Book Research Articles

To Civilise What We Inherit: Isabelle Stengers ‘Thinking with’ Gilles Deleuze

Hundreds of books have been written about Deleuze, but although many prominent philosophers and schools of philosophy have inherited from him, no single philosopher has emerged as the primary inheritor of Deleuze’s project. The Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers could serve as one conceptual persona among others playing such a role. Stengers refers to Deleuze in all but one of her fourteen books which have so far been translated into English, especially in The Invention of Modern Science, Cosmopolitics and Thinking with Whitehead, and this article ‘thinks with’ Stengers as she thinks with Deleuze through most of her references to his work over four decades.

Citation network analysis for viewpoint plurality assessment of historical corpora: The case of the medieval rabbinic literature.

Citation networks enable analysis of author groups, defining in-group dynamics, and mapping out inter-group relationships. While intellectual diversity and inclusiveness is one of the important principles of modern scholarship, it is intriguing to explore the extent to which these principles apply to historical communities of leaders and intellectuals. This paper introduces a novel methodological framework aimed at assessing the degree of viewpoint plurality and diversity of historical scholarship communities, through an in-depth analysis of the citations used in their literature, which has become possible due to the recently developed advanced computational analysis techniques. To achieve this goal, we have devised a set of new network-based indicators grounded in standard network metrics. These indicators can be applied at both the individual author and community levels. The developed methodology was applied to a citation network automatically constructed from a corpus of Rabbinic Halachic literature spanning the 10th to 15th centuries. This corpus includes over 5,000 citations from hundreds of books authored by approximately 140 Rabbinic scholars from six diverse geographic communities. We found that most of the authors and communities cite many more external resources from other communities than their own reflecting a willingness to engage with a diverse range of viewpoints. A more in-depth analysis based on the novel proportional diversity measures unveils more intriguing insights. Contrary to expectations, communities with the greatest number of external citations, such as Spain and Ashkenaz, surprisingly exhibit lower levels of viewpoint plurality compared to others, such as Italy and North Africa, elucidating a key finding of the study.

Book reviews

ABORTION THEN AND NOW: NEW ZEALAND ABORTION STORIES FROM 1940–1980 By Margaret SparrowWellington: Victoria University Press, 2010. 304pp. RRP $50ISBN 978 0 864736 32 1Reviewed by Sarah Donovan

Islamic Literacy and Scholarship in African Languages: The Case of Hausa in West Africa

Language is the main instrument in the wider spread and documentation of Islam and Islamic history in Africa and beyond. Historical development and rapid spread of Islam in African societies were historically accredited to African languages. The historic contact of the first Muslim generations with the Ethiopian emperor opens up the gate for the socio-linguistic development of translating Islamic dogma and messages into African languages. The Hausa factor in West African Islam is well noted in the writings of the early Muslim scholars. African linguistics contributions enhance the converts' literacy and develop a strong community of scholars of the highest historical relevance in the history of Islam in the African context. Africa is the home of about 2000 languages, Nigeria is with more than 556 languages, having Hausa leading the race with about 150 million speakers was rated as number 11 out of 7500 languages in the modern world as of 2022. Interestingly, about 85% of the Hausa native speakers are Muslims and about 69 percent of the Nigerian Muslim scholars are either Hausa natives or hausanized through Islamic activities in Hausaland. Thus, the spread of Islam in Africa was the handwork of African languages and not by the sword as alleged by the observers. My contact with Muslim scholars of various regions in Hausaland justified that, the technique of identification and naming Arabic alphabets are the same across the regions. In addition, the Ajami writing styles are the same. Hundreds of books and manuscripts are of the same orthography. These gave me the courage to investigate how it helps Islamic scholarship in the West African regions. This paper aims to study the role of Hausa Muslim scholars in the translation, naming, and adaptation of the 28 Arabic alphabets into the Hausa language which led to the innovation of Hausa Ajami writing and subsequent development of scholarship in the Hausaland. The paper would critically look into the Hausa-Arabic battle of alphabets treatment and the role of mother tongue in Islamic scholarship activities in West Africa Islam, with special emphasis on Hausa-speaking communities of West Africa.

The ideology of crisis in higher education

AbstractHigher education seems to be in a perpetual state of ‘crisis’. The many hundreds of books and papers containing this specific, or other relevantly similar expressions, convey a sense of fear and angst. Yet, what are these various crises about, and which values and beliefs are seen as threatened or ‘under attack’? This paper will provide an analysis of the ‘crisis’ literature and identify four major crisis themes – massification, marketisation, restitution and geopolitics, linked to their ideological basis and influences—including meritocracy, liberalism, restorative justice, and justice globalism. The second part of the paper analyses the massification crisis in Britain between the 1940s and the 1970s as a case example identifying how the principles of a meritocratic society played an influential role in the debate. It will be argued that the notion of ‘universities in crisis’ needs to be understood critically in terms of ideology and historically via the shifting and reshaping of such beliefs over time.

The Transformative Magic of Education in Walt Disney’s <em>The Sword in the Stone</em>

The Transformative Magic of Education in Walt Disney’s <em>The Sword in the Stone</em>

Nilai-Nilai Sosial di Dalam Pendidikan Pemuda Perspektif Sa’id bin Ali bin Wahf Al Qahthani (Telaah Kitab Al Hadyu An Nabawi fi Tarbiyah al Aulad fi Dhau Al-Kitab Wa As-Sunnah)

The young generation has contributed to achieve the glory of a nation, even history has recorded youth figures who were becoming key persons in achieving that glory. Provising young generation education contained social values, especially related to national culture, is urgently needed in order prevent them from cultures those can damage national identity. Today the young generation are being influenced by a destructive culture which has an impact on their identities and impacts on social life. Instilling social values is needed to re-connect youth with society. Sa'id bin Ali bin Wahf Al-Qahthani, a muslim educator in the Middle East has written hundreds of books related to Islamic teachings, one of these books entitled by Al Hadyu An Nabawi fi Tarbiyah al Aulad fi Dhau Al-Kitab Wa As-Sunnah as a guide in Islamic education including youth. With the formulation of the problem, what are the social values contained in youth education on the perspective of Sa'id bin Ali bin Wahf Al-Qahthani? Using qualitative research through literature study and analysis with content analysis it was concluded that youth education on the perspective of Sa'id bin Ali bin Wahf Al Qahthani contains social values in the form of; caring, kindship, mutual help, empathy, justice, cooperation, and democracy.

The Picassos in the 1901 Vollard Exhibition and Their History

This article describes Picasso’s first visit to the French capital in 1900, and the events that led to his first major exhibition at the acclaimed Galerie Ambroise Vollard in Paris in 1901. The first section provides a narrative of his early experiences abroad as a young unknown artist, his influences, and the contacts he established with friends, artists and dealers during this important period of his career; the second section traces the histories of the sixty-five artworks that were exhibited, identifying the collections those items went through after they were exhibited, their current locations, as well as the exhibitions in which they have been featured since Vollard first displayed them in his gallery. The last section elaborates on some of the immediate repercussions of the exhibition. The reported findings are the result of extensive research on hundreds of books and catalogs published on Pablo Picasso from 1901 to the present. The new facts we have uncovered are published here for the first time. Readers of the article will learn that the works included in Picasso’s first exhibition in France have been part of the most prestigious art collections, such as those of Justin K. Thannhauser, Gertrude Stein, Chester Dale, Paul Guillaume, Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., Paul Mellon, Helena Rubinstein, Alfred Flechtheim, Walter C. Arensberg, among others. The works have also been featured in such important overviews of his career as “Picasso, 75th Anniversary” 1957–1958, and “Picasso: An American Tribute”, 1962. Thus, while Vollard claimed that the exhibition at his gallery had no major impact, the facts show that it not only played an important role in Picasso’s acceptance as a groundbreaking newcomer, but also left a significant mark on the rest of his career, as evidenced by the works’ inclusion in the retrospectives held in Paris and Zürich in 1932, and New York in 1980.

Dr.Gohar Naushahi As A Researcher: An Overview

The literary and research services of Majlis-e-Taraqi-e-Adab Lahore are very high. Hundreds of books were compiled under the auspices of Majlis-e-Taraqi-e-Adab. Eminent researchers from all over India were given an opportunity to utilize their talents and contribute to the literature. These researchers have certainly painstakingly searched for ancient Urdu manuscripts and books and edited them and presented these books to the readers. Important Urdu books were saved from extinction due to his research efforts. Dr. Gohar Naushahi is one of the renowned researchers of Urdu. His research efforts are very important in the field of Urdu classical literature and literary history. On the platform of Majlis-e-Traqi-e-Adab, he edited rare books in Urdu. From his efforts, it can be inferred that there is a keen eye on the ancient spellings, manuscripts and script of Urdu. His research efforts are a beacon for future researchers.

Notes on “Notes on the Synthesis of Form”

This essay is a picaresque -- a first-person narrative relating the adventures of a rogue (me) sifting through the mind of Christopher Alexander as he left behind formalized design thinking in favor of a more intuitive, almost spiritual process. The work of Christopher Alexander is familiar to many computer scientists: for some it's patterns, for some it's the mystical **quality without a name** and "Nature of Order"; for many more it's "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" -- Alexander's formalized design method and foreshadowing ideas about cohesion and coupling in software. Since the publication of "Design Patterns" by Gamma et al. in 1994, there have been hundreds of books published about design / software patterns, thousands of published pattern languages, and tens of thousands of published patterns. "Notes," published in 1964, was quickly followed by one of Alexander's most important essays, "A City is Not a Tree," in which he repudiates the formal method described in "Notes," and his Preface to the paperback edition of "Notes" in 1971 repeats the repudiation. For many close readers of Alexander, this discontinuity is startling and unexplained. When I finally read "Notes" in 2015, I was struck by the detailed worked example, along with a peculiar mathematical treatment of the method, and a hint that the modularization presented in the example was reckoned by a computer program he had written -- all in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Because of my fascination with metaheuristic optimization, I couldn't resist trying to replicate his experimental results. Computers and their programs relish dwelling on flaws in your thinking -- Alexander was not exempt. By engaging in hermeneutics and software archeology, I was able to uncover / discover the trajectory of his thinking as he encountered failures and setbacks with his computer programs. My attempted replication also failed, and that led me to try to unearth the five different programs he wrote, understand them, and figure out how one led to the next. They are not described in published papers, only in internal reports. My search for these reports led to their being made available on the Net. What I found in my voyage were the early parts of a chain of thought that started with cybernetics, mathematics, and a plain-spoken computer; passed through "A City is Not a Tree"; paused to "make God appear in the middle of a field"; and ended with this fundamental design goal: **I try to make the volume of the building so that it carries in it all feeling. To reach this feeling, I try to make the building so that it carries my eternal sadness. It comes, as nearly as I can in a building, to the point of tears.**

La actividad financiera del Monasterio de Silos en el siglo XVIII a la luz de sus libros de cuentas

El artículo, tras sintetizar las características del gobierno de los monasterios benedictinos, respecto a su actividad económica en general, analiza la actividad financiera desarrollada por el Monasterio de Silos en la Edad Moderna, y más en concreto durante el período comprendido entre 1665-1835. La riqueza documental de su Archivo, en cuanto a Libros de Cuentas se refiere, ha permitido el análisis, cuantificación e interpretación de dicha actividad. Se han podido extraer conclusiones acerca de la importancia absoluta y relativa de la misma en el conjunto de aportaciones que contribuyeron al desarrollo económico del Monasterio y su entorno durante el mencionado periodo. Para ello, en primer lugar, se ha analizado la principal operación financiera vinculada a una buena parte de la propiedad laica libre, cual fue la concesión y redención de créditos hipotecarios mediante censos. Esta información se ha extraído de los registros del Libro de Censos y sus correspondientes escrituras públicas notariales conservadas en el Archivo. Igualmente, y con el propósito de determinar la contribución y representatividad de esta actividad financiera sobre el total de rentas del Monasterio, se han estudiado los diferentes tipos de ingresos existentes, tanto los procedentes de la administración y gestión económica de los bienes propiedad del Monasterio –rentas de los censos, rentas de las tierras cedidas en explotación y productos de tierras y ganados obtenidos mediante la explotación directa-, como los procedentes de su condición eclesiástica y actividad religiosa –diezmos, sacristía y extraordinarios-. Este análisis se ha podido efectuar a partir de los registros y anotaciones efectuadas en los Libros de Mayordomía y Depósito. Por último, tras revisar los Libros de Consejos, seargumentan las razones que podrían justificar la permanencia de la actividad financiera en esta institución eclesiástica, así como las causas que pudieran explicar la necesidad de endeudamiento de los campesinos.

The Judicial Bookshelf

The Judicial Bookshelf Donald Grier Stephenson Jr. (bio) Introduction: Supreme Court History as a Parade of Themes Of the hundreds of books about the Supreme Court published in the twentieth century, surely few have been more widely read and referenced than The American Supreme Court by Robert G. McCloskey, professor of government at Harvard University from 1946 until his death in 1969. First published in 1960 by the University of Chicago Press, this compact and elegantly written one-volume interpretive history of the Court has been updated now through six editions by McCloskey's student, Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas.1 The paragraph that concluded the Epilogue in the initial edition combined a historical overview with what appeared to be an admonition for the Warren Court, ironically just as it was on the eve of an even more activist phase. From 1789 to the Civil War, the Court labored to establish a reasoned argument for the cause of union. From the war to 1937 it performed a similar function on behalf of laissez faire. Toward the end of each of those periods, the judges overstepped the practical boundaries of judicial power and endangered the place they had earned in the American governmental system. Since 1937, the Court has striven to evolve a civil rights doctrine that will realize the promise of the American libertarian tradition, yet accord with the imperatives of political reality. Even when criticisms are duly acknowledged, the fact remains that the Court has contributed more to an understanding of this issue than any other agency in American life. It would be a pity if the judges, having done so much, should now once again forget the limits that their own history so compellingly prescribes.2 McCloskey's paragraph illustrates a common goal of many who write about the Court: Highlighting one or more themes that capture the essence of a period of judicial history. [End Page 113] Indeed, in fewer than 150 words, McCloskey pointed to at least four such themes, the last of which was hardly a surprise. As William Lasser observed some three decades later in the context of warnings against an overreach of judicial power, the theme of "weakness and vulnerability pervades the literature on the Supreme Court."3 This theme perhaps echoed the same "forbearance in the use of power" to which Paul Freund referred as he eulogized Justice Felix Frankfurter in 1965.4 The word forbearance itself is a reminder that the Court's work of deciding cases occurs in at least three dimensions as it may choose to allow, to direct, as well as to forbid. Yet in the context of deciding cases contemporary observers as well as someone decades hence might well choose to associate the words political or partisan as both a related and even an identifying theme for the Court of this part of the twenty-first century. That characterization, however, is hardly novel or even distinctive in that the label could also easily be applied to much of the Court's history. Indeed, scholars have long regarded the Court as political in numerous ways. Perhaps most obviously, the Court is political because its decisions shape public policy by deciding what government—national, state, or local—may or may not do. At least since the 1960s, for example, the Court has overseen operation of the criminal justice system to a degree never before experienced, from police-citizen encounters through punishment. Second, decisions clarify the boundaries of political authority, focusing less on what may be done than on who may do it or how it may be done. The Steel Seizure Case5 turned not on whether government could cope with labor disruptions but on whether President Truman in the executive order had exceeded his authority and intruded into Congress's law-making domain. The Legislative Veto case6 did not question government's authority to deport a particular individual but instead challenged the device by which Congress had mandated deportation. Third, the Court itself may become an issue in presidential elections, as has happened at least a dozen times since 1800 because of unpopular decisions. Quadrennial campaigns in the past four decades, for example, would have...

A Glimpse of Einstein's Living Quality: Humanbecoming Hermeneutic Sciencing.

The purpose of this humanbecoming hermeneutic sciencing was to discover the emergent meanings in the living quality of humanuniverse, Albert Einstein. The author's dialogue with various media centered on the question: What are the emergent meanings in the living quality of the legendary figure, Albert Einstein? For this humanbecoming hermeneutic sciencing, the works investigated by the author were limited to only three media sources: Einstein Revealed, a public television production; the book that inspired the work, Einstein: His Life and Universe, by Walter Isaacson; and the BBC-DVD video, Einstein and Eddington. There are hundreds of books, essays, films, and other works about Einstein that were not included in this hermeneutic investigation.

Science Fiction

SCIENCE FICTION by Sherryl Vint. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2021. 224 pages. Paperback; $15.95. ISBN: 9780262539999. *Science Fiction is the story of the romance between fiction and science. The goal of the book is not to define the history or essence of science fiction, but rather to explore what it "can do" (p. 3). How does fiction affect scientific progress? How does it influence which innovations we care about? In the opposite direction, what bearing does science have on the stories that are interesting to writers at a point in time? Science Fiction references hundreds of books to paint a cultural narrative surrounding science fiction. Throughout the book, Vint refers to the fiction as ‘sf' in order to avoid distinctions between science fiction and speculative fiction. The dynamic between science and fiction is a relationship defined by both scientific progress and by forming judgments of the direction of development through a lens of fiction. Fiction is cause and effect; we use fiction to reflect upon changes in the world, and we use fiction to explore making change. *Vint, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and of English at the University of California, Riverside, gives overviews of different areas of sf. These include some of the most common sf elements, such as utopias and dystopias (chap. 2), as well as relatively recent concerns, such as climate change (chap. 7). Through these questions, she is navigating one question: how does sf engage with the world? It is more complex than the commonly reflected-upon narrative that sf is an inspiration to inventors--it is a relationship moving in both directions and involves value judgments as well as speculation about scientific possibilities. *The book also navigates the attitudes at the root of sf. Vint presents sf as a fundamentally hopeful, perhaps even an optimistic, genre. She describes sf as "equally about frightening nightmares and wondrous dreams" (p. 13). Yet even dystopian stories require hope for a future. Showing the world gone wrong still requires "the seeds of believing that with better choices we might avoid these nightmares" (p. 32). This is certainly true in the discussion of climate change sf. Where nonfiction writing often focuses on the impartial mitigation of disasters, the heart of fiction offers "the possibility to direct continuous change toward an open future that we (re)make" (p. 136). *The most surprising chapter is the penultimate one, focusing on economics (chap. 8). Vint discusses the recent idea of money as a "social technology" (p. 143) and the ways our current economy is increasingly tied to science, including through AI market trading and the rise of Bitcoin. The chapter also focuses on fiction looking at alternative economic systems--how will the presence or absence of scarcity, altered by technology, change the economic system? Answers to this and similar questions have major implications on the stories we tell and the way we seek to structure society. *As Christians, we have stories to help us deal with our experiences in life and our hope for the future. Science Fiction discusses sf as the way that our communities, including the scientific community, process life's challenges and form expectations for the future. We must not only repeat the stories from scripture, but also participate in the formation of the cultural narratives as ambassadors of Christ. While Science Fiction does not discuss the role of religion in storytelling, the discussion of our ambitions and expectations for the future is ripe for a Christian discussion. *Vint describes sf as a navigational tool for the rapid changes occurring in the world. Science Fiction references many titles that illustrate the different roles sf has played at historical points and that continue to form culture narratives. While some pages can feel like a dense list of titles, it is largely a book expressing excitement about the power and indispensability of sf. I would recommend this book for those who want to think about interactions between fiction, science, and culture, or learn about major themes of sf, as well as those interested in broadening the horizons of their sf reading. *Reviewed by Elizabeth Koning, graduate student in the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801.

Becoming Italian

Becoming Italian

On British travelers in Albania from the Georgian era to Edwardian era: Studies and travelogue

This paper is a summary of the tradition of British travelers in Albania during the 19th century until the First World War. Referring to British history and British cultural traditions, these travelers are classified between two periods: from Georgian era to Edwardian era. British travelers began to visit Albania frequently, especially from the time of the rule of Ali Pasha Tepelena, through whose pasha’s territory traveled many British agents, missionaries, and adventurers, including the eminent poet Gordon Byron and his friend John C. Hobhouse, and Dr. Henry Holland. The first part of the paper deals with the main studies for travelogue literature, listing the authors and their studies according to the order and study approaches. As there are hundreds of books with travel notes from British travelers on Albania and Albanians, the second part of the article focuses only on some of the most famous British travelers, such as Edward Lear, Arthur Evans, Edith Durham, Henry N. Brailsford and Aubrey Herbert. The purpose of this paper is to make a chronological history of British travelers in Albania and historical literature on this literature genre of British travelers who traveled and describes Albania of late modernity.

Review of Carceral Con: The Deceptive Terrain of Criminal Justice Reform

Literally hundreds of books plus thousands of journal articles have been written about the penal system during the past 100+ years. With few exceptions, these capture neither the history nor the complete political and economic context of this system of punishment. Carceral Con is one of these rare exceptions. Whitlock and Heitzeg get the reader’s attention in the introductory chapter when they deviate from the usual discussion of the penal system by outlining several key concepts: structural inequality, neoliberalism, political economy, and especially intersectionality, which encompasses race, class, gender, sexuality, and age. In the past “reforms” have never focused on these issues or in their words “the erroneous notion that the massive harms and injustices of the criminal legal system can be reformed as a standalone project” (p. 10). In a departure from previous analyses the authors spend a lot of time discussing the growth of jail populations and...

The Writer's Wife

The Writer's Wife Kenneth A. Fleming (bio) Day 1. You said the writers would never be silenced here. But I fear they have finally succeeded. So I won't mention the name of this land, or any names because I don't know where they have taken you. Because I want you to remain alive. When I arrived home from spending the weekend in the country with my sister, her husband, and their newborn son, I discovered our front door slightly ajar—just enough to look innocence, enough for a harmless snake to slither in—like you had forgotten your glasses as soon as you reached the door. My hand touched the door, just enough to brush it open. But I knew then—the silence was too immense to contain you. You must have met the soldiers at the door. Still—the lamps in our living were broken, the picture frames slapped off the walls. The library was destroyed, our bedroom upended. It had to have been the interview. You did not speak bad about this country's president, you were careful. When the interviewer led you and asked if you had finished any new novels, you only smiled. I should have known—a smile, yes, something as small as a smile could have caused this. Isn't every smile a doorway to a truth? And in this land, when people take office, they don't want to be leaders and solve the problems of the people. No, they want to be worshipped. So, yes, your smile threatened that. The bookcases in the library had been ripped from the walls, the lavender area rug hidden underneath the hundreds of books scattered across the wooden floor. Maybe they thought you had a secret room somewhere in the house and that was where you were hiding your work. Did you? My mind cringed at the thought of them handcuffing you, flinging you against the wall as they searched the house. Where are those books, Mr. Writer? I imagined them saying. When I climbed into the study and picked up a book, I discovered your blood along the pages—a trace you were here, a trace that you were gone; but also, my heart hoped, a trace that you were still alive. You didn't die in the library. There wasn't enough blood. In the far corner of the library I found this empty journal, as if flung there by one of the soldiers. I picked it up like it was an injured animal, alive but barely breathing. I don't know how to go about finding you, so I will write to you. As I'm writing now, outside the wind wheezes by our home as if in pain. Day 2. I manage not to cry when I call my sister. She is nursing the baby when she answers the phone. I refuse to speak. She keeps saying, Tell me what's wrong? Even when the baby starts wailing, she persists and eventually I say it: They took him. The silence that follows makes it feel like they are listening in on our conversation. Neither of us is as brave as you. I can't ask her to hide me. Her husband won't allow it, newborn or not. That's her problem, I imagine him scolding her. She married him. We both know it will be a long time before we speak again, so we stay on the line without saying words. In her silence [End Page 124] she is asking, Are you safe? In mine I'm replying, Is there a such thing as safe if they can just take you and make it as if you never existed? Day 3. I can't sleep. My tears know no end, my tears are an army. They storm out of me demanding answers. I shiver as if somehow I am connected to you, and you are being dragged in the cold. I step outside before dawn, before our neighbors awake, the crisp morning air curious, spying on me. Barefoot, I lumber away from the house, the ground cold and hard underneath my feet. At the edge of our property...

Teaching Anticommunism: Fred Schwarz and American Postwar Conservatism

Teaching Anticommunism: Fred Schwarz and American Postwar Conservatism

Book Review: Immunology and Rheumatology in Questions.

Book Review: Immunology and Rheumatology in Questions.