Strange Land Research Articles

Strangers in a Strange Land: Wittgenstein, Flies, Us Too

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations is a prime example of how an intellectual text can simultaneously advance theoretical positions and allude to profound, troubling personal experiences and emotions. And, having—to save his skin—taken up an alien, refugee existence, Wittgenstein was well equipped to call our attention to how there is no language in which we can be ourselves. Language has brought us our feelings. It is in this sense that this paper connects our and Ludwig’s experiences with one that Moses stamped on his son: we are indeed strangers in a strange land.

Ghostly Embodiments of Migration: Jarmila Očkayová’s Aesthetics of Estrangement and Transnationalism in L’essenziale è invisibile agli occhi

Ghostly Embodiments of Migration:Jarmila Očkayová’s Aesthetics of Estrangement and Transnationalism in L’essenziale è invisibile agli occhi Renata Redford A strange sickness haunts the protagonist of Jarmila Očkayová’s L’essenziale è invisibile agli occhi (1997).1 The novel uses this sickness as its central symbolic imagery for encoding the estranging effects of migration and addressing the protagonist’s psychic trauma. In the novel, accounts of various physical symptoms interrupt the narrative and impose themselves as moments of inarticulate rupture. The protagonist, whose name is Agata Jakub, is an Italo-Slovakian journalist who finds herself unable to grasp the source of her malattia. Yet, her anxious questioning leads her on a journey to recover her multiple belongings. She begins to recall not only her stunted formation as a woman, but also years of repression that hint at a need for reconciliation with the idea of a transnational self.2 [End Page 223] In the novel, Očkayová dislocates the notion of national belonging, articulates a transnational ethos, and exposes the arbitrary nature of divisions that separate humans across borders. In this article, I examine the representation of the trauma of border crossing in Očkayová’s novel and her aesthetics of estrangement, which supports Victor Shklovsky’s concept of ostranenie. I also refer to Cathy Caruth’s work on trauma to argue that Očkayová configures the experience of crossing the border between Italy and Slovakia as a trauma that resists naming and that lives on in the body as a trace memory. Finally, through references to Sigmund Freud and Julia Kristeva, I intend to reveal that Očkayová transforms the potentially deformative experience of crossing national borders and exilic migration into a positive one. Although a work of fiction, L’essenziale è invisibile agli occhi incorporates traces of both Očkayová’s life in Slovakia and her own migration to Italy. Born in Slovakia in 1955, Očkayová emigrated to Italy in 1974 to study Italian literature at the University of Bologna. She currently lives in Reggio Emilia where she works as a writer and translator. Očkayová first left Bratislava during the 1970s. At the time, the region that now comprises Slovakia enjoyed relative economic stability due to its high level of industrialization and what Tomas Frejka calls “the peculiar sociopolitical situation of stabilization” after the Prague Spring of 1968.3 “Normalization” after the short-lived Prague Spring, however, entailed thoroughgoing political repression and the return to stifling ideological conformity. Today Slovakia enjoys one of the strongest economies of the former Soviet satellite countries, on par with Hungary and Poland, which are all conceived by Italians and other Western Europeans as Central European rather than Eastern European, and therefore, less other.4 Despite Slovakia’s extensive industrialization, [End Page 224] many still envision it as somehow intrinsically backwards.5 Slovakian identity, from the Western perspective, remains colored by forty years under Soviet rule, despite Slovakia’s efforts to rise from the ashes of the Cold-War era and rejoin “Europe,” which technically happened in 1993. In contrast to Slovakia, which maintains strong ties to its rural past that figure significantly in its identity, Italy after the Second World War attempted to erase its rural past in an effort to “re-color” Italian identity and establish itself as a First-World nation.6 Očkayová’s discourse on multiple belongings thus blends two very different experiences of Europe. It emphasizes, as we shall see, a transnational identity that moves beyond the nationalist beliefs that have traditionally polarized Europe. Stranger in a Strange Land: The Aesthetics of Estrangement L’essenziale è invisibile agli occhi traces the belated coming-of-age story of Agata Jakub, a Slovakian-Italian recently separated from her husband, a native Italian politician named Angelo. The novel is divided into three sections that gradually reveal the evolution of Agata’s perception of reality. In the first section of the novel, Očkayová explores the protagonist’s recent marital separation. Despite various prior trips to Bratislava, it is the dissolution of Agata’s marriage that triggers long-repressed memories of her emigration to Italy. As Agata attempts to create a new life for herself, she experiences a series...

Crucible of Struggle: A History of Mexican Americans from Colonial Times to the Present Era by Zaragosa Vargas

Vargas, Zaragosa. Crucible of Struggle: A History of Mexican from Colonial Times to the Present Era (2nd edition). New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. By the end of the twenty-first century, Latinos are expected to make up about half of the US population (xii). Since Mexican make up the majority of this Latino population, there is renewed interest in the history and influence of Mexican in the US political economy. There are, however, few comprehensive studies that offer a sufficient narrative on the story of Mexican Americans. second edition of Zaragosa Vargas' Crucible of Struggle: A History of Mexican from Colonial Times to the Present Era meets this demand by offering a detailed account of Mexican and their impact on the evolving national identity of the United States. Rather than limiting his focus to recent events, Vargas takes a broad approach in explaining the struggles and histories that create the Mexican American experience. He begins his journey with Spanish colonization and continues through to the early twenty-first century. In his first two chapters, Vargas outlines the native resistance to Spanish settlement and oppression, and the complications with maintaining control over the northern frontier. He notes, For two centuries the integration, exploitation, and destruction of Indian populations, the latter often achieved through a scorched-earth policy, were key to the economic development of northern frontier society (31). In chapters 3 and 4, Vargas describes Mexican American involvement in the Civil War, the Indian Wars, and the era of expansion westward. After the United States embraced the concept of Manifest Destiny, it increased its imperialist efforts and military aggression towards Mexico (102). This supposed fate of the growing nation also took a racial tone: Anglo assumed themselves superior to Mexicans, and thus an ethnic prejudice developed alongside territorial goals (137). This left Mexican in a state of otherness, or, as Vargas explains, The Mexican of the Southwest found themselves strangers in a strange land, a minority struggling for acceptance in a sea of Americans (107). Chapters 5 through 11 are the strongest in the text as Vargas goes into great detail to discuss Mexican American immigration and labor in the twentieth century. Seeking economic opportunities, Mexican immigrated to newly formed states in the southwest (188). …

The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction by Muhsin J. Al-Musawi

Reviewed by: The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction by Muhsin J. Al-Musawi Brian Welter The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction by Muhsin J. Al-Musawi, 2015. University of Notre Dame Press, 456 pp., £45.95. ISBN: 978-0-268-02044-6 (pbk) Columbia University professor Muhsin J. Al-Musawi succeeds at showing the great depth and breadth of knowledge in the middle Arabic-Islamic period from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The author offers convincing material to support his argument that "the long-established Western equation between secularism and humanism needs to be challenged whenever it is applied outside the specific domain of a European Renaissance" (311). Al-Musawi aims to apply Foucault's archaeology of knowledge to this civilisation, which leads to demanding sentences like the following: "[E]pistemological shifts from a basic ternary mode, which collapses signs and the signified into one of resemblance, to a binary mode that assigns representation to signs" (82). Such annoying language comes up repeatedly, slowing down the reading and accomplishing little for the overall argument. A more straightforward prose would have made the book more convincing. Readers soon become accustomed to the ceaseless barrage of names. This flood makes the author's point. The Arabic-centred Islamic civilisation in this oft-disparaged period possessed a dense, dynamic, and creative written and intellectual environment. The author likens medieval Cairo up to the eighteenth-century to Paris from the early modern period onward as the cultural centre for an entire civilisation. Cairo's literary circles reached all the way down to the street and all the way up to the chancery. Self-sustaining, they repeatedly outlived political turmoil. Though Professor Al-Musawi claims to write this book in opposition to major western assumptions of cultural decadence and the resulting lack of intellectual depth during the Islamic middle period, in fact he takes the iconic western stance, "knowledge is power." Detailing the power of the written word in society, the author highlights the importance of all social strata, from the street to the mosque to Sufi brotherhoods [End Page 231] and finally the chancery. Mirroring western assumptions and practices, this takes spirituality out of the equation, which will disappoint many readers. Is Islamic culture not more than the sum of all power? Al-Musawi writes as a western materialist. He therefore offers a far different perspective and reading experience than Henry Corbin or Seyyed Hossein Nasr. His examination of Sufi writings exemplifies the knowledge-is-power mindset. He portrays these mystics less as spiritual seekers and guides than as writers upsetting text-based power structures because they push hermeneutical boundaries and thereby cause "epistemological shifts." This includes a broadening of registers, which "undergo semantic navigation and a blurring of boundaries" (253). Such an analysis, however correct from a certain viewpoint, seems unfaithful to the Islamic tradition, as Sufi teachings in this perspective no longer invite one on a spiritual path, but apparently engage in nothing more than linguistic gymnastics. This reminds one of Hossein Nasr's remarks on Religionwissenschaft in Knowledge and the Sacred (1989): "Religion was studied as fact belonging to various human cultures to be documented and described as one would study and catalogue the fauna of a strange land. The question of faith was of little importance; historical 'facts,' myths, rites, and symbols were more attractive since such aspects of religion could be made subjects for scientific study more readily than what appeared as the nebulous question of faith. … This approach amassed a great deal of information about religions but rarely succeeded in providing meaning for what had been studied" (284). Yet Al-Musawi's dissection of lexis, style, genre, and discourse offers insights to the reader that Corbin or Hossein Nasr tend not to offer, even if this makes The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters more impersonal. The author shows precisely where, linguistically, certain Sufis caused the trouble that led to sometimes violent reactions by the authorities or other Islamic scholars. Mystical writings were not simply for spiritual seekers, but had practical and even political consequences. As Al-Musawi observes, taking the innocence out of spiritual life: "Heavily influenced by the preoccupation with...

Joining the Journey: Using Memory Research to Help Students Identify with Biblical Events

The world of the Old Testament is one many students see as a “strange land” (Rodd, 2001). For those who teach the Old Testament as Scripture, this is a significant problem, for that land and its people are part of our faith story—something we need to identify with. The aim of this article, then, is to show how memory research might provide a way forward in helping students identify with Scripture. By leveraging false memory research in particular, it is argued that by carefully embedding sensory features within storytelling we can facilitate a pseudo-experience, thereby helping students to “see” themselves in biblical events. This seeing, in turn, accomplishes meaningful and long-term identification, for it shifts students' memory of biblical events from the perspective of an observer to that of a participant. The book of Deuteronomy is used to show how this can be put into practice.

Status in a Strange Land: Status Transfer to Foreign Markets in Cross-Border Venture Capital

The literature agrees on the benefits of organizational status, but we know less about whether and when firms can enjoy status-related benefits in different markets. Focusing on international expansion, we argue that the extent to which a firm can transfer status advantages from its home market to a host market depends in part on the relationship between the two markets. We build on the international management literature and hypothesize that two conditions influence how effectively organizational status transfers across markets: the interconnectedness of the home and host markets and the relative global position of the two markets. We test our hypotheses by examining whether cross-border venture capital (VC) firms with high home-market status contribute to the performance of their ventures in a study of 462 VC-backed biotechnology ventures in 25 countries between 1990 and 2006. Correcting for endogeneity, our results suggest that some level of interconnectedness between national markets is required for status to transfer effectively. Also, the relative proximity of a VC firm’s home market to the core of the world trade system appears to act as a substitute for firm status, reducing its impact on performance.

Are international medical graduates well supported by the emergency medicine community in Australasia? No.

Are international medical graduates well supported by the emergency medicine community in Australasia? No.

Fiction into religion: imagination, other worlds, and play in the formation of community

Research into religions founded upon explicitly fictional sources is a recent development in the study of religion. Such research is social scientific in orientation and emphasises: the persuasive power of shared narratives among subcultural groups; the ‘cognitive’ methodological turn that has gained ground since the 1980s regarding the origin and function of religion; and the individualistic and affective ways that elements from traditional religion, popular culture, and a wide range of social artefacts and phenomena are used to create new religions and personal spiritualities. In certain cases, exposure to, prolonged immersion in, and social vindication of highly affective narratives (science-fiction novels and films that are sensuous and have tangible impact in experiential terms) may trigger the formation of a religion. This article examines the Church of All Worlds, which is a fiction-inspired religion founded by Tim Zell (b. 1942) and Lance Christie (1944–2010), two students at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, in April 1962. Zell and Christie read Robert A. Heinlein’s science-fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land (London: New English Library, 1961 [1987]), and initiated a ‘real world’ version of the fictional Church, founded by Martian-raised Valentine Michael Smith in the novel. Identification with Stranger’s characters, and lifestyle choices designed to recreate the social milieu of the novel, reinforced and made ‘real’ this initially fiction-based religion, which is now over 50 years old, has a vibrant print and online presence, and braches (called Nests) in countries including the United States, Britain, Germany, and Australia.

"Coming to a Strange Land": The West African Migrant Women's Establishment of Home and Family in a New Culture Within Australia.

Migrating and establishing a new life in another culture can have diverse health effects especially for women. This article explores the struggles and social adjustment issues that might constitute negatively to the health of West African migrant women living in Australia. Qualitative storytelling. Audiotaped voluntary stories from 20 West African migrant women living in Sydney, Australia were transcribed and analyzed. Three themes are presented for discussion: (1) But it is different here: life in a new country; (2) I have to do it all by myself: communal versus individual living; and (3) They don't listen to parents: perceived threats to the family unit. The demand for and the importance of nurses and midwives in supporting migrant families is demonstrated by findings suggesting that social adjustment into the Australian culture has a significant impact on both the nuclear and extended family unit of women.

‘Strange Lands and Different Peoples’: Spaniards and Indians in Colonial Guatemala - by Lovell, W. George and Lutz, Christopher H. with Karmer, Wendy and Swezey, William R.

‘Strange Lands and Different Peoples’: Spaniards and Indians in Colonial Guatemala - by Lovell, W. George and Lutz, Christopher H. with Karmer, Wendy and Swezey, William R.

Sonia Nimr: Author – Palestine

Sonia NimrAuthor – Palestine You Chengcheng Click for larger view View full resolution sonia nimr is a prominent Palestinian author and storyteller, writing for children and youth both in Arabic and English. She was born in 1955 in a small town of Palestine where she finished her elementary and high school education. In her second year at Birzeit University in 1975, she was sentenced to three years in an Israeli prison for political reasons. During those three years, she developed a strong interest in writing children’s books. Still, she did not start writing children’s books until she worked as an education officer at the Museum of Mankind in 1989. In 1990, she received her PhD in Oral History from Exeter University. Currently, she teaches at the Department of Cultural Studies, Birzeit University. Aside from writing fiction, she is also passionate about translating children books from English into Arabic. Sonia Nimr’s preoccupation with oral history motivates her to collect traditional tales from around the world. She is masterful in weaving familiar ingredients of “rich imagery, patterned language and repeated action” into her telling and retelling of stories against the backdrop of Arabian land, culture, and folklore. Nimr hopes that these stories will challenge stereotypes and stimulate the sharing and valuing of folktales from diverse groups of people. Instilling humor and humanistic concerns in the traditional stories, Nimr tries to make each tale attractive to children. By the same token, she resists conservative teaching methods and encourages teachers to meet the children on more open and flexible premises, answering their needs with fantasy and folktales. Throughout her career as a children’s writer, Nimr has published a large number of books for children and young adults and accumulated several awards. She is the recipient of the 2014 Etisalat Award for Arabic Children’s Literature, one of the most important and prestigious awards for children’s literature in the Arab world, for her young adults book Rihlat Ajeeba Fi Al Bilad Al Ghareeba [Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands]. This novel and Qisah Awalha khayal wa Akherha Khyal [Story that Begins and Ends with Lies] made the IBBY Honor List in 2014 and 2004. Viewing her writings as a mission meant for Palestinian children in particular and also for children that live in zones of conflict and war in general, Nimr is committed to exercising their imagination and keeping them in touch with their cultural heritage. A humanistic perspective emanates from her stories for children. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Story that Begins and Ends with Lies. Ramallah, Palestine: Tamer Institute, 2002. Print. Google Scholar A Little Piece of Ground. Sonia Nimr with Elizabeth Laird. London: Macmillan Children’s Books,2003. Print. Google Scholar Ghaddar the Ghoul, and other Palestinian Stories. London: Frances Lincoln Children’s books, 2007. Print. Google Scholar Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands. 2013. Ramallah, Palestine: Tamer Institute, 2014. Print. Google Scholar King of Tales. Ramallah, Palestine: Tamer Institute, 2014. Print. [End Page 46] Google Scholar Copyright © 2016 Bookbird, Inc.

未知の国の滞在記

未知の国の滞在記

Status in a Strange Land: Status Transfer to Foreign Markets in Cross-Border Venture Capital

The literature agrees on the benefits of organizational status, but we know less about whether and when firms can enjoy status-related benefits in different international markets. Focusing on inter...

“Lords of New Mexico”: Raiding Culture in Pre-Reservation Navajo Society

“Lords of New Mexico”: Raiding Culture in Pre-Reservation Navajo Society Reilly Ben Hatch (bio) It was a strange new land that Lieutenant William Emory beheld on the morning of September 30, 1846. Rough lava rock spread out across the plain, covering layers of sandstone with six feet of black, vesicular basalt, all surrounded by high mesas in the immediate horizon, and mountain ranges even farther beyond. The cavities in the igneous flow were large; Emory even remarked that hawks used the naturally formed holes for their nests. Emory took careful notes of birds that made this malpaís their home, and he recorded the species of vegetation growing nearby. As part of the Army of the West, Emory and his team of topographical engineers were tasked with bringing back information in regard to the natural landscape of New Mexico and California, along with its flora and fauna, in anticipation of it becoming American territory upon termination of the war currently being waged against Mexico. Emory carried out these orders with the precision that might be expected of an engineer or a soldier, and he happened to be both. But on this particular day, he was apprehensive. In the early morning, Emory had wandered by himself away from camp to take notes of the area just described, not wanting to make his entire unit go out of the way of the trail they were already on. But he did so cautiously, for this was Navajo country.1 Emory’s experience with this “wild tribe” was limited. His only personal encounter with a group of Navajo, as far as his record shows, had been a month earlier, a few days after General Kearny and his army had marched into Santa Fe and captured the New Mexican capital without a firing a shot. A small band of Navajo had ridden into the capital, and Emory felt uneasy in the presence of these “naked, thin, savage looking fellows,” who were apparently fierce-looking enough to set them apart [End Page 311] from the Pueblo, Ute, and Apache Indians that had already promised good conduct to General Kearny in Santa Fe.2 They were aloof, austere, and guarded, seemingly living up to their reputation as untrustworthy warriors and raiders that had been given them by the Pueblo and Mexicans. Emory seemed to have bought into these descriptions, and he even went so far as to record that these Navajo eyed a little New Mexican child who played in a nearby court, as if they wanted to eat him.3 While Emory’s assumptions of Navajo cannibalism were absolutely unfounded, his perception of the Navajo as fierce warriors was not. For decades, the Navajo had preyed upon the inhabitants of New Mexico, stealing their livestock and sometimes their women and children, in an effort to exercise power over the territory. And now, a month later and on his way to California, Lieutenant Emory was looking at Dinétah, the Navajo homeland; even though his mission was to write about plants and rocks and critters, Emory could not help but wonder if this expanse of desolate badlands was a hiding spot of the Navajo, who “carry off the fruit, sheep, women, and children of the Mexicans.” And as far as Emory knew, they would continue in their dominant role, living in “caverns...in high and inaccessible mountains,” where United States troops would “find great difficulty in overtaking and subduing them.” To Emory, the Navajo had been, were presently, and would continue to be “the lords of New Mexico.”4 Though Emory was one of the first Americans to travel near the Navajo homeland, he was not the first foreigner to pass through or to acknowledge Navajo authority in the area. For hundreds of years, Spanish, Mexican, and other Indian tribes had been subjected to Navajo power, a dominance maintained by the establishment of a raiding culture in Navajo society. The Navajo (or Diné, as they call themselves, meaning “the People”) were not unique in this by any means—the various tribes of Apaches, Comanches, Kiowas, Arapahos, and Utes had all developed an inclination for raiding whites, mestizos, and their native neighbors—but they were the biggest...

The Art, Science, and Technology of Medieval Travel

Contents: Introduction: the art, science, and technology of medieval travel, Robert Bork and Andrea Kann Part I Medieval Vehicles and Logistics: Carolingian military operations: an introduction to technological perspectives, Bernard S. Bachrach Everything is a compromise: Mediterranean ship design, 13th to 16th centuries, John E. Dotson From carriage to coach: what happened?, Julian Munby Caister castle, Norfolk, and the transport of brick and other building materials in the Middle Ages, David H. Kennett. Part II Medieval Travel and the Arts: Pilgrims and portals in late medieval Siena, Michelle Duran-McLure The strange lands of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Anne McClanan Spiritual pilgrimage in the Psalter of Bonne of Luxembourg, Annette Lermack. Part III Medieval Maps and their Uses: Mapping the macrocosm: Christian Platonist thought behind medieval maps and plans, Nigel Hiscock Informal catechesis and the Hereford Mappa Mundi, Dan Terkla The Gough Map: Britain's oldest road map, or a statement of empire?, Nick Millea Petrarch's journey between 2 maps, Evelyn Edson. Part IV Medieval Navigational Instruments: Medieval tools of navigation: an overview, Richard A. Paselk Astrolabes and medieval travel, Sara Schechner. Index.

Wonder and Exile in the New World ‐ by Nava, Alex

Alex Nava (2013) Wonder and Exile in the New World, The Pennsylvania State University Press (University Park, Pennsylvania, PA), xii + 260 pp. $69.95 hbk. Wonder and Exile attempts to use history as a creative endeavour that inspires readers in the present. To accomplish this task, the author created an extended essay reviewing Iberian and New World authors in the early modern era and the twentieth century that experience the world with exhilarated wonder and the reflective meditation of exile. Swinging wildly at times from Billie Holiday to Christopher Columbus, Nava's book is itself a work with Baroque sensibilities. Chapters 1 and 2 explore the ideas of wonder and exile in the context of the European arrival in the New World. They are, he argues, key to the narrative of dispossession found in the history and literature of the Americas: wonder a dispossession of knowledge and exile a dispossession of place. Free of these anchors, authors and travellers often revel and occasionally despair at the world around them. While historians may work diligently to recreate a view of the past from documents, Nava urges readers to revel in the awe of their position as strangers in a strange land. Focusing on the theoretical framework of Michel de Certeau in Chapter 1, Nava then applies those ideas to Christopher Columbus and Bartolome de Las Casas in Chapter 2. The author strips away the narratives of Columbus as hero or villain and instead presents the reader with Columbus as a man in exuberant revelry with the New World. Las Casas is not only the defender of indigenous rights, but a man in exile raging at Europe while simultaneously in wonder of the indigenous. Chapters 3 and 4 explore the importance of Baroque arts and religion to the Americas, with a particular emphasis on Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes and New Spain scholar Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. The Americas are exemplarily Baroque, the author tells us, because it is the place where creation and death come crashing together, and the excess and vulgarity of a full life meet a desperate struggle to find God. Nava applies these ideas to Cervantes, whose Don Quixote marks a man that is both in wonder as he moves about Spain, but also a man in exile, dislocated from his present with his focus on the past. Sor Juana is also a woman that experiences the pain of exile as a brilliant and passionate woman in a world where all of her various loves – both academic and personal – are taboo. In Chapter 5 Nava leaps ahead three centuries to the authors of magical realism. With a sharp focus on Gabriel García Márquez, Miguel Ángel Asturias and Alejo Carpentier, the authors of magical realism push the limits of imagination and extravagance, leaping into worlds where no boundaries or rules exist. They represent, argues Nava, a desire for a mystical experience of beauty to counter the agony of the present while still bearing witness to the injustices of the same. Nava's book is an interesting if curious experiment. The author is clearly enamoured of his subject and works hard to communicate that excitement; readers unfamiliar with the host of theoreticians and authors flying at them with no introduction will feel as if they have entered blindly into a snowstorm of names. Similarly, while wonder and awe unite the work and the scholarship is wide-ranging and impressive, the leap from Sor Juana to Magical Realism seemed inexplicable. Were there no travellers or authors that experienced exile and wonder in Latin America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Certainly Fernandez de Lizardi's satirical, vulgar romp through late New Spain's society, Allesandro Malaspina's explorations, or the romantic interpretations of Alexander von Humboldt's travels might qualify. And what of Brazil? Once more, Brazil itself is exiled from yet another work on the new world when that vast expanse of South America served as a place of wonder and exile for so many. In a related note, the selection and organisation (or lack of) feel almost as if a student has gathered their reading list from courses on Spanish and Spanish American literature into three sections (early colonial, late colonial, and twentieth century) and assembled them as a book. Indeed, all of the sources are English language translations, moving this reviewer to ponder what more we would have learned about the ideas of wonder and exile had the author considered the works cited in the original Spanish. The work is thoughtful and intriguing, and no doubt will inspire a small circle of literature scholars and graduate students to consider the ideas of the Baroque, fascination, wonder, and awe in their own work. This is not a book intended for the casual public and certainly not for undergraduate courses.

Strangers and Strange Lands

Strangers and Strange Lands

Strange Lands: The Lexicon of Settler-Colonial Landscapes in Charles Fletcher Lummis's and Arthur Groom's Portrayals of the American West and the Australian Outback

In 1892, the American journalist Charles Fletcher Lummis published a book titled Some Strange Corners of Our Country in which he described for his fellow citizens various distinctive aspects of the landscapes and cultures of the American Southwest (a term he is credited with coining). In this book, he argued for the protection of what struck him as fascinating and unusual landscape features while simultaneously promoting a nascent tourism industry in the region. In 1950, the Australian journalist Arthur Groom published I Saw a Strange Land: Journeys in Central Australia, a book that portrayed the landscape and people of Central Australia with a similar goal of describing a vast but little-known region to his fellow citizens and of encouraging protection of the landscape and promoting tourism. Lummis and Groom, though separated by some 45 years in time and 8,000 miles in geography, were both Anglophone settler colonists engaged in a process of incorporating arid and semi-arid regions into their respective nation's imaginaries while simultaneously championing a sometimes contradictory and morally ambiguous effort

Moving From a Stranger in a Strange Land to a Confident Professional in the Therapist’s ChairMoving From a Stranger in a Strange Land to a Confident Professional in the Therapist’s Chair

Moving From a Stranger in a Strange Land to a Confident Professional in the Therapist’s ChairMoving From a Stranger in a Strange Land to a Confident Professional in the Therapist’s Chair

Symbolism and the Antipodes: The Fallen Woman in Caroline Leakey’s *Lyra Australis, or Attempts to Sing in a Strange Land*

This essay considers Caroline Leakey's volume of poetry, Lyra Australis, or Attempts to Sing in a Strange Land (1854), and argues that the more broadly feminist aspects of Leakey’s poetry, particularly its sympathetic portrayal of ‘the fallen woman’, are connected with developments in Anglophone women’s poetry in the first half of the nineteenth century. It reads Leakey's volume as a radical rejection of the increasing restrictions placed on sympathetic narratives about ‘fallen women’ by the mid nineteenth century by contextualising it within broader frameworks of women’s writing on the fallen woman.