The Biographical Formula: Types and Dimensions of Biographical Networks

Behind every printed national biography is a board of editors responsible for finding established scholars to write the biographies. The personal and institutional networks, the scientific and ideological socialization of these authors have a significant influence on the biographical constructs and narratives they have designed, and thus also determines the information contained in the biographies. Therefore, a source-critical approach to such biography texts is necessary. This will be exemplified using a biography selected from the Austrian Biographical Dictionary 1815–1950 (ÖBL). A complementary approach for the interpretation of biographical dictionaries is analysis of the networks, which can be reconstructed on the basis of the information contained in the biographies. As part of the APIS project, biographical data is generated through the annotation of biographies of the ÖBL. This data consists of frequently mentioned names of persons, places and institutions that can be subsumed under the term “biographical building blocks”. Biographical networks can be built on the basis of this data. In the second part of the paper, different dimensions of these networks as well as ways of analyzing this type of data will be shown

‘They Called Them Communists Then … What D'You Call ‘Em Now? … Insurgents?’. Narratives of British Military Expatriates in the Context of the New Imperialism

This paper addresses the question of the extent to which the colonial past provides material for contemporary actors' understanding of difference. The research from which the paper is drawn involved interview and ethnographic work in three largely white working-class estates in an English provincial city. For this paper we focus on ten life-history interviews with older participants who had spent some time abroad in the British military. Our analysis adopts a postcolonial framework because research participants' current constructions of an amorphous 'Other' (labelled variously as black people, immigrants, foreigners, asylum-seekers or Muslims) reveal strong continuities with discourses deployed by the same individuals to narrate their past experiences of living and working as either military expatriates or spouses during British colonial rule. Theoretically, the paper engages with the work of Frantz Fanon and Edward Said. In keeping with a postcolonial approach, we work against essentialised notions of identity based on 'race' or class. Although we establish continuity between white working-class military emigration in the past and contemporary racialised discourses, we argue that the latter are not class-specific, being as much the creations of the middle-class media and political elite

vinegar soup improved his womb : Food, Appetite, and the Redefining of Asian American Masculinity in Kingston\u27s China Men

This paper examines the connection between food, appetite, and gender identity in Maxine Hong Kingston\u27s China Men. Specifically, I argue that Kingston\u27s use of food in China Men reconstructs traditional norms of masculinity. Food, appetite, consumption, and foodways are thus a crucial component in Kingston\u27s larger project of redefining Chinese American masculinity. Drawing off of recent studies regarding the role of food and gender in Asian American literature, my analysis focuses on the characters Tang Ao, Kingston\u27s father and the uncles from the New York laundry, Ah Goong, and Kingston\u27s brother from the Vietnam War. These characters\u27 consumption practices and various relationships with food work to redefine masculinity within the text

Tradition and novelty: food representations in Irish Women’s magazines 1922–73

Based on a qualitative content analysis of selected Irish women’s magazines, this paper provides a brief overview of Irish food culture from 1922 to 1973. It illustrates how selected texts from women’s magazines, mainly recipes, food columns, practical suggestions for cooking and housekeeping, as well as articles on food topics mirrored social, cultural, economic, and religious characteristics of a particular period. The paper discusses various culinary trends apparent in the content and style of cookery pages focusing on a paired category of novelty and tradition adapted from the quantitative research conducted by Alan Warde

African adventure and metropolitan dissent in Thomas Hardy’s Two on a Tower (1882)

Recent studies of late 19th-century imperialism have challenged postcolonial arguments for the existence of a uniform imperial culture in colonial Britain that unquestioningly supported its overseas expansionist agenda. Through a cultural materialist reading of Thomas Hardy’s Two on a Tower (1882), this article extends these critical challenges to claims for a cohesive colonial society by exploring moments of textual and biographical dissent in relation to African adventure and travel writing. It demonstrates the way in which colonial pursuits in the African interior control and devastate metropolitan worlds. It additionally considers a range of oppositional responses that unite the novel’s metropolitan heroine and labourers against the African colonizer. Examples in Hardy’s tale of radical scepticism in relation to debasing representations of autochthonous cultures are likewise evaluated in this article for the riposte they offer to 19th-century travel writing about Africa