Establishing Connections,Restoring Relationships: Exploring the Historiography of Nursing in Britain

This paper provides a comparative historiographical framework within which to reconsider the history of nursing. It asks why nursing has remained largely sidelined within the history of medicine, while the latter has gained mainstream respectability in the wider field of historical research. Gender historians are challenged to look at the under‐explored aspects of nursing's history such as pre‐Nightingale nurses and nursing, and the multiple and international meanings of race, class and gender as experienced by this unique cohort of women and men. The paper draws upon key texts in the history of nursing and of medicine and includes a discussion about use of imagery within significant publications and what this says about intended readerships. It concludes that, unlike medicine, nursing professionals have to some extent hijacked the history of nursing, while the subject has been further hampered by Florence Nightingale's legacy and the subsequent emphasis on the professionalisation of nursing.     

Legal Challenges to Presidential Policies on the Use of Military Force

A review of legal challenges to the use of military force, from the Vietnam War era to the Gulf War, demonstrates a judicial unwillingness to constrain presidential policymaking. In most of these cases, the judiciary has ruled the legal challenge nonjusticiable. In the first post-Cold War challenge , Dellums v. Bush, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued the equivalent of a declaratory judgment. Arguably, this is the only practical judicial response to the presidential use of force, but it does little more than redirect the policy conflict from the courts to Congress. The rule of law remains a weak reed in efforts to constrain presidential policymaking on the use of military force.     

Interview with Paul Sweet

Paul R. Sweet is a retired Foreign Service Officer and professor emeritus of the Department of History at Michigan State University. Dr. Sweet received his B.A. degree from DePauw University in 1929 and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1934. He has taught at Birmingham-Southern College, Bates College, the University of Chicago, Colby College, and Michigan State University. From 1948 to 1959 he served with the U.S. Department of State and from 1953 to 1963 at the U.S. Embassy in Bonn; from 1963 to 1967 he was U.S. Consul General at Stuttgart. He co-authored The Tragedy of Austria (1948), and is the author of Friedrich von Gentz: Defender of the Old Order (1941), and Wilhelm von Humboldt: a Biography 1767–1808 (1978). He and his wife live in East Lansing, Michigan, where this interview was conducted by Linda Cooke Johnson in October 1996.     

Engaging territorio cuerpo-tierra through body and community mapping: a methodology for making communities safer

We propose a new way of collectively creating data about gender violence through active participation and mapping women’s bodies and communities. We see this process of data creation, self-awareness and action as inherently linked to the native concept territorio cuerpo-tierra, the landscape of bodies-lands. The concept erases Western notions separating bodies and land and helps to decenter the public–private divide, which is an important obstacle to eliminating violence against women. Drawing on data from our work with Mexican women in the, U.S. and Mexico, we illuminate the continuity of women’s individual bodily experience of violence and collective spatial knowledge of community safety. We conclude that the process and outcomes of body and community mapping linking bodies and land, afford planners the prospect of engaging as partners and co-actants with community members in the goal of making places safe for women.     

Book reviews—Comptes Rendus

Themes in medieval history—Aspects de l'histoire du moyen âge

Dianne WATT ed., Medieval Women in their Communities University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1997 ISBN 0–7083–1369–8(Hardback) £30.00 ISBN 0–7083–1361–2(paperback) £14.95.

Chris GIVEN‐WILSON ed., An Illustrated History of Late Medieval England, Manchester University Press, Manchester 1996 xi + 292 pp. ISBN 0–7190–4152‐X £35.00

Themes in Eighteenth‐Century History—Aspects de l'histoire du dix‐huitième siècle

Jeremy BLACK ed., An Illustrated History of Eighteenth‐Century Britain 1688–1793 Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1996, xv + 244 pp. ISBN 0–7190–4267–4. £25.00.

Jeremy BLACK ed., Culture and Society in Britain 1660–1800 Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1997, viii + 199 pp. ISBN 0–7190–4947–4. £35.00.

Themes in Russian History—Aspects de l'histoire Russe

Lionel KOCHAN and John KEEP, The Making of Modern Russia: From Kiev Rus’ to the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Third Edn., Penguin, London, 1997, xii + 603 p., ISBN 0–14–015715–8. £9.99.

Wendy R. SALMOND, Arts and Crafts in Imperial Russia: Reviving the Kustar Art Industries, 1870–1917, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, xv + 270p., ill., ISBN 0–521–41576–4 £50.00.

Morgan Philips PRICE, Dispatches from the Revolution: Russia 1916–1918, Pluto Press, London, 1997, xii + 181 p., ISBN 0–7453–1210–1 £30.00.

John Lewis GADDIS, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997, x + 425p., ISBN 0–19–878070–2 £25.00.     

Dance arenas,dance events

Katrina Hazzard‐Gordon. Jookin’: The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African‐American Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990. xiii + 226 pp. including bibliographic end notes and index. $24.95.

Jane K. Cowan. Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. xv + 252 pp. including references and index. $45.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.