Abstract and Table of Contents

Elena Baraban and Adam Muller:

Fighting Words and Images:
Representing War across the Disciplines

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.

-Link to book on www.amazon.ca
-Link to book on www.amazon.com

Abstract

Fighting Words and Images closes the existing gap in research and analysis into how war is represented by systematically examining war representations across time periods – from Classical Antiquity to the present day – and across languages, cultures, media – including print, painting, sculpture, architecture, and photography.

The volume develops a set of ideas intended to assist in explaining the nature, origins, dynamics, structure, and impact of war representations. These ideas aim to uncover the principles coordinating the emergence, functioning, and changeability of war representations as well as the interdependencies linking different kinds of war representations that are co-present in particular verbal and visual “narratives” about war. The book contributes to resolving the question of whether there is anything – ontological, historical, or discursive – that defines representations of war in their relation to other discourses.

Fighting War and Images moves beyond merely documenting war discourses ubiquitous in different cultures and across historical periods. Instead, it explores how social, linguistic, aesthetic, moral, political, and other conventions determine specific contents of war representations within different historical periods (from Classical Antiquity to the present day), locations and cultures (North-America, Europe, and Asia), and disciplines (Classics, History, Art History, Anthropology, as well as Cultural, Literary, and Film Studies).

The volume is divided into four theoretically salient sub-sections: Silences, Perspectives, Identities, and Aftermaths. Each of its chapters provides insights into the theoretical and conceptual issues arising from the study of representations of war while simultaneously producing interpretations of specific kinds of representations – monuments and memorials, films, literary works, works of history and memoir, photographs, posters, and performances. The essays thus work on two levels simultaneously: on the first, they discuss ways in which conceptual challenges associated with theorizing war representations may be overcome; on the second, they apply their theoretical and conceptual findings to enlarge our understanding of actual representations.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Representing War across the Disciplines (by Elena V. Baraban, Stephan Jaeger, Adam Muller)

SILENCES (section introduction by Elena V. Baraban, Stephan Jaeger, Adam Muller)

1. Representation of War and the Social Construction of Silence by Jay Winter (History, Yale University)

2. Not Writing About War by Kate McLoughlin (English, Birkbeck College, University of London)

3. Occupation as the Face of War: Concealing Violence in the Diary “ A Woman in Berlin” by Brad Prager (German Studies, University of Missouri-Columbia)

PERSPECTIVES (section introduction by Elena V. Baraban, Stephan Jaeger, Adam Muller)

4. Historiographical Simulations of War by Stephan Jaeger (German Studies, University of Manitoba)

5. The Aestheticization of Suffering on Television by Lilie Chouliaraki (Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science)

6. Slotting War Narratives into Culture’s Readymade by Helena Goscilo (Slavic Studies, The Ohio State University)

IDENTITIES (section introduction by Elena V. Baraban, Stephan Jaeger, Adam Muller)

7. Blessed are the Warmakers: Martin Luther King, Vietnam, and the Black Prophetic Tradition by Jennifer James (English, George Washington University)

8. Exchange of Sacrifices: Symbolizing an Unpopular War in Postsoviet Russia by Serguei Alex. Oushakine (Anthropology, Princeton University)

9. Identity and the Representation of War in Ancient Rome by James T. Chlup (Classics, University of Manitoba)

AFTERMATHS (section introduction by Elena V. Baraban, Stephan Jaeger, Adam Muller)

10. The Battle of Stalingrad in Soviet Films by Elena V. Baraban (Russian Studies, University of Manitoba)

11. Monsters in America: the First World War and the Cultural Production of Horrorby David M. Lubin (Art History, Wake Forest University)

12. ‘ Ruins: the Ruin of Ruins’ – Photography in the ‘Red Zone’ and the Aftermath of the Great War by Simon Baker (Art History, Tate Gallery London)

Index