bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Economic coercion and currency crises in target countries
Authors: Peksen Dursun , Son Byunghwan
Published: June 2015

Despite significant research on the efficacy and inadvertent humanitarian and political effects of economic sanctions, surprisingly little is known about the possible economic and financial consequences of sanctions for target economies. Synthesizing insights from the currency crisis literature with sanctions scholarship, we argue that economic sanctions are likely to trigger currency collapses, a major form of financial crisis that impedes economic growth and prosperity. We assert that economic coercion instigates currency crises by weakening the economy and creating political risks conducive to speculative attacks by currency traders. To substantiate the theoretical claims, we use time-series cross-national data for the 1970–2005 period. The results from the data analysis lend support for the hypothesis that sanctions undermine the financial stability of target countries. The findings also indicate that the adverse effect of economic coercion on the financial stability of target economies is likely to be conditioned by the severity of the coercion and the type of actors involved in the implementation of sanctions. The findings of this article add to the sanctions literature demonstrating how economic coercion could be detrimental to the target economy beyond the immediate effect on trade and investment. It also complements and adds to the literature on political economy of currency crises that has so far overlooked the significant role that economic coercion plays in financial crises.
The Role of Overconfidence in Romantic Desirability and Competition
Authors: Murphy Sean C. , von Hippel William , Dubbs Shelli L. , Angilletta Michael J. , Wilson Robbie S. , Trivers Robert , Barlow Fiona Kate
Published: June 2015

Four studies and a computer simulation tested the hypothesis that people who are overconfident in their self-assessments may be more successful in attracting mates. In Study 1, overconfident people were perceived as more confident in their dating profiles, and this perceived confidence predicted increased romantic desirability. Study 2 revealed that overconfident people also tend to be perceived as arrogant, which counteracts the positive effects of perceived confidence. However, Study 3 revealed that overconfidence might confer an advantage in intrasexual competition, as people were less likely to compete with overconfident individuals by virtue of their perceived confidence and arrogance. Study 4 showed that overconfident raters were also more likely to choose to compete for romantic partners. In Study 5, agent-based modeling incorporating the coefficients from these studies suggested that overconfidence facilitates mate acquisition in the presence of intrasexual competition.
Dynamic analysis of gearbox behaviour in milling process: Non-stationary operations
Authors: Chaari Riadh , Khabou Mohamed Taoufik , Barkallah Maher , Chaari Fakher , Haddar Mohamed
Published: June 2015

Dynamic behaviour of gearbox transmitting power to milling tool in a milling process application is considered in this paper. The gearbox is subjected to variable cutting torque induced by the milling operation. This variability will lead to fluctuating speed. The dynamic behaviour of the system should be investigated according to this non-stationary operating condition. To achieve this objective, a simple model of motor-gearbox-milling tool system is developed. The influence of variable cutting torque on driving motor speed is taken into account. The gearmesh function which describes the meshing phenomena is modified according to this specific operating condition. Simulations of the dynamic behaviour of the gearbox show a simultaneous frequency and amplitude modulation. These modulations are highlighted using time frequency representation which is necessary to implement so that it is possible to achieve a correct diagnosis of the transmission. Simulations in presence of tooth crack defect confirmed the necessity to implement time frequency techniques to characterize time varying systems.
British comedy, global resistance: Russell Brand, Charlie Brooker and Stewart Lee
Authors: Brassett James
Published: June 2015

The article provides a critical analysis of the possibilities and limits of comedy as a form of political resistance. Taking a cue from recent critiques of mainstream satire — that it profits from a cynical and easy criticism of political leaders — the article questions how comedy animates wider debates about political resistance in International Political Economy. The case is made for developing an everyday and cultural International Political Economy that treats resistance in performative terms, asking: what does it do? What possibilities and limits does it constitute? This approach is then read through a historical narrative of British comedy as a vernacular form of resistance that can (but does not necessarily) negotiate and contest hierarchies and exclusions in ‘particular’ and ‘particularly’ imaginative terms. In this vein, the work of Brand, Brooker and Lee is engaged as an important and challenging set of resistances to dominant forms of market subjectivity. Such comedy highlights the importance and ambiguity of affect, self-critique and ‘meaning’ in the politics of contemporary global markets.
Effectiveness of Minimally Invasive Hybrid Surgery for Ileal Interposition (MIHSII) for the Resolution of Type 2 Diabetes
Authors: Ramakrishnapillai Padmakumar , Pai Madhukara , Shams Farish , Kumar Praveen , P.G Shaji , T.S Anithadevi , J Sulfia P. , Krishna Vani
Published: June 2015

Aim. To evaluate the effectiveness of minimally invasive hybrid surgery for ileal interposition (MIHSII), a novel procedure for type 2 diabetes (T2DM) in patients with a body mass index (BMI) <30 kg⁄m2. Materials and methods. MIHSII is an innovative technique in which sleeve gastrectomy is performed laparoscopically, followed by extracorporeal ileal interposition performed through a 5-cm midline incision. The procedure was performed on 31 T2DM patients, 17 males and 14 females. Their BMI values ranged from 21.8 kg/m2 to 29.8 kg/m2, with a mean BMI of 26.61 ± 2.61 kg/m2. The average duration of diabetes 8.14 ± 4.89 (range = 1-20) years. Most of the patients exhibited poorly controlled diabetes despite the use of oral hypoglycemic agents (OHAs) and/or insulin. Results. The mean preoperative glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) for the population was 8.86%. The mean HbA1c 1 year after surgery was 6.80%. The difference between the mean preoperative and 1-year postoperative HbA1c values was significant, at P < .05 (group 1: BMI = 18.5-24.99 kg/m2, t = 2.83, and P = .022; group 2: BMI = 25-29.99 kg/m2, t = 4.23, and P = .001). The resolution rate of diabetes was 80.48%; 48.57% experienced complete resolution, and 31.91% experienced partial resolution. The remaining 19.52% of patients exhibited a significant reduction in HbA1c, although the HbA1c levels did not fall below 6.5%, even with medications. Conclusion. MIHSII is an innovative technique of metabolic surgery and is a cost-effective and minimal procedure for the resolution of T2DM in patients with BMI <30 kg/m2.
Effect of a Procaspase-Activating Compound on the Catalytic Activity of Mature Caspase-3
Authors: Matsuo Takashi , Yamada Keita , Ishida Masaya , Miura Yoshiyuki , Yamanaka Masaru , Hirota Shun
Published: June 2015

Caspase-3, an apoptosis-executing enzyme with a dimeric structure, and its zymogen (procaspase-3) are target proteins in cancer chemotherapy using synthetic compounds. Previous work has shown that PAC-1 (1st procaspase-activating compound) affects the activation of procaspase-3 in cancerous cells through the Zn2+-chelation mechanism. However, we found that the compound also enhances the mature caspase-3 activity in the absence of Zn2+. The enhancement of the mature caspase-3 activity by PAC-1 followed a Michaelis–Menten-type saturation dependency with respect to the concentration of the compound. PAC-1 induced the change in the UV–vis spectrum of the mature caspase-3. From these findings, we propose a direct structural interaction of PAC-1 with the protein core. According to a molecular dynamics calculation for the complex of PAC-1 and mature caspase-3, PAC-1 is likely to bind to the interface between the dimeric structure in mature caspase-3. The interactions between PAC-1 and amino acid residues that affect the catalytic activity of mature caspase-3 are suggested. Throughout this work, diverse functions of the apoptosis-inducing compound are disclosed.
Absence of kdr resistance alleles in the Union of the Comoros, East Africa
Authors: Lee Yoosook , Olson Natalie , Yamasaki Youki , Chang Allison , Marsden Clare , Ouledi Ahmed , Lanzaro Gregory , Cornel Anthony J.
Published: June 2015

Knockdown resistance (kdr) and CYP9K1 genotypes were detected by a MOLDI-TOF based SNP genotyping assay (Sequenom iPLEX) in samples of Anopheles gambiae collected at 13 sites throughout the Union of the Comoros and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania during February and March 2011. All A. gambiae specimens collected in the Comoros were homozygous for the susceptible kdr alleles (+/+) while 96% of A. gambiae from Dar es Salaam were homozygous for the East African kdr resistant genotype (E/E). In contrast, all specimens from Dar es Salaam and the Comoros were homozygous for the cyp3 allele (c3/c3) at the CYP9K1 locus; the locus has been implicated in metabolic resistance against pyrethroid insecticides in West Africa. All specimens had typical A. gambiae genotypes for SNPs within the divergence Islands on all three chromosomes. Although further spatial and temporal studies are needed, the distribution of kdr genotypes between the Comoros and Tanzania further supports isolation of the Comoros populations from A. gambiae populations on mainland Africa.
Great Britain and the Bulgarian‑Yugoslavian Rapprochement (Fall 1944‑Winter 1945)
Authors: Znamierowska-Rakk Elżbieta
Published: June 2015

Due to their geographical position in the vicinity of the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, where the main routes to British colonies started, the Balkans were always an important region of Europe for London. Therefore, when towards the end of World War II, Britain’s influence in Greece and Turkey was endangered by the projected union of communist Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, both within the Kremlin’s orbit, the British leadership firmly counteracted. On the one hand, Churchill made an agreement with Stalin on retaining Greece under almost exclusive influence of the Anglo‑Saxon powers. On the other hand, the Foreign Office issued a strong objection to Moscow regarding the concept of federalization of both Southern Slavic states, which, from London’s point of view, would be conducive to the the expansion of communism from those countries and with the main role of the Soviet Union. The British attempts led to breaking the Yugoslavian‑Bulgarian negotiations regarding the federation, which was, paradoxically, beneficial also for Moscow, Sofia, and even Belgrade, which initially made efforts to implement this plan without delay.
Geopolitical Determinants of Macedonia as Part of the Balkan Instability
Authors: Gibas-Krzak Danuta
Published: June 2015

Geopolitics is a relatively new scientific discipline that studies the relationship between the geographical and historical factors influencing the formation and functioning of the states (centres of power). The aim of this paper is to present geopolitical and geostrategic determinants of Macedonia. The author examines the question: Does the territory of Macedonia have the character of destabilizing the political situation in the Balkans, by typing in the paradigm of Balkan instability? The author has relied on the analysis of the Balkan scientists, mostly Serbian and Greek. It is essential to mention: Andrej Mitrović, MiloljubSretenović, MilenkoTešić, Radovan Pavić, Slavoljub B. Šušić, Alexander Demajo and Greek balkanist – Dimitri Poulakos. The author depictsthe geopolitical significance of Macedonia throughout the ages, and geostrategic importance of Macedonia in order to conclude that contemporary Macedonia faces numerous problems of economic, ethnic, legal and international nature. However, it seems that the Albanian ethnic factor as well as bi‑ethnicity of Macedonia are the most unstable elements in the current geopolitical situation of this territory.
Nurses' perceptions of mental health nursing
Authors: Laing Kenny , Nolan Peter
Published: June 2015

The mental health nursing workforce has been at the forefront of unprecedented change in recent years. To date, few empirical studies have sought to elicit the impact of serial changes on nurses' morale, identity and perceptions of the organisational climates in which they work. The aim of this small scale study was to contribute to and stimulate further debate in this area. An opportunistic sample of 26 respondents from a range of services and of different grades satisfied the eligibility criteria and agreed to participate in a short interview. Findings suggest that, far from accepting current changes unquestioningly, nurses are concerned about their short and long-term effects. While nurses continue to believe that the majority of service users value nursing care, they are apprehensive that diminishing resources will affect person-centred care, team functioning, and the role of the nurse and ultimately lead to a dilution of the nursing workforce. Respondents were fearful that continuing with the changes already initiated will inevitably erode the quality of care that will be provided.
Standardizing and Exoticizing the Main Jo’oh : The Tourist Gaze and Identity Politics in the Music and Dance of the Indigenous Mah Meri of Malaysia
Authors: Ching Chan Clare Suet
Published: June 2015

This article explores how the Mah Meri have standardized and exoticized the music and dance performance of the Main Jo’oh in response to the “tourist gaze” and identity politics in Malaysia. A comparison of the form, texture, melody, dance choreography, and costume of the Main Jo’oh in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries shows that the Mah Meri have transformed the Main Jo’oh in various ways, including (1) reducing the time and length of the performance, (2) sustaining traditional acoustic sounds, and (3) self-indigenizing and exoticizing. Playing to the gaze of the tourists, the Mah Meri sustain and innovate the Main Jo’oh by creatively exploring their improvisatory skills, traditional weaving and carving skills, and resources from the depleting mangrove forest on Carey Island, their ancestral territory and home.
Theorizing Religious Abuse within the Context of Intimate Partner Violence: The African American Community
Authors: Davis Maxine
Published: June 2015

This work conceptualizes the perpetration of religious abuse within the context of intimate partner violence ( ipv ). Some scholars have examined the importance of spirituality or religion in the lives of domestic violence survivors, and only a few have explored how abusers use religion to mistreat their partners. This gap in the literature has caused religious abuse itself to be understudied, as a method of control within ipv . The author presents an argument supporting the need to acknowledge religious abuse, details a set of tactics that may be used, and describes the occurrence of this abuse through the description of a theoretical model that focuses on the African American community.
The Intersection of Race and Gender: Teaching Reformed Gender Ideologies to Black Males in the Context of Hegemonic Masculinity
Authors: Wesley Lauren
Published: June 2015

Hegemonic masculinity traditionally excludes those who are not members of it including women, gay men, lower-class white men and non-white men. Black men have historically been characterized as the most oppositional to hegemonic masculinity. However, even in this opposition, some black men strive to create a concept of masculinity for themselves in the context of traditional, white constructs. The unfortunate consequence of this goal is the overcompensation some black men have taken to in order to prove their manhood. In response to the economic and political disempowerment some black men face, this paper introduces models of a reformed definition of black masculinity in order to give some black men the opportunity to emerge as productive citizens in their own communities.
Australian Muslim Jobseekers and Social Capital
Authors: Lovat Terence , Nilan Pam , Hosseini S. A. Hamed , Samarayi Ibtihal , Mansfield Michelle , Alexander Wendy
Published: June 2015

This article uses the concept of social capital to analyse data about Muslim jobseekers attempting to enter the Australian labour market. They often relied on their own social networks to find work rather than maximize the support of employment service providers. The study demonstrated the range of Muslim jobseekers and their social networks in an atmosphere of fear and intolerance. Three categories of Muslim jobseekers – from advantaged to disadvantaged – were identified. It is concluded that the most disadvantaged Muslim jobseekers can benefit greatly from increased support offered by employment service providers. Cet article présente une analyse des gens de confession musulmane qui cherchent à entrer sur le marché du travail en Australie. Nous avons observé que ces gens comptaient souvent sur leurs propres réseaux sociaux pour chercher un emploi et que quelquefois ils ne voulaient pas utiliser les services d’aide. Nos recherches décrivent en détail les expériences de ces demandeurs d’emploi. Il semble qu’il y ait un climat de peur et d’intolérance dans la société australienne qui pousse ces personnes à compter sur leurs propres ressources et réseaux, qui sont nécessairement limités. Nous avons identifié trois catégories de demandeurs d’emploi musulmans: les demandeurs les plus favorisés, les demandeurs avec quelques avantages, et les demandeurs les plus défavorisés. Nos recherches indiquent que les musulmans qui ne réussissent pas à trouver un emploi sont ceux qui sont les plus défavorisés dans la société. Ces derniers devraient obtenir un meilleur soutien des services d’aide à la recherche d’un emploi quand ils cherchent à entrer sur le marché du travail en Australie.
A Sea of Warriors: Performing an Identity of Resilience and Empowerment in the Face of Climate Change in the Pacific
Authors: Steiner Candice Elanna
Published: June 2015

It is estimated that by 2050 as many as 75 million people in the Asia-Pacific region will be forced to migrate from their homelands due to the negative impacts of climate change. While many representations of Pacific Island communities affected by climate change emphasize helplessness, Pacific Islanders have been negotiating identities of empowerment and resilience in both political and cultural arenas. This essay provides an analysis of the messages that Islander performers have chosen to convey through three performance contexts: the 2011 Water Is Rising concert tour, which featured groups from Kiribati, Tokelau, and Tuvalu; 350 Pacific’s Pacific Warrior Campaign, including both the 2013 Warrior Day of Action and the 2014 Canoe Building Day of Action; and the multimedia dramatic performance Moana: The Rising of the Sea , written and produced by Vilsoni Hereniko. Through these three campaigns, we can see that Islanders are actively shaping their identity in the face of climate change, choosing to be seen not as victims in a far and rising sea but rather as a sea of warriors with the power to rise up, work together, and make their voices heard in order to save the lands and cultures that they cherish.
Diacritical Marks and the Samoan Language
Authors: Tualaulelei Eseta Magaui , Mayer Fepuleai Lasei John , Hunkin Galumalemana A
Published: June 2015

The issue of diacritical marks in the Samoan orthography has long been a contentious one, and it is almost four decades now since the last serious attempt was made to review and reconcile the competing guidelines for their use. This article is aimed at promoting a better understanding of the function and use of diacritical marks (the glottal stop and the macron) in written Samoan, as the use of diacritics has important educational implications for students in introductory Samoan-language classes and in early reading programs in bilingual classes. It presents the historical context of the use of these symbols, their treatment in educational materials, and the contemporary situation in which inconsistency prevails. Using historical and linguistic analysis, it investigates how the use of diacritics became so variable and why some Samoan-language users do not consider them to be significant symbols. The article argues that diacritics should be used in the Samoan language, particularly for academic settings, and offers recommendations for teachers to assist with the Samoan language–learning classroom. Our key motivation is that the future of the Samoan language relies heavily on its transmission to younger generations, and for this we need an unambiguous, consistent orthography.
Working Out What to Wear in Papua New Guinea: The Politics of Fashion in Stella
Authors: Spark Ceridwen
Published: June 2015

In this article I discuss Stella , a new women’s magazine in Papua New Guinea. Noting that Stella provides a context for celebrating new Pacific femininities, I argue that the magazine’s representations of fashion are a crucial way in which this refiguring of the feminine occurs. Discussing the significance of what women wear through reference to anthropological insights about the relationship between clothing, gender, and status, I suggest that in PNG, clothing is a focal point of cultural debate. Through its playful politics, Stella intervenes in this debate, thus smuggling a deeply political message between its glossy pages. In addition, I demonstrate that through its selective aestheticization of the “local” and the “traditional,” the magazine acknowledges educated, young Papua New Guinean women’s desire to reconfigure “culture” in more inclusive ways.
Austronesian Youth Perspectives on Language Reclamation and Maintenance
Authors: Odango Emerson Lopez
Published: June 2015

This dialogue piece addresses the relative lack of youth perspectives in the academic literature on language shift, endangerment, reclamation, and maintenance. One of the most important ways to address the matter of intergenerational language shift is to encourage the further integration of youth perspectives into these academic discourses, especially (but not exclusively) perspectives written by young scholars who are speaker-members of communities in which language shift is occurring. Through such perspectives, we can gain more nuanced understandings of youth perceptions about language shift in their communities, the effects on their linguistic identities, and their motivations for reclaiming (or letting go of) their ancestral/heritage languages. In this dialogue piece, I explore perspectives shared with me by members of my generational cohort as a way of telling other stories of youth who are engaged in lifelong journeys of holding on to and reclaiming their languages for reasons that are inherently tied to personal identities. By the nature of the array of languages I discuss in this essay, an Austronesian perspective emerges, one that I draw on for personal inspiration: the challenges I face as a Filipino are shared by other members of my cohort who are of Austronesian ancestry. It is an immeasurable amount of support knowing that there are other young Austronesians like me who are fighting to hold on to their languages against all odds. This dialogue piece is a contribution to the growing literature on youth perspectives in the academic discourses on language shift, endangerment, reclamation, and maintenance.
Re-Presenting Melanesia: Ignoble Savages and Melanesian Alter-Natives
Authors: Kabutaulaka Tarcisius
Published: June 2015

In this essay, I examine the dominant representations of Melanesia as a place and Melanesians as peoples and how these have influenced understandings of and responses to contemporary developments in this subregion. I begin with an overview of the discourses that influenced the mapping of Oceania and the negative representations of Melanesians. These have, in turn, framed and influenced discourses about and relationships with Melanesia and Melanesians, including Melanesian perceptions of themselves and their relationships with others. Against this background, my focus is on how Melanesians have recently appropriated the term “Melanesia” and are using it in positive, empowering, and progressive ways to mobilize, redefine, and re-present themselves. In the process, they have constructed a pan-Melanesian identity that embraces and celebrates the subregion’s ethno-linguistic and cultural diversities. This is manifested through the concepts of “the Melanesian Way” and “wantokism,” intergovernmental organizations such as the Melanesian Spearhead Group, the arts, and popular culture. Through all of these, Melanesians are “altering” the native and “re-presenting” what might be called the “ignoble savage.” This process and discourse constitute “Melanesianism.”
‘Mulrennan Spoke To Him About Universe And Stars’: Astronomy In A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man
Authors: Ebury Katherine
Published: June 2015

This article positions A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man through the lens of scientific discourses of astronomy, in particular in relation to popularizations of the science of entropy and its literary impact. It is argued that scientific readings of Joyce’s texts have tended to focus too much on ‘Ithaca’ and ‘Night Lessons’, to the neglect of key scientific metaphors for creativity and subject formation utilized in A Portrait . Focused close readings of the later chapters of A Portrait allow the author to make a case for reading Joyce’s use of the bildungsroman form in parallel with theories of cosmic evolution and decay. Science fiction, such as the work of H.G. Wells, and the poems of Yeats’s apocalyptic collection The Wind Among the Reeds , are offered as important points of comparison for Joyce’s transformation of astronomical ideas into literary texts. A final, more playful, section explores the politics of alien life in Mulrennan’s story of an old man who imagines ‘queer creatures’ in Chapter V of A Portrait .
‘But I Must Not Accounted Be /One Of That Mumming Company’: Joyce, Mangan, and the Treacheries of Poetic Succession
Authors: Wheatley David
Published: June 2015

This essay examines the formative influence on the young Joyce of James Clarence Mangan, and his shaping of Joyce’s relationship with the Irish tradition. Mangan’s posthumous promotion as Ireland’s ‘national poet’ invested that writer with the aura of the poète maudit , while implicitly confirming Ireland and Irishness as the limiting horizons of his work. Joyce engages sympathetically with Mangan while signalling his intention to pull away from the nationalist tradition he represents. In his poetry, Joyce does this most memorably in verse satires such as ‘Gas from a Burner’ and ‘The Holy Office’. I consider the relationship of the satirical poems to the lyrics of Chamber Music and Pomes Penyeach , and the thematic centrality (shared with Mangan) of betrayal and succession. The essay ends with a brief consideration of the influence of Joycean poetics on contemporary writers, from Thomas Kinsella to Justin Quinn.
Piercing the Veil: Der reine Tor , the Grail Quest, and the Language Question in ‘Araby’
Authors: D’arcy Anne Marie
Published: June 2015

Since the mid-nineteenth century, numerous critics have attempted to determine the ultimate source of the grail legend. Perhaps the most influential strand in early critical studies, particularly outside academia, was the Ritual or Anthropological theory of origin, which sometimes flowed into the ‘cultic twalette’ ( FW 344.12) of the Celtic or Folkloristic theory. The Ritual Theory suggests that the concept of the grail sprang from the putative rites associated with a vegetation god, typified by such figures as Adonis, Attis, and Osiris, who dies each year in the winter only to be ritually revived each spring. Both Stephen and Bloom make several references to the central tenets of the Ritual Theory in Ulysses , and Joyce appropriated aspects of this theory in Finnegans Wake , albeit from a sceptically humorous perspective. However, this article highlights Joyce’s essentially Christian concept of the grail in ‘Araby’: as a chalice of unattainable knowledge and unfulfilled desire, and Joyce’s construction of the boy as a type of Perceval, the original, twelfth-century grail hero. Here, Joyce draws specifically on the topos of der reine Tor , or le pur simple , which not only defines Perceval in medieval romance from his inception in Le conte du graal by Chrétien de Troyes ( c . 1181–90), but also in Wagner’s adaptation of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival ( c. 1200–10). In ‘Araby’, the boy is indeed a ‘young reine’ ( FW 64.16), and like Perceval he fails in his quest, ‘purely simply’ ( FW 241.25) because of his inability to ask the right question before darkness falls on the hall, and the opportunity is lost forever. As in the Perceval romances, this inability to pierce the veil, to fulfil the onomastic potential of the grail hero’s name, is rooted in the orientalized locus , and the question of language, or in this instance, the language question. At the close of ‘Araby’, the boy’s eminently medieval anagnoresis involves the sudden recognition of the alien nature of the very words he fails to speak as a ‘purr esimple’ ( FW 561.9).
Ascension of Christ or Ascension of Mary?: Reconsidering a Popular Early Iconography
Authors: Kateusz Ally
Published: June 2015

This essay argues that an early Christian iconography that art historians today typically identify as the “Ascension of Christ” was instead originally understood as a scene from the Six Books Dormition narrative about the ascension of Mary. This art depicts Jesus inside a sphere in the sky above his arms-raised mother, who is herself usually flanked by twelve apostles, including Paul. Subsequent changes to both the Dormition text and the iconography resulted in the loss of this scene from Christian memory, but two ascension scenes carved on the early fifth-century doors of S. Sabina Basilica in Rome support the argument.
Irenaeus vs. the Valentinians: Toward a Rethinking of Patristic Exegetical Origins
Authors: Ayres Lewis
Published: June 2015

An under-studied dimension of Irenaeus’s exegetical practice is his extensive use of Hellenistic literary-critical techniques. He couples this usage with a consistent claim that the meaning of texts should primarily be established by attending to the “clear” or “manifest” sense of terms and expressions. Irenaeus’s practice culminates a gradual and deepening engagement with these techniques apparent in earlier Christian texts, but the suddenness and striking quality of his advance is best explained by seeing him as reacting to the Val-entinian production of commentary literature that claims the cultural capital of ancient literary-critical techniques to justify reading the texts of the “New Testament” as enigmatic ciphers for Valentinian myths. Irenaeus responds by making a distinct claim on the same cultural capital—one that utilizes an established anti-allegorical rhetoric—to justify his own practice. Understanding Irenaeus’s particular adaptation of ancient literary-critical practice provides a deeper context for considering his emphasis on reading in the light of the regula veritatis . In so doing he becomes a foundational figure in shaping the exegetical practice so central to early Christianity in the centuries that follow.
“The Health-Giving Cup”: Cyprian’s Ep . 63 and the Medicinal Power of Eucharistic Wine
Authors: Penniman John David
Published: June 2015

Cyprian’s Epistle 63 represents the earliest extant account of the proper meaning and administration of the eucharistic cup. Against a group of Christians who were taking only water, Cyprian argues that wine is necessary for the ritual to be effective. While there has been much discussion surrounding the biblical references marshaled by Cyprian to prove his point, this article explores the extent to which those references are inflected through lexical and conceptual categories relating to the medical usage of wine. Wine figured prominently in literature on illness, health, and healing that proliferated during the Roman Empire. This article locates Cyprian within that broader dynamic, and argues that his emphasis on the health-giving effects of the eucharistic cup in Ep . 63 reflects similar descriptions of the medicinal power of wine found in manuals of Roman medicine and other folklore traditions.
The “Eye of Abraham” Charm for Thieves: Versions in Middle and Early Modern English
Authors: Stallcup Stephen B.
Published: June 2015

This article discusses and edits five versions of the “Eye of Abraham,” a charm against thieves common in Early Modern England, though in fact the procedure described in the charms is unique to neither England nor the sixteenth century. A similar charm is known to German folklorists as the Diebesauge; numerous versions are found in the folk- and magic-literature of Germany and Scandinavia, and the earliest known version occurs in an early fourth-century Greek papyrus. All the versions have in common a procedure that involves painting an eye on a wall, and striking or hitting it with a hammer or sharp object to cause the eye of the thief to water, or in the worst cases, to be put out. The five English versions edited here all show interesting differences in language and invocation.
Prognostic Structure and the Use of Trumps in Tibetan Pebble Divination
Authors: Smith Alexander K.
Published: June 2015

This paper discusses the structure of prognoses offered in a form of pebble divination common to the Bön religion of Tibet. In addition to fieldwork conducted at Menri Monastery, Sirmaur District, H.P., India, the discussion will be drawn primarily from an alleged witness to an eleventh century “treasure” text, as well as two divination manuals written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries respectively. Following a brief introduction to Tibetan divination practices and to the Bön religion, the method of casting will be discussed. It will be shown that Tibetan pebble divination uses a system of ‘trumps’ that significantly complicate the distillation of prognoses. In this respect, lithomantic techniques stand apart from other Tibetan divination practices, many of which use similar numeral systems, though lack a mediating structure of ‘major’ and ‘minor’ results
“Give the devil his due”: Freedom, Damnation, and Milton’s Paradise Lost in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman: Season of Mists
Authors: Jahlmar Joakim
Published: June 2015

In their collection Milton in Popular Culture (2006), Laura Lungers Knoppers and Gregory M. Colón Semenza have established the importance of Miltonic intertextuality in popular culture, while recognizing the importance of William Blake to the field. Blake’s definition of Milton as “a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it” in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793) lies at the centre of a main concern of Milton criticism since the poem’s original publication. The debate between Satanists and anti-Satanists goes back even further than Blake and the Romantics, and this central ambivalence is representative of the “discontinuities” and “irresolvable complexities” which Peter C. Herman and Elizabeth Sauer (2012) argue are the focus of interest of the New Milton Criticism. Following this strand of critical thought, this article proposes to show how the introduction of Miltonic intertext into Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman , in issues 21–28, serves to structure the series’ theme of change and death — which involve questions of freedom and teleology, free will and damnation — through a critical dialogue with, and creative rewriting of Miltonic theodicy in the epic poem. Gaiman draws upon the ambivalent theological dimensions of Paradise Lost not to present his own concept of good and evil but rather to discuss the freedom to change and the damnation inherent in the inability to change as part of the human condition.
Du côté de Fun Home : Alison Bechdel Rewrites Marcel Proust
Authors: Iuliano Fiorenzo
Published: June 2015

This article reads Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (2006) as a rewriting of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time . Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s assumption, which interprets In Search as a complex exercise in decoding signs, the article claims that Fun Home stages the attempt of its protagonists, Alison and her father Bruce, to understand the truth about each other. In particular, it addresses the issues of sexual identity, spatiality, and death as some of the crucial motifs in In Search that Bechdel retrieves in Fun Home . The protagonists’ “experiment in decoding” turns out to be a failure, due to the impossibility of understanding and deciphering the signs of each other’s intimate truths.
Chris Ware’s Epiphanic Comics
Authors: Freedman Ariela
Published: June 2015

This paper reads Chris Ware’s Building Stories in light of his many references to art and literature, especially to Cornell, Courbet, Duchamp, and James Joyce. The author argues that Building Stories requires intermedial reading, knowledge of both the “high” canon of modernist literature and art and the history and iconology of twentieth and twenty-first century comics. In Building Stories Ware incorporates the work and ideas of canonical art history through an allusive play that is hybrid, layered and subversive. The paper claims that Ware’s citation of Duchamp and Courbet reframes a dissociated and dissociating trope, the dismembered female nude, in a story critical of the objectification of women, the mask of femininity, and the traps of gender. Ware ultimately does so in the service of a sentimental and redemptive narrative frame the paper calls the epiphanic mode. As used by Ware, the epiphanic mode marries one of the most sacred and revered concepts of modernism, the epiphany, to the formal device of the comics capsule as used by Bil Keane, one of the most maligned and popular comics artists of the last fifty years. The turn towards a devalued device — the Bil Keane capsule, or epiphanic circle, and a devalued experience — the domestic, rejects the internal hierarchies not only of the art world but also of the comics world, which is so often associated with masculine and public models of heroism.
Introduction
Authors: Freedman Ariela
Published: June 2015

Survey of the directions taken by the papers of the forum “Comics and the Canon”: a reading of modern prints as an overlooked part of comics genealogy, followed by intertextual and intermedial readings of contemporary graphic novels in relation to canonical art and literature.
Repertorio monumental y pluralismo en la cultura argentina contemporánea
Authors: Lanctot Brendan
Published: June 2015

In the context of the prolific cultural production surrounding the Bicentennial celebrations in Latin America, this paper examines the writings of the Argentine writer Washington Cucurto (the penname of Santiago Vega, born 1973), particularly his novel 1810: la Revolución de Mayo vivida por los negros (2008). Contrary to the received idea that his poetry and novels confer visibility on marginalized groups, it contends that his work reveals and, indeed, revels in the excess of representation that is intrinsic to fictions of the state. That is, Cucurto does not criticize the inclusion of certain social actors in Argentine civic life or historiography, but rather—per Alan Badiou's terminology—the operative “excrescence” of the present conjuncture. 1810 rejects neither the conventions of official history nor those of historical fiction, but carries them to an absurd extreme, staging a frenetic accumulation of anachronisms. By representing the destruction and reconstruction of the iconic Cabildo in the midst of a patriotic orgy, Cucurto explicitly links a new pluralist nationalism with the monumental repertory of patriotic festivities prior to the Bicentennial. In this way, 1810 constitutes a corrosive pastiche that does not advocate for the political and aesthetic representation of marginalized groups in present-day Argentine society, but instead interrupts a sociopolitical discourse that insists on fixing, tracking, and disciplining the place of the other.
The Cuban Anti-Antislavery Genre: Anselmo Suárez y Romero's Colección de artículos and the Policy of Buen Tratamiento
Authors: Silverstein Stephen
Published: June 2015

While Anselmo Suárez y Romero's (1818–78) articles depicting slavery have conventionally been read as philanthropic efforts to put an end to this institution in Cuba, they are in fact propaganda for a program of labor reform called buen tratamiento, or good treatment, the purpose of which was the economic rationalization and prolongation of slavery. Although the flow of chattel labor to the Pearl of the Antilles continued even after successive Anglo-Spanish bilateral treaties banned the trans-Atlantic slave trade (1820, 1835, 1845), the price of a slave increased exponentially. Due to the augmented value and relative scarcity of slaves, some creoles promoted a series of labor reforms that were designed to prolong the productive life of slaves and encourage their natural reproduction. These reforms were known as buen tratamiento. Intellectuals of the period, such as Suárez, had a stake in the planters' extrication from peninsular slavers and the Crown's colonial authority: they wished to secure Antillean political and economic liberties. By rereading Suárez's costumbrista sketches of slave life through the lens of buen tratamiento, I hope to provide a more nuanced understanding of nineteenth-century creoles' conceptualization of slave labor that moves beyond the pro- and anti-slavery binary that currently dominates discussions surrounding Cuban abolitionism.
Orientalizing Mexico: Estudios indostánicos and the Place of India in José Vasconcelos's La raza cósmica
Authors: Torres-Rodríguez Laura J.
Published: June 2015

This article analyzes the writings about India of the first federal Secretary of Public Education of Mexico, José Vasconcelos, to connect the emergence of his culturalist thinking with Orientalist conceptions about Asia. The relation between the two can be seen in his first long work about South Asia, Estudios indostánicos (1919), in which Vasconcelos develops ideas about India that he will later apply to the Latin American case in La raza cósmica (1925). From this perspective, India operates as a subtext for Latin American mestizaje. Similarly, the article traces the prominent role of his readings of the Indian intellectual Swami Vivekananda in the development of his spiritualist anticolonialism in La raza cósmica. Thus, the transnational and interperipheral nature of his philosophical practice is emphasized. Furthermore, Vasconcelos's literacy campaigns include Indian religious practices as yoga and vegetarianism, thus showing the instrumentalization of spiritual practices within the State imperatives of development and modernization. Based on these examples, this article proposes Mexican Orientalism as a complementary practice to cultural nationalism, and, therefore, as a central discourse in the development of a Latin Americanist ideology in the 1920s.
Vivísimo surrealismo: notas sobre una reactivación historiográfica
Authors: Porchini Dafne Cruz
Published: June 2015

“Vivísimo surrealismo: notas sobre una reactivación historiográfica” REVIEW ESSAY OF: Dawn Ades, Rita Eder, and Graciela Speranza, Eds. Surrealism in Latin America: Vivísimo Muerto; Annette Leddy, and Donna Conwell. Farewell to Surrealism: The Dyn Circle in Mexico.
Memory, Silence, and Democracy in Spain: Federico García Lorca, the Spanish Civil War, and the Law of Historical Memory
Authors: Delgado Maria M.
Published: June 2015

What does it mean to unearth the dead? What is contemporary society’s responsibility to the disappeared ? How do we live with the ghosts of history? In the midst of the search for the body of Federico García Lorca in 2009, Emilio Silva, cofounder and president of Spain’s Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH)—a national organization assisting in the location and exhumation of the graves of Spain’s desaparecidos , or disappeared, during the Civil War and its aftermath—wrote of “the silent bones of Federico García Lorca and the skeleton of our democracy.” This essay traces the ways in which the remains of one of Europe’s most resonant twentieth-century dramatists haunt contemporary Spain. In mapping the wider ideological framework in which his work has been produced in Spain, it engages with the politics of a statesanctioned “official” history that has shaped his appropriation by the nation-state. Using the search for Lorca’s corpse in 2009 as a central focus, it examines how the exhumation of mass graves undertaken in twenty-first-century Spain can be viewed as a move toward a more nuanced understanding both of the events of the past and the fissures of the present in a country where issues of justice have been compromised for too long by a culture of silence.
Unseen Labor and Backstage Choreographies: A Materialist Production History of A Chorus Line
Authors: Essin Christin
Published: June 2015

This essay documents the experiences of union stagehands in New York who worked on Broadway productions of A Chorus Line (1975, 2006), positioning their backstage labor as a choreographic mirror to the onstage labor of performers. Through a historiographic reconstruction of stagehands’ live production labor, particularly that of electricians, the essay argues for a reconsideration of the iconic musical’s materialist critique, including its scrutiny of the commercial theatre industry’s impersonal supply-and-demand hiring practices and the loss of individual identity that accompanies the practice of professional skills in unison. Through a combination of oral histories, archival research, and secondary sources, the reconstruction focuses on the intricate, rehearsed movements of followspot operators illuminating and isolating dancers as they reveal their interior lives. It then juxtaposes the spot ops’ physically demanding labor with the more visually engaged, technologically advanced skills of the head electrician, who operated Tharon Musser’s innovative, Tony Award–winning lighting design from Broadway’s first computer-controlled light board. As a materialist production history, the essay aligns A Chorus Line ’s stagehands with the musical’s fictional (and actual) dancers, using the production’s materialist critique as an impetus to recuperate the regularly unseen and often undervalued labor of individuals whose physical, mental, and intuitive skills fuel the Broadway machine.
Redefining America, Arena Stage, and Territory Folks in a Multiracial Oklahoma!
Authors: Galella Donatella
Published: June 2015

In 2010, Arena Stage, the pioneering regional theatre of Washington, D.C., celebrated its sixtieth anniversary and new theatre complex with a multiracial production of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! This production helped to rebrand the company as “Where American Theatre Lives” by mobilizing a popular musical of American nation-formation populated by multiracial territory folks on the frontier and in the nation’s capital. This essay argues that Arena’s production stages a utopian performative of inclusion and harmony, but that utopia troublingly rests on indigenous genocide and elision of racial difference and inequality. Both parts of this argument are crucial when many Americans openly celebrate diversity, but deny the structural significance of race and racism despite vast disparities. To understand how bodies become variously interpellated and interpreted into existing racial projects and the shifting (re)productions of Americanness, the essay theorizes three terms for the production and consumption of this Oklahoma! : multiracial-conscious , whitened , and post-racial . Spectators could view the territory folks as people of color, whites, and/or beyond race. The casting, marketing, and critical reception reveal the struggles for defining race and American identity at a moment when people of color appear to have significant representation, enabling a post-racial project in which many with privilege disavow that privilege and perpetuate existing inequities.