Feminine Discursive Authority through Symbolism, Allegory and Exemplum: A Study of Christine de Pizan, a Rhetor of the Late Middle Ages

Rhetorical studies are deeply concerned with the way that human beings use language and symbols to interact and persuade others to follow a particular point of view, or plan of action. In the male dominant culture of 15th century France, Christine de Pizan recognized the limitations of speaking as a woman in her own voice. Therefore, she directed her voice through a cadre of allegorical divine beings, most of whom were women. These allegorical mentors held the divine authority to profess the virtue of women, as Christine, the narrator, humbly listened. This was a time in history when few women were entitled to a voice in society, and female practitioners of rhetoric were not considered to be credible. Rhetoric was a field of endeavor that was strictly limited to men. This dissertation addresses the question: What are the implications of Christine de Pizan’s use of rhetoric to defend the honor of women, advocate for their right to knowledge, and to promote the betterment of her adopted country, France? This dissertation explores the empowerment of women in the early 15th century through the rhetorical tropes of symbolism, allegory, and exemplum. For that reason, a close examination of the literary oeuvre of Christine de Pizan warrants a more prominent place in the conversation of medieval rhetoric. This is particularly true regarding Christine’s ability to engage literary symbolism as a way of circumventing a power structure that denied women a voice in that society. Because rhetoric in the Middle Ages was limited almost exclusively to men, for their own self-interest, this project argues how Christine successfully circumvented the limitations of a male patriarchal society to engage in the practice of rhetoric, not by outwardly teaching her theories, rather by focusing upon the more subtle use of tropes to project her persuasive voice to the French aristocracy, and later to exert an influence upon western intellectualism. This project gives due consideration to the power of symbolism, allegory and exemplum, and Christine’s use of these tropes to influence the course of an historical narrative. This dissertation also addresses the question of how a secular woman writer in, by today’s standards, a misogynistic era succeeded in gaining cultural authority, and it deems relevant the influence of Christine de Pizan upon the late medieval conversation as it transitioned into the humanism of the Renaissance phase of early modernity

The ANZUS Treaty during the Cold War: a reinterpretation of U.S. diplomacy in the Southwest Pacific

This article explains the origins of the Australia–New Zealand–United States (ANZUS) Treaty by highlighting U.S. ambitions in the Pacific region after World War II. Three clarifications to the historiography merit attention. First, an alliance with Australia and New Zealand reflected the pursuit of U.S. interests rather than the skill of antipodean diplomacy. Despite initial reservations in Washington, geostrategic anxiety and economic ambition ultimately spurred cooperation. The U.S. government's eventual recourse to coercive diplomacy against the other ANZUS members, and the exclusion of Britain from the alliance, substantiate claims of self-interest. Second, the historiography neglects the economic rationale underlying the U.S. commitment to Pacific security. Regional cooperation ensured the revival of Japan, the avoidance of discriminatory trade policies, and the stability of the Bretton Woods monetary system. Third, scholars have unduly played down and misunderstood the concept of race. U.S. foreign policy elites invoked ideas about a “White Man's Club” in Asia to obscure the pursuit of U.S. interests in the region and to ensure British exclusion from the treaty

Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of four different strategies for SARS-CoV-2 surveillance in the general population (CoV-Surv Study): study protocol for a two-factorial randomized controlled multi-arm trial with cluster sampling

Background: To achieve higher effectiveness in population-based SARS-CoV-2 surveillance and to reliably predict the course of an outbreak, screening, and monitoring of infected individuals without major symptoms (about 40% of the population) will be necessary. While current testing capacities are also used to identify such asymptomatic cases, this rather passive approach is not suitable in generating reliable population-based estimates of the prevalence of asymptomatic carriers to allow any dependable predictions on the course of the pandemic. Methods: This trial implements a two-factorial, randomized, controlled, multi-arm, prospective, interventional, single-blinded design with cluster sampling and four study arms, each representing a different SARS-CoV-2 testing and surveillance strategy based on individuals' self-collection of saliva samples which are then sent to and analyzed by a laboratory. The targeted sample size for the trial is 10,000 saliva samples equally allocated to the four study arms (2500 participants per arm). Strategies differ with respect to tested population groups (individuals vs. all household members) and testing approach (without vs. with pre-screening survey). The trial is complemented by an economic evaluation and qualitative assessment of user experiences. Primary outcomes include costs per completely screened person, costs per positive case, positive detection rate, and precision of positive detection rate. Discussion: Systems for active surveillance of the general population will gain more importance in the context of pandemics and related disease prevention efforts. The pandemic parameters derived from such active surveillance with routine population monitoring therefore not only enable a prospective assessment of the short-term course of a pandemic, but also a more targeted and thus more effective use of local and short-term countermeasures. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov DRKS00023271. Registered November 30, 2020, with the German Clinical Trials Register (Deutsches Register Klinischer Studien

Highlights of Coastal Waves 1996

Highlights of Coastal Waves 199

Introduction to special issue:New Times Revisited: Britain in the 1980s

The authors in this volume are collectively engaged with a historical puzzle: What happens if we examine the decade once we step out of the shadows cast by Thatcher? That is, does the decade of the 1980s as a significant and meaningful periodisation (equivalent to that of the 1960s) still work if Thatcher becomes but one part of the story rather than the story itself? The essays in this collection suggest that the 1980s only makes sense as a political period. They situate the 1980s within various longer term trajectories that show the events of the decade to be as much the consequence as the cause of bigger, long-term historical processes. This introduction contextualises the collection within the wider literature, before explaining the collective and individual contributions made