The Ojibwe Renaissance: Transnational Evangelicalism and the Making of an Algonquian Intelligentsia, 1812–1867

Between the War of 1812 and the emergence of a self-sufficient Canadian Methodism in the 1850s, the combination of geopolitical instability, transatlantic evangelicalism, indigenous and settler enthusiasm for religious revival, and the ideas of romantic nationalism produced a distinctly Ojibwe Christianity. This Christianity is known to us primarily through the letters, journals, and publications of a small group of Algonquian-speaking intellectuals educated in American colleges who mobilized the ideology and institutional networks of the Protestant missionary project to mount a vigorous challenge to the encroachments of settler colonialism occurring on both sides of the Great Lakes. Ojibwe Christians participated in a movement to transform the world into a multiracial Christian commonwealth, a movement within which they could remain committed to a historiographical and nation-building project meant to establish an autonomous, or at least semi-autonomous, Indian polity within the imperialist state.     

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.     

The cult of St Minias and the struggle for power in the diocese of Florence, 1011–1018

Foundation of churches and monasteries in the tenth and eleventh centuries often have more to do with economic and political concerns than they have to do with religious motivation. Though historians have long recognized the importance of the basilica of San Miniato al Monte in Florence for the history of the Tuscan romanesque, they have largely failed to see that its foundation stemmed from conflicts over competing interests between rival families in the northern Tuscan elite. The tenth and early eleventh centuries saw the formation of several powerful family lineages (consorterie) in northern Tuscany, which organized their regional patrimonies into proprietary monasteries. Two of those lineages — the Guidi and the Cadolingi — derived much of their wealth from the seizure of properties formerly held by the bishops of Florence. Endowing its two proprietary monasteries at Fucecchio and Settimo at the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh centuries with a patrimony which may have included lands claimed by the bishop, the Cadolingi patronized a faction within the Florentine clergy that challenged the moral qualifications of Bishop Hildebrand to be bishop.In order to defend episcopal properties from usurpation by the Caldolingi and Guidi and to provide a cover for his own family's appropriation of ecclesiastical property, Bishop Hildebrand consciously orchestrated after 1014 the revival of the cult of the first martyr of Florence, St Minias. The core of that program was the construction of the basilica and monastery of San Miniato. Endowing the basilica with the episcopal properties he sought to protect, the bishop appointed a loyal abbot who agreed to write a new Passio of the saint. Bishop Hildebrand managed to hold on to his office in spite of the challenges to his prelacy, but shortly after his death his sons lost control of the church property bequeathed to them by their father.     

Florence and its hinterlands in the late Middle Ages: contrasting fortunes in the Tuscan countryside, 1300–1500

A key strand of research for social and economic historians of the pre-industrial period is the relationship between city and countryside. Sometimes urban and rural environments enjoyed mutually beneficial relationships, though in other cases cities reduced their rural hinterlands to poverty and decay – the question is, why? By focusing on late-medieval Florence and Tuscany, this paper moves away from approaching this question through an ‘urban bias’, and suggests the answers can be found within the structural configuration of rural societies themselves. Essentially, some rural regions were well set up to repel urban predatory tendencies, while other societies were susceptible to exploitation.     

Visible Charity: The Archaeology, Material Culture, and Landscape Design of New York City's Municipal Almshouse Complex, 1736–1797

How did New York City's eighteenth century almshouse (1736–1797) handle homelessness and poverty? Historians have been debating whether the conditions were familial and supportive, or mean-spirited and intolerable. An analysis of the archaeology, artifacts, architecture, landscape design, primary sources, and secondary sources associated with the New York City almshouse complex suggest some answers.     

Urban patricians and ‘bourgeois’ society: A study of wealthy elites in Florence, 1862–1904

This case study presents the results of research carried out on the principal wealthy families in Florence between 1862 and 1904. It shows that while Tuscany was in many ways a particular case, it offers an important opportunity for studying those distinctions between ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’ that are implicit in debates on the social history of this period. From the 30,000 declarations of inheritance resulting from deaths registered in these years, the author examines 300 estates that were valued at over half a million lire and 146 ‘millionaires’, reconstructing the balance between fixed and liquid assets in the overall composition of the estates. The data show that estates based mainly on landed property of a type which was aristocratic in origin remained common throughout the period, and this finding is confirmed by the importance that farms in the case of rural property, and noble houses in the case of urban property, retained as forms of immovable property. A comparison of the structure of the wealth of the nobility (theoretically a more ‘traditional’ group) and that of Jewish bankers (in theory a more ‘modern’ group) indicates that all sections of the elite followed the same tendencies. The author argues that the elite was characterized by a ‘Renaissance paradigm’ in which forms of rural and urban seigneurial power were combined in a mixture of both relatively modern and relatively conservative features, and that this same combination was evident over the longer period in many other northern and central Italian urban elites. The statistical data offered by the sources are insufficient, however, to carry the analysis further without taking account of institutional structures and individual behaviour. In the final section of the article the author discusses several examples of inheritance settlements that confirm the complementary nature of family strategies aimed at perpetuating the integrity of the property through the male line and forms of management that sought to develop a variety of forms of economic enterprise and activity.     

The boundaries of eros— Sex crime and sexuality in Renaissance Venice

Throughout Western history there have been two sharply differentiated beliefs about the character of creativity. However, one of these beliefs—Judaeo-Christian and neo-Platonic—has occupied such a dominant position that the very existence of the other has been obscured and ignored. Yet the evidence for this second belief is no less extensive or vivid. It has never been formulated in the same way as the first and so has never constituted a tradition as such; yet it has existed over as long a period of time and can therefore be called a tradition. Moreover, this second belief seems to bear a closer relation to the character of creativity displayed by people regarded as ‘creative’, as well as to what we have learnt about creativity in this century from psychologists. Attitudes to creativity in the modern period have generally been based on the first tradition, but the activities of creative people have borne out the validity of the second tradition. The attitudes, in other words, have been based on false expectations. To recover the lost tradition, therefore, may enable us to see more accurately what we may or may not achieve by being creative.     

The center and the edge: Archaeology in Belize, 1809–1992

The archaeological history of Belize now spans, in a sense, 183 years. For all but the past quarter-century of that time, research in the country has ranged from sporadic to nonexistent. In recent years, however, forces both internal and external to Belize have brought about an explosion of fieldwork and reporting, as well as wide-ranging analyses, problem-focused studies, and the beginnings of placement of Belize in a theoretical frame. Review of the development of archaeological research in the country establishes a base on which to rest discussion of themes in current work, as well as the impact of Belizean data as regards changes in our assessment of Maya prehistory as a whole.     

The Reformed Elect: Wealth, Death, and Sanctity in Gloucestershire, 1550–1640

The cleansing of the parish space in the sixteenth century provided opportunities for the laity to state the case for their own sanctity within the spaces formerly occupied by the didactic imagery of the Elect. Pietistic superiority in death, rendered in stone with reference to a popular ideal set forth in the Ars Moriendi elevated the moneyed over the living congregation. This paper compares the emphases of memorials in Gloucestershire, England, with that of selected Ars Moriendi texts in order to comprehend how wealthy patrons farmed themselves as a novel focus for popular adoration and what they hoped to achieve by doing so.