Journal articles on the topic 'Western art canon'

The article makes an attempt to reveal the peculiarities of influence of such components of religious art as symbol and canon, in the context of the impact on man as a whole. The researcher is interested in the process of their functioning in religious art, both from the side of religious-philosophical analysis and from the point of view of art studies.The symbol, as an integral part of religion, serving both a liturgical and ritualistic function, is the embodiment of the existential meaning of the divine world, immutable and eternal. The symbols clearly demonstrate the presence in the earthly reality of the very beginning of the transcendent, formulating the original position of the connection of the world sinful and sacred. This is their main purpose. Hence, the saturation of religious-cultural symbols with a variety of historical, social, moral-ethical, aesthetic, modern, mystical-esoteric, and other meanings syncretically link in one indissoluble sense, which is involved in the transcendental mystery of being. Hence, the exceptional generalization of religious symbols, due to its abstract nature, maintains its cultural content within the enormous time and space dimensions of epochs, supranational and transgovernmental communities in world religions. Symbolism in religious art allows us to relate the experiences of millions of people to some kind of integrality, different in their ethnic origins and cultural traditions; to act as a form-forming and system-forming factor of separate cultures and whole civilizations.The Canon as a certain law, which is a typical example for imitation, may be not only religious, but also artistic. The canons of artistic and religious origins are born as an integrity that is difficult to divide, but each of them has its own specifics. The canon is often considered only as a factor limiting the artist, but it also has the other side. Compliance with the canon allowed the artist - even a mediocre one - to reach a high level of artistic creativity. Thus, the average level of mass art production, for example, the ancient Russian icons due to the hard canon is very high. The true artist, working on nuances of artistic form, could show his personality and creative genius.The symbolic and canonical components of religious art were unable to completely determine peculiarity or uniqueness of artistic thinking. Only in certain historical frameworks they were able to organize the stability of artistic integrity at a specific content-formal level. Moreover, the canon emphasized the talent and originality of the artist who created within its framework, as in order to create a significant work of art within the framework of the canon, it is necessary to have a great creative potential, the ability to overcome existing stereotypes. Thus, for example, Andrei Rublev’s works were carried out within the limits of the Orthodox, Christian canons, but at the same time it went beyond its formal boundaries, becoming a peculiar and unique phenomenon of the Eastern Slavic culture. The same were the works of other world artists who represented religious and sacred art of the Western Church - each of their geniuses went beyond the narrow limits of theological prescriptions, which is due to the unsurpassed perfection of their artistic creativity, and as a result, the world’s artistic heritage.

Mozart's canons are rather inadequately represented in the Köchel catalogue and the Neue Mozart Ausgabe. The same may be said about other music for his immediate circle of friends, colleagues and patrons, as well as his dance music and his contributions to pasticcios. Neglect of these ‘minor’ genres perhaps arises at least in part from anachronistic paradigms, for instance ‘masterpieces for posterity’. And the canons suffer additionally from the peculiar nature of their sources and transmission, from uncertainty about the position of canons in the ‘canon’ of Western art music and probably also from embarrassment over some of Mozart’s texts. Mozart’s canons have been studied not only less often than his operatic, church, chamber and orchestral music, but also less well.

This article explores Jerusalem-based art practice from the 1930s to the 1960s, focusing particularly on the German immigrant artists that dominated this field in that period. I describe the distinct aesthetics of this art and explain its role in the Zionist nation-building project. Although Jerusalem’s art scene participated significantly in creating a Jewish–Israeli national identity, it has been accorded little or no place in the canon of national art. Adopting a historiographic approach, I focus on the artist Mordecai Ardon and the activities of the New Bezalel School and the Jerusalem Artists Society. Examining texts and artworks associated with these institutions through the prism of migratory aesthetics, I claim that the art made by Jerusalem’s artists was rooted in their diasporic identities as East or Central European Jews, some German-born, others having settled in Germany as children or young adults. These diasporic identities were formed through their everyday lives as members of a Jewish diaspora in a host country—whether that be the Russian Empire, Poland, or Germany. Under their arrival in Palestine, however, the diasporic Jewish identities of these immigrants (many of whom were not initially Zionists) clashed with the Zionist–Jewish identity that was hegemonic in the nascent field of Israeli art. Ultimately, this friction would exclude the immigrants’ art from being inducted into the national art canon. This is misrepresentative, for, in reality, these artists greatly influenced the Zionist nation-building project. Despite participating in a number of key Zionist endeavours—whether that of establishing practical professions or cementing the young nation’s collective consciousness through graphic propaganda—they were marginalized in the artistic field. This exclusion, I claim, is rooted in the dynamics of canon formation in modern Western art, the canon of Israeli national art being one instance of these wider trends. Diasporic imagery could not be admitted into the Israeli canon because that canon was intrinsically connected with modern nationalism.

The avant-garde movement Surrealism claimed historical figures as supposed ancesters, as is well known, but also interacted with the past, and especially art of the past, in other ways. This article explores the reception of the European Middle Ages in French Surrealism, in particular medieval art, by means of a case study: illustrations of medieval and early-modern Western art in the surrealist periodicals Documents (1929-1931) and Minotaure (1933-1939). The cerebral and contrary Documents challenged the canon of art by actively looking at the margins of European art, reproducing medieval art from a wide variety of periods and geographic locations, and in very differing media, including jewelry and vessels, murals, bronze church doors, and manuscript illuminations. The glossy art review Minotaure, which came with coloured inserts, was more conventional in its selection, reproducing primarily late-medieval and renaissance art works, mainly (panel) paintings. However, the intention is just as contrary, as late-medieval and renaissance art in Minotaure is framed in terms of surrealist aesthetics in a manner undermining the conventional canon. In Documents medieval art primarily serves to makes points about style and iconography, which is often posited as primitive or exotic. In Minotaure, medieval art serves to make points about Surrealism, about the oneiric qualities of form or iconography. Both periodicals offered an interesting array of medieval and renaissance art and introduced this art into the surrealist discours.

This article looks back on the consequence, for a scholar of the art of the western canon, of a two-day conference held at the Clark Art Institute titled “In the Wake of the Global Turn: Propositions for an Exploded Art History Without Borders.” The author reflects on the pedagogical challenges of the ethical and political project of reimagining the limits of the discipline in both geographic and theoretical terms in order to accommodate issues of the untranslatable, incommensurable, and irresolvable when it comes to visual cultures from around the world. As well, the article touches on the ways in which attempts to “expand” the discipline through efforts at writing a global art history have merely reentrenched outmoded ideas about cultural power rather than dislocated the most limiting terms of art historical analysis.

AbstractThe canon forming the backbone of most conceptions of Western music has been a feature of musical culture for decades, exerting an influence upon musical study in educational settings. In English school contexts, the once perceived superiority of classical music in educational terms has been substantially revised and reconsidered, opening up school curricula to other musical traditions and styles on an increasingly equal basis. However, reforms to GCSE and A-levels (examinations taken aged 16 and 18 respectively), which have taken place from 2010 onwards, have refocused attention on canonic knowledge rather than skills-based learning. In musical terms, this has reinforced the value of ‘prescribed works’ in A-level music specifications.Thus far, little attention has been paid to the extent to which a kind of scholastic canon is maintained in the Western European Art Music section of the listening and appraising units in current A-level music specifications. Though directed in part by guidance from Ofqual (Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation, the regulatory body for qualifications in England), there is evidence of a broader cultural trend at work. The present article seeks to compare the historical evidence presented in Robert Legg's 2012 article with current A-level specifications. Such a comparison establishes points of change and similarity in the canon of composers selected for close study in current A-levels, raising questions about the purpose and function of such qualifications.

Evidence found throughout the history of Western European art music reveals traditions that encompassed improvisation. This furthers the idea that without improvisation, music education based on canonized works of Western European art music is incomplete. When the goal of music education is to preserve works exactly as notated, improvisation occupies a marginal role in representations and practices commonly associated with the canon. Drawing upon participant observation and semi-structured interviews, this ethnographic case study investigates narratives of experience and pedagogical strategies of two Dalcroze music teacher-participants who treat canonized repertoire as an impetus to creative thought. Field sites included a kindergarten and an adult music class. Several themes emerged from the data analysis, providing a basis for understanding how previous experiences influence classroom practices and pedagogical strategies for opening creative processes in interaction with canonical repertoire. Findings show that the teacher-participants consider improvisation as inextricably linked to other musical processes and conceive of teaching itself as improvisation, treating features of repertoire as material for creative development. By revealing pedagogical practices that offer exceptions to an established model, this study illuminates patterns of interaction that challenge a widespread view of music education based on Western European art music as enacting static preservation.

Several museums and libraries in North America and Europe house in their collections expressive works of art from Latin America. An understanding of the source of such collections requires study of their history and of the background from which they come, even if, as a matter of fact, collecting works of art and bibliographical assets on such a theme is not new. The interest in studying artworks which do not belong to the so-called western canon enables a wider knowledge of the art in Latin America. Notwithstanding the reasons behind such interest, it is worth noting that some facts related to their development are still lively, such as the interests roused by the travelling artists in the 19th century, who departed in search of the unknown or exotic and came back to their homeland with an imagination full of images from the New World. It is undeniable that Latin America has had a key role in the major changes that occurred during the age of discovery, when Europe focused on its colonies. Nowadays, as we observe the recurrence of such a foreign look at Latin America, we might ask ourselves how Latin America sees itself.

At the core of Félix Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic paradigm is a conception of subjectivity that somehow relies upon the notion of animism. Even though this apparently Romantic return to animism may seem vague and perhaps even naive, it forms the very framework that Guattari asks us to pass through, at least provisionally, in order to fully grasp his last project. I will therefore attempt to demystify this important concept theoretically before showing how the aesthetic machines of Japanese contemporary art – and more specifically, the conceptual art of Yoko Ono – stage one key aspect of Guattari’s animism: machinic heterogenesis. Guattari travelled to Japan many times in the years leading up to the publication of Chaosmosis and Japanese contemporary art allowed him to bolster some of its theoretical claims with concrete examples. I will argue that it is through the lens of Japanese contemporary art that Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic paradigm might propel us beyond the old-guard strategies of modernism. Just as we are asked to pass through a certain notion of animism to understand the relational onto-logic of Chaosmosis, Japanese contemporary art itself demands a similar conceptual framework in order to be disappropriated from an all-too-Western canon. To this end, I supplement Guattari’s work with speculative readings of Japanese philosophy.

Abstract The paper examines the reception of HIV/AIDS-related artworks from the 1980s by comparing four New York exhibitions from the early 1990s and 2010s. It argues that to this day artworks dealing with AIDS are bound to political and moral demands of former activists from the AIDS movement in New York. This politicization of historical images of AIDS is striking since the disease has lost its fatal threat in Western countries and political constellations have changed. Yet current exhibitions focus only on activist, politically motivated responses to the epidemic in order to represent an “appropriate” remembrance of AIDS. Thirty years after the climax of the epidemic, images of AIDS are currently integrated in the canon of art history, while they are continuously claiming their political efficacy.

On the basis of petroglyphic sites Kalgutinsky Rudnik (Kalgutinsky mine) on the Ukok Plateau, Baga-Oigur and Tsagaan-Salaa in northwestern Mongolia, a distinct “Kalgutinsky” style of rock art of the Russian and Mongolian Altai is described. The distance between these sites is about 20 km. This group is marked by very specifi c stylistic features, common technological properties, a narrowly defi ned motif, featuring only animals, and a very intense desert varnish. All these features and the proximity of the sites suggest that they should be regarded as a special group, which we term the “Kalgutinsky” style and date to the Upper Paleolithic on the basis of several criteria. Images of mammoths at Baga-Oigur and Tsagaan-Salaa are similar to those known in the classic Upper Paleolithic cave art of Western Europe. An entire set of stylistic features typical of the “Kalgutinsky” canon is seen also in the representations of mammoths, and this manner is consonant with that of European Upper Paleolithic rock art. Our fi ndings suggest that a peculiar “Kalgutinsky” style existed and, moreover, that it represented a separate Central Asian locus of Upper Paleolithic rock art.

This article begins with a review of studies in perception and depth psychology concerning the experience of exposure to sacred artworks in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox contexts. This follows with the results of a qualitative inquiry involving 45 Roman Catholic, Eastern and Coptic Orthodox, and Protestant Christians in Canada. First, participants composed narratives detailing memories of spiritual experiences involving iconography. Then, in the context of a darkened room evocative of a sacred space, they viewed artworks depicting Biblical themes and interpreted their meanings. Stimuli included “Western” paintings from the Roman tradition—a selection from the Gothic, Northern Renaissance, and Renaissance canon—and matched “Eastern” icons in the Byzantine style. Spiritual experience narratives were analyzed in terms of word frequencies, and interpretations of sacred artworks were analyzed thematically. Catholics tended to utilize emotional language when recalling their spiritual experiences, while religious activity was most often the concern of Protestants, and Orthodox Christians wrote most about spiritual figures and their signifiers. A taxonomy of response styles was developed to account for participants’ interpretations of Western and Eastern artworks, with content ranging from detached descriptions to projective engagement with the art-objects. Our approach allows for representation of diverse Christians’ interpretations of sacred art, taking into consideration personal, collective, and cultural-religious sources of meaning. Our paradigm also offers to enrich our understanding of the numinous or emotional dimension of mystical contact.

For many centuries, Western European art drew its subjects from ancient history, mythology and the Bible. The artists paid great attention to the depiction of saints, for each of whom, over time, a pictorial canon with its own attributes and certain subjects was formed. As a result, the viewer not only easily recognized a particular saint, but he could also get acquainted with the facts of his biography and the role he played in the history of the church. Saint Jerome of Stridon was one of the most popular among artists, of all the Fathers of the Church he was portrayed more often than others. The article discusses the formation of this canon on the example of Jerome’s life and work. It is based on a literature review of this topic and it contains the main studies of the biography and literary activity of Jerome, from which the artists drew subjects for their works. The article describes chronologically the vitae of St. Jerome, his hagiography from Jacobus de Voragine’s “The Golden Legend”, biography and posthumous legends, miracles and appearances of the saint from “Hieronymianus” by Giovanni d’Andrea. Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote a historical biography of Saint Jerome. Since the 19th century a large number of scientific studies of Jerome’s life and work has appeared. The article analyzes specific works of Jerome, which were also sources for pictorial images. Special attention is paid to a review of art history literature, as well as medieval bestiaries, since the paintings with St. Jerome are filled with numerous symbolic animals. A review of literature and sources on the stated topic will help stimulate researchers to further study the relationship between the lives of saints and their iconography in art, identify gaps in research on this topic and specify aspects that researchers have not yet paid attention to.

Parallax Error is a found photographic image collection scavenged from well-known art history publications in bookstores in Cairo between 2012 and 2014. What makes the series distinct are the forms and styles of censorship used on the original images ahead of sale and public distribution. The altered images involve some of the leading figures in the canon of Western photographic history and these respected photo works enter into a process of state censorship. This entails hand-painting each photograph, in each book edition, in order to obscure the full erotic effect of the object of desire, i.e. parts of the human body. The position of photography within Egypt and much of the Arab world is a contested one shaped by the visual formations of Orientalism created by the impact of European colonial empires in the region. This archival project examines the intersection of visual cultures embedded behind the series of photographic images that have been transformed through acts of censorship in Egypt. This frames how these doctored photographic images impose particular meanings on the original photographs and the potential merits, if any, of iconoclastic intervention. Parallax Error examines the political and aesthetic status of the image object in the transformation from the original photograph to censored image. The ink and paint marks on the surface of the photograph create a tension between the censorship act and its impact on the original. These hybrid images provide a political basis to rethink visual culture encounters in our interconnected and increasingly globalised contemporary image world. Keywords: aesthetics, censorship, iconoclasm, images, representation

Majeed Amjad is a great poet of the 20th century who primarily loved his fellow humans, and who expressed this love through his account of deep affection for nature. His poetic grandeur has long been denied, and his artistic status has not been acknowledged the way he deserved it, yet he continued working his own way. Despite facing serious financial hardships, he utilized his artistic abilities aptly and stamped an unerasable shadow of his artistic self on Urdu Literature that will remain with it till the point time this literature will exist. Majeed Amjad, who had been ignored through the efforts of belittling, receives strong impressions of what is all around him and also he gets influenced by the poets and literary artists of the West. As a result of it, he produced such works of art that were apparently seen as derived from the western art canon. Despite western influence, his work stands alone as of independent stature without any blame for plagiarism or even for flat production of copying foreign content. The present work will investigate the western influence and its imprints upon the poetry of Majeed Amjad, and we will try to understand those nooks and corners of his poetry which are not much known to a systematic critical investigation to date. This research, hence, will open up new pathways for fresh researchers who would invest their critical insight into Amjad’s such poetic interpretations that have remained under surface. Through the present research, we will try to introduce a renewed Majeed Amjad who, despite having been influenced by the western artistic tradition, remained successful in establishing his own independent artistic identity. In our present investigative attempt, we will also explore his artistic independence by looking at whether he succeeded not in establishing his own voice even after absorbing western influence. This research will primarily engage such questions for the consequent debate in the analytical chapters. Hence, after critically looking at western poetic influence on Amjad’s work, this research will introduce the reader to a new Majeed Amjad who had a unique identifying accent that had been unknown till now.

The author analyses the problems of visualisation and marginalisation of female corporeality in developments of Iranian political and cultural identity from the early modernisation project of the 19th century and the radical modernisation of the 1920s – 1970s to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which changed significantly the vectors and trajectories of the visualisation of the female body in public spaces and the discourse of Iranian culture. The author believes that Iran / Persia in the 19th century belonged to the number of Muslim countries that were under stable European influences. Russia and Great Britain became the main sources of cultural changes. Cultural exchange with these countries stimulated changes in Persian identity. The author analyses the features of corporeality in the visual art of Iran from the Qajars to the Islamic revolution and its mutations during the process of radical Islamisation of the social life inspired by it. The author believes that the early modern project of the Qajars was the first attempt to visualise female corporeality and map in the centre of cultural coordinates which in fact simulated European discourse. The identity project of the Pahlavi period became an attempt to transform and adopt Western concepts to the Iranian national canon. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 marginalised the visual and visible forms of female corporeality, presented earlier in public and cultural spaces. The project of Islamisation inspired subordination of the female body, marginalising attempts to visualise in ways Western intellectuals did it. Modern feminine corporeality in Iranian culture develops as a dichotomy of official religious identity and its secular alternative, represented by the “high” cultural segments of the consumer society. The author analyses how and why Western strategies of visualisation of female corporeality coexist with its religious rejection. It is assumed that the Iranian mass culture assimilated Western practices of visualising femininity, although the official cultural discourse continues to reproduce the canon of the body imagined as predominantly religious construct.

AbstractThis essay examines the process by which Wang Guowei placed Chinese dramatic history into the modern Chinese literary canon. It explores how Wang formed his ideas on literature, drawing on Western aesthetics to explain, through the notions of leisure and play, the impetus for art creation, and on the Chinese notions of the genesis of literature to explain the psychology of literary creation. In order to establish the literary value of Chinese drama, Wang applied these ideas to the first playwrights of the Yuan dynasty, arguing that theirs was a literature created under the right aesthetic and creative circumstances, and that it embodied the value of "naturalness" which he considered a universal standard for good literature. By producing a scholarly critical history of the origins and nature of Chinese drama, Wang placed drama on a par with other literary genres of past dynasties, thus giving it a renewed status and creating at the same time a new discipline of research. Drama had now become an established literary genre.

Since the 1970s, artists from Central America, Mexico and the Hispanic Caribbean have explored the connection between imperialism and gender violence through innovative artistic proposals. Their research has led them to use the female body as a metaphor for both the invaded geographical territory and the patriarchal incursion into women’s lives. This trend has received little to no attention and it behooves us to understand why it has happened and, more importantly, how the artists are proposing we examine this double violence endured by the women who live or used to live in countries with a colonial present or past. The resulting images are powerful, interesting, and a great contribution to Latin America’s artistic heritage. This study proposes that research yet to be done in other Global areas where colonies has been established, since it is possible that this trend can be understood, not only as an element of the Latin American artistic canon, but also integral to all of non-Western art.

The article analyzes the philosophical and psychological meaning of the category of emptiness and its reflection in art and architecture. The sacred meaning of emptiness in Zen Buddhism and its influence on Japanese architecture are considered. Differences in interpretations of the concept of “emptiness” in Eastern, Western and Russian philosophy and architecture are analyzed, it is highlighted how echoes of Zen teachings and the category of emptiness contributed to the emergence of the empty canon in the avant-garde. The devaluation of “emptiness” in the aesthetics of modernity and its transformation under the conditions of postmodernism are considered. In the course of analyzing the attitude of the modern generation to the categories of emptiness and space, the preconditions for the return of the attitude to emptiness and space as sacred categories of architectural culture are revealed.

In this paper, we discuss three alternative approaches to the dominant histories of techniques of illusion and interaction that emerged in the context of the panel “Alternative Beginnings: Towards an-Other history of immersive arts and technologies” sponsored by the New Media Caucus presented at the 2018 College Art Association Conference. Bringing together recent insights by media archaeologists (Huhtamo and Parikka 2011, Parikka 2012), decolonial thinkers (Mignolo 2011a, b), feminist and indigenous media scholars (Zylinska 2014, Todd 1996, Todd 2015) we invited papers that gave visibility to diverse genealogies of immersion, outside the dominant western art historical canon, to contextualize our current interest for embodied and multi-sensorial experiences. Focusing on the Latin American context – both geographically and epistemologically— the three critical approaches proposed include a discussion on the decolonizing potential of immersion as it moves away from a purely ocular regime towards an embodied one, an exploration of strategies that delink the development of immersive technologies from the military and for-profit game industry, and an emphasis on how localized sites can highlight the decolonizing potential of the local/global relationship in our possible rethinking of immersive technologies.

Nothing can stop the tides of innovation in art: it is this idea that a captive, dirty, weak, and hungry Don Quixote embraced to affirm himself as the heroic referent for the emerging Romance literatures. Indeed, this adaptability has been the secret of his longevity in the Western canon. Like Don Quixote, Hispanic literatures cannot build their identity on a pristine, metropolitan, and uniform Spanish language elevated by its exclusivity. If literary Hispanism is to be alive, it needs to evolve into a complex cultural construction that binds together the oral and literat­e languages of America and Spain and takes into account transatlantic flows and contradictions. Breathing, a common feature of both literary patterns and a rhythm of nature, will serve as the much-needed metaphor to bridge Latin American oral cultures, which have found permanence and expression in written texts, with literate cultures, including even the most urban, digital, and technologically advanced from Mexico, Chile or Spain. ­

AbstractIn his writings on music Hans Keller includes Skalkottas among the few great twentieth-century composers of ‘symphonic thought’, and considers him to be the only ‘symphonic genius’ after Schoenberg whose ‘genius’ remains to be discovered. Although during the time of his writings, Keller was in a minority in his appreciation of this relatively minor composer in the Western art music canon, he did not analyse any of Skalkottas's music in support of his views, as he did with the works of other composers who, although important to him, are not elevated to such a high plane. This paper first gives an overview of Keller's approach to and understanding of symphonic thought, as presented in his various writings and exemplified in his analyses of Schoenberg's music. Subsequently, it examines certain of Skalkottas's 12-note works and the compositional techniques he applies to construct them, which exhibit these characteristics of symphonic thought defined by Keller, and which might be used to substantiate his unexplained but intuitively correct assertions.

This interview focuses particularly on Democratic Intuition (2013-20), Meleko Mokgosi's epic, eight-chapter painting cycle, the title of which references Gayatri Spivak's lecture on the necessary relationship between education and democracy. Education, reflection on theory and practice and engagement with young practitioners are all important parts of Mokgosi's work. The interview discusses the way the chapter format of Democratic Intuition is influenced by film processes, and the research and critical analysis on which his work is based; this includes historiography; the western genre of history painting; narrative tropes and the work of Hayden White; and painting techniques that more accurately construct Black skin tones. It also discusses discourses of race and assumptions about whiteness in the western canon; and whether there is a possibility for the Black subject to inhabit allegorical representational space without being overdetermined by histories of Blackness and race discourse. Stuart Hall's work has been important to Mokgosi because of its analysis of the complexities of the discourses within which cultural production and consumption is located. This has been helpful for reflecting on the location of the western art tradition within discourses of the Enlightenment and western humanism, which provide specific rules of circulation and consumption, and structures of authority. Such discourses assume that the viewer has the necessary tools or literacies to read in order to arrive at the meanings proposed in cultural objects. Mokgosi is engaged in continuous reflection on the extent to which, in spite of this, he, as a particular subject from Botswana, has managed to locate meaning within the narrow practice of painting.

As a harrowing sub-discipline of English and Comparative Literature, Trauma Studies is in need of geographical expansion beyond its moorings in European genocides of the 20th century. In this article, the authors chart the institutional and cinematic appropriation of atrocity images in relation to the Khmer Rouge’s auto-genocide from 1975–1979 in Cambodia. They analyse the cultural and scholarly value of these images in conjunction with genocide studies to reveal principles often overlooked, taken for granted, or pushed to the periphery in photography studies and film studies. Through grim appropriations of archival or news footage to more experimental approaches in documentary, such as the use of dioramas, the authors examine the commercial and artistic articulations of trauma, reconciliation and testimony in two case studies: The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibition Photographs from S-21: 1975–1979 (1997) and Pithy Panh’s documentary The Missing Picture (2013). The authors first focus on the relatively obscure scholarship devoted to contextualizing images from international genocides outside the Euro-American canon for genocide study in order to build their critical formulations; they go on to explore whether these atrocity-themed still and moving images are capable of defying aspects of commodification and sensationalism to instead convey positive notions of commemoration and memory. Finally, their contribution to this debate regarding the merit of appropriating atrocity imagery is viewed from two perspectives: ‘commodified witnessing’ (a negative descriptor for the MoMA exhibition) and ‘commemorative witnessing’ (a positive term for the Cambodian film).

Popular music and society had been thought inseparable long before the union was made official, at first in the title of pop's original academic journal (1971), later in that of a much-taught textbook (1995). In many minds at late century, sociologies of music were sociologies of pop: Western art music's true believers could still easily imagine that repertoire existing on another plane – the historical literature was devoted to the minute detailing of its mucky creative contexts, but that didn't have to matter – and critically minded, social science-trained pop scholars usually didn't care enough to argue. Yet music sociology's first, halting steps had actually been taken in approaching the classical canon, and the movement of the 1980s and 1990s that was the New Musicology seemed radical precisely because it opened so many doors onto the social. That, then, was the situation twenty years ago, at least in the Anglophone countries: a popular music studies reaching maturity but still largely embedded in sociology and media/communications departments, and a musicology gradually transforming into a discipline in which music was much more openly reconciled with the worlds of its making.

Bohdan Ihor Antonych was one of the most remarkable modernist Ukrainian poets of the twentieth century. He left an extraordinary lite rary legacy with just a handful of books of published poetry despite his premature death at the age of twenty-eight in 1937. He was a poet, literary critic, translator, and journalist. From the outset of his literary career, in the context of western Ukrainian literature, his poetry had a diff erent sound and texture to it. Antonych’s literary interests were unconventional for his milieu: he concerned himself with the metaphysical, philosophical, and metapoetic issues. The power of his accomplishment is that he restored the human need, suppressed by centuries of colonization, for metaphysical, non-political meditation on the meaning of life, eternity and art, rather than -- as it was in a previous Ukrainian literary canon -- in the name of national interests, where literature had to play a didactic role designed to amplify the patriotic feelings of a reader. Antonych mastered the poetic language of antithesis and paradoxes, and by using it he rises from the level of personal experience to that of a universal archetype.

Background: This paper describes the development of a culturally competent medical humanities course for second and third-year medical students at the ethnically diverse College of Medicine at Qatar University. First taught in 2016, the elective seminar “Medicine and the Arts” was restructured in 2017 to cultivate an appreciation of the symbiotic relationship between medicine, art, and humanities, and to foster cultural competence among the students. Methods: Results and tips are based on our experiences and past reports. Results: In designing a course for students immersed in an Arab-Muslim context, we encountered two challenges: the discipline’s privileging of a predominantly Western canon of arts and humanities, and the largely Euro-American-centric and unilateral framing of concepts e.g., the doctor-patient relationship, patient-centered approach, patient experiences, and meanings of health and illness. To circumvent these challenges, we followed the Purnell Model for Cultural Competence, adopted the interdisciplinary approach, and employed an intersectionality framework to build and deliver a culturally competent course exploring the nexus of arts, humanities, and medicine. In addition to these tips on which frameworks to adopt and how to structure the course, we recommend a visual literacy workshop to help them develop the ability to recognize and understand ideas conveyed through art. Furthermore, we recommend deep conversations about artistic portrayals of medicine from different cultural contexts as tools for developing cultural awareness. Lastly, we recommend that these discussions adopt a student-centered approach, where students inform about their experiences and their own health and illness determinants, in order to develop their knowledge and practice of holism and patient centered approach, and other issues related to humanities and social sciences. Conclusions: Adopting and implementing a culturally competent approach to medical education, alongside interdisciplinary and intersectionality concepts, are potential conceptual frameworks to structure a course that uses art to inform about medical humanities.

Background: This paper describes the development of a culturally competent medical humanities course for second and third-year medical students at the ethnically diverse College of Medicine at Qatar University. First taught in 2016, the elective seminar “Medicine and the Arts” was restructured in 2017 to cultivate an appreciation of the symbiotic relationship between medicine, art, and humanities, and to foster cultural competence among the students. Methods: Results and tips are based on our experiences and past reports. Results: In designing a course for students immersed in an Arab-Muslim context, we encountered two challenges: the discipline’s privileging of a predominantly Western canon of arts and humanities, and the largely Euro-American-centric and unilateral framing of concepts e.g., the doctor-patient relationship, patient-centered approach, patient experiences, and meanings of health and illness. To circumvent these challenges, we followed the Purnell Model for Cultural Competence, adopted the interdisciplinary approach, and employed an intersectionality framework to build and deliver a culturally competent course exploring the nexus of arts, humanities, and medicine. In addition to these tips on which frameworks to adopt and how to structure the course, we recommend a visual literacy workshop to help them develop the ability to recognize and understand ideas conveyed through art. Furthermore, we recommend deep conversations about artistic portrayals of medicine from different cultural contexts as tools for developing cultural awareness. Lastly, we recommend that these discussions adopt a student-centered approach, where students inform about their experiences and their own health and illness determinants, in order to develop their knowledge and practice of holism and patient centered approach, and other issues related to humanities and social sciences. Conclusions: Adopting and implementing a culturally competent approach to medical education, alongside interdisciplinary and intersectionality concepts, are potential conceptual frameworks to structure a course that uses art to inform about medical humanities.

This article investigates the development of the 20th century ballet genre on the example of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881—1945). The study aims to reveal the features of B. Bartók’s ballets in the context of trends in Western European art of the 20th century and to show the composer’s innovative techniques. The article identifies specific musical formative means that reflect the genre definition of “pantomime”, and emphasizes his innovation. The early 20th century ballet art is an extremely bright phenomenon associated with the active search for new ways of developing the genre, which took place at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Classical ballet, which had reached its peak in the works of the Russian ballet school and the works of M. Petipa, was suddenly recognized as outdated and unviable. The new generation of choreographers sought to refute, to a certain extent, the genre’s old laws. The idea of searching for new means of expression became the leading one, and the canon of classical choreography was replaced by pantomime and a new unusual dance technique, which later became known as modern dance. B. Bartók’s ballets “The Wooden Prince” (1917) and “The Miraculous Mandarin” (1919) are examples of the new type of ballet performance of the early 20th century. The article shows that the composer focused on creating a symphonic score corresponding to the ideas of pantomime. His appeal to this had been primarily dictated by the librettos themselves, in which B. Balázs and M. Lengyel had defined the work character in this way. Naturally, the rejection of classical ballet’s traditional forms influenced the works’ compositional features. The article demonstrates that the scores of “The Wooden Prince” and “The Miraculous Mandarin” are distinguished by a new approach to the musical structure, in which the principles of instrumental forms play a significant role. At the same time, each of the ballets expresses the dialectical pair of “canon and heuristic” in its own way: “The Wooden Prince” retains to a certain extent the flair of classical ballet; in “The Miraculous Mandarin”, this genre pattern is violated almost ostentatiously. In this work, B. Bartók’s appeal to such an anti-classical subject reflects the era’s new trends associated with the artistic movement of expressionism. In the Hungarian composer’s ballets, the dualism of the traditional and the innovative gives rise to a different type of ballet score itself.

The social climate of the United States of today is dramatically different from that which gave birth to multicultural children's literature. Conservatism's rise to political ascendancy has sharpened the contentious “culture wars” that surround virtually all aspects of American culture. One important dimension of today's conservative movement is a backlash against the multicultural movement. Conservative defenders of the traditional literary canon, for example, see multicultural literature as a threat to the very fabric of Western civilization. Within children's literature circles, charges abound that advocates of multicultural literature are ignoring traditional literary values and are focusing instead on ill-defined notions of “political correctness.” This article explores this complex issue and the challenges it poses to those concerned with the creation, production, distribution, and consumption of children's literature. The discussion addresses questions that speak to the very nature and function of children's literature: its status as art, as entertainment, as a source of role models and ideology for children's “impressionable” minds. Also discussed is the relation between the politically charged question of whether books about African Americans are to be written only by African Americans, books about Native Americans by Native Americans, and so forth, and the freedom of writers to write without restriction.

Although the name of Rubens was included in the canon of well-known Western European artists in the Russian 18 century and his style was quite recognizable, an appeal to the artistic poetics of Rubens was rare, and Rubens’s eccentricities, created by Valery Bryusov and Nikolai Oleinikov, are full of ambiguities and obscure places. The article clears up all these obscurities based on the enlightening notion of Rubens as an artist capable of only a local mimesis, of portraying the life of Flanders, but not of a classic imitation of nature. This thesis was adopted by Pushkin and Dostoevsky and gradually acquired a moralistic and historicist meaning: Rubens depicts the characters, not the nature of a person, which means that he portrays the vice mainly and draws the viewer into the vicious circle of vice. The reevaluation of Baroque art at the beginning of the 20th century and the symbolists’ dreams of immersive theater required a different look at the audience’s involvement, thereby turning Rubens into an artist who could simulate the revolutionary activity of the crowd. At the same time, Pushkin’s idea of Rubens as an artist of arbitrariness, and not freedom, supported by the cultural image of Paul I as a collector of Rubens, was retained in Russian literature of the twentieth century.

The paper deals with renewal of socialist art history in the Post-Stalinist period in Soviet Union. The modernisation of art history is discussed based on the example of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (Estonian SSR), where art historians were forced to accept the Soviets’ centrally constructed Marxist-Leninist aesthetic and approach to art and art history. In the art context, the idea of progressiveness began to be reconsidered. In previous discourse, progress was linked with the “realist” artistic method that sprang from a progressive social order. Now, however, art historians found new arguments for accepting different cultures of form, both historical and contemporary, and often these arguments were “discovered” in Marxism itself. As a result, from the middle of 1950’s Soviet art historians fell into two camps in interpreting Realism: the dogmatic and revisionist, and the latter was embraced in Estonia. In 1967, a work was published by the accomplished artist Ott Kangilaski and his nephew, the art historian Jaak Kangilaski: the Kunsti kukeaabits – Basic Art Primer – subtitled “Fundamental Knowledge of Art and Art History.” In its 200 pages, Jaak Kangilaski’s Primer laid out the art history of the world. Kangilaski also chimed in, publishing an article in 1965 entitled “Disputes in Marxist Aesthetics” in the leading Estonian SSR literary journal Looming (Creation). In this paper the Art Primer is under scrutiny and the deviations and shifts in Kangilaski’s approach from the existing socialist art history canon are introduced. For Kangilaski the defining element of art was not the economic base but the “Zeitgeist,” the spirit of the era, which, as he wrote, “does not mean anything mysterious or supernatural but is simply the sum of the social views that objectively existed and exist in each phase of the development of humankind.” Thus, he openly united the “hostile classes” of the social formations and laid a foundation for the rise of common art characteristics, denoted by the term “style.” As is evidenced by various passages in the text, art transforms pursuant to the “will-to-art” (Kunstwollen) characteristic of the entire human society. Thus, under conditions of a fragile discursive pluralism in Soviet Union, quite symbolic concepts and values from formalist Western art history were “smuggled in”: concepts and values that the professional reader certainly recognised, although no names of “bourgeois” authors were mentioned. Kangilaski relied on assistance in interpretation from two grand masters of the Vienna school of art history: Alois Riegl’s term Kunstwollen and the Zeitgeist concept from Max Dvořák (Zeitgeist, Geistesgeschichte). In particular, the declaration of art’s linear, teleological “self-development” can be considered to be inspiration from the two. But Kangilaski’s reading list obviously also included Principles of Art History by Heinrich Wölfflin, who was declared an exemplary formalist art historian in earlier official Soviet historiography. Thaw-era discursive cocktail in art historiography sometimes led Kangilaski to logical contradictions. In spite of it, the Primer was an attempt to modernise the Stalinist approach to art history. In the Primer, the litmus test of the engagement with change was the new narrative of 20th century art history and the illustrative material that depicted “formalist bourgeois” artworks; 150 of the 279 plates are reproductions of Modernist avant-garde works from the early 20th century on. Put into the wider context, one can claim that art history writing in the Estonian SSR was deeply engaged with the ambivalent aims of Late Socialist Soviet politics, politics that was feared and despised but that, beginning in the late 1950s, nevertheless had shown the desire to move on and change.

The terminological load of the phrase “foreign / world literature” is outlined. The attention is focused on the semantic, cultural-historical, epistemological features of this concept. Literature as a verbal art, being formed since the time of oral folk creativity, reflects the corresponding established canon in the national expression, accordingly, the dynamics of the world literary process. It is emphasized that the development of national literatures had strengthened the nature of explicit-implicit literary relationships. It contributed to the formation of new genres, artistic tastes, as well as to the expansion of the recipient`s worldview, and, accordingly, literary concepts. Controversial interpretations of Goethe’s term “Weltliteratur” are considered: supporters who perceived literature as one general world synthesis (F. Moretti) and scientists who predicted the collapse of the views of the German classics (E. Auerbach). The scientific discourse of the 20th century is assumed. Diverse interpretations of the “world literature” paradigm is understood as a collection of all works from antiquity to modern times; an anthology of the best literary texts (a kind of canonization); as a high-quality cultural and intellectual mutual enrichment. The significant contribution to the formation of the “world / foreign literature” paradigm of comparative studies and sociocultural research is emphasized (the works of P. Sorokin, O. Biletsky, L. Gumilyov, G. Gachev, D. Dyuryshin, A. Volkov of the Chernivtsi TPI School). Outlining the term world / foreign literature in the general literary process, the modern concepts of Western literary critics (E. Auerbach, P. Casanova, K. Prado and T. Samuayo, F. Moretti, D. Damrosch, R. Thomsen, J. David, N. Esenlilioglu, S. Uhliga and C. Zhang) are assumed. It is concluded that the diversity of the interpretation of the term “world / universal / foreign” literature directly depends on the historical, cultural and epistemological approaches to considering this issue; however, for all researchers there are common criteria for the nominative definition of the given paradigm – comprehensiveness, canons of a certain method, anthropological value, and participation in globalization processes.

The development of clothing of the 1920s-1930s and its role in the formation of new productivist art are considered in the article. At the beginning of the 20th century, the world underwent not only enormous changes but also the loss of self-identification, both on a personal level and on a social level. The Russian Avant-Garde of the early 20th century became the prototype of not only new art but also claimed to have created a unified system of values. Artists turned their attention to clothing as a new widespread form of language. At the same time, finding a functional application to their creativity was the task. Reconstructing the role of clothing in human life was part of the "life building" concept of the early 20th century. The implementation of this idea was seen in the creation of a universal formula not only for creative work but also for life. The utopian idea of the unification of clothing formed the basis for the creation of anti-class functional working clothes. The project of creating universal clothing for mass production is a vivid example of the practical embodiment of the new productivist art. The search for a new form of dress, as a new cultural code, seemed an extremely attractive idea both from an ideological and artistic point of view. The new concept of universal clothing for work and sports transmitted the idea of creating a person of a new world - the builder of a new life. At the same time, denying fashion as a gender-oriented art form, constructivists tried to use concise forms, avoiding decoration and deliberate embellishment. The creation of innovative clothing for mass production also brings up the subject of the appearance of a new canon of the image of a woman, which changed not only the idea of an aesthetic ideal but also its role in society. At the same time, laboratories, which in their work synthesized the trends and challenges of the new time already existing in the world of Western fashion, were working. An attempt to unite Western fashion trends, national traditions, and mass production can be traced both in the practices of constructivist artists and in the works of artists who collaborated with Atelier of Fashion. New interpretations of folk traditions, as part of the search for self-identity, influenced the inclusion of a number of ornamental techniques in the artistic practices of the early 20th century. On the example of the creative work of V. Stepanova, L. Popova, and N. Lamanova’s design, different approaches to the formation of new dress are compared. The article analyzes how the transformation of the approach to clothing design becomes an indicator of sociocultural, political, and ideological changes.

El presente estudio se formula en una situación saturada de imágenes fijas y esencialistas sobre el individuo árabe y musulmán, que intenta tipificar la diferencia en absolutos, sin tener en consideración las diversidades existentes. En este sentido, planteamos como principio a seguir, ir más allá del canon historicista habitual para poder desarrollar un análisis específico sobre el trabajo de un artista extra-occidental, que contradice la razón moderna para reflexionar, a partir del arte, sobre la experiencia espiritual en la fe musulmana. A partir de una aproximación a la obra del artista marroquí Younes Rahmoun, construida desde una perspectiva interdisciplinar, analizamos las relaciones existentes entre su discurso artístico, sus convicciones espirituales y su experiencia vital.A modo de contextualización, definimos las razones subyacentes tras las elecciones estético-conceptuales y narrativas empleadas por Rahmoun. En efecto, partimos del convencimiento de que no estamos ante una experiencia artística aislada de su realidad cultural, social, política, económica, histórica y cultural; sino ante una continuidad integrada en el contexto, que funciona en armonía con estilos, reflexiones y modos de vida existentes en el entorno local y global. The present study is formulated in a situation saturated with fixed and essentialist images of the Arab and Muslim individual, which tries to typify the difference in absolutes, without taking into account the existing diversity.In this sense, we propose to go beyond the usual historicist canon to be able to develop a specific analysis of the work of an non-western artist, who contradicts modern reason to reflect through art on the spiritual experience in the Muslim faith. It is, therefore, an approach to the work of the Moroccan artist Younes Rahmoun, built from an interdisciplinary perspective, in which we analyze the relationships between his artistic discourse, his spiritual convictions and his life experience.For this, by way of contextualization, we define the underlying reasons behind the aesthetic-conceptual and narrative choices used by Rahmoun. Indeed, we start from the conviction that we are not facing an artistic experience isolated from its cultural, social, political, economic, historical and cultural reality; but a continuity integrated in the context, which works in harmony with existing styles, reflections and ways of life in the local and global environment.

This paper sheds light on the way Saul Bellow’s (1915–2005) intellectual protagonists deconstruct post-industrial American ethos which are dominated by the hegemony of capitalism and the values of democracy. These heroes are deeply immersed in European liberal education, the ‘Western Canon’ to recall Harold Bloom; however, they are marginalized, alienated, degraded and eventually rejected by the masses, junk culture, the dictatorship of the commonplace, and the unqualified individual. Bellow’s heroes predict that American culture will be overwhelmed by mass culture after the 1950s characterized by liberal democracy, [ultra capitalism], scientific experimentation, and industrialization, inspite of the high rate of higher education. Deploring a Derridean method of deconstructionism and a Foucauldian epistemic design, they archeologically question the roots of American cultural backdrop, that is, the massive industrialization in the late age of capitalism. They centralize art, humanities, classical books, morality, and religion; and marginalize science, commodity, consumerism, technology, and psychiatry. They deconstruct all makers of culture industry based on analysis, systemization, standardization, and not imagination and creativity. To achieve human and noble norms, they admit a noble life away from the vulgarity and barbarism of the age to cite Zygmunt Bauman. Special focus is on Herzog (1964), Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970), Humboldt’s Gift (1975) and The Dean’s December (1982) for their common concern with this issue.

The scientific development of the term «action» has been investigated and its clarified definition has been suggested in the article. The genre features of Y. Smolych's novel which allow to classify this work as the first Ukrainian action have been analyzed: the protagonist performs an important mission, his doings include, first of all, fleeing, chasing, hiding, searching and stealing; there is a strict time limit that forces the characters to be extremely active. Because of accentuation of the action plan, the protagonist's character is the most schematic and devoid of personality, which in general was a trait of both western and action, which developed primarily as genres of silent cinema, when scripts were created under specific actors. It has been emphasized that the Superman features are clearly showed in the protagonist's character – he drives a motorcycle, an airplane, speaks European languages, knows radio technologies and secret encryption, but in the novel, there is no mention of his physical strength, he does not enter into any fight. The fact that the novel describes exactly the moments of active action of the characters creates a sense of special time density of events, which is a traditional genre-defining trait of the action. The events of the novel resemble modern American movies: heroes seize cars, armed with browning and masked break into the recording studio in search of a microphone, later capture ATS and close the tied security guard in the restroom, etc. In accordance with the action's aesthetics, the development of events in the novel by Y. Smolych is constantly complicated, the hero has to overcome incredible obstacles, the cliffhanger is used repeatedly. It has been pointed out that via the novel «The Last Edgewood» Y. Smolych introduces into Ukrainian literature the new topos – the subway tunnels. It has been emphasized that in the peripeteia built by Y. Smolych (it is impossible to kill the enemy simply, but it can be overcome by finding his vulnerable place) the archetypal plot is viewed clearly, which is traced in the tale about Koshchiy the Immortal. It has been stated that taking into account the time of the creation of the novel (1925) and the evolution of action as a genre of cinema, Y. Smolych could not adhere to the genre's canon, because it had not existed yet, so the writer independently developed artistic techniques that are now considered canonical for the genre mentioned.

Smaller corpora and individual pieces are compared to a large corpus of 2,447 hymns using two measures of melodic angularity: mean interval size and pivot frequency. European art music and West African melodies may exhibit extreme angularity. We argue in the latter that angularity is motivated by linguistic features of tone-level languages. We also found the mean interval sizes of African-American Spirituals and Southern Harmony exceed contemporary hymnody of the 19th century, with levels similar to Nigerian traditional music (Yorùbá oríkì and story songs from eastern Nigeria). This is consistent with the account of W. E. B. Du Bois, who argued that African melody was a primary source for the development of American music. The development of the American spiritual coincides with increasing interval size in 19th-century American hymnody at large, surpassing the same measure applied to earlier European hymns. Based on these findings, we recommend techniques of melodic construction taught by music theorists, especially preference rules for step-wise motion and gap-fill after leaps, be tempered with counterexamples that reflect broader musical aesthetics. This may be achieved by introducing popular music, African and African Diaspora music, and other non-Western music that may or may not be consistent with voice leading principles. There are also many examples from the European canon that are highly angular, like Händel’s “Hallelujah” and Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. Although the tendency of textbooks is to reinforce melodic and part-writing prescriptions with conducive examples from the literature, new perspectives will better equip performers and educators for current music practice.

The article is an overview of a prominent scientific event — The Second Russian Congress of Aesthetics (Yekaterinburg, July 2021). The paper assesses the state of aesthetics as a scientific and educational discipline throughout its history of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The article highlights four stages of the Soviet history of aesthetics. The first stage, the 1930s, received following K. Clark, the nomination “return of aesthetics”, which was associated with the general conservative turn of the Stalinist cultural policy, the creation of the socialist realist canon, the program of building socialism, the denial of the functionalism of the previous (avant-garde) stage. The “return of aesthetics” had not only a political and pragmatic content but contributed to the saturation of Soviet culture with fragments of the classical heritage, primarily the philosophical one. At the second stage (late Stalinism), there was a rollback of aesthetics in the direction of extreme political instrumentalization. During a short period of the “thaw,” aesthetics began to go behind public liberal discourse, yielding leadership to journalism and art criticism. At the stage of the “long seventies”, aesthetics becomes an influential and in-demand scientific discipline, included in the program of “technical progress” and “education of the builder of communism”, important ideological, aesthetic, and applied tasks are assigned to aesthetics since it is expected to influence all spheres of life. Aesthetics as philosophy and science develops, responding to contacts with semiotics, psychology, anthropology, cultural history, and sociology. Relying on the selective stream of translations of Western art philosophy, Soviet aesthetics begins to resonate with world trends, which is facilitated by the tacit consensus of the idea of aesthetics as a part of philosophical and humanitarian knowledge that has its autonomy. The state of aesthetics in the 1990s and early 2000s is qualified as a change of scientific generations and the emergence of new groups of professionals in aesthetic and artistic knowledge, not related to academic aesthetics, forming their conceptual vision of the development of art and aesthetics relations. The current state of aesthetics was diagnosed with a brief description of the last 15 years, when contacts with foreign aesthetic schools became regular and academic aesthetics began to be in demand in master’s educational programs, intellectual venues for festivals, and biennials of contemporary art, and cultural management programs. A large portion of the article is devoted to the analysis of the composition of the participants, their professional interests and competencies, the frequent concepts discussed in the sections, the structure of polemical problems, and crosscutting topics of all congress participants.

Given the broad scale and fundamental transformations occurring to both the natural environment and human condition in the present era, what does the future hold for vernacular architecture studies? In a world where Capital A (sometimes referred to as ‘polite’) architectural icons dominate our skylines and set the agenda for our educational institutions, is the study of vernacular architecture still relevant? What role could it possibly have in understanding and subsequently impacting on architectural education, theory and practice, and in turn, professional built environment design? Imagine for a minute, a world where there is no divide between the vernacular and the ‘polite’, where all built environments, past and present are open to formal research agendas whereby the inherent knowledge in their built histories inform the professional design paradigm of the day – in all built settings, be they formal or informal, Western or non-Western. In this paper, the author is concerned with keeping the flames of intellectual discontent burning in proposing a transformation and reversal of the fortunes of VAS within mainstream architectural history and theory. In a world where a social networking website can ignite a revolution, one can already see the depth of global transformations on the doorstep. No longer is there any excuse to continue intellectualizing global futures solely within a Western (Euro-American) framework. In looking at the history of VAS, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate that the answers for its future pathways lie in an understanding of the intellectual history underpinning its origins. As such, the paper contends that the epistemological divide established in the 1920s by art historians, whereby the exclusion of so-called non-architect architectures from the mainstream canon of architectural history has resulted in an entire architectural corpus being ignored in formal educational institutions and architectural societies today. Due to this exclusion, the majority of mainstream architectural thinkers have resisted theorizing on the vernacular. In the post-colonial era of globalization the world has changed, and along with it, so have many of the original paradigms underpinning the epistemologies setting vernacular environments apart. In exploring this subject, the paper firstly positions this dichotomy within the spectrum of Euro-American architectural history and theory discourse; secondly, draws together the work of scholars who have at some point in the past called for the obsolescence of the term ‘vernacular’ and the erasure of categorical distinctions that impact on the formal study of what are perceived as non-architectural environments; and finally, sets out the form by which curricula for studies of world architecture could take.

Canon and oblivion. The memorials of archaeologyThe article takes its point of departure in the sun chariot; the find itself and its find site at Trundholm bog where it was discovered in 1902. The famous sun chariot, now at the National Museum in Copenhagen, is a national treasure included in the Danish “Cultural Canon” and “History Canon”.The find site itself has alternated bet­ween experiencing intense attention and oblivion. A monument was erected in 1925; a new monument was then created in 1962 and later moved in 2002. The event of 1962 was followed by ceremonies, speeches and songs, and anniversary celebrations were held in 2002, during which a copy of the sun chariot was sacrificed.The memorial at Trundholm bog is only one of several memorials at archaeological find sites in Denmark. Which finds have been commemorated and marked by memorials? When did this happen? Who took the initiative? How were they executed? Why are these finds remembered? What picture of the past do we meet in this canon in stone?Find sites and archaeological memorials have been neglected in archaeology and by recent trends in the study of the history of archaeology. Considering the impressive research on monuments and monumentality in archaeology, this is astonishing. However, memorials in general receive attention in an active research field on the use of history and heritage studies, where historians and ethnologists dominate. The main focus here is, however, on war memorials. An important source of inspiration has been provided by a project led by the French historian Pierre Nora who claims that memorial sites are established when the living memory is threatened (a thesis refuted by the many Danish “Reunion” monuments erected even before the day of reunification in 1920).Translated into Danish conditions, studies of the culture of remembrance and memorials have focused on the wars of 1848-50 and 1864, the Reunion in 1920, the Occupation in 1940-45 and, more generally, on conflicts in the borderland bet­ween Denmark and Germany.In relation to the total number of memorials and public meeting places in Denmark, archaeological memorials of archaeology are few in number, around 1 % of the total. However, they prompt crucial questions concerning the use of the past, on canon and oblivion.“Canon” means rule, and canonical texts are the supposed genuine texts in the Bible. The concept of canon became a topic in the 1990s when Harold Bloom, in “The Western Canon”, identified a number of books as being canonical. In Denmark, canon has been a great issue in recent years with the appearance of the “Danish Literary Canon” in 2004, and the “Cultural Canon” and the “History Canon”, both in 2006. The latter includes the Ertebølle culture, the sun chariot and the Jelling stone. The political context for the creation of canon lists is the so-called “cultural conflict” and the debate concerning immigration and “foreigners”.Canon and canonization means a struggle against relativism and oblivion. Canon means that something ought to be remembered while something else is allowed to be forgotten. Canon lists are constructed when works and values are perceived as being threatened by oblivion. Without ephemerality and oblivion there is no need for canon lists. Canon and oblivion are linked.Memorials mean canonization of certain individuals, collectives, events and places, while others are allowed to be forgotten. Consequently, archaeological memorials constitute part of the canonization of a few finds and find sites. According to Pierre Nora’s thesis, memorials are established when the places are in danger of being forgotten.Whether one likes canon lists or not, they are a fact. There has always been a process of prioritisation, leading to some finds being preserved and others discarded, some being exhibited and others ending up in the stores.Canonization is expressed in the classical “Seven Wonders of the World”, the “Seven New Wonders of the World” and the World Heritage list. A find may be declared as treasure trove, as being of “unique national significance” or be honoured by the publication of a monograph or by being given its own museum.In practice, the same few finds occur in different contexts. There seems to be a consensus within the subject of canonization of valuing what is well preserved, unique, made of precious metals, bears images and is monumental. A top-ten canon list of prehistoric finds from Denmark according to this consensus would probably include the following finds: The sun chariot from Trundholm, the girl from Egtved, the Dejbjerg carts, the Gundestrup cauldron, Tollund man, the golden horns from Gallehus, the Mammen or Bjerringhøj grave, the Ladby ship and the Skuldelev ships.Just as the past may be used in many different ways, there are many forms of memorial related to monuments from the past or to archaeological excavations. Memorials were constructed in the 18th and 19th centuries at locations where members of the royal family had conducted archaeology. As with most other memorials from that time, the prince is at the centre, while antiquity and archaeology create a brilliant background, for example at Jægerpris (fig. 2). Memorials celebrating King Frederik VII were created at the Dæmpegård dolmen and at the ruin of Asserbo castle. A memorial celebrating Count Frederik Sehested was erected at Møllegårdsmarken (fig. 3). Later there were also memorials celebrating the architect C.M. Smith at the ruin of Kalø Castle and Svend Dyhre Rasmussen and Axel Steensberg, respectively the finder and the excavator of the medieval village at Borup Ris.Several memorials were erected in the decades around 1900 to commemorate important events or persons in Danish history, for example by Thor Lange. The memorials were often located at sites and monuments that had recently been excavated, for example at Fjenneslev (fig. 4).A large number of memorials commemorate abandoned churches, monasteries, castles or barrows that have now disappeared, for example at the monument (fig. 5) near Bjerringhøj.Memorials were erected in the first half of the 20th century near large prehistoric monuments which also functioned as public meeting places, for example at Glavendrup, Gudbjerglund and Hohøj. Prehistoric monuments, especially dolmens, were also used as models when new memorials were created during the 19th and 20th centuries.Finally, sculptures were produced at the end of the 19th century sculptures where the motif was a famous archaeological find – the golden horns, the girl from Egtved, the sun chariot and the woman from Skrydstrup.In the following, this article will focus on a category of memorials raised to commemorate an archaeological find. In Denmark, 24 archaeological find sites have been marked by a total of 26 monuments (fig. 6). This survey is based on excursions, scanning the literature, googling on the web and contact with colleagues. The monuments are presented chronological, i.e. by date of erection. 1-2) The golden horns from Gallehus: Found in 1639 and 1734; two monu­ments in 1907. 3) The Snoldelev runic stone: Found in c. 1780; monument in 1915. 4) The sun chariot from Trundholm bog: Found in 1902; monument in 1925; renewed in 1962 and moved in 2002. 5) The grave mound from Egtved: Found in 1921; monument in 1930. 6) The Dejbjerg carts. Found in 1881-83; monument in 1933. 7) The Gundestrup cauldron: Found in 1891; wooden stake in 1934; replaced with a monument in 1935. 8) The Bregnebjerg burial ground: Found in 1932; miniature dolmen in 1934. 9) The Brangstrup gold hoard. Found in 1865; monument in 1935.10-11) Maglemose settlements in Mulle­rup bog: Found in 1900-02; two monuments in 1935 and 1936. 12) The Skarpsalling vessel from Oudrup Heath: Found in 1891; monument in 1936. 13) The Juellinge burial ground: Found in 1909; monument in 1937. 14) The Ladby ship: Found in 1935; monument probably in 1937. 15) The Hoby grave: Found in 1920; monument in 1939. 16) The Maltbæk lurs: Found in 1861 and 1863; monument in 1942. 17) Ginnerup settlement: First excavation in 1922; monument in 1945. 18) The golden boats from Nors: Found in 1885; monument in 1945. 19) The Sædinge runic stone: Found in 1854; monument in 1945. 20) The Nydam boat: Found in 1863; monument in 1947. 21) The aurochs from Vig: Found in 1904; monument in 1957. 22) Tollund Man: Found in 1950; wooden stake in 1968; renewed inscription in 2000. 23) The Veksø helmets: Found in 1942; monument in 1992. 24) The Bjæverskov coin hoard. Found in 1999; monument in 1999. 25) The Frydenhøj sword from Hvidovre: Found in 1929; monument in 2001; renewed in 2005. 26) The Bellinge key: Found in 1880; monument in 2003.Two monuments (fig. 7) raised in 1997 at Gallehus, where the golden horns were found, marked a new trend. From then onwards the find itself and its popular finders came into focus. At the same time the classical or old Norse style of the memorials was replaced by simple menhirs or boulders with an inscription and sometimes also an image of the find. One memorial was constructed as a miniature dolmen and a few took the form of a wooden stake.The finds marked by memorials represent a broader spectrum than the top-ten list. They represent all periods from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages over most of Denmark. Memorials were created throughout the 20th century; in greatest numbers in the 1930s and 1940s, but with none between 1968 and 1992.The inscriptions mention what was found and, in most cases, also when it happened. Sometimes the finder is named and, in a few instances, also the person on whose initiative the memorial was erected. The latter was usually a representative part of the political agency of the time. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was the royal family and the aristocracy. In the 20th century it was workers, teachers, doctors, priests, farmers and, in many cases, local historical societies who were responsible, as seen on the islands of Lolland and Falster, where ten memorials were erected between 1936 and 1951 to commemorate historical events, individuals, monuments or finds.The memorial from 2001 at the find site of the Frydenhøj sword in Hvidovre represents an innovation in the tradition of marking history in the landscape. The memorial is a monumental hybrid between signposting and public art (fig. 8). It formed part of a communication project called “History in the Street”, which involved telling the history of a Copenhagen suburb right there where it actually happened.The memorials marking archaeological finds relate to the nation and to nationalism in several ways. The monuments at Gallehus should, therefore, be seen in the context of a struggle concerning both the historical allegiance and future destiny of Schleswig or Southern Jutland. More generally, the national perspective occurs in inscriptions using concepts such as “the people”, “Denmark” and “the Danes”, even if these were irrelevant in prehistory, e.g. when the monument from 1930 at Egtved mentions “A young Danish girl” (fig. 9). This use of the past to legitimise the nation, belongs to the epoch of World War I, World War II and the 1930s. The influence of nationalism was often reflected in the ceremonies when the memorials were unveiled, with speeches, flags and songs.According to Marie Louise Stig Sørensen and Inge Adriansen, prehistoric objects that are applicable as national symbols, should satisfy three criteria. The should: 1) be unusual and remarkable by their technical and artistic quality; 2) have been produced locally, i.e. be Danish; 3) have been used in religious ceremonies or processions. The 26 archaeological finds marked with memorials only partly fit these criteria. The finds also include more ordinary finds: a burial ground, settlements, runic stones, a coin hoard, a sword and a key. Several of the finds were produced abroad: the Gundestrup cauldron, the Brangstrup jewellery and coins and the Hoby silver cups.It is tempting to interpret the Danish cultural canon as a new expression of a national use of the past in the present. Nostalgia, the use of the past and the creation of memorials are often explained as an expression of crisis in society. This seems reasonable for the many memorials from 1915-45 with inscriptions mentioning hope, consolation and darkness. However, why are there no memorials from the economic crisis years of the 1970s and 1980s? It seems as if the past is recalled, when the nation is under threat – in the 1930s and 40s from expansive Germany – and since the 1990s by increased immigration and globalisation.The memorials have in common local loss and local initiative. A treasure was found and a treasure was lost, often to the National Museum in Copenhagen. A treasure was won that contributed to the great narrative of the history of Denmark, but that treasure has also left its original context. The memorials commemorate the finds that have contributed to the narrative of the greatness, age and area of Denmark. The memorials connect the nation and the native place, the capital and the village in a community, where the past is a central concept. The find may also become a symbol of a region or community, for example the sun chariot for Trundholm community and the Gundestrup cauldron for Himmerland.It is almost always people who live near the find site who want to remember what has been found and where. The finds were commemorated by a memorial on average 60 years after their discovery. A longer period elapsed for the golden horns from Gallehus; shortest was at Bjæverskov where the coin hoard was found in March 1999 and a monument was erected in November of the same year.Memorials might seem an old-fashioned way of marking localities in a national topography, but new memorials are created in the same period as many new museums are established.A unique find has no prominent role in archaeological education, research or other work. However, in public opinion treasures and exotic finds are central. Folklore tells of people searching for treasures but always failing. Treasure hunting is restricted by taboos. In the world of archaeological finds there are no taboos. The treasure is found by accident and in spite of various hindrances the find is taken to a museum. The finder is often a worthy person – a child, a labourer or peasant. He or she is an innocent and ordinary person. A national symbol requires a worthy finder. And the find occurs as a miracle. At the find site a romantic relationship is established between the ancestors and their heirs who, by way of a miracle, find fragments of the glorious past of the nation. A paradigmatic example is the finding of the golden horns from Gallehus. Other examples extend from the discovery of the sun chariot in Trundholm bog to the Stone Age settlement at Mullerup bog.The article ends with a catalogue presenting the 24 archaeological find sites that have been marked with monuments in present-day Denmark.Jes WienbergHistorisk arkeologiInstitutionen för Arkeologi och ­Antikens historiaLunds Universitet

The author situates the question of praxis in theological methodology and Catholic Social Teaching in relation to teaching ethics courses in Catholic higher education. The author uses a genealogical strategy to show that Cardinal Joseph Cardijn’s See-Judge-Act methodology of theological praxis has become canonical in Catholic Social Teaching. The author shows that advocates of Cardijn’s methodology include Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII, Saint Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI, and Pope Francis. In addition, the author shows that Cardijn’s methodology is used by the committee that drafts Schema XIII, the Conciliar document that becomes Gaudium et Spes. Besides its use in a Western European Catholic Context the author explains that Cardijn’s methodology of theological praxis is appropriated at the Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano in Medellin, Colombia (1968); Puebla, Mexico (1979); and Aparecida, Brazil (2007). The author also explains how Cardijn’s methodology of theological praxis is integrated in ethics courses in order to develop students’ ability to discern whether a current business, healthcare, or environmental practice is a sign of the kingdom of God or the anti-kingdom. For the author, Cardijn’s methodology of theological praxis leads students to new insight about realities they are unaware and introduces them to the countercultural wisdom of the Catholic intellectual tradition, as well as the importance of moving beyond critical theological reflection and into the realm of social action.

Modern researchers pay attention first of all to the typological connections of Pushkin's works, but it seems to us that the productive method of studying the similarity of English-Russian communications in this context is not associated with specific figurative-thematic or genrethematic calls, not with the commonality of individual motifs and, finally, not with the concepts of the Russian poet’s responses to specific works of the English bard, but with the genetic textand meaning-generating links of the Russian poet’s creativity with Shakespeare’s poetics in nuce. No wonder M. P. Alekseev noted that Shakespeare was for Pushkin “the problem of worldview”. On the other hand, it seems fundamental that E. W. M. Tillard justified the need to introduce the category “picture of the world” in relation to the analysis of Shakespearean dramas, because, as S. Coleridge said, in any particular, the great playwright opened the universal, potentially existing, and opened in the image of homo generalis. In this retrospect, the statement of H. Bloom, the author of the bestseller “Western Canon”, “there is a man before and after Shakespeare” entails another consideration: “there is a man before and after Pushkin”. Both are the creators of the latest drama. A student of M. P. Alekseev, great comparatist Yu. D. Levin thought: “In the history of Russian experme... Pushkin is the Central figure. It was he who carried out the creative processing of Shakespeare’s poetics, which was then mastered by the development of Russian drama.” About the exceptional importance of Pushkin in the arrangement of Shakespeare’s poetics on Russian soil indirectly expressed in his notebooks Pushkin's friend P. A. Vyazemsky: “What threw our dramatic art on the narrow road of the French? – he asked. – Thin Sumarokov tragedy. If he had been an imitator of Shakespeare, we would have perfected his thin imitations of the English, as we have now perfected his pale imitations of the French.” Brilliant poets were led to creative achievements by impartial comprehension of human nature, and on this way they showed the image of man in the fullness of his own historical reality. This was expressed primarily in the independent dignity of poetry, which neither Shakespeare nor Pushkin was able to find support for religious, rhetorical, philosophical or political considerations that were not in its favour. No wonder the context of Pushkin’s creativity, V. S. Nepomnyashchy believes, not literature, not culture, not history even as such, but existence itself in its universal understanding, integral unity. It is noteworthy that, according to G. Bloom, and Shakespeare’s plays give “us the opportunity to join what can be called the primary aesthetic value.” The link between the two poets was the “grandeur of the idea”, the integrity of the artistic consciousness, the ability, as Heraclitus said, “to see everything as one”, and the deep psychological development of an unpredictable human character.

Abstract. The Whittard canyon is a branching submarine canyon on the Celtic continental margin, which may act as a conduit for sediment and organic matter (OM) transport from the European continental slope to the abyssal sea floor. In situ stable-isotope labelling experiments were conducted in the eastern and western branches of the Whittard canyon testing short term (3–7 day) responses of sediment communities to deposition of nitrogen-rich marine (Thallassiosira weissflogii) and nitrogen-poor terrigenous (Triticum aestivum) phytodetritus. 13C and 15N labels were traced into faunal biomass and bulk sediments, and the 13C label traced into bacterial polar lipid fatty acids (PLFAs). Isotopic labels penetrated to 5 cm sediment depth, with no differences between stations or experimental treatments (substrate or time). Macrofaunal assemblage structure differed between the eastern and western canyon branches. Following deposition of marine phytodetritus, no changes in macrofaunal feeding activity were observed between the eastern and western branches, with little change between 3 and 7 days. Macrofaunal C and N uptake was substantially lower following deposition of terrigenous phytodetritus with feeding activity governed by a strong N demand. Bacterial C uptake was greatest, in the western branch of the Whittard canyon, but feeding activity decreased between 3 and 7 days. Bacterial processing of marine and terrigenous OM were similar to the macrofauna in surficial (0–1 cm) sediments. However, in deeper sediments bacteria utilised greater proportions of terrigenous OM. Bacterial biomass decreased following phytodetritus deposition and was negatively correlated to macrofaunal feeding activity. Consequently, this study suggests that macrofaunal-bacterial interactions influence benthic C cycling in the Whittard canyon, resulting in differential fates for marine and terrigenous OM.