Death and the erotic woman: the European gendering of mortality in times of major religious change

This paper explores the use of European erotic death imagery produced in the Death and the Maiden (D&M) genre in two time periods. It compares and contrasts D&M imagery produced by the Germanic-speaking proto/early-Reformation artists, Hans Baldung (alias Grien) (c1484–1545), Niklaus Manuel (known as Deutsch) (c1484–1530) and Sebald Beham (known as Hans Sebald Beham) (1500–1550) which highlighted the folly, futility and transience of earthly vanities during the transition from Roman Catholic to Protestant Christianity, with contemporary calendar art produced by Cofani Funebri (from 2003) and Lindner (from 2010) which advertise coffins manufactured in the increasingly secular countries of Italy and Poland. Drawing on Biblical narrative, Augustinian theology and European socio-cultural perceptions of gender, this paper argues that these D&M images are highly eroticised and place woman as signifiers of transcient life (vanitas) and earthly pleasure (voluptas), juxtaposing her with a masculine/male representation of death; Death being imaged as an individual in the sixteenth century, and as a coffin in the contemporary works. The paper also contextualises the imagery in terms of traditional European Christian notions of life and death, as informed by the Biblical Fall narrative, with its elucidations of sin, concupiscence and punishment. It thus asserts that both socio-cultural and religious attitudes towards gender are highly significant in D&M imagery and indeed in terms of the artworks, argues that the masculine signifier of Death can be placed as Adam, whilst the Maiden, as fecund life, represents Eve. However, the overt eroticism of both sets of artworks also allows for a reading that draws on Messaris' [(1997). Visual persuasion; the role of images in advertising. London: Sage] notion that visual images ‘make a persuasive communication due to iconicity; the emotional response to the visual image presented’. Thus, this paper contrasts D&M imagery produced over 400 years apart to examine consciously erotic gendered thanantological allegories of women as vanitas and voluptas, and the male/masculine as representations of Death.     

吧国公堂对华人宗教活动的管理

受原乡传统的影响,中国人在向印尼移民的过程中,也把传统的宗教信仰带到了印尼。自有华人定居吧城之时起,就"有人必有庙"。至元明时期,华人庙宇已遍布印尼各地,尤以吧城为盛。吧国公堂是荷兰殖民时期吧城华人处理华人社会内部诸项事务的具有半自治性质的行政和司法机构,对华人宗教活动的管理是其重要职能之一。吧国公堂名下有华人四大佛教庙宇,即观音亭、完劫寺、安恤神庙和玄天上帝庙,其中以观音亭建立时间最早、影响最大。为管理与维护上述四大寺庙,公堂设置有专门的"掌庙宇公勃低"一职,还定期安排官员轮值管理不同的寺庙。公堂对华人寺庙的管理,包括主持中元节及清明节祭祀等宗教活动、寺庙的重修与维护、募集善缘题捐、监管寺庙日常工作(包括向荷印殖民政府申请僧人移民来到吧城,负责各寺庙僧众的选任、离职和监管,监督寺庙所属土地及房屋的出租,管理寺庙所属器具,监管寺庙日常收支及处理寺庙与周边民众的纠纷等等)。在某种意义上,吧国公堂对华人宗教活动的管理是其半自治性质的一种体现。到19世纪中后期,随着荷兰殖民统治力量的增强,公堂的自治权逐渐被削弱。二战后印尼政府又对华人宗教活动进行诸多限制,于是公堂对华人宗教活动的管理权逐步丧失。1970年代印尼政府更下令将具有华族色彩的庙宇(Klenteng)改为佛寺(Vihara),并禁止华人再建新的庙宇。     

The Body as Situation: A Darwinian Reading of The Second Sex

Challenging the influential view that the chapter on biology in the first volume of The Second Sex is exposing scientific myths in severe prose, in the view of this paper, the chapter is as much about scientific facts as it is an intriguingly open-ended dialogue between phenomenology and science. Beauvoir’s consuming epistemological and scientific preoccupation with the category of biology is analysed in a bid to advance a new, naturalist–feminist conception of Beauvoir’s theory of natural history. The analysis unravels the theoretical edifice, with its tensions between Beauvoir’s selective but brilliant appropriation of recent discoveries in evolutionary biology and genetics and certain deliberate rejections and omissions of Darwinian evolutionary thinking. Contrary to Beauvoir’s intentions, she ends up conflating the term biology with, in particular, reproductive physiology, and perpetuating the ill-fated division between body and psyche. In contributing to a reformulation of an empirically grounded approach to the embodied mind and situated body, this paper debates some promising insights from contemporary neuroscience and primatology. These insights are critical to theory development, based on a non-anthropocentric stance and non-dualistic understanding of the mind–brain continuum and the body as a situation.     

女性“第二轮班”现象真的存在吗 —— 基于女性教育、职业和收入特征的实证研究

本研究借助国家统计局和妇女联合会的调查数据,对比了中国不同性别城镇劳动者在有酬劳动 时间和家务劳动时间分配上的差异特征,并利用面板数据模型验证了影响女性群体时间选择偏好的主要因素。 结果表明,在中国女性城镇劳动力者中,显著存在着“第二轮班”现象,即不仅参与有酬劳动,而且负担了很 大比重的无酬家务劳动。同时,教育、职业和收入等因素对不同性别劳动者时间分配有一定程度的影响。     

Canadian Concerns of a Different Kind of Brexit: Britain’s First Application to the EEC and Canada’s Commonwealth Appeal

Recent debates on Brexit have made several attempts to connect the current situation with Britain’s first attempt to gain entry to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1961. In both 2016 and 1961, questions were raised about what role the Commonwealth would take and how the relationship with Britain would adapt to their then-entry and current exit of a union with Europe. This article seeks to examine how Canada reacted to Britain’s decision to enter the EEC and sheds light on the vociferous opposition it raised within the Commonwealth. Using both British and Canadian cabinet minutes and Commonwealth memoranda, the article follows the Canadian campaign against British entry to the EEC and its fervent defence of the Commonwealth as an economic-focused community. Ultimately, the Canadian-led protest against British entry into the EEC derived from a fear that Britain would drift from the Commonwealth towards Europe, leading to the complete dissolution of the economic bonds that tie the community together.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">The Daily Show with Jon Stewart</Emphasis> and Audience Attitude Change During the 2004 Party Conventions

The intention of this analysis is to examine The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’s coverage of politics and assess the persuasive power of the program’s unique brand of humor. Evidence from a content analysis of The Daily Show’s “Indecision 2004” coverage of the Democratic and Republican Party Conventions shows the program’s humor was much harsher during the Republican Convention than it was during the Democratic Convention. While the humor in both conventions was heavily based on self-deprecation and the exploitation of conventional political stereotypes, the ridicule of Republicans focused much more on policy and character flaws. Humor pointed toward Democrats, on the other hand, tended to focus more on innocuous physical attributes. Analysis of panel data collected by the National Annenberg Election Survey during the 2004 national party conventions shows that exposure to The Daily Show’s convention coverage was associated with increased negativity toward President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. These relationships remain significant even when controlling for partisan identification and ideology. Attitudes toward the Democratic ticket, John Kerry and John Edwards remained consistent.     

Last Thoughts on <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Last Intellectuals</Emphasis>

Over twenty years ago my book The Last Intellectuals put into circulation the phrase “public intellectual.” The term unexpectedly enjoyed great success. It encapsulated a new division between a professional or academic intellectual focused on his or her specialty and an intellectual orientated to a larger public. The former tend to disappear into the university, while they latter write for the educated public. In the twenty years since its publication, my book has been sharply challenged. Moreover the emergence of African-American and women intellectuals, and well as new developments such as Internet, have possibly undermined my thesis. Yet these phenomena amount to revisions, not refutations, of my thesis. Moreover the role of intellectuals in France and Germany suggest that the same process of academization is taking place in other advanced industrial nations. What is called for is not nostalgia or its opposite, a celebration of everything that happens, but a consideration of the real shifts that affect the lives and work of intellectuals.

第一代独生子女婚姻生育选择及对未来人口和家庭结构的影响——兼与庄渝霞商榷生育政策调整的可行性

随着第一代独生子女进入婚育年龄,产生大量的双独家庭、单独家庭,不同家庭类型的变化将引起政策生育率自然回升,如果考虑到有部分家庭放弃生育二孩,则意愿生育率会低于政策生育率。本文从独生子女婚育选择的角度出发,使用相关调查数据分析,发现由双独家庭所产生"4-2-1"家庭的数目受政策微调生育的影响较小,政策微调可以大幅度降低一孩家庭的比例,二孩家庭比例的增加无疑会降低家庭风险,且不会大规模地增加出生人口数量,因此,中国应当对生育政策进行微调,增强人口结构的合理性。     

论环境健康与政府环境责任

通过分析自然环境对人体健康的影响,指出环境健康问题的严重性,而在环境健康问题越来越严重的今天,根据法律规定,政府负有不可推卸的环境责任,根据政府对环境责任的错误认识提出了要狠抓落实环境民主,改进现有政府环境理念,达到环境善治的观点。     

论《源氏物语》的叙事手法

紫式部在继承了物语虚构的传统的同时,注重写实,真实再现人物的内心情感;利用历史叙事手法,适当加入史实,增加了作品的真实性;以和歌抒情,使原本单调的物语叙事手法变得丰满起来。