Browsing by Type "Review"

The 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party - an event that happens only every five years - begins on 18 October. China's leadership will be selected at the five-day event, which will be attended by 2287 delegates from around China. The Asia Media Centre spoke to Xiang Gao (Lecturer at Eastern Institute of Technology, Auckland) about the biggest issues.

As Christian conquerors from the north of the Iberian Peninsula gradually gained possession of Islamic Spain during the medieval reconquista (largely between 1085 and 1492), they not only took control of lands, cities and peoples but also came into contact with a very different architectural style. The result was a fascinating coexistence of cultural hybridity and anti-Islamic prejudice. While some Islamic buildings were torn down and replaced with new Christian edifices (such as the Great Mosque of Toledo), others were preserved or adapted (mostly notably the Mosque/Cathedral of Cordoba, the Mosque/Cathedral of Seville and the Alhambra palace in Granada, which all survive today and are major tourist attractions). Elements of Islamic art and architecture were incorporated into buildings built after the conquest in what has, since the nineteenth century, commonly been called the 'Mudejar style'.

The great pandemic that swept across Europe in the fourteenth century and killed millions, earning itself the grim name of ‘the Black Death’, has been the object of many studies in recent decades. Those historians who have examined the effects of the plague on the Jewish communities scattered across Western Europe have tended to focus on the antisemitic accusation that Jews caused the plague by poisoning wells, and the massacres and trials that it provoked. The actual impact of the epidemic on Jewish communities has been neglected, and it is this significant oversight that Susan Einbinder endeavours to address in this book by using a variety of sources of information: documentary, literary, medical, and archaeological.

This is a long overdue review of an outstanding book, which richly deserved the 2022 NSW Premier's History Award for Australian History. On that occasion, the judges rightly suggested that one of this book's major strengths lay in providing a novel and an unexpected understanding of Australianness. It does so by shedding light on how, since its conception, colonial Australia was much more cosmopolitan—and much less British—than we may have previously thought. I have had the pleasure of reading Bergantz's book more than once in recent years and I have watched it receive glowing reviews. These include Jim Davidson's article in the Australian Book Review in which he heralds it as "an exemplary piece of cultural history",¹ and Gemma King's review in The French Australian Review in which she commended the subtle manner in which French Connection has been able to capture "the ways in which Frenchness was interpreted, used and reimagined in the service of defining an Australian identity".² While much has already been written on this book, then, and by colleagues so well placed to assess it, this temporal décalage has allowed me the rare privilege of prolonged reflection on Bergantz's arguments, which have provided food for thought not only for ongoing academic projects, but also in my own journey of self-discovery as a relatively recent Italian migrant and new Australian citizen.

Both the title and the author—writer of the famous and influential book From Memory to the Written Record—excite the would-be reader. But there is a warning in the subtitle Mothers and the Teaching of Reading in the Middle Ages. How are the title and subtitle related? The book consists of seven chapters, comprising an introduction followed by six reprints of articles published between 1983 and 2011. The title of the book in fact turns out to be the title of Chapter 2. We are not told whether the articles have been revised, but it appears not and that only the number of illustrations has been augmented (and presumably rephotographed; all forty-nine are in colour and of excellent quality). In their subject matter the former articles are closely interrelated, and this leads to considerable repetition of references to the same pieces of evidence, mainly books and pictures, which some readers may find disconcerting.

Visitors to the northern Italian city of Padua often marvel at the city's medieval pictorial artworks which adorn the interiors of its ancient buildings. Most queue to be admitted into the environmentally regulated Scrovegni Chapel to view Giotto's stupendous works completed at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Those who venture further into Padua's historic center will never forget the experience of stepping into the city's baptistery. Admitted through a small wooden door nonchalantly by a proud but often helpful Paduan, the viewer - as soon as his/her eyes adjust to the soft light - is embraced by the splendor of the baptistery's ceilings and walls. Although the city's adjoining cathedral was gradually transformed from its late medieval form during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, the baptistery has retained both its facade and interior frozen in the late fourteenth century. Perhaps the only significant change occurred early in the fifteenth century when the sarcophagi of the city's penultimate lord Francesco Il Vecchio da Carrara (1325-1393) and his consort Fina Buzzacarini (1328-1378) were removed.

In December 2018, I participated in a panel about Pitcairn Island history titled '"Strangers": Placing Insiders, Outsiders and the Microcosmic in Pacific Language and History' at the Pacific History Association (PHA) conference in Cambridge, England. Apart from a single conference in 2012 at Angwin College, California, it is likely that this was one of few occasions in which three academics who have been to Pitcairn Island had ever assembled a conference panel. We were gathered to present at the intersection of a breadth of topics ranging from empirical history, history of science, linguistics, film, and inter-island relations with Mangareva, all with Pitcairn Island as fulcrum-subject. Aside from myself, the other panellists were Alexander Mawyer, Tillman Nechtman and Adrian Young. We drew a decent crowd and it was enlivening to realize that Pitcairn Island history is a ripe topic within broader trends in Pacific history.

This groundbreaking study will attract those interested in the history, material culture, religion and archaeology of the Czech lands. The book avoids technical discourse with a specialist audience. For example, the author does not describe archaeological method. Instead, Klápště seeks to introduce the subject to a broad audience, and it should be noted that a synoptic survey does not exist for the subject or the period even in Czech. This makes this study particularly valuable. For the neophyte, the book defines the historic Czech lands as Bohemia, Moravia, and the southern part of historical Silesia. Today this is mainly in the Czech Republic.

The Archaeology of The rich premise of this book is that archaeological art—including cave art of Ice Age Europe—can be compared with art in the recent past, and that it is possible to use ideas from contemporary art criticism when analyzing prehistoric visual art and communication. By "prehistoric," Liliana Janik means art predating written accounts communicated about the art itself, although she does not acknowledge the slight that some Indigenous people feel as a result of that word.

Near the end of Ian Hoskins excellent history of Australia and the Pacific he notes that Australia can be seen as the 'prodigal son' of the Pacific, having charted a path that has separated itself from the peoples and concerns of its oceanic neighbours. From one perspective, this can be called Australian 'exceptionalism' or 'mateship', and is reflected in the enormous wealth and technological prowess that has paved the way for Australian dominance of southwestern Pacific. From another perspective this aloofness has been exhibited by mistreatment of non-European peoples, visions of an imperial Australia in the Pacific and a collective amnesia that Australia is a Pacific state. This history is exemplified by the mistreatment of Aboriginal Australians, the indentured labour from the Pacific Islands that underpinned the Australian sugar industry in the 19th century (Blackbirds), the White Australia policy, colonial administration in Papua New Guinea, and the present-day lack of concern about Australia's enormous greenhouse gas contributions that pose an existential threat to its Pacific Island neighbours.

In Widow Inheritance and Contested Citizenship in Kenya, Awino Okech examines the practice among Luo communities in Kenya, focusing on its reception among widows and the wider Luo community. Okech argues that widow inheritance, like so many cultural rites that focus on women’s bodies and sexuality, is understood and mobilized in the face of repeated experiences of structural and physical political violence, and other threats to Luo cultural integrity.

The book presents five succinct chapters with an introduction and conclusion, and is based on a case study of a specific set of villages just outside Kisumu city in 2008–09. Okech conducted interviews and focus groups with women who had experienced widow inheritance, as well as men who held roles within the rite, and cultural leaders. The roles of women and the centrality of their bodies in preserving Luo cultural practice and identity in the face of the postcolonial Kenyan national project are explored through an examination and assessment of their performances of culturally appropriate femininity—gendered performances that have the capacity to reinforce and reconstitute Luo identity.

Strom and Martin engage with the non-linear philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (Citation1987) to trouble linear thinking about classroom practices, teachers' work, and subjectivities. The authors, with their background in K-12 classroom teaching, and in particular working with students of color and English learners in high-poverty neighborhoods in the USA, speak back to neoliberal conceptions of effective first year pedagogy. They highlight how classroom dynamics, when theorised using a monist ontology, are fluid, multiplistic, and dynamic – in constant change and flux.

Since William Labov established quantitative sociolinguistics as a field of study in its own right, research into the nature and scope of linguistic variation has continued to expand its frontiers. Variation has been examined in the context of second language acquisition (Adamson 2009), substrate influence on creole languages (Meyerhoff 2009), historical relatedness of creole varieties (Poplack & Tagliamonte 2001) and bi-varietal language use (Dixon 2017), to name but a few. While each of these applications is motivated by distinct theoretical concerns, they are united by a shared understanding: that language change is predicated on instability in the linguistic system, and that this instability comes in the form of intra-speaker variation. For change to happen, individual speakers have to stop doing one thing and instead do another. Rarely does this involve a singular leap from 'doer-of-one-thing' to 'doer-of-the-other'. Rather, there is a process of acclimation, during which speakers maintain a foot in both camps. In short, you can't have change without variation (Weinreich et al. 1968: 188). The close examination of intra-speaker variation, therefore, is the study of potential or nascent language change.

Many global climate change mitigation pathways presented in IPCC assessment reports rely heavily on the deployment of bioenergy, often used in conjunction with carbon capture and storage. We review the literature on bioenergy use for climate change mitigation, including studies that use top-down integrated assessment models or bottom-up modelling, and studies that do not rely on modelling. We summarize the state of knowledge concerning potential co-benefits and adverse side effects of bioenergy systems and discuss limitations of modelling studies used to analyse consequences of bioenergy expansion. The implications of bioenergy supply on mitigation and other sustainability criteria are context dependent and influenced by feedstock, management regime, climatic region, scale of deployment and how bioenergy alters energy systems and land use. Depending on previous land use, widespread deployment of monoculture plantations may contribute to mitigation but can cause negative impacts across a range of other sustainability criteria. Strategic integration of new biomass supply systems into existing agriculture and forest landscapes may result in less mitigation but can contribute positively to other sustainability objectives. There is considerable variation in evaluations of how sustainability challenges evolve as the scale of bioenergy deployment increases, due to limitations of existing models, and uncertainty over the future context with respect to the many variables that influence alternative uses of biomass and land. Integrative policies, coordinated institutions and improved governance mechanisms to enhance co-benefits and minimize adverse side effects can reduce the risks of large-scale deployment of bioenergy. Further, conservation and efficiency measures for energy, land and biomass can support greater flexibility in achieving climate change mitigation and adaptation.