hari s.

Guest Post by Teresa A. Meade and Leila J. Rupp

Quite often, when we reflect on the field of women’s history and how it has developed over time, we use what the feminist scholar Clare Hemmings calls “progress narratives.” That is, we say that women’s history used to be all about white middle-class women, but now we are attentive to race, ethnicity, class, and other differences. Or we say that women’s history used to be dominated by scholarship on the United States, but now we attend to other places and think comparatively and transnationally. Or we say that women’s history used to be relentlessly empirical and atheoretical, but now we have incorporated the insights of poststructuralism, intersectionality, and gender theory. The twenty-fifth anniversary issue of the Journal of Women’s History gives us the opportunity to reflect on the trajectory of women’s history, not from the beginning, whenever that might have been, but certainly since the first Journal issue in 1989.

In addition to this celebration of the Journal’s first twenty-five years, we are happy to announce that a history of the JWH, researched and written by Jennifer Tomas, will be available online later this year at http://bingdev.binghamton.edu/jwh/. Tomas received her PhD from Binghamton University in 2012, and her dissertation, “The Women’s History Movement in the United States: Professional and Political Roots of the Field, 1922-1987,” made her a perfect candidate for the JWH history project. A web article, key documents, and video interviews with JWH founders, editors, and officers complement the articles in this issue.

So let us go to the beginning. Volume 1, issue 1, coedited by the founders, Christie Farnham and Joan Hoff, featured an article on Cherokee women; an article on conceptualizing the history of women in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East; a report on women’s history and feminism in China; reviews of teaching packets for integrating women’s history into courses on the Third World; and responses to a theoretical and methodological reflection, from the perspective of French feminism, on women’s culture and women’s power. The remaining two issues in volume 1 included articles on African American women and working-class history; on India, Iran, Argentina, Chile, and South Africa; and on Third World historiography, socialist-feminist U.S. women’s history, and reconceptualizing differences among women. In other words, the issues were not all about white middle-class women, did not focus exclusively on the United States, and were not atheoretical (although the statement of purpose in the first issue did critique the “problematic tendency for research on women to become increasingly relativistic and apolitical under the influence of poststructuralism”).

Looking back at the first volume is a useful reminder that the Journal of Women’s History from the beginning sought to recognize differences among women, to take a global view, and to open discussion of different theoretical perspectives. We reflect here, then, on the ways that women’s history has developed in the years since the Journal saw the light of day.

The anniversary issue begins with a conversation about the relationship between radical history and women’s history, bringing together scholars from across generations and fields of women’s history. The reflections of the participants remind us that the best women’s history has always woven together the threads of individual lives, collective action, and large-scale forces. And that women’s history began with an agenda: to analyze the past in order to understand the present and work toward a better future. The rest of the issue consists of articles we solicited on thematic and national or regional areas of women’s history, along with articles that deal with the various ways in which women’s history reaches beyond the university.

Compared to 1989, women’s history has transformed in terms of themes, approaches, and possibilities for disseminating our work outside the university setting, although we must take care not to exaggerate change and ignore continuity. We have expanded our reach into such areas as disability studies, transgender studies, and transnational history. The concept of intersectionality, so central to the field of women’s studies, has had a strong impact on women’s history, as many of the articles in this issue illustrate. If women’s history was never just about white, middle-class, Euroamerican women, since the publication of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s foundational article on intersectionality we have become more sophisticated in analyzing the ways that race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and disability interact at both the individual and societal level. Postcolonial theory, critical race theory, queer theory, and borderlands theory have added to the toolkit we as women’s historians bring to our work. The Internet and new media offer us new ways of teaching and researching. And over the last twenty-five years, women’s history, at least in some places, has shaped the field of history as a whole, engendering the “master” narrative and adding insight into the behavior, appraisal, and understanding of relations among people.

So where might we be headed in the next twenty-five years? We as historians are notoriously bad at thinking about the future, given our professional expertise in dwelling on the past. History as a discipline is also, compared to both the other humanities and the other social sciences (since history is arguably both), relatively slow to change. We still appreciate narrative—telling a good story—even as we embrace new theories and methods. Thinking about the last quarter century, the Journal of Women’s History has, we think, bridged the divide between women’s history and gender history and grappled with the relationships between experience and discourse, oppression and agency. JWH articles reflect increasing interdisciplinarity in incorporating theoretical insights from other disciplines. They also contribute historical perspective that is essential to women’s, gender, and feminist studies. It is our hope that this issue will not only document where we have been, but that it will help to open doors to the future of our field.

Teresa A. Meade is the Florence B. Sherwood Professor of History and Culture at Union College in New York. She is the author and editor of many books on Latin America and women and gender studies. She is a member of the Radical History Review Editorial Collective and President of the Journal of Women’s History Board of Trustees. Leila J. Rupp is a professor of feminist studies and an associate dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She edited the Journal of Women’s History from 1996 to 2004 and currently serves on the Board of Trustees.

Marcel Proust was undoubtedly a gifted author, known largely for his classic multi-volume novel, In Search of Lost Time, a mammoth piece of work believed by some to be one of the greatest books ever written. More importantly, he was also, it is said, obsessed with masturbation. As a teenager this caused problems for his family, not least his father, a professor of hygiene, who like many of the day believed that such a worrying habit could cause homosexuality if left unchecked. And so, in May of 1888, in an effort to cure him of this "problem" having recently walked in on him "on the job," Dr. Proust gave his 16-year-old son 10 francs and sent him off to a local brothel. As evidenced by the following letter to his grandfather, and possibly due to the fact that Marcel was in fact homosexual, the visit didn't go to plan.

(Letter and translation kindly supplied by Fabien Bonnet—huge thanks to Larst Onovich; Image above: Marcel Proust at 16, some months before he wrote this letter, via.)



Transcript

18 May 1888

Thursday evening.

My dear little grandfather,

I appeal to your kindness for the sum of 13 francs that I wished to ask Mr. Nathan for, but which Mama prefers I request from you. Here is why. I so needed to see if a woman could stop my awful masturbation habit that Papa gave me 10 francs to go to a brothel. But first, in my agitation, I broke a chamber pot: 3 francs; then, still agitated, I was unable to screw. So here I am, back to square one, waiting more and more as hours pass for 10 francs to relieve myself, plus 3 francs for the pot. But I dare not ask Papa for more money so soon and so I hoped you could come to my aid in a circumstance which, as you know, is not merely exceptional but also unique. It cannot happen twice in one lifetime that a person is too flustered to screw.

I kiss you a thousand times and dare to thank you in advance.

I will be home tomorrow morning at 11am. If you are moved by my situation and can answer my prayers, I will hopefully find you with the amount. Regardless, thank you for your decision which I know will come from a place of friendship.

Marcel.

Αυτό το δωδεκάχρονο αγόρι είναι απίστευτα έξυπνο. Ακούστε τις απόψεις του καθώς αποδοκιμάζει το κίνημα της μουσουλμανικής αδελφότητας που προσπαθεί να ανακτήσει την εξουσία στην Αίγυπτο.

President Obama landed in Berlin this evening for his first official visit to the German capital, but his reception in the privacy-loving nation might have been warmer if not for the recent revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs.

A few dozen demonstrators gathered at Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin Wall crossing that became a historic symbol of Cold War tensions. Wielding signs reading "Yes We Scan" and "Privacy Ends Here," the group told reporters that they see widespread data collection as a human rights violation.

Here are a few of the images from the demonstration, via Digitale Gesellschaft, a German advocacy group:

The protest was small, but it speaks to larger rifts over privacy between the U.S. and Germany, where memories of the Stasi still linger. It's estimated that one in every seven East Germans was once a Stasi informer, and the secret police monitored almost every form of communication there in an attempt to root out anti-Communist sentiment. Germans seem repulsed by anything that even resembles that level of surveillance, and in the past they've gone to great lengths in order to force Internet companies to protect user data.

When the NSA story broke, German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised to raise the issue with Obama, and the country's justice minister wrote in an op-ed that said, "The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is."

But it will be interesting to see if Obama's historic popularity in Germany, the close U.S.-German relationship, and the NSA's recent claims that its spying program prevented more than 50 terrorist plots since 2011 will make a difference in Germans' current anti-Obama sentiment.

Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that Merkel herself had softened her stance toward PRISM on the eve of Obama's arrival in Berlin.

"It did surprise me to a certain extent, though on the other hand we recognize that the United States has taken up the fight against terrorism," Merkel said in an interview.

In fact, Der Spiegel magazine recently reported that Germany's own intelligence agency is expanding Internet surveillance with a $133 million program.

"With the new capabilities, the BND wants to ensure that cross-border traffic can be monitored as comprehensively as possible, just as is done in the United States by the National Security Agency," a German press agency reported.

What's the German equivalent of "Yes We Scan" -- Ich bin ein data miner?

ΔΕΙΤΕ ΖΩΝΤΑΝΑ ΤΟ ΠΡΟΓΡΑΜΜΑ ΤΗΣ ΚΑΤΑΛΗΜΕΝΗΣ ΛΑΪΚΗΣ- ΔΗΜΟΣΙΑΣ ΤΗΛΕΟΡΑΣΗΣ ΕΔΩ : http://cyprusnews.eu/tv/net.html Μπάτσοι στην κεραία της ΕΡΤ στον Υμμητό Υπάρχουν πληροφορίες για μπάτσους στην κεραία της ΕΡΤ στον Υμητό. Ας μπαίνει εδώ το όποιο νέο. ΣΟ αστο και γιατι ή θα γίνει τώρα ή αργότερα οπότε ας είμαστε ετόιμοι   1475347 επισημα από ππ 23:03, […]

Fans der legendären Rockgruppe The Doors trauern um Ray Manzarek. Der Keyboarder verstarb im Alter von 74 Jahren an einem Krebsleiden. Manzarek hatte die Band zusammen mit Jim Morrison gegründet.

thelyonrampant:

How To Tell If A Toy Is For Boys or Girls

Time to remind people…

(Need to remind people from  http://scidoll.com/an-open-letter-to-tesco/)

Off-duty sailor beats the shit out of an attempted rapist:

kili-fili-and-frilly:

candymandie:

turncoatrunaround:

gundamnjack:

A bus driver who tried to rape a passenger at knifepoint chose the wrong victim, a court heard yesterday.

The woman, an off-duty US navy sailor, knocked the knife from his grasp, broke it in two, bit his hand, wrestled him to the ground and put him in a stranglehold between her thighs.

Having beaten him into submission, she left the bus and reported the incident to her commander.

she broke a knife in half

“wrestled him to the ground and put him in a stranglehold between her thighs”

you can’t even fucking trust bus drivers

Can she be a new super hero?

• Day Jobs of the Poets.
• Have you seen James Patterson’s personally-funded “book industry bailout” ads?
• By a hair, print still trumps digital in the UK.
• “How I overcame snobbery to self-publish an e-book.” One man’s story.
• Gillian Flynn: “That’s exactly my goal: to make spouses look askance at each other.”

 

Many Russian cars are outfitted with dashboard cameras to protect drivers against insurance fraud. These cameras have caught all sorts of crazy happenings -- car accidents, low-flying jets, insurance scam attempts, meteors, and plane crashes
-- leading many to believe that Russia is a place where crazy shit pretty much happens constantly.

But Russia's dash cams have also captured many more tender moments -- people hopping out of their cars to help old ladies across the street, looking after little kids who wandered into the street, pushing cars out of snowbanks, etc.

I love the hell out of this video. Russia, you're alright. (via devour)

Tags: Russia   video

A remarkable and unusual sort of civil disobedience has been triggered in Marivan, a city in the Kurdistan Province of Iran. On April 15, an Iranian court in the city forced a male convict to wear traditional Kurdish women’s clothes in public, perceiving it as a humiliating punishment. Kurdish feminists of the Marivan Women’s Community protested against this misogynistic decision on the streets of Marivan in red traditional clothes, similar to the Kurdish bride robe that the convicts had to wear, and they were confronted by violent security forces.

Then, in solidarity with the women, Kurdish men took an extraordinary initiative by dressing as Kurdish women and posting their photos on social media.

In a café in the heart of Frankfurt, Germany, my friend Çiğdem and I enjoyed tea with Masoud Fathi and Dler Kamangar, two of the feminist men behind this campaign, which has made international news.

Masoud Fathi is a poet, journalist, political activist—and feminist. He is from Marivan, a city known for its disobedience and resistance. He had his friend Dler take a photo of him wearing an authentic, grass-green Kurdish woman’s robe, and posted it on his Facebook page, adding the sentence that became the slogan of the campaign: “Being a woman is not a tool to humiliate or punish anyone”.

Soon, some friends joined this brave statement by taking pictures of themselves in women’s dresses. Within a week, the Facebook page “Kurd Men for Equality” gained over 13,000 fans. Women and men from other parts of Kurdistan, Europe and America expressed their solidarity and shared commitment to gender equality with their own photos.

How did Masoud feel when he put on this impressive green dress?

When I wore that dress, I suddenly realized how much evil the chauvinist thinking of men, male-dominated religions, ideologies and systems have caused. I understood that masculine culture has destroyed the world.

The pictures on Facebook are as diverse as the Kurdish nation: A cute, smiling little boy in red challenges patriarchy the same way as a mature, serious-looking man with thick glasses in a delightfully charming dress. Some women are dressed in Kurdish men’s clothes, some of them stand next to male friends who wear flashy dresses with pride. One mother in a traditional men’s outfit stands confidently alongside her adolescent son, who smiles in a bright-blue, shimmering woman’s gown. Some men covered their faces to escape persecution by the Iranian regime.

Sasan Amjadi, a contributor to this project and a friend of Masoud and Dler’s, says,

The Iranian regime is fascist, and it is almost inevitable that this affects the society, which leads parts of the Iranian population to accept the regime’s beliefs. Perhaps 40 percent of the population does not believe in women. I did not feel any strangeness when I put on a woman’s dress. I just wanted to demonstrate who we were: This is what we look like, this is our culture and they cannot insult our culture, our mothers and sisters. We cannot accept that. … There can be no free society without free women. It is in the responsibility of men to end this culture of male hegemony.

Men in Western societies have also resorted to wearing women’s clothes in order to challenge gender discrimination. Even the most democratic societies struggle with rape culture, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. Violence against women is a global epidemic. If tabooizing and controlling women’s bodies and behaviors in the name of honor is the sexism of one society, the porn industry, prostitution and unhealthy beauty standards make up the other end of the patriarchal spectrum that devaluates women by reducing them to objects of men’s pleasure or property. Cross-dressing is an effective way of challenging binary notions of gender and raising awareness of issues that human beings who are not male and heterosexual encounter on a daily basis.

However, the case of Kurdish men wearing Kurdish women’s clothes is even more special, because it attacks two forms of oppression at the same time. This “punishment” is not only sexist; it further constitutes an attempt to ridicule Kurdish culture. The Islamic Republic of Iran has executed at least 56 Kurds in the past year. It continues to enforce oppressive annihilation policies towards the Kurdish people and other ethnicities, or against any dissident voice, for that matter. While the misogynist regime forces women to cover in black cloth, traditional Kurdish (and of course traditional Persian) women’s clothes are very colorful and beautifully embroidered pieces of detailed handwork. The meaning of these sequined, extravagant robes on Kurdish men is a double strike against a regime that covers, hides and silences women in plain black, discriminates against different ethnicities and believes that being an oppressive despot defines masculinity and power. After all, chauvinist concepts of gender and abusive power structures are inseparable.

But while the Iranian authorities attempted to shame male prisoners by making them wear traditional Kurdish women’s clothes, Kurdish men formidably responded by standing up against both sorts of oppression. They made two statements in one: Being a woman is NOT a punishment—and our culture is beautiful. Not being a woman, but being sexist is degrading. Not Kurdish clothes, but racism is humiliating.

Dler Kamangar, a talented musician from the beautiful East Kurdish city of Sine, agrees with Masoud that this Facebook action is just one small step in the right direction. Though media and public attention are important, future steps must be more practical, and not just remain in the social media sphere. As he drinks his black tea, he tells me that they are currently planning protest actions in front of Iranian embassies. They will appear in women’s clothes. Dler’s skepticism of the Iranian regime is surpassed by his optimism for the Kurdish people’s struggle:

I do not wait for a reform by the Iranian regime. We need to work against the negative structures in our own communities and societies. In the end, we are by ourselves. We must come up with our own solutions.

Like Dler, Masoud considers himself a feminist. He has written columns about women’s rights and men’s duty to actively challenge the male-dominated system. In his words,

Women are part of our personality, our character. If we oppress one part of our character, we oppress ourselves. If one part of us is unfree, our whole cannot be free either.

While the regimes of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria oppressed the Kurds ethnically and created hyper-masculinized forms of warfare and oppression, the Kurds have often responded with feminism. One unifying slogan echoes around all four parts of Kurdistan: “No free society without free women.” A liberated Kurdistan is, and must be, measured by women’s emancipation.

Speaking from a Kurdish woman’s perspective, my dear friend Çiğdem Orhan, a young philosophy student from Karakocan, Elazig in North Kurdistan, who is socially active in our community in Germany, adds:

This action is very meaningful and powerful, because it was started by men who stand up for women’s rights. This illustrates that women’s rights is a societal phenomenon that involves all of society, not just women. These men prove courage in overcoming their “inner man” when putting on dresses, taking pictures and posting these for the world to see. They don’t just mentally stand up for women’s rights, but do so literally in a physical sense.

The Iranian regime’s intention to signify honorlessness, embarrassment, humiliation and degradation by using womanhood has completely failed.

Crossposted from the Kurdistan Tribune

KT News and Comment:

Garmyan committee will campaign to stop violence against women

Women activists in the district of Garmyan have set up a local committee to campaign against violence against woman.

Garmyan belongs to the town of Chamchamal and there are plans to set up more committees in other areas such as Kalar, Kfri and Khanakin.

Alongside the women activists, members of political parties and representatives from some religious sectors have agreed to participate. The committee has discussed plans for an awareness campaign involving local neighbourhoods, mosques, schools, and so on.

KT congratulates the organisers and hopes this initiative will spread across the region. But these community campaigns must be backed up by state action – the police and courts must take violence against women much more seriously.

Kurds around the world can be proud of their recent campaign against the misogyny and racism of the brutes who control Iran’s judicial system. The south of Kurdistan is controlled by Kurds and it should become a model for women’s rights, in the Middle East and beyond.

Copyright © 2013 Kurdistantribune.com

If your reaction to the announced demise of Google Reader was to scream “But my starred items!”, then this is the tutorial for you. Read on as we show you multiple ways to extract all your starred articles from Google Reader.

Της Κατερίνας Οικονομάκου Είναι τόσο ειδυλλιακό το ανοιξιάτικο τοπίο του Ράβενσμπρουκ, με τη γαλήνια λίμνη λουσμένη στο φως του μεσημεριού και τα χωριά με τα χαμηλά σπίτια να διαγράφονται απέναντι στον ορίζοντα, που αισθάνεται κανείς ότι εδώ διαπράττεται μια ύβρις: η ομορφιά της φύσης σε ετούτο τον τόπο του θανάτου μοιάζει απρεπής. Πριν από μερικές δεκαετίες, σε αυτήν εδώ τη λίμνη άδειαζαν οι ναζί τις στάχτες των θυμάτων τους.

From a recent NY Times Op-Ed:

 

I JUST noticed something strange on Wikipedia. It appears that gradually, over time, editors have begun the process of moving women, one by one, alphabetically, from the “American Novelists” category to the “American Women Novelists” subcategory. So far, female authors whose last names begin with A or B have been most affected, although many others have, too.

 

Apparently, women novelists from the original list are being moved systematically (in alphabetical order) to the “American Women Novelists” category. An explanation at the top of the “American Novelists” explains that the main list of novelists was getting too long, and so as many names as possible are being moved to subcategories. Naturally, prominent male novelists are also being moved off the main list and onto the “American Man Novelists” category, and the original list has been left only with those who reject a binary gender identification. Except ha, no, of course not.

Because, of course, if the likes of Jane Austen, George Eliot, Emily Bronte, Willa Cather, and Harper Lee taught us anything, it’s that women will forever be second-rate, subcategory-only novelists.

[Thanks for the tip, S!]

A group of Iranian men are dressing in drag, protesting the recent punishment of another man. The man in question was paraded down the street in women’s clothing as a form of humiliation. The protesters are from the group “Kurd Men for Equality.”  The message of this campaign is: “Being a woman is not a way for humiliation or punishment.” Read more here.

 

533 years ago this week, a girl was born whose life would prove to be so full of drama and scandal that it has been turned into a play by Victor Hugo, an opera by Donizetti (read the libretto, see the printed sheet music and handwritten music, or listen to a song), a famous painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, more than 20 films for the big and small screens, and a character in the video game Assassin’s Creed.

This painting ‘Portrait of a Woman’ by Veneto is traditionally thought to depict Lucrezia Borgia, but scholars have not officially accepted this. Image: ‘Bartolomeo Veneto, Lucrezia Borgia’, Bartolomeo Veneto, Federico Zeri Foundation, public domain

Lucrezia Borgia was born on 18 April 1480 in the province of Rome, Italy. Google her and you’ll find her described with words like ‘femme fatale’, ‘infamous’ and ‘scheming’. All of this and she was the daughter of a Pope, albeit the illegitimate daughter of a Pope!

History has certainly cast Lucrezia in the role of ‘femme fatale’, but it is also possible to interpret her life and actions differently, seeing her as a girl used as a pawn in the power games of the Renaissance papacy. It seems that Lucrezia’s father, Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia), and her brothers Cesare, Giovanni and Gioffre, arranged marriages for her in order to further their own political ambitions, no doubt taking advantage of her widely acknowledged good looks and figure.

‘Ritratto di Lucrezia Borgia’, anonymous, Federico Zeri Foundation, public domain

Aged just ten years old, Lucrezia was engaged to a Lord, but this arrangement was scrapped in favour of an engagement to a Count, which in turn was dissolved so that Lucrezia could marry a man who was both a Lord and a Count – Giovanni Sforza. The wedding took place when Lucrezia was 13, in Rome. When Sforza’s political influence proved to be insufficient, Lucrezia’s father did all he could to destroy the marriage, allegedly trying to have Giovanni murdered, then cajole him into a divorce. For his part, Giovanni fled Rome, then claimed Lucrezia was victim to fraternal and paternal incest, then finally signed documents confirming he was impotent, which was grounds for an annulment of the marriage.

Some histories tell that at the time of Lucrezia and Giovannia’s annulment for non-consummation, Lucrezia was pregnant. She retired to a convent to have the baby. The father of the child could have been her father’s chamberlain, Pedro ‘Perotto’ Calderon, a man found dead a couple of years later.

Aged 18, Lucrezia married again. This time, her husband was 17-year-old Alfonso d’Aragon (Duke of Bisceglie) from Naples. The couple had one son, Rodrigo, but spent less than two years together because Alfonso was murdered in 1500.  It is thought that Lucrezia’s brother arranged Alfonso’s demise (first by stabbing, then by strangling) as he had recently allied himself with France, against Naples, and therefore against Alfonso.

‘”Lucrezia Borgia e Famiglia”. Dosso Dossi.’, anonymous, Federico Zeri Foundation, public domain

So, two husbands and two children by the age of 20. Surely that’s enough? But no, two years after the death of husband number two, Pope Alexander VI arranged a third marriage for Lucrezia. Another Alfonso, this one Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. This marriage produced several children and lasted for the rest of Lucrezia’s life (perhaps because her father died in 1503 and with him many of the family’s scheming ways), but she wasn’t the one-man type, and he wasn’t the one-woman type. Both of them had affairs. Lucrezia’s included an affair with a poet, Pietro Bembo, to whom she wrote a series of love letters.

Perhaps the passionate affairs she had whilst married to Alfonso number two could justify her description as a ‘femme fatale’, but the rest of the scandal is either rumour (such as the stories that she frequently poisoned people at parties) or can be attributed to her power-hungry family rather than to the lady herself.

Away from ‘family life’, Lucrezia became a patron for the arts in Ferrara, where the artistic community was thriving. However, in 1512, Lucrezia turned to religion, possibly in response to the death of her son, Rodrigo. Lucrezia died aged just 39, not long after suffering a still-born birth.

Want to know more? Read her biography, ‘Lucrezia Borgia: Duchess of Ferrara’ by William Gilbert.

It’s no surprise that if you search for Shakespeare on Europeana, you get back quite a lot of results, in more than 20 languages. Shakespeare wrote, amongst other things, 38 plays and 154 sonnets. He also invented 1,700 words including ‘eyeball’, ‘fashionable’ and ‘lonely’!

‘William Shakespeare: profile.’ Drawing, c. 1793.Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK

Today, 23 April, is traditionally celebrated as his birthday, and the day of his death. I say ‘traditionally’, because no-one is really sure of the actual date. What we do know is that he was baptised on 26 April 1564 in a parish church in Stratford, England. He is thought to have died on 23 April 1616, but this event too is surrounded by mystery, not to do with the date, but to do with the cause of death – some think it might have been typhus, others that he contracted a fever from partying too hard.

Regardless of the question marks surrounding both his birth and his death, today, on Shakespeare Day,  we celebrate his life and works. Today is also World Book Day and what better book to celebrate than The Complete Works of Shakespeare? You can access the whole text through Europeana.

 ’The complete works’, William Shakespeare, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, CC0

For one man to be such a prolific writer, producing some of the world’s most influential works, there must be something special about him, right? In 1914, the British Medical Journal published this diagram of Shakespeare’s skull, comparing its size with that of modern man. The diagram shows that his skull was bigger than the average man’s, and therefore presumably his brain was too. Bigger brain = better bard? Possibly. Another theory is that Shakespeare was just too good to be true and all his work could not have been penned by one man. Conspiracy theorists suggesting alternative authors have put forward more than 80 names, including Francis Drake, the 6th Earl of Derby, Christopher Marlowe, and the 17th Earl of Oxford.

‘Diagram comparing skulls of Shakespeare and modern man’.  Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK

My favourite Shakespeare play has to be A Midsummer Night’s Dream, partly  because it was the first one I ever studied at school, partly because it’s full of fairies and magic, and partly because the school put on an open air performance of it in which I was an unnamed  fairy and danced to The Beatles’ ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ – the interpretation was Shakespeare-cum-sixties-psychedelia. My favourite character in the play is the mischievous Puck, who is behind all of the tomfoolery that goes on, putting spells on people left, right and centre. By the way, don’t you just love the word ‘tomfoolery’? It’s a term, like so many others, coined by the Bard himself, inspired by the antics of the character ‘Tom Fool’ in King Lear.

A costume design for the character of Puck. ‘Vágó Nelly, jelmezterv’, ECLAP, e-library for Performing Arts, public domain.

From plays to poetry – I also have a favourite Shakespeare sonnet, number 61. It’s a poem in which the narrator is so much in love that he or she  cannot sleep and longs only to watch over their loved one who is tortuously far away. I find it a very romantic notion:

Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
Is it thy spirit that thou send’st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?
O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake:
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
To play the watchman ever for thy sake:
For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
From me far off, with others all too near.

Through Europeana, you can find Shakespeare’s sonnets in French, German and Hungarian.

More romance – dancers acting out the parts of Romeo and Juliet, a Shakespeare tragedy put to music by Prokofiev. ‘Romeo és Júlia, Magyar Királyi Operaház / Magyar Állami Operaház, (Budapest)’, eCLAP library for the performing arts, public domain

Do you have a favourite Shakespeare play, character or poem? Let us know by leaving a comment.

lapetitecole:

Joan Colom

El Raval. 1958

Alex Pareene in Salon:

Yesterday, a Reddit user posted a new, startlingly clear image of the aftermath of the explosion, that shows, on the far left, what looks very much like one of the FBI’s suspects fleeing the scene. After Philip Bump, an Atlantic Wire writer and Photoshop expert,explained why he believed the image was genuine the New York Times confirmed the photo’s authenticity.

So: The Internet actually found a new, much clearer photo of one of the FBI’s suspects. Amazing! It could’ve taken ages, before the Internet, for this evidence to surface and be sent to law enforcement. Immediately after the Internet did this admirable thing, of course, it took it to a dark and irresponsible place.

Remember how thousands of Reddit users and 4chan people spent the days after the bombing combing through every available photo and frame of video of the site of the bombings, searching for the perpetrators, and they found a bunch of guys with backpacks— so many guys they made a spreadsheet! — and (inadvertently) allowed the New York Post to identify, on the front page, two innocent people as the bombers? And remember how when the FBI released images of the actual suspects, neither of them had been spotted by Reddit or 4Chan or any other online sleuth? Well, armed with this new, clearer photo, and giddy from having uncovered it, the message board investigative geniuses then determined that “suspect two” was a missing college student.

Sunil Tripathi is a Brown University student from Pennsylvania who has been missing since March 16. On that day, surveillance cameras picked him up leaving his Providence, R.I., apartment. He left behind his computer, wallet and phone. He hasn’t been seen since. 

Not long ago, Brian Kennish helpted to write the software that serves advertisements around the Web. First at DoubleClick and later at Google, he helped build ad servers and the developer APIs that link advertisers and ad products.

But the more he worked on ad technology, the more concerned he grew about the data advertisers were collecting about him. "I realized that despite having all of this insider knowledge, I myself had absolutely no idea where all my data was going and what was being done with it," Kennish said. "That was a pretty scary proposition."

---

"Despite having all of this insider knowledge, I myself had absolutely no idea where all my data was going"

IN 2010, Kennish quit Google and started down the path that would lead him to create Disconnect the following year. This week the Palo Alto startup released version 2.0 of its browser extension for Chrome and Firefox, which thwarts companies that profit from identifying consumers through "retargeting." Unlike traditional ad-blocking software, Disconnect permits ads to load in most cases while blocking companies from tracking consumers around the Web.

Retargeting is the reason that you see an ad for Nordstrom on Facebook the day after you searched for it on Google. But not every case of tracking is so benign — and as tracking methods become increasingly sophisticated, it's becoming more difficult for the average person to understand what data companies are collecting about them and how it is being used.

"It turns out there are literally thousands of companies and organizations collecting what I would consider very personal data — the history of the pages that we browse and our search history," Kennish said. "And so today my data is in the hands of roughly 2,000 different companies, and who knows what is being done with it? It's very difficult to even tell. We could pore over the privacy policies of these 2,000 companies to try to figure out what they're doing, but it's quite a stretch to be able to have any idea what our data is being used for."

Disconnect, like similar software from Abine and Ghostery, aims to give consumers more control over the data they share. After the extension is installed, an icon in the browser lets users adjust which advertisers and tracking companies can access their data. Disconnect sorts the requests into categories like advertising, analytics, and social. Eliminating them is as simple as clicking a check box.

With the second version of the app, Disconnect engineers have rewritten the software engine with a focus on speeding up load times by filtering out unwanted adware faster. After benchmarking the top 1,000 sites, Kennish claims that Disconnect makes the average page load 27 percent faster and require 17 percent less bandwidth. The company also beefed up its list of third-party tracking sites, and now says its database is the largest in the world. It also updates automatically every week with any new tracking companies discovered by the Disconnect crawler.

Disconnect claims to make the average page load 27 percent faster and require 17 percent less bandwidth

The update also shows Disconnect dipping its toes into security, incorporating potential malware sources into its filtering database and including a default setting to force encryption when browsing popular sites over Wi-Fi.

Perhaps most interestingly, Disconnect 2 is launching as pay-what-you-want software. When you go to download the extension Disconnect asks you to contribute, but you can also choose to pay nothing.

"We're sensitive about trying not to create a class system around privacy and security," Kennish said. "Outright charging for an extension when not all users can afford to pay a fixed price didn't feel right for us."

The emergence of Do Not Track legislation and browser settings over the past year has brought new attention to retargeting and the growing amount of data that advertisers are collecting. But the companies themselves are still largely invisible. If nothing else, software like Disconnect makes their work more transparent.

"Over the last couple years, certainly, I think the general public has become more attuned to this issue," Kennish said. "But still it's largely arcane. And the more you know about it, the more troubling it becomes. "

• Via The New York Times
• Related Items web privacy disconnect do not track ghostery abine Facebook Google

Mondrian and Rothko, Modern Art Desserts

We’re fine since we don’t have an admin who uses the name “admin”,  but in any case, it’s good to occasionally have a reminder of why simple, short passwords (and handles) are a very bad idea:

Apr 12 2013, 9:10pm: 

Security analysts have detected an ongoing attack that uses a huge number of computers from across the Internet to commandeer servers that run the WordPress blogging application.

According to CloudFlare’s Prince, the distributed attacks are attempting to brute force the administrative portals of WordPress servers, employing the username “admin” and 1,000 or so common passwords.

April 11, 2013:

There is currently a significant attack being launched at a large number of WordPress blogs across the Internet. The attacker is brute force attacking the WordPress administrative portals, using the username “admin” and trying thousands of passwords. It appears a botnet is being used to launch the attack and more than tens of thousands of unique IP addresses have been recorded attempting to hack WordPress installs.

 

Other articles on this Here and Here.

Μετάφραση από ένα ποστ που κυκλοφορεί στο ίντερνετ και μας φάνηκε χρήσιμο να υπάρχει και στα ελληνικά.

Οι φεμινίστριες δε θέλουμε να χάνετε την κηδεμονία των παιδιών σας. Η υπόθεση ότι οι γυναίκες είναι εκ φύσεως καλύτερες στη φροντίδα των παιδιών είναι μέρος της πατριαρχίας.

Στις φεμινίστριες δεν αρέσουν τα διαφημιστικά όπου οι άγαρμποι πατέρες χαλάνε την μπουγάδα και οι ικανές σύζυγοί τους πρέπει να επέμβουν για να το διορθώσουν. Η υπόθεση ότι οι γυναίκες είναι καλύτερες στο νοικοκυριό είναι μέρος της πατριαρχίας.

Οι φεμινίστριες δε θέλουμε να πρέπει να πληρώνετε διατροφή. Η διατροφή ορίστηκε για να καταπολεμήσει το γεγονός ότι ιστορικά υπήρχε η προσδοκία για τις γυναίκες να βάλουν τα οικιακά τους καθήκοντα πριν από τους επαγγελματικούς τους στόχους, ελαχιστοποιώντας έτσι τη δυνατότητα εισοδήματός τους αν τελειώσει ο «παραδοσιακός» γάμος τους. Η υπόθεση ότι οι παντρεμένες γυναίκες πρέπει να κάνουν παιδιά αντί να βγάζουν χρήματα είναι μέρος της πατριαρχίας.

Οι φεμινίστριες δε θέλουμε να βιάζεται κανείς στη φυλακή. Η επιείκεια και τα αστεία για το βιασμό στη φυλακή είναι μέρος της κουλτούρας του βιασμού, που είναι μέρος της πατριαρχίας.

Οι φεμινίστριες δε θέλουμε να κατηγορείται κανείς ψευδώς για βιασμό. Οι ψευδείς κατηγορίες για βιασμό στιγματίζουν τα θύματα βιασμού, πράγμα που ενισχύει την κουλτούρα του βιασμού, που είναι μέρος της πατριαρχίας.

Οι φεμινίστριες δε θέλουμε να νιώθετε μοναξιά και δε μισούμε τα «καλά παιδιά». Η ιδέα ότι μερικοί άνθρωποι έχουν από τη φύση τους μεγαλύτερη αξία από άλλους ανθρώπους λόγω επιφανειακών σωματικών χαρακτηριστικών είναι μέρος της πατριαρχίας.

Οι φεμινίστριες δε θέλουμε να πρέπει να πληρώνετε στις εξόδους. Θέλουμε την ευκαιρία να έχουμε οικονομική επιτυχία ισότιμη με των αντρών σε όποιο τομέα εργασίας επιλέξουμε (και έχουμε τα κατάλληλα προσόντα), και το γεγονός ότι τώρα δεν την έχουμε  είναι μέρος της πατριαρχίας. Η ιδέα ότι οι άντρες πρέπει να κανακεύουν και να συντηρούν τις γυναίκες, και/ή να αγοράζουν το ερωτικό ενδιαφέρον τους, είναι συγκαταβατική και βλαβερή και μέρος της πατριαρχίας.

Οι φεμινίστριες δε θέλουμε να ακρωτηριάζεστε ή να σκοτώνεστε σε βιομηχανικά ατυχήματα, ή να δουλεύετε σκληρά σε ανθρακωρυχεία ενώ εμείς κάνουμε ξεκούραστη γραμματειακή δουλειά και διάφορες δραστηριότητες με βελόνες. Το γεγονός ότι οι γυναίκες αποκλείονται εδώ και πολύ καιρό από τις επικίνδυνες βιομηχανικές εργασίες (από τους άντρες, εδώ που τα λέμε) είναι μέρος της πατριαρχίας.

Οι φεμινίστριες δε θέλουμε να αυτοκτονείτε. Κάθε πίεση και προσδοκία που χαμηλώνει την ποιότητα ζωής για κάθε φύλο είναι μέρος της πατριαρχίας. Το γεγονός ότι η κατάθλιψη χαρακτηρίζεται ως θηλυπρεπής αδυναμία, που κάνει τους άντρες λιγότερο πιθανό να αναζητήσουν θεραπεία, είναι μέρος της πατριαρχίας.

Οι φεμινίστριες δε θέλουμε να σας κοιτάζουν καχύποπτα όταν πηγαίνετε το παιδί σας στο πάρκο (οι άντρες συχνά επιμένουν ότι αυτό είναι σοβαρό θέμα, οπότε θα τους εμπιστευτώ). Η υπόθεση ότι οι άντρες είναι  αχόρταγα σεξουαλικά ζώα, σε συνδυασμό με την ιδέα ότι είναι αφύσικο οι άντρες να φροντίζουν τα παιδιά, είναι μέρος της πατριαρχίας.

Οι φεμινίστριες δε θέλουμε να κατατάσσεστε ή να επιστρατεύεστε και μετά να πεθαίνετε στον πόλεμο ενώ εμείς μένουμε σπίτι να σιδερώνουμε. Η ιδέα ότι οι γυναίκες είναι πολύ αδύναμες για να πολεμήσουν ή πολύ ντελικάτες για να λειτουργήσουν σε στρατιωτικό περιβάλλον είναι μέρος της πατριαρχίας.

Οι φεμινίστριες δε θέλουν οι γυναίκες να γλυτώνουν τη δίωξη για κατηγορίες ενδοοικογενειακής βίας, ούτε θέλουμε οι άντρες να κοροϊδεύονται επειδή βιάστηκαν ή κακοποιήθηκαν.  Η ιδέα ότι οι γυναίκες είναι εκ φύσεως ευγενικές και  υποχωρητικές και ότι η ιδιότητα του θύματος είναι από τη φύση της θηλυπρεπής είναι μέρος της πατριαρχίας.

Οι φεμινίστριες μισούμε την πατριαρχία. Δε μισούμε εσάς.

Αν νοιάζεστε γι’ αυτά τα θέματα με τόσο πάθος όσο λέτε, θα έπρεπε να ευχαριστείτε τις φεμινίστριες, γιατί ο φεμινισμός είναι ένα κοινωνικό κίνημα ενεργά αφοσιωμένο στη διάλυση όλων τους. Το γεγονός ότι κατηγορείτε τις φεμινίστριες –τις συμμάχους σας- για προβλήματα ενάντια στα οποία παλεύουν εδώ και δεκαετίες δείχνει ότι η υποστήριξη των αντρών δεν είναι τόσο σημαντική για σας όσο η έχθρα προς τις γυναίκες. Εμείς νοιαζόμαστε πολύ για τα προβλήματά σας. Εσείς μπορείτε να προσπαθήσετε να νοιαστείτε για τα δικά μας;

Σε φυλάκιση δέκα μηνών με αναστολή καταδικάστηκε από δικαστήριο της Κωνσταντινούπολης ο διάσημος πιανίστας και συνθέτης Φαζίλ Σάι. Ο Σάι κατηγορείτο για πρόκληση μίσους και προσβολή θρησκευτικών αξιών, εξαιτίας σχολίων που είχε αναρτήσει στο Twitter. Στο θέμα παρενέβη η Κομισιόν.

LONDON -- Colin Davis, the former principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and one of Britain's elder statesmen of classical music, has died at 85.

The orchestra said Davis died Sunday after a short illness.

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