Objects of War: The Material Culture of Conflict and Displacement - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501720074 ISBN 13: 9781501720079

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2018

Synopsis

Historians have become increasingly interested in material culture as both a category of analysis and as a teaching tool. And yet the profession tends to be suspicious of things; words are its stock-in-trade. What new insights can historians gain about the past by thinking about things? A central object (and consequence) of modern warfare is the radical destruction and transformation of the material world. And yet we know little about the role of material culture in the history of war and forced displacement: objects carried in flight; objects stolen on battlefields; objects expropriated, reappropriated, and remembered.

Objects of War illuminates the ways in which people have used things to grapple with the social, cultural, and psychological upheavals wrought by war and forced displacement. Chapters consider theft and pillaging as strategies of conquest; soldiers' relationships with their weapons; and the use of clothing and domestic goods by prisoners of war, extermination camp inmates, freed people, and refugees to make claims and to create a kind of normalcy.

While studies of migration and material culture have proliferated in recent years, as have histories of the Napoleonic, colonial, World Wars, and postcolonial wars, few have focused on the movement of people and things in times of war across two centuries. This focus, in combination with a broad temporal canvas, serves historians and others well as they seek to push beyond the written word.

Contributors:
Noah Benninga, Sandra H. Dudley, Bonnie Effros, Cathleen M. Giustino, Alice Goff, Gerdien Jonker, Aubrey Pomerance, Iris Rachamimov, Brandon M. Schechter, Jeffrey Wallen, and Sarah Jones Weicksel

About this title

About the Author

Leora Auslander is Professor of European Social History and Arthur and Joann Rasmussen Professor of Western Civilization at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Cultural Revolutions and Taste and Power. Tara Zahra is Professor of East European History at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Kidnapped Souls, The Lost Children, and The Great Departure.

Review

"In a feat rarely accomplished in an edited volume of such breadth, the chapters in Objects of War are in conversation with one another throughout the book. Together, the chapters make a compelling case to move beyond the battlefield and examine the objects so easily tossed aside by war."

(Los Angeles Review of Books)

"Editors Leora Auslander and Tara Zahra have put together a collection of articles in Objects of War that each contain detailed analysis of material possessions and their significance during conflicts of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Overall, this collection of essays is highly recommended for the scholarly audience. The editors have brought together a collection that show how objects are affected by people and vice-versa, when revolutions and large-scale armed conflicts displace populations."

(Army University Press)

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1501720074
• ISBN 13: 9781501720079
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 348
• Editor: Auslander Leora, Zahra Tara