Naked Woman Research Articles

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Both drawings (the one from the first page of the fascicle and the other from the outer side of the cover) show two degrees, two stages of the decomposition of form. In the same process, bodies lose their integrity. They were shown by Schulz as a series of leaping aspects which are disconnected, hence discontinuous. The drawings were made in the 1930s. The beginning of the draughtsman’s development did not anticipate such a great catastrophe of bodily forms. In his works from the second and in part also third decade of the 20th century Schulz defined human figures precisely and unambiguously. Then, however, the proud poses which he took when drawing himself (e. g., in his narcissistic Lvov portrait) or other figures (Budracka or Weingarten) probably could not be repeated. In the final decade of his life (and artistic activity) Schulz was drawing differently, perhaps because he perceived himself and the others in a different way. The body? The draughtsman presents it as just a cluster of vibrating lines. A self-portrait? It is possible only as a psychological study, an exaggerated caricature that stresses individual traits or an icon of oneself (the big head with a hat on top, a small size). In hundreds of compulsive sketches drawn in the 1930s even those principles were not respected any more. The bodies that Schulz drew then, no matter if it was his own body or someone else’s, often approach a boundary behind which there is only trembling. Displacement and movement. Schulz’s sketches do not search for form. They are testimonies of its destruction or maybe better, its palpitation, solution and scattering.
 For the eye, the body is a phenomenon of the surface. It is only the reduction of distance in an act of love (or aggression) or even a common handshake that change that state. Perhaps then the problem of Schulz’s representation of the body is reduced to perception. The drawn body has no smell or weight (or taste – it is not “meaty”). One cannot even touch it. A hand that makes an attempt to touch naked women, who in Schulz’s drawings take majestic and provocative poses, touches only a sheet of paper. The drawn body exists just for the eye. Thus the last chance for the existing body is keeping its surface. Why is it then that the body from Schulz’s late drawings loses its integrity, why does it so often fall apart under our eyes? What is the body for Schulz-the draughtsman and Schulz-the writer? How does he experience his own corporeality? How does he see himself? How do others see him?

손창섭 소설 속 여성의 나체와 시선의 문제

손창섭 소설 속 여성의 나체와 시선의 문제

The Transformation of Greek Amulets in Roman Imperial Times by Christopher A. Faraone

Reviewed by: The Transformation of Greek Amulets in Roman Imperial Times by Christopher A. Faraone Theodore de Bruyn Christopher A. Faraone The Transformation of Greek Amulets in Roman Imperial Times Empire and After Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Pp. xv + 486. $89.95. This magisterial volume is the product of Christopher Faraone's sustained investigation, now spanning more than three decades, of "magical" objects and formulations from the Greek and Roman worlds. In that interval, Faraone's scope expanded from his initial interest in Greek curses and spells to a wider array of formulations and materials, particularly images and inscriptions on gems. Throughout, he has aimed to interpret object, image, and text primarily in relation to the literary and cultural contexts of the Greek and Roman worlds, while not ignoring Mesopotamian, Egyptian, or Phoenician antecedents or parallels. In this book he offers a sustained argument for this reading of the evidence. The proliferation of "magical" images and texts on a variety of media during the Roman Empire was not, as he puts it, "a result of any alteration in the Zeitgeist or a tidal wave of 'oriental' influence" (1); rather, it was the result of changes in the way long-standing "magical" remedies were given shape, image, and text. The introduction of text, a reflection of the growing tendency to inscribe things in the Roman imperial period (the "epigraphic habit"), is especially significant. As Faraone argues repeatedly throughout the book, the addition of text to an object or an image in the Roman period confirms that comparable objects and images without text in prior periods had a similar purpose. Figurines and gems from the Hellenistic period are now recognized for what they were: amulets. The book is divided into three sections, each comprising three chapters. Part One, "Archaeology," reviews what can be learned about the use and production of amulets from the material record of the Greek-speaking world in the classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods. Vase paintings and statuary display children with a string of amulets worn diagonally across the torso and women with similar strings around their waist or thigh. Numerous examples of the types of pendants depicted on these strings—medallions with the Gorgon's head or other deities, crescent [End Page 667] moons (lunulae), and amulet cases—have been preserved, along with a few complete necklaces or strings retrieved from the graves of children. Faraone discusses several groups of pendants in more detail: weapons (the club of Heracles was a favorite), seashells, animals, parts of real animals, and depictions of human body parts (the frontal eye, female and male genitalia, an obscene hand gesture representing the vulva). The protective power of the vulva is forcibly represented in figurines of a naked woman pointing to her vagina or brandishing a club, while the protective power of the phallus, widely represented throughout antiquity, is confirmed by literary evidence and phalli inscribed with text from the Roman period. The section concludes with a discussion of the power attributed to the various media used for amulets: metals, plants, and stones. The properties assigned to the latter when rubbed, fumigated, or worn—properties, again, learned from written manuals or inscribed stones—go some distance to explaining their value as effective materials. In Part Two, "Images," Faraone investigates how the protective use of images becomes more explicit in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods. For some longstanding images, such as the frontal eye or the self-strangling Phthonos, the addition of an array of creatures attacking the image heightens its power to protect against envy. Two archaic scenes from the life of Heracles—of him strangling snakes as a child and strangling the lion as a man—likewise persist over time. Both images, Faraone perceptively notes, occur before Heracles became invulnerable, thus offering a more persuasive analogy for protecting the vulnerable. One fascinating phenomenon, to which Faraone devotes a chapter, is the production of miniature versions of images or figurines used in the shrines of houses and shops: naked Horus grasping animals, a frontal head (Hermes) and phallus, the triple-faced Hecate, Mercury and his money sack. The presence of an element associated with the domestic cult, such as the base...

The Story Will Be There When You Need It: A Conversation with Edwidge Danticat

Edwidge Danticat writes about death, even the most brutal, with a lyricism that reminds us of a primal paradox—within the deepest violence and loss, the life-force reasserts itself. A mother clings to her starved newborn, a man plunges to his death reviewing moments of love, a boy trapped below earthquake rubble imagines flying a kite, a naked woman bathes quietly in the river where countless compatriots have been slaughtered. By titling her most recent book The Art of Death, Danticat explores how writers craft mortality on the page but also alludes to the possibility that wrestling with death might itself become an art. Indeed, her fiction and memoir lead us there. She sometimes uses the Creole expression lòt bò dlo, on the other side of the water, which refers either to someone who has migrated abroad or has died. These are the intertwined journeys Danticat's stories navigate.

Dekoracja stropu w kamienicy Jacoba Heinricha Zerneckego przy ul. Żeglarskiej 16 oraz dzieje toruńskiej rodziny malarskiej Tiedemanów

Bei Renovierungsarbeiten im Haus in der ul. Żeglarska 16 in Thorn wurde eine Dekoration in Form einer illusionistischen Malerei gefunden, die an der Holzdecke im Flur angebracht ist. Die zentrale Szene zeigt eine Allegorie Die Wahrheit als Tochter der Zeit, auf der Chronos eine nackte Frau, die Personifikation der Wahrheit, in den Himmel trägt und sie vor den Einflüssen der Zwietracht und des Neides rettet, die als zwei Frauen gezeigt werden, die am Rand der Szene sitzen. Die Malerei ist die Wiederholung einer Komposition von Nicolas Poussin, die er im Jahr 1641 im Auftrag von Kardinal Richelieu ausführte und die für die Decke des privaten Appartements in dessen Kardinalspalast in Paris bestimmt war. Dieses Werk wurde in Europa durch mehrere Versionen von Abbildungen verbreitet, von denen die von Bernard Picard der Thorner Version am nächsten steht. Die Verzierung der Decke wird vervollständigt durch Putten mit Obstkörben, Engel sowie vier Porträts, die als skulptierte Büsten stilisiert sind. Sie stellen den Eigentümer des Hauses, Jacob Heinrich Zernecke, seine Frau Concordia und seine Eltern Johann und Christine dar. Die Analyse archivalischer Quellen lässt den Schluss zu, dass mit den Dekorationsarbeiten der örtliche Meister Johann Tiedeman der Jüngere beauftragt war, dessen Sohn Georg bei seiner Taufe am 13. August 1702 Johanna und Concordia Zernecke als Taufpaten hatte. Die Entstehungszeit der Malerei lässt sich auf die Zeit kurz nach der Rückkehr der frisch verheirateten Jacob Heinrich und Concordia Zernecke nach Thorn im Juni 1702 datieren. Aus der Familie Tiedeman, die seit 1631 mit Thorn verbunden war, stammten drei Maler, die Mitglied der Thorner Zunft waren: Johann der Ältere (1633-1705) sowie seine Söhne Johann der Jünger (1669 – nach 1718) und Daniel (1674 – nach 1722). Darüber hinaus machte Michael (1671-1747), der dritte Sohn von Johann dem Älteren, eine Beamtenkarriere, die er mit der Funktion des Ältesten im Stadtrat der Thorner Neustadt krönte.

Anxieties of Seeing: The Sensational World of Cinema, Digital Media and Politics

This article analyses the super-hit Malayalam film Drishyam (Sight) in relation to the modalities of protest in the Chumbanasamaram (Kiss of Love [KoL] campaign) in 2014 in Kerala in which the kiss was deployed as a form of public protest. It brings together a popular thriller and a political protest that made waves in the entire nation in order to explore how shifting media technologies choreograph performative modes of doing politics. Drishyam stages the convergence of different media forms and legitimises the conventions of older forms such as cinema that hinges on the spectacle of women’s bodies and sexual acts on screen. At the same time, digital technology and the modes of circulation and reception it facilitates function as a node of heightened anxiety. Although Drishyam precedes the KoL campaign, this film can be seen as a response to precisely the (hyper) visibility of bodies and sexuality in the public domain through the workings of new media technologies. The film is driven by an overwhelming concern about the public performance of intimacy—contiguous with the secret filming and the threat of circulation of the naked woman’s body that is the cause of crisis in the film. Thus, I argue that the energies that drive Drishyam and finds a resonance with a national audience, in fact, anticipates KoL-type display of sexuality which is at once unauthorised and out of place but also mediated by unruly technologies.

Beyond Airspace Safety: A Feminist Perspective on Drone Privacy Regulation

The impact of drones on women’s privacy has recently garnered sensational attention in media and popular discussions. Media headlines splash stories about drones spying on sunbathing or naked women and girls, drones being used to stalk women through public spaces, and drones delivering abortion pills to women who might otherwise lack access. Yet despite this popular attention, and the immense literature that has emerged analyzing the privacy implications of drone technology, questions about how the drone might enhance or undermine women’s privacy in particular have not yet been the subject of significant academic analysis. This paper contributes to the growing drone privacy literature by examining how the technology can be especially apt to impact women’s privacy. In particular, various features of the technology allow it to take advantage of the ways in which privacy protection has traditionally been - and in many cases continues to be - gendered. While the analytical focus is on the gendered privacy impacts of drone technology, the article and its conclusions are about more than women's privacy. Examining some of the differential impacts of the technology, and the laws that guide its use, helps to reveal broader inequities that can go unseen when we think about technology without social context. The paper ultimately argues that drone regulators cannot continue to treat the technology as though it is value-neutral - impacting all individuals in the same manner. Going forward, the social context in which drone technology is emerging must inform both drone-specific regulations, and how we approach privacy generally. This paper is framed as a starting point for a further discussion about how this can be done within the Canadian context and elsewhere.

Xicanisma Prophecies Post-2012] / Putin's Puppet

[Xicanisma Prophecies Post-2012] / Putin's Puppet Ana Castillo (bio) is not Aryan (or a golden-hair-Thor) but through & through as close to yellow as it gets.A flim-flam man claiming billions no one sees. He & the Czarhad a chat at the Ritz, in a bar,over Red Bull, vodka, coke and complimentary chips,served up by naked women who took American Express and rubles in I.O.U.s.One rat said,You take the East. I'll snatch the West.It's all for the taking for swines like us and our friends (ha-ha,like 'we' have friends), rapacious and sly,unconcerned with who or how many die as we take the planet. Don't worry, man.Forget the jaundiced Chinese & Rocketman (we'll send to the moon.)France can eat escargot. Palestinians must go. We'll suck the earth dry. You & I,pillage until we are down to two. We'll compete for the universe.Fair enough? (Haw, one said. As if we define fair by anyone's terms.) [End Page 177] I, the poet, rest my head on a pillow or a rock, the throb is the same,my brain doesn't stop its slideshow of doom.Viewing Dr. Strangelove scenes,reruns play & no new plots.No breathtaking aerial shots of an Aston Martin headed along the coast toward thevillain's hideout.No soundtrack. (We are all silent, not censored, not yet, but quiet, waiting.)No scientific facts in this version of a world for the taking.No historical reference without revisiones. . . [stop](No Spanish allowed or you may be arrested.)They are watching, legions in camouflage, hoods or riot gear, ready to take you out.On your mark and get set. Putin's Puppet doesn't read books—a novel or a memoir,sit through films or listen to a symphony or even the Top Twenty.He doesn't look at art.Consequently, he has shut beauty down.Putin's Puppet knows one color, said his son, and that is green. [End Page 178] I will disagree. Putin's Puppet does see color and it revolts him.Blacks belong in Africa, he opines, and Muslims must stay in the Mid-East.Mexicans are the scourge.He doesn't want us on his turf.It's as simple as this: racist.Race in the second decade of the 21st century to him exists . . . like with his father,his father before him and so on—it serves one purpose.Servitude or genocide.As for women, we are unimportant.You kill a rhino for sport or for its horns. [You keep a woman only if she enhancesyour life.]He's the big man on campus with a loyal fraternity, he thinks.Instead, I see anarchy merged with insanity, a fake man wrapped in a dictator's cloak.How did we get here? How did we, indeed.Not without concessions, not without greed. Down the rabbit holethe nation went into Wonder-less slime.We are in it deep this time.When I can't sleep, I spot the devil pissing in the dark.I've lost feeling in my hands and feet.I am an indian woman off the reservation,as they say now, in racialist double-speak.But in this country where democracy remained an aspiration, not a reality,we still do reservations for the original peoples of the land.Take a moment—this poet asks—take a moment to think on that. [End Page 179] Ana Castillo Ana Castillo is a celebrated poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, editor, playwright, translator, and independent scholar. Born and raised in Chicago, she has contributed to periodicals and online venues and national magazines. Her writings have been the subject of scholarly research and publications. Among her bestselling titles are So Far from God (1993); Peel My Love Like an Onion (1999); The Guardians (2007); and the volume of poetry I Ask the Impossible (2001). Her novel Sapogonia (1994) was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She has been profiled and interviewed on National Public Radio and History Channel, and was a radio-essayist with NPR in Chicago. Castillo holds an...

Retratos de Susana: do texto à pintura

A partir da noção sobre “o que é Belo”, propõe-se discutir um tema problemático que é a violação feminina na história da arte e dos textos antigos. Tomando a história de Susana atribuída ao profeta Daniel, percebe-se uma profusão de versões plásticas dessa narrativa, que geralmente representam uma mulher nua aterrorizada pelo olhar masculino, que viola e adentra a cena do que deveria ser um tranquilo banho. O corpus analisado parte do texto para a pintura, tendo como principal foco a artista italiana Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1651/53), que aponta para importantes reflexões do contexto contemporâneo no que se refere à visão feminina, sendo a mesma passagem retratada por diversos artistas homens em diferentes épocas. Pretende-se assim contribuir para os estudos que pensam a autoria feminina e a interferência sobre o ponto de vista, além das relações entre texto, imagem e contexto histórico. Enviado em: 29 de março de 2017. Aprovado em: 24 de abril de 2017

Review: Angela Grauerholz: Écrins écrans and Regarder

CENTRE CULTUREL CANADIEN PARIS NOVEMBER 9,2016-MARCH 24,2017 MUSEE D'ORSAY PARIS NOVEMBER 9,2016-FEBRUARY 5,2017 It's often stated that with modernity came an increased visuality--our sense of vision now dominates all other perceptual modes. And we now look from a further remove: our rationalizing gaze extends across greater distances to anonymous urban others; we see more representations of things than things themselves. But that intimacy, drained from our personal exchanges, slips into other spaces. Desire is endless and mobile. Looking deeply into our images, we can trace the surfeit of displaced desire circulating through them. All pictures are about looking, of course, but two recent photographic exhibitions--presented in a city that itself privileges modern looking, with its open boulevards designed for both authoritarian and bourgeois surveillance--gave special focus to the circulation of desire within images. The most pointed address to this theme came from a recent photographic display at the Musee d'Orsay. Regarder (Looking) brought together images from the museum's collection made with nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century processes, including daguerreotypes, albumen prints, cyano-types, and gelatin silver prints. In each image, human subjects elude the gaze, direct it onto other, or return it back to their mirrored selves. In two of Paul Burty Haviland's seductively elegant portraits (c. 1910), women's faces are shielded from view, submerged in long curves of shadow produced by hats or hands. Four albumen prints c. 1865, produced collaboratively by photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson and the Countess of Castiglione, show the Italian diplomat who was also Napoleon Ill's provocative mistress playfully seducing and subverting the viewer's gaze by sending her own through cut-out frames, masks, and hand mirrors. In an anonymous postmortem daguerreotype from 1850, three figures-two of them standing behind a beautiful deceased young woman--all stare into the camera. In a stunning pair of hand-tinted stereographic daguerreotypes made by soft-porn artist cum producer of academies Felix-Jacques Moulin, a naked woman, body pressed voluptuously against the mirror she lies upon, stares deeply into the pool of her own flesh (Nu, reflet au miroir, Narcisse, 1850). In a salt print, the reflection of a tripod-mounted camera repeats itself again and again in mise en abyme in a large mirror above a salon's mantel. Less explicit, but no less present, was the play of the gaze in images presented at the Centre Culturel Canadien. Close to forty photographs drawn from two bodies of work by German-born Quebec artist Angela Grauerholz invited pleasurable looking through a series of large color inkjet prints of open yet intimate interior spaces and, in dialogue on separate walls, pieces from the artist's series Privation (2001). The most striking feature of the exhibit was its beauty, and this was particularly evident in the first group. Though aesthetic beauty still appears in contemporary art, it is not required and is perhaps even rare. Serial attacks by twentieth-century avant-garde movements--particularly Dada and conceptualism--chipped away and diminished its value. These avant-garde movements bracketed midcentury formalism, an approach that did invoke the beautiful through painting and photography. Grauerholz's images seem to hover close to these two histories: her pictures refer to the real world and invite conceptual contemplation, but their slightly soft focus, reduced detail, and mesmerizing colors--from soft pinks, beiges, and violets to dramatic reds and vivid blues--make them more abstract. Standing before these large, frameless images, I got lost in their compelling beauty. …

Looking at George Rorris’ naked women: Towards an Orthodox Christian theory of gaze

Looking at George Rorris’ naked women: Towards an Orthodox Christian theory of gaze

Gyms

Gyms Jennifer De Leon (bio) I missed sweating. I wanted to run. I was living in Guatemala for several months, and my host mother, Blanca, told me that if I jogged around the neighborhood I would look like a crazy person. "People don't really do that here," she said one Sunday morning as I tied the laces on my sneakers in the courtyard. "Yes they do," her husband Alejandro said. He explained that people in Xela exercised, but they usually did it very early in the morning when the city streets weren't as busy with cars and people. I tightened my laces and told them I'd be back in an hour or so. They stared in silence as I left the house. It was sunny and cool. I jogged slowly at first. Ah, yes. Running. Then, a whistle. Across the street a man grabbed his dick and called, "Bella . . . bella." I quickened my pace. I felt that man's words all over my skin. Maybe running wasn't the best idea in the middle of the morning when the city was packed with slimy, dick-grabbing men. I switched to a power walk. I had to pay close attention to where I stepped. Dog poop, deep potholes, uneven sidewalks, cars, motorcycles, and enormous buses that pushed me up against buildings, threatening to run over my feet—all that made for a stressful walk instead of the soothing calorie-burn I had been seeking. So the following week I visited a couple of gyms, gimnasios, one of which was essentially a petri dish of germs in the form of three weight machines, two benches, and a skinny guy reading the newspaper at the front desk while half a dozen men lifted weights and stared at their reflections in a rusted mirror. The second gimnasio consisted of a long, narrow room on the third floor of a building in a neighborhood I would likely never find again, seeing as how there were no numbers or street names in that zone. Discouraged and desperate as ever, I needed to find a gym. It wouldn't be the first time I felt that particular angst in a foreign country. [End Page 66] My obsession with gyms started with my introduction to dieting. And that started when I was a child. ________ Diets were always something white women did. Women my mother cleaned houses for in the wealthy suburbs. These women would take Dexatrim diet pills and sprinkle artificial sweetener from pink packets onto grapefruit halves. It was the eighties. They wore magenta headbands and legwarmers on their way to the gym. They carried water bottles. My mother—who came to this country from Guatemala weighing one hundred pounds and, like many immigrants, discovered that Big Macs cost less than a packet of vine-ripe tomatoes—gained ten, twenty, thirty, pounds, eventually reaching nearly double her green card weight. She joined the new gym down the street from our house—Futura. The first time I went with her at the age of twelve, I stepped past the racquetball room where dripping-with-sweat men looked to be in great pain as their sneakers screeched loudly in the narrow space. I was scared. What if that small blue ball smacked them right in the face? And I was entirely unprepared for what I was about to see upstairs in the ladies locker room. Never had I seen naked women in real life. The occasional sex scene in movies I wasn't supposed to watch—Dirty Dancing, White Men Can't Jump—revealed nude women's backs and chests but never below the waist. The locker room ladies had nests in between their legs. They had cellulite on pale thighs, dark rings around their middles where the fat sat, and bumpy brown nipples. After that abrupt introduction to the female body, I began waiting for my mother in the carpeted hallway outside the locker room while she changed her clothes. Then I'd sit cross-legged in the corner of the workout studio, a pink notebook on my lap, writing stories about girls with spiral perms, while my mother stepped sideways and spun in...

The Sculpted Recumbent Effigy of Marie Gaudin at the Church of Saint Denis in Amboise: History and Artistic Context

The sculpture from the 16th century of a naked woman on her deathbed, preserved at the church of Saint Denis in Amboise, is usually referred to in bibliography as “the drowned woman” and was attributedby local tradition to the Italian painter Primaticcio. This attribution has been challenged for a long time, but the circumstances surrounding the commission remained unknown. The history of this work, moved several times, was revealed by Alfred Gabeau at the end of the 19th century; it can now be completed and clarified by the study of documents and iconographic sources preserved in archives and libraries of France.The purpose of this article is to identify and to list the historical sources concerning this work, to take stock of its history and to place this funerary monument in its artistic context in order to better understand the circumstances of this important commission. The study confirms the identification of the recumbent effigy as a statue of Marie Gaudin, the widow of the rich financier Philibert Babou from Tours. Taking as an example the royal tombs at the basilica of Saint Denis, this commission demonstrates the practices and artistic strategies of the refined aristocracy of the Renaissance.

Conquering the Reign of Femeny: Gender and Genre in Chaucer’s Romance by Angela Jane Weisl

REVIEWS naries, grammar texts, ancillary texts and translations, and "Yearly Bibliographies and Other Bibliographical Listings. " Finally, the editor's superb glossary provides relevant information "for every form of every word" (p.217) in Pearl. Such data is anchored further by the "literal meanings [ofwords}, line numbers, grammatical elements, and etymological derivatives [OED, MED}" (p.xi). In general, Vantuono succeeds admirably in his editorial purposes, for he has crafted a book suitable for students and scholars alike.Such an edition, then, both illuminates Pearl's rich vision world and comple­ ments Vantuono's earlier work, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Dual-Language Version (1991). ROBERT J.BLANCH Northeastern University ANGELA JANE WEISL.Conquering the Reign ofFemeny: Gender and Genre in Chaucer's Romance. Chaucer Studies, vol. 22. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995.Pp.ix, 133.$53.0 0. This provocative little volume begins with an image from ltalo Cal­ vino's Invisible Cities in which several men simultaneously dream of a long-haired naked woman vanishing through an unknown city into the darkness.Failing to locate the city, they construct one of their own, with mazes to trap the vision should she reappear.This image, Angela Jane Weisl tells us, embodies the romance genre in that its essential content of male desire, the action of pursuing the woman, and the method ofexecution through entrapping labyrinths recapitulate the ro­ mance.It is a haunting metaphor. Insights in the twenty-page introduction, which this reader found more evocative than the somewhat repetitive readings of four individ­ ual romances, are quite creative.Weisl's thesis is that Chaucer pushes "boundaries (the glass ceiling that defines roles, positions, and possi­ bilities}, testing the genre's limits ...to show both its confines and its potential" (p.3).Since romance defines the nature and behavior ofhero­ ines (who cannot be ugly Loathly Ladies, self-motivated, independent young Alisons, or gregariously assertive old Alisons), it contains them. Feminine confinement, such as that of the coerced, unwilling Emelye, 335 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER then, symbolizes the genre. In upsetting her gendered role, Criseyde flaunts tradition, upsetting both the genre and her tale, which can no longer support a standard romance ending. Although these ideas seem intriguing, many romances defy the "confined-woman" schema-Parzival, Amis andAmiloun (with one very dominant Belisaunt and another domineering wife), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (whose two women wield much power), and the allitera­ tive Morte Arthure (with no primary woman) come to mind.Eventually Weisl acknowledges exceptions, that "many poems that are gener­ ally ...lays or romances are not really about romantic love at all" (p.8), seemingly contradicting herself. Classifying is hazardous, as Susan Crane has noted, but perhaps limiting the thesis to certain types of ro­ mances might have ameliorated the problem.Several evocative issues tease us, but remain unclarified.How, for example, is Boccaccio a source for Chaucer's methodology as much as for plot? How do Chaucer's ro­ mances, transformed into self-referential narratives, tell us as much about narrative as they do about love? Some claims seem controversial or contradictory.For example, Weisl states, "Chaucer, strikingly, can­ not end two of his romances" (p. 5), discounting those who insist The Squire's Tale and Tale ofSir Thopas are in fact ended precisely at the right, intended moment.Since some romances contain didactic elements, the author posits a reverse mimesis-life imitating art.But from Horace or before, the ends of poetry have always been to teach and entertain, so how does romance differ? Certain statements appear self-evident or un­ remarkable, such as Chaucer's attitude to romance: "The genre is prob­ lematic for him; he continually challenges, expands, and tests the lim­ its of the romance by shifting its contexts and altering its conventions" (p.2).Does his policy differ for other genres, equally manipulated for the new creative spark they elicit? Is not his genius that he regularly transgresses, defies boundaries, violates generic expectations, and to successful, not deconstructive, ends? Weisl believes that although women are necessary to the genre, their space and roles are restricted.Yet she admits: "The woman's role can be greater than [inspiring and perfecting...

Training Computers to See Internet Pornography: Gender and Sexual Discrimination in Computer Vision Science

This article critically examines computer vision–based pornography filtering (CVPF), a subfield in computer science seeking to train computers on how to recognize the difference between digital pornographic images and nonpornographic images. Based on a review of 102 peer-reviewed CVPF articles, we argue that CVPF has as a whole trained computers to “see” a very specific, idealized form of pornography: pictures of lone, thin, naked women. The article supports this argument by closely reading the algorithms proposed in the CVPF literature and quantitatively analyzing the images included as illustrations of these algorithms. Drawing on pornography studies, we also compare the CVPF pornographic imagination with “noisy” pornography that exceeds computer vision. Ultimately, the article argues that this very narrow imagination of porn in CVPF reflects and reinforces larger gender and sexual inequalities in the technology industry as a whole.

Pragmatics in language change and lexical creativity.

This essay examines language change and linguistic creativity as revealed by remodelling, especially as a source for euphemisms and euphemistic dysphemisms and as a function of verbal play. Within the scope of this essay, there are predominantly two ways in which novel terms and expressions are created leading to language change: formally through remodelling and semantically through figurative language. Consider some of the words for nakedness. There is the orthophemistic term nude, from Latin nudus, often used of photographic or painted representations of naked women and, much more rarely, of a naked man—hence the marked term male nude. Whether a nude is artistic or pornographic depends on the viewer belief. A colloquial Australian euphemism for being in the nude is in the nuddie. Other euphemisms include as nature intended, in one’s birthday suit, in the altogether, and in the buff (⇐buff[alo] leather, buff skin transferred to humans). Being naked is captured by the dysphemism bare-arsed and the more euphemistic butt / buck naked in which buck ⇐ butt. The orthophemistic term stark naked and the connected colloquial euphemism starkers also arose by replacing a final /t/ with a /k/: stark ⇐ start “tail, arse”. Nudists like to go about in the open air without clothes on and, being as nature intended when in natural surroundings, are euphemistically called naturists. Such expressions display folk-culture in a remarkable inventiveness of metaphor and figurative language sourced in the perceived characteristics of whatever is being talked about. For instance, terms for tabooed objects and events provide ready-made material for the dysphemistic language of curses, insults, epithets, and expletives. The essay shows that X-phemisms (orthophemisms and/or euphemisms and/or dysphemisms) are motivated by a speaker/writer’s want to be seen to take a certain stance by upgrading, downgrading, obfuscating, and deceiving; and they extensively manifest indulgence in verbal play. Although the discussion focuses on English, the categories illustrated occur across the world’s languages, and many of them are significant for the study of language change.

Chewing on Japan: consumption, diplomacy and Kenny Kunene's nyotaimori scandal

In 2010, the South African entrepreneur Kenny Kunene caused a sensation in South Africa when he ate sushi off a naked woman's body at his birthday party. The practice – called nyotaimori in Japanese – was swiftly characterised as a Japanese tradition. In the process, sushi itself came to stand in for nouveau riche consumption. This article analyses the construction of Japan in the subsequent South African and Japanese coverage of the scandal. It puts it in the context of attempts by the Japanese government to use elite consumption as a form of public diplomacy. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, this article shows that nyotaimori was used in the subsequent scandal as a way for South Africans to define themselves – a process that reveals how embedded South Africa remains in Western ideoscapes. Through comparing Japanese and South African accounts of the scandal, this article raises questions about the role of consumption in diplomacy and the construction of the foreign.

Neonatal medicine in prehistoric times in Anatolia

This paper attempts to provide a preliminary report on neonatal medicine in prehistoric times in Anatolia. Skeletal findings in newborn babies are rare in the archeological record, and all interpretations are made based on artistic figures. A naked woman carved into a stone stab on the floor between God reliefs in Gobeklitepe which was erected by hunter-gatherers 12,000 years ago may suggest the center might have been for pregnant women to safe birth place or more likely an ideal location for blessed intercourse under the powerful god eyes. Catalhoyuk, the largest and best preserved Neolithic settlements dating from 7500 BC. The figurine of the Mother-Goddess in sitting position for child birth is the world's earliest known work of art which depicts a newborn head. A figurine of diencephalic (omphalopagus) twin which is thought to be a goddess is the earliest representation of a human with congenital anomalies. Newborn infant burials were probably used as vessels of communication to the gods.

A Modern Miscellany: Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei’s Circle, and the Travels of Jack Chen, 1926–1938 by Paul Bevan

Reviewed by: A Modern Miscellany: Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei’s Circle, and the Travels of Jack Chen, 1926–1938 by Paul Bevan Hal Swindall (bio) Paul Bevan. A Modern Miscellany: Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei’s Circle, and the Travels of Jack Chen, 1926–1938. Ideas, History, and Modern China, vol. 12. Leiden: Brill, 2016. xix, 387 pp. Hardcover $181.00, isbn 978-90-04-30793-3. Although it focuses on a small group of Chinese cartoonists in interwar Shanghai and the foreigners who influenced them, this volume is a major contribution to modern Chinese studies in general. That is because it traces the ideological development of Shanghai artists and writers, who were the avant-garde of the whole country, from the aestheticism of Shao Xunmei to the leftist activism of Lu Xun. In this respect, Shanghai’s literati, unusual though they were, might be seen as a microcosm of Chinese society at the time. Furthermore, the book is relevant to current cross-cultural studies, since it is mainly about how Chinese artists adapted European sources to their own needs and styles at a time when China was trying to forge a modern identity. Finally, anyone interested in the place and time will appreciate Bevan’s reconstruction of its art scene and the interrelations of the characters in it. Throughout his study, Bevan demonstrates how decisively Shanghai artists were inspired by Western models. To begin with, he documents how copies of magazines like Punch, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker were eagerly consumed from the bookstore Kelly and Walsh on Nanjing Road, and French magazines and books from Libraire de l’Extreme-Orient, Shanghai’s French literary outlet, also on Nanjing Road (pp. 20–21, 26). Indeed, French models were much in vogue among young Chinese intellectuals then, a fact Bevan documents with quotes from books by Marc Chadourne and Paul Morand (pp. 20–25). The main conduit of Western art and literature into Shanghai was, however, Vanity Fair (pp. 25–27), which Shao Xunmei regularly read (p. 28). This and other Western models of the avant-garde, fashion, style, and luxury were adopted by the artists of Shanghai manhua, which launched in the 1920s. Bevan argues from the beginning that Shanghai manhua was the real originator of Chinese cartoons, rather than the Storm Society as previous scholars have held (pp. 17–18). Indeed, his entire study is a sort of vindication of it and similar publications that fell into disrepute because they were not politically engaged, or because their cartoons were not regarded as worthy of serious academic attention. Shanghai manhua ran into trouble during its existence, too, being charged with obscenity in 1928 for publishing photos comparing the bodies of naked women from various countries (pp. 30–31). The fact that Lu Xun did not like it hurt further. While it existed, however, Shanghai manhua was strongly influenced by Shao Xunmei, a wealthy Western-influenced aesthete who had studied at Cambridge (p. 34). Chapter 2 is therefore devoted to Shao and his associates, since Shao himself launched many pictorial magazines and patronized many cartoonists. [End Page 101] Bevan’s chapter on Shao’s role in Shanghai’s entre-guerre art scene is an invaluable contribution to scholarship on this little-known figure, on whom very little has been published until recently. Besides being a poet, essayist, and socialite, Shao Xunmei was deeply involved with magazine publishing through his Modern Publications Ltd. and Number One Publishing Company. Although he was upper class and mainly wrote for highbrow audiences, Shao’s reading of foreign magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar convinced him of the power of images among the masses, so he advocated more native Chinese visual art with a proletarian appeal (pp. 57–59). Bevan’s rundown of Shao’s circle makes it clear, however, that he considered the Chinese elite just as indifferent to culture as the masses (p. 62), so his entire career can be seen as an effort to cultivate his society at all levels. In this, his main inspiration was the Arts and Crafts movement and the Aesthetic movement in general (p. 84). It was precisely his championing of the “art for art...

The Social Meaning between Art and Obscenity on the Naked Woman Drawing in the Korean 1920’s

The Social Meaning between Art and Obscenity on the Naked Woman Drawing in the Korean 1920’s