This introductory chapter treats the early history of Rome’s literature, who was interested in the topic and when, and also how they approached the subject. It notes that from the start Roman literature was deeply imitative of Greek, and that the other peoples of the Italian peninsula also played important roles in the creation of a native literature. Indeed, many of the original writers of Rome were non-Romans. Covers the epics of Livius Andronicus, Naevius, and Ennius.

Chapter 8 focuses on the imperial state level to examine the legal and political logic informing the final adjudication of the case in 1799, a decision that constituted a shift in the decisions the Council of the Indies and colonial tribunals had been taking in the 1780s. The chapter examines the political reasons related to mining utility and security that informed the shift and the juridical basis imperial jurists used to ground the case’s outcome. Ultimately, the Bourbon Crown ruled in favor of the cobreros but attached caveats related to Indian law to their collective freedom. The chapter ventures into the immediate aftermath of the Freedom Edict of 1800 to examine the challenges that emerged in the colony regarding the actualization of the decreed emancipation. It also interrogates the possibility of compensation or reparations to the cobreros for their wrongful enslavement.

As we consider the relationship of myth-making, at all levels of ‘artistic quality’, it is tempting to place the ‘creative’ moment of invention on a level with God’s action in the creation of the world. Even when the artist humbly attributes her ideas to the world, to her relationships, to her keen artist’s eye, there remains a sense that the novel remainder is somehow conjured by the artist’s genius itself. Indeed, the derivation of genius as the individual’s attendant deity retains some of the originary power suggested by the imposition of the verb creare onto the artist’s work. Before we can properly consider why such an application has been contentious, both theologically and in the attempt to understand what we mean by the poiesis of mythopoiesis, we must consider what Christian theologians classically have meant by ‘creation’ at all.

Variation in the form, pattern and pace of ageing is studied by scientists in multiple disciplines and there is much to be gained from more cross-disciplinary communication. This chapter suggests here that the framework provided by Tinbergen’s ‘Four Questions’ is useful in integrating ageing research. It emphasizes the need to separate biological and chronological age and describe several markers of age-related deterioration that could be used more widely to measure biological age, with a focus on those that can be deployed outside of the standard laboratory setting and be used repeatedly in individuals to enable longitudinal studies. Whole organism frailty measures are currently little used by evolutionary ecologists and this chapter describes how these could be used more extensively. Telomere attrition and mitochondrial function are highly conserved processes and have been studied in an increasingly wide range of taxa in recent years. The chapter also discusses other markers, including those related to immune function, oxidative damage, inflammation and DNA methylation. Great progress is currently being made in the use of epigenetic alterations to provide information on chronological and biological age in a range of (predominantly) vertebrate taxa. The chapter outlines how this integrative approach could be developed further and highlight future directions.

Existing conceptualizations of thriving at work are dominated by White Eurocentric hegemonic beliefs. This is done by focusing on individual experiences and workplace resources and privileging universalisms over pluralistic, local, and regional understandings. Many individuals and communities across the globe are engaged in precarious work, operate in informal economies, and lack the opportunity to gain equal access to resources. With fairness as the foundation to thriving, I have expanded on existing conceptualizations on thriving at work by restoring multiple perspectives, centering decent work as a basic goal, and by including an ecological systems perspective. Thriving workplaces require equitable opportunities for self-determination available for all.

The Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) accounts for how native-language (L1) experience shapes speech perception. According to PAM, infants develop phonological categories by attuning to the critical phonetic features that set phonological categories apart (phonological distinctiveness) and to the phonetic variability that defines each category (phonological constancy).The effects of L1 attunement on perception can also be seen in adults. PAM generates predictions about discrimination accuracy for non-native contrasts by comparing how the non-native phones are perceived in terms of L1 phonological categories. The extent to which perception might be altered further by experience with a second language (L2) is outlined by PAM-L2. While PAM has focused on L1 attunement in monolinguals, and PAM-L2 on L2 acquisition in adulthood, their principles also apply to early bilingual language acquisition. In this chapter, we will consider the various contexts of acquisition and language use in early bilinguals to sketch out how experience with more than one native language shapes perception and how childhood L2 acquisition might modify the emerging phonological system.

This chapter addresses symmetry’s implications for gun rights and unenumerated fundamental liberties. Although recognizing an individual right to bear arms is inevitably asymmetric given current divides over gun regulation, the Supreme Court might moderate its decisions’ asymmetry in two ways: by allowing some meaningful room for firearms regulation, and by ensuring that the Second Amendment sometimes interferes with laws that are conventionally favored more by conservatives than by progressives. With respect to unenumerated rights, symmetry should support embracing some method for identifying such rights that avoids any predictable skew toward rights favored by one or the other major partisan or ideological camp. The Court’s current method of looking to “history and tradition” to define unenumerated rights could satisfy this standard, provided the Court applies it in a manner that allows recognition of new rights based on enactment of new laws over time in jurisdictions across the United States. In addition, the existing constitutional protection for parental rights, meaning parents’ authority to control key aspects of their children’s upbringing, appears not only defensible under the Court’s “history and tradition” approach but also symmetric given major current divides over certain parenting choices.

Counting of degrees of freedom of fields up to spin 2 is described, both on-shell and off-shell. Then, the supergravity models, based on matching Bose and Fermi degrees of freedom, are inferred. The N = 1 on-shell supergravity model is defined, and the first-order and second-order formalisms, as well as the better 1.5-order formalism, in which the susy invariance of the action is shown.

We described actions and equations of motion for general supergravities, out of which we derive extremal and black p-brane solutions. We find electric p-brane solutions and magnetic p-brane solutions and show the duality between them, then we generalize to black p-branes and Dp-branes in 10 dimensions, and then we discuss fundamental string and NS5-brane solutions in 10 dimensions. Tseytlin’s harmonic function rule for writing intersecting brane solutions is explained.

The introduction outlines the volume’s main impetus: to encourage historians, global and not, to reflect on ‘their daily task’, as Marc Bloch put it – on their methods, craftsmanship, and conceptual basics. It is an invitation to rethink the field’s forms of inquiry and argumentation and the tacit assumptions underlying its practice, at a time when the ground under global historians’ feet – with globalisation in crisis – is moving fast.

Global history and other relational approaches to history, the introduction holds, have methodological implications and require theoretical reflection: because many of the classic analytical instruments commonly employed by historians require some reduction of complexity – to explain, to periodise, or to compare – a task naturally more difficult when scholars deal with an unusual abundance of factors; because the field’s assault on Eurocentrism requires reflection on the matter of perspective and authorial vantage point; or, indeed, because of the field’s inherent teleology, with its understanding of history inseparable from the telos of continuously increasing global integration.

This chapter recounts Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese relations from 1975 to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1978 as well as Sino-Vietnamese relations during the same period. The chapter also introduces Hun Sen and describes the state of Vietnam–US relations since the end of the Vietnam War.