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Catastrophe and Catharsis
Destroying human habitat and taking human lives, disasters, be they natural, man-made, or a combination, threaten large populations, even entire nations and societies. They also disrupt the existing order and cause discontinuity in our sense of self and our perceptions of the world. To restore order, not only must human beings be rescued and affected areas rebuilt, but the reality of the catastrophe must also be transformed into narrative. The essays in this collection examine representations of disaster in literature, film, and mass media in German and international contexts, exploring the nexus between disruption and recovery through narrative from the eighteenth century to the present. To...
The Talk of the Town
The Talk of the Town explores everyday communication in a sixteenth-century small town and the role it played in the circulation of information across and within early modern communities. It does so through the lens of the St Gall linen trader Johannes Rütiner (1501-1556/7) and his notebooks, the Commentationes; a little-known source which offers unusual insights into an oral world normally hidden from view. A close reading of Rütiner's notes on hundreds of conversations reveals what the inhabitants of a sixteenth-century town talked about, through which channels such information reached them, and how it was then processed, shared, criticized, contradicted, and employed as a means to forge and strengthen social bonds. By bringing together the histories of sociability and information, reconstructing Ru?tiner's network of informants and probing a broad variety of exchanges-jokes, gossip, news, and tales of the past-Carla Roth rethinks both what constituted valuable information in the sixteenth century and who was able to provide it, and argues that the circulation of information remained inseparably linked to the social dynamics of face-to-face exchanges long into the age of print.
Climate Change and Cultural Transition in Europe
Climate Change and Cultural Transition in Europe is an account of Europe’s share in the making of global warming, which considers the past and future of climate-society interactions. Contributors include: Clara Brandi, Rüdiger Glaser, Iso Himmelsbach, Claudia Kemfert, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Claus Leggewie, Franz Mauelshagen, Geoffrey Parker, Christian Pfister, Dirk Riemann, Lea Schmitt, Jörn Sieglerschmidt, Markus Vogt, and Steffen Vogt.
The Culture of the Case
How artists in twentieth-century Germany adapted the idea of the medical or legal case as an artistic strategy to push to the fore sexualities, scandals, and crimes that were otherwise concealed. In early twentieth-century Germany, the artistic avant-garde borrowed procedures from the medical and juridical realms to expose and debate matters that society preferred remain hidden and unspoken. Frederic J. Schwartz explores how the evocation or creation of a “case” provided artists with a means to engage themes that ranged from blasphemy to Lustmord, or sexual murder. Shedding light on the case as a cultural form, Schwartz shows its profound effect on artists and the ways it dovetailed with...
Historical Disaster Experiences
Historical disaster research is still a young field. This book discusses the experiences of natural disasters in different cultures, from Europe across the Near East to Asia. It focuses on the pre-industrial era and on the question of similarities, differences and transcultural dynamics in the cultural handling of natural disasters. Which long-lasting cultural patterns of perception, interpretation and handling of disasters can be determined? Have specific types of disasters changed the affected societies? What have people learned from disasters and what not? What adaptation and coping strategies existed? Which natural, societal and economic parameters play a part? The book not only reveals the historical depth of present practices, but also reveals possible comparisons that show globalization processes, entanglements and exchanges of ideas and practices in pre-modern times.
Catastrophe, Gender and Urban Experience, 1648-1920
As Enlightenment notions of predictability, progress and the sense that humans could control and shape their environments informed European thought, catastrophes shook many towns to the core, challenging the new world view with dramatic impact. This book concentrates on a period marked by passage from a society of scarcity to one of expenditure and accumulation, from ranks and orders to greater social mobility, from traditional village life to new bourgeois and even individualistic urbanism. The volume employs a broad definition of catastrophe, as it examines how urban communities conceived, adapted to, and were transformed by catastrophes, both natural and human-made. Competing views of gen...
Sea and Land
Sea and Land provides an in-depth environmental history of the Caribbean to ca 1850, with a coda that takes the story into the modern era. It explores the mixing, movement, and displacement of peoples and the parallel ecological mixing of animals, plants, microbes from Africa, Europe, elsewhere in the Americas, and as far away as Asia. It examines first the arrival of Native American to the region and the environmental transformations that followed. It then turns to the even more dramatic changes that accompanied the arrival of Europeans and Africans in the fifteenth century. Throughout it argues that the constant arrival, dispersal, and mingling of new plants and animals gave rise to a creo...
Scholarly Virtues in Nineteenth-Century Sciences and Humanities
Reflecting a growing interest in the history of knowledge, this book explores the importance of scholarly virtues during the late nineteenth century. The practice of science is moulded on notions of scholarly values, such as diligence, impartiality, meticulousness and patience, but here, the author focuses on the virtues of collegial loyalty and critical independence. By analysing how virtues were reflected in day-to-day scholarly work, and examining the possibility that these virtues may have come into conflict with each other, this book sheds light on what is often described as ‘the moral economy of scholarship,’ a metaphor which draws attention to the changeability of the expectations...
Why History Education?
Sinn und Zweck der Geschichte werden immer wieder neu hinterfragt, weil sich Gesellschaften ständig neu verorten. Davon ist der Geschichtsunterricht direkt betroffen: "Warum Geschichtsunterricht?" Autor*innen aus 18 Ländern und vier Kontinenten fragen daher nach der Bedeutung des Geschichtsunterrichts aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven: mit theoretischen Überlegungen und Modellen, mit Bezügen aus der Unterrichtspraxis und Erkenntnissen aus der Forschung. Die Publikation präsentiert eine ganze Reihe von Gründen, warum Geschichte heute unbedingt unterrichtet werden muss. Sie liest sich als Plädoyer für einen kompetenten Umgang mit Geschichte in heutigen Gesellschaften.
Cultures of Crisis in Southeast Europe
The history of the Balkan Peninsula of the last two centuries is marked by deep transformations and upheavals. The emergence and disappearance of states, ethnic conflicts and wars, changes of political systems, economic crises, migration movements, and natural disasters are the more visible of such upheavals. Most of them have been experienced as deep crises that forced people to adapt to often radically new situations. All too often crisis management became a permanent way of life. The included essays focus on the cultures of crisis and on the reactions of societies and individuals to them: on their impact on everyday life, on peoples' strategies of coping, on the processes of adaptation, and on peoples' attitudes. (Series: Ethnologia Balkanica, Vol. 19) [Subject: Sociology, Balkan Studies, Politics, Migration, Crisis Management]
