Rock College: An Unofficial History of Mount Eden Prison

2020 should not only be defined by the mass death and social devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic. 2020 was also a year for a long-overdue global confrontation with the socially unjust consequences of justice systems around the world. Following the police killing of George Floyd, millions of people around the world took to the streets demanding ‘Black Lives Matter’, alongside calls to defund and disband the police. Tens of thousands took part in the successful ‘Arms Down’ campaign in Aotearoa to end a trial of Armed Response Teams. These movements put the question of racism and the future of the criminal justice system at the forefront of public debate.

Pinocchio illustrations in the fascist period: history of implicit propaganda

The contribution aims to investigate the influence that the italian Fascist period had on the iconography of images, including the illustrations of Children’s Literature, using the representation of Pinocchio as an emblematic image for this reflection. Often, in fact, we look at the Great History leaving out the unofficial history, that of mass culture, which more than anything else gives us back the common feeling of the society between the World Wars, opening us to the complexity of a period in which the stories of those who lived in it dissolve. The contribution will therefore attempt to historically and socially frame aesthetics in the Fascist Period by retracing the relationship between images and propaganda and analysing, through the social and cultural context, the illustrations of Pinocchio and the educational and iconographic influences exerted on an entire generation of children and young people, adopting Avventure e spedizioni punitive di Pinocchio fascista as a paradigm.

The Practical Past as a Field of Metahistorical Approach. Some Remarks on the Contemporary Situation of Historical Theory

The narrative theory of history that studies historical works from the viewpoint of their narrative, rhetorical devices, and ideological strategies highly emphasized the necessity of renewing historiography. In his early essays, the trend’s founding father, Hayden White, positioned history between art and science or fiction and reality and defined the role of historical theory as a kind of “critical historiography” that is both a criticism of actual historical works and a prescriptive theoretical approach with which the contemporary historical discipline can reform itself. This renewal basically meant a formal reorganization with which the historical works and the historical discipline itself could come closer to literature by using narrative methods and rhetorical devices of recent literary works and films. However, after the 1990s, White and his followers had to face some radical problems that compelled them to rethink the role of recent historiography and their theoretical positions as well. Firstly, the so-called “new” historiography did not actually come into existence, or at least not in a way they suggested. Secondly, new forms of “unofficial” history, from varieties of public history through conspiracy theories to contemporary historical fictions, forced to reconceptualize the task of historical theory and its approach to the social and ideological functions of “official” history. Analysing some recently published works of this trend (above all, Hayden White’s concept of “modernist event” and his distinction between two forms of the past, theoretical and practical), my essay tries to define the situation of historical theory among the forms of contemporary historical experience.

Vernacular Story in and as Archives: (Re)Making Xingshi yan Stories in Early Modern China and Korea

This article examines literary texts both as records transmitted through archives and as cultural sites recording preferred knowledge. It focuses on the late Ming-era (1368–1644) Chinese vernacular short story anthology Xingshi yan 型世言 (Exemplary Words for the World, ca. 1632)—the only extant copy preserved in the Kyujanggak Archives in South Korea—and its Chosŏn (1392–1910) rendition in the Korean alphabet, Hyŏngse ŏn, housed in the Jangseogak Archives. Xingshi yan, taking seriously the Chinese vernacular literature’s claim of being “unofficial history,” provides its own historical narrative of the Ming at the end of the dynasty when it was threatened by the Manchus. Recording the notable Ming figures and affairs, this anthology creates a literary archive furnishing materials for Ming history. In addition, this article points out the significance of the Kyujanggak Xingshi yan in solving the ambiguous textual origins of several Chinese vernacular story anthologies that were previously associated with the famous Second Amazement. Eventually, it traces the trajectory of how Xingshi yan was preserved in the Korean royal archives and appreciated by royal family members, and how its stories were rendered into the Korean alphabet for reasons of cultural and literary preference as well as to address the intended audience of Chosŏn. The making and remaking of Xingshi yan stories in both China and Korea, this article argues, illuminate the varied knowledge preferences and selections in the forming of the two cultures’ respective literary archives.

Filmed Testimonies, Archives, and Memoirs of the Mao Era

Over the past 25 years, various Chinese independent documentary filmmakers have attempted to shed light on times and topics that are vaguely, inaccurately or insufficiently narrated in official history, such as the Cultural Revolution, or more recently the Great Leap famine. Typically, independent documentaries focus on ordinary people’s memories, and often feature witnesses who survived various political movements. Investigating sensitive historical topics as an independent filmmaker requires a distinctive documentary framework in order to present the author’s filmic and historical endeavor in a favorable light and convince the audience. In the Chinese context, the filmmakers’ unofficial status has various consequences on their stance, their work method, but also on the films’ aesthetics and reception. The present essay gives an overview of this body of films and analyses how unofficial memory is framed and expressed by focusing on three main aspects: the filming of oral testimonies, the use of archival documents, and the role of written memoirs. This study of several works reveals the diversity of responses found by independent filmmakers to articulate their findings and discourse on unofficial history.