Atlantic understandings

Atlantic understandings
Author: Claudia Schnurmann
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Total Pages: 494
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9783825896072

In honor of the German historian Hermann Wellenreuther, this volume explores the Atlantic world in all its many facets and extraordinary scope. Experts from different fields address economic problems as well as religious convictions, on the social differences and the everyday life experiences of the "ordinary people" as well as the aristocracy and the politics of princes. Taken together, the articles weave together German, English and American history and help us to understand the Atlantic societies on both sides of the ocean from the Middle Ages to the present. Claudia Schnurmann is professor at the Department of History at the University of Hamburg (Germany). Hartmut Lehmann is professor at the Max-Planck-Institute for History, Goettingen (Germany).

The Invention of Tradition

The Invention of Tradition
Author: Eric Hobsbawm
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2012-03-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107394511

Many of the traditions which we think of as very ancient in their origins were not in fact sanctioned by long usage over the centuries, but were invented comparatively recently. This book explores examples of this process of invention – the creation of Welsh and Scottish 'national culture'; the elaboration of British royal rituals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the origins of imperial rituals in British India and Africa; and the attempts by radical movements to develop counter-traditions of their own. It addresses the complex interaction of past and present, bringing together historians and anthropologists in a fascinating study of ritual and symbolism which poses new questions for the understanding of our history.

Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory

Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory
Author: Astrid Erll
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2009-07-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110217384

This collection of essays brings together two major new developments in cultural memory studies: firstly, the shift away from static models of cultural memory, where the emphasis lies on cultural products, in the direction of more dynamic models where the emphasis lies instead on the cultural and social processes involved in the ongoing production of shared views of the past; and secondly, the growing interest in the role of the media, and their role beyond that of mere storage, within these dynamics. The specific concern of this collection is linking the use of media to the larger socio-cultural processes involved in collective memory-making. The focus rests in particular on two aspects of media use: the basic dynamics of “mediation” and “remediation”. The key questions are: What role do media play in the production and circulation of cultural memories? How do mediation, remediation and intermediality shape objects and acts of cultural remembrance? How can new, emergent media redefine or transform what is collectively remembered? The essays of this collection focus on social, historical, religious, and artistic media-memories. The authors analyze the memory-making impact of news media, the mediation and remediation of lieux de mémoire, the medial representation of colonial and postcolonial, of Holocaust and Second World War memories, and finally the problematization of these very processes in artistic media forms, such as novels and movies.