Low-Fired Earthenwares in the African Diaspora: Problems and Prospects

Local earthenware associated with enslaved African populations in the Americas, variously called Colono-Ware, Afro-Caribbean Ware. Yabbas, and Criollo ware, has received considerable attention from researchers. What unifies this disparate group of ceramics is not method of manufacture, design and decoration, or even form and function but the association or potential association with African diaspora populations. The ceramics incorporate some skills and techniques possibly brought by African potters to the Americas, as well as skills reflecting European and Native American traditions, and local adaptations in form, function, and manufacture. Analogies linking African ceramic traditions to American industries have at times been employed uncritically and have relied on generalized characteristics to infer overly specific meanings. With particular reference to low-fired earthenwares from Jamaica, this paper examines the historical and cultural context of these ceramics and the methodological and theoretical problems faced in their interpretation.     

Diaspora and nostalgia: travelling Jewish tales in the Mediterranean

The article addresses narratives that tell of a member of the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel who comes to the rescue of a Jewish community. The tales were documented at the Israel Folktale Archives, in the second half of the twentieth century, and were told by informants from Morocco and Greece. While it is probably impossible to trace the exact routes of these “cultural possessions”, around and across the Mediterranean, the texts nevertheless provide a glimpse into the ways in which a network of Jewish communities shared a meta-narrative while adapting it to their own regional contexts. Although these tales are quintessentially diasporic, they also provided a platform for negotiating post-exilic identities in the new Israeli national context.     

Review Article: The Basque Diaspora in the New World

Richard Overy. The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. London: Allen Lane, Penguin, 2004. Pp. xl, 848. £25.00.     

从国际移民到跨国离散:基于北京的加拿大华人研究的“双重离散”理论建构

论文以早先从中国移民加拿大,后又从加拿大回流中国北京的华人为研究对象,对他们的"双重离散"经历进行理论建构。论文认为,在全球化以及现代通信和交通运输技术发展的影响下,加拿大华人国际化流动的程度日益加深。其跨国移民经历可以归类为"双重离散"——一种超越民族和国家主义界限的混合型经验。双重离散者具有一系列的双重性:他们既是中国人又是加拿大人,既是离散者又是回流者。他们作为文化与经济中介在中加两国之间扮演着双重角色。而这些移民的定居不是最终的,而是多向循环的。"双重离散"理论摒弃了有关离散的原有概念,而将离散视为异质化的、冲突的社会形式,提供了理解跨国移民行为以及展现归属多元路径的另一种框架。     

Diaspora and identity in the Viking Age

This article investigates the implications of the recent application of the term ‘diaspora’ to the overseas settlements of the Viking Age and offers a speculative assessment, based on literary, historical, archaeological, sculptural and onomastic evidence, of how the concept might contribute to our understanding of the cultural dynamics of the period. This exploratory look at connectivity in the ‘viking world’ considers the respective roles of the Scandinavian homelands and overseas settlements in the interplay of cultural forces from the ninth to the eleventh century.     

Jabotinsky and Jewish autonomy in the Diaspora

This article examines the customary assumption that ultra-Orthodox memory of the Holocaust is a counter-memory, which confronts, consciously and unconsciously, the dominant secular, Zionist memory of the Holocaust. However, in the early postwar period, the memory of the Holocaust in ultra-Orthodox society was variegated and multifaceted. The article shows that not only did some members of ultra-Orthodox society adopt part of the Zionist narrative on issues such as the lessons of the Holocaust and the centrality of the Land of Israel but that they even took part in its creation and consolidation. During the 1960s some of the ultra-Orthodox spokesmen shifted their commemoration efforts to within their own community for a variety of reasons. Nonetheless, the sectorial barriers between the secular majority and the ultra-Orthodoxy minority in Israel in the first decades were not as high or as rigid as they appear to be today.     

Rediscovering the French Canadian Diaspora: A Personal Testimony

The presence of Franco-Americans in New England is well documented. This is not the case for New York. Recently, public awareness of the French presence in Albany's Capital District was increased, an ethnic revival kindled and a mother country discovered through intergovernmental and transnational collaboration.     

Introduction: Gender Interventions in Research,Teaching and Practice

This study investigates the counter-intuitive observation that older students tend to thrive better than younger students in online classes. We use a variety of measures to compare performance and attitudes of undergraduates and continuing adult professionals in separate but nearly identical class sections led by the same instructor at a US university during the same nine-month study period. Findings are consistent with theoretical predictions about differences in readiness of younger and older adults for self-directed learning experiences. Results also suggest that online educators should be proactive in stimulating younger students' participation in class discussions, and should find ways to evaluate explicitly the tacit learning that online discussion can foster.     

美国印度裔族群的形成及其经济成就探析

论文概述了美国印度裔族群艰难的移民历程,分析了其族裔人口在新时期快速增长的原因,并着重探讨了它近年来的经济成就和成功的动因。作为当今美国的一个新兴少数族裔群体,印度裔族群已发展为仅次于美国华人的第二大亚裔族群。尽管其真正意义上的发展开启于美国1965年新移民法案的出台,但它却在短短四十余年间逐步取得了令人瞩目的经济成就,并在收入、商务、个人发展等方面得到了清晰的展现。美国印度裔族群杰出经济成就的取得并非偶然,而是与它族裔整体上的精英特性密切相关,这一特性在很大程度上保证了其发展目标的顺利实现和对美国主流社会的平稳融入。