Cemeteries and the Decline of the Occult: From Ghosts to Memory in the Modern Age

New places for the dead - cemeteries - were from the start understood as places of memory in which the undead and sleepless dead, ghosts and spirits did not abide. Anxieties about the public health problems of old burial grounds were born of a new interest to separate the dead from the living; memory replaced the corpse as the placeholder for the deceased; a secular geography replaced a sacred one. The essay ends with the speculation that the popularity of the occult in late nineteenth century Europe might have been a response to the novel segregation of the dead.New places for the dead - cemeteries - were from the start understood as places of memory in which the undead and sleepless dead, ghosts and spirits did not abide. Anxieties about the public health problems of old burial grounds were born of a new interest to separate the dead from the living; memory replaced the corpse as the placeholder for the deceased; a secular geography replaced a sacred one. The essay ends with the speculation that the popularity of the occult in late nineteenth century Europe might have been a response to the novel segregation of the dead

Afro-americanos, linchamientos y memoria : Equal Justice Initiative Project o el terrible don de la compasión

Primo Levi en The Drowned and the Saved sugiere que el estar presente ante nosotros es lo que hace posible que sintamos lástima por un ?co-humano? y actuemos de acuerdo con nuestros sentimientos. Nos preocupamos por los demás en relación inversa a la distancia que nos separa de ellos. Por lo que respecta a los muertos, situados al otro lado de un abismo en apariencia insalvable, se encuentran inconmensurablemente más lejos de nosotros que incluso el más distante de los vivos. Es el arte ?en su significado más amplio? lo que nos enseña a sentir por ellos y lo que genera un relato en el que sus cuerpos y huesos importan. Es el arte lo que hace que los muertos vivan de nuevo de maneras importantes dentro de la cultura. Este artículo toma como caso de estudio el nuevo National Lynching Memorial en Montgomery Alabama

Fighting in the legal grey area: an analysis of the German Federal Court of Justice decision in case preimplantation genetic diagnosis

According to the German Embryo Protection Act, PGD has been banned in Germany since 1990; one reason is the legislature’s avoiding to insert a revision clause regarding medical advance into the law. The ruling of the German Federal Court of Justice of July 2010 shows the problems resulting out of this approach and declares PGD to be permitted in certain cases. The article discusses the necessity for, as well as the problems of, an interdisciplinary dialogue in the field of reproductive medicine

The impact of spikes in handgun acquisitions on firearm-related harms.

BackgroundResearch has documented sharp and short-lived increases in firearm acquisitions immediately following high-profile mass shootings and specific elections, increasing exposure to firearms at the community level. We exploit cross-city variation in the estimated number of excess handgun acquisitions in California following the 2012 presidential election and the Sandy Hook school shooting 5 weeks later to assess whether the additional handguns were associated with increases in the rate of firearm-related harms at the city level.MethodsWe use a two-stage modeling approach. First, we estimate excess handguns as the difference between actual handgun acquisitions, as recorded in California's Dealer Record of Sales, and expected acquisitions, as predicted by a seasonal autoregressive integrated moving-average (SARIMA) time series model. We use Poisson regression models to estimate the effect of city-level excess handgun purchasing on city-level changes in rates of firearm mortality and injury.ResultsWe estimate there were 36,142 excess handguns acquired in California in the 11 weeks following the election (95% prediction interval: 22,780 to 49,505); the Sandy Hook shooting occurred in week 6. We find city-level purchasing spikes were associated with higher rates of firearm injury in the 52 weeks post-election: a relative rate of 1.044 firearm injuries for each excess handgun per 1,000 people (95% CI: 1.000 to 1.089). This amounts to approximately 290 (95% CI: 0 to 616) additional firearm injuries (roughly a 4% increase) in California over the year. We do not detect statistically significant associations for shorter time windows or for firearm mortality.ConclusionThis study provides evidence for an association between excess handgun acquisitions following high-profile events and firearm injury at the community level. This suggests that even marginal increases in handgun prevalence may be impactful

L’usage de la catégorie de genre. Réponse de Thomas Laqueur à Annick Jaulin

Il est difficile, après avoir écrit tout un livre sur le thème de la différence sexuelle, d’apporter de nouvelles preuves pour défendre les points de vue qu’Annick Jaulin met en question dans le numéro 14 de CLIO, Histoire, Femmes et Sociétés. Elle a raison d’affirmer que l’usage que je fais de la catégorie de « genre » dans l’examen des sources prémodernes, est confus et peut-être inapproprié. J’ai moi-même essayé de le suggérer autant que faire se peut. Le mot lui- même a longtemps été util..

Afterword

Reflections on the special issue 'Divided by Death? Staging Mortality in the Early Modern Low Countries'

"Lüge! Alles Lüge?!": Neue Forschungsergebnisse zur Identität von "Dr. Langer" und die daraus folgenden Neubewertungen für Eichmanns Aussageverhalten in Jerusalem

Während des 91. Verhandlungstages im Prozess gegen Adolf Eichmann vor dem Jerusalemer District Court, am 11.7.1961, befragte Generalstaatsanwalt Gideon Hausner den Angeklagten nach seinem Verhältnis zur Wahrheit. Hausners Frage wurde von dem Dolmetscher wie folgt übersetzt:" Was Ihren Wahrheitssinn, Ihren Sinn zum Sprechen der Wahrheit betrifft: Sie drückten sich einmal aus, dass jeder der sich in Haft befindet, das Recht habe, die Unwahrheit zu sprechen, ist das richtig?"Die Übersetzung in die deutsche Sprache missfiel dem Vorsitzenden Richter Moshe Landau, so dass er intervenierte. Er präzisierte in Richtung von Eichmann auf deutsch: "Nicht den Sinn, sondern Ihren Wahrheitswillen! Ihren Willen, die Wahrheit zu sagen!" Eichmanns Antwort lautete wie folgt: "Im Prinzip stimmt das. Ich habe von diesen Prinzipien nie Gebrauch gemacht." Dies führte im Gerichtssaal auf Seiten der Zuschauer zu Tumulten, was wiederum den Vorsitzenden Richter dazu veranlasste, mit der flachen Hand mehrfach auf den Tisch zu schlagen und in scharfem Ton: "Ruhe im Gerichtssaal" zu fordern. Zu diesem Verfahrenszeitpunkt war erkennbar, dass Eichmann nachweislich und damit wider besseren Wissens log. Aus seiner vehementen Negierung der Tatsachen wurde ein Dogma: Eichmann lügt. Das erwies sich für die (rechts-)historische Forschung als fatal.&nbsp