History and/as Science: Rereading Paul Lacombe

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-304
Author(s):  
Philippe Carrard
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Empirical Approach ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gender History ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Historical Theory

Abstract Forgotten during several years and rediscovered by historians of the Annales in the 1930s, Paul Lacombe’s De l’histoire considérée comme science (1894) is now quoted in such books as Antoine Prost’s Douze leçons sur l’histoire and the Sage Handbook of Historical Theory. Lacombe’s work is important from an historical standpoint. Against the focus on single events that prevailed in the late nineteenth century, Lacombe defined scientific history as the identifications of regularities for the purpose of articulating laws. Against the empirical approach practiced during that same period, he also stressed the importance of the hypothesis – of the assumptions that made the selection of the facts possible. Finally, connected to several militant women of the time, Lacombe, sought to do what we would now call “gender history,” that is, to study the distribution of gender roles during specific periods. While anticipating several developments in the theory of history, Lacombe was yet a man of his time. He thus did not foresee that his (and his contemporaries’) contrast between observation-based and document-based science would later be challenged, some philosophers now arguing that chemists and physicists are not more able than historians to “observe” the phenomena that they describe.

Disruptions of the Local, Eruptions of the Feminine: Local Reportage and National Anxieties in Egypt’s 1890s

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn Booth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Female Images ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Advocacy Role ◽  
Representations Of Women ◽  
Gendered Expectations

This chapter demonstrates that inscriptions of female images in Cairo’s late nineteenth-century nationalist press were part of a discursive economy shaping debates on how gender roles and gendered expectations should shift as Egyptians struggled for independence. The chapter investigates content and placement of ‘news from the street’ in al-Mu’ayyad in the 1890s, examining how these terse local reports – equivalent to faits divers in the French press – contributed to the construction of an ideal national political trajectory with representations of women serving as the primary example in shaping a politics of newspaper intervention on the national scene. In this, an emerging advocacy role of newspaper correspondents makes the newspaper a mediator in the construction of activist reader-citizens.

scholarly journals The Painter and the Princess: Constructing Feminism/Decentring Orientalism between Copenhagen, Istanbul, Cairo and Tunis

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-71
Author(s):  
Ragnhild Johnsrud Zorgati
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Literature And Politics ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The World ◽  
International Importance ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This article explores the encounters between a Polish-Danish painter and an Egyptian princess in the second part of the nineteenth century, at the junction of Orientalism, modernism and Islamic reformism. The painter Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann is known for her Orientalist paintings and autobiographical writings, while Princess Nazli Fadhel was a hostess of influential intellectual salons in Cairo and Tunis and, as such, a contributor to the world of art, literature and politics. Jerichau-Baumann and Nazli Fadhel were both creative and controversial personalities engaged in the cultural and political debates of their time. They were outspoken and well-travelled, which challenged conventional gender roles. Based on Scandinavian, English, French and Arabic sources concerning Jerichau-Baumann and Nazli Fadhel's lives, this article argues that the activities of these two women are testament to the increasing international importance of feminist discourses in the late nineteenth century. Their encounter is emblematic of the rapidly expanding connections across cultural, linguistic, and religious boundaries that characterized the nineteenth-century world. It thus questions the binary constructions – the idea of the West/Europe and the Other – underlying the paradigm of Orientalism.

scholarly journals Dreamers in dialogue: evolution, sex and gender in the utopian visions of William Morris and William Henry Hudson

2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 65-80
Author(s):  
Caterina Novák
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Active Engagement ◽  
William Morris ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
William Henry Hudson ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
And Gender

The aim of this article is to explore the parallels between two late-nineteenth-century utopias,William Henry Hudsons A Crystal Age (1882) and William Morriss News from Nowhere (1891). Itaims to explore how these two works respond to the transition from a kinetic to a static conception ofutopia that under pressure from evolutionary and feminist discourses took place during the period.Particular focus lies on the way in which this is negotiated through the depiction of evolution, sexuality,and gender roles in the respective novels, and how the depiction of these disruptive elements may workas a means of ensuring the readers active engagement in political, intellectual and emotional terms.

scholarly journals Paolo Mantegazza e l'Evoluzionismo in Italia

2010 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Production ◽  
Italian Society ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Selection Of

An eclectic figure – a scientist, novelist, anthropologist, politician and man of his time – Paolo Mantegazza (1831-1910) played a leading role in Italian society and the cultural scene of the late nineteenth century, even if historic events then partially eclipsed his memory. The retrieval and valorisation of the legacy of Mantegazza were the focus of the meetings that were held in the main sites connected with his life (Monza, Florence, Lerici) at which academics in different disciplines exchanged notes on various aspects, some even little known, of his multifaceted activity. This book brings together a selection of the most significant works presented on these occasions. They represent pieces in a complex puzzle which brings fully to light the great variety of interests and curiosities of the man, and the profound methodological rigour that guided his entire scientific production and is today the most evident sign of his contemporary relevance.

scholarly journals Vampires and Sexual Degeneration in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

MANUSYA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-65
Author(s):  
Nathamon Sunthikhunakorn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sexual Morality ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Late Nineteenth

In the late-nineteenth century, Victorian people lived their lives in fear and anxiety caused by the negative consequences of the Industrial Revolution and uncertainty about their future. The concept of degeneration invented by influential nineteenth-century European scientists was used to explain the causes and effects of these pessimistic outcomes. It terrified Victorian people because it proposed the idea that the Caucasian race would be physically degraded and would, unavoidably, face extinction because later generations would become morally and culturally corrupted. This concept is reflected in the analysis of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) in the form of sexual degeneration in the form of sexual degeneration in the late-nineteenth century and how the novel seeks to deal with the tensions of the era by both reinforcing Victorian values and highlighting the importance of an adaptability to change. Relying on the social and cultural context of degeneration in nineteenth-century Britain, this paper shows that vampires in the novel can be seen to represent degenerate people and they also symbolize the Victorians’ fear regarding changes in gender roles during the late-nineteenth century. Decadent women of the period are portrayed through the figures of the female vampires and Lucy Westenra who express their lack of self-control by being excessively sexual and resigning wifehood and motherhood. While Lucy is eliminated from the text, Mina Harker survives through to the end since she is proved to be a good and loyal wife who uses her knowledge and intellect to provide her husband with support when it is needed. A character like Mina helps reduce the tension and anxiety about sexual morality, gender roles and the possibility that the English race will become extinct because she reaffirms Victorian values and also proves that it is not necessary for the country to collapse because of change.

Translating Domesticity in Chinese History and Historiography

2019 ◽  
Vol 124 (4) ◽  
pp. 1278-1289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth LaCouture
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Gender History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Anglo American

Abstract This article examines knowledge about “domesticity” in China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and argues against the naturalization of Euro-American historiographical frameworks around “domesticity.” “Domesticity” was not a Chinese concept: although Confucianism had long connected the household to the state through ideology and prescriptive practices, Anglo-American ideas about “domesticity” were translated into Chinese first by way of Japan in the late nineteenth century, and second by way of American missionary educators in the twentieth century. “Domesticity” did not translate easily into Chinese, however; neither the ideology nor its pedagogical practices ever became popular in China. The history of translating “domesticity” into Chinese thus reveals that Euro-American historiographical terms that were once thought to be universal map poorly onto other places and suggests that we need more inclusive frames for comparative gender history.

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