American Edition Research Articles

Her Dark Materials: John Milton, Toni Morrison, and Concepts of “Dominion” in A Mercy

Her Dark Materials: John Milton, Toni Morrison, and Concepts of “Dominion” in A Mercy Tessa Roynon (bio) Introduction In Toni Morrison’s 2008 novel, A Mercy, the mistress Rebekka Vaark gives the journeying Florens an authenticating letter that twice describes their domicile as “Milton” (110). Appearing two-thirds of the way through the novel, this detail strongly suggests what has been only hinted at until this point: that the writings of John Milton (1608–74) are an important presence herein. My aim in this article is to explore A Mercy’s subtle and complex engagement with the work of the seventeenth-century poet, statesman and political activist. I argue that Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) significantly informs Morrison’s representation of life in Virginia, Maryland and New England in the 1680s and ’90s. The novelist’s engagement both with that poem and with its status in that specific time and locale is key to A Mercy’s central concerns: the nature of freedom and oppression, of power and powerlessness, and of good and evil. In his keynote address at the Toni Morrison Society Conference of July 2008, Marc Conner declared that “the context of the seventeenth century, of Descartes and Milton . . . opens all sorts of doors into Morrison’s worlds, particularly her relation to Modernity” (5). In the same speech he suggested that Adam and Eve’s banishment “at the end of Paradise Lost . . . has been a meditation for Morrison,” pointing out that “her novel Paradise . . . is hardly her first investigation into the concept of Paradise and its loss” (4). Several scholars have analyzed the ways that Tar Baby and Jazz as well as Paradise—in their portrayals of flawed and/or lost utopias—engage with the Genesis stories of the Creation, and of Adam and Eve’s temptation and fall.1 Yet (with the exception of Conner’s remarks) there has been a regrettable critical silence on the subject of Morrison’s dialogue with Milton’s version of these events. To some extent, this is not surprising: from one perspective, no two authors writing in the same language could have less in common, and the stern-faced, Puritan-leaning, white Englishman does not immediately come to mind when we think of Jadine and Son, Joe Trace and Dorcas, or even Consolata and Deek. The interactions with Milton in A Mercy, however, are sufficiently charged that it would be an act of wilful scholarly oversight to ignore this intertextual relationship any longer.2 It is in A Mercy that Morrison most obviously shares Milton’s preoccupation with (if not his perspectives on) the conflicts between order and chaos, reason and sexual desire, and the divine and the human. His fascination with the nature of power and government, with the status of women, with the relationship between Puritanism and Roman Catholicism, with the limits of language and literature, and even with the viability (or otherwise) of binary oppositions, resonates significantly in the contemporary work. Morrison’s allusions to Paradise Lost at once unpack Miltonic certainties and exploit Miltonic uncertainties and ambivalences, and in so doing, contribute to the scrutiny of the nascent Enlightenment world-view and of the transition into constructions of “America” that A Mercy enacts. [End Page 593] Concepts of “Dominion” In contrast to the scant critical attention paid to the subject of Milton and Morrison, scholars have written extensively on the subject of Milton and America. This scholarship contextualizes what might be at stake, politically, in Morrison’s own engagement with Milton in the interventionist version of American history and identity that is A Mercy. In 1845, in his introduction to the first American edition of Milton’s prose works, the editor and critic Rufus Wilmot Griswold claimed that “Milton is more emphatically American than any author who has lived in the United States” (Stevens 789). In recent decades scholars have both reiterated and challenged the conventional wisdom that the poet’s republicanism, reforming brand of Protestantism, and stake in individual liberty have an exceptional resonance within dominant American ideologies, and they have explored the various and often conflicting uses to which his work has been put in American religious, political and literary discourses. For example, in his...

Luther's Works: American Edition vol. 69. Sermons on the Gospel of St. John Chapters 17–20

Luther's Works: American Edition vol. 69. Sermons on the Gospel of St. John Chapters 17–20

Acknowledgements

Equine Veterinary Journal has been delighted to work together with the American Association of Equine Practitioners to produce this supplementary issue. The supplement is the result of considerable effort on the part of authors, reviewers and our Editorial Team. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr Jim Moore, EVJ's North American Editor and our Guest Editors, Drs Nat White, Deb Sellon and Pat McCue for their hard work in ensuring that the manuscripts were reviewed promptly and rigorously. I also thank Sue Wright and Jane Woodley in EVJ's office and Carey Ross in AAEP's office for their help and support of this project.

Welcome to Annette Wannamaker, Editor-in-Chief for North America

Children’s Literature in Education is delighted to welcome Annette Wannamaker of Eastern Michigan University as its new Editor-in-Chief for North America. In this role, Dr. Wannamaker follows Lawrence Sipe who died suddenly last March and whose contribution to children’s literature will be celebrated in a special issue of the journal in March 2012. Annette Wannamaker brings a broad range of experience to the position of North American editor. She is an Associate Professor of Children’s Literature at EMU, and is also Coordinator of the Children’s Literature Program in the Department of English Language and Literature. Dr. Wannamaker is well known as a scholar and teacher with a particular interest in gender questions. In 2008, she published Boys in Children’s Literature and Popular Culture: Masculinity, Abjection, and the Fictional Child (Routledge), and she recently produced an edited book, Mediated Boyhoods: Boys, Teens, and Young Men in Popular Culture and Media (Peter Lang, 2011). She and Michelle Ann Abate are currently editing Global Perspectives on Tarzan: From King of the Jungle to International Icon, a book that will be published by Routledge in 2012. She has published an extensive list of journal articles and chapters, and made her first appearance in CLE in 2006, with an article on Holes. She has been active in the Children’s Literature Association for many years, and in 2010 she organized a highly successful annual conference for this organization, on the theme of ‘‘Children’s Literature and Media.’’ Dr. Wannamaker has already begun working on CLE with her usual energy and flair. All friends of the journal will be glad to welcome her aboard and wish her a long and successful tenure.

The Sublime was Yesterday. Latest news about Barnett Newman

Twenty years after the American publication of Barnett Newman’s writings, they are now appearing in a French translation by Jean-Louis Houdebine. Borrowing the organization and part of the contents of the American edition, the French version, for which we are indebted to Jean Clay, adds a concluding section made up of texts which have mostly been already published and, above all, an impressive critical apparatus which, as J. Clay’s foreword mentions, acts largely as commentary–a euphemism, gi...

My Vision for JAMA

JOURNALS ARE SACRED TRUSTS. THEY ARE THE MOST important voice of the scientific community and the bridge between investigators and clinicians. Journals help establish accepted practice norms, they influence policy decisions, and they are read by clinicians and patients alike. Recently, journals have evolved: most journals now contain far more value-added material than original research papers. Many are experimenting with new ways of communicating, including podcasts, videos, and ways to register the opinions of their readers. The best journals contribute to the discourse about the many complexities of medicine and influence how it is practiced. I have been given the reins of a great publication: JAMA. I thank the selection committee for choosing me and the outgoing editor, Dr Cathy DeAngelis, and her staff, who have done an outstanding job these past 12 years. The stature of JAMA has never been greater and the journal has clearly thrived under Cathy’s leadership. She has enhanced the scientific rigor of JAMA research reports. In numerous editorials, she has carefully articulated the importance of understanding and reporting possible conflicts of interest. Although concerns about potential conflicts have always existed, Cathy’s persistence and JAMA’s leadership in this area have led to substantial changes in the reporting of such conflicts in journals and academic medical centers. In addition, her outspoken and often-repeated concerns that each researcher has an ethical responsibility to report the results of studies accurately contributed substantially to mandatory registration of clinical trials. This latter success has done more to ensure the scientific integrity of medical research than any other change in the last decade. I am a pediatrician whose academic home for the past 20 years has been Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center (formed by the merger of Boston City Hospital and University Hospital). For the past decade, I have led a large division of general pediatrics that remains committed to clinical and health services research focused on low-income urban children. My passions have been my own research and mentoring and development of academic careers. The division has been fortunate to have a thriving 2-decades-old federally supported fellowship training program and the majority of faculty members have received career development awards from the NIH and various foundations, or both. Virtually all of our faculty members have become successful independently supported investigators. My own training is in epidemiology and biostatistics, and I have conducted numerous clinical trials and observational cohort studies. My editorial experience and knowledge of publishing comes via Archives of Disease in Childhood (ADC), the official publication of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (UK), starting out as the journal’s American Editor in 2000 and becoming Editor-in-Chief in 2003. During the past 8 years ADC has aggressively pursued intelligent innovation, experimenting with different types of articles, columns (including global health reports), critically appraised topics, and guideline reviews and with interactive radiology and dermatology sections. We supported original research, ensuring that our articles reflected the vast enterprise of medicine. These reports became shorter and more focused. Readership surveys were conducted every 3 years and the information was used to help sculpt content and develop new initiatives. ADC pursued relationships with various pediatric societies around the world. I have come to appreciate how health care is organized and delivered in many European, Asian, and South American countries. I was blessed with editors who were energetic, intelligent, innovative, and committed to making ADC a better journal. What about the future of JAMA? Both the print edition and Web site are being redesigned. We are hoping for a more modern look that is easier to navigate and better highlights our content. We will experiment with new and creative ways to present material and to engage and hear from our readers. The content will also evolve over time. JAMA must be a place for ideas—ideas that affect health care in the United States as well as around the world. Medicine is a complex organism, and JAMA must reflect its myriad moving parts. Evidence will be balanced with narrative, and the views of influential practitioners and observers of medicine will be published.

Review: Trans. Alessandro de Magistris and Gianluigi Giacone by Alessandro de Magistris, Irina Korob'ina, editors

Alessandro de Magistris and Irina Korob'ina , editors, Ivan Leonidov, 1902–1959 . Trans. Alessandro de Magistris and Gianluigi Giacone , Milan: Electa/architettura, 2009, 324 pp., 207 color and 130 b/w illus. €110, ISBN 978883705761 In 1978 the Architectural League of New York opened a small exhibition about a then-obscure Soviet architect, Ivan Il’ic Leonidov. Two decades later, in 2002, Rem Koolhaas declared in Moscow, at the celebration of Leonidov's 100th anniversary, “If the entire twentieth-century architecture of the world was destroyed, it could be brought back to life through the genetic code of Leonidov's architecture” (117). Koolhaas also suggested that Leonidov's three idiosyncratic ceramic, glass, and steel towers for the 1934 NARKOMTJAŽPROM competition be raised at New York's Ground Zero. What is certain is that his discovery of Leonidov's architecture in 1971 at the exhibition Art and Revolution , organized by Oleg Svidkovskij at the Hayward Gallery in London, was the catalyst that propelled the Dutch architect to abandon his career as a filmmaker in order to become one of the most important architects of our day. Kenneth Frampton was no less emphatic when he wrote in 1981, in the preface to the American translation of the first monograph the Soviets dedicated to Leonidov (published in Russian in 1971), “There is probably no figure of the modern movement who haunts the stage of the twentieth century with such persistence as Ivan Leonidov.”1 Indeed, both the Parc de la Villette in Paris and analogous cultural and recreational facilities in Japan are avowed progeny of Leonidov's radical concept of a Palace of Culture (Dvorec Kultury) designed for a Moscow competition in 1929. I. M. Pei's glass pyramid for the Louvre—a Palace of Culture par excellence—echoes Leonidov's Palace of Culture glass pyramid, with a dirigible hovering above. Leonidov, a passionate adept of aircraft, was playing off the image published in the Soviet press in the 1920s featuring a dirigible cruising above the pyramids of Luxor. It is no less true, even if unacknowledged, that Le Corbusier's …

A Note on the Search for the Publication Date of Wuthering Heights , Boston, Coolidge & Wiley, 1848

The order of publication of the first two American editions of Wuthering Heights has previously been uncertain. The New York, Harper & Brothers publication date is known to be 21 April 1848. The Boston, Coolidge & Wiley publication date had not been previously established. This note determines the likely publication date as 28 April 1848 based on advertisements for the book on that date. Further confirmation that the Harper & Brothers was the first American edition is based on textual analysis of the 1847 first London edition and the 1848 New York and Boston editions.

Mathematical Lens: Geometry Lives at Greeley!

Greeley West High School (GWHS), named for the prominent American newspaper editor Horace Greeley, was designed by the architectural firm of John Shaver of Salina, Kansas. GWHS faculty and administration worked with the assistant principal, Bob Kula, to clarify for Shaver's firm their needs and expectations for the new building; construction was completed in 1965. Kula later served as a school projects adviser for Shaver's firm.

The Effects of Race and Maternal Education Level on Children’s Retells of the Renfrew Bus Story—North American Edition

The Renfrew Bus Story--North American Edition (RBS-NA; C. Glasgow & J. Cowley, 1994) is widely used in clinical and research settings to determine children's language abilities, although possible influences of race and maternal education on RBS-NA performance are unknown. The current study compared RBS-NA retells of 4 groups of children: African American (AA) children and European American (EA) children whose mothers had an education level of high school or less (≤ HS) and those whose mothers had an education level higher than high school (> HS). Statistical tests were used to examine 172 kindergartners' story retells using raw scores for all 4 RBS-NA measures: (a) Information, (b) Sentence Length, (c) Complexity, and (d) Independence. A 2 × 2 analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed main effects of maternal education and race for the Information score, with ≤ HS and AA children scoring lower. For measures not meeting ANOVA assumptions, 2 × 2 ANOVAs using ranked data indicated significant main effects of maternal education for Sentence Length, Complexity, and Independence measure, with ≤ HS children scoring lower within the AA group. There are systematic effects of maternal education and race on children's RBS-NA performance, which is important for both researchers and clinicians to take into account when using this instrument.

The Americans at 50: A review of the exhibition and related publications of Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans.

In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the first American edition of Robert Frank's seminal publication The Americans, the National Gallery of Art circulated an exhibition in 2009, accompanied by two related catalogs that provide a comprehensive and exhaustive examination of the genesis, creation, and critical reception of the book. This review analyzes the curatorial issues raised by both the exhibition and the publications in representing The Americans as a physical object and cultural entity.

Reasonable Conversions: Susanna Rowson's Mentoria and Conversion Narratives for Young Readers

y the time Susanna Rowson published Mentoria; or, the Young Lady's Friend in 1794, most literate British and American readers had encountered a plentiful supply of juvenile conversion narratives—stories that illustrate children's dedication to Christianity, often on the deathbed, the most striking example of which is the clas- sic Calvinist text A Token for Children: Being an Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children (1671-1672; American edition 1700) penned by English Puritan minister James Janeway. 1 The work collects the stories of children who convert and ultimately die at an early age, all related with an explicit didactic goal of promoting readers' conversions as well. A hundred years later a wave of seduction novels flooded the literary marketplace in Britain and America, some of which appropriated conventions of the sacred conversion form and secularized it for eighteenth-century audiences by merging the concept of moral transformation with Enlightenment-era models of rational education. Though not well known, Rowson's Mentoria—a curious conglomeration of thematically-related pieces from multiple genres, including the essay, epistolary novel, conduct book, and fairy tale—of- fers particularly fertile ground for thinking about the nexus between eighteenth-century didactic books and earlier works for young readers. 2 At the heart of Mentoria is a series of letters describing girls who yield, with dire and frequently deadly consequences, to the passionate pleas of male suitors. 3 Fallen women populate Rowson's world, and scholars have traditionally read Mentoria within the familiar bounds of the eighteenth-century seduction novel. 4 However, Rowson's creation transforms the older tradition of didactic,

New Oxford American dictionary

Produced by Oxford's American Dictionaries Program, and drawing on the expertise of scores of American scholars and advisors, The New Oxford American Dictionary sets the standard of excellence for lexicography in this country. Here is the most accurate and richly descriptive picture of American English ever offered in any dictionary. Oxford's American editors drew on our 200-million-word databank of contemporary North American English, plus the unrivaled citation files of the world-renowned Oxford English Dictionary. We started with American evidence--an unparalleled resource unique to Oxford. Our staff logged more than 50 editor-years, checking every entry and every definition. Oxford's ongoing North American Reading Program, begun in the early 1980s, keeps our lexicographers in touch with fresh evidence of our language and usage--in novels and newspapers, in public records and magazines, and on-line, too. To provide unprecedented clarity, the entries are organized around core meanings, reflecting the way people think about words and eliminating the clutter and confusion of a traditional dictionary entry. Each entry plainly shows the major meaning or meanings of the word, plus any related senses, arranged in intuitive constellations of connected meanings. Definitions are supplemented by illustrative, in-context examples of actual usage. This major new edition of The New Oxford American Dictionary includes a guide to the pronunciations on every page, a new etymology essay by Anatoly Liberman, completely updated and revised maps, and more than a thousand new entries, covering everything new in our language from low-carb to warblog and beyond. The New Oxford American Dictionary is designed to serve the user clearly, simply, and quickly, with the precise guidance you expect from Oxford University Press. With in-depth and up-to-date coverage that all users need and expect--for reading and study, for technical terms, for language guidance--it continues the tradition of scholarship and lexicographic excellence that are the hallmarks of every Oxford dictionary. Web Site A companion web site is now available at www.oup.com/us/noad.

Notes from a Second Line Journal: Suggestions for Authors

Abstract: This paper was written for a proposed volume on the Experiences of Economics Journal Editors to be edited by Professor Michael Szenberg. In our contribution, we provide some suggestions for authors based on our combined 26 years as American and European editors of Managerial and Decision Economics. Our specific suggestions are: Get the English right; Update your references; Help the editor find referees; Don’t be negative; Pay attention to referees; and Be sure the journal is correct for your paper. These suggestions are based on the idea that the editorial process is a cooperative effort between editors and authors, both of who want a prompt and accurate editorial process. Authors can help this process by citing authorities who are likely to be interested in the topic and will make accurate referees since most referees are chosen from the cited authors.

Independence or Not? Paul V. McNutt, Manuel L. Quezon, and the Re-examination of Philippine Independence, 1937–9

In 1934 the United States set the Philippines on a new course, one that was to begin with autonomy for the archipelago as a ‘commonwealth’ - not a colony - and end with the Islands gaining independ...

Excellence, innovation and impact factor of Ultrasound in Obstetrics & Gynecology

Excellence, innovation and impact factor of <i>Ultrasound in Obstetrics &amp; Gynecology</i>

Risk-Based Policies for Airport Security Checkpoint Screening

Passenger screening is an important component of aviation security that incorporates real-time passenger screening strategies designed to maximize effectiveness in identifying potential terrorist attacks. This paper identifies a methodology that can be used to sequentially and optimally assign passengers to aviation security resources. An automated prescreening system determines passengers' perceived risk levels, which become known as passengers check in. The levels are available for determining security class assignments sequentially as passengers enter security screening. A passenger is then assigned to one of several available security classes, each of which corresponds to a particular set of screening devices. The objective is to use the passengers' perceived risk levels to determine the optimal policy for passenger screening assignments that maximize the expected total security, subject to capacity and assignment constraints. The sequential passenger assignment problem is formulated as a Markov decision process, and an optimal policy is found using dynamic programming. The general result from the sequential stochastic assignment problem is adapted to provide a heuristic for assigning passengers to security classes in real time. A condition is provided under which this heuristic yields the optimal policy. The model is illustrated with an example that incorporates data extracted from the Official Airline Guide (Official Airline Guide. 1998. OAG Business Travel Planner: North American Edition. Official Airline Guides, Bedfordshire, UK).

The Ghosts of Harlem: Sessions with Jazz Legends (review)

Reviewed by: The Ghosts of Harlem: Sessions with Jazz Legends Edward Komara The Ghosts of Harlem: Sessions with Jazz Legends. By Hank O'Neal. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2009. [viii, 488 p. ISBN 9780826516275. $75.] Illustrations, discography, index, compact disc. The Harlem Renaissance has meant much to African Americans: unfettered aspirations, cosmopolitan expressions, racial pride, and a sense of place. For many Americans, "Harlem" north of 110th Street in Manhattan invokes not the Dutch (from whose city Haarlem the name was taken and evolved to its present spelling), but the gifted African Americans who crafted there a new urban identity with words and music. The Harlem Renaissance is often celebrated; its decline and afterglow is told less [End Page 770] often and all too quickly. Hank O'Neal's Ghosts of Harlem offers an unblinking look at the end of a fabled era. In his introduction, O'Neal tells the prior history of this publication. The first edition was published not in English but in French (Les fantômes de Harlem: l'histoire du quartier mythique du jazz [Levallois-Perret: Filipacchi, 1997]); it consisted of portraits and edited interviews originally conducted in English, then translated into French by Florence Paban. The book became a cult item, even in American jazz shops. One purchaser, Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, asked O'Neal why there was no English-language edition, and his subsequent assistance on the author's behalf helped to pave the way for the present publication. Any page of that French edition or of this new American one shows what captivated Ertegun. Each of the interviews is preceded with a full-page portrait of the speaker taken by O'Neal with a large-format view camera. Additional shots of the performing venues as they looked in the 1980s and 1990s are given in a separate chapter. Historical photographs from the Renaissance period, whether of the speakers or of the individual people and places discussed at length, and reproductions of 78 rpm jazz record labels are placed wherever appropriate in the interviews. The production values for the French edition were very high, although the dark toning made most of the photographs seem like they were taken under overcast skies. In the new American edition, the illustrations are rendered better, bigger, and brighter than before. A few of the portraits—such as that of Buck Clayton—may seem more natural in the French printing. But other pictures are better examined in this second presentation. For example, the picture of Clayton rehearsing a group of musicians during a 1990 Chiaroscuro label session for Milt Hinton's album Old Man Time (Chiaroscuro 310) includes in the background Hinton at his bass and Red Richards at piano. The French reproduction (p. 245) blankets Hinton and Richards in darkness, while the present edition (p. 271) reveals them well enough to be identifiable. The premise of the interviews, and hence of the book, was how and why jazz disappeared from the Harlem musical scene. Jazz didn't merely fall out of favor within that neighborhood, it seemed to have vanished. When it could be heard in the 1980s—such as at Small's Paradise where O'Neal could find it at the time—jazz seemed to be making odd reappearances rather than an abiding return. Through his record label Chiaroscuro Records, O'Neal was a colleague with many jazz musicians great and good. In the mid-1980s, he began asking about the decline of jazz in Harlem with the veterans he knew, and with the late John Hammond. From their remarks and suggestions, O'Neal sought additional former participants in Harlem jazz, often meeting them for the first time. His strategy was to pose to each musician the same basic set of approximately twelve questions. For me, the most telling answers were often elicited by these: (1) Where [and in what year] did you first work [as a musician] in Harlem, either for pay or just jamming? (2) Describe the audience. Was it black, white, or mixed? (3) When you weren't performing, where did you hear the best music and who was your favorite band? (4) When did you notice the music scene beginning to...

The Return of the Repressed: Modern Jewish Studies in JQR

The Return of the Repressed:Modern Jewish Studies in JQR David N. Myers As one reads the editorial announcement with which Cyrus Adler and Solomon Schechter opened the new series of JQR in July 1910, one gets the distinct sense that they felt themselves at the dawn of a new era. "America," they wrote, "is fast becoming the center of Jewry, and in all likelihood, will become also the center of Jewish learning in the English world." The transatlantic passage of the Jewish Quarterly Review from London to Philadelphia, from the editorial control of Claude Montefiore and Israel Abrahams to Adler and Schechter, symbolized a broader transition of Jewish scholarship from its European birthplace to its new American home. Well before the devastation of the Shoah—and alongside the fledgling Zionist enterprise in Palestine—America was indeed becoming a center of Jewish scholarship. At first, this growth took place mainly in rabbinical seminaries and Jewish colleges (such as JQR's first sponsor, Dropsie College). Later in the twentieth century, the main institutional venue shifted from seminaries and colleges to the university, where Jewish studies has become a mainstay of humanistic inquiry. One could well imagine Adler and Schechter feeling a mix of sadness and satisfaction that Dropsie College did not survive, but its library—and JQR itself—were taken over and put to new use by a research center at the University of Pennsylvania. Quite similar to the founding fathers of Wissenschaft des Judentums, the first American editors conceived of their journal as filling a need not currently being met by the existing scholarly literature. Research in Jewish studies in America, they asserted, followed either a theological or local historical bent. By contrast, they aimed for a measure of Schechterian catholicity by embracing work in Jewish history, literature, philology, and archaeology. That said, the journal unavoidably tracked the research interests of the editors. Semitic philology and Bible à la Adler were amply represented in [End Page 345] the first years, as were articles that reflected Schechter's passion for and expertise in Geniza materials. What was conspicuously lacking was work on modern Jewish history. The editors made clear that they did not intend to retain the old JQR's interest in English Jewish history. Nor did they feel obliged to replicate the efforts of the American Jewish Historical Society. And yet, topics of modern concern crept into the pages of the journal. In the second issue (October 1911), the scholar of medieval Hebrew literature from JTS, Israel Davidson, wrote an essay that eventually wended its way around to its main subject: a review of a new dictionary devoted to the importation of Hebrew and Chaldean words into Yiddish coedited by C. D. Spivak and the renowned translator Yehoash. In a lengthy prelude to this discussion, Davidson offered an intriguing survey of both Hebrew and Yiddish literature in which he revealed himself to be impressively conversant with belles lettres and criticism in both languages. Even more interesting, though, were his judgments of the status of the two in his own day. Comparing the development of the two literary cultures, Davidson maintained that "in the short space of a quarter century Yiddish literature has made such rapid strides that it bids fair to outstrip modern Hebrew" especially in poetry and fiction. "Where is the Hebrew artist," he asked, "to equal Abramowitz [i.e., Mendele Mokher Seforim], unless we place his own Hebrew works side by side with his Yiddish? What Hebrew writer can measure up with the genius of [Y. L.] Peretz?" Davidson recognized that Hebrew literature was undergoing its own "extraordinary development." But he seemed intent on placing Yiddish even higher on the ladder of success, noting the "gigantic proportions" of its recent achievements. He even sought to explain its advantage over Hebrew by contrasting its mass appeal to the latter's "upper class" orientation. Davidson hastened to insist that his comparison had nothing to do with the ongoing ideological debate du jour about whether Hebrew or Yiddish was the national language of the Jews (as, for example, at the 1908 Czernowitz conference). One might speculate that he did not want to run afoul of the new editors of JQR, who sought...

Editorial: What is Varus or Valgus Knee Alignment?

Editorial: What is Varus or Valgus Knee Alignment?