Multiple Voices Research Articles

Juno’s Aeneid: A Battle for Heroic Identity by Joseph Farrell

Reviewed by: Juno’s Aeneid: A Battle for Heroic Identity by Joseph Farrell Tedd A. Wimperis Juno’s Aeneid: A Battle for Heroic Identity. By Joseph Farrell. Princeton, NJ and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2021. Pp. xvii + 360. Hardback, $47.00. ISBN: 978-0-691-21116-9. Study of the Aeneid’s profound and pervasive interplay with other texts—especially the foundational epics of Homer—has been a mainstay of criticism from the poem’s earliest commentators. A new entry in this long tradition, Farrell’s impressive volume offers a novel perspective on Vergil’s engagement with Homer, furnishing an approach that adds new complexity to old questions and yields plentiful insights in return. Juno’s Aeneid lies at the intersection of two interpretive frameworks: first, the epic’s intertextuality, primarily with Homer but including other texts that intervene in the Aeneid’s core dialogue with the Iliad and Odyssey; and second, the ancient ethical schema of kingship theory, through which Aeneas may be evaluated as a “good” or “bad” king. Taking inspiration from Francis Cairns’ application of kingship theory to the Aeneid (Virgil’s Augustan Epic, 1989), Farrell taps a rich vein in combining that framing with the poem’s formative Homeric intertexts, re-examined within the philosophical tradition that identified Odysseus as a paradigmatic “good king” and Achilles as the opposite. The “battle for heroic identity” promised in this book’s title reflects its main line of inquiry: whether, as its narrative unfolds, the Aeneid is to be an Iliad or an Odyssey and, consequently, whether we read Aeneas himself as an Odyssean good king or an Achillean bad one. As the Aeneid’s twelve books unfold, this “battle” plays out in tension among the multiple narrative voices that shape the outcome, predominantly those of Juno, the narrator and the heroic protagonist. This study’s use of intertextuality is highly dynamic, probing the Aeneid’s systemic allusions to Homer as an active process of narrative construction that continually shapes the story in the direction of an Iliadic or Odyssean tale. Tracing the threads of these metapoetic forces, Farrell foregrounds the creative role of the fictive actors inside the epic. From her first speech, Juno willfully “dissents” from an emergent Odyssean narrative, pushing to recast Aeneas’ voyage as part of a “long Iliad” instead, a sequel to the Trojans’ traumatic defeat and their city’s destruction. Aeneas, for his part, must determine which kind of hero he’s going to be, a decision weighted by his personal experience of the Iliad (which he has “read”) but also by his ignorance of the Odyssey, a story in which he has not participated. Farrell’s evidence, rigorously marshalled throughout, assembles a compelling model of an epic-in-the-making, inflected at each turn through the choices of its characters and the allusive networks those choices engage. [End Page 488] After an introduction that sets the agenda and elaborates its scholarly antecedents in the study of Vergilian intertextuality (principally Knauer, Barchiesi, Dekel and Nelis) and kingship theory (principally Cairns), Farrell’s close study of the poem begins in earnest in the first chapter, which focuses on specific theaters in Aeneid 1 of the metapoetic contest between an Iliadic and Odyssean master narrative. At the center of this Homeric tug-of-war is Juno’s transgressive “interruption” of the narrator’s incipient Odyssey by rousing narrative specters of the Iliad; her “displacement” of Odyssean elements extends to Aeneas himself, who is shown to be not unlike Juno in his “strongly Iliadic obsession” (71) with the memory of Troy, and figures like Dido epitomize a “fragmented” intertextuality resulting from this narrative power struggle. Chapter 2 calls attention to the interpretive dichotomy of Iliad or Odyssey on which the book has so far relied and investigates a series of “third ways:” narrative patterns drawn from other intertextual sources “that might have allowed Aeneas to escape from or surpass the Homeric binary” (116). Put to the test are the Epic Cycle, the Argonautica, the heroic model of Hercules, Greek tragedy and Roman historical epic—each of which grounds a vibrant discussion, but, in the final analysis, fails to offer an alternative to...

Building Coalitions from Shared Pieties

The Asian Rural Institute (ARI) is a Christian organization based in Tochigi, Japan that emphasizes foodlife work (working to grow food to sustain life), servant leadership, and community development. In analyzing the experiences of ARI community members, we located three themes that encapsulate ARI’s negotiation of religious environmentalism: 1) hierarchy, 2) ritual, and 3) tensions. These themes create polyvocality, or multiple voices, which we argue builds coalitions among community members at ARI through shared values. In conversation with work on religious environmentalism, this essay positions Christianity as a coalition building resource for some environmental and social justice advocates. Furthermore, we demonstrate the capacity for coalition building among groups that share pieties rather than identity and illustrate how an organization can rhetorically mobilize and emphasize some parts of its identity to its advantage while remaining committed to all of its core values.

Shama, an insider looking in: a community-centred collaborative documentary production

ABSTRACT In this article, we analyse and reflect on the complex interweaving of documentary strategies and the five levels of performance that we designed in a small-scale community-centred collaborative documentary project entitled Shama. Shama Ethnic Women’s Trust is one of the first NGOs in New Zealand established and run by ethnic migrant women for ethnic women and their families. Applying a filmmaking-as-research methodology, the project’s aim was to respond to the scarcity of screen representation of ethnic NGOs. The purpose was not only to convey information about Shama’s activities and services but also to convey a sense of the internal culture of the NGO and its community spirit. The portrayal of minority groups in community production often leads to an outsider-looking-down approach. We felt that providing an insider view was more important than simply conveying the facts efficiently about the organisation. This goal led us to apply a collaborative documentary practice, avoid an expository style, characterised by a single authoritative voice, and opt for a mix of performative and observational strategies, in which multiple voices and modes of address are featured. By shifting modes of address, we explored the ways in which a short, no-budget documentary could represent the complexity of this NGO.

Enhanced Multiple Speakers’ Separation and Identification for VOIP Applications Using Deep Learning

Institutions have been adopting work/study-from-home programs since the pandemic began. They primarily utilise Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) software to perform online meetings. This research introduces a new method to enhance VoIP calls experience using deep learning. In this paper, integration between two existing techniques, Speaker Separation and Speaker Identification (SSI), is performed using deep learning methods with effective results as introduced by state-of-the-art research. This integration is applied to VoIP system application. The voice signal is introduced to the speaker separation and identification system to be separated; then, the “main speaker voice” is identified and verified rather than any other human or non-human voices around the main speaker. Then, only this main speaker voice is sent over IP to continue the call process. Currently, the online call system depends on noise cancellation and call quality enhancement. However, this does not address multiple human voices over the call. Filters used in the call process only remove the noise and the interference (de-noising speech) from the speech signal. The presented system is tested with up to four mixed human voices. This system separates only the main speaker voice and processes it prior to the transmission over VoIP call. This paper illustrates the algorithm technologies integration using DNN, and voice signal processing advantages and challenges, in addition to the importance of computing power for real-time applications.

Tying the knots

Alice Kettle’s stitched works can be viewed in the canon of English figurative embroidery. She uses stitch and thread as a narrative device and as a connecting line, which ties together individual and collective stories as multiple strands across time. The article gives an overview of Kettle’s works which integrate autobiography with mythology and contemporary event, tracing the lineage practices of women and offering a feminine viewpoint to chronicle experience. The works document the recent histories of sociopolitical disruption in Europe, which heralded the fragmentation of unity and Brexit. The recent project Thread Bearing Witness concerns people displacement, migration and global conflict. Stitch is used as a means to represent the marginalized and multiple voices of refugees and those seeking asylum. Stitch is viewed as an expressive and empowering means to change perceptions, promote change and as a common language of making.

Breathing Room: Working Principles of Independent Art Spaces in African Cities

Breathing Room: Working Principles of Independent Art Spaces in African Cities

Morir en Isla Vista. Novela del Destierro by Víctor Fuentes

Reviewed by: Morir en Isla Vista. Novela del Destierro by Víctor Fuentes Erick Dickey Fuentes, Víctor. Morir en Isla Vista. Novela del Destierro. Editorial Verbum, 2021. Pp. 240. ISBN 978-84-1337-727-8. Morir en Isla Vista is a non-traditional Spanish novel written by Víctor Fuentes that details the life of the Spanish exile living in the United States in the post-Spanish Civil War era. Unlike many Spanish exiles who fled Spain in the early months of 1939, Víctor Fuentes belongs to the generation of the “children of the civil war” who left Spain in 1954 and whose life as an exile would be embodied by numerous exiles that would take him from Spain to Venezuela, to New York and finally to Isla Vista, California as a Spanish professor at the University of California Santa Barbara. Adapting to life in exile proved to be difficult for Fuentes as the novel relates the many struggles that he faced integrating into his new adopted homeland particularly in the early years where he was forced to find menial jobs in order to survive financially. While the novel relates in diary form the many vicissitudes and personal troubles suffered by Fuentes throughout his life, such as his failed relationships, battles with depression and psychosis, and difficulties writing novels, the memory of Spain and the Spanish Civil War pervades the text. This becomes a recurring theme in exile literature, as the exile, who is separated and alienated from his home-land and longs to return to Spain, is forced to live off of memory. Therefore, the continual remembrance of Spain and his fellow exiles represents Fuentes’s endeavor to reconstruct new memory traces as their identity has been erased by the Franco dictatorship. This multifaceted novel veers from the traditional narrative structure of the post-war novel with Fuentes’s use of the Cervantine model of the found and transcribed manuscript in addition to the incorporation of multiple narrative voices that combine fiction with reality. It is also a work that reflects on one of the most important and recurring issues within the body of Spanish exile literature, namely the continual remembering of the mother country. The novel begins with the discovery of a corpse in the water, which is that of the author Víctor Fuentes. This initiates what one could call the appearance of the “split narrator” or “Yo-dividido” as Fuentes interjects himself as a character in his own novel recounting his life in exile as the narrative shifts between first- and second-person narrators. This symbolizes the metaphorical “death” of the exile as he is forced to reconstruct a new identity in exile, cut off and separated from his mother country, but still remains as the “other” in the adopted homeland. Upon Fuentes’s mysterious death, his narrative takes shape as a second narrator appears—the Transcriber—who reconstructs the life story of Fuentes’s exilic journey by recovering Fuentes’s discarded writings left in a box. As the Transcriber, he also takes the liberty of inserting, when he deems it appropriate, some critical commentary on Fuentes’s works and bears the responsibility of completing Fuentes’s unfinished text much like Cide Hamete Benengeli in the Quijote. The plurality of narrative voices is Fuentes’s way of creating a collective identity or memory for the exile community. More than an autobiography, this text could be seen as a co-biography given the many voices that appear in it. Fuentes’s narrative represents the memories of the Republican children of a collective suffering, which is illustrated by Fuentes’s usage of a Hispanic “Yo-nosotros” living in exile in the United States. Here Fuentes problematizes the question of the identity of the exiled. The allusion to the “I-we” dichotomy has now merged into what Fuentes believed to be the great deed of the collective subject. Fuentes is determined to rescue the memory of these individuals from what he terms “oblivion and the destructive [End Page 166] clutches of time.” He accomplishes this by enumerating a list of exiles who died and briefly describing their contributions in exile in the United States while also remembering...

Investing in the Educational Success of Black Women and Girls ed. by Lori D. Patton, Venus E. Evans-Winters, and Charlotte E. Jacobs

Reviewed by: Investing in the Educational Success of Black Women and Girls ed. by Lori D. Patton, Venus E. Evans-Winters, and Charlotte E. Jacobs Emerald Templeton Investing in the Educational Success of Black Women and Girls Lori D. Patton, Venus E. Evans-Winters, and Charlotte E. Jacobs (Editors) Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2022, 312 pages, $37.50 (softcover) In her seminal work, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, Hill Collins (2000) described the "hidden space of Black women's consciousness" (p. 98) that includes self-definition; self-determination; and resistance to racism, sexism, classism, and white supremacy. Lori D. Patton, Venus E. Evans-Winters, and Charlotte E. Jacobs's work is an embodiment of this consciousness. Much like how Hill Collins designed Black Feminist Thought, the editors of this volume created an accessible text grounded in Black women and girls' experiences, knowledges, and existence. As a Black woman scholar whose research underscores the experiences of Black women in higher education while uncovering the logics of valuing diversity, I recognize the authority of this work and find that it aligns with and informs my scholarly interests. As a former Black girl who has trudged through misogynoir throughout my educational experiences, I feel incredibly affirmed, seen, and celebrated through this work. Written from the vantage point of women and girls across the spectrum of Black womanhood and girlhood, the authors of this edited volume artfully describe how we navigate the American system of education while maintaining our meanings and intonating our expressions (Hill Collins, 2000). This text is organized into four sections: (a) Mattering for Black Women and Girls in Schooling Contexts, (b) Naming and Challenging the Violence and Criminalization of Black Women and Girls, (c) Navigating Politics and the Politicization of Black Women and Girls in Higher Education, and (d) Still We Rise: Black Women and Girls Lifting and Loving Black Women and Girls. The chapters in these sections provide the reader with context, discussion questions, further reading, and additional resources. These sections weave together narratives that illustrate the depth, breadth, and rigor of scholarship about Black women and girls. Each section sheds light on multiple experiences and voices, which I will describe below. In the first section, Mattering for Black Women and Girls in Schooling Contexts, Patton et al. set the tone for this volume and lay a foundation for understanding the ways of knowing (epistemologies), being (ontologies), and thinking (ideologies) that influence Black women and girls' efficacy in school. Chapter 1, "Mid-Twerk and Mid-Laugh," uncovers how Black girls' ability to express themselves through laughter and dancing in culturally situated ways is stifled and criminalized. Further, the author posits that this level of expressiveness provides an opportunity for learning that schools can engage for transformation. In Chapter 2, readers are presented with ways to enact the Black girls' literacy framework, which allows schools to expand learning and literacy beyond simply reading and writing to a nuanced practice that situates learning in sociopolitical, historical, and cultural contexts. Similarly, Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the ways myths and stereotypes depict Black girls as older than they are, disrespectful, and underachieving. Such myths must be dispelled so that Black girls can find belonging and safety in spaces that were not intended for them. Together, these chapters encompass why [End Page 250] Black girls matter and how schools can begin to embrace that fact. The second section, Naming and Challenging the Violence and Criminalization of Black Women and Girls, begins by situating the education of Black women and girls within a political context that surveils, polices, and arrests them. Chapters 5 and 6 detail the ways in which schools are failing Black girls—pushing them out and deeming them "nobodies"—by highlighting compelling cases and data related to their involvement with school discipline and the legal system. Further, the ways in which a lack of care and value for Black women and girls persist through higher education are explicated in Chapters 7 and 8. The authors herein urge educators and administrators to challenge their biases about gender and race and interrogate how the intersection of those identities reveals the ways they characterize and value Black women and girls...

“Perceived” talker variability in high-variability perceptual training

It has been suggested that higher talker and acoustic variabilities in training materials are the driving factors impacting learning advantages, such as better generalization and longer retention of training effects. To investigate whether such advantages are diminished when trainees do not perceive talker variability in training stimuli, we gave three days of training on identifying Korean stop contrasts to three groups of English speakers: a group with three distinctive-voice stimuli (DV), a group with three similar-voice stimuli (SV), and a group with one-voice stimuli repeated three times (OV). We compared their performances twice: once right after the last training session and again one week later. Results showed the tendency that the DV group was better than the other two groups at generalizing their training effects to a novel talker, and this remained the same one week after their training. Although some participants in the SV group claimed they heard multiple voices during their training, their performance was similar to that of the OV group. Taken together, the results support the previously reported high-variability training benefits, and suggest that in training stimuli, the “perceived” talker variability, not just the talker and acoustic variability, is a driving factor for such benefits.

A Challenge to Monolithic Elitism: Eclecticism in Rock Music

This project aims to explore how eclecticism reflected in rock music as a sign of postmodern culture, explain the cultural background and expression intention of it by musical analysis, then apply the relative theory of Jonathan Kramer in his Postmodern Music, Postmodern Listening. As a characteristic of musical postmodernism, eclecticism changed the original features of rock music and led it to a fresh style which broke through its own performance category, to show new connotations and values. By elucidating how rock musicians use eclecticism to deny the authoritative value represented by traditional classical music, it can be seen that in a specific historical context, an anti authority voice sounded outside the traditional historical line of music, which has changed the single line historical narrative. Through the acceptance of music style that were considered noble in the past, rock music became a powerful force to challenge the value made by monolithic elitism, and successfully created an environment in which multiple voices can exist.

희망과 불안의 양가적 공간으로서의 도시

This study examined the case of 'Jungang-dong' in Pohang, Gyeongsangbuk-do, which is undergoing simultaneous spatial reorganization among local urban regeneration projects aiming for new goals of sustainable development and social integration. This space is a key economic, social, and cultural hub in the past, and strategic promotion and planning are underway to improve the quality of life of local people, and also to move to a creative and unique new space based on culture and art. However, although this urban regeneration policy puts regional development at the forefront, a flip side of it functions as an urban space where exclusion and alienation are prevalent. Furthermore, it is an ambivalent urban space where suppression and control to occupy space and a certain ideology is concealed. Through this, the relationship between individuals and groups in the urban space where diverse lives coexist, and the complex interests such as the change and overcoming of the subject and group responding to the political flow and the aspect of the local community managed and regulated in a fluid capitalist society. For this, this study conducted an analysis based on David Harvey's concepts of 'capital accumulation' and 'time-space compression'. In particular, textual analysis was conducted based on the status of implementation of Pohang urban policy, statements and contributions by urban regeneration policy officials and experts, resident groups and representatives, and multiple voices of local residents presented in Pohang urban regeneration newspapers.

A latent rhythm complexity model for attribute-controlled drum pattern generation

Most music listeners have an intuitive understanding of the notion of rhythm complexity. Musicologists and scientists, however, have long sought objective ways to measure and model such a distinctively perceptual attribute of music. Whereas previous research has mainly focused on monophonic patterns, this article presents a novel perceptually-informed rhythm complexity measure specifically designed for polyphonic rhythms, i.e., patterns in which multiple simultaneous voices cooperate toward creating a coherent musical phrase. We focus on drum rhythms relating to the Western musical tradition and validate the proposed measure through a perceptual test where users were asked to rate the complexity of real-life drumming performances. Hence, we propose a latent vector model for rhythm complexity based on a recurrent variational autoencoder tasked with learning the complexity of input samples and embedding it along one latent dimension. Aided by an auxiliary adversarial loss term promoting disentanglement, this effectively regularizes the latent space, thus enabling explicit control over the complexity of newly generated patterns. Trained on a large corpus of MIDI files of polyphonic drum recordings, the proposed method proved capable of generating coherent and realistic samples at the desired complexity value. In our experiments, output and target complexities show a high correlation, and the latent space appears interpretable and continuously navigable. On the one hand, this model can readily contribute to a wide range of creative applications, including, for instance, assisted music composition and automatic music generation. On the other hand, it brings us one step closer toward achieving the ambitious goal of equipping machines with a human-like understanding of perceptual features of music.

A dialogical self approach to understanding identity as negotiated in retirement from elite sport

Every athlete will eventually retire from their career in elite sport. Despite its inevitability, following their encounter with this critical event, many athletes are left vulnerable to diversions from psychological well-being (Park et al., 2013). In their review, Cosh et al. (2021) report that somewhere between 18% to 39% of retired athletes experience mental health challenges, such as anxiety and depressive symptoms, after career termination. While the literature surrounding retirement from sport and well-being cites various factors contributing to the quality of adjustment, a large body of research has focused on the predictive factor of athletic identity, the extent of identification with the athlete role (Brewer et al., 1993) and the negative relationship it tends to have with psychological well-being during retirement (Douglas & Carless, 2009; Kuettel et al., 2017; Warriner & Lavallee, 2008). Although these findings have led to recommendations for a shift away from monologic performance-based narratives (Brewer & Petitpas, 2017; Park et al., 2013) the concept of a diversified identity in high performance sporting careers is relatively underexplored. Therefore, this project aims to expand on existing research demonstrating the possibility of alternative narratives (Douglas & Carless, 2006) and the notion that there is room within the presentation of identity for multiple voices to be represented and heard in negotiation or contradiction with one another (Peterson & Langellier, 2006; Ronkainen & Ryba 2020). To conceptualize how athletes’ evolving self-concepts might be comprised of multiple identities, we introduce Dialogical Self Theory (DST; Hermans & Kempen, 1993) which has been previously applied to research surrounding identity and transitions, such as childhood development and cultural migration (Hermans & Gieser, 2012). According to the theory, one’s inner world is made up of several “I”-positions which are constantly positioned relative to each other (Konopka et al., 2018). These “I-positions” are by nature dynamic and can move depending on changes in time and situation (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010). Pauha and Ronkainen (2021) applied DST to their recent examination of conflicting positions of an intersectional identity. Their interesting findings demonstrating an athlete in dialogue have inspired our current project which seeks to answer: How are identities negotiated in athletes’ stories during retirement from elite sport? Semi-structured interviews informed by The Life Story Interview (Atkinson,1998), with ten recently retired elite athletes were conducted at one to three months after they officially announced their retirement to Swiss Olympic. Interviews were conducted in person and lasted on average 90 minutes. Preliminary results from the narrative analysis are discussed and provide insights of the various, non-performance related “I”-positions present amongst athletes. A case study is used to illustrate the implicit ways in which elite athletes may or may not engage in “identity work” while transitioning out of their careers, along with the practical implications of these findings.

12th Cosmic Ray International Seminar “The endless multiple voices fugue of the Universe”

Napoli, Italy, September 12 - 16, 2022 The 12th Cosmic Ray International Seminar (CRIS 2022) was held in Napoli, Italy, from September 12th to 16th, 2022. The meeting was focused on fundamental topics in astroparticle physics.CRIS 2022, following the experience of previous editions, aimed to present overviews of existing data and reports from the present and future experiments. Talks covered both theoretical/phenomenological and experimental/observational aspects, in order to give an exhaustive overview of this complex field. The discussion about the present status and future plans was achieved involving theorists and experimentalists. The progress in astroparticle physics achieved through space and ground-based detectors played a major role in the scientific program of CRIS 2022.As in the past, the CRIS 2022 Conference was addressed to scientists in the field as well as to PhD and graduate students. We encouraged lively and informal discussions among participants. We take advantage of this preface to thank all the participants for their high quality contributions and for the fruitful discussions that came up during the conference.List of The CRIS 2022 Local Organizing Committee (LOC), The CRIS 2022 Scientific Organizing Committee (IAC) are available in this pdf.

‘ … vayan a San Miguel de Allende, además lleven su visa y su diccionario los que no sepan hablar inglés pues ya se han apropiado de todo los gringos.’ The discursive struggle for interculturality in a gentrified hybrid Mexican city

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on interculturality in the discursive construction of the Mexican city of San Miguel de Allende that is culturally hybrid due to Americanisation and gentrification caused by North American migration and tourism. Constructing their own community as ‘expats’, this homogenous group produces and reproduces a dominant discourse that normalises Americanisation and gentrification. There is, however, a resistant discourse from multiple voices, both North American and Mexican, that problematises this hybridity in terms of negative consequences for local Mexicans of rising costs, displacement, and a sense of alienation, particularly felt in how English has become a lingua franca.

One Voice Is Good, But More Is Better: Symptom and Toxicity Reporting in Pediatric Oncology.

One Voice Is Good, But More Is Better: Symptom and Toxicity Reporting in Pediatric Oncology.

Promises and Perils of Rortian Conversation

Abstract As a contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Whatever Happened to Richard Rorty?,” this essay elucidates how Isabelle Stengers's signature idea of an “ecology of practices” offers a way to establish claims to expertise and—within limits that are, in effect, the limits of specific scientific practices—claims of authority within science that Rorty would have denied. The problems facing Rorty's understanding of science also imperil his vision of a society admirably seeking to realize what he calls “social hope.” Once again, Stengers's ecology of practices, together with her cosmopolitical perspective, offers grounds for questioning Rorty's utopian belief that endless conversation should lead to continual expansion of the “we” who constitute liberal society. Her idea also provides tools for engaging, in mutually respectful and sensitive encounters that reopen prospects for social hope, the multiplicity of voices, perspectives, and practices of the “others” who have been excluded from liberal society.

Gender Inequality in Contracts Casebooks: Representations of Women in the Contracts Curriculum

Gender has always explicitly or implicitly played a critical role in contracting and in contracts opinions—from the early nineteenth century, when married women lacked the legal capacity altogether to contract, through the next century, when women gained the right to contract but continued to lack bargaining power and to be disadvantaged in the bargaining process in many cases, to today, when women are present in greater numbers in business and commerce, but face continued, yet less overt, obstacles. Typical casebooks provide ample offerings for discussions of the ways in which parties can be and have been disadvantaged because of their gender and gender identity. At the core, gender inequity often stems from long-held stereotypes about women in contracting, which are often on full display in the cases. The vast majority of cases in the typical Contracts casebook are drawn primarily from the commercial context; sales, franchise, employment, and transfer of property cases predominate most Contracts casebooks, with many fewer cases in the family context. In the commercial cases, women and other people who do not identify as men, rarely seen as the businessperson, seller, or landowner, are sorely underrepresented, and the “non-male” perspective tends to be obscured. Casebook offerings involving non-male parties still tend to be clustered in certain areas—namely contract defenses, promissory estoppel, and family cases. The result is a Contracts curriculum that typically confines women to certain traditional roles and relegates women’s issues to a secondary status, privileging rational, arms-length market promises at the expense of family-based promises. The overall gender allocation in cases may or may not be reflective of the actual presence of women in the universe of American contracts cases. But either way, it raises some issues regarding how the typical casebook presents women in the realm of contracts cases, and overall, the role of women in contracting. There is, of course, a diversity of viewpoints and a multiplicity of voices among women and feminists, who are divided by age, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, and class, among other things. There are divisions among feminists over the nature and source of gender injustice, as well as over solutions.2 Feminists differ, for example, over the roles of men and women (such as biological differences and cultural frameworks that land women as the primary caretakers most of the time), and whether and how the law should account for those differences.3 When it comes to contract

Towards a reframing of Eryri: how historic framings of landscape influence perceptions and expectations of a Welsh national park

The landscape decision-making system in northwest Wales is insufficiently democratised and the main framings of Eryri (Snowdonia) are grounded in the perception and expectation that it is a sublime, distant and static landscape. Eryri, however, is changing. The landscape of the national park is already being impacted by climate change and the loss of biodiversity. Anticipated future change will also bring the need for further adaptation and transformation in land management. Historic framings of Eryri perpetuate ideologies and ambivalences that have, and could, continue to hamper the much-needed landscape change required to tackle today’s multiple crises. This article explores how past modes of representation, newly specialised industries and government legislation have perpetuated a limited understanding of Eryri. It links the eighteenth-century ‘top-down’, elitist rationalisation of the environment and the legacies of longing to find a ‘truly British’ landscape, with people’s current perceptions and expectations of the landscape. This article begins the journey of exposing the dominant ideologies of landscape, helping to define the underlying problem with the current prevailing framings of the landscape of the national park. It concludes by going beyond defining the problem and proposes an approach to actively reframe Eryri. To do this, it acknowledges the need to empower multiple voices, involving diverse forms of knowledge and incorporating new ways of representation within the landscape decision-making process.

Subaltern voices from the sertão : cultural history of broadside ballad in Brazil

This paper analyzes the role of cordel – the Brazilian contribution to the global tradition of the broadside ballad – as a reservoir of cultural memory of the Nordeste, the region where cordel took root in Brazil. Cordel is at once perceived as a repertoire of representations, images, and meanings that have shaped messages on social order. The focus here is on transformations that have occurred in cordel titles over time and, in particular, how gender and ethnicity have been represented in cordel texts during different periods and locations in a region that, even now, has been characterized by latifundism, the absence of the state, and abysmal social inequalities. To this end, the examination of cordel titles by José Francisco Borges (1935), Jarid Arraes (1991), and Auritha Tabajara (1980) in this context is grounded in a cultural studies framework. Among other perspectives, we engage with the question posed by Spivak to highlight the cordel as a venue in which the subaltern voices of the colonized and otherwise marginalized segments of Brazil's population have expressed themselves historically until the present. Whereas cordel traditionally represented a space in which the voices and concerns of ordinary Brazilians from the rural hinterland found their way into the public arena, new possibilities of publishing cordel post-2000 have opened it up to new narratives from the otherwise silenced actors of Brazilian society and history, including female authorship, and Afro-Brazilians and the Indigenous as protagonists of their own representation. This paper concludes by pointing to how cordel has been notably successful in accommodating Brazil's diverse social realities. Its narratives now speak in the multiple voices of the sertão, thus inviting its readership to rethink Brazil's cultural history, historical memory, and symbolic imaginaries.