Introduction

Author(s):  
Brenda Hollweg ◽  
Igor Krstić

In this introductory chapter readers are made familiar with the expanding research field of essayistic filmmaking in world cinema-contexts around the globe. Brenda Hollweg and Igor Krstíc argue that the essay film is a privileged political and ethical tool by means of which filmmakers around the world approach historically specific and locally, geographically concrete issues against larger global issues and universal concerns. The chapter also includes a genealogical overview of important moments in the development of essay filmmaking, particularly during the 1920s and 1960s, and provides readers with short abstracts on the individual chapters and their specific transnationally inflected case studies on essay film practitioners from around the world.

Author(s):  
Susanna Braund ◽  
Zara Martirosova Torlone

The introduction describes the broad landscape of translation of Virgil from both the theoretical and the practical perspectives. It then explains the genesis of the volume and indicates how the individual chapters, each one of which is summarized, fit into the complex tapestry of Virgilian translation activity through the centuries and across the world. The volume editors indicate points of connection between the chapters in order to render the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Braund and Torlone emphasize that a project such as this could look like a (rather large) collection of case studies; they therefore consider it important to extrapolate larger phenomena from the specifics presented here


Arthur Szyk ◽  
2004 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Joseph P. Ansell

This introductory chapter briefly describes the life and work of the artist, Arthur Szyk. It discusses his numerous and diverse works and places special emphasis on those works which contain topical commentary on contemporary political and social issues. Though it would seem difficult to reconcile these greatly disparate elements in one artist's work, the chapter argues that the concentrated political activity of the World War II years was not an aberration — however important — in Szyk's career. It was an integral part of an artistic life dedicated to serving humanity through his talents. To understand the interconnection of all aspects of his work, and to understand the man who was equally adept at rendering an entire world within a few square inches of exquisite beauty and savagely attacking a political enemy through caricature, the chapter argues that one must look beneath the decorated surface of the page to the meaning of the individual work and to its historical context.


Author(s):  
Ian Finseth

Contra conventional wisdom, this introductory chapter proposes that the Civil War dead were understood in relation to four epistemic predicaments that shaped not only an American but a broadly Western modernity in the late nineteenth century: (1) a growing sense of the eᶊentially mediated character of all experience and a loᶊ of faith in the coherence of the individual subject; (2) the increasing dominance of the image in political and social relations and in shaping how Americans knew the world; (3) an erosion of traditional and nationalist views regarding the meaning of historical change and of the present’s relationship to the past; and (4) a newly secular emphasis on complexity, contingency, and chance in the workings of the world. These social and intellectual dilemmas provide an organizational scheme for the book, which is structured around four cultural archives: eyewitneᶊ accounts, visual art, histories of the war, and narrative fiction.


This handbook presents detailed accounts of current research in all aspects of language prosody, with chapters written by leading experts from various disciplines. The last four decades have seen major theoretical and empirical breakthroughs in the field, many of them informed by interdisciplinary approaches, as reflected in this volume. Following an introductory chapter covering the fundamentals of language prosody research, Parts II and III explore prosody in speech production and in relation to linguistic structure. Part IV provides overviews of prosodic systems across the world, with case studies from Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Pacific, and the Americas. The chapters in Parts V, VI, and VII investigate prosody in communication, in language processing, and in language acquisition (respectively), while Part VIII examines prosody in technology and the arts.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 98-116
Author(s):  
Bertil W. Hök

Case studies of well documented, great innovations were performed with focus on their underlying, basic ideas. In retrospect, these ideas may seem obvious, but at the time of conception, they were considered utopian, here defined as imaginative, unexpected, counterintuitive, or unrealistic by most people, including experts. The build-up of the utopian ideas in each of the case studies is shortly described along with a critical analysis about their roles, importance, and risk exposure in the individual cases. The ideas were ranked according to defined criteria of importance, risk, and utopian potential, and this ranking was compared to the ranking of the overall impact of the analyzed innovations. The results suggest that the utopian idea potential correlates with the overall impact. The World Wide Web and the smartphones are prominent examples of great innovations driven by utopian ideas. The significance of these findings is discussed in view of current innovation models and in recognition of the heuristic character of the reported investigation.


The liberation of learning is a prelude to the expansion of the personal conscience—this expansion is the first of two of the only natural freedoms given to the individual, the other being the employment of one’s physical, mental, and emotional abilities in accord with that conscience—and becomes the foundation of all other rights and corruptions that both bless and plague every society ever created by mankind. This is fundamental and explains why universal learning is necessary for any kind of progress in the way we see, think about, and treat one another and the World around us. For every book somebody wants you to read, there is a book they do not want you to read—both can be found at the library. Let that sink into your thoughts for a moment, its meaning. That is the ”library,” its very concept, and this is what it has come to represent in the minds of millions of patrons. It is a fine heritage matched by no other institution, and one that all its workers should be proud to be a part of and hopefully protect and perpetuate. This introductory chapter covers a few brief insights into why I wrote this book—subjective motivates and goals guiding its completion. The chapter is concluded with a light historical review of the pivotal technologies establishing the foundation of information technology leading into the Information Age and paving the way to changes in the library user environment.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-130
Author(s):  
Coline Covington

The Berlin Wall came down on 9 November 1989 and marked the end of the Cold War. As old antagonisms thawed a new landscape emerged of unification and tolerance. Censorship was no longer the principal means of ensuring group solidarity. The crumbling bricks brought not only freedom of movement but freedom of thought. Now, nearly thirty years later, globalisation has created a new balance of power, disrupting borders and economies across the world. The groups that thought they were in power no longer have much of a say and are anxious about their future. As protest grows, we are beginning to see that the old antagonisms have not disappeared but are, in fact, resurfacing. This article will start by looking at the dissembling of a marriage in which the wall that had peacefully maintained coexistence disintegrates and leads to a psychic development that uncannily mirrors that of populism today. The individual vignette leads to a broader psychological understanding of the totalitarian dynamic that underlies populism and threatens once again to imprison us within its walls.


Author(s):  
Emma Simone

Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world: A Heideggerian Study explores Woolf’s treatment of the relationship between self and world from a phenomenological-existential perspective. This study presents a timely and compelling interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s textual treatment of the relationship between self and world from the perspective of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Drawing on Woolf’s novels, essays, reviews, letters, diary entries, short stories, and memoirs, the book explores the political and the ontological, as the individual’s connection to the world comes to be defined by an involvement and engagement that is always already situated within a particular physical, societal, and historical context. Emma Simone argues that at the heart of what it means to be an individual making his or her way in the world, the perspectives of Woolf and Heidegger are founded upon certain shared concerns, including the sustained critique of Cartesian dualism, particularly the resultant binary oppositions of subject and object, and self and Other; the understanding that the individual is a temporal being; an emphasis upon intersubjective relations insofar as Being-in-the-world is defined by Being-with-Others; and a consistent emphasis upon average everydayness as both determinative and representative of the individual’s relationship to and with the world.


World Cinema and the Essay Film examines the ways in which essay film practices are deployed by transnational filmmakers in specific local and national contexts, in an interconnected world. The book identifies the essay film as a political and ethical tool to reflect upon and potentially resist the multiple, often contradictory effects of globalisation. With case studies of essayistic works by John Akomfrah, Frances Calvert, José Luis Guerín, Jonas Mekas, David Perlov, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Zhao Liang, amongst many others, and with a photo-essay by Trinh T. Minh-ha, the book expands current research on the essay film and presents transnational perspectives on what is becoming a global film practice.


Moreana ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (Number 209) (1) ◽  
pp. 79-93
Author(s):  
Marie-Claire Phélippeau

This paper shows how solidarity is one of the founding principles in Thomas More's Utopia (1516). In the fictional republic of Utopia described in Book II, solidarity has a political and a moral function. The principle is at the center of the communal organization of Utopian society, exemplified in a number of practices such as the sharing of farm work, the management of surplus crops, or the democratic elections of the governor and the priests. Not only does solidarity benefit the individual Utopian, but it is a prerequisite to ensure the prosperity of the island of Utopia and its moral preeminence over its neighboring countries. However, a limit to this principle is drawn when the republic of Utopia faces specific social difficulties, and also deals with the rest of the world. In order for the principle of solidarity to function perfectly, it is necessary to apply it exclusively within the island or the republic would be at risk. War is not out of the question then, and compassion does not apply to all human beings. This conception of solidarity, summed up as “Utopia first!,” could be dubbed a Machiavellian strategy, devised to ensure the durability of the republic. We will show how some of the recommendations of Realpolitik made by Machiavelli in The Prince (1532) correspond to the Utopian policy enforced to protect their commonwealth.


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