Can Dance and Music Make the Transition to a Sustainable Society More Feasible?

Transition to sustainability is a process that requires change on all levels of society from the physical to the psychological. This review takes an interdisciplinary view of the landscapes of research that contribute to the development of pro-social behaviors that align with sustainability goals, or what we call ‘inner sustainability’. Engaging in musical and dance activities can make people feel trust and connectedness, promote prosocial behavior within a group, and also reduce prejudices between groups. Sustained engagement in these art forms brings change in a matter of seconds (such as hormonal changes and associated stress relief), months (such as improved emotional wellbeing and learning outcomes), and decades (such as structural changes to the brains of musicians and dancers and superior skills in expressing and understanding emotion). In this review, we bridge the often-separate domains of the arts and sciences by presenting evidence that suggests music and dance promote self-awareness, learning, care for others and wellbeing at individual and group levels. In doing so, we argue that artistic practices have a key role to play in leading the transformations necessary for a sustainable society. We require a movement of action that provides dance and music within a constructive framework for stimulating social sustainability.

Journalism and Media Curricula in Arab Universities

The study aims to reveal the consistency of the types of courses in the study plans of the bachelor’s programs and specializations in journalism and media in Arab universities, along with the classification of the UNESCO model curriculum courses on teaching journalism in developing countries. It adopted three types of courses that need to be included in any curriculum in the field of journalism teaching: Professional Training Courses (47%), Journalism Courses (10%), and arts and other sciences courses (43%). This model was applied to academic plans of journalism and media programs and specializations in nine Arab public universities covering the three Arab regions: The Levant and Iraq, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and the Maghreb and North Africa. In addition, the study adopted the descriptive approach by analyzing and describing the components of the study plans in terms of form and content. The study results showed that the faculties and departments of communication and media in the selected sample of Arab Universities offer different programs more in teaching journalism and media disciplines. In contrast, communication studies are almost limited to public relations programs. As for the content level of the three courses (vocational training courses, journalistic studies courses, and courses from other arts and sciences) included in their study plans in different proportions, some of them are compatible with the estimates of the UNESCO model curriculum, while some are far away from these estimates. Also, there is a methodological and scientific gap between the practical and theoretical aspects in most of the selected sample of programs and disciplines. KEYWORDS University education in Arab countries, ideal journalistic competence, teaching methods, courses, vocational training, journalism and media studies

Integrating the Arts for Leadership Education and Development

The arts involve engaging the human imagination and sensory skills to communicate and create experiences, artifacts, and surroundings shared with others. Conventionally, education providers have compartmentalized the arts and sciences as separate and disparate disciplines. Yet, the future of work will continue to demand that organizations and their members remain agile, creative, and innovative in the face of ongoing uncertainty and change. As a result, leadership paradigms and models have been changing from top-down, command and control to relational, participative standards due to the need for collaborative expertise and organizational agility. This chapter will address the skills required for relational leaders and learning organizations, how higher education programs must model the way, and how integrating the arts within other disciplines could answer the call for deeper learning and collaborative engagement in the 21st century.

Jack of all trades with a master’s degree. Review of the book “Obrazovatel’naya model’ svobodnykh iskusstv i nauk. Mirovoi i rossiiskii opyt” [Educational Model of Liberal Arts and Sciences. World and Russian experience]

Today when the remnants of a political system based on liberal values is finally breaking down all over the world and the values themselves are being subjected to purposeful profanation and relativization, an educational model based on academical freedom and development of a truly Renaissance breadth of scientific horizons – i. e. principles one would least expect to flourish in with the atmosphere of the forthcoming digital concentration camp – is gaining popularity with the pace none could have expected.. At least this is what the authors of the book in question are trying to convince us of. But despite all their efforts, reality – that is, who and why needs to rebuild the higher education system according to the model of the liberal arts and sciences – transpires before the attentive reader in all its inhuman pragmatism.

Collaging the Posthuman into the Postnatural

Collage – that somewhat old-fashioned sounding word, revolutionary in the arts in the early 20th century – remains a powerful and omnipresent creative and interpretive strategy throughout all media, and much philosophy, over one-hundred years later. The value of collage theory to a wide range of topics is derived by recognizing literal or figurative gaps and seams between components, and the conceptual contested space between them. Such ideas are useful when considering characteristics of the posthuman and the postnatural. By tracing collage, the posthuman, and postnatural through several topics in the arts and sciences, unexpected commonalities can be found. The (post) human body threads through these topics: a body of irreversible chimerality, interpenetrating and entangling larger physical, psychological, and cultural environments. At that point the line between the posthuman and postnatural becomes murky at best. That ambiguity raises questions of ethics. The perspective found within one particular ethical response is surprisingly resonant with collage.

Tunde Kelani: The Man Exceeds the Frame

The extraordinary announcement, coming from the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, that ace filmmaker Kelani will now be based there as a Fellow is heartwarming. The news reveals the warmth and uniqueness of the University’s boundless imaginations and the humanistic vision of its Vice-Chancellor, Professor Kolawole Salako. The news of this deserving appointment follows on the heels of Kelani receiving the prestigious Leopold ́ Sédar Senghor Prize for African Cultural Creativity and Impact in July, 2019 at the annual TOFAC event at Babcock University. In that same month, he was also inducted into the American Oscars—the Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences. All of these accolades are well-deserved. Kelani has spent his career putting things—people, ideas, cultures, traditions, and ideologies—inside the cinematographic frame. It is a most exciting thing to see him too bursting out of every frame with all these multiple achievements that celebrate him Ìrókò!

The concept of the Polish Biographical Dictionary

The aim of the article is to present a concept of the Polish Biographical Dictionary (Polski Słownik Biograficzny, PSB), which has been published in Krakow since 1935 as a multi-volume publication of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) and the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (PAU), and realised by the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the PAN. Over 28,000 biographies of people associated with Poland (and with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Commonwealth of Both Nations, and their fiefs), who lived or operated in the country and abroad from the time of legendary Duke Popiel (9th century) to 2000, have been published in 52 volumes so far. The concept of the PSB is presented in the historiographic context as well as the context of contemporary problems and challenges that the PSB is facing.

СТАН СУЧАСНОГО ПЕРЕКЛАДОЗНАВСТВА У СЛОВАЧЧИНІ

The article reveals the main achievements of the modern Slovak school of translation studies in the fi elds of theory, history, criticism and didactics of translation. In today’s Slovakia translation research is concentrated in four academic centres: the Slovak Academy of Arts and Sciences in Bratislava as well as the Universities of Banska Bystrica, Nitra and Presov. Slovak researchers are developing a number of partial theories of translation, including the theory of audiovisual translation and the theory of translation competencies. Interestingly, machine translation is also well-studied, although the topic might be neglected as the number of Slovak speakers is not so numerous. Researchers are very active in studying the history of translation, especially in the fi eld of biography studies. History studies apply the methodology of sociological research which help to evaluate the reception of foreign literatures in various perspectives. On the basis of judging books in translation, translation criticism does not seem to be very popular as a research topic, although the publication of the specialized journal “Kritika prekladu” will defi nitely stimulate this domain. Ukrainian studies in Slovakia – including the domain of translation studies – also have a strong position due to the scholars of Prešov University. This can be explained by long and fruitful academic traditions of the Ukrainian autochthonous community. Within the last decade, the researchers of Ukrainian background also contributed to translation studies in the areas of the cultural theory of translation and court interpreting and translation. Although there are a number of books in translation, publishing eff orts have some problems as well, i. e. the small volume of monographic editions, which sometimes resemble a lengthy article rather than a book. The books are published not only in print, but also in electronic format and online which will facilitate the availability of these publications to much wider readership. Key words: Slovakia, translation theory, translation history, audiovisual translation, Ukrainian studies.

Reflections on Bharatanatyam and Neuroscience. A Dance Studies Perspective

Building on recent interest in the convergence of arts and sciences, we propose specific areas of intersection between the disciplines of Bharatanatyam, a classical Indian dance, and neuroscience. We present personal reflections by practitioners of both disciplines and propose that Bharatanatyam can be used to understand and explain brain functioning and that neuroscience can help analyze the dancing Bharatanatyam brain. We explore conceptual areas of convergence between the two fields as well as specific points of connection using language acquisition, rhythm, music, and cognition as examples. We conjecture that Bharatanatyam training and practice support long-term neuronal plasticity in various parts of the brain, including but not limited to the hippocampus, motor, premotor cortex, and the cerebellum. The beginning of the study of the intersection between these disciplines will pave the way for additional allied fields of rich thinking, exploration and potentially, therapy.