Forging Female Subjectivity on the Commercial Stage in the 1920s and ’30s: Three Plays by María Luisa Ocampo, Concepción Sada, and Alfonsina Storni

This study analyses little-studied plays by Mexican playwrights María Luisa Ocampo and Concepción Sada alongside a work by the better-known Argentine Alfonsina Storni. Written and performed in commercial theatres in the 1920s and ‘30s, all three plays portray female protagonists struggling with accepted social and cultural norms regarding marriage and motherhood. By calling attention to the use of the commercial stage as the locus for representing social issues, particularly the performativity of gender roles, this work aims to show that shifts in gender ideology, and in the theatre milieu itself, are representative of the conflicting ideas on and about women during the transitional period of post-revolutionary Mexico. Moreover, the difficulties involved in the formulation of female subjectivity, as expressed through views on marriage and maternity, are presented as crises not only in Mexico but also within the wider scope of Latin American modernity

Education Through Labor: From the deuxième portion du contingent to the Youth Civic Service in West Africa (Senegal/Mali, 1920s-1960s)

International audienceUnder the French colonial regime, the “second portion” of the military was used as labour brigades, compelled to serve for two years in works of public nature. They were encamped in labor camp and were taught the value of work as well as discipline and basic rules of hygiene. After the independence of the francophone West African countries in 1960, postcolonial leaders in Senegal and Mali try to implement a civil service for the youth in order to offer them basic education. In reality, the civil service appears as a way to control and use the recruits for economic purposes echoing in some extent the former colonial “second portion du contingent.” More broadly, through the analysis of the legacies and continuities, I argue that the postcolonial elites perpetuate the “civilizing mission,” no more for the so-called mise en valeur of the colonies but for the development of the territory

Unruly agents: Police reform, bureaucratization, and policemen's agency in interwar Togo

This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.In the last few years, our understanding of police forces in Africa has increased significantly. Whilst in previous literature the police tended to be presented as a mere instrument in the hands of state elites, recent studies have shown the ability of policemen to defend their group interests. This article analyses a pivotal moment in the history of French West Africa, namely the creation of theService de Sûretéin the early 1930s. Drawing on archival evidence from Togo, it takes a close look at the shift from military to urban policing, arguing that the bureaucratization of security modified the agency of African policemen. Whereas previously their forms of protest were very much connected with the specific setting of military camps (indiscipline, desertion, rebellion), these now increasingly included written protests within the administration.Peer Reviewe

Building Burma: Constructing Rangoon's Urban Influence on Citizenship and Nationhood

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12340While Burma has often been discussed at the margins of South and Southeast Asian historiography, contemporary scholarship has begun to construct Burma as central to wider regional and inter-Asian histories. This essay considers how notions of nationhood and citizenship relating to Rangoon’s urban environment can begin to be understood in light of recent historical work on other Asian port cities. Looking at published work on Asian cities like Bombay, Hong Kong and Singapore, this article constructs a contextual framework from which Rangoon’s role in building a Burmese identity can be analysed. Nikhil Rao’s $\small \textit{House, But No Garden}$ on Bombay offers a productive means through which a middle-class and commercial Burmese identity could be constructed in Rangoon’s pre-war ‘suburbs’, while Alan Smart’s $\small \textit{The Shek Kip Mei Myth}$ on Hong Kong and Loh Kah Seng’s $\small \textit{Squatters into Citizens}$ on Singapore provide a way of understanding the role that disaster and crisis play on forming identities of belonging and citizenship among the poorest sections of Rangoon’s war torn post-war society. These cities, along with others across the Indian Ocean world – each with a long, continuous and often separate tradition of historical inquiry – can then help begin to build an understanding of citizenship and nationhood in Burma as it relates to the construction of Rangoon’s urban environment.Cambridge Trusts via a Cambridge International Scholarship and the Smuts Memorial Fun

Monstruos y grotescos: Aproximaciones desde la literatura y la filosofía. Coordinadora Carmen Álvarez Lobato.

Monstruos y grotescos: Aproximaciones desde la literatura y la filosofíaconsiste en una discusión a varias voces para aquellos iniciados en los temas delo monstruoso ylo grotesco (y otros temas afines como la locura, la metamorfosis y el devenir), así como una excelente introducción en la materia. Esta breve reseña pretende dar pautas para iluminar algunos aspectos de su forma y su contenido—las temáticas y preguntas presentes y subyacentes en este fascinante libro. Quizás sobre decir queno pretendo realizar una revisión exhaustiva del volumen, sino extender una invitación a leerlo