scholarly journals Peter Carey's Laptop

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rowan Wilken

In 2001, the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne built on its holdings of Australian literary manuscripts by acquiring all the papers, drafts and other items associated with Peter Carey’s Booker Prize-winning novel, True History of the Kelly Gang. The centrepiece of this acquisition, and the focus of this article, is Carey’s Apple Mac Classic laptop computer. The argument that is developed in this article is that Carey’s laptop is a technological artefact that operates, especially at the time of its acquisition, as an important talisman in three interrelated senses. First, it was viewed by library staff as a key means of gaining access to the ‘true history’ of Carey’s own creative drive or creative unconscious. Second, its public display alongside other textual objects (mostly books) served to reinforce a reconstructed corporate image that endeavoured to reposition the library as a vital contemporary cultural site and key player in Melbourne’s institutional gallery scene. Third, it was a crucial symbolic acquisition insofar as it spoke to certain desires within library management at that time, and which responded to similar moves at major libraries elsewhere around the world, to embrace collection digitisation as the path forward.

Author(s):  
Alexander Y. Samarin

The article presents the analysis of the new book of the famous bibliophile, researcher and populariser of rare books and bibliophilism, the Chairman of the National Union of Bibliophiles M.V. Seslavinsky about the history of creation, specific aspects of publishing and art design of the famous bibliophilic edition “Cantata” by A.A. Sidorov (Moscow, 1921). Comic verses of the future famous bibliologist and art critic, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR became the text for the first edition of the Russian society of the friends of books (1920—1929), the largest Association of booklovers of the 1920s. Two small runs totalled only 20 copies. The study is based primarily on the copies of “Cantata” preserved in the state collections (the Russian State Library, the State Tretyakov Gallery) and private collections, including the M.V. Seslavinsky’s one. The discovery of new documents on the history of the publication allowed restoring the list of owners of the autographed copies. Using the copy-by-copy method, the researcher succeeded in describing the numerous design options of the rarity of bibliophile publishing. The use of art-historical methods allowed to finally establish that the prototype for the image on the engraving “Bibliophile in 1920” (artist N.B. Baklanov, engraver I.N. Pavlov) was A.N. Benoit, the famous painter. The author introduces into circulation the handwritten poetic epistles of A.A. Sidorov to the owners of the autographed copies and other unique materials about preparation for printing, distribution and provenance of “Cantata”. In general, it can be concluded that M.V. Seslavinsky’s approaches to the analysis of “Cantata” can become basic in the study of bibliophile book as a special cultural phenomenon and trend in book publishing.


2021 ◽  
pp. 229-241
Author(s):  
Maciej Rak

The article has three goals. The first is to present the history of research on Polish dialectal phrasematics. In particular, attention was paid to the last five years, i.e. the period 2015–2020. The works in question were ordered according to the dialectological key, taking into account the following dialects: Greater Polish, Masovian, Silesian, Lesser Polish, and the North and South-Eastern dialects. The second goal is to indicate the methodologies that have so far been used to describe dialectal phrasematics. Initially, component analysis was used, which was part of the structuralist research trend, later (more or less from the late 1980s) the ethnolinguistic approach, especially the description of the linguistic picture of the world, began to dominate. The third goal of the article is to provide perspectives. The author once again (as he did it in his earlier works) postulates the preparation of a dictionary of Polish dialectal phrasematics.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Joris van Eijnatten

The overwhelming popularity in academic writing of such concepts as transnationalism, anti-essentialism and postcolonialism illustrate the impact of the postmodern critique of once-stable entities ranging from the nation and the state to culture and civilization. We no longer believe in the steady orderings of humanity bequeathed by ‘heavy modernity’. But does this mean that concepts like the nation and civilization are obsolete? This article takes issue with the current hype of transnationalism, and suggests a correction to the current focus on interconnectedness, networks and flows by introducing the concept of ‘reference cultures’. It claims that in the history of the world, robust collective mentalities act as a counter-balance to cultures in motion.


1939 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-74
Author(s):  
Guy Franklin Hershberger

There are many varieties of pacifism in the world today. And the history of the peace movement shows that most of them, if not all, have had a long existence. Each type of pacifism is usually based on some corresponding variety of theology, religion, ethics, or political or social philosophy.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Peck ◽  
Stephen M. Rowland

ABSTRACT Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807–1894) was a British scientific illustrator and sculptor who illustrated many British exploration reports in the 1830s and 1840s. In the early 1850s, Hawkins was commissioned to create life-size, concrete sculptures of Iguanodon, ichthyosaurs, and other extinct animals for a permanent exhibition in south London. They were the first large sculptures of extinct vertebrates ever made, and they are still on view today. Inspired by his success in England, Hawkins launched a lecture tour and working trip to North America in 1868. Soon after his arrival, he was commissioned to “undertake the resuscitation of a group of animals of the former periods of the American continent” for public display in New York City. Had it been built, this would have been the first paleontological museum in the world. As part of this ambitious project, with the assistance of the American paleontologist Joseph Leidy, Hawkins cast the bones of a recently discovered Hadrosaurus specimen and used them to construct the first articulated dinosaur skeleton ever put on display in a museum. It was unveiled at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in November 1868. Hawkins worked tirelessly on New York’s proposed “Paleozoic Museum” for two years, until his funding was cut by William “Boss” Tweed, the corrupt leader of the Tammany Hall political machine, who grew hostile to the project and abolished the Central Park Commission that had made it possible. When Hawkins defiantly continued to work, without funding, Tweed dispatched a gang of thugs to break into his studio and smash all of the sculptures and molds. Although Hawkins would create several copies of his articulated Hadrosaurus skeleton for other institutions, the prospect of building a grand museum of paleontology in America was forever destroyed by Tweed’s actions.


Author(s):  
Daniela Spenser

Vicente Lombardo Toledano was born into a prosperous family in 1894 in Teziutlán, Puebla, and died in Mexico City in 1968. His life is a window into the history of the 20th century: the rise and fall of the old regime; the Mexican Revolution and the transformations that the revolution made in society; the intellectual and social reconstruction of the country under new parameters that included the rise of the labor movement to political prominence as well as the intervention of the trade unions in the construction and consolidation of the state; the dispute over the course of the nation in the tumultuous 1930s; and the configuration of the political and ideological left in Mexico. Lombardo Toledano’s life and work illustrate Mexico’s connections with the world during the Second World War and the Cold War. Lombardo Toledano belonged to the intellectual elite of men and women who considered themselves progressives, Marxists, and socialists; they believed in a bright future for humanity. He viewed himself as the conscious reflection of the unconscious movement of the masses. With unbridled energy and ideological fervor, he founded unions, parties, and newspapers. During the course of his life, he adhered to various beliefs, from Christianity to Marxism, raising dialectical materialism to the level of a theory of knowledge of absolute proportions in the same fashion that he previously did with idealism. In life, he aroused feelings of love and hate; he was the object of royal welcomes and the target of several attacks; national and international espionage agencies did not let him out of their sight. He was detained in and expelled from several countries and prevented from visiting others. Those who knew him still evoke his incendiary oratorical style, which others remember as soporific. His admirers praise him as the helmsman of Mexican and Latin American workers; others scorn the means he used to achieve his goals as opportunist. Lombardo Toledano believed that the Soviet Union had achieved a future that Mexico could not aspire to imitate. Mexico was a semifeudal and semicolonial country, hindered by imperialism in its economic development and the creation of a national bourgeoisie, without which it could not pass on to the next stage in the evolution of mankind and without which the working class and peasantry were doomed to underdevelopment. In his interpretation of history, the autonomy of the subordinate classes did not enter into the picture; rather it was the intellectual elites allied with the state who had the task of instilling class consciousness in them. No matter how prominent a personality he was in his time, today few remember the maestro Vicente Lombardo Toledano, despite the many streets and schools named after him. However, the story of his life reveals the vivid and contradictory history of the 20th century, with traces that remain in contemporary Mexico.


2019 ◽  
Vol 91 (Suplement 1) ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Lech Pomorski ◽  
Paweł Mikosiński

The history of endocrine surgery in Poland begun later compared to the rest of the world. The first confirmed endocrine surgeries in Poland were performed in the XIXth ceuntry. The surgical center in Krakow had a lot of merit in that field, especially surgeons such as: Mikulicz, Rydygier and their successors. Blooming development began after the II World War – in the 70’s and 80’s of XX century. Achievements of professors such as Tadeusz Tołłoczko, Witold Rudowski, Kazimierz Rybiński and others and their successors led to a situation where the state of Polish endocrine surgery is at a world-class level.


2011 ◽  
Vol 332-334 ◽  
pp. 420-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heng Zhong ◽  
Yu Mei Cui ◽  
Dan Mao

“Shoso-in” is located behind the Hall of Great Buddha of Todaiji Temple in Nara city of Japan and it is known to the world with its storage of cultural relics of successive dynasties, most of which are valuables handed down from Japan’s royalty, nobility and Buddhist assembly in Nara and Heian periods of Japan. At that time, Japan's central government, princedoms, regional governments, including many large monasteries, had the establishment of “official warehouse”, which served as the main storehouse for storing rice expropriated by the state as well as silk, iron products and other property and the various storerooms were divided into different blocks to form “Shoso-in”. Today, only the Shoso-in of Todaiji Temple stands the test of the long history and others have disappeared. Since the 8th year of Meiji Period, Shoso-in broke away from Todaiji Temple and is under state administration and Japan government ordered to permanently conserve the “treasures” inside. Since then, Japan Shoso-in become an authentic independent “museum”. Shoso-in in Japan is greatly favored by the world, firstly because that it boasts a history of more than 1200 years and is blessed with a great variety of collections, most of which are donated by royalties; secondly because that since the 30th year of Showa when Shoso-in in Japan is relocated from old treasure-house to the newly-structured treasure-house, the cultural relics are better protected. According to the literatures, the collections conserved in Shoso-in almost stand intact and this is rare in the history of world conservation, facilitating the investigation and repair work of researchers.


Author(s):  
Elena A. Ivanova

International scientific and practical conference “Rumyantsev readings — 2019” was held on April 23—24 in the Russian State Library. The conference covered a wide range of issues: “Libraries and museums in the context of history”; “History of the Russian State Library”; “Disclosure of universal and specialized collections of libraries: forms and methods”; “Future of libraries: evaluations, studies, forecasts”; “Libraries as centres of information-bibliographic activities”; “Library collections and library-information services in the age of electronic communications”; “Professional development of library staff: demands of time. Library as educational centre”; “International cooperation of libraries. Library as a platform for intercultural dialogue”. The conference was attended by specialists from libraries, museums, archives, universities and research institutes, representatives of professional associations and organizations from various regions of Russia and from Australia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia, the United States of America, Tajikistan and Ukraine. Among the sections and round tables of “Rumyantsev readings” were both traditional, held within the framework of the conference on annual basis, and timed to the memorable dates and visits of foreign colleagues of the year. In 2019, the following sections were held: “Art editions in the collections of libraries: issues of study, preservation and promotion”, “Library classification systems”, “Rare and valuable books, book monuments and collections”, “Manuscript sources in the collections of libraries”, “Specialized collections in libraries”, “Collectors, researchers, keepers. Libraries in the context of history”, “Continuing education as a competence resource of library staff”, “Theory and practice of librarianship development at the present stage”, “Library digitalization: trends, problems, prospects”, “Effective library management: problems and solutions. (Pre-session meeting of the 32nd Section of the Russian Library Association on library management and marketing)”. Seminar from the series “Role of science in the development of libraries (theoretical and practical aspects)” “N.M. Sikorsky: scientist, organizer of book science and librarianship. To the 100th birth anniversary” took place. There were organized Round tables: “The new National standard for bibliographic description GOST R 7.0.100—2018 in the modern information environment”, “Library terminology in the context of digital space”, “Cooperation of libraries of the CIS countries: strategic directions”, “Flagship projects that shape the future of libraries”. The growing number of participants, the breadth of topics, the steady interest of specialists in traditional sections and the annual organization of new events in the form and content of the “Rumyantsev readings” allow the conference to stay among the largest scientific and practical events of library research in the country. The search for new topics and the introduction of topical issues on the agenda contribute to both activation of historical research and the search for ways of innovative development and intercultural interaction.


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