This study is launched from the general understanding that History is a dialectical process comprised by the contributions of multiple actors, all of which interact in a contentious give-and-take. Keeping in mind this precept, ,I look at the novel La carga, by contemporary Equatoguinean author Juan Tomas Avila Laurel, as an alternative source of history, and assess that history as he has constructed it. This entails not only a detailed exploration of the world he creates within the novel, but a look at the intertextual bonds he establishes with such nineteenth-century writers as Manuel Iradier and Jose Marti. My analysis begins with the general notion that in Avila's granting of textual agency to natural elements one can begin to see the first inklings of a challenge to typical Eurocentric historiography. In the first major, section I look at what for all intents and purposes has been deemed the colonial dialectic, or the greater social dynamic that maintained colonial hegemony, as it is presented in the vignettes of 1940 Equatorial Guinea that we see in La carga. In the next section, I look at what Avila does with some of the discursive tenets of Spanish imperialism, especially those associated with the monolithic conception of Africa and Europe. And finally, I look at the way that relations between spatiality—mainly the geographic classifications inherent in colonial discourses—and subjectivity give way to Avila's commentary on modern-day Equatorial Guinea. I try to close with some speculation on the strategic formation of which Avila and La carga may form part, beginning with a look at his prefacio and concluding with a questioning of where the attitudes outlined in the prefacio may place him on the grand scale of African discourses of resistance.

Using the travel writings of Amerigo Vespucci, the voyage of Pedro Álvares Cabral and Jean de Lérys book, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, Also Called America, this thesis will investigate the role of the individual in the narrative of New World contact. This thesis specifically moves against the tendency in New World historiography to rely upon meta-narratives and a singular, universal European presence to explain the circumstances of the New World contact. This project seeks to gain greater understanding of the unique and divergent representations of indigenous cultures contained within travel writing by being sensitive towards the travel writers individual characteristics such as educational background, religion and participation in intellectual endeavours. The specific example used in this thesis will be the Tupínamba of coastal Brazil and will be supported by the anthropological understandings we have about this extinct indigenous group. Overall, this thesis seeks to show that in the creating of metanarratives regarding the New World experience of Europeans, it is easy to forget that the word European is as meaningless as the word Indian in terms of academic usefulness.

Since Mark Leone’s landmark 1979 study Roots of Modern Mormonism, a scholarly consensus has emerged that a key element of Mormon distinctiveness stems from one’s subscription to an alternate narrative or experience of history. In the past generation, scholarship on Mormon historical thought has addressed important issues arising from these insights from anthropological and sociological perspectives. These perspectives have joined a rich and venerable controversial literature seeking to “debunk” Mormon narratives, apologetic scholarship asserting their epistemic harmony or superiority, as well as fault-finding scholarship that constructs differences in Mormon historical thinking as a problem that must be solved. The lacuna that this project begins to fill is the lack of scholarship specifically in the field of intellectual history describing the various alternate narratives of the past that have been and are being developed by Mormons, their contents, the methodologies by which they are produced and the theories of historical causation that they entail. This dissertation examines nine chronica (historical narratives and associated theories of history) generated by Mormon thinkers during the twentieth century. Following Philip Barlow’s definition of “Mormon” as any religious group that includes the Book of Mormon in its canon, this project examines five chronica generated by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism’s 14-million-strong Utah-based denomination), two generated by the Community of Christ (Mormonism’s 175,000-strong Missouri-based denomination) and two generated by independent Mormon fundamentalists (polygamists), one in Utah and the other in Mexico. In so doing it examines the thought of B. H. Roberts, James E. Talmage, Joseph Fielding Smith, Bruce R. McConkie, W. Cleon Skousen, Ogden Kraut, Margarito Bautista, Hugh Nibley, John Sorenson and a variety of CoC writers such as Harold Velt, Roy Cheville, Little Pigeon and F. Edward Butterworth. Following the work of Leone and Jan Shipps, it engages ethnographic perspectives on unique elements of Mormon temporal phenomenology and its relationship with ritual practice. It also examines how national political and religious movements interpenetrate with Mormonism to condition different understandings of the past; the interactions of Mormon understandings of the past with Mexican revolutionary nationalism and indigenismo, Cold War anti-communism, the 1970s New Left, Christian fundamentalism and Gilded Age progressivism are concurrently examined. Similarly, Mormon interactions with various epistemes and methodologies are canvassed, including New Testament criticism, cultural anthropology, conspiracy theory, medieval typology and the Cambridge myth and ritual school. Ultimately, a set of religious communities that prioritize subscription to a narrative of Israelite immigration to the Americas and pre-Columbian Christian history of the Western Hemisphere, including the post-resurrection ministry of Jesus Christ, has had to reach a special accommodation with history. This project is a study of the diverse accommodations that have been achieved, their epistemic bases and their sustainability in light of the different forms of time consciousness that underpin them.

The intriguing parallels between musical and literary forms have long been a focus of musicological inquiry, particularly in recent debates concerning music’s narrative properties. However, parallels between musical and historical forms and processes remain under-examined. Indeed, while historically-based operas continue to be prominent in the repertoire, there has been little if any attempt to interrogate how the unique structural, temporal, and narrative dimensions of the operatic form might render a representation of the past that is unique in comparison to those in other modes. This dissertation takes up this issue, and probes it on musical and aesthetic levels, asking the following questions: Given recent inquiries into history’s creative nature in historiography, what kind of historical account does opera represent? What elements of historical experience, knowledge, or memory are accessed in these works? How do music’s temporal, dramatic, and narrative dimensions interact with what we presume to be the objective realm of history? And most importantly: Can these works be seriously considered historiographical in any sense? In this dissertation, I investigate these questions with a focus on Canadian historically-based opera specifically. Applying a hermeneutical approach that connects current threads in musicology, narrative theory, theory of the sublime, film theory, and philosophy of history, I define and theorize the powerful discourse that music contributes to Canadian historiography in six of Canada’s most prominent historically-based operas: Harry Somers and Mavor Moore’s Louis Riel (1967); Harry Somers and James Reaney’s Serinette (1991); John Estacio and John Murrell’s Filumena (2005) and Frobisher (2007); and Istvan Anhalt’s Winthrop (1986) and La Tourangelle (1975). The conclusions of this study are, however, not limited to this repertoire. Rather they are applicable to the canon of historically-based works as a whole, and speak directly to some of the most critical and current aesthetic issues in musicology and historiography. As an art form that reopens the space between past and present by reaffirming history’s subjective and temporal nature, and by exploring the ephemerality it shares with living memory, opera validates itself as a truly distinct historiographical mode.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the historiography of Qin Shi Huang. I will focus my analysis on the perspectives of scholars from three periods: the Han Dynasty, late 19th century to early 20th century, and last the 30 to 40 years of Communist Party rule. Through analysis of sources from each of the three periods, I will trace the evolution of the shifting perspectives on Qin Shi Huang to explain why this controversial figure has remained relevant throughout the ages.

Since Mark Leone’s landmark 1979 study Roots of Modern Mormonism, a scholarly consensus has emerged that a key element of Mormon distinctiveness stems from one’s subscription to an alternate narrative or experience of history. In the past generation, scholarship on Mormon historical thought has addressed important issues arising from these insights from anthropological and sociological perspectives. These perspectives have joined a rich and venerable controversial literature seeking to “debunk” Mormon narratives, apologetic scholarship asserting their epistemic harmony or superiority, as well as fault-finding scholarship that constructs differences in Mormon historical thinking as a problem that must be solved. The lacuna that this project begins to fill is the lack of scholarship specifically in the field of intellectual history describing the various alternate narratives of the past that have been and are being developed by Mormons, their contents, the methodologies by which they are produced and the theories of historical causation that they entail. This dissertation examines nine chronica (historical narratives and associated theories of history) generated by Mormon thinkers during the twentieth century. Following Philip Barlow’s definition of “Mormon” as any religious group that includes the Book of Mormon in its canon, this project examines five chronica generated by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism’s 14-million-strong Utah-based denomination), two generated by the Community of Christ (Mormonism’s 175,000-strong Missouri-based denomination) and two generated by independent Mormon fundamentalists (polygamists), one in Utah and the other in Mexico. In so doing it examines the thought of B. H. Roberts, James E. Talmage, Joseph Fielding Smith, Bruce R. McConkie, W. Cleon Skousen, Ogden Kraut, Margarito Bautista, Hugh Nibley, John Sorenson and a variety of CoC writers such as Harold Velt, Roy Cheville, Little Pigeon and F. Edward Butterworth. Following the work of Leone and Jan Shipps, it engages ethnographic perspectives on unique elements of Mormon temporal phenomenology and its relationship with ritual practice. It also examines how national political and religious movements interpenetrate with Mormonism to condition different understandings of the past; the interactions of Mormon understandings of the past with Mexican revolutionary nationalism and indigenismo, Cold War anti-communism, the 1970s New Left, Christian fundamentalism and Gilded Age progressivism are concurrently examined. Similarly, Mormon interactions with various epistemes and methodologies are canvassed, including New Testament criticism, cultural anthropology, conspiracy theory, medieval typology and the Cambridge myth and ritual school. Ultimately, a set of religious communities that prioritize subscription to a narrative of Israelite immigration to the Americas and pre-Columbian Christian history of the Western Hemisphere, including the post-resurrection ministry of Jesus Christ, has had to reach a special accommodation with history. This project is a study of the diverse accommodations that have been achieved, their epistemic bases and their sustainability in light of the different forms of time consciousness that underpin them.

The intriguing parallels between musical and literary forms have long been a focus of musicological inquiry, particularly in recent debates concerning music’s narrative properties. However, parallels between musical and historical forms and processes remain under-examined. Indeed, while historically-based operas continue to be prominent in the repertoire, there has been little if any attempt to interrogate how the unique structural, temporal, and narrative dimensions of the operatic form might render a representation of the past that is unique in comparison to those in other modes. This dissertation takes up this issue, and probes it on musical and aesthetic levels, asking the following questions: Given recent inquiries into history’s creative nature in historiography, what kind of historical account does opera represent? What elements of historical experience, knowledge, or memory are accessed in these works? How do music’s temporal, dramatic, and narrative dimensions interact with what we presume to be the objective realm of history? And most importantly: Can these works be seriously considered historiographical in any sense? In this dissertation, I investigate these questions with a focus on Canadian historically-based opera specifically. Applying a hermeneutical approach that connects current threads in musicology, narrative theory, theory of the sublime, film theory, and philosophy of history, I define and theorize the powerful discourse that music contributes to Canadian historiography in six of Canada’s most prominent historically-based operas: Harry Somers and Mavor Moore’s Louis Riel (1967); Harry Somers and James Reaney’s Serinette (1991); John Estacio and John Murrell’s Filumena (2005) and Frobisher (2007); and Istvan Anhalt’s Winthrop (1986) and La Tourangelle (1975). The conclusions of this study are, however, not limited to this repertoire. Rather they are applicable to the canon of historically-based works as a whole, and speak directly to some of the most critical and current aesthetic issues in musicology and historiography. As an art form that reopens the space between past and present by reaffirming history’s subjective and temporal nature, and by exploring the ephemerality it shares with living memory, opera validates itself as a truly distinct historiographical mode.

Using the travel writings of Amerigo Vespucci, the voyage of Pedro Álvares Cabral and Jean de Lérys book, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, Also Called America, this thesis will investigate the role of the individual in the narrative of New World contact. This thesis specifically moves against the tendency in New World historiography to rely upon meta-narratives and a singular, universal European presence to explain the circumstances of the New World contact. This project seeks to gain greater understanding of the unique and divergent representations of indigenous cultures contained within travel writing by being sensitive towards the travel writers individual characteristics such as educational background, religion and participation in intellectual endeavours. The specific example used in this thesis will be the Tupínamba of coastal Brazil and will be supported by the anthropological understandings we have about this extinct indigenous group. Overall, this thesis seeks to show that in the creating of metanarratives regarding the New World experience of Europeans, it is easy to forget that the word European is as meaningless as the word Indian in terms of academic usefulness.

Thesis--Berlin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 234-265).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, December 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 440-483). Also available on the Internet.