The book concludes by pointing out two major shifts that my reading of the Shepherd produces: one focused on how the centrality of slavery in the Shepherd that complicates earlier treatments of the text as most invested in baptism and/or repentance, and the other focused on the ethical and historical anxieties that emerge from the enslaved–enslaver relationship being so deeply embedded in early Christian literature, ethics, and subject formation. Additionally, I point to how my findings reveal why the Shepherd would be appealing to late ancient Christians: its visionary, dialogical, parabolic, and ethical content are aimed toward crafting obedient enslaved believers who were unified in their ecclesiastical vision. The work of feminist, womanist, Africana, and slavery studies scholars offer an intellectual and ethical scaffolding upon which I contend with the centrality in early Christian thought of God as an enslaver and believers as enslaved persons, as well as the continuations and challenges of the embeddedness of slavery in Christian vocabulary into the twenty-first century.

Chapter 6 contains a case study in which we sketch how the normative framework set out in part A of the book, can be used as a basis for arguments that can be made in relation to the ongoing ICJ advisory opinion on climate change. It argues that the court should interpret international rules in a manner which furthers justice including intergenerational justice. This is essential for maintaining the court’s legitimacy, which must include its future legitimacy. The court should flesh out the principle of intergenerational equity by defining it in terms which require states to take climate action to ensure protection of the human rights of future generations necessary for them to lead a decent life. In addition, the normative framework is used to argue for: (i) an particular interpretation of the no harm rule to incorporate harm towards future generations and (ii) reform of the procedural rules of the ICJ so as to allow NGOs and scientists to make amicus curiae submissions (directly or implicitly) on behalf of future generations in proceedings before the court.

Chapter 1 lays the groundwork for the subsequent legal analysis. Following the fundamentals, the chapter highlights ongoing global policy discussions and initial regulatory efforts, with particular emphasis on the latest developments within international organisations such as UNESCO, the OECD, the Council of Europe, and the EU. It also addresses relevant legal scholarship, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of the evolving regulatory debate surrounding these technologies.

This chapter examines how copyright reversion mechanisms developed in US copyright law. It traces the history of such provisions to its present day iteration (an inalienable right for creators to terminate copyright grants after around 35 years). As with the study of British reversionary rights, the chapter highlights how the US provisions have often been rendered ineffective through the behaviour of rightsholders (both before and after reversion mechanisms have been passed). It focuses on how the current termination scheme operates, highlighting its considerable problems: for example, uncertainty over whether sound recordings are covered, and the sheer difficulty of meeting the formalities necessary to exercise the statutory rights.

Evolutionary psychologists used the concepts of inclusive fitness theory, evolved psychological mechanisms and kin altruism to help explain social behaviour in ourselves and animals. Inclusive fitness is an estimate of the number of genes that individuals pass on both directly via their offspring and indirectly via their effects on the survival of other kin. Kin altruism is the term used for self-sacrificing acts towards kin. The tendency to provide aid to relatives appears to be related to the proportion of genes shared by common descent (the coefficient of relatedness). Evolutionists explain many acts of social behaviour in animals in terms of nepotistic strategies. Parental investment consists of the amount of time and effort that an individual puts into rearing each of its offspring. The grandmother hypothesis is the notion that the menopause came about because, by shifting their investment from offspring to grandoffspring, a woman can increase her inclusive fitness.

The book concludes by commenting on what can be said about the traditions that Cyril and Julian represent (Christianity and Hellenism) based on the focused analysis of the particular arguments of these two figures. Demonstrating narrative conflict between two individuals does not yet prove incommensurability between their traditions, and this concluding chapter points to how that larger question would need to be broached.

The rapid co-evolution of instrumentation and surgical technique has allowed an ever-growing number of pediatric procedures to be performed using minimal access surgery (MAS). At present, any size or age patient (i.e., from fetus to adolescent) can benefit from MAS. Thoracoscopy and laparoscopy have many proven advantages when compared to open surgery including less postoperative pain, earlier return to normal activities, less risk of cosmetic and mechanical musculoskeletal deformities, possible less postoperative adhesive disease, and in many cases better exposure and magnification of the operative field. Given these potential benefits, MAS has been increasingly adopted by pediatric surgeons as the preferred approach for management of many surgical diseases in children and infants.

As a material and literary world, the Silk Road ‘reorients’ our maps of both global capitalism and world literature. The commodities that circulated along the Silk Road included not only objects such as silks, leather, pottery, spices, silver and paper, but also artisans and courtesans, foods and cuisines, languages and knowledges, ideas, ideologies, texts and cultural institutions. This chapter explores the connections between world literature and Silk Road commodities, focusing on the global cultures of tea and specifically the literary culture of the teahouse, which it reads as a precursor to the coffeehouse of early modern literary culture. The history of tea’s origins and proliferation, and of its production and consumption as well as attendant technologies, material cultures, rituals and spaces, allows us to track its movement from the Silk Road to Europe, specifically through the rise and development of teahouses and the intercultural dialogues facilitated by the practice of tea consumption. Bringing together examples of tea poetry in Chinese, Japanese, Moroccan-Arabic and Sufi literatures this chapter shows how tea is a staple feature of fictional worlds across connected literary cultures. In doing so, it explores the broader potential for using the commodity cultures of the Silk Road as a framework for literary study in a global context.

This chapter presents evidence that some of the merchants under study either were actually ennobled or otherwise lived “nobly,” easily socializing with the lower nobility in German-speaking Europe and sometimes with the high nobility. Despite many historians’ claims otherwise, such merchants did not leave trade; nor did they marry “out of” the mercantile class, even if some of their wives bore names indicating noble status. The chapter also presents evidence assembled by other scholars that demonstrates the same patterns: merchants often lived as “city nobles” (Stadtadel) even while continuing their work in commerce.