A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words: Building American National Identity Through Art

ABSTRACT

Even though agonistic democratic theory espouses and celebrates competition, it seemingly lacks a coherent ethic for decent winning and losing in everyday political life. This article is an effort to fill this void by suggesting a practice-based, non-perfectionist ethic drawn from sport. Focusing on Xenophon's On Hunting, we argue that sport, properly defined, offers an appropriate experience with ponos (toil, suffering) that teaches citizens perseverance, humility, generosity, empathy, and stewardship. This sporting ethic, we argue, provides a more suitable model for winning and losing in public life than the martial basis of agonistic democratic theory.     

Gender,Politics and Mass Culture

Books reviewed in this article: Margaret Finnegan, Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women Nan Enstad, Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Alison M. Parker, Purifying America: Women, Cultural Reform and Pro‐Censorship Activism, 1873‐1933     

DEEP GENETICS: UNIVERSAL HISTORY AND THE SPECIES

The popularity of books such as Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind suggests that universal history‐writing has a continuous not a broken past. Rather than “returning,” it is perhaps the most enduring genre of all. This review essay explores the deep‐history element of universal histories and the ongoing purchase of the stadial tradition for a new history of the species. Why are deep histories of the species so reliably appealing, and what do they mean in the twenty‐first century? Although the Anthropocene would seem to be the pertinent context for this ongoing historiography, this essay suggests that the new domain of genetic genealogy powerfully individualizes and commercializes deep history for neoliberal times.     

The Smock Frock: The Journey from Fieldwork to the Pages of Vogue

The smock frock was a nineteenth-century utilitarian overall worn by male manual labourers and particularly associated with agricultural work. However, by 1915, the garment had appeared on the front cover of American Vogue as an item of female clothing. This article will investigate how this transition happened and the factors that enabled a garment that was a stigmatised marker of social class to bridge the gap between high fashion and workwear, also menswear and womenswear, and thus enter the fashionable discourse. The article will trace why these changes happened, discussing the relationship with the aesthetic and rational dress movements, and, in particular, the importance of the actress Ellen Terry and her daughter Edith Craig, in the transformation of the garment. It will also consider how the gendered interpretation of a garment might alter over the course of time, and the influence that this had on its function.     

Book reviews—Comptes rendus

State‐building—Formation de l'Etat

P. LE ROUX, Romains d'Espagne. Cités et politique dans les provinces, Paris, Armand Colin, 1995,182 p., cartes, chronologies, glossaire, bibliographie, index.

Janice E. THOMSON, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns. State‐building and extraterritorial violence in early modern Europe, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994, xiii + 219 p., ISBN 0691086583.

Isser WOLOCH, The New Regime. Transformations of the French civic order, 1789–1820s, New York & London, W.W. Norton, 1994, 536 p. ISBN 0–393–03591–3.

Marie‐Anne MATARD‐BONUCCI, Histoire de la mafia, Bruxelles, Editions Complexe, 1994, 317 p. ISBN 2–87027–505–6.

Religious history—Histoire religieuse

C. Stephen JAEGER, The Envy of Angels: cathedral schools and social ideals in medieval Europe, 950–1200, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994, xvi + 515 p., ISBN 0–8122–3246–1.

Bodo NISCHAN, Prince, People and Confession. The Second Reformation in Brandenburg, Philadephia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994, 366 p., 21 black & white illustrations, ISBN 0–8122–3242–9.

Marriage and power—Manage et pouvoir

Martin AURELL, Les Noces du Comte. Mariage et pouvoir en Catalogne (785–1213), Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 1995, 623 p.

Carole LEVIN, The Heart and Stomach of a King. Elizabeth I and the politics of sex and power, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994, ISBN 0–8122–1533–8.

William G. WAGNER, Marriage, Property and Law in Late Imperial Russia, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994, xiv + 413 p., ISBN 0198204477.

Northern Europe—Europe du Nord

T. KJAERGAARD, The Danish Revolution, 1500‐I800. An ecohistorical interpretation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, xii + 314 p., ISBN 0521442672.

David KIRBY, The Baltic World 1772–1993: Europe's northern periphery in an age of change, London & New York, Longman, 1995, viii + 472 p., 4 maps, ISBN 0–582–00408‐X (hardback), 0–582–00409–8 (paperback).

Contemporary political history—Histoire politique de l'époque contemporaine

François DUCHENE, Jeen Monnet: the first statesman of interdependence, New York & London, W.W. Norton & Co., 1994, 478 p., ISBN 0393034976, 0393314901.

Romain YAKEMTCHOUK, L'adhésion de la Belgique à l'ONU 1944–1945. La contribution belge à la rédaction de la Charte de San Francisco, Bruxelles, Institut Royal des Relations Internationales, 1995, 207 p.

Kenneth MAXWELL, The Making of Portuguese Democracy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, 250 p., ISBN 0–521–46077–8.

Methodology—Méthodologie

Jean BOUTIER et Dominique JULIA (sous la dir. de), Passés recomposés. Champs et chantiers de l'histoire, Autrement, Série Mutations, no. 150–151, 349 p.     

Bedside manner and the invisible patient: The silence surrounding women's gynaecological health in Niger (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Women with gynaecological and obstetrical disorders in Niger such as obstetric fistula, often negotiate the clinical experience for years or even decades without ever receiving a diagnosis. The withholding of information is common practice among clinicians, who due to the lack of time, the lack of follow‐up, or ethical considerations that discourage delivering patients ‘bad news’, frequently do not explain women's conditions or options for treatments. Instead, women interfacing with the clinic are often told only one thing: be patient. This call for patience strips women, and their families, of the agency to participate in treatment decisions and the decision as to when, or if, to abandon the search for care.     

The estimation of size in sardines (Sardina pilchardus) from amphorae in a wreck at Randello,Sicily

Large quantities of sardine (Sardina pilchardus) bones from amphorae in a wreck at Randello, Sicily, were examined. Methods of estimation of size of the fish represented using the lower jaw bone (dentary) and the gill cover (operculum) by comparison with those of modern fish are given. Both methods give comparable results; from dentaries 108–171 mm and from opercular bones 116–176 mm total length.     

The impact of royal government in the French Ardennes: the evidence of the 1247 enquête

Louis IX's enquête of 1247 was designed to investigate the misdeeds of loyal royal officials, and the reports of the cases investigated by the enquêteurs reveal the impact of royal government at the village level. The complaints heard in the upland Ardennes voice the protests of a remote region as it found itself increasingly subject to royal control. The local agents of the crown, usually outsiders, were characterised by an arbitrariness of procedure and a disregard for local feeling and custom which suggests that, in this area, royal justice was seen as a violent intruder as much as a preserver of order.