Short description:

Popularizing National Pasts is the first truly cross-national and comparative study of popular national histories, their representations, the meanings given to them and their political and societal uses, expanding outside the confines of Western Europe and the US. It draws a picture of popular histories which is European in the full sense of this term, making available to English readers the cutting edge of Eastern European scholarship on popular histories, nationalism, and culture.

Long description:

Popularizing National Pasts is the first truly cross-national and comparative study of popular national histories, their representations, the meanings given to them and their uses, which expands outside the confines of Western Europe and the US. It draws a picture of popular histories which is European in the full sense of this term. One of its fortes is the inclusion of Eastern Europe. The cross-national angle of Popularizing National Pasts is apparent in the scope of its comparative project, as well as that of the longue durée it covers. Apart from essays on Britain, France, and Germany, the collection includes studies of popular histories in Scandinavia, Eastern and Southern Europe, notably Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Armenia, Russia and the Ukraine, as well as considering the US and Argentina. Cross-national comparison is also a central concern of the thirteen case studies in the volume, which are, each, devoted to comparing between two, or more, national historical cultures. Thus temporality ?both continuities and breaks- in popular notions of the past, its interpretations and consumption, is examined in the long continuum. The volume makes available to English readers, probably for the first time, the cutting edge of Eastern European scholarship on popular histories, nationalism and culture.

"The individual essays are exciting, and offer a variety of new topics and methods that will greatly increase our understanding of the impact of the past on the historical and contemporary present." Stephanie Barczewski, Clemson University, USA

Table of Contents:

Introduction. Stefan Berger, Chris Lorenz, and Billie Melman Part I: Popular National Histories in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries 1. Revolutionary Politics and Revolutionary Aesthetics: Opera, Classics, and Popular National History. Simon Goldhill 2. History as Romance and History as Atonement: Nineteenth-Century Images from Britain and France. Stephen Bann 3. ?That which we learn with the eye?: Popular Histories, Modernity, and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century London and Paris. Billie Melman 4. Popular Heritage and Commodification Debates in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Britain, France, and Germany. Astrid Swensson Part II: Popular National Histories in the First Half of the Twentieth Century 5. Imagining Russia?s Pasts: Revolutionary and Tsarist Russia in American, British and German Cinema, 1927?1939. Sarah Street 6. Balkans Baedecker for Übermensch Tourists: Janko Janev?s Popular Historiosophy. Balász Trencsényi 7. Exhibiting Scandinavian Culture: The National Museums of Denmark and Sweden. Peter Aronsson 8. Locating Transylvanians: Real and Fictional Ethnohistories. Borbála Zsuzsanna Török Part III: Popular National Histories in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century 9. Migrants, Foreigners, Jews, and the Cultural Structure of Prejudice: The Nation as Performative Event in US and German TV Crime Dramas. Wulf Kansteiner 10. Filming a Livable Past: The 1970s?1980s in Contemporary Russian Cinema. Oksana Sarkisova 11. On Track to the Grand Prix: The National Eurovision Competition as National History. Philip V. Bohlman 12. A City and its Pasts: Popular Histories in Kaliningrad between Regionalization and Nationalization. Stefan Berger 13. The Internet and National Histories. Markku Jokisipilä 14. ?Unpopular past?: The Argentine Madres de Plaza de Mayo and their Rebellion against History. Berber Bevernage