Studying Immigrant Policy One Law at a Time

This article shows that, in the study of immigrant integration policy in the U.S. states, it is critical to report data and coding decisions for individual laws. This analysis uses an updated and public database of law‐level decisions, which includes 2,703 legislative actions recorded by the National Conference of State Legislatures from 2005 to 2016. These data are used to estimate models of aggregate state policy activity in a variety of ways: as a single continuum of policy balance versus separate models of welcoming and hostile, lumping all policy subareas together versus analyzing a specific subarea, and lumping all years together in one cross section versus panel analysis. The results in these models differ enough to indicate that reporting codes for individual‐level laws is absolutely essential so that each researcher easily can construct the measure that fits his or her theoretical framework best.     

Emblems and enigmas: Revisiting the ‘sword’ belt of Fernando de la Cerda

The belt of Fernando de la Cerda is on permanent display in the Museo de Telas Ricas, Burgos. Presently, scholars believe the belt dates from 1252–75, is of Hispano-Islamic work and was worn as a baldric. This article suggests that the belt is English, that it was commissioned by King Henry III and was worn around the waist. Henry gave the belt to the count of Champagne, Thibault II, during his first diplomatic visit to France. In turn, Thibault probably gave the belt to Fernando de la Cerda, the infante of Castile, in 1269, at Fernando’s wedding. The belt’s burial with the Castilian infante provides important evidence of the close familial and political relationships that linked the ruling dynasties of north-west Europe during the thirteenth century. Commissioned as a gift and richly decorated, the belt should be seen as an example of the aesthetic accomplishment of Henry III, his use of propaganda and political aspirations.     

Recent Books in the Field of Mediaeval Literature

In the Cantigas de Santa María, King Alfonso X unveils an intricate cultural, political, and economic system that defines the relationship between Christian society and religious minorities. This article illustrates that the Cantigas must be understood as an ideological instrument of cultural codification that reaffirms the established Christian social order in relation to three principal groups: heretics, Jews, and Muslims.     

El pulso de Centro América a través de la novela

This article offers a new reading of Miguel de Unamuno's San Manuel Bueno, mártir. Critics have traditionally focused on the question of the protagonist's supposed lack of faith and sought to relate San Manuel's doubts in the novel to Unamuno's own religious views. Although this novel is very much concerned with religion, eschatology, and social issues, it is also an extremely sophisticated literary narration wherein the use of irony and ambiguity remains perhaps unequalled in Spanish contemporary literature. By considering the principles of linguistic pragmatics, this article shows that in her account of San Manuel's life, the female narrator tells the dramatic story of the love she and San Manuel felt for each other. By means of a complex use of ambiguity, Unamuno writes a novel that can be read in two different ways: the religious novel and the love novel.     

Raised fields in the Bolivian Amazonia: a prehistoric green revolution or a flood risk mitigation strategy?

The Llanos de Moxos (LM), Beni, Bolivia, with its impressive number of pre-Columbian earthworks, is an ideal region for studying past human–environment interactions in the Amazonia. Agricultural raised fields are among the most striking of those earthworks. They can offer us valuable information about the region’s agricultural carrying capacity and the nature and extent of human occupation in pre-Columbian times and, therefore, help adopt better informed conservation and development strategies for Amazonia in the future. However, before tackling these issues we need to further our understanding of why pre-Columbian raised fields were built and how they were managed in the past. Published data on raised fields in the LM is contrasted with new data gathered from field and remote sensing images. Raised fields have been analysed in relation to the hydrology, soil, topography and paleoclimate of the areas where they are found. In light of this new data we believe that there are grounds to question the current model that suggests raised field agriculture provided high yields without the need of fallow periods, representing a kind of pre-Columbian green revolution. Our alternative proposal suggests that raised field agriculture allowed pre-Columbian peoples to mitigate the risk of more intense and frequent flooding than is experienced today in the LM. We show that raised fields were built only in those areas where there were no alternatives, which do not coincide with those areas where pre-Columbian societies seem to have flourished and reached high levels of social complexity.     

Perspectivismo Narrativo y Enjuiciamiento Social en La familia de Pascual Duarte

The phenomenal ambiguity and irony in Camilo José Cela's La familia de Pascual Duarte has led to many often differing conclusions regarding its social message. While some scholars regard its protagonist as a victim of society and of the new regime that followed the Civil War, others have argued that Pascual is the evil perpetrator of unspeakable crimes who is rightly punished by the new order. This article proposes to reconsider the picaresque nature of this novel, focusing on two features of the picaresque genre, namely its political commitment (or poética comprometida) and the determinism versus free will foil. This analysis will show that Cela replicated the Quevedian vilification of the protagonist and the Alemanian presentation of a false conversion at the end of the story with one purpose: to present Pascual as an unremorseful murderer who lived an irreligious life, killed his mother, and supported the Republican repression in his village killing the local aristocrat, before the new regime makes justice by executing him.     

La clerecía del Fernán González

The Poema de Fernán González is usually regarded as a hybrid text—while its subject matter is deemed epic, its expression, intentionality, and ideology are considered clerical. This article studies several elements shared by Fernán González and the other poems of the mester de clerecía school: the same stanza (the cuaderna vía) and poetic rules; similar modes of composition, transmission, and reception; and common structural, thematic, and verbal patterns. The article concludes that the Poema de Fernán González fully participates in the common artistry of the mester de clerecía and therefore can be regarded as the attempt to produce epic poetry by this learned clerical school.