Men and the Desert: Contested masculinities In Ice Cold in Alex

This article explores the relationship between space, identity and film through the war film genre and in particular Ice Cold in Alex (1958). Although war films have suffered particular neglect by geographers, their appeal is enduring, helping to shape British national identity and popular constructions of masculinity. Through an analysis and critique of the film, this article makes two interconnected points. First, it highlights the value of film to geographers as a creative medium in which spaces and identities are imagined, (re)created, contested and negotiated. Second, it brings recent work on masculinities to bear on a detailed examination of Ice Cold to illustrate how war films have produced and sustained a specific unconventional form of heroic masculine British national identity through the passage of an ‘off-road’ movie. Here we demonstrate that masculinities are forged not only in the maelstrom of power interrelationships between men and other men and between men and women, but also importantly in relation to the landscape, in this example the desert as other. This glimpse allows us to challenge hegemonic norms as well as the construction of the desert as an active agent in the co-construction of the main characters' identities.     

Separating the Men from the Boys: Masculinity and Maturity in Understandings of Shell Shock in Britain

This article examines gendered discourses of shell shock inBritain during the First World War. Located within the contextof the ideas about shell shock as a form of male hysteria putforward by Elaine Showalter, it examines the ways in which thecontemporary discourses of soldiers, medical professionals andpopular novelists used ideas of maturity and self-control tounderstand a condition that appeared to undermine both the wareffort and national masculinity. It argues that contemporaryunderstandings of authority and maturity helped to normalizeshell shock as a medical condition, thereby lessening its perceivedthreat to society.     

THE BODY AT WAR

This book is one of the truly original contributions in historical writing to appear during the centenary of the outbreak of the war in 1914. The authors' central argument is that at the time of the Great War, scientists and physicians reconfigured the human body as both a living organism and a site of meaning. They developed the notion that the body was an integrated set of self-regulating systems, the precariousness of which threatened all of us with death every single day. The authors term this the “integration–crisis duet.” Although the origins of this formulation long antedated the war, the problem of treating thousands of men who suffered from various forms of shock—wound shock, surgical shock, shell shock—brought this new configuration of the human body into high relief during and in the decades after the war. The metaphor of homeostasis, or self-regulation, Geroulanos and Meyers claim, was so powerful that it spread well beyond the domain of physiology and medicine to facets of psychoanalysis, political thought, cybernetics, philosophy, and anthropology.     

Between Galen, Geddes, and the Gael: Arthur Brock, modernity, and medical humanism in early-twentieth-century Scotland

Arthur Brock (1879-1947) is generally remembered as the physician who treated poet Wilfred Owen for shell shock and as the translator of Galen and other ancient physicians. He was also a key figure in the early-twentieth-century humanist revival within medicine. Brock's interest in humanism, I argue, was inspired by a broader concern about modernity and by a desire to return medicine and society to the more harmonious, organic existence that he believed was characteristic of ancient Greece and could still be found among "primitive" peoples, such as the Scottish Gaels. This article explores Brock's anxieties about modernity and its relations to his interests in ancient and "primitive" peoples; to his medical thought and practice; to his interests in history, sociology, language, and translation; and to his involvement in the social and political life of Edinburgh and North Queensferry, where he moved in 1925. Crucially, it shows how all these interests and activities were influenced by Brock's mentor, Edinburgh polymath Patrick Geddes. The article concludes with a discussion of Brock's place in early-twentieth-century medical humanism.     

„Simulanten des Irrsinns auf dem Vortragspult“: Dada,Krieg und Psychiatrie,eine ‚Aktive Traumadynamik‘

“Simulanten des Irrsinns auf dem Vortragspult”: Dada, War and Psychiatry – ‘Active Dynamics of Trauma’. This paper relates stage performances of dada artists to war neurosis and shell shock as sociocultural phenomena. The leitmotif of this investigation is the notion of simulation, as dada artists were referred to as malingerers (simulators) of madness by the press at the time. I hypothesize that the performers imitate/simulate with drums, shouting and ‘bruitist’ sound poems, the noises of war, staging themselves as war neurotics in a kind of shocking clinical demonstration. Both discourses intersect in the fact that many dadaists try to dodge the draft by simulating madness. The scandalizing anti-art of dada will be understood as contagious anti-pedagogy, trying to vaccinate against the madness of the era.     

Österreichische Ärzteemigration 1934-1945 - Zwischen neuem Tätigkeitsgebiet und organisierten Rückkehrplänen

Information on emigrant doctors and university teachers of medicine from Austria is rather poor up to now. This article is a preliminary sketch to give a first impression of the problems, quantity and quality of the doctors' emigration. First, there is made a distinction between different groups of emigrants, who emigrated at different times owing to the political changes in Austria (civil war and ?Anschluß”?). Then the emigration prior to the political set-ups during the thirties is discussed. The assertion is made, that the reasons for emigrating during the twenties are very much the same than in later years. Hostility against Jews, socialists, democrats and foreigners made living and working conditions increasingly unbearable. Concerning the influence of emigrated scientists on science and learning in immigration countries some theoretical and clinical sub-specialties of medicine are examined, e.g. social medicine, internal medicine, pharmacology, orthopedic surgery and child psychiatry. Whereas in some cases the influence is minimal, e.g. social medicine, other disciplines have been influenced enormously, e.g. child psychiatry. Finally there follows a short examination of the organisations of Austrian doctors and medical scientists in the United States and Great Britain.     

Revisiting black medical school extinctions in the Flexner era

Abraham Flexner's 1910 exposé on medical education recommended that only two of the seven extant medical schools for blacks be preserved and that they should train their students to "serve their people humbly" as "sanitarians." Addressing charges of racism, this article traces the roots of the recommendation that blacks serve a limited professional role to the schools themselves and presents evidence that, in endorsing the continuance of Howard's and Meharry's medical programs, Flexner exhibited greater leniency than he had toward comparable schools for white students. Whether his recommendations to eliminate the other five schools were key factors in their extinction is addressed here by examining 1901-30 enrollment patterns. Those patterns suggest that actions of the American Medical Association and state licensing boards, combined with the broader problem of limited premedical educational opportunities for blacks, were more consequential than was the Flexner report both for the extinction of the schools and for the curtailed production of black doctors.     

War,Modernity, and Motion in the Edison Films of 1898

This essay examines films created by the Edison Company of the US military campaign in the Caribbean in 1898 and their projection and reception in Vaudeville theaters and other similar venues in the larger urban areas of the US. Through an analysis of these films in regards to their production and reception contexts, it discusses relationships between entertainment, nationalism, and colonialism in this early cinema. Features foregrounding technology, production capacity, tourism, and military campaigns in tropical settings are examined in order to explore the blurred boundaries between journalism and entertainment in the context and how specifically the technology of the incipient cinema shaped these perceptions. The venues, in which they were exhibited, situated these war films within larger variety shows including oddities, acrobats, skits, and musical entertainment, together with technological exhibitions involving devices revered for both their destructive and constructive capabilities. It considers, furthermore, how tourism and the possibilities for travel related to the war shaped entertainment and dialogued with public desires regarding American empire and the roles of the Caribbean and, by relation, Latin America in these scenarios. The essay seeks to underscore, finally, how these films, and the war that they attempt to depict, resonated deeply with a type of audience and a corresponding mode of spectatorship that would come to expect an entertaining dimension in journalism.     

南京大屠杀期间的难民医疗救助

南京沦陷后,日军制造了南京大屠杀,南京的医疗救助任务空前繁重。虽然绝大多数医生在沦陷前离开了南京,但是留在南京的西方人士、慈善机构、隐匿身份生活在难民收容所内的军医以及参差不齐的民间医生出于人道主义立场,以各自的方式投入南京的医疗救助。南京内外信息交流初步恢复后,西方在宁人士又积极申请外援,经历一波三折,方才成行。上述努力为南京难民挺过难关做出了贡献。     

Trajectories of Memory: Documentary Film and the Transmission of Testimony

The author argues that in the burgeoning new literature about social memory anthropologists have not yet contributed all that they might. In particular, little has been written from an anthropological point of view about memory and film. The article seeks to examine the possible roles of documentary film in memory transmission. During the twentieth century, film and video became increasingly important vehicles of memory, while the digital revolution has made video such a pervasive medium in the new century that it will become more and more vital as a source of historical evidence and reflection. While the evidence presented by visually recorded interviews certainly requires critical evaluation, there is no reason to suppose that recorded interviews are any less reliable than texts; they may in fact offer clues that a text cannot. Some of the most interesting films of memory are the work of independent filmmakers engaged in a courageous personal quest to break officially imposed silences. The article examines the potential of film to preserve memories as trace—that is, as a form of historical evidence; as event—testifying itself being a performative act which generates its own meanings and demands a dialogical engagement with/by an audience; and as trajectory—for individual memories must be transmitted in order to become social. As they are launched into the flow of collective memory, they have a chance to endure over time, multiplying available perspectives on the past. Films of memory are thus part of the struggle against the forgetting of past injustices, and ultimately have the potential to contribute to shifts in our interpretations of history.     

The Magnus-Rademaker Scientific Film Collection: Ethical Issues on Animal Experimentation (1908–1940)

The Magnus-Rademaker scientific film collection (1908–1940) deals with the physiology of body posture by the equilibrium of reflex musculature contractions for which experimental studies were carried out with animals (e.g., labyrinthectomies, cerebellectomies, and brain stem sections) as well as observations done on patients. The films were made for demonstrations at congresses as well as educational objectives and film stills were published in their books. The purpose of the present study is to position these films and their makers within the contemporary discourse on ethical issues and animal rights in the Netherlands and the earlier international debates. Following an introduction on animal rights and antivivisection movements, we describe what Magnus and Rademaker thought about these issues. Their publications did not provide much information in this respect, probably reflecting their adherence to implicit ethical codes that did not need explicit mentioning in publications. Newspaper articles, however, revealed interesting information. Unnecessary suffering of an animal never found mercy in Magnus’ opinion. The use of cinematography was expanded to the reduction of animal experimentation in student education, at least in the case of Rademaker, who in the 1930s was involved in a governmental committee for the regulation of vivisection and cooperated with the antivivisection movement. This resulted not only in a propaganda film for the movement but also in films that demonstrate physiological experiments for students with the purpose to avert repetition and to improve the teaching of experiments. We were able to identify the pertinent films in the Magnus-Rademaker film collection. The production of vivisection films with this purpose appears to have been common, as is shown in news messages in European medical journals of the period.     

'The Scars of Ravensbruck': Medical Experiments and British War Crimes Policy, 1945-1950

Although the fiftieth anniversary of the Nazi Doctors' Trialin 1946 and 1947 sparked significant debate about medical researchethics and the origins of the Nuremberg Code, historians haveso far paid little, if any, attention to Allied war crimes policyon the investigation of German medical atrocities, of whichthe Ravensbrück trials formed part. British war crimespolicy, in particular, was concerned with medical war crimescommitted by German scientists at the Ravensbrück concentrationcamp. Much of the evidence against some key defendants at theDoctors' Trial was compiled by British experts and made availableto the US prosecution. Although the British investigated thisgroup, some of the defendants were later extradited and triedwith the Nuremberg doctors. To date, little has been writtenabout the broader political and legal context of the first Ravensbrücktrial, its origin, and overall place in the context of Allieddenazification policy. The article investigates the genesisof the Ravensbrück trial and the extensive investigationsand discussions that preceded its opening. It looks at how membersof the German public perceived the Ravensbrück trial, andcontextualizes the British response to criticism levelled againstit at the dawn of the Cold War. It aims, in part, to reconstructthe wider historical context of postwar British policy on medicalwar crimes, and suggests that British war crimes investigationsconducted in preparation for the Ravensbrück trials formedone of the most substantial bodies of legal testimony and scientificexpertise on human rights violations in experimental human researchbefore the establishment of the Nazi Doctors' Trial. The articlealso acknowledges Britain's contribution to the war crimes programme,and emphasises that the memory of the first Ravensbrücktrial has largely been overshadowed by the publicity surroundingthe Nuremberg trials.     

"把医疗卫生工作的重点放到农村去"——毛泽东"六·二六"指示的历史考察

1965年,我国广大农村还没有彻底改变缺医少药的落后面貌,围绕着优先发展重工业的经济建设目标,卫生部长期将人力、物力和财力集中在城市,为此,毛泽东发出了“把医疗卫生工作的重点放到农村去”的指示。这不仅是毛泽东始终坚持的群众观点和对官僚主义作风深恶痛绝的反映,更是出于他对当时战备形势的考虑。“六·二六”指示的贯彻执行有力地推动了农村巡回医疗的深入开展和合作医疗的推广与普及,极大地改善了农村的医疗卫生状况。今天重提这一指示,对于审视当下的医疗卫生改革,加快农村医疗保障制度的建设,具有重要的现实意义。     

Beyond Comfort: German and English Military Chaplains and the Memory of the Great War, 1919–1929

How did German and English military chaplains commemorate the Great War? The established historiography broadly interprets war commemoration in the post‐war period in two ways. One approach presents commemoration as a ritual of healing that soothed the bereft. The other emphasizes the political function of commemoration, interpreting it as a way of reshaping the war in collective memory to legitimize the status quo — by venerating sacrifices made for the nation, it put the nation beyond question to strengthen allegiance to the established order. Both interpretations treat the language of war commemoration as one of consolation and comfort. Military chaplains, however, espoused a more ambitious mission. For them, the purpose of war commemoration was to inculcate dissatisfaction, guilt, and discomfort. This was because they remembered the war as a contest of ideas embodied in the clash of nations, a contest that was still unsettled. Their purpose was therefore the antithesis to consolation and conventional patriotism: to mobilize the living to honour their “blood debt” to the dead through the language of agitation. They themselves had participated in a war regarded by the churches as a campaign of regeneration through blood, in which sacrifice and suffering would revitalize their nations by bringing them to repentance, piety, and social cohesion. Because they were implicated personally in that incomplete crusade, they were especially anxious to realize the mission and complete the sacrifices of the dead. Anglican ex‐chaplains predominantly implored their congregations to ensure a permanent peace that had been purchased by blood, whereas German Protestants invoked a resurrected Volk reclaiming its status as a chosen people. Each articulated a politics of remembrance, one formed on the vision of a war to end all wars, the other on a vision of a war to resurrect the Reich as the Kingdom of God. While the political content of their memories was different, they shared an attitude to the function of remembrance, as a ritual to mobilize and arouse rather than console. Both groups preached that the peace was a continuation of an unfinished moral and spiritual struggle. Furthermore, while always honouring the dead, they stressed that the worth of their sacrifices was no longer guaranteed but contingent upon the conduct of living and future generations. Despite the divergences that emerged from their different confessional and national traditions, and from their respective circumstances, they shared a common moral language.     

James Naughtie,The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency

Abstract

The terms "justice" and "necessity" are often employed in discussions of war. The just war tradition seeks to delineate when wars are and are not just; other theologians who do not find this approach helpful may nevertheless resort to the logic of necessity. Although unjust, some wars may still be deemed necessary. Barth employs both the language and logic of justice and necessity in his approach to war. The purpose of this paper is to address Barth's exposition of war in relation to his approach to divine justice and the necessity of Christian affliction. It does not attempt to make any large claims about the just war tradition or other approaches to war. Rather, it is intended to be an immanent critique of Barth from Barth's own theology, showing that, although consistent with his view of church and state, Barth's theology of war is inconsistent with his view of both God's character as just and the external necessity of affliction to Christian witness.     

Ein Blick in die Tiefe der Seele: Hypnose im Kultur- und Lehrfilm (1920–1936)

Gazing into the Depths of the Soul: Hypnotism in Documentary and Instructional Film (1920–1936). Although part of the medical fold since the 1870s, hypnosis was long relegated to the margins, recognised and used by only a relatively small group of medical professionals. In the decades around 1900 hypnotic techniques were monopolised as a form of medical treatment through a long and in no way linear process. Hypnosis of laymen was vehemently opposed, however, denounced as being far too dangerous. And yet, medical participation in the aura of spectacular intervention into the human psyche garnered support. The medium of both documentary and instructional film served an important function in this regard, conveying popular interest in acknowledging hypnosis as a scientific method. On the basis of four medically accredited films on hypnosis from 1920 to 1936, this paper attempts to investigate how medical experts and these genres, as part of their effort to claim hypnosis from the realm of public spectacle and parapsychological experimentation, worked to stabilise hypnosis as a purified form of medical and psychiatric practice.     

"Sound law and undoubtedly good policy": Roe v. Wade in comparative perspective

This article traces the abortion reform processes in the US, the UK, and Australia to reveal the underlying rhetoric and policy rationales which served to fuel abortion reform. The early abortion legislation in Great Britain, Australia, and Texas is described to lay the groundwork for a discussion on the widespread modification the laws were subject to through medical practice and judicial interpretation. In 1938, a trial judge in Britain carved out a legal loophole to sway a jury to acquit a physician who openly performed an abortion on a 14-year-old rape victim. The judge found that the law neither prohibited abortion absolutely nor permitted unrestricted medical discretion, but rather lay within the two extremes. Before the 1960s, psychiatric subterfuges were used by physicians as justification for performing abortions for "social" reasons, but reform was spearheaded by concerns about rape, incest, and fetal damage (especially after exposure to rubella or thalidomide). Reformers also argued that abortion would reduce poverty, and it soon became clear that all but the poor could obtain safe abortions. Claims were also made that abortion had historically been allowed before quickening. A new consensus grew and was encouraged by physicians who accepted abortion because it furthered social justice. The law struggled to keep up. In Britain a major reform bill was enacted by Parliament. In Australia, the police gave up trying to prosecute doctors as judges interpreted the law in such a way as to render the doctors innocent of wrongdoing, and, in the US, some states adopted liberal laws. The Roe vs. Wade decision in the US, therefore, may have made abortion a constitutional issue through use of the doctrine of privacy, but the other elements of the decision reflected the situation in the UK and Australia. For example, the Row decision relies on the physician-patient relationship to regulate abortion on demand. Also, the decision acknowledges that conflicting rights exist which allow the law to neither prohibit abortion nor leave it entirely unrestricted. In each country, the legislation is centered on the professional competence of the practitioner and on the provision of abortion before quickening. This reliance on a medical decision imbues the abortion debate with a certain ambiguity which is shared by all three countries.     

Popular geopolitics of Chinese Nanjing massacre films: a feminist approach

This article attempts to deconstruct the masculinised contract among the war narrative, popular culture, and Chinese nationalism by exploring the roles of women in Nanjing Massacre films with war narratives and Chinese audiences' emotional ‘readings’ of these women. Based on the analysis of City of Life and Death (2009) and The Flowers of War (2011) and audiences' comments on these two films from Douban Movie, this article has mapped a popular geopolitics of these two films through a feminist approach. The main argument of this research points out that, through the production and consumption of these two films, the women of the Nanjing Massacre can be territorialised as Nanjing/China and used to represent China's attitudes towards both the historical and current Sino–Japanese relationship. In this way, the women of these films can be considered an articulation of popular culture and politics, and they are empowered to establish Chinese nationalism and construct anti-Japanese identities in Chinese society. To a wider extent, this article can be read as a contribution to the literature on gender, nationalism and popular geopolitics.