From the organization website:

Writing has given me a rich and exciting life.
I’ve traveled the world from Sweden to South Africa, from the Golden Globes to the Olympic women’s hockey finals. I’ve photographed a mother polar bear and her cubs and profiled stars like ABBA, Jennifer Garner and Katarina Witt. And I couldn’t have done it without women.
I’ve been very fortunate, and it’s time for me to give back. With the Irene Adler Prize, I’m awarding a $1,000 scholarship to a woman pursuing a degree in journalism, creative writing, or literature at a recognized post-secondary institution.

Contest details

• Sponsor: Lucas Aykroyd
• Category: Essay
• Submission length: 500 words
• Entry fee: No fee
• Awards: $1,000 scholarship to a woman pursuing a degree in journalism, creative writing, or literature at a recognized post-secondary institution

Guidelines and submission information (organization's contest page)
This contest has been vetted and approved by Winning Writers

Press Release

Hollywood, CA: Child Actor 101 Announces the 7th Session of Its Renowned Acting Masterclass

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Child Actor 101, led by industry expert Corey Ralston, is excited to announce the 7th session of "The Craft," a specialized master class for young actors aged 10 to 19. This course is designed to transform talented individuals into dynamic actors, ready to conquer the realms of TV and film.
Key Course Features: - Duration & Format: Six months (20 weeks) of comprehensive training, delivered online via Zoom. Sessions are recorded for flexible learning. - Content: A rich blend of established acting methodologies (Meisner, Hagen, Adler) with a focus on emotional expression, comedy, and charisma development. - Unique Benefits: Includes self-tape feedback, private coaching sessions, and detailed weekly homework for skill application. - Eligibility: Acceptance-based, requiring approval from Corey Ralston for registration.
Transformative Results: Graduates have consistently achieved remarkable success, bagging roles in network TV and major films, a testament to the course's efficacy.
Comprehensive Curriculum: - Weekly Structure: Mixture of lectures, discussions, video lessons, and active performance participation. - Homework: Designed to reinforce learning and skill application. - Evaluations: Extensive feedback and comprehensive final assessments.
Limited Enrollment: Capped at 16 students per session to ensure individualized attention.
Flexibility for Busy Schedules: - Recorded Sessions: For easy catch-up and review. - Scholarship Opportunities: Available for students facing financial challenges.
Enrollment Process: Detailed application and selection criteria at childactor101.com/thecraft.
Prestigious Testimonials:

1. Wendy Alane Wright, Renowned Coach: "A must for young actors aiming for the top. The Craft is crucial for developing competitive-level skills."
   
2. Melissa, Mother of Ella Dorsch: "Ella's leading role in a SAG film is a direct result of 'The Craft.' It refined her skills, elevating her performances remarkably."
   
3. Joanna, Mother of Aiden Torres: "Aiden's acting skills skyrocketed after 'The Craft,' leading to significant film roles. Corey's training was a game-changer."
   

Investment Options: - Early Bird Discount: $1149 full or $199/month for six months (before December 20th). - Regular Price: $1349 full or $199/month for seven months (after December 20th). - Partial Scholarship: Seven payments of $135 for eligible students.
Set to begin on January 8th or 9th, 2024, at 4:30 PM Pacific, "The Craft" is poised to be a transformative journey for aspiring actors. For more details, visit childactor101.com/thecraft.
Contact: Corey Ralston Child Actor 101 [Email: coaching@coreyralston.pro](mailto:coaching@coreyralston.pro)
This press release is a declaration of Child Actor 101 and Corey Ralston's commitment to shaping the future of young acting talents.

Press Release: "The Craft" – A Pinnacle of Training for Young Actors

Hollywood, CA: Child Actor 101 Announces the 7th Session of Its Renowned Acting Masterclass

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Child Actor 101, led by industry expert Corey Ralston, is excited to announce the 7th session of "The Craft," a specialized master class for young actors aged 10 to 19. This course is designed to transform talented individuals into dynamic actors, ready to conquer the realms of TV and film.
Key Course Features: - Duration & Format: Six months (20 weeks) of comprehensive training, delivered online via Zoom. Sessions are recorded for flexible learning. - Content: A rich blend of established acting methodologies (Meisner, Hagen, Adler) with a focus on emotional expression, comedy, and charisma development. - Unique Benefits: Includes self-tape feedback, private coaching sessions, and detailed weekly homework for skill application. - Eligibility: Acceptance-based, requiring approval from Corey Ralston for registration.
Transformative Results: Graduates have consistently achieved remarkable success, bagging roles in network TV and major films, a testament to the course's efficacy.
Comprehensive Curriculum: - Weekly Structure: Mixture of lectures, discussions, video lessons, and active performance participation. - Homework: Designed to reinforce learning and skill application. - Evaluations: Extensive feedback and comprehensive final assessments.
Limited Enrollment: Capped at 16 students per session to ensure individualized attention.
Flexibility for Busy Schedules: - Recorded Sessions: For easy catch-up and review. - Scholarship Opportunities: Available for students facing financial challenges.
Enrollment Process: Detailed application and selection criteria at childactor101.com/thecraft.
Prestigious Testimonials:

1. Wendy Alane Wright, Renowned Coach: "A must for young actors aiming for the top. The Craft is crucial for developing competitive-level skills."
   
2. Melissa, Mother of Ella Dorsch: "Ella's leading role in a SAG film is a direct result of 'The Craft.' It refined her skills, elevating her performances remarkably."
   
3. Joanna, Mother of Aiden Torres: "Aiden's acting skills skyrocketed after 'The Craft,' leading to significant film roles. Corey's training was a game-changer."
   

Investment Options: - Early Bird Discount: $1149 full or $199/month for six months (before December 20th). - Regular Price: $1349 full or $199/month for seven months (after December 20th). - Partial Scholarship: Seven payments of $135 for eligible students.
Set to begin on January 8th or 9th, 2024, at 4:30 PM Pacific, "The Craft" is poised to be a transformative journey for aspiring actors. For more details, visit childactor101.com/thecraft.
Contact: Corey Ralston Child Actor 101 [Email: coaching@coreyralston.pro](mailto:coaching@coreyralston.pro)
This press release is a declaration of Child Actor 101 and Corey Ralston's commitment to shaping the future of young acting talents.

Hollywood, CA: Child Actor 101 Announces the 7th Session of Its Renowned Acting Masterclass

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Child Actor 101, led by industry expert Corey Ralston, is excited to announce the 7th session of "The Craft," a specialized master class for young actors aged 10 to 19. This course is designed to transform talented individuals into dynamic actors, ready to conquer the realms of TV and film.
Key Course Features: - Duration & Format: Six months (20 weeks) of comprehensive training, delivered online via Zoom. Sessions are recorded for flexible learning. - Content: A rich blend of established acting methodologies (Meisner, Hagen, Adler) with a focus on emotional expression, comedy, and charisma development. - Unique Benefits: Includes self-tape feedback, private coaching sessions, and detailed weekly homework for skill application. - Eligibility: Acceptance-based, requiring approval from Corey Ralston for registration.
Transformative Results: Graduates have consistently achieved remarkable success, bagging roles in network TV and major films, a testament to the course's efficacy.
Comprehensive Curriculum: - Weekly Structure: Mixture of lectures, discussions, video lessons, and active performance participation. - Homework: Designed to reinforce learning and skill application. - Evaluations: Extensive feedback and comprehensive final assessments.
Limited Enrollment: Capped at 16 students per session to ensure individualized attention.
Flexibility for Busy Schedules: - Recorded Sessions: For easy catch-up and review. - Scholarship Opportunities: Available for students facing financial challenges.
Enrollment Process: Detailed application and selection criteria at childactor101.com/thecraft.
Prestigious Testimonials:

1. Wendy Alane Wright, Renowned Coach: "A must for young actors aiming for the top. The Craft is crucial for developing competitive-level skills."
   
2. Melissa, Mother of Ella Dorsch: "Ella's leading role in a SAG film is a direct result of 'The Craft.' It refined her skills, elevating her performances remarkably."
   
3. Joanna, Mother of Aiden Torres: "Aiden's acting skills skyrocketed after 'The Craft,' leading to significant film roles. Corey's training was a game-changer."
   

Investment Options: - Early Bird Discount: $1149 full or $199/month for six months (before December 20th). - Regular Price: $1349 full or $199/month for seven months (after December 20th). - Partial Scholarship: Seven payments of $135 for eligible students.
Set to begin on January 8th or 9th, 2024, at 4:30 PM Pacific, "The Craft" is poised to be a transformative journey for aspiring actors. For more details, visit childactor101.com/thecraft.
Contact: Corey Ralston Child Actor 101 [Email: coaching@coreyralston.pro](mailto:coaching@coreyralston.pro)
This press release is a declaration of Child Actor 101 and Corey Ralston's commitment to shaping the future of young acting talents.

Playing the Heavy
Actor Robert Davi Has Made a Career of Playing Tough Guys With a Signature Cigar.
By Paul Chutkow.
Monte's is not your usual Hollywood hangout. It's not chic, it's not trendy, and it's no place to camp out waiting for a glimpse of Arnold or Demi. Monte's is located out in the San Fernando Valley, and it's a big, homey, slap-you-on-the-back sort of place, with great steaks, a friendly bar, a huge TV for watching sports and a faithful clientele that wouldn't be caught dead drinking a white wine spritzer or a kir royal. Monte's is Robert Davi's neighborhood hangout, and it's definitely his kind of place.
"Ho, sorry I'm late," Davi says, rushing in for lunch. "We worked all night, until 7:30 this morning, and I slept right through my alarm clock."
Davi looks as though he's just rolled out of bed. He's dressed in rumpled khaki shorts and a silky shirt of electric blue. His hair's still wet, straight out of the shower, and pulled down over it is a baseball-style cap, bill to the rear. The insignia on the cap: Cigar Aficionado. To emphasize the point, Davi has arrived for lunch armed to the teeth: in his fist he's clutching a half-dozen fine cigars.
Davi is not a casual cigar smoker; he's a passionate devotee and has been since long before cigars became high chic in the Hollywood of the 1990s. In his work in movies and television, Davi also likes to have a cigar in hand, to help him add a distinctive flair to his many memorable caracterizations of heavies and bad guys. In the James Bond film License to Kill, he played Franz Sanchez, a ruthless Colombian drug lord with a taste for sadism and Dunhills. He has also played an array of gangsters, a Palestinian terrorist, a Mexican bandito and, in the first Die Hard, a hard-edged FBI agent in Los Angeles.
Now, though, Davi is enjoying an exciting departure and a major career opportunity as a good guy. In the new NBC series "Profiler," he's starring as Bailey Malone, the head of an elite FBI anti-crime unit. At Davi's urging, Malone has been written as a tough but warmhearted FBI pro--with a taste for whisky and, of course, fine cigars.
"Malone is an aficionado," Davi says, settling in for what will be his breakfast. "As an FBI agent, he's a man who seeks the truth. And he's also a man who, even from a distance, can distinguish a Cohiba from a Montecristo No. 2."
As a wake-me-up, Davi now orders a monster coffee--a big mug of American coffee with a jolt of espresso jiggered in. In a few moments, he has ordered a breakfast of fried zucchini with cheese melted over the top and a huge filet mignon, one of Monte's specialties. Now he's ready to properly start the day, with a Hoyo de Monterrey Double Corona.
Davi is a bit bleary this afternoon, and with good reason. With "Profiler" in its infancy, Davi has been working around the clock and under enormous stress. He co-stars with Ally Walker, who plays Dr. Sam Waters, a brilliant forensic psychologist with an unusual gift for visualizing the way a crime has taken place and "profiling" the perpetrator. Davi and Walker, with their writers and producers, are still feeling their way, trying to hone their characters and establish the right chemistry between them. As with any start-up venture, there have been frustrations and growing pains. But all the effort feels good to him; at long last, Robert Davi has arrived.
"Unless you're a pretty boy with uncommon appeal--immediate leading man appeal--the normal progression in an acting career is from bad guy to good guy," Davi says. "And it's a progression that happens little by little. It's been hard, but now I'm there."
With a single glance you can see why Davi has so often been typecast as a heavy or a bad guy. The 6-foot, 185-pound actor cuts an imposing figure, with broad shoulders, muscular forearms, and a bearing of strong, almost menacing authority. His face is rugged and distinctive, with prominent cheekbones and folds and creases that suggest a man of character, with hard-earned knowledge of the darker side of the human psyche. Even his voice is edgy, especially when his New York accent is coming through loud and clear.
In conversation, though, a very different man comes to the fore. Davi is funny, light-hearted, a perpetual prankster, and a serious husband and father. And as his fancy for Monte's suggests, there is something refreshingly un-Hollywood about him. He couldn't give a fig about pomp or pretense or putting on airs. Indeed, as he smokes his double corona and talks about his upbringing and early training in theater and music, you can easily see that behind Robert Davi's fearsome gangster's face there beats the heart of a puppy dog, most likely a playful, slobbery Lab.
"I was born in Queens, in Astoria, in a big Italian family," Davi says. The year was 1953. His father, Sal, was born in southern Italy, and though his mother, Mary, was born in America, her family came from southern Italy as well. His maternal grandfather, Stefano Rullo, was a colorful character who had a big impact on Robert as he grew up. Stefano worked for a while laying railroad track in the coal mining regions of Pennsylvania. According to Robert, his grandfather also worked for a while as a bootlegger. When Robert was five, the family--including Grandpa Stefano and his wife, Michelina--moved out of Queens to a two-story brick house on a rural patch of Long Island. With three generations living under the same roof, the common language at the table was frequently Italian.
"I spoke Italian as a kid," says Davi. "I also grew up with red wine. Mucho red wine. Grandpa Stefano would make and barrel red wine in the garage, often with me at his side. I have vivid memories of the smell of fermentation and of the wooden barrels we stored in the garage."
He also grew up with cigars prevalent in the house. Stefano smoked the little Italian cigars known as Toscanos, and Uncle Mike, Stefano's son, loved cigars as well. "I probably had my first cigar when I was 13 or 14," Davi recalls.
Still, his upbringing was hardly freewheeling. He went to Catholic primary schools on Long Island and then to Seton Hall, a Catholic high school. "I had a good education, a very respectful education." And, he adds, he grew up in a racially tolerant family, community and school: "I didn't grow up with any prejudice."
For a long time, sports were Davi's grand passion in life, and he was a school standout in football and baseball. Always big for his age, he played defensive tackle and sometimes offensive end. "I was a lefty, and in baseball I played first base and was a pretty good hitter." The way Davi describes it, his was very much an All-American youth, albeit with an Italian accent. His friends had names such as Sal De Rosa and Joey Lamingino.
While he shone in sports at school, at home he was exposed to a different sort of calling: music. Opera and classical music filled the Davi house, with Puccini being a family favorite. His grandmother sang, while his grandfather had an old windup record player he loved to crank up, except when Robert's mother was drilling him in his lessons. At school young Robert gravitated toward classes in drama and oratory. He loved Jerry Lewis, and at home he often played the family clown. Davi says he began acting formally in the ninth grade, and one of his first roles was in a school production of Macbeth.
His move into music came soon thereafter. The story goes that one day one of the nuns at Seton Hall overheard Robert singing in the locker room shower and she called Robert's mother on the phone. "Your son has a beautiful voice," she said. "Please encourage him to join our glee club."
Davi says he resisted the idea, but his mother was persuasive: "What have you got to lose?" she asked him. The clincher, he says, was his own youthful hormones: "All the pretty Irish girls were in the glee club," he says with a laugh, stabbing a piece of zucchini. In high school, Davi began entering local competitions for dramatic interpretation--and he began winning prizes. "We had some sort of competition every week," he says. "It was like getting an Oscar almost every week."
Robert's mother was a strong influence on his interest in music and theater. The way Davi describes her, she was a warm Italian momma who loved music and old movies. And she had a true gift for motivating her children. "I had a TV in my room, which was sort of the family den," Davi recalls. "My mother would sit with me in there and we'd watch old movies. 'This is Spencer Tracy,' she'd say, or 'This is Humphrey Bogart.'"
When he was 16, Robert contracted a mysterious illness. He had severe pain in his right arm and joints, combined with bad congestion and inflammation in his chest and lungs. He lost 40 pounds, dropping from his football playing weight of 220 to 230 down to 180. Davi says there was no definitive diagnosis. When he failed to improve, his family--his mother in particular--sought help through prayer and even from faith healers. Robert's own religious faith remained strong, he says, and when the strange illness lifted, some of the doctors treating him declared, "This is a miracle."
The illness plunged Robert into introspection and metaphysics and, he says, it ultimately gave his life a clearer sense of purpose and direction. He dropped out of sports ("I just didn't have the will to play") and he plunged headlong into theater arts. He got into Hofstra University on a drama scholarship and began working with its famous Shakespeare program, which includes a campus replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theater. After a time, though, Robert lost interest in school. Instead, he held a larger ambition: to work with the great Stella Adler, mentor to Marlon Brando and so many other talented actors.
"I was frustrated at Hofstra, so I moved to Manhattan, worked as a waiter and at a fruit-and-vegetable stand. I lived in a cheap railroad flat on East 171st Street, took classes at Juilliard and finally worked my way into Stella Adler's actors' studio. And that made all the difference. This woman was like getting a flame inside you, she was so inspirational."
Davi worked with Adler for three years and also studied with Lee Strasberg. During his apprenticeship, he acted in a rich variety of plays, from Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull to Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He also got involved in a start-up opera company on Long Island. "I sang baritone, but I had the heart of a tenor," Davi recalls with a laugh, now tearing into his filet mignon, done perfectly and served with a mountain of French fries.
In 1978, when Davi was 24 and still looking for his breakthrough role, he heard about an audition for an NBC movie starring Frank Sinatra, the Italian kid from Hoboken who was his family's hero and his mother's heartthrob. "As soon as I heard about the casting call, I went to the production offices on Fifth Avenue in search of an audition," Davi says.
Told to come back the next day with a photo and résumé, Davi instead raced home, got the photo and résumé and came right back. The tactic worked; he was assigned an audition time immediately. And here there's another lovely family story, even if it sounds a bit apocryphal.
"My mother was diagnosed with lung cancer that same week," Davi says. "One night, Frank Sinatra appeared on television and my mother purportedly pleaded to his image on the small screen, 'Frank, help my son!' " Davi got the part, of course, went to Los Angeles and played the role of Mickey Sinardos in Contract on Cherry Street, with Sinatra in the lead.
Davi never moved back to New York. He began working regularly, in the TV miniseries "From Here to Eternity" and "The Gangster Chronicles," about the beginnings of the mob. He also had small roles in a number of eminently forgettable feature films, including Goonies, Wild Things and Raw Deal.
But this was not a happy period for Davi. Between 1977 and 1979, his parents, his sister and two of his grandparents died. Davi says dealing with the family tragedies was profoundly painful. One day at 20th Century Fox, he recalls, he met an attractive woman and they rushed into a relationship and marriage. In 1980 she gave birth to their son, Sean-Christian. Davi now describes that marriage as a kind of escape. "I couldn't face death; I wanted to create life," he says. The marriage did not last.
Though his roles during this period and into the 1980s were not stupendous, Davi honed his acting and developed a flair for foreign accents. His gift for music was a definite asset in this regard and so was his childhood facility with Italian. To prepare for a role with a foreign accent, Davi starts by immersing himself in the music of his character's country of origin. "The music gives you a blood rhythm; you have to feel the language, not just get the words right."
In 1988, ready for a major role, Davi landed the part of a Palestinian terrorist, drawn along the lines of the notorious terrorist Abu Nidal, in the TV movie Terrorist on Trial: The United States vs. Salim Ajami. The project was the brainchild of the highly respected producer George Englund, who has made such movies as The Ugly American and Shoes of a Fisherman and who has worked with Brando and Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.
"Bob prepared extremely well for that part," Englund recalls. "He gave a very successful, very weighty reading. And he came in with a good accent, which is something he has a knack for." To prepare that accent, Davi met with many Arabs and Palestinians, trying to absorb their music, culture, mind-sets and, finally, the intonations and nuances of their languages. The result, Englund says, was a very convincing performance in a very difficult role: "It was a delicate thing because the Arab community at that time was getting very volatile about the way Arabs were being portrayed in the movies. So Bob had to be believable. That was key."
As convincing as Davi was, the role was still that of a bad guy; there was just no breaking Hollywood's typecasting, which Englund says is regrettable. "As an actor, Bob's well-schooled, well-prepared and with a very strong background. He has a very singular appearance, and that's the good news and the bad news. He fits perfectly into what would be called heavies. People making movies want his face. The last thing they want is for him to show interesting facets. I've often told him, 'Robert, you're always going to have to win it on sheer merit. You just don't have the looks of Troy Donahue or Tom Cruise.'"
His performance in Terrorist impressed the producers of the James Bond series, and they cast him in the high-profile role of Franz Sanchez in License to Kill. To prepare, Davi immersed himself in Colombian music and culture, and in search of authenticity and feel he even met with the architect of the home of the fabled drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The research and hard work paid off; he gave a convincing--and chilling--portrayal of Sanchez. The role also gave Davi a taste of the international big time; he was on the road promoting the movie worldwide for 4 1/2 months.
In the late 1980s, at a party at Mickey Rourke's house, Davi met supermodel Christine Bolster, the original model for Guess Jeans. Later, at a photo shoot for GQ magazine, he bumped into her again, and a romance blossomed. They married, and the couple now has two young girls, ages 4 and 6. While he's a devoted husband and father, Davi does not really think of himself as a family man. "I'm more of a loner," he says. "There's a conflict between being an actor and being a husband. Part of you wants both, but both sides are always fighting each other. You're always trying to find that balance between home and career."
To decompress from work and family, Davi tools around on either of his two Harley-Davidson motorcycles, works out at the gym and sometimes hangs out at the Grand Havana Room, the smart-set cigar club in Beverly Hills. But because of "Profiler" and a flurry of movies Davi has made over the past few years, he hasn't had much time for Grand Havana of late. But he says it is a great comfort knowing it's there, should his work pace slow down: "I used to say there's nothing better than to be out of work and hang around the Grand Havana smoking a great cigar."
When he's working on the set, Davi loves a cigar break, but he also has a smoke-free way of unwinding: joking around and pulling pranks. Tom Berenger and Davi became friends during the making of the 1995 low-budget movie An Occasional Hell, and Berenger says working with Davi was always uproarious: "He's pretty funny. Really funny. I'd do scenes with him and it was everything I could do to not crack up. One morning on the set I caught him singing 'Old MacDonald.' He said, 'It keeps me out of that New York accent.' "
Knowing Davi's lighter side, Berenger says it's too bad that the viewing public has come to associate Davi almost exclusively with tough guys. "He's kind of a puppy dog in some ways," Berenger says. "Bob really should do a lot more comedy, but you don't have much control over those kinds of things." Berenger often refers to himself as a "soldat du cinéma," a soldier of cinema, meaning a grunt who takes orders, not a big star who can give orders. Davi surely fits the same description.
That could change, though, with "Profiler." With the series in its infancy, Davi and co-star Ally Walker have been working closely with the writers and producers to flesh out and establish the characters. To make their characters realistic, Davi and Walker worked with a retired FBI agent, and they have been deeply involved in the creative process.
"A project like this is a living, breathing thing," Davi says, resting up for dessert. "The artists--meaning the actors and writers--are the ones going into the pit, journeying into another world, and we know when something is working and when it isn't. If it's not working, we go back to the writers. It's not about ego; it's about quality work."
It's also about expanding your skills. "I get frustrated if I don't have the creative process, I get frustrated just being a monkey," Davi says. "Even Shakespeare had collaboration." Because he likes to be so involved in the process, Davi can easily envision himself directing or producing one day. In fact, he has a story in the works now that he wants to direct.
But at this stage, Davi's focus remains on acting and turning "Profiler" into a major success. He is thoroughly enjoying the impact and visibility of doing a weekly TV series. "The reach and power of TV are incredible," he says. Each week, "Profiler" reaches a viewing public that is larger than a feature film that grosses $200 million, Davi says. How is that possible? Because the week after a "Profiler" segment is shown in the United States, that same segment is shown in 44 countries around the world, thanks to advanced technology and a vast network of foreign distribution.
The pace of the show is grueling. In essence, the "Profiler" team is turning out a small feature movie every eight days. With that kind of daily grind and pressure, Ally Walker says it's good to have a veteran like Davi playing opposite her and keeping things loose. To keep her relaxed and somewhat off-balance, she says Davi constantly slips into rollicking imitations of Bogart or Italian gangsters.
"I love Robert," says Walker. "I think he's one of the funniest people I've ever met. And we're trying to inject some of that into the show. Because that's how intelligent people are; they relieve stress with humor." Walker knows what she's talking about. Her father's a scientist, her mother an attorney, and Ally studied biology and chemistry in college and worked for a time as a researcher in genetic engineering.
Beside intelligence and humor, Davi and Walker have another basis for a lasting friendship: cigars. Walker grew up among cigar smokers in Santa Fe, New Mexico. When she was trying to quit smoking cigarettes, she would often light up a small Montecristo instead. She still enjoys Montecristos on occasion and she also likes a fine Romeo y Julieta. Still, as a cigar lover, she will never be a match for Robert Davi.
"Sometimes I start early, sometimes with a robusto at 9 a.m., before the gym," says Davi. "I average about three cigars a day, but I can get up to six or eight cigars a day when I'm smoking heavily. Why do I love cigars? I could say the obvious, that it's comparable to opening a great bottle of Champagne, or seeing a great boxing match, or having a great red wine at dinner, that sort of thing. But it's not that. I get a certain craving, a certain idea."
In "Profiler," Bailey Malone often gets that same craving, and the script writers have learned that they'd better keep their cigar intelligence up to snuff: Davi is a stickler for cigar accuracy. During the shooting of one early segment, Bailey Malone was meeting with a shadowy informant and the dialogue called for him to say, "Ah, a Cohiba." The problem was that the prop involved was a Montecristo No. 2, not a Cohiba, and Davi kicked up a ruckus. "Bailey would obviously know a Cohiba from a Montecristo," he says. "So I made the writers change the dialogue."
By this stage of the lunch, Davi has knocked back his filet, a mountain of fries, a big salad and even a tasty biscotti or two. Sated, refreshed and ready to go home for a nap, Robert Davi seems a happy man. And why not? Here's a guy starring in a big TV series, he has the original Guess Jeans model waiting for him at home, and Monte's and the Grand Havana Room treat him like a king of the realm. And besides, as he heads out into the bright L.A. afternoon, what is this man cradling in his hand? A long, lush Fuente Fuente Opus X, just begging for a match. Yes, Robert Davi, you have arrived.
Sourced and archived from here.

Robert Davi wears 'good guy' hat in Profiler by Bob Thomas (The Associated Press)
LOS ANGELES - Robert Davi cuts a striking figure as he parks his Harley-Davidson in front of the San Carlo Italian dli in Chatsworth, on the northwest outskirts of the city. He wears a plaid shirt, tan walking shorts and a cap that pays homage to his television series, "Profiler." His long, craggy face looks benign, but anyone could see how it could scare James Bond out of his tuxedo, as it did in 1989's "Licence to Kill."
Davi, 44, has made a career of playing gangsters and hoodlums of the lowest order. In his first movie, "Contract on Cherry Street" in 1978, he menaced Frank Sinatra. His criminal past includes such films as "Goonies," "Raw Deal," "Wild Thing," "Predator II," "Son of the Pink Panther" and "Showgirls" - the last as a threatening Las Vegas strip show manager. And in television, the villainous roles kept coming, in "L.A. Law," "Hill Street Blues," "The Gangster Chronicles" and "Wiseguy." Now, Davi has moved to the other side of the law with NBC's " Profiler." He plays FBI agent Bailey Malone, who persuades Dr. Sam Waters (Ally Walker) to return to the Investigative Support Unit he heads. She quit after a serial killer she had been tracking as a forensic psychologist murdered her husband.
Davi was elated when the suspense hour did well enough against CBS' " Walker, Texas Ranger" on Saturday nights to be renewed for another season. He hopes " Profiler" will accommodate his five-year plan. "If the show lasts five years, I would move to the south of France of some part of the Italian Riviera," says Davi who now lives in Chatsworth with his wife, Christine, and daughters, 5 and 7. The move to Chatsworth was part of his plan. Home is now about as far from the Hollywood scene as you can get without leaving the Los Angeles city limits. Yet it is close to his work. "Profiler" has its production headquarters only a few miles away in one of those vacated warehouses or aerospace factories that now serve as TV studios.
"I would keep my home here, but I hope to work abroad, too," Davi says. " If the show is successful, it would be seen there by producers and directors. I will start intensive French and Italian lessons for the whole family." Davi's grandparents emigrated from Italy - one set from Naples, the other from Sicily. He was born in Astir, N.Y., and grew up on Long Island, where his grandfather had been a bootlegger during Prohibition.
Young Robert was tough on the football field and elsewhere, but he also had a beautiful tenor voice. He won a prize to study opera w ith the the great singer Tito Gobbi in Florence. He also was awarded a drama scholarship to Hofstra University, where he performed Shakespeare and other classics. In New York he waited tables while studying with the great drama coach Stella Adler. Her comment: "They're going to cast you as a gangster but you'll break that mold," And has he? " I think so. Yeah," he says. " I think now my career is going to use the series to redefine myself. That's one of the reasons I want to be a little reclusive. You get caught up in that (Hollywood) game, the whole other rhythm."
Sourced and archived from here.

hey you all!
I am planning to apply the bachelor of software engineering and management at Gothenburg University. Already checked the info on the school website but still in need of help due to my special condition:
I am a student outside EU and I have completed a bachelor degree (education major) in my country. I am not sure about the admission requirement for non-school leavers and the admission rate for international students like me.
Also, I am thinking of applying axel adler scholarship which will fully cover my tuition cuz my budget is really tight. Is it really hard to get the scholarship and can I still apply for financial aid to cover my living cost if I am a recipient of axel adler scholarship?(or, say, Is it possible to get two scholarships at the same time?)
Many thanks to everyone who decides to help!

Hey guys, I am an 18 year old aspiring actor and have recently been accepted into conservatory prgrams at Atlantic Acting School, Circle in The Square, Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler Studio of Acting (all NYC campuses).
I'm struggling to make a decision between them and was wondering if anyone on here had any advice they could give me?
A few specific questions/things to note:
- Finances are limited and so far the highest scholarship is from Atlantic Acting School and then Circle in the Square. Any financial aid/scholarship advice would be appreciated!
- Does anyone have any advice/opinions on the 12 week or one year conservatory programs at Lee Strasberg if I was unable to afford the two year conservatory?
- Which has the best alumni benefits/sets you up the best in terms of getting agents and gaining connections in the industry?
- Does the lack of auditions at Lee Strasberg mean that the program has a wide variety of abilities and if so, does this have a good or bad effect on classes in your opinion?
Thank you so much!

Hey guys, I am an 18 year old aspiring actor and have recently been accepted into conservatory prgrams at Atlantic Acting School, Circle in The Square, Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler Studio of Acting.
I'm struggling to make a decision between them and was wondering if anyone on here had any advice they could give me?
A few specific questions/things to note:
- Finances are limited and so far the highest scholarship is from Circle in The Square. Any financial aid/scholarship advice would be appreciated!
- Does anyone have any advice/opinions on the 12 week or one year conservatory programs at Lee Strasberg if I was unable to afford the two year conservatory?
- Which has the best alumni benefits/sets you up the best in terms of getting agents and gaining connections in the industry?
- Does the lack of auditions at Lee Strasberg mean that the program has a wide variety of abilities and if so, does this have a good or bad effect on classes in your opinion?
Thank you so much!

So, hey guys. You probably don't know me. I spend most of my time scrolling on other social media these days. I come in once in a while to talk about the current state of actor training which I'm very passionate about, or to celebrate a new booked short film. I'm here today to celebrate my first feature film lead role, 3 years after I first began.
In 2020 I was in my final year of high school, living through an existential crisis during the worst days of the pandemic, and I came out here and said, I want to be an actor, how do I start?
I got many, many replies. Some encouraged me to give it a go, some told me how difficult it would be. Some gave great advice, others gave advice that I later realized was irrelevant to my context. I was a clueless kid who has until then never been on set, never been in drama club, I did not know a single person around me who was in the industry.
In the immediate period after I graduated from high school, I read tons of books about acting from the greats - Stanislavski, Meisner, Adler, Strasberg, Hagen, Meyerhold and so on. I understood some of it, but applying it in practice was another matter. I did acting classes only when I had the part time job money for them, but I spent hours after classes organizing my thoughts into journals and notes, because I did not want to forget a single second of what I learned.
I applied to a non-audition theatre major program which focused more on academics than the practical side, mainly because it was a safe and affordable option that my parents could agree on. I was rejected from the university drama club, rejected from many more professional youth theatres, rejected from the local musical theatre conservatory. I said no to a drama school in London because it was way too expensive and not worth the cost of leaving my current school.
I did lots of student films and unpaid work, and got compensated in meals and transportation. I freelanced as a writer and translator. I have a whole thing where I give people Chinese names on Reddit, it's one of my more interesting hobbies. I made lots of connections within my market, traversing between the film and theatre spaces, and I got to know people from every corner of the industry.
I started hanging out with filmmaking groups, and did small skits with beginner filmmakers.
I got my first student film lead in January 2022. I was ecstatic.
Someone told me I needed to work on a lot more before I'm good enough for drama school.
I did my first 48 hour film competition in May 2022, we didn't win anything but it was lovely being on set again.
Someone wanted to do an action webseries with me as a supporting lead and we had multiple discussions, but it just never happened.
I wrote and performed a stage play in my university in November 2022. The joy I felt bringing my character to life was immeasurable.
Someone told me I'll never be a professional actress.
I did a two week acting intensive, and the instructor did not hold back. I experienced the limits of how far my imagination and physicality can go.
I got a closed door audition for a day player role in a TV show. I didn't get it.
Someone told me I should stop trying.
May 2023. Exactly three years after I first imagined myself as a professional actor, I landed my first lead role in a feature film. I didn't dare to tell anyone until the director gave me the character biography. I was too afraid that it would disappear again. But I got the script. I got rehearsals. We did test shoots. We planned wardrobe, props, and even got permits from a few authorities to shoot on location.
At the same time, I got accepted into a two year actor training program on full scholarship, with some of the most celebrated mentors and teachers in my industry. Some opportunities only come by once in a lifetime, and I am quite certain this is one of them.
Today, looking at the eighty-page script on my table and the first day of shoots happening on Sunday, it finally occurred to me that all this is real. I did it.
When I said, "I want to make it as an actor" 3 years ago I didn't really know what I meant. I did not have high expectations, or maybe I did, and I was told to lower them because "darling, people don't just make it in the acting industry overnight, it takes years and lots and lots of money". I told myself, I'll graduate from this degree and try my hardest to act while holding down a full time job, and maybe when I'm 27 or 28 and I've scrimped and saved enough for a Masters of Fine Arts, I'll finally get the professional training and start trying my luck at 30.
Now suddenly everything has changed, and I'm lost again. It's a happy kind of lost. I just turned 21. Suddenly it occurred to me that my path is about as unorthodox as it gets. I didn't go to a 4-year acting school, I'm literally still a rising junior like my peers, tearing my hair out over group projects and college sports. I certainly did not move to LA, NYC, London or anywhere that is traditionally "an industry". I don't even have a TikTok, my Instagram is semi-professional but I'm more interested in being authentic than trying to attract casting directors. I know that this may not mean anything, many things could go South, but for the first time in this three years, I feel like I know where I'm going as an actor.
I'll be pinching myself every hour until the first day of shoots, and then I'll probably pinch myself some more. 2023 is actually insane.

The point of this post is not to debate and meritoriously inspect the terminological rationale of “slavery”, “unfreedom”, “indentured servitude”,”bondage”, and so forth - the point is to briefly address what lurks behind it, how change of status materializes and what consequences it brings. Neither is it to engage in confessional or theodical issues in a broader sense.
(i) Slavery, in its different manifestations, was for a notable part of its history a spectrum, it could even be relative (to complicate things right from the start, relative in a legal sense, i.e., split legal subjectivity, that is one could be a slave in relation to the third person and not a slave in relation to the other person. E.g., this was a known regional occurrence in Ancient Near East family law, where (1) one could not be both a spouse and an owner, meaning the personality was split by the husband and an owner, (2) concubinage and offsprings in some circumstances, e.g. concubinage with a non-owner, could lead to peculiar consequences where ownership was limited. This complex interaction between law of persons, property law, family law and consequently inheritance, occurs when slaves have the recognized capability to enter legally cognizable familial relationships – comparatively rich and understudied subject, be it regionally or locally in Ancient Near East and (pre)classical Greece, as if we make a connection now with what will be said below, Slavery in later Greco-Roman milieu has some notable differences compared to previous millennia, this being one of them, but the situation changes again by the early middle ages, when we again see complex familiar relationship concurrent with changes to the insitution itself), it showed noticeable regional variability, it depended on citizenship status, potential public relation (e.g. corvée), etc.
(i.i) What it meant by a spectrum is that different status coexisted, what we typically call chattel slavery (heritable status with almost non-existent legal subjectivity - why almost is that ANE differed from Roman in this regard in some finesses, though granted, framing it like that can be a bit unfortunate) and other forms of slavery which had specific legal consequences, (a) ex contractu (self-sale, sale of alieni iuris, to show the complexity here, e.g. the latter form could result in chattel slavery, it could be with a limitation period on redemption if the loan was not for a full price of a pledge, after which the person could be non-redeemable, or via some other penalty provision etc.), in this broad category we could also add a pledge and a distrainee (all these would be subject to varying contractual provisions – we can however extrapolate some regional tendencies of customary law in some periods), (b) ex delicto, this was closely entwined with contractual obligations, but it nevertheless has some important peculiarities (e.g. slavery arising from these obligations could fall outside of some post hoc court-intervention or debt-release, a royal prerogative jurisdiction), (c) there are some other forms differentiated by some legal historians, like famine-slavery, but we would complicate this too much with further nuances. All these lead to different legal consequences and interactions with other fields of law.
(i.ii) Biblical peculiarity on this is that it is prima facie more stringent and detailed textually (I will return to this word) with limitation on ownership for some types of slavery – that is Israelite slaves. Non-Israelite slavery is rarely mentioned in legal texts of the Bible, and when it is, it is indirectly by contrasting it to the benevolence afforded to fellow Israelite slaves, its presence is better attested in other narrative sources. But it is not exactly clear how this would translate to practice (comparatively, even debt-slaves were alienable, but the right of redemption was a real right to be exercised against any new owner or possessor), given that similar limitations existed for some forms of slavery elsewhere in surrounding cultures. That is not to say there were no differences, but we do not have legal documentations from Palestine/Judea from this period (the earliest are Elephantine papyri and some tablets from the period of Babylonian Exile, which attest slave sale documents, some slaves even with Semitic names, but there are not indicative of actual ethnicity). In any case, this did not apply to chattel slaves (unless naturally, they were not yours, but were in your possession with a real or contractual title), both in Ancient Near East or Old Testament. Another unsolved issue is that there were plenty of mechanisms for non-chattel slave to become a chattel-slave, but OT is rather silent on this except entering into familial relations (or better, we do not have actual legal documentation which would attest this to any specifics or via other venues) with only very limited and rather ambiguous textual references – but if look at it comparatively in surrounding cultures, this did happen. Another one that is frequently mentioned is blanket sale prohibition (akin to Ham. Codex §279-281), or flight protection (cf. Deut. 23:16-17), but this did not and could not apply domestically (though we can complicate this further with introduction of different statuses, where distrainee would be in considerably different situation to chattel slaves, and could in light of mistreatment sought refuge, but by this we are already within a broader ANE customary norms, though again, practically what were the power imbalances between debtors and creditors should be taken into account) - it would make the whole institution of slavery unworkable (and anything in relation to it, security, property rights, ...), both for chattel and other types of slavery. The idealistic meaning, the Covenant as addressee, is a blank prohibition to Israel of making treaties internationally to engage in slave-extradition - but again, what this meant in practice (or what basis it had in practice, if any) is not known.
(i.iii) Another issue frequently raised that warrants a closer look, which we will tackle comparatively, is Exod. 21:20-21 (due to Biblical infamous textual indifferentiation between types of slavery, there are some reasonable contentions on this). It seems easy to situate within Ancient Near Eastern tradition (e.g., Cod. Ham. 116), namely, a creditor could due to violence, mistreatment or injury done to a pledge or a distrainee with this action forfeit his claim in part or in full (subtract compensation from the loan), or even be subjected to vicarious punishment (this sub-principle of talion is later explicitly condemned in Deuteronomy, so it further complicates things) if a pledge or a distrainee dies and compensation is not paid (there is no direct talion as the injured party was not free). All this is fairly clear to this point, the issue becomes, if we reason a contrario, that chattel-slaves could be killed at discretion (without cause), which is mistaken – masters generally in Ancient Near East do not have the right to kill slaves (narrow exceptions), but have to go with cause through appropriate judicial venue (when executions happened, they were not to be performed by owners) – there is nothing special with Exod. 21:20-21, the misunderstanding enters due to anachronistic backreading of Roman legal norms which differed on this, where owners could exercise summary execution in principle without cause. To save myself here from further critiques, (i) this was a¸most plausible development (Roman law, comparatively, probably did not recognize this capacity in earliest stages, i.e., without cause, but due to development of roman society, e.g., later disappearance of a comparable institute of debt-slavery could have removed the incentives for "moderative" tendencies we see in Ancient Near Eastern milieu. Evolution and disappearance of nexum has been a subject of great scholarly attention (pre-tables, post-tables, lex Poetelia, comparatively with paramonè and antichresis (primarily as pledge) in service), but this is beyond our scope here, and this was naturally a simplification, selling, non-pledgeability of persons was a process which was not realized, but nevertheless, the characterization holds for our purposes here that what differenciates it from "previous" analogous institutes in some sense is the (non)change of personal status and interactions within a legal regime) and (ii) imperial period slowly ascribes some very limited legal subjectivity to slaves. This Greco-Roman tradition is important to the development of rabbinic texts on slavery at this time, which changes the understanding of OT, but one should not take this to far, as within eastern parts of the empire, many indigenous legal customs persisted, even those about slavery. [Nothing said here is precluding the corporal mistreatment, punishments, brandings, sexual exploitation, etc., it is merely beyond the intended scope of the post]
(ii) Now, if we return and expand on that textuality (i.ii), it was meant as a relation between legal codices (ANE codies, Old Testament) and legal practice. Much of the scholarship is about the former, and one should not conflate the two with bringing later ideas about law backwards. These texts were not positive law (i.e. that courts would apply in actual cases) – this had been a hotly debated subject for the more than half a century with various arguments, ranging from royal apologia, (legal) scientific text in Mesopotamian scientific tradition (divination, medicine, … e.g. they also share textual and structural affinity), notable juridical scribal exercises and problems … That is not to say they have no relation to practice or that they are not profoundly informative about ancient cultures, customs or law – but literal reading of them and literal application is more than problematic, not only because law rarely (never) gets application like this (there is always interpretative methodology), but because they were not positive law to be actually applied at all. Sadly though, this is extrapolated (high confidence) to Ancient Israel and Judea to the lack of record to be compared against, but it can be stated for surrounding cultures, where legal documentations plainly contradicts codices, neither does it reference them. So, when we read about time-limitations (3 years, 7 years, Jubilee), it is not something one would see either as legal norm itself in this strict sense narrowly or something the courts or contract would take as non-dispositive (if we take these texts to have some non-legal ideal with cultural values to be strived toward), not to mention they would be a notable inhibition in practice to legal transactions (they would as a consequence de facto limit loan-amount, shifting the preference of pledged objects, no one would lend and credit in years prior to Jubilee, etc.). Likewise, we have documentation from surrounding cultures which likewise plainly contradict these time-limitations. From this we also cannot know surely what limitations (if there were any practically, but even the text offers some workaround, or rather consitent pattern how courts would intervene customarily - though one should note customs were or would be territorially particularized) would there be for Israelites becoming chattel slaves to fellow Israelites through various mechanism (e.g. whether contractual provisions could bar or limit right of redemption under relevant circumstances, what sort of coercion could a creditor employ etc.) in practice.
Obviously, the situation is much more complex. The old revisionist vanguard (Kraus, Bottero, Finkelstein,...) has cleared the ground for newer, more integrated proposals (Westbrook, Veenhof, Barmash, Jackson..., Chripin in the middle, to those that squared it closer to the pre-revisionist line, Petschow, Démare-Lafont,...), while the latter is a modest minority (take this reservedly, I do not intend to mischaracterize their work, which is an unavoidable consequence of this short excerpt), even in biblical law, there seems to be no end in sight - but this is not the subject of this post.
(ii.i) A type of act that is referenced though are edicts. (There was no systematic legislation or uniformization of law, save some partial exceptions on the matters of royal/public administration and taxation/prices – royal involvement in justice was, beside edictal activity, through royal adjudication, beside mandates to other officials). Our interest here is limited to debt-relief edicts (as an exercise of mì“šarum prerogative), for which we have considerable textual attestation, both direct and indirect (references) – they were typically quite specific what kind of debt (and by implication slavery) was released (e.g. delictual debt could be exempt), by status (degrees of kinship, citizenship specific), region, time,… (e.g. Jer. 34:8–1, Neh. 5:1–13, but OT authors/redactors can be critical of failure to use this prerogative).
(ii.ii) Prescriptivity of written law (legislation whose norms would be primary, mandatory and non-derogable - or even the connection to understand law as "written" law) is something which slowly develops in Ancient and classical Greece, 7th-4th century BC, which was a considerable change in Mediterranean legal milieu, also influencing second Temple Judaism with gradual emergence of prescriptivity from probably mid Persian period onwards. Though this period, i.e. roughly from mid-Persion to the formation of the Talmuds, is incredibly rich, so it would need a post of itself.
(iii) This shorter section will be devoted to some features of the principle of talion. Equal corporal retribution (talion) principle predates Hammurabi´s codex (e.g. codex Lipit-Ishtar, 19th century BC), though not in this specific textual form. The most famous textual form comes from the biblical tradition, e.g. Exod. 21:23-25, which is a modified transmission from Ham. Codex (§ 196-200). But biblical tradition likewise further changes the principle itself, e.g. insofar as it denies vicarious talion explicitly as a reference to previous textual tradition (Deuteronomy). It should be noted however that there is signifixant divergence in the understanding of these verses, e.g. Westbrook said it is not a case of talion at all and offers a completely different interpretation. In any case, the principle enters into cuneiform law (Summerian Lip.-Ish. and Akkadian Ham. in Old Babylonian Period) at the end of the 3rd mil. BC and early 2nd mil. BC, most plausibly through West Semitic being the influence with migrations at the time. Older cuneiform law texts do not know it in this corporal form - composition is in pecuniary amount with injury tarrifs (e.g. compare with later Anglo-Saxon tables, see this post for a sense of substantive issues). Regardless of what we say about the textuality and scholarly/scribal legal tradition above, there is no reason to suppose this textual change materialized in changed practice. Compositional systems follow the same logic, in lieu of revenge and retaliation (which was subsidiary and subjected to potential “public” intervention, though this would obviously depend on public authority and its coercive capabilities, in Ancient Near East and elsewhere, medieval and early modern period had another institute, usually in the from of property destruction), the injured party and offending party primarily negotiated a compensation, which results in a debt to be settled, where talion was a measuring value in negotiations, i.e. starting at the worth of injuries should they befall the offending party. Not the subject at hand, but the Medieval period on this is, if anything, more fascinating - the institution was present on the continent right to the end of the ancien regime in the 18th century and corresponding changes in criminal law into modern form, as it was gradually pushed out, starting in late medieval period, though note it coexisted with other procedures and regional varieties (e.g. for the unfree).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adler, Y. (2022). The Origins of Judaism. An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal. Yale University Press.
Barker, Hannah (2019). That most precious merchandise: the Mediterranean trade in Black Sea slaves, 1260 1500. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Barmash, P. (2020). The Laws of Hammurabi. At the Confluence of Royal and Scribal Traditions. Oxford University Press.
Bothe, L., Esders, S., Nijdamed, H. (2021). Wergild, Compensation and Penance. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Bottero, J (1982). “Le ‘Code’ de Hammu-rabi. Annali della Scola Normale Superiore di Pisa 12: 409-44.
Bottero, J. (1981) L’ordalie an Mesopotamie ancienne. Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia III 11(4), 1021–1024.
Brooten, B. J. and Hazelton, J. L. ed. (2010). Beyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Charpin, D. (2010). Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia. University of Chicago Press.
Chavalas, Mark W., Younger, K. Lawson Jr. ed. (2002). Mesopotamia and the Bible: Comparative Explorations. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Chirichigno, G. (1993). Debt-slavery in Israel and the Ancient Near East. Sheffield.
Cohen, B. (1966). Jewish and Roman Law. A Comparative Study. The Jewish TheologicalSeminary of America. (Two Volumes, xxvii + 920 pp.).
Diamond, A. S. (1971). Primitive Law, Past and Present. Routledge.
Durand, J. M. (1988) Archives epistoleires de Mari I/1. ARM XXVI/1. Paris: Recherche sur les Civilisations.
Durand, J. M. (1990) Cité-État d’Imar à l’époque des rois de Mari. MARI 6, 39–52.
Evans-Grubbs, J. (1993). “Marriage More Shameful Than Adultery”: Slave-Mistress Relationships, “Mixed Marriages”, and Late Roman Law. Phoenix, 47(2), 125–154.
Finkelstein, J. J. (1981). ‘The Ox That Gored’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 71, 1–89.
Finkelstein, J.J. (1961). Ammisaduqa’s Edict and the Babylonian ‘Law Codes.’” JCS 15: 91-104
Forsdyke, S. (2021). Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Foxhall, L., and A. D. E. Lewis, ed. (1996). Greek Law in its Political Setting: Justifications Not Justice. Oxford University Press.
Gagarin, M and Perlman, P. (2016). The Laws of Ancient Crete c. 650–400 BCE. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gagarin, M. (2008). Writing Greek Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gagarin, M. (2010). II. Serfs and Slaves at Gortyn. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Romanistische Abteilung, 127(1), 14-31.
Glancy, Jennifer A. (2002). Slavery in Early Christianity. Oxford University Press.
Goetze, Albrecht (1939). review of Review of Die Serie ana ittišu, by B. Landsberger, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 59, 265–71.
Gordon, C. H. (1940). Biblical Customs and the Nuzu Tablets. The Biblical Archaeologist, 3(1), 1-12.
Gropp, D. M. (1986). The Samaria Papyri from the Wadi ed-Daliyeh: The Slaves Sales. Ph.D. diss. Harvard.
Harrill, J. A. (2006). Slaves in the New Testament: Literary, Social, and Moral Dimensions. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Harris, E. M. (2002). Did Solon Abolish Debt-Bondage? The Classical Quarterly, 52(2), 415–430.
Hezser, C. (2005). Jewish Slavery in Antiquity. Oxford University Press.
Jackson, Bernard S. (1975). Essays in Jewish and Comparative Legal History. Brill.
Jackson, Bernard S. (1980). Jewish Law in Legal History and the Modern World. Brill.
Kienast, B. (1984). Das altassyrische Kaufoertragsrecht. FAOS Beiheft 1. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.
Kraus, F.R. (1960). Ein zentrales Problem des altmesopotamiscchen Rechtes: Was ist der Codex Hammu-rabi?” Geneva NS 8: 283-96.
Lambert, T. (2017). Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford University Press.
Lambert, W. G. (1965). A NEW LOOK AT THE BABYLONIAN BACKGROUND OF GENESIS. The Journal of Theological Studies, 16(2), 287–300.
Loewenstamm, S. E. (1957). Review of The Laws of Eshnunna, AASOR, 31, by A. Goetze. Israel Exploration Journal, 7(3), 192–198.
Lyons, D., Raaflaub, K. ed. (2015). Ex Oriente Lex. Near Eastern Influences on Ancient Greek and Roman Law. John Hopkins University Press.
Malul, Meir. (1990). The Comparative Method in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Legal Studies. Butzon & Bercker.
Mathisen, R. (2001). Law, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity. Oxford University Press.
Matthews, V. H., Levinson, B. M., Frymer-Kensky, T. ed. (1998). Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 262). Sheffield Academic Press.
Paolella, C. (2020). Human Trafficking in Medieval Europe: Slavery, Sexual Exploitation, and Prostitution. Amsterdam University Press.
Paul, Shalom M. (1970). Studies in the Book of the Covenant in the Light of Cuneiform and Biblical Law. Brill.
Pressler, C. (1993). The View of Women Found in the Deuteronomic Family Laws (BZAW 216). Walter de Gruyter.
Renger, J. (1976). “Hammurapis Stele ‘König der Gerechtigkeit’: Zur Frage von Recht und Gesetz in der altbabylonischen Zeit.” WO 8: 228-35.
Rio, Alice (2017). Slavery After Rome, 500–1100. Oxford University Press.
Richardson, S. (2023). Mesopotamian Slavery. In: Pargas, D.A., Schiel, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery throughout History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Roth, M. T. (2000). The Law Collection of King Hammurabi: Toward an Understanding of Codification and Text," in La Codification des Lois dans L'Antiquité, edited by E. Levy, pp. 9-31 (Travaux du Centre de Recherche sur le Proche-Orient et la Grèce Antiques 16; De Boccard).
Schenker, A. (1998). The Biblical Legislation on the Release of Slaves: the Road From Exodus to Leviticus. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 23(78), 23–41.
Silver, M. (2018). Bondage by contract in the late Roman empire. International Review of Law and Economics, 54, 17–29.
Smith, M. (2015). "EAST MEDITERRANEAN LAW CODES OF THE EARLY IRON AGE". In Studies in Historical Method, Ancient Israel, Ancient Judaism. Brill.
Sommar, M. E. (2020). The Slaves of the Churches: A History. Oxford University Press
Ste. Croix, G. E. M. de. (1989). The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World from the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests. Cornell University Press.
Verhagen, H. L. E. (2022). Security and Credit in Roman Law The historical evolution of pignus and hypotheca. Oxford University Press.
von Mallinckrodt, R., Köstlbauer, J. and Lentz, S. (2021). Beyond Exceptionalism: Traces of Slavery and the Slave Trade in Early Modern Germany, 1650–1850, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg.
Watson, Alan. (1974). Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law. University Press of Virginia.
Watson, Alan. (1987). Roman slave law. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Weisweiler, J. ed. (2023). Debt in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East Credit, Money, and Social Obligation. Oxford University Press.
Wells, B. and Magdalene, R. ed. (2009). Law from the Tigris to the Tiber: The Writings of Raymond Westbrook. Eisenbrauns.
Westbrook, R. (1985). ‘BIBLICAL AND CUNEIFORM LAW CODES’, Revue Biblique, 92, 247–64.
Westbrook, R. (1988). Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Law. J. Gabalda.
Westbrook, R. (1991). Property and the Family in Biblical Law. (Journal for Study of Old Testament Supplement Series 113). Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Westbrook, R. (1995). Slave and Master in Ancient Near Eastern Law, 70 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 1631.
Westbrook, R. (2002). A history of Ancient Near Eastern Law. BRILL.
Westbrook, R., & Jasnow, R. ed. (2001). Security for Debt in Ancient Near Eastern Law. Brill.
Wormald, P. (1999) The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, Volume I: Legislation and its Limits. Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell.
Wright, D. P. (2009). Inventing God's law. How the Covenant Code of the Bible Used and Revised the Laws of Hammurabi. Oxford University Press.
Yaron, R. (1959). “Redemption of Persons in the Ancient Near East.” RIDA 6: 155-76.
Yaron, R. (1988). “The Evolution of Biblical Law.” Pages 77-108 in La Formazione del diritto nel vicino oriente antico. Edited by A. Theodorides et al. Pubblicazioni dell’Istituto di diritto romano e del diritti dell’Oriente mediterraneo 65. Rome: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane.
Yaron, R. (1988). The Laws of Eshnunna. BRILL.
Young, G. D., Chavalas, M. W., Averbeck, R. E. ed. (1997). Crossing boundaries and linking horizons : studies in honor of Michael C. Astour on his 80th birthday. CDL Press.

The season would begin with a flashback to spring break. We see all 5 Liars cleaning up a crime scene. They are distressed, covered in blood and dirt. Imogen proposes they all make a promise to take this secret with them to the grave.
We flash forward
Its 5 months later and the Liars are getting ready to begin a new school year. We get to see a noticeable distance between these girls since the last time we’ve seen them.
Faran and Kelly have taken over as reigning mean girls of Millwood High. Faran has become an obsessed artist. Fixated with perfecting every detail of her life from ballet, to her status at school. Kelly is her second in command.
Tabby has grown completely disinterested with film due to her trauma with Chip and has become enamored with taking photographs of naked men to reclaim her power and sketching gory, disturbing art.
Noa has turned to partying after last years messiness. She believes she can’t trust anyone, not her mother, not Shawn, and not the other girls. So she finds a greater comfort in drugs and alcohol.
Minnie has begun to blossom out of her shell, she’s campaigning for class president and rebelling against her moms. But through all this she is running a dark double life on the deep web and stalking her “dads” family.
And Imogen is the most troubled of all. After giving away her baby she suffered a mental breakdown and went into treatment. Now she’s become a recluse, hiding out at her moms abandoned house and staying with her dad on nights that get too cold. She is debilitated by a consistent paranoia that A will come back eventually.
We also introduce some intriguing newbies.
Naomi Kahn (yes related to Noel Kahn) and Aniya St James. Two new girls that are apart of Faran and Kelly’s clique. Naomi is a spoiled rich girl who was expelled from Rosewood High and sent to live with her grandmother in Millwood. She is stylish, snarky, and cruel when she has to be.
Aniya on the other hand, is the sweeter of the two. A former unpopular freshman who transformed after summer break, she is an overachiever and a foil to Minnie. She is captain of the debate team, president of the student council, and the head cheerleader. In contrast to Naomi and Faran, she is much more approachable but she does have a manipulative streak that comes out when under pressure.
The two add interesting new dynamics to the school.
Esther Cromwell, she’s a friend to Imogen, Tabby, and Minnie. Patron saint to the outcasts of Millwood. Constantly butting heads with both Faran and Kelly. She runs a self defense club for the girls of Millwood to be able to protect themselves. Nerdy, with a bit of an edge. She’s kind and compassionate, but something tells us she might not be as trustworthy as she seems.
There is also:
Mrs. Hansley, a new teacher who teaches a journalism class that Tabby is in. She runs the school newspaper and is someone that the girls can look to for guidance and can confide in. And due to being a former journalist she can lend some of her investigative prowess to help the girls. But she isn’t entirely to be trusted as she has a mysterious history with their mothers!
Derek Adler, Millwood dropout and Noa’s nightlife friend and possible love interest. He hates authority and is a bad boy with a heart of gold. Shawn and Noa’s mother both hate him, but he is useful whenever the Liars need someone to do dirty work for them.
Ever since spring break the Liars have been adamant on staying as far away from each other as possible. Until a new A surfaces and threatens to take everything away from them.
The Liars have a shared secret, a dark one that could possibly destroy everything.
While on vacation, they killed someone, an innocent person who they believed to be Archie. And not only does this new A know but they also have proof.
In a 12 episode second season, this A asks the question of how far the Liars are willing to go to protect their secrets. Forcing them to do bad things in order shield themselves and those around them. While also having the heightened stakes of the REAL Archie still being out there and highly dangerous. Willing to kill any person at a moments notice to exact revenge.
A isn’t playing any games this season. This is where get to see this great mix with OG PLL style A and horror movie villain.
Some of A’s Torture will include:

• Forcing Minnie to tell her father’s family about her
• Making Faran sabotage a scholarship opportunity for Henry to go to an elite ballet academy
• Blackmailing Tabby with her photos into planting evidence to incriminate Imogen in the Spring Break murder
• Forcing Imogen to turn Noa’s stash of drug paraphernalia into the police
• Forcing Noa to expose Tabby’s creepy photo collection and gory art in order to keep A from framing her

A will force this Liars to either choose to protect their secrets or keep those they love and themselves ALIVE.
And now that our brand new A and Archie have teamed up for this second game, its only a matter of time until the Liars lose everything.

I love arranged marriage and related tropes, and I love organizing books. So of course the recent book collection posts and discussions inspired me to organize a giant marriage-before-love collection. This post covers various flavors of the trope, like different arranged marriages, marriage of convenience, waking up married, and more. It does not cover adjacent non-marriage tropes like accidental bonding or unexpected/forced mates. That's a post for another time!
I've discussed why I love these tropes before, but the short of it is that they're perfect for forced proximity, opposites attracts/unexpected romance, as well as overcoming cultural differences, wrongful assumptions and communication issues. They can also have varying levels of angst and emotional hurt/comfort, from the very angsty to the very sweet.
I hope this post can be helpful both for those who like these tropes and want more of it, and those who are interested but haven't dived in yet. I've done my best to categorize these books by type of marriage, but obviously there is some overlap in the categories and some books fit in several categories. And while I've read most of these books I haven't read all of them, and the presence of a book on this list only speaks to its content and not its quality.
Forced or arranged marriage
Bound to Him by M.D. Gregory and Ki Brightly is a contemporary billionare romance with an age gap and a forced marriage due to blackmail.
Married to the Mobster by Leighton Greene is a contemporary book with a forced marriage between the son of a former Irish mob member and a member of the Italian mafia in New York.
Gaven by J.C. Owens is a fantasy captive/captor romance where the sole survivor of a defeated people is forced to marry the second-in-command of the attacking army.
The Only Option by Megan Derr a fantasy story about an older necromancer who is ordered by the Queen to marry a young dragon lord to help pay off the Queen's debt to him.
Moon by Wendy Rathbone is about an alpha and an omega who are forced into an experimental arranged marriage program where they must to live as a family. It's set in a dystopian omegaverse setting with mpreg.
Dragon’s Hoard by M.A. Church is a paranormal romance about a young, innocent omega werewolf whose father marries him off to an ancient dragon to repay a debt.
Cherryvine by Marina Vivancos is about an omega who is forced to travel to the south for an arranged marriage after his first husband dies. It deals with trauma from a previous abusive relationship, and has mpreg.
Gryffon Hall by Alexis Duran is a historical fantasy about the fourth son of a lord being forced by his father to marry a notorious scoundrel with a secret in exchange for the opening of a trade route. A story with a gothic/dark fairytale atmosphere.
Marriage Contract by A.J. Sherwood is a contemporary romance about a man whose family sells him into marriage to pay off his sister's debts.
Wed to the Omega by Ashe Moon is about a headstrong omega enrolled in a fighting school, whose parents arrange a marriage for the sake of having an heir. His future husband turns out to be his classmate and rival. A contemporary omegaverse with rivals-to-lovers, fated mates and mpreg.
The Dotted Line by Claire Cullen is a contemporary romance with two men whose fathers organize for them to get married, one because it will save his family from destitution and one because it's a stipulation of his inheritance. Due to an unfavorable marriage contract, the man saved from destitution is forced to live isolated at his new husband's estate until health issues forces his husband back to the estate.
Marriage of convenience
The Arrangement by Alex Jane has a marriage of convenience between a member of a pack at risk of disbandment and the alpha he has been in love with for a long time. It's set in an alt-historical USA in 1895 with without homophobia, and is omegaverse without mpreg.
Omega's Gamble by Claire Cullen has an omega prince marrying a reluctant alpha prince, the omega to avoid being banished to the priory and the alpha because of the political alliance. A fish-out-of-water story in a steampunk/fantasy setting with a political plot, shifters and mpreg.
The Substitute by Sean Ashcroft is a contemporary book with a marriage of convenience for scholarship money. The marriage is between an artist and the older brother of the man he was supposed to marry, who stepped in when the younger brother bailed.
Surprise Groom by D.J. Jamison is a contemporary romance between two childhood friends who enter a marriage of convenience for economic reasons.
Bad With Love by Sophie O'Dare is a contemporary omegaverse romance about a tea shop owner who ends up marrying his old high school nemesis on the behest of his mother, to save their family fortune. The book has an animosity-to-lovers romance, mpreg, and a secret omega
False Engagement by Hollis Shiloh is set in a Regency-like setting without homophobia and has an engagement of convenience after a scandal, with a friends-to-resentment-to-lovers relationship and a second chance romance.
The Replacement Husband by Eliot Grayson is an alt-historical that has a younger man whose fiance leaves him two weeks before their wedding, and the fiance's brother steps in to marry the younger man to save him from a ruined reputation. It's set in a Regency-like setting without homophobia.
To Not Marry My Enemy by Gianni Holmes is a contemporary enemies-to-lovers romance with marriage of convenience between a man who has to be married for business reasons, and a con man who's blackmailed into taking the place of the woman who was supposed to be the bride, a fellow con artist who bailed.
Political marriage
Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell has a rushed arranged marriage between the widower of a deceased prince and the prince's disreputable cousin. It has a murder investigation, space politics, and a slow burn romance.
The High King’s Golden Tongue by Megan Derr is about a prince trained to become consort, and a widowed king who is resentful of having to remarry and dismisses the prince. The story has political intrigue and action, and an age gap romance.
The Gryphon King’s Consort by Jenn Burke is about a crown prince who suddenly becomes king, forcing him to rush his coronation and arranged marriage to a marriage candidate he has barely met. It's set in a modern world with fantasy elements and gryphon shifters, and deals with differences in political ideology.
Wed to the Barbarian by Keira Andrews is about an innocent prince who is forced to marry a brutish barbarian and move to the barbarian's homeland for political reasons. It's a fantasy enemies-to-lovers romance with an age gap, and the first book in a duology (both books must be read for a HEA).
The Lodestar of Ys by Amy Rae Durreson is an animosity-to-lovers story about a diplomat whose arranged marriage falls through when his betrothed runs away before the wedding. Instead the diplomat is forced to marry the man's brother, who he despises, in order to keep the political alliance between their countries. A fantasy story with many, many weddings and a political/war plot.
The Wolf and the Sparrow by Isabelle Adler is a fantasy book with an arranged marriage between two nobles from warring kingdoms for the sake of peace. The book has action, magic and political intrigue.
Claimed by the Orc Prince by Lionel Hart is about an elven prince and the son of an orc warlord who are made to marry as part of a peace treaty. It has light omegaverse elements and there is mpreg in the world but not on page.
A Deceptive Alliance by Sydney Blackburn has an MC who disguises himself as his twin sister when she flees from an arranged marriage, and takes her place to save them from a political incident while hoping that his true identity isn't discovered.
Honeythorn by Marina Vivancos is a fantasy/historical story about an omega who has travelled to the north to marry an alpha to strengthen a peace treaty, only to find that the alpha is cold and neglectful towards him. Omegaverse with no mpreg.
Unnatural by Alessandra Hazard is a science fiction omegaverse story about two alphas, a prince and a senator, who are forced to marry for a peace treaty.
A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows is about a man who is engaged to a woman for political reasons, but after his preference for men is revealed he is instead made to marry the woman's brother to save the diplomatic union. It's a fantasy book with political intrigue.
A Prince's Duty by Jude Marquez is a fantasy book with an arranged marriage between two crown princes, the last remaining heir of one kingdom and a warrior prince from another.
The Emperor’s Omega by Corey Kerr is a fantasy book about an omega prince who takes the place of his recently deceased sister in marrying the emperor to produce an heir. The book deals with cultural differences and infertility issues, and has mpreg.
Betrothed since birth
Broken Prince and Mismatched Eyes by Layla Dorine is about the son of a nobleman who unknowingly is betrothed since birth to the prince of another country, who one day shows up to marry him and take him to his homeland.
La Douleur Exquise by Amelita Rae is an omegaverse alt-historical with an omega in a love triangle with two alpha twins, one who loves him and one who he is betrothed to. It's very heavy on the bodice-ripper tropes, and has mpreg.
That Irresistible Poison by Alessandra Hazard is a science fiction story with an enemies-to-lovers romance between two princes who are betrothed since birth.
Royally Screwed by Lynn Van Dorn is about two princes who are betrothed from birth. It's a contemporary romance with animosity-to-lovers, a sexuality awakening and kink.
Waking up married
Will & Patrick Wake Up Married by Leta Blake and Alice Griffiths is a serial with two strangers waking up married in Vegas. Aversion-to-lovers and contemporary romcom shenanigans.
Satisfying by Onley James is a holiday-themed contemporary romance with two guys who wake up married after getting too drunk at a Christmas party and get snowed in together.
Bet on Love by A.F. Zoelle is a contemporary friends-to-lovers romance with a groom-to-be who drunkenly elopes with his best man in Vegas.
Screwed by K.M. Neuhold is a contemporary book with two men waking up married after a bachelor party, who decide to pretend that the marriage is real to their friends.
Waking under the Mistletoe by Aurora Crane is a holiday romance about two strangers who wake up married on Christmas day.
Rearranged by E.M. Denning is a contemporary romance about two strangers with family issues who meet in Vegas and end up getting drunk and married.
If you know any other books where the marriage comes before the romance, feel free to share them with everyone in the comments!

Contest summary from Winning Writers:

Free contest gives a $1,000 scholarship for a 500-word essay by a US or Canadian woman commencing or continuing to pursue a bachelor's, master's, or Ph.D degree in journalism, creative writing, or literature at a recognized post-secondary institution in the United States or Canada in the following academic year (e.g. 2022-23 for the contest with May 2022 deadline). See themes on the website. Contest sponsor and judge Lucas Aykroyd is a Canadian journalist and travel writer. He created this award to thank the female colleagues and mentors who have supported his writing career. It is named for a strong female character in the Sherlock Holmes story "A Scandal in Bohemia".

From the contest guidelines (link opens a Microsoft Word Doc):

Entries will consist of a 500-word essay in English on one of the following three topics:
Which story from your life best illustrates why writing is important to you?
If you could embark on an adventure anywhere in the world, what would it be?
What is a mystery that you’d love to solve via your writing?

Contest details

• Sponsor: Lucas Aykroyd
• Category: Flash essay
• Submission length: Up to 500 words
• Entry fee: No fee
• Awards: $1,000 scholarship

Guidelines and submission information (organization's contest page)
This contest has been vetted and approved by Winning Writers

Contest summary from Winning Writers:

Free contest gives a $1,000 scholarship for a 500-word essay by a US or Canadian woman commencing or continuing to pursue a bachelor's, master's, or Ph.D degree in journalism, creative writing, or literature at a recognized post-secondary institution in the United States or Canada in the following academic year (e.g. 2022-23 for the contest with May 2022 deadline). See themes on the website. Contest sponsor and judge Lucas Aykroyd is a Canadian journalist and travel writer. He created this award to thank the female colleagues and mentors who have supported his writing career. It is named for a strong female character in the Sherlock Holmes story "A Scandal in Bohemia".

From the contest guidelines (link opens a Microsoft Word Doc):

Entries will consist of a 500-word essay in English on one of the following three topics:
Which story from your life best illustrates why writing is important to you?
If you could embark on an adventure anywhere in the world, what would it be?
What is a mystery that you’d love to solve via your writing?

Contest details

• Sponsor: Lucas Aykroyd
• Category: Flash essay
• Submission length: Up to 500 words
• Entry fee: No fee
• Awards: $1,000 scholarship

Guidelines and submission information (organization's contest page)
This contest has been vetted and approved by Winning Writers

I have a BS in psychology and a thesis based MS degree. Ideally, I want to do clinical assessments and research. I applied to clinical psychology PhD programs this year but it's so competitive. Thinking of starting to apply to PsyD programs but some are so expensive (e.g. Adler - Canada). Is it worth it? Will I be able to pay off my student loans and/or are there any good scholarships? Will I realistically still be able to do research at hospitals with a PsyD? Thank you!!

Hello fellow friends, comrades and colleagues
​
Yesterday I was a delegate to the state conference of the Junge Generation ("Young Generation", the youth unit of the SPÖ). In the main speech, held by our federal JG leader Claudia O'Brien she mentioned that education is something very important. As a response to the speech I answered that it is a huge problem that we forget about education, not on the classic level of obligatory schools, but more outside of school in various ways, for instance in "Arbeiterschulen" (Workers schools) run by SocDem parties.
As I took the train home, I thought about the concepts that Social Democrats developed in the early years of the movement - and still continue in some way. Today, I'd like to talk about education in the context of Social Democracy and how it can be a helpful tool for the future.
​
It's the education, stupid!
Early in the formation of Social Democracy and Socialism as a political force, intellectuals like Victor Adler and August Bebel realised the importance of education for the improvement of conditions worldwide. Victor Adler, a physician, saw first hand the poor conditions of the Viennese workers in the 1870s and 1880s, struck by an economic desaster in Austria-Hungary. In this time, he saw that education was a low priority for children as they had to help their parents in the field or work in factories. Therefore their prospects for the future were bad as well as their life expectancy. Early on, even in the times of the Sozialistengesetze (Socialists Laws) in Germany, some intellectuals and smart people founded the first Abendschulen (Evening Schools) or Arbeiterschulen (Workers Schools) to teach basic things and especially the ideas of Marx and socialism in general.
Although the German Social Democrats were under ruthless pressure from Bismarck and the police, they did their best to bring more education to the people as best they could. Schools were only one form of this.
​
Vienna ahead!
Victor Adler was the founder of the Austrian Social Democratic Workers Party in 1889. Before that, smaller clubs of Social Democrats did the same thing as in Germany: teaching workers. This even went in some instances so far to teach skills that could be helpful for daily work life - everyone was able to learn more from others. In the time of Red Vienna (Rotes Wien), the party improved their ideas and for once put them into effect on a great scale. Public schools were reformed under the supervision of Otto Glöckel - one of the fathers of modern public education. Not only increasing the public school budget but too educating the teachers in a new way - no physical punishment and more interactive learning methods between teacher and pupils.
Alongside came an offensive in party education, but not only in terms of classes. One things was the Arbeiterorchester ("Workers Orchestra") where workers and socially poor people could attend concerts and such for very cheap money or even free. Singing choirs and such were too part of this. But the crown of it all was the Arbeiterhochschule ("Workers college"). Although it only existed for five years in the 1920s, it was a role model for educating promising members for higher positions in the crafts of politics and other things like economics. Some of the teachers were famous Austrian Social Democrats like Karl Renner, Otto Bauer, Max Adler and Julius Deutsch.
Another very important factor was the establishing of workplace libraries or even those in the Gemeindebauten (City Buildings - cheap but dam effective living quarters)
​
Education in modern times
After the war, classic workers schools didn't contine - but rahter were reformed into different organisations. In Germany, the most famous one is the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, close to the SPD and financed by the state as well as donations. Not only give they speeches and courses, but help students of lower classes with their studies at university with scholarships. Today, the FES provides a lot of courses on the history of Social Democracy and other interesting facts to politics, economics and life in general.
In Austria, two institues close to the SPÖ are important places for party and general education: the Dr. Karl-Renner-Institut and the Jahoda-Bauer-Institut. Both give regular courses as well as help with book writings etc. For instance, I asked the JBI for help with materials for my bachelors thesis - and they gladly helped me with that. Both institutes provide a broad range of courses and ideas that can be visited by everyone interested, even and especially non-party members. The unions either cooperate with the two institutes or themselves provide their own courses from a wide range of topics - often enough historical ones (which I like and were even invited to - as a possible guest speaker).
One successor in the german-speaking areas were the Volkshochschulen (Peoples Colleges), where people of all ranges can take courses on all kinds of things - from languages to skills like cooking you'll find a lot there. They are indepedent, but the idea stems from the Arbeiterschulen of the earlier years. And: they aren't too expensive, but it depends on the region in which you live.
In Sweden, the ABF still serves a similar purpose, but it is more connected to other leftist movements today.
In Switzerland, Movendo is the educational institute of the SP Schweiz as well as the unions and are similar in idea and structure as the sister institutions in Germany and Austria.
​
The future of an old idea
With this short view into history, I'd like to argue that this founding idea is one that Social Democracy should keep for various reasons.
One is quite easy: providing free or cheap education on various topics for all that are interested as education today is more important than ever for reaching our goals.
Second to show what we as Social Democrats want to do to improve the lives of the people - to hear their needs and develop innovative and progressive ideas.
Third to meet new people/friends and connect with them - talking about what wsa learned and how it can be put to use.
Fourth: to provide culture in a cheap and effective format - to be independent of high concert prices for classic music concerts for instance.
Fifth: providing cheap libraries is a great addition for all age groups - as all can benefit from the books there.
Sixth (and for me the most important): to secure and save the history of the movement. The Jahoda-bauer-Institut for instance is very active in remembering the February Uprising of 1934 in Austria, a very important bot often enough forgotten moment of Austria. Same with the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in remembering the fight against National Socialism with the words of Otto Wels echoing into the future: "Freiheit und Leben kann man uns nehmen, die Ehre nicht!" (You can take our freedoms and lives, but not our honour!"). That we shall never forget, that education is something for every human on this planet, not for the wealthy elites.
To crack the chains of class thinking and more social mobility - and I am one of those that profits from this!
I even see a great benefit from this: it might help to bring back our old strength and mobilise more people to the cause of Social Democracy - possibly even resulting in better voting results for SocDem parties. As we show that we not only care, but provide help to those that want and need it, independently from being in government or not.
​
Therefore I am in favor of not only continuing, but expanding the idea - so that more people can learn what Social Democracy is about and understand the ideas behind it - striving for a better future.
For Liberty, Justice, Solidarity - and these three arrows are surrounded by a circle, by our most important value we have - democracy!
​
Freundschaft und Glück auf!

Hi twoset, I'm Irene Adler .... I am a student of piano but I did achive many GOOD things...

1. I got a scholarship
2. Did well in olympiads
3. I gotin to the school I wanted and....

I PRACTICED

Adherents rely on pre-Christian, folkloric, and ethnographic sources to a variety of degrees; many follow a spirituality that they accept as entirely modern, while others claim prehistoric beliefs, or else attempt to revive indigenous, ethnic religions as accurately as possible.[4] Academic research has placed the Pagan movement along a spectrum, with eclecticism on one end and polytheistic reconstructionism on the other. Polytheism, animism, and pantheism are common features of Pagan theology.
Contemporary Paganism has sometimes been associated with the New Age movement, with scholars highlighting both their similarities and differences.[5] The academic field of Pagan studies began to coalesce in the 1990s, emerging from disparate scholarship in the preceding two decades.