Oxford University Press's Blog, page 568

Fog everywhere: an extract from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House

This Christmas sees the premier of Dickensian, a 20-part series, written by a former EastEnders scriptwriter, described as “a beginners’ guide to Dickens’ books for a soap-loving generation”. To give you a flavour of what you can expect from Dickens, this extract is taken from Chapter One of Oxford World’s Classics edition of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House.

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ‘prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.

Stephen Rea as Ispector Bucket in the BBC Drama Dickensian . Dickensian airs on Boxing Day at 7pm and 8.30pm on BBC One .

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time—as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth.

On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High Chancellor ought to be sitting here—as here he is—with a foggy glory round his head, softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a large advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an interminable brief, and outwardly directing his contemplation to the lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog.

Photo of illustration from novel “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

On such an afternoon some score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar ought to be—as here they are—mistily engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might. On such an afternoon the various solicitors in the cause, some two or three of whom have inherited it from their fathers, who made a fortune by it, ought to be—as are they not?—ranged in a line, in a long matted well (but you might look in vain for truth at the bottom of it) between the registrar’s red table and the silk gowns, with bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, injunctions, affidavits, issues, references to masters, masters’ reports, mountains of costly nonsense, piled before them. Well may the court be dim, with wasting candles here and there; well may the fog hang heavy in it, as if it would never get out; well may the stained-glass windows lose their colour and admit no light of day into the place; well may the uninitiated from the streets, who peep in through the glass panes in the door, be deterred from entrance by its owlish aspect and by the drawl, languidly echoing to the roof from the padded dais where the Lord High Chancellor looks into the lantern that has no light in it and where the attendant wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank! This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and begging through the round of every man’s acquaintance, which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give—who does not often give—the warning, “Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here!”

Image Credits: All-Star Cast: Tiny Tim (ZAAK CONWAY), Bob Cratchit (ROBERT WILFORT), Emily Cratchit (JENNIFER HENNESSY), Peter Cratchit (BRENOCK O’CONNOR), Martha Cratchit (PHOEBE DYNEVOR), Meriweather Compeyson (TOM WESTON-JONES), Young Amelia Havisham (TUPPENCE MIDDLETON), Arthur Havisham (JOSEPH QUINN), Bill Sikes (MARK STANLEY), Nancy (BETHANY MUIR), Artful Dodger (WILSON RADJOU-PUJALTE), Fagin (ANTON LESSER), Inspector Bucket (STEPHEN REA), Boy (BENJAMIN CAMPBELL), Jacob Marley (PETER FIRTH), Ebeneezer Scrooge (NED DENNEHY), Mr Bumble (RICHARD RIDINGS), Mrs Bumble (CAROLINE QUENTIN), Mrs Gamp (PAULINE COLLINS), Captain James Hawdon (BEN STARR), Honoria Barbary (SOPHIE RUNDLE), Frances Barbary (ALEXANDRA MEON) and Mr Venus (OMID DJALILI) in the BBC Drama Dickensian. Dickensian airs on Boxing Day at 7pm and 8.30pm on BBC One.

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Gods and religion in Shakespeare’s work [infographic]

Shortly after her coronation in 1558 Queen Elizabeth I reasserted and maintained royal supremacy within the English church, thus confirming her power as a Protestant leader. Shakespeare’s writing flourished under her reign, when Catholic and Protestant doctrines developed distinct methods of worship, mediation, and, perhaps most significantly, power and authority.

In this period of clashing theological ideals and vacillating religious leadership, Shakespeare produced works that explored numerous religious themes, raising universal questions concerning doubt, doctrine, and spirituality in the natural world. Most of his work incorporates references to religious literature, including the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Plays such as All’s Well That Ends Well, Henry VIII, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and The Merchant of Venice are set in a Christian world, but he also wrote many popular plays that include non-Christian deities, such as Antony and Cleopatra, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Troilus and Cressida, and Cymbeline. With these works, he conveyed a complex understanding of both public and private religious crises from multiple perspectives.

Download the infographic as a PDF or JPG.

Featured Image: “Vitrail Cathédrale Troyes” by Vassil. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

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Test your knowledge of Baruch Spinoza [quiz]

This December, the OUP Philosophy team has chosen Baruch Spinoza as their Philosopher of the Month. The seventeenth century philosopher was seen as a controversial figure due to his views on God and religion, leading to excommunication and herem from the Amsterdam Jewish community, and his books being banned by the Church. His posthumous book, Ethics, is seen as one of the most important contributions to modern Western philosophy. His rationalist arguments have influenced leading philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gottfried Leibniz, and many more to come. How much do you know about Baruch Spinoza?

Featured image credit: Pond and Building in The Hague, Netherlands. CC0 Public domain via Pixabay.

Quiz image credit: C. 1665 Portrait of Baruch Spinoza. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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A few of our favorite things

In the spirit of Christmas (and in honor of our all-time-favorite daytime talk show host), our present to you is a list of some of our favorite things from 2015. We hope you enjoy reading our list as much as we did writing it. Keep an eye on the blog for exciting new content and some brand new blog series in 2016!

Using voice recognition software in oral history transcription

One of our first posts of the year was also one of our most popular. In January, Sam Snyder reviewed transcription software, which could make all of our lives much easier. In a couple of weeks, we’ll be going deeper into the world of transcription to bring you an interview with a couple of real, live professional transcriptionists.

Uniqueness lost

A personal favorite of mine, this post asks how we can honor the stories we record while still staying true to the goals of our project. Sometimes the most beautiful memories emerge on the boundaries of relevance, and I love the way Eliza Lambert approaches this problem.

On spatial strategies of narration

When we read Tim Cole’s article, “(Re)Placing the Past: Spatial Strategies of Retelling Difficult Stories,” we knew we had to talk to him about it. Our interview with him became another one of our most popular pieces, and spawned an upcoming blog series. Come back in the coming months, to read an ongoing conversation between Cole and Hank Greenspan about their usage of space and time in oral history.

Building community and ecoliteracy through oral history

We’re strong believers in the role of oral history as a tool for students of all ages. Kate Kuszmar did a great job of showcasing the educational value of oral history in her OHR article, “From Boat to Throat: How Oral Histories Immerse Students in Ecoliteracy and Community Building,” and we were excited to bring her into the blog. She explained that oral history helped her students understand the bigger issues facing fishing communities in California and the power of narration.

Bringing the Digital Humanities into the classroom

Doug Boyd agreed to talk with us about his usage of oral history in the classroom as well. Following up on an article he co-wrote in the OHR, Boyd discussed some of the valuable lessons both he and the students learned from their experiences with oral history-focused assignments and the groundbreaking Oral History Metadata Synchronizer.

Listening on the Edge

We would be remiss not to include any of our incredible podcasts, and one of our favorites from this year was a three way conversation between Mark Cave, Stephen Sloan, and Troy Reeves. In addition to talking about the book Cave and Sloan co-edited, they took seriously the need for oral historians to think about their own self-care when listening to difficult stories.

Narrating Nostalgia

Another one of my personal favorites, this interview with Jennifer Helgren follows up on her article in the OHR, “A ‘Very Innocent Time’: Oral History Narratives, Nostalgia and Girls’ Safety in the 1950s and 1960s.” In both the article and the interview, Helgren explores the ways narrators re-write the past as a way of understanding and critiquing the present. She offers a powerful methodology of listening to narrators, especially when their memories may not line up with other recorded facts.

Archivist by day, audio enthusiast by night: an interview with Dana Gerber-Margie

Finally, we were so happy to be able to talk to Dana Gerber-Margie about her audio newsletter. We are avid readers of the newsletter, and getting to talk about its origins and production was a real treat. Gerber-Margie will be returning to the blog in early 2016 to kick off a blog series that we are incredibly excited to start.

Thanks for indulging our cheesy clip show while we take a little bit of a break with our friends and families. We have a great lineup of blog posts coming down the pipe that we can’t wait to share with you. See you next year!

*Note: We wrote this piece while listening to the Sound of Music Soundtrack on repeat, and highly recommend you do the same while reading it.

Image Credit: “More Presents” by Aaron Jacobs. CC BY SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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Plagiarism or text recycling? It depends on the context.

If you went to college, your school likely had an official statement about plagiarism similar to this one from Oxford University:

Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement. All published and unpublished material, whether in manuscript, printed or electronic form, is covered under this definition. Plagiarism may be intentional or reckless, or unintentional…

Verbatim (word for word) quotation without clear acknowledgement

Quotations must always be identified as such by the use of either quotation marks or indentation, and with full referencing of the sources. It must always be apparent to the reader which parts are your own independent work and where you have drawn on someone else’s ideas and language.

On the surface, such statements seem straightforward, so you might be surprised to learn that they don’t adequately fit some aspects of scholarly writing in the sciences.

Consider the two passages in the figure below—one from the “methods” sections of a student’s senior thesis and the other from an article written by her thesis mentor (and others), published years earlier.

Should this be considered plagiarism? Certainly not.

Now, if the student had been an English major and the source text was a literary essay, the different context might well lead to a different answer. But this student was working within the accepted standards of neuroscience under the guidance of an expert in the discipline, and the source text was a research report published in a scientific journal. As I discuss in my viewpoint essay, certain types of text recycling are not only common in the sciences, they have been formally recognized as acceptable (and perhaps sometimes desirable) practice by the Committee on Publication Ethics. Should this be considered plagiarism? Certainly not.

For those unfamiliar with this aspect of contemporary scientific writing, it is worth noting that the sentence “Signal pixels of a region of interest were defined as having a gray value of three standard deviations above the mean gray value of a cell-poor area close to the region of interest” appears verbatim or nearly so in at least five of the mentor’s publications, and with only slight variation in many other publications as shown by the Google Scholar search results in the figure below.

Evidence of text recycling conventions in neuroscience: Some of the hits from a Google Scholar search for ‘”Signal pixels” “region of interest” were defined as being  standard deviations above the mean gray value” of a cell poor area “close to” the “region of interest”‘.

Do students in scientific fields often confront decisions about text recycling? I suspect they do. In the past year, I have given two invited talks on the conventions and ethics of text recycling to Duke University graduate students as part of their RCR (Responsible Conduct of Research) training. At both events, a number of students indicated that they had already faced situations in their own writing involving decisions about text recycling—especially those who had joined established lab groups that had published papers closely related to the student’s own research. Perhaps it is time that universities acknowledged text recycling as an established practice in the sciences—in their plagiarism policies and in their teaching.

Featured image credit: Photo by condesign. CC0 public domain via Pixabay. 

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When gods become shelterless: rituals and reconstructing temples in post-earthquake Nepal

With the devastating earthquake in Nepal on 25 April 2015, not only humans but also gods became shelterless. The famous Car Narayan or Fourfold Vishnu Temple in Patan is one of the many temples that completely collapsed. It was constructed in the classical Newar “pagoda” style with two pyramidal roofs and an inner ambulatory by a local ruler, Purandara Simha, in 1565. It is a royal temple, established in celebration of the king’s inauguration sacrifice (rajasuya). The only other temples equal in age, details, and quality are the western portal of Indreshvara Temple in Panauti and the southern portal of the Yakseshvara Temple in Bhaktapur, both which survived the earthquake almost unharmed.

With the collapse of the Car Narayan Temple the sanctum sanctorum remained while everything else broke into pieces. Already two days after the earthquake, Rohit Ranjtkar of the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust (KVPT), which has its project office just a few paces away, mobilized 150 Armed Police and 50 policemen to salvage all valuable architectural fragments. Helpers collected all the wood-carved struts, doors and windows, and safeguarded them in the compound of the nearby Patan Museum.

However, the main deity remained there almost naked and unprotected. The pillar with the Fourfold Vishnu suddenly stood under the sky on top of the stepped terrace that once bore the proud temple. Quite a few years are needed to provide shelter again. International donors, among them the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University, are supporting its reconstruction. But can the deity wait so long?

The local people feeling uneasy in this situation quickly organized a kind of pacification ritual (kshemapuja), covered the sanctum with cloth and built a temporary shelter. They thus provided some kind of home for the Fourfold Vishnu.

Apparently, humans cannot imagine that omnipresent deities might cope with such situations easier than all the homeless victims who still wait in Nepal their destroyed housed to be rebuilt. The members of the Mahima Dharma, a religious group in Orissa, worship the Void. They thus build temples in which nothing is. However, they also feeling the urge to venerate something, worship the threshold. It seems that in desperate moments we need somebody to address. And it would be very impolite not to provide him or her a sheltered place.

Unfortunately, what is so obvious for gods, does not work for humans. Since almost half a year rebuilding destroyed homes has been unnecessarily delayed by lack of clear government policy – despite the many financial help that was offered by international community. Since four months, many locals are still living in tents or makeshift shelters next to their ruined homes. After another half of the year the one-year death rituals for those who have been killed in the earthquake will have to be performed. These rituals are to guide the deceased to a “safe” place in death god Yama’s world. In this world, winter begins and the homeless survivors still struggle for a basic accommodation.

Image credit: “Shiva’s family blessing the Kathmandu valley” by Francisco Anzola, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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Christmas in New York: the restaurants and shops that help us celebrate

Looking for a place to get the essentials for a Christmas Eve feast? Or perhaps you’re leaving the cooking to the professionals and you’re looking for a place to make a reservation? With the holiday season in full swing, what better way to celebrate than enjoying some of New York City’s top eats! We have compiled a list of some of the best New York City food and market spots from our latest title Savoring Gotham: A Food Lover’s Guide to New York City. Enjoy and be merry!

Arthur Avenue: In the heart of the Bronx, Arthur Avenue is synonymous for its food and cultural venues of Italian and Italian American food. Here you can find a variety of restaurants and markets that are sure to cover your recipe needs. Looking for fish for your Feast of Seven Fishes? Check out Randazzo’s and Cosenza’s fish markets where you can buy the freshest from the sea. Or maybe you are just looking for a dessert to top off your meal. With some of the best pastry and bakery shops around you won’t have to look too far. Try out the traditional Addeo Bakery, home to their crusty Italian bread – wrapped in paper and string- or De Lillo’s Pastry Shop where their pastries taste as if you were in Napoli, Italy. With a wide variety of Italian cuisine, be sure to add Arthur Avenue to your list.

Eataly: Home to the most complete selection of Italian regional groceries, Eataly is a one-stop shop for all things Italian. Nearly fifty eight thousand square feet, Eataly is located on the first floor of the former International Toy Center Building on Fifth Avenue. Here you can check out Fulton Fish Market, eat from one of the seven restaurants, including their rooftop  La Birreria, or choose your choice of takeaway.

Red Rooster:  If you’re looking for American comfort food with Swedish and African influences, then Red Rooster is the place to be! Ethiopian born and Swedish-raised celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson opened The Red Rooster in 2010 and it has since become a place of energy and excitement, as well as being a mark of diversity among other restaurants in the area.

Katz’s Delicatessen: This legendary spot, made most famous by New Yorkers themselves, is the perfect spot to grab some of the best platters, sandwiches, and meats. Ranging from pastrami to corned beef, sauerkraut and homemade Russian dressing; this is your go to place.

Fraunces Tavern: This landmark restaurant located in the Financial District is a colonial American tavern which is said to be the site where General George Washington offered his farewell at the end of the Revolutionary War. Today it is both a museum and restaurant. Check this local hot spot for a bit of history, craft beer, and great food.

McSorley’s Old Ale House:  Another New York hot spot, McSorley’s Old Ale House is the oldest continually operating Irish Bar. With few modern improvements, McSorley’s sports rickety chairs, sawdust strewn floors, and memorabilia covered walls that make it feel as if you’ve transported back in time.

Delmonico’s: Since the 1830’s, movie stars, socialites and the like have all made their stop at Delmonico’s. The true essence of fine dining, this premier New York restaurant will not be the cheapest, but will be sure to satisfy your eating delights.

Dylan’s Candy Bar: Daughter of fashion designer Ralph Lauren, Dylan Lauren is the “brainchild” of one of New York’s candy empires. It’s a must visit for those with a sweet tooth for all things candy related.

Feature Image: “2013 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting” by Anthony Quintano, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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Top five holiday-related crimes

The holiday season is a time for sharing, spreading peace, and promoting goodwill… but it’s also a time went tempers fray, people over-indulge and the outright criminal elements of society take advantage of spirit of the season to wreak havoc. Here are five of the most appalling holiday crimes, from opening presents early, right through to Santacide (not really).

1. Away in a manger

The most heinous holiday crime of all (barring shipping Santa off to Guantanamo Bay) is the abduction of baby Jesus himself. Before you imagine the three wise men in a Baby’s Day Out type scenario – I’m talking about a plastic nativity Jesus. These figurines are regularly stolen from nativity scenes all over the world, prompting one Indianapolis nursing home to install a GPS tracking devices on Jesus’ manger. In his autobiography, rock star Marilyn Manson admits to a spree of baby Jesus thefts as a teenager. Manson replaced the figurines with a ham and contacted a local paper posing as a black radical group supposedly protesting against “the plasticisation of the black man’s wisdom with the so-called White Christmas.”

2. Be good for Christmas sake!

I’m sure we’ve all been caught peeling back the wrapping paper on a gift to get a glimpse of what’s inside, or inspecting the contours of a package, trying to guess if it’s a Buzz Lightyear or just new socks. As long you don’t actually open it – it’s fine right? One little angel from South Carolina went a step further. After opening his new Game Boy several weeks early, the boy was charged with petty larceny when his mother called the police. Rumour has it Santa has also put the boy permanently on the naughty list.

3. A not so precious load…

A Christmas market in Spain was the setting for a nativity scene tainted with regret and accidental animal slaughter in 2014. An obese local resident climbed into the ‘living nativity scene’ at the market and posed for a photo astride a miniature donkey. Baby Jesus’ Christmas companion was actually a baby donkey named Platero and died later from severe internal injuries. The local man responsible for killing the donkey didn’t escape public shame as the image quickly went viral. The overweight man wearing festive green pants was later made known to the authorities and was said to be deeply sorry for the Christmas prank gone wrong.

4. This is a ho ho hold-up!

‘The Santa Claus Bank Robbery’ as it has become known is a heist worthy of a Christmas movie directed by Quentin Tarantino. The bank robbery took place on 23 December 1927 in Texas. The mastermind of the heist, Marshall Ratcliff, walked into a Texas bank dressed as Santa Claus accompanied by two other ex-cons. The plot was foiled by a customer and her two daughters who wanted to meet Santa but after seeing that he and his helpers were heavily armed, ran into the street and raised the alarm. In 1927 Texas, bank robberies were occurring at a rate of 3-4 a day, and a $5000 reward had been offered to anyone who shot a bank robber during a robbery. With the town residents alerted to the heist, the Santa Claus’ crime outfit were met with a hail of bullets as they made their escape. Over a hundred shots were fired by armed residents who had rushed to the hardware store to grab rifles. Despite the armed militia outside, the gang managed to escape leading to the biggest manhunt in Texas history.

5. The Grinch who stole Christmas

The Christmas crime that has caused the most fatalities (if we include the death of childhood innocence) is the case of the man in Kingston, Ontario who ruined the Santa Claus parade by telling children Santa wasn’t real. The inebriated local man had a little too much Christmas cheer and after moulding his hair into the shape of two horns, preceded to work his way down the street and systematically tell children Santa ‘isn’t real.’ He must have had too much to drink if he seriously didn’t believe in Santa! Needless to say, he was arrested for a breach of the peace after leaving a trail of distraught children in his wake.

Header image credit: Winter Wintry Snow landscape by Cocoparisienne. CC0 via Pixabay.

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Handbells: a festive instrument

Handbells aren’t just ringing for the Salvation Army this holiday season. If you’ve ever tuned in to a holiday music special, you’ve probably seen a handbell choir playing the Christmas standards. Handbells have been a part of the holiday landscape for hundreds of years. Here are some facts you may not know about handbells:

1.   People who play handbells are called “ringers.” We’ve heard all the jokes—don’t worry.

2.   There are only two handbell makers in the United States, Schulmerich and Malmark, and they have a longstanding rivalry. Ringers are adamant in their preference of one over the other, and you can’t mix makers in your choir—they sound quite different. The rivalry is so famous and fascinating that the NPR podcast Planet Money devoted an episode to it.

3.   To ring a bell, hold it between your thumb and pointer finger and wrap remaining fingers around the base. Drop the bell as if you’re creating a great circle with it, keeping the wrist perpendicular to the ground at all times (some handbell directors ask you to pretend you’re holding a glass you don’t want to spill) and the clapper will naturally hit the bell at the bottom of the arc. Each note you play must be damped at the appropriate time against the body—rung sounds decay slowly.

4.   Though they look like big hunks of indestructible metal, bells are actually quite fragile. Oils from ringers’ hands can degrade the finish on the bells. Bells are polished frequently and occasionally sent back to their makers for tune-ups (literally) that involve grinding small bits of bronze from the bell to maintain the proper sounding pitch and overtones. But the primary way to keep bells safe from tarnish is to wear gloves when handling them.

Bass handbell, Malmark. Photo by Wanda Lotus. Used with permission.

5.   There are many additional ways to play handbells beyond the standard ringing and damping described above. Arrangers often use different articulation techniques to create expressive changes and multiple timbres in a single piece. While ringing a bell has a sustained sound, many of these techniques stop the sound or change the sound of the bell in drastic ways. This list details the many different ways bells can be played, and many can be heard in action in the videos linked below.

6.   Handbell performers, no matter their level of experience, must learn to move and work together. Most ringers are assigned two consecutive letter-named bells (along with their sharp/flat counterparts) that they must play regardless of whether they are part of melody or accompaniment lines. Ringers often find themselves participating in both a melody and accompaniment line (sometimes simultaneously), and must work with their fellow ringers to create consistent musical lines that pass quickly between several performers. Watch how seamlessly the professionals in the Raleigh Ringers perform this holiday classic.

7.   Handbell tune ringing is descended from a practice called change ringing, which can be done with handbells or, more commonly, the peal bells in a church tower. In change ringing, each bell in the set is assigned a number, and ringers play all the “changes” (i.e., possible permutations of these numbers) before completing the ring. Depending on the number of bells that participate and the size of the bells, this can take several hours. Change-ringing has also been used as an example of mathematical concepts in combinatorics.

8.   Because handbell ringing is so community-oriented, when choirs get together at handbell festivals, they often will perform a set of pieces all together. This can mean upwards of 600 bells in the same room, ringing simultaneously. This video from a recent festival doesn’t do it justice, but it’s still an incredible sight.

9.   In the upper octaves, bells become very small and it’s possible to hold more than one in a hand. More experienced ringers will be asked to play the upper octave doublings in this register, holding each bell and its octave double in such a way that either bell could be played on its own. Called “four-in-hand” for the four bells the ringer will hold (two in each hand), the ringer lays the handles of the bells perpendicular to one another so that by changing the rotation of the hand, each bell can be struck separately, or by changing the rotation yet again, all together. Holding three bells in each hand (“six-in-hand”) requires even more finesse and is rare in choral ringing.

10.   Although traditionally handbells are played by a group of ringers, each responsible for two to six bells, some handbell ringers challenge themselves by doing solo-ringing. Unlike choral ringing, where a ringer is responsible for a particular line and space on the staff (and occasionally the octave doublings), a solo-ringer must play it all by herself—a challenging feat that requires extensive planning and choreography. Solo-ringers are often compared to dancers—and for good reason. Here is one such performance.

Headline image credit: Handbells. Photo by Suguri F. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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Reflecting on international human rights law

The 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10th this year prompted some reflections and grounds for concern about international human rights law.

The field has long faced legitimacy problems because the bad fit between the fundamental values of particular cultures and the Western-oriented character of human rights law as shown, for example, by efforts to reconcile rule of law concepts with the belief in witchcraft, firmly held, in some parts of Africa. More recently, however, states have become willing to raise what amount to challenges to the legitimacy of regional human rights institutions in which the challenging states have long participated. This happens with respect to particular cases, e.g., Brazil’s rejection of the precautionary measures voted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in the Belo Monte dam matter; Ecuador’s similar action in a matter relating to political dissidents; or the British Parliament’s overwhelming rejection of voting rights for persons confined in prison in defiance of the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the Hirst case. More fundamentally, states have also sought to clip the wings of human rights bodies, as shown by the adoption of the Brighton Declaration by the states of the Council of Europe in 2012 and the series of amendments to the Rules of Procedure of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights that Professor Shelton has called “attempts . . . to curtail the functioning and powers of the Commission.” Venezuela’s outright denunciation of the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights does not merely limit the reach of regional human rights institutions; it completely eliminates the authority of the Inter-American Court.

Of course, some of these actions reflect no more than annoyance of a state that is actually violating human rights to be formally labeled a violator by a human rights institution. However, not all of these state reactions can simply be dismissed as wrong-headed evasions of the rule of law. For example, the arguable inconsistency between the judgment in Hirst and that in Scoppola v. Italy justifies questions about the former decision. Further, if one rejects the doctrine that human rights bodies can never be wrong, one has to consider states’ limited options in the face of mistakes by such institutions, given the absence of any clear, workable mechanism for dealing with institutional over-reach in this context.

Beyond these questions regarding the content of human rights law and state questioning of the work of human rights institutions, Professor Engle has noted a difficulty going to the fundamental justification for the existence of this body of law: increasing acceptance of the view that denying impunity to human rights violators is so important a goal that achieving it trumps any other consideration, no matter what the facts of a particular situation. As she points out, it is as though that the whole purpose of human rights law is not preventing future human rights violations, but rather punishing past misdeeds. In effect, proponents of this view would seem to prefer that a conflict continue if the alternative is ending that conflict through an arrangement that includes an amnesty for violators of human rights. It is surely ironic that legal protection of international human rights seems to be seen increasingly as a matter of international criminal law at a time when fundamental questions are being raised about that body of law.

None of this is to deny the importance of the concept of human rights. Indeed, respect for that concept is practically universal, at least on the rhetorical level. China is fiercely opposed to outside interference in its internal affairs, but nonetheless acknowledged a duty to promote and protect human rights in its report to the UN Human Rights Council in 2013. ASEAN adopted a human rights declaration in 2012, not quite twenty years after the Bangkok declaration staked out an Asian position suggesting considerable suspicion of the very idea. Myanmar’s military apparently will abide by the results of a free election, accepting significant limits on its power.

My point, instead, is that these examples suggest that the power of the idea of human rights does not depend on acceptance of international legal standards or on oversight by international or regional bodies. Conversely, there seems to be no inconsistency between the strengthening of the force of the idea of human rights and the weakening of international/regional mechanisms for the enforcement of human rights law.

Featured image: Yosemite Valley, United States. Photo by Mike Petrucci. CC0 via Unsplash. 

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