This article considers the Clive Memorial Fund and the campaigns surrounding proposed statues to Robert Clive in London and Calcutta between 1907 and 1912. The author argues that this campaign was an attempt to glorify Clive's actions, focused on the battle of Plassey and its aftermath, as foundation stones for the Indian Empire. The statues were an anxious attempt to situate Britain as a natural part of Indian history, but the campaign instead provoked a developing Indian counternarrative around resistance to colonial rule, particularly from newspapers in Bengal. Although the fund garnered support in Britain, it was greeted in India with official irritation and widespread Indian opposition, highlighting the importance of considering imperial statues in their imperial frame. This reaction, demonizing Clive's treachery and praising his opponent, Siraj-ud-Daula, the nawab of Bengal, was indicative of the place of history in both Bengali nationalism and imperial self-identity. Using newspapers in Britain and Bengal and the correspondence of the Clive Memorial Committee, the author examines the competing narratives of history that emerged in the campaigns around the fund.

The basic question of this article is whether Thomas Aquinas's doctrine of divine providence through his understanding of primary and secondary causation can be understood as a theological causal or non-causal explanation. To answer this question, I will consider some contemporary discussions about the nature of causal and non-causal explanations in philosophy of science and metaphysics, in order to integrate them into a theological discourse that appeals to the classical distinction between God as first cause and creatures as secondary causes to explain God's presence and providence in the created universe. My main argument will hold that, even if there are some philosophical models of explanation that seem to allow one to suggest that, at least partially, this doctrine could be seen as a non-causal theological explanation, there are other models that offer seemingly stronger reasons to see this doctrine in full as a causal theological explanation.

In the article ‘How to be absolutely fair, Part I: the Fairness formula’, we presented the first theory of comparative and absolute fairness. Here, we relate the implications of our Fairness formula to economic theories of fair division. Our analysis makes contributions to both philosophy and economics: to the philosophical literature, we add an axiomatic discussion of proportionality and fairness. To the economic literature, we add an appealing normative theory of absolute and comparative fairness that can be used to evaluate axioms and division rules. Also, we provide a novel definition and characterization of the absolute priority rule.

The colonial reason at the heart of psychoanalysis is increasingly acknowledged, but literature scholars still work with it as an instrument for decolonizing. This essay examines thepossibilities of postcolonial literature itself as a source of epistemological intervention into psychoanalysis.

We present the first comprehensive theory of fairness that conceives of fairness as having two dimensions: a comparative and an absolute one. The comparative dimension of fairness has traditionally been the main interest of Broomean fairness theories. It has been analysed as satisfying competing individual claims in proportion to their respective strengths. And yet, many key contributors to Broomean fairness agree that ‘absolute’ fairness is important as well. We make this concern precise by introducing the Fairness formula and the absolute priority rule and analyse their implications for comparative fairness.

This article asks why many divines pushed for reform of the Church of England's use of excommunication after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. In response, it argues that, worried by what they perceived as widespread moral decline and the threat posed by the floodgates of Protestant dissent opened up by the Toleration Act of 1689, clergy became concerned that sentences such as excommunication were ineffective and the church would soon cease to be the chief arbiter of certain offenses. In contrast to existing historiography, this article suggests that the urge for reform was not confined to any particular section of the church. Instead, the reform of excommunication was a shared cause, although there was sharp disagreement about how to pursue it. However, despite enthusiasm for change, efforts for reform floundered because of partisan conflict and the legacy of the Tudor Reformation that continued to shape religious life in England well into the later Stuart period. Examining the debate about excommunication allows us to revise of our understandings of religion and politics in the last decades of the Stuart dynasty and further develop important concepts such as the long Reformation.

This report is about the ASMI Summer School held in Pisa on 22–23 June 2023. The conference focused on twentieth-century history issues: gender studies, cultural studies, resistance studies, fascism studies and mafia studies, with the addition of a round table and two keynote lectures, which discussed the profession of the modern historian and the history of racism in Italy from the Second World War to the present.

This survey of recent research on extensive reading (ER) for language learners focuses on ER in the classroom. While early adopters of ER imagined the quick emergence of an intrinsically motivated independent reader, the reality of much classroom-based language learning is that without considerable teacher guidance and supportive transitional activities, students are not likely to reach self-motivated independent ER either in or out of the classroom. Many of the studies included here, mostly non-experimental and classroom-based, reflect this reality. These studies confirm previous research on the general efficacy of ER in promoting motivation, vocabulary, and fluency development, but they also provide evidence for a variety of ways to support reluctant and grade-focused students who are only willing to engage with the target language in the classroom. This review also considers the many impediments that restrict the implementation of ER with language learners in school contexts. Separate sections discuss ER motivation and attitudes, ER and vocabulary, the effects of ER on reading fluency, as well as speculation on the relationship between “time on task” and progress in the various reading subskills. Each major section concludes with a table summarizing the research that has been discussed and suggestions for future investigation.

In 2021, the decision to close the last Norwegian coal mine on Svalbard was made, and with that, the Norwegian coal adventure on the archipelago came to an end. This was a result of a political process, which is the focus of this article. Drawing on fieldwork conducted during the fall of 2022, I argue that the political process of phasing out coal changed from a conflict over interests to a contest over symbolic capital. The article contributes to the understanding of Norwegian Svalbard politics and the “balancing act” that this represents. I focus on how power, in the form of shaping people’s perceptions and as prestige, influenced what interests prevail and why. The article addresses (1) why the decision to phase out coal was not made earlier, (2) what ultimately made this decision possible and (3) why and over what the key actors were still competing after the decision to phase out coal was made.

This article links the study of transnational and imperial fascism in the context of the Italian occupation of Albania by examining how Italian authorities sought to turn Albanians abroad into assets rather than liabilities. Organising and monitoring Albanians occurred through conferences, youth institutions and consular activities. Studying such concrete contacts and negotiations allows us to explore the practical issues latent in expanding fascist political subjectivity in transnational and imperial contexts. On the one hand, Italians hoped to verse Albanians in a fascist identity by using existing organisational strategies while silencing or converting potential anti-Italian critics. On the other, many Albanians expressed and offered support for these Italian efforts, though with reservations and conditions, raising questions as to what it meant to be an Albanian nationalist and/or fascist in the years of occupation. The Albanian case therefore contributes to our understanding of the tensions inherent in ‘universalising’ fascism for colonial subjects.