Clothes as Expression of Action in Former Concentration Camps

The prisoners of the former concentrations camps were supposed to be deprived of their socialization by brutal dehumanization. Among other things, the use of blue-and-white striped prison clothes was meant to reinforce a homogeneous and uniform prisoner society. However, studies from a sociological perspective have shown that prisoners’ societies were indeed diverse and structured, allowing individuals to develop strategies of survival within their – albeit limited – scope for action. In this article, prisoners’ possibilities to act are discussed using the example of clothing – an omnipresent and visible medium. Various changes and alterations preserved in prisoner clothing from former concentration camps reveal open or secretive acts of individuals and thus provide insights into the different levels of action inside the camps.     

Land use in prehistoric malta. A re-examination of the maltese 'cart ruts'

Summary. This paper explores the manufacture and function of the so‐called ‘cart ruts’ within the harsh environment of Malta and proposes that they were deliberately constructed in order to push the boundaries of available arable land and are better identified as field furrows. Using comparative ethnographic evidence as well as archaeological data from European contexts, it is argued that the driving force, which necessitated their manufacture in Malta, lay in socio‐economic pressures. It is argued that the ruts are of high antiquity, products of Temple Period intensification and marginalism in land use.     

Studieren in den USA Als Austauschstudentin in Denver

Im Rahmen des Austauschprogrammes der Universit?t Oldenburg studierte Claudia Weiermann für ein Jahr an der “University of Colorado at Denver” und testete die amerikanische Uni-Realit?t.     

Imagining the absent dead: rituals of bereavement and the place of the war dead in German women's art during the First World War

Drawing on women's visual responses to the First World War, this article examines female mourning in wartime Germany. The unprecedented death toll on the battlefronts, military burial practices and the physical distance from the remains of the war dead disrupted traditional rituals of bereavement, hindered closure and compounded women's grief on the home front. In response to these novel circumstances, a number of female artists used their images to reimagine funerary customs, overcome the separation from the fallen and express acute emotional distress. This article analyses three images produced during the conflict by the artists Katharina Heise, Martha Schrag and Sella Hasse, and places their work within the civilian experience of bereavement in war. By depicting the pain of loss, female artists contested the historical tradition of proud female mourning in German society and countered wartime codes of conduct that prohibited the public display of emotional pain in response to soldiers’ deaths. As a largely overlooked body of sources, women's art adds to our understanding of the tensions in wartime cultures of mourning that emerged between 1914 and 1918.     

Studies in sociolinguistics

William Labov. Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Conduct and Communication No. 3. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972. xxiv + 412 pp. Figures, tables, bibliography, and index. $6.95 (paper).

William Labov. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Conduct and Communication No. 4. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972. xviii + 344 pp. Figures, tables, biliography, and index. $5.95 (paper).