bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Fame Nation
Authors: Osterweis Ariel
Published: April 2024

This chapter examines how queer and closeted black masculinities are depicted in 1980s American dance and its translations into film and photography. Focused on Richardson’s high school years at LaGuardia, during which time he earned the Presidential Scholar in the Arts award, the chapter takes place against the backdrop of Reaganism, the culture wars, and the New Jim Crow. The year of the award, 1986, was a politically charged time of conservativism that negatively impacted Black Americans. It was the same year that Ronald Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe published his book of photographed Black male nudes, Black Book. Reagan actively defunded many of the programs that Lyndon Johnson had established. 1986 marked six years since Reagan’s 1980 attempt to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and three years before the 1989 NEA scandal involving Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano, among others. Mapplethorpe’s images were implicated in the culture wars, inciting numerous national debates on “obscenity,” fetishism, classicism, sexuality, religion, and blackness. The culture wars and what Michelle Alexander elaborates on as the “New Jim Crow” (including a continuation of Nixon’s War on Drugs through channels such as the school-to-prison pipeline) coalesced against the backdrop of Reagan’s defunding of the arts and calculated disregard for the AIDS crisis. This chapter also discusses Leroy from the movie Fame and how Richardson’s story parallels that of Leroy. It comments on the uncanny meta-narrative of black performance labor taking place as the real-life stories of Richardson and Gene Anthony Ray (who plays Leroy) are layered onto that of Leroy. This chapter analyzes a Mapplethorpe photograph of dancer Derrick Cross to further explore how black dancing masculinities are portrayed in 1980s American culture. Then, cycling back, further demonstrating how intertwined Fame and Richardson’s career have become, the 2009 revival of Fame cites Richardson’s company, Complexions, as the greatest contemporary dance company in the world. This chapter thinks through Richardson’s high school training alongside the Mapplethorpe image and tropes of youthful dance aspiration in Fame, as recounted by Richardson’s high school modern dance teacher, Penny Frank, who also acted in the film.
Difficult Fun
Authors: Osterweis Ariel
Published: April 2024

Richardson decided to leave Ailey and form Complexions in 1994. The same year, Richardson left the US to dance in Germany with William Forsythe’s Ballett Frankfurt. This chapter explores how Richardson and choreographer William Forsythe’s combined modes of improvisation create a notable shift in their practices to a “black radical tradition.” It cites George Balanchine and improvisational traditions as influences on Forsythe. Richardson and Forsythe’s collaboration collapses racial and choreographic signifiers, lingering in the difficult space of illegibility. Through concerted practice, such illegibility functions as a refiguring of the relationship between subjectivity and blackness. The chapter traces the way Frankfurt dancers describe an otherwise modernist aesthetic of difficulty as “fun,” ultimately positioning the body as the locale of choreographic and ontological agency. In doing so, it traverses the interval between what Forsythe calls a “[staging] of disappearance” and what Fred Moten refers to as the inevitably “improvisatory exteriority” of blackness. While much of the book works to make legible otherwise illegible queer black masculinities, this chapter understands a certain kind of formal, choreographic illegibility as a site of radical, performative potential for black subjectivity. Despite Richardson’s hypervisibility, his work in improvisation renders him illegible as he collapses racial signifiers in pursuit of an aesthetics of difficulty with Forsythe.
Bad
Authors: Osterweis Ariel
Published: April 2024

Desmond Richardson worked with Michael Jackson seven times over the course of his career, first appearing as a teenager in Jackson’s music video, “Bad.” This chapter discusses how choreographic falsetto is manifested in Richardson’s collaboration with Jackson, and goes on to theorize “freakery” as the term pertains to both artists. This chapter’s main focus is an investigation of the term “freak”—the history of the term’s origins in ethnological freak shows and how it has evolved into a colloquial term that designates both otherness and hyperability. In discussing the way freaks are often emulated, this chapter also traces a genealogy of appropriation and authenticity from Broadway (“Great White Way”) to the contemporary music video. The quintessential falsetto post-soul singer of the 1980s and 1990s, Jackson is a virtuoso in his own regard. By incorporating interviews with Richardson, this chapter provides the reader with unique insight into Jackson’s process and work ethic. In addition to turning its attention to Jackson’s oft-eclipsed dancing, this chapter compares Richardson and Jackson’s artistry in terms of virtuosity. Richardson is often referred to by fans as a “freak” due to the incredible feats he executes with aplomb. The use of the term in Jackson’s case was more derogatory and related more to his personal (rather than artistic) life—his surgical bodily modifications and skin condition, vitiligo (not to mention his alleged child sex abuse crimes). In this chapter we find two kinds of alteration taking place, surgical and technical: the body is transformed by knife and rehearsal. The question of the mechanical comes to the fore in regard to surgery, on the one hand, and dance technique (as technology), on the other.
Henry Enfield Roscoe
Authors: Morris Peter J.T. , Reed Peter
Published: April 2024

Henry Enfield Roscoe (1833–1915) was one of the most prominent chemists and educational reformers in Victorian Britain. He was born in London and was educated in Liverpool and at University College London. He then studied under Robert Bunsen in Heidelberg and thereafter admired German education. Having transformed the chemistry department at Owens College into one of the best in Britain, he assisted the conversion of the college into Victoria University (University of Manchester’s official name until 2004) and then embarked on a campaign to reform technical education at all levels, using Germany as a model. Roscoe became a Manchester MP in 1885 and after helping with the passing of the Technical Instruction Act in 1889, he pushed for a scheme of compulsory metrication in 1895. After losing his seat in the General Election of 1895, Roscoe oversaw the reform of the University of London as its vice-chancellor, assisted the formation of Imperial College, helped to found the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, and was a director of the Castner-Kellner Alkali Company. His ability to bring together academic and industrial chemists resulted in the creation of the Society of Chemical Industry (1881), and his association with Eton College led to the formation of the forerunner of the Association for Science Education. This biography aims to show how these different strands of Roscoe’s career came together to make Roscoe one of the leading scientists of his generation; his impact is still felt today.
Finding His Niche
Authors: Morris Peter J.T. , Reed Peter
Published: April 2024

This chapter shows the importance for Roscoe of his time living and studying in London, the influence of several outstanding teachers on his intellectual development, and the network of people Roscoe met, many of whom were to remain lifelong friends. Roscoe chose to study at University College London because there were no religious stipulations, and he came under the influence of the mathematician Augustus De Morgan, and the chemists Thomas Graham and Alexander Williamson. Teaching in the Birkbeck laboratory allowed students to undertake experimental work, which appealed to Roscoe, who matriculated with a BA in 1852. While in London, Roscoe became acquainted with Benjamin Brodie (later Professor of Chemistry at Oxford), Henry Holland (physician and President of the Royal Institution), and Alfred Fletcher (later Chief Inspector of the Alkali Administration); and also met his cousin Stanley Jevons, who later would join him on the staff of Owens College Manchester.
After the Flying Saucers Came
Authors: Eghigian Greg
Published: April 2024

After the Flying Saucers Came tells the story of the world's fascination with UFOs and the prospect that they were the work of visitors from outer space. While accounts of great wonders in the sky date back to antiquity, reports of UFOs took place against the unique backdrop of the Cold War and space age, giving rise to disputed government inquiries, breath-taking news stories, and single-minded sleuths. This book traces how a seemingly isolated incident in 1947 sparked an international drama involving shady figures, questionable evidence, suspicions of conspiracy, hoaxes, new religions, scandals, unsettling alien encounters, debunkers, and celebrities. It examines how descriptions, theories, and debates about unidentified flying objects and contact with aliens changed over time and how they appeared in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Russia. And it explores the impact UFOs have had and continue to have on our understanding of space, science, technology, politics, and ourselves up through the present day.
Spaceships, Conspiracies, and the Birth of the UFO Detective, 1948–1953
Authors: Eghigian Greg
Published: April 2024

While the flying saucer sighting was born in 1947, the drama surrounding UFOs emerged only over the ensuing six years. Between 1947 and 1953, flying saucers went from being things people reported seeing to being a stock set of images, characters, and stories with which most people were familiar. By the mid-1950s, to mention seeing something moving oddly in the sky instantly conjured up more than flying disks and Kenneth Arnold; it also brought up thoughts of alien corpses, UFO photos, military investigations, government cover-up, demands for disclosure, hoaxes, and ridiculing debunkers. The Air Force adopted the term UFO to try to rid the phenomenon of these associations, but to no avail. Pulp fiction publishers kept pressing the idea that flying saucers came from outer space. The stage was set for a perpetual debate about UFOs between believers and skeptics.
Intruders
Authors: Eghigian Greg
Published: April 2024

In the 1980s and 1990s, interest in UFOs and extraterrestrial visitors took a dark, alarming turn. More and more, the talk was of aliens forcing witnesses on board their vessels and performing experiments and examinations on their victims. Dominated by the specter of alien abduction, the focus of ufology moved away from speculations about nuts-and-bolts spacecraft and toward analyzing the stories of individuals having unnerving encounters with entities from another world. At the same time, UFO investigators began to assume a new role as advisors and counselors to witnesses, using hypnosis to recover traumatic memories of terrifying experiences at the hands of alien intruders. Leading abductee researchers like Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs, and John Mack, however, found themselves the targets of criticism for their controversial interventions.
The Arab American Novel
Authors: Hassan Waïl S.
Published: April 2024

This chapter investigates the Arab American novel as a transnational, multilingual phenomenon, even in its narrowest sense as the novel written in English by Arab immigrants and their descendants in the United States. Arab immigrant novelists have tended to focus on the home country and/or the experience of coming to America, while most novels by US-born (second- and third-generation) writers have focused on Arab American identity. The Arab American novel responds to a particular kind of Orientalist representation that reaches back to the nineteenth century and that, since the mid-twentieth century, has reflected US attitudes toward, and foreign policy in, the Middle East. This discourse has been inescapable: writers wishing to address the subject of the Arab American experience in English have had to define their position in relation to it, whether through confirmation, rejection, or negotiation that accepts some of its tenets while challenging others.
Historical Fiction
Authors: Donahue James J.
Published: April 2024

This chapter charts the trajectory of US historical fiction from the Second World War to the early decades of the twenty-first century. Prominent mid-twentieth-century historical novelists produced books that were well researched and often meticulously detailed, embodying a belief in the past as a knowable, documentable field that fiction can bring to life. Often celebratory in tone, these various works also presented America’s past largely in terms of American Exceptionalism, particularly in terms of social and technological progress. From the 1960s on, however, the project of US historical fiction increasingly sought to challenge the authority of the narratives that had been composed to construct the common understanding of US history. Novelists incorporated voices traditionally left out of historical fiction and often pursued narrative strategies designed to disorient their readers, challenging them to re-evaluate received truths and accepted stories.
Regionalism
Authors: Campbell Donna M.
Published: April 2024

This chapter argues that taking a long view of regionalism over time reveals its importance in constructing a more complete vision of US literature. Beginning as a minor, if popular, form of writing in the 1870s and 1880s, local color or regionalism was dismissed as insular and provincial in the early twentieth century during the rise of modernism, which favored transnational, urban, and cosmopolitan perspectives. Post-1940s regionalism, however, engages with history and national culture in ways that differ from the illusion of sheltered remoteness common in nineteenth-century regionalism, with the region becoming the backdrop for a re-envisioning of both local and national history. At the start of the twenty-first century, regionalist writing has dramatized what it means to live with rural poverty, suburban despair, or the decaying infrastructure and crumbling families of post-industrial regions.
Quantum Drama
Authors: Baggott Jim , Heilbron John L.
Published: April 2024

It was not a question of whether light should be pictured as waves or particles, or atoms as solar systems, but of whether the microworld could be pictured at all. The famous debate between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr reached beyond quantum physics to the deepest foundations of science. Faced with the ever more perplexing ‘irrationalities’, Bohr, Einstein, and their followers fell into two broadly opposed camps. Bohr’s approach of ‘complementarity’ accommodated the apparent absurdities of the microworld, declared quantum concepts to be purely ‘symbolic’, and insisted that the manifestation of quantum phenomena in experiment be discussed only in the language of classical physics. He asserted that quantum theory was mathematically coherent and complete. Einstein could not accept Bohr’s ‘tranquilizing philosophy’, which dealt in probabilities rather than certainties. He insisted that physicists look more deeply for the causes of entanglement and rejected the spooky actions at a distance that this implies. Their discussion, respectful and profound, reached stasis in the mid-1930s with the apparent victory of Bohr, while attention shifted to nuclear and particle physics. But their arguments continued to reverberate, and later physicists identified testable consequences of the theory. Ingenious experiments have now confirmed its radical strangeness. Vividly capturing the personalities and interactions of a remarkable cast of characters, the prevailing socio-political circumstances, and threaded through with explanations of theory and experiment, this erudite and carefully crafted telling by Jim Baggott and John Heilbron may prove to be the definitive account of the Bohr–Einstein debate and its legacy.
A Century of Anarchy?
Authors: Simon Hendrik
Published: April 2024

In the beginning there was anarchy—but was there? The nineteenth century is (mis)understood as a century in which states were free to wage war against each other whenever they deemed it politically necessary. Not until the League of Nations, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the UN Charter was this ‘free right to go to war’ (liberum ius ad bellum) gradually outlawed. The dark times of anarchy were over. Lighter times dawned—and, with them, ‘radical transformations’ of international law and politics. This story of progress is widely shared. But it is puzzling. For a ‘free right to go to war’ has never been empirically proven. By outlining a genealogy of modern war justifications and drawing on multiple political and normative discourses, A Century of Anarchy? argues that this ‘right’ actually never existed (Part I). Rather, it was an invention by realist legal scholars in Imperial Germany who argued against the mainstream of European liberalism (Part II). Paradoxically, this now forgotten Sonderweg reading was universalized in international historiographies after the World Wars. But the characterization of nineteenth-century international relations as anarchic is as inaccurate as it is widespread: in addition to deconstructing the myth of liberum ius ad bellum, this book traces the political and theoretical roots of the modern prohibition of war in the ‘long nineteenth century’ (1789–1918). The latter is not to be understood as the anarchic photo-negative of the modern international order governing the use of force. It was the era of its birth.
Birth of an International Order
Authors: Simon Hendrik
Published: April 2024

Dialectically, the French Revolution was a violent catalyst for the emergence of the nineteenth-century international order. Following Paul W. Schroeder, Chapter 4 identifies the Vienna Congress of 1814/15 as a ‘decisive turning point’: the chapter’s central argument is that the modern international order governing the use of force was born in ‘Vienna 1814/15’. In response to the trauma of the Revolution, the European Great Powers created a new normative framework for the (de)legitimization of war, with a prohibition of war as a yet uncodified emerging norm at its centre (Chapter 4.2). The chapter then addresses the Vienna Order’s highly paradoxical normative regulation of collective force, with a special focus on so-called ‘measures short of war’, and, more specifically, on anti-revolutionary and ‘humanitarian’ interventions in the first half of the nineteenth century (Chapter 4.3).
Money Flows
Authors: De Vries Catherine , Doyle David , Solaz Hector , Tertytchnaya Katerina
Published: April 2024

Remittances, the repatriated earnings of emigrant workers, have risen spectacularly in recent decades. They are a crucial lifeline for the households that receive them and one of the largest sources of capital for developing economies, outstripping both aid and foreign direct investment. Money Flows studies how remittances shape the relationship between remittance recipients and the authorities in migrant-sending countries by providing a comprehensive study of the political effects of remittances on the attitudes of their recipients. It argues that far from being an exclusively economic risk-sharing mechanism between poorer, migrant-sending, and richer, migrant-receiving economies, remittances may compromise rudimentary accountability mechanisms in the developing world. Money Flows leverages survey data from Central-Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and original focus groups from Kyrgyzstan. It shows how remittances, and fluctuations in their volume, colour recipients’ economic evaluations; shape the burden of corruption; and change how recipients interact with, and view their state, ultimately impacting the approval function of the authorities.
Ramism and the Reformation of Method
Authors: Burton Simon J. G.
Published: April 2024

This book offers the first in-depth discussion of the philosophical and theological presuppositions of the early modern movement of Ramism for more than a generation, arguing for its deep roots in medieval Augustinian and Franciscan thought and charting its uptake in Reformed scholasticism. In doing so, it challenges a widespread narrative associating Reformed Protestantism with disenchantment and the onset of secularism. The work traces a broad arc from Ramus to Comenius, encompassing both Continental and British varieties of Ramism. It examines the nature and formation of Ramism and its subsequent development and transformation through engagement with Philippist, scholastic, Lullist, and federal thought. It shows that at the heart of Ramism, unifying all of its diverse strands, was a Franciscan vision of Christian philosophy and it reveals the connection of Ramism to an eclectic, Scotistic approach to reality embodied in a sophisticated Realism and exemplarism. It considers the development of Ramism as a supernatural logic of faith. It highlights the relation of Ramism to a wider mathematization and systematization of knowledge grounded in the reforms of Nicholas of Cusa and the Fabrists. It thus exposes the deep roots of the early modern encyclopaedia in medieval and Renaissance thought. It finally reveals the presence of an important Edenic paradigm within Ramism, issuing in a Trinitarian and eschatological drive for the universal reform of Church and society.
University in Canada
Authors: Warsh Cheryl Krasnick
Published: April 2024

At fifteen, Oldham entered Victoria College, a feeder school for McGill University, and she moved on to Montreal, Quebec, after two years. Too young to visit the nightclubs in the lively city, she played sports and studied biochemistry, awed by her brilliant colleagues, and she found her niche in pharmacology, a discipline based on animal research. With no work for a female science graduate in the Depression years, she returned for graduate studies under Raymond Stehle, completing a thesis on the pituitary glands of frogs. With no work prospects, Oldham remained at Stehle’s lab until he recommended her for Eugene Geiling’s new pharmacology laboratory at the University of Chicago, where (Mr) Frances Oldham was offered a scholarship. Oldham accepted, and then told Geiling she was a woman. He offered her a scholarship for doctoral studies, and she was off to a new country and a department she would call home for a decade.
The Early Washington Years
Authors: Warsh Cheryl Krasnick
Published: April 2024

Both Kelseys found employment in Washington: Frances at the FDA and Ellis at NIH. Frances befriended Barbara Moulton, an ex-FDA reviewer who exposed cozy relationships between FDA officials and pharmaceutical executives. On her first New Drug Applications, Kelsey reviewed medical studies, while other scientists reviewed the chemistry and pharmacology. She found many studies shoddily executed, if not falsified, and highlighted addictive substances. The Bureau included a small group of underpaid scientists, and women were not fully welcomed.
The Battle of the Lady and the Dragon
Authors: Warsh Cheryl Krasnick
Published: April 2024

In 1962, Senator Kefauver’s subcommittee discussed amendments to the 1938 FDA Act to regulate drug safety and efficacy, but industry and AMA opposition stymied substantive changes. Kefauver staffer Lucille Went leaked Helen Taussig’s article on Kelsey’s role in banning thalidomide to the Washington Post’s Morton Mintz, whose story made international headlines. Kelsey was an instant heroine, and Kefauver recommended her for the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service. The Kennedy administration reversed previous opposition to drug reform and gave Kelsey the award, confirming Kelsey’s status as one of 1962’s most famous women. She was swamped with letters, interview requests, awards, and public invitations. News coverage was gendered, focusing on her appearance, dependence on her husband’s advice, and her maternal instincts rather than her professional expertise. Unlike earlier characterizations of female physicians as spinsters, Kelsey was portrayed as an ideal working mother, a comforting image in a period of Cold War domestic containment.
The Good Mother of Science
Authors: Warsh Cheryl Krasnick
Published: April 2024

Kelsey received thousands of letters from the public. Gratitude was contextualized in Cold War fears of atomic radiation and environmental poisoning. Radiation fear postponed German physicians’ publicizing thalidomide birth defects. Physically challenged individuals were rarer and less tolerated publicly than in previous centuries, which added to the thalidomide horror. Sample letters are presented in this chapter, in which gratitude was often religiously framed, as Kelsey was characterized as savior from chemical abominations. Physicians were no longer seen as all-knowing and powerful. Male power brokers were distrusted. The letter writers admired Kelsey’s steadfast stance against drug companies and politicians. Family and old friends sent congratulations and reminiscences.
Policing Informed Consent, 1960s–1990s
Authors: Warsh Cheryl Krasnick
Published: April 2024

Kelsey helped create the Investigational Review Boards (IRBs), which oversaw the review boards the Kefauver–Harris amendments required to ensure institutional clinical studies obtained informed consent and were ethically sound. Many researchers objected that IRBs interfered with the doctor–patient relationship. Kelsey explained the system to the public and stakeholders, and trained field officers. The Stough–Wisdom scandal, in which prisoners were used for multiple trials while the administrators got rich, became a cause-célèbre, as concerns about how prisoners and other institutionalized subjects could give true consent grew. Jessica Mitford’s Atlantic Monthly expose of prison trials put the FDA on the defensive, but Kelsey reminded her superiors that with a small staff and budget, it was impossible to oversee all institutions. Trials based in private offices came under her purview, including instances where physicians attempted to fraudulently report their practices. The use of nursing home residences and street people as clinical subjects was examined.
Lasting Memorials, Everyday Happenings
Authors: Warsh Cheryl Krasnick
Published: April 2024

At the age of seventy-nine, Kelsey suffered a debilitating spinal injury while on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, for a groundbreaking ceremony of the Frances Kelsey Secondary School. She returned to Victoria, BC, when an asteroid was named for her. She remained director of the DSI until 1995, and then was tasked with organizing her files for posterity. She continued to be interviewed by new generations learning of her achievements and, in 1990, was the first recipient of the F. O. Kelsey Award of the American Medical Women Writers Association. The FDA held receptions for her, where she was the agency’s heroine, particularly for women scientists. In 2015, living with her daughter in London, Ontario, she received the Order of Canada at 101 years of age, and passed away that evening.
Epilogue
Authors: Warsh Cheryl Krasnick
Published: April 2024

Kelsey was called both heroic and obstructionist, but she was always progressive in establishing guidelines for future researchers and regulators. She was well suited to her FDA position, especially in policy planning and enforcement. She was a pioneering female scientist in the nascent field of pharmacology. After a lifetime of encountering glass ceilings, she created pathways for women scientists and bureaucrats. Her secure base of family and friends nourished her spirit as she faced the challenges of employment as a federal government scientist while under public scrutiny. Her greatest skill was successfully negotiating around hostile drug lobbyists, politicians, and even colleagues for a decades-long career.
The Pursuit
Authors: Paul T.V.
Published: April 2024

This chapter covers the key motivations behind and constraints on the Indian elite’s international status quest. It starts with the consideration of India’s status as a socio-psychological phenomenon pursued by nation-states. National leaders hold great regard for higher status for reasons of socio-psychological and material advancement. In international politics, status enhancement appears to be one of the key motivating factors of large and even small states in their national strategies. The chapter then elaborates on the interplay between status considerations and security that is driving state choices on foreign or security policy, while exploring India’s search for greater status.
Hard Power
Authors: Paul T.V.
Published: April 2024

This chapter discusses the achievements and challenges that India faced in its quest for status while considering the key hard-power markers. These ingredients are essential for status enhancement, accommodation by established powers, and recognition by non-great power states. The hard-power markers range from military capabilities to economic capacity, technological advances, and demography. A key hard-power resource that an aspiring power should possess for status enhancement today is the appropriate mix of a working-age population. India has this demographic dividend, but its utilization has not been up to the higher levels required for major status advancement or economic progress. The chapter mentions that aspiring great powers must consider whether their hard power is of consequence to other leading actors in the international arena.
Introduction
Authors: Zhang Angela Huyue
Published: April 2024

This chapter presents two opposing views regarding the Chinese government's recent crackdown on the tech sector. The majority view, held by critics, asserts that political motivations primarily drive the wave of tech regulation. In contrast, proponents argue that China is merely following a global trend of regulating Big Tech. This chapter proposes that neither view is complete. Instead, it introduces a dynamic pyramid model to shed light on China's unique regulatory system, drawing parallels between Chinese regulation and a high-wire circus act in terms of hierarchy, volatility, and fragility. The chapter explain in detail how these three main features of Chinese regulatory model interact with each other through various channels, forming a complex network via multiple feedback loops. In the end, the chapter offers a roadmap that outlines the structure of the book.
The Traces of Jacques Derrida's Cinema
Authors: Holland Timothy
Published: April 2024

Situated at the intersection of film and media studies, literary theory, and continental philosophy, The Traces of Jacques Derrida’s Cinema provides a trenchant account of the role of cinema in the oeuvre of one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). The book is animated by Derrida’s self-confessed passion for the movies, his reluctance to write about film despite the range of his corpus, and the generative encounters arising between his legacy and the field of film and media studies as a result. Given the expanse of its references, interdisciplinarity, and consideration of Derrida’s approach to the experience of both spectatorship and the act of being filmed, The Traces of Jacques Derrida’s Cinema contributes to the ongoing close analyses of the philosopher’s work while also providing a rigorous introduction to deconstruction. The book interweaves historical and speculative modes of research and writing to articulate the peripheral place of the cinematic medium for Derrida and his philosophical enterprise. The outcome is a meticulously detailed survey of the centers and margins of Derrida’s oeuvre that incorporate his appearances in films; his unrealized or hypothetical project on cinema and belief; the correspondences between the strategies of deconstruction and David Lynch’s cinematic media; and the questions wedded to both the legitimization and future of film studies amid the vicissitudes of the modern, virtual university.
The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship
Authors: Marsden George M.
Published: April 2024

This book is a thought-provoking text on the relationship between religious faith and intellectual scholarship. The book argues that mainstream American higher education needs to be more open to explicit expressions of faith and to accept what faith means in an intellectual context. The book points out that while other defining elements of a scholar’s identity, such as race or gender, are routinely taken into consideration, the perspective of the believing Christian is dismissed as irrelevant or antithetical to scholarly enterprise. The book rebuts the various arguments commonly given for excluding religious viewpoints, such as the argument that faith is insufficiently empirical for scholarly pursuits, the fear that traditional Christianity will reassert its historical role as oppressor of divergent views, and the received dogma of the separation of church and state, which stretches far beyond the actual law in the popular imagination. The book argues that scholars have both a religious and an intellectual obligation not to leave their deeply held religious beliefs at the gate of the academy. Such beliefs, it contends, can make a significant difference in scholarship, in campus life, and in countless other ways.
Introduction
Authors: Stepien Rafal K.
Published: April 2024

The Introduction outlines relevant developments in the study of Buddhist, and more broadly non-Western, philosophy and exposes the Eurocentrism insidiously at work within them. This leads directly to critical discussion of the very paradigms used both to structure and to demarcate scholarship on ‘philosophy’, ‘religion’, and thus also ‘philosophy of religion’. Using Nāgārjuna as a theoretical counterbalance, the (largely unacknowledged) perpetuation of identifiably Christian/Western terms of reference as normative in the study of Buddhism is critiqued, and a proposal is set out to study the tradition as what is here termed a ‘religiosophy’. This, in turn, entails revisionary discussion of topics such as the relation of rationality to wisdom, the historicity of (religious and philosophical) claims to universality, and the place for terminological innovations when reading materials rooted in one linguistic and intellectual culture from the interpretive horizon of another.
Logical, Buddhological, Buddhist
Authors: Stepien Rafal K.
Published: April 2024

Chapter 2 focuses on the tetralemma or catuṣkoṭi. This fourfold form of discourse typically negates a given position, its contrary, both, and neither, as when, for example, Nāgārjuna states at the very outset of his masterwork that “Not from itself nor from another / Not from both nor without cause // Does any entity whatsoever / Anywhere arise.” The logicalizing approach predominant in contemporary scholarship on the tetralemma is motivated by a desire to demonstrate that, contrary to appearances, Nāgārjuna cannot possibly be serious in denying all four positions. This chapter articulates and dismantles three major iterations of this approach, which are called the Mereological, Modal, and Qualitative Interpretations. An alternative reading is then proposed that is not only just as methodologically legitimate but also better equipped for the hermeneutical endeavor of describing Nāgārjuna’s religiosophical project taken in its entirety.
Nāgārjuna’s Tetralemma
Authors: Stepien Rafal K.
Published: April 2024

Chapter 3 turns from the critique of currently prevalent interpretive strategies to the construction of an alternative method. In contradistinction to analyses aimed at demonstrating the logicality of the tetralemma, an interpretation is proposed along what are called paralogical lines. An argument is made for the inadequacy of the dialetheic reading currently preferred, and therefore a new term is proposed—“tetrāletheia”—designed to better represent the four-folded nature of the tetralemma. Subsequent sections of the chapter are devoted to explication of this neologism, together with a reading of the tetralemma as embodied in the archetypal Buddhist figure of the Tathāgata. In the final section, “utterance” is proposed as an alternative descriptor for the totality of the tetralemma, one that is better suited to the paralogical and “anontological” tetralemma than are terms in standard use insofar as it dispenses with their substantialist value(s).
Social Systems and Intersectional Oppression
Authors: Haslanger Sally
Published: April 2024

Societies are complex dynamic systems that are self-organizing due to their internal structure. How, then, should we understand intersectional oppression? Robin Dembroff states in Chapter 21 that patriarchy and White supremacy work together to constitute social subjects as both gendered and raced. But how? Are patriarchy and White supremacy two systems that interact? Or, as Dembroff argues, do they overlap? Drawing on a case study of social reproduction in the early- twentieth-century United States, this chapter argues that in our current social formation, patriarchy and White supremacy are not best understood as two different systems. However, the author claims that our social system is patriarchal, White supremacist, and capitalist due to patterns in who suffers what consequences.
Europe as Ideological Resource
Authors: Lorimer Marta
Published: April 2024

How did the far right go from illegitimate fringe to contender for public office, and did Europe have anything to do with it? This book argues that European integration functioned as an ideological resource for far-right parties looking for legitimation because it enabled them to refashion their political message in a more acceptable form, while maintaining the allegiance of their existing supporters. Drawing on the qualitative analysis of over 400 documents produced by the Movimento Sociale Italiano/Alleanza Nazionale in Italy (1978–2009) and the Rassemblement National in France (1978–2019), the book identifies the core concepts and discourses the parties used to talk about Europe, and the legitimation mechanisms associated with them. The book’s narrative is developed through the analysis of four key concepts: the concept of identity, which enabled the parties to transnationalize their message and create a positive association between themselves and Europe; the concept of liberty, which made it possible for them to foster an image of actors holding uncontroversial positions; the concept of threat, which helped them promote the idea that ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’; and the concept of national interest, which helped them stress commitment to core principles in their ideology. Ever since its re-emergence on the European political scene, scholars have sought to explain the mainstreaming of the far right. By understanding how the process of European integration facilitated its transition from the margins to the mainstream, this book adds one piece to the puzzle of far-right legitimation.
Dehumanization in the Global Migration Crisis
Authors: de Ruiter Adrienne
Published: April 2024

What can we learn about dehumanization from the global migration crisis? In reporting on the hardships that refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants face, scholars, journalists, commentators, and displaced persons themselves have frequently described their mistreatment using the term dehumanization. Yet, while this notion is commonly used or alluded to, it is rarely defined or conceptualized. This is surprising since its meaning is far from clear. Does dehumanization concern conditions of severe destitution in refugee camps, which do not allow for minimally decent living standards? Should we think of political games in which displaced people are perceived, portrayed, and treated as undesirable burdens or bargaining chips? Or is it about the ways in which (forced) migrants may come to feel alienated from their own humanity? This book examines what dehumanization entails through a critical study of the various forms of social and moral exclusion to which people are exposed in the global migration crisis. It presents a philosophical account of dehumanization that is empirically grounded in both the lived experiences of (forced) migrants and prevailing accounts of their treatment. The central argument is that dehumanization consists in a distinct form of moral exclusion that is characterized by neglect of or contempt for the moral status of human beings, which expresses itself in blindness for the significance of the human subjectivity of victims as a moral factor that should be taken into consideration.
The Conflict of Laws
Authors: Briggs Adrian
Published: April 2024

The book examines and analyses private international law—the conflict of jurisdictions, the conflict of judgments and the conflict of laws, in the aftermath of Brexit. Where retained EU laws are to be assimilated into the structure of the subject, the problems to which this may give rise are dealt with and solutions proposed. The theory underpinning the subject is exposed, for without an understanding of what the conflict of laws does, and why it does it, the detail of the law can appear overwhelming, when the truth is the opposite: almost every decision and principle can be seen to be part of a rational, coherent, structure. Where criticism—whether of legislation or the absence of legislation, or of judicial decisions—is called for, it is made. Punches are not pulled. Where the law has been let down by legislators or judges (not only in London), the shortcomings are explained, the better to help the reader appreciate what the subject, taken as a whole, seeks to do. Where reform is necessary, the need is explained. But above all, the reading is intended to be fun, or at least provocative. For as soon as the reader is stimulated to produce his or her own thought, reaction and assessment, the book will have achieved its most important purpose.
Interpretational Remarks
Authors: Pearle Philip
Published: April 2024

This chapter discusses how, from the abstract statevector, one can extract reliable statements about what is observed, following the author’s favorite approach. It begins by defining “stuff” the absolute magnitude squared of the scalar product of the state vector with a basis. Singled out is the eigenbasis of the particle number operator in an arbitrary volume V. A criterion for “observability” is given: one can say that the particle number in V is observed when the ratio of standard deviation of this operator to its mean value is “sufficiently small.” If the criterion is satisfied, one can say that the mean value is the number of particles in V. The chapter goes on to provide examples of application of the criterion. Among these, one shows that, during a measurement, it is possible for the state of an apparatus to “briefly” not be observable, but the time interval of unobservability is less than human perception time. Lastly, the chapter discusses “tail” issue, that collapse never goes to completion in a finite time. It argues that the tiny amplitude state (superposed with the observed state) can be neglected since it gives rise to no observable particles.
Supplement to Chapter 6
Authors: Pearle Philip
Published: April 2024

This chapter supplements Chapter 6. It provides details regarding a number of calculations related to experiments. These experiments are “spontaneous” excitation of bound states (that is, the rate of 1s electrons ejected from Germanium atoms with a subsequent photon shower as it collides with other Ge atoms), a relativistically invariant model (where the collapse-generating operator is a scalar quantum field, leading to an, unfortunately, infinite rate of production of particles), the random walk of an extended object in CSL and, finally, the decay of particle number in a Bose–Einstein condensate due to CSL heating.
Suicidal ideation in police officers and associated risk factors: A systematic review
Authors: Talavera-Velasco Beatriz , Gutiérrez-Carvajal Alicia , Martín-García Jesús , Luceño-Moreno Lourdes
Published: April 2024

Research shows that police officers are at greater risk of suicidal ideation than the general population, with few workers seeking help. However, there is little research on suicidal ideation among police officers. The objective of this study is to conduct a systematic review, categorize, and identify the risk factors associated with suicidal ideation in this particular group, with the aim of preventing suicidal thoughts in these professionals. Articles published between 2018 and 2023 were reviewed using the PsycINFO, Web of Science, and Scopus databases. Nine scientific articles were obtained from a total of 119 studies. Being a woman, being older, being single, having high levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, and suffering from anxiety, depression, or alcohol, and substance use are among the risk factors associated with suicidal ideation among police officers. Taking these factors into account is considered essential to improve the well-being of these workers.
Dissecting caspase-2-mediated cell death: from intrinsic PIDDosome activation to chemical modulation
Authors: Zeng Mengxue , Wang Kun , Wu Qingcui , Ding Jingjin , Xie Dan , Qi Xiangbing , Shao Feng
Published: April 2024

Caspase-2, a highly conserved member of the caspase family, is considered an initiator caspase that triggers apoptosis in response to some cellular stresses. Previous studies suggest that an intracellular multi-protein complex PIDDosome, induced by genotoxic stress, serves as a platform for caspase-2 activation. Due to caspase-2’s inability to process effector caspases, however, the mechanism underlying caspase-2-mediated cell death upon PIDDosome activation remains unclear. Here, we conducted an unbiased genome-wide genetic screen and identified that the Bcl2 family protein BID is required for PIDDosome-induced, caspase-2-mediated apoptosis. PIDDosome-activated caspase-2 directly and functionally processes BID to signal the mitochondrial pathway for apoptosis induction. In addition, a designed chemical screen identified a compound, HUHS015, which specifically activates caspase-2-mediated apoptosis. HUHS015-stimulated apoptosis also requires BID but is independent of the PIDDosome. Through extensive structure–activity relationship efforts, we identified a derivative with a potency of ~60 nmol/L in activating caspase-2-mediated apoptosis. The HUHS015-series of compounds act as efficient agonists that directly target the interdomain linker in caspase-2, representing a new mode of initiator caspase activation. Human and mouse caspase-2 differ in two crucial residues in the linker, rendering a selectivity of the agonists for human caspase-2. The caspase-2 agonists are valuable tools to explore the physiological roles of caspase-2-mediated cell death and a base for developing small-molecule drugs for relevant diseases.