National Themes Research Articles

Nostalgia, Nationalism and Notability: The Success of Skyfall

2012 saw the release of what has since been branded ‘the most successful British film to date’: Skyfall broke box office records by making £94 million in the first 40 days of its release. The positive reception from film critics would have undoubtedly gone some way to attracting patrons to its cinema run, however, the overwhelming commercial success of Skyfall indicates that there were more hooks at play here, amongst the promotional campaign for the film. This article argues that strong themes of nostalgia, nationalism and notability (of the cast and crew), present throughout the marketing and preview literature for Skyfall, played a significant part in generating audience interest for the film. Through textual analysis of a variety of artefacts circulated in anticipation of the film's release, this article aims to explore how these three themes engaged with the audience and helped to ensure a successful box office run for Skyfall.

A DIFFERENT VIEW OF THE WOUNDED VALLEY

The Kashmir question is felt by many to be beyond resolution. As many again regard it as a situation wherein the status quo of on-going violence is now a ‘conflict industry’ with too much vested interest in play for any genuine avenues of negotiation to be pursued. The Kashmir Valley seems to have joined the long list of often forgotten Balkanised stories about unresolved hostilities written around the themes of geopolitics and jingoistic nationalism. The psychotherapist Justine Hardy looks at the question from another point of view, that of the psychological state of the people of Kashmir, the real stakeholders in any possible agreement between Pakistan and India over the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir. She presents the case for adding another approach to those that appear to have stalled along the way.

Martha Ostenso, Periodical Culture, and the Middlebrow

Between 1938 and 1942, border-crossing Norwegian-Canadian author Martha Ostenso published three short stories in Chatelaine magazine, stories that engage in complex ways with themes of femininity, nationalism, and consumerism. In this article, we consider how the context of Chatelaine shapes and complicates readings of these stories by placing the stories in conversation with surrounding material, including advertisements and editorial content. The fiction, we argue, unsettles romantic tropes and nationalist rhetoric, and contests the correlation between the attainment of happiness and the acceptance of class and gender norms. In examining authorial identity, textual complexity, and print cultural contexts, we show how middlebrow magazines are a vibrant means of understanding middle-class culture’s anxieties and aspirations.

Walter Raleigh, through John Milton, according to William Carlos Williams

Walter Raleigh, through John Milton, according to William Carlos Williams Angelica Duran The US-American poet, writer, and self-fashioned country doctor William Carlos Williams expressly refers to the also eclectic Walter Raleigh (1552–1619) in two works: in the chapter “Sir Walter Raleigh” in his early collection of historical essays In the American Grain (1925) and in his mid-career lyric “Raleigh Was Right,” published in two typographically different versions, first in 1940 and then in The Wedge (1944). Of significant consequence to Williams’s representations of Raleigh is that he grafts John Milton (1608–74) onto them both times, overtly in the form and voice in the first work; unobtrusively but no less powerfully, through an image and its overriding tone, in the second.1 My aim is to show that Williams’s epitomizing of the figure of a Miltonic Raleigh demonstrates a form of modernism that does not as much radically break from but rather eagerly reconceives of traditional modes of social organization. Just as Raleigh’s and Milton’s works contributed to the long-awaited emergence of a great English literature in the seventeenth century, Williams worked deliberately to help build a strong US-American literature that finally came into its own in the twentieth century. In the American Grain compiles distinctivelymodulated chapters on American explorers from Norway, Spain, France, England, and the Americas, and in the Raleigh chapter, Williams conveys the epic nature of England’s unexpected and sharp rise in the settlement of the Americas, and consequently in international standing. To provide a new sense rather than a historic account of Raleigh’s chaotic explorations, Williams does not adapt, for example, Raleigh’s historiographer’s voice from his most popular long work History of the World, but rather the much more familiar epic voice of the fiercely British “John Milton, Englishman.”2 When Williams returns to Raleigh, and Milton, again in his [End Page 15] mid-career lyric “Raleigh Was Right,” the conversation still concerns significant national themes and aims. But Williams’s touch is lighter; and his poem joins with theirs in the pastoral mode to create a modernist stance that breaks from traditional form but maintains its concern for civic order, and to attend to the difficulties of defining much less achieving one. Together, Williams’s two works capture the capaciousness of the Raleigh legend and the arguments it can bear. In In the American Grain, the Miltonic Raleigh represents a formidable, successful European precursor for those etching out a US-American nation and literature. With “Raleigh Was Right,” Williams posits a Raleigh and a Milton—chronological and national Others—as fellow human voices, as he offers one alternative to coming to terms with the bearing that individual acts and limitations have on vast, enduring human needs. In the American Grain’s Epic Raleigh Williams’s visionary and revisionary history In the American Grain is a sweeping representation of a slow, painful but necessary dismissal of the transatlantic diaspora by Old World settlers in the New World for the sake of national and eventual universal self-identity.3 The work is a subtle but strong manifesto that sets out to intervene in American cultural formation at the beginning of the twentieth century. That formation is multifarious, which Williams represents by adeptly using multiple voices and allusions. For example, Williams seamlessly weaves word-for-word quotes from Christopher Columbus’s journals into his second chapter “The Discovery of the Indies”; he uses a disjointed narrative voice bordering on Latin-American magical realism for “De Soto and the New World”; and he assumes a frontier voice for “The Discovery of Kentucky,” focused on Daniel Boone. The epic voice of “John Milton, Englishman” for the narrator of the chapter “Sir Walter Raleigh” participates with those other voices in creating a European literary and political vocal system leading to the last two US-American figures of the book, Edgar Allan Poe and Abraham Lincoln. The images of the multiple seeds and eventual flowerings throughout the work powerfully figure hybridity as a desirable telos of American settlement rather than a foisted concession to Old World purity.4 This history is a progressive one: Williams’s mimicking...

Leisure Activity Styles among Kaohsiung City Residents: Application of Taiwan Leisure Activity List

The purpose of this study was to distinguish the common and unique dimensions of destination image by way of a comparative analysis of three types of tourist destinations, including national parks, national scienic areas, and theme parks. A total of 857 usable on-site questionnaires surveys were collected from Taichung residents in Taiwan, and used for data analyses. The results indicated that the common dimensions of three types of tourists' destination image were ”Tourism Management” and ”Cultural Experience.” However, the unique dimensions varied among national parks, national scienic areas and theme parks. Our findings conclude that some image dimensions were general to various destinations; however, others were destination specific. It was suggested that a variety and relative importance of destination image dimension could be used to conduct the effective managerial and promotional strategies for such three types of destination. Further studies are recommended for further indepth investigations in this area of research.

“Exhilarating Exile”: Four Latin American Women Exhibit in Paris

This essay will analyze the individual exhibitions of four Latin American women artists held in Paris between the two world wars: Brazilians Tarsila do Amaral and Anita Malfatti in 1926, Mexican Lola Velásquez Cueto in 1929, and Cuban Amelia Peláez in 1933. Entering the modern art milieu involved decisions about subject matter and technique, about whether to portray national themes or avoid them, and how to negotiate the gendered implications of style. During periods of “exhilarating exile” all four of these artists entered the vibrant artistic environment in Paris and strategically positioned themselves, via their artistic choices, in relation to aesthetic debates about the role of decorative in modern art.

Memorialisation in Norrtälje, Mariehamn and Pargas: 1881-1939

The data, the result of an archaeological survey of more than 300 memorials dating from 1881 – 1939 in cemeteries in Norrtälje, Sweden; Mariehamn, Åland and Pargas, Finland, was collected for an MA dissertation: ‘The Åland Islands Question’ – A New Perspective? A comparative study of three burial grounds on Åland, in Finland and in Sweden. The dissertation explored the potential for carrying out archaeological studies of memorialisation in a Nordic context, concentrating on the twin themes of identity and nationalism with particular reference to the League of Nations 1921 Agreement on the Autonomy of Åland. The dataset, deposited with the Swedish National Data Service, comprises a database with the details of each memorial, a photograph of each memorial and of the cemeteries, and a note on methodology. Reuse potential includes the incorporation of the data into wider studies of memorialisation, utilisation for gender studies, studies of nationalism, design history and genealogy.

James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma and the Mission in Iraq

Our Nation Has a Missionthough the united states no longer uses Western films to discuss national issues, the films' relationship to American history, or their place in national mythologies, occasionally a Western is released that reminds us their power. Director James Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma (2007) is such a Western. It is, I want to argue, an Iraq War Western. And since it is a remake the 1957 3:10 to Yuma, it is able to place the in Iraq in the context two other American missions-the settling the West and the Cold War.In 2003 the United States undertook the liberation Iraq under the banner the most deeply held belief American patriotism, that are a people set apart, a people with a providential (McKenna 6). America needs missions in order to affirm its sense itself as exceptional, alone among the nations the world favored by God. In film, which so often displaces the political with the personal, the idea America's exceptional is often conveyed through stories exceptional Americans. It is the heroic individuals art who often carry the meaning national destiny. In the willingness these characters to act courageously, we see a model for national action. And we see in their virtue and triumphs the promise that a virtuous America will be successful.A number anti-Iraq War films focused specifically on the nature heroism in that conflict in order to deny that war the legitimacy that heroism can bestow. In the Valley Elah (2007) and Redacted (2007) dealt with soldiers who lost their humanity fighting in Iraq, and Hurt Locker (2009), more ambiguously, reduced heroism to an adrenaline addiction. As a character says in In the Valley Elah, you shouldn't send heroes to places like Iraq, [where] everything is fucked up.No genre is more famous for creating heroes and incorporating grand, national themes in the personal stories Americans than the Western. has said that Westerns are about great mythical landscape, Mt. Olympus, in which all the great American themes are played out in this kind fever dream (James Mangold A15). And although the Western returns again and again to the same myths, it does so, according to Mangold, to place the events the day in that mythic landscape. Westerns have a tradition, he noted in an interview, of being able to gracefully and easily fold into their subtext ideas about the moment (Esther 28).The continued influence the cowboy narrative was integral to the way George W. Bush presented himself, the war on terror, and his war in Iraq. It was immediately after 9/11 that he likened Osama Bin Laden to a Western whom he wanted dead or alive. More significant was his mission accomplished announcement. In a culture used to the updating the Western hero to fighter pilots in Star Wars (1977), Top Gun (1986), and Space Cowboys (2000), for example, the link between Bush stepping out the jet in full fighter uniform and the symbolism the Western hero could not be missed. His speech on the aircraft carrier that first day May in 2003 continued the Western theme his visual presence tried to establish. He called Iraq an outlaw regime, invoked the cavalry goal bringing order to parts the country that remain dangerous, used the language Manifest Destiny to announce to the world that our nation has a mission, and at the end tied America's to God (as well as to the Western captivity narrative)-To the captives, come out, he said, quoting from Isaiah 49:9.But just as Western films have long provided mythic examples courageous men who subdue vicious outlaws, as in the original 3:10 to Yuma, which could be used to support American policies such as the Cold War, they also have a history that dates at least to the Vietnam War debunking the myth the Western hero and the idea American exceptionalism that the hero carries. …

Allegory, the Nation, and the March of Time: An Essay on Modern Chinese Literature in Honor of Fredric Jameson

In this essay I engage with Fredric Jameson’s theoretical works and ideas, especially his concept of national allegory, and examine their possibilities and limits for use in literary analysis of Modern Chinese Literature. In particular, I examine the themes of the nation and the passage of time in the works of Yu Dafu, Lao She, Xiao Hong, and Zhao Shuli and argue for evidence of a historical development from cyclical narrative to messianic and utopian linear time in their novels. While Yu Dafu’s “Sinking” (Chenlun) and Lao She’s Camel Xiangzi (Luotuo Xiangzi) both display a desire to break free from cyclical time and narration, the narratives fold back into themselves. In contrast, Xiao Hong’s The Field of Life and Death (Shengsi chang) mediates between two different temporal schemes and marks a transition to the linear developments prevalent in Socialist Realist novels such as Zhao Shuli’s Sanliwan Village (Sanliwan). While Jameson’s earlier works on Realism, Marxism, and the “Political Unconscious” all provide valuable insight into Modern Chinese Literature and the novels mentioned, Jameson’s engagement with Chinese authors has also opened up new ways of examining Chinese literature.

‘Zhonghua’ tobacco advertisement in Shanghai: a descriptive study

ObjectiveTo document tobacco advertising practices of a popular, high-grade, domestic cigarette in China across a broad spectrum of channels.MethodsMedia monitoring and direct observations were conducted to assess tobacco advertisements for...

Israeli stamps 1948–2010: between nationalism and cosmopolitanism

An examination of 1012 stamps issued by Israel from May 1948 to June 2010 reveals a degree of fluctuation between national and cosmopolitan themes, with a significant rise towards cosmopolitanism in the second decade and an increase in nationalism in the third. Cosmopolitan themes again showed modest growth in the fourth decade, and have been rising steadily, if moderately, since 1988. The findings suggest that Israeli stamp issues constitute an arena of dynamic contention between the desire to maintain a particular national Israeli identity, and the desire to promote a worldview based on universal values.

The "White World's Future?": An Analysis of the Russian Far Right

The "White World's Future?"An Analysis of the Russian Far Right Richard Arnold and Ekaterina Romanova Russia has witnessed dangerously high levels of hate-based violence on ethnic or racial minorities carried out by groups described either as "Neo-Nazi" or "skinhead" in the Russian media.1 These groups have been active in using violence against those who are racially different. In 2009, for example, at least 72 people were killed and 359 injured in racist incidents in Russia. In 2011, at least 16 people were killed and a further 90 were injured.2 In the first half of 2012, five people were killed and over 77 were injured in different regions in Russia.3 It should be noted additionally that these frightening statistics are conservative estimates, because not all violence gets reported. Yet while using such terms may be the most accurate way to define these groups, it is necessary to pay attention to nuances and details of their ideology, or else we risk misunderstanding them. This article aims to make a contribution to those efforts. Far-right groups in Russia advocate ideas of racial hygiene and a halt to Muslim immigration. These ideas are widely shared by European far-right groups. Moreover, the intellectuals of the Russian far right seek support and often relate to their European counterparts. It is therefore clear that there is at least some ideological overlap. However, the transmission of ideas between the Russian and European radical Right leads to questions. How do proponents of the extreme Right position Russia in relation to [End Page 79] Europe? How do they understand the interaction between Europe and Russia in overcoming the perceived shared challenges of immigration and preserving the national genotype? How is the concept of "race" to be understood? These questions are important for a number of reasons. First, as mentioned previously, without such scholarship there is a danger of misunderstanding the ideology of any part of the European far Right. This can have real consequences when it comes to designing policy. Second, while the Russian far Right has traditionally taken anti-Western positions, explaining the cross-border conversation between the Russian and European far Right strikes one as a puzzle. Finally, understanding the degree to which the ideas expressed by the far right mobilize traditional themes of Russian nationalism has implications for how popular the movement is likely to become and, in turn, how likely the nightmare "Weimar Russia" scenario is.4 One attempt to answer these questions was carried out using the 2006 Moscow conference "The Future of the White World." Through analysis of the documents produced at this conference, this article argues that the concept of Euro-Russia (or, variably, the "White Eurasia") represents the coalescence of Western far right hopes in a union with forces in the East.5 A racial union will be the most secure kind due to (what the conference participants see as) the centrality of race to culture and values. Furthermore, the construction of such a concept reflects a belief in the accuracy of Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations," while simultaneously giving this idea the appearance of objective reality. The conference and accompanying actions undoubtedly contributed to an atmosphere that makes violent acts on the basis of ethnic or racial difference appear rational. The article is split into four sections. First, we discuss the 2006 Moscow conference as part of a series of far-right conferences in recent Russian politics. Second, we argue for the suitability of our methodology of qualitative content analysis. Third, we focus on the prescription of the conference: the foretold union of Euro-Russia. This concept has similarities to classical doctrines of Eurasianism, but hails from a fundamentally different perspective. This is especially clear in how race, religion, and ethnicity are to be understood in this new world. The final [End Page 80] section deals with the motivations for this concept, the idea of Euro-Russia as a retreat for white people in the "Clash of Civilizations," the threat of racial intermixing, and Euro-Russia as a bulwark against the liberalizing forces of NATO. In this manner, this article delivers a comprehensive account of the "White World's Future." The Phenomenon...

How political were Verdi's operas? Metaphors of progress in the reception of I Lombardi alla prima crociata

This article re-examines claims for liberal and patriotic significance traditionally made for the operas Verdi composed for La Scala in the early 1840s. Although it is still commonly asserted that Verdi's music mobilized a new kind of national consciousness, the journalistic reception of Nabucco (1842) and I Lombardi alla prima crociata (1843) give few hints that critics were interested in the images of national identity, unity or colonial oppression alluded to in those works. This silence is all the more striking in contrast with contemporary writing on Francesco Hayez, in which critics found ways to comment on the national themes explored in the canvasses, despite censorship. Departing from this surprising divergence between music and art criticism, the article examines reviews of I Lombardi as a case study for how we might extract historical information from a documentary record that was so deeply shaped by censorship and self-censorship.

My Life as a Chameleon: Finding the Anthropological Self through Interdisciplinary Collaboration

My Life as a ChameleonFinding the Anthropological Self through Interdisciplinary Collaboration Hedda Haugen Askland (bio) Chameleon: A saurian reptile of the genus Chamæleo, family Chamæleonidæ, small lizard-like creatures, distinguished by a prehensile tail, long tongue, eyes moving independently, and covered each with a single circular eyelid, but esp. by their power of changing the colour of the skin, “varying through different shades of yellow, red, gray, brown, and dull inky blue” (Carpenter Zoology 1847). From their inanimate appearance, and power of existing for long periods without food, they were formerly supposed to live on air. These attributes made the name famous and familiar to many who knew nothing else of the animal. (Oxford English Dictionary 2012) Although geographically removed from anthropological schools such as those of Manchester and Chicago, Australia represents a major center for anthropological education and expertise. The Australian National University (anu) alone holds one of the largest concentrations of anthropological expertise anywhere and has over one hundred PhD candidates engaged in its Anthropology Higher Degree Research Academic Network (anu 2012). Together with peers from other Australian universities, these candidates enter a competitive work environment after completing their degrees, in which few valuable academic positions as lecturer or research fellow are available. As a consequence, many of those graduating with a PhD in anthropology have to think creatively about how to progress in their careers and how to balance their academic ambitions with the pragmatisms of life. This was what happened to me; having studied at a regional Australian university in [End Page 244] which anthropology has become an often undervalued and low priority subject, I found that my chances of an anthropological appointment in the region where I lived were slim. My options for work would have to be found elsewhere, in a different city, region, or nation, beyond the discipline of anthropology, or in non-academic sectors. At this stage of my life, moving was not a viable alternative, and I therefore had to consider how I could best employ—and further develop—my skills and experiences beyond the anthropological discipline. Raising my dilemma to my former head of school at the university where I gained my PhD, I was encouraged to I contact the head of the School of Architecture and Built Environment. Quite a few social science graduates had previously been employed in this school, leading to a sarcastic observation from some that the school was offering a “social science graduate program.” The advice I was given had unexpected consequences and opened doors I had not previously seen as entry points to my life as an anthropologist. What had I imagined my professional life would be like? My vision of life after the PhD resembled an image pointing me in a general direction carved out of my ideals more than a map borne out of pragmatic strategies and career ambitions. Then as now, I strongly identified as an anthropologist, and I wanted to use my more than ten years of anthropological training to contribute, somehow, to contemporary understandings of human culture and society. More specifically, I empathized strongly with the human values embedded in anthropology and the discipline’s moral ethos—or its political purpose—to “rediscover the humanity in the peripheral subject” (Westbrook 2008: 11). As to my professional credentials, I believed they resided in my experience of conducting ethnographic fieldwork as well as the theoretical knowledge I had developed and my regional expertise. Thus I presumed that future work would correspond with the theoretical themes of refugees, exile, diaspora, identity, belonging, (trans)nationalism, human rights, war and conflict, the methodological premise of ethnography, and the regional challenges facing the Asia Pacific. I was therefore surprised when shortly after sending my cv to the head of the School of Architecture and Built Environment I was approached with an offer of research work. What was it that I, as an anthropologist, could bring to the fore? How could my phenomenological approach and ethnographic experience [End Page 245] expand knowledge in disciplines that, at least on paper, appear removed from the anthropological enterprise? These questions are at the core of this article, in which I draw on my experience of working...

From Štúr to Parasites: Thematic Adaptation of the Far Right in Slovak Parliamentary Elections

The paper analyzes the far right People’s Party Our Slovakia (ĽSNS) in 2006, 2010 and 2012 Slovak parliamentary elections. The main questions that the paper seeks to answer are 1) whether and how has the party changed its main themes during the periods before elections, 2) what the party’s position toward the Roma minority has been, and 3) how the thematic adaptation has affected electoral results of the party. The paper analyzes the changing position of the party toward the Roma minority in the context of three electoral periods and it links the party’s electoral results with the occurrence of so-called Roma settlements in the areas, where the party gained a significant share of the vote. We found that during the 2006 elections the party mostly emphasized the need for the renaissance of the (Slovak) nation and the reflection of its roots and national historical figures. In both the 2010 and 2012 elections the party for the most part sharply criticized the Roma minority and the mainstream political parties. We argue that this change was reflected in the party’s electoral gain. Since 2010 the party has changed its focus to an active campaign against Roma and electoral results of the party have improved. In 2006 ĽSNS gained the most votes in areas where the local appeal of its leaders emphasizing the nationalistic themes was the largest and in both 2010 and 2012 the party gained the most votes in regions with the highest occurrence of Roma settlements. We also identified all four features that according to Mudde (2000) characterize far right parties in the electoral themes emphasized by ĽSNS.

The Soviet myth of the Great Fatherland War and the limits of inclusionary politics under Brezhnev: The case of Chalmaevist literature

Influential scholarship on the Brezhnev era has described the instrumental official support for Russian nationalist themes and pre-socialist imagery in public discourse as a deliberate “politics of inclusion,” designed to co-opt certain nationalist intellectuals and the sympathies of the state's core of ethnic Russians for the purpose of popular mobilization. How this policy related to and interacted with the ubiquitous official commemoration and mythologization of the Great Fatherland War during this period, however, has remained unexplored. Based on a number of the most important Russophilic publications in the censored press - the writings of the so-called “Chalmaevists” - this article contends that despite unambiguously russocentric, single-stream readings of history in general, when it came to the war in particular, nationalist intellectuals tended to muffle their russocentrism through opaque language or an avoidance of the war's larger significance, or conformed to the war's official (supra-ethnic, socialist) reading. It was only in samizdat that the essentially Russian, primordial nature of victory in 1945 could be fully articulated. The present study thus probes the limits of the concept of inclusionary politics and underscores the party leadership's apparent commitment to maintaining the war myth's predominantly supranational, socialist significance as a means of fostering all-Soviet, rather than Russian national, solidarity.

El tiempo y el mito: los argonautas en Liubliana

Nuestro estudio se centrará en el tiempo de los mitos de fundación, observando el papel de la tradición clásica en la invención de un imaginario nacional esloveno (Jasón fundador de Ljubljana) y comparándolo con apropiaciones semejantes en la construcción identitaria de la Península Ibérica (Ulises fundador de Lisboa). Procuraremos iluminar la especificidad eslovena de la transmisión textual de esta tradición y analizar la singularidad de la intervención de los sucesivos agentes: humanistas, ilustrados, románticos..., a la luz de sus homólogos ibéricos.

Patriotism and Imperialism 1870-1914 Education & the Young

"Propaganda aims to to turn resentment into rebellion or loose coalition into unity." (Mangan, 1986, p. 113) Contemporary commentators and historians alike have commented on the way patriotic and imperial propaganda 'mush­roomed' (Porter, 2004, p. 180) between 1870 and 1914. What is particularly remarked upon is the greater emphasis which was placed on patriotic and imperial themes in schools and youth groups. It is important then to examine this trend, to understand the reasoning and implementation so to be able to make a judgement as to its effectiveness and impact on the young of the day. When examining the emphasis on patriotic and imperial themes in schools and youth groups it is first important to realize that it is a mistake to treat them as a homogenous whole. Treating Eton or Harrow the same as a school in a working class district of London or any larger industrial city would overlook some important differences in what propaganda was trans­mitted and how it was transmitted. As Mangan (1986, p. 113) points out, until 1902 there were essentially two different education systems, one encompassing the public schools and the other covering the vast majority of children. Only by ac­cepting this fact can we begin to see clearly how and why values were transmitted and make some judgment as to its effect. This difference can be seen clearly in the question of teaching materials for schools. A lot of focus has been on the introduction of new subjects in schools, especially the humanities, and the textbooks which were designed to teach these subjects. These text books, according to MacKenzie (1984, p. 177) were to instill a certain set of values; patriotism, good citizenship, and moral training. With a contemporary perception of external weakness and greater threat to Britain's position, it was natural to inspire the class of future leaders, through the example of role models who embodied virtuous and moral lives, to be part of the Imperial enterprise.

Writing on the Margins of the World: Hester Lynch Piozzi’s Retrospection (1801) as Middlebrow Art?

Hester Lynch Piozzi’s Retrospection is little discussed in the historiography of world history. This article explores Piozzi’s composition, publication, and repeated reinscription of the work from the mid 1780s to her death in 1821, and locates it within her varied efforts at describing a social index of affinity and cohesion. Drawing out this dimension of the work highlights the opportunity to connect textual annotation with another nineteenth-century textual expression of social relationships—photography—and thereby provides an avenue to expand John Sutton’s research on physical “exograms” through a consideration of desired as well as actual relationships. In this way, Retrospection —and world histories—are seen as opportunities for authors to bind themselves to the “middlebrow” communities of friend-readers, and thus as works of far “smaller compass” than traditional analyses of imperial and national themes would suggest.

Flagging Turkishness: the reproduction of banal nationalism in the Turkish press

This article explores banal nationalist themes and symbols in the Turkish media on the basis of the study by Michael Billig titled “Banal Nationalism”. In this study, we used content analysis method to reveal how the key concepts that encompass the idea of the nationhood have been propagated within presentations of the daily news. The research sampling consisted of 36 daily newspapers of the mainstream Turkish media dated 3th February 2010. Our analysis revealed that even in an ordinary day when nationalist themes or developments were not intensely situated in the newspapers, nationhood was reproduced via both nationalist language forms and classifications of “us” and “them”, praise of the nation/country, and the emphasis on common interest or common history. This further highlights the constant transformation of nationalism, underlining its allusions and evocations not as a forgotten ideology but as something that is being reproduced in an unnoticed way every day and survives as a principal determinant of daily life activities. In addition, although it is not possible to see overt dichotomies or expressions of feeling within each part of the news or in every column, we found that the nation was implied or the national sentiments were presented.