Imagining Britain: reconstructing history and writing national identity in Englands Heroicall Epistles

ABSTRACT

The idea that in the Tudor era the English people became proudly conscious of their national language and history, has been challenged by critical interventions that suggest how England as a nation had to be “written”: the act of writing can construct imagined boundaries, both to appropriate and exclude. In Englands Heroicall Epistles, Drayton replaces Ovid’s mythological figures in the Heroides with specific well-known English historical personas who provide, through their letters, different perspectives on English history. I will contend that Drayton’s assertion of national identity and patriotism is done verbally and semantically, while his allegiance to oppositionist politics is rendered generically and subversively by a remarkable manipulation of the genre of historical poetry in the Heroicall Epistles: this in turn reflects his deep engagement with ideas of history and the construction of national consciousness in early modern England.     

Demetrios Capetanakis: a Greek poet (coming out) in England

Abstract

The homosexual undertones of Demetrios Capetanakis's English writings become evident when the work is seen in the context of the British literary circle that was instrumental in its publication. However, reading Capetanakis's poems as a 'coming out' narrative leads us to assess the mismatching interpretations of gender and sexuality in Greece and the West and the larger complications of identity and identifications. It is suggested that, in Capetanakis's work written in English, what seems at first a liberating expression of the 'true self' through writing can instead be viewed as positing the problem of the idea of a stable, unified and solid identity.     

Discourse on migration and ethnic identity: interviews with professionals in Hong Kong

"This paper has revealed a complex set of relationships between migration, place and ethnic identity [in Hong Kong]. On the one hand, ethnic identity is shaped by the places where people have lived, particularly the places where they have spent the early years of their life; on the other [hand], places--being the context for socialization--provide the milieux where people learn who and what they are and how to act...." The authors note that "while legislation clearly regulates levels of immigration, international migration is also self-regulated by potential migrants in relation to interpretations of their ethnic identities and their perceptions of 'other' places."     

Historical writing? – Richard Wilton’s “Booke of particular remembrances”, 1584–1634

ABSTRACT

Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Knowledge shaped contemporary and modern conceptions of historical writing and culture which historians have only begun to re-examine more recently. This case study of the “notebook” of Sir Richard Wilton demonstrates the fruitfulness of considering non-narrative texts as “historical”. Wilton self-fashioned his identity from the ideals of gentry culture and his Protestant faith. Wilton’s personal memory was influenced by the Reformation which led to forms of commemoration in texts. He also used elite knowledge networks to negotiate historical networks that were fundamentally oral and local. Finally, early modern historical writing found in personal accounts, commonplace books, and remembrance books could be fluid and dynamic, and it appropriated forms of writing that were highly accessible in the day-to-day lives of the writers that compiled them. The decision to use particular forms of writing was intrinsically associated with the utility and meaning of these forms.     

Coloured Cabinets: A Reflection on Material Culture as a Marker of Coloured Identity in Cloetesville,South Africa

In coloured neighbourhoods of the Western Cape in South Africa, there are objects in people's homes that live in a unique historical and cultural moment. This article reports on an examination, in the neighbourhood of Cloetesville, Stellenbosch, of how these objects inside residents’ homes tell a story of a creolised people and the locations in which they are situated. In the case of Cloetesville, as in many neighbourhoods that arose from a history of forced removals, many people experience various social and economic problems. Coloured people's identities are commonly thought to rest in these problems. This article, however, seeks to suggest an alternative way of exploring coloured identity through looking at objects in households and broader living environments. Thus, I hope to provide insight into different yet distinct experiences by contributing new perspectives through looking at nostalgic and ordentlike (respectable) sentiments of belonging. Specifically cabinets in living rooms are conceptualised as repositories of such sentiments in the home, and how the objects residing in the home have the power/ability to symbolically ground their owners in the neighbourhood of Cloetesville.     

The Italian resistance between history and memory

Abstract

Since the 1960s the Resistance has held pride of place in public ceremonial, political debate and to a point also in historcial writing in Italy. The emphasis on its popular and national character transformed the Resistance into the struggle of the whole country to rid Italy of the German invaders and the small number of Italian fascists who remained their allies, but in ways that took no account of the complexity of people's reactions and the different ways in which Italians experienced the years immediately after the fall of fascism. In the last decade, however, numerous accounts have been published that contradict the images of the Resistance that for 30 years have constituted the ‘official’ memory of the Italian Republic. As a result, the Resistance offers a classic example of the ‘public use of history’, in which historical interpretation has served primarily to justify party political, instutitional and idelogical ends. It is now clear, however, that the supposed unity against fascism was more the result of agreement that there were limits beyond which political differences could not be pressed rather than of a deeper political unity that might have provided the basis for the political and institutional reform of the Italian Republic. The contrasting memories and interpretations of that period that have recently re-emerged for the same reason make it more difficult to project a new Italian democracy for the future.     

Regional patterns in the experiences and treatment of the sick poor, 1800–40: rights,obligations and duties in the rhetoric of paupers

Abstract

This article focuses on three individual paupers who wrote a series of letters about sickness to their home towns in Essex, Northamptonshire and Lancashire. While it would be wrong to claim that the rhetoric and strategies employed by the three writers are representative of all pauper writers, they are representative of those who wrote multiple letters to their parish of settlement and a detailed exposition of their writing can tell us much about sickness and its relief by communities in the last decades of the Old Poor Law. While sick paupers have largely escaped historiographical attention in a literature that has tended to focus on the elderly, widows, children and the unemployed able-bodied man, more detailed study of the life- and dependency-cycles of poor people is beginning to show that sickness was the pivotal experience of people on the margins and that sickness relief swallowed up a very sizeable chunk of poor law resources in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The strategies, thoughts and experiences of the sick poor are thus not just important in their own right, but also for what they tell us about the sentiment of communities towards the poor and the experiences of paupers in those communities.     

Estonian Swedish Ethnic Survival – Examples from Nuckö in the Interwar Period

Abstract

A long-term perspective is important in studies of ethnic groups and their opportunities for survival. This case study deals with the Swedish population in Nuckö (Noarootsi), Estonia, during the interwar period. Even though the Swedish population declined as a whole, some villages succeeded in maintaining their Swedish affiliation. Settlement patterns and varying opportunities to own land are important factors behind these differences. The Estonian–Swedish cultural awakening in the interwar period made it easier for people to show their Swedish ethnic identity more openly. Inhabitants in villages that already at the end of the nineteenth century had a large proportion of Estonians in their population, reacted more positively to the state's request that people change their surname as part of the assimilation policy of the 1930s. Even though people in some villages chose to register a change in ethnic status, a change of surname, and even changed their use of language, they may nonetheless have remained committed to their former Swedish ethnicity on a private level. It is crucial to combine different kinds of data, such as church records, censuses and interviews, in order to illustrate the complexities of ethnic identity from a variety of different angles.     

Ways of Writing in Post-Medieval and Historical Archaeology: Introducing Biography

Abstract

Archaeologists use writing as an important method of communicating results and interpretations, but have only recently started to consider what this implies about their research, and the effect that any style of writing has on the intended audience. Whilst public interpretation has widened forms of discourse to include narrative, performance and biography, few such academic and professional outputs have been attempted in British post-medieval archaeology, although in the wider discipline of North American historical archaeology there has been some experimentation. It is argued that biography offers new ways of encountering data, as well as opening up different modes of interpretation and communication within professional and academic arenas.     

‘Defending the race’: the Italian reinvention of the Hottentot Venus during Fascism

Abstract In 1938 the regime's popular periodical La Difesa della Razza published the portrait of Saartjie Baartman (a Khoisan woman known to the western world as ‘The Hottentot Venus’) to discourage miscegenation in the empire of Italian East Africa. But by 1938, Italian public and scientific interest in the Hottentot Venus had long faded away. In addition, readily available photographs of Italo-Eritreans could have been used to show the ‘outcome’ of miscegenation. Why then did the regime's organ publish a portrait of ‘The Hottentot Venus’? This article addresses this question, and explores how Baartman's story could serve the regime's aim of forging a new ‘racial consciousness’ among Italians. By focusing on the transformation of scientific discourses from the 1850s to the late 1930s, and on their silences, the article illuminates the process through which some of the regime's anthropologists constructed a new, ‘made in Italy’ story for the Hottentot Venus. Deliberately leaving out all the main issues long debated during the previous century, they turned this figure into an empty icon to support Fascist colonial obsession with the purity and prestige of the Italian race.     

Examining elements of children's place attachment

ABSTRACT

The quality of children's attachments to people has claimed considerable scrutiny in research and practice. Children's attachment to place, however, has received less attention despite its relevance to childhood experiences. This paper explores childhood place attachment and applies Chawla's theory as a guiding framework. This theory delineates places by three forms of fulfillment: security and belonging, social affiliation, and creative expression and exploration. Research from within schools and hospitals cites evidence of children's varied interpretations and their responses to adult domination that drive creativity. Acknowledging the significance of place attachments can inform research, policy and professional practice.     

Complexity and diversity: domestic material culture and French immigrant identity in early modern London

Abstract

The French immigrants of early modern London are recorded as having been a clearly recognizable community with similarities in language, religion, occupation and material culture. However, analysis of the excavated and documentary evidence of their domestic artefacts reveals few differences when compared with their English counterparts. Although isolated artefacts may reasonably be linked to an immigrant identity, the majority of refugees do not appear to have commonly expressed their group identity through their domestic material culture in historically identifiable ways. This may indicate that the nature of French immigrant identity was more complex and varied than contemporary accounts imply.     

Tourism and sacred landscape in Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) National Park,Nepal

Abstract

While tensions between the sacred and the profane in tourism have been of long standing interest to tourism scholars, there is a dearth of literature on the growing influence of tourism on local residents’ spirituality and religious practices in sacred landscapes. This paper examines how local residents’ interpretations of sacred landscapes are influenced by tourism development, and whether tourism plays a role in influencing and reproducing sacred landscape and place-based spiritual values. This exploratory study is based on four months of fieldwork conducted in 2014 and 2015 in Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) National Park in Nepal’s Khumbu Region. Results of the 33 interviews conducted with ethnic Sherpa community indicate the Sherpa consider their homeland as a beyul (sacred, hidden valley), and its landscapes (i.e. mountains, forests and lakes) as the abode of local deities. Tourism’s influence on local spiritual values is evident and reflected in changes in mountain deity worship, shift in human-environment relationship, and alterations in religious routines and practices. Although Sherpa still regard Khumbu as a sacred place and are actively involved in maintaining their spiritual values and cultural identity, the religious influence of beyul is slowly diminishing as reliance on tourism grows.     

Excursion to Southchurch and Prittlewell

Abstract

In the late 15th century, a monumental brass was laid in the church at Etchingham (East Sussex) to the memory of two never-married women, Elizabeth Etchingham, who died in 1452, and Agnes Oxenbridge, who died in 1480. This article investigates the possible social meanings of their brass, with a particular eye to Alan Bray's recent interpretations of other funeral monuments dedicated to same-sex couples.     

Leviathans Old and New: What Collingwood Saw in Hobbes

Summary

R. G. Collingwood presented his major work of political philosophy, The New Leviathan, as an updated version of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. However, his reasons for taking Hobbes's great work as his inspiration have puzzled and eluded many Collingwood scholars, while those interested in the reception of Hobbes's ideas have largely neglected the New Leviathan. In this essay I reveal what Collingwood saw in Hobbes's political philosophy and show how his reading of Hobbes both diverges from other prominent interpretations of the time and invites us to reassess Hobbes's complex association with the origins of liberalism. In doing so, I focus on Collingwood's science of mind, his ideas on society and authority, and his dialectical theory of politics, in each case showing how he engaged with Hobbes in order to elucidate his own vision of civilisation. That vision is based on the development of social consciousness, which involves people coming to understand the body politic as a joint enterprise whereby they confer authority upon those who rule.     

The Diocese of Carlisle, 1814–1855. Chancellor Walter Fletcher’s ‘Diocesan Book’, with additional material from Bishop Percy’s parish notebooks

Abstract

Newspaper children's columns first appeared in the 1870s. However, they have been largely overlooked by academic studies of education, children's literature and the newspaper Press. This latter resource has provided rich veins of material for scholars looking for affirmation of contemporary events. The 'miscellaneous' contents of this source, and particularly that of the provincial weeklies, have been largely ignored. This study analyses the development of children's columns in two weekly newspapers, the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle and the Northern Weekly Leader. Both of these newspapers launched societies attached to their children's columns, the 'Dicky Bird Society', which ran until 1940 and the 'Golden Circle', which ceased in 1919. During their existence, these two societies enrolled nearly half a million members, who were then engaged in activities ranging from charitable collections to nature conservation work. Such numbers support the argument that children's columns were a vital element of the popular Press and were more than simply miscellaneous features. These features played a vital commercial role for their respective titles in their adversarial circulation battles by creating a community of readers at an early age.     

Contemporary visual art and the construction of identity: maintenance and revision processes in older adults

This article explores how older visitors use meanings created through encounters with contemporary visual art in art galleries for identity maintenance and revision processes. The analysis is based on the results of a 28-month study of the responses of older people to contemporary visual art in art galleries in north-east England, UK. The identity processes used in this study are those defined as maintenance and revision as understood by Kroger (2002) Identity processes and contents through the years of late adulthood. Identity, 2, (1), 81-99, Kroger and Adair (2008) Symbolic meanings of valued personal objects in identity transitions of late adulthood. Identity, 8, (1), 5-24. and Marcia (2002) Identity and psychosocial development in adulthood. Identity, 2, (1), 7-28. Respondents who did not have an existing identity-defining commitment towards art and who had less ability to decode the art works used the art to make symbolic links to aspects of their identity. The meanings created were then used to help satisfy current identity needs. In contrast, those with an existing commitment to art used the experience of the visits to deepen their current knowledge. Engaging with contemporary visual art facilitated identity processes that contributed to participants’ well-being. This study contributes to studies on identity by exploring how content and identity processes interact and provides new perspectives on the role of art in identity formation for older people. It also has significance for museum, gallery and heritage policy and practice.     

Toward an Understanding of Canada’s International Identity

ABSTRACT

This article examines the construction of Canada’s postwar international identity and how that identity continues to influence Canadian foreign policy, especially with the United States. Furthermore, the article illustrates how changes in Canadian policy necessitated by the Trump Administration may impact Canada’s international identity in the future. The article argues Canadian policy makers have consistently constructed an international identity in opposition to the United States and continue to use the US as a reflective tool in shaping their own policy. The first part of the article briefly examines the concept of state identity outlining both type and role variants and their relevance to foreign policy and this is followed in the second part by a discussion of Canada’s postwar international identity.     

Reading Habits: Catalina de Erauso and the Subjects of Early Modern Spanish Gender and Sexuality

This article reconsiders the subject of early modern Spanish gender and sexuality studies by analyzing the relación de méritos y servicios presented by the famed ‘Lieutenant Nun’ Catalina de Erauso to the Council of the Indies. Studies have focused on the Vida i sucesos de la Monja Alferez, a biography of disputed authorship, and its transgressive protagonist who hides gender identity and illicit desires from persecuting authorities. In contrast, this article studies the petition to show how Erauso’s identity depends upon bureaucratic forms, their standardized content, and collective authorship. In so doing, it moves from a study of gender transgression to a reading of ‘hábitos’—a term that designates interlocking categories of gender, dress, profession, and social status. By shifting the subject of gender and sexuality studies to this web instantiated by ‘hábitos,’ this article shows how collaborative acts of reading and writing allowed privileged subjects to navigate identity and empire in the seventeenth-century Spanish Atlantic world.     

Şeref Xan's Sharafnama: Kurdish Ethno-Politics in the Early Modern World,Its Meaning and Its Legacy

This paper critically analyzes the Sharafnama, a history of the Kurds, written by the late sixteenth century ruler of Bitlis, ?eref Xan. Given the politically sensitive nature of the Middle East's “Kurdish Question,” the Sharafnama has become an extremely important resource through which Kurdish nationalists have sought to construct a coherent “national narrative.” This is due to the fact that ?eref Xan's book constitutes one of the few systematic histories of the Kurds written before the twentieth century. This paper moves away from nationalist inspired interpretations of the Sharafnama, which see the work as a “national(ist)” history. Instead, it posits that, although the piece can be regarded as a manifestation of Kurdish “ethno-politics,” it is necessary to look at it within the context of the relationship between the Kurdish tribal princes who ruled large areas of “Kurdistan,” on one hand, and the Ottoman and Safavid empires who competed for control of this region, on the other. In particular, it brings to the fore an often forgotten and/or ignored aspect of ?eref Xan's history, namely its pro-Ottoman bias. In this way, the article makes broader points relating to the nature of the Kurdish identity in the early modern period, and the influence of such conceptions on the later construction of the modern Kurdish identity.