The Primitivist Imaginary in Iberian and Transatlantic Modernisms

UIDB/00417/2020 UIDP/00417/2020Taking into account politics, history, and aesthetics, this edited volume explores the main expressions of primitivism in Iberian and Transatlantic modernisms. Ten case studies are thoroughly analyzed concerning both the circulations and exchanges connecting the Iberian and Latin American artistic and literary milieus with each other and with the Parisian circles. Chapters also examine the patterns and paradoxes associated with the manifestations of primitivism, including their local implications and cosmopolitan drive. This book opens up and deepens the discussion of the ties that Spain and Portugal maintained with their imperial pasts, which extended into European twentieth-century colonialism, as well as the nationalist and folk aesthetics promoted by the cultural industry of Iberian dictatorships. The book significantly rethinks long-established ideas about modern art and the production of primitivist imagery.publishersversionpublishe

Visual Analytics for the Exploratory Analysis and Labeling of Cultural Data

Cultural data can come in various forms and modalities, such as text traditions, artworks, music, crafted objects, or even as intangible heritage such as biographies of people, performing arts, cultural customs and rites. The assignment of metadata to such cultural heritage objects is an important task that people working in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) do on a daily basis. These rich metadata collections are used to categorize, structure, and study collections, but can also be used to apply computational methods. Such computational methods are in the focus of Computational and Digital Humanities projects and research. For the longest time, the digital humanities community has focused on textual corpora, including text mining, and other natural language processing techniques. Although some disciplines of the humanities, such as art history and archaeology have a long history of using visualizations. In recent years, the digital humanities community has started to shift the focus to include other modalities, such as audio-visual data. In turn, methods in machine learning and computer vision have been proposed for the specificities of such corpora. Over the last decade, the visualization community has engaged in several collaborations with the digital humanities, often with a focus on exploratory or comparative analysis of the data at hand. This includes both methods and systems that support classical Close Reading of the material and Distant Reading methods that give an overview of larger collections, as well as methods in between, such as Meso Reading. Furthermore, a wider application of machine learning methods can be observed on cultural heritage collections. But they are rarely applied together with visualizations to allow for further perspectives on the collections in a visual analytics or human-in-the-loop setting. Visual analytics can help in the decision-making process by guiding domain experts through the collection of interest. However, state-of-the-art supervised machine learning methods are often not applicable to the collection of interest due to missing ground truth. One form of ground truth are class labels, e.g., of entities depicted in an image collection, assigned to the individual images. Labeling all objects in a collection is an arduous task when performed manually, because cultural heritage collections contain a wide variety of different objects with plenty of details. A problem that arises with these collections curated in different institutions is that not always a specific standard is followed, so the vocabulary used can drift apart from another, making it difficult to combine the data from these institutions for large-scale analysis. This thesis presents a series of projects that combine machine learning methods with interactive visualizations for the exploratory analysis and labeling of cultural data. First, we define cultural data with regard to heritage and contemporary data, then we look at the state-of-the-art of existing visualization, computer vision, and visual analytics methods and projects focusing on cultural data collections. After this, we present the problems addressed in this thesis and their solutions, starting with a series of visualizations to explore different facets of rap lyrics and rap artists with a focus on text reuse. Next, we engage in a more complex case of text reuse, the collation of medieval vernacular text editions. For this, a human-in-the-loop process is presented that applies word embeddings and interactive visualizations to perform textual alignments on under-resourced languages supported by labeling of the relations between lines and the relations between words. We then switch the focus from textual data to another modality of cultural data by presenting a Virtual Museum that combines interactive visualizations and computer vision in order to explore a collection of artworks. With the lessons learned from the previous projects, we engage in the labeling and analysis of medieval illuminated manuscripts and so combine some of the machine learning methods and visualizations that were used for textual data with computer vision methods. Finally, we give reflections on the interdisciplinary projects and the lessons learned, before we discuss existing challenges when working with cultural heritage data from the computer science perspective to outline potential research directions for machine learning and visual analytics of cultural heritage data

Ethno-Religious Conflict in Northern Nigeria: The Latency of Episodic Genocide

This dissertation explores the ethnic and religious dimensions of the northern Nigeria conflict in which gruesome killings have intermittently occurred, to determine whether there are genocidal inclinations to the episodic killings. The literature review provides the contextual framework for examining the conflict parties and causation factors to address the research questions: Are there genocidal inclinations to the ethno-religious conflict in northern Nigeria? To what extent does the interplay between ethnicity and religion help to foment and escalate the conflict in northern Nigeria? The study employs a mixed content analysis and grounded theory methodology based on the Strauss and Corbin (1990) approach. Data sourcing was from 197 newspaper articles on the conflict over the study period spanning from the 1966 northern Nigeria massacres of thousands of Ibos up to present, ongoing killings between Muslims and Christians or non-Muslims in the region. Available texts of the conflict cases over the research period were content-analyzed using Nvivo qualitative data analysis software involving processes of categorizing, coding and evaluation of the textual themes. The study structures a theoretical model for determining proclivity to genocide, and finds that there are genocidal inclinations to the northern Nigeria conflict, involving the specific intent to ‘cleanse’ the north through the exclusionary ideology of imposition of the Sharia law through enforced assimilation or extermination of Christians and other non-Muslims who do not assimilate or adopt the Muslim ideology. The study also suggests that there is latency in the recognition of these genocidal manifestations due to their episodic nature and intermittency of occurrence. he study provides further understanding of factors underlying and sustaining the violent conflict between Muslims and Christians in northern Nigeria. It contributes new perspectives and theoretical model for determining genocidal proclivity to the field of conflict analysis and resolution, and proffers alternative strategies for relationship building and peaceful coexistence among different religious groups. The findings will guide recommendations on policy formulations for eliminating religious intolerance in northern Nigeria. The study creates further awareness on the need for global intervention on the region’s sporadic killings to avert full blown Rwandan type genocide in Nigeria

Aspects of the structure of Modernist poetry, 1908-1918 : a structural and comparative study of the poetic writing of Guillaume Apollinaire, Hans Arp, Hugo Ball, Georg Heym, T.E. Hulme, Max Jacob, Ezra Pound, Pierre Reverdy, and Georg Trakl

This dissertation offers a structural and comparative investigation into some of the 'principles of construction' operative in Modernist poetry in the English, French and German language areas in the first decades of the twentieth century. While the general scope of the study is fairly broad, its thematic focus is restricted to questions of poetic structuration and related theoretical issues. The method of analysis and description leans towards Formalist and Structuralist approaches to literature, and incorporates a diachronic as well as a synchronic dimension. Taking as a starting-point, in chapter 1, the synthetic and idealist conception which informs Mallarmé's Symbolist poetic system, the main body of the work then explores, in the eight chapters which follow, the poetic theories and practices of a representative selection of Modernist poets (Apollinaire, Arp, Ball, Heym, Hulme, Jacob, Pound, Reverdy, Trakl). The central argument pursued throughout these chapters rests on the contention that the diverse and often highly paradoxical modes of Modernist poetic writing are to be understood in relation (in opposition) to the basic categories of the Mallarmean aesthetic. The Modernist repudiation, whether implicit or explicit, of the Symbolist norm represents much more than a stylistic reaction. It implies, within the larger series of 'the Modern', a major theoretical reorientation, the construction of a new, non-idealist poetic, and the replacement of a metaphorical by a metonymic conception of poetic writing. The result is a radically altered approach to the function and finality of poetic language, to the status and nature of the poem, to the relation between poem and poet, between the poem and reality, and between the poet and reality. It is this momentum of reconsideration and reassessment which defines the space within which the various modes of Modernism come into being. In practice, the Modernist poem develops a powerful internal dialectic between on the one hand an impulse towards fragmentation and deconstruction, and, on the other, a tendency to objectivation, control, and reconstruction. In the Expressionist branch, where the role of socio-cultural elements is a contributory factor, the first impulse is particularly in evidence, and reveals strong existential overtones. The more 'constructivist' movements (Cubism, Imagism, Vorticism) appear preoccupied with the notion of the poem as a self-sufficient, self-reflexive entity, appealing at the same time to complementary moments of classicism and exploration. The paradoxes inherent in both branches of Modernism are finally radicalized in the Dadaist venture, which presents the point where the Modernist reconsideration of the categories of poetic writing reaches its ultimate extreme, while simultaneously creating the conditions for its transcendence

Putting the Video Back in Video Games: Opportunities and Challenges for Visual Studies Approaches to Video Game Analysis

I argue for the application of visual studies in video game analysis. This approach presents opportunities for the intersectional analysis of video game visuals as games are brought into dialogue with other visual media like film and painting. This approach also presents challenges due to ontological distinctions between different media as well as due to academic divisions regarding the study of different art and media objects. Despite the challenges presented, a visual studies approach is particularly useful as a critical window into contemporary visual culture at large. I outline the fields of game studies and visual studies, marking their distinctions as well as the areas in which they overlap. I provide examples of visual studies approaches to video game analysis through an emphasis on the visual characteristics of video games. As visual studies is generally considered an interdisciplinary endeavor, I contextualize my analyses through comparisons with other visual media, in particular finding intersections with art history and film studies. Specifically, I argue that perspective is an integral visual trait of many video games, relating the use of linear perspective and isometric perspective, used in some genres of games, with the development of perspective in painting. I examine various cinematic techniques used in video games and discuss their ideological potency. I also cover ways in which video games subvert conventional norms, such as through self-reflexivity, to open up novel avenues for visual expression

Arts Integration in Elementary Curriculum: 2nd Edition

This open textbook was revised in 2018 under a Round Eleven Mini-Grant for Revisions. Topics include: Arts Integration Music Visual Arts Literary Arts Performing Arts Physical Education and Movement A set of lecture slides for the textbook are also included as an additional file. Accessible files with optical character recognition (OCR) and auto-tagging provided by the Center for Inclusive Design and Innovation.https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/education-textbooks/1002/thumbnail.jp

Laughing Revolutions: The Popular Culture of Modern Aesthetic Manifestos

During the first quarter of the twentieth century, a veritable manifesto-craze in the arts swept across Europe and the Americas. Inaugurated by F.T. Marinettis Founding and Manifesto of Futurism (1909), this phenomenon saw the publication of thousands of manifesto texts and parodic manifestos announcing new aesthetic theories and movements in the form of bombastic and often incredulous rhetoric. This dissertation intervenes in the extant body of literary criticism on the subject of this phenomenon. It argues that, contrary to current analytic trends, these manifestos were irreducible to their generic antecedents in the realm of politics. Rather than seeking legitimacy for their artistic programs in the same way political manifestos seek legitimacy for and subscription to their political programs, the authors of these texts sought legitimacy through a paradoxical process of delegitimizing themselves, by appropriating a confluence of comedic framing, rhetoric, and performance specific to burgeoning forms of entertainment unique to early twentieth-century popular culture. Assessing the modern aesthetic manifesto with this internal cultural logic in mind, the project interrogates the genesis, popularization, and decline of the genre at its origin-point in Belle poque Paris. In what unfolds as a narrative of cultural actors, events, and reflexive relations, the project attends to the manifestos popular reception in and appropriation of the theater, the press, cultural memory, and the visual arts, respectively. The genres participation in each of these popular forms, I argue, expose a calculated invocation of the affective, innervating anxious indeterminacy between the serious and non-serious on the part of manifesto authors in order to gain public attention, effectively inculcating in the manifesto a new modality of popular entertainment

Representation of Otherness In Literary Avant-Garde of Early Twentieth Century : David Burliuk’s and Ezra Pound’s Japan

The subject of the dissertation is the East-West opposition and the image of Japan in the works of Ezra Pound and David Burliuk, representatives of European/American Vorticism and Russian cubo-futurism respectively. The opposition is discussed in the cultural and historical context of the early twentieth-century Russian and European avant-garde esthetics with a focus on the typological similarities and radical differences between the two literary groups. The primary material used in the analysis consists of little-studied Japan-related materials in the oeuvre of the two authors: Pound’s Noh-based dramatic works A Supper at the House of Mademoiselle Rachel and Tristan (1916, published in 1987), as well as his Japanese correspondence (published in 1987) and essays which appeared in Japanese periodicals (1939-1940), and, on the other hand, Burliuk’s prose narratives and poetry written during his stay in Japan in 1920-1922 (The Ascent to Fuji-san, Oshima, and In the Pacific Ocean, published in the USA in 1926-1927 and never reprinted, as well as verse collections Marusia-san and ½ Century published in the USA in 1925 and 1932 respectively). The dissertation draws on Roman Jakobson’s dichotomy (outlined in “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances”, 1954) of two opposite language modes, those of metaphor and metonymy, understood by the scholar in a broad sense as paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships structuring any semiotic system. In accordance with Jakobson’s view, the dissertation discusses the Vorticist and cubo-futurist esthetic assumptions, and the representation of the East/West opposition in particular, as examples of respectively metaphoric (based on analogy) and metonymic (based on contiguity) approaches. The analysis of Pound’s and Burliuk’s Japan-related texts within the frame of Jakobson’s dichotomy allows foregrounding the essential difference between the Oriental projects of the two poets: while Pound builds a similarity-based East-West paradigm that challenges the familiar Western culture, Burliuk creates a contiguous background image of Japan, which legitimizes familiar cultural assumptions and essentially frames his dialogue with the West.Väitöskirjan aiheena on itä-länsi -oppositio ja Japania koskevat representaatiot eurooppalais-amerikkalaisen vorticismin edustajan Ezra Poundin ja venäläisen kubo-futurismin edustajan David Burliukin teoksissa. Tutkimuksessa käsitellään oppositiota 1900-luvun alun venäläisen ja eurooppalaisen avantgarde-estetiikan kulttuuri-historiallisessa kontekstissa keskittyen typologisiin yhtäläisyyksiin ja radikaaleihin eroihin kahden kirjallisuusryhmän välillä. Tutkimuksen alkuperäislähteet ovat edellä mainittujen kirjailijoiden vähän huomiota saaneet Japania koskevat tekstit. Tutkin Poundin kahta japanilaiseen Noh-teatteriin perustavaa näytelmää, A Supper at the House of Mademoiselle Rachel ja Tristan vuodelta 1916 (julkaistu 1987), hänen kirjeenvaihtoaan Japanista (julkaistu 1987) sekä vuosina 1939-1940 japanilaisissa aikakausilehdissä ilmestyneitä esseitä. Burliukin teksteistä tutkin hänen Japanissa oleskelun aikana, vuosina 1920-1922, kirjoittamiaan proosakertomuksia ja runoja The Ascent to Fuji-san, Oshima ja In the Pacific Ocean, sekä runokokoelmia Marusia-san ja ½ Century (kaikki julkaistu vuosien 1925-1932 aikana Yhdysvalloissa). Väitöskirja pohjautuu Roman Jakobsonin kahtiajakoon, jonka hän esittää teoksessaan Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances (1954) ja joka siis koskee kahta vastakkaista kielikuvaa - metaforaa ja metonymiaa. Jakobson tulkitsee näitä kielikuvia laajassa merkityksessä eli paradigmaattisina ja syntagmaat-tisina suhteina, jotka jäsentävät tai rakentavat minkä tahansa semioottisen systeemin. Tutkimus käsittelee Jakobsonin näkemyksen mukaisesti vorticismin ja kubo-futurismin esteettisiä periaatteita, ja erityisesti itä-länsi -opposition ilmenemistapoja, esimerkkeinä metaforisesta eli ennalta odottamattomaan analogiaan perustuvasta ja metonymisesta eli kulttuurisesti jo tunnustettuihin asiayhteyksiin perustuvasta lähestymistavasta. Jakobsonin kahtiajaon soveltaminen tutkimuksellisena menetelmänä Poundin ja Burliukin Japania koskevien tekstien analyysissä tuo esiin olennaisen eron kahden runoilijan suhteissa itään. Pound rakentaa itä-länsi -paradigmaa, joka perustuu ennakoimattomalle samankaltaisuudelle (metafora) ja joka näin haastaa perinteisen länsimaisen kulttuurin. Burliuk puolestaan luo Japani-kuvaa, joka perustuu ja oikeuttaa jo tunnustettuja kulttuurisia näkemyksiä (metonymia) ja joka jäsentää olennaisesti hänen vuoropuheluaan lännen kanssa.Siirretty Doriast

The Persistence of Minimalism

The following work develops a new and general theory of minimalism – one addressing both its transhistorical and interdisciplinary dimensions, and capable of accounting for existing minimalism of every epoch and in every medium, while suitably open to embrace minimalist work yet to be created. To offer such a theory it is necessary not only to revisit the histories of minimalist practice and criticism, but also to consider its radical philosophical ground and implications. Hence its principal thesis – that minimalism exemplifies the persistence and facticity of the Real – grapples at once with the ontological heart of minimalist theory, and its practical instantiation through canonical as well as rarely considered examples. Divided into three parts, the first part addresses minimalism as the manifestation of particular aesthetic properties in relation to critical and theoretical trends. Since it becomes apparent that no single descriptive or theoretical account adequately frames minimalism, the discussion turns to the possibility of discovering a philosophical ground equally radical to the minimalist objects it addresses. The Real – an indifferent field of forces from which contingent entities are subtracted from within an irreversible temporal passage – offers precisely this radical continuum. Minimalism, by exposing the continuity between radical poiesis and an essentially quantitative understanding of Being, clarifies the indifferent persistence of the Real in every existential situation. Penetrating to the heart of this proposition, parts two and three respectively address minimalism in terms of its quantitative logic of Being – every exemplary subtraction from which is instantiated a type of existential calculation – and its exemplary aesthetic manifestation in terms of an existential transumption – a constructive poietic displacement by which minimalism renders itself maximally intelligible in terms of its objecthood and persistence. The work concludes with a typology which reorients and confirms the substance of the preceding argumentation

Hart Crane and the Little Magazine

This thesis examines Hart Crane’s oeuvre through a detailed appraisal of his publishing history in little magazines. The main contention of this thesis is that Crane’s relationships with his periodical publishers shaped his poetic development, and that new light is shed on these works through their recontextualisation in their original periodical contexts. This raises a secondary question: how does Crane’s publication in journals and his relationships with editors affect the reception of his poetry, and can patterns established in his immediate reception be found in later criticism. This study takes a new approach in its methodology, both in relation to existing studies of Crane, and as a way of dealing with a writer’s body of work. By examining, as D. F. McKenzie has put it, ‘the sociology of texts’ and their ‘processes of transmission, including production and reception’, forgotten contexts of Crane’s poetry are able to emerge. As well as uncovering new works by Crane, an examination of Crane’s periodical networks highlights the influence of particular strands of Modernism on his development, such as ‘post-Decadent’ forms advanced in Greenwich Village journals, the American Futurist experiments active in American magazines based in Europe, and the proto-Surrealist experiments with metaphor that inform Crane’s own associative aesthetic. This study also traces the interconnections between poetic form and publishing. Crane’s long poems, 'The Bridge', ‘For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen’ and the ‘Voyages’, were all published in fragments in a number of different journals, and these publishing formats are found to be aesthetically significant for these texts, and articulate Crane’s wider interest in fragment and collage forms