From Environment to Landscape. Reconstructing Environment Perception Using Numerical Data

The paper introduces a method that links environment to landscape. The environment-landscape divide appears because of epistemological differences: since studying the landscape involves describing the world as it was perceived by humans, it is difficult to access this dimension through the numerical data that we employ when studying the environment. We approach the issue of non-correspondence between environment and landscape knowledge using fuzzy logic. The numerical data describing two geomorphometric parameters, slope and modified topographic index, are split each into three classes with overlapping borders. The classes are then fused into four qualitative categories: flat wet, steep dry, flat dry, and gradual moist. These four categories have direct correspondence in the real world and can be observed by people through simple perception. The correspondence of such categories to peoples’ perception is checked against evidence of past human settlement in three areas coming from Turkey, Serbia, and Syria. The identified qualitative categories resemble the way people categorized their landscape in all but the second case study. Humans were able to perceive and choose areas which correspond to gradual moist in Turkey and broadly to flat wet in Syria. However, for the Serbian example, the results are inconclusive.     

The Limits of Misperception: ReexaminingIranian-U.S. Relations

Book reviewed in this article:
James Goode, The United States and Iran: In the Shadow of Musaddiq     

From Mother-Patriot to Sister-Lover: Changing Visions of Womanhood in Nineteenth-Century Poland

This article provides an analysis of different approaches to gender and the Polish women's question in the first half of the nineteenth century, particularly focusing on the Romantic era (roughly 1820–63), when the Polish question dominated political and cultural life. The ideal of an elite woman as a primarily home-bound mother and educator of the next generation of Poles gained traction among nation-builders during the brief Enlightenment reform period at the end of the eighteenth century. After the dissolution of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795), such ideas continued to remain in public circulation until the massive November Uprising of 1830–31, when some aristocratic women pushed the bounds of womanhood into a public, nationalised space by aiding and participating in the war effort. This article explores different ideas about gender and the nation using official statutes, women's life writing and Romantic literature. It will show changes in attitudes and actions before and after the November Uprising and pay particular attention to Narcyza Żmichowska and the Enthusiast women's movement of the 1840s which offered another way of being a woman than subordinate companionship to menfolk and their idea of the nation.     

Cultural Factors in U.S.-India Relations

Book reviewed in this article:
Andrew J. Rotter, Comrades at Odds: The United States and India, 1947–1964