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Omni-Balancing: the Case of Hamas and the Syrian Regime
Full text linkThe relationship between Hamas and the Syrian regime is one of the most controversial in the Middle East. Despite some historical hostility and ideological differences, they enjoyed a good relationship prior to the outbreak of the Syrian revolution. That changed the relationship radically, leaving it unclear as to where it would go. This paper aims to explain the changing nature of the relationship between the Syrian regime and Hamas, using Omnibalancing theory to explain both the conduct of regime in the global south, such as Syria’s and that of non-state actors, like Hamas, illustrated by the evolving relationship between Hamas and the Syrian regime. Thus, this paper hopes to explain how the two parties moved from rapprochement to the complete breakdown of relations
After the Flight: The Legality of the Conferences at York and Westminster
Full text linkFollowing the deposition of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1567, she fled first to Lochleven and, following defeat by supporters of James VI, she fled south to England seeking refuge. In England, Queen Elizabeth I allowed for conferences at York and Westminster to consider Mary\u27s involvement in the murder of her husband Henry Darnley. This article explores the contemporary legality of such conferences, and whether they might be regarded as trials
“Linguistics and New Testament Greek: Key Issues in the Current Debate” edited by David Alan Black and Benjamin L. Merkle
No full textReview ofDavid Alan Black and Benjamin L. Merkle, eds., Linguistics and New Testament Greek: Key Issues in the Current Debate (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2020), xi + 276pp, ISBN 978-1540961068. £21.9
“Why do we post selfies?”: Vanity, Validation, and the Virtual Communication of Selfies on Instagram
Full text linkOver the last two decades, we have watched the selfie grow and establish itself in the virtual sphere, especially on the social media site Instagram. This article considers the role that selfies play in our communications and social relations in an online space through engaging with the experiences of young, Scottish women. It explores their thoughts on taking, posting, and interacting selfies in order to understand the meanings and motivations behind selfies on Instagram. It will find that regardless of how “vain” taking selfies may be, posting them is a method of virtual communication that cannot be ignored. This article also breaks down the association between women, selfies, and vanity through analysing the phenomenon of moral panics, and how this impacts the interlocutors in their selfie taking habits
Double Vision: Encountering Early Ethnographic Films in the Digital Archive
Full text linkIn 1908, Georg Thilenius, director of the Hamburg Museum für Völkerkunde, sent a group of researchers on an expedition to the then-German colonies in Melanesia and Micronesia. The team was also equipped with a film camera. In comparison to the several thousand photographs, sketches, and notes the quantity of film produced was very low: only around eleven minutes could be shot on 35mm footage. This footage, transferred to 16mm film in the 1940s and digitised in 2018-19, is analysed both as an event of early ethnographic filmmaking and as a specific archival object: to date the object biography of the Hamburg films shows significant changes of their materiality and no less important ruptures concerning their preserving archives. This featurette raises questions about the significance of film recordings for ethnographic research, the role of archives and museums in their preservation or digitisation, and, not least, their entanglement in German colonial politics. It reconstructs the object biography of the Hamburg films based on signatures, inventory lists, and descriptions of the expedition members to shed light on this entanglement and to question its status as an archival object. In doing so it argues for a relational understanding of ethnographic filmmaking and its preservation that accounts for the responsibilities, constraints, and different interests of the people and institutions involved in capturing, distributing, and transforming moving images into an archival object.  
The theological house that Jack (un)built: Halberstam on an aesthetics of collapse and mushrooms among the ruins
Full text linkThis paper discusses Jack Halberstam’s September 2022 Gifford Lecture, “Unworlding: An Aesthetics of Collapse”, given at the University of Glasgow on 15 September 2022
"The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: Exploring its Theological Significance and Ongoing Relevance" by W. Ross Hastings
No full textReview ofW. Ross Hastings, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: Exploring its Theological Significance and Ongoing Relevance (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022), pp. xii + 191, ISBN 978-154096492
“I’m gonna study everything!”: Bisexual Orientations in Dana Terrace’s The Owl House
Full text linkNear the end of the episode “The First Day” of Dana Terrace’s The Owl House, the series’s protagonist, Luz, receives permission to study every subject. Having overthrown her magic school’s traditional one-track system, Luz confesses, “Maybe it’s crazy but I wish I could study a little bit of everything.” At this wish, Luz finds herself suspended in space; magic adorns her in motley-colored garments, indicative of her intended multitrack pursuits, against an abstract backdrop of blue, purple, and pink: unmistakably, at least for this bisexual viewer, the color of the bisexual flag. Even before Terrace confirmed the character’s bisexuality, I suspect many bisexual viewers already knew.
My knowledge was excitement; I felt an intense energy that responded simultaneously to what I witnessed on screen and within myself. Later I thought of coenesthesia, “the potential and perception of one’s whole sensorial being” (Carnal Thoughts 67), and how this scene’s coenesthesia collides with Luz’s realizing herself in terms of her multifaceted potential. Given that “we extend space differently based on how we are orientated in the world” (“Questions” 207), I seek to explore how this scene posits bisexuality as multi-directional and interdisciplinary. Furthermore, I seek to examine how, from my perspective as a twenty-some-year-old bisexual viewer who wishes she had this show years ago, this scene also speaks to bisexual temporal orientations. How can we read this scene, and ourselves, in relation to the history of bisexuality, traditionally located “in the past or future, but never in the present tense” (Angelides 194)
(Guilty) Viewing Pleasures and Reality TV: Queer Viewers Decoding the Greek Version of The Bachelor
Full text linkDespite their relatively long and successful presence in the history of Greek private television, reality shows have generally been cast in a negative light. Due to its concentration on superficial topics pertaining to the private sphere, the genre has been criticised as “bad,” while its viewers are often imagined as being at the bottom of a moral hierarchy. Drawing on the queer research tradition’s interest in audience studies and building on the idea of friendship as a generative site of inquiry, this article analyses how five queer viewers make sense of the Greek version of the popular reality show, The Bachelor (ALPHA, 2020-2021). By initiating a dialogue between Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenology and queer reception studies, I contest what is considered to be “bad” material on television, not only in terms of its “authenticity,” but also in terms of the emotional and affective responses that it may generate to its viewers. Through notes from the fieldwork and interviews, I explore how overly heteronormative shows that exclude particular groups of people, like The Bachelor, enable viewers to experience guilty pleasures, read the reality show through critical lenses and even resist its content in creative ways. In doing so, I highlight the importance of including “lowbrow” entertainment and embodied approaches in the study of Greek screen cultures, which can not only add significant original thought concerning the reception of everyday media forms by the academic community but can also challenge the unworkable dichotomies between high/low culture and heterosexual/queer, often found in much queer theoretical work
Editorial: Church, virtual and physical
Full text linkFrom the Editorial:"As we continue to inhabit this not-quite-post-pandemic world, and grapple with the fact that, at least in some contexts and some forms, online participation is here to stay, questions around the relationship between the physical and the virtual in the life of the Church will need some sustained theological conversation. We hope that this issue of Theology in Scotland will contribute to a start of such conversation.