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The book "Inventing the Third World: In Search of Freedom for the Postwar Global South" challenges the Eurocentric and racist connotations of the term "Third World" and explores its emancipatory potential. The authors argue that the term can be used to empower marginalized populations. The book also examines the contested meanings and diverse perspectives within the Third World, highlighting tensions over democracy, relations with the United States, and regional unity. The authors employ a wide range of sources and innovative methodologies to provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the Third World. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of revising and emancipating histories to address global fairness in the present. [Extracted from the article]

i points beyond itself as it stylizes the ambiguity inherent in all things that are made: their capacity to include I and i exclude, protect I and i harm, create I and i destroy. Heaton's I Zen Men i are lumped together; in one we can just about make out a thinker's pose, while the other merely slouches. i (2007, see Figure 1) by Southport- and London-based sculptor and performance artist Tony Heaton, we first encounter an uninviting fortress made from the same stone as St Paul's Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, and the Bank of England. The original blue (which, Heaton notes, became derogatively known as spaz blue) turns into lamé, a shimmering fabric, which is a play on the word I lame i , indicating the fickle balance between ability and disability. [Extracted from the article]

This article analyzes the sketches of Ernesto “Che” Guevara and fellow guerrillas made by the Argentine Ciro Bustos during his captivity in Bolivia in 1967. Many of the references to Bustos in biographies of Guevara and in writings about the latter’s failed Bolivian campaign depict Bustos, because of those sketches, as “the man who betrayed Che.” The tensions and discrepancies in those accounts suggest instead that Bustos’s sketches should be seen not merely as documents of betrayal but as artworks embedded in the period’s wider revolutionary visualities. The article argues that Bustos’s drawing of Che Guevara, who is usually depicted visually as “heroic guerrilla” or “saintly martyr,” introduces an affective, intimate gaze of armed struggle in all its complications.

Copyright of Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Catholic education faces a number of serious challenges including cultural and political disrespect for, and hostility towards religion in general and Catholicism in particular, and lack of knowledge of, and commitment to, Catholic beliefs and values among Catholic educational administrators, school managers, teachers, and other staff, as well as the diminishing percentage of even nominally Catholic staff. I set these matters within the context of broader challenges surrounding Catholic education, deriving from three cultural movements: the reformation, the emergence of liberalism, and the scientific revolution, which undermined the synthesis of scripture, theology, and speculative and practical philosophy achieved in the high middle-ages. I propose in response a creative critique showing that what is of authentic value in modernity can be accommodated within the traditional synthesis. I also connect that tradition with strands of eastern philosophy suggesting that the movement of people, ideas, and traditions from Eastern cultures into historically Western societies provides an opportunity for further synthesis of a wisdom-based approach to education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to promote wellbeing in old age is an issue that is drawing increasing attention as populations age in societies around the world. This study explores arts participation in later life and creative ageing through artistic engagement. We focus on potential participants who have had little prior experience with the arts, examining their journey through artistic activities, and the broader benefits to society of a creatively engaged population. We applied an action research methodology by designing two phases of arts workshops, one focused on hands-on creation activities and the other on appreciation of professional artists' works. This approach yielded the following findings. First, facilitation is key to initiating and sustaining artistic engagement among older adults, in part by helping them adapt to a changing society. Second, potential participants should be centred in discussions on creative initiatives. In particular, still active pre-seniors have much to offer in developing creative ageing initiatives. Third, arts participation for creative ageing goes far beyond the individual; it promotes community wellbeing and contributes to creating social value. Finally, we make an actionable suggestion that 'facilitation for arts participation' be developed as a specialised professional field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay returns to a largely forgotten achievement of mid-twentieth-century philosophical theology, Richard Kroner's Culture and Faith (1951) and the "philosophy of faith" presented therein. It focuses on Kroner's idea of religious imagination as the inspired medium of revelation. It considers implications of this idea with regard to religious epistemology and theological language. In doing so, it puts Kroner in conversation with John Caputo, Iain McGilchrist, and Kroner's friend and colleague Paul Tillich. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clara Wieck Schumann: Art of Preluding and Romance – The Piano Music of Clara Schumann are two albums that contribute to the re-appreciation of Clara Schumann's work as a performer, composer, and educator. These albums provide insights into Clara Schumann's approach to piano playing and teaching, emphasizing the importance of tone and musicality. The albums showcase the technical and harmonic range of Clara Schumann's preludes and compositions, highlighting her compositional and performative qualities. Both albums offer a deeper understanding of Clara Schumann's talent and innovative genius. [Extracted from the article]

Bärenreiter-Verlag has released an edition of Clara Schumann's Drei Romanzen für Violine und Klavier, Op. 22, edited by Jacqueline Ross. This edition not only provides accessible and reliable sources for performing and recording Schumann's music, but also contributes to the mission of restoring women's creative voices in music history. The edition includes an Introduction, Critical Commentary, and Performing Practice Commentary, which offer insights into the historical context, differences from the manuscript and printed sources, and performance practices of the time. The edition presents a richly researched and carefully constructed edition of Schumann's Op. 22 Romances. [Extracted from the article]

This essay argues that scrofula was one of several disorders, including gout, rickets, and venereal disease, that were 'rebranded' as hereditary in response to broader cultural changes that took place during the Restoration and eighteenth century in England. While the purposes of scrofula's recategorisation were more political than medical, they resulted in this heretofore relatively obscure childhood ailment assuming a new prominence within both medical and popular discourses of the period. Scrofula became both emblem and proof of the links between sexual promiscuity, financial profligacy, and physiological degeneration, its symbolic status reinforced by the legal and moral language used to model processes of hereditary transmission. By likening the inheritance of scrofula to the inheritance of original sin—or, more commonly, to the inheritance of a 'docked entail' or damaged estate—eighteenth-century writers and artists not only made this non-inherited ailment into a sign of catastrophic hereditary decline; they also paved the way for scrofula to be identified as a disease of aristocratic vice, even though its association with crowded, unsanitary living conditions likely made it more common among the poor. By the same token, financial models of disease inheritance facilitated a bias toward paternal transmission, with scrofula often portrayed as passing, like a title or an estate, from father to son rather than from mother to daughter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Choreographer and performance-maker Faye Driscoll's performance installation Come On In (2020) offered spectators an aesthetic experience that included very little physical contact—yet investigated deeply the nature of physical touch. The sensation, artistic implications, and sociopolitical valences of touch provoke a rich and complex set of questions for considering artistic, physical, and gendered forms of control across performance and visual art, including abstract sculpture, a history into which Driscoll's installation intervenes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that an intentional acrostic spanning the first five lines of Propertius' elegy for Cynthia's birthday (3.10), MANE[T] , contributes significantly to the poignancy and purpose of the poem. MANE can be read as māne , 'in the morning', or manē , 'stay!', both of which emphasize the fleeting nature of dawn—and of Cynthia's youthful beauty. MANET can suggest both '[art] remains' and '[death] awaits'. All four of these meanings work together to capture the tension between human transience and artistic immortality. The theme is further enhanced by a balancing reverse telestich at the poem's end, ROSA RVES ('[a] rose, you will fall to ruin'). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to explain the rise of Western art forms in the musical creation of the Romanian Principalities in the first half of the nineteenth century, as dictated by a particular European political and economic dynamic. I analyse the spread of Western music – usually described as a consequence of the gradual modernization of Romanian society – in terms of the power relations between the European core and a newly integrated periphery at the Eastern border of the continent. To illustrate this change, I discuss Edward Said's concept of orientalism which helps describe the early interactions between Western musicians and professionals and the local music traditions and customs. I then show how these interactions gave the former access to a distinctive musical material used in compositions targeting an expanding European music market. In an age of national struggle in the Romanian Principalities, national music was both a concept and a practice in demand by the local intelligentsia and fostered by composers. However, in addition to this agreement, the concept of national music signalled some significant societal changes that I elucidate by looking at class stratification and the evolution of musical taste. In the final part of the analysis, I draw on dependency theory authors such as Samir Amin and Daniel Chirot to argue that musical life in the first half of the nineteenth century in Wallachia and Moldavia was closely mirroring the economic development of these countries. Thus, I demonstrate that the emergence of the Romanian school of composition must be understood not only at a national level but also within a broader political, economic and social context, defined by the gradual transition to capitalist modes of production and consumption that happened in the first decades of the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two splendid Oxford Handbooks deserve the opening slot of my review. The Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography contains forty chapters, each of which closes with a helpful section on recommended further reading. The editors have organized the material in five very well-conceived parts. The first section, 'Mythography from Archaic Greece to the Empire', naturally wrestles with the question: When does mythography start? Two initial chapters provide their answers, and the rest of the contributions in this section offer an overview of mythography in Greek (Hellenistic and Imperial period) and Latin. The second section aims to provide an overview of individual mythographers: the stars of this section are Apollodorus, Antoninus Liberalis, Parthenius, Conon, and Hyginus. The eighteen chapters provide informative and concise introductions to authors who specialized in mythography, but also to the mythographic tendencies in authors such as Pausanias or Ovid, as well as in the scholia and even mythographical papyri. The third section is on the typical genres or interpretative models with which mythography tends to intersect: rationalizing historical approaches, philosophical allegoresis, etymologizing, catasterism, local historiography, paradoxography, creative approaches to mythography in ancient education, the role of mythography in political discourse, geography, and, finally, an investigation of the ancient terms used to designate the activity and the writings of a mythographer. The fourth section, 'Mythography and the visual arts', is a provocative and highly interesting experiment in viewing visual representations of myth as a mythography of sorts: can vases, frescoes, and sarcophagi be seen as visual pendants to literary mythography? These three contributions are all highly rewarding and thought-provoking. The closing, fifth, section offers richly rewarding discussions of the role of mythography in the age of Christianity, starting with the way early Christian writers draw on Greek and Latin mythographers, followed by chapters on mythography in the Byzantine Empire, the Latin West, and in the Renaissance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to identify scientific content and compilations related to circus arts available in subscription databases and in renowned and free academic information systems. After providing terminological definitions for circus and circus arts, the article describes the search strategies applied and the issues which emerged during the searches, and then introduces quantitative results, thereby also identifying the major periodicals and the most often referenced articles of the topic. The analysis provides useful input for representatives of other arts related to circus arts (e.g., performing arts, theatre arts, visual arts, musical arts) and of other academic fields (e.g., literary studies, history, media science); but first of all, it serves as an unparalleled library information service guide for navigating between electronic information sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neutrality is one of the founding principles of library classification; however, systems reflect the biases of the societies that created them. Many articles have been written on bias in the Library of Congress Classification System (LCC) and its subject headings (LCSH). But how is bias evident in the Fine Arts (N) range? One answer to this question lays in the writings of Hope A. Olson who argues that systems like LCC are inherently prejudiced because of their use of universality, which results in hierarchical relationships and Derridean binaries. This is problematic because library classification, according to Olson, functions as a third-space, a place where meaning is created. Reading the Fine Arts range through Olson's work reveals a system that perpetuates bias by reconstructing the western canon of art history through its privileging of fine art over craft. While each of the fine arts are given their own subclasses, craft mediums are located under one subclass, Decorative Arts (NK), giving them a lesser than status. Artists and art historians have argued that the valuing of fine art over craft in the western canon, something clearly seen in LCC, is a consequence of patriarchal and colonialist power systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Victorian Science and Imagery: Representation and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture" is an edited volume by Nancy Rose Marshall that explores the intersections between Victorian art and science. The book argues that the arts and sciences were not separate spheres in Victorian culture, but rather intertwined. Marshall emphasizes the importance of art history methods in studying these interactions and challenges the demand for proof of influence. The book also examines the shared interest in vision and anxieties about perception in Victorian art and science. Overall, "Victorian Science and Imagery" offers fresh perspectives on the connections between the sciences and the visual arts in Victorian culture. [Extracted from the article]

For a nearly identical analysis, see Cooper's '"Inner Necessity": Fabulation, Frame, and Musical Memory in Mendelssohn's I Lobgesang i ', in I Rethinking Mendelssohn i , ed. Thus, Cooper used this piano solo version of the Sinfonia as a source for editing the Sinfonia in the piano vocal score for the present edition (p. xi). Unless any landscape-altering new autograph sources for the I Lobgesang i are discovered, Cooper's edition is probably the last we will need until the LMA edition is released. [Extracted from the article]

In our 2018 film, A Modest Proposal, we proposed to financialize the assets of public museums, their collections, and buildings, and distribute the generated values for the benefit of the producers of those values: the artist community. Reality seems to have caught up with our proposal. In the wake of the pandemic, public museums started to sell NFTs of their master pieces. But this did not inspire any new form of mutualization. In this text, we question whether blockchain infrastructures can be considered a public good. The individualistic logics that pervade the crypto sphere consider human relations in transactional terms and the enforcement of property rights as the only valuable governance principle, defining property as the basis for representation in many of the Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). The trust placed in automated processes might lead to ‘governance by algorithms’, making the ‘Leviathan’, the sovereign machine, a frightening possibility. Other blockchain infrastructures may offer more inclusive alternatives. Distributed Cooperative Organizations (DisCOs) acknowledge the need for the individual to sustain her/himself and yet also create a solidarity economy by the mutual distribution of collectively generated values among all contributors. We focus on the above questions on property, public goods and governance using our home in Brussels, which we have defined as an artwork and framing device. It is the ‘house as artwork’ that helps us evaluate how these concepts play out in an accelerating world in which blockchain and other technologies might equally generate emancipation or new enclosures.

The term ‘volatility’ applies to changeability: both that which can be measured, such as temperatures and stock prices, and that which cannot be easily measured, such as affects and emotions. Quantitative financial volatility has typically been studied quite separately from art, culture, and everyday life. Randy Martin's work, which addressed the resonances between volatility in dance and finance, was a notable exception. Martin focused on derivatives, which played a critical role in the development of financialized capitalism, especially between 1973-2008. Arguably, however, derivatives are no longer the key drivers of volatility as a social and cultural logic. New assemblages of asset managers, rentiers, and online platforms - along with a pandemic, new banking crises, and ongoing climate emergency - are reshaping how volatility is produced and navigated. How might we rethink volatility in order to better grasp its changing logics? This introduction unpacks existing debates on volatility in finance, art, and culture, suggesting several directions in which new work in this area might depart from existing frameworks - some of which are pursued in this special issue. We focus on three broad lines of exploration: rethinking the intellectual histories of volatility; rethinking volatility across disparate post-2008 contexts; and imagining volatile futures through art practice.

Copyright of History in Africa: A Journal of Method is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The critic Cecil Gray, well known for bringing Sibelius's music to the attention of British audiences, is the focus here and it is noted that he moved away from nationalistic considerations to outline the formal and structural qualities of this music. "Sibelius and the Ecological Breakthrough" by Tomi Mäkelä, the last chapter in this section, takes the composer's lifelong enthusiasm for nature and elevates it to that of an "early environmentalist" (81): Jean the Eco Warrior. However, the degree of abstraction that music offers - especially in relation to visual arts which are as representational as this - might undermine the strength of that connection: music is rather distinctive in this regard. [Extracted from the article]

The multifactorial etiology of pediatric cancer is poorly understood. Environmental factors occurring during embryogenesis can disrupt epigenetic signaling, resulting in several diseases after birth, including cancer. Associations between assisted reproductive technologies (ART), such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), and birth defects, imprinting disorders and other perinatal adverse events have been reported. IVF can result in methylation changes in the offspring, and a link with pediatric cancer has been suggested. In this study, we investigated the peripheral blood methylomes of 11 patients conceived by IVF who developed cancer in childhood. Methylation data of patients and paired sex/aged controls were obtained using the Infinium MethylationEPIC Kit (Illumina). We identified 25 differentially methylated regions (DMRs), 17 of them hypermethylated, and 8 hypomethylated in patients. The most significant DMR was a hypermethylated genomic segment located in the promoter region of LHX6 , a transcription factor involved in the forebrain development and interneuron migration during embryogenesis. An additional control group was included to verify the LHX6 methylation status in children with similar cancers who were not conceived by ART. The higher LHX6 methylation levels in IVF patients compared to both control groups (healthy children and children conceived naturally who developed similar pediatric cancers), suggested that hypermethylation at the LHX6 promoter could be due to the IVF process and not secondary to the cancer itself. Further studies are required to evaluate this association and the potential role of LHX6 promoter hypermethylation for tumorigenesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This response takes advantage of the diverse and wide-ranging series of commentaries to clarify some aspects of the target article, and flesh out other aspects. My central point is a plea to take graphic codes seriously as codes, rather than as a kind of visual art or as a byproduct of spoken language; only in this way can the puzzle of ideography be identified and solved. In this perspective, I argue that graphic codes do not derive their expressive power from iconicity alone (unlike visual arts), and I clarify the peculiar relationship that ties writing to spoken language. I then discuss three possible solutions to the puzzle of ideography. I argue that a learning account still cannot explain why ideographies fail to evolve, even if we emancipate the learning account from the version that Liberman put forward; I develop my preferred solution, the "standardization account," and contrast it with a third solution suggested by some commentaries, which says that ideographies do not evolve because they would make communication too costly. I consider, by way of conclusion, the consequences of these views for the future evolution of ideography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morin envisions the adaptive landscape of graphic codes as an unfertile valley where writing rises as an isolated peak that humans managed to reach only on four occasions throughout all of history. By exploring the different paths to cultural convergence, we suggest an alternative landscape occupied by a mountain range of visual art systems. We conclude that graphic communication through visual art worked well enough to render writing contingent but not necessary in most cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clark and Fischer's depiction hypothesis is based on examples of western mimetic art. Yet social robots do not depict social interactions, but instead perform them. Similarly, dance and performance art do not rely on depiction. Kinematics and expressivity are better predictors of dance aesthetics and of effective social interactions. In this way, social robots are more like dancers than actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of collaborative projects between artists and scientists raises the question regarding their value, particularly when considering the redirection of resources. Here we provide a personal account of our collaborative efforts, as an artist and a scientist.We propose that one of the most significant outcomes is something that cannot be planned for in advance: serendipitous events. Such events lead to fresh perspectives and imaginative ideas, the fairy dust underlying many great works of art and science. The unexpected nature of these desired outcomes requires from us a leap of faith on the one hand, and a deep trust in our 'partner in crime' on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Educational strategies are necessary for the care of patients with fibromyalgia. The objective was to develop and validate an e-book to promote the health of individuals with fibromyalgia. Methods: Methodological research in which, initially, through a bibliographic survey, the available publications on the subject were analyzed. Then, this knowledge was used to build the theoretical content addressed, and the art and layout of the e-book were elaborated. In the third phase, validation of the constructed material, content specialists (n = 23), technicians (n  =  23) and design specialists (n = 23), and individuals with fibromyalgia (n = 45) evaluated the e-book through the Delphi technique. For data collection, different questionnaires were used, according to the evaluation focus of each participant group, analyzed for reliability using Cronbach's Alpha (αC) and agreement using the Content Validity Index (CVI). Results: In the global assessment of agreement from all groups of judges, the CVI presented a considerable minimum: content (0.79), technical (0.89), design (0.92), and target audience (0.97). Regarding reliability, all groups also had a αC within the acceptable range: content (0.960), technical (0.963), design (0.977), and target audience (1.08). Conclusions: The e-book was developed and validated in terms of content and relevance and can be used to promote the health of individuals with fibromyalgia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers a corpus of images created between 1650 and 1750 within Italian Capuchin missions to Kongo and Angola. It demonstrates how these visual creations, though European in form, craftsmanship, and intended audience, were in fact penned by encounter and the products of cross-cultural interactions. Contrasting the Central African images with two well-known and oft-studied Franciscan visual projects from early colonial Mexico, the article further reflects on the stakes of making visible the mixings present, but often overlooked or silenced, in early modern images born from encounters between Europeans and the people they considered their Others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study which examined the notions of authenticity and citizenship for people living with cognitive impairment or dementia in a care home in the North-East of England. We demonstrated that both notions were present and were encouraged by engagement with an artist, where this involved audio and visual recordings and the creation of a film. The artist's interactions were observed by a non-participant observer using ethnographic techniques, including interviews with the residents, their families and the staff of the care home. The data were analysed using grounded theory and the constant comparative method of qualitative analysis. Our findings suggest that participatory art might help to maintain and encourage authenticity and citizenship in people living with dementia in a care home. Certainly, authenticity and citizenship are notions worth pursuing in the context of dementia generally, but especially in care homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how popular historical knowledge and understanding can be deepened by collaboration between historians, creative artists, and editors, publishers and those who support and develop the creative arts. Historical research into enslaved people who escaped in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London reveals much about their enslavers but very little about the enslaved people themselves. However, archival gaps and silences can be imaginatively filled, and those who engage with the historically inspired creative work can explore the nexus of historical research and artistic creativity. In this article the authors (a historian and two members of the creative industry) detail how their 'Runaways London' collaboration developed, and how the work of poets and artists, premised on extensive historical research, deepens our understanding of race and slavery in British history, achieving something that is beyond the reach of historical research and writing alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The representation of the ‘dying Socrates’ was extremely popular among artists during the 17th and 18th centuries, while there are several artworks with this concept during the early 19th century. This article's main aim is to use the methodological tool of the Grammar of Visual Design in forming a teaching proposal based on the Harvard University ‘Artful Thinking Project’. This teaching proposal can be applied to a Language, a Philosophy or a History course. As a second aim, we propose a new typology for that era's artworks on the subject of the last moments of Socrates.

An increasing number of collaborative projects between artists and scientists raises the question regarding their value, particularly when considering the redirection of resources. Here we provide a personal account of our collaborative efforts, as an artist and a scientist. We propose that one of the most significant outcomes is something that cannot be planned for in advance: serendipitous events. Such events lead to fresh perspectives and imaginative ideas, the fairy dust underlying many great works of art and science. The unexpected nature of these desired outcomes requires from us a leap of faith on the one hand, and a deep trust in our ‘partner in crime’ on the other.

After a long quarrel scattered with persecutions, uprisings, dismissals and replacements of religious authorities, deaths, military expeditions, confiscations and attempts of assassinations in Greece, Italy and other European areas, the Council of Nicaea, in 787, imposed the victory of the iconodules in the Byzantine Empire. The West, especially the Kingdom of the Franks and the Lombards ruled by Charles, later known as Charlemagne, tried to take an official position in the synod of Frankfurt in 794 and in an odd and complex treatise, comprising four books, entitled Opus Caroli , or Libri Carolini , which were recently attributed by Ann Freeman to Theodulf of Orleans, one of the greatest intellectuals of his time. In this work, which we could call the first western treatise on images, the icon is freed from its ritual and cult value, and returned to its artistic use, thus determining, according to some scholars, the larger freedom of figurative representation that characterizes western religious art as compared with the Orthodox one. This stance is followed by a lively debate, involving many authors, the materials of which have not yet been translated and put into full circulation in historical-artistic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the First World War, some musicians embraced 'international' identities in novel ways, requiring novel strategies.6 During the 1920s, internationalist initiatives were launched in musicology, music education, folk music and more, joining a more general proliferation of institutions devoted to cultural internationalism.7 In the domain of Western art music, the most high-profile internationalist organization of the era was the ISCM, founded in Salzburg in 1922.8 The ISCM's principal activity during the interwar period was to organize an annual contemporary music festival. This peripatetic event, hosted in a different European city each year, served two intertwined ambitions: to promote contemporary music and to further international cooperation. The latter aspiration gave rise to an unofficial nickname – the 'musical League of Nations' – encapsulating the ISCM's perceived affinities with other, heftier internationalist endeavours.9 A 'musical League of Nations' was, however, an ambivalent and precarious project: the moniker recognized, through analogy, a necessary proximity to the era's chief prototype of an international structure; but it clung, by way of its adjective, to a degree of detachment from the treacherous waters of politics and diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Another bumper edition, again by way of apology for absenteeism in the spring issue (though this time due to paternity rather than plague). We begin with the latest Beard blockbuster. In her Twelve Caesars, based on her 2011 A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, Mary Beard turns her trademark combination of penetrating gaze and jovial tongue to the reception of the famed group of elite first-century ce Roman men who span a key moment in the transformation of ancient politics. Belying their importance for ancient historians and archaeologists, they have been rather neglected by art historians of later periods. With an extraordinarily wide lens, spanning from Alexander the Great to the 2017 modern art of Alison Wilding, Beard corrects that omission, demonstrating their central place in the history of Western art, and exploring not just how those emperors have been represented, repackaged, and reused, but what that says about the identities, worlds, and priorities of those who so mobilized them. The result is a tour de force of art and intellectual history. Not only is the reader presented with gloriously arcane anecdotes on almost every page, but their sum amounts to a sustained inquiry into the role that past power has played, and continues to play, in our history, politics, art, and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This issue sees five volumes from IMAGINES – Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts. This series, published by Bloomsbury and edited by Filippo Carlà-Uhink and Martin Lindner, developed from a series of conferences starting in 2007, and has so far produced fourteen books, including both edited volumes and monographs. In keeping with the editors' aims to work from an anti-hierarchal approach to culture, the books under discussion elaborate on a range of media, without distinguishing between 'high' and 'low' culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In my last years of teaching at the University of Leeds (2019-20), I invited all first-year Fine Art and Art History students to meet me in the circular Reading Room of University of Leeds Library. I felt that, for many students arriving at university, the space, form, function and use of a research, or even a reference, library might be inhibiting, alien at worst and certainly overwhelming. My aim was to get them inside, and to then explore the Library as an architectural-spatial text written with books ordered and spaced according to classification systems that already encode and pre-frame their fields of knowledge amidst other discrete fields. Moreover, my lectures to them would question the system of classifying art and its histories laid out for them in the library. I might indeed deeply challenge this 'order of things' (to quote Michel Foucault.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

De la vie d'oraison is an early and neglected work by Jacques Maritain. Exploring its major themes and biographical context reveals a tension in Maritain between his commitment to orthodox Catholic mystical theology and his belief in his godfather Léon Bloy's unique, tripartite vocation of lay mystic, prophet, and artist. This tension, I argue, has been overlooked due to Maritain's public image as an esteemed Thomist philosopher, but becomes clear when we study Maritain's defense of Bloy, especially in his dialogues with his Dominican peers and church authorities. I suggest that this tension reveals two deep-seated convictions at work in Maritain's life and writings. The first is that the reasons for the necessity of lay Catholic mysticism, and the diverse forms it may take, need to be spelled out more clearly. The second is that for Maritain, his godfather is an exemplar of such lay Catholic mysticism. Understanding Maritain's reasons for these convictions can open up a pathway for Catholic mystical theology to better accommodate and conceptualize alternative forms of mystical life among laypeople whose mystical and artistic experiences spill over traditional theological categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ARLIS UK & Ireland Cataloguing & Classification Committee supports the cataloguing and classification of all art materials in libraries, promoting effective discovery of library resources for the visual arts, architecture and design, and by supporting development and research in the sector. In the first half of 2021 we organised two webinars, one an introduction to cataloguing given by Victoria Parkinson, and the second a demonstration of cataloguing by Amy Staniforth, alongside her colleagues Simon French and Lloyd Roderick. From the attendance and feedback, and it was clear there was an appetite for more talks that introduced aspects of cataloguing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gathers interim results of a study on the accessibility of artistic research. Since no corresponding subject portal could be found, a specific data collection was started. Due to the study's background in Switzerland, the resulting DataBase for Applied, Fine and Performing Arts (AFPA-DB) focusses mostly on the German-speaking and European countries, while aiming to be expanded in the future. After summarizing the formal findings of the study, the authors explore the challenges that occurred during the research process. Their struggle in finding and/or accessing artistic research seems to be characteristic of the field and is therefore likely to affect similar projects in other academic art libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like every other continent in the world, Antarctica has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, in an imagined as well as a practical sense. Antarctica is a mediated experience; that is, most of us experience the place through films, novels, music, visual arts and the media. We present an analysis of media articles from eight countries over three time periods - pre-COVID-19 outbreak (October–December 2019), shortly after the pandemic hit the headlines (March–May 2020) and when the virus was established (October–December 2020) - to discover how COVID-19 may have changed Antarctic discourse. Our study shows that representations of Antarctica have been affected by the pandemic, in some instances reinforcing existing ideas and in other cases bringing new ideas to the fore. Based on our findings, we believe that COVID-19 has begun to change representations of Antarctica, stepping us away from the prevailing Antarctic hero narrative and providing a more contemporary understanding of the Antarctic experience. We argue that this may increase our motivation to engage with Antarctic issues, with associated implications for future global stewardship of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the nexus between art and its ideological function, both discursively and in practice, in the Soviet socialist republics. Scrutinizing the case of visual monumental art in Soviet Tajikistan in the 1970s and 1980s, it can be seen that the geographical and cultural distance from Moscow, in addition to complex multi-actor and multi-level policy implementation channels, allowed for non-conventional artistic practices to develop in the Soviet periphery. The article highlights the role of local officials and, in particular, artists in re-appropriating the official identity formation process with specific ideas of "nationhood," religion, and gender relations, while at the same time aspiring to comply with the dominant socialist realism doctrine. It is argued that, contrary to the prominent slogan "socialist in content, national in form," artworks produced in the Soviet periphery were often socialist in form and "national" in content. While the artists skillfully worked within the monumental art tradition promoted by the state, thus relying on a socialist form, not infrequently the meaning of their works distorted, or even contradicted, the official ideology. Often this subversion was non-deliberate. Ultimately, however, the artworks ended up strengthening an autonomous local agency that policy-makers in Moscow sought to eradicate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edited by Dassia N. Posner and Kevin Bartig with Maria De Simone. Prokofiev employed Gozzi's and Meyerhold's motifs in the libretto for his opera I Love for Three Oranges i , which aimed to overturn the existing tradition of musical harmony. Part III, "The Opera", opens with Kevin Bartig's translation of Prokofiev's libretto, which features a detailed textual comparison with Meyerhold's divertissement. [Extracted from the article]

My visual artworks propose ways of being in the world--the world that humans share with non-humans. By developing projects such as breathe with a tree or listen to soil, I wish my installations to be experienced as translators. Those art projects are the result of collaborations with different teams of scientists. Together we found technological tools that could be used in art installations. These hybridizations between art and science sometimes mischievously divert technology, and instead, offer us aesthetic work with its roots deep in traditional arts and crafts knowledge. With themwe can--for amoment--share time with plants, and be in dialogue with air, soil and gravity. The first project, Dendromacy, an experimental movie, was designed with a specific cooled lens thermal camera. The second one, Listening to the soil, a sounded ceramic installation started from bioacoustics recordings of the soil mega and meso-fauna. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

- Henri Lefebvre The extraordinary art environment created privately in a rented flat over decades by Ron Gittins, better known as Ron's Place, is like a personal stage set. 'A Greek theatre presupposes tragedy and comedy, and by extension of the presence of the city's people and their allegiance to their heroes and gods. Gittins' multidimensional practice reverberates within Ron's Place, where like other artists who have transformed their homes, it becomes a "cultural container" presenting a complicated but extraordinary relationship between Gittins and his domestic, transformed space (Umberger, 2007). 3 Saving Ron's Place is an active initiative lead by Jan Williams (Ron's niece) and Chris Teasdale of The Caravan Gallery to preserve Ron's Place and Gittins' legacy for future generations. [Extracted from the article]