Deconstructing History

Munslow examines history in the postmodern age. He provides an introduction to the debates and issues of postmodernist history. He also surveys the latest research into the relationship between the past, history and historical practice.

Surveying the latest research, this welcome second edition of Alun Munslow's successful Deconstructing History provides an excellent introduction to the debates and issues of postmodernist history. This new edition has been updated and revised and, along with the original discussion material and topics, now: assesses the claims of history as a form of 'truthful' explanation discusses the limits of conventional historical thinking and practice, and the responses of the 'new empiricists' to the book's central arguments examines the arrival of 'experimental history' and its implications clarifies the utility of addressing Michael Foucault and Hayden White, and strengthens the analysis of Frank R. Ankersmit's recent work. Along with an updated glossary, and a revised bibliography, this second edition will not only live up to its predecessor's reputation, but will surpass it as the most essential student resource for studying history and its practice.

This groundbreaking collection challenges the accepted principles and practices of sport history and encourages sport historians to be more adventurous in their representations of the sporting past in the present. Encompassing a wide range of critical approaches, leading international sport historians reflect on theory, practice, and the future of sport history. They survey the field of sport history since its inception, examine the principles that have governed the production of knowledge in sport history, and address the central concerns raised by the postmodern challenge to history. Sharing a common desire to critique contemporary practices in sport history, the contributors raise the level of critical analysis of the production of historical knowledge, provide examples of approaches by those who have struggled with or adapted to the postmodern challenge, and open up new avenues for future sport historians to follow.

King of the Cold War crisis film, Dr. Strangelove became a cultural touchstone from the moment of its release in 1964. The duck-and-cover generation saw it as a satire on nuclear issues and Cold War thinking. Subsequent generations, removed from the film's historical moment, came to view it as a quasi-documentary about an unfathomable secret world. Sean M. Maloney uses Dr. Strangelove and other genre classics like Fail Safe and The Bedford Incident to investigate a curious pop cultural contradiction. Nuclear crisis films repeatedly portrayed the failures of the Cold War's deterrent system. Yet the system worked. What does this inconsistency tell us about the genre? What does it tell us about the deterrent system, for that matter? Blending film analysis with Cold War history, Maloney looks at how the celluloid crises stack up against reality--or at least as much of reality as we can reconstruct from these films with confidence. The result is a daring intellectual foray that casts new light on Dr. Strangelove, one of the Cold War era's defining films.

The notion of 'history' has always been one strenuously debated by both academics and the wider population. This deeply provocative re-thinking of our engagement with the past by one of the world's leading post-modern historians takes that debate one step further. Alun Munslow re-assesses history in the light of post-modernism and other intellectual challenges which have questioned the primacy of the modernist epistemology of empiricism. In an original and stimulating vision of history that will intrigue all those seriously interested in the subject, Munslow argues that history is not only about the sources, but a literary construction. Munslow concludes that history, as a cultural narrative about the past can never tell us what the past really means. This far reaching conclusion is based on the radical idea that the content of history is defined as much by the nature of the language used to represent and interpret that content as it is by research into the sources. This suggests that history does not produce the most likely meaning of the past but rather can only generate alternative meanings. The lead volume in a major new series on historical thinking and practice, this is an accessible yet absorbing study that breaks new ground in discussing the stage history is at now, and perhaps most engagingly, the direction it will take in the future.

This book argues for a deconstructive approach to the past by looking at deconstruction's impact on American historians and then presenting an alternative hauntological theory and method of history influenced by, but not beholden to, the work of Jacques Derrida.

Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art addresses how researchers can challenge stereotypical notions of Islam and Islamic art while avoiding the creation of new myths and the encouragement of nationalistic and ethnic attitudes. Despite its Orientalist origins, the field of Islamic art has continued to evolve and shape our understanding of the various civilizations of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Situated in this field, this book addresses how universities, museums, and other educational institutions can continue to challenge stereotypical or homogeneous notions of Islam and Islamic art. It reviews subtle and overt mythologies through scholarly research, museum collections and exhibitions, classroom perspectives, and artists’ initiatives. This collaborative volume addresses a conspicuous and persistent gap in the literature, which can only be filled by recognizing and resolving persistent myths regarding Islamic art from diverse academic and professional perspectives. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, museum studies, visual culture, and Middle Eastern studies.

What is organized crime? There have been many answers over the decades from scholars, governments, the media, pop culture and criminals themselves. These answers cumulatively created a "Mafia Mystique" that dominated discourse until after the Cold War, when transnational organized crime emerged as a pronounced, if nebulous, threat to global security and stability. The authors focus both on the American experience that dominated organized crime scholarship in the second half of the 20th century and on the more recent global scene. Case studies show that organized crime is best understood not as a series of famous gangsters and events but as a structure of everyday life formed by numerous political, social, economic and anthropological variables. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.