Opening the Chrysalis: Willard D. Straight’s Sketches, Photographs, and Accounts of Korea’s Interaction with the Outside World, 1904–5

Willard D. Straight – architect, diplomat, photographer, publisher, sketcher, and writer – arrived in Korea in 1904 as a correspondent during the Russo-Japanese War, and became the US vice consul in Seoul in 1905. By utilizing a number of images from the Willard Dickerman Straight Papers of Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, and by referring to other relevant sources of/about Straight, this essay presents a textual analysis and comprehensive visual reading about the country which Straight observed in a very crucial transition period in global history. It provides a glimpse at the perspective of an early twentieth-century American diplomat, eyewitness, photographer, and writer on the cultural, industrial, and technological transformations that Korea experienced in the early 1900s as a consequence of its interaction with major world powers.

Crisis of Multilateralism and Cities’ Helping Hand

This essay shows how cities are stepping into the role of nation-states and are efficiently cooperating with other cities, not only bilaterally but also multilaterally. There are clear symptoms of the crisis of multilateralism that have led cities to attempt to save or fix the multilateral system and solve global problems, notably the current COVID-19 pandemic. Can cities be regarded as a helping hand or as a fix for the multilateral system? With discourse analysis and formal-legal analysis, this article concludes that the answer to the question is positive – cities may help to fix or save the multilateral system.

“Civilization” in History and Ideology Since 1800

The term “civilization,” articulated in eighteenth century Europe, has been widely used in many languages from the nineteenth century to the present. It refers both to widespread societies governed by powerful states in modern times and to prestigious urban and monumental civilizations of ancient times. This essay explores the history of the concept of civilization through science, ideology, and schooling. Scientific exploration of civilization was an implementation of emerging studies in social science. Ideological statement of social priorities appropriated civilization, especially in the era of expanding capitalism, empire, and white supremacy. In the school systems set up around the world, the term “civilization” was included in the curriculum both to explain ancient heritage and the comparison of modern great powers, religious faiths, and cultural practices. Weaknesses in the concept of civilization are becoming apparent as knowledge expands. New factors to consider include the significance of the end of empire; increased attention to network dynamics as well as hierarchies; comparisons of biological equality and social inequality; the roles of commoners and local scales; the rise of global social and institutional structures; shifting balances of societies and regions; and more attention to the historical role of schooling and science.

The Spiritual Globe

The Renaissance recovery of Ptolemy’s Geography may have laid the foundations for a scientific cartography, but the new interest in maps, which provided an increasingly sophisticated orientation to the unknown, also opened up a new prophetic space. And the growing knowledge of the globe would engage the religious imagination of many, as salvation moved to a planetary scale and fostered a long-standing desire to bring the entire world and all its peoples under one faith. As a result, spiritual desires themselves contributed to the expansion of cartography. This article traces this emerging apocalyptic cartography not only in Christian but also in Jewish and Islamic contexts. For each tradition, the ultimate goal, deeply felt in the early modern period, was the realization of a Beautiful Ending: the Second Coming of Jesus for the Christians, the arrival of the Messiah for the Jews, and the return of the Mahdi for the Muslims. But, while each tradition drew on similar apocalyptic visions of the End, their dreams of unity were ultimately exclusive. The ideal of the spiritual globe not only united, it also divided the world.

Apocalypticism and Globalization in the Early Modern World: A Medievalist’s Perspective

The apocalyptic belief systems from early modernity discussed in this series of articles to varying degrees have precursors in the Middle Ages. The drive to map the globe for purposes both geographic and symbolic, finds expression in explicitly apocalyptic manuscripts produced throughout the Middle Ages. An apocalyptic political discourse, especially centered on themes of empire and Islam, developed in the seventh century and reached extraordinary popularity during the Crusades. Speculation about the end of world history among medieval intellectuals led them not to reject the natural world but to study it more closely, in ways that set the stage for the later Age of Discovery. These broad continuities between the medieval and early modern, and indeed into modernity, demonstrate the imperative of viewing apocalypticism not as an esoteric fringe movement but as a constructive force in cultural creation.