On Christmas Day, 1996, JonBenét Ramsey was reported miss-ing by her family. JonBenét was six years old; she was also a suc-cessful child beauty queen. Patricia Ramsey, JonBenét’s mother, claimed to have discovered a ransom note left on the stairs of their home that apparently alerted the family to the fact that her daughter was missing. Though the note specifically indi…
The libraries of Tunis are considered lost since the sack of the city by European armies in 1535. This study reconstructs the original holdings of Tunis’ medieval libraries by bringing together dispersed manuscripts from over 30 library collections worldwide. The outcome is twofold: the book maps the networks of the first European Orientalists and, by doing so, retrieves from oblivion an impo…
The interstellar medium (ISM) is the matter (gas 99%, dust 1%) distributed inthe space between the stars. Hydrogen (H) is the most abundant element of theISM, and its physical/chemical state defines the ISM phases: the ionised phase,in which H is atomic ionised, the neutral phase, in which H is neutral atomic,and the molecular phase, in which H is neutral molecular (H2). Star formationis the se…
Transnational and transracial adoption has become a phenomenon that is rapidly declining in numbers yet highly visible.1 How adoptive families were and are made has come under intense scrutiny in critical adoption studies over the last two decades, especially with regard to international adoption.2Major debates in recent years have addressed the detention of chil…
Living with chronic conditions requires careful, ongoing management, or what Annemarie Mol (2008) has defined as ‘tinkering’. This means continually making adjustments, and not only to the fluctuating symp-toms and moods, but also to the presence and action of the multiple, significant actors involved in the field of care. Anthropological research on…
The legends of the Japanese warrior-statesmen, referred to as the samurai, are renowned for accounts of military valor and political intrigue—epic conflicts between powerful lords, samurai vassals, and the imperial court—as well as accounts of profound self-sacrifice and loyalty. The term samurai is derived from the word saburau, or “one who serves.” The evolution of the samurai from mo…
“Precarity is everywhere today”, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu announced in a lecture in 1997 (qtd. in Springveld 26). “[P] recarity is not a passing or episodic condition, but a new form of regulation that distinguishes this historical time”, American philosopher Judith Butler writes in her foreword to German political theorist Isabell Lorey’s study State of Insecurity: Governme…
People were talking long before they invented writing. People were also making music long before anyone wrote any music down. Some musicians still play "by ear" (without written music), and some music traditions rely more on improvisation and/or "by ear" learning. But written music is very useful, for many of the same reasons that written words are useful. Music is easier to study and share if …
Communities great and small across Europe for eight centuries have contracted with doctors. Physicians provided citizen care, helped govern, and often led in public life. Civic Medicine stakes out this timely subject by focusing on its golden age, when cities rivaled territorial states in local and global Europe and when civic doctors were central to the rise of shared, organized written inform…
In Pursuit of Visibility honors the distinguished career of a scholar of Canaan and ancient Israel, Beth Alpert Nakhai. In fifteen diverse essays, Professor Nakhai’s students and colleagues celebrate her important contributions to the field of Near Eastern Archaeology, including her research into gender, household, and cult in the Bronze and Iron Age southern Levant, and her tireless efforts …