Making-Over Northern Ireland by Changing Facades & Perceptions

Through art, architecture, and “symbolic landscapes,” post-conflict Northern Ireland is changing the “face” it shows the world. Bree T. Hocking explores this new identity in The Great Reimagining: Public Art, Urban Space, and the Symbolic Landscapes of a ‘New’ Northern Ireland. In the following short essay, the author explains some of actual and perceived changes, by way of the words exchanged with a young Protestant man.

 

 

On a recent visit to Northern Ireland, I met a young Protestant man from the Shankill Road heading home after dropping off his daughter at a nearby crèche. It was hardly an extraordinary encounter—save for the fact that the man had just left his toddler at a nursery on the Catholic side of one of Belfast’s largest and oldest peace walls. (These walls, sometimes up to eight metres tall, separate many working-class neighborhoods across the city along ethno-national lines.)

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#MuseumWeek 2015

Museum Week is international: more than 800 museums, galleries and cultural institutions from across the UK, Europe, the Americas, Asia and Oceania — 29 countries in total — are officially participating in this, the first ever international Museum Week on twitter, March 23-29. ‪#‎MuseumWeek‬ 2015!

Happy Museum Week from Berghahn! Read a FREE virtual issue on Museums from Berghahn Journals: http://bit.ly/P0ugcB  

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Berghahn is delighted to present some of the latest Museum Studies titles:

 

Museums and Collections Series: This series explores the potential of museum collections to transform our knowledge of the world, and for exhibitions to influence the way in which we view and inhabit that world. It offers essential reading for those involved in all aspects of the museum sphere: curators, researchers, collectors, students and the visiting public.

 

Forthcoming! Volume 8

MUSEUM WEBSITES AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Issues of Participation, Sustainability, Trust and Diversity
Ana Luisa Sánchez Laws

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Landscape as Literary Criticism in Jane Austen’s Fiction

The following is the third in a series of posts on Jane Austen. This is a guest post written by Anne Toner, contributor to a special issue of Critical Survey which is devoted to the subject of Jane Austen. Anne Toner is the author of the article titled “Landscape as Literary Criticism: Jane Austen, Anna Barbauld and the Narratological Application of the Picturesque.” 

 

We are in the midst of Jane Austen bicentenary celebrations. Formidably, in the six years preceding her death in 1817, when she was only 41, Austen saw four novels published, as well as writing another complete novel (Persuasion) and revising one more (Northanger Abbey), both to be published posthumously.

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Visions of The Other: Swiss & Malagasy See, But Do They Understand?

Where do Switzerland and Madagascar meet, and what do the people of each place think of those in the other? Eva Keller, in her recently published Beyond the Lens of Conservation: Malagasy and Swiss Imaginations of One Another, in seeking to connect these two places winds up highlighting the disconnect between them. Following, the author offers a brief glimpse into the volume from two directions: from a Swiss classroom looking at Madagascar and from a Malagasy man looking at a national park.

 

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Read the following extract of a conversation which took place in a Swiss classroom with pupils aged between 11 and 12. My questions are in italics.

 

 

What do you know about Madagascar?

 

Takschan: I think there are cannibals there, I think, the people, like they eat the flesh.

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Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality

Today (March 18th) is Goddess of Fertility Day, a time when Aphrodite and other gods and goddesses of fertility are honored by pagans throughout the world in celebration of life and fertility.

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Understanding the complex and multifaceted issue of human reproduction has been, and remains, of great interest both to academics and practitioners. Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality series includes studies by specialists in the field of social, cultural, medical, and biological anthropology, medical demography, psychology, and development studies. Current debates and issues of global relevance on the changing dynamics of fertility, human reproduction and sexuality are addressed. Below is a selection of forthcoming & newly published titles within the series:

 

Volume 30 Forthcoming!

THAI IN VITRO
Gender, Culture and Assisted Reproduction
Andrea Whittaker

 

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Roots and Recovery: Anthropologists Study Anorexia from all Angles

How do sufferers of anorexia recover? Richard A. O’Connor and Penny Van Esterik seek answers to this question, first by identifying root causes of the disease and then by sharing the stories of those who have made a full recovery.  From Virtue to Vice: Negotiating Anorexia, the book that resulted from their research, does not look at the affliction of anorexia from behind a glass, in fact, O’Connor’s connection to the work is deeply personal. He explains in his own words below.

 

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Every book has a back story. Mine is no big secret. When my daughter Amorn became anorexic it turned our family upside down. Carolyn [my wife] and I desperately wanted answers. We got a great counselor but nothing worked. The explanations we got made no sense. That wasn’t our daughter. Of course we worried we were in denial—that we just didn’t want to face the truth—and that silenced me at the time. I understood clinicians have to put people in categories and few fit perfectly. So I settled into accepting my daughter was an exception, an outlier. What mattered most was working with her caregivers for recovery.

 

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National Women’s History Month

Women’s History Month is an annual declared month that highlights the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society. It is celebrated during March in the United States, and across Europe, corresponding with International Women’s Day on March 8. All around the world, National Women’s History Month & International Women’s day present an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of women while calling for greater equality!

 

Berghahn invites you to explore a special issue of Aspasia devoted to International Women’s Day. The year 2010 marked the centennial of International Women’s Day, and the year 2011 marked the centennial of its first celebrations. Inspired by these events, this issue deals with “A Hundred Years of International Women’s Day in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe.” Read more.

 

Berghahn is also pleased to offer a 25% discount on any of our Gender Studies books on orders placed within the next 30 days. At checkout, simply enter the code IWD15.

 

GENDER HISTORY IN A TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Networks, Biographies, Gender Orders
Edited by Oliver Janz and Daniel Schönpflug

 

 

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Supercinematic Projection: Author Looks toward Future of Film Studies

Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age, originally published in May 2013, is now available in paperback. Following, author William Brown reflects on the book as a launching pad for his own studies and what he perceives as the forward trajectory of film studies. This post pairs with his reflection on the book’s initial release, which can be read here.

 

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The argument in Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age is about the depiction and possible meanings of the continuous times and spaces that contemporary mainstream cinema often seems to depict thanks to the aesthetic possibilities opened up to, or at the very least made more easily achievable by, cinema as a result of digital technology.

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Celebrate International Women’s Day with a Special Issue!

AspasiaInternational Women’s Day is annually held on March 8 to celebrate women’s achievements. It is also known as the United Nations Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace.

 

In recognition of this day, Berghahn is pleased to offer a 25% discount on any of our Gender Studies books on orders placed within the next 30 days. At checkout, simply enter the code IWD15.

We would also like to invite you to explore a special issue of Aspasia devoted to International Women’s Day. The year 2010 marked the centennial of International Women’s Day, and the year 2011 marked the centennial of its first celebrations. Inspired by these events, this issue deals with “A Hundred Years of International Women’s Day in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe.”

 

 

VOLUME 6: Celebrating 100 Years of International Women’s Day

 

THEME SECTION: A Hundred Years of International Women’s Day in CESEE

From West to East: International Women’s Day, the First Decade
Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild

 

Together and Apart: Polish Women’s Rights Activists and the Beginnings of International Women’s Day Around 1911
Iwona Dadej and Angelique Leszczawski-Schwerk

 

The Different Faces of a Celebration: The Greek Course of International Women’s Day, 1924-2010
Angelika Psarra

 

THE SOURCE
Kak v revoliutsionnoe vremia Vserossiiskaia Liga Ravnopraviia Zhenshchin dobilas’ izbiratel’nykh prav dlia russkikh zhenshchin (How in the revolutionary time the All-Russian League for Women’s Equal Rights won suffrage for Russian women)
Olga Zakuta

 

FORUM
Clio on the Margins: Women’s and Gender History in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (Part One)
Edited by Krassimira Daskalova

 

NEWS AND MISCELLANEA
Ukrainian Women Reclaiming the Feminist Meaning of International Women’s Day: A Report about Recent Feminist Activism
Oksana Kis