Kwestie kobiece w czesko-słowackiej refleksji filmowej po 1989 roku

Tekst stanowi krytyczną rekapitulację refleksji filmoznawczej prowadzonej w Czechach i Słowacji a dotykającej problematyki tzw. ženskej otázki (kwestii kobiecej). Myśl feministyczna i genderowa pojawiła się w refleksji publicznej i naukowej dopiero po Aksamitnej Rewolucji, napotykając na wstrzemięźliwą i zdystansowaną reakcję środowisk naukowych i twórczych. Dotychczasowa niezbyt rozbudowana refleksja nad kwestiami kobiecymi w kinie czeskim i słowackim, reprezentuje wczesny etap feminizmu akademickiego. Czesko-słowackie women’s studies skupiają się na gromadzeniu wiedzy dotyczącej historii, kultury, życia społecznego i politycznego kobiet. W centrum swojego dyskursu sytuują analizę wizerunków kobiecych, przede wszystkim we wczesnym kinie, rozważania nad kategorią kobiecości, jej specyfiką i przeobrażeniami dokonującymi się w procesie historycznym. Tymczasem w dokonaniach kinematografii Czech i Słowacji coraz większą rolę odgrywają kobiety reżyserki. Współczesne kino kobiet jest tu wyraźnie dostrzegalnym w swojej specyfice jakościowej i ilościowej zjawiskiem artystycznym, który na razie pozostaje obszarem nieeksplorowanym w czesko-słowackiej myśli filmoznawczej ukierunkowanej feministycznie i genderowo.

The right to humanitarian assistance in natural and human-made disasters: progress and challenges for an emerging international legal framework

Natural and human-made disasters cause on average 120,000 deaths and over US$140 billion in damage to property and infrastructure every year, with national, regional and international actors consistently responding to the humanitarian imperative to alleviate suffering wherever it may be found. Despite various attempts to codify international disaster laws since the 1920s, a right to humanitarian assistance remains contested, reflecting concerns regarding the relative importance of state sovereignty vis-à-vis individual rights under international law. However, the evolving acquis humanitaire of binding and non-binding normative standards for responses to humanitarian crises highlights the increasing focus on rights and responsibilities applicable in disasters; although the International Law Commission has also noted the difficulty of identifying lex lata and lex ferenda regarding the protection of persons in the event of disasters due to the “amorphous state of the law relating to international disaster response.” Therefore, using the conceptual framework of transnational legal process, this thesis analyses the evolving normative frameworks and standards for rights-holders and duty-bearers in disasters. Determining the process whereby rights are created and evolve, and their potential internalisation into domestic law and policy, provides a powerful analytical framework for examining the progress and challenges of developing accountable responses to major disasters.

The Islamic commercial crisis: Institutional roots of economic underdevelopment in the Middle East

During the second millennium, the Middle East's commerce with Western Europe fell increasingly under European domination. Two factors played critical roles. First, the Islamic inheritance system, by raising the costs of dissolving a partnership following a partner's death, kept Middle Eastern commercial enterprises small and ephemeral. Second, certain European inheritance systems facilitated large and durable partnerships by reducing the likelihood of premature dissolution. The upshot is that European enterprises grew larger than those of the Islamic world. Moreover, while ever larger enterprises propelled further organizational transformations in Europe, persistently small enterprises inhibited economic modernization in the Middle East.

Recasting 'Black Venus' in the new African Diaspora

This article explores the ways in which transnational feminist analysis can be deployed to reconfigure new gendered and racialized cartographies of the African Diaspora in Europe. First, I position contemporary film representations of trafficked Nigerian sex workers in Italy in dialogical relation to 19th century discourses of black sexuality - in particular, Sharpley-Whiting's (1999) reinscribed 'Black Venus Master Narrative' - and assess historical and geographical (dis)continuities in their modes of signification. Second, by linking endemic factors feeding the supply of Nigerian women for the purposes of (in)voluntary participation in the Italian sex industry, such as the localized feminization of poverty and regionally specific perceptions of sex work as a temporary economic strategy, I engage with broader feminist debates on victimization and agency in global sex work and migration literatures. In doing so, this dialectical think piece highlights the gendered complexities of new African diasporic formations and the ways in which their growth is facilitated by broader illegal networks that shape and are shaped by vicissitudes in glocalized economies. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Nineteenth Century Law of the Sea and the British Abolition of the Slave Trade

This study focuses on British attempts during the nineteenth century to outlaw the Atlantic Slave Trade internationally, for which it was successful, after seventy-five years of effort. It considers the lack of willingness to allow Great Britain, at the Congress of Vienna and during the Concert of Europe, to establish a universal treaty outlawing the slave trade. As a result, this mandated a change in British tactics, which would ultimately prove to be successful – the establishment of a web of bilateral agreements which came to included all maritime powers. The study then moves on to consider the evolution of these bilateral agreements while highlighting the relationship between Great Britain and States (Brazil, France, Portugal and the United States) which were obstinate in their willingness to join this bilateral regime. Finally, consideration is given to the move towards the establishment of the 1890 General Act of Brussels; and thus the conclusion of the decades long British foreign policy objective of a universal instrument meant to suppress the Atlantic Slave Trade.

"That a black twisty divil could be hiding under such comeliness": Woman vs woman in Early Twentieth-Century Irish Theatre

This essay investigates representations of womanhood in early twentieth-century Irish theatre, particularly in terms of the disjunction between woman as a physical, social being and the symbolic Woman as an ideological construction promoted by both church and state. It uses Lacanian theory in conjunction with Irish women’s studies scholarship to inform the analyses of plays by dramatists including Maud Gonne, Padraic Colum, Lennox Robinson, and T. C. Murray. The aim is to show how women in Irish society were faced with the impossible task of fulfilling such idealized roles as Woman, Wife, and Mother, and how this situation was variously represented and contested in the theatre during the first quarter of the twentieth century.

"Irish Perspectives on EC Law by Mary Catherine Lucey and Cathrina Keville (eds.), Dublin, Thomson Round Hall, 2003 (ISBN 1-85800-280-X)"

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