The rejection of Mou Tun-fei’s End of Track (late 1960s), an ‘invisible’ film, never distributed, proves to what extent the themes it tackled (homosexuality, class difference, nihilism) were taboo for an entire generation. Banana Paradise (1980s) deals with the way two brothers in arms survive by usurping the identity of deceased comrades and eventually living in a society in exile tainted by the memory of the continent. Finally, Gf/Bf (2000s) develops themes that were once censored (homosexuality, democratization) and which resurface through the lens of a love triangle. Despite their heterogeneity, these films allow us to draw a history of this fraternal relationship in ambiguous and dissonant contexts. Through three films from different periods, I trace the evolution over time of the representation of friendship between men, an evolution that reveals a ‘paradigm shift’ within Taiwanese society itself.

This paper examines the core twin concepts of secularism and pluralism and their location within the Indian constitutional discourse, through a discussion of the hijab ban in the South Indian state of Karnataka. I suggest that attempts at Hindu majoritarian subversion of these core principles face challenges due to the structure of the Indian Constitution, and due to the constitutional agency and mutinies set in motion by women through their legal challenge of state action. I discuss the hijab ban in India and the two judgments on the ban as an example of this attempted subversion but also of its failure, suggesting that these judgments fall short in their reading of this interrelationship between secularism and pluralism. In doing so, I introduce a threefold analytical categorisation, pluralist constitutionalism, constitutional appropriation and constitutional derailment, to help us outline the tensions inherent in constitutional politics in the present.

This article asks what Paul’s claims about cosmology signify in terms of his competitive position on the nature and purpose of the moon. Specifically, in an age in which discourses and demonstrations involving the moon were rife, I argue that Paul is invoking principals shared by writers like Plutarch on the “double death” of the human being (first as soma on the earth, then as psyche/nous in orbit around and on the moon) and that he envisions an afterlife among the stars in pneumatic form that, to the degree it is anthropomorphic, is ideally male. I also posit that this aspect of Paul’s thought has been overlooked, in part due to the idiosyncratic-yet-pervasive translation of doxa in Paul as “glory” rather than in terms related to typologies and judgment, as it is elsewhere in Greek philosophical literature.

This article challenges the prevailing narrative surrounding the Japanese manufacturing industry in the post-World War II era, which predominantly centers on large corporations and male engineers. It sheds light on the vital role played by Japanese housewives in shaping product innovation. It argues that the exclusion of consumers, particularly women, from existing industrial models carries a gendered dimension. By presenting Japanese housewives as active stakeholders who defy stereotypes and enhance their lives by expressing their opinions, we aim to offer a fresh perspective on innovation and product development. The article specifically focuses on the electric appliance industry and draws upon a diverse range of sources, including women’s magazines and corporate archives, to uncover the hidden aspects of gender within the Japanese economic miracle. It shows that housewives have played an active role in product innovation and that women’s magazines have made this possible by acting as intermediaries between women and companies.

This report is about the ASMI Summer School held in Pisa on 22–23 June 2023. The conference focused on twentieth-century history issues: gender studies, cultural studies, resistance studies, fascism studies and mafia studies, with the addition of a round table and two keynote lectures, which discussed the profession of the modern historian and the history of racism in Italy from the Second World War to the present.

This paper critically analyses the hypothesis of the aetiological link between EDCs and trans identities from a scientific point of view, evincing its lack of evidence. It also problematizes the hypothesis by drawing from gender studies scholars who have denounced the transsex panic underlying the scientific literature on the effects of EDC on non-human animals, as well as from philosophical, biological, STG studies’, and neuroscientific elaborations that address sex-gender identities. It finds that the hypothesis that causally links prenatal exposure to EDCs and trans identities, which fuses biological determinism with a toxic and perturbing element, not only obscures the dynamic processual and relational character of trans identities, but also offers a pathologising understanding of them.

A partir de las series fotográficas Padre Patria (2014–2019) y Vírgenes de la Puerta (2014–2016), de Juan José Barboza-Gubo y Andrew Mroczek, este ensayo reflexiona acerca de la identidad de las mujeres trans en el Perú desde la sexualidad, el mestizaje y la colonialidad del poder. Padre Patria ofrece una narrativa visual de los crímenes de odio hacia la comunidad LGBTI en diferentes lugares del país. En Vírgenes de la Puerta se propone un nuevo modelo de feminidad a través de la apropiación de íconos religiosos como la Virgen María. A partir de enfoques decoloniales, feministas, de diversidad sexual y biopoder, este trabajo indaga sobre la reformulación del retrato fotográfico de las mujeres trans a través de la estética mariana y la violencia patriarcal. La dimensión política de este proyecto fotográfico busca visibilizar las experiencias de las mujeres trans en la actualidad.

This review essay looks at the plurality of research conducted today in the sociology of financial markets by examining a pioneering and little-known study - the PhD thesis of Ira Oscar Glick. It is indeed possible to find in this 1957 thesis some insights that are later solidified by several contemporary lines of research in the sociology of financial markets (new economic sociology, science and technology studies, gender studies, Bourdieusian sociology, ethnomethodology, the economics of conventions). This rediscovery of a key author in the history of the field may lead us to reconsider his legacy and delve into a landmark work that potentially still harbors unexplored insights capable of opening up new avenues for research.

Historians working on slavery always must perform a balancing act between narrating the atrocities of oppression and the possibilities of resistance to and escape from it. The three books under review all do a wonderful job in showing us a way out of this conundrum. Jessica Johnson and Sophie White do so by analysing the intimate lives of enslaved women in early modern New Orleans and West Africa (Johnson) and enslaved women and men in Louisiana (White), while Stella Dadzie looks at the means of resistance taken by the enslaved in the British Atlantic world. Their work allows us to better understand the historical reality of slavery as it applied to at least 15 million people, while stressing the notion that the historical actors whose voices were recovered, were first of all humans, all of them different, and all of them, in their own way, able to deal with the horrors imposed on them – by being intimate with their peers, by running away, or by fighting their oppressors.

While MERIP's offered incisive critiques of the power relations that defined the existing field of Middle East studies, this essay explores how it also represents an alternative model of knowledge production, built outside academia, that has helped reshape scholarship and teaching about the Middle East and North Africa and more broadly about the US relationship to the region. The essay also introduces the other contributions in this forum including an edited transcript of 2020 MESA roundtable on the impact of MERIP on Middle East studies, a historical account that traces the origins of the MERIP collective and three essays exploring the evolution of MERIP's approach addressing, in turn, contributions and innovations within the areas of critical political economy, gender studies, and the politics of culture. Finally, drawing on these contributions as well as Middle East Report issue no. 300 that reviews how MERIP covered various topics, the essay concludes by highlighting the continuing value of MERIP as a teaching resource that allows students and others to understand the transformations across the region over the past half century as well as shifting approaches and theories that have come to help define Middle East studies as an academic field.

When other measures for material conditions are scarce or unreliable, the use of height is now common to evaluate economic conditions during economic development. However, throughout US economic development, height data by gender have been slow to emerge. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, female and male statures remained constant. Agricultural workers had taller statures than workers in other occupations, and the female agricultural height premium was over twice that of males. For both females and males, individuals with fairer complexions were taller than their darker complexioned counterparts. Gender collectively had the greatest explanatory effect associated with stature, followed by age and nativity. Socioeconomic status and birth period had the smallest collective effects with stature.