The Politics of Contested Narratives
The twentieth century in Europe was characterised by great moments of rupture, with two world wars, ideological conflicts, and political polarisation. In these processes, as well as in the historical writing that followed in its wake, the individual as an historical entity often appeared crushed. In line with contemporary theories about the precariousness of historical writing and the self, this volume seeks to understand the important developments in modern Europe from the perspective of the single, sometimes isolated, but always original viewpoint of individuals inhabiting the space at the other side of the traditional grand narratives. Including theoretical chapters as well as detailed case studies, this volume takes a biographical approach to dystopian events the Holocaust, Fascism, Communism, and collectivisation by starting with the voices of unknown historical actors and relating their experiences to larger processes in modern European history, such as the emergence of the national, collective memory, and state formation, as well as changes in the understanding of modern identities and the (re)formulation of the self.
This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Review of HistoryRevue Europenne dhistoire.
Ilse Josepha Lazaroms is a Prins Fellow at the Center for Jewish History in New York. She received her PhD from the Department of History & Civilization at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, in 2010. Her first book, The Grace of Misery: Joseph Roth and the Politics of Exile, 19191939, was published with Brill in 2013. Her articles have appeared in the Leo Baeck Yearbook, the Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, and Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture. She is on the Academic Board of the European Review of History, and a contributor to The Jewish Quarterly. Her current research focuses on responses to catastrophe and narratives of anti-Jewish violence in Central Europe and in particular Hungary.
Emily R. Gioielli is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at Central European University, Hungary. She is the Online Review Database Editor for East Central Europe and has contributed to Zeitschrift fr Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung. Her research focuses on the experience and interpretation of violence during the long Great War in East Central Europe.
The Politics of Contested Narratives
Biographical Approaches to Modern European History
Edited by
Ilse Josepha Lazaroms and Emily R. Gioielli
First published 2015
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Contents
Ilse Josepha Lazaroms and Emily R. Gioielli
Pierre-Heli Monot
Victoria Harms
Ilse Josepha Lazaroms
Catalina Botez
Tnde Cserpes
George Greskovits
Anastasia Felcher
Yana Georgieva Yancheva
Mitja Suni
Daryl Leeworthy
The chapters in this book were originally published in the EuropeanReview of HistoryRevue Europenne dhistoire, volume 19, issue 5 (October 2012). When citing this material, please use the original page numbering for each article, as follows:
Chapter 1
The politics of contested narratives: biographical approaches to modern European history.
Introduction
Ilse Josepha Lazaroms and Emily R. Gioielli
European Review of HistoryRevue Europenne dhistoire, volume 19, issue 5 (October 2012) pp. 653658
Chapter 2
Personal epistemologies: historiography, self-reflexivity and bios
Pierre-Heli Monot
European Review of HistoryRevue Europenne dhistoire, volume 19, issue 5 (October 2012) pp. 659667
Chapter 3
Living Mitteleuropa in the 1980s: a network of Hungarian and West German Intellectuals
Victoria Harms
European Review of HistoryRevue Europenne dhistoire, volume 19, issue 5 (October 2012) pp. 669692
Chapter 4
The double bind of self-narration: Joseph Roth, Jewish identity and the undercurrents of European modernity
Ilse Josepha Lazaroms
European Review of HistoryRevue Europenne dhistoire, volume 19, issue 5 (October 2012) pp. 693710
Chapter 5
Contiguous spaces of remembrance in identity writing: chemistry, fiction and the autobiographic question in Primo Levis The Periodic Table
Catalina Botez
European Review of HistoryRevue Europenne dhistoire, volume 19, issue 5 (October 2012) pp. 711727
Chapter 6
Measuring identity change: analysing fragments from the diary of Sndor Krolyi with social-network analysis
Tnde Cserpes
European Review of HistoryRevue Europenne dhistoire, volume 19, issue 5 (October 2012) pp. 729748
Chapter 7
Re-presenting moral ambivalence: narratives of political monologue regarding Andrs Hegeds and Pl Teleki
George Greskovits
European Review of HistoryRevue Europenne dhistoire, volume 19, issue 5 (October 2012) pp. 749766
Chapter 8
Public festivities and the making of a national poet: a case study of Alexander Pushkins biography in 1899 and 1937
Anastasia Felcher
European Review of HistoryRevue Europenne dhistoire, volume 19, issue 5 (October 2012) pp. 767788
Chapter 9
Self-identification through narrative: reflection on the collectivisation of agriculture in Bulgaria
Yana Georgieva Yancheva
European Review of HistoryRevue Europenne dhistoire, volume 19, issue 5 (October 2012) pp. 789808
Chapter 10
Biography and social change: industrialists and the Communist revolution in Yugoslavia
