Mapping coexistence in Italy: Reshaping the cartographic feelings of the plural nation

Rarely considered from the perspective of ordinary citizens as opposed to institutional actors, national maps have been primarily deconstructed as abstract tools of power that express nationalist agendas. This paper offers an alternative examination of the map as a performative tool of national pluralism. In tune with the most recent conceptualizations of everyday forms of nationhood, I explore multiple creative auto-cartographies of Italy as experiential images for investigating the coexistence of several senses of nationhood and cultural diversity. To this end, I combine an inductive visual content analysis of nearly three hundred remappings of Italy, uploaded online by readers of a popular national newspaper, La Repubblica, with a visual semiotic reading of six samples. Here, the playful idea of remapping the nation becomes a catalyst to produce or resist a sense of belonging to the nation, while eliciting a wider spectrum of feelings with regard to internal and external perceived meaningful others. This paper concludes that the different ways in which ordinary people map the nation have to be taken seriously, as they show evidence that these readers absorb and decode, but also resist or challenge, different mainstream discourses regarding the idea of nationality, coexistence, and cultural diversity.     

已佚1590年单幅中国大地图研究

透过法国制图家桑松1656年绘制的中国地图,揭示已佚的由耶稣会士罗明坚与意大利制图家内罗尼合作的1590年单幅中国大地图面貌,指出此图主体部分是由罗明坚依据《大明一统文武诸司衙门官制》所载中文舆图摹绘的抄摹型分省图稿拼合而成的,拼合主要基于对分省图稿省际河道比较随意的连接,造成水系、诸省轮廓及方位等重大错误。部分图示还借鉴1584年刻印的巴尔布达"中国新图"。此图是已知最早的单幅西文中国详图,虽有缺陷,但对中国地理面貌的展现较此前西文地图有所推进。     

违约的精神损害赔偿

我国立法和司法实践长期拒绝违约责任中的精神损害赔偿,理论上固守于违约行为和侵权行为的立法界限,司法上用责任竞合理论解决此类纠纷。然而以侵权之诉追究违约行为人不利于受害人的保护,应当赋予受害人可以提起违约的精神损害赔偿。     

Introduction: Roundtable on John Tallis’s London Street Views (1838–1840)

John Tallis’s London Street Views (1838–1840) offers a striking and a distinctive account of the early Victorian metropolis. This introduction outlines its significance and contextualizes the essays included in this roundtable.     

Japan in Early Modern Scholarly Journals, 1665–1750

This article aims at exploring Japan and its cultural and symbolic representation in the Republic of Letters from the end of the seventeenth century until the mid-eighteenth century. In order to do this, the article focuses on early modern scholarly journals, as they were the most comprehensive and up-to-date instruments of communication for the international community of scholars during that time. By analysing the journals’ content we will see which topics were more commonly connected to Japan and understand the role Japan played in the development of the increasingly comprehensive and methodical knowledge of the early modern savants. This article provides a picture of the heuristic and rhetorical role of Japan in the shaping of new, expanded representations of the world. On the one hand, connections between the cultural representations of Japan and other extra-European lands are highlighted; on the other hand, Japan's peculiar and unique features within the cultural and scientific discourses of the Republic of Letters are examined. Finally, how the representations of Japan relate to the divisions and identities within the Republic of Letters itself is considered.     

Constant Desjardins,Peripatetic Cartographer

ABSTRACT

The French-born, nineteenth-century commercial cartographer, Constant Desjardins (1787?1876) remains a rather obscure figure, despite a productive career of more than four decades and his creation of a precociously designed atlas of Europe. Desjardins was a typical mapmaker of his age in his interest in thematic mapping, his use of the new technology of lithography, and his publication of materials primarily for the growing educational systems of Europe. Yet he was unusual in the increasingly nationalistic era of nineteenth-century Europe in that he produced multilingual as well as monolingual maps. He also crossed many state borders, working in France, Bavaria, Austria, Hungary and Serbia. Indeed, this cosmopolitanism may explain his relative obscurity.     

Mapping a New Kind of European Boundary: The Language Border between Modern France and Germany

ABSTRACT

During the nineteenth century, Europeans became fascinated with the idea of locating and mapping the borders between their languages. The barrier of language offered a new way of seeing, dividing and organizing European land according to cultural differences. The cartographic techniques that Europeans invented to map their language borders involved a combination of linguistic surveys, on-site observations and collaboration with locals. Once printed, language maps found a broad public audience and helped to structure debates over cultural identity in European borderlands. This article explores the nationalist and regionalist motivations behind linguistic map making along the French-German border, one of the most disputed in modern European history.