bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Athikte's Voice: Listening to the Voice of the Dancer in Paul Valéry's “L'âme et la danse”
Authors: Kozel Susan P.
Published: May 2006

”Dance, dear body, do not think,” the message attributed to the serpent in Paul Valéry's poem “La jeune parque,” lends biblical connotations to the duality between body and mind, between dance and philosophy. A similar duality between movement and thought is found in Valéry's “L'âme et la danse” (1921), a mock Platonic dialogue in which three Greek philosophers respond to a group of dancers performing in front of them. In “L'âme et la danse” the action unfolds between the eminent philosophical figures of Socrates, Eryximachus and Phaedrus, and Athikte, a young woman dancer. More than a dialogue; it is a drama through which philosophy confronts dance, in which the philosophers, who are men, confront the dancers, who are women, and across the course of which the dancers are voiceless.

In this essay, I explore a confrontation between philosophy and dance through the tension between the roles Valéry accords to men and women in philosophical discourse. Women dance, men think. Freeing the dancer from the fetters of philosophical thought is akin to liberating women from the need to bother themselves with intellectual matters. Athikte, as the voice of dance, introduces an entirely different range of philosophical issues from those which, on the surface, animate the dialogue. But, above all, Athikte illustrates how an unproductive tension between philosophy and dance can be intensified through the uncritical preservation of gendered roles within philosophical discourse.
Source Materials for the Study of French Dance (1643–1793)
Authors: Schlundt Christena L.
Published: May 2006

This paper announces a forthcoming bibliography for dance scholars and details some of the major sources it will list. The publication originated as a bibliography for a course on French music and dance taught at the University of California, Riverside, by Dr. Judith Schwartz, Wendy Hilton (guest artist), and the author. It has since taken on larger dimensions, including the cooperation of another scholar, Dr. Meredith Little of Stanford University. The collaborators sought to develop a definitive bibliography on French dance of the period 1643-1793.

The bibliography will be published by Joseph Boonin, Inc., in the series Music Indexes and Bibliographies, George R. Hill, General Editor. The full title is French Court Dance and Dance Music during the Reigns of Louis XIV-Louis XVI: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources. Part I contains printed and manuscript collections of notated chorégraphies, and an index of musical incipits for notated chorégraphies. Part II contains writings about dance and dance notation. Part III contains writings about dance music, with a selective list of composers of dance music in the French manner.
Men as Women: Female Dance Symbolism in Walbiri Men's Rituals
Authors: Wild Stephen A.
Published: May 2006

Dance in a particular cultural tradition may be analyzed from any of several different perspectives, which may be classified in two categories. In the first, analysis may be structural or stylistic. By structure I mean the set of relationships among discrete movements characteristic of a dance tradition; it is similar to grammar in language (cf. Woodard 1976). Style refers to the general qualities of a dance tradition or classes of the tradition: tempo, energy level, parts of the body used, characteristic number of dancers, smoothness or abruptness of movements, body decorations and objects manipulated in the dance (cf. Lomax 1968:222-273). Although this category is concerned with analysis of dance qua dance, it may justifiably be argued that a kind of meaning inheres in pure structure and style, and therefore that their analysis is an explication of meaning.

Other ways of analyzing dance in a cultural tradition approach meaning in a different way. Meaning is sought in the relationship between structure and style on one hand and other aspects of the culture on the other.
Anxiety, Creativity, and Dance Performance
Authors: Manley Mary-Elizabeth , Wilson Vietta Elin
Published: May 2006

This study proposes to investigate how anxiety is related to the dance experience and to a person's creative behaviour within that experience. A number of assumptions regarding the creation, improvisation, composition, and performance of dance have centered around the relationship of anxiety to the dance experience. These assumptions point to anxiety as being integral in the creative behaviour of dancers and as being a vital ingredient for good performance. Others suggest that the dance experience is a medium of expression which reduces tension or anxiety. (See Barron 1972:96–97 and Leith 1972:246.)

This exploratory study looks at the creative potential that an individual brings to a simulated studio composition session. The study also investigates the relationship of this creative potential to dancers' self-reported anxiety and their creativity in performing the composition.
Bronislava Nijinska and the Polish Ballet, 1937-1938: Missing Chapter of the Legacy
Authors: Arkin Lisa C.
Published: May 2006

Bronislava Nijinska arrived in Warsaw during June of 1937 to accept the post of ballet mistress and choreographer for the Polish Ballet. She created a company, premiered five choreographies, and within four months brought the Polish Ballet to acclaim by capturing the Grande Prix award at the 1937 Paris International Exposition of Art and Technology Applied to Modern Life. Although her work for the Polish Ballet was prolific and significant, it had an early and unanticipated finale; Nijinska's three-year contract was prematurely terminated by the company's administration following her first year as artistic director. Little evidence remains to document this year of intense creativity and commitment. Unaware that she would not return to Poland after her first year, she left many of her personal records in Warsaw during the summer of 1938. The 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany resulted in the subsequent destruction of numerous precious source materials, including the choreographic notes, musical scores, and costumes of Nijinska's ballets.
Dancers, Workers and Bees in the Choreography of Doris Humphrey
Authors: Graff Ellen
Published: May 2006

Doris Humphrey's deep humanistic concerns, as stated in dances such as New Dance and Passacaglia, and her dedication to the group as the most essential element of choreography might have allied her with those enthusiastic and vociferous dancers in the 1930s who were dedicated to effecting social change through movement. But although her image of a perfect society would seem to echo the visions of social equality promised by the new Soviet Union, visions which deeply influenced the work of many artists on the political left, she was not readily welcomed by the leftist contingent in dance. In part this was the result of Humphrey's ambivalence about the creative role of the group and her understanding of the singular nature of the artistic process. In part it was the result of her interest in abstraction and her disinterest in more concrete depictions of reality. Humphrey's approach, while visionary, was not essentially political because it did not deal with the “real” world. Writing about New Dance she described an idealized world, “where each person has a clear and harmonious relationship to his fellow beings” (1). The community in New Dance was an imagined community, perfect because it was not real, perfect precisely because it was removed from the passions and imperfections of 1930s America. This article explores the role of the group in articulating Humphrey's social vision and places it alongside experiments in group choreography by leftist dancers during this period.
Shakers in Cyberspace: Electronic Resources and the Bibliography of Dance
Authors: Edsall Mary E.
Published: May 2006

Research in the performing arts to a greater degree than other disciplines relies upon literature that crosses and resides within many other disciplines. Researching dance in particular can become a rather interwoven process. Not only is the literature of dance laid across the landscape of the Library of Congress subject headings, but its very subject scope often evolves within other disciplines. Research in dance is environmental and ephemeral, with much of the valuable information found in primary sources as well as in secondary and tertiary sources. When looking at the bibliography of dance as a research inquiry, the direction of the search cannot be narrow. Often, the scope of such research will evolve, taking the researcher circui-tously, but intellectually, around the course of the various disciplines in the arts and the humanities, and the social and physical sciences as well. Moreover, such research requires locating different formats of information, found within a variety of bibliographic structures and searching environments.

By utilizing the bibliographic search techniques developed in the Dance Heritage Coalition's workshop, “Choreographing Your Search” (1) bibliographic research in dance can be more fully explored and its findings more easily displayed than through more traditional library research methodology. The purpose of the workshop “Choreographing Your Search” is to provide a basic and general introduction to available on-line resources that can lead to information sources and materials relevant to dance and dance history.
The Green Table–sources of a classic
Authors: Siegel Marcia B.
Published: May 2006

The Green Table is unique on our stages. In the late 20th century no one is dancing anything quite like it. This is not only because of its age–many ballets are older but look modern. Dancers almost unconsciously speak in the idiom of their time, steadily and imperceptibly polishing the patina off old artifacts to keep them fresh. I think even in well-preserved ballets there is much that is not prescribed, many expressive choices that aren't even acknowledged. When a dancer learns a role, he or she tries to accomodate to the steps, to own them. Most often, the steps end up accomodating to the dancer. They end up looking contemporary, whatever their origin.

The Green Table is an exception. Its production style and its dance idiom are attached to the late-expressionist period, that remote phase of cultural history between the great wars, so earnest in its innocence and anger, its fears and its ironies. Because of his particular method of fitting image to action, Kurt Jooss gave us a document that insists on telling us about its time, even as it reflects into our own.

The goal of expressionistic art, literature, and music was to use emotion and memory as a conduit to more universal feelings. Unlike the Romantics, to whom they were related, the expressionists did not view their art solely as a personal outcry. Expressionism nearly always had a spiritual component. This took the direction not of personal uplift or ecstasy, but of a surge toward the cosmos. Expressionists wanted to know and dramatize their connections with nature, with archeological time, with mystery and magic, and with other human beings living in their own time and place. Early expressionism unleashed a chaotic, anarchic freedom that often looked like madness. After the real trauma of World War I, artists began to draw back from those limitless, destabilized, early visions, into the safety of more rational, formal structures.
Technique and Autonomy in the Development of Art: A Case Study in Ballet
Authors: Hammond Sandra N. , Hammond Phillip E.
Published: May 2006

Comparison is the basis of theory. To know a thing is to know what it is not, and to theorize is therefore to compare a thing with many other things, including the thing itself at earlier stages, if the theorizing is about how the thing develops. The more “abstract” the theory, the greater is the range of things that can be compared—the more phenomena, in other words, the theory embraces.

The above paragraph is our way of warning the reader that, while we offer a theoretical perspective on the development of ballet, we spend most of our pages introducing an abstract way of making comparisons–comparisons pertinent not only to the differences between contemporary and earlier ballet but also to the differences between ballet and other artistic endeavors. The publication of this essay in a dance journal is justified by our concluding pages, therefore, but it is our hope that not just dance theorists will profit from (and add to) our analysis, but so also will persons of a theoretical bent interested in any of the arts.

One more word of preliminary explanation. A decade ago we published an essay in the Journal of Social History that offered a radically sociological interpretation of the development of ballet. Our article challenged conventional accounts of ballet history that charted the course of ballet as chiefly a product of its dominant performances and personalities.
References to Dance in Fifteenth-Century Italian Sacre Rappresentazioni
Authors: Smith A. William
Published: May 2006

Fostered to celebrate lives of saints, apostles, or other biblical characters, liturgical drama was popular throughout Europe at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance. In Italy, these religious dramas were called sacre rappresentazioni; in England, miracles; in France, mystères; and in German, Fastnachtspiele. Sizeable collections from diverse countries, such as the English Coventry mysteries written mostly in 1468, are available for study in modern editions. These dramas were often performed at various cities during civic holidays. For instance, on the birthday of John the Baptist, the patron saint of Florence, sacre rappresentazioni celebrating events of his life were performed at designated places in the city. The religious dramas were also performed during state or private festivities, such as visits of important clergy or rulers, or wedding celebrations. Productions of these dramas were often staged during the carnival season. Sometimes they were performed by confraternities at specific churches that wanted to celebrate their patron saints, or by guilds. Sometimes these dramas were performed at a single area and other times they were simultaneously staged, and then performed as a cycle. They could be performed on the ground, on raised stages, or on pageant wagons. The form generally has a strict rhyme scheme, and earlier dramas contain fewer stage directions than later ones.
The Afro-American Transformation of European Set Dances and Dance Suites
Authors: Szwed John F. , Marks Morton
Published: May 2006

It is well acknowledged that the court dances which developed in Europe from the seventeenth century onward spread to the rural areas of Europe and to the new world. What has not been properly recognized is that these dances — the quadrille, the cotillion, the contradance and the like — were taken up by Afro-Americans in North and South America and the West Indies and were modified and adapted to local cultural circumstances. In many cases — especially in the West Indies — they continue to be found today. Yet as similar as these dances may look or sound, their functions are not always necessarily the same as those of their European sources. At one extreme, they were “Africanized” for sacred purposes; at the other, they were re-formed and became the basis of a new world popular culture. An example of the former occurs on the island of Montserrat.

There country dance orchestras made up of various combinations of fife, fiddle, concertina or accordion, triangle, and two drums known as the woowoo and the babala (or babla) play for social dancing, but the same music is also used for inducing possession on other occasions, called “jombee dances.” On these latter occasions quadrille dance rhythms are intensified and gradually “Africanized” in order that individuals may become possessed and convey the messages of the spirits.
Robert Ellis Dunn: Personal Stories In Motion
Authors: Bélec Danielle Marilyn
Published: May 2006

The late Robert Ellis Dunn (1928–1996) made a vital contribution to the maturation of modern dance in the twentieth century as a master teacher of improvisation and choreography. His pedagogy in both the professional and academic milieux reinforced interdisciplinary associations between dance and related disciplines in the arts and humanities, and helped situate dance as a science within a theoretical framework worthy of scholarly study. The following article is a study of the principles and pedagogy that Dunn engaged in as a master teacher of improvisation and choreography for nearly forty years.

I first met Dunn in 1981 at the Laban Institute of Movement Studies in New York and in 1982, I worked as his teaching assistant at the Dance Notation Bureau in New York and at the University of California Summer School of Dance in Long Beach. During the six-week summer dance intensive in California, I assisted and performed in two events directed by Dunn: Top, a structured improvisation for nine dancers, and Pivot/Delay, a choreographic process for twenty-two dancers (1).
A Study of the Relationships between Teacher Behaviors and Student Performance on a Spatial Kinesthetic Awareness Test
Authors: Minton Sandra , McGill Karen
Published: May 2006

Dance teacher behaviors have been studied for many years in an attempt to describe what these teachers do in the classroom. One method of describing dance teacher behaviors is to place the behaviors in categories or classes (Gray 1983; Gray 1984a; Skrinar 1986; Skrinar and Moses 1988; Minton 1992; Davenport 1993). Researchers have also attempted to describe dance teacher behaviors by drawing relationships between one behavior category and another. This has been accomplished through the use of proportions, patterns or domain analysis (Lunt 1974; Lord 1981/82; Gray 1984b). More recently, dance teacher behaviors were analyzed by dividing the task presentations into distinct moments: the set-up, presentation, and transition to execution (Lord, Chayer and Girard 1995). In addition, some investigators preferred to classify dance teacher behaviors by describing the type of imagery used during the instruction process (Overby 1990; Overby 1991/92; Minton 1996). Finally, the case study has been used to describe and classify the behaviors of a single dance teacher.
Participation Motives in Relation to Background and Involvement Variables Among Finnish Non-Professional Dancers
Authors: Nieminen Pipsa
Published: May 2006

Different dance forms attract different people. Dancers involved in folk dance, ballroom dance, ballet, and modern dance differ in both their background and participation profiles (Nieminen 1997) and in their reasons for participating in dance (Nieminen 1998). In Finland, the 1980s can be considered a golden age in the field of dance education. It was the decade that at long last saw the start of university-level and vocational dance education in the country. At the same time students of physical education were given the opportunity to specialize in dance pedagogy. The new Finnish Opera House in Helsinki also generated a great deal of publicity for dance in general. All this gave impetus to a demand for qualified dance teachers and increased the number of people involved in art dance. Since the 1970s, folk dance has also become more popular than in previous years and today there are many innovative folk dance choreographers who want to see folk dance not only as the transmission of tradition but also as a theater-art form. The latest changes to take place in the field of folk and ballroom dance are partly due to the new four-year program for folk and ballroom dance instructors offered by the Oulu Conservatory of Music.
The Problem of Counsel in Mum and the Sothsegger
Authors: Ferguson Arthur B.
Published: May 2006

The two verse fragments edited in 1936 under the title Mum and the Sothsegger have already proved useful to the historian of ideas and institutions. In 1939, Helen M. Cam made very good use of them to illustrate the relation of English members of parliament to their constituencies. More recently, Ruth Mohl, who followed the editors in considering them parts of a single poem, placed them in relation to the more formal aspects of medieval political thought. The usefulness of Mum and the Sothsegger has not, however, been exhausted. Indeed it remains, as both Miss Cam and Miss Mohl found it, a curiously neglected text. And one reason is that it has not been studied for what the author undoubtedly intended it to be, namely a substantial (if not closely knit) and only partially satirical commentary on the problem of counsel.
The Renaissance Humanists and the Knowledge of Arabic
Authors: Dannenfeldt Karl H.
Published: May 2006

The philological study of Arabic by Europeans was long delayed and slow in development, considering the number, strength, and importance of the Moslem peoples and the value of their cultural contributions to western civilization. The Moslem conquest of Spain in the early part of the eighth century did stimulate an early desire among the Christians of the Iberian peninsula to learn the language of the conquerors. In fact, the ardor of the interest among the Spanish Christians brought forth the complaint of Alvarus of Córdoba (IX century) that the Christian youths were abandoning the study of Latin for that of Arabic. Later the language of Islam, a religion branded a Christian heresy by the medieval church, fell into discredit, though interest was revived in the eleventh and twelfth centuries with the transmission to Europe of Arabic science and philosophy in Latin translation. Toledo, captured by Spanish Christians in 1085, was the outstanding center for the translators, most of whom were native Jews who had been Moslem subjects.
Paradox in Donne
Authors: Mccanles Michael
Published: May 2006

Letter which Donne wrote to Sir Henry Wotton in 1600 accompanying a copy of his early Paradoxes reads in part: Sr. Only in obedience I send y° some of my paradoxes; I loue y° & myself & them to well to send them willingly for they carry wth them a confession of there lightnes. & yr trouble & my shame, but indeed they were made rather to deceaue tyme then her daughthr truth: although they haue beene written in an age when any thing is strong enough to overthrow her: if they make y° to find better reasons against them they do there office: for they are but swaggerers: quiet enough if y° resist them, if pchaunce they be pretyly guilt, yt is there best for they are not hatcht: they are rather alarūs to truth to arme her then enemies: & they haue only this advantadg to scape frö being caled ill things yt they are nothings: therfore take heed of allowing any of them least y° make another.
Francesco Vimercato of Milan: a Bio-Bibliography
Authors: Gilbert Neal W.
Published: May 2006

Among Renaissance commentators on Aristotle, an honorable place must be given to Francesco Vimercato of Milan, whose translations and commentaries cover almost the entire corpus of Aristotelian writings. During his lifetime, this hard-working sixteenth-century scholar achieved a solid reputation for his erudition and unrivaled grasp of Aristotelian philosophy. He was honored by the King of France and by the Duke of Savoy, and his works found their way into the libraries of many lands. But he belongs to that tribe of pedants whose indispensable merits tend to be appreciated today only by editors of Aristotle who must struggle with textual details. The casual reader or sweeping philosophical critic has no patience for the sort of word-by-word examination of the text that editors still find useful.
Florentine Religious Experience: The Sacred Image*
Authors: Trexler Richard C.
Published: May 2006

The pagan Renaissance is no more. A hundred years of interpretation of Burckhardt's thesis has erased most traces of those fearless individuals whose fascination with the almost living statuary of antiquity, whose reckless disregard for Christian symbols, whose awe before the figures of Scipios and Catos had brought them to despise the theological and abnegatory world which had mothered them. Renaissance man remained a Christian, even a pious one. The shapes of the world and its art might be in transition, but the cosmology of its inhabitants remained Christian.

What exactly is meant by: ‘This remained a Christian age’? I think the idea is that Christian dogmas and beliefs remained essentially unaltered: first, the authority of the church to define doctrine was unquestioned; second, the leading figures of the age were generally traditionally Christian in their attitudes, neither better nor worse, perhaps, than previous generations.
Suicide, Martyrdom, and Thomas More
Authors: Green Paul D.
Published: May 2006

For Thomas More the topic of suicide clearly had special significance. In his public life he encountered several instances of self-destruction; his concern with suicide in all its aspects is reflected in his major works, including Utopia and A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation; and ultimately he had to decide whether his decision not to recognize Henry the Eighth as spiritual leader of England was equivalent to an act of suicide. More's approach to suicide is consistent throughout his writings, and there is no discrepancy at all between his written statements and the actions of his life. His earliest known contact with suicide occurred at the end of 1514, when a certain Richard Hunne, a wealthy merchant tailor who had been committed to the Lollards’ Tower at St. Paul's on a charge of heresy, was found hanged in his cell.
Alberico Gentili in Defense of Poetry and Acting
Authors: Binns J. W.
Published: May 2006

Almost all Elizabethan criticism of any seriousness and weight was written in Latin. Yet no one would imagine this, to look at the literary histories.’ A Latin treatise in defense of poetry and acting by Alberico Gentili, which it is my purpose here to edit and translate, has altogether escaped the notice of historians of criticism and students of Elizabethan literature, even though it was published at Oxford by the University Printer, in the greatest days of Queen Elizabedi's reign.

The main outlines of the life of Alberico Gentili are well enough known. He was born in Italy at San Ginesio in 1552, and studied at the University of Perugia, whence he graduated as a doctor of civil law in 1572. A Protestant, suspected of heresy, he was compelled to flee the Inquisition, along with his father Matteo, and younger brother Scipione.
Individualism in the Early Italian Renaissance: Burden and Blessing*
Authors: Becker Marvin B.
Published: May 2006

Almost all Elizabethan criticism of any seriousness and weight was written in Latin. Yet no one would imagine this, to look at the literary histories.’ A Latin treatise in defense of poetry and acting by Alberico Gentili, which it is my purpose here to edit and translate, has altogether escaped the notice of historians of criticism and students of Elizabethan literature, even though it was published at Oxford by the University Printer, in the greatest days of Queen Elizabedi's reign.

The main outlines of the life of Alberico Gentili are well enough known. He was born in Italy at San Ginesio in 1552, and studied at the University of Perugia, whence he graduated as a doctor of civil law in 1572. A Protestant, suspected of heresy, he was compelled to flee the Inquisition, along with his father Matteo, and younger brother Scipione.
Rabelais and Stoic Portrayal
Authors: Nash Jerry C.
Published: May 2006

The influence of Stoicism in the works of Rabelais has increasingly attracted the attention of scholars. The importance of Stoicism in Rabelaisian thought has been interpreted by some to have permitted Rabelais to draft a physical theory of the cosmos based on Stoic monism and its doctrine of universal permeation. For others, Stoicism provided the French humanist with the concept of Pantagruelism, Rabelais’ ‘mépris des choses fortuites’, which they see as forming a restatement of the Stoic principle of apathy or indifference toward things external. Finally, one critic holds that Rabelais’ leaning toward Stoicism represents only partial commitment during a period of intense syncretism wherein the writer assimilates and subordinates Stoic ideas to yet another body of thought which is Evangelical by definition: Stoic indifference - Pauline Folly, the Pan- Christ symbol, the duty of man to conform his will to the Will of God, and so forth.
Sigismund I of Poland: Renaissance King and Patron
Authors: Lewalski Kenneth F.
Published: May 2006

Sigismund's marriage to Bona Sforza in 1518 is perhaps the most familiar event in Polish Renaissance history. Bona's journey to Cracow with a retinue of 287 persons, followed by that of her adviser Prosper Colonna with an added company of fifty-eight Italians, suggests something on the order of an Italian invasion of the Polish court. The construction of the Sigismund Chapel and the completion of the remodeling of the royal residence at Wawel by Italian architects and sculptors in the years following the Sforza union strengthen the association between Sigismund's enthusiasm for Italian art and his Italian marriage.
Society, Beauty, and the Humanist Architect in Alberti's de re aedificatoria
Authors: Westfall Carroll William
Published: May 2006

Leon Battista Albertl's de re aedificatoria has not been clearly discussed as a theory of architecture with an appeal far beyond the practice of architecture. Alberti's intention was not only to give a theory for practice but also to integrate architecture with a broad interpretation of the new humanist culture. The treatise, begun sometime in the 1440s and substantially completed by 1450, begins where his della pittura of 1435 had left off; it therefore belongs to that fertile period in his career before he had endulged in the actual practice of architecture. Still primarily a man of letters, it was to other humanists that he addressed himself and to other humanists that he must have owed his primary debt.
Agrippa in Renaissance Italy: the Esoteric Tradition
Authors: Nauert Charles G.
Published: May 2006

The curious northerner who had been attracted by the culture of Renaissance Italy and who sooner or later managed to fulfill his desire to visit that land in person was certainly one of the most interesting and most significant types of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Historians have found his type interesting and significant partly because they desire to understand the spread of intellectual influences from one region to another, and notably from Italy to northern Europe, and partly because these visitors from the north through their writings give insights into intellectual conditions in Italy itself. The type of the humanistic visitor from the north was already well established by the time that Erasmus began his three-year residence in the peninsula in 1506, for Erasmus was only following the example of many of his humanistic acquaintances, especially his English friends, the Oxford reformers.
The Traditions of the Early Kings of Buganda: Myth, History, and Structural Analysis
Authors: Atkinson R.R.
Published: May 2006

In the pages which follow, the traditions surrounding the first eight (of a total of thirty-five) kings of Buganda's traditional history will be investigated from a perspective that has not been utilized before. I hope to demonstrate that these traditions—beginning with the establishment of the first king, Kintu, in Buganda proper and ending with the death of the eighth king, Nakibinge, at the hands of the Banyoro—form an interrelated set which can be analyzed structurally as myth. While so doing, I do not wish to imply that the traditions in question demand this type of analysis and no other; different perspectives have been and will be useful for understanding early Buganda and its traditions. But I do want to show that such a structure can be discerned in the traditions and that the existence of this structure should be taken into account regardless of the type of analysis to be undertaken.

One task which will further these ends will be a discussion of the reasons for setting off the particular traditions chosen from the larger context of the set of traditions surrounding all the kings of Buganda. Following this, the selected traditions will be subjected to a structural analysis. In the process, however, I will digress frequently from the dominant mode of analysis to discuss: (1) variant or additional traditions which seem to remain outside the particular structural themes dominating the traditions as a set; and (2) alternative interpretations of the traditions, especially historical ones, which have been or might be offered. Finally, the structural themes discussed in the body of the paper will be represented in a comprehensive chart.
A New Look at Interpretations of the Early Iron Age in East Africa
Authors: Schmidt Peter R.
Published: May 2006

Since the publication in English in 1965 of Jan Vansina's Oral Tradition, historians of Africa have been increasingly concerned with developing methods which confirm the historical value of oral traditions. Independent proof for the historicity of oral traditions is often lacking; consequently the historian is usually left with comparative analysis as his primary analytical method. Archeologists such as Merrick Posnansky, Frank Willett, and John Sutton have in part attempted to show linkages between oral traditions and archeological evidence.

Posnansky, especially, has contributed much to the idea that it is possible to combine the two sources to obtain a more comprehensive view of Hfeways usually referred to as ‘prehistoric’ Recent research, though, now suggests that the concept ‘prehistoric’ must be questioned, particularly in cases where there is a demonstrated tie between archeological evidence and oral traditions. When archeology affirms the accuracy of oral traditions which explain, comment on, interpret, or locate activities and sites which predate a literate tradition, then the germaneness of the concept must be critically questioned. It is my position here that when archeological evidence confirms the historical value of oral traditions about preliterate life, then those cultural phenomena in that time period should be considered historic rather than prehistoric. To retain ‘prehistory’ as a concept in this context ignores and even militates against the historiographies and historical concepts of other cultures. The ramifications of this relativist perspective are considerable both for the study of history and of prehistory. Given this logic, historians must begin to reassess and expand their concepts of what history is and prehistorians must prepare to forfeit part of the temporal domain previously considered as prehistory.
North African Historiography and the Westerner: The Maghrib as Seen by David Gordon
Authors: Smith Albert C.
Published: May 2006

For the people of the Third World, nationhood in the twentieth century frequently demands the solution of a dual complexity: on the one hand, a search for an identity long suppressed by colonialism; and on the other hand, an effort to come to terms with the problems engendered by often violent entry into modernity. The challenge presented by this quest for self-identity and self-determination is at once paradoxical and parallel. Under foreign domination the colonized is denied his past, his real history; in addition he is forbidden any role in the making of his future. No wonder then that modern revolutionary movements stress the necessity for recovering the colonized's indigenous background — his roots — as a necessary corollary to independence and the eradication of colonialism.

In a sense the student of history also shares in the problem. Particularly is this true of students in North African history for in the pursuit of knowledge about the Maghrib's past and present, where does one turn historiographically? For purposes of organization only, three prospective “schools” of historical analysis are considered here: colonialist, nationalist, and Western. In suggesting these three “schools,” I make no attempt to be inclusive; many other variations are possible. The model used here is presented simply as a guide to complement the discussion which follows.

The aspiring historian may first seek truth in history as written by the colonialist. In most instances, however, this will prove inadequate because the colonizer usually relegates the pre-colonial past to obscurity; history under dynamic colonialism or protectionism is inevitably seen as forever enlightened whereas independence is chaotic and despotic, if the colonizer bothers to write about the reborn nation at all.
Bulfinch Lambe and the Emperor of Pawpaw: A Footnote to Agaja and the Slave Trade
Authors: Johnson Marion
Published: May 2006

In “Agaja and the Slave Trade” it was argued that the evidence cited to support Akinjogbin's view of Agaja's attitude to the slave trade did not in fact give any support to his view. Particular reference was made to Bulfinch Lambe, whose “Proposal” was quoted by Atkins in support of his interpretation of Agaja's motives for the conquest of Whydah –– the only contemporary to give an interpretation in line with Akinjogbin's.

Atkins was not on the coast at the time of the conquest of Whydah (nor, apparently, had he been there since 1722); but it seems that he met Lambe, presumably after Lambe's return to England. Atkins refers to Lambe's “scheme of trade, said to be proposed from that Emperor [Agaja] and laid before our Commissioners of Trade;” he leaves the reader with the impression that nothing was ever done about the matter, “and Captain Lamb, tho' under a solemn Promise to return, never gave any Account of his Embassy to that Prince.”
The Writing of C.W. de Kiewiet's A History of South Africa Social and Economic
Authors: Saunders Christopher
Published: May 2006

C.W. de Kiewiet's A History of South Africa Social and Economic, published by Oxford University Press in 1941, remains one of the most-used general histories of that country. No other single work by a professional historian on South Africa has been so influential, so often cited and quoted. Yet few readers of the book have known anything about its author's career or about the circumstances under which it was written. “Before you study the history,” advises E.H. Carr in What is History?, “study the historian,” to which he adds: “Before you study the historian, study his historical and social environment.” In this short paper all that can be done is to say something of the historian, and of how he came to write his book. This is, then, the history of A History.

Born in Holland in 1902, C.W. de Kiewiet was taken by his parents to South Africa the following year. He grew up in Johannesburg and attended the University College, which from 1922 was known as Wits. There he studied under W.M. Macmillan, the Professor of History, who was then working on the papers of the missionary John Philip and beginning to prepare what would become his two classic works, The Cape Colour Question and Bantu, Boer, and Briton. Macmillan supervised the thesis on the Cape northern frontier which de Kiewiet completed for his M.A. degree in 1924.
Africana in the Indexes
Authors: Scheven Yvette
Published: May 2006

Hartwig and O'Barr state in The Student Africanist's Handbook that

Students of African affairs are poorly served by standard indexing services in the respective disciplines. Too many periodicals devoted to Africa are simply not indexed in the standard reference works.

This paper is the result of a study carried out in late summer 1976, to determine how well that statement stands. My approach was to go directly to the indexes (in the social sciences and humanities) to learn how many Africanist journals are actually indexed, and how well Africana materials are covered.

For this study “index” is interpreted in its broadest sense: any bibliographic list arranged in some order to allow a subject approach. Therefore, abstracts and bibliographies were included, as well as current contents and advanced contents indexes, in addition to the more “traditional” indexes, but machine-readable data banks were excluded. Also, I sought indexes that are current and that appear on a regular basis, at least annually. 1975 volumes (or the most recent) were used for comparison.
African Papers in the Southern Historical Collection, The University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill
Authors: Durrill Wayne K.
Published: May 2006

As foundation money for overseas research grows more difficult to obtain, historians of Africa will perforce seek archival resources closer to home. A rough listing of African materials in American archives has been published, the Handbook of American Resources for African Studies, but the catalog evidently relied in part on reports written by American archivists who had little or no training in African history. As a result many available sources have been inadequately described. Take the case of the Southern Historical Collection, a repository for private manuscripts at the University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill. Although several collections with African papers in this repository are briefly noted in the Handbook, there was no indication of important materials like the forty-page eyewitness description of the court of the Mijjerteyn Sultan written in 1878. Nor, for that matter, is this account noted in the unpublished description of the papers available at the Collection; in fact, even if a researcher should ask, the archivist probably could not readily locate the account unless the researcher already had a name and date for it.

The Southern Historical Collection holds three kinds of documents relating to Africa: (1) The Khedive of Egypt hired several former Confederate officers to conduct mapping expeditions in Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia when he began his military conquests to the south in the 1870s. These officers' papers consist of letters, diaries, and printed material concerning their explorations and their daily lives in Cairo. (2) Several groups of papers contain information on missionary activities, mostly by Episcopalians, in Liberia from 1829 to 1880, and (3)there are a number of scattered items in various collections, mainly travelers' accounts of brief visits to Africa.
A Note on the Archives of the Republic of Cabo Verde
Authors: Fyfe Christopher
Published: May 2006

The archives of the Republic of Cabo Verde contain the official records of Portuguese rule up to 1975. I did not see any documents that dated from before the early eighteenth century. At independence in 1975 the jubilant crowd broke into the main administrative building in Praia, the capital, and threw the records into the street. The records of the Praia municipal administration and of the Instituto de Trabalho were also ransacked. Eventually the dispersed documents, together with several thousand volumes from the Praia Public Library, were gathered up and packed haphazardly into wooden crates. In 1978 a large municipal warehouse was allocated as an archives store. Shelves were installed and the documents were slowly disinterred from the crates, where they had accumulated thick layers of dust.

The earlier documents, about 1500 manuscript volumes of the eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries, have been put on shelves, but not in any systematic order. Many are defective or fragile. The documents from the later nineteenth century up to 1949 are preserved in about 1300 metal boxes. They too have been put on shelves, but not in chronological order (if only because many of the boxes have lost their labels). The documents from 1950 to 1975 were enclosed in cardboard file covers. Some have been put on shelves, others are stacked on the floor. None are in order. Many have come loose from their covers and have been tied up arbitrarily in bundles, along with documents from the municipal and Instituto de Trabalho archives. There are also many bundles of miscellaneous municipal records.
Patterns in Linguistic Geography and the Bantu Origins Controversy
Authors: Bennett Patrick R.
Published: May 2006

The Bantu languages of Africa constitute a large cluster of languages sharing so many common features that their probable relationship was recognized very early. Doke and Cole summarize the history of this recognition, and of the comparative studies that grew out of it, up to 1943. Given an early start, a closely-knit group of languages, and workers of the quality of Meinhof, Meeussen, and Guthrie, Bantu linguistics has progressed to a stage equalled by few comparative fields outside Indo-European. Detailed reconstructions of Bantu phonology (including tonology and intonation), morphology, syntax, and lexicon have been possible.

The problems that remain are those of internal and external relationships. What are the subgroups of Bantu and what is the history of their development from the hypothetized ancestral language? What languages are related to Bantu, and what is the status of Bantu in any larger language grouping? Both questions together may be put as--does ‘Bantu’ exist? That is, do the languages recongized as Bantu--all and only those languages--constitute a well-defined linguistic group?

The simplest, and most common, assumptions are 1) that Bantu (possibly including some of the languages recognized as Bantu by the followers of Greenberg, but rejected by Guthrie) is a linguistic unit, with a common ancestor, Proto-Bantu, not shared with any other languages; 2) that it constitutes one division of a sub-group of Niger-Congo; and 3) that it in turn consists of two principal dialect areas, showing either an east-west division or a break between the forest languages (Guthrie's Zones A, B, and C) and the remainder. The principal problem for this view is the lack of support in shared innovation for any of the groupings it postulates. There is plentiful evidence in lexicostatistics both for the existence of Bantu as a distinct unit and for either of the internal borders postulated. There is even evidence for these in the form of numerous lexical and grammatical Isoglosses roughly coinciding at the boundaries of Bantu, and primarily lexical isoglosses internally. But there do not seem to be any cases where one of these boundaries is parallelled by an isogloss such that a clearly innovative feature occurs only on one side of the line.
Histoire des Mentalités et Histoire des Missions au Burundi, ca. 1880–1960
Authors: Feltz Gaëtan
Published: May 2006

L'histoire sociale et l'histoire des mentalités permettent certainement de mieux évaluer les rapports qui se créent entre des sociétés dont les fondements culturels sont tout à fait différents. Peut-être serait-il utile de réexaminer ces orientations historiques au vu des tendances actuelles de l'historiographie contemporaine, en tenant compte de la spécificité de la conscience des sociétés africaines qui semble poser parfois des problèmes de réflexion et d'ordre méthodologique, tels que l'ethnocentrisme et l'originalité des sources de l'histoire africaine. Notre approche théorique et notre problématique concernent essentiellement le terrain préparé par l'expansion missionnaire à la faveur du mouvement de colonisation dès la fin du XIXe siècle. Cette expansion, perçue dans toutes ses formes, a nécessairement occasionné des répercussions au sein des sociétés colonisées dans un grand nombre de domaines de la vie sociale. Notre propos, ici, est de voir comment l'historien peut arriver à cerner ces effets, surtout à segmenter les divers secteurs où une station missionnaire a sécrété une influence. L'historien doit donc, dans la mesure du possible, percevoir les données historiques qui couvrent tous les domaines de l'évolution d'une société.

D'emblée, nous tenons à souligner que nous n'aborderons pas la question de la domination culturelle d'une religion sur une autre, telle qu'on pourrait le faire pour le christianisme au cours de la situation coloniale. Au niveau de la dynamique des groupes en présence, nous serons plutôt porté à essayer de comprendre les mouvements d'interaction culturelle produit par l'installation d'une station missionnaire dans un endroit déterminé et d'en dégager les facteurs qui permettront à l'historien de faire une histoire des mentalités.