Ontario County Historical Society

The Countryside, Nature, and Swedish Agrarian Policies. Vilhelm Moberg from an Eco-Critical Perspective
 This study applies an eco-critical perspective on the agrarian utopia Vilhelm Moberg depicts in his fictional works. His autobiographical novels about Knut Toring from the 1930s and his emigrant series from the 1950s are put in the foreground. (Sänkt sedebetyg 1935, transl. Memory of Youth 1937; Sömnlös 1937, “Sleepless”, not translated into English; Giv oss jorden! 1939, transl. The Earth is Ours 1940; Utvandrarna 1949, transl. The Emigrants 1951; Invandrarna 1953, transl. Unto a Good Land 1954; Nybyggarna 1956, transl. The Settlers; Sista brevet till Sverige 1959, transl. The Last Letter Home 1961).
 These works can be read as variations on a theme which occupied Moberg throughout his life as a writer: the loss of rural Sweden. The study focuses on Moberg’s utopian concepts of how the countryside could be saved. The solution lies in increased productivity and growth. In both his fictional and journalistic works Moberg has come forward as a critic of modernity in general and more specific the emerging Swedish welfare state, the so called ”Folkhemmet”. But the study argues that Moberg’s novels, paradoxically enough, in certain respects are compatible with Swedish agrarian policies in the middle of the 20th century and the ideological ideas underpinning ”Folkhemmet”, with development, progress and growth as overriding goals. The eco-critical perspective puts this policy of growth in a historical and anthropological and ideological context, aiming to show that nature in the works of Moberg is primarily seen as a resource for man. Nature is a bottomless source of riches, and man is assigned to manage it.

Ritual Boundaries of Ancient Indian Theatre The paper focuses on the question of the genesis of ancient Indian theatre and argues that it was introduced in the early post-Vedic period as an inalienable part of the pūjā cult. The definition of theatre as Nāṭyaveda and Pancama Veda (the ‘Fifth Veda’), presented in the Nāṭyaśāstra, should not be taken merely as a kind of eulogy but as a reflection of the ancient tradition, which treated the early ceremonial theatre not so much as an art form and entertainment but as a ritual and a visual sermon intended to elevate and educate the public.

IC 2118, also known as the Witch Head Nebula, is a wispy, roughly cometary, ~5 degree long reflection nebula, and is thought to be a site of triggered star formation. In order to search for new young stellar objects (YSOs), we have observed this region in 7 mid- and far-infrared bands using the Spitzer Space Telescope and in 4 bands in the optical using the U. S. Naval Observatory 40-inch telescope. We find infrared excesses in 4 of the 6 previously-known T Tauri stars in our combined infrared maps, and we find 6 entirely new candidate YSOs, one of which may be an edge-on disk. Most of the YSOs seen in the infrared are Class II objects, and they are all in the "head" of the nebula, within the most massive molecular cloud of the region.