Search Results (56)

The Third Plague Pandemic originated in 19th-century Yunnan, China, yet the confluence of factors that enabled the pandemic strain Yersinia pestis 1.ORI to emerge and spread globally remains unclear. Using a One Health framework, this study investigates how human-driven ecological and socioeconomic changes disrupted zoonotic barriers in Yunnan. We conduct an interdisciplinary historical analysis, triangulating evidence from Qing dynasty gazetteers, environmental reconstructions, and biological data on plague ecology, including host–vector dynamics, to model conditions for spillover and spread and to build a convergent, validated case. The analysis identifies a mid-19th-century convergence that created a high-risk interface: widespread deforestation from mining and agriculture, rapid population growth, increased synanthropic rat densities, and the turmoil of the Panthay Rebellion. Socioeconomic stressors—labour migration into mining valleys, currency devaluation undermining food security, and comorbidities such as malnutrition, heavy metal contamination, and opium use—may have further increased host susceptibility. This socio-ecological context catalysed spillover and establishment of the 1.ORI strain in commensal rat populations. The findings show the pandemic’s origin reflects spatiotemporal convergence rather than a single cause, while noting uncertainty in quantifying historical ecological and health parameters; the case offers a framework for assessing contemporary pandemic risks. It underscores how layered pressures operate across timescales. Full article

This article examines the revival of the Romantic Ballad in contemporary anglophone writing through Vanavil K. Ravi’s The Ballad of the Warrior-Girl, which reimagines the Tamil folk figure, Kuyili and her role in the Sivagangai rebellion, a Romantic-era anti-colonial uprising in South India. In retelling this folk memory, Ravi mobilizes a Romantic-era form to recast an instance of a local uprising, rife with caste dynamics, into a national and globalized narrative aligned with neo-nationalist storytelling conventions. By transforming a lower-caste, female militant in a local language into a Hindu, pan-Indian icon of patriotic martyrdom, Ravi’s ballad participates in a larger trend of globalized translations. I situate the text within intersecting histories of Romanticisms, balladic traditions, and the global circulation of literary forms. Through this, I outline what I call the ‘global ballad’ as distinct from the ‘globalized ballad’. While the latter flattens cultural difference into consumable cosmopolitanism, the former centers opacity and untranslatability across rhizomatic relationalities. I show how reading literary texts alongside different critical traditions is a productive way to counter the exoticized, neoliberal circulation of literature in translation. Full article

This study examines the interrelationship between historical and political context, paradigmatic experience, social memory, and the spiritual formation of Korean Christianity. To be specific, this paper investigates the impact of ideological confrontation and political factions on Korean Christianity during the Yeosu–Suncheon Incident in October 1948 (henceforth, the 10.19 Incident). Amid the incident, military rebellion, suppression, and massacres took place, and the Korean Church was simultaneously both victim and perpetrator. Moreover, the impact of the factionalism of that era continues to this day through the subsequent distortion of memories surrounding the incident. Such memories have been preserved and transmitted, shaping the essence of Korean Christian spirituality. In this regard, this article presents a phenomenological analysis of the relationship between political faction, paradigmatic experience, social memory, and Korean Christianity, drawing on memory theory. In contrast to such a phenomenon, this paper also finds an alternative spirituality by recovering silent, unspoken, marginalized, and forgotten memories. Full article

This article offers the first systematic analytical methodology to understand distant play as a multidimensional, ludoliterary, critical, and philosophical practice of engaging with so-called idle or semi-idle games. It uses Anselm Pyta’s The Longing, a so far underexplored semi-idle, slow game that challenges traditional gameplay paradigms through its metareferential, bookish, philosophical, and contemplative structure, as a case study. Our central argument is that The Longing deploys antimimetic temporal mechanics, interpassive forms of bookish play, and ideas of existentialist resistance to explore themes of time, agency, and existential longing, thereby offering a reflective space for dealing with neo-liberal, post-pandemic, polycrisis-stricken angst. To come to terms with the multidisciplinary complexities of the game, our paper adopts a triadic analytical methodology interweaving insights from postclassical, medium-specific narratology, platform-comparative literary analysis, and existentialist philosophy. This combined approach transcends existing ludoliterary frameworks and accounts for divergent forms of play. Our first focus is the game’s multiscalar temporal layering and the strategies it requires from players to “ludify” antimimetic frictions between those layers. This is followed by an examination of how the game constructs a bookish player by interweaving ludexical processes of reading, unreading, dis-reading, and writing (in) books and other printed documents. Finally, we turn to the game’s complex interpassive relationships between player, player-character, and game world, highlighting in particular the role of walking, collecting, building, and searching as acts of catharsis and rebellion, and examining failure as a valid ludic alternative to survival and happiness. Ultimately, our analysis renders distant play as a form of parasocial resistance, which in The Longing manifests as an affective and philosophically fine-grained combination of more-than-human relationality, care, and relief vis-a-vis the nothingness of lost hope. The game thus offers a new form of e-literary engagement, placing books and their “unnatural,” transmediated affordances front and center while questioning the capitalist undercurrents of contemporary literary media and critiquing a culture of acceleration. Full article

This essay examines how textiles operate as violent aesthetic tools in the formation of Black existence during American slavery. While the American plantation relied on cotton production and the regulation of what the enslaved would wear, enslaved people transformed these fibers into instruments of refusal, creativity, and ontological reclamation. A study of textiles during American slavery exposes how the violence of enslavement was lived on the surface of the body through clothing. Reading art and runaway advertisements alongside narratives by Olaudah Equiano, John Brown, Booker T. Washington, and Harriet Jacobs, this article reveals how the enslaved resisted and rebelled against the textiles they were forced to wear. Bringing together visual art, runaway slave advertisements, and slave narratives, I argue that textiles form a crucial archive for understanding Black rebellion and resistance. This essay situates historical acts of resistance through textiles; it is through clothing that enslaved people articulated a radical insistence on their presence, thus turning fiber into flesh. Full article

The gut immune microenvironment and the liver engage in intricate information exchange via the gut–liver axis. The disruption of these interactions plays a pivotal role in the formation and exacerbation of pathological damage to the liver. The gut immune microenvironment is not an independent layer of the gut barrier; rather, it permeates and regulates all other barrier functions, serving as the core coordinator. Disruption of the immune microenvironment in the gut–liver axis drives progression across the full disease spectrum—from steatosis to hepatitis, fibrosis, and even liver cancer—through the continuous influx of immune-stimulatory signals that overwhelm the liver’s intrinsic immune regulatory mechanisms. Dysfunction of innate immunity components, amplification of inflammatory factors and key cellular signaling pathways, activation of adaptive immune T cells, and systemic effects mediated by liver-derived inflammatory factors collectively form a disordered immune microenvironment. This damages the intestinal barrier and exacerbates liver disease via the gut–liver axis, leading to further intestinal injury, thus establishing a self-reinforcing vicious cycle. Current therapeutic strategies based on modulating the gut–liver axis microenvironment remain limited, yet studies have demonstrated that suppressing gut immune cells, cytokines, and signaling pathways can help delay liver disease progression. Hopefully, future combined, precise, and cutting-edge gut immunotherapies will provide more effective strategies for liver disease treatment. Full article

The Boxer Rebellion, as a significant historical episode in modern Chinese history, has been primarily studied through official archives and Boxer propaganda Posters. Chinese Christian literature remain underutilized in current scholarship. Quan Huo Ji 拳祸记 (The Record of Boxer Rebellion), is an important ecclesiastical document, compiled by the Catholic priest Li Wenyu. While reflecting an apologetic stance, it nonetheless provides valuable insights from the perspective of common people and narrates the experiences of marginalized individuals, offering a systematic account of the suffering endured by various dioceses. Within this text, three categories of common people emerge. First, the lay faithful, who, under the violent threat of “apostasy or death”, remained steadfast in their faith. Second, anti-Christian civilians, whose motivations—though often framed as expressions of national or social grievance—may in fact reflect a release of personal frustrations and desires. Third, those sympathetic to Christians either maintained a neutral stance or offered assistance within their limited capacity. These individual experiences, often overlooked by mainstream historiography, compensate for the limitations of conventional analytical frameworks. They also vividly illustrate how ordinary people navigated between forced compromise and active resistance. Through a microhistorical lens, these personal trajectories offer a multi-dimensional portrayal of the survival dilemmas. Full article

From the late seventeenth century onward, the central aim of missionary Christianity in the British Atlantic was to Christianize slavery; that is, to render the institution morally and theologically acceptable within a Christian framework. This work of “amelioration” was envisioned as a gradual process, with missionaries from both the established Church of England and a host of dissenting denominations playing a central role in its advancement. Collectively, they promoted a discourse of Christian slavery that aimed both to reassure slaveowners of the compatibility between slavery and Christianity and to frame the conversion of enslaved people as a means of producing a more obedient, industrious, and morally disciplined labor force. To be sure, in promoting a Christianized vision of slavery, missionary societies were deeply complicit in the exploitation of enslaved Africans. Yet, ironically, the very tools they employed to pacify and discipline (biblical instruction and literacy) were repurposed to articulate a platform of resistance, ultimately contributing to slavery’s undoing. This essay employs critical discourse analysis to examine how these dynamics unfolded in two pivotal uprisings in the British Atlantic world: the Demerara Rebellion of 1823 and the Christmas Rebellion of 1831 in Jamaica. In both cases, missionary endeavors contributed to the counter-discursive appropriation of biblical theology that played a critical role in transforming enslaved people into agents of political change. Still, reimagining scripture was only part of the story. Crucially, it was the alignment of a new religious consciousness with unfolding political events, that transformed simmering discontent into open revolt. Full article

Historical discussions regarding labour organizing within American prisons tend to focus on the period stretching from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, framing those years as both the origin and apex of nationalized and organized inmate-led strikes behind bars. This focus is partly due to a counter-historical assumption that the rebellions of previous eras were primarily focused on “good housekeeping” and were not political in nature. This article challenges ongoing scholarly assumptions that incarcerated Americans were ever pre-political, providing a microhistorical account of the first significant labour unrest at New York’s Attica State Prison in 1932. Through an analysis of the strike’s leadership structure, this paper claims that there is no reason to believe that incarcerated Americans lacked political identities prior to their contact with conscientious objectors, Marxist revolutionaries, and other educated ideologues. Rather, this article contends that the Depression-era Jewish and Italian inmates who led the 1932 Attica strike carried into the prison their own form of political pragmatism, drawn from their experiences operating within interwar-era organized crime syndicates. While this was not a universal experience among incarcerated people, it is indicative of the notion that interwar-era strikes throughout the country surely drew from their own local, informal political norms. This paper concludes that it is unlikely any penal rebellion could exist outside of politics and that historians of prison rebellions must be more willing to look for indirect indicators of political identities that naturally emerge from the struggles of everyday life. Full article

Migration issues remain one of the most contentious topics in contemporary social discourse. This paper reinterprets key Old Testament figures who can be identified as asylum seekers or political migrants. The central question is the following: who represent asylum seekers in the Old Testament? Employing a narrative methodology, the study focuses on biblical stories and their thematic development rather than linguistic or historical analysis. The paper unfolds in three key sections. First, it defines asylum seekers and reviews prior research related to migration in the Old Testament. Second, it analyzes three significant biblical figures—Moses, Elijah, and David—who represent the law, the prophets, and the Messiah, respectively. Their migration experiences (genocide, resistance, political violence, dictatorship, and rebellion) provide a theological bridge for churches to engage with contemporary political migrants. Lastly, the paper offers practical approaches for churches to support asylum seekers. Full article

Exploring the reality of women with cancer involves acknowledging the pressures of conformity and loneliness that often lead to silence. It is a silence that hides women’s experiences, emotions, and reflections on suffering, death, and despair, undermining the process of self-revelation and community support that could develop on their journey with cancer. The article aims to analyze Audre Lorde’s reflections in The Cancer Journals in dialogue with Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love and The Book of Margery Kempe, to articulate aspects of an eschatology from a woman’s perspective that are pastorally beneficial for discourse on suffering, death, and hope. The cornerstones of this eschatology can motivate the sufferer to stand at the crossroads of accepting suffering as a reality while actively resisting it, creating a space to determine whether one’s suffering has meaning in their life. Full article

This article focuses on participation in youth-led climate-oriented groups and the role of this form of civic engagement for young people. Thirty interviews were conducted with 13- to 18-year-olds belonging to four groups: Extinction Rebellion Youth, Sustainabiliteens, Sunrise Movement, or school-affiliated clubs. The participants had been part of their group for an average of 1.5 years, coming from either the United States (n = 26) or Canada (n = 4). They were predominantly female (n = 22), with a few male (n = 5) and a small number identifying as non-binary (n = 3). Significant in the thematic analysis was the critical role of increased meaning-making, which involved relationship-building, processing emotions, and taking action. The peer-led group settings served to create community, work through the range of emotions the climate crisis evoked, and generate actions that felt purposeful at both the individual and collective levels. In these spaces, young people seek meaning together, and they propose and demand action from governmental bodies and corporations on climate change. Through everyday activism, young people express an ecocitizenship that is constructive, hopeful, and generative. In a world characterized by the climate crisis, joining and contributing to youth-led climate groups is becoming part of young people’s identity development, a way of enacting citizenship and expressing political agency. Full article

Background/Objectives: This study conducted a secondary and integrative analysis of qualitative data on adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with biliary atresia who survive with their native livers. These individuals struggle with independence and self-care due to prolonged parental involvement. Prior studies have insufficiently clarified how AYAs and parents jointly navigate daily responsibility transitions during this period. Therefore, we aimed to elucidate this process and develop a practical model to support nursing care. Methods: Semi-structured interview data from eight adolescent–parent dyads (one male and seven females, aged 17–25; one father and seven mothers, aged 40–60) were reanalyzed using the modified grounded theory approach. By reframing the analytical focus on dyadic interactions, four transition phases were identified, which were then integrated with the findings of two prior studies to construct an integrative process model. Results: The transition comprised four phases: (1) parent-led recuperation, (2) a vicious cycle of control and rebellion, (3) passing the axis of responsibility, and (4) aligning the parent–child rhythm to create a patient-centered life. The transition processes were shaped by changes in cognition and behavior. The model illustrates mutual adaptation through communication, negotiation, and reflection, identifying opportunities for nursing intervention. Conclusions: This process model offers a practical framework for nurses to assess readiness for care transitions, support transitional role shifts, and co-develop care strategies. The model provides insights into relationship-based communication and shared decision-making in transitional care by capturing the relational dynamics between AYAs and their parents. Full article

Some of Spain’s greatest humanists—Juan Luis Vives, Antonio de Nebrija, Juan de Ávila, Luis de León, and Benito Arias Montano—were from a converso background. Recent scholarship suggests that two of the three most influential religious movements in sixteenth-century Spain—Juan de Ávila’s evangelical movement and Teresa of Ávila’s Barefoot Carmelites—were founded by conversos and presented converso membership, whose winds of religious innovation to tame Christian Orthodoxy and Counter-Reformation Spanish society, through the influence of Italian Humanism and reform, prioritized spiritual practice, social toleration, and religious concord. Indeed, Santa Teresa de Ávila, a major innovator within the Spanish Church, was herself from a converso family with Jewish ancestry. She became a key female theologist who transcended as an identity marker of the Spanish Baroque, conceived as quintessential of the Spanish Golden Age. Coopted in different periods, she “reappeared” in the 1930s as Patron of the Sección Femenina de la Falange y de las JONS, the women’s branch of the new radical right, turning into a role model of femininity for highly conservative religious women. Consecrated as “Santa de la Raza”, she became the undisputable womanized icon of the so-called “Spanish Crusade”, the slogan which General F. Franco implemented, with the approval of the Spanish Catholic Church, to re-cast in a pseudo-theological narrative the rebellion against the Spanish Second Republic in July 1936. This article examines different appropriations of the figure of Teresa de Ávila as a pillar of “Hispanidad”, in the last centuries within the changing sociopolitical contexts and theological debates in which this instrumentalization appeared. By highlighting the plasticity of this converso figure, the article suggests possible lines of research regarding the Jewish origins of some national icons in Spain. Full article

Massachusetts in the 1780s was deeply polarized. In the preparty era, the most developed communities were able to monopolize the levers of policymaking and governance in order to secure their interests. The least commercial–cosmopolitan communities, lacking organization and resources, were unable to advance their interests. The least commercial–cosmopolitan communities’ inability to influence politics and secure relief stemmed from the absence of party competition. The absence of oppositional political organizations to counteract the natural advantages of elites in preparty politics obstructed the representation of the least commercial–cosmopolitan communities. Such obstruction caused the accumulation of populist frustration, culminating in Shays’s Rebellion. Full article