Oxford University Press's Blog, page 816

The ‘internal’ enlargement of the European Union – is it possible?

By Phoebus Athanassiou and Stéphanie Laulhé Shaelou

European Union (EU) enlargement is both a policy and a process describing the expansion of the EU to neighbouring countries. The process of EU enlargement, first with the creation of the European Economic Community and, later, with that of the European Union, has resulted in today’s EU membership of 28 member states.

EU membership is open to any European country that will satisfy the conditions for accession as set out in Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). The position in EU law of countries aspiring to become member states of the EU has been well covered in multiple publications throughout the years.

As a corollary to the ‘right of accession’ of states to the European Union, the EU Treaties have recently provided for the member states’ right to withdraw from the European Union. This right has been enshrined in Article 50 TEU, formally introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon. The formal recognition of the member states’ right to withdraw warrants, in itself, special attention as regards its scope and the concrete consequences of its exercise, all the more so since there are, today, signals that this newly attributed right could be exercised in the foreseeable future.

The newly attributed right of withdrawal opens up new lines of enquiry relevant to other distinct scenarios, with no less of an impact on the EU’s composition. One such scenario is that of the separation or ‘secession’ of part of the territory of an EU member state, motivated by a desire for national independence. Recent months have seen a flurry of activity and academic debate on the likely implications of secession of part of the territory of certain member states, followed by the creation of newly independent states.

While secession within the European Union may be within the realm of the possible, several questions spring to mind when reviewing such a scenario, starting with the future of a newly created independent state in the EU. Would this future lie ‘in’ or ‘out’ of the European Union? This would be up to the newly created state to determine, as a sovereign state in international law. In case the newly created state decides to tie up its future to the one of the other members of the European family, the next question would be ‘how’ this is to be achieved? As newly created states wishing to join the EU would originate in an existing (rump) member state they would be familiar with the various EU principles, rules and procedures. Taking into consideration the ‘roots’ of a newly created state within the European family and its previous compliance with EU policies and practices (albeit in a different legal form and capacity) could an ‘automatic’ right to EU accession for the newly created state be envisaged? And, even if there is no such right of automatic accession to the European Union, what would be the parameters for an eventual ‘internal’ enlargement of the EU? To what extent would this differ from the stated policy and process of EU enlargement as enshrined in Article 49 TEU? The debate is on-going in various member states, while views on the matter have also been expressed at the European level.

These are only a few of the very fundamental and valid points raised by a secession scenario within the European Union. Many more questions spring to mind regarding, in particular, the future of the people living in the newly created states. Their people would normally find themselves outside the territorial scope of the EU, even if for a limited period of time only, with all the implications that this will have with respect to their rights as EU citizens. It is clearly in the interest of such citizens that their rights deriving from EU citizenship are maintained and/or protected during any transitional period from independence to full EU membership, so that they do not end-up being treated as third country nationals would. Is it at all possible to ensure the continuing enjoyment of their rights as (former) EU citizens? But this is yet another story.

Phoebus Athanassiou and Stéphanie Laulhé Shaelou are the authors of “EU Accession from Within?—An Introduction” (available to read for free for a limited time) in the Yearbook of European Law. Phoebus Athanassiou is Senior Legal Counsel with the European Central Bank, specializing on EU financial law and issues of relevance to the ECB and EMU. He holds a PhD and an LLM from King’s College, London, and an LLB from Queen Mary, London. He is a Member of the Editorial Boards of the ECB Legal Working Papers Series and of the International In-house Counsel Journal. He is the author of Hedge Fund Regulation in the EU (Kluwer, 2009), and the editor of the Research Handbook on Hedge Funds, Private Equity and Alternative Investments (Edward Elgar, 2012). Stéphanie Laulhé Shaelou is an Assistant Professor at the School of Law of the University of Central Lancashire Cyprus, specialising in EU constitutional law and governance, EU integration and EU external relations. She holds a PhD and an LLM from the University of Leicester, a First Class LLB from the University of Paris and a BA in English and German for lawyers from the international language school I.S.I.T in Paris. Dr Shaelou has written extensively in internationally refereed publications on multiple aspects of EU law, including related to Cyprus. She is the author of The EU and Cyprus: principles and strategies of full integration (vol. 3, Studies in EU External Relations, Brill/Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Leiden, 2010) and of ‘Market Freedoms, EU fundamental rights and public order: views from Cyprus’ (2011) 30(1) Yearbook of European Law 298.

The Yearbook of European Law seeks to promote the dissemination of ideas and provide a forum for legal discourse in the wider area of European law. It is committed to the highest academic standards and to providing informative and critical analysis of topical issues accessible to all those interested in legal studies. It reflects diverse theoretical approaches towards the study of law.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only law articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post The ‘internal’ enlargement of the European Union – is it possible? appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesFelon disfranchisement preserves slavery’s legacySearching for more legal certainty in bitcoins and mobile paymentsWhy do frogs slough their skin? 

Banning Sterling makes a lot of cents for the NBA

By Adam Grossman

Donald Sterling’s lifetime National Basketball Association (NBA) ban, $2.5 million dollar fine, and potentially forced sale of the Clippers may seem fit in the category of previous owners who received a comparable punishment. Marge Schott was forced to sell the Cincinnati Reds for her anti-Semitic and racist comment while owner of the team. George Steinbrenner was suspended twice as owner of the New York Yankees, with the last occurrence spurred by his allegedly hiring a private investigator to examine the history of his team’s star slugger Dave Winfield.

However, Sterling’s comments and the reaction it provoked is an example of the evolution of the modern crisis. This includes:

Convergence of Sports and Entertainment — Sterling’s comments were first reported on TMZ.com, a site known for celebrity gossip more than sports coverage. This made sense, as TMZ created TMZ sports because of the convergence of sports and entertainment. More specifically, players, coaches, and even owners are some of the most well-known celebrities in entertainment.

Influence of Technology on Sports Crisis — Ten or even five years ago, there would less of a chance that a crisis would have emerged because of Sterling’s comments. The only reason the Clippers’ owner’s statements were made public is that someone recorded a private conversation on a mobile phone. The comments were then posted on TMZ.com and quickly spread throughout social media. While Sterling’s comments were abhorrent, it was unlikely he thought they would ever be made public. Rather than relying on here-say of a fan sitting near the Clippers now former owner at the game, the league, media, and public could directly hear what Sterling had to say in his own words. This is a reminder that every sports fan can become a citizen journalist by turning on their smart phone.

Pre-crisis Preparation — Sterling’s racial views have been well known and well documented. On his ESPN 980 radio show in Washington D.C., Tony Kornheiser and his Pardon The Interruption co-host Michael Wilbon recently discussed how they had conversations about Sterling’s views ten years ago. In addition, the Department of Justice filed suit against Sterling alleging that his housing practices violated anti-racial discrimination laws. The NBA could have recognized this as a potential crisis and moved earlier to oust him before these events forced the leagues’ hand.

Los Angeles Clippers players stand up for the national anthem before the 31 December 2007 game against the Minnesota Timberwolves at Staples Center. Photo by Paul de los Reyes. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Virtually every one from players, coaches, and owners to media critics, pundits, and morning newscasters have analyzed the impact that Sterling’s comments had on his team’s and the NBA’s brand. What has received less coverage is why the NBA needed to take this type of action to try to resolve this crisis from an economic perspective. Sterling’s crisis potentially impacts three key revenue streams that demonstrate why his immediate ban makes sense for the NBA.

Subsidy / Revenue Sharing — Like most major professional sports leagues, the NBA shares revenue among all 30 teams. In fact, the NBA rules dictate that teams keep 50% revenue with teams sharing the remaining 50% with the entire league minus expenses for items such as arena operating costs. Therefore, any revenue lost by Clippers impacts every NBA team. Sterling has taken steps in the past to ensure that the Clippers have remained profitable even when the team is losing. His team’s recent success combined with the Lakers relative decline has made the Clippers a more important franchise for the NBA in the large Los Angeles market.

Sponsorship – Corporate partners spend millions of dollars with the league and its teams to increase their brand awareness and enhance their brand perception. In particular, the NBA can help companies target young, male, and often African-American audiences. It would be extremely difficult to sell or renew current corporate partners and sign future corporate partners when their brands could be tied with Sterling. The immediate exit of State Farm and Kia illustrates the possible crisis consequences. While some sponsors have already returned, Sterling’s comments and the uncertainty of whether he will sell the team still threatens their brand.

In Game – In Game revenue consists of money a sports organization generates through competition. Most in game revenue comes from tickets, concessions, and parking that occurs on game days. The question here is if fans would stop attending Clippers’ games because of Sterling’s comments. Unfortunately for Los Angeles sports fans, there is an example of another owner who had a similar impact on his organization. When Frank McCourt owned the Dodgers, he was embroiled in a bitter divorce and also took steps that forced the team into bankruptcy. During McCourt’s final year owning the team in 2011, average game attendance declined to 36,173 as compared to 46,172 in 2013. One could have expected a similar 22% decline for the Clippers with Sterling continuing to be the team’s owner.

Sterling’s past actions and recent comments deserved the harsh punishment. Understanding the relationship between crisis and revenue, however, can outline and forecast the possible financial questions of crisis responses. If Sterling fights the ban or refuses to sell the team, the above analysis will play an important role in the future of the club and revenue for the league.

Adam Grossman is the Founder and President of Block Six Analytics (B6A). He has worked with a number of sports organizations, including the Minnesota Timberwolves, Washington Capitals, and SMG @ Solider Field, to enhance their corporate sponsorship and enterprise marketing capabilities. He is the co-author of The Sports Strategist: Developing Leaders for a High-Performance Industry with Irving Rein, PhD and Ben Shields.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only business and economics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Banning Sterling makes a lot of cents for the NBA appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesWhy everyone does better when employees have a say in the workplaceFelon disfranchisement preserves slavery’s legacyThe Illyrian bid for legitimacy 

The Illyrian bid for legitimacy

The following is extracted from Taken at the Flood: The Roman Conquest of Greece, by Robin Waterfield. This is the story of the Roman conquest of classical Greece – a tale of brutality, determination, and the birth of an empire.

The region known as Illyris (Albania and Dalmatia, in today’s terms) was regarded at the time as a barbarian place, only semi-civilized by contact with its Greek and Macedonian neighbours. It was occupied by a number of different tribes, linked by a common culture and language (a cousin of Thracian). From time to time, one of these tribes gained a degree of dominance over some or most of the rest, but never over all of them at once. Contact with the Greek world had led to a degree of urbanization, especially in the south and along the coast, but the region still essentially consisted of many minor tribal dynasts with networks of loyalty. At the time in question, the Ardiaei were the leading tribe, and in the 230s their king, Agron, had forged a kind of union, the chief plank of which was alliances with other local magnates from central Illyris, such as Demetrius, Greek lord of the wealthy island of Pharos, and Scerdilaidas, chief of the Illyrian Labeatae.

In the late 230s, the Illyrians’ Greek neighbors to the south, the confederacy of Epirote tribes and communities, descended into chaos following the republican overthrow of a by-then hated monarchy. Agron seized the opportunity. Following a significant victory over the Aetolians in 231—they had been hired by Demetrius II of Macedon to relieve the siege of Medion, a town belonging to his allies, the Acarnanians—the Illyrians, confi dent that they could stand up to any of their neighbors, expanded their operations. The next year, they raided as far south as the Peloponnesian coastline, but, more importantly, they seized the northern Epirote town of Phoenice.

The capture of Phoenice, the strongest and wealthiest city in Epirus, and then its successful defense against a determined Epirote attempt at recovery, were morale-boosting victories, but the practical consequences were uppermost in Agron’s mind. Phoenice was not just an excellent lookout point; it was also close to the main north–south route from Illyris into Epirus. More immediately, the town commanded its own fertile (though rather boggy) alluvial valleys, and access to the sea at Onchesmus. There was another harbor not far south, at Buthrotum (modern Butrint, one of the best archaeological sites in Europe), but for a ship traveling north up the coast, Onchesmus was the last good harbor until Oricum, eighty kilometers (fifty miles) further on, a day’s sailing or possibly two. And, even apart from the necessity of havens in bad weather, ancient ships had to be beached frequently, to forage for food and water (warships, especially, had room for little in the way of supplies), to dry out the insides of the ships (no pumps in those days), and to kill the teredo “worm” (a kind of boring mollusk). Phoenice was a valuable prize.

By Ptolemaic maps by Girolamo Porro, Venice, 1598. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Agron died a short while later, reputedly from pleurisy contracted after the over-enthusiastic celebration of his victories. He was succeeded by his son Pinnes—or rather, by his wife Teuta, who became regent for the boy. Teuta inherited a critical situation. Following the loss of Phoenice, the Epirotes had joined the Aetolian–Achaean alliance, and their new allies dispatched an army north as soon as they could. Th e Illyrian army under Scerdilaidas moved south to confront them, numbering perhaps ten thousand men. The two armies met not far north of Passaron (modern Ioannina).

The fate of the northwest coastline of Greece hung in the balance. But before battle was joined, the Illyrian forces were recalled by Teuta to deal with a rebellion by one of the tribes of her confederacy (we do not know which), who had called in help from the Dardanians. Th e Dardanian tribes occupied the region north of Macedon and northeast of Illyris (modern Kosovo, mainly), and not infrequently carried out cross-border raids in considerable force, with several tribes uniting for a profi table campaign. Scerdilaidas withdrew back north, plundering as he went, and made a deal with the Epirote authorities whereby he kept all the booty from Phoenice and received a handsome ransom for returning the city, relatively undamaged, to the league.

The Dardanian threat evaporated, and in 230 Teuta turned to the island of Issa, a neighbor of Pharos. Th is was a natural extension for her: Issa (modern Vis), along with Corcyra (Corfu) and Pharos (Hvar), was one of the great commercial islands of this coastline, wealthy from its own products, and as a result of convenience of its harbors for the Adriatic trade in timber and other commodities; in fact, at ten hectares, Issa town was the largest Greek settlement in Dalmatia. Teuta already had Pharos and its dependency, Black Corcyra (Korč ula); if she could take Issa and Corcyra, her revenue would be greatly increased and she would become a major player in the region. Teuta put Issa town under siege; in those days, each island generally had only one large town, the main port, and so to take the town was to take the island.

When the campaigning season of 229 arrived, Tueta (who still had Issa under siege) launched a major expedition. Her forces first attacked Epidamnus, a Greek trading city on the Illyrian coast, with an excellent harbor and command of the most important eastward route towards Macedon, the road the Romans began to develop a century later as the Via Egnatia. Th e attack was thwarted by the desperate bravery of the Epidamnians, but the Illyrians sailed off and joined up with the rest of  their fleet, which had Corcyra town under siege. The people of Corcyra, Epidamnus, and Apollonia (another Greek colony, eighty kilometers [fifty miles] down the coast from Epidamnus, and certain to be the next target) naturally sought help from the Aetolians and Achaeans, who had already demonstrated their hostility toward the Illyrians, and the Greek allies raised a small fl eet and sent it to relieve Corcyra. But the Illyrians had supplemented their usual fleet of small, fast lemboi with some larger warships loaned by the Acarnanians, who were pleased to thank them for raising the siege of Medion. Battle was joined off Paxoi, and it was another victory for the Illyrians.

In addition to having translated numerous Greek classics, including works by Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Xenophon, Polybius, and Plutarch, Robin Waterfield is the author of Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths, Xenophon’s Retreat: Greece, Persia and the End of the Golden Age, Athens: A History, Dividing the Spoils: the War for Alexander the Great’s Empire and Taken at the Flood: The Roman Conquest of Greece. He lives in the far south of Greece on a small olive farm.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only history articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post The Illyrian bid for legitimacy appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesIllustrating a graphic history: Mendoza the JewFelon disfranchisement preserves slavery’s legacyMonthly etymology gleanings for April 2014 

Monthly etymology gleanings for April 2014

By Anatoly Liberman

As usual, many thanks for the letters, questions, and comments. I answered some of them privately, when I thought that the material would not be interesting to most of our readers. In a few cases (and this is what I always say) I simply took the information into account. My lack of reaction should not be misunderstood for indifference or ingratitude.

Etymology and poetry

In tracing the origin of words, we often have to deal with sound symbolism and sound imitation. Sound effects are also the glue of organized speech. Old Germanic verses depended on alliteration (and were chanted), folklore is chanted all over the world, Greek, Latin, and Germanic poets distinguished between long and short syllables, and, until recently, European poetry was based on rhyme. But free verse seemingly has no phonetic foundation. Is it poetry? The question does not quite belong to this blog, so that I will confine myself to a brief response. Free verse is not devoid of a phonetic base, namely intonation. It is possible to read any piece of prose in such a way that it begins to sound like poetry. Conversely, one can read even well-organized poetry like prose. But traditional poetry, just because it used special devices, could often be attractive without being “clever,” while free verse, in order to impress, has to contain deep or original thoughts. Since few people have them and since for producing free verse one does not need any technical skills, it often degenerates into a string of trivialities parading as emotions. Paradoxically, the fewer devices poets have at their disposal, the harder it is to compose anything memorable and the poorer the outcome is. But rhyme, alliteration, assonances, and the rest do not always disguise banality. Fortunately or unfortunately, in order to produce good poetry (the same holds for any good art), one needs talent, a rare commodity, regardless of style.

Spelling problems. 

For years ingenious people have been composing sentences that can baffle spellers. This is what I found in The Spectator for 1933 (a letter to the editor):

“The following short sentences are made up of English words in common use, but I doubt if one in five of your readers would get full marks if they were given as a dictations exercise: ‘A harassed pedlar met an embarrassed saddler near a cemetery to gauge the symmetry of a lady’s ankle. The manoeuver they performed with unparalleled ecstasy’.”

Pedlar is peddler, while manoeuver lost one vowel in American English. Other than that, the exercise does not strike me as either too complicated or as a product of great wit. However, it was nice to hear that even eighty years ago at least twenty-five percent of the well-educated subscribers to The Spectator were already not fully literate. It is even nicer to  read the statement made in 1931 (another letter to the same worthy journal): “There is much to be said for the simplification of English spelling, however much it may offend the taste of lovers of English, but the world cannot wait while England sets her house in order.” Indeed it cannot; yet only the English speaking world has the authority of doing something in this area.

Grammar

A clever case of they. I am sure everything is correct in the sentence that follows, but it still sounds funny. My local newspaper has recently discussed coyotes prowling in the city. The deputy police chief said: “They’re an animal that does not like human contact.” Are analogs thinkable, for example: “They are a toy that can harm babies”?

To whom it may concern. (from News Service) “Meanwhile, Syria’s state news agency said that authorities liberated Austrian lawyer Anton Sander, whom had been held by rebels in Homs for the past four months.” Why won’t we pass a law prohibiting the form whom? Something like: “If you want to say whom, say who.”

Old languages and complexity. It was not my goal to compare the morphological complexity of Hittite (or Tocharian) and Sanskrit (Greek, Latin, Gothic). This kind of comparison is hard because a language recorded early may be more “advanced” than a language whose written monuments go back to a later date. I only wanted to point out that a hope to find simplicity in ancient languages has no foundation.

A not too primitive Hittite.

Small fry

Jixy ~ taxi. I received two responses to my note on the “jixy,” named after Joynson-Hickes. It was London cabmen who coined the word, and yes, the politician was known as Jix; hence the blend. Jixi is not only a blend of Jix and taxi but also a tribute to the popularity of this type of word formation. So those who hate the noun selfie should beware: such words have been around for a long time. Consider walkie-talkie, movie, to say nothing of Tommy, Jackie, and so forth. That the word (selfie) is inoffensive does not of course mean that the thing should be admired. But my area is language, not mores.

Speaking of words and mores: Old Engl. myltenhus “brothel.” Could this word be a reshaping of Latin multa ~ mulcta “fine, punishment” or multus “much, many”? In etymology, all kinds of things are possible. The question is how probable our solution is. According to traditional opinion, Old Engl. myltestre “prostitute” is an alteration of Latin meretrix. As I said in the post on brothel, I have no enthusiasm for this idea and prefer my own derivation (myltenhus = stew house, stews; this is, for example, what such establishments were called in Shakespeare’s days). However, it may well be that also in the seventeenth century the phrase common house meant the same (see Notes and Queries, June 2008, pp. 191-194). Perhaps in Anglo-Saxon England brothels ware also called “houses for many’’ (multi) or for the behavior that carried its own punishment, but such guesses can never be substantiated.

Wolf puns. In my previous gleanings, a picture by the great Russian artist Valentin Serov showed a wolf walking past a fence. There was a question whether I deliberately punned on the name Serov (stress on the second syllable; ser- means “gray”) and the color of the wolf, the more so as I had recently discussed the etymology of the word gray. I wish I had noticed the coincidence! No, the pun was unintentional. Other than that, Russian family names from color words are common: compare Belov, Chernov, and Krasnov, from “white,” “black,” and “red” respectively.

A final flourish.

“Mr. Snowden had an enthusiastic reception when he returned to London. He was hailed as a national hero. These revenges of time are amusing and also reassuring.” No, not our very own Snowden but Philip Snowden, the once wll-known British politician. This quotation is again from The Spectator (1929; a faithful volunteer is looking through this journal in search of materials for my etymological database, and I cannot help reading adjoining pages). But never say die! Edward Snowden was installed as Glasgow University’s rector and succeeded in this post Winnie Mandela and Mordechai Vanunu. These amusing and reassuring revenges of time… Nomen est omen.

Anatoly Liberman is the author of Word Origins And How We Know Them as well as An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction. His column on word origins, The Oxford Etymologist, appears on the OUPblog each Wednesday. Send your etymology question to him care of blog@oup.com; he’ll do his best to avoid responding with “origin unknown.” Subscribe to Anatoly Liberman’s weekly etymology articles via email or RSS.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only language articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credit: Hittite orthostat – Teshub. Gaziantep, Turkey. Photo by Avi Dolgin. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 via dolgin Flickr.

The post Monthly etymology gleanings for April 2014 appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesWalter W. Skeat (1835-1912) and spelling reformHenry Bradley on spelling reformUnsung heroes of English etymology: Henry Bradley (1845-1923) 

The Ebola virus and the spread of pandemics

By Peter C. Doherty

A recent New York Times editorial by author David Quammen highlighted the seriousness of the current Ebola outbreak in Guinea, but made the point that there is no great risk of any global pandemic. That’s been generally true of the viruses that, like Ebola, cause exudative diathesis, or bleeding into the tissues, and present with horrific symptoms. There’s a whole range of such infections caused by a spectrum of different virus types. These pathogens are generally maintained asymptomatically in wildlife “reservoir” species, including fruit and insectivorous bats, monkeys, field mice, and various other rodent species. Breathing dust contaminated with dried mouse feces can lead, for example, to infection with the Sin Nombre hantavirus that caused a recent outbreak in Yosemite National Park. Others (like Ebola) may “jump” across to us from bats and are then transmitted between people following contact with contaminated human blood and other secretions.

Ebola virus virion.

From the pandemic aspect, the most dangerous we’ve seen to date is the SARS coronavirus that, in 2002, came out of nowhere to kill some 800 people in the Asia/Pacific region and also caused cases in Toronto. Spread via the respiratory route or by hand-to-face transmission following contact with contaminated surfaces this virus would, if it had emerged prior to the 19th century development of the germ theory of infectious disease, have gone on to cause a continuing human problem. As it was, once the virologists had identified the virus and worked out its mechanism of spread, instituting rigorous sanitation procedures (especially hand washing) and practicing  “barrier nursing” (latex gloves, face masks, disposable gowns) with afflicted patients led to the disease essentially “burning out” in humans. Authorities in the Middle East are, though, keeping a close watch on the closely related MERS coronavirus, which has caused a few human cases and may be maintained in nature as an asymptomatic infection of Egyptian tomb bats and camels. Could the MERS-CoV be the source of  “The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb”?

Even in the absence of specific antiviral drugs and vaccines, modern science protects us by defining the problem so that public health and medical professionals can take appropriate counter-measures. Still, though such viruses do not generally change their mode of transmission to spread readily by the dangerous respiratory route (we can’t choose when and where to breathe!), the basic message is that the price of freedom (from such infections) is constant vigilance. That’s why government agencies like the CDC and the US Public Health Service are so important for our defense. So far, the “worst-case” pandemic scenario for any hemorrhagic fever virus is that portrayed in the movie Contagion. Hopefully, a catastrophe of such magnitude will remain in the realm of fiction, but we do need to keep our guard up.  The much more immediate and likely pandemic danger is always, so far as we are aware, from the influenza A viruses.

Peter C. Doherty is Chairman of the Department of Immunology at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, and a Laureate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize: Advice for Young Scientists, Their Fate is Our Fate: How Birds Foretell Threats to Our Health and Our World, published in Australia as Sentinel Chickens: What Birds Tell us About Our health and the World, A Light History of Hot Air and Pandemics: What Everyone Needs to Know.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only science and medicine articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

Image: Ebola virus virion. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post The Ebola virus and the spread of pandemics appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesWhat is ‘lean psychiatry’?New sodium intake research and the response of health organizationsVaccines: thoughts in spring 

Why everyone does better when employees have a say in the workplace

By William Lazonick and Tony Huzzard

In manufacturing plants all over the world, both managers and workers have discovered that when employees are involved in workplace decision-making, productivity rises. So in the United States, it made national news when on 14 February 2014 workers at the Volkswagen auto plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee rejected representation by the United Automobile Workers by a vote 712 to 626.

Unfortunately, the Chattanooga workers said no to just the type of employee involvement in productivity improvement that will be necessary to sustain their jobs going forward. To compete on the world stage, a strong employee voice in the workplace matters.

The UAW’s Chattanooga campaign would have made Volkswagen the very first foreign car company to a have a unionized plant in the United States. More importantly, a victory for the UAW was a precondition for the creation of a works council at the Chattanooga plant — a form of worker-management plant-level collaboration for improving manufacturing productivity that is a fixture of German industrial relations, but virtually unknown in the United States. Through information-sharing and problem-solving, the managers and employees on a works council improve product quality, speed up production processes, and reduce materials waste. It’s a win-win.

If American workers want to ensure the competitiveness of their manufacturing jobs, they should jump at the chance of instituting this type of forward-looking arrangement, one that enables their voice to influence the productivity of the work that they do. A large body of evidence shows that the involvement of workers in enhancing productivity increases both the earnings of workers and the competitiveness of the products that they produce. There is fresh evidence of the importance of worker involvement in the productivity improvements that contribute to making their own jobs, and the companies for which they work, competitive on a global scale.

In-depth case studies of automotive supply companies in Germany, Sweden, and the United States — comparing governance regimes and work organization at the plant level — have shown that the automotive supply industry requires creativity and learning from its workers to generate products that are competitive in terms of both quality and cost. The ability and incentive of workers to use their insights and intelligence to contribute to productivity improvements depends on the organization of work at the plant level. High-performance workplaces, characterized by “high road” jobs in which productivity improvements and pay increases go hand in hand, are critical to sustained competitive advantage.

Our research reveals the important role of employee voice mechanisms in high-road work designs, not just in German and Swedish automotive suppliers where worker involvement is formally recognized, but also in supplier firms in the United States where productivity is generally viewed as solely management’s concern. Employee representation in strategic decision-making substitutes a stakeholder approach for the one-sided emphasis on “maximizing shareholder value”—a flawed ideology embraced by business schools over the past 25 years in which all that matters is the company’ stock price. Our research confirms, and helps to explain, a larger body of industrial experience that shows that compromises between the financial interests of shareholders and the productive interests of employees have had considerable success in continental Europe. To succeed in global competition, the US automobile industry needs more, not less, employee voice.

Different nations favor different forms of employee voice. German firms have works councils at the plant level, and in companies with 2,000 or more employees, under the system known as co-determination, equal representation of workers and shareholders on the board of directors, plus one neutral seat. Whether at the plant level or the board level, change requires workers’ input and consent.

In Sweden, union representatives have the more prominent role. Since 1976, Swedish companies have been regulated by an act of parliament, the Co-determination Act, stipulating that company management must consult unions prior to taking decisions on major changes such as corporate reorganization, new work conditions, or the introduction of new technology. Although this requirement ultimately does not displace managerial prerogative, it does give time for unions to investigate the matters being decided and consult with members at central and plant levels prior to decisions being made. In practice, the co-determination regulations are codified in collective agreements across the companies concerned. Not only do these arrangements for employee voice allow for better road-tested decisions in firms; they also confer greater legitimacy on the management of change. For this reason, initial employer opposition to this form of employee voice has now given way to broad acceptance.

In the United States, in publicly listed companies, the ideology of maximizing shareholder value reigns supreme, even though, it is an ideology that enables top executives and corporate raiders to extract value from companies at the expense of value creation. Nevertheless, one of the US companies that we studied had a 100 percent Employee Owned Stock Plan (ESOP) in which the scope for self-dealing by top executives is much more constrained. And in two publicly listed US companies, plant managers had instituted programs for tapping workers’ knowledge, with UAW members involved in one of the cases. Indeed, the workers at the unionized plant had only recently elected to have the UAW represent them because of the protection that it afforded against their jobs being shipped overseas.

The UAW has been seeking to become more proactive in questions of labor’s voice in productivity improvement. UAW president Bob King assumed his position four years ago, coming off his work as UAW vice-president in structuring wage concessions to Ford Motor Company that helped to keep it solvent in the 2008-2010 automotive industry crisis, while General Motors and Chrysler went bankrupt and had to be bailed out by taxpayers. But as King made the cost-cutting bargains at Ford, he also placed worker-management productivity agreements on the agenda as a sustainable way to keep automobile plants competitive in the United States.

UAW rules hold that King, now age 67, cannot run for re-election as UAW president at the end of his term in June of this year. But the “high road” drive to improve the productivity of manufacturing jobs rather than pursue the “low-road” alternative of cutting workers’ wages needs to transcend his presidency. The evidence shows that to sustain high-road jobs while maintaining workers’ standards of living in advanced economies such as Germany, Sweden and the United States, workers’ voice in improving competitiveness needs to extend beyond the plant level to include restraints on corporate financial policies that enable rapacious company executives and Wall Street predators to appropriate corporate cash while leaving workers with low pay or out of work.

German-style works councils are by no means a complete solution to the problem of generating competitive products in high-wage nations. As a foundation for engaging workers in the process of productivity improvement, however, the “high road” alternative presented by the VW Chattanooga union election was a choice that American workers should have embraced.

A version of this article originally appeared on Alternet.

William Lazonick is professor of economics and director of the UMass Center for Industrial Competitiveness. He cofounded and is president of the Academic-Industry Research Network. His book, Sustainable Prosperity in the New Economy? Business Organization and High-Tech Employment in the United States (Upjohn Institute, 2009) won the 2010 Schumpeter Prize. Tony Huzzard is professor of organization studies at the Department of Business Administration, Lund University School of Economics and Management. Inge Lippert, Tony Huzzard, Ulrich Jürgens, and William Lazonick are the authors of Corporate Governance, Employee Voice, and Work Organization: Sustaining High-Road Jobs in the Automotive Supply Industry.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only business and economics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credit: welding robots in a car manufactory. © RainerPlendl via iStockphoto.

The post Why everyone does better when employees have a say in the workplace appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesFelon disfranchisement preserves slavery’s legacyDiscussing proprietary estoppel: promises and principlesIllustrating a graphic history: Mendoza the Jew 

Why do frogs slough their skin?

By Rebecca Cramp

In recent decades, the extraordinarily rapid disappearance of frogs, toads, and salamanders has grabbed the attention of both the scientific community and concerned citizens the world over. Although the causes of some of these losses remain unresolved, the novel disease chytridiomycosis caused by the skin-based fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), has been identified as the causative agent in many of the declines and extinctions worldwide. Bd is now regarded as being responsible for the greatest disease-driven loss of vertebrate biodiversity in recorded history.  Like other entirely cutaneous microbes, interactions with the skin of its host determine how and under what conditions the fungus can induce disease.

The skin plays an important role in immune defence. In the first instance, skin acts as a physical barrier against microbes and pathogens. It also produces anti-microbial skin secretions and supports a large microbial community made up of good (commensal), bad (pathogenic) and indifferent (neither good nor bad; having no discernable effect) microbes. Like most animals, the outer skin layer of amphibians is shed (sloughed) on a regular basis—as often as daily to every couple of weeks. However, unlike mammals, amphibians shed (and often eat) the entire outer skin layer in one piece.  Therefore, anything adhering to or within that outer layer would be lost from the body every time the animal sloughs it skin. As such, regular sloughing could play a role in regulating the abundance and persistence of microbes (including Bd) at the body’s surface. To date, however, the potential for regular skin sloughing to serve as an immune defense strategy in amphibians has been largely overlooked.

A green tree frog. Photo by Ed Meyer.

To test the hypothesis that sloughing in plays a role in the management of cutaneous microbe abundance, we investigated changes in the number of cultivable cutaneous bacteria on the ventral and dorsal body surfaces of the Green tree frog (Litoria caerulea) with sloughing. Effects of temperature on sloughing periodicity were also investigated in order to determine how the efficacy of sloughing in regulating microbial infection might vary with climate and season. Our study showed that sloughing massively reduced the overall abundance of bacteria, in some cases by as much as 100%. In addition, temperature had a marked effect on sloughing periodicity, with animals in cooler temperatures having a much longer time between sloughs compared with animals at held higher temperatures.

Most importantly however, we found that the extended time between sloughs in animals in the cold treatments allowed skin microbe numbers to increase to levels in excess of those seen in animals in the warm treatment. These data suggest that for pathogens that like relatively cooler conditions (like Bd), the effect of temperature on host sloughing frequency may allow pathogen numbers to build up to such a degree that fatal disease occurs.

What does it all mean, though? Firstly, the epidemiology of skin based diseases like Bd could be in part attributed to the effects of temperature on host sloughing periodicity particularly when disease outbreaks occur in cool habitats and/or at cooler times of year. Secondly, differences between species in the frequency of sloughing could influence pathogen establishment and go some way to explaining why some amphibian species are more resistant to cutaneous pathogens than others. Thirdly, the ability of commensal (good) bacteria to protect against pathogens may be reduced in frog species which slough frequently as commensal bacteria would also be lost from the skin with sloughing, unless they are able to recolonise the skin rapidly.

Understanding the role the skin plays as the first bastion of defense against external pathogens is vitally important as the rate of emergence of both novel and pre-existing infectious diseases is predicted to skyrocket in the future as a result of anthropogenic climate change.

Dr Rebecca Cramp is a Research Officer at The University of Queensland in the laboratory of Professor Craig Franklin. Rebecca has diverse research interests and is currently working on several projects including a study of disease susceptibility in frogs, the control of ion regulation in acid-tolerant amphibian larvae and the effects of environmental stressors on immune function in amphibian larvae. She is a co-author of the paper ‘First line of defence: the role of sloughing in the regulation of cutaneous microbes in frogs‘, which appears in the journal Conservation Physiology.

Conservation Physiology is an online only, fully open access journal published on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology. Biodiversity across the globe faces a growing number of threats associated with human activities. Conservation Physiology publishes research on all taxa (microbes, plants and animals) focused on understanding and predicting how organisms, populations, ecosystems and natural resources respond to environmental change and stressors. Physiology is considered in the broadest possible terms to include functional and mechanistic responses at all scales.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only earth and life sciences articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credit: A green tree frog. Photo by Ed Meyer. Do not reproduce without permission.

The post Why do frogs slough their skin? appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesThe amoeba in the roomInferring the unconfirmed: the no alternatives argumentThe never-ending assault by microbes 

10 facts about the saxophone and its players

By Maggie Belnap

The saxophone has long been a star instrument in jazz, big bands, and solo performances. But when exactly did this grand instrument come about? Who invented it? Not many people know that when the saxophone first appeared in jazz, many performers turned up their noses to it, much preferring the clarinet. But as the hardness began to wear off, the saxophone became a hit in itself.





1.   Adolphe Sax moved to Paris in 1842 and invented the saxophone in 1846.





2.   The saxophone has a metal body and is played with a single beating reed, which the player controls through his or her mouth tightness.





3.   There are eight different saxophones in the sax family. The highest pitched ones are known as the Sopranino and Soprano sax. The more moderately middle toned saxes are the Alto and Tenor, while the lowest pitched saxs are Baritone Sax, Bass Sax, Contrabass Sax, and Sub-Contrabass Sax.











4.   Only four members of the sax family are commonly used today: the Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass Saxophone. The most popular are the Alto and Tenor.





5.   Although the saxophone is usually thought of as a jazz instrument, it has been used successfully with symphonic music such as Bizet, Massenet, and Berlioz.





6.   Although the saxophone is closely related to the clarinet, the fingering of a saxophone is much easier. Because the higher and lower octaves of the sax have the same fingering, it is much easier to play than the clarinet, which over blows at 12ths, meaning a clarinet player must learn different fingers for higher and lower octaves.





7.   When the saxophone was first introduced to jazz, the clarinet was much more popular and many musicians resisted the saxophone for a time.





8.   However, the tenor, alto, and soprano saxs soon caught on and became very popular in music from New Orleans jazz to rock music.





9.   Gene Ammons, founder of the Chicago school of Tenor Sax, recorded, “The Big Sound” and “Groove Blues” on a single day in 1958. The album includes many talented players, especially Gene Ammons talented saxophone playing.





10.   John Douglas Surman was a remarkable play of the soprano and baritone saxophones (as well as many other instruments). He attended the London College of Music and was a member of the Jazz Workshop at Plymouth Arts Center. is solo album, The Amazing Adventures of Simon Simon, includes and features many different saxophone sounds.

Maggie Belnap is a Social Media intern at Oxford University Press. She attends Amherst College.

Oxford Reference is the home of reference publishing at Oxford. With over 16,000 photographs, maps, tables, diagrams, and quick and speedy search, Oxford Reference save you time while enhancing and complimenting your work.

Subscribe to OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only music articles on OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credit: By Undefined («собственная работа»). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The post 10 facts about the saxophone and its players appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesAn intriguing, utterly incomplete history of Louis ArmstrongShakespeare and the music of William WaltonCreative ways to perform your music: tips for music students 

Illustrating a graphic history: Mendoza the Jew

By Liz Clarke

The illustration of a graphic history begins with the author’s script. There are two aspects to turning that script into artwork. It’s both a story, calling for decisions to be made about the best way to present the narrative visually, and a history, rooted in fact and raising questions about what the places and people (and their furniture and transportation and utensils) would actually have looked like.

A sketch of Esther Mendoza, wife of Daniel Mendoza. Courtesy of Liz Clarke. Used with permission.

It’s unlikely that we’ll find perfect answers to all of these questions, particularly in a pre-photography age like the late 18th century, when Daniel Mendoza was at the height of his boxing career. Some subjects offer a wealth of images. Some, like a number of the places Mendoza frequented in London, still exist today. I was able to work from current photographs of locations including Mendoza’s house in Paradise Row, the cemetery where he is buried, and the exterior of the White Hart Inn. We had several images of Mendoza himself to refer to, thanks to his celebrity status. We knew what he looked like at different points in his life, how tall he was and how much he weighed. We knew about his fighting style from newspaper reports, artwork, and from his own instructional writing.

However, other subjects may not have been recorded in an image or even in a written description at the time. If records were made, they may not have survived. This means we have to cast the net wider. There are many sources of general information available that allow a lateral approach — records of people and places with shared characteristics, surviving artefacts and garments, artwork and documents from the time. There was nothing definite to work from in the case of Mendoza’s wife Esther, but we could ask what a woman like Mendoza’s wife would have looked like. How would a woman similar in age, class, and religion to Esther have dressed and worn her hair? We could then blend fact and imagination to arrive at a concept sketch of Esther, which allowed us to agree on how we would depict her.

A page from Mendoza the Jew, showing the process from the sketch stage to the final piece. Courtesy of Liz Clarke. Used with permission.

Once we have enough information, each page is planned in detail. I’ll decide on the composition of the whole page, and of the contents of each panel on the page. There are choices to make about viewpoint (for example, if the scene is going to be presented from a low angle, looking up at it, or a high angle, looking down on it, which creates two very different effects), how to draw attention to the pivotal point in the scene, the characters’ body language and expressions, if they aren’t already defined by the script, and how to convey the themes of the book. This layout sketch is the most important stage in the illustration of a page.

Once the author has approved the sketch, I draw it in ink as line art and prepare this to be coloured digitally. Colour and the nature and direction of the light can also contribute to the storytelling. For example, the desaturated colours at the beginning of an exchange between Mendoza and Humphries, when Mendoza is not at his best, gradually become brighter and warmer by the end of the scene, as their verbal sparring restores Mendoza’s fighting spirit. The text comprising the narrative and dialogue is added to the art, and text boxes and speech bubbles are fitted to it. For Mendoza the Jew, we decided to use three different fonts. Two fonts with some resemblance to typefaces from the time period represented quotes from Mendoza’s autobiography and from a newspaper report of Mendoza’s match against Humphries in Doncaster, distinguishing the author’s words from Mendoza’s, and those of the reporter.

As an artist, illustrating a graphic history, as opposed to a work of fiction, has some unique rewards as well as challenges. There’s an awareness that these were real individuals and events, and it always feels like a privilege to be telling their stories.

Liz Clarke is an illustrator based in Cape Town, South Africa. Her artwork has appeared in magazines, games and books, including Abina and the Important Men: A Graphic History by Trevor R. Getz and Mendoza the Jew, Boxing, Manliness, and Nationalism: A Graphic History by Ronald Schechter.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only history articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Illustrating a graphic history: Mendoza the Jew appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesOxford University Press during World War IFelon disfranchisement preserves slavery’s legacyGetting to know Sir Philip Sidney 

Hasidic drag in American modern dance

By Rebecca Rossen

On 27 February 1932, the American modern dancer Pauline Koner presented a concert at New York City’s Town Hall. For the occasion, Koner, who was Jewish, premiered Chassidic Song and Dance, a solo in which she portrayed a young Hasidic Jew. Her characterization of an Eastern European Jew was not so different from the other exotics that constituted Koner’s repertory in the 1930s. Indeed, aided by vibrant costumes (and her mother, who would assist in swift costume changes backstage), the soloist would effortlessly transform herself into an array of foreign types—Hindu goddess, Javanese temple dancer, Andalusian maiden, Italian signorina. Yet Chassidic Song and Dance offered a critical distinction. In all her other solos, Koner portrayed female characters; in Chassidic Song and Dance, she presented herself as a boy—in Hasidic drag.

Interestingly, Koner was not the only Jewish female dancer performing in Hasidic drag on New York City stages and screens in the 1920s and 1930s. In Bar Mitzvah (Chassidic) (1929), Belle Didjah depicted an Orthodox youth on the verge of manhood; Dvora Lapson created a number of Hasidic solos including Yeshiva Bachur (1931), Beth Midrash (1936), and The Jolly Hassid (1937); and Benjamin Zemach outfitted a cast of male and female dancers in Hasidic garb for a 1931 concert. The most famous Jewish drag performer was Molly Picon, a seminal figure in Yiddish theater and film who frequently cross-dressed in such Second Avenue stage hits as Yonkele (1922–25) and the films Ost und West (1923) and Yidl Mitn Fidl (1937), presaging Barbra Streisand’s Yeshiva “boy” in Yentl (1983).

Belle Didjah in Bar Mitzvah (1929). Photograph: Maurice Goldberg. Courtesy of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations and the Maurice Goldberg Estate.

Why were these women drawn to Hasidism? Dance was an acceptable form of expression and exaltation in Hasidism. Thus, it makes sense that Jewish female choreographers working in American concert dance would look to Hasidism as a source for inventing modern dances on Jewish themes. However, each of these performers had different relationships to Judaism and Jewish culture, and their identities as Jewish women impacted how they represented Jewishness in performance.

For Koner, who had grown up in a secular home, Judaism was foreign and mysterious. In her autobiography, she likened her occasional childhood trips with her grandfather to a Lower East Side synagogue to visiting a distant land: “To me it was all wondrous theater.” Koner’s approach to representing ethnic material on the American concert stage was to transform it through creative interpretation and invention or, as she explained it, to capture “the flavor rather than the fact.” The actual choreography of Chassidic Song and Dance is not documented, though a stunning photograph of the dancer still exists, depicting her as a Hasidic boy with peyes (side curls), black cap, and black suit. In it, the dancer’s vivid features are highlighted by makeup and her body is positioned against a backdrop of angular shadows. Koner made the Hasidic Jew soulful, yet glamorous. At the same time, by performing so many ethnic types on one program, she suggested that these characterizations were all an act. To a certain degree, the choreographer represented the Hasidic boy, the Hindu goddess, and the Javanese temple dancer in the same way—from a distance, reinforcing her distinction from all the exotics in her repertory. She could portray the Jew, but Jewishness did not define her—she could put it on and take it off at will (or through swift costume changes between acts).

Pauline Koner in Chassidic Song and Dance (1931). Photograph: Aram Alban. Courtesy of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Unlike Pauline Koner, Dvora Lapson’s deep knowledge of Hasidic culture and dance stemmed from extensive ethnographic research that she conducted both in her native New York City and in Poland, where she traveled in 1937 only three years before the Warsaw ghetto was established, after which Poland’s Jewish population was virtually annihilated. Proudly describing herself as a “Jewish dance mime” and a “pioneer of the new Jewish dance,” Lapson wrote that her dance “compositions not only mirror and reflect Jewish life and folklore but present a keen commentary upon them.” In fact, Lapson’s lifelong dedication to Jewish dance would lead Jerome Robbins to hire her as a dance consultant for Fiddler on the Roof. Lapson boasted a vast repertory of Jewish dances in the 1930s, many of which were on Hasidic themes. Photographs of the dancer demonstrate that she was every bit as glamorous as Koner, though Lapson did not exoticize Jewish characters. On the contrary, Lapson believed that dance had the potential to instill pride in American Jews about their heritage and combat anti-Semitism. As she said to an interviewer in 1938, “I want the Gentile as well to find something in my work which makes him more sympathetic and appreciative of my race.”

Dvora Lapson most likely in Beth Midrash (House of Study) (1936). Photographer unknown. Courtesy of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations and Beril Lapson.

It is significant that Hasidic drag thrived on the American concert stage during the 1920s and 1930s. By the late 1920s, American modern dance had already emerged as field in which female artists were making great strides by creating dances that portrayed women as autonomous subjects. When they commanded the stage as solo artists, female performers also asserted their ability to play an active role in American society. While Lapson’s dances aimed to increase American audiences’ understanding of Jewish culture and traditions, Koner’s Chassidic Song and Dance emphasized Jewish difference. It should be noted, however, that Koner premiered the dance at a benefit supporting the seventh anniversary of the Pioneer Women’s Organization of America, a left-wing association that rebuffed the chauvinism of American Zionism and aimed to educate Jewish women to become equal participants in a just society. Although their approaches were distinct, both Koner and Lapson used dance to intervene in a patriarchal religion that restricted women’s participation in religious and public life. By dancing in drag and by dancing solo, they subtly demanded a platform for women in Jewish spheres while underscoring women’s growing leadership in American modern dance and modern Jewish life.

Rebecca Rossen is assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin, and a faculty affiliate in Jewish Studies, American Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies. She has published articles in TDR: The Drama Review, Theatre Journal, and Feminist Studies, and is the author of Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance (Oxford University Press, 2014).

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only theatre and dance articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Hasidic drag in American modern dance appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesFelon disfranchisement preserves slavery’s legacyDiscussing proprietary estoppel: promises and principlesThe viability of Transcendence: the science behind the film