This chapter explores the history of Recife’s abolitionist newspaper O Homem and the bold racial politics of its founder, offering a fresh perspective on how the ferment of the abolition debates set in motion important shifts in racial subjectivities. Yet O Homem’s story calls attention to the important nineteenth-century history of racial silencing, which was an ideology and cultural process that shaped power relations. The paper’s founder, Felipe Neri Collaço, illuminated the racialized work that this ideology did in suppressing debates on hierarchy, politics, and, by extension, slavery. O Homem’s history also helps us better understand how the “breaking of this silence” sparked noticeable shifts in racial subjectivities, thus rewriting the racial narrative.

For their politics lessons Susanne Staschen-Dielmann and Saskia Helm create a digital learnscape based on the well-known simulation Model United Nations (MUN) – usually based on the organisation of an international conference. The idea of a digital MUN emerged during the first lockdown in Great Britain and was refined using pluriliteracies principles during the second one. Within the authentic setting of a United Nations conference, learners are guided through more and more sophisticated text-production tasks. These include writing a policy cycle analysis, a draft resolution and an opening speech. Learners take part in a highly formalised debate, which requires the use of an extremely elaborate register. The digital learning space is used to ensure formal and informal communication and information exchange within groups of varying sizes as well as providing meaningful feedback.

This chapter explores the history of Recife’s abolitionist newspaper O Homem and the bold racial politics of its founder, offering a fresh perspective on how the ferment of the abolition debates set in motion important shifts in racial subjectivities. Yet O Homem’s story calls attention to the important nineteenth-century history of racial silencing, which was an ideology and cultural process that shaped power relations. The paper’s founder, Felipe Neri Collaço, illuminated the racialized work that this ideology did in suppressing debates on hierarchy, politics, and, by extension, slavery. O Homem’s history also helps us better understand how the “breaking of this silence” sparked noticeable shifts in racial subjectivities, thus rewriting the racial narrative.

This chapter considers the everyday life of urban groups from whom Chaucer drew some of his Canterbury pilgrims: the Merchant, the craftsmen and the Shipman. These offer examples of rich, modest and poorer folk. The chapter first examines the likely variations in their material worlds: in housing, furnishings, meals, food and drink, and clothing. It also looks at the conditions for travel, urban health and cleanliness, and at childhood, education, and marriage.The second part of the chapter looks at the possible structures of the day for the three occupations. Probably all had servants to ease their lives. Merchants were likely to work at least partly outside the home; craftsmen generally work from home; but shipmen were likely to be absent for long periods. All would have opportunities to take part in public life; the merchants in municipal administration, the craftsmen in their gilds, and all within the parish organisation.

What is ‘heresy’? One answer would be, ‘that which orthodoxy condemns as such’; though we may also wish to consider when conscious dissent invites such a condemnation. The main ‘heresy’ in late medieval England was that usually termed Lollardy, understood to be inspired by the radical theological thought of John Wyclif (1328-1384), which among other things emphasised the overwhelmingly importance of Scripture, and of lay access to Scripture, through vernacular translation. Orthodox repression of heresy began in the late fourteenth century and developed in various ways in the fifteenth. There are small traces of these much wider battles in Chaucer’s oeuvre, but it would be very hard to say quite how he saw them. We might instead see the fluidity of attitude toward aspects of religion in Chaucer as a sign of his times. ‘Dissent’ can encompass more than that which is solidly decried as heresy, and ‘orthodoxy’ can turn out to be more than one mode of religious thought and expression.