Maiden Name Research Articles

Suzanne: Fragments of Memories

Little has been written about Suzanne Beckett, née Suzanne Déchevaux-Dumesnil (1900–1989). In biographies of Samuel Beckett, and in the even more numerous memoirs and commentaries discussing Beckett’s life, Suzanne disappears quickly – sometimes as soon as she is evoked – and she has rarely been acknowledged as someone who led a rich and interesting life in her own right. Her maiden name, Déchevaux-Dumesnil, has been widely and persistently misspelt as ‘Deschevaux-Dumesnil’ or ‘Déschevaux-Dumesnil’, although it appears just above Beckett’s own name on their tombstone at the Montparnasse Cemetery – a tombstone visited by so many, and photographed so often. The most caricatural portrayals render her as someone who complains when he receives the Nobel Prize, squanders his money and hinders his aspiration to have a good time. Overall, based on some accounts, it can be difficult to understand how a writer like Beckett would have wanted to spend his life with her and why their relationship lasted over fifty years. This biographical essay written by Michèle Tholozan-Warluzel, Suzanne’s great-niece, and translated by Emilie Morin, gives us a fuller view of this remarkable person. Suzanne, Michèle Tholozan-Warluzel tells us, had no time for sentimentality; she inhabited the here and now; she believed that women should be liberated from the weight of conventions; she held the institution of marriage in profound contempt; she felt passionately about the preservation of human and animal life; she frequented concert halls, museums and theatres assiduously throughout her life and loved Paris deeply. She was much loved by her family and friends. This biographical essay brings to life a strikingly modern woman, who seems in some ways better suited to our time than hers.

Ambivalent Sexism Impacts Attitudes Toward Marital Surname Change Decisions

AbstractCouples are making increasingly varied surname change decisions following marriage. However, despite this increased variability, cultural attitudes toward nontraditional surname choices remain rooted in sexism, with women who retain their maiden names often being viewed negatively as individuals and as partners within their marriages. The present study aimed to examine ambivalent sexism as a potential moderator of the link between women’s and men’s nontraditional surname choices and negative perceptions of those individuals and their marriages. To this end, participants (n = 129) viewed a series of vignettes describing heterosexual couples who made traditional vs. nontraditional choices regarding whether to change or retain their surnames following marriage, and participants’ levels of ambivalent sexism were measured. Results indicated that participants with higher levels of sexism perceived nontraditional surname choices, and the individuals who make those choices, more negatively relative to those who make traditional choices. These findings underscore the persistent role of sexism in cultural attitudes toward marital surname choices in an emerging adult population.

Šalek roots of Anton Martin Slomšek

The existing knowledge about the genealogy and the ancestors of Blessed Anton Martin Slomšek, Prince-Bishop of Lavant (1800–1862), who had lived or originated in the Šalek Valley, is largely owed to two priests–Franc Kovačič (1867–1939) and especially Maks Goričar (1885–1941). The bishop’s grandfather Gašper Slomšek (ca. 1718–1779) moved to the Šalek Valley in the mid-eighteenth century from his native hamlet of Slom near Ponikva. The maiden name of his wife, Ana Apat, meaning abbot, was first documented in 1575 in her native village of Družmirje near Šoštanj. Ana Apat descended from a well-to-do tavernkeeper’s family in Družmirje, and her father Jakob was also the market-town dweller of Šoštanj, where his ancestors had most probably lived for at least two generations. At the end of the eighteenth century, the bishop’s father Marko and uncle Valentin Slomšek moved to Slom, where they took over their ancestors’ big farm, which subsequently became the home of Bishop Anton Martin Slomšek.

Parliamentary Dress

Parliamentary Dress

An Interview with David Roediger

An Interview with David Roediger Jon K. Lauck JL: Where were you born? DR: The hospital in which I was born was in East St. Louis, Illinois. I have long been tempted to claim I'm "from" there, given how central that city has been to African American creative genius and to the tragedy of race in the Midwest. But in truth the life and livelihood of both my parents was in Columbia, Illinois, a dozen miles south. It was a village of two to three thousand, deeply German American, all-white, and built around grain milling and limestone quarrying. JL: How did your parents and grandparents come to be in this part of the country? DR: My family on both sides came to southern Illinois before the generation of my grandparents, overwhelmingly from what's now Germany but with one branch from Ireland. JL: A fairly large group of Germans immigrated to St. Louis in the early nineteenth century. Would you say your ancestors were part of that urban migration stream or were they more oriented toward farming and rural/small town living in southern Illinois? DR: My family connected to St. Louis much later, with some moving from Cairo, Illinois, and Columbia to the city for work in my parents' generation. The most lastingly German part of the family, my father's side, described itself as coming for religious reasons and to avoid conflicts during German unification. I think they sought rural life, but not a farm. Their religious bent, Missouri Synod Lutheranism, became the main arena for continued identification with one way of being German American. My paternal grandmother was a German speaker, though mostly without anyone to speak to. My mother's family was more [End Page 239] German than Irish in "blood" but just the opposite in identity. They lived near and centered life around an Irish American Catholic church in Cairo. JL: What was your parents' line of work? DR: My mother and her twin brothers became orphans before she was five, her mom dying as a result of childbirth and her dad in a railway work accident. She lived her first seventeen years in Cairo. Her aunts and grandmother sacrificed greatly to send her to two years of normal school for teacher training at Southern Illinois Normal College, now Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. She taught in Columbia for forty-nine years, mostly fourth grade. My dad followed his dad into work at the limestone quarry just outside Columbia. While his father worked as a mechanic, my father, back from the Navy and World War II, moved into the office as a bookkeeper. JL: What was your mother's maiden name and what did her family do for an occupation in Cairo? DR: She was born Mary Ann Lind. As noted, her dad was a railroad worker. Her mom was a housewife until dying very young. The aunts who worked to support the household in which she grew up had white-collar, or pink-collar, jobs. One kept books for a coal company and the other was a union phone operator, a job that required considerable skill and an absence of much accent. Opening those jobs to Black women was a demand of the Black United Front in Cairo, one that eventually succeeded but just before the positions were largely mechanized out of existence. When he served as lieutenant governor in the late 60s, Paul Simon sent Dick Durbin to fact find in Cairo. Durbin, now a U.S. senator from Illinois, was an aspiring Democratic politician then. The man taking him to his Cairo hotel room—we know this story because Durbin told it later to Barack Obama who made it public—warned that any use of the phone in the hotel would lead to phone operators relaying what was said to local white supremacists.1 JL: How did your parents meet and where and what year were you born? DR: My mother moved to Columbia to accept the first teaching job she was offered, just as the world war began. My father courted her as he was busily eating bananas in an attempt, ultimately successful, to meet the [End Page 240...

Reform, nonconformists and the press: the role of women’s suffrage networks in the early sculpture commissions of Frances Darlington

Research for this article was developed from core findings previously made in the West Yorkshire Archive on the 1902 commission for Frances Darlington to produce a statue of Queen Victoria for Morley Town Hall. The online database at the British Newspaper Archive provides contemporary reportage that lends a different dimension to the minimal descriptions in the Town Council minutes, and demonstrates crucial links with the women’s movement. Furthermore, in the contemporary representation of Frances Darlington, the papers tell a very different story to that available in institutional catalogues of the era. Pivotal to the article are the reports of the unveiling of the commission, which the deputy mayoress of Morley, Alice Cliff Scatcherd, a prominent suffragist with close ties to Emmeline Pankhurst, utilized as a vehicle for feminist protest. The article extends the study of the press to women editors such as Ada Sarah Ballin (Womanhood magazine) and Amy Hurlston (The Sheffield Telegraph), who emerge as advocates in the women’s movement, driving reform in their representation and employment of women. The article further highlights the importance of new online genealogy databases in identifying connections previously hidden by the loss of maiden names in marriage.

Generations: Lucille Clifton’s Memoir, a Haunting Reprinted

Generations: Lucille Clifton’s Memoir, a Haunting Reprinted Jalynn Harris (bio) Generations: A Memoir, by Lucille Clifton (NYRB Classics, 2021), 104 pp. What do you call something that goes and comes back in a form not quite, but resembling, the corporeal? Is there any word closer than haunting, or maybe, more narrowly, history? History is a subject that Tracy K. Smith asks us to consider in the introduction to the republished edition of Lucille Clifton’s memoir, Generations. Clifton’s timeless contribution to poetry has a clear through line in Generations—the stroke of her pen, rays of light running across pages, opening possibility through simple, exact and human diction. It cannot go without mention that light is the very definition of Lucille. Smith writes, If light is what the work of Clifton is intent upon spreading, then I’m tempted to think that history as we have been conditioned to accept it is unrefracted, all of a piece, and blindingly white. Whereas Clifton’s imagination is prismatic; it slows down the central story so we can see what it is truly made of: all the dazzling colors moving at different frequencies and, depending upon circumstances, in distinct directions. . . . Generations, first published in 1976, chronicles in dialect several generations of Clifton’s family line. The narrative’s impetus is framed in reflection of Clifton’s father’s death and her journey to and out of his homegoing service. Laden with family photos and quotes from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” the narrative is a mosaic of dialogue, poetry, and family records both visual and oral. Clifton’s memoir, a monument despite its 87-page heft, resonates as beautifully as the life of the poet, who illuminated readers with each word she wrote. Poet laureate of Baltimore from 1974–1985, Clifton’s first book of poetry, Good Times (1969), was selected as one of the 10 best books of the year by The New York Times. Her career went on to span over four decades of accolades, publication, and poetic service—including, but not limited to, two Pulitzer Prize nominations, several children’s books, a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and a position as one of the chancellors of the Academy of American Poets. Through dialogue in the voice of Clifton’s father, Samuel Sayles, and his incantation of his great-grandmother Mammy Ca’line’s voice, Clifton weaves together a nonlinear yet luminary account of her patrilineal grandmother’s [End Page 118] harrowing epic from Dahomey to Virginia. And in turn, an account of how she picks up the baton to continue the line—a six-fingered woman with six children in tow. The story begins through the wires, Clifton on the phone with a distant white relative who offers to send Clifton a concise log of her family’s history—the Sales/Sayles of Bedford County, Virginia. Curious, the white relative asks Clifton why she’s interested in this family history. Clifton proffers, “Well, my maiden name was Sayles.” Eager, the white woman prods, “What was your father’s name?” “Samuel.” Clifton states, to which the “thin-voiced white woman” says, “I don’t know him.” “Who remembers the names of slaves?” Clifton asks, both as a statement and an accusation. And then, continues, for an entire book, to remember the names of those enslaved. Samuel Sayles, son of Gene Sayles, son of Lucille Sayles, daughter of Mammy Ca’line, born free in Afrika in 1822. The story begins with Clifton’s father’s death. Samuel “Mr. Sayles Lord” Sayles finishes breakfast and sends his eldest daughter Josephine “Jo” upstairs to fetch his cigarettes, but, when she comes back, he’s lying on the floor, already in the afterlife. Samuel Sayles, born 1902 in Bedford, Virginia, was raised by his great-grandmother, Caroline “Mammy Ca’line” Donald Sale until the age of eight years old. Punkin, Clifton’s younger sister—by six months—calls Clifton and tells her the news of their father’s passing. Grieving through fits of disbelief and laughter, Clifton, alongside her husband Fred and her brother Sammy, begins the journey from Baltimore, Maryland, to Buffalo, New York, to say their goodbyes. The story begins...

Startup Culture: MLMs, Mormons, and Entrepreneurship

Startup Culture: MLMs, Mormons, and Entrepreneurship

ქართველურ ენათა ლინგვისტური ანოტაცია: I. სახელები (პრობლემები და მათი გადაჭრის გზები)

The international standards of morphemic analysis of texts have outlined completely new prospects of research for the languages with rich morphological structurebecause typological linguistics systematizes and classifies language facts and phenomena based on the structural content and the number of structural markers. The unity of these markers is relevant for the definition of the essence of language as such, the very phenomenon of language. Morphologically, of great interest with regard to any language are the noun and the verb, because they are structural units of ample syntagmatic data. This proves the importance of the outcomes of morphemic analysis, as well as the vast grammatical capacity of these parts of speech. Kartvelian languages embrace the empirical material of four languages (Georgian, Megrelian, Laz and Svan) with diverse and multifunctional morphemic data. Their systemic research is urgent, important and vital for the definition of the typology of Kartvelian languages as well as for the general typological research. Modern challenges have created the need for the new,reliable and knowledge-based research product that will meet contemporary international standards. Linguistic morphological analysis is carried out based on the synchronic data. Due to the morphonological changes peculiar of nominal stems, we should take into account the diachronic-etymological factors in order to identify the original forms and meanings of words. The problems of linguistic annotation of the nominal parts of speech in Kartvelian languages are analyzed based on the grammatical categories of case and number:The issues of segmentation and qualification of the nominal parts of speech with postpositions are discussed with reference to all the four Kartvelian languages.In Megrelian and Laz, especially in Megrelian, the definition-identification of the nominal stem is specific with regard to the following:a. The former genitive cases (secondary cases).b. Due to the phonetic insertion in the singular and plural forms (the insertion that separates consonants or vowels).c. Due to the phonetic transformation of the stem and the case-marker.d. Due to the changes in some case-markers caused by phonetic rules.In Megrelian anthroponyms (maiden names) a gender suffix -ხე /xe/ is usually found.It is traditionally considered that Svan nouns are more complex than Svan verbs. This opinion is based on the existence of two/three stems in the Svan declension system and the existence of double declension paradigm. The empirical material is diverse, taking into account the dialectal data as well. Out of Kartvelian languages, only Svan has the so-called “prepositional-postpositional“ cases. Such forms express semantic nuances, and, in this, they are close to double local cases found in the highland dialects of the Svan language. The lexical-grammatical patterns denoting names of clans-families are also extremely diverse in the Svan langauge.In the process of annotation (segmentation-marking) of the nominal lexemes, alongside with formal data, we should take into account the semantic peculiarities. Besides, description-qualification of the formal mechanisms of nominal parts of speech will be complete and accurateonly if it reflects the outcomes of the phonetic transformation of forms. Annotation, including morphological annotation, is conventional (achieved on the basis of agreement). However, the theoretical foundation should be consistent, especially in condition of diverse opinions.

Elizabeth "Betita" Martínez: A Tribute

Elizabeth "Betita" Martínez:A Tribute Sarah M. Quesada (bio) and Maylei Blackwell (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Portrait of a young Elizabeth "Betita" Martínez, by Melanie Cervantes, Dignidad Rebelde. [End Page 996] Long before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turned red lipstick into a political statement, Elizabeth "Betita" Sutherland Martínez donned it as a badge of audacity. After all, Martínez epitomized the unapologetic scholar-activist for Chicano studies and the world. A legendary advocate and Chicana journalist, she often appeared on the front lines battling on behalf of numerous causes, from access to reproductive health care to racial justice, to equal rights in an early antiglobalization movement. From the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to supporting African decolonization at the UN, to fighting for Latinx workers' rights during the global shift to neoliberalism, hers was a legacy of multiracial, feminist, and internationalist solidarity. Ninety-five years after her birth, Martínez succumbed to vascular dementia and passed away on June 29, 2021, in San Francisco, California. While her physical presence has vanished, her legacy could not be more enduring. Martínez's lifetime of writing, organizing, teaching, and inclusive militancy creates a framework for American studies that this tribute seeks to highlight. In particular, her additional roles as a social movement knowledge holder and historian, a committed mentor and a bridge to youth activists, a women of color feminist, and a prolific documentarian underscore lessons learned from her lifetime that serve as an antidote to and an inspiration for a troubling present era. Reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the twenty-first century has seen the rise of totalitarianism in Russia, China, and the United States, the latter via the growth of Trumpism. The related proliferation of white supremacist movements and a virulent anti-immigrant hatred have fueled an unbridled epidemic of racially motivated gun violence and threats to women's rights. But Martínez's legacy provides a framework for scholar-activists to address these challenges with an inclusive platform modeled after her commitments to social justice and her radical democratic thinking in the face of despair and uncertainty. One of the Chicano Movement's most powerful thinkers and prolific writers, Martínez understood well the legacies of coloniality. In a truly Fanonian fashion, she perceived the legacies of colonial [End Page 997] power as equally affecting both domestic and international communities of color. Likewise, she heeded the urgency of organizing against patriarchal and white-dominated organizations to effect equality for women, especially those of color. Finally, she believed in the need to write resistance into the archive, passionately documenting the plight of others so that we might all follow in the activists' footsteps. This tribute provides insight into Martínez's exemplary written legacy and untiring resistance. After all, those who knew her can still hear her chanting against foreign intervention in "Raza Sí, Guerra No!" For those who did not know her, this tribute provides an access point to that legacy. The contributions in this forum feature the intricacies of Martínez's internationalism, her multigenerational activism and multiracial feminism, as well as the foundational role of her memory work for social change. We examine these three pillars of her life's work mainly chronologically and thus start from the beginning years of Martínez's life. Racial and Internationalist Solidarities Elizabeth "Betita" Sutherland Martínez was born in 1925 in Washington, DC, to a Mexican immigrant father who was a diplomat and later a Georgetown literature professor, and an Anglo mother who was a high school Spanish teacher. Raised bicultural and bilingual, her dual identity is reflective of a painful in-betweenness that marked her identity. The forms of exclusion and relative privileges of being biracial while growing up in a segregated, whites-only Maryland suburb can be seen in her nom de plume. She first used her mother's maiden name, "Liz Sutherland," as she came of age as a writer and journalist in the Jim Crow era, later adopting "Betita Martínez," as part of the Civil Rights Movement and her lifelong commitment to racial, economic, and gender justice.1 While her life journey...

The Art of Being Philip Roth

The Art of Being Philip Roth

Enemies

Enemies

Carmela Curto: The Story of One Italian Immigrant, the History of Millions

Carmela Curto: The Story of One Italian Immigrant, the History of Millions

Envisaging Dada: Facial Legibility and Illegibility in Sophie Taeuber’s Dada Head

Throughout the text, I use the artist’s maiden name Taeuber rather than her married name Taeuber-Arp to reflect the way in which she signed her works during the period under discussion, which preceded her marriage to Hans/Jean Arp in 1922. It was a dance full of flashes and fishbones, of dazzling lights, a dance of penetrating intensity. The lines of her body break, every gesture decomposes into a hundred precise, angular, incisive movements. The buffoonery of perspective, lighting, and atmosphere is for her hypersensitive nervous system the pretext for drollery full of irony and wit. The figures of her dance are at once mysterious, grotesque, and ecstatic.1 This is how poet Hugo Ball described Sophie Taeuber’s dance performance to one of his sound poems at the opening of the Galerie Dada in Zurich on 29 March 1917.2 Because no indisputable images of Taeuber’s dance practice survive, Ball’s account is central to reconstruct her approach to this discipline. According to Ball, when Taeuber set her body in motion she appeared to fragment it in a plurality of gestures. These gestures did not blur the body into an undifferentiated kinetic mass; on the contrary, their ‘precise, angular, incisive’ character conferred a geometric quality on Taeuber’s moving figure. At the same time, Ball’s lyric language contrives a movement comparable to a source of ‘dazzling light’, as energetic as it is uncontrolled. For Ball, Taeuber’s dancing body shattered, dissolving into a multiplicity of signs that the viewer’s sensorial apparatus was unable to fully process in spite of their clarity. Taeuber seemed at once to emphasize the corporeality of her limbs and to abstract them through her linear movements.3

Black page of Ukrainian history

Maria Stepanovna Krushelnytska (maiden name - Sloboda) entered the history of Ukrainian culture as a dramatic actress, publicist, memoirist, editor and novelist, public figure. Published in the newspapers "Bukovyna" and "Dilo", almanacs, magazines "Literary-scientific bulletin", "New ways", "New house". He participated in the publication of reading books, the organization of theater groups and cultural and educational institutions.
 She promoted the idea of ​​women's emancipation, in particular, in the almanac "Women's Fate" (Kolomyia, 1928) she published an article "New Woman", in which she set out her thoughts on a new type of Ukrainian woman. But her fate is the personification of the difficult fate of the Ukrainian intelligentsia during Stalin's repressions. After all, almost the entire family of Maria Krushelnytska was shot by the NKVD and became a symbol of the most brutal tragedy of Ukrainians.

Tiio, Roosi, Liiso ja Toomas – maakeelseid luuletusi avaldanud Eestimaa autorite otsinguil

According to Recke and Napiersky, the first poems in Estonian from the pen of a woman were allegedly published in 1779, in the sheet music book Oden und Lieder in Musik gesetzt by Andeas Traugott Grahl, a private tutor in the Governorate of Estonia, but unfortunately it is not preserved. More luckily another sheet music book by him, Lieder und Handsachen für das Klavier und den Gesang, published in Leipzig in 1784, was available to the researchers before World War II. Two poems by Estonian ladies were published there: Tio, tassane ja helde and Liesole. A variant of the Tio-poem (the so-called Rosi-poem) was published in 1787 in the 5th volume of the reader Lesebuch für Ehst- und Livland by Friedrich Gotthilf Findeisen in Oberpahlen (Põltsamaa) in Livonia, and a year later, in 1788, in a longer version in the German literary magazine Der Teutsche Merkur. To the latter, the poem was mediated by Christian Hieronymus Justus Schlegel, a private tutor in Estonia from 1780 to 1782, and then pastor, who left Estonia in 1783. However, he did not ascribe the Rosi-poem to an Estonian lady, but to a gentleman, von Tiesenhausen of Saus, who wrote the poem on the occasion of the passing of his wife. There are several manors called Saus or Sauß in Estonia. Traditionally the Rosi-poem has been ascribed to Ber(e)nd Heinrich von Tiesenhausen of Groß-Sauß (Sausti or Kaarepere). But there was another manor called Sauß (Sauste) near Wesenberg (Rakvere), which belonged to captain Hans Wen(t)zel(l) von Tiesenhausen from 1779 to 1781. Based on several sources, this paper brings forth arguments to support the thesis that the gentleman, von Tiesenhausen, mentioned by Schlegel was actually Hans Wenzel von Tiesenhausen. This man was probably also identical with the captain von Tiesenhausen, whom Grahl has named as his employer in the subscription call of the Lieder und Handsachen. According to Professor Gustav Suits, Grahl acted as a private tutor somewhere near Wesenberg. The paper also suggests that H. W. von Tiesenhausen was the author of the poem Der Client an seinen Sachwalter, published in the muses almanac Estländische poetische Blumenlese for 1780. Earlier this poem has been ascribed to Johann Georg von Tiesenhausen from Northern Latvia. Dirk Sangmeister has guessed that the Albrechts who published the almanac mentioned the name Wesenberg on the cover of the first issue of their periodical (for 1779) in honour of the owner of the Wesenberg manor, judge Jakob Johann von Tiesenhausen and his family, with whom Sangmeister believes the Albrechts stood in a cordial relationship as Sophie Albrecht dedicated several poems to a certain Ottilie von Tiesenhausen. The last one lets us know that on the 9th of June 1781, the news of the death of her beloved friend had reached Sophie Albrecht. The date 9th of June 1781 (due to calendar differences actually 11 days later) can also be found in the archival materials concerning H. W. von Tiesenhausen – on this day his bankruptcy proceedings were started. Already in January 1781 he had sold Sauß; in March 1781 his other manor – Tuddo (Tudu) – was sold too; these are likely the two manors mentioned in his German poem. The bankruptcy proceedings were evoked by a lawsuit, initiated in March 1780 by J. J. von Tiesenhausen, who from 1774 to 1780 rented his Wesenberg manor to his second cousin Hans Wenzel. From 1779 the latter had difficulties in paying the rent. As at the time of the publication of Estländische poetische Blumenlese it was H. W. von Tiesenhausen who was living in the manor of Wesenberg, the recipient of the poems by Sophie Albrecht was very likely his wife. Neither the given nor the maiden name of this woman or her birth date and the exact death date are preserved. H. W. von Tiesenhausen mentions his wife without her name in his report to the court, Demüthigste Anzeige und Unterlegung der wahren Umstände meines gegenwärtigen unglücklichen und betrübten Schicksaals (The humblest report and interpretation of the true circumstances of my current unhappy and sad fate), signed 26 June 1781. It appears that his wife really died shortly before the composing of the report. Frau Capitainin Tiesenhausen has also been mentioned three times in the birth register of the Wesenberg church in 1777 as a godparent, one of the cases being as godmother of a girl, whose mother was the sister of G. W. von Schwengelm, the employer of mister Schlegel, who mediated the Rosi-poem to the Teutsche Merkur! The paper also presumes that the ladies mentioned by Grahl could have been translators and guesses who these women were, but as we lack confirmed proof, the investigation must continue.

What’s in a Name? Nothing, (in PubMed) if You Change It!

Most physician-scientists are unaware that PubMed, the search tool used to access MEDLINE-indexed peer-reviewed articles, cannot link citations if they undergo a name change during their academic careers. For example, author L.N.K. had attempted to find a publication by a colleague who was a rising star in her field and in doing so realized that the colleague must have become divorced. She eventually found the PubMed citation after trying several variations of the author’s name; the older elusive paper was indexed under the author’s married hyphenated surname, whereas her newer publications were under her maiden name.

‘From the cradle to the grave I am my father’s daughter!’ Women and their married names in Transylvania in the second half of 19th century

ABSTRACT In the common perception, the surname of a woman is a changing value of her personality as, at least in theory and customarily, she will take her husband name at marriage. For a traditional and patriarchal society like the Romanian one in the second half of the 19th Century, the common, empirical knowledge and the ancestral believes alike tempted one to argue that the woman left behind her maiden name and, from the day of her marriage till the end of her life (presumably lived with the same man), she assumed his family name and a new combined identity. When the information gathered in the Historical Population database of Transylvania was quantitatively important enough to allow some preliminary conclusions on this segment of population, it became evident, even at a first sight, that we have a wrong perception about the wife’s name after marriage: more than half of the married women were registered in different moments of their lives, in different circumstances, with their maiden name. The preliminary results entitle us to consider that a marriage contract is not automatically followed by a name change and the married woman is recognized by her own name in the subsequent papers. The Civil Code of 1853 states that the wife will take the name of the husband at marriage and, in this respect, our preliminary findings contradict the norm and raise specific research questions: what are the reasons for which the women preserve their maiden name in such a great extent, despite of legislation? Is this a personal choice related to the personal identity or a customary practice of the communities maintained with the only purpose of preserving the link between families, probably for issues concerning the property transmission and the lineage?

In Memoriam: Audrey Meaney (1931–2021)

In Memoriam:Audrey Meaney (1931–2021) Sybil Jack Click for larger view View full resolution Audrey Meaney died after a massive stroke on 8 January 2021, to the great distress of her children and friends. She had been a major contributor to uncovering the history and culture of Anglo-Saxon England for over seventy years and it could be said that she died with her pen still in her hands. Thirty years ago, in 1990, the various Australian Medieval and Early Modern groups that she had helped found, especially the Sydney Medieval and Renaissance Group and the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, were sadly farewelling her as she retired from Macquarie University to move back to Cambridge. She was already one of the most internationally distinguished writers and researchers on the Anglo-Saxon period, admired for her 'monumental output', her pioneering contribution to the archaeology of medicine and magic, and her scrupulous, painstaking scholarship. She had succeeded in making the agency of women in the practice of magic undeniable. She was also acknowledged as one of the academics who had established Macquarie as a first-class university. Its vice-chancellor, Di Yerbury, had paid tribute to her critical role with the words: Her contribution to Macquarie University extended deep into its fabric and well-being. She was very influential in the early development of the new University's teaching programs. She was active in several [End Page xiii] committees and took on the responsibilities of Acting Head of the School of English and Linguistics. She quietly but persistently promoted the role of women and women's studies. Indeed, her interest in the role of women has been a dominant theme in her research into Anglo-Saxon culture, removing yet another layer of invisibility over women's place in history. The volume of Parergon that was subsequently dedicated to her (n.s., 10.2, 1992) collected accounts of much of the work that had occupied her academic career to date as well as reflecting on her contribution to the establishment of medieval studies—especially interdisciplinary studies—in her lifetime of employment in Australia. She had come to Australia to a post at the university of New England after completing her PhD at Cambridge in 1959, when she was still using her maiden name, Savill. On the ship out to Australia she had met and married Neville Meaney, an Australian historian, and adopted his name for her later publications. Her early years in Australia, spent in various temporary positions in the English department at the University of Sydney, were complicated by bearing and managing three children while maintaining a full-time university career, a rare achievement for a married woman at that time. It was her drive in the 1960s that helped start the interdisciplinary bodies that brought together academics from different areas in medieval and early modern studies—languages, art, history, archaeology, and others—and persuaded them that they had more in common than they had previously believed. It also led her to many comparative ideas in her own research into religion and medicine in Anglo-Saxon culture. She had no intention of stopping her research on her retirement, however, and maintained her links to Australia after 1990 with periodic visits in which she was usually persuaded to talk about her recent work in Britain, where the key methodological premises she had set out for magic and witchcraft as well as the practice of medicine were now widely adopted. In the 1990s she was working on the position and distribution of pagan sanctuaries in Anglo-Saxon England and their relationship to later Christian sites—a study that led to further work by other academics in the field. She kept in touch with people researching the area by attending conferences. She continued to give papers that were widely published (for instance '"And we forbeodað eornostlice ælcne hæðenscipe": Wulfstan and Late Anglo-Saxon and Norse "Heathenism"', in Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference, ed. by Matthew Townend, Brepols, 2004, pp. 461–500). Although the book on 'Heathenism to Superstition in Anglo-Saxon England' she had planned in 1989 did not materialise, most...

Over 40 years with jumping spiders: on the 70th birthday of Wanda Wesołowska.

Professor Wanda Wesołowska (maiden name Nowysz)-an internationally recognised expert in the taxonomy of jumping spiders (Araneae: Salticidae)-was born in Włocławek (Central Poland) on 11 August 1950. Wanda spent her youth and received her primary and secondary education in Szczecin (NW Poland). After finishing school in 1968, she entered the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, where she studied biology. Wanda graduated with a MSc degree in 1973. Her thesis was devoted to birds and was titled "Observations on the water and marsh birds on the storage-reservoir on the Vistula river near Włocławek during migration seasons". This research was published as a scientific paper (Nowysz-Wesołowska 1976). Thus, Wanda began her scientific career with research on birds, an interest that is not uncommon among arachnologists (e.g., Pontus Palmgren, Michael I. Saaristo and Eugène Simon). This passion was shared with her future husband Tomasz Wesołowski. While still a student, Wanda undertook several regional field trips and published four papers on birds, with most of them being co-authored with Tomasz (Nowysz Wesołowski 1972, 1973a,b; Nowysz 1973). Recently, Wanda and Tomasz celebrated the 40th anniversary of their marriage with another joint paper devoted to the ecology of the fluke Leucochloridium and its effect on the behaviour of the snail Succinea putris (Wesołowska Wesołowski 2014). Wanda and Tomasz have one daughter, Olga, who currently works at the Department of Biophysics and Neurobiology at the Wrocław Medical Unversity (Poland), and a grandson, Mikołaj.