front cover of Narrating the Past
Narrating the Past
Fiction and Historiography in Postwar Spain
David K. Herzberger
Duke University Press, 1995
The relationship between fiction and historiography in Francoist Spain (1939–1975) is a contentious one. The intricacies of this relationship, in which fiction works to subvert the regime’s authority to write the past, are the focus of David K. Herzberger’s book.
The narrative and rhetorical strategies of historical discourse figure in both the fiction and historiography of postwar Spain. Herzberger analyzes these strategies, identifying the structures and vocabularies they use to frame the past and endow it with particular meanings. He shows how Francoist historians sought to affirm the historical necessity of Franco by linking the regime to a heroic and Christian past, while several types of postwar fiction—such as social realism, the novel of memory, and postmodern novels—created a voice of opposition to this practice. Focusing on the concept of writing history that these opposing strategies convey, Herzberger discloses the layering of truth and meaning that lies at the heart of postwar Spanish narrative from the early 1940s to the fall of Franco. His study clearly reveals how the novel in postwar Spain became a crucial form of dissent from the past as it was conceived and used by the State.
Making a decisive intervention in the debate about the ways in which narration determines both the meaning and truth of history and fiction, Narrating the Past will be of special interest to students and scholars of the politics, history, and literature of twentieth-century Spain.
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Narratives of Low Countries History and Culture
Reframing the Past
Edited by Jane Fenoulhet and Lesley Gilbert
University College London, 2016
This edited collection explores the ways in which our understanding of the past in Dutch history and culture can be rethought to consider not only how it forms part of the present but how it can relate also to the future. Divided into three parts – The Uses of Myth and History, The Past as Illumination of Cultural Context, and Historiography in Focus – this book seeks to demonstrate the importance of the past by investigating the transmission of culture and its transformations. It reflects on the history of historiography and looks critically at the products of the historiographic process, such as Dutch and Afrikaans literary history. The chapters cover a range of disciplines and approaches: some authors offer a broad view of a particular period, such as Jonathan Israel's contribution on myth and history in the ideological politics of the Dutch Golden Age, while others zoom in on specific genres, texts or historical moments, such as Benjamin Schmidt’s study of the doolhof, a word that today means ‘labyrinth’ but once described a 17th-century educational amusement park. This volume, enlightening and home to multiple paths of enquiry leading in different directions, is an excellent example of what a past-present doolhof might look like.
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Nationalism in India
Past and Present
Irfan Habib
Seagull Books, 2024
A persuasive redefinition of nationalism by one of the most eminent historians of India.
 
What makes a people living in a mere “geographical expression” a nation? From the French Revolution onwards, the word “nation” came to denote a people who wish to be collectively free. But free from what—colonial rule and inequality? Or religious and cultural diversity?
 
In this timely and succinct essay, Irfan Habib charts India’s struggle to consolidate a nationalist identity, to identify what it sought to be free from. Even as the colonial regime denied the very possibility of nationalism in the subcontinent, opposition to British rule fomented just such a sentiment. But resistance against colonial exploitation alone could not unify the Indian people. Internal inequalities—caste, poverty, religious bigotry—remained (and still remain) to be tackled.
 
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Navajo Women of Monument Valley
Preservers of the Past
Robert S. McPherson
University Press of Colorado, 2021

"McPherson, through this oral history of Navajo Women living in Monument Valley, provides a unique story of cultural understanding specific to the area. From personal experience and a shared heritage, these women explain their early struggles in life, religious beliefs and sacred teachings, daily activities of a traditional family, and later, battling against cultural loss. Today's rapidly changing world challenges these elders while enticing the young to forget what it means to be Diné. Here, these women share what they want the youth to know. I highly recommend this book to those who wish to learn about the past, understand the present, and consider the future."
—Ronald P. Maldonado, Navajo Nation Cultural Resource Supervisor

"The teachings and stories presented here are fascinating and important. When reading them, I heard my granmother's and aunt's voices, connecting me to the past while strengthening my understanding of Navajo culture. It is the women who are the heard and soul of preserving this information as they guide youth into the future. Here that wisdom becomes real. Those interested in a balanced presentation of the difficult, yet rewarding live of Navajo elders will be highly rewarded by learning from this book"
—Charlotte Nez Lacy, Heritage Language Educator/Translator

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Negotiating for the Past
Archaeology, Nationalism, and Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1919-1941
By James F. Goode
University of Texas Press, 2007

The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 was a landmark event in Egyptology that was celebrated around the world. Had Howard Carter found his prize a few years earlier, however, the treasures of Tut might now be in the British Museum in London rather than the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. That's because the years between World War I and World War II were a transitional period in Middle Eastern archaeology, as nationalists in Egypt and elsewhere asserted their claims to antiquities discovered within their borders. These claims were motivated by politics as much as by scholarship, with nationalists seeking to unite citizens through pride in their ancient past as they challenged Western powers that still exercised considerable influence over local governments and economies. James Goode's analysis of archaeological affairs in Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq during this period offers fascinating new insight into the rise of nationalism in the Middle East, as well as archaeological and diplomatic history.

The first such work to compare archaeological-nationalistic developments in more than one country, Negotiating for the Past draws on published and archival sources in Arabic, English, French, German, Persian, and Turkish. Those sources reveal how nationalists in Iraq and Iran observed the success of their counterparts in Egypt and Turkey, and were able to hold onto discoveries at legendary sites such as Khorsabad and Persepolis. Retaining artifacts allowed nationalists to build museums and control cultural heritage. As Goode writes, "Going to the national museum became a ritual of citizenship." Western archaeologists became identified (in the eyes of many) as agents of imperialism, thus making their work more difficult, and often necessitating diplomatic intervention. The resulting "negotiations for the past" pulled patrons (such as John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Lord Carnarvon), archaeologists (James Breasted and Howard Carter), nationalist leaders (Ataturk and Sa'd Zaghlul), and Western officials (Charles Evan Hughes and Lord Curzon) into intractable historical debates with international implications that still resonate today.

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Negotiating the Past in the Past
Identity, Memory, and Landscape in Archaeological Research
Norman Yoffee
University of Arizona Press, 2008
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that “all history becomes subjective,” that, in fact, “properly there is no history, only biography.” Today, Emerson’s observation is hardly revolutionary for archaeologists; it has become conventional wisdom that the present is a battleground where interpretations of the events and meanings of the past are constantly being disputed. What were the major events? Whose lives did these events impact, and how? Who were the key players? What was their legacy? We know all too well that the answers to these questions can vary considerably depending on what political, social, or personal agenda is driving the response.

Despite our keen eye for discerning historical spin doctors operating today, it has been only in recent years that archaeologists have begun exploring in detail how the past was used in the past itself. This volume of ten original works brings critical insight to this frequently overlooked dimension of earlier societies. Drawing on the concepts of identity, memory, and landscape, the contributors show how these points of entry can lead to substantially new accounts of how people understood their lives and why things changed as they did.

Chapters include the archaeologies of the eastern Mediterranean, including Mesopotamia, Iran, Greece, and Rome; prehistoric Greece; Achaemenid and Hellenistic Armenia; Athens in the Roman period; Nubia and Egypt; medieval South India; and northern Maya Quintana Roo. The contributors show how and why, in each society, certain versions of the past were promoted while others were aggressively forgotten for the purpose of promoting innovation, gaining political advantage, or creating a new group identity.

Commentaries by leading scholars Lynn Meskell and Jack Davis blend with newer voices to create a unique set of essays that is diverse but interrelated, exceptionally researched, and novel in its perspectives.
CONTENTS

1. Peering into the Palimpsest: An Introduction to the Volume
Norman Yoffee

2. Collecting, Defacing, Reinscribing (and Otherwise Performing) Memory in the Ancient World
Catherine Lyon Crawford

3. Unforgettable Landscapes: Attachments to the Past in Hellenistic Armenia
Lori Khatchadourian

4. Mortuary Studies, Memory, and the Mycenaean Polity
Seth Button

5. Identity under Construction in Roman Athens
Sanjaya Thakur

6. Inscribing the Napatan Landscape: Architecture and Royal Identity
Lindsay Ambridge

7. Negotiated Pasts and the Memorialized Present in Ancient India: Chalukyas of Vatapi
Hemanth Kadambi

8. Creating, Transforming, Rejecting, and Reinterpreting Ancient Maya Urban Landscapes: Insights from Lagartera and Margarita
Laura P. Villamil

9. Back to the Future: From the Past in the Present to the Past in the Past
Lynn Meskell

10. Memory Groups and the State: Erasing the Past and Inscribing the Present in the Landscapes of the Mediterranean and Near East
Jack L. Davis

About the Editor
About the Contributors
Index


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New Jersey's Environments
Past, Present, and Future
Maher, Neil M
Rutgers University Press, 2006

Americans often think of New Jersey as an environmental nightmare. As seen from its infamous turnpike, which is how many travelers experience the Garden State, it is difficult not to be troubled by the wealth of industrial plants, belching smokestacks, and hills upon hills of landfills. Yet those living and working in New Jersey often experience a very different environment. Despite its dense population and urban growth, two-thirds of the state remains covered in farmland and forest, and New Jersey has a larger percentage of land dedicated to state parks and forestland than the average for all states. It is this ecological paradox that makes New Jersey important for understanding the relationship between Americans and their natural world.

In New Jersey’s Environments,historians, policy-makers, and earth scientists use a case study approach to uncover the causes and consequences of decisions regarding land use, resources, and conservation. Nine essays consider topics ranging from solid waste and wildlife management to the effects of sprawl on natural disaster preparedness. The state is astonishingly diverse and faces more than the usual competing interests from environmentalists, citizens, and businesses.

This book documents the innovations and compromises created on behalf of and in response to growing environmental concerns in New Jersey, all of which set examples on the local level for nationwide and worldwide efforts that share the goal of protecting the natural world.

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The New Mormon History
Revisionist Essays on the Past
D. Michael Quinn
Signature Books, 1992
 The New Mormon History is the banner under which many professional historians today approach Latter-day Saint historiography. Scholars who embrace this term attempt to put significant events into context rather than bracketing data that might seem challenging to traditional assumptions. These scholars are also as interested in the experience of the rank-and-file as in the lives and edicts of the leaders, and pursue questions about women, minorities, domestic life, diet, fashion, and the common church experience. They employ statistical analysis and theories and methods of the social sciences in their work.

In this collection, D. Michael Quinn has selected fifteen essays which demonstrate the methods of this new history. Contributors include Thomas G. Alexander, James B. Allen, Leonard J. Arrington, Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Eugene E. Campbell, Kenneth L. Cannon II, Mario S. DePillis, Robert B. Flanders, Klaus J. Hansen, William G. Hartley, Stanley S. Ivins, Dean L. May, Linda King Newell, B. H. Roberts, Jan Shipps, and Ronald W. Walker. Participants offer new ideas and give readers the opportunity to determine for themselves the relative success of these approaches by presenting examples. The collection demonstrates areas of interpretation that may be considered revisionist as well.

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New Zealand Cinema
Interpreting the Past
Edited by Alistair Fox, Barry Keith Grant, and Hilary Radner
Intellect Books, 2011

New Zealand has produced one of the world’s most vibrant film cultures, a reflection of the country’s evolving history and the energy and resourcefulness of its people. From early silent features like The Te Kooti Trail to recent films such as River Queen, this book examines the role of the cinema of New Zealand in building a shared sense of national identity. The works of key directors, including Peter Jackson, Jane Campion, and Vincent Ward, are here introduced in a new light, and select films are given in-depth coverage. Among the most informative accounts of New Zealand’s fascinating national cinema, this will be a must for film scholars around the globe.

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