British Scholars Research Articles

Looking for/Longing for/Sick for Home: Marina Tsvetaeva in English Translation

This contribution consists of a correspondence between a postdoctoral English literature scholar and poet, Tara Bergin, and a Russian and English literature scholar, Marina Tsvetkova, who initially set out to write an essay comparing two translations of Tsvetaeva's poem of May 1934, called ‘Homesickness’ by Elaine Feinstein and ‘Longing for the Motherland’ by David McDuff. Their letters focus on this poem but also venture into Tsvetaeva's biography and some of her other writings. Eventually it seemed to them appropriate to submit for publication the correspondence itself, following which the material was given a detailed reading by a third Tsvetaeva translator, Christopher Whyte. His comments are also published here, with a postscript from the two correspondents.

Fictions of Conversion: Jews, Christians, and Cultures of Change in Early Modern England. By Jeffrey S. Shoulson. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. 266 pp. $65.00 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Fictions of Conversion: Jews, Christians, and Cultures of Change in Early Modern England . By Jeffrey S. Shoulson . Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press , 2013. 266 pp. $65.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesAt first glance Fictions of Conversion may strike the reader as oddly subtitled since Jews were expelled from England in 1290. Yet in this volume, Jeffrey Shoulson shows that theologians and churchmen, preachers and poets, dramatists and alchemists turned to Jews and Judaism to understand and explore the nature of conversions--authentic and inauthentic. Native Christian devotion signaled to the English their providential role in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But confessional shifts in England's official religion--from Anglican to Roman Catholic to the Elizabethan Settlement--along with the subsequent growth in numbers of Puritans, Catholics, and Quakers, among others, served to complicate and undermine a coherent and singular English identity. The Jews--their religion, scriptures, and contested conversions in Spain--provided fictions of for writers anxious about English identity. Indeed, such encounters tended to be textual and imagined apart from the few Englishmen who had contact with Jews in the Low Countries and the Levant. Through the Jews English authors indirectly explored their own religion specifically and fractious cultural change as a whole. Such Jewish fictions of offered narratives and models that proved productive, provocative, and perilous as English scholars translated and interpreted the biblical text, plumbed the transformation of matter and spirit in alchemy, and measured the dissenting claims of religious enthusiasts.Shoulson's investigation opens with the multiple meanings of as reflected in the New Testament of the Apostle Paul, the theological legacy of the continental Reformers, and English efforts to make sense of contemporary religious change and authenticity. Even as some conversions were sudden, others were incremental; some appeared fleeting, while others appeared fictitious, feigned conversions designed to conceal one's actual religion, heresy, or treachery. To make sense of this authors such as Richard Hooker, John Foxe, and Thomas Cooper compared confessional shifts and feigned conversions in England to the response of Jews to early Christianity, and even more so to the forced conversions of marronos in Spain. Fictions of Conversion then turns more directly to the interpretation of scripture and how English scholars developed typologies of from the Old Testament narratives of Abraham, Jethro, Naaman, Rahab, and Ruth. Such typologies revealed subtle nuances of and further uncertainties in relation to ethnicity, gender, and ecumenism. In short, the Jews provided scriptural and early modern accounts of that were at the same time decisive and dubious in meaning.In the final three chapters Shoulson considers deeply related fictions of conversion: linguistic translation, alchemical transformation, and the poetic assessment of religious enthusiasm. In each case, the Jews play a surprising and essential role. In the early modern period translation was itself a form of conversion as English texts of the Hebrew Bible and the epics of Homer raised the question of continuity and discontinuity between Judaism and classical paganism, on the one hand, and early modern England, on the other (90). …

The economics of social reform across borders: Fukuda's welfare economic studies in international perspective

AbstractThis article examines how, in the course of modernization, Japan learned from Germany and Britain about ideas and institutions concerning social reform, and attempted to implement and develop them at home. It focuses on Fukuda Tokuzo, a pioneering liberal economist and social reformer, who studied under the German historical economist Lujo Brentano, and who was also inspired by the British scholars Alfred Marshall, A. C. Pigou, and J. A. Hobson. By examining how Fukuda's ideas and work were developed and assimilated in Japan, this article shows how Japanese social reformers navigated the two key strands of economic thinking that witnessed a process of globalization during this period: neoclassical welfare economics, on the one hand, and an ethical-historical style of economics, on the other. It shows how the latter was stronger in a latecomer country to modernization such as Japan.

The Mathew Holmes Manuscripts I: Cambridge University Library MS Dd.2.11 (review)

FACSIMILE OF A LUTE MANUSCRIPT The Mathew Holmes Manuscripts I: Cambridge University Library MS Dd.2.11. Two vols. and supplement in slipcase. Inventory and Bibliography: John H. Robinson. Commentary: Stewart McCoy. Image Processing: Craig Hartley. Co-ordination and Typesetting: Ian Harwood. (Lute Society Facsimiles, 7.) Guildford: Lute Society, 2010. [Vol. 1: Contents, p. iii-vii; color facsimile, p. 1-200. Vol. 2: Introd., p. 1-8; inventory, p. 9-26; commentary, p. 27-62; bibliog., p. 63-70. Tablature supplement: p. 1-8. ISBN 978 0 905655 71 0. £75.00.]For English readers, there are two main scholarly societies dedicated to the lute and similar instruments: the Lute Society of America, and its older British counterpart called simply The Lute Society. This is the seventh volume in the latter's Lute Society Facsimiles series, which began in 1987 with Partie in B flat Major for 11-Course Baroque Lute: Facsimile of a Manuscript (c. 1720) by Wolff Jakob Lauffensteiner (1676-1754). This first volume was edited by English lute scholar Robert Spencer (1932-1997), to whom the present volume is dedicated. The series continued in 2000 with volume 2: Krakow Mus. Ms. 40641 (ex Berlin) also edited by Spencer, and then four important English lute sources: volume 3 (2003): The FolgerDowland Manuscript (now at the Folger Shakespeare Library, MS V.b.280, with music by John Dowland but no longer thought to be in his hand; volume 4 (2004): The Welde Lute Book (now in the private library of Lord Forester at Willey Park, Shropshire; volume 5 (2007): Osborn fb7 (Yale University Music Library MS 13); and volume 6 (2008): The Wick- hambrook Lute Manuscript (Yale University Music Deposit), all with detailed critical notes and introductions. The series contin- ues here with one of the largest and most important English lute manuscripts, Cambridge University Library MS Dd.2.11.The facsimile contains three separate en- cased parts: (1) the full-color facsimile it- self, with over 200 pages, just slightly smaller than the original, which is 350 mm tall by 229 mm wide; (2) a second volume entitled Introduction, Inventory, Com- mentary, Bibliography by the English scholars John H. Robinson and Stewart McCoy; and (3) a short eight-page supple- ment in tablature clarifying illegible parts of the facsimile. Since this last part contains fragments of music difficult to read in the original, librarians would be wise to bind it separately from the facsimile volume so that both can be open and consulted at the same time. And obviously this is a volume for lutenists: the music is in French lute tablature with no effort to transcribe any- thing into modern notation. Those who cannot read tablature will have to tran- scribe or find editions of separate pieces elsewhere, although given the number of major composers represented, there are quite a few works here that are available in modern editions. Certainly the thirty-eight pieces by John Dowland, including such fa- vorites as Melancholy Galliard, Lachrimae Pavan, Orlando Sleepeth, and several well- known fantasias, are readily available in Diana Poulton's and Basil Lam's edition of his complete works for lute (The Collected Lute Music of John Dowland [London: Faber Music, 1974]). Other composers present in this large collection of 324 separate works include almost all the major English lutenists: John Johnson, Francis Cutting, Anthony Holborne, Richard Allison, and others (only Robert Johnson and Daniel Bacheler appear to be missing), as well as major contemporaneous continental fig- ures such as Emanuel Adriaensen and Matthaus Waissel. Italian and German lutenists from earlier generations, among them Francesco da Milano, Joan Maria da Crema, and Melchior Neusidler, are also represented. In addition, the manuscript is the major source for an instrument closely related to the lute: the bandora, a metal- strung chordophone with an unusual and immediately recognizable tuning (C1-D1- G1-C-E-A). …

Theatre and the Vanguards of the Arab Spring

Theatre and the Vanguards of the Arab Spring Hala Nassar (bio) The Avant-Garde: Race, Religion, War. By Mike Sell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press / Seagull Books, 2011; pp. 356. Doomed by Hope: Essays on Arab Theatre. Edited by Eyad Houssami. London: Pluto Press, 2012; pp. 224. Hamlet’s Arab Journey: Shakespeare’s Prince and Nasser’s Ghost. By Margaret Litvin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011; pp. 296. The Theatres of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia: Performance Traditions of the Maghreb. By Khalid Amine and Marvin Carlson. Studies in International Performance series. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; pp. 272. On 17 December 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, age 26, set himself on fire as an act of protest against the confiscation of his fruit-and-vegetable wagon, and against the harassment and humiliation inflicted by the municipal officials of the town of Sidi Bouzid. His burnt body set the spark for the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution the next day, leading longtime president Zin Abidine Ben Ali to leave the country in January 2011. The revolutionary sparks found the right kindling in neighboring Egypt and Libya, and even all the way to Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, and Syria.1 In the West, media outlets were surprised by the domino effect [End Page 291] of mass street protests, public square sit-ins, and the toppling of Arab leaders. The Arab world, which has been fermenting for decades under inhumane living conditions, restricted freedoms, censorship, high unemployment, and dim future prospects, eventually went to the streets to voice outrage against despots—corrupt and autocratic regimes supported by the West. Since then, 24/7 media coverage and a large body of scholarship have started to discuss the role of social media in mobilizing the people: in Egypt, what some call the “coup” and others an “extension of the January 25th revolution,” followed by the new constitution under General Sisi’s military rule; in Syria, the impasse between the Assad government and rebel fighters; in Iran, the debate over nuclear facilities; and across the Arab world, the impact of events on their US relations. Meanwhile, media outlets and experts have been scrambling to make sense of why the Arab world is suddenly in revolt. The ongoing protests we are still witnessing in the Arab world have been waged before, targeted both internally and also at the West. However, analysis of this volatile region always seems to originate from the perspectives of political analysts, anthropologists, social scientists, and experts on Islam and its history, often at the expense of any focus on literary or cultural production. One cannot help but notice the comparative lack of scholarship in English on theatre and drama in the Middle East in general, and in the Arab world in particular, in spite of the staggering number of studies done in Arabic on the topics. Of the many possible explanations, most prominent among them is a lack of familiarity both with Arabic as a language and the cultural context with which any researcher needs to review manuscripts and journal and newspaper articles and to conduct interviews. This language and culture gap means that the West remains deeply unaware of the fact that when it comes to theatre and drama in the postcolonial Arab world, there are heated debates that argue between modernity and traditions, between Western adaptations and local voices, between the role of theatre in politicizing the masses and art for art’s sake, and the relevance of utilizing hybrid performances—all reflecting questions raised by theatre-makers, artists, and Arab citizens alike. Certainly, the events of 9/11 prompted a surge in teaching Arabic as a foreign language and created an increasing demand for Arab-native speakers in the American academy. As a result, many Centers for Middle East Studies began to introduce new courses on the politics and society of the Arab world, recruited more faculty members, and promoted study abroad, internships, and Arabic-language study beyond US campuses, at sites across the Arab world. In spite of all these efforts, a noticeable scarcity persists when it comes to shedding light on the rich cultural heritages of the region. For instance, after a quick look at the Middle East Studies Association program of...

Socio – Cognitive Perspective to the Analysis of the Strategic Features of the Discussion Section of Research Articles in Applied Linguistics: Native vs. Non-native Researchers

Writing is like a mirror that reflects the social and personal realities. Any culture and society has some specific ways and strategies for text and talk organization and communication, e.g. generic conventions, moves, metadiscourse markers, etc. are some of such strategies for better text organization and communication. Metadiscourse categories are specific rhetorical devices that help the participants to effectively communicate with each other (Hyland, 2005). Employing these interactional devices is different in various languages and societies, in other words metadiscourse strategies are context dependent. In order to find differences between the use of interactional metadiscourse strategies, in two different societies and contexts, we analyzed and critically interpreted their usage in the discussion sections of 40 research articles written by Iranian and English scholars in English. This critical analysis was based on the socio-cognitive approach of van Dijk. This analysis showed similarities and differences in the rhetorical behaviour of these authors in their use of interactional metadiscoursive strategies. There was a considerable tendency to the use of ‘hedging’ by both groups of writers. The main difference was in the use of self-mentions and engagement markers. The frequency rate of such strategies was very low amongst Iranian writers. The social constructions and cognition of participants may have undeniable effects on the use of interactional strategies. The findings of such studies can have useful implications for ESL, EFL, and ESP courses in general; and for developing academic literacy in particular.

Global Advertising Histories: an Australian Perspective

AbstractThis article surveys the historiography of the global advertising industry, identifying the key challenges and debates raised by American and British scholars, and then discusses two important questions for historians of Australian advertising. First, if advertising is a globalised and ‘Americanised’ industry, exactly how Australian is the Australian advertising industry? Second, can we understand how advertising works by analysing advertisements, or are new forms of analysis required? The article introduces a fresh analytical approach that seeks to answer these questions before discussing the scope, methodology and preliminary findings of a historical study of the Australian advertising industry that is currently utilising this approach.

Nothing But Change and Variance:

Abstract With historicism on the wane, now is a good time to reexamine Thomas Hoccleve's politics. The resurgence of interest in Hoccleve coincided with the advent of critical historicism in Middle English scholarship. Debate on Hoccleve has been sharply divided between those who see him as a royalist and those who see him as politically unaligned. Analysis of Hoccleve's persona in the Regiment of Princes—the most poetically prominent feature of his most important political poem—and its relation to the figure of Fortune demonstrates that, if anything, ideological readings of Hoccleve have underplayed his royalism.

John Owen, Richard Baxter and the Formation of English Nonconformity by Tim Cooper (review)

Reviewed by: John Owen, Richard Baxter and the Formation of English Nonconformity by Tim Cooper Carl R. Trueman John Owen, Richard Baxter and the Formation of English Nonconformity. By Tim Cooper. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2011. Pp. xii, 343. $134.95. ISBN 978-0-7546-6361-4.) The study of Puritanism has been a thriving scholarly industry for many years, but one area that has been comparatively neglected is that of the Puritans during the Restoration. There are a number of reasons for this: the Clarendon Code enforced Anglican conformity on England and thus moved the key intellectual and cultural architects of the 1650s to the margins of society; in so doing, it also ensured that Puritanism became little more than an embarrassment to later generations of English scholars and academics. [End Page 159] Recent years, however, have seen a growth in interest in Puritanism as a theological movement, and this has brought to prominence a number of key figures. Perhaps the two most important of these—John Owen and Richard Baxter—are the subjects of this fine exercise in combined intellectual biography by Tim Cooper. Both were not only important influences on theological discussion in the 1650s; in the world of the Restoration they went on to be the leaders of the English nonconformists. Representing two quite different approaches to Protestant theology, they thereby also represented two possible paths for English non-Anglican Protestantism. Various challenges face any intellectual biographer: the connection of the public and the private; and the relationship of ideas to the broader cultural, social, and economic contexts. Both subjects were men of their age who suffered both private and public pain. Cooper draws out neatly the difference in personality between the two men: Owen the intensely private but also urbane man; Baxter the autodidact who seems never to have had an unpublished thought on anything. He also touches on the irony that Owen, by far the doctrinally more narrow, was yet apparently a far more easygoing person than the theologically more concessive but personally more combative Baxter. Whereas Owen was an advocate for tolerance in the matter of church and state, woe betide anyone who did not agree with the latter on his moderate theological and ecclesiastical plans. Indeed, for all of his ecumenism, Baxter was ultimately less political than Owen and unable to realize that politics is really all about the art of the possible. His rigid moderation and his abhorrence of anything hinting at sectarianism meant that his voice was ultimately less effective than that of Owen, both in the 1650s (when he stood a realistic chance of being a significant player) and in the rather more marginal world of English nonconformity. That Owen could be welcomed at the court of Charles II, despite his close connection to Oliver Cromwell, whereas Baxter suffered terribly under the terms of the Clarendon Code, is both odd and, on further examination, an eloquent testimony to a basic difference of personality between the two men. Cooper’s book is excellent. He has done much painstaking research in reconstructing the lives of these two men and, by juxtaposing them, has offered the reader profound insights into the theological and political dynamics of the time. What he makes clear, which has perhaps been missed by previous studies, is the fact that the Restoration shape of nonconformity was profoundly influenced by the personal conflicts between Baxter and Owen that stretched back through the Cromwellian years even to the late 1640s. If this reviewer had one criticism, it would be that, at times, the author’s personal sympathies for Baxter show through rather too clearly. For example, in discussing the issue of the atonement, he is too quick to dismiss Owen for lack of exegetical sensitivity; whatever flaws Owen’s view may have had, willful ignorance of the biblical text was certainly not one of them. But this is a very minor cavil at an otherwise thoughtful, intelligent, and arguably groundbreaking monograph that helps the reader to understand the world of the Restoration from the perspective of [End Page 160] two leading intellectuals who had the misfortune to witness the dismantling of a world of which they were so much a...

Liberation and Concept, the Language of Avowing Bodies ― Linguistic Politics in South Korea during the US Military Government Period, Focusing on English Scholar of Korea and the Making Dictionaries of Neologisms

Liberation and Concept, the Language of Avowing Bodies ― Linguistic Politics in South Korea during the US Military Government Period, Focusing on English Scholar of Korea and the Making Dictionaries of Neologisms

'The main contribution of this study is'...: An analysis of statements of contribution in English published research articles and L2 manuscripts

Given the widespread use of English for the international dissemination of scholars’ research results, numerous intercultural analyses have been undertaken in the field of English for Academic Purposes in diverse genres. Rhetorical and discursive conventions across languages and cultures have been studied to help non-native English scholars to be successful in the difficult endeavour of being granted publication in international English-medium publications. The increasing competition to get one’s research published in international journals in English has resulted in the authors’ need to clearly spell out what their contribution to their discipline is, a rhetorical convention which seems to be currently crucial especially in some fields. It is the aim of this paper to trace statements of contribution in the Introduction and Conclusion sections of research articles published in two international journals in finance and to compare the results with those obtained from an analysis of three manuscripts written in English by a team of Spanish scholars sent to the same journals but which received major revision or rejection reports. Reference to these statements made by reviewers in their reports will also be analysed to explore to what extent (non) compliance with this rhetorical convention may influence their final decision (not) to recommend publication

Conquering Demons: The “Kirishitan,” Japan, and the World in Early Modern Japanese Literature by Jan C. Leuchtenberger (review)

Reviewed by: Conquering Demons: The “Kirishitan,” Japan, and the World in Early Modern Japanese Literature by Jan C. Leuchtenberger Peter Nosco Conquering Demons: The “Kirishitan,” Japan, and the World in Early Modern Japanese Literature. By Jan C. Leuchtenberger. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2013. 240pages. Hardcover $65.00; softcover $25.00. One of the more vexing problems in the study of the social and cultural history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Japan concerns the memory of Christianity. The common wisdom on the subject has long been that after Christianity was proscribed in the 1610s and the priests were subsequently expelled, most Christians in Japan renounced their faith, and the few who did not were driven underground. Because of the absence of priests, the Catholic Church had long tended to discount the integrity of the faith of these underground Christians. In a remarkable reversal, however, on 15 January 2014 Pope Francis said of them, “They maintained, even in secrecy, a strong spirit of community because baptism made them become one single body in Christ: they were isolated and hidden, but they were always members of [End Page 275] the people of God, of the Church.”1 Japanese scholarship on the Tokugawa state has generally exaggerated the effectiveness of the Bakuhan state’s efforts to eradicate the despised creed and has tended to represent Tokugawa religious life as if the waters simply closed over Christians, Christianity, and their memory with nary a ripple. More recent scholarship in English has challenged this narrative, though often indirectly, by focusing on anti-Christian rhetoric of the early seventeenth century. Building on the work of George Elison’s Deus Destroyed (Harvard University Press, 1973), both Nam-lin Hur’s Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2007) and Kiri Paramore’s Ideology and Christianity in Japan (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2009) demonstrate how anti-Christian rhetoric contributed in various ways to the formation and subsequent character of the early modern Japanese state. But left unaddressed in this scholarship has been the intriguing question of whether what Charles Boxer and others have styled “Japan’s Christian Century” survived in the popular imagination of subsequent centuries, and if so, in what manner. The volume under review adds an important dimension to this earlier scholarship by focusing on the demonized Christian/European Other in both seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Japanese literature, thereby taking us away from the world of ideology and political rhetoric and into the world of narrative and popular memory. Conquering Demons begins with the official end to the European missions to Japan in 1614 and carefully traces the image of Christian missionaries and priests—author Jan Leuchtenberger argues in favor of the Japanese term “Kirishitan”—through their caricatured appearance in three works: Baterenki (History of the Padres), Kirishitan monogatari (The Christian Story), and Kirishitan shūmon raichō jikki (True Account of the Arrival of the Kirishitan Sect in Japan). Leuchtenberger then extends the analysis into late-Edo discourse up to and including Aizawa Seishisai’s 1825 Shinron (New Theses). Except for Shinron, the exact dates of these works are not known. Baterenki dates from around 1610, when European priests were still much in evidence. Kirishitan monogatari dates in printed form from 1639, but the fact that the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637–1638 is unmentioned in most variants of the text indicates that it was almost certainly written earlier. Kirishitan shūmon raichō jikki dates from the Kyōhō era (1716–1735), i.e., the first twenty years of the culturally liberal bakufu of Tokugawa Yoshimune (r. 1716–1745). Although their precise dates are uncertain, the sequence of these three works is crystal clear, and so in Conquering Demons we have for the first time in English a study that provides a sense of the “evolving discourses on Japan and its Others,” whereby the Kirishitan Other is transformed from “a relentless would-be conqueror to a grotesque and uncanny foreigner who uses money, magic, and medicine to lure the gullible” (pp. 4–5). The volume also includes annotated translations of Baterenki and Kirishitan shūmon raichō jikki, the latter in a variant titled Nanbanji [End Page 276] monogatari (Tale of...

The Old Meditation (boran kammatthan), a Pre-Reform Theravāda Meditation System from Wat Ratchasittharam. The pīti section of the Kammatthan Matchima Baep Lamdap

Meditation practices currently associated with Theravāda Buddhism are largely text-based methods stemming from nineteenth-century reforms in Burma and Thailand. Despite pioneer work by a small number of French, Thai and British scholars, there is little awareness in western scholarship of meditation as practised prior to these reforms, and no research into its lineages of transmission or internal diversity. This article attempts to remedy this by describing in detail a single meditation practice from the Old Meditation (Thai boran kammatthan) cycle as transmitted by the Supreme Patriarch (Thai Sangkharat) Suk Kaithuean and currently taught uniquely at Wat Ratchasittharam, Thonburi. This involves invoking the eidetic ‘ signs’ (Pali nimitta) for the five ‘ delights’ (Pali pīti), and moving them in predetermined patterns around the practitioner’s body. We examine the unique and unexpected use of meditation and Abhidhamma terminology employed in this tradition, locate the pīti practice within the broader frame of the Old Meditation, and assess its probable links to Abhidhamma. The authors hope that this account will facilitate future studies which can begin to explore the diversity of the Old Meditation techniques.

At the Cradle of Legal Scholarship on the European Union: The Life and early Work of Eric Stein

This Article studies the career and academic work in the field of European law by Eric Stein (1913–2011), the University of Michigan Law School professor who is often acknowledged as the father of English legal scholarship on the European Union. Few—if any—experts on European law can indeed claim to have had a career as long, prolific, and influential as Eric Stein's. From 1955 to the very end of his life, the Czech-born American scholar produced numerous books and dozens of papers on European legal integration, including his 1981 classic Lawyers, Judges, and the Making of a Transnational Constitution. The present Article focuses on his life and career until 1983 and is structured in three chronological periods. It traces his personal and professional journey from his native Bohemia to his appointment at the University of Michigan Law School, then contextualizes and analyzes some of his most influential academic writings on Community law. It argues that Stein's success resulted from his correlated abilities and efforts to produce (alone and in collaboration) pathbreaking academic research on the development of European Community (EC) law and institutions, to establish the University of Michigan Law School as a renowned center of excellence in European legal studies, and finally to develop an extensive network with European scholars and communities officials. This Article is based on Eric Stein's personal papers and interviews as well as on several key private archives.

The Shelley Society, Literary Lectures, and the Global Circulation of English Literature and Scholarly Practice

This essay examines the contribution of the Shelley Society to the rise of English studies in the late nineteenth century. It reconstructs what “studying English literature” signified outside the university at the time, offering a parallel history to the well-documented institutional account of the evolution of English studies. This essay builds and tests the theory that literary societies were agents for disseminating not only literature but scholarly practice, spreading productive debate about curricula, relevance, and the public benefit of literature over the English-speaking world. It also explores how literary societies publicly negotiated the controversial conception of English literature as a legitimate subject for scholarly pursuit, how they built the case for vernacular literature’s capacity to be studied “scientifically,” and how they then exported these ideas—and texts—across the globe.

Do You Have Any Skin in the Game?

This idiom gets right to what bothers me most about this most recent Why .1. are we still here? conversation. Beyond the immediate metaphor, skin in the game indicates a person entering a space in which something is already in play. In financial circles, the price to play necessitates an investment--a risk. When Nellie McKay wrote her now famous PMLA guest column, Naming the Problem That Led to the Question 'Who Shall Teach African American Literature?'; or, Are We Ready to Disband the Wheatley Court?, she spoke insistently about both the risks and the necessities of saying what needs to be said, especially when no one wants to hear it. No one in the academy wants to be questioned about why this person or that group is not in the room/sitting at the table/engaged in the discussion, because the question implies, at best, indifference and, at worst, a systemic ambivalence that feeds something much more sinister. This question too often seems unspeakable and too often goes unspoken: What do you really believe, and (how) does that inform your praxis? The interconnectedness of individual praxis and institutional best practices is key. Any scholar editing a volume or organizing a symposium, or any academic organization choosing an editor or panel, might do well simply to practice the same due diligence afforded fields of study predominantly about empowered (in this case white) subjects. What is the likelihood that a group of earnest, intelligent scholars would edit, let's say, a collection on British literature in England and not include a representative number of British scholars? Can we imagine a scenario in which those same scholars were specialists in American, Irish, or postcolonial literature yet published on an important topic in English literature with a highly respected press with nary an objection raised? These questions point to the obvious yet so often obfuscated issue at hand. The importance of the seems to differ significantly depending on what and who is being studied. To my mind, Foreman's call to address Foucault's question how does it happen (qtd. in Foreman 307) through what she characterizes as self-reflection [and] accountability is not asking for much (307). One could ask that all those who exercise do so while consistently questioning the cultural ethics of their decisions that affect the work and those who produce and benefit from it. Or, one could simply ask that each power broker apply the same academic practices across the board, in every field. Serious academic players should be expected to conduct substantive and in-depth surveys of the terrain to gauge what is already in play and who is on the field. And they should be expected to know that a high level of previous investment is required to be an entitled contributor to an academic venture. …

Introduction sections of biomedical research papers: integration of research variables into social functions.

It has long been recognized that learning to write academic genres essentially means developing an understanding of the social practices of one’s discipline, becoming aware of the functions of texts and how these functions are conventionally accomplished. The conventions of their writing, therefore, are always embedded in deeper epistemological frameworks that are frequently discipline specific (1). Specifically, the research paper remains the pre-eminent genre of the academy (2). Its publication involves a long process of persuading editors, reviewers and peers to accept a claim as interesting or valid, drawing on approved and familiar discourses to do so (2). And its writing presents challenges for non-native English scholars and novice scholars due to their unawareness of its social nature and conventions.

Application of Differential Equation to Population Growth

Thomas Malthus, an 18th century English scholar, observed an essay written in 1798 that the growth of the human population is fundamentally different from the growth of the food supply to feed that population. He wrote that the human population was growing geometrically [i.e. exponentially] while the food supply was growing arithmetically [i.e. linearly]. He concluded that left unchecked, it would only be a matter of time before the world's population would be too large to feed itself. The first growth model we examine in this module is the one Thomas Malthus referred to in his famous essay. Malthus' model is considered a more sophisticated model for the special case of world population.

Review: Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753–1914, by Zainab Bahrani, Zeynep Çelik, and Edhem Eldem, eds.

Zainab Bahrani, Zeynep Celik, and Edhem Eldem, eds.. Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753–1914 Istanbul: SALT, 2011, 519 pp., 178 illus. $58.99 (paper). ISBN 9789944731270 This admirable, innovative volume offers a unique panorama of archaeology and the traffic in antiquities generated in Ottoman lands during the essential formative period of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While it does not discuss Ottoman Egypt and Palestine (whose inclusion might have doubled the page count), Scramble for the Past engages strategically with archaeology and its institutions in modern-day Turkey, as well as Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Greece. The book’s editors and contributors analyze activities by English, French, German, and Austrian scholars and archaeologists at home and abroad. Further, and crucially, they break new ground by considering the motivations of the Ottoman peoples and government, rescuing them from the more common role of largely passive or picturesque backdrop for Western narratives of discovery. In their introductory essay, “Archaeology and Empire,” the editors state as their goal to challenge the view that “scientific archaeology” constitutes “a purely disinterested realm of scholarship” (25). Instead, this volume provides an impressive roster of the often buried and less than purely scientific or objective interests that motivated Western archaeological discovery in this portion of the world. Two particular themes recur throughout. First is the centrality of imperialism, the seemingly never-absent tie between scientific and political activities. Perhaps the most striking example occurs in Shawn Malley’s essay, “The Layard Enterprise.” Malley presents Austen Henry Layard, …

Introduction: Questioning E Pluribus Unum

In 2009 the New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, in association with the US State Department, inaugurated a summer programme called ‘The Reconciliation of American Diversity with National Unity’ for British scholars of American studies. In 2010, it began an association with the US-UK Fulbright Commission before being discontinued in 2011 when funding was reallocated to establish new Fulbright Scholar Awards in the field. The seven contributors to this special issue are drawn from that initial Fulbright cohort and this collection is designed in part to commemorate a particular moment in the life of the discipline in the UK. The aim of the one-month programme was to explore the ways in which American culture had succeeded or failed to live up to the phrase on the Great Seal of the United States: E Pluribus Unum. True to the aims of American studies as an area of enquiry, this question was explored through a variety of disciplinary lenses including, but not limited to, those represented in this special issue: literature, history, art, architecture, intellectual history, and film. Although a perennial theme in both American studies as a discipline and the larger realm of American society and politics, the decision to run a course on the question of American unity and diversity at that moment in time came out of the perception that American studies was facing a crisis in the UK and required a new narrative through which to understand itself. In addition, it coincided with the resurgence of what was being perceived internationally as a new wave of American nationalism that had been damaging to the USA’s reputation in Britain. On 15 April 2009 there had been a series of protests in more than 750 cities across the USA. Nominally directed against Barack Obama’s tax policy, these protests signalled the large-scale emergence of a new conservative populism in American society. Going by the name of The Tea Party (recalling the Boston Tea Party of 1773), this group had numerous, diverse, and frequently contradictory grievances against the Washington political system. Ranging from resistance to so-called ‘Obama-care’ health reform and a ‘Keynesian’ policy of fiscal stimulus, to discontent with certain state government policies towards gay marriage, abortion, or the secularization of schools, the Tea Party’s multiplatform protest movement often seemed to be unified more by circumstance than judgement. However, threads of unity can be found in this diverse body. Standing on Boston Common on 15 April, David Tuerck (an academic from the Boston-based Suffolk University) announced: ‘It’s time for us to rally around a new cause, which is to return America to the principles for which our