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Hydrology of peatlands

Håkan Rydin and John K. Jeglum

in The Biology of Peatlands

Understanding the hydrology is fundamental for understanding peatland habitats, and this chapter considers both the quantitative and qualitative (chemical) aspects of water in peatlands. It describes ... More

Understanding the hydrology is fundamental for understanding peatland habitats, and this chapter considers both the quantitative and qualitative (chemical) aspects of water in peatlands. It describes how depth to the water table (DWT) governs vegetational physiognomy, plant occurrence, and growth. Hydraulic conductivity is an important concept affecting the water flow in the peat; and how the conductivity is related to degree of decomposition (humification) of the peat, is discussed. Variation in hydraulic conductivity is a basis for the separation in bogs between an upper, aerated ‘active layer’ (acrotelm) and the lower, constantly anoxic ‘inactive layer’ (catotelm). The water balance of a peatland is an accounting of the inputs, outputs and storage of water. The variation in water chemistry (with a focus on pH, calcium content, and electric conductivity) in peatlands is discussed, and methods for measurement introduced.Less

Idealizing the Prima Donna in Mid-Victorian London 1

Roberta Montemorra Marvin

in The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century

Chapter 2 explores the visual culture of nineteenth-century British spectatorship by examining images of prima donnas that were published in one of the principal English newspapers, the Illustrated ... More

Chapter 2 explores the visual culture of nineteenth-century British spectatorship by examining images of prima donnas that were published in one of the principal English newspapers, the Illustrated London News. Dress, ornament, posture, and physiognomy were each subtle codes through which aspects of personality were communicated, and newspaper editors and illustrators were adept at manipulating these codes to specific ends. In some cases these can be seen working against what the readers’ prior impressions of a prima donna might have been, based on reports of her irregular private life and moral transgressions. This revealing case study offers insights into ideologies of gender that literally shaped the image and the public’s perception of Italian opera stars in the years before newspapers moved over from engravings to photography.Less

“Haunting Face”: Spectral Premonitions and the Memory of the Dead

Luke Gibbons

in Joyce'S Ghosts: Ireland, Modernism, and Memory

In Joyce's Ireland, the past is not over until it has found its expressions in the present, and it is these spectral premonitions that allowed Irish culture to come to terms with the traumatic fall ... More

In Joyce's Ireland, the past is not over until it has found its expressions in the present, and it is these spectral premonitions that allowed Irish culture to come to terms with the traumatic fall of Parnell. The shock of Parnell's death was such that many believed he had staged his death, leading to the rumor that he had re-surfaced as Christiaan De Wet in South Africa to lead the Boer War against the British empire. In Ulysses, the capacity to see a resemblance of a lost person in the face of another is explored to suggest the possibility of finding a new substitute for an inconsolable loss. The refusal in melancholia to accept the finality of death is reworked in terms of the relational ethics of Judith Butler, in which one element in a bond of attachment may be lost, but the affective ties live on, affording new possibilities of hope in the future.Less

Hybridised Whiteness in ‘Rose’: The Displacement of Racialised/Gendered Discours in a Japanese Queer Magazine in the 1970s

Katsuhiko Suganuma and Siu-lun Wong

in Contact Moments: The Politics of Intercultural Desire in Japanese Male-Queer Cultures

Chapter 3 investigates a morphing process of the gendered binary metaphor of Japan and the West. The case study for this chapter is conducted on the first Japanese commercial gay magazine, Barazoku ... More

Chapter 3 investigates a morphing process of the gendered binary metaphor of Japan and the West. The case study for this chapter is conducted on the first Japanese commercial gay magazine, Barazoku (Rose Tribe). The chapter discusses the notion of ‘whiteness’ in the context of queer as well as transnational contexts. It asks the question as to what happens when whiteness is discussed within a discursive space in which whiteness is no longer the norm. The chapter shows how the Japanese queer textual space of Barazoku in the 1970s precluded whiteness from attaining the flexibility and fluidity normally available in the West.Less

Historical introduction

O.D. Creutzfeldt

in Cortex Cerebri: Performance, Structural and Functional Organisation of the Cortex

This chapter provides a historical perspective to systematic scientific research on the cerebral cortex. The significance of the cerebral cortex for the higher integrative and intellectual functions ... More

This chapter provides a historical perspective to systematic scientific research on the cerebral cortex. The significance of the cerebral cortex for the higher integrative and intellectual functions of the brain was not clearly recognized until the second half of the nineteenth century. In fact, systematic scientific research on the cerebral cortex did not begin until about 1870. However, in 1792 the anatomist Franz Josef Gall, under the influence of romantic psychology with its interest in characterology and physiognomy, had already hypothesized that certain ‘psychological qualities’ were located in specific areas of the cerebral cortex. This idea contradicted the established doctrine, originating with Rene Descartes and based on philosophy rather than on anatomy, which located the soul as a unified function in the pineal gland. Although none of these speculations had a sound anatomical basis, Gall's phrenology was a step in the right direction. At the centre of Gall's hypothesis was the conviction that intellectual and moral powers were located in certain regions of the surface of the brain.Less

Introduction: Toward a Physiognomic Epidemiology of the Fetishized Jew

Jay Geller

in The Other Jewish Question: Identifying the Jew and Making Sense of Modernity

This chapter introduces terminology and methods that will be used throughout this study. It offers working definitions of Judentum, antisemitism, Jewish-identified individuals, fetish, modernity, and ... More

This chapter introduces terminology and methods that will be used throughout this study. It offers working definitions of Judentum, antisemitism, Jewish-identified individuals, fetish, modernity, and the morphemic/orthographic/semantic/phonemic field. It also describes a physiognomic epidemiological method, a technique for mapping the emergence and distribution of as well as the interrelationships among particular Jewish-associated morphemes and images in German-language verbal and visual texts. The chapter depicts a European modernity characterized by the emergence of medical/biological and national/evolutionary/colonial narratives and accompanying authorizing discourses by which truth was identified and rendered visible on the body—specifically, the body of “the Jew” and the techniques practiced upon it (e.g., circumcision). It situates the socio-politico Jewish Question in Germanophone lands within the unresolved crisis over whether or not Jewish-identified individuals should or could be integrated into the dominant society.Less

How to Read a Face: Pilgrims and Ascetic Physiognomy

Georgia Frank

in The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity

This chapter focuses on pilgrims' responses to the facial appearance of ascetics. Monastics developed their own physiognomic enterprise, often exhorting novices on the type of self-fashioning that ... More

This chapter focuses on pilgrims' responses to the facial appearance of ascetics. Monastics developed their own physiognomic enterprise, often exhorting novices on the type of self-fashioning that would result in an “ascetic” appearance. In their vocabulary for ascetic physiognomy, pilgrims put a distinctive face on sanctity, combining techniques of ancient physiognomy with a biblical sensibility. In addition, as a discipline based in visual scrutiny, physiognomy can lead to a deeper understanding of how pilgrims construed the processes and effects of seeing. Because pilgrims rarely commented on the act of seeing, their descriptions of what they saw become important for understanding the viewing subject implied in such descriptions. Physiognomy provides a tool by which to uncover these visual processes and the spiritual possibilities for those who engaged in body-reading.Less

The “Bon Curé” of Emberménil

Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall

in The Abbe Gregoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism

In 1782, Henri Grégoire was named curé (parish priest) of Emberménil, as successor to his old mentor—something truly momentous for someone in his circumstances. Though he could have remained an ... More

In 1782, Henri Grégoire was named curé (parish priest) of Emberménil, as successor to his old mentor—something truly momentous for someone in his circumstances. Though he could have remained an important man in Emberménil until his death, Grégoire was to set his sights higher. Though Grégoire's activities in the 1780s are far less famous than his later actions, tracing them is important for several reasons. First, examining his practical attempts to improve his parish helps understand the roots of his ideas of regeneration and universalism. This chapter shows in particular his early interest in spreading enlightenment to groups he felt had been denied knowledge; in traveling as a means for learning about different cultures; and in using Johann Caspar Lavater's ideas on physiognomy to understand moral behavior and discusses the origins of his controversial stances on the Church during the Revolution.Less

‘Roots, Remedies and Properties of Stones’: Dead Sea Healing

Joan E. Taylor

in The Essenes, the Scrolls, and the Dead Sea

The Dead Sea’s healing resources, being so well-known in antiquity, also attracted Essenes, who were attested as being adept in pharmacological lore (so Josephus, War 2: 136). As John Allegro once ... More

The Dead Sea’s healing resources, being so well-known in antiquity, also attracted Essenes, who were attested as being adept in pharmacological lore (so Josephus, War 2: 136). As John Allegro once noted, their location also lates to Ezekiel 47: 1-12, where a stream of healing water flows from the Temple down the Kidron to the Dead Sea, bringing alive the water from en Gedi to En Egallaim (Ain Hajla). Many healing resources are evidenced in antiquity: balsam, date palms, rue, mandrake, madder, honey, minerals (asphalt, sulphur, alum, salt), along with healing hot spring waters. These can be related to the continuing traditions of medicinal plant use among the Bedouin over the centuries. Likewise, in the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are many instances of a deep concern with healing, seen as a blessing of God. This is found in scientific works in the corpus (the wisdom of Solomon), containing lore concerning astrology, physiognomy, angelology, exorcisms, purifications and pharmacology. The archaeology of Qumran itself indicates a strong possibility that part of the site was used for medicinal manufacture, as also in En Boqeq.Less

Small Mammal Communities in Upland and Floodplain Forests along an Amazonian White Water River

Jay R. Malcolm, James L. Patton, and Maria Nazareth F. da Silva

in Mammalian Diversification: From Chromosomes to Phylogeography

This chapter examines the non-volant small mammal communities in floodplain and upland forest along the Juruá River, a white-water tributary in the western part of the Amazon Basin. It compares small ... More

This chapter examines the non-volant small mammal communities in floodplain and upland forest along the Juruá River, a white-water tributary in the western part of the Amazon Basin. It compares small mammal community composition and abundance and richness between upland and floodplain forests, and analyzes the correlations between small mammal community structure and various measurements of forest physiognomy. The chapter suggests that the Jutaí Arch of the river may have served as a barrier separating small mammal populations in the former upstream and downstream subsidence basins.Less

Affecting: Endell’s Mathematics of Living Feeling

Zeynep Çelik Alexander

in Kinaesthetic Knowing: Aesthetics, Epistemology, Modern Design

While many at the turn of the century imagined a new aesthetic theory that prioritized feelings, it was August Endell who theorized the epistemological possibilities of feeling with unrivalled ... More

While many at the turn of the century imagined a new aesthetic theory that prioritized feelings, it was August Endell who theorized the epistemological possibilities of feeling with unrivalled acuity. Drawing on contemporaneous psychological debates about emotional expression and empathy, Endell developed an architectural theory that he put to pedagogical use at his Formschule in Berlin. This theory was predicated on the claim that forms could be correlated to their emotive effects with mathematical precision. Nineteenth-century academic architectural theory had been based on a physiognomic theory of expression, according to which architectural forms conformed to an expected character that expressed social norms. Endell instead theorized a pathognomic architecture that impressed its formal effects on the psyche, just as the physiologist Duchenne de Boulogne stimulated the facial muscles of his subjects with electrical currents. At a moment when theorists declared space (Raum) to be the essence of all architecture, Endell’s architectural theory shifted the focus from the physical body of buildings to the empty space that they enclosed. Furthermore, Endell provocatively argued that given the immediacy between form and affect, architectural space was the best means through which kinaesthetic knowing could attain a rigor comparable to that of propositional knowledge.Less

New directions in theory-building

Dimitris N. Chryssochoou, Michael J. Tsinisizelis, Stelios Stavridis, and Kostas Ifantis

in Theory and Reform in the European Union

This chapter examines the latest theoretical trends and the two treaty revisions that occurred during the mid-1980s and early 1990s, introducing the Single European Act and the Treaty on European ... More

This chapter examines the latest theoretical trends and the two treaty revisions that occurred during the mid-1980s and early 1990s, introducing the Single European Act and the Treaty on European Union (TEU), which resulted from the treaty revisions, and neofunctionalism, which re-emerged as the leading theory of European integration. The next part studies the state of theorising European integration in the 1990s in relation to the constitutional and political physiognomy of the Maastricht Treaty. The final part of the chapter focuses on the new theoretical approaches, which include the fusion thesis and new institutionalism.Less

Hermetic borderline

Mechthild Fend

in Fleshing Out Surfaces: Skin in French Art and Medicine, 1650-1850

This chapter focuses on a set of nudes and portraits by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. It engages with the artist's ambivalent relationship with artistic anatomy and demonstrates the artist's ... More

This chapter focuses on a set of nudes and portraits by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. It engages with the artist's ambivalent relationship with artistic anatomy and demonstrates the artist's increasing attention to the body's surface achieved through a reduction of modelling of the physical forms. Ingres changed the terms of the fabrication of flesh tones – carnations – and skin became deliberately non-physiological. Critics registered Ingres's peculiar handling of skin and flesh as one of the artist's idiosyncrasies and their writings manifest a gradual shift in the understanding of the body in paint. In Ingres‘ paintings themselves, the established association of flesh and paint was replaced by the alignment of the skin with the images‘ ground, be it canvas or paper in the case of drawings, and of the depicted skin with the polished painterly surface. The final section argues that the suppression of anatomical detail is pushed to the extreme in Ingres‘ portraits of women, resulting in a renunciation of physiognomic paradigms in which a person's exterior is meant to refer to internal qualities and character. Like in his Valpinçon Bather, the concealment of skin goes along with the closure of the interior space.Less

Dissemination: Morton, La Rocca, and Armstrong

Charles B. Hersch

in Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans

This chapter focuses on the dissemination of jazz from New Orleans outward. It shows how Jelly Roll Morton (Creole), Nick La Rocca (white), and Louis Armstrong (black) spread the carnivalesque values ... More

This chapter focuses on the dissemination of jazz from New Orleans outward. It shows how Jelly Roll Morton (Creole), Nick La Rocca (white), and Louis Armstrong (black) spread the carnivalesque values of the Crescent City, continuing the musical miscegenation that began there. In particular, each man's story illustrates the complex relationship between physiognomy, racial identity, musical style, and commercial success. With a focus on Armstrong, who thought of his music as a device for racial rapprochement, the chapter argues that the contrasting fates of the three men was influenced by their racial identities and their relationship to those identities. Though La Rocca and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band achieved mass success and Morton created innovative and influential compositions and recordings, only Armstrong reached a wide audience for the long haul. Using African devices to transform popular songs, Armstrong and his impure, subversive sounds challenged racial boundaries for decades.Less

Bodies Inside Out

Shahzad Bashir

in Sufi Bodies: Religion and Society in Medieval Islam

This chapter has three main sections, each of which highlights a different signification of the apparent-hidden dichotomy in considering Sufi views on corporeality. The first section addresses Sufi ... More

This chapter has three main sections, each of which highlights a different signification of the apparent-hidden dichotomy in considering Sufi views on corporeality. The first section addresses Sufi understanding of the formation of the human body within the womb as an embryo. The second section concentrates on the connection between the body and ruh or spirit, the entity seen as the body's animating force. The third section considers, first, the heart (Persian dil, Arabic qalb, used interchangeably), the highest organ within the body that enables human beings to sense and experience realities pertaining to the interior world. This is followed by Sufi understanding of the science of physiognomy that indicated that human beings are predetermined to behave in certain ways based on characteristics involving the shapes, sizes, and colors of their bodies' observable parts. But the Sufi view of physiognomy also affirms the idea that individuals can overcome the characteristics inherent in their bodies through expending effort under the guidance of those whose bodies are already endowed with higher and more praiseworthy capacities.Less

Editing Women: The Cosmetic Gaze and Cinema

Bernadette Wegenstein

in The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction of Beauty

This chapter deals with the effect of the cosmetic gaze in the world of cinema. The first section deals with how cosmetic surgery has thematically influenced a series of films between the 1940s and ... More

This chapter deals with the effect of the cosmetic gaze in the world of cinema. The first section deals with how cosmetic surgery has thematically influenced a series of films between the 1940s and the twenty-first century. The next section deals with two films, made with the different approaches of two women, which disrupt the notion of female beauty in cinematic expression. The final section of the chapter deals with how this revelatory ability of films has gone beyond cinema to performance art and reality TV. Reality makeover TV is the ultimate model to display how the nineteenth-century physiognomy is repackaged in a twenty-first-century cosmetic gaze.Less

Hang-Dog Looks: From Subjects at Law to Objects of Science in Animal Trials

Laurie Shannon

in The Accommodated Animal: Cosmopolity in Shakespearean Locales

A “hang-dog look” refers to the conscious look of guilt, or the fear and anticipation of punishment or shame, and is a deflated look often describing human defendants in courtrooms and the ordinary ... More

A “hang-dog look” refers to the conscious look of guilt, or the fear and anticipation of punishment or shame, and is a deflated look often describing human defendants in courtrooms and the ordinary canine physiognomy in relatively equal measure. The question, then, is how did the look on an animal’s face come to represent such complex social experiences as guilt and shame? Although merely an expression to represent the shamefacedness of a particularly despised or degraded fellow, the term hang-dog also refers to the historical fact of dog hanging. This chapter, then, looks at the extraordinary phenomenon of the criminal and civil trials of animal defendants. It examines these legal trials and their implications, plotting their decline against the rise of the technoscientific or experimental trials of animals. In the first, the animals are perceived as subjects of law, whereas in the second, the perception of them is disanimated; they have now become objects of science.Less

From Physiognomy to DNA Testing: Developments in the Establishment of Paternity

in The Expert Witness in Islamic Courts: Medicine and Crafts in the Service of Law

Focusing on the establishment of paternity in Egypt and other Muslim countries, this article demonstrates the ramifications of any initiative to reform the traditional concepts of family law. It ... More

Focusing on the establishment of paternity in Egypt and other Muslim countries, this article demonstrates the ramifications of any initiative to reform the traditional concepts of family law. It comments on the current controversy in Egypt regarding the introduction of DNA testing in paternity suits, arguing that this controversy is part of a larger process. Specifically, the article links this controversy to the debate on sociocultural values—patterns of familial organization and gender relations anchored in authoritative religious-legal texts—and the struggle between traditional and modern elites for political power. After considering the role of physiognomy in Islamic legal systems, the article analyzes a recent Egyptian court case (Hinnawi v. Fishawi) and compares it with the situation in Israel, Europe, and the United States. It concludes that Muslim judges are reluctant to rely on scientific medical evidence in the context of paternity due to moral, religious, socioeconomic, and political considerations and not because they doubt the reliability of scientific means.Less

The Semantics of the Hand

Adrian Daub

in Four-Handed Monsters: Four-Hand Piano Playing and Nineteenth-Century Culture

This chapter deals with a much more covert aspect of four-hand playing and its role in nineteenth-century culture: the hand as an organ. Most visual and literary representations of four-hand playing ... More

This chapter deals with a much more covert aspect of four-hand playing and its role in nineteenth-century culture: the hand as an organ. Most visual and literary representations of four-hand playing leave out the hands themselves; however, the late nineteenth century witnessed a veritable cult of the hand—the belief that size, shape, and articulation of a hand could tell the well- schooled observer about the heredity, disposition, and character of a person. The physiognomic albums of Cesare Lombroso and Francis Galton (or the photo volumes of hands that were common in particular in fin-de-siècle Germany) proceeded mostly through montage and juxtaposition: two different sets of hands (or more often, “types” of hands) were opposed on the same page to enable or suggest comparisons. Since the piano technique of the time kept the hands on the keyboard much stiller than is the case today—highly mobile arms and shoulders were the province of iconoclasts, geniuses, and virtuosos—four-hand practice tended to fix two sets of hands in relatively limited enclosures side by side, allowing something comparable to Lombroso’s or Galton’s visual juxtapositions.Less