The Cultural History of Solitude in Antiquity: An Introduction

This article presents a novel approach to the study of the cultural history of solitude in antiquity. It presents solitude in comparative perspective, notably in conversation with anthropology, paleolithic studies, zoology, as well as with a broad range of ancient philological sources that range from ancient Egypt to to India to classical Greece and Rome down to Jewish Alexandria and late-antique Christianity. As it shows, the history of solitude is not a simple fall from communitarian grace to individual alienation, nor is it a simple rise from a conformist mass to triumphant autonomy: neither lapsarian nor whiggish teleology, or vision’s of history’s necessary arc, are adequate to the complex role that the uses, the cultivation, the culture of solitude has played throughout human history. And I say ‘throughout’, for, far from being the invention of Augustine’s meditations on original sin, or the medieval confessional, or Montaigne’s tower, or the mass-print paperback, or British romanticism, or the French revolution or bourgeois counter-revolution, or neo-liberal late-stage capitalist alienation, solitude is as old as hominids, and perhaps as old as our primate ancestors: a recent ethological study suggested that a certain eye-covering gesture by captive Colchester mandrillsin—usually highly sociable monkeys that live in troops—signaled a desire to be left alone. Sad solitude, bad solitude, useful solitude; loneliness on a desert island, loneliness in a crowd, or a moment to one’s own in deep forest or a room or a city or a tomb: all of these are as old as culture, from Latin cultura, meaning a way of living, dwelling, adorning, growing, caring for others (plants, animals, gods) and taking ‘care of the self’. To study the cultural history of solitude is to study practices but also ways of speaking and thinking, ways of approaching what it means, in the words of the American poet Wallace Stevens, to ‘live in a place / that is not our own and, much more, not ourselves’. He adds: ‘And hard it is in spite of blazoned days’

Catullus and the Limits of the Light

This chapter shows : a) how Catullus, especially in the Marriage of Peleus and Thetis, but in ways that are built into the whole of his poetic corpus, thought through what we might term the disenchantment of his world as a whole. b) how this disenchantment was made not only national, but global, through manipulations of the inherited Hellenistic archive of, and contemporary Roman applications of, conceptions of the path of the sun and of solar (political-)theology, and c)how Catullus’ dynamic model of the limits of the light allows him to build on Cicero’s example to connect the cosmic and the (Republican) imperial with himself as individual, thus connecting the public, the private, and the solitary spheres (Kachuck 2021) to explain his place in the world, and that world’s place in him. The devil is in Catullus’ details, and this chapter will not be a study of the cult of the sun Rome—now the subject of a major two-volume study several decades in the works by Steven Hijmans 2023)—but of how Catullus’ poetry does not only reflect what Greeks or Romans thought about or performed in cultic service of the sun, but what about how it makes for itself what the spirits of Virgil’s underworld enjoy, those who “know their own sun, their own stars” (Aen. 6.641 solemque suum, sua sidera norunt). Catullus’ interest in light as a way to structure his world, his thought and his works comes within the particular context of the use of the sun as metaphor for human political leaders in the late Roman Republic, most especially in the works of Cicero, whose first political speech (De imperio Pompeii, 66 BCE) and who’s poem on his first consulate (De consulatu suo, 60 BCE), provide the building-blocks for what will be Catullus’ achievement: thinking through his own place in a world grown larger, and less enchanted, than ever before. Following this, we explain the role of cosmography in Catullus’ works in general, before turning to Catullus 64, and its role within that broader corpus

Multisensory impact of visual stimuli on detection thresholds of thermo-nociceptive inputs conveyed by Aδ and C fibers

Nociception is seen as an alarm system that allows detecting and reacting to potential physical threats. It is hypothesized that such alarming function is optimized through interactions with other sensory systems such as vision that allows identifying surrounding objects that might have an immediate impact on the body. Here, we test the hypothesis according to which visual stimuli could modulate the response threshold to heat stimuli. Using an adaptive psychophysical procedure allowing, among other things, to take into account differences in conduction distance and velocity within visual and thermo-nociceptive pathways, laser-induced thermal stimuli of different temperatures were applied on one hand dorsum, and detection thresholds of thermal sensations conveyed by C- and A-fibers were measured, respectively. Measures were taken while visual stimuli were presented either near the stimulated hand, near the opposite hand or at a neutral position in front of the participant. Results showed that the detection threshold of A fibers was decreased when the visual stimuli occurred near the stimulated hand as compared to when they occurred near the opposite hand. Such modulation of nociceptive thresholds by non-somatic stimuli, at least that of A fibers, could reflect a defensive mechanism to facilitate detection and response to external threats. Conversely, due to their slow conduction velocity, sensory inputs conveyed through C fibers could be less sensitive to multisensory interactions because they would be less involved in immediate defensive reactions and more involved in monitoring the general state of the body

Developing a Survey on Motivations, Attitudes, and Challenges of Non-Native Participants in English-Taught MOOCs

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provide free and flexible learning opportunities worldwide. However, despite their supposed accessibility, approximately 75% of MOOCs are in English, posing challenges for non-native speakers. This poster presents the development and pilot testing of a survey designed to measure non-native speakers’ motivations, attitudes, and challenges in English-taught MOOCs. The survey was piloted with 87 participants via Prolific, and was refined using Exploratory Factor Analysis and Cronbach’s alpha calculations. Preliminary results emphasize the value of these courses for professional growth and language development, and show that many participants take English MOOCs because similar courses are unavailable in their native language. Participants generally view these courses as high-quality and prestigious, report high confidence in their English skills, and face few difficulties in comprehension or communication. Additionally, they rarely rely on language support tools. Building on these results, our next step is now to share the survey more broadly in order to reach a representative sample of non-native MOOC participants

Les estampes religieuses habillées, entre altération et ornementation

À l’époque moderne, il est fréquent de manipuler les images imprimées, qui se voient découpées, collées, assemblées, affichées, recyclées, grattées, censurées, coloriées, transformées. Notre contribution porte sur un aspect spécifique de cette 'afterlife' ou seconde vie des gravures, le phénomène des estampes habillées. Cette pratique consiste à rehausser des images imprimées de fragments textiles, appliqués au verso de la feuille de papier qui a été préalablement ajourée. Ainsi, en poursuivant un but d’ornementation de l’image, on arrive paradoxalement à une altération de la gravure, dont une partie est remplacée par du tissu. Nous proposons d’abord une présentation générale de cette pratique en Europe, en concentrant notre attention sur les gravures à sujet religieux, puis nous investiguerons le cas d’estampes de dévotion produites dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et habillées à la fin du XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècles, afin mettre en lumière l’expérience tactile vécue par les utilisateurs et utilisatrices d’estampes de la première modernité