ECOLOGICAL MIGRANTS
The Relocation of China’s Ewenki Reindeer Herders
Yuanyuan Xie
Foreword by Ping Hao

 

Reindeer-herding Ewenki hunters have lived in the forests of China’s Greater Khingan Range for over three hundred years. They have sustained their livelihoods by collecting plants and herbs, hunting animals and herding reindeer. This ethnography details changing Ewenki ways of life brought first by China’s modernization and development policies and more recently by ecological policies that aim to preserve and restore the badly damaged ecologies of western China. Xie reflects on modernization and urbanization in China through this study of ecological migration policies and their effects on relocated Aoluguya Ewenki hunters.

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RUSSIAN POSTMODERNISM
New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture
Mikhail N. Epstein, Alexander A. Genis, and Slobodanka M. Vladiv-Glover
Translated by Slobodanka M. Vladiv-Glover

 

Recent decades have been decisive for Russia not only politically but culturally as well. The end of the Cold War has enabled Russia to take part in the global rise and crystallization of postmodernism. This volume investigates the manifestations of this crucial trend in Russian fiction, poetry, art, and spirituality, demonstrating how Russian postmodernism is its own unique entity. It offers a point of departure and valuable guide to an area of contemporary literary-cultural studies insufficiently represented in English-language scholarship. This second edition includes additional essays on the topic and a new introduction examining the most recent developments.

 

 

 

CYCLING AND RECYCLING
Histories of Sustainable Practices
Edited by Ruth Oldenziel and Helmuth Trischler

Volume 7, Environment in History: International Perspectives

 

Technology has long been an essential consideration in public discussions of the environment, with the focus overwhelmingly on creating new tools and techniques. In more recent years, however, activists, researchers, and policymakers have increasingly turned to mobilizing older technologies in their pursuit of sustainability. In fascinating case studies ranging from the Early Modern secondhand trade to utopian visions of human-powered vehicles, the contributions gathered here explore the historical fortunes of two such technologies—bicycling and waste recycling—tracing their development over time and providing valuable context for the policy successes and failures of today.

Read Introduction: How Old Technologies Became Sustainable

 

 

CINEMA IN SERVICE OF THE STATE
Perspectives on Film Culture in the GDR and Czechoslovakia, 1945-1960
Edited by Lars Karl and Pavel Skopal

Volume 18, Film Europa

 

The national cinemas of Czechoslovakia and East Germany were two of the most vital sites of filmmaking in the Eastern Bloc, and over the course of two decades, they contributed to and were shaped by such significant developments as Sovietization, de-Stalinization, and the conservative retrenchment of the late 1950s. This volume comprehensively explores the postwar film cultures of both nations, using a “stereoscopic” approach that traces their similarities and divergences to form a richly contextualized portrait. Ranging from features to children’s cinema to film festivals, the studies gathered here provide new insights into the ideological, political, and economic dimensions of Cold War cultural production.

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MATTERS OF TESTIMONY
Interpreting the Scrolls of Auschwitz
Nicholas Chare and Dominic Williams

 

In 1944, members of the Sonderkommando—the “special squads,” composed almost exclusively of Jewish prisoners, who ensured the smooth operation of the gas chambers and had firsthand knowledge of the extermination process—buried on the grounds of Auschwitz-Birkenau a series of remarkable eyewitness accounts of Nazi genocide. This careful and penetrating study examines anew these “Scrolls of Auschwitz,” which were gradually recovered, in damaged and fragmentary form, in the years following the camp’s liberation. It painstakingly reconstructs their historical context and textual content, revealing complex literary works that resist narrow moral judgment and engage difficult questions about the limits of testimony.

Read Introduction: Matters of Testimony

 

 

 

THE SECOND GENERATION
Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians
With a Biobibliographic Guide
Edited by Andreas W. Daum, Hartmut Lehmann, and James J. Sheehan

Volume 20, Studies in German History

 

Of the thousands of children and young adults who fled Nazi Germany in the years before the Second World War, a remarkable number went on to become trained historians in their adopted homelands. By placing autobiographical testimonies alongside historical analysis and professional reflections, this richly varied collection comprises the first sustained effort to illuminate the role these men and women played in modern historiography. Focusing particularly on those who settled in North America, Great Britain, and Israel, it culminates in a comprehensive, meticulously researched biobibliographic guide that provides a systematic overview of the lives and works of this “second generation.”

Read Introduction: Refugees from Nazi Germany as Historians: Origins and Migrations, Interests and Identities
PROTEST IN HITLER’S “NATIONAL COMMUNITY”
Popular Unrest and the Nazi Response
Edited by Nathan Stoltzfus and Birgit Maier-Katkin
Afterword by David Clay Large

Volume 14, Protest, Culture & Society

 

That Hitler’s Gestapo harshly suppressed any signs of opposition inside the Third Reich is a common misconception. This book presents studies of public dissent that prove this was not always the case. It examines circumstances under which “racial” Germans were motivated to protest, as well as the conditions determining the regime’s response. Workers, women, and religious groups all convinced the Nazis to appease rather than repress “racial” Germans. Expressions of discontent actually increased during the war, and Hitler remained willing to compromise in governing the German Volk as long as he thought the Reich could salvage victory.

Read Introduction: Nazi Responses to Popular Unrest among the Volk of the Reich

 

 

COMRADES OF COLOR
East Germany in the Cold War World
Edited by Quinn Slobodian

Volume 15, Protest, Culture & Society

 

In keeping with the tenets of socialist internationalism, the political culture of the German Democratic Republic strongly emphasized solidarity with the non-white world: children sent telegrams to Angela Davis in prison, workers made contributions from their wages to relief efforts in Vietnam and Angola, and the deaths of Patrice Lumumba, Ho Chi Minh, and Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired public memorials. Despite their prominence, however, scholars have rarely examined such displays in detail. Through a series of illuminating historical investigations, this volume deploys archival research, ethnography, and a variety of other interdisciplinary tools to explore the rhetoric and reality of East German internationalism.

Read Introduction

 

 

THE LONG AFTERMATH
Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936-2016
Edited by Manuel Bragança and Peter Tame
Foreword by Richard Overy
Afterword by Jay Winter

Volume 17, Contemporary European History

 

In its totality, the “Long Second World War”—extending from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War to the end of hostilities in 1945—has exerted enormous influence over European culture. Bringing together leading historians, sociologists, and literary and film scholars, this broadly interdisciplinary volume investigates Europeans’ individual and collective memories and the ways in which they have shaped the continent’s cultural heritage. Focusing on the major combatant nations—Spain, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, and Russia—it offers thoroughly contextualized explorations of novels, memoirs, films, and a host of other cultural forms to illuminate European public memory.

Read Introduction: The Long Aftermath of the Long Second World War

 

 

EMPIRE OF PICTURES
Global Media and the 1960s Remaking of American Foreign Policy
Sönke Kunkel

Volume 8, Explorations in Culture and International History

 

In Cold War historiography, the 1960s are often described as a decade of mounting diplomatic tensions and international social unrest. At the same time, they were a period of global media revolution: communication satellites compressed time and space, television spread around the world, and images circulated through print media in expanding ways. Examining how U.S. policymakers exploited these changes, this book offers groundbreaking international research which shows that U.S. power came to depend more and more not on military superiority or economic strength alone, but also on America’s ability to create appealing pictures that assured recognition of its global leadership.

Read Introduction: Why Empires Need Pictures

 

New in Paperback: 

 

SLAVERY AND ANTISLAVERY IN SPAIN’S ATLANTIC EMPIRE
Edited by Josep M. Fradera and Christopher Schmidt-Nowara†

Volume 9, European Expansion & Global Interaction

 

“The essays in this volume make an important contribution to understanding the process through which European empires shifted, as Seymour Drescher’s aptly titled contribution puts it, ‘from empires of slavery to empires of antislavery'(p. 291). They do so by centering on Spain and its Atlantic empire. This focus results in the volume’s most significant contribution and resounding statement: that the Spanish empire, far from being ‘a case apart in the study of slavery and abolition’ (p. 1), played an important role in the histories of slavery and antislavery in the Atlantic world…a wonderful book that could productively be assigned to an undergraduate audience.” · Hispanic American Historical Review (HAHR)

 

 

MEDIA AND REVOLT
Strategies and Performances from the 1960s to the Present
Edited by Kathrin Fahlenbrach, Erling Sivertsen & Rolf Werenskjold

Volume 11, Protest, Culture & Society

 

”…a timely, truly interdisciplinary, and much needed volume on the relationship between (mass) media, social movements and protests.” · Peter N. Funke, University of South Florida

Drawing on contributions from media scholars, historians, and sociologists, this volume explores the dynamic interplay between social movements, activists, and mass media from the 1960s to the present.

 

 

MUSSOLINI’S DREAM FACTORY
Film Stardom in Fascist Italy
Stephen Gundle

 

“Gundle has written the book that will become a standard in the fields of historiography on Italian Fascism, Italian Fascist cinema and film scholarship on star culture. The mixture of intimate sources such as diaries, letters and photographs with exhaustive archival material breathes life into this period, allowing us new and necessary insight on this complicated era of cinematic and Italian history.” · Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

“This is an outstanding book in every respect. It is beautifully written, clear, concise, no professional jargon, yet based on a confident grasp of all the relevant criticism as well as primary sources in a number of languages…It is high time that a complete revision of our thinking on Italian cinema under fascism takes place, and this book represents a giant step in this direction.” · Peter Bondanella, Emeritus, Indiana University

 

 

THE FRENCH RIGHT BETWEEN THE WARS
Political and Intellectual Movements from Conservatism to Fascism
Edited by Samuel Kalman and Sean Kennedy

 

“Organized thematically into three sections and concluding with William Irvine’s astute historiographical commentary, this edited volume unhinges analyses of the French political and intellectual Right from long-standing debates over whether France was “immune” tof ascism, and how to categorize its Rightist leagues… Highly recommended.” · Choice

“[These essays] make useful contributions. They all identify interesting problems, often fresh and original; display significant research; and are clearly written.” · Robert O. Paxton, Columbia University

 

 

 

GENERAL DE GAULLE’S COLD WAR
Challenging American Hegemony, 1963-68
Garret Joseph Martin

Volume 13, Berghahn Monographs in French Studies

 

“…a well-written, vibrant presentation of how world events  interacted with and impacted  de Gaulle’s  grand design, creating  a comprehensive understanding of the general  in the Cold  War.  Highly recommended.”  ·  Choice

“While there is a lot of information for readers to take in, the subject is inherently complex, spanning different aspects of French foreign policy and the politics of other countries and institutions. In spite of this complexity, Martin displays a good grasp of the material.”  ·  H-France Review

 

 

PETER LORRE: FACE MAKER
Constructing Stardom and Performance in Hollywood and Europe
Sarah Thomas

Volume 12, Film Europa

 

“…in her important new study of Lorre’s career…[the author pursues] a rewarding approach that combines careful archival research with clever film analysis to illuminate Lorre’s career from a new angle that not only impacts our understanding of this actor, but also presents an important new way to understand the complex exchanges between on-screen and off-screen performances more generally.” · Senses of Cinema