Employs research on the GDR's healthcare system along with feminist and queer theory to get at socialism's legacy, revealing a specifically East German literary convention: employment of symptomatic female bodies to either enforce or rebel against political and social norms.

This dissertation is a study of the literary motifs and topoi relating to rebellion in the Assyrian royal inscriptions. It is particularly concerned with the ways in which the Assyrian kings and their scribes emplotted rebellion into the narratives of the royal inscriptions in order to present these events in a favourable light. Details such as the identities of those responsible for a rebellion; the location of the king at the time at which the rebellion began; or the involvement of the gods (or lack thereof) all contributed towards a message that rebellions against Assyria were unjustified and lacked divine backing. In cases where it was felt that events could not be made to present the king in a favourable light, reference to rebellion was omitted from the inscription. I argue that the approach to these events changed during the reign of Ashurbanipal. This king presented events which might otherwise have been seen as negatively connoted as having been decreed by the gods in order to allow him the opportunity to gain further military successes against his enemies.

The European Seminar in Historical Methodology is committed to debating issues surrounding the history of ancient Israel and Judah with the aim of developing methodological principles for writing a history of the period. In this particular session the topic chosen was the Omride dynasty-its rise and fall-and the subsequent Jehu dynasty, down to the fall of Samaria to the Assyrians. Participants discuss such topics as the dating of prophetic texts, the house of Ahab in Chronicles, the Tel Dan inscription, the Mesha inscription, the Jezebel tradition, the archaeology of Iron IIB, the relationship between the biblical text and contemporary sources, and the nature of the Omride state. The volume incidentally gives a reasonably comprehensive treatment of the main sources, issues, debates, and secondary literature on this period of Israel's history. An introductory chapter summarizes the individual papers and also the relevant section of Mario Liverani's recent history of the period. A concluding `Reflections on the Debate' summarizes the issues raised in the papers and provides a perspective on the discussion. LHB/OTS volume 421 - ESHM volume 6

In Babel: Political Rhetoric of a Confused Legacy, Boyd shows how one of the most familiar stories from the Bible, the Tower of Babel, has been misinterpreted for millennia. He offers a new interpretation, and also examines how the story has shaped politics and intellectual culture to the current day.