bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
On Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang
Authors: Kinsella John
Published: September 2017

A key to understanding Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang is to realise that this is a book about speech and text, witness, and the question of the reliable or unreliable narrator. It explores the need to explain one’s actions, motives and character in the context of possible histories and their receptions by personal and public audiences. The narrative of Ned Kelly is constructed for a private audience, though made public through the machine of research and public interest. Or so Carey directs his reader. As a child, Kelly hears tales of Cuchulainn and Irish mythology, of the legends and terrors of the district, but only spends a limited time at school because of poverty and his father’s death. Kelly’s great moment of childhood bravery, saving a boy from drowning, is rewarded by the boy’s publican father – a sash with Kelly’s heroics blazoned across it is awarded in front of the school. Text is the hero here. And though resentment surfaces regarding its value, it’s the pride that links his narrative together....
Tales of place: Barbara Temperton’s Southern Edge
Authors: Kinsella John
Published: September 2017

Barbara Temperton is interested in where folklore and folktales intersect with fact, reportage and place (and their spatial geographies). She has taken tales come out of specific locations –especially around Albany and the surrounding coastline – and merged the figurative and the narrative. She tells tales in verse, but that is not all she does – she shifts the stories, language and locations of these tales to make them much more than the sum of their parts. In ...
On Contemporary Asian Australian Poets
Authors: Kinsella John
Published: September 2017

This is one of the more vital, relevant and significant anthologies of poetry to appear in Australia, and as such makes its mark in any consideration of conversation around place/s coming out of Australia. It has been compiled with a purpose as sophisticated and complex as the arguments for existence that it posits. It is an anthology not so much of ‘region’ (it’s a massive region!) as of the experience of being or having been from Asian heritages in contemporary Australia....
Corthna, Carraiglea, Anchor Lodge – from Schull Journals
Authors: Kinsella John
Published: September 2017

Back to the Corthna house after a day of preliminary ‘exploring’ of the Mizen Head, Sheep’s Head and the pass into County Kerry. There’s a stench of oil fumes through the house. I can taste it in my mouth, it’s sharp to the eyes, and is causing severe headaches. It’s a disgrace. We’re searching for another house. We love the area, though the radar domes (bombed by the IRA in the 1970s) on Mount Gabriel, highest point on the Mizen, cast a shadow over the area. We are 5 km away from them here. They infiltrate one’s nights and days. And now toxic slurry is being spread across the fields, flooding the house to conjoin with the oil fumes, penetrating every cell of this house, even saturating the linen. We feel invaded....
More from a Schull Journal
Authors: Kinsella John
Published: September 2017

Went to Macroom yesterday via the Gearagh, and home via the ‘Mouth of the Glen’. Saw an entire forest devastated by the storm and thousands of trees down across the county. Wrote a ‘devastation’ poem on return. Bereft.

The Sea-mist Scenario (of Place)...
Further extracts from a Schull Journal
Authors: Kinsella John
Published: September 2017

Just back from my walk up Ardmanagh, down to Toormore-Goleen Road and on to Newman’s to talk with John D’Alton about our poem-photos collaboration; then down to the pier, back up into town and down to the 80 kmh sign on the road to Ballydehob, and back. Most of it in sunshine. Strong, gusty breeze, heavy swell in Roaringwater Bay, and plants/shrubs coming into bud....
From a Schull Journal
Authors: Kinsella John
Published: September 2017

Farmers in Ireland (Cork a focus) are ‘burning, herbiciding and digging’ their ‘nature’ habitats in revenge on the EU for not granting subsidies for un-farmed land. We’re just back from a drive on the peninsula where we saw vast areas of burnt habitat – up almost vertical mountains and other places that can’t be ‘farmed’. Read an article in the ...
Terms and conditions of writing place?
Authors: Kinsella John
Published: September 2017

After a brisk walk up Ardmanagh Road, with rain and hail predicted (though it doesn’t arrive till 3 pm), the furze bristling with intense bumble-bee activity, I am thinking over the terms and conditions of engaging with and writing place, I’ve come up with a set of notions to consider:...
Irredentism
Authors: Kinsella John
Published: September 2017

In the context of ‘Putin’s Russia’ (which it is not!) annexing the Crimea, the word ‘Irredentism’ is being bandied about. According to the Guardian newspaper of the 28/03/2014 in an article by Luke Harding, ‘Talbott was referring to the doctrine that a country is entitled to control areas or territories outside its borders to which it has an ethnic or historical claim. The word comes from the Italian for unredeemed – ...
Storage
Authors: Kinsella John
Published: September 2017

Another batch of our ‘stuff’ (books, papers, kitchen items, clothes etc.) collected from the storage lock-up in Skibbereen where we placed all we had in Ireland while we were away and between rentals. Everything wrapped in plastic against the dust. In the boxes are our poetry manuscripts-in-progress, in a bizarre state of non-being. In the process of their unwrapping, their disinterring, there is something over-invested and painfully private. They’re not ...
The place of reading: the geographical context of (re)reading The Jindyworobaks and self – from Schull to an imaginary Australia
Authors: Kinsella John
Published: September 2017

1.

I picked up a copy of Brian Elliot’s volume The Jindyworobaks
1 in a second-hand bookshop in Skibbereen. I am thrilled to have it as much as I detest (most of) the values of the ‘Jindys’ – I find it useful and generative re-encountering them ...
Harvesting the grass (from a Schull Journal)
Authors: Kinsella John
Published: September 2017

It’s the time of mowing and hay-cutting here in Schull. Everywhere fields of cut grass ready for baling. Everywhere around the village the sound of whippersnippers. I think of John’s (the Guru’s) report today from Jam Tree Gully (which he’s been looking over in our absence): that there was 100 mm! (accumulated over a couple of weeks) in the rain-gauge. He planted 17 flat-topped Yates at the bottom of Bird Gully and will plant the rest of the tray of 30 next Wednesday when he’s back there to ‘supervise’ the cleaning of the 90,000-litre rainwater tank by the tank-cleaning specialist. He says the wild oats are already very high there....
Last entries in Volume Three of a Schull Journal
Authors: Kinsella John
Published: September 2017

On Saturday afternoon we travelled over to Tralee (Trá Li). It didn’t greatly appeal to us, but we didn’t get a chance to interact with it much. Tim and I caught a sliver – through the gates – of a hurling match, which was great. We saw the sliotar fly and someone scoop it on to their hurley and run with it. Tim was excited because he plays hurling at school and is a pretty full bottle on its history, teams, players and statistics. We drove over to Camp (under the mountains) and saw the bay – incredible wetlands/marshes and sandy beaches: a haven for birdlife....
Coda: changing route (October 2015)
Authors: Kinsella John
Published: September 2017

The ‘return’ – or desire for return, or even fear of being forced to return when one has escaped a threatening situation – is inherent to polysituatedness. We return in our imaginations to reconfigure, to make different regarding where we’ve ended up, or where we’ve managed to reach (or escape) to. Many leave and hunger for the old place, the familiar zones of growing up or habitation. The migrant makes new reaching into the old, the place is reconfigured in part, and sometimes in great part. Even being in many places as part of a transitory life, or going out from home to make other dwellings to take back to your notion of where you come from, entails, necessitates, the folding of return into return into return....
Judges and the idea of ‘principle’ in constitutional adjudication
Authors: Hickey Tom
Published: September 2017

Tom Hickey’s chapter seeks to reconcile the principles-oriented contribution that constitutional adjudication (or judicial review) can make to overall public deliberation with the fact of reasonable disagreement on rights. Part I assesses the school of ‘legal constitutionalism’ in the context of Irish constitutional law and experience. Part II introduces a distinctive way of understanding the role of principle in judicial review; one that works from a conception of deliberation that – in contrast to contemporary deliberative democracy theory – embraces disagreement and thus, it is argued, better accounts for the political and contestable nature of rights. The chapter then closes by combining the ideas in these parts to argue that the intuition shared by many to support outright judicial supremacy does not stand up to scrutiny, but that the primary cause of that intuition – the principled nature of judicial review – demands and justifies a more constrained form of judicial power.
Subsidiarity of ECHR and O’Keeffe v. Ireland: a response to Mr Justice Hardiman
Authors: O’Mahony Conor
Published: September 2017

Conor O’Mahon’s chapter offers a detailed response to the critique of Mr Justice Hardiman in chapter 6. This chapter submits that ‘essential grievance’, which is the object of critique in Mr Justice Hardiman’s chapter, while well developed in the jurisprudence of the ECtHR, is only one route to admissibility. The decision of the Grand Chamber also rested on a separate and independent ground – namely the futility of domestic proceedings on the direct liability issue. O’Mahony argues, contra Mr Justice Hardiman, that the reasons given by the Chamber and Grand Chamber were each sufficient in themselves to declare the case admissible, and that the decision was entirely in line with the jurisprudence of the ECtHR on admissibility.
Judicial appointments in Ireland: the potential for reform
Authors: Cahillane Laura
Published: September 2017

Laura Cahillane’s chapter aims is to consider the current procedure for judicial appointments and put forward some tentative suggestions for reform in an attempt to begin a debate on this area. Part II of the chapter examines problems with the existing system for judicial appointments, including their political nature, the lack of transparency in existing processes, the lack of diversity in existing appointments, and limitations inherent in the process. The chapter then considers several possible avenues for reform, including reducing the number of names which the appointments board can recommend, introducing an obligation to interview candidates, consider the possibility of ranking candidates, require the Government to publish reasons for its choice, involve opposition parties, reform membership of the appointments board, amend eligibility criteria and require the board to consider questions of diversity.
Speaking to power: mechanisms for judicial–executive dialogue
Authors: O’Dowd John
Published: September 2017

John O’Dowd’s chapter concentrates upon the relationship between the executive and judiciary, specifically the communication, or lack thereof, between these institutions. He refers to some recent controversial episodes where this lack of communication has been problematic and suggests looking to Canada for potential solutions. The chapter concludes that a judicial council is no panacea for the ills that can afflict the relationship between politicians and judges. Individual judges (and especially the Chief Justice and other court presidents) will retain a role in bringing the concerns of the judiciary to the executive’s attention and sometimes also to the attention of the public and this inevitably runs the risk of cutting across politicians’ own priorities and sensitivities.
‘The union makes us strong’: National Union of Railwaymen v. Sullivan and the demise of vocationalism in Ireland
Authors: Coffey Donal
Published: September 2017

Donal Coffey’s chapter examines the case of National Union of Railwaymen v. Sullivan which held part III of the Trade Union Act 1941 unconstitutional. The chapter contends that the importance of this case is related to the manner in which it undermined the vocational project in Ireland, which was an ongoing concern in 1945 when the decision was handed down. It also marks a decisive turn in the development of judicial review in Ireland. This chapter seeks to show that the decision, although poor, played an important role in the failure of the vocational project in Ireland. The chapter concludes that in terms of judicial rigor, the decision in National Union of Railwaymen v. Sullivan is not of the highest standard. In terms of its historical importance in shaping a key debate about the future political and civic development of the State, however, the chapter concludes it is clear that it was a constitutional case of the first rank.
‘Towards a better Ireland’:1 Donal Barrington and the Irish Constitution
Authors: Finn Tomás
Published: September 2017

Tomás Finn’s chapter is concerned with the consideration that Donal Barrington, a judge and public intellectual, gave to the Constitution, the basic law of the country, and the balance its Articles struck with regard to relations between Church and State and Northern Ireland. It considers his vision for Ireland, how this changed and the extent to which he influenced attitudes towards the Constitution. Of particular interest is how from the 1950s to the 1970s his stance evolved on the Constitution and specifically on those Articles that related to moral issues and to the national question. The chapter concludes that Barrington’s role was to put forward ideas which he hoped would inform intellectual debate and persuade governmental institutions to adopt new policies.
‘This dreadful machine’: the spectacle of death and the aesthetics of crowd control
Authors: Galbally Emma , Brunström Conrad
Published: September 2017

This chapter considers the context of the French Revolution and the spectacle of accelerated and mechanised decapitation and their joint influence on the Gothic imagination. The focus of the discussion is on stage representation, and the anxieties generated by attempts to represent insurrectionary violence in the 1790s in front of potentially volatile and unpredictable audiences. James Boaden’s dramatisation of Matthew Lewis’ The Monk is adapted (in part) to neutralise the representation of mob rule. Meanwhile, George Reynolds’ Bantry Bay, staged during a unique window of opportunity in 1797, attempts to re-imagine potential insurgents in loyalist terms. Paradoxically, the attempt to control the theatre through licensing had created larger venues than ever before, making audiences potentially more threatening.
Deadly interrogations: cycles of death and transcendence in Byron’s Gothic
Authors: White Adam
Published: September 2017

A number of Byron’s works – in particular The Two Foscari but also ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’, Manfred, and Sardanapalus – can be located firmly within the Gothic. The tyrannical burden exerted by ancestry, for example, is a Gothic theme seen in these works, while ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ and The Two Foscari also feature the Gothic scenarios of incarceration and torture: in both cases that which is loved and familial repeatedly becomes a source of pain and death. Yet Byron also moves beyond the Gothic view of death by presenting so many figures, from Manfred to Jacopo Foscari, who appear to actively exhibit a death drive, which is dramatised as a means of transcending different forms and conditions of imprisonment and torture. Death is a repeated event in these works where significant and extended claims are also made by Byron for the existence of variously imagined (mental, physical, and textual) afterlives.
Death cults in Gothic ‘Lost World’ fiction
Authors: Hartley John Cameron
Published: September 2017

This chapter examines the ‘Lost World’ genre, a staple of late-Victorian popular fiction, exemplified by H. Rider Haggard’s stories featuring Allan Quatermain, and
Ayesha, known as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. These fin-de-siècle tales, while ostensibly celebrating British Imperialism and the continuation of colonial power, reveal layers of anxiety concerning degeneration, the collapse of civilisation, the rise of the Victorian ‘new woman’, and perhaps most potently the fear of death. Canadian writer James De Mille, in his book A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, inverted Victorian values to satirise the capitalist economy, and the glorification of war, by creating the Lost World of the Kosekin where wealth is a burden and death worshipped. The presentation of the Lost World as a Gothic Space allows for a critical examination of the way that Victorian cultural certainties were challenged, by divergent belief systems, and the mystery and terror of death.
Dead again: zombies and the spectre of cultural decline
Authors: Pangborn Matthew
Published: September 2017

This chapter investigates the Gothic as a mode of writing that escaped generic literary boundaries during the British debates over the French Revolution in order to express more widespread fears of cultural decline. Positing the current ubiquity of the zombie as a resurgence of this Gothic mode, the chapter explores zombie-apocalypse texts as expressing a return of Malthusian worries about population growth, climate change, financial instability, and energy insecurity. The zombie-apocalypse genre, popularized by George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), released within a few years of U.S. peak oil production, has become a mainstay of global cinema, fiction, and television in the recent international scramble for alternative energy sources. These texts, like the Gothic in its first heyday, demonstrate a conflicted desire both to confront and dismiss problems that seem as inconceivable as they appear to be insoluble. Today’s zombie stands, then, much as the envisioned undead did for earlier British writers like Edmund Burke and Mary Wollstonecraft, as the spectre of regression so unimaginable within the reigning cultural narrative of the time that its nightmarish possibility may be repressed by the very same spectacle of apocalyptic carnage used to figure it.
Through the opaque veil: the Gothic and death in Russian realism
Authors: Bowers Katherine
Published: September 2017

This chapter examines nineteenth-century Russian writers who drew on the Gothic in order to explore the experience of death, existential terror, and the possibility of an afterlife within the bounds of literary realism. In Turgenev’s story ‘Bezhin Meadow’ and Chekhov’s sketch ‘A Dead Body’, Gothic language and imagery create a narrative frame that contextualizes an encounter between peasants and a traveller focused around a discussion of death. This chapter argues that the Gothic is juxtaposed with folk belief in these works, to underscore that both the peasants’ dvoeverie and educated Russia’s interest in natural sciences, materialist philosophy, and the pseudo-science of spiritualism represent attempts to systematise and explain the unknown. The Gothic mediates the tension between science and faith, the irrational and the prosaic, and the abject and the mysterious, while allowing these ruminations to remain ambiguously unfinalised for the reader.
‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’
Authors: Chance Helena
Published: September 2017

Industrialists exploited the powerful cultural, symbolic and metaphorical meanings of gardens and parks to ‘engineer’ particular feelings, ideas, modes of behaviour and well-being amongst employees and consumers, particularly women. Gardens and landscaping had at times been employed for these means since the beginning of the factory system, but by the end of the century, landscaping at factories was becoming more sophisticated in terms of design and amenity. In America from the 1880s and to a lesser extent in Britain from the 1900s, the expertise of professional landscapists with specialist design and horticultural knowledge made it possible to enhance the beauty, function and symbolic value of the available space with the ultimate aims of increasing productivity and profit. Whilst promoted as a means to create a healthy environment, the union of gardens and factories was a form of social engineering to manipulate employees and to promote industrial capitalism as healthy, respectable, responsible and sustainable; therefore gardens and parks became agencies of control.
Introduction
Authors: Benthall Jonathan
Published: September 2017

The Introduction summarizes the book’s content under the following headings. Since all the Chapters have been previously published elsewhere, it also adds some complementary material to bring the book up to date on some important topics:
Part One: Chapters 1 to 9: Islamic charities
Summary of the Chapters
Some recurrent themes
Faith Based Organizations and “cultural sensitivity”
Islamic Relief Worldwide
The West Bank zakat committees
Banking problems
Towards a more complete description
Pakistan
Turkey
Domestic Islamic charity in the United Kingdom
A zakat movement?
Towards a more comparative approach
Part Two: Chapters 10 to 17: Islamic humanism
Islamic charities, Faith Based Organizations and the international aid system
Authors: Benthall Jonathan
Published: September 2017

This chapter outlines the historical background of the growth of Islamic charities over the last few decades, and of Faith Based Organizations in general. It also discusses the humanitarian consequences of the clampdown on Islamic charities post 9/11, and questions the academic standard of some counter-terrorist studies that have authorized this clampdown. It calls for sympathetic steps to ease the way for those Islamic charities that accept the principles of regulation and monitoring. It argues that high values and ideals are better expressed by actions than by mere dialogue. Islamic Relief Worldwide showed what can be done when it was appointed to represent all the major British relief agencies on television to launch a joint appeal for the Kashmir earthquake in 2005. Failure to recognize the potential of Islamic charities means losing a significant opportunity to defuse the purported “clash of civilizations”.
Islamic philanthropy in Indonesia
Authors: Benthall Jonathan
Published: September 2017

This Chapter republishes a review of Amelia Fauzia’s book Faith and the State: Islamic philanthropy in Indonesia, originally published in the Asian Journal of Social Science in 2014. Most research published in English since 2000 on Islamic philanthropy and humanitarianism has concentrated on the Middle East, South and Central Asia, and Europe and the USA. Fauzia’s impressive monograph on Indonesia bears comparison with any of this research. She explores how zakat (the Islamic tithe) and sadaqa (optional charity) have been implemented in various ways in Indonesia. Her guiding theme is the tension between the private or personal imperatives of the Islamic revelation and public conduct where persuasion or coercion can be effective, including that exerted by the modern state. She gives special attention to the “modernist” Muhammadiyah, founded in 1912. The Chapter proposes an angle for historical research: to what extent did Christian institutions introduced by colonial powers affect the development of Islamic charities in Indonesia and elsewhere?
Religious persecution and conflict in the twenty-first century
Authors: Benthall Jonathan
Published: September 2017

This Chapter evaluates the incidence of religious persecution and conflict in our own century, as quantified and tabulated by two social scientists, Brian J. Grim and Roger Finke – with special reference to the plight of Christians and other religious minorities (including Muslim minorities such as the Ahmadiyya) in a number of Muslim-majority countries. It first appeared in the Times Literary Supplement on 1 June 2012, under the heading “Repression by numbers”. Reservations are expressed about the value of vast global comparisons such as are presented by Grim and Finke, but it is argued that such an approach is defensible provided that one is alert to possible bias or misjudgements that can warp the whole enterprise. The plight of Christians and other religious minorities in several Muslim-majority countries has become still more urgent since the publication of this book, with the rise of Isis in the Middle East and Boko Haram in Nigeria. This Chapter also mentions the anthropologist Chris Hann’s critique of what he calls “religious humanrightsism”, i.e. the claim that all religious traditions deserve to be treated equally.
Peace and the private sector: Northern Ireland’s regional experience of globalised trends
Authors: Hayward Katy , Magennis Eoin
Published: September 2017

Chapter nine explores the role of NGOs in assessing business and the private sector in promoting peace in Northern Ireland. Analyses of Northern Ireland’s peace process tend to concentrate on the public or non-profit sector. The role of the private sector has been more or less ignored. The lack of scholarly focus may reflect the traditional gap in comprehension and cooperation between business and peace. This, however, is changing. Liberal IR assumptions about the spillover effects of economic development have morphed into analysis of the potential for globalisation to improve international connections, thus making the recourse to violence less likely. At a sub-state level, the same liberal premises are present in the concept of business-based peacebuilding, which identifies a natural complementarity between the objectives of private sector actors and the maintenance of a stable, sustainable peace.
Assessing external funding supports for the Northern Ireland peace process
Authors: Buchanan Sandra
Published: September 2017

Chapter ten explores the role of external economic aid in conflict resolution and since the signing of the Agreement to promote peacebuilding. In moving from violence to peace, most efforts have concentrated on the removal of direct violence through top level political engagement, usually over the short-term. However, a number of external funding programmes have focused their efforts on all levels of society, supporting the Northern Ireland peace process over the long-term through social and economic development. By focusing on the local, they have attempted to redress the root cause of conflict in Northern Ireland. Under the guise of the International Fund for Ireland and the EU Peace programmes (I, II, III), they have been responsible for a huge increase in grassroots level involvement in the region’s conflict transformation process, prompting previously unforeseen levels of citizen empowerment and local ownership of the process. Consequently this has assisted in sustaining the peace process during its most challenging political periods.
Responsibility, justice, and reconciliation in Northern Ireland
Authors: McGrattan Cillian
Published: September 2017

The final substantive chapter explores the difficulty and importance of achieving reconciliation after the Agreement. Groups in Northern Ireland need to focus more on taking responsibility for their role in continuing sectarian differences rather than looking for reconciliation from or with others. Previous research has stressed the need for reconciliation, social learning, and dialogue as key mechanisms that allow a transformation of former enemies. Memory studies have recently looked to constructivism and studies of international norms in analysing the resilience of collective memory and the politics of apology, while commemoration studies have increasingly explored questions of globalisation and the transfer of internationally recognized tropes in producing memorial cultures. The chapter maps the various initiatives and policy proposals that have been developed in Northern Ireland, which have increasingly looked not only to international examples, but also the importance of cultivating US involvement.
Conclusion: Northern Ireland and International Relations theory
Authors: White Timothy J.
Published: September 2017

The concluding chapter summarizes the major points of the chapters and identify some common themes that emerge from the analysis provided by the contributors. This chapter explains how International Relations theory is furthered by the attempt to apply the case study method to explore the causal mechanisms associated with different theories. While the Northern Ireland case confounds the theoretical predictions of multi-lateral governance and the literature on decommissioning, certain theoretical approaches, especially those emanating from constructivism, proved useful in explaining the arrival of a peace settlement in Northern Ireland. Constructivism has the advantage of allowing the researcher to focus on the unique characteristics of the actors involved and the ideas and ideologies they devised and employed to pursue their interests, including peace.
Getting Risk Right
Authors: Kabat Geoffrey C.
Published: September 2017

Do cell phones cause brain cancer? Does BPA threaten our health? How safe are certain dietary supplements, especially those containing exotic herbs or small amounts of toxic substances? Is the HPV vaccine safe? We depend on science and medicine as never before, yet there is widespread misinformation and confusion, amplified by the media, regarding what influences our health. In Getting Risk Right, Geoffrey C. Kabat shows how science works—and sometimes doesn't—and what separates these two very different outcomes.
Kabat seeks to help us distinguish between claims that are supported by solid science and those that are the result of poorly designed or misinterpreted studies. By exploring different examples, he explains why certain risks are worth worrying about, while others are not. He emphasizes the variable quality of research in contested areas of health risks, as well as the professional, political, and methodological factors that can distort the research process. Drawing on recent systematic critiques of biomedical research and on insights from behavioral psychology, Getting Risk Right examines factors both internal and external to the science that can influence what results get attention and how questionable results can be used to support a particular narrative concerning an alleged public health threat. In this book, Kabat provides a much-needed antidote to what has been called “an epidemic of false claims.”
Splendors and Miseries of Associations
Authors: Kabat Geoffrey C.
Published: September 2017

Studies reporting associations between an exposure and a disease most often come from observational studies. These studies, while useful, cannot be taken at face value, and it is crucial to understand that “association” does not equate to “causation.” However, because it is challenging to identify important causes of complex chronic diseases, there is a tendency to latch on to findings that appear to point to a cause. If science in this area means anything, it means the uncompromisingly critical assessment of the relevant evidence bearing on a question.
Do Cell Phones Cause Brain Cancer?
Authors: Kabat Geoffrey C.
Published: September 2017

The possibility that using a cell phone could cause brain cancer first arose in the early 1990s and has been the subject of research since then. Radiofrequency waves used in cellular communications are far too weak to induce cancer by any known mechanism, and most scientific and regulatory bodies have found the evidence for health effects from use of mobile phones to be unconvincing. Nevertheless, positive results, largely from a single group of researchers, and an ambiguous assessment from single agency have kept the controversy alive. New studies are in progress.
Hormonal Confusion
Authors: Kabat Geoffrey C.
Published: September 2017

In the early 1990s concern emerged that hormonal compounds present in small amounts in food and water – “environmental estrogens” -- could be having subtle effects on human health and wildlife. This concern led to the formulation of the “endocrine-disruption hypothesis,” which has received widespread attention. Over twenty years of research have shown that environmental exposures to these substances is generally minute and are dwarfed by hormonal (phytoestrogenic) compounds in food, as well as by hormone therapy used by some women. Nevertheless, the issue of “endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the environment” is currently under debate within the European Union and elsewhere.
HPV, Cancer, and Beyond
Authors: Kabat Geoffrey C.
Published: September 2017

For over one hundred years, cervical cancer has presented a conundrum. In the 1960s and 1970s most virologists believed that herpes simplex virus-2 caused the disease. However, based clinical and animal evidence, the biologist Harald zur Hausen posited that human papillomaviruses (HPV) were the cause. It took him and his colleagues eleven years to prove that specific types of the virus were capable of causing cancer. This discovery led to a cascade of work elucidating the role of HPV in a number of cancers and, thirty years later, led to the development of the first vaccines to prevent infection with the virus.
Conclusion
Authors: Kabat Geoffrey C.
Published: September 2017

In a pithy little book published in 2014 titled Are We All Scientific Experts Now?, the sociologist of science Harry Collins explored public attitudes toward science in an attempt to explain recent phenomena like the antivaccine movement and climate skepticism.1 Collins noted that the public’s trust in science has declined from its apogee in the decades following World War II, and he attributed this decline to a simplistic reading of Thomas Kuhn and the rise of social relativism, starting in the 1970s. He went on to provide a useful inventory of different types of expertise to distinguish what is special about ...
Frontier’s Bright Economic Outlook
Authors: Dimitrijević Marko , Mistele Timothy
Published: September 2017

Describes frontier markets’ fast growth (71 of the world's 75 fastest-growing economies are frontier markets) and argues that the strong macroeconomic fundamentals of today’s frontier markets, including shrinking or well-financed current account deficits, lower debt levels, moderate inflation, and increased foreign direct investment, will help these markets mimic and accelerate the path to emergence taken by today’s mainstream emerging markets
Frontier Equity Markets Offer Value and Diversification
Authors: Dimitrijević Marko , Mistele Timothy
Published: September 2017

Makes the case for frontier market equities on a valuation basis: they’re cheap, they trade in inefficient markets, and they provide portfolio diversification
The Pitfalls of Passive Management and Advantages of Active Management in Frontier Markets
Authors: Dimitrijević Marko , Mistele Timothy
Published: September 2017

Addresses the pitfalls of passive management of frontier market investments and makes the argument for active, and sometimes activist, frontier markets investing.
Other Risks in Frontier Markets
Authors: Dimitrijević Marko , Mistele Timothy
Published: September 2017

Looks at the macro- and microeconomic and “headline” risks of investing in frontier markets.
Between the Jew and Writing
Authors: Hammerschlag Sarah
Published: September 2017

Considers Derrida's earliest publications and Levinas's role in them. It argues that already Derrida was working out a conception of freedom in relation to and in contrast with Levinas's "Difficult Freedom," a notion developed in his volume of that name on Judaism.
To Lose one’s Head
Authors: Hammerschlag Sarah
Published: September 2017

Shows how Derrida's political thinking developed in relation to his understanding of literature and argues that for Derrida, literature provides a means to call into question the sovereign subject of liberal political theory.
Literature and the Political-Theological Remains
Authors: Hammerschlag Sarah
Published: September 2017

Argues that Derrida's conception of the relation of literature and religion can provide an important intervention into the recent recovery of Political Theology.
Epilogue
Authors: Hammerschlag Sarah
Published: September 2017

Ten pages into Gift of Death there is an intriguing note to Derrida’s 1991 seminar on the secret: “Literature concerning the secret is almost always organized around scenes and intrigues that deal with death,” it begins. This is a theme, he adds, that he had attempted to demonstrate in the seminar, “referring most often to ‘American’ examples.”...
The Gnostic New Age
Authors: DeConick April D.
Published: September 2017

Gnosticism is a countercultural spirituality that forever changed the practice of Christianity. Before it emerged in the second century, passage to the afterlife required obedience to God and king. Gnosticism proposed that human beings were manifestations of the divine, unsettling the hierarchical foundations of the ancient world. Subversive and revolutionary, Gnostics taught that prayer and mediation could bring human beings into an ecstatic spiritual union with a transcendent deity. This mystical strain affected not just Christianity but many other religions, and it characterizes our understanding of the purpose and meaning of religion today.
In The Gnostic New Age, April D. DeConick recovers this vibrant underground history to prove that Gnosticism was not suppressed or defeated by the Catholic Church long ago, nor was the movement a fabrication to justify the violent repression of alternative forms of Christianity. Gnosticism alleviated human suffering, soothing feelings of existential brokenness and alienation through the promise of renewal as God. DeConick begins in ancient Egypt and follows with the rise of Gnosticism in the Middle Ages, the advent of theosophy and other occult movements in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and contemporary New Age spiritual philosophies. As these theories find expression in science-fiction and fantasy films, DeConick sees evidence of Gnosticism’s next incarnation. Her work emphasizes the universal, countercultural appeal of a movement that embodies much more than a simple challenge to religious authority.
Introduction
Authors: DeConick April D.
Published: September 2017

In 1982, I was finishing my first year of college. I was enrolled in a two-year program to become a registered nurse and had been doing rounds on the oncology floor of the local hospital and in geriatrics. I was eighteen years old and any romantic notions I may have had about health care when I started school vanished with the first catheter I had to insert....
The Matrix of Ancient Spirituality
Authors: DeConick April D.
Published: September 2017

Discusses Servant Spirituality, Covenant Spirituality, and Mystic Spirituality as models that pre-exist the rise of Gnostic Spirituality. Engages the movie, “The Matrix.”
The Gnostic True Man
Authors: DeConick April D.
Published: September 2017

Examines rise of Gnostic Spirituality within historical environment of shamanic practices and mystery initiation; Engages the movie, “The Truman Show.”
Superpowers and Monsters
Authors: DeConick April D.
Published: September 2017

Engages the super hero movies and comics, including Superman; Spiderman; and Doctor Strange.
John and the Dark Cosmos
Authors: DeConick April D.
Published: September 2017

Historical influence of the Gnostic religion of Simon Magus on the formation of the first Johannine community; Gnostic storyline of the Gospel of John that has been obscured for centuries by inaccurate translations; Gnostic controversy in the epistles of John. Engages the movie, “The Dark City.”
Hell Walks and Star Treks
Authors: DeConick April D.
Published: September 2017

Elaborate second- and third-century Christian Gnostic movements; Basilidians, Peratics; Ophians; Naassenes; Platonic Sethians; soul-journeys through hell and through the star system as initiatory practices; connection to ancient mystery religions and Greek philosophical schools. Engages the movie, “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.”
Gnosticism Out on a Limb
Authors: DeConick April D.
Published: September 2017

Closing remarks that leave reader to wonder about the therapeutic and personal shape of religion in modern America; debt to the ancient Gnostics who altered the very fabric of religion. Engages the film, "Out on a Limb."
A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park
Authors: Webster Nancy , Shirley David
Published: September 2017

By the 1970s, the Brooklyn piers had become a wasteland on the New York City waterfront. Today, they have been transformed into a stunning park that is enjoyed by countless Brooklynites and visitors from across New York City and around the world. A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park recounts the grassroots, multivoiced, and contentious effort, beginning in the 1980s, to transform Brooklyn’s defunct piers into a beautiful, urban oasis. The movement to resist commercial development on the piers reveals how concerned citizens came together to shape the future of their community.
After winning a number of battles, park advocates, stakeholders, and government officials collaborated to create a thoroughly unique city park that takes advantage of the water and the ’Manhattan skyline, combining an innovative design with vibrant cultural programming. From start to finish, this history emphasizes the contributions, collaborations, and spirited disagreements that made the planning and construction of Brooklyn Bridge Park a model of natural urban development and public–private partnership. The book includes interviews with Brooklyn residents, politicians, activists, urban planners, landscape architects, and other key participants in the fight for the park. The story of Brooklyn Bridge Park also speaks to larger issues confronting all cities, including the development of postindustrial spaces and the ways to balance public and private interests without sacrificing creative vision or sustainable goals.
The Evolution of the Waterfront
Authors: Webster Nancy , Shirley David
Published: September 2017

Provides readers with a vivid description of Brooklyn Bridge Park as it is today, a brief summary of the major issues and events that are treated in the remainder of the book (including a brief profile of the major organizations and personalities in the Park movement), and a presentation of the features and innovations that distinguish Brooklyn Bridge Park from other contemporary urban parks. The chapter also examines Brooklyn Bridge Park in relation to the history of New York City and its great parks, and offers a history of the Brooklyn waterfront from the time of the Lenape to the present day.
A Park at Last
Authors: Webster Nancy , Shirley David
Published: September 2017

Describes the vibrant reality of Brooklyn Bridge Park today, both in terms of the active usage of its available sections by thousands of people each day and the ongoing construction and opening of additional sections and features. The park’s role and significance in the city going forward and its impact on the national and global urban parks movement is examined.
Introduction
Authors: Scheible Kristin
Published: September 2017

IN THE study of religions, we find that certain key texts come to define their interpretive communities, for both the communities themselves and the scholars who study them.1 Texts are an appealing source for the cultivation of understanding; they seem stable and fixed in a way that a religious community, comprising people who change through time and contexts, simply is not. But a text is not a source unless it is brought to life through reading and interpretation, irrespective of the vicissitudes of time and context. Reading and interpretation necessarily negate, to some extent, the stability or fixedness of a given text, and the imagination at work in reading and interpretation opens up possibilities for transformation....
Instructions, Admonitions, and Aspirations in Vaṃsa Proems
Authors: Scheible Kristin
Published: September 2017

If we read the proem, or opening poem of reading instructions, of the Mahāvaṃsa, especially in light of the proem of the earlier related text Dīpavaṃsa, we see that the traditional, historicizing, scholarly way of reading and using the Mahāvaṃsa misses the point: the Mahāvaṃsa is intended to effect a transformation in the reader/hearer through the cultivation of the highly prized Buddhist emotions of saṃvega (anxious thrill) and pasāda (serene satisfaction). The proems straightforwardly articulate the ethically transformative potential of the texts, a potential realized through proper reading by an appropriate audience (of “good people”). Following subtle and blatant cues within the text, this chapter considers a way to read the Mahāvaṃsa as literature, a corrective to the predominant historicizing focus, where the proem prepares a particular kind of reader and circumscribes a particular kind of textual community to help not only individual ethical transformation, but also to envision the Buddhist landscape with Sri Lanka at the center.
Historicizing (in) the Pāli Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa
Authors: Scheible Kristin
Published: September 2017

Scholars and Buddhists alike have treated the Mahāvaṃsa as a history, provoking all the concomitant responsibilities and expectations and methods of interpretation assumed to be at work when one does (or reads and interprets) history. This chapter suggests that one of the primary concerns for the fourth and fifth century Mahāvihāran monks responsible for compiling the Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa was to provide a vehicle for the continued presence and proximity of the Buddha through evocative, transformative literature. The vaṃsa thus works on the reader/interpreter in ways not entirely unlike the way history works on the modern scholar, but there is a significant difference. The Mahāvaṃsa explicitly states its objectives in religious terms; the text is not only didactic but is intended to create or support an ethically inspired community in its religious program.
Conclusion
Authors: Scheible Kristin
Published: September 2017

THE PĀLI Mahāvaṃsa has survived through fifteen hundred years of history to become a seminal text of Sri Lankan Buddhism. It has survived thanks in part to the scribes who were charged along the way with copying it (palm-leaf manuscripts do not hold up indefinitely in the Sri Lankan climate). It survived the early translation performed by George Turnour and the consequent attention it garnered from Western Orientalists. And it survived through numerous other intervening interpretations, finally making its way into the hands of modern interpretive communities and scholars alike. Modern scholars must be grateful to all these scribes and interpreters, without whom the text may not have survived at all. Yet we must not forget the work that these interpretations have exerted on our modern understanding of the text. As I hope to have shown by now, key operative facets of this text—its literary form, function, and aims as well as the emotionally provocative, religious work it can perform on the primed reader—warrant a reorientation of modern scholarship on this monumental text....
The Foucault-Derrida Debate on the Argument Concerning Madness and Dreams
Authors: Macherey pierre
Published: September 2017

This essay contextualizes the original debate between Foucault and Derrida from Foucault’s History of Madness to Foucault’s Reply. It gives particular attention to the interpretations of Descartes offered by Foucault and Derrida. It situates the debate in the context of the French academy