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No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 258-296). / The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the life of a Marseilles architect, Pascal-Xavier Coste (1787-1879), his architectural work in Egypt, and his subsequent historical publications on his return to France. In Egypt, Coste served as the chief architect of the Ottoman Viceroy, Muhammad Ali, during the early portion of his reign. Coste worked on modernizing Lower Egypt through various architectural and engineering projects. I plan to show that Coste was not only responsive to the needs of progressive design but was also sensitive to the Egyptian culture, creating a stylistic synthesis of European and Islamic forms. Unfortunately, due to Muhammad Ali's military expenditures, much of Coste's work was sidelined, to be built later in the governor's reign. Coste's original designs and realized buildings, however, continued to have a great impact on the design of Egyptian architecture throughout the nineteenth century. Through a narrative of the life of Coste concluding with his publication of Architecture Arabe ou Monuments du Kaire in 1837, I will illustrate Coste's attitude toward the Muslim world, his reasons for compiling the study of Egypt's monuments, and the ultimate reception the book received in mid-nineteenth century France. Coste greatly admired the Islamic architecture of Egypt and through his work hoped to share this love with his European audience. In addition, he wished to contribute to the pursuit of Islamic architectural history. Ultimately, Coste's work had little impact on nineteenth century historical studies because of the change in European politics and Europeans' attitudes toward the Middle East during the later part of the nineteenth century. By discussing Coste's life in the context of contemporary historical developments, I will argue that Coste's innovative objectivity led to the neglect of his work during the nineteenth century and the renewed appreciation of it by historians of Islamic architecture in the early twentieth century and beyond. / by Kara Marietta Hill. / Ph.D.

Thomas A. Kochan. / Bibliography: p. [24]-[26]. / Support for the research in this paper was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Dept. of Labor, Division of Labor Management Relations and Cooperative Programs.

Bibliography: p. 6. / Office Naval Research. N00014-84-K-0519 (NR 649 003)

Written in memory of the first women convicts transported to Botany Bay, this unthinkable history, a concept posed by the historian, Paul Carter, is an experiment in extending the boundaries of academic remembering, so that the complex lives of those resilient women might be given recognition. Researching the women??s lives required an ethnographic method, or ??spatialized?? history, based on original archival research, together with research of rituals, art, literature, newspapers and music; and, importantly, the laws which circumscribed their behaviour. A research focus was thus the administration of criminal codes and the character of prominent judges, including the significance of the Recorder of London. Theories of history based on the work of philosophers such as Heidegger, Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida, Foucault and the ethical philosopher, Wyschogrod, with her feminist perspective, have influenced narrative themes and tropes. This experimental hybridization of historical methods and the poetics of fiction might be classified as ficto-critical historiography, where ficto-critical functions as an epithet, not a polarity, as is the case with ficto-historiography and the coinage, faction. As a meditation on the ??maybe?? of historiography, the experiment enters the debates about the relationship between history and fiction and the significance of remembering. The incompleteness of records, their silences and partialities, the forensic reading required to contextualize them, the perspective from which the narrative is told, together with the metaphorical levels of all writing, are explicitly acknowledged. Fundamental to that acknowledgement is the narrative trope of simulacra. The narrative figures are thus copies without originals; they are an acknowledgement of the absence which haunts memories, while avoiding scepticism or relativity. The semi-omniscient, intrusive voice of the narrator, the dialogic placement of other ??voices??, variously contrary, affirmative, informative or philosophical; together with the acknowledged artifice of narrative dramatizations in which the figures are assembled from multiple sources, are important elements in the grammar of this transgressive act of remembering with its footnotes and phantoms.

Written in memory of the first women convicts transported to Botany Bay, this unthinkable history, a concept posed by the historian, Paul Carter, is an experiment in extending the boundaries of academic remembering, so that the complex lives of those resilient women might be given recognition. Researching the women??s lives required an ethnographic method, or ??spatialized?? history, based on original archival research, together with research of rituals, art, literature, newspapers and music; and, importantly, the laws which circumscribed their behaviour. A research focus was thus the administration of criminal codes and the character of prominent judges, including the significance of the Recorder of London. Theories of history based on the work of philosophers such as Heidegger, Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida, Foucault and the ethical philosopher, Wyschogrod, with her feminist perspective, have influenced narrative themes and tropes. This experimental hybridization of historical methods and the poetics of fiction might be classified as ficto-critical historiography, where ficto-critical functions as an epithet, not a polarity, as is the case with ficto-historiography and the coinage, faction. As a meditation on the ??maybe?? of historiography, the experiment enters the debates about the relationship between history and fiction and the significance of remembering. The incompleteness of records, their silences and partialities, the forensic reading required to contextualize them, the perspective from which the narrative is told, together with the metaphorical levels of all writing, are explicitly acknowledged. Fundamental to that acknowledgement is the narrative trope of simulacra. The narrative figures are thus copies without originals; they are an acknowledgement of the absence which haunts memories, while avoiding scepticism or relativity. The semi-omniscient, intrusive voice of the narrator, the dialogic placement of other ??voices??, variously contrary, affirmative, informative or philosophical; together with the acknowledged artifice of narrative dramatizations in which the figures are assembled from multiple sources, are important elements in the grammar of this transgressive act of remembering with its footnotes and phantoms.

The figure of Shaka (c. 1780-1828) looms massively in the historical and symbolic landscapes of Southern Africa. He has been unquestioningly credited, in varying degrees, with creating the Zulu nation, murderous bloodlust, and military genius, so launching waves of violence across the subcontinent (the "mfecane"). The empirical evidence for this is slight and controversial. More importantly, however, Shaka has attained a mythical reputation on which not only Zulu self-conceptions, but to a significant degree white settler self-identifications have been built. This study describes as comprehensively as possible the genealogy of white Shakan literature, including eyewitness accounts, histories, fictions and poetry. The study argues that the vast majority of these works are characterised by a high degree of incestuous borrowing from one another, and by processes of mythologising catering primarily to the social-psychological needs of the writers. So coherent is this genealogy that the formation of an idealised notion of settler identity can be discerned, especially through the common use of particular textual "gestures". At the same time, while conforming largely to unquestioning modes of discourse such as popularised history and romance fiction, individual writers have attempted to adjust to socio-political circumstances; this study includes four close studies of individual texts. Such close stylistic attention serves to underline the textually-constructed nature of both the figure of Shaka and the "selves" of the writers. The study makes no attempt to reduce its explorations to a single Grand Unified Explanation, and takes eclectic theoretical positions, but it does seek throughout to explore the social-psychological meanings of textual productions of Shaka - in short, to explore the question, Why have white writers written about Shaka in these particular ways?

No description available.

From 1787 to 1793 a group of Bostonians plied the sea otter pelt trade between the northwestern coast of the North American continent and Canton, China. By chance, in May of 1792, their captain, Captain Robert Gray discovered the Columbia River, thereby feeding the popular belief in a transcontinental river and strengthening subsequent American claims to the Pacific Northwest. Presented here is a previously unpublished portion of First Mate Robert Haswell's log of the second voyage. This portion spans the dates October 3, 179 2 through May 2 6, 1793 and records the voyage from the completion of trade in the Pacific Northwest until the Columbia Rediviva's arrival in St. Helena. It has been lightly annotated and placed within the context of the subsequent use by statesmen and scholars of Columbia Rediviva records.