Constructing the Past

Ronald L. Grimes. Symbol and Conquest: Public Ritual and Drama in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976. 281 pp. $16.50.     

Forgetting the Past

Based on arguments developed more fully in the author's History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (2006), this article urges historians of women and gender to develop a richer appreciation of the distant past. The article uses data from recent conferences and journals to demonstrate that our field is now overly focused on the modern era, and especially the last century. Then, in the spirit of encouraging further discussion and debate, the article lays out some reasons for this contemporary tilt, some ways we might right the balance and some benefits of doing just that.     

Evidence for the Past

Book reviewed in this article:
The What and the Why of History: Philosophical Essays By Leon J. Goldstein     

Struggling with the Past

Many postprocessual archaeologists have argued that active individuals make history. The apotheosis of the individual has been achieved under the rubric identity, the most pervasive theoretical term of the last few years. This focus obscures the fundamental idea that individuals do not exist in isolation. The relational concept of struggle will help us past this theoretical impasse. This concept has many components including real struggles in the past, our struggles to know the past, and using the past to struggle in the present. Our goal is to struggle past identity politics and the individual by focusing on peoples' real struggles in real cases.     

草原往事

生命,像一首悠扬的歌,每一个音符都是一个细节;又像一条蜿蜒的河,每一朵浪花都是一个故事;更像一棵婆娑的树,每一枚落叶都是一段往事。尽管,我的人生算不上精彩和丰盈,但也有一些经历弥足珍贵,至今记忆犹新。     

Getting out of the Iraq trap

The Iraq crisis has been variously defined as a problem of local leadership, regional security, culture clash, arms control, neo–imperialism, transatlantic relations and international legitimacy. The competing definitions reflect the worldviews of different actors with a stake in the outcome of the crisis. Each perspective has validity for its proponent and none of them can be expected to triumph to the exclusion of the others. Consequently, it is argued here, whatever the goals of UN and/or military intervention in Iraq, at the receiving end, the experience will be at odds with what is meant or sought by such intervention. A way to understand the problem and thence to address it is ventured which combines local, regional and international perspectives and calls for a multitiered, multilateral approach to rethinking Iraq and the region. The intention is to take on 'the hawks' who claim that the United States can deliver democracy to client states, challenge their logic and propose an alternative vision that would require all parties, international and local, to take shared responsibility not only for Iraq but for Palestine too.     

走进喇家遗址

●2002年,喇家遗址被评为“全国十大考古发现”之一。●这里有我国惟一的史前灾难遗址;●这里发现了中国第一大磬——黄河磬王;●这里发现了国内最大的玉刀;●这里发现了世界上最古老的一碗面条;现在,就让我们——在青海省民和回族土族自治县南部,有一个面积约60平方公里的三角     

Approaches to the Recent Past

These five books address the evolution of cognition and consciousness, the two topics no longer considered synonymous but separate though related inquiries. Two books focus on consciousness as revealed in art and artifacts from prehistoric sites of anatomically modern humans; one evaluates the intelligence of anthropoid apes through ecological, ethological, behavioral, and anatomical studies of living and fossil apes; one concerns intelligence as revealed in fossil brains and skulls; and the fifth is an essay using many types of data and imaginative scenarios to comment on the mind.     

When the Past becomes the Present

L'oracle pour les Recabites (Jr 35,18-19 TM // 42,18-19 LXX) presente quelques differences notables suivant qu'on le lit dans sa version massoretique ou dans la LXX. Il s'agit essentiellement du changement de locuteur et de destinataire, de la construction differente des personnages, ainsi que d'insistances differentes d'une version a l'autre. De la sorte, ce texte se revele etre un bon terrain pour verifier a petite echelle que les differences entre les narrations paralleles des deux versions connues du livre de Jeremie impliquent une strategie narrative differente, ce qui a un impact sur le sens du recit lui-meme pour le lecteur. L'article entend montrer tout l'interet qu'il y a a prendre au serieux separement le TM et la LXX, de sorte qu'apparaisse la specificite de chaque texte dans sa confrontation a l'autre. De la comparaison ressortiront des indications quant a la qualite eraire de chaque texte, mais aussi sans doute l'un ou l'autre indice concernant l'histoire textuelle de ce livre biblique.