My grandmother’s aunt, Ms. Ida Hoyt, put together several scrapbooks in the 1890s. The pages are quite frayed today, but most of the images are still in good shape. At this time the British Raj was in full force, including the “glorious” depictions of the British rule.
Detail
For Part 1, click here; for Part 2, click here; for Part 3, click here.
My grandmother’s aunt, Ms. Ida Hoyt, put together several scrapbooks in the 1890s. The pages are quite frayed today, but most of the images are still in good shape. Here we see an artist’s reconstruction of cat love in ancient Egypt at a time when the archaeology of Egypt was still in its infancy stage.
Detail
For Part 1, click here; for Part 2, click here.
My grandmother’s aunt, Ms. Ida Hoyt, put together several scrapbooks in the 1890s. The pages are quite frayed today, but most of the images are still in good shape. The story behind this image shows the antipathy towards the “Turks” at the time.
Detail of the young maidens
For Part 1, click here.
My grandmother’s aunt, Ms. Ida Hoyt, put together several scrapbooks in the 1890s. The pages are quite frayed today, but most of the images are still in good shape. With this post I provide several images that she clipped from magazines, which I suspect were from the 1880s or 1890s.
Detail of the main gatekeeper
to be continued
My grandmother’s aunt, Ms. Ida Hoyt, owned an 1873 geography textbook entitled An Elementary Treatise on Physical Geography by D. M. Warren (published by Cowperthwait & Co of Philadelphia). For Part 1, click here;for Part 2, click here; for Part 3, click here. The racial and ethnocentric hubris of the author, reflecting his time, is quite evident in the text, as can be seen above and below.
My grandmother’s aunt, Ms. Ida Hoyt, owned an 1873 geography textbook entitled An Elementary Treatise on Physical Geography by D. M. Warren (published by Cowperthwait & Co of Philadelphia). For Part 1, click here and for Part 2, click here. A vital part of geography at the time was the issue of “race,” which was as misunderstood after the American Civil War as before it. “Arabs” were admitted into the Caucasian Race, on a par with the “Western Hunter.” The five major racial categories are shown below.
My grandmother’s aunt, Ms. Ida Hoyt, owned an 1873 geography textbook entitled An Elementary Treatise on Physical Geography by D. M. Warren (published by Cowperthwait & Co of Philadelphia). The book itself, which I recently leafed through, is falling apart, but it is worth taking a brief look at some of the lithographic images. The text itself shows how far we have come since 1873, especially for the dated views of “race” and the ethnocentric views of the time. I will start with several of the images, as shown here.
[These remarks were written on the train back to New York after the 1997 AAA meetings in Washington. I had earlier provided extemporaneous remarks on the subject at the business meeting of the Middle East Section. I found these in a set of old files and decided such a confession is timeless, at least in my case. And this year I will again be presenting papers at both AAA and MESA. ]
The idea of “Area Studies,” especially those areas where several centuries of Western colonialism have helped define the modern boundaries, is under attack. One of the more besieged areas is the Middle East, once the Near East and part of the politically uncorrected Orient as such. I am not particularly interested in defending Area Studies as such. But I am dismayed at the weakening of Middle East Studies programs at major universities. As an anthropologist who encourages other anthropologists to work in the Middle East, I appreciate the teaching of Middle Eastern languages, literature, culture, history, politics, economics, etc. as potentially useful information for ethnography. I do not know how trying to learn “too much†about the region could distort one’s anthropologizing.
Each fall I have a major decision to make: should I go to AAA or MESA? Continue reading Airing out on Area Studies: Confessions of a Middle East Area Specialist