scholarly journals Sicilian landscape as contested space in the first century BC: three case studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dustin McKenzie
Author(s):  
Judith Fletcher

Stories of a visit to the realm of the dead and a return to the upper world are among the oldest narratives in European literature, beginning with Homer’s Odyssey and extending to contemporary culture. This volume examines a series of fictional works by twentieth- and twenty-first century authors, such Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante, which deal in various ways with the descent to Hades. Myths of the Underworld in Contemporary Culture surveys a wide range of genres, including novels, short stories, comics, a cinematic adaptation, poetry, and juvenile fiction. It examines not only those texts that feature a literal catabasis, such as Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, but also those where the descent to the underworld is evoked in more metaphorical ways as a kind of border crossing, for instance Salman Rushdie’s use of the Orpheus myth to signify the trauma of migration. The analyses examine how these retellings relate to earlier versions of the mythical theme, including their ancient precedents by Homer and Vergil, but also to post-classical receptions of underworld narratives by authors such as Dante, Ezra Pound, and Joseph Conrad. Arguing that the underworld has come to connote a cultural archive of narrative tradition, the book offers a series of case studies that examine the adaptation of underworld myths in contemporary culture in relation to the discourses of postmodernism, feminism, and postcolonialism.


Author(s):  
Paul Hedges

This chapter explores the development of Anglican inter-faith relations since 1910 which has been shaped by a number of factors including: the ecumenical context, changing dynamics within the global Communion, globalization issues, and moves from mission to dialogue. The chapter begins with a historical overview and traces developments in key Anglican Communion texts and meetings, especially in recent times the Lambeth Conferences of 1988, 1998, and 2008. The ecumenical context which has shaped thought on inter-faith relations in this period is also given strong attention. The chapter concludes with two case studies. The first explores relations with Buddhism in the Sri Lankan context, while the second looks at relations with Islam focusing on the Middle East. While charting some general trends, it is noted that very different dynamics and varying standpoints exist in Anglican attitudes on inter-faith relations and have been part of the historical development throughout the period surveyed.


2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-75
Author(s):  
Dr. Anke Iman Bouzenita

The current discourse on bioethical questions often reveals a certain patchiness or seeming inability to answer contemporary bioethical problems within an Islamic epistemological paradigm. Attempting to analyze the causes of this phenomenon, the author describes the decontextualization of Islamic concepts from a background of secularized medical care and the ethics in the Islamic world—as well as the estrangement due to these questions of Islamic law from its holistic framework of application as a pervasive phenomenon, which brought about the dilemmas of bioethics in the twenty-first century. The author discusses chosen bioethical case studies in this light, with a focus on the concept of brain death. Doing so, the author takes into consideration the paradigmatic relationship between science, bioethical models, and the implications of the relevant different worldviews. The author shows how constructed realities related to the life sciences have been imported from the secular setting into an already estranged Islamic context to be answered, and describes the evolving dilemmas that make Islamic bioethics appear like a stranger moving in a strange land.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anju Mary Paul

The growing scientific research output from Asia has been making headlines since the start of the twenty-first century. But behind this science story, there is a migration story. The elite scientists who are pursuing cutting-edge research in Asia are rarely 'homegrown' talent but were typically born in Asia, trained in the West, and then returned to work in Asia. Asian Scientists on the Move explores why more and more Asian scientists are choosing to return to Asia, and what happens after their return, when these scientists set up labs in Asia and start training the next generation of Asian scientists. Drawing on evocative firsthand accounts from 119 Western-trained Asian scientists about their migration decisions and experiences, and in-depth analysis of the scientific field in four country case studies - China, India, Singapore and Taiwan - the book reveals the growing complexity of the Asian scientist migration system.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (78) ◽  
pp. 20-31
Author(s):  
Celeste M. Condit

In the twenty-first century, as throughout human history, anger has played a pivotal role in governance and international affairs. This essay contributes to the substantial scholarly literature on public emotion by summarizing an integrative analysis of public anger built both on multi-disciplinary literatures theorizing emotion and upon three case studies surrounding the attacks now commonly labelled “9/11.” Examples from the rhetorics of Osama bin Laden, President George W. Bush, and Susan Sontag illustrate the predispositional complex of anger well, because the elements of that complex are evident among all three rhetorics, despite the dramatic differences in culture, ideology, and positionality of the rhetors from whom they emanate. The essay concludes by urging the development of conditions and rhetorical practices that would enable global anger to serve its valuable adjudicatory functions rather than to reprise endlessly its function of rallying peoples to attack each other


2020 ◽  
pp. 271-286
Author(s):  
Eric Robertson

The notion of the formless found a lasting definition in Documents, the dissident Surrealist magazine led by Georges Bataille, Carl Einstein and Michel Leiris from 1929 to 1931.  In an unassuming short entry for its ‘Dictionnaire’, Bataille presents the informe emphatically not as a system or a structure, but as ‘un terme servant à déclasser’; yet neither the disruptive impulse of the 'Dictionnaire', nor the more recent exhibitions it has generated, can avoid a measure of taxonomic organisation (L'Informe: mode d'emploi, 1996; Undercover Surrealism, 2006). In the realm of poetry, free verse has eroded the boundaries of the poetic, but its freedom from formal constraints is limited too; as Jay Parini (2008) contends, ‘formless poetry does not really exist, as poets inevitably create patterns in language that replicate forms of experience.’  Through  a small number of case studies, this chapter will consider the legacy of Bataille’s definition while assessing the ongoing tension between form and its undoing in textual and visual art of the twenty-first century.


2021 ◽  
pp. 148-173
Author(s):  
Jason Lustig

This final chapter argues that struggles over archival ownership and the possibility of archival totality continue far beyond the years immediately following World War II. It considers three case studies to consider new forms of total archives being created through virtual collections and digitization: The Center for Jewish History in New York City (formed in 1994/1995 and opened in 2000), the efforts by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research to digitize materials found in Lithuania and reunite them with their own files, and the Friedberg Genizah Project’s initiative to digitize and join together fragments of the Cairo Genizah found in repositories around the world. These case studies showcase enduring visions of monumentality and indicate how archival construction is not merely the province of the past. Instead, the process of gathering historical materials is a continual process of making and remaking history.


Author(s):  
Amitav Acharya

This chapter examines the origins of the concept of human security, debates surrounding its definition and scope, some of the threats to human security in the world today, and international efforts to promote human security. It explores whether the idea of human security fundamentally challenges or merely supplement the traditional view of national security; whether human security is ‘freedom from fear’ or ‘freedom from want’, or both; and whether human security, broadly defined, represents a more accurate way of conceptualizing and strengthening world order in the twenty-first century. Two case studies are presented, one dealing with human security in Odisha, India, and the other with human security and international aid to Haiti in the wake of the January 2010 earthquake. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether a human security approach contributes significantly to world peace and order.


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