Identity (Culture)

Arts-based Education in Outdoor Learning is a compendium of artistic endeavour created for the purposes of learning. The contents stem mainly from teaching BA undergraduate Outdoor students at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, UK, showcased here to promote critical discussion on Outdoor issues and foster pedagogical progress wherever that may be found. This introduction outlines the structure of the book, which also illuminates the plan of teaching that has brought about such a vibrant collection of chapters. The ethos of my educational mission has been for students to become philosophical about things, ‘having ideas’ with a view to making a comment about some state of affairs in the Outdoors. With a nugget of an idea latched on to, fuelled with some passion, the next step was to transform that idea into some physical presence through an artistic medium; shape it. Thereafter, the academic task was to polish and present the artwork with a supporting chapter, in order to communicate their idea to the world; share it. The creation of art in this context was always a means to an educational end, the artworks being an impressive by-product from this experience – but now the artworks are leading the show, representing the style of education we enjoyed. It seems worth mentioning at the outset, that all the Outdoor students I have taught are not artists, they are climbers, canoeists and mountaineers. They never came to university to do or study art and nor did I teach them as such. If I have done anything, it was to free up the possibility of thinking slightly differently about topics they chose, and then equip them with some basic artistic tools to play with those ideas. As a result, I discovered a huge increase in student confidence and a palpable increase in enjoyment of learning, as much for me as their teacher as for them. In effect, what I did was invite into my classroom a raft of untapped talent in thinking and learning that suddenly had a place in their university degrees. Students were writing home asking parents to dig out their pencils and painting sets that they had at school, as there was now an urgent need to express an idea in a creative way. On this point, and towards a student-centred introduction to this book, I invite the reader to turn to the last chapter (chpt 40) Student Voices: living and learning through art and the outdoors which provides a sense of the endeavour, commitment and learning experiences from a selection of student authors in this volume.

The article calls into question the understanding of the Kočevska (Gottschee) area as a “German language island”. Through examples of the use of different languages before the Second World War, it shows a different –multilingual or multicultural– image of this region. The author draws data from historical and archival sources, as well as from a survey that she conducted among Gottscheers (“Gottschee Germans”) living in Slovenia, Austria, Germany, the USA and Canada. Keywords: Gottschee, Gottscheers, Gottschee Germans, multilingualism, nationalism, linguistically mixed regions, linguistic islands, national identity

To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2017. Rescaling the local: Multi-academy trusts, private monopoly and statecraft in England. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49 (2), 171-185

For the past six years successive UK governments in England have introduced reforms intended to usher in less aggregated, top-down, bureaucratically overloaded models of service delivery as well as secure conditions for greater school autonomy.  Yet the ‘hollowing out’ of local government has not resulted in less bureaucracy on the ground or less regulation from above, nor has it diminished hierarchy as an organising principle of education governance.  In some cases, monopolies and monopolistic practices dominated by powerful bureaucracies and professional groups persist, albeit realised through the involvement of new actors and organisations from business and philanthropy.  In this paper I adopt a governmentality perspective to explore the political significance of large multi-academy trusts (MATs) – private sponsors contracted by central government to run publicly funded schools – to the generation of new scalar hierarchies and accountability infrastructures that assist in bringing the gaze of government to bear upon the actions of schools that are otherwise less visible under local government management.  On this account, it is argued, MATs are integral to statecraft and the invention and assemblage of particular apparatuses for intervening upon specific organisations, spaces and peoples.

Abstract:  The  term  identity  is  very  problematic  and  has  varying
degrees of scopes and meanings. The concept of “being” or “becoming”
of identity is a contextual term that is affected by time and space. The
interaction  and  togetherness  of  the  two  places  cultivates  conflict  of
identity in the person. No one can be independent of his/ her identity of
past  or  present.  It  is  the  political,  cultural  and  social  scenario  of  the
place  and  time  which  have  an  impact  upon  the  individual’s  identity.
Thus,  identity  relates  itself  to  the  individual,  social,  cultural  and
national aspect.
Amitav  Ghosh’s  Sea  of  Poppies  (2008)  re-enacts  the  history  of
indentured  labour,  the  story  of  their  problems  and  position  in  the
society,  their  dislocation,  the  anguish  of  departure  from  their
motherland, and the way they confronted the issues  of identity. Ghosh
in his novel has penetrated the issues of identity  of characters that are
related to their personal, socio-political and national arena. This paper is
an attempt to analyse the elements of diasporic, national, subaltern and
cultural identity that Ghosh has employed in this novel.

One of the most momentous cross-cultural collisions occurred in the Caribbean in 1492, heralding a period of rapid change in both ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Worlds. During the early years of the colonial period, when new relationships were being established, material objects became active agents in the interactions between the indigenous Taíno and the Spanish. The Taíno gifted the Spanish with objects that had significance in their own world, in an attempt to enmesh the Spanish into Taíno socio-political and economic networks. In turn, Spanish objects entered into Taíno value
systems. Glass and jet beads, mirrors and brass ornaments were integrated into prestigious objects, such as the two surviving Taíno cotton sculptures that form the focus of this paper: a belt in the collections of the Weltmuseum Wien and a composite sculpture in the Museo Nazionale
Preistorico Etnografico ‘Luigi Pigorini’, Rome. These pieces offer a glimpse into how Old World exotics were reinterpreted and integrated into indigenous value systems during a period of cultural transition and change.

Full, open access volume:
http://www.archaeopress.com/Public/displayProductDetail.asp?id=%7B75FFD4AC-966D-406F-A3A7-CBE6F4CF613B%7D

Jonathan Woocher’s 2012 essay, “Reinventing Jewish Education for the 21st Century,” o ered
a distillation of concepts and prescriptions he
had been incubating for the better part of a decade (Woocher, 2012a). At its core was a
vision of a learner-centered educational system where Jewish wisdom (i.e., Torah) becomes a resource for personal meaning-making. Those familiar with the trajectory of Woocher’s thinking were surely not surprised by his enthusiasm for prosumerism or his relative sanguinity about
the decline of legacy institutions. But they might have been caught o  guard by the virtual absence of any reference to a role for community and Jewish peoplehood in his proposed educational paradigm. For Woocher, Jewish community had been an animating concern that presaged his interest in communal dynamics, guided his work as the longtime executive director of the Jewish Education Service of North America ( JESNA), and grounded his e orts on behalf of Jewish continuity and renaissance. Was Woocher’s silence on community in “Reinventing Jewish Education” indicative of a radical rethinking of the bases of Jewish life?

The dislocated, deterritorialized discourse produced by repatriates from formerly European colonies has remained overlooked in academic scholarship. One such group is the Eurasian “Indo” community that has its roots in the former Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia. This article focuses on Tjalie Robinson, the intellectual leader of this community from the 1950s to the mid-1970s. The son of a Dutch father and a British-Javanese mother, Robinson became the leading voice of the diasporic Indo community in the Netherlands and later also in the United States. His engagement resulted in the foundation of the Indo magazine Tong Tong and the annual Pasar Malam Besar, what was to become the world’s biggest Eurasian festival. Robinson played an essential role in the cultural awareness and self-pride of the eventually global Indo community through his elaboration of a hybrid and transnational identity concept. By placing his focus “tussen twee werelden” (in-between two worlds) and identifying “mixties-schap” (mestizaje) as the essential characteristic of Indo identity, Robinson anticipated debates on hybridity, transnationalism, and creolism that only much later would draw attention from scholars in the field of postcolonial studies. This article highlights Robinson’s pioneering role in framing a deterritorialized hybrid alternative to nationalist essentialism in the postcolonial era.

Our research study investigated the primary research question: “What are the lived experiences of millennial women holding knowledge positions in South African metropolises that lead them to leave their organizations?” among 25 professional, millennial women in the main economic hubs of Gauteng and the Western Cape in South Africa. Secondary questions explored were: What the experience of resigning felt like for the women, the role of different identities in the experiences, and mechanisms that organizations could use to retain millennial women. For most women in our study, the experience of resigning was unpleasant; while for some, it was appeasing. This study also identified gender, age, race, dress-code, language, accent, relationship status, and country of origin as ideological identity-forming components that affect their experiences in the workplace. Organizational retention strategies identified were: (1) fostering diversity, (2) developmental support, (3) management support, (4) voice amplification, (5) enabling work environment creation, and (6) rewards and recognition. Based on the analysis of the findings, the effect of homogenous norms resulting from homosocial reproduction was then interpreted as the underlying essence of many of the participant’s lived experiences that led them to resign from their organizations.

Iris Ruiz is a Lecturer in the Merritt Writing Program at UC, Merced, which is located in the heart of the Central Valley and is a designated Hispanic Serving Institution. She teaches courses in advanced composition, journal editing, first and second year composition and Chicanx Studies. She recently published Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and other Ethnic Minorities: A Critical History and Pedagogy and an edited collection, Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies: New Latinx Keywords for Theory and Pedagogy, which Raúl Sánchez and she are co-editing and includes many CCCC Latinx Caucus gente. Iris has been a member of the NCTE/CCCC Latinx Caucus since 2000, contributing to Writing and Working for Change projects, Reflections, the formation of the People Of Color caucus for the WPA, and she is currently working on a statement for the Caucus to consider in support of Ethnic Studies nationwide to be release soon by NCTE. She has recently been elected to the position of Co-Chair for the NCTE/CCCC Latinx Caucus. Her indigenous roots stem from her great-grandmother, Angelita Treviño, who is pure-blooded indigenous. Iris has gleaned much of what she knows about Curanderismo, indigenous spirituality, and natural healing practices from Angelita's memory. She hopes to continue to " Indigenize " Western epistemology as the world continues to go through a decolonial paradigm shift that has no due date, but that is currently in process.

The book is devoted to the analysis of ethno-linguistic and socio-cultural foundations of the identity of Dagestanis. The author discribres
particularities of  ethno-linguistic situation in the Mountainous and Lowland districts of Dageston, the influence of migration, urbanization, ethnic mixations on the cultural and language identity,  as well as the correlation of ethnic and religious identitues,  forms of actualization of ethnic and civil  consciousness,  ethnic stereotypes and other components of consciousness of Dagestanis. Special attention is paid to the problem of preserving the language diversity and cultural identity of the peoples of Dagestan.The book is intended for anthropologists, historians, philologists.
culture and a wide range of readers interested in Etnea-
takovymi and ethno-cultural problems.

This paper aims at the study and enhancement of the Greek’s historical, cultural and ekistics heritage in Turkey today, targeting on the enhancement of its image that is dependent on the architectural, morphological and social features of the built fabric. As a key study, there were chosen communities of the contemporary province of Izmir, Çeşme and Alaçati.
The methodology approach which was chosen is consisted of bibliography and in situ research and analysis, both of which have been taking place in the framework of a research program entitled “Cultural and ekistics heritage of the Greek communities in Asia Minor”.
A thorough examination is followed in the evaluation of the historic relations and ties, in order to enhance tradition and redefine the symbiosis of the dualism of greek origin ekistics heritage and tourism development in the turkish territories. 
During the investigation, a question was raised, regarding the way in which a monumental housing settlement could adapt to current conditions that have brought about a kind of conversion in the current identity of the communities.
Their crucial historical and cultural role as the holdover of collective memory and architectural heritage, establish them into places of great significance, worth being preserved and enhanced throughout the years.
In this context, a series of proposals are suggested, targeting on the enhancement and protection of their cultural image, along with their historical and architectural identity.

Renato Rizzi, Susanna Pisciella, Giuseppina Scavuzzo//// Raccolta critica degli interventi delle due giornate seminariali "Architettura. I pregiudicati".

Draft-to-be-completed uploaded

"Il seminario pone due domande, la prima rivolta al sapere: abbiamo consapevolezza del carattere della cultura contemporanea? La seconda rivolta all’apparire (l’irriducibile manifestarsi di ogni cosa, progetto, idea): abbiamo consapevolezza delle forme che i nostri saperi producono e radicano nel territorio?
Se non si comprende la struttura fondamentale dei significati che si generano nell’intersezione tra sapere e apparire non si può realmente avere cognizione di ciò che si vede e si produce.
In questo orizzonte emerge il tema dei “pregiudicati”, quegli ambiti del sapere che sono stati espulsi e rifiutati dalla cultura contemporanea, pur essendo a fondamento del sapere e dell’apparire; in una parola del “progetto”.
Il dominio dei saperi tecnico-analitici avvallato dalla confusione estetico-individuale genera una condizione insostenibile per il progetto, per il paesaggio e per gli abitanti.
Il seminario si propone di portare al centro del dibattito un problema che riguarda tutti noi e che si esprime nella crescente richiesta di qualità ambientale e urbana, con la consapevolezza che non si può affrontare in alcun modo il tema della qualità senza affrontare prima il tema dell’estetico –nella sua dimensione ontologico metafisica-, il piano indifferibile e ignorato dall’architettura del nostro tempo.
A partire dal secondo dopoguerra, il sapere-estetico è stato depotenziato e progressivamente estromesso dai processi di produzione del progetto e sostituito da un dispositivo di schematismi, automazioni e anonimato mascherati di sociale e sostenibilità. In altre parole, il paradigma dell’informe, sommatoria di due principi: isolamento e individualità. Una testimonianza di tutto questo? Il nostro territorio dopo soli cinquant’anni di trasformazioni. Questo processo ha investito sia l’ambito della ricerca sia quello professionale, attraversando tutte le discipline.
La Convenzione Europea del Paesaggio richiama all’urgenza la necessità di arginare la desertificazione del paesaggio che è desertificazione simbolico-significante. Quali proposte può formulare l’architettura se è dominata da quella medesima cultura che è in totale contraddizione con i fondamenti epistemici dell’apparire e che vuole gestire il mondo diviso in parti isolate? Come può l’architettura rispondere consapevolmente se ormai da tempo il suo pensiero è stato portato all’esterno, definitivamente trasferito nelle maglie strette dell’apparato tecnicistico-normativo?
Non esistono linguaggi che possiamo definire neutri, per questa ragione affidare il progetto all’autorità astratta degli indici non è indifferente, ma costituisce in sé un’ideologia.
Il titolo “Common Ground” della XIII Biennale di Architettura diviene il pretesto per interrogarsi se questo “dominio comune”, per essere efficacemente tale, non debba confrontarsi con gli “Un-common grounds” –visione atemporale e universale-, affinché l’ordine complesso delle relazioni del mondo ricostituisca l’intreccio delle connessioni nelle opere, saldando insieme paradigma tecnico-scientifico e paradigma ontologico-metafisico."




Relatori:
Lamberto Amistadi, Univ. Parma
Renato Bocchi, Univ. Venezia
Malvina Borgherini, Univ. Venezia
Angelo Bucci, Univ. Sao Paulo
Massimo Donà, Univ. Milano
Franco Farinelli, Univ. Bologna
Emanuele Garbin, Univ. Venezia
Carlos Fabian Giusta, Univ. Rosario
Alberto Pèrez Gomez, Univ. Montreal
Antonio Gnoli, La Repubblica
Giuseppina Scavuzzo, Univ. Trieste
Luciano Semerani, Univ. Venezia
Luca Taddio, Mimesis Edizioni
Andrea Tagliapietra, Univ. Milano


Interventi:
Augusto Angelini, Univ. Valparaìso
Fernanda Botter, Univ. Milano
Cristina Hurtado Campana e Federico Scaroni, Univ. Tokyo
Enrico Cicalò, Univ. Sassari
Cinzia Farina, Univ. Roma
Carlo Gandolfi, Univ. Milano
Fermina Garrido, Univ. Salamanca
Fernando Laterca e Amodeo Wagner, Univ. Sao Paulo
Serena Muccitelli, Univ. Roma
Francesca Pierdominici, Univ. Roma
Matteo Sangalli, Univ. Milano
Valerio Tolve, Univ. Milano
Ugo Rossi, Univ. Venezia



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In order to better cope with the pressures and stresses of the current day, modern psychology is anxiously seeking to find new therapies to address the increasing disorders within the human psyche. In the process new fields of research, such as humanistic and transpersonal psychology, curiously appear to borrow more and more from the wisdom of the ages. This volume, containing eighteen articles by noteworthy expositors of the perennial philosophy such as Huston Smith, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Frithjof Schuon, presents the spiritual psychology of the wisdom traditions as a much-needed antidote to the current impasse in modern psychology.

Some Endorsements for Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy:

“[Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy] is more than an anthology. It is a wisely crafted collection of classic and contemporary scholarship noting that what many are seeking is what has always been, a perennial philosophy, that remains foundational. As one of the authors, Tage Lindbom, properly notes, ‘Secularization is a fish in troubled waters.’ This book claims the waters and is essential reading for all those who may have forgotten or are simply ignorant of the rich foundation provided by the perennial philosophy.”
—Ralph W. Hood, Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, past president of the Psychology of Religion division of the American Psychological Association, co-founder of The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion and co-author of The Psychology of Religion

“A necessary and bracing critique of the assumptions and limitations of contemporary Western psychology, this generous volume is also a passionate call and learned guide towards a truer perspective that embraces man's spiritual nature.”
—Gabor Maté, M.D., and author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“Knowing the nature of the mind is perhaps the most difficult undertaking, especially in today’s world. To comprehend the nature of mind one needs to turn to the domain of religion and spirituality. Yet the truth of the mind and its complexity cannot explicitly be defined in words. Inner or transcendent wisdom sees the mind’s own nature without the duality of the seer. Suchness (tathatā) of mind is only experiential and not expressible. The words used to describe thought are themselves a product of thought, which is conditioned and limited. Thus, differences and contradictions are unavoidable. Therefore, a comparative study of different viewpoints and commentaries is immensely important to awaken the inner intelligence to see the mind as it is. Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy: Studies in Comparative Religion edited by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is an outstanding effort in this direction.”
—Samdhong Rinpoche, former Prime Minister (Kalon Tripa) of the Tibetan Government-in-exile, author of Uncompromising Truth for a Compromised World: Tibetan Buddhism and Today’s World

“The rise of psychology has impacted the study and practice of spirituality, the experiences and attitudes relevant to ultimate human values that transcend ordinary behavior. Each chapter of this remarkable book demonstrates this interaction in a unique and provocative way. But rather than using psychology to reduce and ‘psychologize’ spiritual topics, its authors demonstrate how directives from the spiritual traditions can enhance and even illuminate the enduring importance of psychology in the 21st century.”
—Stanley Krippner, Saybrook University, co-author of Spiritual Dimensions of Healing

“The work at hand is a thinking and debating man’s delight. If you have any interest at all in attempting to include an educated and enlightened view of man’s higher functions in your purview of the world, you will learn from and enjoy this collection of essays. If you already have some knowledge in this area, brace yourself: you may see some of your favorites sharply criticized. A thought-provoking work.”
—Bruce W. Scotton, University of California, San Francisco, co-editor of Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology

“This book, superbly edited by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos, is a masterful critique of the field of psychology and its loss of the sacred ground in which it once was rooted. It offers depth psychologists an opportunity to contemplate timeless truths echoed through the centuries by perennial philosophers who have always claimed psyche is subordinate to Spirit. Although ignored in depth psychology’s early years due to prejudice and lack of understanding, this is a message today’s psychotherapists must take seriously. Human beings need a deeper and wider transpersonal vision of who and what we are, which the saints and sages of the world’s spiritual traditions have always pointed to. In psychotherapy with a therapist committed to such a vision, patients penetrate into their unconscious depths and not infrequently awaken to the Ground of all Being. Their suffering itself occurred because they had turned away from Spirit. Above all, this volume passionately calls upon depth psychology to remember its origin in the perennial wisdom at the core of the great religions. There is something of a polemic in these pages. It deserves to be considered by depth psychologists of all persuasions.”
—Bryan Wittine, Transpersonal psychologist and Jungian psychoanalyst

“This anthology from Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is a must reference for anyone who is interested in psychology and its relationship to spirituality, and in developing an inclusive dialogue between disciplines that favor an integral outlook on the person and his or her potential. Selections in this anthology will inspire us to reexamine the metaphysical underpinnings of psychology, and remind us how important it is to rise above science’s attempt to reduce the human being to an epistemic object.”
—Sangeetha Menon, National Institute of Advanced Studies (Bangalore, India), Board Member of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), author of The Beyond Experience: Consciousness in Bhagavad Gita

“This anthology has some of the most discerning essays and reviews on spirituality and psychology, which provide much-needed care and caution to all those engaged in bringing them together or who wish to do so in future. Therefore, it is a must-read for all those who teach, research, consult, or study in such frontier areas as transpersonal psychology, states of consciousness, mind-body relation, holistic health, Indian psychology, and so on. It will be an invaluable textbook for courses in these and other related areas. I congratulate the editor of the book.”
—Kiran Kumar K. Salagame, University of Mysore (India), Board Member of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), author of The Psychology of Meditation: A Contextual Approach

“One of the finest collections of essays on the Perennial Philosophy—a must-read for all psychologists who are engaged with spirituality and transpersonal psychology. The essays which critique modern psychology (including transpersonal psychology, and the framework of Carl Jung), in the light of the Perennial Philosophy are a revelation and make compelling reading. The book serves as a corrective to the excesses of modern psychology, and to this end Sotillos has done a commendable job. I for one will include the book in some of the graduate courses that I teach.”
—Suneet Varma, University of Delhi, co-editor of Foundations of Indian Psychology

“To its credit modern science by-and-large is becoming more cognizant of the essential connection between spirituality and psychological health and well-being and most of all its positive implications within the field of psychology. While there is ample data to document this in a plethora of academic journals and books, this new book Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy adds a novel contribution to the dialogue between psychology and spirituality, which captures many nuances that for the most part go unnoticed within these discussions, and last but not least, it provides a keen eye of discernment to understand this intricate relationship on a deeper level that is crucially needed. This work will be a valuable asset to students and long term mental health practitioners and professors alike who seek to better understand the relationship between psychology and spirituality.”
—Harold G. Koenig, Duke University, Director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health, co-author of The Handbook of Religion and Health

A life narrative as short addendum to Chapter IV/Lives in Translation.

In Xenophon's Anabasis, Book IV, beginning of Chapter 8. Xenophon's army reaches the land of the Macrones at the east of Trabzon. The Macrones are lined up for battle. At this moment one of the peltasts came up to Xenophon, a man who said that he had been a slave at Athens, with word that he knew the language of these people; “I think,” he went on, “that this is my native country, and if there is nothing to hinder, I should like to have a talk with them.” (4.8.3). The man serves then as an interpret.

Pages from the book
”The Vanishing Aromanian”
by Eugene Matzota

Available on AMAZON

https://www.amazon.com/Vanishing-Aromanian-Eugene-Matzota/dp/198493399X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1F3UKV4W3TXKV&keywords=the+vanishing+aromanian&qid=1647860784&sprefix=the+vanishing+aromanian%2Caps%2C227&sr=8-1

Actas de las XIII Jornadas Museológicas Chilenas realizadas en Valdivia en el año 2016.
Organizadores: ICOM-Chile y Dirección Museológica de la Universidad Austral de Chile.
Coordinador general: Simón Urbina.
Comité editorial: Luis Alegría, Gabriela Alt, Marcelo Godoy, Leonardo Mellado, Ricardo Mendoza, Simón Urbina, Valeria Vera, Fernando Vergara y Karin Weil.
Edición: César Altermatt.
Diseño: Milka Marinov.
Maquetación: Alejandra Rosas.
Traducción de conferencias magistrales: Valentina Pires A. / VPA Communications.

The 2nd Global African Indigenous and Derived Religions Conference provided a platform for scholars of African Indigenous Religions and African-derived religions to critically appraise the status, nature and role of global African Indigenous and Derived Religions, bringing together academics, practitioners and 'activists' in civil society, from Africa and the Afro-American diaspora with special emphasis on Brazil, as one of the major countries of African culture. This aimed to provide a forum for trans-Atlantic exchange, also in the southern hemisphere, which is very neccesary. The conference encouraged research and explored avenues for the documentation and preservation of African indigenous and derived religions, both as a matter of intrinsic value as with regard to their lasting influence on Christianity, Islam and on Esotericism in the 'West'. The special importance of the study of Africa Indigenous Religion - in the forms it has developed in Africa and in the Americas - for the affirmation and further development of African and Afro-Descendant identities, in terms of politics of identity in many fields has been recognized.

Derived from Maithil practices and festivals and assumed to protect the household, the Madhubani Paintings spread since the 1960s in India and abroad. Transferred on paper in order to be commercialized, they undergo important changes. I will focus on the reception history of Mithila paintings through two Western mediators, who each declared themselves to be the discoverers of these paintings: one is British, William Archer (1907- 1979); the other French, Yves Véquaud (1938-2000). They bear witness to an international reception which underlines a particular aspect of the worldwide connected and shared histories of Bihar.
After being appointed officer of the Indian Civil Service in Bihar, Archer publishes in 1949 the article “Maithil Painting”. This is a first moment in the reception history of these paintings. His writings show a universal aesthetic, based on psychoanalyze, surrealism and an organic vision of art.
The hippie “counter-culture” renews enchanted orientalist and romantic visions of a South Asian universe presumed to be spiritual, pantheist and sensorial. Followed on the heels of the sixties, indophily appears a particularly favourable, moment - or kairos - in the reception of Maithil works. It parallels the internationalization of its actors: Erika Moser Schmitt in Germany, Tokio Hasegawa in Japan, Raymond and Naomi Owens as well as David Szanton in United States and Yves Véquaud in France. The writings of the latter mingled an aptitude to capture the “air du temps” with a real interest in India and adhered to the values of the counter-culture. He is today mostly known for his essays on Mithila paintings. The Mithila Art is published in 1976, then translated in 1977 into English and German. In 1974, he co-directed the documentary Mithila. During a period of about ten years, he exhibited his collection of Mithila paintings in France and abroad (in particular in Paris, Musée de l’Homme, Musée des arts Décoratifs...).
In 1970, Véquaud discovered the Mithila paintings in New-Delhi thanks to the museologist Ratna Fabri. He remained in India for two years, went to Madhubani and met some village painters. In his writings, the Maithil women painters are presented as charismatic figures, between holiness and genius. In 1973, Sita Devi “appears to him as a saint”, withdrawn from the world, “in a inner-peace and trust refuge which nothing could disturb". From the author’s standpoint, the talent of these painters, neo-tantric muses presumed to create only when in a yogic state, is compared with that of an exorcist. This vision of the prophetic artist, fluctuating between the christic figure of the saviour and the holy icon, also bears witness to the transformation of the status of the artist since the 19th Century in the West and to the appearance of a ”vocational regime” (Nathalie Heinich). These charismatic figures call to mind the appearance of a conception of the artist as the author of innovative works, and living a singular life. Like Braque and Rouault, the Maithil women painters would so be transformed into figures of legend, likely to guide the work of their followers in their efforts to become an artist. These prophetic artists would become a modern incarnation of holiness. In 1968, Yves Véquaud describes Mozart and Van Gogh as saints, whose example overwhelms. From his standpoint, the prophetic Maithil artists are devoid of the overwhelming heroization that affects Western artists. They would correspond to his promotion of creative spontaneity and a present freed from the burden of the past, in quest of eternal moments.
In Yves Véquaud’s conception, the women painters swing between an ideal of devout humility and religious immortality. In 1973, Sita Devi is described as the one who “knew all the honours” and yet remained “humble and loving”. From the westernized standpoint of Véquaud, the artistic success of Maithil painters may be explained by their desire for singularity and timelessness in their results. This involves both the personalization of means, namely the invention of new paths, as well as the depersonalization of the ends of the success, namely the creation of objects crystallizing values recognized beyond the author. This contingency was traditionally reserved for saints and heroes.
His admiration for these artists assumed an almost devotional character. Following the example of the canonization of Western art, Yves Véquaud established a relationship between the Maithil pictorial phenomenon and a religious phenomenon, the neo-tantrism. His behaviour was almost that of a believer. He set up his exhibitions with a nearly sacerdotal and proselytizing diligence. His hermeneutics of the works is almost theological. The conditions in which the paintings were produced has been neglected. The art of Mithila is described as a (wedding) liturgy ; the paintbrush becomes the tool of prayer. The biographies of the painters appear as a “golden legend”. Nevertheless, these exegeses underline the effective ritual dimension of these paintings. Maithil art became the sphere onto which he projected the expectations traditionally assumed by the religion. It is no longer the instrument, but the object of the sacralization. Sanctified with the admiration of Yves Véquaud, the painters were not “acknowledged by the ecclesiastical authorities”: it concords with the informal religiosity of the author. He thus put forward an essentialized vision of Mithila paintings. Perhaps it represented also an attempt to sublimate his own artistic failures by projecting onto fantasized painters an imaginary solution to a melancholy situation: giving up novelistic publications, whether due to lack of inspiration or to editorial refusals. His neo-tantric vision of Mithila paintings resulted from the kairos of the hippie phase previously evoked.
Yet in 1994 India Served and Observed, the memoirs posthumously published by William Archer and his spouse, Mildred, put forward a fanciful account about the discovery of Mithila paintings, marked with a Flower Power sensitivity : it stays in-between the construction of a storytelling and an aesthetic emotion, which is a posteriori inflamed. To seize the proclaimed strong and valued discourses of the moment on South-Asia is equivalent to a re-enchantment of Archer’s writings. This work builds itself in resonance with Véquaud’s one. Thus in this new narrative about the discovery of Mithila paintings, the meeting with the paintings and the painters is described as simultaneously exalted and distanced, but sublimated by aesthetic emotion. A narrative play takes shape wavering between desire and repression. According to their words, "in these murals we somehow electrically met".
I will analyzed in what extent these idealized works and their women heroized figures could be situated in the social context of the “counter-culture” and the hippie movement, foreseeing the globalization of Mithila paintings in the 1990s : since then some maithil artists free themselves from categories of gender, caste and local belonging. The appearance of painters men in Mithila, motivated in particular by the prospect of profits, polls gender categories associated to a practice for a long time exclusively feminine. Simultaneously some researchers deconstruct this essentialized tradition. They expound Archer’s and Vequaud's interpretations as an hegemonic discourse constituted from masculine canons.

Dance is a movement art, transmitted as an oral, or rather aural-visual, tradition.  What then is the relationship of shastric texts on dance to the actual performance practice, with particular reference to Odissi dance?  Shastric texts have become a major reference point and validating factor of “classical” dance in India since the 1930’s, in Orissa since the 1950’s, and are increasingly used in the training of today’s educated students of the dance.
Did these texts play a central role in the development of the Odissi dance tradition as we know it today, or have they been used after the fact in a quest to capture and codify a tradition?  What are the consequences of using textual codification as a starting point in classical training?  To what extent has Odissi dance gelled into a distinctive form as it passed through generations of dancers up to the present and how much latitude still remains for innovation within the tradition?
What texts play a role in Odissi dance and what is that role?  To what extent do contemporary practitioners of Odissi base their work on shastric tradition?
What are the problems of textual representation of a three-dimensional art form functioning in time and space translated to two dimensional paper and word symbolization?  What are the difficulties of taking a fluid tradition in art and categorizing its elements in narrowing definitions, definitions which can intrinsically exclude nuance and variation, and lose its channeled logic in tangents?  Does the quest for codification threaten the fluidity of tradition, tying teaching to text in future?
And finally, what role has shastric text played in bestowing legitimacy of recognition to Odissi dance as a classical tradition?

The following text is a response sent to an email dispatched to me by the Chairman of the exiled Oromo Parliamentarians who struggle for the Independence and Self-determination of the 5 millennia long Kushitic Ethiopian Nation of the Oromos.
The Hamitic - Kushitic Oromo Nation - due to criminal, inhuman and evil persecution conceived by the colonial powers (France, England and America) and executed by the colonially promoted barbaric and incestuous pseudo-Christian Abyssinians - lost their kingdoms and were engulfed within the Cemetery of Nations Fake Ethiopia, which consists in the world's most tyrannical realm and the location of the world's more abhorrent, more enduring, and more multifaceted genocides. There are more than 45 million Oromos in Abyssinia (Fake Ethiopia) and Kenya today, despite the notorious and pathetic falsehood propagated by Wikipedia.
The present text enumerates all the major points of historical distortion and falsification carried out and diffused by the colonial academia, mass media, and diplomats, as well as by their local agents and criminal executioners, i.e. the barbaric, incestuous and Anti-Christian tribes of Amhara and Tigray (: the Abyssinians), who usurped the fair name of Ethiopia, which historically denotes the land of North Sudan and the Kushitic Nation that prospered there either in the Antiquity or in the Christian Era. Both, the Oromos and the Arabic-speaking (but not Arab) populations of Northern-Central Sudan are the descendants of Ancient Sudan's (i.e. Ancient Ethiopia's) Kushitic populations.
Representative photographic documentation was herewith added to the text in order to better illustrate the topic.

Refutation of historical forgeries propagated by European colonials and incestuous Abyssinians
First published here:
https://megalommatiscomments.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/kushitic-oromos-ancestry-in-ethiopia-ancient-sudan-semitic-amharas-tigrays-abyssinians-ancestry-in-yemen/

Przysługujący widmom wywrotowy, niemalże rewolucyjny potencjał został odsunięty oraz zagubiony poprzez pozbycie się tej kontrowersyjnej kategorii z terytorium metafizyki i zbyt pośpieszne odesłanie jej do przestrzeni badań nad literaturą, sprowadzając ją jedynie do roli użytecznego, bezpiecznego narzędzia interpretacji.

Książka Andrzeja Marca odzyskuje niepokojący charakter widmontologii i ponownie wprowadza widma do myśli metafizycznej. Czym nawiedzona i przeniknięta jest tradycyjna metafizyka, co właściwie ją dręczy, nie daje spokoju oraz nieustannie podmywa jej stabilność?

Kategoria widma Derridy posłużyła Marcowi przede wszystkim do rozważań nad charakterem współczesności i przeobrażeń, jakie dokonały się w obrębie myśli ponowoczesnej. Współczesna kultura, zdaniem Marca, stała się miejscem powstawania widm, nieustannie powracających z przeszłości. Uznając, że nie jesteśmy już w stanie tworzyć utopijnych wizji przyszłości, autor stara się zdać sprawę z widmowego charakteru współczesnej kultury, analizując m. in. strategie vintage, retro, nurt no future w kulturze lat 70. czy nurt fantastyki naukowej w literaturze.

With the culture and identity-related events in Europe such as the Charlie Hebdo case, the need to reconsider the situation of Turkish people in Europe and their Muslim identity has (re)emerged. As it has been long acknowledged, culture is a socially and historically constructed term, which has been shaped by a number of common components including a shared history, language, and religion. During the construction process of culture, certain factors play initial roles to construct and maintain a culture repertoire to be presented to the society. Itamar-Even Zohar terms this process of choosing what to be presented to the society as " making of a culture repertoire ". By referring to his theory, this paper aims to discuss the perception/identity of being Turkish in Europe as a part of the process of constructing a specific " culture repertoire ". Within this brief background, the movies directed by European directors such as Die Fremde by Feo Aladag and Takiye: Allah Yolunda by Ben Verbong; and the movies directed by Turkish directors, namely Kuma by Umut Dağ and Gegen die Wand by Fatih Akın dealing with Turkish migrants in Europe are interpreted. It is possible to argue that deliberate actions, choices, and bias play crucial roles in representing and narrating a specific culture to another cultural majority and shape the perception regarding the represented culture. Moreover, when the tragic events overlap with fiction, the " culture repertoire " presented to a target audience becomes reinforced through repeated narratives. Keywords Constructivism, Culture Repertoire, Turkish Migrants in Europe, Movies as Cultural goods and tools.

“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976 lectures (“Society Must Be Defended”), this work-hypothesis theorises “basic warfare” [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of socio-political relations. Following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this polemological approach, conceived as a purely descriptive discourse on “real” politics and war, against the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes’s Leviathan being here the prime example).
However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of notions such as power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: “actions over potential actions”.
I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault’s hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in “Heidegger’s Ear”, an “anthropolemology”. However, I show that all conceptualisation of power implies its self-deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure supposes an archi-originary unpower prior to power: power presupposes an excess within power, an excessive force, another violence making it both possible and impossible. There is something within power located “beyond the power principle” (Derrida). This (self-)excess signifies a limitless resistantiality co-extensive with power-relationality. It also allows the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, as unpower opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the archi-originary force of différance. This force, unconditional, challenges Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, suggesting an originary performativity located before or beyond hermeneutics of power-knowledge, disrupting theoreticity as well as empiricity by pointing to their ontological complicity.
The bulk of this essay is dedicated to sketching the theoretical implications of this deconstructive reading of Foucault with respect to the methodology and conceptuality of political science and social theory.

Bu makalede bugünle geçmiş arasında bağ kurarak son Osmanlı ve Cumhuriyet Türkiye’sinin Alevilere/Aleviliğe dair politikalarının dili, şiddeti, etkileri ve yansımaları analiz edilecektir. Alevilerle kurulmayan muhataplık ilişkisinin esasta Alevileri görünmez kılarak bu kimliği kültürel dünyadan silip atmayı hedeflemesine dair kültür politikalarının 21. yüzyıldaki yeni biçimleri tartışılacak; ‘görünmez kılmanın’ teknik olarak artık mümkün olamadığı bugünkü koşullarda Alevilerin görünür meşruiyetine rağmen, istikrarlı yasal tanınmazlığına yol açan arkaplan incelenecektir.

Available now from Penn State University Press, with a foreword by Pat J. Gehrke. Order here: https://www.amazon.com/Metanoia-Rhetoric-Authenticity-Transformation-Self/dp/0271085924/ref=sr_1_1?crid=DL9ENJNF09HO&keywords=ellwanger+metanoia&qid=1581529316&sprefix=ellwanger%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1

This PhD thesis engenders new approaches to the understanding, appreciation, and experience of modern and contemporary ceramic art. It focusses on two recent outputs. The initial, Scorched Earth: 100 Years of Southern African Potteries (2016), a scholarly publication, and the latter, Post-colonialism? (2016/2017), a socially-engaged international exhibition, held at the Benyamini Contemporary Ceramics Centre in Tel Aviv, Israel. The moral philosophy ubuntu was proposed as a component of self-reflexive methodology for research and curatorial projects. The term cryrator was advanced as constituting an approach to curatorial praxis in conflict zones. These concepts make an original contribution to existing methodologies and research that historicise, de-westernise, and decolonise knowledge.

This project presents and analyses all of the signet rings and intaglios so far unearthed in Roman Britain to reinterpret how they were used and their role within provincial society. These small artefacts have traditionally been regarded as attractive but relatively insignificant minor objets d’art, with little relevance to the wider discourses of Romanists. This thesis attempts a more critical examination of how they were used and their role within provincial Roman society. I argue that signet rings were an essential element in provincial society that should no longer be overlooked. This project builds on the pioneering Corpus assembled by Martin Henig in the 1970s, including more recent
discoveries and more than doubling the material available to him. This combined body of evidence includes 2,012 signet rings and intaglios, making it one of the largest contextualised assemblages of these objects ever studied. It also benefits from the results of developer funded archaeology and the advent of recording by the Portable Antiquities Scheme, enabling us to create a richer and more detailed picture how they were used.

My approach has been to resituate these objects in terms of the archaeological context in which they were found, but also to consider them as functional as well as decorative objects. When
studied in this way signet rings provide a unique perspective on the identity of their wearers, and how they wanted to present themselves to others. I have found growing evidence for the use of signet rings amongst local elites before the Roman invasion of Britain, and it is clear that they had a role to play in negotiating identity after the conquest. I have also been able to identify trends in the way that different communities used signet rings, both as regards their imagery and materiality. It is also apparent that in
some parts of Britain these objects remained a feature of a type of dress and the hallmark of a society that remained alien to their inhabitants throughout the Roman period. However, for those who chose to wear them, signet rings could be more than just objects but reflections of themselves.

In looking at these two tropes of horror we have exposed a few underlying tropes within the American psyche. It is clear that although American society has externally appeared to have moved away from the view that the white male is the ideal state that internally it has not. By looking at it’s art, and we may call horror film art within the understanding that art is an expression of the self, we find a very different sentiment.

This paper explores the importance of Kendrick Lamar in the entertainment industry, in hip-hop and in American History. The essence of this paper explores his celebrity black body in relation to history, identity and his contribution to rich black historical archives on the black experience. At large, this paper examines his performance in his DNA music video, to see how his lived body, equipped with its historical DNA, informs our modern perception of the black body.

This paper, written from a feminist perspective, seeks to understand the oppressed black body in popular culture to see how public figures like Kendrick Lamar are reclaiming their history. By creating a rich archive of soulful music and meaningful videos, Kendrick is mainstreaming the black reality in a time where the African-American body is at a political crossroads.

Kendrick Lamar is writing history with his embodied performances and his profound written reflections and ensuring that future generations have a reference point in understanding, participating with and learning from their collective history.

"Guavas for Dummies, American Jíbaras, & Postnational Autonomy: When I Was Puerto Rican in the Hemispheric Turn" (2019) re-engages this text after I taught it in Puerto Rico four years. In this 2009 essay, Santiago’s memoir is said to bridge U.S. and Caribbean lit. WIWPR begins with a remembered Puerto Rico, and ends in the author’s adulthood in the USA. Studying Santiago’s text within a trajectory of immigrant narratives familiarizes the text to readers who are often processing their own entries into the US / its cultural orbit. This essay examines Santiago’s representation of jibaros, a subculture whose place in in Puerto Rico parallels the conflicted relationship many Jamaicans have with Rastafarians. Also, the theme of “Translating and Resisting Imperialism” is developed through a close reading of the chapter “The American Invasion of MacÚn.” Santiago’s treatment of gender roles in her family is also explored.

CITATION: Stinson, D. W. (2004). African American male students and achievement in school mathematics: A critical postmodern analysis of agency (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses: A & I. (ATT 3194548).

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to shed light on the schooling experiences of African American male students who embraced school, academics, and mathematics. In particular, the study examined the influence of sociocultural discourses on the agency of 4 African American men in their early 20s who demonstrated achievement and persistence in school mathematics. Agency in this context was defined as the participants’ ability to accommodate, resist, or reconfigure the available sociocultural discourses that surround African American males in order for them to effectively negotiate these discourses in their pursuit of success.

The study used qualitative action research methodology (Kemmis & Wilkinson, 1998) located within a critical postmodern theoretical frame (Kincheloe & McLaren, 1994). More specifically, the participants of the study were asked to read, reflect on, and respond to current research literature regarding the schooling experiences of African American male students. Their responses were analyzed using an eclectic theoretical framework that included poststructural theory, critical race theory, and critical (postmodern) theory. Poststructural theory provided a frame for rethinking and redefining key concepts such as person, agency, and power, among others. Critical race theory provided a frame for understanding how the discourse of race and racism operates within U.S. social structures. And critical (postmodern) theory provided a frame for discussing the purposes of education research.

The reporting and analysis of the data revealed that the participants had acquired robust mathematics identities (Martin, 2000), identities that positively impacted their sense of agency. How the participants acquired such uncharacteristic mathematics identities for African American male students was to be found, in part, in how they understood the sociocultural structures and discourses of U.S. society and how they accommodated, resisted, or reconfigured the specific discourses that surround African American males. Although at times the responses from the participants were similar, their responses were never monolithic—not across participants, and not even within participants. Present throughout the responses from each participant, however, was recognition of himself as a discursive formation (Foucault, 1969/1972) who could actively accommodate, resist, or reconfigure sociocultural discourses as a means to subversively repeat (Butler, 1990) his constituted “raced” self.

"Words and Phrases, Unchanged for Centuries.

Containing a rich glossary and in excess of 300 words and phrases, the texts demonstrate the strength of the Macedonian language through preservation.

Following is a comparison of sentences between the texts and the Macedonian
dialect of Bitola as spoken today.

16th cent., Kostur dialect
21st cent., Bitola dialect

Gospodine, brate, da si zdrav, da si prost, ostavi ni da spime, ela da jame, i da pieme, dol da pojdime, da rabotime.
Gospodine, brate, da si zdrav, da si prost, ostai ne da spiame, ela da jaime, i da piame, dolu da pojdime, da rabotime.

Imate hljap-o da kupime, imate vino da kupime, ot koja strana da pojdime vo
Bogasko.
Imate lep da kupime, imate vino da kupime, od koja strana da pojdime vo
Bogatsko.

As can be clearly noticed, most of the vocabulary and grammar is identical.
All of the elements that would later be required to rejuvinate the Macedonian people as they were shaking off centuries of subjugation, were present during this period. The language of the people had solidified, a tradition of heraldry and symbolism had developed which incorporated the emblem of a rapant lion and historical figures from Macedonia's past, and the churches continued preserve the local customs and serve as cultural centres for the population. The significance of all these elements together cannot be overstated, the language of medieval Macedonia is the same as the language of the Macedonians today. Unfortunately, only a small portion of the larger amount of Macedonian literature from the Middle Ages has survived, much of it being looted and destroyed by Greek-speaking officials, clerics and teachers. Nevertheless, Macedonian as a language reached its current form centuries before the creation of the Balkan states in the 19th and 20th centuries. "

Vulnerability and Exposure: footballer scandals, masculine identity and ethics presents a critical investigation of contemporary masculine team sports and football scandals and their relationship with gendered cultures, institutions and identity norms. Drawing on reports of Australian Rules football off-field scandals over the past decade, the book critically examines cases of sexual assault, illicit drug use and binge drinking, homophobia, violence and other controversial behaviours that have become norms in the reporting of sportsplayers’ off-field lives.

Using a range of approaches to unpack some of the ways in which these scandals are produced and understood, and how they impact on reputations (of players, clubs and the game itself), Cover identifies the cultural factors significant in the production of the contemporary footballer identity, and the ways in which these identities are constructed, performed and reported on.

In utilising scandal to develop ways in which off-field behaviour in sport can be re-made as a relatively harmless event for women, bystanders and players, this work develops an approach to ethics by showing that footballers are well-placed to see the vulnerability of others through their own vulnerability to injury, career breaks and loss of reputation.

The concept of the gentleman amateur was, and remains, an important aspect of upper and middle-class Victorian and Edwardian male identity. Although he remains a significant literary presence, the form and length of time the gentleman amateur remained a cultural influence in society is contested.                                                     

This article examines one realm of this social constructs influence - sport - in terms of the social and philosophical origins of these titles, what they meant in practice and the repercussions their use had on class cultures, British (English) sporting values and success. It proposes that the gentleman amateur - despite the long-term damage inflicted by such men - remains a major philosophical, ideological and physical influence upon British sport today.

Available now from Penn State University Press, with a foreword by Pat J. Gehrke.

Order here: https://www.amazon.com/Metanoia-Rhetoric-Authenticity-Transformation-Self/dp/0271085924/ref=sr_1_1?crid=DL9ENJNF09HO&keywords=ellwanger+metanoia&qid=1581529316&sprefix=ellwanger%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1