Scholars Of Culture Research Articles

Editorial Introduction

Editorial| April 01 2023 Editorial Introduction Emily A. Engel Emily A. Engel Emily A. Engel is an independent scholar of Latin American visual culture and an environmental advocate. lalvcassoced@ucpress.edu Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar lalvcassoced@ucpress.edu Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture (2023) 5 (2): 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2023.5.2.1 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Emily A. Engel; Editorial Introduction. Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture 1 April 2023; 5 (2): 1–2. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2023.5.2.1 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentLatin American and Latinx Visual Culture Search As scholars it is not uncommon for many of us to have our personal identities get caught up in our professional pursuits. While this phenomenon is not unique to academia, nor to the study of the visual arts in any specific way, it appears to be more pronounced among academics. Perhaps it is the hazing process of graduate school or personal connections to the material that first draw us into our studies, but in either case scholars of all ranks have observed remarkable overlap between their personal and professional senses of self. Recently, as the academic job market has shifted and contracted, many PhD candidates and graduates have had to come to terms with this phenomenon as they have left academia for rewarding careers in tangential fields. Others of us who work within the academy have confronted our ever-evolving personal and professional identities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic,... You do not currently have access to this content.

Tāmnieku dialekta savdabība kā Kurzemes reģionālā diskursa zīme mūsdienu latviešu bērnu literatūrā: Arnolda Auziņa un Ulda Ausekļa dzejas piemērs

The article focuses on the study of one of the identifiers of regional literature – the use of local language. The goal of the article is to establish and interpret the nuances and meaning of the use of the Livonian dialect in the poetry of two popular authors of modern Latvian children’s literature – Uldis Auseklis (1941) and Arnolds Auziņš (1931). The analysis of literary texts is based on the work (opinions on idioms, dialects and the use of their features in fiction) of several researchers of regional culture – Keith David Malcolm Snell, Anna Mlekodaj –, and Latvian scholars – Kārlis Mīlenbahs, Marta Rudzīte, Ieva Ozola, Alberts Sarkanis, Dace Strelēvica-Ošiņa and others. The examples of Auseklis’s and Auziņš’s poetry analyzed in the study reveal that in modern Latvian children’s literature, specificially in poetry, dialects are one of the sources of language enrichment and that poets use them consciously and skillfully. Both poets demonstrate a convincing sense of the peculiarities of the Livonian dialect, however, the use of the dialect is influenced by the knowledge of the authors: if the dialect is the language of the author’s native region, then the texts written in it are more numerous and reveal the distinctiveness of the dialect in a more nuanced way. The lexicon characteristic of Livonian dialect – regional words, ethnographic names, also individual expressions, various phonetic peculiarities (loss of sounds, insertions, rearrangements, etc.) and word forms different from the literary language (use of the masculine gender instead of the feminine gender, verb form invariance regardless of person and number, etc.) – is used in modern Latvian children’s poetry most often. In the poems by Auziņš and Auseklis, the use of dialect is dominated by a respectful attitude. Humour in the analyzed texts does not mock the dialect or its speakers, the analyzed texts demonstrate the recognition that the regional language can be perceived as an important part of the national language, not as its opposition. The study shows that the use of the regional language in modern Latvian children's books simultaneously preserves the peculiarities of the dialect and gives them a new life because the unusual expressiveness makes them attractive to the reader and can promote the use of the dialect. Also, the texts written in such idioms can become an important source for the research of linguists, literature and culture scholars, and educational scientists.

Book Review

In Life Should be Transparent: Conversations about Lithuania and Europe in the Twentieth Century and Today, Irena Veisaitė, a noted theater critic and an outstanding scholar of modern Lithuanian culture (who passed away on December 11, 2019 at the age of ninety-two due to COVID-19), shares her compelling recollections of her life in Kaunas, Lithuania before, during and after the Second World War. In thirteen separate conversations (chapters) with Aurimas Švedas, a Lithuania historian, Veisaitė provides an in-depth personal history of life in twentieth-century Lithuania beginning as a young child through old age. She provides truly extraordinary insight into three distinct periods of twentieth century Lithuanian history through which she lived: the Soviet occupation (June 1940 to June 1941), the Nazi occupation (June 1941 to 1945) and the later Soviet occupation (1945 to 1990). Born in 1928, Veisaitė was part of a secular Jewish family. She was thirteen years old when the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States began in 1940. When the Nazis arrived one year later, the German occupation authorities imposed various anti-Jewish restrictions, culminating in her family’s forced relocation to the Kaunas ghetto. After the Nazis murdered her mother, Veisaitė was smuggled out of the ghetto and lived with two non-Jewish families until the end of the war.1 (Her parents had divorced in 1938 and her father emigrated to the United States; they finally met again thirty years later in 1968.)

The Form of Ideology and the Ideology of Form: Cold War, Decolonization and Third World Print Cultures by Francesca Orsini, Neelam Srivastava, and Laetitia Zecchini, eds.

<i>The Form of Ideology and the Ideology of Form: Cold War, Decolonization and Third World Print Cultures</i> by Francesca Orsini, Neelam Srivastava, and Laetitia Zecchini, eds.

The origin legends of early medieval Britain and Ireland by Lindy Brady

Reviewed by: The origin legends of early medieval Britain and Ireland by Lindy Brady Donato Sitaro (bio) Lindy Brady, The origin legends of early medieval Britain and Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. ISBN 9781009225618 (hardback), 9781009225670 (ebook). x + 272 pages. $99.00. Origin myths and legends are prominent features of early medieval writings and mentalities. They became a popular genre, an ever-growing corpus of traditions and pseudo-histories, and eventually a late-antique/early medieval 'scholarly preoccupation', as underlined by Brady & Wadden in the foreword to their edited volume Origin legends in early medieval Western Europe (2022: 4). Despite not being the first recorded origines gentium, the Insular origin myths stand out as precious hermeneutic objects for scholars of early medieval culture, as part of a genre 'that has shaped national identity and collective history from the early medieval period to the present day', as we read in the synopsis. The variety of their approach and their richness in contents and traditions make the British, Irish, Pictish, and Anglo-Saxon origin narratives a perfect subject for a dedicated volume. Discussing these apparently divergent narratives in comparative terms was not an easy task, but Brady bravely attempts it in a relatively compact and easily readable book. Divided into five main chapters, the book is prefaced by a 27-page introductory section, eloquently titled 'The anachronism of nationalism', where modern scholarly debate around the contested concepts of ethnicity, post-Roman identities, and early medieval writers' agendas is summarized and discussed. Brady's approach consciously differs from the two major historiographical standpoints on ethnic identities, as it neither gives excessive weight to the influence of Classical ethnography (as Goffart did), [End Page 156] nor does it look too far forward by extending the effects of enduring ethnic identities from the Migration Period deep into the Middle Ages (as in certain readings by Wolfram and Pohl). Brady decides to look 'sideways' (21) to explore the textual and conceptual interrelations between the origin legends of the British Isles without attempting to construct from the texts a straightforward idea of the development of ethnic identities. She looks at the development of origin stories within and among the texts surveyed, more than outside and beyond them. For this reason, the interpretative keywords for Brady's analysis of the sources are 'discourse' and 'development' (3). Her assessment that the concepts enshrined in early medieval origin narratives were communicating and were part of a shared intellectual milieu is repeated throughout the introduction and beyond (1, 4, 16, 21, 63, 227, 229). This assumption finds support in the first chapter through a survey of the textual history of the Insular works containing origin stories: Gildas's De excidio, Bede's Historia ecclesiastica, the ninth-century Historia Brittonum, and the later Irish Lebor Bretnach and Lebor gabála Érenn. While the first two works are referred to in cursory fashion as embryonic nuclei of traditions that would develop later, the latter three pseudo-histories are discussed in depth throughout the book. The Historia Brittonum is given a justified pre-eminence as 'a valuable microcosm of the intellectual connections which form the focus of the study' (16). After the presentation of the sources, the proper narratological analysis begins: chapters 2, 3, and 4 focus on exile, kin-slaying, and intermarriage and incest, respectively. Having established the interrelated nature of the Insular writings in chapter 1, Brady is able to conduct a comparative survey of shared concepts and their development within three concentric levels of investigation corresponding to the three-part structure of these chapters: (i) first she explores the wider conceptual resonance of the motif in literature, usually through comparison with biblical and classical archetypes; (ii) then she outlines the recurrence of historical episodes involving the motif (cases of exiles or kin-slayers in the early medieval Insular context); and finally (iii) she considers the meaning of the motif within the Insular origin narratives. The second part of these themed chapters, the attempt to show 'resonances of these topics in [historical] early insular society' (138), could have been the trickiest. However, Brady addresses the eventual collision between literary motifs and the 'hard facts' drawn from legal and historical records through...

The Last Revolutionaries: The Conspiracy Trial of Gracchus Babeuf and the Equals by Laura Mason

Situating the trial of Gracchus Babeuf and his co-conspirators in its poisonous political setting, Mason provides a new perspective on the French Revolution’s downfall. She examines the Conspiracy of Equals and the show trial of the man whom Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels considered the first revolutionary communist, given maximum publicity by the corrupt ruling Directory in hopes of rallying public opinion for their centrist regime. Mason seeks to write “a history of the French Revolution for the twenty-first century,” worried about rising authoritarianism, faltering judicial integrity, and the erosion of democratic institutions (5).In this fluent narrative history, the first book about the Directory era readily available for wide reading, Mason places Babeuf in his historical context. After a brief overview of Babeuf’s rise from a feudal notary’s apprentice to a Paris-provisioning official and subsequent imprisonment after the Thermidor Coup against Robespierre and his allies, Mason turns to the troubled history of the Directory regime’s attempt to combat polarization on both the neo-Jacobin left and pseudo-royalist right while its own ranks became beset with corruption, careerism, and authoritarian manipulation. The content of Babeuf’s conspiracy, and even the trial, receive little detailed attention; instead, Mason examines how the Directory enthusiastically publicized the Conspiracy of Equals as a scare tactic against the political left, first publishing its papers and then paying stenographers to transcribe the courtroom proceedings and thus ensure the fullest possible coverage in France’s newspapers. Opposition papers, however, treated the Equals as heroes. An able scholar of French Revolutionary print culture, Mason’s extensive research captures the press’ vibrancy during an often-overlooked period. The book successfully explores the Directory’s bizarre politics and its ultimate failure, as regime candidates were badly trounced in the next election. Rather than seeking compromise thereafter, Directors undertook several coups to stay in power, before ultimately being unseated during and after Napoleon Bonaparte’s 18 Brumaire seizure of power in 1799.Though effectively deconstructing the trial’s political context, Mason pays surprisingly little attention to Babeuf’s ideas about equality or to the complex but powerful meanings that revolutionary conceptions had assumed over the revolution’s radical phase. She dismisses fellow conspirator Filippo Buonarotti’s memoir about Babeuf as hagiography without detailed refutation. She claims that Babeuf “misread” Enlightenment philosophers’ egalitarian writings, but she refrains from discussing the processes of creative adaptation and inspiration that had marked revolutionary thought (172). The Babeuf of this history seems little more than the Directory’s discursive creation.Mason also attempts to smother any hopes for either the Conspiracy of Equals or the Neo-Jacobin left, claiming that “the French Revolution was [already] over and the people had been defeated.” Yet even the dismantling of radical networks since Thermidor did not necessarily doom future movements, given the spontaneous uprisings that had marked the revolution’s earlier phases (100–101). She also seeks to distance Babeuf from the “neo-Babouvists” of the 1840s who helped to inspire Marx (227). The Last Revolutionaries is a dispiriting title for anyone interested in Babeuf’s legacies. Her avoidance of the revolution’s continued radical potential risks falling into the Directory’s own centrist trap.

Le "catharisme" en questions ed. by Jean-Louis Biget et al. (review)

Reviewed by: Le "catharisme" en questions ed. by Jean-Louis Biget et al. Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel Le "catharisme" en questions. Edited by Jean-Louis Biget, Sylvie Caucanas, Michelle Fournié, and Daniel le Blévec. (Fanjeaux: Centre d'études historiques de Fanjeaux, 2020. €30,00. ISBN: 97829568972.) Since the publication of the first Cahier de Fanjeaux back in 1966, this series, a treasure trove for scholars of medieval culture and religion, has devoted four volumes—namely CF3 (1968), CF14 (1979), CF20 (1985), and CF55 (2020)—to what has come to be known as the "Cathar debate." Significantly enough, the only title where we can find the term "catharisme" surrounded with scare quotes is that of the most recent installment, as if, in keeping up with our times, the volume tried to distance itself from an uncomfortable concept. One must appreciate the refreshing candor of such an open display of skepticism, especially in a research area that has turned into something of a scholarly minefield to be navigated with the utmost care. This skeptical perspective gains momentum in the preface to the volume, where Michelle Fournié and Daniel le Blévec present Le "catharisme" en questions as a Festschrift to honor the work of Jean-Louis Biget, a French scholar widely renowned for his holistic approach to the study of heresy, as well as for pioneering the questioning of the 'Cathar paradigm.' In the Introduction (pp. 13–34), Biget himself criticizes what he considers to be the shortsightedness of historians who resist the revision of traditional views. He follows this up with a barrage of seemingly open questions whose rather rhetorical nature leaves no doubt as to his position in the debate. Arguing that the Albigensian Crusade marked a turning point for the perception of the religious groups known in French as the bons hommes and bones dames, Biget underscores how polemicists and clerics alike could only understand their religious expressions by shaping them to conform to the model of an alternative Church. His praise of the colloquia of Fanjeaux, the academic events that produce the Cahiers, is far from formulaic, and instead compares them favorably to previous [End Page 397] gatherings; more specifically, the 2013 conference that resulted in Cathars in Question,1 a volume that casts its long shadow over the one discussed here. Le "catharisme" en questions is made of four sections that present the Albigensian Crusade as a watershed moment. The first one, looking into the twelfth-century origins of this religious movement, gathers five chapters that run the gamut from outright rejection to willing embrace of long-standing views on the spread, hierarchical structure and, in sum, the existence of Catharism. Thus, Alessia Trivellone (pp. 37–63) argues that conclusions about Italian Cathars have been drawn from theoretical treatises with little or inconsistent use of factual data and calls for a deeper philological study of these; Edina Bozoky (pp. 65–80) does not question the sources of Italian treatises but takes these at face value. The reader almost wishes these two chapters were arranged in reverse order, as Bozoky, in her discussion of the circulation of the well-known Interrogatio Iohannis, makes the more traditional argument that Trivellone's piece questions. In keeping with the latter, Jean-Louis Biget, in his second contribution to the volume (pp. 81–110), torpedoes the cornerstone of pan-Catharism, that is, the infamous document known as the Charter of Niquinta, a 1167 record of a council that allegedly brought together the whole leadership of the alternative Cathar Church, including a Cathar pope and bishops, for the official establishment of Cathar dioceses. While few scholars still defend its authenticity, many argue for it being a thirteenth-century forgery. In contrast, Biget vindicates the erudition of Pierre de Caseneuve and Guillaume Besse, the seventeenth-century French scholars who respectively discovered and edited the documents, and their intellectual milieu, arguing that they produced the successful forgery themselves and rooting their motivations in their own political context and personal aspirations. In a more ecclesiological vein, Dominique Iogna-Prat (pp. 111–25) reflects on the "othering" of heresy as a means by which the Church, within the context of the Gregorian reforms, emphasized its unity...

Research on the Communication Thought of Lin Qiansan and Guo Moruo in Music Historiography

The exchange of musical historiographical ideas between Lin Qisan and Guo Moruo reflects the exchange of musical academic ideas between China and Japan in the early 20th century, and is a reflection of the exchange and convergence of historical views, perspectives, and research methods in Chinese and Japanese music historiography, as well as the formation of their musical ideas under the joint action of Japanese sinological and Chinese historical thinking. At the beginning of the 20th century, China was faced with a dilemma, both politically and culturally, as to whether to adopt full Westernization or to adhere to Chinese culture? Or should stick to Chinese culture? Many scholars went to Japan to search answers to the question of whether to adopt full Westernization or to adhere to Chinese culture, and how to learn from the success of Japan’s modern reformation. Chinese and Japanese cultural scholars, including Li Shutong, Zeng Zhimin, Guo Moruo and Lin Qiansan, all expressed their cultural orientation and research thoughts in the ideological dialogue of cultural exchange. Among them, Shutong Li, Zhimin Zeng et al.’s practice in music in the Academy, Lin Qiansan and Guo Moruo et al.’s exploration of music theory, Tanabe’s “History of Chinese Music”, and Lin Qiansan’s “Study on Yan Music in the Sui and Tang Dynasties” are all brief reflections of the musical cultural exchanges between China and Japan in the last century. In particular, Guo Moruo ‘s translation of Lin Qiansan’s “Study of Yan Music Tunes in the Sui and Tang Dynasties” has become an important academic reference for later scholars studying the culture of Yan music in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. At the same time, Qiansan Lin and Guo Moruo’s music thought also profoundly influenced the construction of music historiography in Japan and China. This paper argues that, if want to explore the spirituality of the ideas of Lin Qisan and Guo Moruo in the turbulent environment of the intersection and collision of Chinese and Japanese cultural thoughts in the 20th century, the cultural and ideological backgrounds of Lin Qiansan and Guo Moruo, their coinciding academic perspectives, and the revelation and significance of the interaction of musical ideas in their respective times should be analyzed and studied.

Je me souviens, j’imagine: essais historiques et littéraires sur la culture québécoise. Sous la direction d’Anne Caumartin, Julien Goyette, Karine Hébert et Martine-Emmanuelle Lapointe

‘Je me souviens’ is the motto of Quebec province, and it is inscribed on the coat of arms on the Parliament Building in Quebec City (inaugurated in 1884). In this context it urged the Québécois to remember their history, embodied in the statues of key historical figures (founders, explorers, military, religious and political figures, and anonymous representatives of the indigenous population) which decorate the building. But in its more familiar context today — on the province’s car licence plates — the motto has lost its context and the population no longer makes the automatic connection between it and the collective identity it once invoked. The sense of historical continuity, which had been integral to the ideology of ‘survivance’ in Quebec from the nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, no longer holds. The break with the traditionalist, Catholic past, which culminated in the Révolution tranquille in the 1960s, coincided with a questioning of the reliability of history and of collective memory. Across twenty-two essays by historians and literary and cultural scholars, the current volume addresses this rupture between a people and its history. Inspired by Pierre Nora’s concept of the lieu de mémoire, it offers analyses of key topoi of Quebec history and culture as they have been represented within the collective imaginary. Some contributions focus on a significant historical moment or emblematic location (for example, La Conquête, or Le Forum de Montréal, home of the Canadiens ice-hockey team, 1926–96), but more frequently the chapters take up commonplace figures such as the porteur d’eau or the coureur de bois, or choose a broader topic (the myth of Quebec as a matriarchal society; the high birth rate in francophone Canada; the shifting meanings of the term ‘colonisation’; attitudes towards the French language in Quebec), in order to revisit them, undermining stereotypes and analysing their transformations, and, in some cases, their relevance in Quebec today. The chosen sites of memory relate mostly to francophone (rather than anglophone or allophone) experience in Quebec, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Essays dealing with various figures of the Other study images, clichés, and stereotypes as they function and shift within the collective (francophone) memory. These include contributions devoted to: the place of the indigenous voice, focusing on the earliest contact under French colonization; les maudits Français and the ambivalence of their presence in the Québécois sense of identity; and the place of l’Anglais in the imagination of (francophone) Quebec. The essay on the migrant Other focuses on one of the most problematic objects of memorialization. Migration (inward and outward, forced or voluntary) is central to what it is to become or to have been Québécois. But to attempt to memorialize the passage of migrants within or beyond Quebec is to attempt to capture a process of flight, of transition, of adaptation or exclusion. Accordingly, the essays in this wide-ranging volume engage the reader in what is both a reconfiguration but also a fundamental questioning of what its authors term ‘les contours d’un Québec évanescent’ (p. 18).

«Я унес с собой Россию»: журнал «Современные записки» как площадка русской эмиграции в 1920-е годы

The article is devoted to the analysis of the phenomenon of the journal «Modern Notes», which was published in several centers of Russian emigration. Attention is paid to the peculiarities of appearance, structural parts and socio-cultural characteristics of the magazine, which became a unique platform for creativity, work and communication within the first wave of Russian emigration. The author makes an attempt to determine the degree of inclusion of the journal in European culture and to identify features of the Russian cultural code in the journal «Modern Notes». In recent decades, the issue of Russian emigration has become a key aspect of humanitarian research. This is reflected in numerous publications by historians, philosophers, cultural scholars, and philologists. Nevertheless, a sufficient number of research gaps remain out of sight. Therefore, drawing attention to some stories becomes an impetus to search and publish Russian and foreign sources on the topic, revealing new aspects of the phenomenon of Russian emigration. The phenomenon of the magazine is also that it was created by emigrants, in the past, former political activists, who were far from publishing activity and publishing. Therefore, the degree of success of the journal was in direct dependence on what copyrights will be placed on its pages, who can attract authors for «promotion» of the journal. «Modern notes» for twenty years (1920–1940) labor-intensive and difficult work produces seventy books. The editorial staff moved to the European capitals: Paris, Berlin, Prague. Forming a certain axis of cultural influence, the magazine becomes a kind of collective place of creativity, a kind of literary monument that is formed in interwar time.

Planet

This essay argues that “planet” has recently become an important concept for scholars of nineteenth-century literature and culture. Whereas concepts such as the “globe” or the “world” portray the Earth as a space subject to surveillance and political power, the concept of the planet emphasizes the alien, nonanthropocentric aspects of the Earth and its history.

Percorsi di un italiano all'estero: Robert Viscusi Replies to Rosemary Serra

<i>Percorsi di un italiano all'estero</i>: Robert Viscusi Replies to Rosemary Serra

Editorial Introduction

Editorial Introduction

ІМПЛІЦИТНА КОНЦЕПЦІЯ МУЗИКИ В "DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE" БОЕЦІЯ

The paper is an attempt to demonstrate the possibility and necessity of an implicit conception of music in Boethius. An explicit conception is something that is obviously present in a text. That is what is usually studied within the 'history of ideas'. Contrary to this, an implicit conception is an unconscious picture of the author's world, in which the basic concepts of explicit conception are grounded. Therefore, the implicit conception is a condition for the possibility of any explicit text. So, the well-known text of Boethius' "De institutione musica", which but replicates mostly Pythagorean views of music, is an explicit conception. We chose "De consolatione philosophiae" as the most representative and semantically loaded text by Boethius to look for his implicit conception of music. It is based on different but unconscious grounds. We read this text to look for unconscious semantics associated with the concept. Thus, the unconscious semantics of music should be studied using the psychoanalytic approach in its broadest sense. The approach asks for the cues of connotations of the terms used by Boethius. The history of reception of the text, including different translations, can show the way. We should bear in mind, too, that the text we read is the record of an internal dialogue, which brings forth a different ontological horizon. Besides, we should see the text as a texture of signs and symptoms, pointing to unconscious notions Boethius had developed. The necessity of such an approach and the relevance of the results obtained within it are discussed in the article. The guidelines for the reconstruction of the implicit conception of music in Boethius are outlined and the elements of this conception are proposed. By further development of the method demonstrated and applied in this paper we shall be able not only to understand Boethius better, but we can reveal the intrinsic contents of the basic concepts describing the realities culture scholars are working with.

Nontuberculous mycobacteria otomastoiditis with facial palsy.

Nontuberculous mycobacteria otomastoiditis with facial palsy.

Association between residents' scholarly activities and publication requirement policy.

Scholarship is recognized as important in residency training worldwide. The Japan Pediatric Society (JPS) enacted a reform in 2017 to require publication of an article as a prerequisite for taking the board certification test, with the goal of increasing scholarly activity. The purpose of this study was to provide a detailed description of the trends in residents' scholarly activities related to the JPS reform. A secondary analysis was performed on the cross-sectional database of pediatrics residents who took the certification test in 2015-2018. The enrolled participants were 2399 residents of which 79.7% passed the test. Publication of any type of article increased significantly (21%-22% to 100%; 0.1 to 0.3/person-year) after the implementation of the JPS reform, whereas academic presentations did not (89% to 91%; 1.2 to 1.3/person-year), both in terms of the percentage of the number of those who created them and the average rate of research production. Not only Japanese articles (11%-13% to 49%-53%; 0.04 to 0.15-0.17/person-year) or case reports (10%-14% to 51%-52%; 0.03-0.05 to 0.16-0.17/person-year), but also English articles (4%-5% to 15%-16%; 0.01-0.02 to 0.05/person-year) and original articles (5% to 11%-17%; 0.01 to 0.03-0.05/person-year) increased significantly. The number of each type of article publication was correlated with success in the board certification test (odds ratio 1.5-1.8). Scholarly activities of pediatrics residents were enhanced by the JPS implementation of the article requirement policy, which is crucial to fostering a scholarly culture. The most efficient measures to promote scholarship need to be persistently investigated.

The Emergence of a Theatrical Science of Man in France, 1660–1740

The Emergence of a Theatrical Science of Man in France, 1660–1740

Alien Listening: Voyager’s Golden Record and Music from Earth, by Daniel K. L. Chua and Alexander Rehding

<i>Alien Listening: Voyager’s Golden Record and Music from Earth</i>, by Daniel K. L. Chua and Alexander Rehding

Vegetal Sex: Philosophy of Plants by Stella Sandford

Reviewed by: Vegetal Sex: Philosophy of Plants by Stella Sandford Joela Jacobs Stella Sandford. Vegetal Sex: Philosophy of Plants. London: Bloomsbury, 2022. Pp. 256. As a work of plant philosophy that is invested in botany, Stella Sandford's Vegetal Sex examines the zoocentrism in current models of plant sex to arrive at more precise, phytocentric concepts. In doing so, the clearly written book touches on sexuality and gender but is primarily concerned with sex, to respond to the question of what "female" and "male" do and do not mean in plants. Beginning with a chapter on plant philosophy as a method, Sandford defines this kind of work against current plant advocacy texts, perhaps sometimes taking those other publications to task a bit too much for their anthropocentric metaphors, since—by definition—they serve a science communication purpose that differs from the precise philosophical conceptualization she pursues in her own work. And indeed, Sandford's book fills an important gap for botanists, plant scientists, plant philosophers, and anyone working in critical plant studies, as well as for scholars of the history of science and gender studies—if they are interested in terminology regarding plants, not humans, and bring some botanical reproduction knowledge to help them along. By mapping major moments of thought and discovery from Aristotle—via Grew, Camerarius, and Linnaeus—to the fascinating work of David G. Lloyd in the late twentieth century, Sandford elucidates both the history and the science of plant sex in the subsequent five chapters. She emphasizes how much the understanding of plants has been guided by analogies to animal sex to this day and in which ways this analogy is inaccurate. In doing so, Sandford shows the lasting centrality of Aristotle for the conceptualization of plant sex and emphasizes the importance of philosophy for botany as a field. While Sandford's impressive interdisciplinary knowledge and carefully scaffolded, logical steps demonstrate the significance of these claims for plant philosophy, for a scholar of literature and culture like me the strict dismissal of metaphors and of the sociocultural realm occasionally seems to limit the argument to being only about what plant sex is not or should not be called, instead of what it has been and is, precisely because of the language and terminology people have been using. While poetic language and cultural practice are of course not what the book sets out to engage, the turn to Indigenous knowledge and feminism in the final chapter troubles the sometimes artificially upheld distinctions of the monograph's prior theorizations in productive ways and shows what is at stake for Sandford herself. As these final pages expand the question of plant sex from the strict sense of the previous chapters, they engage with cultural contexts and metaphors like the "mother tree," and they break away from the overwhelmingly white, male perspective with which Western philosophy is otherwise suffused. Especially in the epilogue, Sandford's exciting own conceptual constructions of vegetal sex begin to emerge, which I hope will be pursued further. Joela Jacobs University of Arizona Copyright © 2023 L'Esprit Créateur

In This Land: Jewish Life and Legal Culture in Late Medieval Provence by Pinchas Roth

Reviewed by: In This Land: Jewish Life and Legal Culture in Late Medieval Provence by Pinchas Roth Erika E. Hess Roth, Pinchas. In This Land: Jewish Life and Legal Culture in Late Medieval Provence. Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2021. ISBN 978-0-88844-223-9. Pp. 168. Drawing primarily from medieval Provençal legal responsa––texts written by rabbinic scholars to answer questions about Jewish law or Halakhah––Roth reveals a colorful portrait of Jewish life in Provence from the twelfth through fourteenth centuries. In contrast to other rabbinic documents such as Talmudic commentaries or legal codes that turn back to older texts, responsa tend to be grounded in the moment––“specific legal questions, asked at a particular point in time by one person (or more) to another person (or group of people),” often practical in nature (4). Roth notes that the “temporal nature” of responsa provides rare glimpses into the culture, conflicts, and identities of Jewish life in medieval Provence (4). Some questions posed to rabbinic scholars centered on marital relations, such as a case in which a man sought guidance in regard to his adulterous wife, asking: “Is my wife forbidden to me or permitted?” (37). In another case, a questioner asked whether a man who suffered from “the black madness” or melancholy could divorce his wife (40). Other questions revolved around Jewish dietary rules, such as the scientific thinking behind kosher meat. Still others questioned components of Jewish liturgy, such as whether it was correct to recite the Kol Nidre on the eve of Yom Kippur. Although a number of responsa consider fabricated questions that were asked to resolve philosophical or legal matters rather than true questions that were cause for concern, Roth notes that they nonetheless underscore the “presence” of Jewish law in their lives (39). Roth additionally compares the rulings of specific rabbinic scholars, for example the rulings of Mordechai Kimhi from Narbonne (later, near Carpentras), and those of Abraham ben Isaac of Montpellier. As Roth notes, although they had a similar “cultural profile” as “recognized rabbinic scholars” and their “attitude toward philosophical rationalism was similarly moderate,” their rulings often differed significantly: “They held very different beliefs about the law and its place in society” (36). Especially after 1306, when Jews were expelled from the Kingdom of France and many migrated to Provence, we also find responsa relating to conflicts resulting from differences between the culture and traditions of Provençal Jewish communities and those of the newly arrived French Jews. As Roth points out, the personality of the rabbi often played an important role in their attitudes toward immigration and multiculturalism. Mordechai Kimhi’s son, Isaac, for example, “advocated a path of compromise and tolerance” both between Provençal and French Jews, and between Jews and Gentiles (119), whereas Isaac of Manosque and Abba Mari of Lunel “staked out confrontational positions” as they strove to hold a firm line within their “deeply divided community” (119). In addition to the vivid and sometimes surprising stories that Roth includes, his own enthusiasm for the subject contributes to the book’s easy readability. This book will be of great interest, not only to scholars of medieval Jewish history and culture, but to anyone interested in the European Middle Ages and in Judaism more broadly. [End Page 194] Erika E. Hess Northern Arizona University Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French