Querying a Queer Spain Under Franco

There should be more articles in the legal journals such as Professor Gema Pérez-Sánchez\u27s. In Franco\u27s Spain, Queer Nation?, Professor Pérez-Sánchez has done a great service to legal scholarship in four respects. Firstly, she has written an appropriately far-ranging piece. In a discipline that has as one of its central missions the broadening of critical legal discourse, LatCrit can sometimes appear to suffer from symptoms of parochialism in its understandable emphasis on the Latina/o experience within American borders, or on the experience of its Latina/o immigrants once they have reached these shores. To be sure, this is not a problem unique to LatCrit. However, if LatCrit takes seriously its role in the legal academe of opening up all categories (such as race, gender, sexuality, and class) to critical analysis, thereby disrupting the hegemony of fixed meanings (and it does), it cannot simultaneously confine those investigations to a North or Latin American experience. While the influence of continental philosophy on American legal theory is undeniable, with a few notable exceptions, the reverse effect seems far less impressive. Even though it is unlikely that Professor Pérez-Sánchez\u27s contribution will single-handedly correct this imbalance, it is a welcomed example of American scholarship willing and interested in non-American affairs, and it is a credit to LatCrit for including a work such as this within its movement. However, it is perhaps of no coincidence that an Article such as this was written by a non-legal scholar

The Absorption of Trapped Line Photons by Dust

We derive the rate at which photons in an optically thick line are absorbed by cold dust. This rate is approximately equal to the dust optical depth to the cloud center times the rate at which the photons escape from the cloud. Our derivation is in response to a recent article by Strel'nitskii in which he incorrectly criticized our previous application of this result to models for the pumping of cosmic masers. Strel'nitskii now agrees that his criticism was unjustified

When Interests Diverge

In this review of Mary Dudziak\u27s important book, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton Univ. Press 2000), Professors Chang and Kwan find the book to provide compelling historical narratives about the intersection of the Cold War and civil rights struggles. Dudziak demonstrates through an amazing array of historical evidence a story that runs counter to the standard narrative of racial sin followed by racial redemption, which helps us to reassess who we are and to be cognizant of the work that remains

When Interests Diverge

In her recent book Cold War Civil Rights, Professor Mary L. Dudziak, sets forth to explore the impact of Cold War foreign affairs on U.S. civil rights reform (p. 14). Tracing the emergence, the development, and the decline of Cold War foreign affairs as a factor in influencing civil rights policy (p. 17), she draws together Cold War history and civil rights history (pp. 14-15), two areas that are usually treated as distinct subjects of inquiry. In mixing the two together, she shows that the borders of U.S. history are not easily maintained. Perhaps it is fitting that the field of American history is not delimited neatly by its geographic borders, especially when those same borders have not contained the reach of the United States. She closes the introductory section of her book by suggest[ing] that an international perspective does not simply \u27fill in\u27 the story of American history, but changes its terms (p. 17). Dudziak is not the first, as she herself admits, to draw a connection between foreign policy and domestic civil rights. She does, however, present the most thorough and compelling case for this connection. She draws from a remarkable array of documentary evidence to construct a fascinating narrative that frames the local within the transnational. For instance, Dudziak opens her book with the story of Jimmy Wilson. She tells us that Mr. Wilson\u27s name has not been remembered in the annals of Cold War history (p. 3). But as a historian, she is about to help us remember. The notion of remembering seems to serve two important functions for Dudziak. First, it helps us know who we are (pp. 17, 252-53). Second, it reminds us that we are not alone and cannot act with impunity (passim). The second value of remembering is revealed through Dudziak\u27s stressing the important role played by international actors in effecting domestic civil rights reform. To Dudziak, the international gaze serves as a panopticon. She examines how local actors reacted to international criticisms of civil rights violations, and how pressure was brought to bear on local actors by federal officials. In this way, the international gaze operated to constrain or contain this country\u27s racist majoritarian excesses. She posits what might be described as an extralegal theory of local and national restraint, based on some notion of national prestige and national interest. We shall return to this extralegal theory of restraint at the end of this Review