Past Imperfect (Journal)
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Keeping Loyalty and Regulating Insubordination: Freemen and the Edmonton House Fur Trade, 1821-1828
No full textThis paper examines the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) Edmonton House Journals and district reports from 1820-1829 to assess the relationship between the HBC and Freemen over the decade immediately following the merger between the HBC and Northwest Company (NWC). I argue that although numbers of Freemen associated with Edmonton House decreased substantially as Freemen moved to the Red River and Columbia River regions after the merger, Freemen associated with Edmonton House provided an essential supply of food and fur that bolstered both the viability and profitability of the post, and served as an invaluable buffer between the HBC and Indigenous peoples. Freemen often moved fluidly between bush and post, procuring food and furs for the fort, at times engaging in contract labour around the fort, or accompanying trapping and exploration missions alongside fort employees. By the end of the decade, it appears that many Freemen were able to eliminate their debts with the HBC and establish more autonomous communities. In the fort Edmonton region, the 1820s can perhaps be viewed as a point of emergence for Freemen communities as they gained greater autonomy from fur trade companies and increased the size of their families. Growth in the independence and size of Freemen bands in the 1820s may be considered as a root of Métis ethnogenesis in the West
Separate Beds: A History of Indian Hospitals in Canada, 1920s-1980s, by Maureen K. Lux, University of Toronto Press, 2016.
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“New York is Dying”: Policing Outdoor Sex Workers in the Era of AIDS and Urban Renewal, 1981-88
No full textWhile the history of scapegoating sex workers in times of heightened moral anxiety is well-studied, work remains to be done on how the co-occurring crises of AIDS and “urban decline” in New York City inspired a renewed crackdown on street-based sex work. Though after 1978 New York State’s prostitution statute prohibited purchasing and selling sex, arrests continued to disproportionately affect women performing sex work, especially those based on the street. Three forces interacted to put “streetwalkers” at the centre of fears about the city’s moral and physical health. First, New Yorkers seized on an image of their city since the mid-1970s as a dangerous and vice-ridden metropolis to denigrate sex workers. Metaphors of disease—including the language used to describe AIDS—were readily deployed against sex work to “explain” New York’s state of sickness. Second, medical studies, which were decontextualized and disseminated in newspapers, posited sex workers as an epidemiological missing link between the gay and straight populations. Third, as part of a larger campaign to “clean up” blighted areas marked for “urban renewal,” the NYPD became increasingly aggressive towards outdoor sex workers. Sex workers met an array of popular assumptions about them by organizing conference meetings, educating each other on HIV/AIDS, and attempting to forge a counter-narrative to scapegoating. Their pursuit of self-representation was not always successful, but they used the resources available to them to mount moments of resistance and share strategies for survival within their ranks
The Arthur H. Tweedle Collection, Project Naming, and Hidden Stories of Colonialism
No full textThis paper explores the digitized photographs captured by Canadian optometrist and amateur photographer Arthur H. Tweedle during his government-sponsored eye survey of the Arctic in the 1940s, and considers the impact digitization has had on the meanings and functions of these images. Held by Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Tweedle’s collection has been digitized as part of Project Naming¸ a photographic identification project that seeks to identify unnamed Inuit individuals depicted in images held by LAC. While Project Naming’s impact in terms of acknowledging the agency and identities of Inuit depicted in the archival record cannot be underestimated, it is also important to consider the ways in which Tweedle’s collection functions differently after being digitized, and to question the extent to which this new context has led to a reframing of the photographs’ meaning. Analysis of Tweedle’s photographs, and of the textual materials that accompany them in the archives, suggests that the removal of these images from their original context as part of a wider collection has hidden much of their colonial history from the public eye. While one might read the images on the LAC website as simply a visual record collected by a tourist, meant for compilation in a personal or family album, the undigitized textual records in Tweedle’s files suggest that they were used as part of a wider effort to depict Inuit peoples as “others” in Canada
The Rise of Motherhood: Maternal Feminism and Health in the Rural Prairie Provinces, 1900-1930
No full textThis article examines the rise of maternal feminism and the concept of motherhood in the Prairie West from 1900 to 1930. White, middle-class, British women (and male allies) adopted the rhetoric of moral reform, social decline, and Mothers of the Nation to argue that as mothers, their positions allowed them to contribute to the regeneration of the British race in Canada. Further, they justified their claims to political and social rights by referencing their maternal role, arguing that because they were the people responsible for regenerating the British-Canadian population, and providing care for these children, they ought to be awarded equality in the political arena as only mothers would know the best legislation for the well-being and development of children and, by extension, the nation. This conservative ideology of motherhood helped women gain support in the West, to integrate themselves in the public discourse of rights and responsibilities, and advocate for increased medical services in the rural areas of the Prairies. The Grain Grower’s Guide was an important platform for the female voice, and many maternal feminists and their opponents contributed their opinions to the publication, including an extensive campaign for heath and medical care for both mother and child in rural areas of the region. While maternal feminists gained significant success in their fight for medical and health services, these gains applied to a specific, narrow group of women. Women of color, of non-Protestant beliefs, and of the working class were not included in this group. This paper argues that the concept of motherhood became a political category of nation-building in the early 20th century promoted by the state, which maternal feminists employed to gain support from opponents of radical feminism and to advocate for advancements in both political and domestic spheres in the rural Prairie West
Éric Rebillard and Jörg Rüpke, eds., Group Identity and Religious Individuality in Late Antiquity
No full textCatullus’ Otium: A Transgressive Translation?
No full textThe majority of the discussion surrounding Catullus 51 has centered on the function or fit of the poem’s last stanza. For, while the first three stanzas of the poem describe what the sound and sight of Lesbia physically does to Catullus, the poem’s concluding discussion of otium seems to abruptly change the topic, tone, narrative voice, and addressee from what preceded. However, what tends to be ignored in the discussion is the context of the entire poem, both in relation to the rest of the Catullan corpus and to the Sappho poem it is a translation of. Indeed, Catullus’ multilayered poem refers to the Lesbia narrative of Catullus’ corpus, it concludes and directly responds to Catullus 50, and, most importantly, it is a close translation of Sappho 31, a poem from a genre that had largely remained untouched before Catullus’ time, and of a poet who inspired the name of Catullus’ literary mistress. Furthermore, the prefacing nature of poem 50 and the deliberate insertion of Catullus into poem 51 together allude to the uneasy attitude that the Romans held in regards to translation, specifically the translation of a genre that had little in common with Roman culture. Therefore, when the poem is compared to and read alongside other Catullan poems, the last stanza does not seem to be as jarring as it has been purported to be, and is, in fact, informed by the poem that directly precedes it; when Catullus 51 is read as a translation, namely one that is conscious of its status as a translation, the otium stanza is seen as an integral part of a very Catullan poem, and of a very Roman translation
A Case of Peculiar Orientalism? The late Habsburg Empire through the early writings of R. W. Seton-Watson (1906-1914)
No full textThis study uses the methodological tool of Orientalism, as described by Edward Said, to examine the attitude toward the early 20th century Austro-Hungarian Empire expressed in the writings of R.W. Seton-Watson (1879-1951), a highly influential British historian and traveler in the Habsburg lands. The paper focuses on the question of whether, in his observations of the Dual Monarchy, Seton-Watson came to comprehend that state and its peoples through the prism of Orientalism, assuming a hegemonic occidental attitude and perceiving Austria-Hungary as an oriental, decayed and corrupted state. The study examines the most crucial (but simultaneously the most poorly researched) era of his life regarding the formation of his opinion about Central Europe, i.e. his youth and his early contacts with the Danubian Monarchy, from his first travel there (1905/06) until the outbreak of the Great War, when his attitude took its final form. The numerous books and pamphlets that Seton-Watson published in these years regarding the international and domestic position of Austria-Hungary, as well as his rich private correspondence with his Central European associates, are examined for Orientalistic thinking. Following his own line of thought, the present essay will focus progressively on Seton-Watson’s reflections on Austria as a European Great Power, while describing his relations with the Magyars and the other peoples of the Hungarian Kingdom. Subsequently, his interest in the South Slav peoples of the Monarchy and their treatment by the Viennese imperial authorities will be discussed. Eventually, his image of the Empire during the turbulent summer of 1914 is analyzed, in order to reach a conclusion regarding whether and to what extent Seton-Watson saw the Habsburg Empire via the lens of Orientalism
