Bringing gender and spatial theory to life at a German technical university

This article focuses on the use of a university sculpture garden, the renaming of streets, and advice about the use of public space in order to teach the intersection of gender theory with spatial theory. This article outlines methods for teaching gender and spatial theory to international and multidisciplinary bachelor’s and master’s students in English at a German technical university. Most of the students had not learned gender or spatial theory prior to the course. A review of the course syllabus is included, and interactive teaching methods are outlined for the writings of three scholars: Elizabeth Grosz, Henri Lefebvre, and Dolores Hayden. Three intertwined aspects of campus life: its student life, its architecture, and its outdoor sculpture are brought into conversation with those theorists. Students learn the history of their campus buildings, outdoor spaces and artwork, along with how university spaces, place naming, and storytelling all affect their educational and individual experiences. By interacting with and analyzing examples of campus architecture, urban space, and outdoor sculpture, students discover how spatial and gender theories function in everyday life. However, students were more convinced that living gendered interactions affected everyday life, and less convinced that static gender representations such as the sculpture garden or street naming impacted gender ideas and perceptions.     

The occluded role of royal women and lost works of pre-Norman English and Irish art (tenth to twelfth centuries)

ABSTRACT

Medieval women's involvement with artworks and building campaigns can sometimes be hidden, particularly when, as with architectural patronage, that involvement is familial and multi-generational; it is also likely to be routinely underestimated by scholars in the absence of the artworks themselves. This paper discusses various interactions between royal women, art and architecture from the turn of the tenth century to the arrival of the Normans in England and the Anglo-Normans in Ireland. Moving to portable objects, the analysis of two lost artworks – Edith of Wilton's alb, described by Goscelin, and Derbforgaill of Mide's chalice given to Mellifont – suggests that historical sources can be more revealing of iconography and meaning than is often assumed. Finally, a brief examination of the Ælfflæd/Frithestan/Cuthbert embroideries shows that these fit the same paradigms as the lost works, and that they may offer some further insight into Ælfflæd's status and fate.     

Tracking local dwelling changes in the Chittagong Hills: perspectives on vernacular architecture

Historically, geographers, anthropologists and colonial British administrators (1860–1947) frequently mentioned two ethno-geographical categories – khoungtha and toungtha – when referring to the tribal groups in the Chittagong Hills of Bangladesh. Some of these early works considered the livelihood patterns of these groups and the nature of their social and economic interactions. However, a discussion of the changes to their vernacular built environment has escaped any serious investigation. Using empirical findings, this article examines the changes to architectural practices of lowland and highland groups in the socially and ethnically complex region of the Chittagong Hills. Narrowing the discussion to the toungtha Mru ethnic group, this article also examines religious patterns, building techniques and spatial changes in a remotely placed, relatively inaccessible part of the hills where the built environment is still a strong cultural priority.     

On the Early Religious Houses of Somersetshire

The paper offers a reassessment of the patrons involved in the construction of Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand in Poitiers during the 11th century. Three stages are identified. The first, to which Queen Emma of England may have contributed, fell perhaps in the 1020s. The second is that associated with Countess Agnes of Poitou-Aquitaine around 1049. The third followed on and saw the involvement around the 1070s and 1080s of the layman Gautier, a cordwainer by trade, as administrator of the work. The respective roles of the dukes of Aquitaine and the treasurers of Saint-Hilaire are also examined.     

The Fordwich Stone and its Legend

Abstract

The ubiquitous use of the Latin word ‘sedilia’ to refer to the ritual seats to the south of an altar for the use of the celebrant priest and his assistants has led to the notion that it is an authentic medieval term. This paper shows the results of a survey of documentary references to seats of all kinds in medieval England, and demonstrates that in the medieval period the word sedilia was of no especial distinction, meaning merely ‘bench’, only gaining its current meaning in the late 18th century. The word was used along with a variety of others to refer to now lost seating in medieval churches, including benches and individual chairs in the chancel as well as seating in the nave. This piece will make some suggestions for the distinctions made in the terminology in medieval documents regarding the different types of seating in churches. To avoid confusion, the word ‘sedilia’ is italicised when it refers to medieval use of the Latin word, but not when it refers to the modern definition.     

“Ill‐natured comparisons”: Racism and relativism in European representations of ni‐Vanuata from Cook's second voyage

Landes’ anthropological theorizing, highlighting the connections between race, gender, sexuality and class, expressed an Eastern European Jewish female praxis well-established by the late 1920s and early ‘30s when Landes began her research career. Landes’ changing Jewish identification through her life resulted from gendered aging and the reformulation of Jewish racialization processes in the U.S. Her late life reflections are evidence of what Susan Watkins calls ‘gendered late-style’ as well as Jewish conceptions of time as anti-linear and counter-normative. I investigate how her Jewish socialist Yiddish-speaking family background inflected her interpersonal and professional networks and her writings on anti-racist, class and gender-based themes.

Abbreviations: RLP: Ruth Landes Papers; NAA: National Anthropological Archives; SI: Smithsonian Institution; RBP: Ruth Benedict Papers; ASC: Archives and Special Collections Library; VCL: Vassar College Libraries     

北京近代建筑砖石墙体的病害分析

为了尽量减少在修复工作时对历史建筑造成不可预估的破坏,修复前对建筑的病害分析是必不可少的。本文以北京近代建筑砖石墙面为研究对象,针对近代建筑的砖石墙面病害进行了调查研究,结合每类建筑病害特征,对其病害成因进行了简要分析,即病害分析。研究砖石墙面的病害成因,对寻求适宜的砌体病害保护修复方法有着重要的意义。     

Doing Building Work: Methods at the Interface of Geography and Architecture

This paper summarises the methodological approach taken in an interdisciplinary project involving geographers and architects. The project charted the diverse afterlives of the modernist‐inspired, state‐sponsored, residential high‐rise, and did so drawing on two cases: Red Road Estate in Glasgow and Bukit Ho Swee Estate in Singapore. In offering a specific account of, and reflection upon, the methodologies used in the High‐rise Project, we hope to advance the methodological repertoire of human geography generally and contribute further to the new wave of scholarship on geography and architecture.     

The Listers of Gisburn: The Fashioning of A Gentry Family In The Early Eighteenth Century

The Lister family of Gisburn, created Lords Ribblesdale in 1797, is an example of a family with yeoman or minor gentry status in the sixteenth century who, by the persistent purchase of land and a number of fortunate marriages, established themselves amongst the county gentry in the eighteenth century. They also acquired a share in the pocket borough of Clitheroe and served in the House of Commons continuously from 1718 to 1780. The paper describes the ways in which successive Listers fashioned the image of the family through their education, engagement in politics (where they were at the least Tories and possibly Jacobites), by their erection of a new house (Gisburne Park) in the decade after 1727 and the creation of a parkland landscape to surround it. This is explored through the surviving documentary materials (which are not exhaustive, but include reflections by Thomas Lister (d. 1745) on his political creed), by the house and landscape of the park and an abortive scheme for the park, but above all through the art they commissioned and the representations of landscape that it contains. Pictures attributed to Robert Griffier, Peter Tillemans and Arthur Devis, all formerly at Gisburne Park, and an engraving by François Vivares of Malham Cove, are discussed.