Identity, Philosophy, and the Problem of Armenian History in the Sixth Century

History and Identity in the Late Antique Near East gathers together the work of distinguished historians and early career scholars with a broad range of expertise to investigate the significance of newly emerged, or recently resurrected, ethnic identities on the borders of the eastern Mediterranean world. It focuses on the "long late antiquity" from the eve of the Arab conquest of the Roman East to the formation of the Abbasid caliphate. The first half of the book offers papers on the Christian Orient on the cusp of the Islamic invasions. These papers discuss how Christians negotiated the end of Roman power, whether in the selective use of the patristic past to create confessional divisions or the emphasis of the shared philosophical legacy of the Greco-Roman world. The second half of the book considers Muslim attempts to negotiate the pasts of the conquered lands of the Near East, where the Christian histories of Hira or Egypt were used to create distinctive regional identities for Arab settlers. Like the first half, this section investigates the redeployment of a shared history, this time the historical imagination of the Qu'ran and the era of the first caliphs. All the papers in the volume bring together studies of the invention of the past across traditional divides between disciplines, placing the re-assessment of the past as a central feature of the long late antiquity. As a whole, History and Identity in the Late Antique Near East represents a distinctive contribution to recent writing on late antiquity, due to its cultural breadth, its interdisciplinary focus, and its novel definition of late antiquity itself.

The Family Preservation Philosophy and Therapy With Lesbian Clients

Family preservation is generally viewed in terms of a rather narrow practice definition. However, it's underlying philosophy offers a strong framework for building a positive, nonbiased helping alliance with lesbian clients in a therapeutic setting. The family preservation philosophy offers a unique heuristic for helping professionals to work with lesbians. Family preservation values teach that the therapist must start with the client's reality, recognize the particular needs of that client, and use the client's strengths in treatment. Also inherent in this perspective is respect and sensitivity to the lesbian client's "cultural context, experience, and history" (Family Preservation Institute, 1995). In other words, in the family preservation philosophy there is no assumption of heterosexuality in the therapeutic relationship; rather there is an assumption of unconditional positive regard. Further, clients are engaged in a dialogue and encouraged to name the challenges they encounter in their own words, from their own perspective. All of these principles will help empower lesbian clients. Lesbians may avoid traditional mental health services in times of need, preferring to depend on alternative services or friendship support networks. The choice not to seek help through mainstream agencies may be based on previous negative experience or on an assumption of the homophobic attitudes which are often inherent in such services. Traditional services are usually based on the medical model. Services based on the family preservation philosophy, however, have the capability of creating therapeutic relationships in which there is no assumption of heterosexuality, where the lesbian client is respected and viewed as a whole, healthy individual.

Die Odyssee der Pygmäen. Eine prekäre Figur auf den neuzeitlichen Spieltischen anthropologischer Differenz

Due to the impacts of postcolonialism, social and cultural anthropology has been dealing intensively with the possibilities and limits of representing "other” human beings and their meaningful worlds. Scholars such as George Marcus, James Clifford or Clifford Geertz have discussed ways of improving anthropological methods of representation without, however, fully raising questions about the quality and validity of the objects represented and the very idea, that they could be “represented”. Thus, despite attempts to purify classical anthropological categories, substantialized presences (“Humans”, “Others”, “Pygmies” etc.), various forms of binary oppositions (us–them, culture–nature, human–animal) as well as certain epistemological modes/ logoi (representation, interpretation) have been rehearsed until today. The research aims to dissect and challenge the metaphysical outputs of the “anthropological machine” (Giorgio Agamben). I intended to solve these from their apparent familiarity as representable identities or differences in order to investigate their genealogy. In Derrida’s and Foucault’s understanding, genealogy becomes manifest mainly in the “blind spots” (Derrida) or “anomalies” (Foucault) between differences, at the borders of identities. As an analytical guideline, the research uses on one concrete metonym for the Derridean blind spot, one incorporation of a Foucauldian Other, namely pygmy narratives within early modern and 19th century imaginings. “Pygmies” have been part of both Western mythology and anthropological reflection since the antiquity and finally became “ethnographical facts” within an evolutionary anthropology in the 19th century during the European exploration of Africa. Throughout this veritable Odyssey, they were mostly precarious “category-jammers” (Timothy Beal), occupying the impossible middle grounds within (proto)anthropological classification. Thus, along with the early modern wild men, enfants sauvages or the apes of proto-primatology, the pygmies of the Homeric myth, as a catalyst for the negotiation of categories, played a decisive role in early modern and 19th century conceptions of the human. Through the precarious Pygmies, concrete socio-historical materializations of Identities (human, European), differences (human–animal etc.), as well as the accompanying logoi which vindicate these as pseudo-entities, appear evident. The research aims to read and write the history of early modern and 19th Century anthropology through one of its many classificatory constituting Others. It thus contributes to a discipline that for a long time has examined concrete systems of knowledge and the genealogy of classification in general. One might call it an “anthropologization” of anthropology.

Stratification of high-risk prostate cancer into prognostic categories: a European multi-institutional study

BACKGROUND High-risk prostate cancer (PCa) is an extremely heterogeneous disease. A clear definition of prognostic subgroups is mandatory. OBJECTIVE To develop a pretreatment prognostic model for PCa-specific survival (PCSS) in high-risk PCa based on combinations of unfavorable risk factors. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS We conducted a retrospective multicenter cohort study including 1360 consecutive patients with high-risk PCa treated at eight European high-volume centers. INTERVENTION Retropubic radical prostatectomy with pelvic lymphadenectomy. OUTCOME MEASUREMENTS AND STATISTICAL ANALYSIS Two Cox multivariable regression models were constructed to predict PCSS as a function of dichotomization of clinical stage (< cT3 vs cT3-4), Gleason score (GS) (2-7 vs 8-10), and prostate-specific antigen (PSA; ≤ 20 ng/ml vs > 20 ng/ml). The first "extended" model includes all seven possible combinations; the second "simplified" model includes three subgroups: a good prognosis subgroup (one single high-risk factor); an intermediate prognosis subgroup (PSA >20 ng/ml and stage cT3-4); and a poor prognosis subgroup (GS 8-10 in combination with at least one other high-risk factor). The predictive accuracy of the models was summarized and compared. Survival estimates and clinical and pathologic outcomes were compared between the three subgroups. RESULTS AND LIMITATIONS The simplified model yielded an R(2) of 33% with a 5-yr area under the curve (AUC) of 0.70 with no significant loss of predictive accuracy compared with the extended model (R(2): 34%; AUC: 0.71). The 5- and 10-yr PCSS rates were 98.7% and 95.4%, 96.5% and 88.3%, 88.8% and 79.7%, for the good, intermediate, and poor prognosis subgroups, respectively (p = 0.0003). Overall survival, clinical progression-free survival, and histopathologic outcomes significantly worsened in a stepwise fashion from the good to the poor prognosis subgroups. Limitations of the study are the retrospective design and the long study period. CONCLUSIONS This study presents an intuitive and easy-to-use stratification of high-risk PCa into three prognostic subgroups. The model is useful for counseling and decision making in the pretreatment setting.