From dissent to diselief : Gaskell, Hardy, and the development of the English social realist novel

L’unitarienne Elizabeth Gaskell rejetait les doctrines anglicanes qui aliéneraient Thomas Hardy de sa religion. Elle était aussi championne de plusieurs penseurs qui exerceraient une forte influence sur les convictions d'Hardy. La continuité de la religion de Gaskell avec la vision du monde d'Hardy est évidente dans leurs écritures personnelles et aussi dans leurs romans. L'authenticité de voix que tant Gaskell que Hardy donnent aux caractères marginalisés, et spécialement aux femmes, provient aussi de leurs valeurs chrétiennes communes. Les convictions religieuses des deux auteurs et l'influence de la religion sur leurs travaux ont été abondamment étudiées, mais une comparaison entre elles doit encore être entreprise. Après avoir examiné les liens entre la foi de Gaskell et les convictions d'Hardy, je compare les attitudes des deux auteurs envers la classe dans North and South et The Woodlanders et leurs sympathies envers la femme tombée dans Ruth et Tess of the d’Urbervilles.As a progressive Unitarian, Elizabeth Gaskell rejected the Anglican doctrines that would later alienate Thomas Hardy from his religion. She also championed many of the thinkers who would exert a strong influence on Hardy’s beliefs. The connection between Gaskell’s religion and Hardy’s worldview is evident in their personal writings and in their novels. The authenticity of voice that both Gaskell and Hardy give to marginalized characters, specifically to women, also springs from their common Christian-based values. Both authors’ religious convictions and the influence of religion on their works have been extensively studied, but a comparison between them has yet to be undertaken. After examining the links between Gaskell’s Unitarianism and Hardy’s beliefs, I compare the two authors’ attitudes towards class in North and South and The Woodlanders and their sympathies with the fallen woman as expressed in Ruth and Tess of the d’Urbervilles to demonstrate their intellectual and artistic affinities

Internationalism and Empire: British Dilemmas, 1919-1939

These lectures were given as the James Ford Lectures in British History at Oxford University in the Spring of 2014. They incorporate material that was later included in my book, "The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire", which was published by Oxford University Press in 2015. That book is a history of the origins and workings of the mandates system of the League of Nations and its impact on the international and imperial order as a whole. These lectures concentrate more narrowly on Britain’s involvement in the construction of that system and on its unexpected effects on British strategy and power. The fourth lecture, on British dilemmas around the Italo-Ethiopian crisis, has not been published elsewhere; the third lecture (and to a lesser degree the first and sixth lectures) also incorporate material not found in that book. A fully international account of all the themes discussed can be found in The Guardians

Dilemmas of a Liberal Descent -- or, the Ladies Vanish

This is a talk about the difficulties the genre of political biography poses for historians writing about a female subject. It discusses the detective work I undertook to recover the ways a number of forgotten women -- her mother, her sister, and her lifelong partner, Elizabeth Macadam -- facilitated Eleanor Rathbone's political and parliamentary career, and discusses why both Rathbone and Macadam sought to disguise the importance of that collaboration. It also reflects on the subterfuges biographers themselves resort to (and that I certainly resorted to) when trying to recover personal material

Women and the Quest for Equal Citizenship: The Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Lecture, 2016

This lecture looks back to Eleanor Rathbone's thinking about the roots of gender inequality. Women's disadvantage, she argued, stemmed almost entirely from society's unwillingness to value, economically and morally, the work of care -- work that is typically done by women. It then turns to the course of social policy in recent decades, showing how the Anglo-American drive to prioritize wage-earning while still neglecting the problem of care has left women and children still disproportionately poor. It then looks at three main proposals offered to compensate better for the work of care and thus to combat women carers' systematic disadvantage. It concludes by challenging our tendency to identify market-rationality with morality, and points to Rathbone's own commitment to Kantian principles as a better moral framework

Means-Tested Income Support, Portfolio Choice and Decumulation in Retirement

We investigate the impact of means tested public income transfers on post-retirement decumulation and portfolio choice using theoretical simulations and panel data on Australian Age Pensioners. Means tested public pension payments in Australia have broad coverage and give insight into the incentive responsiveness of well-off, as well as poorer households. Via numerical solutions to a discrete time, finite horizon dynamic programming problem, we simulate the optimal consumption and portfolio allocation strategies for a retired household subject to assets and income tests. Relative to benchmark, means tested households should optimally decumulate faster early in retirement, and choose more risky portfolios. Panel data tests on inferred wealth for pensioner households show evidence of more rapid spending early in retirement. However they also show that better-off households continue to accumulate, even when facing a steeper implicit tax rate on wealth than applies to poorer households. Wealthier households also hold riskier portfolios. Results from tests for Lorenz dominance of the panel wealth distribution show no decrease in wealth inequality over the five years of the study.retirement wealth; life-cycle saving; public pension; portfolio choice

Resveratrol given intraperitoneally does not inhibit the growth of high-risk t(4;11) acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells in a NOD/SCID mouse model.

The efficacy of resveratrol as a preventive agent against the growth of t(4;11) acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) was evaluated in NOD.CB17-Prkdcscid/J mice engrafted with the human t(4;11) ALL SEM cell line. SEM cells were injected into the tail vein and engraftment was monitored by flow cytometry. Once engraftment was observed, mice were injected intraperitoneally with resveratrol (10 mg/kg body weight) dissolved in dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) or DMSO alone (control) every other day, or vincristine (0.5 mg/kg body weight) 3 times per week for 4 weeks (n=16 per group). Comparisons of the percent of human leukemia cells in blood and survival curves showed resveratrol did not inhibit progression of the disease. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry analyses of mouse sera showed resveratrol was rapidly metabolized to glucuronidated and sulfated forms 1 h post-injection, with low to no resveratrol or metabolites observed in sera by 24-48 h. These data indicate that in contrast to findings in in vitro models, parenterally administered resveratrol does not have potential as a preventive agent against high risk t(4;11) ALL

National Bodies, Unspeakable Acts: The Sexual Politicsof Colonial Policy-making

This analysis of the Kikuyu female circumcision controversy of the 1920s discusses how issues of sexual practice and sexual order proved useful vehicles for both Kenyan nationalist, and British nationalist and imperialist, agendas. The complex and acrimonious debate brought ideals of cultural self-expression, women's rights, and imperial hegemony into open conflict. On its most overt level, the debate in Britain shows how the tensions between feminist, imperialist, and nationalist interests could immobilize individuals and fragment campaigns. It can also help us to understand these early twentieth-century Britons' conception of female sexuality and, more broadly, of the place of women in national life

Hannah More Meets Simple Simon: Tracts, Chapbooks, and Popular Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century England

A discussion of the Cheap Repository of Moral and Religious Tracts, published in 1795-98, as a broad evangelical assault on late eighteenth-century popular culture

From National Crisis to "National Crisis": British Politics, 1914-1931

Reviews of National Crisis and National Government: British Politics, the Economy and Empire, 1926-1932 by Philip Williamson; The British General Election of 1931 by Andrew Thorpe; and British Politics and the Great War: Coalition and Conflict, 1915-1918 by John Turner

Planetary Lake Lander - A Robotic Sentinel to Monitor a Remote Lake

The Planetary Lake Lander Project is studying the impact of rapid deglaciation at a high altitude alpine lake in the Andes, where disrupted environmental, physical, chemical, and biological cycles result in newly emerging natural patterns. The solar powered Lake Lander robot is designed to monitor the lake system and characterize both baseline characteristics and impacts of disturbance events such as storms and landslides. Lake Lander must use an onboard adaptive science-on-the-fly approach to return relevant data about these events to mission control without exceeding limited energy and bandwidth resources. Lake Lander carries weather sensors, cameras and a sonde that is winched up and down the water column to monitor temperature, dissolved oxygen, turbidity and other water quality parameters. Data from Lake Lander is returned via satellite and distributed to an international team of scientists via web-based ground data systems. Here, we describe the Lake Lander Project scientific goals, hardware design, ground data systems, and preliminary data from 2011. The adaptive science-on-the-fly system will be described in future papers