Museums, History and the Intimate Experience of the Great War PDF Download

Author: Joy Damousi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000201341
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
The Great War of 1914-1918 was fought on the battlefield, on the sea and in the air, and in the heart. Museums Victoria’s exhibition World War I: Love and Sorrow exposed not just the nature of that war, but its depth and duration in personal and familial lives. Hailed by eminent scholar Jay Winter as "one of the best which the centenary of the Great War has occasioned", the exhibition delved into the war’s continuing emotional claims on descendants and on those who encounter the war through museums today. Contributors to this volume, drawn largely from the exhibition’s curators and advisory panel, grapple with the complexities of recovering and presenting difficult histories of the war. In eleven essays the book presents a new, more sensitive and nuanced narrative of the Great War, in which families and individuals take centre stage. Together they uncover private reckonings with the costs of that experience, not only in the years immediately after the war, but in the century since.

Author: Priscilla Roberts
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440873577
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Bringing together a diverse collection of primary source documents, this book illuminates the events and experiences of World War I from a variety of perspectives, from soldiers on the front lines to civilians supporting the war effort at home. Part of Bloomsbury's Voices of an Era series, this carefully curated collection highlight the wartime experiences of a diverse array of individuals from around the globe. In addition to covering major military innovations and turning points, documents explore how issues of gender, race,diplomacy, and empire building impacted individuals' experience of the Great War. Each of the 42 documents includes contextual information and thought-provoking questions to guide readers in their exploration of the text. In addition to high-interest sidebars, in-text glossary definitions, biographical snapshots of key figures, and a comprehensive chronology of the war, the book also includes a guide to evaluating and interpreting primary sources that bolsters readers' analytical and critical thinking skills. Although it was nicknamed "the war to end all wars," World War I heralded the start of modern-day conflicts. The human toll of the Great War was immense-an estimated 9 million soldiers died on the battlefield, while more than 5 million civilians died as the result of military actions, disease, or famine. In the wake of World War I, empires crumbled and new nations won their independence. Although the events and aftermath of World War I happened on an epic scale, the conflict is best understood through the human lens provided by these primary sources.

Author: Ashley Garber
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000294935
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
First World War-based ex-servicemen’s organisations found themselves facing an existential crisis with the onset of the Second World War. This book examines how two such groups, the British and American Legions, adapted cognitively to the emergence of yet another world war and its veterans in the years 1938 through 1946. With collective identities and socio-political programmes based in First World War memory, both Legions renegotiated existing narratives of that war and the lessons they derived from those narratives as they responded to the unfolding Second World War in real time. Using the previous war as a "learning experience" for the new one privileged certain understandings of that conflict over others, inflecting its meaning for each Legion moving forward. Breaking the Second World War down into its constituent events to trace the evolution of First World War memory through everyday invocations, this unprecedented comparison of the British and American Legions illuminates the ways in which differing international, national, and organisational contexts intersected to shape this process as well as the common factors affecting it in both groups. The book will appeal most to researchers of the ex-service movement, First World War memory, and the cultural history of the Second World War.

Author: Mesut Uyar
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000295184
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
This is a comprehensive new operational military history of the Ottoman army during the First World War. Drawing from archives, official military histories, personal war narratives and sizable Turkish secondary literature, it tells the incredible story of the Ottoman army’s struggle from the mountains of the Caucasus to the deserts of Arabia and the bloody shores of Gallipoli. The Ottoman army, by opening new fronts, diverted and kept sizeable units of British, Russian and French forces away from the main theatres and even sent reinforcements to Austro-Hungary and Bulgaria. Against all odds the Ottoman army ultimately achieved some striking successes, not only on the battlefield, but in their total mobilization of the empire’s meagre human and economic resources. However, even by the terrible standards of the First World War, these achievements came at a terrible price in casualties and, ultimately, loss of territory. Thus, instead of improving the integrity and security of the empire, the war effectively dismantled it and created situations and problems hitherto undreamed of by a besieged Ottoman leadership. In a unique account, Uyar revises our understanding of the war in the Middle East.

Author: Paul Everill
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000590100
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Archaeology, Heritage, and Wellbeing fills an important gap in academic literature, bringing together experts from archaeology/ historic environment and mental health research to provide an interdisciplinary overview of this emerging subject area. The book, uniquely, provides archaeologists and heritage professionals with an introduction to the ways in which mental health researchers view and measure wellbeing, helping archaeologists and other heritage professionals to move beyond the anecdotal when evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of such initiatives. Importantly, this book also serves to highlight to mental health researchers the many ways in which archaeology and heritage can be, and are being, harnessed to support non-medical therapeutic interventions to improve wellbeing. Authentic engagement with the historic environment can also provide powerful tools for community health and wellbeing, and this book offers examples of the diverse communities that have benefited from its capacity to promote wellbeing and wellness. Archaeology, Heritage, and Wellbeing is for students and researchers of archaeology and psychology interested in wellbeing, as well as researchers and professionals involved in health and social care, social prescribing, mental health and wellbeing, leisure, tourism, and heritage management.

Author: Gaynor Kavanagh
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472586050
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The book is concerned with how, during four demanding, dislocating and world-changing years, that most Victorian of institutions, the museum, was forced or prompted to meet the extraordinary test of war on the home front. Museums were no more immune from the pressures of war than any other institution and the changes in museums during this period, some long term, others transitory, do much to explain the nature and character of museums in Britain today. Their history reveals and reflects the broader history of the home front, and the willing, stumbling, confused efforts to do the right thing at the right time. They were far away from the fighting, the despair and degradation of the battlefields. But they were in some measure not only close to, but part of, a society carrying both its fears and expectations for those operating in a war which disassembled all their lives. The discussion covers the progress of museums from just before the advent of war in August 1914 to the immediate post-war period, 1920, although this is set in the context of museum developments before and after this span of time. Museums are considered in relation to the tensions and prevalent conditions of this period. Further, the nature and effect of the experience of them and the public services they provide, in both the long and short term, are examined.

Author: Stephan Jaeger
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110661330
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
The Second World War is omnipresent in contemporary memory debates. As the war fades from living memory, this study is the first to systematically analyze how Second World War museums allow prototypical visitors to comprehend and experience the past. It analyzes twelve permanent exhibitions in Europe and North America – including the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden, the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, the House of European History in Brussels, the Imperial War Museums in London and Manchester, and the National WWII Museum in New Orleans – in order to show how museums reflect and shape cultural memory, as well as their cognitive, ethical, emotional, and aesthetic potential and effects. This includes a discussion of representations of events such as the Holocaust and air warfare. In relation to narrative, memory, and experience, the study develops the concept of experientiality (on a sliding scale between mimetic and structural forms), which provides a new textual-spatial method for reading exhibitions and understanding the experiences of historical individuals and collectives. It is supplemented by concepts like transnational memory, empathy, and encouraging critical thinking through difficult knowledge.

Author:
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1787146111
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Contributors to this edited collection argue for an emotional rebellion in the academic world, arguing that the presentation of research as ‘objective’ conceals the subject positions of researchers and the emotional imperatives that often drive research.

Author: Karen Shelby
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317377524
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Belgian Museums of the Great War: Politics, Memory, and Commerce examines the handling of the centennial of World War I by several museums along the Western Front in Flanders, Belgium. In the twenty-first century, the museum has become a strategic space for negotiating ownership of and access to knowledge produced in local settings. The specific focus on museums and commemorative events in Flanders allows for an in-depth evaluation of how each museum works with the remembrance and tourist industry in the region while carving a unique niche. Belgian Museums of the Great War writes the history of these institutions, analyzes the changes made in advance of the anniversary years, and considers the site-specificity of each institution and its architectural frame. Since museums not only transmit information but also shape knowledge, as Eileen Hooper-Greenhill has noted, the diverse narratives and community programs sponsored by each museum have served to challenge prior historiographies of the war. Through newly revamped interactive environments, self-guided learning, and an emphasis on the landscape, the museums in Flanders have a significant role to play in the ever-changing dialogue on the meaning of the history and remembrance of the Great War.

Author: Gail Braybon†
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 178238183X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
In the English-speaking world the Great War maintains a tenacious grip on the public imagination, and also continues to draw historians to an event which has been interpreted variously as a symbol of modernity, the midwife to the twentieth century and an agent of social change. Although much 'common knowledge' about the war and its aftermath has included myth, simplification and generalisation, this has often been accepted uncritically by popular and academic writers alike. While Britain may have suffered a surfeit of war books, many telling much the same story, there is far less written about the impact of the Great War in other combatant nations. Its history was long suppressed in both fascist Italy and the communist Soviet Union: only recently have historians of Russia begun to examine a conflict which killed, maimed and displaced so many millions. Even in France and Germany the experience of 1914-18 has often been overshadowed by the Second World War. The war's social history is now ripe for reassessment and revision. The essays in this volume incorporate a European perspective, engage with the historiography of the war, and consider how the primary textural, oral and pictorial evidence has been used - or abused. Subjects include the politics of shellshock, the impact of war on women, the plight of refugees, food distribution in Berlin and portrait photography, all of which illuminate key debates in war history.