Imagining Britain: reconstructing history and writing national identity in Englands Heroicall Epistles

ABSTRACT

The idea that in the Tudor era the English people became proudly conscious of their national language and history, has been challenged by critical interventions that suggest how England as a nation had to be “written”: the act of writing can construct imagined boundaries, both to appropriate and exclude. In Englands Heroicall Epistles, Drayton replaces Ovid’s mythological figures in the Heroides with specific well-known English historical personas who provide, through their letters, different perspectives on English history. I will contend that Drayton’s assertion of national identity and patriotism is done verbally and semantically, while his allegiance to oppositionist politics is rendered generically and subversively by a remarkable manipulation of the genre of historical poetry in the Heroicall Epistles: this in turn reflects his deep engagement with ideas of history and the construction of national consciousness in early modern England.     

An Archaeological Study of a Streetcar Suburb: The East Main Streetcar Barns and Hayward-Hobbie Subdivisions,City of Rochester,New York

ABSTRACT

In order to appreciate the social dimensions of the industrial past, any research examining how working people both laboured and lived must recognise that sites of production and distribution may share a close relationship with the household, a relationship that will influence consumption and settlement patterns. Using artefactual and documentary evidence, this paper examines the initiation and growth of the Beechwood neighbourhood, a former streetcar suburb, located in the eastern section of the City of Rochester in western New York State. Streetcar suburbs in cities throughout the United States have received attention from geographers and urban historians for some time. This paper builds on previous studies by considering how transportation infrastructure — here, a maintenance facility and railyard for repairing inter-urban and intra-urban trolley cars — influenced the demographic and material patterns in one section of the neighbourhood in the first decades of the 20th century.     

Decentring international and institutional famine relief in late nineteenth-century China: in search of the local

This article uses rural gazetteer biographies to examine village and household-level famine relief during the great North China Famine of 1876–9 to deepen our understanding of past relief methods and dynamics at the most local level. Despite the appearance of major works recently on famine in modern China, particularly on the Great Leap Forward, knowledge of Chinese famine relief remains thin and scattered considering the enormity of the subject. Nineteenth-century China saw intensifying international relief activity as well as the emergence of a vibrant charity-relief sector based in China's major cities, leading to the rise of prominent relief institutions in the twentieth century, such as the Chinese Red Cross. But the increasingly intense disasters of China's modern period also saw a surprising persistence of local humanitarian traditions still barely covered by historians.     

The emergence of agropastoralism: Accelerated ecocultural change on the Andean altiplano, ∼3540–3120 cal BP

In the fourth millennium BP, there were major environmental and cultural changes on the Andean altiplano of South America, but the chronology remains vague. A recent synthesis describes a slow, gradual transition from hunting and gathering to agropastoralism. This proposal is tested by refining the date of the onset of more humid and stable conditions, around 3550 cal BP, based on a Bayesian model of 26 dates from Lake Wiñaymarka and an updated calculation of the lacustrine offset. This is compared to Bayesian models of 191 dates from 20 archaeological sites, which incorporate a number of recently processed radiocarbon dates. A synthesis is presented of 15 full coverage surveys, a summed probability distribution, and a Bayesian model of the transition to ceramics, which together support a scenario of a very rapid demographic increase. Fourteen models from archaeological sites are cross-referenced in a composite model, which identifies a brief, altiplano-wide emergence of agropastoralism with starting and ending boundaries of 3540 and 3120 cal BP, respectively. This starting boundary correlates strongly with the onset of improving environmental conditions, indicating synchronous cultural and environmental change. The suite of accelerating cultural changes included a marked reduction in mobility, a demographic surge, increased subsistence diversity, the adoption of ceramics, farming and the integration of camelid herding into a remarkably resilient economic strategy still in use today. This is a highly relevant but yet to be used comparative case study for the variable tempos of ‘big histories’, and ecocultural interactions that generate rapid, emergent episodes of wide-spread and enduring cultural change.     

New Architectural Models and Building Tradition: A Dialogue in Early Modern Sardinia – The Jesuit Church in Sassari

Architecture in early modern Sardinia is characterized by a strong continuity with previous practices. In the second half of the 16th century, new models join the Gothic building tradition, linked in particular to trends in military engineering and Classicism of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The Jesuit church in Sassari offers an interesting example of the intertwining of these architectural modes, which originated with a sudden change of leadership at the site. Giovan Maria Bernardoni, an Italian Jesuit architect, initially modeled the church after the Gesù in Rome, and it was partially built under his direction. After his departure from Sardinia, local master builders finished the construction, following the Gothic tradition and possibly some external influences. This article analyzes the church, particularly focusing on the challenges presented by its articulated vaulting system completed between 1587 and 1609.     

论安徽东至周馥家族对我国近代社会发展的贡献

安徽东至周馥家族自19世纪60年代以来,为我国社会发展做出了积极的贡献。主要有:参与制订了多项有利于我国社会发展的政策,并努力付诸实施;创办或参与创办了一系列近代工商企业;开创或参与开创了我国近代教育事业;丰富和发展了我国的科学文化事业;积极推动和热心从事社会慈善与公益事业。     

Political theory in the Australian Journal of Political Science: A review

The place of political theory in AJPS has historically been a fairly marginal one, partly because Australia does not seem to have a strong national tradition of political theorizing. This is thought to be a function of living in a nation that never produced a great political theorist and was born neither in revolution or utopianism. Yet, although there has been a marked absence of high theory or exegetically-inclined history of ideas over the life of the journal, theorists have responded by contributing work that usefully illuminates applied problems with theoretical insight. Further, it may be the case that there is a peculiarly Australian style of political theory that is pragmatic and self-consciously embedded within our institutions and political culture. The paper explores this and other means by which Australian theorists have adapted in order to retain a presence within the journal.     

Maritime Aspects of Medieval Siraf,Iran: a pilot project for the investigation of coastal and underwater archaeological remains

Siraf is well‐known archaeologically and historically as an ancient port in the Persian Gulf that prospered during the medieval period. Siraf played a leading role in facilitating maritime and terrestrial trade, connecting long‐distance Indian Ocean and China routes with those in the Gulf region. Despite its history, no previous research has been dedicated to the maritime infrastructure of Siraf. Through the ‘2012 Siraf pilot project’ a preliminary survey of the underwater and shoreline remains of this ancient port city was conducted. The site's location is unique in many respects to trade routes and logistical considerations; however, its maritime infrastructure is difficult to assess in light of the extensive threats to the site.     

‘Dead dads’: memory narratives of war-related fatherlessness in Germany

After the Second World War, there were estimated to be around 20 million half-orphans in Europe. In Germany alone, 5.3 million soldiers killed in action left behind approximately 1.2 million widows, nearly 2.5 million half-orphans and about 100,000 complete orphans. This article examines how men and women from various social strata in western and eastern Germany remember their fathers who died in the war and in what way he has been stored in the family's collective memory. The analysis focuses on 30 life-history interviews with men and women from eastern and western Germany with various social and religious backgrounds, all of whom were born between 1935 and 1945 and had little or no memory of their fathers. The following questions are relevant: what memories did children have of their fathers, and what images of them were related by mothers and relatives? What individual, political, social and memory-cultural factors characterise a child's memory of her or his father? The article also analyses trans-generational transmissions and conflicts of how the father's past is remembered.