Research Blog

Posted by Keren Wang, 11/9/2016 at 19:00 ET When comparing current election results with how groups voted back in 2012, it appears that the “White/Older/Male” voter groups may not be the ones to blame for electing Donald Trump. Current data suggest that Trump did not receive significantly higher percentage of “White/Older/Male” votes than the previous GOP candidate. Of course it is still too early to see the finalized voting data, and early exit poll numbers are not the most accurate. However, it is always a good practice to check our political assumptions with facts on the ground. At minimum, the “White/Older/Male” voter narrative frequently cited by the media might be too easy of an explanation for the election result we’re seeing… ...

http://civcm.psu.edu/2016/09/06/written-and-unwritten-constitutions/

One of my recently published article, “Participatory Global Citizenship: Civic Education Beyond Territoriality”, co-authored with Nabih Haddad of Michigan State University, has been featured on Yale Global’s Academic Papers collection Yale Global is an online publication of Yale University’s MacMillan Center. According to its website, the “Academic Papers” series incorporates “analytical and reflective essays on various aspects of globalization from many sources.” (Available at: http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/academic/papers). The co-authored paper has been previously published on Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics, 2015. Below is the abstract of the featured essay, the full version of the paper can be accessed here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2565483 ...

*Flora Sapio is a China legal scholar currently serving as research fellow at the Australian Centre on China in the World. Her research is focused on criminal justice and legal philosophy. She is the author of Sovereign Power and the Law in China (Brill, 2010); co-editor of The Politics of Law and Stability in China(Edward Elgar, 2014); and, Detention and its Reforms in China (forthcoming, Ashgate, 2016). The following is a transcription of my conversation with Flora Sapio on the problem of enemyship in contemporary Chinese politics and the rhetorical approach in the investigation of political rhetoric: ...

[embed]http://imgur.com/XhRs5nT[/embed] The study of the relationship between the state and religion—especially organized and institutional religion originating in the West and Middle East–is grounded in an important and often overlooked premise. That premise is based on a very specific view of religion and a very historically contextualized understanding of the relationship between the state and religious institutions. Both are grounded in the primacy of the model of religious organization and of state-religion relations developed in the Middle East and Europe (and later spread elsewhere in the globe) centering around Judaism, Jewish state organization and its important evolution under Christianity and Islam, the religions that emerged from it. Much of the national and international discussion of the last several centuries has effectively centered on the way in each of these variants of so-called “Abrahamic” religions (and thier contests for domination within social, cultural and economic space) be manifested, and their relations with states legitimated. Other religious traditions are then folded into the master narrative of law-religion discourse, or treated as exceptions or variations within it. ...

The historic Laki (Lakagígar) eruption that took place in Iceland from June 1783 to February 1784 was so powerful, that the entire European continent plus many parts of North America were blanked with a great “haze” of volcanic gases and particles. The eight-month-long continuous release of toxic gas from Laki not only wiped out roughly one-quarter of Iceland’s population [1], the resulting volcanic haze also led to an exceptionally cool summer followed by a brutal, frigid winter in Europe and North America. The Laki eruption added another layer of frost on top of the frigid climate pattern of thus in turn led to acute food shortages in those regions. Present analysis estimated that the Laki eruption directly caused more than twenty-thousand human mortality in England alone during the “volcanic winter” from August 1783 to February 1784. [2] ...

originally posted by Keren Wang, July 20th 2015 For this research project, in collaboration with Professor Stephen Browne from Penn State University, we seek to investigate New York City, circa 1789 through the five senses: what did it look like, sound like, smell like, taste like, and feel like? I will be primarily focusing on looking directly into relevant sources from the early years of the Republic: newspapers clippings, personal diaries, musical scores, travelers’ accounts, correspondence, menu offerings, historical art, architecture, music, theater, food, etc. By the end of this project, hopefully we may find ourselves with a collection of blog posts, nicely crammed with contemporary accounts of life in the City as it was lived bodily, publicly, and culturally. ...

Fig. 1: Floor mosaic in Beit Alfa Synagogue (c.5th century CE, Israel) depicting the Binding of Issac (public domain art available via Wikimedia Commons) Human sacrifice refers to the practice of ritual killing of human beings as offerings to divine patrons, ancestors, or other superhuman forces. Early comparative studies on human sacrifice were heavily influenced by theories of historical relativism and social evolutionism. [1] Such theory approach is exemplified by the works of nineteenth century cultural-anthropologists Edward Tylor and Marcel Mauss, both of whom framed practices of human sacrifice as specific iteration of a general social feature, developed relative to various stages of human historical development. [2] ...

Mayan Moon Goddess with rabbit, Museum of Fine Arts Boston MA In my previous post “Human Sacrifice during Shang Dynasty”, I examined the historical background of renji (人祭 / ritual human sacrifice) practiced during Shang dynasty China (c. 1600 BC to 1046 BC). It is important to note that the kind of large-scale human sacrifice practiced by Shang rulers, though extraordinary, is not historically idiosyncratic. Human sacrifice rituals similar to that of renji were also found pre-Colombian Mesoamerica, most notably in Mayan and Aztec societies. [1] As scholars have already performed excellent analyses on the political economy of ritual human killings in Aztec empire (see, The Accursed Share by Georges Bataille), this post will focus only on large-scale human sacrifices as practiced in pre-Colombian Mayan society. ...

[box type=“note”]Fig.1, Bronze ceremonial axe (Yue / 钺) from middle to late Shang period, c. 1400 BCE ~ 1000 BCE, symbol of state power. Excavated from tomb M1 at the Sufutun site, currently part of the Shandong Museum collection. [/box] Human sacrifice refers to the practice of ritual killing of human beings as offerings to divine patrons, ancestors, or other superhuman forces. While the phenomenon of ritual human killings have been present in many societies throughout history [1], the types of human sacrifice that were practiced by ancient Chinese and pre-Colombian Mesoamerican cultures, which were exceptional in terms of the sheer number of people sacrificed, the frequency at which it was done, and the high degree of formalization of their sacrificial rituals. Large-scale, systematic human sacrifice functioned as important political and religious spectacles in Shang dynasty.[2] ...