University of St Andrews: Journal Hosting Service
Not a member yet
1414 research outputs found
Sort by
Awakening the film censors’ archive in [CENSORED] (2018)
Full text link[CENSORED] (2018) is a feature-length collage of clips excised from international films by the Australian Film Censorship Board between 1958 and 1971, which historian and artist Sari Braithwaite uncovered in the National Archives of Australia. While the censored clips were archived alphabetically, Braithwaite curates them by motif, capturing the numbness generated by archivists’ and censors’ processes through repetitive bombardment of similar imagery in various categories of sex and violence. Compiling and re-categorising this trove of censored fragments produces a new perspective not only into past practices of censorship but more insightfully, into patterns of gendered dynamics and action in narrative cinema. Through feminist critical practice, Braithwaite deploys a ‘layered gaze’ and expands a critique of censorship to a critique of cinema. Braithwaite’s film mobilizes ‘productive misuse’ (Baron 2020), not for her original goal of damning censorship, but to reflect on cinematic fixations (including female nudity and sexual violence) and spectatorial implication. By suturing the censors’ excisions, Braithwaite draws attention to her own growing feminist ‘disenchantment’ (Elsaesser 2005) with cinema culture as she engages with the censors’ offcuts. [CENSORED] documents an awakening of – and from – the censors’ archive. The film evolves through sensory engagement with this archive, and in doing so, provides insight into the comparable – and sometimes complicit – processes of film spectatorship, censorship, and audio-visual archival research. 
Why not an ‘online Eucharist’?: A Scottish-Episcopal perspective on presence
Full text linkThe experience of Covid-19’s lockdowns, especially living through a period without the Eucharist on Sunday lays behind this theological reflection from the perspective of a Scottish Episcopalian about so-called online Eucharists with remote consecrations. The question I set is simple: ‘Can the elements of bread and wine be consecrated outwith the gathered community?’ Simple too is my answer: ‘No, they cannot.’ The pandemic has tested the fault lines of God’s presence in our worship, our presence in community and those presences in the Eucharist. I argue that God’s presence with us was unchanged by lockdown. I also argue that although many of us began to use ‘onsite’, ‘online’ and a variety of related terms in unprecedented ways vis-à-vis liturgies, our presence to one another was changed during lockdown. When we could not gather as a community, even if we were able to communicate via the internet, we could neither celebrate the Eucharist nor consecrate the elements. Theological reflection will, I hope, hone our appreciation of the significance of our humanity, the Incarnation, and the Body and Blood of Christ in the sacramental economy
From one degree of imperfection to another: A consideration of gathering in different ways
Full text linkThis conversation between Ruth Gouldbourne and Steve Holmes, both ordained Baptist ministers, focuses on issues raised during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in particular the theological as well as practical questions around gathering for worship when gathering together in church buildings was not possible. Exploring a theology of ‘gathering’, they find themselves wanting to distinguish between ideal and ‘adequate’ ways of being church: the significance and different expressions of people seeing each other ‘face to face’, the experience of virtual gatherings around the Lord’s Table, and the anticipatory, provisional nature of any church expression. In this perspective, celebrating the Communion while being separated physically is not only possible, but an essential expression of the creative nature of a gathering community in continuation with the Church across the ages. They also note the communicative power carried by physical spaces and objects used in the life of the church, as well as all other nonverbal cues
Three Lions, divine comedy and making Jews count: Baddiel and Skinner, then and now
Full text linkTo coincide with the 2022 FIFA World Cup, our review essay discusses new books by Frank Skinner and David Baddiel, two British comedians, writers and broadcasters well-known for their association with football tournaments (in song). Here we find them offering personal reflections on matters of faith and identity.Reviewed works:Frank Skinner, A Comedian’s Prayer Book (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2021), pp. 112, ISBN 978-1529368956.David Baddiel, Jews Don’t Count: How Identity Politics Failed One Particular Identity (London: TLS Books, 2021), pp. 144, ISBN 978-0008399474
Understanding a Decade of Syrian-Hamas Relations, 2011-2021
Full text linkTracing the trajectory of Hamas’ policy towards Syria in three distinct phases, the paper seeks to provide a comprehensive understanding of Syria-Hamas relations over the course of the past decade and identifies the various factors that have led us to this point. The argument put forward here suggests that it is only through a combination of geo-strategic factors and issues pertaining to identity that can help to fully explain the shifts and changes in Hamas’ policy towards Syria, which has inevitably had repercussions for its relations with the other members of the Axis of Resistance, Iran and Hezbollah too
In Search of Mercian Law
Full text linkThere are five extant English law codes from the sixth to the ninth century but, despite Mercia\u27s having been an independent polity in the period, none are Mercian. Three seventh century Kentish royal law codes survive in a single twelfth century manuscript and two West-Saxon law codes survive elsewhere. The early English legal record is, therefore, thin and there are no extant law codes from the major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, or Mercia. As such, this article discusses possible answers to two questions: what Mercian law was and whether a Mercian law code ever existed.
 
