Review of Homer\u27s Iliad: The Basel Commentary, Book XIX

Marina Coray’s commentary on Iliad 19, originally published in German in 2009, is part of the ongoing Basel commentary series on Homer’s Iliad, edited by Anton Bierl and Joachim Latacz. So far thirteen volumes of the series have been published in German, and five in English translation. Coray’s commentary is a work of great erudition and will be an indispensable resource for scholars of Homer. Here I focus on the utility of this slightly revised new English edition for anglophone readers at various levels, and consider how this commentary relates to and supplements Mark W. Edwards’ outstanding commentary on Iliad 17-20, which is Volume V (1991) of the Cambridge series edited by G. S. Kirk, and represents the current English-language scholarly standard. (excerpt

Homeric Studies, Feminism, and Queer Theory: Interpreting Helen and Penelope

Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz and Amy Richlin’s Feminist Theory and the Classics (1993) and Barbara F. McManus’ Classics and Feminism: Gendering the Classics (1997) provided ground-breaking surveys of the feminist revolution in classical studies, and their work leads us to the question of the feminist impact on the study of Homer. In this essay, I review the contributions of feminist scholarship on Homer and explore queer theory as a new heuristic avenue for advancing the feminist interpretation of the Homeric epics. With this approach, I follow upon and revise McManus’ use of the concept of “dual-gendering” (a term that I employ instead of her original “transgendered,” as I explain below) for her feminist analysis of Virgil’s Latin epic, the Aeneid. Her interpretive lens encourages us to look for complexity in epic gender representation and to investigate the ideological functions of this representation; my deployment of queer theory reframes her line of inquiry in terms of the gender normative and deviant and includes in its purview the additional categories of sexuality and power relations. [excerpt

But Are They Meritorious? Productivity Gains under Plant IPR

Despite that recentness of intellectual property rights protection of plants in the US , documenting the productive merit of varieties associated with IPR protection has been elusive. This paper using varietal trial data of soft white winter wheat from Washington State found supporting evidence to the hypothesis that Plant Variety Protection has contributed to the genetic improvement of soft white winter wheat in Washington State.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Incremental planning to control a blackboard-based problem solver

To control problem solving activity, a planner must resolve uncertainty about which specific long-term goals (solutions) to pursue and about which sequences of actions will best achieve those goals. A planner is described that abstracts the problem solving state to recognize possible competing and compatible solutions and to roughly predict the importance and expense of developing these solutions. With this information, the planner plans sequences of problem solving activities that most efficiently resolve its uncertainty about which of the possible solutions to work toward. The planner only details actions for the near future because the results of these actions will influence how (and whether) a plan should be pursued. As problem solving proceeds, the planner adds new details to the plan incrementally, and monitors and repairs the plan to insure it achieves its goals whenever possible. Through experiments, researchers illustrate how these new mechanisms significantly improve problem solving decisions and reduce overall computation. They briefly discuss current research directions, including how these mechanisms can improve a problem solver's real-time response and can enhance cooperation in a distributed problem solving network

EXPERIMENTAL PRICE VARIABILITY AND CONSUMER RESPONSE: TRACKING POTATO SALES WITH SCANNERS

Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis,

ASSESSING THE COSTS OF MANDATORY BEVERAGE CONTAINER DEPOSIT LEGISLATION

Agricultural and Food Policy,

Too Much of a Good Thing?: Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Papers of George Washington\u3c/i\u3e, W. W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig, Editors; Philander D. Chase and Beverly H. Runge, Associate Editors. \u3ci\u3eRevolutionary War Series, Volume 4: April-June I776\u3c/i\u3e, Philander D. Chase, Editor.

One hundred and seventy-two pages into this exemplar of many of the best aspects of contemporary historical documentary editing, Philander D. Chase prints George Washington\u27s 29 April 1776 letter to his brother John Augustine Washington. His last letter to his brother had been penned on 31 March, the last date included in the previous volume, and thus this renewal of the correspondence afforded the opportunity to summarize the activities of the first month encompassed in this book\u27s covers. At the beginning of the month, General Washington had been preparing to leave Cambridge for New York after a successful siege had caused the British to abandon Boston. Washington had detached reinforcements to Canada. Additional regiments were just now Imbarking . . . for the same place, but the general was affraid we are rather too late. Every effort, including skillful handling of the New York Committee of Safety, had also gone into fortifying New York. Pieced together from the recipient\u27s copy in the Washington Papers at the Library of Congress and the clipped closing, signature, and dateline now at Cornell, the letter to John Augustine Washington is carefully transcribed, intelligently annotated, and handsomely printed. One hopes that John Richard Alden, who directed Chase\u27s 1973 dissertation on Baron von Steuben and to whom the volume is dedicated, had it in hand in these covers before his recent death. Washington\u27s letter to his brother, however, raises the issue of How much is enough?, a fundamental question that must be asked of the Revolutionary War Series. One hundred and thirty- four letters to and from Washington precede it in this volume, yet this one letter succinctly summarizes the content of all those letters and provides insight into the general\u27s rationale that is missing in their day-today detail. Military historians will want every false alarm, troop movement, promotion, question of supply, and sign and countersign presented here in so elegant and useful a way, but previous efforts to make these sources accessible suggest the title of this essay

Failed Revolt, Faulty Edition: Review of \u3ci\u3eDesigns against Charleston: The Trial Record of the Denmark Vesey Slave Conspiracy of 1822\u3c/i\u3eEdward A. Pearson, ed.

On June 19, 1822, a court composed of two magistrates and five freeholders convened in Charleston, South Carolina. The discovery of a planned slave revolt led by Denmark Vesey, a free black carpenter, had alarmed the city just days earlier. Before the summer was out, Vesey and thirty-four enslaved men were hanged and about the same number sentenced to be transported outside the United States. Lionel H. Kennedy and Thomas Parker, the two magistrates who presided over the trials, published An Official Report of the Trials of Sundry Negroes ... later that year:, but Kennedy and Parker\u27s version of the proceedings IS Incomplete. Two manuscript transcripts at the South Carolina Department of An:hives and History preserve a full~r version of the proceedings of the Court and the testimony received on the trials of those charged as principals or accomplices. In the volume under review, Edward Pearson seeks to make this material and a good bit else more widely available