A Transnational Perspective on Psychosurgery: Beyond Portugal and the United States

The history of psychosurgery is most often recounted as a narrative wherein Portuguese and American physicians play the leading role. It is a traditional narrative in which the United States and, at times, Portugal are central in the development and spread of psychosurgery. Here we largely abandon the archetypal narrative and provide one of the first transnational accounts of psychosurgery to demonstrate the existence of a global psychosurgical community in which more than 40 countries participated, bolstered, critiqued, modified and heralded the treatment. From its inception in 1935 until its decline in the mid-1960s, psychosurgery was performed on almost all continents. Rather than being a phenomenon isolated to the United States and Portugal, it became a truly transnational movement.     

Approaching selfhood

Often overlooked is the fact that postmodern theory brought to the fore a crisis in the humanities. The implied universalism of the current “iconic turn” in postmodern thinking is a blow to the traditional sciences grouped around national literatures and cultures. In the 1980's, postmodern practitioners in the United States began to assault the discursive practices of the mainstream under the banner of cultural studies. The current crisis in the humanities surfaced in the emancipation of the various studies from their traditional fields in the humanities. The German Studies practiced today in the United States for instance, has no counterpart in Germany's traditional departments of Deutsche Philologie. Whereas the icon in the United States has become an object of investigation for the various studies, it has not yet displaced the littera in Germany's literary sciences. However in the 1990's, the historical sciences in Germany responded to the challenge of the various studies by directing their attention not to cultural studies, but to cultural history, with its well-defined set of methodologies. But what kind of cultural history is it? Is it built on 19th century German foundations, or is it grafted to current North American notions of post-industrial culture? In this paper I show that the supposed opposition between cultural studies and cultural history is artificial. Through a close reading of Hayden White's extremist questioning of historical practice in Metahistory (1973), I demonstrate that there is no opposition between the icon and the littera in this recent radical critique of mainstream humanistic science. The vehement German reaction to his North American assault on European Kultur is based on a misunderstanding of White's premises. Rather than being constructed on a hodgepodge of postmodern approaches, I show that White's postmodern history is in fact conventionally grounded in 19th century Nietzschean thinking.     

跨国领养与跨文化的“家”——以来华领养的美国公民为例

论文通过对跨国领养的出现及其发展与国际政治气候之间是否存在着某种相关性、美国跨国领养家庭如何建构跨文化的＂家＂等问题的分析论述,揭示了美国公民跨国领养的历时性变化的原因及其相关的国际政治大背景以及通过对美国公民来华领养及其连带形成的社会文化现象。认为某种世界性的关怀与视野,已经是美国中产阶级民众价值观中不可或缺的部分;被美国人所领养的数目庞大的中国婴孩,他们当中的绝大部分人在美国中产阶级或者中产阶级以上阶层的家庭中生活,他们将有着与其他的美国华人不同的社会资源与背景;他们对中国和中国社会文化的理解甚至可能会直接在两国关系上发挥影响,日后必将在美国的华人社区中占有一席之地。     

略论20世纪40年代中国赴美学者对美国汉学的影响

目前学界对于美国汉学史的研究,多侧重于美国汉学概况、研究范式转变和著名中国学家及其著述的研究,而缺少从华裔汉学者对美国汉学之影响这一角度研究的论著。论文就赴美华裔汉学者对美国汉学的影响这一论题作了总体性探析。结果表明,20世纪40年代,一批从事中国文史研究的华裔学者赴美潜心于中国文史研究。他们在美所从事的文史研究是美国汉学发展的重要组成部分,对美国汉学产生了重要影响。他们对美国汉学的基础性贡献和推进作用具体表现在：协力培育美国汉学的基础、矫正美国汉学发展中的流弊、开拓美国汉学研究的新领域。     

The Danzón,North American Racial Discourses,and Reflections on Early Jazz

This essay proposes a way of understanding the formation of jazz as part of a broader transnational exchange of culture. It argues that the processes by which jazz came into being closely resemble others taking place in Cuba and elsewhere, and thus calls for analysis that positions jazz as part of a hemispheric exchange of cultural influences that extend beyond the United States. Second, it reviews and critiques existing scholarship on New Orleans jazz from a transnationalist perspective. It suggests that such literature presents turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans culture as insular, with little or no recognition of the international movement of artists and musical forms. Finally, it suggests that the cultural projects associated with jazz in the United States have necessitated a strong emphasis on the contributions of black US artists to the exclusion of Hispanics.     

American Girls and French Jeunes Filles: Negotiating National Identities in Interwar France

This essay is a transnational and comparative study of how gendered national stereotypes structured the experience of American women who studied in France in the 1920s and 1930s and how this cross‐cultural exchange contributed to cultural internationalism. In both the French and American popular imaginations, American girls and French jeunes filles connoted opposite modern and traditional notions of femininity. In the process of negotiating these two competing identities in popular consciousness and in daily life, some American women students came to appreciate the limitations of the stereotypes, as well as more complex underlying cultural differences, notably in their encounters with French youth's heterosocial practices and with French women students. I argue that the outcome of this process included women's construction of alternative identities for themselves and a new tolerance and appreciation for cultural difference that represents a distinctive development toward cultural internationalism. This study challenges the cultural asymmetry of United States and European relations between the wars and locates gender and women at their centre.     

Of Peaceable Kingdoms and Lawless Frontiers: Exploring the Relationship between History,Mythology and Gun Culture in the North American West

The United States is more violent than Canada and it always has been. Even in the face of mass shootings, most Americans remain culturally and politically resistant to the sorts of gun control measures that have long existed in Canada. America’s unique gun culture is embedded in the history, imagery, and especially the mythology of the American frontier. Canada had its own frontier experience and has its own history of gun ownership, but it does not have a parallel gun culture. This article presents a comparative analysis of post-Civil War/post-Confederation frontier history and mythology, and examines the construction of contrasting cultural narratives of America’s “Wild West” and Canada’s “Mild West.” It suggests that US–Canadian differences in gun laws and gun culture—even in the borderlands region of Alberta/Montana—are better explained by the countries’ two different frontier mythologies than by their actual western histories.     

Memories of an Imperial City: Race,Gender, and Birmingham,Alabama

September 15, 2013, marked the 50^th anniversary of the 16^th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. The bombing remains one of the most infamous events in the history of white supremacist violence in the United States. While conventional accounts of the event and its aftermath often consider the legal restructuring of the US state following the passage of subsequent Civil Rights legislation, little has been written about the transnational significance of Birmingham in shaping the character of US power abroad. This article argues that memorialisation and cultural architecture of Birmingham represent a significant crucible forging a particular style of liberal empire. Tracing a cultural genealogy of Birmingham through the writings of former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and famed scholar-activist Angela Davis, I demonstrate how Birmingham, as a site of historic black struggle, has been remembered alongside the place-making of empire.     

论美国文官群体的历史演变

19世纪80年代以来,随着美国历史的发展,以文官制度的逐步完善为契机,文官群体的政治角色、经济地位、价值观念以及社会影响都发生了很大的变化,逐步朝着成为美国社会中的一个独立阶层的方向发展。首先,从"政治附庸"发展到"行政主管",文官群体的政治角色发生转换,其政治势力得以迅速膨胀;其次,从收入菲薄到待遇优厚,文官群体的经济地位得到提升,政府的财政负担也随之加重;再次,从"官本位"发展到"权本位",文官群体形成了带有现代官僚特征的价值取向,同时也开始蜕变为一个有人格缺失的群体;最后,从声名狼藉到公众认可,文官群体不仅扩大了社会影响,而且也在新的层面上形成了真正的官僚主义。     

美国早期史研究中的自我探索与历史叙事 --评《透过一块晦暗的玻璃》

《透过一块晦暗的玻璃》体现了美国早期史研究领域的较新的发展趋势。这本论文集从小历史的角度来论述了早期美国史研究中关于个人认同的自我探索与边缘化状态的问题,并较好地弥补了大历史的缺陷,使人们从历史叙述、文本细读和语言学转向这三个方面更新了对小历史长处的认识。     

Small Product,Big Issues: Value Contestations and Cultural Identities in Cross-border Commodity Networks

This article follows the trajectory of maize husks from their production sites in rural Western Mexico to diverse consumption and commercialization locales both within the country and in the United States, showing how the uses and meanings of specific products are continuously reassembled and transformed within the livelihoods and social networks of Mexicans living in a transnational world. By highlighting the multiplicities and ambiguities of social value and cultural identities implicit in the workings of commodity chains and globalization processes, the study leads to a questioning of commodity-chain analysis. It also challenges theories of cultural production and circulation based on a unified and hierarchical system of value.     

The political geography of macro-level turnout in American political development

Aggregate turnout rates are among the central indicators of democratic performance in the American polity. Despite the considerable implications of macro turnout, however, most studies of turnout focus instead on the micro level. As a consequence, we know little about how local, political, and historical influences have impacted turnout over the course of American political development. The result is a somewhat impoverished conception of turnout that often removes the political from political participation. In this article, I argue for a new, macro-level perspective that highlights the political dimension of turnout by placing turnout in the local political settings in which it has taken place. I contrast two competing explanations of macro turnout variation across local electorates, a political account and Elazar's cultural thesis, and discuss their implications for the political geography of macro turnout in American electoral history. I then examine this political geography by employing a local indicator of spatial association (a LISA statistic) to identify the spatial structuring of macro turnout in the United States from 1828 through 2000. I demonstrate that a political perspective provides greater leverage than Elazar's cultural perspective in explaining the political geography of macro turnout in the United States.     

The Place of the Dog: AKC Breeds in American Culture

The American Kennel Club (AKC), the primary registry agency for purebred dogs in the United States, had recognized 138 breeds through September 1995. An investigation of the source areas of these breeds reveals the cultural authority of Great Britain in organized dog breeding in the United States. Although Great Britain accounts for more than one-third of the AKC breeds, however, its importance has declined. Dogs from Asia account for more than one-fifth of the breeds recognized since World War II. Breed names that contain toponymic elements (such as Sussex Spaniel) usually reinforce the importance of the area in which the breeds were developed. An analysis of the patterns of geographic names reveals a pronounced emphasis on Western Europe, particularly Great Britain. A decline in the prominence of names from Europe has occurred. Asian name sources have become more important, and Australia and Africa have begun receiving attention. North America as a source of breeds as well as a source of naming has occupied a relatively minor role throughout the AKC's history. American breeders and promoters of purebred dogs have tended to look outward, especially toward Europe, for sociocultural forms.     

19世纪末至20世纪20年代美国外交思想探析

从19世纪末叶以来,美国外交思想经历了从孤立主义向所谓的“国际主义”的转变,这种转变到了第一次世界大战爆发后基本完成,其核心内容是美国借助着强大的经济、军事和化力量,大踏步地迈向国际政治竞技场,实现这一时期绝大多数美国领导人梦寐以求的世界领袖地位。然而,这种转变在国内外遇到了强大的阻力,最终把美国的世界领袖梦想化为烟云。不过,美国的政治、经济和战略等利益已经使美国无可解脱地与世界联系在一起。就美国外交而言,这是一个不可逆转的趋势,美国人厌恶卷入大洋之外政治事务的传统心态由此正发生着变化,这也预示着美国力图充任世界领袖的时代正在缓慢地到来。     

Progress before modernization: Foreign interpretations of American development in James Bryce's generation

This essay considers how observers from various national backgrounds explained the late nineteenth‐century United States as a developing nation. Outsiders often portrayed American industrialization, urbanization, corporate capitalism, and similar modernizing trends as manifestations of transnational forces that would eventually reshape their own countries, but they also stressed ways that American development diverged from what was taking place at home. The evolutionary mindset that infused many of these writers ‐ law professor and politician James Bryce being a noteworthy example ‐ encouraged them to view the ‘progress’ of the United States as a product of Darwinian adaptation and variation. The enormous territory and resources held by the United States supposedly rewarded and reinforced the aggressive, enterprising qualities of Anglo‐American culture, which facilitated emergence of a distinctive American civilization. Racial thinking thus pervades these accounts. Nevertheless, they draw attention to ways that environment, resources, and regional dynamics ‐ factors often overlooked in the modernization framework normally applied by historians to this so‐called Gilded Age ‐ drove and molded American development.     

The Rise,Fall, and Transformation of Native American Cultures in the Southeastern United States

The culture area of Southeast United States saw the rise of the most complex societies in Native America north of Mexico before European contact. Many of these societies developed with matrilineal kinship systems. Some built impressive mounds. The “Southeast” volume of the Handbook of North American Indians presents numerous chapters that reconstruct the prehistory, history, and cultures found in this region and chronicle the European exploration and colonization that impacted the region's cultures. The differences between the prehistoric and postcolonial cultures are so great that they appear as different cultural traditions.     

(Re)creating places and spaces in two countries: Brazilian transnational migration processes

Brazilian immigration to the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon that gained momentum in the 1980s in unprecedented numbers. Today an estimated 1.2 million Brazilians live in the United States. Brazilians (re)create transnational places and spaces through social, cultural, and economic practices, within the immigrant receiving communities of Marietta, Georgia, and Framingham, Massachusetts, in the United States. They also incorporate and add new elements to their livelihoods in the respective sending communities of Piracanjuba, in the state of Goiás, and Governador Valadares, in the state of Minas Gerais, in Brazil. How are these Portuguese-speaking Brazilian immigrants shaping and (re)creating new places and spaces? In what ways and spheres do transnational exchanges affect two places of destination in the United States and two places of origin in Brazil after migration occurs? Using multiple methods, which include in-depth interviews and participant observation, this paper addresses these questions by evaluating the changes incurred by migration. I use a framework perspective that is largely from outside the Latino/Hispanic context. Migration processes are just as much about those who leave Brazil for the United States as it is about those who return to Brazil (i.e. returnees) and what happens to those respective receiving and sending communities in both countries.     

冷战期间美国文化外交的演变

冷战开始后随着美苏两大阵营的对峙加剧,美国政府通过采取创建新闻署、组建和平队、成立国际交流署等手段,逐步将文化外交融入对外宣传范畴,演变为一种冷战工具,其间政治文化和领袖的国家使命感起到关键作用。这种文化外交在为美国赢得冷战的胜利发挥重要作用的同时,也使其国际信任度和软权力下降。     

意识形态与美国革命的历史叙事

世界近现代史上的革命往往也是一种意识形态事件,而革命史写作与意识形态之间有着复杂的关联。美国史学界关于美国革命的历史叙事,经历了从辉格主义范式向新美国革命史学的转变,这场革命也从建国之父领导的政治革命,被改写成了一场由普通民众和边缘群体扮演主角的全面变革。在这一转变中,平民主义、多元文化主义和女性主义等思潮与革命史写作之间发生了微妙的互动。这种经过重构的美国革命史带有浓厚的意识形态色彩,已经从学术的边缘走向了中心,并为当前美国社会各种激进的意识形态提供了新的能量。但它仍只是美国革命史的众多相互竞争的版本中的一个。     

Gender as a Question of Historical Analysis

This article examines the historically and culturally specific valence of ‘gender’ as currently deployed in the field of gender and women's history. It draws broadly on the scholarship on gender since the 1980s, while focusing particularly on the case of the British North American colonies and the early United States republic. The essay argues against the common practice of assuming that gender, understood as an oppositional binary, functions virtually universally as a primary process for representing differential power. It concludes by calling for a way of thinking about gender that can recognise important historical and cultural alternatives.