Mixing/Medicines: Healing Exchanges among Women in Early Colonial New Spain (1530–1650)

Part of a broader project that studies the exchange of medical knowledge across boundaries of language and ethnicity in the colony of New Spain, this article uses records from the Mexican tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition to examine women healers’ participation in the exchange of healing materials and treatments and women’s networks as loci of knowledge and healing exchanges. The article finds that women in early-colonial New Spain (1530–1650) participated in complex multi-ethnic and multi-class networks, sharing healing recipes and remedies, transmitting and hybridising medical traditions and medicines and helping forge a diverse healing culture.     

Sarah and Her Sisters: Letters,Emotions, and Colonial Identities in the Early Modern Atlantic World

This article uses letters by indigenous converts to explore how early modern Moravian missions in the Atlantic imagined themselves as emotional communities. Moravian missions were the most successful Protestant mission enterprise in the Atlantic and established numerous missions across several empires and vastly different indigenous cultures. By comparing the letters from indigenous converts across the Atlantic rim (North America, Caribbean and Greenland) I argue that indigenous people used the medium of the written letter to participate in an imagined emotional community of Moravians while at the same time they negotiated inescapable social and gendered differences in very specific colonial contexts.     

Mud Silk and the Chinese Laundress: From the South China Silk Industry to Mud Silk Suits in Maine

In 1921, bride Toy Len Goon (1892–1993), a peasant from Guangdong (Canton) South China, emigrated to Portland, Maine, USA where she and her husband ran a suburban laundry. She became a respected member of the community and, in 1952, American ‘Mother of the Year’. This article follows her biography by investigating a group of four recently rediscovered tunic and trouser suits preserved from her trousseau. The suits are made of Guangdong mud silk, a two-colour fabric distinguished by its black upper surface and brown underside. Mud silk is a little recognised, studied or collected South-East Asian textile. By examining mud silk and its manufacture within the context of Guangdong’s rise and decline as a major silk producer and exporter, this article contributes a new perspective to the present limited body of research on this regional textile.     

The southern dispersal hypothesis and the South Asian archaeological record: Examination of dispersal routes through GIS analysis

This research advances a model for coastal-based dispersals into South Asia during oxygen isotope stage (OIS) 4. A series of GIS-based analyses are included that assess the potential for expansions into the interior of South Asia, and these results are compared with known archaeological signatures from that time period. The results suggest that modern Homo sapiens could have traversed both the interior and coastlines using a number of routes, and colonized South Asia relatively rapidly. Use of these routes also implies a scenario in which modern H. sapiens, by either increased population growth or competitive ability, may have replaced indigenous South Asian hominin populations.     

Beach body work: Australian women’s experiences

This article examines Australian women’s complex relationship with the beach through a focus on affect and on what bodies do. Interviews with ten participants of diverse backgrounds and of different ages reveal that women understand the beach as a mediated and surveilled space where their bodies are foregrounded. In this environment, there is an intersection of women’s knowledge of the popular constructions of the archetypal Australian beach body, real women’s bodies, and interviewees’ experiences of the beach as a place of shame and pride. As a means of managing this affective landscape participants detail a range of bodily strategies enacted prior to going to the beach and once at the beach. This bodily labour demonstrates that for Australian women the beach is a dynamic and complicated site of both leisure and labour.     

Book Reviews

‘WE GATHER TOGETHER’: FOOD AND FESTIVAL IN AMERICAN LIFE. Edited by THEODORE H. HUMPHREY and LIN T. HUMPHREY. Utah State University Press, 1991. 289pp. $17.95 paper, ISBN 0-87421-155-7. Reviewed by Jennifer Chandler.

SPOKEN IN JEST. Edited by Gillian Bennett. Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, 1992. ISBN 1850752575. 296pp., 3 plates, 22 figures. £25 (cloth). Reviewed by Susan Storrier.

WEDDING CAKES AND CULTURAL HISTORY by SIMON CHARSLEY. Routledge, London, 1992. 162pp. 4 illustrations. ISBN 0-415-02648-2 (hbk); 0-415-02649-0 (pbk). Reviewed by George Monger.

NORSE MYTHS. By R. I. PAGE. London: British Museum Press, 1990. 80pp. £5.95. ISBN 0 7141 2062 6. Reviewed by Carolyne Larrington.

DIE MAUS IM JUMBO-JET: NEUE SAGENHAFTE GESCHICHTEN VON HEUTE. By ROLF WILHELM BREDNICH, Beck'sche Reihe 435. München: Beck, 1991. 143 pp. Reviewed by W. F. H. Nicolaisen.

THE RISE OF MAGIC IN EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE by VALERIE J. FLINT. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991. 452 pp. ISBN 0-19-820093-5. Reviewed by Jacqueline Simpson.

INTERNATIONAL PROVERB SCHOLARSHIP: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY. SUPPLEMENT I (1800–1981). WOLFGANG MIEDER. Garland Publishing Inc., New York and London, 1990. 436 pp. Reviewed by Malcolm Jones.

THE CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF PROVERBS. Ed. JOHN SIMPSON and JENNIFER SPEAKE. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York (2nd ed.), 1992. 316 pp. ISBN 0-19-866177-0. Reviewed by Malcolm Jones.

A DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN PROVERBS. Ed. WOLFGANG MIEDER, S. A. KINGSBURY and K. B. HARDER. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1992. 710 pp. £27.50. ISBN 0-19-505399-0. Reviewed by Malcolm Jones.

ETHNIC MUSIC ON RECORDS. By RICHARD K. SPOTTSWOOD. University of Illinois Press, 1990. Volumes 1-7. Pp. 4,347. Illustrated. ISBN 0-252-01718-8 (set). Reviewed by Gordon Ashman.

DUNBAR THE MAKAR. By PRISCILLA BAWCUTT. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992. 196pp. £50. ISBN 0-19-812963-7. Reviewed by Jacqueline Simpson.

SIGNS FROM THE ANCESTORS by M. JANE YOUNG, 1990. Reviewed by Donald Taylor.

THE NIGHTWAY by JAMES C FARIS, 1990. Reviewed by Donald Taylor.

FORMS OF DEFORMITY. By LYNN HOLDEN. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 131. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991. 370pp. Appendix and bibliography. ISBN 1-85074-327-X. £40. Reviewed by Jennifer Chandler.

CITY, MARRIAGE, TOURNAMENT ARTS OF RULE IN LATE MEDIEVAL SCOTLAND. By LOUISE OLGA FRADENBURG. University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. 390pp, ill. ISBN 0-299-12954-3. Reviewed by Sandra Billington.

GEORGE EWART EVANS. By GARETH WILLIAMS. Writers of Wales Series, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1991. 93pp. £3.50. Reviewed by Trefor M. Owen.