Gerben Zaagsma | modern Jewish, digital and music history

Apr

2022

Handbook of Digital Public History

By gerben zaagsma

After several years in the making, I am happy to announce the publication of the Handbook of Digital Public History with De Gruyter Oldenbourg, edited by Serge Noiret, Mark Tebeau and myself.

About the book

This handbook provides a systematic overview of the present state of international research in digital public history. Individual studies by internationally renowned public historians, digital humanists, and digital historians elucidate central issues in the field and present a critical account of the major public history accomplishments, research activities, and practices with the public and of their digital context. The handbook applies an international and comparative approach, looks at the historical development of the field, focuses on technical background and the use of specific digital media and tools. Furthermore, the handbook analyzes connections with local communities and different publics worldwide when engaging in digital activities with the past, indicating directions for future research, and teaching activities.

Sep

2021

New Review: Technology and the Historian

By gerben zaagsma

I wrote a review of Adam Crymble's recent book Technology and the Historian. Transformations in the Digital Age, which seeks to chart the evolution of practicing digital history. The review was published on H-Soz-Kult.

Feb

2021

Teaching contemporary history and music with Spotify

By gerben zaagsma

For my new BA course on music and contemporary history I use Spotify for (collaborative) playlists. We started with an introduction on musicology, (global) music history and how historians have engaged and engage with music, followed by two contextual classes on functions, technologies and categorisations of music. In the remaining classes we will talk about intersections with politics, nationalism and nation building, class, youth culture, (post-)colonialism, migration, religion and gender.

I am very very happy to return to music & history since my MA thesis on Jewish instrumental music in the 1990s (‘klezmer’ nowadays) and I am educating myself as much as the students.

In addition to reading and listening, part of the (group) work for students will be to create and curate their own playlists about the main themes (I am aware of much of the valid criticism of Spotify from an artist point of view, but as a teaching tool it adds a dimension that would be difficult to add otherwise).

Edit 30 May 2021: the weekly classes have now ended, below is the complete set of playlists that we created during the course:

Music & History 1 - Introduction:

My playlist for the introductory class is intended to illustrate some of the big themes we will discuss in the course of the seminar. They relate to both the contextual topics (functions, technologies, categorisations) and the themes outlined above.

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... continue reading ...

Feb

2021

International Conference #DHJewish - Jewish Studies in the Digital Age

By gerben zaagsma

The international virtual conference #DHJewish - Jewish Studies in the Digital Age took place between 11-14 January 2021 and brought together more than sixty scholars and heritage practitioners to discuss how the digital turn affects the field of Jewish Studies.

The conference is part of a bigger project which includes an online portal, currently under development at the C²DH, which will offer a variety of different types of information on the intersection of Jewish Studies & Digital Humanities, including a news and events section, a registry of projects, blogs & forums, as well as a Zotero bibliography.

You can now visit the online archive of the conference here, including all abstracts and recordings, with lots of great talks and contributions to enjoy!

Jan

2021

New review: Mapping Modern Jewish Cultures

By gerben zaagsma

I wrote a review of Mapping Modern Jewish Cultures, a digital project on Jewish café culture, directed by Shachar Pinsker. The review was published in a special issue of Reviews in Digital Humanities devoted to Jewish Studies.

Apr

2020

New article: The ‘Jewish Freedom Fighter’. The legacy of Naftali Botwin and the construction of a transnational cult of Jewish heroes

By gerben zaagsma

This article discusses the transnational heroic cult that developed in Yiddish communist circles around the figure of Naftali Botwin, a young Polish-Jewish communist who was executed by the Polish authorities in the city of Lwów following a trial in which he was accused of assassinating a police infiltrator in the ranks of the Polish Communist Party (KPP). The analysis brings out how Botwin’s legacy has been appropriated in multiple, and sometimes contradictory ways in the decades following his death, especially within the context of the creation of the Botwin Company in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. In so doing it will highlight the transnational nature of this cult as his memory lived on through the poems, plays and publications that circulated through the worldwide networks and communicative spaces of Jewish (leftist) émigrés.

The article can be found here and was published in the book: Le Culte des héros en Europe centrale 1880-1945 (Paris: Eur'Orbem Éditions, 2019).

Feb

2020

Interview with Elena Hoffenberg about digital research in Yiddish

By gerben zaagsma

In October 2019 I had an interview with Elena Hoffenberg for In Geveb, the online journal for Yiddish Studies.

Below is the brief introduction, you can read the whole interview here.

"It seemed fitting to break away from a conference bringing together American and European scholars and researchers working on digital humanities for an old-fashioned face-to-face conversation about Yiddish. During a conference on Digital Hermeneutics at the German Heritage Institute in Washington, DC, I sat down to talk with Gerben Zaagsma, who is an assistant professor at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg. In addition to being the author of the book Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War (2017), Zaagsma is the curator of the invaluable online collection of links to all things Yiddish, yiddish-sources.com.