Adrian S Wisnicki
Biographic Data
| ID | 1708682 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Adrian S Wisnicki |
| GIVEN NAMES | Adrian S |
| FAMILY NAME | Wisnicki |
| SIGNATURE | WISNICKI A S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Nebraska–Lincoln |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9145-3309 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Reflections on the Victorian(ist) Impulse to Totalize Africa
In this presentation, I offer some reflections on how Victorianists might understand nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discursive practices for mapping Africa. I introduce and problematize a series of Victorian-era maps or, more specifically, problematize what such maps represent conceptually, then offer some alternate means by which Victorianists might critically engage with cultural social, and political reality on the nineteenth-century …
Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom: Activism as Community-Building in Action
This essay reflects on the first three years of Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom 's work. While we initially perceived our project and corresponding website as a space to develop and circulate pedagogical materials, it has become clear that what we have accomplished since our launch goes far beyond mere content creation. In fact, the community-building portion of our project has become the driving force of our mission. For us, community-bui…
A Conversation about Livingstone Online and the Victorian Record of African Exploration
Livingstone Online is a digital museum and library that provides a global audience with public access to the vast written and visual legacies of David Livingstone (1813–1873), the British Victorian explorer of Africa. The site’s manuscripts span Livingstone’s adult life, ranging from family correspondence written in the 1830s to the field diaries of the 1870s composed in the Congo Basin. Additional illustrations, photographs, and other materials …
Fieldwork of Empire, 1840–1900: Intercultural Dynamics in the Production of British Expeditionary Literature
Fieldwork of Empire, 1840-1900: Intercultural Dynamics in the Production of British Expeditionary Literature examines the impact of non-western cultural, political, and social forces and agencies on the production of British expeditionary literature; it is a project of recovery. The book argues that such non-western impact was considerable, that it shaped the discursive and material dimensions of expeditionary literature, and that the impact exte…
Digital Victorian Studies Today
Digital Victorian studies, as the field might be called, has entered a new generation of endeavor. Of course, many older digital Victorian projects remain online and continue to be important resources for scholars working in a variety of areas. In the pantheon of the older projects we might include: The Victorian Web (Landow; 1987–2012), a long-standing project that presents an array of images and texts linked to the Victorian era as nodes in a c…
Conspiracy, Revolution, and Terrorism from Victorian Fiction to the Modern Novel
Drawing on critical and theoretical work by Miller, Boone, Foucault, Jameson, and others, as well as cultural history, affect theory, and contemporary psychiatric literature, the author defines and explores what he calls the Victorian "conspiracy narrative tradition"--a tradition which embraces classic Victorian works like Bleak House, Great Expectations, Villette, and The Moonstone, as well as later Victorian and Edwardian novels by James, Conra…
Journey into Digital Humanities: One Victorianist's Tale
In this essay, I document my experiences of working on the Livingstone Spectral Imaging Project, an international Digital Humanities initiative that I describe briefly below and that is fully set out on the project site. 1 In contrast to the project site, however, here I strive to be much more personal and self-reflective, and I discuss aspects of the project, my involvement in it, and its aftermath that I have not previously detailed. As a resul…
Victorian Field Notes from the Lualaba River, Congo
This article examines nineteenth-century British documentation on the Central African village Nyangwe and its inhabitants produced by the three British explorers (David Livingstone, Verney Lovett Cameron, and Henry Morton Stanley) who visited this settlement in the 1870s. In doing so, the article has four principal objectives. First, the article extends recent work on nineteenth-century African urbanization to consider how such urban history migh…
Travel Writing and Atrocities: Eyewitness Accounts of Colonialism in the Congo, Angola, and the Putumayo, by Robert M. Burroughs
Travel Writing and Atrocities: Eyewitness Accounts of Colonialism in the Congo, Angola, and the Putumayo, by Robert M. Burroughs, Routledge Research in Travel Writing, New York and London, Routledg
Rewriting agency: Samuel Baker, Bunyoro-Kitara and the Egyptian slave trade
This article combines colonial history/discourse analysis and postcolonial theory to explore how non-Western forces and agents can predetermine and even derail the discursive production of the narrative of the West. Drawing on the work of the Victorian explorer Samuel White Baker, I pursue two lines of analysis. First, I develop a genealogy of the key intercultural encounters documented by Baker during his 1863–5 travels in southern Sudan and Bun…
Interstitial Cartographer: David Livingstone and the Invention of South Central Africa
Upon returning to England in December 1856 after sixteen years in the interior of southern Africa, David Livingstone, the celebrated missionary and explorer, received an enthusiastic welcome. Already a household name because of his well-publicized discoveries and travels, Livingstone now found himself a hero of national stature. The Royal Geographical Society and the London Missionary Society organized large receptions in his honor; he received t…
Cartographical Quandaries: The Limits of Knowledge Production in Burton's and Speke's Search for the Source of the Nile
When he sighted the southern end of Lake Victoria on 3 August 1858, John Hanning Speke (1859b:397) realized that he had discovered the “source” of the White Nile, the most important tributary of the Nile proper, and so had “almost, if not entirely, solved a problem which it has been the first geographical desideratum of many thousand years to ascertain, and the ambition of the first monarchs of the world to unravel.” That Speke was an unknown exp…
Charting the Frontier: Indigenous Geography, Arab-Nyamwezi Caravans, and the East African Expedition of 1856-59
This article develops a cross-cultural and material analysis of the work of the East African Expedition of 1856-59, during which Richard Burton and John Speke "discovered" Lakes Tanganyika and Victoria. It explores the well-developed Arab-African trading network within which the EAE operated and suggests that the network, while facilitating the expedition's survey work, likewise circumscribed its findings. The result, best evidenced in the EAE's …
Reformulating the Empire's Hero Rhodesian Gold, Boer Veld-Craft, and the Displaced Scotsman in John Buchans The Thirty-Nine Steps
Reformulating the Empire’s Hero: Rhodesian Gold, Boer Veld-Craft, and the Displaced Scotsman in John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps1 Adrian Wisnicki By many accounts, in publishing The Thirty-Nine Steps (1914), John Buchan invented the modern spy thriller. Although there had been “invasion scare” and espionage narratives before—most notably works by William LeQueux, Phillips Oppenheim, and Erskine Childers—and although Buchan himself had previous…
Charting the Frontier: Indigenous Geography, Arab-Nyamwezi Caravans, and the East African Expedition of 1856-59
This article develops a cross-cultural and material analysis of the work of the East African Expedition of 1856-59, during which Richard Burton and John Speke "discovered" Lakes Tanganyika and Victoria. It explores the well-developed Arab-African trading network within which the EAE operated and suggests that the network, while facilitating the expedition's survey work, likewise circumscribed its findings. The result, best evidenced in the EAE's …
Rewriting agency: Samuel Baker, Bunyoro-Kitara and the Egyptian slave trade
This article combines colonial history/discourse analysis and postcolonial theory to explore how non-Western forces and agents can predetermine and even derail the discursive production of the narrative of the West. Drawing on the work of the Victorian explorer Samuel White Baker, I pursue two lines of analysis. First, I develop a genealogy of the key intercultural encounters documented by Baker during his 1863–5 travels in southern Sudan and Bun…
Victorian Field Notes from the Lualaba River, Congo
This article examines nineteenth-century British documentation on the Central African village Nyangwe and its inhabitants produced by the three British explorers (David Livingstone, Verney Lovett Cameron, and Henry Morton Stanley) who visited this settlement in the 1870s. In doing so, the article has four principal objectives. First, the article extends recent work on nineteenth-century African urbanization to consider how such urban history migh…
Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom: Activism as Community-Building in Action
This essay reflects on the first three years of Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom 's work. While we initially perceived our project and corresponding website as a space to develop and circulate pedagogical materials, it has become clear that what we have accomplished since our launch goes far beyond mere content creation. In fact, the community-building portion of our project has become the driving force of our mission. For us, community-bui…
Interstitial Cartographer: David Livingstone and the Invention of South Central Africa
Upon returning to England in December 1856 after sixteen years in the interior of southern Africa, David Livingstone, the celebrated missionary and explorer, received an enthusiastic welcome. Already a household name because of his well-publicized discoveries and travels, Livingstone now found himself a hero of national stature. The Royal Geographical Society and the London Missionary Society organized large receptions in his honor; he received t…
Reformulating the Empire's Hero Rhodesian Gold, Boer Veld-Craft, and the Displaced Scotsman in John Buchans The Thirty-Nine Steps
Reformulating the Empire’s Hero: Rhodesian Gold, Boer Veld-Craft, and the Displaced Scotsman in John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps1 Adrian Wisnicki By many accounts, in publishing The Thirty-Nine Steps (1914), John Buchan invented the modern spy thriller. Although there had been “invasion scare” and espionage narratives before—most notably works by William LeQueux, Phillips Oppenheim, and Erskine Childers—and although Buchan himself had previous…
Cartographical Quandaries: The Limits of Knowledge Production in Burton's and Speke's Search for the Source of the Nile
When he sighted the southern end of Lake Victoria on 3 August 1858, John Hanning Speke (1859b:397) realized that he had discovered the “source” of the White Nile, the most important tributary of the Nile proper, and so had “almost, if not entirely, solved a problem which it has been the first geographical desideratum of many thousand years to ascertain, and the ambition of the first monarchs of the world to unravel.” That Speke was an unknown exp…
Charting the Frontier: Indigenous Geography, Arab-Nyamwezi Caravans, and the East African Expedition of 1856-59
This article develops a cross-cultural and material analysis of the work of the East African Expedition of 1856-59, during which Richard Burton and John Speke "discovered" Lakes Tanganyika and Victoria. It explores the well-developed Arab-African trading network within which the EAE operated and suggests that the network, while facilitating the expedition's survey work, likewise circumscribed its findings. The result, best evidenced in the EAE's …
Interstitial Cartographer: David Livingstone and the Invention of South Central Africa
Upon returning to England in December 1856 after sixteen years in the interior of southern Africa, David Livingstone, the celebrated missionary and explorer, received an enthusiastic welcome. Already a household name because of his well-publicized discoveries and travels, Livingstone now found himself a hero of national stature. The Royal Geographical Society and the London Missionary Society organized large receptions in his honor; he received t…
Rewriting agency: Samuel Baker, Bunyoro-Kitara and the Egyptian slave trade
This article combines colonial history/discourse analysis and postcolonial theory to explore how non-Western forces and agents can predetermine and even derail the discursive production of the narrative of the West. Drawing on the work of the Victorian explorer Samuel White Baker, I pursue two lines of analysis. First, I develop a genealogy of the key intercultural encounters documented by Baker during his 1863–5 travels in southern Sudan and Bun…
Travel Writing and Atrocities: Eyewitness Accounts of Colonialism in the Congo, Angola, and the Putumayo, by Robert M. Burroughs
Travel Writing and Atrocities: Eyewitness Accounts of Colonialism in the Congo, Angola, and the Putumayo, by Robert M. Burroughs, Routledge Research in Travel Writing, New York and London, Routledg
Conspiracy, Revolution, and Terrorism from Victorian Fiction to the Modern Novel
Drawing on critical and theoretical work by Miller, Boone, Foucault, Jameson, and others, as well as cultural history, affect theory, and contemporary psychiatric literature, the author defines and explores what he calls the Victorian "conspiracy narrative tradition"--a tradition which embraces classic Victorian works like Bleak House, Great Expectations, Villette, and The Moonstone, as well as later Victorian and Edwardian novels by James, Conra…
Journey into Digital Humanities: One Victorianist's Tale
In this essay, I document my experiences of working on the Livingstone Spectral Imaging Project, an international Digital Humanities initiative that I describe briefly below and that is fully set out on the project site. 1 In contrast to the project site, however, here I strive to be much more personal and self-reflective, and I discuss aspects of the project, my involvement in it, and its aftermath that I have not previously detailed. As a resul…
Victorian Field Notes from the Lualaba River, Congo
This article examines nineteenth-century British documentation on the Central African village Nyangwe and its inhabitants produced by the three British explorers (David Livingstone, Verney Lovett Cameron, and Henry Morton Stanley) who visited this settlement in the 1870s. In doing so, the article has four principal objectives. First, the article extends recent work on nineteenth-century African urbanization to consider how such urban history migh…
Digital Victorian Studies Today
Digital Victorian studies, as the field might be called, has entered a new generation of endeavor. Of course, many older digital Victorian projects remain online and continue to be important resources for scholars working in a variety of areas. In the pantheon of the older projects we might include: The Victorian Web (Landow; 1987–2012), a long-standing project that presents an array of images and texts linked to the Victorian era as nodes in a c…
Fieldwork of Empire, 1840–1900: Intercultural Dynamics in the Production of British Expeditionary Literature
Fieldwork of Empire, 1840-1900: Intercultural Dynamics in the Production of British Expeditionary Literature examines the impact of non-western cultural, political, and social forces and agencies on the production of British expeditionary literature; it is a project of recovery. The book argues that such non-western impact was considerable, that it shaped the discursive and material dimensions of expeditionary literature, and that the impact exte…
A Conversation about Livingstone Online and the Victorian Record of African Exploration
Livingstone Online is a digital museum and library that provides a global audience with public access to the vast written and visual legacies of David Livingstone (1813–1873), the British Victorian explorer of Africa. The site’s manuscripts span Livingstone’s adult life, ranging from family correspondence written in the 1830s to the field diaries of the 1870s composed in the Congo Basin. Additional illustrations, photographs, and other materials …
Reflections on the Victorian(ist) Impulse to Totalize Africa
In this presentation, I offer some reflections on how Victorianists might understand nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discursive practices for mapping Africa. I introduce and problematize a series of Victorian-era maps or, more specifically, problematize what such maps represent conceptually, then offer some alternate means by which Victorianists might critically engage with cultural social, and political reality on the nineteenth-century …
Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom: Activism as Community-Building in Action
This essay reflects on the first three years of Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom 's work. While we initially perceived our project and corresponding website as a space to develop and circulate pedagogical materials, it has become clear that what we have accomplished since our launch goes far beyond mere content creation. In fact, the community-building portion of our project has become the driving force of our mission. For us, community-bui…
History (13 works) · Art (9 works) · History (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Literature (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Art history (5 works) · Geography (5 works)