Other Pasts, Different Presents, Alternative Futures PDF Download

Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253017068
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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“The most robust defense of historical counterfactuals to date . . . For those interested in this fascinating subject, Black’s book is indispensable.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) What if there had been no World War I or no Russian Revolution? What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo in 1815, or if Martin Luther had not nailed his complaints to the church door at Wittenberg in 1517, or if the South had won the American Civil War? The questioning of apparent certainties or “known knowns” can be fascinating and, indeed, “What if?” books are very popular. However, this speculative approach, known as counterfactualism, has had limited impact in academic histories, historiography, and the teaching of historical methods. In this book, Jeremy Black offers a short guide to the subject, one that is designed to argue its value as a tool for public and academia alike. He “demonstrates that, in skillful hands, counterfactual history is more than just fun; as one ingredient among many, it can be an extremely fertile source of explanation” (History Today). “[Black’s] illustrative examples of ‘what if' ‘how,’ and ‘why’ will make readers sit back and wonder.”—Kirkus Reviews “With a unique methodology, Black performs a what-if analysis of history to show how little it takes to change the world’s fate . . . This book provokes thought and speculation while also entertaining.”—Foreword Reviews “A sparkling defense of the legitimacy and utility of counterfactual history―of what ifs―and the best single work on its subject available.”—Weekly Standard

Author: Sarah Van Ruyskensvelde
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110623455
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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This volume brings together important theoretical and methodological issues currently being debated in the field of history of education. The contributions shed insightful and critical light on the historiography of education, on issues of de-/colonization, on the historical development of the educational sciences and on the potentiality attached to the use of new and challenging source material.

Author: Brian E. Crim
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978801629
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Planet Auschwitz explores the diverse ways in which the Holocaust influences and shapes science fiction and horror film and television by focusing on notable contributions from the last fifty years. The supernatural and extraterrestrial are rich and complex spaces with which to examine important Holocaust themes - trauma, guilt, grief, ideological fervor and perversion, industrialized killing, and the dangerous afterlife of Nazism after World War II. Planet Auschwitz explores why the Holocaust continues to set the standard for horror in the modern era and asks if the Holocaust is imaginable here on Earth, at least by those who perpetrated it, why not in a galaxy far, far away? The pervasive use of Holocaust imagery and plotlines in horror and science fiction reflects both our preoccupation with its enduring trauma and our persistent need to “work through” its many legacies. Planet Auschwitz website (https://planetauschwitz.com)

Author: James M. Banner, Jr.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300258240
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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An experienced, multi-faceted historian shows how revisionist history is at the heart of creating historical knowledge "A rallying cry in favor of historians who, revisiting past subjects, change their minds. . . . Rewarding reading."—Kirkus Reviews History is not, and has never been, inert, certain, merely factual, and beyond reinterpretation. Taking readers from Thucydides to the origin of the French Revolution to the Civil War and beyond, James M. Banner, Jr. explores what historians do and why they do it. Banner shows why historical knowledge is unlikely ever to be unchanging, why history as a branch of knowledge is always a search for meaning and a constant source of argument, and why history is so essential to individuals’ awareness of their location in the world and to every group and nation’s sense of identity and destiny. He explains why all historians are revisionists while they seek to more fully understand the past, and how they always bring their distinct minds, dispositions, perspectives, and purposes to bear on the subjects they study.

Author: James R. Mensch
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438412827
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
The threat of solipcism nagged Husserl. The question of the status of others occupied him during the last years of his life and remained a question that seemed to challenge the foundation of his life's work. This book offers new answers to this persistent philosophical question by defining the question in specifically Husserlian terms and by means of a careful examination of Husserl's later texts, including the unpublished Nachlass.

Author: Zondervan,
Publisher: Zondervan Academic
ISBN: 0310534771
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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In recent years, a number of New Testament scholars engaged in academic historical Jesus studies have concluded that such scholarship cannot yield secure and illuminating conclusions about its subject, arguing that the search for a historically "authentic" Jesus has run aground. Jesus, Skepticism, and the Problem of History brings together a stellar lineup of New Testament scholars who contend that historical Jesus scholarship is far from dead. These scholars all find value in using the tools of contemporary historical methods in the study of Jesus and Christian origins. While the skeptical use of criteria to fashion a Jesus contrary to the one portrayed in the Gospels is methodologically unsound and theologically unacceptable, these criteria, properly formulated and applied, yield positive results that support the Gospel accounts and the historical narrative in Acts. This book presents a nuanced and vitally needed alternative to the skeptical extremes of revisionist Jesus scholarship that, on the one hand, uses historical methods to call into question the Jesus of the Gospels and, on the other, denies the possibility of using historical methods to learn about Jesus.

Author: Chiel van den Akker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000465500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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This Companion provides a wide-ranging and up-to-date overview of the conceptual issues that history as a discipline and mode of thought gives rise to. The book offers both historical and systematic treatments of these issues, as well as addressing their contemporary relevance. Structured in three parts – Modes and Schools of Historical Thought, Epistemology and Metaphysics of History, and Issues and Challenges in Historical Theory – it offers the reader a wide scope and expert treatment of each topic in this vibrant field that can be read in any order. An international team of experts both discuss the basis of their topic and present their own view, offering the reader a cutting-edge contribution while ensuring their chapters are of interest to both students and specialists in the field of historical theory and engaging with the very nature of historical thought, the metaphysics of historical existence, the politics of history-writing, and the intelligibility of the historical process. The volume is an indispensable companion to the study of history and essential reading for anyone interested in the reflection on the nature of history and our historical existence.

Author: Bryan W. Carter
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 042988978X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
This book brings Afrofuturism into conversation with digital humanities to pioneer the field of Digital Africana Studies, and shows how students and academics can engage with the vision of Afrofuturism, both theoretically and practically, in the classroom and through research. As Black people across the globe consider their place in the future following the past two decades of technological advancement, Afrofuturism and its relevance for the humanities has become ever pertinent. While Afrofuturism has thus far been discussed through a literary, artistic, or popular culture lens, growing use of new technologies, and its resultant intersections with the reality of our racial experiences, has created a need for approaching Afrofuturism from a digital studies perspective. Via detailed case studies, Bryan W. Carter introduces the field of Digital Africana Studies to demonstrate how this new area can be experienced pedagogically. Alongside the book, readers can also visit select Digital Africana Studies projects that exemplify the various technologies and projects described at the author’s website: ibryancarter.com/projects. Given its unique approach to the path-breaking tradition of Afrofuturism, the book will be indispensable for scholars and students across fields such as digital humanities, media studies, black studies, African American studies, and Africana studies.

Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253016878
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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A survey of the variety of readings we have of the past and of how those readings are used in the present day to validate, discredit, unite, or divide. To write history is to consider how to explicate the past, to weigh the myriad possible approaches to the past, and to come to terms with how the past can be and has been used. In this book, prize-winning historian Jeremy Black considers both popular and academic approaches to the past. His focus is on the interaction between the presentation of the past and current circumstances, on how history is used to validate one view of the present or to discredit another, and on readings of the past that unite and those that divide. Black opens with an account that underscores the differences and developments in traditions of writing history from the ancient world to the present. Subsequent chapters take up more recent decades, notably the post–Cold War period, discussing how different perspectives can fuel discussions of the past by individuals interested in shaping public opinion or public perceptions of the past. Black then turns to the possible future uses of the then past as a way to gain perspective on how we use the past today. Clio’s Battles is an ambitious account of the engagement with the past across world history and of the clash over the content and interpretation of history and its implications for the present and future. “Remarkable both for its geographical scope and historical scale, and for its command of scholarship on a breathtaking range of subjects. I can’t imagine another historian who could attempt such an ambitious work or pull it off with such aplomb.” —William Gibson, Oxford Brookes University “Refreshing . . . Black eschews “Eurocentricism” and includes considerable material on other areas of the world that one does not usually find in such a work. Typical of Black’s writing, there is much to learn in the numerous small asides throughout the text. Taken together these form an impressive whole.” —Spencer C. Tucker, VMI

Author: Ingo Venzke
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192652907
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
This book poses a question that is deceptive in its simplicity: could international law have been otherwise? Today, there is hardly a serious account left that would consider the path of international law to be necessary, and that would refute the possibility of a different law altogether. But behind every possibility of the past stands a reason why the law developed as it did. Only with a keen sense of why things turned out the way they did is it possible to argue about how the law could plausibly have turned out differently. The search for contingency in international law is often motivated, as it is in this volume, by a refusal to resign to the present state of affairs. By recovering past possibilities, this volume aims to inform projects of transformative legal change for the future. The book situates that search for contingency theoretically and carries it into practice across many fields, with chapters discussing human rights and armed conflict, migrants and refugees, the sea and natural resources, foreign investments and trade. In doing so, it shows how politically charged questions about contingency have always been.