Traces. Public History and Heritage Studies
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Edited by:
Marko Demantowsky
You want to know more about the series? Watch the short <A href=" https://www.youtu.be/XFO2Eq5KX4k?si=srDsOgOb6SIb_bbP">video introducing ‘Traces’ by Iman Elghonemi and Mariama De Brito Henn.
Grasping traces means understanding past events, seizing absences, questioning the present, and apprehending the coming of potential futures. Traces are found in languages and rituals, in recipes and practices, in art and culture. We aim to explore such traces and their readings, because they play a role in inventing and authorizing communities. Our approach is a transdisciplinary one. Thus, the series includes texts centered around material culture, architecture, art, monument, counter-monument, discourses, and performances, with no chronological nor geographical limitations.
Saisir les traces, c'est comprendre les événements passés, se confronter aux absences, interroger le présent et appréhender l'avènement de futurs potentiels. Les traces se trouvent dans les langues et les rituels, dans les recettes et les pratiques, dans l'art et la culture. Notre objectif est d'explorer ces traces ainsi que leurs différentes lectures, parce que celles-ci jouent un rôle dans l'invention et la légitimité des communautés. Notre approche est transdisciplinaire; la série publie des textes centrés sur la culture matérielle, l'architecture, l'art, les monuments, les contre-monuments, les discours et les performances, sans limitation chronologique ni géographique.
Spurenlesen heißt, vergangene Ereignisse zu verstehen, Abwesenheiten zu erfassen, die Gegenwart zu hinterfragen und die mögliche Zukunft zu antizipieren. Spuren finden sich in Sprachen und Ritualen, in Rezepten und Praktiken, in Kunst und Kultur. Wir wollen Spuren und ihren Lesarten nachforschen, denn sie spielen ihre Rolle bei der Gründung und Legitimation von Gemeinschaften. Unser Ansatz ist transdisziplinär, daher beinhaltet die Reihe Arbeiten, die sich mit materieller Kultur, Architektur, Kunst, Monumenten, Gegenmonumenten, Texten, Diskursen und Performanzen befassen, und zwar ohne chronologische oder geografische Einschränkungen.
Advisory Board:
Nebahat Avcioglu, The City University of New York
Yaëlle Biro, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Eva Kernbauer, Universität für Angewandte Kunst, Wien
Antje Flüchter, Universität Bielefeld, Germany
Yuko Lippit, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Noor Nieftagodien, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Moira Patricia Perez, Universidad de Buenos Aires
Thomas Sandkühler, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Marie-Karine Schaub, Université Paris Est
Didier Houenoude, University of Abomey-Calavi, Cotonou, Benin
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Supplementary Materials
Colonial capital and imperialism have shaped and redefined built environments in both metropole and periphery. Apparitions of trans-Atlantic colonialism and neo-colonialism haunt those societies and bound an important field of ideological and political contest, repudiation and resistance. Most of those actions have targeted commemorative monuments, object collections, and museum interpretation. Below and beyond those blatant ideological examples of imperialism, however, are the landscapes and structures that reinforce a habitus of imperial life, inferring rather than explicitly declaring its hegemony.
This collection of historical archaeological studies, centered in the long nineteenth century, examines and reinterprets a series of architectural remnants – structures and landscapes – that continue to ideologically reinforce neo-colonial social and power asymmetries. Examples include the failing Spanish mission and colony in New Spain; the bombastic reconstruction of imperial Paris; the nascent imperium centered in an expanding New York City; the failed cooperative utopia of the Oneida religious community; and the wide-area effects of early industrialization in New England.
It was above all its reconstructions of historical settings that made Assassin’s Creed a globally successful brand. With the series Discovery Tour, Ubisoft has made the leap from entertainment to education. This study examines whether the use of the digital game has led to measurable learning outcomes in historical knowledge. It provides insights into the future of learning games in history education.
Within this framework, 1989 is considered to be an epochal caesura. This project provides insights into what young history teachers from the Ruhr region believe about this significant complex of events. It not only illuminates their (individual) notions of history within a scholarly interpretative framework but also examines their ideas about teaching contemporary history.
Many people around the world ask themselves: what is in fact this "public history". All those who work at the junction of historical research and the history-related public outreach or public policy in museums, at memorial sites, in editorial offices, administrations, schools and universities must find themselves asking this question, as it concerns both their daily professional practice and their history-related freelance activities.
What connects all these people around the world who –– although they work in different institutional settings –– experience their work as essentially common, and describe their professions as a part of a larger field of public history?
There are countless answers to this question, yet they often converge on a simple common descriptive level which strives to address as many different practices as possible. In recent years, however, an attempt has been made to explain the nature of public history in a way that would provide an operationalizable definition of the concept.
This volume presents a continuation of this debate with contributions from Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, Italy, Austria, Russia, the USA and Venezuela. By opening a space for a constructive, explicit and reciprocal discourse, this volume also renders public history visible in its form as a dynamic, theoretical scholarly practice.
