Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth edited by Carol J. Adams and Lori Gruen

Astrida Neimanis reviews Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth, edited by Carol J. Adams and Lori Gruen

A Field Guide for Weathering: Embodied Tactics for Collectives of Two or More Humans

In our inherited meteorological practices and frameworks, weather conditions are managed for us in a range of ways (for example, through architecture, technology, commodity culture, infrastructure, economic rationale). This field guide brings the weather back to the body. A traditional field guide provides tools for the individual sovereign human subject to observe and document nature “over there”. In contrast, through a range of different activities, our field guide not only invites investigation and cataloguing of the field that we also comprise, but also challenges what counts as a noteworthy observation regarding the weather and also climate

Bodies of Water

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Water is the element that, more than any other, ties human beings in to the world around them – from the oceans that surround us to the water that makes up most of our bodies. Exploring the cultural and philosophical implications of this fact, Bodies of Water develops an innovative new mode of posthuman feminist phenomenology that understands our bodies as being fundamentally part of the natural world and not separate from or privileged to it. Building on the works by Luce Irigaray, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze, Astrida Neimanis’s book is a landmark study that brings a new feminist perspective to bear on ideas of embodiment and ecological ethics in the posthuman critical moment

Animate Intimacies

A review of Kath Weston. 'Animate Planet', Duke University Press, Durham, 2017. ISBN 9780822362326 RRP US$24.95 (pb)

Promocijas darbs

Elektroniskā versija nesatur pielikumusJāľa Rudzīša disertācijā „Vardarbība pret bērniem ģimenē Vecajā Derībā” autors analizē vardarbības daţādas izpausmes, vecāku vardarbīgās rīcības iemeslus un pārbauda, vai Vecās Derības tekstos ir novērojamas teoloģiskas tendences pārvarēt vai ierobeţot vardarbību. Līdz šim maz pētīto tēmu Vecās Derības teoloģijā autors pēta 4 nodaļās, vispirms raksturojot, ko nozīmē vardarbība un bērnība Vecajā Derībā. Konkrētu Vecās Derības vardarbības tekstu ekseģēze, pielietojot vēsturiski kritiskās ekseģēzes metodes, veido pētījuma galveno daļu (III. un IV. nodaļas), aplūkojot sekojošas apakštēmas: vardarbīga bērnu audzināšana ģimenē, bērnu pamešana un bērnu pārdošana verdzībā. Neskatoties uz daţādām vardarbību atainojošajām situācijām Vecajā Derībā, visu vardarbības pret bērniem veidu gadījumā Vecās Derības teksti piedāvā vardarbību ierobeţojošus vai novērsošus risinājumus. Atslēgvārdi: bērni, Vecā Derība, vardarbība, ģimeneAbstract In his doctoral thesis „Violence against children in the family in the Old Testament” Jānis Rudzītis explores violence in various forms, parents‟ reasons for violent conduct and exegetically examines the Old Testament writings in order to identify theological attitudes to overcome, stop or prevent domestic violence against children. The research is devoted to the little-studied domain of the Old Testament theology, and it consists of four parts. Introductory matters, such as methods and sources, themes „violence childhood in the Old Testament” and „childhood in the Old Testament” are covered in the first two chapters (I. and II.) before the thesis moves on to a detailed exegesis of selected passages which is the heart of the research (the chapters III. and IV.). In these chapters the author explicates different aspects of violence against children (violent education; children's abandonment; selling of children into slavery). To conclude, the author states that violence against children in the family is condemned either in the same text or is criticized intertextually in other Old Testament texts. Keywords: children, the Old Testament, violence, famil

AN INVESTIGATION OF ALTERNATIVE OXIDASE PRESENCE, EXPRESSION, AND REGULATION IN THE MOSS PHYSCOMITRELLA PATENS

Alternative oxidase (AOX) is an inner mitochondrial membrane protein that introduces a branch point at ubiquinone within the respiratory electron transport system (ETS). The AOX protein bypasses two sites of proton translocation within the ETS and as a result the yield of ATP per oxygen consumed is significantly reduced. Although AOX appears to be energetically wasteful, recent studies have revealed that AOX has a wide taxonomic distribution. AOX multigene families, transcripts, protein levels, and enzymatic activity have been most thoroughly characterized in many angiosperm (flowering) plants. Given the data available for angiosperm AOXs, evidence of non-angiosperm AOXs in the primary literature is scarce and therefore is a logical starting point for comparative studies. The bioinformatics results suggest that AOX is an ancient character in the Viridiplantae, as it is present within algae, a liverwort, a moss, lycopods, ferns, and many gymnosperms. Most interestingly, it appears that the moss Physcomitrella patens possesses a single AOX gene; a characteristic unobserved in all angiosperm AOXs studied to date. This finding has been validated by sequence analysis of a cloned P. patens AOX cDNA that was amplified by PCR using specific genomic primers. Reverse transcriptase PCR has demonstrated that AOX is expressed in P. patens and sequencing analysis suggests that AOX has all the residues to be catalytically active. At the protein level, moss AOX was heterologously expressed in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and protein expression was analyzed by performing mitochondrial isolations, SDS-PAGE, and immunoblots. Preliminary studies using respirometry and site-directed mutagenesis of key residues were undertaken, and it is anticipated that the optimization of these procedures will yield useful data in future studies. A greater understanding of the AOX pathway in non-angiosperm plants is of importance as it will contribute to understanding the evolutionary history of AOX and may help determine its physiological function(s)

Promocijas darbs

Elektroniskā versija nesatur pielikumusJāľa Rudzīša disertācijā „Vardarbība pret bērniem ģimenē Vecajā Derībā” autors analizē vardarbības daţādas izpausmes, vecāku vardarbīgās rīcības iemeslus un pārbauda, vai Vecās Derības tekstos ir novērojamas teoloģiskas tendences pārvarēt vai ierobeţot vardarbību. Līdz šim maz pētīto tēmu Vecās Derības teoloģijā autors pēta 4 nodaļās, vispirms raksturojot, ko nozīmē vardarbība un bērnība Vecajā Derībā. Konkrētu Vecās Derības vardarbības tekstu ekseģēze, pielietojot vēsturiski kritiskās ekseģēzes metodes, veido pētījuma galveno daļu (III. un IV. nodaļas), aplūkojot sekojošas apakštēmas: vardarbīga bērnu audzināšana ģimenē, bērnu pamešana un bērnu pārdošana verdzībā. Neskatoties uz daţādām vardarbību atainojošajām situācijām Vecajā Derībā, visu vardarbības pret bērniem veidu gadījumā Vecās Derības teksti piedāvā vardarbību ierobeţojošus vai novērsošus risinājumus. Atslēgvārdi: bērni, Vecā Derība, vardarbība, ģimeneAbstract In his doctoral thesis „Violence against children in the family in the Old Testament” Jānis Rudzītis explores violence in various forms, parents‟ reasons for violent conduct and exegetically examines the Old Testament writings in order to identify theological attitudes to overcome, stop or prevent domestic violence against children. The research is devoted to the little-studied domain of the Old Testament theology, and it consists of four parts. Introductory matters, such as methods and sources, themes „violence childhood in the Old Testament” and „childhood in the Old Testament” are covered in the first two chapters (I. and II.) before the thesis moves on to a detailed exegesis of selected passages which is the heart of the research (the chapters III. and IV.). In these chapters the author explicates different aspects of violence against children (violent education; children's abandonment; selling of children into slavery). To conclude, the author states that violence against children in the family is condemned either in the same text or is criticized intertextually in other Old Testament texts. Keywords: children, the Old Testament, violence, famil

Writing with Multiple Appendages: Scratchings of the Skittering Limbs of Stygofauna

Four pairs of images from the Postcards from the Underground (2022) print series are presented here as experiments in translating invertebrate underground worlds. Artist Perdita Phillips and cultural theorist Astrida Neimanis collaborated to create an interdisciplinary ‘walkshop’ event to the coal mining town of Lithgow, as part of Phillips’ Artsource both/and artist in residence at Artspace, Sydney in 2017. The many forms of stygofauna—small invertebrate animals including worms, mites, snails, insects and many crustacea—can be found in the millimetreswide in-between spaces in groundwater. Short-range endemism is common—due to their distribution in isolated patches beneath semi-arid to rainforest landscapes in Australia—and sporadic relic distribution world-wide. Working between Neimanis’ text and Phillips’ drawings and found images, the conversations with and through stygofauna, underground water and mining were then developed into colour postcards, that use a red/cyan optical masking technique. The images can be decoded with a red filter that is held up to the eye. The previously invisible cyan delineations are then revealed from beneath—alluding to the layers of concern and the double state of both/and—“caught up in both the noticing and notnoticing of each other” that the artist/author were articulating (Neimanis and Phillips 137). The swirling patterns of swimming and the complex fingering of many limbs were rendered into cryptic scores. The postcards explore notions of hiding/revealing and comprehension and miscomprehension of subterranean ecosystems, through the multiple scratchings of the skittering limbs of stygofauna. Phillips, Perdita and Astrida Neimanis. Postcards from the Underground. 2022. Private Collection

Composting Feminisms and Environmental Humanities

Composting is a material labor whereby old scraps are transformed—through practices of care and attention—into nutrient-rich new soil. In this provocation, we develop “composting” as a material metaphor to tell a particular story about the environmental humanities. Building on Donna Haraway’s work, we insist “it matters what compostables make compost.” Our argument is twofold. First, we contend that certain feminist concepts and commitments are foundational to the environmental humanities’ contemporary emergence. Second, we advocate for more inclusive feminist composting for the future of our field. We begin with a critical cartography of some of the field’s origin stories. While we discover that feminism is named or not named in several different ways, what most interests us here is a particular trend we observe, whereby key feminist scholars or concepts may be mentioned, but their feminist investments are not incorporated as such. Following this cartography, we dig into the stakes of these missed opportunities. A failure to acknowledge the feminist context that grows some of our field’s foundational concepts neutralizes their feminist politics and undermines the potential for environmental humanities to build alternative worlds. To conclude, we propose feminist composting as a methodology to be taken up further. We call for an inclusive feminist composting that insists on feminism’s imbrication with social justice projects of all kinds, at the same time as we insist that future composting be done with care. Sometimes paying attention to the feminist scraps that feed the pile means responding to feminism’s own potential assimilations and disavowals, particularly in relation to decolonization