Published in Sächsische Leute und Länder Benennung und Lokalisierung von Gruppenidentitäten im ersten Jahrtausend, and a considerably expanded version of a paper delivered at the Internationales Sachsensymposion in Leipzig, 2015.

The article considers the literary representation of Saxons in the works of the late antique authors Sidonius Ap…[Read more]

You are cordially invited to a special event to celebrate ten years of the Open Graves, Open Minds project and to launch our new book In the Company of Wolves: Werewolves, Wolves and Wild Children.
In the Company of Wolves presents further research from the Open Graves, Open Minds Project. It connects together innovative research from a variety…[Read more]

Many of the feminist readings of the Dinah story in Genesis 34 in recent years have focused on the question of whether Dinah is raped. The interpretations that perhaps Dinah was not “raped” span the spectrum from a teenage love affair between Dinah and Shechem, to a case of statutory rape, to a marriage by abduction. Guilty of exploring this que…[Read more]

Extending Audre Lorde’s intuition around the polysemy of the term recreation, I put forward this concept as an organizational principle. Via the framework of recreation, I want to think about some of the main political stakes of the forms used by collectivities able to act politically in the present. I transpose the double binding that Lorde a…[Read more]

People’s relationships to paid work are many and varied. For some it is an important indicator of their identity, while for others it is a form of inescapable drudgery, boredom, or a place of exploitation. For those under- and unemployed, this unbearable state of boredom might itself be an aspiration. Current literature on queer identities and…[Read more]

Anglo-Scandinavian literary and legal texts give evidence of two cultures which shared similar attitudes to punitive acts of violence; whether as literary trope or legislative recourse, deliberate mutilation was a familiar form of retribution. Why this is the case is not always clear within the context of the texts in which such episodes are…[Read more]

The term ’empire’ is frequently applied retrospectively by historians to historical trans-cultural political entities that are notable either for their geographic breadth, unprecedented expansionary ambitions, or extensive political hegemony. Yet the use of the terminology of empire in historical studies is often ill-defined, as exemplified by the…[Read more]

Gesta regum Anglorum, written by William of Malmesbury in the twelfth century, is a key source for the life of the tenth-century Anglo-Saxon king, Æthelstan (924–939). Contemporary narrative histories provide little detail relating to Æthelstan’s kingship, and the account of Gesta regum Anglorum purports to grant an unparalleled insight into his l…[Read more]

The practical necessity of sight to effective participation in Anglo-Saxon life is reflected in the multifaceted depictions of punitive blinding in late Anglo-Saxon literature. As a motif of empowerment or disempowerment, acts of blinding permeate the histories and hagiographies of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and each narrative mode…[Read more]

In 1016 the young Danish prince who was to become Cnut the Great, King of England, Denmark, and Norway, laid siege to the city of London as part of a program of conquest that would see him crowned as King of England by 1017. This millennial year is an appropriate time to reflect on the consequences of London’s defiance as a city that was rapidly…[Read more]

Over the past decade, the idea of the commune has again become increasingly important to political theorists and philosophers thinking about communism. Within their debates, the anarchist-communist line of thought and practice of the commune is not much reflected. This is a mistake.
Within this chapter I reconstruct the collectively shared…[Read more]

The dominant literate culture of early medieval England – male, European, and Christian – often represented itself through comparison to exotic beings and monsters, in traditions developed from native mythologies, and Classical and Biblical sources. So pervasive was this reflexive identification that the language of the monstrous occurs not onl…[Read more]

The dominant literate culture of early medieval England – male, European, and Christian – often represented itself through comparison to exotic beings and monsters, in traditions developed from native mythologies, and Classical and Biblical sources. So pervasive was this reflexive identification that the language of the monstrous occurs not onl…[Read more]

Social organizations, institutions, governments, and bureaucracies are all manifestations of power distribution. Many contemporary theories on power are at least partly informed by notions that were introduced in General Systems Theory. Public libraries are open systems. In an average organization, a hierarchy divides tasks, sets rules, and…[Read more]

Susan Kim and Asa Simon Mittman, “Keeping History: Images, Texts, Ciphers, and the Franks Casket,” with Susan Kim, in A Material History of Medieval and Early Modern Ciphers, ed. K Ellison and S Kim (New York: Routledge, 2017)

Medieval Christians arguably lived in a ‘real’ world – a tangible place in which they lived, worked, loved, hated, and died – but through a process of worldbuilding continually reconstructed it anew around themselves as the mythical land they called ‘Christendom.’ This was predicated first on reconceptualizing and then ultimately on removing (o…[Read more]

A review of a series of interviews with prominent political theorists (Wendy Brown, Braidotti, Jean-Luc Nancy, Negri, Vogl, Esposito, Tariq Ali, Saskia Sassen, Maurizio Lazzarato, and Angela McRobbie). All of them reflect on contemporary political crises and the concept of crisis itself. This review considers their political positions as well as…[Read more]

They say the global proliferation of colonial and neoliberal (ir)rationalities and the techno-managerial enclosure of the ‘commons’ (Hardt & Negri 2000; Harvey 2004) has resulted in a ‘foreclosure of politics’, prompting calls for a renewed technocultural hegemony for a post-capitalist future (Srnicek & Williams 2015) or a return to the revolut…[Read more]

They say the global proliferation of colonial and neoliberal (ir)rationalities and the techno-managerial enclosure of the ‘commons’ (Hardt & Negri 2000; Harvey 2004) has resulted in a ‘foreclosure of politics’, prompting calls for a renewed technocultural hegemony for a post-capitalist future (Srnicek & Williams 2015) or a return to the revolut…[Read more]

PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) is a relatively new drug-based HIV prevention technique and an important means to lower the HIV risk of gay men who are especially vulnerable to HIV. From the perspective of biopolitics, PrEP inscribes itself in a larger trend of medicalization and the rise of pharmapower. This article reconstructs and evaluates…[Read more]