Engraving Accuracy in Early Modern England

The book traces major concepts including: the creation of the visual effects of accuracy through careful action and training; the development of visual judgment and connoisseurship; the role of a network in the production of knowledge; balancing readers’ expectations with representational conventions; and the effects of acts of collecting on the creation and circulation of knowledge. On the one hand, this study uncovers that approaches to knowledge production were different in the seventeenth century, as compared with in the twenty-first century. On the other, it reveals how the early modern struggle to sort through an overwhelming quantity of visual information - brought on by major changes in image production and circulation - resonates with our own.

Criticism of “Colonial Modernity” through Kurdish Decolonial Approaches

Western modernity with its colonial application has created an identity trauma and patriarchal domination of the memory of colonized and oppressed peoples. Critiques from colonized territories encourage us to reread the colonial epistemes of modernity, whether or not centered on the West. The Kurdish political movement thus defines a new interpretation of modernity based on the critique of colonialism and global capitalism: “democratic modernity.” This chapter problematizes the relations between modernity, the nation state, the destruction of ecology, social confinement, the relationship of the forces of these relations, but above all the modalities by which it becomes possible to act on them to break the “stalemate” of the modernity of thought in the twenty-first century.

How civil engineers can survive and thrive in the twenty-first century

This is an abridged transcript of the inaugural address of Ed McCann, who became the 157th President of the Institution of Civil Engineers on 2 November 2020. His online address consisted of a series of video presentations and interviews, and is available on the ICE website.

History of Controlled Environment Horticulture: Ancient Origins

In the first century CE, two Roman agricultural writers, Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella and Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), referred to proto-greenhouses (specularia) constructed for the Emperor Tiberius (42 BCE–37 CE) presumably adjacent to his palace, the Villa Jovis on the Isle of Capri. Pliny stated in Historia Naturalis (Book 19, 23:64) that the specularia consisted of beds mounted on wheels that were moved into the sun, and on wintry days withdrawn under the cover of frames glazed with transparent stone (lapis specularis) to provide fruits of cucumis. According to Pliny, this was “a delicacy for which the Emperor Tiberius, had a remarkable partiality; in fact there was never a day on which he was not supplied it.” The cucumis fruits described by Columella and Pliny, long mistranslated as cucumbers, Cucumis sativus, were in fact long-fruited melons, Cucumis melo subsp. melo Flexuosus Group. They are known today as vegetable melons, snake melons, and faqqous, and were highly esteemed in Rome and ancient Israel.

The Hucpoldings’ Involvement in the Political Struggles of the Kingdom of Italy (847–945)

The first part of the book is dedicated to the prosopographic reconstruction of the kinship group, and to the political context and relationships in which the members, both men and women, operated from the second half of the ninth century to the beginning of the twelfth. The first chapter examines the first century of the Hucpoldings in Italy. Fundamentally, it suggests that the criteria for the inclusion into the ranks of Carolingian elite in the Italian kingdom were a relationship with the royal power and the attainment of public offices in different areas of the kingdom, such as in the palace of the capital Pavia, eastern Emilia, the duchy of Spoleto or the marchese of Tuscany.

Germania de Tácito: en los límites del género literario

This article proposes a new generic label for Tacitus’ Germania as “frontier ethnography”. Our reading is supported by Germania’s textual instability, due to its topical originality and compositive innovation. Although these features place Germania in a disruptive positioning face of historiographical tradition of Monography, it is consistent with the particular rhetorical situation of the late first century AD, traversed by the mixture of genres and the inversion of center-periphery relationships, and with the rise of a new dynasty as well. These characteristics are found in the two main text features of Germania. On the one hand, Ethnography, which was traditionally relegated to the excursus, is used here as the text’s main narrative device, whereas historical discourse is relocated to the digression. On the other hand, Barbaric periphery beyond the frontier becomes the central narrative matter of the text. Therefore, these textual features allow us to state that Germania insinuates a discourse move towards the limits of Roman generic and geographical space. Hence, Tacitus’ Germania can be interpreted as a literary exercise representing a new space within its sociopolitical context: the frontier.

The Red Gown: Reflections on the Visual History of Menstruation in Scotland

Over the last decades, menstruation has become more present in public discourse in Scotland.While scholars are increasingly documenting this change, little attention has been paid to therole of menstrual art made in Scotland. In this article, we explore the historic contexts ofmenstrual art in the town of St Andrews and in Scotland during the late twentieth and earlytwenty-first century, and ask what this reveals about menstrual absence and presence in publicdebates. We do this in collaboration with artist Bee Hughes, whose practice focuses on thevisible and invisible aspects of menstruation, and who was artist in residence at St Andrews in2020. Due to a university strike and a pandemic, our collaboration changed and subsequentlyfocused more on the histories of menstrual art. We thus assess symbols and collections ofmenstrual visual culture in Scotland, including the use of the ceremonial red gown at theUniversity of St Andrews, and menstrual art collections at Glasgow Women’s Library and StAndrews Special Collections. Together, we reflect on how their histories might be both present(institutionalised) and absent (when not on display). 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