1,721,218 research outputs found
Mitochondrial Genome Variation: a Female Perspective in Evolution
No full textMitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences are powerful genetic records of the history of populations and species, and the study of their evolution is profoundly changing our perception on how modern humans and animals evolved and colonized the entire planet. By studying concomitantly the sequence variation in individuals or populations, it is possible to acquire sufficient and reliable information concerning genetic ancestries and migrations, starting from their homelands, all the way to the four corners of the earth.
A remarkable case study in human population genetics is represented by the Native Americans. They belong to one of the few extant human groups whose ancestors entered a vast uninhabited area over a relatively short interval and then remained isolated from other human contacts for a considerable period of time. The overall picture about the first peopling of the Americas is gradually emerging much clearer and detailed also thanks to the contributions provided by phylogenetic surveys of entire mtDNAs.
The molecular and phylogenetic survey of complete mitogenomes is now also applied to reconstruct the major processes that lead to the domestication and spread of some important mammals (e.g. cattle, horses and goats). Moreover, since after domestication, the diffusion of livestock completely depended on human events and migrations, it is also conceivable that the genetic diversity of modern livestock might provide further details about the history of human movements
Making Verse in a Precarious Language: Poetry in Late 19th-Century Ukrainian Culture between Silence and Music, Present and Future
Full text linkIn questo articolo vengono analizzati testi poetici ucraini scritti tra la morte di Taras Ševčenko e l'avvento del modernismo incentrati sul tema della precarietà della letteratura ucraina come conseguenza della mancanza di una nazione ucraina. Sulla base di esempi tratti dall'opera di Pantelejmon Kuliš, Lesja Ukrajinka, Mychajlo Staryc'kyj, Borys Hrinčenko, Volodymyr Samijlenko, Volodymyr Šaškevyč e Ivan Franko si cercherà di mostrare come la poesia ucraina della seconda metà dell'Ottocento tenda a immaginare la comunità ucraina come appartenente al passato e/o al futuro, mentre la sua presenza e la sua agency nel presente sono rese impossibili dalla sottomissione all'impero, il che rende ogni comunicazione, inclusa quella letteraria, impossibile o limitata. Nella parte finale dell'articolo si riflette sul nesso tra la prassi del giudizio estetico e la rivalutazione della storia letteraria ucraina.In this article, I analyze instances of Ukrainian poetry written between Taras Shevchenko's death and the establishment of modernism that deal with the theme of the precarity of Ukrainian literature as a consequence of the lack of a Ukrainian nation in those times. On the basis of examples drawn from the works of Pantelejmon Kulish, Lesja Ukrajinka, Mychajlo Staryc'kyj, Borys Hrinchenko, Volodymyr Samijlenko, Volodymyr Shashkevych, and Ivan Franko, I aim to show how Ukrainian poets of the second half of the 19th century tended to imagine the Ukrainian community as belonging to the past and/or the future, while its presence and its agency in the present are made impossible by imperial subjugation, hence making communication, including literary, impossible or powerless. In the final part of my article, I also reflect on the complex nexus between aesthetic judgment and the re-evaluation of Ukrainian literary history
Between poetology and nation building: complex identities in Ukrainian underground poetry of the 1960s–1980s
Full text linkIn this essay, I analyse how identities are constructed in Ukrainian underground poetry of the late Soviet period. On the basis of selected poems by Mykhailo Hryhoriv and Vasyl’ Stus, I explore the com-plex dynamics between the explicit commitment to fostering national identity that is often regarded as a standard duty of Ukrainian writers and the pursuit of a transnational, purely literary identity as part of a wider embrace of the modernist imagination
Mitochondrial DNA: A Female Perspectivein Recent Human (and Livestock) Origins and Evolution
No full text
On Reading Ukrainian Literature in the 1920s and Now
Full text linkLiterature, as is widely known among those conversant with Ukrainian culture, has always played a significant role in Ukraine’s nation-building process. This was especially true in the nineteenth century, but it is no less true of Ukraine’s collective resistance effort against Russia’s full-scale aggression today. With Ukraine fighting for its freedom and dignity and the international community torn between solidarity and hesitation, Ukrainian writers today often serve as ambassadors for their country in cultural and political venues all around the globe. The interest in Ukrainian literature that international publishers and literary institutions have shown since 2022 is often focused on poetry and prose that have a direct link with the ongoing war. However, both the war-related creativity boom that we are witnessing and the belated discovery of Ukrainian literature by international readerships should not lead to the conclusion that only recent writing from Ukraine is of interest. Ukrainian literature in its historical development has both much to offer readers and many unexplored sides awaiting scholarly work. In this contribution, I will explore two articles that deal with issues pertaining to the circulation of Ukrainian literature among Ukrainian and international readers
Su alcuni ritorni nella poesia polacca del secondo Novecento: l’interiorizzazione dello spazio negato (e la sua parziale riscoperta) = On some returns in Polish poetry in the second half of the twentieth century: Interiorizing the forbidden space (and its partial rediscovery)
Full text linkIn this article, I offer an overview of the return theme in Polish poetry of the second half of the 20th century. Focusing on such leading names of modern and contemporary Polish poetry as Adam Zagajewski, Czesław Miłosz, Zbigniew Herbert, Wisława Szymborska, Tadeusz Różewicz, and Stanisław Barańczak, I aim to show how in their poetry the spatial side of return is generally less pronounced and consequential than the complex inner exploration that return may engender. In other instances, returns are more or less implicitly depicted as meaningless. By discussing poetic images of return over a rather long period, I also touch upon issues of cultural and literary development and change
Rethinking Tradition, Rejecting the Past: Ukrainian Poetry of the 1910s and 1920s in the Search for Europe
Full text linkIn my contribution, I analyze texts by Mykola Zerov, Mychajl’ Semenko, and Mykola Chvyl’ovyj, three leading Ukrainian writers of the 1910s and 1920s, that thematize Ukrainian literature of the first years of the twentieth century, criticizing its alleged backwardness and lack of artistic quality. With their rejection of recent tradition, Zerov, Semenko, and Chvyl’ovyj were pursuing an ambitious program of cultural renewal aimed at elevating Ukrainian poetry and prose to the same level as classical and contemporary European literature. A recurrent name in their poems and pieces of criticism is that of Mykola Voronyj, a key figure of early-twentieth-century Ukrainian culture, whose controversial reception sheds light on the extent to which Zerov and Semenko were eager to radically renew Ukrainian literature after its first modernization attempts, which they deemed unsatisfying
- …
