Cultural History for a Changing World

This volume explores the changing field of cultural history to map out its new developments and future directions, covering major themes such as environment, (de)colonization, digitization, knowledge, heritage and embodied identity. After the rise of the ’new cultural history’ in the 1980s, the field of cultural history is once again undergoing a time of change. This collection discusses and explains these changes, highlighting new themes from disability and race to technology and animals, and shows how the field has become increasingly entangled with other disciplines such as gender studies, science and technology studies, and critical heritage studies. Featuring an international team of experts working in cultural history today, Cultural History for a Changing World is an indispensable guide to the field.

Each chapter historicizes and problematizes their topics, gives an overview of the different reactions within the field, and offers an outlook about future avenues and opportunities of research the respective topic offers. Introducing relevant case studies drawn from their own research, the authors show how these new approaches can work in practice. Also highlighting the opportunities offered by new approaches such as decolonial, environmental and digital methodologies, Cultural History for a Changing World sets out how this field has been adapting to, and sometimes instigating, shifts in society, and demonstrates how global cultural, social, political and economic changes are affecting the theories, methods and practices of cultural historians.

Jochen Hung is Associate Professor of Cultural History at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. His research focuses on the relationship between media, culture and society in modern history.

Willemijn Ruberg is Associate Professor of Cultural History at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Her research explores the cultural history of the body, gender, law, (forensic) medicine and psychiatry, as well as cultural theory. She is the author of History of the Body (2020) and Principal Investigator of the research project ’Forensic Culture: A Comparative Analysis of Forensic Practices in Europe, 1930-2000’.