bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Conquest, Crusade and Pilgrimage: The Alliterative Morte Arthure in its Late Ricardian Crusading Context
Authors: Nievergelt Marco
Published: June 2010

This article explores the poem's problematic use of holy war rhetoric, arguing for an engagement with contemporary debates on the transformation, revival and decline of the crusading ideal within the framework of the Papal Schism and the Hundred Years War. More specifically I suggest that through its skillful use of religious vocabulary the poem highlights the manipulative potential of the language of holy war, and in doing so asks the reader to reflect critically on the crusading revival under Richard II. Yet rather than merely denouncing the simple appropriation of religious language to justify a continued war of conquest, the poem stresses the potential for a genuine blurring of motives—political, spiritual, economic, imperialistic, self-glorifying—which may ultimately result in the pursuit of those delirious messianic ambitions that the poem's Arthur seems to share with Richard II.
The Occasion of the Morte Arthure : Textual History and Marginal Decoration in the Thornton MS
Authors: Crofts Thomas Howard
Published: June 2010

The physical make-up of the Morte Arthure section of Lincoln Cathedral MS 91 is rich in information about Robert Thornton's copying, and understanding, of the alliterative poem. The illustrations that accompany the Morte —including an amateur 'frontispiece' added much later—form an attentive and evolving response to the poem.
Translating the Alliterative Morte Arthure into a Digital Medium: The Influence of Physical Context on Editorial Theory
Authors: Carlson John Ivor
Published: June 2010

This article examines the impact of a modern digital edition of the Alliterative Morte Arthure on editorial rationale, arguing that a change in physical context entails a deep change in the analytical context within which the poem is perceived. More precisely, I will illustrate the 'dynamic' potential of a digital edition, which allows an editor or reader to accommodate multiple reading texts reflecting different degrees of editorial certainty, and thus constitutes a significant advance compared to more traditional methods of presentation. Ultimately the possibility of contemplating such plural, open-ended and provisional possibilities within the context of a digital edition of the Morte Arthure widens the range of editorial and interpretive interaction with the text itself.
Genre as Context in the Alliterative Morte Arthure
Authors: Whetter K.S.
Published: June 2010

Genre remains an important context for teaching and understanding literature. The genre of the Alliterative Morte is epic-heroic. This genre is dominated by a focus on heroes and their concern with honor, glory and martial achievement. Such values and heroes have potentially tragic consequences, but such tragedy and the genre which surrounds it are celebrating, not condemning, Arthurian heroism and martial deeds.
Friendly Fire: The Disastrous Politics of Friendship in the Alliterative Morte Arthure
Authors: Chism Christine
Published: June 2010

This article counterposes the Alliterative Morte Arthure with the late fourteenth-century court of Richard II to explore the politics of royal friendship, patronage, and chivalric noriture , arguing that the poem responds to the contemporaneous politicization of the king's love. The Morte Arthure pursues the disastrous consequences of the politics of friendship for Arthur and his court as a way of thinking through the passionate political coalitions whose repeated engagement brought down the Lords Appellant, the protégés of Richard II, and eventually the king himself.
Blogging and Mass Politics
Authors: Keren Michael
Published: June 2010

In an attempt to understand the political implications of online life writing, or blogging, I construct a typology of modes of expression by politically engaged bloggers who are conceptualized as public intellectuals. I then propose the hypothesis that once the public dialogue in society is held almost exclusively online, it can be expected to follow more closely modes of expression associated with mass politics than with Aristotle's rules of civic discourse.
Autobiographical Discourse in the Theaters of Politics
Authors: Smith Sidonie
Published: June 2010

During the course of the 2008 presidential election in the United States, candidates, voters, journalists, pundits, and campaign operatives engaged directly and indirectly in an extended national debate about auto/biographical storytelling, its generic forms, its grounds of authenticity, its routes of circulation, and its afterlives in various media. In the wake of that election, scholars have been probing the conjunctions of personal discourse and political discourse, autobiographical acts, and the "theater" of politics. This introduction situates contributions to this special issue of Biography in the context of three broad themes: the personalization of politics over the last five decades, with its mobilization of the personal story to suture political persona and national fable; the social action of genre in constituting political publics, in such diverse genres as television reality shows, blogs, and national biography; and the archives of the fragment animating strategic biographism and scholarly methodology.
Human Rights Singular-Plural: Translating Dalit Autobiography from Hindi
Authors: Merrill Christi
Published: June 2010

I focus on the English translation of the first-person narrative Joothan by Dalit Hindi writer Omprakash Valmiki to ask how we read accounts from the "downtrodden" across languages and cultures. I argue that the Dalit atmakatha posits a different relationship between self and society than most autobiography in English, and so puts productive pressure on the generic expectations used to assess human rights.
Insecure Citizenship: Michael Ignatieff, Memoir, Canada
Authors: Rak Julie
Published: June 2010

This article links Michael Ignatieff's need to write memoir to his desire to explore what family, public service, and citizenship can mean when they are thought together. Ignatieff does not yet use memoir as most politicians do, to recall what public life was like or to set records straight. He writes as part of a process of self-invention and reinvention. In the process, the concepts of citizenship and national belonging move too, from a position of insecurity and migration as a challenge to national belonging, to a position of citizenship as securely patriotic and the focus of national security.
Transnational Adoption, Hallyu , and the Politics of Korean Popular Culture
Authors: So Young Park
Published: June 2010

This essay examines the phenomenon of the return of transnational adoptees to Korea, as represented in the popular media. I argue that television shows and films melodramatize adoptees' narratives to produce new narratives that promote the idea of a globalized South. The essay contexualizes this process of melodramatization within Hallyu , a contemporary renaissance in Korean arts and entertainment.
"Home Squared": Barack Obama's Transnational Self-Reliance
Authors: Banita Georgiana
Published: June 2010

One of the most important aspects of Barack Obama's political success concerns the transnational makeup of his identity. Taking Dreams from My Father (1995) and The Audacity of Hope (2006) as case studies, this article examines how Obama's autobiographical self squares with the precepts of American exceptionalism in an era that has witnessed a palpable decline in the centrality and leverage of the US on an international stage.
A Nuclear Narrative: Robert Oppenheimer, Autobiography, and Public Authority
Authors: Hecht David K.
Published: June 2010

This article explores the rhetorical strategies employed by Robert Oppenheimer in a personal narrative he wrote in 1954, defending himself against McCarthy-era charges that he was unfit for continued government employment. It argues that this personal narrative was central to establishing his public authority at this culturally tense moment, particularly in terms of his standing as a trustworthy atomic scientist.
The Personal in Political Television Biographies
Authors: Van Santen Rosa , Van Zoonen Liesbet
Published: June 2010

This article analyzes themes and styles of personal narratives of Dutch politicians on television. We find that general developments in the personalization of politicians are typifi ed by complex patterns of change and continuity, and that the portrait as a genre has diversified but is still mainly constituted by the politician's political and personal stories.
Mob Rule in New Orleans: Anarchy, Governance, and Media Representation
Authors: Ford James Edward
Published: June 2010

This article deconstructs the terms "anarchy" and "mob rule," which are used to restore legitimacy to failed hegemonic structures and to misrepresent collective governance working outside those structures. I use this argument to reinterpret Mob Rule in New Orleans by Ida B Wells, and ultimately, to contribute to a new theory of "crisis."
Autobiography in Australian Parliamentary First Speeches
Authors: McCooey David , Lowe David
Published: June 2010

This article analyzes the autobiographical content in the First Speeches of three Australian parliaments (1950, 1976, and 1996). It argues that such autobiographical disclosure has significant political functions—in particular, representing credentials, and representing social and political affiliations. The essay argues that these functions highlight, and finesse, the paradoxical condition that parliamentarians find themselves in, of having to simultaneously represent themselves and their constituencies.
The Personal Politics of Raphael Samuel
Authors: Maslen Joseph
Published: June 2010

In the 1980s, the writings of the historian Raphael Samuel (1934–1996) were oriented toward personal politics. In his autobiographical work on his personal and political lives, memory was a site of history. Personal narrative and political discourse were located at different points within the same domain of historical recollection.
Malaysia: The Writing of Lives and the Constructing of Nation
Authors: Morais Dawn
Published: June 2010

I examine the biographies and memoirs of John Victor Morais to show how middle-class leaders used their colonial legacy to build an independent nation. The affi rmation of ethnic roots and national allegiance continues today, not just in Malaysia, but in the diasporic lives of those who look back even as they venture beyond Malaysia's borders.
Charles H. Malik and Human Rights: Notes on a Biography
Authors: Mitoma Glenn
Published: June 2010

I examine the contributions of Lebanese diplomat and educator Charles H. Malik as a leading member of the UN Human Rights Commission, particularly in relation to his educational experiences in American-run institutions in Lebanon and the US. I also propose biography as a significant mode of inquiry for understanding the political discourse of human rights more generally.
Utilizing Community-Based Participatory Research to Adapt a Mental Health Intervention for African American Emerging Adults
Authors: Mance GiShawn A , Mendelson Tamar , Byrd Benjamin , Jones Jahon , Tandon Darius
Published: June 2010

Background: Adapting mental health interventions to heighten their cultural and contextual appropriateness may be critical for engaging ethnic/racial groups that have been traditionally excluded or marginalized. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a collaborative research approach that highlights unique strengths and expertise of those involved. Although intervention adaptations have garnered much attention there is little previous work specifically describing the adaptation process of mental health interventions using CBPR.
Objective: This article summarizes the use of a CBPR approach to adapt a mental health intervention for urban adolescents and young adults disconnected from school and work, a population at elevated risk for poor mental health owing to the presence of numerous chronic stressors.
Methods: We describe the process undertaken to modify the content and delivery format of an evidence-based intervention.
Lessons Learned: Unique challenges of working with urban African American adolescents and young adults in a job training program are highlighted. By incorporating principles of co-learning and shared responsibility, this partnership was able to achieve positive outcomes.
Conclusion: Our experience suggests that a CBPR approach can be used effectively to adapt a mental health intervention in collaboration with African American adolescents and emerging adults in a job training program.
The One-Pager: A Practical Policy Advocacy Tool for Translating Community-Based Participatory Research Into Action
Authors: Izumi Betty T. , Schulz Amy J. , Israel Barbara A. , Reyes Angela G. , Martin Jenifer , Lichtenstein Richard L. , Wilson Christine , Sand Sharon L.
Published: June 2010

The multiple and diverse perspectives, skills, and experiences inherent in community–academic partnerships make them uniquely positioned to educate policy makers and advocate for health equity. Effective communication tools are critical to successfully engage in the policy-making process. Yet few resources emphasize the development and use of practical tools for translating community-based participatory research (CBPR) findings into action. The purpose of this article is to describe a CBPR process for developing and using a one-page summary, or “one-pager,” of research findings and their policy implications. This article draws on the experience of the Healthy Environments Partnership (HEP), a community–academic partnership in Detroit, Michigan. In addition to describing these processes, this article includes a template for a one-pager and an example of a one-pager that was written for and presented to federal policy makers.
Development of a Theater-Based Nutrition and Physical Activity Intervention for Low-Income, Urban, African American Adolescents
Authors: Jackson Caree J. , Mullis Rebecca M. , Hughes Marilyn
Published: June 2010

Background: Childhood overweight is disproportionately worse in minority and low-income populations. Theater is a promising and effective tool for delivering health education to these underserved populations, but no known studies have examined the use of theater to promote both nutrition and physical activity to minority youth.
Objective: To develop an interactive, theater-based intervention that conveys health messages to low-income, urban, African Americans and engages them in learning ways to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
Methods: Community partners worked to develop a theater-based nutrition and physical activity intervention. A focus group provided urban adolescents’ thoughts about their desires for the intervention. Based on input from all community partners, the group created a theater-based intervention. Researchers used a quasi-experimental (pre-/posttest) design with a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach. Participants learned health messages through theater, dance, and music and gave feedback on the program sessions and materials. The program ended with a dinner theater performance showcasing information that students learned during the intervention.
Results: Participants received six theater-based health lessons. Learning objectives for each health education session were achieved. Each participant contributed to and performed in the final performance. All program participants were highly satisfied with the theater-based method of learning health messages.
Conclusion: A community–academic partnership succeeded in developing a theater-based nutrition and physical activity intervention that satisfied participating adolescents.
Interpretations of Interpretations: Combining Community-Based Participatory Research and Interpretive Inquiry to Improve Health
Authors: Gregg Jessica , Centurion Lourdes , Maldonado Julio , Aguillon Raquel , Celaya-Alston Rosemary , Farquhar Stephanie
Published: June 2010

Background: Latina immigrants from Mexico suffer significantly increased morbidity and mortality from cervical cancer when compared with non-Hispanic White women, largely owing to lack of screening and appropriate treatment.
Objectives: To demonstrate that by combining the tools of community-based participatory research (CBPR) with the tools of interpretive inquiry, it is possible to address explicit community concerns surrounding a particular problem such as cervical cancer while also examining what other, perhaps less immediately visible, matters consume the time and attention of community members.
Methods: We first briefly discuss and compare CBPR as an approach to research and interpretive inquiry as a qualitative research method. We then provide a case study from our own research using a CBPR approach to examine beliefs and attitudes about cervical cancer prevention among Oregon Latinos. Methods in that study included extensive discussions with our community advisory board (CAB) and promotores (community health workers) regarding barriers to cervical cancer screening for Latinas and community health concerns in general, and in-depth interviews with more than 50 Latino immigrants.
Conclusion: Combining the tools of CBPR with the tools of interpretive qualitative inquiry may allow researchers to address explicit community concerns while also examining what other, less immediately visible, issues consume the time and attention of community members. In our specific case, combining the insights of our community partners with the results of our interpretive analysis helped us shift the focus from cervical cancer alone to a focus on gender relations and family health as we design future interventions.
Phases of “Pre-Engagement” Capacity Building: Discovery, Exploration, and Trial Alliance
Authors: Campbell-Voytal Kimberly
Published: June 2010

Background: Academic prevention researchers who engage limited-resource communities may find that organizational or community capacity for prevention is low. Community organizations, neighborhoods, and academic partners may lack shared issue awareness, mutual interests, and interactive skills necessary for collaborative intervention. Existing capacity building models either ignore a ‘pre-engagement’ phase or acknowledge it without offering strategic detail. An exploratory or developmental phase before active engagement can be achieved through co-located work in a community setting. The construct, “ecology of practice,” provides conceptual background for examining how “shared work” introduces and prepares partners for future collaboration consistent with community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles.
Objective: This paper presents two case studies where pre-engagement capacity building involved partners who were initially unaware, disinterested, or unable to engage in preventive interventions. These cases illustrate how mutual participation in shared “ecologies of practice” enabled an exchange of cultural knowledge, skill, and language that laid the groundwork for future preventive intervention.
Methods: A trajectory of developmental work in each case occurred over 5 years. Historical timelines, interviews, and personal communications between community and academic leaders were reviewed and common themes identified. A model of “pre-capacity building” emerged.
Conclusion: Capacity-building models that detail strategies for developing equitable engagement in under-resourced settings will more effectively move best practices into vulnerable communities. Preventive interventions must be translated equitably if health disparities are to be reduced.
From Community-Based Pilot Testing to Region-Wide Systems Change: Lessons from a Local Quality Improvement Collaborative
Authors: County Pennsylvania , Keyser Donna J. , Pincus Harold Alan
Published: June 2010

Background: A community-based collaborative conducted a 2-year pilot study to inform efforts for improving maternal and child health care practice and policy in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
Objectives: (1) To test whether three small-scale versions of an evidence-based, systems improvement approach would be workable in local community settings and (2) to identify specific policy/infrastructure reforms for sustaining improvements.
Methods: A mixed methods approach was used, including quantitative performance measurement supplemented with qualitative data about factors related to outcomes of interest, as well as key stakeholder interviews and a literature review/Internet search.
Results: Quantitative performance results varied; qualitative data revealed critical factors for the success and failure of the practices tested. Policy/infrastructure recommendations were developed to address specific practice barriers. This information was important for designing a region-wide quality improvement initiative focused on maternal depression.
Conclusion: The processes and outcomes provide valuable insights for other communities interested in conducting similar quality improvement initiatives.
Partnering to Collect Health Services and Public Health Data in Hard-to-Reach Communities: A Community-Based Participatory Research Approach for Collecting Community Health Data
Authors: Nguyen Giang , Hsu Leah , Kue Kao N. , Nguyen Thoai , Yuen Elaine J.
Published: June 2010

Background: Community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches are increasingly used in behavioral studies but also may allow public health and health services researchers to study determinants of health in hard-to-reach communities for whom existing data are missing.
Objectives: We describe our experience with a CBPR project in diverse communities of limited English proficient minorities.
Methods: The process included relationship building, recognition of community needs, resource investment by community and academic partners, and shared decision-making. Community-driven implementation, academic-driven analysis, and joint reporting took advantage of diverse layers of expertise.
Results/Lessons Learned: We mobilized eighteen community interviewers, involved researchers from three institutions, and collected public health/health services data from 525 adults in seven weeks using a 117-item survey in nine languages.
Conclusion: A CBPR approach can make the process of collecting public health and health services data in hard-to-reach communities not only viable, but also highly successful.
Engaging Participants in Design of a Native Hawaiian Worksite Wellness Program
Authors: Leslie Jodi Haunani , Hughes Claire Ku‘uleilani , Braun Kathryn L.
Published: June 2010

Background. Native Hawaiians today face a disproportionately high rate of obesity. The Designing Healthy Worksites (DHW) project investigated existing administrative policies and supports for healthy eating and physical activity at eight Native Hawaiian-serving organizations in Hawai‘i, along with employee preferences for worksite wellness programming.
Objectives. We describe the process by which Native Hawaiian researchers and community members worked together to gather formative data to design future worksite wellness programs.
Methods. A Native Hawaiian doctoral student (JHL) and a Native Hawaiian activist (CKH) spearheaded the project, mentored by a Caucasian professor (KLB) who has worked in Hawaii communities for 30 years. Advisors from the worksites supported the use of environmental assessments ( n = 36), administrative interviews ( n = 33), focus groups ( n = 9), and an employee survey ( n = 437) to collect data. We used an interactive process of data collection, sharing, and interpretation to assure mutual agreement on conclusions and future directions.
Results. Worksites were at different stages of readiness for worksite wellness programming, suggesting that a toolkit be developed from which agencies could create a program that fit. Activities preferred by large proportions of employees included support groups, experiential nutrition education (e.g., cooking demonstrations and field trips for smart food shopping), food buying clubs, and administrative policies supporting healthy lifestyles. High participation in data collection and interpretation suggest that our methods fostered enthusiasm for worksite wellness programming and for Native Hawaiians as researchers. The team continues to work together to develop and test interventions to promote worksite wellness.
Conclusion. Native-directed research that engages administrators and employees in designing programs heightens program acceptability and applicability.
The Processions of John Chrysostom and the Contested Spaces of Constantinople
Authors: Andrade Nathanael
Published: June 2010

While bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom organized psalm-singing processions that were to transform the city's civic spaces and colonnaded streets into "churches." By participating in these processions, which featured fiery torches and candles, John's followers transformed the material properties of the civic landscape through their deployment of light and sound. Their activities generated new meanings for Constantinople's imperial monuments and recast civic spaces as Christian sites inhabited by the Holy Spirit and angels. In such ways, John tried to make Constantinople into a "truly" Christian city and to succeed Constantine as its founder.
Ambrose and the Usurpation of Arbogastes and Eugenius: Reflections on Pagan-Christian Conflict Narratives
Authors: Salzman Michele Renee
Published: June 2010

The usurpation of Arbogastes and Eugenius that resulted in the Battle of Frigidus in 394 remains embedded in pagan-Christian conflict narratives in modern scholarship on the late fourth century. Even scholars who see conflict as the flip side of religious assimilation persist in reading the narratives of the usurpation and Theodosius's victory as evidence for pagan-Christian conflict. An examination of the evidence for these events, including two newly relevant texts—John Chrysoston's Homily 6, adversus Catharos (PG 63: 491-92) and the Consultationes Zacchei et Apollonii , re-dated to the 390s—reinforces the view that religion was not the key ideological element in the events at the time, nor was it so in all narratives from the late fourth and fifth centuries. It was, however, due in large measure to Ambrose's writings and influence that some Christian authors in the western and eastern empire recounted the usurpation as a pagan-Christian conflict. But even Ambrose's view of these events was more complex than a simple pagan-Christian conflict narrative suggests.
Models of Gift Giving in the Preaching of Leo the Great
Authors: Neil Bronwen
Published: June 2010

Rabbinic literature on almsgiving centers on four themes—anonymous indirect giving, indiscriminate giving, justice for the poor, and the redemptive power of alms—which make up a comprehensive rationale for giving that was picked up by late antique advocates of Christian charity. Using the ninety-seven extant homilies of Leo I, bishop of Rome (440-461), I contrast the evidence for the Greco-Roman and Jewish models of gift-giving in the preaching and charitable activities of western bishops. First, I examine the four themes as they appear in rabbinic literature and in Leo's homilies. Second, I establish why one model of giving remained dominant in Rome in this period: that of redemptive almsgiving (i.e. giving alms in order to attain one's own salvation), a model that had become standard in western Christian texts on almsgiving by the end of the fourth century. The dominance of this model in the West, as evident in the homilies of bishops like Leo the Great, poses a significant challenge to the thesis posed by Patlagean and adopted by Brown, namely, that the rise of the virtue of charitable giving in the fourth and fifth centuries had a significant impact on social and economic relations between rich and poor. Evidence from hagiography, law codes, inscriptions, sermons, and letters presents rather a different picture, one of bishops upholding the status quo while preaching an impossible ideal of justice for the poor. The Derridean concept of the "impossibility of the gift" helps to illuminate how the Greco-Roman patronage model inhibited the emergence of a new way of thinking about and acting towards the poor in these centuries.
Moving Beyond the Palimpsest: Erasure in Syriac Manuscripts
Authors: Penn Michael Philip
Published: June 2010

An examination of the world's largest collection of Syriac manuscripts illustrates how frequently late antique and medieval readers modified many of the most important documents for early Christian studies. Of particular note is the widespread practice of readers erasing small parts of the texts they were reading. Such erasures are especially common in manuscript sections that contain 1) ownership information, 2) prayer petitions or anathemas, and/or 3) contested names or personal attributes. Such erasures challenge the analytical primacy of original authorship and suggest that scholars of early Christianity should attend more closely to the "lives" of the manuscripts upon which our knowledge of antiquity depends. An approach to manuscript culture that focuses less on recovering an ur-text provides important information for how subsequent generations of Christians read manuscripts and how such reading strategies related to such issues as power, performance, and ethics. It also suggests that the literature we label as "early Christian" is often the end product of an extensive transmission history that defies easy periodization.
Ornament’s Invitation: The Rococo of Vienna’s Gardekirche
Authors: Yonan Michael
Published: June 2010

This essay contributes to the project of interpreting rococo ornament by demonstrating how the visual techniques of open-endedness, apparent incompleteness, and spatial complexity found inside one rococo church answer to a complex social network of institutional conflict over divinity and authority. The church in question is the Gardekirche, built in Vienna, Austria, between 1755 and 1763 by the Austrian-born Italian architect Nikolaus Pacassi. Through a close analysis of the church's ornamental program, this essay demonstrates that rococo ornament could and did harness semantic potentiality as a political tool. Although the rococo conveyed an openness of meaning to its viewers, that freedom was never infinite and it never granted the viewer total agency. The social relationships evoked in the Gardekirche's interior decoration routed its viewers along certain predetermined paths, while simultaneously giving them the conception, however misleading, of agency.
The Personal is Political: Domesticity’s Domestic Contents
Authors: Thompson Helen
Published: June 2010

A Review of Michael McKeon’s The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge (2005).
“The Queen was not shav’d yet”: Edward Kynaston and the Regendering of the Restoration Stage
Authors: Haggerty George E.
Published: June 2010

A discussion of the career of Edward Kynaston, both when he acted in women’s roles and when he proceeded to act in male roles. The essay looks at the kind of male roles that Kynaston performs and makes some conclusions about masculinity in the later seventeenth century.
The Epistemology of the Gaze in Popular Discourse: A Re-Vision
Authors: Johnston Elizabeth
Published: June 2010

A review of Daryl Ogden’s book, The Language of the Eyes: Science, Sexuality, and Female Vision in English Literature and Culture, 1690–1927 (SUNY, 2005), which sets out to recover a gaze that has been, to date, largely ahistoricized by psychological and evolutionary theories of surveillance and desire. Ogden’s argument rests on two premises: that feminist theorists have not fully acknowledged the extent to which Freud and Freudian theory gendered the epistemology of vision and, more importantly, that this gendering of vision was actually shaped by eighteenth-century discourse. Literary works examined include those by Catherine Trotter, Samuel Richardson, Eliza Haywood, Maria Edgeworth, Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, Olive Schreiner, Thomas Hardy, and Virginia Woolf.
Manual Dexterities
Authors: Koehler Martha J.
Published: June 2010

A review of Eve Tavor Bannet’s Empire of Letters: Letter Manuals and Transatlantic Correspondence, 1680-1820, a book examining eighteenth-century letter-writing manuals, their adaptations within England, Scotland, and America, and their complex historical agency in both helping to unify different regions of the British Empire and establishing distinct local and regional cultures.
The Covert Homoeroticism of A Spy on Mother Midnight
Authors: Thomason Laura E.
Published: June 2010

The anonymous author of A Spy on Mother Midnight (1748) applies libertine philosophy to commonplace elements of eighteenth-century amatory and erotic fiction, producing a story that offers omnisexual thrills and unmistakable homoerotic interest. This manipulation suggests that the boundaries of pornographic appeal in the period may have been more flexible than scholars have generally believed. At a time when public discourse on “sodomites” and “mollies” was almost uniformly negative, Mother Midnight's libertinism creates homoerotic allure without the intratextual or actual punishment expected in connection with both pornography and homosexuality. Though the tale embraces the amorality of the aristocratic libertines, it blurs social boundaries as well as gender boundaries, using class voyeurism to enable sexual voyeurism. With a letter from a man to his male friend as its framing device, Mother Midnight dwells on the erotic appeal and sexual usefulness of cross-dressing while allowing its readers, standing in for the letter’s recipient, to partake of the transgressive adventures from a safe distance. Because its homoerotic content stays just under the radar, A Spy on Mother Midnight need not excuse itself with homophobic language. As the protagonist disguises himself to gain entrance to a lying-in, A Spy on Mother Midnight disguises its homoerotic sympathies, hiding them, so to speak, in plain sight for interested readers to discover.
The British Empire Live Onstage
Authors: Wood Gillen D’Arcy
Published: June 2010

A review of Daniel O’Quinn’s Staging Governance: Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770–1800, a book examining the relationship of politics, theater, and the East India Company in the Romantic period.
Our Neighbors Observe and We Explain: Moses Mendelssohn’s Critical Encounter with Edmund Burke’s Aesthetics
Authors: Furniss Tom
Published: June 2010

This essay traces the impact of Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757/59) on the evolution of German aesthetic theory in the second half of the eighteenth century, concentrating in particular on a close reading of the series of articles on aesthetics that Moses Mendelssohn published between 1755 and 1761. The essay argues that Burke’s distinction between the sublime and the beautiful, his attempt to generate an empirical physiological aesthetic theory, and his radical severance of the links between aesthetics and ethics fundamentally challenged the rational metaphysical grounds of German aesthetic theory, provoking Mendelssohn into generating a series of creative but incompatible responses that both constituted a significant elaboration of German aesthetic theory and led into an impasse that only Kant could surmount.
"The Yellow-Dog Thing": Joseph Conrad, Verisimilitude, and Professionalism
Authors: Attridge John
Published: June 2010

This paper frames Conrad's practice of verisimilitude as a technique of securing the reader's trust. Understood in this way, verisimilitude emerges as a vital term in the equation linking Conrad to modernism, on the one hand, and to the mass market, on the other. I draw on Georg Simmel, H. G. Wells and other contemporary sources to establish the importance of trust and trustworthiness to literary writers at the dawn of mass society. Engaging with recent critical studies of professionalism and modernist self-fashioning, I examine how professionalism functioned in Conrad's self-presentation, but also how the technique of verisimilitude that he developed in Lord Jim surpasses the rhetoric of professionalism: Conrad deployed verisimilitude in Lord Jim as a substitute for certification.
The Scandals of Shakespeare's Sonnets
Authors: Matz Robert
Published: June 2010

This study of the reception of Shakespeare's sonnets takes as its starting point Margreta de Grazia's influential claim that contemporary understandings of the sonnets--which consider the sonnets to the young man scandalous and the ones to the young woman proper--are, from an early modern perspective, "topsy-turvy." I argue that in positing a single reversal we risk missing more complex synchronic variations and diachronic overlaps in the reception of the sonnets during their 400-year history. Jonathan Goldberg and Madhavi Menon have recently called for a "queer history" that embraces the untidiness of the relationship between past and present because neither past nor present is self-identical. I explore the history of the sonnets' reception with special attention to this untidiness, from the moment of the sonnets' production to today. I argue in particular that a definitive eighteenth-century shift, which de Grazia identifies as inaugurating our "topsy-turvy" sense of the sonnets, does not exist. This sense of the sonnets developed over a much shorter period of time, only since about the 1930s, along with a new understanding of heterosexuality per se as a positive value, what Jonathan Katz has called the modern "invention of heterosexuality." Nor is this reception of the sonnets simply definitive of the contemporary moment.
Oscar Wilde's Salome : Décor, Des Corps , Desire
Authors: Bennett Chad
Published: June 2010

This essay reads Oscar Wilde's Salome and its engagement with the lyric blazon in relation to a range of period representations of Salome. It argues that the blazon--a genre based on the extensive use of decorative language to describe the loved object--provides Wilde with a formal vehicle for negotiating the ethical impasse of poetic ornament and its impossible efforts to embody fully the object of desire. Wilde's text employs the blazon to amplify decorative language's failures even as it cultivates their attendant pleasures, reclaiming as a site of aesthetic and erotic possibility the invisible sphere into which the loved body is cast by the blazon and related modes of poetic embodiment.
Pilgrim's Progress and the Book
Authors: Seidel Kevin
Published: June 2010

This essay reexamines the literary-historical situation of The Pilgrim's Progress , part one and two, in light of recent work on its transnational reception history by Isabel Hofmeyr. The way African writers have used Pilgrim's Progress turns out to be deeply analogous to the way Bunyan uses the Bible. The book, scroll, and letters that appear in Pilgrim's Progress work together to disclose three interrelated circuits of literacy--moral, legal, domestic--operating in late-seventeenth-century conceptions of "the Book." Bunyan combines these circuits, none simply religious or secular, to make his fiction an entertainment, in this world, of the world to come.
Wallace Stevens: Where He Lived
Authors: Burt Stephen
Published: June 2010

Facts about real sites that Wallace Stevens knew well (some of them noted by no earlier critic) inform the deliberately "plain" poems of his final years. Stevens brought Connecticut into his works of art partly through his arrangements of grammar and sound, and partly through matters of regional lore and urban planning: the poems' view of public life includes the varied uses of public space. Regarding Connecticut as a place of abstraction, of "thin" colors and hard work, the late poems make southern New England (unlike the other regions in Stevens' work) a place to which the mature poet could feel he belonged. To read the late poems in the light of Stevens's Connecticut is to see one more source for their verbal powers. It is also to see how that work speaks to recent debates about literature and geography, literature and the environment, and even literature and the human body.
The Cost of Reading in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Auction Sale Catalogues and the Cheap Literature Hypothesis
Authors: Elliott J. E.
Published: June 2010

Eighteenth-century cultural historians have long asserted that the British book market was flooded with sharply discounted classics after the 1774 Donaldson copyright verdict, giving birth to a middle-class reading public and radically altering the use of literature as a social and political steering mechanism. Despite the work of William St. Clair and others in recent years, the empirical basis for this claim has never been systematically examined. In particular, the vibrant and extensive resale market for literary works in the eighteenth century has been almost wholly ignored. A preliminary review of this market through its period auction catalogues and Bent's retail pricing indexes suggests that the cost of literature for those buying to read varied minimally between 1750 and 1790. Price data for major figures and works is given in both real and nominal terms, correcting for purchasing power differentials, opportunity costs, and alternative access to reading material. Signal attention is granted selected editions of Milton and Shakespeare as the dynasty-making authors and editions of the era. What emerges is a late-century book market identifiable not so much by price movements as by market complexity and product differentiation. Contrary to conventional wisdom, therefore, the cheap literature hypothesis fails in all relevant particulars. Its inability to underpin widely held assumptions about literary canon formation and common reading habits should encourage us to rethink the complex relationship between culture and society at the time. Above all, we should consider more seriously the importance of source work to effective theory building.
"Enough Force to Shatter the Tale to Fragments": Ethics and Textual Analysis in James Baldwin's Film Theory
Authors: Friedman Ryan Jay
Published: June 2010

This essay argues that James Baldwin's writings on film exemplify the broader project that he undertakes in his midcareer nonfiction: to enlist an ethics of intersubjective love in the dismantling of racial categories. Applying ethical concepts like the "shattering" effect of the self's encounter with the other to the analysis of classical Hollywood films, Baldwin develops an original and coherent hermeneutic approach, at once highly literary and engaged with academic film theory's foundational concerns (the ontological status of the image, spectatorship, ideological critique, and historiography). Baldwin's approach, the essay argues, conceives of the film as an unstable, fragmented textual structure and of actors and viewers as historically situated subjects whose "flesh-and-blood" existence the film puts at stake.
Hopkins's Silent Men
Authors: Humphries Simon
Published: June 2010

The contention of this article is that there has been a major oversight in the critical literature on the representations of the male body in Gerard Hopkins's poems. We have not seen that the men and the boys in these poems are subject to a rule of silence: they must not speak; or, if they do speak, they must be silenced. This article not only substantiates this contention, but reads the silence of the male body within its explicatory contexts: not only theological, but also political and sexual. Yet the article also argues that the privileged theological context of this silence is contradictory in questions that are central to Hopkins's thought.
A Problem for Hume's Theory of Induction
Authors: Weintraub Ruth
Published: June 2010

According to Hume, the paradigm type of inductive reasoning involves a constant conjunction. But, as Price points out, Hume misrepresents ordinary induction: we experience very few constant conjunctions. In this paper, I examine several ways of defending Hume's (psychological) account of our practice against Price's objection, and conclude that the theory cannot be upheld.
Practical Reasoning and Practical Reasons in Hume
Authors: Schafer Karl
Published: June 2010

Hume's discussion of the role of reason in the practical sphere is often read to imply two broad, negative claims: first, that passions and actions can (at most) only be regarded as responsive to reasons in so far as they are either in agreement with or contrary to the instrumental implications of other passions or desires. And second, that there is no properly practical form of inference or reasoning. I argue that Hume's general understanding of practical reason does not support either of these claims. Rather, Hume's explicit discussion of these issues—like his discussion of the nature of probable inference—is intended to lay the foundation for a naturalist account of practical thought that we would today regard as embodying a substantive, non-instrumentalist theory of practical rationality. This account will, indeed, make reason the "slave of the passions," but in a very different sense than the one familiar from most contemporary discussions of Hume.
Hume's "farther scenes": Maupertuis and Buffon in the Dialogues
Authors: Knox-Shaw Peter
Published: June 2010

While numerous sources have been found for the ideas expressed by Cleanthes and Demea in the Dialogues , Philo's thoughts have commonly been taken to originate with Hume. It is clear, however, both from internal and external evidence, that Hume drew for his (sometimes wayward) spokesman on that mid-century ferment in the life sciences that Denis Diderot described as a "revolution." The restoration of this context—obscured by the late publication of the Dialogues —suggests that Philo's celebrated critique of theism is merely one face of a discourse that centres in new ideas about generation and evolution. On this reading the Dialogues emerges as a conjectural as well as analytic work, one that offers in addition to its demolition of the argument from design an argument about design, built on the premise that natural order can be independent of a creator. The philosophical definition that Hume brings to ideas that first surfaced in the works of Maupertuis and Buffon makes the Dialogues the most potent pre-Darwinian work of its period.
On the Compatibility between Euclidean Geometry and Hume's Denial of Infinite Divisibility
Authors: Badici Emil
Published: June 2010

It has been argued that Hume's denial of infinite divisibility entails the falsity of most of the familiar theorems of Euclidean geometry, including the Pythagorean theorem and the bisection theorem. I argue that Hume's thesis that there are indivisibles is not incompatible with the Pythagorean theorem and other central theorems of Euclidean geometry, but only with those theorems that deal with matters of minuteness. The key to understanding Hume's view of geometry is the distinction he draws between a precise and an imprecise standard of equality in extension. Hume's project is different from the attempt made by Berkeley in some of his later writings to save Euclidean geometry. Unlike Berkeley, who interprets the theorems of Euclidean geometry as false albeit useful approximations of geometrical facts, Hume is able to save most of the central theorems as true.
Marital earnings premiums in Trinidad & Tobago: ethnicity and socioeconomic status
Authors: Olsen Reed Neil , Coppin Addington
Published: June 2010

This article employs a unique data set from 1993 with 7,063 working men and women from Trinidad and Tobago to examine the impact of ethnicity and socioeconomic status upon marital earnings premiums. It finds a significant marriage premium for both males and females. Ethnicity is found to play a crucial role in marital premiums with more advantaged ethnic groups having generally higher premiums. This result is strengthened when controlling for socioeconomic status, which is found to increase the size of marital premiums for all workers, regardless of gender or ethnicity. Earnings regressions with endogenous marital status confirm these results and further highlight the importance of socioeconomic status.