Philology and Presence

Various scholars have argued that the rise of modern information technology over the past century has coincided with a steady decline of traditional methods of learning and interpretation, and has contributed to the general sense of “worldlessness” or anomie. In the words of Paul Ricoeur, “we are overwhelmed by a flood of words, by polemics, by the assault of the virtual, which today create a kind of opaque zone.” Philology, the ancient discipline that grew in the past two centuries to encompass literary study, linguistics, and intellectual history, was originally conceived as a return to the past with the aim of retrieving the knowledge of bygone times. While the recent revival of interest in philology recognizes its importance to the humanities, it remains unnamed as such. The aim of my exploration of the history and practices of philology is to suggest how it can reinstate the presence of the past. With its attentiveness to language—undertaken in the silent spaces of private study, archive, and library—philology not only confirms the presence of the dead but also enacts a more fundamental return to “world.”     

Indian Textiles at Mozambique Island in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

Building upon the work of scholars writing about Indian textiles and the textile trade of the western Indian Ocean, I examine a combined list of nearly eighty different specific types of Indian cotton cloths that were imported at Mozambique Island in the 1750s. In the absence of physical evidence, I seek first to identify each specific textile using archival and literary sources and then to categorise them according to provenance, design and price.     

A collective biography of joy in academic practice

Changing working conditions at many universities over the past decade have meant longer hours, intensified record-keeping, and more precarious employment. Despite these changes, many academics still insist that we enjoy our jobs. Our inquiry is oriented toward spaces and practices that bring us joy in our daily work and help us withstand the negative effects of working in academia. This article reports on our exploration of some moments of joy at work as part of our own academic practice. Through a feminist methodology known and developed as collective biography, we wrote individual memories of joy in our teaching, publishing, and collaborating, together at a writing retreat. As we analyzed these recalled moments, we came to realize that joy emerges through a turbulent process fueled by a cocktail of emotions. In fact, we came to understand joy as affect, with affect seen as a certain sort of excess, generated around and through sensations that might contribute to feelings such as celebration, happiness, or surprise as well as fear, anger, or embarrassment. We conclude that joy does things, that it can be transformative, and that cultivating joy in academia is part of a radical praxis.     

The monastic conversion of Romuald of Ravenna and the church of Sant’Apollinare in Classe

Romuald of Ravenna was one of the foremost reformers of the late tenth and early eleventh century, devoting his energy to establishing monastic communities that emphasised asceticism. After his death, he was celebrated for this work in a vita written by Peter Damian that described the conditions of the conversion of Romuald, who rejected the world after an encounter with St Apollinaris in the church of Sant’Apollinare in Classe outside Ravenna. Peter Damian’s detailed account of this space not only created a fitting location for the conversion to monastic life, but in its appropriation of the visual, textual and hagiographic landscape it would have invited his eleventh-century audience who entered Sant’Apollinare in Classe to share in the same type of experience as his monastic hero, Romuald, and to connect with Ravenna’s late antique patron saint directly.     

Hegemony,rebellion and history: Flodoard's Historia Remensis ecclesiae in Ottonian perspective

This article considers the growth of Ottonian hegemony through a close examination of Flodoard's Historia Remensis ecclesiae. Specifically, it scrutinises Flodoard's laconic account of a property dispute between the church of Rheims and Conrad the Red, Otto the Great's powerful duke of Lotharingia. Reading Flodoard's testimony alongside diplomatic evidence and Ottonian narratives, this study argues that the controversy was a factor in Conrad's rebellion against Otto in 953. Both the central role of Rheims' property in an Ottonian political conflict and Flodoard's silence on numerous aspects of the affair reveal that the church was deeply enmeshed in Ottonian politics. The Historia therefore offers an unrecognised angle on the expansion of Ottonian power, while further investigation of its content suggests that this emergent hegemony may indeed have been welcomed by Flodoard and his superiors at Rheims.     

Cats of the Pharaohs: Genetic Comparison of Egyptian Cat Mummies to their Feline Contemporaries

The ancient Egyptians mummified an abundance of cats during the Late Period (664 - 332 BC). The overlapping morphology and sizes of developing wildcats and domestic cats confounds the identity of mummified cat species. Genetic analyses should support mummy identification and was conducted on two long bones and a mandible of three cats that were mummified by the ancient Egyptians. The mummy DNA was extracted in a dedicated ancient DNA laboratory at the University of California - Davis, then directly sequencing between 246 and 402 bp of the mtDNA control region from each bone. When compared to a dataset of wildcats (Felis silvestris silvestris, F. s. tristrami, and F. chaus) as well as a previously published worldwide dataset of modern domestic cat samples, including Egypt, the DNA evidence suggests the three mummies represent common contemporary domestic cat mitotypes prevalent in modern Egypt and the Middle East. Divergence estimates date the origin of the mummies' mitotypes to between two and 7.5 thousand years prior to their mummification, likely prior to or during Egyptian Predyanstic and Early Dynastic Periods. These data are the first genetic evidence supporting that the ancient Egyptians used domesticated cats, F. s. catus, for votive mummies, and likely implies cats were domesticated prior to extensive mummification of cats.