“As a City on a Hill”

These curricula proudly distinguish themselves from other histories of America; they intend, as the Abeka textbook puts it, to offer “uplifting history texts,” allowing students to understand “its traditional values.” This chapter explores these curricula’s commitment to providential history as English colonies founded the Christian nation. This story of unquestionable religious fervor and Christian virtue relies on nineteenth-century national origin myths. The chapter explores the central arguments used to make this case. They reject Jamestown because the colony adopted the unchristian practice of sharing goods and was no model of virtue. They point to the Massachusetts colonies as the establishment of a Christian city on a hill and herald the Mayflower Compact as the source of the subsequent founding documents of the new nation. They disparage or exclude other colonies and native peoples.

Using Nominalization in Scientific Texts; A Practical Review of the Related Studies

Many scholars have focused on using the nominalization over the scientific discourse. On the other hand many scholars have focused on the historic origins of nominalization in scientific discourse (Banks, 2005); realizing the grammatical metaphor in modern prose fiction (Farahani & Hadidi, 2008). Furthermore, Susinskiene (2009) examined the influence of verb-based nominalization to cohesion over the history texts. Baratta (2010) examined moreover using the nominalization in the writing performance of six undergraduate students. Finally, Wenyan (2012), examined the role of nominalization in the English Medical Papers (EMP) created by native English speakers and Chinese writers. These investigations have focused the vital role of using the nominalization in the skillful arrangement of academic discourse. Nevertheless, the realization between discipline specificity and nominalization is not focused a lot. In the current paper, the researcher tried to review the nominalization use and related studies which have been conducted in this regard. Hopefully, results of the current investigation is useful for a number of people who can benefit the results namely students of applied linguistics who want to understand the related studies about nominalization, researchers who want to conduct their studies of nominalization and interested people to applied linguistics.

Narrative Elements in Expository Texts

While the use of narrative elements in educational texts seems to be an adequate means to enhance students’ engagement and comprehension, we know little about how and to what extent these elements are used in the present-day educational practice. In this quantitative corpus-based analysis, we chart how and when narrative elements are used in current Dutch educational texts (N=999). While educational texts have traditionally been considered prime exemplars of expository texts, we show that the distinction between the expository and narrative genre is not that strict in the educational domain: prototypical narrative elements – particularized events, experiencing characters, and landscapes of consciousness – occur in 45% of the corpus’ texts. Their distribution varies between school subjects: while specific events, specific people, and their experiences are often at the heart of the to-be-learned information in history texts, narrativity is less present in the educational content of biology and geography texts. Instead publishers employ narrative-like strategies to make these texts more concrete and imaginable, such as the addition of fictitious characters and representative entities.

The Silken Thread

Insects are seldom mentioned in history texts, yet they significantly shaped human history. The Silken Thread: Five Insects and Their Impacts on Human History tells the stories of just five insects, tied together by a thread originating in the Silk Roads of Asia, and how they have impacted our world. Silkworms have been farmed to produce silk for millennia, creating a history of empires and cultural exchanges; Silk Roads connected East to West, generating trade centers and transferring ideas, philosophies, and religions. The western honey bee feeds countless people, and their crop pollination is worth billions of dollars. Fleas and lice carried bacteria that caused three major plague pandemics, moved along the Silk Roads from Central Asia. Bacteria carried by insects left their ancient clues as DNA embedded in victims’ teeth. Lice caused outbreaks of typhus, especially in crowded conditions such as prisons and concentration camps. Typhus aggravated the effects of the Irish potato famine, and Irish refugees took typhus to North America. Yellow fever was transported to the Americas via the trans-Atlantic slave trade, taking and devaluing the lives of millions of Africans. Slaves were brought to the Americas to reduce labor costs in the cultivation of sugarcane, which was itself transported from south Asia along the Silk Roads. Yellow fever caused panic in the United States in the 1700s and 1800s as the virus and its mosquito vector was moved from the Caribbean. Constructing the Panama Canal required defeating mosquitoes that transmitted yellow fever. The silken thread runs through and ties together these five insects and their impacts on human history.

The Belief Stories in the Texts of Oral History of the People in Late Adulthood Period

In my article, I analyze selected belief stories from the oral history texts. The research material contains the three biographical accounts of the people in late adulthood (over 65). The belief stories (belief tales) are one of the genres of speech typical for the accounts rooted in a folk view of the world. The demonic characters appear in them, e. g. the devil, the striga or the południca. The belief stories contain a detailed description of the world. They have an explanatory function. They are to explain how the world works. Belief stories do not appear often in the oral history texts created by the people in late adulthood who were not related to the countryside or were related to it in a limited extent. This way of shaping the narrative may be related to changes in the rationality of the narrators. The common and the scientific view of the world intersect in their narratives. The narrators add the numerous comments to their belief stories, in which they distance themselves from the folk view of the world or try to scientifically rationalize the fantastic events. Nevertheless, the fragments in which other genres of speech are realized, especially in anecdotes, reveal a clear relationship between the narrative of oral history and the common sense and belief vision of the world. The narrators often explain their own experiences by introducing elements of belief tales into other genres. Such fragments reveal the schemes of punishment and reward, non-worldly divine intervention, anthropomorphization of inanimate objects and assigning them the rank of demonic beings. Despite the intersection of different types of rationality in the narratives, a belief-based vision of the world still plays an important role in shaping of the oral narratives about the past.

Historical and Archival Aspects of Expertise and Attribution of N. K. Roerich’s Works

Based on the materials of expert and attribution studies carried out by the author over the years, this article examines the historical and archival documents, evidence and facts used in the course of the examination and attribution of works of easel, theatrical and decorative art of Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947). Also, the author examines the role which documents from the funds of the departments of manuscripts of the State Russian Museum, the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art, the Central State Archive of Film and Photographic Documents of St Petersburg, and other institutions play in the examination process, which is important for clarifying and studying the artistic heritage of the master. The purpose of the article is to consider individual examples of the examination and attribution of N. K. Roerich’s works with the help of various kinds of historical, cultural, and everyday documents, facts, and evidence reflected in unpublished art history texts, epistolary and memoir sources, in inscriptions on the reverse of paintings and on the margins of typographic prints of exhibition catalogues and works of art by Roerich, i.e. everything that contains important information for an expert included in the concept of “historical and archival aspects”. The article provides examples of art history, culturological and technical and technological methods used in the examination and attribution of works of art, and their result, which is reflected in the “expert conclusions”, attributions, verified and refined description of works and the history of their existence, which is important for understanding the artist’s work, further analysis of his work and, as a result, the emergence of new scholarly and educational publications.