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Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology is a collection of classic articles by some of the best known proponents of oral history, demonstrating the basics of oral history, while also acting as a guidebook for how to use it in research. Added to this new edition is insight into how oral history is practiced on an international scale, making this book an indispensable resource for scholars of history and social sciences, as well as those interested in oral history on the avocational level. This volume is a reprint of the 1984 edition, with the added bonus of a new introduction by David Dunaway and a new section on how oral history is practiced on an international scale. Selections from the original volume trace the origins of oral history in the United States, provide insights on methodology and interpretation, and review the various approaches to oral history used by folklorists, historians, anthropologists, and librarians, among others. Family and ethnic historians will find chapters addressing the applications of oral history in those fields.
"The Second World War was a common experience of cultural and historical rupture for many European countries, but studies of this period and its after-images often remain locked in national frameworks. Jones' comparative study of national memory cultures argues for a more nuanced view of responses to shared issues of remembrance. Focusing on the 1960s and 1970s, two decades of great change and debate in French and German discourses of memory, it investigates literary representations of the Second World War, and in particular the Holocaust, from France and both Germanies. The study encompasses thirteen works representing a variety of genres and divergent perspectives, and authors include Jorge Semprun, Peter Weiss, Georges Perec and Bernward Vesper. Addressing the underlying theme of travel as a means of exploring the past, it contrasts the journeys made by deportees and post-war visitors to the camps with the use of the journey as a literary device."
Despite the Holocaust's profound impact on the history of Eastern Europe, the communist regimes successfully repressed public discourse about and memory of this tragedy. Since the collapse of communism in 1989, however, this has changed. Not only has a wealth of archival sources become available, but there have also been oral history projects and interviews recording the testimonies of eyewitnesses who experienced the Holocaust as children and young adults. Recent political, social, and cultural developments have facilitated a more nuanced and complex understanding of the continuities and discontinuities in representations of the Holocaust. People are beginning to realize the significant rol...
"Broué enables us to feel that we are actually living through these epoch-making events.... [D]o not miss this magnificent work."--Robert Brenner, UCLA A magisterial, definitive account of the upheavals in Germany in the wake of the Russian revolution. Broué meticulously reconstitutes six decisive years, 1917-23, of social struggles in Germany. The consequences of the defeat of the German revolution had profound consequences for the world. Pierre Broué (1926-2005) was for many years Professor of Contemporary History at the Institut d'études politiques in Grenoble and was a world renowned specialist on the communist and international workers' movements.
Featuring essays by scholars of history, literature, television, and sociology, Rebuilding Jewish Life in Germany illuminates important aspects of Jewish life in Germany since 1949, including institution building, the internal dynamics and changing demographics of the Jewish community, and the central role of Jewish writers and public intellectuals.
The Last Revolutionaries follows the lives of German communists across the tumultuous twentieth century. Epstein offers an unparalleled portrait of the most enduring and influential generation of Central European communists.
The powerful impact of Socialism and Communism on modern German history is the theme which is explored by the contributors to this volume. Whereas previous investigations have tended to focus on political, intellectual and biographical aspects, this book captures, for the first time, the methodological and thematic diversity and richness of current work on the history of the German working class and the political movements that emerged from it. Based on original contributions from U.S., British, and German scholars, this collection address a wide range of themes and problems.
In the study of the National Socialist State and its aftermath, two unusual aspects continue to occupy historians and social science commentators. First, a factor important enough to enter into the very definition of totalitarianism is the thoroughgoing mobilization, coercive if needed, of the population of writers, teachers, professors journalists and other intellectual workers, securing cooperation – or at the least passive concurrence – in the mass-inculcation of the population in the destructive Fascist ideology. Second is the central place of dissident members of these populations in the exile. Since webs of communications with others, the majority of whom had remained in Germany, had constituted their own memberships in the populations at issue, the question of their roles in the post-war era depended importantly on the ways and means by which they restored – or refused to restore – communications with those who had remained.
While many of the essays focus on recent developments, they shed light on the evolution of this phenomenon since 1945.
For roughly the first decade after the demise of the GDR, professional and popular interpretations of East German history concentrated primarily on forms of power and repression, as well as on dissent and resistance to communist rule. Socio-cultural approaches have increasingly shown that a single-minded emphasis on repression and coercion fails to address a number of important historical issues, including those related to the subjective experiences of those who lived under communist regimes. With that in mind, the essays in this volume explore significant physical and psychological aspects of life in the GDR, such as health and diet, leisure and dining, memories of the Nazi past, as well as identity, sports, and experiences of everyday humiliation. Situating the GDR within a broader historical context, they open up new ways of interpreting life behind the Iron Curtain – while providing a devastating critique of misleading mainstream scholarship, which continues to portray the GDR in the restrictive terms of totalitarian theory.