‘My precious books and instruments’: Jewish divorce strategies and self-fashioning in medieval Catalonia

The divorce case between David Bonjorn and Esther Caravita, which took place in Girona and Perpignan in 1337, is extraordinarily well documented. Hebrew and Latin documents shed light on the stages of the controversy, the wide range of personalities involved in the case and, most notably, the strategies mobilised by the two sides in their attempt to uphold or invalidate the divorce. The ways in which personal strengths and weaknesses were utilised in this legal battle enrich recent scholarly discussions about legal strategy in medieval Europe.     

CONTESTED GROWTH: THE DEVELOPMENT OF NORWAY'S TEMPORARY STAFFING INDUSTRY

In this article we mobilize a variegated capitalism approach to understand the development of the Norwegian temporary staffing industry. From this perspective, national temporary staffing industries are understood as contested multi‐actor and multi‐scalar institutional fields. The analysis explores the key actors and regulatory conditions that have interactively produced this field in the Norwegian context since initial deregulation in 2000, paying particular attention to the active role played by agencies and their collective organizations. In our account, the tight regulatory conditions for temporary staffing in Norway emerge as the main mobilizing issue for the agencies, as well as other political actors such as trade unions. It is argued that the nature of national labour laws, and struggles thereon, are defining characteristics which set the Norwegian market apart from the neighbouring Swedish staffing market. The Norwegian case enables us to contribute to the wider economic geography literature on temporary staffing markets by demonstrating the fundamental importance of national regulatory processes and the contested political processes that underlie regulatory change. It also demonstrates how national distinctiveness is actively produced in relation to extra‐national dynamics in terms of both regulatory imperatives (e.g. via the EU's Temporary Workers Directive) and processes of migration. Overall, we demonstrate how national staffing markets are highly dynamic, multi‐scalar institutional configurations whose particularities and complexities defy attempts to generalize across groups of seemingly “similar” national economies.     

The Environment and Subsistence of the Early Neolithic Settlement Area at Těšetice-Kyjovice,Czech Republic

This paper presents a reconstruction of environmental conditions and subsistence strategies in the Early Neolithic (6th Millenium BC) settlement area at Tě?etice-Kyjovice (Czech Republic). Our detailed reconstruction of the environment contributes to the unravelling of the genesis and spread of steppes and the formation of secondary anthropogenic forest-free areas in the Holocene in eastern-Central Europe. Mollusc shells, charcoals and plant macroremains were used as on-site evidence of a settlement environment. A relatively warm and dry anthropogenic forest-free area is reconstructed for the immediate vicinity of the Early Neolithic settlement. Communities of mixed deciduous forests are recorded in the surroundings of the settlement. Plant macroremains reflect the characteristic Neolithic range of cultivated plants (e.g. Triticum monococcum, Triticum dicoccon, Lens culinaris and Pisum sativum). Papaver somniferum seeds were also found, possibly constituting the oldest evidence of its presence and cultivation in the territory of the Czech Republic.     

新时期文化发展战略的演变

改革开放30年来,我国文化发展战略的演变以中共十五大为界可划分为两个发展时期:前期从1978年到1996年,文化发展战略以精神文明建设为主导;后期从1997年中共十五大召开至今,文化发展战略在强调精神文明建设的同时,更加重视提升国家综合实力和文化软实力。这一发展历程表明,改革开放以来,执政党和全社会的文化自觉意识明显提高,文化建设的着力点已从强调政治思想教育转变为满足人民群众的基本文化权益和文化需求,文化的内涵和外延进一步扩大,文化认知达到新的高度。新时期我国文化发展战略的演变是建设中国特色社会主义的需要,是应对全球化浪潮的必然结果,也是适应新科技革命时代的自我调整。     

Orderic Vitalis and the First Crusade

This article examines the narrative of the First Crusade written by the Norman monk and historian Orderic Vitalis, which spans Book IX of his Historia ecclesiastica. Though hitherto little-studied, Orderic's account of the First Crusade, which was probably written in 1135, occupies an important place in the Historia and reveals much about his wider historical method. The significance of Orderic's editorial interaction with Baldric of Bourgueil's Historia Ierosolimitana, through the omission and addition of material, forms the focus of the study. By making only a small number of insertions into the story of the First Crusade which he had inherited from Baldric, Orderic transformed its meaning so that it became suitable for incorporation into the Historia as a whole, linking the First Crusade to the history of his monastery, Saint-Evroult.     

James Cone’s Legacy for White Christians

ABSTRACT

This article explores James Cone’s lesson and legacy for white Christians. Specifically, it analyzes Cone’s claim that whites can “become black.” Cone insists that a process of conversion to blackness “means that white people are prepared to deny themselves (whiteness), take up the cross (blackness), and follow Christ (black ghetto).” In this essay, I will draw upon Cone’s writings and original interview material to construct an outline of these three steps of becoming black. Making sense of what it means to convert to blackness begins with first analyzing his specific challenge to white theology, then his concepts of blackness and the Black Christ, and finally, the praxis of these three steps – that is, what does it look like, practically, to follow the black Christ as a white person.     

Theatre,mathematics, and the aesthetics of infinity: Complicite’s A Disappearing Number

ABSTRACT

Complicite's A Disappearing Number is one of the best examples of contemporary plays that use theatrical strategies to convey complex scientific ideas. Complicite uses performance to stage the complex mathematical concepts of partition and infinite convergent series, taking inspiration from the statement by renowned British mathematician G. H. Hardy that “a mathematician... is a maker of patterns”. As well as performativity, other elements in the play contribute to performing mathematics on the stage, elements such as time and space, narrative structure, thematic content, and characterization. Complicite introduces a complex pattern that runs throughout the play to connect these elements to form a complete whole. These elements effectively work with each other to release a set of clues that guide the audience towards decoding the play's pattern. This study provides an in-depth analysis of these connections and the complex process of decoding the pattern in the play.     

Structural boundaries that effect the representation of gender and disability in works of fiction from the United States and United Kingdom

Abstract

Discussions of intellectual disability are found in medical journals, published biographies, and disability research. However, outside the realm of medicine or personal reminiscence intellectual disability struggles for spaces of social, historical, cultural and imaginative representation. This article addresses these struggles for space and specifically focuses on the imagined space of narrative fiction. Being imagined spaces they should easily be able to accommodate people with disability, and yet, very few characters with intellectual disability are represented or more importantly have agency in narrative fiction. Drawing on work from feminist geographies and literary geographies this article addresses the limiting narrative structures that have been used against fictional characters who have a disability and ways authors may move beyond these limitations. Reconciling feminist geographies and literary geographies allows new critical spatial knowledge around disability to emerge. It is not enough to write characters with disabilities into narrative fiction if the structures surrounding them remain limiting and prejudiced. This article discusses the three main limiting structures in narrative fiction: character representation, narrative voice and genre. Looking at narrative fiction through feminist and literary geographies reveals how these limiting structures function as power hierarchies, and importantly, shows how these imposed structures can be subverted and changed.