Film-viewing in Turkish and Moroccan diasporic families: a gender and place perspective

This article explores the relation between gender identities and spatial aspects of audience reception by means of a case study on film-viewing in the Turkish and Moroccan diasporic communities in the Belgian city of Antwerp. Drawing on feminist and gender approaches to audience reception on the one hand, and research into the spatial dynamics underlying audience reception on the other, we look at film-viewing as a socially and spatially meaningful practice that is relevant for the understanding of gender identities in diasporic families. This article is based on the results of a four-year project on diasporic film cultures in Antwerp that investigated how film-viewing practices relate to social and cultural dynamics within the Turkish and Moroccan communities. The data that are discussed include participant observations, in-depth interviews and group interviews with a varied sample of people with Turkish and Moroccan backgrounds. The results show that although film-viewing, especially in the public space of the film theatre, can be mobilized by women as an emancipating social practice, gendered power structures often prevail. Also in the domestic contexts, a more traditional gender division is articulated by the respondent concerning family viewing. We conclude that the space of the film theatre and film-going serve the continuity and stability of gendered family relations, rather than subverting them.     

Archaeological Assessment of Second World War Anti‐Torpedo Close Protection Pontoons in Scapa Flow,Orkney

This paper presents the outcomes of sidescan sonar and archaeological diving surveys in 2015 of two wrecked vessels located off Flotta Island, Orkney, North Scotland. Archival research indicates these are the remains of Anti‐Torpedo Close Protection Pontoons (ATCPP), an experimental protection device used for close protection of naval vessels at anchor in Scapa Flow from attack by aircraft‐launch torpedoes. The pontoons were only in operation in Scapa Flow for 13 months (March 1941–April 1942) and few were brought into service. As such they represent a rare heritage resource, for which very little is known about their operation.     

The British Pharaoh?: James I and VI and internationalist religious writing at the wedding of Friedrich V and Elizabeth Stuart

The marriage of Elizabeth Stuart and Friedrich V, Prince Palatine, has recently been described as “the pinnacle of Protestant European festival,” a transnational, transcultural event celebrated throughout Protestant Europe. Politically, it marked a high point of internationalist Protestant sentiment in England. In this article, I examine three sermons preached for the occasion, by the court preacher Andrew Willet, the Wiltshire parson George Webbe, and Friedrich’s court chaplain, Abraham Scultetus. All three use the wedding to advocate an internationalist agenda and subtly critique the Church of England. This is done, in part, through a shared typological understanding of the event based on Psalm 45, read by early moderns as a song on the marriage of Solomon and Pharaoh’s daughter, which aligns James with an idolatrous Pharaoh. Their interpretation of the marriage implicitly anticipates a move toward the pure biblical worship practiced by the continental reformed churches, and shifts the focus of Pan-Protestant hopes from London to Heidelberg.     

A combined visual-geochemical approach to establishing provenance for pegmatite quartz artifacts

A technique for establishing source provenance for pegmatite quartz artifacts was developed using a quarry sample from the Churchill River basin of northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) was used to quantify Ti, Ge, Th, and U trace element concentrations and Pb isotope ratios, coupled with qualitative visual characteristics to distinguish between pegmatite quartz from different archaeologically exploited sources in the Churchill River basin region. The technique was also applied to a small sample of quartz artifacts recovered from sites in and around the study area in a preliminary attempt to assign or rule out raw material provenance to characterized sources.     

In search of lost selves: Aidan Higgins' Scenes from a Receding Past

This essay makes the case for a fresh evaluation of Aidan Higgins' long-neglected autobiographical novel Scenes from a Receding Past. It argues that it is most fruitfully understood as a contribution to the phenomenology of personal identity and that many of its formal idiosyncrasies, especially its deviations from the standard formula for Künstlerroman, are a direct result of its preoccupation with general concepts of selfhood rather than a concern with society, or with the artist's role. I trace the genealogy of Higgins' innovative and unique form of realism in this work, and in the novel to which it forms a prequel, Balcony of Europe, to his attempts to escape the influence of James Joyce; and using the work of, amongst others, Paul Ricoeur, demonstrate how his fiction contributes to a new understanding of the relations between narrative, memory, imagination, and consciousness.     

Doing Business: Chinese and European Socioeconomic Relations in Early Cooktown

This paper is an historical archaeological examination of the socioeconomic relations of the Chinese and European communities of Cooktown in north Queensland during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It looks at the social landscape and production, exchange and consumption of material culture to show that the Chinese were not a disengaged group, as depicted in conventional understandings of colonial life, but integral to the town’s socioeconomic fabric. This close relationship arose out of a process of negotiation between Chinese and Europeans which responded to the strengths, weaknesses and resources of their individual business networks, and the particular conditions of Cooktown’s frontier environment.