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Monthly Archive: February 2017

The ‘Academic Nachwuchs’ Label in Germany

Ein Forscher, eine Forscherin ist meines Erachtens mit Abschluss der Promotion wissenschaftlich mündig.

After earning a PhD, a scholar has, in my opinion, reached academic adulthood.

I have only ever heard the German term Nachwuchs in an academic context, which I understood to be a label for people rather junior in the profession, “trainees” or “young ones,” if you will. The word sounds … Continue reading

Notes on Colonial-Imperial Knowledge Formation

Historiographical notes blogged by a PhD student in New Zealand, S.D. Carpenter:

A number of scholars of British India have sought to understand the ways in which British power was exercised through constructing knowledge about Indian societies, including their histories and literatures, languages and geographies. At one end of the spectrum …

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History of Knowledge Forum in GHI Bulletin

The Fall 2016 issue of the free access GHI Bulletin includes a thematic forum on the history of knowledge with the following three articles:

[caption id="attachment_953" align="alignnone" width="806"]For more on this image, see p. 30 of Simone Lässig’s article.[/caption]

Knowledge and Interwar German-Japanese Relations

Ricky Law, “Knowledge is Power: The Interwar German and Japanese Mass Media in the Making of the Axis,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute [Washington, DC] 54 (Spring 2014): 27–46.

Ricky Law, who won the Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize in 2013, investigates the role of the interwar German and Japanese mass media in preparing the ground for the Axis by studying the portrayal of Japan in German newspapers, motion pictures, and nonfiction as well as the depiction of Germany in Japanese dailies, lectures and pamphlets, nonfiction, and language textbooks. Law goes beyond cultural history, however, to consider how knowledge was acquired, translated, and disseminated, including the roles played by pundits and voluntary associations.

‘Why Write a Book? From Lived Experience to the Written Word…’

Pamela H. Smith, “Why Write a Book? From Lived Experience to the Written Word in Early Modern Europe,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute [Washington, DC] 47 (Fall 2010): 25–50.

In this article, Pamela Smith links the tacit and explicit knowledge of artisans in an innovative way. See also Jonathan Sheehan’s interesting review of Smith’s related book, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

‘Knowledge is Power’

[caption id="attachment_910" align="alignnone" width="550"]wissen_ist_macht Hans Lindenstaedt, “Wissen ist Macht” (Knowledge is Power), pre-1914 Source: Kunstbibliothek Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, no. 14050132. License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 DE[/caption]