The Necklace

The Wedding Ring, 2007

Early in the Sixteenth Century, the Inquisition was in full course. The Jews of Spain and Portugal suffered great persecution. It was illegal to practice any of the rituals, or to observe any of the customs of Judaism. Even to speak Hebrew was a crime punishable by death. Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism, and to profess their Christian faith openly in public. Under pain of death, many Jews did go through public conversions, ate pork in the public square, and trampled upon the sacred scrolls-acts which it was unthinkable for any Jew ever to commit. Many of them became marranos, secret Jews, who pretended by day to have converted to Catholicism but at night, hidden in the dark cellars of their homes in Valencia, Barcelona, Cadiz, or Madrid, these Jews recited the Sabbath prayers in secret, in soft voices, in near darkness, so that their neighbors would not hear what they were doing. They led double lives. These are the Jews who wrote the prayer that we all recite at the most solemn time of the year, the Kol Nidrei, the prayer we sing on Yom Kippur eve, the evening of the Day of Atonement. The prayer, sung in a sad, plaintive melody, announces that "all vows, oaths, and promises, that we may undertake, bind ourselves to, or recite in public, from this Day of Atonement to the next one which will come upon us in one year, are null, void, cancelled, and of no effect." As if they could vaccinate themselves against the the oaths they were going to be forced to take, by reciting this one prayer in secret, in their cellars, where only God and their closest friends and families could hear them.

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers, 2014

Originally published in Godey's Magazine and Lady's Book in 1854 (pp. 213-216), this article presents a brief history of necklaces among the classic Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, as well as the British, from the perspective of an educated English lady. It is an instructive early study of strung adornments based on antiquarian, historical, and literary sources.

2009

An exhibition of art jewellery created in response to Manchester Art Gallery's Pre-Raphaelite collection, curated by Jo Bloxham.

A Feminist Mythology, 2022

You are as light as a thin strand of white hair, as invisible as a common face. The back seat of the Honda where you rest is hardly perturbed by your weight. The wind smelling of rainsoaked frondescence sets you adrift in a procellous stone-strewn water body with perilous waves. You are lifted and then thrown back by the waves gushing into deep dark labyrinthine chambers, sometimes you touch the stony dead ceilings and sometimes you are under the water, rolling and turning in the mysterious whirlpool which emanates a nebulous haze. You are never wet, never soaked, never bedraggled. You are as dry as lips in winter, as land in desert. They sit in the two front seats, she in the driver's cushion and he on her left. Her lips are painted red, her nails are painted black. His curly long hair tied in a braid reminds you of the swinging bony tails of the cows grazing in the valley. The car that has been swiftly moving downhill now moves away from the centerline of the narrow road and stops at the side to allow a honking red tourist bus to pass. After the bus had passed she reaches out and hugs him and then kisses him on the mouth. "Why do you talk about pain all the time," she says stroking his hair, "it's such a beautiful morning, and we are finally married, there won't be any more pains…ever." "You are silly, Rumia, there will always be pain" he says disembracing himself and fingercombing his disheveled hair. With a mischievous girly smile she moves back to her seat. I know there will be pain," she says removing the smudged stains of passion around her mouth with a tissue, "but I refuse to be sullen anymore. I have got all I ever wanted; I have got you…honey. What's pain to me?" She turns to him with a beaming smile. "Sokhi, bhabona kahare bole, sokhi, jatona kahare bole?" She quotes the two lines from her favorite Tagore song nodding her head and blinking childishly. He smiles. "Hey, you are blushing," she says, "Oh, my god! I can't believe I made you blush. Ha…ha." "Come on, Rumia; don't pull my leg, drive on. There might be another car behind us; I thought I heard the tyres screech," He turns back. You gasp and move close to the window. But he doesn't see you. He inspects the narrow stony comma shaped curved track their vehicle has driven down and says "Be careful with the brakes, Rumia." The car starts once more. How unnatural it is to see him with her, you think. Yet why, you can never tell. Their faces come to you like faces in vintage sepia-tinted photographs partially dissolved in historical undercurrents staring at you blurred from some half-torn album. Sometimes you think it is all part of an extensive dream; a dream whose maze of metaphrastic mystery has engulfed you such that you can never walk out of its reverie-generated miasma. Who are you, why are you here drifting like some dead tree leaf in the air, caught in the net of communication between a

TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2015

This article considers the performances of “animal drag” that appear across the affiliated US media projects of Jackass (the television program and film franchise) and Wildboyz (the television program). Drawing on transgender studies scholarship, as well as recent work in affect theory, animal studies, and environmental studies, Nicole Seymour argues that these performances—which include, for example, a human inserting a fishhook in his face before being thrown into shark-infested waters—constitute an extension of this media corpus's general investment in affective interconnectivity. As Seymour shows, such performances ask us to feel along with the performers, which includes feeling along with them as animals. Paying attention to the comic as well as the tragic resonances of animal drag, the article outlines the ethical role that nonserious affective modes can play in probing the trans-, or intersectional and interdependent, nature of human and nonhuman life.

Prairie Schooner, 2003

The first time she could remember my father ever striking me, my mother told me forty-five years later, I was just learning to crawl on the hardwood floors of my father's cramped officer's barracks at Fort Bliss, and when just bathed and powdered-pink and still naked on hands and knees 1 reached out to touch a scorpion, carrying her young on her back, dozens of them, her hind end up, pincers out, flicking her tail at me from the shadows of my mother's closet, my father jumped from their bed, shouting, then slapped me across the back of my tender knuckles, picking me up like a football under his arm as I howled, then stepped the scorpions into a long blond smear with his boot. That's what Maricella, my mother's best friend from Juarez, the bullfighter's daughter, called them: Little blondies. Gueritos/ Tiny scorpions the vanilla color of calaveras, candy skulls for el Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. The day I was born ...

2019

The Whole of the Hidden Thing is an accumulation of found, altered, and replicated objects that harnesses the discarded and unknown histories attached to their constituent, postconsumer parts. From the perspective of the individual, other persons seem to be located across vast psychic distances. This body of work incorporates objects obtained from second-hand sources, particularly clothing, linens, furniture, and small, decorative trinkets to talk about the precarious balance between self and stranger, individual and collective, and the skin-like membranes that exist between people. By looking at objects as both manifestations of culture and carriers of invisible memory, I explore sentiment and intimacy through the material world of things and establish physical mediators for the recognition of shared culture. INDEX WORDS: Material culture, Intimacy, Textiles, Found objects, Sentiment, Accumulation THE WHOLE OF THE HIDDEN THING

A woman has several diamond rings but her most treasured piece of jewelry is a silver bracelet with five hearts on it. Why? The piece was her mother’s, composed of gifts from her father, a heart after each child. It is links like this that make jewelry more valuable than just the sum of its parts. This study contributes not only to design research but also to the small and novel field of jewelry studies. It brings a new approach to seeing personal experiences and memories, important when jewelry is part of women’s social existence. This study provides a deeper understanding of the social reasons why jewelry is possessed and worn. Women’s jewelry often connects past and future generations. Such jewelry not only exists in the present day, but also connects generations. Jewelry also often works as a mediator of memories of possessors’ milestones in life, relationships and family ties. It plays important roles in the rituals that make up the rites of passages throughout a woman’s life. 􀀄􀀇􀀉􀀊􀀅􀀈􀀆􀀂􀀋􀀌􀀍􀀋􀀎􀀏􀀃􀀁

Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, vol. I (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2005), pp. 60-71., 2005

A comparison between references in the Greek Magical Papyri to lettered, semi-lettered, and unlettered amulets of stone, metal, and papyrus with the actual realia of such amulets from the archaeological record, with special attention paid to the categories of diseases addressed, especially fever, along with the malevolent spirits thought to engender such maladies.

Silver Magazine, 2016