORDERS

Contentious Politics in Europe since 1945

“This is a wide ranging and informative study…The essays are well presented , intrinsically interesting.”  •  Ruth Kinna, Loughborough University

more

Aspasia

The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women's and Gender History

Volume 5

Aspasia is an international peer-reviewed yearbook dedicated to publishing the best new scholarship in women’s and gender history of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe (CESEE). It aims to transform European women’s and gender history by expanding comparative research on women and gender to all parts of Europe, creating a European history of women and gender that encompasses more than the traditional Western European perspective. Aspasia particularly emphasizes research that examines the ways in which gender intersects with other categories of social organization and advances work that explores transnational aspects of women’s and gender histories within, to, and from CESEE. The journal also provides an important outlet for the publication of articles by scholars working in CESEE itself. Accordingly, contributions cover a rich variety of topics and historical eras, as well as a wide range of methodologies and approaches to the history of women and gender.

more

Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques

Volume 37, Number 2, special issue on “Gender, History, and Heritage in Ireland and Scotland: Medieval to Modern”

Historical Reflections/Reflections Historiques has established a well-deserved reputation for publishing high quality articles of wide-ranging interest for over thirty years. The journal, which publishes articles in both English and French, is committed to exploring history in an interdisciplinary framework and with a comparative focus. Historical approaches to art, literature, and the social sciences; the history of mentalities and intellectual movements; the terrain where religion and history meet: these are the subjects to which Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques is devoted.

more

Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society

Volume 3, Number 1, special issue on “Teaching about Islam and the Muslim World: Textbooks and Real Curriculum”

JEMMS explores perceptions of society as constituted and conveyed in processes of learning and educational media. The focus is on various types of texts (such as textbooks, museums, memorials, films) and their institutional, political, social, economic, and cultural contexts. The construction of collective memory and conceptions of space, the production of meaning, image formation, forms of representation, and perceptions of the "self" and the "other", as well as processes of identity construction (ethnic, national, regional, religious, institutional, gender) are of particular interest. Special importance is given to the significance of educational media for social cohesion and conflict. The journal is international and interdisciplinary and welcomes empirically-based contributions from the humanities and the social sciences as well as theoretical and methodological studies.

more