scholarly journals Narratives of Displacement: The Challenges of Motherhood and Mothering in semi-fictional works by Laura Pariani, Mary Melfi, and Donatella Di Pierantonio

Author(s):  
Laura Rorato

This article analyses the representation of the impact of migration on family dynamics in three autobiographical works: Laura Pariani’s Il piatto dell’angelo (2013), Mary Melfi’s Italy Revisited. Conversations with my Mother (2009), and Antonella Di Pietrantonio’s Mia madre è un fiume (2011). All three authors were directly or indirectly affected by the wave of emigration that took place in Italy between the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Pariani extends her observations to the present by focusing also on those South American women who are currently moving to Italy to work as cares for old people, often leaving their families behind. Motherhood and mothering are central themes in all three books. These works problematise the patriarchal notion of motherhood and highlight the need to move towards alternative concepts of motherhood that do not imply the subordination of women. Additionally, this article offers a reflection on the role that creative writing can play in challenging some of the most engrained stereotypes, such as those of the good mother versus the bad mother, partially related to our Christian tradition. Building on Podnieks and O’Reilly’s notion of “maternal texts” (1-2), this article argues that through fiction women are less inhibited in exploring the thornier aspects of motherhood as a social construction than they seem to be in everyday life.

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 309-335
Author(s):  
Klaudiusz Święcicki ◽  

The article discusses the process of increased interest in Zakopane and Podhale culture in the second half of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. Discusses the problem of highlanders acquiring national identity. Characterizes the environment of the intellectual and artistic elite of Zakopane. Attempts to analyse how fascination with the Tatra landscape and highlander culture influenced the formation of one of the myths that fund modern national identity. Tries to show how the artists influenced the development of Zakopane as a holiday spa. It also shows the impact of bohemia on the transformation of the culture of highlanders in the Podhale region. The second part of the article discusses the relationship of the poet Jan Kasprowicz with Podhale. His peregrinations to Zakopane and Poronin were presented. On the selected example from creativity, an attempt was made to analyse the poet’s fascination with the Tatra Mountains and highlander culture.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-135
Author(s):  
Denisa-Maria Frătean

AbstractSecession Influences in Blaga’s Poetry (Influențe Secession în lirica blagiană) – This essay analyses the impact of the years spent in Vienna on the formation of Lucian Blaga, taking into consideration the fact that, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the capital of the Empire was the centre of an impressive art movement called the "Vienna Secession". The aim of this paper is to identify the similarities that can be established between the art of the painter Gustav Klimt, a representative figure for that period and the president of Secession, and the poetry of Blaga. The comparison includes the symbols to be found in the works of the two artists, such as the spring flowers and the serpents, the dominant colours, the type of lines used in the creation of their images and the reaction of people to their modern art.


Author(s):  
William J. Abraham

‘The impact of Methodism’ considers Methodism’s impact on and contribution to social movements, politics, education, and healthcare. Social movements that were deeply influenced by Methodism include the abolition of slavery in the 19th century and the Temperance Movement in the 20th century. The Methodist tradition has always encouraged diversity of judgement in the political arena and Methodists can be found on both the conservative and progressive wings of politics. One of the most important expressions of social holiness in Methodism shows up in its role in education. Methodists founded numerous successful schools and universities around the world. Methodism has also had an impact on popular and high culture.


2014 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 391
Author(s):  
Mukhtar Umar Bunza

Nigeria is a country with a centuries’ long tradition of Islamic revivalism and activism. It was the impact of the activities of the 17th century scholars of Nigeria that culminated in the success of the 19th century tajdeed movement that brought about the emergence of the muslim caliphate of Sokoto. British imperialism brought an end to the caliphate in the beginning of the 20th century, the circumstances of which have been consistently challenged mainly by the ulama and their followers ever since. Some contemporary scholars such as Shaikh Abubakar Mahmud Gummi, former Grand Qadi of Northern Nigeria, contributed significantly in the new dimension to the roles of muslim scholars in the government. Since 1999 muslim scholars have taken on new roles in the administration of states, serving as commissioners for newly established ministries for Religious Affairs, as special advisers, or directors of commissions like Hisbah, Hajj, Masjid, Moon Sighting, and other related government bodies, with full salaries and other benefits unlike ever before in the Nigerian system. This new role of ulama and its impacts in the governance of the contemporary Nigeria is what this paper intends to investigate and expound.[Nigeria merupakan sebuah negara dengan tradisi revivalisme dan aktivisme Islam selama berabad-abad. Hal itu terkait dengan upaya para ulama Nigeria abad ke-17 yang berpuncak pada keberhasilan gerakan tajdid pada abad 19 dengan munculnya kekhalifahan muslim dari Sokoto. Imperialisme Inggris mengakhiri kekhalifahan ini pada awal abad ke-20, yang terus dilawan oleh terutama para ulama secara konsisten. Beberapa ulama kontemporer seperti Syaikh Abubakar Mahmud Gummi, mantan Grand Qadi Nigeria Utara, memberikan kontribusi signifikan dalam membentuk dimensi baru peran ulama dalam pemerintahan Nigeria modern. Sejak tahun 1999 para ulama telah mengambil peran baru dalam pemerintahan, sebagai pegawai Kementerian Agama yang baru didirikan, sebagai penasihat ahli, atau direktur komisi seperti Hisbah, Haji, Masjid, Rukyah Hilal, dan badan-badan pemerintah terkait lainnya, dengan gaji penuh. Peran baru dari ulama dan pengaruhnya dalam pemerintahan Nigeria kontemporer inilah yang menjadi fokus tulisan ini.]


2017 ◽  
pp. 23-44
Author(s):  
Tomasz Ewertowski

Northeast China as a Contact Zone in Polish and Serbian Travelogues, 1900-1939Historically, Northeast China (Manchuria) was a border zone between China and nomadic peoples, as well as between Russian and Qing empires since the 17th century. In the second half of the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century, a number of factors (penetration by foreign powers, collapse of the Qing Empire, revolution in Russia, Japanese expansion and demographic changes) transformed this area into “a contact zone” in the sense given by Mary Louise Pratt. The main focus of the article is the way in which this contact zone was described by Polish and Serbian travellers. Their can provide a special outlook, because Poland and Serbia did not participate extensively in the colonial penetration into China, however, Serbs and Poles travelled there, often representing Russian institutions. Therefore they were observing China as agents of imperial force, but they did not identify themselves fully with it. Our analysis of the image of Northeast China as a contact zone will be divided into three broad sections: 1) political and military expansion, 2) economic and demographic relations, 3) transcultural phenomena of everyday life. Chiny Północno-Wschodnie jako strefa kontaktu w polskich i serbskich relacjach podróżniczych w latach 1900-1939Północno-wschodnie Chiny (Mandżuria) są historyczną granicą między Chinami a ludami wędrownymi, od siedemnastego wieku również między Rosją a imperium dynastii Qing. W drugiej połowie dziewiętnastego wieku, a zwłaszcza w pierwszej połowie dwudziestego szereg czynników (penetracja przez obce mocarstwa, upadek dynastii Qing, rewolucja w Rosji, ekspansja japońska i zmiany demograficzne) uczyniły z tego obszaru „strefę kontaktu” w rozumieniu Mary Louise Pratt. Głównym tematem artykułu jest sposób opisu strefy kontaktu przez polskich i serbskich podróżników. Ich dzieła dają bowiem szczególną perspektywę, gdyż Polska i Serbia nie uczestniczyły w kolonialnej penetracji Chin, jednakże Serbowie i Polacy podróżowali do Państwa Środka, często reprezentując rosyjskie instytucje. Z tego względu obserwowali Chiny jako reprezentanci imperium, jednak nie identyfikowali się z nim w pełni. Analiza obrazu północno-wschodnich Chin jako strefy kontaktu dzieli się na trzy sekcje: 1) ekspansja polityczna i militarna, 2) relacje ekonomiczne i demograficzne, 3) zjawiska transkulturowe w życiu codziennym.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 618
Author(s):  
Dorota Walczak-Delanois

The aim of this paper is to show the presence of religion and the particular evolution of lyrical matrixes connected to religion in the Polish poems of female poets. There is a particular presence of women in the roots of the Polish literary and lyrical traditions. For centuries, the image of a woman with a pen in her hand was one of the most important imponderabilia. Until the 19th century, Polish female poets continued to be rare. Where female poets do appear in the historical record, they are linked to institutions such as monasteries, where female intellectuals were able to find relative liberty and a refuge. Many of the poetic forms they used in the 16th, late 17th, and 18th centuries were typically male in origin and followed established models. In the 19th century, the specific image of the mother as a link to the religious portrait of the Madonna and the Mother of God (the first Polish poem presents Bogurodzica, the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus) reinforces women’s new presence. From Adam Mickiewicz’s poem Do matki Polki (To Polish Mother), the term “Polish mother” becomes a separate literary, epistemological, and sociological category. Throughout the 20th century (with some exceptions), the impact of Romanticism and its poetical and religious models remained alive, even if they underwent some modifications. The period of communism, as during the Period of Partitions and the Second World War, privileged established models of lyric, where the image of women reproduced Romantic schema in poetics from the 19th-century canons, which are linked to religion. Religious poetry is the domain of few female author-poets who look for inner freedom and religious engagement (Anna Kamieńska) or for whom religion becomes a form of therapy in a bodily illness (Joanna Pollakówna). This, however, does not constitute an otherness or specificity of the “feminine” in relation to male models. Poets not interested in reproducing the established roles reach for the second type of lyrical expression: replacing the “mother” with the “lover” and “the priestess of love” (the Sappho model) present in the poetry of Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska. In the 20th century, the “religion” of love in women’s work distances them from the problems of the poetry engaged in social and religious disputes and constitutes a return to pagan rituals (Hymn idolatrous of Halina Poświatowska) or to the carnality of the body, not necessarily overcoming previous aesthetic ideals (Anna Świrszczyńska). It is only since the 21st century that the lyrical forms of Polish female poets have significantly changed. They are linked to the new place of the Catholic Church in Poland and the new roles of Polish women in society. Four particular models are analysed in this study, which are shown through examples of the poetry of Genowefa Jakubowska-Fijałkowska, Justyna Bargielska, Anna Augustyniak, and Malina Prześluga with the Witches’ Choir.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (A29A) ◽  
pp. 106-108
Author(s):  
Christina Helena Barboza

AbstractThis paper aims at contributing to the UNESCO-IAU Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative's discussions by presenting the case study of a 20th-century observatory located in a South American country. In fact, the National Observatory of Brazil was created in the beginning of the 19th century, but its present facilities were inaugurated in 1921. Through this paper a brief description of the heritage associated with the Brazilian observatory is given, focused on its main historical instruments and the scientific and social roles it performed along its history. By way of conclusion, the paper suggests that the creation of the Museum of Astronomy and Related Sciences with its multidisciplinary team of academic specialists and technicians was decisive for the preservation of that expressive astronomical heritage.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (32) ◽  
pp. 115-124
Author(s):  
Lyn Brierley-Jones

When Samuel Hahnemann devised homoeopathy he constructed multiple arguments that both vehemently supported his new system and criticized the conventional medical practice of his day. At the end of the 19th century when homeopathy had grown within Britain and America, homeopaths failed to make use of some of Hahnemann’s most successful arguments. Instead, homeopaths found themselves lose significant cognitive ground to their long time conventional rivals with the dawn of the 20th century, a ground they have not yet recovered. This paper uses the theoretical framework of Berger and Luckmann to analyse the dynamics of the arguments used against homeopathy and suggests that homeopaths failed to adopt a universalizing medical explanation that was available to them: the reverse action of drugs. Had they used this argument homoeopaths could have explained conventional medicine successes within their own universe of meaning and thus neutralized the impact of conventional on their practice. The implications of these conclusions for the future survival and success of homoeopathy are considered.


Author(s):  
Hans Schelkshorn

Abstract In the second half of the 19th century positivism became the official state doctrine of many countries in southern America. Around 1900, however, the authoritarian positivistic regimes were increasingly criticized due to their cultural imitation on the Anglo-Saxon world and the atheistic ideology. In this context, José Enrique Rodó, a poet and philosopher of Uruguay, called for a critical and creative re-adoption of the “Latin” roots of southern America, specifically Greek culture and early Christianity. In his essay “Ariel” (1900), Rodó sparked a spiritual revolt that especially affected the youth of the whole continent. In contrast to Nietzsche but on the basis of secular reason, Rodó defended a religion of love, which inspired important philosophies in the 20th century, from José Vasconcelos and Antonio Caso to the theologies and philosophies of liberation. Thus, “Latin America” as a self-designation of the South American peoples was essentially inaugurated through the spiritual revolt initiated by José Enrique Rodó.


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