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The Many Faces of Dionysos in the Hexameters of the Sinai Palimpsest (Sin. ar. NF 66)
No full textThe fragments of a hexameter poem about Dionysus recently discovered in a palimpsest (Sin. Ar. NF 66) reveal some different faces of Dionysus, including an Adonis-figure at the heart of a dispute between two goddesses (Persephone and Aphrodite), and a personified wine-god, Oinos, threatened by the machinations of his enemies in the court of Zeus. These palimpsest texts help to illuminate some of the allusions to the early life of the god that have long puzzled scholars, especially in some of the early Christian apologists and the collection of Orphic Hymns
The Vernacular Ethics of Stigmatized Care: Reinterpreting Acceptance and Confidentiality for Social Work in the West Bank, Palestine
Get PDFSocial workers in Palestine routinely navigate issues of stigma with their clients without formal ethical guidance. This constructivist grounded theory study examines how Palestinian social workers in the West Bank organize themselves ethically to provide stigmatized care—where social workers supporting people with socially rejected conditions and experiences can face community scorn by extension. We conducted focus groups and individual interviews with 99 social work supervisors in 12 cities over a 2-year period. Our analysis reveals localized reinterpretations of acceptance and confidentiality as ethically grounded principles for stigmatized care. These practice principles have emerged under strain in cases involving substance use, sex work, sexual variance, sexual violence, and child abuse allegations but reach a limit around accusations of collaboration with the occupation. Our findings reflect a dynamic vernacular ethics: a politicized field of shared concerns and debates that social workers use to guide their practice without a codified ethical system
Interfacial and Surface Magnetism in Epitaxial NiCo2O4(001)/MgAl2O4 Films
Get PDFNiCo2O4 (NCO) films grown on MgAl2O4 (001) substrates have been studied using magnetometry, x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) based on x-ray absorption spectroscopy, and spin-polarized inverse photoemission spectroscopy (SPIPES) with various thickness down to 1.6 nm. The magnetic behavior can be understood in terms of a layer of optimal NCO and an interfacial layer (1.2± 0.1 nm), with a small canting of magnetization at the surface. The thickness dependence of the optimal layer can be described by the finite-scaling theory with a critical exponent consistent with the high perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. The interfacial layer couples antiferromagnetically to the optimal layer, generating exchange-spring styled magnetic hysteresis in the thinnest films. The non-optimal and measurement-speed-dependent magnetic properties of the interfacial layer suggest substantial interfacial diffusion
An Epic of Tragic Proportions: [In]forming the Politics of Statius’ Thebaid through Greek Tragic Intertext
No full textStatius’ epic poem, the Thebaid, has often been compared to Virgil’s Aeneid and many studies rightfully devote their attention to this text. I argue, however, that Greek tragedy equally plays an integral role in our reading and understanding of the Thebaid. Statius’ relationship with Greek tragedy in his epic is pronounced, ubiquitous, and intentional throughout the Thebaid and it is no less prevalent and relevant than the Aeneid for an understanding of the poem. The extant Greek tragic plays that treat the Theban story and Polynices and Eteocles’ conflict include Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, and Euripides’ Phoenissae and Suppliant Women. I identify various passages throughout the epic that parallel scenes from these tragedies, not only through their more overt similarities to characters or plot, but also through thematic, verbal, or even syntactic echoes.
I then explore the prominent themes, which the layering of the texts reveals, and the political significance and the contemporary relevance in these intertextual scenes. I show how Statius highlights themes that illustrate a deterioration of family dynamics, ritual connections, and political turmoil, which is intrinsically connected to the crisis of the political situation in Statius’ time. I demonstrate that Statius more subtly uses such intertext with tragedy to raise themes that would be of concern to a reader from Flavian Rome: civil war, power vacuums, crises of inheritance and succession, overextension and abuse of power, and destabilization of political structures when familial and ritual bonds dissolve.
These points of interaction between the epic and the tragedies emphasize themes of the Thebaid that are particularly politically weighted due to their activation through the tragic backdrop Statius creates. Statius’ intertext with Greek tragedy prompts the reader to examine the Roman epic and its themes through the encoded political nature of the Greek tragic genre. The inherent politicizing nature of Greek tragedy, therefore, invites the reader to explore the politics of the Thebaid, not merely as a product of its mythological sources, but as a product of the contemporary Roman climate from which it is produced
