近十年来美国环境史研究的动向——以《环境史》期刊为中心的探讨

本文以2000～2010年《环境史》(Environmental History)所刊论文和书评为基础,通过分析、归纳、总结,对近十年来美国环境史研究的特点和动向进行考察,可以看出,在过去的十年里,美国环境史研究在研究主题、研究方法上都有了长足的发展,不但继续拓宽自然保护和资源保护传统研究领域的研究范围,而且还对过去的研究主题进行重新思考.与此同时,不断地涌现着新的环境史研究热点,如海洋环境史、环境正义、少数族群等.此外,综合环境史的研究也逐渐引起环境史研究者的关注.     

Troubling Naturalism: Shirana Shahbazi's The Curve

This article performs a reading of Shirana Shahbazi's photo-based mural The Curve (2007), an artwork that interrogates the production of knowledge based on various ideas of truth in representation. The Curve meditates on knowledge production in relation to three sites: contemporary documentary photography, the history of northern European still-life painting, and the murals of religious leaders and martyrs that adorn Tehran. The effect of these multiple citations is the creation of an artwork that cannot be comfortably contextualized either in Western art history or in contemporary Iranian visual culture. The Curve thereby anticipates and attempts to block its own assimilation into art historical and critical discourses that reduce the work of Iranian artists to static reflections of a particular geographical and political reality. The artwork thus demands a consideration of the ways in which context, as a term in contemporary global art history, is ideologically constructed within a certain network of power relationships.     

The New Men's History and the Peculiar Absence of Gendered Power: Some Remedies from Early American Gender History

Historians with feminist commitments have expressed reservations about men's history and men's studies. This unease has existed more or less from the first appearance of men's history as a specialised area of inquiry, and shows no signs of abating. The first part of this article explores the sources of this unease. It discusses several guiding premises of men's history and shows that they tend to lead to the occlusion of men's gendered power over women. Nonetheless, the scrutiny of the gender of men is the logical outgrowth of several decades of theoretical and empirical work on gender–witness the many historians of women and gender who have recently turned their attention to the systematic study of manliness and masculinity. With the help of examples drawn from the scholarship on the history of the British colonies in America and the early United States, the second part of this article enumerates several strategies for successfully highlighting men's gendered power in histories of manliness and masculinity.     

The State of the Union: Sexuality in American History

Books reviewed in this article: Merril D. Smith (ed.), Sex and Sexuality in Early America Beryl Satter, Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875–1920 Sharon R. Ullman, Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America M. E. Melody and Linda M. Peterson, Teaching America about Sex: Marriage Guides and Sex Manuals from the Late Victorians to Dr Ruth     

将老百姓还原于历史:美国社会史学的发展

本文概述了社会史在美国的发展,重点讨论了社会史的起源、发展及其面临的挑战。作者也考察了社会史研究方法的变迁,包括借鉴人种史、心理学、社会学、行为科学及计量学的研究方法。美国社会史对于历史研究的贡献在于:普通老百姓不仅有自己的历史而且还对历史的发展作出了贡献;社会史还使超越政治的各种人类行为成为历史研究中不可缺少的部分。美国社会史的诞生及成长绝非一帆风顺,特别是自20世纪60年代以来,社会史学家不仅需要面对其他史学同行的挑战,而且还要在与保守派的斗争中赢得美国公众的支持。     

从历史轨迹看“以史为鉴”的得失

“以史为鉴”是历史学被高度政治化的1体现。结合中国古代史的发展轨迹做考察,就必须承认,“以史为鉴”可以导致两种不同的社会效用。正面效用,用作前车之鉴,直接导致了周、西汉、唐盛世的出现;负面效用,以防弊致弱的方式,影响到东汉、西晋、北宋等朝代的立制不良。对造成这两种不同效用的原因,应该正视和探讨。