Bryocrumia Malabarica Spec. Nova (Bryophyta, Hypnaceae), A Second Species of the Genus from the Western Ghats of India

A new species similar to Bryocrumia vivicolor, the only known species in the genus Bryocrumia, is described as Bryocrumia malabarica spec. nova from the Malabar Wildlife Sanctuary in the Western Ghats of Kerala in Peninsular India. It resembles Homalia in external appearance and was collected in a rheophytic habitat along a stream channel in the evergreen forest. The new species is characterised by closely arranged leaves with distinct tricostate, ovate-rounded to truncate leaves, upper margin of leaf rounded with fine serrations and an inconspicuous central strand in stem cross section.

New trenching results along the İznik segment of the central strand of the North Anatolian Fault (Turkey): an integration with preexisting data

This paper provides a new contribution to the construction of the complex and fragmentary mosaic of the Late Holocene earthquakes history of the İznik segment of the central strand of the North Anatolian Fault (CNAF) in Turkey. The CNAF clearly displays lower dextral slip rates with respect to the northern strand however, surface rupturing and large damaging earthquakes (M > 7) occurred in the past, leaving clear signatures in the built and natural environments. The association of these historical events to specific earthquake sources (e.g., Gemlik, İznik, or Geyve fault segments) is still a matter of debate. We excavated two trenches across the İznik fault trace near Mustafali, a village about 10 km WSW of İznik where the morphological fault scarp was visible although modified by agricultural activities. Radiocarbon and TL dating on samples collected from the trenches show that the displaced deposits are very recent and span the past 2 millennia at most. Evidence for four surface faulting events was found in the Mustafali trenches. The integration of these results with historical data and previous paleoseismological data yields an updated Late Holocene history of surface-rupturing earthquakes along the İznik Fault in 1855, 740 (715), 362, and 121 CE. Evidence for the large M7 + historical earthquake dated 1419 CE generally attributed to this fault, was not found at any trench site along the İznik fault nor in the subaqueous record. This unfit between paleoseismological, stratigraphic, and historical data highlights one more time the urge for extensive paleoseismological trenching and offshore campaigns because of the high potential to solve the uncertainties on the seismogenic history (age, earthquake location, extent of the rupture and size) of this portion of NAFZ and especially on the attribution of historical earthquakes to the causative fault.

Conclusion: The Shame is (Not) Over

The Conclusion of Writing Shame reflects back on the key discussions of the book: the origins and manifestations of a contemporary ‘shame culture’; the persistence of shame and the challenges that it poses for writers; the formal and generic disruptions involved in the writing of shame; the uses and limitations of shared feelings of shame as a basis for political action or solidarity; the uses of shame as a tool of analysis, within and beyond queer theory and feminism; the fraught relationship between shame, pleasure and spectacle; and above all, the particular imbrication of shame and femininity, of shame and women’s supposed sexual impropriety – the central argument here, that shame’s role in femininity is constitutive, not merely regulatory. In addition, the Conclusion touches briefly on several recent novels and collections of short stories by women authors, revealing therein a continuing preoccupation with questions of desire, sexuality, sexual violence and embodiment, and suggesting that, while shame may not be the central strand, it remains on the edges of all of these considerations of femininity, female desire and women’s bodies within patriarchal cultures.

Class, Taste, and Literature: The Case of Ivar Lo-Johansson and Swedish Working-Class Literature

This article discusses the tradition of Swedish working-class literature and the relationship between taste and class. First, I analyze the representation of this relationship in Swedish working-class writer Ivar Lo-Johansson’s novel Kungsgatan [King Street] from 1935. Thereafter, I discuss the whole tradition of Swedish working-class literature—in which LoJohansson’s novel occupies a central position. This tradition constitutes a challenge to received ideas about class and taste, mainly because its consecration as a central strand in Swedish literature and its dissemination to a mass audience in the working class make it problematic to uphold conventional distinctions between popular/working-class and high/bourgeois culture. Finally, I argue that the challenging of these distinctions is not only a key to a better understanding of Lo-Johansson’s novel, but it also shows that Swedish working-class literature can serve as a catalyst for re-theorizations within working-class studies of the relationship between class and taste as something that is historically specific, rather than universal.

Rebuilding the Church: Barbara Pym’s Parochialism

Despite being relegated to the sidelines of British literature as a female novelist, Barbara Pym holds faith with a central strand of literary culture, namely the place of the church in the community and the place of women within the Church of England. Pym anthropologizes religious observance, with particular irony directed at the exclusionary hierarchy of the church, which admits only men to its ranks of curates, vicars, and bishops while relegating women to parsons’ wives or ‘excellent women’ who decorate altars and arrange jumble sales. In Excellent Women, Jane and Prudence, and A Glass of Blessings, Pym centres novelistic representation on the parish, even as she critiques the demotion of women and queer men to second-class status with church-defined communities. On occasion, she appeals to ‘paganism’ to invigorate Christian observance. She also appeals to the contemporary discussion of reconstruction in the postwar years as a way of rethinking parishes and church communities.

“Never Better”: Affliction, Consolation and the Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern England

This essay examines the central role of consolation in early modern Protestant culture. It first maps a number of the important tropes in early modern Protestant consolation literature, focusing on England. It then analyses the language of consolation in early modern printed and manuscript sources on the legal proceedings against the Puritan pamphleteers Bastwick, Burton and Prynne, showing how consolation was both widely shared and politically contentious, undermining the very idea of a unified Protestant cause which it served to foster. Finally, I examine the notebooks of the London wood-turner Nehemiah Wallington as a case study of the ways in which self-writers, in recording and reflecting on affliction, drew on consolation discourses. While consolation is a central strand in Wallington’s reflections on affliction, it is also elusive and provisional, especially where everyday, personal suffering is concerned. In Wallington, consolation seems available especially if the religious suffering it alleviates has a political dimension, and can be construed as a way of suffering for the true faith.

The Chemist as Philosopher: D. I. Mendeleev’s “The Unit” and “Worldview”

The Periodic System of chemical elements is almost certainly the most widely recognized scientific object in the world today, even though extensive debates persist about what it exactly is. Is it a theory, a collection of empirical data, a tabular arrangement of that data, a particular (best) tabular arrangement, a “paper tool,” or something else besides? Precisely because the periodic system has over close to 150 years remained so significant to the training and practice of scientists, the broader field of science studies has devoted considerable attention to it, most prominently in the philosophy of science. Among the many different approaches to articulating a philosophical foundation for the periodic system, one central strand is historicist, which places great emphasis on the individual (or individuals) to whom one attributes its discovery (Gordin 2012). Almost universally, credit for the formulation of the periodic system is assigned to St. Petersburg chemist Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834–1907) for his 1869 table of elements, which he later used to predict the properties of three yet-undiscovered elements. Although the philosophical justification of the periodic system by no means requires engagement with Mendeleev’s own views about the periodic system—or, as argued in Gordin (2004, 182–189), how those views changed over the course of his lifetime as periodicity became more central to chemical practice—nonetheless it remains of interest to understand precisely what Mendeleev thought he was about in constructing his system, as well as his post hoc justifications of it. There is, however, an obstacle to the full development of this line of inquiry: the Russian language itself. There is a substantial body of Imperial Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet scholarship that would be of interest to the international community of philosophers and historians of chemistry, but it remains locked in a language not widely read by Western scholars. Even more problematic, only a very slender selection of primary sources are accessible in Western European languages (most widely cited are those available in English, although the corpus is larger if one includes French and German).

A revision of the genus Seligeria (Seligeriaceae, Bryophyta) in Russia inferred from molecular data

The genus Seligeria is revised based on morphological and DNA sequence data of nuclear ITS and chloroplastic trnL-F. Fifteen species from most infrageneric units of the genus are recovered in two well supported phylogenetic clusters that are also distinctive in morphology. The clade with the type species of the genus, S. pusilla, includes also S. donniana, S. brevifolia, S. calcarea, S. patula, S. tristichoides, S. trifaria, and S. oelandica. These species are characterized by short, cupulate or turbinate capsules widened towards the mouth, and the lack of a stem central strand. Another clade includes species with rather long, mainly ovate to cylindrical capsules and more or less developed stem central strand: S. campylopoda, S. recurvata, S. subimmersa, S. diversifolia, and S. polaris. These two clusters do not show sister relationships, but the second one appears more closely related to the Blindia clade. To resolve the apparent paraphyly, the latter phylogenetic group is segregated in a genus Blindiadelphus. In some aspects of morphology and ecology it is intermediate between Seligeria s. str. and Blindia, but differs from both genera in subquadrate upper leaf cells and thin- to moderately thick-walled rectangular exothecial cells. Molecular phylogenetic analyses revealed heterogeneity within the specimens previously referred to Blindiadelphus campylopodus, indicating a presence in Asian Russia of an undescribed species that is described here as Blindiadelphus sibiricus. It differs from B. campylopodus by the larger spores and typically rounded leaf apices. The isotype specimen of S. galinae appeared to be nearly identical to S. donniana in the sequences of ITS and trnL-F, and examination of morphology revealed no substantial differences between these species. Thus, we consider S. galinae as a synonym of S. donniana. The genus Blindiadelphus includes species of Seligeria subg. Blindiadelphus and S. subg. Cyrtoseligeria, which however are found intermingled in the molecular phylogenetic analysis. Thus the genus Blindiadelphus is accepted without any infrageneric taxa. The phylogenetic tree is congruent with the subdivision of the genus Seligeria s.str into subg. Seligeria, subg. Anodon, subg. Megalosporia and one newly established subgenus Robustidontia for S. brevifolia.

The genus Gertrudiella Broth. (Pottiaceae, Bryophyta) in Paraguay

As part of a study of the bryophytes of South America, some samples collected in Paraguay were identified as Gertrudiella uncinicoma, a species of Pottiaceae characterized by the presence of a well-developed central strand and a thick-walled hyalodermis on the stem, lanceolate leaves, laminal cells ventrally mammillose, and several rows of guides cells at the transverse section of the costae. This work represents the first record of the genus from Paraguay. A complete description, ecological comments, illustrations in optical and scanning electron microscopy, and a distribution map are presented.

Hyophila flavolimbata, a new species of Pottiaceae from northwestern Yunnan, China

A new species of Pottiaceae, Hyophila flavolimbata S. He & Y.-J. Yi, is described and illustrated from northwestern Yunnan Province, China. The new species is most similar to H. involuta in having spathulate leaves with non-papillose leaf cells and two stereid bands in costa. Its distinguishing characteristics include a differentiated leaf margin bordered by 3–4 rows of lightly yellowish thick-walled cells, leaf cells completely plane on both abaxial and adaxial leaf surfaces, papillose stem epidermal cells, a layer of pseudoleptoids developed next to hydroids in central strand, and the presence of subguide cells in costa.