307 research outputs found
Studying monumental cemeteries to understand societies
No full textStarting from the work by Malone this contribution traces the development and social changes of monumental cemeteries in Italy during the nineteenth-century. By analysing how the culture of the dead has changed over time, it offers to the reader a “fresco” of the major changes in society. The author’s point of view provides insight into the relation between funerary architecture and the social order of Italian society. The reason why the author focuses on the Italian case depends on the fact that the Italian monumental cemetery represents an ideal case to show “how networks of social, cultural and political forces can influence architecture
Anna Oehler: Mission Literature
Get PDFThank you for awarding me the ORCA grant. I have used it to travel to Vienna, Austria with Professor Brewer to research the works of Anna Oehler. Anna Oehler was a mission author of children’s literature in the early 1900s. Her work is important because it provides insights on the racial positions of Europeans at this time
Recensione al Volume "Hope" di Tia De Nora
No full text“This book is for anyone who has ever hoped, who is hoping, who will hope. That probably includes anyone. (...) Global issues – climate crisis, violence, hostility, pandemics, homelessness, displacement, racism and racial hostility, economic hardship, modern slavery, loneliness, anxiety, mental illness – all of these have intensified. This intensity underlines a global need for hope and a corresponding need to confront hope - what hope is and what can, and cannot, be achieved by hoping. This confrontation includes distinguishing hope from wishful thinking and simple optimism. For me, a sociologist with an interest in how things take shape in action, that project also includes understanding hope as a complex form of situated practice. “ (p. 4).
With these words the sociologist Tia DeNora introduces her new book, which is very interesting and challenging. Her book was completed in November 2020 during the pandemic and in a period of fear, despair, death, and economic crisis all over the world. The author offers to the reader the refined elegance and interpretative efficacy of her sociological gaze. Suddenly through the sociological glasses provided by reading these pages, the reader can observe the attitude of hoping in a new way: as a complex form of situated practice, a basket of many small and invisible decisions that the social actor makes in everyday life. However, all these micro-decisions, all these micro-actions, instead of having micro-consequences, will literally make a difference and change both the present and the future
Richardson, Barbauld, and the construction of an early modern fan club
No full textMPhilMuch has been written about the life and long works of the eighteenth century epistolary novelist, Samuel Richardson, but the prospect of his position as the first celebrity novelist – responsible for courting his own fame as well as initiating his own fan club – has largely been ignored. The body of manuscripts housed at the National Art Library in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London provides the modern scholar with evidence of the skeletal beginnings of an early fan club. This thesis aims to show how these manuscripts were turned into a saleable commodity by the publisher and entrepreneur Richard Phillips, while under the guiding hand of another, slightly later, literary celebrity, Anna Laetitia Barbauld. In order to restore Richardson’s reputation amongst a new nineteenth century audience, Barbauld was required to construct her own idea of him as an eighteenth century celebrity author, and in doing so the insecurities of a self-professed, apparently diffident man, are revealed. Barbauld’s capacious, but heavily edited selection of letters is analyzed in this thesis, providing ample evidence that Richardson’s correspondents were more than just eager letter writers. By using Barbauld’s biography of Richardson this thesis aims to show how she manipulates the genre of life writing in her construction of him.
This thesis offers an alternative reading of how the Richardson manuscripts are viewed, redefining them as not simply a collection of letters, but as a collective entity, deliberately selected and archived as evidence of an early modern fan club, and its celebrity managing director
KR’PTA. Samtidspoesin och Derrida : Spår och ärrbildningar hos Johannes Heldén, Ingrid Storholmen och Anna Hallberg
No full textLisa Schmidt, KR’PTA. Samtidspoesin och Derrida. Spår och ärrbildningar hos Johannes Heldén, Ingrid Storholmen och Anna Hallberg. (CR’PT. Contemporary Poetry and Derrida: Traces and Scarring in the Poetry of Johannes Heldén, Ingrid Storholmen and Anna Hallberg.) Through the analyses of three contemporary Nordic poets whose work challenges the boundaries of literature and even the laws of grammar, I draw attention to the term linguistic materialism. I also sketch an historical line between the predecessors of the experimentation with the poetic language in the past, starting with Mallarmé, and the experiments of today. In conclusion, I discuss language poetry from a wider philosophical point of view, in relation to Derrida and Wittgenstein. Burner, the debut of Swedish poet Johannes Heldén, combines an abstract intellectual and theory-based form with graffiti as the main topic, which results in a questioning of the structures of language and text. The poems will here be connected to Derrida’s terms crypt, ashes, date and wound (in my analyses, wound is also transformed into scars and marks or tracks). The main feature of the Norwegian author Ingrid Storholmen’s Skamtalen Graceland is the visuality of language that appears through different fonts and formations as well as through marked words visualizing a scarred text. Anna Hallberg has been a leading figure for the genre of language poetry in Sweden. In connection to the analysis of her latest poetry collection, På era platser, some ideas of the early Wittgenstein are applied. It seems as if the language-focused poets of today want to contribute to the philosophical language debate from within the topic of the same debate, that is, from the inside of poetry itself
KR’PTA. Samtidspoesin och Derrida [Elektronisk resurs] : Spår och ärrbildningar hos Johannes Heldén, Ingrid Storholmen och Anna Hallberg
No full textLisa Schmidt, KR’PTA. Samtidspoesin och Derrida. Spår och ärrbildningar hos Johannes Heldén, Ingrid Storholmen och Anna Hallberg. (CR’PT. Contemporary Poetry and Derrida: Traces and Scarring in the Poetry of Johannes Heldén, Ingrid Storholmen and Anna Hallberg.) Through the analyses of three contemporary Nordic poets whose work challenges the boundaries of literature and even the laws of grammar, I draw attention to the term linguistic materialism. I also sketch an historical line between the predecessors of the experimentation with the poetic language in the past, starting with Mallarmé, and the experiments of today. In conclusion, I discuss language poetry from a wider philosophical point of view, in relation to Derrida and Wittgenstein. Burner, the debut of Swedish poet Johannes Heldén, combines an abstract intellectual and theory-based form with graffiti as the main topic, which results in a questioning of the structures of language and text. The poems will here be connected to Derrida’s terms crypt, ashes, date and wound (in my analyses, wound is also transformed into scars and marks or tracks). The main feature of the Norwegian author Ingrid Storholmen’s Skamtalen Graceland is the visuality of language that appears through different fonts and formations as well as through marked words visualizing a scarred text. Anna Hallberg has been a leading figure for the genre of language poetry in Sweden. In connection to the analysis of her latest poetry collection, På era platser, some ideas of the early Wittgenstein are applied. It seems as if the language-focused poets of today want to contribute to the philosophical language debate from within the topic of the same debate, that is, from the inside of poetry itself.</p
Shifting identities of the victims of terrorism and camorra
No full textThis chapter refers to a cultural definition of shame. By referring to trauma theories, it argues that – as in the case of trauma – there is always a gap between the emotion of shame and the event that provoked it. The event provokes a gap, a break in the relation between the individual and the community and its consequence is that the social actor will no longer consider him/herself the way they were before. The shame has to do with the fact that suddenly one feels alone, divided from the rest of the community to which s/he feels to belong. Exactly in this gap the victim can find the individual and social resources to transform the shame in something else.
This definition of shame is applied to the data collected in the pieces of research done by the author on Italian victims of terrorist attacks and especially in a research on a terrorist attack organized by “camorra” (Val di Sambro railway bombing - December 23, 1984). This case is very peculiar in relation to the emotion of shame, because the victims of terrorist attacks should be “immune to” any social process of “blaming”. The identity of such a victim is strongly marked by the fact that the terrorist attack is an event that might occur to everyone. “It could be me” is the main argument protecting those victims from any sense of shame. However, it will be shown how, to what extent and under what circumstances the emotion of shame can emerge over time also for the victims of terrorism. The chapter will explore some of the reasons why this walk of the victims from an initial sense of fame to the emotion of shame is likely to occur
Re-visioning silk through Amami Ōshima = 「奄美大島を通して見た絹の再考
No full textThis project is a collaboration between a historian of science (Lisa Onaga), a design historian (Laura Forlano), a textile artist (Galina Mihaleva), and a literary historian (Anne McKnight). It takes its inspiration from pattern books in fabric stores. These pattern books catalog options that sewers can use to customize their garments and are also inspired by Edo-era design books that kimono buyers would peruse when commissioning their own silk kimonos. The essays contextualize a wearable prototype, made of silk from a southern island, Amami-Ōshima situated in the East China Sea between Japan, Okinawa and China. Part I of the chapbook contains essays that give a historical context. Part II contains highly magnified microscopic images of the silk that show detailed patterns that draw on the natural world. By recasting our eyes upon Amami-Ōshima, we are forced to consider a different history of silk-making that encourages a reflection upon historical assumptions about silk in Japan, from fabric to sutures to protein. The title Re-Visioning Silk thus refers to both a renewed view of highly familiar silk and a refashioning of how we have recounted the story of silk, tied to imperial and liberal capital production. This collaborative project serves as a springboard for the identification, documenting, and narrating of silk in less familiar settings and spaces.Published versionThis work is funded by Ministry of Education, Singapore, AcRF Tier 1 Grant (2015-T1-001-026), 2015–2017). And the author would like to acknowledge the co-editor, Anna McKnight as well as the following contributors: Galina Mihaleva, Laura Longo, Nicole Ong Yii Mei and Ong Xin Hong
Influence of Nature at the Time of the Pandemic: An Experience-Based Survey at the Time of SARS-CoV-2 to Demonstrate How Even a Short Break in Nature Can Reduce Stress for Healthcare Staff
Get PDFAim: The current COVID-19 pandemic has been causing significant upheavals in the daily lives of citizens and consequently also their mood (stress, distraction, anxiety, etc.), especially during the lockdown phase. The aim of the investigation is to evaluate the benefits of 20–30 minutes in contact with nature. Background: The Scientific Community, also through the evidence-based design approach, has already demonstrated the importance of greenery and nature on the psychophysical well-being of people and, in a moment of emergency, contact with the nature can be therapeutic and quite influential on the mental health of staff subject to stress. Method: During the lockdown, an Italian multidisciplinary working group promoted an experience-based survey, based on the Profile of Mood States methodology, for measuring the psychophysical well-being of hospital staff. Results: The author collected 77 questionnaires. The benefits that users have obtained from the experience in nature have been investigated by comparing the type of stresses they were subjected to and highlighting various peculiarities in the data analysis associated with the type of green in which they carried out the survey, the healthcare areas in which they worked during the pandemic emergency, and the moment in which the survey was conducted. Conclusions: The study has highlighted that a short break in green spaces strongly influenced the mental and psychophysical well-being of hospital staff, emphasizing the importance of nearby green spaces in architectures for health. Even a brief break in nature can regenerate users, especially in times of a stressful health emergency
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