Freemasonry has traditionally been seen as a key influence in the rise of the Bourgeoisie, since it allegedly subdued social boundaries and behavioural norms of the Ancien Régime. This paper, however, argues that the masonic lodges at least in the smaller German court towns, adopted various elements of court society – organizational structures, my…[Read more]

जीतन राम मांझी, एक भारतीय राजनेता और बिहार के पूर्व मुख्यमंत्री हैं। वो राजनीतिक पार्टी जनता दल (यूनाइटेड) के नेता के तौर पर 23वें मुख्यमंत्री रहे। मांझी बिहार राज्य में दलित समुदाय के तीसरे मुख्यमंत्री रहे। 20 फरवरी 2015 को उन्होनें मुख्यमंत्री पद से इस्तीफ़ा दे दिया। यह पुस्तक उनके व्यक्तित्व और उनके कार्यों पर आधारित है।
बहुजन…[Read more]

यह किताब ई.वी. रामासामी नायकर ‘पेरियार’ (17 सितम्बर, 1879—24 दिसम्बर, 1973) के दार्शनिक व्यक्तित्व से परिचित कराती है। धर्म, ईश्वर और मानव समाज का भविष्य उनके दार्शनिक चिन्तन का केन्द्रीय पहलू रहा है। उन्होंने मानव समाज के सन्दर्भ में धर्म और ईश्वर की भूमिका पर गहन चिन्तन-मनन किया है। इस चिन्तन-मनन के निष्कर्षों को इस किताब के विविध लेखों मे…[Read more]

प्रमोद रंजन द्वारा संपादित पुस्तक “महिषासुर एक जननायक” का उद्देश्य यह स्पष्ट करना है कि आखिर महिषासुर नाम से शुरू किया गया यह आन्दोलन है क्या? इसकी आवश्यकता क्यों पड़ी? इसके निहितार्थ क्या हैं? इस पुस्तक में प्रश्न उठाया गया है कि जब असुर एक प्रजाति है तो उसकी हार या उसके नायक की ह्त्या का उत्सव किस सांस्कृतिक मनोवृत्ति का परिचायक…[Read more]

This essay focuses on territorial conflicts between European masonic bodies outside Europe, and on the impact of these conflicts on inner-European masonic relations. The period between c. 1870 and c. 1930 marks the height of the European expansion respectively the age of ‘high imperialism’. It also marks the first wave of decolonization. The tid…[Read more]

How did (Western) European freemasonries on a transnational level came to terms with the idea of a closer union of the European peoples? Concepts of “Europe” and “Europeanness” were the background music of the formation of masonic pan-European networks, building on transnational encounters either by individual freemasons (in the Universala Framaso…[Read more]

Any memorials, monuments, historic sites, and other public facilities commemorate, celebrate and generally remind us about the landscape of the Cowpastures. In recent decades there has been a nostalgia turn in recovering the memory of the Cowpastures landscape. This is cast in terms of the pioneers and the legacy of the European settlement.
Some…[Read more]

One of the first directors of the Sydney Railway Company was colonial identity Thomas Barker who established Maryland at Bringelly in the 1850s. He developed the farm Maryland as a Sydney gentleman’s retreat and starting building his hilltop homestead in 1854. Barker was a successful Sydney businessman and philanthropist who was one of the…[Read more]

The idea of the North in Western society has a long and distinguished history. Indeed, the only ‘purely ethnographic treatise that survives from antiquity’ is Tacitus’s Germania, his description of the Germanic peoples (Mellor 1993: 14). Tacitus produced his short treatise as a way of forcing Romans to confront the luxurious decadence that he fe…[Read more]

The metatheatricality of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has invited recent directors to tell particular kinds of socially progressive stories. This article uses the notion of “social reparation” to theorize remedial uses of Shakespeare in adaptations that give artists and audiences more moral agency. By imagining more inclusive local habitations and s…[Read more]

The metatheatricality of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has invited recent directors to tell particular kinds of socially progressive stories. This article uses the notion of “social reparation” to theorize remedial uses of Shakespeare in adaptations that give artists and audiences more moral agency. By imagining more inclusive local habitations and s…[Read more]

Heracles/Hercules is a particularly striking example of how European societies have received, appropriated and reshaped classical heroic myths into the early 21st century. Is the ancient hero thus also a European site of memory? It will be shown that it was a specific aspect of the myth that was evoked particularly frequently and became a topos by…[Read more]

This article demonstrates the interplay between national, international and transatlantic dimensions within fraternalism. From the late nineteenth century, masonic lodges took part in the broader push towards the formation of transnational organisations and institutions. They were mainly based in western and southwestern Europe. However,…[Read more]

proofs, to be published in a volume 2023

Gotteshäuser en miniature? Architekturbezug, Funktion und Medialität der sogenannten Tempelmodelle der südlichen Levante, in: Jens Kamlah/Markus Witte (Hg.), Sacred Architecture in Ancient Palestine from the Bronze Age to Medieval Times (ADPV 49), Wiesbaden 2023, 153-234.

[Note: these are the slides for the second talk described in the abstract.]

Phylogenetics is an approach developed in evolutionary biology to reconstruct organisms’ relationships of descent based on observations of their trait similarities and differences. It finds a close analogue in textual criticism, where manuscripts correspond to o…[Read more]

This dissertation deals with aristocratic historiography and political legitimation in late-medieval Portugal (late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries). It offers a perspective into the historical imaginary of the late-medieval Portuguese aristocracy; an imaginary that underlay the argumentation of members of this social class in defence of their…[Read more]

The last print issue of FORWARD Press was published in April, 2016. This editorial in the last issue of Forward Press has been written by Pramod Ranjan. Thereafter Forward Press continued to be published as a website and also ventured into the business of books. Pramod Ranjan parted ways with Forward Press in October 2019 in protest against the…[Read more]

फारवर्ड प्रेस काअंतिम प्रिट अंक अप्रैल, 2016 में प्रकाशित हुआ था। यह उस अंतिम अंक का प्रमोद रंजन द्वारा लिखा गया संपादकीय है। उसके बाद फारवर्ड प्रेस वेबसाइट के रूप में प्रकाशित होता रहा तथा किताबों के व्यवसाय में भी उतरा। फारवर्ड प्रेस के मालिकों द्वारा की जा रही वित्तीय अनियमितता के विरोध में प्रमोद रंजन ने अक्टूबर, 2019 में इस पत्रिका से अलग हो गए।