Contested Collectivities: Europe Reimagined by Contemporary Artists

This dissertation studies a particular current of contemporary art, which is devoted to exploring positive models for an intercultural imaginary in Europe. In recent times, there has been much contestation over a European identity following decolonization, mass immigration, globalization, and the breaking down of political boundaries on the continent. Numerous artists are scrutinizing a symbolic-visual realm increasingly shaped by stereotypes, misinformation, and distortions concerning “foreigners” and immigrants. This dissertation examines the work of three artists and art groups – the filmmaker and video installation artist Harun Farocki, the public installation artist Thomas Hirschhorn, and the transnational art collective, “Henry VIII’s Wives.” Each explores various forms, such as film, television, the Internet, radio, and so on, in order to probe how the media shapes public opinion and group identification. Through these three cases, the dissertation charts a changing narrative of “Europeanness” from hopes for a federation after the racial genocide of World War II through critiques of nationalism after decolonization, the “failure” of multiculturalism since the 1990s, and intensified Roma discrimination, Islamophobia, and right-wing extremism in the twenty-first century. At stake is a broader question of how strangers may relate to one another in an increasingly proximate world. Within the field of contemporary art history, scholars have focused recently on issues of collective spectatorship and participation, or how multiple viewers around an artwork may connect with one another and not just an object. Since the 1990’s, there has emerged a robust line of inquiry directed at socially-oriented art practices, variously studied as “community” art, “relational” art, “dialogical” art, and so on. While this scholarship has opened up a rich discourse about different aspects of socially-engaged practices, there has not been a study of artists who focus on the specific dilemmas of constructing a present-day “European community.” The European Union itself, for example, which touts a slogan of being “United in Diversity,” is an exemplary model to rethink questions of cross-cultural exchange and hopes for inter-relating a mass body of strangers. This dissertation investigates contemporary artists in Europe who are staking aesthetic questions of collective engagement in vivid socio– and geopolitical terms

Learn Languages, Explore Cultures, Transform Lives

Selected Papers from the 2015 Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Aleidine J. Moeller, Editor 1. Creating a Culture-driven Classroom One Activity at a Time — Sharon Wilkinson, Patricia Calkins, & Tracy Dinesen 2. The Flipped German Classroom — Theresa R. Bell 3. Engaging Learners in Culturally Authentic Virtual Interactions —Diane Ceo-Francesco 4. Jouney to Global Competence: Learning Languages, Exploring Cultures, Transforming Lives — J. S. Orozco-Domoe 5. Strangers in a Strange Land: Perceptions of Culture in a First-year French Class — Rebecca L. Chism 6. 21st Century World Language Classrooms: Technology to Support Cultural Competence — Leah McKeeman & Blanca Oviedo 7. Effective Cloud-based Technologies to Maximize Language Learning — Katya Koubek & John C. Bedward 8. An Alternative to the Language Laboratory: Online and Face-to-face Conversation Groups — Heidy Cuervo Carruthers 9. Free Online Machine Translation: Use and Perceptions by Spanish Students and Instructors —Jason R. Jolley & Luciane Maimone 10. A Corpus-based Pedagogy for German Vocabulary — Colleen Neary-Sundquist 11. Grammar Teaching Approaches for Heritage Learners of Spanish —Clara Burgo 12. Going Online: Research-based Course Design — Elizabeth Harsm

From the real to the imaginary. A flora and fauna database of the Iberian Iron Age.

'From the real to the imaginary,' a project developed between 2005 and 2012, studies Iberian flora and fauna in order to understand (and even approximate) the use and symbolism of plants and animals within Iberian Iron Age societies. Our methodology combines a paleobiological approach, based on palinology, anthracology, paleocarpology and paleozoology, with an iconographic approach. We record all the representations of plants and animals that appear on different Iron Age media: pottery, architectonic stone, stone sculpture, metallic objects and coins. All these data are catalogued taking into account the context and chronology of the archaeological remains for each entry. This information is now available in an open access database, which is updated regularly: http://www.florayfaunaiberica.org

The role of social media as marketing tool for tourism in Kenya. Case study: Kenya Safari and Tours

Social media has become extremely effective form of marketing which has raised the brand awareness, brand loyalty, customer services and lead to increase sales hence opening tremendous opportunities for companies to market their products and services using social media. The objective of this research was to find out how tourism companies are integrating social media into marketing so as to boast awareness and generate excitement about tourism destination as well as finding what exactly has social media strategies done to market tourism companies. The theoretical background was based on theories of social media marketing mainly collected from social media literature that included both books and articles journals and the aim of this was actually to provide readers general understanding of social media and its impacts on the customers. The empirical study was performed through discussions, interviews and observation in the case company. The study was performed using a qualitative research approach and a case study method was utilized. After all the data was gathered and the information was carefully analyzed to give the reasons why companies use social media as a marketing tool for their companies. The research finding of the study are to proposed important suggestion for Kenya Safari and Tour in using social media as a part of its marketing strategy Keywords: Social networking, social media, tourism, social media marketing strateg

Photographs and history : interpreting past and present through photographs

This book concerns photographs as sources in the research of history and social sciences. The idea is to present various approaches to analyzing both past and present through photographs. The intended target audience is students and researchers interested in historical or contemporary photographs and their meanings. The emphasis of the chapters is on history and social sciences, yet the book also includes perspectives of art history and cultural studies. The focus is on qualitative analysis; however, quantitative approaches are also taken into account

Photographing Central Asia

The volume demonstrates that photography was the cornerstone of imperial media governance and discourse construction in colonial Turkestan of the tsarist and early Soviet periods. The aim of this volume is to interpret photography as a specific tool that reifies reality, subjectively frames it, and fits it into various political, ideological, commercial, scientific, and artistic contexts

Achtzehntes Jahrhundert digital

Digitale Technologien und Methoden haben in den vergangenen Jahren immer mehr Einfluss auf die geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung gewonnen. Dies gilt nicht minder fur das achtzehnte Jahrhundert: In allen einschlagigen Fachbereichen werden seit Jahren Texte, Bilder und Metadaten digital generiert, verarbeitet, analysiert und prasentiert. Ergebnis ist eine bisher nie dagewesene Konfrontation mit quantifizierenden Methoden auch in qualitativ arbeitenden Disziplinen sowie die Notwendigkeit einer Auseinandersetzung mit nationalen und globalen Datenstandards. Diese Standards entscheiden uber die Interoperabilitat - gewissermassen die internationale Anschlussfahigkeit - der Daten und somit uber die Nachhaltigkeit der eigenen Forschung. Die Osterreichische Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts widmet ihr 34. Jahrbuch 2019 dem Thema der digitalen Forschung zum 18. Jahrhundert in Zentraleuropa. Die einzelnen vorgestellten Beitrage sind nicht nur Projektberichte, sondern referieren die Ergebnisse digital durchgefuhrter Forschungsarbeit. Sie eroffnen ein Panorama der moglichen methodischen Zugange, von den Bildwissenschaften uber Netzwerkanalyse und -darstellung hin zu digitaler Edition, Korpuslinguistik und digitaler Sprachwissenschaft sowie der Vernetzung von Forschungsdaten mit den Daten von Kulturerbe-Institutionen