How could the ideal of a universal brotherhood of mankind be realized in an age of nationalism, colonialism and culture wars? “With God, for fatherland and humanity?” is the first comprehensive study of masonic internationalism. It explores, with a focus on England, France, Germany, and Italy, how European masonic associations promoted or opposed…[Read more]

There are hundreds of alphabetic texts in Zapotec languages dating back to the 16th century. Today, however, Zapotec speakers are generally unable to read these texts, due to lack of access to the texts and an unfamiliarity with the orthographic practices. Moreover, significant changes have taken place in the grammar in the intervening centuries.…[Read more]

To encourage classroom dialectic I often turn to the “quitting” structure of “The Canterbury Tales,” within which pilgrims offer requitals of previous tales that range from exuberant acclamations to
raucous attacks. Within these extremes lie productive forms of correction that emerge as subtle critiques, opposing arguments, and timely (or…[Read more]

The “Spanish influenza” pandemic that struck Egypt in fall 1918 resulted in the death of eleven out of every one thousand people. Despite the mass suffering caused by the pandemic, it has been largely ignored by historians. I describe how the Egyptian public health service was unprepared for a major health crisis because resources were red…[Read more]

Identity politics is subject to similar critiques in contemporary public debate and political theory. A central topos of this critique is that identity politics is essentializing: it fixes subjects to their social position and resorts to a politics of
particularity that leads to divisions in national citizenship and democratic discourse (the…[Read more]

This chapter works with a mixture of discourse analysis, cultural anthropological empiricism, integration of behavioural research, and not al least conceptual argumentation. It integrates different, but corresponding strands of discussion and controversies from German-speaking politics and culture, from academic discourse, research, and art to…[Read more]

Spanish Abstract: Proponemos, en contraposición a la noción de ideología corriente en la crítica cultural y ejemplificada aquí por el libro de Teun A. van Dijk “Ideología: Un enfoque multidisciplinario” (Gedisa, 1999), una noción de ideología más interaccional, más dialógica y más unida a las situaciones efectivas en las que la ideología s…[Read more]

Spanish Abstract: Proponemos, en contraposición a la noción de ideología corriente en la crítica cultural y ejemplificada aquí por el libro de Teun A. van Dijk “Ideología: Un enfoque multidisciplinario” (Gedisa, 1999), una noción de ideología más interaccional, más dialógica y más unida a las situaciones efectivas en las que la ideología s…[Read more]

The Popol Wuj is one of the most important, commonly studied, and widely circulated Indigenous literary works from colonial Mesoamerica. By some accounts, there are 1,200 editions of the work published in thirty world languages, all of which trace back to a single manuscript—itself a copy of an earlier Mayan work. To protect their work from b…[Read more]