Baudelaire's “Teacher”: Joseph de Maistre and Le Spleen de Paris

For a total of twenty years (1856–76), Gustave Flaubert corresponded with a woman whom he would never meet and who had first written to him to express her admiration for his novel, Madame Bovary. These forty-five letters are among the most fascinating and important that he was to write, reflecting on his life, on art and esthetics, and on his determined dedication to the practice of writing. The letters to Marie-Sophie Leroyer de Chantepie occupy a central role in Flaubert's Correspondence, between the long series of letters he wrote to two other women, Louise Colet and George Sand. They are all dominated by the idea of the centrality of art, literature, and the activity of writing, and of the subordinate status of all other experiences and interests.     

The Achill Yawl: vernacular boats in historical context on Achill Island,Ireland

Achill yawls, originally introduced to Ireland as ships' boats aboard Norwegian merchantmen, developed into distinct working vessels along Achill Island's shores during the 19th century. These boats were subsequently modified for recreational racing in the mid‐20th century. Despite changes to their design, they are often nostalgically viewed as traditional symbols of an Achill islander identity, though their popularity may have been prompted by late‐19th‐century British legislation. The authors take an ethnographic approach in interpreting Achill yawls over time, contextualizing their social functions through an exploration of primary historical and photographic archives, extant vessels, and interviews with Achill islanders. © 2010 The Authors     

Annotated Bibliography: Children's Folklore Review

The Fisher King in the Grail. Romances. By W. A. Nitze. (Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, xxiv. 3.) By Alfred Nutt.

Folklore and Folk-Stories of Walks. By Marie Trevelyan. With an Introduction by E. Sidney Hartland. Elliot Stock, 1909. Fcap. 4to, pp. xiv+350. By Charlotte S. Burne.

Native Life in East Africa. The Results of an Ethnological Research Expedition. By Dr. Karl Weule. Trans, by Alice Werner. Sir Isaac Pitman &; Sons, 1909. Ryl. 8vo. pp. xxiv +431. Maps and Ill. By E. Sidney Hartland.

Folklore of the Santal Parganas. Trans, by Cecil Henry Bompas, Indian Civil Service. Nutt, 1909. 8vo, pp. 483. By W. Crooke.

Myths and Legends of the New York State Iroquois. By Harriet Maxwell Converse. Edited and annotated by A. C. Parker. Education Department Bulletin, No. 437. Albany, N.Y., 1908. (New York State Museum Bulletin, 125.) 8vo, pp. 195. By A. C. Haddon.     

Pushing Boundaries in Oral History Based Biographies

The author comments on three preceding articles, two by authorsof oral history–based biographies (Sandy Polishuk's biographyof Julia Ruuttila and Catherine Fosl's biography of Anne Braden)and a third by their editor, Deborah Gershenowitz. The authoracknowledges the constraints imposed on the authors of oralhistory–based biographies, both by the refusal of biographicalsubjects to discuss certain matters and by the necessary honingthat editors undertake. While granting the need for author-subjectand author-editor negotiations and revisions, the author (ofthis commentary) insists on the value of pushing boundariesin oral history–based biographies and finds encouragementin the process of dialog, negotiation, and compromise that improvedthe books under consideration.     

Assessing the distribution of Asian Palaeolithic sites: a predictive model of collagen degradation

Having previously shown that there is a statistically significant relationship between areas of low collagen degradation and the location of archaeological sites in Africa [K.M. Holmes, K.A. Robson Brown, W.P. Oates, M.J. Collins, Assessing the distribution of African Palaeolithic sites: a predictive model of collagen degradation, Journal of Archaeological Science 32 (2005) 157–166], we here test the applicability of the same model on Palaeolithic archaeological remains from Asia.     

Governor Stone: Analysis of an 1877 Two-masted Schooner from the Gulf of Mexico

This article details the historic preservation documentation and construction analysis of the 1877 American 2-masted schooner Governor Stone , a National Historic Landmark. Governor Stone 's construction reflects its intended use as a general freight and oyster schooner, and to a lesser degree its geographic origin along the Gulf of Mexico. While the physical environment of the Gulf Coast necessarily constrained the size of these vessels, 2-masted schooners of the Gulf Coast generally exhibit similarities with their contemporary functional equivalents of other American regions rather than stylistic elements unique to their geography.
© 2004 The Nautical Archaeology Society     

Marriage Migration,Gender Transformations,and Family Values in the ‘Global Ecumene’

The metaphor of the market is a poor explanatory tool for the growth in international web-brokered marriages, between (mainly) men from rich countries and women from poor countries. States play an important role in regulating particular forms of migration including creating the ‘need’ for spousal migrants, as well as permitting their entry. The characterisation of the men who seek spouses through international agencies as powerful agents in the world system has to be mediated through understandings of the ways in which gender identities are not simple binaries that the contemporary global order is reproducing on an expanded scale. The characterisation of the women obscures the manner in which they are acting out of their own aspirations; and when a marriage is contracted, the man and woman enter into a personal relationship that cannot be reduced to a commodity exchange. These marriages involve people in negotiations about new forms of personal attachment involving intimacy, spousal roles and family relations. They are constitutive of the social networks of the ‘global ecumene’, a new kind of known world whose borders are constantly expanding. Gender relations are not constituted simply in the realm of the economic. We cannot assume family relations are merely expressions of dominant economic forms. The space of international web-brokered marriages is one in which women can be seen as active subjects in a transnational space that allows them to act outside, to certain degrees, of kinship-based power.