bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
"What do I think of glory -": Dickinson's Eliot and Middlemarch
Authors: Heginbotham Eleanor Elson
Published: November 2012

Emily Dickinson's famed 1873 response to George Eliot's monumental novel Middlemarch is more than the hyperbolic praise by a village spinster poet for a contemporary with whom she had far more in common than most understand. The "glory" comment appears midway in a letter that reflects in every line Dickinson's relish for Eliot's fun with ridiculous people and, more significantly, her deep sympathy and identification with the generous humanistic bent of Eliot's thought. The letter, like the novel, is polyvocal, moving from satire toward obnoxious hypocrites, through confrontations with the harshest human conditions, to explorations of possibilities for belief. The letter to her Norcross cousins follows several—usually funny—epistolary references to Eliot's characters (three, at least, to The Mill 's Aunt Glegg); references to the inspiration of Daniel Deronda ; and questions about Eliot/Evans/Lewes the woman and fellow struggler with orthodox theology. Read with Middlemarch's cast of Cadwallader-like characters in mind, the letter's digs at Mrs. Sweetser have more resonance; with the tragedies of Dorothea and Lydgate in mind, its meditations on the transitory pleasures of "Spring" and "Life" have greater relevance; and with the book's endings, particularly the subplot of the Bulstrode marriage, its conclusions on "the mysteries of human nature" acquire more richness. What "glory" might have meant to the poet remains problematic, but attending closely to the Eliot novel that the avid reader had just completed reveals that Dickinson's capacities as a passionate reader are one with her poetic approaches to measuring "the finite" against "the infinite."
George Eliot and Emily Dickinson: Poets of Play and Possibility
Authors: Freeman Margaret H.
Published: November 2012

Contemporary research in the cognitive sciences provides tools for humanities scholars to make explicit the nature of creativity in the arts and their importance in the development of human cognition. From this perspective, the notion of the arts as play takes on new meaning. In his book, Finite and Infinite Games , James P. Carse explores through the metaphor LIFE IS A GAME the way we are both finite and infinite players in the worlds of human life and nature. Three elements define the distinction between finite and infinite play: an infinite game is boundless, dramatic, and open; finite games are bounded, theatrical, and self-limited. These elements of the finite and the infinite occur as themes in both Eliot and Dickinson. For the novelist, they are played out through the lives of her characters. For the poet, they reflect the dynamic tensions of her literary personae in their encounters with others and with the natural world. The characters of Eliot's Middlemarch fall on a scale from most finite to most infinite in their interactions with each other. At the two extremes are Rosamond Vincy and Will Ladislaw. In our encounters with nature, we act either as finite players in believing that it can be ultimately known and controlled, or as infinite players, recognizing that something lies always beyond our reach, beyond the ever-changing horizons of our perceptions. In her poems, Dickinson creates lyric personae who experience the infinite play of life, looking and moving always beyond the boundaries of the known.
Through the Transatlantic Lens of " my George Eliot" and Percy Bysshe Shelley: Emily Dickinson's Expatriate Soul in Postcards from the Edge
Authors: Mossberg Barbara
Published: November 2012

The oxymoron of Emily Dickinson as famous "Nobody," isolated as a poet, belies her generative sense of community in the iconic company of transatlantic "freedom writers," George Eliot and Percy Bysshe Shelley, with whom she associates in her poetry and letters. Comparing her attitudes toward homeland authority and leadership with Eliot's Middlemarch and Shelley's prose and sonnets such as "England in 1819," posits Dickinson in a conversation that expresses a shared resistance, a critique of their respective cultures. The symmetry of Dickinson's "We like March - his Shoes are Purple -" (Fr1194) and her effusive identification with " my George Eliot" suggests her reading Middlemarch as illuminating her own experience of a culture repressive of woman's voice and role in civic society. Dickinson could have read Middlemarch in serial format, when she was composing "We like March -" in 1871. Of special interest to scholars is the fact that Dickinson revised this poem years later, but only to the extent of changing two words: the "Adder's Tongue" "presents" to "begets," and bluebirds "exercising" to "buccaneering." Investigating Dickinson's reading of local and international news yields a thesis that Dickinson's "bluebird" poet self is more than a tactical rebellion from a culture demanding "Prose." Rather, she conceives her writing as a bold insurgency rooted in mandates in which political and creative freedoms are inextricable. The mystery of who "We" are in "We like March"—and a world under a "British Sky"—may point to an expatriate sensibility that Dickinson shares with Eliot and Shelley; and, in turn, may locate Dickinson's political aesthetic, clarifying the significance of Emily Dickinson's identity as a self-consciously American writer.
A Life with Emily Dickinson: Surprise and Memory
Authors: Juhasz Suzanne
Published: November 2012

This essay explores my long relationship with Emily Dickinson—as student, scholar, and reader. Reading through her poems from the vantage point of my present life as retired Professor, I note two important aspects of this relationship: surprise and memory. Surprise, linked to the audacity of her language, is at the essence of a Dickinson poem. I identify four categories of surprise: short phrases that suddenly upset the reader's thought and reading; a sequence of words that one cannot really understand at all; "new poems: poems that one has never seen before or familiar poems suddenly understood in a new way; and "overlapping" poems in which more than one subject becomes possible to identify, so that the whole poem is a continual surprise. Some poems evoke a response other than surprise: memories that alter my sense of the poem itself, so that what I think of as "the poem" becomes an event composed of both the words and my experiences with them. In my discussion I concentrate on Dickinson as the poet-in-the-poem and on her language as the source and conduit of our continuing interaction.
I Call on Mme. Bianchi
Authors: Hickok Benjamin B. , Schmitt Peter
Published: November 2012

Benjamin B. Hickok was a twenty-year-old college junior when in 1934 he gained an impromptu interview with Martha Dickinson Bianchi while visiting the Emily Dickinson estate in Amherst. Bianchi, an editor and biographer of her famous aunt, and by then Dickinson's only living descendant, proved a lively and opinionated subject, offering insights that remain relevant to our understanding of the poet today. Benjamin Hickok went on to a long career as a professor at Michigan State University; this account of his talk with Bianchi, submitted at the time for a school assignment, was recently discovered among Hickok family papers and has been introduced and edited by Peter Schmitt.
Finding a Civic Voice: Latino Immigrant Youths’ Experiences in High School Social Studies
Authors: Callahan Rebecca , Obenchain Kathryn
Published: November 2012

Socialization into the dominant civic and political discourse lies at the heart of social studies. As they become proficient in the discourse of home and school, Latino immigrant youth demonstrate the potential to uniquely benefit from this socialization. This qualitative study explores ten Latino immigrant young adults’ perceptions of how their social studies experiences shaped their young adult civic selves. Participants internalized not only their parents’ high expectations for them, but also those of their teachers, highlighting the potentially instrumental role of schools in the civic fabric of the nation. In addition, the Latino young adults felt empowered by their social studies teachers via civic expectations and academic encouragement and perceived this empowerment to have facilitated the skill development necessary for later civic leadership. In closing, we reflect on immigrant students’ incorporation of the discourse of the dominant culture with that of the home to develop their own civic voices.
Predictors of Placement in Lower Level Versus Higher Level High School Mathematics
Authors: Archbald Doug , Farley-Ripple Elizabeth N.
Published: November 2012

Educators and researchers have long been interested in determinants of access to honors level and college prep courses in high school. Factors influencing access to upper level mathematics courses are particularly important because of the hierarchical and sequential nature of this subject and because students who finish high school with only lower level courses lack readiness for college and have severely diminished chances for admission to college. Our research analyzes a district-level transcript data set. We examine whether probabilities of enrollment in upper level mathematics courses in high school vary by demographic characteristics, before and after controlling for prior achievement. Before controlling for prior achievement, minority and low-income students have significantly lower odds of placement in upper level mathematics courses; after controlling for prior achievement, the disparities disappear.
When is Homework Worth the Time?: Evaluating the Association Between Homework and Achievement in High School Science and Math
Authors: Maltese Adam V. , Tai Robert H. , Fan Xitao
Published: November 2012

Even with the history of debate over the merits of homework, there are significant gaps in the research record regarding its benefit to students. The focus of this study is on the association between time spent on homework and academic performance in science and math by assessing survey and transcript data from two nationally representative samples of high school students collected in 1990 and 2002. Using multiple linear regressions and controlling for students’ background, motivation, and prior achievement, we investigated how much variance in science and math course grades and achievement test scores could be explained by time spent on homework in those classes. The results indicate that there is no consistent significant relationship between time spent on homework and grades, but a consistently positive significant relationship between homework and performance on standardized exams.
Exploring the Meaning African American Students Ascribe to Their Participation in High School Career Academies and the Challenges They Experience
Authors: Fletcher Edward Charles , Cox E. Daniel
Published: November 2012

Despite the historical mission of career academies to expand opportunities and engagement of minority students, particularly African American students, more recent curricular changes in the career academy model have increased the rigor of these types of programs. These new initiatives have undoubtedly resulted in a demographic shift with more White and Asian students participating in career academies while African American and Hispanic student enrollment is drastically decreasing. To that end, the purpose of this study was to explore the meaning African American students ascribed to their participation (or lack thereof) in career academies and the challenges they encountered. As such, the experiences of 15 African American high school students were explored using a phenomenological approach. The following themes were revealed: (a) Preparation for the Next Level ; (b) Less Time for School Activities ; (c) Not Just Going Through the Motions ; and (d) An Unrealized Connection with Core Academic Subjects. Implications for administrators, guidance counselors, parents, and teachers are articulated.
The Dichotomy of the Soul and Spirit in Shi'a Hadith
Authors: Daftari Abdulaziz
Published: November 2012

The common perception in the Islamic tradition is that there is no distinction between the soul and spirit. This article, however, argues otherwise on the basis of numerous quotations from the Hadith literature. The soul and spirit are described as having inclinations for material and immaterial matters, respectively. It is for this reason that the spirit seeks to guide the soul toward virtue and away from vice.
'Self-Honour' and 'Other-Esteem' in Shi'a Sacrifice
Authors: Babaei Habibollah
Published: November 2012

This article aims to resolve the contradiction between self-denying in self-sacrifice, and self-proving in self-honour, on the one hand, and the contradiction between self-honour and other-esteem on the other hand. In order to do this, I will emphasize two types of 'self' in Islamic theology: the 'figurative-self' that is inferior and individual, and the 'real-self' that is superior and societal. Self-denying in self-sacrifice refers to the figurative-self that is the exclusive self (not common with other human beings), while self-proving in self-honour refers to the real-self (that is inclusive so that its esteem requires other's esteem and vice versa). In concluding this paper I refer to the historical expression of self-sacrifice by Imam Husayn and his followers in Karbala to demonstrate the possibility of being self-sacrificed, self-honoured, and other-esteeming at the same time.
Al-Attas Revisited on the Islamic Understanding of Education
Authors: Noaparast Khosrow Bagheri
Published: November 2012

Al-Attas has been an important figure in the Islamisation of knowledge project. One of his original contributions has been to offer an Islamic account of education in terms of adab and ta'dib . He holds that the words commonly used to describe the Islamic understanding of education, tarbiyah and rububiyyah , are unable to do the job. This paper argues that not only is ta'dib not better than tarbiyah/rububiyyah for denoting the Islamic understanding of education but that it can only be subsumed under rububiyyah . This is because ta'dib , at best, refers to only the ethical and social aspects of education without all aspects of education.
Political Plots, Espionage, and a Shi‘a Text among the Moriscos
Authors: Cutillas José F.
Published: November 2012

This paper offers a new approach to understanding the Corónica y relaçión de la esclareçida deçendençia xarifa, a unique Shi‘a text from the last Spanish Muslim community in Tunisia. I argue that, in the light of recent analysis presented by Luis Bernabé, the Moriscos in Tunisia could have been working as spies for the Spanish monarchy. Were such a contention to be proven, it would have serious implications for our understanding of the relations between Spain and Persia in the seventeenth century.
Seeing Allah While Dreaming: A Comparison between Shi‘a and Sunni Beliefs
Authors: Pouresmaeil Ehsan
Published: November 2012

The two main branches of Islam have taken opposing stances on the possibility of seeing Allah in the dreaming state. While the dominant Sunni position has been open to the possibility, the dominant Twelver Shi‘a position has not. The difference between these two approaches has not always been recognised. In this study, therefore, both traditions are examined, particularly with reference to the Qur’an and Hadith. Mulla Sadra’s views are also discussed as the views of a key detractor from Shi‘a orthodoxy.
Malcolm X and Mohammad Mehdi: The Shi‘a Connection?
Authors: Morrow John Andrew
Published: November 2012

According to accepted knowledge, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam to embrace ‘orthodox’ Islam after his pilgrimage to Mecca. As a result of his contacts with Saudis and Egyptians, it was assumed that Malik Al-Shabazz had embraced Sunnism or Salafism. This study, however, suggests that Malcolm X was brought into mainstream Islam by Dr. Mohammad Taki Mehdi, an Iraqi Shi‘a. Not only did Dr. Mehdi make arrangements for Malcolm X’s pilgrimage, he appears to have acted as his spiritual and political mentor. On the basis of interviews with family and friends of the late Dr. Mehdi, it is suggested that the famous activist may have shared the story of Imam Husayn with his African American associate. If Malcolm X decided to follow in the footsteps of Imam Husayn, he could be considered a de-facto Shi‘a by some. At the very least, it would suggest that Malcolm was influenced by Shi‘ism.
Fadlallah and the Passing of Lebanon’s Last Najafi Generation
Authors: Browers Michaelle
Published: November 2012

This article reflects on what Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah represented during his lifetime and the significance of his death for Lebanese politics and society. I argue that Fadlallah’s death signals the passing of a generation of uniquely independent and authoritative Shi‘i cleric-intellectuals trained in Najaf. Fadlallah’s ability to think independently was not only revealed in the realm of politics (where his typically subtle stance on wilayat al-faqih was but one example), but also in his role as a modern mujtahid and the broader societal role he often played. Further, it is the second and third aspects – rather than any of the explicitly political stances Fadlallah took – that were so key in Fadlallah’s continuing relevance and significance for Shi‘i and Lebanese politics.
Thoughts on an Illustrated Copy of the Divan of Muhammad Khan Dashti from the 1270s (1853-1863)
Authors: Uluç Lale
Published: November 2012

Qajar painting is best known for its large images. These large images have generated most of the scholarly writing on Qajar figurative art. This was a natural outcome of the shift of emphasis from illustrated manuscripts that were the primary channel for the figurative arts of the Safavid era to life size paintings that were initiated by the Qajars. As a result, considerably more research is needed to understand the state of the arts of the book under Qajar rule. This paper focuses on a previously unpublished manuscript of the Divan of Muhammad Khan Dashti dated to the 1270s (1853-1863), which has thirty textual illustrations that can be divided into two distinct groups: the former showing a number of amorous couples, and the latter comprising of images of the Karbala incident. The discussion of the combination of the usual and the idiosyncratic found in these images aims to shed further light on the production and consumption of both manuscripts and figurative art in the Qajar era.
Baqir al-Sadr and the Islamic State: A Theory for 'Islamic Democracy'
Authors: Al-rikabi Jaffar
Published: November 2012

Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, one the most innovative Islamic thinkers of the last century, is renowned for his academic contributions to Islamic economics, jurisprudence, philosophy, politics, and theology, and for his activism against Saddam's tyrannical Ba'athist regime which ultimately cost him his life on 8 April 1980. Despite his pre-eminence, Sadr's political thought has been understudied and his conception of the 'Islamic state' is widely misunderstood. This article seeks to help fill this gap by analysing the key texts in which Sadr expounds his views on the Islamic state, placing each text in its politico-historical context. In the process, the article critiques the current literature, arguing that Sadr's thought is neither authoritarian nor liberal-democratic, but rather it is a type of constitutional democracy meriting the description 'Islamic democracy'.
Najaf and Iranian Politics: Analysing the Way the Hawzah of Najaf Influenced Iranian Politics between Two Revolutions
Authors: Samiei Mohammad
Published: November 2012

Najaf, as the most important centre of Shi'a religious authority, has been very influential in Iranian politics since the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. In this study a historical analysis of Najaf's political role is made during three periods: from the Constitutional Revolution to the end of the Qajar reign, under Reza Shah, and finally under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The political contributions of the 'ulama during these three periods are critically examined, as well as some of the consequences of their decisions. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of the 'ulama of Najaf taking on political roles are considered. It is concluded that although the institution of Shi'a leadership has been, and in the foreseeable future will be, among the most influential social and political networks in Iran, in order to improve its political contribution and to avoid its disadvantages, it needs to widen its political vision to include even non- fiqhi dimensions of polity.
Mt. Tambora, Climatic Changes, and China’s Decline in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Cao Shuji , Li Yushang , Yang Bin
Published: November 2012

This article first introduces the correlation between volcanism and global climatic abnormalities (commonly referred to as global cooling), with particular reference to the Tambora eruption in 1815. Recent case studies in China concerning this volcanic effect and climate changes in the nineteenth century are brought in to substantialize and revise some general statements previously made about China. These case studies cover various regions, including the Yangzi Delta, Yunnan, the Jiaodong Peninsula, and the North China Sea area, and examine a wide range of topics such as floods, famines, economic recession, crop patterns (including those of New World crops), and Pacific herring catches. Finally, this article provides suggestions for future studies of the Tambora effects in China and proposes to bring climate into the specific temporal span of the decline of the Qing Empire.
The Global Spread of Neoliberalism and China’s Pension Reform since 1978
Authors: Hu Aiqun
Published: November 2012

This article treats China’s pension reform as part of the global spread of neoliberalism, arguing that China’s pension reform was a process of the triumph of neoliberal models based on individual accounts. Chinese policymakers emulated or learned from the ILO social insurance in the 1980s, Singapore’s central provident funds until 1995, and the World Bank’s model since 1995, and the national forces dominated that process until 1995, when the World Bank established itself as the driving force. China’s pension reform has been far from successful, as shown in the difficulties in funding the individual accounts and the issue of fragmented coverage. But the neoliberal model will continue to exist, largely due to the fact that once adopted it is hard to abolish, and the continual compromises among policymakers.
Challenges, (Non-) Responses, and Politics: A Review of Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600–1850
Authors: Vries Peer
Published: November 2012

This review is an analysis of Prasannan Parthasarathi’s explanation of the economic divergence in the long eighteenth century between Britain and India as presented in his recent book. It focuses on the question of why Britain industrialized first instead of India. Parthasarathi’s claim that Britain’s industrialization was a response to two challenges that were absent in India—global competition with other textile producers, in this case India, and a wood shortage—is critically discussed, as is his claim that the state played a fundamental role in the rise of Britain’s industry. The review ends with expressing doubts about Parthasarathi’s thesis that there would not have existed a unique scientific and technological culture in Britain or more broadly Europe.
The Global View of History in China
Authors: Xincheng Liu
Published: November 2012

This is an attempt to trace and contextualize Chinese scholars’ response—either positive or negative—to the “West-imported” concept of a “global view of history” after its emergence in China more than two decades ago. It also introduces how world historians in China are consciously employing this “global view of history” to compile their own world history textbooks, a practice that gave rise to a serious concern about world history methodologies.
Fiscal and Financial Preconditions for the Formation of Developmental States in the West and the East from the Conquest of Ceuta (1415) to the Opium War (1839)
Authors: O’Brien Patrick Karl
Published: November 2012

For centuries before the Great Divergence the priorities of Eurasian states had not been with the specification and protection of property rights, the reduction of transaction costs, the extension of markets, the facilitation of competition or any of the other institutional prerequisites specified for Smithian growth in premodern economies. Their overwhelming concern seems to have been with their own formation in contexts of intensifying geopolitical and imperial violence, attacks from nomads, as well as internal rivalries for control over resources with warlords, local gentries, aristocratic magnates, urban oligarchies, ecclesiastical prelates, and other contenders of power within their own borders. Some comprehension of when, how, and why some states constructed the kind of autonomous, centralized, and effective governments with administrative capacities required to support and sustain institution required for long-term economic growth seems to be a precondition for the initiation of a discourse for a global history of state formation. The aims of this paper are to survey the modern secondary literature covering both historical and theoretical approaches concerned with connections between the formation and constitutions of states and the construction of institutions for the assessment and collection of taxes. For global history its conclusion is that in retrospect the extensive territorial empires in both the Orient (and the Occident?) look suboptimal as political units for the promotion of economic growth.
The Global and the Local: Problematic Dynamics of the Triangular Trade in Early Modern Manila
Authors: Tremml Birgit M.
Published: November 2012

Toward the end of the sixteenth century, Spanish Manila became a pivot for intercontinental exchange in silver and silk. When studying early modern Manila, its multilayered character has often been overlooked. Urban and economic developments were not only based on Chinese and Japanese private merchants’ contributions but also imbedded in the complex history of Asia’s global integration and the Castilian Overseas Empire’s involvement in various international affairs. The present article revisits these global and local connections by highlighting the impact of triangular encounters between powerful premodern states on the short-lived global significance of the Manila market.
Beyond "Home Identity"?: Immigrant Voices in Contemporary Greek Fiction
Authors: Gotsi Georgia
Published: November 2012

The unprecedented influx of immigrants in Greece in the last decades has led to a proliferation of fictions of migration. The emerging stories of migrants, refugees, and repatriates constitute a privileged field for the expression and reconfiguration of the problems created by the explosive presence of cultural difference within the nation's supposedly homogeneous society. Recent texts by Boulotis, Faïs, Firtinidou, and Hatzimoisiadis pose questions of identity, belonging, and democracy from the perspective of migrant characters, who articulate in their first-person narratives the experience of discrimination and victimization suffered in the host society. Reading these texts presents perplexing issues: does first-person or monologic narration intended to portray reality authentically, to criticize oppressive practices, and to generate empathy for the suffering immigrant contribute to the vision of a constructive intercultural existence? Do such invented self-accounts of experience suggest a conceptualization of immigrant characters as empowered subjects? Do they allow for conceptions of identity as multiple and provisional or do they reproduce essentialist notions rooted in the national culture?
The Drawbacks of Philhellenism in mid-Victorian Britain: The Case of the Philhellenic Committee of 1863
Authors: Hionidis Pandeleimon
Published: November 2012

The Philhellenic Committee was a body formed in 1863 in London with the explicit objective of promoting the "Greek interest" in Britain. Its short life and limited appeal highlights why modern Greece and the Greeks failed to catch the imagination of the British public in the way the Italians and the Polish managed to do in the same period. In the early 1860s, British philhellenism—that is, interest in the affairs of modern Greece and advocacy of the "Greek cause"—should be accounted for within the framework of liberal concern for freedom and, consequently, in the context of British interest in continental nationalities, which affected and mobilized wider sections of the middle and working classes. In this context, Greece presented drawbacks that made it less attractive to British interests than other continental nations: the Greeks of the independent kingdom did not suffer under foreign oppression and could not provide the public with an emblematic leader, while Greeks in Britain excelled in commercial transactions, not in political agitation.
Science, Cosmopolitanism, and the Greek Landscape: The Cruises of the Revue Générale des Sciences Pures et Appliquées to the Eastern Mediterranean, 1897-1912
Authors: della Dora Veronica
Published: November 2012

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the blurred contours of the mythical landscapes of Greece acquired sharpness and definition in Western travelers' accounts and visual representations. They were experienced from the mobile elevated platform of steamboats and filtered through the lens of new visual technologies. Traversed by a new category of organized "scientific cruisers," the Greek landscape was a repository of universal values as well as a site of tensions: between a mythical ancient past and a geopolitically dynamic present; between poetic imagination and "clear" scientific observation; between land and sea. Sailing between these tensions, a new cosmopolitan community took shape. This, however, ultimately remained a western elite sailing at a distance from contemporary Greece and its people. It remained a metaphor for ephemeral utopian visions-like the idealized dioramic landscape through which it moved.
Translations and Adaptations of C. P. Cavafy in Albanian
Authors: Goldwyn Adam J.
Published: November 2012

C. P. Cavafy became an important model for Albanian poets during and immediately after the dissolution of the Communist regimes in Albania and the former Yugoslavia. Cavafy was first introduced to Albanian writers through a series of translations. These translations inspired a variety of original Albanian poems which emulated Cavafy's historical and nostalgic themes and poignant symbols: Moikom Zeqo's "Anna Comnena," Bardhyl Londo's "Ithaca," and Lindita Arapi's "Walls," for example, all adapt Cavafy's poems of the same names. Cavafy's poems ground the poems' symbolism in a specifically Hellenic historical, political, and cultural context; the Albanian analogs re-contextualize these truths to suit the unique context of post-Communist Albania and Kosovo.
Relics of a Library: How C. P. Cavafy's Library Survived through Auction, Sales, Book Loans, and Relocations
Authors: Karampini-Iatrou Michaela
Published: November 2012

Cavafy's library offers readers a snapshot of the poet's reading life. The history of the formation and dissolution of his library provides researchers with invaluable archival tools. An examination of the files of the auction of his books that took place in Alexandria in October 1943 gives us a general snapshot of his library. The list with the English books prepared by Rika and Alekos Singopoulos for the unsuccessful sale to the Alexandrian millionaire Oswald Finney gives us a more accurate picture of the books that Cavafy had in his library very close to the time of his death. The list of the books Alekos Singopoulos gave to Michalis Peridis for the preparation of Cavafy's biography completes the missing books inventory. All these lists and an overview of the surviving books provide researchers with a sense of Cavafy's library and an appreciation of the efforts that were made for its preservation.
"Who Will Help Me to Get Rid of this Man?": Grigoris Lambrakis and the Non-Aligned Peace Movement in Post-Civil War Greece: 1951-1964
Authors: Gkotzaridis Evi
Published: November 2012

Grigoris Lambrakis's message of unity and his idea of a non-aligned peace movement were both original and subversive for a Greek people still carrying the scars of the Civil War and still deeply dichotomized between Left and Right, Left and Center, and Left and Left. Lambrakis's ardent mobilization for peace, amnesty, and democracy stemmed from his acute understanding that peace and democracy were from the start consubstantial, and could not be held apart. He knew what domestic and geopolitical considerations demanded, and urgently called for the creation of a Greek non-aligned and politically-inclusive peace movement. The timing proved him right, as a younger generation—born during World War II and the Civil War—was ready to listen and follow his bold example. His murder caused a seismic shock in and outside of Greece: it exacerbated internecine divisions and simultaneously uncovered a potential for meaningful cross-party dialogue that had not yet been harnessed. His murder also showed how volatile, complex, and contradictory Greek society was during Constantine Karamanlis's first Premiership.
Dissection or Narrative Surgery?: Medical Inquiry and Writer Confidences in Fin-de-siècle French Magazines
Authors: Emery Elizabeth
Published: November 2012

In 1896 Doctor Edouard Toulouse published the first volume of his Enquête médico-psychologique sur les rapports de la supériorité intellectuelle avec la névropathie (Médico-psychological Investigation into the Links Between Intellectual Superiority and Nevropathy). This work followed in the tradition of other nineteenth-century European scientists interested in the links between genius and neurosis (Jacques Moreau de Tours, Cesare Lombroso, and Max Nordau, among others). However, where earlier scientists practiced a “historical method” reliant on biographical anecdotes and literary excerpts, Toulouse sought to proceed by “direct observation,” painstakingly measuring fingerprints and body mass, collecting urine samples, and submitting his subjects to a barrage of intelligence tests. Much to the surprise of the reading public for whom the book was excerpted, the objects of Toulouse’s study were not criminals or patients, but famous novelists, poets, sculptors, painters, composers, and scientists. The 1896 volume was dedicated entirely to Emile Zola who had spent a year undergoing rigorous weekly tests. In this essay I question the seemingly odd complacency with which leading figures of the day agreed to subject themselves to such invasive and time-consuming poking and prodding. I place Toulouse’s study against the social context of other more mass market studies, “confessions,” and surveys of the 1880s and 1890s, before arguing that the writers’ decision to participate in studies like those of Toulouse was not simply a question of contributing to science, as Zola suggested, but also a self-serving attempt to reconfigure public image.
Forget Waterloo
Authors: Mahuzier Brigitte
Published: November 2012

“Oubliez Waterloo,” these two words, written very large over the reproduction of Baron Charles von Steuben's romantic painting of Napoleon surrounded by a group of adoring soldiers on what looks like a battlefield, formed the motto of a 2007 advertisement campaign by Eurostar, the cross-Channel train system, as it replaced London’s Waterloo Station by Saint Pancras Station, as terminus of the London-Paris journey. Disseminated through the major French magazines and newspapers and posted over the main entrance of the Gare du Nord in Paris, this motto encouraged French travelers to forget an obsession with its past military splendor and live in a post-Waterloo era, the peaceful and exciting era of easy shopping and convenient traveling. But at the same time as Eurostar passengers were encouraged to “forget Waterloo,” the slogan as well as the painting (which is not representing Waterloo but the return of Napoleon from Elba) reminded them of the greatness of the event. Thus the advertisement was cleverly playing both on the banality of the exhortation (now it is time to live in a world of peace and friendly commercial exchanges) and the perverse and paradoxical attachment of the French for a battle that was their “Waterloo,” that signed the end of the legitimate power of their army as inheritor of the Revolution. This article analyzes the relation between defeat and narrative, “the strange translatory process,” according to which, “the French (…) managed to make an epic out of the (Waterloo) defeat” (John Keegan, The Face of Battle ).
Humoring the Republic: Marcel Schwob's Archeologies of Laughter and Journalistic Culture
Authors: Zachmann Gayle
Published: November 2012

Marcel Schwob’s Lettres parisiennes (Parisian Letters) reveal an engaged journalist who questions not only law and order, but also their perversion: “La France a été le pays de la liberté. Encore peu d’années, et la liberté ira se réfugier ailleurs. (…) Il faut qu’on y prenne garde; ce n’est pas une République où nous vivons” (France used to be the country of freedom. A few more years and liberty will seek refuge elsewhere. We must be vigilant; this is not a republic we live in) ( Lettres parisiennes 1077). But it is not only through these “dépêches” that Schwob challenged established order. As literary critic and social scientist, in 1894, Schwob mockingly declared that laughter was bound to disappear. Schwob’s biologizing account of laughter reflects how the physical sciences became a lens to study social practices. His text, “Le Rire” (Laughter), presents itself as both scientific study and historical document. In “Le Rire,” Schwob satirically mobilizes the figure of archeology to articulate a questioning of artifacts and the discourses that would interpret them, as well as how inscriptions—in this case textual monuments—may relate to or make social reality. I will argue that Schwob’s “Le Rire” is a seminal text, and that his literary work, known for its extraordinary erudition, attests to a deployment of destabilizing journalistic humor where erudition, education and the new democratic orator may meet.
The return of the undead: the body politic in Le colonel Chabert
Authors: Roulin Jean-Marie
Published: November 2012

In Le colonel Chabert , Balzac tells the story of a revenant, since this officer in Napoleon’s army returns from the dead fallen at Leipzig. The novel goes beyond this singular episode and tells indeed a collective story with, at its heart, the notion that post-revolutionary France is built from characters returning from foreign lands, like Chabert, of course, but also his rival, the Count Ferraud who returned from emigration and married the woman supposed to be the colonel’s widow. However, Chabert is above all a body confronting other bodies, dead or alive, flesh or bones, and through these bodies, their metamorphoses, their wounds and their scars, Balzac tells the tale of his political vision of the Restoration. Most notably, the scar across Chabert’s skull is a metaphor for the transaction with his former wife, but also for the alliance between Bonapartists and Legitimists, both doomed to failure. Through a duel between two revenants, this novel presents returning as the defining trait of Restoration society.
Flirting with the young lady: Albéric Cahuet's Au jardin des vierges (In the Garden of Maidens)
Authors: Pierssens Michel
Published: November 2012

In his 1904 novel Au jardin des vierges , Albéric Cahuet takes up where the celebrated and infamous Les demi- vierges (1894) by Marcel Prévost had not ventured to tread. The turn-of-the-century period was obsessed with the seemingly irreversible disappearance of the young lady, ever more emancipated and rebelling against the rules of a patriarchal society which allowed her to become a woman only once married. Cahuet seizes on the contradictory state of desires in modern young ladies and conventional society and imagines the provoking character of a writer who preaches the complete freedom for young unmarried women to experiment with flirting in the most audacious way. In his supposed novel, the heroine transcribes every day her most erotic sensations and desires in “the most suggestive of confessions.” Au jardin des vierges , in a clever turn of fiction, sets the stage for a complex game of seduction between the writer Norville and a delightful maiden who wants to apply his declared transgressive principles. The young lady has become the ultimate femme fatale . Cahuet manages to create a well-written story (mostly in vivid dialogic form) on the basis of the anxiety-ridden moral and social aporias typical of the period. His novel might be the very last testimony to a vanishing human type, ever so present in much of the fiction from the two previous centuries. Shortly after, Proust’s “jeunes filles en fleurs” (1919) will have escaped for good from the constraints that made their predecessors’ lives so dangerous and their charms so tantalizing.
Of Dignity and Ridicule: Virility from Mosca to Muffat
Authors: Stivale Charles J.
Published: November 2012

In an era (ours) in which the (current) symbol of male potency may be found in small blue pills, one can rightly muse about the line between maintaining dignity and risking ridicule in the domain of male virility. In order to so muse, I propose to look briefly at constructions of masculinity and virility in several figurations of the troisième âge in nineteenth-century French fiction. I suggest that just as our contemporary trope of virility has taken on particular modes of expression and risks of ridicule, the desiring impulsion that both makes and undermines male virility and dignity is a subject in nineteenth century French fiction that has been taken as a given rather than problematized fully. Focusing on two characters among many likely examples—the count Mosca from Stendhal's La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma), and the count Muffat from Zola's Nana —, I consider briefly how these figurations crisscross the fine line between dignity and ridicule, and to what narrative ends.
"The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful": Reflections on a Hidden Motif in Literature
Authors: Duclert Vincent
Published: November 2012

In the 19th century, women’s undergarments certainly remained an instrument of powerful strategies for alienating women, in particular through the coercion of bodies by the imposition of the corset. It is nonetheless possible to perceive in the late 19th century and the Belle Epoque a hidden motif apparent in the use of feminine lingerie, as shown by recent scientific research and by an informed reinterpretation of literary works of the period. Such is the growing reflection upon an object that crystallizes often contradictory points of view. For in this object, the beauty of lacework or ribbons can signify all at once good or evil, wonder or pain, and it could throw light, a century later, on social situations that create an unexpected discourse on love, sex and equality.
The Bibliothèque Nationale and Cultural Productions of Scholarship
Authors: McCall Anne E.
Published: November 2012

Libraries conserve cultural heritage, communicate information, and support discovery; as a result, they find themselves central to debates over relationships that they should foster between readers and their collections. Technological innovations nourish paradoxical reactions, both encouraging us to fetishize borderless communities based on verbal modes of being and spawning resistance. I argue that the imminent fading of a certain library culture is related not only to our fears of manipulation and technological failure but also to our allegiance to architectural and material search engines that played an important role in the cultural production of scholarship as we know it and that were enshrined in a previous era of significant library transformation, the nineteenth century. Major debates accompanied well-publicized efforts to provide France’s premier library, the Bibliothèque Nationale, with an adequate physical infrastructure, facilitate research through the production of comprehensive catalogues, and orchestrate the signature activities that occur in libraries, namely reading and writing. This reflection supports the contention that our identification with certain fading forms of library culture ignores our most striking commonalities with this earlier period: experiences of temporal disjuncture and simultaneous distress over the prospect of infinite consumption and production, frustration at our inability to order knowledge, and fear of potential loss in social status. In more clearly recognizing ourselves and our fields as contingent cultural products, we free ourselves to imagine ways in which the library transformations might change the cultural production of scholars and beyond, create conditions conducive to the reinvention of scholarship.
Naked, but Hairy: Women and Misogyny in Fin de Siècle Representations
Authors: Gaillard Françoise
Published: November 2012

At the end of the 19th century, women are everywhere: in painting, in literature, in decorative art but there is a notable difference from other periods in that they are an obsessive presence, well documented in Mireille Dottin-Orsini’s book, Cette femme qu’ils disent fatale (This Woman They Call Fatal) . Never has there been such an obsession about the feminine, attested in medical works, essays in scientific psychology, treatises on moral philosophy. Rather than calling it an obsession with the feminine, we should speak of a “nightmare of the feminine,” since it is a succession of devil-worshipping witches, a parade that includes Salome, Heriodias, Judith, Delilah, Messalina, Medea, without forgetting the various Omphales, Cleopatras, Queens of Sheba and Helens of Troy, who all used their malevolent powers to destroy men. Myths, legends, and religious history all provide numerous figures to embody the fantasy of the fear of the feminine. Indeed, women are omnipresent in these representations, but mostly incarnated as a sex that fascinates and terrifies, attracts and repulses, worries, upsets and disturbs. The danger is expressed everywhere, a silent attractor impelling men toward its dark maw.
Sex and Spleen: Fetish in Baudelaire's "Les Bijoux"
Authors: Stephens Sonya
Published: November 2012

In Baudelaire and Freud , Leo Bersani argues that “woman exists for Baudelaire, not in order to satisfy his desires, but in order to produce them,” describing the “fantasy-machine” at work in Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil). This article develops Bersani’s argument in order to propose that there is evidence not only of fantasy but of fetish in Baudelairean desire, and that, although the term was not coined until 1887-8, fetishism offers a psycho-sexual construct for understanding both the image-making of these poems and the autoeroticism (and depletion) of poetic creativity itself. With reference to “Les Bijoux” (The Jewels), I argue that this fetishism both derives from and participates in a visual culture, as well as a literary one, playing out the symbolism of the “bijou” in both sexual and textual ways. While the poem might represent a transpositional impulse on the part of Baudelaire—hence Pirard’s description of it as “une peinture lascive” (a lewd painting)—it has also subsequently invited illustration. The interpretive slippage that occurs in such illustrated editions draws attention to persistent fetishistic themes, and to the way in which these become visual phenomena, circulating in a constantly evolving culture of desire. While it is possible—and, indeed, plausible—to read “Les Bijoux” as a sexual (genital) encounter, examining it as a fetish strategy brings into sharp focus the spectatorship that such visual phenomena imply, as well as the power of the imagination to transform the erotic signifier into the desiring text—and image.