bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Remedies of Hippocrates or Divine Counsel?: Jean Gerson and Religious Visionaries during the Great Western Schism
Authors: Fogleman Andrew
Published: April 2015

Jean Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris from 1395 to 1429, theologian, and conciliarist, has been the focus of much recent scholarship, especially regarding his reportedly hostile attitude toward women in his visionary treatises. Much of this scholarship, however, has dealt with his treatment of women without considering the broader influences affecting his work. Gerson’s anxieties about scandal within the church of his day resulting from the Great Western Schism and the influences of his own academic training in natural philosophy and medicine deserve a more central role in discussions about his attitudes toward women. Gerson feared that the negative impact of false visionaries proved more damaging than the comfort of real prophets. In addition, fourteenth-century medical prognoses increasingly offered alternative theories to vision-like experiences. The larger implications of this article trace the ways in which localized theological concerns and beliefs about the body impacted discourses on religious visionaries during the later Middle Ages.
The Werste Lay that Euer Harper Sange with Harp: The Forms of Early Middle English Satire
Authors: Parsons Ben
Published: April 2015

There is a persistent view in criticism which characterizes satirical discourse in Middle English as profoundly conservative. It is routinely asserted that satirical discourse was capable only of simple moral pronouncements, and that it was predisposed to champion the ideals and conventions it drew upon. The article challenges these conceptions. It revisits some of the earliest examples of satire in English to counter such views, paying particular attention to the texts collected in Jesus College MS 29, and the Harley MSS 913 and 2253. Through examining these sources, a range of more scurrilous and defamatory devices are identified. Far from being inflexibly censorious, satire is found to have a strong element of deprecation and deflation in its arsenal of techniques. The article also reviews existing scholarship on medieval vernacular satire to suggest how existing conceptions of the literature may be refined, to reflect the findings it reaches.
Fertility Control and Society in Medieval Europe
Authors: McCann Christine
Published: April 2015

It was once thought that during the Middle Ages the church provided the only opinion on matters of sexuality and reproduction, and women were obliged to get pregnant with uncontrolled frequency. On the contrary, many medieval people were aware of various methods which could be used to limit the size of their families, with varying degrees of success. Furthermore, contraceptive practice was widely commented on, not only in church documents but also by medical writers and famous authors such as Chaucer. Many medieval people sought ways to limit their offspring, and many of those successfully. Moreover, the image of a church-dominated unanimity of opinion on sexual matters must be replaced by the recognition that the Middle Ages was a time of great diversity of opinion where one might find both harshness and compassion.
The Case of the Crying Bride: Gossip Letters about the Wedding of Frances Coke
Authors: Ross Emily
Published: April 2015

Frances Coke, daughter of Sir Edward Coke and Lady Elizabeth Hatton, was married in 1617 to Sir John Villiers, brother of the royal favorite George Villiers, then earl of Buckingham. Although history has little to say about Frances, reading gossip about her in letters provides an alternative, subjective means of gaining insight into her social existence. While most letters about the wedding are preoccupied by the evidence events provided of the king’s favor to Coke, one writer, Castle, passed on a secondhand observation that the bride had cried at the wedding, with some speculative interpretations of her tears. This article explores representations of the wedding in that letter, and others as a contrast to it, to gain an understanding of the cultural, rather than historical, meanings in circulation around this episode in Frances’s life.
Juan Ruiz’s Lenten Dream of Gluttony: Don Carnal, Doña Quaresma, and Oneiric Structure in the Libro de Buen Amor
Authors: Poole Kevin R.
Published: April 2015

Verses 1067–1225 of the Archpriest of Hita’s Libro de buen amor ( LBA ) have long perplexed scholars with respect to content as well as structure. In this episode, the Archpriest and his friends enjoy a gluttonous banquet just before the forces of Sir Flesh face those of Lady Lent in a carnivalesque battle that leads to Flesh’s imprisonment and subsequent penitence. Though the LBA is narrated from a first-person point of view, much of the narration of these verses is told from the third-person, giving rise to the question of who the narrator of this episode really is. Using clues from the text, as well as historical discussion of food in fourteenth-century Castile, this articles concludes that this episode presents a dream of the Archpriest that takes place after he has partaken of too much meat and wine and that reflects the narrator’s lack of religious desire to participate in Lenten customs.
Enacting Ties that Bind: Oath-Making vs. Oath-Taking in the Finnsburg “Episode”
Authors: Wolf Keri
Published: April 2015

Drawing upon the theories of Henri Lefebvre, this article examines the mead hall as social space, focusing on the spatial context of the heroic oath in Old English poetry. It demonstrates that when thanes and lords recollect oath-making ceremonies in Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon , they reflect upon the spatial situation of the oath (in the hall while drinking mead and sitting upon the mead bench), indicating that these components make the oath binding. Appearances of these “conventional” oath-making spatial components contrast with the oath-taking scene in the Finnsburg “Episode,” in which these components are absent or tempered, suggesting that Hengest will not keep the peace treaty with Finn. By implication, the poet could have intended to hint that Hengest is a traitor who will not fulfill the oath or to downplay the fact that Hengest breaks his oath to Finn to keep a prior oath to Hnaef.
The Perception of Anglo-Norman Modernity and the Conquest of Ireland
Authors: Sposato Peter W.
Published: April 2015

Two contemporary accounts of the Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland provide insight into the mentalité of the conquerors. A close analysis of Gerald of Wales’s Expugnatio Hibernica and Morice Regan’s The Deeds of the Normans in Ireland illuminates an Anglo-Norman self-perception that reflects their sense of cultural superiority. The invading knights saw themselves as the vanguard of a political and cultural mainstream, one which originated on the continent and flowed through the cosmopolitan court of Henry II to the shores of Ireland. They believed their ideas on law, justice, and warfare were superior to those of the Irish, who were characterized by their social and political conservatism, penchant for mutual slaughter, and quotidian treachery. The argument is not that the Anglo-Normans were exceptional, but rather that they saw themselves as such in their role as both conquerors and agents of progressive change.
Lo Collin, here the Place: Locating the World of Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender
Authors: Cull Marisa R.
Published: April 2015

This essay examines the use of space in Spenser’s early pastoral work, The Shepheardes Calender . In a pastoral mode that has often been characterized by its literal stasis, space—and the movement through it—actually figures as a dynamic element of the poem’s ecclesiastical and political satire; moreover, space becomes an important context for examining the poet’s progression from a pastoral to an epic role. By grounding the characters in spaces that are both heavily allegorized and yet highly resonant with the reality of sixteenth-century England, Spenser creates a regional landscape that evokes the actual world around him. Finally, the essay suggests that we might better understand the development of the Calender ’s regional (or topographical) landscape as a precursor to Spenser’s eventual development of a national (or chorographical) landscape in The Faerie Queene .
Fælsian and the Purification of Sacred Space in the Advent Lyrics
Authors: Ristuccia Nathan J.
Published: April 2015

A number of Anglo-Saxon authors in both Old English and Latin demonstrate a strikingly unified conception of sacred space and ritual purification. By weaving together elements from sources as diverse as Roman paganism, Mosaic Law, and the rite of church dedication, these writers formulated an understanding of sacred space that had clear influence poetically. Much of the Anglo-Saxon conception of sacred space centers on the meaning of a particular Old English word ( fælsian ) and its relationship to a similar Latin term ( lustrare ). While neither of these words is common, they appear in a small number of important works in startling similar contexts. It is possible that this view of the sacred also affected the actual process of Christianization, though this is more speculative.
Tactics of Manipulation: A Revisionist Study of Gediminas and the Threat of Teutonic Invasion, 1315–1342
Authors: Markman Kristina
Published: April 2015

In the early fourteenth century, the pagan Grand Duchy of Lithuania became a prominent player in the political, economic, military, and religious affairs of Europe and Rus’. As demonstrated by his correspondence with Western Europe, Grand Duke Gediminas (1315–1342) exaggerated Lithuania’s position as a confessional and military frontier. Much like his neighboring kingdoms, the duke presented Lithuania as a victim of Teutonic incursion. The threat of Teutonic invasion, while real, was far from existential; Lithuania was quite capable of defending itself. When examined within the broader context of fourteenth-century European diplomacy, Gediminas’s attacks on the Knights appear to be part of a larger political movement aimed at strengthening Lithuanian economy and shoring up commercial and military alliances.
A Delineation of Asian American and Latino/a Students’ Experiences With Faculty at a Historically Black College and University
Authors: Palmer Robert T. , Maramba Dina C.
Published: April 2015

Research has shown that the enrollment of Asian American and Latino/a students are increasing at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Nevertheless, research on how these students experience the institutional climate of HBCUs is nonexistent. Hence, this study sought to explore the college choice process and perceptions of campus climate for Asian American and Latino/a students at HBCUs. One of the salient themes that emerged from this study was the participants’ perception of faculty as supportive and exhibiting care for their well-being. Despite this, there was a concern among some participants that faculty lacked knowledge about non-Black students and were culturally exclusive in their teaching. This article discusses those experiences and concludes by providing implications for future research and institutional practice.
The Impact of Racial Socialization on the Academic Performance and Prosocial Involvement of Black Emerging Adults
Authors: White-Johnson Rhonda L.
Published: April 2015

Despite evidence linking racial socialization processes to the functioning of Black youth, the effect of these parenting practices among Black college students is less clear. This study examined the relationship among racial socialization messages, academic performance, and prosocial involvement for 295 Black college students. Results revealed that participants who received messages alerting them to the existence of racism were more involved in prosocial activities on campus and in the community; conversely, disparaging racial messages were negatively related to academic performance. Despite the college students’ newfound autonomy, findings suggest parental messages about race continue to impact Black college students.
Contingency Management to Increase Grade Point Average Among Fraternity Members: A Feasibility Study
Authors: Van Patten Ryan A. , Irons Jessica G. , Apple Kevin J.
Published: April 2015

Contingency management is an incentive-based intervention strategy that has been demonstrated to be effective for inducing behavior change among a variety of populations and for a variety of behaviors. The current study examined whether contingency management techniques can help students change behaviors in an effort to raise their grade point averages. Members of a social fraternity participated in the study. We randomly assigned students to either a contingency management condition or a control condition. Throughout the entire semester, the contingency management students earned pulls from the fishbowl for reaching a grade criterion. For the first half of the semester, the control students were yoked to the contingency management group such that they earned pulls based on the other condition’s performance. For the second half of the semester, the control students began to experience the regular contingency management regimen. As hypothesized, the contingency management students’ GPA did increase during the semester and gains were maintained over time. Students in the control group did not show the same increase in grades. Contingency management appears to be effective in helping students raise their grades.
Experimental Flights Using a Small Unmanned Aircraft System for Mapping Emergent Sandbars
Authors: Kinzel Paul , Bauer Mark , Feller Mark , Holmquist-Johnson Christopher , Preston Todd
Published: April 2015

The US Geological Survey and Parallel Inc. conducted experimental flights with the Tarantula Hawk (T-Hawk) unmanned aircraft system ( uas ) at the Dyer and Cottonwood Ranch properties located along reaches of the Platte River near Overton, Nebraska, in July 2013. We equipped the T-Hawk uas platform with a consumer-grade digital camera to collect imagery of emergent sandbars in the reaches and used photogrammetric software and surveyed control points to generate orthophotographs and digital elevation models ( dems ) of the reaches. To optimize the image alignment process, we retained and/or eliminated tie points based on their relative errors and spatial resolution, whereby minimizing the total error in the project. Additionally, we collected seven transects that traversed emergent sandbars concurrently with global positioning system location data to evaluate the accuracy of the uas survey methodology. The root mean square errors for the elevation of emergent points along each transect across the dems ranged from 0.04 to 0.12 m. If adequate survey control is established, a uas combined with photogrammetry software shows promise for accurate monitoring of emergent sandbar morphology and river management activities in short (1–2 km) river reaches.
Obesity and Obligation
Authors: Jeppsson Sofia
Published: April 2015

The belief that obese people ought to lose weight and keep it off is widespread, and has a profound negative impact on the lives of the obese. I argue in this paper that most obese people have no such obligation, even if obesity is bad, and caused by calorie input exceeding output. Obese people do not have an obligation to achieve long-term weight loss if this is impossible for them, is worse than the alternative, or requires such an enormous effort in relation to what stands to be gained that this option is supererogatory rather than obligatory. It is highly plausible that most obese people fall into one of these three groups. Politicians may still have obligations to fight obesity, but they ought to do so through progressive politics rather than blaming and shaming.
Dependencies between grammatical systems
Authors: Aikhenvald Alexandra Y. , Dixon R. M. W.
Published: April 2015

In some languages there are dependencies between grammatical systems, e.g. there may be fewer tense choices in negative than in positive polarity. We examine the direction of dependencies between eight types of grammatical systems, and establish a dependency hierarchy. Polarity is at the top of the hierarchy—the choices available in another system may depend on polarity, but the possibility of positive/negative specification never depends on any of the other systems considered here. Next come systems associated with the predicate (or perhaps with the clause as a whole): tense, aspect, and evidentiality. Next come systems associated with predicate arguments—person, reference classification (covering gender/noun class, classifiers, and human/nonhuman or animate/inanimate); then number. And finally case, which marks the function of a predicate argument. The rationale for this hierarchy is considered. An appendix adds systems of definiteness to the discussion.
Liberalism’s Blind Judgment: Richard Wright’s Native Son and the Politics of Reception
Authors: Afflerbach Ian
Published: April 2015

Incompatible generic and political judgments have divided critical discussion of Richard Wright’s Native Son for 70 years. Far from indicating the novel’s failure to cohere, this essay shows how the contest between naturalist and existential readings of Native Son emerged from the novel allegorizing midcentury liberalism’s equivocal concept of judgment. In its rhetoric of blindness, Native Son anticipates and thematizes antithetical “blind” judgments of Bigger. By treating this structuring rhetorical pattern as evidence of Wright’s critique of liberalism, we might move beyond the novel’s dichotomous reception and consider how Native Son performs the critical function associated with literary modernism.
Realist Hieroglyphics: Aravind Adiga and the New Social Novel
Authors: Anjaria Ulka
Published: April 2015

In what many consider to be a postrealist age, what are the new modes emerging that reflect a continued investment in representing contemporary life? This essay outlines the contours of a new social realism through the works of contemporary novelist Aravind Adiga. Against the grain of recent Indian writing, Adiga constructs a virulent critique of contemporary social issues. Adiga’s realism is not transparent, but instead raises a set of open-ended questions about the nature of interpretation, elaborating a “realist hieroglyphics”—the presentation of realism as a mode founded on indecipherability—as an aesthetics central to the political novel.
Sui Sin Far’s Jekyll and Hyde: Divided Subjects and Utopian Alternatives
Authors: Macellaro Kimberly
Published: April 2015

Sui Sin Far’s fiction investigates the anxieties of white masculinity and the reification of racial identity, which is embodied in a statue of Robert Louis Stevenson in her short story “Its Wavering Image.” Reading the statue as a “dialectical image” illuminates the doubling and splitting that haunts early twentieth-century white American masculinity and is displaced onto Chinese-American and Eurasian subjects. This essay demonstrates Sui Sin Far’s nuanced participation in American literary and social movements of her time, most significantly her utopianized imaginings of mixed and ambiguously raced children in America.
“A Boy Under the Ban of Suspension”: Renouncing Maturity in Willa Cather's “Paul’s Case”
Authors: Ku Chung-Hao
Published: April 2015

This article studies Paul’s queer adolescence at the intersection of narrative, time, and sexuality. Although Paul’s effeminacy evokes homosexuality, he is not a gay-identified subject who looks back on his boyhood and defines it as protogay. To convert his boyhood effeminacy into protogay boyhood is problematic. Paul also renounces the arc of normative, capitalist adulthood by desiring to be rich without climbing the social ladder rung by rung and by killing himself. His suicide undoes transitional views of adolescence.
Putting Learning into Library Planning
Authors: Bennett Scott
Published: April 2015

This essay notes the emergence of learning as a key factor in academic library planning. It argues for an improved, learning-oriented planning process by noting the dangers that arise from the priority usually given to fixing dysfunctional space and from the traps of mistaking the things of learning for learning itself and of thinking with the metaphors of learning rather than about what our metaphors actually mean. We can spring the trap by grounding planning in a sound concept of learning and by giving thoughtful attention to questions of ownership and presence in learning spaces. Five habits of highly effective planning are offered.
Area Studies and Special Collections: Shared Challenges, Shared Strength
Authors: Carter Lisa R. , Whittaker Beth M.
Published: April 2015

Special collections and area studies librarians face similar challenges in the changing academic library environment, including the need to articulate the value of these specialized collections and to mainstream processes and practices into larger discovery, teaching, learning, and research efforts. For some institutions, these similarities have led to combining these areas of librarianship into a shared administrative structure. This article articulates the concept of “distinctive collections,” identifies the shared challenges of these programs, and enumerates some essential differences, as well as outlines some observations from institutions that have taken this step. It further suggests opportunities for these areas to build strength and significantly impact teaching, learning, and research together. Future research agendas that might propel further investigation of “distinctive collections” are proposed.
University Rankings: How Well Do They Measure Library Service Quality?
Authors: Jackson Brian
Published: April 2015

University rankings play an increasingly large role in shaping the goals of academic institutions and departments, while removing universities themselves from the evaluation process. This study compares the library-related results of two university ranking publications with scores on the LibQUAL+™ survey to identify if library service quality—as measured within the LibQUAL+™ dimensions affect of service, information control, and library as place—is related to the standings. The results suggest that some indicators used to rank universities favor libraries with more highly rated physical facilities, while largely ignoring the impact that other services have on library quality.
“La Poesía Sorprendida”; or the Surrealist Poetic Imagination Against Neocolonial Dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, 1943–1947
Authors: Dawahare Anthony
Published: April 2015

La Poesía Sorprendida, a literary movement and journal that flourished in the Dominican Republic between 1943 and 1947, was an integral part of the broad European and Caribbean surrealist movement of the last century that viewed art as a form of resistance to fascism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism. For the sorprendistas , interior life, a realm of imagination, constituted a kind of free zone in the otherwise totalitarian social space of the island of La Hispaniola during the dictatorship of Rafael Molina Trujillo. The surprise or shock generated from manifesting poetically an unfettered inner psychic life had, for them, the potential to dislodge the minds of the colonized from an adherence to an oppressive regulation of life under the neocolonial dictatorship. However, while La Poesía Sorprendida published a wealth of notable national and international poetry and critical essays, it was a movement subject to the philosophical idealism characteristic of much twentieth-century modernism. Their belief that poetry could strengthen the imagination and inner life as a way to transform outer life expressed their over-estimation of the power of ideas to transform social relations within a regime of capital. Nonetheless, La Poesía Sorprendida stands as an important chapter in the literary and political history of Surrealism in the twentieth-century.
Value and Hidden Cost in André Breton’s Surrealist Collection
Authors: Conley Katharine
Published: April 2015

André Breton’s collection provides a unique perspective on the environment within which the principles of surrealism were crystallized. In addition to his collection of European paintings, Breton’s Oceanic object collection grew during World War Two in New York. In essays from the 1950s and 1960s, Breton ascribed a “poetic view” and “prestige” to these things with no reference to their monetary value. And yet his history of acquisition and de-acquisition of such things and paintings show that he also understood collecting as a form of investment, despite his avowed objection to the forces of French colonialism that made it accessible to him. “Value and Hidden Cost in André Breton’s Surrealist Collection” examines the acknowledged—poetic—and unacknowledged—monetary—value of Breton’s collection and what is shows about his understanding of art acquisition as a form of patronage, in contradiction to his intellectual rejection of any form of engagement in the bourgeois economy. This contradiction constitutes a hidden cost to the consistency of his ethical position in favor of leftist politics. In his admiration for the Easter Island statuette with which he started his collection as a teenager, and his elevation of such non-Western things to works of art, he also unconsciously perpetuated a form of intellectual colonialism. This contradiction lies at the root of his slow reassessment of his pre-war attitudes in light of his growing post-war understanding of the cultures that produced the objects he revered and his intellectual engagement in the process of French de-colonization that coincided with his return to Paris from New York.
Uncapture This Image
Authors: Cole Merrill
Published: April 2015

“Uncapture This Image,” drawing on Alain Badiou’s philosophy of the event, argues that postmodern dismissals of the efficacy of the avant-garde, such as Peter Bürger’s Theory of the Avant-Garde , miss how adversarial art, of which Dada is the prototype, devises strategies that slice, at any given moment, through the doxa in the historical chain of its articulation, cutting the signifying loops of colonialist representation and commodity exchange. The photomontages of the Hannah Höch in the early twentieth century, and the montages of David Wojnarowicz in the late, present images of non-normative sexuality, gender, ethnic otherness, and desire that unravel the reifications of (post)colonial capitalism. The essay examines Höch’s photomontages, the 1929 Fremde Schönheit [ Strange Beauty ], the 1930 Indische Tänzerin [ Indian Dancer ], and the 1931 Liebe [ Love ], alongside a photograph from Wojnarowicz’s 1979 series, Arthur Rimbaud in New York ; the 1983 montage, Untitled [Sirloin Steaks]; the 1984 montage, A Painting to Replace the British Monument in Buenos Aires ; the 1986-87 film, A Fire in My Belly ; and the 1991 narrative, Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration . Contrary to the received narrative, this essay elaborates a century-long convergence of queer and anti-colonialist art. A “queer” avant-gardism contests the prefabricated identity categories and ideals of appearance on which the captivation of desire in consumer culture depends. Höch and Wojnarowicz show that now will always have been the time to break out of the capitalist ever-same.
The Effects of Censorship on the Emergence of Anti-Colonial Protest in France
Authors: Taoua Phyllis
Published: April 2015

This essay reveals evidence of censorship from the colonial archive and assesses the negative impact it had on the emergence of anti-colonial protest in France. I consider the literary historical implications for the Negritude movement in particular and contrast the effects of censoring such works as Légitime Défense and Batouala during the interwar period with the relative degree of freedom accorded French surrealists at the time. I demonstrate how French colonial administrators deliberately thwarted an emerging alliance between left-wing political organizations in Europe, notably the French Communist Party and its Colonial Section, and anti-colonial activism in Africa. I argue that race was a multi-faceted issue that involved skin color, social identity and labor power, which were overlapping elements whose intersections became increasingly charged as political awareness sharpened during the 1950s. In conclusion, I discuss current issues related to black identity in France and the enduring relevance of Negritude for contemporary artists and intellectuals in Africa and the Diaspora.
Jewish “Diasporic Humor” and Contemporary Jewish-American Identity
Authors: Rosenberg Roberta
Published: April 2015

In their 1993 essay on diaspora and identity, Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin reject “diaspora” as a site of persecution and fear and instead argue that “the [new] lesson of Diaspora, namely, that peoples and lands are not naturally and organically connected . . . can teach us that it is possible for a people to maintain its distinctive culture, its difference, without controlling land, a fortiori without controlling other people.” I argue that the Boyarins’ new “diaspora” has been incorporated into contemporary Jewish American humor and provides assimilated Jews a way to create humor in a multicultural world. The Boyarins’ diasporic thinking can be applied to diverse contemporary Jewish comedic texts like Roth’s “The Conversion of the Jews,” Englander’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank,” and Auslander’s Hope, A Tragedy . Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, and Larry David also reject traditional forms of Jewish comedy (the need for group identity and solidarity in the face of suffering, persecution, genocide, powerlessness) in favor of an emancipated diaspora that maintains identity while it is outer directed and engages the Other.
Strangers in Their Own Land: Greeks and the Roman God-Emperor
Authors: Burrell Barbara
Published: April 2015

This paper views the operation of the imperial cult in the Roman East as a dialogue, in which the initial offer of worship could be either accepted outright or modified by the recipient to his own purposes, and that response could affect how future petitions were presented. Roman judgements of which cities were most suitable to host their province’s imperial temples often led to intercity rivalry. Hellenic orators and Roman rulers both disparaged this rivalry, but their own evaluations of the relative worth of cities in fact encouraged it.
Venturing Where Vine and Olive Don’t Grow: Diet and Cultural Diversity
Authors: Irwin M. Eleanor
Published: April 2015

Unfamiliar food and drink encountered outside the Greek world were sometimes distasteful to Greeks and could have unpleasant side-effects on them. When Greek travelers encountered oils other than the familiar olive, drinks other than wine, and breads not made with barley or wheat, they not only described them but also reported adverse reactions, though the local inhabitants ate and drank with relish and impunity. Cultures could thus be defined by climate and crops because these determined what people ate and drank.
The Cultural Construction of Beer Among Greeks and Romans
Authors: Nelson Max
Published: April 2015

Although beer was a common beverage in practically all ancient societies, the wine-drinking Greeks and Romans mysteriously excluded it from their diet. It is too simplistic to state that they simply disliked the drink, since those who ventured to try some beer did not necessarily find it so distasteful. Rather, the very fact that beer was the beverage of others was enough to condemn it.
Agrippina Laborum Periculorumque Socia
Authors: Gillison Linda W.
Published: April 2015

Tacitus’ characterization of the elder Agrippina in his Annales is one of the richest in his entire corpus. This paper argues that Tacitus employed “self-quotation” in his depiction of this complex character, using German women from his own Germania as a source. In the Annales , the character of Thusnelda, wife and then widow of Arminius, also offers parallels, as do selected Roman coins which depict conquered provinces.
Greek and Lydian Evidence of Diversity, Erasure, and Convergence in Western Asia Minor
Authors: Kearns John Michael
Published: April 2015

After the Persian, Greek, and Roman conquests of Lydia, a separate Lydian culture and language gradually disappeared under the influence of the kind of socioeconomic and sociolinguistic forces that have more recently reduced the diversity of the world’s cultures and languages. There is evidence, however, that a convergence between Greek and Anatolian (particularly Lydian) cultures stretched back into the Bronze Age. This kind of convergence would explain Herodotus’ remarkable statement that Greeks and Lydians follow much the same customs.
Images of Black Slaves in the Roman Empire
Authors: George Michele
Published: April 2015

Although not an operative principle in Roman slavery, race did have consequences for the tasks of black slaves and for their representation in Roman art. Although they developed from varied Greek artistic precedents, Blacks occur most often in Roman art as slaves. As signs of their masters’ wealth and status, images of black slaves evoked exotic locales and were invested with apotropaic powers. The somatic differences of Blacks reinforced their visible difference from Italian aesthetic norms and facilitated a connection with slaves, the proverbial aliens in Roman thought. Thus, although their numbers among the slave population were relatively small, the presence of Blacks in Roman art is dominated by the slave context.
Facing the Facts about Teaching Latin
Authors: Groton Anne H.
Published: April 2015

Let’s face the facts: Latin students vary widely in their language skills, their study habits, and their motivation. Only a handful will ever go on to graduate school in Classics; the majority will take only enough Latin to satisfy a requirement. Is it possible to acknowledge these facts and still believe in the effectiveness of a rigorous, grammar-oriented approach? Yes! The author advocates sticking with tradition but using various means, including crazy antics and creative assignments, to make the Latin classroom a fresh and lively place, characterized by a fun-filled atmosphere, a positive attitude, and a sense of accomplishment.
Thucydides’ Ignorant Athenians and the Drama of the Sicilian Expedition
Authors: Smith David G.
Published: April 2015

Thucydides’ claim that most Athenians were ignorant of the size and inhabitants of Sicily before the Sicilian Expedition is demonstrably false. He is keenly aware that Athens has a great deal of information about Sicily, but its main sources are hearsay, gossip, and the poetic topoi that have been circulating on the dramatic stages. The historian uses this claim of ignorance as a rhetorical device to recreate in his readers, and thereby comment upon, the dangerously democratic epistemological conditions under which the Expedition was discussed and launched.
Seven Myths About Latin Teaching
Authors: Gruber-Miller John
Published: April 2015

This article employs recent research on second language acquisition, linguistics, and psychology to invite Latin teachers to examine their assumptions about how students learn Latin best. Topics addressed include learning styles and learner variables, the place of grammar in understanding Latin, the usefulness of drills, the meaning of communication, reading vs. translating, the importance of culture, and the instructor’s role in the learning process. Each section presents current research on the topic and offers classroom activities.
Promoting Open Access in the Humanities
Authors: Suber Peter
Published: April 2015

Open access literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. It gives readers wider and easier access to the research they need and gives authors a larger audience and greater impact. It is desirable and attainable in the humanities, but it is less urgent and harder to subsidize than in the sciences. This article briefly explains what open access is, identifies nine reasons why progress is slower in the humanities than in the sciences, and makes eight recommendations for accelerating that progress.
Mors Repentina and the Roman Art of Dying
Authors: Beagon Mary
Published: April 2015

Sudden death features rarely in the ancient sources: the Elder Pliny and Suetonius supply the most detailed testimonials. Most discussions of dying are philosophical in tone and promote an image of “prepared” death which considerably influenced the later Christian tradition. Five aspects of a Roman art of dying emerge, elements of which are paralleled in a more pragmatic sixth, the will. The sudden deaths in Pliny and Suetonius, however, may indicate a popular tradition in which absence of pain or fear overrode preparation. Closer examination of two of these suggests that features of both traditions might be combined to produce the “ideal” death.
Reassessing Ezra Pound’s Homage to Sextus Propertius
Authors: Willett Steven J.
Published: April 2015

This paper is the first major attempt since J. P. Sullivan’s 1964 book Ezra Pound and Sextus Propertius. A Study in Creative Translation to assess the precise translational methods, structural organization, and poetic success of Ezra Pound’s Homage to Sextus Propertius . The assessment is based on an exhaustive line-by-line collation of the twelve English poems in the Homage with their disparate and fragmented sources in Propertius’ Latin. Pound used Lucian Müller’s nineteenth-century Teubner edition of Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius for his Latin text. Since that is not readily available outside a major research library, the Latin text in Goold’s Loeb Library edition of Propertius, the best now available, was collated against Müller and the Homage . An appended table summarizes the results in easily readable form. The paper first cites the ancient testimonia to correct widespread errors about Propertius’s style and then falls into two parts: the first provides a section-by-section analysis of the techniques used by Pound in translating Propertius, the second explores the claim that the poem is a great technical feat in structural organization, versification, and English poetry.
Symposia and the Macedonian Elite: The Unmixed Life
Authors: Carney Elizabeth
Published: April 2015

This paper will evaluate the degree to which, during the reigns of Philip II and Alexander III (an era which produced most of our evidence about Macedonian drinking), court symposia actually differed from those of southern Greece. It will argue that Macedonian drinking practices were distinctive in some significant respects and reflect upon the relationship between these drinking habits and the nature of Macedonian monarchy and elite culture. It will suggest that the “unmixed” quality of Macedonian elite culture was more than a mere construct of Demosthenes and other Greek authors.
Odysseus and the Historians
Authors: Marincola John
Published: April 2015

Studies of Homer’s influence on ancient historiography have concentrated naturally on the Iliad , a martial epic emphasising war, battle, bravery, and glory. This article, working through the figure of Odysseus, looks more closely at the influence of the Odyssey on ancient historians. It is argued that despite the problematic nature of Odysseus’ character, he was seen by historians largely in a positive light; and his curiosity, patience, cleverness, and narrative skill played fundamental roles in the subject matter and methodology of ancient historiography.
Ancient History and the Challenge of World History
Authors: Burstein Stanley
Published: April 2015

The teaching of history in the United States has been revolutionized in the past few decades by the emergence of world history as a teaching field. This paper analyzes the challenges and opportunities facing ancient historians as a result of this development. These are threefold: first, ancient historians increasingly will have to teach material for which their graduate training has not prepared them; second, non-ancient historians will define the content of ancient history; and third, defining ancient history primarily as a period of world history will create interesting new research opportunities, particularly with regard to the study of cross-cultural interactions.
Delphi’s Small “omphalos”; An Enigma
Authors: de Boer Jelle Zeilinga
Published: April 2015

The history of Delphi’s small omphalos began with its discovery in the adyton of the Apollo Temple in 1913 and temporarily ended with its disappearance, at some point after 1951, following its denouncement as a fake. Questions had arisen earlier concerning the manner in which this artifact had been found, but most archaeologists and classicists who saw and wrote about it in the early half of the 20 th century believed it to be genuine.

The omphalos was shaped using ancient tools, and its dimensions are similar to those of most omphaloi shown on bas-reliefs, coins, and ceramic wares from the Classical and Hellenistic periods. It differs, however, from other omphaloi by the presence of a narrow squarish hole, carved through it from top to bottom, and widening downwards. Holland (1933) believed that this axial tube served to funnel the “ pneuma ” to the Pythia during mantic sessions. Holland’s hypothesis is greatly strengthened by the recent discovery that hydrocarbon gases (including narcotic ethylene) did surface with spring waters in the adyton.
Stranger and symbolon at Sophocles, ot 216–23
Authors: Kovacs David
Published: April 2015

The meaning of σύµβολον (221) is “point of connection,” as Lloyd-Jones and Wilson have argued: “I would not be tracking it over a great distance unless I had some connection.” Hence in the following sentence Oedipus emphasizes his connection to the Thebans. But as transmitted, the immediately preceding sentence denies any connection between Oedipus and the matter at hand. Sense suggests that the second ξϵ́νος is corrupt and the meaning of the uncorrupted passage was “I will speak these words as one who, though a stranger to the report, is yet involved in the deed.” The lost word is unrecoverable, but ξυνϵὼν is a reasonable guess.
Kleonai, Kleone, and Kleonymos: Competing Founding Myths for the Polis of Kleonai in the Northeastern Peloponnesos
Authors: Marchand Jeannette
Published: April 2015

The ancient sources which discuss the etymology of the name of the polis Kleonai in the northeastern Peloponnesos have received little study; with close scrutiny, more texts than previously thought can be found to relate directly to the question. In these texts, traces of three different founding myths for the city can be discerned. The associations provided for Kleonai by each of these little discussed passages and myths are explored here, as are the circumstances under which the myths may have originated and times during the city’s history when they may have been promoted. Ultimately, the founding myths of Kleonai contain strong indications of the real and potential political alliances of the strategically located city in the Archaic and Early Classical periods, and shed light on the contemporary relations between larger powers such as Argos, Mycenae, Sparta, and Sikyon.
"Remembrance is Not Enough": The Political Function of Tony Harrison’s Poetry
Authors: Marshall Hallie Rebecca
Published: April 2015

Tony Harrison’s dramatic works frequently engage with issues of cultural memory, both what is remembered and what is forgotten. In most instances, Harrison explores these issues by engaging with canonical texts, which, like certain examples of material culture—particularly monumental architecture—are marked by both their duration and by the accretion of a multiplicity of interpretations and symbolic functions. These works become, to use Pierre Nora’s term, lieux de mémoire , “sites of memory,” endowed by the collective cultural imagination with a symbolic aura. Nora noted “that lieux de mémoire only exist because of their capacity for metamorphosis, an endless recycling of their meaning and an unpredictable proliferation of their ramifications” (19). It is with the metamorphic nature of mythic characters, texts, and sites that Harrison engages as they provide him spaces endowed with significance by both the past and the present: these are spaces in which collective and cultural memory has been repeatedly constructed through the centuries. Numerous aspects of memory in Harrison’s work could be fruitfully explored, but this paper limits itself to a relatively brief discussion of Harrison’s examination of remembrance, or the lack thereof, in the mythic examples of Hecuba, Medea, and Hercules, and the historical figures such as Faustina and the anonymous victims of contemporary conflicts.
Emotional Appeals in the Mytilenean Debate
Authors: Fulkerson Laurel
Published: April 2015

Thucydides’ Mytilenean debate has often been read as a study in opposites, and one of the standard oppositions seen in it is that between reason and passion. This article seeks to show that Cleon’s and Diodotus’ speeches are more similar than different, and that both contain implicit emotional appeals cloaked in the guise of reason. Both men presume that a certain kind of emotional education is necessary to the functioning of democracy, and both attempt to provide it. Aristotle’s Rhetoric provides a key to looking at reason and passion not as polar opposites but as two integral parts of decision-making.
Madness, Pity, and Echoes of Epic in Catullus 63
Authors: Foster Wakefield
Published: April 2015

Catullus’ Attis is known as a figure of devotion and delusion, a zealot who castrates himself as an offering to Cybele, regrets his actions too late, and is condemned to lifelong exile and servitude. This paper argues that traditional oral-epic thematic and phraseological design in 63 provides an epic-like setting for a poem about a eunuch that begins in the realm of myth, where Attis is portrayed as an eccentric, though benign, convert to foreign religious practice. But midway through the poem, Catullus shifts our focus to a Greco-Roman realism from which Attis can be viewed simultaneously as a madman and an object of pity.
Number and Numeracy in Early Greek Literature
Authors: Hawke Jason G.
Published: April 2015

The issue of Greek numeracy before c. 550 BC has been neglected, though an understanding of it is necessary to appreciate the intellectual history of Greece in the archaic period. After the Bronze Age, Greeks developed their numerical sophistication in a largely native context, and research in linguistics, anthropology, and cognitive studies suggests how this process may have taken place. The evidence of epic and “lyric” demonstrates that prior to the sixth century, Greek facility and mastery of number and its operations was severely restricted; Greek numeracy remained limited until the middle of the sixth century.
Comédien– Actor –Paradoxe : The Anglo-French Sources of Diderot’s Paradoxe sur le comédien
Authors: Harriman-Smith James
Published: April 2015

This essay locates Denis Diderot’s influential Paradoxe sur le comédien at the end of a complex set of Anglo-French exchanges on the art of acting. These exchanges, particularly with respect to the actor’s sensibility and creative powers, are marked with a set of tensions and contradictions that Diderot exploits in the writing of his provocative and influential text.