bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Singularity
Authors: Attridge Derek
Published: March 2020

The term singularity has been put to a variety of uses by philosophers and literary theorists with a limited degree of consistency among them. It is very often contrasted with one or more other terms which might seem to be synonyms, such as particular and individual, and its relation to universality and generality is frequently discussed. Although the term itself is not an important one for Kant, his discussion in the Critique of Judgment of the peculiar nature of aesthetic or reflective judgment marks the beginning of a long history of philosophical attention to the artwork as a singular entity resistant to analysis and the experience of art as unamenable to explanation. Some philosophical deployments of the concept of singularity stress uniqueness, self-sufficiency or transcendence (Martin Heidegger, Gilles Deleuze, Hans-Georg Gadamer); others see singularity as self-divided and existing only in relation to other singularities (Jean-Luc Nancy) or to generalities (Jacques Derrida). Singularity is sometimes understood as an event rather than an entity (Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard, Nancy, Derrida); for some thinkers, it is closely connected with community (Giorgio Agamben, Nancy). For Derrida, the most influential of these philosophers for literary studies on this topic, singularity is inseparable from iterability; a mark or sign is able to remain the same through history and in various realizations if it is able to change with each new context in which it appears. As a term in literary theory, singularity is usually regarded as a distinctive quality of the literary work, combining as it does a sense of the work’s uniqueness with its participation in general and generic codes and norms. The reader’s encounter with the singularity of the work is an encounter with otherness that necessitates a change in his or her frameworks of understanding and feeling; every such reading is singular in that the reader and the context of reading will always be different. Iterability is a condition of literary singularity: works retain their identity only because they are open to change.
Sentiment
Authors: Chandler James
Published: March 2020

“Sentiment” is a term that signifies differently in its different English forms (sentiments, sentimental, sentimentality, sentimentalism), and these forms themselves signify differently at different times and in different languages. In French, whence it derives, the verb sentir means “to feel” or “to sense,” and a relatively clear distinction can be made in that language between sentir and penser (“to think”), and likewise between un sentiment and une pensée. In English, however, especially in the 18th century when the notion of the sentiment became central to empiricist moral philosophy, the term tends to straddle thought and feeling. In the accelerated development of the concept in the work of David Hume and his friend Adam Smith, sentiment might best be understood as feeling reflected in thought, which later figured centrally in William Wordsworth’s account of the poetic process. Even before Wordsworth, Laurence Sterne had deployed the recently coined English adjective sentimental, and he exploited this new understanding to develop a new and massively influential mode of ambivalence in fiction. Such an understanding also helped to underwrite the fully elaborated 1795 theoretical intervention of the Anglophile German writer Friedrich Schiller, who had to invent the German adjective sentimentalisch from the Anglo-French term. Schiller distinguished the sentimental mode in poetry from the naive on the dual grounds, already established in British writings on the subject, that the sentimental involved “mixed feelings” born of an act of “reflection.” Even as this more technical understanding of the sentimental mode was being developed, however, critique of “sentimentality” in a strictly pejorative sense was underway. In modernist literary theory, certainly, much energy is mobilized around this critique, as is clear from a foundational work in the institution of “practical criticism” by I. A. Richards at Cambridge, who produced a full taxonomy of the forms of sentimentality, a deviant kind of emotional responsiveness he opposed to another, which he called “inhibition.” The modernist intolerance of what it called “sentimentality” would be taken up as part of a broader and more programmatic critique of commercialized culture under capitalism in later work by Frankfurt School theorists Max Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno and by Jean Baudrillard.
Surface
Authors: Kwa Shiamin
Published: March 2020

Thinking about surface and its historiography in the early 21st century is a way of thinking about ways of seeing in the world, and how people define themselves in relation to the things around them. From literary texts to the decorative arts, from graphic narratives to digital stories, and from film to the textile arts, the ways of reading those texts frequently raise questions about interactions with surfaces. Theories of surface have been engaged in many ways since their invocation by French theorists in the final decades of the twentieth century. They have a steady but by no means identical presence in the field of visual studies, history of architecture, and film studies; they have found an application in discussions of race and identity; they have enjoyed an early 21st century turn in the spotlight under the auspices of a broadly defined call for a “surface reading.” This critical move defines surface as worthy of scrutiny in its own right, rather than as something that needs to be “seen through,” and makes its most profound claims less by reactivating attention to reading surfaces, which arguably has been done all along, but by a shifting away from a model of interpretation that makes claims for authoritative symptomatic readings by an all-knowing interpreter.
Transgender Studies and Latina/o/x Studies
Authors: Galarte Francisco J.
Published: March 2020

The field of Latina/o/x studies has long been interested in various forms of gender and sexual deviance and diversity as a site of inquiry. Yet, there are many gaps in the literature of the field when it comes to the study of trans subjectivities, politics, and cultural formations. Foundational theoretical works such as Sandy Stone’s “A Posttransexual Manifesto” (1991) and Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands (1987) share a theoretical approach to understanding autoethnographic texts that propose to write minoritarian subjects into discourse. The result of the two works is the emergence of the “new mestiza” and the “posttranssexual,” two figures that come to shape the fields of transgender, Chicana/o/x, and Latinx studies, respectively. There are myriad ways in which the fields of transgender studies and Latinx studies overlap and depart from each other. Most often, transgender studies is characterized as not grappling directly with race, colonialism, and imperialism, while Latina/o/x studies can at times be read as treating transgender subjects as objects, or sites of inquiry. Therefore, there is much to be gleaned from exploring how the two fields might come into contact with each other, as each becomes increasingly institutionalized.
Hypertext Theory
Authors: Ensslin Astrid
Published: March 2020

In a generic, medium-nonspecific sense, hypertext refers to a compositional format characterized by nodes, links, and networks that allow readers multiple choices and different pathways through textual and/or multimodal components. The largest informational hypertext network is the World Wide Web. Within literary studies, hypertext theory relates to literary in the sense of primarily narrative and poetic uses of hypertext as a composition technique and metatextual principle aided by specific technologies such as hypertext editing software and HTML (Hypertext Mark-Up Language). In its contemporary, medium-specific meaning, hypertext refers to interactive networks of digital documents and media connected by hyperlinks that give rise to multilinear readerly pathways through texts and, thus, highly versatile and personalized narrative and poetic experiences. Literary hypertext theorists have traced the beginnings of hypertext in the nonlinear proto-hypertexts of medieval scripture and early scientific texts displaying numerous glosses and footnotes, thus affording multilinear reading trajectories. While hypertext theory first emerged against the backdrop of late poststructuralist thought and early, pre-web, standalone hypertexts produced by the so-called Storyspace School from the late 1980s onward, more recent, early-21st-century waves of electronic literature and digital fiction scholarship have established the field of hypertext criticism and related areas of digital fiction and poetry research through a large corpus of systematic close analyses, as well as empirical reader-response studies, applied socio-psychological research, and educational uses. Aided by the growth in popular hypertext and game design platforms such as Twine in the second decade of the 21st century, hypertextual writing has become a mainstream form of literary game production and interaction, which has moved hypertext and its theorization from a scholarly-elitist niche to a mainstream form of creative and critical engagement.
Public Opinion in European Union Politics
Authors: De Vries Catherine E.
Published: March 2020

Public contestation regarding European integration is becoming increasingly important for the future of the European project. While traditionally European Union (EU) scholars deemed public opinion of minor importance for the process of European integration, public support and scepticism is now seen as crucial for the survival of the European project. One important reason for this change in perspective is the increasing politicization of the EU in domestic politics. In recent years, a burgeoning literature on public contestation concerning European integration has developed. Students of public opinion in the EU have primarily focused their attention on the explanations of fluctuations in support and scepticism. This work stresses both interest- and identity-based explanations showing that support for European integration increases with skill levels and more inclusive identities. Less attention has been given to the conceptualization of the precise nature of public opinion and its role in EU politics. When it comes to the politicization of European integration and its effects on public opinion, many scholarly contributions have aimed to explore the conditions under which EU attitudes affect voting behavior in elections and referendums. Yet, the way in which public opinion affects policy making and responsiveness at the EU level has received much less scholarly attention. This suggests that more work needs to be undertaken to understand the conditions under which public contestation of the EU constrains the room to maneuver of domestic and European elites at the EU level, and the extent to which it poses a challenge to, or opportunity for, further integrative steps in Europe. Only by gaining a better understanding about the ways public opinion limits the actions of domestic and European elites or not at the EU level, will scholars be able to make predictions about how public opinion might affect the future of the European project.
Out Lesbian and Gay Politicians in a Multiparty System
Authors: Juvonen Tuula
Published: March 2020

Even though it may be challenging to determine both someone’s sexual orientation and the time of their coming out, or sometimes even their gender for that matter, taking all those as the starting point for analyzing the proliferation of out LGBT parliamentarians will offer intriguing insights into a country’s political life. When following over some 40 years the developments in two European countries with a multi-party system, but with different proportional representation voting systems, such as Germany and Finland, one can notice interesting differences begging for closer scrutiny. In Germany, the list voting combined with constituency voting has allowed openly lesbian or gay candidates from all parties to enter the Bundestag, whereas in Finland only candidates from younger parties have made it to the eduskunta through the open list system. In both countries, gay men have been able to benefit comfortably from their incumbency advantage, whereas lesbians have faced far more difficulties in sustaining their political careers. Thus the descriptive representation and political careers of out lesbians and gays present themselves as highly gendered. This can be explained partly by the prejudices held by party selectorates, and partly by the gendered differences in symbolic representation of politicians in the media, which affects the electorate. It remains to be seen what effect the changing political meaning of politicians’ coming out will have in relation to substantial representation in an era when being lesbian or gay becomes ordinary, but, at the same time, LGBT issues get politicized and remain contested.
Europe’s Supranational Courts and LGBT Rights
Authors: Voss M. Joel
Published: March 2020

Europe has some of the most powerful human rights legal institutions in the world including two supranational human rights courts—the Council of Europe’s European Court of Human Rights and the European Union’s Court of Justice (hereafter, together—the Courts). After decades of relative quiet, the Courts have begun hearing more cases concerning LGBT rights. Judgments of the Courts have advanced some facets of LGBT rights like anti-discrimination in the workplace while disappointing gay-rights advocates in other areas, for example family life and asylum.

Scholarship on European courts and LGBT rights is not as developed as scholarship on norm advocacy or policy diffusion within states in Europe. The research that does exist looks at how decisions by the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice deal with current European law, how the institutions are designed, or how the supranational courts may act as agents of change or status quo institutions in shaping wider European behavior. This lack of newer research on the Courts presents ample opportunity for new avenues of research that examines not only how decisions are made at the Courts but also how states implement decisions and how states view the legitimacy of each Court.
Children in LGBT Political Discourses in the United States
Authors: McCreery Patrick
Published: March 2020

The role of the symbolic child figure has shifted substantially within discourses of LGBT politics and activism in the United States since World War II. From the 1950s well into the 1980s, the putatively heterosexual child was portrayed as the potential victim of homosexuality—victimized by influence, predation, and infection. By the early 21st century, the child had become a figure who was often represented as benefiting from LGBT civil rights—either as the child of lesbian or gay parents whose union was strengthened by the acquisition of civil benefits and protections or as a young gay or trans person struggling to accept a non-normative identity. This cultural shift both reflected and helped generate specific governmental and institutional policies—from the sexual psychopath laws of the 1950s, to the emergence of school-based Gay-Straight Alliances in the 1990s, to the central role of the child in debates over same-sex marriage in the 2000s.
Leadership in the European Union
Authors: Aggestam Lisbeth , Johansson Markus
Published: March 2020

Leadership in the European Union is an empirical phenomenon that has increasingly come to attract scholarly attention. While a call for leadership in the EU is often heard, not least in times of crisis, it is also accompanied with a general reluctance to centralize powers. This leadership paradox has historical roots and has resulted in a dispersed type of leadership governance at the EU level. Scholarly work varies from mainly descriptive accounts of leadership by particular individuals to more theory-testing approaches to leadership.

The academic field of EU leadership studies contains variation along three primary dimensions: (1) how leadership is defined, (2) by which theories it is explained, and (3) through which empirical cases and approaches it is studied. First, there is a wide differentiation in the literature of how leadership is defined and approached as an object of study. Four leadership approaches can be distinguished in the literature, focusing on the role of individuals, an actor’s position, the process of leadership enactment, and the outcomes produced by leadership. Second, leadership in the EU has been theorized and explained in a variety of ways. Explaining leadership in the EU requires an understanding of what power resources different actors draw on, ranging from material to institutional and ideational powers. These sources often also translate into different types of leadership strategies. A substantial amount of research has departed from rational choice institutionalism, which highlights the importance of a formal position to exercise leadership. Sociological approaches have more recently attracted attention to conceptualize leadership as a social role based on the interaction between leaders and followers. Third, the empirical study of leadership in the EU encompasses a range of different approaches in terms of the type of actors studied, the issues covered, and the data and methods used. EU leadership studies include different types of leadership actors ranging from individuals to institutions, member states, and the EU itself as a global leadership actor. The empirical policy domains vary from issues relating to treaty amending processes, environment and climate policies, eurozone governance and crisis management, to foreign and security policy. Although comparative studies of leadership in the EU exist, the focus has predominantly been on single actors during particular policy processes. An increasing use of explicit comparative designs in the study of EU leadership could have the potential to further advance theory building in the scholarship of EU leadership.
The American Judicial Process and Why It Matters
Authors: Holmes Lisa M.
Published: March 2020

The American judicial system is not a static, simple, or mechanical entity. Rather, it is a complex organization that is developed and staffed in response to changing caseload and societal pressures through a process that is inherently political. The key personnel who help the judiciary function bring varied backgrounds and perspectives with them that influence the work they do. As is the case with any political system, understanding American politics and policy making requires an understanding of the judiciary’s role in the American political system. In addition, on a daily basis, courts function to resolve disputes. While most cases have little direct impact on American policy or society broadly speaking, the resolution of these cases is important to those who turn to the courts of law to resolve their disputes.
Gestalt Psychology
Authors: Gundlach Horst
Published: March 2020

Gestalt psychology is an holistic approach to psychology launched in 1910 by three psychologists: Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka. It was conceived to oppose elementary or atomistic psychology, the conception that psychical processes consist of elements whose associations produce the contents experienced in the mind or soul. Instead, Gestalt psychology holds that configurations or, in German, Gestalten, not these hypothetical elements, are the primary material underlying experience. Beginning with research in perception, the Gestalt approach was soon applied to other fields of psychology. Gestalt theory, inspired by field theories in physics, tried to lay a common groundwork for psychology, physiology, and physics. The Gestalt movement originated in Germany, but the three protagonists for personal and political reasons resettled in the United States where the movement became an important force combatting the dominance of behaviorism. The Gestalt approach was especially fruitful in empirical psychology, but it did not fulfill the promise of turning psychology into a unified science based on a common theoretical ground.
Varieties of the Self From Self-Esteem to Self-Control
Authors: Pettit Michael
Published: March 2020

Various self-concepts constitute major keywords in both psychological science and liberal political discourse. They have been central to psychology’s public-facing, policy-oriented role in the United States, dating back to the mid-19th century. Psychologists’ articulations of self-concept include an understanding of the individual, society, and the interventions needed to augment them both. Psychologists’ early enthusiasm for self-esteem has given way to competing concepts of the individual, namely self-regulation and self-control. Self-esteem in a modern sense coalesced out of the deprivation of the Great Depression and the political crises it provoked. The fate of self-esteem became tied to the capacities of the liberal welfare state to improve the psychic capacities of its citizens, in order to render them both more equal under the law and more productive in their daily existence. Western democracies, especially the United States, hit peak self-esteem in early 1990s. Since then, psychologists lost faith in the capacity of giving away self-worth to improve society. Instead, psychologists in the 21st century preached a neo-Victorian gospel of self-reliance. At the very historical juncture when social mobility became more difficult, when inherited social inequality became more entrenched, psychologists abandoned their Keynesian model of human capital and embraced its neoliberal counterpart.
William Stern (1871–1938), Eclipsed Star of Early 20th-Century Psychology
Authors: Lamiell James
Published: March 2020

In the literature of mainstream scientific psychology, German scholar William Stern has been known primarily (if at all) as the inventor of the intelligence quotient (IQ). In fact, however, Stern’s contributions to psychology were much greater and more consequential than this. In this all-inclusive article, I have sought to provide readers with a fuller appreciation for the breadth and depth of Stern’s work, and, in particular, for that comprehensive system of thought that he elaborated under the name “critical personalism.” Drawing frequently on translated quotations from Stern’s published works, and on his personal correspondence with the Freiburg philosopher Jonas Cohn, I have endeavored to show how Stern was much more than “the IQ guy.” During the first 20 years of his academic career, spent at the University of Breslau in what is now the Polish city of Wroclaw, Stern founded that sub-discipline of psychology that would be concentrated on the study of individual differences in various aspects of human psychological functioning. He also made major contributions to that sub-discipline referred to at the time as “child” psychology, and laid the foundations for a comprehensive system of thought that he would name “critical personalism.” After relocating to Hamburg in 1916, Stern continued his scholarly efforts in these domains, taught courses both in psychology and in philosophy at the university that opened its doors there in 1919, and played major administrative roles there in the institutional homes of both disciplines until forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1934. The present chapter highlights ways in which, over the course of his scholarly career, Stern boldly opposed certain trends within mainstream thinking that were ascendant during his time.
Anglo-American Psychology in the Cold War
Authors: Holmes Marcia E.
Published: March 2020

From the end of World War II until roughly 1989, global leaders feared that cataclysmic war would break out between the world’s two superpower states, the Soviet Union and the United States. Though such a confrontation did not occur, the stalemate between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the United States—with its simmering fears, proxy battles, and psychological warfare—became known as the Cold War. Psychological expertise played an important role in the Cold War, especially within Western democracies like the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. In these countries, citizens tended to view the Cold War as a “battle for minds”: a fight against communist political ideology, totalitarianism, social conformity, and other threats to individual mental freedom. Anglo-American psychology flourished within this intellectual environment by finding new topics and applications for research, new sources of funding, and a new image as essential to the functioning of healthy democracy.

Historians continue to debate how the Cold War influenced the field of psychology. Overall, the strategic partnership between psychology and the “military-industrial complex” was limited to certain initiatives. In some cases, Anglo-American psychologists who used their expertise to fight the Cold War were led into questionable pursuits, resulting in greater public scrutiny and even scandals for themselves and their profession. Nonetheless, the Cold War had a significant impact on Anglo-American psychology by making the relationship between psychological knowledge and democratic values a continual subject of public concern.
Paternal Behavior from a Neuroendocrine Perspective
Authors: Guoynes Caleigh , Marler Catherine
Published: March 2020

How hormones and neuromodulators initiate and maintain paternal care is important for understanding the evolution of paternal care and the plasticity of the social brain. The focus here is on mammalian paternal behavior in rodents, non-human primates and humans. Only 5% of mammalian species express paternal care, and many of those species likely evolved the behavior convergently. This means that there is a high degree of variability in how hormones and neuromodulators shape paternal care across species. Important factors to consider include social experience (alloparental care, mating, pair bonding, raising a previous litter), types of care expressed (offspring protection, providing and sharing food, socio-cognitive development), and timing of hormonal changes (after mating, during gestation, after contact with offspring). The presence or absence of infanticide towards offspring prior to mating may also be a contributor, especially in rodents. Taking these important factors into account, we have found some general trends across species. (1) Testosterone and progesterone tend to be negatively correlated with paternal care but promote offspring defense in some species. The most evidence for a positive association between paternal care and testosterone have appeared in rodents. (2) Prolactin, oxytocin, corticosterone, and cortisol tend to be positively correlated. (3) Estradiol and vasopressin are likely nuclei specific—with some areas having a positive correlation with paternal care and others having a negative association. Some mechanisms appear to be coopted from females and others appear to have evolved independently. Overall, the neuroendocrine system seems especially important for mediating environmental influences on paternal behavior.
Gender and Math Development
Authors: Herts Julianne , Levine Susan C.
Published: March 2020

A great deal of research has examined math development in males versus females. Some studies indicate that males do better on standardized tests of mathematics achievement, whereas females get better grades in math class than males. Other studies find no gender differences in math development, or that differences depend on factors such as the type of math problem included on the tests. Further, there is evidence that gender differences in math test performance are not stable over time, with accumulating evidence that these differences are narrowing in more recent cohorts. In addition to evidence concerning sex differences in math grades and test performance, there is evidence that there are sex differences in math attitudes, with females showing higher levels of math anxiety and less confidence in their math ability than males, controlling for their math performance. Additionally, there is evidence that stereotypes exist such that teachers and parents believe that males are better at math than females, even when males and females have comparable levels of math skill. Moreover, when this math stereotype is activated before taking a math test, stereotype threat ensues and female performance is negatively affected. A wide range of factors, including biological differences, sociocultural factors, including stereotypes, and differences in math attitudes and interests, are likely to act in concert to account for male-female differences in mathematics achievement and decisions to enter math-intensive careers.
Poststructuralism and Educational Leadership and Administration
Authors: Niesche Richard
Published: March 2020

Poststructuralism is broadly considered to be a particular movement of thought that emerged in France during the 1960s in response to a range of philosophical approaches such as modernism and structural linguistics. Poststructuralism has been extensively explored across philosophy, cultural studies, politics, and numerous other fields. It has also received significant attention in education, particularly in relation to education policy, although much less so in relation to educational leadership and administration. Nevertheless, it is important to identify some of the main thinkers who have been associated with poststructuralism, examples of how their work has been used and drawn from in educational leadership, and explore how these ideas might be useful in providing alternative perspectives to much of the existing research in educational leadership and administration.
Environmental Education Teacher Training
Authors: Ortega Miguel Ángel Arias
Published: March 2020

The way environmental education has been presented as a viable response to the emergence of national, regional, and global environmental problems since the 1970s is reviewed; as well as some environmental education presuppositions, approaches, and aims with which a field of knowledge and educational practices have been constituted and provided to the individual, to help re-evaluate and redefine the established forms of relationship and exchange with society and nature. Also, the concepts of education and environmental education are examined as they are considered the starting point for undertaking teacher education processes and the potential to generate a new environmental culture in society. At the same time, certain inconsistencies in this process are observed, along with the analysis of some distinctive features (knowledge, attitudes, abilities, and skills) a teacher who is trained in the field of environmental education must possess. General reflections on environmental education teacher training and its processes which are meant to increase debate and discussion on the subject are included, together with the description of some educational experiences developed in different areas and levels that aim to innovate in the reflection and practice of environmental education. Finally, some clues are given to help the design and development of training proposals for environmental education teachers with a greater social, scientific, critical, and humanistic projection.
Military Technology and Organization in Imperial China
Authors: Lorge Peter
Published: March 2020

Warfare and the military were at the center of the imperial Chinese state, though their significance was downplayed by government officials and the literati. Chinese dynasties fielded armies organized and supported by the central government that combined infantry and cavalry forces, and mixed part-time (militia) and professional soldiers. Cavalry and infantry forces were strongly, though not exclusively, connected to ethnic background. The best and most numerous cavalry came from steppe groups, and the best and most numerous infantry were Chinese.

The stirrup and guns were invented in China, changing the course of both Chinese and world military history. China also had a highly developed tradition of military thought that drew upon a classical tradition and was vastly elaborated and expanded upon during the imperial period. What most distinguished imperial China from its earlier period was the effective use of war to create and support a unified state. Overall, the history of warfare and the military in imperial China was one of technological and intellectual sophistication in support of state power.
The Archaeology of the Swahili World
Authors: Wynne-Jones Stephanie
Published: March 2020

The east African coast and its offshore islands are home to the Swahili cultural tradition. This is a fascinating and long-lived urban tradition that has been synonymous with this coast for nearly two millennia. Archaeologically, Swahili culture is most visible in the remains of a series of stonetowns, which contain houses, mosques, and tombs built of coral and lime. These sites were once cosmopolitan centers of trade and an important part of the medieval Islamic world. They are also the culmination of a long period of urban development, starting with villages built of wattle and daub founded on the coast from around the 7th century ce, which were key players in international trade circuits. The Swahili world is thus associated with a diverse and changing culture, united through oceanic connections and with a range of relationships with interior regions of Africa. The archaeology of these settlements reveals a developmental trajectory that continues directly to the stonetowns of the contemporary coast and islands.
al-Nafzaouiya, Zaynab
Authors: Lebbady Hasna , El Hilali Hiam
Published: March 2020

Referred to as the best-known Amazigh malika (queen), Zaynab al-Nafzaouiya was centrally involved with the building of the Almoravid dynasty of Morocco and its empire in the 11th century. The Almoravids were Sanhaja tribesmen who, led by Abdellah b. Yasin, started off as religious reformers and developed into empire builders when they embarked on a campaign to regain control over trans-Sahara trade, which the Sanhaja had lost the previous century. Two Almoravid leaders, Abu Bakr b. Umar and Yusuf b. Tashfin, married Zaynab, who had already been married twice before, and brought her to the world’s notice. The sources, in which she receives brief but significant notice, mention her only as her life touches upon those of the Almoravids; however, they depict her as playing a pivotal role in both the cultural and the political spheres of Aghmat (near Marrakesh), in which she was based.

Although some called her a magician, Zaynab was actually just intelligent, knowledgeable, and capable of benefitting from the intellectual and cultural affluence that characterized her era. She was, moreover, gifted with political acumen, making her a good advisor for Abu Bakr b. Umar and a good co-ruler for Yusuf b. Tashfin. Her understanding proved to be particularly helpful concerning the founding of the Almoravid empire, stretching from modern-day Senegal to al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), which the two emirs were instrumental in building. They were both virtuous men who possessed considerable military skills; however, they were basically nomads from the desert. It was Zaynab who was familiar with the more settled and refined way of life in Aghmat, enabling her to advise them diplomatically concerning the politics of the area to which she was accustomed. She was even able to advise Yusuf b. Tashfin on how to handle Abu Bakr b. Umar, enabling him, with her at his side, to take over the leadership of the dynasty and launch the extension of its empire all the way to al-Andalus.
Al-Durr, Shajarat
Authors: El Kholy Azza
Published: March 2020

Shajarat Al-Durr’s life and death constitute a story that deserves to be told. Turkic in origin, she was sold into slavery but grew up to become a great Sultana. She was purchased by Al- Saleh Ayyub, and soon became his favorite concubine, and later his wife after bearing his son Khalil who died in infancy. She was intelligent and beautiful, and was the Sultan’s companion and advisor in many state affairs. Her astuteness appears in her role in boosting the morale of the army by concealing her husband’s death during the Crusade in 1249. Upon Al- Saleh’s death, his son Turanshah became Sultan, and persecuted her and his father’s Bahari Mamluks who, abetted by her, murdered him. They then instated her as Sultana of Egypt because of her liaison with the Ayyubid dynasty as wife of the Sultan, and mother to his deceased son.

For eighty days she ruled as Sultana. Coins were minted in her name, and she was praised in prayers around the country until the Abbasid Caliph, Al- Musta’sim, sent a derogatory message offering to send a “man” to rule Egypt. Shajarat Al-Durr, a wise woman, abdicated the throne in favor of Aybak, one of her husband’s Mamluks and the man she took as husband to avoid political turmoil, thus finally marking the end of the Ayyubid dynasty and the beginning of the Mamluk era. They ruled together until he betrayed her trust when she learned that he was thinking of taking another wife, and seeking to rule on his own. A proud woman, Shajarat Al-Durr ordered him dead. In retaliation, Aybak’s Mamluks and his first wife killed her, and thus ended the life and reign of one of the most prominent women in Islamic history.
Women in Associations and Organizations in Africa
Authors: Kang Alice
Published: March 2020

Associations and organizations are groups of individuals who form a body to achieve an aim. Women’s leadership and membership in associations constitute a vital part of Africa’s economic, social, and political history. Women-only associations and women in dual-sex organizations protested against colonial rule; fought for independence; and mobilized for democracy, peace, and equality. Still, women in associations also supported colonial projects, fought in war, and held up postcolonial authoritarian rule. Taken together, economic, social, and political accounts of Africa are inherently incomplete if they fail to interrogate women’s participation in collective action on the continent.

Women have created and joined many kinds of associations and organizations in Africa. These include secular and religious associations. Some groups represent the interests of a profession (e.g., academics, journalists, lawyers, midwives, traders) or a political party or ideology (e.g., African National Congress Women’s League in South Africa). Others explicitly try to bring together women and men from multiple status and political groups (e.g., Women’s National Coalition in South Africa). Women have formed groups of friends and family members in their immediate vicinity, at times through small-scale rotating savings and credit associations. Other associations have a national membership base. Associations further vary in their relationship to the state. Some are formally recognized, and others are informal. Whereas some groups receive state financing, others depend solely on the contributions of its members, and many fall in the middle of the spectrum. Women have also forged intra-regional, pan-African, and global networks of individuals and organizations. It is not uncommon for a woman to belong to multiple kinds of associations simultaneously and for her memberships to vary over her lifetime.

The associations and organizations that women have spearheaded rise and fall, consolidate and fragment, and succeed and fail in achieving their aims, reflecting local, national, and international contradictions and dynamics. The power of women-led organizations has changed over time. Women-led organizations registered economic revolutions, political upheavals, and religious conversion on the continent before the advent of European colonization, under European rule, and in postcolonial Africa.
Labor History of East Africa
Authors: Freund Bill
Published: March 2020

This paper concerns the long-term evolution of labor in East Africa up to the twenty-first century. While it considers the classic themes of labor history, trade unions, strikes and politics, it is concerned with the broader question of how people relate to their environment, how their work is organized and what the economic consequences are. Taking 1500 as a bottom line, it proceeds to look at changes before and with the coming of imperialism and colonialism and the contradictions of colonial labor policy. It also considers how labor conditions have altered since independence. Mau Mau in Kenya and the institution of villagization in Tanzania, which both shed a light on labor conditions, receive particular attention. Since the majority of the population even in the twenty-first century are rural dwellers, there is much concern with agricultural and pastoral activities. If the greatest concentration is on Tanzania and Kenya, East Africa is defined broadly in part for purposes of comparison.
Women in Equatorial Guinea
Authors: Castillo-Rodriguez Susana , Valenciano Mañé Alba
Published: March 2020

Women who live in the territories that today comprise the Republic of Equatorial Guinea experienced important material and social changes during pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial times. They faced crucial imbalances in terms of their social and political position: while Guinean women had a vital role in household management and child rearing, in most cases they did not control their income nor the circulation of goods and people within their society. While they have historic commonalities with women in other parts of Central Africa, their particular experiences during the slave trade and Spanish colonialism, including the deployment of the national Catholic colonial state during Franco’s dictatorship in the territory, contributed to their unique history and situation today. Francoist colonialism, which lasted from 1936 until Equatorial Guinea’s independence from Spain in 1968, strengthened the existing patriarchal structure of the societies living within the country. Independence did not substantially change the social and political roles of women in Equatorial Guinea but nevertheless opened up new horizons for them. Since 1968, three generations of empowered women—teachers, traders, farmers, writers, and politicians—have contributed to the creation of alternative narratives for women and increased the scope of their role in the public domain. Despite these new avenues for women, Equatorial Guinea’s current regime and economy not only relies on extracting rents from an oil-based economy but also extracting the organizing and political capacity of ordinary Guinean women. As before, they still face the challenge of managing their households without controlling their larger economic circumstances while lacking political power in the country.
African Indigenous Religions
Authors: van Beek Walter E.A.
Published: March 2020

There is not one African indigenous religion (AIR); rather, there are many, and they diverge widely. As a group, AIRs are quite different from the scriptural religions the world is more familiar with, since what is central to AIRs is neither belief nor faith, but ritual. Exemplifying an “imagistic” form of religiosity, these religions have no sacred books or writings and are learned by doing, by participation and experience, rather than by instruction and teaching. Belonging to specific local ethnic groups, they are deeply embedded in and informed by the various ecologies of foragers, pastoralists, and horticulturalists—as they are also by the social structures of these societies: they “dwell” in their cultures. These are religions of the living, not so much preparing for afterlife as geared toward meeting the challenges of everyday life, illness and misfortune, mourning and comforting—but also toward feasting, life, fertility, and togetherness, even in death. Quiet rituals of the family contrast with exuberant public celebrations when new adults re-enter the village after an arduous initiation; intricate ritual attention to the all-important crops may include tense rites to procure much needed rains. The range of rituals is wide and all-encompassing. In AIRs, the dead and the living are close, either as ancestors or as other representatives of the other world. Accompanied by spirits of all kinds, both good and bad, harmful and nurturing, existence is full of ambivalence. Various channels are open for communication with the invisible world, from prayer to trance, and from dreams to revelations, but throughout it is divination in its manifold forms that offers a window on the deeper layers of reality. Stories about the other world abound, and many myths and legends are never far removed from basic folktales. These stories do not so much explain the world as they entertainingly teach about the deep humanity that AIRs share and cherish.
Education and Politics in Colonial French West Africa
Authors: Duke Bryant Kelly
Published: March 2020

Education was profoundly political in colonial French West Africa (1895–1960), a federation that included the modern-day countries of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta), Benin (formerly Dahomey), Côte d’Ivoire, and Niger. It shaped political discourse across the federation as officials, educators, missionaries, African families, and African students weighed in on the type of education they thought best. Dissatisfaction with education policies or with the quality of schools encouraged Africans to become politically active, and the practical skills they learned in school along with the status gained through school attendance prepared young people to agitate for colonial reform and ultimately for independence.

Colonial officials engaged in a back and forth with the Catholic missionary orders that provided public schooling in much of the region, especially as they sought to balance early 20th-century metropolitan demands for secularization with the colonies’ need for reliable and inexpensive schools. In the second half of the 19th century, administrators attempted to undermine Qur’an schools through regulation and surveillance, hoping that this would result in increased attendance in French schools. In doing so, they competed directly with popular Islamic leaders and the interests of the Muslim community, which had the unintended effect of involving African Muslims in colonial politics in new ways. Officials also attempted to “adapt” colonial school curricula to the local realities of African communities, usually by decreasing academic content and focusing instead on vocational and agricultural training. Yet over several decades, they encountered significant resistance from urban educated elites and rural farmers alike, all of whom pushed in one way or another for schooling that would allow for social mobility and, ultimately, claims for equality with the French. Finally, education played a crucial role in formal politics in the region, preparing Africans for political candidacy and leadership, mobilizing the voting public, and helping to determine access to voting rights after African subjects became citizens in 1946. Education and politics were thus inextricably linked in colonial French West Africa.