FRAGMENTS OF POSTWAR LOS ANGELES: THE BLACK DAHLIA IN FACT AND FICTION*

The gruesome murder of Elizabeth Short, a sex worker nicknamed the “Black Dahlia,” created a real-life film noir tale in postwar Los Angeles. In the unsuccessful search for her killer, the tabloid press and psychiatric “experts” indicted all forms of the open sexual expression brought on by the war as complicit. The problematic connection made at the time between the sexually dangerous woman and the corruptions of postwar Los Angeles has been reinforced in the numerous fictional retellings of the case written in the past fifteen years.     

THINKING AFTER HITLER: THE NEW INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY1

This review essay seeks to direct attention to intellectual history as a new and flourishing subfield in the historiography of post‐1945 Germany. The essay probes and critically interrogates some of the basic arguments of Dirk Moses' prize‐winning monograph German Intellectuals and the Nazi Past. It does so by engaging with a series of German‐language monographs on key intellectuals of the postwar period (Alexander Mitscherlich, Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse) or groups of intellectuals that have appeared during the last few years. The essay also includes two books that focus on intellectual transfers from and to the United States and hence transcend the purely national framework. The essay highlights some broader themes such as West German intellectuals' confrontation with the Nazi past and with the memory of Germany's failed experiment with democracy during the interwar Weimar Republic. It also discusses the significance of the West German student movement in the 1960s for West German intellectual history. The essay concludes with some broader reflections on writing intellectual history of the postwar period, and it points to some avenues for further research. It underlines the significance of intellectual debates—and hence of intellectual history—for charting and explaining the process of postwar democratization and liberalization in the Federal Republic of Germany.     

True Accounts OF THE NINE YEARS AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE IN YUSHU

正Many people use significant events to denote certain points in time.This can be seen when people say things like"before the founding of the new nation"or"after the great economic reform began".Yushu,for example,is often referred to as"Old Yushu"and"New Yushu",with the dividing line placed before and after liberation.The devastating earthquake that occurred on April 14,2010,     

PREDICTING THE RECLAMATION OF LAND AFTER SURFACE MINING IN THE CENTRAL CHERNOZEM REGION

A methodology is proposed for forecasting the area of land likely to be disturbed by surface-mining activities and the portion of the disturbed land subject to rehabilitation for various land uses (farming, woodland, ponds, outdoor recreation, built-up areas, etc.). The Central Chernozem Region includes not only peat bogs, sand and clay quarries, chalk and limestone pits and phosphate mines, but also the large iron-ore operations of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly, destined to become some of the leading iron-ore producers of the Soviet Union. Iron-ore, chalk and limestone pits and associated spoil banks now account for 20 percent of all disturbed land in the region, and their share is expected to grow to 40 percent. The total land area disturbed by surface mining in the Central Chernozem Region is expected to grow from 27,200 hectares in late 1970 to 63,000 hectares by 1990, or an increase of 2.3 times. According to the forecast, 46,400 hectares of the long-term disturbance will be subject to reclamation, with 16,300 hectares for farming uses, 18,500 for woodland, 8,5000 for ponds, and 3,200 for ourdoor recreation, built-up areas and other miscellaneous uses.     

THE HEALTH OF OLDER WOMEN AFTER HIGH PARITY IN TAFT,IRAN

High parity has been hypothesised to lead to a shorter and less healthy life. Using the 2007 Taft Ageing Health and Fertility Survey consisting of 696 women aged 50–79, this paper examines the extent to which women's health in middle and older ages is affected by their childbearing histories. The results show that high parity (>8) is associated with a reduction of GP-rated health by 0.094 points on a scale from 1 to 10. These health reductions are four times as large as those of an extra year of age, and are robust to controlling for birth interval, age, area of residence, education, marital status, work history, economic satisfaction and surviving daughters. There is a positive but curvilinear relationship between shorter birth intervals (<2 years) and GP-rated health accounting for socio-demographic factors. Our analysis suggests that parity and birth intervals, along with socio-demographic characteristics, affect women's well-being in later life.     

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AFTER 1945: A BIBLIOMETRIC STUDY

Much has been said about what philosophy of history should be. This bibliometric assessment of research in the philosophy of history examines what scholars in this field have actually produced. The study covers a dataset—a subsection of the bibliography of the International Network for Theory of History—of 13,953 books, articles, book chapters, dissertations, and other scholarly publications, encompassing materials written in seven different languages published between 1945 and 2014. This material was classified according to a multilayered system of taxonomy consisting of keywords representative of themes discussed in the field. Separate quantitative analyses were made to elucidate characteristics about the publication outputs in the field in the different language groups. Changes in paradigm, often referred to as “turns” or “trends,” have been mapped in this study, according to a quantitative analysis of the most recurrent keywords within a five‐year interval, which give an indication of the most debated themes in each period. ?Religion/theology/secularization? is the most frequent keyword during the period 1945 to 1969, followed by ?Marxism/historical‐materialism?¹ from 1970 to 1984, in what can be considered a second period of the field. Although many of the key publications of the linguistic turn were written within this second period, our dataset shows that it is not until the third period (1985–2014) that their writing goes on to influence other authors in the field.     

PALAEOCLIMATIC IDENTIFICATION BASED ON AN ISOTOPE STUDY OF TRAVERTINE FROM THE COPPER AGE SITE AT LOS MILLARES,SOUTH-EASTERN SPAIN*

Remains of an aqueduct from the Copper Age settlement of Los Millares have been studied. The isotope results (—7‰ < δ¹⁸O — 5.3‰) show that the aqueduct was used to transport fresh water at room temperature. The results are inconsistent with the aqueduct being used for hot water transport or as a container for water exposed to evaporation processes. Both isotopic and mineralogical results were useful in identifying the origin and use of building materials and also in determining climatic conditions during the time of the settlement occupation.     

THE CITY OF GOD AND AFTER: RELIGIOUS CHANGE AND ORGANISATIONAL DECLINE IN GREAT ENGLISH TOWNS SINCE C. 1850

Abstract

The demands and effects of warfare have not been one of the traditional concerns of historians of early modern English towns. This essay looks at the way in which the townsmen of York, Hull and Beverley responded to the demands of war. It explores the level of urban involvement in the king's wars, mainly but not exclusively against the Scots, and the way in which the pressure of war acted to transform relations within towns and relations between towns and their neighbours. In a period when towns were experiencing rapid economic, social and religious change, war provided one means of renegotiating power relations and allowed urban elites to expand their authority, through partnership with the Crown, vis-à-vis their fellow citizens and non-urban elites. The balance between profiting from war and being ruined by its demands was a fine one, however, exemplified by the experience of Hull in the 1540s.     

THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY: AN ASSESSMENT OF THE STATE OF THE FIELD

In this concise volume, Jeffrey Weeks traces the development of the history of sexuality from its earliest days, more than a century ago, to the present. He identifies dominant themes and subject matter as well as analyzing and commenting upon some of the key theoretical frameworks that have driven this scholarly endeavor. He devotes special attention to LGBT history, to histories of gender, power, and sexuality, and to globalization and the transnational turn in historical writing. He gives attention to the tensions that have often existed between a community‐based activist history produced from within the LGBT community and the history produced within the academy. Finally, he considers the degree to which sexual history has been mainstreamed and the dangers and the value of that process.     

DEEPLY COLOURED AND BLACK GLASS IN THE NORTHERN PROVINCES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE: DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES IN CHEMICAL COMPOSITION BEFORE AND AFTER ad 150*

In this work we attempt to elucidate the chronological and geographical origin of deeply coloured and black glass dating between 100 bc and ad 300 on the basis of their major and trace element compositions. Samples from the western and eastern parts of the Roman Empire were analysed. Analytical data were obtained by means of a scanning electron microscope – energy‐dispersive system (SEM–EDS, 63 samples analysed) and laser ablation – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry (LA–ICP–MS, 41 samples analysed). Among the glass fragments analysed, dark brown, dark purple and dark green hues could be distinguished. Only among the dark green fragments could a clear compositional distinction be observed between fragments dated to the periods before and after ad 150. In the early samples (first century bc to first century ad ), iron, responsible for the green hue, was introduced by using impure sand containing relatively high amounts of Ti. In contrast, a Ti‐poor source of iron was employed, containing Sb, Co and Pb in trace quantities, in order to obtain the dark green colour in the later glass samples. The analytical results obtained by combining SEM–EDS and LA–ICP–MS are therefore consistent with a differentiation of glassmaking recipes, detectable in glass composition, occurring in the period around ad 150.     

THE ORIGINS OF RACISM: A CRITIQUE OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

This essay has two objectives. First, it seeks to engage critically with contemporary scholarship on the origins of racism through the lens of an older debate centered around the history of ideas. Specifically, it argues that Quentin Skinner's influential critique of the history of ideas can help identify the pitfalls of our current fascination with the origins of racism—most particularly when such origins are traced back to antiquity and the European pre- and early modern periods. In pursuing its second objective, the essay turns from histories cataloguing ancient, medieval, and early modern racisms to objections leveled, in these same literatures, against scholarship defending the modernity of race. The defense of a premodern origin to race is, I argue, not just a historical argument but a contemporary politics embedded in a narrative of continuity that insists on the relevance of the medieval past to the racial configurations of our current moment. Rather than demonstrating continuity and sameness, this essay seeks to draw attention to alternative modes of historicizing that are more attentive to the alterity of the past.