"Among the troops he chose brave warriors, who were battling through ranks...". On Some Peculiar Aspects of Amir Timur's Tactical Art

This article revises the peculiarities of Amir Timur's army tactical peculiarities, as well as their influence on the development of martial art of the Muslim East. It is established that Timur effectively used the mobilization potential of his state. The sedentary population of Chorasa and Transoxiana formed the infantry archery units who were taught to fight under cover of large standing shields - chapars. At the same time, loyal nomad tribes were the source of horse cavalry for the Timur's army. The base of battle formation was represented by a tactical "skeleton" formed of forced kanbuls, powerful advance guard and a reserve (that included elite warriors). Such battle formation allowed Timur to effectively face outflanking and frontal attacks of the enemy. Besides, such battle formation also fit for quick shift from defense to massive counterattack, performed by advance guard and kanbuls projected towards the enemy. The vulnerability of weakened flank corps was partially compensated by using infantry archery units with support of dismounted archers. As a rule, massive archery attack stopped the enemy's attack and provided for counterattack. The organizational and tactical autonomy of kul corps, which could embattle independently even if there was a front breakthrough or encirclement, played an important role. Dismounted, enshielded warriors of the corps could repulse the attacks until the deblocking unit approaches. A fast-moving reserve under Timur's personal command could be used for both repulsing an attack and augmenting the advancing troops.

When Attitudes Become Platitudes, Live in the Cloud

“New Eelam” is a cloud-based digital subscription housing project offering ideal homes to footloose “global citizens” who practice high mobility, postpolitical utopianism, and minimalist interior design. This article uncovers the political and cultural significance of this dream of dematerialized existence in the work of the artist Christopher Kulendran Thomas. Mapping the dematerialization of the art object onto the dematerializations of cloud computing and minimalist lifestyles, this article addresses two ongoing series: When Platitudes Become Form (2012–) and New Eelam (2016–). First, it explores how New Eelam conscripts its public into imagining itself as the morally and aesthetically superior advance-guard of a new world order. Then, it uses Kulendran Thomas’s submerged invocation of the 1969 exhibition Live in Your Head. When Attitudes Become Form to analyze how this experiment in “digital realty” uses dematerialization to solicit urgent realizations about the relationships between the contemporary art market, mass migration, and geopolitical reality.

The Macedonian Expeditionary Corps in Asia Minor (336–335 BC)

Summary The article deals with a complex of issues connected with the campaign waged by the Macedonian expeditionary corps in Asia Minor in 336–335 BC. The author clears up the aims set for the advance-guard, its command structure, strength and composition. He also describes the relevant military operations and reveals the reasons both for the Macedonians’ successes in 336 and their failures in 335. The idea is argued that despite the final failures, it is hardly possible to say that the campaign the expeditionary corps conducted ended in its total defeat. Besides, it is noted that those military operations had major significance for Alexander’s campaign in Asia Minor in 334, because a number of preconditions for its full success had been created right in their course.

Edward Carpenter’s Homogenic Utopia

This chapter examines Edward Carpenter's utopian vision, and specifically his belief that the path to utopia would be blazed by what he called Uranians. Carpenter coined the term “Uranian,” or “Urning,” to describe the man-loving men and women-loving women who he believed were the advance guard in the march to utopia. According to Carpenter, Uranians constituted an “intermediate sex,” combining what he saw as the best of both genders: women's tender, loving nature and men's energy and capacity for action. Carpenter wrote a series of essays and books about intermediate sex and what he refers to as “homogenic love.” One of his major works was the 1883 poem “Towards Democracy.” This chapter first provides a background on Carpenter before discussing his utopianism, his religious and spiritual beliefs, his visit to Walt Whitman in America, and his views on homosexuality and socialism.

To the Heart of Europe

F. O. Matthiessen and Alfred Kazin were the advance guard of a generation of American scholars bringing American literature to Europe after the war, but their European encounters shaped “American literature” as a canon. Matthiessen was a gay Christian socialist who taught in Czechoslovakia just before the 1948 communist coup; he committed suicide, in 1950, having come under suspicion for “un-American” activities. Originally a scholar of Elizabethan translation, Matthiessen’s encounters in Europe changed his sense of what does and doesn’t get lost in carrying over a novel, an ideology, or the entire “American renaissance.” Kazin was a Jewish-American writer whose encounters in the wake of the Holocaust yielded opposing conclusions. Their dialogue, alongside European commentaries, illuminates the power of literature in postwar reconstruction. What did it mean for a Czech Americanist to read Keats in Buchenwald? And what did it mean for Europeans to read Moby-Dick in the postwar ruins?