This book offers a critical reflection of the historical genesis, transformation, and problématique of “humanity” in the transatlantic world, with a particular eye on cultural representations. “Humanity, ” the essays show, was consistently embedded in networks of actors and cultural practices, and its meanings have evolved in step with historical processes such as globalization, cultural imperialism, the transnationalization of activism, and the spread of racism and nationalism. Visions of Humanity applies a historical lens on objects, work, and sounds to provide a more nuanced understanding of the historical tensions and struggles involved in constructing, invoking, and instrumentalizing the “we” of humanity.
Table of Content
Introduction: Visions of Humanity: Actors, Culture, Practices
Jessica Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs
Chapter 1. The Human in Human Rights
Suzy Killmister
Objects
Chapter 2. Hearts, Minds, and Skulls: The International Debate on the Nature of Humanity in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
Michael L. Krenn
Chapter 3. In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia: Visions of Humanity in US Archaeological Excavations in Iraq, 1880–1910
Sarah Epping
Work
Chapter 4. Tensions of “Humanity”: Jewish Philanthropy and Refugee Crises in Eastern Europe, 1881–1914
Barbara Lambauer
Chapter 5. “The Whole Organism of Humanity”: The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s Campaign for Women’s Rights as Universal Rights, c. 1919
Andrew M. Johnston
Chapter 6. “A New Humanity” for the Poor: Liberation Theology and Visions of Revolutionary Justice in 1960s Guatemala
Betsy Konefal
Chapter 7. Engineering Empathy: Humanity, Culture, and the Battle against Apartheid in South Africa, 1948–1994
Nicholas J. Cull
Sounds
Chapter 8. Choreographing Humanity in the 1960s: Maurice Béjart and the Symphony No. 9
Stéphanie Gonçalves
Chapter 9. Musical Humanism:Yehudi Menuhin and UNESCO’s International Music Council, 1969–1975
Anaïs Fléchet
Chapter 10. “We Are the World”:Visions of Humanity in 1980s Charity Songs
Tobias Hof
Afterword: Languages of Common Humanity
Siep Stuurman
About the author
Sönke Kunkel is assistant professor of North American history at Freie Universität Berlin. He has published widely on the history of humanitarianism and development and is the author of Empire of Pictures: Global Media and the 1960s Remaking of American Foreign Policy (Berghahn, 2015).
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