Pandemic fiction as therapeutic play: The New York Times Magazine’s The Decameron Project (2020)

This article explores the therapeutic potential of narrative fiction during a global health crisis. We focus on The Decameron Project (2020), a collection of short fiction by writers from around the world, commissioned by the New York Times Magazine. The Decameron Project references the narrative framework established by Giovanni Boccaccio in the mid-14th century, when the Black Death devastated Europe. Drawing on aspects of psychoanalytic theory and principles of bibliotherapy employed since the Middle Ages, we argue that The Decameron Project offers strategies to simultaneously confront and contain the anxious mind. Storytelling, according to both Boccaccio and to the editors of The Decameron Project, is not merely a source of distraction but a means of survival.

Occupying Maori Architectural Time: Reconstructing the architectural process through Maori interpretations of space

<p>This thesis investigates the occupation of an alternative Maori Architecture within Maori space/time constructions. The design research questions how to articulate a Maori architectural process in resisting lost identity within the colonised New Zealand landscape. The architectural programme addresses disconnections of Maori relationships to traditional landscape functions. A commercial paua farm, posed as a 'Maori gang business front', is designed as a testing ground for the Maori narrative framework. The programme adopts existing aquaculture methods within Maori space/time concepts to question possibilities of continual, cyclic architecture. The design research questions how Maori architectural typologies are governed by natural cyclic functions of continual change. The thesis is politicised through the narration of 'The Warrior', used as a framework for resisting colonised methodologies, consistently applied across writing, process and design.</p>

Occupying Maori Architectural Time: Reconstructing the architectural process through Maori interpretations of space

<p>This thesis investigates the occupation of an alternative Maori Architecture within Maori space/time constructions. The design research questions how to articulate a Maori architectural process in resisting lost identity within the colonised New Zealand landscape. The architectural programme addresses disconnections of Maori relationships to traditional landscape functions. A commercial paua farm, posed as a 'Maori gang business front', is designed as a testing ground for the Maori narrative framework. The programme adopts existing aquaculture methods within Maori space/time concepts to question possibilities of continual, cyclic architecture. The design research questions how Maori architectural typologies are governed by natural cyclic functions of continual change. The thesis is politicised through the narration of 'The Warrior', used as a framework for resisting colonised methodologies, consistently applied across writing, process and design.</p>

Using Evidence in Policies Addressing Rural NEETs: Common Patterns and Differences in Various EU Countries

Using the policy narrative framework, this article examines the pathways through which the development of policies (related to rural/small towns young NEETs in various EU countries) are based on evidence. To do this, we consider the Youth Guarantee (YG), an EU program (2014–2020) developed in several member countries with the aim of socioprofessional inclusion of NEETs (young people aged 15–24 that are not in employment, education, or training). It examines how evidence is used for national policy-making and is taken into account by stakeholders. This study involves documentary analysis of YG in three European countries: namely, Romania, Italy, and Portugal. In addition, it involves 27 interviews with policy-makers and NGO leaders. The results show a predominantly statistical use of data exclusively managed by public institutions. Therefore, we emphasize the importance of consulting evidence from academia and NGOs to improve this policy.

Negotiating Emerging Adulthood With Master and Counter Narratives: Alcohol-Related Identity Trajectories Among Emerging Adults in Performance-Oriented Neoliberal Society

This study analyzes how emerging adults negotiate their relation to alcohol in the context of declining youth drinking and how this relationship changes over time. The sample consists of longitudinal qualitative interview data ( N = 28) with 9 boys and 19 girls aged 15 to 21. The participants were recruited through schools, social media and non-governmental organizations from mainly the Stockholm region and smaller towns in central Sweden to reach a heterogeneous sample in terms of sociodemographic factors and drinking practices. We interviewed the participants in-depth three times between 2017 and 2019. Thematic coding of the whole data with NVivo helped us select four cases for more detailed analysis, as they represented the typical trajectories and showed the variation in the material. We used the master narrative framework and Bamberg’s narrative positioning analysis to examine the data. The analysis demonstrates what kinds of narrative alignments in identity development encourage heavy drinking, moderate alcohol consumption, and fuel abstinence. The results suggest that the decline in youth drinking is produced by a co-effect of multiple master narratives that intersect and guide the identity development away from heavy drinking.

Textualidad y visualidad en El curioso y sabio Alejandro, fiscal y juez de vidas ajenas de Alonso Jerónimo Salas Barbadillo

RESUMEN: A partir de los avances realizados en los estudios de cultura visual a lo largo de los últimos treinta años, se describen las técnicas ecfrásticas adoptadas por Salas Barbadillo en El curioso y sabio Alejandro, fiscal y juez de vidas ajenas (1634), una colección de seis relatos insertados en un marco narrativo representado por una galería de retratos. Al disponer solamente de los epítomes que describen los personajes retratados, se estudiará cómo las relaciones semánticas que se establecen entre textualidad y visualidad, y los procesos de verbalización visual estimulan la estipulación de un pacto de comunicación y colaboración entre el autor y el público lector. ABSTRACT: Starting from the advances carried out in the visual culture studies over the last thirty years, the article deals with the ecphrastic techniques adopted by Salas Barbadillo in El curioso y sabio Alejandro, fiscal y juez de vidas ajenas (1634), that is a collection of six short stories inserted in a narrative framework represented by a gallery of portraits. Since we only have the epitomes related to the painted characters, this work studies the semantic relationships established between textuality and visuality, and the visual verbalization processes that stimulate the stipulation of a communicative and collaborative pact between the author and the reading public.

Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great inspired a body of literature that grew throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages by accumulating various episodes and local contributions across a host of languages, cultures, and appropriations. This extraordinary transmission of texts resulted in an ever evolving and often contradictory figure. In some accounts, Alexander’s ambition was a defining characteristic, in others benevolence; some writers idealized while others condemned Alexander; and in texts classified as histories from a modern perspective Alexander built an empire as the son of Philip of Macedon, while in texts classified as romance or legend Alexander was the illegitimate son of an Egyptian sorcerer and traveled to exotic lands populated by the creative lens of storytelling. Medieval writers engaged with a core set of plotlines inherited from their predecessors in Antiquity. These provided the narrative framework of Alexander’s childhood in Macedon, expansion of an empire stretching to India, and death in Babylon. However, countless adaptations and interpolations ensured the vibrancy of this narrative and created a version of Alexander dependent on availability of texts and authorial agenda. For example, writers and scribes in southern Italy had access to episodes that emphasized the limitations of Alexander’s ambition—how the intrepid explorer constructed a flying machine that the gods turned back to land and received prophecies of mortality in the far reaches of an earthly paradise. Under the influence of such accounts, they emphasized the temporality of Alexander’s career in allegorical terms that were, at least until these accounts traveled westward, quite different from the idealized warrior portrayed in French romances. The textual corpus that accounted for Alexander’s reception thus comprised a vast network founded on Greek and Latin but shaped by the vernacular. Navigating this network is a formidable task, and this article is written with a guiding principle in mind: to assist readers in finding their starting points for engaging with the medieval Alexander. It includes texts that were largely or exclusively devoted to Alexander’s exploits, and it identifies scholarly works intended for readers in the early stages of their navigation; more specialized research can be found in the scholarship cited. Finally, it organizes the medieval reception of Alexander the Great into two broad categories: Greek and Latin texts (both foundational accounts of Late Antiquity and medieval Latin literature) and the vernacular texts based on them.