In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Two Poems JOSEPHINE BALMER The House Opposite (Walbrook, London, 78 CE) Give this note to the cooper Junius, just opposite the house of Catullus... —Bloomberg Writing Tablets, 14 I unpack my treasures of Syrian glass, plates sourced from the slopes of Vesuvius. The walls I paint with frail shoots of grass and a poppy—my own hidden message for those who know the poet, my namesake: a flower (...) fallen at the meadow’s edge... I had pictured myself as a pioneer composing stark, startling, northern poems as fêted (one day) as my famed forebear. Besides, I’d been priced out of Rome. Yet each word I write I later delete. I watch the starlings rising up at dusk above the teeming, cloud-fogged streets like a simile slipping out of grasp. I hear the drunken Rhenish equites chant their taproom verse, swilled in vomit our bleak reward for six months’ back pay. My voice still clogs with Londinium clay. All I am here is the house opposite the cooper, two doors from the brewer. The only lines that come, come in error and for them: barrels, bills, more calls for beer. arion 27.2 fall 2019 Catullus the Slave (Walbrook, London, 79 CE) To Catullus the slave of Romanius Faustinus: 2000 units, 65 denarii [lines struck through] —Bloomberg Writing Tablets, 70 Six months on, the ice kicked in. My page was frost-white, its lines still frozen. By the following year I had given up, sold everything— volcanic crockery to the cooper, ink-smudged glass to the brewer who was branching out to wine. When even that was not enough I sold myself to Romanius Faustinus, a scrawny Gallic works contractor (a literary man, he said, was worth more than most). I did his books. I counted bricks, tessera for mosaics shifting back into the face of Orpheus, accounts closed, nothing outstanding. I learnt silence where once I spoke— he owned the air, he owned my breath— so I mouthed the verse I used to quote, the finest Catullus (snr) had written: you pea-brain, hairy-legged hick whose farts are your best feature... And concurred re bastard Caesar: why did he ever eye up Britain, that cursed place, ugly and remote? two poems 136... (shrink)

Over the years, companies have adopted hiring algorithms because they promise wider job candidate pools, lower recruitment costs and less human bias. Despite these promises, they also bring perils. Using them can inflict unintentional harms on individual human rights. These include the five human rights to work, equality and nondiscrimination, privacy, free expression and free association. Despite the human rights harms of hiring algorithms, the AI ethics literature has predominantly focused on abstract ethical principles. This is problematic for two reasons. (...) First, AI principles have been criticized for being vague and not actionable. Second, the use of vague ethical principles to discuss algorithmic risks does not provide any accountability. This lack of accountability creates an algorithmic accountability gap. Closing this gap is crucial because, without accountability, the use of hiring algorithms can lead to discrimination and unequal access to employment opportunities. This paper makes two contributions to the AI ethics literature. First, it frames the ethical risks of hiring algorithms using international human rights law as a universal standard for determining algorithmic accountability. Second, it evaluates four types of algorithmic impact assessments in terms of how effectively they address the five human rights of job applicants implicated in hiring algorithms. It determines which of the assessments can help companies audit their hiring algorithms and close the algorithmic accountability gap. (shrink)

In _Beyond Animal Rights_, Josephine Donovan and Carol J. Adams introduced feminist "ethic of care" theory into philosophical discussions of the treatment of animals. In this new volume, seven essays from _Beyond Animal Rights_ are joined by nine new articles-most of which were written in response to that book-and a new introduction that situates feminist animal care theory within feminist theory and the larger debate over animal rights. Contributors critique theorists' reliance on natural rights doctrine and utilitarianism, which, they (...) suggest, have a masculine bias. They argue for ethical attentiveness and sympathy in our relationships with animals and propose a link between the continuing subjugation of women and the human domination of nature. Beginning with the earliest articulation of the idea in the mid-1980s and continuing to the theory's most recent revisions, this volume presents the most complete portrait of the evolution of the feminist-care tradition. (shrink)

Résumé Dans les situations sociomotrices, l’engagement des participants n’est pas seulement réductible aux communications directes. Il est surtout lié à l’émergence de systèmes de signes assurant la dynamique globale du jeu. Nous proposons d’appréhender la communication comme un système d’interaction global constitué de plusieurs canaux. On y retrouve les communications directes mais aussi quatre systèmes de signes : celui des praxèmes, des gestèmes, des gestes et des communications verbales. Ce travail interroge la place de chaque canal communicationnel dans deux sports (...) et deux jeux traditionnels. Nous recrutons trois groupes de 20 étudiants pour participer aux jeux mentionnés. Les communications sont filmées, décryptées, triées et catégorisées. On constate une forte prévalence des praxèmes dans les sports collectifs, tandis que la répartition des communications est plus équilibrée dans les jeux traditionnels. La quantité, la variabilité et l’organisation des signes sont sensibles à la logique interne. Globalement, cette recherche tend à montrer que les jeux sont un formidable laboratoire in vivo pour comprendre l’organisation des systèmes de signes. Spécifiquement, elle apporte des informations sur le pouvoir socialisant de la sémiotricité de chaque jeu et sur le renouvellement des pédagogies qu’elle peut engendrer. (shrink)

This November I spent three days in Washington, D.C., splitting my time between The March of Dimes Prematurity Prevention Conference and a National Institutes of Health meeting about the use of genome sequencing technology in newborns. The trip was a powerful reminder for me of a problem I've confronted before.

In Survive and Resist: The Definitive Guide to Dystopian Politics Shauna L. Shames and Amy L. Atchison aim to give the readers an insight into various key concepts in political science by analyzing some of the world's most famous dystopian fictional works. Among them are George Orwell's 1984, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, but also more recent novels such as Scott Westerfield's 2005 Uglies Trilogy. In separate chapters, the authors draw on a wide array of concepts in political philosophy to (...) confront real-life and fictional dystopias. The book makes for an excellent introduction to political theory that is highly approachable to dilettantes.The book consists of eight chapters, a preface, an introduction, an... (shrink)

L’Union européenne nous invite à repenser les conditions et les attributs de la souveraineté traditionnellement rattachée aux États-nations. Dans cet article, est proposée une tentative de re-conceptualisation à partir des différentes définitions de la souveraineté, et de l’analyse d’un exemple : celui de la politique étrangère et de l’exercice diplomatique de l’Union européenne. En effet, la souveraineté possède toujours deux faces : une face interne qui se charge de définir la loi, le droit, et de les faire appliquer sur un (...) territoire délimité ; une face externe qui exporte et affirme les intérêts, les valeurs et les principes qui prévalent en interne. La politique étrangère et son outil principal qu’est l’action diplomatique, consistent dans l’expression vers l’extérieur de la souveraineté d’un corps politique. Nous nous interrogerons ainsi sur la nature de la souveraineté incarnée par l’Union européenne. (shrink)

Laffin, Josephine Review(s) of: Blessed and beautiful: Picturing the saints, by Robert Kiely, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), pp.344, $49.95.

Contains eight contributions which extend feminist ethic-of-care theory to the issue of animal well-being. As a group, the essays aim to suggest ways that theorists can move beyond the notion of animal rights to establish care as a basis for the ethical treatment of animals. Annotation c. by Book.

As you might guess, the words goodness, truth, and beauty are not of heavy poetic value today. Terms of concept may be stressed again someday, and maybe soon, but at the moment have gone out of poetry in favor of more concreteness, more imagery, more connotative suggestion, less effect of the naming and labeling virtues, which Ezra Pound and other twentieth-century leaders have told us not to use. But actually these terms of abstract concept were lessened in major usage in (...) poetry long before the twentieth century. They had flourished in a setting of kings and courts. The love poetry, the political poetry, the philosophic poetry not only dealt directly with truth and goodness but used them constantly for evaluative commentary of other subjects. People, as well as moral issues, were good; lovers, as well as propositions, were true . . . Love and honor, good and true, these were terms of value in which poetry worked so strongly that a large proportion of its reference was limited to these alone, and so thoroughly that there was not a poet in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who did not share in this emphasis. Josephine Miles is a poet, critic, and University Professor of English at Berkeley. Her works of criticism include The Vocabulary of Poetry, The Continuity of Poetic Language, Eras and Modes in English Poetry, Style and Proportion, and Poetry and Change. She is also the author of a number of books of poems, from Lines at Intersection to Poems 1930-60, Kinds of Affection , and To All Appearances. (shrink)

Maiese and Hanna (2019) argue that social institutions shape and transform our embodied minds, and that detrimental and harmful institutions can be reverted in order to promote mentally healthy, authentic, and fulfilling lives. This commentary aims to complement this proposal by understanding the role that narratives and narrative practices play in shaping our embodied minds, by highlighting narrativity’s (1) active, deliberative, and productive functions, and (2) its strong entanglement with embodiment. We will argue that this addition to Maiese and Hanna’s (...) account allows agents to assume a more active role within social institutions by engaging in conscious and deliberative self-narration. This is because, we contend, not only do we understand ourselves and others according to cultural narrative archetypes; we also, crucially, bring about concrete changes in our embodiment and behavior by narrative deliberation and intention formation. As such, self-narration is not only an intellectual endeavor, but can also have profound consequences for how we experience the world; in other words, narrative practices can purposefully alter our affective framing which, in Maiese and Hanna’s account, is fundamental in the process of changing detrimental institutions into constructive, enabling institutions. (shrink)

Laffin, Josephine On 31 October 2017 it will be five hundred years since Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, the date traditionally hailed as the start of the Lutheran Reformation. Another anniversary is a personal one: it is twenty-five years since I began teaching Reformation history. It seems an appropriate time, therefore, to pause and reflect on the significance of this task.

When Nadya Suleman gave birth to eight babies in January 2009, the story ignited a media frenzy—first because the babies were only the second set of octuplets born in the United States, and later because of the irregularities of their conception by in vitro fertilization and the personal details of their mother's life. Hidden beneath the sensational aspects of the story, though, are a number of fundamental ethical, medical, and legal issues concerning assisted reproductive technologies. Three essays examine these questions.

Laffin, Josephine The archbishop of Adelaide, it must be acknowledged, did not play a prominent role at Vatican II. Matthew Beovich never gave a speech in the aula, the Council 'hall' inside St Peter's Basilica, nor did he prepare a written submission. At first glance, his seemingly minimal participation reinforces the damning judgment of Patrick O'Farrell that members of the Australian hierarchy were 'frequently uncomprehending and even resistant to the spirit of change'. With this from the doyen of Catholic (...) historians in Australia in the late twentieth century, it is not surprising that Ian Breward concluded in his survey of Australian religious history: 'Most Australian bishops were bemused observers of a process which shattered their convictions about the uniformity of the Roman Catholic Church. Australian contributions to Council debates were few. The pragmatism and traditionalism of the Australian Church stood nakedly exposed'. (shrink)

Since 1980, the number of twin births in the United States has increased 76 percent, and the number of triplets or higher‐order multiples has increased over 400 percent. These increases are due in part to increased maternal age, which is associated with spontaneous twinning. But the primary reason for these increases is that more and more people are undergoing fertility treatment. Despite an emerging (but not absolute) consensus in the medical literature that multiples, including twins, should be a far less (...) frequent outcome of fertility treatment, American clinicians currently practice fertility medicine in ways likely to result in twins and, occasionally, triplets—often, they tell us, at the request of their patients. At first blush, one might conclude that these practice patterns show that patients and their doctors have weighed the risks associated with twins against the benefits of swiftly completing their families and decided that the risks are worth taking. That is, their requests for twins must represent their free and informed choices. But there are reasons to be skeptical of this interpretation, including that the preferences of many patients seem to be very strongly shaped, if not sometimes completely constrained, by concerns about costs—costs that mainly result from the routine exclusion of in vitro fertilization from health insurance coverage. It is quite possible, we believe, that these cost concerns actually undermine the autonomy of fertility patients, pushing many of them to take risks with their health and the health of their hoped‐for future children. (shrink)

Dasein’s struggle is an investigation of the writings of Martin Heidegger to consider whether his thoughts and beliefs would be useful and / or insightful in addressing contemporary society and its discriminatory practices towards disabled people. Heidegger‟s basic existential being Dasein, is in constant interaction and interconnection with others as it negotiates its best possibilities of Being-in-the-world. This pursuit of an „authentic‟ existence is interpreted as a struggle for individuality, acceptance, engagement and resistance to social conformity and anonymity. Developing the (...) analysis through the theme of „Being‟ the paper‟s discussion is centred on Critical Disability Studies and the evolving Studies in Ableism. The interpretation is underpinned by the contemporary voice of disability, predominantly by autobiographical insights of Nancy Mairs‟ Waist-high in the world; A life among the nondisabled, together with other autobiographical, biographical and narrative texts. The paper presents an alternative perspective in the “endeavour to know” using Heidegger‟s philosophy to think differently about the experience of disability. (shrink)

Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Change. By Celeste Michelle Condit.

Background There is now rising consensus that community engagement is ethically and scientifically essential for all types of health research. Yet debate continues about the moral aims, methods and appropriate timing in the research cycle for community engagement to occur, and whether the answer should vary between different types of health research. Co-design and collaborative partnership approaches that involve engagement during priority-setting, for example, are common in many forms of applied health research but are not regular practice in biomedical research. (...) In this study, we empirically examine the normative question: should communities be engaged when setting priorities for biomedical research projects, and, if so, how and for what purpose? Methods We conducted in-depth interviews with 31 members of the biomedical research community from the UK, Australia, and African countries who had engaged communities in their work. Interview data were thematically analysed. Results Our study shows that biomedical researchers and community engagement experts strongly support engagement in biomedical research priority-setting, except under certain circumstances where it may be harmful to communities. However, they gave two distinct responses on what ethical purpose it should serve—either empowerment or instrumental goals—and their perspectives on how it should achieve those goals also varied. Three engagement approaches were suggested: community-initiated, synergistic, and consultative. Pre-engagement essentials and barriers to meaningful engagement in biomedical research priority-setting are also reported. Conclusions This study offers initial evidence that meaningful engagement in priority-setting should potentially be defined slightly differently for biomedical research relative to certain types of applied health research and that engagement practice in biomedical research should not be dominated by instrumental goals and approaches, as is presently the case. (shrink)

This article critiques contemporary feminist theory's frequent ocularcentric readings of the anorexic body as a surface of cultural inscription or as a paradigmatic sign of the female body's alienation through sexual difference. In an initial speculative attempt to find a theoretical framework that might sustain a more generative and embodied account of anorexia, I read anorexia through Butler's theory of gender as psychic `incorporation' because she problematizes an interior/exterior topography of the subject. This Butlerian framework proves problematic because, by establishing (...) an association between visibly queer gender and subversion, it effectively designates as hegemonic any sense of gender as a felt interiority. In a second framework, I draw on Prosser's anti-ocularcentric reading of transsexual `body narratives' derived from Anzieu's theory of the `skin ego'. Filtering Butler's theory of melancholia through this skin ego framework, I find a theoretical space for anorexia as a transitional embodied subjectivity which both re-lives and relieves the melancholic trauma of gender. (shrink)