Hannu Salmi

Digital history is an emerging field that draws on digital technology and computational methods. A global enterprise that invites scholars worldwide to join forces, it presents exciting and novel ways we might explore, understand and represent the past. Hannu Salmi provides the most compelling introduction to digital history to date. Beginning with an examination of the origins of the digital study of history, he goes on to discuss the question of how history exists in a digitized form. He introduces basic concepts and ideas in digital history, including databases and archives, interdisciplinarity and public engagement. Outlining the problems and methods in the study of big data, both textual and visual, particular attention is paid to the born-digital era: the contemporary age that exists primarily in digital form. What is Digital History? is essential reading for students of history and other humanities fields, as well as anyone interested in how digitization and digital cultures are transforming the study of history.

What is Digital History?

Nineteenth-Century Europe offers a much-needed concise and fresh look at European culture between the Great Revolution in France and the First World War. It encompasses all major themes of the period, from the rising nationalism of the early nineteenth century to the pessimistic views of fin de siècle. It is a lucid, fluent presentation that appeals to both students of history and culture and the general audience interested in European cultural history. The book attempts to see the culture of the nineteenth century in broad terms, integrating everyday ways of life into the story as mental, material and social practices. It also highlights ways of thinking, mentalities and emotions in order to construct a picture of this period of another kind, that goes beyond a story of “isms” or intellectual and artistic movements. Although the nineteenth century has often been described as a century of rising factory pipes and grey industrial cities, as a cradle of modern culture, the era has many faces. This book pays special attention to the experiences of contemporaries, from the fear for steaming engines to the longing for the pre-industrial past, from the idle calmness of bourgeois life to the awakening consumerism of the department stores, from curious exoticism to increasing xenophobia, from optimistic visions of future to the expectations of an approaching end. The century that is only a few generations away from us is strange and familiar at the same time – a bygone world that has in many ways influenced our present day world.

A Cultural History

19th Century Europe

'19th Century Europe' offers a concise and fresh look at European culture between the Great Revolution in France and the First World War.

Jeroen Salman

Massimo Rospocher

This volume explores the challenges and possibilities of research into the European dimensions of popular print culture. Popular print culture has traditionally been studied with a national focus. Recent research has revealed, however, that popular print culture has many European dimensions and shared features. A group of specialists in the field has started to explore the possibilities and challenges of research on a wide, European scale. This volume contains the first overview and analysis of the different approaches, methodologies and sources that will stimulate and facilitate future comparative research. This volume first addresses the benefits of a media-driven approach, focussing on processes of content recycling, interactions between text and image, processes of production and consumption. A second perspective illuminates the distribution and markets for popular print, discussing audiences, prices and collections. A third dimension refers to the transnational dimensions of genres, stories, and narratives. A last perspective unravels the communicative strategies and dynamics behind European bestsellers. This book is a source of inspiration for everyone who is interested in research into transnational cultural exchange and in the fascinating history of popular print culture in Europe.

Popular Print in Europe (1450–1900)

Crossing Borders, Crossing Cultures

This volume explores the challenges and possibilities of research into the European dimensions of popular print culture.Popular print culture has traditionally been studied with a national focus. Recent research has revealed, however, that popular print culture has many European dimensions and shared features. A group of specialists in the field has started to explore the possibilities and challenges of research on a wide, European scale. This volume contains the first overview and analysis of the different approaches, methodologies and sources that will stimulate and facilitate future comparative research.This volume first addresses the benefits of a media-driven approach, focussing on processes of content recycling, interactions between text and image, processes of production and consumption. A second perspective illuminates the distribution and markets for popular print, discussing audiences, prices and collections. A third dimension refers to the transnational dimensions of genres, stories, and narratives. A last perspective unravels the communicative strategies and dynamics behind European bestsellers.This book is a source of inspiration for everyone who is interested in research into transnational cultural exchange and in the fascinating history of popular print culture in Europe.

Deborah Simonton

As Enlightenment notions of predictability, progress and the sense that humans could control and shape their environments informed European thought, catastrophes shook many towns to the core, challenging the new world view with dramatic impact. This book concentrates on a period marked by passage from a society of scarcity to one of expenditure and accumulation, from ranks and orders to greater social mobility, from traditional village life to new bourgeois and even individualistic urbanism. The volume employs a broad definition of catastrophe, as it examines how urban communities conceived, adapted to, and were transformed by catastrophes, both natural and human-made. Competing views of gender figure in the telling and retelling of these analyses: women as scapegoats, as vulnerable, as victims, even as cannibals or conversely as defenders, organizers of assistance, inspirers of men; and men in varied guises as protectors, governors and police, heroes, leaders, negotiators and honorable men. Gender is also deployed linguistically to feminize activities or even countries. Inevitably, however, these tragedies are mediated by myth and memory. They are not neutral events whose retelling is a simple narrative. Through a varied array of urban catastrophes, this book is a nuanced account that physically and metaphorically maps men and women into the urban landscape and the worlds of catastrophe.

Hannu Salmi

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