A Reflection on The Inter-Semiotic Transformation of Select Vacanas of Akka Mahadevi into a Music-Dance Production

This project was set out to curate dance videos of select vacanas, meaning, religious free verses in Kannada, of Akka Mahadevi, a twelfth century poet from Karnataka, India. Vacanas are religious lyrics in free verse which mean ‘a saying’ or ‘a thing said’. By translating Akka’s vacanas to music and dance the project aimed to transport the essence of her poetry to the viewer. The symbols, images and metaphors used by the poet from discursive fields such as Bhakthi movement (a spiritual reform movement in India), Vedas, Upanishads, Yoga and feminism were re-interpreted through traditional music and dance styles recognized as classical arts by the national government, by a process of, what I theorize, as inter-semiotic transformation. Inter-semiotic transformation is the reinterpretation of symbols from one semiotic system, say, literature into others like music, dance, film or theatre. This paper analyses strategies of bringing poetry into the realm of aesthetic experience of viewers through the performing arts.

Annie Besant's Fight for Home Rule in India, 1910s–1920s

Annie Besant is famous in England for her involvement in the socialist revival in the 1880s. In 1889, she adopted theosophy and decided to focus on moral and spiritual reform. She moved to India, which she considered the mother of spirituality in order to pursue her goal. In the following two decades, though she often came back to Britain, she almost completely severed the links with the British left. However, in the 1910s and 1920s, she was again at the forefront of political agitation and she had to deal with labour movements again, both in Britain and in India. This chapter acknowledges the large and controversial historiography concerning Annie Besant’s involvement in the Indian nationalist movement. Rather than focusing on specific events, it seeks to draw attention to the global logic of her fight for Home Rule in India which extended well into the 1920s. By using primary sources, some of which have remained unexplored so far, it also aims to analyse how she related her political struggle to labour movements.

The Moresca Dance in Counter-Reformation Rome: Court Medicine and the Moderation of Exceptional Bodies

In the early modern elite court culture, dance held a prominent sociopolitical position. Nevertheless, in the Counter-Reformation era, the Catholic Church put dance culture under scrutiny. The moresca, one of the most popular dance spectacles that expressed the elite’s taste in exceptional and wondrous bodies, was criticized as deviant by Catholic reformers. In this criticism, the religious discourse often overlapped with contemporary medical discourse, which considered aspects of dance culture as unhealthy for both body and soul. In Counter-Reformation Rome, Girolamo Mercuriale, the court physician of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, following the aspirations of the Counter-Reformation papacy for spiritual reform, moderates in his medical treatise De arte gymnastica the controversial moresca: by modifying it into a medical exercise, he regulates the moresca in both medical and religious terms, making it an appropriate body practice for the elite.

Transformation of Oleksandr Dukhnovych’s pedagogical paradigm in the dimensions of modern domestic education

The problem of a creative use of the ideas that contain O. V. Dukhnovych’s pedagogical heritage in order to direct our search for constructive approaches to realisation of the concept “New Ukrainian School” has been raised. Special attention is paid to the parameters of the construct “substantial reform” which constitute the historical and pedagogical source bases. On the material of O. Dukhnovych’s elaborations, we focus on the attitudes related to textbook creation, organisation of schooling and pedagogisation of family education; this is the subject of the performed fundamental research. Since today it is not yet possible to effectively solve the new tasks set within the concept “New Ukrainian School”, this context of scientific understanding of O. Dukhnovych’s pedagogical paradigm has been actualised: creative adoption of the outstanding pedagogue-classicist’s ideas will contribute to the positive dynamics of the educational reform aimed at improving educational realities. The before mentioned issues constituted the purpose of the article and outlined the substantive content of its scientific objectives. A set of scientific and pedagogical methods, mainly of a theoretical level, was used to solve the outlined tasks: analysis, systematisation, generalisation, specification, modelling. It is noted that the scientific understanding of the pedagogical heritage of O. Dukhnovych creates an opportunity to understand the regularities of the gradual development of a corresponding pedagogical phenomenon better, for example of the ones the totality of which are concentrated in the problematic field of domestic education now – enhancement of the personal and professional mission of the pedagogue as “an agent of changes”, which (according to O. Dukhnovych) is “the greatest artist” from the perspective of “Pedagogy as an art”; enrichment of the national content of education through the imperative of teaching students in their native language; recognition of the basic importance of education as the general purpose of school and family as well as the meaning of education; full implementation of the conformity-to-nature principle to acquire “the joy of knowledge” by the child regardless of his / her educational needs. Reference is made to the context of O. Dukhnovych’s pedagogical paradigm with regard to solving the problems of small schools (in particular through the participation of village communities), bullying (in particular through stimulating public opinion). The historical and pedagogical provisions on the “substantiality” of any reform that correlates with “internal spiritual reform” are recognised as significant. Special attention is paid to the interpretation of the empirical data of the psychologists who characterise the involvement of modern pedagogues in innovations and actualise the historical and pedagogical heritage of O. Dukhnovych.

Towards the Courtier: The University Formation of Public Servants in the Age of Richard Fox

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Corpus Christi College in Oxford, founded in 1517 by Bishop Richard Fox, which occupies a particular place in the history of English universities. Corpus Christi College was a new kind of foundation, with a humanist curriculum and a distinctive emphasis on pedagogy. Endowed with lecturers in ‘Humanity‘ (Latin literature), Greek, and Theology—the last appointed to teach Scripture and the church fathers rather than the medieval authorities—it seemed to harness the learning of the Renaissance to the contemporaneous project of spiritual reform and reformation. Moreover, Corpus Christi College’s trilingual library—containing texts in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew—was famously judged by Erasmus as a wonder of the world. So it is that Corpus has been identified as one of a ‘group of Renaissance colleges‘, introducing ‘a new era in the university‘.

Introduction

Corpus Christi College, Oxford, founded just over five hundred years ago in 1517 by Bishop Richard Fox, occupies a particular place in the history of English universities. Together with Christ’s College, Cambridge (1506) and St John’s College, Cambridge (1511–16), it was a new kind of foundation, with a humanist curriculum and a distinctive emphasis on paedagogy. Endowed with lecturers in ‘Humanity’ (Latin literature), Greek and Theology, the last appointed to teach Scripture and the church fathers rather than the medieval authorities, it seemed to harness the learning of the Renaissance to the contemporaneous project of spiritual reform and reformation; and its trilingual library—containing texts in Latin, Greek and Hebrew—was famously judged by Erasmus a wonder of the world. So it is that Corpus has been identified as one of a ‘group of Renaissance colleges’, introducing ‘a new era in the university’....

A Mathematical Turn

Lefèvre described his own mathematical turn as a kind of conversion. This chapter explains what motivated his turn to mathematics, considering the place of mathematics in fifteenth-century Paris in relation to court politics and Lefèvre’s own connections to Italian humanists. But more importantly, Lefèvre’s attitude to learning and the propaedeutic value of mathematics drew on the context of late medieval spiritual reform, with its emphasis on conversion and care of the soul. In particular, Lefèvre’s turn to university reform seems to have responded to the works of Ramon Lull, alongside the devotio moderna and Nicholas of Cusa, which he printed in important collections. With such influences, Lefèvre chose the university as the site for intellectual reform.