‘The province…But, indeed, that is Russia!’

“The Imagined Province” investigates the shifts in what the “idea of the province” in the period of world war and the Russian revolution and civil war. I argue that the mental and emotional valence of Russia’s map changed markedly over these nine years as regionalist and provincial pride came into literary culture, urging a fresh view of central Russia outside the capital cities. This change of perspective emerges in essays, stories, and poetry throughout Central Russia, though this article focuses mainly on the Volga Region. Authors of many different political stripes contributed to this shift—among them, regionalists like Evgenii Chirikov and Nikolai Kliuev, pro-revolutionary socialists such as Maksim Gor’kii and Matvei Dudorov, and Bolsheviks like Aleksei Dorogoichenko and Fedor Bogorodskii. As the Bolsheviks regathered Russia, these provincial voices were overpowered by more prominent voices from the center. Nonetheless, they established a “usable history” that remains a substrate of Russian culture even today, challenging the simplistic binary juxtaposing “capital” and “province.”

Trasmigrazioni: cultura materiale e sviluppo dell'identità. Alcune riflessioni sulla produzione di San Vincenzo al Volturno

The text analyzes the ornamental culture of the monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno, through the comparison between different classes of materials. Through the analogies between the ornamental motifs, we tried to reconstruct their creative process, on a perceptual basis. The study, in fact, focuses on the relationship between the individual and the environment, exploiting the theories of Gibson, applying them to a particular context such as monasteries. The goal is to demonstrate how the continuous use of space determines the acquisition of visual information, which, stored in memory, is re-proposed during the creative process. Especially, it is the daily journey of the rooms that guarantees the memorization of the signs and, at the same time, their updating, through the change of perspective that occurs with movement. In the last part, we discuss the perceptive effects of the aniconic paintings in the crypt of Joshua.

A neurologist’s rhombencephalitis after comirnaty vaccination. A change of perspective

Rhombencephalitis is an orphan disease of multiple causes that may manifest with facial palsy, limb ataxia and reduced consciousness. Up to now it is described after COVID-19 infection and in this (personal) case was found up to 8 weeks after Comirnaty vaccination. So far, we do not fully understand the pathophysiological characteristics of encephalitis associated with SARS-CoV-2. In rare cases, vaccination may cause an immunological reaction and delayed inflammation, the consequences of which we have not yet deciphered. Rhombencephalitis should be considered as a rare potential mRNA-associated vaccination side effect.

Development and Structures of Trialogue for Bipolar Disorders in Germany and Guidelines of the German Society for Bipolar Disorders

The German concept of a trialogue in medicine is at its best a cooperation between patients, relatives, and professionals as partners on equal footing. Prerequisites, and also the aim of the trialogue, are mutual respect, an open attitude from professionals, and self-confidence from patients and relatives. The expertise of each of these groups is to be strengthened through the trialogue and should benefit all. Trialogue cooperation brings about a change of perspective and promotes mutual understanding. By establishing a therapeutic relationship on equal footing with the patient with involvement of their relatives, individual and family resources can be better utilized, professional assistance can be designed to better meet the patient’s needs, and acceptance of and commitment to treatment can be increased. In addition, early symptoms and new phases of the disease can be recognized earlier and adequate treatment can be initiated more quickly. A favorable course of the disease is thus more likely, and relapses are less likely to present. The use of peers has proven to be quite helpful. The consistently trialogue structure within the German Society for Bipolar Disorder (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Bipolare Störungen e.V./DGBS: Heinrich-Hoffmann-Straße 10, 60528 Frankfurt am Main) as a medical society enables further development of the trialogue on many levels, for example, the drafting and updating of the German guidelines for bipolar disorder with the trialogue in mind.

Covid Conversations 4: Stacy Klein

The ecology of the rural setting in which Double Edge Theatre lives and works is as integral to its artistic work as to its principles of social justice, and these qualities mark the ensemble’s singular profile not only in the United States but also increasingly on the world theatre map. Stacy Klein co-founded the company in Boston in 1982 as a women’s theatre with a defined feminist programme. In 1997, Double Edge moved its work space to a farm that Klein had bought in Ashfield, Massachusetts, commuting from there back to Boston to show its productions. Within a few years, Klein and her collaborators were acutely aware of their separation from the local community, which necessitated a change of perspective to encompass personal and creative engagement with local people and to develop audiences within the area, while not losing sight of their international links. Carlos Uriona, formerly a popular-theatre activist from Argentina, had joined Double Edge and facilitated the local immersion that ultimately became its lifeline, most visibly during the Covid-19 pandemic, as Klein here observes. Klein, who had been a student of Rena Mirecka in Poland (starting in 1976), has maintained her friendship and professional relations with this founding member of the Teatr Laboratorium led by Jerzy Grotowski, inviting Mirecka to run wokshops at the Double Edge Farm. Collaboration with Gardzienice (also from the Grotowski crucible) through the Consortium of Theatre Practices (1999–2001) extended Klein’s Polish connections. She expanded her research on community cultures in Eastern and Central Europe and developed these experiences in her probing, distinctly imaginative explorations of theatre-making, while taking a new approach to participatory theatre-making in Ashfield. Her highly visual and sensual compositions are driven by her sense of the fantastic, no more strikingly so than in Klein’s Summers Spectacles, which are performed outdoors, in concert with the Farm’s natural environment – fields, trees, water, birds, animals, and heaven’s firmament. Double Edge’s profound commitment in the past decade to what it now terms ‘living culture’ and ‘art justice’ has taken root in multiracial collaborations, primarily with the indigenous peoples of Western Massachusetts. This Conversation took place on the winter solstice, 21 December 2020, a date that Maria Shevtsova, Editor of NTQ, had chosen symbolically. It was transcribed by Kunsang Kelden and edited by Shevtsova. Many thanks are extended to Travis Coe of Double Edge for assembling with such loving care the photographs requested.

Missing links: the functional unification of language and memory (L∪M)

The field of neurocognition is currently undergoing a significant change of perspective. Traditional neurocognitive models evolved into an integrative and dynamic vision of cognitive functioning. Dynamic integration assumes an interaction between cognitive domains traditionally considered to be distinct. Language and declarative memory are regarded as separate functions supported by different neural systems. However, they also share anatomical structures (notably, the inferior frontal gyrus, the supplementary motor area, the superior and middle temporal gyrus, and the hippocampal complex) and cognitive processes (such as semantic and working memory) that merge to endorse our quintessential daily lives. We propose a new model, "L∪M" (i.e., Language/union/Memory), that considers these two functions interactively. We fractionated language and declarative memory into three cognitive dimensions, Embodiment-Formulation-Internalization, that communicate reciprocally. We formalized their interactions at the brain level with a connectivity-based approach. This new taxonomy overcomes the modular view of cognitive functioning and reconciles functional specialization with plasticity in neurological disorders.

Laughter in early China: The Zhuangzi and beyond

Traditionally, in both East and West, laughter, and in particular its causes, have been studied under the category of humour. However, ideas on and practices of laughter itself have been largely ignored. This paper intends to lead readers beyond the topic of humour and focus on the act of laughter in the Zhuangzi as a starting point for the study of laughter in early China. It examines frequently ignored areas, such as how laughter draws readers into the text; how it functions to exclude people with different social value judgements; how it is used as a tool to challenge political power; how it serves rhetorical functions as a means to construct a conversation among people of different social or political status; and how it is used as an important signal and marker for a change of perspective. By examining questions such as: “What are the types of laughter?”, “What are the functions of laughter?”, and “How does laughter operate in different situations, and between different persons?” we can see a new idea of laughter in the Zhuangzi with multi-layered philosophical significance. Using the Zhuangzi as a case study, we can envision a series of well-crafted, intentional practices of laughter for various purposes throughout early Chinese texts.