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This volume, Rhizomes, is a challenging path into a very multidisciplinary set of papers. Papers range across cultural studies and film, to applied linguistics to sociolinguistics; and as gathered in this one volume - the result of postgraduate student research of a very high order - they'force'readers to think critically of disciplines, their assumed boundaries and most importantly, the usefulness of assuming the enduring value of such boundaries. This is not to say that ‘anything goes', but the diversity of areas under scrutiny means that sharper re-thinking of one's own comfort zones is necessarily one key outcome when confronted with a volume like this. This is one advantage of the selected papers – besides the obvious one of having at your finger tips a simple way of delving into a challenging diversity.Brian Ridge, Campion College, SydneyThis is a wonderful collection of papers, which demonstrates the power and vitality of contemporary literary and cultural research. The scope of the papers, the diversity of the subject matter, and the willingness of their authors to work across disciplinary boundaries work together to create an exemplary collection of research for the twenty-first century – multidisciplinary, multigeneric, and multimodal, like 21st century texts and media.Greg Hainge's opening paper sets the stage for the diverse and engaging papers that follow. With his own examples of rhizomatics drawn from music, Greg immediately has the reader acknowledging the multidisciplinary – and multimodality – of contemporary texts – and so the need for research that can address the richness and complexity of these texts.In Part 1 we have two papers that address the issue of the limitations of conventional research methodology in their own fields (language acquisition, film studies) – and propose alternative and more productive methodologies. The exciting thing about this section is that these are fields normally considered very different and without much to say to one another – and yet the combination works to create a dialogue that extends across these and many other fields of research. Most importantly, both challenge the dichotomising of research and analytical methods that has worked to impoverish their fields and the research on which it is based. Part 2 presents papers on a range of marginalised social positionings and experiences – and in the process demonstrates both the power of research to uncover what has been ignored or elided in contemporary histories (how many westerners know of the long history of Chinese women in film? Or of an Aboriginal Taiwanese literature?) as well as the power of new perspectives, new ways of thinking the research subject, to open up areas of study such as dating manuals and country music, both conventionally dismissed as inherently trivial and/or sexist.In Part 3 the papers all play brilliantly with the notion of connectivity, demonstrating for readers the inextricability of texts and meaning systems (verbal, visual and other) with the cultural contexts in which they operate – and so the diverse ways they may be deployed. These papers banish forever any reliance on a formalist reading or methodology for the analysis of text and meaning! And, again, the range of subject-matter is breath-taking and argues the need for cross-disciplinary, transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research practice.Part 4 takes the reader into the realm of transformations, challenging the ways in which textual and systemic changes articulate profound cultural changes in the societies that produce them. So we learn about grammatical interventions in the Chinese language as feminine and neuter pronouns are added to the gender-free Chinese language – and consider the major cultural change that both caused this change and is subsequently produced by it. We consider the ways in which cinema has evolved as an art-form, under the influence of its material and verbal technologies.

Can cultural exchange be understood as a mutual act of translation? Or are elements of a country's cultural identity inevitably lost in the act of exchange? Brazil and Great Britain, although unlikely collaborators, have shared an artistic dialogue that can be traced back some 500 years. This publication, arising from the namesake research project funded by the United Kingdom's Arts and Humanities Research Council, seeks to understand and raise awareness of the present practices of cultural exchange between Brazil and Great Britain in relation to their historical legacy. Presenting five case studies and eight position papers, this research-based project investigates how artists interpret, transmit and circulate ideas, ideologies and forms of knowledge with specific reference to the production of new ‘translations'produced from and, where possible, between peripheral territories. Written in accessible language, the case studies describe the experience of artists, managers and cultural leaders dealing with important challenges in the creative sector regarding the translation of creative and learning arts methodologies. Projects investigated are at the forefront of social arts collaborative practice, representing internationally influential initiatives that have had a demonstrable impact not only in urban centres and peripheries but also in isolated areas of central Brazil and the north of England. The position papers commissioned by the research from Brazilian and British academics and cultural leaders provide a remarkable variety of social, political, anthropological, historic and artistic perspectives of cultural exchange projects offering valuable experiences for those working in research, policy and for creative practitioners.

This book is composed of a selection of papers presented at a conference in Cambridge in December 2005. Cultural history is a relatively new sub-discipline. Over the past few decades, it has become increasingly apparent that a new generation of historians has emerged. These scholars have become concerned with research, sources and questions traditionally beyond the scope of the discipline of history. Indeed, recent monographs in history have demonstrated a growing awareness of the cultural imagination in analyses of patterns of change and continuity in the past. Such a movement has also encouraged the development of new networks between different disciplines in the Arts and Social Sciences.The authors of these chapters come from a wide range of academic backgrounds. While all are concerned with crucial issues of the past, they represent a substantial variety of disciplines. In addition to the historians are those trained and working in literary studies, art history, design, music and science. As early-career scholars, the research they present is cutting edge: these contributions represent the very latest trends in cultural studies and demonstrate the attempts of new researchers to answer the most current and challenging questions that are being proposed in this field.

Hokkaido Dairy Farm offers a historical and ethnographic examination of the rapid industrialization of the dairy industry in Tokachi, Hokkaido. It begins with a history of dairy farming and consumption in Hokkaido from a macro perspective, mapping the transition from survival to subsistence and then from mixed family farms to monoculture and'mega'industrial operations. It then narrows the focus to examine concrete changes in a Tokachi-area dairying community that has undergone rapid sociocultural upheaval over the last three decades, with shifts in human relationships alongside changes in human and cow connections through new technologies. In the final chapters, the scope is further narrowed to a detailed history and ethnography of a single industrializing dairy farm and the morphing cast of individuals attached to it, centering on their idiosyncratic searches for economic, social, and even ontological security in what is popularly considered a peripheral region and industry. The culmination of over fifteen years of ethnographic, policy, and historical research, Hokkaido Dairy Farm argues that the dairy industry in Japan has always been entwined with notions of Otherness and security seeking, notably in terms of frontiers.

The Postcard's Radical Openness offers a groundbreaking exploration of what this multifaceted, double-sided open card entails and how it has affected our being in the world. With a holistic approach, it focuses on studying the postcard's specific way of being and performing, a particular ontology that opens up what is constitutively implicated in such an apparently trivial artifact. The book, organized into four parts, meticulously unveils the postcard's political, technological, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions, ending with a coda correlating the postcard's radical openness to G. Klimt's painting, Nuda Veritas (1899) in reference to the scope of truth. By examining the postcard's complex worldwide history, its socio-cultural significance, and its global effect, the book reveals hidden stories shedding light on its impact on photography, printing, marketing, trade, and business practices and exposes the aesthetic, communicative, and ethical qualities that lie behind the enormous success of postcards at the turn of the 20th century. This comprehensive study is positioned as a thought-provoking invitation to scholars and students interested in material culture, media studies, and human interactions, as well as to history enthusiasts, art lovers, and postcard collectors. Offering a distinctive contribution, the book not only fills a void in the literature but also encourages readers to question and reflect on the transformative power inherent in the postcard's'radical openness,'presenting a novel and unparalleled analysis of this seemingly trivial yet culturally significant object.

The words fear, risk and safety have come to define our contemporary age and have been construed as a dynamic background in the human sciences against which most risk narratives, imaginative or otherwise, can be read. This volume brings together original articles to investigate “cultures of fear” in post-millennial works and covers a wide variety of topics ranging from post-millennial political fictions, post-humanist and postcolonial rewritings to trauma narratives, risk narratives, literary disaster discourses and apocalyptic scenarios. Featuring theoretical and analytical approaches with insights borrowed from multiple disciplines, this book will be of interest for scholars and researchers working in the fields of literary and cultural studies, as well as the general reader.

The book is a study of the emergence of market economy with modern economic institutions in the early civilizations of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt from the third and early second millennium B.C.E. The study covers the Sumerian, Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian periods. The economic analysis is based on Institutional Economics theory, and the data on the Old Assyrian period is based on the work of many scholars that transliterated, translated and studied many of the 23,000 documents of the Old Assyrian traders found in old Kanesh in Central Turkey.The book includes chapters on the institutions of: property rights; the markets and means of exchange; the organization and finance of trade; and enforcement institutions from the judicial, social and political systems. In addition, it gives a detailed analysis of: the early means of exchange (money) like the use of volume measure of barely and weight measure of copper and silver in Sumer; various instruments establishing property rights such as Kuduru border stones, seals and inserted cones in walls; detailed analysis of the communication system and its components; and the description of the modern financial instruments used to include, for example, limited partnerships.

This volume brings together selected papers covering topics related to the contemporary cultural heritage research framework within the field of Digital Humanities (DH). Intended for scholars, students and practitioners, the book provides the reader with insights into the description and access, and digitization of cultural heritage. It also explores Croatian Glagolitic and Latin written heritage as a source for historiographic and linguistic research.It is organized into seven topics, each questioning one of the research areas within the DH framework, namely DH as a contemporary cultural heritage research framework; the description of, and access to, cultural heritage; the digitization of cultural heritage; written heritage as a source for historiographic and linguistic research; literary studies; research and communication of cultural heritage; and education in the field of DH.

This book is a theological reflection of Sheen's contribution to humanity and society. It analyzes the modern person from the Catholic doctrinal perspective, explores Fulton Sheen's perception of the contemporary individual, and demonstrates that global economic, religious, and political crises cannot be resolved by focusing only on the mundane. It further underscores some contemporary anthropological challenges and proposes a philosophy and theology of life that can enable contemporary humans to know themselves better and make life worth living. The authors argue that advancements in science and technology have failed to prolong happiness; people are still frustrated, disillusioned, cynical, bored, and suicidal.This book enters the landscape of Sheen's controversial pause before he was sanctified and provides a lengthy, liturgical extrapolation of Sheen's Christian anthropology, wrestling with other thinkers and general concerns surrounding human angst in modern society.

Il volume intende rappresentare le principali linee di ricerca sviluppate in ambito accademico italiano da studiosi nazionali e internazionali sulle aree caucasica e centroasiatica. In questa prospettiva, il volume presenta una serie di saggi che traggono spunto da interventi effettuati nell'ambito dei principali appuntamenti annuali incentrati sull'area: l'edizione del 2021 del Convegno annuale dell'Associazione per lo Studio in Italia dell'Asia centrale e del Caucaso (ASIAC) e la XV Giornata di Studi Armeni e Caucasici. Per sua natura, il volume ospita dunque contributi di differente matrice disciplinare, che spaziano da studi di carattere storico e filologico fino a studi di taglio linguistico, letterario e politologico.

This volume is the result of the debates held at Ca'Foscari University during the Iberismo(s) study day, aimed at discussing the ethical, theoretical and methodological limits of Iberian Studies and demonstrating their applications. Far from a unidirectional reading, the works gathered here explore the multiple aspects of Iberism, or rather ­Iberisms: different aspects such as the literary, cultural, economic and political ones are taken into account and interpreted on the basis of their plurality – since the diversity of actors, discourses, and contexts makes it impossible to outline a closed narrative. According to Claudio Guillén, “national literature is […] an institution that is not only insufficient, but also spurious and fraudulent”, hence the commitment to redefine this field of study. Moreover, its analytical perspective is associated with the ‘crisis of Hispanism'as a ‘uninational'and monolingual paradigm. Iberian Studies as such do not take root in a simple broadening of the object of research in order to give space – and thus a new location – to the more peripheral realities; it is rather a theoretical and methodological reformulation in constant development, as all the essays in this volume attest.

Musical vernaculars are a rare and challenging object of study. Their sound can include everything—from local folk and popular songs to random foreign hits and fragments of classic repertoire. It is an everchanging element—eclectic, whimsical, and resistant to regularity.Based on the author's multicultural experience, proficiency in Russian and Jewish music history, and interest in anthropology, this book explores the essential features of vernaculars. They can have varying degrees of changeability; some are quite stable, and exist in closed rural or immigrant communities (phylo-vernacular), while others are dynamic, like those of an urbanized population (onto-vernacular). These types of vernacular can turn into one another when communities migrate—that is, agricultural people move to cities, and the townspeople settle on the land. Understanding the changes in the vernacular repertoires as something natural, this book defends the value of urbanized folk music, disputing the traditional view of art-music composers of rural folk songs as only “authentic” and suitable for expressing nationalistic sentiments. The book also examines unexpected interconnections between Russian and Jewish music, both in their vernacular manifestations and the creative work of Sergei Slonimsky and Dmitry Shostakovich.

This comprehensive study of digital visualization brings together insights from the fields of anthropology and music analysis and explores their import for critical pedagogy and digital education. Anchored on an array of ethnographically informed examples of visualization, it discusses the cultural, educational and cognitive repercussions of our engagement with visually-centered research and teaching. The book offers a hands-on approach to experimental pedagogies attuned to the needs of researchers, educators and artists in the digital humanities who seek to open passageways between theory and praxis.

This volume brings together a range of views and arguments that healthily contribute to global conversations on media, culture and conflict in Africa. It explores how cultural practices, media practices, social movements, and the possibilities of emerging technologies could be ventilated and directed towards remediating the perilous state of affairs in political, social, and economic spaces in contemporary Africa. As the intersection of culture and conflict is relatively underexplored or under-researched in African media studies, this book makes an important contribution to the field.

الأقباط يمثلون جماعة أساسية في المجتمع المصري، ورغم خصوصيتهم الدينية فإنهم يشتركون في كثير من سمات هذا المجتمع ويتفاعلون مع تحولاته الاجتماعية، والاقتصادية، والسياسية بصورة واضحة. ولهذا يصعب اختزال الأقباط في مفهوم الأقلية الذي يعكس تكوينًا ثقافيًا أو إثنيًا أو عرقيًا مختلفًا عن سكان الأغلبية. ويكشف هذا الكتاب عن وجود دلائل على أن هموم الأقباط المصريين وسقف تطلعاتهم في التعليم والعمل والحياة العامة تتشابه مع هموم وتطلعات سائر المسلمين من المصريين، خاصة في ظل تراجع مستوي التعليم عمومًا، واتساع الفجوة الواسعة بين العرض والطلب في سوق العمل والتي تؤثر على الجميع. كما أن مستقبل الأقباط يسير في طريق المزيد من الاندماج الاجتماعي في المجتمع، وهذا ما يضفي على الكتاب أهمية كبرى في كونه يصحح كثيرًا من التصورات الرائجة عن الشأن الاجتماعي القبطي في المجتمع المصري، الملتبس دائمًا بغيوم التبسيط المعرفي والتعصب والجهل.

This collection of papers explores the sacred and magical aspects of ethno-medicine. The subject area is marked out by the points of connection between religious anthropology, ethno-medicine and medical anthropology, focusing on topics such as magical and religious concepts of health and disease, causes of disease, religious and magical averting and healing rites, healing gods, saints and, last but not least, the role that these play in the society, religion, mentality and everyday life of a community, as well as their various representations in folklore, literature or art. This volume includes, without restrictions of a methodological, temporal or geographical nature, works from the fields of folklore studies, anthropology, cultural history, comparative historical and textual philology, as well as research findings using the latest methods of analysis in textual folklore or based on archival research or fieldwork in or outside of Europe. This book will appeal to researchers and students of religion, folklore, and medical anthropology, as well as general readers interested in the humanities and cultural history.

Il libro raccoglie i contributi presentati nel corso del primo Seminario internazionale METra (Mapping Epic in Tragedy – Epica e tragedia greca: una mappatura) svoltosi nel maggio del 2021 presso l'Università degli Studi di Verona. Il fine di questo volume – e del progetto da cui prende le mosse – è sondare i confini della ricca e frastagliata eredità dell'epica greca arcaica (in primis Omero) nel dramma attico. Tale eredità viene qui indagata secondo direttrici molteplici e multidisciplinari: dall'analisi linguistica e metrica all'esegesi filologica, stilistico-letteraria e drammaturgica, dalle prospettive della ricerca antropologica e storico-religiosa a quelle della storia culturale e delle idee. I saggi costituiscono – per quanto in modo inevitabilmente parziale – una prima, provvisoria ma già estesa mappatura delle fertili, continue e innovative rivisitazioni in chiave drammatica del patrimonio mitico, linguistico e culturale dell'epica messe in opera dai grandi tragediografi del V secolo a.C.

Tradicionalmente, en la disciplina antropológica, la idea de festival o feria se asociaba con eventos breves recurrentes en el tiempo, donde la ilusión de comunidad cobraba cuerpo, cristalizando una supuesta identidad colectiva. Hoy, los festivales pueden estar organizados desde fuera de la comunidad donde se ubican y, por lo tanto, también son reflejo de los valores de sus organizadores y de sus posibles y potenciales audiencias. Tiempos puntuales, localizados en lugares concretos, donde se diseñan y se re-inventan discursos y prácticas sociales que construyen identidades, tradiciones y modernidades. Cada año, el Festival de Cine Africano de Tarifa (FCAT) crea un espacio y un tiempo acotado para compartir imágenes, ideas, definiciones y símbolos, que materializan una determinada identidad social sobre lo africano. El FCAT representa un África diferente y especializada que cuestiona otras visiones sobre el continente. Un evento de estas características es mucho más que un lugar en el tiempo para mostrar películas, es un potente agente heurístico donde investigar y generar un buen número de cuestiones: ¿Por qué este cine es africano? ¿Qué África nos presenta y quién elige las representaciones? ¿Por qué se celebra un evento como este en un municipio pequeño, apartado de lo que podríamos considerar como los circuitos al uso de las manifestaciones culturales oficiales? ¿Cómo vive el municipio esta celebración? ¿Quién puede hablar sobre África? ¿Y por qué? Este estudio interroga sobre los procesos de legitimación de la construcción identitaria y sobre la importancia de los contextos en la producción de significados. Contextualizado en el marco geográfico y simbólico de la ciudad de Tarifa, el FCAT es analizado desde la perspectiva de la mercantilización de la etnicidad y su implicación en las industrias culturales, como un nuevo producto/productor para el mercado de lo exótico que demanda un mundo globalizado. Porque eso es precisamente un festival, una intersección local/global puntualmente programada.