This chapter seeks to reflect on the concepts of entertainment, engagement, and poetics applied to cinematic art and it inscribes this set of reflections within the scope of aesthetic authenticity in cinema. The discussion is structured around the question of the autonomy of art, understood as a kind of characterization or requirement, a topic…[Read more]

This paper presents some of the ideas central to my current developing research into the modes of historical television drama, particularly the Gothic mode. In focusing on the 2018 television adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock, the paper illustrates the idea of the Gothic mode in operation, considering its relationship to notions of historical…[Read more]

This article explores the co-constitution of networks and infrastructure in the context of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century culture. We consider Maria Edgeworth’s conceptualization of the term network with and alongside infrastructure in her Harry and Lucy stories (1801–25) and offer an analysis of a manuscript tour by Mary Anne Eade fro…[Read more]

From 40 years of experience it is clear that spirituality has become entangled in abstractions: powers, perfection, supernatural, unreal, limitless knowledge, crystal ball perceptions, etc.
Dr Stephen Farra agreed with that – and went one better. Dr Farra stated “Our models are out reality. But our models are not reality. That coincides with the…[Read more]

This chapter examines the relationship between American Westerns and Brazilian Nordesterns, films set in the arid northeastern region known as the sertão. US cultural and economic imperialism, in Brazil and throughout Latin America, is both cause and effect of persistent underdevelopment. The northward flow of natural resources has long been…[Read more]

Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 police procedural is, as its title suggests, intensely interested in the socioeconomic valences of spatial relationships, literalized in Yokohama’s affluent hills and its low-lying slums. The central conflict between inhabitants of these two spaces articulates this local topography into a global framework, in which con…[Read more]

Surround sound is often mistaken as a relatively new phenomenon in cinemas, one that emerged in the 1970s with the arrival of Dolby. Making Stereo Fit reveals that, in fact, filmmakers have been creating stereo and surround-sound effects for nearly a century, since the advent of talking pictures, and argues that their endurance owes primarily to…[Read more]

Desde que el hispanista francés Félix Lecoy llamase en 1938 la atención sobre las
peculiaridades de los papeles atribuidos a las mujeres en la obra de Juan Ruiz, numerosos
trabajos académicos se han dedicado a esclarecer en lo posible las coordenadas históricas
y literarias de esta presencia femenina en el Libro de buen amor, sobre todo en lo r…[Read more]

Although a plethora of ancient South Asian sources refer to situations that would be considered crises by modern standards, the early Sanskrit vocabulary lacks a word that we could understand as a distinct equivalent of the term “crisis” and its Greek and Latin predecessors. Nevertheless, the descriptions and discussions of personal and col…[Read more]

The incidence of diseases in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) shaped encounters between colonial officials and indigenous people, yet this subject has merited minimum attention in the Ghanaian historiography. This paper examines the colonial healthcare interventions to combat the outbreak of cerebrospinal meningitis (CSM) in Asante and
how the presence…[Read more]

The role of Japanese manga as a site for intercultural understanding and engagement is worth further investigation, and research in this area is
still growing. This article explores intercultural dialogue through a case study of the Japanese manga Satoko and Nada Volume 1 by Yupechika, which narrates the friendship between Satoko, a young…[Read more]

This conversation revolves around Dora Apel’s work in the field of art and memory. Memory, in its mediating force, is critical for our understanding of the present and the construction of a future, or, rather, as Dora Apel posits it in her recent book Calling Memory Into Place: “Memory effects are not about the past. How do they shape the pre…[Read more]

Historical Synergy: Mannheim holds that historical and political thought is determined by the socio-historical location of the thinker and the political aspirations and material ambitions of the group or groups to which he belongs.
2. Prehistoric Artic Hunter-Gatherer Synergy of Beliefs in Animal Spirits w/ Economic-Political Realities Erica Hill…[Read more]

A Cultural History of the Sea in the Medieval Age, ed. by Elizabeth Lambourn.

The cultural history of the sea during the Middle Ages is a young and dynamic field. Born only recently in the literary criticism of European sources, this innovative volume pushes out beyond this European heartland to explore the shape and potential of a cultural…[Read more]

This paper examines the use of the Gothic mode in historical television drama to suggest it is used to emphasise engagement with historical traumas, and suggest that these traumas still have relevance today. This emphasis works by engaging with the associations that are acquired around the Gothic mode through experience, recognising the aesthetic…[Read more]

The Hebrew word “ruach” – the word connected to the idea-symbol of “spirit” translates alternately as “wind,” “breathe,” or “spirit.” In Arabic, there are two words for the words: spirit, soul or self – namely, ruH (spirit, soul) & nafs (spirit, soul, self). Both of these Arabic words are also connected to the ideas of breath or wind (e.g. ruH is…[Read more]

In 2023, a new museum opened in Tbilisi, at the Writer’s House of Georgia that previously house the Soviet Writers’ Union: The Museum of Repressed Writers. The museum honours the executed poets from Georgia’s Soviet past, poets whose identities Soviet authorities tried to destroy. This article examines the story the museum tells about Soviet l…[Read more]