Giving Afghan Women a Voice: women's writing in Afghanistan

This article considers how far women's rights have improved in Afghanistan since the intervention by the international community in 2001. It examines this question through the author's experience of working with an Afghan women's writing group. It looks at the tension between allowing Afghan women to voice their experiences, and the danger of their writing embracing depictions of the female as ‘victim’. It concludes that while depictions of Afghan womanhood may appear to promote ‘negative’ images, the women themselves offer positive role models.     

Misogyny,Dionysianism and a new model of Greek tragedy

The subject of misogyny in Greek culture is widely recognized as of capital importance in understanding our attitude towards women as well as the general culture context within which that attitude is framed. Yet despite the obvious importance of this subject there has been little attention given to the way misogyny in fifth‐centry Athens was an integral part of its greatest art form, the tragic drama. Only when a model of tragedy is developed which accounts for the typological opposition between the male “tragic hero” and Dionysus will it be possible to understand how women function within this particular literary genre as the essential “other” of repressive male consciousness.     

Leader Influence and Reputation Formation in World Politics

The study of reputation is one of the foundational topics of modern international relations. However, fundamental questions remain, including the question of to whom reputations adhere: states, leaders, or both? We offer a theory of influence‐specific reputations (ISR) that unifies competing accounts of reputation formation. We theorize that reputations will adhere more to actors who are more influential in the relevant decision‐making process. We employ two survey experiments, one abstract and one richly detailed involving a U.S.‐Iran conflict, to evaluate ISR. We find evidence of large country‐specific reputations and moderately sized leader‐specific reputations. Consistent with the theory of influence‐specific reputations, leader‐specific reputations are more important when leaders are more influential.