State Of Scholarship Research Articles

REFORM AND TRANSITION IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION THEORY AND PRACTICE IN GREATER CHINA

AbstractPublic administration has undergone a fundamental change in China since Deng Xiaoping initiated a process of openness and reform in the late 1970s. While reform is widespread in Greater China (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau), only limited scholarship has been conducted to theorize these changes and empirically document them. This is somewhat surprising given the growing international prominence of China as a major powerhouse in the world economy and a political leader. This symposium seeks to contribute towards building knowledge and evidence on the changing nature of public administration in Greater China. In this article, key themes unique to Greater China are drawn out, the emergent status of public administration scholarship in China is discussed, and the key ingredients of a research agenda are presented.

‘Feminist theory is proper knowledge, but …’: The status of feminist scholarship in the academy

This article explores some of the most significant questions in feminist epistemology: how do academics demarcate what constitutes ‘proper’ academic knowledge? And to what extent is feminist theory and research recognised as such? I draw on material from an ethnographic study of academia in Portugal to examine the claims that non-feminist scholars make in classrooms and conferences about the epistemic status of feminist scholarship. I observed that feminist work was very commonly described as capable of generating credible and valuable knowledge, but only in some instances and in limited ways. I present examples of these adversative claims (i.e. propositions that express opposition or discrepancy through a ‘but’ or equivalent adversative conjunction) and analyse their structure, content and uses of caricature and humour, showing how epistemic boundaries are drawn in them and how feminist scholarship is positioned in relation to those boundaries. I argue that this boundary-work produces a representation of feminist scholarship as being located partly within, and partly outside, the realm of proper knowledge, a move which I designate as an epistemic splitting of that scholarship. I suggest that this splitting enables and legitimates a selective engagement with feminist work, because it provides non-feminist scholars with a recognised epistemological rationale for taking into account the feminist insights which broadly fit mainstream frameworks, while simultaneously rejecting as epistemologically unsound the feminist critiques of those frameworks.

Orientalist Jones: Sir William Jones, Poet, Lawyer, and Linguist, 1746-1794. Michael J. Franklin.

Michael J. Franklin, Orientalist Jones: Sir William Jones, Poet, Lawyer, and Linguist, 1746-1794 (Oxford University Press, 2011) xii + 396 35 [pounds sterling] In Orientalist Jones. Sir William Jones, Poet, Lawyer, and Linguist, 1746-1794, Michael Franklin has written an engaging, sympathetic, and definitive new scholarly biography of the first great British orientalist, Sir William Jones. Following burst of scholarly interest begun by Raymond Schwab, sustained by the polemical postcolonial theories of Edward Said and his admirers and critics, the achievements of Jones are now well-known with many literary scholars and cultural critics engaged in further researches. Consequently, thorough, up to date, reappraisal of the life and work of all-encompassing Jones is most welcome and greatly needed. William Jones was genuine polymath whose researches into Persian and Sanskrit transformed the intellectual and cultural climate of Europe. Famously, he posited an Indo-European language, related to Sanskrit, as primary language which must have existed in Europe, the near East and northern India, before the existence of Germanic, Romance, and Slavic, thus revolutionizing contemporary understandings of the European language families. Jones produced his highly influential translations of Persian poetry, the Hindu law statutes, Indian poetry, and, most famously, of the Sanskrit masterpiece, Uakuntala of the dramatist Kalidasain 1789. Sanskrit was actually Jones's twenty-eighth language and his extensive linguistic knowledge allowed, as few others could, him to make serious and scientific comparisons among them, thus establishing the new field of comparative linguistics. Beyond language, however, Jones's translations transformed the literary and cultural life of Europe, introducing oriental stories, themes, and imagery that inspired whole generation of writers from Coleridge and Southey, to Shelley and Goethe. The status of this orientalist scholarship and the literature it inspired has been subject to tremendous critical scrutiny variously assessed as an epistemological form of colonialism or deeply empathetic pluralist engagement with the culture of other peoples. Franklin's biography is deeply committed to its subject, and to what it argues is the genuine cultural pluralism that Jones dedicated his life to establishing, from his early work as circuit judge in Wales, to his term as High Court judge in British Calcutta. Although on occasion, Franklin can chide Jones for his infrequent lapses from his high ideals, generally Franklin presents his subject as an eminently decent, rational, and humane man who fought for his cherished beliefs. His faults are few and those he possesses mainly determined by his position as powerful, upwardly mobile intellectual seeking patronage and advancement. Franklin's biography is also distant from those Saidian-inspired denunciations of all forms of orientalist scholarship as covert form of colonialism. This case is made throughout the biography, but especially in the final chapter, 'Indo-Persian' Jones and Indian Pluralism. In this chapter, the methodological heart of the work, Franklin situates the cultural tolerance and pluralist thought that he believes Jones established and espoused and which Indian writers, both Muslim and Hindu, have historically propagated and practiced against contemporary examples of distressing religious violence and intolerance, such as the setting fire to the Sabarmati Express at Godhra by angry Muslims, leading to the deaths of some fifty-eight people. This atrocity sparked reprisals that led to the further deaths of two thousand people, mainly Muslims. Franklin painfully describes how such 21st century developments cast long and deep shadow over both the past and future of the peaceful, plural, and often syncretic co-existence of the great religions of India (334). In response he instances the long history of a sympathetic and productive mingling of Muslim and Hindu traditions (334). …

The Impact of Advances in Skin & Wound Care

FigureAs we celebrate the 25th anniversary of Advances in Skin & Wound Care, I’m happy to share another important milestone in the journal’s history. Advances in Skin & Wound Care recently made its debut into the current biomedical Journal Citation Reports (JCR) by Thomson Reuters, with an initial impact factor (IF) ranking of 1.438. With this first IF rating, we also rank 13th out of 97 journals in the report’s Science category! This achievement marks a significant benchmark for the journal. We extend our gratitude to all the authors, clinical editors, editorial board members, and peer reviewers who contribute to the success of the journal. It is their clinical expertise and research findings that provide quality content for our readers. I’d also like to thank the editors and publishers at Lippincott Williams & Wilkins/Wolters Kluwer Health, especially Kathleen Greaves, Daniella Thoren, Theresa Steltzer, and Barbara Miller, who provide the operational and quality framework for the journal. Given the complexity of the journal IFs and their current influence, we should consider the history, current concerns, and the future of biomedical journal ranking. Patient care is becoming more comprehensive and complex. Today’s wound care practitioner is responsible for operating in the context of a system of care and possessing knowledge competencies in multiple components of the healthcare system, including the acquisition of knowledge throughout the career span. The systems-based, evidence-based, and patient care information available to the modern clinician presents an array of learning materials to interpret. And, clinicians must measure the credibility and quality of learning resources, including the journals we read. Quantitative tools for ranking, evaluating, categorizing, and comparing journals, especially peer-reviewed clinical and research journals, have been provided by the concept of the IF. The Journal IF Thomson Reuters began to publish the JCR in 1975 as part of the Social Sciences Citation Index. The journal IF emanates from the JCR, and it is a product of the Thomson Institute for Scientific Information. The JCR provides quantitative tools for evaluating journals, such as the IF. The IF measures the frequency with which the “average article” in a journal has been cited in a given period and is a surrogate for the impact it is making in a given field. The IF for a journal is calculated based on a 3-year period and can be considered to be the average number of times published papers are cited up to 2 years after publication. For more information on this calculation process, visit http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/free/essays/impact_factor. Peer-reviewed journals typically post IF rankings on their websites. Controversies Using the IF as a metric is like any other measurement tool. The intended use was to measure the activity related to important articles in the field, and citations are a good measure of the importance or impact; however, there has been some “utilization creep”1 in the use of the tool. Some academic institutions use the IF as a surrogate for quality performance measures of faculty—for example, the number of publications in a highly ranked biomedical journal. In addition, the authors of manuscripts may prefer to publish in journals with a higher IF. The Future of Journal Assessments In addition to Thomson Scientific, other methodologies are emerging to measure the status of scholarship, including Google Scholar, CrossRef, the usage factor of the United Kingdom Serials Group, or the Y-Factor, a combination of both the IF and the weighted page rank, developed by Google.2 Google Scholar Citations (GSC) provides an online tool for authors to instantly track citations to their articles. You use GSC to graph citations over time and compute several citation metrics. You can also make your profile public, so that it may appear in Google Scholar results when people search for your name on this site.3 Summary In 2012, together in the field of wound care we have accomplished substantial gains in understanding the clinical complexities in wound care practice. Now, and in the future, new challenges remain in providing quantitative and qualitative evidence for our practices and deciding what clinical journals to use for scientific and educational content.FigureRichard “Sal” Salcido, MD

2012 Public Policy Yearbook: Evolving Scholarship in Public Policy

The Public Policy Yearbook is now in its fourth iteration and continues to serve as a useful tool for examining recent changes in public policy scholarship over the past several years. The Yearbook itself has changed considerably over time: in addition to providing a detailed international listing of policy scholars with contact information, fields of specialization, research references, 1 and individual scholars’ statements of current and future research interests, the September 2011 Yearbook made its debut online as a versatile web-tool. The Yearbook’s content is now accessible, in searchable form, via the Internet—providing links to scholars’ bios, articles, abstracts, and review articles. Individuals can now search for a scholar’s profile according to name, geographic location, institution, or research interests. The online Yearbook also includes retrospective research reviews for specific theoretical and substantive policy subfields. These peer-reviewed articles summarize the most recent developments (primarily over the past two years) in scholarship in specific policy subfields. The online Yearbook allows for in-text citations to be activated, taking readers directly to scholars’ bios and provides listings of additional scholars with similar research interests. By providing a snapshot of scholarship in particular domains, the Yearbook provides a quick and accessible reference to the current state of scholarship on all aspects of public policy, as well as indications of future research directions. This allows public policy scholars to gain visibility and it facilitates networking within the policy research community. The contents of the latest edition are summarized below.

Does our research tool kit equip us to make generalisable claims about dental education?

In this essay on the state of scholarship in dental education, I argue that we are best served by looking at the validity, generalisability and usefulness of claims rather than at the rigour of various research methods. All papers published in 2009 in the European Journal of Dental Education (a quarterly) and the Journal of Dental Education (published monthly), a quarterly journal of the Academy of Management, Learning & Education and the monthly American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics were classified by the type of claim made, method by which evidence was collected and techniques of analysis. The dental education literature, compared with the two other journals, was largely focussed on surveys of opinion or particular practices and lacked scope in generalisability. The dental education literature was thin in use of randomisation, covariable analysis and theory-building.

The Nazi aerospace exodus: towards a global, transnational history

The exodus of Third Reich scientific and engineering personnel after World War II has traditionally been understood through its impact on the Cold War missile and space race. This article assesses the state of scholarship on this topic globally, particularly in aerospace professions, in the process drawing some conclusions on the total numbers, skill composition and Nazi backgrounds of the Germans, the stages of movement, and the technological impact of their movement. Such an assessment not only demonstrates the geographical weaknesses in existing knowledge, notably in the scholarship on Britain, France and much of the Third World, but it also points us towards a global, transnational history of the phenomenon, as cross-border flows of people, information, and technology grew beyond the bounds of the victorious powers’ national programs for exploiting German knowledge.

Weak Historicism: On Hierarchies of Intellectual Virtues and Goods

Abstract This article seeks to reconcile a historicist sensitivity to how intellectually virtuous behavior is shaped by historical contexts with a non-relativist account of historical scholarship. To that end, it distinguishes between hierarchies of intellectual virtues and hierarchies of intellectual goods. The first hierarchy rejects a one-size-fits-all model of historical virtuousness in favor of a model that allows for significant varieties between the relative weight that historians must assign to intellectual virtues in order to acquire justified historical understanding. It grounds such differences, not on the historians’ interests or preferences, but on their historiographical situations, so that hierarchies of virtues are a function of the demands that historiographical situations (defined as interplays of genre, research question, and state of scholarship) make upon historians. Likewise, the second hierarchy allows for the pursuit of various intellectual goods, but banishes the specter of relativism by treating historical understanding as an intellectual good that is constitutive of historical scholarship and therefore deserves priority over alternative goods. The position that emerges from this is classified as a form of weak historicism.

Using God-Talk in a Secular Society: Time for a New Conversation on Public Issues?*

Abstract The role that religious language should play in the ‘public square’ has long been a matter of debate. As Rawls, Rorty, Audi and others have long argued, albeit with subtle variations, discussion on public issues must be truly ‘public’ and therefore employ vocabulary, principles and reasoning which are intelligible to any reasonable person and based on public canons of validity. But does this argument do justice to religious voices? Can the growing number of such voices clamouring for the right to be heard continue to be ignored? Does excluding conviction-based language from public debate lessen the quality of that debate and the potential to find effective solutions to policy challenges? Drawing upon recent work by Jonathan Chaplin, Rowan Williams, Roger Trigg and Michael Sandel, this article examines the current state of scholarship on the question of language in public discourse, and concludes that the case for ‘confessional candour’ to be accepted in such discourse is overwhelming and could have a positive effect on policy outcomes. A prerequisite to this, however—at least within the context of New Zealand—will be a fresh debate about the meaning and scope of the term ‘secularism’.

Introduction: Special Issue on Tomboys and Tomboyism

This article provides a critical introduction to, as well as an overview of the articles within, this special issue. The opening portion briefly discusses the history of tomboyism as both a cultural concept and embodied phenomenon. Then, the subsequent paragraphs provide a brief summary of the five essays that comprise this themed edition. In so doing, the Introduction addresses the current state of scholarship on tomboys and tomboyism, while it also highlights possible areas for future study.

Sabrina in the thorns: place‐names as evidence for British and Latin in Roman Britain

AbstractThis article reviews published work which draws on various kinds of evidence to assess the linguistic situation in Roman Britain. Having reached some interim conclusions about the state of scholarship, it proceeds to examine the particular contribution that place‐names can make to the debate on how far Latin may have taken hold in the province at the expense of the native British Celtic. While there is rather more evidence of Latin here than has often been allowed, the widespread continuity of British across much, at least, of Lowland Britain is reaffirmed, in the face of a recent suggestion to the contrary.

Literature, Modernity, and the Practice of Resistance: Japanese and Taiwanese Fiction, 1960–1990 by Margaret Hillenbrand (review)

Reviewed by: Literature, Modernity, and the Practice of Resistance: Japanese and Taiwanese Fiction, 1960–1990 by Margaret Hillenbrand Sylvia Li-chun Lin (bio) and Christopher Ahn (bio) Margaret Hillenbrand. Literature, Modernity, and the Practice of Resistance: Japanese and Taiwanese Fiction, 1960–1990. Edited by Glen Dudbridge and Frank Pieke. Chinese Studies, vol. 11. Leiden: E. J. Brill Academic Publishers, 2007. 370 pp. Hardcover $151.00, ISBN 978-90-04-15478-0. This is an ambitious project in which the author proposes to study recent and contemporary East Asian literature through an intraregional episteme that draws upon the commonalities shared by industrialized societies in East Asia. Any reader interested in a comparison of specific writers or texts from Japan and Taiwan will find this book worthwhile and take interest in Hillenbrand’s readings of the texts. In addition, she has performed an important service by assembling Japanese and Taiwanese works in one place and providing a useful and extensive bibliography of secondary materials. However, the reader who seeks a theoretical analysis of regionalism upon which to ground a comparison of writers or texts may be less satisfied with the author’s approach. A project with radical ideas, the book begins with a lengthy introductory chapter (ninety pages), “The Scope of the Enquiry,” detailing the rationale for a new paradigm and introducing the main arguments and texts to be analyzed in the three chapters that follow. This chapter alone is a must-read for anyone interested in the state of scholarship in East Asian literary studies. Hillenbrand argues that area studies scholars of literature, whether philologically or theoretically inclined, typically confine themselves to the perspectives of single nation-states or remain subservient to Western and Euro-American epistemological regimes (p. 3). By doing so, they miss the overlapping histories, experiences, and solidarities that exist in East Asia today (p. 2). According to Hillenbrand, regionalism, in contrast, exploits these commonalities to seek “new and more self-referential ways of theorizing about non-Western experience” (p. 2) and to make visible distinctive [End Page 334] East Asian literary practices (p. 15). However, she argues that there is a surprising lack of (interest in) comparative studies of literary works from East Asia, particularly in light of the fact that the comparative approach seems more the norm than the exception in such disciplines as history, political science, and economics. Hence, she begins with a discussion of regionalism and the resistance to such a natural approach among literature scholars. Hillenbrand makes a persuasive case for the emergence of a sphere of regional interaction and even a nascent, consumer-oriented pan-Asian identity, but these do not necessarily exemplify the ideal of regionalism that she herself advocates. That ideal imagines a regional meta-text that is based on broad historical, political, and social commonalities, and is in dialogue with, but not beholden to, the West. She then offers an insightful critique of old school, Eurocentric comparative literature and the new school of theory-dominated readings of East Asian literature, virtually all of which are anchored in a single national context. To remedy the sparse production in such fertile land, she posits that a regional comparative study would be more fruitful, owing to affinities among East Asian cultures. As a way to demonstrate her approach, she compares the intellectual responses to modernity that have emerged in Japanese and Taiwanese fiction, circa 1960–1990, using a methodology that combines close readings of literature with an analysis of the intellectual and social contexts in which they were produced. The author claims that Japan and Taiwan are the most obvious choices for an intraregional comparison, because they share membership within a Chinese cultural zone, a colonial history, and the experience of rapid postwar transformation into consumer societies. Throughout the text, Hillenbrand readily acknowledges their historical differences, as well as the heterogeneities that exist within each society. She, nonetheless, insists that “broader affinities” (p. 28), “wide areas of overlap” (p. 54), “cultural assimilation” (p. 75), and so on serve to define an East Asian region based on a commonality of experience. Thus, for her, the influence of Confucian ethics in Taiwan and Japan matters more to the postwar unraveling of kinship ties in...

The Present state of scholarship in the history of rhetoric: a twenty-first century guide

The Present state of scholarship in the history of rhetoric: a twenty-first century guide

Interests, Ideas, and Institutions in Comparative Analysis of Judicial Power

In a high-profile 1993 publication about the status of scholarship titled Public Law and Judicial Politics, Martin Shapiro wrote that science study of comparative constitutional law and has begun flourish a little. He celebrated the fact that a growing, if still small, group of political scientists was attempting to undertake comparative analysis of comparable systemic comparative work on legislatures, executives and bureaucracies. However, he lamented, this group remains small and rather isolated from the main body of comparativists, and comparative politics scholars remain woefully uninformed about constitutional law and courts (p. 367).1 The minisymposium in the preceding pages of this edition of PRQ provides a welcome signal that Shapiro's lament is no longer warranted. Featured here are several of the many distinguished political scientists who in recent years have contributed conceptually sophisticated, empirically rich studies probing the proliferation of constitutions, constitutional courts, and judicialized politics around the world. Moreover, the intellectual connection and professional standing of this scholarship among comparativists seems have grown substantially as well. And there is every reason think that this symposium will advance these trends yet further. This new collection has been comparatively oriented in at least two important regards. First, and most obvious, the authors offer empirical studies of judiciaries that have developed significance, or been empowered, in seven national contexts over the past four decades or so. This sample is smartly subdivided between different regime types - including four in the process of transition from semiauthoritarian democratic states and three relatively developed democracies dealing issues regarding substantial minority group interests.2 As such, the studies provide much opportunity for theory building across national cases. Second, the studies are theoretically comparative in the sense that they critically engage one of the leading analytical approaches explaining which they label the model. That latter approach has been addressed so extensively in previous pages that I will not summarize its key features here. Instead, my concluding comments briefly offer some questions and puzzles at stake in the debate over how we analyze comparatively the dynamics of power at work in the politics of institutions. Pressing the Terms of Engagement It is worth noting at the outset the terms and tenor of the theoretical engagement. For one thing, the symposium editors chose focus in particular on the phenomenon of judicial empowerment, thus placing the study of power and politics at the heart of the inquiry. This is laudable, for studies of law and courts, even by political scientists, do not always center so directly on questions of power. Moreover, the authors in the symposium are be commended for their generous, thoughtful, and constructive challenges rationalstrategic frameworks. The authors go out of their way at most points underline that they do not dismiss or reject the rational-strategic approach so much as seek expand, complicate, supplement, or refine its understandings in a variety of ways. The core critique is that the rational-strategic approach is not so much wrong as too narrow, too simple, and overbroad in its generalizations. The model has various degrees of analytical value in different contexts, symposium contributors acknowledge, but in nearly all cases, additional considerations are needed make sense of how and what effect increase their relative power. The symposium authors thus typically eschew either/or claims and offer instead arguments about other factors or understandings that are as important or that matter along with strategic-rational actions of political elites. The effort is one of synthesis rather than thumping and trumping. …

Is All Scholarship Equally Valued? Fusion of Horizons on the Definition and Status of Scholarship

Is All Scholarship Equally Valued? Fusion of Horizons on the Definition and Status of Scholarship

La devoción popular a la Santa Vera Cruz. Fundación de cofradías penitenciales en el ámbito gaditano

With the end of the Middle Ages and in response to several factors, the devotion to the True Cross, introduced by the Franciscan friars, leads to the formation of the first penitential brotherhoods on the Iberian peninsula: the Vera Cruz brotherhoods. The first associations emerged in Spain at the end of the fifteenth century, especially in the northern cities, which had been freed some time before from Muslim occupation. Gradually, the devotion to the True Cross and to the Blood of Christ lead to the rapid expansion of these lay religious associations throughout the Peninsula. This article will examine a specific case, the foundation of Vera Cruz brotherhoods in the current province of Cadiz, in southern-most in Spain. After a brief introduction on the state of scholarship in this area, the article will examine unpublished documental data touching on the founding and early years of some of these corporations. It will then provide some brief information on other, non-penitential contemporary devotions that deserve a separately study. This new information has been obtained on the whole though the analysis and transcription of sixteenth-century legal documents from Cadiz and in particular from one specific type of document, the last will or testament.

Constitutional scholarship in the United States

The status and character of constitutional scholarship depends upon the nature of constitutional law. In the United States, the content of constitutional law is typically negotiated within a dialogue between the Supreme Court and the American people. Constitutional scholarship accordingly seeks to mediate this dialogue by clarifying the systematic and jurisprudential implications of potential constitutional developments. In Europe, constitutional law is more independent of political dialogue; hence constitutional scholarship is relatively more autonomous. Whereas European constitutional scholars imagine their project as the development of an apolitical and internally coherent structure of constitutional norms, American constitutional scholars tend to develop theory in the context of its practical implications for case-by-case adjudication.

Career Factors Help Predict Productivity in Scholarship Among Faculty Members in Physical Therapist Education Programs

Academic institutions and scholars play a critical role in the development of a unique and substantive professional science and disciplinary literature. Individual and environmental characteristics influence the scholarly work of higher education faculty generally, but little is known about factors that influence scholarly productivity of physical therapist faculty members. The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that contribute to the variability in scholarly productivity among faculty members in physical therapist education programs. A cross-sectional study design was used. A survey of a representative sample of faculty members in accredited professional (entry-level) physical therapist education programs in the United States was conducted. Descriptive analysis was conducted, and 5 blocked hierarchical regression models were constructed to identify factors that help explain variability in grantsmanship, peer-reviewed publications, and peer-reviewed presentations. A usable response rate of 58% was obtained. The 520 participants displayed variability in scholarly productivity. The regression models explained half of the variance in career publishing productivity and 28% to 44% of the variance in productivity in presentations and grants. Career factors, including discipline of highest degree, appointment status, and faculty rewards, contributed most substantially to the explained variance. Several phenomena unique to physical therapy were considered in light of these findings. The multidisciplinary nature of the faculty, national trends in faculty hiring and appointment, and the status of the DPT-trained faculty cohort all may influence physical therapy faculty scholarship. Unidentified errors in sampling or reporting may limit the results of this study. Career factors generally predict the largest proportion of explained variance in scholarly productivity. Large numbers of questions remain regarding the status of scholarship and scholars in physical therapy.

Medieval Arab Lesbians and Lesbian-Like Women

If t h e a b s e n c e o f a s p e c i f i c terminology to denote lesbianism in medieval Europe seems to have compromised the production of scholarship about same-sex love and desire among women, the existence of the label sahq and sihaqa, musahaqat al-nisa’, or sahiqa (Arabic words for “lesbianism” and “lesbian,” respectively) in medieval Arabic writings did not result in a richer critical production. In fact, if relatively little research has been conducted on female same-sex desire in medieval Europe, even less has been produced on homosexuality in the medieval Arabic literary or Islamicate tradition, and almost no research at all has been done on medieval Arab Islamicate lesbianism. 1 This state of scholarship into alternative sexual practices in the Arab Islamicate world is especially astonishing considering the survival of a noteworthy body of primary texts dealing precisely with this topic. Furthermore, if one broadens the category of medieval Arab lesbian to include women who were “lesbian-like,” as Judith Bennett has invited us to do in our construction of the history of Western female homosexuality, we uncover additional expressions of medieval Arab lesbian I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for the Journal of the History of Sexuality who made countless helpful suggestions. 1

Polonistyczny dyskurs edukacyjny (tezy)

The article raises the status of the literary scholarship for discourse (in a specifically Polish context, but it can be generalized for all communication about literature). It rejects the vision of a minimized scientific literary scholarship discourse. This discourse is seen as wholly different, because it transports the scientific prototypes (understood in a cognitive manner) selectively and with a big delay, but also it combines them with the prototypes derived from the ethical (moral) and political discourses (like f.e. the ministerially programmed list of literary works for school). The author debates the question how to introduce the scientific prototypes from zero, how to construct a synthesis of literary history and whether it is possible to avoid the technique of a school heuresis (i.e. asking questions which include answers in them etc.).