Modern literary history was born, together with the European nation states, in the early 19th century, encapsulating the emerging idea of literature as an articulation of the national mentality. In tandem with other national histories of art, politics, language, religion, culture and nature, literary history took part in the creation of a national identity, as did the literary texts it interpreted and canonized along a historical trajectory with the nation state as its teleological culmination. Literature and literary histories have always been a form of cultural intervention, not just texts. This is still the case, but in a modern transnational and globalized cultural environment, inherited historical paradigms are obsolete as scientific and didactic models. Nevertheless, they still play a dominant role in our educational institutions on all levels. This article discusses the resilience of the national paradigm, points to the institutional and conceptual obstacles for imposing alternative frameworks, but also exemplifies how new historiographical routes may be found.

Turkish migrants constitute the largest migrant community as well as the largest migrant entrepreneurial group in many European countries. Recent studies state that today 1 in 10 Turkish families is self-employed and the number of Turkish entrepreneurs operating all over EU member states has exceeded 100,000. Projections suggest that 190,000 Turkish entrepreneurs will be living in the EU member states in 2020 while employing over 1 million people. An increasing involvement of second-generation migrants in entrepreneurial activities, as well as the new orientations from traditional to non-traditional sectors and transnational activities, has led to a transformation from ‘Migrant Entrepreneurship’ towards the ‘New European Entrepreneurship’.

I wish to caution against undue weight being given to received wisdom and false assumptions of ‘expertise’, particularly in the context of new epidemics. I argue that, in some cases, reliance on received wisdom can lead to poor decision-making in public health terms, whether we are talking about Mad Cow Disease, the likelihood of a novel strain of influenza causing many fatalities, or the best way to reduce overdose deaths soon after release from prison. I shall also stress the importance of well-designed data-acquisition which is, or should be, the forte of statistician-scientists.

This paper examines the importance of human rights protection – in particular the European Convention on Human Rights – to the Council of Europe's survival as a political authority. Its underlying premise is that the proliferation of regional organisations in Europe in post-war Europe, and the creation of the Communities in 1958, contributed to a loss of a sense of purpose as to the Council of Europe's role in post-war Europe. Initial attempts to widen the scope of its political authority in relation to the Member States and other regional organisations were unsuccessful. It was, therefore, necessary for the Council of Europe to consolidate its existing mandate in ensuring the region's democratic security through human rights protection. Thus, led by its Parliamentary Assembly, Council of Europe institutions have, since 1949, provided the Member States with the necessary regional fora for examining and promulgating regional human rights legislation, such as the European Convention on Human Rights and its two additional protocols abolishing the death penalty.

The essay deals with the criterion and the distortion of making democratic political culture the basis of the democratic political community in the context of the traumatic historical experiences. The historical traumas of the communities may lead to a fluid or vacuum situation, a non-democratic consolidation, a fall back to personal power, even political hysteria if the assessment of the situation is wrong and bad aims are chosen; to a situation that could bring almost all the countries of Europe to the brink of disaster, and only those countries that could recall democratic political culture and education will be able to keep up with the rise of democratic crowd emotion. A comparative European research into the ways and means of processing collective traumas is not only an area that might shed new light on political phenomena, but a requirement of democratic functioning.

In spite of the fact that negotiations have been going on for years, the chances that Turkey will eventually become a full member of the European Union are slim. At present, a political majority among the EU-member states headed by Germany seems to oppose Turkey entering the EU. In the Netherlands, however, most political parties are still in favour of Turkey's membership. That difference coincides with the difference in the position of Turkish immigrants in German and Dutch societies.

There is plenty of stuff out there that looks like science, sounds like science and yet which is no more science than the ‘cargo cult’ aircraft and landing strips constructed by Pacific Islanders in the 1940s and 1950s were functional technology. My talk is not so much about the usual suspects – homeopathy, crystal healing, UFOs and the like – but other areas of cargo-cult science that sit far closer to the high altar of respectability. We take far too much for granted in science, and this can be seen in the replicability (or otherwise) of peer-reviewed studies, the phenomenon of publication bias, the so-called Decline Effect and the persistence of folk myths such as the one that describes how aeroplanes fly.

The resurgence of World Literature must be seen in relation to the economization of all spheres of life. Traditional, ‘specialized’ literary criticism replicates literature's power to interpellate subjects characterized by attention. Both literature and state funded literary criticism in research and teaching are currently under siege because they are counter-hegemonic in relation to a lifeworld shaped by a global attention deficit syndrome, which is the bedrock of a hypertrophic consumerism. Recent proposals for writing histories and systematic descriptions of World Literature are complicit with this move because they champion, to the detriment of deep attention, the relevance, mobility, exchange value, and translatability of texts, successfully competing with traditional ‘painstaking’ practices of literary criticism for ever dwindling institutional resources.

Along with those case studies he did on the Middle East, the Cyprus case study that is presented here was meant to have been part of István Bibó's Paralysis of International Institutions and the Remedies. A Study of Self-Determination, Concord among the Major Powers, and Political Arbitration (Hassock, Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1976), written between 1965 and 1974, but it was finally left out of the volume. István Bibó (1911–1979) was a seminal Hungarian democratic political thinker, international lawyer, and the last legitimate minister of the 1956 revolution, and, in this case study, he pointed out that there is no such entity as a Cypriot nation. Cyprus is the clashing and splitting area of the Greek and the Turkish nation-making processes. His detailed analysis is based upon this assumption. It has been translated by Péter Pásztor (Szentendre, Hungary).

This article aims to open a theoretical space to address the variation of migrant settlement and transnationalism in time and space beyond the national scale and ethnic lens. On the basis of the emergent homeland ties and Hometown Associations of Syriac migrants from Mardin (Turkey) in Europe it approaches migrant dynamics through the lens of the repositioning struggles Mardin has undergone within the context of neo-liberal development agendas.

Infectious diseases still jeopardize human health and even lives. In spite of the variety of advanced treatment methods, prevention is considered to be the most effective way to fight infections, and vaccination, no doubt, is one of the most effective preventive measures in the history of mankind. The vaccine controversy is based on a dispute over morality, ethics, effectiveness, and/or safety. There is no 100% safe or effective vaccine; however, benefits clearly overweigh risks. Ironically, as the numbers of cases of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases are falling, the controversies relating to vaccine safety are growing. Vaccines are generally victims of their own success. Controversies can afflict the positive acceptance of immunization, decrease the coverage and uptake and finally threaten the health of children and adults.

This article discusses the theory of the Russian medievalist Dmitry Likhachov regarding the evolution of European literature. In the history of European literature, Likhachov distinguishes a number of so-called ‘megaperiods’, which each consist of a ‘primary’ and a ‘secondary’ cultural period or style. The megaperiods are: Romanesque–Gothic, Renaissance–Baroque, Classicism–Romanticism, Realism–Symbolism, Modernism–Postmodernism. Primary periods generally favour ‘realism’ and are connected with a definite ideology; secondary periods tend to decorativeness, irrationalism and various, even opposite, ideologies. The change from a primary to a secondary period is gradual, from a secondary to a primary one rather sudden. The theory makes us aware of the existence of a kind of ‘rhythm’ in the development of European literature and culture.

Literary History has changed its objectives during the last few decades. In theory as well as in literary analysis strictly demarcated approaches have given way to a worldwide perspective. The openness to the world and the ongoing dialogue with the ‘other’ resonates in recent French Literature. Academic critique can accompany and guide these evolutions. This article focuses on three central concepts: transculturalité, colinguisme and transmédialité. Special attention will be given to the 18th century French-English author William Beckford and the final word is spoken by Edouard Glissant.

Return migration has been one of the rather neglected aspects of migration until recently, although a considerable number of international migrants as well as inter-regional migrants return to their place of origin. Nevertheless, since the beginning of the 1990s, the interest for issues related to return migration has grown considerably. In the context of Turkish return migration there still is a lack of information about the motives for returning, the new social status, the levels of satisfaction and reintegration as well as the employment and income of emigrants who have returned home. This paper aims at shedding light on this neglected aspect of Turkish migration in the context of Europe as well as on the history of Turkey as a country of immigration.

Universities in the UK have been offering ‘bachelor of science’ degrees in preposterous made-up pseudoscience. The Freedom of Information Act made it possible to winkle out some of the nonsense taught on these courses. When this was exposed on blogs and in the mainstream media, vice-chancellors were embarrassed into closing many of the courses. The fact that it had to be done this way reflects badly on the integrity of the vice-chancellors involved. And the total failure of every regulatory agency to achieve this reveals the bad value that they give.