Historianopetukseen kohdistuu paineita

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

The history of Lapland : containing a geographical description, and a natural history of that country; with an account of the inhabitants, their original, religion, customs, habits, marriages, conjurations, employments, &c. Written by John Scheffer, ... Translated from the last edition in Latin, and illustrated with many curious copper-cutts. To which are added, the travels of the King of Sweden's mathematicians into Lapland: the history of Livonia, and the wars there: also a journey into Lapland, Finland, &c. Written by Dr. Olof Rudbeck in the year 1701

Added engraved title page: The history of Lapland.

The oral history network in the Nordic and Baltic context

Teemanumero

Soldiering and the making of Finnish manhood : conscription and masculinity in interwar Finland, 1918–1939

Military conscription and peacetime military service were the subjects of heated political, social and cultural controversies during the early years of national independence in Finland. Both the critics and the supporters of the existing military system described it as strongly formative of young men’s physical and moral development into adult men and male citizens. The conflicts over conscription prompted the contemporaries to express their notions about what Finnish men were like, at their best and at their worst, and what should and could be done about it. This thesis studies military conscription as an arena for the “making of manhood” in peacetime Finnish society, 1918–1939. It examines a range of public images of conscripted soldiering, asking how soldiering was depicted and given gendered meanings in parliamentary debates, war hero myths, texts concerned with the military and civic education of conscripts, as well as in works of fiction and reminiscences about military training as a personal experience. Studying conscription with a focus on masculinity, the thesis explores the different cultural images of manliness, soldiering and male citizenship on offer in Finnish society. It investigates how political parties, officers, educators, journalists, writers and “ordinary” conscripts used and developed, embraced or rejected these notions, according to their political purposes or personal needs. The period between the two world wars can be described as a fast-forward into military modernity in Finland. In the process, European middle class gender ideologies clashed with Finnish agrarian masculinities. Nationalistic agendas for the militarisation of Finnish manhood stumbled against intense class conflicts and ideological resistance. Military propaganda used images of military heroism, civic virtue and individual success to persuade the conscripts into ways of thinking and acting that were shaped by bourgeois mentality, nationalistic ideology and religious morality. These images are further analysed as expressive of the personal experiences and emotions of their middle-aged, male authors. The efforts of these military educators were, however, actively resisted on many fronts, ranging from rural working class masculinities among the conscripted young men to ideological critiques of the standing army system in parliament. In narratives about military training, masculinity was depicted as both strengthened and contradicted by the harsh and even brutal practices of interwar Finnish military training. The study represents a combination of new military history and the historical study of men and masculinities. It approaches masculinity as a contested and highly political form of social and cultural knowledge that is actively and selectively used by historic actors. Instead of trying to identify a dominant or “hegemonic” form of masculinity within a pre-determined theoretical structure, this study examines how the meanings ascribed to manhood varied according to class, age, political ideology and social situation. The interwar period in Finland can be understood as a period of contest between different notions of militarised masculinity, yet to judge by the materials studied, there was no clear winning party in that contest. A gradual movement from an atmosphere of conflict surrounding conscription towards political and cultural compromises can be discerned, yet this convergence was incomplete and many division lines remained.

Unca Don and Unca Scrooge’s Guide to History. Representations of the Past in the Disney Comics of Don Rosa

This thesis studies the various forms and layers of representations of the past that can be found in the Disney comics of Don Rosa. To stay true to the legacy of renowned comic book artist Carl Barks, Rosa has stopped time in the duck universe to the 1950’s: the decade when Barks created his most noted stories. There is a special feel of historicalness in Rosa’s duck stories, as his characters recall events that occurred in both Rosa’s own stories as well as Barks’. Rosa has shed new light to the past of the characters by writing and illustrating the history of Scrooge McDuck, one of the most beloved Disney characters. Rosa is also adamant that the historical facts used in his stories are always correct and based on thorough research. The methodological tools used in the analysis of the comics come from the fields of comic book studies, film theory, and history culture. Film and comics are recognized by many scholars as very similar media, which share elements that make them comparable in many ways. This thesis utilizes studies on historical film, narrative and genre, which provide valuable insight and comparisons for analysis. The thesis consists of three main chapters, the first of which deconstructs the duck universe in the stories in order to understand how the historicalness in them is created,and which outside elements might affect them, including the genre of Disney comics, publishers, and the legacy of Barks. The next chapter focuses on The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck series, i.e. the stories which are located in the past. Such stories feature similar representations of history as for example Westerns. They also compress and alter history to meet the restrictions of the medium of comics. The last part focuses on the adventure stories which draw inspiration from for example mythology, and take the characters to strange and mystical, but yet historical worlds. Such treasure-hunting stories show similarity to the action-adventure genre in film and for example their stereotypical representations of foreign cultures. Finally, the chapter addresses the problematic of historical fiction and its capability to write history.

The Great Irish Famine in history-writing and prose fiction : "the mutual interplay of two narrative genres"

Denna tvärvetenskapliga studie kontextualiserar den skönlitterära framställningen av hungersnöden i Irland i mitten av 1800-talet i förhållande till tre olika faser av irländsk historieskrivning ‒ den nationalistiska, den revisionistiska, och den postrevisionistiska ‒ med syfte att granska i vilken mån prosafiktionen antingen återspeglar eller motsäger historikernas tolkningar. År 1845 drabbades landet av en dittills okänd potatispest som förstörde skörden helt eller delvis under de följande fem åren. Missväxten ledde till utbredd svält och epidemiska sjukdomar som dödade åtminstone en miljon människor, medan ytterligare en och en halv miljon flydde, huvudsakligen till Förenta Staterna, England, och Kanada. I sina försök att hitta en rationell förklaring till hur potatispesten kunde utvecklas till den värsta svältkatastrofen i Europa under modern tid, har historiker påvisat ett antal bidragande faktorer, till exempel överbefolkning, de fattigaste jordlösa småbrukarnas och lantarbetarnas beroende av potatisen som sitt baslivsmedel, underutveckling inom jordbruket, det rådande jordegendomssystemet, och den dåvarande brittiska regeringens misslyckande att tillhandahålla effektiv och tillräcklig nödhjälp. Historiska förklaringar är naturligtvis nödvändiga för att vi skall kunna bilda oss en uppfattning om hungersnödens orsaker och konsekvenser, men svårigheten med att skildra offrens situation i en historiografisk analys baserad på fakta är uppenbar då deras egna vittnesmål till största delen saknas i källmaterialet. Följaktligen finns det en risk att historieskrivningen förmörkar det som onekligen var centrala realiteter för de värst drabbade, nämligen svält, vräkning, sjukdom och död. Här kan skönlitteraturen bidra till att komplettera historien. Genom att fokusera på ett specifikt (fiktivt) samhälle och dess (fiktiva) individer, kan skönlitterära verk ge en inblick i hur hungersnöden inverkade på olika samhällsskikt, vad människorna gjorde för att överleva, hur nöden och fasorna påverkade deras psyke, och vad eller vem de höll ansvariga för katastrofen. Å andra sidan kan denna fokusering innebära att författaren misslyckas med att ge en helhetsbild av hungersnödens enorma omfattning och att redogöra för alla faktorer som orsakade och förlängde den. Paul Ricoeurs teori om samspelet mellan historia och fiktion (the interweaving of history and fiction) är därför ett nyckelbegrepp för att bättre förstå denna traumatiska period i Irlands historia. Avhandlingen omfattar en textanalytisk, komparativ kritik av ett antal historiska och skönlitterära verk. Genom närläsning av dessa texter granskar jag vilka aspekter av hungersnöden (politiska, ekonomiska, sociala) de olika författarna valt att behandla, och på vilket sätt, samt hur deras synvinklar har format tolkningarna i sin helhet. I detta sammanhang tar jag också upp skillnaderna mella fakta och fiktion, och speciellt de etiska problem som är förknippade med skildringen av traumatiska händelser och mänskligt lidande. Samtidigt undersöker jag, med hänvisning till Roger D. Sells kommunikationsteori, huruvida vissa författare anslår en påstridig ton i sina verk och hur detta påverkar dialogen mellan författare och läsare. Med utgångspunkt i Ricoeurs teori argumenterar jag för att historia och fiktion inte bör ses som ömsesidigt antitetiska diskurser i skildringen och tolkningen av det förflutna, och att skönlitteraturen genom fokuseringen på offren, som ofta tenderar att reduceras till statistik i historieskrivningen, kan förmedla en bättre förståelse och en djupare känsla för den mänskliga dimensionen av den tragedi som utspelades under hungeråren.