Papers
New Jurisdictional Tools for Displaced Cultural Property in Russia: From "Twice Saved" to Twice Taken
First Prize at http://www.culturalheritagelaw.org/education/2009-student-writing-comp
The D.C. Circuit Court’s recent opinion in Chabad v. Russian Federation (2008) allowed jurisdiction under the expropriation exception of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act [FSIA] over Russia and its agencies by employing an expansive interpretation of a “taking in violation of international law.” The court held that a governmental “frustration” of an owner’s effort to physical recover property, when recovery had been secured through a final judicial judgment, may effect a “retaking” sufficient for jurisdiction. This template for a “retaking” or “second taking” of property has potentially broad consequences for cultural property displaced during and after World War II, particularly in Russia. It also severely limits one of the most effective defenses customarily employed by nations drawn into litigation, the Act of State Doctrine.
LikeCum Notabilibus Suis: Allegorical Landscaping in Gerald of Wales's Itinerarium Kambriae
Presented at the Medieval Academy Meeting, University of Toronto (2007)
Twenty-five out of the twenty-seven chapters in Gerald of Wales’s Itinerarium Kambriae (c. 1189-1215) tell us in the title that they contain information about a particular locale “cum notabilibus suis.” These notabilia are usually considered random marvelous details and digressions, and the amplification of these in the successive versions seem to obscure rather than reveal a focused authorial project. Yet Gerald deploys these “digressions” to create, in the process of narration, a specific, localized, signifying landscape of Wales that in structure acts out geographically what allegory does formally: two distinct narratives are connected through topographical features and visible vestigia of past miracles which function as cross-temporal witnesses, representing for the contemporary traveler snatches of narrative from an actively sacred past. In this paper, I will analyze how Gerald integrates the notabilia into the narrative of his contemporary journey. The concrete, largely topographical notabilia create a backdrop for the journey characterized by a kind of double vision or double time – a dual landscape that features both natural, topographical presence and – literally – a supernatural, or spiritual, meaning. Furthermore, part of Gerald’s project seems to be to create by allusion a master narrative of Wales’s sacred past itself. Gerald is both author and witness; we see what he sees, and he sees a specifically Christian history of Wales which, in its creation as textual, is suggestively analogous to the biblical history of the Holy Land.
Dating the Versions of the Topographia Hibernica
dissertation chapter
Gerald of Wales wrote his text on Ireland, the Topographia Hibernica, in five successive versions, each one longer than the last. This paper suggests dates for each version based on new availability of manuscript evidence and internal textual interpretation. The resulting timeline drastically revises the previous assumption of scholars that Gerald continued to revise the Topographia until the end of his life.
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