Witnessing Women: Quo Vadis, Cinema?

The essay explores how two women filmmakers, each deploying her unique vision through the perspective of a female protagonist, stage a transformative encounter with the act of bearing witness to genocide. The Diary of Diana B. (Dnevnik Diane Budisavljević, 2019, Croatia) directed by Dana Budisavljević, and Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020, Bosnia-Herzegovina), directed by Jasmila Žbanić, both compel us to bear witness to mass atrocities while avoiding the pitfalls of turning suffering into a spectacle, and by sidestepping the predictable cinematic conventions of redemption and closure, both formally and narratively. In my analysis of the films as anti-spectacles through the framework of Trinh T. Minh-ha’s ‘speaking nearby’, I argue for the concept of ‘women’s world cinema’, a kind of cinema that is made by women, speaks to women’s experiences, and/or addresses the spectator as female while also speaking nearby instead of about its subjects in ways that eschew conventional spectatorial alignments and co-optations of traumatic experience.

Historical Memory and Orthodox Faith: Byzance Aprиs Byzance in Sofia Under Ottoman Rule

In our article we propose a case study on the character of the veneration of neomartyrs of Sofia in the 16th century and a review of the related literature. We try to argue that the aims of their veneration were religious and political, and that these aims were attained through the exaltation of the Christian faith and the creation and maintaining of a historical memory. The direction of the intended results, however, is not anti-Ottoman, but anti-Islamic; the veneration urged to consolidate the Orthodox Christian congregation. It is to the people of the Orthodox confession, not to the national (in this period mostly “ethnical”) community, that the veneration of the neomartyrs was addressed. The strengthening of the congregation could be achieved excellently through the martyr’s bearing witness (having in mind that “martyros” means “witness” in Greek); the martyr adds holiness to the place and sacralizes the space of the city, and finally of the whole political milieu. The witness is not only the creator of sacredness, he is also a keeper of the memory of the past. The martyr is a champion because he / she vanquishes the foes of God through his / her martyrdom. As a champion, he is a reminder of the glorious past; as a victor, he is a Defensor fidei in the present. This is a clear confirmation of God’s power under different historical circumstances. These ideas directed at the restoration, but only spiritual, of the Christian Empire through the Body of the Church. This explains the absence of any overt opposition against Ottoman power. Therefore, we find here, in Sofia, a conception of Byzance après Byzance of the same type as we find in Constantinople after the fall of the Empire, when the Ecumenical Church adopted part of the Empire’s heritage.

The future of global health is inclusive and anti-racist

In global health, a discipline with a racist and colonial history, white supremacy, white privilege and racism are still present today. 1 Although many believe we are witnessing a resurgence of racism in global health, because of a recent rise of extreme right comments and racism in the community and online 2 , 3 . In reality racism has always been an inherent aspect of global health and its predecessors: tropical health and international health by prioritizing the health issues of the colonizers over those of the native populations. 4 As such, we are rather bearing witness to long standing issues that have been persistently overlooked. There is a need for a paradigm shift to enable true authentic leadership that promotes the values of our shared humanity.

Peace, Protest and Precarity: Making Conceptual Sense of Young People’s Non-violent Dissent in a Period of Intersecting Crises

The current young generation are living through socio-historically situated intersecting crises, including precarity and climate change. In these times of crisis, young people are also bearing witness to a distinctive global wave of youth-led activism involving protest actions. Much of this activism can be deemed dissent because many young activists are calling for systemic change, including the radical disruption, reimagining and rebuilding of the social, economic and political status quo. In this interdisciplinary article, between politics and peace studies, we investigate how the concept of peace plays an important role in some young dissent, and specifically the dissent of young people taking action on climate change. We observed that these young environmental activists often describe their actions in careful terms of positive peace, non-violence, kindness and care, in order to express their dissent as what we interpret as positive civic behaviour. They also use concepts grounded in peace and justice to navigate their economic, political and social precarity. Based on a youth-centred study, drawing on insightful face to face semi-structured interviews in Britain and France with school climate strikers, Friday For Future (FFF) and Extinction Rebellion (XR) activists, we explore how young environmental activists themselves related their dissent, and especially how they attached importance to it being non-violent and/or peaceful. Stemming from our findings, we discuss how young environmental activists’ vision of violence and non-violence adapted to the structural and personal violence they face at the complex intersections of young marginalization, global inequalities and injustices in the lived impact of climate change and the policing of protest.

Hyaenas and early humans in the latest Early Pleistocene of South-Western Europe

Throughout the Pleistocene, early humans and carnivores frequented caves and large rock-shelters, usually generating bone accumulations. The well-preserved late Early Pleistocene sedimentary sequence at Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar (CNERQ) has provided substantial evidence concerning the behavioural and adaptive skills of early humans in Western Europe, such as butchery practices, lithic technology or tending fire, whilst also bearing witness to the bone-altering activities of carnivores. Recent fieldwork has allowed the re-examination of the spatial and taphonomical nature of the macrofaunal assemblage from the upper layers of Complex 2. These layers are somewhat different from most of the underlying sequence, in showing quite a high representation of cranial and post-cranial bones of large mammals, including several Megaloceroscarthaginiensis antlers. The presence of Crocuta sp. at Cueva Negra represents one of the earliest instances of this genus in Western Eurasia. Identification of several juvenile Crocuta sp. remains alongside coprolites and bones with carnivore damage, indicates sporadical hyaenid denning activity. Furthermore, the presence of bones with percussion and cut-marks near to several hammerstones suggests a clear albeit limited anthropogenic input. We interpret the available taphonomical and spatial evidence from these layers as reflecting a multi-patterned palimpsest, likely representing the non-simultaneous and short-lived co-existence of hyaenas, humans, and other small carnivores in the Cueva Negra palaeolandscape during the final phase of sedimentation preserved at the site.

Beauty and the wonder of poetry. Voices of a poetic education to revive our times

Poetry is an epiphany of the gaze, an arousing vision. It opens a passage unexpectedly, where a glimmer of truth is found. The poetic word is a metaphor for this extraordinary time, revealing not only a fear of the other and the threat of death – which has become a tangible presence – but also the beauty of fragility when it is cultivated as a gesture of care for oneself and for the world. A word capable of restoring a look of wonder accords the verses of some poets, bearing witness to a different way of thinking. The text seeks to explore their voices, linked by a word that cultivates the expansion of detail and the beauty hidden between the folds of a troubling time. In a moment of estranging separation, their inspiration promotes an education consisting of listening and receptivity, reviving silence, inviting gestures of devotion and intimacy towards oneself and to others and cultivating an imperishable art of life.

Trends in Mobile Journalism: Bearing Witness, Building Movements, and Crafting Counternarratives

This field review examines how African American mobile journalism became a model for marginalized people’s political communication across the United States. The review explores how communication scholars’ theories about mobile journalism and media witnessing evolved since 2010 to include ethnocentric investigations of the genre. Additionally, it demonstrates how Black people’s use of the mobile device to document police brutality provided a brilliant, yet fraught, template for modern activism. Finally, it shows how Black mobile journalism created undeniable counternarratives that challenged the journalism industry in 2020 and presented scholars with a wealth of researchable questions. Taken together, the review complicates our understanding of Black mobile journalism as a great equalizer—pushing us to also consider what we lose when we lean too heavily on video testimony as a tool for political communication.