bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sensitive limit
Authors: Fend Mechthild
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on the significance of skin in neoclassical art and aesthetics. The most distinctive features of neoclassicism - an emphasis on the contour and a preference for more finished surfaces - are understood as elements crucial for the visual formation and understanding of the human body, its surface and borderlines. The culture of neoclassicism, extending well beyond the realm of art and art discourse, was generally characterised by a heightened concern with the shaping of the body and the safeguarding of its boundaries. Skin as the body's physical demarcation, was increasingly perceived not merely as an envelope and organ, but as the boundary of the self. The chapter considers the new attention to skin and contour in late eighteenth-century French art discourse, in particular in Watelet's and Levesque's Dictionnaire des beaux-arts. It equally looks at the discussion of membranes and the definition of skin as ‘sensitive limit‘ in the works of anatomist Xavier Bichat and analyses a set of portraits by Jacques-Louis David painted in the aftermath of the French Revolution.
Indirect satire: theory and Spenserian practice
Authors: Hile Rachel E.
Published: May 2017

The first chapter begins with an analysis of indirect meaning-making in satire, discussing how allusion, symbol, and analogy can work to create allegorical satirical meanings that invite the reader to project insights from the text to the real world. Chapter 1 explores the literary, natural-historical, symbolic, and allegorical meanings that Spenser’s culture attached to foxes in order to give a sense of the complexity of Spenser’s use of animal imagery to create indirect satire in his most famous satirical character, the Fox of Mother Hubberds Tale. The chapter closes with a sketch of Spenser’s career as a satirist, aiming to create a sense of story and to connect the story of Spenser-as-satirist with better-known discussions of Spenser’s career trajectory from such scholars as Richard Helgerson and Patrick Cheney.
Spenserian “entry codes” to indirect satire
Authors: Hile Rachel E.
Published: May 2017

Chapter 4 provides two case studies of writers who found in Spenser, and particularly in his indirect satirical tools of allusion and allegory, inspiration for creating their own puzzlingly indirect works. The chapter explores the intertextual relationships between Thomas Nashe’s Choise of Valentines and Spenser’s “March” and between Tailboys Dymoke’s Caltha Poetarum and Spenser’s Muiopotmos, arguing that these poets use allusions to and intertextuality with Spenser to signal that the reader ought to read for allegorical satire. The chapter argues that Nashe creates his Choise of Valentines in part to take satirical aim at Spenser himself, or rather, the oversimplified version of “the decorous Spenser” discussed in chapter 3, to suggest the foolishness of subscribing to idealizing views of love while also offering some sly insults to Frances Walsingham and Queen Elizabeth. The offense to the queen is clearer, though still indirect, in Caltha Poetarum, and the second half of chapter 4 uses that work to consider the possibility that some contemporary viewers found satire on Queen Elizabeth in Spenser’s Muiopotmos. The chapter closes with a coda that aims to bring together the two halves of the chapter through a brief discussion of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis.
Introduction: almost nothing
Authors: Dezeuze Anna
Published: May 2017

This introduction introduces the term ‘precariousness’ by contrasting it with the ‘ephemeral’. Precarious practices that explore the ‘almost nothing’ are situated in the context of studies of ‘nothingness’ and empty exhibitions in contemporary art. Such debates focus on the ‘dematerialisation’ of the art object since the 1960s, which will be addressed from a new perspective following Lawrence Alloway’s 1969 definition of ‘an expanding and disappearing’ work of art. Re-readings of the materiality of contemporary art since the 1960s are related to continental debates concerning ‘precarity’ in the 1990s, and traced back to Hannah Arendt’s 1958 remarks on The Human Condition. Two different philosophical books — Vladimir Jankélévitch’s 1957 Le Je-ne-sais-quoi et le presque rien, and Simon Critchley’s 1997 Very little, almost nothing — point to some of the questions and methods raised by the study of precarious practices.
Junk aesthetics in a throwaway age
Authors: Dezeuze Anna
Published: May 2017

For Arendt, the fragile balance between labour, work and action that lies at the heart of the human condition was fundamentally endangered by the planned obsolescence characteristic of the new post-war consumer capitalism. Artworks displaying a ‘junk’ aesthetic produced on the East and West Coasts of the United States in the period between 1957 and 1962 can be read in light of Arendt’s perspective, which intersected with both sociological critiques of the new capitalism and the writings of Zen master D.T. Suzuki and other popularisers of Zen Buddhism. Jack Kerouac’s 1958 novel The Dharma Bums resonated with both critiques of consumer society and newly discovered Zen alternatives. This chapter outlines some of the links between Kerouac’s Beat aesthetic and the assemblage and happenings of the early 1960s, by analysing the reception of landmark exhibitions such as The Art of Assemblage in 1961, and the practices of Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Bruce Conner and Allan Kaprow.
‘At the point of imperceptibility’
Authors: Dezeuze Anna
Published: May 2017

This chapter hinges on a comparison between George Brecht’s 1961 concept of a ‘borderline’ art ‘at the point of imperceptibility’ and the concerns with invisible forces and energies of an international group of kinetic artists, associated with the Signals Gallery in London between 1964 and 1966. While the evolution of Brecht’s work from 1957 to 1962 was shaped by a search for the concrete and the changeable in which other ‘junk’ artists, such as Allan Kaprow, were engaged at the time, the Signals Gallery artists were more closely linked to a trajectory of abstract and constructive art. Nevertheless, both the Signals Gallery artists and Brecht shared a similar desire to create experimental forms that would reflect a new vision of reality, inflected by both scientific discoveries and Zen Buddhism. In particular, the issue of perception was closely tied to the role of the spectator, whether in Brecht’s participatory ‘arrangements’ and ‘borderline’ event scores or Lygia Clark’s manipulable sculptures and her conception of an ‘art without art’. Brecht’s work is shown to have contributed to Allan Kaprow’s reflections on precarious ‘activities’, while both the artists’ work impacted Lawrence Alloway’s definition of an ’expanding and disappearing’ artwork in the late 1960s.
Introduction
Authors: Donnelly K. J. , Rawle Steven
Published: May 2017

The introduction examines the significance and history of Alfred Hitchcock’s partnership with Bernard Herrmann. It also demonstrates the enduring appeal and legacy of the partnership in cinema from the 1970s onwards, especially as Herrmann worked with other directors steeped in the Hitchcock tradition.
Hitchcock, music and the mathematics of editing
Authors: Barr Charles
Published: May 2017

Drawing on new archival work on Hitchcock’s films, this chapter contextualises Hitchcock’s authorship around a metaphor of ‘musicality’. Plotting the structure and shot lengths of Hitchcock’s work, it argues that Hitchcock’s conception of editing was dictated by a structural ‘musicality’ that runs throughout his silent works, demonstrating the influence of Griffith and Eisenstein, into the partnership with Herrmann and beyond, to the Herrmann-inspired work with John Williams in Family Plot. The chapter traces this historical aspect of Hitchcock’s authorship, and its interactions with the work of several composers, including Herrmann, to demonstrate how the mathematics of Hitchcock’s editing can be argued to be a musical structure that runs throughout the body of his work. Charting these structures as musical notation, the chapter demonstrates that ‘music’ was a central component of Hitchcock’s work, despite his numerous collaborations with different composers, of which Herrmann is a privileged case, and can be charted right from his silent work to his final works.
A Lacanian take on Herrmann/Hitchcock
Authors: Brown Royal S.
Published: May 2017

As the title of this chapter testifies, it takes a Lacanian approach to Herrmann’s work with Hitchcock. Drawing on Kristeva’s Lacanian pre-Symbolic notion of ‘the specular,’ Brown finds Herrmann’s music, not just his film work with Hitchcock, but also his concert and radio music, to demonstrate the full specular potential of the cinema. Drawing on Laura Mulvey’s theories, the chapter examines the way in which Herrmann’s deployment of the Hitchcock chord (as referenced above) in Vertigo and Psycho in particular, remove film’s Symbolic discursive attachments, in a manner similar to atonal or experimental music, and returns it to its specular potential.
Portentous arrangements: Bernard Herrmann and The Man Who Knew Too Much
Authors: Pomerance Murray
Published: May 2017

While Herrmann's twenty-four successful and one failed collaboration with Hitchcock – including films and television programs – featured compositional scoring to some degree, Herrmann's work on The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) is a peculiar deviation in the pattern of their regular working relationship because there are only a very small number of composed cues. The bulk of Herrmann's work on this film, which involved some considerable legal machinations, consisted of two very different kinds of contribution, each of which can tell us something about the composer's talents, diligence, and sensitivity to film production. On one hand he was called upon to arrange "received" music, and this in a wide range from Moroccan folk tunes to elaborate symphonic work, and including the traditionalist hymn, "The Portents." On the other, he became a member of the cast, on this one occasion only in his filmic work with Hitchcock, playing the role of a conductor at a performance in the Royal Albert Hall. This chapter argues that, since the overall score of the film is essentially an acoustic quilt, we find here evidence of a talent for assemblage and backgrounding that Herrmann does not have opportunity to show in his other work with Hitchcock.
A dance to the music of Herrmann: a figurative dance suite
Authors: Cooper David
Published: May 2017

This chapter argues that Herrmann’s Echoes owes much to Herrmann’s film work, and in particular has resonances with his scores for Vertigo, Psycho and Marnie. Taking a musicological approach to Herrmann’s concert and film score work, it finds in Herrmann’s music a potent ability to subtly support Vertigo’s narrative development and sonically make manifest its underlying psychological thrust without the need to resort to slavish and literal translation and therefore reduplication of the visual into the aural and musical. In addition, it sets Herrmann’s work within the context of Hitchcock’s oeuvre, examining firstly the musical relationship between Herrmann and Lyn Murray, and the stylistic agreement between them: Murray’s score for To Catch a Thief is more heterogeneous than that of his sometime friend, and a significant proportion is diegetic, drawing strongly on jazz and popular music, while at the same time looking to influences such as early Britten and Prokofiev.
Musical romanticism v. the sexual aberrations of the criminal female: Marnie (1964)
Authors: Donnelly K. J.
Published: May 2017

Hitchcock and Herrmann had a symbiotic and complementary artistic relationship. However, as this chapter contends, rather than necessarily synergic in their understanding of the unified requirements of drama, sometimes their complementary relationship took on a different character. In Marnie, Herrmann’s music attempted to ameliorate Hitchcock’s dark interests, in an attempt to romanticize Hitchcock’s bleak and grotesque story about a psychologist’s fantasy about possessing a disturbed kleptomaniac killer, which includes a deeply disquieting rape scene. The music moves to make these elements bearable, with a ‘sleight of hand’ that misdirects us from the utter darkness and irredeemable characters and obscene aspects of the film narrative.
The scope of security threats and their causes
Authors: Stevens Daniel , Vaughan-Williams Nick
Published: May 2017

Chapter Three brings together insights from the focus group and survey data on the scope of threats and their origins. It debunks previous claims that there are few systematic influences on threats and goes further in clarifying the variation in the origins of different threats at different levels. It begins by summarising how participants in group discussions defined and understood the key concepts of ‘security’ and ‘threat’, and the vernacular methods of perception, measurement and categories of understanding of security. The Chapter shows a recurring scale of understanding consisting of four primary levels –personal, community, national, and global. From the survey data, it focuses initially on the breadth, or number, of security threats that individuals identified in total at the global, national, community, and personal levels. It also examines what those threats were. The second part of the Chapter analyses the specific threats of terrorism, immigration, the economy, and the environment. Among the findings is that mortality salience and authoritarian attitudes are strong predictors of the number of threats that individuals identify and on the identification of specific threats such as terrorism and immigration.
Introduction
Authors: O'Brien Mark
Published: May 2017

It was, by any measure, a sensational court case: a prominent solicitor suing a Catholic priest for damages after the cleric had allegedly stalked, hypnotised, and slept with the man’s wife. The case was heard before the President of the High Court over several days in May 1943 and provided much copy for the journalist who worked as a stringer for the London-based ...
Official Ireland
Authors: O'Brien Mark
Published: May 2017

This chapter surveys the state of journalism prior to the 1960s. Long criticised for being stagnant and uncritical, journalism during this period was, more than anything else, a reflection of the influence of interest groups and the Catholic Church. But there were some positive developments also: the Irish News Agency provided a training ground for many future, influential, journalists and The Bell provided a rare outlet for critical journalism. Other issues were also pertinent: the lack of education, poor pay and conditions, the poor public perception of journalists, and the legacy of wartime censorship all shaped journalism during this period.
The impact of television
Authors: O'Brien Mark
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the impact that the arrival of television had on journalism. It argues that Section 18 of the Broadcasting Authority Act had a profound influence on the trajectory of journalism. This section required RTÉ to be ‘fair and impartial’ in its news and current affairs – a very different requirement to that which had previously informed journalism. This inevitably put pressure on other media outlets to distance themselves from their political allegiances and give journalists greater autonomy. The chapter examines how, in a decade of unprecedented social change, this new dynamic in journalism took root and looks at the clashes that erupted between journalists and institutions that had, up to then, had it all their own way.
Lifting the lid
Authors: O'Brien Mark
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the development of investigative journalism from the early 1970s onwards. It looks at the ground-breaking Sweepstakes éxpose of 1973, how the early investigations into corruption in local government were frustrated, and the infamous Heavy Gang investigation into police brutality by the Irish Times. It also looks extensively at how a new generation of journalists sought to instil transparency and accountability into Irish public life through the development of periodicals such as Hibernia, Magill, Hot Press and In Dublin. In time the journalists who cut their teeth on these periodicals would migrate to mainstream media – bringing their investigative zeal with them.
An appalling vista
Authors: O'Brien Mark
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the seemingly unending revelations of political, religious, and financial corruption that dominated the 1990s. It surveys the banking and policing scandals that dominated this decade and examines the struggles that journalists engaged in to expose this corruption. It also devotes considerable attention to the church scandals that were finally exposed by journalists – in particular the child abuse scandal that was to change forever the relationship between the once all-powerful Catholic Church and journalism.
Introduction: The Northern Ireland Troubles in Britain: impacts, engagements, legacies and memories
Authors: Dawson Graham , Hopkins Stephen
Published: May 2017

The introduction, and the book more generally, addresses a paradox: that the Northern Ireland conflict, commonly known as ‘the Troubles’, has had profound and shaping impacts upon politics, culture and the lives of many thousands of people in Great Britain, producing lasting legacies that continue to resonate nearly half a century after the eruption of political violence in 1968-9; but that engagements with the conflict, and with its ‘post-conflict’ transformation, from within Britain have been limited, lacking, frequently problematic, often troubled, in ways that are not fully grasped or considered.
The book, then, has four main aims: to investigate the history of responses to, engagements with, and memories of the Northern Irish conflict in Britain; to explore absences and weaknesses or silences in this history; to promote a wider academic and public debate in Britain concerning the significance of this history, and the lessons to be learned from the post-conflict efforts to ‘deal with the past’ in Northern Ireland; and to provoke reflection on the significance of opening up hitherto unexamined histories and memories of the Troubles, and the ways in which ongoing conflicts between competing understandings of the past might be addressed and negotiated.
The memoir writing of the Wilson and Callaghan governments: the Labour Party and constitutional policy in Northern Ireland
Authors: Hopkins Stephen
Published: May 2017

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the memoir-writing of senior Labour Party (LP) politicians who were closely engaged in developing and implementing government policy towards Northern Ireland during the administrations of Harold Wilson (1964-70 and 1974-6) and James Callaghan (1976-9). Studying the memoirs of these leading policy-makers can furnish researchers with an understanding of the lived experience of individuals attempting to deal on a day-to-day basis with the intricacies of policy in a context (after 1970) of regular, and sometimes intense, political violence.
The argument presented here is that the significant degree of continuity in the Labour governments’ constitutional policy towards Northern Ireland is not always reflected in the memoir-writing of the key protagonists. It is also probable that a fuller understanding of the way in which policy towards Northern Ireland was made, and thought about, by key protagonists, may cast a brighter light on the nature of the LP as a governing party more generally.
Serving in troubled times: British military personnel’s memories and accounts of service in Northern Ireland
Authors: Jenkings K. Neil , Woodward Rachel
Published: May 2017

Operation Banner saw the deployment of over 300,000 British soldiers to Ulster during the Troubles and as such they can be seen as constituting a third community during this period. Drawing on interviews with former service personnel structured around their personal photographs, and using published memoir accounts of military deployment to Northern Ireland, this chapter explores the memory work undertaken by former personnel to make sense of their past experience. Individuals, some still teenagers and serving in a hostile environment that for many looked just like home on the UK mainland, often experienced traumatic and life changing events when deployed. Using the themes of ‘youth and experience’, ‘security and danger’ and ‘trauma and memory’ we examine the often conflicting emotions and responses of these former military personnel to their experiences of the Troubles, and the work undertaken in the present to contain and make sense of this.
Political delegations of women from Britain to the North of Ireland and the campaign against strip searching in the 1980s
Authors: Parkin Di
Published: May 2017

This chapter gives an account of delegations of women, primarily organised during the 1980s by Labour Women for Ireland (LWI), the women’s section of the Labour Committee on Ireland (LCI), to the North of Ireland.The primary focus of the visits was to raise the profile of the campaign against strip searching of women in Armagh Jail.
‘Truth recovery’ and the role of the security forces in the Northern Ireland Troubles
Authors: Edwards Aaron
Published: May 2017

In light of the controversies that remain about Bloody Sunday and other violent episodes involving the state, this chapter examines three important aspects to the debate around truth recovery and the role of the Security Forces in the Troubles. First, it asks what role the Security Forces played in the conflict according to official state narratives. Second, it examines the apparent obfuscation of security forces’ experiences by an anti-state republican agenda. Here the chapter makes the case that republicans do this because of a need to reinforce tropes of meaning that preserve the integrity of the killings carried out by the Provisional IRA, while justifying continued hostility to the British state as well as their commitment to a peace process. Lastly, the chapter asks what consequences these official state and anti-state representations of the past have had on attempts to ‘give a voice’ to Security Forces victims (particularly those from Britain) amidst the apparent obfuscating of terrorist violence. By marginalising the experiences of those who soldiered during the Troubles we risk skewing our understanding of the three dimensional nature of the conflict and further postponing the opportunities to move towards meaningful peace and reconciliation.
Introduction
Authors: Aveyard S.C.
Published: May 2017

It is no good ignoring facts however unpleasant they may be. The politician who thinks he can deal out abstract justice without reference to forces around him cannot govern.

(David Lloyd George, 14 October 1921)1

In its broadest sense this is a book about the limitations of government power. As Lloyd George was aware, when abstract solutions encounter the context and conditions of whatever problem they are intended to resolve they rarely emerge unscathed. Just as the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty failed to fully realise the ideals of Irish nationalists or British/Irish unionists, so the more recent peace process in Northern Ireland failed to do the same for their modern-day counterparts. This book demonstrates the naivety of claims that a solution to the Northern Ireland conflict could have been imposed by the British state two decades before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. It also argues that while there is a tremendous volume of material written on the Northern Ireland conflict, areas remain where there is a poverty of understanding. This is especially the case for the difficult years of the Labour administration of 1974 to 1979. The application of a distinctively historical methodology for this period offers insights into why the conflict lasted as long as it did. During these crucial years the power-sharing executive which emerged from the Sunningdale Agreement collapsed because of a general strike by loyalists. Afterwards the Labour government considered a variety of constitutional options before concluding that indefinite direct rule from Westminster would remain until a political settlement was agreed by the two communities in Northern Ireland. The British state was unable to impose a constitutional solution in the face of local opposition....
Drift?
Authors: Aveyard S.C.
Published: May 2017

This chapter deals with the aftermath of the collapse of power-sharing and the Labour government’s attempts to produce an entirely new constitutional approach. To many at the time, British policy for the remainder of 1974 was frustratingly static, both on the political front and in dealing with paramilitary violence. Though the period might be characterised as one of drift, significant developments occurred behind closed doors. Plans were developed for an expected Provisional IRA ceasefire and the Gardiner commission produced its report, identifying many of the key changes that would follow and supporting Rees in his desire for a security policy which moved away from detention without trial and placed greater emphasis on the police. Rees also declared his plan for a constitutional convention in which politicians in Northern Ireland would be given the task of seeking an agreement without imposition from Dublin or London.
Fraying at the edges: the Provisional IRA ceasefire
Authors: Aveyard S.C.
Published: May 2017

This chapter considers Labour policy in Northern Ireland during the Provisional IRA ceasefire. In the dialogue facilitated by Brendan Duddy the British representatives made a number of statements to the effect that the government was willing to withdraw from Northern Ireland. The analysis presented here is that these remarks were made in order to drag the ceasefire out and that it did not amount to the bilateral arrangement they had hoped for. Rees is shown here to be firm on what was expected of the ceasefire. Publicly, he was placed in the difficult position of being unable to make clear, definitive statements without endangering the ceasefire. Privately, he insisted there could be no negotiation with republicans and that the benefit of the ceasefire was that it enabled the Labour government to remove detention without trial and pursue a new policy of criminalisation. In the autumn it became apparent to the Provisionals that they were being strung along and the ceasefire collapsed.
Conclusion
Authors: Aveyard S.C.
Published: May 2017

This book has attempted to critique a number of flawed perceptions of British policy during the Northern Ireland conflict. The Labour government’s handling of the UWC strike was not as disastrous as has been portrayed. From an analysis of the context of the strike and the challenges it proffered it becomes clear that the government was limited in what it could achieve. The strike did not merely succeed because of indecisiveness or a lack of commitment to Sunningdale. This is reinforced by the experience of the UUAC strike three years later. The depiction of the two stoppages as symbolic of Rees and Mason’s tenures as Secretary of State is inaccurate. In spite of a vastly different political context the UUAC strike was a close-run affair; after three years of planning difficulties remained....
Introduction: approaching performance in Spanish film
Authors: Allbritton Dean , Melero Alejandro , Whittaker Tom
Published: May 2017

The importance of screen acting has often been overlooked in studies on Spanish film. While several critical works on Spanish cinema have centred on the cultural, social and industrial significance of stars, there has been relatively little critical scholarship on what stars are paid to do: act. This is perhaps surprising, given the central role that acting occupies within a film. In his essay ‘Why Study Film Acting?’, Paul McDonald argues that acting is not only crucial to understanding the affective charge of movies, but integral to the study of film as a whole (2004: 40). Yet, despite its significance, performance remains one of the most elusive and difficult aspects of film analysis. One of the reasons for this, according to Pamela Robertson Wojcik, is its apparent transparency (2004: 1). A ‘good’ actor supposedly renders their performance ‘invisible’, thereby concealing the process of acting from the audience, and engaging us within the emotional universe of the character. To this effect, discussion on acting is all too frequently evaluative: we think in terms of how convincing or naturalistic a given performance is, or are invited to appreciate the actorly skills and techniques that are brought to bear on the film....
Acting for the camera in Spanish film magazines of the 1920s and 1930s
Authors: Peiró Eva Woods
Published: May 2017

This chapter locates specific instances in which writers, directors, and actors of the twenties referenced the actual object of the camera in relationship to Spanish film acting and performance. It further shows how, contrary to how Spaniards have been represented or have portrayed themselves throughout history, the phenomenology of technological mediation—in this case, acting—is deeply embedded in Spanish filmic culture. This chapter includes extensive archival work in order to analyse how Spanish critics of silent film regularly theorised on complex ideas concerning the need for actors to physically and psychologically adjust their performances to the requirements of the camera medium, the fragmentation and monotonisation of acting, and ultimately its commoditisation. It finally documents the ways in which the camera influenced acting styles and performances, and how the consciousness of cinemagoers participated in the policing, self-policing and racialization of subjects as readers of film magazines.
Performance and gesture as crisis in La aldea maldita/The Cursed Village (Florián Rey, 1930)
Authors: Wright Sarah
Published: May 2017

Through a close analysis of the 1930 version of La aldea maldita, this chapter reflects on the influences ushered in by Spain’s embrace of modernity. Touted as ‘Spain’s last silent film’ as well as its most important one, La aldea maldita presents a harsh, minimalist beauty that has long been praised by audiences and critics. The chapter shows that the acting style is influenced not just by trends of the time but also by the film’s relationship to sound: after the disastrous experience with the sonorisation of a previous film, Rey decided to film La aldea maldita as if it were silent, when in fact the first showing of the film included sound. It also addresses the performance in the version of this film, questioning the sense of anachronism that now pervades them and reflecting on attitudes to aesthetics, acting and the cinematic medium itself.
Askance, athwart, aside: the queer plays of actors, auteurs and machines
Authors: Epps Brad
Published: May 2017

This chapter juxtaposes the Spanish ‘comedia de mariquitas’ [‘poofter comedy’] No desearás al vecino de quinto (Ramón Fernández, 1970) with Lucrecia Martel’s La niña santa (2004). By dissecting Alfredo Landa’s performance in No desearás al vecino de quinto, the chapter studies how the actor’s on-and off-screen persona as modern-day everyman and his flamboyant character highlight the split between actor and his craft. It also shows how this performance brings to fore a queer performance of identity that dovetails with the ‘queer sensibility’ of Martel’s directorial hand. While insisting on the multiple positions available to queerness, particularly in two films that seem to teeter on its edge, this chapter questions what it can mean to perform humanity through utterances, gestures and glances, through objects, positions, and gestures.
Performing fatness: oversized male bodies in recent Spanish cinema
Authors: Fouz-Hernández Santiago
Published: May 2017

This chapter looks at three actors who have gained weight for roles—Javier Bardem, Santiago Segura, and Antonio de la Torre—in order to discuss the role of fatness and fat masculinities in their performances. The substantial weight gain of each actor in all three films becomes a metric for understanding the way that their bodies are represented, filmed, and discussed. The chapter questions the limits of performance and acting, particularly when the body one inhabits is so drastically altered for a role. These physical alterations between the actors’ general appearance and their personal appearances, in turn, negatively mark the masculinity of their characters, the chapter argues.
Los amantes pasajeros/I’m So Excited! (2013): ‘performing’ la crisis
Authors: Delgado Maria M.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines Almodóvar’s film Los amantes pasajeros/I’m So Excited! against the backdrop of Spain’s economic crisis. Describing the shift of director Pedro Almodóvar from melodrama to drawing room farce made evident in this film, the chapter highlights its theatricality; in so doing, it argues that the Los amantes pasajeros owes much to broad traditions of theatre acting that range from vaudeville, to mime to classic Shakespearian. The language of theatrical acting that the film employs, to that end, incorporates gestures and dramatic histrionics in order to make a clear indictment of the current state of Spain in crisis. By making clear the links between the politics of acting and acting out politics, the chapter’s account of performance further demonstrates just how nuanced the landscape of Spanish acting can be.
Food, the Emergency and the lower-class Irish body, c.1939–45
Authors: Evans Bryce
Published: May 2017

The ending of the Anglo-Irish Economic War (1932-8) is often represented as a watershed in British-Irish relations. However, it was soon followed by renewed trade hostility. Between 1940 and 1945, Winston Churchill subjected Ireland to an economic squeeze: the price of Irish neutrality in the Second World War. While the length of this trade war has generally been overlooked by historians, the effect of this ‘long’ Economic War on Irish public health has been similarly disregarded. This contribution argues that the Anglo-Irish economic war resulted in the mass slaughter of Irish herds due to the removal of the British export market. Market disruption had a significant knock-on effect on Irish public health, particularly in the countryside. Similarly, the British economic squeeze of the Second World War ensured that Ireland’s agricultural economy was denied fertilisers, feed, chemicals and tractors; modern productive aids that are essential to food production. The Irish government infamously introduced the ‘black loaf’ as wheat production wheat stalled, causing fears of a second Famine. Aggravated by a belatedly introduced rationing system, public health suffered.
The ‘report of a nightmare’: hallucinating conflict in the political and personal frontiers of Ulster during the IRA border campaign of 1920–22
Authors: Byrne Fiachra
Published: May 2017

The influence of the ‘new psychology’ was less notable in early-twentieth-century Ireland than elsewhere. Nonetheless, the personal narratives of patients can be used to unravel the meaning of warfare and conflict. This chapter exploits a 1940 article published by the former medical superintendent of the Downpatrick District Asylum, Michael J. Nolan, of a ‘case of acute systematized hallucinosis’. His article provided a detailed journal account of an extended period of hallucination authored by a patient in the immediate aftermath of his disturbance during the War of Independence. Nolan’s article was also distinguishable by its focus on the actual substance of hallucinatory experience. The patient recounted a hallucinatory episode in which a battle took place in his sickbed between an army of cockroaches and an army of hairs. These phantasmagorical battalions clearly functioned as proxies for the participants of the ‘real’ conflict raging beyond the doors of the asylum. His hallucinations were also deeply coloured by his personal relations with, and violent impulses towards, two women, one Protestant and the other Catholic. This chapter critically analyses in an ethnographic frame this account of a hallucinatory episode and the psychiatric discourse which enfolded and structured it.
From front to home and back again: geographical networks of auxiliary medical care in the First World War
Authors: Foley Ronan
Published: May 2017

Throughout the First World War, a set of complex geographical networks were developed across the British Empire, which led the wounded soldier from the Front back through a series of therapeutic nodal points, to rehabilitation and treatment in a range of established and auxiliary hospitals. This chapter outlines two aspects of these relational geographies. Firstly, it maps the physical networks to show the ways in which a nodal structure of relational spaces of treatment, often ephemeral and temporary, was developed and constructed from the Front to across the British Isles. Typically, such sites were drawn from pre-war hydros, hotels, schools and private homes. Secondly, a number of examples of Auxiliary Hospital spaces at sites such as Blarney, Bray, Dublin and Glengariff are described. In addition, Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute in Scotland was managed by an Irishwoman and provides an especially well-documented example of how the Auxiliary Hospital functioned both as an ephemeral space of care but also as part of a wider set of therapeutic pathways from the Front to home and back again. Finally, the levels of civilian medical knowledge were enhanced and enlarged in such settings.
War work on the home front: the Central Sphagnum Depot for Ireland at the Royal College of Science for Ireland, 1915–19
Authors: Cullen Clara
Published: May 2017

Immediately after war was declared with Germany, emergency classes in first aid and ambulance work were organised in the Royal College of Science for Ireland (RCScI) in Dublin. By 1915 the College had two Voluntary Aid Detachments Red Cross groups who met hospital ships from the Western Front bringing casualties to Dublin hospitals. They were also provided aid to casualties of the Easter Rising. The women’s VAD also organised and managed the Central Sphagnum Depot for Ireland. Sphagnum moss had been found to have medicinal and absorbent properties and was known as a safe, reliable surgical dressing, making it a perfect replacement for increasingly scarce cotton wool in hospitals and dressing-stations during the First World War. As war casualties mounted, demands for this moss as a field-dressing increased. Between 1915 and 1919, over 900,000 dressings were dispatched to various theatres of war. This chapter assesses the work of the women who voluntarily involved themselves with the central depot by organising moss collection, sterilisation, packaging and dispatching. It also pits this Irish contribution to the war effort against Ireland’s increasingly turbulent political backdrop.
Imperial continuities: Irish doctors and the British armed forces, 1922–45
Authors: O’Connor Steven
Published: May 2017

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Irish doctors led successful careers in the British Empire’s military medical services. Surprisingly, Irish medical connections with the British military were not simply severed once the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom in 1921, as might be expected. Rather, they rapidly grew in the 1920s and 1930s. This chapter asks why British military service continued to prove so popular among Irish doctors, making extensive use of a database of 262 Irish medical officers who served in the British forces between 1922 and 1945. The chapter reveals striking patterns in the social profile of officers, their motives, career success and the peaks and troughs of recruitment. It seems that many Irish medical officers complained that appointments in Irish hospitals were controlled by nepotism and that limited jobs were available. Several Irish publications which dispensed career advice to medical students during the 1930s not merely acknowledged, but actually recommended, opportunities in the British military services in preference to the Irish Army Medical Service - castigated for its poor pay, promotion prospects and pension entitlements. The result was an outflow of Irish medical practitioners beyond the attaining of Irish independence.
The Cold War heats up: propaganda and subversion, 1945–48
Authors: Lomas Daniel W. B.
Published: May 2017

Chapter Three explores the development of British propaganda policy towards the Soviet Union. While Ministers began the process of dismantling the wartime information machinery, the developing threat of the Soviet Union forced them to sanction defensive measures where British interests were threatened. The chapter also looks at discussions on anti-Communist propaganda that would ultimately lead to the formation of the Information Research Department (IRD) in 1948. The chapter also shows how, while agreeing to overseas information activities, Bevin resisted calls for Britain to start a Cold War offensive involving subversion and special operations inside the Eastern Bloc.
Britain’s secret Cold War offensive: ministers, subversion and special operations, 1948–51
Authors: Lomas Daniel W. B.
Published: May 2017

Chapter Four considers Ministerial attitudes towards special operations and the development of covert warfare against the Eastern Bloc. By looking at the example of Operation Valuable, SIS’s abortive scheme to detach Albania from the Soviet Orbit, it explores why Bevin, initially opposed to any activities beyond propaganda, endorsed offensive measures. The chapter also examines the development of Britain’s Cold War machinery by looking at the formation and early discussions of the Committee on Communism (Overseas), formed in 1949. It shows that by late 1951 Ministers had endorsed proposals for subversion inside the Soviet Bloc with the aim of undermining Soviet rule. The chapter also details Ministerial discussions on the development of stay behind networks in Europe.
Defending the realm: Labour ministers, vetting and subversion1
Authors: Lomas Daniel W. B.
Published: May 2017

Chapter Six focuses on the Government response to Communism at home. Shaped by their wartime experiences of intelligence and security, it argues that the popular perception that Ministers were suspicious of the intelligence services, particularly the Security Service, is unfounded, based largely upon Labour folklore. In fact, rather than viewing MI5 with distain, even alarm, Ministers in the new government were aware of the need for an internal security body; any changes in the security apparatus were the result of the recommendations made by Sir Findlater Stewart, whose report of November 1945 is examined here for the first time. The chapter also looks at the development of Whitehall security procedures using the minutes and memoranda of the Committee on Subversive Activities (GEN 183). It argues that, as in the field of British policy towards Russia, domestic countermeasures measures against Communists in the civil service were hidden until the spring of 1948 after attempts at Anglo-Soviet rapprochement finally broke down. Despite the introduction and later expansion of vetting, Ministers sought to balance anti-Communist measures alongside the need for freedom of speech and liberty. Nowhere is this clearer than in discussions for domestic anti-Communist propaganda. While the Labour Party and other organisations had participated in the distribution of such material, IRD had no specific mandate to conduct its activities at home. However, after the outbreak of hostilities in Korea, Ministers authorised a domestic campaign aimed at influential sections of the British public, with the study looking at the early development of this campaign, revealing IRD’s domestic activities in education, industry and the armed forces.
Empire, Commonwealth and security
Authors: Lomas Daniel W. B.
Published: May 2017

Chapter Seven explores Government attempts to combat Communist influence in and around Britain’s overseas territories and dependencies and the development of security agencies across the Commonwealth. The Attlee era also saw the development of internal security agencies around the Commonwealth modelled on British lines, resulting from Soviet espionage and American fears that Britain’s allies were far from secure. Responding to American threats to cut-off secret information to Australia, the British government responded by assisting in the development of a new internal security agency, the Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). The chapter looks at the role played by Attlee and others in Commonwealth security liaison and the role of the Commonwealth Security Conferences of 1948 and 1951, highlighting the political dimension of intelligence and security liaison. Using the recently declassified files of the Colonial Information Policy Committee, the chapter assesses British attempts to direct overseas anti-Communist publicity. Chaired by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Commonwealth Relations, Patrick Gordon Walker, the committee was formed in the autumn of 1948. The chapter explores the role of the Committee and IRD in combatting Communism in Britain’s African colonies.
The quiet conversion of a ‘Jewish’ woman in eighteenth-century Spain
Authors: Graizbord David
Published: May 2017

The conversion of Jews to Christianity in late medieval and early modern times was often accompanied by acrimony, and in several cases by violence. Less acrimonious conversions of Jews from the same periods have tended to escape scholarly attention because of their relatively quotidian and private nature, and because the converts in such cases have often been women, and thus were not expected to assume significant public roles as Christians, let alone to lead campaigns against Judaism. This chapter explores one such ‘quiet’ conversion, that of Carlota Liot, a Jewish woman and a merchant from Hesse-Kassel who resided in Consuegra (in Castile-La Mancha) and was baptized in Toledo in 1791 after voluntarily submitting to inquisitorial scrutiny. By comparing her case with those of other Jewish transients, the chapter assesses the degree to which gender shaped the manner and substance of these Jews’ socio-religious transformation in Spain, and shed a fuller light on the history of Jews’ Christianization. This chapter traces Liot's journeys and relocations in detail, to understand the connections between acts of border-crossing and settlement, and the performance of gender as a passport to social and community identity.
Gender and reproduction in the Spirituall experiences
Authors: Shinn Abigail
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores how female authority is connected to the reproduction of religious experience in The Spirituall experiences of sundry beleevers, the first anthology of conversion narratives to appear in print when it was published in 1653. Arguing that the employment of authorial anonymity, coupled with the preponderance of female gender signifiers, foregrounds female experience in such a way as to frame the Experiences as a reproductive object, this chapter identifies how the text encourages a gendered hermeneutics: the reader goes looking for the gender of the convert and more often than not finds a woman.
In order to explore the reproductive effects of this gendered bias the chapter looks firstly at how the use of authorial anonymity confers a feminised moral authority upon the text. It moves on to examine the importance of fertility as a spiritual trope for radical Protestants, before considering in detail how the Experiences utilises the symbolic associations of motherhood in a number of narratives composed by women.