Humboldt and the modern German university

This book is about the idea of the university in modern Germany. Its primary focus is how the transformation of the Humboldtian tradition gave direction to debates around higher education. By combining approaches from intellectual history, conceptual history and the history of knowledge, the study investigates the ways in which Humboldt’s ideas have been appropriated for various purposes in different historical contexts and epochs. Ultimately, it shows that Humboldt’s ideals are not timeless – they are historical phenomena and have always been determined by the predicaments and issues of the day. Nevertheless, many of the key concepts and fundamental ideas have endured throughout the twentieth century, though they have been interpreted in different ways

Articulation rate in Swedish child-directed speech increases as a function of the age of the child even when surprisal is controlled for

In earlier work, we have shown that articulation rate in Swedish child-directed speech (CDS) increases as a function of the age of the child, even when utterance length and differences in articulation rate between subjects are controlled for. In this paper we show on utterance level in spontaneous Swedish speech that i) for the youngest children, articulation rate in CDS is lower than in adult-directed speech (ADS), ii) there is a significant negative correlation between articulation rate and surprisal (the negative log probability) in ADS, and iii) the increase in articulation rate in Swedish CDS as a function of the age of the child holds, even when surprisal along with utterance length and differences in articulation rate between speakers are controlled for. These results indicate that adults adjust their articulation rate to make it fit the linguistic capacity of the child.Comment: 5 pages, Interspeech 201

Public Arenas of the Humanities : The Circulation of Knowledge in the Postwar Period

The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how a new history of thepostwar humanities could be written. Drawing on approaches from thehistory of knowledge, it outlines the conditions of the circulation ofknowledge in the public sphere during the 1960s and 1970s. By introducing“public arena of knowledge” as an analytical concept, the authors highlightcertain media platforms where circulation of knowledge occurred. As theirempirical examples, they focus on paperback series and the Christianpublic sphere. All in all, the chapter underlines the importance of thehumanities for a wider circulation of knowledge and thereby challengesa crisis narrative of the humanities of the postwar period that is prevalentin established historiography

Nazismens sensmoral : Svenska erfarenheter i andra världskrigets efterdyning

At the core of this study is an enquiry into the experiences of Nazism and the conclusions that were drawn from them. The prime concern is the ideological and intellectual arena in Sweden in the wake of the Second World War, but throughout the study the Swedish case is examined against a more general international background. In recent years, many international scholars have turned their interest to the early postwar era, a formative period in many parts of Europe. One question has been of particular concern: How did the Nazi experience shape the postwar world? By contrast, the overwhelming majority of the Swedish research on these years has been carried out as if the experiences of National Socialism were insignificant to Sweden. The aim of this dissertation, therefore, is to analyze the repercussions of the Nazi experience for postwar society. Inspired by the tradition of conceptual history and Reinhart Koselleck’s hermeneutical approach, I begin by elucidating the content of the Nazi experience in the aftermath of the war. The study shows that an unambiguous, homogenous interpretation of Nazism dominated. National Socialism was regarded as a nationalistic phenomenon, characterized by irrationalism and barbaric manner. According to the Swedish interpreters, Nazism had its roots in distinctively German traditions – militarism, Prussianism, Romanticism. Against the background of the Swedish understanding of Nazism, three major chapters are devoted to the conclusions drawn from the Nazi experience. In a biographical chapter, a process of stigmatization is uncovered, where those associated with National Socialism, including Fredrik Böök, Zarah Leander och Erich Wittenberg, were branded in various ways. In this process, certain traditions were suppressed and other ideas gained ground. Drawing from two fundamental, normative fields of modern societies, the education and the law, I examine this historical dynamics further by relating the Nazi experience to “the ideas of 1945”, a label for the ideological foundations of the early postwar era. Moreover, the experience had a profound impact on Swedish attitudes towards German culture and contained a strong appeal: stay away from the German sphere. In conclusion, this study demonstrates how historical experiences influence human minds and affect the attitudes of society. From the interplay between the dark experiences of the past and the bright dreams of the future, postwar Sweden emerged

Nordic Narratives of the Second World War : National Historiographies Revisited

How have the dramatic events of the Second World War been viewed in the Nordic countries? In Nordic Narratives of the Second World War, leading Nordic historians analyse post-war memory and historiography. They explore the relationship between scholarly and public understandings of the war. How have national interpretations been shaped by official security-policy doctrines? And in what way has the end of the Cold War affected the Nordic narratives? The authors not only present the overarching themes that set the Nordic experience of the Second World War apart from other European narratives, but also describe the distinctive postwar characteristics of Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden. Key concepts such as national identity, memory culture, and the moral turn are placed in their Nordic context. Bringing new nuance to the post-war history of Europe, this is the first work to focus on Nordic narratives of the war, and is valuable reading for students, academics, and all who have an interest in the historiography of the Second World War or modern European history

History of Intellectual Culture : International Yearbook of Knowledge and Society

With concepts of participation discussed in multiple disciplines from media studies to anthropology, from political sciences to sociology, the first issue of the new yearbook History of Intellectual Culture (HIC) dedicates a thematic section to the way knowledge can and arguably must be conceptualized as "participatory".Introducing and exploring "participatory knowledge", the volume aims to draw attention to the potential of looking at knowledge formation and circulation through a new lens and to open a dialogue about how and what concepts and theories of participation can contribute to the history of knowledge. By asking who gets to participate in defining what counts as knowledge and in deciding whose knowledge is circulated, modes of participation enter into the examination of knowledge on various levels and within multiple cultural contexts.The articles in this volume attest to the great variety of approaches, contexts, and interpretations of "participatory knowledge", from the sociological projects of the Frankfurt School to the Uppsala-based Institute for Race Biology, from the Argentinian National Folklore Survey to current hashtag activism and Covid-19-archive projects. HIC sees knowledge as rooted in social and political structures, determined by modes of transfer and produced in collaborative processes. The notion of "participatory knowledge" highlights in a compelling way how knowledge is rooted in cultural practices and social configurations