Sharp and telling

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-562
Author(s):  
Karin Tybjerg

Abstract Surgical instrument collections have been used in a multitude of ways – as tools, taxonomies, teaching aids, representation, historical highlights and public displays – and they provide a key to understanding the shifting relations between surgery, medical museums and medical history. Tracing the uses of the surgical instrument collections from the Royal Danish Academy of Surgery and the Medical Historical Museum at the University of Copenhagen reveals a network of disciplinary and institutional changes from the late nineteenth to early twenty-first century. The history of the collections maps relations between scientific and cultural historical collections and between medicine and history. In the same way as surgical instruments have connected the surgeon’s hand to the patients’ body, the surgical instrument collections connect together the public, medical practice and history.

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 283-287
Author(s):  
Evgenii Koloskov

This review is devoted to the book of Pavel E. Lukin and Alexander A. Safonov “In the Heart of the Balkans: Essays on the History of Macedonia (from ancient times to the early twenty-first century)”. The authors challenged themselves to write a textbook of the History of Macedonia for history and philology university students, which was the very first attempt in the Russian historiography. The textbook was provided with an extension of a selected bibliography and a list of abbreviations and illustrations. In addition, the authors also proposed an exemplary history course curriculum, which is actually the full content of the university course program. Lukin and Safonov’s book also contains a brief history of the most important historical cities and the illustrative material which demonstrates the beauty of the cultural heritage of the region in architecture and painting. It could be interesting to a wide circle of readers. The work due to the stated framework of the textbook may sometimes lack the deep analysis of some issues; however, it will certainly be fundamental for all those who would choose the specialization in the history of the Macedonian lands and the countries of the Balkan Peninsula in general.


Author(s):  
Eve McPherson

Since the beginning of the twentieth century and the establishment of the modern Turkish Republic, the Islamic call to prayer in Turkey has occupied a controversial space, sonically and culturally. Early on, the new Republic attempted to “Turkicize” the call by legally mandating Turkish language recitation, a practice that was maintained for nearly twenty years despite strong popular opposition. Although this particular practice ended in 1950, the call to prayer has continued to engender controversy. One of the more recent debates has grown out of the practice of centralization. Call to prayer centralization refers to broadcasting one muezzin, or caller, from one mosque to other area mosques in an effort to diminish “cacophony” and regulate the sound quality, ostensibly to beautify the call and make it more clearly audible. Although the goals of the centralization program have been to improve the sound quality and distribution of the call, opponents of the program have voiced concerns. Such concerns include the loss of mosque “personalities” and the possible substitution of recordings for live recitation, an especially worrisome prospect in the context of a religious practice that considers live human recitation a direct conduit to the divine. This chapter examines the early twenty-first-century history of centralization and how its implementation fits into the continuing dialogue on the public declaration of faith in the context of a politically secular republic, thus contributing to studies on the use and mediation of public sonic space.


Author(s):  
Oksana Blashkiv ◽  

This article focuses on the image of the Russian professors in The Eccentric University (2008), a novel by Stanislav Rakús. Based on previous research, the author presents a short survey of Russian images in Slovak Literature in the late nineteenth — early twentieth-first centuries, whose peculiarities are rooted in the history of interaction between the two Slavic nations. Thus, the early twentieth century idealistic image of the Russian was built on the basis of Russian literature. The first images of Russians based on personal experience were created by Czechoslovak legionnaires as a result of interaction with Russians between 1917 and 1920, while after World War II, they were presented through a dichotomy “brother — suppressor”, to be changed into more dynamic ones by the early twenty-first century. The Eccentric University, which the author approaches from the perspective of the academic novel and part of Rakъs’s academic trilogy, enlarges the list of literary images of the Russians in Slovak literature. The author analyses images of Maria Petrovna Golovčikova, a female professor of Russian nineteenth-century literature, and Alexandr Kirillovič Ћuprej, a professor of Russian literature, both immigrant scholars at a Slovak university in the 1950s. The author maintains that through these images, Rakъs addresses not only Slovak Russophilic stereotypes historically embedded in nineteenth-century literary images of Russians, but also gender and immigrant stereotypes that circulate in contemporary Slovak culture. The author concludes that an ironic portrayal of Russian professors is directed at the cultural memory activation, which together with other features typical for both campus and academic novel adds to the new (Rakús’s) invariant of the “university novel”.


Author(s):  
Chris Keith

This book offers a new material history of the Jesus tradition. It shows that the introduction of manuscripts to the transmission of the Jesus tradition played an underappreciated but crucial role in the reception history of the tradition that eventuated. It focuses particularly on the competitive textualization of the Jesus tradition, whereby Gospel authors drew attention to the written nature of their tradition, sometimes in attempts to assert superiority to predecessors, and the public reading of the Jesus tradition. Both these processes reveal efforts on the part of early followers of Jesus to place the gospel-as-manuscript on display, whether in the literary tradition or in the assembly. Building upon interdisciplinary work on ancient book cultures, this book traces an early history of the gospel as artifact from the textualization of Mark in the first century until the eventual usage of liturgical reading as a marker of authoritative status in the second and third centuries and beyond. Overall, it reveals a vibrant period of the development of the Jesus tradition, wherein the material status of the tradition frequently played as important a role as the ideas about Jesus that it contained.


Author(s):  
Tatyana Zlotnikova ◽  

Contemporary Russian socio-cultural, cultural and philosophical, socio psychological, artistic and aesthetic practices actualize the Russian tradition of rejection, criticism, undisguised hatred and fear of power. Today, however, power has ceased to be a subject of one-dimensional denial or condemnation, becoming the subject of an interdisciplinary scientific discourse that integrates cultural studies, philosophy, social psychology, semiotics, art criticism and history (history of culture). The article provides theoretical substantiation and empirical support for the two facets of notions of power. The first facet is the unique, not only political, but also mental determinant of the problem of power in Russia, a kind of reflection of modus vivendi. The second facet is the artistic and image-based determinant of problem of power in Russia designated as artis imago. Theoretical grounds for solving these problems are found in F. Nietzsche’s perceptions of the binary “potentate-mass” opposition, G. Le Bon’s of the “leader”, K.-G. Jung’s of mechanisms of human motivation for power. The paper dwells on the “semiosis of power” in the focus of thoughts by A. F. Losev, P. A. Sorokin, R. Barthes. Based on S. Freud’s views of the unconscious and G. V. Plekhanov’s and J. Maritain’s views of the totalitarian power, we substantiate the concept of “the imperial unconscious”. The paper focuses on the importance of the freedom motif in art (D. Diderot and V. G. Belinsky as theorists, S. Y. Yursky as an art practitioner). Power as a subject of influence and object of analysis by Russian creators is studied on the material of perceptions and creative experience of A. S. Pushkin (in the context of works devoted to Russian “impostors” by numerous authors). Special attention is paid to the early twenty-first century television series on Soviet rulers (Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Furtseva). The conclusion is made on the relevance of Pushkin’s remark about “living power” “hated by the rabble” for contemporary Russia.


Author(s):  
Alfred L. Brophy

This chapter discusses the role of historical analysis in property law. The history of property has been used to offer support for property rights. Their long history makes the distribution of property look normal, indeed natural and something that cannot or should not be challenged. However, historically in the U.S there have been competing visions of property. From the Progressive era onward especially, the history of property has been used to show the unequal distribution of property and to offer an alternative vision that expands the rights of non-owners of property. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, the history of opposition to feudalism and protection of the rights of non-owners was used to protect the rights of non-owners. Thus, the history of property has been a tool of judges and legislators to support property rights and it has also been, less frequently, a tool of critique.


Tempo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (289) ◽  
pp. 30-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hunter Coblentz

AbstractThis article serves as an introduction to the twentieth- and twenty-first-century musical practices that have made use of glass instruments and objects. Emphasis is placed on those practices that use glass in a raw, acoustic manner, and those that take advantage of the precision with which glass can be tuned. First, a general history of glass music is presented, followed by an overview of the physical and acoustic aspects pertaining to the material that are relevant to those composers wishing to integrate glass into their works. Finally, the composers, performers and instrument builders who have made significant use of glass in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are surveyed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-299
Author(s):  
Markus Wild

Abstract This letter focuses on both the recent history of academic philosophy in Switzerland and its present status. Historically, institutional self-consciousness of philosophy came to life during World War II as a reaction to the isolation of international academic life in Switzerland; moreover, the divide between philosophy in the French part and the German part of the country had to be bridged. One important instrument to achieve this end was the creation of the “Schweizerische Philosophische Gesellschaft” and its “Jahrbuch” (today: “Studia philosophica”) in 1940. At the same time the creation of the journal “Dialectica” (1947), the influence of Joseph Maria Bochensky at the University of Fribourg and Henri Lauener at the University of Berne prepared the ground for the flourishing of analytic philosophy in Switzerland. Today analytic philosophy has established a very successful academic enterprise in Switzerland without suppressing other philosophical traditions. Despite the fact that academic philosophy is somewhat present in the public, there is much more potential for actual philosophical research to enter into public consciousness. The outline sketched in this letter is, of course, a limited account of the recent history and present state of philosophy in Switzerland. There is only very little research on this topic.


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaori Kusuda ◽  
Kazuhiko Yamashita ◽  
Akiko Ohnishi ◽  
Kiyohito Tanaka ◽  
Masaru Komino ◽  
...  

Purpose – To prevent malpractices, medical staff has adopted inventory time-outs and/or checklists. Accurate inventory and maintenance of surgical instruments decreases the risk of operating room miscounting and malfunction. In our previous study, an individual management of surgical instruments was accomplished using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a new management method of RFID-tagged instruments. Design/methodology/approach – The management system of RFID-tagged surgical instruments was used for 27 months in clinical areas. In total, 13 study participants assembled surgical trays in the central sterile supply department. Findings – While using the management system, trays were assembled 94 times. During this period, no assembly errors occurred. An instrument malfunction had occurred after the 19th, 56th, and 73th uses, no malfunction caused by the RFID tags, and usage history had been recorded. Additionally, the time it took to assemble surgical trays was recorded, and the long-term usability of the management system was evaluated. Originality/value – The system could record the number of uses and the defective history of each surgical instrument. In addition, the history of the frequency of instruments being transferred from one tray to another was recorded. The results suggest that our system can be used to manage instruments safely. Additionally, the management system was acquired of the learning effect and the usability on daily maintenance. This finding suggests that the management system examined here ensures surgical instrument and tray assembly quality.


2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-358
Author(s):  
Andrew Scull

Michel Foucault remains one of the most influential intellectuals in the early twenty-first century world. This paper examines the origins and impact of his first major work, Folie et déraison, on the history of psychiatry, particularly though not exclusively in the world of Anglo-American scholarship. The impact and limits of Foucault’s work on the author’s own contributions to the history of psychiatry are examined, as is the larger influence of Madness and Civilization (as it is known to most Anglophones) on the nascent social history of psychiatry. The paper concludes with an assessment of the sources of the appeal of Foucault’s work among some scholars, and notes his declining influence on contemporary scholars working on the history of psychiatry.


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