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Early modern European society took a serious view of blasphemy, and drew upon a wide range of sanctions - including the death penalty - to punish those who cursed, swore and abused God. Whilst such attitudes may appear draconian today, this study makes clear that in the past, blasphemy was regarded as a very real threat to society. Based on a wealth of primary sources, including court records, theological and ecclesiastical writings and official city statutes, Francisca Loetz explores verbal forms of blasphemy and the variety of contexts within which it could occur. Honour conflicts, theological disputation, social and political provocation, and religious self-questioning all proved fertile ...
This Open Access biography chronicles the life and achievements of the Norwegian engineer and physicist Rolf Widerøe. Readers who meet him in the pages of this book will wonder why he isn't better known. The first of Widerøe's many pioneering contributions in the field of accelerator physics was the betatron. He later went on to build the first radiation therapy machine, an advance that would eventually revolutionize cancer treatment. Hospitals worldwide installed his machine, and today's modern radiation treatment equipment is based on his inventions. Widerøe's story also includes a fair share of drama, particularly during World War II when both Germans and the Allies vied for his collab...
When Yugoslavia was invaded by Nazi Germany and its allies in April 1941, what followed was as much a Yugoslav civil war as a war of occupation and liberation. Several hundred-thousand Yugoslav civilians were killed by other Yugoslavs in large-scale massacres or concentration camps, and the horrific events left the country ruined and deeply divided. Usable History? examines the way in which the history of Yugoslavia's internal problematic past was presented and used politically and ideologically, and asks how a society can cope with such an "unmasterable" history. How did Yugoslav historians and politicians represent and explain their own history and how did these representations interact with the cultural developments, political demands and societal needs? By investigating political documents, historiography and popular representations of history such as films, songs and literature, the book's author reveals a deeply disturbing narrative of historical (mis)inter-pretation and (mis)use.
Whether its ultimate resting-place is deemed to be Fukuyama’s liberal democracy or Baudrillard’s hyperreality, history, according to a number of pundits, has reached the end of the line. In the inflated debates that have ensued, it is precisely history which has been ignored, for the conception of posthistoire is far from new. Here, Lutz Niethammer, Germany’s leading practitioner of ‘history from below’, explores in fascinating detail the forms the conception has taken in the twentieth century and assembles what amounts to an intellectual history of disillusion and resignation. In his survey of thinkers as diverse as Kojeve, Heidegger and Junger, he finds adherents to the idea of the end of history on the Right and Left. But whether they pinned all their hopes on the nation or the proletariat, in different ways they have all conflated the apparent collapse of a particular historical project with the collapse of history itself.
The book investigates the multifaceted entanglements between the many pasts and presents of the Nordic medieval period and colonialism. The edited volume contributes to the untangling of questions concerning how present, recent, and past structures of colonialism affect historiography on the medieval Nordic past. Consisting of thematically diverse chapters, the book brings together a range of approaches related to medieval colonialism in a Nordic context, touching both on medieval and medievalist factors. The editors and contributors understand their project as part of the growing conversation about colonialism and its reverberations in academia, and as a contribution to decolonization efforts. The volume will offer an interdisciplinary approach to oft-neglected aspects of the medieval world through an incorporation of more inclusive methodologies and re-readings of both medieval texts and previous scholarship.
Battles and Borders. Perspectives on Cultural Transmission and Literature in Minor Language Areas is about literature on the fringes of Europe. The authors all discuss the often unique ways in which literary history and cultural transfer function in peripheral and central regions against the background of shifting national borders in the last two centuries. Special attention is paid to minority and migrant groups in Northwest Europe. The present volume aims to prompt a reconsideration of the concepts of ‘minority' and ‘migrant' cultures and literatures in the past and the present day. It also suggests a new topic for further study: the importance of cultural transfer for migrant groups (...
This text makes use of the unique and extant cultural forms of architecture and the visual arts, as well as statistics and other forms of documentary evidence.
A broad perspective on the role of religious institutes in social and cultural practices This volume examines the cultural contribution of religious institutes, men and women religious, and their role in the constitution of Catholic communities of communication in different European countries (England, Germany, Liechtenstein, the Low Countries, the Nordic Countries, Switzerland). The articles focus on social and cultural history by comparing both discourses and cultural and social practices, as well as examining international networks and cultural transference. How did religious institutes function as cultural elites in the production and mediation of knowledge, ideologies, cultural codes, a...
This monograph presents a fresh and detailed treatment of the problems posed by the Nehemiah-Memoir. Starting from the pre-critical interpretations of Ezra-Neh, the study demonstrates that the use of the first-person does not suffice as a criterion for distinguishing between the verba Neemiae and the additions of later authors. The earliest edition of the Memoir isconfined to a building report, which was expanded as early generations of readers developed the implications of Nehemiah's accomplishments for the consolidation and centralization of Judah. The expansions occasioned in turn the composition of the history of the "Restoration" in Ezra-Neh.
By following and reproducing the cultural turn, the rhetoric of cultural mix and hybridism is disseminated today primarily in its crossing of trade barriers. Cultures reduced to their exchange value function as capital - an accumulative, speculative and, ultimately, financial affair. In some of its media and site-(un)specific manifestations, process art - which aims to encompass both old and new media art - seems to resist this pressure, despite, nonetheless, not being protected from regulations and incorporations. In the present collection of his recent essays, Slavko Kacunko discusses the process art by crossing the disciplines of art history and comparative media-, visual- and -cultural s...