History

In Luxembourg, the evolution of cultural policy remains underexplored despite its pivotal role in the nation-building process. This book investigates how national cultural policy evolved from the 1920s to the early 1970s, casting Luxembourg as a nationalized intermediate space between French and German influences. Featuring a case study of the history and art section of the State Museums – the precursor to today’s Musée national d’archéologie, d’histoire et d’art – the book examines the interplay of structures, actors, and discourses and how a cultural institution was intertwined with cultural policy. The study exposes the tensions between adopting external models, on the one hand, and asserting a distinct national culture amid interventionist policies, on the other hand. By including the occupation period from 1940 to 1944, it illustrates how Nazi policies challenged Luxembourg’s nation-building by seeking to integrate it into the Third Reich. Combining theoretical analysis with archival research, this work offers nuanced insights into nation-building processes and is highly relevant for historians, cultural policy scholars, and museum professionals.

In this essential intervention, Venezuelan socialists analyze the origins and causes of their country’s crisis and offer a critique of the Maduro regime.

Venezuela in Crisis brings together a diverse array of Venezuelan thinkers and activists to grapple with the question of how and why the aspirations for what Hugo Chavez deemed “socialism in the twenty-first century” gave way to the deepest economic collapse in all of South America. While recognizing the devastating impact of sanctions, this collection’s authors reject the simplistic view that all would be well if not for US meddling. Rather, they argue that from governmental mismanagement to rising repression, the regime of Nicolás Maduro deserves a significant share of the blame for Venezuela’s ongoing crisis. 

With chapters focused on the Maduro government’s economic policies, its continuities and breaks from the Chávez era, its erosion of democratic processes in the country, and its doubling down on extractivism, Venezuela in Crisis is an indispensable guide for international solidarity activists and for anyone looking for a nuanced understanding of Venezuela’s crisis.

Writing from an anticapitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-authoritarian perspective, this volume never loses sight of the need to stand with the Venezuelan people rather than their government—even when it claims to be struggling to build socialism. 

From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor documents the overlooked history and lasting influence of the International Socialists through the words of its members.

Founded at UC Berkeley in 1964 as a radical civil rights group, the International Socialist Club sparked the Free Speech Movement that same year, and its members and successor organizations would go on to help shape the course of both the Black freedom struggle and the rank-and-file labor insurgency of the 1970s. From its inception, the organization adhered to the tenets of “socialism from below”—the belief that revolutionary Marxism meant an expansion of democracy, not its curtailment at the hands of bureaucratic dictatorships that claimed to be building socialist societies. 

Following their success in the Bay Area, the ISC launched chapters across the country, forging an alliance with the Black Panthers to promote Huey P. Newton’s candidacy on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. In 1969, the ISC became the International Socialists, and much of its growing membership relocated to the Midwest to take industrial jobs. In their final years, among other important efforts, the IS created a majority-Black youth group known as the Red Tide, founded the seminal publication Labor Notes, and helped create Teamsters for a Democratic Union. 

From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor includes twenty-six original reflections by leading members—including renowned scholar-activists Nelson Lichtenstein and Nancy Holmstrom—offering invaluable insights into this influential but little-known organization. 

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Обозначение, или определение «других» по отношению к собственной группе «мы» лежит в исторической основе формирования коллективной идентичности, «самости». В российских источниках формулирование этих «двойных» определений можно проследить вплоть до средневековых текстов, в которых главной линией, делящей группы на «своих» и «чужих», стала религия. Кроме того, расширение империи постоянно превращало многочисленных «внешних других» во внутренние меньшинства. В этом сборнике рассматриваются развитие и контекст различных образов, представлений и категорий внешних и внутренних Других в России начиная с XVI века, с появления на исторической карте Московского государства, до распада Российской империи.

For nearly a thousand years, the city of Tharros in western Sardinia was central to trade routes and cultural exchange, a hub connecting North Africa, the Balearic Islands, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Its earliest ruins, dating from the seventh century BCE, were likely constructed by Punic settlers from North Africa. The Carthaginians built temples and tombs; the Romans, who arrived in the third century BCE, erected their own infrastructure, such as public baths and aqueducts. Tharros was eventually abandoned around 1000 CE. The site was plundered over the centuries, and treasures from its tombs were widely trafficked.

This is the first English-language book to explore the rich and fascinating archaeological site of Tharros. Distinguished scholars of Sardinian and Mediterranean archaeology examine the history of excavations and the many significant discoveries that have been made on the site. Essays consider the religious beliefs, burial practices, material culture, and daily life of the inhabitants of ancient Tharros. Dozens of color photographs depict the city’s architecture and artifacts—buildings and roads from the Bronze Age, the Punic era, ancient Roman times, and the Christian centuries, along with treasured and everyday objects now held in major global museums. Showcasing the achievements of Sardinia’s ancient society, this book shines a light on Tharros’s distinctive history and culture.

The first book to tell the shocking story of the AIDS crisis in Soviet Russia.

Throughout the 1980s, as the world was grappling with the escalating crisis of AIDS, Soviet Russia continued to deny there was a problem. Arguing that the disease was limited to foreigners and ‘immoral’ groups, the government failed to take meaningful action, long past the point other countries had begun to recognise the full scale of the threat.

In this ground-breaking book, Rustam Alexander tells the story of AIDS in Soviet Russia. Fixated on disinformation, censorship and the persecution of marginalised communities, the Soviet authorities wasted precious time, allowing the epidemic to strike at the very heart of the nation: its children. Yet, despite the government’s failure, a number of brave journalists, doctors and nascent gay groups decided to take matters into their own hands and engage in full-fledged AIDS activism.

Tracing the political and social response to AIDS in the final years of the Soviet era, Alexander sheds light on the devastating consequences of government inaction. He draws on personal stories, media reports and archival materials to provide a riveting account of the Russian people’s fight against AIDS amid the tumultuous transformations of Gorbachev’s perestroika.

Der interdisziplinäre Band fragt nach dem Stellenwert von formeller wie informeller Beratung und Beschlussfindung in Mittelalter und Frühneuzeit. Dazu rekonstruiert er historische Vorstellungen von gelingendem wie scheiterndem Rat in literarischen Entwürfen.

Beratung ist ein zentrales Instrument öffentlicher wie privater Konsens- und Beschlussfindung. Ihre Funktionen und Leistungen betreffen nicht nur eine sachliche, sondern auch eine soziale Dimension. Besonders in den locker organisierten Personen- und Herrschaftsverbänden der Vormoderne konnte öffentlich sichtbare Beratung Konsens fördern, konnten Ratsversammlungen den Einzelnen ins Kollektiv integrieren und dieses stabilisieren. Entsprechend entwerfen literarische Texte der verschiedenen Volkssprachen eine Vielzahl von Szenen formeller wie informeller Beratung, die aber in der literaturwissenschaftlichen Forschung bislang nur eher punktuelle Aufmerksamkeit geweckt haben.

Die Beiträge des Bandes aus den Bereichen Germanistik, Romanistik, Anglistik und Theaterwissenschaft verbinden in komparatistischer Perspektive textnahe Analysen mit systematischen Überlegungen und bieten für Literatur- und Geschichtswissenschaften, aber auch für eine historisch informierte Soziologie Impulse.

Historically, Latin American political entities were structured by different forms of slave-labor that until the 19th century depended on transatlantic slave trade from Africa to the Americas. In this volume, scholars from Brazil, Germany, and Africa characterize different forms of serfdom in colonial times, picture slavery-based societies and explore aspects of dependency relations that emerged in the aftermath of abolition in Brazil and Africa.