Pawel Goral, Cold War Rivalry and the Perception of the American West

In his first monograph, Cold War Rivalry and the Perception of the American West, Pawel Goral, History lecturer at the University of Texas, Arlington, employs the myth of the American West as a critical lens to address the fascinating, albeit complex, theme of cultural memory and identity-building in Cold-War-divided-Germany. Goral’s thesis argues how the two spheres of political influence shaped opposing views of the Western myth, and how each block respectively deployed it to accommodate their own nationalistic needs. This contributed, the author claims, to fill the cultural void left in the aftermath of the Third Reich, as well as to the formation of a unified sense of Germanness after the fall of the Iron Curtain

L'or noir dans les savanes cotonnières du Tchad : premiers impacts et perspectives

International audienceEn Afrique comme ailleurs, l'or noir est un substratum géopolitique inflammable. Aussi, l'imminence de l'exploitation pétrolière au Tchad suscite bien des interrogations. Enclavé au sein de l'Afrique centrale, ce pays porte l'héritage d'une longue guerre civile, qui cristallise les clivages socio-politiques en une opposition binaire entre Nord musulman et Sud chrétien. Le Tchad méridional, qui concentre grâce à la culture cotonnière l'essentiel des ressources de l'Etat, se trouve sous pression depuis qu'en 1979 des originaires du Nord se succèdent à la tête de l'Etat. Or, ce "Tchad utile" de l'époque coloniale abrite également les principaux gisements de pétrole du pays. Le pétrole tchadien ne coulera qu'en 2004. Avec les débuts des travaux fin 2000, l'activité a singulièrement augmenté, stimulant une économie partagée jusque là entre des cultures vivrières peu productives, un élevage peu contrôlé et la culture cotonnière au Sud, en crise. Les opportunités offertes par le chantier expliquent le calme politico-militaire relatif dans la région méridionale. Mais ce chantier apparaît aussi comme un révélateur du sousdéveloppement. Les normes imposées empêchent les acteurs économiques nationaux de tirer parti de l'activité nouvelle, alimentant un vif ressentiment, qui augure de prochaines déceptions pétrolières. Ainsi, l'or noir n'aura pas des effets aussi considérables que ce que l'on a laissé attendre aux Tchadiens. Dans la région de production, il devrait davantage stimuler des dynamiques déjà amorcées, croissance des villes, essor du vivrier marchand, que bouleverser les structures de l'économie au détriment de l'agriculture, sur le modèle des états rentiers d'Afrique centrale. (Résumé d'auteur

Bernice M. Murphy, The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture, Backwoods Horror and Terror in the Wildernes

Bernice M. Murphy, popular literature lecturer at Dublin’s Trinity College, opens her wide-ranging survey of The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture with a telling remark: “it is no coincidence that when American authors and film-makers fantasise about the end of civilisation as they know it, they so often produce narratives which unconsciously evoke the beginnings of European settlement”(2). Indeed, a body of scholarship in gothic fiction (Fiedler, Goddu, Lloyd-Smith) concurs in tracing back the trope of the inherent monstrosity and grotesqueness of the American wilderness and its inhabitants to the literary production that stemmed out of the earliest days of the New World’s conquest, ranging from travellers’ memoirs to captivity tales and puritan novels

The opto-mechanical alignment procedure of the VLT Survey Telescope

The VLT Survey Telescope is a f/5.5 modified Ritchey-Chretien imaging telescope, which is being installed at the ESO-Paranal Observatory. It will provide a one square degree corrected field of view to perform survey-projects in the wavelength range from UV to I band. In this paper we describe the opto-mechanical alignment procedure of the 2.61m primary mirror, the secondary and correctors lenses onto the mechanical structure of the telescope. The alignment procedure does not rely on the mechanical precision of the mirrors. It will be achieved using ad-hoc alignment tools, described in the paper, which allows the spatial determination of optical axes (and focuses where necessary) of the optical components with respect to the axis defined by the rotation of a laser beam mounted on the instrument bearing.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, Proceeding 773357 of the SPIE Conference "Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes III", Sunday 27 June 2010, San Diego, California, US

In Praise of the Artist Researcher

I will start by defining the terms artist, researcher and artist researcher and then give some examples of artist researchers: Leonardo da Vinci, Constantin Stanislavski, Bertolt Brecht and Lee Strasberg. Finally, I will address the issue of artist researcher from my own perspective, as an actor and director in particular. I will thus demonstrate the benefits of linking the practice of art with a more theoretical research of this practice, and how these two aspects – art and research – are mutually reinforcing and help creativity to flourish

The Relationship Between Photo Retouching and Color Grading

This paper deals with photo retouching and color grading. It proposes a simplified workflow for both of them. It also points the commonalities and the differences, and further explore the relationship between the two, including a phenomenological point of view as well as an aesthetic point of view. It also discuss the implications of that relationship in pedagogy

Reflections on the Impact of Creation Research, Practice-based Research, and Practice as Research, and How to Define and Maximize That Impact

In this contribution, I reflect on creation research/practice-based research/practice as research. I mostly explore the notion of the impact of such practices. I underline the fact that impact can mean various things depending on the type of projects: it can be emotional; it can be a way to influence; or it can act more subtly on the subconscious mind. But impact is always about the intention to induce change. I also discuss the difficulty, most of the time, to have a quantitative approach to impact, since it is often difficult to measure. I suggest, instead, to include a reflection on the planning of impact and its maximization before embarking on a project. I illustrate those points with various examples taken from my own practice

Presentation of the Issue on Cuisine & Performance

Gastronomy is an important part of our culture. The way we eat says a lot about who we are, what culture has shaped us, and the choices we have made concerning our food and the way we eat it. Gastronomy is surrounded by many rituals, and we often perform the way we eat. Besides, since we need to eat every day, we are engaged in rituals and performative acts related to gastronomy every day