Anti-Christ in Egypt: Sexual Danger, Race, and Crime in a Narrative of Imperial Crisis

European women active as sex workers in the empire became a dense referent for the articulation of an increasingly unstable imperial self. In this article I focus on discourses of gendered crime as an index of mounting colonial anxieties in a specific imperial setting, colonial Egypt, to investigate how the global moral panic known as “white slavery” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries exposed a very peculiar tension in the nexus between notions of womanhood and agency at the core of the social understanding of prostitution; how this mapped onto the colonial space—in fact, how the definition of issues of women’s autonomy and agency became particularly salient in the colonial context as civilizational marker; and how it was dramatically reconfigured in times of imperial crisis

"Let down the curtains around us" sex work in colonial Cairo 1882-1952

The shift from pre-modern to modern sex work meant the “professionalization” of transactional sex, its commodification and the attending social stigmatization of the essentialized category of prostitutes as “public women”. This dissertation explores the construction of social marginality of sex workers in colonial Cairo (1882-1952), in the context of major economical and social changes and the development of dramatically new concepts about the scope of intervention of the State on society. The quantitative and qualitative change in sex work which took place in Cairo since the end of the nineteenth century was made possible by a number of structural factors such as the integration of Egypt in the global market in a subaltern position, the restructuring of autonomous households’ economy, the augmented economic social vulnerability of female economic roles in the job market, migration and rapid urban growth. At the same time, the new social meaning of prostitution, a permanent symbolic threat to the physical and moral welfare of the rising Egyptian nation, was discursively constructed by dominant positions, both by local and colonial elites. Prostitutes were used as dense referent to express a wide range of dominant anxieties about the social order, the definition of normative notions of Egyptian citizenship and colonial racial hierarchies. Positing the inextricable link between material and discursive formations, this study analyzes the political economy of sex work and combines a wide range of sources – governmental reports, reformist societies’ papers, court cases, contemporary press and semi-academic literature – to explore a space of subaltern and gendered agency which has been overlooked for long and endeavours to restore prostitution, generally considered as a marginal activity, to the history of the Egyptian nation

The “Maiden Tribute of Modern Egypt”, White Slavery as a Gendered and Racialized Narrative of Imperial Crisis in Early Twentieth Century Egypt

At the turn of the 20th century, a mass moral panic revolving around the figures of trafficked and sexually exploited girls and children known as the “white slave trade” spread across both the metropole and the Empire. In fact, it can be considered as an imperial construct indexing a whole set of racialised, sexed and gendered colonial anxieties about the degeneration - the term is not casual - of the imperial order.Building on a rich tradition of cultural studies focusing on the narration of late Victorian urban margins, this article aims at exploring issues of representation, power, and subaltern agency and their resignification in a colonial context by presenting the micro-history of a peculiar case of alleged child abduction in 1913 Egypt, the ‘Nazifa Bint Omar’ case. Drawing on discourse analysis methodology, the close reading of Nazifa’s case, forcefully illustrates the ways in which a metropolitan discourse of moral panic and social control reinforced itself by migrating and playing on locale-specific cultural and racial elements. It also shows how a whole peculiar material configuration of gender, age, labour, and scarcity was totally obliterated in the process

Death associated to methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus ST8 infection in two dolphins maintained under human care, Italy

The present study describes the isolation of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) from respiratory tract of 2 dolphins of different origin, a stranded juvenile Risso's dolphin (Grampus griseus) and a captive born common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) calf, which died in the same institution at 1-month distance from the other. A complete microbiological and genetic investigation confirmed the presence of MRSA clone-complex 8, sequence type (ST) 8, spa-type t008 in both individuals. This strain differs from the one previously reported in walruses and dolphins and has never been described in dolphins before, but it is randomly isolated from Italian human patients. Vertical transmission of the infection may also occurs in other species and considering the description and location of the pathological lesions, this seems to be the most likely route of transmission implied in the young bottlenose dolphin. Staphylococcus aureus is known as an opportunistic agent, usually secondary to other pathogens, but its multiple antibiotic resistance and its zoonotic implications suggest a thorough and strict application of animal management hygiene protocols

Introduction- Phantom Archives in a Dispersed History

The present issue of JQ is the first of two special issues that focus on the UN agency for Palestinian refugee relief and its troubled history, reflecting a multidisciplinary approach, engaging and connecting historical, anthropological, and sociological methods. Originally conceived as a single issue, the number and variety of contributions has led us to publish two separate issues, with diverse but complementary scopes and contents. This issue concentrates on the history of the UNRWA archives from their creation to the present; the trajectories and various placements of the written, oral, and visual collections; the politics behind their material and digital preservation policies; their appearance, dispersion or cessation; conditions of access and denial; and intertwining curatorial practices, critical archival theory, and politics. policies; their appearance, dispersion, or cessation; conditions of access or denial; and intertwining curatorial practices, critical archival theory, and politics

INTRODUCTION Scales and Geographies of Contention, Containment, and Mobilization

This second special issue complements the first one by showing how UNRWA sources can be used to retrieve, first of all, aspects of Palestinian refugee political history and, secondly, the role played by UNRWA in the making of regional and international politics on a more systemic level. In fact, it situates UNRWA at the crossroads of multiple political scales, ranging from the bottom-up perspective of the camps to the regional and international levels

Squamous cell carcinoma with presence of poxvirus-like inclusions in the foot of a pink-backed pelican (Pelecanus rufescens).

Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) or avian keratoacanthoma is a neoplastic skin lesion of unknown aetiology that has been well described in birds. Some studies have reported that poxviruses may contribute to the onset of SCC. Here we describe a case of SCC on the underside of a pelican's foot. Histologically, the tumour consisted of irregular cords of pleomorphic epithelial cells that invaded the adjacent tissues. Additionally, keratinized epithelial cells and moderate numbers of keratin pearls were observed. Intracytoplasmic inclusions, a characteristic of this virus, were observed in some of these cells, and viral particles were characterized by electron microscopy. Although the aetiology of the carcinoma in this case may have been secondary to chronic focal trauma, the possibility of a latent or chronic form of fowlpox should be considered in the pathogenesis of the lesion

Multi-locus phylogenetic analysis of Amphipoda indicates a single origin of the pelagic suborder Hyperiidea

Hyperiidea is an exclusively pelagic suborder of amphipod crustaceans, exhibiting a wide array of unique adaptations to life in the dark, open expanse of the oceanic midwater. No common morphological synapomorphy unites approximately 350 described species. Instead, hyperiid amphipods are defined only by their pelagic existence. Hyperiidea exhibits many of the characteristics of an adaptive radiation and could represent a midwater example of this phenomenon. Previous morphological and molecular analyses have led to uncertainty in the shared ancestry of Hyperiidea. The evolutionary history of their diverse adaptations, as well as their relationship to other amphipods, remains unknown. Here we present results of a multi-locus phylogenetic analysis of publicly available amphipod sequences for three nuclear loci (18S, 28S, and H3) and two mitochondrial loci (COI and 16S) from over 300 amphipod genera, 40 of which are hyperiids. We recover strong support for a monophyletic Hyperiidea as well as reciprocally monophyletic hyperiid infraorders Physocephalata and Physosomata (with enigmatic genera Cystisoma and Paraphronima more closely related to Physosomata). We also identify several benthic, commensal amphipods representing potential sister groups for Hyperiidea. These taxa have not previously been considered close hyperiid relatives and include the genera Amphilochus, Colomastix, Anamixis, Paranamixis, and Leucothoe. Our results support the current definition of Hyperiidea and inform the phylogenetic placement of the suborder within Amphipoda

Reducing the complexity of virtual machine networking

Virtualization is an enabling technology that improves scalability, reliability, and flexibility. Virtualized networking is tackled by emulating or paravirtualizing network interface cards. This approach, however, leads to complexities (implementation and management) and has to conform to some limitations imposed by the Ethernet standard. RINA turns the current approach to virtualized networking on its head: instead of emulating networks to perform inter-process communication on a single processing system, it sees networking as an extension to local inter-process communication. In this article, we show how RINA can leverage a paravirtualization approach to achieve a more manageable solution for virtualized networking. We also present experimental results performed on IRATI, the reference open source implementation of RINA, which shows the potential performance that can be achieved by deploying our solution

Gastrointestinal Motility in Health and Disease

Michael Zabinski (with Biancani, P., M. P. Zabinski, M. D. Kerstein, and J. Behar) is a contributing author, Comparison of mechanical characteristics of the lower oesophageal sphincter and pyloric sphincter, p.547-551. Book description: Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Gastrointestinal Motility, held at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, 12–16th September, 1977.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/engineering-books/1036/thumbnail.jp