Reinscribing the Revolution: Genre and the Problem of National History in Early American Historical Novels

This dissertation examines nine early historical novels of the Revolution that recover an important yet largely forgotten archive of American cultural history. In the years following the War of 1812 writers from the Revolution’s successor generation reinscribed the history of national origins through narratives of the Revolution that address issues left unresolved by the Revolutionary War and subsequent Constitutional debates; thus, the Revolution itself becomes an important and ubiquitous subject area for writers attempting to situate narratives of national history. These national allegories, consciously constructed as patriotic narratives, unconsciously “bring forth” figurations that represent the official nation’s Others, people excluded by race, class, and gender. Thus, the dissertation addresses these novels both in their dimension as official patriotic narratives of national history and also as narratives that introduce liminal figures that undermine naïve versions of a unified nation. Ultimately, early Revolutionary historical novels express complex and conflicted versions of an American nation as it was constructed in the years leading up to the jubilee celebrations of 1825-26. Among the texts explored here are Samuel Woodworth’s The Champions of Freedom (1816); James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy (1821), The Pilot (1824), and Lionel Lincoln (1825); John Neal’s Seventy-Six (1823), Lydia Maria Child’s The Rebels (1825); Eliza Cushing’s Saratoga (1824) and Yorktown (1826); and Giles Gazer’s (pseud.) Frederic de Algeroy (1825)

Poor Soils and Rich Folks: Household Economies and Sustainability in Muskoka, 1850-1920

This dissertation examines the social, economic and environmental dimensions of the transformation of the Muskoka region in southcentral Ontario from an Aboriginal place into a renowned tourist mecca between 1850 and 1920. More specifically, it explores how changing social relationships, patterns of economic exchange and environmental conditions shaped sustainability in a marginal landscape located at the southern edge of the Canadian Shield and in close proximity to large urban populations. Focusing on the household level, this study situates the challenges and opportunities faced by people in Muskoka within a broader set of social, economic and environmental histories of Ontario, Canada and North America. This work draws on a variety of primary sources, including diaries and journals, ledgers, legal testimony, Indian Affairs reports, local histories and memoirs, government files and oral interviews. The rural and environmental history of the southern Shield region has received little attention from historians. This dissertation begins with two chapters on the history of transportation in the Muskoka region, which establish the importance of mobility on the lakes and access to outside resources as central to the narrative that follows. These chapters also identify the transition from an exclusively organic fuel economy to a largely mineral fuel economy as central to the history of sustainability in the region. The dissertation then turns to the history of the region’s First Nations and the relationship of continuity and change they had with the marginal landscape of the southern Shield during this time period. The next section devotes three chapters to Eurocanadian settlement of Muskoka during the 1860s and 1870s, the rise of tourism during the 1880s and 1890s and the emergence of a culture of conspicuous consumption on the lakes during the 1900s and 1910s. Finally, the dissertation considers the alternative small-scale household approach to logging that co-existed with the commercial exploitation of Muskoka’s forests before 1920. This dissertation argues that society at the southern edge of the Shield was shaped by environmental limitations and a reliance on resources, manufactured goods and wealth from outside the region. Ultimately, this dissertation concludes that life in a marginal environment, such as Muskoka was never completely sustainable only more or less sustainable. Sustainability was part of a process, not a condition, of life in Muskoka. Life at the southern edge of the Shield became more sustainable when social relationships, patterns of economic exchange and environmental conditions were shaped mainly by local material and energy flows, and became less sustainable when local material and energy flows are greatly exceeded or undermined by exogenous ones. The most sustainable moment occurred during the 1880s and 1890s when visitors and residents formed interdependent relationships, while less sustainable moments existed before those relationships had been established and after the turn of the century when they were eclipsed by a consumer culture. The history of Muskoka did not unfold on a trajectory toward or away from an exclusively sustainable or unsustainable end. Changing circumstances either enhanced or diminished the potential for people in Muskoka to reproduce or maintain certain social, economic and environmental arrangements over time

Moving Natures

Mobility - the movements of people, things, and ideas, as well as their associated cultural meanings - has been a key factor in shaping Canadians' perceptions of and interactions with their country. Approaching the burgeoning field of environmental history in Canada through the lens of mobility reveals some of the distinctive ways in which Canadians have come to terms with the country's climate and landscape. Spanning Canada's diverse regions, throughout its history, from the closing of the age of sail to the contemporary era of just-on-time delivery, Moving Natures: Mobility and the Environment in Canadian History examines a wide range of topics, from the impact of seasonal climactic conditions on different transportation modes, to the environmental consequences of building mobility corridors and pathways, to the relationship between changing forms of mobility with tourism and other recreational activities. Contributors make use of traditional archival sources, as well as historical geographic information systems (HGIS), qualitative and quantitative analysis, and critical theory. This thought-provoking collection divides the intersection of environmental and mobility history into two approaches. The chapters in the first section deal primarily with the construction and productive use of mobility technologies and infrastructure, as well as their environmental constraints and consequences. The chapters in the second section focus on consumers' uses of those vehicles and pathways: on pleasure travel, tourism, and recreational mobility. Together, they highlight three quintessentially Canadian themes: seasonality, links between mobility and natural resource development, and urbanites' experiences of the environment through mobility

Injury to health :a forensic audit of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (1972-2005) with special reference to congenital Minamata disease

The objective of this research was to examine whether the United States and Canada have successfully implemented their Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and to identify the factors determining the continuation of any injury to human health from pollution of the boundary waters. The Agreement was first negotiated in 1972 as part of the legitimation of the social unrest of the 1960s and gave special responsibilities to the International Joint Commission to advise the Parties of problems of water quality. It has been subject to periodic review and occasional renegotiation and amendment. Specifically, the Agreement was renegotiated in 1978 to address the health effects from the imperceptible exposures to persistent toxic substances. Though extensive scientific evidence of continuing injury to health from persistent toxic substances has been available, there has been a consistent pattern of deliberate failure by the authorities to report the injury and to implement many of the remedial provisions contained in the Agreement. The thesis claims that the failure of the International Joint Commission to advise the Parties of the new information about the injury to health and the failure of the Parties to act upon the information when it was obtained from other sources constituted dereliction of duty. While synthesis of the science linking the pollutant-induced injury to specific causal agents was necessary to provide an empirical measure of the failure to implement the Agreement, consideration of the social, economic and political aspects was needed to provide a sufficient explanation for the failure of the International Joint Commission to inform and of the authorities to act. There have been active attempts to use diversionary reframing of the Agreement, based on a multi-causal ecosystem theory proposed by fisheries ecologists, to attenuate the risk message and transform the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement into a more inclusive and less focused agreement on restoring ecosystem integrity. This has been welcomed by industry and governments as a means to remove the focus from addressing the unresolved dangers of persistent toxic substances through costly remedial actions. The International Joint Commission undermined its credibility when it recommended ‘sunsetting’ the use of chlorine in chemical manufacturing. The Parties failed to use a precautionary approach to prevent the commercial introduction of new persistent toxic substances, such as the brominated flame retardants. Since the 1980s, the economic politics of the two nations have been profoundly influenced by neo-liberalism and one of the consequences has been the removal of environmental health as a priority from the respective political agenda. Advisory bodies seem to have been captured not only by the prevailing neo-liberalism but also by corporate interests and these factors seem to underlie the reluctance to report the injury to health from exposures to persistent toxic substances. Though there were many different health endpoints affected by exposures to water pollutants in the Great Lakes, the thesis concentrated on the evidence of neuro-teratogenic effects. The adequacy of the implementation of the Agreement during the past thirty-three years was tested by using Health Canada data on cerebral palsy hospitalisation to evaluate whether there were indications of previously undetected outbreaks of congenital Minamata disease in human populations in Canadian Great Lakes communities potentially exposed to methyl mercury from natural sources or from historic industrial uses of mercury. The uncertainties in the apparent association that was found were reduced by the application of Hill’s guidelines. While these findings indicated both the need for further multi-disciplinary research to locate and diagnose the victims and for a precautionary approach to the consumption of Great Lakes fish, they also indicated that, for more than three decades, health authorities have not diligently implemented the Agreement. The inclusion of the social, economic and political considerations in the forensic audit has revealed the dangers inherent in any renegotiation of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement

"Family is Really All Over The Place:" Ethnic Identity Formation Within A Transnational Network

This dissertation explores the process of ethnic identity formation in immigrants from the Campania region of Italy who settled in Ontario (Canada) and Buenos Aires (Argentina) after the Second World War. It centres on the collection of twenty-five original testimonies from narrators from the Campania who travelled from Italy between 1949 and 1979. Testimonies are complemented by ethnic newspaper archives and a diverse collection of archival materials from Canada, Argentina, and Italy. Campani understood their ethnic identities not via national boundaries, nor by a hyphenated or binary relationship; they did so using a shared imagined space that formed part of a multi-directional and transnational network, a mental map that included nodal points across the globe. This project argues that the identity of Campani depended less on formalized ethnic associations and more on informal networks of family to develop a sense of identity. Focusing on this unorganized group offers an intriguing perspective on how immigrants develop ethnic identities in situations where regional ties or formalized institutions are not strong enough to adhere to as a viable source of ethnic identity. Women were a vital part of these transnational networks, and this dissertation explores how networks of transmission work within this category of analysis. Language, food, and music are some of the means of forging and affirming ethnic identity that operate within the transnational network. Hyphenated identities are unsatisfactory, since they rely on a linear connection between two places and obfuscate the existence of other nodal spaces. Instead, Campani turned to other identifiers for constancy. Discussions of identity centre on the family or use familial terms to describe that tension. Campani had multiple identifiers at their disposal, and they adopted them strategically to navigate the situation at hand. The dissertation complicates the presence of hybrid or hyphenated identities by considering the vast but understudied transnational network that provided Campani with a domain for ethnic identity formation. It explores immigration as a process of non-linear mobility that transcends borders by creating nodes of settlement and streaks of movement that together create a picture of how identity is defined

Dizziness

"The feelings of dizziness and vibrations are closely related. Most people experience vibrations at one point or another, and some even frequently. The unmistakable feeling of the body vibrating can be overwhelming. More often, though, the feeling is less distinct, and the vibrations are ignored or brushed aside as being caused by something else, like a truck passing, the floor rocking, a sudden spell of wobbliness. In dance and ritual, vibrations are made visible through the shaking of the performers. This shaking, as well as the vibrations that are sensed but unseen, can be understood as the first step in a transformation: a signal from phantom bodies, lost memories, and new identities trying to wriggle their way out. Joachim Koester (artist) This book gets your head spinning. While being bombarded by daily reports of crises (both real and fictional), while destabilization has become normal and feelings of disorientation, fear, and dizziness have started to prevail in our everyday lives, the contributors to this book reverse this perspective by emphasizing that dizziness is a valuable resource. Dizziness—A Resource is the result of the cross-disciplinary research project initiated in 2014 by artistic duo Ruth Anderwald and Leonhard Grond. What can we gain when balance is lost? How can anarchy and dizziness empower us? How can a cognitive vertigo fuel our cognition? Artists, scientists, philosophers, and art critics attempt to answer these questions and to show us how to navigate a world marked by unpredictable change. Małgorzata Ludwisiak (director, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw) With contributions by Ruth Anderwald, Mathias Benedek, Oliver A. I. Botar, Katrin Bucher Trantow, Davide Deriu, Karoline Feyertag, Leonhard Grond, Sarah Kolb, François Jullien, Rebekka Ladewig, Jarosław Lubiak, Alice Pechriggl, Oliver Ressler, Maya M. Shmailov, Maria Spindler, Marcus Steinweg

Michigan Geology: A Bibliography, March 2016

The Michigan Geological Survey produced a historic Index of Michigan Geology with an extensive bibliography in 1956. This current bibliography is an update of the bibliography in the Martin and Straight compilation. It is not comprehensive, but provides a starting place for anyone interested in Michigan Geology. The Michigan Geological Survey plans to update this bibliography periodically with newly published citations as well as other older citations we find