Queens Consort,Gender and Diplomacy: Catherine of Aragon,Claude of France and the Field of Cloth of Gold

In 1520, two queens consort, Catherine of Aragon and Claude of France, attended the event now known as the Field of Cloth of Gold. This article analyses representations of their involvement across three sources; contemporary diplomatic correspondence and two later sources, Edward Hall's Chronicle (1548 and 1550) and the Hampton Court Palace painting of the Field (c. 1545). It examines how the producers of these sources shaped the function of the consort according to their own motivations, genre and the context of their own time. It argues that each source acknowledges the consorts as important to the event's success, but that while contemporary letters represent Catherine and Claude as individuals, the later sources exhibit shifting narratives to focus on the trope of ideal queenship. A similar shift was not apparent for kingship. This comparison of contemporary and later depictions of the consorts reveals a gendered reshaping of their role at the Field across time according to the needs of the creators which, in turn, sheds light on understandings of queenship and diplomatic engagement in early modern England.     

Zopilotes,Alacranes, y Hormigas (Vultures,Scorpions, and Ants): Animal Metaphors as Organizational Politics in a Nicaraguan Garbage Crisis

While scholars frequently frame conflicts over urban waste in terms of a politics of infrastructure, this article frames such conflicts in terms of a politics of organization. In 2008, self‐employed recyclers in and around Managua, Nicaragua blockaded local dumps in an effort to secure rights to scavenge for resellable material. Over the course of this “garbage crisis”, a material and semiotic entanglement of human labor organization with animal ecology became politically salient. At different points, recyclers were compared to ants (hormigas), vultures (zopilotes), and scorpions (alacranes). State officials, NGOs, and recyclers themselves used these animal metaphors to describe the organization of waste collection. Drawing on theories of value from political ecology and economic anthropology, as well as analysis of the deployment of these “organic” metaphors, we outline an “organizational politics” of urban waste.     

Review article: What’s new in early medieval burial archaeology?

Books reviewed in this article:
John Hines, Karen Høilund Nielsen and Frank Siegmund (eds), The Pace of Change. Studies in Early–Medieval Chronology.
Catherine E. Karkov, Kelley M. Wickham–Crowley and Bailey K. Young (eds), Spaces of the Living and the Dead: An Archaeological Dialogue.
Sam Lucy, The Early Anglo–Saxon Cemeteries of East Yorkshire. An Analysis and Reinterpretation.
Elizabeth O'Brien, Post–Roman Britain to Anglo–Saxon England: Burial Practices Reviewed.
Nick Stoodley, The Spindle and the Spear. A Critical Enquiry into the Construction and Meaning of Gender in the Early Anglo–Saxon Burial Rite.