Richard David Williams
Richard David Williams
Institution: School of Arts, SOAS University of London,
Email: richard.williams@soas.ac.uk
Over the seventeenth century, scholars working for courtly patrons extensively produced new treatises on the theory and practice of music in Sanskrit, Persian, and vernacular languages. This arena of musicology grew through to the eighteenth century, when Bengali vaisnava poets and lyricists began ...
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Over the seventeenth century, scholars working for courtly patrons extensively produced new treatises on the theory and practice of music in Sanskrit, Persian, and vernacular languages. This arena of musicology grew through to the eighteenth century, when Bengali vaisnava poets and lyricists began curating extensive song anthologies and expounding the aesthetic considerations derived from canonical works on poetics and the performing arts. This article explores the scholarly connections
between non-sectarian, courtly intellectual arenas and vaisnava religious communities by examining the musical works of Narahari Cakravarti (c.1698–1760), who lived in Vrindavan in the first half of the eighteenth century. His Sanskrit and Bengali works gesture to the transregional circulation of conversations and texts about musical aesthetics between northern and eastern India, and how intellectuals accommodated contemporary scholastic developments and trends in musical performance in
their theology and religious practices.
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Posted 2 years ago
Sharon Khalifa-Gueta
Sharon Khalifa-Gueta
Institution: Art History Department, School of History, University of Haifa, Mt. Carmel, Haifa 3498838, Israel
Email: skhali18@campus.haifa.ac.il
In this article, I place the Leontocephaline from the Villa Albani on the axis of time of the Mithraic Saturn/Kronos prototype. Entangled in that prototype are astrology, concepts of death, and time perceptions. As a symbolic choice, its style reflects politico-religious and cultural colonial approp...
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In this article, I place the Leontocephaline from the Villa Albani on the axis of time of the Mithraic Saturn/Kronos prototype. Entangled in that prototype are astrology, concepts of death, and time perceptions. As a symbolic choice, its style reflects politico-religious and cultural colonial appropriation by Rome’s elite of the Severan period and demonstrates a syncretistic complexity adapted to Roman esthetic values. By surveying these issues and identifying the iconographic changes the statue has undergone, I reveal the elements of that colonial appropriation. The movement of the serpents and the astrological reliefs on the body depict Western philosophical concepts of the movement of the soul between the constellations after death and the unbounded (circular) nature of Aionic time entangled with Eastern concepts of the procession of time and Leontocephalic divinities.
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Posted 2 years ago
Suprakash C. Roy
Suprakash C. Roy
Institution: Formerly at Bose Institute, Kolkata 700009, India
Email: suprakash.roy@gmail.com
India holds a respectable position globally in X-ray research, particularly in X-ray crystallography. X-ray research in India is as old as the discovery of X-rays and the history of X-ray research in colonial India is fascinating. The purpose of this paper is to present how India participated in X-r...
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India holds a respectable position globally in X-ray research, particularly in X-ray crystallography. X-ray research in India is as old as the discovery of X-rays and the history of X-ray research in colonial India is fascinating. The purpose of this paper is to present how India participated in X-ray research and how X-ray research initiated by C.V. Raman, the only Indian Nobel Laureate in physics, at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) paved the way to proliferate X-ray research in all parts of India and acted as the foundation stone of modern X-ray research in India. With limited resources under the British rule (India became independent in 1947), readers will find that the research work performed by Indians is commendable. This article is neither comprehensive nor detailed but will give the readers a flavour of the high-quality X-ray research that was performed in India in the early years after the discovery of X-rays.
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Posted 2 years ago
The annual congress of the Italian Association of Plastic Aesthetic Surgery (AICPE) is one of the most relevant conference meetings in Europe concerning aesthetic plastic surgery due to the number of participants and as parterre of invited speakers chosen for their renowned scientific value.
Posted 2 years ago
Lingyu Xu
Lingyu Xu
Institution: School of Sociology and Political Science, Anhui University, 111 Jiulong Road, 230601
Email: Lingyu.xu@ahu.edu.cn
Scholars normally explore China’s international migration policy through a pure social sciences lens. This article aims to investigate the policy evolution trajectory, adding a linguistic viewpoint. It explores the question of how the word ‘foreigner’ changed to reflect shifting policies. Theo...
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Scholars normally explore China’s international migration policy through a pure social sciences lens. This article aims to investigate the policy evolution trajectory, adding a linguistic viewpoint. It explores the question of how the word ‘foreigner’ changed to reflect shifting policies. Theoretically, it engages historical institutionalism and focuses on the critical junctures in Chinese history, especially after 1949. Methodologically, it uses document interrogation. To collect data, it mainly relies on Chinese encyclopaedic dictionaries (e.g. The Great Chinese Dictionary, Chinese Etymology Dictionary), Chinese historical ancient books, the Peking University Law database [PKULAW] and some regulation compilation books. In China, a variety of words can signify ‘foreigner’ (Waiqiao, Waiguoren, Yimin), yet each word has another connotation. Waiqiao suggests that China regards foreigners from an ethnic and cultural perspective, revealing an ethnic orientation of the policy makers in Chinese immigration policies in the 1950s. Waiguoren has a more political undertone and strengthens the administrative orientation of immigration policies after the 1960s. While, as a more recent phenomenon, the use of Yimin is a sign for the turn of integration-oriented policies. By differentiating those terms and clarifying their applications in different historical periods, we expect to unveil a clear link between the use of the different terms and China’s immigration policy changes.
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Posted 2 years ago
Stefan Brönnimann
Stefan Brönnimann
Institution: Institute of Geography and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern,
Email: stefan.broennimann@giub.unibe.ch
Historical reanalyses have become a widely used resource for analyzing weather and climate processes and their changes over time. In this article I explore how further historical observations could support reanalyses and lead to products that reach further back in time or have a better quality. Usin...
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Historical reanalyses have become a widely used resource for analyzing weather and climate processes and their changes over time. In this article I explore how further historical observations could support reanalyses and lead to products that reach further back in time or have a better quality. Using an off-line Ensemble Kalman Filter I estimate improvements arising from assimilating additional observations into the ensemble of the “Twentieth Century Reanalysis” Version 3 (20CRv3). I demonstrate this for three case studies and evaluate them using independent data and a leave-one-out approach. For Europe in 1807, assimilating additional pressure data improves the skill for pressure but slightly decreases it for temperature, while assimilating temperature data, a variable that is not assimilated in 20CRv3, improves the skill for temperature but slightly decreases it for pressure. Assimilating both leads to substantially increased skill in a leave-one-out approach. For Sub-Saharan Africa in 1877/78, assimilating ship-based pressure observations as well as land station data, albeit extremely sparse, leads to a slight improvement over the entire domain. Finally, for Europe in 1926/27, assimilating upper air and total column ozone observations both lead to improvements in geopotential height and wind in the middle troposphere and in total column ozone, but with little or no effect in the lower troposphere. This is because 20CRv3 is already close to perfect over Europe in this period. The article shows how additional observations could improve historical reanalyses. A backward extension to the 1780s seems possible, but further data rescue efforts are necessary. For some applications, improved fields as generated by the offline assimilation presented in this study could be useful.
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Posted 2 years ago
Duaa Mohammed Alashari
Duaa Mohammed Alashari
Institution: Postgraduate student of Islamic Civilization, Faculty of Islamic Civilization, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia,
Email: duaa1983@graduate.utm.my
Art is constantly inspired by what happens in its social and cultural context. The arts cannot be separated from life and the significant events in the world, whether it is a war, a natural disaster, or the spread of a disease an epidemic. Today, the whole world is witnessing the Coronavirus (Covid-...
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Art is constantly inspired by what happens in its social and cultural context. The arts cannot be separated from life and the significant events in the world, whether it is a war, a natural disaster, or the spread of a disease an epidemic. Today, the whole world is witnessing the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, one of the worst in human history. The current scene has taken hold of artwork and the visual arts. The spread of the virus has inspired many artists to produce paintings, posters and artwork. This study aims to reveal the role and importance of Arab artists regarding the message they present regarding the situation at hand. In this study, the qualitative data was amassed as part of the methodology. The qualitative descriptive method and the case study approach are the primary approaches for the data collection. The results section focuses on the answers obtained from Arab artists through their artwork. It is held via a virtual exhibition. The discussion section focuses on a detailed analysis of the paintings. The study results concluded that art is a kind of documentation of all of the events that happen to humans. Art is a record of historical events, so it is a bright spot in times of crisis and darkness. Through these paintings, Arab artists have provided a light to those who feel gloomy in these difficult times, indicating that those in the Arab world focus on the unity of place, language and religion. Therefore, this artistic movement moves between all its countries so that no matter how harsh the situation, people will remain unified.
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Posted 2 years ago
Abstract In the summer of 1894, Claud Cardew, then at British Central Africa, asked his brother in England to send him a violin. In tracing the violin's trajectory from metropole to colony, this article combines two inquiries. It probes, firstly, the emotional vocabulary surrounding Claud's request,...
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Abstract In the summer of 1894, Claud Cardew, then at British Central Africa, asked his brother in England to send him a violin. In tracing the violin's trajectory from metropole to colony, this article combines two inquiries. It probes, firstly, the emotional vocabulary surrounding Claud's request, and secondly, the technology underpinning the British Empire mail. Closely reading the Cardew family letters alongside postal documents, the author argues that for Claud, the violin's delayed arrival triggered a tangled nexus of anxieties, stemming from both the colonial racial hierarchy and the changing expectations surrounding modern technology. Much like the cultural connotations carried by the violin itself, efficient mail delivery denoted racial superiority. Furthermore, the empire mail gained significance in the minds of British users for its racially loaded function as potentially mitigating colonizers’ anxiety in the face of outnumbering locals. Yet the violin's failure to arrive when expected led to mounting anxiety, as claims for colonizers’ dominance cracked in the face of unstable postal communications. The story of Claud Cardew's violin thus offers a framework that may be used to unravel similar emotional entanglements surrounding Western technologies set to work within empire.
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Posted 2 years ago
In the summer of 1780, anti-Catholic riots led by Lord George Gordon in London left hundreds dead and stretches of the city burnt and destroyed. Eighteen months later, during a tense period in the city's history, London was invaded by brown-tail moth caterpillars. The metropolis and surrounding coun...
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In the summer of 1780, anti-Catholic riots led by Lord George Gordon in London left hundreds dead and stretches of the city burnt and destroyed. Eighteen months later, during a tense period in the city's history, London was invaded by brown-tail moth caterpillars. The metropolis and surrounding countryside disappeared behind the tents and nests of the insects, prompting widespread fear of famine and plague. With the memory of the riots still fresh, philanthropists such as Jonas Hanway and entomologists like William Curtis sought to assuage the public's fear, insisting that the brown-tail moth outbreak was part of the normal operations of nature, that the infestation bore no danger to the public, and that efforts to alarm the public or describe them as dangerous were contemptuous. At the same time, the conjurer and philosopher Gustavus Katterfelto, performing in the city, sought to profit from the public agitation, developing spectacles and performances that promised the insects would soon deliver famine, plague, and ruin on the city. This article examines the intersection of scientific authority, public fear, and performance, showing that the outbreak placed tremendous stress on the relationship between scientific authority and security in the metropolis.
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Posted 2 years ago
Jonathan Baldo
Jonathan Baldo
Institution: Department of Humanities, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, 26 Gibbs Street,
Email: jbaldo@esm.rochester.edu
Indirectly addressing the authorship question in the anonymous The Reign of King Edward III, this paper focuses on a signature of Shakespeare’s treatment of English history, a concern with the political implications of remembering and forgetting. Multiple ironies attend the unstable relation of re...
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Indirectly addressing the authorship question in the anonymous The Reign of King Edward III, this paper focuses on a signature of Shakespeare’s treatment of English history, a concern with the political implications of remembering and forgetting. Multiple ironies attend the unstable relation of remembering and forgetting in the play. The opening of Edward III gives the impression that England’s forgetful enemies, Scotland and France, require schooling by a nation that appears to own memory. However, initial appearances prove to be deceiving, as three early Shakespearean scenes prominently feature lapses of English memory, causing the early alignment of England with faithful memory to slip away. There are traces of a distinctly Shakespearean approach to history—one that interrogates the mixed effects of historical memory itself and the values commonly assigned to remembering and forgetting—in The Reign of King Edward III. A consideration of the scenes that share the practice of Shakespeare’s histories—of not simply reviving the past but also reflecting on the motivations and conflicts associated with recollection—accords well with previous attributions of those scenes to Shakespeare on stylistic grounds.
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Posted 2 years ago
