This chapter focuses on Sinn Fein and its influence in altering the vision for Ireland's future. Published between 1906 and 1914, it had the longest print run of Arthur Griffith's publications and was arguably the most important. The ideas outlined in Sinn Fein, which for a short time also published a daily edition, built on those already propagated through the United Irishman. When confronted with the difficulty facing all editors and journalists posed by the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) during the First World War, Griffith displayed real ingenuity in producing his next publication. Through Sinn Fein newspaper, Griffith advanced the notion of political and economic independence and aimed to educate his readers. The newspaper's performance was clearly affected by the performance of the Irish Parliamentary Party. In 1913, the newspaper declared that 'the future Ireland can only be an Ireland reuniting itself with its Gaelic past'.

This chapter tackles positron emission tomography (PET), a functional neuroimaging technique that revolutionized brain imaging in the 1970s by providing the first colorful maps of brain activity. Beginning with its historical development from Hans Berger’s early hemodynamic measurements to modern scanners, the chapter examines how PET visualizes metabolic processes by tracking radioactively labeled tracers in the bloodstream. Unlike structural imaging methods, PET detects gamma rays emitted when positrons from the radiotracer collide with electrons, allowing researchers to measure regional changes in blood flow, glucose metabolism, and neurotransmitter activity related to cognitive processes. The chapter details practical aspects of PET studies, including experimental design, data acquisition, image reconstruction techniques, and visualization methods like subtraction analysis for mapping task-related brain activity. While MRI-based techniques have supplanted PET for many cognitive neuroscience applications, PET remains invaluable for certain investigations due to its unique ability to label diverse compounds, particularly for studying neuropsychiatric disorders, neurotransmitter systems, and metabolic processes in diseases like Alzheimer’s and epilepsy.

The third chapter explores how Tengyue consuls worked in a court to resolve Sino-British cases involving local populations (1909–35). The court was a reflection of the coming together of local laws and British and Chinese jurisdiction. The consular role was to work alongside Chinese officials and act as linguistic and cultural mediators between these officials and their Burmese counterparts. They therefore balanced British imperial objectives – such as furthering colonial claims to land – with efforts to ensure Chinese cooperation in the resolution of transfrontier cases.

The fourth chapter examines the establishment of extraterritorial jurisdiction in Xinjiang (1880–1918). There, no treaty existed defining consular rights in the province. As a result, the consular official George Macartney carved out his rights through adjudicating Sino-British cases and by diplomatic negotiation with the Chinese authorities. As Macartney worked for the Indian government and, after 1908, was also a China consular official, he therefore bridged the colonial and semicolonial world. From 1918, his legal powers were derived from consular frameworks, but he could apply colonial laws from British India. He also sent suspects and convicts to India, creating an administrative and judicial fusion between the consular and colonial system.

Since its introduction to Early Ireland, Marianism has changed considerably, conforming to trends on the Continent to an extent but also developing idiosyncratically, as in fusions of Mary with St Brigid, and spoken charms. The Blessed Virgin became a paradigm for Irish femininity in the Free State and Republic. While the Second Vatican Council attempted to suppress Marianism, the devotion persisted in Ireland, with incidents such as the Moving Statues often taken by commentators to represent a clash between tradition and modernisation. To writers such as Eavan Boland, Paula Meehan, and John McGahern, the debate over Marian apparitions anticipated a lacuna that could lead to the decline of Irish Catholicism. Written in this process of decline, Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy – with Neil Jordan’s film adaptation – and Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary use Marianism to examine institutions and the function of belief, and to consider a Marianism that might exist apart from Christianity.

This chapter discusses the cultural identity of contemporary Koreans by analysing five films based on a popular traditional folk tale, Ch'unhyangjon. Three of the five films were made in South Korea: Shin Sangok's Song Ch'unhyang, Pak T'ae-won's The Tale of Song Ch'unhyang and Han Sanghun's Song Ch'unhyang. The other two films are from North Korea: Yu Wonjun and Yun Ryonggyu's The Tale of Ch'unhyang and Shin Sangok's musical, Love, Love, My Love. Ch'unhyangjon is a text apt for an ideological interpretation. This argument is born out by its history of cinematic adaptation. Ch'unhyangjon features gender and class as the central subjects. The treatment of the two interrelated subjects in the film texts is tied specifically to the oppositional ideologies of the capitalist South and the communist North.

Chapter 2 traces the development of the poetics of space in Ireland’s heroic literature (ca. 900–1160) through a focus on the warrior Cú Chulainn. I situate narratives from Táin Bó Cúalnge alongside other Ulster Cycle texts to track a spatial hero’s construction. Cú Chulainn is initially named Sétanta—suggesting ‘path-finder’ or ‘journeyer’—and tales of his birth, boyhood deeds and defense of Ulster in the Táin emphasize his ability to navigate new environments and internalize storied maps of the territory. Cú Chulainn’s increasing mastery of placelore and the erotics of space are examined in Tochmarc Emire. A brief look at Mesca Ulad queries how Ulster’s spatially savvy hero is not ultimately immune to displacement: Cú Chulainn loses himself and the men of Ulster in hostile territories, and their frenzied ride transforms the landscape—their journey levels hills, clears trees and drains rivers—and generates a (mis)reading of the drunken, careening heroes as environmental features rather than humans, which also problematizes violence and heroic excess. The chapter concludes with Saint Patrick raising Cú Chulainn from the dead to tell his tale, an account that highlights the chapter’s key themes: spatial narrative, textuality and the redemptive function of storytelling.

The chapter investigates the persuasiveness of moral rhetoric, that is, effects on nonsupporters of the party. Based on insights from previous work, I develop theoretical expectations that suggest that moral rhetoric is unlikely to be persuasive, or make nonsupporters see the party more favorably. Previous studies on moral persuasion suggest moral-value alignment between a moral message and the recipient can make the message persuasive. Yet previous work on attitudinal bias suggest that moral rhetoric may be unpersuasive regardless of moral alignment and even further alienate nonsupporters with negative preexisting attitudes. I test the hypotheses using experiments in Britain. I find that moral rhetoric does not easily convince nonsupporters. However, moral rhetoric can be quite persuasive when the message is strong and the party has moral credibility. Under those conditions, moral rhetoric increases favorable attitudes, on average and among nonsupporters who prioritize the moral intuition in the message. There is no evidence that moral rhetoric further alienates hostile nonsupporters. The findings present a rather optimistic picture about the persuasiveness of moral rhetoric.

The first asteroid, Ceres, was discovered on the first night of the nineteenth century. There are now more than 800,000 numbered asteroids. Numerous properties link most meteorite groups to asteroids. These include cooling rates, the presence in some specimens of solar-wind gas, formation ages and CRE ages, orbital parameters, and the retrieval of chondritic material from asteroids visited by spacecraft. In addition, the spectral reflectance properties of meteorites match those of particular asteroids. Space-weathering can account for differences between OC spectra and those of S-complex and Q-complex asteroids. Ordinary-chondrite parent asteroids probably initially had an onion-shell-like structure due to internal heating by 26Al. These bodies were likely collisionally disrupted and gravitationally reassembled while still hot.

This introduction to the volume explains the origin of these essays, which began as papers given at a workshop to support the development of the Virtual Reality Oracle, which created a virtual reality experience of visiting the ancient Greek oracle of Dodona. An ancient Greek oracular site comprised an encounter with ‘unknowing’: the sanctuary was a space to which visitors brought questions concerned with many different areas of their lives. In that respect, we also drew a parallel with the experience of those who ‘visit’, as researchers, an oracle about which little is certain. The essay then reflects on this process of research, to consider how in examining the way our historical subjects engage with the affordances of their environments, we, in turn, as historians, ourselves engage with the affordances of our historical evidence, using Bakhtin’s theory of the chronotope.

Gender inequality in India arises from widespread societal attitudes that prioritize the economic and social status of men and, as a result, favour investment in male children. Policy actions have resulted in significant improvements in women’s educational attainment and political representation, but there has been only limited progress in women’s labour force participation, in rates of domestic violence and rape, and in the abatement of trends in the selective abortion of girls. Attitudes pertaining to the status of women also show limited improvement.