“History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.” (George Santayana) Enquiries into the relationship between literature and history continue to stir up intense critical and scholarly debate. Alongside the new hybrid categories that have emerged out of this ferment―life-writing, ficto-criticism, “history from below”, and so on―there has been a welter of new literary histories, new ways of tracking the connections between the written word and the historically bound world. This has resulted in renewed discussion about distinguishing the literary from the non-literary, about dialogues taking place between different national literatures, and about ascertaining the relative status of the literary text in relation to other cultural forms. Remaking Literary History seeks to clarify the diversity of issues and positions that have arisen from these debates. Central to the book’s approach is a rigorous and constructive questioning of the past, across disciplinary boundaries. This is carried out through four detailed and engrossing sections that explore the relationship between memory and forgetting; what it means to be ‘subject’ to history; the upsurge of interest in trauma and redemption; and the question of historical reinvention, which demonstrates how the overwriting of history continues to reinvigorate the literary imagination. As well as readers of literature and history, Remaking Literary History will be of interest to students of literary theory, legal studies and cultural and media studies.

â oeHistory is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.â (George Santayana) Enquiries into the relationship between literature and history continue to stir up intense critical and scholarly debate. Alongside the new hybrid categories that have emerged out of this fermentâ -life-writing, ficto-criticism, â oehistory from belowâ , and so onâ -there has been a welter of new literary histories, new ways of tracking the connections between the written word and the historically bound world. This has resulted in renewed discussion about distinguishing the literary from the non-literary, about dialogues taking place between different national literatures, and about ascertaining the relative status of the literary text in relation to other cultural forms. Remaking Literary History seeks to clarify the diversity of issues and positions that have arisen from these debates. Central to the bookâ (TM)s approach is a rigorous and constructive questioning of the past, across disciplinary boundaries. This is carried out through four detailed and engrossing sections that explore the relationship between memory and forgetting; what it means to be â ~subjectâ (TM) to history; the upsurge of interest in trauma and redemption; and the question of historical reinvention, which demonstrates how the overwriting of history continues to reinvigorate the literary imagination. As well as readers of literature and history, Remaking Literary History will be of interest to students of literary theory, legal studies and cultural and media studies.

A Village Voice Best Book of the Year, this collection of rich and diverse essays by contributors such as Jim Hoberman, Edward Said, and Cornel West, are concerned with imperialism in a variety of forms, ranging from the geographical to the sexual. Discussions in Contemporary Culture is an award-winning series co-published with the Dia Center for the Arts in New York City. These volumes offer rich and timely discourses on a broad range of cultural issues and critical theory. The collection covers topics from urban planning to popular culture and literature, and continually attracts a wide and dedicated readership.

"The George Gund Foundation imprint in African American studies."

After World War II, U.S. documentarians engaged in a rigorous rethinking of established documentary practices and histories. Responding to the tumultuous transformations of the postwar era--the atomic age, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the emergence of the environmental movement, immigration and refugee crises, student activism, the globalization of labor, and the financial collapse of 2008--documentary makers increasingly reconceived reality as the site of social conflict and saw their work as instrumental to struggles for justice. Examining a wide range of forms and media, including sound recording, narrative journalism, drawing, photography, film, and video, this book is a daring interdisciplinary study of documentary culture and practice from 1945 to the present. Essays by leading scholars across disciplines collectively explore the activist impulse of documentarians who not only record reality but also challenge their audiences to take part in reality's remaking. In addition to the editors, the volume's contributors include Michael Mark Cohen, Grace Elizabeth Hale, Matthew Frye Jacobson, Jonathan Kahana, Leigh Raiford, Rebecca M. Schreiber, Noah Tsika, Laura Wexler, and Daniel Worden.

An examination of Berlin's turbulent history through the lens of its water and energy infrastructures. In Remaking Berlin, Timothy Moss takes a novel perspective on Berlin's turbulent twentieth-century history, examining it through the lens of its water and energy infrastructures. He shows that, through a century of changing regimes, geopolitical interventions, and socioeconomic volatility, Berlin's networked urban infrastructures have acted as medium and manifestation of municipal, national, and international politics and policies. Moss traces the coevolution of Berlin and its infrastructure systems from the creation of Greater Berlin in 1920 to remunicipalization of services in 2020, encompassing democratic, fascist, and socialist regimes.

Since the late 1960s, drama by Pacific Island playwrights has flourished throughout Oceania. Although many Pacific Island cultures have a broad range of highly developed indigenous performance forms—including oral narrative, clowning, ritual, dance, and song—scripted drama is a relatively recent phenomenon. Emerging during a period of region-wide decolonization and indigenous self-determination movements, most of these plays reassert Pacific cultural perspectives and performance techniques in ways that employ, adapt, and challenge the conventions and representations of Western theater. Drawing together discussions in theater and performance studies, historiography, Pacific studies, and postcolonial studies, Remaking Pacific Pasts offers the first full-length comparative study of this dynamic and expanding body of work. It introduces readers to the field with an overview of significant works produced throughout the region over the past fifty years, including plays in English and in French, as well as in local vernaculars and lingua francas. The discussion traces the circumstances that have given rise to a particular modern dramatic tradition in each site and also charts routes of theatrical circulation and shared artistic influences that have woven connections beyond national borders. This broad survey contextualizes the more detailed case studies that follow, which focus on how Pacific dramatists, actors, and directors have used theatrical performance to critically engage the Pacific’s colonial and postcolonial histories. Chapters provide close readings of selected plays from Hawai‘i, Aotearoa/New Zealand, New Caledonia/Kanaky, and Fiji that treat events, figures, and legacies of the region’s turbulent past: Captain Cook’s encounters, the New Zealand Wars, missionary contact, the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, and the Fiji coups. The book explores how, in their remembering and retelling of these pasts, theater artists have interrogated and revised repressive and marginalizing models of historical understanding developed through Western colonialism or exclusionary indigenous nationalisms, and have opened up new spaces for alternative historical narratives and ways of knowing. In so doing, these works address key issues of identity, genealogy, representation, political parity, and social unity, encouraging their audiences to consider new possibilities for present and future action. This study emphasizes the contribution of artistic production to social and political life in the contemporary Pacific, demonstrating how local play production has worked to facilitate processes of creative nation building and the construction of modern regional imaginaries. Remaking Pacific Pasts makes valuable contributions to Pacific literature, world theater history, Pacific studies, and postcolonial studies. The book opens up to comparative critical discussion a geopolitical region that has received little attention from theater and performance scholars, extending our understanding of the form and function of theater in different cultural contexts. It enriches existing discussions in postcolonial studies about the decolonizing potential of literary and artistic endeavors, and it suggests how theater might function as a mode of historical enquiry and debate, adding to discussions about ways in which Pacific histories might be developed, challenged, or recalibrated. Consequently, the book stimulates new discussions in Pacific studies where theater has, to date, suffered from a lack of critical exposure. Carefully researched and original in its approach, Remaking Pacific Pasts will appeal to scholars, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduate students in theater and performance studies and Pacific Islands studies; it will also be of interest to cultural historians and to specialists in cultural studies and postcolonial studies.