In a famous essay, Michel Foucault introduced the term “author-function” into scholarly discourse, and later scholars of authorship in antiquity have applied the term in different ways to different concepts. Some scholars center the notion of authorship around authority, while others look to the notion of authorizing a work as a finished literary work. This article seeks to retrieve a suggestion in Foucault’s essay that the author-function can fruitfully be understood under the notion of Foucault’s French term appropriation, that is, making something belong to a person, for purposes of punishment or praise. This article applies all three notions of the author-function in scholarly use to the complex testimonium on the authorship of the Gospel of Mark by Papias in Eusebius, Church History 3.39.15, and concludes that Foucault’s own construal of his term explains best the intricacies of this ancient statement of gospel authorship.

This article explores the formation of the University of California amidst widespread populist agitation against university leaders in the 1870s. These complaints were rooted in corruption by the Board of Regents as well as their failure to honor the requirement of the 1862 Morrill Act to offer practical training in “agriculture and the mechanic arts.” It argues that Yosemite served as a vehicle through which representatives of the University of California countered charges of elitism and fostered a reputation for trustworthy stewardship of public land. These efforts were visible to the public through literary texts, newspapers, public lectures, nature writings, and other forms of popular literature. By positioning Yosemite as a site of middlebrow intellectual exchange and an alternative to the demonstration farms established at other land grant institutions, professors such as Joseph LeConte helped quell populist critiques and strengthen affective ties to the university. The resulting shift in popular sentiment helped secure public trust in the university for the remainder of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

This article introduces the Voice Leaf, an outsider among Baschet’s numerous sound sculptures because of the use of the performative voice. Conceived in 1965 by French pioneers Bernard and François Baschet, the sculpture for voice consists of a stainless steel sheet folded as a leaf using origami technique. This article explores how voice and sculpture interplay acoustically by evaluating the voice’s agency and the sculpture’s aural dynamic gain. In this mutualist relationship, multiple senses are mobilised: aural, visual and haptic. The voice harboured in the sculptural leaf gains materiality and a resonance altered by the sculpture’s intrinsic properties. The article draws from conversations at the Structures Sonores Baschet Association open day with chairperson Pierre Cuffini and former workshop and acoustics research director Frédéric Fradet, as well as an interview with multidisciplinary artist and long-term collaborator of Bernard Baschet, Sophie Chénet.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophy has been hugely influential but can be difficult to understand. He has a radical approach to philosophy. Most philosophers think that questions such as ‘How can I know there is an external world?’ or ‘How is my private inner world of thought and experience related to my body?’ raise genuine puzzles requiring solutions. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, takes such questions to result from linguistic confusion and a scientistic approach to philosophy. Such questions require, not answers, but conceptual elucidation. This article introduces Wittgenstein’s later philosophy.

This article provides a critical examination of the Moscow Mechanism, a rapid-response tool within the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Originally established in 1991 and rarely invoked during its first three decades of existence, the Mechanism has experienced a reinvigoration since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, having been triggered six times, four of which were in response to alleged violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law during the conflict. Drawing on the authors’ experience as experts in these four missions, the article offers a historical overview, explains the Mechanism’s procedural dynamics and assesses its unique features. Through a comprehensive analysis of its repeated use in respect of Ukraine, the article highlights both the strengths and limitations of the Moscow Mechanism, ultimately arguing that recent developments have revealed its full potential as an instrument for advancing international justice and accountability.