Roses and Thorns, or Recollections of an Artist (1854), the autobiography of American painter Susanna Paine (1792-1862) has been overlooked despite its historical value, due to its alleged affinity ...to fiction. In this article I argue that Paine's narrative should be read instead as an early attempt to write in the autoethnographical mode; I demonstrate my argument by focusing on one such "fictional" element, her use of composite vignettes. I find that exploring Paine's narrative style and the dynamics between the personal and the social offers a new path to trace the impact of early nineteenth-century socio-economic changes had on American women artists; second, it highlights the difficulties in rendering that life into a narrative, and last it calls attention to the intertwining of "truth," memory and imagination in autobiographical writing.
This article examines how American girls and young women in the early republic formed a new sense of a "corporeal" national identity while touring areas of the Hudson River valley and the Great ...Lakes. Based on a reading of the travel writings of fifteen white, middle and upper-middle class, American girls and young women travelling between 1802 and 1835, it demonstrates first that during the tours within the United States the girls underwent a multisensory familiarisation with the landscape, which both bolstered their confidence and concretised much of their theoretical knowledge gained during their studies. Second, when touring the Canadian shores of the Great Lakes their focus was on constructing both its landscape and its people as "other". The article closes with a consideration of how these young women's travel writings may offer a new perspective for the study of a gendered national identity formation in the early United States.
Children's and adolescents' tourist activities and patterns before the late nineteenth century have not garnered much scholarly attention. This study addresses this oversight by focusing on the ...travel experiences of thirteen, white, middle and upper-middle class, American adolescent girls touring the United States between 1782 and 1834. I trace their visits to two site clusters: battlefields, forts, and cemeteries, and prisons, hospitals and asylums; sites which some scholars term 'dark sites'. Reading their writings, I argue that such sites were viewed as places which exemplified civic sacrifice or benevolence and hence the girls' visits to such sites were part of a shared desire to foster female civic virtue in the new Republic.
Jackie (
2016
), Pablo Larraín's biopic of Jacqueline Kennedy, is the first full-length feature film devoting serious attention to an American First Lady and the work she carries out. I argue that ...Larraín's interpretation should be read as an endeavour to render visible a First Lady's largely invisible work of image-making. Larraín's subversion of biopic conventions combined with the use of estrangement devices enables him to posit a nuanced and complex interpretation of Jacqueline Kennedy and to lift the cinematic veil of invisibility obscuring her work. I close by considering the uniqueness and significance of Jackie, suggesting it has the potential to serve as an alternative, postmodern, and perhaps feminist, option for portraying women's lives and labour.
Avant la deuxième décennie du dix-neuvième siècle, la Vallée de l'Hudson était devenue à la fois une destination touristique, réputée pour sa beauté naturelle, et le lieu de transformations ...commerciales et industrielles significatives. Les voyageurs qui venaient dans la vallée avaient sans cesse exprimé leurs réactions devant ce paysage emblématique, mais les expériences de voyages des enfants et des adolescents ont été systématiquement absentes des études sur la littérature de voyage. Dans cet article, j'étudie les expériences des jeunes filles en voyage, à travers la lecture des récits de voyage de quatorze jeunes Américaines blanches, issues des classes moyenne et moyenne supérieure (âgées de 10 à 21 ans), qui ont écrit sur leur voyage dans la vallée entre 1758 et 1840. J'examine leurs réactions au milieu social et à l'environnement géographique de l'Hudson. Je défends l'idée que ces voyages ont à la fois initié ces jeunes filles au milieu social américain et leur ont fait faire connaissance avec le paysage historique et géographique de leur nation, favorisant par là la formation d'un sentiment nouveau d'identité nationale partagée.
Early in the nineteenth century, New York residents K. White and Elizabeth Fisher wrote and published two of the earliest autobiographies written by American women. Their lives ran along parallel ...courses: both were daughters of Loyalists who chose to remain in the United States; both found themselves entangled in unhappy marriages, abandoned for extend periods, and forced to take on the role of sole provider; and both became involved in property disputes with their male kin, which eventually landed them in prison, where they wrote their narratives. White's tale is a highly crafted text, almost an embryonic novel, incorporating several subgenres and interweaving poetry and prose. Fisher's story, while less sophisticated in terms of rhetoric and style, is nevertheless a compelling account of a woman's life and struggles during the Revolution and the early years of the republic. Their narratives, read together, highlight many literary and historical issues. They present an unruly, disobedient, and assertive female subject and illuminate popular attitudes regarding women and marriage. By articulating a consistent and growing unease concerning the institution of marriage and the unlimited power husbands had over their wives, these narratives lay the groundwork for a political critique of marriage and the status of women within it.
This article seeks to understand the gendered dynamics of political leadership in contemporary Israeli society by examining how the Israeli press dealt with the issue of Tzipi Livni's "womanhood" and ..."feminine style" (or lack thereof) in the course of the 2008-2009 campaign. By analyzing the media debate surrounding Livni's candidacy to the premiership, I am able to complicate the discussion concerning the media's treatment of the issue of gender and political leadership in general and in Israel in particular. The main sources of data are some fifty items published in the daily national newspapers during the election campaign, and Livni's website. Employing a rhetorical analysis, I chart the persistent power of gender ideologies in Israeli public and political discourses and outline the ways in which they are accepted, contested and subverted. I find that although creative appropriation attempts were made to produce an alternative leadership discourse, these came fairly late in the campaign and were unfocused, and thus, ultimately, were unable to pose a serious challenge to Israeli gender ideologies concerning leadership.
Freshwater salinization is an emerging global problem impacting safe drinking water, ecosystem health and biodiversity, infrastructure corrosion, and food production. Freshwater salinization ...originates from diverse anthropogenic and geologic sources including road salts, human-accelerated weathering, sewage, urban construction, fertilizer, mine drainage, resource extraction, water softeners, saltwater intrusion, and evaporative concentration of ions due to hydrologic alterations and climate change. The complex interrelationships between salt ions and chemical, biological, and geologic parameters and consequences on the natural, social, and built environment are called Freshwater Salinization Syndrome (FSS). Here, we provide a comprehensive overview of salinization issues (past, present, and future), and we investigate drivers and solutions. We analyze the expanding global magnitude and scope of FSS including its discovery in humid regions, connections to human-accelerated weathering and mobilization of ‘chemical cocktails.’ We also present data illustrating: (1) increasing trends in salt ion concentrations in some of the world’s major freshwaters, including critical drinking water supplies; (2) decreasing trends in nutrient concentrations in rivers due to regulations but increasing trends in salinization, which have been due to lack of adequate management and regulations; (3) regional trends in atmospheric deposition of salt ions and storage of salt ions in soils and groundwater, and (4) applications of specific conductance as a proxy for tracking sources and concentrations of groups of elements in freshwaters. We prioritize FSS research needs related to better understanding: (1) effects of saltwater intrusion on ecosystem processes, (2) potential health risks from groundwater contamination of home wells, (3) potential risks to clean and safe drinking water sources, (4) economic and safety impacts of infrastructure corrosion, (5) alteration of biodiversity and ecosystem functions, and (6) application of high-frequency sensors in state-of-the art monitoring and management. We evaluate management solutions using a watershed approach spanning air, land, and water to explore variations in sources, fate and transport of different salt ions (
e.g.
monitoring of atmospheric deposition of ions, stormwater management, groundwater remediation, and managing road runoff). We also identify tradeoffs in management approaches such as unanticipated retention and release of chemical cocktails from urban stormwater management best management practices (BMPs) and unintended consequences of alternative deicers on water quality. Overall, we show that FSS has direct and indirect effects on mobilization of diverse chemical cocktails of ions, metals, nutrients, organics, and radionuclides in freshwaters with mounting impacts. Our comprehensive review suggests what could happen if FSS were not managed into the future and evaluates strategies for reducing increasing risks to clean and safe drinking water, human health, costly infrastructure, biodiversity, and critical ecosystem services.
Israeli Women in Black was founded twenty years ago to demonstrate for peace and against the occupation of the Palestinian territories. Their political activism involves three spatial processes: ...outing their protest by taking to the streets, locating their protest through strategic siting, and performing their politics, thus redefining the places they occupy. The Haifa chapter has relocated its demonstrations several times in response to political opposition. Observations and interviews support our analysis of the geographical implications of their unique method of demonstration, their locational choices, and the tension between their femininity and activism played out against the city dynamic.
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