The Persian Presence in Nineteenth-Century English Poetry: A Taxonomy

This study employs keyword searches of literary databases such as Literature Online (LION) in an attempt to map the image of “Persia” in nineteenth-century English poetry as it was molded by a proliferation of thoughts and ideas in a variety of contexts. Completeness is not possible, of course, but the article aims to identify and explore some of the major categories within which the image of Persia was formed and disseminated in the nineteenth-century. The scope of the study is not confined to a corpus of poetic works that were written specifically on or about “Persia,” but takes account of a broader range of poems, and attends to the structure, texture and variations of the presence of “Persia” in nineteenth-century English poetry.     

The Bennachie Colony: A Nineteenth-Century Informal Community in Northeast Scotland

In this paper we explore the intertwined issues of improvement and community relations within the context of the Colony site, a nineteenth-century informal settlement in Scotland best known through caricatures of the poor and stereotypes of rural living. Drawing on a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research framework, a collaborative initiative involving academics and community researchers has begun rediscovering and rethinking the history of the Colony. Our investigations have established a rich and unexpected tapestry of life that played out at multiple scales of analysis according to a variety of issues. The settlement’s rise and fall was shaped by wider improvement processes impacting parts of Europe and beyond, but it is also an example of how outside influences were adopted locally, resisted and adapted; material conditions that played directly into the way community relations were themselves constituted. The lessons learned have implications for the archaeology of improvement and the study of informal communities on a global scale.     

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.     

Archaeology in Antarctica: Nineteenth-Century Capitalism Expansion Strategies

Antarctica was the last continent to be discovered in the early nineteenth century. In order to become acquainted with the process of incorporation of Antarctica to the scope of the capitalist system we have focused on particularity: i.e., specific economic and technological and ideological aspects of everyday life in sealer camps spread along the coastline of the South Shetland Islands. Archaeological research in Byers Peninsula–Livingston Island provides an approach to the mechanisms implemented to organize the first resource exploitation in these lands.