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News [For further news and what-not, visit the Greycat Blog.] Anthony Burgess’s visions of Islam [11 Apr 08] After a long silence around here (I’ve been ill) things are happening again. A new article is posted today, the first of this year: ‘“The old enemy”: Anthony Burgess and Islam’. More new essays are on the way. Bulldozer history [31 Dec 07] The always fascinating pages of History News Network provide a home today for another article of mine: ‘The bulldozer: one of the overlooked wonders of technology’. New article at History News Network [8 Dec 07] History News Network have published another article of mine: ‘China’s future is not Europe’s past’ (also here at the Greycat Blog). Nadia Abu El Haj at History News Network [14 Nov 07] The editor of George Mason University’s History News Network recently asked me to write a piece on the Nadia Abu El Haj controversy, reflecting on her book, Facts on the Ground, and the debate over her (ultimately successful) bid for tenure. My essay was published by HNN on 12 November and can be read here. Generalized update [9 Nov 07] This page has been quiet for a while, partly because I have been too busy with other things to add anything of substance to the site over the past month, and partly because quite a lot that would once have appeared here now goes straight to the Greycat Blog. Just to round up latest happenings, I have a new article in All The Rage on the mystery of the Mary Celeste (the issue containing the article, PDF of course, is here) and have had one of my blog postings on Nadia Abu El Haj republished by History News Network. More on this topic is forthcoming. It's a blog [5 Oct 07] Greycat.org now has a blog of its very own. The idea is for the blog to provide a place for news and announcements related to the site (although news will still be posted on this page), and to be a place where I can post things that don’t necessarily fit within the confines of these pages. It will also, of course, provide an avenue for shameless self-publicity. To visit the blog click here. Steam-age science fiction [30 Sep 07] I have an article in the latest (October 2007) issue of the excellent online magazine All The Rage about the wonderful world of Victorian and Edwardian science fiction: ‘Steam sci-fi: how the Victorians invented the future’. To see the issue featuring my article click here (this link opens up a PDF document). The enterprising editor of All The Rage, Leila Johnston, has a new book out, by the way: How to Worry Friends and Inconvenience People. You’ll enjoy it, it’s based on a successful and popular blog, and you are strongly recommended to buy it. More on Nadia Abu El Haj and Facts on the Ground [13 Sep 07] The Nadia Abu El Haj controversy continues to generate more heat than light. As an antidote to all the ignorance, prejudice and downright nastiness now swirling around this issue, I would like to recommend Bulldozing the [Arti]Facts, a posting by Daniel Martin Varisco (Chair of Anthropology at Hofstra University) at the Islamic and Middle Eastern scholarship site Tabsir. The piece can also be found in a slightly different form at the History News Network. I don’t agree with everything Varisco has to say but his essay is, almost uniquely for current commentary on the Nadia Abu El Haj controversy, intelligent, reasoned, thoughtful and balanced. His observations on the tenure process, as someone who knows it from the inside, are particularly valuable: ‘Regardless of the controversial aspects of [Nadia Abu El Haj’s] thesis and the disagreement over her methodology (primarily from those outside her own discipline of anthropology), the decision to grant tenure to this candidate should be judged the way it would for any other scholar: internally and based on the total criteria her department and college require.’ That is a point that cannot be made often enough. The campaign against Nadia Abu El Haj [25 Aug 07] It has come to my notice that my Israeli ‘bulldozer archaeology’ essay is featured on the website of the ‘Deny Abu El Haj Tenure Committee’. I would like to make it clear that I have not given permission for my essay to be included on this site, and that its presence there represents no endorsement whatsoever on my part of that site or of the campaign of which it is part. It is very noticeable that those behind the ‘Deny Abu El Haj Tenure Committee’ have been careful to conceal their own identities, while taking Nadia Abu El Haj’s own name and registering it as the domain for a website dedicated to attacking and denigrating her. This strikes me as questionable behaviour, coming from people who claim to be standing up for academic integrity. Bulldozer archaeology: minor correction [24 Aug 07] Thanks to the e-mail correspondent who pointed out an error in my Israeli ‘bulldozer archaeology’ essay: the date of publication for Nadia Abu El Haj’s Facts on the Ground was given in the text as 2003 rather than the correct date of 2001. I’ve put this right, but the incorrect date will still be shown in the various copies of the essay that currently feature on other websites. Nadia Abu El Haj and ‘bulldozer archaeology’ [20 Aug 07] ‘Bulldozer archaeology: excavation, earthmoving and archaeological practice in Israel’ has been cited by the US Chronicle of Higher Education in an article on the Nadia Abu El Haj tenure controversy. The article is subscription-only, but can be read for free at Campus Watch. The author of the Chronicle’s article may have called this site a ‘blog’, which it is not, misspelt its name, and deprived both Nadia Abu El Haj (PhD, Duke University, 1995) and me (DPhil, Oxford University, 1999) of our correct academic title of ‘Dr’, but he did at least very properly mention my disclaimer, making it clear that I take ‘no position on the tenure dispute’. The fact is that I would never take any position on the tenure process for any scholar. Whether Nadia Abu El Haj gets tenure or not is a matter for her, her peers and her institution, and is nobody else’s business. The bulldozers rumble on [16 Aug 07] The Nadia Abu El Haj tenure battle continues: my Israeli ‘bulldozer archaeology’ essay has now cropped up on Paula Stern’s PaulaSays site, as part of her coverage of the Facts on the Ground controversy. In the light of this development, please see my disclaimer below. Advertising the atom, 1954-60 [28 May 07] A new gallery features press advertisements from the pages of The Times, connected with the birth of the British civil nuclear power industry in the 1950s. To explore the brave new world of nuclear Britain, visit the Atomic Advertising gallery. More on bulldozer archaeology, and a disclaimer [15 May 07; updated with new links 17 May 07] Following on from Solomonia’s posting, my Israeli ‘bulldozer archaeology’ essay has been picked up by ArchaeoBlog and by Campus Watch. All this sudden interest in bulldozers and archaeology stems from the ongoing controversy about the work of Nadia Abu El-Haj, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College, Columbia University, and specifically about her book Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001). Professor Abu El-Haj is currently up for tenure at her institution, and a controversy has developed over whether she should get it. A reasonably impartial summary of the row can be found in this article at the New York Sun; an article putting the Abu El-Haj tenure lobbying campaign in context is at Inside Higher Ed; a statement by President Judith Shapiro of Barnard College can be found here. My own essay (itself just part of a larger and much more wide-ranging work) addresses one particularly controversial issue: Abu El-Haj’s claim that Israeli archaeologists commonly use bulldozers on their excavations to obliterate non-Jewish archaeological remains. I reject that claim, and argue my rejection through in some detail. I’m glad that my contribution in this respect has been found to be of interest; one writes, after all, to be read. Here’s the disclaimer. While I do not agree with Nadia Abu El-Haj’s view of Israel or her characterization of Israeli archaeology, and in my ‘bulldozer archaeology’ essay I am critical of aspects of her scholarship, methodology and ideological approach to her subject matter, that does not mean that I necessarily associate myself with all the current critiques of her opinions or her scholarship, and nor do I take any view on the tenure question. End of disclaimer. Bulldozer bloggery; and a nice review [11 May 07] My essay-in-progress on Israeli ‘bulldozer archaeology’ has been featured by Solomonia Blog, where it drew forth the following comment: ‘Wow, that guy really likes bulldozers!!!!’. This is, I think, the first time anything I have written has provoked a four-exclamation-mark reaction. More illustrations added [8 May 07] Illustrations, all either original to this site or from public domain sources, have been added to ‘Dresden: the making of a baroque city’ and ‘El Valle de los Caídos: a study in remembrance and revenge’. Baroque Bohemia: now in colour [29 Apr 07] I have finally added to my essay ‘The distinctiveness of Bohemian baroque: a study in the architecture of Central Europe, c.1680-c.1720’ the illustrations it always should have had. The five images, all from public domain sources, illustrate particularly significant buildings discussed in the essay. They are all reasonably small (the largest is 75.6KB) and should be fairly quick to load even on a dial-up connection. To read the essay, now in colour, click here. Copyright on this site [18 Mar 07] The copyright status of everything on this site has recently been reviewed (the disappearance of the ‘library’ section, see below, is not unrelated to this development) and generally tidied up. I have clarified the copyright position for all the content for which I am the originating author and revised the copyright declarations accordingly. The majority of my work is now made available on this site under a Creative Commons licence that makes copying, distributing and reproducing it much easier while still protecting my proprietory rights (example). Where particular pieces of work are not subject to this licence the declaration on the appropriate page makes this clear (example). The library is closed [18 Mar 07] I have closed and removed the ‘library’ section of the site. It consumed a great deal of time and disk space, hardly anyone ever looked at it, and its status in UK copyright law was dubious. It has therefore gone and will not be returning. Modernism and the home: 1930s kitchen design [11 Mar 07] Kitchens provide an endless source of irresistible fascination. In our new gallery there are enough beautiful, haunting 1930s-vintage images of kitchens from small urban flats to satisfy even the most kitchen-hungry viewer. Read>> Pope’s “Epistle to Burlington” [20 Feb 07] Alexander Pope’s ‘Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard, Earl of Burlington’, published in 1731, is discussed in ‘Taste, sense and vanity: Alexander Pope’s “Epistle to Burlington”’. Read>> Bulldozer archaeology [30 Jan 07] In Israel the bulldozer is at the centre of controversy over archaeology, nationalism and ideology. Read all about it in ‘Bulldozer archaeology: excavation, earthmoving and archaeological practice in Israel’ (2007). Read>> Bulldozer history [24 Jan 07] Themes in the cultural history of the bulldozer are explored in ‘Behold now Behemoth: the bulldozer as tool and weapon’ (2007). Read>> The Victorian railway [5 Jan 07] A new paper on the Victorian railway is now available on the site: ‘Representing the Victorian railway: the aesthetics of ambivalence’ (2006). Read>> New article on M. R. James [02 Jan 07] The 30 December 2006 issue of The Tablet contains my article ‘Storyteller haunted by a Christian conscience’, which is a modified and condensed version of my essay ‘M. R. James: supernaturalism, Christianity and moral accountability’. The Tablet article is currently accessible to subscribers only in print or via the Tablet website. Wellcome Unit paper now available [20 Oct 06] The paper I presented at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine seminar on 16 October is now available on this site. Click here to read ‘“So jarred were all my nerves”: supernatural shock and traumatic terror in the ghost stories of M. R. James’. Wellcome Unit seminar, Oxford: 16 October 2006 [28 June 06, updated 15 Sept 06] The Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at the University of Oxford have asked me to contribute a paper to their Michaelmas Term 2006 seminar series on ‘Mind, Brain and Trauma’. The title of my paper is ‘“So jarred were all my nerves”: supernatural shock and traumatic terror in the ghost stories of M. R. James’. The seminar is at 2.00pm on 16 October 2006, and takes place at the Wellcome Unit which is at 45-47 Banbury Road, Oxford. The paper will be available on this site after the seminar. New academic papers [11 Mar 06] A new paper on the ghost stories of M. R. James is now available on the site: ‘M. R. James: supernaturalism, Christianity and moral accountability’ (2006). Read>> [10 Jan 06] Three new academic papers are now available on the site, dealing with diverse topics in historiography and cultural history: ‘Writing the Cold War: a survey of Cold War historiography’ (2005) Read>> ‘Beauty and identity: the national beauty contest in twentieth-century Australia and America’ (2006) Read>> ‘The shadow of Stonehenge: paganism, fate and redemption in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ (2006) Read>> SVU World Congress 2006 [14 Jan 06] I have been invited by the Czechoslovak Society of Arts & Sciences (SVU) to give a paper on my research into the Bohemian Baroque at their 2006 World Congress. The Congress takes place at the University of South Bohemia, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic, 25 June - 2 July 2006. © greycat.org