Abstract(s) of the Week!

Human Rights Quarterly:

Cartoon Violence and Freedom of Expression

The publication of the "Danish cartoons" generated a continuing conflict between freedom of expression and religious tolerance. The article examines the history of cartoon satire, invoking past examples of racial and religious discrimination in cartoons while emphasizing the important role cartoonists have played in criticizing and checking the exercise of power. The legal implications of the "Danish cartoons" is [sic] analyzed through the lens of international human rights law, in particular the concepts of hate speech, racial discrimination and religious defamation. Finally the present movement in the UN towards "cartooning for peace" is promoted.

GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies:

Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology

What does it mean to be oriented? How is it that we come to find our way in a world that acquires new shapes, depending on which way we turn? If we know where we are, when we turn this way or that, then we are oriented. We have our bearings. We know what to do to get to this place or to that. To be oriented is also to be oriented toward certain objects, those that help us find our way. These are the objects we recognize, such that when we face them, we know which way we are facing. They gather on the ground and also create a ground on which we can gather. Yet objects gather quite differently, creating different grounds. What difference does it make what we are oriented toward? My interest in this broad question of orientation is motivated by an interest in the specific question of sexual orientation. What does it mean for sexuality to be lived as oriented? What difference does it make what or who we are oriented toward in the very direction of our desire? If orientation is a matter of how we reside in space, then sexual orientation might also be a matter of residence, of how we inhabit spaces, and who or what we inhabit spaces with. After all, queer geographers have shown us how spaces are . . .

Update: Actually went and found the "Cartooning for Peace" site. It would probably help if the captions and thought balloons were translated into the takeover language of the 21st century, Esperanto, but I was surprised by a few; the ones, that is, that were (mildly) sympathetic to Israel (how, I say, how, does that forward the peace process?). Can't figure out how to link to any particular cartoon (they have that Coverflow thing going on) and the whole site is kind of convoluted, so just look around.