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In Egypt's 2012 elections, the Muslim Brotherhood came to power after many years of repression, an unprecedented victory for the country's most active opposition movement. The Brotherhood's journey can be divided into several stages. One of the most important, which has not received enough attention, is the imprisonment of many of its major figures. Long before the coup that overthrew President Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the Arab nationalist President Gamal Abdel Nasser brutally put down the movement with mass arrests. The Brotherhood's members dominated Egypt's prisons, but they were far from the only activists in the system, which also held communists, Zionists, and other Jewish prisoners. This article uses the memoirs of the incarcerated enemies of the state to examine the struggles of these groups inside Egypt's prisons and show how the institutions served as platforms to promote the ideological struggle against the regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why and how do pathways to regime complexes diverge? Building on insights from the literatures on institutional design and historical institutionalism, we argue that early institutional design choices produce long-term variation in the pace, density, and composition of institutional layers within a regime complex. In a first step, we argue that if an institution becomes focal, this increases the exit costs for member-states to leave. Additional institutional layers become a more likely outcome. In a second step, we argue that depending on the focal organization's formal or informal design, variegated sovereignty costs inform the additional layering pathways. If a focal organization is formal, sovereignty costs are high for member-states. Consequently, creating additional institutional layers becomes cumbersome, leading to a slow pace of "negotiated layering" and a regime complex characterized by low density and composed of formal and informal institutions. In contrast, low sovereignty costs associated with informal focal organizations enable a rapid process of "breakout layering" resulting in a high density of mostly informal institutions. We develop our argument by examining the evolution of security institutions in Europe and Asia through diplomatic cables, treaty texts, personal memoirs, and policy memos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout history, epilepsy has been subject to spiritual or supernatural interpretations and is often construed as a form of possession, divine retribution, or even a mystical endowment. However, from a medical perspective, epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder. Elodie Durand's graphic memoir, Parenthesis (2021), offers a personal narrative documenting the complexities of epilepsy. Through a meticulous analysis of Durand's memoir, this article aims to investigate the intersections of crip temporalities and the affective dimensions of epilepsy as experienced and depicted by Durand, encompassing her epileptic seizures and neuropsychological evaluations, as well as her attempts at narrative reconstruction. Situated within the conceptual framework of crip time developed by Ellen Samuels, this essay examines the concealed nature of epilepsy as a chronic illness and its implications as an invisible disability. This study in graphic medicine conveys the embodied and experiential nature of epilepsy visualised through the medium of comics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a book review of two works about the German Nobel laureate Günter Grass. The first book, "Günter Grass: Der Schriftsteller" by Dieter Stolz, is a comprehensive introduction to Grass's poetry, dramas, and prose fiction. The reviewer notes that Stolz's personal connection to Grass influences his perspective, but praises his deep knowledge of Grass's works. The second book, "Katalogisierung und Kommentierung der Jugendlektüren von Günter Grass in den 1930er und frühen 1940er Jahren" by Dorothee Neuhaus and Volker Neuhaus, focuses on Grass's early life and the books that influenced his literary output. The reviewer highlights the book's insightful interpretations and its value for researchers. [Extracted from the article]

"Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers" is a candid and humorous memoir written by Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green. It delves into Rodgers' life as the daughter of renowned composer Richard Rodgers and her own journey as a composer and lyricist. The memoir explores her complex relationship with her parents, the challenges she faced as a woman in the music industry, and her personal doubts and setbacks. With its engaging and insightful content, the memoir offers valuable perspectives on the experiences of women in the music industry during the mid-20th century. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the concept of queer bibliography and its relationship with other critical bibliographical traditions. It emphasizes the need for an intersectional approach, considering factors such as race, class, dis/ability, and gender alongside non-normative sexualities. The article examines the overlap between queer and Black bibliography, highlighting the value of recognizing marginalized voices and the transmission of texts. It also discusses the work of Ann Allen Shockley, a Black lesbian writer and librarian, as an example of how Black bibliography can be queer in practice. The authors argue that a new form of bibliographical studies is emerging, challenging exclusionary practices and embracing liberatory futures. Another text discussed in this summary focuses on the intersection of queer bibliography and feminist theory. It emphasizes the importance of including lived experiences and embodiment in bibliographic work, particularly through the creation of enumerative bibliographies of lesbian media by lesbian activists in the late twentieth century United States. The text also advocates for expanding the definition of bibliography to include diverse perspectives and marginalized voices. The author reflects on the role of biobibliography in preserving queer history in Latin America and shares their personal collection of books on queer personal writings. Overall, both texts stress the significance of recognizing and honoring the intersectionality of identities in bibliographic work. [Extracted from the article]

This article reads Hernan Diaz's Trust as a contemporary commentary on, and reimagining of, literature's entanglements with capitalism, liberalism, finance, and law. Beginning with an outline of the history of legal and corporate trusts and connecting that history to the rise of the modern novel, the article spotlights the complex role played by the notion of trust in Diaz's metafictional text. Trust tells the story of a Wall Street financier, his philanthropist wife, and the ghostwriter of his memoir through a four-part structure, moving from a realist novel called Bonds through two memoirs and ending with a diary titled Futures. This structure serves the aim, reaffirmed in Diaz's interviews, of teaching his novel's reader about the ideological implications of literary forms and about the kinds of power—financial and patriarchal—involved in turning reality into fiction. The article explores Trust 's revision of these forms and the ways in which its aesthetics forge an alignment among modernism, feminism, and financial expertise. Reflecting on the novel's metacommentary on its own values and operations, the article concludes by asking whether Trust 's liberal pedagogy offers a persuasive alternative to the narrative forms it sets out to critique. With its carefully wrought aesthetic architecture... Trust confidently insists on its own autonomy from complicity, reaffirming the liberal idea that art symbolizes, and exists in, a realm outside the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zahra Husayni's war memoir Da (2008) is widely recognized as one of the most successful productions of Hawzah-yi Hunari's Holy Defence oral history project. Focusing on this work and by using a combination of paratextual analysis and close reading, the present article explores the dynamics of meaning-making as a contested phenomenon within the propagandist messaging of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The analysis hinges on the fact that despite the official promotion of this memoir as a tribute to the mothers of martyrs of the Iran-Iraq War, the narratives of these mothers are surprisingly marginalized within the text. Approaching the Holy Defence discourse as a Lyotardian grand narrative, this article raises the question whether in light of this discrepancy, a counter-discursive reading of Da is possible. Exploring this question provides insight into the construction and propagation of meaning in the Holy Defence war memoirs industry in Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the experiences of Soviet mannequins in the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on the account of Valentina Chernova at the Leningrad Dom Modelei. Unlike contemporary fashion models, Soviet mannequins operated within a centralized and controlled system of fashion institutions. However, they still managed to cultivate their allure and project their images beyond their organizations. The article challenges stereotypes about fashion in the USSR and highlights the unique beauty, charisma, and creative input of Soviet mannequins. The research emphasizes the creativity and agency of mannequins and examines their labor through the lens of "glamour labor." The article aims to fill gaps in understanding Soviet models and challenges ideas of oppression and objectification commonly associated with the modeling profession and the Soviet era. [Extracted from the article]

This article provides a list of books and films that may have been overlooked by mainstream audiences. The books cover a range of topics, including the experiences of Kurds in Iran, the impact of illegal abortion, and the influence of asset manager speculators on society. The films include stories about hiding Jews during the Nazi occupation, the lives of workaday characters in Portland, and a young Jewish art student helping others escape Germany. These works offer diverse perspectives and shed light on important social issues. [Extracted from the article]

In the 1970s, the India Office Archive within the British Library began inviting the last generation of the Indian Civil Service and Indian Political Service to commit their experiences to written record. Running until the mid-1980s and eventually producing 135 manuscript memoirs, this archive offers a unique insight into the end of the British Empire, as seen a generation hence. This article argues that these memoirs, generated in a time of crisis and fracture within British national identity, are not only vital historical sources but are a significant body of creative work within the context of acute cultural production of narratives of Empire known as the 'Raj Revival'. Moreover, in their acknowledgement, inclusion and direct dialogue with colonial fictions from Kipling to Forster, as well as their own aesthetic form, these memoirs are part of the long tendency towards the blurring of the boundaries between fiction and life writing within the historical publishing cultures of British India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the prevailing belief that Indian print culture emerged in the nineteenth century by exploring the participation of Indians in print culture in the late eighteenth century. It reveals that Indians were actively involved in print culture as both readers and patrons, contributing to periodicals, reading newspapers, and handling official documents. Subscription publishing, a method that limited risk and raised funds in advance, gained popularity in India, with Indian names appearing on almost half of the extant lists of subscribers to books published in India during the eighteenth century. The article argues that this early Indian experience with print laid the foundation for its later proliferation, contradicting the notion that Indian print culture only emerged after the arrival of foreign institutions. [Extracted from the article]

Drawing upon the genre of the testimonio, this article bears witness to the historical evolution of the New York Puerto Rican community. It highlights the connections between my personal journey into graduate studies, where I discovered Andreu Iglesias' manuscript of Memorias de Bernardo Vega, and subsequently, the influence of Vega's testimony in my own research. An eyewitness to more than forty years of Puerto Rican life in the New York metropolis, the cigar maker arrived in New York in 1916, became an activist, and wrote a major source on a century of Puerto Rican life in New York. My initial encounter with Vega's unpublished manuscript was in 1975. The Spanish version, Memorias de Bernardo Vega, appeared in print in 1977, followed by the English translation, Memoirs of Bernardo Vega in 1984. Nonetheless, the recovery of Vega's original manuscript in 2011 raised issues about the author's original intent, voice, and genre. This generationally focused article explores the course of events leading to the publication of these key sources, and the possible effect the original manuscript might have on Vega's published work and on my monograph, From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds upon African American literary theorist Margo Perkins's conception of political autobiography from her award-winning book Autobiography as Activism: Three Black Women of the Sixties , and the work of critical prison studies scholars Angela Y. Davis and Dylan Rodríguez. It reads Susan Burton's 2017 narrative, Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women , as reflecting an untheorized subgenre of African American confinement literature: the post-Black Power neo-abolitionist memoir. In the memoir, Burton alludes to slavery and anti-slavery activism to contextualize historically the post-Black Power-era prison-industrial complex and galvanize opposition to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

German Blood, Slavic Soil: How Nazi Königsberg Became Soviet Kaliningrad by Nicole Eaton is a book that explores the transformation of the German city of Königsberg into Soviet Kaliningrad after World War II. The book examines the history of Königsberg, the rise of the Nazi party, the German occupation of Eastern Europe, and the experiences of the Red Army soldiers during the invasion of Germany. It also focuses on the treatment of the German population by the Soviet authorities, including high mortality rates, disease outbreaks, and food shortages. The book highlights the complexities of guilt and responsibility in the aftermath of violence. [Extracted from the article]

"Good Morning, Mr. Mandela: A Memoir" by Zelda La Grange is a well-reviewed biography that tells the story of La Grange's life while serving as the private secretary to Nelson Mandela, the renowned anti-apartheid leader and former president of South Africa. The memoir highlights the author's personal growth and Mandela's ability to inspire and transform those around him. La Grange reflects on her preconceived notions and the racial discrimination ingrained in South African culture, and how her interactions with Mandela challenged and changed her perspective. The book also explores Mandela's international travels and diplomatic initiatives. While the memoir has some shortcomings, it offers valuable insights into Mandela's life and the impact he had on those around him. [Extracted from the article]

Kristen Radtke's graphic memoir Imagine Wanting Only This (2017) visually chronicles the author's journeys through post-apocalyptic sites including abandoned cities, derelict landscapes, and architectural ruins in order to process the grief over the loss of her uncle and to confront her recurrent thoughts on mortality. Diagnosed with a fatal heart condition that catapults her into reflections on the transience of human existence, Radtke seeks answers by engaging in a series of dark tours to find physical manifestations of her inner turmoil amidst deserted cities and modern ruins. This essay examines how Radtke treads complex subjects of loss, angst, and death through nuanced visual storytelling while associating her vulnerable body with the dilapidated structures she explores. It further investigates how ruins as transitional spaces that simultaneously evoke recollections of a catastrophic past as well as the hope of human endurance offer avenues of self-reflection for the grieving protagonist, aiding her to successfully navigate her grief and overcome her anxieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview, Teresa Wong discusses her artistic practice and creative process with particular reference to her graphic narrative Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression. This interview aims to create a dialogue by exploring the facets of creation and consumption of Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression. She talks about the process of turning her life experience into a story, her choice of the medium, the art of visual storytelling, visual strategies employed, artistic influences, the magic of combining words and images, the significance of graphic works by women of colour and her ongoing projects among others. The interview is divided into three sections: in the first section, entitled Before the text: Genesis, the author responds to questions related to the author's artistic vision and the creation of Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression; in the second section entitled The text: form and theme, the author responds to questions pertaining to the formal aspects and themes of the graphic novel and in the concluding section of the interview titled After the text: reception and pedagogy the author responds to inquiries about the social and pedagogical impacts of her work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the sudden experience of an unfamiliar feeling due to the blurring of the boundaries between the private and the public space, resulting in what Bhabha calls 'unhomely.' It has been further argued that this sudden emergence of unfamiliar experiences acts as a traumatic event, represented through graphic narration in Malik Sajad's Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir. The sense of 'unhomeliness' caused due to various factors like constant surveillance is responsible for the traumatic feeling in Munnu. The paper also explores the idea of the panopticon, which engenders the blurring of the boundaries between the home and the world. The blurred boundaries make our private space strange and unfamiliar, which is supposed to be an intimate place without any invasion by the external world. Therefore, the present study explores the notion of 'unhomely' and the trauma caused by it, as represented in the graphic narration of the events through dreams and nightmares. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A. K. Summers' graphic memoir Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag (2014) visually enunciates the author's lived experience as a pregnant butch in a cis-normative culture. In this interview, Summers elaborates on her intention behind creating the memoir as bestowing visibility and intelligibility to the reproductive experiences of the LGBTQ+ community. The conversation also addresses the memoirist's insecurities and fears as a queer parent raising a child in a homophobic cultural setting, also pointing out how being a 'child's mother' accords cultural legitimacy to her non-normative queer family. Identifying comics as a potent medium to represent one's inner realities, Summers emphasises the wider scope of the visual-verbal canvass in representing lived and tabooed experiences unswervingly when compared to mere verbal expressions. Furthermore, the conversation highlights Summers' observations on the homophobic attitudes that mediate medical attitudes towards queer motherhood and the significance of queer autobiographical comics in destigmatizing the often complex and diverse LGBTQ+ experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Jungle Heart of the Khmer Rouge: The Memoirs of Phi Phuon, Pol Pot's Aide-de-Camp, and the Role of Ratanakiri and Its Tribal Minorities on the Cambodian Revolution" is a book that tells the story of Phi Phuon, a member of the Jarai upland ethnic minority who joined Cambodia's communist revolution in the 1960s and served as a bodyguard and aide to the Khmer Rouge leaders. The book also includes a contextual analysis by Henri Locard, which proposes that the highland minorities played a significant role in the creation of the Khmer Rouge regime. The book provides insights into the Khmer Rouge era and the highland cultures of Cambodia. However, readers should approach Phi Phuon's narrative with caution, as he was a willing participant in the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. Locard's revisionist history of the regime also has its limitations, as he has a compromised relationship with his subject and makes errors in his analysis. Overall, the book offers an interesting perspective on the Khmer Rouge, but readers should be aware of its complexities and limitations. [Extracted from the article]

Oil evokes a range of emotions, from the promise of prosperity to the reality of environmental degradation and corporate greed. A growing number of graphic narratives (such as Gasoline Dreams) are exploring the 'cruel optimism,' to use Lauren Berlant's term, of oil. Crude: A Memoir is one such graphic narrative that through the memories of Pablo Fajardo exposes the intricate networks of extraction, the paraphernalia of the corporation-state nexus, and the contradictions of petromodernity through the use of visual storytelling techniques such as point of view, focalisation, and colour palette. This graphic narrative solicits an empathetic response from its readers by revealing the ethical and affective aspects of this environmental disaster. Drawing insights from energy humanities and comics studies, this article, through the close reading of Crude: A Memoir, investigates the toxicities of oil-modernity, the role of state infrastructure, and the global matrixes of power. Put together, Crude performs a kind of grassroot justice in that the memoir names the abusers who seem to be immune to justice, shows the plight of the Indigenous 'collateral damage' and the environmental degradation that result when legal protections are not afforded to those most vulnerable (including human, plant, animal, water, and mineral entities). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early Soviet society featured clear nutrition guidelines and a robust plan for streamlined logistics in food processing, distribution, and consumption, all of which was aimed at building a stronger state through a virtuous transformation of calories into labor power. Such rhetoric appeared even in children's illustrated books, such as Vladimir Maiakovskii and Nikolai Kupreianov's Story of Petia, Fat Boy, and of Sima, Who is Skinny (1926). This paper shows how in the 1920s authors such as Viktor Shklovskii and Iurii Olesha turned that rhetoric on its head and pushed back against the early Soviet obsession with planning and mastering nature and the human body by employing metaphors of food, digestion, and agriculture. In Shklovskii's memoirs A Sentimental Journey (1923) and Knight's Move (1923) and Olesha's novel Envy (1927), the October Revolution itself emerges as a metabolic process on a vast scale: prerevolutionary aesthetic threads, motifs, and concepts are broken down and processed, reassembled, and repurposed into a seemingly new society and worldview, in which the individual original components are still recognizable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical examination of Beryl Markham's 1942 West with die Night has tended to dismiss her aeronautical memoir as reifying a conservative outlook in its masculine and imperial positionings. Scholarly work on Markham's text, however, has not fully examined the ways in which her writing contains transgressive depictions of flight that resist binary categorization: flying is neither wholly natural nor man-made, both ancient and of the future, both masculine and feminine. This resistance to clear taxonomies is mirrored in her depiction of a narrative "I" that counters unified determination. She creates an autobiographical subjectivity that is porous, fluid, and shifting with her use of a second person "you." Engaging with theories of women's autobiography reveals how Markham challenges the unity of what has functioned as the masculine "I" at the center of men's autobiography, and complicates the "aeronautical 'we'", or the "flying pronoun" that permeates Lindbergh's writing. Revisiting West with the Night with attention given to Markham's subversion of oppositions and contesting of the traditional autobiographical subject makes visible the role new technologies can play in the strategies women's memoirs engage to negotiate representations of selfhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simone de Beauvoir's influence, particularly through her Second Sex and Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, has been personally and intellectually decisive for Annie Ernaux who just like Beauvoir turned from a both dutiful and disturbed girl into a disturbing author as evidenced by her narrative A Girl's Story. This article precisely aims at studying how the 'disturbed' and 'disturbing' paradigms open the way to a reassessment of A Girl's Story in light of Beauvoir's Second Sex and Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, and bring so to the fore the organic bond connecting Ernaux to Beauvoir. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I will draw on two twentieth-century French writers and extract from their works their ideas about memory and memoir writing. The first, the poet and philosopher Charles Péguy wrote a great deal about memory, bringing the philosophy of Henri Bergson into realms of daily life that the philosopher himself did not. Not all of Péguy's meditations on memory are related to memoir writings, and yet they provide a possible frame for anyone who would want to engage in such a task. I will focus on some of his points about time and aging, give some examples from his projected confessions, and relate them to the writing of memoirs as he saw it. The second author, Romain Gary was a prolific novelist, whose works were among the greatest best sellers in post-War France. I will focus on his literary memoir, Promise at Dawn. Gary does not write directly about memoir writing. His ideas on it are embedded in his autobiographical narration, however, and it is these ideas that I shall extract and illustrate. Much separates these two authors' views on memory and memoirs. Despite their differences, I would like to argue that both authors focus on the ethics of memory and memory writing. That ethics revolves not so much on telling the literal truth, the getting this or that detail correctly, but in capturing and conveying the commitments that have marked one's life, and capturing them in such a way that they do not coincide with the current pieties about the past. Memoir writing for both authors is a way of responding to the times, a kind of critique of contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this personal memoir of my lifelong collaborator and friend, Herb Gintis, I reflect on his "A Radical Analysis of Welfare Economics and Individual Development." Published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1972, the article advances a novel Marx-inspired interpretation of the societal origins of preferences, one that profoundly influenced the ideas of a group of like-minded young economists at Harvard at the time, economics more broadly, and Herb and my subsequent joint work. JEL Classification: B14, B21, D01 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 'Skip the Corsets' I ask how female former operatives writing about their work at CIA have responded to the post-9/11 era in both memoirs and fiction. I analyse texts that offer a vision of the post-9/11 world order as one in which the qualities of a good intelligence specialist may include empathy and maternal instinct. As the Agency has come under criticism for torture, illegal extraditions, and drone attacks, I look at how depictions of women intelligence specialists created by women writers have negotiated with that criticism, and also suggested other ways of envisioning the role of American intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) suffered a shocking setback when the head of its deep cover (illegal) agent networks in the United States Rudolf Abel, whose real name was William (Willy) Fisher, was arrested in Brooklyn in 1957. After Fisher was swapped for the downed CIA U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers and an American PhD student Frederic Pryor in 1962, the KGB attempted to turn the setback into a public relations victory by constructing the myth of an ideal Soviet intelligence officer. However, the myth required that Fisher continue his public life under the assumed identity of Rudolf Abel until his death and beyond. Drawing on KGB archival documents, memoirs of former KGB officers, Fisher's published personal letters, and Russian language journalistic accounts, this article chronicles and analyses both the KGB activities to make Fisher into the mythic Abel and the former officer's seemingly hopeless but remarkably persistent struggle to preserve his personal identity and integrity. A struggle that culminated in a little-known spy fiction novella which, using allusions and metaphors, articulated his critique of the KGB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the inter-war period, there appeared numerous spy memoirs, offering surprising insights into the recently fought secret war. These had a noticeable impact on the writing of spy stories, which under the influence of new detail and knowledge tended to become more realistic. The following article examines the influence of spy memoirs on spy fiction in the period, revealing that both critics and the reading public were now forced to disentangle fact from fakery and trying to pinpoint where truth bled into fiction. Attention is given to the three 'spy memoirs' of Bernard Newman, Spy (1935), Secret Servant (1935) and German Spy (1936). These unjustly forgotten works of fiction disguised as fact generated some confusion and debate at the time and served to draw attention to issues of authenticity when treating 'writers in intelligence'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the death of Suphi Kaner by suicide in 1963, an incident that overlaps with the rapid growth of the domestic film industry in Turkey. Kaner's tragic death is discussed in popular literature solely in relation to his alcohol addiction, his possible depression, and his inability to cope with sudden stardom, leaving almost unmentioned the key role of the boycott call of the Producers Association against him. In 1963, the power struggle between the producers and the star actors was very visible. Within the framework of this power struggle, producers made a boycott statement about Kaner, for allegedly interrupting the shooting of a film. I approach the chain of events that concluded with Kaner's suicide as an early example of labour disputes in Turkish cinema. This case demonstrates that the scope of labour disputes in film industries encompasses even star actors who are often considered as a privileged class. I argue that Kaner's suicide could have been avoided by fairer employment conditions, and if the Producers Association had not called for the boycott. To examine the case, I make use of a variety of historical texts including memoirs, auto-biographies, news pieces, interviews, and commentaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Asylum: A Memoir & Manifesto" by E. Okporo is a powerful memoir that explores the author's experiences as a gay Nigerian refugee seeking asylum in the US. The memoir sheds light on the challenges faced by LGBTQ+ individuals in countries where homosexuality is criminalized and the dangers they encounter even after seeking refuge. It also delves into the difficulties of the asylum process, racial trauma, and the impact of family separation. The book calls for a more humane and sensitive approach to asylum procedures and emphasizes the importance of research and advocacy in supporting refugees. [Extracted from the article]

"Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew" by Avi Shlaim is a hybrid genre book that combines political-social history, family history, and personal memoir. Shlaim, an Arab-Jew, explores the experiences of his family and other Arab-Jews who were uprooted from their homes in the Arab world due to rising violence and anti-Semitism after the establishment of Israel in 1948. He argues that Zionism, while seeking to establish a Jewish majority in Palestine, also displaced long-standing Jewish communities across the Arab world, making them second-class citizens in Israel. The book also delves into the relationship between refugees and the state, particularly in the case of Israel, and raises questions about the blurred line between migrants and refugees. Shlaim's research also uncovers evidence of Israeli-Zionist involvement in bomb attacks on Baghdad's Jewish community, adding a dark twist to the narrative of Israel as a savior of Middle Eastern Jews. Overall, "Three Worlds" provides valuable insights into the history of Arab-Jews and the complexities of displacement and identity politics in the Middle East. [Extracted from the article]

Working from the memoir literature of Soviet Gulag survivors, the article explores the curious practice of tukhta as contrived by the toiling zeks of the archipelago. In a labour regime tasked with accumulating surplus, destroying political dissent, and transforming the subjectivity of the imprisoned, tukhta proved to be a tactical means for resisting the logic of Gulag as an audit regime. The subtle labour control of numbers effected by Gulag demanded equally sophisticated practices of resistance on the part of the zeks subjected to its technique, and tukhta was one of those practices. When treated as a kind of phronesis, the informal and ethical quality to the practice of tukhta can be appreciated in a way that more formal social scientific epistemology and historical method would miss. Perhaps the most salient counter-conduct to be found in the experiences of Gulag's orchestration of labour control, tukhta has the potential to reveal a great deal about audit regimes generically beyond the historical bounds of Soviet Russia. Historical inspiration for engaging audit regimes can therefore be derived from the ethico-political practice of tukhta, where otherwise there might just be pessimism, demoralization, and resigned acceptance to the awesome power of those regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of Wilhelm II's well-known predilection for military uniforms and displays, many of his contemporaries regarded him as a real-life version of the titular figure in Hans Christian Andersen's fable "The Emperor's New Clothes." This essay uses Žižek's concept of fantasy to complicate that perception and articulate the deeper relevance of Andersen's tale. Even as the second volume of Wilhelm's memoirs reveals the extent to which the kaiser's sense of self was constitutively enmeshed in fantasies about the meaning of uniforms, this study indicates that Wilhelm's many critics were also guided by their own fantasies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were experienced by the ears as much as the eyes, yet the auditory dimensions of these conflicts have received limited attention from historians. This article interrogates the reach and reception of military music in wartime Britain and Ireland by drawing on a wealth of evidence from memoirs, diaries, press reports and regimental archives. It demonstrates that military bands provided sought-after entertainment at myriad public events and staged open-air concerts for socially diverse audiences. The article interprets martial music-making as an important civil-military interface and a potent form of cultural propaganda: a means of inculcating patriotism and asserting the sonic supremacy of the established order in a revolutionary age. But it also reveals that military music provoked irritation, controversy and distress, not least by generating noise complaints and exacerbating sectarianism in Ireland. The article concludes by considering the role of British regimental music-making in overseas colonies and foreign theatres of operations, arguing that it functioned as a form of soft power that underpinned imperial authority, aided diplomacy and eased relations with local inhabitants. An intrusive symptom of large-scale military mobilization, martial music shaped civilian attitudes and soundscapes while profoundly influencing broader musical culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an in-depth reading of Flora Veit-Wild's They Called You Dambudzo: A Memoir (2020) and its contentious racial politics of representation. Through the memoir, which I contend is an apologia pro vita sua , a justification for the author's own life and work, Veit-Wild seeks to dispel long-standing accusations that she has benefitted from Dambudzo Marechera and his legacy. As she depicts herself as a magnanimous activist and scholar, Veit-Wild reverses the script by portraying Marechera as a "galling scoundrel" who "depended on others to sustain him." In the process, far from offering an authoritative portrait of Marechera that we can trust, the memoir dehumanises the writer. Suggesting that Veit-Wild's relationship with Marechera was motivated more by racialised objectification than love and respect, the text reproduces a white saviour narrative that reinscribes racist tropes of representation. While it also engages other works by Veit-Wild, this article delves into They Called You Dambudzo 's (un)critical reception, its unsettling portrayal of Marechera as a spoilt, ungrateful, and mentally ill writer who "had a way of taking for granted whatever was done for him," Veit-Wild's self-representation as both Marechera's victim and saviour, her misappropriation of Marechera's thought to enforce colourblindness, and the vexed colonial politics of speaking for others that the memoir lays bare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]