61 books match the query 'Histories' and 2 start with r

cover of Reframing the Ethnographic Museum: Histories, Politics and Futures

Reframing the Ethnographic Museum

Histories, Politics and Futures

Edited by Michael Rowlands, Nick Stanley, and Graeme Were

University College London, 2025

Amid calls for decolonization and digital innovation, this necessary work explores the shifting histories and futures of ethnographic museums worldwide.

Ethnographic museums are at a crossroads; caught between colonial legacies, and the difficulties of captivating new audiences in a digital world. Reframing the Ethnographic Museum brings together leading scholars and curators to study the shifting role of these institutions in a rapidly changing cultural and political landscape. From Asia to Africa, the book explores how different museum strategies have grappled with decolonization and digital transformation, engaging in critical analysis and including case studies of innovative curatorial practices.

As museums confront calls for accountability and reconsider their collections, this volume provides a relevant exploration of the dilemmas and possibilities facing ethnographic display today. Reframing the Ethnographic Museum urges us to rethink how we engage with the past, and how museums can become spaces of dialogue and reflection.
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cover of Remedies for a New West: Healing Landscapes, Histories, and Cultures

Remedies for a New West

Healing Landscapes, Histories, and Cultures

Edited by Patricia Nelson Limerick, Andrew Cowell, and Sharon K. Collinge

University of Arizona Press, 2009

This wide-ranging collection of essays is intended to provoke both thought and action. The pieces collected here explore a variety of issues facing the American West—disappearing Native American languages, deteriorating air quality, suburban sprawl, species loss, grassland degradation, and many others—and suggest steps toward “healing.” More than “dealing with” or “solving,” according to the editors, healing addresses not just symptoms but their underlying causes, offering not just a temporary cure but a permanent one.

The signs of illness and trauma can seem omnipresent in today’s West: land and soil disrupted from mining, overgrazing, logging, and farming; wildlife habitat reduced and fragmented; native societies disturbed and threatened; open space diminished by cities and suburbs; wilderness destroyed by roads and recreation-seekers. But as these essays suggest, the “treatment program” for healing the West has many healthful side effects. Engaging in the kinds of projects suggested by contributors is therapeutic not only for the environment but for participants as well. Restoration, repair, and recovery can counter symptoms of despair with concentrated doses of promise and possibility.

The more “lesions” the West has, this book suggests, the more opportunities there are for westerners to revive and ultimately cure the ailing patient they have helped to create. The very idea of restoring the West to health, contributors and editors contend, unleashes our imaginations, sharpens our minds, and gives meaning to the ways we choose to live our lives. At the same time, acknowledging the profound difficulties of the work that lies ahead immunizes us against our own arrogance as we set about the task of healing the West.
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