Access to the Divine: Gender and Votive Images in Moldavia and Wallachia

1998 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 143-161
Author(s):  
Christine Peters
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Wall Painting ◽  
Social Position ◽  
The West ◽  
Negative Image ◽  
Adam And Eve

In Orthodox Last Judgements in sixteenth-century Moldavia, both Adam and Eve appear as saintly intercessors on behalf of mankind. The presence of these suppliant figures, on either side of the throne of hetimasia (Plate i), suggests that Orthodoxy and Catholicism differed significantly in their evaluations of the gender implications of the Fall. In medieval Catholicism the portrayal of a nimbed figure of Eve, or even of Adam, was inconceivable. In the West the ideas of the Fall as the cause of the crucifixion and of Mary as the antithesis of Eve produced a powerful set of negative views of women’s nature. The weaker sex was inherently vulnerable to temptation, flattery, and persuasion, endangering not only women’s souls but those of all mankind. The veneration of Mary tempered this negative image, but Mary’s extraordinary nature could never entirely erase the assumptions of innate female inferiority based on the role of Eve in the Fall. The depiction of Eve as a saint in Orthodox wall painting appears to offer an unexpected challenge to the view that such gender associations are the only possible outcome of the Genesis account. It is also tempting to relate the presence of such representations in Moldavia to the highly unusual social position of women in Moldavian society, based on inheritance customs which divided estates equally between both sons and daughters.

scholarly journals Stratigraphy of the wall paintings in the main church of the Praskvica Monastery

Zograf ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 153-163
Author(s):  
Dragan Vojvodic
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Wall Painting ◽  
The Other ◽  
Stylistic Analysis ◽  
Wall Paintings ◽  
The West ◽  
The Third ◽  
Technical Features ◽  
The Church

In the katholikon of the monastery of Praskvica there are remains of two layers of post-Byzantine wall-painting: the earlier, from the third quarter of the sixteenth century, and later, from the first half of the seventeenth century, which is the conclusion based on stylistic analysis and technical features. The portions of frescoes belonging to one or the other layer can be clearly distinguished from one another and the content of the surviving representations read more thoroughly than before. It seems that the remains of wall-painting on what originally was the west facade of the church also belong to the earlier layer. It is possible that the church was not frescoed in the lifetime of its ktetor, Balsa III Balsic.

Wanted: A Comparative History of the Modern Mediterranean

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-53
Author(s):  
Edmund Burke
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Third World ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
The West ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Third World

There is something seriously flawed about models of social change that posit the dominant role of in-built civilizational motors. While “the rise of the West” makes great ideology, it is poor history. Like Jared Diamond, I believe that we need to situate the fate of nations in a long-term ecohistorical context. Unlike Diamond, I believe that the ways (and the sequences) in which things happened mattered deeply to what came next. The Mediterranean is a particularly useful case in this light. No longer a center of progress after the sixteenth century, the decline of the Mediterranean is usually ascribed to its inherent cultural deficiencies. While the specific cultural infirmity varies with the historian (amoral familism, patron/clientalism, and religion are some of the favorites) its civilizationalist presuppositions are clear. In this respect the search for “what went wrong” typifies national histories across the region and prefigures the fate of the Third World.

scholarly journals Why Europe and the West? Why Not China?

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S Landes
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Technological Advance ◽  
The West ◽  
European Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

In the history of technological development, why didn't other regions keep up with Europe? This is an important question, as one learns almost as much from failure as from success. The one civilization that was in a position to match and even anticipate the European achievement was China. China had two chances: first, to generate a continuing, self-sustaining process of scientific and technological advance on the basis of its indigenous traditions and achievements; and second, to learn from European science and technology once the foreign “barbarians” entered the Chinese domain in the sixteenth century. China failed both times. What explains the first failure? I stress the role of the market: the fact that enterprise was free in Europe while China lacked a free market and institutionalized property rights; that in Europe innovation worked and paid, while the Chinese state was always stepping in to interfere with private enterprise. As for the second failure, China's cultural triumphalism combined with petty downward tyranny made it a singularly bad learner.

scholarly journals THE ROLE OF CENTRE FOR ISLAMIC THOUGHT AND EDUCATION (CITE): Correcting Negative Image of Islam, Spreading Moderate Islam in Australia

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-176
Author(s):  
Ahmad Ali Nurdin ◽  
Rosihon Anwar ◽  
Husnul Qodim ◽  
Usep Dedi Rostandi
Keyword(s):  
Educational Institution ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The West ◽  
Negative Image ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Islamic Thought

This paper discusses the participation of educational institution, Centre for Islamic Thought and Education (CITE) in promoting and campaigning moderate and tolerance Islam in Adelaide, Australia. The article also attempts to close reading of the discourse of moderate Islam itself to answer fundamental questions about what moderate Islam is, what CITE attempts to do, can do, and cannot be expected to do. This study is essential to fill the gap in the dearth literature discussing the role of educational institution in campaigning moderate Islam in Australia. This study was based on observation and interviews conducted with main figures of CITE and the staff members or the supporters of the group who actively involved in their activities in Adelaide, Australia. The result of the study shows that as an educational institution, CITE has significant roles in promoting moderate Islam and straightening negative image of Islam in the West.

scholarly journals Angels with Dirty Faces: Gosha Rubchinskiy and the Politics of Style

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 18-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practice ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Negative Image ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Literal Sense ◽  
The World ◽  
Fashion Designer

In many ways, twenty-first century Russia is the land par excellence of extreme masculinity. President Putin himself regularly indulges in spectacular performances of extreme masculinity, whether it be pledging to ‘bump off’ Chechen terrorists in their ‘shithouses’, swimming in ice-cold Siberian lakes, or posing in the pilot’s seat of a supersonic strategic bomber. Men’s fashion and fashion imagery is one of the rare areas of Russian culture where the kind of masculinity embodied (in a literal sense) by Putin is still challenged, and indeed subverted. Perhaps the most interesting Russian men’s fashion designer working today, certainly the designer who has engaged most persistently with political change, is Gosha Rubchinskiy. In his work he foregrounds various ‘extreme’ forms of Russian masculinity, from the angelic youth at one end of the spectrum through the brown-shirted neo-fascist adolescent, to the shaven-headed football fan at the other end. He does so, he maintains, in order to change the way Russia is perceived in the world. Indeed, if Dostoevsky once claimed that ‘beauty will save the world,’ Rubchinskiy self-consciously enlists what he refers to as the ‘beauty’ of his models in an attempt to challenge the negative image of Russia generated by western media as part of what he has called an ‘informational [sic] war’ against his native country. Borrowing concepts from Bakhtin (the chronotope, carnival) and Foucault (heterotopia), I examine Rubchinskiy’s extreme masculinities, and the questions they raise about masculinity, about the cultural relationship between Russia and the West, fashion as a discrete cultural practice, and the place and role of the fashion designer in society.

Economic and Legal Support for Commercialization of Intellectual Property in Russia

2003 ◽  
pp. 66-76
Author(s):  
I. Dezhina ◽  
I. Leonov
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
The State ◽  
Commercial Application ◽  
The West ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Legal Context

The article is devoted to the analysis of the changes in economic and legal context for commercial application of intellectual property created under federal budgetary financing. Special attention is given to the role of the state and to comparison of key elements of mechanisms for commercial application of intellectual property that are currently under implementation in Russia and in the West. A number of practical suggestions are presented aimed at improving government stimuli to commercialization of intellectual property created at budgetary expense.

Magistri Legis. Eine Studie zur dogmatischen Funktion im industriellen System

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-112
Author(s):  
Pierre Legendre
Keyword(s):  
Social Function ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Cultural Reproduction ◽  
Industrial System ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Law ◽  
New Look

"Der Beitrag reevaluiert die «dogmatische Funktion», eine soziale Funktion, die mit biologischer und kultureller Reproduktion und folglich der Reproduktion des industriellen Systems zusammenhängt. Indem sie sich auf der Grenze zwischen Anthropologie und Rechtsgeschichte des Westens situiert, nimmt die Studie die psychoanalytische Frage nach der Rolle des Rechts im Verhalten des modernen Menschen erneut in den Blick. </br></br>This article reappraises the dogmatic function, a social function related to biological and cultural reproduction and consequently to the reproduction of the industrial system itself. On the borderline of anthropology and of the history of law – applied to the West – this study takes a new look at the question raised by psychoanalysis concerning the role of law in modern human behaviour. "

Broken Promises and the Rise of a Stereotype

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koji Yamamoto
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Political History ◽  
Negative Image ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Balance Of Trade

Projects began to emerge during the sixteenth century en masse by promising to relieve the poor, improve the balance of trade, raise money for the Crown, and thereby push England’s imperial ambitions abroad. Yet such promises were often too good to be true. This chapter explores how the ‘reformation of abuses’—a fateful slogan associated with England’s break from Rome—came to be used widely in economic contexts, and undermined promised public service under Elizabeth and the early Stuarts. The negative image of the projector soon emerged in response, reaching both upper and lower echelons of society. The chapter reconstructs the social circulation of distrust under Charles, and considers its repercussions. To do this it brings conceptual tools developed in social psychology and sociology to bear upon sources conventionally studied in literary and political history.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Chief Editor ◽  
City Council ◽  
The West ◽  
Son Of God ◽  
Warm Summer ◽  
The City

On a warm summer afternoon in 1561, Calvin’s chief editor donned a heavy stole, thick robes, and a gleaming tiara and proceeded to strut and fret his hour upon the stage in a comedy of his own devising. For little more than a century, Christians in the West had celebrated on August 6th Christ’s Transfiguration as the son of God in shining robes. But on this Sunday in Geneva, the city council, consistory, and an audience fresh from having attended edifying sermons at morning service gathered to applaud the transfiguration of the learned Conrad Badius into the title role of ...

Levantine Art in the “Orientalizing” Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 369-383
Author(s):  
Marian H. Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The West ◽  
False Dichotomy ◽  
First Millennium

The “Orientalizing period” represents a scholarly designation used to describe the eighth and seventh centuries bce when regions in Greece, Italy, and farther west witnessed a flourishing of arts and cultures attributed to contact with cultural areas to the east—in particular that of the Phoenicians. This chapter surveys Orientalizing as an intellectual and historiographic concept and reconsiders the role of purportedly Phoenician arts within the existing scholarly narratives. The Orientalizing period should be understood as a construct of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship that was structured around a false dichotomy between the Orient (the East) and the West. The designation “Phoenician” has a similarly complex historiographic past rooted in ancient Greek stereotyping that has profoundly shaped modern scholarly interpretations. This chapter argues that the luxury arts most often credited as agents of Orientalization—most prominent among them being carved ivories, decorated metal bowls, and engraved tridacna shells—cannot be exclusively associated with a Phoenician cultural origin, thus calling into question the primacy of the Phoenicians in Orientalizing processes. Each of these types of objects appears to have a much broader production sphere than is indicated by the attribute as Phoenician. In addition, the notion of unidirectional influences flowing from east to west is challenged, and instead concepts of connectivity and networking are proposed as more useful frameworks for approaching the problem of cultural relations during the early part of the first millennium bce.

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