Sketching women in court: The visual construction of co-accused women in court drawings

This paper explores the visual construction and representation of co-accused women offenders in court drawings. It utilises three case studies of female co-defendants who appeared in the England and Wales court system between 2003 and 2013. In doing so this paper falls into three parts. The first part considers the emergence of the sub-discipline, visual criminology and examines what is known about the visual representation of female offenders. The second part presents the findings of an empirical investigation, which involved engaging in a critical, reflexive visual analysis of a selection of court drawings of three female co-offenders. The third part discusses the ways in which the court artists' interpretation, the conventions of court sketching, and motifs of female offenders as secondary actors, drew on existing myths and prejudices by representing the women as listening, remorseless ‘others’

“Germany’s Victory over Brazil was like the Blitzkrieg”: The Sport-Politics Nexus in Israel During the 2014 World Cup

Various voices assert that the sport-politics nexus that characterized international sport events during the Cold War era is irrelevant in the current age of globalization. This study examines the validity of this argument via a case study of Jewish-Israelis’ fandom tendencies during the 2014 World Cup. A survey conducted during the World Cup games among a representative sample of the Jewish-Israeli population revealed that the Dutch team, whose popularity in Israel has been attributed to the Netherland’s perceived support of Jews during the Holocaust, was the most supported team. The teams most rooted against were Iran, Germany, and Algeria, indicating the potential role of the Holocaust and contemporary Jewish-Islamic relations on fandom tendencies. To better understand the animosity towards the German team, which is surprising in light of current improved Israel-Germany relations and the strength of the German team, we analyzed user comments on Israel’s main online newspaper following the German team’s glorious 7-1 victory against Brazil. The analysis revealed that 51 of the 287 user comments made direct or indirect references to the Holocaust, further highlighting the centrality of nationalism in contemporary sport fandom