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Japanese Branch Report- 2013, Ayako Tani

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On Saturday 7 December 2013, the Seventeenth Annual Convention of The George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Keio University.

The morning session started with an opening address by Maiko Otake (Obirin University). Three papers were presented in the morning session. The first two were commented on by Toyotsugu Matsui (Daido University) and the third by Hideo Takano (Komazawa University).

The first speaker was Nanae Hama (Seinan Gakuin University), whose subject was 'The Hero Worship and the Imperial Consciousness: How George Eliot Described Heroes among Children'. In her presentation on The Mill on the Floss (1860), Hama argued that …

Romola's Religious Experience, Alain Jumeau

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Romola can be seen as a landmark in George Eliot's career, when we bear in mind her striking confession to her second husband, John Cross: 'I began it a young woman -, I finished it an old woman' (Haight [1968] 362). Many of her readers, indeed, felt it represented a new departure, far from the world of Adam Bede, Mrs Poyser and Silas Mamer. It was a more ambitious novel, with more refined and educated characters, set in a foreign country, in a distant past. Her first works of fiction were also set in the past, but only one or …

Review Of After Darwin: Animals, Emotions, And The Mind, Angelique Richardson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This extremely interesting and well organized collection of 11 original essays and an 'Afterword' is not greatly concerned with George Eliot, although it would seem every major Victorian concern somehow ends by involving her. As a study that aims at what its title indicates, it includes George Eliot and G. H. Lewes as direct subjects, hut only in one essay, Angelique Richardson's 'George Eliot, G. H. Lewes, and Darwin: Animals, Emotions, and Morals'. Although, she concedes, both 'maintained human distinction in their writing' (p. 137), George Eliot felt and expressed through anthropomorphism, a real kinship with animals. With Lewes (whose …

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 24 November 2013- The Toast To The Immortal Memory, Sheila Woolf

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

First of all, may I say what an enormous honour it is to be asked to speak on this very special occasion. When John asked me in January what I was doing on 24 November, I was obviously not quick enough to think of a reason to duck out of the responsibility! In fact, I wondered he had asked several others more agile with their excuses before he got round to me.

John asked me to speak about 'What George Eliot means to me'. In consequence, my speech will not be an academic one - those who went to the …

Politics And Pastoral In Silas Marner, Barbara Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

When eighteen-year-old sumameless Eppie stands by Silas Mamer and against Godfrey Cass she joins a line of subversive children in Victorian fiction. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre speaks out against her aunt; Dickens's Oliver Twist asks for more gruel; his Paul Dombey asks the capitalist father, 'What is money after all?' One child rebels against adult power; one against institutional power; one against the cash nexus. The children are all economic dependants but there is no emphasis on class. Oliver behaves like a little gentleman; Paul is a little gentleman; Jane tells Brocklehurst she would not like to be poor, and …

Review Of Oscar Browing's Life Of George Eliot, Tapan Kumar Mukherjee

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I would like to draw the attention of interested readers and George Eliot scholars to one of the earliest biographies of George Eliot, that written by Oscar Browning. It is a book which, apart from many interesting anecdotes of her life, might still be valuable to them for the exhaustive annotated bibliography, compiled by John Parker Anderson of the British Museum, appended to the end of the volume. The extent and range of the bibliographical details collected there are the result of very thorough, painstaking research which may provide further new insights and give clues to unexplored areas in the …

George Eliot And Psychosomatic Illness: A Footnote To The Biographies, Brenda Mckay

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A reader of George Eliot's novels, with their luminous intelligence and authoritative command of a fictional world, might be surprised to learn that this author was actually frequently tormented by crises of confidence, exhaustion and bodily pain. Her illnesses were often exacerbated by her novel-writing; but certainly not always. '[M]y life’, as she wrote, 'has always been much broken by physical malaise'.' She later commented that, despite extensive medical tests, the doctors could find nothing wrong with her. The word 'malaise' suggests extreme somatic discomfort, not necessarily associated with disease, but also depression. Eliot herself was aware, as she acknowledged …

Obituary Of Andrew Brown, Joanne Shattock

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I first met Andrew Brown on the conference circuit in the early 1980s. As the recently appointed senior editor for literature at Cambridge University Press he was a regular presence at Victorian Studies conferences, wearing his Press hat, but unlike many other publishers, attending as a productive scholar in his own right. He got in touch with me in 1989 asking if he could come to Leicester to talk about a project he was contemplating, a new edition of the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, the nineteenth-century volume of which had been last updated under George Watson's editorship in 1969. …

Review Of George Eliot In Context, Margaret Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This collection offers a wide range of individual and rigorous criticism, with essays by the most informed specialists: amongst others, Margaret Harris on 'Biographies’, John Rignall on 'Landscape' and 'Metropolitanism’, Melissa Raines on 'Language', Leonee Ormond on 'The Visual Arts', Ruth Livesey on 'Class' and 'Transport', Joanne Shattock on 'Editions ' and 'Publishing and Publishers’, Richard Menke on 'Industry and technology'. Texts in context include journalism as well as fiction and poetry.

I have a few reservations. Most of the essays are remarkably condensed but one or two have more breadth than depth. In 'Travel and Tourism' Judith 10hnston touches …

'In Isolation Human Power Is Limited, In Combination It Is Infinite': Tracing Ludwig Feuerbach's Essence Of Christianity Through Daniel Deronda, Milena Schwab-Graham

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Written between January 1873 and June 1876, Daniel Deronda was George Eliot's final and most ambitious novel. The Jewish-born, later excommunicated Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, whose Ethics Eliot translated in 1856, would perhaps seem the more obvious choice of philosophical context for our analysis of Deronda, owing to his religious affinity with the eponymous protagonist. However, Ludwig Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, translated by Eliot in 1854, provides a more thorough basis for drawing out the ethical complexities of her final novel. Feuerbach's philosophy, the influence of which is integral to all her novels, hinges upon 'the moral [ ...] qualitative, …

Chairman's Annual Report For 2013, John Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

We can be pleased with the Fellowship's year in 2013. For some time now we have tried to add extra events to the well-established series of meetings built up over the years. In 2013 we looked towards Coventry to provide a theme for the year, and were delighted with the results, much helped, it has to be said, by the enthusiasm and new ideas brought to the Fellowship by Vanessa Oakes, whose writing skills have much enhanced our programme. The other major event for the year was our emergence, blinking and floundering, into the world of websites and Facebook (Twitter …

Casaubon's Impotence: A Literary Libel?, Marianne Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

There are some literary hypotheses which so suit readers' impressions of a text that they become accepted almost as literary fact, as if they were stated in the text itself or had been confirmed by the author in an interview, letter or notebook. This seems to have become the case with Edward Casaubon's sexual impotence in Middlemarch. Gordon Haight complained that undergraduates 'despite a generation of sex-education' never failed to describe Casaubon as impotent simply by virtue of his age. Casaubon was around forty-eight. Haight was seventy-three when he wrote this essay, and indignantly listed the famous men who had …

Uncoverings: The Research Papers Of The American Quilt Study Group, Volume 35 (2014), Lynne Zacek Bassett, Nancy C. Bavor, Joyce D. Hammond, Marin F. Hanson, Laurel Horton, Christine E. Humphrey

Uncoverings Journal

Preface by Lynne Zacek Bassett

Knockers, Pickers, Movers, and Shakers: Quilt Dealers in America, 1970-2000 by Nancy C. Bavor

Tlfaifai in Tahiti: Embracing Change by Joyce D. Hammond

"One Hundred Good Wishes Quilts": Expressions of Cross-Cultural Communication by Marin F. Hanson

Weft-Loop Woven Counterpanes in the New Republic: The Rediscovery of a Textile Legacy by Laurel Horton

Quilt Documentation Projects, 1980-1989: Exploring the Roots of an National Phenomenon by Christine E. Humphrey

Contributors

Index

How Civil Society Represents Women: Feminists, Catholics, And Mobilization Strategies In Africa, Alice J. Kang

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

In recent years, civil society has risen to speak on behalf of underrepresented groups in Africa. In particular, civil society has advocated for the representation of women’s interests. Yet, relatively little is known about the full range of actors who seek the representation of women’s interests, mobilize around women’s issues, and articulate specific preferences. Some of these actors include not only feminists, but also religious activists who may clash over women’s issues. This gap in knowledge, moreover, extends to non-democratic countries. Who in civil society seeks to influence the representation of women’s interests and how, in both democratic and authoritarian …

Conference Report: Romola And Felix, Institute Of English Studies, 23 November 2013., A.G. Van Den Broek

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's two Marmite novels - given their reputations, not everyone tries them, and when they do, they often leave them only partially digested - Romola (1862-3), the one she famously said aged her, and Felix Holt (1866), the one with that involved legal plot, were the focus of last year's George Eliot Conference sponsored by the Institute of English Studies at the University of London. Nevertheless, despite their uneven appeal, the Conference drew a tolerably-sized audience. Barbara Hardy (Birkbeck and Swansea) and Louise Lee (Roehampton) once again organized the Conference, bringing together a group of speakers who variously dealt …

Remarkable Russian Women In Pictures, Prose And Poetry, Marcelline Hutton

Zea E-Books Collection

Many Russian women of the late 19th and early 20th centuries tried to find happy marriages, authentic religious life, liberal education, and fulfilling work as artists, doctors, teachers, and political activists. Some very remarkable ones found these things in varying degrees, while others sought unsuccessfully but no less desperately to transcend the generations-old restrictions imposed by church, state, village, class, and gender.

Like a Slavic “Downton Abbey,” this book tells the stories, not just of their outward lives, but of their hearts and minds, their voices and dreams, their amazing accomplishments against overwhelming odds, and their roles as feminists and …

The Military–Masculinity Complex: Hegemonic Masculinity And The United States Armed Forces, 1940–1963, Brandon T. Locke

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The military-industrial complex grew rapidly in the build up to the Second World War and continued to expand in the decades that followed. The military was not only much larger, but had also changed their relationship with American citizens, impacting their lives in new and complex ways. The defensive needs of World War Two and the Cold War made the military an imperative and prestigious institution in the United States, and the Selective Service Draft, beginning in 1940 and running continuously until 1973, gave the military unfettered access to the young men of the nation.

During the same time, government …

A Matter Of Regionalism: Remembering Brandon Teena And Willa Cather At The Nebraska History Museum, Carly S. Woods, Joshua P. Ewalt, Sara J. Baker

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

In 2010–2011, the Nebraska History Museum featured two temporary exhibits: “We the People: the Nebraskan Viewpoint” and “Willa Cather: A Matter of Appearances.” We argue the public memories of Brandon Teena and Willa Cather contained in the exhibits are distanced from regional politics when articulated alongside the nostalgic regionalist rhetoric of the Nebraska History Museum. Specifically, both exhibits not only discipline the memory of trans* performance within problematic material and symbolic contexts, but also place these memories within a rhetoric of regional optimism that has critical consequences for restricting counter-public formation. In performing this reading, the essay argues that critical …

Freedom Indivisible: Gays And Lesbians In The African American Civil Rights Movement, Jared E. Leighton

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This work documents the role of sixty gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals in the African American civil rights movement in the pre-Stonewall era. It examines the extent of their involvement from the grassroots to the highest echelons of leadership. Because many lesbians and gays were not out during their time in the movement, and in some cases had not yet identified as lesbian or gay, this work also analyzes how the civil rights movement, and in a number of cases women’s liberation, contributed to their identity formation and coming out. This work also contributes to our understanding of opposition to …

“In Counterfeit Passion”: Cross-Dressing, Transgression, And Fraud In Shakespeare And Middleton, Anastasia S. Bierman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines the way women cross-dressing as men functions as a crime in Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl and William Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Twelfth Night. While many modern scholars have discussed cross-dressing in these plays, many look to the end of the plays as the foundation for their analysis rather than the play as a whole. Because of this oversight, scholars deem the characters in the plays not transgressive, when, in fact, cross-dressing is transgressive. They ignore the way cross-dressing is often presented in writing in the Renaissance, i.e. as a type …

Yolanda Barco's Impact On The Cable Television Industry, Piper L. Peteet-Kilgore

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

The purpose of this thesis was to take a detailed look into the life of cable television pioneer Yolanda Barco and demonstrate that her achievements in cable telecommunications have directly impacted the success of the cable telecommunications industry.

The daughter of cable television pioneer George Barco, Yolanda Barco worked alongside her father advocating for the rights of cable television during the early years of the industry. Following a biographical story framework, this research follows a timeline of her career discussing her family life, education, how she became involved in the cable television industry, achievements in cable television and the lasting …

"In Family Way": Guarding Indigenous Women’S Children In Washington Territory, Katrina Jagodinsky

Department of History: Faculty Publications

The cases discussed here represent very few of the guardianship arrangements that characterized intergenerational and interracial households in territorial Washington, yet the patterns they illustrate correspond with other evidence that allows historians to track the distribution of Indian and mixed- race children in the Puget Sound region. Th e 1880 federal census schedules for counties bordering the Puget Sound reveals the informal guardianship of Native women’s children in ninetytwo households. Among these extralegal arrangements were forty- two households headed by white men, some single like Ed Boggess and others married to white women like Phoebe Judson, who classified the indigenous …

George Eliot's Brazilian Critical Fortune And The Case Of Romola, Jaqueline Bohn Donada

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I would like to begin this paper with a comment by Professor Felicia Bonaparte about George Eliot's novels. In an introductory reflection, she once observed that

We have found nothing yet that Eliot did not deliberately put in her novels; [ ... ]. Indeed, the fact is we have not yet read in these novels all that Eliot wrote. We have not yet, for example, looked carefully at what Eliot had to say about women in society. Eliot was a great feminist, and her novels, although they never stoop to mere propaganda, urge a relentless war against the conditions by …

'And Her Wings Fall From Her And She Drops To The Ground': Reading Eliot's Mr Casaubon Through Benjamin Jowett's Phaedrus, Royce Best

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In the scene describing Casaubon 's pathetic mental state prior to his heart attack in Chapter XXIX of Middlemarch, the narrator makes an enigmatic reference: 'Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less under anxious control'.' It seems odd to conclude this powerful passage, long read as a telling example of the hazards of over-study without meaningful application, with a reference to ancient Greek drama. Yet, perhaps not enough attention has been given to the indebtedness …

Review Of Heathen And Outcast: Scenes In The Life Of George Eliot, Robert Muscutt

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This fictionalized version of George Eliot's life between 1841 and 1854 takes as its starting point Edith Simcox's account of visiting the Midlands after the novelist's death and collecting material for a biography which, in the end, was never written. Thus the first section of four chapters is titled 'From Conversations with Maria Lewis' and is written in the latter 's voice, while the second section of two chapters follows the same pattern and is narrated by Charles Bray. The Simcox framework of posthumous interviews falters in the final section of eight chapters since here the narration is taken over …

The Two Felixes: Narrational Irony And The Questions Of Radicalism In Felix Holt And 'Address To Working Men, By Felix Holt', Helen Kingstone

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In this characterization of Dorothea by the narrator of Middlemarch (1871-2), the 'Great' Reform Act of 1832 is posited as a dividing line between two phases of history, so distinct as to have separate spheres of interest and judgements of normality. George Eliot flatters her mid-Victorian reader by insinuating that only the 'modem' mind of their shared present could understand the zeal of a humanistic 'exalted enthusiasm' that took its source of energy from within. In this passage, therefore, 'reform' seems to be the key to historical, social and personal change. The issue of reform - of society, of institution …

Review Of George Eliot In Society: Travels Abroad And Sundays At The Priory, Kathleen Mccormack

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is a welcome and wholly worthwhile extension of the author's George Eliot's English Travels: Composite Characters and Coded Communication (2005), a densely written and stimulating examination of places and people in Eliot's life which have some resonance, in varying degrees of coding, from the seemingly casual to the subtly integrated, in her published work. McCormack there defined three categories of place identification. These range from 'absolute certainties' through 'pretty good cases' to 'alluring, probable, but irretrievably speculative suppositions', categories certainly applicable to herpresent study, in which her dedication and saturation in George Eliot, the works, the life, and a …

The Golden Gates Are Passed, Robert Muscutt

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

There have always been attempts not just to conceal knowledge of George Eliot's life but also to manipulate it into conformity with a preconceived profile. In the Preface to his edition of The George Eliot Letters in nine volumes, Gordon Haight revealed that those pages of her Journal from immediately after her father's death in 1849 until shortly before she went to Weimar with Lewes in 1854 were tom out and presumably destroyed, probably by Cross. Charles Lewes, George Eliot's main literary executor, also seems to have destroyed nine of his father 's journals, the first volume extant beginning in …

'The Antigone And Its Moral': George Eliot's Antigonean Considerations, Kathryn Brigger Kruger

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

As early as 1856 with the publication of the essay, 'The Antigone and Its Moral' ,1 George Eliot turned her literary attention to the Sophoclean figure of Antigone. Scholars such as Gerhard Joseph' and David Moldstad' have enumerated Eliot's multiple references to Antigone, and they have argued that Eliot makes Antigone a relevant figure for '"modern" life' (Joseph, 27) and an example of 'the continuity of man's elemental self, concerned in all ages with similar needs and problems, though moral codes have come and gone' (Moldstad, 531). Where Joseph traces the specific Antigone references in Eliot's fiction - especially in …

Review Of Reading For Our Time: 'Adam Bede' And 'Middlemarch' Revisited, J. Hillis Miller

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

As his sub-title indicates, J. Hillis Miller is returning in his latest book to the study of George Eliot, bringing to bear on Adam Bede and Middlemarch the insight and erudition acquired in a long and distinguished career as a scholar and critic. He pursues a similar line to his wellknown articles from the 1970s on 'Narrative and History' and 'Optic and Semiotic in Middlemarch', subjecting that novel to a close and tenacious deconstructive reading that brings out the sophisticated self-qualifying nature of George Eliot's fiction. This is preceded by a shorter discussion of Adam Bede which shows how its …