Imagined Histories

Imagined Histories
Author: Anthony Molho
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 504
Release: 1998
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780691058115

This collection of essays by twenty-one distinguished American historians reflects on a peculiarly American way of imagining the past. At a time when history-writing has changed dramatically, the authors discuss the birth and evolution of historiography in this country, from its origins in the late nineteenth century through its present, more cosmopolitan character. In the book's first part, concerning recent historiography, are chapters on exceptionalism, gender, economic history, social theory, race, and immigration and multiculturalism. Authors are Daniel Rodgers, Linda Kerber, Naomi Lamoreaux, Dorothy Ross, Thomas Holt, and Philip Gleason. The three American centuries are discussed in the second part, with chapters by Gordon Wood, George Fredrickson, and James Patterson. The third part is a chronological survey of non-American histories, including that of Western civilization, ancient history, the middle ages, early modern and modern Europe, Russia, and Asia. Contributors are Eugen Weber, Richard Saller, Gabrielle Spiegel, Anthony Molho, Philip Benedict, Richard Kagan, Keith Baker, Joseph Zizak, Volker Berghahn, Charles Maier, Martin Malia, and Carol Gluck. Together, these scholars reveal the unique perspective American historians have brought to the past of their own nation as well as that of the world. Formerly writing from a conviction that America had a singular destiny, American historians have gradually come to share viewpoints of historians in other countries about which they write. The result is the virtual disappearance of what was a distinctive American voice. That voice is the subject of this book.

Imagined Histories

Imagined Histories
Author: Anthony Molho
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 501
Release: 2018-06-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691187347

This collection of essays by twenty-one distinguished American historians reflects on a peculiarly American way of imagining the past. At a time when history-writing has changed dramatically, the authors discuss the birth and evolution of historiography in this country, from its origins in the late nineteenth century through its present, more cosmopolitan character. In the book's first part, concerning recent historiography, are chapters on exceptionalism, gender, economic history, social theory, race, and immigration and multiculturalism. Authors are Daniel Rodgers, Linda Kerber, Naomi Lamoreaux, Dorothy Ross, Thomas Holt, and Philip Gleason. The three American centuries are discussed in the second part, with chapters by Gordon Wood, George Fredrickson, and James Patterson. The third part is a chronological survey of non-American histories, including that of Western civilization, ancient history, the middle ages, early modern and modern Europe, Russia, and Asia. Contributors are Eugen Weber, Richard Saller, Gabrielle Spiegel, Anthony Molho, Philip Benedict, Richard Kagan, Keith Baker, Joseph Zizak, Volker Berghahn, Charles Maier, Martin Malia, and Carol Gluck. Together, these scholars reveal the unique perspective American historians have brought to the past of their own nation as well as that of the world. Formerly writing from a conviction that America had a singular destiny, American historians have gradually come to share viewpoints of historians in other countries about which they write. The result is the virtual disappearance of what was a distinctive American voice. That voice is the subject of this book.

The Imagined Island

The Imagined Island
Author: Pedro L. San Miguel
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2006-05-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807876992

In a landmark study of history, power, and identity in the Caribbean, Pedro L. San Miguel examines the historiography of Hispaniola, the West Indian island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. He argues that the national identities of (and often the tense relations between) citizens of these two nations are the result of imaginary contrasts between the two nations drawn by historians, intellectuals, and writers. Covering five centuries and key intellectual figures from each country, San Miguel bridges literature, history, and ethnography to locate the origins of racial, ethnic, and national identity on the island. He finds that Haiti was often portrayed by Dominicans as "the other--first as a utopian slave society, then as a barbaric state and enemy to the Dominican Republic. Although most of the Dominican population is mulatto and black, Dominican citizens tended to emphasize their Spanish (white) roots, essentially silencing the political voice of the Dominican majority, San Miguel argues. This pioneering work in Caribbean and Latin American historiography, originally published in Puerto Rico in 1997, is now available in English for the first time.

The Imagined Civil War

The Imagined Civil War
Author: Alice Fahs
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2010-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807899291

In this groundbreaking work of cultural history, Alice Fahs explores a little-known and fascinating side of the Civil War--the outpouring of popular literature inspired by the conflict. From 1861 to 1865, authors and publishers in both the North and the South produced a remarkable variety of war-related compositions, including poems, songs, children's stories, romances, novels, histories, and even humorous pieces. Fahs mines these rich but long-neglected resources to recover the diversity of the war's political and social meanings. Instead of narrowly portraying the Civil War as a clash between two great, white armies, popular literature offered a wide range of representations of the conflict and helped shape new modes of imagining the relationships of diverse individuals to the nation. Works that explored the war's devastating impact on white women's lives, for example, proclaimed the importance of their experiences on the home front, while popular writings that celebrated black manhood and heroism in the wake of emancipation helped readers begin to envision new roles for blacks in American life. Recovering a lost world of popular literature, The Imagined Civil War adds immeasurably to our understanding of American life and letters at a pivotal point in our history.

Imagined Geographies

Imagined Geographies
Author: Geoffrey C. Gunn
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2021-09-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 9888528653

Imagined Geographies is a pioneering work in the study of history and geography of the pre-1800 world. In this book, Gunn argues that different regions astride the maritime silk roads were not only interconnected but can also be construed as “imagined geographies.” Taking a grand civilizational perspective, five such geographic imaginaries are examined across respective chapters, namely Indian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and European including an imagined Great South Land. Drawing upon an array of marine and other archaeological examples, the author offers compelling evidence of the intertwining of political, cultural, and economic regions across the sea silk roads from ancient times until the seventeenth century. Through a thorough analysis of these five geographic imaginaries, the author sets aside purely national history and looks at the maritime realm from a broader spatial perspective. He challenges the Eurocentric concept of center and periphery and establishes a revisionist view on a decentered world regional history. This book will definitely interest history lovers from all around the world who wants to know more about how their forebears viewed their respective region and how their region fits into world history with local uniqueness. “Gunn takes large themes and makes them understandable. He is not afraid to make the grand statement, and to look at the sweep of history all in one arc. I admire that greatly; this is not history for the faint of heart. But it is history well-done, and history that can show the forest from the trees.” —Eric Tagliacozzo, John Stambaugh Professor of History, Cornell University “This is one of the most ambitious and insightful books that I have read on pre-Modern maritime Asia. The author offers fascinating perspectives on how this vast region was imagined, charted, and experienced over many centuries. That requires mastery of an immense range of scholarship and primary sources. His aim is to knit this watery world together into a conceptual whole. This mission is accomplished with style and discipline.” —Andrew R. Wilson, John A. van Beuren Chair of Asia-Pacific Studies, U.S. Naval War College

Beauty Imagined

Beauty Imagined
Author: Geoffrey Jones
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2010-02-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0191609617

The global beauty business permeates our lives, influencing how we perceive ourselves and what it is to be beautiful. The brands and firms which have shaped this industry, such as Avon, Coty, Estée Lauder, L'Oréal, and Shiseido, have imagined beauty for us. This book provides the first authoritative history of the global beauty industry from its emergence in the nineteenth century to the present day, exploring how today's global giants grew. It shows how successive generations of entrepreneurs built brands which shaped perceptions of beauty, and the business organizations needed to market them. They democratized access to beauty products, once the privilege of elites, but they also defined the gender and ethnic borders of beauty, and its association with a handful of cities, notably Paris and later New York. The result was a homogenization of beauty ideals throughout the world. Today globalization is changing the beauty industry again; its impact can be seen in a range of competing strategies. Global brands have swept into China, Russia, and India, but at the same time, these brands are having to respond to a far greater diversity of cultures and lifestyles as new markets are opened up worldwide. In the twenty first century, beauty is again being re-imagined anew.

History Made, History Imagined

History Made, History Imagined
Author: David Walter Price
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780252067761

In this provocative and original study, David Price investigates history as a form of poiesis -- the act of making in language -- and suggests that certain novels can provide the best means of engaging in historical interpretation. Contending that the fundamental act of narration itself, including the narration of history, expresses a system of values, Price explores the work of seven contemporary novelists who share a commitment to reexamining history as idea and a refusal to accept history as given. Within a theoretical framework based on Friedrich Nietzsche and Giambattista Vico, Price investigates how these writers -- Carlos Fuentes, Susan Daitch, Salman Rushdie, Michel Tournier, Ishmael Reed, Graham Swift, and Mario Vargas Llosa -- create a discursive space between history and literature, a space within which history can be questioned and the making of history explored. Through their novels, these writers replace the univocal expression of history as a description of "what really happened" with a polyvocality of competing discourses, languages, and points of view. Price's investigation of three modalities of the poietic novel -- the history of forgotten possibilities, the construction of countermemory and cultural critique, and history as myth -- has far-reaching implications for how we read and question the narratives we understand as history. By treating the past as a dynamic flow of values, rather than a fixed collection of facts, History Made, History Imagined fosters a deeper understanding not only of literature and philosophy but also of history and our relationship to it.

Imagined Communities

Imagined Communities
Author: Benedict Anderson
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2006-11-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 178168359X

What are the imagined communities that compel men to kill or to die for an idea of a nation? This notion of nationhood had its origins in the founding of the Americas, but was then adopted and transformed by populist movements in nineteenth-century Europe. It became the rallying cry for anti-Imperialism as well as the abiding explanation for colonialism. In this scintillating, groundbreaking work of intellectual history Anderson explores how ideas are formed and reformulated at every level, from high politics to popular culture, and the way that they can make people do extraordinary things. In the twenty-first century, these debates on the nature of the nation state are even more urgent. As new nations rise, vying for influence, and old empires decline, we must understand who we are as a community in the face of history, and change.

The Imagined Past

The Imagined Past
Author: Christopher Shaw
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 1989
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780719028755

Imagining Early Modern Histories

Imagining Early Modern Histories
Author: Elizabeth Ketner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2016-07-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1134803974

Interpreting textual mediations of history in early modernity, this volume adds nuance to our understanding of the contributions fiction and fictionalizing make to the shape and texture of versions of and debates about history during that period. Geographically, the scope of the essays extends beyond Europe and England to include Asia and Africa. Contributors take a number of different approaches to understand the relationship between history, fiction, and broader themes in early modern culture. They analyze the ways fiction writers use historical sources, fictional texts translate ideas about the past into a vernacular accessible to broad audiences, fictional depictions and interpretations shape historical action, and the ways in which nonfictional texts and accounts were given fictional histories of their own, intentionally or not, through transmission and interpretation. By combining the already contested idea of fiction with performance, action, and ideas/ideology, this collection provides a more thorough consideration of fictional histories in the early modern period. It also covers more than two centuries of primary material, providing a longer perspective on the changing and complex role of history in forming early modern national, gendered, and cultural identities.