In this article I make a case for an analytic of atmospheres as a way to understand the seemingly ineffable yet powerful effects of vocal sound on listeners in an Islamic setting. Focusing on the recitation of devotional poetry in honor of the Prophet Muhammad among Mauritian Muslims, I seek to bring together neo-phenomenological approaches to…[Read more]

Profiling the Samuel Becket collection at the University of Reading

A review of the 2017 retrospective of painter Mernet Larsen at the Tampa Museum of Art.

Bibliography of scholarly works on Haitian (diasporic) dance and movement.

Her Father’s Name (1876) is one of Marryat’s most radical and intriguing novels, featuring Leona Lacoste, a cross-dressing heroine, and Lucilla Evans, a textbook hysteric who falls in love with her. For centuries, the diagnosis of ‘hysteria’ was conveniently applied to any woman who exhibited transgressive behaviour, whether it be through sexual…[Read more]

Whereas many women writers were reticent on the issue of property, or vehemently opposed to improving the position of wives, Florence Marryat used her public platform to campaign for change. As such, her work forms an important contribution to our understanding of women and property in the nineteenth century. In this paper I discuss the ways in…[Read more]

Florence Marryat (1833-99) was a novelist, editor, playwright, spiritualist, singer and actress. She wrote nearly seventy novels during her varied career, most of which were dismissed by critics but loved by her reading public. Much of the opprobrium aimed at her originated from fellow women authors such as Eliza Lynn Linton and Marie Corelli, but…[Read more]

הדרת נשים מהמרחב הציבורי הדתי היא תופעה נרחבת ומוכרת. מתחילת שנות האלפיים אלפי נשים יהודיות, חילוניות, מסורתיות, דתיות וחרדיות, מרקעים סוציו־אקונומיים מגוונים, מתמודדות עם הדרה זו. הן יוצרות ומחדשות ריטואלים דתיים, וכך מפלסות מקום במרחב שהיה סגור בפניהן. השאלה הניצבת בבסיסו של מאמר זה היא מה הן האסטרטגיות שנשים משתמשות בהן כדי ליצור לעצמן ולחדש…[Read more]

מחקר זה מבקש לתאר ריטואלים הקשורים לאוכל שנשים יוצרות ומחדשות לעצמן. שאלת המחקר היא כיצד ומדוע נשים יוצרות ומחדשות ריטואלים. התשובה מבוססת על ניתוח דוגמאות של טקסים הקשורים באוכל שהתפתחו בישראל והתפשטו בקרב נשים יהודיות ברחבי אירופה וארה”ב מאז שנת 2000: “סעודות א ֵמנים” וטקסי הפרשת חלה ציבוריים. המתודולוגיה שננקטה היא איכותנית אתנוגרפית, ומבוס…[Read more]

New ritual practices performed by Jewish women can serve as test cases for an examination of the phenomenon of the creation of religious rituals by women. These food-related rituals, which have been termed ‘‘amen meals’’ were developed in Israel beginning in the year 2000 and subsequently spread to Jewish women in Europe and the United States.…[Read more]

This study shows how Old Order Amish and ultra-Orthodox women’s discourse about television can help develop a better understanding of the creation, construction, and strengthening of limits and boundaries separating enclave cultures from the world. Based on questionnaires containing both closed- and open-ended questions completed by 82 p…[Read more]

This study explores how women in two devout religious communities cope with the Internet and its apparent incompatibility with their communities’ values and practices. Questionnaires containing both closed and open-ended questions were completed by 82 participants, approximately half from each community. While their discourses included similar f…[Read more]

Reproductive justice and gestational surrogacy are often implicitly treated as antonyms. Yet the former represents a theoretic approach that enables the long and racialised history of surrogacy (far from a new or ‘exceptional’ practice) to be appreciated as part of a struggle for ‘radical kinship’ and gender-inclusive polymaternalism. Recasti…[Read more]

As surrogacy services expand globally, more and more nations are moving to ban the practice. Calls for its abolition couched in feminist terms returned to prominence in international public life in 2012. The resurgence follows a lapse since the heyday of the Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering…[Read more]

In cultural studies today, there is emerging an interpretive revolution “from below” – that is, a radical reassessment of the politics of cultural forms, based on a recovery of the embodied and affective subject as the center of meaning-making. Making sense of dance performances is therefore methodologically important because of their parti…[Read more]

During the rise of Italian immigration to the United States between 1870 and 1930, the sceneggiata, a musical theater genre popular in Naples, began its tenure in the theaters located within predominantly Italian neighborhoods of the United States. The sceneggiata revolved around specific Neapolitan songs and was one of the few types of…[Read more]

Este artículo acusa que historiadores y críticos de las dramaturgias chilenas del S. XX padecen de agorafobia: pavor súbito a los espacios ajenos. Esto porque, en sus trabajos, desatienden espacios de producción teatral situados en los extramuros de los campus universitarios. De acuerdo con este diagnóstico, se proponen claves para una agenda de i…[Read more]

Henry V has one of the most divisive critical histories in the Shakespeare canon. For the first two hundred years after being published, it was seen as a patriotic celebration of the heroic warrior King Henry V and his victory at Agincourt. But in 1817 William Hazlitt made remarks critical of the King and several subsequent commentators interested…[Read more]

This review-essay discusses George Brant’s play Grounded (2013) in the context of its production at the Gate Theatre (London). It begins with a critical examination of my own “mis-seeing” of the play’s protagonist as a version of the tragic Heracles. The analysis which follows compares key aspects of The Pilot’s narrative with Euripides’ Heracles…[Read more]