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With this book, Jacqueline Holler demonstrates how early members of religious orders in Mexico were conceived of as an extension of the process of conversion and spiritual conquest. Over time, however, the creation of convents became a means of reaffirming the European nature of the colony, at least for its upper classes. Holler's work is based on archival research in both Mexico and Spain. It integrates much of the existing historiography while effectively telling individual stories and allowing the personalities, strengths, and foibles of some of the women involved to carry the history forward. This book is an important contribution to the growing literature on women in colonial Latin America

An elite community in India, neither Anglicized nor traditional, shaped instead by diaspora and capitalist enterprise, is the subject of Anne Hardgrove's research.

Wayne Hanley's The Genesis of Napoleonic Propaganda, 1796-1799 makes clever use of images as well as text to show the artful self-crafting on the part of a young provincial on the make. Using a term actually invented at or near the Revolution, the book makes propaganda into a key element in the rise of Napoleon. With a solid interfacing of cultural and political history, Hanley's novel approach meshes with recent works on the Revolution by Lynn Hunt, Carla Hesse, and others.

Mary Halavais's Like Wheat to the Miller: Community, Convivencia, and the Construction of Morisco Identity in Sixteenth-Century Aragon reopens the question of the reality of convivencia in Aragon during the 16th century in a tightly-woven examination of two villages, Baguena and Burbaguena, in the Jiloca valley. On the basis of notarial records, parish registers, and ecclesiastical archives, Halavais argues that in these villages local laity and religion made little distinction between old Christians and new (Moriscos): These distinctions were imposed from the outside by ecclesiastical authorities and royal agents. Employing literature on 16th-century Spain along with archival materials, this book provocatively posits that the marginalization of Moriscos was imposed on localities by central authorities and not out of antagonism in the local communities themselves.

Gregory S. Brown's A Field of Honor: The Identities of Writers, Court Culture and Public Theater in the French Intellectual Field from Racine to the Revolution offers a multilevel study of the intellectual, social, and institutional contexts of dramatic authorship and the world of playwrights in 18th-century Paris. Brown deftly interweaves research in archival and printed materials, case studies of individual authorial strategies, the rich, often contentious historiography on the French Enlightenment and contemporary cultural theory and criticism. Drawing on a sophisticated array of recent studies, Brown positions his work against and between the grain of alternative approaches and interpretations. He combines scholarship on the history of the book with analyses of political culture and cultural identity, leaving the reader with a strong and revealing appreciation for the tensions and crosscurrents staged at the center of the 18th-century "republic of letters."

At the beginning of the 1600s, Taiwan was a sylvan backwater, sparsely inhabited by headhunters and visited mainly by pirates and fishermen. By the end of the century it was home to more than a hundred thousand Chinese colonists, who grew rice and sugar for export on world markets. This book examines this remarkable transformation. Drawing primarily on Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese sources, it argues that, paradoxically, it was Europeans who started the large scale Chinese colonization of the island: the Spanish, who had a base on northern Taiwan from 1626 to 1642, and, more importantly, the Dutch, who had a colony from 1623 to 1662. The latter enticed people from the coastal province of Fujian to Taiwan with offers of free land, freedom from taxes, and economic subventions, creating a Chinese colony under European rule. Taiwan was thus the site of a colonial conjuncture, a system that the author calls co-colonization. The Dutch relied closely on Chinese colonists for food, entrepreneurship, translation, labor, and administrative help.Chinese colonists relied upon the Dutch for protection from the headhunting aborigines and, sometimes, from other Chinese groups, such as the pirates who ranged the China Seas. In its analysis the book sheds light on one of the most important questions of global history: how do we understand the great colonial movements that have shaped our modern world? By examining Dutch, Spanish, and Han colonization in one island, it offers a compelling answer: Europeans managed to establish colonies throughout the globe not primarily because of technological superiority but because their states sponsored overseas colonialism whereas Asian states, in general, did not. Indeed, when Asian states did, European colonies were vulnerable, and the book ends with the capture of Taiwan by a Chinese army, led by a Chinese warlord named Zheng Chenggong.

During World War I, over six million men became prisoners-of-war, a burden that overwhelmed the resources of the belligerent powers, which had a responsibility to care for these men. Becoming aware of the POWs plight, the American YMCA was determined to provide welfare relief to these prisoners, and in early 1915, the Association sent two representatives to negotiate access to military prison camps in England, France, and Germany. Archibald Harte convinced the German government that the YMCA's assistance would benefit German POWs in Allied prison camps as well as Allied prisoners incarcerated in Germany. The Germans agreed to Harte's terms on the condition that the British, French, and Russians accept similar arrangements for prisoners under their care. This began a process of reciprocity that would yield the Association POW access agreements with the governments of Britain, France, Russia, Serbia, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. After the Armistice was signed in 1918, the YMCA facilitated the return of Allied prisoners to their home countries and continued to provide relief to Russian POWs stranded in German prisons.The wartime activities of the YMCA have largely "fallen between the cracks" of history, and scant attention has been paid to the role of non-governmental organizations in contributing to American neutrality and foreign policymaking during World War I. Pursuit of an Unparalleled Opportunity addresses this lacuna with a remarkable study of the social, spiritual, and physical relief offered to POWs by these dedicated, apolitical groups.

John Rogers Haddad's analytically rich and methodologically complex work attends to various appearances of Chinese culture in America throughout the nineteenth century. Through a close examination of museums, panoramic paintings, blue and white ceramics, tea advertisements, travelogues, missionary accounts, children's literature, and world fairs, Haddad counters the idea that imperialist domination and racial prejudice eclipsed cultural exchange between Asia and the West during this period. Americans who journeyed to China tended to acquire a degree of respect and admiration for the complex civilization they encountered. Upon returning to the United States, they assembled displays, shows, books, and other cultural forms designed to share their knowledge with ordinary Americans. Haddad's research also reveals the surprising fact that the Chinese played a large but subtle role in shaping the representation of their culture in the United States. Far from being passive, the Chinese exerted substantial control over China's exported image. Haddad's fascinating study reveals how the Unites States, then the newest country in the world, first became acquainted with China, the oldest nation.With the ongoing rise and increased relevance of China on today's global stage, this volume provides invaluable insight into how these two nations might get to know each other again in the twenty-first century.

Joshua R. Greenberg argues that working men's conceptions of household-based masculine obligations informed organized responses to the changing economy in early nineteenth-century New York City. Rather than a particularized class consciousness as the source of working men's identity, Greenberg claims that household issues and concerns guided workplace and political reactions to the new industrial economy. Although the contemporary breakdown of traditional artisanal households sometimes divided workers' domestic and occupational space, skilled journeymen did not ideologically, culturally, or politically experience a separate sphere of existence. As part of this household-based market engagement, working men perceived numerous obstacles to their ability to fulfill domestic responsibilities. Potential threats came in the form of financial institutions and policy, such as the power of monopolies and the proliferation of paper money. They also came in the form of competition from prison laborers and female and African American workers.In response to such threats, working men used trade unions and labor parties to champion household-based masculinity and protect their roles as breadwinners and fathers. Consulting a diverse range of sources, Greenberg demonstrates the critical relationship between the household, the workplace, and the nascent labor movement. By placing gender at the center of his examination, he challenges existing scholarship on working men and the market revolution of the early nineteenth century and critiques gender studies that envision journeymen as rowdy stereotypes. Instead, Greenberg treats these men primarily as domestic actors, relating their involvement in politics and the workplace to their household duties and obligations.

Manhood in the Age of Aquarius investigates how a deep commitment to the belief in the naturalness of masculinity shaped the efforts of American hippies to create economic, social, political, institutional, religious, and environmental alternatives to their received culture during the 1960s and 1970s. Their efforts to create such alternatives informed the creation of a range of new forms of masculinity. Timothy Hodgdon compares two sharply contrasting hip communities: The Farm and the Diggers (later known as the Free Families). The Farmies argued that industrial progress had encouraged a dangerous hypermasculinity in men and a corresponding devaluation of women's fertility and capacity for maternal nurture. Only through veneration of women's beautiful yin could humankind return to the path of enlightenment charted by Buddha, Jesus, and other sages, and men were to cultivate a knightly masculinity of egoless service to women within lifelong, monogamous marriages. The anarchist Diggers reached the opposite conclusion: that progress had effeminized the organization man while brutalizing the respectable working-class men who served his interests as wage worker, policeman, and soldier.The Diggers sought to uproot the alienating status hierarchy mandated by private property. Their theater of the streets valorized the manliness of the outlaw& mdash;the Native American warrior, the Black Panther, the bohemian artist, and the Chinese tong member& mdash;who forcefully defended his freedom from the depredations of unjust authority while practicing the communistic sharing of wealth that, they believed, was a mark of honor among those slandered as thieves. Thus, Hodgdonargues, the Farmies and the Diggers occupied widely separated positions on a continuum of countercultural manhood. Their divergent criticisms demonstrate that the shift from producerist to consumerist conceptions of manliness was still by no means complete at mid century. Furthermore, hippies' unabashed commitment to masculinity as a natural trait, rather than a political and social construct, shows how even these incisive& mdash;and at times, impish& mdash;critics of American culture stood utterly unprepared for the emergence of radical feminism in 1967 and 1968.

J. L. McIntosh argues that Mary I and Elizabeth I were authority figures before they acceded to the English throne. As independent heads of households and property owners, the Tudor princesses attained a social and political status usually reserved for elite men, showing that women could achieve agency through the management of an elite household. Drawing on their household archives, McIntosh recounts how the Tudor princesses attracted political clients, challenged royal authority, and established a recognizable political profile by exploiting the resources of servants, estates, and material culture. Her research proves that "exceptional" women can offer insights into the opportunities available to other contemporary women and that the elite household was a foundational element in identity formation.

The image of a woman bearing arms is a potent symbol of modern Greece's nation-building conflicts. Margaret Poulos traces the influence of this image on Greek feminist discourse from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1970s and 1980s. The study begins with the heroines of the 1821 Revolution and the extent to which Greek protofeminism capitalized on this legacy. Poulos then explores the role of partisan women in the communist-led resistance movement during World War II and Greece's subsequent collapse into Civil War, which saw a striking and controversial increase in the number of women fighting in the ranks of the partisan army. In conclusion, Poulos examines the way in which postwar feminism engaged, ignored, or reconciled this fraught history. Poulos's unique focus coherently connects a series of historical events otherwise separated by a hundred and fifty years at both extremes. The image of a woman-in-arms has long been a source of fascination for its embodiment of an inherent contradiction--the fragility and passivity of the feminine and the menace and violence of the gun.Poulos probes both the myth and reality of these representations within the context of Greek history, and the specific ways in which their symbolic power has been utilized by feminists, nationalists, and others to advance at times diametrically opposed political agendas. Therefore, while demystifying highly celebrated images, she also illuminates the contributions and experiences of the marginalized, shedding important light on the historical significance of women's agency.

Maria Rentetzi surveys the experimental practices of radioactivity research in early-twentieth-century Vienna, focusing on radioactive materials, instruments, women's work in physics, and gendered skills. She shows how experimental cultures in radioactivity-scientific practices employed by gendered subjects who shared a certain material and epistemic style of research--were constructed and reshaped by socialist politics in Vienna at that time. She also explores the different ways experimental practices affected men and women in laboratory sciences. Rentetzi expands the notion of material culture to include not only instruments and objects but also materials that operated as both commodities and objects of scientific inquiry. She tells a multifaceted story of how purified radium ended up on laboratory benches and who extracted and isolated it from tons of residues; the individuals who designed experiments and instruments for probing radium's properties; and those who carried radium outside of the physics laboratory and into the clinic and medical amphitheatres.Rentetzi examines how the architecture of the laboratory affected men's and women's scientific work and the way in which its urban setting reflected assumptions about scientific cross-disciplinary collaborations. Following the circulation of radium and the pursuit of power through strategies of partnership and collaboration, Rentetzi redraws paths of scientific exchange and transfers the reader from scientific laboratories to hospitals and from academic to industrial sites.

Through the lens of sensorial experience, Erika Lauren Lindgren explores the spirituality of monastic women as reflected in their writings, liturgical texts, artwork, architecture, and archival documents. Specifically, she focuses on the Dominican nuns and lay-sisters of southern Germany in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, particularly the way in which these women controlled and interpreted their surroundings and incorporated them into their spiritual and devotional practices. Lindgren divides the monastic environment into four areas: the spatial environment, in which she considers the physical as well as spiritual requirements of the monastic community and the use of precinct space; the visual environment, in which she looks at the function of visual material in daily spirituality and the meanings given to these images; the acoustical environment and the roles of silence and sound in communal and private devotional practices; and the textual environment, in which Lindgren addresses the intersection between the visual, the acoustical, and women's utilization of texts.Brilliantly argued and intellectually rich, Lindgren's study is a remarkable examination of the connections between the spirituality of monastic women and the physical and sensual environment of the medieval monastery.

Scholars often equate a Swahili presence with the moment history began on the Tanzanian central coast. In this book, Rhonda M. Gonzales proposes an altogether different and more comprehensive narrative. Societies, Religion, and History is the first study to apply historical linguistic methods to the Bantu-speaking peoples of the coastal and interior regions of central east Tanzania, individuals and communities who later became part of the Swahili world. The Seuta and Ruvu Bantu societies were entrenched along the coast and interior of Tanzania for centuries before Swahili-speaking populations expanded their towns and settlements southward along the East African coastline. Making use of historical linguistics, the findings of cutting-edge archaeologists, ethnographic sources, and her own extensive field research, Gonzales unfolds a historical panorama of thriving societies engaged in vibrant cross-cultural exchange and prosperous regional and transoceanic networks. According to Gonzales, scholars need to integrate these communities into their stories if they are to compose a full and satisfying history of central eastern Tanzania.Recovering this history requires close attention to the happenings of the interior, often misleadingly referred to--and treated--as hinterland. Toward that end, Gonzales combines a challenging range of historical resources to build a long-term history of the social, cultural, and religious beliefs and practices of the region as they have developed over the past 2,000 years.

The studioli of the ducal palaces at Urbino and Gubbio, Italy, demonstrate architecture's capacity to transact between the mental and physical realms of human experience. Constructed between 1474 and 1483 for the military captain Federico da Montefeltro and his young motherless son, the studioli may be described as treasuries of emblems: they contain not things but images of things, rendered with remarkable perspectival exactitude. These small, image-filled chambers reflect how architecture and its ornament equipped a quattrocento mind with metaphors for wisdom and methods for statecraft and intellectual activity. Drawing on the densely layered imagery in the studioli and text sources readily available to the Urbino court, Robert Kirkbride examines the position of the studioli in the Western tradition of the memory arts, considering how architecture bridged the mathematical arts, which lent themselves to mechanical pursuits, and the art of rhetoric, a discipline central to memory and eloquence.As subtle ramifications of material and mental craft, the studioli provided ideal methods for education and prudent governance, extending an ancient legacy of open-ended models that were conceived to activate the imagination and exercise the memory. At the time of their construction, the studioli represented the leading edge of technologies of visual representation and offer a case study of how contemporary advances in interactive technologies reactivate and transform ancient metaphors for thought and learning.

In the summer of 1947, Crossfire, a controversial thriller exposing American anti-Semitism, was a critical and box-office hit, and RKO producer Adrian Scott was at the pinnacle of his career. Within several months, however, Scott became infamous as a member of the Hollywood Ten, blacklisted for his refusal to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood reconstructs the production and reception of Scott's major films, exploring the political and creative challenges faced by Hollywood radicals within the studio system and reassessing the relationship among film noir, antifascism, anticommunism, and the politics of Americanism.

Laura J. Mitchell concentrates on the contested dynamics of land tenure in the Cedarberg region of the Western Cape, from the first settler land claim of 1725 to the entrenchment of colonial administration in the 1830s. Based on a decade of research, Mitchell focuses on the conflict between Dutch East India Company officials, settlers, indigenous Khoisan, and Indian-Ocean slaves, detailing the ways in which settlers themselves--rather than Company policy or an imperial army--drew the frontier into a colonial orbit and then gradually placed it under colonial control. Against a backdrop of often violent resistance, settlers claimed land one farm at a time. Family by family, household by household, the inhabitants of the Cedarberg region were bound to each other and to a colonial society based at Cape Town. The Khoisan resisted displacement, the appropriation of their livestock and hunting grounds, involuntary servitude, and subordination. Likewise, settlers resisted the Dutch East India Company's efforts at controlling territorial expansion, limiting their interaction with independent Khoisan groups, and regulating bonded labor.At the same time, the increasing presence of European material culture in frontier spaces proved that many settlers still affirmed their relationship to colonial power. Mitchell enriches her social history with insights from anthropology, archaeology, sociology, and environmental and women's studies, considering multiple sources of power and identity and recovering the role of women in creating settler society.

Between Winds and Clouds tells the two-thousand-year history of Yunnan, an ethnic frontier bordered by Tibet, mainland Southeast Asia, and southwest China. Yunnan's prime geographic location turned the site into a center of cross-regional trade, and consequently, it became a desirable conquest for Eurasian rivals. Bin Yang details the fight for military control of Yunnan and its demographic, administrative, and economic transformation into a local entity. In conclusion, he discusses the impact of Yunnan's imperial legacy on modern state building, or, conversely, the way in which the modern state has contributed to the development of imperial discourse. Deploying a unique cross-regional approach, Yang brings the activities of Southeast and East Asia, Tibet, the Indian Ocean, and modern Europe to bear on the history of Yunnan, emphasizing both the local and the international forces that played a role in the region's long-term transformation.

Beginning in the early thirteenth century, the burial of a child became an event of dramatic consequence. Child death took on a symbolic power, with great concern expressed over the fate of the body. William F. MacLehose follows the evolution of this social anxiety during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, an anxiety focused on images of children's vulnerability and susceptibility to external threats. Employing a wide range of sources, including historical chronicles, medical writings, Marian legends, hagiography, and popular theological texts, MacLehose advances four important discussions of childhood that directly link fragility with other sources of cultural anxiety: medical writers who began to articulate an increasingly paradoxical view of women's bodily fluids--milk and menstrual blood--as simultaneously essential and potentially fatal to the survival of the fetus and the newborn; doctrinal debates on the fate of children who died before baptism; accusations against Jews, who were charged with the ritual murder of Christian children; and the so-called Children's Crusade of 1212, which was justified on the basis that corruption was an inevitable part of a child's growth.