"Paganism" is an evocative word that even today conjures up deep-seated emotions and prejudices. Until recently, it was primarily a derogatory term used by Christians to describe the non-Christian cultures vanquished by their churches. For some it evokes images of sacrifice and barbaric behavior, while for others it symbolizes a peace-loving, nature-worshipping spiritual relationship with the e…
We are now witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record. Accordingto the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), there are 70.8million forcibly displaced people worldwide. This includes over 41 million inter-nally displaced people, 25 million refugees and 3.5 million asylum seekers. This isa challenge of historic proportions. Evolving responses having now become oneof th…
Yet we cannot foreclose the extent to which some thinkers and theorists, especially looking back over the long arc of TV reception, have raised concerns about the medium’s deleterious potential: its apparent agency in human dissipation and degeneracy. While Raymond Williams offered a critical materialist approach equipped with a searing interest in how serious criticism of …
We wanted to have this experience to assess whether our hypotheses were well founded. Hassan, an old camel driver of few words but who knew all the “secrets” of a desert journey, served as our guide.From the expedition diary: 12 February 1990: “Since a few hours, we have been travelling on our teetering rides across an immense stony plain towards Jebel Maqran, a tiny outcrop tha…
Questions of responsibility arise at all levels of health care. Most prominent has been the issue of patient responsibility. Some health conditions that risk death or serious harm are partly the result of lifestyle behaviours such as smoking, lack of exercise, or extreme sports. Are patients with such conditions responsible for them? If so, might healthcare providers, be they state-run systems …
s this story of the Golden Age develops – with Eustace’s charming descrip-tions of meals growing on trees, carefree fun, and the bright aura – it in fact reveals the sinister myth of Pandora, here a “playfellow” sent by the gods to the boy Epimetheus, in whose household “a great box” menacingly awaits. Even though in Hawthorne’s version the girl is not responsible for…
The only up-to-date frequency dictionary of Spanish currently available, this is an invaluable tool for all learners of Spanish that provides a list of the 5,000 most commonly used words in the language. Based on a twenty million word corpus evenly divided between spoken, fiction and non-fiction texts from both Spain and Latin America, the Dictionary provides a detailed frequency-based list,…
This volume demonstrates how the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) provides a necessary context for late medieval literature. Many of the major writers of the period, in a variety of different languages, lived either all or most of their lives under the shadow of war, including Geoffrey Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, Giovanni Boccaccio and Bridget of Sweden. The essays collected here investigate ho…
Albers advanced the idea that colour is continually deceptive, and that the exact same colour can evoke innumerable responses depending on how it is seen against other colours. He argued against ‘mechanically applying or merely implying laws and rules of colour harmony’, because of the subjective nature of perception – it is almost impossible to see a colour by itself and not interacting …
The world is facing a biodiversity crisis and around 1 million animal and plant species are estimated to be threatened with extinction (IPBES, 2019). Trees are highly visible in most landscapes and are excellent biodiversity indicators. They are ecologically, culturally and economically of vital importance and yet there have been surprising gaps in knowledge of the diversity, distribution, abun…