The Bonds of Brotherhood: New Evidence of Sino-North Korean Exchanges, 1950-1954

Drawing on recently declassified documents from the archive of the Foreign Ministry of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), this article looks at China’s relationship with North Korea during and immediately after the Korean War. Although previous scholarship has touched on PRC–North Korean military ties during the war, this article is the first in-depth analysis of issues that are less well understood, notably China’s efforts to cope with a huge influx of refugees from North Korea, the PRC’s economic assistance during the war and in the early postwar reconstruction, and Chinese educational and ideological support for North Korean professionals and party cadres. The article shows that the extensive military coordination between Beijing and Pyongyang was only one way in which the war brought North Korea and the PRC into a closer relationship

Affective disruption: Walter Benjamin and the 'history' of Ireland's industrial schools

What role do organizations play in writing history? In this paper, I address the part played by organizations in the enactment of large-scale violence, and focus on the ways in which the resulting histories come to be written. Drawing on the case of Ireland's industrial schools, I demonstrate how such accounts can act to serve the interests of those in power, effectively silencing and marginalizing weaker people. A theoretical lens that draws on ideas from Walter Benjamin and Judith Butler is helpful in understanding this; the concept of 'affective disruption' enables an exploration of how people's experiences of organizational violence can be reclaimed from the past, and protected in a continuous remembrance. Overall, this paper contributes a new perspective on the writing of organizational histories, particularly in relation to the enactment of violence. 

Hui and Walter's latent-class model extended to estimate diagnostic test properties from surveillance data: a latent model for latent data

Diagnostic test sensitivity and specificity are probabilistic estimates with far reaching implications for disease control, management and genetic studies. In the absence of 'gold standard' tests, traditional Bayesian latent class models may be used to assess diagnostic test accuracies through the comparison of two or more tests performed on the same groups of individuals. The aim of this study was to extend such models to estimate diagnostic test parameters and true cohort-specific prevalence, using disease surveillance data. The traditional Hui-Walter latent class methodology was extended to allow for features seen in such data, including (i) unrecorded data (i.e. data for a second test available only on a subset of the sampled population) and (ii) cohort-specific sensitivities and specificities. The model was applied with and without the modelling of conditional dependence between tests. The utility of the extended model was demonstrated through application to bovine tuberculosis surveillance data from Northern and the Republic of Ireland. Simulation coupled with re-sampling techniques, demonstrated that the extended model has good predictive power to estimate the diagnostic parameters and true herd-level prevalence from surveillance data. Our methodology can aid in the interpretation of disease surveillance data, and the results can potentially refine disease control strategies.

Walter Heissig, Rüdiger, Schott, Die Heutige Bedeutung Oraler traditionen. IHRE Archivierung, Publikation und index-Erschießung

The book under review is the publication of 28 contributions to a workshop which has tak en place in St. Augustin, near Bonn, in November 1995. This was attended by a large number of proeminent scholars, gathered around the commonly felt concern for the need to preserve “the oral traditions of all kinds” (p. 26). The papers, written in German (11), in English (16) and in French (1), are introduced by the organisers Walter Hessig and Rüdiger Schott in both German and English.

Um drama da crítica: Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater e Matthew Arnold, lidos por Fernando Pessoa

Tese de doutoramento, Estudos da Literatura e da Cultura (Teoria da Literatura), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, 2014

A censura sem limites : as práticas de censura no cinema e seus ecos na contemporaneidade demográfica luso-brasileira (1930-1950)

Tese de doutoramento, Educação (História da Educação), Universidade de Lisboa, Instituto de Educação, 2015

Choosing to be Jews: a Sociological Reflection on American Jews Since 1950, pt. 1

The second half of the twentieth century has been a time when American Jews have experienced a minimum of prejudice and almost all domains of life have been accessible to them, but it has also been a time of assimilation, of swelling rates of inter-marriage, and of large numbers ignoring their Jewishness completely. Jews have no trouble building synagogues, but they have all sorts of trouble filling them. The quality of Jewish education is perhaps higher than ever before, and the output of Jewish scholarship is overwhelming in its scope and quality, but most American Jews receive a minimum of religious education and can neither read nor comprehend the great corpus of Jewish literature in its Hebrew (or Aramaic) original. This is a time in America when there is no shame in being a Jew, and yet fewer American Jews seem to know what being a Jew means. This book is part of a stocktaking that has been occurring among Jews as the century in which their residence in America was firmly established comes to an end. Grounded in empirical detail, it provides a concise yet analytic evaluation of the meaning of the many studies and surveys of the last four and a half decades. All those who want to know what it means and has meant to be an American Jew will find this volume of interest.

Choosing to be Jews: a Sociological Reflection on American Jews Since 1950, pt. 2

The second half of the twentieth century has been a time when American Jews have experienced a minimum of prejudice and almost all domains of life have been accessible to them, but it has also been a time of assimilation, of swelling rates of inter-marriage, and of large numbers ignoring their Jewishness completely. Jews have no trouble building synagogues, but they have all sorts of trouble filling them. The quality of Jewish education is perhaps higher than ever before, and the output of Jewish scholarship is overwhelming in its scope and quality, but most American Jews receive a minimum of religious education and can neither read nor comprehend the great corpus of Jewish literature in its Hebrew (or Aramaic) original. This is a time in America when there is no shame in being a Jew, and yet fewer American Jews seem to know what being a Jew means. This book is part of a stocktaking that has been occurring among Jews as the century in which their residence in America was firmly established comes to an end. Grounded in empirical detail, it provides a concise yet analytic evaluation of the meaning of the many studies and surveys of the last four and a half decades. All those who want to know what it means and has meant to be an American Jew will find this volume of interest.