Gótico brasileño: el cine de Walter Hugo Khouri y José Mojica Marins

This paper seeks to connect the concepts of “terror” and “horror” proposed by Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe to films by Brazilian directors Walter Hugo Khouri and José Mojica Marins. It will be discussed here how such concepts manifest themselves in the national context and in which senses, trapped somewhere between repetition and difference, Khouri and Mojica’s films can be deemed expressions of a Brazilian Gothic. Stemming from elements derived from Anglo-American criticism, but, highlighting the different meanings that these elements gain in Brazil. To interpret Brazilian films in the light of the Gothic means addressing the issue of “construction of meaning” in national history, as the Gothic has the potential to revive old traumas and generate discussions about specific social contexts.

Teaching Literature in a Post-Dictatorship Country

Albanian literature curricula in a high school system has incorporated in a few years a lot of concepts, authors and methodology pretending in absorbed and integration of knowledge worldwide on literature teaching process and environment. Analyzing the academic process of constructing the base and the theoretical axis of the teachers, which actually are teaching literature can be noticed easily that a large number of them in their last ten years of their professional carrier has nothing to do with it. Their studies in university stage was only ideologized and focused on socialist realism. The university’s curriculum was strictly handicapped and based on the communist ideology on “creating the new people- the communist one”, as the literature itself, and every art form was “shaped” as it. Being such a teacher nowadays in Albania you have to face a challenge: You feel prejudged by your “experienced” colleges, who has not accepted and never “known” really the perspective of reading a fiction text as a “open text”. You felt yourself “trapped” in textbooks, their sources and their perspective is limited on their authors theoretical backgrounds. Having a parenting and student tradition, mentality as their academic success is based only on “the book” (even if in Albania we have more than 10 years practicing “altertext”-as a possibility of performing the subject program through the book chosen by teachers between three or four possibilities) makes it difficult to provide an “open” experience on learning through a based bibliography. The academic coordinators in pre-university system, aren’t always ready for the teacher who want to realize the teaching process leaded by the ideas of globalization, open minded individual, constructive perspective of the personality of the student, on national history and tradition versus “the other”.

IMAGINARY ICONOGRAPHY OF MYKHAILO DOROSHENKO (1991‒2021)

The article is an attempt to systematize and analyse most of the existing images of Hetman Mykhailo Doroshenko created during 1991-2021. A life portrait of the Cossack leader was not found. The probability of the existence of such a portrait is very low due to a number of specific historical reasons of objective and subjective nature, as described in the article. The formation of modern iconography of Mykhailo Doroshenko was due to the growing interest in the biography of this leader of the Zaporozhian Cossacks in the context of the revival of interest in national history during the first years of Ukraine's independence. Further interest in the formation of the iconography of Mykhailo Doroshenko was fostered by the needs of national-patriotic education, museum activities and educational process. Doroshenko's modern iconography is imaginary, it does not reflect the real appearance of the hetman. The vast majority of images of this leader of the Zaporozhian Cossacks are works of the portrait genre, two paintings are made in the battle genre. Doroshenko's fabulous image was also used on philatelic articles and commemorative coins. There have not yet been erected monuments or memorials dedicated to Mykhailo Doroshenko in which the existing imaginary iconographic types of this figure would be used

Russian statehood in 1917: a change in the paradigm of development (to the 105th anniversary of the February Revolution in Russia)

The article examines the most problematic and interesting, from the author’s point of view, events and facts that had a cardinal impact on the development of Russian statehood in the period between the February and October revolutions of 1917. The relevance of the study of these problems is primarily due to the growing interest of researchers in the events of 1917 in Russia as a turning point in national history, as well as the understanding of possible alternatives to the development of the state and legal system of the Russian state at various stages of its existence. Based on the analysis of the complex of sources, the following conclusions are made: 1) the events of the February Revolution profoundly affected the course of development of the national statehood; 2) the republican form of government in Russia in 1917 turned out to be quite a promising innovation, however, the government found complete helplessness in solving pressing issues; 3) the reforms carried out by the Provisional Government in March – October 1917, for the most part remained declarative and were never implemented; 4) the construction of bourgeois republican statehood was not completed due to the October Revolution of 1917 and the overthrow of the Provisional Government. At the same time, the very attempt to build a bourgeois-democratic statehood in the spring and autumn of 1917 had a huge moral and symbolic significance. It was a kind of precedent in the domestic state-legal practice and laid a solid foundation for the formation of democracy and parliamentarism in modern Russia.

Editorial

This issue of Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences includes authors from China, Canada, France and the United States. The first two articles analyse processes of developing international partnerships and networks promoting refugee access to higher education. The other three papers concern aspects of teaching and learning: online learning in accountancy; a flipped pedagogy in sociology; and the inclusion of national history in introductory international relations courses.

The Volhynian mass murders of 1943 in Polish-Ukrainian historical discussions in the 1990s

The article analyzes the first public discussions of the last decade of the 20th century about mass murders of Polish population in Volhynia in 1943. The author explores the emergence of the topic of “Volhynia” in the public space and Polish-Ukrainian historical debates about these mass murders in the 1990s. The research is based on the published sources and interviews with the participants in the Polish-Ukrainian dialog. The article focuses on the first mentions of the Volhynian events in the post-communist period, on the way this issue was discussed at seminars of Polish and Ukrainian historians, and in the leading Polish newspapers “Gazeta Wyborcza” and “Rzeczpospolita”. Particular attention is paid to the discussion about the mass murders in the “Gazeta Wyborcza” in 1995. The Volhynian issue appeared in the public space after almost fifty years of silence initiated from the Polish “kres” and veteran circles which represented the victims of the mass murders. This topic was arousing interest gradually. It did not immediately take a lead- ing place in Polish-Ukrainian historical debates. In the 1990s, the discussion about “Volhynia” took place primarily between historians and within the groups to which this topic was important. There was only one discussion about the Volhynian events in the press, namely in the “Gazeta Wyborcza”. This newspaper, which appeared as an organ of Solidarity, pays attention especially to the relationship between Poland and its neighbours, particularly Ukraine. In the Ukrainian central media, the Volhynian issue remained completely without attention. Although the debates about “Volhynia” were not actively conducted in the 1990s, certain tendencies were established during this period, which remained characteristic in the following years. In Poland, these events were perceived as one of the most traumatic episodes of the national history, so it was the Polish side who initiated the discussions about this topic. The Ukrainian side was forced to respond to these initiatives.

Bringing (inter)national history into ‘Introduction to International Relations’

Many introductory courses in International Relations (IR) dedicate some portion of the class to international history. Such class segments often focus on great-power politics of the twentieth century and related academic debates. In this essay, I argue that these international history segments can better engage students by broadening the histories instructors present and by drawing on especially salient histories such as those of the country in which the course is being taught. To elaborate on how one might do this, I discuss how US-based courses could productively examine the country’s rise to great-power status. I outline three reasons to bring this topic into US-based introductory IR courses, and I draw on personal experience to provide a detailed description of the ways one can do so.

The “Storms and Turns of History”: Emigration Narratives in the 20th Century in Polish and Hungarian History Textbooks

History textbooks are special sources, reflecting on the era in which they were published. They play a role in formation of national identity and shape students’ perception of the past and their relation to the present. Central Europe’s recent media have given considerable attention to emigration. How do history textbooks narrate migration? This paper explores how the current history textbooks in Hungary and Poland narrate mass emigration. Findings reveal several reasons for the mass migration named by the textbooks, which include a desire for improved economic and living conditions. The treatment of emigrant groups as transnational populations in both Hungarian and Polish narratives suggests that they are separated from their home country’s national history and in a way ‘step out’ of its flow – however, the narratives appearing in the Polish textbooks deal with the overall neglected groups in greater depth. In addition, this research explores how these textbooks treat these transnational populations.