Franciscan Books and their Readers

The book explores the manuscripts written, read, and studied by Franciscan friars from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries in Northern Italy, and specifically Padua, assessing four key aspects: ideal, space, form and readership. The ideal is studied through the regulations that determined what manuscripts should aim for. Space refers to the development and role of Franciscan libraries. The form is revealed by the assessment of the physical configuration of a set of representative manuscripts read, written, and manufactured by the friars. Finally, the study of the readership shows how Franciscans were skilled readers who employed certain forms of the manuscript as a portable, personal library, and as a tool for learning and pastoral care. By comparing the book collections of Padua’s reformed and unreformed medieval Franciscan libraries for the first time, this study reveals new features of the ground-breaking cultural agency of medieval friars.

Remnant of the Past? An Investigation into the Past, Present and Future Role of Archaeology in New Zealand Museums

<p>Museum archaeology is a subject that has received little attention from local academics and museum professionals. This is despite the fact that it continues to be perceived as a foreign subject that most New Zealanders find difficult to relate to. This dissertation takes an exploratory approach in understanding what has to be considered in future efforts to connect museums and their wider communities with archaeology. Rather than reiterating what the literature has previously confirmed, this research examines the perspective of archaeological interpreters, namely museum and heritage professionals. This provides an avenue for examining how archaeological content is perceived by museums, how this can be conveyed to the public and its potential benefits and limitations. This research was developed around a qualitative methodology that collated data from interviews with practitioners from a range of backgrounds: archaeologists, museum curators, heritage site mangers and Maori studies. An examination of some of the educational programs and resources currently provided by New Zealand museums and heritage sites was undertaken to recognise opportunities already established. A critical observation of exhibition practice provided additional insight into the physical context of archaeological interpretation and display methods. Key findings from this research found that many of the issues and opportunities are interrelated and not always exclusive to archaeology. Museums are continuing to move away from specialised curation and instead, favouring the development of multidisciplinary, thematic narratives. As a result, they now rely on the support of outside institutions and consultants to provide this perspective. The dissertation concludes by arguing for a multidisciplinary framework where subjects like archaeology recognise the museum’s potential as a hub for providing relatable experiences across the various disciplinary perspectives available and as an opportunity to promote and the wider exploration of cultural landscapes in their region. This research makes a contribution to the academic analysis of museum and archaeology in New Zealand by encouraging a more inclusive dialogue around the role museums can play in the future of public archaeology. Engagement within the wider heritage and indigenous communities is required to establish a greater level of cultural agency and awareness for these issues and allows for further involvement in site management and cultural interpretations This can ultimately produce a more personal connection and understanding of archaeology in general.</p>

Remnant of the Past? An Investigation into the Past, Present and Future Role of Archaeology in New Zealand Museums

<p>Museum archaeology is a subject that has received little attention from local academics and museum professionals. This is despite the fact that it continues to be perceived as a foreign subject that most New Zealanders find difficult to relate to. This dissertation takes an exploratory approach in understanding what has to be considered in future efforts to connect museums and their wider communities with archaeology. Rather than reiterating what the literature has previously confirmed, this research examines the perspective of archaeological interpreters, namely museum and heritage professionals. This provides an avenue for examining how archaeological content is perceived by museums, how this can be conveyed to the public and its potential benefits and limitations. This research was developed around a qualitative methodology that collated data from interviews with practitioners from a range of backgrounds: archaeologists, museum curators, heritage site mangers and Maori studies. An examination of some of the educational programs and resources currently provided by New Zealand museums and heritage sites was undertaken to recognise opportunities already established. A critical observation of exhibition practice provided additional insight into the physical context of archaeological interpretation and display methods. Key findings from this research found that many of the issues and opportunities are interrelated and not always exclusive to archaeology. Museums are continuing to move away from specialised curation and instead, favouring the development of multidisciplinary, thematic narratives. As a result, they now rely on the support of outside institutions and consultants to provide this perspective. The dissertation concludes by arguing for a multidisciplinary framework where subjects like archaeology recognise the museum’s potential as a hub for providing relatable experiences across the various disciplinary perspectives available and as an opportunity to promote and the wider exploration of cultural landscapes in their region. This research makes a contribution to the academic analysis of museum and archaeology in New Zealand by encouraging a more inclusive dialogue around the role museums can play in the future of public archaeology. Engagement within the wider heritage and indigenous communities is required to establish a greater level of cultural agency and awareness for these issues and allows for further involvement in site management and cultural interpretations This can ultimately produce a more personal connection and understanding of archaeology in general.</p>

Performing while Black: Disrupting Gender and Sexuality from Trinidad to Norway—The Artivism of Thomas Prestø

In this interview, artistic director and choreographer Thomas Prestø speaks with cultural studies scholar Dr. Gladys M. Francis about his personal journey as a hyper visible Black boy growing up in a Norwegian region known as a hub for neo-Nazi groups. Subjected to various forms of torture, Prestø discusses how his experiences shaped his politics of arts when he founded the Tabanka Dance Company to promote “a sustainable Black identity” that converges both Caribbean and African movement esthetics to tell the stories of Blacks in Norway. Prestø presents how his body of work informs Black diaspora studies in terms of art and culture through issues of minority identities, body-memory, body-politics, and political and cultural agency relating to Black performances and cultures in Norway. He discusses principles on “Caribfuturism” and corporealities within what he calls “the uniqueness of the Afropean, the Afro-Scandinavian and the poly-Diasporan.” His insights on the prejudiced mechanisms of representation and segmentation of cultures visible in Norway also convey how his artistic productions offer challenging esthetics and representations of gender and sexuality for performing Brown and Black artists. The following segments were gathered during his 2018 dance fellowship in Dakar, Senegal, my scholar appointment in Norway in 2019, and follow up discussions in spring 2021.

Diaspora Literacy, Heritage Knowledge, and Revolutionary African-Centered Pedagogy in Black Studies Curriculum Theorizing and Praxis

The original mission of Black Studies is producing consciousness transforming knowledge, and teaching for social change in close connection with Black communities, not mimicking other disciplines in producing esoteric knowledge for establishment legitimacy in the academy. Two principal pillars for Black Studies curriculum theorizing and praxis have been: (a) knowledge making as (and for) consciousness transformation and (b) social change for (and as) Diaspora literacy knowledge making also refers to the ability to “read” various cultural signs as continuities in African-descended people’s experience. As a foundation for collective cultural agency, Heritage knowledge or group memory, refers to a repository or heritable legacy that makes a feeling of belonging, peoplehood, and communal solidarity as an outcome of education possible. Vèvè A. Clark, scholar of African and Caribbean literature, African American dance histories, and African diaspora theatre, coined the concept of Diaspora literacy in a 1984 paper analyzing allegory in Guadeloupean writer Maryse Condé’s novel, Hérémakhonon, which situated an Afro-Caribbean women’s identity quest in postcolonial West Africa. Clark later revised and expanded the concept to denote a narrator’s or reader’s ability to understand and/or interpret the multilayered meanings of stories, words, and other folk sayings within any given African diaspora community. Heritage knowledge takes the unjust system out of the center and puts the Africanity of group memory, the Black perspective, which is the cultural foundation that generates people’s collective cultural agency, at the center. While Heritage knowledge is a cultural birthright of every human being, the experience of Blackness as “ontological lack” obstructs and denies African people’s humanity and agency. These conceptual tools and revolutionary African-centered pedagogy provide opportunities for consciousness transforming education for Black liberation. Such theoretical concepts and praxis in Black Studies are neglected in curriculum theorizing discourse and praxis. This is so even though curriculum is viewed as racial text and reconceptualists focus on autobiography, subjectivity, identity, transformation, and more to define curriculum as a process (currere) not an object of study. Likewise, curriculum theorizing has yet to become an identifiable subfield within the transdiscipline of Black or Africana Studies, notwithstanding decades of institutionalizing curricula in higher education since the 1980s, including a National Council of Black Studies curriculum framework. Because African-descended people’s continent of origin and history, as well as Black children, their families, and teachers have been maligned in society, the radical introduction of African content in Afrocentric curriculum and pedagogy is needed to change the quality of education and to create new understanding of the racial politics of knowledge for all students and teachers. Revolutionary African-centered pedagogy aims to undo “twisted thinking” about Africa; challenge the oppressive educational system’s vision; defend students from self-hatred, and support agency for those who have been marginalized by hegemonic concepts, themes, and curricular ideas. The aim of examining relevant theoretical, epistemological, curriculum, and pedagogical developments in Black Studies and Black education scholarship is to clarify the meaning, significance, and implications of (a) African diaspora/s as a concept in education, political discourse, and method in Black Studies; (b) what deciphering Africanity in Diaspora literacy consciousness and Heritage knowledge reveals about the importance of the Black (Studies) perspective; and (c) revolutionary African-centered pedagogy as a philosophy and method of teaching for consciousness transformation.

The Agencyment Bicycling Latinamerican Open Streets

The purpose of this Letter to Editor the Journal of Psychological Science and Research presenting our particular interpretation recreational open streets programs as political technologies in the agencyment Latin American bicycling. We intend to understand organization public-private management experiences contextualized Red de Ciclovías Recreativas de las Américas (Red-CRA) and analyze the discursive convergences and divergences in this form of cultural agency related work of promoting sustainable active mobility. The ongoing research interviewed 26 promoters of recreational cycle paths from the countries of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Mexico, based on the inclusion criteria.