Performing a different narrative: museum theater and the memory-work of producing and managing slavery heritage at southern plantation museums

In the southeastern United States, operators of plantation museums have traditionally engaged in a selective and romanticised remembrance of the antebellum past that has regrettably silenced and marginalised the historical experiences and struggles of enslaved African people. More recently, some plantation managers have sought to engage in the ‘memory-work’ using artistic practices to reconstruct and interpret slavery heritage for visitors. Our study explores museum theatre as a form of memory-work and suggests that theatrical performances of the memories of enslavement are an increasingly important but not yet fully understood strategy for recovering, embodying, and representing a different and hopefully more just narrative about enslaved Africans. We visit three plantation museums where managers hosted a theatrical performance of enslaved oral histories and explore the motivations and experiences of managers and the director of the slave performance. Realising the power and efficacy of theatrical performance as memory-work practice requires understanding how the management of the interpretation process can be difficult. We delve into the emotion-laden challenges confronting slavery-related museum theatre development at the North Carolina plantations and discuss the creative response formulated at the sites to help visitors work through unexpected feelings and understandings about the past.     

Viewing obesogenic advertising in children's neighbourhoods using Google Street View

The advertising of unhealthy food and beverages forms an important component of obesogenic environments. Such marketing to children is a key health determinant because of its impact on dietary preference and food purchasing behaviour. The location of outdoor advertising is important in exploring obesogenic environments and children's neighbourhoods. The aim of this study is to explore issues involved in the use of Google Street View to examine outdoor food and beverage advertising. The implications for using Google Street View in the context of neighbourhood built environment research and grass‐roots advocacy are discussed. The study was conducted within walkable distances from 19 primary and intermediate schools in Auckland, New Zealand, where “walkable” was defined as limited by 800 m road network boundaries, which are equivalent to school buffer boundaries. Google Street View allows for centrality of data collection, coding, and storage. However, challenges exist with the method because 727 (29.4%) of a total of 2,474 outdoor advertisements that were identified were not able to be categorised because images were unclear, not in English, blocked, or at angles where detail cannot be deciphered. Specific to outdoor advertising for food and beverages, the results presented here show that children are exposed to a significantly greater number of unhealthy advertising than other advertising, P=0.001, eta‐squared statistic (0.45) indicates a large effect size. Overall, the results show promise for the use of Google Street View in the study of obesogenic environments.     

Feminist Perspectives on the Internationalization of The State

Abstract: The state is often described in transition: public spaces are rearranged by private companies, national social welfare is being privatized to some extent, and supranational institutions have more influence on national policies. “A view from the kitchen” (Diane Elson) is helpful for understanding the changing dynamics of states and societies because different women are affected by these policies in different and often ambiguous ways: women of the globalized South migrate to the North, creating global care chains, while women in Western industrialized countries are confronted with changing welfare regimes, leaving mainly highly educated women to profit from this situation. This article contributes to feminist debates on economic globalization and state internationalization. Our feminist materialist perspective allows a critical view on dominance and power in “governance”. Thus, the article adds to feminist debates on globalization from the perspective of state transformation and to debates on governance from the perspective of state transformation grounded in gendered social relations.     

Distribution patterns of cultivated plants in the Eastern Alps (Central Europe) during Iron Age

Carbonized fruits and seeds from two recently investigated Iron Age hilltop settlements, one located north and the other south of the main Alpine range, were analyzed and reveal a detailed insight in the subsistence strategies of the Eastern Alps. The results were compared with archaeobotanical data sets from other Iron Age excavation sites in Austria, Eastern Switzerland and Northern Italy. On the basis of variable data from 17 sites it is not possible to detect a geographical pattern through statistical analyses. On the basis of the frequencies, however, it becomes clear that the principal cereals were Hordeum vulgare (hulled six-rowed barley), Triticum dicoccon and T. spelta (emmer and spelt) and Panicum miliaceum (broomcorn millet). In addition, foxtail millet (Setaria italica) as well as naked wheat played some role. Legumes such as Vicia faba (horse bean) and Pisum sativum (pea) also occurred regularly and supplemented the diet of the prehistoric settlers. More systematic research with standardized methods is however urgently needed to corroborate the existing data.     

Internationalisation at Stellenbosch University during the international academic boycott of the apartheid era (1948–1994)

In this article, we address the international dimension of Stellenbosch University (SU) during the apartheid era, most notably during the academic boycott of South African universities between the early 1960s and the early 1990s. Based on information gathered from the documentary sources of the university and interviews with key role players at the university, the findings of the research will put some of the well-established hypotheses on South Africa’s academic isolation and an increasing localism in higher education during that period into perspective. The article will show that prior to 1990 there were different kinds of international activities going on at SU, despite the academic boycotts.     

Having her hand in it? Elite women as ‘makers’ of textile art in the Middle Ages

ABSTRACT

In the Middle Ages, elite women acted as creators, donors and recipients of textile art. This article analyses a small but representative group of seventh- to thirteenth-century embroideries in order to examine the motivation for their creation and to investigate the ways in which women could mark their own presence through textile art. It discusses written sources alongside the material evidence; these sources include documentary, hagiographical and literary texts, which provide information about cultural norms and the expectations of society. Set within the context of these sources, the evidence suggests that society both channelled women's creativity into textile art and idealised it. At the same time, as artists and patrons of ornamented textiles, noblewomen had creative control over the medium; embroidery became a field in which their works were noted and celebrated.     

A ‘New Deal’ for the Kurds: Britain's Kurdish Policy in Iraq, 1941–45

The Mulla Mustafa revolt of 1943–45 threatened to undermine the authority of the already vulnerable Iraqi government. In formulating a response, both the Iraqi prime minister and the British embassy wanted to prevent Kurdish nationalists from appropriating the revolt for their own ends. Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, the British Ambassador to Iraq, called for a ‘New Deal’ for the Kurds, encouraging development and investment in Kurdish areas as a means of drawing them under the control of central government authority. Iraqi Minister Majid Mustafa offered similar suggestions for infrastructure projects. In this instance, British and Iraqi priorities aligned and both hoped that reform would appease the Kurds and strengthen the Iraqi state. Britain's Kurdish policy during the Second World War demonstrates the continuing tension, dating back to the Mandate period, between its commitment to a united Iraq and the paternalistic sense of responsibility for the Kurds felt by many of its officials, in particular, the political advisers posted in the northern provinces. Despite British and Iraqi attempts to dismiss the Mulla Mustafa revolt as an ‘isolated tribal uprising’, it has entered the Kurdish narrative as a transformative moment in the Iraqi Kurdish national movement.     

Neolithic cremation in south‐east Arabia: archaeological and anthropological observations at FAY‐NE10 in the Emirate of Sharjah (UAE)

Small fragments of cremated human bone, clearly representing numerous individuals, were found in a stratified Neolithic context in a small cave at Jebel Faya in the Central Region of the Emirate of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. With radiocarbon dates between 6500 and 5800 cal BC, they are among the earliest well‐documented cases of cremations in south‐west Asia. Taxonomic identification of the small burned bone fragments is based on morphological and histological analysis. The deposits are to date the oldest human remains found in south‐east Arabia and represent a phase during the Middle Neolithic for which no other types of burials have yet been documented.