A Harmony of the Spirits

In 1971 the Honorable Thomas M. Rees of California observed that "very little has been written of what the Welsh have contributed in all walks of life to the shaping of American history." In 1979 historian David Galenson maintained that "the issue of the composition of America's early immigrants is an impor-tant one and will continue to receive considerable attention from historians who seek to understand the social and economic history of colonial America." However, Douglas Greenburg's examination of the historiography of the middle colonies revealed that Pennsylvania, which witnessed the immigration of many early modern Welsh Quaker migrants, has not attracted as much attention from researchers as has its neighboring states.

Reviewed by: Frontier Country: The Politics of War in Early Pennsylvania by Patrick Spero Keri Holt (bio) Frontier Country: The Politics of War in Early Pennsylvania patrick spero Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016 343 pp. Frontier Country: The Politics of War in Early Pennsylvania takes a fraught term and redefines and contextualizes it in ways that illuminate its importance as the British American colonies transformed into an independent nation. The frontier, Patrick Spero writes, "was a politically potent word in the eighteenth century," and, using the colony of Pennsylvania as [End Page 262] a case study, Frontier Country examines how the complexities of "governing frontiers was … essential to the success or failure of colonial projects" (7, 8). By carefully reexamining this term and the role it played in American political discourse, print and popular culture, and day-to-day lived experience during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Spero offers significant arguments about the causes of the American Revolution and the influence of the frontier on early US nationalism, as well as the need to carefully historicize the terms we use to study the political and cultural dynamics of early America. For Spero, recognizing the importance of the frontier in colonial American and early national politics requires fundamentally reorienting and reinterpreting the term frontier itself. Conventionally, frontier has been understood as a spatial term marking the border or limit of a sovereign space. Although the location of a frontier can change, particularly in the context of national expansion, we typically assume frontiers to be sparsely populated spaces defined by activities of settlement and development located at the (relatively distant) boundaries of a state or nation. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, the term frontier marked a much more situational and transitory space defined not so much by set borders but by feelings of fear and uncertainty. During this period, writes Spero, "[f]rontiers formed—people and places became a frontier—when people felt a specific type of fear: invasion" (115). Although colonial borders were more susceptible to invasion than other spaces, the term frontier did not necessarily mark a clear boundary line but, instead, operated as a plural term that could mark multiple locations anywhere within a colony, depending on perceived threats. As a result, during the colonial period, frontiers were understood not so much as a location but as a particular kind of experience. "For those colonists who lived in fear of invasion, a frontier was more than a geopolitical abstraction that drove policy decisions. It was a personal experience that shaped their actions and beliefs," writes Spero (114). By examining this "traumatic process of becoming a frontier," this book offers a new lens for examining the causes of the Revolution and the changing expectations that the colonists had for their government over the course of the eighteenth century. In the end, argues Spero, "[t]he failure of the British Empire to provide for frontiers—indeed, its apparent turn against such zones and their inhabitants—became a central argument for independence" (222). [End Page 263] To make this argument, Spero offers an extensive analysis of the plural and shifting dimensions of frontiers in colonial Pennsylvania, focusing specifically on the experiences of people living on these frontiers and the growing distance between their experiences and the expectations and actions of the British Empire and the Pennsylvania colonial government. Pennsylvania experienced a much greater variety of frontier experiences than other colonies, particularly regarding its efforts to manage and defend these varied locales, and these diverse frontier experiences and policies were well documented in letters, newspaper articles, court cases, government proceedings, Quaker records, pamphlets, broadsides, and formal histories written throughout the colonial period. Spero provides a thorough and impressive assessment of these texts and contexts, assembling them into an engaging narrative history that traces Pennsylvania's transformation from a pacifist colony that was antithetical to the concept of frontiers to one whose government was increasingly preoccupied with frontier management. The politics of Pennsylvania's frontier management were exceedingly complicated and contradictory, and Spero does a masterful job explaining the varied and changing perceptions of invasion in colonial Pennsylvania, as well as the competing responses from the colonial governor, the Assembly...

Although popular culture has awarded Massachusetts the distinction of being recognized as America's "witchcraft capital," it was Pennsylvania's earliest practitioners of the mystical arts who quietly fostered the archetype of the American "cunning man." Much like their European brethren, these hybrid practitioners of the occult arts often paired the esoteric worldview of the Renaissance magus with the practicality of the traditional sorcerer.

Reviewed by: Moravian Soundscapes: A Sonic History of the Moravian Missions in Early Pennsylvania by Sarah Justina Eyerly Tucker Adkins Sarah Justina Eyerly, Moravian Soundscapes: A Sonic History of the Moravian Missions in Early Pennsylvania ( Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2020). Pp. 290; 39 b&w illus., 1 map, 15 tables. $22 paper. In Moravian Soundscapes: A Sonic History of the Moravian Missions in Early Pennsylvania, Sarah Justina Eyerly describes how colonial Pennsylvania's Moravians produced, shaped, and functioned within an array of spaces and sound-ways. This distinctly creative study holds that sound played a generative role in the worship, work, and social life of indigenous and European Moravians dotting the eighteenth-century northeast. Eyerly, a professor of musicology and director of the Early Music Program at Florida State University, convincingly demonstrates both that hymns and singing practices "served as sonic markers of history, place and identity" and that understanding Moravian acoustics is indispensable for understanding Moravian theology and community (11–12). At its heart, this monograph deftly interprets Moravian experience through their relationship to early American sound and space, grounding this understudied revivalist group within their common "belief in the power of sound to shape religious community" (108). Eyerly's extensive research into Moravian hymnody makes her use of it as a lens through which to present Moravian experience both vivid and masterful. For European and native Moravians, hymn singing functioned in numerous ways. For white leadership, such as that given by Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, hymnody represented the means by which settlers could "claim and sanctify a Christian space within what they heard as a vast wilderness" (67). Singing hymns strengthened the courage of itinerants like David Zeisberger and Johann Martin Mack as they roved through menacing physical landscapes that might include forest fires, river floods, and treacherous mountains. Likewise, Moravian Indians starting to "incorporate Christian concepts of divinity into their spiritual practices" now channeled Christ in the woods, believing his salvific love—realized in hymn singing—brought fruitful hunts (68–71). Pious melodies served many purposes in early Moravian Pennsylvania. Eyerly also vividly shows how hymnody underpinned everyday life in Moravian communities like Bethlehem. Outside of worship spaces, believers of all ages and occupations were expected to structure their daily occupations—"even the most mundane activities"—around hymn singing (108). Divine ditties could be heard at all times and in all places, from graveyards and homes to worship halls and smithies. In one of her most striking examples, Eyerly shows readers how Moravian hymn-singing practice included singing hymns as most community members lay asleep. Every evening, Beter (intercessors) or Nachäwater (night-watchers) would pray and sing long past sundown, convinced that their dozing neighbors piously digested their tunes. Regardless of the occasion, space, and time, whether or not a day was festal or dull, the sound of hymn-singing colored it (114–21). The book's accompanying website represents further realization of Eyerly's ambition in Moravian Soundscapes.1 One of the richest examples of the intertextual enrichment given by the website comes from her "Listening Tour of Eighteenth-Century Bethlehem," which offers visitors a "sound map" of early Bethlehem, with fine-grained acoustic reproductions of eighteenth-century daily life. With great sensitivity, Eyerly's curation of sounds—from twittering birders and bleating sheep [End Page 498] to swinging blacksmith hammers and hymn-signing girls—represents a compelling attempt to explore historic soundways by recreating them. Readers will thus find the website an exceedingly relevant and useful companion to the book. Eyerly's extensive fieldwork, carefully gathered spatial data, clever use of geographic and acoustic technologies, and artistic storytelling all make Moravian Soundscapes a pathbreaking study of colonial Moravians. However, certain areas of inquiry remain untouched in this book. Given how integral Moravians were to the broader eighteenth-century evangelical movement, it is a little surprising that the Atlantic awakenings do not play a bigger part in Eyerly's account. Given the central role played by sonic expressions in the American, English, Scottish, and Welsh revivals, it would have been quite intriguing to see Eyerly apply her expert analysis to what perhaps could be shown to be common acoustic traits running through eighteenth-century...

Reviewed by: Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson J. William Frost Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson. By Jane E. Calvert. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xiv + 382 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $99. Insisting that Quakers and Pennsylvania have been marginalized by obtuse secular-minded historians, Calvert maintains that Friends' distinctive ideas and practices in civil disobedience and constitutional ideas were of fundamental importance in American political history and, primarily through the thought of John Dickinson, influenced the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution. She argues that Pennsylvania Friends were not just Whigs engaged like other colonists in a quest for power, but created a religio-political view of a fundamental written constitution that should be preserved but could be amended by the people for the common good. Quakers, in short, pioneered the American tradition of civil disobedience as a tactic designed to influence governments to change laws while preserving the legitimacy of the God-given fundamental order. In raising a challenge to previous scholars, Calvert discusses Quaker political theory and practices in seventeenth-century Britain and in colonial Pennsylvania from its founding until after the ratification of the Constitution. In order to support her theses, Calvert has read widely in sources on political theory and [End Page 51] colonial politics but she candidly acknowledges that there are gaps in sources partially because of the way Quakers and the Pennsylvania Assembly structured their affairs. The Quakers' innovations rested upon defiance of those laws of England that they saw as infringing upon religious freedom while disdaining revolution and accepting the legitimacy of royal government. In creating a system of local, monthly, and yearly meetings operating under a written discipline ("Christian and Brotherly Advices") beginning in 1669, Friends created a system of church government resting upon the democratic consent of all but with authority in an oligarchy of the spiritual elite. The religious and political writings of Isaac Penington, William Penn, and Robert Barclay on religious liberty and the peace testimony provided an intellectual underpinning for Friends' religious and political actions that was carried over into early Pennsylvania. The New Jersey Concessions and Agreements of William Billings and Penn's first plans for government, that would have allowed the Assembly the power to initiate laws, exemplified Quaker religio-political ideas. When Penn withdrew this power from the Assembly, Friends in Pennsylvania engaged in selective civil disobedience until they received in 1701 a more Quakerly constitution. Calvert argued that the Assembly under Thomas Lloyd and David Lloyd kept their dissent within limits, because as Friends they did not wish to destroy the colony's foundation. The result was that Pennsylvania became a Quaker "theocracy" and the "largest missionizing effort in American history" in which religious liberty and the peace testimony were used to persuade outsiders to follow Friendly procedures and endorse Quaker goals, even though they did not become members of the meeting. It did not matter whether the colonists converted because the boundaries between the meeting and the outsiders were flexible. The Assembly, in short, was a political version of the Quaker meeting, resting upon the consent of the people who could reform the laws as needed while preserving the God-given liberties confirmed by the 1701 Frame of Government. After 1755, Franklin and Galloway repudiated the Quaker consensus and sought to make Pennsylvania a royal colony, but John Dickinson became the defender of the traditionalists, a role that he would occupy until 1776. Calvert insists that Dickinson's behavior during the disturbances after the Stamp and Townshend Acts and Continental Congresses by endorsing boycotts while seeking redress of grievances within the context of the British constitution and even opposing independence exemplified Quaker practices. Even Dickinson's support of a just war could be linked through a Quaker tradition exemplified by Penn's charter and support for a militia, and the endorsing of just wars by Robert Barclay, James Logan, and Isaac Norris II. Calvert states that Pennsylvania had more freedoms under the 1701 Frame than in the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution that disfranchised Friends and brought persecution. So she does not see the revolution in Pennsylvania as a democratic movement. [End...

Reviewed by: A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania by Patrick M. Erben Scott Paul Gordon (bio) A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania patrick m. erben Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press and Omohundro Institute, 2012 352 pp. In this book, Patrick M. Erben powerfully evokes the utopian promise of early Pennsylvania. William Penn’s famous plan for religious [End Page 807] toleration, like the notion of religious toleration itself, has often been treated as part of an Enlightenment project. But Erben brilliantly associates Penn’s “holy experiment,” instead, with other seventeenth-century “mystical” or “esoteric” dreams that aimed to “counter the effects of Babel” or “[repair] human divisions by discovering a common spiritual language” (8, 14). Pennsylvania was, in Erben’s beautiful phrases, a “mission field for a utopian project of reconnecting the divine Word of God and the fallen word of human language” (7). The key claims of the book appear in a series of compelling chapters that discuss the promotional literature produced to encourage immigration to Pennsylvania, the meaning of linguistic diversity in the colony, and the important figure of Francis Daniel Pastorius (1651–1720), who looms larger in Erben’s text than William Penn himself. Erben focuses in these chapters on a wide range of individuals and groups that embraced Pennsylvania as a place where they could “escape Babel/Babylon and create a more perfect society through linguistic and spiritual reform” (46). These groups did not view the linguistic diversity that characterized Pennsylvania as an impediment to community, despite the “cultural and political myth” that prevails today that “language diversity poses a fundamental threat to communal coherence” (14). These seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century thinkers were convinced that such diversity offered an opportunity that could be realized through translation: translation could reveal the common spiritual language that lay hidden beneath the differences that separated one European language from another and European languages as a whole from the many indigenous languages that Europeans encountered in America. For many recent literary critics, as Erben briefly acknowledges, translation functions as a tool of colonization (see, for instance, Eric Cheyfitz’s The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from “The Tempest” to “Tarzan” [U of Pennsylvania P, 1997]). For the figures Erben discusses, translation rests on a faith in the existence of an original, Adamic language that perfectly captured in words the essence of things. The different groups that populated early Pennsylvania, Erben shows, imagined the new colony as a place where spiritual and linguistic renewal could happen. Erben devotes two-thirds of his book, his introduction and chapters 1 through 4, to recovering and analyzing these utopian origins of Penn’s colony. Chapter 5 extends these concerns into the middle of the eighteenth [End Page 808] century, by which time many had given up on Pennsylvania’s promise. Yet Erben shows that some groups continued to embrace the “enduring spiritual potential of a fallen Pennsylvania” (203). Focusing on Johannes Kelpius’s experiment on the Wissahickon, the radical pietists at Ephrata, and Bethlehem’s Moravians, this chapter explores in particular the conviction that singing and hymnody could “reverse the effects of Babel, especially if members of different linguistic and ethnic origins would join their voices” (205). Erben explores, for instance, the remarkable practice of polyglot singing in Bethlehem: at a lovefeast in August 1745, the Moravian community sang hymns in eighteen different languages, including English, German, Swedish, Wendish, Mohawk, and Mahican. This practice did not “erase difference” but modeled a “post-Babel community” that recognized a “single language of the spirit.” The “multiplicity of voices” in different languages, Erben concludes, “paradigmatically reversed the confusion of Babel” (238–41). Erben continues to search texts for traces of this yearning to reverse Babel’s effects and to discover spiritual community among diversity in chapter 6, which focuses on the latter half of the eighteenth century. Erben’s project, however, seems forced in this chapter. Take, for instance, his reading of the Martyrs’ Mirror produced in Ephrata in 1748–49 (25269). This Martyrs’ Mirror prompts one of Erben’s more fascinating stories, since the book itself, which...

too often, when we think of William Penn’s colonial project, we think of it in terms that disavow the very colonialism that underpinned it. Part of the problem lies in the persistent mythology surrounding Pennsylvania’s founding, a tradition inherited as much from scholars as it was from the founding generation. Writing more than a century ago, isaac sharpless, professor and dean at haverford college, helped to naturalize the myth that colonial Pennsylvania was from its start a social and political democracy. For sharpless, it just made good sense. after all, the colony had been born that way; a liberty-loving people like the Quakers, sharpless concluded, could not help but produce a society that was democratic. Yet, despite the powerful images of tolerance and pluralism that thoughts of the Quaker colony evoke, the history of Pennsylvania—and early america—needs to be interpreted in a fashion similar to other imperial endeavors: as a site of contestation and negotiation not only between indigenous and settler societies, but between the acrimonious admixture of colonists as well. to tell Pennsylvania’s history in this fashion is to discard a triumphant narrative of democratization and replace it with a story of creolization and hybridity. each and together, John smolenski’s Friends and Strangers and Judith Ridner’s A Town In-Between help to trouble the democratic narrative with more complex investigations of culture creation. Read together, smolenski’s focus on the decades after Pennsylvania’s founding and Ridner’s close study of carlisle, Pennsylvania, give important attention to the generative and adaptive processes of creolization and the resistant, sometimes subversive, responses of hybridity.

A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania

Book Review| April 01 2022 Moravian Soundscapes: A Sonic History of the Moravian Missions in Early Pennsylvania, by Sarah Justina Eyerly Moravian Soundscapes: A Sonic History of the Moravian Missions in Early Pennsylvania, by Sarah JustinaEyerly. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020. xvi, 269 pp. With companion website Moravian Soundscapes by SarahEyerly, MarkSciuchetti, and AndyNathan, https://moraviansoundscapes.music.fsu.edu/ Stephen A. Marini Stephen A. Marini STEPHEN A. MARINI is Elisabeth Luce Moore Professor of Christian Studies and Professor of Religion in America and Ethics at Wellesley College. He is also the founder and singing master of Norumbega Harmony, a choral ensemble specializing in early American psalmody and the repertoire of the Southern singing-school tunebook The Sacred Harp (1844). His most recent book is The Cashaway Psalmody: Transatlantic Religion and Music in Colonial Carolina (University of Illinois Press, 2020), which has been awarded the Lloyd Hibbert Endowment by the American Musicological Society. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the American Musicological Society (2022) 75 (1): 200–209. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2022.75.1.200 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Stephen A. Marini; Moravian Soundscapes: A Sonic History of the Moravian Missions in Early Pennsylvania, by Sarah Justina Eyerly. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 April 2022; 75 (1): 200–209. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2022.75.1.200 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search The Moravians of colonial Pennsylvania are enjoying renewed attention today from scholars with diverse interests. The Moravians’ rapid rise, communal institutions, controversial devotional and sexual practices, and sudden financial crisis during the mid-eighteenth century have been explored in important recent studies by Aaron Spencer Fogleman, Katherine Carté Engel, and Paul Peucker, among others.1 Now Sarah Justina Eyerly offers a sweeping new interpretation of their rich music culture and distinctive sound environments in Moravian Soundscapes: A Sonic History of the Moravian Missions in Early Pennsylvania. Founded by Nikolaus Ludwig, Count von Zinzendorf of Saxony (1700–1760), the Moravians, or Herrnhut Community of Brothers (Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine), brought together a group of Hussite exiles from Bohemia with followers of the count’s own vision of Lutheran Pietism. In 1722, Zinzendorf welcomed the remnant of the Unity of the Brethren (Unitas Fratrum), Jan Hus’s fifteenth-century religious reform movement, to Herrnhut, a town on his... You do not currently have access to this content.

Ethnicity, religion and politics are undisputedly the root of major problems in many African states. Clear examples of this can be found in Nigeria. Some scholars have argued that politicians use ethnicity and religious differences in order to create unnecessary rivalries and to settle political scores and fuel ethnic and religious violence in Nigeria. Others are of the view that religious and ethnic differences are responsible for political instability in the country. While some scholars suggest that the country should be divided along ethnic or religious lines, others argue that the size and diversity of Nigeria would guarantee enhanced competitiveness for the nation. Without necessarily taking sides in any of these arguments, the author examines the epistemological foundations of sustained ‘schism’ in Nigeria.

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES61 that Friends in New Jersey, like those in eighteenth-century Rhode Island and North Carolina, had little political significance. When scholars begin to examine in detail the role of Quakers in New Jersey, they will need to consult frequently Pomfret's well-balanced survey of the colonial and revolutionary periods. Swarthmore CollegeJ. William Frost Colonial Pennsylvania—A History. By Joseph E. Illick. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976. xix, 359 pages. $15.00. A treatise on colonial Pennsylvania always has to pass judgment on controversies that defy resolution and keep enlisting partisans long after the event. Like a tongue going to a sore tooth, the historians' pen will not stay away from die series of contentions from the squabbles between William Penn and his colonists to the complex of antagonisms on die questions of the day from 1763 to 1776. In all the classical episodes Friends figured prominently (often as the donkey on which somebody was trying to pin the tail) and have kept public attention ever since. Joseph E. Illick had to deliberate on the whole familiar procession when he undertook to write a comprehensive volume on colonial Pennsylvania for that elusive beast the general reader. Perforce, he relied heavily on the labors of others who had mined the sources, so his book reflects what historians over the years have chosen to investigate. As he points out, intriguing topics await inquiry. Still, he might have done more with the structure of commerce, the stratification of society, and the process of populating the province. Illick's task was to rise above the well-rehearsed arguments, select the choicest fruits of scholarship, and blend them with some fresh ideas. This he did most successfully in two long segments of die book, one revolving around William Penn and one on the political battles from the entry of Benjamin Franklin to the Declaration of Independence. Illick's previous work on Penn gave him a sure touch in handling the early period; the first few chapters are judicious and balanced. Though less masterful, the synthesis of new research on late colonial politics provides original insights and brings to this intricate subject as much clarity as reasonably may be expected. (Some may be disturbed by the undigested tidbits of psychohistory .) The middle of the book, lacking a focus on an eminent personage, often seems to ramble from one sub-topic to another. Readers of Colonial Pennsylvania may be troubled by a less than finished quality. There are too few connective passages linking one part with another , too many opaque or muddled paragraphs, clumsy sentences, and illchosen words. The followers of George Keith change occupations oddly; the celebrated schism in the Presbyterians is mentioned first in a passing remark on its resolution; implausibly, "plutocrats" dwelt in the colony before 1702. Such flaws, however, detract little from the value of the book, which offers a predominantly thoughtful, impartial, reliable, and readable survey of its subject. University of IowaSydney V. James ...

Letters of recommendations (LORs) are key components of academic medicine applications. Given that bias against students and trainees underrepresented in medicine (UIM) has been demonstrated across assessment, achievement, and advancement domains, the authors reviewed studies on LORs to assess racial, ethnic, and UIM differences in LORs. Standardized LORs (SLORs), an increasingly common form of LORs, were also assessed for racial and ethnic differences. A systematic review was conducted for English-language studies that assessed racial or ethnic differences in LORs in academic medicine published from database inception to July 16, 2023. Studies evaluating SLORs underwent data abstraction to evaluate their impact on the given race or ethnicity comparison and outcome variables. Twenty-three studies describing 19,012 applicants and 41,925 LORs were included. Nineteen studies (82.6%) assessed LORs for residency, 4 (17.4%) assessed LORs for fellowship, and none evaluated employment or promotion. Fifteen of 17 studies (88.2%) assessing linguistic differences reported a significant difference in a particular race or ethnicity comparison. Of the 7 studies assessing agentic language (e.g., "strong," "confident"), 1 study found fewer agentic terms used for Black and Latinx applicants, and 1 study reported higher agency scores for Asian applicants and applicants of races other than White. There were mixed results for the use of communal and grindstone language in UIM and non-UIM comparisons. Among 6 studies, 4 (66.7%) reported that standout language (e.g., "exceptional," "outstanding") was less likely to be ascribed to UIM applicants. Doubt-raising language was more frequently used for UIM trainees. When SLORs and unstructured LORs were compared, fewer linguistic differences were found in SLORs. There is a moderate bias against UIM candidates in the domains of linguistic differences, doubt-raising language, and topics discussed in LORs, which has implications for perceptions of competence and ability in the high-stakes residency and fellowship application process.

This chapter discusses the religious and linguistic diversity of colonial Pennsylvania. It describes how the confrontation with and frequent embrace of linguistic difference allowed individuals and groups in early Pennsylvania to see past religious differences.

Ethnic difference and ethnic identity constructions are examined in prison settings. While a vast academic literature examines prisons as sites of ethnic and racial identity constructions in the United States and Europe, studies of Soviet and post-Soviet prisons have not been included in this scholarly dialogue. Thus, ethnic identity negotiations in prisons in the former Soviet Union are examined. Soviet legacies in policies and practices toward ethnic and religious difference in prison services and the contrasting trajectories away from the Soviet penal model in different jurisdictions after 1991 are considered. Examination of Russia focuses on Muslim prisoners and official and popular responses to moral panic about “prison jihad.” Subsequent analysis turns to elements of Soviet legacies in two other post-Soviet countries: Georgia and Estonia. New trends and reforms unique to each case (including the architectural and spatial organization of incarceration) are identified, the role of prison subcultures is discussed, and analysis is provided as to how these prison systems reflect or refract overall trends of ethnic discrimination and marginalization in each country.

Movies frequently feature depictions of reality in various aspects, such as the projection of racist discourse in every- day dialogue. However, translating racist discourse, particularly in the movie subtitles requires careful consideration of the target audience, source text, and cultural context to present appropriate subtitles. Despite few studies on Eng- lish-to-Malay translations of subtitles, there is a gap in the exploration of translation strategies of racist discourse in English movies. Hence, this study aims to identify the racist discourse in the Rush Hour movie franchise and investi- gate the strategies used in translating racist discourse in the Malay subtitles. This qualitative study utilised Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal Theory to identify and categorise the racist discourse and Gottlieb’s (1992) subtitling strate- gies to analyse the strategies used in translating racist discourse. The results reveal that all three types of racist dis- course were evident in the movies, namely 1) affect, to show negative emotions and responses towards others, driven by racial, ethnic or religious differences (e.g., I will slap you so hard, you’ll end up in the Ming dynasty); 2) apprecia- tion, referring to rigidly using certain traits as ample reasons for unfavourable judgements (e.g. First I get a bullshit assignment, now Mr. Rice-A-Roni... don’t even speak American) and 3) judgement, which describes negative judge- ments of people’s behaviour when seen as aligned with their racial or ethnic differences (e.g., Hey! Slow down Chen/Chin! Hell is wrong with you?). The top five subtitling strategies in the Malay subtitles of racist discourse in the movies, i.e. paraphrase, transfer, imitation, decimation, and resignation were also presented and elaborated. The find- ings of this study may benefit translators, subtitlers, and screenwriters for them to consider the sociocultural norms and context in the translation process.