Research, Resources, and Perspectives
On May 29, 1793, Göttingen anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach received a Georgian woman’s skull. It would later become the most prominent representation of the so-called Caucasian variety of humankind. His Russian skull supplier, Georg Thomas von Asch, emphasized the “coincidence”1 of finding this specific skull. Only due to her sudden death had the deceased woman received an autopsy.
Hans A. was 72 years old and in good shape when he was admitted to the Eglfing-Haar Mental Institution in March 1944.1 This Bavarian asylum was notorious at the time for its high mortality rate, and Hans A. died there within two months without having shown any signs of serious illness prior to his admission. How and why did he get there? The answers to these questions open up new insights about the relationship among distinct types of knowledge involved in psychiatric committals.
Occasional notes on calls, events, publications, and more that caught our attention. Please email us your own items.
That Germans love bread seems to be one stereotype that is largely accurate. Given Germany’s rich baking culture, it is perhaps not surprising that it also has a long tradition of producing challot, braided loaves eaten during Shabbat. There were many expressions for challah, including Datscher, Challe, and Striezel.1 The most common terms, Barches and Berches, are derived from the word brachah, i.e., blessing. Continue reading “For the Love of Bread and Barches – The Very German-Jewish Challah Knife”
For a German version of this call, please visit Geschichte der deutsch-jüdischen Diaspora . Deadline: January 31, 2024.
The Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies is seeking authors for a digital platform. It is dedicated to the lifeworlds of German-speaking Jewish women and men who emigrated or fled from their countries of origin beginning in the 1820s, passing through and building new lives in various countries – from A as in Argentina to Z as in Zimbabwe – especially after 1933. Continue reading “Call for Proposals to Online Source Portal ‘History of the German-Jewish Diaspora’”
We have many different cognitive abilities, and human history runs on many paths. Not surprisingly, there are many ways to conduct scientific research. … These are distinct styles of reasoning, each of which has been developed in its own way, in its own time frame, and each of which contributes to the larger fabric of scientific imagination and action.1Ian Hacking
Continue reading “Styles of Reasoning and the History of Knowledge”
Sometime in early 1523, the merchant Matthias Mulich (†1528) received a letter from his servant Matthias Scharpenberch. Mulich usually lived and worked in the Hanseatic city of Lübeck but was staying in Nuremberg at the time for family reasons. There, he regularly received letters that informed him about the situation in his northern German hometown.
Continue reading “Rumors in Transition: Uncertain Information in the Premodern Culture of News”
The British Museum is one of the most popular museums in the world. The free permanent exhibition provides information about two million years of human history from a cross-cultural perspective. Since its founding in 1753, the museum has had a clearly universal ambition: It has aimed to explore and exhibit the history of the world through material legacies. Neil MacGregor, who was the director of the museum from 2002 to 2015, exemplified this intention in his groundbreaking book and radio series, A History of the World in 100 Objects (2010). Continue reading “Provenance Research as History of Knowledge: Archaeological Finds from the Syrian-Turkish Border at the British Museum”
Unicorns, although they are non-existent, are ubiquitous today as symbols. For example, they remain the national animal of Scotland, first added to the Scottish coat of arms in the 1500s to represent the untamable, proud nature of Scotland. Unicorns also intrigued ancient, medieval, and early modern authors who wrote about these imaginary animals and how they interacted with their environments. Long before the Scottish adoption of the unicorn, these writers infused the animal with spiritual meanings similar to those that later appealed to the Scots: the unicorn was proud, fierce, and pure. Continue reading “Unicorns: Knowledge of the Environment and the Hispanic Mediterratlantic”
Editorial note: The editors wish to acknowledge that the date of this post about risk cultures, highlighting the example of fire-fighting technologies, marks the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which took the lives of so many firefighters and other first responders. While we often honor the people involved in emergency response, we frequently forget to also analyze the constraints of modern risk cultures.
When Ulrich Beck published Risk Society in 1986, the sociologist could have hardly known how influential his work would become for scholars studying risk. The idea that industrial modernity undermined itself through the very means of technological advancement proved exceptionally relevant. At the time of publication, chemical industries and nuclear energy presented paramount environmental and societal challenges.1 Continue reading “Exploring Histories of Risk and Knowledge”