Aranda,Arrernte or Arrarnta? The Politics of Orthography and Identity on the Upper Finke River

The Aboriginal people of the Upper Finke River in central Australia have followed a literacy tradition for over 130 years. When the first Lutheran missionaries arrived, they immediately started to study the local Arandic language and were teaching reading and writing by 1879. Despite this long exposure to literacy and the Lutheran influence on it, the issue of the right orthography for this Arandic language variety is emotionally charged and politically very contested. In this post‐colonial context, orthography has become a sociocultural and symbolic, rather than a phonemic, matter.     

Literacy,reading, and writing in the medieval West

Over the last quarter century, a plethora of studies on literacy, reading, and writing in medieval Europe have contributed significantly to our understanding of medieval society and culture. Nevertheless the sheer number of these studies and their authorship by scholars in several different disciplines have obscured the relationships between these studies, their common themes and their differences. This essay seeks to survey this literature and its background, to explicate its contributions to the field of medieval history, and to suggest avenues for future study. It also reveals how approaches developed outside medieval studies were borrowed and adapted by medievalists, and how the study of literacy, reading, and writing in the Middle Ages has, in turn, influenced the work of ancient and modern historians.     

Literacy, reading, and writing in the medieval West

Over the last quarter century, a plethora of studies on literacy, reading, and writing in medieval Europe have contributed significantly to our understanding of medieval society and culture. Nevertheless the sheer number of these studies and their authorship by scholars in several different disciplines have obscured the relationships between these studies, their common themes and their differences. This essay seeks to survey this literature and its background, to explicate its contributions to the field of medieval history, and to suggest avenues for future study. It also reveals how approaches developed outside medieval studies were borrowed and adapted by medievalists, and how the study of literacy, reading, and writing in the Middle Ages has, in turn, influenced the work of ancient and modern historians.     

Missionaries and the Māori Language in Nineteenth‐Century New Zealand: A Mixed Inheritance

The historiography dealing with New Zealand's colonial period (1814 – c.1900) underwent a substantial revision during the second half of the twentieth century. In particular, the role and activities of the missionaries in the country during the colonial era was subject renewed scrutiny, which served as a much‐needed antidote to the largely uncritical depiction of these proselytisers in earlier histories. However, this revisionism sometimes took a reductionist approach to the work of the missionaries, and in the process, overlooked some of their accomplishments in a colonial environment that was at best unsympathetic and often hostile towards the Māori culture and language. Since then, a more nuanced and considered historiography has emerged – one which also incorporates the histories of imperial missionary activity in the realms of literacy and indigenous languages in other parts of the world into New Zealand's experience. This work examines the seminal role that Protestant missionaries and their parent churches played in the colonial era in converting Māori into a written language, in spreading the use of literacy within Māori society, with consideration given to the role of Māori agency in this process, and the challenges in policy and practice that the Protestant missionaries had in this period.     

Gladstone Studies

Charting recent ‘turns’ in history, towards empathy and ethics, this paper proposes reading Mayhew as a writer. The entry point proposed is Mayhew's What to Teach and How to Teach It: So that the Child may become a Wise and Good Man (1842), a book that charts Mayhew's theories of literacy and language, and of voice and writing.     

HISTORY,AFRICA, AND DEFAMILIARIZATION: A COMMENT

After initially identifying defamiliarization as a central aspect of Nancy Rose Hunt's essay “History as Form,” this comment reflects on the implications that her reading of Georg Simmel and her emphasis on objects and materiality have for the writing of history. If Hunt suggests, with Simmel, that the form of history is autonomous from history as it unfolds, the claim here is rather that there is no necessary relationship between writing and its topic. Considering how earlier European historiography excluded Africa (in particular) from the domain of history, it is no coincidence that this contingent relation between form and history has been particularly energizing for Africanist historiography—leading to innovations both in practice and theory. The comment concludes by briefly discussing three concepts that have informed such innovation: the vernacular, suturing, and multiple temporalities.     

新发现的王鹏运早年词稿《四印斋词卷》

国家图书馆所藏《四印斋词卷》为清季词坛领袖王鹏运的早年词稿;该书保存了大量王氏早年词作,但从未进入过研究者视野。据查,该书共录词一百二十九首,其中六十余首未见于王鹏运已刊词集,且有三十六首仅见于此。通过《四印斋词卷》可以更清楚地了解王鹏运的早年学词道路和交游情况;据该书自序可知,王氏词有七稿九集,独缺甲稿,只是因故没有选出而已。     

Martin Amis,neo-Orientalism,and hubris

This article puts forward a reading of Martin Amis’s 2008 book The Second Plane with an emphasis on its cultural politics. It reconsiders Amis’s book from a distance of almost a decade in light of recent global developments, including the rise of ISIS in the Middle East, the resurgence of acute Islamophobia in Europe and the US, and Tony Blair’s public acknowledgement of the shortcomings of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. With these factors in mind, the essay argues that it is possible to detect in Amis’s book early warning signs of how the West’s relationship with both Islamism and Islam would develop in the period following its publication. Drawing on William Connolly’s work on tragedy and Edward Said’s work on Orientalism, the essay argues that The Second Plane ought to be read as advancing a hubristic ‘neo-Orientalist’ cultural and political agenda which today threatens to lock much of the world into an ongoing cycle of recrimination and revenge. Against this, a case is made for an appreciation of the complex circumstances which give rise to suicide terrorism and for a sense of history largely absent from Amis’s writing on the subject.     

日本学界的《文明论概略》解读

福泽谕吉的《文明论概略》成书于明治八年（1875）,该书言简意赅,极具包容性和思想张力,被视为了解日本近代文化必读的经典。日本学界百余年间见仁见智的评价、研究历史已经形成了一个复杂的知识谱系。综述学界的百年阅读史,探寻争论焦点背后潜藏的种种隐喻,可为我国学界的相关研究提供重要的学术参考。     

LEVINAS,HISTORY, AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

In this book Anton Froeyman has provided us with a colorful and intriguing account of a Levinasian approach to historical inquiry and historical writing. In my discussion of his book I describe central features of his account and notice how he uses, to develop his view, recent developments in historiography—including the work of figures like Natalie Davis and Carlo Ginzburg, in philosophical thinking about history and historiography, and in various postmodern developments. I sketch central features of Levinas's ethical metaphysics and show that Froeyman's focus on Levinas's interest in our relations with other persons and in particular with their relative differences from us is too narrow. A proper understanding of our infinite responsibility to and for all others, as Levinas portrays it, leads to a broader account than the one Froeyman gives and one that enables us to understand with greater clarity how historiography fits into the Levinasian understanding of our temporal and interpersonal relations with others.     

The missionary position: NGOs and development in Africa

This article traces the evolution of development non–governmental organizations (NGOs) in Africa, and suggests that their role represents a continuation of the work of their precursors, the missionaries and voluntary organizations that cooperated in Europe's colonization and control of Africa. The authors maintain that the work of the NGOs today contributes marginally to the relief of poverty in Africa, and significantly undermines the struggle of the African people to emancipate themselves from economic, social and political oppression. Development NGOs have, unwittingly or otherwise, become a part of the neo–liberal system that has resulted in widespread impoverishment and the loss of the authority of African states to determine their own agenda. NGOs could, and some do, play a role in supporting an emancipatory agenda in Africa, but it involves breaking with the 'missionary position' by disengaging from their paternalistic role in development.     

Beyond Cultural Imperialism: Cultural Theory, Christian Missions, and Global Modernity

"Cultural imperialism" has been an influential concept in the representation of the modern Christian missionary movement. This essay calls its usefulness into question and draws on recent work on the cultural dynamics of globalization to propose alternative ways of looking at the role of missions in modern history. The first section of the essay surveys the ways in which the term "cultural imperialism" has been employed in different disciplines, and some of the criticisms made of the term within those disciplines. The second section discusses the application of the cultural imperialism framework to the missionary enterprise, and the related term "colonization of consciousness" used by Jean and John Comaroff in their influential work on British missionaries and the Tswana of southern Africa. The third section looks at the historiography of missions in modern China, showing how deeply the teleological narratives of nationalism and development have marked that historiography. The concluding section argues that the missionary movement must be seen as one element in a globalizing modernity that has altered Western societies as well as non–Western ones in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and that a comparative global approach to the missionary movement can help to illuminate the process of modern cultural globalization.     

西方人眼里的徐继畬及其著作

在<瀛环志略>面世的19世纪中叶,徐继畬其人及其著作,成为西方人观察中国的风向标.美国传教士弼莱门和卫三畏先后发表长篇书评,对此书的价值及其刊行的意义作了充分肯定,与郭士立对<海国图志>的批评形成鲜明对照.徐继畬为了写作<瀛环志略>,利用一切机会向西人探询域外文明.同时,这部杰出的著作及其作者,也成为西方人探求中国文化的渠道.西人对徐继畬及其著作的评价,与徐继畬在对外交涉中坚持理性原则、对传教士采取宽容态度相关.     

《魏书》校勘札记

《魏书》,北齐魏收撰,全书一百三十卷,分本纪十二卷,列传九十八卷,志二十卷,记载了公元四世纪末至六世纪中叶北魏王朝兴亡史。《魏书》是现存叙述北魏历史最原始和最完备的资料,对研究鲜卑拓跋部的历史也有重大价值。《魏书》的整理研究,主要经历了北宋、明、清、近代等阶段,中华书局1974年出版的点校本《魏书》,集《魏书》研究之大成,是目前最好的本子。但有些地方仍可进一步商榷。本文以标点本《魏书》为基础,比勘了有关版本并参考其它典籍,撰成校勘札记若干条,冀为《魏书》之整理研究,贡其一得之愚。     

Land,Labour and Ambivalence: Lutheran Missionaries Managing Land Disputes at Cape Bedford Mission

This article provides a close reading of a land dispute between Lutheran missionaries at Cape Bedford mission during the 1920s and 1930s in order to extrapolate understandings of missionary ambivalence, power, and privilege within colonial processes of dispossession. The main contention is that missionaries felt compelled to promote Aboriginal engagement in agricultural labour in order to ensure that they could visibly demonstrate the land's productivity, and then maintain access to it. It also contributes to understandings about missionary power and privilege within the colonial context and how at times the authority of missionaries was undermined by bureaucracy. It points to the discrepancies between settler and humanitarian discourses around Indigenous land use in Queensland's north during this period, and the relationships between missions and the state.     

一本不该被忽视的史著——《马阁老洗冤录》

近人姚大荣所著《马阁老洗冤录》一书,旨在为马士英翻案。囿于成见,学界长期以来忽视其存在,乃至视而不见。笔者仔细研读全书,认为此书亦不乏值得今人学习和借鉴之处。但是它最大的不足就是臆断过多。本文主要介绍该书的内容,讨论其史学价值,以期引起有关治史者的相应注意;同时对书中的一些重要观点予以评析,希望能借此对马士英这一历史人物做出更全面更客观的认识和评价,并推进相关的研究。     

Said,Auerbach, and the Return to Philological Hermeneutics

ABSTRACT

This essay explores the relationship between Edward Said’s well-known contrapuntal reading of history and Erich Auerbach’s Ansatzpunkt, or point of departure, as a means of entering a given hermeneutic circle. Although Auerbach occupied an increasingly prominent place in Said’s critical thought, his engagement with the work of the German philologist has been largely ignored or downplayed. In this essay I take the figure of exile, which is so central to Said’s scholarship and which he explicitly links with the intellectual mission of critique, as a point of departure for a deepened exploration of Said’s critical method—a method developed in critical dialogue with Auerbach’s work. Building on the existing literature, I argue that Auerbach offers more than simply a way for Said to problematize identity politics and to challenge the dogmatism of received notions of home and political belonging. More than this, I argue that the German philologist provides Said with a way to reconfigure the dialectic between history and literature; to develop his contrapuntal approach to reading history; and to rethink the parameters of a historicist humanism that, in turn, enables him to reactivate the critical potential of philological hermeneutics.     

《唐会要》成书考略

《唐会要》是现存最早的会要体史书,是研究唐史,特别是研究玄宗天宝以后历史的重要典籍。但目前对该书全面、深入的研究仍未展开,其成书过程、流传情况至今尚不明晰。本对《唐会要》编纂流传过程中的一些模糊问题作了一些新的探索,通过对以王应麟的《玉海》为主的几部引用《唐会要》较多的类书进行的细致考察,从中梳理出一些《唐会要》与《会要》、《续会要》之间的关系,从一个侧面论述了王溥对前后《会要》的整理工作。     

Reading versus Seeing? Winckelmann's Excerpting Practice and the Genealogy of Art History

From his arrival in Italy in 1755, Winckelmann's work is infused throughout by a fundamental antinomy: reading versus seeing. This antinomy possesses for him a decidedly epistemological significance: it allows him to present himself as the father of a discipline deserving of its name, i.e., the history of art. In Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764), he claims to break with a long tradition of art discourse which had been primarily supported by ancient texts, basing his book instead on the direct observation of the artworks. The aim of this paper is to critically examine this antinomy. How does seeing relate to reading in his working method? What relationship does art history, in the empirical dimension Winckelmann wanted to give it, have to book knowledge? Winckelmann's excerpts collection provides valuable answers to these questions. Following an old scholarly tradition, Winckelmann used to write down passages of his readings, constituting a vast handwritten library of excerpts which never left him. The result of this intense excerpting practice consists in some 7,500 pages, which allow to better define the share of empirical observation and book-based knowledge in his approach to ancient art.     

Theology,Idolatry and Science: John Williams’ Missionary Ethnography and Natural History of the South Pacific

This article contributes to the recent scholarly efforts toward a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between Protestant missionaries and the practice of natural history and ethnography in the early nineteenth century. Exploring John Williams’ work in the South Pacific, I argue that not only was Williams practicing science in the form of ethnography and natural history, but that his theology was, in fact, central to his scientific work. Through a careful exploration of Williams’ account of his missionary activities in the South Pacific, I contend that Williams’ conception of idolatry served as an explanatory tool that shaped the practice of his ethnography. In the minds of missionaries like Williams, whereas Christianity’s truth was universal, idolatry was the worship of a false god: false because it was just a deification of a particular desire rather than worship of the universal God. This conception of idolatry shaped Williams’ contention, central to his ethnography, that the islanders’ religion was a product of their particular cultural needs. In this way, I argue, Williams used a theological concept to perform explanatory scientific work, contributing to the idea that religion is a product of culture, a notion that became central to nineteenth century studies of religion.