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Meet Dr. Kathy Battista, Benezit’s new Editor in Chief

Oxford is thrilled to welcome Dr. Kathy Battista as the new Editor in Chief of the Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Get to know Dr. Battista with our Q&A session below.

What is your role at Sotheby’s Institute?

I am Director of the MA program in Contemporary Art. I moved from London in 2007 to establish this program in New York. I formulate the curriculum and guide the program, working closely with my faculty, and aim to give the students the best experience possible over the course of eighteen months. My approach is to combine a strong art historical training (of the kind I received at the Courtauld) with practical and professional skills. I also try to get the students to think outside of the box in terms of what their career path might be.

Who influenced you in pursuing your studies in art history and your career in teaching?

While an undergraduate at Fordham University, I took an Introduction to Art History class with Professor Katherine Heleniak and was hooked. She, and her colleague Dr. Carmen Bambach, a Michelangelo scholar who is now Curator of Drawings and Prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, are major influences on my career. These women are intelligent, dedicated, and infectiously enthusiastic about their subjects. I found inspiration in the way that they approached their work in all formats and I thought “I want to be like them.” They were important role models as teachers because they truly loved what they taught, were generous with their knowledge, and always pushed me to do better and reach further. They are also both incredibly elegant women who break the old stereotype of the art historian in a grey cardigan.

In London I worked with some of the most amazing professors including Laura Mulvey, Mark Cousins, Steve Connor, Colin MacCabe and the late Paul Hirst. Studying with this calibre of thinkers made me think in a more critical and interdisciplinary way. I now find it impossible to think about art without considering architecture, film, performance, and politics alongside it.

Kathy Battista

What is the most important issue in your field right now?

I believe that there are several crucial issues in the contemporary art field at present.

First is the proliferation of the contemporary art market. Contemporary art, once the bastion of an international elite, has moved into the mainstream. It is great that more people are visiting museums than ever before; however, we need to be wary of creating spectacle and remember that there is a place for art that is modest, quiet, ephemeral, and challenging. Also we must remember that, after the market frenzy, in the end we will return to the art that we love the most rather than what is worth the most money.

Another issue at present is the huge change in art historical methodology with the development of online culture. Now that so much information is available online, it frees time in the classroom for more discussion, dialogue, and debate. It also allows more time to see objects in the field. This is a huge development and I think as educators we are all still catching up to this massive change.

I’m also interested in sustainability and contemporary art. Living in the so-called age of the anthropocene, we are in a world riddled with ecological crises, from oil spills to earthquakes and superstorms. I think increasingly artists will be called upon to find ways to find solutions working with scientists. They will also hopefully want to create works using a smaller carbon footprint. Artists are always at the forefront of technology, and I believe it will be interesting to see how artists deal with the climate crisis. How one finds a balance between beauty and economy of scale and materials is an interesting problem.

What are you currently reading (personally or work related)?

I’m currently reading Siona Wilson’s Art Labor, Sex Politics: Feminist Effects in 1970s British Art and Performance. It’s a wonderful read that offers an in-depth discussion of some of my favorite British works from the 1970s, including the film Nightcleaners; Mary Kelly’s early films; and Jo Spence’s important work. Siona writes beautifully and the book is so thoroughly researched. It’s just a joy. I also have The Great Mother and Arts and Foods catalogues beside my bed; both are from exhibitions I saw recently in Milan.

Can you give us a fun fact about your work?

I bring my dog Fifi to work every day. She is an eleven pound shih tzu who has been paralyzed twice but is now better than ever. She has a bed in my office and we call her Dr. Fifi Battista. We joke that she is the resident therapist because she makes us all laugh a lot, even during the most stressful days.

What do you think makes Benezit a valuable resource?

Benezit is an extremely valuable resource for students and researchers as a first stop for information. It is also useful for discovering new artists and fact checking biographical and bibliographic information, as well as reviewing auction records and signatures. It is wonderful that it is an online resource as it is so widely accessible.

What do you envision for Benezit’s future?

I envision a Benezit Dictionary of Artists with more images, more entries, and perhaps new categories. I hope to include a more diverse array of artists, more women and younger artists.

Which artists’ work interests you most at the moment?

There are so many artists that I’m interested in: younger artists like K8 Hardy, Kate Gilmore, Firelei Baez, Zackary Drucker, Juliana Huxtable, Martin Gutierrez; iconic artists like Carolee Schneemann, Marybeth Edelson, Mary Kelly, Judy Chicago, David Hammons, Dan Graham, E.A.T., Hans Haacke; and increasingly I’m interested in artists who work outside of the established mainstream including John Hiltunen, William Scott, and Uman. I recently bought two ceramic works created by a blind sculptor who works with Creative Growth Center in Oakland, CA.

My new book, New York New Wave, The Legacy of Feminist Art in Emerging Practice includes a chapter on drag and trans artists. I love how second wave feminism is being re-evaluated and understood through the lens of a younger population of artists who are again seeking equal rights, equal representation and working against oppression.

What changes have you noticed in the art market in the past ten years?

The contemporary art market in particular has ballooned in the past decade. I remember when Old Masters were the most valuable art commodities. Now contemporary art has taken over that position. It’s been fascinating to see the market defy any resistance in the wider economic crises and continue to thrive. Blue chip art has outperformed stocks and bonds in the past half century.

It’s also been interesting to see more women and artists of color entering the mainstream market. I’ve been excited to walk into art fairs and see feminist artists holding prime positions in booths. You would not have seen that fifteen years ago. But women artists are still undervalued and remain a disproportionately small part of the market.

What was the last artwork or exhibition you saw that you couldn’t wait to show to someone else?

The last exhibition I saw that I couldn’t wait to share with someone else was Arts & Foods – Rituals since 1851, a show curated by Germano Celant on the occasion of the World Expo at the Triennale building in Milan. I love the sheer breath and ambition of this show, moving from the turn of the twentieth century to the future. It includes recreations of period kitchens, artworks, graphic design, industrial design and film. It’s a great theme and was such a delight to walk through. How often do I get to walk through a Futurist kitchen? Or see a Cubist teapot in the flesh?

“Café Milanais 1900 (Arts & Foods, Triennale de Milan)” by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

What art would you hang on the walls of the home of your worst enemy?

Bruce Nauman’s Clown Torture or any of Ryan Trecartin’s video work. I love both of these artists but watching these videos can be challenging and disruptive.

Alternatively, if you were being permanently banished to a desert island, how would you decorate your house in your exile?

If I were stuck on a desert island I’d decorate the walls with works by my artist friends. I love having pieces that remind me of people as it feels like a little bit of them is there in the room with me. So I would want Dan Graham, Mary Kelly, Judy Chicago, Linder, Elif Uras, Richard Mosse, Katie Holten, Sherin Guirguis, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Tom Burr, Haluk Akakce, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Hadrian Pigott, O Zhang, Ali Emir, Mentalklinik, and the list goes on and on…

Headline image credit: Paintbrushes by PublicDomainPictures. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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When aging policies can’t keep up with aging families

The very look and feel of families today is undergoing profound changes. Are public policies keeping up with the shifting definitions of “family”? Moreover, as the population ages within these new family dynamics, how will families give or receive elder care? Below, we highlight just a few social changes that are affecting the experiences of aging families.

Divorces and remarriages

Divorces are no longer just for young couples. The divorce rate for longtime marriages has doubled since 1990 and tripled among those 65 and older – the wave of so-called “gray divorce” which is sure to grow in the decades ahead. Divorce has a profound impact on finances for both men and women, though women usually face larger economic setbacks, especially if they have had limited workforce involvement. For both men and women, divorce strains or can eliminate retirement savings. For men, divorce often takes a significant toll on relationships with children and other family members, which can also weaken social networks and care in later life. Remarriage, too, creates blended families and ambiguous or ambivalent responsibilities, especially when it comes to the support and care of stepchildren and stepparents.

Grandparents raising grandchildren

Public policy has not kept up with the rapidly increasing number of grandparents, especially grandmothers, who are primary caregivers to one or more of their grandchildren. In the last major census (2010), 5.8 million children under the age of 18 were living in households headed by grandparents, almost 8 percent of all children. More than 2.6 million of these children are the exclusive responsibility of their grandparents. These living situations require significant sacrifices on the grandparents, as a family crisis is usually the reason this responsibility was accepted. Programs in some states provide a full range of service to aid grandparents, such as preschool child care, foster care training, mental health counseling, and therapy. Other states use block grant programs to provide cash, food stamps, and free or low-cost day care to help grandparents. Paradoxically, many of these grandparents are too young to meet the age eligibility threshold of the Family Caregiver Support Program because they must be at least age 55. According to the U.S. Census, 69 percent of grandparents who are completely responsible for their grandchildren are not yet 50 and about 19 percent are under age 40.

Minority and immigrant families

Public policies are also out of sync with the realities faced by minority and immigrant families. Minority participation in formal care settings, such as skilled nursing centers, is low due to many factors – not only to cost, but also to cultural expectations that elders are to be cared for by their children. Indeed, older minorities have strong expectations of family support and may not make financial plans with anything other than this outcome in mind. However, as more minority and immigrant women enter the workforce, this expectation may not be realistic in the coming decades.

Same-sex couples and families

In the last few years, public policies for same-sex couples and their families rapidly evolved in the U.S., culminating in the landmark June 2015 Supreme Court decision in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges. This ruling should guarantee same-sex couples in all states the right to marry and have their marriages recognized. We have much to learn about what these changes mean for how same-sex couples will plan for or experience later life. In addition, having legal status and recognition are not the same as having social status and recognition, especially in a country like the U.S., for which gay marriage has been such a volatile political and social issue.

Singlehood/childlessness and prolonged parenting

Single Americans are at an historic high in the U.S., with non-married adults over the age of 25 making up about 20 percent of the adult population in 2012, compared to just nine percent in 1960. Many will also not have children, whether inside or outside of marriage. Indeed, Millennials do not feel the same need to marry and to have children that their parents did. In this respect, they save the government money because there are fewer children to educate. However, there are also fewer people to support Social Security funding in the future. Many parents with adult children are supporting their children financially through their 20s and 30s. It remains to be seen what this extended support will mean for the long-term resources and options of parents as they approach retirement.

Conclusion

As family configurations become more complex and nuanced, so too, should our policies that address the needs, care, and support of aging families. Whether that means adapting current policies to fit reality or creating new ones, these circumstances should be studied more closely to fully understand how public policy can facilitate the care and integration of aging families now and in the future.

Featured image credit: Photo by dassel. CC0 Public domain via Pixabay. 

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Place of the Year 2015 nominee spotlight: Cuba

This week, we’re shining the spotlight on another one of our Place of the Year 2015 shortlist contenders: Cuba. This year was rather significant for this Latin American country; for the first time in over five decades, the United States reopened diplomatic ties with Cuba, with the help of Pope Francis and the Vatican in late 2014. Now, controversy arises as concerned Cuban citizens worry about the impact that the incoming waves of tourists will have on its environment— specifically its coral reefs.

There’s a lot to know about Cuba, so in the spirit of highlighting this nominee, we’ve pulled together a list of interesting facts that we’d like to share.

Capitol Building. Photo by Bud Ellison. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

1. Cuban exports include sugar, cigars, medicines, citrus fruits, fish, rum, and nickel oxide—the biggest export of the country.

2. Gender reassignment surgeries are covered under Cuba’s universal healthcare system, and have been since 2008.

3. Mountains and hills cover about a quarter of Cuba, with the highest mountain range, the Sierra Maestra, reaching 6,562 ft (2,000 m) above sea level.

4. Guantánamo Bay is technically leased to the United States for use; however, the Cuban government has not cashed any of the annual rent checks of $4,000, issued by the U.S. Treasury, since 1959.

5. Before 1959, US companies owned most of Cuba’s manufacturing industries but became government property under Fidel Castro’s rule.

6. During the Cuban insurrection, Cuban women would transport weapons through the country by sewing them into the pleats of their hoop skirts.

7. The tourism industry in Cuba employs about 100,000 people (many more if you include informal enterprises like prostitution) and generates around $2 billion annually.

Make sure to cast your vote on the shortlist for Place of the Year 2015 by 30 November.

Place of the Year 2015 shortlist

Keep checking back on the OUPblog, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr for regular updates and content on our Place of the Year 2015 contenders.

Headline Image Credit: Cuba. Photo by Balint Földesi. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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Not a Beatle: Andy White

Every major news source last week carried news of Andy White’s death at 85. The Guardian’s “Early Beatles Drummer Andy White Dies at 85” represents a typical article title intended to attract readers albeit with misinformation that suggests that a particular two-minute-and-twenty-second episode from his life should be why we remember him.

The late guitarist Big Jim Sullivan described Andy White as “fearless,” summing up the calm and determination that the Scotsman brought to recording sessions. The drummer, who would be in the studio before anyone else with his kit in place, anonymously participated in the creation numerous hit records and with his passing we lose one more contact with a remarkable era in music.

Andy White. Promotional photo. Image courtesy of the Gordon R. Thompson.

In the sixties London, the limited number of available recording studios proved a formidable challenge for the young British musicians who flooded the popular music market. The major record companies that controlled the primary studios largely reserved access to their facilities for their artists, but, with hundreds of acts wanting to record, studios still had to limit sessions to three-hour slots. For each of these three-hour sessions, the company (and EMI, Decca, and Pye) expected an artist-and-repertoire manager (later called a producer) to create four completed songs. This context placed considerable pressure on musicians whom recording managers expected perfect performances of music they had only just encountered.

Professionals called the recording fright experienced by amateurs “red-light fever”—the inability to play when the balance engineer lit recording sign—and the industry came to rely upon a core community of musicians who could deliver on command. Everyone would be in the studio and ready to go when the union clock started and usually had about thirty minutes to create and to complete a convincing interpretation of a musical idea. In this endeavor Andy White established the musical bedrock upon which others built. Such was the situation on Monday 11 September 1962.

Ringo Starr has described the experience of arriving at EMI’s facilities in Abbey Road thinking he would be recording only to discover another drummer and his kit already set up and ready to go. A week earlier, the Liverpudlian had played on a version of the song “Love Me Do” and was ready to redo it along with two other Lennon-McCartney songs: “P.S., I Love You” and “Please Please Me.” But artist-and-repertoire manager George Martin had been unhappy with the 4 September session and, although he was giving The Beatles another chance, he did so with the condition that they use a session drummer. His assistant Ron Richards called Andy White.

Andy was never a member of The Beatles, but he did belong to an elite community of musicians called by recording managers to save the day every day, if not with their musical ability, then with a sense of humor that could diffuse the tension. Make no mistake, Andy White had high standards that he brought to everything he did, as well as a wit as dry as the Sahara.

Raised in Glasgow, his baker father loved drumming and encouraged Andy in this pursuit, which in this context meant pipe bands. After joining the Boy Scouts in order to play in their band, he went on to play with the Rutherglen Pipe Band, reveling in the discipline of the tight musicianship that such ensembles embrace with passion. Andy of course also played in dance bands, but remained an amateur musician until bandleader Vic Lewis heard him and extended an invitation to go professional. He would tour with the Lewis band for six years in the early fifties, including opening for Bill Haley and His Comets during their February 1957 UK tour.

With his innate musical ear, Andy quickly took to rock ‘n’ roll with television producer Jack Good choosing him to be in The Firing Squad, the resident band for his influential show Boy Meets Girls that performed weekly on live broadcasts. In that context, White developed his reputation as an undaunted studio master and a regular member of the backing bands for a long list of British artists such as Tom Jones, Lulu, Dusty Springfield, Joe Brown, and many others, including The Beatles.

Andy White at Skidmore College in 2006. Photo courtesy of Gordon R. Thompson.

In retirement, he moved to New Jersey in the United States and returned to his first love, pipe bands, which he coached for decades. It seems entirely fitting that Andy passed away on 11 November, Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth, a date commonly celebrated with the pipe-and-drum music he so loved. A humble gentleman, he seldom sought the spotlight instead devoting his life to making other people sound good. We will remember him by his good works.

Featured image: Cupcake Band. (c) tgsdesigner via iStock.

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The antimicrobial resistance crisis: is there a global solution?

The serendipitous discovery of Penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1929 positively transformed modern medicine. Fleming’s decision to spend his summer holiday in East Anglia and his casual approach to laboratory housekeeping was an auspicious combination. After his return to the laboratory he observed that an uncovered culture plate of Staphyloccocus bacteria had been contaminated with a fungus Penicillium notatum. Fleming’s decision not to discard this plate but to study the phenomenon further was the start of a new era of modern medicine.

The therapeutic potential of Penicillin to successfully treat infections that had previously killed patients was soon apparent. In 1941 the microbiologist Selman Waksman (who subsequently went on to discover more than 20 antibiotics himself) used the term ‘antibiotic’ for the first time. Antibiotics are small molecules that inhibit the growth of microbes and can be used clinically to treat a plethora of bacterial and fungal infections. The Golden Age of drug discovery had arrived and from the 1940s to the 1960s new drugs were discovered and developed. But as early as December 1945 Fleming’s sounded a note of warning in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

“It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them […]. The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops. Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.”

Unfortunately, Fleming’ premonition has been uncannily accurate. Over the last eighty years or so we have seen bacterial pathogens develop resistance to almost all of the antibiotics we have in current, clinical use. Bacteria carry the information required for antibiotic resistance in their DNA and some bacterial species are resistant to certain antibiotics as a direct result of their genetic make-up, metabolism and cellular structure. Other bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics in two different ways. Firstly in large populations of bacterial cells, spontaneous mutation in bacterial DNA can cause an individual bacterium to develop a resistance to an antibiotic. Secondly, bacteria can acquire antibiotic resistance from DNA that is transferred from a resistant bacterium to a non-resistant one. This horizontal transmission of antibiotic resistance can even occur between different species of bacteria. However acquiring antibiotic resistance is not an evolutionary advantage for a bacterium until a selection pressure is applied: the antibiotic. The antibiotic destroys any bacteria that are sensitive to antibiotics (not resistant) but bacteria that have acquired antibiotic resistance survive and multiply ensuring that the antibiotic resistant bacteria become the majority within the bacterial population. The animation below gives a visual explanation of horizontal transmission of antibiotic resistance.

Antibiotics and antibiotic resistance are not modern phenomena. Scientists analysed ‘rigorously authenticated ancient bacterial DNA’ recovered from Late Pleistocene permafrost sediments located at a site in the Yukon, Alaska. They identified a plethora of genes encoding resistance to a variety of antibiotics used today. These results revealed that genes encoding antibiotic resistance are found in bacteria from environments that predated humans and our use of antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance has been around for a long time.

Society’s generous adoption of antibiotics as a force for good is understandable and represents the optimistic, utopian view that science will always have the answers. However our reliance on antibiotics has consequences for antibiotic resistance; it is speeding up the process. The more we use antibiotics the more resistant bacteria are becoming. It is less than a hundred years since Fleming ‘discovered’ Penicillin and our reliance on antibiotics to treat life-threatening infections and prevent post surgery infections is at grave risk if we continue to use them inappropriately and with such casual abandon. Antibiotic use in modern agricultural practice and animal husbandry has increased dramatically and an increase in antimicrobial resistance has followed. Antibiotics are not effective against viruses yet antibiotics continue to be prescribed for viral infections and in some countries it is easy to purchase antibiotics without a prescription.

As patients, we continue to misuse antibiotics by demanding them for viral infections, and failing to finish the course of antibiotics when we feel better. The days when bacteria carried resistance to only one or two clinical antibiotics are becoming a thing of the past. Nowadays, it is not uncommon for life-threatening infections such as Tuberculosis and Gonorrhea to be caused by bacteria with extensive antibiotic drug resistance or even pan-drug resistance making them almost untreatable. Unfortunately, Antibiotic Resistance knows no borders. Cheap, easy travel means that resistant strains of bacteria can travel the globe effectively.

Unfortunately the Golden Age of antibiotic discovery is long gone; most commonly found antibiotics have been discovered and the discovery of a novel antimicrobial with a clinical impact is rare. In addition, pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to invest in a drug that is at best prescribed for a short period of time, and at worst kept on a shelf as a ‘reserve antibiotic’ to be used only when no other treatment is available.

Effective education, communication, and engagement lie at the heart of any solution and the good news is that this approach is working. Currently it is not just the medical profession and scientists who are highlighting this issue; society, the media, governments, and policymakers from across the globe now understand the scale of the problem. The result is that resources are being invested in examining the challenges and presenting potential solutions to this crisis and financial and regulatory incentives are being provided to address the lack of new antibiotics that are coming on stream. Concerted efforts are also being made across the agricultural and healthcare industries to improve antibiotic stewardship so that we preserve the usefulness of the antibiotics that we currently have at our disposal. Finally a priority must be to invest effort, expertise, and commitment to create a better-informed public that understands the issue of AMR and feels empowered to be part of the global solution.

Feature image credit: ‘Antibiotics’, by Iqbal Osman. CC-by-2.0 via Flickr.

Video credit: ‘Horizontal Transmission of Antibiotic Resistance’ by Distinct Signal. Video used with permission.

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You’ll be a man, my son. Part 2

This is the continuation of the story about the origin of the Germanic word for man. Last week I left off after expressing great doubts about the protoform that connected man and guma and tried to defend the Indo-European girl from an unpronounceable name. As could be expected, in their attempts to discover the origin of man etymologists cast a wide net for words containing m and n. Ghmonon, a cross between man and guma, reigned for a long time and was politely forgotten, though one can occasionally still see it in some books of questionable respectability. Some conjectures sound fanciful, even silly (for instance, “man is the last syllable of human”), and there is no need to review them here, but a few look or at one time looked persuasive, and references to them can be found in various dictionaries, especially the older ones. The most recent dictionaries are boringly noncommittal, so that the user comes away with very little information. Since no etymology is better than a wrong one, complaints would probably be out of place, especially because in much wisdom is much grief.

One of the oldest scholarly etymologies (perhaps even the oldest one) of man connected the Germanic word with Latin men ~ mentis, a gloss for and a cognate of Engl. mind (compare Engl. ment-al, dementia, etc.). According to a strong rule, Indo-European e can alternate only with o, not with a. Therefore, the authors of the men- ~ man hypothesis suggested that the earliest form of the Germanic word was mon, which only later became man. The assertion I once saw that the appearance of Latin a in the Latin e ~ o series should not trouble anyone sounds less than fully convincing. Neither the divine name Manus ~ Mannus discussed in the previous post (the learned term for a divine name is theonym) nor the Germanic forms support this reconstruction. Old Engl. mon, which alternated with man, is the product of a local rule, according to which Old Engl. a yielded o before n; mon has no value in establishing the etymon of the noun man. Besides, this etymology dissociates man from Manus ~ Mannus. The connection between the two is not a given, but ignoring it cannot be recommended.

Rodin on the etymology of man.

We have seen that finding the origin of the word man presents great difficulties because it is not clear what we are looking for. What could such an ancient generic term signify, and why did people coin it? In any case, “man” as “thinker” looks quite improbable, and it did not appeal to anyone, among other things, because our distant ancestors believed that animals too could “think.” To save the situation, it was suggested that the root at the foundation of the Indo-European word meant “aroused” or “mentally alert”; Latin mentula “penis,” a word of obscure origin, seemed to offer support to the idea of arousal. A Greek-Slavic parallel was pressed into service, but it did not go too far. The question remained open until “think” was interpreted as “breathe.” Despite the broad approval of that interpretation, no one could explain how “think” developed into “breathe.” In etymology, as probably elsewhere in scholarship or at least everywhere in the humanities, authority counts for more than good logic, and the authority behind the think-to-breathe idea (Falk and Torp) was great. Numerous laudatory comments rewarded it, and it partly withstood the onslaught of time. According to James Murray, the OED’s first editor, who, incidentally, was never swayed by authority, the derivation of man from the root “think” prevailed not because it has merit but because “no plausible alternative explanation has been suggested.” Yet other explanations exist. Whether they are more plausible is a matter of opinion.

It has also been suggested that man is related to Latin manus “hand” (compare Engl. manuscript, manual, and so forth). George Hempl, the author of this idea, wrote “The figurative use of hand for the whole man is very natural and appears in almost every language. It refers to the hand as the skillful member and generally designates a laborer or a skillful person.” According to an interesting correction to this reconstruction, the development was from “hand” to “a group of people, team” and then to “man.” This idea met a critic, who pointed out that at the dawn of civilization, women did all the work. Since the dawn of civilization is a vague concept, the counterargument fell flat.

The problem with Hempl’s idea is that Lain manus has another well-established cognate in Old Germanic, namely mund ~ munt “hand,” while man– “hand” has not been attested. Gothic retained the adjective manwus “ready,” which Hempl, to buttress his derivation, glossed as “ready, at hand,” but, unfortunately, the origin of manwus is unknown, and I will again refer to the law I have so often mentioned in the past: an obscure word can never shed light on another equally obscure word (the same of course holds for Latin mentula). The widespread existence of the synecdoche “hand” / “man” needs no proof (compare farmhand, all hands aboard, and the like in English and elsewhere in Germanic). As one of Hempl’s defendants said: “If Walde [a distinguished German scholar who showed no enthusiasm for the “hand” / “man” idea] had grown on an American farm and had learned from actual experience how often man and hand are synonymous terms,” that idea would have appealed to him more. This is beyond the point. As far as I can judge, no word for “man” in the languages of the world goes back to the concept “hand.” Also, the god Mannus (or Manus) has again been left out of the picture, though the chance of the affinity of man to Mannus is higher than that of the relatedness between Latin manus and Germanic man.

Of the other more or less reasonable etymologies of man only a few deserve mention here. Can Latin manere “to stay, remain” or Latin mons “mountain” have something to do with man? Or should we have recourse to the Indo-European root men– “to rise, project” (“man as an erect being”)? In some Austronesian languages, the word for “man” coincides with those for “pole, stake, mast, trunk.” The idea of human beings as animated trees (but trees, not stakes) is widespread. Or does the root manu-, recorded in some Indo-European languages in the word for “little,” provide the sought-for clue (man as a growing creature)? It is usually taken for granted that we have to explain the initial meaning of the word man-, while the etymology of Man(n)us will take care of itself, for, allegedly, Man(n)us is simply “man.” However, who needs a god called “man”? I base my reconstruction on two assumptions: (1) the ancient Germanic god’s name and the word man are connected, and a solid etymology should not separate them, (2) rather than trying to guess the origin of man, we should attempt to understand the origin of the theonym Man(n)us (then perhaps a good solution will present itself).

What is a piece of work is man….

Not too long ago, I devoted three posts to the origin of the word god. Perhaps it won’t be considered blasphemy on my part that I am going to devote equal space to man, for “What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!”

To be concluded.

Image credits: (1) Creation of man by Michelangelo. Sistine Chapel. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Monkey. (c) RolfSt via iStock. (3) Creation of Adam by Paolo Uccello (1445). Public domain via WikiArt.

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The meaning of “terrorism”

Anyone who saw the terror on the faces of the people fleeing the attacks in Paris last week will agree that terrorism is the right word to describe the barbaric suicide bombings and the shooting of civilians that awful Friday night. The term terrorism, though once rare, has become tragically common in the twenty-first century. So it may seem surprising that there’s no legal agreement about what terrorism actually is.

The word terrorism first appeared in English in 1795, referring to the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. As Alex P. Schmid notes, in 1793, the revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre and the delegates to the French National Convention had decided that terror through repression and bloodshed was legitimate state policy. By 1794, however, the delegates had begun to fear that Robespierre would turn on them. They accused him of a criminal abuse of power, which they called terrorisme, and they sent him to the guillotine. Thus in late nineteenth-century France, terrorism became a legal instrument of the state.

Nowadays many people think of terrorism as an illegal tactic used by non-state groups and radicalized lone wolves. However, a government’s funding of acts of terror committed by groups not under its control can also be thought of as terrorism. So can state-sponsored torture or other kinds of illegal oppression. Seen in that light, an understanding of terrorism becomes more complicated.

The dictionary definitions of terrorism are usually simple and clear, though. They often go something like this: “The use of violence, or the threat of violence, to frighten people in order to achieve a political, social, or religious goal.” As of this posting, the Oxford Dictionary (US English) defines terrorism as “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims,” yet The Oxford Dictionary (British & World English) further elucidates terrorism as “the unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.” It would seem that there’s no universal consensus about what constitutes terrorism. The League of Nations first proposed a legal definition of the word as far back as 1937, and a UN committee has been trying to define the term for over 40 years.

Instead, there are hundreds of definitions of the term focusing on its different facets. They often stress that terrorism targets civilians and non-combatants. That may seem self-evident, but there are problems with that definition, as Virginia Held points out: Does it mean that the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center were terrorism because they killed civilians, for example, but the one on the Pentagon wasn’t because it targeted the military?

Understandings of terrorism emphasize other aspects as well: Terrorism disregards the rules of war. It’s asymmetric, involving the weak vs. the strong, the armed vs. the unarmed, etc. Sometimes it’s used to provoke an over-reaction, other times to avenge a perceived wrong or to undermine public order and security. Terrorism is typically premeditated.

Definitions of terrorism also stress that it’s normally intended as a message meant to influence an audience, with the aim of advancing a political, social, or religious goal. Supporters of the Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility for the recent atrocities in Paris, say the attacks were revenge for French airstrikes in Syria, and for insulting the Prophet Muhammad. ISIS claims that they chose Paris to attack because it is “the capital of abominations and perversion.” Their larger goal was presumably to spread fear in order to intimidate France into ending its role in the American-led military action in the Middle East. Or they may have the opposite intent: to draw Western nations, as well as Russia and Hezbollah, into a final battle in Syria, where, according to the Islamic State’s apocalyptic theology, the “crusader armies” will be destroyed. It can be difficult to decipher intention from acts of violence.

Who gets to decide what is terrorism, as opposed to legitimate opposition to an oppressive government? What distinguishes terrorism from assassination or guerrilla warfare? And who are noncombatants? People have disputed these points for decades.

That’s because terrorism is a loaded term that stigmatizes and delegitimizes a group, with legal as well as moral consequences. Dissident organizations usually reject the term terrorist, even if they use violence against civilians. Instead they choose words like revolutionary, freedom fighter, or martyr. Journalists may refer to them as militants or suicide bombers. An autocratic government may call all opponents terrorists in order to elevate itself morally and justify a severe crackdown. And state officials normally don’t say that their own forces have committed acts of terrorism. When soldiers kill a large number of innocent civilians, government or military spokesmen may call it collateral damage. The mainstream media may label an extreme case an atrocity. But they rarely use the word terrorism to describe their own government’s actions.

These semantic fine points have little significance, of course, for the extremists who kill, the maimed who survive, and those who mourn the dead. The militants find meaning instead in radical interpretations of holy texts. The injured and those who have lost loved ones are left to seek meaning in a world blown apart by vengeance and religious conviction.

Featured image credit: Terrorism definition by Jagz Mario. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr. 

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‘I get more of a kick out of your bad temper than your good looks': Martial’s guide to getting boys

Martial adores sexy boys. He craves their kisses, all the more so if they play hard to get, “… buffed amber, a fire yellow-green with Eastern incense… That, Diadumenus, is how your kisses smell, you cruel boy. What if you gave me all of them, without holding back?” (3.65) and “I only want struggling kisses – kisses I’ve seized; I get more of a kick out of your bad temper than your good looks…” (5.46). A tactical show of resistance is perhaps part of the erotic script, but certainly all these boys can afford – they are owned, as the continuation of 5.46 immediately makes clear, “I want to beg you often, Diadumenus, so I beat you often. Result: you’re not afraid of me or in love with me.”

Diadumenus’ very name advertises his un-free status – the Diadumenos (a lithe young athlete putting on his victory wreath) was one of the masterpieces of the famed Greek sculptor, Polyclitus of Sicyon (the other was the Doryphoros, a mature male carrying a spear). Polyclitus’ fifth-century bronze original is long lost (bronze is so easily turned into coins to pay troops), but the statue-type was much reproduced for the Roman market; collectors and connoisseurs such as Pliny the Elder and Cicero rated its artist highly. Martial’s Diadumenus is thus a beautiful youth named for the canonical Greek image of beautiful youth (and Kanōn is itself a word we owe to Polyclitus – its first attestation is as the title of his famous lost treatise on statuesque beauty through mathematical proportion, summetria, our ‘symmetry’).

“Diadumenos, National Archaeological Museum of Athens” by Ricardo Andre Frantz CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

I included several Diadumenus poems in my Oxford World’s Classics edition of the epigrams to help show how Martial breathes unity into his dodecalogy’s miscellany through the use of ‘cycles’ (recurring themes, motifs, and characters). Hyllus is another of the Martialverse’s recurring names and likewise points towards a Greek prototype, in his case a mythical son of Hercules, but his characterisation seems much less consistent than Diadumenus’. At 2.51 he is a formerly wealthy householder impoverished by an addiction to cock; at 2.60, a teenager committing risky adultery with a tribune’s wife (I’ll be posting a translation of 2.60 on my blog). In our poem, 4.7, he is probably a pretty slave with favoured ‘pet’ status – he expects that his passage into manhood will be formally celebrated, and that Martial will no longer pursue him romantically thereafter.

4.7 is good to blog about because it’s one of the few poems where my excellent copyeditor, Jeff New, called me on a choice I made translating it. The Latin of line 4 runs, “o nox quam longa es, quae facis una senem!” Literally, “O night, how long you are, you who by yourself make an old man!” But who is the old man – Martial, or (as Jeff suggested) Hyllus? It was a good question, because either way, we needed to read something into the text that wasn’t there – viz, a personal pronoun.

In the end I stuck with my first impulse: “all by itself, it has turned me into an old man.” Why? The name ‘Hyllus’ evokes a Greek frame of reference, as does the soft-focus eroticism; one could compare any number of epigrams on boy-love from book 12 of the Greek Anthology. The classic Greek template for homosexual love is an asymmetric binary of tops and bottoms. There is the receptive beloved, the erōmenos –young, but not too young, and with an abrupt expiry date when the beard comes; and there is the actively pursuing lover, the erastēs – a fully adult, older citizen male, but not too old. Greek lyric poets are painfully clear on what comes after, and Mimnermus, celebrated founder of love elegy, is pessimistic to the point of fatalism. I quote the splendid version of fr.1 by the late and much missed Martin West, translator for the World’s Classics of Greek Lyric Poetry:

I hope I die when I no longer care

for secret closeness, tender raptures, bed,

which are the rapturous flowers that grace youth’s prime

for men and women. But when painful age

comes on, that makes a man loathsome and vile,

malignant troubles ever vex his heart;

seeing the sunlight gives him joy no more.

He is abhorred by boys, by women scorned…

…Just as Hyllus scorns Martial now. Free or slave, the evidence of his body is incontrovertible: all of a sudden he has outgrown the role of beloved, of the softly yielding erōmenos; and by withholding his no-longer-boyish favours, he edges Martial out of the role of the kiss-hunting lover in his adult prime. At least within so Greek a genre as epigram.

(Did Martial want only kisses from these boys? Far from it; but that is a story for another blog, and one decidedly NSFW, in the epigrammatic parlance of the modern Martialic microblogger.)

Featured image: “Nude Wrestling” by Alex Proimos, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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Failed versus rogue states: which are worse?

Today, the international community has its hands full with a host of global challenges; from rising numbers of refugees, international terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation, to pandemics, cyber-attacks, organized crime, drug trafficking, and others. Where do such global challenges originate? Two primary sources are rogue states like North Korea or Iran and failed states like Afghanistan or Somalia. Rogue states do not accept widespread international norms, and so are security threats and likely candidates for proliferation of international crime and weapons of mass destruction. Failed states suffer from a lack of internal governance, and are likely havens for terrorist groups, engines of disease transmission, and sources of refugees. Too often these disparate sources of global challenges are lumped together, but there are essential contrasts between these source states.

By challenging the status quo, rogue states often engage powerful enemies. Effective cooperation may be easier to achieve against a rogue state if it provokes a great power that can take unilateral action or if several powerful countries coordinate their actions. This coordination is feasible when the rogue country presents similar dire consequences to a small number of capable countries whose interests are aligned. Eliminating the risks associated with rogue states therefore often involves a few countries’ focused effort; such action denotes a best-shot public good whose quantity is determined by the largest single or pooled action. To address challenges arising from failed states, however, a different scenario often applies, wherein state failures undermine global efforts to coordinate or provide a weakest-link public good, for which the smallest provision level fixes the quantity of the good that countries consume. For example, the least effective monitoring effort during an infectious disease outbreak determines the world’s ability to stem the contagion.

Rogue states often pose risks because of their threatening actions, while failed states frequently present risks because they provide safe haven to terrorists, drug-traffickers, and pirates. By giving rise to low or no provision of a weakest-link public good, failed states can undo the collective efforts of other states. For example, even one failed state giving haven or training facilities to a transnational terrorist group keeps the group’s threat around for all other countries. Failed states present security and other concerns – disease outbreaks, refugee outflows, financial instability, guerrilla wars, and transnational crime.

 Rogue states often pose risks because of their threatening actions, while failed states frequently present risks because they provide safe haven to terrorists, drug-traffickers, and pirates.

Failed states have disproportionate effects on their surrounding countries, which are often poor and sometimes poorly governed themselves. Somalia, for example, has spawned terrorist attacks in neighboring Kenya via Al-Shabaab as well as piracy in the Gulf of Aden. In poorly governed parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the global effort to eradicate polio has grounded to a halt, thereby requiring people worldwide to get booster shots since herd immunity has not be achieved. The international community has repeatedly found itself unable to secure effective governance from outside – NATO’s intervention in Libya may have prevented atrocities in the short term but it has created a political vacuum in the long term.

Many of the problems emanating from failed states are weakest-link problems, which reduce overall levels of global security, raise crime, or limit protection from diseases. From a strategic perspective, such problems are more easily addressed by relatively homogeneous groups with similar preferences and means. We might therefore expect problems emanating from failed states to be addressed when they affect a relatively similar (small) set of countries. Similarity in this instance could mean size, wealth, and power, or it might also include similar linguistic or ethnic makeup. Somalia’s pirates have been beaten back by a number of countries, particularly European Union countries acting as a unit, due to their common shipping interests in the area.

Which is a worse problem? Our answer revolves around the diversity of countries affected by each set of problems. Because best-shot problems are more easily solved by a single powerful (or rich) state or small coalition, they are generally easier to address. Of course, sometimes the country that has the most capability to solve a problem lacks political will to do so. Weakest-link problems are inherently more difficult to address because they require coordinated action among many states. If some states lack the means to act, then other nations must shore them up by providing the necessary level of action. That is, even one substandard contribution limits what everyone can achieve. In a world with lots of poor countries, this shoring-up effort may become prohibitively expensive. Since many of the issues arising from failed states have these weakest-link properties, we believe that they are, on average, harder to solve. For this reason, we would argue that failed states present a greater host of problems than rogue states.

 Featured image credit: Hillah Landscape Desert by tpsdave. CC0 via Pixabay.

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The origins of the Religious Right: a Q & A with Neil Young

In We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics, Neil J. Young traces the interactions among evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons from the 1950s to the present day to recast the story of the emergence of the Religious Right. We sat down with him to find out a bit more about his process researching the book, what role Mormons have in the rise of the Religious Right, and what the Religious Right’s relationship with Ronald Reagan was.

What led you to this particular field of study?

Although I went to graduate school to focus on nineteenth-century Southern history, I unexpectedly turned my attention to twentieth-century American politics and religion. This was during the years of George W. Bush’s presidency and many academics, especially historians, were struggling to understand the prominence of religious conservatism in American politics. I read a lot of scholarly works that argued the Religious Right formed in response to Roe v. Wade’s federal legalization of abortion in 1973. They also argued that the Religious Right had succeeded in large part because evangelicals and Catholics had set aside their longstanding theological differences and historical animosities in order to become political allies. This explanation didn’t seem right to me for a number of reasons, so I set out to understand the relationship among evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons (the three pillars of the Christian Right) and how these relationships ultimately shaped the formation, success, and failures of the Religious Right.

You begin your book in the 1950s. Why?

Most accounts of the Religious Right begin in the 1970s because they tend to treat the movement as a response to the social transformations of the 1960s and to a series of Supreme Court decisions about school prayer and abortion. This view, however, paints religious conservatives as reactors rather than actors, as people who are responding to political and social changes rather than as shapers of many of those changes. It also depicts the Religious Right as only a political story. By starting in the 1950s, however, I show the theological and intellectual origins of the Religious Right.  In other words, I argue that the Religious Right was an outgrowth of the interfaith conversations Catholics, evangelicals, and Mormons were having at midcentury over questions about the unity of Christians, the authority of the Bible, the means of salvation, and who could claim the mantle of true Christianity. It was these religious conservations that were a response to the ecumenical movement of mainline Protestantism, I argue, that helped give rise to the Religious Right.  I show that long before Roe v. Wade and the Equal Rights Amendment, religious conservatives had already been drawn together in conversation and alliance building.  So, the Religious Right wasn’t a new political development for these religious conservatives but rather the latest innovation of a longer interfaith relationship.

Your book has been noted as one of the first books to include Mormons in the story of the Religious Right. What was their role in the rise of the Religious Right?

Yes, while many writers have acknowledged the importance of Mormons in the emergence of the Religious Right, most books still have concentrated on only Catholics and evangelicals. But Mormons deserve to be at the center of our narrative about the rise of the Religious Right because they have been such prominent political actors all along.  In the 1970s, the LDS Church played a huge role in defeating the Equal Rights Amendment. Additionally, the LDS Church has spearheaded efforts against gay rights from the 1970s to the more recent Proposition 8 controversy in California. In the Religious Right’s current focus on matters of religious liberty, Mormons have emerged as one of the most vocal defenders of religious freedom. All of this points to the central role of Mormons in the Religious Right, but, as my book shows, that has not been without controversy since most evangelicals do not believe Mormons subscribe to traditional beliefs of orthodox Christianity.

What do you think readers will find surprising about your book?

Many things, I hope! For one, I think readers will be surprised about how much internal disagreements there have been among religious conservatives on political matters. As I show, while conservative evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons have opposed abortion rights, for example, they have had a hard time agreeing about the right political actions and legislative options for seeing abortion outlawed federally. With other issues like national defense and economic matters, I think readers will be surprised to discover how far apart religious conservatives were on a lot of these questions.

Additionally, readers will be surprised to learn how much diversity there is within the evangelical movement, both religiously and politically. Our media coverage especially tends to treat evangelicals as a rather monolithic and homogenous group, but my book shows the wide-ranging nature of modern American evangelicalism and how that has shaped the nation’s religious landscape and also its political climate.

What was the Religious Right’s relationship with Ronald Reagan?

It was a tricky one. Religious conservatives saw Reagan as no less than a political godsend, pun intended. After years of feeling ignored and marginalized, religious conservatives believed that a Reagan presidency would validate their social and political beliefs and turn the nation back to God. Reagan appealed to the Religious Right by emphasizing his personal faith and speaking in religious language, but also by promising to act on their most important political causes, particularly school prayer and abortion. But once in office, Reagan failed to deliver on these issues much to the dismay of religious conservatives.  In response, many of them threatened to not support Reagan’s re-election efforts in 1984.  (The Reagan Library is filled with many angry letters from disgruntled religious conservatives from throughout his presidency.) Ultimately, the Religious Right stuck with Reagan, but many of them felt even more disappointed by Reagan’s second term. As one Religious Right leader asked at the end of Reagan’s presidency, “Were Christians courted for their votes or their beliefs?” Most of this history has been forgotten or perhaps even deliberately repressed for political reasons, but my book shows how messy things often were between the Reagan administration and the Religious Right and the political consequences of that often-strained relationship.

Do you have a favorite chapter of your book?

That’s hard to say – it feels a bit like picking a favorite child! But I especially enjoyed writing chapters 2 and 6. Chapter 2 deals with the Catholic Church’s reform of itself through the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and evangelical and Mormon reactions. I was surprised by how deeply and thoughtfully evangelical and Mormon leaders responded to Vatican II and what it revealed about their thoughts on the Catholic Church and their larger ideas about the nature of Christianity.  In Chapter 6, I focus on changing relationships among evangelicals, fundamentalists, Catholics, and Mormons in the 1980s. We see this decade as a great moment for religious conservatism, but what my chapter shows is that the Reagan years actually produced great concern among many conservative Christians that the “Religious Right” was overshadowing important theological differences among them. This produced some important conversations between leading evangelical and Catholic figures on the one hand, but also led to other results like the creation of the virulently anti-Mormon “documentary,” The God Makers, that became wildly popular among evangelicals in the 1980s.

Essentially, I’m most drawn to the parts of my book where I closely examine the ever-changing relationships among Mormons, Catholics, and evangelicals and how this shaped the rise of the Religious Right and transformed American politics. I think the religious history of the Religious Right has been largely overshadowed by focusing so much on its political accomplishments. My book argues that we can only understand those political changes by examining the larger religious history that helped bring them about.

Featured image credit: Photo by Rohit Chhiber. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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