Creation,Virginity and Diet in Fourth-Century Christianity: Basil of Ancyra’s On the True Purity of Virginity

Shaw explores the connections between dietary theory, Christian ascetic fasting, gender and the ideology of virginity in late antiquity, especially as represented in the fourth-century treatise on virginity by Basil of Ancyra. With its remarkable attention to the practicalities of embodiment and sexual renunciation, Basil’s treatise is distinctive in its genre. After discussing Basil’s treatise of creation, the nature of male and female sexual attraction and physiology, the control of bodily passions and the value of ascetic fasting for reducing desire, Shaw sets these topics in the context of ancient medical theory, gender and the theology of paradise.     

Doing Archaeology as a Feminist: Introduction

Gender research archaeology has made significant contributions, but its dissociation from the resources of feminist scholarship and feminist activism is a significantly limiting factor in its development. The essays that make up this special issue illustrate what is to be gained by making systematic use of these resources. Their distinctively feminist contributions are characterized in terms of the recommendations for “doing science as a feminist” that have taken shape in the context of the long running “feminist method debate” in the social sciences.     

Representing Commerce in Tallis’s London Street Views

This essay examines how the London Street Views organize the city as a space of commercial interaction, one that is curiously at odds with an image of crowded Victorian streets full of shoppers, street-sellers, advertisements, and window displays. As a commercial directory, it is at once tightly self-referential and open ended, cross referring information between the lists of businesses, the advertisements, and the street elevations while also including advertisements for shops in other streets and neighbourhoods than that focused on in each issue. This essay considers the distinctiveness of Tallis’s project by contextualizing his Street Views within a range of forms of urban commercial information, including directories and advertisements.