In 1584, Antón Zape, a Black enslaved African originally from Sierra Leone, received his manumission letter after a long trajectory of military service to the Spanish Crown. Although his enslaver was reluctant to grant him freedom, the Audiencia de Panama considered Antón’s services worthy of a royal grace. The president of the Audiencia himself intervened by writing to King Philip II to force his enslaver to grant Antón the manumission he deserved. The king heard the Audiencia’s recommendation and granted Antón freedom along with a substantial annual pension of 50 gold pesos to live according to his calidad (“quality,” but better translated as status). Philip II ordered Antón’s former enslaver to pay him this annual pension and to supervise the correct distribution of the stipend for his entire life; until Antón’s death, his enslaver’s descendants were required to fulfill the duty of paying him his annual pension. Because the pension was financed by Antón’s past enslaver, it subverted the enslaved person–enslaver relation, requiring the enslaver’s lifetime commitment to his former enslaved person. In addition to freedom and a pension, Antón was granted the privilege of bearing arms, signifying a public and official royal sanction of honor and calidad.1

This article concerns itself with how archaeologists and other heritage studies professionals contend with temporal collapse on landscapes that hold African Diasporic histories. Coral stones lay the foundation of colonial architecture on the island of St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands. This article explores how buildings constructed of coral stones during the colonial era are still in use today, either restored or repurposed, along with examples of how coral is being used as an artistic medium in contemporary sculptures that collapse time and demand heritage studies professionals to tend to the persistence of colonial violence in the present. Here, coral—via the structures built out of it—is discussed as a mnemonic device for the biophysical afterlife of slavery. In this article, linear temporal distinctions of past, present, and future are called into question on St. Croix, where colonial structures act as ruptures in conceptualizations of time and serve as palimpsestual reminders of the past in the present.

This article addresses derivational issues related to palatalization in Khotanese, focusing on action nouns of the kīra- type (< *-i̯a-). It is argued that diachronic palatalization conforms to the rules of synchronic palatalization and that the origin of the hapax legomenon jsīna- “killing” (Z 13.124), which apparently violates these rules, needs to be interpreted differently. It is traced back to a reduplicated Indo-Iranian verbal stem *ǰa-ghn- (cf. Young Avestan jaɣn-) < Proto-Indo-European *gwhé-gwhn- “to strike repeatedly” → “to kill”. This stem is also reflected in the Khotanese gerundive jsīñaa- “to be killed” < *dzai̯n-i̯a- ← *dzaɣn- < Iranian *ǰa-gn-. The article contributes additional evidence supporting the development of the preconsonantal voiced velar fricative *ɣ into *i̯ in pre-Khotanese.

Most commentators, as well as the editors of both the NA28 and UBS5, identify Acts 3.22–3 as a composite citation of Deut 18.15–19 and Lev 23.29. Problems arise, however, when they try to explain why Luke combines these two texts. Luke’s typical practice for composite citations is to combine texts which share a common theme or otherwise mutually interpret each other, but none of the suggested connections between Deut 18.15–19 and Lev 23.29 have proven convincing. This paper demonstrates that while scholars have correctly identified Deut 18.15–19 as one of the texts cited, the text with which Luke combines it ought to be identified as Num 15.30 rather than Lev 23.29. Both Deut 18.18–19 and Num 15.30–1 describe the consequences of deliberately rejecting the ‘word of the Lord’. Correctly identifying these texts confirms Luke’s general practice in composite citations and also clarifies the function of this citation in its context in Acts 3.12–26. Using this composite citation, Peter warns those who had previously acted in ignorance against now opposing God deliberately.

Following their 2013 monograph, Helen of Troy. Beauty, Myth, Devastation, Ruby Blondell delivers a study on screen representations of Helen in the USA, ranging from The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1927), via Star Trek, Hollywood epics, and Xena: Warrior Princess, to Helen of Troy (2003).1 Blondell takes a rounded approach to their investigation, looking at different strands in the ancient tradition and analysing numerous factors related to the production and reception of the case studies.

Frailty is a common but complex phenomenon that is approached from theoretical and professional perspectives but rarely from the perspectives of older people and their essential stakeholders. Different or opposing perspectives on frailty at personal, organisational, and community levels can negatively affect care for frail older people. This systematic integrative review synthesises the perspectives on frailty of older people, health/social care professionals, informal caregivers, managers and policymakers, using thematic analysis. We use the Joanna Briggs Institute–Critical Appraisal Checklist to appraise the quality of 52 qualitative and mixed-method studies drawn from the PubMed/MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Embase, and Web of Science databases (inception–December 2023). Of these, 33 include the perspectives of older people, 27 of health/social care professionals, four of managers, and six of informal caregivers. Structuring the perspectives along six themes – ‘the multi-dimensional nature of frailty’, ‘the dynamics of frailty’, ‘the complexity of frailty’, ‘frailty in relation to age’, ‘frailty in relation to health’ and ‘frailty in relation to dependence’ – revealed substantive similarities in the conceptualisation of frailty between older people and professionals, e.g. regarding frailty’s dynamic and multi-dimensional nature. However, older people and professionals differ in their interpretations of frailty: older people take a personal view, while professionals take a more practical view. The identified discrepancies in perspectives may affect care relationships and care for frail older people. Therefore, we advocate a systems approach that incorporates multiple perspectives to form a comprehensive view of frailty and allows for a situation-specific shared understanding of frailty in older people.

Cody Marrs’s concept of “transbellum literature” has urged critics to reconsider the position of the Civil War that neatly divides literary history into “antebellum” and “postbellum.” Marrs’s idea encourages us to see both continuity and discontinuity between the postbellum and antebellum periods. Taking as a main subject of inquiry Herman Melville’s “Lee in the Capitol” in Battle-Pieces, one of the poems written from the perspective of the South, I would like to inquire into what the South as a geographical and political entity meant to Melville after the Civil War. In this poem, Melville gets inside Robert E. Lee’s inner psyche, ventriloquizing his suppressed emotions. By ventriloquizing Lee, Melville can be seen as doing violence to the alterity of the South in ways that conflict with his representation of others in his antebellum fiction. This essay interrogates how the Civil War changed Melville’s approach to representing alterity by focussing on the presence of the South as a geographical other in Battle-Pieces. At the heart of this perceived change lies his concern with representing community rather than individuals. However, Melville ultimately finds himself othered from the southern individuals, thereby demonstrating less discontinuity than continuity in terms of his ethics of alterity.