James Brookes - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by James Brookes

Research paper thumbnail of Picturing the Civil War: visual culture of the rank and file

Access to and use of the material held within the University of Nottingham's Institutional Reposi... more Access to and use of the material held within the University of Nottingham's Institutional Repository (the Repository) is based on your acceptance of the following terms and conditions:

Research paper thumbnail of Images in Conflict: Union Soldier-Artists Picture the Battle of Stones River, 1862–1863

Journal of American Studies, 2019

The Civil War marked a revolution in the use of visual culture, during which imagery became a sol... more The Civil War marked a revolution in the use of visual culture, during which imagery became a soldier's tool. Engagement with imagery presented both an opportunity and a dilemma, forcing some soldier-artists to abandon existing artistic conventions, whilst others fortified them, in search of ways to represent both the war's violence and tedium. The visual idealization of war jarred uncomfortably with the depiction of the conflict's realities. The creation of a diverse grassroots archive ran parallel to the mainstream narrative, examination of which offers new insight into how some soldiers visualized the war in opposition to themes exhibited in popular culture.

Research paper thumbnail of Richard M. Reid, African Canadians in Union Blue: Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2015, $28.95). Pp. 308.isbn 978 1 6063 5255 7

Journal of American Studies, 2016

network of indigenous knowledge is invaluable for understanding unsettlement. It is not just as a... more network of indigenous knowledge is invaluable for understanding unsettlement. It is not just as an isolated incident but itself an epistemology and a knowledge formation within what Jace Weaver calls the "Red Atlantic." As Brickhouse reveals, it is not indigenous culture that unsettlement foregrounds, but indigenous knowledge. The distinction is important, in that Brickhouse recovers the knowledge so long denied indigenous societies by scholars' recourse to the concept of culture. In the contexts that Brickhouse outlines, culture has functioned as a marker of difference in being but not an acknowledgement of difference in knowing. It is through this crucial recovery of indigenous knowledge that the narrative of unsettlement can unfold, for only this frame enables us to recognize that Don Luis had "multiple sources of empirical and indirect evidence by which to understand that a return to his homeland" would destroy Ajacán (). Don Luis's actions were themselves an act of unsettlement; they were also the basis for numerous interpretations and reinterpretations that tried to inscribe this unsettlement within narratives of settlement. These attempts stretch from the Spanish colonial context through the US nineteenth century and into the twentieth century's reinvention of these acts. Last but not least, as Brickhouse herself points out, her own work participates in this process of unsettlement. The linkages between these seemingly disparate time frames and contexts are nuanced and fascinating. For instance, Don Luis's story was crucial in the nineteenth century because of the doctrine of discovery. The narrative of a first discovery by Spain of Virginia was certainly unsettling to the United States and its claims of first discovery as a justification of territorial expansion (in which, according to Brickhouse, Edgar Allan Poe plays the role of Don Luis when he produces the Journal of Julius Rodman ostensibly to support but then ultimately to unsettle US expansion to the Oregon territory). She also points out how the narrative of first settlement was doubly used to dispossess Native Americans, to undercut other imperial powers, and to use the narrative of Native American conquest over previous indigeneities as a justification for expansion into southern territoriesthus generating a multifaceted Americas drama that pits competing American exceptionalisms against each other. This book contributes to current scholarship in the humanities even above and beyond these accomplishments. At a time when the most recent turn seems to be to the digital, this book is a timely intervention into the fantasies of data-mining and mapmaking that seem to underlie at least one strand of the digital humanities endeavor. This book unmakes our maps and refuses to let texts stand as isolated datapoints. It is as wary of textual and spatial integration via practices of mapping as it is forceful in offering an alternative paradigm for how we may revisit the past as the foreign country that it truly is.

Research paper thumbnail of Picturing the Civil War: visual culture of the rank and file

Access to and use of the material held within the University of Nottingham's Institutional Reposi... more Access to and use of the material held within the University of Nottingham's Institutional Repository (the Repository) is based on your acceptance of the following terms and conditions:

Research paper thumbnail of Images in Conflict: Union Soldier-Artists Picture the Battle of Stones River, 1862–1863

Journal of American Studies, 2019

The Civil War marked a revolution in the use of visual culture, during which imagery became a sol... more The Civil War marked a revolution in the use of visual culture, during which imagery became a soldier's tool. Engagement with imagery presented both an opportunity and a dilemma, forcing some soldier-artists to abandon existing artistic conventions, whilst others fortified them, in search of ways to represent both the war's violence and tedium. The visual idealization of war jarred uncomfortably with the depiction of the conflict's realities. The creation of a diverse grassroots archive ran parallel to the mainstream narrative, examination of which offers new insight into how some soldiers visualized the war in opposition to themes exhibited in popular culture.

Research paper thumbnail of Richard M. Reid, African Canadians in Union Blue: Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2015, $28.95). Pp. 308.isbn 978 1 6063 5255 7

Journal of American Studies, 2016

network of indigenous knowledge is invaluable for understanding unsettlement. It is not just as a... more network of indigenous knowledge is invaluable for understanding unsettlement. It is not just as an isolated incident but itself an epistemology and a knowledge formation within what Jace Weaver calls the "Red Atlantic." As Brickhouse reveals, it is not indigenous culture that unsettlement foregrounds, but indigenous knowledge. The distinction is important, in that Brickhouse recovers the knowledge so long denied indigenous societies by scholars' recourse to the concept of culture. In the contexts that Brickhouse outlines, culture has functioned as a marker of difference in being but not an acknowledgement of difference in knowing. It is through this crucial recovery of indigenous knowledge that the narrative of unsettlement can unfold, for only this frame enables us to recognize that Don Luis had "multiple sources of empirical and indirect evidence by which to understand that a return to his homeland" would destroy Ajacán (). Don Luis's actions were themselves an act of unsettlement; they were also the basis for numerous interpretations and reinterpretations that tried to inscribe this unsettlement within narratives of settlement. These attempts stretch from the Spanish colonial context through the US nineteenth century and into the twentieth century's reinvention of these acts. Last but not least, as Brickhouse herself points out, her own work participates in this process of unsettlement. The linkages between these seemingly disparate time frames and contexts are nuanced and fascinating. For instance, Don Luis's story was crucial in the nineteenth century because of the doctrine of discovery. The narrative of a first discovery by Spain of Virginia was certainly unsettling to the United States and its claims of first discovery as a justification of territorial expansion (in which, according to Brickhouse, Edgar Allan Poe plays the role of Don Luis when he produces the Journal of Julius Rodman ostensibly to support but then ultimately to unsettle US expansion to the Oregon territory). She also points out how the narrative of first settlement was doubly used to dispossess Native Americans, to undercut other imperial powers, and to use the narrative of Native American conquest over previous indigeneities as a justification for expansion into southern territoriesthus generating a multifaceted Americas drama that pits competing American exceptionalisms against each other. This book contributes to current scholarship in the humanities even above and beyond these accomplishments. At a time when the most recent turn seems to be to the digital, this book is a timely intervention into the fantasies of data-mining and mapmaking that seem to underlie at least one strand of the digital humanities endeavor. This book unmakes our maps and refuses to let texts stand as isolated datapoints. It is as wary of textual and spatial integration via practices of mapping as it is forceful in offering an alternative paradigm for how we may revisit the past as the foreign country that it truly is.