Brain, mind, and body: interactions with art in renaissance Italy

The Renaissance saw the first systematic anatomical and physiological studies of the brain and human body because scientists, for the first time in centuries, were allowed to dissect human bodies for study. Renaissance artists were frequently found at dissections and their attention to detail can be observed in their products. Scientists themselves were increasingly artistic, and they created astonishing anatomical models and illustrations that can still be studied. The cross-fertilization of art and science in the Renaissance resulted in more scientific analyses of neuroanatomy as well as more creative ways in which such analyses could be depicted. Both art and science benefited from the reciprocal ways in which the two influenced each other even as they provided new ways of explaining the mysteries of the human body and mind.     

Dig for Victory! New histories of wartime gardening in Britain

Prompted by the curious fact that both progressive environmentalists and Conservative Party politicians have recently drawn on popular understandings of austerity associated with Britain’s wartime domestic gardening campaign, this article broadens the range of histories associated with Dig for Victory. It suggests firstly that far from simply encouraging self-sufficiency, the government conceptualised Dig for Victory as requiring the extension of order and control into the domestic sphere. Second, it shows how the ideal figure of a national citizen digging for victory elided differentiated gender and class experiences of gardening, and finally the article demonstrates that statistics of food production were more about fostering trust than picturing the realities of vegetable growing. By so doing the paper illuminates the particular ways in which present-day articulations of Dig for Victory’s history are partial and selective.     

Neurology and Literature, 1860–1920 by Anne Stiles (ed.)

Abstract

Research from many perspectives has been made on the work of the French neurologist, J.‐M. Charcot (1825–1893) with particular reference to his fame for his studies and “construction”; of hysteria. What has not been demonstrated so far is the extent to which Charcot's construction can be explained by the perceived relationship between hysteria and epilepsy and Charcot's access to epileptic patients at La Salpêtrière. From the confusion that reigned concerning hysteria and epilepsy, both separately and in relation to each other, Charcot claimed to have isolated hysteria as a distinctive and universal pathology. This claim was partly based on the “grande attaque”;, representing the most intense degree of hysteria. A comparison with Gowers, the contemporary English neurologist suggests that diagnosis was the function of the practitioners’ preferences; and a linguistic analysis pinpoints Charcot's problems in describing an isolated pathology in terms of its relation to its neighbour, epilepsy.     

Autonomy,Erasure, and Persistence in the Urban Gardening Commons

Collective gardening spaces have existed across Lisbon, Portugal for decades. This article attends to the makeshift natures made by black migrants from Portugal's former colonies, and the racial urban geography thrown into relief by the differing fortunes of white Portuguese community gardening spaces. Conceptualising urban gardens as commons‐in‐the‐making, we explore subaltern urbanism and the emergence of autonomous gardening commons on the one hand, and the state erasure, overwriting or construction of top‐down commons on the other. While showing that urban gardening forges commons of varying persistence, we also demonstrate the ways through which the commons are always closely entwined with processes of enclosure. We further argue that urban gardening commons are divergent and cannot be judged against any abstract ideal of the commons. In conclusion, we suggest that urban gardening commons do not have a “common” in common.