If we look at the past three decades in the history of Eastern Europe, Ukraine may safely be placed at the top of the chart of “unstable” states. First was the student-led Revolution on Granite in the 1990s. The outcome of that revolution was a resignation of entrenched high-ranked Soviet officials under the pressure of public opinion. Then, if…[Read more]

This article draws on the scene history of HC/punk in Bandung, specifically SXE, traced through collectives, spaces, political communities, music, gigs, zines, and merchandise. I’m trying to weave this into the history of urban youth culture in the city, reflecting both the Indonesian and the global context.

The story of Lough Derg in Ireland’s County Donegal is arranged around clusters of sectarian narratives in juxtaposition, synthesis and conflict. The Sanctuary of Saint Patrick sits on Station Island, a small rocky islet set within the waters of the lake. The site became well known in the early Middle Ages as the place of Saint Patrick’s del…[Read more]

Throughout film history, many famous scenes and even entire films have been devised with actors improvising on certain general parameters that ultimately depict a character, often vaguely portrayed. These turns to improvisation and narrative experimentation tend to come forward every time filmmakers propose a new rupture, frequently accompanied by…[Read more]

Book review. Marcin Moskalewicz and Wojciech Przybylski “Understanding Central Europe,” Routledge, 2017.

Book review. Abel Polese. “Limits of a Post-Soviet State,” Ibidem-Verlag, 2016. ISBN 978-3-8382-0845-9

In the post-Versailles era, Polish leader Józef Piłsudski proposed to the authorities of Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus to forge an Intermarium union for the survival of their states. Piłsudski risked and pushed forward an intellectual speculation on how to strengthen subjectivity and sovereignty of the “young” states in games between major po…[Read more]

Yuriy Lypa stated in the mid-1930s: “The Ukrainian race is an island among its neighbours, an island with its own life, its own holy things and all-human values. Foreign and imposed spiritual values are worthless, and even non-imposed values are adopted in time, only if they pass the nation’s test… The Ukrainian race is an island, and this is its…[Read more]

The research: (1) embraces peculiarities of the current EU foreign policy towards Ukraine; (2) enumerates and analyzes documents, agreements and treaties which establish the frameworks for this policy; (3) discovers the impact of human rights issues on shaping and conducting this policy. Based on the criminal trials against opposition leaders, the…[Read more]

The article addresses current trends in European transformation and compares the structure which is being built to ancient and medieval empires. The imperial order appears to be productive for the EU due to it easily embraces the heterogeneity existing within the Union, as well as contributes to the strengthening of the EU institutional legitimacy…[Read more]

The article outlines the geopolitical rationale behind contemporary Russian expansionism, as well as presents the asymmetric and “hybrid” mechanisms utilized by the Kremlin to solidify its authority in the post-communist space. To do this, the article refers to the findings of American, British, Polish and Ukrainian intellectuals on the nature of…[Read more]

This book highlights the quantitative methods of data mining and information visualization and explores their use in relation to the films and writings of the Russian director, Dziga Vertov. The theoretical basis of the work harkens back to the time when a group of Russian artists and scholars, known as the “formalists,” developed new concepts of…[Read more]

In this book, I explore the connections between music for early movies (1895-1927) involving the supernatural in the context of the culture of the time in regard to supernatural beliefs and entertainments, particularly spiritualism.

Through The Making of Early Kashmir, Shonaleeka Kaul, who teaches in the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, deftly presents a new discourse on Kashmir’s culture and history and successfully argues not only that a traditional Sanskrit text can indeed function as a historical text, but that the very fact that s…[Read more]

In the cultural and religious history of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory—a centuries-old Catholic pilgrim site situated on Station Island within the waters of Donegal’s Lough Derg—the mass drowning of 1795 stands out. The aftermath was devastating, stamping a lasting mark on the memory of place. The disaster continues to be complicated by its entangl…[Read more]

The article aims to uncover the nature and distinctive features of the contemporary messianic narrations in the Russian public discourse, as well as estimate their impact on the actual policy-making. For this reason, the article scrutinizes the political philosophy of Aleksandr Dugin, Nataliia Narochnitskaia, Egor Kholmogorov, and Vadim…[Read more]

This essay analyzes two recent interactive documentary projects: Sharon Daniel’s Public Secrets (2006), an exploration of the prison industrial complex through the testimonies of female inmates in California, and Zohar Kfir’s Points of View (2014) which “maps” Palestinian video advocacy projects made for and/or disseminated by B’Tselem, a human r…[Read more]

Post Mortem by Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín challenges traditional cinematic conventions of affect and spectacle through a narrative of spaces and bodies that is neither realist, comedic, nor melodramatic. This chapter draws upon affect theories that study the spectacle of cinematic spaces and political bodies in Latin American film. The…[Read more]

Women filled a number of roles in the American cinema music industry, particularly during
the Great War. In addition to serving as cultural barometers for cinematic music
and accompaniment, women were at the heart of innovations in cinema sound
and composition.