Humility & Humiliation: The Transformation of Franciscan Humour,c.1210–1310

Humiliation and self-ridicule worked as surprisingly important tools of evangelical outreach in the first decades of the Franciscan Order (c.1210–50). According to early Franciscan texts such as the Assisi Compilation (c.1240s) and Jordan of Giano’s Chronica (c.1260), St Francis and his earliest followers sought to win supporters by stripping naked in public, mocking learned preachers and ludicrously imitating animals. Yet within a few decades of the founder’s death this type of humour had been erased from Franciscan texts. Chronicles now omitted references to Francis’s laughter, while humiliating behaviour came to be condemned by Franciscan preachers, chroniclers and theologians alike. From being a means of undermining dignity and reason, joking was now instead celebrated as a tool of upholding these very same values. Describing the nature of this shift, and contextualising it within the evolving institutional priorities of the Franciscans under the leadership of Bonaventure (d.1274), this article will complicate debates about the development of medieval humour, while also reflecting on laughter’s role as a means of resistance to the significant social and cultural upheavals of the 1200s.     

The Logic of Conquest: Tripoli, 1289; Acre, 1291; why not Sis, 1293?

In 1289, Tripoli was taken from the Franks by the Mamluk Sultan Qalāwun. In 1291, Qalāwun's son al-Ashraf Khalīl captured Acre, the last capital of the Crusader "kingdom of Jerusalem", and the few surviving Frankish outposts on the Levantine coast were swiftly abandoned. Next in line seemed to be the Armenian kingdom in Cilicia and the Taurus mountains - but it was to be a further 84 years before Sis, the kingdom's capital, was to fall to the Mamluks. It does not seem unreasonable to ask why the Mamluks should have let it survive so long: indeed, how did it survive the 1290s?     

J.B. Priestley,the ‘Modern’ and America

ABSTRACT

J.B. Priestley has often been seen as representative of a nostalgic Englishness which rejected the modern world and, in the process, embraced anti-Americanism. However, as this article suggests, Priestley had a more complicated relationship with both America and modernity than has been accepted. Focusing on the 1930s, it shows how Priestley travelled widely in the United States and came to admire the democratic and collective aspects of American culture, whilst also developing a critique of what he saw as the lack of individuality and creativity in other elements of the ‘mass' society, anticipating arguments he would develop after 1945.     

China,U.S.Sign an Ice-breaking Agreement：An mtervtew with SACH Director Gener al Mr.Shan Jixiang

On January 15, the United States and China signed a Memorandum of Understanding Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the People＇s Republic of China Concerning the Imposition of Import Restrictions on Categories of Archeological Material from the Paleolithic Period through the Tang Dynasty and Monumental Sculpture and Wall Art at Least 250 Year Old,     

Preserving The English Landscape,c.1870–1914

ABSTRACT

This article examines the significance and ideological character of the landscape preservation movement in England before 1914. In these years, preservationist discourse had considerable resonance across all sections of society. At a time of change, mainstream English culture increasingly valued natural landscapes seen to be ‘relics' of ages past, or associated with historical figures, events and customs. This historicized reading of landscape was bound up with patriotic sentiment, but did not reflect the dominance of any atavistic ideology of rural Englishness. In late Victorian and Edwardian England, the preservationist dispensation ran with the grain of modernity, not against it.     

W.S.默温: 如斗士般反抗暴力,如隐士般诗意栖居

正W·S·默温(1927—2019)是20世纪美国新超现实主义诗派的代表诗人,出生于纽约的他在新泽西州的联合城和宾夕法尼亚州的斯克兰顿长大,母亲早逝,父亲是长老会的牧师。默温5岁起就帮父亲编写赞美歌,16岁时获得一笔奖学金而进入普林斯顿大学就读,大学时代开启诗歌生涯。默温一生笔耕不辍,著作颇丰,是名副其实的多产作家,出版了50多本诗集、译作和散文集,曾获得美国国家图书奖和普利策诗歌奖,2010年被评为美国第17位桂冠诗人。默温的创作广受赞誉,因为他不断追求创作手法的推陈出新。在每个阶段,默温都对同时代的诗人和更年轻一代产生巨大的影响,被誉为     

Perceived Personal Discrimination,Panethnic and National Identification,and Collective Action to Support Immigrants’ Rights among U.S. Latinas/os

Many Latinas/os in the United States participated in the protests and rallies (i.e., collective action) to support immigrants’ rights that followed Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. President in 2017. Following the rejection-identification and rejection-disidentification models, we examined whether perceived personal discrimination, panethnic (i.e., Hispanic or Latina/o) identification, and national (i.e., American) identification were associated with greater likelihood of having engaged in collective action to support immigrants’ rights among a national sample of Latinas/os in the United States (N = 1,501). We found support for the rejection-disidentification model. Perceived personal discrimination was associated with lower national identification. Latinas/os who reported lower national identification, in turn, were more likely to have reported participating in collective action to support immigrants’ rights. We found less support for the rejection-identification model. Perceived personal discrimination was not associated with higher (pan)ethnic identification, although (pan)ethnic identification was positively associated with collective action. We consider the implications of these results for the rejection-identification and rejection-disidentification models and emphasize the importance of attending to U.S. Latinas/os’ multiple identities.     

夜·灯·母亲

那是一段苦不堪言的日子,中考落榜,给了我沉重的打击,希望之灯近乎熄灭了.……