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This paper explores how documentary cinema in war contexts can challenge gender representations. To do so, we adopt a feminist and postcolonial approach to analyze the work of Catalan non-fiction filmmaker Alba Sotorra in Kurdistan, Afghanistan and Catalonia. In her films, Sotorra positions herself close to a series of subjects absorbed by wars and armed conflicts that (re)define their identities while acting beyond gender stereotypes. In particular, the paper analyzes the modes of production and representational strategies of two of Sotorra's latest feature films, Game Over and Commander Arian, documentaries with which the filmmaker aims at overcoming the visual exploitation of alterity. After an introduction to Sotorra, and a brief revision of the theory of postcolonial feminist cinema, our argument unfolds in four parts. Firstly, we reflect on cinematic representations of women and men at war; secondly, we introduce our methodology, based on in-depth interviews with the director to support our film analysis; thirdly, we contrast our hypotheses by means of close-readings of the films; lastly, we reflect on how the filmmaker aligns herself with intersectional feminism by using empathy and solidarity towards her subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Western gaze instituted by the cinematographic apparatus constructs racialized subjects and supports processes of dispossession. My present transmedial artistic research project engages with the biopolitics of representation in archival film material, from a decolonial perspective. By drawing from academic and non-academic sources on relations between colonialism, capitalism, and technologies of control, this paper studies manifestations of surveillance in non-fiction film, to analyze the sub-genre of medical propaganda in former European colonies. Moreover, it proposes to scrutinize the long-term impact colonial cinema and its structures of representation had and still have on processes of subjectification, haunting present-day gender and race-determined profiling by mainstream film, CCTV, and drones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been a growing jurisprudential and philosophical literature on the concept of harm, in particular, what it means to suffer harm. This paper defends the most unpopular account of what it means to suffer harm, the temporal comparative account of harm (TCA). According to TCA, what it means to suffer harm just is for a person to come to be in a state in which they are worse off than they were before. My defence of the TCA proceeds as follows. Firstly, I explain why it is that one might find the TCA appealing to begin with. Then, I respond to three sets of concerns that have been levied against the TCA: (1) concerns about the sufficiency of historical worsenings for harm; (2) concerns about the necessity of historical worsenings for harm; and (3) concerns about the downstream consequences of adopting the TCA in general. If my arguments are successful, we ought to take the TCA much more seriously as a plausible account of what it means to suffer harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although students in college science courses typically learn laboratory techniques and practices, few are taught about the communicative interactions that occur within the larger scientific community. In this paper, I propose that to educate a scientifically literate public — one that comprehends the centrality of argument in the production of scientifically sound information — science instructors must generate an understanding of how consensus is reached within a community of scientists. I use a chapter from a popular science book as an exemplar to illustrate how narrative can be used in an introductory undergraduate science course to inculcate contextual understanding as to why scientists argue. It is in the undergraduate classroom that we groom students to be our future scientists, science teachers, and scientifically literate citizens. The lively and often contentious debates detailed in this chapter can help these students gain a contextual understanding of the role of argumentation in constructing scientific knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Works of fiction are alleged to differ from works of nonfiction in instructing their audience to imagine their content. Indeed, works of fiction have been defined in terms of this feature: they are works that mandate us to imagine their content. This paper examines this definition of works of fiction, focusing on the nature of the activity that ensues in response to reading or watching fiction. Investigating how imaginings function in other contexts, I show, first, that they presuppose a cognitive infrastructure encompassing at least one additional kind of mental state, whose role is to determine, to some degree, truth in an imaginary world. I then discuss the implications for the definition of fiction, showing that the definition should be refined to accommodate the structure that imagining presupposes: a work counts as fiction just in case it mandates us, not only to imagine, but to engage in a more complex mental activity, an activity that in addition to imagining, involves positing a backdrop for our imaginings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lead white is widely used as a white pigment in the history of Persian painting. This paper focuses on three Persian treatises dated between the twelfth and the sixteenth century, which explained different manufacturing methods of lead white or sefidāb-i-sorb. Experimental reconstruction of each recipe to access the comprehensive meaning of the text and analytical studies with X-ray powder diffraction on products of recipes revealed white compounds other than the previously known products of hydrocerussite (Pb(OH)2 · PbCO3) and cerussite (PbCO3) in samples. Chlorine-containing raw materials mentioned in these recipes lead to the chemical products of laurionite (Pb(OH)Cl), blixite (Pb8O5(OH)2Cl4), and phosgenite (Pb2Cl2(CO)3) in the final products. These data lead to the hypothesis of the discrepancy of the lead white pigment between Iran and Europe and a marked probability of other compounds in historic Persian lead white samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the sixteenth century, essayists such as Michel De Montaigne have been writing life's minutiae; trying to find words to ‘portray passing … from day to day, from minute to minute’. Even in its earliest articulation the word essay expressed an intention to venture forth into unfamiliar territory. In recent years, blogs have become an avenue for previously silenced writers to publish their personal experiences and perspectives, and no more so than in the ever-growing sphere of ‘mummy bloggers’. Though the term has developed social currency, it has also begun to encompass any and all online writing by mothers and includes a spectrum of styles. This paper suggests a new reading of blogs by mothers, using essayist Vivian Gornick's framework of ‘situation’ and ‘story’. By identifying the online writing which understands ‘why one is speaking’ and ‘who is speaking’, we are able to distinguish blogs that successfully utilise creative non-fiction techniques to articulate and advocate the voice of the mother. The article argues that this approach best enables writers to, as maternal theorist Susan Maushart calls it, ‘unmask motherhood’. In considering further the connections between the texts and life itself, the paper examines how digital representations reflect and help define or (re)shape the realities of women and families, and how mothering and being a mother are political, personal and creative narratives unfolding within the digital world. It aims to illuminate how the writers construct their online maternal identities to subvert the scripts of their families, cultures and nations in their quest for self-knowledge, agency and artistic expression. The paper is therefore interested in the intersection between recent research in creative non-fiction practice and maternal scholarship. It is believed that together these disciplines can provide alternate interpretations of how writing mothers use digital spaces to negotiate, reconcile and resist traditional notions of mothering and maternal roles, and how they offer alternative matrifocal narratives for women and society. Finally the paper argues for a new category of ‘mummy bloggers' – what I term ‘maternal essayists' – to represent writers who engage in the practice of creative non-fiction writing to celebrate the centrality of mothering. Furthermore, it is suggested that these women have been some of the most influential writers of the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper takes as its starting point the memoirs of a French sergeant who took part in Napoleon's Moscow campaign. After discussion of a number of war narratives from World Wars I and II, it brings out two features. The first is that the vast majority of these do not belong to the genre of fiction. The memoir form has been seen as more appropriate. The second feature is that the mode of narration used, both in fiction and non-fiction, has been that of literary realism, hence the title 'The Mimetic Imperative'. The paper goes on to discuss aspects of realism, such as attacks on it as being no more than 'reportage', the denigrating of the 'Reality Effect', and the 'Chaotic Fallacy', of assuming that the chaotic aspects of modern war can be replicated in a written text with war as its subject-matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first part of this essay review (“ Bildung Between Human Value, Political Rhetoric and Historical Transformation”), the term Bildung is introduced and central questions for the review are raised. How can a term that is charged with the utopian hopes of enlightenment and the appropriation of these hopes by the rising middle class between 1770 and 1830 guide the current discourse on education? How can Bildung serve as a principle of contemporary educational practice? In the second part of this essay review (“Rewriting Bildung: The Place of a Normative Theory of Education”), I look at the rewriting of this idea in a collection of essays written by educational philosophers in Educating Humanity: Bildung in Postmodernity ( Løvlie, Mortensen, & Nordenbo, 2003 ). These authors present transformations of Bildung to cope with postmodern realities. I review these essays in terms of their potential to save human values against dehumanizing trends of postmodernity and globalization. In the third part of this essay, I examine the transformation of Bildung into educational practice via “ Bildung-centered Didaktik.” Two German Didaktik traditions are explained and the other two books, Looking Into Classrooms: Papers on Didactics ( Menck, 2002 ) and Teaching as Reflective Practice: The German Didaktik Tradition ( Westbury, Hopmann, & Riquarts, 2000 ), are reviewed with respect to their role for the contemporary discourse on Didaktik and their contribution to classroom practice. The relationship between Bildung and curriculum serves as a background to several of the papers. I also discuss the role of Bildung and Didaktik for teacher education and confront the books’ theoretical ideas with current issues of educational reform. Finally, I present a discussion of the different approaches and my own conclusions. They include arguments to defend a utopian and partly idealist concept against managerial approaches to education that restrict themselves to performativity and effectiveness. My conclusions also underline the need for rewriting Bildung in the late modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with a brief description of the fundamental change in the way India is perceived today compared to its image in its early decades after independence - from a weak player in the international system to a potential great power in the twenty-first century. The author then places Edward Luce's In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India and Mira Kamdar's Planet India: How the World's Fastest Growing Democracy is Transforming America and the World within this changed perception of the India, and evaluates the arguments made by them. While Kamdar's book conveys the message that India is rising even as it has multiple challenges to overcome, it does not tell us much more. By contrast, Luce's excellent book presents the most definitive non-academic account of the rise of India by focusing on its economy, politics, society, and foreign policy. The paper also places India's "rise" in an historical context and shows that what we are witnessing is not just India's rise, but its recrudescence. The paper concludes by briefly discussing what a rising India seeks from the world and what kind of a power it wants to be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines chronic poverty in the developing country context within the entitlement theory approach. The dialogue on entitlement theory originally introduced by Sen is extended here to explore poverty and its persistence, or chronic poverty. A conceptual framework is presented, in which poverty and its persistence are explained within the context of the individual's economic and non-economic situation and development incentives. These attributes are influenced by the individual's entitlements. It is shown that poor endowments and resource base are important causes of persistent poverty. Policies aimed at reducing poverty therefore must address problems associated with improving the entitlements of individuals and households. The definition of ‘entitlements’ in the paper is not restricted to material possessions—the economic entitlements of the individual or the household—but is extended to incorporate the individual's skills, education and productive ability—the non-economic entitlements. The discussion is rooted in the increasing awareness of multidimensional poverty. The paper focuses on rural poverty in certain parts of India, where most of India's chronic poverty is situated. Over a million people can be classified as chronically poor in terms of duration, severity and deprivation. This is despite the government's commitment to the eradication of poverty since the early 1950s, with a total expenditure of nearly $7 billion in the past 50 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main substance of this paper is the postscript of a book currently awaiting publication ‘Life in a Kam Village in Southwest China, 1930 – 1949’. The book was written by a Kam professor and then translated into English. In this paper, the translator first introduces the forthcoming book and presents some Chinese historical background to contextualize the story of the postscript. In his postscript, the author briefly describes the culture of the village where he was born and lived for 20 years, before leaving in 1950. The author's father died in 1944, but his mother lived for more than 20 years after Liberation in 1949. By reference to his four return visits between 1964 and 1990 and in particular to his mother's post-Liberation experiences, the author outlines how the inter-personal and material culture of his home village changed irrevocably during the second half of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In The whale caller, published in 2005, Mda has cast his net, literally as it were, off the Cape coast for his thematic framework. Although the title of his fifth novel accords centre stage to its human protagonist, the presence of the southern right whale, christened Sharisha by the whale caller, vies for equal space with the protagonist and his mistress Saluni. Marshalling the precepts of Jacques Derrida, Victor Turner, and not least of all Coleridge, this paper proposes to explore the uncanny relationship of the whale caller and Sharisha, whose annual dalliance in the bay of Hermanus gives meaning and identity to her surrogate human lover. In problematizing this relationship between the human and the non-human, this paper attempts to come to grips with the ontology of human and non-human relationships in general, and with the relationship between the whale caller and Sharisha in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his book A Secular Age, Charles Taylor appeals to the metaphysical-normative distinction between 'immanence' and 'transcendence' as definitive for post-Axial religion. On Taylor's view, therefore, those of us who embrace a fully secular modernity can be described as having abandoned 'transcendence' to take up our lives wholly within the confines of the immanent frame, though he grants we may seek alternative satisfactions or 'substitutes' for eternity. But the notion that any metaphysical-normative model of sacred experience can serve as an irresistible foundation is open to doubt if one recalls the Heideggerian insight that any metaphysical picture both reveals and conceals aspects of our experience. Taylor's own description of sacred and non-sacred experience within the immanent frame seems to rely upon this foundational distinction, without entertaining the possibility that the language itself may very well actually distort what our experience is like. This paper pursues the above objections to Taylor's argument, focusing special attention on the assumption that one can judge aesthetic experience (such as listening to a Beethoven string quartet) with the criteria we have inherited from post-Axial religion. The overwhelming authority of the Axial tradition might seem to validate questions such as, 'Is there an object?' or 'Is the experience purely immanent?' But to such questions we might respond that such language simply has no grip on the phenomena. Any such talk of 'substitution' might therefore be understood as an historical remnant in Taylor's book of the traditional monotheist's critique of idolatry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doing Without Concepts Edouard Machery New York: Oxford University Press, 2009 296 pages, ISBN: 0195306880 (hbk); $65.00 This paper offers a critical review of Edouard Machery's Doing Without Concepts, with a particular emphasis on an approach to concept individuation that is consistent with many of Machery's arguments but has the potential to avoid his eliminativist conclusion. The approach agrees with Machery's claims to the effect that prototypes, exemplars, theories (and so on) form a heterogeneous class, but construes these theoretical entities as implementing a unified, albeit coarse-grained, notion of a concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Myth, Telos, Identity: The Tragic Schema in Greek and Shakespearean Drama. By Iván Nyusztay (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 2002), 202 pp. $45.00/£24.85 paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]