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For the 21st century, the often-quoted citation ‘past is prologue’ reads the other way around: The global present lacks a historical narrative for the global past. Focussing on a transcultural history, this book questions the territoriality of historical concepts and offers a narrative, which aims to overcome cultural essentialism by focussing on crossing borders of all kinds. Transcultural History reflects critically on the way history is constructed, asking who formed history in the past and who succeeded in shaping what we call the master narrative. Although trained European historians, the authors aim to present a useful approach to global history, showing first of all how a Eurocentric but universal historiography removed or essentialised certain topics in Asian history. As an empirical discipline, history is based on source material, analysed according to rules resulting from a strong methodological background. This book accesses the global past after World War I, looking at the well known stage of the Paris Peace Conferences, observing the multiplication of new borders and the variety of transgressing institutions, concepts, actors, men and women inventing themselves as global subjects, but sharing a bitter experience with almost all local societies at this time, namely the awareness of having relatives buried in far distant places due to globalised wars.
Today's spectrum of research in literary studies is characterized by a sense of openness to the methods of comparative literature and cultural studies, along with a wide range of interdisciplinary crossover. The spectrum Literaturwissenschaft series is intended to be a forum for this pluralistic new model of literary studies. It presents papers that are informed by methodologically innovative, frequently comparative approaches, and whose findings are of importance well beyond the narrow boundaries of national philological horizons.
Tattoo Histories is an edited volume which analyses and discusses the relevance of tattooing in the socio-cultural construction of bodies, boundaries, and identities, among both individuals and groups. Its interdisciplinary approach facilitates historical as well as contemporary perspectives. Rather than presenting a universal, essentialized history of tattooing, the volume’s objective is to focus on the entangled and transcultural histories, narratives, and practices related to tattoos. Contributions stem from various fields, including Archaeology, Art History, Classics, History, Linguistics, Media and Literary Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, and Sociology. They advance the current endeavour on the part of tattoo scholars to challenge Eurocentric and North American biases prevalent in much of tattoo research, by including various analyses based in locations such as Malaysia, Israel, East Africa, and India. The thematic focus is on the transformative capacity of tattoos and tattooing, with regard to the social construction of bodies and subjectivity; the (re-)creation of social relationships through the definition of (non-)tattooed others; the formation and consolidation of group identities, traditions, and authenticity; and the conceptualization of art and its relevance to tattoo artist–tattooee relations.
This book unravels the formation of the modern concept of cultural heritage by charting its colonial, postcolonial-nationalist and global trajectories. By bringing to light many unresearched dimensions of the twelfth-century Cambodian temple of Angkor Wat during its modern history, the study argues for a conceptual, connected history that unfolded within the transcultural interstices of European and Asian projects. With more than 1,400 black-and-white and colour illustrations of historic photographs, architectural plans and samples of public media, the monograph discusses the multiple lives of Angkor Wat over a 150-year-long period from the 1860s to the 2010s. Volume 1 (Angkor in France) reconceptualises the Orientalist, French-colonial ‘discovery’ of the temple in the nineteenth century and brings to light the manifold strategies at play in its physical representations as plaster cast substitutes in museums and as hybrid pavilions in universal and colonial exhibitions in Marseille and Paris from 1867 to 1937. Volume 2 (Angkor in Cambodia) covers, for the first time in this depth, the various on-site restoration efforts inside the ‘Archaeological Park of Angkor’ from 1907 until 1970, and the temple’s gradual canonisation as a symbol of national identity during Cambodia’s troublesome decolonisation (1953–89), from independence to Khmer Rouge terror and Vietnamese occupation, and, finally, as a global icon of UNESCO World Heritage since 1992 until today. Congratulations to our author Michael Falser who received the prestigious 2021 ICAS Book Prize in the "Ground Breaking Subject Matter" category.
In our globalised world, literature is less and less confined to national spaces. Europe-centred frameworks for literary studies have become insufficient; academics are increasingly called upon to address matters of cultural difference. In this unique volume, leading scholars discuss the critical and methodical challenges that these developments pose to the writing of literary history. What is the object of literary history? What is the meaning of the term “world literature”? How do we compare different cultural systems of genres? How do we account theoretically for literary transculturation? What are the implications of postcolonial studies for the discipline of comparative literature? Ranging in focus from the Persian epic of Majnun Layla and Zulu praise poetry to South Korean novels and Brazilian antropofagismo, the essays offer a concise overview of these and related questions. Their aim is not to reach a consensus on these matters. They show instead what is at stake in the emergent field of global comparatism.
In Things with a History, Héctor Hoyos argues that the roles of objects in recent Latin American fiction offers a way to integrate materialisms old and new, transforming our understanding of how things shape social and political relations.
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.
While multicultural composition of nations has become a catchword in public debates, few educators, not to speak of the general public, realize that cultural interaction was the rule throughout history. Starting with the Islam-Christian-Jewish Mediterranean world of the early modern period, this volume moves to the empires of the 18th and 19th centuries and the African Diaspora of the Black Atlantic. It ends with questioning assumptions about citizenship and underlying homogeneous "received" cultures through the analysis of the changes in various literatures. This volume clearly shows that the life-worlds of settled as well as migrant populations in the past were characterized by cultural change and exchange whether conflictual or peaceful. Societies reflected on such change in their literatures as well as in their concepts of citizenship.
How do images circulating in Pacific cultures and exchanged between them and their many visitors transform meanings for all involved? This fascinating collection explores how through mimesis, wayfarers and locales alike borrow images from one another to expand their cultural repertoire of meanings or borrow images from their own past to validate their identities.
Mexican American folk and religious healing, often referred to as curanderismo, has been a vital part of life in the Mexico-U.S. border region for centuries. A hybrid tradition made up primarily of indigenous and Iberian Catholic pharmacopeias, rituals, and notions of the self, curanderismo treats the sick person with a variety of healing modalities including herbal remedies, intercessory prayer, body massage, and energy manipulation. Curanderos, “healers,” embrace a holistic understanding of the patient, including body, soul, and community. Border Medicine examines the ongoing evolution of Mexican American religious healing from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. Illuminating the ways in which curanderismo has had an impact not only on the health and culture of the borderlands but also far beyond, the book tracks its expansion from Mexican American communities to Anglo and multiethnic contexts. While many healers treat Mexican and Mexican American clientele, a significant number of curanderos have worked with patients from other ethnic groups as well, especially those involved in North American metaphysical religions like spiritualism, mesmerism, New Thought, New Age, and energy-based alternative medicines. Hendrickson explores this point of contact as an experience of transcultural exchange. Drawing on historical archives, colonial-era medical texts and accounts, early ethnographies of the region, newspaper articles, memoirs, and contemporary healing guidebooks as well as interviews with contemporary healers, Border Medicine demonstrates the notable and ongoing influence of Mexican Americans on cultural and religious practices in the United States, especially in the American West.