But Is It History?

Histories: narratives written by historians.Historians: academically trained specialists researching, and writing about, the past.The discipline of history:a set of conventions about the formats in which histories may be presented. Historians, however, do not seem to be prominently represented among those experimenting with new formats, probing the limits of traditional genres or rethinking the relationship between the past and its rendering as history. This may be because historians are comfortable with a particular set of conventions and confident about their usefulness, or because they feel threatened by the idea that the distinction between proper and improper histories is arbitrary. This article argues for a challenge to the historical discipline from within, and for a fruitful dialogue between various groups of specialists competent in making histories out of the past

Among Historians

Trades Hall, Melbourne, 16 March 2003. An expectant buzz fills the auditorium. The capacity crowd, several hundred strong and mainly under thirty, is anticipating a spectacle: a contest between two members of a profession not otherwise known for staging fights in the public arena. This bout could have been billed ‘The Ugly v. The Righteous’. The Ugly is Keith Windschuttle, author of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. The Righteous is Patricia Grimshaw, Professor of History at the University of Melbourne

Vocal correlates of individual sooty mangabey travel speed and direction

This study was funded by the European Research Council (FP7/2007–2013, grant number 283871).Many group-living animals coordinate movements with acoustic signals, but so far most studies have focused on how group movements are initiated. In this study, we investigated movement patterns of wild sooty mangabeys (Cercocebus atys), a mostly terrestrial, forest-dwelling primate. We provide quantitative results showing that vocalization rates of mangabey subgroups, but not of focal individuals, correlated with focal individuals' current movement patterns. More interestingly, vocal behaviour predicted whether individuals changed future speed, and possibly future travel direction. The role of vocalizations as a potential mechanism for the regulation of group movement was further highlighted by interaction effects that include subgroup size and the quality of poly-specific associations. Collectively, our results suggest that primate vocal behaviour can function beyond travel initiation in coordination and regulation of group movements.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Geschlechterpräsentation [in Musikvideos]

Musikvideos aus den 1980er und 1990er Jahren zeigen häufig stereotype Darstellungen von Geschlechterrollen, doch finden sich auch alternative beziehungsweise oppositionelle Darstellungsmuster wieder. Auf der einen Seite wird die Inszenierung der Geschlechter durch das Musikgenre und das damit angesprochene Zielpublikum bestimmt, auf der anderen Seite versuchen Künstler bewusst gängige Rollenklischees zu überwinden. Nach Sichtung der aktuellen Forschungsliteratur benennen die beiden Autoren verschiedene geschlechtsspezifische Darstellungsweisen in Videoclips, die anhand von Musikbeispielen illustriert werden

Filmmythos Hexe und Mythos Hexenfilm : eine kommentierte Filmographie (Erfassungszeitraum: 1896 bis 1999)

Der Beitrag stellt Teilergebnisse eines längerfristig angelegten Forschungsprojekts zum Thema Strukturen und Funktionen der Präsentation des Bösen in populären audiovisuellen Medien vor. Im Anschluß an die Studie “Satanismus – audiovisuell”, in der der filmischen Inszenierung des Bösen und Unheimlichen am Beispiel der Figur des Teufels nachgegangen wurde (Neumann-Braun & Arend 1997), steht in der vorliegenden Untersuchung der Mythos des weiblichen Bösen und Unheimlichen im Mittelpunkt des Interesses. In einem ersten Analyseschritt werden Literaturauswertungen zum Thema Hexenmythos aus psychoanalytisch, feministisch und gesellschaftstheoretisch orientierter Perspektive sowie zum Thema Hexen in populären Kinofilmen vorgenommen. Der zweite Schritt besteht aus einer genretheoretischen Diskussion der filmischen Präsentation von Hexenfiguren, die auf einer die gut einhundertjährige Filmgeschichte umfassenden Filmographie des Hexenfilms basiert. Die Studie versteht sich nichtzuletzt auch als Baustein der Untersuchung medialer Repräsentationsformen von Phänomenen aus Parapsychologie und den Grenzgebieten der Psychologie

Complex patterns of signalling to convey different social goals of sex in bonobos, Pan paniscus

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 283871.Sexual behaviour in bonobos (Pan paniscus) functions beyond mere reproduction to mediate social interactions and relationships. In this study, we assessed the signalling behaviour in relation to four social goals of sex in this species: appeasement after conflict, tension reduction, social bonding and reproduction. Overall, sexual behaviour was strongly decoupled from its ancestral reproductive function with habitual use in the social domain, which was accompanied by a corresponding complexity in communication behaviour. We found that signalling behaviour varied systematically depending on the initiator's goals and gender. Although all gestures and vocalisations were part of the species-typical communication repertoire, they were often combined and produced flexibly. Generally, gestures and multi-modal combinations were more flexibly used to communicate a goal than vocalisations. There was no clear relation between signalling behaviour and success of sexual initiations, suggesting that communication was primarily used to indicate the signaller's intention, and not to influence a recipient's willingness to interact sexually. We discuss these findings in light of the larger question of what may have caused, in humans, the evolutionary transition from primate-like communication to language.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Bonobos modify communication signals according to recipient familiarity

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 283871.Human and nonhuman primate communication differs in various ways. In particular, humans base communicative efforts on mutual knowledge and conventions shared between interlocutors. In this study, we experimentally tested whether bonobos (Pan paniscus), a close relative to humans, are able to take into account the familiarity, i.e. the shared interaction history, when communicating with a human partner. In five experimental conditions we found that subjects took the recipients' attentional state and their own communicative effectiveness into account by adjusting signal production accordingly. More importantly, in case of communicative failure, subjects repeated previously successful signals more often with a familiar than unfamiliar recipient, with whom they had no previous interactions, and elaborated by switching to new signals more with the unfamiliar than the familiar one, similar to what has previously been found in two year-old children. We discuss these findings in relation to the human capacity to establish common ground between interlocutors, a crucial aspect of human cooperative communication.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Travel fosters tool use in wild chimpanzees

The research leading to these results has received funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) and from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under REA grant agreement N°329197 awarded to TG, ERC grant agreement N°283871 awarded to KZ.Ecological variation influences the appearance and maintenance of tool use in animals, either due to necessity or opportunity, but little is known about the relative importance of these two factors. Here, we combined long-term behavioural data on feeding and travelling with six years of field experiments in a wild chimpanzee community. In the experiments, subjects engaged with natural logs, which contained energetically valuable honey that was only accessible through tool use. Engagement with the experiment was highest after periods of low fruit availability involving more travel between food patches, while instances of actual tool-using were significantly influenced by prior travel effort only. Additionally, combining data from the main chimpanzee study communities across Africa supported this result, insofar as groups with larger travel efforts had larger tool repertoires. Travel thus appears to foster tool use in wild chimpanzees and may also have been a driving force in early hominin technological evolution.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe