Rederijkers, Kannenkijkers : drinking and drunkenness in the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Low Countries

This article discusses drinking practices and conceptions of drunkenness in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Low Countries from the perspective of the rederijkers or guildsmen who would regularly gather together to practice the vernacular art of rhetoric. The essay surveys the regulations and accounts of the chambers of rhetoric in which these gatherings took place, as well as the literary texts the rederijkers produced (including poetry, songs and theatre plays). It also examines the intersections with contemporary genre painting. The central argument of this paper is that drinking, and even drunkenness, was an essential aspect of rederijker culture and the urban middling groups represented by this culture. This argument nuances the influential thesis of the pervasiveness of a Dutch burgermoraal or bourgeois morality. Even though they created comical caricatures of drunkards, rederijkers indulged in heavy drinking themselves. These guildsmen were well aware of the need for moderation, but their regulations and literary texts go beyond moral didacticism and often reveal double layers and self-parody

Assessing Islamic religious education curriculum in Flemish public secondary schools

Islamic tradition promotes a holistic approach of personality development in which, we argue, three educational concepts take the centre stage: tarbiyah, ta’leem and ta’deeb. Looking through the lens of these concepts, we analyse two Islamic religious education (IRE) curricula: the 2001 and 2012 curricula for Flemish public secondary education provided by the Representative Body for IRE. We conduct a systematic thematic document analysis of the 2001 and 2012 curricula to map curricula elements that potentially contribute to Islamic personality development through IRE classes. Crucially, this article seeks to investigate whether the 2001 and 2012 curricula for Flemish public secondary education are in line with these central IRE concepts. We observe that the 2012 curriculum does contain relevant anchor points to work on tarbiyah, ta’leem and ta’deeb and to strengthen an Islamic personality in Muslim pupils. Hence, we argue that there is an urgent need for a new, adequate and sufficiently comprehensive IRE curriculum for Flemish public secondary education, developed by an expert committee—which should include Belgian-educated educational experts—in order to meet the expectations of all the stakeholders. Since in our view, this is the first step for a qualitative update of Flemish IRE. Further reflections on both curricula and recommendations for a new IRE curriculum are outlined in the discussion and conclusion sections

A restriction map of virulence plasmid pVYE439-80 from a serogroup 9 Yersinia enterocolitica strain

A restriction map of the virulence plasmid pVYE439-80, isolated from Yersinia enterocolitica 439-80 (serogroup 9) was constructed for EcoRI, BamHI, SstII, and SmaI. The mapping was done after cloning of about two-thirds of the plasmid in Escherichia coli. The restriction pattern was compared to those obtained with plasmids isolated from Y. enterocolitica strains of serogroups 1, 3, and 5b. The restriction sites are particularly conserved in a region of about 25 kb. This region contains fragments that are also conserved in serogroup 8 strains [J. Heeseman, C. Keller, R. Morawa, N. Schmidt, H. J. Siemens, and R. Lauf (1983) J. Infect. Dis. 147, 107-115] and that were shown, in strains from this serogroup, to encode calcium dependency [D. A. Portnoy, H. Wolf-Watz, I. Bolin, A. B. Beeder, and S. Falkow, (1984) Infect. Immun. 43, 108-114]