Search

The article presents a discussion of the thought of philosopher Walter Benjamin regarding the phenomenon of flâneurs in his book "The Arcades Project," noting the relationship of the concept to North American culture, adapted from an article in the Winter 2006 issue of the periodical.

The proliferation of pedestrian performances since the beginning of the twenty-first century has led to an active rethinking of the defining parameters of site-based practice. Does the action of walking deterritorialize or strengthen the boundaries of site, or is the terming of ‘site’ itself redundant for these types of performance? In this article Kris Darby examines one of the most influential types of walking practice on this mode of performance, that of the dérive (‘drift’), and its subsequent adoption and renovation by arts collective Wrights & Sites. Beginning with a contextualization of ‘drifting’ within the Situationist International, this study then focuses on key terms derived from the collective's use of this type of walking in their performance work. The three types of drifting defined by Wrights & Sites – reconnaissance, group, and simultaneous – are then analyzed, illustrating how, through ‘framing’, the defining parameters of site begin to shift further. The article concludes by suggesting that Wrights & Sites’ drifting can be termed situation-specific rather than site-specific, due to its movement across multiple places. Kris Darby is a PhD student in the Drama Department of the University of Exeter, whose research concerns an expansion of the defining properties of pedestrian performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Journal of Academic Inquiries / Akademik Incelemeler Dergisi is the property of Akademik Incelemeler Dergisi (Journal of Academic Inquiries) 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.)

An essay is presented that discusses disability in modern urban life, noting the documentary film "One Night Sit," directed by Carmelo Gonzalez and Diana Naftal, which addresses the lives of disabled gay men. The notion of the flaneur, or Parisian street walker, is said to embody the privilege of the able-bodied. The sculpture "Alison Lapper Pregnant," by Marc Quin, is discussed.

This essay places the bright lights of the cinematic city at the centre of a series of explorations. Commencing with the lure of the city for characters within fiction film, I then proceed to map the growing fascination of the cinematic city for scholars from many disciplines. What does the study of the cinematic city offer to scholars in the period of cinema's declining significance as a mass urban entertainment? I explore the contours of the cinema/city canon and what I characterize as a crossdisciplinary ‘city discourse’. How does this discourse function within the academy, and how should we understand the continuing scholarly romance with the figure of the flâneur? What does the cinematic city do in contemporary scholarship? Are its attractions specific to cinema, or could they carried by television – and to what extent are the attractions of the cinematic city a symptom of broader transformations in the study of the moving image? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The figure of the flâneur haunts the pages of Charles Baudelaire's Le Spleen de Paris. As first-person narrator, man, woman, protagonist, or passer-by, the flâneur presence lends continuity to this collection of fifty seemingly disparate prose poems. The flâneur has also become almost inseparable from the backdrop of the city and its streets, which in mid-nineteenth-century Paris were crowded, muddy, and smelly. The purpose of this essay is to rethink the Baudelairean flâneur, and the prose poems, through olfactory perception. Odours inhabit intimate spaces and invade public environments, thus facilitating a process of mutual permeation, or, to use a word favoured in Baudelaire's writing, a mutual penetration. An analysis of both the theory and practice of flânerie in the prose poems reveals that smell and flânerie function similarly as experiences of volatility, transience, intimation, and penetration in Le Spleen de Paris. Here textual references to the olfactory go beyond mimetic realism, contributing to a poetics of flânerie central to the prose poem experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The flâneur and the tourist were both characterized foremost by movement and curiosity. A range of meanings and resonances were associated with both figures, underlining the tensions between the ideas of the insider and the outsider, the Parisian and the foreigner, travel within Paris and without, mechanical versus purposeful seeing, and compulsive versus meaningful mobility. While the sense of vision was emphasized, literary representations often evoked the idea that vacuous and passive seeing, stimulated by trivial goings-on and merchandise, lets the flâneur neglect the other senses, whereas an inner preparation and discernment lead to a more balanced way of flânerie. The projection of flânerie onto world travel paralleled the mode of reading illustrated magazines, which elicited imaginary flânerie. The re-reading of Baudelaire's 'Le Peintre de la vie moderne' in this light provides some new insights regarding the concept of the artist as the 'man of the world'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The physiologies and mass-circulation literature of the July Monarchy launched the emergence of the flâneur in the French popular imaginary, and famously celebrated his acute, flexible, and discerning gaze. Yet, these texts sometimes represent imperilled flâneurs who inadvertently collide with the city; the cause of these accidents lies in their hyperopia and subsequent failure to perceive the closest and most pedestrian details of the Parisian street. This farsightedness itself results from distraction in the French senses of the term: as both absentmindedness (la distraction) and social entertainment (les distractions), the flâneur's distraction belongs to him as much as to Paris itself. The accidents that it causes question the stability of the flâneur as a social type, and eventually of social taxonomies themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the contributions of the flânerie, the dérive and the urban ethnography as methodological practices for knowledge and understanding of public spaces. These "urban views" are significant research tools because they are spatial practices that pose a critical look at the modern city, established an integral character that invites the researcher to be part of the public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Electronic Turkish Studies is the property of Electronic Turkish Studies 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.)

Drawing upon the extensive literature on urban walking and also on almost 60 years experience of walking the streets, this article argues that there is a pressing need to re-assert the educational value of going for a walk. After a brief discussion of the social significance of the flaneur, the historic pioneer of urban walking, the article proceeds to a consideration of a variety of ways in which the walker engages with society. These are walking for religious reasons, walking as a form of political protest, walking as a shared experience with strangers and walking as a way of understanding the world around us. No attempt is made here to challenge the arguments of those who postulate the physical health benefits of walking. It is argued, however, that even if such benefits do exist, they may well be of secondary importance to the lessons that can be learned from the pedagogies of the street. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Societes is the property of De Boeck Universite 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.)

Abstract: We all collect personal mementos, treasured objects that remind us about our past. We also remember significant people and places from our past. A key way that we reflect on our identity is through collecting, organizing and talking to others about such personal mementos, places and people. However, most work on mementos has focused on physical objects rather than their digital representations. And when digital archives have been examined these have been found to be underexploited. We, therefore, implemented and evaluated a new class of digital memory application, MemoryLane, that is designed on the basis of prior research into memory and reminiscence. MemoryLane allows people to capture, actively organize and reflect on digital representations of mementos relating to people, places and objects. Users can also annotate captured mementos with spoken or textual narratives. User feedback provides new information about the nature of digital reminiscing and reflection. Our 31 persons evaluation showed that people were active in organizing and reflecting on these personal digital collections. As we expected, most mementos centered around familiar home objects, although mementos relating to people tended to be regarded as most important and to evoke stronger emotions. Participants also recorded many spoken narratives about mementos, but these spoken reflections were unpopular on playback. We discuss the theoretical and design implications of our work. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In January 2008 the Eritrean capital of Asmara witnessed a theatre production that did not sit easily with the cultural imaginary of the country. Performed by a group of university graduates rather than the well-versed artists in government employ, Beyene Haile's Weg'i Libi, or Heart-to-Heart Talk, caused a stir among the local art-loving community in that it defied common strands of Eritrean theatre arts. Difficult to understand, with no clear plot or clear-cut message, it nonetheless drew crowds during the two weeks of its performance, largely because, as Christine Matzke suggests in this article, it allowed audiences to participate in the intellectual flânerie presented on stage. Basing her article on material collected in autumn 2008 and spring 2010, the author here provides an interpretation of the play and an outline and contextualization of its production process. Christine Matzke has spent well over a decade researching Eritrean theatre arts and cultural production. Her publications include the co-edited African Theatre 8: Diasporas (2009) and Postcolonial Postmortems (2006) on transcultural crime fiction. She teaches at the University of Bayreuth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented on the phenomenon of women applying powered make up in public in New York City in the 1910s. It examines the idea of flânerie, or strolling urban streets, and analyzes public powdering in terms of gender roles, femininity, and capitalism. Other topics include the 1925 book "Manhattan Transfer," by John Dos Passos and avant-garde artist and poet Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.

In this article, the author comments on representations of cities and queries whether a critical urban imaginary can be created which addresses issues such as gender and human trafficking. It is suggested that the field of cultural criticism is far removed from the everyday reality of modern slavery. Details related to reporting done on human trafficking by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) are also presented. Topics discussed include Modernist representations of the figures of the flȃneur and the prostitute, neoliberalism, and abolitionism.

The article discusses the concept of "Flâneur in exile," wherein the author used this phrase to refer the encounter between a paradigmatic figure of European modernity, the Flâneur and contemporary writing of Yang Lian. It is said that the Flâneur was a product of the nineteenth-century European imperial capital. It also examines the works of Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin on the Flâneur.

Copyright of Journal of International Social Research is the property of Journal of International Social Research 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 narrative of The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger, happens in the metropolis of New York in the tumultuous decade of 1950s. The protagonist, Holden Caulfield, following his archetypal model, Ulysses, undertakes a journey of initiation in the heart of the city in order to become aware of the ambiguity of modern life, and of his own identity. Like many other novelistic heroes, Holden can be regarded as an incarnation of the character of the flaneur in the works of Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin: a slow stroller of the streets and arcades who tried to read the cityscapes like a text and aimed at restoring legibility and clarity to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One challenge for the humanities is to articulate subjectivities able to reach across national and regional divides without reestablishing the "cosmopolitan" or "ironic" sensibilities at the core of our ideological predicament. This article is such an attempt in a re-reading of Baudelaire, the writer who gave us "modernity" at the same moment he offered us a discourse on the "flâneur." In such re-reading we answer his call to countersign his text, achieving thus the very subject position he is purportedly describing, in his, and our, search for modernity. While many commentators have suggested the flâneur aristocratically uses the masses as means to enjoyment (purportedly finding cause for this critique in the Baudelairean text itself), we will, in contrast, gesture toward a more fundamental ambiguity surrounding the figure--and modernity itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the role of flâneur in the novels of Henry Miller. It defines flâneur as a stroller or walker looking like a well-dressed man with no intention to buy. It compares the narrators in the Tropic novels of Henry Miller to a flâ who is greatly aware of the activities around him and subtle gestures which normally goes unnoticed. It also talks about Miller's life as a flâneur in Paris, France when he strolled the Paris streets and wrote about his observations.

The purpose of this study was to probe the presence of slackers in college classroom work group, how students react to slackers, and the recommendations students would make for working with slackers in future group projects. Thirty-seven college students participated in one of five focus groups. Results indicate that (a) college students working in classroom work groups report working with slackers to be frustrating due to a lack of indifference on the slackers' part, (b) they deal with slackers by either ignoring them or including them in the group task, and (c) they would confront slackers in future work group endeavors. Future research should examine the influence of slackers on group members' feelings of grouphate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the course "The Art of the Fl&aacirc;neur: Paris in Literature, Art and Film" which demonstrates how language and literature can be combined with the study of cultures for rich undergraduate research experiences in study abroad. The course was developed within the framework of the Expanding Your Horizons program at Wagner College in Staten Island, New York. The flâneurs were artists and writers who traveled around Paris, France during the 19th century. Stages involved in the research project include designing a research topic, compiling a bibliography, and reflection.

The article focuses on the ethnographic aspects of the New York photographers' artistic practice. Walter Benjamin, who is genealogy to the street photographer, reflected the flaneur which was a 19th century mythical figure. It is revealed that the figure of the flanuer that was Benjamin's work that led the people to think that the historian, and the anthropologist by collecting everyday observations in their aimless walks about the city where the people do something of great importance. It is concluded that the New York photographers identify primarily in their collective vision, and only secondarily in the content of the photographs themselves.

The article discusses the figure of flâneur in the book "The Arcades Project," by Walter Benjamin. It asserts that the figure of flâneur is exemplary for the way he perceives the landscape of the modern city. The presence of the elements of phantasmagoria and dream in the book is addressed. It also cites examples that exhibit the pervasiveness and obliquity of superimposition in the book.

The article portrays viewing methods in respect to historicity of audience. Viewing of cubist paintings in not only pictorial but also in visual reception including Pablo Picasso's "Portrait of Artdealer Ambroise Vollard," and Georges Braque's "The Portuguese Man," are discussed. The article focuses of visual perception and relates to Ernst Junger.

The article presents a discussion about the use of cyborgs in comparison to literary figures such as the flâneur, Centaurs, Amazons, and the Minotaur. These characters expresses their being beyond the limitations of human capacity with regards to action and power. It states that the literary cyborg character being described is not the usual organisms that are composed of both flesh and metal. The idea of these cyborgs focuses on the nature of a unitary women's identity, which goes down to the basic history of socialist feminism.

Although scholars have established the publicity of all types of nineteenth-century women, their public actions are still regarded as morally constrained. We offer one group of public women, bourgeois cyclists, who after encountering public skepticism only briefly were given free rein of the streets and country roads. This propensity of women and men to ride the thoroughfares ‘a-wheel’ we refer to as flâneurie on bicycles, a technology-mediated form of the pedestrian variety. Similarities and differences necessarily abound because of the requirements of safe cycling and the long-distance rambling capacity of cyclists. We argue, however, that flâneurie of the bicycle kind is largely faithful to the original in that cycling promoted peripatetic individualism, for female as well as male riders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores Las Vegas as a stage-set for tourist performance. Initially, I outline Walter Benjamin's notion of the flâneur as a framework for my study before addressing two foci of this paper: (1) the site of Las Vegas as “omnitopian” enclosure and (2) the performance of Las Vegas through post-tourism. Following this analysis, I discuss consequences of inauthentic post-tourist play as imagined by critics of “mere pleasure.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new singly resonant, single-frequency optical parametric oscillator (OPO) has been developed for the 2.6–4.7 μm infrared wavelength region, using a high power (>20 W), widely tunable (1024–1034 nm) Yb:YAG pump source. With the OPO frequency stabilized with an intracavity etalon, the OPO achieved an idler output power of 3 W at 2.954 μm. Tuning of the idler frequency was achieved by longitudinal mode-hop tuning of the pump source (FSR 100 MHz). In this way an idler frequency scan of 100–150 GHz could be obtained, after which the signal frequency hops ahead over the FSR of the intracavity etalon of the OPO (207 GHz). Due to un-optimized mirror coatings for the OPO cavity and PPLN crystal, the frequency stability was limited to 90 MHz over 1 s, with an unaffected long-term frequency stability of 250 MHz over 200 seconds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conditional interference patterns can be obtained with twin photons from spontaneous parametric down-conversion and the phase of the pattern can be controlled by the relative transverse position of the signal and idler detectors. Using a configuration that produces photons entangled in both polarization and transverse momentum, we report on the control of the conditional patterns by acting on the polarization degree of freedom. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Focuses on the comedy television program 'Sex and the City,' broadcast in the U.S. Theme of the program; Transition in the practice of flanerie from modernity to postmodernity; Role of a flaneur played by Sarah Jessica Parker in the program.

The article focuses on the perspective of a flaneur in Las Vegas, Nevada. A flaneur is traditionally thought to be a modern, urban male who can evocatively describe the dynamic character of urban life from a distance without directly engaging others or participating in a city's economy. The flaneur's traditionally anti-consumer stance, however, seemed nearly impossible for tourists who visited Las Vegas. Tourists in Las Vegas then ultimately paid to engage in practices that were traditionally associated with flaneurs. However, such tourists were better described as pseudo-flaneurs, or those engaged in flaneur-like practices who were actually consumers and of highly structured environments emulating cities. The term flaneur is most frequently associated with poet Charles Baudelaire and sociologist Walter Benjamin. Las Vegas was registered as one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S., that added about seventy thousand people a year to its population of 1.4 million. It was also spotted as the most popular tourists destination in the world during the year 2000.

Presents an anthropological and anarchist methodology for exploring the past. Practice of excursionismo; Heuristic character of the flaneur; Global histories of the past.

Focuses on taking the flaneur on a stroll through Point Pelee National Park in Southwestern Ontario. Importance of flanerie for the apprehension of human/nature relations; Controversies surrounding the flaneur; Critique of a commoditized nature.

This article considers the question of George Simmel's intellectual character. In his major work on Simmel, Sociological Impressionism, David Frisby discusses the question of whether or not Simmel is a sociological flâneur, in the sense that Walter Benjamin used that term. The term flâneur certainly has pejorative connotations and was not one that Simmel chose to describe himself. Rather than being Benjamin's flâneur, Simmel is seen to be more like Claude Lévi-Strauss's bricoleur. This article proceeds by examining the Benjamin/Frisby definition of flâneur and how Frisby applies it to Simmel's sociological practice. then a Simmelian analysis of the form of the flâneur is worked up as a prelude to contrasting the flâneur to the bricoleur. Finally, this article reads the Metropolis and Mental Life, Simmel's well-known and influential essay on the sociocultural matrix of urban mentality, as the self-reflexive analysis of the modern scene as a bricolage, calling for the virtues of the bricoleur. That is, the metropolis is the site of postmodernity, and the intellectual character most appropriate for describing it is developed in postmodernist discourse, not in the gallery of human types received from the first half of the nineteenth century.

Deals with the virtues of the idea of doing nothing. Justifications for the attention that should be given to the alternative of doing nothing; Factors that created the receptivity for a serious analysis of the idea; Positive aspects of the idea of doing nothing.

A general analysis is presented for the step-recovery diode frequency multiplier operating in the series mode with idlers. Both analogue and digital computed results are given for the 1-2-3 multiplier and it is shown that the addition of idlers actually degrades the overall performance.
In this paper we discuss the addition of idlers to the step-recovery diode frequency multipliers operating in the series mode. It is shown that, contrary to expectations, idlers in the series mode actually degrade the overall performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents letters to the editor referencing articles and topics discussed in previous issues. "Why Don't They Write Right," which focused on effective writing of articles in journals, and the proper depiction of counseling systems; "Case Study: Student-Faculty Discussions," which discussed the relationship between students and faculty members; "The Counselor as Consultant: What Can Teachers Teach Him?," which focuses on the role of school counselors as consultants, rather than as problem solvers; "group Counseling With truants," which discussed the taming of young truants through group counseling.

The article focuses on the relationship of materiality to modernism. The article discusses a photograph by artist Timothy H. O'Sullivan in which a miner is mining silver, the material used to develop the film, the possible digital reproduction of photography and the staged nature of the subject in the photograph. The article goes on to compare distractions of modern day with the attitude of the flâneur, the philosophies of Karl Marx and Slavoj Žižek and the materiality of the items needed to write about the photograph, such as a computer.

Editorial. Introduces a series of articles published in the June 2003 issue of 'Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.' Cultural significance of television Logie Awards; Transition of the flaneur from modernity to postmodernity period; Analysis of Michael Powell's motion picture 'They're a Weird Mob.'