One Hundred Percent Americanism: Material Culture and Nationalism,Then and Now

This article examines the ways that specific interest groups within the American nation use material culture to attempt to define the parameters of a shared national identity. Case studies are drawn from the first decades of the twentieth century (1900–30) and the early years of the 21st century (2000–12). Analysis of landscapes and artifacts excavated from the working-class industrial town of Berwind in southern Colorado show how an early twentieth-century corporation and its immigrant workers used mundane objects to debate, through symbols, the meanings of citizenship and the nation. An analysis of yellow ribbon magnets used and created by supporters of the Iraq War (2003+) in the 21st century will show how material symbols are deployed in an attempt to reinforce a specific, but contested vision of the nation and the nature of her citizenry.     

From Iberia to the Southern Levant: The Movement of Silver Across the Mediterranean in the Early Iron Age

Journal of World Prehistory - The origins of the silver trade across the Mediterranean, and the role of the Phoenicians in this phenomenon, remain contentious. This is partly because of...     

Writing the History of the “Persian Arabs”: The Pre-Islamic Perspective on the “Naṣrids” of al-Ḥīrah

Modern scholarship on Arabs in the pre-Islamic period has focused on Rome's Arab allies—the so-called “Jafnids” or “Ghassānids,” with much less attention paid to Persia's Arab allies, the so-called “Na?rid” or “Lakhmid” dynasty of Arab leaders at al-?īrah in Iraq. This article examines select pre-Islamic sources for the Persian Arabs, showing that even with the meager evidence available to us, and the lack of archaeological material, it is possible to draw a relatively complex portrait of the Persian Arabs. This article situates the Persian Arabs as important figures in some key themes and phenomena of late antiquity, such as the growth of Christian communities, the conflict between Rome and Persia, and the struggle for influence in the Arabian peninsula.     

Fairies,Fractious Women,and the Old Faith: Fairy Lore in Early Modern British Drama and Culture

TABOU ET TOTÉMISME À MADAGASCAR: ÉTUDE DESCRIPTIVE ET THÉORIQUE. Par ARNOLD VAN GENNEP. Paris: E. Leroux, 1904. Reviewed by E. Sidney Hartland.

THE MASAI, THEIR LANGUAGE AND FOLK-LORE. By A. C. HOLLIS, with Introduction by Sir Charles Eliot Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1905, 8vo Pp. xxxii + 364. Price 14s. net. Reviewed by N. W. Thomas.

ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH POPULAR BALLADS. Edited from the Collection of Francis James Child by HELEN CHILD SARGENT and GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE. London: D. Nutt 1905. Reviewed by A. Lang.     

A Corpus of Early Medieval Inscribed Stones and Stone Sculpture in Wales,I & II / Studies on the Book of Deer

The web portal of the Folklore Archive of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain, gives access to three databases: ArxiuFolk, the Database of the Folklore Archive; RondCat, the Catalan Folktale Search Engine; and BiblioFolk, the Bio-bibliographic Repository of Catalan Popular Literature. This article describes how these databases work and the possibilities they offer for researchers.     

Crafted within liminal spaces: Young people's everyday politics

This paper examines how high school-aged young people from New Zealand are crafting their everyday political subjectivities within the liminal status and liminal spaces they occupy in society. With a specific focus on schooling and the citizenship education curricula in New Zealand, three vignettes are introduced which examine young people's less reflexive and ‘everyday’ forms of political action in the interstitial liminal space between Public/private, Formal/informal and Macro/micro politics. These vignettes underline how young people's everyday politics were embedded within spatial and relational processes of socialisation with adults within their schools and communities, yet, also showed both agency and resourcefulness with these spaces. Young people's liminal status and occupation of liminal spaces provided them with unique perspectives on social issues (such as bullying, racism, water conservation, and obesity) and enabled them to respond in ways that were ‘different’ to adults' Politics, yet nonetheless showed their political and tactical selves (de Certeau, 1984). A focus on young people's political practices in liminal spaces allows for new possibilities and understandings of the political.