Christine Sylvester is Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, specializing in international relations, and professorial affiliate of the School of Global Studies at Gothenburg University. She has been the Swedish Research Council's Kerstin Hesselgren Professor for Sweden, recipient of an honorary degree in social sciences at Lund University, a Leverhulme fellow at SOAS, University of London, and a Humanities Institute fellow at the University of Connecticut. An International Studies Association eminent scholar of feminist theory and gender studies, she is also listed among Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations. Her recent works related to this book include Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It and War as Experience, as well as the edited books Masquerades of War and Experiencing War.
Christine Sylvester has produced a book that retheorizes how war is
represented. She does so through a series of unconventional
framings and stories that push the boundaries of what has
traditionally been conceived of as war studies. It is a masterful
example of the way narrative work can generate knowledge, with key
insights on the individual experience of war inside and outside the
traditional war theater.
*Perspectives on Politics *
How do we remember? Who or what is left out of memory, and for what
purposes? Similarly, who and for what reasons are others left in?
Sylvester charts an evocative path through symbols, literary and
artistic, that burns great holes through all that is merely
official in the memories of war in Vietnam and Iraq.
*Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of
London*
This book makes an insightful and truly interdisciplinary
contribution to the study of war. Drawing from Memory Studies,
International Relations, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies, and
Ethnography, Professor Sylvester traces how difficult wars are
mediated through official and localised curation
practices-advancing, once again, our knowledge of war's ownership
and warexperience in the contemporary era
*Charlotte Heath-Kelly, Associate Professor of Politics and
International Studies,University of Warwick, UK*
Once again, Christine Sylvester wows the reader with her
compelling, creative, and deeply intelligent way of asking and
addressing the imperative questions of global politics. In this
rich and wonderfully written book, Sylvester invites us on a
fascinating journey through war museums and memorials, novels and
memoirs, and compels us to revisit how we understand, remember,
forget, and imagine war. This book is clearly a must-read for those
who reflect on war, and its subjects, objects, and experiences
within the fields of International Relations, War Studies, Critical
Military Studies, and Feminist Theory, those who are touched by the
specific wars addressed in these pages, and all of us who-by the
mere fact that we live in today's global conjuncture-want to
rethink militarism and warring
*Maria Stern, Professor of Peace and Development Studies,
Gothenburg University.*
Focusing her attention on the 'objects' of war, Christine Sylvester
challenges the discipline of International Relations to take
account of the bodily and bloody effects of war. Demonstrating that
war is experienced and felt long after its supposed 'end' and far
away from its battle zones, and that authoritative knowledge of it
is found in oft-ignored sites, this book is a vital corrective to a
discipline that frequently de-peoples and sanitizes the act of
warring.
*Julia Welland, Assistant Professor of War Studies, University of
Warwick, UK*
"From her brilliant opening excursus of Pollock's 'Blue Poles' to
her revelatory analysis of who remembers our contemporary wars,
how, why, and to what aesthetic and political ends, Christine
Sylvester's Curating and Re-curating the American Wars in Vietnam
and Iraqis a stunning achievement. Lucidly written, powerfully
argued, and beautifully illustrated, every insight of every chapter
made me see these wars and their sites of memory as if for the
first time. An exquisite 'tour de force' in every way." -- James E.
Young, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst
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