bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Peace of Mind in the Age of Anxiety: Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman and America’s Post-war Therapeutic Faith
Authors: Oestreicher Cheryl
Published: May 2022

In 1946, Americans were recovering from two world wars and a depression and sought to make sense of a troubled world through faith and/or psychology. To find solutions to their psychological and religious wounds, people sought guidance from books. As the first non-Christian to write a religious self-help book that reached a mass audience in the post-war era, Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman understood that Americans needed guidance through this tumultuous and transitional era. In his 1946 book Peace of Mind, he explained how psychiatry and religion together could help achieve emotional and spiritual maturity, ultimately leading to individual happiness. This chapter investigates the types of problems experienced by men and women, connects them to the larger societal, religious, and therapeutic shifts of the post-war era, and examines how the anxieties of post-war men and women supported and challenged gender roles, mental health, and religion transitioning into the 1950s.
Amazing Stories , 1950–3: The Readers Behind the Covers
Authors: Whavers Angelle
Published: May 2022

This chapter examines an under-explored archive of readers’ letters to the editors of a popular 1950s pulp fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. Using this empirical method, it is able to demonstrate that not only were such magazines once a centrepiece of American popular culture, but that they paid close attention to what their readers wanted, changing covers, illustrations, and even storylines in response to surprisingly numerous and highly proactive reader responses. In so doing, these magazines became key players in debates about censorship and juvenile delinquency during the moral panics of the early Cold War.
A “hard” legacy, under pressure
Authors: Harrington Clodagh , Waddan Alex
Published: May 2022

The first two years of the Obama presidency were ones that saw substantive legislative action. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act created a stimulus package that contained some long-term legacy-building elements such as the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, but the most singular aspect of the Obama legacy was the Affordable Care Act. In addition to questions about health care coverage and cost, the ACA became a flashpoint for those concerned with ‘moral values.’ Issues such as reproductive rights came to the fore and went beyond the socio-economic concerns regarding healthcare provision. While repeal of ‘Obamacare’ had been central to wider Republican attacks on Obama well before Trump arrived on the political scene, as a candidate he eagerly adopted language about the ‘disastrous’ ACA. Hence this chapter will examine the aims and achievements of the Trump administration, working with congressional Republicans, in relation to further reform the US health care system. Furthermore, in the context of ‘values’ issues the chapter will examine the Obama legacy on LGBT rights and the extent to which the Trump administration was able and willing to pursue an agenda promoted by more religious conservative groups to undo that legacy.
An uncertain “soft” legacy, under fire
Authors: Harrington Clodagh , Waddan Alex
Published: May 2022

There were areas where the Obama administration’s legacy fell short of its bold aims, most notably in relation to climate change and immigration. In addition, ambitions to promote free trade were only partially fulfilled. This chapter will focus on Obama’s limited achievements in these areas, and the fierce extent of Trump’s repudiation. Reflections will be offered on the possibilities and limitations of governing via executive order, and the ease, or lack thereof, with which such presidential fiat can be undermined.
Exercising presidential power
Authors: Harrington Clodagh , Waddan Alex
Published: May 2022

This chapter will consider the ways in which presidents exercise power, with specific emphasis on the differing leadership styles of Presidents Trump and Obama. Parallels will be drawn with regard to use of formal and informal powers, nomination and appointment of staff, issuing executive orders and relations with other actors, most notably Congress, the Supreme Court, and including, where relevant, intelligence agencies, international organisations and world leaders.
Post-Revolution Presbyterianism in Central Scotland
Authors: Muirhead Andrew T.N.
Published: May 2022

In 1690, under the joint monarchy of King William II (III) and Queen Mary II, Presbyterianism was re-established as the system of governance for the Church of Scotland, replacing the Episcopalianism imposed by Charles II and James VII (II). This introduction lays out the available evidence for the process of change within the bounds of the Presbyteries of Stirling and Dunblane, including the survival of church records and the other primary sources, diaries, legal records, letters, and sermons. It also lays out the core themes of the work; the questions of how the changes were implemented locally, how far the people were in harmony with the changes and how stable Presbyterianism was in the area. It discusses the continuities and discontinuities between the pre- and post-1690 ecclesiastical regimes, and shows how the area covered by the Presbyteries exemplified many of the issues found in Scotland as a whole.
Evidence Provided by Propertarians to Support the Appropriation Hypothesis
Authors: Widerquist Karl , McCall Grant S.
Published: May 2022

Chapters 7-9 have shown that propertarianism requires some version of the (set of) empirical claim(s) we call the individual appropriation hypothesis. Some propertarians actually have provided evidence in favor of it. This chapter reviews that evidence, showing that it is superficial and inconclusive. A more thorough investigation is needed. Therefore, this chapter sets up the following five chapters, which provide that investigation.
Property Systems in Hunter-Gatherer Societies
Authors: Widerquist Karl , McCall Grant S.
Published: May 2022

This is the first of four chapters examining the origin and development of property rights (private, public, collective, common, and other) in order to investigate the individual appropriation hypothesis and related claims outlined in Chapter 7. Section 1 considers whether appropriation theory applies to animals. Section 2 explores the broad variation of systems of territoriality among modern human hunter-gatherers and uses the results to think about territoriality among the earliest human occupants of most of the globe. Section 3 argues that nomadic hunter-gatherer bands appropriated most of the world’s land in ways that were consistent with all or most appropriation criteria contained in natural property rights theories. In contradiction to propertarian theory, these original appropriators chose not to establish individual private property—neither in land nor in other goods. Land was a common, and food and tools were subject to requirements to share.
The Individual Appropriation Hypothesis Assessed
Authors: Widerquist Karl , McCall Grant S.
Published: May 2022

The history recounted in Chapters 10-14 shows that private property does not arise spontaneously through appropriation or any other method. The first people to discover, claim, use, occupy, or mix labor with resources over most of the Earth established complex, overlapping, flexible, nonspatial, partly collective land-tenure systems with significant common elements. The individual appropriation hypothesis is not merely unproven: it is disproven. The history discussed above indicates that the establishment of private property systems necessarily involves coercion and violence. Claims that the defense of unequal private ownership is somehow the defense of “natural liberty” are false. In the context of real history rather than the made-up appropriation story, the natural rights theories invented to defend private property shows that the people and the community have a better claim to land and resource ownership than unequal private owners.
Idiorrhythmy: An (Unsustainable) Aesthetics of Ethics
Authors: Manghani Sunil
Published: May 2022

The chapter’s main theoretical frame of reference is taken from the late writings of Roland Barthes, particularly his interest in idiorrhythmy and the Neutral as found in his posthumously published lecture courses How To Live Together and The Neutral. These texts provide insights into Barthes’ long-standing critical interest in the everyday, displaying a more explicit concern for an ethics rather than a politics of culture. In How to Live Together he refers to the idiosyncratic rhythms of people, questioning how we might reside as a group without losing individual specificities. Against the temporality of the ‘event’ he looks to the rhythms of the ‘incident’. Barthes presents us with a ‘slight’ interest in rhythm (akin to the temporalities of the Haiku), which relates to a form of (utopian) neutral living, being both harmonious and free. References to and applications of rhythm appear across a wide range of critical writings. These accounts open up questions of how to understand or define rhythm, but less so about how we should learn to live with them. What is less evident is an ethics of rhythm. Barthes’ considerations, then, are placed in dialogue with the different theoretical strands raised in this volume, and with respect to contemporary social, economic formations, with the explicit view to challenge how we might choose to live rhythmically.
The Configuring of ‘Context’ in Rhythmanalysis
Authors: Chen Yi
Published: May 2022

This chapter defines rhythm in ways that carve out the distinct attentions, orientations and procedures of rhythmanalysis. There are two conceptual configurations of rhythms which are to be discussed: rhythm as a meta-sense and rhythm as temporal-spatial relations in which social entities are (dis)ordered. Rhythmanalysis is posited as a methodology that directs our attention to these registers and forms of experience (albeit not limited to them). The chapter examines how the methodology of rhythmanalysis can be practised in relation to cultural historical research. In particular, focusing on how rhythmanalysis offers perspectives for engaging with the notion of ‘contexts’ (as Lawrence Grossberg argues that Cultural Studies is about making ‘radical contexts’). To instantiate a type of contextual analysis for which rhythmanalysis serves to be a potent analytical tool, the chapter uses the notion of ‘conjuncture’ in relation to the late 1970s’ shift of cultural political landscape in Britain claimed by Stuart Hall. Drawing on the main concepts of rhythmanalysis (e.g. ‘polyrhythmia’, the agential role of rhythms), the chapter addresses how conjunctural analysis is itself a type of contextual work and how, through this, we can enrich discourses of the 1970s’ conjuncture by re-thinking the category of conjunctural analysis through rhythmanalysis.
Ferishtah’s Fancies
Authors: Taher-Kermani Reza
Published: May 2022

Ferishtah’s Fancies has no counterpart or original Persian source, nor is it an adaptation or imitation of any kind. It is a work of English literature with, in Browning’s language, a ‘thin’ layer of Persian disguise. But the poem’s Persian surface, which is apparently decorative and makes no claim to historical or literary authenticity, conceals another, less demonstrative layer of allusion, some of which may be the result of an unconscious, or unintended infusion of knowledge about Persian culture picked up from many sources—among them FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát, to whose hero Browning’s Ferishtah is polemically opposed. Close reading of the poems, of a kind rarely accorded to this work, which has mainly been seen as a repository of Browning’s religious and philosophical ideas, uncovers its deeper, less visible ‘Persian-ness’.
An Introduction. Pablo Larraín: Doomed to Repeat It
Authors: Hatry Laura
Published: May 2022

The introduction provides biographical background information on Larraín and his work, recounting the arc of his career, from his first film, Fuga (2006), through the critically acclaimed dictatorship trilogy, that is Tony Manero (2008), Post mortem (2010), and No (2012), to his more recent films, El club (2015), Neruda (2016), and Jackie (2016), as well as his work in television and as a producer. It provides the context of Chilean cinema and lays out the historical background in which these films are inscribed, particularly focusing on Chile’s neoliberal policies. It also offers a sketch of the main tendencies in Larraín’s cinematic style, narrative, and character construction and a detailed overview of the content of each of the book’s chapters.
The Synecdochic Series of Pablo Larraín: The Castro Cycle of Chilean Complicity in Fuga , Tony Manero , Post Mortem , No , El Club , and Neruda
Authors: McMenamin Amanda Eaton
Published: May 2022

This chapter seeks to fill the scholarly gap in the dialogue about the Pablo Larraín’s latest films located in the Chilean milieu, as well as to propose a rereading of his cinematic corpus, firmly establishing the connections between what has previously been considered the “dictatorial trilogy” (Tony Manero, Post mortem, and No) and the more recent El club and Neruda. Therefore a review (re-viewing) of all five features as a series provides an opportunity for an “interserial interpretation” of the central role that star Alfredo Castro plays in each of the works, in fact suggesting that the actor becomes representative—as synecdoche—of the Chilean nation and its positionality of subservience to the hegemonic social, political, and economic forces of the United States in the region. Larraín equally excoriates Chilean capitulation to U.S. interests throughout the entire “synecdochic series,” via the characters that Castro interprets. Thus, this chapter proposes a filmic frame for the Larraínian cinematic cosmos that is centered on the dogged denunciation of Chilean complicity with the neoliberal, North-American model, which persistently permeates both the Castro characters and their national nexus in the auteur’s oeuvre.
“Within the Limits of the Possible”: Realist Aesthetics in Larraín’s Dictatorship Trilogy
Authors: Jung Berenike
Published: May 2022

This chapter demonstrates, through close textual analysis, how Pablo Larraín’s “dictatorship trilogy” remixes historical neorealism’s aesthetic and formal approach. Tony Manero and Post mortem pair attention to historical faithfulness – to objects, actors, and mise-en-scène – with the absence of archive footage, while No artfully meshes documentary and recreated footage, creating a different category of “faux authenticity.” A corporeal metaphor, already central in historical neorealism, plays a crucial role in these films to anchor their reference to the real: in Tony Manero, the body translates the schizophrenia of the system, the erosion of social trust and annihilation of a public sphere; in Post mortem, bodies are compressed within the frame, persecuted by a cold machine gaze; in No, both historical bodies and the “body” of the film stock are taken as markers of authenticity, as they exhibit a physically inscribed lived-in history. These aesthetic strategies are put into context with Chile’s historical and contemporary cinema landscape, including the influence of the global festival circuit and realist tendencies in world cinema. Finally, by activating the aesthetic approaches associated with neorealism, these films also rework the ethical proclivities of their precursor.
The Blurred Image: The Aesthetics of Impunity in Pablo Larraín’s No and El Club
Authors: Amestoy Susana Domingo
Published: May 2022

Pablo Larraín has discussed the challenge of working with digital film, whose pristine image tends to flatten the historical differences that regular film stock preserves. He intends to achieve a certain “tone” or “texture,” by employing filters that simulate old anamorphic lenses and natural lighting. The director’s desire for an image that captivates the senses—not only the visual, but the tactile as well—has everything to do with the subject matter of his films, as these relate to the history of Chile and the legacy of Pinochet’s military dictatorship. Larraín’s interest in the problem posed by digital film, then, gives rise to what he calls an “aesthetics of impunity.” For instance, El club draws on this aesthetic by making use of a fogged lens to mark the eerie remnants of the past in the present. Similarly, in No he uses various filters to underscore the very manipulations that cause history to disappear in the wake of the market’s triumph. This chapter attempts to understand the role such techniques play in Larraín’s films in producing, extending, and even challenging what Jacques Rancière calls the aesthetics of politics, a “distribution of the sensible” that determines both the visible and the effable.
Reimagining the Left in Neruda : Inclusivity and Encounters with Secondary Characters
Authors: VanWieren Rachel , Garrett Victoria L.
Published: May 2022

Pablo Larraín’s Neruda centers on the poet’s escape into exile during the government of González Videla, elected in 1946 with the support of the Chilean Communist Party. Once in office, he illegalized the party and initiated a campaign of intense persecution against known members, including then Senator Pablo Neruda. While the focus of the film is Cold War-type conflicts between the political left and right, certain interactions between key secondary characters in the film and Neruda highlight spaces of tensions on the left. This portrayal seems to be informed by the importance that contemporary leftist political movements and parties in Chile place on fully incorporating women, the LGBTQ community, and youth in their agendas, not central concerns in the late 1940s. These character’s emotions show their frustrations with the party and cultural icon Neruda, both of whom they choose to support but challenge to be more inclusive. This chapter analyzes these secondary characters and their affective power as spectral figures that highlight the excluded zones of the Communist Party. Their performances cast a critical light on the party’s past while also reminding the viewer of the inclusiveness that will be possible in its future.
Aesthetics of Crisis: Art Cinema and Neoliberalism
Authors: Lykidis Alex
Published: May 2022

The disempowerment that results from de-democratisation is captured in Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Chevalier , which tells the story of six middle-aged men who gather on a boat in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Athens. During the trip the men spend most of their time playing an elaborate game called chevalier. It involves contests devised by the participants and the assessment of each player on everything he does. The game comes to dominate every aspect of the men’s lives, including daily routines and private interactions. The men’s willing immersion in such an all-encompassing competition demonstrates the pervasiveness of the neoliberal ethos that the game embodies and the social impotence of its participants. Chevalier undermines the spectator’s investment in psychological realism by reducing the differences between characters, the significance of their actions and the expressiveness of their dialogue. Through its defiance of our expectations of realism, Tsangari’s film denaturalises the depoliticisation and managerialism at the heart of neoliberal governance.
Post-Fordism in Active Life, Industrial Revolution and The Nothing Factory
Authors: Brás Patricia Sequeira
Published: May 2022

I discuss in detail three films produced by Terratreme, a Portuguese film cooperative: Vida Activa (Active Life, Susana Nobre, 2013), Revolução Industrial (Industrial Revolution , Tiago Hespanha and Frederico Lobo, 2014) and A Fábrica do Nada (The Nothing Factory, Pedro Pinho, 2017). Because these three films address the economic/debt crisis vis-à-vis industrial labour, they appear to belong to a long tradition of militant cinema, which, according to Manuel Ramos Martínez, attempts to make ‘visible exploitative working conditions and the brutality of industrial transformations’ as well as ‘make visible and audible the figure of the worker’ (2013: 123). Yet the focus of these films is de-industrialisation, so they more appropriately fit into Martínez’s category of post-Fordist cinema, which refers to films that emerged after ‘the crisis of the Fordist model in the 1970s’ as well as films that are ‘critical of the factory as a site of exploitation and of cinema itself as a medium of audio-visual exploitation’ (Ramos Martínez 2013: 124).
Representing And Escaping the Crises of Neoliberalism: Veiko ÕUnpuu’s Films and Methods
Authors: Näripea Eva
Published: May 2022

Propelled by the notion of a perpetual state of crisis that affects all aspects of human existence, as well as drawing on a Marxist frame of reference in general, and ideas developed by left-wing scholars such as Zygmunt Bauman and David Harvey in particular, this discussion concentrates on Veiko Õunpuu’s cinematic output in terms of practices, techniques and representations. After looking at the ways in which Õunpuu has responded to the effects of neoliberal capitalism on cinematic production and expression, I investigate his filmic depictions of various forms of crisis, ranging from private to social and from local to global.
Miserable Journeys, Symbolic Rescues: Refugees and Migrants in the Cinema of Fortress Europe
Authors: Austin Thomas
Published: May 2022

A salient social and political issue in Europe in recent years has been the increasing number of people fleeing war and poverty and attempting to gain entry to the continent. Engaged film-makers working across Europe have staged fictional, symbolic rescues of refugees and ‘clandestines’. Here I analyse films by directors Aki Kaurismäki and Emanuele Crialese in which white characters welcome new arrivals. I also consider two works which attend more closely to the experience of people trying to reach Europe, their dangerous journeys and the problems that await them: Senegalese director Moussa Touré’s La Pirogue (2012) and American Italian Jonas Carpignano’s feature debut Mediterranea (2015).
Frontlines: Migrants in Hungarian Documentaries in the 2010s
Authors: Stőhr Lóránt
Published: May 2022

As a result of the deliberate mishandling of mass migration by its populist government, Hungary was one of the European countries where the flow of refugees congested and caused highly dramatic scenes in 2015. Despite the cinematic potential of these spectacular events and their wide media coverage, no Hungarian documentaries thematised the turbulent events directly. In this chapter, I aim to provide an explanation of this telling absence and to analyse documentaries on migration and refugees before and after 2015. How have Hungarian documentary film-makers represented these issues in the recent xenophobic and openly anti-migration political climate, in which financial resources for socially critical documentaries are largely absent?
Introduction: Bad Films and Badfilms
Authors: Bartlett Becky
Published: May 2022

‘Bad cinema’ comprises a loose collection of movies described as bad for a range of different reasons. This chapter establishes badfilm as a particular category of bad cinema marked by incompetence, whereby viewers can recognise – or make claims to recognise – the failure to achieve intended standards of cinematic form and construction. The chapter presents an overview of badfilm reception, fandom and scholarship to date, through discussion of the badfilm canon and an examination of critical approaches within cult literature. In doing so, it identifies several key concepts, such as objective badness, intentionality, and ‘so bad it’s good’, which will inform subsequent chapters, and proposes a framework through which formal characteristics of cinematic failure can be identified and analysed.
Investigating Intentions in Badfilms
Authors: Bartlett Becky
Published: May 2022

Although badfilm appreciation is predicated on a celebration of incompetence, the apparent visibility of failed intentions has largely been taken for granted. This chapter examines intentionality as a central factor in how badfilms are identified, understood and potentially appreciated. It argues that badfilms offer a unique opportunity to reflect on intentionality, because their unconventional, inconsistent, illogical and unmotivated style is inherently accidental, and cannot be consciously reproduced. As such, it identifies sincerity and the intention to be taken seriously as crucial in how badfilms are recognised and appreciated. Acknowledging the complexity of intention as a concept, the chapter examines why intentions matter, whose intentions are being inferred, what those intentions are perceived to be, and how intentions are identified through analysis of the films’ formal, technical, industrial and artistic failures.
The Disruptive Effects of Bad Voices
Authors: Bartlett Becky
Published: May 2022

This chapter examines post-production sound techniques, specifically voice-over narration and post-synchronisation (dubbing), in badfilm. Badfilms regularly disrupt and dismantle the relationship between sound and image, drawing attention away from the diegesis to its construction and, in the process, encouraging a more detached, critical viewing position. These ideas are explored through a number of case studies. Irony, authorship and associated issues of control are examined through analysis of inept voice-over narration in Monster A-go Go, which is presented as omniscient but frequently, seemingly unintentionally, exposes itself as unreliable. Contradictions and disparities between voice and image are further explored in relation to post-synchronisation and the ‘uncanny’ effects of bad dubbing. Comparative analysis of The Beast of Yucca Flats and The Creeping Terror indicates how accidental asynchrony shatters the ‘illusion’ of the filmic world, even when post-synchronisation is employed in markedly different ways.
Recycled Footage, Plagiarism and Bad Art
Authors: Bartlett Becky
Published: May 2022

With the vast majority of badfilms being low-budget productions, material poverty is recognised to contribute to their unavoidable incompetence and visible failure. This chapter draws on a range of examples to examine a common practice in low-budget filmmaking in the 1950s and 1960s: the incorporation of pre-existing footage into otherwise ‘new’ films. The use of recycled footage as a primary source of narrative content is examined through analysis of Horror of the Blood Monsters and They Saved Hitler’s Brain, while Robot Monster provides a useful case study to consider how recycled footage is exploited as a source of spectacle in badfilms, unwittingly drawing attention to the limitations of the original content. The chapter demonstrates that while these recycling practices can, on occasion, be understood in relation to plagiarism, at other times they operate differently, offering new possibilities for interpretation and meaning-making, some of which are associated with experimental cinema. Analysis of the ways stock footage is appropriated and recontextualised in Glen or Glenda, for example, provides opportunities to reflect on how badfilms can blur the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultural forms, avant-garde film and exploitation.
The Potential Pleasures of Bad Editing
Authors: Bartlett Becky
Published: May 2022

This book argues there is a difference between recognising formal failure and enjoying it; appreciation is necessarily subjective. Nevertheless, it appears that the visible, excessive incompetence of some films offer more potential to elicit positive experiential responses than others. This chapter argues that a closer examination of bad editing can help to understand why some badfilms are celebrated as ‘so bad they’re good’ while others are cultified in different ways, as ‘just’ bad. Analysis of editing in Manos: The Hands of Fate and Plan 9 From Outer Space demonstrates how the seemingly unintended visibility of editing can draw attention to the film’s construction in disorienting ways, activating new interpretive possibilities as a result. Larry Buchanan’s films, meanwhile, provide useful case studies to examine why some badfilms produce a kind of anti-pleasure experience, characterised by tedium and boredom. Through these case studies, the chapter offers an approach that allows for a more objective understanding of the textual features that encourage these various responses.
Law Reports of the Parliament of Flanders and their Authority in the Parliament’s Practice
Authors: Cazals Géraldine , Michel Sabrina , Wijffels Alain
Published: May 2022

After the French annexation of the southern part of the county of Flanders, together with other southern territories of the Habsburg Netherlands, a sovereign court of justice (later elevated to the rank of Parliament) was established for the newly conquered territories. From the late seventeenth century until the Parliaments abolition during the French Revolution, several generations of practitioners produced law reports based on the courts decisions. These reports offer an insight in the legal reasoning of practitioners and judges and their use of authorities, including law reports originating from the Parliament of Flanders itself and from other French and foreign courts. In spite of the royal governments policy to bring this jurisdiction into the mould of French legal policies, the Parliaments practice reflects the legal culture of a peripheral territory which retained much of its own particular tradition.
Paradigms of Authority in the College of Justice in Scotland
Authors: Ford JD
Published: May 2022

In a functioning legal system, it is generally assumed, there will be settled rules governing the identification of other rules as laws applicable to the facts of cases. The task of 'doctrinal legal history', it is further assumed, is to examine the development of the rules of law identified and applied according to the settled rules. But what if there is disagreement about how rules of law should be identified and applied? The first part of this chapter provides a case study of how rules of law were identified and applied in the highest civil court in Scotland towards the end of the seventeenth century by looking at decisions relating to the strict liability of innkeepers. In the second part it is argued that the case study illustrates a continuing debate in this period over the authority to be attributed to certain sources and the appropriate approach to be taken in resolving novel questions of law. It is suggested that in seeking to make sense of the type of situation described assistance may be derived from Thomas Kuhn's account of the emergence of new research paradigms in the natural sciences.
Legal Authorities in the Making of Portuguese Private Law: Emphyteusis and Majorat in Practical Literature
Authors: Cabral Gustavo César Machado
Published: May 2022

This chapter aims to contribute with the legal historiography on Portuguese private law during the Early Modern period, particularly on the role of legal authorities in the making of two legal institutes, majorats and emphyteusis. These institutes are used to analyze the close relations between practical literature (decisiones, consilia, allegationes, resolutiones forenses) and the decisions taken by Portuguese royal courts, in order to understand the role of the idea of legal authorities both in case law and legal literature.
Legal Authorities in the Seventeenth-Century Swedish Empire
Authors: Pihlajamäki Heikki
Published: May 2022

From early on, in Sweden legal authority was exercised largely with the help of written statutes. Domestic legal scholarship emerged late and never acquired dominant authority in practical legal life, and much the same can be said about legal practice. Both legal scholarship and legal practice of the high courts grew in importance over the course of the seventeenth century, but their role remained less important than elsewhere in Europe. In Swedish overseas provinces, the legal-cultural background was different. The most effective channel of legal authority that the Swedes had – statute law – could not compete with other sources in either Livonia or the German territories. The professional jurists in the overseas provinces – used as they were to ius commune legal culture – proved difficult, if not impossible, to convert into humble servants of Swedish statute law.
Immobile Women? Ageing Women and Wartime Cinema
Authors: Mortimer Claire
Published: May 2022

This chapter considers the role of the mature woman in British films of the Second World War. Familiar archetypes were reinforced for the sake of continuity yet the ageing woman was often accorded an agency and centrality in the narrative to appeal to home front audiences, on occasion being inspirational role models. Social class was a powerful determinant of the representation of female ageing, ranging from the upper middle-class ‘do-gooder’ to the cheerful Cockney matriarch. The case studies include Great Day (1945), The Demi-Paradise (1943), Went the Day Well? (1942), Two Thousand Women (1944), The Gentle Sex (1943), In Which We Serve (1942) and Gert and Daisy’s Weekend (1941).
‘Dangerous and unwholesome’: The Spinster Teacher
Authors: Mortimer Claire
Published: May 2022

This chapter considers representations of spinster teachers and bluestockings in British film of the twentieth century. The spinster teacher was an apocryphal figure, her education, authority and independence rendered her a threat to the patriarchal framework of marriage and family. Such anxieties are articulated in various grotesques and tragic figurations, the majority of whom suffer a dismal fate or are comic figures whose redemption lies outside teaching. The chapter examines films including Things Are Looking Up (1935), The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). These case studies span an era of fundamental change in the British school system. Teaching was one of the few professions that an educated single woman could pursue, offering independence and a vocation.
‘Not having it so good’: Widowhood, Anomalous Ageing and the Welfare State
Authors: Mortimer Claire
Published: May 2022

Concern mounted in the post-war era over the care of the elderly within the welfare state, in particular the plight of the ageing single woman. The widow has long been regarded as a social anomaly, placed apart from society by the loss of their husband, occupying a threshold between life and death. The chapter explores representations of the ageing widow in British film during the 1950s and 1960s, often characterised as living in poverty or facing peril. The chapter explores how film comedy drew on a nostalgic recreation of a tradition of support through collectivity, dating back to pre-industrial Europe. In contrast The Whisperers (1967) presented an intensely bleak vision of lonely old age and poverty. Ageing icons established as grandes dames of the British stage found substantial roles in these films.
‘Infertile, domestically unnecessary, and jealous’: Hags, Witches and the Magic Spinster
Authors: Mortimer Claire
Published: May 2022

One of the most enduring types of female ageing in fictional texts is the witch. Representations of the witch in British film are informed by a cultural imaginary which extends back through the centuries. A sequence of post-war films reiterated the threat of the ageing woman by evoking the supernatural, drawing on myths of the ageing unattached woman as a monstrous hag. In contrast the chapter examines a more benign figuration of the female grotesque and the supernatural with Margaret Rutherford’s performance as an eccentric medium in Blithe Spirit (1945), which was to define her persona as a ‘magic spinster’. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed a return to the ageing woman as monster, as British horror films increasingly targeted a youth audience. These monstrous women were a boon for the ageing actress, finding a new younger audience.
Introduction
Authors: Warren Aiden , Bartley Adam
Published: May 2022

The introduction illustrates that there is an exceptional yet perturbing convergence in the longer-term fundamental drivers and the short-term recurring ones at the core of U.S.-China relations. Together, they are pressing this relationship toward a more competitive domain, and the ensuing competition will likely draw in a wider array of issues and encompass more actors. In examining the three U.S. presidents in the twenty-first century—Bush, Obama, and Trump—it is unclear as to whether a new U.S. president would or could fundamentally alter this intensifying dynamic or whether Xi Jinping would drastically shift course in the new decade and beyond. Many of these drivers are knotted to the personalities, material interests, and capabilities of both states, indicating, but not ensuring, their permanence. Consequently, it is evident that relations are perhaps moving toward a new period which, unlike previous ones, will be characterized by an amplified preponderance of competition and the enhanced probability of conflict and confrontation. As the following chapters will reveal, obtaining an equilibrium in U.S.-China relations between cooperation and competition will be increasingly difficult to achieve as the latter becomes more pronounced and the former contracts and is viewed to be of limited value.
The Bush Administration’s First Term: Reconciling the China “Threat” with New Priorities
Authors: Warren Aiden , Bartley Adam
Published: May 2022

This chapter seeks to examine and unpack the Bush administration’s approach toward the Chinese across two distinct phases during the first term in office: the events prior to September 11, 2001 and, following, the immediate post-9/11 years. By all indications, the U.S.-China relationship under the Bush administration in 2001 was set to encounter the vicissitudes of a generational change in American strategic thinking. The China challenge undoubtedly marked the development of a Bush China policy during this first phase, but the extent to which it was formed on a strategy toward action left important questions unclear. We argue also that conservative ideology played a critical role, reinforced by the image of an evolving China threat in publications and conservative thinking inside the Beltway. As this chapter illustrates, the China ‘threat’ was a constant among administration officials. While the threat was rarely made explicit in public it was nevertheless a discussion of great importance behind closed doors. Indicatively, even after 9/11, when a rebalancing of the U.S.-China relationship was pursued by Bush, not only do we find that it was done unevenly, but on the major issue of Taiwan, greater uncertainty became the norm.
The Obama Administration’s Second Term: Balancing Continuities and New Realities
Authors: Warren Aiden , Bartley Adam
Published: May 2022

The Obama administration during its second term in office continued to search for the “right” equilibrium pertaining to China, particularly on how to engage with it on issues concerning stability and security in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. On this, Washington sought to understand the true rationale behind China’s military modernization program while deterring it’s use of military and paramilitary forces in altercations with states over territorial claims in the South China Sea (SCS). At first considered a proponent of greater engagement, Xi Jinping quickly established a basis for pushing back against the United States in international institutions, through the direct and provocative reinforcement of Chinese maritime control using militia forces, Coast Guard “white hulls” and an expansive naval presence. The strategic and security aspects of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Beijing’s persistent threat to use force in pressing toward unification with Taiwan brought the China threat into significant new focus. Over the course of its second term in office, while elements of cooperation and of competition oscillated back and forth, the latter became a more prominent feature as China asserted its claims in the Indo-Pacific.
Afterword
Authors: Warren Aiden , Bartley Adam
Published: May 2022

In looking ahead, there are significant lessons to draw upon for moral, conceptual, and strategic nuance in the experiences of the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. For one, it is impossible to overlook the fact that, at least under Bush and Obama, engagement has been strategized, trialed, and embraced at the highest levels of government and at the highest levels of national security. It is difficult, too, to discount the point that America has been instrumental in China’s modernization and its substantial growth in economic, financial, and even military capabilities. These are extraordinary talking points worth embracing in every rhetorical act concerning China. Denying them, as Trump has, delegitimizes the lessons that these experiences have produced and the policies that former administrations adopted. As nations in the Indo-Pacific search for stability, consistency, and trust in regional partnerships, these peculiarities in the Trump administration will have lasting implications, not the least being the impression that credibility, respect, and authenticity have become virtues of the past. That this is taking place at a time when nations are increasingly looking to China for economic partnership and development support presents another critical challenge for the United States.
The Last Abbasids of Cairo, 903–22/1497–1517
Authors: Banister Mustafa
Published: May 2022

This chapter discusses the last two Abbasids to reign with pomp in Cairo prior to the Ottoman conquest of the Cairo Sultanate in 1516-1517. As problems mounted in early sixteenth-century Cairo, the Abbasids seldom received priority and often had to fend for themselves. The father and son al-Mustamsik and al-Mutawakkil III, witnessed the collapse of the sultanate and the loss of much of their family fortune and prestige to the invading Ottomans. In a unique development, they also reigned together simultaneously for a brief period. During the transition to Ottoman rule in Cairo the caliphate persevered as a status quo symbol, but ended in relative obscurity after a brief sojourn in Istanbul. The chapter also discusses faulty claims of an official ceremony intended to transfer the caliphal office from the Abbasid to the Ottoman dynastic lines.
Beyond the Throne of the Caliphate: Analysing Caliphal Documents
Authors: Banister Mustafa
Published: May 2022

The second of two chapters that discuss caliphal documents that offer opportunities to examine Abbasid legitimacy alongside conceptual representations of the caliphate’s authority in late medieval Syro-Egyptian society. The documents counted among a small number of venues in which the theoretical power and authority of the Abbasid Caliphate could be presented as far-reaching and authentic, thereby providing a basis for Citadel ritual. Chapter 9 carries the discussion in the previous chapter further by isolating the important themes and motifs that appear in the text of the documents including the social ramifications of the bayʿa, caliphal succession, Abbasid lineage and perpetuation, and delegation of caliphal authority to the sultan. The chapter also presents an exploration of courtly expectations for the Cairene Abbasids, gleaned from the documents.
Introduction: contents of this book
Authors: van der Hulst Harry
Published: May 2022

This book presents a theory of phonological structures with roots in the framework of Dependency Phonology (henceforth DP), but proposes a rather different ‘geometry’, which reduces the set of unary elements to just two: |C| and |V| (which explains the name of the theory). The structure that is proposed accommodates all and only phonological distinctions that have been found to function contrastively in (at least one of) the world’s languages. As such, the theory ...
Basic assumptions about phonology
Authors: van der Hulst Harry
Published: May 2022

In this chapter, I outline my basic assumptions about the enterprise called phonology, starting with my understanding of the scope of phonology, which I break down into three assumptions: the need for a separation of grammatical phonology and phonetic implementation, the idea that ‘phoneme’ size segments are pivotal units in phonological representations and thirdly that there is a syllabic organisation. I then situate Radical CV Phonology within the field of current phonological approaches. Subsequently, I discuss five theses regarding phonological primes and representations. I conclude with addressing the question of Structural Analogy, that is, whether phonology is different in a fundamental way from syntax, answering this question in the negative.
Manner
Authors: van der Hulst Harry
Published: May 2022

In this chapter, I focus on the manner class. I take manner to be the head class of the segmental structure because manner elements determine the distribution of segments in the phonotactic organisation of words. Also, manner elements are the most stable elements, often resisting assimilation. Following the notion of polysystematicity (the idea that sets of contrastive segments differ for different phonotactic positions) I will discuss manner distinctions for each of the four core syllabic positions and, where relevant for the head (primary) and dependent (secondary) class separately.
Special structures
Authors: van der Hulst Harry
Published: May 2022

In this chapter, I propose both incomplete and overcomplete structures for segment types that call for one or the other. Incomplete structures are structures that miss one of the element classes. In previous chapters, we will already have seen examples of this, in the sense that a non-tonal language does not use the laryngeal node for vowels. We have also seen that the locational class can be missing, as in central vowels and pharyngeal and laryngeal consonants. What cannot be missing is the manner class because this class, being the head class, is obligatory. I will discuss one possible exception to this. I will consider whether the manner class, being obligatory, can be ‘empty’, then providing a different approach that may not require this kind of ‘abstractness’. Subsequently, I turn to overcomplete structures which are necessary for various classes of so-called complex segments, such as clicks, multiple-articulated consonants, short diphthongs and some others.
Minimal specification
Authors: van der Hulst Harry
Published: May 2022

In this chapter I will address the following issues:
Redundancy and default: are predictable (i.e. redundant) elements underspecified, and what about elements that are contrastive? In other words, is there a role for (contrastive and radical) underspecification in RcvP? Markedness: how does RcvP express markedness? What is ‘markedness’ in RcvP? Minimal specification: given that underspecification plays a role in RcvP, how are minimal (i.e. maximally underspecified) representations determined? Phonological activity: can redundant or default properties be phonologically active? Constraints: which types of constraints can be formulated to restrict the set of possible segments to precisely those that occur in a given language?
Radical CV Phonology applied to sign phonology
Authors: van der Hulst Harry
Published: May 2022

As explained in chapter 1, a central aspect of RcvP is that ‘features’ (elements) are not as such innate. Elements emerge from successive splitting during language acquisition, based on the occurrence of contrast. However, the RcvP splitting model is not specific to the phonetic modality. This implies that the model can also be applied to sign language phonology, for which I have developed an explicit model in previous work over the last two decades. In this previous work, I have not emphasized how an appropriate structure for signs can be derived from the principles of RcvP, using more ‘descriptive’ labels for contrastive specifications. In this chapter I will show how such a structure can be represented in terms of a binary ‘C/V’ choice within the relevant classes.