Na szczycie wulkanu. O wyprawach na Heklę i Snæfellsjökull w XVIII i XIX wieku

The present paper gives an overview of the history of climbing on Hekla and Snæfellsjökull, Iceland’s most famous volcanoes, in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the Middle Ages and early modern period, Hekla was compared to the gates of hell due to its frequent and violent eruptions. Snæfellsjökull was considered a supernatural space and a domain of Bárður, the eponymous hero of Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss. The author analyses a wide range of sources: Reise igiennem Island by Bjarni Pálsson and Eggert Ólafsson (who reached the summits of Hekla and Snæfellsjökull in 1750 and 1754, respectively), British (from Banks to Burton) and French (from Gaimard to Labonne) travelogues, Ida Pfeiffer’s journals (who was the first foreign woman to climb Hekla).

Marriage and Family in the East: Russian view

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of marriage and family relations in the middle East. It is based on the reflections of a Russian woman who lived for many years in a marriage with a Syrian citizen. The Russian woman’s view on different aspects of the phenomenon of the Eastern family, ways of integrating a foreign woman into Eastern society, taking place against the background of the activation of the processes of feminization of modern Western and neighboring societies, and the diversity of forms of emancipation of women.

“Are You Married?”: Gender and Faith in Political Ethnographic Research

In this article, I look at how political ethnography can contribute to the study of religious dynamics within conservative religious communities. Based on fieldwork conducted in Tajikistan within conservative Muslim circles, I take a reflexive stance by arguing that my informants used my status as a single foreign woman to steer interactions toward those of my religious conversion and need for marriage. Their repeated efforts and our interactions exposed the depth of their religious beliefs and its precedence over other identity markers such as ethnicity and language. This close access also allowed me to witness the exclusion and distrust that conservative Muslims face from the rest of the society as well as state authorities. Ultimately, I argue that political ethnography enables the production of a more nuanced portrait of conservative Muslims communities, which are often represented as hermetic and hostile. Political ethnography can be particularly useful to investigate sensitive issues such as religious identities and their complex relations to structures of power.

Representation of a Foreign Woman in Contemporary Japan

Under the conceptual framework of foreign Otherness in Japan, the article explores the media representation of a Latin American woman, Anita Alvarado. It proposes that she became a well-known character who was instrumental in the othering processes of foreign identities in Japan. Originally from Chile, Alvarado moved to Japan and became involved in a scandalous fraud committed by her husband. Since then, Japanese media have produced content that continue reminding audiences of the incident, while simultaneously creating an atmosphere of suspicion around her. Based on a content analysis and a textual analysis of written news, the article argues that media references to Alvarado nourish the Japanese structure of othering.

Feminist and Postcolonial Readings of the Historical Books

Feminist and postcolonial readings of the Hebrew Bible share overlapping concerns, including amplifying voices of the marginalized—particularly women and indigenous or colonized peoples—in the biblical texts. This essay outlines some of the major concepts within feminist and postcolonial approaches, as well as the ways those approaches challenge each other. The essay then wrestles with the ways the Historical Books testify to ancient Israel’s experiences as both a colonizer and as the colonized. Finally, the essay examines the notion of the reviled “foreign woman” in the Historical Books, with particular attention to Rahab in Joshua and Jezebel in Kings. In its attempts to construct Israelite identity over and against that of foreign women, the text necessarily inscribes its own destabilization of that identity.

Theology of Resilience Amidst Vulnerability in the Book of Ruth

This article explores Ruth’s theology of resilience amidst vulnerability: a resilience rooted in ḥesed (loving kindness, a generosity beyond the call of duty). Ḥesed is a powerful social force that could address current issues for those both in privileged positions and in vulnerable situations. A re-reading of Ruth offers modern theologians and serious students of the Bible pathways towards building resilience amidst vulnerability, and in caring for those in vulnerable positions. The text at hand offers a pathway to be true to one’s core values and character, even amidst desperate situations. In Ruth resilience is developed by caring for others, identifying with a particular faith community, and taking initiatives while maintaining integrity. The narrative unveils a sustainable life of resilience that happens when one’s private and public life is lived congruently to each other. This article also reads Ruth’s narrative through a lens of a minority foreign woman that uses feminist and post-colonial approaches while looking at Ruth through a hermeneutic of trust. First, the author identifies her assumptions and considerations. Secondly, the article examines resilience as rooted in one’s identity and explores ḥesed under cultural and spiritual frameworks, within the narrative of Ruth and Naomi’s road scene from Moab to Bethlehem. Lastly, it examines resilience as rooted in ḥesed, within the narrative of the threshing floor scene encounter between Ruth and Boaz. The road and threshing floor scenes are decisive moments for Ruth. Her words and actions in each instance reveal her resilience: her strength of mind, emotion, and spirit, in spite of her vulnerability.

Object

Drawing on autoethnography as a genre, this letter of disapplication to the discipline of organizational communication is organized around short poems. Speaking from my positionality as a brown foreign woman of Ivorian and French heritage, I walk the reader through my experience of the walkout at the 2019 National Communication Association Organizational Communication Division's Top Paper Panel. Weaving in recent and distant pasts, I claim that this particular encounter is interconnected to other daily embodied experiences of racism, sexism, and ethnocentrism that constitute the normal for many people of color in communication studies.

Sensing ethnic difference: A kinesthetic reading of Proverbs 7.1-27

The historical identity of the נכריה‎/אשה זרה‎ in Proverbs 7 has been a vexing quandary in modern biblical scholarship. Although many proposals have been offered, there is, as of yet, no critical consensus. My aim is not to settle the matter once and for all, but to approach the problem from a different angle. This article offers a fresh reading of Proverbs 7.1-27 in order to shift attention away from who the Foreign Woman might be historically to how her foreignness is constructed ideologically. Specifically, the argument draws on kinesthetic theory to reexamine the pedagogical use of sensory data to enhance persuasion. As we shall see, the father deploys a visceral narrative that transmits the ethnicized and gendered otherness of the Foreign Woman in sensory fashion (e.g. aural, gustative, tactile, visual, olfactory). This pedagogical tactic functions as a strategic form of kinesthetic empathy that subconsciously inscribes social and religious boundary markers in the sensorium. In this way, the father’s instruction encodes an ethnic sensory that is neurologically wired, so to speak, to perceive Lady Wisdom as more appealing than the seductions of the Foreign Woman. By drawing attention to the didactic strategy of shaping wisdom in the sensorium, this kinesthetic reading highlights the critical role of sensory perception in mediating ideologies of difference.