Mobilising the Movement: The role of mobility in the suffrage politics of Florence Luscomb and Margaret Foley, 1911–1915

This article, placed in the context of the ‘mobility’ turn in cultural and social theory, focuses on mobilities of the suffragists, Florence Luscomb and Margaret Foley between 1911 and 1915. Using letters, diaries and newspaper accounts the article illustrates how a transatlantic voyage and car rides in Massachusetts contributed to the transformations in the political strategy of the women's suffrage movement in the United States. I argue that the mobilities of Luscomb and Foley engendered new kinds of action in the public sphere undertaken by the two suffragists and their colleagues. The second argument in the article is that these mobilities are not simply the mobilities of people but the mobilities of ideas and things as well. The two women were enacting newly available forms of mobile prosthetic subjectivity.

En este artículo, situado en el contexto de la inclinación ‘movilidad’ en la teoría social y cultural, enfoca en las movilidades de las sufragistas Florence Luscomb y Margaret Foley entre los años de 1911 y 1915. Usándose relatos de cartas, diarios, y periódicos, este artículo ilustra como un viaje transatlántico y paseos en autos en Massachussets contribuyeron a las transformaciones en la estrategia política del movimiento sufragio de mujeres en EE.UU. Argumento que las movilidades de Luscomb y Foley engendraron nuevos modos de acción que emprenderán ellas y sus colegas en las esferas públicas. El secundo argumento en el artículo es que estas movilidades no son simples movilidades de la gente sino que también son movilidades de ideas y cosas. Estas dos mujeres hacían el papel de nuevas formas accesibles de subjetividad móvil protésica.     

Ecocriticism,Joyce, and the politics of trees in the ‘Cyclops’ episode of Ulysses

This article explores the ecological and ideological context of a passage in which two nationalists lament Ireland's treeless state. Although Joyce satirises these professed tree-lovers and the cause of reforestation, the passage alludes to a lively, serious topic in fin de siècle discourse. While Catholic nationalists blamed the loss of the island's once-vast, oak-dominated forests on British colonialism, a history elided by unionists, they shared a belief in the economic benefits of reforestation. Like Joyce, both sides knew little of Ireland's post-Ice Age natural history and did not appreciate the cultural importance of forest ecosystems to ancient Celtic peoples. Today, the Republic's profit-based plantations of conifers enact the materialist ideology of c.1904 reforestation advocates while overlooking the environmental and cultural benefits of restoring the biodiversity of native deciduous forests.     

The history of ‘Social Technology’, 1898–1930

Since the term was first coined, in the late nineteenth century, ‘social technology’ has had a mixed fate. Whereas ‘technology’ has become one of the keywords of the twentieth century, ‘social technology’ never quite seemed to settle in the vocabulary of social theory. In this article, we focus on the early history of ‘social technology’, tracing its spread from its origin in the sociology department at the University of Chicago, and describing the increasing competition from the term ‘social engineering’ starting in the 1920s. We argue that this shift in terminology is significant, because it is an index of changing ideas about the demarcation of sociology, about the application of science in the betterment of society and about the nature of technology.     

The people and the professors: socialism and the educated middle classes in Italy, 1870–1915

This article examines the role of the educated middle classes in the Italian socialist and syndicalist movements from 1870 to 1915. After discussing the problems of defining the educated middle classes and the intellectuals, this article looks at the role of the creative free-floating intellectuals within the socialist movement of the 1890s. The importance of positivist and 'evangelical' socialism is highlighted and illustrated through the influence of Cesare Lombroso and Edmondo De Amicis. The article then focuses on the role of Filippo Turati and the Italian Socialist Party's Socialist Parliamentary Group, which was largely composed of individuals from the educated middle classes. In this part of the article, the author evaluates the influence of the educated middle classes in the Italian Socialist Party before 1915. This article concludes with a discussion on the nature of Italian intelligentsia socialism and its influence on Gramsci. Questo articolo esamina il ruolo delle borghesie intellettuali nel movimento socialista e sindacalista in Italia tra il 1870 ed il 1915. Dopo aver preso in considerazione le problematiche inerenti alla definizione sia delle borghesie intellettuali che degli intellettuali, l'articolo dedica spazio al ruolo creativo di intellettuali indipendenti all'interno del movimento socialista negli anni intorno al 1890. Si dÀ particolare rilievo all'importanza del socialismo positivista ed 'evangelico' attraverso l'analisi del pensiero di Cesare Lombroso e di Edmondo De Amicis. Si passa, infine, a considerare il ruolo di Filippo Turati e del gruppo parlamentare del Partito socialista, il quale era principalmente composto da personalitÀ di estrazione borghese intellettuale; l'autore valuta l'importanza e l'influenza delle borghesie intellettuali nel Partito socialista, nel periodo che precede il 1915. L'articolo si conclude con un'analisi della natura dell'intellighenzia socialista italiana e della sua influenza su Gramsci.     

San Francisco's Pioneer Mother Monument: maternalism, racial order, and the politics of memorialization, 1907–1915

The 1907–1915 campaign to create San Francisco's Pioneer Mother Monument provides both a case study of conservative uses of maternalism and a window into the political mutability of maternalist rhetoric. Ella Sterling Mighels, a pioneer descendant, utilized the monument campaign to promote white women's moral influence over middle-class men, to argue against Asian immigration and labor unrest, and to inculcate old-fashioned moral values among urban children. Although some of Mighels's contemporaries cited pioneer mothers as proof of women's fitness for suffrage, Mighels herself used the pioneer mother to argue against suffrage. The final statue, created by the sculptor Charles Grafly, failed to encapsulate Mighels's multivalent political message and to express her ideals about gender, race, class, and morality.     

The golden and the brazen world: Papers in literature and history, 1650–1800

From the seventeenth century onwards, English Reformed ministers engaged in lively correspondence and publishing exchanges with men from different countries and Protestant traditions. In the eighteenth century, appreciation of their shared intellectual and cultural heritage and a desire to sustain the patterns for religious living it encouraged inflected the content and style of textual interactions among Halle Pietists, English dissenters and New England Congregationalists. Interest in the present state of religious life was also important, and therefore news about awakenings and materials for pastoral care circulated around Europe and North America through existing channels and by new means. Their encounters and the texts that they produced were mutually generative, and the language and manner of the participants' personal interactions were important features of published works. These personal associations, publishing activities and discursive styles can be understood as aspects of the literary sociology of a religious culture that valued intellectual and emotional engagements and sought to inculcate religion through education and friendship.     

George Egerton,James Joyce and the Irish Künstlerroman

George Egerton (Mary Chavelita Dunne, 1859–1945), from Co. Laois, was the New Woman author most closely associated with the Decadent movement. As such, she was also the New Woman writer most profoundly affected by the downfall of Oscar Wilde. After the Wilde trials of 1895, Egerton's connection to Decadence and New Womanhood would make her work anathema to much of the British public. This essay will argue that ongoing tendencies to situate her texts solely within the New Woman categorisation and an English cultural location have had the detrimental effect of obscuring their importance to a specifically Irish literary tradition. By examining Egerton's 1898 novel The Wheel of God, focusing on its status as an Irish Künstlerroman written from a position of exile, and drawing comparisons between it and the works of James Joyce, this essay will seek to redress this imbalance.     

The politics of the Shanghai courts: the state,local elites,and social networks in Nationalist China, 1927–1937

This article explores the ways in which the Nationalist Party established dominance over the Shanghai courts in the foreign concession area to use them as weapons against political dissidents, and it analyzes the intricate relations among the Nationalist Party, local elites, and the Shanghai courts during the Nanjing decade (1927–1937). Building on recent studies that pay attention to the limited success of the Nationalist Party’s policy of putting the judiciary under Party control, this study demonstrates that the process of establishing the Nationalist Party’s dominance over the Shanghai courts was highly contested. The interplay between the Nationalist Party’s effort to gain control over the Shanghai courts by building formal and informal institutions and the local elites’ appropriation of their own social networks rendered the Shanghai courts vulnerable not only to the Party’s intervention, but also to the influence of social forces. I argue that due to the weak authority of the Shanghai courts, the Nationalist Party’s use of law against political foes could be a double-edged sword.     

Russia,Turkey, and the Problem of the Black Sea Straits in 1898–1908

The article deals with the main geopolitical problem in Russian—Ottoman relations at the turn of the twentieth century. Using ample archive sources the author shows the course of Russia’s struggle for influence in the straits. He concludes that the Ottoman policy was more flexible and the Turks proved able to assert their interests in the region. At the same time the straits question did not become the cause of any serious escalation between the two powers.     

The challenge of the spaceship: Arthur C. Clarke and the history of the future, 1930–1970

Arthur C. Clarke’s 1946 essay on ‘The Challenge of the Spaceship’ was one of the founding manifestoes of the Space Age, and helped to establish him as the West’s leading techno-prophet. Restating his ideas in subsequent factual and fictional works, Clarke successfully propagated the belief that man’s destiny lay in space and that the process was already underway. On the surface Clarke’s oeuvre offers a classic astrofuturist model of progress as technology-driven, but on closer examination it also incorporates a more pessimistic, historically based strand of philosophy, British rather than American. This essay traces the genesis of Clarke’s early work and the influence upon him of the historian Arnold J. Toynbee and the moral philosophers Olaf Stapledon and C.S. Lewis. Toynbee was essentially a Christian pessimist who believed that western civilization was on the way out; his long historical perspectives were an important source of inspiration for Clarke, leading him to a cyclical rather than a simply progressive model of history which contemplated both the beginning and the end of civilizations. The concerns of Stapledon and Lewis with grand narratives of decline and redemption were also influences on Clarke. All this needs to be understood in relation to both the European experience of World War I and to the coming of the atomic bomb, the latter a profound influence on Clarke’s generation. Such perspectives gave European astroculture a more modulated vision of the human future in space than the technologically based astrofuturism which dominated in the USA.     

Lessons in Seeing: Art,Religion and Class in the East End of London, 1881–1898

In 1881 the Reverend Samuel Barnett, Anglican incumbent of St Jude's Church, Whitechapel, established the Whitechapel Fine Art Exhibitions with his wife Henrietta. These quickly became an important part of the parochial programme ofSt Jude's. The Barnetts followed the art theories of John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold and argued that exhibiting famous and beautiful paintings would revive the spirituality of poor East Enders. In order to test this theory, they introduced the practice of ‘Voting for Your Favourite Picture’. The result, however, did not bear out straightforwardly the Barnetts' belief that paintings are ‘Windows into the other World’. The gap between the intended outcome and the actual reception of the Whitechapel Exhibitions reveals that, although they may not have adopted the Barnetts' religious aestheticism, working-class visitors were keen to engage with art on their own terms.