Early Interest Research Articles

ПІДГОТОВКА ВЧИТЕЛІВ ПОЧАТКОВИХ КЛАСІВ ДО РОЗВИТКУ ПРОФЕСІЙНИХ ЗАЦІКАВЛЕНЬ УЧНІВ НА ОСНОВІ ВИКОРИСТАННЯ ТЕОРІЇ МНОЖИННИХ ІНТЕЛЕКТІВ

The article provides a theoretical analysis of research by domestic and foreign scientists, whose works are devoted to the problems of professional training of future teachers in the field of the primary school students’ early professional interests’ development. The author’s conceptual approach consists in using the G. Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence as a methodological basis for preparing the primary school teachers for the diagnosis, formation and development the early professional interests’ of students.The author details the main provisions of the theory of multiple intelligences, describes the types of intellects that express ways of capturing and processing information by people: linguistic, mathematical-logical, kinesthetic, visual-spatial, musical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, natural, existential. The features identifying different types of intelligence of primary school pupils are characterized. Based on the research of foreign scientists, the directions of early professional orientation of students have been developed, the list of professions that best corresponding to each of the types of intelligence of the child has been determined.The author believes that a primary school teacher should support and develop the dominant type of the pupils’ intelligence in the educational process, consult the parents to predict the possible professional orientation in the future. A list of recommended questions has been formulated for parents of students to better systematize their observations of child at home. The article emphasizes that for teachers who diagnose and guide students to develop their professional interests, it is important to monitor and notice changes in today’s labor market, know the professions that will be most needed in the near future, if necessary, consult with experts on this issue. It is recommended to supplement the content of professional training of future primary school teachers with topics related to the formation of skills to diagnose and develop early professional interests of children.

Ephemeral are Gay Gulps of Laughter’: P. B. Shelley, Louis Macneice, and the Ambivalence of Laughter

Abstract Ambivalence is the hallmark of Shelley’s poetry, but the ambivalence of Shelley’s often underappreciated wit remains a relatively uncharted area of critical exploration. The characterization of laughter as ‘heartless fiend’ – or ‘heartless friend’ – in Shelley’s sonnet ‘To Laughter’ underscores this very ambivalence while also spotlighting the sociality of laughter. Drawing upon the ancient Greek ambiguities of laughter as socially divisive and socially integrative, laughter in Shelley’s poetry vacillates between ostracizing bursts and harmonizing glee. This essay explores the ambivalence of Shelleyan laughter and its echo in the poetry of Louis MacNeice, prompted by the modern poet’s early interest in ‘a comparison of Shelley & Nietzsche & a deification of laughter’. MacNeice’s realist leanings remain coloured by Romantic predispositions throughout his career. With attention to Shelley and MacNeice’s Classical backgrounds, this essay reveals how Shelleyan laughter echoes throughout MacNeice’s poetry and, in its ambivalence, unveils the extent to which identity is unfixed for both poets.

Hallowed Yalow: The 4th female ACR Gold Medal winner

Dr. Rosalyn (Sussman) Yalow (1921–2011) was born and raised in the Bronx, and spent most of her life and career in New York City. She had an early interest in science, particularly chemistry while attending Walton High School. However, while attending Hunter College (now the City University of New York) her professors encouraged her to pursue Physics as a career. While she was an undergraduate in the 1930s, Physics was a seemingly new and exciting frontier: in her own prescient words, “When I was in college, Physics, and in particular Nuclear Physics, was the most exciting field in the world.

A statement on the current status and future needs of the pediatric pulmonology workforce: Pipeline Workgroup.

There is growing concern that current trends in pediatric pulmonology will lead to a workforce shortage resulting in patients having difficulty accessing subspecialty care. As part of the Pediatric Pulmonology Division Directors Association and Pediatric Pulmonary Training Directors Association Workforce Summit, we examined factors affecting the recruitment of learners into pediatric pulmonary fellowship training (PPFT) programs. The goal of our workgroup was to describe these issues and develop a plan to increase the pipeline of learners who ultimately pursue PPFT. Specifically, we summarize factors that impact decisions to undertake PPFT, describe existing initiatives to enhance recruitment, and propose future strategies to increase early career learner interest.

PsychStart: a novel mentoring scheme for supporting and valuing medical students interested in psychiatry.

We describe the establishment and evaluation of a career-based mentoring scheme (PsychStart) for medical students interested in psychiatry. Medical students reported multiple benefits of mentoring, including enhanced personal and professional development, increased career and clinical knowledge, and broadened exposure to psychiatry. The mentoring scheme was also found to promote and sustain interest in the specialty. Further evaluation is required to determine the long-term effects of mentoring and how this may compare with other undergraduate enrichment activities. We conclude that mentoring in psychiatry could offer innovative solutions for improving recruitment and retention, and for supporting and valuing medical students who demonstrate an early interest in the specialty.

Gershom Scholem: Master of the Kabbalah by David Biale (review)

Reviewed by: Gershom Scholem: Master of the Kabbalah by David Biale Michael A. Meyer David Biale. Gershom Scholem: Master of the Kabbalah. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018. 232 pp. doi:10.1017/S036400942000032X In 1958, during an undergraduate year spent in Jerusalem, I received an invitation to visit Gershom and Fania Scholem in their Rehavia apartment. Aside from the courtesy and warmth with which the unexcelled—and sometime notorious—scholar of the Kabbalah welcomed my roommate and myself, the most lasting impression was of the library. In each room, volumes of various sizes stretched from floor to high ceiling, with additional books perched on dangling shelves suspended from above. Now close to forty years after Scholem's death, it is the abundance of books written about him and his brothers that arouses attention. A few years before Scholem passed away in 1982, David Biale was able to interview him and in 1979 to publish a first biography. In that volume, titled Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History, Biale argued that—for all of his critique of German Wissenschaft des Judentums—Scholem must be seen as extending that tradition into a new Zionist stage; his rebellion was not so much in opposition to the legacy of Leopold Zunz as it was directed against the bourgeois values that characterized much of German Jewry. Biale tried to link Scholem with Hermann Cohen in his rational approach, albeit directed toward a "history of irrationalism." As his title indicates, Biale at that time chose to understand Scholem's historiography as a "counter-history," by which he meant that underneath his predecessors' interpretations of Jewish history lay a vital "secret tradition," which for Scholem found expression in the Kabbalah. In his new book, Biale shifts the emphasis from Scholem's historiography and from what he had called his "anarchistic theology" to Scholem's life, an area whose details had remained largely hidden until they came to light in his publicly available archive, his letters, and his diaries. Having earlier focused on his thought, Biale turns his account toward Scholem's humanity, a subject almost as complex as his dialectical thinking. His goal is to understand Scholem "from within." In his youth Scholem was an enfant terrible, scarcely agreeing with anyone on anything for very long. His personality was ironic, and he was an expert poseur. The student of mystery was himself, in many ways—and perhaps purposefully—mysterious. As one would expect of a biography, David Biale organizes his brief volume chronologically. He begins with a description of the Scholem household in which Gerhard (as he was then called) suffered from a father whom Biale compares with the father of Franz Kafka. In rebellion, the son for a time became Orthodox, but that phase soon gave way to a Zionism mostly out of harmony with any other youthful Zionists. Like Theodor Herzl, the young Scholem also secretly believed that he might be "the Chosen One." Like his brother Werner—and unlike Martin Buber and most German Jews —Gerhard opposed World War I; by feigning psychosis he was able to gain a medical discharge from the army and avoid service in combat. Or were there perhaps genuine symptoms of mental illness? Biale at least raises that possibility. [End Page 453] In Berlin, Scholem was able to make the acquaintance of men who played a major role in Hebrew culture, among them Bialik and Agnon. But the only long-term and profound friendship was with Walter Benjamin, with whom he carried on a correspondence until Benjamin's tragic death by suicide in 1940. Benjamin was one of the few—perhaps the only one—whom Scholem regarded as his intellectual equal. The most original chapter in Biale's volume is that titled "Scholem in Love." Here Biale suggests that the Scholem-Benjamin relationship may have contained a homoerotic component. And later he raises the possibility that the reason Scholem had no children with either of his two wives may have been due to impotence. But the young Scholem did have numerous female friends, and, in a 1917 letter to Werner Kraft, he expresses the hope that his future children will speak Hebrew. Scholem's early interest in...

David Biale. Gershom Scholem: Master of the Kabbalah. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018. 232 pp.

Reviewed by: Gershom Scholem: Master of the Kabbalah by David Biale Michael A. Meyer David Biale. Gershom Scholem: Master of the Kabbalah. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018. 232 pp. doi:10.1017/S036400942000032X In 1958, during an undergraduate year spent in Jerusalem, I received an invitation to visit Gershom and Fania Scholem in their Rehavia apartment. Aside from the courtesy and warmth with which the unexcelled—and sometime notorious—scholar of the Kabbalah welcomed my roommate and myself, the most lasting impression was of the library. In each room, volumes of various sizes stretched from floor to high ceiling, with additional books perched on dangling shelves suspended from above. Now close to forty years after Scholem's death, it is the abundance of books written about him and his brothers that arouses attention. A few years before Scholem passed away in 1982, David Biale was able to interview him and in 1979 to publish a first biography. In that volume, titled Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History, Biale argued that—for all of his critique of German Wissenschaft des Judentums—Scholem must be seen as extending that tradition into a new Zionist stage; his rebellion was not so much in opposition to the legacy of Leopold Zunz as it was directed against the bourgeois values that characterized much of German Jewry. Biale tried to link Scholem with Hermann Cohen in his rational approach, albeit directed toward a "history of irrationalism." As his title indicates, Biale at that time chose to understand Scholem's historiography as a "counter-history," by which he meant that underneath his predecessors' interpretations of Jewish history lay a vital "secret tradition," which for Scholem found expression in the Kabbalah. In his new book, Biale shifts the emphasis from Scholem's historiography and from what he had called his "anarchistic theology" to Scholem's life, an area whose details had remained largely hidden until they came to light in his publicly available archive, his letters, and his diaries. Having earlier focused on his thought, Biale turns his account toward Scholem's humanity, a subject almost as complex as his dialectical thinking. His goal is to understand Scholem "from within." In his youth Scholem was an enfant terrible, scarcely agreeing with anyone on anything for very long. His personality was ironic, and he was an expert poseur. The student of mystery was himself, in many ways—and perhaps purposefully—mysterious. As one would expect of a biography, David Biale organizes his brief volume chronologically. He begins with a description of the Scholem household in which Gerhard (as he was then called) suffered from a father whom Biale compares with the father of Franz Kafka. In rebellion, the son for a time became Orthodox, but that phase soon gave way to a Zionism mostly out of harmony with any other youthful Zionists. Like Theodor Herzl, the young Scholem also secretly believed that he might be "the Chosen One." Like his brother Werner—and unlike Martin Buber and most German Jews —Gerhard opposed World War I; by feigning psychosis he was able to gain a medical discharge from the army and avoid service in combat. Or were there perhaps genuine symptoms of mental illness? Biale at least raises that possibility. [End Page 453] In Berlin, Scholem was able to make the acquaintance of men who played a major role in Hebrew culture, among them Bialik and Agnon. But the only long-term and profound friendship was with Walter Benjamin, with whom he carried on a correspondence until Benjamin's tragic death by suicide in 1940. Benjamin was one of the few—perhaps the only one—whom Scholem regarded as his intellectual equal. The most original chapter in Biale's volume is that titled "Scholem in Love." Here Biale suggests that the Scholem-Benjamin relationship may have contained a homoerotic component. And later he raises the possibility that the reason Scholem had no children with either of his two wives may have been due to impotence. But the young Scholem did have numerous female friends, and, in a 1917 letter to Werner Kraft, he expresses the hope that his future children will speak Hebrew. Scholem's early interest in...

The influence of early experiences and university environment for female students choosing geoscience programs: a case study at Universidad de Chile

Abstract. This case study addresses the experiences of female undergraduate students in the geology and geophysics programs at Universidad de Chile. These majors are part of the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Mathematics (FCFM) and have a relatively large proportion of female representation compared to the other engineering and science majors at FCFM that are dominated by male students. We interviewed 12 female students in geoscience majors to understand (a) the reasons for choosing geoscience as a major and (b) their experiences both at FCFM and in geoscience in an institution with a strong masculine environment that aims to increase women's undergraduate enrollment. We found that the decision to pursue a geoscience career was made during high school, and they maintained this decision during the first years of college, which is heavily focused on mathematics and physics, with no geoscience-related courses. During this early period in college, known as the common core program, students perceived a hostile environment due to high academic demands and gender-based discrimination. Their experiences had a positive shift once they started the geoscience courses in their fifth or sixth semester. The relatively large proportion of female students in the geoscience majors at FCFM creates a positive environment in which the participants developed a sense of belonging in the geoscience community. Students also felt that the feminist movement during 2018 in Chile positively influenced their perspectives on their path at FCFM. These findings give insights for developing strategies to increase early interest, participation, and satisfaction of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines at various educational levels.

Emotional speech prosody perception in the first year of life

Prosodic aspects of speech are considered more salient than linguistic features in prenatal listening environment. The literature on early prosodic speech perception has been largely focused on the role of infant-directed speech in language development. While emotional prosody is also ubiquitous and contains diverse social cues, its perceptual development trajectory remains unclear. The current study adopted the central fixation paradigm to investigate 3- to 12-month-old infants' preferential listening attention to English monosyllabic words spoken in neutral, happy, angry, and sad tones. Forty-six infants completed the experiment and were assigned to younger and older groups with the median cut-off age of 8 months. Linear mixed-effect model results revealed a prevailing trend of shorter listening time for the sad tone. Furthermore, this reduced level of attention was only statistically significant in the younger infants but not the older group, suggesting that the lower-pitched and longer sad prosody was least attractive to the younger infants. With more exposure to emotional speech and the ongoing neural commitment towards language-specific speech perception in the older infants, the early differential interests in voice emotions showed signs of mitigation in the context of spoken words, leading to a relative increase in their listening time to the sad tone.

Informed aspirations in science and engineering with upper elementary students after 1 year of a STEM intensive university‐school district partnership

AbstractThis article reports findings from a study of an integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education program on student interest and awareness in science and engineering. The analysis features grade 3–5 students from a high‐poverty, urban school system in the Mid‐Atlantic region. Through the quantitative analysis of closed ended survey responses and the qualitative analysis of an open‐ended query, we describe how the adoption of an intensive STEM‐focused partnership could influence students’ early interest in and awareness of science and engineering as disciplines and careers. The analysis of the student responses revealed that after 1 year of the project, the students enrolled in the program demonstrated developing interest in science and engineering and were better able to articulate a greater understanding of engineering as a discipline. These findings have implications for the effectiveness of an integrated STEM approach for upper elementary students participating and succeeding in the STEM fields.

Alfred Russel Wallace, antropólogo: contribuciones a la antropología física

La figura de Alfred Russel Wallace dentro de la antropología ha sido escasamente reconocida dentro de la historia de la disciplina. Un punto importante es ubicar al autor dentro de las discusiones antropológicas de la época victoriana, desde su interés temprano como naturalista por historizar a los seres humanos, hasta su labor institucional como el primer presidente de un departamento de antropología en Inglaterra. En ese contexto, el objetivo del trabajo es presentar la visión de Wallace respecto a la antropología física, a partir de su obra antropológica, que incluye referencias al origen de las razas humanas en términos naturalistas, al desarrollo de características físicas distintivas de los seres humanos o a la relación evolutiva entre primates. Con esto, se amplía la perspectiva sobre el desarrollo de la antropología física en el siglo XIX, al abrir el abanico a autores que contribuyeron de manera importante a su desarrollo.

In Memoriam: Marvin A. Van Dilla: 1919-2019.

© 2020 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry.

PLANTS AND THEIR SEASONAL CHANGES: TEACHING BIOLOGY IN PRIMARY SCHOOL USING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

With a view to the active learning, that makes the students protagonist, responsible and aware of the learning process, the present study presents an experimental work designed to demonstrate the usefulness and the validity of the scientific method as the basic element of the teaching of Life Sciences. Scientific training adopts an inductive approach to knowledge that allows us to observe, imagine, discover, verify, generalize, providing the tools needed to understand the reality. This research focused on the study of seasonality in the first class of a Primary School in Treviso (Italy), using a teaching approach based on direct field exploration and planning activities in which the sensory perceptual aspect is only the starting point. Those activities were based on both the observational comparative method (characteristic of Evolutionary Biology), and the experimental method (a feature of Functional Biology). Prior to the experimental out a preliminary investigation work was carried, involving the teachers of Natural Sciences and Experimental of some Italian Primary Schools. This survey allowed to paint a partial picture of how it the teaching of the Biology is performed, with particular reference to the seasonality, which was the starting point to develop and test a didactic approach of adequate originality. The addressed topics were divided in four stages corresponding to the seasons, and covered aspects of plant morphology (leafs, vascular tissues, flowers, fruits), plant physiology (the color changes of the leafs, leaf abscission, plant nutrition, fruit development) and the concept of biodiversity. The obtained results showed that, using the scientific method and laboratory tools such as the stereoscope and the optical microscope, conceptualizations planned for second cycle of the Primary School can be met with success in the first class, helping to reach the programmed goals optimally and often excellently, facilitating the achievement of competences such as the use of a correct scientific nomenclature. With this approach, the young students were motivated, stimulated, intrigued, and this potentially provides a meaningful, authentic and transferable Lifelong Learning and the development of a scientific culture together with an early interest in the Sciences.

ФОРМУВАННЯ ЧИТАЦЬКОЇ КУЛЬТУРИ МОЛОДШИХ ШКОЛЯРІВ ЯК АКТУАЛЬНА ПРОБЛЕМА СЬОГОДЕННЯ

The article is devoted to the formation of reading culture among junior schoolchildren as a current problem of today. Reading is one of the most popular activities. In the modern society reading skills are an integral part of the formation and development of a person, his or her learning and professional career. Reading is a complex phenomenon. It is a principle factor that ensures obtaining of general education, the main means of acquiring knowledge in higher education institutions. Reading plays an extremely important role for a competent personality development. It is not only a social phenomenon (helping to develop an individual as a personality, contributing to the formation of emotional culture, intelligence, logical and creative thinking), but also a pedagogical phenomenon, which is an important factor in the education of spirituality, aesthetic feelings, creators, rhetorical skills, and other personal qualities. It is known that the more a person reads, the greater general cultural experience and the higher level of intellectual development they have, the more expressive their speech becomes.The degree of involvement of boys and girls into reading shows the level of humanization of the entire society, that is why our research is focused on junior schoolchildren, as these people will soon be teaching and educating younger students as active readers. It is they who can lead early and sustained interest in reading to students, a kind of navigator in the overall flow of reading products for both children and their parents.In the primary school, the range of reading interests of the youth narrows; great spiritual potential of fiction remains out of the sight for most children. Such indicators make one think about the problems of forming the reading culture of juniors and the means of solving them. Therefore, it is necessary to raise the level of education, in particular literary, since it is the young educated people with critical thinking, forming the demand for a book, can dictate the mode of reading. At the state level, it is necessary to begin with the creation of a literary map of his area, to begin studying the literary process of each region in the state and every ethnos that populate Ukraine, to start work on investigating the historical and cultural heritage, the creative achievements of local writers in different historical periods.

Career Ladder: Luis Alvarez

1990s Early interest in chemistry Luis Alvarez had two semesters of organic chemistry under his belt before he left high school, thanks to an unusual program at his Hollywood, Florida, school. The ...

ESA HISTORICAL RECORDS COMMITTEE (Established 1944) Newsletter

ESA HISTORICAL RECORDS COMMITTEE (Established 1944) Newsletter

Charcot foot: Early diagnosis and interest in medical care: A case report

Charcot foot: Early diagnosis and interest in medical care: A case report

Novel Methodology for Recruitment of High School Students to Health Professions

Medical schools are creating programs to introduce careers in healthcare to students at earlier stages in their education. At the Penn State College of Medicine University Park Regional Campus, we have created and implemented a novel improvisational, case-based, small-group learning curriculum for high school students to introduce integrative thinking in basic and clinical sciences and to cultivate an early interest in health professions careers. The program also includes elements of health systems science and humanities. A multidisciplinary team of educators with both secondary and post-secondary pedagogical expertise worked together to develop a longitudinal case-based curriculum suitable for high school students. This curriculum was administered to a group of 40 students in grades 9-12. At the start of each session, students were challenged to explore personal biases, reflect upon ethical dilemmas, and to step outside their comfort zones with “centering exercises.” Through these activities, we strived to challenge the learners’ preconceptions about their colleagues, medicine, and their role within it. Students were then presented with a case as a large group. At critical junctures in the cases, students worked in small groups of 8-10 with 1-2 medical student facilitators to discuss questions and solve clinical dilemmas associated with the case. Early feedback from students and faculty advisors has been overwhelmingly positive. The authors have no conflicts of interest.

A Historical Account of My Early Research Interests

This paper presents a brief account of some of the my early research interests. This historical account starts from my laurea thesis on Signal Theory and my master thesis on Computation Theory. It recalls some results in Combinatory Logic and Term Rewriting Systems. Some other results concern Program Transformation, Parallel Computation, Theory of Concurrency, and Proof of Program Properties. My early research activity has been mainly done in cooperation with Andrzej Skowron, Anna Labella, and Maurizio Proietti.

African Kings and Black Slaves: Sovereignty and Dispossession in the Early Modern Atlantic

Historians and anthropologists, from Melville Herskovits to David Eltis, have detailed the intimate relationship between capitalism and slavery and long acknowledged modernity's cultural debt to Africans and African Americans. In the process, argues Herman Bennett in African Kings and Black Slaves, scholars have superimposed a subsuming “liberal order” over early Atlantic historiography (p. 20). The overemphasis on commodification and race, in particular, overlooks a critical fifteenth-century phase in the genealogy of slavery. The early Atlantic was not articulated through regimes of property or racialized difference, Bennett argues, but rather through Afro-European logics of sovereignty and dispossession through which liberalism, chattel slavery, and the modern economy would later emerge.In six concise chapters, Bennett engages a wide historiography and offers new perspectives on early Atlantic legal culture, political and religious authority, pageantry, and slavery. Bennett complicates the narrative that Europeans rendered Africans into property and capital through Roman law and Christian theology. He draws from the Catholic legal corpus of extra ecclesiam and humanist writings on sovereignty and natural law to offer careful reappraisals of the Romanus Pontifex (1455) and similar authoritative texts that dealt with non-Christians. Bennett argues that as trading vessels plied the early Atlantic, ecclesiastical authorities restricted Iberian plunder in Africa, just as they had in Andalusia, with legal precedents from Pope Innocent IV (1243) and others. Secular authorities, too, drew from Hostiensian arguments that limited illegal encroachment and dispossession. Pontiffs and legal scholars drew from a rich crusading legalese to shield non-Christians from unjust war and enslavement. Thus, while Roman law and Christian theology sanctioned slavery through just war and rescate, they also helped curtail the development of chattel slavery in the fifteenth-century Atlantic.The strength of African kings also helped curtail enslavement by Europeans. As Portuguese and Castilian monarchs extended trade in Guinea, slavers and traders approached territories with strong lords who limited Europeans to fortified trading factories along the coast. Despite princely ambitions, Bennett claims, slavery's marriage to capitalism in the fifteenth century was bridled by the twin forces of strong African lordship and a dynamic Catholic legal system. A matrix of civil, feudal, and ecclesiastical precedents evolved to extend dominium and imperium to non-Christians, allowing African lords and subjects the right to live outside of grace without European intrusion. While substantial literature details the strength of these African polities elsewhere, Bennett's nuanced analysis of the centrality of canon law to limiting European expansion is a welcome addition to the historiography.African Kings and Black Slaves does not rebuff the history of early Iberian commercial interest in Guinea. Rather, it situates fifteenth-century Christian institutions and Afro-European politics at the center of a discussion of modernity. Drawing on the influential works of Paul Gilroy and Alexander Weheliye, Bennett locates modernity in Atlantic slavery not vis-à-vis liberty or the free market but through Christian dogma and political absolutism. As ecclesiastical and secular authorities recognized non-Christian dominium by Moorish and African kings, Bennett points out, they also stripped other Jews, Moors, and non-Christian Africans of corporate rights, instituting two key features of modernity: legal individualism and the erosion of corporate identity. Iberian trade increased along the African coast as clerical attempts to define sovereignty waned against the growth in secular authority. Bennett points to a rupture of the oikos (economy) as it eclipsed the polis (politics) following sustained European engagement with African slavery. Iberians came to understand sovereignty increasingly through the lens of African political theater, pageantry, captivity, and trade regimes. Europeans developed new slave taxonomies, engaged in African ritual diplomacy, and eventually adopted Atlantic slavery as a baseline of power in early modern absolutist regimes.Bennett's nuanced look at the intersections of Christianity, slavery, and imperial politics successfully engages Gilroy's thesis of modernity and pushes it back to the fifteenth century. His findings—that much of early modern Iberian political theory developed outside Europe, in Africa, among lords, theologians, and merchants equal in trade relations and governed by shared ideologies of sovereignty and dispossession—are provocative and should be debated by students and scholars alike. Bennett's clarity is as sharp as his criticism, which at times borders on piercing. His theoretical interventions are exciting. The analysis of the genesis of modernity through the logic of enslavement under slavery's relationship to imperial governance and church dogma might not transcend the “liberal order” as claimed, but it anchors the discourse more firmly in the history of religious legal practice and politics. African Kings and Black Slaves is one of the boldest and most successful attempts yet to engage the fields of African studies, history, and critical theory equally.