ESCAPE – European Slaves: Christians in African Pirate Encounters 
Barbary Coast Captivity Narratives (1550–1780)

Team

Principal investigator

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Mario Klarer

University Professor (§ 98 UG) of American Literary and Cultural Studies

University of Innsbruck
Department of American Studies
Innrain 52d
6020 Innsbruck
Austria

Humanities building, 3rd floor, room 40317

Office hours: by appointment

Tel: +43 512 507-41604
Email: mario.klarer@uibk.ac.at

ORCID^® iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0712-9328

Research projects:

• Hermeneu­tic Exem­pla: Retrac­ing Medieval Exegetic Strate­gies in the Gesta Romano­rum (HER­MES); FWF-Stand-Alone Project (€656,226.00)
• The Boundaries of Fact and Fiction: Barbary Captivity Narratives (1530–1820), FWF Stand-Alone project (€403,220.90)
• The Marco Polo of Christopher Columbus – Francesco Pipino’s Latin Version of Il Milione, FWF Stand-Alone project (€406,305.49)
• MENS – Medieval Explorations in Neuro-Science (1050–1450): Ontology-Based Keyword Spotting in Manuscript Scans, Research Südtirol/Alto Adige 2019 (€299,786.68)
• TEI Converter for E-Book and Print Editions, Austrian Academy of Sciences, CLARIAH-AT (€20,000.00)
• Maximilian goes digital: From “remembrance” to data storage, Office of the Tyrolean Regional Government and Provincial Capital of Innsbruck, Year of Maximilian 2019 (€500,000.00)
• SLAVES – SchülerInnen leiten eine Ausstellungsvorbereitung zu europäischen Sklaven, Sparkling Science project (€169,081.00)
• KONDE – Kompetenznetzwerk Digitale Edition, HRSM project, Subproject (€51,000.00)
• Ambraser Heldenbuch: Transcription and Scientific Dataset, ÖAW go!digital 2.0 project (€146,652.00)
• Pirates and Slaves in the Mediterranean: Jubilee exhibition for the 350th anniversary of the University of Innsbruck – Schloss Ambras Innsbruck (€75,000.00)
• ESCAPE – European Slaves: Christians in African Pirate Encounters: Barbary Coast Captivity Narratives (1550–1780), FWF Stand-Alone project (€275,623.95)
• Framing Media: The Periphery of Fiction and Film (1919–1936), FWF Stand-Alone project (€209,782.43)

Project assistants

• Julia Ott, BA
• Mag. Bernadette Rangger
• Mag. Dr. Robert Spindler, M.A.

Research projects of the principal investigator

• Hermeneu­tic Exem­pla: Retrac­ing Medieval Exegetic Strate­gies in the Gesta Romano­rum (HER­MES); FWF-Stand-Alone Project (€656,226.00)

• The Boundaries of Fact and Fiction: Barbary Captivity Narratives (1530–1820), FWF Stand-Alone project (€403,220.90)
• The Marco Polo of Christopher Columbus – Francesco Pipino’s Latin Version of Il Milione, FWF Stand-Alone project (€406,305.49)
• MENS – Medieval Explorations in Neuro-Science (1050–1450): Ontology-Based Keyword Spotting in Manuscript Scans, Research Südtirol/Alto Adige 2019 (€299,786.68)
• TEI Converter for E-Book and Print Editions, Austrian Academy of Sciences, CLARIAH-AT (€20,000.00)
• Maximilian goes digital: From “remembrance” to data storage, Office of the Tyrolean Regional Government and Provincial Capital of Innsbruck, Year of Maximilian 2019 (€500,000.00)
• SLAVES – SchülerInnen leiten eine Ausstellungsvorbereitung zu europäischen Sklaven, Sparkling Science project (€169,081.00)
• KONDE – Kompetenznetzwerk Digitale Edition, HRSM project, Subproject (€51,000.00)
• Ambraser Heldenbuch: Transcription and Scientific Dataset, ÖAW go!digital 2.0 project (€146,652.00)
• Pirates and Slaves in the Mediterranean: Jubilee exhibition for the 350th anniversary of the University of Innsbruck – Schloss Ambras Innsbruck (€75,000.00)
• ESCAPE – European Slaves: Christians in African Pirate Encounters: Barbary Coast Captivity Narratives (1550–1780), FWF Stand-Alone project (€275,623.95)
• Framing Media: The Periphery of Fiction and Film (1919–1936), FWF Stand-Alone project (€209,782.43)

Conferences

Piracy and Captivity in the Mediterranean: 1530-1810
Barbary Coast Captivity Narratives

16 - 18 June 2016
University of Innsbruck, Austria, Europe

New: German article about our conference

Full Program as PDF File (includes Abstracts)

Flyer as PDF File

Call for Papers

(as PDF)

Usually, Africa is not the first continent that comes to mind when one reads about white slavery or narratives by European captives. Yet, captivity accounts by Christian slaves in Northern Africa, or the Barbary Coast, influenced early modern writers and public figures, such as Miguel de Cervantes, Daniel Defoe, Benjamin Franklin, or Thomas Jefferson. A large number of European and American Christians were slaves in the North African city-states of Algiers, Tripoli, Tunis, and Salé from the early16th to the early 19th century. Some of the slaves, who managed to escape or were ransomed, wrote narratives about their time in captivity after their return to their home countries.

Besides recounting the experiences and adventures of their protagonists, these Barbary Coast captivity narratives touch upon matters such as acculturation, the cultural and ethnic melting pot of the Barbary Coast, inter-Christian relations, the Islamic faith, as well as issues of gender, sexuality, and homecoming. Although many authors vilify Barbary Coast slavery, they often provide surprisingly balanced and positive evaluations of the Islamic religion and culture. As one of the most accessible sources of information on Islam and North Africa in the early modern period, these texts were tremendously popular and had a significant influence on the literature, art, politics, philosophy, and foreign politics of the countries subjected to the pirates’ attacks. The pirate activity was not only directed against countries located around the Mediterranean Sea but also affected German speaking countries, Great Britain, Scandinavia, the United States of America, or even far away islands as, for example, Iceland.

Until some years ago, interest in Barbary Coast captivity narratives was largely historical, as documents on slavery and piracy. The aim of this conference is to look at these narratives in a variety of languages from a literary perspective, while putting them into a proper historical, cultural context. Although the narratives as such stand at the center of the conference, we also invite papers that address larger issues pertinent to the pro­duction and reception of these texts. Besides literary scholars in the different philologies, we also especially welcome scholars from the fields of history, cultural studies, philosophy, theology, Islamic and Oriental studies, slavery studies, etc. Paper topics may include, but are not limited to, the following areas of inquiry:

Barbary Coast captivity narratives proper:
- the tension between fictionality and authenticity
- narratological features
- questions of cultural identity
- influences on the early novel and African American slave narratives
- the tension between Protestantism and Catholicism
- Muslim narratives of captivity in Europe

Barbary Coast slavery and piracy in general:
- diplomatic relations between North Africa and the Christian World
- piracy, politics, and economy on the Barbary Coast
- the role of the Barbary Coast in the development in the emerging United States
- Muslim perspectives on piracy and captivity
- the Trinitarians and other religious orders
- redemption practices
- Muslim slaves in Europe
- white slavery

Conference Participation

Please send conference papertitles with abstracts of about 300 words as a Word document to tobias.auboeck@uibk.ac.at. The deadline for submission is 30 November 2015.

November 13 - 14, 2014 we held a conference on "Perspectives on Northern Africa in the Early Modern Period: Piracy, Slavery, and Diplomacy" at Innsbruck. Speakers were Khalid Bekkaoui, Carsten Junker, Magnus Ressel, Joachim Oestlund, Elisabeth Watzka-Pauli, and Gillian Weiss.

Events

2023

May 16: Lecture (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Mario Klarer) “Piraterie, Korsarentum und Sklaverei: Der frühneuzeitliche Kaperkrieg auf dem Mittelmeer” at the Volkshochschule Zürich.

January 6:Book talk of Barbary Captives: An Anthology of Early Modern Slave Memoirs by Europeans in North Africa at the Columbia Global Centers Tunis.

2018

June 9: Newspaper Article on the project: "Menschenhandel im Mittelmeerraum", Die Presse, June 9, 2018, page 100.

April 13: Lecture: Robert Spindler (Innsbruck), "Renegados: Converted Christians in British Barbary Captivity Narratives." at the International Symposium Buccaneers, Corsairs, Pirates and Privateers: Connecting the Early Modern Seas at the Bielefeld University.

2017

November 8: Lecture: Robert Spindler (Innsbruck), "Three Early Modern Barbary Captivity Narratives in the German Language and their Portrayal of Islam" for the Mediterranean Collaborative, Consortium for the Study of the Premodern World at the University of Minnesota.

November 4: Lecture: Robert Spindler (Innsbruck), "Masters, Agusins and Renegados: Portrayals of Muslims in Early Modern Barbary Captivity Narratives from Germany and Austria" for the SAGES Program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

June 14-15: Newspaper article on the project: "Auf zum Entern!", Der Standard, June 14/15, 2017, page F1.

February 23: Lecture: Robert Spindler (Innsbruck), "Merckwürdige Lebens- und Reisebeschreibung: Der Bericht des Johann Michael Kühn" at the workshop "Erzählen zwischen Fakt und Fiktion" in Innsbruck.

2016

November 15: Lecture: Mario Klarer (Innsbruck), "Die Ausstellung ‚Gefangen von Piraten’ auf Schloss Ambras im Jahr 2019" Forschungsschwerpunkt Kulturelle Begegnungen,  University of Innsbruck.

June 17: Lecture: Robert Spindler (Innsbruck), "Austrian 'Robinsons' on the Barbary Coast” at the "Piracy and Captivity in the Mediterranean: 1530-1810" in Innsbruck.

June 16: Lecture: Tobias Auböck (Innsbruck), "Easier Imagined than Described: Femininity and Fictionality in American Barbary Coast Captivity Narratives” at the "Piracy and Captivity in the Mediterranean: 1530-1810" in Innsbruck.

June 16 - 18: International conference "Piracy and Captivity in the Mediterranean: 1530-1810" in Innsbruck.

April 23: Lecture: Tobias Auböck (Innsbruck), "Selling the Truth: The Case of William Ray's Horrors of Slavery" at the EAAS Conference in Constanta (Romania).

April 22: Lecture: Robert Spindler (Innsbruck), "Austrian Pirate Victims in North Africa: Two Early Modern Narratives of Barbary Coast Captivity" at the conference "Piraten, Gin Tonic und Partnerwahl. DIe Vielfalt der universitären Forschung" in Innsbruck.

2015

December 15: Lecture: Tobias Auböck (Innsbruck), "Two Versions of the Truth: Representations of Class in Captivity Narratives" at the EHLN Conference "Free and Unfree Labour" in Turin.

October 23: Presentation: Tobias Auböck (Innsbruck) presents our project and our editing efforts at the kick off workshop of the Forschungszentrum Digital Humanities at the University of Innsbruck.

June 8: Lecture: Lisa Kattenberg (Amsterdam), "The Free Slave. Morality, Neostoicism and Publishing Strategy in Emanuel d’Aranda’s Algiers and it’s Slavery, 1640-1682" in Innsbruck.

June 3-4: Newspaper article on the project: "Als christlicher Gefangener unter Piraten", Der Standard, June 3/4, 2015, page F8.

April 15: Lecture: Tobias Auböck (Innsbruck), "Two Versions of the Truth: American Captivity in Tripoli" at the "Philologisch-Kulturwissenschaftliches Kolloquium" in Innsbruck.

March 19: Lecture: Robert Spindler (Innsbruck), "Identity Crisis: Returning from the Barbary Coast" at the research workshop "Afrikaforschung in Österreich: Zugänge und Einordnung" in Innsbruck.

March 19: Lecture: Tobias Auböck (Innsbruck), "Constructing Knowledge: Early Modern North Africa Through the Lense of Captivity Narratives" at the research workshop "Afrikaforschung in Österreich: Zugänge und Einordnung" in Innsbruck.

March 19: Lecture: Mario Klarer (Innsbruck), "The Barbary Coast Captivity Narrative as an Early Modern Guide to North Africa: Emanuel Aranda’s A Relation of Captivity and Liberty (1665;1666)" at the research workshop "Afrikaforschung in Österreich: Zugänge und Einordnung" in Innsbruck.

February 19: Lecture: Tobias Auböck (Innsbruck), "Americans in Chains: Sexual Virtue and the Quest for National Identity in Barbary Captivity Narratives" at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.

January 26 - 30: Radio series: Mario Klarer in "Betrifft Geschichte" on Ö1, 5:55 pm.
   January 26: "Piraterie und Sklavenhandel seit der Antike"
   January 27: "Formen nordafrikanischer Sklaverei"
   January 28: "Sexuelle Standhaftigkeit versklavter Christinnen"
   Januray 29: "Berichte geflohener oder freigekaufter ehemaliger Sklaven"
   January 30: "Cervantes, Defoe und Rousseau"

2014

November 22, 2014: Lecture: Tobias Auböck (Innsbruck), "Discovering Timbuktu: An American Perspective on a Legendary City" at the 41 AAAS Conference "Space Oddities: Urbanity, American Identity, and Cultural Exchange" in Graz.

November 22, 2014: Lecture: Robert Spindler (Innsbruck), "City Descriptions in Barbary Coast Captivity Narratives" at the 41 AAAS Conference "Space Oddities: Urbanity, American Identity, and Cultural Exchange" in Graz.

November 17, 2014: Lecture: Tobias Auböck (Innsbruck), "The Fantastical Travels of Robert Adams: An American Captive in Western Africa" at the Forschungstag des Forschungszentrums Kulturen in Kontakt in Innsbruck.

November 13 - 14, 2014: Conference "Perspectives on Northern Africa in the Early Modern Period: Piracy, Slavery, and Diplomacy" in Innsbruck.

November 3, 2014: Lecture: Khalid Bekkaoui (Fez), "Muslim Discovery of America" in Innsbruck.

November - December 2014: LFUI Guest Professorship: Khalid Bekkaoui (Fez) spends to months in Innsbruck at the Department of American Studies. Report on his stay (pdf).

Winter term 2014/15: Seminar and proseminar on Barbary Coast captivity narratives in Innsbruck.

June 7, 2014: Lecture: Mario Klarer (Innsbruck), "Barbary Coast Captivity Narratives" at the conference "Mightier than the Sword? The Countercultural Agency of Literary Fiction" in Innsbruck.

May 21, 2014: Lecture: Salvatore Bono (Perugia), "Europäische Sklavenberichte aus dem Mittelmeerraum (16.-19. Jahrhundert)" in Innsbruck.

March 24, 2014: Lecture: Magnus Ressel (Frankfurt), "The Image of the Barbary Corsairs in European Scholarly Literature from 1600 to 1800" in Innsbruck.

March 17, 2014: Lecture: Mario Klarer, "Christliche Sklaven unter islamischen Piraten: Gefangenenberichte von der Berberküste (1550-1780)" at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institut for Neo-Latin Studies in Innsbruck.

Summer term 2014: Seminar: Mario Klarer, "American Literature and Culture: Pirates of the Mediterranean: Barbary Coast Captivity Narratives" at Innsbruck University.

February 25, 2014: Radio interview with Mario Klarer on Radio Freirad 105,9 (in "uni konkret", radio broadcast of the University of Innsbruck, February 2014, www.uibk.ac.at/ipoint/uni-konkret/).

February 8, 2014: Lecture: Mario Klarer, "Die Sklaven der Korsaren: Frühneuzeitliche Gefangenenberichte aus der Barbareskenküste und der frühe Roman" at the workshop "Schiff und Schrift. Zum Verhältnis von Literatur und Globalisierung von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zum 19. Jahrhundert" in Munich.

2013

November 27, 2013: Lecture: Mario Klarer, "Barbary Coast Captivity: German and English Narratives" at the Schwerpunkttreffen of the Forschungsschwerpunkt Kulturen in Kontakt in Innsbruck.

November 27, 2013: Lecture: Tobias Auböck, "Barbary Coast Captivity: American Narratives" at the Schwerpunkttreffen of the Forschungsschwerpunkt Kulturen in Kontakt in Innsbruck.

November 25, 2013: Lecture: Stefan Brandt, "The American in Chains: Enslavement and the Specter of North Africa in Early U.S. Barbary Narratives" in Innsbruck.

November 9, 2013: Lecture: Mario Klarer, "Barbary Coast Captivity Accounts as Anti‐Utopia" at the AAAS Conference in Salzburg.

November 9, 2013: Lecture: Tobias Auböck, "Barbary Coast Captivity Narratives: The Female Perspective" at the AAAS Conference in Salzburg.

November 9, 2013: Lecture: Robert Spindler, "17th Century Captivity Narratives and the Puritans’ Utopian Vision of the New World" at the AAAS Conference in Salzburg.

Winter term 2013/14: Seminar: Mario Klarer, "American Literature and Culture: Escape in American Literature" at Innsbruck University.

July 19, 2013: Lecture: Mario Klarer, "Escaping from White Slavery: Barbary Coast Captivity Accounts and the Emerging Novel" at the conference "CISLE: New Frontiers in Research, Innsbruck" in Innsbruck.

Partners

Khalid Bekkaoui is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdallah University, Fez, Morocco. His most recent books include White Women Captives in North Africa (Palgrave: 2011) The British Bride of Tangier: The Extraordinary Love Story of Emily Shareefa of Wazzan (Moroccan Cultural Studies Centre: 2012), Maghrebi Sufism Youth Gender Politics and the West (in Arabic: Fez University Press: 2013). He is currently working on a book project entitled Muslim Discovery of America.
Report on his stay in Innsbruck (pdf).

Robert Davis is a professor of Italian Renaissance and pre-modern Mediterranean history at Ohio State University. He studies Naples, Rome, Palermo, Venice, Genoa, the Vatican, and Perugia, and mostly works on the lives of ordinary people and the values they cherished. His subjects have ranged from shipbuilders, bull fighters, and amateur boxers in Venice to Italian bandits, Mediterranean corsairs, and the slave trade.

María Antonia Garcés obtained a Masters in English Literature from Georgetown University in 1987, another Masters (1992) and a Ph.D. in Hispanic Literatures from the Johns Hopkins University in 1994. Currently Professor of Hispanic Studies at the Department of Romance Studies, Cornell University, Professor Garcés is a specialist in Cervantes and early modern Spanish literatures and cultures. Her research interests in the literatures of the Iberian Peninsula and Colonial Spanish America lie at the thresholds between cultural and religious traditions, which include the encounters between Christianity and Islam in Spain and the Mediterranean. Her attention to such issues has pressured her to study the question of the frontiers between geopolitical territories and communities, as well as the interactions between Christians and Muslims in North Africa.

Carsten Junker is postdoctoral researcher in English-speaking Cultures/American Studies and member of the Institute for Postcolonial and Transcultural Studies at the University of Bremen, Germany. He obtained his doctorate in North American Literature and Culture from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2009, with a study on the essay as genre of cultural critique. He is currently completing his second book which focuses on the transatlantic discourse of abolition around 1800. For this project, he received the Christoph Daniel Ebeling Fellowship, jointly sponsored by the German Association for American Studies and the American Antiquarian Society.

Joachim Östlund got his PhD in history 2007 and is a teacher and a researcher at the Department of History at Lund University. His research deals with Sweden's relation to the Ottoman Empire and especially its provinces in North Africa. Östlund has done the first modern study on Swedish captives and slaves in North Africa and also discovered that Swedish ships was involved in the trade in African slaves across the Mediterranean. This is presented in the book Saltets pris: svenska slavar i Nordafrika och handeln i Medelhavet 1650-1770, published by Nordic Academic Press 2014. Currently he works on a project (2012-2016) that continues the exploration of the Swedish consular and maritime presence in the Mediterranean, and with special attention on the Ottoman slave trade and the French invasion of Algiers.

Christine E. Sears is an associate professor of History at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where she teaches classes in the Atlantic World, Early American Republic, and comparative slavery. Her book, American Slaves and African Masters: Algiers and the Western Sahara, 1776-1820, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012.

George A. Starr teaches at the U. C. Berkeley English Department. His current research interests include Biblical and other features of 17th- and 18th-century prose style and Prudential calculation and risk-taking (e.g. in investing, insuring, gambling, &c.), as applied by Defoe and others to questions of religious belief. His most recent book-publication is Christianity Not as Old as the Creation: the Last of Defoe's Performances, ed. G. A. Starr (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012).

Daniel Vitkus holds the Rebeca Hickel endowed chair in Early Modern Literature at UC, San Diego. He earned his Master's Degree in English Language and Literature at Oxford University (Hertford College) and his Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the editor of Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England (Columbia UP, 2000) and Piracy, Slavery and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England (Columbia UP, 2001), and he is the author of a book called Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570-1630 (Palgrave, 2003).

Elisabeth Watzka-Pauli received her PhD in history from the University of Graz, where she also studied philosophy, theology, law and German philology. In 2006 she received a scholarship from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and worked at the historical institute of the Austrian forum for culture in Rome. Between 2006-2011 she was a member of the Austrian Science Fund research project “Charitable Catholic Orders in Early Modern Central Europe” at the institute for sociology and the center for social research in Graz. She completed her PhD with the dissertation “Redemption of Christian Slaves by the Trinitarian Order between the 17. and 18. Century: Austrian Redemption in the context of the Order’s Overall Structure” in 2011 and has been working as an independent historian ever since.

Media clips

Online media

November 2020: Online article: "Ein weißer Sklave macht Karriere", RP Online, November 13, 2020, online.

December 2019: Online article: "Vormoderne Sklaverei am Mittelmeer", science.ORF.at, December 6, 2019, online.

July 2019: Online article: "Piraterie und Sklaverei: Auf Menschenjagd im Mittelmeer", Der Standard, July 2, 2019, online.

Print media

July 2022: Newspaper article: “Vom Sklaven zum Bestsellerautor”, Die Presse, July 23, 2022.

September 2019: Newspaper article: "Piraten lockten 50.000 Besucher nach Ambras", Tiroler Tagezeitung, September 11, 2019, page 10.

July 2018: Newspaper article on the project: "Wie ein Tiroler Bauer von Piraten versklavt wurde", Tiroler Tageszeitung Magazin, July 15, 2018, page 28-29.

June 2018: Newspaper article on the project: "Menschenhandel im Mittelmeerraum", Die Presse, June 9, 2018, page 100.

June 2017: Newspaper article on the project: "Auf zum Entern!", Der Standard, June 14/15, 2017, page F1.

June 2015: Newspaper article on the project: "Als christlicher Gefangener unter Piraten", Der Standard, June 3/4, 2015, page F8.

November 2014: Magazine article on Khalid Bekkaoui's stay in Innsbruck: "Kulturelle Begegnungen", Zukunft forschung 2/2014, page 48.

Audio files

September 12, 2022:"Versklavt im Mittelmeer – Als Christen und Moslems sich jagten," by Brigitte Kramer, radioWissen, Bayern 2, 9:05 am.

February 29, 2020:"Diagonal zum Thema: Sklaverei," presented by Peter Waldenberger, Ö1, 5:05 pm.

• "Das Inhaltsverzeichnis," 5:09 pm, 4:28 min.
• "Deutschsprachige Sklavenberichte aus Nordafrika," 5:26 pm, 5:01 min.

January 26–30, 2015: Radio series: Mario Klarer in "Betrifft Geschichte" on Ö1, 5:55 pm.

January 26: "Piraterie und Sklavenhandel seit der Antike"
January 27: "Formen nordafrikanischer Sklaverei"
January 28: "Sexuelle Standhaftigkeit versklavter Christinnen"
January 29: "Berichte geflohener oder freigekaufter ehemaliger Sklaven"
January 30: "Cervantes, Defoe und Rousseau"

February 25, 2014: Radio interview with Mario Klarer on Radio Freirad 105,9 (in "uni konkret", radio broadcast of the University of Innsbruck, February 2014, www.uibk.ac.at/ipoint/uni-konkret/).

Video files

November 13–14, 2014: we held a conference on "Perspectives on Northern Africa in the Early Modern Period: Piracy, Slavery, and Diplomacy" at Innsbruck University. The speakers were Khalid Bekkaoui, Carsten Junker, Magnus Ressel, Joachim Östlund, Elisabeth Watzka-Pauli, and Gillian Weiss.