Palmyra, the famous oasis city in the Syrian Desert, has long been a subject of study. It is often brought to the forefront as a case study on trade networks, elite culture and local religious life. However, over the course of the last decades the data available from the city now allows us to investigate new facets of the city’s life, its culture, and its social and religious structure. This contribution provides a short introduction to the history and archaeology of the city as well as the history of research, before turning to the ways in which Palmyra was not only unique in the sense that through its location in an oasis and as a major trade hub it came to hold a pivotal role in the region for a while in the Roman period but can also be studied in a unique light in its relation to the Mediterranean world through the evidence from the city.

While the field of European law scholarship has long maintained a form of ‘colonial amnesia’, this chapter considers the growing literature that has emerged over the past few years studying the entanglements between European law projects and (post)colonialism. The chapter first suggests a new analytical framework to assess these ‘entanglements’ and ‘continuities’ by looking at three ‘carriers of continuity’ in the law: biographies of multiple-positioned lawyers; forms of legal knowledge; institutions and professions in the European field of law. As it looks at European law projects from the margins and peripheries, this new stream of research can transform our understanding of European law which looks less like the ‘cathedral’ often praised by scholars and more like a complex ‘archipelago’, the legal borders and principles of which are uncertain and unequal.

There are three slightly different ways that language and languages can be considered in relation to the idea of assemblage: assemblages as combinations of linguistic items (language assemblages), assemblages as semiotic gatherings (semiotic assemblages) and assemblages as material arrangements that involve language (sociomaterial assemblages). Looking at language in terms of assemblages emphasizes the processes of communication as people draw on varied resources to make meaning. The notion of semiotic assemblages opens up ways of thinking that focus not so much on language use in particular contexts – as if languages pre-exist their instantiation in particular places – but rather on the ways in which particular assemblages of objects, linguistic resources and places come together. This is to approach language not as a pregiven or circumscribed entity but rather as something that is constantly being put together from a range of semiotic and resources. Sociomaterial assemblages similarly focus on things and places in relation to linguistic resources and consider language to be embodied, embedded and distributed, where language is not so much an abstract system of signs as changing sets of material relations.

When José Eusebio Llano Zapata travelled from Peru to Spain in the middle of the eighteenth century, he remarked on the difference between the book markets. The Peruvian scholar who had travelled across the Atlantic, and had experienced both places, clearly judged the colonial book market favourably, and saw it as as bearing comparison with Europe's. In characterising the trade, he emphasised the wide variety of books that were available. In addition, he outlined a broad readership composed of both men and women, conveying the impression that books were an accessible object. In the following decades, more and more people in colonial society gained access to locally printed and imported books. This Introduction sets the historical and historiographic scene. It calls for a social history of books and prints, and reflects the status of Lima as a ‘Lettered City’ with social and spatial hierarchies.

This chapter presents salient concepts to understand a vast literature on dynamics of charged macromolecules. Starting from a description of hydrodynamic interaction, dynamics of folded proteins, colloids, flexible polyelectrolytes, DNA are described. For flexible macromolecules, the models of Rouse, Zimm, reptation, and entropic barrier are developed in increasing order of complexity. Using this groundwork, the phenomena of ordinary-extraordinary transition, electrophoretic mobility, and topologically frustrated dynamical state are explained.

This chapter presents a comprehensive overview of the mechanical behavior of Network materials, with emphasis on the structure–properties relation. Crosslinked and non-crosslinked Network materials are discussed in separate sections. The behavior of crosslinked networks in tension, shear, compression, and multiaxial loading is described. The effects of fiber tortuosity, fiber alignment, crosslink compliance, network connectivity, and variability of fiber properties on network stiffness and nonlinear behavior are discussed in detail. The size effect on linear and nonlinear material properties is evaluated in relation with network parameters. Three types of nonlinear behavior are identified, corresponding to networks that stiffen or soften continuously during deformation, and networks with an approximately linear response. Numerous examples of each type are presented, including collagen networks, fibrin and actin gels, elastomers, paper, and nonwovens. The response of non-crosslinked athermal networks, such as fiber wads, is studied in compression and tension. The effect of entanglements in athermal networks is analyzed and a parallel drawn with the mechanics of thermoplastics.

In this introductory chapter, we establish a theoretical framework for the book, drawing on the concept of 'queer entanglements' to argue for what a 'queer menagerie' might look like in terms of research, theory, and activism in regard to the intersections of gender, sexuality, and species. The chapter also provides definitions of the populations we focus on and outlines our reasons for our specific areas of focus. We also discuss our positionality as authors. In elaborating our theoretical framework, we focus on histories and presents of animal and LGBQTNB human lives, and we map out some potential ways of understanding why it would seem that such histories and presents take unique forms in the lives of LGBQTNB people and the animals they live with. We finish the chapter by outlining our two key concepts, ‘enmeshment’ and ‘irreducibility’, that help us to understand and represent the work of curating a queer menagerie. This introductory chapter concludes by providing an overview of the chapters included in this book.

In this introductory chapter, we establish a theoretical framework for the book, drawing on the concept of 'queer entanglements' to argue for what a 'queer menagerie' might look like in terms of research, theory, and activism in regard to the intersections of gender, sexuality, and species. The chapter also provides definitions of the populations we focus on and outlines our reasons for our specific areas of focus. We also discuss our positionality as authors. In elaborating our theoretical framework, we focus on histories and presents of animal and LGBQTNB human lives, and we map out some potential ways of understanding why it would seem that such histories and presents take unique forms in the lives of LGBQTNB people and the animals they live with. We finish the chapter by outlining our two key concepts, ‘enmeshment’ and ‘irreducibility’, that help us to understand and represent the work of curating a queer menagerie. This introductory chapter concludes by providing an overview of the chapters included in this book.