The Wrong King: Apocalypse and Transformation (or Not) in the White House

Abstract

Jonathan Z. Smith has argued that apocalyptic discourse grew out of a political desire to remove the "wrong" king from the throne. Later, though, the same discourse was used to prevent a "wrong" king from taking the throne. Thus apocalyptic discourse can either motivate or resist transformative change. In US political history it has served both purposes. This article focuses on the trend in presidential discourse, especially in foreign policy, since Franklin D. Roosevelt to use apocalyptic language to resist transformation. The electorate's desire to prevent substantive change was the determining factor in the presidential election of 2008. In Barack Obama's first year in office, though he seemed to promote transformation, his dominant message was a reassuring one: The threat of fundamental change would continue to be contained both at home and around the world. No "wrong" rulers would be allowed to disturb the security of America.     

Crisis,challenge and choice: recent theoretical trends of anti-modernism and Western studies in Chinese history

During the last three decades, so-called “postism” (a Chinese non-professional, invented referent to postcolonialism, postmodernism and poststructuralism) has powerfully criticized and challenged the hegemonic ideology of the long-standing Euro–American centralism and the authoritative discourse of modernism in Western intellectual and academic circles, albeit it with various different resonances in Chinese and other non-Western societies. By tracing the trajectory of Western conceptual ideas from classical “rational” interpretations of history, this article tries to construct the inner connections and evolution between these conceptions and ways of thinking, and to summarize their impacts on and reactions from the field of Chinese historical studies. This article suggests that these new trends have definitely cast light on macro ideological and perspective concerns but have been less fruitful in concrete historical studies.     

Stiffening Abe: William Pitt Fessenden and the Role of the Broker Politician in the Civil War Congress

The difficult but by no means dysfunctional relationship between President Abraham Lincoln and Congress remains an understudied aspect of Civil War history. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at a comprehensive or convincing explanation for Union victory until that relationship is limned more precisely. This article contends that U.S. Senator William Pitt Fessenden (1806–69) played a critical mediating role in the wartime Congress. He did so firstly in his capacities as chair of the Senate finance committee and close associate of U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and secondly as a public supporter of executive war powers. Although the influential Maine Republican had serious doubts about the effectiveness of the Lincoln administration, his determination to quash the southern rebellion and considerable powers of self‐restraint enabled him to act as an important and constructive broker between the White House and the fractious Republicans on Capitol Hill.     

1949—1951年美国如何阻挠和破坏西藏和平解放

1949—1951年间,美国策划达赖喇嘛出走,破坏西藏和平解放。起初,美国反对达赖喇嘛离藏,支持噶厦抵抗人民解放军解放西藏。美国后来认识到不可能阻挡人民解放军的进军,因而要求达赖喇嘛流亡锡兰或泰国,不得已时到美国"避难"。《十七条协议》公布后,美国反对达赖喇嘛返回拉萨,要求达赖喇嘛在靠近西藏的地区流亡或"访问"印度。中华人民共和国中央人民政府采取因地制宜的措施,达赖喇嘛最终返回西藏并通电拥护《十七条协议》。美国的企图必然破灭,西藏的和平解放是历史发展的必然。     

Verbs,Voyeurism, and the Stalker Narrative in Cortázar's "Continuidad de los parques"

Julio Cortázar's "Continuidad de los parques" can be described as a stalker narrative in two different senses. Not only is it a story about a stalker with murderous intentions, it is also a story in which the reader is turned into a stalker.

Modalization in verbs, or the use of the subjunctive and qualifiers, has been discussed by critics such as Tzvetan Todorov as a characteristic of the fantastic in literature. What has not been studied is the alternating use of aspect in the past, here between the verb tenses the preterite and the imperfect, as a technique that aids in the subtle creation of the reader as a stalker. Cortázar uses these two verb tenses to form and shape the narrative, moving it in the desired direction and, in the process, aiding in his creation of the image of the stalker. Both the careful manipulation of the preterite and the imperfect and the careful interplay between the two are the vehicle of invasion, an invasion perpetrated by the stalker, in which the reader is made complicit.     

Hidden in plain sight: mixed methods and the marble orchards of the Vlach Rom (Gypsies) in Toledo,Ohio

While American Romanies live a remarkably secretive cultural existence, their grave locations and memorial stones offer accessible evidence about their history and active, on-going communities. This article elaborates a less-intrusive ethnographic method that uses Romani cemetery data to explore and map the distributions and social networks of American Romani communities. This case study identifies Vlach Rom memorial sites located in Toledo, Ohio's Calvary Catholic Cemetery. Data were gathered on the memorials and spatially cataloged using a global positioning system (GPS). Additionally, genealogical data on the families were collected whenever available in order to construct and map family networks. Conjectures explaining the spatial distribution were tested by empirically investigating geographic information system (GIS) maps of different gravesite attributes. Land availability was the most likely factor determining the distribution. Evidence of Toledo Rom history and cultural practices were also gathered and reviewed from a qualitative analysis of the memorial stones. These discoveries have the potential to advance Romany studies—by applying modern analytic tools, GPS and GIS hardware and software to reveal otherwise “hidden” knowledge.     

Sign Geography

Signs are significant elements of cultural landscapes throughout the world. Through their form and content, signs reveal a variety of information about places ranging from locational and physical geographic data through social, economic and political characteristics. Signs, which tell of past events, current conditions and future expectations, are landscape notes on the geography of change. Signs are frequently evidence of cultural diffusion and convergence. Many signs give direction to human activity and symbolize societal quest for order. Others reflect tastes, values and attitudes, in concert with prevailing belief systems. Signs are both cultural phenomena and landscape statements that attest to the way of life in a place.     

An American Controversy about the Localization of Cutaneous Sensory Regions and their Relation to Motor Regions

Three American neurologists (C. K. Mills, C. L. Dana, and M. A. Starr) explored the anatomical limits of the motor and tactile systems in the brain from 1884 to 1895. Their papers and critiques of one another show contemporary knowledge, limits of their thinking, and difficulties deciding between alternatives. The issue for them was whether there were separate sensory and motor regions or whether there was a combined sensory-motor region. They based their localization arguments on clinical and laboratory findings and on the conclusions of H. Munk and D. Ferrier. There is a discussion about why differences were unresolved.     

From the ‘spirit of capital’ to the “spirit” of capitalism: The transition in German economic thought between Lujo Brentano and Max Weber

I dedicate this essay to the memory of the late Wolfgang Mommsen—the subject would have been congenial to him. It is one of a series of offshoots from a central project: a scholarly edition of Max Weber's Protestant Ethic with commentary. When I first told Prof. Mommsen of my plan in 1994 he looked me full in the face and gave a characteristic growl: “All that work!” Here was a man who knew what he was about. My thanks to Ross McKibbin and Keith Tribe for reading this paper in draft.

The article begins by examining Max Weber's relations with Lujo Brentano, much the most important “precursor” to Weber in the field of economics. In particular, Brentano conducted a form of parallel inquiry into the rise of ‘the spirit of capital’ in England 35 years before Weber looked for the origins of “spirit” of capitalism there, and the contrast between these two ideas casts much light both on Brentano and on Weber's Protestant Ethic. This personal history leads into a broader history of the transition in German economic thought between the 1860s – the formative decade for Brentano but also the era of Marx's Capital – and that of Weber's generation coming to maturity c.1890. Marx and Weber remain the two great canonical thinkers and original minds; but any authentic historical comparison between Marx and Weber must take in Brentano. The essence of the contrast between the generations is that between Weber's novel conception of an ethical ‘capitalism’, and the materialism and naturalism underpinning Brentano's and Marx's ‘capital’, although Weber and Brentano are alike as liberals, democrats and bourgeois.     

Mapping History: Cartography and the Construction of the San Pedro Valley

The San Pedro Valley of North America’s desert Southwest has been depicted in maps for over four centuries. These images composed by Euro‐American colonialists do not merely portray a topographical reality; they also construct singular notions of place. While place‐making often inspires a rich awareness of self and belonging, it is also a device of power that shapes people’s desires, perceptions and experiences. Employing Geographic Information System (GIS) technology, we explore the hidden messages embedded in maps from the 1500s to 1800s to reveal the social and political ideologies that buttressed the Spanish, Mexican and American empires. These analyses illustrate that Euro‐American maps do not advance in a linear evolution from simple (unknown) to complex (known) in the production of place. Rather they act to legitimize colonial rule through strategies of representation that privilege Euro‐American standpoints and disregard competing claims of entitlement.