History - Recent Titles from Ohio University Press

Madness in Buenos Aires

Tue, 15 Apr 2008

Madness in Buenos Aires (2008)
Patients, Psychiatrists and the Argentine State, 1880–1983

By Jonathan Ablard

Madness in Buenos Aires examines the interactions between psychiatrists, patients and their families, and the national state in modern Argentina. This book offers a fresh interpretation of the Argentine state’s relationship to modernity and social change during the twentieth century, while also examining the often contentious place of psychiatry in modern Argentina.

Drawing on a number of previously untapped archival sources, author Jonathan Ablard uses the experience of psychiatric patients as a case study of how the Argentine state developed and functioned over the last century and of how Argentines interacted with it. Ablard argues that the capacity of the state to provide social services and professional opportunities and to control the populace was often constrained to an extent not previously recognized in scholarly literature. These limitations, including a shortage of hospitals, insufficient budgets, and political and economic instability, shaped the experiences of patients, their families, and doctors and also influenced medical and lay ideas about the nature and significance of mental illness. Furthermore, these experiences, and the institutional framework in which they were imbedded, had a profound impact on how Argentine psychiatrists discussed not only mental illness but also a host of related themes including immigration, poverty, and the role of the state in mitigating social problems.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Madness+in+Buenos+Aires.
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Hanging by a Thread

Tue, 01 Apr 2008

Hanging by a Thread (2008)
Cotton, Globalization, and Poverty in Africa

Edited by William G. Moseley and Leslie C. Gray

The textile industry was one of the first manufacturing activities to become organized globally, as mechanized production in Europe used cotton from the various colonies. Africa, the least developed of the world’s major regions, is now increasingly engaged in the production of this crop for the global market, and debates about the pros and cons of this trend have intensified.

Hanging by a Thread: Cotton, Globalization, and Poverty in Africa illuminates the connections between Africa and the global economy. The editors offer a compelling set of linked studies that detail one aspect of the globalization process in Africa, the cotton commodity chain.

From global policy debates, to impacts on the natural environment, to the economic and social implications of this process, Hanging by a Thread explores cotton production in the postcolonial period from different disciplinary perspectives and in a range of national contexts. This approach makes the globalization process palpable by detailing how changes at the macroeconomic level play out on the ground in the world’s poorest region. Hanging by a Thread offers new insights on the region in a global context and provides a critical perspective on current and future development policy for Africa.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Hanging+by+a+Thread.
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The World beyond the Windshield

Tue, 04 Mar 2008

The World beyond the Windshield (2008)
Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe

Edited by Christof Mauch and Thomas Zeller

For better or worse, the view through a car's windshield has redefined how we see the world around us. In some cases, such as the American parkway, the view from the road was the be-all and end-all of the highway; in others, such as the Italian autostrada, the view of a fast, efficient transportation machine celebrating either Fascism or its absence was the goal. These varied environments are neither necessary nor accidental but the outcomes of historical negotiations, and whether we abhor them or take delight in them, they have become part of the fabric of human existence.

The World beyond the Windshield: Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe is the first systematic, comparative look at these landscapes. By looking at examples from the United States and Europe, the chapters in this volume explore the relationship between the road and the landscape that it traverses, cuts through, defines, despoils, and enhances. The authors analyze the Washington Beltway and the Blue Ridge Parkway, as well as iconic roads in Italy, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and Great Britain. This is a story of the transatlantic exchange of ideas about environment and technology and of the national and nationalistic appropriations of such landscaping.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/The+World+beyond+the+Windshield.
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Realizing the Dream of R. A. Kartini

Sun, 13 Jan 2008

Realizing the Dream of R. A. Kartini (2008)
Her Sisters’ Letters from Colonial Java

Edited by Joost J. Coté

Realizing the Dream of R. A. Kartini: Her Sisters’ Letters from Colonial Java presents a unique collection of documents reflecting the lives, attitudes, and politics of four Javanese women in the early twentieth century. Joost J. Coté translates the correspondence between Raden Ajeng Kartini, Indonesia’s first feminist, and her sisters, revealing for the first time her sisters’ contributions in defining and carrying out her ideals. With this collection, Coté aims to situate Kartini’s sisters within the more famous Kartini narrative–and indirectly to situate Kartini herself within a broader narrative.

The letters reveal the emotional lives of these modern women and their concerns for the welfare of their husbands and the success of their children in rapidly changing times. While by no means radical nationalists, and not yet extending their horizons to the possibility of an Indonesian nation, these members of a new middle class nevertheless confidently express their belief in their own national identity.

Realizing the Dream of R. A. Kartini is essential reading for scholars of Indonesian history, providing documentary evidence of the culture of modern, urban Java in the late colonial era and an insight into the ferment of the Indonesian nationalist movement in which these women and their husbands played representative roles.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Realizing+the+Dream+of+R.+A.+Kartini.
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Being “Dutch” in the Indies

Tue, 01 Jan 2008

Being “Dutch” in the Indies (2008)
A History of Creolisation and Empire, 1500–1920

By Ulbe Bosma and Remco Raben

Being “Dutch” in the Indies portrays Dutch colonial territories in Asia not as mere societies under foreign occupation but rather as a “Creole empire.” In telling the story of the Creole empire, the authors draw on government archives, newspapers, and literary works as well as genealogical studies that follow the fortunes of individual families over several generations. They also critically analyze theories relating to culturally and racially mixed communities. The picture of the Indies they develop shatters conventional understandings of colonial rule in Asia.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Being+%E2%80%9CDutch%E2%80%9D+in+the+Indies.
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The Unsettled Land

Sat, 01 Dec 2007

The Unsettled Land (2007)
State-making & the Politics of Land in Zimbabwe, 1893–2003

By Jocelyn Alexander

The Unsettled Land engages with the current debates on land and politics in Africa and provides a much-needed historical narrative of the Zimbabwean case.

In early 2000, a process of land occupation began in Zimbabwe. It involved the movement of hundreds of thousands of black farmers onto mostly white-owned farms, often under the leadership of veterans of Zimbabwe’s 1970s liberation war. The Zanu (PF) government cast this moment as the end of colonialism. Others saw it as mere electioneering, the desperate machinations of an illegitimate government.

This poorly understood crisis had deep roots. In the settler period the government of Rhodesia divided the land along racial lines, leaving the black population in poor and overcrowded reserves. Independent Zimbabwe inherited not only this profoundly unequal division of land but also a potent institutional and ideological legacy of contested claims to authority over the land. This combustible mix shaped political desires and discourses as well as state and African institutions, setting the stage for the dramatic upheavals of 2000 and beyond.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/The+Unsettled+Land.
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Women, Work & Domestic Virtue in Uganda, 1900–2003

Sat, 01 Dec 2007

Women, Work & Domestic Virtue in Uganda, 1900–2003 (2007)

By Grace Bantebya Kyomuhendo and Marjorie Keniston McIntosh

This groundbreaking book by two leading scholars offers a complete historical picture of women and their work in Uganda, tracing developments from precolonial times to the present and into the future. Setting women’s economic activities into a broader political, social, and cultural context, it provides the first general account of their experiences amid the changes that shaped the country. Women, Work & Domestic Virtue in Uganda, 1900–2003 describes the origins of the current situation, highlighting the challenges working women now face and recommending strategies that will improve their circumstances in the future.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Women%2C+Work+%26+Domestic+Virtue+in+Uganda%2C+1900%E2%80%932003.
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Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa

Fri, 16 Nov 2007

Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa (2007)

Edited by Henri Médard and Shane Doyle

Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa is a collection of ten studies by the most prominent historians of the region. Slavery was more important in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa than often has been assumed, and Africans from the interior played a more complex role than was previously recognized. The essays in this collection reveal the connections between the peoples of the region as well as their encounters with the conquering Europeans. The contributors challenge the assertion that domestic slavery increased in Africa as a result of the international trade. Slavery in this region was not a uniform phenomenon and the line between enslaved and non-slave labor was fine. Kinship ties could mark the difference between free and unfree labor. Social categories were not always clear-cut and the status of a slave could change within a lifetime.

Contents:
- Introduction by Henri Médard
- Language Evidence of Slavery to the Eighteenth Century by David Schoenbrun
- The Rise of Slavery & Social Change in Unyamwezi 1860–1900 by Jan-Georg Deutsch
- Slavery & Forced Labour in the Eastern Congo 1850–1910 by David Northrup
- Legacies of Slavery in North West Uganda ‘The One-Elevens’ by Mark Leopold
- Human Booty in Buganda: The Seizure of People in War, c.1700–c.1900 by Richard Reid
- Stolen People & Autonomous Chiefs in Nineteenth-Century Buganda by Holly Hanson
- Women’s Experiences of Slavery in Late Nineteenth- & Early Twentieth-Century Uganda by Michael W. Tuck
- Slavery & Social Oppression in Ankole 1890–1940 by Edward I. Steinhart
- The Slave Trade in Burundi & Rwanda at the Beginning of German Colonisation 1890–1906 by Jean-Pierre Chretien
- Bunyoro & the Demography of Slavery Debate by Shane Doyle

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Slavery+in+the+Great+Lakes+Region+of+East+Africa.
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Rookwood and the American Indian

Tue, 23 Oct 2007

Rookwood and the American Indian (2007)
Masterpieces of American Art Pottery from the James J. Gardner Collection

By Anita J. Ellis and Susan Labry Meyn

The nation’s premier private collection of Rookwood art pottery featuring American Indian portraiture is on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum from October 2007 to January 2008. Rookwood and the American Indian: Masterpieces of American Art Pottery from the James J. Gardner Collection is a remarkable exhibition catalogue that will be of interest well beyond the exhibition because of its unique subject matter. Fifty-two pieces produced by the Rookwood Pottery Company are showcased, many accompanied by black-and-white photographs of the American Indians portrayed by the ceramic artist. In addition, the catalogue includes a brief biography of each artist as well as curators’ comments about the Rookwood pottery and the Indian apparel seen in the portraits.

The catalogue also presents two essays. The first, “Enduring Encounters: Cincinnatians and American Indians to 1900,” by ethnologist and co-curator Susan Labry Meyn, describes American Indian activities in Cincinnati from the time of the first settlers to 1900 and relates these events to national policy, such as the 1830 Indian Removal Act. Rookwood and the American Indian, by art historian Anita J. Ellis, concentrates on Rookwood’s fascination with the American Indian and the economic implications of producing that line.

Rookwood and the American Indian blends anthropology with art history to reveal the relationships between the white settlers and the Native Americans in general, between Cincinnati and the American Indian in particular, and ultimately between Rookwood artists and their Indian friends.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Rookwood+and+the+American+Indian.
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Paris on the Potomac

Fri, 19 Oct 2007

Paris on the Potomac (2007)
The French Influence on the Architecture and Art of Washington, D.C.

Edited by Cynthia R. Field, Isabelle Gournay and Thomas P. Somma

In 1910 John Merven Carrère, a Paris-trained American architect, wrote, “Learning from Paris made Washington outstanding among American cities.” The five essays in Paris on the Potomac explore aspects of this influence on the artistic and architectural environment of Washington, D.C., which continued long after the well-known contributions of Peter Charles L’Enfant, the transplanted French military officer who designed the city’s plan.

Isabelle Gournay’s introductory essay provides an overview and examines the context and issues involved in three distinct periods of French influence: the classical and Enlightenment principles that prevailed from the 1790s through the 1820s, the Second Empire style of the 1850s through the 1870s, and the Beaux-Arts movement of the early twentieth century. William C. Allen and Thomas P. Somma present two case studies: Allen on the influence of French architecture, especially the Halle aux Blés, on Thomas Jefferson’s vision of the U.S. Capitol; and Somma on David d’Angers’s busts of George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette. Liana Paredes offers a richly detailed examination of French-inspired interior decoration in the homes of Washington’s elite in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cynthia R. Field concludes the volume with a consideration of the influence of Paris on city planning in Washington, D.C., including the efforts of the McMillan Commission and the later development of the Federal Triangle complex.

The essays in this collection, the latest addition to the series Perspectives on the Art and Architectural History of the United States Capitol, originated in a conference held by the U.S. Capitol Historical Society in 2002 at the French Embassy’s Maison Française.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Paris+on+the+Potomac.
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