scholarly journals HISTORICITY AND GENDER HEROISM IN OLA ROTIMI’S HOPES OF THE LIVING DEAD

Author(s):  
Tunji Azeez ◽  
Babafemi Babatope

The intercourse of history and Drama is an age long phenomenon. On one hand, the evolution and the various developmental stages of drama find expression in history. On the other hand, historical occurrences provided and still provide raw materials for drama. Historically, women have been represented in drama since the beginning of literary tradition. Aristophanes (410 BC) represented Greek women, reflecting the strength and weakness of women and more importantly the role of women in nation building. Shakespeare and Webster portray women substantially in their plays. Nigerian playwrights are not left out in the scheme, as they employ the instrumentality of history to dramatise traits of legendry Nigeria women and thus preserve their heroic deeds for the prosperity of posterity. This paper interrogates the interplay of history and gender heroism in Ola Rotimi’s play, Hopes of the Living Dead. The framework for this discourse is “Stiwanism”, the African expression of feminism. The paper argues that Ola Rotimi, in a bid to celebrate African women does not create a fictitious personality with fabricated legendary deeds, but falls back on history to showcase the legendary and heroic nature of African women. History, therefore, enhances the tangibility of gender heroism as dramatised by Ola Rotimi in the play. We conclude that, in Hopes of the Living Dead, Ola Rotimi employs history to unearth the past, thereby reconstructing the present and taking a peep into the future about what is expected of the African women as leaders and co-workers in social and political re-engineering.

Author(s):  
Émilie Perez

The role of children in Merovingian society has long been downplayed, and the study of their graves and bones has long been neglected. However, during the past fifteen years, archaeologists have shown growing interest in the place of children in Merovingian society. Nonetheless, this research has not been without challenges linked to the nature of the biological and material remains. Recent analysis of 315 children’s graves from four Merovingian cemeteries in northern Gaul (sixth to seventh centuries) allows us to understand the modalities of burial ritual for children. A new method for classifying children into social age groups shows that the type, quality, quantity, and diversity of grave goods were directly correlated with the age of the deceased. They increased from the age of eight and particularly around the time of puberty. This study discusses the role of age and gender in the construction and expression of social identity during childhood in the Merovingian period.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-112
Author(s):  
Richard Larouche ◽  
Nimesh Patel ◽  
Jennifer L. Copeland

The role of infrastructure in encouraging transportation cycling in smaller cities with a low prevalence of cycling remains unclear. To investigate the relationship between the presence of infrastructure and transportation cycling in a small city (Lethbridge, AB, Canada), we interviewed 246 adults along a recently-constructed bicycle boulevard and two comparison streets with no recent changes in cycling infrastructure. One comparison street had a separate multi-use path and the other had no cycling infrastructure. Questions addressed time spent cycling in the past week and 2 years prior and potential socio-demographic and psychosocial correlates of cycling, including safety concerns. Finally, we asked participants what could be done to make cycling safer and more attractive. We examined predictors of cycling using gender-stratified generalized linear models. Women interviewed along the street with a separate path reported cycling more than women on the other streets. A more favorable attitude towards cycling and greater habit strength were associated with more cycling in both men and women. Qualitative data revealed generally positive views about the bicycle boulevard, a need for education about sharing the road and for better cycling infrastructure in general. Our results suggest that, even in smaller cities, cycling infrastructure may encourage cycling, especially among women.


1941 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Kuznets

This paper deals with the relation between statistical analysis as applied in economic inquiry and history as written or interpreted by economic historians. Although both these branches of economic study derive from the same body of raw materials of inquiry—the recordable past and present of economic society—each has developed in comparative isolation from the other. Statistical economists have failed to utilize adequately the contributions that economic historians have made to our knowledge of the past; and historians have rarely employed either the analytical tools or the basic theoretical hypotheses of statistical research. It is the thesis of this essay that such failure to effect a close interrelation between historical approach and statistical analysis needs to be corrected in the light of the final goal of economic study.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michal Brzezinski

This paper estimates how previous major pandemic events affected economic and gender inequalities in the short- to medium run. We consider the impact of six major pandemic episodes – H3N2 Flu (1968), SARS (2003), H1N1 Swine Flu (2009), MERS (2012), Ebola (2014), and Zika (2016) – on cross-country inequalities in a sample of up to 180 countries observed over 1950-2019. Results show that the past pandemics have moderately increased income inequality in the affected countries in the period of four to five years after the pandemic’s start. On the other hand, we do not find any robust negative impacts on wealth inequality. The results concerning gender inequality are less consistent, but we find some evidence of declining gender equality among the hardest hit countries, as well as of growing gender gaps in unemployment within the four years after the onset of the pandemic.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lauren Ray ◽  
Peter Mende-Siedlecki ◽  
Ana P. Gantman ◽  
Jay Joseph Van Bavel

Over the past few decades, two-factor models of social cognition have emerged as the dominant framework for understanding impression formation. Despite the differences in the labels, there is wide agreement that one dimension reflects sociability potential, and the other, competence. One way in which the various two-factor models do clearly differ, however, is in the way the dimensions incorporate or produce evaluations of morality. Aristotle saw morality as the most important basis on which to form positive evaluations, because competence and sociability could only be virtuous, sincere, and trustworthy if expressed through a moral character. This chapter highlights research demonstrating the unique and possibly primary role of morality in social cognition. We clarify the dynamic, interactive, and conjoint effects of morality on social perception, and argue morality, competence, and sociability are three influential and interactive dimensions of social perception.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-161
Author(s):  
Fernanda Neubauer ◽  
Michael J. Schaefer

We discuss the important role of the feminist critique in bringing awareness to gender, childhood, and identity research, and in giving voice to the perspectives of underrepresented groups. As a case study of ancient social lives and gender, we discuss a range of Marajoara identity markers interpreted through the study of ceramic tangas (female pubic coverings) from Marajó Island in the Brazilian Amazon (A.D. 400-1400). There, tangas were made and used by women as a material representation of social position, gender, and individual identity. We argue that identity constitutes a fundamentally important aspect of archaeological research, and that the strongest case studies in identity are those that encompass a variety of gendered inferences to understand social lives of the past.


Author(s):  
Vicki Cummings

The transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic in Britain and Ireland remains one of the most debated and contested transitions of prehistory. Much more complex than a simple transition from hunting and gathering to farming, the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in Britain has been discussed not only as an economic and technological transformation, but also as an ideological one. In western Britain in particular, with its wealth of Neolithic monuments, considerable emphasis has been placed on the role of monumentality in the transition process. Over the past decade the author‧s research has concentrated on the early Neolithic monumental traditions of western Britain, a deliberate focus on areas outside the more ‘luminous’ centres of Wessex, the Cotswold–Severn region, and Orkney. This chapter discusses the transition in western Britain, with an emphasis on the monuments of this region. In particular, it discusses the areas around the Irish Sea – west Wales, the Isle of Man, south-west and western Scotland – as well as referring to the sequence on the other side of the Irish Sea, specifically eastern Ireland.


Author(s):  
Vanessa Lopes Lourenço Hanes

Given the massive changes that Brazil has undergone in the past century, particularly in distancing itself linguistically from its former colonizer, this study is an attempt to determine the role of translation in the country's cultural evolution. Translational approaches have developed along opposing poles: on the one hand, a strong resistance to incorporating orally-driven alterations in the written language, while on the other, a slow, halting movement toward convergence of the two, and both approaches are charged with political and ideological intentionality. Publishing houses, editors and translators are gatekeepers and agents whose activities provide a glimpse into the mechanism of national linguistic identity, either contributing to or resisting the myth of a homogenized Portuguese language.


Author(s):  
Selina Makana

As scholars of Africa continue to challenge the place and role of Africa in world history, shedding light on women as valid historical actors in postcolonial Africa within the last three decades remains an ongoing and much-needed endeavor. African women in the past and the present have used their position as breadwinners, mothers, and community leaders to influence their social, economic, and political worlds and to assert their power. In the 21st century, they have become known especially for their success as formidable politicians and peace activists. Even in the age of cyberactivism, women in postcolonial Africa have demonstrated their ability to mobilize across ethno-linguistic lines to effect change in their societies. It is important to move beyond the male-centric perspectives on Africa by highlighting not only the diverse experiences of women in the post-independence era but to also underscore the fundamental roles they continue to play in defining and redefining the postcolonial political economies, and their place in them.


2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (12) ◽  
pp. 1609-1631 ◽  
Author(s):  
Varda Wasserman ◽  
Michal Frenkel

How does the multiplicity of surveilling gazes affect the experience of employees subjected to a matrix of domination in organisations? Building on a case study of ultra-religious Jewish women in Israeli high-tech organisations, the article demonstrates how the intersectionality of gender and religiosity exposed them to a matrix of contradicting visibility regimes – managerial, peers, and religious community. By displaying their compliance with each visibility regime, they were constructed as hyper-subjugated employees, but simultaneously were able to use (in)visibility as a resource. Specifically, by manoeuvring between the various gazes and playing one visibility regime against the other, they challenged some of the organisational and religious norms that served to marginalise them, yet upheld their status as worthy members of both institutions. Juxtaposing theoretical insights from organisational surveillance and gender studies, the article reveals the role of multiple surveilling gazes in both the reproduction of minorities’ marginalisation, and their ability to mobilise it to maintain their collective identities.


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