Public Letters Research Articles

In the Language of the Land: Native Conversion in Jesuit Public Letters from Brazil and India

Abstract This paper begins with a simple problem: given the implicit Ignatian model for conversion and of conversion narratives for those already within the Christian fold, how did Jesuit missionaries in the colonies represent native conversion? To what extent were these colonial conversion narratives responding to the demands of Jesuit representational norms and to what extent did they reflect local realities? To address this question, this paper will examine stories of conversions of natives in public letters sent from Bahía and Goa and their immediate environs during the first thirty years of the missions in Brazil and India—annual letters but also other letters which were published in popular collections such as the Nuovi Avisi delle Indie di Portogallo series printed in Venice. The public cartas particulares, as opposed to the private hijuelas, were meant to be carefully crafted, and were explicitly intended to give a good account of the mission to the public in Europe. Since the public letters considered here were guided by Ignatius’ epistolary conventions and often placed into wide circulation, they provide an index of the rhetorical strategies and conversion narratives deemed successful by the Jesuit order in Europe in a period when Ignatius’ influence was still strongly felt.

Three Poems

28 worldliteraturetoday.org Actions to sling stones eyelashes intimate throwaways unleashed fury and fevers outrageous miracles broken nails illustrious curs the wind but to sling living against any and all quietude against death once again i have spoken Comely Company it’s a perfectly ordinary thing to have a vulture working away at my guts not devouring them exactly more like loving them or ripping them out to bring to light my latest faces and look at them he says to me see what you’re eating beast says the beautiful vulture Data beneath the freshness beneath the harsh sweetness of this day in may like a warm gunshot rewinding itself to relive old recollections of dreadful women magnificent humans and the entire hospital, the gullible fool sucks up the winds exploding in his pulse to learn and learn again that every bit of ruin is inclined to survive Translations from the Spanish By Lisa Rose Bradford Editorial note: From Cólera buey (1965/1971; Oxen rage), in the series “Broken nails illustrious curs the wind.” Argentine poet-in-exile Juan Gelman (b. 1930) was born of Jewish Ukrainian parents in Buenos Aires and grew up amid a myriad of languages, acquiring a fascination for words early on in life. Author of more than twenty books of poetry, he has received numerous prizes, including the prestigious Premio Cervantes. Having worked as a journalist and translator in Argentina, Spain, France, and Italy, he is presently living in Mexico City. Lisa Rose Bradford has published three book-length translations of Juan Gelman’s verse, one of which, Between Words: Juan Gelman’s Public Letter (Coimbra Editions, 2010), received the National Translation Award. She teaches comparative literature at the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Her “Translation Tuesday” post on translating Gelman’s work appears on this month’s WLT blog. Three Poems Juan Gelman photo : paola stefani ( author ) / rsphoto . nl ( vulture ) ...

Super-FEC Codes for 40/100 Gbps Networking

This paper presents a simple approach to evaluate the performance bound at very low bit-error-rate (BER) range for binary pseudo-product codes and true-product codes. Moreover it introduces a super-product BCH code that can achieve near-Shannon limit performance with very low decoding complexity. This work has been accepted by IEEE Communications Letters for future publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessible.

Public and Personal Letters: Julia Griffiths and Frederick Douglass' Paper

This essay examines Julia Griffiths' contributions to Frederick Douglass' Paper, arguing that Griffiths had a stronger sense than Douglass of the newspaper as an instrument of sociability, and that letters were crucial to its production. The paper's multiple and overlapping forms of circulation blended print, manuscript and private communication. Griffiths' own column took the form of a letter, borrowing the warmth and familiarity of personal correspondence. Part of the mid-century flowering of British and American women's periodical writing, it adopted the developing conventions of the travelling correspondent, and demonstrates some of the wider cultural aspirations of Douglass's anti-slavery newspaper.

Announcement of 2012 Hunter Award

Objective: The Statistics Division established the William G. Hunter Award in 1987 to encourage and promote outstanding accomplishments during a career in the broad field of applied statistics, and to recognize an implementer who achieves results. Qualifications: Any outstanding leader in the field of applied statistics, regardless of ASQ Statistics Division membership status, is qualified. Candidates must have demonstrated a high level of professionalism, significant contributions to the field, and a history of inspirational leadership and application. A person may be nominated may times but may win the award only once. Procedure: The nominator must have the permission of the person being nominated and letters from at least two other people supporting the nomination. Claims of accomplishments must be supported with objective evidence. Examples include publication lists and letters from peers. Nominators are encouraged to read the accompanying article “William G. Hunter: An Innovator and Catalyst for Quality Improvement” written by George Box in 1993 (http://www.asqstatdiv.org/documents/ William%20Hunter%20-%20Innovator%20-%20by%20George %20Box_1993.pdf) to get a better idea of the characteristics this award seeks to recognize.

Unusually low inversion

AbstractReaders are encouraged to submit letters for possible publication. Letters can be submitted either electronically through the system used for articles, by email attachment to weather@wiley.com or by post, as shown on the Contents page. The Letters Editor reserves the right to edit any letter.

The European Culture Wars in Ireland: The Callan Schools Affair, 1868-81, by Colin Barr

Colin Barr’s question in this book is why there was no Prussian style Kulturkampf in Ireland. After the declaration of papal infallibility at the Vatican Council in 1870–71, and the renewed fear of Catholic aggression and the political struggles which that declaration precipitated in much of continental Europe—and also given the existence of anti-Catholicism among British political élites—why did a seemingly tailor-made opportunity not lead the government to curtail the power of the Catholic Church? The provocation was provided by the experiences and efforts of Fr Robert O’Keeffe, parish priest of Callan in Kilkenny county. In the late 1860s O’Keeffe ran into difficulties with his bishop and was suspended as a priest, whereupon his roles as manager in the local national schools and chaplain in the Workhouse were discontinued by different government agencies. These civic bodies could be seen as enforcing the discipline of the Roman church—anathema to many who saw Rome as riding roughshod over the rights of individual citizens. Challenging the whole canon law basis and process for his suspension, O’Keeffe sued for libel anyone who said he was suspended (not only his bishop but ultimately Cardinal Cullen, his own curates, and many others), repeatedly dragging canon law into the civil courts. He also rallied local support around Callan, wrote public letters, and published extensive pamphlets defending himself. Moreover, he assiduously sought help from politicians at the highest levels, meeting with the Prime Minister, Gladstone, and being helped by a former Prime Minister, Russell, as well as by many others from within and outside Parliament. In the first half of the 1870s the Callan Affair became a cause célèbre not just in Ireland but throughout the United Kingdom and even around the world.

The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The "Great Truth" about the "Lost Cause." (review)

Reviewed by: The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The "Great Truth" about the "Lost Cause." Randall M. Miller (bio) The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The "Great Truth" about the "Lost Cause." Edited by James W. Loewen and Edward H. Sebesta. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010. Pp. 424. Cloth, $55.00; paper, $25.00.) James Loewen has been debunking myths about American history for some time, and now he teams up with Edward Sebesta to rattle from their roost all those Confederates still in attics thinking that secession and states' rights were, and are, a noble cause. They do so with a telling array of documents that reveals hard truths about what the Confederacy really fought for and what the "Lost Cause" mythology has concealed about the harshness of slavery, the cause and character of the Civil War, the unfinished promise of Reconstruction, and more. The dominant theme coursing through the book is Americans' persistent, and almost willful, ignorance about basic facts regarding the reasons for secession, the place of blacks in the Civil War, the violent and virulent racism during and after Reconstruction, and the misuse and abuse of history by "neo-Confederates" and others trading in prejudices and hatreds. The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader is Loewen's and Sebesta's mission to set the record straight. It also is their hope to introduce teachers and other readers to the historiographical evolution of the aforementioned concerns. And it is their warning that Americans must know the truth to set themselves free from those who would misuse and abuse the past. In six document-rich chapters the editors combine cogent commentary and critical documents, spanning the time from the drafting of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 to Sonny Perdue's March 2008 "Confederate History Month Proclamation." The editors largely draw on the public record (e.g., speeches, sermons, editorials, public letters, manifestos, political cartoons) to make the case that white southerners unabashedly fought for slavery [End Page 120] and to keep the South a white man's country. The book's emphasis centers on the Civil War era and then on modern appropriation and exploitation of symbols and myths largely forged during and after Reconstruction by white apologists for slavery, secession, the overthrow of Reconstruction governments, and the submission of blacks to white rule. Of special interest is the editors' insistence on the modern distortion, even inversion, of basic truths about the reasons for secession. As the documents from southern legislatures and secession conventions, among others, unequivocably show, white southerners left the Union to protect slavery's interest, which they believed the federal government had failed to respect and which the actions of free state governments had threatened. In sum, states' rights was not the cause of secession because southern slaveholders rejected its legitimacy regarding slavery when northern states refused to return fugitive slaves or otherwise obstructed southern "rights." They wanted more federal power, not less, to save slavery. States' rights became a crutch after the war when white southerners sought to justify their rebellion and failed bid for independence. But, as the editors complain, the postwar fiction has transmuted into accepted "fact" over time so that today those distrusting government invoke the "noble cause" of states' rights for their own purposes and cast the rebels of 1860-61 and after as the precursors of libertarians and any number of advocates for scaling back and opposing the federal government. The editors amply document such "evolution" with documents from the Dixiecrats, White Citizens' Councils, recent "textbooks" written by neo-Confederates, and public statements by white supremacists. Readers will find Loewen and Sebesta at times angry, impatient, and frustrated as they compare the facts with subsequent distortions or subversions of those facts. But theirs is a mission of great urgency, for as they argue in concluding this uncommonly useful and timely anthology, "There is a reciprocal relationship between truth about the past and justice in the present" (393). And what better time than the sesquicentennial of the Civil War to reflect on that great truth? And, one might add, what better time to hope for a reckoning of the obligations regarding that truth? That the University Press of Mississippi...

Momigliano e i suoi critici

This article presents three of Arnaldo Momigliano�s letters in the author�s possession. All concern Momigliano�s responses to criticism, and taken together they show his openness to criticism candidly offered within the context of friendly relations. They also reveal his impatience with indirect, insensitive, or ill informed criticism, as well as certain problems that arose from incomprehension (as in the case of Ronald Syme). The first letter was addressed to the author, the second to Professor Christopher Jones (now at Harvard, formerly at Toronto), and the third to Professor Sir Fergus Millar (Oxford). Jones entrusted the second letter for publication, and a copy of the third was given to the author by Momigliano himself

El oficio de partera entre los siglos XV al XVIII: fuentes documentales para su estudio

The midwife has traditionally been developing his practice over the centuries in the field of reproductive health of women developing care, teaching, expertise, religious functions and as an adviser in this matter. Despite being an occupation or trade as old as humanity itself, as recorded is in countless testimonies written and iconographic, are relatively rare research work carried out on this profession in late medieval and early modern age. We intend as a central objective of this paper show and analyze some documentary sources dated between the 15th and 18th centuries that provide a rich information about the daily work of these professionals, since its formation until the tasks that were usually: meet delivery, care during pregnancy and puerperium, give advice to women in all matters relating to their sexuality, even engaged in practices not legal as it was the practice of abortion, all of which made him a frequent object of suspicion by the Court of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Are three sources that are analysed: a public letter from birth, a pastoral visit, specifically made to the Sevillian town of Mairena del Alcor, and a process or auto de Fe against a Mexican midwife.

The crooked timber of identity: Integrating discursive, critical, and psychosocial analysis

This paper seeks to contribute to the growing band of constructionist approaches within the field of identity studies (Wetherell & Moharty, 2010). First, it will review the developments that have taken place since the emergence of these approaches in the 1980s, identifying a state of fragmentation into local discursive, political-moral, and psychosocial levels of analysis. Second, and in order to challenge this fragmentation, it will present a rhetorical psychological (Billig, 1987, 1999a) analysis of the classic exchange of public letters between Israeli historian of Judaism Gershom Scholem and American political theorist Hannah Arendt in the wake of the latter's book Eichmann in Jerusalem (Arendt, 1994a). The analysis will proceed from local discursive action, through political-moral frameworks, to the nature of the writers' investment in these constructions. It will show that while the participants' implicitly occasioning of extreme identity categories (such as the 'Jewish anti-Semite' and the totalitarian-style religious Zionist ideologue) is a function of apparently incommensurable political-moral discourses, the nature of investment into such constructions may be understood in a mutual commitment to the absolute inalienability of Jewishness. Third, therefore, the paper will conclude that, rather than constituting separate 'levels', local discursive action, political-moral intelligibilities, and psychosocial qualities are mutually constitutive of each other. It is only through recognizing their inter-dependent nature that the complexity of identity may properly be addressed.

When Pastors Go Public: Richard Furman's Public Letter on Slavery

Early in the history of South Carolina, leaders questioned pastoral influence as a potential threat to public discourse. The form of the public letter helped realize such a threat, by giving the eloquent and powerful Richard Furman a way to turn private correspondence into a multi-audience, transcendent appeal for the extension of slavery. The public letter was a hybrid genre of modern discourse, combining civic argument with intimate and social functions. The form allowed Furman to conceal his agency as a pastor delivering a written sermon on a timely political issue.

Cancer causes & control

We would like to submit this brief manuscript as a letter for publication in CCC. Lowery et al. [1] sought to document the incidence of breast cancer during the year following a negative mammogram so as to facilitate identification of high-risk women who may benefit from increased surveillance. For women as a whole and for subgroups defined by demographic and clinical characteristics, they wished to accomplish the important goal of providing information about the true burden of breast cancer.

Painted for the ear: Ambrogio Lorenzetti's “Fraud” and political oratory

Painted for the ear: Ambrogio Lorenzetti's “Fraud” and political oratory

Climate change: Meeting the challenge

The debate over global warming is over. That was the implicit message of a public letter that appeared in the journal Science on May 7, 2010, signed by 255 members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, including Lonnie Thompson. The letter declared that “there is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.” (The NAS members' letter in Science is available online at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/328/5979/689.pdf) The writers acknowledged that “science never absolutely proves anything,” but they identified five conclusions consistently supported by climate research: (i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact. (ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. (iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth's climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes. (iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) are making the oceans more acidic. (v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more. These scientists go on to say, “We urge our policymakers and the public to move forward immediately to address the causes of climate change, including the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels.” Although the letter has an ominous tone, the authors conclude by adding, “The good news is that smart and effective actions are possible.” The question arises, What smart and effective actions can behavior analysts contribute to this effort?

Biography: A Very Short Introduction (review)

Reviewed by: Biography: A Very Short Introduction James C. Klagge (bio) Hermione Lee. Biography: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. xiv + 170 pp. ISBN 978-0199533547, $11.95. While not a very short book, this is a short and very good book about biography. (It could be made twenty pages shorter by deleting the fairly pointless illustrations.) The author proceeds often historically, using examples mostly from British literary biographies to illustrate or provide exceptions to various generalizations about biographies. The book is not exactly an introduction, since the author’s examples will far exceed the familiarity of any reader, much less any novice reader. But the author provides an engaging overview of the kinds and purposes of biographies over the centuries. And this leads to a solid and wide-ranging sense of what we are up to when we write and read about the lives of others. The author does not give in to the unfortunately popular academic notion that biography really is fiction after all. Of course, for a biography to be comprehensible it requires a selection of the facts: “No biographer is going to write down every single thing the subject did, said, and thought . . . or the book would take longer than the life itself ” (122). And for a biography to be interesting it requires an arrangement of the selected facts—a storyline. This selection and arrangement makes biography an “artificial construct” (122), since there is no objective sense in which one selection and arrangement is correct, or as Lee puts it, “There is no such thing as an entirely neutral biographical narrative” (134). But this still is a far cry from fiction, also an artificial construct, since what are selected and arranged are facts—or our closest approximations to them—and not inventions. Sometimes the meaning of such facts is open to interpretation. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s dying words, spoken in English and reported by his caregiver, who had told him his friends would be there to see him tomorrow, were: “Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life.” There is no doubt about the fact that he said this; there is considerable doubt about its import. Biographers can offer very different interpretations of this statement depending on the material chosen to surround it. One biographer (Ray Monk) presents it as a caustic remark, another memoirist (Norman Malcolm) as a “strangely moving utterance.”1 Lacking any other evidence from the caregiver, these interpretations depend for their plausibility on the storyline of which they are a part. Each storyline will see Wittgenstein differently. In one of them his life ends in despair, in [End Page 847] the other almost in triumph. But in each case the storylines will build on and arrange incidents taken as or shown to be factual. Certain storylines may be impossible to construct because of the unavailability of relevant evidence (7). (This would not be a problem if biographies really were fiction.) At Wittgenstein’s death, control of his Nachlass passed to three designated executors who, with the tacit approval of such family members as still lived, exercised complete control over the availability of manuscripts and letters for research or publication. One of the executors, Elizabeth Anscombe, wrote, “If by pressing a button it could have been secured that people would not concern themselves with his personal life, I should [i.e., would] have pressed the button.”2 In fact, she saw to it that private passages were blocked out or even destroyed when microfilms of scholarly material were made for researchers in 1968 (Paul 12–13). When other researchers found ways to raise issues about such private matters as Wittgenstein’s sexuality or his struggles during wartime service, presumably through access to material never secured by the executors or by interviews with lesser-known acquaintances or by sheer disobedience, they were often excoriated in the press.3 Another executor, Rush Rhees, wrote: “there are certain stories which it would be foul to relate or tell about somebody even if they were true. . . . What is foul is to treat the phrase ‘private life’ as though it were a misnomer.” Apparently family members tried to sue for libel over the publication, but found...

Horace Bushnell among the Metaphysicians

On December 15, 1851, Andrew Jackson Davis—self-styled Harmonial philosopher and noted scion of the spiritualist world—sent a public letter. Addressed through the Hartford Times to the controversial Congregationalist minister Horace Bushnell, the message concerned the first of a series of lectures Bushnell was delivering at his North Church. Davis, who at the time claimed Hartford, Connecticut, as his base, was clearly excited. The announced topic—“On the Naturalistic Theories of Religion as Opposed to Supernatural Revelation”—already gave Davis “much pleasure,” suggesting a position “entirely unlike any other ever assumed by the clergy of Christendom.” More than that, Bushnell's way of approaching the subject and defining his position was “considerably unlike the method pursued by most clergymen,” since Bushnell relied on his own “reason or judgment” to address “the corresponding faculty in the mind of the hearer.” Davis went on to propose that, with so important an issue, better to move the lectures from Bushnell's North Church pulpit to a different location and to invite “all parties interested” to “analyze and examine before the same audience the various positions.”

FDA Wants M.D.s to Enlist in War Against Illegal Ads

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Professional NewsFull AccessFDA Wants M.D.s to Enlist in War Against Illegal AdsJun YanJun YanSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:18 Jun 2010https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.45.12.psychnews_45_12_002AbstractThe Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has launched a campaign to recruit physicians and health care professionals to report potentially illegal advertisements and promotions by drug companies.This outreach effort, termed the “Bad Ad” program, is being implemented by the FDA's Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising, and Communications (DDMAC).A Web site at <www.fda.gov/badad> has been set up to educate health care professionals about the types of drug advertisements and promotions that violate the law. Among the examples are overstating efficacy, omitting or downplaying safety risks, and promoting off-label indications.Drug companies are prohibited from discussing or promoting unapproved indications of their products, but it is not illegal for them to distribute articles published in peer-reviewed medical journals that investigate or review unapproved uses of a medication.The FDA is encouraging physicians and other professionals to report suspected violations they encounter at medical conferences, in professional and lay media, in materials they receive, at company-sponsored presentations, and during sales-representatives' visits. Complaints can be submitted, with supporting materials or other evidence, to the agency by e-mail at [email protected]gov, telephone at (877) RX-DDMAC, or mail. The reports can be submitted anonymously, but the agency recommends that those filing a complaint provide their name and contact information for follow-up and collection of additional materials.“This is a reasonable effort on the part of the FDA,” said David Fassler, M.D., APA treasurer and a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Vermont. He is also a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont. “At a minimum, it may help educate physicians about the regulations governing ads and promotions.”He suggested, however, that the initiative indicates the FDA's lack of resources when it comes to reviewing drug-marketing activities. “Improving compliance will ultimately require a substantial increase in the resources available for monitoring and enforcement,” he said.The DDMAC, housed in the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, is in charge of monitoring and regulating the advertisements and promotional activities for prescription drugs. Medical devices and over-the-counter drugs are not regulated by this division.Although spontaneous reports from health care professionals have occasionally led to investigation and regulatory actions, the DDMAC has traditionally focused its reviews on advertising materials voluntarily submitted by drug companies, complaints filed by competitor drug companies, and surveillance of medical conferences. In a public letter posted on the Bad Ad program Web site, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, M.D., wrote that the “FDA's ability to monitor other promotional activities, which may occur in any number of settings, is limited.”In 2009, the DDMAC issued 38 enforcement letters to pharmaceutical companies, up from 22 letters in 2008.According to Hamburg's letter, the DDMAC will have exhibits at major medical conferences to educate physicians and others about drug-marketing regulations and to promote the Bad Ad program. She urged practitioners to assist the FDA in identifying and stopping misleading drug promotion. ISSUES NewArchived

Response to Swinnen et al.

Response to Swinnen et al.

Announcement of 2010 Hunter Award

Objective: The Statistics Division established the William G. Hunter Award in 1987 to encourage and promote outstanding accomplishments during a career in the broad field of applied statistics, and to recognize an implementor who achieves results. Qualifications: Any outstanding leader in the field of applied statistics, regardless of ASQ Statistics Division membership status, is qualified. Candidates must have demonstrated a high level of professionalism, significant contributions to the field, and a history of inspirational leadership and application. A person may be nominated may times but may win the award only once. Procedure: The nominator must have the permission of the person being nominated and letters from at least two other people supporting the nomination. Claims of accomplishments must be supported with objective evidence. Examples include publication lists and letters from peers. Nominators are encouraged to read the accompanying article “William G. Hunter: An Innovator and Catalyst for Quality Improvement” written by George Box in 1993 to get a better idea of the characteristics this award seeks to recognize.