[ecrea] History Culture Modernity: New issues online!

The open-access International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 
(HCM) has recently published two new issues. They can be found online by 
following this link: http://www.history-culture-modernity.org.

A themed issue on Socialist Culture and Modernity offers a selection of 
papers read at the conference "Modernity, Socialism, and the Visual 
Arts" held in Germany and Poland in October 2013. Historians, art 
historians, architectural historians, cultural anthropologists and 
visual artists discussed the various ways in which socialist cultural 
history has been presented over the past decades.

    * In “Makeshift Modernity”, Susan E. Reid draws on oral history and 
material culture to apply the concept of modernity to Soviet housing 
projects. She shows that the inhabitants actively shaped their 
environments in accordance with their own views, translating the 
ideological rhetoric of socialist modernity into personal vernacular. 
Reid argues that these appropriations cannot be understood in terms of 
modernity or anti-modernity, but that they were fundamental signs of agency.
    * Vladimir Kuliç analyses how the key symbolic spaces of New 
Belgrade were shaped by three globalisation projects and investigates 
how they participated in the shaping of socialist Yugoslavia’s global 
imaginaries in "New Belgrade and Socialist Yugoslavia's Three 
Globalisations".
    * Christina Schwenkel discusses an architectural project in Vinh 
City, Vietnam in "Traveling Architecture: East German Urban Designs in 
Vietnam”. East German architects and urban planners took up the 
reconstruction process in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam or “North 
Vietnam” after more than 5,000 American air strikes between 1964 and 
1973. Schwenkel shows that this is not a simple case of socialist modern 
architecture being imposed on a socialist Third World Country.
    * April A. Eisman looks at the impact of East Germany’s gender 
policies on women painters across four decades. In "From Economic 
Equality to “Mommy Politics”" she argues that thesepolicies, despite not 
having achieved the stated goal of true equality, had a positive impact 
on women artists, and especially painters.


The themed issue on Chinese Modernity sheds light on the historiography 
of modernity in China. The articles discuss three different periods and 
three different experiences: Republican China, Taiwan and the People’s 
Republic of China (PRC). Guest editor Gotelind Müller-Saini provides an 
introduction to the main topics of this issue on history, culture and 
modernity in China.

    * Tze-ki Hon examines the notion of “alternative modernity” that 
was prominent during Republican China in "The Chinese Path to 
Modernisation". He discusses the two main areas of contention between 
the May Fourth intellectuals and their critics: scientism and populism. 
By comparing the writings of Liang Shuming (1893-1988), Wu Mei 
(1894-1978), Liu Yizheng (1880-1956), and Chen Yinke (1890-1969), he 
focuses on their use of “culture” (wenhua) and “morality” (daode) to 
chart a Chinese path to modernisation.
    * In "Island of Memories", Lung-chih Chang discusses the “memory 
boom” in post-martial law Taiwan and examines its implications in our 
understanding of history, culture, and modernity intheir East Asian 
context. He discusses the emergence of new academic and public 
discourses, four major examples of postcolonial historiography and 
public discourse, and the features of Taiwan’s postcolonial 
historiography in terms of history and memory.
    * Stefan R. Landsberger investigates the radical turn in the 
People's Republic of China from revolution to economic development in 
"Dreaming the Chinese Dream". How did this path to modernisation affect 
China’s political, social and artistic cultures? Is China’s present 
Dream structurally different from the one cherished in 1949?
    * Thoralf Klein looks at the recent history of China, arguing that 
although there exists a line between what is modern and what is not 
(between modernity and its Others), this often appears fuzzy when we 
look at concrete historical manifestations. His essay "How Modern was 
Chinese Modernity?" shows that it is essential to incorporate the 
paradoxes inherent in the modern condition into an analytical framework.


We hope you will enjoy these issues. Please visit our website for more 
information and new articles. If you are interested in publishing in HCM 
or if you would like to receive further information, please feel free to 
contact us at our new email address: (hcm /at/ uu.nl) or join our LinkedIn group.

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