PATHWAYS INTO A SCIENTIFIC ELITE: THE SOCIAL ORIGINS, SCHOOLING AND UNIVERSITIES OF FELLOWS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY BORN FROM 1900

We report on continuing research on the British scientific elite, intended to illustrate a proposed new approach to elite studies, and based on prosopographical data on Fellows of the Royal Society born from 1900. We extend analyses previously reported of Fellows’ social origins and secondary schooling so as to take their university careers into account. The composite term ‘Oxbridge’ is called into question, as Cambridge appears historically to have been far more productive of members of the scientific elite than Oxford. However, Fellows from more advantaged class backgrounds do have a clearly higher probability than others of having attended Cambridge, Oxford or London, rather than universities outside of ‘the golden triangle’ – an outcome only partially mediated through private schooling. The ‘long arm’ of family of origin is thus apparent, although private schooling has been more important in helping Fellows from managerial rather than from professional families to gain entry to an elite university. Family influences on Fellows’ fields of research also remain, even though a further major factor is the universities they attended. A ‘royal road’ into the scientific elite, which Fellows from higher professional and managerial families have the highest probability of having followed, can be identified: that leading from private schooling to both undergraduate and postgraduate study at Cambridge. But the most common pathway, taken by 20% of all Fellows, is that leading from state schooling to undergraduate and graduate study at universities outside of the golden triangle. Fellows from higher professional, but not managerial, families show a distinctively high probability of having avoided this pathway; but it is that most common for Fellows of all less advantaged class origins. The case of the British scientific elite would suggest that detailed and disaggregated analyses of processes of elite formation can show these to be much more diverse than has often been supposed.

Lavender Images and Poetic Landscapes: My Thirty Years in the Queer Film Ecosystem

This chapter by LGBT filmmaker and film historian Jenni Olson is a firsthand account of her thirty-plus years of work across the ecosystem of queer cinema. It covers her curatorial work in the late 1980s and early 1990s (she was codirector of the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival); her extraordinary efforts as an LGBT film collector and archivist over the decades (her collection was acquired by the Harvard Film Archive in 2020); her pioneering work in online queer-film exhibition, as cofounder of PlanetOut.com; her decade as director of marketing for the LGBT film distributor, Wolfe Video; and her work as a maker of digressive and contemplative 16mm essay films, such as The Royal Road (2015) and The Joy of Life (2005), which speak from a butch lesbian perspective and reflect on a wide array of preoccupations.

THE SILK ROAD AS A COMMON PART OF THE HISTORY OF IRAN AND KAZAK

Each country has its own history in which the events and ups and downs of that country are recorded. But countries also have parts of history that they have in common. An international incident or a transnational incident in the past caused countries to have common ground in parts of the history. The Silk Road and trade at that time are common points of history between Iran and Kazakhstan. The Silk Road, which started in the east of China, went west, and divided into two major international routes, one passing through Iran and the other passing through Kazakhstan. The Silk Road in Iran and Kazakhstan had structures that facilitate the passage of caravans, including caravanserais. Iranian cities had an acceptable performance in this particular case. One of the most important tools needed to create an efficient administrative structure and oversee the country's affairs has been to build communication channels. The royal road is an example of this communication route that was created in the Achaemenid period to connect different parts of the country.

Reading in the Age of Compression

Compression is often considered a royal road to process data in ever-shorter time and to cater to our desire to outspeed the accelerating transmission of information in the digital age. This article explores how different techniques of accelerated text dissemination and reading, such as consonant writing, speed-reading apps, and the PDF file format, borrow from the language of compression yet, precisely in so doing, obscure the constitutive multilayered temporality of reading and the embodied role of the reader. While discussing different methods aspiring to compress textual objects and processes of reading, the author illuminates hidden assumptions that accompany the rhetoric of text compression and compressed reading.