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One of the major changes that was produced by the wars of independence and the consequent foundation of new republics across the Spanish American mainland during the first five decades of the 19th century was the abolition of slavery. The history of the abolition of slavery in this region illustrates how economic, political, and social factors were entwined in the Spanish American revolutions as processes that were at once embedded in the broader imperial and transimperial dynamics of the 19th century, yet also singular in the origins and consequences that the end of slavery had in that region due to its connection to republican formation and the integration of African-descended people in legal and political terms.

Arab American theater broadly includes the dramatic works and performances of self-identified Arab Americans, Americans of Arab heritage, and immigrants to the United States from the Arabic-speaking world. Beginning in the late 19th century with the first wave of modern Arab migration to the United States, the tradition evolved from early intellectual dramas written by Mahjar playwrights to 21st century plays that span the gamut of form and genre. Among the most prominent contemporary playwrights of this tradition are Yussef El Guindi, Betty Shamieh, Heather Raffo, and Mona Mansour. Arab American performance also includes popular entertainment such as stand-up comedy and digital media. Arab American theater has been supported by a collection of amateur and professional companies over the years, as well as festival and digital media producers. Their contributions have culminated in a concerted cultural movement in the 21st century that seeks to disrupt misrepresentations of Arabs in American culture with authentic narratives from within the community. The contemporary Arab American theater and performance canon covers topics ranging from immigrant experiences to cross-cultural conflict, political resistance to identity politics, and popular stereotypes to anti-Arab bias in the government and media. The academic study of this tradition has increased in early 21st century and includes works by scholars in the United States and abroad.

While some studies have been undertaken on childhood in South Asia, there is no focused archaeological study on any aspect of gender in this region. Hence, information has been culled from work that only tangentially refers to aspects of gender. Within the constraints at hand, themes of gender and childhood in South Asia can be explored from studies on representation, production, toys, and skeletal remains. For instance, age, gender, masculinity, identity, and status have been deciphered through anthropomorphic representations. Similarly, can women’s work be discerned by looking at the locations of production, or the presence of children through toys? Skeletal data have pointed the way toward an understanding of matrilocality, migration, stress, and trauma that may have impacted women and children. In South Asian archaeology, there has been a focus on artifacts and their production and on classification and typology, often at times to the exclusion of the people who would have been associated with these objects. If people are at all considered, it is always with the assumption that men were the active agents in production, with women undertaking primarily domestic chores, like cooking. The bulk of craft production appears to have taken place in household contexts, where women and children, as also the aged, would equally have been active producers. There are tantalizing glimpses of what can be archaeologies of gender and childhood in South Asia, where certain social groups experienced more stress and trauma than other groups, pointing toward social stratification in the Indus period. Similarly, in the medieval period, differential representations can give hints for gender and status relations among communities. However, much more work focusing on these themes needs to be done in this region. To get more nuanced and deeper insights into gender and childhood, questions around these themes need to be formulated and integrated into archaeological projects.

Blame is a feature of everyday life, whether or not that blame is directed toward an individual for a willful act of moral transgression, an entrepreneur for taking reckless action that puts the venture and its employees at risk, or a company for the violation of some social norm. Blame identifies morally wrong behavior and has the power to pressure individuals to adhere to a set of norms. More broadly, blame is worthy of scholarly consideration because it is a reality for organizations and the individuals who lead them. Blame is multifaceted because it entails psychological, social, and legal issues. Historically, psychological theories of blame emphasized the rational and prescriptive—how blame attribution processes ought to occur to produce an accurate blame attribution, for example. Over time, psychological theories started to incorporate nonrational elements—such as how socially attractive the potentially blameworthy is, whether the blameworthy engage in “positive” or “negative” actions that are unrelated to the blameworthy act, and so forth. Blame becomes more complicated when it moves from a specific individual (e.g., an entrepreneur) to an aggregate group (a venture) or an abstract entity (a corporation). The aggregation of blame creates an apportionment problem in that it is unclear who within a group ought to be blamed. This complication is further illustrated in the court of law. For instance, courts in the United States have struggled to consistently judge cases of corporate criminal liability due, in part, to the difficulty of knowing how to assign blame to an abstract entity. Part of the challenge relates to establishing a criminal “state of mind” to a corporation, and the broader question whether a corporation can even have such a state of mind (or if that state of mind resides in its leaders, employees, etc.). Management research on blame is limited. Existing work examines blames-shifting tactics, such as scapegoating, wherein organizations place blame on specific organizational actors who may or may not have any direct connection to the blameworthy event. Importantly, blame attributions can flow both ways: employees may sometimes blame the broader organization, despite the employees’ involvement in the blameworthy act. Given the complexities of blame, entrepreneurs face unique blame-related challenges at different points of their venture’s life cycle. At early stages of the life cycle, blameworthy acts are unlikely to have significant societal impact, and attributions are relatively simple due to the minimal number of actors involved in the venture. As the venture grows, the impact of a blameworthy act grows in magnitude, as does the difficulty of accurately apportioning blame for the act among the numerous actors involved. If the venture eventually adopts a formal corporate structure, it also adopts corporate characteristics such as dispersed decision-making processes, a board of directors that are meant to provide some level of oversight, and so forth. This formal corporate structure introduces the challenge of establishing a “state of mind” for a blameworthy act. Ultimately, blame affects entrepreneurs, their ventures, and the corporations that eventually grow from them, and is worth further scholarly investigation.

Workplace bullying and harassment is prevalent in contemporary workplaces with detrimental negative outcomes for targets as well as for bystanders and the organization itself. At any one time, some 3%–20% of the working population is targeted, suffering reduced motivation and productivity, severe mental and physical health problems, and a risk of exclusion from the organization and even working life altogether. Bullying and harassment is about the systematic and ongoing mistreatment of an employee by other organization members, mostly of a psychological and social nature and often involving a gradually escalating process that may end in severe victimization of those targeted if not properly managed and handled in its early phases. In early phases, by some denoted incivility, the behaviors involved are often subtle, indirect, and discrete, while in later phases they become ever more prevalent and direct—even involving threats and open verbal abuse. Bullying may involve work-related behaviors creating a difficult and even dangerous working situation for the target, personally demeaning behavior, acts of social exclusion and non-inclusion, and physically intimidation behaviors. Hence, bullying comes in many shades and forms, as well as at many levels of intensity. Although risk factors and antecedents of this complex problem may be found on many levels, factors in the immediate working environment and the design and management of work are particularly important. Furthermore, bullying is particularly prevalent in working environments characterized by a hostile working climate and in organizations where such behaviors are permitted or even rewarded.

Beginning with the Renaissance, the architecture of churches in the West was shaped by new cultural and liturgical demands that reshaped the spaces of Christian worship. Renaissance Christians found models of urban monumentality and geometric harmony in the architecture of classical Rome that they deemed lacking in their existing Gothic forms. At the same time, both Catholics and Protestants placed new emphasis on preaching and on the ability of worshipers to see the liturgy. These factors decisively reshaped church architecture. The rational austerity of the Renaissance, however, soon gave way to the more exuberant decoration of the baroque and, in time, to a revival of the Gothic. Beginning in the late 18th century, it became valued for its association with mystery, organic development, and the endurance of faith amid the rise of scientific rationalism. By the mid-19th century, an eclecticism in architecture had developed where many church builders used varied styles to actualize buildings of many plans in order to bring the desired historical and emotional associations to the structure, or simply to distinguish it from its neighbors. Yet, architectural principles—often associated with the Gothic—that emphasized the integral relation of form, structure, and function led many church builders to embrace architectural modernism. They rejected applied ornament, especially that which hid the structure of the building. Concrete, steel, and glued laminated wood beams made possible new designs often with a minimalist aesthetic and innovative ground plans. As in the 16th, so in the 20th century this architectural shift was associated with new values and liturgical demands. For many there was a fundamental concern with the architectural expression of the immanence of God. Historical styles and dim light seemed wrongly to suggest that God was not part of the contemporary world. Along with this, liturgical ressourcement fostered throughout the 20th century by the Liturgical Movement and endorsed by the Second Vatican Council championed the idea that liturgy was “the work of the people,” a corporate activity in which all participated. This led to the development of the “modern communal church” as a liturgical form. Many historic buildings were significantly altered. Within thirty years, a sizable revolution was insisting on more traditional, often classical, architectural forms ensuring that future church building would be shaped by a dialogue between tradition and the modern.