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Tourism souvenir tattoos, between perception and significance. Case study: Bucharest’s population
No full textTattoos have always represented forms of cultural manifestation specific to signature groups (either ethnic or others). As a visual representation, they often transmit information about cultural characteristics through symbols. In different periods, over time, society has frequently perceived tattoos as controversial due to their association with people who showed antisocial behaviour and/or were usually part of the lower/poor social classes. Today, modern societies see tattooing as an art form, and the creativity and ingenuity shown by tattoo artists produce genuine cultural and aesthetic currents, each with its characteristics and manifestations. Romanian society has recently seen a significant emergence of artistic representations of tattoos due to a change in the perception of new generations regarding seeing and having tattoos. Tourism souvenir tattoos represent a relatively recent practice, and they have grown in scope and implementation in recent decades due to a more liberal perception of tattoos in general as well as an increase in tourists’ mobility. In this context, this study explores the role of tattoos as tourism souvenirs, highlighting their significance and emotional impact on tourists. This research aims to contribute to understanding the complexity of the relationship between personal identity and travel experiences through tattoos using an interdisciplinary approach. The study’s objectives include identifying why tourists choose tattoos as souvenirs and analysing their perception and emotional response to tattoos’ symbolism. The study’s results prove that there is a strong correlation between getting souvenir tattoos and an emotional response from tourists who intend to maintain an emotional connection with the place they visited, have a reminder of the state of mind they were in during the visit and especially emphasise that the destination has had a positive impact on them. The tattoo acquired after a tourism experience represented a form of storytelling that aims to evoke pleasant experiences, strong memories, or unforgettable places. The chosen symbolism is often closely related to the traveller’s personality, beliefs, or passions, and its visual representation is very personal
Considering disaster risk when allocating locations in the digital era. Case study: Semarang City, Indonesia
No full textIn the digital era, people can perform most activities anywhere and anytime online. This change brings new insight into activity space location-allocation, including disaster risk issues. This study aims to identify the extent to which online activity actors consider these disaster characteristics in determining the location of their activities in the digital era. This study identified a series of findings using the CRITIC method for factor weighting, Chi-square and Contingency Coefficient C analysis, and geo-visualisation for spatial mapping of virtual activity actors’ preferences and characteristics in Semarang City. Disaster issues are no longer one of the primary considerations in determining activity space because online activity can be carried out everywhere. On the other hand, there is no correlation between the location of online activity and disaster risk level, which indicates that online activities in high disaster-risk areas could move to safer places
Exploring inequalities of urban housing and basic services through the lens of COVID-19 and smart cities development: insights from Bhopal, India
No full textAccess to affordable housing and basic urban services is required to maintain social equality and is linked to the well-being and happiness of the citizens. Global pandemics, like Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), pose challenges to decision-makers in revisiting urban development policies to strengthen citizens’ amenities and services. Bhopal, one of India’s fast-growing million-plus cities (1.79 million at the 2011 census) and one of the first 20 cities under the Government’s ambitious Smart Cities Mission, was a hotspot of COVID-19 pandemic cases in India. This paper attempts to determine the housing and basic services conditions at both cities and the local (municipal ward) level, taking Bhopal as a case study. The paper also examines the geographical inequalities in housing and basic services and explores their relation to the COVID-19 pandemic through deprivation indices and Geographic Information System (GIS) based analysis. The findings suggest that COVID-19 pandemic cases are higher in those municipal wards where housing and basic services deprivation indexes are low. People living in poor housing and lacking basic services find maintaining proper personal hygiene and sufficient physical distancing difficult, increasing COVID-19 cases. The results can help the decision makers to understand the geographical inequalities in housing and basic services within the city, its relationship with COVID-19 pandemic cases, and ongoing urban mission initiatives that can help to tackle the impact of similar health emergencies in the future
Geographic maldistribution of the physician workforce in Romania: urban-rural divide and need for better planning and retention strategies
No full textHealth workforce shortage and maldistribution represent significant challenges for health systems functioning in many countries. Romania registers the lowest physicians per patient ratio in the European Union (EU). Despite the increasing number of medical graduates, shortages have become more critical over the past two decades with both out-migration of health professionals and intra-country disparities between large cities and rural areas or between primary and speciality care. Considering these variances in health workforce supply, it is crucial to identify areas with particularly low human resources. This paper focuses on a critical determinant of geographic access to healthcare, namely the availability of health professionals. We identified and analysed the patterns of physicians’ geographic distribution at the lowest spatial level, pointing out their imbalances and factors interrelated with territorial disparities. Gini coefficient calculation and Moran’s I index provided strong evidence for increasing divergences in this distribution. Furthermore, the analysis of the physician/population ratio spatial patterns revealed two areas of opposite clusters on the west-east axis: one of positive spatial aggregation in the west and one negative in the east. Geographical imbalances in the health workforce distribution have adverse effects, particularly on the public healthcare sector. To address the issue of territorial imbalances, we considered that the maldistribution of physicians is contextually created and might cause several dysfunctions in the healthcare system: normative (the dilemma of dual practising in the public and private sector simultaneously), educational(specialized training, enrolment, and logistics), and social (emigration of physicians and retention policies). Therefore, for the effective functioning of its healthcare system, Romania still needs to implement policies to retain medical graduates and reduce physician outflows. Also, specific strategies regarding the size, structure and distribution of the physician workforce are required to alleviate issues related to access to care. 
CRISTINA GODUN, Morfologia limbii polone. Flexiunea verbală și părțile de vorbire neflexibile: București: Editura Universității din București, 2025, 276 p., ISBN: 978-606-16-1565-0
No full textProfesoara Cristina Godun de la Facultatea de Limbi și Literaturi Străine a Universității din București propune o monografie descriptivă și funcțională a verbului și a părților de vorbire neflexibile ale limbii polone, care fructifică experiența domniei sale de peste 25 de ani la catedră
PROBLEMATICA GENIULUI ȘI A IDENTITĂȚII NAȚIONALE ÎN NUVELA STÂNGACIUL DE N.S. LESKOV: GENIUS AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN N.S. LESKOV’S SHORT STORY THE TALE OF CROSS-EYED LEFTY FROM TULA AND THE STEEL FLEA
No full textThis paper examines the representation of national identity in N.S. Leskov’s short story The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea, focusing on the symbolic role of the protagonist as an embodiment of the neglected Russian genius. Set against the ideological debates of the 19th century between Slavophiles and Westernizers, the narrative highlights Russia’s ambivalence toward modernization and its ongoing struggle to define cultural specificity. By contrasting Russia with England, the story reveals the cultural and institutional barriers that hinder the recognition of native talent. The analysis combines literary interpretation with historical context, offering an interdisciplinary perspective that shows how Leskov’s narrative reflects broader debates between Slavophiles and Westernizers and contributes to the construction of Russian cultural self-understanding in the 19th century
COMPLEX SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES IN THE HERITAGE LANGUAGE VS. THE MAJORITY LANGUAGE: A COMPREHENSION STUDY WITH ROMANIAN-GERMAN BILINGUALS
No full textThis study investigated the comprehension of subject and object which-questions in both the heritage language (Romanian) and the societal language (German) of eighteen bilingual children with ages between five and eleven. Using an offline picture-matching task, the study assessed whether the bilingual children use morphological cues, like differential object marking, case marking, and number agreement to overcome the difficulties associated with the comprehension of object which-questions even in monolingual acquisition (Bentea 2017, Friedmann et al. 2009, Roesch & Chondrogianni 2016). The study shows that the Romanian-German bilingual children exhibit a subject-object asymmetry in both their heritage and societal language. However, children appear to use morphological cues differently. In Romanian, the differential object marker did not eliminate comprehension difficulties and a number mismatch did not significantly impact offline interpretation. In contrast, in German, case marking, but not number, played a significant facilitative role, especially when marked on both noun phrases
Editor\u27s Introduction
No full textThis volume celebrates forty years of academic service in the life-long career of Griselda Pollock. The idea of the volume sprang up in an apparently remote location in relation to what has been considered the epicentre of feminist theory, namely Western Europe. In recent years the Centre of Excellence in Image Studies in Bucharest became closely linked to Griselda Pollock\u27s mentorship in a way that seems symptomatic of her long-term effort to geographically join apparently distanced spaces, to rejuvenate connections that powerful historical and political narratives have made seemingly impossible. How is it that Griselda Pollock became a referential figure for the Romanian academic environment
Henrik Ibsen\u27s "Mad" Women
No full text"Madness" is an exclusionary term used as a frequent apparatus to crush, dominate, silence and deprive a person of his/her own narrative. As Foucault explains, madness opens our ears to all those "forgotten words on whose omission the Western world is founded." The term "mad woman" is thus a double hegemonization of a person\u27s position; in the context of Ibsen\u27s times, crippling acharacter with "womanhood" and insanity meant one could disregard her claim to an independent opinion because she was a woman, as well as deny her ability to make sense because she was also apparently "mad." The panoptic gaze of patriarchy often labels a woman as "mad" when she threatens the structure by calling out on it and declaring it as brittle as "a doll\u27s house." The two processes of marginalization have always been connected and overlapping; people (both men and women) were often shut out becausethey were mad and women were always shut up because they were women. This internal double exile, this double alienation of the "mad" women in Ibsen\u27s plays – women who thought so ahead of their times that they were contemporary Cassandras blubbering wild, prophetic reveries – will be my area of study for the paper. The article provides a detailed study of Ibsen\u27s plays A Doll\u27s House,Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, Rosmersholm, The Wild Duck and The Lady from the Sea. It will mainly deal with Ibsen\u27s prescient understanding of the interplay between the proliferating gender crises in modern Europe and the paradox of madness
The Lady from the Sea: The Ultimate Challenge of Eleonora Duse
No full textMay 5th, 1921 was a memorable day in the history of the theater, with the return on the scene of the great Italian actress Eleonora Duse. In Turin, at the Balbo Theater, she played the role of Ellida (the main protagonist in Ibsen\u27s Lady from the Sea), the same character she portrayed in her 1909 farewell performance. As pointed out by the press, Duse\u27s choice to play young Ellida with her white hair showing and without makeup was a revolutionary decision: the actress had the courage to show her real age, she wasextremely sincere in front of her audience, and the result was astonishing. According to the critics, nobody felt there was anything "dissonant" in the acting: the character and the actress were in complete harmony. This performance was the first revelation of Duse\u27s "spiritual acting," a style that marked the last years of her career. This way of acting was aimed at expressing the very soul of the character, beyond the real age and the physical traits of the actress. With her final challenge, Duse taught women as well asactresses an important lesson: she showed them that the age of an artist is not binding for the choice of a character. This lesson was a revolutionary one in the 1920s, but it is just as important for today\u27s theater and film industry. This article analyzes Duse\u27s success with The Lady from the Sea in Italy and during her American tour, building upon the memories of important artists who admired her performance and saw it as a valuable spiritual gift for their own careers: Luchino Visconti, Eva Le Gallienne, Lee Strasberg