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The 1970s in Italy proved to be the time of both intense cultural renewal and growing political tension, followed by street fights and violent terrorism. The breaking of traditional social and cultural models and high achievements went hand in hand in this stormy environment, facilitated by both the desire of the individual to break free and collective creativity. The latter was sustained by left-wing intellectuals and artists. Also felt was the necessity to secure once again the leading role of theatre in culture and society. In 1976, left-wing editor Feltrinelli published the translation of Asja Lācis's memoirs into Italian, entitled "Professione - rivoluzionaria" (Profession - Revolutionist), with an introductory essay on agitprop theatre in the Weimar Republic by the author of the present paper. Those turbulent years were the fertile soil that ensured the positive perception of the book and its strong impact on theatre and education, as well as the political and cultural domains. The trespassing of officially established theatre boundaries, which developed the ideas of collectivism and overtness of the individual's life, was inspired by Asja's innovative experience - it encouraged numerous theatre artists to rediscover the ethical sense in their routine work.

AbstractFederalism allows state politicians opportunities to undermine or support for federal policies. As a result, voters often have varied impressions of the same federal programmes. To test how this dynamic affects voting behaviour, I gather data on the severity of the opioid epidemic from 2006–2016. I exploit discontinuities between states that expanded Medicaid and those that did not to gain causal leverage over whether expansion affected the severity of the epidemic and whether these policy effects affected policy feedback. I show that the decision to expand Medicaid reduced the severity of the opioid epidemic. I also show that expanding Medicaid and subsequent reductions in the severity of the opioid epidemic increased support for the Democratic Party. The results imply that the Republican Party performed better in places where voters did not have access to Medicaid expansion and where the epidemic worsened, demonstrating an unintended consequence of federalism on policy feedback.

It is now twenty years since the publication of Jamie O'Neill's At Swim, Two Boys (2001). O'Neill's novel was not the first Irish novel to depict same-sex passion, and not even the first Irish gay novel of the post-decriminalisation period. However, it did attain a wider and higher level of recognition among mainstream Irish, and international, readers. This may have been at least partly due to O'Neill's decision to write a historical romance – a genre which still retains its enduring appeal for readers. By adapting this genre, O'Neill uses fiction to unearth, and imaginatively recreate, an archaeology of same-sex passions between men in revolutionary Ireland. As such, his novel speaks powerfully to a yearning to make the silences of history speak and is motivated by the belief that, as Scott Bravmann puts it in a different context, 'lesbian and gay historical self-representation – queer fictions of the past – help construct, maintain and contest identities – queer fictions of the present.' Revisiting O'Neill's novel now – after two decades of remarkable social change for Ireland's LGBT communities, and after almost a decade of national commemoration of the revolutionary period – is a timely opportunity to reflect on the relationship between history, fiction and how we imagine sexual liberation.

Keywords: Gay Men in Irish Culture; Historical Fiction; Jamie O'Neill; Denis Kehoe; ANU Theatre Company