Village Inventions: Historical Variations Upon a Regional Theme in Uiaku,Papua New Guinea

Anthropologists have come to realize that even the most ‘traditional’ Melanesian practices and ideologies may be historically shaped by the people's experiences within encompassing regional systems. This article examines the reshaping of local understandings of the village among the Maisin people of Oro Province over the past century. I distinguish three contexts within which Maisin notions of the village have been formed: colonial models of village government imposed before the Second World War; Christian village cooperatives in the post-war colonial period; and village meetings in the 1980s. The paper shows that the idea of the village has a complex evolution, shaped within overlapping dialogues between villagers and significant outsiders and between elder and younger village leaders who have had differing experiences of the outside world and the place of their own community within it.     

Czech Women Writers and Racial Others: (Un)timely Reflections on the History of Czech Nationalism

Czech historians are often reluctant to study negative aspects of the Czech past, including more extreme forms of Czech nationalism and particularly racism. This article examines attitudes of Czech women writers at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to racial Others. Focusing on the works of Bo?ena Bene?ová, Gabriela Preissová, and R??ena Svobodová that featured Jewish and Romani characters, it argues that women’s views resembled those of their male contemporaries and ranged from interest in marginalized groups to implicit and explicit antisemitism. The article explores contradictions characteristic of the three writers’ works with Jewish and Romani themes and points out commonalities and differences in the treatment of both groups. It is intended as an opening of a discussion on a little-studied aspect of Czech nationalism.     

The Universal Principle of Grace: Feminism and Anti‐Calvinism in Two Seventeenth‐Century Women Writers

This article presents one of the theological contexts for early feminist thought in England in the late seventeenth century. It argues that an emerging universalist soteriology in Platonist and radical thought had a positive impact on discourses about sexual equality, and shows how two female writers (the Quaker Elizabeth Bathurst and the visionary M. Marsin) combined their critique of the doctrine of limited atonement – in other words, the idea of an exclusive elect – with a confident assertion of women's calling to preach and teach in the Church.     

The Difficulties of Gender in France: Reflections on a Concept

This article examines the cultural and institutional resistance to the use of gender as a category in French historiography. In France, history, and, more specifically, women's history, has not really assimilated the openings offered by the problematics of the construction of differences, nor the logical consequences of the use of gender. Cultural differences are partly responsible for this, and the polysemic nature of the word genre may add to the confusion. With a few exceptions, women's history in France is reluctant to engage in a historical analysis which would take into account the founding role of hierarchy and of relations of power and difference which are central to gender.     

On Women's Reason,Education and Love: Women and Men of the Enlightenment in Spain and France

This article is an exploration of the ways in which Enlightenment discourse constructed the sentimental and intellectual ‘nature’ of women and of the ways cultivated women could situate themselves within this context. They were able to produce a discourse which shared Enlightenment arguments but also displayed a vital and intellectual distance from restrictive definitions of femininity. The lives and writings of three eighteenth-century French and Spanish women, Mme d'Épinay, Josefa Amar y Borbón and Inés Joyes y Blake are taken as case-studies. Their participation in the cultural debate of their time and their agreements and disagree-ments with intellectuals and politicians such as Rousseau, Thomas and Cabarrús are examined. The terms of the debate on gender were established in two different national contexts, particularly in regard to the thorny issue of the politics of love and feelings: the similarities and differences between France and Spain are discussed.