This book reflects on the culture wars over the historical canon in today's globalizing world. It discusses the attempts to review and transcend the received canon in historical research and teaching in Europe, Canada, the United States and South Africa. In the aftermath of the culture wars, the national and Western canons still largely dominate teaching and public memory. The book addresses the challenge of moving beyond these traditional narratives without sacrificing history as a coherent, attractive, and teachable subject.

MARIA GREVER has published several books and articles on historical consciousness, the making of identities in a multicultural society, on monarchy, gender and political culture. One of her recent books is with Berteke Waaldijk, Transforming the Public Sphere. The National Exhibition of Women's Labor in 1898. She is editor in chief of Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, a major historical journal in the Netherlands. She is also a board member of the Social Sciences Council, an advisory council of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. Recently she has conducted research for the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) on National Identity and Plural Pasts.

SIEP STUURMAN has widely published in the history of ideas, among others in the Journal of the History of Ideas, The Journal of Modern History, Eighteenth-Century Studies, History and Theory and History of European Ideas. His most recent book is Francois Poulain de la Barre and the Invention of Modern Equality, which was awarded the George Mosse Prize by the American Historical Association. He is a member of the Board of the Humanities, a division of the Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research.