bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS) in Campania Region: the challenges facing the first implementation of experimental model
Authors: Mirra Laura , Caputo Nicola , Gandolfi Ferdinando , Menna Concetta
Published: February 2021

Purpose: In this context, the current study aims to carry out an implementation analysis of knowledge network in Campania region, Italy. This region has implemented, using Measure 1, Measure 2 and Measure 16 of Rural Development Plan 2014-2020, an experimental model of AKIS.Methodology: The methodology was based on a living-lab approach where involved actors have an active role as co-innovators.Findings: The results give hints to implement, in the last period of the Cap 2014-2020, others experimental AKIS based on the Rural Developments Plans.Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: The development of new agricultural practices and its spread to obtain more sustainable agriculture has become an important issue for researchers and policy makers. In particular, growing attention is paid to the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) expression used to describe the whole knowledge exchange system, the ways people and organisations interact within a country or a region. AKIS can include farming practice, businesses, authorities, research and can vary a lot, depending on the country or sector. However, the complexity of the AKIS implemented in Campania region requires particularly effective governance instruments and a continuous monitoring and evaluation processes to elicit innovation needs.  Therefore, in the next CAP 2014-2020 measure related to advice (Art. 13 - COM (2018) 392 final) and ‘knowledge transfer and information actions’ (Art. 72 – COM (2018) 392 final) should be strategically integrated to implement modern and tailored advisory programmes based on different advisory work approaches to better meet the needs of all parties. This issue needs a testing time useful to better plan policy intervention for the next CAP.
DETERMINANTS OF SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF NON- GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS HEALTH PROJECTS IN KIBERA INFORMAL SETTLEMENT, KENYA
Authors: Odongo Patrick , Ombui Dr Kepha
Published: February 2021

Purpose: The current study sought to establish determinants of successful implementation of non-government organization health projects in Kibera informal settlement. The study sought to establish how community participation, resource mobilization, communication and project control determines successful implementation of health projects for NGOs operating in Kibera informal settlement.Methodology: The study adopted a descriptive survey design and 116 questionnaires were issued but only 92 questionnaires were received which represented a 79% response rate.Results: The results of the study revealed that resource mobilization, communication and project control positively and significantly determined successful implementation of health projects by Non-Governmental organizations in Kibera as shown by r=0.443, r=0.511 and r=0.798 respectively while community participation negatively determined the implementation success of the projects (r= -0.078).Recommendations: The study recommends that NGOs implementing health projects in Kibera should focus on mobilizing resources since the practice contributes to successful implementation of the projects. NGOs can achieve this by actively engaging sponsors, conducting harambees, networking and presenting grant proposals to prospective financiers to solicit resources for implementing the health projects. Additionally, the study recommends that NGOs implementing health projects in Kibera should focus on project communication since the practice contributes to successful implementation of the projects. NGOs can achieve this by establishing a concise project communication plan, and through continuous communication with project teams and stakeholders on matters concerning the progress of the project. The study further recommends that NGOs implementing health projects in Kibera should focus on project control since the practice contributes to successful implementation of the projects.NGOs can achieve this by using project management information systems in designing and controlling health projects, conducting a variance analysis on the progress of the project and by providing updates on the status of the project to the relevant stakeholders.
INFLUENCE OF STAKEHOLDER INVOLVEMENT ON THE SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF PROJECTS AT KENYA RAILWAYS CORPORATION IN KENYA
Authors: Anne Vaati , Paul Dr. Samson Nyang’au
Published: February 2021

Purpose: The purpose of this study was be to examine the influence of stakeholders’ involvement on successful implementation of projects in Kenya with reference to Kenya Railways Corporation.Methodology: This research used descriptive research design. The population of the study was the project officers, project managers/team, contractors, consultant’s engineers and architects, financial managers and auditors. This research adopted primary and secondary data.Primary data was gathered through use of questionnaire. Data was analyzed using Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS Version 21).Results: According to the findings, taking all factors (project team competency, stakeholders’ involvement, top management support and project monitoring and evaluation) constant at zero, the overall successful implementation of projects in Kenya was 5.774. The data findings also show that a unit increase in project monitoring and evaluation lead to a 0.362increase successful implementation of projects in Kenya; a unit increase project team competency lead to a 0.379; a unit increase in top management support, lead to a 0.355; a unit increase in stakeholders’ involvement lead to a 0.398  increase in successful implementation of projects in Kenya respectively. This means that the most significant variable was stakeholders’ involvement followed by project team competency; top management support and project monitoring and evaluation respectively.Recommendations: The study recommends that stakeholder’s involvement should be improved in project implementation. The study also recommends that a competent project leader be given the responsibility to oversee the implementation of projects in Kenya Railways Corporation to ensure projects are effectively implemented.
CRITICAL FACTORS INFLUENCING IMPLEMENTATION OF ROAD PROJECTS IN KENYA
Authors: Jebitok Nelly , Nzulwa DR. Joyce
Published: February 2021

Purpose: The Purpose of the study was to establish Critical factors influencing implementation of road projects.Methodology: The study adopted a descriptive survey design. The target population of the study was all the road engineers, middle managers in department of KRB. The sample size was 188 respondents. Data collected was cleaned, pretested, validated, and coded, summarized and analyzed using statistical package of SPSS V23.  The study findings were presented using graphs, histograms, bar charts and pie charts.  Conclusions were derived based on the P.value and the coefficient of determination.  Results: The study found that the key significant determinants of sustainability of water projects in Machakos County were capacity of the project management, government policies, monitoring and resource support. The study concluded that project management capacity had the greatest determinant ofsustainabilityofwater projects in Machakos County, followed by resource support, then monitoring while government policy had the least determinant of sustainability of water projects in Machakos County.Contribution to policy and practice: The study recommends that the government should advocate for proper planning with involvement of the benefiting community and timely implementation with the required results. This can be done through making of a policy by the ministry demanding for the practice of the same by the involved organizations. The project committee should set up financial structures considering both rising of funds and dissemination of the same in relation to operating and maintaining of the project. This can be done through learning and training on the same. The study also recommended that water beneficiaries and management should be sensitized to improve their knowledge on conservation and protection of water facilities.
HOW PRODUCT STRATEGY IN THE MARKETING MIX IS AFFECTING THE GROWTH OF JUA KALI ENTERPRISES IN NORTH IMENTI SUB-COUNTY
Authors: Kanana Gatobu Jackline , Gichohi Dr. Paul , Moguche Abel
Published: February 2021

Purpose: This study aim was to investigate the effect product strategy on the growth of jua kali Enterprise in North Imenti Sub County, Meru County. The study hypothesized that there is no significant relationship between product and growth of jua kali enterprises.Methodology: The study adopted a descriptive research design. The population comprised of one hundred and twenty eight (128) owner of jua kali enterprises operating within North Imenti Sub County, Meru County and registered by Micro and Small Enterprises Authority Kenya (MSEA-K). A stratified random sampling technique was used to select a sample of ninety seven (97) jua kali enterprises from the total population. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire after which mean and standard deviation were computed while Pearson Correlation, and linear regression done accordingly. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22 was used as a statistical tool.Results: The results indicated that there is growth in jua kali sector which is contributed by product strategy. The study established that product strategy affects growth of jua kali enterprises hence rejecting the hypothesis. It was therefore concluded that product strategy significantly affects SME’s growth.Contributions to policy, practice and theory: The study recommends that; SMEs should invest in their products to ensure they are of desirable quality in order to satisfy their customers and maintain a competitive edge. The study is valuable to entrepreneurs as they seek for better product strategies to grow their enterprises.
WOMEN EMPOWERMENT THROUGH ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT: DETERMINANTS OF GROWTH FOR WOMEN OWNED SMALL TO MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN NAIROBI COUNTY, KENYA
Authors: Kamau Lorna
Published: February 2021

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to establish the determinants of growth for women owned SMEs in Nairobi County in Kenya.Methodology: The population of the study was 100 exhibitions which were spread across five zones in Nairobi County. The target population was 500 small businesses. Stratified random sampling technique was used to determine the sample size.  A sample size of 100 SMEs was used. This study used primary data which was collected through use of a questionnaire. Descriptive analysis was employed; which included; mean frequencies and percentages.  Inferential statistics such as correlation and regression analysis were used. The analysis was done using MS-EXCEL and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 17. The analyzed data was presented in frequency and percentage tables or pie charts.Results: The study results revealed that there was a positive and significant relationship between education and training and SME’s growth, there was negative and significant relationship between access to productive resources and SME’s growth, there was negative and significant relationship between competitive environment and SME’s growth and that there was a positive relationship between gender specific factors and SME’s growth. The results also revealed that there was a positive relationship between SME’s growth and women empowerment.Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: The study recommended that the Government of Kenya (GOK), responsible authorities and the society at large should work hand in hand with women owners/managers of SME’s to aid them in terms of education and skills, finance and competitive environment in order to empower them.
First record of Pediacus dermestoides (Fabricius, 1792) (Coleoptera: Cucujidae) for Bulgaria
Authors: Gradinarov Denis , Sivilov Ognyan , Doychev Danail
Published: February 2021

The saproxylic species Pediacus dermestoides (Fabricius, 1792) is reported from forest habitats located in five mountains in Bulgaria. The adult beetles were found under the bark of several host tree species or captured with flight interception traps. It seems that P. dermestoides might be widespread in the mountain forests in Bulgaria.
Interaction of Salicylamide and Salicylic Acid with Iron and Cobalt and their Comparative Study by IR and NMR
Authors: Wani Mr. Mohd Waseem , Chandok Dr. G. K.
Published: February 2021

The complexes formed by salicylic acid and several substituted derivatives of salicylic acid (Salicylamide) with essential metal ions of the soil (iron and cobalt) have been investigated at 25° and in a medium of variable ionic strength using pH. The equilibrium constants of complex formation of the 1 : 1 , 1 : 2 and1 : 3 mole ratio metal–acid complexes formed are discussed with reference to the activity degradation of substituents. Salicylic acid and Salicylamide after disposal can also react with the various metal ions present in the soil to form complexes. The rate at which these complexes are formed is done with the help of UV-vis. Spectroscopy. The complexes formed are characterized by various Spectroscopic technique viz. FTIR and NMR.
A Laboratory Corrosion Inhibition Study of Carbon Steel Using 2-Mercaptobenzothiazole (MBT) Under Post-Combustion CO2 Capture Conditions
Authors: Li Wei , Landon James , Qian Dali , Liu Kunlei
Published: February 2021

Corrosion mitigation is an important aspect of amine-based post-combustion carbon dioxide (CO2) capture operations due to the desire to use less expensive but corrosion-vulnerable materials such as low carbon steels in the construction of a capture system. In this study, the corrosion behavior of A106 (grade B) carbon steel with an in-house proprietary amine-based solvent was investigated in a laboratory environment at 80°C using an organic corrosion inhibitor, 2-mercaptobenzothiazole (MBT). The corrosion inhibition mechanism was interpreted by electrochemical methods and surface analyses. The results revealed that the corrosion rates of carbon steel were significantly retarded using MBT. The critical inhibitor concentration was determined to be lie between 10 ppm and 50 ppm under the tested conditions.
Initial Development and Evaluation of the Executive Function Performance Test–Enhanced (EFPT–E) in Women With Cancer-Related Cognitive Impairment
Authors: Boone Anna E. , Wolf Timothy J.
Published: February 2021

Importance: Psychometrically sound instruments are needed to evaluate executive functioning in the population of people with cancer.

Objective: To develop and evaluate the reliability and validity of the Executive Function Performance Test–Enhanced (EFPT–E) in women after being treated for breast cancer.

Design: Cross-sectional.

Setting: University research laboratory.

Participants: Women treated for breast cancer who had cognitive impairment (n = 12) and community control participants (n = 13).

Outcomes and Measures: Evaluators (n = 8) independently scored a recorded administration of the EFPT–E to evaluate interrater reliability. An assessment battery, including the EFPT–E, was administered to evaluate the EFPT–E’s known-groups validity and concurrent validity.

Results: Excellent interrater reliability was observed for the EFPT–E total score and each subtask score (intraclass correlation coefficient = .90–.98). Moderate effect sizes were noted for the EFPT–E total score (Cohen’s d = 0.5) and the total number of cues (d = 0.4) between the breast cancer group and the control group, with the breast cancer group demonstrating poorer performance. A limited correlation was found between the EFPT–E and the other cognitive measures.

Conclusions and Relevance: The results support the EFPT–E’s interrater reliability and warrant continued investigation to further establish its reliability and validity.

What This Article Adds: Assessments are needed to quantify the impact of cognitive processes within functional tasks. The EFPT–E has been developed to assess the functional impact of mild cognitive impairment; initial testing with women with cancer showed excellent agreement between raters and promising results for validity.
Actors, Non-professional Actors, Starlets, and Stars
Authors: Pitassio Francesco
Published: February 2021

Film critics and film history celebrate neorealism for its use of nonprofessional performers in a number of masterpieces. However, as lucid observers such as André Bazin pointed out in the late 1940s, neorealist films relied on a mixture of professional and non-professional actors. This chapter describes the debate on film performance and its origins from the mid-1930s to the early 1950s and looks at how the use of non-professional performers was associated with neorealism’s aim to present a non-narrative cinematic representation. Moreover, the chapter examines the relationship between neorealism, non-professional performers, and phenomena such as popular theatre and new female stardom. The chapter ends with a case study of the most renowned neorealist actress, Anna Magnani.
Animated Statues and Petrified Bodies : A Journey Inside Fantasy Cinema
Authors: Bertolini Michele
Published: February 2021

The essay aims to show the aesthetic and philosophical implications of
the polarity between the animation of stone and the petrification of the
body through a journey inside fantasy cinema and horror movies. The
examples offered by horror movies like The Haunting (Robert Wise), Un
Angelo per Satana (Camillo Mastrocinque) and La Venere d’Ille (Mario and
Lamberto Bava) re-enact the mythical imagery of the animated statue as the
intertwining of simulacrum and living body. Unlike these gothic models, two
postmodern masterpieces, After Hours (Martin Scorsese) and Dead Ringers
(David Cronenberg), evoke at the same time the ghost of contemporary
sculpture and the cinema device as simulacra-producing machine.
The Ephemeral Cathedral : Bodies of Stone and Configurations of Film
Authors: Hediger Vinzenz
Published: February 2021

At first sight, a statue that appears in a film is a prop among others. It can
serve to situate the action, it can be an attribute of a character, indicating
the person’s taste and social status, and it can become a world-making
detail, as in historical epics set in antiquity, where statues serve as the kind
of ornament used to describe the world of the film and lend it credibility.
But as it appears in a film, it raises questions about film as an art of the
gesture, and about the power of film to endow inanimate objects with
agency.
Technical Images and the Transformation of Matter in Eighteenth-Century Tuscany
Authors: Luppi Anna
Published: February 2021

The essay investigates the production of scientific images and threedimensional
models in the effervescent dialogue between art and science
of eighteenth-century Tuscany. Created to meet new didactic needs, these
technical images, such as the anatomical tables conceived by anatomist
Paolo Mascagni for the students of the Academy of Fine Arts, abandoned
the Vesalian topos of the cadaver as a life-like statue and gave rise to a
novel lithic iconography, which emphasised the textured materiality of
human remains and their potential transformations across the natural
and artificial realms. The miscegenation of manufactures and natural
productions was given pride of place in anatomical and botanical atlases,
as well as in the scientific collections that sprung up in Tuscany at the time.
The Orphan Image
Authors: Villa Federica
Published: February 2021

This contribution offers an example of a monumental narration arising out of images of death. This is the case of Amos Humiston, a sergeant at the front in the American Civil War who, as he lay dying, chose to look at the photograph of his three children. The monumentalising cadaver’s pose transforms him into an exemplary individual whose story deserves to be recounted and to whom a name needs to be given. A bronze plaque including the photograph of the children was built in his memory; the plaque is one of the most common forms of monument undergoing reconsideration in contemporary art. What it mineralises here is not so much the corpse of the soldier but his story as a whole.
Monuments of the Heart : Living Tombs and Organic Memories in Contemporary Culture
Authors: Damiani Sara
Published: February 2021

According to the basic assumption that monuments are the aesthetic
mediators of memory—primarily the memory of the dead—the essay
aims to discuss the imaginary of the body as a sepulchral monument.
Taking as a starting point the legend of Artemisia of Caria, who celebrated
the memory of her dead husband/brother Mausolus both by having the
Mausoleum of Halicarnassus erected and by drinking Mausolus’ ashes so
as to turn herself into his living sarcophagus, the analytic focus is on the
replication of similar symbolic practices in contemporary culture, namely
in the field of organ transplantation. The transplanted patient receives
and preserves within his/her body the organ of the deceased donor, thus
becoming, even if unintentionally, the donor’s memorial monument.
Conclusion
Authors: Stevens E. Charlotte
Published: February 2021

The vid form represents a diverse range of expression and comment. The
existence of vids relies on the existence of home video technologies—first
analogue, now digital—for access to source material. The vid form’s inherent
reflexivity demands that vids be read alongside the viewer’s memory
and understanding of its source texts as a whole. Vids help constitute an
individual’s knowledge and understanding of a series, film, franchise, or
broader viewing landscape. A close look at vids and vidding uncovers a
hidden ‘afterlife’ of programmes, films, and other visual media. Vids offer
fans’ interpretations of media texts, construct histories of viewership and
engagement, and demonstrate a mode of productive audience behaviour
that has seldom been part of the story of television.
Introduction
Authors: Engh Line Cecilie , Turner Mark
Published: February 2021

The introductory chapter by Engh and Turner gives an overview of how
marriage served as a structuring frame in early Christianity and the
Latin West and an outline of the individual chapters. Discussing the
nature of symbolism and its importance to human cognition, the chapter
positions the book within an ongoing dialogue between the humanities
and cognitive science. These two fields share the basic assumption
that producing, communicating, and recognizing meaning is a creative,
contingent process – it is not something ‘already there,’ in a text or in an
image, but is constructed and reconstructed by human minds in human
bodies, in social and institutional spaces, and in natural and cultural
environments. Understanding the ways humans process metaphor helps
us understand the relation between various kinds of discourses and the
ways people lived, thought, and believed.
Single Marriage and Priestly Identity
Authors: Hunter David G.
Published: February 2021

This chapter argues that the emergence of marriage as a symbol and
its relation to marriage as ‘sacrament’ were connected to a third factor,
namely the emergence of a ‘priestly’ identity for the Western clergy.
Hunter shows first that a tradition developed in the third to the fifth
centuries in which the single marriage of the clergy (i.e. the prohibition of
digamists from ordination) became a privileged symbol of divine–human
union, and eventually the union of Christ and the Church; second, that
this tradition of single marriage was directly connected to the increased
sacralizing of marriage in liturgical practice; and, third, that both of
these developments contributed to the identification of the Western
clergy as ‘priests’.
Veiled Threats
Authors: Firey Abigail
Published: February 2021

It has long been recognized that the veil taken by consecrated women religious draws upon nuptial associations and thus symbolizes the trope that consecrated women are brides of Christ. The history of the veil’s symbolic value in the early Middle Ages can, however, be probed more extensively than it has been. This chapter proposes that prior to the tenth century polyvalent symbolism and intermittent use produced competing understandings of the veil. That competition culminated in efforts in the ninth century to regulate the practice of veiling, and also in discursive shifts in representation of the veil’s significance. By tracing the chronology of the connection of the veil to the concept of the bride of Christ, Firey invites consideration of the possible function of symbolism as a device for parties with opposing views to negotiate contested positions, practices, and meanings.
Marriage Symbolism in Illuminated Manuscripts of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
Authors: Pavón Ramírez Marta
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores marriage symbolism in twelfth- and thirteenth-century illuminated manuscripts containing canon and civil law texts but also liturgical texts and illustrated Bibles. Visual representations of weddings and marriages were neither straightforward nor immediate, but challenged the artists to make conceptual and interpretative choices. How was marriage visualized? What could be pictured? How did the artists face the difficult task of illustrating abstract concepts? Pavón Ramírez explores the relationship between visual images and theological ideas, and the role of artists and patrons in the construction of new images of the theological concept of marriage in the Middle Ages.
Marriage in the Divine Office
Authors: Salvadó Sebastián
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the use of marriage symbolism to explain the meaning of the different liturgical seasons, ritual, and liturgical observances of the high medieval Divine Office. From the glosses on the liturgy of Amalar of Metz onwards, monks and clergy wrote treatises interpreting their practice of the liturgy. Salvadó traces glosses, such as those of Honorius of Autun and Innocent III, to disclose the liturgical seasons and areas of praxis where marriage symbolism is most prevalent. This discussion is contextualized by reference to liturgical praxis and the liturgy of marriage as witnessed in contemporary sources.
What Kind of Marriage Did Pope Innocent III Really Enter Into?
Authors: Engh Line Cecilie
Published: February 2021

Bernard of Clairvaux was the first writer to stake out a precise role for
the pope at the spiritual nuptials between Christ and the Church: the
pope was the ‘friend of the bridegroom’ and Christ’s best man. But it
was Pope Innocent III who turned bridal imagery into an argument for
papal primacy in the Church, imagining the pope as bridegroom of the
Church. This chapter addresses conceptualization and representation
of papal authority and church hierarchy by means of bridal imagery, as
testified in sermons and in decorations and inscriptions that Innocent
commissioned in Rome. Who, exactly, was Innocent III’s bride? And what
kind of marriage was this, anyway? What relation was there between
Innocent’s marriage to the Church of Rome and marriage between a
man and a woman?
‘Please don’t mind if I got this wrong’
Authors: Müller Wolfgang P.
Published: February 2021

Twelfth-century church lawyers employed concepts like spiritual marriage
to justify norms regulating Christian life. In Medieval Marriage
(2005), David d’Avray has argued that spiritual marriage was key to the
notion of marriage as an unbreakable bond and exerted real influence
on the domestic partnerships of Western Christians. The present chapter
challenges this assertion, questioning (1) the contention that the related
idea of canonical bigamy assumed shape under the decisive influence of
theological tenets. The principle of matrimonial indissolubility is also
discussed (2), again suggesting that spiritual marriage furnished juristic
theory with just one rationale among many. Canonists drew on biblical
imagery to reason by way of analogy but maintained much of their
interpretive freedom in doing so.
Coda
Authors: Vélez-Serna María A.
Published: February 2021

This brief chapter offers a final reflection on the future of film exhibition
as a social practice, and returns to the ambiguous value of the ephemeral
as a site of precarity but also of possibility and freedom.
Postscript
Authors: Ma Ran
Published: February 2021

In this concluding section, I summarize what I have examined in the preceding chapters to foreground the significance of this study. More importantly, I highlight some of the research concerns that could be explored further in the future. In proposing potential ‘ways of seeing’, I briefly look at how we can grasp border-crossing filmmaking in relation to current developments in visual technologies, especially apropos the ubiquitous use of drones, as instantiated in Ai Weiwei’s documentary project Human Flow (2017). Secondly, I suggest that in extending the questions of gender and sexuality, it would be useful for a future project to realign and re-examine the border-crossing auteurs and their films, both within and beyond the inter-Asia context.
The New Horizons of Piety
Authors: Amer Sahar
Published: February 2021

This article focuses on the development of new forms of Muslim piety that
challenge both Euro-American stereotypes of Muslim women veiling and
conservative interpretations of the meaning of hijab in Islam. It shows
how recent progressive readings of Islamic sacred texts, highlighting the
spiritual equality of the sexes, are questioning persistent assumptions
that Muslim women are required to veil. These progressive intellectual
and theological voices are accompanied by the development of more
popular and far reaching industries that are facilitating the emergence
of new practices of piety: the Islamic fashion industry, Islamic beauty
pageants, veiled dolls, and artistic voices. Taken together, these new modes
of Islamic piety show the imbrication of religious expressions, faith, and
global market forces.
Hollywood Action Hero Martyrs in ‘Mad Max Fury Road’
Authors: Copier Laura
Published: February 2021

Laura Copier builds on Elizabeth Castelli, who characterises the discourse
on martyrdom as highly ambivalent, yet persistent and powerful to this
day and age, evaluating martyrdom as ‘an idea without a precise origin’
(Castelli, 2004, p. 35). Because it is both impossible and unproductive to
pinpoint the exact historical moment in which martyrdom came into
existence, Copier focuses, with Castelli, on the ongoing manifestations of
martyrdom, in particular on the sustained investigation of contemporary,
popular, and secular representations of martyrdom. The discourse of martyrdom
is so powerful precisely because of its adaptability and, critically,
the transformation of the object that it allows. It is not just the concept of
martyrdom that is not fixed; it also causes related discourses to change.
One of those discourses is Hollywood cinema, and its representations of
gender and the body in female action heroes. Castelli’s ‘culture making’
dimensions of martyrdom that ‘depend upon repetition and dynamics of
recognition’ are played out, as Copier shows, in the female character of
Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) in the 2015 film Mad Max Fury Road.
Through a close reading of the film’s genre, narrative, and iconography,
Copier argues that the female action hero Furiosa is able to transcend
and destabilise the equation of martyrdom with death.
Gathering Water in Exegetical Texts
Authors: Starkey Lindsay J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyzes thirty-eight different sixteenth-century commentaries
on Genesis and their medieval Christian and Jewish predecessors,
focusing specifically on exegeses of Genesis 1:9–10. These biblical verses
recount God’s separation of the waters from the earth on the third day of
creation. This chapter argues that in contrast to patristic and medieval
Christian and Jewish understandings of why water did not flood the earth,
sixteenth-century Christian exegeses of Genesis 1:9–10 show that authors
offered a wide variety of categorizations for the dry land’s existence with
the majority insisting that God kept the water from the earth through
his supernatural power.
Defining Water in Natural Philosophical Texts
Authors: Starkey Lindsay J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores some of the most frequently printed and widely
circulated natural philosophical texts of the sixteenth century along
with their medieval predecessors. It focuses on each author’s conception
of water and his classification for why water did not flood the earth. This
chapter argues that most of these authors did ultimately classify the dry
land’s existence as a natural occurrence. However, it also shows that
their arguments for this naturalness were longer and more convoluted
than previous discussions, incorporating redefinitions of the proper
subject matter of natural philosophy to do so. These longer, more complex
discussions suggest that water was of more particular interest to sixteenthcentury
authors of natural philosophical texts than to previous ones.
Water in Newly Rediscovered Ancient and Medieval Texts
Authors: Starkey Lindsay J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores how Ptolemy’s Geography and medieval Jewish
exegesis helped reshape sixteenth-century European views on water and
the relationship between the world’s landmasses and waterways. Whereas
Ptolemy’s Geography argued that there was more land and less water in the
world than medieval Europeans typically thought, medieval Jewish scholars
explained the dry land’s existence through God’s more direct intervention
into the world than their medieval Christian contemporaries. It argues that
the method through which sixteenth-century European scholars studied the
world in which they lived meant that the books they read shaped the ways
in which they conceptualized the arrangement of the world’s landmasses
and bodies of water, and the ontological status of that relationship.
Absolute Immanence
Authors: Rodowick D.N.
Published: February 2021

The defining question of modern art was how to release the image from
representation. The problem for contemporary art is how to find new approaches,
materials, techniques, and technologies for remapping this
question in ways responsive to our current history and media environment.
What has the image become under new conditions of technological
production and reproduction, amplified flows of communication through
social and mass media, and the global expansion of neoliberalism,
both politically and economically? In this chapter, Rodowick appeals to
Theodor Adorno’s late writings on aesthetics to evaluate contemporary
art’s critical responses to its current technological and social condition
in works by Philippe Parreno, Sturtevant, Pierre Huyghe, Michel Majerus,
Cory Arcangel, and other international artists.
When Buildings Become Screens
Authors: Colangelo Dave
Published: February 2021

This chapter outlines various tactics that artists, filmmakers, curators, architects, city planners, and arts administrators can employ to develop works, sites, and audiences that support a more participatory and representative public culture through massive media. These include: the application of analytical tools from cinema studies, namely superimposition, montage, and apparatus/dispositif, high-level coordination and provision of technical support from curatorial groups that see themselves as public space activists and community facilitators, and sensitivity towards context, both digital and virtual, of large-scale public data visualisations centred upon led façades. More study and practice is needed as the technologies and contexts of massive media shift and merge with the practices of digital placemaking and smart cities.
Mediating the Sublime
Authors: Mathias Nikita
Published: February 2021

As if accepting Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant’s rejection of the
visual arts as carriers of the experience of the sublime as a productive
challenge, artists and craftsmen already in the eighteenth century started
to experiment with media technological innovations that would give more
dynamic, greater and overwhelming images of sublime disaster events.
More precisely, such innovations sought to overcome the spatial and
temporal limitations of easel painting, aiming to provide experiences of
illusionistic immersion and of sensory, affective, and emotional intensity.
The media discussed in this chapter range from the moving images of the
Eidophusikon and the Diorama to the large-scale pictures of the Panorama,
John Martin’s disaster motifs, and American landscape painting. Moreover,
these various media participated in broader popularization processes, as
pictorial experiences shifted from being viewed as elite activities toward
phenomena of middle class leisure entertainment.
Cinema – A Medium of the Sublime?
Authors: Mathias Nikita
Published: February 2021

I set out to explore cinema in terms of its potential function as a medium
of the sublime. Burke and Kant’s accounts of the sublime are employed
to examine their correlation with cinema’s technological, formal, and
receptive repertoire. This encompasses intrinsic features such as cinematography’s
innovation of putting in motion photographic images,
aspects of the montage, the aesthetic potential of the camera as cinema’s
central organ of expression and perception, sound effects, and multimedia
interplay as well as external features of cinema which constitute the
medium as a concrete space for cinematic experiences. To what extent
do these various features provoke, facilitate, mediate, or participate in a
sensory and affective overpowering of the viewer?
The Sublime in Disaster Cinema
Authors: Mathias Nikita
Published: February 2021

The film analytical chapter moves along the lines of different key moments
of the sublime: the Sublime as somatic excess, subjectivity, transcendence,
modality, presentability, the geological sublime, the sublime
and the ridiculous, as well as sublime hyperobjects and the ecological
sublime. The primary analytical tool applied are Edmund Burke and
Immanuel Kant’s theoretical models of the sublime. The application of
these eighteenth-century theorems for the analysis of twentieth and
twenty-first-century motion pictures is solely justified through their
shared historical foundation. This historical account takes into view the
broader cultural horizon of the sublime, encompassing aesthetic thought,
art historical iconographies, media technologies, aesthetic receptive
conventions and strategies, scientific, economic, and cultural discourses,
as well as general concepts of man’s relation to nature’s forces.
Conclusion: Biogeography as a Teaching Tool
Authors: Beusterien John
Published: February 2021

The conclusion examines how teachers can use the methodology of
biogeography—that is, teachers can guide students by having them name
a previously unnamed animal from early modern Spain. For instance,
students can name a quetzal whose feathers were used by an Amanteca
artisan to craft a shield that Philip II received as a gift and put in his
collection in the Royal Armory. The teaching methodology of biogeography—
creating names of animals in spectacles of animals in early
modern Spain—helps prepare students in the humanities to look beyond
the superficial interpretation of images and texts to better understand
landscapes of exclusion.
A Prohibition on Digging Up the Bones of the Dead (1813)
Authors: Manalo Ino
Published: February 2021

In 1813, the Bishop of Cebu, Joaquín Encabo de la Virgen de Sopetrán,
issued an edict prohibiting the exhumation of the dead, written primarily
in the local language of Cebuano Visayan. This document from the
archives of the Roman Catholic parish of Patrocinio de Maria in Boljoon,
a town in the Philippine province of Cebu, suggests that inhabitants of
the diocese were digging up the bones of the dead in order to hold rituals
for a secondary burial along traditional, non-Christian lines. Ino Manalo
discusses the edict in light of the emphasis placed by Spanish colonialism
on urbanism and literacy, and outlines the ways in which it provides
evidence of the persistence of traditional beliefs and practices centuries
after the introduction of Christianity to the Visayas.
The Tensions of Heterochronicity on Cartographies of Imperial Motion in Japan
Authors: Leca Radu
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses the ways, in which intersections between historical
narratives and cartographic design shaped the spatial imaginary of Japanese
audiences. It follows early modern, modern, and contemporary visualizations
of two narratives of imperial movement in Japan: the eastward march of the
legendary first Emperor Jinmu and the Korean campaign of the equally legendary
Empress Jingu. The study cases show how cartography was enlisted for a range
of purposes, from confident depictions of exemplary movements to dynamic
trajectories that accommodated multiple points of view. The study thus provides
an example of the diagnostic value of historical motion maps as a litmus test for
the agendas to which historical and geographical knowledge were employed by
different ideological positions.
‘Change-of-State’ in the History of Cartography
Authors: Monmonier Mark
Published: February 2021

Five static graphic strategies support the transition from one spatial pattern to
another. Chess maps, as a telling sequence of instantaneous views, use a common
geographic framework to narrate a geographic story. By contrast, rate-of-change
maps use numerical measurements to describe spatial variation in the rapidity or
slowness of change. A third type, the dance map, mimics the step-by-step footwork
of rehearsed choreography, analogous to the movements of troops, materiel, and
intelligence in a military campaign (A highly focused dance map, the centrographic
map, treats a spatial-temporal narrative as a statistical summary.) Additional
strategies include flow maps and frontal maps, a military/meteorological analog.
Dynamic cartography and the interactive manipulation of history maps afford
new insights as well as alternative interpretations.
Conclusion
Authors: Walters Holly
Published: February 2021

The ever-changing conditions, constraints, and challenges under which
a widely disparate community of ritual practitioners have forged ties of
relations, embodied experiences, and histories have demonstrated the
ways in which Shaligram veneration crosses the boundaries of nation,
religion, ethnicity, caste, and generation. As an exploration in political
conflict and resistance, religious innovation in the digital age, and
symbolic accommodation for decreasing physical mobility within and
outside of South Asia, this work on Shaligrams reveals how contemporary
understandings of personhood, place, and family remain fluid and how
they are continuously constructed as a result of the interactions between
people, landscapes, material life, and the immaterial divine.
Afterword
Authors: Long Kathleen
Published: February 2021

In the early modern world, exceptional bodies are linked to knowledge,
not as the production of knowledge of the self through the scrutiny of
those who have been ‘othered’, but as a means of inducing self-scrutiny
and awareness of the limitations of human understanding. Exceptional
beings and phenomena entice us to consider the world beyond that which
is familiar to us and raise questions concerning our knowledge systems
based on notions of what is natural or, in our modern era, normal. Rather
than reacting with horror, disgust or pity, we can learn to respect the
variety, mobility and resilience of the natural world in our contemplation
of that which we see as exceptional.
Epilogue: Renaissance Somaesthetics in a Digital World
Authors: Terry-Fritsch Allie
Published: February 2021

The epilogue highlights a somaesthetic turn in contemporary pedagogical tools
used to teach the Renaissance and engage virtual viewers. It highlights select
cases of digital humanities projects to demonstrate how researchers have provided
new sensory-driven access to historical experience, and explores how the digital
platform disrupts hegemonic discourse through its design, which relies on a user’s
actions to generate a personalized experience. The epilogue argues that mindful
interaction with these tools provides a means to come to know Renaissance works
through the body and points to the constructive ways that somaesthetic cultivation
can reinvigorate the first-hand experience of art in the museum and beyond.
Reform in the Twilight Years
Authors: Cussen Bryan
Published: February 2021

The interplay of honour and reform continued in the last years of Pope
Paul’s pontificate. With the Council transferred to Bologna and most of
the prominent reformers either dead or retired, the movement for reform
was left languishing. Yet Paul was aware that reform was unfinished
business and that if he could keep it under his control, it would bring
him honour to stimulate the movement once more. In his last year, Paul
made attempts to bring influential bishops to Rome to consider reform
possibilities. Those efforts were still in train when Paul died. The chapter
concludes with a reflection on the course of reform under Paul and on
how culture shaped events in this period.
How interactive maps mobilize people in geoactivism
Authors: Gutiérrez Miren
Published: February 2021

Thus far little has been said about how maps are employed in activism
to unleash sentiments. Employing as a lens the emotional turn currently
influencing geography, this article looks at a 15M map, a cartographic
animation that shows a ‘connected multitude’ of indignad@s as they
demonstrated in Spain in 2011; the ‘Left-to-die boat’ map, tracing the
course of a ship in which 63 refugees lost their lives; and the ‘Western
Africa missing fish’ map, which shows foreign fishing vessels operating
irregularly in African waters. Interviews, fieldwork, and participatory
observation are employed to understand how maps are designed to activate
people through emotions. Based on DeSoto (2014) and Muehlenhaus (2013),
the chapter also offers a taxonomy as a heuristic tool.
The Umbrella Movement
Authors: Ma Ngok , Cheng Edmund W.
Published: February 2021

This volume examines the most spectacular struggle for democracy in post-handover Hong Kong. Bringing together scholars with different disciplinary focuses and comparative perspectives from mainland China, Taiwan and Macau, one common thread that stitches the chapters is the use of first-hand data collected through on-site fieldwork. This study unearths how trajectories can create favourable conditions for the spontaneous civil resistance despite the absence of political opportunities and surveys the dynamics through which the protestors, the regime and the wider public responses differently to the prolonged contentious space. The Umbrella Movement: Civil Resistance and Contentious Space in Hong Kong offers an informed analysis of the political future of Hong Kong and its relations with the authoritarian sovereignty as well as sheds light on the methodological challenges and promises in studying modern-day protests.
From Political Acquiescence to Civil Disobedience
Authors: Ma Ngok
Published: February 2021

The outbreak of the Umbrella Movement in 2014 followed decades of futility in
the democracy movement. Years of conventional protests and bargaining had
failed to bring about full democracy for Hong Kong. The rise of a new political
identity and trends of radicalization in social and political movements fuelled
the massive civil disobedience campaign. With Beijing handing down an
election formula that allowed popular elections only after a Beijing-controlled
committee screened the candidates, the opposition was prepared to launch
an occupation campaign. Police violence then triggered the spontaneous
participation of the masses, culminating in the 79-day occupation that
signified a new stage of contentious movements for Hong Kong.