Visual Histories of Sex

Increased access to visual archives and the proliferation of digitized images related to sexuality have led a growing number of scholars in recent years to place images and visual practices at the center of critical historical inquiries of sexual desire, subjectivity, and embodiment. At the same time, new critical histories of sexual science serve both to expand the temporal and geographical frames for investigating the historical relationships of sex and visual production, and to generate new lines of inquiry and reshape visual studies more broadly. The contributors to this issue invite us to ask: What new questions and challenges for the study of sex and sexual science are posed by critical studies of the visual? How are new visual methodologies that focus on archives changing the contours of historical knowledge about sex and sexuality? What—and where—are new methodologies still needed? “Visual Archives of Sex” aims to illuminate current research that centers visual media in the history of sexuality and that interrogates contemporary historiographies.

3D survey and virtual reconstruction of heritage. The case study of the City Council and Lonja of Alcañiz

With current data acquisition techniques, exhaustive documentation of patrimonial goods is generated, which allows obtaining a 3D geometric model, on which data from research from research is generated. As in other fields of architecture, the latest graphic techniques and manipulation of the image, allow a working methodology other than the current one in the patrimonial field. The information systems have been evolving towards technologies developed with open source software, the use of standards, ontologies and the structuring of information and of the 3D model itself under a semantic hierarchy. Interoperability between databases is favored and the maintenance of applications is ensured. The purpose is to support decision-making related to the model and simultaneously, serve multiple purposes such as cataloging, protection, restoration, conservation, maintenance or dissemination, among others. The research carried out for the realization of the survey of the City Council and Lonja of Alcañiz (Teruel), has the aim of expanding the historical knowledge of the buildings and delimiting its possible constructive phases, in order to obtain the geometric reality of the buildings. In this way, provide greater instruments to carry out the drafting work of the set restoration project.

Discourse of Historical Cognition: an Epistemological Analysis

The purpose of this article is to consider the discourse of researchers actively working in the field of historical knowledge. In other words, the article examines the features of the verbalization of basic concepts and methodological attitudes of modern historical knowledge. Discourse analysis, in contrast to the traditional philosophical and methodological, allows you to penetrate into the microcosm of historical work, to observe the “historian at the workbench” outside the “spotlights” and other attributes of public demonstration. Discourse analysis is a specific section of historical epistemology. From the author's point of view, epistemology adheres to a descriptive attitude. It is intended to describe, not prescribe, as is the case with the methodology of science. The goal of the article is to trace and show the dynamics of the historical vocabulary in the hope of seeing emerging trends in the rethinking of the models of the historical process as a whole. Discourse analysis allows you to detail intellectual changes and see “point shifts” in patterns of thinking, which ultimately lead to “tectonic transformations” of the entire field of historical research. Science, according to the theory of P. Bourdieu, is a specific social game, and contains a competitive struggle within itself, in which the winner acquires the right to general recognition and authority, which consolidate the concepts he invented as legitimate. History is no exception here. The article focuses on such concepts that have gained legitimacy as “historical reconstruction”, “temporality”, “past”, “presentism”, “antiquarianism”, “narrative”, “contingent”. It is shown that words are the triggers of search thinking.

Larger than Life? A Stylometric Analysis of the Multi-Authored 'Vita' of Hildegard of Bingen

This article explores by aid of stylometric methods the collaborative authorship of the Vita Hildegardis, Hildegard of Bingen's (auto-?)biography. Both Hildegard and her biographers gradually contributed to the text in the course of the last years of Hildegard's life, and it was posthumously completed in the mid-1180s by end redactor Theoderic of Echternach. In between these termini a quo and ante quem the work was allegedly taken up but left unfinished by secretaries Godfrey of Disibodenberg and Guibert of Gembloux. In light of the fact that the Vita is an indispensable source in gaining historical knowledge on Hildegard's life, the question has often been raised whether the Life of Hildegard is – by dint of contributions by multiple stakeholders – a larger-than-life depiction of the visionary's life course. Specifically the 'autobiographical' passages included in the Vita, in which Hildegard is allegedly cited directly and is taken to recount biographical information in the first-person singular, have been approached with suspicion. By applying state-of-the-art computional methods for the automatic detection of writing style (stylometry), the delicate questions of authenticity and collaborative authorship of this (auto?)hagiographical text are addressed.

And the Rest is History: Measuring the Scope and Recall of Wikipedia’s Coverage of Three Women’s Movement Subgroups

Narrating history is perpetually contested, shaping and reshaping how nations and people understand both their pasts and the current moment. Measuring and evaluating the scope of histories is methodologically challenging. In this paper we provide a general approach and a specific method to measure historical recall. Operationalizing historical information as one or more word phrases, we use the phrase-mining RAKE algorithm on a collection of primary historical documents to extract first-person historical evidence, and then measure recall via phrases present on contemporary Wikipedia, taken to represent a publicly-accessible summary of existing knowledge on virtually any historical topic. We demonstrate this method using women's movements in the United States as a case study of a debated historical field. We found that issues important to working-class elements of the movement were less likely to be covered on Wikipedia compared to other subsections of the movement. Combining this method with a qualitative analysis of select articles, we identified a typology of mechanisms leading to historical omissions: paucity, restrictive paradigms, and categorical narrowness. Our approach, we conclude, can be used to both evaluate the recall of a body of history and to actively intervene in enlarging the scope of our histories and historical knowledge.

„Quo Vadis, Aida?“ in the Context of Prosthetic Memory

The research for this paper was initially prompted by the insights of Alison Landsberg (Prosthetic Memory, 2004) on the development of prosthetic memory, namely the phenomenon of personally experienced content through the mass media – and the idea to apply the same insights to the film "Quo Vadis, Aida" (2020) directed by Jasmila Žbanić, because of the relevance of its topic on the Srebrenica genocide in 1995 for modern society. This paper analyzes the difference between collective and prosthetic memory, affective engagement concerning the process of identification in acquiring historical knowledge and prosthetic memory, and the elements of the film that encourage epistemological uncertainty and therefore potentially develop historical awareness and responsibility. Given the example of the film "Quo Vadis, Aida?", this paper aims to show the potential of mass media in developing prosthetic memory, which consequently brings to thinking about the other from the current perspective, thus encouraging moral responsibility and critical thinking.

Theater/Performance Historiography: A Preamble

The introduction to the issue of Pamiętnik Teatralny which gestures towards current work on theater/performance historiography published in the Anglo-American academe. Reflecting on insights about the complex nature and the mediality of historical knowledge, we would like to offer a collection of essays which, in their singularity, draw attention to internal contradictions prompted by tensions between 1) time, space, and matter, which are used to frame academic practices, and 2) events and objects, which are determined historically not only by past and present imaginations but also by how time, space, and matter function within the field of theater/performance historiography. We ask the following questions: How are we to think about the ways of housing the past (the archive, the event, the object) and the experience of the past (time, space, matter)? How are we to think about historiography in ways that are not only not dualistic (e.g., self and other, mainstream and margin), but that facilitate seeing historical subjects as unsettled by (rather than settled in) time, as riddled with contradictions (rather than reflective of a status quo), and as constructs of meaning (rather than as regulated thought)? And finally, how are we to negotiate the dynamics and the contradictions between multiple temporalities and spatialities housed in one and the same object or event?

Paetumokai : an inquiry into the social and family life of a rural town in New Zealand

This survey of Paetumokai, however, was not intended to be a complete social survey of a small town, but rather a study of all those organisations which in one way or another have a bearing upon family life. In order to obtain a clear picture of this a questionnaire was prepared and seventy families were interviewed. Before proceeding to a discussion of the methods and techniques I adopted for this survey I should like to present a brief sketch of the changes in general that have occurred in family life. The normal minimum family into which a child is born is one consisting of two parents in the special environment of a home. This environment changes and establishes a different background for each successive child. In all times of which we have legendary or historical knowledge the family has existed and has been responsible for the provision of the basic needs of its offspring - food, clothing, shelter and education. As time went on and the needs of mankind increased, the family, as a group, became involved in more and more duties and responsibilities until it became a complex organisation in which the participants filled many varied roles. Thus, in addition to providing the staple needs already mentioned, the family has provided work, education and apprenticeship, companionship, religion and social life. Such then was the pattern of the emerging family of historical times.