Containing Kassindja: detention,gendered threats and border control in the United States

In 1996, the USA issued a landmark decision to grant political asylum to a young woman, Fauziya Kassindja, due to the threat of forced genital circumcision. The case, Matter of Kasinga, is now a cornerstone in the area of law known as ‘gender-based asylum.’ While the legal victory occurred during a watershed moment for women’s human rights, it also spawned considerable critique for reproducing colonial tropes of third-world women, cultural backwardness, and narratives of rescue. This article offers another perspective by examining key phases of the case that predate the final decision. I demonstrate how logics of containment shaped the case trajectory and outcome. Initially, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) sought to contain Kassindja as a bogus asylum seeker through detention. However, once a powerful advocacy campaign exposed the violence of detention, the INS shifted their containment strategies to safeguarding the legal paradigm and circumscribing its legacy as a precedent-setting case. By focusing on the role of detention and the logics of containment, this article supplements cultural critiques of the case and provides an example of how gender and gender violence can be leveraged by state agencies and actors to reinforce border control and manage refugee/asylee populations.     

An assessment of attributing public healthcare infrastructure damage in the Donbas five years after Euromaidan: implications for Ukrainian state legitimacy

ABSTRACT

From the onset of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine in 2014, significant damage has been wrought to the public health infrastructure of the Donbas region. To date however, the full extent of that damage which is substantial, has not been documented: attribution of blame for that damage has not been attempted; and the implications for the region’s residents in terms of access to clinics and hospitals has been difficult to assess. This paper presents a spatial database of damaged facilities and relates that to the fighting to assess whether the damage incurred was collateral or targeted. The concept of state capacity is used to frame a discussion of what the consequences are for those residents remaining and for the challenges this crisis presents to the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government.     

刘东生院士与科技考古

2008年3月6日下午．刘东生院士仙逝的消息传来．深感悲痛。尽管深知生老病死的自然规律无法抗拒．然而仍久久不愿相信先生离我们而去的事实。确实．先生大智大慧、高瞻远瞩的大师风范,脚踏实地、精益求精的治学精神,淡泊名利、献身祖国的高尚品德．提携英才、甘为人梯的长者风度．科学登顶、誉满学界的光辉业绩,将永远留在我们心中。     

A history of anatomy theaters in sixteenth-century Padua

The history of anatomy includes not only professors and the support of their institutions but also medical students. Because medical students were quick to assess a teacher's pedagogy, their complaints tell us a great deal about the transition from Galenic to Aristotelian projects of anatomy. When Fabricius of Aquapendente instituted a new style of anatomical inquiry, one based on Aristotle and the search for universal principles, students repeatedly complained that his demonstrations did not provide technical education in structural anatomy (as demonstrations employing a hands-on, Galenic pedagogy did). Within the new anatomy theater (the second of its kind in Padua), however, students were persuaded to accept Fabricius's demonstrations. Fabricius's philosophical orientation combined with the formal atmosphere and aesthetic features of the new theater to create anatomy demonstrations that relied on orations and music for their structure (rather than on the progressive stages of human dissection). A place that emphasized a discourse of anatomy as the study of the "secrets of nature," the new theater so effectively publicized a new style of anatomy that a larger, more diverse group of spectators attended subsequent demonstrations and participated in the celebration of leading academic figures as well as the institution of the university.     

庞资厚质存异宝 廓然有容汇奇珍 记美国收藏家安思远

时隔一年,当我再次走进曼哈顿第五大道上的这套公寓,依然感受到了强烈的震撼,在20多间房间连通起来的庞大空间里,目之所及,无不是精彩绝伦的东方艺术品。