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Jane Austen’s Teenage Writings: an audio guide

Three notebooks of Jane Austen’s teenage writings survive. The earliest pieces probably date from 1786 or 1787, around the time that Jane, aged 11 or 12, and her older sister and collaborator Cassandra left school. By this point Austen was already an indiscriminate and precocious reader, devouring pulp fiction and classic literature alike; what she read, she soon began to imitate and parody.

Unlike many teenage writings then and now, these are not secret or agonized confessions entrusted to a private journal and for the writer’s eyes alone. Rather, they are stories to be shared and admired by a named audience of family and friends. Devices and themes which appear subtly in Austen’s later fiction run riot openly and exuberantly across the teenage page. Drunkenness, brawling, sexual misbehaviour, theft, and even murder prevail. Listen to Kathryn Sutherland and Freya Johnston, editors of the Oxford World’s Classics edition, introduce Austen’s teenage writings and who she was writing for, on the tracks below.

Featured image credit: “Notebook” by Pexels. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay .

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Seeing a cat with photons that aren’t there

Quantum mechanics allows some mind-bending effects. A recent paper shows us how to make an image of the silhouette of a cat using a set of photons that had never interacted with the cat object. The photons that had actually interacted with the cutout, and carried information about it, had even been discarded. The explanation depends on the ideas of quantum superposition and interference; the trick is in transferring quantum information from one set of photons to another.

Let’s review superposition briefly: if a particle can take two possible paths α and β then the quantum wave function is a sum of the two states representing these paths. If we use a detector to measure which path the particle is traversing, we would find it is either the α path or the β path. A which-way measurement collapses the superposition into just one element. However, the superposition is not just an expression of the uncertainty of the path taken. The single particle must have taken both paths, because, if the two paths intersect, the two states will interfere with one another, causing “fringes,” that is, regions of increased or decreased probability, depending on the position of the interference.

Figure 1: The photon circuit for quantum imaging. Reprinted by permission from Macmillian Publishers Ltd: Nature 512, 409 (2014), copyright 2014.

Figure 1 shows the possible photon paths. The basic elements are two special crystals NL1 and NL2 (NL for “nonlinear”); when a laser pulse enters one of these it can produce a pair of photons, one called the “signal” photon and the other the “idler” photon. A laser pulse enters either of the green paths, a or b, producing a pair in NL1 or in NL2, but not two pairs. BS1 is a “beam splitter” that has equal probability of allowing the laser pulse through into a or reflecting it into b. Suppose mirror D1 were not present. Then we would have either set {c, d} or set {e, f} and the state of the system would be an entanglement (superposition of pairs) of these two possibilities, where c and e are the signal photons and d and f are the idlers.

The mirror D1 deflects the idler photon on path d where it interacts with the object O, which is a cut-out silhouette of a cat, with the photon either being transmitted or absorbed by the cut-out figure. That means the pair {c, d} now carries information about the cat in terms of a “transmission coefficient” T that measures the probability of the idler photon being transmitted through the silhouette.

Figure 2: The cat quantum image. Reprinted by permission from Macmillian Publishers Ltd: Nature 512, 409 (2014), copyright 2014.

What we want is to transfer this cat information to the signal photons in paths c and e, which we will allow to interfere when they meet at the beam splitter BS2. The key trick of the process is to turn this entanglement into a simpler superposition. To do this we divert idler d with mirror D2 so that it passes through NL2. At the dotted vertical line, we now have two possibilities, either we have signal c, but with idler now in state f, or we have laser pulse b having triggered NL2 so that the signal is e and the idler is again f. The state, ignoring any activity at position O, is then the simpler superposition in which the signal state is a superposition of c and e, with the state f a common factor of both. Now state c, which was associated with idler d carries the information about the cat. How this precisely happens is not so clear without the use of some quantum mathematics.

The interference of the signal photons c and e at BS2 is measured by the detectors at g and h. The probability of a photon being found in detector at g is increased by a term depending on T; the probability of the detector at h is decreased by the same amount in the other. These are the interference fringes. The detectors thus can now measure T; so one can see how the paths of repeated idler photons could be varied so they could detect different points in the cat’s silhouette and get the position of the outline of it, transferring this information in each case to the detected signal photons. The image as seen in Figure 2 is formed by detecting the signal photons, which never actually “saw” the cat.

Does this odd technique have any application? Perhaps. Suppose I want to investigate a very sensitive system, perhaps a biological molecule. My detectors work with photons of a frequency that would damage the molecule, so I use photons of a much lower energy and transfer the information to photons that work in the detectors. I make an image with photons that I cannot detect and detect photons with which I cannot make the image.

There have been other proposals to do so-called “interaction-free measurements” for example, by Elitzer and Vladman and by Kwiat et al among others. In these one can get information about a system, for example, its position, without actually sensing it directly. Quantum mechanics allows one to do these strange things.

Featured image credit: Light by geralt. CC0 Public domain via Pixabay.

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The separation of church and state in the US

While contradictory in many respects, the principles of separation of church and state, cooperation between sacred and secular, religious equality in the treatment of religion, and the integration of religion and politics combine to provide unique but important contributions to American life. In the following excerpt from the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, Derek H. Davis examines the relationship between law and religion in the United States.

The United States Supreme Court plays a significant role with respect to religious institutions and religious practice in America. The role of the court derives specifically from its authority to engage in judicial review, that is, its authority to invalidate legislation or executive actions that violate the Constitution. The court’s jurisprudence in the realm of religion has generally been constructed by interpreting the meaning of the First Amendment’s religion clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Overall, the court seems committed to at least four themes: separation of church and state, cooperation between sacred and secular activities in religion-based contexts, equality of government treatment among religions and religious persons, and integrating religion and politics. One must see these various themes as integrated into a much larger Supreme Court framework that seeks to set forth the contours of how government authority interfaces with religious practice in the United States.

The court’s decisions sometimes seem contradictory, even to the most ripened experts. But by examining many of the court’s decisions under these four themes, the court’s difficult task of balancing the religion clauses and giving them meaning becomes more apparent and their decisions more rational.

Apparent inconsistencies abound. How is it, for example, that students in public schools cannot have vocal prayers in their classrooms or at their football games, but the US Congress can have its own chaplains to lead it daily in prayer? Or why is it that the Ten Commandments cannot be regularly posted in public school classrooms, yet the US Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, both inside and out, features several displays of the Ten Commandments?

And how can a nation committed to the separation of church and state adopt a national motto that proclaims to the world, “In God We Trust?” On their face, these seemingly contradictory rules and practices might be bizarre. But understood in the broader, elaborate framework of Supreme Court decisions, examined through the grid of the four themes already mentioned, these apparent consistencies can be understood, even justified.

Obviously, the American tradition of separation of church and state does not mean that a separation of religion from government is required in all cases. So, while the phrase is too broad to embrace the whole system, it nevertheless does accurately describe an important part of the system.

 And how can a nation committed to the separation of church and state adopt a national motto that proclaims to the world, “In God We Trust?”

The US Supreme Court has frequently resorted to an examination of the eighteenth-century Founding Fathers’ writings to ascertain the relationship between religion and state that was intended to undergird the American social and political order. The court has tended to rely extensively on Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and the nation’s third president, to determine much of the Founders’ “original intent.” In fact, the phrase “wall of separation between church and state” was first used in America by President Jefferson in 1802 as a shorthand explanation of the meaning he assigned to the religion clauses. This well-known phrase was enlisted by the US Supreme Court in 1947 as a useful metaphor in adjudicating religion clause disputes. The court thus acknowledges that separating church and state was fundamental to the Founders’ project.

“Separation of church and state” is therefore a legitimate concept in America, but it describes more an institutional separation than a strict separation. In other words, the Constitution requires that the institutions of church and state in American society not be interconnected, dependent upon, or functionally related to each other. The purpose of this requirement is to achieve mutual independence and autonomy for these institutions, based on the belief that they will function best if neither has authority over the other. Affected are the institutional bodies of religion, that is, churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, and other bodies of organized religion, and the institutional bodies of governmental authority—state and federal governments, but also small local bodies such as school districts, police departments, city councils, utility districts, municipal courts, county commissions, and the like.

Consequently, churches and other houses of worship receive no direct governmental funding, nor are they required to pay income or property taxes. Government officials appoint no clergy; conversely, religious bodies appoint no government officials. Governments, even courts, are not allowed to settle church disputes that involve doctrinal issues. And religious bodies, unlike the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, have no authority to dictate law or public policy, although they might try since they are not excluded as participants in political discourse.

The institutional separation of church and state is observed most frequently, and most controversially, in judicial decisions that limit religious activity in the public schools. The Supreme Court’s decisions limiting schools’ ability to entertain vocal prayers and scripture readings, to post the Ten Commandments and other religious texts, or to advance a particular religious worldview are intended to protect the sacred domain of religion from state interference. The High Court often stresses that children are highly impressionable, and that while it might be permissible for the state to occasionally accommodate religious observances in higher public education settings or in legislative assemblies, it is important to leave the religious training of young children generally to parents, religious bodies, and other private organizations. Thus it might be said that a “high” wall of separation is observed in the nation’s public K–12 schools.

Yet it is important to remember that in the public school context, it is the precepts and practices of institutionalized religion that are prohibited from being embraced or proscribed. Courses that teach comparative religion, the historical or literary aspects of religion, or religion in a secular and objective way without any attempt to inculcate faith, are permitted, and even encouraged. As Justice Tom Clark wrote in Abington v. Schempp, “one’s education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization … [S]tudy of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education [does not violate] the First Amendment.”

Featured image credit: Kendal Parish Church, by Michael D Beckwith. Public Domain via Unsplash.

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Tradesmen and women during the Industrial Revolution

An eclectic mix of small manufacturers, shopkeepers, and service providers dominated the streetscape of towns across north-west England during early industrial revolution. Yet although these tradesmen and women constituted anything from 20-60% of the urban population, our view of the commercial world in this period tends to be dominated by narratives of particularly big and successful businesses, and those involved in new and large-scale modes of production. In places such as Manchester, Liverpool, Preston, Bolton, Salford, Blackburn, Warrington, and Wigan though, it was not great factories and mills that altered the urban and economic landscape—at least not before the 1820s—but rather the proliferation of small businesses.

As Maxine Berg has argued, the transformation of towns and regions in the early industrial revolution in Britain was achieved “on the backs of a myriad of smaller and medium-scale producers, and not on the spectacular, but isolated successes of small numbers of giant industrialists and financial elites.” Moreover, as historians of consumption—including Berg—have explained, it was not only producers that promoted growth during the long eighteenth century, but also consumers, who bought goods from an increasing army of retailers, many of whom also contributed to the supply chain, by being involved in the manufacture of the goods that they stocked.

The failure of shopkeepers and small-scale manufacturers to excite subsequent scholars more interested in those obvious motors of social and economic change—the working classes and the wealthier middle classes—has not gone unnoticed. Even so, it has been almost 40 years since Geoffrey Crossick first urged historians to examine the English lower middle class, around the same time as Neil McKendrick asked why fellow historians have been so eager to explore the Industrial Revolution, but not the consumer revolution, and in the process had ignored the bulk of people in trade. “Some discussion is required” he asserted, “of why attention has centred on the great industrialists and the supply side of the supply-demand equation, and why so little attention has been given to those hordes of little men who helped to boost the demand side and who succeeded in exciting new wants, in making available new goods, and in satisfying a new consumer market of unprecedented size and buying power.” (And, of course, we need to pay attention to the hordes of “little women” involved in this process too).

Nathan Wood, Pattern Maker Hanging Bridge, c. 1800–1810. Manchester Scrapbook, Chetham’s Library. Used with permission.

The lack of attention paid to tradesmen and women in the past can be explained, at least in part, by their tendency not to leave a particularly significant mark on the historical record. Sometimes the glimpses found in the archive are frustratingly brief. The portrait on the right, of Nathan Wood, pattern and heel maker, seated on his work bench is a good example. Here Wood has been drawn by his friend and neighbour, the saddler Thomas Barritt, sometime in the opening decade of the nineteenth century. We see Wood sitting proudly (if rather awkwardly, given Barritt’s limited drawing skills) in his workshop at the front of his house on Hanging Bridge in Manchester, facing the Collegiate Church, which is visible through the window.

Although the image is suggestive of industry, and possibly also of the sitter’s Anglican piety, it is limited in terms of what it tells us about Wood and his life. Was he successful in business? How did he view his position in the commercial and social world of early nineteenth-century Manchester, and how did others see him? Who else lived and worked with him? How did household and familial relations function? What was the rest of his house like, and how was living and working space organised? These things we do not know, for there seem to be few other surviving records of Wood’s life, save for his listing in trade directories over a 30-year period.

Perhaps it is not just the working classes, then, who need rescuing from what Edward Thompson described as the “enormous condescension of posterity.” Moreover, though those “in trade” can be seen to have had a significant impact on the social and economic developments of early industrial revolution England, it is also the “ordinariness” and the smaller-than-life adventures that such individuals experienced that make them important to historians, for in order to truly understand the past we need to know not just about the exceptional and the heroic, but also the everyday and the commonplace. As men and women of largely humble means and often limited ambitions, it is perhaps not hard to see why they have failed to capture historians’ attention. Yet without them, the urban landscape in Britain during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries would have been completely different—and the very transformations in economy and society that we associate with this period would have been profoundly affected as a result. This means that to fully understand the period, we also need to know not just about the Wedgwoods and the Boultons, but also to consider the experiences and the aspirations of individuals such Nathan Wood.

Featured image credit: “Iron and Coal” painting by William Bell Scott c. 1855–60. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Why shouldn’t we compel them to come in? Locke, the Enlightenment, and the debate over religious toleration

Most people in the West today unreflectively accept the need for religious toleration. Of course, if pressed, they will admit that toleration, like freedom of speech, can’t be absolute; there must be some limits. Suppose, for example, that my religion calls for human sacrifice every Sunday; no one will think that such a religion should be tolerated. Again, if pressed, people will agree that there are difficult cases: to take an issue that troubled John Locke, suppose that my religion demands allegiance to a foreign power. We may think that reasonable people can disagree over such cases. But the fact that there are these problem cases doesn’t shake people’s commitment to the principle of religious toleration.

We tend to be so wedded to this principle that we can easily forget how seductive the case for intolerance can be. Consider, for instance, a person who says with an authoritative air: “I know that my religion is the true one and that yours is completely false. I also know you will go to hell if you don’t convert to my religion.” Wouldn’t it be an act of charity on his part to convert you, by force if necessary, to the religion that will ensure your happiness in the afterlife? Here one might adapt an example given by that champion of liberalism, John Stuart Mill, for another purpose. A police officer sees a person trying to cross a bridge that he knows to be unsafe. According to Mill, it’s not an unwarranted interference with the person’s liberty for the officer to use force to prevent him or her from stepping on to the bridge; he knows, after all, that the bridge is unsafe and he knows that the person doesn’t want to fall into the river. One might take a similar line in the religious case: I know that John’s religion is leading him to hell, and I know that that’s not where he wishes to end up. Theologians in the Western tradition such as Augustine have argued for intolerance along these lines, and they have buttressed their argument by appealing to the biblical text: “Compel them to come in.”

Modern liberals are likely to respond that the appeal to Mill’s example is unfair, for the analogy is far from exact. For one thing, Mill builds into his example the assumption that there is no time to warn the person about the danger of the bridge; presumably, if there were time to warn him, then other things being equal, Mill would admit that there was no case for coercion. More importantly, one might argue that no one really knows, or can know, that the doctrines of revealed religion are true; acceptance of such doctrines depends on accepting the accounts of witnesses who may be unreliable or whose words may have been misinterpreted down the ages.

The idea that no one can know the claims of revealed religion are true is the basis for one of Locke’s main strategies of argument for religious toleration. The strategy is a powerful one, but it is open to a couple of objections. First, Locke sets the bar for knowledge very high: he allows little to count as knowledge that isn’t on a par with mathematical demonstration. By his lights, in the bridge example, even the policeman doesn’t strictly know that the bridge is unsafe. Further, even if the champion of intolerance concedes that he doesn’t strictly know his religion to be true, he may still say that he has very strong support for his beliefs, and that this level of support justifies him in coercing others. So the kind of case that Locke makes here may not be conclusive.

Fortunately, Locke has other strings to his bow. One intriguing argument turns on the nature of belief and its relation to the will. Suppose that the champion of intolerance says to the unbeliever: “You ought to believe the articles of my faith” (e.g. the doctrine of the Trinity). It seems apt for the unbeliever to reply to such a claim by saying: “It’s not in my power to believe this doctrine. You misunderstand the nature of belief. Belief is not a voluntary action like switching on a light. Rather, belief is more like falling in love; it’s something that happens to you.” One might then plug in the Kantian principle implicitly accepted by Locke: ought implies can. If belief is not in my power, and ought implies can, then I can have no obligation to believe the proposition in question.

This can seem like a powerful reply to the advocate of intolerance, but again, unfortunately, it’s not conclusive. For the advocate may say: “I agree that belief is not directly under your voluntary control, but I maintain that it is indirectly so. True, you can’t just switch on belief, but it’s in your power to do things that will result, or are likely to result, in your coming to believe.” Pascal, for instance, thought that though we can’t just believe at will, we can do things such as going to Mass and mixing with the congregation of the faithful that will have the effect of producing belief; faith, he thought, is catching. And then the intolerant person is in a position to make a case for religious persecution on the part of the state: there should be penalties for non-attendance at church so that people are induced to attend and at least to give a hearing to the teachings of the state-approved religion. This was the argument put to Locke by his opponent, Jonas Proast. Locke seeks to reply to this argument by saying that sincere religious belief can’t be produced in this way, and that it’s only sincere religious belief that is acceptable to God. Whether this reply to Proast is successful is a controversial issue among philosophers who have studied the debate. And the issue isn’t a narrowly academic one: it should be of interest to all those who seek to defend the values of the Enlightenment today.

Featured image: Winslow Homer – Sunlight on the Coast. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

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Earth Day 2017: reading for environmental & climate literacy

Earth Day is celebrated globally on 22 April in support of environmental protection. The theme for 2017’s Earth Day is “Environmental & Climate Literacy” – and we couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate knowledge of the environment and climate than with a reading list. These books, chapters, and articles can add to your understanding of Earth through topics such as climate change, natural phenomena, and what practical steps are being taken to help protect our planet.

“Confronting the Consequences of Climate Change” from Adapting to a Changing Environment: Confronting the Consequences of Climate Change by Tim R. McClanahan and Joshua E. Cinner

This chapter summarizes the available options for confronting the consequences of climate change through building local-scale adaptive capacity in societies and improving the condition of the natural resources on which people depend for their livelihoods. This first item in our reading list discusses how to simultaneously govern resource use and build capacity in society.

Stories from the Leopold Shack: Sand County Revisited by Estella B. Leopold

The classic A Sand County Almanac by ecologist and writer Aldo Leopold, which called for a responsible relationship between people and the land they inhabit, is a touchstone text for the American conservation movement. In this new project, Stories from the Leopold Shack, Aldo’s daughter Estella B. Leopold offers a window into the development of the land-ethic theory as it unfolded in her father’s life and thought.

“Modeling sustainability: population, inequality, consumption, and bidirectional coupling of the Earth and Human Systems” by Safa Motesharrei, Jorge Rivas, Eugenia Kalnay, et al in National Science Review

The importance and imminence of sustainability challenges, the dominant role of the Human System in the Earth System, and the essential roles the Earth System plays for the Human System, all call for collaboration of natural scientists, social scientists, and engineers in multidisciplinary research to develop coupled Earth–Human system models for devising effective science-based policies and measures to benefit current and future generations.

“From conservation theory to practice: crossing the divide” from Conservation Biology for All by Madhu Rao and Joshua Ginsberg

Exploring the implementation of conservation science, this chapter integrates the inputs of decision‐makers and local people into scientifically rigorous conservation planning as a critically important aspect of effective conservation implementation.

Weather: A Very Short Introduction by Storm Dunlop

From deciding the best day for a picnic, to the devastating effects of hurricanes and typhoons, the weather impacts our lives on a daily basis. Although new techniques allow us to forecast the weather with increasing accuracy, most people do not realise the vast global movements and forces which result in their day-to-day weather. Here, Storm Dunlop explains what weather is and how it differs from climate, discussing what causes weather, and how we measure it.

“The Conservation Paradox” from Biodiversity Conservation and Environmental Change: Using palaeoecology to manage dynamic landscapes in the Anthropocene by Lindsey Gillson

Urgent action is needed to counter the climate change and consumption patterns that are driving the Earth’s life support systems towards a dangerous tipping point. However, the paradox of conservation is that we seek to preserve systems that are incessantly in flux. As conservation moves towards the maintenance processes, the need emerges for us to understand change over time, with respects to the limits of ecological resilience and the fragile points at which dramatic ecosystem re-organisation may occur.

Totality: The Great American Eclipses of 2017 and 2024 by Mark Littmann and Fred Espenak

In Totality, Littmann and Espenak provides a complete guide to the most stunning of celestial sights, total eclipses of the Sun. It focuses on the upcoming eclipses of 21 August 2017 and 8 April 2024 that will pass across the United States and contributes to our understanding of this phenomenon, as well as how to safely observe the total eclipse.

Eclipse: Journeys to the Dark Side of the Moon by Frank Close

Building on the forthcoming total solar eclipse on 21 August 2017, the popular science author Frank Close describes the spellbinding allure of this most beautiful natural phenomenon in Eclipse: Journeys to the Dark Side of the Moon. Will you be one of the 100 million people projected to gather in a narrow belt across the USA to witness the most watched total solar eclipse in history?

“Changing conservation behaviors” from Conservation Education and Outreach Techniques by Susan K. Jacobson, Mallory McDuff, and Martha Monroe

This chapter organises many of the most commonly used theories in conservation program development and research around key purposes, and the important roles they play in the development of conservation education and outreach programs.

“Analyzing climate variations at multiple timescales can guide Zika virus response measures” by Ángel G. Muñoz, Madeleine C. Thomson, Lisa Goddard, and Sylvain Aldighieri in GigaScience

In this article, Muñoz et al. reviews the related flaviviruses transmitted by the same vectors as the Zika virus (ZIKV) and uncovers that ZIKV dynamics may be sensitive to climate seasonality and longer-term variability and trends.

“Betraying the Future” from Debating Climate Ethics by Stephen M. Gardiner and David A. Weisbach

This selection argues that ethics plays a fundamental role in climate policy for three reasons. First, we need ethical concepts to identify the relevant problem. Second, ethical considerations are at the heart of the main policy decisions that must be made. Third, climate change presents a severe ethical challenge for humanity and its institutions.

“Gaia and her microbiome” by John F. Stolz in FEMS Microbiology Ecology

The Gaia hypothesis proposes that the Earth’s biosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere act together as a cybernetic system that maintains the optimal physical and chemical environment for life. This article re-examines the theory, and reflects on how recent discoveries might contribute to our understanding of how the Earth’s biosphere functions.

Environmental Protection: What Everyone Needs to Know by Pamela Hill

This book gives background information on the origins and development of environmental protection and provides accessible information that will help readers navigate this topic. Environmental Protection also provides context for understanding current environmental issues, such as nanopollution and climate change.

Featured image credit: Gulf of Mexico, United States by NASA. Creative commons via Unsplash.

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Councils and juntas in early modern Madrid

Nowadays it’s not uncommon to think of meetings as a time-consuming chore, and it was no different in the seventeenth century. During the 1660s, the count of Castrillo would complain to his wife about the long hours that he had to spend in committees. He was sometimes too busy even so much as to go to Mass, and when he was finally allowed out of the palace it might not have been until the early hours of the morning.

The count’s experience was in many ways typical. Habsburg officials seemed to spend more time discussing problems, than resolving them. Their government was broadly collegial in organization. Below the king, public affairs were officially the responsibility of a dozen or so councils in Madrid, along with a variety of similar institutions in Milan, Brussels, Naples, and the other principal cities that made up what English diplomats were accustomed to describe as “the Spanish Monarchy.” The system worked reasonably effectively, but the councils tended to be slow in operation, and suspicious of attempts at reform and modernization.

So, from the reign of Philip II “ad hoc” committees (or “juntas”) began to be used alongside the councils. They existed for all manner of purposes—from the management of the royal households to the supply of the armies and fleets; from the development of new sources of revenue to the introduction of reforms in government and society. Their purpose was to provide an element of executive direction that was lacking in the formally instituted councils, and the latter often found themselves excluded from the discussion of significant matters. There was nothing particularly Spanish about the practice. One of the members of the English Privy Council during the 1640s was the duke of Newcastle, who complained of how: “every letter and book of news we gravely deliver our opinions thereof, but first wipe our mouths formally with our handkerchers, spit with a grace, and hem aloud, and then say little to the purpose.” Cited by Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, ed. Charles H. Firth (London, 1906)—The words of this English grandee would have struck a chord with his Spanish counterparts.

Painting of Elisabeth of Bourbon, attributed to Juan Van Der Hamen. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

During the reign of Philip IV between 1621 and 1665, the matter went to extremes. His principal minister, the count-duke of Olivares, was accused of running a regime of “juntas” whose contempt for legalities and due process had led to the outbreak of revolts in Catalonia and Portugal. When he fell from power in 1643, many of his committees were suppressed, but not before a special “junta” had been set up to recommend which ones should be the first to go! Thereafter, the king continued to be advised by a private committee that accompanied him to Zaragoza on his summer campaigns to suppress the revolt in Catalonia. Meanwhile, the queen remained in Madrid and ruined her health by the long hours that she spent chairing meetings—to the concern of everyone, including her 13-year-old son Baltasar Carlos. Foreign affairs were entrusted to an exclusive committee of state in an arrangement that gave its name to the English “Junto” that would later come to prevail under William III.

Yet, busy attendance of “juntas” was not always an index of real influence. Officials in Madrid lived out their lives enclosed in discussion of matters about which their advice often went unheeded. During the late 1650s Friar Nicolás Bautista, a renowned Carmelite preacher, was regularly invited to attend committees on matters of taxation, which might lead one to think that he was a government man. Yet, the fiery sermons that he delivered from the pulpit of the royal chapel suggest an attempt to use an alternative and more public platform to distance himself from the unpopular and controversial decisions being made in his name.

Committee-work could thus be a sign of impotence, as well as of influence. Some “juntas” appeared to serve no other purpose than to enhance the status of the person responsible for convening them—as was the case with the count of Monterrey who liked to summon meetings to his house, only to cancel them after everybody had arrived. Others provided a forum for collective irresponsibility where the presence of many would allow blame for mistakes to be evenly spread. Often, the establishment of a “junta” might just as easily have been a means of kicking a contentious matter into the long grass as of reaching a quick decision. Supplicants bemoaned that committee members were usually too old, or too busy to attend, and when someone fell ill, a month would go by with no meetings, and when he got better, somebody else would be sick, or some other accident would intervene, with the outcome that months, years, and lifetimes could be wasted in frenetic, but ineffectual petitioning.

And, yet for the standards of the era, the Spanish administration was remarkably effective at doing its job of ensuring the defence of Philip IV’s possessions from his enemies. For all the time-serving working groups that wasted the hours and days of the governing elite, there were some committees that played a very important role in the Spanish Monarchy’s survival, and the count of Castrillo was one of the half-dozen effective decision-makers during the closing years of the reign. Yet he still didn’t like attending meetings. Whether influential or irrelevant, seventeenth-century “juntas” were exasperating for everyone.

Featured image credit: “Equestrian portrait of Philip IV” by Diego Velázquez. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Why do we love our pets so much?

Since time immemorial, humans have kept animals for companions. Pets are known to provide physical and emotional benefits, not only in terms of companionship, but also in terms of outdoor adventure, exercise, and socializing with other pet owners. As Sigmund Feud once said, “Time spent with cats is never wasted.” Dogs and cats have been particular favourites throughout the ages, with cats commonly thought to have been domesticated in ancient Egypt, and dogs from the time of the hunter-gatherers. There is a special bond between every owner and their pet, but what exactly is it that brings us so close?

To understand the bond between humans, our cats, and our dogs, we decided to look at the letters left by historical pet owners, to see what lies behind this time-honoured pairing. From David Hume’s troubles with his friend’s dog, to Laurence Sterne’s protection of his beloved cat and Alexander Pope’s moving contemplation on loss, discover more about our relationship with our four-legged friends…

Laurence Sterne (1713–1768), the clergyman and author best known for his novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy clearly loved his “poor cat.” In a letter of 24 August 1767, he chastises his daughter for the unruly behaviour of her dog, as he would not have his cat “abused” in such a manner:

My poor cat sits purring beside me—your lively French dog shall have his place on the other side of my fire—but if he is as devilish as when I last saw him, I must tutor him, for I will not have my cat abused—in short I will have nothing devilish about me—a combustion would spoil a sentimental thought.

“Domestic Cat” by bogitw. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

William Cowper (1731–1800) was one of the most popular English poets of the eighteenth century, famed for his depictions of everyday life and the British countryside. Just like Laurence Sterne, Cowper also contended with a dog and a cat under the same roof, but their relationship was far more amicable. On 17 December 1787 he wrote to his cousin, describing his beloved pets:

My dog, my dear is a spaniel…he is really handsome; and when nature shall have furnished him with a new coat, a gift which, in consideration of the ragged condition of his old one, it is hoped she will not long delay, he will then be unrivalled in personal endowments by any dog in this country. He and my cat are excessively fond of each other, and play a thousand gambols together that it is impossible not to admire.

Like any pet owner today, Alexander Pope (1688–1744) would have been devastated at the loss of his dog. Best known for his satirical verses and translations of Homer, as well as his inspired used of the heroic couplet, Pope elucidates the high esteem in which he held his closest companion:

The loss of a faithful creature is something, tho’ of never so contemptible an one: and if I were to change my dog for such a man as the aforesaid, I should think my dog undervalu’d.

“French Bulldog” by lightstargod. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

Akin to Alexander Pope, John Boyle, 5th Earl of Cork and Orrery (1707–1762) much preferred “man’s best friend” to a great deal of his human associates. In a letter to Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), the famed author of Gulliver’s Travels, Boyle puts forward his dog’s viewpoint:

My dog Hector bids me ask you if it is not hard that bad men should be called beasts and dogs when there are no instances to equal their inhumanity among the whole brute generation.

Love me, love my dog? Unfortunately, not everyone is destined to get along. David Hume (1711–1776), the great Scottish philosopher, was certainly not a fan of his friend Lord Elibank’s “mangey cur.” Indeed he said so in no uncertain terms, declaring that whilst he had “great respect for your Lordship” he had “none at all for this dog of yours“:

It is an old Proverb, Love me, love my dog: But certainly it admits of many exceptions: I am sure, at least, that I have a great respect for your Lordship; yet have none at all for this dog of yours. On the contrary, I declare him to be a very mangey cur: Entreat your Lordship to rid your hands of him as soon as possible: And think a sound beating or even a rope too good for him.

Featured image credit: “Animals, Dogs, Cat” by Gellinger. CCO Public Domain via Pixabay .

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The price of freedom

As Passover ends and those of us who observe the holiday allow hametz – leavened foods – back into our homes and our lives, it is worth reflecting on what all the fuss is over, and whether we should make such a fuss at all.

Holidays are carved from daily life for a purpose, and often, the mode of observance dovetails the meaning of the holiday. Not always; some holidays, especially secular ones like bank holidays in Britain or Presidents’ Day in the US, are observed, if at all, with a mere day off work and a sale at the mattress store. Other holidays may have a greater or lesser confluence between observance and meaning.

Jewish holidays tend to have a relatively deep connection between meaning and observance, and Passover among the deepest. In particular, the Seder – the ritual meal with which Passover begins – recounts a story of liberation from oppression, and asks us to accept anew the legacy of emancipation, although it comes at a price. The price is symbolized by eight days of matzah, but that stands in for the whole price of our freedom as a people: keeping the Sabbath, refraining from pork, 613 commandments actually, but by celebrating Passover we affirm that freedom is worth the price.

Moreover, many people now use Passover’s theme of emancipation as a platform for universalizing our emancipatory politics; hence some put an orange on the Seder plate to symbolize the emancipation of women; recently some have used a tomato to symbolize the struggle of farm workers in contemporary America; and many – particularly in this 50th year of the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza – now use an olive to mark the oppression of Palestinians under a state that purports to act in the name of all the Jews of the world.

DSC05342, by Meg Stewart. CC 2.0 via Flickr

These attempts to universalize the emancipatory meaning of Passover seem to reflect a modern, secular worldview that affirms a universal equality of persons and peoples and a consequent discomfort with the view, fundamental to historical Judaism, of the Jews as a people apart; rather than say that God has chosen us “mi kol ha’amim,” out of all peoples, we may now say he has done so “im kol ha’amim,” with all peoples.

But there is a much older tradition of ethical reflection on the story of emancipation, one that grapples with the cost of emancipation, not to those who must obey, but to the people who had to be vanquished. Emancipation was achieved, so the story goes, only through a collective punishment visited upon Egypt to coerce the Pharaoh to emancipate the Israelite’s.

Acknowledging the cost to the Egyptians is central to the holiday. For instance, before drinking a glass of wine to celebrate liberation, we lessen our joy by spilling from the glass ten drops, one for each plague. Yet if we take the plagues seriously, this momentary pause seems worse than inadequate. To take the plagues seriously would be to invert the meaning of the holiday altogether.

The first nine plagues seem underwhelming. We recite them placidly – blood, frogs, lice, etc. – because they pale in comparison to the tenth. But try to imagine what it must have been like to suffer the first nine plagues. The Nile oozes with blood. An army of frogs invades. Lice infest one’s body. The livestock sicken and die. Darkness blots out the sun. Locusts devour the harvest. These first nine plagues would not just cause terror, disease, and famine, but would shatter worlds. Metaphysical order – the conception of reality that gave a point to any Egyptian’s plans – would be smashed: there is an unstoppable force in the universe, and it hates us. Why do anything?

Then finally, after life has lost meaning and purpose, when there is nothing left to live for, comes the killing of the firstborn sons of Egypt. Picture the parents: beaten into submission, emaciated, covered in boils, not knowing how many more plagues there might be. They may have felt that death was a mercy, wishing that their child’s escape had come sooner.

Image CC0 Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Even down the generations, we shrink from the tenth plague. To assuage our conscience or God’s, we blame the Pharaoh: it was his oppressive regime that stirred God’s wrath; it was his stubbornness that brought the plagues as punishment; it was his recalcitrance that brought the tenth plague; it was his diabolical plan for the sons of Israel that God turned against the sons of Egypt. Positively rumsfeldian. At most, this could justify punishing the Pharaoh alone: not his son, not an entire nation.

Sure this is horrible by today’s standards, but in that era, whole peoples would be routinely put to the sword for no crime at all. It was standard practice in the ancient Mediterranean: “Carthage must be destroyed!” By that standard, killing only the firstborn is merciful. The lure of temporal relativism is strong. But the issue is not whether contemporary observers would be baffled by collective punishment; it is whether we today should celebrate the freedom thereby gained.

Or we might suggest: the people of Egypt – “good Germans” of their day – were complicit; they lived off the spoils of enslavement and oppression. The wealth of the rich was built on the poverty of the poor. And then, gaining confidence in this narrative as it rolls off the tongue, conveniently linking our vanquished oppressors across the millennia, we would insist that those who are complicit in structural injustice are morally accountable.

This is surely true. And yet infants, toddlers, young children were not yet complicit. It remains a heinous crime against an innocent population. And anyway, even the fully grown firstborns were, for the most part, merely complicit, and complicity is not culpability. Complicity is wrongful, but is not criminal; it does not merit punishment, still less execution. There can be no justification, nor even any excuse, for any of the plagues: for the tenth or the first or any in between. What kind of a God could do such a thing? What kind of people worship such a God?

Philosophers have recently begun to consider the responsibilities of those who benefit from injustices for which they are not responsible. As a white citizen of both Canada and the United States, I benefit from the history of colonialism, genocide, enslavement, and segregation. I am not culpable; I am not even complicit in the historical (as opposed to ongoing) aspects of these crimes. Yet it seems highly plausible that, together with other innocent beneficiaries, I owe something to somebody by way of rectification or repair. Celebrating Passover, being cheerful about our freedom, may then seem to be like celebrating Columbus Day: a decent person doesn’t do it.

One might protest that these are not the same. We are talking thousands of years ago. Does anyone or anything from the Pharaonic age exist today? Did the Passover story even happen? Were the Israelite’s ever enslaved at all? Even if there is a historical grounding for the story of the plagues, the reality must have been wholly naturalistic; a clever demagogue could – even while insisting he had no talent for oratory – exploit superstitions about natural disasters to gain his people’s freedom. But such creative radicalism is awesome, not criminal.

Yet historical accuracy is not the point. The point of Passover is to affirm that I accept my emancipation, even though it came with the steep price of ten plagues. If we take that price seriously, can we truly celebrate our emancipation, or even accept it?

Let us ask the question bluntly: if you could go back in time to just before the 10th plague, when its nature had been decided, but it had not been carried out, and you could choose to accept your freedom at the cost of the lives of every firstborn, or refuse your freedom to spare them, which would you choose? Perhaps we can be forgiven if we accept our freedom at that price. A moment of weakness or rage after decades of harsh enslavement. But now that the rage has subsided, should we still celebrate our freedom? Should we instead atone for it?

The link between the new ethic that universalizes our emancipatory politics – the olive on the Seder plate – and the older tradition that grapples with the cost to the Egyptians may then be closer than it seems. It is through the former that we can have a hope of redeeming the latter.

Featured image credit: Yachatz, by Eugene Kim. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

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Society of Cinema and Media Studies 2017 annual conference wrap-up

Thanks to everyone who joined us at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies 2017 annual conference. OUP’s Media Studies team had a great time in Chicago, attending conference sessions and meeting with authors and conference goers alike. We’re looking forward to seeing you next year!

Take a look at our slideshow of photos from the conference and around town.

Downtown Chicago.







The OUP booth at SCMS 2017.







Thomas Whittaker, co-author of Locating the Voice in Film: Critical Approaches and Global Practices.







Marsha Gordon, author of Film is Like a Battleground: The War Movies of Sam Fuller.







Susan Courtney, author of Split Screen Nation: Moving Images of the American West and South.







Kiri Miller, author of Playable Bodies: Dance Games and Intimate Media.







OUP editor Norm Hirschy and Kyle Stevens, author of Mike Nichols: Sex, Language, and the Reinvention of Psychological Realism.







Carol Vernallis, author of Unruly Media: YouTube, Music Video, and the New Digital Cinema.







Invitations to the OUP reception event.







The crowd listens to editor Norm Hirschy's speech at the OUP reception.







Editor Norm Hirschy delivers a speech at the OUP reception.







Noa Steimatsky, author of The Face on Film.







Nick Davis, author of The Desiring Image: Gilles Deleuze and Contemporary Queer Cinema.







The famous "Cloud Gate" sculpture in Millennium Park, Chicago. Designed by Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor.







A cloudy evening in downtown Chicago.







"Return Visit," a bronze enlarged sculpture by Seward Johnson.

Featured image: Buildings along Chicago River. Photo by flickr user mindfrieze. CC-BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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