Engaging the Past to Fashion the Future: The Use of Early Nineteenth-Century Bespoke Tailored Men’s Coats and Gender Narratives to Shape Contemporary Womenswear

Designing for Curves

Contemporary Women's Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries we have grown used to using the term “fellow creatures” to refer to non-human animals — from dogs and cats to horses and hippopotamuses. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the term was also used to refer to non-human animals. But from the late eighteenth century (when the term began to be used for several decades with much greater frequency), through the nineteenth century, and through most of the twentieth century too, “fellow creature” was a term used to connect like to like — horses to horses, sheep to sheep, or, much more commonly, humans to other humans. Why the change in the late eighteenth century? And why the further change in the late twentieth century? This paper argues that political activism played a key role — and that the activism of those leading the fight against cruelty towards animals in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was implicitly in competition with the struggles to improve the lot of black Africans, the poor, women, and other oppressed categories of humans — causes that sought to end the treatment of these groups as “no better than animals.”

This paper is an attempt to document the early history of the quantitative chemical analysis of ceramic materials in Europe, with a specific interest in the analysis of archaeological ceramics. This inevitably leads to a study of the attempts made in Europe to imitate the miraculous material—porcelain—imported from China from the fourteenth century onwards. It is clear that before the end of the eighteenth century progress was made in this endeavour by systematic but essentially trial-and-error firing of various raw materials, culminating in the successful production of European porcelain by Böttger and von Tschirnhaus in 1709. Shortly after this, letters describing the Chinese manufacture of porcelain, and, more importantly, samples of raw and fired material, began to arrive in Europe from French Jesuit missionaries, which were subjected to intense study. Following the perfection of gravimetric methods of chemical analysis in the late eighteenth century, these Chinese samples, and samples of porcelain from various European factories, were regularly analysed, particularly by Brongniart at Sèvres. Similar work was carried out on English porcelain by Simeon Shaw and Sir Arthur Church. The origins of the chemical analysis of archaeological ceramics are still somewhat obscure, but must date to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries, by the likes of Vauquelin and Chaptal.

Consilium Interrumpitur:Understanding the Interrupted Work of the First Vatican Council (1869–1870) Kenneth L. Parker (bio) Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church. By John W. O'Malley. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018. 320 pages. Hardcover, $24.95. ISBN 9780674979987. Revered and Reviled: A Re-Examination of Vatican Council I. By John R. Quinn. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2017. vi + 117 pages. Hardcover, $49.10. ISBN: 0824523296. Australian Catholic Bishops and the First Vatican Council 1869–1870: An Historical Reflection. By Peter Price. Northcote, Victoria, Australia: Morning Star Publishing, 2017. 208 pages. Paperback, $35.66 AUD. ISBN: 0995416176. Vatican I and Vatican II: Councils in the Living Tradition. By Kristen M. Colberg. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2016. xiv + 162 pages. Paperback, $19.95. ISBN: 9780814683149. The impact of the First Vatican Council (1869–1870) permeates contemporary Roman Catholic life and culture, though few know the historical context of the Council or appreciate its perduring influence. Though disrupted by war after only eight months, never to reconvene, its definition of papal sovereignty and infallibility has shaped Roman Catholic understandings of ecclesiology and has been a point of contention inside and outside the Church ever since. As the sesquicentenary remembrance of the Council approaches, four books have been published, between 2016 and 2018, offering opportunities to inform gaps [End Page 72] in our knowledge and correct impressions that have circulated for 150 years. This review article opens with an overview of how the Council came to be and the impact of its reception. Attention then turns to the four texts under review, with consideration given to whether they represent continuity or change from prior approaches to the subject. The concluding portion of this essay reflects on the way these works reinforce John Henry Newman's enduring relevance in the study of the First Vatican Council and our reception of it in the twenty-first century. historical overview An impressive pontifical ceremony opened the First Vatican Council on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception (8 December 1869), and the final conciliar vote on, and papal promulgation of, Pastor Æternus marked the last act of the Council (18 July 1870). The following day, 19 July 1870, the Franco-Prussian War erupted, French troops withdrew from Rome, and Italian nationalists gained control of the city two months later. Bishops fled Rome, and Pius IX prorogued the Council. It never reassembled. The pope declared himself a prisoner of the Vatican as the last territorial vestiges of his temporal power were annexed by the unified Italian nation, and Rome became its capital. Historians have noted the irony of the pope's supreme spiritual authority being defined in the Council as his temporal power ended.1 Yet this watershed moment in Roman Catholic history had been more than two centuries in the making. The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries proved a period of defensive retrenchment for the papacy in the North Atlantic region. Nation after nation in western Europe negotiated, and received, concordats from the papacy that limited the authority of popes and gave governments discretion in shaping the ecclesial life of their subjects, particularly in the selection of bishops.2 These centuries witnessed the rise of ideologies that reflected evolving conciliar principles with roots in the fifteenth century. Gallicanism, Febronianism, cisalpinism, and Josephinism, as well as a striking form of Irish gallicanism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,3 all asserted the integrity of local, national churches and the authority of their local ordinary or bishop, and favored [End Page 73] limitations on the universal jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome. While these various forms of conciliar ecclesiology honored the pope as the center of unity and the arbiter of disputes, they affirmed the collective apostolic authority of bishops when gathered in council. Even when scattered throughout the world, episcopal consensus carried weight that popes must not ignore.4 As temporal rulers, popes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries struggled with circumstances that forced them to choose alliances with religious foes against Catholic rulers in order to ensure the preservation of the papacy's temporal interests. These conflicts of interest eroded trust in...

It is difficult to disentangle masculinity from military uniforms. Amid the shifting notions of gender in the late eighteenth century, this article argues that ‘techniques of the body’ were employed by the military, contributing to what became the hegemonic shape of the modern male body. Framing the work within the theories of Marcel Mauss this article uses the case study of Beau Brummell to argue that this dandy based his dress on something more than the vestmentary surface. Brummell’s story is rare for a male in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century: his life was described through his dress practices. Traditionally, when fashion is discussed, it is through women’s fashion, although this is rapidly shifting. Very little writing on military uniforms is about embodied practice. Dressing is an embodied activity located in specified temporal, spatial and hierarchical relations. This article addresses this gap.

Reviewed by: German Women's Writing in the Twenty-First Century ed. by Hester Baer and Alexandra Merley Hill Barbara Kosta German Women's Writing in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Hester Baer and Alexandra Merley Hill. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015. Pp. 208. Cloth $90.00. ISBN 978-1571135841. This engaging, provocative volume insists on a renewed focus on "women's literature" and on the significance of a feminist analysis to reflect critically on gender within a larger discursive complex of representation. Well aware of the potentially "loaded" meaning of the title given its associations with second-wave feminist approaches, Baer and Merley Hill assert their aim to develop "new ways of conceptualizing gender and feminism" in view of their analytical and political potential for German studies. In the introduction to German Women's Writing in the Twenty-First Century, Baer and Merely Hill thus caution against an essentialized, prescriptive understanding of gender, while advocating for placing gender at the center of analysis as one significant aspect of the many complex markers of identity. The volume, they explain, sets out to "consider women's writing by examining how the politics of gender continue to inform practices of reading, writing and representation … and [to address] how women's writing participates in the feminist project of transforming gender relations" (2). All nine contributors reclaim feminism, and redefine and demonstrate its critical effectiveness. Feminism is articulated in various ways, but at its foundation is a call for an attentive, critical engagement with gendered experiences as they relate to issues as disparate and intertwined as transnationalism, sexuality, ethnicity, consumerism, labor, and intimacy. Moreover, as Baer and Merley Hill write, "one key emphasis of this volume is to interrogate the ways in which women's writing—in aesthetic and representational terms—might contribute specifically to understanding the neoliberal present." Reading contemporary women's writing through a feminist lens, especially at a time when market pressures and neoliberal thinking deflect from a politicized literary practice, this volume boldly reclaims a feminist analysis of literature as an interdisciplinary, theoretical practice invested in examining how gender works in configurations of language and power. The nine contributors critically analyze a wide selection of themes and issues that contemporary women writers tackle, and the genres and trends that they employ and create, from popfeminism, to a new wave of women's writing that expands on the insights of 1970s feminism, to the Fräuleinwunder, a term coined to market the work of a group of young women writers. The range of aesthetic styles and topics and the reception of the works discussed in the nine essays reflect the vibrancy of women's cultural production and the complex "mosaic" of women's writing that seeks to question, unsettle, and confound notions of gender while historicizing and expanding articulations of gender within larger networks of identifications such as race, class, sexuality, ethnicity and religion, just to name a few. Merley Hill and Baer draw attention to discussions about intersectionality and Butlerian theories of gender performativity, and look to new theoretical approaches [End Page 710] to challenge and undo its normative representations. Significantly, the volume starts off with Necia Chronister's eloquent contribution, which identifies the queering of gender in works by Antje Rávic Strubel and Judith Hermann, whose fluid gendered personas confound heteronormative expectations. Other contributions focus on the experience of Germany's Nazi past and gender. Katherine Stone looks at memoirs in which women authors grapple with family histories to expand the narrative repertoire of women's complicity with and resistance to National Socialism. Valerie Heffernan recognizes in intergenerational matrilineal narratives a multiperspectival account that lends a voice to often marginalized historical actors with little known agency. Sheridan Marshall explores the intersection of gender, faith, and religion, both Christianity and Judaism, in narratives that work through Germany's fascist past and its legacies. Other topics include Lindsay Lawton's analysis of the stereotypes that are used to market Muslim women's writings that undermine the critical issues of ethnicity, motherhood, the body, and religion explored in these texts. According to Lawton, these texts exhibit "the way that gender intersects with and shapes other articulations of difference" (109). Mihaela...

The current article has by objective understand the notion of gender and feminine imaginary of the 20th century, from analyzes realized in the publications present in Jornal das Mocas, observing so, the permanence and change between the 20th and 21st centuries, based on readings of male authors and female authors that study the thematic. Highlighting that the magazines of 20th century influenced the maintenance of stereotyped behaviors, ratifying the separation among the genders and reincorcingthe female roles like mother, wife and lady in the society. In the transition between the 20th and 21st centuries, the woman faced many conflicts to achieve the social equality, got herself insert in the job market, in the politics, conquered more liberty in the relationships, among others. However, many women still in disproportionate situation about the men in the atual society. We don't disregard the advences between the genders, but part of the society remains grounded in the conservatism and patriarchy of 20th century, that hind the relations and perpetuate the inequalities.

'The saturation of cultural texts with metaphors of masculinity and femininity is nowhere more obvious than in the case of the modern, perhaps the most pervasive yet elusive of periodizing terms.' These introductory words of Rita Felski's The Gender of Modernity could just as easily apply to the complexities of China's twentieth-century articulations of the modern as to the European texts of Felski's study. From the outset, they broadly suggest that both concepts - the modern and gender - have acquired meaning through reference to each other. At the same time, they hint at the difficulties in defining them. Neither the modern nor gender refers to fixed or stable entities of time, social practice or representation. Neither can be defined through a lens focused solely on the contours of European trajectories of modernity and gender. 'Alternative' modernities can be seen in the commercial developments of China in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, in the images of domestic spaces that featured in Shanghai's commercial print culture of the 1920s, or in the formation of the student as a political subject of anti-colonial struggle in the early part of the twentieth century. The meanings and forms of femininity and masculinity that configure social relationships and cultural practices, bodies and spaces in China's modern history have similarly been the subject of extensive scholarly debate. What forms have femininity and masculinity taken in the constitution of Chinese modernity?

<p>Discussing morphology in one of the traditional architectural element of Iran without analyzing its elements and recognizing its components, forms and colors would be an incomplete matter. The geometry of this architecture is the result of its fundamental components and elements not being formed in the designer’s mind all of a sudden in a constructive and unified process; rather it is the result of a gradual practical and constructive method. Its components including physical and geometrical features exert significant effect on the end result of the overall volume. The formation process in nature is often carried out by the help of a structure or some structures. Like nature, formation of volumes in Iran’s traditional architecture follows the same rules. The morphologies of the traditional architecture as well as the modern architecture are fundamentally different with each other from this perspective. This means that the former is accomplished through motion of basic, constructive and standardized elements in space while the latter is realized through a mental and abstract process. Nevertheless, recognizing the physical texture of traditional architecture has a considerable effect on its morphology. Physical, chemical, and geometrical bonds maintain the natural forms in the nature and organized them, but traditional architecture follows those natural rules which are mostly in physical and geometrical bonds because its constructional materials are mainly natural elements and less synthetic. A traditional architect is in search for the harmony rules of the standardized constructional components (masonry materials) so that he can find out a relatively stable equilibrium against the applied forces. These rules have become available for architects through experience and observance of the nature and also the introductory geometrical analyses and eventually, his attempt to counter the force of gravity is reflected in the general form of the work. This attempt in the form of the used shapes is perceivable by the viewer of this architectural work and based on this perception, an aesthetical relation is created between the observer and the work. Wind Catcher has been among the historical elements of Iranian traditional architecture in the hot and dry as well as hot and humid regions of this country which consist of a tower higher than elsewhere in houses and being located on the roofs and water storages to fulfill the role of controlling wind flow and conducting it into the inner space of the houses. Existence of various decorative forms and natural colors used in the facades of the wind catchers, the necessity to approach and analyze them, also maintenance and usage of these elements as well as making them known to the researchers at the present time led to the formation of this study being conducted through a field research by attending the context, having interviews with the locals and analyzing and drawing 50 samples of the present wind catchers to meet the main purpose of the study more accurately which was “analyzing the function and recognizing the motifs and colors” used in the wind catchers. Studies on recognition of the motifs and colors used in the wind catchers of the Sothern Iran (Laft) have not been done so far and only a book entitled “Architecture of Laft Port” published by “Tehran University” Publications in 2001 is available. Some general studies have also been conducted sporadically by Iranian and Arab researchers. Therefore, having conducted this study toward completing the studies about this port, in the first part entitled “An Overview on Wind Catcher and its Function”, we have dealt with location of wind catcher in the house plans. In the second part, i.e., “Morphology of the Wind Catchers”, their constructional elements and components and also classification of their motifs-that are divided in two natural and geometrical groups were analyzed. Finally, the results indicated that since this Port is located adjacent to the Persian Gulf and surrounded by nature, most of the adornments used in the wind catchers are abstractly inspired from nature and sea and their colors are made of vernacular materials.</p>

In 1788, the potter Josiah Wedgwood introduced a radical new sub-section under the banner of his popular Heads of Illustrious Moderns, from Chaucer to the Present Time focused on historical and contemporary women, rather than men, and entitled “Femmes Célèbres”. In its creation, Wedgwood celebrated the lives and achievements of twenty-eight elite, white women of immense privilege and beauty, but also objectified and commodified them for his financial gain. Within this group of aristocrats, mistresses, poets, queens, and educationalists were several female worthies, inspirational women, who possessed qualities he clearly admired—independence, intelligence, and industry. The outsider was the actress and first modern female celebrity, Sarah Siddons, whose struggles to gain acceptance by overcoming gendered obstacles paralleled those of elite, educated, literary women in their desire for recognition. Wedgwood’s gallery of female heads may have served as a visual conduct book or manual, presenting a modern vision of female agency, a new femininity that circumvented and navigated conventions of politeness and the status quo. When accompanied by enlightened conversations, even gossip, among women around the tea-table or while shopping with friends, the life choices of the sitters depicted in these portrait medallions served to educate and promote what it meant to be a woman in the late eighteenth century. This article redefines the reception of this group of ornamental portrait medallions in Wedgwood’s new stoneware bodies as decorative art objects inspired by fine art representations and made accessible through mass production.

Reviewed by: Improvisation as Art: Conceptual Challenges, Historical Perspectives by Edgar Landgraf Gabriel Trop Improvisation as Art: Conceptual Challenges, Historical Perspectives. By Edgar Landgraf. New York: Continuum, 2011. Pp. 176. Cloth $100.00. ISBN 978-1441146946. Edgar Landgraf’s Improvisation as Art is by all counts a theoretically nuanced and historically grounded book, remarkable not only for its level of lucidity and insight into eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century aesthetics and literature, but for its commitment to thinking through the paradoxes and complexities of aesthetic practices that are still flourishing in the twenty-first century. The book aims at more than a mere analysis of the intersection of art and improvisation. Rather, it takes up an important strand in a genealogy of modernity, describing how the new, the unexpected, and the inventive emerged as recognizable practices and values constitutive of the very concept of the modern. The book’s most important contributions are both theoretical and historical in nature, and its merits should be assessed with regard to these dual trajectories. From a theoretical perspective, Improvisation as Art may be regarded as one of the most clear and compelling scholarly attempts to deploy Luhmann’s systems-theoretical [End Page 425] framework to revise our understanding of aesthetics and retell the history of modernity, and is therefore comparable to recent interventions made along these lines by David Wellbery and Cary Wolfe. To those unfamiliar with this theoretical approach, it may seem almost provocative to rethink a phenomenon as seemingly fluid as improvisation through the lens of systems. And yet, this would be to misunderstand the very concept of the system in Luhmann’s theory: a system is perpetually organizing itself in response to an environment exterior to it in a way that is decisive for its internal structure, finding pathways of connectivity in situations saturated with contingency, unpredictability, and complexity. One of Landgraf’s central contentions consists in the argument that systems theory can account for improvisation in a way that is sensitive to the richness of the phenomenon while at the same time avoiding some of the pitfalls of other theoretical perspectives, above all Derridean deconstruction. Derrida argues that improvisation—as an activity that, in an absolute sense, entails the emergence of something wholly new or unexpected—is impossible precisely because its intelligibility depends upon preexistent practices against which something stands out as improvisational. For example, a jazz performer in a concert does not in fact bring something absolutely new into the world; such acts are interpreted in the light of previous similar instances and must be evaluated against a series of comparable events in order to have meaning. According to Derrida, improvisation therefore presupposes, and even reinforces—even if only through transgressing—the rule that it seeks to suspend. Landgraf criticizes Derrida’s essentialization of planning, calculation, and structure as diametrically opposed to innovation. Indeed, precisely those elements that make improvisation impossible for Derrida are seen to enable it from a systems-theoretical perspective: stability, repetition, and variation constitute the conditions of possibility of improvised acts rather than their conditions of impossibility. This insight allows Landgraf to show how constraint (e.g., the “formulas” governing jazz music), techniques of staging and framing (the “venue” of the concert), and social and cultural expectations in processes of recognition (the “audience” for whom this situation is more or less intelligible) form an irreducible part of aesthetic practices claiming to be improvisational. Much of the book is dedicated to a historical account of how improvisation functions not merely as a model for the emergence of novelty amidst constraints, but as a way in which artistic practices, beginning in the late eighteenth century, framed their practices as artistic practices in relation to improvisation. The historical narrative unfolds roughly along the following lines. The Enlightenment, with its emphasis on didacticism and moral improvement, was, in general, suspicious of improvisation. The emergence of the notion of aesthetic autonomy in the late eighteenth century—or the way in which art distinguishes itself [End Page 426] as art by referring to its own modes of production and reception rather than, for example, relying on civil society, church, or state as sources of normativity—then coincides with a...

At the turn of the nineteenth century, American pragmatists claimed that philosophy rests on experience. Variations of their empiricism persist at the beginning ofthe twenty-first century, but, I argue, the notion of experience remains under-analyzed. In this paper I examine Peirce’s and James’s contrasting views of the relation between experience and philosophy, comparing their views with Descartes’s, and I re-enter Dewey’s question, “What are the data of philosophy?” Do different individuals have different data? As it is a commonplace of the twenty-first century that our experiences vary widely with our individual life circumstances and that there are fault lines in human experience that can be organized by notions of gender, race, ethnicity and culture, and historical and economic circumstances, I also consider whether that commonplace has any import for philosophy.

The dualism subject/object has dominated literary imagination, especially throughout the twentieth century, not only in the Western world but also in the Asian continent. However, over the last twenty years, an ontological shift in focus can be observed in the narratives produced by Indian women authors, in which the material object world, from being merely the background, becomes the structural framework of the story. Through their special interest in the domestic, contemporary Indian women authors rehabilitate the small objects and invest them with metonymic power to such an extent that they become symbols of women’s lives. My research aims at demonstrating that an object-oriented close reading of contemporary narratives by Indian women writers offers new insights into Indian women’s condition, not only from the point of view of gender discrimination but also of identity formation, both in postcolonial India and in the diaspora. The theoretical framework I use is based on Bill Brown’s “Thing Theory,” a recent approach which puts subjects and objects in relational rather than oppositional terms. The corpus of writings I have selected includes Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things (1997), Anita Nair’s novel Ladies’ Coupe (2001), Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories “Mrs. Sen’s” and “The Third and Final Continent” (1999), and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel The Mistress of Spices (1997). The critical analyses of the texts demonstrate that gender is no less physical than an object. It can be materialized either through the externalization of thoughts and ideologies or through the internalization of the physical object world. Hence, the semiotic apparatus in contemporary Indian women writers’ fiction tells stories of objectification and marginalization and, consequently, constitutes significant reading matter.

In most African countries, it is still a common belief that thin women are not attractive. Until the 21st century, full-figured women were considered attractive, were respected, and their padded (with flesh) and curvaceous bodies represented wealth, fertility and good health. The western society views a thin woman as ideal body and has forced many women including Africans to believe that a body that deviates from it is unaccepted. Fashion designers use the thin model as a basis from which to create ready-to-wear clothing for all consumers including those whose body characteristics do not comply with the ideal body features. This has resulted in unsatisfied consumers with clothing sold in the retail stores and negative reactions towards their bodies. The problem of ideal body versus un-ideal body shape date back to 19th Century, where Saartjie Baartman’s body shape characterised by full breasts, narrow waist and extra large buttocks was viewed by Europeans as ugly, yet later on, the same body, though not acknowledged, was used to inspire the creation of Victorian bustle dress that resembled her body in every aspect. This article examines the relationship between the Victorian Bustle dress that became popular from 1870 onwards and the unique body features of Saartjie Baartman, an African slave who was displayed in Europe against her wish as from 1810 to 1815, and even after her death, her body continued to be exhibited in a Museum in Paris. This paper concludes that her body could have inspired the development of the Victorian bustle dress. The paper encourages African women to view their bodies sensibly rather than basing their beauty on the western standard ideologies. Likewise, promotional media houses are encouraged to portray all body shapes fairly and positively. African researchers are advised to search beyond surfaces of historical events for the purposes of documenting underlying important facts affecting Africa.