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Mobile-enhanced virtual exchanges through asynchronous video interaction: Learners as ethnographers in the L2 classroom to promote intercultural communicative competence
No full textThis practice report focuses on the integration of virtual exchange (VE) with mobileassisted language learning (MALL), where learners act as ethnographers within the context of language education. This VE model harnesses mobile technology capabilities to exchange personal and immersive cultural insights through asynchronous video content using Flip.com. The model consists of three integrated sections: Preparation, Intercultural Exchange, and Reflection. This report covers a pilot implementation of the mobile-enhanced VE model to evaluate the outcomes on Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC). The project lasted eight weeks, covering various topics, such as greetings, food, and education. Participants were L2 learners of Spanish in the United States and L1 Spanish speakers in Spain. Outcomes were evaluated through a survey where students in the United States self-assessed their perceived ICC gains. This survey, grounded in Byram’s (2009) ICC model, measured changes in students’ attitudes, knowledge, skills of interpreting and relating, skills of interaction, and critical cultural awareness. Students reported substantial improvements in all areas of ICC, highlighting enhanced engagement and understanding of the target culture facilitated by the mobileenhanced VE model. This report provides insights for the incorporation of mobile technology for VE projects in L2 settings, emphasizing its role in expanding global interconnectedness and deepening intercultural learning among learners by offering a more dynamic, authentic, and immersive learning experience
A proposal in STEM for virtual exchange held by Computer Science and Applied and Computational Mathematics programs
No full textIn this practice report, we present a practical experience of a virtual exchange carried out by a Belgian and a Brazilian professor from two research intensive universities in Northwestern Europe and in Latin America, respectively. Particularly, this paper is focused on how we designed a common syllabus in a specific topic of STEM, aiming to explore math and computer science skills of the students, and how we implemented this virtual exchange step by step, despite the students being from different courses and different levels of degree. In addition, we discuss the pros and cons of the process from the instructors’ perspective as well as under students’ views, and provide some suggestions to be applied and tested for future virtual exchanges in this field. Overall, this practice report reinforces our deep reflection about the results and desire to share our STEM syllabus to encourage other colleagues to apply it (or modify it) for different courses
The Visual Life Story of a Self-made Economic Man: The Painting Series of Willem Albert Scholten (1819-1892) as an Autobiographical Practice
No full textBetween 1870 and 1880, Willem Albert Scholten (1819-1892) commissioned fifteen paintings by twelve different painters, portraying different formative episodes from his lifetime. During this decade, Scholten was on his way to becoming one of the wealthiest inhabitants of the city of Groningen, his hometown in the Netherlands. He acquired this wealth by exploiting factories throughout and outside the Netherlands, making his company one of the first Dutch multinationals. The events these paintings portray have been described in a small booklet and an autobiography written during Scholten\u27s lifetime, both commissioned by him. This combination of paintings and text is crucial in understanding how Scholten presented himself. This article will describe how Scholten built his origin story, which follows a plot similar to that of Benjamin Franklin: the self-made economic man. The article will examine how the paintings and written records reinforce one another, creating a visual narrative
A Woman Haunted: How Graphic Biofiction Revises Mary Shelley’s Early Feminist Life
No full textBiofiction, literature inspired by the life of real people and histories, has become a popular genre. Rarely, however, have graphic biographies been considered in connection to this rapidly emerging (academic) field. To work out these connections, I want to analyse Manuela Santoni and Alessandro di Virgilio\u27s 2021 Mary Shelley (a German translation of the original 2020 Italian text), a biofictional graphic novel about the life of Mary Shelley, while also considering other examples of the genre. I suggest that graphic novels that draw on real life people—in this case, celebrated author and one of the major influences on Gothic literature, Mary Shelley—make use of the graphic medium and create a new version of their subject. Shelley\u27s relationship with her mother, early feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, is a prominent topic of reflection for artists, as well as her relationship with her troubled husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and her most famous creation, Frankenstein\u27s creature. Biofictional graphic novels thus controvert the biographical genre and revision it instead as a way of reconnecting with the author in a visual way for a new audience regardless of their familiarity with Shelley\u27s biography
De ontdekking van Doggerland: de wetenschappelijke waarde van strandvondsten
No full textThe discovery of Doggerland: the scientific value of beach finds Coined in 1998 by archaeologist Bryony Coles, ‘Doggerland’ has become a widely recognised name for the prehistoric landscapes, now submerged beneath the North Sea. For more than 100 years, scholars have suspected remains of these landscapes and their inhabitants to have survived, but direct evidence such as bone and stone tools has long been relatively sparse. Today, much more is known about the preservation of prehistoric landforms, as well as the material remains of animals, humans and artefacts. As part of the NWO-funded project ‘Resurfacing Doggerland’, thousands of finds, collected on Dutch beaches and retrieved from fishing nets, are now being studied in detail. The results will provide new insights into the relationship between climate-induced sea-level rise and socio-cultural processes
De rol van niet-volwassenen in Oosterdalfsen gedurende de trechterbeker- en enkelgrafperiode
No full textThe role of non-adults at Ooster-dalfsen during the Funnelbeaker and Single Grave periods Within prehistoric archaeology in northwestern Europe there is an ongoing debate about the transition from the Funnelbeaker to the Single Grave culture. The accepted hypothesis, of a gradual transition, is now being called into question by studies that suggest new migrations into Europe. Can burials tell us more about this transition? To answer this question, Funnelbeaker culture burials and Single Grave culture burials from Oosterdalfsen (province of Overijssel, the Netherlands) were examined. The focus was on distinguishing between non-adults and adults based on grave orientation, grave shape and grave goods. The results show that non-adults of the Funnelbeaker culture were often buried with arrowheads. One non-adult Single Grave culture inhumation also contained arrowheads. This may indicate that the roles of non-adults overlapped between these two cultures, supporting a gradual transition from the Funnelbeaker to the Single Grave culture
Saltwater Insurgency: Drowning and Gender during the Middle Passage
No full textThis article resurfaces an enslaved female whom we encounter, drowning, in the archive of the Middelburgse Commercie Compagnie (MCC). To unfold a reading beyond the transcription of her commodified death, I investigate the five localities that conditioned her bodily inscription into history: the archive, the law, the ship, the ocean, and the womb. Traveling through these localities, I disclose, at once, the historical violence against black females through the transatlantic slave trade system and the excess black females proved to be to this very system. Excessive thus, black female lineage provides an alternative to white, patriarchic systems of relation
Is there an ‘Italian’ school of Spinoza studies? Some present and future perspectives
No full textThis paper sketches a bottom-up reconstruction of the panorama of Italian Spinoza studies over the past three decades. It tries to capture the self-representation of the Italian scholarly community starting from the analysis of collective volumes, and then exploring the results of a survey among the members of the newly established Italian Societas Spinozana, complemented by individual interviews with leading Spinoza scholars. What emerges is a past heritage centered on historical and philological research, but also deeply interested in political themes and in bringing Spinoza into dialogue with contemporary issues. Today, Spinoza studies in Italy seem to be in a transitional phase, in which a solid bridge must be built between older and younger generations of scholars, negotiating how to handle the heritage of the former and orienting the new perspectives of the latter
Discourses of Covid-19 and the Political: Introduction to the Special Issue
No full textThe contributions in this special issue explore the intersection of discourse, crises and the political during the Covid-19 pandemic. By focusing on ‘the political’, the contributors go beyond understandings of ‘politics’ as procedures and processes of decision-making. Instead, they explore the nuanced ways in which pandemic discourses shape struggles over the normalised socio-political order and its legitimate subjects. By adopting diverse theoretical perspectives on the political, ranging from governmentality to poststructuralist theory, and by employing traditions from different disciplines such as political theory, sociology, anthropology, or media-aesthetics, the articles scrutinise pandemic discourses in various regions, including in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Ghana, Estonia and the Polish-German border region. The contributions highlight how discourses of the Covid-19 pandemic construct, stabilise and re-configure political identities,subjectivities and normalities within pandemic societies. They show that pandemic discourses allow for a recognition of shared vulnerabilities, while simultaneously perpetuating inequalities and reinforcing established neoliberal subjectivities, such as the ‘responsible subject’. The articles compiled in the special issue offer critical insights into thecomplex dynamics of pandemic discourses and put a spotlight on how societies are (re-)imagined during times of crisis