In its updated Commentaries on the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) embraces the ‘external’ interpretation of Article 1 common to the four Geneva Conventions, according to which States have certain negative (complicity-type) and positive (prevention/response) obligations to ‘ensure respect’ for the Conventions by other actors. This interpretation has been gaining support since the 1960s, though the ICRC's new Commentaries have served as a catalyst for some States recently to express contrary views. This article focuses on two major methodological shortcomings in the existing literature, offering a much firmer foundation for the external obligation under common Article 1. First, it demonstrates the overwhelming support in subsequent practice for external obligations. Previous studies have failed to explain the method by which this practice is taken into account, given the existence of some inconsistent practice. This article addresses this general question of treaty interpretation, critiquing the approach of the International Law Commission that relegates majority practice to supplementary means of interpretation and proposing instead a principled approach that better fits and justifies the judicial practice here. Secondly, the article challenges two common assumptions about the travaux: first, that an original, restrictive meaning was intended, and secondly that the travaux of Additional Protocol I offer no support for external obligations. Given the ubiquity of military assistance and partnering, these findings have far-reaching consequences for the liability of States.

This paper is an exploration of the most recent revival of Utpal Dutt's play Titu Mir in 2019 by the ensemble group Theatre Formation Paribartak in India. Islamic religious reformer Titu Mir led a peasant rebellion from 1827 to 1831 in the Barasat region of Bengal and the play focuses on a narrative of revolutionary resistance to colonialism. Titu Mir becomes an articulation of political theatre against the Hindu right-wing agenda of expunging Muslim national heroes from Indian history. This essay seeks Titu Mir's relevance as a site and theory of materializing historical contradictions, and as part of a ‘gestic’ feminist criticism of theatre. The essay attempts to understand how critique of patriarchal ideology is enmeshed in critique of colonialism in Titu Mir, especially in those moments where the play addresses complexities of political violence, interracial romance, martyrdom, alienation in the colony and deep-rooted misogyny in the project of colonialism.

In this study, the temporal accession date of king Pepy II is modeled by using a series of 14C dates based on samples from the burial of Djau at Deir el-Gebrawi in Middle Egypt. Djau was one of Pepy II’s officials—overseer of Upper Egypt and nomarch of the 8th and 12th provinces. Five samples of Djau’s wrapping as well as his wooden coffin were analyzed. ATR-FTIR (Attenuated Total Reflection–Fourier Transform InfraRed spectroscopy) analyses were carried out on textile samples to ensure they were not contaminated by organic chemicals due to the embalming process, prior to being dated using the conventional radiocarbon method at the IFAO Laboratory (Cairo). Based on archaeological evidence, the temporal density associated with Djau’s death is then used as a chronological marker for the death date of king Pepy II. Taking into account the possibility of either biennial, annual or irregular censuses to assess the duration of his reign, the accession date of Pepy II is thus modeled using OxCal software. The results place king Pepy II’s accession date between 2492 to 2256 BCE with 95.4% probability, and between 2422 to 2297 BCE with 68.3%.

Neutrality is one of the founding principles of library classification; however, systems reflect the biases of the societies that created them. Many articles have been written on bias in the Library of Congress Classification System (LCC) and its subject headings (LCSH). But how is bias evident in the Fine Arts (N) range?

One answer to this question lays in the writings of Hope A. Olson who argues that systems like LCC are inherently prejudiced because of their use of universality, which results in hierarchical relationships and Derridean binaries. This is problematic because library classification, according to Olson, functions as a third-space, a place where meaning is created.

Reading the Fine Arts range through Olson's work reveals a system that perpetuates bias by reconstructing the western canon of art history through its privileging of fine art over craft. While each of the fine arts are given their own subclasses, craft mediums are located under one subclass, Decorative Arts (NK), giving them a lesser than status. Artists and art historians have argued that the valuing of fine art over craft in the western canon, something clearly seen in LCC, is a consequence of patriarchal and colonialist power systems.

A gap of several decades existed between the first sung performances of trouvère melodies and the earliest surviving songbooks to collect them in notation. A thriving culture of written and notated song grew up in parallel to the unquestionably oral culture driving the trouvère tradition. This article traces the vestiges of that written culture through surviving sources. Empty staves and absent music demonstrate the existence of lost notated sources and reveal their relationship to surviving songbooks. The case studies, taken from thirteenth-century trouvère sources, take part in a recent scholarly trend towards revisiting written transmission. The article drives this trend forward by distinguishing notated transmission from written transmission in text-only sources. The continuing existence of vernacular songs in notation, including many unique melodies, was only possible thanks to lost manuscripts. The article points the way towards further research into notated song culture and new bodies of evidence.