bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Marching Back to the Future: Magyar Garda and the Resurgence of the Right in Hungary
Authors: LeBor Adam
Published: February 2012

One Sunday morning in December 2007, some three hundred extreme nationalists dressed in black uniforms marched in military formation through a Hungarian village, protesting against what they called "Roma [Gypsy] delinquency." They then gathered at a rally, where speakers demanded that Roma be segregated from mainstream society. The protesters were members of the Magyar Garda (Hungarian Guard), a new ultranationalist organization whose members pledge to defend Hungarian values and culture. The Magyar Garda is an offshoot of the far-right Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalam (Movement for a Better Hungary), generally shortened to Jobbik. Jobbik is a play on words in Hungarian, meaning both "better" and "more to the right." Jobbik has no members of Parliament, but is represented on several local councils, where its representatives often cooperate with Fidesz, the main conservative opposition party. Opinion polls usually give Jobbik 2 percent or 3 percent support, and the Garda boasts around 650 members.
How Can Architecture be Democratic?
Authors: Gans Herbert J.
Published: February 2012

I appreciate Herbert Gans’s discerning comments, and in essence am in agreement with all he says. The one point I’d like to underscore, though, is that architecture, whatever else it is (or isn’t), is a form of symbolic representation. Although buildings change ownership and get put to varied ideological uses by different regimes (there are many notorious examples of this kind of “reuse,” for example, in the context of Nazi Germany, where modernist buildings by some of the most progressive architects of the twenties were appropriated for nefarious purposes in the thirties), they also belong to their historical moment and have real cultural effects along with the spatial ones. Because the leading architects today are public figures (in a few cases with the status of lower-echelon rock stars), the claims they make, even if spurious, need to be taken with some seriousness.
Rattlesnakes in the Garden: The Fascinating Serpents of the Early, Edenic Republic
Authors: Hutchins Zachary McLeod
Published: February 2012

This essay considers the various ways in which writers and visual artists deployed the rattlesnake to advance and, later, destabilize nationalist agendas between the French and Indian War and the Civil War. During the intervening century the rattlesnake, with its powers of fascination, evolved into a multifaceted symbol used to represent a wide range of ideas: British colonial unity; American national identity; white fears of interracial conflict and miscegenation; and the lingering belief that original sin represented a serious threat to a secular republic whose well-being could be ensured only by the virtuous behavior of its citizens. Between 1751 and 1861 visual artists like Benjamin Franklin and Charles Gadsden, together with writers such as J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur and Oliver Wendell Holmes, made the rattlesnake a symbol of the national transition from imported art to endogenous culture, from indigenous inhabitants to European emigrants, from innocence to experience.
Christianity, Private Power, and the Law from Decius to Constantine: The Minimalist View
Authors: Cooper Kate
Published: February 2012

This essay considers the development in the third and fourth centuries of the idea of a "universal church" and the transition from private power to corporate institutional polity as the basis of authority within the churches, in light of "minimalist revolution" in our understanding of Roman law and government over the last few decades.
Reading Sex and Gender in the Secret Revelation of John
Authors: King Karen L.
Published: February 2012

The Secret Revelation of John is replete with imagery of the divine Mother alongside the Father God and his Son Christ. It boasts of powerful female saviors—and even identifies Christ among them. Eve is not the cause of humankind's fall, but of its redemption. The sexual intercourse of Adam and Eve marks not original sin, but a step toward salvation. Yet readers find, too, an idealized divine world in the pattern of the ancient patriarchal household, and a portrait of another female figure, Sophia, whose bold and independent action leads to a fatherless world headed by a sexually violent and deviant bastard. The complexity of this imagery, nestled in a story that operates with oppositional strategies and parody, ensures that no single monolithic perspective on sex/gender will rule—and indeed it opens up a crack where it is possible that the wise-fool Sophia is more completely the hero of the story than one might think. This essay aims to explore the complexities of SRJ 's representation of gender and the implications of their strategic deployments.
Economic and Political Liberalization in Tanzania and its Unintended Outcomes
Authors: Liviga Athumani J.
Published: February 2012

With the onset of globalization one-party state regimes were forced to liberalize politically and economically. Liberalization was seen as beneficial for it opened up both the political and economic space for all actors in the development process. Liberalization was embraced because of its perceived advantages to all sections of society: allowing citizens to participate in decision-making on matters affecting their lives and allowing and facilitating, among others, the private sector to take the lead role in economic development (engine of growth). This paper argues that political and economic liberalization has not brought the intended outcomes in Tanzania. It is observed that some positive changes have occurred but the unintended outcomes outweigh by far the advantages. In fact there is in Tanzania a notable reversal of the gains the country has had before it embarked on liberalization politically and economically. The reversal is more apparent in the policymaking process where foreign influences dominate national interests. The paper argues further that the reasons advanced for countries like Tanzania to embark on wholesale liberalization are spurious. Foreign interests in general and flag bearers of neo-liberalism in particular are bent on sustaining their domination of developing countries under the guise of advocacy for good governance.
Water Infrastructure and Food Security Linkages in Three Selected Regions of Ethiopia
Authors: Tafesse Tesfaye
Published: February 2012

Access to water infrastructure reduces the exposure of people to a variety of diseases that obstruct the intake and utilization of food. In addition, it can reduce the time of hauling water by women, thereby increasing their productivity and status. The study has considered two important water infrastructures, namely domestic water supply schemes, and irrigation that affect food security in Ethiopia. Three regions that fall within the Ethiopian portion of the Nile Basin, namely Amhara, Oromia and Tigrai, were purposively selected. Data and information pertaining to food security situations and the status of domestic water supply and irrigation for all zones in the three selected regions of Ethiopia have been collected. Descriptive and inferential statistical techniques have been used to analyze the data. The findings of the study have shown that food security status in the three studied regions is generally low and varies considerably from zone to zone and from region to region. The study has also established the existence of strong linkages between water infrastructure and food security in Ethiopia. There are a relatively lower number of food insecure people in areas where there are better accesses to water supply and irrigation agriculture. This implies the need for policy interventions that can help in upgrading and expanding water infrastructures, adopting an integrated food security and infrastructure development approach, maintaining the existing water schemes, and universalizing water coverage in Ethiopia.
How a Pie Fight Satirizes Whig-Tory Conflict in Delarivier Manley's The New Atalantis
Authors: Sargent Carole Fungaroli
Published: February 2012

A scene in Delarivier Manley's 1709 Tory political satire, The New Atalantis , depicts poet Sarah Fyge Egerton hitting her priest husband in the face with a hot apple pie, followed by butter "to cool him again." Scholars have debated whether it is biographical gossip about the unsuccessful Egerton divorce petition, but this study identifies it as satire of Whig-Tory political battles and High Church controversy. Its burlesque derives from John Dryden, Elizabethan ballads, opera, and caricatura , and the food metaphor echoes Tory William King. Manley's scene prefigures the political cartoon, containing recognizable works to protect her from libel charges.
The Progress of Knowledge in the Regions of Air?: Divisions and Disciplines in Early Ballooning
Authors: Brant Clare
Published: February 2012

There are various stories about the invention of balloons; they reveal taxonomies of intellectual ordering. The literary formations of air include investments in imagination as well as knowledge; hence disciplines are less useful in understanding the significance of balloons than ideas of ill-discipline and anti-discipline. This mix of order and disorder challenges the intellectual seriousness attendant on disciplinarity. Questions about the uses of balloons reveal how the new discipline of aerostation contended with satire, fantasy, and playfulness in ways that undo binaries of science and spectacle. Analysis of some balloon illustrations show ambiguities in visual conventions that pictorialize discipline in complex ways.
Edgeworth and the Lunar Enlightenment
Authors: Chandler James
Published: February 2012

Maria Edgeworth was arguably the most important novelist writing in English during the early Regency period. Her narrative art was informed by her influential educational theories, and in its turn it decisively shaped the very different oeuvres of Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott, whose successes in fiction would somewhat eclipse hers. If Edgeworth’s novels came to seem puzzling in their design, the reason may lie in the distinctive disciplinary context from which they emerged. For Edgeworth followed her highly accomplished and polymath father in engaging with the projects of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, which included diverse intellectuals such as James Watt, Erasmus Darwin, and Joseph Priestley. The Lunar commitment to improvement through experiment, I argue, not only set the terms for the agricultural, mechanical, and educational efforts carried out by Richard Edgeworth and his daughter on their Irish estate, it also helps to make sense of the novels and tales Maria wrote there, especially her remarkable analysis of contemporary fashionable life in Belinda (1801).
The Sense of Rhythm: Nationalism, Sympathy, and the English Elocutionists
Authors: Yahav Amit
Published: February 2012

This essay traces a peculiar conception of linguistic rhythm developed by the English Elocutionists and imagined to foster strong sympathy among members of linguistic communities. Focusing on Joshua Steele's An Essay Towards Establishing the Melody and Measure of Speech (1775), I demonstrate that such rhythm and the fellow-feeling it fosters were imagined as at once national and personal as well as formal and embodied. This conception of linguistic bonding coheres with David Hume's early discussion of sympathy, while also offering interesting solutions to problems in Adam Smith's later theatrical model. Additionally, it provides an illuminating perspective on the much debated ethic of speech, as it was shaped by Rousseauvian nostalgia and reconsidered in more recent deconstructive and psychoanalytic theorizations of presence.
Evelina , the Rustic Girls of Congreve and Abington, and Surrogation in the 1770s
Authors: Evans James E.
Published: February 2012

In Evelina Frances Burney represents characters attending a performance of William Congreve's Love for Love at the Drury Lane Theatre, at a time when Frances Abington, one of the company's principal actors, regularly performed the part of Miss Prue in the play. Joseph Roach's concept of "surrogation" facilitates a reading of this episode that demonstrates how selective memory functions in the culture's search for substitutes in the 1770s. Late in a decade of new Congreve revivals and critical conversation about them, Burney offers her novel as a surrogate for Congreve's kind of comedy. While some characters comment on the play's indelicacy, the episode recalls Congreve's characters, notably the vulgar Miss Prue, whom Burney contrasts with Evelina, a more delicate rustic girl. Illustrating the uncanniness of surrogation, the novelist also suppresses references to Abington, so celebrated for this part that Sir Joshua Reynolds painted her in it. Burney, who had once followed the actress down a London street, was wary of Abington's theatricality on stage and off and so chose another model of conduct for her protagonist and herself as author. Her approach differs from Richard Brinsley Sheridan's exploitation of Congreve's memory and Abington's celebrity through new revivals before offering his own stand-in for the former's plays, The School for Scandal , in which the latter portrayed Lady Teazle, another young woman from the country. Burney's strategy, when juxtaposed with Sheridan's, shows that surrogation may sometimes be a gendered process.
Sustaining Identity in I'tesamuddin's The Wonders of Vilayet
Authors: Schürer Norbert
Published: February 2012

There are many narratives of European travelers visiting India in the eighteenth century, but there are only a few surviving reports of Indians who spent time in Europe. One such report is The Wonders of Vilayet by the Indo-Persian diplomat I'tesamuddin, who went to France and Britain 1766-67. In his travel narrative, available in two ideologically distinct English translations, he explores issues of identity, particularly pertaining to gender and religion. At first, I'tesamuddin is excited by the visibility of European women and highly complimentary about their beauty, and his Sunni Muslim ideas about male-female interaction are challenged. In the end, though, he cannot see himself with a British woman because of the religious difference. Similarly, I'tesamuddin initially tries to understand and displays a positive stance towards Anglican Christianity as he offers Muslim interpretations of Christian parables. At the same time, he insists on differences between Christianity and Islam, arguing that Christians are too materialistic and that Muslims are ultimately more devout. Thus, he holds fast to his spiritual beliefs and sustains his identity in the face of the challenge of European modernity.
“And row my blossoms o’er!” Gift-Giving and Emily Dickinson’s Poetic Vocation
Authors: Manheim Daniel
Published: February 2012

Emily Dickinson loved gifts. Many of her early poems were gifts themselves, accompanied gifts, or spoke in the voice of gifts. Finding the voice of the gift was an essential dimension of her development as a poet, and many of her early lyrics show her transforming material gifts into more immediately apprehensible imaginative inventions. She came of age as a poet at a time when the nature of gifts was being widely discussed, and when giving a gift of poetry was, for a brief time, a veritable fad. Her gift poems can be seen as a contribution to the public discourses about what was important in a gift, and what kind of human contact a gift offering might promise. In this current of popular gift discourse, from gift books and flower lexicons, to revivalist discussions of the Atonement, Dickinson forged her poetry and her understanding of the communicative power of the poem. Rising to her imaginative invitation promised a more intense intimacy than any commodity gift could convey. Through her poetic gifts, she debated what kind of human relation was defined by the giving of a gift and what kind of circuit of understanding a poetic gift could create.
“Itself is all the like”: Selfsameness in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson
Authors: Evans Meagan
Published: February 2012

This essay explores how Dickinson’s conflicted relationship to speech and silence influences her formal experimentation. It asks why Dickinson, a poet deeply invested in figuration, so often appears to elevate extreme experiences as silently self-sufficient and beyond the knowing-by-relation that is the province of artful language. Poems that describe a thing as selfsame or an experience as self-defined are, on some level, about the insufficiencies of language; they are about the failure of the voice of the poet and the boundaries beyond which poetic authority cannot reach. However, because of the overwhelmingly relational nature of much of Dickinson’s poetry, statements of the self-sufficiency of experience cannot be simply admissions that poetic comparison fails as an explanatory tool. Instead, I argue that Dickinson’s statements of selfsameness are simultaneously literal and figurative. As literal statements, claims of selfsameness suggest indivisible self-identity that transcends or precludes comparative language. As figures, self-referential comparisons make more things speakable; they make even the idea of the insufficiency of language the subject of figurative exploration. Selfsameness as a figure does not deny the creative and communicative possibilities of poetic language but dramatizes the multiplicity of comparative figures in tension with the singular self-sufficiency and inexpressibility of experience conveyed by literal selfsameness. Through close readings of Dickinson’s poems, this essay also explores how Dickinson simultaneously employs literal and figurative selfsameness in her use of rhyme and multivalent syntax.
Feeling For Philosophy: Shaftesbury and the Limits of Sentimental Certainty
Authors: Yousef Nancy
Published: February 2012

This essay offers an account of the rich contradictions between claims of knowledge and assertions of feeling in eighteenth-century ethical writing, a recurrent tension that is crucial to an understanding of how intersubjective recognition manifests itself as a specifically moral challenge in the period. In spite of explicit efforts to wrest a realm of certainty (affective, moral) from the encroachments of (epistemic) scrutiny and doubt, the moral and the epistemological are always mutually implicated in the bold assertions of intersubjective access put forward by the sentimentalists. Shaftesbury's work is a particularly significant case for the study of sentimentalism, not only because it is among the earliest affirmations of the irresistible self-evidence of moral feeling, but also because its deliberate eschewal of systematic argumentation set distinctive challenges for later eighteenth-century theorists of sympathy who sought to integrate his insights within the dominant philosophical current of empiricism. Addressing not only Shaftesbury, but also Mandeville, Hume and others, this essay is intended to bring interpretation of the written corpus of moral philosophy to bear on the interest in the dynamics of recognition that has characterized the recent ethical turn in literary studies.
Games People Play: Metafiction, Defense Strategy, and the Cultures of Simulation
Authors: Grausam Daniel
Published: February 2012

This essay situates the American metafiction produced in the 1960s in relation to contemporary defense strategy and war-gaming. As critics have noted, metafiction about games and gaming is a particularly rich site for thinking about metafiction more generally, and I argue that these metafictional texts reveal a profound skepticism about the value and efficacy of simulation. This skepticism should be understood, I argue, in relation to the problems of defense strategy in the thermonuclear age.
Reading in the Dark: Sensory Perception and Agency in The Return of the Native
Authors: Coombs David Sweeney
Published: February 2012

This article argues that Thomas Hardy’s often-expressed ambivalence towards his readers has its origins in late nineteenth-century sciences of mind. It reads The Return of the Native as an allegory of reading informed by neuropsychological theories of association that characterized sensory perception as a semiotic mental process. In Hardy’s novel, this article contends, association makes possible the radical reinterpretation of experience that Hardy elsewhere claims is key to his artistic practice, but it also leads to forms of misreading that haunt Hardy as an author and shape his decision to abandon novel-writing in the 1890s.
Accent on Desire: Desire and Race in the Production of Ideological Subjectivities in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Authors: Soudien Crain , Botsis Hannah
Published: February 2012

Understanding the “transformation” of South African institutions requires taking into account the ways in which category maintenance and transgression operate in post-apartheid South Africa. Despite the official ideology of the post-apartheid government being one of nonracialism, there are still incongruent messages about identity from all quarters, which learners have to negotiate. We consider how this negotiation is managed through examining South Africans’ English accents as a terrain of desire upon which ideological (gendered, raced) subjectivities are formed. We argue that desire is deeply invested in the psycho-social complex of what being “white” and “black” is assumed to stand for. Currently, South Africans “can deviate from the identity descriptions attributed to them or to which they will attach themselves”; however, this deviation involves both transgression and “category-maintenance” work that simultaneously enables and constrains the (Davies 1989, 29) subject. In narrative research with young South African women (aged 16 to 24), we found that normative whiteness is re-inscribed through constructions of desire as they pertain to accent. We argue that accent acts as a “disruption [that] works at the level of [their] desire to be a particular kind of subject” (Davies 2006, 88).
Higher Education and Children in Immigrant Families
Authors: Baum Sandy , Flores Stella M.
Published: February 2012

The increasing role that immigrants and their children, especially those from Latin America, are playing in American society, Sandy Baum and Stella Flores argue, makes it essential that as many young newcomers as possible enroll and succeed in postsecondary education. Immigrant youths from some countries find the doors to the nation's colleges wide open. But other groups, such as those from Latin America, Laos, and Cambodia, often fail to get a post-secondary education. Immigration status itself is not a hindrance. The characteristics of the immigrants, such as their country of origin, race, and parental socioeconomic status, in addition to the communities, schools, and legal barriers that greet them in the United States, explain most of that variation. Postsecondary attainment rates of young people who come from low-income households and, regardless of income or immigration status, whose parents have no college experience are low across the board. Exacerbating the financial constraints is the reality that low-income students and those whose parents have little education are frequently ill prepared academically to succeed in college. The sharp rise in demand for skilled labor over the past few decades has made it more urgent than ever to provide access to postsecondary education for all. And policy solutions, say the authors, require researchers to better understand the differences among immigrant groups.
Removing barriers to education and to employment opportunities for undocumented students poses political, not conceptual, problems. Providing adequate funding for postsecondary education through low tuition and grant aid is also straightforward, if not easy to accomplish. Assuring that Mexican immigrants and others who grow up in low-income communities have the opportunity to prepare themselves academically for college is more challenging. Policies to improve the elementary and secondary school experiences of all children are key to improving the postsecondary success of all.
The Physical and Psychological Well-Being of Immigrant Children
Authors: Perreira Krista M. , Ornelas India J.
Published: February 2012

Poor childhood health contributes to lower socioeconomic status in adulthood. Subsequently, low socioeconomic status among parents contributes to poor childhood health outcomes in the next generation. This cycle can be particularly pernicious for vulnerable and low-income minority populations, including many children of immigrants. And because of the rapid growth in the numbers of immigrant children, this cycle also has implications for the nation as a whole. By promoting the physical well-being and emotional health of children of immigrants, health professionals and policy makers can ultimately improve the long-term economic prospects of the next generation. Despite their poorer socioeconomic circumstances and the stress associated with migration and acculturation, foreign-born children who immigrate to the United States typically have lower mortality and morbidity risks than U.S. children born to immigrant parents. Over time, however, and across generations, the health advantage of immigrant children fades. For example, researchers have found that the share of adolescents who are overweight or obese, a key indicator of physical health, is lowest for foreign-born youth, but these shares grow larger for each generation and increase rapidly as youth transition into adulthood. Access to health care substantially influences the physical and emotional health status of immigrant children. Less likely to have health insurance and regular access to medical care services than nonimmigrants, immigrant parents delay or forgo needed care for their children. When children finally receive care, it is often in the emergency room after an urgent condition has developed.
To better promote the health of children of immigrants, health researchers and reformers must improve their understanding of the unique experiences of immigrant children; increase access to medical care and the capacity of providers to work with multilingual and multicultural populations; and continue to improve the availability and affordability of health insurance for all Americans.
K-12 Educational Outcomes of Immigrant Youth
Authors: Crosnoe Robert , Turley Ruth N. López
Published: February 2012

The children from immigrant families in the United States make up a historically diverse population, and they are demonstrating just as much diversity in their experiences in the K-12 educational system. Robert Crosnoe and Ruth López Turley summarize these K-12 patterns, paying special attention to differences in academic functioning across segments of the immigrant population defined by generational status, race and ethnicity, and national origin. A good deal of evidence points to an immigrant advantage in multiple indicators of academic progress, meaning that many youths from immigrant families outperform their peers in school. This apparent advantage is often referred to as the immigrant paradox, in that it occurs despite higher-than-average rates of social and economic disadvantages in this population as a whole. The immigrant paradox, however, is more pronounced among the children of Asian and African immigrants than other groups, and it is stronger for boys than for girls. Furthermore, evidence for the paradox is far more consistent in secondary school than in elementary school. Indeed, school readiness appears to be one area of potential risk for children from immigrant families, especially those of Mexican origin. For many groups, including those from Latin America, any evidence of the immigrant paradox usually emerges after researchers control for family socioeconomic circumstances and youths' English language skills. For others, including those from Asian countries, it is at least partially explained by the tendency for more socioeconomically advantaged residents of those regions to leave their home country for the United States. Bilingualism and strong family ties help to explain immigrant advantages in schooling; school, community, and other contextual disadvantages may suppress these advantages or lead to immigrant risks.
Crosnoe and Turley also discuss several policy efforts targeting young people from immigrant families, especially those of Latin American origin. One is the DREAM Act, proposed federal legislation to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented youth who meet certain criteria. Another effort includes culturally grounded programs to support the college preparation of immigrant adolescents and the educational involvement of immigrant parents of young children.
International Perspectives on Work-Family Policies: Lessons from the World’s Most Competitive Economies
Authors: Earle Alison , Mokomane Zitha , Heymann Jody
Published: February 2012

The United States does not guarantee families a wide range of supportive workplace policies such as paid maternity and paternity leave or paid leave to care for sick children. Proposals to provide such benefits are invariably met with the complaint that the costs would reduce employment and undermine the international competitiveness of American businesses. In this article, Alison Earle, Zitha Mokomane, and Jody Heymann explore whether paid leave and other work-family policies that support children’s development exist in countries that are economically competitive and have low unemployment rates. Their data show that the answer is yes.

Using indicators of competitiveness gathered by the World Economic Forum, the authors identify fifteen countries, including the United States, that have been among the top twenty countries in competitiveness rankings for at least eight of ten years. To this group they add China and India, both rising competitors in the global economy. They find that every one of these countries, except the United States, guarantees some form of paid leave for new mothers as well as annual leave. And all but Switzerland and the United States guarantee paid leave for new fathers.

The authors perform a similar exercise to identify thirteen advanced countries with consistently low unemployment rates, again including the United States. The majority of these countries provide paid leave for new mothers, paid leave for new fathers, paid leave to care for children’s health care needs, breast-feeding breaks, paid vacation leave, and a weekly day of rest. Of these, the United States guarantees only breast-feeding breaks (part of the recently passed health care legislation).

The authors’ global examination of the most competitive economies as well as the economies with low unemployment rates makes clear that ensuring that all parents are available to care for their children’s healthy development does not preclude a country from being highly competitive economically.
Families with School-Age Children
Authors: Christensen Kathleen , Schneider Barbara , Butler Donnell
Published: February 2012

Most working parents face a common dilemma—how to care for their children when they are not in school but the parents are at work. In this article Kathleen Christensen, Barbara Schneider, and Donnell Butler describe the predictable and unpredictable scheduling demands school-age children place on working couples and single working parents.

The authors assess the potential capacity of schools to help meet the needs of working families through changes in school schedules and after-school programs and conclude that the flexibility parents need to balance family-work responsibilities probably cannot be found in the school setting. They argue that workplaces are better able than schools to offer the flexibility that working parents need to attend to basic needs of their children, as well as to engage in activities that enhance their children’s academic performance and emotional and social well-being.

Two types of flexible work practices seem especially well suited to parents who work: flextime arrangements that allow parents to coordinate their work schedules with their children’s school schedules, and policies that allow workers to take short periods of time off—a few hours or a day or two—to attend a parent-teacher conference, for example, or care for a child who has suddenly fallen ill. Many companies that have instituted such policies have benefited through employees’ greater job satisfaction and employee retention.

Yet despite these measured benefits to employers, workplaces often fall short of being family friendly. Many employers do not offer such policies or offer them only to employees at certain levels or in certain types of jobs. Flexible work practices are almost nonexistent for low-income workers, who are least able to afford alternative child care and may need flexibility the most.

Moreover the authors find that even employees in firms with flexible practices such as telecommuting may be reluctant to take advantage of them, because the workplace culture explicitly or implicitly stigmatizes or penalizes employees for choosing these work arrangements. The authors conclude by making a case for creating a workplace culture that supports flexibility. Such a culture, they argue, would enable working parents to better meet the responsibilities of their jobs as they care for and build strong relationships with their children.
Children with Health Issues
Authors: Schuster Mark A. , Chung Paul J. , Vestal Katherine D.
Published: February 2012

All children, even the healthiest, have preventive and acute health care needs. Moreover, a growing number of children are chronically ill, with preventive, acute, and ongoing care needs that may be much more demanding than those for healthy children.

Because children are unable to care for themselves, their parents are expected to provide a range of health care services without which the current health care system for children would not function. Under this “shadow health care system,” parents or parent surrogates often need to be with the child, a requirement that can create difficulties for working parents, particularly for those whose children are chronically ill. How federal, state, and employer policies and practices mesh with the child health care needs of families is therefore a central issue in any discussion about work and family balance.

In this article Mark Schuster, Paul Chung, and Katherine Vestal describe the health care needs of children; the essential health care responsibilities of parents; the perspective of employers; and the existing network of federal, state, and local family leave benefits that employed parents can access. They also identify current gaps in policies that leave unmet the needs of both parents and their employers.

The authors suggest the outlines of a national family leave policy that would protect the interests of parents and employers. In essence, such a policy would build on the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, which gives some workers time off with no advance notice required and no loss of job or health insurance. But it would also include elements of California’s Paid Family Leave Insurance, which expands coverage to more workers and provides partial pay during leave. Employers could be given some financial protections as well as protections against employee fraud and abuse. Such a policy, the authors conclude, would help to provide security to parents, minimize effects on employers, raise societal expectations for family-friendly work environments, and help maintain the parental shadow system of care on which health care professionals depend.
Workplace Flexibility: From Research to Action
Authors: Galinsky Ellen , Sakai Kelly , Wigton Tyler
Published: February 2012

Ellen Galinsky, Kelly Sakai, and Tyler Wigton explore the “time famine” among American workers—the continuing sense among employees of not having enough time to manage the multiple responsibilities of work and personal and family life. Noting that large shares of U.S. employees report feeling the need for greater workplace flexibility to enable them to take better care of family responsibilities, the authors examine a large-scale community-engagement initiative to increase workplace flexibility voluntarily.

Using the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce as a primary source of data, the authors begin with an overview of the prevalence of flexibility in today’s American workplace. They track which categories of employees have access to various flexibility options, as well as the extent to which employees with access to various types of flexibility use those options. Findings from the study indicate that the majority of employees want flexibility but that access to it varies, with more advantaged employees—those who are well educated, have high salaries, and work full time, for example—being doubly advantaged in having greater access to flexibility.

A number of employers, say the authors, tend to be skeptical of the value of workplace flexibility and to fear that employees will abuse it if it is offered. But the study data reveal that most employees use flexibility quite conservatively. When the authors use their nationally representative data set to investigate correlations between access to workplace flexibility and a range of workplace outcomes especially valued by employers—employee engagement, job satisfaction, retention, and health—they find that employers as well as employees can benefit from flexibility.

Finally, the authors discuss When Work Works, a large, national community-based initiative under way since 2003 to increase voluntary adoption of workplace flexibility. The authors detail the conceptual basis of the project’s design, noting its emphasis on flexibility as one component of effective workplaces that can benefit employers, employees, and communities alike. Galinsky, Sakai, and Wigton conclude by drawing lessons learned from the project and briefly discussing the implications of using research to bring about workplace change.
The Expression ûqsāmîm b e yâdâm (Numbers 22:7) in Light of Divinatory Practices from Mari
Authors: Hurowitz Victor
Published: February 2012

The expression ûqsāmîm b e yâdâm (Num 22:7) has been explained variously as "diviner's salary," "divinatory equipment," or "power of divination in their hands." None of these interpretations has been accepted universally. Parallels from newly published and republished Mari texts (Durand AEM I/1) suggest two new possibilities. The q e sāmîm may be substitutes for Israel upon which divination is to be performed. More likely, they are models of omens concerning Israel which are dispatched to Balaam for an expert, more advantageous opinion. The biblical q e sāmîm are functionally and semantically equivalent to the Mari têrētum which are baked and sent from one diviner to another for authoritative interpretation.
The (Non)sense of Smell in Isaiah 11:3
Authors: Unterman Jeremiah
Published: February 2012

The first three words of Isa 11:3 have long been a crux interpretatum , eliciting many different and varied Jewish interpretations since Talmudic times. Modern commentators have often sought to delete these words as a corrupt dittography. A new solution, based upon biblical and Qumran references, is suggested herein.
"Age of Wickedness" or "End of Days"?: Qumran Scholarship in Prospect
Authors: Davies Philip R.
Published: February 2012

Interpretation of the newly available texts will inevitably reflect existing theories, controversies, and issues. The chief focus in this report is on the evidence for the communities that we already know from other Qumran texts (1QS, CD, 1QSa), in the hope of discovering more of their ideology, structure, and relationship. But two other factors come into prominence: what do the large number of texts reflecting no community at all tell us about the nature and origin of the Qumran archive? And what does the appearance of more than one text on one manuscript and, indeed, the evidence of varied material juxtaposed in the same text tell us about the immediate source of the literature? The rival theories of origin in Jewish sects and of origin in Jerusalem libraries may need to be reconciled in some way in future research.
New Halakhic Texts from Qumran
Authors: Schiffman Lawrence H.
Published: February 2012

The study of halakhah , legal matters, at Qumran will be advanced considerably by the present availability of the materials. The author discusses several issues using the previously accessible material and the new preliminary forms and concludes that a Sadducean sub-stratum was more pervasive than previously assumed.
Language as a Human Right: The Ideology of Eastern European Zionists in the Early Twentieth Century
Authors: Breslauer S. Daniel
Published: February 2012

The use of Hebrew or Arabic, especially among Jews and Arabs, often becomes an ideological issue. This essay examines how some early Zionists (most particularly and at greatest length, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, but also noting Ahad HaAm, Martin Buber, and Shemarya Levin) claimed that the opportunity to speak one's native language was a human right, a right that for Jews translated into a revival of Hebrew as a spoken language. The essay notes how this ideological position conflicted with the views of the Yiddishists, denigrated the achievements of the German Jewish Enlightenment (the Haskalah), sought "normalization" of Jewish life. It concludes by suggesting that the ideology of language arises from the social and political needs of an elitist leadership group and may well need alteration when circumstances demand a different type of leader.
Ideology and Reality: The American Hebrew Movement in its Inception-In Search Of Identity
Authors: Pelli Moshe
Published: February 2012

Ever since the establishment of the Histadruth Ivrith of America in 1916, on the heels of several attempts to form a unified Hebrew movement in America, the pundits of the movement attempted to delineate the ideology, purpose and character of Hebrew culture in America. Three early Hebrew ideologues, Moshe Halevi, Kalman Whiteman, and Daniel Persky, discussed in this article, typified the ideological trends as they struggled with the concepts and means of preserving and promoting Hebrew culture in the diaspora, while American soil presented them with its unique and not too welcoming reality. The article discusses the ways they attempted to define Hebrew culture vis-à-vis the needs of American Jewry, as they perceived them, and how they coped with the American Jewish experience, while they were attempting to translate their ideology and lofty undertaking into practice. Some other aspects deal with topics that tantalized the Hebrew ideologues from the inception of the organization. Such are the question whether the Hebrew movement should cater to the elite or to the masses; should it emphasize cultural Hebrew activities, such as speaking Hebrew, or concentrate on the publication of books and literary journals; should the movement be part of the Zionists organization or outside of it.
Bavli Gittin 55b-56b: An Aggadic Narrative in Its Halakhic Context
Authors: Rubenstein Jeffrey L.
Published: February 2012

This study presents a literary analysis of the aggadic narrative of Qamza and Bar Qamza, the siege of Jerusalem and R. Yohanan b. Zakkai's escape ( b. Git. 55b-56b). The Bavli redactors combined and revised several independent sources to fashion a sustained and coherent narrative. The story blames the destruction of Jerusalem on rabbinic meekness and inaction, on the rabbis' failure to take bold measures in moral, social, and political realms. The second part of the study considers the redactional setting of the story, the fifth chapter of Tractate Gittin and specifically m. Git. 5:3. The chapter consists of a collection of rabbinic "amendments" ( tiqqunim ) and other enactments, rulings that adjust divine laws to further social and moral ends. In this halakhic context the story is an apology for such rabbinic legislative activity. Calamity results from rabbinic inaction and diffidence, while R. Yohanan b. Zakkai "saves a little" by risky action and compromise. The final section discusses the story in relation to an important intertext, t. Šabb. 16:7, which blames the destruction of the temple on a seemingly minor point of legal indecisiveness. The story should be seen as a narrative explanation of this puzzling charge.
The Role of the Mythic Birth Narrative in Modern Hebrew Poetry: Bialik, Shlonsky, Greenberg
Authors: Shoham Reuven
Published: February 2012

Although they were at first reluctant, modern Hebrew poets adopted the biographical model of the hero-prophet, including their miraculous birth. The present paper explores this myth by focusing on how three modern Hebrew poets—Bialik, Shlonsky, and Greenberg—treat the birth story in an attempt to reach down to the speaker's spiritual roots. Impelled by the Romantics and the birth story model, modern Hebrew "prophetic" poets, in search of the self, reverted to the narrative of their birth and their childhood. This is done sometimes with simplicity and naiveté, and sometimes with more than a tinge of self-irony and ambivalence, as in the poetry of Haim Nahman Bialik. While Avraham Shlonsky seems to play games with the theme, Uri Zvi Greenberg is almost completely serious and unquestioningly convinced of his mission.
Wedding-Feasts, Exiled Princes, and Hasidic Parable-Traditions
Authors: Wineman Aryeh
Published: February 2012

From among the parables found in classical hasidic collections of homilies, some can be seen to belong to families or traditions of parables. In the first such tradition examined in this study, representative hasidic teachers, explicitly or implicitly, sought to explain the talmudic saying, "The world can be likened to a wedding-feast." An association with the biblical account of the Tabernacle is a key to tracing the roots of a connection between the Tabernacle with the wedding-motif, going backwards through Kabbalah, rabbinic midrashim , and ultimately to the association between Temple and sacred marriage in ancient Near Eastern pagan culture. The second parable-tradition consists of a series of variations on the motifs of an exiled prince and the quest for a gem at the bottom of the sea, a parable-complex which also includes motifs such as a change of garments, forgetting, and a letter. The closest analogue to these parables is found in an ancient gnostic source known as the "Hymn of the Pearl." Employing what is obviously an inherited parable-story, hasidic teachers could freely mold that narrative-tradition to convey an array of meanings and themes central to hasidic teaching and the hasidic ethos.
Silence as Poetry: Avraham Ben-Yitzhak
Authors: Shiffman Smadar
Published: February 2012

This paper attempts to account for Avraham Ben-Yitzhak's poetic silence in terms of the complex relationships between his poetics, his personality, and his literary-historical position as a modernist European poet in Vienna and in Jerusalem of the thirties. Ben-Yitzhak's poetic silence, which began in Vienna and went on unbroken in Jerusalem, has elicited multiple explanations. The paper shows that the personal behavior is in fact another aspect of the same poetic attitude which drove him to opt for minimalist and restrained poetics. The close reading of two of Ben-Yitzhak's poems is used here to demonstrate the consistency of his poetic and personal choices, and the fact that his poetic silence is the almost inevitable consequence of his poetics. The third and last context in which Ben-Yitzhak's silence is dealt with in this paper is his poetic and historical status vis-à-vis Bialik's poetry. In terms of H. Bloom's "Anxiety of Influence," the paper explains Ben-Yitzhak's silence as the ultimate assimilation of the poetic "father" and his poetics into the "son" and his poetry. Ben-Yitzhak's silence is, in fact, a Bialik-like behavior which surpasses Bialik himself.