SAME/DIFFERENCE? TOWARD A SAPPHIC/NONBINARY SEXUALITY OF HISTORY

What is the next step when one has published a strong intervention in a field but later recognizes that one's angle of vision deserves new scrutiny? In this article, which began as a roundtable talk, I return to The Sexuality of History: Modernity and the Sapphic, 1565–1830 (2014) to interrogate its “same-sex” logic through a nonbinary/trans lens. My book argues that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century representations of the sapphic became a flash point for European cultures grappling with questions of power and governance, desire and duty, mobility and difference in an age of colonialism, racial capitalism, revolution, and reaction. In figuring the sapphic exclusively through notions of sameness, however, The Sexuality of History does not do justice to trans and nonbinary figures both historical and fictional. Is there a place among sapphic subjects for these figures, and, if so, with what implications? I argue here for a both/and approach that requires recoding certain figures as nonbinary while still insisting on their efficacy as signs of the sapphic. This recoding encourages a more nuanced exploration of the cultural work performed by sapphic representations and a more expansive conception of what I have called a sapphic episteme. Such revisionist thinking may be useful at a time of social and theoretical tensions at the intersections of “lesbian” and “trans.”     

Sir John Coxe Hippisley: That ‘Busy Man’ in the Cause of Catholic Emancipation

The late 18th and early 19th centuries represent a critical time for the emergence of modernity in western political life. Of particular interest is the confluence at that time of increased religious toleration with political reform. Research for an earlier study, Parliamentary Politics of a County and its Town: General Elections in Suffolk and Ipswich in the Eighteenth Century (Westport, 2002), led to an examination of Sir John Coxe Hippisley, MP (1747–1825). In many ways, his political career is an exemplar of the broader conflicts of contemporary English political life writ small. Set between 1790 and 1818, Hippisley's parliamentary career is fascinating, for while he was an active and precocious supporter of catholic emancipation, he represented Sudbury in Suffolk, a borough with a high proportion of protestant dissenters. His constituents found Hippisley's enthusiasm for catholic emancipation repugnant, but not so much so that they could not be convinced to continue to vote for him if the price was right. Consequently a constant and expensive wooing of his constituents marked his parliamentary career. On a national level, Hippisley's constant and public pursuit of catholic emancipation, coupled with his equally avid quest for preferment, led to a series of quixotic contradictions in his political behaviour. Hippisley and his political adventures thus represent a crucial development stage in the movement for religious freedom in England and the west, as well as providing an illuminating case study on the dynamics of local politics in the time leading up to the first great age of reform.     

ASSIMILATION THROUGH DOMESTIC TRANSFORMATION: SASKATCHEWAN'S MASONIC SCHOLARSHIP PROJECT, 1922–23*

The Masonic Scholarship Project reflected a growing post-World War I commitment to the assimilation of Canada's central and eastern European immigrants. By placing ‘Anglo-Saxon’ teachers in non-English schools, the project sought to extend Canadian influences into Saskatchewan's isolated immigrant blocs. The project's designers had a profound understanding of the way in which social order is embedded in the domestic environment and focused much of their attention on ensuring that the domestic realm was conducive to change. This paper examines the efforts made to transform the woman's role in the home and in the community. These efforts centred on providing the immigrants with an example of ‘suitable’ behaviour and values. The teachers were encouraged to visit all of the homes in their districts, and to use the school for community-focused events such as picnics, sewing circles, and literary societies. The transformation of the domestic realm was viewed as a critical step in immigrant assimilation. Le Projet Bousier Maconnique exprimait un engagement croissant après la Première Guerre Mondiale pour assimiler les immigrants canadiens de L'Europe centrale et de l'est. En mettant les professeurs ‘Anglo-Saxon’ dans des écoles á population non-anglo-saxonne le projet tendait á augmenter l'influence canadienne dans les quartiers isolés de la Saskatchewan. Les animateurs du projet avaient une vaste compréhension de la facon dont l'ordre social était intégré dans la cellule familiale et ils ont concentré leurs efforts afin de s'assurer qu'il conduisait au changement. Ce document s'intéresse aux efforts faits pour transformer le rôle de la femme au foyer et dans la communauté. Ces efforts étaient dirigés afin de donner aux immigrants un exemple ‘convenable’ de conduite et de valeurs. Les professeurs étaient invités á visiter tous les foyers de leur district et á se servir des écoles pour les évènements communautaires tels que les pique-niques, les ateliers de couture et les centres littéraires. La transformation de la cellule familiale était percue comme une étape cruciale á l'assimilation des immigrants.     

THE TSIMSHIAN, THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY, AND THE GEOPOLITICS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST FUR TRADE, 1787–1840

The paper examines the first half-century of the fur trade on the Northwest Coast from the perspective of its First Nations participants. It focuses on the array of initiatives taken by Ligeex, a prominent Tsimshian chief, to insert non-native traders within the geopolitics of the indigenous world. The reconstruction is undertaken by linking Tsimshian oral narratives with Euro-American documentary sources.
ľarticle traite des cinquante premiéres années du commerce des fourrures sur la côte nord-ouest du point de vue des participants membres des Premiéres Nations. II se concentre sur la série ďinitiatives entreprises par Ligeex, un chef tsimshian de premier rang, afin ďincorporer les commerçants allochtones à la géopolitique du monde indigéne. La reconstruction est effectuée en reliant des narrations de la tradition orale tsimshiane à des sources documentaires euro-américaines.     

Reimagined communities: Union veterans and the reconstruction of American nationalism

ABSTRACT. American commemoration of the Union dead and the role this played in the development of post‐war American nationalism is a topic of growing interest. Those who survived, however, are too often left out of the discussion: unsettling reminders of the sectional conflict at the time, the veterans' role in the reconstruction of American nationalism was rather more ambiguous than historians have made it seem. To trace the lineaments of American national identity after the Civil War requires some assessment of the ways in which the veteran was incorporated into or detached from the home front during the war itself and, later, from post‐war society. The evidence suggests that, in contrast to the ambiguity surrounding the veteran, the dead could, in many ways, be more easily accommodated by the new nationalist discourse emerging from the war. Positioning the veteran at the centre of the debate on war and nationalism, indeed, challenges the very concept of an imagined community emerging from or through civil conflict.     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PREHISTORIC IRISH ROCK ART and IRISH PASSAGE TOMB ART

Two major traditions of decoration from the later Neolithic and/or earlier Bronze Age, rock art and passage tomb art, are compared. Both traditions are briefly described, and are compared on the basis of both site and motif characteristics. Their chronological relationship is also discussed, indicating at least a large overlap in time between them. These two show a general affiliation on a number of levels, suggesting a similar degree of relationship between their respective makers. However, they also show important differences, suggesting that they are products of different sets of ritual or symbolic behaviour, or of similarly different groups of people.     

Archaeology,common rights and the origins of Anglo‐Saxon identity

It is generally accepted that rights over land, especially rights of pasture, played a formative role in establishing the identity of early Anglo‐Saxon ‘folk groups’, the predecessors of the middle Anglo‐Saxon kingdoms. This speculative paper sets early medieval and medieval common rights in the context of the archaeological longue durée of the period before 400 ad . It argues that ancient traditions of common governance, integral to Anglo‐Saxon identity, might have offered an attractive legitimacy to middle Anglo‐Saxon kingdom‐builders. While not seeking to establish any answers, the paper hopes to contribute to a wider research agenda.