Recovering the transnational life of Charlotte Maxeke: an interview with Zubeida Jaffer

Abstract

A conversation with Zubeida Jaffer, discussing her recent book Beauty of the Heart: The Life and Times of Charlotte Mannya Maxeke (2016) and Maxeke’s perspectives towards colonialism, women’s rights, and transnational pan-African movements during the twentieth century.     

Radical formalism

The question of formalism often gives rise to well-rehearsed notions of political indifference, autonomy, and ahistoricity. Yet what if a radical formalism was deployed––against these normative understandings––as a contextual practice and subversive method of critique? Mobilized into action, “Radical Formalism” proposes that institutionalized understandings of form may be hijacked from within as an alternative strategy of resistance. Examining the work of Charlotte Poseneske as one practitioner of radical formalism, this essay offers ways of considering formalist art objects as carriers of the political. By welcoming contextual readings of form, we move past the superficial and facile readings of the relation between aesthetics and politics, enabling ourselves to understand what form can perform.     

《简·爱》中信仰与情感的矛盾

《简·爱》与基督教及其经典《圣经》有着密切的关系这点毋庸置疑。不过学术界对《简·爱》是否与基督教相一致存在着争议,尤其集中在对简离开罗切斯特以及随后的回归原因的探讨。这一争论涉及简信仰的虔诚以及简爱情之路的障碍,这种情况的形成是由于小说在简的塑造上流露出的矛盾造成的,是夏洛蒂·勃朗特的宗教教育与情感经历冲突的流露。     

Investigating Treatment Effects in a Domestic Violence Experiment with Partially Missing Outcome Data

This paper considers the problem of estimating the magnitude of a treatmenteffect in a randomized experiment where the outcome is missing for somecases. The primary concern in such situations is that the distribution ofthe outcome variable may vary in important ways between individuals whoseoutcomes are observed and individuals whose outcomes are missing. Since thedata cannot be used to resolve this concern, it is necessary to take theuncertainty that is created by the missing data into account when developinginferences about the magnitude of the treatment effect. This paper considersa modeling framework that accomplishes this objective. Then, the proposedframework is applied to a study of the effectiveness of different types ofpolice responses to spouse assault incidents in Charlotte, North Carolina.     

Making It Up with the Motherland: Revision and Reconciliation in Edna O'Brien's The Light of Evening

This article explores the relationship between the Irish woman writer and exile and return in Edna O'Brien's recent novel The Light of Evening (2006). This work, dedicated as it is ‘To my mother and my motherland’, represents a new chapter in O'Brien's configuration of the connection between the Irish woman writer and the image of Ireland as a place from which escape is a necessary step towards creative freedom. The Light of Evening contains a web of subtle allusions that invite a reading of the novel as a statement of O'Brien's allegiances with the English and Irish literary traditions. Ultimately, however, it foregrounds the quotidian world of the main character's home place—one represented fully in her mother's letters—as the key source of inspiration for the Irish woman writer. The article examines how relationships with the literary past are mapped onto familial ties in the novel, as O'Brien seems to move away from the Joycean promise of creative exile towards a more hopeful reading of the relationship between the Irish woman writer and her ‘motherland’.     

两组对立的女性形象

夏洛蒂·勃朗特的小说《维莱特》通过女主人公露西·斯诺的心智成长过程表现了十九世纪父权文化下尴尬的女性本位。行文中,作者选取了两幅主题截然相反的油画画像即疯狂的演员与隐忍的修女,用两组对立的非现实生活中的女性形象来象征男权制度下被压抑的、歪曲了女性生存的绝对权利,并借此作为露西对女性自我价值进行甄别、判断的参照物。