This is my Fall 2017 Early American History survey course syllabus.

This is my Fall 2017 Intro to Public History syllabus–am indebted to those who have shared their own syllabi publicly

The use of water as an expressive trope of spiritual hygiene was widespread among monastic writers of the twelfth century, adapted for different uses in different genres. Aqueous imagery was particularly frequent within allegories or didactic figurae exploring the care of the soul as if it were a material body, with a constitution that could be…[Read more]

This paper proposes that we can reimagine insular literatures and medieval islescapes as commodious seas of cultural and intellectual loci that span time, culture, and text alike. By moving beyond the rhetoric of insular separation or connectivity, we can see that islands connect even when medieval minds saw separation. The essay focuses on the…[Read more]

This article explores the representation of hunger and thirst as faculties within medieval spiritual allegory that existed at two forms. In their bodily form, hunger and thirst represented a feeling of lack indicating the need for sustenance. In their figurative moralised form these needs came to represent a longing for that which was missing…[Read more]

Following the voyages of Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci in the last decade of the fifteenth century, the New World of the Americas entered the cartographic and moral consciousness of Europe. In the 1500 mappa mundi of Juan de la Cosa, navigator and map-maker, we see Europe as a hybrid moral entity, a…[Read more]

In the context of the global water crisis, we seek an understanding of the histories of water management, their fashioning, and their legacy today. We juxtapose temporally diverse narratives to explore the premodern imaginings that have shaped our inheritance of hydrological thought. Rather than conceptualize their historical influence as a linear…[Read more]

Recent years have seen an infusion of new ideas into material philosophy through the work of the so-called ‘new materialists’. Poignant examples appear within two recent books: the first, Vibrant Matter by Jane Bennett (2010), sets out to “enhance receptivity to the impersonal life that surrounds and infuses us” (2010: 4). The second, Element…[Read more]

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the majority of U.S. states adopted a novel code of legal practice for their civil courts. Legal scholars have long recognized the influence of the New York lawyer David Dudley Field on American legal codification, but tracing the influence of Field’s code of civil procedure with precision across s…[Read more]

State of the art article on reading in Antiquity (in German).

La presente comunicación pretende glosar algunos pequeños detalles biográficos de Luis Crespí de Valldaura, noble valenciano, hijo homónimo del II señor de Sumacàrcer, que fue uno de los primeros profesores del incipiente Studi General valenciano y rector del mismo entre los años 1506 y 1507. Además de esta presencia destacada en el ámbito u…[Read more]

Gózense, otrosí, los otros perlados, duques, marqueses, condes, cavalleros y scuderos, y todos los otros fieles cristianos que en esta santa enpresa han aconpañado a sus altezas, y ayudado con personas, armas y hazienda, pues plugo a Dios de dar tan glorioso fin y tan deseado.

Este fragmento de texto de lo que se ha venido en llamar sermón de…[Read more]

This short paper, rather than providing a thorough analysis of the very broad theme entailed by its title, aims only to programmatically outline the contours of a general framework for future research on structuralism and its genealogy. In essence, I wish to argue that mainstream approaches to structuralism’s history need to be significantly b…[Read more]

From 1798 to 1944 the display of coats of arms in Great Britain was taxed. Since there were major changes to the role of heraldry in society in the same period, it is surprising that the records of the tax have gone unstudied. This dissertation evaluates whether the records of the tax can say something useful about heraldry in this period. The…[Read more]

This article investigates the tensions inherent within the ‘anti-modern’ element of early modernism and its relationship to Victorian and fin de siècle narratives of modernity. Using Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo (1913), this essay examines how the primitive is represented in E.M. Forster’s short story ‘The Machine Stops’ (1909) and Stravinsky/N…[Read more]

This paper explores how gender can operate as a disguise for class in an examination of the self-sacrifice of the Maiden in Euripides’ Children of Herakles. In Part I, I discuss the role of human sacrifice in terms of its radical potential to transform society and the role of class struggle in Athens. In Part II, I argue that the representation o…[Read more]

Biography of and tribute to the erudite Luigi Antonio Paolozzi (Chianciano Terme, 1706-1765), cancelliere of the Gran Duchy of Tuscany for Amiata and the Val di Chiana. It aims at highlighting the important role of Paolozzi in the historical context of the period, and reasses its weight. It follows the path of Paolozzi’s research as a local…[Read more]

Abstract: Nusantara Online is an Indonesian-made massively multiplayer online role-playing game that imaginatively reconstructs the history of the archipelago. As an “allegorithm” for the Indonesian nation, the game suggests a distinct model of digital nationalism, here dubbed “playable” nationalism. This concept captures the formulation of “Nus…[Read more]