Strategies of Representation, Relationship, and Resistance: British Women Travelers and Mormon Plural Wives, c. 1870-1890

During the 1870s and 1880s, several British women writers traveled by transcontinental railroad across the American West via Salt Lake City, Utah, the capital of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons. These women subsequently wrote books about their travels for a home audience with a taste for adventures in the American West, and particularly for accounts of Mormon plural marriage, which was sanctioned by the Church before 1890. "The plight of the Mormon woman," a prominent social reform and literary theme of the period, situated Mormon women at the center of popular representations of Utah during the second half of the nineteenth century. "The Mormon question" thus lends itself to an analysis of how a stereotyped subaltern group was represented by elite British travelers. These residents of western American territories, however, differed in important respects from the typical subaltern subjects discussed by Victorian travelers. These white, upwardly mobile, and articulate Mormon plural wives attempted to influence observers' representations of them through a variety of narrative strategies. Both British women travel writers and Mormon women wrote from the margins of power and credibility, and as interpreters of the Mormon scene were concerned to established their representational authority.

'Initiators of Discursive Practices': Authorship, attribution, and intent in the debates between philosophes and anti-philosophes

This article focuses on the “social side” of pseudonymity—on how writers and readers compete to influence the critical destiny of a pseudonymous work. By analyzing pseudonymity and attribution in both the specific context of Voltaire’s 1760 staging of the play, Le café ou l’écossaise, and in larger debates in the emerging fields of anonymity, pseudonymity, and attribution studies, I hope to show how literary scholars at present can address the individuality of each pseudonymous case while not letting go of trans-historical, general problems of anonymous strategies. Voltaire’s use of multiple pseudonyms before and after releasing L’Ecossaise, a comédie sérieuse in which Voltaire attacks his enemy Elie-Cathérine Fréron, supports his philosophe friends at a crucial moment in history, and exemplifies his emerging taste for serious comedy and British drama calls into question traditional takes on pseudonymity, anonymity, and attribution by refusing to fit into the binary arguments of anonymous vs. attributed and authorial intent vs. the reader’s control.

Córdoban Discourses: A Drama of Interreligious Dialogue

SETTING: Cordoba, Spain, 1135 CE, 29th year of the reign of ‘Ali “amir al-muslimin,” second king of the Berber Almoravid dynasty, rulers of Moorish Spain from 1071 to 1147. Cordoba, the capital of Andalus and the center of the Almoravid holdings in Spain, is a bustling cosmopolitan center, a crossroads for Europe and the Middle East, and the meeting-point of three religious traditions. Most significantly, Cordoba at this time is the hub of European intellectual activity. From the square—itself impressively large and surrounded by a massive collonade, the regularity and ordered beauty of which typifies the Moorish taste for symmetry (so beloved of M.C. Escher)—can be seen the huge Cordoban mosque, erected in the 8th-century by Khalif Abd-er-Rahman I to the glory of Allah, oft forgiving, most merciful. It is the second largest building in Islam, and the bastion of the still entrenched but soon to fade Muslim presence in western Europe. SCENE: Three figures sit upon stone benches beneath the westernmost colonnade of the Cordoban mosque, involved in an animated, though friendly discussion on matters of faith and reason, knowledge and God, language and logic. The host is none other than Jehudah Halevi, and his esteemed guests Master Peter Abelard and the venerable Råmånuja, whose obviously advanced age belies his youthful voice, gleaming eye, quick hands, and general exuberance. It is autumn, early evening…

Sensory-specific Appetition: Postingestive Detection of Glucose Rapidly Promotes Continued Consumption of a Recently Encountered Flavor

It is generally thought that macronutrients stimulate intake when sensed in the mouth (e.g., sweet taste) but as food enters the GI tract its effects become inhibitory, triggering satiation processes leading to meal termination. Here we report experiments extending recent work (see [1]) showing that under some circumstances nutrients sensed in the gut produce a positive feedback effect, immediately promoting continued intake. In one experiment, rats with intragastric (IG) catheters were accustomed to consuming novel flavors in saccharin daily while receiving water infused IG (5 ml/15 min). The very first time glucose (16% w/w) was infused IG instead of water, intake accelerated within 6 mins of infusion onset and total intake increased 29% over baseline. Experiment 2 replicated this stimulatory effect with glucose infusion but not fructose nor maltodextrin. Experiment 3 showed the immediate intake stimulation is specific to the flavor accompanying the glucose infusion. Rats were accustomed to flavored saccharin being removed and replaced with the same or a different flavor. When glucose infusion accompanied the first bottle, intake from the second bottle was stimulated only when it contained the same flavor, not when the flavor switched. Thus we confirm not only that glucose sensed postingestively can have a rapid, positive feedback effect ('appetition' as opposed to 'satiation') but that it is sensory-specific, promoting continued intake of a recently encountered flavor. This sensory specific motivation may represent an additional psychobiological influence on meal size, and further, has implications for the mechanisms of learned flavor-nutrient associations.

The Modernity of la Mode: a History of the French Revolution Through the Lens of Fashion, Culture, and Identity

In my thesis, I explore the cultural history of the French Revolution and its relation to the modern era which ensued. Many historians have studied the French Revolution as it relates to culture, the rise of modernity, and fashion. I combine the unique histories of all three of these aspects to reach an understanding of the history of the French Revolution and fashion’s role in bringing about change. In the majority of literature of costume history, discussion of fashion surrounds its reflective properties. Many historians conclude fashion as a reflection of the broader cultural shifts that occurred during the Revolution. I, on the other hand, propose that fashion is an active force in bringing out cultural change during this time. In exploring fashion as a historical motivator, I examine the aesthetic world of fashion from 1740 to 1815, the modern system of cultural dissemination of fashion through particular historical heroes, and the rise of “taste” and its relation to modern identity. Through aesthetics, culture, and identity, I argue that fashion is a decisive force of culture in that it creates a visual world through which ideas form and communicate.