scholarly journals Acquiring infection: the challenges of collecting epidemics and pandemics, past, present and future

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Emmens ◽  
N. McEnroe
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Science Museum ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spanish Flu ◽  
External Events ◽  
Personal Interests ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Epidemic Diseases ◽  
Looking Back

Curators of the history of medicine are now facing one of the greatest challenges of their careers—how to collect and preserve objects that convey the impacts of COVID-19 on science, medicine and wider society, while that same pandemic rages around them. But in such a rapidly changing situation, might looking back help us in going forward? Using the world-famous Medicine collections at London's Science Museum, we will explore how both presences and absences in the museum record can shed light on the challenges and dynamics of collecting around pandemic and infectious diseases, as well as the broader field of public health. Most strikingly, we examine why the 1918–19 Spanish flu pandemic left little material culture behind, in sharp contrast with other epidemic diseases. In recent years, so-called ‘rapid response’ collecting has become a tool used frequently by museums to capture ongoing developments and current research. To collect COVID-19 presents unique challenges, both practical and ethical, not least because to collect with a view to posterity is an action that remains highly subjective and is dependent on the decisions and personal interests of the curator as well as the influence of major external events.

Imagining the Woman Reader in the Age of Dante

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Lombardi
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
The Other ◽  
Women Readers ◽  
Literary Authority ◽  
Woman Reader ◽  
History Of ◽  
Female Literacy ◽  
Female Audience ◽  
Shed Light

The literature of the Italian Due- and Trecento frequently calls into play the figure of a woman reader. From Guittone d’Arezzo’s piercing critic, the ‘villainous woman’, to the mysterious Lady who bids Guido Cavalcanti to write his grand philosophical song, to Dante’s female co-editors in the Vita Nova and his great characters of female readers, such as Francesca and Beatrice in the Comedy, all the way to Boccaccio’s overtly female audience, this particular sort of interlocutor appears to be central to the construct of textuality and the construction of literary authority in these times. The aim of this book is to shed light on this figure by contextualizing her within the history of female literacy, the material culture of the book, and the ways in which writers and poets of earlier traditions (in particular Occitan and French) imagined her. Its argument is that these figures of women readers are not mere veneers between a male author and a ‘real’ male readership, but that, although fictional, they bring several advantages to their vernacular authors, such as orality, the mother tongue, the recollection of the delights of early education, literality, freedom in interpretation, absence of teleology, the beauties of ornamentation and amplification, a reduced preoccupation with the fixity of the text, the pleasure of making mistakes, dialogue with the other, the extension of desire, original simplicity, and new and more flexible forms of authority.

The Opera and the Omnibus: Material Culture, Urbanism and Boieldieu's La dame blanche

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-114
Author(s):  
Nicole Vilkner
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Business Model ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Transportation Systems ◽  
Mass Transportation ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

AbstractIn the summer of 1828, the Entreprise générale des Dames Blanches launched a fleet of white omnibuses onto the streets of Paris. These public transportation vehicles were named and fashioned after Boieldieu's opéra comique La dame blanche (1825): their rear doors were decorated with scenes of Scotland, their flanks painted with gesturing opera characters, and their mechanical horns trumpeted fanfares through the streets. The omnibuses offered one of the first mass transportation systems in the world and were an innovation that transformed urban circulation. During their thirty years of circulation, the omnibuses also had a profound effect on the reception history of Boieldieu's opera. When the omnibuses improved the quality of working- and middle-class life, bourgeois Parisians applauded the vehicles’ egalitarian business model, and Boieldieu's opera became unexpectedly entwined in the populist rhetoric surrounding the omnibus. Viewing opera through the lens of the Dames Blanches, Parisians conflated the sounds of opera and street, as demonstrated by Charles Valentin Alkan's piano piece Les omnibus, Op. 2 (1829), which combines operatic idioms and horn calls. Through these examples and others, this study examines the complex ways that material culture affects the dissemination and reception of a musical work.

The “Millstätter Predigten” (Millstatt Sermons), Petrus Berchorius, and Mechthild of Magdeburg

Daphnis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-84
Author(s):  
Sabine Seelbach
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Educational History ◽  
Mechthild Of Magdeburg ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Use ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract This article presents the project “Virtual Benedictine library Millstatt” (www.virtbibmillstatt.com/), which is dedicated to the cultural memory and educational history of Carinthia in the broadest sense. It aims to reconstruct the hitherto little-known and little-researched corpus of manuscripts from the Benedictine Abbey of Millstatt, to identify its texts, and to shed light on their history of use. Against the background of the eventful history of ownership of the Millstatt library, the problems that arise when trying to reliably assign manuscripts scattered around the world to the Millstatt corpus are outlined. Examples will be used to show the extent to which external features (binding, signature system, accessories), but also text-internal indications, make the origin and ownership history of the manuscripts traceable. Spectacular new finds are presented, but also erroneous assumptions about the affiliation of certain texts to the reading canon of the Millstatt Benedictines are pointed out.

scholarly journals Tres símbolos y una metáfora en la poesía de Andrés Sánchez Robayna

2018 ◽  
pp. 90-109
Author(s):  
Alejandro Rodríguez-Refojo
Keyword(s):  
Creative Process ◽  
World View ◽  
Religious View ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Shed Light

Se analizan los símbolos de la barca, la casa y la piedra, así como la metáfora del Libro del Mundo, en la obra poética de Andrés Sánchez Robayna. El análisis se apoya en las aportaciones de la simbología y la historia de las religiones con el objetivo de esclarecer algunos aspectos clave de la cosmovisión del autor y de su poética. La presencia de imágenes pertenecientes al simbolismo del centro, la concepción de la poesía como enigma y la indagación en la memoria como una parte fundamental del proceso creador constituyen los elementos que conducen al surgimiento de una conciencia religiosa del mundo.                                                                                                                                                                                                              This paper aims to analyse three symbols presented in Andrés Sánchez Robayna’s work of poetry: the boat, the house, the stone, and the metaphor of the Book of the World. This analysis is supported by contributions in the fields of symbolism and history of religions and it seeks to shed light on some key aspects of the author’s poetics and world view. The imagery related to the symbolism of the centre, the conception of poetry as an enigma and the search through memory as an essential phase in the creative process represent the main elements which lead to the emergence of a religious view of the world.

SOME COMMENTS ABOUT THE INFLUENCE OXUS CIVILIZATION IN THEARABIAN GULF

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (10) ◽  
pp. 97-103
Author(s):  
Khayitmurod Khurramov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Arabian Gulf ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Unique Material ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Written Sources ◽  
Marine Shell

It is known that the Oxus civilization in the Bronze Age, with its unique material culture, interacted with a number of cultural countries: the Indian Valley, Iran, Mesopotamia, Elam and other regions. As a result of these relationships, interactions and interactions are formed. Archaeologists turn to archaeological and written sources to shed light on the historiography of this period. This research is devoted to the history of cultural relations between the Oxus civilization and the countries of the Arabian Gulf in the Bronze Age. The article highlights cultural ties based on an analysis of stamp seals and unique artifacts.Key words: Dilmun, Magan, marine shell, Arabian Gulf, Bahrain, Mesopotamia, Harappa, Gonur, Afghanistan

HISTORY OF TUBERCULOSIS

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (28) ◽  
pp. 92-100
Author(s):  
Katriye KOMİLİ ◽  
Yağmur BAHAR
Keyword(s):  
Drug Treatment ◽  
General Information ◽  
Past Medical History ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Cattle Meat ◽  
Tuberculosis Disease ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Radiological Examinations

The history of tuberculosis disease dates back to very ancient times. Information from these ages shed light on today's tuberculosis disease. Tuberculosis has been one of the most important diseases that have negatively affected people's lives since ancient times and caused their death. The introduction of tuberculosis by humans occurred when cattle joined their daily habitats. Cattle meat , milk was used to spread the disease rapidly. The only common thing about tuberculosis, which has been referred to by different names throughout the ages, is that its consequences intersect somewhere. Most of the disease is caused by myobacterium Tuberculosis Bacillus. Bacillus was introduced to the world in 1882 through Robert Koach. Tuberculosis causes the most outbreaks in the world after Aids. Past medical history and radiological examinations are of great importance in the diagnosis of the disease. Drug treatment of patients continues for 6 to 8 months, but progress is blocked in the first two to three weeks. The aim of this study is to give general information about the progress of the disease throughout history. Key words: Bacillus , Epidemic, Tuberculosis

European Itinerant Opera and Operetta Companies Touring in the Near and Middle East

2019 ◽  
pp. 318-334
Author(s):  
Avra Xepapadako
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
World History ◽  
Musical Theatre ◽  
Theatre Companies ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
South Eastern Europe ◽  
Unexplored Area ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Shed Light

Τ‎his chapter focuses on the activity of musical theatre companies touring in south-eastern Europe, the Near East, the Caucasus and Central Asia during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It investigates cultural transfer and amalgamation between the metropolitan culture of the West and the Orient in the domain of opera and operetta. Greece, in particular, functioned as a cultural crossroads between East and West. From 1840 onwards, Italian opera companies began to tour in Greece and its new theatres, and even further towards the Near East; they were followed, from 1870 onwards, by French operetta and vaudeville companies. In the last decades of the 19th century, these French artists expanded their itineraries towards the East, beyond familiar geographical boundaries, tracing their own small odysseys on the map. The chapter charts and presents these traces, attempting to shed light on an unexplored area of the world history of music and theatre.

Iron Age landscape, society, and regionality : The material culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Rippon
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Symbolic Meanings ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Shed Light

In his review of South East Britain in the later Iron Age, Hill (2007, 16) observed that ‘Since the 1980s, little attention has been given to large-scale social explanations and narratives in British Iron Age archaeology. Debates over core–periphery models, the interpretation of hillforts, and the nature of social organization, were—for good reason—eclipsed by a focus on the symbolic meanings of space, structured deposition, and ritual.’ He goes on to argue that British archaeology is in need of more ‘straightforward storyboards’ around which data can be arranged (Hill 2007, 16), and Brudenell (2012, 52) has similarly noted how ‘close-grained understandings have often been won at the expense of broader pictures . . . [and that] with a few exceptions, recent approaches have atomized the study of later prehistoric society, focussing on the specifics of the local social milieu at the expense of broader scales of social analysis’. There have been some ‘big picture’ studies—most notably Cunliffe’s (1974; 1978; 1991; 2005) Iron Age Communities in Britain—but all too often studies of this period have focused on specific counties, types of site, or artefact, and it is noticeable how little systematic mapping of data there was in three recent collections of papers (Gwilt and Haselgrove 1997; Haselgrove and Moore 2007; Haselgrove and Pope 2007). This study, in contrast, aims to shed light on one important ‘storyboard’: the territorial structures within which communities built their landscapes. The written history of Britain begins in the first century BC when we first get insights into its political and territorial arrangements, although as this was a period when the island was becoming embroiled in the political instability caused by the expansion of the Roman world, the trends seen then may not reflect the longer-term patterns of territorial stability or instability that preceded it. In 54 BC, for example, Caesar describes how his major opponents were a civitas (usually translated as ‘tribe’) who had recently surpassed the neighbouring Trinovantes as the paramount group in South East Britain (Gallic War, 20–1; Dunnett 1975, 8; Moore 2011).

The Politics of Poetics: Nonnus' Dionysiaca and the World of Late Antiquity

Ramus ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 37 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 99-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Shorrock
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
The World ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Focus

Over the last thirty years or so our understanding of the world of late antiquity has undergone a radical transformation. In addition to the important contributions by historians such as Peter Brown (on the body and society) and Averil Cameron (on the evolution of Christian discourse), new perspectives have also been opened up on the material culture of the later empire. In the arena of literary criticism, however, signs of any analogous transformation have been much less obvious. Though, of course, it is easy to overstate the case, it is nevertheless clear from the bibliographic record that the literature of the late antique period has not yet been subject to the intense critical attention of other epochs, such as the Second Sophistic. This article will attempt on a necessarily modest scale to address this lack of critical attention.My primary focus is the fifth-century CE epic poem, the Dionysiaca of Nonnus, a product of Roman Egypt, written in Greek in forty-eight chapter-length books. It runs to over 21,000 hexameter lines—some five thousand lines longer than Homer's Iliad—and tells the story of the wine-loving Dionysus, the hero whose destiny it is to become a god. Though its influence on the wider literary culture of late antiquity was profound, it has remained a marginalised and neglected text within the history of modern classical scholarship. The Dionysiaca exists as an often quoted yet rarely read compendium of obscure mythological information, and is periodically mined for allusions to earlier and implicitly ‘better’ poets whose works have only survived in fragmentary form, but it is rarely considered on its own terms.

scholarly journals In the garden of the world

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Castorina
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Journey To The West ◽  
First Time ◽  
Shed Light

In the garden of the world. Italy to a young 19th century Chinese traveler. On September 14th, 1859, at the first light of dawn, a young Chinese traveler named Guo Liancheng 郭連城 (1839-1866) landed in Civitavecchia, Italy, after a long journey of overland travel and months of navigation. Coming from a small village far from the capital, he was only 20 years old and was in the company of an Italian priest, Luigi Celestino Spelta. Guo was not the first Chinese man to visit Europe but before leaving, he decided to keep a daily journal of his experience, published soon after his return with the title of Xiyou bilüe西游筆略 (Brief Account of the Journey to the West). This book presents for the first time the story of Guo Liancheng, exploring a still little-known aspect of the history of the contacts between Italy and China. Following the pages of Guo Liancheng’s journal, the author tries to shed light on its contents and features and to analyze the image of Italy described in the pages of Brief account of the Journey to the West, the earliest firsthand account on the Bel Paese ever published in China.

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