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Current APS Transactions
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Ronald R. Hoppes Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 99, Pt. 2 - $35 Paper. 115 pp. (16 front matter; 99 text) ISBN: 978-1-60618-992-4 |
Ronald Hoppes always admired the David Rittenhouse astronomical musical clock and over the years he found historical accounts on the clock, but discovered that information on the indications and the mechanical details were absent. During the clock’s restoration he had the opportunity to examine the movement and list detailed descriptions for each of the clock’s various indications and operations. With this book, it is ensured that the clock’s mechanical details, previously undocumented and unavailable, will not be lost or forgotten.
Ronald R. Hoppes graduated from Drexel with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He is a retired Senior Principle Development Engineer who hold patents in both the U.S. and Canada. He developed a calculation method that produces planetary gearing with errors of less than 1% in 10,000 years.
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Descended From Darwin: Insights into the History of Evolutionary Studies, 1900–1970 Joe Cain and Michael Ruse (editors) Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 99, Pt. 1 - $35 Paper. 386 pp. (26 front matter; 360 text) ISBN: 978-1-60618-991-7 |
This volume arises from a symposium held in Philadelphia in October 2004. Scholars convened to focus on the “synthesis” period in evolutionary studies, when fundamental changes occurred in the discipline. How does recent scholarship change our understanding of the period? How does it alter our sense of connection across the generations? How do activities in evolutionary studies relate with developments elsewhere in biology? The papers presented at the conference both informed an assessment of the state of the history of evolutionary studies and pressed it forward with new and thoughtful scholarship. Collectively, the papers selected for inclusion in the book make a significant, and occasionally provocative, contribution to their field. Descended from Darwin has been a labor of devotion for Drs. Joe Cain and Michael Ruse. They make all the collaborators’ voices cohere in a unified and logical fashion.
As APS Librarian Martin Levitt writes in the book’s preface, “These are times when historians, so accustomed to looking ever back into the past, are tempted to pause in their pursuits, turn around, and stare hard into the future. This volume, in its thoughtful analysis of the history of understanding of some of the most the fundamental questions of biology, may well have the reader pondering not just the past, but things to come.”
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The Long Route to the Invention of the Telescope Rolf Willach Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 98, Pt. 5 - $35 Paper. 126 pp. ISBN: 978-1-60618-985-6 |
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The Invention of the Telescope Albert van Helden Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 67, Pt. 4 - $30 Original print date 1977; reprinted 2008 Paper. 72 pp. ISBN-10: 0-87169-674-6 |
Cornelis de Waard, in his "De uitvinding der verrekijkers" (The Hague, 1906), uncovered many new documents bearing on the genesis of the telescope. Dr. van Helden began this project as a translation of de Waard’s study. However, he decided that the profession and de Waard's memory would be better served by a collection and translation of all the relevant primary sources named in his study.
The year 2008 marks the 400th year of the existence of the telescope, a most appropriate time to reprint The Invention of the Telescope.
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Sophie de Grouchy, Letters on Sympathy (1798): A Critical Edition Karin Brown Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 98, Pt. 4 - $35 Paper. 39 pp. front matter; 198 pp. text ISBN: 978-1-60618-984-9 |
Karin Brown brings to light this important philosophical text from the end of the Eighteenth Century which will be valuable to scholars of the French Enlightenment, Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment, Women’s Studies, and the history of women in philosophy.
James McClellan’s high quality English translation of de Grouchy’s work makes the Lettres available to a wider scholarly audience. Both Brown’s critical introduction and McClellan’s translation succeed in restoring Sophie de Grouchy’s text to its rightful place in the history of philosophy and ideas.
Deidre Dawson, Professor
Residential College in the Arts and Humanities
Michigan State University
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Raising Kane: Elisha Kent Kane & the Culture of Fame in Antebellum America Mark Metzler Sawin Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 98, Pt. 3 - $35 Paper. 378 pages (10 front matter; 83 text) ISBN: 978-0-87169-983-2 |
Mark Metzler Sawin introduces us to Elisha Kent Kane, an anxious, driven, sickly, brilliant, adventurous, and insecure young man who turned himself into a national icon. Though largely forgotten today, Kane was one of the most celebrated heroes in the mid-eighteenth century. He traveled to China, East Asia, North and South America, India, Europe, Africa, and the Arctic. He fought in the Mexican-American War, made two celebrated journeys to the far north in search of Sir John Franklin, and wrote one of the most successful books of the period.
Mark Metzler Sawin is an associate professor of U.S. History at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA. He has served as president of the Middle-Atlantic American Studies Association and as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Zagreb, Croatia.
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Franz Boas and W. E. B. Du Bois at Atlanta University, 1906 Rosemary Zumwalt Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 98, Pt. 2 - $35 Paper. 94 pages (10 front matter; 83 text) ISBN: 978-0-87169-982-4 |
WINNER OF THE JOHN FREDERICK LEWIS AWARD FOR 2008
The papers of William Shedrick Willis (1921–1983), housed at the American Philosophical Society, include his drafts of the manuscript Boas Goes to Atlanta. In typescript with handwritten editing and numerous versions, these pages contain the fascinating story of Franz Boas’s visit to Atlanta University in 1906, and more, because Willis intended the work to be a book on Boas’s work in black anthropology. Rosemary Zumwalt focuses on what was to have been Willis’s first chapter, “Boas Goes to Atlanta.” Drawing from archival correspondence and bibliographic research, she expands the sections on Boas’s trip to Atlanta, the time he spent on the campus of Atlanta University, the reaction to his talk by blacks and whites, and the conflict between W. E. B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington as this related to the trip to Atlanta.
Dr. Zumwalt came to know Willis well through his handwriting, his finely penned notes, and the piquancy of his thoughts. She came to know him better as she read through the correspondence on file at the APS and read of his encounters with racism on a painfully personal level and on enduringly institutional levels. The opening chapter, “Willis: An Introduction,” is precisely that—an introduction to a remarkable man who loved anthropology, and who suffered from the narrowness of those who held the keys of power.
Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt is the Vice President for Academic Affairs/Dean of the College, and Professor of Anthropology, at Agnes Scott College in Georgia. She is the author of Wealth and Rebellion: Elsie Clews Parsons, Anthropologist and Folklorist (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), and American Folklore Scholarship: A Dialogue of Dissent (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1988, reprinted 1995).
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Alhacen on Image-Formation and Distortion in Mirrors: A Critical Edition, with English Translation and Commentary, of Book 6 of Alhacen’s De Aspectibus, the Medieval Latin Version of Ibn al-Haytham’s Kitāb al-Manāzir A. Mark Smith Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 98, Pt. 1 - $29 each; $42 set Paper. 436 pages in two volumes ISBN: 978-1-60618-981-8 |
Earlier volumes by Mark Smith on Alhacen include Alhacen's Theory of Visual Perception: A Critical Edition, with English Translation and Commentary, of the First Three Books of Alhacen's De Aspecitubus (Transactions 91-4 and 91-5, 2001) and Alhacen on the Principles of Reflection; A Critical Edition, with English Translation and Commentary, of Books 4 and 5 of Alhacen’s De Aspectibus (Transactions 96-2 and 96-3, 2006).
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THE MAKING OF A ROMANTIC ICON: The Religious Context of Friedrich Overbeck’s Italia und Germania Lionel Gossman Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 97, Pt. 5 - $29 ISBN: 978-0-87169-975-6 |
Winner of the John Frederick Lewis Award for 2007
Friedrich Overbeck’s “Italia und Germania” (1811-1828) is a well-known image in its native Germany, where it is usually seen as an allegory of the perennial longing of German artists and poets for the beauty and harmony of the land “where the lemon tree blooms.” It is not so well known, outside specialist circles, that the earliest sketches for this iconic painting bore the title “Sulamith (the Shulamite of the Song of Solomon) and Maria” and formed part of a series of drawings and texts produced and shared by Overbeck and his close friend Franz Pforr, the young founders of the school of painters generally referred to as “Nazarenes.” Closely linked to the philosopher Friedrich Schlegel and his wife Dorothea, the daughter of the celebrated Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and a convert, along with her husband, to Roman Catholicism, the Nazarenes advocated the renewal of earlier and purer forms of art and religion and looked forward to a condition in which things that had been separated from their original unity—not only art and religion, but word and idea, poetry and philosophy, feminine and masculine, and, not least, Jews and Christians—would be brought together again, as Overbeck said, “in harmony and mutual respect.” The contextualization of Overbeck’s “Italia und Germania” in this essay reveals a painting that is a rich repository of meanings, an emblem not only of the sisterhood of North and South, the early German and early Italian traditions in art, but of the general Romantic longing for reconciliation, reunion, and the overcoming of historical alienation.
Lionel Gossman is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Romance Languages and Literature at Princeton University. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1996.
Lionel Gossman addresses a topic of general importance, which is the relationship between art, life, and religious belief. He has an impressive knowledge of the historical situation and philosophical background of the time. He gives excellent translations from original German sources that are not only accurate but may enable the Anglophone reader to truly grasp the spirit of the sources. This book serves as a thoughtful and elegantly written introduction to the way of thinking of one of the most important of the Nazarene painters.
Hubert Locher
Lehrstuhl für Neuere und neueste Kunstgeschichte
Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste
Stuttgart, GERMANY
Lionel Gossman's study offers an important interpretation of Overbeck's painting. It treats the evolution of the Nazarene artists' preoccupation with religious issues in an engaging manner and offers a social-historical and theological context to Overbeck's painting by looking interestingly at a wide range of issues and contacts in his early Nazarene period. The book engages readers as it situates the painting in an innovative manner and touches on many interesting issues of the period.
Richard I. Cohen
The Hebrew University, Jerusalem
author of Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe
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Beyond Combat: Essays in Military History in Honor of Russell F. Weigley Edward G. Longacre and Theodore J. Zeman, editors Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 97, Pt. 4 - $29 ISBN: 978-0-87169-974-9 |
“The ‘new military history’ is new in its concern for military history as a part of the whole of history, not isolated from the rest, for the military as a projection of society at large, for the relationships of the soldier and the state, for military institutions and military thought.” So wrote Russell F. Weigley, one of the most accomplished and respected military historians of the latter half of the twentieth century. Beyond Combat includes a brief biography of Dr. Weigley by the editors, an introduction by Dennis F. Showalter, essays by nine of Dr. Weigley’s PhDs, and a select bibliography of his work.
Edward G. Longacre is Staff Historian, HQ Air Combat Command, Langley Air Force Base, VA. Theodore J. Zeman is a history professor at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, PA.
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Dashkova: A Life of Influence and Exile Alexander Woronzoff-Dashkoff Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 97, Pt. 3 - $29 ISBN: 978-0-87169-973-2 |
A woman of letters and the first woman member of the American Philosophical Society, Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova (née Vorontsova) was also the first modern stateswoman in Russia. Early in her life she dressed in an officer’s uniform and boldly stepped forward to play an active role in the political arena, where she participated in the palace revolution of 1762. Subsequently, Dashkova was appointed director of the Academy of Sciences by Catherine II and she founded and became president of the Russian Academy. For close to twelve years, she headed both these prestigious academic institutions. She was a leading figure in eighteenth-century Russian culture as she strove to institute reforms, to adapt and apply the ideas of the Enlightenment, and to establish new approaches to the education of Russia’s youth. Sadly, her relationship with her own children was deeply tragic, and later in life she was exiled to the north of Russia. This biography focuses on Dashkova’s efforts in her life and works to isolate, clarify, and define patterns of action, identity, and gender for herself as well as for other women.
Alexander Woronzoff-Dashkoff is Professor of Russian language and literature at Smith College in Massachusetts. Born in Renon, Italy, he received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. For many years he worked in the Russian School at Middlebury College, the last nine years as Director of the School. His scholarship has been devoted to the life and works of Ekaterina Dashkova, of whom he is a descendent. He has compiled and annotated the French edition of Dashkova’s autobiography, Mon Histoire: Mémoires d’une Femmes de Lettres Russe àl’Epoque des Lumières, including the letters of Catherine II (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999).
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THE TINTYPE IN AMERICA, 1856–1880 Janice G. Schimmelman Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 97, Pt. 2 - $29 ISBN: 978-0-87169-972-5 |
The Tintype in America, 1856–1880 is the history of the tintype from its invention in Paris to the end of the wet-plate era. It included the early plate manufacturers Peter Neff (melainotype) and Victor M. Griswold (ferrotype); its process, patents, and presentations; and the society and industry that supported it.
Always suspicious of art, Americans embraced the tintype. They were comfortable with its artlessness and liked the come-as-you-are independence of the thing. It was so quick, so easy, so spontaneous. At the end of the day the stories were real, untouched by the manipulations of artist or photographer, and unencumbered by Romantic notions of moral and civic virtue.
Janice Schimmelman is Professor of Art History at Oakland University in Rochester, MI.
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Classical Romantic: Identity in the Latin Poetry of Vincent Bourne Estelle Haan Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 97, Pt. 1 - $27 ISBN: 978-0-87169-971-8 |
Vincent Bourne (1694-1747) was one of the most, if not the most, popular Latin poets of his day. In its depiction of homely urban scenes and in its sensitive portrayal of animal and civic behavior (and the reciprocity between such behavior) his Latin verse appealed to early eighteenth-century and Romantic sensibilities. The present study examines a broad range of that Latin verse in its classical, neo-Latin, and vernacular contexts with particular attention to the theme of identity (and differing forms of identity). It surveys the quest for identity, reciprocal identities, metropolitan identities, the recreation of identity, and assesses ways in which Bourne's fusion of the classical and the Romantic gave him a unique neo-Latin voice which enabled him to stand out from his predecessors and contemporaries. Appended to the study are the texts (with Haan's translations) of the Latin poetry discussed therein.
Estelle Haan (Sheehan) is Professor of Renaissance and Anglo-Latin Literature at Queen's University Belfast. Previous publications with the American Philosophical Society include From Academia to Amicitia: Milton's Latin Writings and the Italian Academies (Transactions volume 88, part 6) and Vergilius Redivivus: Studies in Joseph Addison's Latin Poetry (Transactions volume 95, part 2).