An Island Divided: Politicised Landscapes,Modern Borders,and Shifting Identities

Abstract

This paper looks critically at the division of Cyprus into North and South (the politically unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Republic of Cyprus respectively) and will consider how this physical division emphasised and further developed a divided identity based on 'ethnic' differences (and the development of the 'other') between the two major populations—Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. The Green Line is just one of several recent manifestations in the landscape of social contestations between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities. This paper outlines how the Green Line has structured the lives of people in relation to the ways that they conceptualise their environment, the past and, importantly, the 'other' side. Further, it addresses how this division, this physical line across the landscape, impacts upon the social landscape as it defines and reinforces identity through the processes of memory and forgetting.     

Interdisciplinarity in the neurosciences

Abstract

The study of the human brain and of the biological nature of the mind and consciousness remains one of the greatest of all scientific challenges. Neuroscience can also lay claim to being one of the most interdisciplinary fields of scientific enquiry, and this has been true since well before the concept of interdisciplinarity was itself invented. Neuroscience draws on insights and developments in disciplines as diverse as molecular biology, electronics, biomedical engineering, statistics, psychology, biophysics, pharmacology, and linguistics. This paper examines the historical, transdisciplinary roots of modern neuroscience and reviews its contemporary interdisciplinary character, before examining two 'case studies', the emergence of functional neuroimaging as a powerful new neuroscientific tool and the ongoing dialogue between computer science and the neurosciences.     

'Missing dates': the 'Mϵρϵς' poems of C. P. Cavafy

Abstract

In this article, the five poems with the word 'M?ρ??' in their titles are discussed, and possible explanations for the dates in the titles suggested. The poems were written and revised between 1909 and 1932, but it is argued here that their initial composition dates are closer together than previously thought. The article examines revisions to the five poems; their positions, where applicable, in Cavafy's thematic collections, and the dates in their titles in relation to events in the poet's life and other writings from the same period. A history of composition and publication, including an account of all extant published revisions, is provided and the implications of this kind of bibliographical and biographical approach are discussed.     

The Tenco effect. Suicide,San Remo,and the social construction of the canzone d'autore

Abstract

Canzone d'autore is an indigenous expression that has no precise equivalent in other languages. Its social use identifies a genre of popular song that presuppose the existence of an ‘autore’ taken in its most vigorous sense, meaning a ‘creator’, an ‘artist’– but how did this claim to artistry originate? How did it insinuate itself into the world of song, a genre that by definition belongs to the realm of what is traditionally called in Italian ‘musica leggera,’ with unmistakably pejorative connotations? In this essay, I will put forward a sociological interpretation of the genesis of the canzone d'autore, using as a strategic conceptual device the idea of cultural trauma. The traumatic event that I propose to explore, making use of this concept and its analytical machinery, is the suicide of the singer-songwriter Luigi Tenco during the seventeenth San Remo ‘Festival della Canzone’ (‘song festival’) – that is the best-known, most controversial, and most influential single event in the field of Italian ‘musica leggera’, an annual event regularly attended every year – via radio, television, or audience participation – by millions of Italians. Through a reconstruction of that suicide and above all of the public and dramatic events that followed in response to it, the paper examines the social process that transformed an individual tragedy into a collective, social drama, a process that not only produced a new musical classification, but also a new cultural and aesthetic category.     

'It's only as stupid as you are': Children's and adults' negotiation of ICT competence at home and at school

Contemporary discourses about children's use of information and communication technologies (ICT)—which both celebrate children's command of a technology which is seen to be our future, and raise fears that this technology is putting children's emotional well-being at risk—are problematic, resting as they do on essentialist ideas about children, and overt technological determinism. Drawing instead on work within the new social studies of childhood, and the sociology of science and technology, we identify a need for research which examines how children and technology come together in diverse communities of practice. The communities of practice we study are the home- and school-based ICT usage of British school children in the late 1990s. Our research identifies the different ways in which children and adults negotiate children's technical and emotional competence in relation to ICT, and uncovers the varied meanings of childhood and technology which emerge for adults and children in these two socio-spatial environments. These findings not only highlight the spatiality of children's and adults' performances and understandings of ICT competence, but also how these are constituted through the socio-spatial relations which shape the off-line spaces of home and school.     

Diffusion of Information Across the Sciences

Abstract

The flow of information is an essential tool for all scientific research and is here examined within and between sciences. Examples are quoted of diffusion across scientific disciplines and technologies, and how science in new papers and in general scientific journals help scientists. Informal channel of communication are discussed and interdisciplinary contacts during conferences are considered. The change of research field by individual scientists is thought to have inherent limitations.     

An astrologer's map: A relic of late antiquity

Abstract

A Greek map of the world, which includes a windrose, zones, places in and around Egypt, and hell, is studied in reference to its context: an anonymous astrological miscellany. Other examples of this map have been found in a second context, among anonymous scholia to Theon of Alexandria's commentary on Ptolemy's Handy Tables (Procheiroi kanones), which were also of use to astrologers. The selection of Egyptian place‐names found on the map provides some clue to its possible origin, while the omission of the Mediterranean as well as the port of Alexandria is significant. Evidence suggests that the original map (known today only through later copies) is of an earlier date than the texts surrounding it, and that it may be one of the earliest world maps preserved from Late Antiquity.     

Britain's central role in the search for an international peacekeeping force for Cyprus, 1963–64

Abstract

This work examines the way in which the British, Greek and Turkish Governments established a peacekeeping force, the Joint Truce Force, in Cyprus in December 1963 and how the United Kingdom, aided by the United States, subsequently handled the creation of a replacement international peacekeeping force. Although the United Kingdom did everything in its power to keep peacekeeping efforts under its own control for as long as possible, when this was no longer feasible it tried to create a NATO-based peacekeeping force. This was opposed by the (Greek Cypriot) Government of Cyprus which favoured a United Nations peacekeeping force. Given the tensions between the British Government and the Government of Cyprus over which of these two international bodies should be responsible for peacekeeping it is strange that the United Kingdom never took seriously Greek Cypriot calls to have the Commonwealth considered as an alternative to the other two. This work examines these processes and analyses why the United Kingdom favoured NATO, opposed the UN and to all intents and purposes ignored the Commonwealth.     

Albert Einstein,Physicist (1879–1955)

Abstract

Einstein's ideas changed man's thoughts about the totality of physics. These ideas were so fundamental for human thought that Einstein belongs to all the sciences and to all cultures. If ever there was a scientist whose centenary ought to be commemorated in an interdisciplinary journal, Einstein would be that one. This is because of the all-pervading influence of the revolution in physics in which Einstein played so paramount a part. Here we look back to what one man was able to contribute to transforming everyman's thought about the physical world. For the most part the lasting consequences are evident and well-known. Nevertheless, we have to observe that in some respect – not necessarily those emphasized by Einstein – the implications are still scarcely apprehended.     

The Scientist in Literature: Images and Stereotypes – Their Importance

Abstract

Recent surveys of public attitudes to science and scientists have indicated that scientists are seen in highly stereotyped forms, most of them unfavourable. Before scientists can alter their public image, it is necessary for them to understand how it has arisen. One very important way is through the literary tradition – the manner in which scientists have been presented as fictional characters from the medieval alchemists to the computer experts and physicists of contemporary literature. These depictions of the scientist have not only reflected the writers' opinions of science and contemporary scientists, but have, in turn, influenced society's image of the scientist and the public response to science. There are five major stereotypes which recur with varying frequency throughout the history of Western literature: the evil alchemist; the stupid virtuoso or projector; the unfeeling researcher; the heroic adventurer, utopian or world saviour; the helpless discoverer unable to control his discovery. This review traces the emergence of these stereotypes, suggests why they arose and examines the effect they have had on contemporary attitudes to science.     

Domestic material culture and post-medieval archaeology in Greece: a case-study from the Cyclades Islands

Abstract

The Kyklades or Cycladic Islands have always been popular amongst archaeologists working on the Aegean Bronze Age and the 'glorious' Classical Greek past. In contrast, not much light has been shed upon aspects of post-Roman life on the islands. Research into the post-medieval period has been a subject mainly for historians and folklorists. This paper attempts to explore aspects of the lifestyle of the peoples who inhabited this island group throughout the more recent, yet most neglected centuries of Greek history, using archaeological, textual and other sources and methods. My aim is to reconstruct everyday rural life in Greece, by focusing on the domestic sphere and addressing questions concerning society and the domestic material culture of a littoral area that has remained traditional until very recently.

This paper examines some first results of the CY.RE.P. (Cyclades Research Project) and introduces examples concerning the domestic material culture of the late medieval and post-medieval periods (early 13th–late 19th centuries) in the Aegean Islands of the Cyclades, with particular reference to housing, furniture and internal fittings, costumes and embroideries.     

Death at St Bernard's: Anti-vivisection,Medicine and the Gothic

Displaying a Gothic fascination with the misapplication of science, Edward Berdoe's St Bernard's: The Romance of a Medical Student (1887) was one of a number of novels in the 1880s that repackaged the horrors of vivisection for public consumption. Although the novel can be dismissed as derivative, it departed from standard themes found in other anti-vivisection texts. Through the device of a hero struggling with the moral implications of science and the reckless treatment of patients, St Bernard's challenged the legitimacy of the teaching hospital. The present article moves debate about the Gothic, literature and science beyond well-known texts by Stevenson and Wells to examine how St Bernard's combined ‘the methods of science with the methods of romance’ and shifted the anti-vivisection narrative into the hospital. In locating the novel within anti-vivisectionist uses of fiction and late-Victorian anxieties about experimental medicine and the teaching hospital, the article explores the novel's relationship with other anti-vivisection texts and Gothic fiction, and examines what it says about scientific practices and mentalities. St Bernard's fashioned a very different hospital from existing representations to warn readers of how brutish students and cruel doctors tortured patients. In doing so, the novel recast the teaching hospital as an uncanny and dangerous place.     

Antique nation? 'Hellenes' on the eve of Greek independence and in twelfth-century Byzantium

Abstract

The Hellenic nation, as constituted in the early nineteenth century, is a recent construct; its name and the traditions to which it lays claim are ancient. In the context of modern debates about the antiquity of nations, and particularly the work of Anthony D. Smith, this paper sets out to make a comparative examination of the contexts and semantic field(s) in which the term 'Hellene' came to be revived by Greek-speakers, as a term of communal self-designation, at two widely separated turning-points in their history. All Greek quoted in the main text is also given in my own translation.     

Preparing Geography,Earth and Environmental Science (GEES) Students for Employment in the Enterprise Culture

Maps and related graphics are important means of representing key issues in development education and related themes. This paper examines the use of world maps in materials used in teaching development in higher education and concludes that many are not 'fit for purpose'. Many of these maps create false connotations, which can lead to misleading understandings of key issues.     

“There are only realities built in the mind”

Abstract

In the wake of the First World War, Vilhelm Bjerknes and his colleagues in Bergen established their so-called front meteorology. With their new concepts and models they “appropriated” the weather – to use Robert Marc Friedman's expression – for physics and for Norwegian science. A regular weather forecasting service was established at the same time for the whole of the Norwegian coast, and fishermen soon became the meteorologists’ primary allies in their struggle for state support and resources. This article examines how the alliance was established, how weather forecasting was “appropriated” by the coastal population, particularly in the north, and what difference this made.     

Oriental borrowings in Medieval Greek: new evidence from the BnF manuscript Supplément persan 939

Abstract

The topic of this article is the historical evolution of Greek foreign policy in the Middle East over the past thirty-five years. It essentially seeks to explain the broad framework of conditions and objectives within which Greek foreign policy has been made towards the Arab Middle East and Israel. It argues that the amount of involvement of Greek foreign policy in the area was relatively little. Though much has changed in Greece's approach towards the Middle East since the 1990s, there is also a significant continuity of attitude, in the sense that serious attention has not been paid to this part of the world.     

Exile and return in John Mauropous,Poem 47

Abstract

The author reads an epigram by John Mauropous as an engagement with epic and biblical traditions. Critical studies of exile and return from different eras of the Greek literary tradition by Émile Benveniste, Gregory Nagy and Nancy Sultan are used to provide a theoretical approach to the tradition with which Mauropous engages. It is suggested that Mauropous' wanderings in the territory of the xenos and return to the familiar world of the philos, and especially his personification of his home as a trophos (nurse), allude to Homer, and that epic language and motifs strengthen the poet's assertion of selfhood and make ancient literary themes relevant to Mauropous' life as a scholar and churchman.     

The doubling of the self in the private diaries of Ion Dragoumis,George Seferis and George Theotokas

Abstract

The 'doubling of the self' is a phenomenon that appears in entries of private diaries and consists in the division of the diarist's self into two: the self that acts and the self that observes and writes. This phenomenon can be found in Dragoumis' ?υλλα ημ?ρολογιου, Seferis' M?ρ?ζ and Theotokas' T?τραδια ημ?ρολογιου. There are entries where the doubling of the self occurs in practice and entries where it is described, discussed or analysed. All these reveal the three Greek diarists' contradictory feelings about the doubling of the self, but also the latter's significance for the private diary.     

Cavafy's Sensual City: A Question

Abstract

In his perceptive book, Cavafy's Alexandria (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), Edmund Keeley describes how Cavafy's major poetic preoccupation during the years 1911 to 1921 was the delineation of a mythical city called Alexandria and of the Greek, or Hellenic, way oflife it represents. An essential element in this way of life is its erotic style, which is explicitly homosexual; and it is through his poems on erotic themes that Cavafy slowly and deliberately builds his image of Alexandria as the Sensual City. His method of doing this is particular. In depicting other features of his mythical city Cavafy locates his poems in that ancient Hellenistic world of which Alexandria was the centre. Most of his erotic poetry, on the other hand, speaks of episodes and relationships in contemporary Alexandria, the city in which Cavafy actually lived. Indeed, all the poetry which Cavafy wrote that is located in contemporary Alexandria deals with erotic themes to the exclusion of all others. And it is with the help of this poetry that Cavafy builds up his image.