Book Reviews and Libel Proceedings

The American journal of International Law has been informed of the initiation in France of penal proceedings against the editor in chief of the European journal of International Law (EJIL), by virtue of a complaint filed by an author of a book reviewed on a Web site affiliated with the Ejll.1 We share the concerns of other professional societies regarding the potential of such litigation for chilling academic discourse. 2 We also take this opportunity to explain the practice of the AJIL concerning communications from authors who object to book reviews published in our pages, and to state our position on the important questions of academic freedom involved

Book Reviews and Libel Proceedings

Reviewers or editors to be subjected to criminal proceedings for writing and publishing, in good faith, a review that the author of the reviewed book finds objectionable threatens the important and long-established institution of scholarly book reviewing. Authors of scholarly works are fully aware that their books may be subject to critical scholarly review; know and accept the risk that such reviews may sometimes be disappointing and that reviewers in different journals or venues may reach different assessments of the same work; and understand that publication of a review in a scholarly journal does not imply that the editors either agree or disagree with the statements, opinions, or assessment expressed in the review. Here, Damrosch et al explain the practice of American Journal of International Law concerning communications from authors who object to book reviews published and to state their position on the important questions of academic freedom involved.</p

“Halal fiction” and the limits of postsecularism: Criticism, critique, and the Muslim in Leila Aboulela’s Minaret

This article examines Leila Aboulela’s 2005 novel Minaret, considering the extent to which it can be seen as an example of a postsecular text. The work has been praised by some as one of the most cogent attempts to communicate a life of Islamic faith in the English language novel form. Others have expressed concern about what they perceive as its apparent endorsement of submissiveness and a secondary status for women, along with its silence on some of the more thorny political issues facing Islam in the modern world. I argue that both these readings are shaped by the current “market” for Muslim novels, which places on such texts the onus of being “authentically representative”. Moreover, while apparently underwriting claims to authenticity, Aboulela’s technique of unvarnished realism requires of the reader the kind of suspension of disbelief in the metaphysical that appears to run contrary to the secular trajectory of the English literary novel in the last 300 years. I take issue with binarist versions of the postsecular thesis that equate the post-Enlightenment West with relentless desacralization and the “Islamic world” with a persistent collectivist and spiritual outlook, and suggest that we pay more attention to fundamental narrative elements which recur across the supposed West/East divide. Historically simplistic understandings of the secularization of culture — followed in the last few years by a postsecular turn — misrepresent the actual evolution of the novel. The “religious” persists, albeit transmuted into symbolic schema and themes of material or emotional redemption. I end by arguing for the renewed relevance of the kind of analysis of literary “archetypes” suggested by Northrop Frye, albeit disentangled from its specifically Christian resonances and infused by more attention to cultural cross-pollination. It is this type of approach that seems more accurately to account for the peculiarities of Aboulela’s fiction

The Influence of Manga on the Graphic Novel

This material has been published in The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel edited by Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey, Stephen E. Tabachnick. This version is free to view and download for personal use only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works. © Cambridge University PressProviding a range of cogent examples, this chapter describes the influences of the Manga genre of comics strip on the Graphic Novel genre, over the last 35 years, considering the functions of domestication, foreignisation and transmedia on readers, markets and forms

International Law: Cases and Materials

This classic international law casebook is updated to cover recent case law, including the arbitral decision in the South China Sea Arbitration (Philippines v. China), the International Court of Justice’s Certain Activities carried out by Nicaragua in the Border Area (Costa Rica v. Nicaragua) case, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Jesner v. Arab Bank. With extraordinary range and depth, this casebook probes hot topics such as cyber-attacks, the Paris Agreement on climate change, developments in the International Criminal Court’s Al-Bashir proceedings, and complaints of racial discrimination by Palestine against Israel and by Qatar against the United Arab Emirates, all calculated to provoke engaging classroom discussions. This casebook is designed for introductory and advanced classes.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1208/thumbnail.jp

International Law: Cases and Materials

This classic international law casebook is updated to cover recent case law, including the arbitral decision in the South China Sea Arbitration (Philippines v. China), the International Court of Justice’s Certain Activities carried out by Nicaragua in the Border Area (Costa Rica v. Nicaragua) case, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Jesner v. Arab Bank. With extraordinary range and depth, this casebook probes hot topics such as cyber-attacks, the Paris Agreement on climate change, developments in the International Criminal Court’s Al-Bashir proceedings, and complaints of racial discrimination by Palestine against Israel and by Qatar against the United Arab Emirates, all calculated to provoke engaging classroom discussions. This casebook is designed for introductory and advanced classes.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1208/thumbnail.jp