“We Should Have Maintained This Unity, Then There Would Be More Development:” Lessons from a Pop-Up Museum of the Fante Confederation

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 195-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor R. Getz ◽  
Lindsay Ehrisman ◽  
Tony Yeboah

Abstract:This article examines the potential of an unconventional method in applied history – the pop-up museum – for analyzing relationships between history and memory and producing meaningful histories of African pasts. Specifically, we assess our application of this tool to accounts of events surrounding the Fante Confederation of 1868–1873 in the Central Region of modern-day Ghana. By utilizing a pop-up museum exhibit in the field, we determined that the construction of a meaningful history of the Fante Confederation requires the apperception of “durable bundles” – continuities between collective memory and history that also serve as survivals from the mid-nineteenth century to contemporary society. Our original sources and interlocutors in common identified themes of “unity” and “development” as particularly meaningful durable themes. We posit that these shared themes can serve as points of attachment for contemporary Fante speakers to work with histories of the Fante Confederation, and propose them as motifs around which relevant histories can be built in this case. Finally, in reflecting on our experience, we hypothesize that this model of applied history may be useful in other situations as well.

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sydney J. Shep

Emoticons are usually associated with the digital age, but they have numerous precursors in both manuscript and print. This article examines the circulation of emotional icons in nineteenth-century typographical journals as a springboard to understanding the relationship between emotion, materiality, and anthropomorphism as well the pre-digital networks of the “typographical press system.” It draws on literature from textual and typographical analysis, including the history of punctuation. It also demonstrates the ubiquity of emoticons in contemporary society and culture outside the world of computers, text messaging, and chat rooms.


2005 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
konrad hirschler

this article examines whether it is possible to trace eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivalist thought to earlier ‘medieval’ examples. the discussion is centred on the issue of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, which featured prominently in revivalist thought. taking the example of scholars in thirteenth-century damascus, it firstly compares the respective readings of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, by focusing on one individual, abu¯ sha¯ma (d. 1267). it secondly asks whether a scholar like abu¯ sha¯ma, who had adopted a reading similar to later revivalists, also took a critical and oppositional stand against large sections of his contemporary society, i.e. a revivalist posture. it is this article's main contention that the example of abu¯ sha¯ma shows the need to study in more detail possible revivalist traditions prior to the ‘grand’ movements. the combination of the history of ideas and social history might allow a deeper understanding of how and in what contexts calls for reform and opposition to the current state of affairs were expressed.


wisdom ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-70
Author(s):  
Davit Mosinyan

This paper discusses the issue of the relationship of history and memory. Memory becomes a topic in historical discourses as it deals with identity, especially when we speak of collective memory. The paper presents the history of the relationship of history and memory and suggests a thesis according which the close interaction between these two concepts can solve the crisis of identity that has been most urgent in our days.


Author(s):  
Thomas Cardoza ◽  
Karen Hagemann

The chapter addresses the ways women were involved in warfare on both sides of the Atlantic in the time between the 1770s and 1880s as camp followers, officially recognized auxiliaries, nurses, and cross-dressed female soldiers and how their active war support was perceived and remembered during the nineteenth century. Collective memory of these women represents a complex picture. Camp followers and officially recognized auxiliaries were long forgotten. The small number of cross-dressed female soldiers, too, fell into obscurity, especially if they survived the wars. Yet by the latter half of the nineteenth century, some of these women were rediscovered, and their public image became more positive. Their public portrayal was, however, one dimensional: they were girls and women who rose above the limitations of their sex to defend a “nation in danger.” They now became examples of extraordinary female patriotism.


2020 ◽  
pp. 175069802092143
Author(s):  
Emre Gönlügür ◽  
Devrim Sezer

This article proposes to read the history of Izmir’s Kültürpark as symptomatic of Turkey’s troubled relationship with its political past and urban heritage. Combining insights from political theory, urban and architectural history, and memory studies for a transdisciplinary analysis, it problematizes the oblivion surrounding Kültürpark and explores the ways in which this collective amnesia is questioned by contemporary artists and civic initiatives. First, we examine how Kültürpark rose on a foundation of forgetting of the uprooting of Izmir’s non-Muslim communities from their homeland and the disappearance of their cultural traces from collective memory. Second, we explore how contemporary artistic and civic interventions that engage with the themes of remembrance and coming to terms with the past contest highly selective memory constructs. Third, we raise the question of whether the agonistic debates on the national narratives about the past might open up a new memoryscape and signal a relatively late ‘memory turn’ in Turkey. Finally, we argue that these artistic and civic interventions might shed new light on the theoretical disputes in memory studies, in particular on the debates about cosmopolitan and agonistic modes of remembering. More specifically, we suggest that the recent memory turn Turkey has been experiencing demonstrates that these two modes of remembering are not mutually exclusive.


Author(s):  
Brenda Assael

The epilogue begins with consideration of the way the nineteenth-century London restaurant features in individual and collective memory. It insists that such memories were not exclusively characterized by notions of dispossession, melancholy, or regret, and the distance between eating out in the middle of the nineteenth century and the dawn of the twentieth century was often expressed through the sentiments of progress and improvement. It then moves on to a reflection on how returning the restaurant to a central role in our understanding of metropolitan history in the Victorian and Edwardian period has important connotations for how the history of Modern Britain, more broadly, might be researched and written. In particular, the restaurant requires more attention to be given to the more materially grounded aspects of the urban experience as much as it does to the more abstracted motifs of representation, performance, and subjectivity.


2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-JüRgen Lechtreck

Two early nineteenth century texts treating the production and use of wax models of fruit reveal the history of these objects in the context of courtly decoration. Both sources emphasise the models' decorative qualities and their suitability for display, properties which were not simply by-products of the realism that the use of wax allowed. Thus, such models were not regarded merely as visual aids for educational purposes. The artists who created them sought to entice collectors of art and natural history objects, as well as teachers and scientists. Wax models of fruits are known to have been collected and displayed as early as the seventeenth century, although only one such collection is extant. Before the early nineteenth century models of fruits made from wax or other materials (glass, marble, faience) were considered worthy of display because contemporaries attached great importance to mastery of the cultivation and grafting of fruit trees. This skill could only be demonstrated by actually showing the fruits themselves. Therefore, wax models made before the early nineteenth century may also be regarded as attempts to preserve natural products beyond the point of decay.


2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Funk

In the history of botany, Adam Zalužanský (d. 1613), a Bohemian physician, apothecary, botanist and professor at the University of Prague, is a little-known personality. Linnaeus's first biographers, for example, only knew Zalužanský from hearsay and suspected he was a native of Poland. This ignorance still pervades botanical history. Zalužanský is mentioned only peripherally or not at all. As late as the nineteenth century, a researcher would be unaware that Zalužanský’s main work Methodi herbariae libri tres actually existed in two editions from two different publishers (1592, Prague; 1604, Frankfurt). This paper introduces the life and work of Zalužanský. Special attention is paid to the chapter “De sexu plantarum” of Zalužanský’s Methodus, in which, more than one hundred years before the well-known De sexu plantarum epistola of R. J. Camerarius, the sexuality of plants is suggested. Additionally, for the first time, an English translation of Zalužanský’s chapter on plant sexuality is provided.


2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-336
Author(s):  
PIOTR DASZKIEWICZ ◽  
MICHEL JEGU

ABSTRACT: This paper discusses some correspondence between Robert Schomburgk (1804–1865) and Adolphe Brongniart (1801–1876). Four letters survive, containing information about the history of Schomburgk's collection of fishes and plants from British Guiana, and his herbarium specimens from Dominican Republic and southeast Asia. A study of these letters has enabled us to confirm that Schomburgk supplied the collection of fishes from Guiana now in the Laboratoire d'Ichtyologie, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. The letters of the German naturalist are an interesting source of information concerning the practice of sale and exchange of natural history collections in the nineteenth century in return for honours.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document