In 1987, LeAnn Fields acquired Lynda Hart‘s Making a Spectacle: Feminist Essays on Contemporary Women’s Theatre. By the time Fields retired in 2024, she had built a list of more than 280 books in the field of theatre and performance studies at the University of Michigan Press. Hart’s Making a Spectacle is a foundational and still radical book of critical essays on gender, the body, and spectatorship, topics that continue to chart and reverberate among the many intellectual commitments of our field. Like nearly all the books that Fields acquired for University of Michigan Press, Making a Spectacle drew from and responded to another interdisciplinary field of study, women’s studies, as it simultaneously broke new ground in theatre and performance studies. In this special section, thirteen authors discuss the ways in which Fields encouraged the development of their work and our field. These author accounts are followed by an interview with Fields by Jill Dolan, in which Fields describes how her work as an acquisitions editor began and how it changed, how she navigated the press boards and changes in technology and staffing, and how, from her perspective, our field fosters a unique sense of community. The author accounts and interview offer an invaluable collection of personal histories that trace the development of our field over the past four decades to our vibrant present.

We examine the arguments made by Onitiu and colleagues concerning the need to adopt a “backward-walking logic” to manage the risks arising from the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) adapted for a medical purpose. We examine what lessons can be learned from existing multi-use technologies and applied to specialized LLMs, notwithstanding their novelty, and explore the appropriate respective roles of device providers and regulators within the ecosystem of technological oversight.

Counterexamples to Lagrangian Poincaré recurrence were recently found in dimensions greater than six by Broćić and Shelukhin. We construct counterexamples in dimension four using almost toric fibrations.

This article examines African American intellectual Louise Thompson Patterson’s 1932 journey to the Soviet Union as a lens through which to explore the complexities of transnational racial identity across ideological borders. It argues that Patterson’s experiences reveal both her political commitments and the contradictions of Soviet internationalism for Black women seeking alternatives to racial capitalism and gender oppression. Rather than viewing her engagement as naïve or disillusioned, the article situates it within a historically rooted, politically intentional search for liberation. The paper further contends that Soviet reactions to Patterson’s identity illuminate a rigid understanding of blackness, complicating claims of anti-racism and revealing internal hierarchies. By analyzing Patterson’s unpublished writings alongside broader historical currents, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of Black women’s transnational activism, the racial politics of the USSR, and the ongoing challenges of forging solidarity across different conceptions of race and justice.

Excommunication – being summarily cut off from the sacraments of the Catholic Church – was the logical, if extreme, expression of Ultramontanism, and of the paternal metaphor enshrined at its heart. It was the ultimate weapon in the Church’s battle with critics who sought to undercut or challenge its chosen role as privileged mediator between the state apparatus and the people, whether this came in the form of open rebellion against said state, or in the demand for individual intellectual freedom, or both. Studying the infamous cases of nineteenth-century excommunicates, Joseph Guibord and Louis Riel (together with their predecessors, the ill–fated Patriotes) yields important insights into the nature of excommunication, both when it “worked” (from the perspective of those who imposed it) and, just as crucially, when it did not.

This contribution explores the non-aligned era labor migration of Yugoslav men to postcolonial Zambia. Based on oral history and archival research conducted in Lusaka and Belgrade, it seeks to provide a gendered account of Yugoslavs negotiating their role as white Europeans in a postcolonial milieu and the ways in which Zambian colleagues understood Yugoslavs to have positioned themselves. Drawing upon contemporary social anthropological research from post-Yugoslav space, I argue that two modes of masculinities were in simultaneous operation and can help to make sense of the tensions inherent in the role of Yugoslav male workers in Zambia. An adventuring young Yugoslav man (frajer) might have driven fast, drunk heavily, and boasted about sexual conquests, but according to the motif of the “father,” the same person would also understand himself as a provider, whose responsible, serious, and protective characteristics would be used in assisting Zambians to develop as industrial workers.

The years immediately following the issue of Magna Carta and the death of John were of fundamental importance in determining the trajectory of the nascent common law legal system. Although the existence of the Bench had functionally been permanently established under chapter seventeen of Magna Carta, the central royal court faced an uncertain future under conciliar rule and in the aftermath of extensive civil conflict. The extensive extant records of the common law fines made to initiate actions in the Bench as recorded the Fine Rolls offer a window into the roles played by the court in relation to litigants, within the wider structure of royal governance, and in relation to a rapidly evolving legal system. An analysis of these sources can therefore both illuminate the early workings of the common law legal procedures and characterize the demand for royal justice that survived the First Barons’ War before continuing to grow across the thirteenth century. What emerges is a picture of a judicial system at the onset of a period of rapid development and widespread demand that would come to lay the foundation for the massive expansion of royal justice that was to follow throughout the reign of Henry III and beyond.

Biological and physical retrospective dosimetry for ionizing radiation exposure is a rapidly growing field, and several methods for performing biological and physical retrospective dosimetry have been developed to provide absorbed dose estimates for individuals after occupational, accidental, intentional, and incidental exposures to ionizing radiation. In large-scale radiological/nuclear incidents, multiple retrospective dosimetry laboratories from several countries may be involved in providing timely dose estimates for effective medical management of several thousand exposed individuals. In such scenarios, the harmonization of methods among participating laboratories is crucial for consistency in data analysis, dose estimation, and medical decision-making. In this regard, ISO documents ensure that these practices are standardized globally across the laboratories by providing quality assurance and quality control documentation that guide laboratories in maintaining high-quality performance for consistency. With the intent of bringing standardization and harmonization of biological and physical retrospective dosimetry methodologies across national and international laboratories, the ISO working group 18 (WG18) was established under ISO/TC85/SC2 (Technical Committee 85, Subcommittee 2-Radiation Protection) in 1999. This manuscript summarizes some of the past, current, and future activities of WG18 on biological and physical retrospective dosimetry.

In this work, we introduce the type and typeset invariants for equicontinuous group actions on Cantor sets; that is, for generalized odometers. These invariants are collections of equivalence classes of asymptotic Steinitz numbers associated to the action. We show the type is an invariant of the return equivalence class of the action. We introduce the notion of commensurable typesets and show that two actions which are return equivalent have commensurable typesets. Examples are given to illustrate the properties of the type and typeset invariants. The type and typeset invariants are used to define homeomorphism invariants for solenoidal manifolds.

Aneuploidy in oocytes is a leading cause of implantation failure, miscarriage and congenital disorders. During meiosis, proper timing of chromosome segregation is regulated by the spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) and the anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C). However, how pharmacological manipulation of these regulatory pathways affects aneuploidy remains incompletely understood. In this study, we investigated whether SAC inhibition by reversine induces aneuploidy in mouse oocytes and whether partial inhibition of APC/C by proTAME can alleviate these errors. Germinal vesicle (GV) oocytes were matured in vitro in the presence of various concentrations of reversine. To optimize the timing of treatment, oocytes were exposed to reversine for 0, 3, 5 or 7 h, followed by culture with or without proTAME. A proTAME-only group (2.5 nM) was also included. Chromosome spreads were analyzed at the metaphase II (MII) stage to determine aneuploidy rates. Reversine (5 nM) yielded an MII maturation rate of 80.5% but induced a high aneuploidy rate of 77.0%. Sequential treatment with 2.5 nM proTAME significantly reduced aneuploidy to 33.3%. In contrast, proTAME alone led to 79.0% aneuploidy, suggesting its effect is contingent upon prior SAC disruption. These results indicate that reversine compromises chromosomal integrity, while appropriately timed, low-dose proTAME can partially rescue segregation errors. Our findings underscore the potential of pharmacologically regulating APC/C activity to reduce aneuploidy and enhance oocyte quality, offering new avenues for improving outcomes in assisted reproductive technologies.

‘English at the grassroots’ refers to English used by non‑elite speakers from lower social strata, with diverse acquisition paths, proficiency levels and usage. These Englishes are often heterogeneous, shaped by informal contexts and professions. English linguistics has long examined English as a pluricentric language, focusing on its use across first language (L1), second language (L2) and foreign language (FL) contexts, often through corpora, which predominantly represent upper‑middle‑class speakers. However, English is used in socially stratified societies, and sociolinguistic research has explored how language use correlates with lower social classes, especially in L1 varieties and multilingual contexts. Despite the historical focus on elites in L2/FL English acquisition and use – often due to colonial education systems – English has also spread to lower social strata globally. Yet, access to English is said to often correlate with socio‑economic status (SES), especially where education is not universally accessible. Nevertheless, SES does not necessarily always predict that one cannot use some form of English for communicative purposes. Non‑educational spaces – such as churches, homes, and social networks – play a crucial role in English acquisition and use outside formal education. These ‘grassroots’ efforts reflect resourcefulness in overcoming systemic barriers, enabling individuals to use English as linguistic capital for mobility, communication, and opportunity, especially in outer circle countries lacking a common indigenous lingua franca.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is defined as a unidimensional condition, and autism traits are measured on a continuum where the high end of the spectrum represents individuals likely to have an ASD diagnosis. However, the large heterogeneity of ASD has thrown this unidimensional conceptualization into question. With the exact underlying cause(s) of autism yet to be identified, there is a pressing need to establish core, underlying dimensions of ASD that can capture heterogeneity within the autism spectrum, thereby better specifying both autistic traits and ASD symptoms. Here we describe one important transdiagnostic dimension, the cognitive rigidity-flexibility dimension, that may impact autistic traits and symptoms across symptom-relevant cognitive domains. We first discuss how diminished cognitive flexibility manifests in core autistic traits and autism symptoms in perception, attention, learning, social cognition, and communication. We then propose to supplement assessments of autistic traits in the general population and autism symptoms in individuals with an ASD diagnosis with a comprehensive batter of cognitive flexibility measures in these symptom-relevant domains. We conjecture that systematic differences in domain-general versus domain-specific cognitive flexibility can distill subgroups within the autism phenotype. While we focus on the cognitive flexibility dimension here, we believe that it is important to extend this framework to other higher order dimensions that can capture core autism symptoms and transdiagnostic symptom severity. This approach can characterize the latent, multi-faceted structure of autism, thereby yielding greater precision in diagnostic classification and the creation of more targeted interventions.

Alcohol use disorders (AUDs) often coexist with psychotic disorders. Both are common and each can cause or perpetuate the other. Comorbid diagnoses are multifactorial in origin, and both diagnostically and therapeutically challenging. This article is a narrative review of the epidemiology, diagnosis and management of comorbid AUDs and psychotic disorders. Although there is a lack of robust evidence on many aspects of this association, AUDs have been repeatedly shown to worsen outcomes in individuals with schizophrenia. The importance of a rigorous approach to diagnosis is emphasised. Three main treatment strategies emerge: considering particular antipsychotic drugs, relapse-prevention medication and engagement with a number of psychosocial interventions.

This article examines the connections between existing democratic deficits in law and contemporary democratic backsliding processes. To undermine the democratic process, present-day autocrats employ various legal strategies, including enacting new legal institutions (such as constitutional amendments or key statutory reforms) or manipulating existing ones. Focusing on a legal legacy of military rule in Turkey, the Specially Authorized Courts, this study argues that in consolidating power, autocrats also capitalize on pre-existing authoritarian zones within legal systems. In Turkey’s case, the AKP government has leveraged the exceptional procedures of Specially Authorized Courts to silence adversaries while simultaneously framing its reforms to the structure of these courts and the trials held at these courts as efforts to democratize the country and eradicate authoritarian legacies. As a result, the AKP masked its repressive actions behind a narrative of democratization in the early stages of Turkey’s democratic regression. Overall, the article presents both the coercive and legitimating uses of pre-existing “zones of authoritarianism” in law in contemporary processes of democratic backsliding. In doing this, it highlights how aspiring autocrats exploit the histories embedded in legal institutions to obscure their repressive actions.

For young people with eating disorders (EDs), family-based therapy (FBT) is generally recommended as first-line treatment. Although there is an abundance of evidence demonstrating the efficacy of FBT, less than half of young people achieve full remission with this treatment. Enhanced cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT-E) is an established alternative to FBT, demonstrating effectiveness in individuals who have not achieved full remission with FBT. It is also recommended when family therapy is unacceptable, contraindicated, or ineffective. Despite some overlap – particularly in addressing maintaining factors and prioritising weight normalisation – the two treatments diverge significantly in conceptualisation of the eating disorder, proposed mechanisms of action, role of both young people and parents, and strategies and processes of therapy. These differences may contribute to one treatment being effective where the other has not, but can present challenges and difficulties for the young person, family and clinician when transitioning from FBT to CBT-E. In this paper, we provide guidance for clinicians delivering CBT-E with young people who have a history of FBT treatment. We highlight common issues encountered among this cohort, discuss how they can present a barrier to successful implementation of CBT-E, and describe solutions.

Key learning aims

1. (1) To learn the commonly encountered barriers to treatment when implementing CBT-E for young people who have previously engaged in FBT.

2. (2) To learn strategies to overcome these barriers focusing on the young person, parents and multi-disciplinary team.