J. Casely Hayford’s Social Imaginary of “Church Universal” in William Waddy Harris the West African Reformer: The Man and His Message (1915)

A close reading of J. Casely Hayford’s tract William Waddy Harris The West African Reformer: The Man and His Message (1915) provides insight into the political considerations accounted for in writing histories of world Christianity during the colonial period. Hayford centres Africa and William Waddé Harris in a social imaginary that critiques Europe as the exclusive centre of religious reform and renewal. I argue that Hayford employs methods of analysis, rhetorical devices, and literary interlocutors that reflect his African positionality within the early colonial period. To this end, I argue that Hayford’s tract reconceives a history of world Christianity that predates the organised study of missions, ecumenics, and world religions. Without dismissing the contributions of these fields to the emergent field of World Christianity, Hayford’s colonial positionality lends him a contrasting and precarious double consciousness with which to the re-imagine a discourse of universal Christianity through and out of West Africa.     

Establishing a ‘Cultural Base’? The Creation of the Fulbright Program in Portugal

This paper deals with the cultural and educational relations between the United States and Portugal during the Cold War. It is built upon the premise that cultural policies and cultural relations between states are a fundamental part of international relations. History of International Relations, therefore, should overcome an analysis based only upon political and diplomatic dimensions to address what can also be referred to as ‘cultural diplomacy’. The Cold War period, because of its historical features, is particularly relevant to the study of processes of cultural diplomacy and some authors even consider it as the ‘golden age’ of cultural diplomacy.¹1. William Glade, ‘Issues in the Genesis and Organization of Cultural Diplomacy: A Brief Critical History’ in The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society (Winter 2010), vol. 39, issue 4, 242. For cultural diplomacy during the Cold War see Jessica Gienow-Hecht, ‘Culture and the Cold War in Europe’ in Leffler, Melvyn & Westad, Odd Arne, The Cambridge History of the Cold War Vol. i, (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 398–419; Akira Iriye, ‘Culture and International History’ in Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson (ed), Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Richard T. Arndt, The First Resort Of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy In The Twentieth Century (Virgínia: Potomac Books, 2005).View all notes     

Blood from the Moon: Gender Ideology and the Rise of Ancient Maya Social Complexity

Archaeological data suggests that there is a direct link between the rise of social complexity and the erosion of women's status. Through a look at the ways in which gendered practices and symbols may shift as men and women (and males and females) negotiate their relationships and interactions within shifting social contexts, this article sets out to explore this linkage between social complexity and gender equality in the ancient Maya region. Building from the notion that ‘gender’ is produced and reproduced through practice and symbol as a culture constitutes and bounds gender roles and expectations by symbolically associating certain activities and materials with each gender as iconic representations and ritual enactments of those normative gender roles then serve to naturalise a gender ideology, this article argues that the rising ancient Maya elite attempted to legitimise increasing social inequalities through the manipulation, ritualisation and abstraction of female symbols of power associated with pregnancy, menstruation and childbirth. This appropriation and contestation of symbols and performances of gender identity can be observed in wide variety of powerful representations and practices within the Maya cosmology such as genital piercing, the 260‐day calendar and the neutering of female sexuality in monumental art.     

Disciplining Subjectivity and Space: Representation, Film and its Material Effects

Although the distinction between representation and reality is increasingly blurred, I argue that representational discourses have material effects in everyday life. By moving “outside the text” I trace the messy terrain between visual discourse and everyday life in Downtown Eastside, Vancouver by examining two questions: (1) how do discursive productions of visual culture articulate, inscribe, and discipline space and subjectivity and (2) how do aboriginal women negotiate the material consequences of those representations? Using discourse and feminist analysis, I analyse how a documentary film, produced by the Vancouver Police Department, constructs spaces and subjectivities of deviance through techniques of realism and the moral gaze of the police officers. I argue that aboriginal women negotiate these deviant representations through their experiences of racism and sexism by police officers. Consequently, aboriginal women are rendered either hyper‐visible or invisible by police officers, marked by their gender, race, and class. Combining an analysis of the documentary film and in‐depth interviews with aboriginal women, I argue that critical geographers must consider the analytical spaces “outside of the text” to explore the material effects of visual representations.