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De constructing Literacies

Considerations for Engagement Amélie


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Amélie Lemieux

De/constructing Literacies
Considerations for Engagement

PETER LANG
New York • Bern • Berlin
Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lemieux, Amélie, author.


Title: De/constructing literacies: considerations for engagement /
Amélie Lemieux.
Description: New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2020.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019030771 | ISBN 978-1-4331-7282-3 (hardback: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4331-7283-0 (paperback: alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-4331-5609-0
(ebook pdf)
ISBN 978-1-4331-5610-6 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-5611-3 (mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: Literacy—Study and teaching. | Language arts. |
Reading. | Knowledge, Theory of.
Classification: LCC LC149.L373 2020 | DDC 418/.4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019030771
DOI 10.3726/b13448

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.


Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

© 2020 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York


29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006
www.peterlang.com

All rights reserved.


Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.
To my immediate and academic families, and to my mother Francine
(1948–2009), who brought me to the library weekly from the day I
was born. Her legacy lives on.
About the author

AMÉLIE LEMIEUX is Assistant Professor of Literacy and Technology at Mount Saint


Vincent University. A Lieutenant-Governor’s Medal Recipient and TedX speaker,
Lemieux’s research extends an expansive view of literacy informed by
multidimensional epistemologies that combine digital literacy and the arts.
About the book

De/constructing Literacies: Considerations for Engagement reviews and


defines the concept of engagement in literacy studies from different
epistemologies. Well-suited for literacy researchers and graduate
students, it considers the foundations of arts-based research, cognitive
psychology, ethnography, phenomenology, posthumanism, with a final
chapter on walking methodologies, to better understand how
engagement can be framed and looked at in literacy studies.

“De/constructing Literacies: Considerations for Engagement is a fascinating book


that challenges educators to rethink the role that aesthetic experiences play
with/in student engagement. Lemieux’s conceptualization of reading as a
phenomenologically-oriented and posthumanely- driven encounter is both fresh
and provocative, as it invites us to imagine not only what a more ethically engaged
conception of affective engagement is, but also, what it could be(come).” —BESSIE
DERNIKOS, FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY

“De/constructing Literacies moves us closer to holistic understandings of literacy


and learning by presenting literacies as both embodied and distributed, emergent
and sedimented, affective and social. Weaving together theoretical strands from
phenomenological hermeneutics and posthumanism, Lemieux pushes central
conversations in the field forward by making sure the contributions of key
deconstructionists, namely Barthes, Ricoeur and Gadamer, are not left behind. The
book’s careful empirical groundedness undergirds and lends support to its
remarkable theoretical contributions.”—BRICE NORDQUIST, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

“De/constructing Literacies: Considerations for Engagement provides us incredibly


important additions to the conversations/debates surrounding literacy and
learning. With the world constantly changing, including learners, it is critical we
consider the ways in which we interact in diverse contexts but also the affectual
nature of these interactions. The book effectively utilises the methodology of
phenomenological hermeneutics in exploring material culture and multimodal
receptions and productions as they relate to posthumanism. With thought-
provoking images and prose as well as powerful classroom practices related to
reading engagement the book takes the reader on a journey; mapping literate
practices through time and space. I am convinced that all interested in literacy,
learning and posthumanist thought will read this book with great interest. I highly
recommend it.”—GEORGINA BARTON, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN QUEENSLAND,
AUSTRALIA
This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start
and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is
placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This
means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.
Table of Contents

List of Figures

Introduction
Chapter One: Literacies as Engrenages or How Phenomenological
Hermeneutics Impact Literacy Studies
Chapter Two: De/constructing Reading Engagement
Chapter Three: Illustrating Reading Engagement: Indicators,
Meaning-Making, and Beyond
Chapter Four: Mapping Reactions across Students: Engagement
Tendencies
Chapter Five: Community-Oriented Literacies and the Place of
Materiality

Index
Figures

Figure 1: Montreal snow. Amélie Lemieux.


Figure 2: Iced footprints. Amélie Lemieux.
Figure 3: Café crème. Amélie Lemieux.
Figure 4: Wet streets, reflecting lights. Amélie Lemieux.
Figure 5: Lights in line. Amélie Lemieux.
Figure 6: Julian’s first aesthetigram, in response to the book
excerpt.
Figure 7: Julian’s second aesthetigram, in response to the
corresponding film excerpt.
Figure 8: Tom’s aesthetigram in response to Scene 37 in the play
Incendies.
Figure 9: Oliver’s aesthetigram in response to scene 37 in the play
Incendies.
Figure 10: Simon’s aesthetigram in response to scene 37 in the play
Incendies.
Figure 11: Justin’s aesthetigram in response to scene 37 in the play
Incendies.
Figure 12: Noah’s aesthetigram in response to scene 37 in the play
Incendies.
Figure 13: Josh’s aesthetigram in response to scene 37 in the play
Incendies.
Figure 14: Max’s aesthetigram in response to scene 37 in the play
Incendies.
Figure 15: Billy’s aesthetigram in response to scene 37 in the play
Incendies.
Figure 16: Billy’s drawing of the book cover.
Figure 17: First character: Billy’s representation of Nawal in the
written play.
Figure 18: Second character: Billy’s representation of Nihad in the
written play.
Figure 19: Billy’s aesthetigram in response to scene 37 in the film
Incendies.
Figure 20: Reading engagement tendencies in participants.
Figure 21: Total occurrences in reading tendencies.
Figure 22: Community-based LFL in Rosemont, picture taken by
Lemieux with an iPhone 5, 2015.
Figure 23: Community-based LFL in Villeray, Montreal, picture taken
by Lemieux with an iPhone 5, 2015.
Figure 24: LFL Pilot, (c) Lemieux, picture taken with an iPhone 5.
Figure 25: LFLs locations on the McGill campus—Map provided by M.
Ramundo.
Figure 26: Faculty of Arts LFL (location #3), picture provided by M.
Ramundo.
Figure 27: Cardiff, taken with iPhone 8, 2018.
Figure 28: Cardiff, taken with iPhone 8, 2018.
____________________

This book is part of the Peter Lang Education list.


Every volume is peer reviewed and meets
the highest quality standards for content and production.
____________________

PETER LANG
New York • Bern • Berlin
Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw
Introduction

The title of this book, De/constructing Literacies: Considerations for


Engagement, refers to ongoing conversations and debates about the
nature of literacies and, more importantly, the relationships between
definitions and dimensions of engagement in literacy studies. Under
the supervision of Jennifer Rowsell (for postdoctoral training) and
Boyd White (for doctoral studies), I studied the epistemological
traditions of phenomenological hermeneutics in reception studies,
material culture, and more recently multimodal receptions and
productions as they relate to such epistemologies as
phenomenology, visual culture, new materialism, and posthumanism.
This book is a dedication to them as a result of our work together
and the provoking conversations that took place over a number of
years. In the last few years, the research I have conducted with high
school and post-secondary students, as well as with pre- and in-
service teachers, speaks to these intricate relationships, and further
exemplifies the often-fleeting and oblivious inchoate dimensions
embedded in the human, the non-human, and the more-than
human. The projects I present in this book are in line with current
research focusing on the relationship between youth’s intra-actions
and affective states within textualities and materialities, specifically
as to how they shape literacies in plural and open forms (Dernikos,
2018; Kuby & Rowsell, 2017; Kuby, Spector & Thiel, 2018; Lemieux
& Rowsell, 2020; Nichols & Campano, 2017; Sherbine, 2018; Wargo,
2018) and in relation to affective entanglements (Ehret & Rowsell,
2020; Leander & Ehret, 2019).
←1 | 2→
Posthuman research on literacy practices focuses on decentering,
in part, the sole emphasis on students, and reconsiders students as
a whole. That is, focusing on their interactions with the world, the
objects, the digital, their environment, and their inner and outer
circles. Researching with posthumanism (Barad, 2007; Braidotti,
2013; Grosz, 2017) in literacy studies has previously been done with
emphasis on: rhizoanalysis and educational studies (Ehret, 2016;
Semetsky & Masny, 2013); second-language education and
citizenship (Fleming, Waterhouse, Bangou & Bastien, 2017); trauma
literatures and sticky, affective entanglements and trauma literacies
(Dernikos, 2018); early childhood literacies and methodologies
(Kuby, 2017; Kuby & Rowsell, 2017); early childhood play and
literacies (Marsh, 2017; Sherbine, 2018); adolescent literacies and
affective states (Ehret, 2018; Lewis & Tierney, 2013); sexual cultures
and youth digital literacies (Handyside & Ringrose, 2017; Renold &
Ringrose, 2017); movement and youth literacies (Hackett &
Somerville, 2017; Leander & Rowe, 2006; Nordquist, 2017);
classroom makerspaces in preschool settings (Wohlwend, Peppler,
Keune & Thompson, 2017); sonic literacies and aural rhetorics
(Brownell & Wargo, 2017; Ceraso, 2018); work with exceptional
youth (Reddington & Price, 2018); and methodologies in the digital
age to look at virtual worlds and big data sets (Savin-Baden &
Tombs, 2017).
In their volume on literacy and posthumanism, Kuby, Spector, and
Thiel (2018) engage with manuscripts covering four main areas: (1)
agency (2) intra-activity and entanglement (3) subjectivity and (4)
affect. These four dimensions are pivotal in understanding new
directions in literacy studies, especially in looking at more-than-
human dimensions and epistemologies of being-with (Lemieux &
Rowsell, 2020). The research I present in this book seeks to
decentralize traditional literacies insofar as it considers students’
intra-actions in response to narratives and their adapted versions.
Looking across interviews, questionnaires, maps, student
commentary, and ekphrastic poetry, I adopted a phenomenological
hermeneutics approach that resonates with such posthuman
elements as subjectivity and moments of affect in high school
students. This research has theoretical underpinnings that align with
phenomenological hermeneutics (Ricoeur, 1981; Van Manen, 2014).
I explain those dynamic open relationships later on in this
manuscript. This is followed by a reflection on the material and its
impact on communities—which is inchoate by nature—that brings
about change and enthusiasm for daily hidden literacies (Rowsell &
Kendrick, 2013).
There is no such thing as immaculate literacies. In a recent study,
Rowsell and colleagues (2018) have shown how children in primary-
school settings would rather engage, especially in maker education,
in sticky literacies (Wargo, 2017), and pedagogies of dissonance
between producing and receiving; meaning that both
←2 | 3→happen, sometimes simultaneously and sometimes
anachronously. By pedagogies of dissonance I mean that it is not
often clear for children that they are engaging in actual “literacies
work” when they are making, reading, browsing, tinkering, and
composing (digital) texts. The logic of trial-and-error is useful in
considering how we might think of literacies differently, as an
ontological way of becoming accustomed to new worlds and words,
shapes, and sounds, and new ontologies altogether. The vibrant
need to transcend im/materials worlds (Burnett, Merchant, Pahl &
Rowsell, 2014) is becoming more and more visible across both home
and school contexts.
In this volume, I focus mainly on these questions: How are
phenomenological hermeneutics reinvested in the twenty-first
century? What are the relationships between phenomenological
hermeneutics, affect, and posthumanist thought? To answer these
questions, I provide reflections based on studies conducted in
secondary and post-secondary educational contexts, and provide
further avenues for investigation in literacy studies that look at
reading and composition.
←3 | 4→←4 | 5→
CHAPTER ONE

Literacies as Engrenages or How


Phenomenological Hermeneutics Impact
Literacy Studies

Phenomenological hermeneutics lay the groundwork for flexible and


open investigations into the structured and unstructured layers of
the self. As we are thinking about communicative behavior in literacy
studies—how a reader may communicate affect for example—one
may think about the way through which one can communicate their
responses to texts. Phenomenological hermeneutics are always
relational; they materialize through communicative modes and
moments of human reflection that are forged by elements
imperceptible to human nature. These elements are more-than-
human, im/material, and, more generally, impossible to pinpoint.
They defy cause and effect. They repulse correlations and positivists
mindsets.
Phenomenological hermeneutics tend to rely on two major
strands: lived experience, or Martin Heidegger’s Dasein; and
hermeneutics, mostly investigated by Gadamer (1975).
Phenomenology has had important repercussions for literacy studies.
As such, Roland Barthes’ essay Death of the Author (1984)
(un)intentionally created the collateral Birth of the Reader. One of
his most famous texts, Barthes’ Death of the Author problematized,
in times of post-structuralist French philosophy, the central place of a
human subject (the author) and replaced it with that of another
human subject (the reader). Analyzing the ways in which Honoré de
Balzac’s Sarrasine (1834) could be read (in English or in French),
Barthes’ essay showed how Balzac’s writing could be confused with
that of the narrator (Sarrasine), and that representations of women
as being overly sensitive ←5 | 6→for instance, coincided with sexist
generalizations that were infamously common in Balzac’s era. The
figure and related representations of the “Author” have historically
been used as hegemonies—Barthes suggested the figure of the
“Author-God” should be carefully discarded; that is to say
hermeneutical work should not be based on a person (as a historical,
canonical entity) but rather on language. Reading and composition
are like puzzles, and the only ones who hold the keys to solving
these puzzles are readers and composers.
Now, language has had its representational problems as well, and
has often been “granted too much power” (Barad, 2018, p. 223).
The 1970s, 1980s, 1990s have seen, with the birth of the reader, a
shift to emphasis on student-led learning after decades of literature
education that Barthes and many others have described (Freire,
1972; Rosenblatt, 1969). Numerous researchers (Galda & Beach,
2001; Karolides, 2013; Lewis, 2000; Sipe, 1999, and many others)
ad(a)opted Rosenblatt’s transactional theory of reading, and focused
on literacy research that contextualized settings for literacy
pedagogies.
The mid-1990s saw the advent of the New Literacy Studies and
Social Semiotics era, and has been studied mostly through the lens
of multimodality (Kress, 2000; Rowsell, 2013; Rowsell, Kress, Pahl &
Street, 2018). Rowsell and Collier (2016) provide a thorough review
of those changes and shifts in literacies studies over the past 20
years. Most recently, and as stated earlier, the focus on emotions
and affect in literacies research (Ehret, 2018) has redirected matters
towards non-representational theory. And so, shifts from the author
to the text to the reader, are being reconsidered to focus,
relationally, on matter rather than form, persons, or language. The
entanglements become more relevant than ever. Text is the
relational now, as the subsequent chapters will exemplify. This
relational dimension oscillates most often between a combination of
typed words on a virtual or printed page, and certainly humans have
evolved and adapted to these interplays when they make meaning.
And of course, meaning-making depends on other things than
schooling, language, reading, and writing (Pahl & Rowsell, 2020).

Ricoeur’s Legacy and the Implications of the


Post-representational in Literacy Research
Like many others, I see Paul Ricoeur as one of the most influential
philosophers of the twentieth century. Drawing on H. S. Gadamer,
Ricoeur’s work is worth discovering in literacy studies, as his theory
on philosophical hermeneutics brings together matters of alterity,
identity construction, philosophy of the subject, and ipseity. For
example, Ricoeur’s philosophy of perception allows researchers
←6 | 7→to witness the necessary relationship between research on
engagement and the “subjective dimension” of posthumanism. That
is, the subject still exists but is decentralized as a repository of
“truth”; the material comes to matter, and the more-than-human
becomes as important as humans. This way of viewing literacy
futures is based on the relational and dynamism between non-
humans, humans, and more-than-humans (Sheridan, Lemieux, Do
Nascimento & Arnseth, 2020).
Relationality and Reciprocity in (the) Making:
Pathways for Engagement and Beyond
Maker education and conversations on posthumanism have been at
the core of literacy research in recent years (Hackett & Somerville,
2017; Kuby & Rowsell, 2017; Leander & Boldt, 2013; Nichols &
Campano, 2017; Pahl & Pool, 2018). Most research has pointed to
both the reciprocity and the intra-actions that unfold as students
develop their thoughts and reflect on them in a non-linear way.
Jennifer Rowsell has done significant work in literacy studies and
posthumanism (Rowsell & Shillitoe, 2019; Rowsell et al., 2018;
Whitty & Rowsell, 2019) and I was fortunate to learn from her work
how posthumanist maker mindsets propel researchers, teachers, and
students into a world that disrupts production and emphasizes
intensities instead. Following that tradition, posthumanism reshapes
the ways humanities think about education (Kuby & Rowsell, 2017),
and challenges Western concepts such as “reading,” “writing,” and
“literacy” as separate entities. Indigenous knowledge and
epistemologies (Smith, Tuck & Yang, 2018; Tuck & Wang, 2012),
phematerialisms (Ringrose, Warfield & Zarabadi, 2018), studies on
affect and digital matters (Chanteris & Gregory, 2018; Ehret &
Rowsell, 2020; Wargo, 2018), and posthuman performativities
(Barad, 2003; Pomerantz & Raby, 2018; Ringrose & Rawlings, 2015)
exemplify how there needs to be a shift to decentralize Westernized
hegemonies. This change needs to deconstruct and reverse
metaphorical statements that act as a shield to social justice work
(see for example, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s (2012) article
“Decolonization is not a Metaphor” as well as work towards
indigenizing education and literacies through creative
multidimensional modes and outlets (Doucet, 2018; Smith, Tuck &
Yang, 2018; Whitty, 2017)). As Braidotti (2013) mentions: the
“Humanities [need] to clarify their own methods and mechanisms of
knowledge production” (p. 155). Braidotti (2013) calls for a
posthuman theory that does not exclude the human, in the sense
that it still considers subjectivity, but also includes the more-than-
human, the non-human, and the superhuman, in the sense that it is
“anti-individualistic” (p. 101) or anti-egocentric as it considers the
“other” and fosters social imagination.
←7 | 8→
Others have offered more practical definitions of posthumanism,
emphasizing different directions. For example, Nayar (2014)
described his view on critical posthumanism, in that it

favours co-evolution, symbiosis, feedback and responses as determining


conditions rather than autonomy, competition and self-contained isolation of
the human. It sees human experience, modes of perception and even self-
affective states as essentially derived from, influenced by and formed by
the sensoria of numerous other living beings first, and then coming
autopoiesis later. (p. 9)

In addition to Nayar, Elizabeth Grosz (2017) describes an ethical


dimension and defines “ontoethics” in her book The Incorporeal as
“an ethics that addresses not just human life in its interhuman
relations, but relations between the human and an entire world,
both organic and inorganic” (p. 1). This dimension is crucial in
literacy research, alluding to the matter of ethics, morals, and
consent by centering and considering the essence of being-with, as
well as the nature of human interactions with their environments,
and vice versa. The question of ethics is also conveyed by Braidotti
(2013), who maintains that “the posthuman knowing subject as a
time continuum and a collective assemblage implies a double
commitment, on the one hand to processes of change and on the
other to a strong ethics of eco-sophical sense of community” (p.
169). Thus, an ethos of cohabitation↔interaction between humans
and non-humans takes place, and there is an ethical responsibility
inherent to posthuman thought (Braidotti, 2013), which implies a
pedagogy of care for, and consciousness of, ethics and
environmental well-being. Art and literacy education are no
strangers to those values.
Posthumanism unfolds in ways that are unpredictable and
unscripted; I present in the next section a contemporary example of
this. In a recent visit to my Alma Mater, I took an afternoon to visit
Alexander Calder’s Fall 2018 exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine
Arts. I spent some time walking through the showrooms allocated
for a recollection of Calder’s training and experiences of working as a
sheet metals welder and as maker-designer of a miniature-size
circus. His meshing of sculptural and painting practices, while not
new, shifted the world of architectural design in the mid-twentieth
century. Calder’s work offers a solid rendering of the hybridity
between maker mindsets and the arts. The immersive pathways the
museum offered speak to current research on posthumanist thought
and museum immersion (MacRae, Hackett, Holmes & Jones, 2017).
While I briefly recollect my experiences as a museum visitor, those
experiences were rooted in the relational, the ‘stickness’ that
happens between humans, more-than-humans, and the self/ves,
speaking to the very fact that “meaning,” MacRae and colleagues
←8 | 9→(2017) argue, “emerges from diffuse and diverse
relationships between non-human and human” (p. 507).
I have been inspired by the propositions put forward by Boyd
White (McGill University), Anita Sinner (Concordia University), and
Darlene St. Georges (Lethbridge University) in a recent article titled
“Interweavings: Threads of Art Education, Poetry, and
Phenomenological Grapplings” published in the Canadian Review of
Art Education. In the article, the authors expand on artful “noematic,
or reflexive” (White, Sinner & St. Georges, 2018, p. 32)
interweavings and responses to Hari Sawa’s airplane multimodal
work, meshing together sounds, destinations, and themes like
movement, place, space, and being-with im/material (Burnett,
Merchant, Pahl & Rowsell, 2014). The following work is a second
example of those diffuse relationships and comes from a
presentation I gave with White, Sinner and St. Georges building on
that article and Sawa’s work. In the same fashion as my co-
presenters, I produced ekphrastic poetry (Heffernan, 2004; Kennedy,
2013; White, 2014; White & Lemieux, 2015, 2017), which
corresponds to a produced, verbal, or written materialization of a
visual representation. While posthumanism aims at decentering the
Anthropocene and human perspectives, this rendition of a Montreal
walk speaks rather to phenomenological hermeneutics (Heidegger,
1962; Ricoeur, 1981). The exercise takes us, through still shots of a
particularly cold and whimsical night, into my intra-actions (Braidotti,
2013) as I walk from my old Montreal neighborhood to the Old Port.
Some research epistemologies will frame these dimensions as
multimodal, others as artful; I welcome both perspectives and see
them as non-exclusionary, in the tradition of people who have been
influential in my thinking (Barton & Baguley, 2014; Chabanne,
Lacelle & Richard, 2017; Pahl & Rowsell, 2010; Pool & Pahl, 2015;
Rowsell, 2018; Sameshima, White & Sinner, 2018).

Walking, Traces, and Relational Oscillations of the


Once Spoken
Figure 1: Montreal snow. Amélie Lemieux.

Silence in motion, advances in time


While its moving essence dances in our minds
Whose light are you keeping in?
Whose soul are you keeping out?
Ruminations of an honest heart with curious bearings
Often still and more often mobile with my thoughts
Whose traces am I reminiscing, following, and unfollowing?
An idea in the making
More truths negotiating
Stillness evokes silence, yet so does movement
Stillness evokes violence, yet so does movement
A straight path with many swerves as one goes along
My old neighborhood, winter lights,
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
trades, which began in the previous July.

January 31, 1898.


Disastrous blizzard in New England.

February 4, 1898.
Re-election (by voting which began January 3) of
President Kruger for a fourth term of five years,
in the South African Republic.

February 7-15, 1898.


Prosecution of M. Zola for defamation of certain military
officers; his scandalous trial and conviction.

February 14, 1898.


Destruction of the United States battle ship "Maine,"
by an explosion, in the harbor of Havana, Cuba.

February 16, 1898.


Removal of Chief-Justice Kotze, of the High Court of the
South African Republic, by President Kruger.

February 18.
Death of Frances Elizabeth Willard, American social reformer.

February 19, 1898.


Death of Dr. Edward Constant Seguin, neurologist, New York.

February 26, 1898.


Death of Frederick Tennyson, English poet.
Death of Michael Gregorovich Tchernaieff, Russian soldier
and popular hero of the Panslavists.

February 27, 1898.


Death of Major-General William Booth Taliaferro,
Confederate army.
March 1, 1898.
Retirement of General Crespo from the Presidency of Venezuela;
succession of General Andrade to the office.

March 6, 1898.
Death of Felice Cavalotti, Italian statesman and dramatist.

March 11, 1898.


Death of Major-General William Starke Rosecrans.

March 15, 1898.


Death of Sir Henry Bessemer, English inventor.

March 16, 1898.


Death of Aubrey Beardsley, English artist.

March 17, 1898.


Speech of Senator Proctor, of Vermont, in the United States
Senate, describing the condition of the reconcentrados in Cuba,
as he saw them during a recent visit to the island.
Death of Blanche K. Bruce, register of the United States
Treasury, born a slave.

March 21, 1898.


Report of the United States naval court of inquiry on the
destruction of the battle ship "Maine."
Death of Brigadier-General George Washington Rains,
Confederate army.

{709}

March 22, 1898.


Report of Spanish naval board of inquiry on the destruction
of the United States battle ship "Maine."

March 23, 1898.


Primary election law in New York signed by the Governor.
March 25, 1898.
Death of James Payn, English novelist.

March 27, 1898.


Proposal by the government of the United States to that of
Spain of an armistice and negotiation of peace with the
insurgents in Cuba.
Cession by China to Russia of Port Arthur and Talienwan.

March 28, 1898.


Message of the President of the United States to Congress on
the destruction of the battle ship "Maine."
Death of Anton Seidl, composer and musical conductor.

March 31, 1898.


Reply of the Spanish government to the proposals of the
United States, for an armistice and negotiation with the
Cuban insurgents.
Death of Edward Noyes Westcott, American novelist.

April 2, 1898.
Quashing of the sentence pronounced on M. Zola, upon his
appeal to the Court of Cassation.
Lease by China to Great Britain of the port of Wei-hai Wei
with adjacent territory.

April 7, 1898.
Death of Margaret Mather, American actress.

April 8, 1898.
Great victory of the Anglo-Egyptian army, under the Sirdar,
General Kitchener, over the Dervishes, on the Atbara.

April 10, 1898.


Passage of bill through the German Reichstag to greatly
increase the German navy.
April 11, 1898.
Special Message of the President of the United States to
Congress on the relations of the country to Spain, consequent
on affairs in Cuba.
Lease by China to France of Kwang-chow Wan
on the southern coast.

April 13, 1898.


Adoption by the United States House of Representatives of a
joint resolution authorizing and directing the President to
"intervene at once to stop the war in Cuba."

April 16, 1898.


Adoption by the United States Senate of a joint resolution
not only directing intervention to stop the war in Cuba,
but recognizing the insurgent government of "the Republic of
Cuba."
Death of ex-President Crespo, of Venezuela, killed in battle.

April 17, 1898.


Death of Jules Marcou, French geologist.

April 18, 1898.


Arrangement of the disagreement between the two branches of
the United States Congress respecting the recognition of
"the Republic of Cuba," and passage of a joint resolution
to intervene for the stopping of the war in the island.

April 19, 1898.


Death of George Parsons Lathrop, American author.
Death of Gustave Moreau, French painter.

April 20, 1898.


Passports asked for and received by the
Spanish Minister at Washington.
April 21, 1898.
Appointment of Rear-Admiral Sampson to the command of the
United States naval force on the Atlantic station.

April 22, 1898.


Proclamation by the President of the United States declaring
a blockade of certain Cuban ports.

April 23, 1898.


Proclamation by the President of the United States calling
for 125,000 volunteers.

April 24, 1898.


Commodore Dewey, commanding the Asiatic squadron of the
United States, ordered to proceed from Hong Kong to the
Philippine Islands, to destroy or capture the Spanish fleet
in those waters.
Interview, at Singapore, between the leader of the Philippine
insurgents, Aguinaldo, and the United States Consul-General,
Mr. Spencer Pratt;
communication from Mr. Pratt to Commodore Dewey, at Hong Kong;
request from Commodore Dewey that Aguinaldo come to Hong Kong.

April 25, 1898.


Formal declaration of war with Spain by the Congress of the
United States, with authority given to the President to call
out the land and naval forces of the nation.
Removal of the American squadron under Commodore Dewey from
Hong Kong to Mirs Bay, China.
Signing of protocol between Russia and Japan relative to Korea.

April 27, 1898.


Sailing of the American squadron from Mirs Bay to Manila.

April 29, 1898.


Proclamation of neutrality by the Portuguese government,
which required the Spanish fleet under Admiral Cervera to
depart from the Cape Verde islands.

May 1, 1898.
Destruction of the Spanish squadron in Manila Bay by the
American squadron under Commodore Dewey.

May 2, 1898.
Arrival of Aguinaldo at Hong Kong.

May 3, 1898.
Occupation of Cavite arsenal by American naval forces.

May 8, 1898.
General elections for a new Chamber of Deputies in France;
first balloting.

May 9, 1898.
Serious fighting in Milan, ending bread riots in that city
and elsewhere in northern Italy.

May 12, 1898.


Attack on the Spanish forts at San Juan, Porto Rico, by
Admiral Sampson, then searching for Cervera's fleet.

May 13, 1898.


Death of Reverend William Stevens Perry,
American church historian.

May 16, 1898.


Major-General Wesley Merritt, U. S. A., assigned to the
command of the Department of the Pacific.
Conveyance of Aguinaldo from Hong Kong to Cavite by the
United States ship "McCulloch."

May 19, 1898.


Death of Mr. Gladstone.
Death of Maria Louise Pool, American novelist.
May 22, 1898.
Second balloting in French elections, where the first had
resulted in no choice.
Death of Spencer Walpole, English historian.
Death of Edward Bellamy, American novelist and social theorist.

May 25, 1898.


Proclamation by the President of the United States calling
for 75,000 additional volunteers.
Departure from San Francisco of the first military expedition
from the United States to the Philippine Islands, under
General T. M. Anderson.

May 28, 1898.


Public funeral of Mr. Gladstone;
burial in Westminster Abbey.
Death of Mrs. Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren, American author.

{710}

May 29, 1898.


Blockade of the Spanish squadron under Rear-Admiral Cervera,
in the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, by the American flying
squadron under Commodore Schley.

May 30, 1898.


Agreement between Great Britain, Canada and the United States,
creating a Joint High Commission for the adjustment of all
existing subjects of controversy between the United States
and Canada.

June 1, 1898.
Arrival of Admiral Sampson and his fleet off the entrance to
the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, to perfect the blockade of
the Spanish squadron.
Opening of the Trans-Mississippi Exposition at Omaha, Nebraska.
Enactment of law to provide for the arbitration of disputes
between employés and companies engaged in interstate commerce
in the United States.

June 2, 1898.
Death of George Eric Mackay, English poet.

June 3, 1898.
Sinking of the collier "Merrimac" in the channel of the
harbor-entrance at Santiago de Cuba, by Assistant Naval
Constructor Hobson. U. S. N.

June 6, 1898.
Bombardment of Spanish forts at Santiago de Cuba by the
American blockading fleet.

June 7-10, 1898.


Possession of the lower bay at Guantanamo, near Santiago de
Cuba, taken by vessels of the American navy, and a marine
battalion landed.

June 11, 1898.


Reform edict issued by the young Emperor of China.

June 14, 1898.


Sailing, from Tampa, Florida, of the military expedition
under General Shafter for the capture of Santiago de Cuba.

June 15, 1898.


Sailing, from San Francisco, of the second American military
expedition to the Philippines.
Adoption by the House of Representatives of a joint resolution
to provide for annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the
United States.

June 16, 1898.


Second bombardment of forts at Santiago de Cuba by the
American blockading fleet.

June 16-24, 1898.


Elections to the Reichstag of the German Empire.

June 17, 1898.


Resignation of the Ministry of Signor Rudini in Italy.
Death of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, English painter.

June 20, 1898.


Arrival, off Guantanamo, of the expedition under
General Shafter.

June 21, 1898.


Capture and occupation of the island of Guam by the U. S. S.
"Charleston."

June 22-24, 1898.


Landing of General Shafter's army at Daiquiri and Siboney.

June 24, 1898.


First engagement between American and Spanish troops in Cuba,
at La Guasima.

June 28, 1898.


Proclamation by Aguinaldo, assuming the administration of a
provisional government of the Philippine Islands.
Approval by the President of the United States of the "Curtis
Act," relating to the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians.
Formation of a new Italian Ministry by General Pelloux.

July, 1898.
Discussion and passage by the British Parliament of a
Local Government Act for Ireland.

July 1, 1898.
Assault by the American forces, at San Juan Hill and El Caney,
on the Spanish lines defending Santiago.

July 2-3, 1898.


Continued fighting on the lines around Santiago de Cuba.

July 3, 1898.
Demand of General Shafter for the surrender of Santiago, under
the threat of bombardment; truce arranged by foreign consuls and
negotiations for surrender opened.
Destruction of the Spanish fleet of Admiral Cervera on its
attempting to escape from the blockaded port of Santiago de
Cuba.

July 4, 1898.
Opening of communications between General Anderson, commanding
the first expedition of the United States forces landed near
Manila, and General Aguinaldo, "commanding the Philippine
forces."

July 6, 1898.
Destruction of the Spanish cruiser" Alphonso XII.," when
attempting to escape from the harbor of Havana.
Adoption by the U. S. Senate of the joint resolution to
provide for the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands.
Exchange of Lieutenant Hobson and his fellow captives for
prisoners taken from the Spanish forces.

July 7, 1898.
Declaration of M. Cavaignac, Minister of War, in the Chamber
of Deputies, of his absolute certainty of the guilt of Captain
Dreyfus.
Death of Francisco Javier Cisneros, Cuban patriot.
Death of M. Buffet, French statesman.

July 10, 1898.


Termination of truce at Santiago;
resumption of hostilities;
bombardment of the city by the navy.

July 11, 1898.


Death of Rear-Admiral Daniel Ammen, U. S. N.

July 12, 1898.


Outbreak of yellow fever in the military hospital at Siboney.
Arrival of General Miles at Santiago with reinforcements for
General Shafter.

July 13, 1898.


Interview of General Miles and General Shafter with General
Toral, the Spanish commander at Santiago.

July 14, 1898.


Agreement by General Toral to surrender the city of Santiago
and the entire district of eastern Cuba with 24,000 Spanish
troops.
Death of Mrs. Elizabeth Lynn Linton, English author.

July 16, 1898.


Signing of the terms of the Spanish surrender at Santiago.

July 17, 1898.


Death of Parker Pillsbury, American abolitionist.
Death of Karl Gehrt, German artist.

July 18, 1898.


Opening of second trial of M. Zola, at Versailles.

July 25, 1898.


Landing, at Guanica, of the expedition of United States
troops, under General Miles, for the conquest of Porto Rico.

July 26, 1898.


Overtures for peace addressed by the Spanish government to
that of the United States through the French Minister at
Washington.

July 27, 1898.


Occupation of Ponce, in Porto Rico, by the American forces
under General Miles.

July 28, 1898.


Death of Dr. William Pepper, of Philadelphia, physician, and
extraordinary leader in public enterprise.

{711}

July 30, 1898.


Terms of peace proposed to Spain by the United States.
Death of Reverend John Caird, Scottish divine and educator.

July 31, 1898.


Death of Prince Otto von Bismarck, at the age of 83.

August 3, 1898.
Urgent message from General Shafter to the United States War
Department, asking for the instant withdrawal of his forces
from Santiago, on account of the deadly ravages of yellow
fever, typhoid and dysentery.

August 4, 1898.
Orders given for the removal of the American army from
Santiago de Cuba to Montauk Point, Long Island.

August 7, 1898.
Acceptance by Spain of the terms of peace offered by the
United States.
Demand of Admiral Dewey and General Merritt for the
surrender of Manila.
Death of James Hall, American geologist.

August 8, 1898.
Death of Adolph Heinrich Joseph Sutro,
American mining engineer.
Death of Georg Moritz Ebers, German novelist and Egyptologist.

August 12, 1898.


Ceremony, at Honolulu, of the transfer of sovereignty over
the Hawaiian Islands to the United States.
Order by General Merritt forbidding the Filipino forces under
Aguinaldo to enter Manila when the city should be taken.
Signing of the protocol of terms for the negotiation of peace
between the United States and Spain;
proclamation by the President of the United States
suspending hostilities.

August 13, 1898.


Attack by American forces on the Spanish lines at Manila
and capture of the city.

August 21, 1898.


Friendly letter of Spanish soldiers at Santiago, Cuba,
before departing for Spain, to their late enemies, the
American soldiers.

August 22, 1898.


Death of Laupepa Malietoa, King of Samoa.

August 24, 1898.


Proposal by the Tzar of Russia of a conference of governments
to discuss the means of stopping the progressive increase of
military and naval armaments and promote the peace of the world.

August 25, 1898.


Transfer of command at Santiago from General Shafter
to General Lawton.

August 28, 1898.


General Merritt ordered to Paris for consultation with the
American Peace Commissioners;
command at Manila transferred to General Otis.

August 31, 1898.


Termination of the minority of Queen Wilhelmina, of the
Kingdom of the Netherlands, and of the regency of her mother,
Queen Emma.
Suicide of Colonel Henry, of the Intelligence Department of
the French Army, after confessing that he had forged one of
the documents on which M. Cavaignac based his certainty of
the guilt of Captain Dreyfus.

September 2, 1898.
Battle of Omdurman;
defeat of the Dervishes and occupation of the Khalifa's capital.

September 3, 1898.
Death of Wilford Woodruff, president of the Mormon Church.

September 4, 1898.
Resignation of M. Cavaignac from the French cabinet, because
of his opposition to a revision of the Dreyfus case.

September 6, 1898.
Enthronement of Queen Wilhelmina, at Amsterdam.
Turkish outbreak at Candia, Crete, against authority
exercised by the British admiral in the name of the
concerted Powers.

September 10, 1898.


Assassination of Elizabeth, Empress of Austria
and Queen of Hungary.

September 12, 1898.


Death of Thomas McIntyre Cooley, American jurist.

September 14, 1898.


Death of Samuel Eliot, American historian.

September 19, 1898.


Death of Sir George Grey, British administrator.

September 21, 1898.


Overthrow of the Chinese reformers at Peking;
submission of the Emperor to the Empress-Dowager.
Death of Theodor Fontane, German poet.

September 23, 1898.


Death of Richard Malcolm Johnston, American author.

September 26, 1898.


Decision of the French cabinet to submit the question of a
revision of the trial of Captain Dreyfus to the Court of
Cassation.

September 28, 1898.


Execution of six of the Chinese reformers at Peking.
Death of Thomas Francis Bayard, American statesman
and diplomatist.

September 29, 1898.


Government of a Philippine Republic organized at Malolos;
a national congress convened, and Aguinaldo declared President.
Popular vote in Canada on the question of Prohibition.
Death of Queen Louise of Denmark.

September 30, 1898.


Mob attack on foreigners near Peking.

October, 1898.
Discovery of the Cape Nome mining region in Alaska.
Outbreak of Indians of the Leech Lake Reservation in
Northern Minnesota.
October 1, 1898.
Call by foreign representatives at Peking for guards of
marines to protect their legations.
Meeting of Spanish and American commissioners at Paris to
negotiate a Treaty of Peace.

October 5, 1898.
Demand of the Powers for the withdrawal of Turkish garrisons
from Crete.

October 6, 1898.
Decree by the Empress-Dowager of China commanding protection
to Christian missionaries and converts.

October 7, 1898.
Death of Blanche Willis Howard, Baroness von Teuffel,
American novelist.
Death of Abraham Oakey Hall, American lawyer and politician.

October 12.
Inauguration of General Julio Roca President of the
Argentine Republic.
Serious conflict at Virden, Illinois, growing out of a
strike of coal miners;
14 persons killed and 25 wounded.
Death of Reverend Calvin Fairbank, anti-slavery worker and
helper of the freedmen.

October 19, 1898.


Death of Harold Frederic, American journalist and novelist.

October 25, 1898.


Decision of the Court of Cassation requiring a supplementary
investigation of the case of Captain Dreyfus.
Death of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, French painter.

October 29, 1898.


Death of Colonel George Edwin Waring,
American sanitary engineer.

October 31, 1898.


Death of Helena Faucit, Lady Martin, English actress.

{712}

November 1, 1898.
Establishment of the Constitution of the United States of
Central America.

November 2, 1898.
Announcement by Lord Salisbury of the amicable settlement,
between France and Great Britain, of "the Fashoda incident."

November 5, 1898.
Death of David Ames Wells, American economist and publicist.

November 12, 1898.


Death of Clara Fisher (Mrs. Clara Fisher Maeder), actress.

November 15, 1898.


Inauguration of Dr. M. F. de Campos Salles, President of
United States of Brazil.
Order by the Court of Cassation that Dreyfus be notified by
telegraph of the pending revision of his trial.

November 19, 1898.


Death of Brigadier-General Don Carlos Buell.

November 20, 1898.


Death of Sir George S. Baden-Powell, economist.

November 25, 1898.


Dissolution of the United States of Central America by
the secession of Salvador.
November 26, 1898.
Appointment of Prince George, of Greece, to be High
Commissioner of the Powers in Crete.

November 27, 1898.


Death of Charles Walter Couldock, actor.

November 28, 1898.


Death of Mrs. Mary Eliza (Joy) Haweis,
English author and artist.

December 5, 1898.
Final raising of the "pacific blockade" of Crete by the Powers.

December 6, 1898.
General Guy V. Henry appointed Military Governor of Porto Rico.

December 10, 1898.


Signing, at Paris, of the Treaty of Peace between the
United States and Spain.
Death of William Black, English novelist.

December 11, 1898.


Death of General Calixto Garcia, Cuban military leader.

December 13, 1898.


Appointment of General Brooke as commander and military
governor of Cuba, by direction of the President of the
United States.
Reception by the Empress-Dowager to the wives of foreign
representatives at Peking.

December 17, 1898.


Death of Baron Ferdinand James de Rothschild.

December 21, 1898.


Arrival of Prince George of Greece in Crete, to undertake
the administration of government as High Commissioner for
the Powers.
Instructions of the President of the United States to
General Otis, relative to the military government of the
Philippine Islands.

December 22, 1898.


Death of Sebastian Bach Mills, composer and pianist.

December 23, 1898.


Decision by the French government to comply with the demand
of the Court of Cassation for the secret papers
(the "dossier") in the Dreyfus case.

December 25, 1898.


Penny postage to all places in the British Empire except the
Australasian colonies and Cape Colony brought into operation.

December 28, 1898.


Death of Justin Smith Morrill, United States Senator.

December 30, 1898.


Death of Don Matias Romero,
Mexican ambassador to the United States.

1899.

January 1, 1899.
Formal relinquishment of the sovereignty of Spain over the
island of Cuba, by ceremonies performed at Havana.

January 4, 1899.
The Treaty of Peace between the United States and Spain sent
to the United States Senate by the President.
Proclamation of General Otis to the people of the Philippine
Islands, amending the instructions of the President.
January 5, 1899.
Proclamation of Aguinaldo to the people of the Philippine
Islands, counter to that of General Otis.

January 8, 1899.
Sensational resignation of the President of the civil section
of the French Court of Cassation.

January 11, 1899.


Second communication of the Tzar of Russia to other
governments on the subject of an International Conference
for the promotion of peace.

January 13, 1899.


Death of Representative Nelson Dingley, of Maine.

January 17, 1899.


Death of John Russell Young, librarian of Congress.

January 19, 1899.


Signing of an agreement between the government of Great
Britain and that of the Khedive of Egypt, establishing a
condominium or joint administration of government over the
Sudan.

January 20, 1899.


Appointment of the First Philippine Commission by the
President of the United States.

January 22, 1899.


Encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII. condemning certain
opinions called Americanism.

January 29, 1899.


Death of Dr. R. Fruin, Dutch historian.

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