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Garden Culture of the Twentieth Century
Leberecht Migge
Harvard University Press, 2013
Leberecht Migge (1881-1935) was one of the most innovative landscape architects of the early twentieth century. With work ranging from large urban parks to housing settlements with allotment gardens, he sought to create functional green spaces that would not only meet the environmental challenges of the industrial metropolis but also improve the social conditions of modern life. Migge's notion of "garden culture" captured the essence of the progressive reform movements of early twentieth-century Germany and yet was unique in proposing a comprehensive role for open space planning within this vision. The nationalistic rhetoric of Garden Culture of the Twentieth Century marks it as a political tract of the late Kaiserreich, and its deep influence within the Siedlung communities of the Weimar era attests to its lasting cultural impact. Perhaps the book's greatest significance today lies in Migge's emphasis on the socioeconomic benefits of urban agriculture, which prefigured both this important contemporary trend as well as other recent developments in green technology and infrastructure. Modern readers will find echoes of a progressivism that many have taken to be of only recent origin and will gain a better understanding of the social and economic history of pre-World War I Germany.
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front cover of Gender Relations in German History
Gender Relations in German History
Power, Agency, and Experience from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century
Lynn Abrams and Elizabeth Harvey, eds.
Duke University Press, 1997
This collection of essays by scholars from England, Germany, and the United States brings together important and innovative work on gender relations in German history from the early modern period to the 1950s. Offering fresh insights and challenging interpretations, the essays demonstrate how the norms of political, social, and sexual behavior for both sexes are the objects of regulation and control, and are matters of conflict, debate, and negotiation. A substantial introduction reviews the historiography relating the major themes of the collection.
Topics include childbirth, abortion, and the female body in early modern Germany; the roots of German feminism; gender, class, and medicine during World War I and during the Weimar republic; female homosexuality during the Nazi period; East and West German reconstruction following World War II and the formation of a gendered consumer culture.
This book will stimulate readers to think more deeply about the importance of gender in German history, and prove to be an invaluable resource for those interested in women’s studies and in German and European history.

Contributors. Lynn Abrams, Elizabeth Harvey, Dagmar Herzog, Kate Lacey, Katherine Pence, Ulinka Rublack, Claudia Schoppman, Regina Schulte, Cornelie Usborne, Heide Wunder

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front cover of Geopolitics and Globalization in the Twentieth Century
Geopolitics and Globalization in the Twentieth Century
Brian Blouet
Reaktion Books, 2004
This book looks at the struggle between the processes of globalization and geopolitical forces over the last 150 years. The twentieth century witnessed a struggle between geopolitical states who wanted to close off and control earth space, resources and population and globalizing ones who wished to open up the world to the free flow of ideas, goods and services. Brian W. Blouet analyzes the tug-of-war between these tendencies, the playing out of which determined the shape and behavior of today's world. Beginning his survey in the late nineteenth century, Blouet shows how the Second World War served to focus international awareness on the ramifications of global controls, and how we may be facing the end of geopolitics today.
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front cover of Geopolitics and Globalization in the Twentieth Century
Geopolitics and Globalization in the Twentieth Century
Second Revised and Expanded Edition
Brian W. Blouet
Reaktion Books, 2010

Geopolitics and Globalization in the Twentieth Century looks at the struggle between the processes of globalization and the forces of geopolitics over the last 150 years. The twentieth century witnessed conflicts between geopolitical states who wanted to close off and control land, resources, and population—like Nazi Germany and the former Soviet Union—and globalizing ones who wished to open up the world to the free flow of ideas, goods and services—like Britain and America. Geopolitics and Globalization describes and analyzes the tug-of-war between these two tendencies, the results of which have determined the shape and behavior of the world we live in today.

Beginning his survey in the late nineteenth century, Brian W. Blouet, in this revised and expanded second edition, brings his analysis up to the present day, when  communication technologies are no longer land- or sea-based, and thus render globalization nearly inevitable.

           

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front cover of German-Balkan Entangled Histories in the Twentieth Century
German-Balkan Entangled Histories in the Twentieth Century
Christopher A. Molnar and Mirna Zakic
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021
This volume brings together a diverse group of scholars from North America and Europe to explore the history and memory of Germany’s fateful push for power in the Balkans during the era of the two world wars and the long postwar period. Each chapter focuses on one or more of four interrelated themes: war, empire, (forced) migration, and memory. The first section, “War and Empire in the Balkans,” explores Germany’s quest for empire in Southeast Europe during the first half of the century, a goal that was pursued by economic and military means. The book’s second section, “Aftershocks and Memories of War,” focuses on entangled German-Balkan histories that were shaped by, or a direct legacy of, Germany’s exceptionally destructive push for power in Southeast Europe during World War II. German-Balkan Entangled Histories in the Twentieth Century expands and enriches the neglected topic of Germany’s continued entanglements with the Balkans in the era of the world wars, the Cold War, and today.
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front cover of The Girls' History and Culture Reader
The Girls' History and Culture Reader
The Twentieth Century
Edited by Miriam Forman-Brunell and Leslie Paris
University of Illinois Press, 2011
The Girls' History and Culture Reader: The Twentieth Century provides scholars, instructors, and students with the most influential essays that have defined the field of American girls' history and culture. A relatively new and energetic field of inquiry, girl-centered research is critical for a fuller understanding of women and gender, a deeper consideration of childhood and adolescence, and a greater acknowledgment of the significance of generation as a historical force in American culture and society.
 
Bringing together work from top scholars of women and youth, The Girls' History and Culture Reader: The Twentieth Century illustrates girls' centrality to major twentieth-century forces such as immigration, labor, feminism, and consumerism. Themes in this pioneering volume include girls' use of fashion and music, their roles as workers, their friendships, and new ideas about girls' bodies. While girls in the twentieth century found new avenues for personal ambition and self-expression, especially at school and in the realm of leisure and popular culture, they continued to wrestle with traditional ideas about feminine identity, socialization, and sexuality.
 
Contributors are Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Rachel Devlin, Susan J. Douglas, Miriam Forman-Brunell, Kyra D. Gaunt, Mary Celeste Kearney, Ilana Nash, Mary Odem, Leslie Paris, Kathy Peiss, Vicki L. Ruiz, Kelly Schrum, and Judy Yung.
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front cover of Governing by Design
Governing by Design
Architecture, Economy, and Politics in the Twentieth Century
Aggregate
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012

Governing by Design offers a unique perspective on twentieth-century architectural history. It disputes the primacy placed on individuals in the design and planning process and instead looks to the larger influences of politics, culture, economics, and globalization to uncover the roots of how our built environment evolves.

In these chapters, historians offer their analysis on design as a vehicle for power and as a mediator of social currents. Power is defined through a variety of forms: modernization, obsolescence, technology, capital, ergonomics, biopolitics, and others. The chapters explore the diffusion of power through the establishment of norms and networks that frame human conduct, action, identity, and design. They follow design as it functions through the body, in the home, and at the state and international level.

Overall, Aggregate views the intersection of architecture with the human need for what Foucault termed “governmentality”—societal rules, structures, repetition, and protocols—as a way to provide security and tame risk.  Here, the conjunction of power and the power of design reinforces governmentality and infuses a sense of social permanence despite the exceedingly fluid nature of societies and the disintegration of cultural memory in the modern era.

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