Commerce
My German friends at Ohio State laughed to hear that I had ancestors named Biedermann. To be a "Biedermann," in German slang, is to be someone narrow and strict, someone who merely follows orders. That joshing came to mind while reading Rick Anderson's recent article, in
History
"Before cameras, educated, well-to-do travelers had learned to sketch so that they could draw what they saw on their trips, in the same way that, before phonograph recordings, bourgeois families listened to music by making it themselves at home, playing the piano and singing in the parlor. Cameras made
Media
From an article in the May 24, 2014 issue of The Economist about how racial minorities in the United States live in places where they breathe dirtier air: [...]The study does not address why [race matters more than income in determining whether someone will live exposed to dirtier air]. A
History
"The premodern city was a walled space protected by defensive installations. Even when walls no longer fulfilled a military purpose, they continued to operate as customs boundaries. When they lost that function too, they served as symbolic markers of space. Whole empires expressed their superiority over the 'barbarians&
History
The Scots were right to vote "no" on the referendum for independence because the referendum was misleading. However Scotland voted this week, and whatever the Scots may wish, they will not be independent of England. A vote cannot widen the River Tweed. A vote cannot reduce England to
History
Though the Scots have decided to remain in the United Kingdom, the closeness of the referendum and the panic that gripped the UK government during the last week before voting suggest a parallel between the fate of the Habsburg Empire after its great Napoleonic War struggle and the fate of
Chapbook
"[T]he culture of [collegiate] English departments [is] structured by an invidious binary opposition between writing teachers and literary scholars that could not be improved by tinkering. Because the profession was organized by–indeed, founded upon–this distinction, it could be undone only by a deconstructive process striking at
Chapbook
“To put it simply, the quasi-religious status once accorded English literature by a class of individuals whose background was mainly privileged and Anglo-Germanic is hardly viable any longer. […] Men and women of letters, whether in or outside of the academy, have a reduced stature today in comparison to major figures
Commerce
"It was a tendency [during the nineteenth century], especially after 1860, to conceive of governance not merely as control of strategic centers but as ongoing activity on the part of regional authorities. [...] This territorialization was bound up with the projection of imagined shapes of the nation onto mappable space
History
"In Britain not a single political refugee from the Continent was prevented from entering the country, or subsequently deported, throughout the nineteenth century. No one thought that Karl Marx in London or Heinrich Heine in Paris should be subject to a gag order. No extradition treaties existed with other
History
As the referendum on Scottish independence approaches, it's worth noting that for all of the nationalism north and south of the River Tweed, Scotland and England really have become a united kingdom that would be painful to disentangle: * Millions of English have at least some Scottish ancestry. * Most
History
"The special characteristics of the newspaper [as it developed in the 19th century] were: (1) publication at regular intervals; (2) production by an editorial team; (3) division into separate departments and fields; (4) reporting that went outside the regional and social horizon of its readers; (5) a rise in