The Limits of Sasanian History: Between Iranian,Islamic and Late Antique Studies

This essay discusses the position of Sasanian Studies from its inception in the late nineteenth century, to its reinvigoration at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The work also discusses the development of the field of Sasanian history and civilization vis-à-vis the three fields of Iranian, Islamic and Late Antique Studies. It is posited that Sasanians have benefited from cross-disciplinary and new historical frameworks that go beyond the traditional field of Iranian Studies, which was never as interested in the history of the period.     

Anglo-Iranian Treaty Negotiations: Reza Shah,Teymurtash and the British Government, 1927–32

From 1927 to 1932, wide-reaching negotiations took place between Reza Shah's court minister, ‘Abdolhossein Khan Teymurtash, and the British Legation in Tehran, the aim of which was to resolve all outstanding issues and to normalize relations between the two countries on the basis of a general treaty. This article examines these Anglo-Iranian negotiations with a particular focus on the thorniest issues—Iran's territorial claims in the Persian Gulf, particularly its claims to sovereignty over Bahrain, Abu Musa and the two Tunb islands. Though an agreement was never reached, an examination of the content and conduct of these negotiations offers some valuable insights into the unique features of Iranian nationalism and Iranian ambitions in the Persian Gulf during the Reza Shah period.     

The Persian Presence in Nineteenth-Century English Poetry: A Taxonomy

This study employs keyword searches of literary databases such as Literature Online (LION) in an attempt to map the image of “Persia” in nineteenth-century English poetry as it was molded by a proliferation of thoughts and ideas in a variety of contexts. Completeness is not possible, of course, but the article aims to identify and explore some of the major categories within which the image of Persia was formed and disseminated in the nineteenth-century. The scope of the study is not confined to a corpus of poetic works that were written specifically on or about “Persia,” but takes account of a broader range of poems, and attends to the structure, texture and variations of the presence of “Persia” in nineteenth-century English poetry.     

Hedwig revisited

The mainstream success of the 2014 Broadway revival of John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch is in stark contrast to the precarity of the central protagonist’s life and the communities out of which the original Hedwig production emerged. While these tensions reveal some of the complicities between homonormativity, gentrification, and neoliberalism, by tracing Hedwig’s other genealogies, a more complicated vision of queer possibility emerges.     

翁方纲及其经学思想

在清代乾嘉学者群体中,翁方纲是一个很有成就的人物。他生平精心汲古,宏览多闻,既能诗文,又擅书法,更精鉴赏。他对诗歌、书画、谱录、金石学等都有很深的研究,而且著作等身,仅流传下来的著作就有《两汉金石记》、 《汉石经残字考》、《焦山鼎铭考》、《苏米斋兰亭考》、《复初斋文集》、《复初斋诗集》、《石洲诗话》、《经义考补正》、《礼经目次》、《苏诗补注》、《苏斋笔记》等数十种。而长期以来,学术界对翁方纲的研究却付诸阙如。本文仅就其生平及经学思想略加论述,以期引起学界同仁的重视。     

3. FROM ENVIRONMENTAL CASE STUDY TO ENVIRONMENTAL KIN STUDY

This article explores the relationships among place, knowing, and being in environmental histories. Grounding ourselves in the work of Indigenous scholars from North America and the Pacific, we propose a method of listening and attuning that can attend to the dislocation and abstraction often found in work addressing ecocide and environmental violence. Against the ubiquity of the case-study approach, we propose a method we call “kin study,” which invites more embedded, expansive, material, and respectful relations to people and lands. This article frames the issues and then proposes, though a dialogue, how kin studies may be constituted and applied in studying environmental histories of the Pacific and Western Canada.     

‘Caught’ between foreign cultural and development policies: perspectives of German Studies and German as a foreign language in Africa

The promotion of the German language abroad and of German Studies plays a central role in German Foreign Cultural Policy. With regard to Sub-Saharan Africa, otherwise a peripheral region for foreign policy, German as foreign language is firmly established as second language after English. Learners especially in Francophone West and Central Africa have increased over the past decade. Numerous funding programmes and actions are supported by German nongovernmental organizations at college/university levels. But bilateral cooperation between German and African academic institutions are challenged both by negative perceptions of the ‘Global South’ among Western colleagues and by an infrastructure adverse to research and to career development in most African countries. Additionally, North/South relations are traditionally seen in terms of (under-)development by German institutions, effecting cooperation. The paper develops a differentiated picture of African Studies in Africa, and outlines benefits that can be attained through collaboration ‘at eye-level’.     

A regionalisation or long-distance trade? Transformations and shifts in the role of Tana in the Black Sea trade in the first half of the fifteenth century

Abstract

The Italian trading stations in Tana were important in the long-distance trade system of the Italian maritime republics Venice and Genoa. The deeds of two Venetian notaries who worked there during the 1430s, Nicolo de Varsis and Benedetto de Smeritis, are an important source for tracing the transformation of the issues and directions of Italian trade in the Black Sea region, a trade which was recovering from the crisis of the fourteenth century. Notwithstanding the Venetian-Genoese struggle and previous crisis events, this recovery made the economic conditions favourable. Although some scholars see a regionalisation of trade in fifteenth century, the source evidence challenges this interpretation. Westerners began to import Italian, Flemish and English textiles to the Eastern markets, and the local goods (fish, caviar) were widely exported to Europe – even to the markets of Flanders. Finally, the slave trade was intensive. My main argument here is that though there were considerable transformations in the Italian trade, there was no real regionalisation of trade, which retained its long-distance character.     

疑经变古思潮中的宋代易学考辨

在宋代的经学领域,疑经变古思潮渐趋兴盛,促使易学考辨多维度、全方面展开。北宋欧阳修首先向孔子作《易传》（《十翼》）的传统观点发难,孔子与《易传》的关系也由此成为易学研究中的重要问题而备受关注。南宋学者又进一步深入,或借之佐证、充实自身的理学思想体系;或藉以批判理学空疏的“义理”、“心性”。肇始于宋代的易学考辨对中国传统经学史、易学史乃至辨伪学史都产生了深远影响。     

Teaching Postgraduate Development Studies: Possibilities within geography

This article outlines theoretical insights generated at the crossroads of geography and development studies, and elaborates their implications for postgraduate education. Reflecting on curriculum design and teaching experiences at one university (the University of Colorado, Boulder), the analysis focuses on the strengths of geography as a disciplinary home for postgraduate training in development studies. To this end, and based on faculty and student projects, it examines the relevance of geographic debates around space, place and scale for understanding specific development questions. While most postgraduate education in development geography already takes account of these themes, this article aims to make explicit the intellectual rationale behind such a focus, and to provide specific substantive strategies relevant to putting geography at the centre of postgraduate development studies education.