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Inktober
No full textACKNOWLEDGEMENTSI would like to thank Dr. Katherine Cook for teaching the course onStorytelling in Archaeology that these poems and Inktober drawingswere made for. She is wonderful and always encourages her studentsto be creative
“A Mexican Medea”: Challenging Western Literary Tropes in Cherríe L. Moraga’s The Hungry Woman
No full textIn her 1995 play The Hungry Woman, Cherríe L. Moraga imagines a new future for the Chicano civil rights movement of the 1960s. In her dystopia, national borders are strict and Medea is exiled (along with her lesbian partner and son) for engaging in a homosexual relationship; however, Moraga juxtaposes this Latin American movement against the backdrop of Euripides’s Medea and alludes to the Gothic trope of the mad ex-wife. This juxtaposition of Western allusions and Latin American mythology reflects the play’s overarching themes of patriarchal resistance and the fight to keep culture alive. In this essay, I argue that the play uses Euripides and the Gothic to challenge Western literary traditions and subsequently mirror the patriarchal binaries imposed on Moraga’s characters
Promoting the Long-Term Management of Public Corporations Through a Reform of Canadian Corporate Law
No full textShort-termism, a tendency to overemphasize strategies that generate immediate financial results at the expense of long-term profits, is a serious issue that the business community faces. Short-term market pressures and the responsive behaviour of corporate boards undermine long-term economic prosperity and social welfare. While select investors and executives may benefit financially from this short-termism, it largely runs counter to the interests of long-term investors and other stakeholders. Without concrete measures, it is unlikely that we will address the problem of short-termism.This article makes recommendations directed at encouraging long-term oriented thinking in boardrooms. It proposes two regulatory measures that, if jointly implemented, would dissuade boards from managing corporations for the short-term and insulate them from market pressures: first, imposing a fiduciary duty upon directors to act in accordance with the corporation’s long-term interests; and second, requiring executive compensation to be aligned with the corporation’s long-term interests
The Human Right to Property in International Investment Law
No full textThis article seeks to address part of the “legitimacy crisis” currently underway in the international investment regime. It identifies shortcomings in the jurisprudential coherence of investor-state arbitral awards in expropriation cases where the state defends its actions by invoking human rights considerations. This article suggests the interpretation of the scope and characteristics of investors’ property rights under investment law—as well as the property rights of non-parties to investor-state disputes, such as the ancestral land rights of Indigenous peoples—should be in line with the meaning of property rights under human rights law. This approach has the methodological benefit of incorporating to investment law human rights law theory’s, methods of interpretation and jurisprudence— which favours a balancing act and proportionality analysis, and provides a margin of appreciation to state authorities when addressing multiple human rights considerations. It provides consistent analytical tools to overcome the difficulties of broadly stating that human rights should apply to investment law, which can be insufficient as a guide to interpretation in the context of specific disputes
The Network of Isma’ili Castles in the Alamut Region: Power and Governance
No full textIn 1090, Hasan-i Sabbah (1050s –1124), the mysterious leader of the Nizari Ismaʿilis in Persia, obtained control of Alamut Castle, one of the major existing castles in the northern part of Iran, and reinforced it as the headquarters of his activities against the Seljuq government. The Nizari Ismaʿilis gradually became a very influential community within the political and intellectual history of the Islamic world until the fall of Alamut in 1256. The principal strategy that helped them to resist their enemies and to survive in a hostile milieu was the establishment of networks of castles within inaccessible regions.This research concerns the network of Ismaʿili castles in the Alamut region. Examining the distribution of the castles in the region, the paper questions the current scholarly assumption that the network of the castles functioned as part of a defensive system, which separated the Ismaʿili territory from their enemies with a linear border. Proposing several examples as evidence, through a detailed examination of historical texts, this paper takes an alternative position, suggesting that the castles should be considered as centers of power, which formed important spheres of influence for their surrounding environment; they were also employed as effective units of governance in the expansion of the Ismaʿili dominions
Amour and Morality in Tapestry: Allegory and Humanist Thought in 16th Century France
No full textThe tapestry Amour foulant des rois (c. 1500-20), now in the Detroit Institute of Arts, is a partial survivor of the original hanging. Over the centuries, it has generated very little interest from art historians and has been separated from the other three tapestries that most probably composed the former cycle. Generally, iconographical analyses have limited the understanding of the image to a representation of the powerful god of Love. The DIA curators have mentioned a reference to Petrarch’s Triumphs. Although the partial poem captured in a banderole above the scene has been described as representative of contemporary poetry, it is interesting to notice that it has not been explained in the context of the image. When considered within the framework of an early French Renaissance literary movement centred on Paris and the Bourbonnais, this study offers a new understanding of the tapestry Amour foulant des rois that takes into account the creation process of late medieval visual and textual allegories as it relates to the development of French Humanist thought
Fashioned from Nature: London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 21 April, 2018 – 27 January, 2019
No full textCopy That! The Cultural and Social Role of Late-Medieval Venetian Zibaldoni
No full textOne of the codicological phenomena of the late middle ages in Italy was the appearance of self-made books—called zibaldone—created by copying passages from a wide variety of other texts, often with illustrations, tables, and diagrams. These were not personal recollections or diaries, but a cross-section of information that spanned the entire spectrum of medieval knowledge. We do not know of many Venetian examples, but two of them have received considerable individual scholarly attention, The Zibaldone da Canal (early 14th century) and The Book of Michael of Rhodes (c. 1435). Although the two have not been studied together, both have been classified as examples of practical commercial/technical manuals for Venetians involved in maritime travel and commercial activity, and this has been the primary scholarly focus. In this article I look at the function of these two manuscripts as socio-cultural objects that speak to the particular interests, concerns, and worldview of their creators. I demonstrate how the texts, diagrams, and images in both codices served similar multifunctional roles in maintaining their owner’s civic and moral identity and providing them with physical, intellectual, social, and emotional well-being as Venetian and Christian persons involved in overseas commercial travel. In particular, this study highlights how the information categories of mathematical problems, astrological and calendric information, and prayers and invocations, act as cultural containers that provide for practical skill development, protection of mind, body, and soul, and social representation and interaction. I conclude that this socio-cultural approach to these particular manuscripts gives us an added dimension to understanding the multilayered complexity that underscores the original creation and use of these codices—and by implication the whole genre of zibaldoni—and also helps explain why they continued to hold their value long after the original compilers’ deaths