Books

Teaching History to Face the World Today

Socially-conscious approaches, activity proposals and historical thinking competencies

By Cosme J. Gómez Carrasco, José Monteagudo Fernández & Juan Ramón Moreno Vera • 2023-08-16

This book develops the challenges that history teaching must face as a curricular subject at the beginning of the 21st century. These challenges are related, both to new epistemological approaches in history education, and also to the development of new activities, active-learning methodologies, and historical thinking competencies. In terms of new approaches, this book suggests activities regarding invisible topics such as social and economic impacts in history, inequalities, church and science, gender equality, power and violence, prosecuted by justice, peasantry… Read More

Difficult Heritage and Immersive Experiences

Edited By Agiatis Benardou, Anna Maria Droumpouki

By Paula • December 9, 2022

Difficult Heritage and Immersive Experiences examines the benefits involved in designing and employing immersive technologies to reconstruct difficult pasts at heritage sites around the world. Presenting interdisciplinary case studies of heritage sites and museums from across a range of different contexts, the volume analyzes the ways in which various types of immersive technologies can help visitors to contextualize and negotiate difficult or sensitive heritage and traumatic pasts. Demonstrating that some of the most creative applications of immersive experiences appear in… Read More

Gender, Transnational Justice and Memorial Arts

Global Perspectives on Commemoration and Mobilisation

By Jelke Boesten & Helen Scanlon • 2021

This book examines the role of post-conflict memorial arts in bringing about gender justice in transitional societies. The book brings together research from scholars around the world who are interested in the gendered dimensions of memory-making in transitional societies. Aimed at those interested in the fields of transitional justice, memory studies, post-conflict peacebuilding, human rights and gender studies… Read More

Rethinking Africa

Indigenous Women Re-Interpret South Africa's Pasts

By Bernadette Muthien & June Bam (Eds.) • 2021

This book critically opens new pathways for de-colonial scholarship and the reclamation of indigenous self-definition by women scholars. Indigenous peoples around the world are often socially and gender egalitarian, matricentric, matrifocal, matrilineal, less violent, beyond heteronormative, ecologically sensitive, and with feminine or two-gender deities or spirits, and more. Bernedette Muthien has contributed to several publications over the years, while Bam has made numerous key contributions in the field of rethinking and rewriting the African past more generally. In this book,… Read More

Contested Histories in Public Spaces

Principles, Processes, Best Practices

By Timothy W. Ryback, Mark S. Ellis & Benjamin Glahn (Eds.) • February 2021

The ten case studies in this volume were selected with a twofold purpose: first, to examine the dynamics around specific contestations around the world in recent, real-world situations to demonstrate that these contestations are a global phenomenon; and second, to identify ‘best practices’ that can help decision-makers faced with similar situations address them in an effective and responsible manner. While every contestation will have its own unique constellation of social, political, legal and cultural dynamics, it is hoped that these… Read More

Rhodes Must Fall

The Struggle to Decolonise the Racist Heart of Empire

By Brian Kwoba, Roseanne Chantiluke & Athinangamso Nkopo • 2018

Written by key members of the movement in Oxford, Rhodes Must Fall is the story of that campaign. Showing the crucial importance of both intersectionality and solidarity with sister movements in South Africa and beyond, this book shows what it means to boldly challenge the racism rooted deeply at the very heart of empire. Read More

Whose History Counts

Decolonising African Pre-Colonial Historiography

By June Bam, Lungisile Ntsebeza & Allan Zinn (Eds.) • 2018

Originally planned as a fact-based book on the pre-colonial history of the Eastern Cape in the true tradition of history, this ground-breaking book focuses on epistemological and foundational questions about the writing of history and whose history counts. Whose History Counts challenges the very concept of “pre-colonial” and explores methodologies on researching and writing history. The reason for this dramatic change of focus is attributed in the introduction of the book to the student-led rebellion that erupted following the #RhodesMustFall… Read More

Law and Memory

Towards Legal Governance of History

By Uladzislau Belavusau & Aleksandra Gliszczyńska (Eds.) • 2017

Legal governance of memory has played a central role in establishing hegemony of monumental history, and has forged national identities and integration processes in Europe and beyond. In this book, a range of contributors explore both the nature and role of legal engagement into historical memory in selected national law, European and international law. They also reflect on potential conflicts between legal governance, political pluralism, and fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression. In recent years, there have been numerous… Read More

Historical Justice and Memory

By Klaus Neumann & Janna Thompson (Eds.) • 2015

Historical Justice and Memory highlights the global movement for historical justice—acknowledging and redressing historic wrongs—as one of the most significant moral and social developments of our times. Such historic wrongs include acts of genocide, slavery, systems of apartheid, the systematic persecution of presumed enemies of the state, colonialism, and the oppression of or discrimination against ethnic or religious minorities. Read More

Post-Communist Poland

Contested Pasts and Future Identities

By Ewa Ochman • 2013

The book explores the reinterpretations of Poland’s past which have been undertaken by Polish national and local elites since the fall of communism. It focuses on remembrance practices and traces the de-commemorating of communism to examine the ways in which collective remembering and forgetting shapes present power constellations in Poland and impacts on foreign and domestic policy. Read More

Sorry States

Apologies in International Politics

By Jennifer Lind • 2008

The post-World War II experiences of Japan and Germany suggest that international apologies have powerful healing effects when they are offered, and poisonous effects when withheld. The author demonstrates that denials of past atrocities fuel distrust and inhibit international reconciliation, by examining the cases of South Korean relations with Japan and of French relations with Germany. Read More

From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation

By Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov • 2004

While conflict resolution is believed to cause temporary settlements and brief periods of peace in volatile situations, conventional conflict resolution techniques are not capable of building long-term stability. Instead, this book contends, practitioners of conflict resolution need to focus more on reconciliation (the restoration of confidence, friendship, and harmony between rivals) than on mere conflict resolution. Read More