Dutch commentators repeatedly claim that their nation has forgotten its violent colonial past. In this compelling study, however, Paul Bijl demonstrates that photographs of colonial atrocities have appeared consistently in the Dutch public sphere and remain widely available in print, on television, and online. The nation, he argues, has not forgotten; rather, the Dutch have failed to absorb the meaning of these ubiquitous images and the scenes they depict. Ultimately, Bijl illuminates the shadowy zone between remembering and forgetting a zone populated by histories that do not correspond to the narratives we construct about the past.
Rosey E. Pool (1905–71) did not live an ordinary life. She witnessed the rise of the Nazis in Berlin firsthand, tutored Anne Frank, operated in a Jewish resistance group, escaped from a Nazi transit camp, published African American poets in Europe, operated a London “salon” with her partner, witnessed independence movements in Nigeria and Senegal, and took part in the American civil rights movement. I Lay This Body Down is the first study of Pool and her remarkable transatlantic life. A translator, educator, and anthologist of African American poetry, Pool corresponded, after World War II, with Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Naomi Long Madgett, Owen Dodson, Gordon Heath, and others who fostered her involvement in the Black Arts Movement, both in Britain and the United States. Though Pool was often cast as an outsider—one poet was amazed that “one so removed” was interested in the Black cause—she saw herself as part of a transatlantic struggle against oppression. For Pool, the “yellow Jew stars” the Nazis forced her to wear “were our darker skins.” Rosey E. Pool’s life allows Lonneke Geerlings to explore intersections of European and American history. As a Holocaust survivor and activist fighting against segregation in the Deep South, Pool connects stories that are often studied and told in isolation. Her life helps us understand the intersecting histories of Jewish Europe and Black America, but it also allows us to see how Pool dealt with tragedy, trauma, and loss. At its core, this book is about resilience and hope. Indeed, Pool’s life illuminates the power of reinvention for dealing with both challenging personal circumstances and the traumas of global history.
Futures of Comparative Literature is a cutting edge report on the state of the discipline in Comparative Literature. Offering a broad spectrum of viewpoints from all career stages, a variety of different institutions, and many language backgrounds, this collection is fully global and diverse. The book includes previously unpublished interviews with key figures in the discipline as well as a range of different essays – short pieces on key topics and longer, in-depth pieces. It is divided into seven sections: Futures of Comparative Literature; Theories, Histories, Methods; Worlds; Areas and Regions; Languages, Vernaculars, Translations; Media; Beyond the Human; and contains over 50 essays on topics such as: Queer Reading; Human Rights; Fundamentalism; Untranslatability; Big Data; Environmental Humanities. It also includes current facts and figures from the American Comparative Literature Association as well as a very useful general introduction, situating and introducing the material. Curated by an expert editorial team, this book captures what is at stake in the study of Comparative Literature today.
"The Netherlands is home to one million citizens with roots in the former colonies Indonesia, Suriname and the Antilles. Entitlement to Dutch citizenship, pre-migration acculturation in Dutch language and culture as well as a strong rhetorical argument ('We are here because you were there') were strong assets of the first generation. This 'postcolonial bonus' indeed facilitated their integration. In the process, the initial distance to mainstream Dutch culture diminished. Postwar Dutch society went through serious transformations. Its once lily white population now includes two million non-Western migrants and the past decade witnessed heated debates about multiculturalism. The most important debates about the postcolonial migrant communities centeracknowledgmentgement and the inclusion of colonialism and its legacies in the national memorial culture. This resulted in state-sponsored gestures, ranging from financial compensation to monuments. The ensemble of such gestures reflect a guilt-ridden and inconsistent attempt to 'do justice' to the colonial past and to Dutch citizens with colonial roots. Postcolonial Netherlands is the first scholarly monograph to address these themes in an internationally comparative framework. Upon its publication in the Netherlands (2010) the book elicited much praise, but also serious objections to some of the author's theses, such as his prediction about the diminishing relevance of postcolonial roots"--Publisher's description.
Artist, filmmaker, magazine publisher, instigator of Pop Art, Andy Warhol (19281987) used his canvasses of dollar bills, soup cans, and celebrities to subvert distinctions between high and popular culture. His spectacular career encompassed the underground scene as well as the equally deviant worlds of politics, show business, and high society. Warhol is the definitive chronicle of Warhol's storied life.
This book rethinks the notion of nineteenth-century capital(s) from geographical, economic and symbolic perspectives, proposing an alternative mapping of the field by focusing on different loci and sources of capital. Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century’ identifies the French capital as the epitome of modernity. His consideration of how literature enters the market as a commodity is developed by Pierre Bourdieu in The Rules of Art, which discusses the late nineteenth-century French literary field in terms of both economic and symbolic capital. This spatio-temporal approach to culture also underpins Pascale Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters, which posits Paris as the capital of the transnational literary field and Greenwich Meridian of literature. This volume brings together essays by specialists on Bayreuth, Brussels, Constantinople, Coppet, Marseilles, Melbourne, Munich and St Petersburg, as well as reflections on local-colour literature, the Symbolist novel and the strategies behind literary translation. Offering a series of innovative perspectives on nineteenth-century capital and cultural output, this study will be invaluable for all upper-levels students and scholars of modern European literature, culture and society.
Covering fundamental research as well as real-world applications, this first book on CMAs at an introductory level treats everything from atomistic details to surface processing. Comprehensive, self-contained chapters provide readers with the latest knowledge on the most salient features of the topic, selected in terms of their relevance to potential technological applications. Edited by one of the most distinguished authorities on quasicrystals and this most important of their subclasses, the contributions elucidate aspects of CMAs from a particular viewpoint: physical and chemical characteristics in the sub-nanometer regime, mesoscale phenomena, preparation and processing of thin films, and large-scale engineering properties. The whole is rounded off by a look at the commercial potential of CMA-based applications. For PhD students and lecturers alike.
Carlo Ginzburg considers how we assign historical context to events. More than twenty years after Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method was first published in English, this extraordinary collection remains a classic. The book brings together essays about Renaissance witchcraft, National Socialism, sixteenth-century Italian painting, Freud’s wolf-man, and other topics. In the influential centerpiece of the volume Carlo Ginzburg places historical knowledge in a long tradition of cognitive practices and shows how a research strategy based on reading clues and traces embedded in the historical record reveals otherwise hidden information. Acknowledging his debt to art history, psychoanalysis, comparative religion, and anthropology, Ginzburg challenges us to retrieve cultural and social dimensions beyond disciplinary boundaries. In his new preface, Ginzburg reflects on how easily we miss the context in which we read, write, and live. Only hindsight allows some understanding. He examines his own path in research during the 1970s and its relationship to the times, especially the political scenes of Italy and Germany. Was he influenced by the environment, he asks himself, and if so, how? Ginzburg uses his own experience to examine the elusive and constantly evolving nature of history and historical research.
