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Microsurgical free flap reconstruction in acute burn care offers the option of reconstructing even challenging defects in a single stage procedure. Due to altered rheological and hemodynamic conditions in severely burned patients, it bears the risk of a higher complication rate compared to microsurgical reconstruction in other patients. To avoid failure, appropriate indications for free flap reconstruction should be reviewed thoroughly. Several aspects concerning timing of the procedure, individual flap choice, selection and preparation of the recipient vessels, and perioperative measures must be considered. Respecting these specific conditions, a low complication rate, comparable to those seen in microsurgical reconstruction of other traumatic limb defects, can be observed. Hence, the free flap procedure in acute burn care is a relatively safe and reliable tool in the armamentarium of acute burn surgery. In reconstructive burn care, microsurgical tissue transfer is routinely used to treat scar contractures. Due to the more robust perioperative condition of patients, even lower rates of complication are seen in microsurgical reconstruction.
Ein besonders sensibler – und von der Öffentlichkeit kaum wahrgenommener – Lebensraum befindet sich unter der Erdoberfläche. Natürliche Höhlen und künstliche Hohlräume (z.B. Bergwerksstollen) beherbergen eine Vielzahl von Tierarten, die auf für sie lebenswichtige konstante Umweltbedingungen angewiesen sind. Schon kleine Eingriffe des Menschen in diese Ökosysteme können negative Auswirkungen auf die biologische Vielfalt des subterranen Lebensraums haben, die nicht mehr rückgängig zu machen sind. Die Biospeläologie widmet sich der Erforschung des Lebens in Höhlen und der damit verbundenen ökologischen Zusammenhänge. Jedes Jahr werden für die Wissenschaft neue Arten entdeckt, was natürlich auch daran liegt, dass die Erforschung der subterranen Organismen noch an ihrem Anfang steht.
Rezension zu: Fabian Schuppert, Freedom, Recognition and Non-Domination: A Republican Theory of (Global) Justice (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014).
As the numbers of people moving internationally increased in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, states tried more rigorously to regulate borders and counteract the problem of fugitives crossing international borders to evade arrest. This presented a legal challenge to domestic state power that increasingly defined its sovereignty on jurisdiction within borders. It is this issue and within this important era of globalization and law formation that Bradley Miller’s book examines how British North American colonies and post-Confederation Canada reacted to the problems posed by international fugitives through ideas and practices of extradition. His work goes beyond the traditional perspective of examining extradition treaties to view the practices of extradition in action, the everyday challenges states faced, and how the key concepts of sovereignty and international law were understood in relation to extradition. ...
Published in good time for the 2014 "Karlsjahr", marking 1200 years since the emperor’s death, Johannes Fried’s latest book is intended to make specialist scholarship on Charlemagne accessible to a broad audience. Judging by the impressive sales figures, it has admirably fulfilled that purpose. That is not however to say that it is an anodyne synthesis of current research. The picture of the Frankish ruler it provides is very much the author’s own, as he himself emphasises, so there is little danger that it might be lost to sight amongst the many other biographies currently available. ...
Any book that purports to be an encyclopedic treatment of the behavior of insects, arachnids, myriapods, and terrestrial representatives of other invertebrate phyla invites skepticism. That made it all the more pleasing to find this book to be remarkably comprehensive and scholarly. Adding to this pleasure were more than 200 full-color, original photographs of live invertebrates doing what land animals do and about 40 line illustrations redrawn from the primary literature.
Facts about global justice
(2014)
Since the study of Late Antiquity evolved in the last few decades into an important research topic, several publications have been dedicated to the late antique city, resulting in lively discussions on "decline" and "transition". In line with this evolution Late Antiquity has recently been the central theme of several conferences and workshops, dealing with specific study themes of Late Antiquity as a whole, focussing on a particular time period and/or dedicated to well-defined geographical areas. ...
After this contribution dealing with the capital of Asia, the paper of Axel Filges discusses the late antique and Byzantine situation in the smaller town of Blaundos in Phrygia (Zum Aussagepotential ruinöser Mauern. Bevölkerung und Bebauung im spätantiken und byzantinischen Blaundos [Phrygia]). ...
Rezension zu:
Margaret Moore, A Political Theory of Territory (New York: Oxford, 2015).
Film review: The Matrix cult
(2003)
Much of the semiotic discussion around the deeper structures of "The Matrix" has tended to center around positive ethical and philosophical systems. Thus, numerous critics have pointed out the Christian subtext in the film with Neo as Christ and Morpheus as John the Baptist (James L. Ford: 8). The Garden of Eden story has been superimposed on "The Matrix" as well with the implication that just as Adam's and Eve's awakening to knowledge makes Christianity possible, so too, Neo's awakening will lead to the salvation of humanity by a Christ-like figure (cf. James S. Spiegel: 13). Others have picked out connections with Joseph Campbell's monomyth concept where the hero must depart from the familiar world, go into a netherworld and return morally transformed (A. Samuel Kimball: 176, 198). There is also the Platonic interpretation where the passage toward the light from the famous cave allegory is read into the awakening process of "The Matrix": "The theme of appearance versus reality is as old as Plato's Republic. And while perhaps no writer or artist has improved upon his cave allegory in presenting this theme, the Wachowski brothers' The Matrix might be as effective an attempt as any since Plato, in cinematic history anyway" (James S. Spiegel: 9). Buddhism and its notion that reality is illusion appears as an equally convincing model for reading "The Matrix" (James L. Ford: 10). Even Gnosticism has been used as an interesting semiotic framework for the film (Frances Flannery-Dailey and Rachel Wagner: 10-12).
Hepatology highlights
(2016)
Pawar SV, et al. Most overweight and obese Indian children have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease
De Keyzer B, et al. Percutaneous shunt reduction for the management of TIPS-induced acute liver decompensation. A follow-up study
Baptista-González H, et al. Frequency of hepatitis C virus infection in a single institution in Mexico with a focus on birth-cohort population
Zeitgeschichte in Germany has now been focusing for some time on the 1970s and 1980s, and has produced a substantial number of studies on the period "after the boom" (Lutz Raphael/Anselm DoeringManteuffel). By contrast, the history of the (West) German historical profession is still lagging behind and remains by and large confined to the first two postwar decades. What makes this gap even more problematic is the fact that most of the existing historiographical texts have been written by historians at the very center of the new developments during the 1970s, most notably Hans-Ulrich Wehler and Jürgen Kocka, or by sympathetic observers such as Georg Iggers. Thus the critical evaluation of these decades remains a historiographical desideratum. The present volume, a Gedenkschrift for the late Wolfgang J. Mommsen, constitutes a step in the right direction. ...
It is a rare and wonderful thing when a book of 383 pages leaves a reader wanting to read more, much more in fact. That is certainly the case with this intriguing collection of thirteen assorted essays on the Rhine economy from 1815 to the present, organized in six broad topical sections: origins, enterprises, sectors and clusters, infrastructures, transport, and environment. ...
Since the turn of the millennium, historical research has become increasingly interested in knowledge-based societies and their cultures, not least medieval ones. Whereas legal historical medieval studies have joined the interdisciplinary discussion about the notion of order as well as that of law, the notion of knowledge, and especially that of legal knowledge, has not been in the focus of interest. This observation serves as the starting point for Stephan Dusil’s habilitation thesis, which he submitted in 2016 at the Faculty of Law of the University of Zurich and which is now available as a monograph. ...
Built to colonize
(2019)
In 1875, the Liebig Extract of Meat Company began to distribute a series of pictures printed on small (11 x 7 cm), colorful, collectible cardboard cards along with its main product, Fleischextrakt. While not the first to adopt this advertising technique, Liebig quickly became the best-known purveyor of Sammelbilder. ...
We live in the age of commentaries. When I was a law student at Heidelberg University and wrote a take-home exam on private law in the mid-1990s, I had to survey eight commentaries on the German Civil Code. Today, students have to check twice as many commentaries, among them whoppers like the Historical-Critical Commentary and the Beck "Grand" Online-Commentary, the latter still in progress with more than 400 individual contributors – not paragraphs. Publishers and editors must use all kinds of incentives to lure new authors onto their juridical treadmills. Nobody needs an oracle to predict that most of the commentaries without a digital interface will soon vanish – sometimes to the relief of their authors, who are deeply frustrated by the lack of citations in textbooks and court cases. There is no need for the Club of Rome to issue a paper on the limits of legal commentaries. Despite all this intertextual Darwinism, the commentaries call to mind a kind of legal oasis with plenty of resources. The desert beyond buries the few remaining "grand" textbooks that traditionally developed legal principles and legal system. The commentaries can provide no guidance on these points. Their focus lies on practical details, not overarching structures. It is no wonder that mainstream contemporary German legal writing on private law is unable to master the overwhelming number of changes in the German Civil Code introduced over the last two decades. ...
The volume under review is the result of a conference on historical graffiti held at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich in 2017. The aim of this book is to analyse — for the first time — graffiti from the ancient, medieval and modern periods in their historical and geographical contexts from an interdisciplinary point of view. Following this comparative approach the authors show the tremendous potential of this nascent area of research by investigating epigraphic material that has been neglected and underestimated by scholars for a long time. ...
Rezension zu:
Frank Vogl, Waging War on Corruption (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012).
Shaazka Beyerle, Curtailing Corruption, People Power for Accountability and Justice (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2014)
Responding to studies on prejudice in the Greco-Roman world, E. Gruen argues that Greeks and Romans had more nuanced and complex opinions about foreigners than often recognized. G. observes that the Greek and Romans could discover or invent links with these other societies through cultural appropriations of the past. These connections, G. contends, show that the Greeks and Romans cannot be ‘blanketed’ with xenophobia, ethnocentrism, and “let alone racism” (p. 3). G. argues that the Greeks and Romans were more interested in drawing connections with the other through cultural appropriation. G. contends that this approach reveals a positive outlook which does not reject or degrade the foreign other.
Rezension zu:
Ruben Andersson, Illegality, Inc. (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2014)
Amy Nethery and Stephanie J. Silverman (eds.), Immigration Detention: The Migration of a Policy and its Human Impact. (London and New York: Routledge, 2015)
Rezension zu: David SHERMAN. Sartre and Adorno - The Dialectics of Subjectivity. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007, xii + 328 pp., €64.59, ISBN 978-0-7914-7115-9.
It was seventeen years ago when the first same-sex marriage was celebrated in a civil ceremony in Amsterdam, right after the Dutch Parliament passed legislation that legalized same-sex marriages. Since then, same-sex marriage has become legal in over two dozen countries worldwide. Last year, the German Bundestag added Germany to the growing list of countries where same-sex couples can obtain a legal marriage license. The past decades have indeed witnessed social mobilizations around the globe for LGBTI+ rights. Whether through legislation, court rulings, or popular referenda, 25 countries grant full juridical marital recognitions only recently enjoyed by opposite-sex partners to all citizens, regardless of their gender and sexual preferences. However, this legal evolution has been uneven. Currently, in many countries, LGBTI+ relations not only contravene moral codes but are still punishable crimes with varying amounts of prison time, fines, and in a few cases, with the death penalty. ...
This book consists of fifteen papers (considered below as Chapters) on fossil and extant arachnids, mostly spiders. Most papers are written by the editor, two papers in cooperation with Peter Jäger and with Søren Toft, and a single one by Peter Jäger. Chapters 1 and 2 are identification keys to the European genera of the families Zodariidae and Corinnidae, respectively.
Over the last few years the boom in Rathenau-studies has continued. The latest addition to the list is Lothar Gall’s biography, which was published last year. Reading Gall’s biography makes it understandable why Rathenau’s life has remained such a popular subject. As a multi-facetted polyglot and business man, as an active and critical commentator of political events and contemporary trends and as an early victim of violent anti-Semitism, he remains a focus for study and research. ...
Every now and again, one is overcome by a sense of utter disbelief. How can it be that some conventional narratives are still so persistent and influential in this day and age? In fact, they are so pervasive that one feels compelled to put pen to paper in order to combat them. Among these narratives, we find the tale of cultural evolution, where law plays a fundamental role as an instrument for rationalizing archaic societies. Having rejected this kind of historiography in his last essay on the early history of law (ZRG RA 127, 1–13), the late Raymond Westbrook instead postulated new paradigms. Moving in the same direction, Philipp Ruch thwarts this story of civilizing progress in a twofold manner: In his eyes, honor and vengeance are not the anthropological factors that law has to contain in order to create civilization. According to Ruch, and the main thrust of his 2016 dissertation, it was in fact law in the context of honor and vengeance that produced emotionality. ...
In Charlemagne, Johannes Fried offers a new account of the life of the Frankish king and emperor, one of the most influential figures in European history. Although the limited surviving resources from the period make the book more of an in-depth account of the socio-political context of Charlemagne’s reign rather than a strict biography, Sara Perley welcomes this as a well-researched and engaging read that will foster curiosity about both Charlemagne and this lesser known period of history.
Alonso-Zarazaga, M. A. and C. H. C. Lyal 1999. A World Catalogue of Families and Genera of Curculionoidea (Insecta: Coleoptera) (Excepting Scolytidae and Platypodidae) 316 pp. ,Publ. Date 27 Dec. 1999.ISBN: 84-605-99994-9, from ENTOMOPRAXIS S.c., Apartado 36164, 08080 Barcelona (Spain), Tel. & Fax: 34 - 933 230 877, e-mail: entomopraxis@entomopraxis.com, ttp://www.entomopraxis.com/news.htm.Cost: 78 Euros + 4% VAT + postage.
For faunistic research on a certain animal group, knowledge of the situation in surrounding countries is a necessity. The presence of certain species in neighbouring regions, together with notes on their distribution and trends, offers valuable information for the interpretation of the status of these species in one’s own study area. Changes in the national fauna – e.g. the discovery of a new species – can often better be explained when integrating information on the status of species in nearby countries. Distribution atlases are therefore not only valuable publications for the country of concern, but also for other countries in the same region.
In the recent historiography on the canon law of the early modern Spanish Empire, legal historians have been considering many forms of normativity. Nevertheless, law still remains, and there is no reason to think otherwise, as a primary source of legal orders. In the case of canon law, many of the legislations drafted remained largely unknown due to their lack of recognitio by the Holy See and pase regio granted by the Spanish Monarch. Such texts were not printed and only circulated in manuscript form, likely resulting in a very low and uncertain degree of compliance. During the 20thcentury, gradually but fragmentally, many of these texts became known in academic publications. The book reviewed here finally gathers together in a single volume all the legislative texts drafted at church assemblies celebrated in the archdiocese of Santafé (today Bogotá) before 1625. ...
In a similar way to dramatic performances and plays, song lyrics establish a complex discourse structure whereby listeners are placed in a position to overhear ‘the pretence of a conversation constructed to convey the performer’s meaning’ (Nahajec 2019: 25; see also Short 1996: 169). In Taylor Swift’s songwriting, listeners are positioned not only to eavesdrop on the narratives presented but are also invited to conceptualise and enact particular roles and scenarios in the discourse. This paper offers a stylistic analysis of songwriting and narrative structure across Swift’s oeuvre to identify how disnarration strategies are used to build stories in her two sister albums written and produced during the Covid-19 pandemic, folklore (2020) and evermore (2020). Specifically, this study examines how disnarration characterises the albums’ narrators, establishes narrator-narratee relationships and invites listeners to adopt a participatory role in the meaning-making process. Through close analysis of four songs across the two albums, this paper builds on developing studies of the stylistics of songwriting (see West 2019) and argues that disnarration strategies foreground particular themes within the discourse, such as nostalgia, wistfulness and regret, and contribute to the fictionalisation and self-aware storytelling characteristic of these albums’ storyworlds.
Book Review: Nault, L.R. and Rodriguez, J.G. (Editors). 1985. The leafhoppers and planthoppers
(1988)
Book Review: Nault, L.R and Rodriguez, J.G. (Editors). 1985. The Leafhoppers and Planthoppers. John Wiley & Sons, New York. 500 pp.
Max Weber's two sociologies
(2003)
Review Essay of: Max Weber, Gesamtausgabe. Abteilung I: Schriften und Reden, Band 22-1: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Die Wirtschaft und die gesellschaftlichen Ordnungen und Mächte. Nachlass, Teilband 1: Gemeinschaften. Edited by Wolfgang J. Mommsen in collaboration with Michael Meyer, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) 2001, 402 pp.
In the past 30 years, the end of the Cold War and the breakdown of the modernist frame of politics have promoted the historical turn of international law. A non-Eurocentric narrative of international law is needed not only to help it go beyond the geographical and conceptual self-justification, but also to open itself to other normative orders. This presents an intellectual and normative challenge to legal historians, who increasingly explore the normative dialogue and competition in interstitial areas, such as South and Southeast Asia in their existence between the Islamic, Sinocentric and European orders. It is this issue and this important era of globalisation that Clara Kemme’s book examines roughly over the period from 1500 to 1900, in particular how the key concepts of tribute and treaty were understood through diplomatic ideas and practices in South and SoutheastAsia, how the treaty system as a product of international law became global and why it prevailed over other systems of order (2). ...
On 26th November 2010 around 3000 psychiatrists rose up for a minute's silence in the great hall of the International Congress Centrum in Berlin. What they had heard before, was deeply impressive and memorable to the audience. Professor Frank Schneider, president of the German Society for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Neurology (DGPPN) asked the psychiatric victims and their relatives of the Nazi era for forgiveness to an extent as only a few German Doctors done before. ...
Rezension zu: Raimon Graells i Fabregat (Coord.), El valor social i comercial de la vaixella metàllica al Mediterrani centre-occidental durant la protohitòria in: Revista d’Arqueologia de Ponent 16-17, 2006-2007, 257-340 <81 pages, 65 illustrations. Edited by Secció d’Arqueologia, Prehistoria i Història Antiga, Departament d’Història, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat de Lleida. ISSN: 1131-883-X>
Mit dem achten Band der von Jörg Wunderlich herausgegebenen Serie „Beiträge zur Araneologie“ liegt endlich ein lange überfälliges Werk vor: Ein Bestimmungsschlüssel aller europäischen Familien der Webspinnen, wobei auch die fossilen Taxa (v.a. aus Baltischem Bernstein) berücksichtigt werden.
The study of civilization is one of the core subjects of international legal history. This is no recent development. Jörg Fisch published his seminal work "Die Europäische Expansion und das Völkerrecht" in 1984, the same year in which Gerrit W. Gong presented his renowned "Standard of Civilization". Today, the more recent works by Martti Koskenniemi and Antony Anghie probably represent the most influential research in this field. What all these path breaking works have in common is that they discuss concepts of civilization in international law especially with regard to its function as providing justification narratives for the European/non-European unequal relations, in particular in the 19th century. ...
The relationship between past and present has been the subject of controversial debates in historical research time and again. In 2013, to give a prominent example, Philip Alston in a review essay discussed the issue of "Does the past matter?" with regard to a debate on the origins of human rights. The debate was dedicated to the controversial question of "[h]ow far back can we trace the genealogy of today’s international human rights system". In this review, I would like to rephrase this question to ask instead to what degree the present matters for historical writing. Other than in the work of Alston, this is not meant as a question on the contingency and path-dependence of history, but rather as a reflection on how historians describe and evaluate the past and what role knowledge of the present may have in this context. ...
Rezension zu: Social preferences: an introduction to behavioural economics and experimental research, by Michalis Drouvelis, Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing, 2021, 205 pages, £22.99, ISBN 978-1-78821-417-9 (paperback).
As Bernhard Jussen correctly stresses in his introduction to this essay collection, we do not need to rediscover kingship. Kings and queens have always been favorite subjects for historians--at least, one might add, as far as medieval and early modern history are concerned. But even for the premodern period, kingship has rarely been studied in long-term perspective. This lacuna is all the more striking as kingship, existent in one form or another since ancient times, seems ideally suited to such a study. A history of kingship--prescinding from specific rulers--would bring to light the very characteristics of this form of rule. Moreover, as kingship was a highly visible and politically relevant phenomenon, and thus comparatively well represented in the sources, such an approach would also allow insights into general social, political, and cultural developments. Jussen's essay collection, in filling the gap, strives for both goals. It does so in a form that, at least in the German context, is innovative. The book combines the characteristics of a single-author volume and essay collection in the sense that each chapter follows clear rules and--with some exceptions--the same structure, though written by different authors. In addition, the strict chronological order, with each of the twenty-six chapters focusing on one particular date and source, and the respective headlines in the form of general questions (for example, "How to Depose a King"), point beyond the scope of the chapter and at the same time make the process of historical analysis visible to the reader. ...
The volume under review contains the published proceedings of a conference held in 2009 with the challenging title, "Merowingische Monetarmünzen und der Beginn des Mittelalters". These Merovingian "Monetarmünzen" are a distinctive group of coins of which less than 10 000 are currently known. Quite suddenly, in the late sixth century, this type of gold coinage appears, with the name of a moneyer ( monetarius ) on the obverse and the place name on the reverse (presumably, but not necessarily in all instances, the mint). Thus, over a thousand moneyers and 722 place names are recorded, many only attested once or twice. In the late 7 th c. these coins slowly give way to a system based on the silver penny/denier, no longer showing names of moneyers. Who were these moneyers? What was their relationship with the court and the kings? To what ends were those coins produced, and how were they used in daily commerce? Why are so many different mints attested? These questions have occupied scholars for several generations now. However, Jarnut and Strothmann have added a new perspective: in how far are these coinages and the associated monetary policy a continuation of late Roman practices, or do they represent something altogether different and can, therefore, be understood as an expression of a fundamentally altered society that could be termed medieval? ...
In Johannes Fried’s The Middle Ages, the author makes his case for an alternative interpretation of the medieval period as much more sophisticated than commonly thought, writes Ignas Kalpokas. The book intricately traces how ideas and systems of thought that we now consider quintessentially modern European ways of life, thinking and culture stemmed from this time period.
This study explores the development of the concept of administratio between the early Merovingian period and the late ninth century. The author’s thesis is that administration lost its original connotation of authority delegated by and exercised on behalf of the state, and that this signals the loss of an abstract awareness of the commonwealth in the early medieval period. In the fifth century the idea of administratio as public powers derived from a higher authority was still in place, but soon thereafter this conception vanished (p. 2–3). Yet when in 814 Louis the Pious became emperor, the original meaning of administratio seemed to get a revival – or, should one say, a new lease of life? Hardly, for only in Italy and Aquitaine was there any awareness left of public service as an abstract concept (p. 7–37). North of the Alps, those in charge did not understand such abstract concepts referring to "Staatlichkeit", as is shown by the fact that the authority of the Carolingian mayors of the palace was never called administratio, even though, in the original meaning of the word, the mayoral office was a clear case of delegated power (p. 16–18). ...
The 900th anniversary of the death of Emperor Henry IV (7 August 2006) occasioned several special colloquia (in Cologne, Speyer, Goslar) and publications in celebration of the so-called "Year of the Salians" . While several scholarly publications and exhibits also appeared with specific focus on Henry IV himself, the present volume contains the papers given at a colloquium held at the University of Cologne (26–30 September 2006), which accordingly focused on the Salian dynasty’s history in the lower Rhine region. Prof. Dr. Tilman Struve (emeritus professor at the University of Cologne), who has spent much of his career studying the Salian house during the Investiture Struggle, lends his considerable expertise to framing this collection of disparate essays. ...
With Architecture Since 1400 another volume has been added to the list of authoritative surveys of architectural history published in recent years. With 30 bit-like chapters and some 300 illustrations, this book is an ambitious attempt to write a global history of architecture that focuses on the arrival of modernity. The central idea of this survey is the shift away from the Weberian approach that views modernization as emanating from the West. Instead, in this book modern architecture is rewritten according to a global approach that allows for multiple perspectives in a multipolar world. This decentring approach is also pivotal for other parts of the book. For example, there is the much-needed effort to include women in the canon. In addition, the author exchanges a stylistic history for a social history and combines this with a narrative that maps the agents of the built environment, thus complementing the narrative of the genius-architect with that of the role played by clients, patrons and critics. In this way, Lina Bo Bardi or Zaha Hadid not only take their place next to Le Corbusier or Brunelleschi, but in addition Eleanor of Toledo is mentioned as an influential sixteenth-century ruler next to her husband Cosimo I, and Hardwick Hall in England is now considered the outcome of the cooperation between the architect Robert Smythson and the landowner Bess of Hardwick.
As Alex Potts points out in his essay, "Colors of Sculpture", "all sculpture is colored, in a literal sense". Yet, despite the fact that the addition of colour to objects as well as its presence as an inescapable fact of sculptural media makes imperative its inclusion in any consideration of sculptors’ intentions and the meaning of their work, Amanda Claridge is right to note in her review, that polychromed sculpture has been given short shrift in the post-enlightenment settlement. ...
I first encountered the work of Miriam Hansen as a graduate student in the mid-1990s when her book Babel and Babylon was the talk of the (at that time still fairly modest) film studies town – even though it was sitting somewhat uneasily on the fence. In fact, it was this position beyond the canonical that made the book so attractive in the first place. It did not fit into the raging debate of that time between psychosemiotics and neo-formalism, nor did it offer the (often too schematic and naive) way out within the cultural studies paradigm of empowering the individual or sub-culturally constituted groups.