Oxford University Press Series Research Articles

Rethinking Bach ed. by Bettina Varwig

Reviewed by: Rethinking Bach ed. by Bettina Varwig Markus Rathey (bio) Bettina Varwig, ed. Rethinking Bach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). 414 pp. Responsible scholarship needs occasional course corrections, moments in time when leaders in the discipline come together to reevaluate methodologies, reassess long-held assumptions, and find new paths to approach their subject of study. These course corrections can be minor, but they can also amount to major paradigm shifts. The Oxford University Press series "Rethinking . . . " has provided a forum for new ideas in the study of major composers, and the volume on Johann Sebastian Bach, edited by Bettina Varwig, is a welcome addition to the series. It reflects a shift in Bach scholarship over the past decade that highlights the emotional qualities of Bach's works while downplaying the view of Bach as a mathematical composer. The inclusion of essays by fourteen authors (the number of Bach's name: B(2)+A(1)+C(3)+H(8)) might have been unintentional, but the fact that this reviewer noticed the significance of the number shows that Bach has been the subject of both valid and highly speculative methodologies in the past. Daniel R. Melamed's essay "Rethinking Bach Codes" provides an interesting and illuminating overview and demonstrates the historical and intellectual framework in which this scholarship emerged. He shows how most of the speculative theories are non-musical (such as the fascination with the number fourteen) and that they often provide a window for listeners into the foreign sonic and intellectual world of Bach's music. What Melamed's essay clearly shows is how modern listening conventions and difficulties lead to scholarly approaches that sometimes prove to be ahistorical or even wrong. A stronger focus on the listener and their perspective is also at the center of John Butt's brilliant essay on "Bach's Works and the Listener's Viewpoint." Using Bach's Christmas Oratorio as a case study, Butt shows how the emerging work concept in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has influenced the way modern listeners (and scholars) perceive a piece that consists of six seemingly independent cantatas. By mining the philosophical discourse of Bach's time (without suggesting that Bach had to be familiar with every single detail of it), [End Page 129] Butt provides a new understanding that culminates in the suggestion that "a Leibnizian would see a well-crafted piece of music as realizing something of God's reality in an infinite causal chain, connecting meanings and emotions in ways that a composer intuits in the mathematical relationships of notes in time" (264). While Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and his philosophy have been referenced occasionally by Bach scholars, Butt's innovative approach offers a new path that students of Bach can take to understand his music within the intellectual landscape of his time. A proper understanding of Bach and his music has to be based on reliable editions of his works; and, just as in the theological and philosophical interpretations explored by Melamed and Butt, misconceptions and misreadings have sometimes obscured important details. Joshua Rifkin's essay, "Rethinking Editions: Mass, Missa, and Monument Culture," provides a fundamental reassessment of practices of editing Bach's works in the twenty-first century. It is a laudable strength of the book that it takes the idea of "Bach's time" from a broad and wholistic perspective. Bach's time is the philosophical discourse of the eighteenth century, it is the influence of contemporary theology on his works (as discussed in the essay by Jeremy Begbie), it is Bach's humor (brilliantly explored by David Yearsley), and it is also the material culture that surrounded Bach. Stephen Rose, whose work on the literary culture of Bach's time has shed new light on the status of the musician and his place in the literary imagination,1 makes a strong case in his essay that Bach's works are more than simply "products of his mind" (11). Rather, Rose shows that the material culture of Bach's time had a significant impact as well. In Leipzig, Bach lived in one of the primary trading hubs in Germany and he participated in and engaged with contemporary consumer culture. Rose rightly...

Medical Ethics: A Very Short Introduction

Medical Ethics: A Very Short IntroductionMichael Dunn and Tony HopeOxford University Press, 2018Let me begin by saying as a long-term advocate of more conscientious, deliberate, and compelling education in the ethical aspects of medical practice, this book is a most welcome contribution.Medical Ethics, a volume in the Oxford University Press series of Very Short Introductions is compact (fits in a jacket pocket), brief (10 chapters, 122 pages), brilliant (passim), and affordable ($11.95). Hence, efficacy in several dimensions.This book, now in its second edition, is the best elementary introduction to medical ethics we have. By “best” I mean the most successful combination of clear writing, accessible analytic acuity of central concepts and issues, pedagogical design, useful guidance to more advanced material, and brevity.Other introductory works in this area are sometimes better in one or more of these categories. One that comes to mind (also recommended for more depth) is Clinical Ethics: A Practical Approach to Ethical Decisions in Clinical Medicine by Albert R. Johnson, Mark Siegler, and William J. Linslade. However, none is as successful as a combination of all these criteria.If I were still teaching medical ethics to residents, when time efficiency is essential, I would certainly use Medical Ethics as a principal resource.The authors present a mix of philosophical insight, grounded in close study of foundational texts, and clinical observation, grounded in reflection on years of experience. The mix is at once intellectually elevating and clinically useful.The book opens with an explication of eight “tools of ethical reasoning” used by philosophers, which are then on display in consideration of a range of topics that challenge medical practitioners.These tools are: 1) Distinguishing facts from values; 2) Reasoning from principles; 3) Defining terms; 4) Elucidating concepts; 5) Case comparison; 6) Thought experiments; 7) Logic; 8) Spotting and avoiding fallacies in reasoning.While using these tools as guidelines, the authors advise it is important to remember: Ethical reasoning cannot be reduced to algorithms. Situations are complex and doing the right thing will often require flexibility. Rationality, if practiced in isolation from other virtues, can, like bureaucracy, become rigid and inhuman. Humane medicine will require in addition to rationality: wisdom, imagination, and creativity.This statement reflects the authors’ general and long-term approach to ethical problems, an approach that is a disciplined attempt to achieve clarity, rather than an opportunity to invoke a commitment to any sort of abstraction (theory, law, ideology, secular or religious tradition, and so on). Readers are encouraged to get rid of the fuzz and goo of careless thought, to achieve clarity about the issue or case at hand, before committing to a treatment plan. (As an aside—in many years of consulting with patients, their families, and attending caregivers, I found that most disagreements could be resolved simply by clarifying the language each party was using. Clarity alone often generated agreement; when it did not, at least differences were better defined and more amenable to resolution.)A variety of cases, laws concerning medical decisions, and “customs of practice,” are presented then followed by an evaluation employing all or some of the tools mentioned above, which discussion is in turn followed by an inquiry of the reader: “Would you use the explicated techniques differently, and perhaps reach a different judgment?” The approach, throughout the presentation of issues, is, again: What is the best way, all things considered, to reach a good judgment about the right thing to do? Reaching such judgment on solid, defensible grounds, all things considered, in a shared language, is the essence of applied medical ethics.The range of cases, laws, and customs considered includes, but is not limited to: assisted dying, people who don’t exist yet, inconsistencies about responses to mental illness, fair procedures for allocating medical resources, the myth of evidence-based value-free policy-making, the role of rescue according to statistics versus to known individuals, modern genetics testing and traditional confidentiality, cultural mores and consent, and the various support roles of medical ethics.The best summary of the book’s message I can offer is this: Attending to the particulars of individuals-in-context is always appropriate, if not mandatory while evaluating ethical aspects of clinical practice. After rational consideration of the kind outlined by the authors, forming different judgments in similar (but not identical) cases ought to be considered an achievement rather than an inconsistency to be avoided. The consistency to be most valued in clinical decision-making is not found in identical results, but rather in the application of rational processes, tempered with empathy and imagination. The particular elements of individual contexts matter and rational judgments will be, and ought to be affected by them.The Further Reading addendum is excellent, offering books, articles, journals, and institutions that have contributed to our—so far—only moderately successful effort in providing essential and continuing medical ethics education.

It All Hinges on China: Environmental Governance in the Twenty-First Century

It All Hinges on China: Environmental Governance in the Twenty-First Century

Cleopatra: A Biography by Duane W. Roller (review)

Reviewed by: Cleopatra: A Biography by Duane W. Roller Carol J. King Duane W. Roller . Cleopatra: A Biography. Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2010 . Pp. x + 252 . US $24.95 . ISBN 9780195365535 . Cleopatra is one of the most significant female figures in recorded history. As heir to the Ptolemaic throne of Egypt in 51 bc, she was the wealthiest and most [End Page 395] powerful Hellenistic ruler of her day. Yet the legacy spawned by her attempts to hold onto both wealth and power in the increasingly Roman-controlled eastern Mediterranean overshadows her accomplishments as the last Ptolemaic ‘king and pharaoh.’ Male-dominated historiography, the victor’s point of view, and the visual and performing arts of the last 500 years have all contributed to the myth of Cleopatra (x, 1), a myth perpetuated in popular culture through film, historical fiction, and even literary biography. The “recension of the myth of Cleopatra” (6) is not the concern of Duane W. Roller’s Cleopatra: A Biography; rather, Roller proposes “to create a portrait of Cleopatra based solely on information from the ancient world” (x). As a corrective to the generally misunderstood and unfairly represented persona of this important historical figure (1), Roller’s book is a valuable contribution to Hellenistic scholarship. As part of the Oxford University Press series Women in Antiquity, Roller’s Cleopatra: A Biography takes a broad approach to ancient history and culture and gives equal attention to Cleopatra’s life and her historical times. The book generally follows chronological order. Chapters 1 and 2 cover, respectively, Cleopatra’s ancestry and her Ptolemaic heritage (particularly Ptolemaic involvement with Rome). Roller rightly gives due attention to historical context that is not only relevant to her but absolutely critical for understanding the significance of her reign (32). For example Ptolemy VIII’s visits to Rome in order to strengthen his political position, as well as his appreciation for the advantages of developing a close personal relationship with a prominent Roman, set precedents for Cleopatra VII (42). Chapter 3 covers Cleopatra’s youth and education. Here the focus is on the cultural context, mainly what is known about the Ptolemaic court, since a sheer lack of evidence frustrates any fuller account of Cleopatra’s early years. Speculation is minimal, kept to the realm of possibility given other facts. “[O]ne presumes that she could study at the Library and attend lectures at the Mouseion,” perhaps preferring those of physicians and pharmacologists (45). Roller pays serious attention to Cleopatra’s educational accomplishments, especially to Plutarch’s mention of seven languages—to which must be added her native Greek, Egyptian, and Latin—and to “the obscure notices” of her writing (50). In Cleopatra’s cultural milieu, “literary output was expected of someone in her position” (50). Roller argues that fragments of a work Cosmetics indicate more of a medical and pharmacological bent than a simple discussion of female adornment. He notes that Plutarch’s list of languages has a geographical progression, from south to northeast, of places historically associated with the Ptolemaic dynasty, which strongly suggests that Cleopatra acquired knowledge of these and likely other languages (Plutarch’s “many others as well”) for diplomatic purposes (48). The “unusually well educated” (43) Cleopatra was evidently less vulnerable [End Page 396] to potentially dangerous factions at court than her rival brother Ptolemy XIII, who was said to have had little education (51). The years 51 to 47 bc, when Cleopatra VII became queen of Egypt, first—significantly—jointly as consort to the younger Ptolemy XIII, are covered in Chapter 4. Roller claimsthat at the point when Caesar arrived in Alexandria in 48 bc, Cleopatra was “marginalized” (in exile) and “no one took her seriously” (60). Thus her swift reversal of circumstances to become sole ruler following the elimination of her brother during the Alexandrian War is indeed remarkable, the more so because it was largely her own doing, beginning with her most ingenious return from exile and self-presentation to Caesar. Roller’s earlier statement that this was one of a number of familiar episodes that “simply did not happen” (7) is somewhat misleading: the oft-called “carpet,” he here argues, was rather a bedsack, but...

Cholera: The Biography

Cholera: The Biography, by Christopher Hamlin, joins Obesity, Asthma, Hysteria, Diabetes, Thalassaemia, and Down’s Syndrome as part of the Oxford University Press series Biographies of Diseases. As great a read as Tuberculosis (Biographies of Disease) (1), Hamlin’s book does an excellent job of treating a complex subject with scientific rigor while also being completely accessible to a lay audience. It includes a glossary of terms and suggestions for further reading. In short, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the origins and history of a “disease” about which the more we know the less certain we become. The word disease appears in quotation marks above because, as the book makes eminently clear, the concept and case definition of cholera are defined differently in different contexts. As is stated in Chapter 6, Cholera’s Last Laugh: [Cholera] may not be (or may not always have been) a South Asian export; is caused by a group of genetically unstable organisms, whose main ecological niche is warm seas not the human intestine; is, as a clinical matter, indistinct from other severe diarrheas (including the old cholera nostras) and is often defined in clinical rather than bacteriological terms; is subject to seasonal and environmental factors, not merely to the presence of infected persons; is not exclusively, or often even predominantly, water-borne, and may not always be a fecal-oral disease; [and] is as much a political problem as ever. Hamlin makes a clearly articulated argument that politics plays a large part in how the lay public and public health professionals perceive and respond to cholera. As this biography elucidates, cholera has historically not only driven individual destiny (Mary Lennox would never have left India for Mistlethwaite Manor had not her parents, her ayah, and most of the servants died of cholera in the first pages of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book The Secret Garden), but it has also defined and reflected prevailing attitudes about the politics, economy, race relations, and social hierarchies of entire nations to an extent not matched until the advent of AIDS. In Chapter 3, Citizen Cholera, the reasons given for the Italian prime minister’s absolute denial of the 1911 cholera epidemic bear a chilling resemblance to the motivations behind South Africa’s President Mbeki’s 20th century denial of the AIDS epidemic. The book ends on a cautionary note, stating that even in the face of modern public health interventions, climate change could trigger ever larger outbreaks as rising, warming seas expand the niche of Vibrio cholera. However, Hamlin’s final statement sums up both the central conundrum of cholera and the central satisfaction of cholera’s treatment in this book: “Cholera will not disappear nor cease to mean. A great challenge will be to respond to the meanings it is given.”

Advances in comparative Germanic syntax

Reviewed by: Advances in comparative Germanic syntax Jeroen Van Craenenbroeck Advances in comparative Germanic syntax. Ed. by Artemis Alexiadou, Jorge Hankamer, Thomas McFadden, Justin Nuger, and Florian Schäfer. (Linguistics today 141.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2009. Pp. xv, 395. ISBN 9789027255242. $158 (Hb). The Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop (CGSW) is a conference with a venerable tradition within generative linguistics. Held more or less every year since 1984, it has yielded a series of often high-quality proceedings, to which the present book forms the most recent addition. It contains a selection of papers from the twenty-first and twenty-second CGSW, held at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2006 and the University of Stuttgart in 2007 respectively. The book contains an introduction by the editors and fourteen papers, grouped into four parts: ‘Cartography and the left periphery’ (five papers), ‘Word order and movement’ (four papers), ‘Thematic relations and NP realization’ (three papers), and ‘Finiteness and modality’ (two papers). As pointed out by the editors (vii), CGSW typically addresses both traditional themes of Germanic comparative syntax and topics pertaining to syntactic theory in general, and the twenty-first and twenty-second installments of the workshop were no exception in this respect. Accordingly, I use this bifurcation as the structuring principle for this review, starting with the general, non- Germanic-specific themes. In so doing, I adhere only partially to the structure proposed by the editors, but I return to it at the end of the review. The first central theme of the volume concerns cartography. This research program is based on the idea that sentence structure should be represented as a template of fixed positions, each with its own syntactico-semantic specification. This template is taken to be a universal, totally ordered set of functional projections, with crosslinguistic variation being reduced to whether or not the heads and specifiers of these projections are overtly filled (be it via internal or external merge). While no one can deny that the cartographic endeavor has yielded a substantial amount of both empirically and theoretically highly relevant work (see, for example, the Oxford University Press series ‘The cartography of syntactic structures’: Cinque 2002, 2006, Belletti 2004, Rizzi 2004, Benincà & Munaro 2010, Cinque & Rizzi 2010), in recent years a growing number of problems has been raised for this approach (see the papers and references in van Craenenbroeck 2009 for discussion). The present CGSW volume presents a very interesting contribution to this debate, with three of its papers adopting the cartographic viewpoint and three others challenging it. The cartographic centerpiece of this volume is Anna Cardinaletti’s paper ‘On a (wh-)moved Topic in Italian, compared to Germanic’ (3–40). She provides an analysis of resumptive preposing (RP) in Italian; she shows that Italian RP differs from clitic left dislocation (CLLD) and focalization, and shares certain properties with English topicalization. In Cardinaletti’s account, an RPed constituent moves to a high TopP, with an intermediate landing site in specFinP. The fact that RP and wh-movement do not cooccur is taken to indicate that the latter also has an intermediate landing site in specFinP, while the fact that RP is a root phenomenon follows from it targeting a very high TopP (the idea being that this projection is absent in embedded contexts). As such, this paper is a very prototypical example of a cartographic piece of work: based on distributional patterns, word-order generalizations, and cooccurrence restrictions, it maps out a particular portion of the functional sequence. The other two cartographic papers are of a different nature. Rather than providing evidence for a particular functional sequence, the authors use results from previous cartographic work as a central ingredient in their analysis. In ‘C-agreement or something close to it: Some thoughts on the “alls-construction” ’ (41–58), Michael T. Putnam and Marjo van Koppen focus on a previously undiscussed construction attested in Midwestern American English. In this regional variation, [End Page 940] an s-ending appears on the universal quantifier all in pseudoclefts. Putnam and van Koppen tentatively analyze this suffix as an instance of complementizer agreement. They claim that the (non)occurrence of the agreement ending is crucially...

Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Womens Rights Movement. By Sally G. McMillen. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. x, 310 pp. $28.00, ISBN 978-0-19-518265-1.)

It is appropriate that Sally G. McMillenś book is in the Oxford University Press series Pivotal Moments in American History (edited by David Fischer and James McPherson), since the womanś rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848 was surely a “pivotal moment.” However, the American womanś rights movement of the nineteenth century is an oft-told tale, and this book closely follows the publication of Judith Wellmanś The Road to Seneca Falls: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the First Womanś Rights Convention (2004), the most authoritative treatment to date of the Seneca Falls meeting. Fortunately, the two books are different enough that there can be room for both on the shelves of historians. Wellmanś book is more tightly focused on Seneca Falls itself and the surrounding region; on the converging religious, antislavery, and legal-reform movements in the region that set the stage for the convention; on the demography of those who attended; and on the central role of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. McMillenś book takes a broader look at the status of women in the context of the “separate spheres” ideology of the antebellum period and at other reform movements before and after Seneca Falls. She also focuses on the “big four” of the movement: Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony, and introduces many other women, and a few men, important to the movement with portraits and capsule biographies. While Wellman devotes only about thirty pages to developments after Seneca Falls, more than half of McMillenś book deals with that period, particularly the years between 1848 and the 1890s. Another positive feature of McMillenś book is that it includes as appendices both the Declaration of Sentiments approved at Seneca Falls and Stantonś powerful 1892 address, “Solitude of Self.”

An Interview with Michael J. Klarman on Race and American Legal History

May/June 2008 Historically Speaking 39 An Interview with Michael J. Klarman on Race and American Legal History Conducted by RandallJ. Stephens MICHAEL J. KLARMAN IS A LEADING EXPERT ON RACE andcivilrights in UnitedStates history. Aftergraduatingfrom law schoolatStanford University, he clerkedforJudge Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. KJarman, aprofessor of history and law at the University of Virginia, willsoon bejoining thefaculty atHarvardLaw School. He is the author of a number of landmark articles and books. His FromJim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and die Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2004) won the 2005 BancroftPri^e. Hismost recentwork, Unfinished Business : Racial Equality in American History (Oxford University Press, 2007), reveals the kng, unevenpath to a morejust society. Historically Speaking associate editor RandallStephens spoke with Klarman recently about his work on race andhw in American history. Randall Stephens: Why did you write Unfinished Business: Racial Equality in American History? Michael J. Klarman: The answer to this one is easy but not very interesting. I 'was asked to contribute the volume on race to an Oxford University Press series on inalienable rights. I believe they asked me because I had recendy published , FromJim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Strugglefor Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2004). That larger volume grew out of twenty years of reading, writing, and teaching about race and the Constitution in American history. I think I first got interested in that subject because every teacher of Constitutional Law has to make peace with Brown v. Boardof Education . By that I mean, how important was that decision to the civil rights revolution of the 1960s? and why was the decision right? (everyone agrees today that it was right, though the justices who decided it in 1954 had a devil of a time figuring out why school segregation was unconstitutional). Stephens: In Unfinished Business you remark: "At first glance the history of American race relations appears to be one of slow, but inevitable progress" (4). Could you explain what you mean by that? Klarman: I think most people buy the view that we started out with slavery, then we abolished slavery and substituted that with Jim Crow, then Jim Crow was gradually dismanded, and today we've accomplished something nearer to the ideal stated in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." That trajectory suggests ineluctable progress. But the actual history is more complicated. Slavery was much more on the defensive in the Soudi in 1780 than in 1820. Northern blacks were probably better treated—at least legally—in 1800 dian in 1 860. And African Americans in the Soudi were surely better off in terms of political and civil South Carolina representative Robert B. Elliott's famous speech in favor of the Civil Rights Act, delivered in the House of Representatives on January 6, 1874, is memorialized here. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number , LC-DIG-pga-02595]. rights in 1870 than diey were in 1900. There have been many instances in American history of racial retrogression—of things getting worse for African Americans and other racial minorities, rather than progressively getting better. Stephens: Most of your book covers the period before Brown vs Topeka. Why? What kind of picture do we get of the civil rights struggle when we look at the decades before the 1950s and 1960s? Klarman: Again, I was asked to write a book about race in American history, not a book about the civil rights movement. Still, I doubt one can ever understand die present without understanding how we got there. For example, only someone who understands the history of race in the 20th century can appreciate why Barack Obama's pastor might have said some of die things he said about America, and why a great many African Americans agree with his words. Stephens: Recently, a number of popular history books have focused the reading public's attention on the post-Civil War era. Why were the rights of African Americans being chipped away in the decades following Reconstruction? How does that era shape the larger story of American history? Klarman: That...

How new is the new philosophy of psychiatry?

In their recent paper, Natalie Banner and Tim Thornton evaluate seven volumes of the Oxford University Press series “International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry,” an international book series begun in 2003 focusing on the emerging interdisciplinary field at the interface of philosophy and psychiatry. According to Natalie Banner and Tim Thornton, the series represents a clear indication that the interdisciplinary field of philosophy of psychiatry has been flourishing lately. Philosophers and psychiatrists face a “new philosophy of psychiatry”. However, the optimism which the “new” philosophy of psychiatry celebrates is precisely the exiling of philosophy from the foundations of psychiatry. The 150 year old belief that psychopathology cannot do without philosophical reflection has virtually disappeared from common psychiatric education and daily clinical practice. Though the discipline of psychiatry is particularly suited to contributions from philosophy, the impact of philosophy on psychiatry nowadays remains limited. With some exceptions, philosophical papers are embedded in a philosophical context inscrutable to ordinary psychiatrists. Much current philosophical work is perceived by psychiatrists as negativistic. I would encourage the field of psychiatry to incorporate once again basic philosophical attitudes which render possible true dialogue with philosophy and enrich both disciplines. The views developed here should not discredit the value and importance of Natalie Banner and Tim Thornton’s paper and the excellent series “International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry.” As Jaspers said “Everybody inclined to disregard philosophy will be overwhelmed by philosophy in an unperceived way”.

The new philosophy of psychiatry: its (recent) past, present and future: a review of the Oxford University Press series International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry

There has been a recent growth in philosophy of psychiatry that draws heavily (although not exclusively) on analytic philosophy with the aim of a better understanding of psychiatry through an analysis of some of its fundamental concepts. This 'new philosophy of psychiatry' is an addition to both analytic philosophy and to the broader interpretation of mental health care. Nevertheless, it is already a flourishing philosophical field. One indication of this is the new Oxford University Press series International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry seven volumes of which (by Bolton and Hill; Bracken and Thomas; Fulford, Morris, Sadler, and Stanghellini; Hughes, Louw, and Sabat; Pickering; Sadler; and Stanghellini) are examined in this critical review.

Rethinking International Human Rights: What Have We Learned, Where Are We Going?

This paper reviews and discusses the recent history of international human rights efforts, noting both its successes and failures; suggests some lessons that might be drawn from this experience, and proposes a number of steps we might take to promote wider respect for human rights. In particular, the paper suggests an informal list of lessons which might be drawn from our international human rights experience thus far. These lessons include: (1) governments do count in making human rights effective; (2) governments do care about their human rights reputation; (3) government can be honestly inconsistent or ambivalent (4) we should do what we can even if it is only partially effective; (5) we should not get discouraged by the difficulty of achieving greater human rights observance; (6) money talks; (7) institutions and precedents tend to grow; (8) even the best motivated policies may have unintended consequences; (9)we should watch out for human rights hijackers; and (10) patience is a virtue. The paper discusses the challenges that remain and concludes with a To Do list of twenty proposals for action. The paper is a shortened version of several of five lectures delivered as a course on Rethinking International Humans Rights: What Have We Learned, Where Are We Going?, presented at the Tenth Anniversary Session on Human Rights of the Academy of European Law, held at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, summer 1999. The lectures have been submitted for publication in the Oxford University Press Series of Collected Courses of the Academy of European Law. A shortened version of another portion of the lectures dealing with the implications of the intervention for the doctrine of humanitarian intervention, the laws of war, international criminal law, the role of the media and NGOs in humanitarian situations, and sovereignty and ethnic conflict has appeared in Richard B. Bilder, Kosovo and the New Interventionism: Promise or Peril, Journal of Transnational Law & Policy, Vol. 9, No.1.

TASK-BASED LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING

TASK-BASED LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING. Rod Ellis . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. x + 387. $24.95 paper. This book is part of the Oxford University Press series in Applied Linguistics . In the preface, Ellis explains that his goal was to produce a book that “attempts to examine ‘task’ from a variety of perspectives,” noting he was striving in particular for “a rounded, balanced account of how tasks have figured in both SLA and language pedagogy” (p. ix). As Ellis also notes, the book is not a “how to” guide for the teacher or researcher but rather a text that informs about current research and practice on task-based second language research and teaching.

JOHNSEN, O. 2002. Photographic Guide to Minerals of the World. Oxford Natural History Series. First published in Danish in 2000 as Mineralernes Verden. 439 pp. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Price £17.99 (hard covers). ISBN 0 19 851568 5.

This book is a new volume in the Oxford University Press series of photographic guides and is aimed primarily at the serious amateur geologist. It is a compact guide to mineral identification in hand specimen with the aid of a hand lens, so detailed optical properties and topics such as X-ray diffraction are not covered. The book starts with a short section explaining what is meant by a mineral and how they are named. …

Dressing Up Debutantes: Pageantry and Glitz in Texas (review)

Reviewed by: Dressing Up Debutantes: Pageantry and Glitz in Texas Audrey Kerr Dressing Up Debutantes: Pageantry and Glitz in Texas. By Michaele Thurgood Hayes. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. x + 180 , 35 illustrations, appendix.) At first, Dressing Up Debutantes appears to be a neutral chronicle of the Coronation tradition in San Antonio, Texas—an objective depiction of pageantry in a Southern city. But as the author unfolds the traditions of Coronation and the events that inaugurate young aristocrats into San Antonio's social elite, it becomes clear that she wishes to confirm the importance of material rituals for local aristocrats while critiquing the use of such rituals to alienate lower-class whites and minority groups from long-standing conventions. Coronation is a 90-year-old system of pageantry originated by the founding father of the (fraternal) Order of [End Page 106] the Alamo who first organized this extravagant production to elect an Order queen. It has grown to become a 10-day fiesta filling all of the streets and banquet hall of San Antonio with a myriad of events, including four citywide parades. Although San Antonio hosts a Hispanic majority, most of the events and almost all of the queens are Anglo in descent, and the manipulation of Mexican cultural motifs—the presence of folklorico performers, for example—erroneously implies that a commemoration of Hispanic heritage is part of the celebration. In practice, Coronation is a localized and deeply symbolic commemoration of American Southern Anglo life, as well as a proclamation of this life as "royal": those who are included in Coronation courts are the social monarchy of San Antonio who inherit both the social obligations and privileges that accompany "noble" birth. Queens are selected based on the ornateness of their gown tapestry and their confidence and poise; even lineage is second to charm, grace, attire, and showmanship. Robes are evaluated based on the length and beauty of the train; judges also observe the elaborateness of the stitching and the historicity (or originality) of the theme that is stitched into—and the story that is told through—the gown design. The cost of the robes (including the trains) is so exorbitant that participation in Coronation is indeed the ultimate demonstration of high status. Hayes effectively makes the argument that class distinctions in San Antonio are confirmed by the powerful social mores established in Coronation, and that the traditions of this event are a microcosm of the social, political, and economic allegiances of city residents. To this end, the robes have three effects: first, they are the premier material landscape of a community ritual; second, they illuminate family traditions and secure family standing; and third, and most important, the robes have the symbolic and actual power to solidify class boundaries. As highbrow patterns of behavior will trickle down, mimicry and imitation abound in similar events around the city organized by lower classes. In other words, the true power of the Coronation may inadvertently be its influence on all tiers of San Antonio society, even while welcoming only a very small and exclusive group to take part in the major events. Excluded groups adapt the ceremonialism by organizing, for example, African American and Latino courts, and by selecting queens with more modest dresses and less extravagant crowns, who are celebrated in smaller pageants. The principal contribution of this book is its unique exploration of the deeply symbolic material traditions of the elite that must, on one hand, borrow Hispanic cultural motifs to perpetuate tradition, then, on the other hand, discriminate against Hispanics and other groups for their own cultural preservation. As part of an Oxford University Press series on material culture, Hayes's is a fine complement to the other works in this collection on corresponding themes. This book, finally, is about the fabric—both literal and figurative—of San Antonio's social environment. To this end, it successfully uses the community's most revered and popular artifacts to construct its social identity, and model its social texture. [End Page 107] Audrey Kerr Simon's Rock College Copyright © 2001 American Folklore Society

Gjert Kristoffersen (2000). The phonology of Norwegian. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. xvi+366.

The phonology of Norwegian is the ninth book in the Oxford University Press series The Phonology of the World's Languages. With Kristoffersen's book, nearly half of this series is devoted to studies of Germanic languages, in which context his work supplements previous volumes on Dutch (Booij 1995), German (Wiese 1996) and English (Hammond 1999). The phonology of Norwegian fits comfortably into this series and the author has been successful in achieving his stated purpose of giving a thorough presentation of the phonological facts of Norwegian as well as offering analyses of many of those facts. The phonology of Norwegian can be seen as supplanting Kristoffersen (1991), the author's doctoral dissertation from the University of Tromsø, which has until this point arguably been the most comprehensive discussion of Norwegian phonology.

English-Canadian Theatre

English-Canadian Theatre, part of a new Oxford University Press series which surveys various aspects of Canadian literary culture, offers a scholarly overview of its topic. Written by two professors at the University of Guelph who have an ongoing concern for Canadian theatre, the book claims to be the first comprehensive work to draw together a history of our nation’s anglophone theatre and an assessment of its drama. Though there’s little doubt that dramatic criticism and theatre history are interdependent, Benson and Conolly sometimes go on seeming tangents in their literary discussions, especially given the confines of a slim volume (114 pages of text, followed by a selected bibliography and index).