For a long time, I have been thinking about how best to talk about vio-lence in Colombia without falling prey to broad statements such as “Colombia is a violent country” or “violence rules Colombia.” These statements have contributed to the pervasiveness of Colombia’s cultural representations of violence globally, be those carried out by Colombians themselves or …
“We have fulfilled our mission; the humanitarian dismantling operation is over,” announced Fabienne Buccio, Préfète of Pas-de-Calais, on Thursday 27 October 2016.1 Her words described the completion of an episode, a supposed end to the ‘Jungle’. But in reality this speech marked the end of neither the ‘Jungles’ of Calais nor the ongoing experience of displaced people in H…
Writing equipment is key for the comprehensive study of Roman handwriting, non-monumental inscriptions and literacy. Cost, material and design of the equipment and how it was used had an impact on many aspects of writing such as letter shapes, document layout and who was writing. Im-portantly, the equipment also has an impact on what kinds of ancient handwritten texts have survived and therefor…
The research project “Performing Interspaces: Social Fluidities in Contemporary Theatre”, whose primary output is this monograph, began as an imperative to account for spaces that are awkward, evade attention, or, when they receive it, rarely do so because they produce feelings of desirability, warmth, or contentment. These spaces are sometimes …
I am very thankful to be here. And there is something more in my heart, something I cannot say.’ Sister Teresa González speaks firmly, with characteristic Spanish emphasis in the English she learnt in Australia 53 years ago. She speaks for us all, and we nod. We have sung an ancient liturgy of psalms to remember the eight Benedictine Missionary Sisters who a…
On March 1, 2020, Greece closed its borders, denying refugees the right to seek political asylum, a reaction to Turkey’s decision to strategically refuse its role as gatekeeper to the European Union. A few weeks later, Italy, France, Belgium, and Spain closed their borders as the global COVID-19 pandemic spread. China had already closed its borders a few wee…
These verses, extracted from a longer Urdu naz?m or poem, were written by Nazir, a blacksmith and bladesmith based in the North Indian city of Rampur in the mid-twentieth century. I first encountered Nazir and his poetry as part of a collection that the librarians of the renowned Raza Library in Rampur had put together to honor the city’s artisanal and material heritage.2 Nazir’s ve…
What ought we do about the bomb? The official answer given by effectively all the world’s states is abolition. To be sure, the current nuclear-armed states are for all intents and purposes resolved to retain and renew their arsenals for the foreseeable future. Disarmament rhetoric has persistently been belied by enormous investments in warheads, missiles, bombers, and submarines. Yet, on the …
The pioneering work done by E. Donnall Thomas in 1957, who first performedallogeneic bone marrow (or hematopoietic stem cell) transfusion in patients,earned him a Nobel Prize in 1990 for his discoveries regarding cell transplantationfor human diseases treatment [1, 2]. In this study, six patients were treated withradiation and chemotherapy followed by intravenous infusion of marrow-derivedfrom…
This book presents a study of Mesoamerican religious experience based on an analysis of ancient religious manuscripts, the calendar that informs their structure, and the author’s field work in the town of Huautla de Jiménez in the Sierra Mazateca of the state of Oaxaca. Collectively known as the Borgia Group, the Codices Borgia, Vaticanus B, Cospi, Laud, and Fejérváry-M…