Download or read book Inconvenient Memories written by Anna Wang and published by . This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inconvenient Memories is a rare and truthful memoir of a young woman's coming of age amid the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989. In 1989, Anna Wang was one of a lucky few who worked for a Japanese company, Canon. She traveled each day between her grandmother's dilapidated commune-style apartment and an extravagant office just steps from Tiananmen Square. Her daily commute on Beijing's impossibly crowded buses brought into view the full spectrum of China's economic and social inequalities during the economic transition. When Tiananmen Protests broke out, her Japanese boss was concerned whether the protests would obstruct Canon's assembly plant in China, and she was sent to Tiananmen Square on a daily basis to take photos for her boss to analyze for evidence of turning tides. From the perspective as a member of the emerging middle class, she observed firsthand that Tiananmen Protests stemmed from Chinese people's longing for political freedom and their fear for the nascent market economy, an observation that readers have never come across from the various accounts of the historical events so far.
Download or read book World War II Memory and Contested Commemorations in Europe and Russia written by Jennifer A. Yoder and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-31 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Instrumentalization of the wartime past for political gain is the subject of this study of eleven World War II commemorations. Using a comparative, conceptually original approach, Yoder identifies the actors who manipulate memory surrounding wartime anniversaries, such as the bombing of Dresden and ceremonies to honor fallen soldiers and fascist collaborators. The cases of memory contestation span three geographic regions, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Russia, recognizing that each developed distinctive interpretations of the war and different patterns of memory politics. This empirically rich study reveals the grievances that motivate memory challengers and their strategies for shaping the commemoration discourses and rituals. The memory challengers' toolkit includes varieties of emotional manipulation, subtle distortion, revisionism and full-scale denial. The study finds that, while there are differences in context and strategy across cases and regions, there are also areas of convergence. Moreover, a memory challenge in one country can spill over into others with serious consequences for foreign relations. While World War II Memory and Contested Commemorations in Europe and Russia deals with debates and narratives about events in the last century, its focus is on power, persuasion, and identity in the present.
Download or read book Memory and Change in Europe written by Małgorzata Pakier and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-11-01 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In studies of a common European past, there is a significant lack of scholarship on the former Eastern Bloc countries. While understanding the importance of shifting the focus of European memory eastward, contributors to this volume avoid the trap of Eastern European exceptionalism, an assumption that this region’s experiences are too unique to render them comparable to the rest of Europe. They offer a reflection on memory from an Eastern European historical perspective, one that can be measured against, or applied to, historical experience in other parts of Europe. In this way, the authors situate studies on memory in Eastern Europe within the broader debate on European memory.
Download or read book Traitors Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory written by Gelinada Grinchenko and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-12-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to shaping and imposition of “formulas for betrayal” as a result of changing memory politics in post-war Europe. The contributors, who specialize in history, sociology, anthropology, memory studies, media studies and cultural studies, discuss the exertion of political control over memory (including the selection, imposition, silencing or ideological “twisting” of facts), the usage of “formulas for betrayal” in various cultural-political contexts, and the discursive framing of the betraying subject for the purpose of legitimizing various memory regimes and ideologies.
Download or read book Memory and Cultural History of the Spanish Civil War written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-10-02 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors in this anthology explore how we are to rethink political and social narratives of the Spanish Civil War at the turn of the twenty-first century. The questions addressed here are based on a solid intellectual conviction of all the contributors to resist facile arguments both on the Right and the Left, concerning the historical and collective memory of the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship in the milieu of post-transition to democracy. Central to a true democratic historical narrative is the commitment to listening to the other experiences and the willingness to rethink our present(s) in light of our past(s). The volume is divided in six parts: I. Institutional Realms of Memory; II. Past Imperfect: Gender Archetypes in Retrospect; III. The Many Languages of Domesticity; IV. Realms of Oblivion: Hunger, Repression, and Violence; V. Strangers to Ourselves: Autobiographical Testimonies; and VI. The Orient Within: Myths of Hispano-Arabic Identity. Contributors are Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez, Álex Bueno, Fernando Martínez López, Miguel Gómez Oliver, Mary Ann Dellinger, Geoffrey Jensen, Paula A. de la Cruz-Fernández, María del Mar Logroño Narbona, M. Cinta Ramblado Minero, Deirdre Finnerty, Victoria L. Enders, Pilar Domínguez Prats, Sofia Rodríguez López, Óscar Rodríguez Barreira, Nerea Aresti, and Miren Llona. Listed by Choice magazine as one of the Outstanding Academic Titles of 2014
Download or read book The Road written by Austin Coates and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in 1950s Hong Kong, The Road paints an evocative picture of comfortable colonial life, while at the same time presenting the local people with the shrewd understanding that the author had acquired as a District Officer in rural Hong Kong. Perhaps the central character is the road itself, now easily recognized as the very real Lantau coast road. But in this novel, the road was an idea tossed off by the Acting Governor between cocktails in the course of a launch picnic. To Richard, the District Officer, the road was a challenge, something of his own to be achieved; an achievement, furthermore, that would spell progress for the Chinese villagers. To Richard's wife Sylvia, an intelligent woman notorious for an ancient affair which she had publicized in a best-selling novel, the road was a new threat to a marriage already riven with complexities. To the island's villagers, who did not want the road or the changes it would bring, it was the end of a way of life and further evidence that the foreign devils were quite mad. And to the villagers' more worldly kin, the road was a god-sent invitation to graft.
Download or read book European Civil War Films written by Eleftheria Rania Kosmidou and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the ways in which late twentieth-century European cinema deals with the neglected subject of civil war. Exploring a range of films about the Spanish, Irish, former Yugoslavia, and Greek civil wars, this comparative and interdisciplinary study engages with contemporary debates in cultural memory and investigates the ways in which cinematic postmemory is problematic. Many of the films present an idealized past that glosses over the reality of these civil wars, at times producing a nostalgic discourse of loss and longing. Other films engage with the past in a melancholic fashion. These cinematic discourses articulate contemporary concerns, especially the loss of ideology and a utopian political horizon in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, a date that marks a significant break in European history and an accompanying paradigm shift in European cultural memory. Filmmakers examined include Trueba, Cuerda, Loach, Jordan, Kusturica, Dragojevic, and Angelopoulos.
Download or read book Handbook of Pre Modern Nordic Memory Studies written by Jürg Glauser and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-11-19 with total page 1152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the field of Memory Studies has emerged as a key approach in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and has increasingly shown its ability to open new windows on Nordic Studies as well. The entries in this book document the work-to-date of this approach on the pre-modern Nordic world (mainly the Viking Age and the Middle Ages, but including as well both earlier and later periods). Given that Memory Studies is an ever expanding critical strategy, the approximately eighty contributors in this volume also discuss the potential for future research in this area. Topics covered range from texts to performance to visual and other aspects of material culture, all approached from within an interdisciplinary framework. International specialists, coming from such relevant fields as archaeology, mythology, history of religion, folklore, history, law, art, literature, philology, language, and mediality, offer assessments on the relevance of Memory Studies to their disciplines and show it at work in case studies. Finally, this handbook demonstrates the various levels of culture where memory had a critical impact in the pre-modern North and how deeply embedded the role of memory is in the material itself.
Download or read book Contested Selves written by Katja Herges and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2021 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigates the field of German life writing, from Rahel Levin Varnhagen around 1800 to Carmen Sylva a century later, from Döblin, Becher, women's WWII diaries, German-Jewish memoirs, and East German women's interview literatureto the autofiction of Lena Gorelik.
Download or read book The Future of the Mind written by Michio Kaku and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michio Kaku, the New York Times bestselling author of Physics of the Impossible and Physics of the Future tackles the most fascinating and complex object in the known universe: the human brain. The Future of the Mind brings a topic that once belonged solely to the province of science fiction into a startling new reality. This scientific tour de force unveils the astonishing research being done in top laboratories around the world—all based on the latest advancements in neuroscience and physics—including recent experiments in telepathy, mind control, avatars, telekinesis, and recording memories and dreams. The Future of the Mind is an extraordinary, mind-boggling exploration of the frontiers of neuroscience. Dr. Kaku looks toward the day when we may achieve the ability to upload the human brain to a computer, neuron for neuron; project thoughts and emotions around the world on a brain-net; take a “smart pill” to enhance cognition; send our consciousness across the universe; and push the very limits of immortality.
Download or read book War Guilt and World Politics After World War II written by Thomas U. Berger and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-16 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes how the states in post-1945 Austria, Germany, and Japan have tried to deal with the legacy of the Second World War and how their policies have affected their relations with other countries in the region. It focuses on the intersection of national interest and popular emotions and argues that it is possible to reconcile over historical issues, but that to do so can exact a considerable political cost.
Download or read book Nordic Experiences in Pan nationalisms written by Ruth Hemstad and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-06-30 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to reassess and shed new light on pan-nationalisms in general and on Scandinavianism/Nordism in particular, by seeing them as possible futures and as interconnected ideas and practices across and beyond Europe. An actor and practice oriented approach is applied at the expense of more essentialist categorizations of what pan-nationalism is, or is not to underline both the synchronic and diachronic diversity of various pan-national movements. A range of expert international scholars discuss encounters, transfers, similarities and differences among pan-movements in Norden and Europe based on a broad empirical material, focusing on Scandinavianism/Nordism, pan-Slavism, pan-Turanism, pan-Germanism and Greater Netherlandism, and the position of Britishness in Great Britain. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of nationalism, European history, European studies and Scandinavian studies, history, social science, political geography, civil society and literary studies.
Download or read book Two World Literature written by Rebecca Suter and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2020-05-31 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study, Rebecca Suter aims to complicate our understanding of world literature by examining the creative and critical deployment of cultural stereotypes in the early novels of Kazuo Ishiguro. “World literature” has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years: Aamir Mufti called it the result of “one-world thinking,” the legacy of an imperial system of cultural mapping from a unified perspective. Suter views Ishiguro’s fiction as an important alternative to this paradigm. Born in Japan, raised in the United Kingdom, and translated into a broad range of languages, Ishiguro has throughout his career consciously used his multiple cultural positioning to produce texts that look at broad human concerns in a significantly different way. Through a close reading of his early narrative strategies, Suter explains how Ishiguro has been able to create a “two-world literature” that addresses universal human concerns and avoids the pitfalls of the single, Western-centric perspective of “one-world vision.” Setting his first two novels, A Pale View of Hills (1982) and An Artist of the Floating World (1986), in a Japan explicitly used as a metaphor enabled Ishiguro to parody and subvert Western stereotypes about Japan, and by extension challenge the universality of Western values. This subversion was amplified in his third novel, The Remains of the Day (1989), which is perfectly legible through both English and Japanese cultural paradigms. Building on this subversion of stereotypes, Ishiguro’s early work investigates the complex relationship between social conditioning and agency, showing how characters’ behavior is related to their cultural heritage but cannot be reduced to it. This approach lies at the core of the author’s compelling portrayal of human experience in more recent works, such as Never Let Me Go (2005) and The Buried Giant (2015), which earned Ishiguro a global audience and a Nobel Prize. Deprived of the easy explanations of one-world thinking, readers of Ishiguro’s two-world literature are forced to appreciate the complexity of the interrelation of individual and collective identity, personal and historical memory, and influence and agency to gain a more nuanced, “two-world appreciation” of human experience.
Download or read book The Scientific American Brave New Brain written by Judith Horstman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-02-25 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating and highly accessible book presents fantastic but totally feasible projections of what your brain may be capable of in the near future. It shows how scientific breakthroughs and amazing research are turning science fiction into science fact. In this brave new book, you'll explore: How partnerships between biological sciences and technology are helping the deaf hear, the blind see, and the paralyzed communicate. How our brains can repair and improve themselves, erase traumatic memories How we can stay mentally alert longer—and how we may be able to halt or even reverse Alzheimers How we can control technology with brain waves, including prosthetic devices, machinery, computers—and even spaceships or clones. Insights into how science may cure fatal diseases, and improve our intellectual and physical productivity Judith Horstman presents a highly informative and entertaining look at the future of your brain, based on articles from Scientific American and Scientific American Mind magazines, and the work of today’s visionary neuroscientists.
Download or read book Engaging with a Nation written by Siddhartha Biswas and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-09 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book looks at the impact that the idea and institution of nationhood have had on the constituents of India in the contemporary postcolonial period. It provides a critical analysis through a variety of perspectives––historical, philosophical, literary, and gendered, and locates the nation and its “discontents”, along with its nationalist agenda firmly within the context of the contemporary perceived modernity. The book also engages with the colonial legacy that the ‘nation’ had to endure for two hundred years. It discusses key themes such as nationalism in the contemporary Indian context, the concept of Hindutva, Islam nationalism, and queer nationalism. An important contribution, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of India studies, Indian politics, Third World studies, postcolonial studies, gender studies, nation studies, and history.
Download or read book Narrative Humanism written by Moss-Wellington Wyatt Moss-Wellington and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-13 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book attempts to clarify the narrative conditions of humanism, asking how we can use stories to complicate our understanding of others, and questioning the ethics and efficacy of attempts to represent human social complexity in fiction. With case studies of films like Parenthood (1989), American Beauty (1999), Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and The Kids Are All Right (2010), this original study synthesises leading discourses on media and cognition, evolutionary anthropology, literature and film analysis into a new theory of the storytelling instinct.
Download or read book Franco written by Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General Francisco Franco, also called the Caudillo, was the dictator of Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975. His life has been examined in many previous biographies. However, most of these have been traditional, linear biographies that focus on Franco’s military and political careers, neglecting the significance of who exactly Franco was for the millions of Spaniards over whom he ruled for almost forty years. In this new biography Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez looks at Franco from a fresh perspective, emphasizing the cultural and social over the political. Cazorla-Sanchez's Franco uses previously unknown archival sources to analyse how the dictator was portrayed by the propaganda machine, how the opposition tried to undermine his prestige, and what kind of opinions, rumours and myths people formed of him, and how all these changed over time. The author argues that the collective construction of Franco’s image emerged from a context of material needs, the political traumas caused by the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the complex cultural workings of a society in distress, political manipulation, and the lack of any meaningful public debate. Cazorla-Sanchez's Franco is a study of Franco’s life as experienced and understood by ordinary people; by those who loved or admired him, by those who hated or disliked him, and more generally, by those who had no option but to accommodate their existence to his rule. The book has a significance that goes well beyond Spain, as Cazorla-Sanchez explores the all-too-common experience of what it is like to live under the deep shadow cast by an always officially praised, ever present, and long lasting dictator.
