Expanding (Environmental) Histories of the Holocaust

ABSTRACT

This epilogue draws out three ways that environmental histories of the Holocaust might challenge the current historiography to expand its horizons. Firstly, environmental histories of the Holocaust expand the range and nature of actors studied as we seek to understand genocide and its aftermath. Secondly, and closely linked to this, environmental histories of the Holocaust expand the range and nature of sources and methods drawn upon in genocide research. Thirdly, environmental – and ecological – histories of the Holocaust expand the chronological boundaries of study when conceptualizing histories of genocide. Taken together, the nascent literature on environmental and ecological histories of the Holocaust offer an important extension of what writing “integrated” histories of the Holocaust might entail.     

Mobile Peoples: Pastoralists and Herders at the Beginning of the 21st Century

Bruce Trigger's and Adam Smith's comparative studies of state-level societies provide new theoretical approaches and are important components in a resurgence of explicit comparative analysis of early states by archaeologists. Trigger presents a massive systematic comparison of seven ancient states on an unusually large number of themes, whereas Smith carries out more intensive comparisons of a smaller sample on more limited themes. These well-written works make significant contributions to a number of areas, including empirical analysis, theory, and comparative methods.     

20世纪初叶西藏的日本军事教官矢岛保治郎

矢岛保治郎是20世纪初叶日本入藏者中一个颇具冒险色彩的人物。他曾怀着不同的目的两度入藏,并被西藏地方政府聘请为军事教官,在西藏活动达6年之久,成为近代日本与中国西藏地方关系史中一个相当重要的人物。对他入藏经过及其在西藏的活动进行考察,不仅有助于我们对西藏近代史的研究,而且对我们认识历史上日本对我国西藏的渗透活动有所裨益。     

江苏考古工作世纪之初的思考

20世纪江苏考古学取得了一系列骄人的业绩,进入新世纪江苏考古的体制建设、学科建设、人才建设以及在工作中的课题意识：团结协作精神等等都面临着如何与时俱进的新挑战。     

Beyond Brassens: Twenty-First Century Chanson and the New Generation of Singer-Songwriters

This article considers the relevance of the notion of ‘generation’ for the study of cultural shifts in the production and critical reception of singer-songwriters in contemporary France, in the period 2005–12. Defining a ‘generation’ as an age cohort sharing socio-cultural characteristics and patterns of socialisation, it focuses on Camille, Benjamin Biolay, La Grande Sophie, Barbara Carlotti and other singer-songwriters who were all born in ‘the long 1970s’, and who achieved notoriety and success in the period in question. It demonstrates that the traditional discourse of chanson, dominant since the 1950s, defined by literariness and embodied by Georges Brassens, is being replaced by an emphasis on seduction, Anglophilia and multi-instrumental sophistication. Although these features have been central to the compositions of a number of ‘older’ singer-songwriters, including Serge Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy and Alain Souchon, the deployment by today's critics of the notion of ‘generation’ helps to give superficial coherence and symbolic originality to the younger artists who uphold these values and techniques. As a result, and because the music reviews referenced in this article are extracted from ‘high-brow’ magazines (including Télérama), this article also considers the changing place of chanson in the elite discourse of contemporary France.