Humanities & Social Sciences

Bucolic imagery—of shepherds with flocks in idyllic surroundings—has barely been studied in Byzantine art history. These images elude our usual analytical categories of imperial, sacred, and secular art, and challenge our assumptions about visual narrative. This book demonstrates that a “bucolic mode” existed in Byzantium in diverse media, such as textiles, sculpture, mosaics, silver, and manuscripts. Through a close reading of a select group of images, this book argues that bucolic themes were deployed to reflect concerns about the salvific effects of sound, the vagaries of the weather, and the contingency of imperial rule at different moments in the Byzantine era.

Wie sollen wir mit Kunst und Kunstwerken umgehen, die in autoritären Strukturen entstanden sind und bei deren Entstehung Menschen Gewalt zugefügt wurde? Wer kuratiert, spricht und schreibt über diese Kunst? Und kann Kunst aus Gewaltkontexten neu kontextualisiert werden? Die Beiträger*innen versammeln in diesem durchgehend zweisprachigen Band zentrale Ideen zu Strategien für zukünftiges Ausstellen und setzen dabei das kritische Kuratieren in den Mittelpunkt. Sie zeigen neue Kontextualisierungsstrategien auf und öffnen einerseits das Feld für zeitgenössische Diskurse. Andererseits stellen sie Bezüge zu Kunst und Aktionismus sowie zur Traumaforschung her und geben praktische Handlungstipps für Museen. How should we deal with art and artworks that emerged within authoritarian structures and whose creation involved violence against people? Who curates, speaks, and writes about this art? And can art that originates from contexts of violence be recontextualized? The contributors in this consistently bilingual volume gather central ideas on strategies for future exhibition practices, placing critical curating at the forefront. They present new strategies for recontextualization and open the field to contemporary discourses. At the same time, they establish connections to art and activism as well as to trauma research, offering practical guidance for museums.

Sorcery or Science? examines how two Sufi Muslim theologians who rose to prominence in the western Sahara Desert in the late eighteenth century, Sīdi al-Mukhtār al-Kuntī (d. 1811) and his son and successor, Sīdi Muḥammad al-Kuntī (d. 1826), decisively influenced the development of Sufi Muslim thought in West Africa. Known as the Kunta scholars, Mukhtār al-Kuntī and Muḥammad al-Kuntī were influential teachers who developed a pedagogical network of students across the Sahara. In exploring their understanding of “the realm of the unseen”—a vast, invisible world that is both surrounded and interpenetrated by the visible world—Ariela Marcus-Sells reveals how these theologians developed a set of practices that depended on knowledge of this unseen world and that allowed practitioners to manipulate the visible and invisible realms. They called these practices “the sciences of the unseen.” While they acknowledged that some Muslims—particularly self-identified “white” Muslim elites—might consider these practices to be “sorcery,” the Kunta scholars argued that these were legitimate Islamic practices. Marcus-Sells situates their ideas and beliefs within the historical and cultural context of the Sahara Desert, surveying the cosmology and metaphysics of the realm of the unseen and the history of magical discourses within the Hellenistic and Arabo-Islamic worlds. Erudite and innovative, this volume connects the Islamic sciences of the unseen with the reception of Hellenistic discourses of magic and proposes a new methodology for reading written devotional aids in historical context. It will be welcomed by scholars of magic and specialists in Africana religious studies, Islamic occultism, and Islamic manuscript culture.

Sugar, Steam and Steel is about cane sugar and the transformation of an Indonesian island into the â Oriental Cubaâ during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Between the 1830s and the 1880s, sweetener manufacture in Dutch-controlled Java â the crown jewel of the erstwhile Netherlands Indies â drew decisively away in matters of technology and sugar science from other Asian centres of production which had once equaled or, more often, surpassed it in terms of both output and know-how. Along with its larger and altogether more famous Caribbean counterpart, Javaâ s industry came to occupy a position at the apex of the trade in what had become by this date a key global commodity.

This open access book summarizes knowledge about several file systems and file formats commonly used in mobile devices. In addition to the fundamental description of the formats, there are hints about the forensic value of possible artefacts, along with an outline of tools that can decode the relevant data. The book is organized into two distinct parts: Part I describes several different file systems that are commonly used in mobile devices. · APFS is the file system that is used in all modern Apple devices including iPhones, iPads, and even Apple Computers, like the MacBook series. · Ext4 is very common in Android devices and is the successor of the Ext2 and Ext3 file systems that were commonly used on Linux-based computers. · The Flash-Friendly File System (F2FS) is a Linux system designed explicitly for NAND Flash memory, common in removable storage devices and mobile devices, which Samsung Electronics developed in 2012. · The QNX6 file system is present in Smartphones delivered by Blackberry (e.g. devices that are using Blackberry 10) and modern vehicle infotainment systems that use QNX as their operating system. Part II describes five different file formats that are commonly used on mobile devices. · SQLite is nearly omnipresent in mobile devices with an overwhelming majority of all mobile applications storing their data in such databases. · The second leading file format in the mobile world are Property Lists, which are predominantly found on Apple devices. · Java Serialization is a popular technique for storing object states in the Java programming language. Mobile application (app) developers very often resort to this technique to make their application state persistent. · The Realm database format has emerged over recent years as a possible successor to the now ageing SQLite format and has begun to appear as part of some modern applications on mobile devices. · Protocol Buffers provide a format for taking compiled data and serializing it by turning it into bytes represented in decimal values, which is a technique commonly used in mobile devices. The aim of this book is to act as a knowledge base and reference guide for digital forensic practitioners who need knowledge about a specific file system or file format. It is also hoped to provide useful insight and knowledge for students or other aspiring professionals who want to work within the field of digital forensics. The book is written with the assumption that the reader will have some existing knowledge and understanding about computers, mobile devices, file systems and file formats.

In The Celluloid Specimen, Benjamín Schultz‑Figueroa examines rarely seen behaviorist films of animal experiments from the 1930s and 1940s. These laboratory recordings—including Robert Yerkes’s work with North American primate colonies, Yale University’s rat‑based simulations of human society, and B. F. Skinner’s promotions for pigeon‑guided missiles—have long been considered passive records of scientific research. In Schultz‑Figueroa’s incisive analysis, however, they are revealed to be rich historical, political, and aesthetic texts that played a crucial role in American scientific and cultural history—and remain foundational to contemporary conceptions of species, race, identity, and society. “Essential reading for anyone in behavioral science and media studies.” — LISA CARTWRIGHT, University of California, San Diego “Remarkable and urgently needed. Benjamín Schultz‑Figueroa disinters an extraordinary lost archive that sheds new light on race, eugenics, species, the science of sex, and biopolitics. A resonant— and stunningly clear—intervention.” — DONOVAN SCHAEFER, author of Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin “A fertile, sprawling, kaleidoscopic work. No book outlines the multiple functions of the scientific moving image as thoroughly. A brilliant and essential addition to animal studies, cinema and media studies, and the history of science.” — SCOTT CURTIS, author of The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany “Seriously speculative, meticulously researched, and boldly interdisciplinary, The Celluloid Specimen cross‑pollinates nontheatrical film studies and critical animal studies with stunning acumen and gripping analysis.” — YIMAN WANG, University of California, Santa Cruz

Economic and social shifts have led to rising income inequality in the world's affluent countries. This is worrisome for reasons of fairness and because inequality has adverse effects on other socioeconomic goods. Redistribution can help, but government revenues are threatened by globalization and population aging. A way out of this impasse is for countries to increase their employment rate. Increasing employment enlarges the tax base, allowing tax revenues to rise without an increase in tax rates; it also reduces welfare state costs by decreasing the amount of government benefits going to individuals and households. The question is: can egalitarian institutions and policies be coupled with employment growth? For two decades conventional wisdom has held that the answer is no. This book provides an assessment of the experiences of rich nations since the late 1970s. It examines the impact on employment of six key policies and institutions: wage levels at the low end of the labor market, employment protection regulations, government benefit generosity, taxes, skills, and women-friendly policies. The analysis includes twenty countries, with a focus on Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The book concludes that there is some indication of tradeoffs, but that they tend to be small in magnitude. There is no parsimonious set of policies and institutions that have been the key to good or bad employment performance. Instead, there are multiple paths to employment success. The comparative experience suggests reason for optimism about possibilities for a high-employment, high-equality society.

Although overlooked by most narratives of American cinema history, films made for purposes outside of theatrical entertainment dominated twentieth-century motion picture production. This volume adds to the growing study of nontheatrical films by focusing on the way filmmakers developed and audiences encountered ideas about race, identity, politics, and community outside the borders of theatrical cinema. The contributors to Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film examine the place and role of race in educational films, home movies, industry and government films, anthropological films, and church films, as well as other forms of nontheatrical filmmaking.

In diesem Open-Access-Buch kritisiert Philipp Schäfer die Entwicklung der Circular Economy hin zu einem Selbstzweck. Um den Beitrag der Circular Economy zu einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung zu gewährleisten, muss sie stets Mittel zum Zweck sein und bedarf daher konkreter Zielsetzungen. Anhand eines ausführlichen Exkurses in die Fachliteratur zeigt der Autor, dass das primäre Ziel der Circular Economy keineswegs durch das Narrativ der schwindenden Ressourcen bestimmt werden sollte. Vielmehr sollte das Ziel die Minderung des Energieaufwands der Rohstoffbereitstellung und der damit verbundenen Treibhausgasemissionen sein. Anhand konkreter empirischer Beispiele zeigt der Autor auf, dass diese konzeptionelle Zielausrichtung zwingend notwendig ist, damit der Beitrag der Circular Economy zum Klimaschutz und damit zu einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung sichergestellt werden kann.

Lope de Vega's lyrical career has been studied through different authorial masks that the poet adopts according to times and interests. Showing off the nickname by which he was known in life, the Phoenix reinvents himself and succeeds himself: poet of ballads, poet of Petrarchan songbooks, sacred, courtier, and even burlesque. Of all of them, the courtly or cultured Lope has not received the attention it deserves, since not even the masterpieces of that period have received updated critical editions. We are speaking, then, of a poet who, after the accession to the throne of Felipe IV, puts a pike in the publishing market with two works of difficult generic taxonomy: La Filomena (1621) and La Circe (1624). With them, Lope delves into literary subgenres little traveled by him, such as the Cervantine-style short novel. But what motivates such an authorial turn in the twenties? What is Lope pursuing with these two peculiar volumes and what strategies does he use to build this renewed self? This study addresses all these questions, and others of greater depth, whose hypotheses are ultimately intended to outline a clearer profile of the author in his full maturity

This open access book is the proceedings of the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT)’s 28th Annual International eTourism Conference, which assembles the latest research presented at the ENTER21@yourplace virtual conference January 19–22, 2021. This book advances the current knowledge base of information and communication technologies and tourism in the areas of social media and sharing economy, technology including AI-driven technologies, research related to destination management and innovations, COVID-19 repercussions, and others. Readers will find a wealth of state-of-the-art insights, ideas, and case studies on how information and communication technologies can be applied in travel and tourism as we encounter new opportunities and challenges in an unpredictable world.

Utopian Variations is a comparative critical study of a variety of kinds of utopia and utopian discourse. Rather than focusing on more familiar forms of utopia, the book considers utopia in relation to a range of topics that have received less attention within utopian studies, including literary modernism, postsecularism, transhumanism, antihumanism, xenofeminism, the Covid-19 pandemic, recent speculation about postcapitalism, and utopianism since the 2007–8 financial crisis. The book also makes an entirely original argument for a re-evaluation of the concept of the utopian blueprint that breaks with academic orthodoxy in this area. As well as drawing on literature, film, and popular culture, there is extensive engagement with social theory, cultural theory, and queer theory, resulting in a rich, wide-ranging study. A small book on very big ideas. The title tells us there’ll be variety, and Sean Seeger delivers that variety not just in terms of the forms discussed but of the texts explored too. Utopian Variations is both accessible and interesting. The writing is clear and to the point but there’s no sacrificing on the detail. Seeger focuses his attention on the forms of utopia and utopianism that have received less attention in academic work to date, and his chronological approach makes it easy to track the evolution of the central ideas explored. I learnt a lot reading this book and have been introduced to a great many new texts. – Matthew Leggatt, University of Winchester

This book explores the phenomenon of the Third Reich from a philosophical perspective. It concentrates on the ways in which the subjects and experiences of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust and Anti-Semitism are conceived by eight German thinkers from the Continental tradition. These eight intellectuals include Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger, Jean Améry, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jan Assmann. Based on careful philosophical examinations of both known and unknown texts of these eight thinkers (including an English translation of two forgotten texts by Schmitt and Jünger), this study exposes and then explores the tension between ideology and philosophy, between submission to authority and genuine critical thinking, all of which constitute the essence of the Continental philosophical tradition.

Beyond Virtual Production brings together a range of creative practice research projects that have been undertaken in The Void, an early-adopter university-based virtual production studio at Flinders University in South Australia. From a cross-disciplinary short virtual production film, to a VR simulation of the last 100 seconds of life of earth, to the live performance of the virtual band Big Sands, to augmented and extended reality, to archaeological projects, this collection captures the potential applications of virtual production technology and provides a framework for cross-disciplinary work and industry collaborations both in a university context and beyond. It offers insight into the development of virtual production courses and encompasses research into theories of performance, liveness, methods for co-creation, gender in virtual production careers, and object digitization and its representation while highlighting significant pathways of industry partnerships alongside experimental art practices. Creative technology and interdisciplinary practitioners, researchers, students, and teachers will find inspiration and practical guidance in these chapters.

Anlässlich des 25-jährigen Bestehens reflektiert dieser Sammelband die Entwicklung, Bedeutung und Zukunftsperspektiven des Berufskollegs aus multiperspektivischer Sicht. Beiträge aus Wissenschaft, Politik, Schulaufsicht, Wirtschaft und Praxis geben fundierte Einblicke in zentrale Themenfelder: von der historischen Genese über curriculare Entwicklungen bis hin zu Fragen der Digitalisierung, Fachkräftesicherung, Heterogenität und Lehrkräftebildung. Der Band gliedert sich in fünf Themenbereiche: Wegspuren, systemische Bedeutung des Berufskollegs, curriculare Grundlagen, bildungsgangbezogene Perspektiven sowie Innovation und Zukunftspfade. So entsteht ein umfassendes Bild der Schulform, das sowohl Stärken als auch Herausforderungen thematisiert. Persönliche Erfahrungsberichte und wissenschaftliche Analysen zeigen auf, wie berufliche Bildung heute gestaltet wird und welche Aufgaben sich für die Zukunft stellen.