“Creatures of Mimic and Imitation”: The Liberty Tree, Black Elections, and the Politicization of African Ceremonial Space in Revolutionary Newport, Rhode Island

The article explains how African slaves changed the colonial space of 18th century Newport, Rhode Island by transporting and preserving cultural and political concepts and codes. African slaves who came directly to Newport frequently came from the Gold Coast and consisted of Mandingo, Mende, Ibo, Ashanti and Fante peoples. Although the city\u27s black population came from various regions and groups, its Africans could draw on a common cultural vocabulary that gave trees a sacred, and even cosmic, importance

The Freedom to Manifest Religious Belief: An Analysis of the Necessity Clauses of the ICCPR and the ECHR

This paper examines Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Both documents affirm freedom of religion as a fundamental human right, yet both recognize the need for restrictions on freedom of religion when “necessary.” The paper discusses the text of Articles 18 and 9, as well as European Court of Human Rights and Human Rights Committee cases interpreting and applying the Articles. The paper then analyzes several current laws restricting religious freedom on necessity grounds as to whether the restrictions are legitimate or illegitimate under the instruments. I conclude that the laws from several States likely do not pass muster, and pose a great risk to religious freedom. My second primary contention is that the “principle of secularism” (as defined primarily in European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence), without more, is an illegitimate justification for restrictions on religious freedom under the ICCPR and the ECHR. More specifically, the principle of secularism functioning as a principle by which religious expression may be excluded from full participation in democratic government is inimical to the ICCPR’s and ECHR’s vision of religious pluralism as “indissociable” from a democratic society. Further, the European Court’s application of the principle improperly equates a “secular” government with a democratic government, and as such is in tension with prior cases in which the Court has affirmed religious pluralism as axiomatic for a democratic society. The paper concludes with a discussion of the case of a pastor in Sweden who was convicted for preaching a sermon condemning homosexuality, as a test case for the application of the principles discussed throughout

Liberal ethnicity: beyond liberal nationalism and minority rights

This article tries to make the case for a variant of the good life based on a synthesis of liberalism and ethnicity. Liberal communitarianism's treatment of ethnicity tends to fall under the categories of either liberal culturalism or liberal nationalism. Both, it is argued, fail to come to terms with the reality of ethnic community, preferring instead to define ethnicity in an unrealistic, cosmopolitan manner. By contrast, this essay squarely confronts four practices that are central to ethnic communities: symbolic boundary-maintenance; exclusive and inflexible mythomoteurs ; the use of ancestry and race as boundary markers; and the desire among national groups to maintain their ethnic character. This article argues that none of these practices need contravene the tenets of liberalism as long as they are reconstructed so as to minimize entry criteria and decouple national ethnicity from the state. The notion of liberal ethnicity thereby constitutes an important synthesis of liberal and communitarian ends

Confederate Memory

This year as a CWI Fellow, I’ve been doing a lot of research and thinking on Civil War memory, specifically that of Confederate memory. When doing this work, the question at the back of my mind is always: How should monuments, symbols, and other examples of Confederate memory be handled? This is a very difficult question, so up until now, I’ve left it alone, knowing that there would come a time in the future that I would sit down and wrestle with my conflicting opinions on the matter. A couple days ago, the Civil War Era Studies Department here at Gettysburg College sent out an email sharing the news that New Orleans had begun removing Confederate monuments and several other cities were thinking of doing the same. After reading this, I knew the time had come for me, and all of you, to join the discussion about Confederate Memory

‘Forebears’, ‘saints’ and ‘martyrs’: the politics of commemoration in Bulgaria in the 1880s and 1890s

Book description: The relationship between states, societies, and individuals in Central and Eastern Europe has been characterised by periods of change and redefinition. The current political, economic, social and cultural climate necessitates a discussion of these issues, both past and present. It is this theme which the proposed publication intends to discuss using a selection of papers given at the 5 th Annual Postgraduate Conference on Central and Eastern Europe held at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) in 2003. The papers represent work from young international scholars from Europe and North America writing on Central and Eastern Europe. The book consists of seven papers and develops an interdisciplinary framework reflecting the range of topics discussed during the conference. It embraces the regional breadth of Central and Eastern Europe containing analyses of Russia, the former Soviet Republics, Central Europe and South Eastern Europe. The papers chosen cover a variety of fields and adopt a corresponding range of approaches with a view to assessing from a multidisciplinary perspective the relationship between state, society and individuals. The papers in the book have been ordered chronologically. The volume starts with an analysis by Julia Mannherz of social conflict in late imperial Russia and moves on to Sergei Zhuk’s discussion of the Stundist movement in Ukraine. The third paper from Stefan Detchev is a discussion of the late-nineteenth-century politics of commemoration surrounding the Bulgarian war of independence. The theme of the politics of commemoration is also present in Andrzej Michalczyk’s analysis of the commemoration of the plebiscite in Silesia by Germans and Poles during the interwar period. Michalczyk examines how a shared event is commemorated and interpreted differently by the two national groups. The idea of common and shared histories is further developed by Rüdiger Ritter in his study of the history and the historiography of post-Communist Poland, Belarus and Lithuania. The move into the contemporary period is completed in the final two papers. The use of historical imagery for political purposes is explored in Markus Wien’s study of the King Simeon II Party in Bulgaria as well as the way in which the historical image of the monarchy has been changed for political purposes during the transition from communism to democracy. The final paper by Maria Aluchna continues the discussion of the process of transition by examining the economic transformation from a communist command economic system to a modern capitalist economy

Establecimiento de simbología religiosa estática en espacios públicos sanitarios

This article completes the approach dedicated to religious symbols in public sanitary spaces, previously published and relating the right to religious liberty of article 16 CE. In this case, the doctrinal contribution to jurisprudence concerning to the establishment of static religious symbols in the public areas, shows the importance of resolve these issues, over again, based on the principle of tolerance.El presente artículo completa la aproximación dedicada a los símbolos religiosos presentes en espacios públicos sanitarios, anteriormente publicado y en relación con el derecho de libertad religiosa del artículo 16 CE. En este caso, las aportaciones doctrinales a la jurisprudencia referida al establecimiento de simbología religiosa estática en el ámbito público, ponen de manifiesto la importancia de resolver estas cuestiones, una vez más, en base al principio de tolerancia.This article completes the approach dedicated to religious symbols in public sanitary spaces, previously published and relating the right to religious liberty of article 16 CE. In this case, the doctrinal contribution to jurisprudence concerning to the establishment of static religious symbols in the public areas, shows the importance of resolve these issues, over again, based on the principle of tolerance

Iconography of the Labour Movement. Part 1: Republican Iconography, 1792–1848

This is the first article in a two-part study of the background and development of the iconography of the international socialist labour movement. With the breakthrough of modern political ideologies after the American and French revolutions, the symbols of freemasonry long remained an important point of reference for new iconographic systems serving secular propagandistic needs. The virtues and vices of classical moral education were replaced or combined with new ones, and old symbols were invested with altered meanings in the context of political satire and allegory. The human and especially the female body retained prominence as a vehicle for conceptual personification in official display and in the minds of common people. After September 21, 1792 (the abolition of the French monarchy), the attempt to replace Christian religion with a cult of the Goddess of Liberty and other associated entities proved, however short-lived, to be of lasting iconographic significance. The rise of liberal democracy and the modern nation state meant that le peuple (common people) was now seen as an organic entity with a common will. Between 1792 and 1848, republican iconography provided allegorical representations of how this relationship between state and population was conceived. It offered symbols and personifications that later became integral to the political and agitational practises of the labour movement. This heritage was double-edged, however. Elements signifying governmental stability were combined with those associated with revolt and dissent. Symbols of rational progress were combined with religious or metaphysical symbolism