(Re)Writing With the Feet: The Flâneur as Urban Cartographer in Alicia Scherson’s Film Play (Chile, 2005)

This article approaches Chilean filmmaker Alicia Scherson’s first feature-length film, Play (2005), from the perspectives of mobility and social cartography in relation to the spatial practices of the main characters. Through the paradigmatic figure of the flâneur, the article explores the representative function of both the characters’ and the camera’s drifting itineraries across the city, as they subtly perform a peripatetic cartography of present-day Santiago. The diegetic threads that are spun by the characters progressively interlace to weave an urban text which lays bare – as they are transgressed – a series of frontiers that cut across the cityscape. The film maps out two very different human geographies of post-dictatorship Chile, a lived urban space that reveals the stark social divide propping up the nation’s neoliberal economic structure. Scherson’s roving camera engages in a politics of perception which invites the spectator to view the city differently, thus exploring the possibility of upsetting this divide.     

Ability of students to recognize the relationship between using mobile apps for learning during fieldwork and the development of graduate attributes

The increasing importance of employability in Higher Education curricula and the prevalence of using mobile devices for field-based learning prompted an investigation into student awareness of the relationship between the use of mobile apps for learning and the development of graduate attributes (GAs) (and the link to employability). The results from post-fieldwork focus groups from four field courses indicated that students could make clear links between the use of a variety of mobile apps and graduate attribute development. The study suggests a number of mobile apps can align simultaneously with more than one graduate attribute. Furthermore, prior experience and the context of use can influence students’ perceptions of an app and its link with different GAs.     

Iron Smelting in Sudan: Experimental Archaeology at The Royal City of Meroe

The Royal City of Meroe, ca. 200?km north of Khartoum in the modern-day Republic of the Sudan, was an ancient capital of the Kingdom of Kush. From the 3rd century b.c. to the 4th century a.d., Kushite rulers controlled significant territory from the banks of the Nile at Meroe, in part through their ability to ensure the production of significant quantities of iron. The extensive archaeological remains of Meroitic iron production have been investigated over decades, and recently a series of experimental iron smelts in a replica Meroitic furnace has shed new light on the archaeometallurgical evidence. The data generated during the smelting campaigns has provided an understanding of the type of iron ore used, the construction and operating parameters of the furnace, and the workshop space created by the ancient iron smelters during the later and post-Meroitic times.     

Exploiting Sino-US Geostrategic Competition: The View from Seoul and Singapore

The mainstream literature on weak status quo states’ diplomacy tends to identify their regional security roles in terms of dealing with non-traditional security issues. This article argues that such a limited approach is not sufficient to explain the current security dynamics in the Asia-Pacific. This article reviews the literature on weak status quo states’ influence on regional order. It then identifies a security environment in which they are more likely to exert some impact on maintaining and building a regional order. After contextualising these discussions in the Asia-Pacific setting, the article examines the experience of South Korea and Singapore as secondary powers in the East Asian region. Although both countries enjoy high levels of security cooperation with the US, both have also been able to exercise a certain amount of influence in advancing their own geostrategic interests amidst the growing Sino-US geostrategic competition. Yet their exploitation of Sino-US geostrategic competition is neither a simple balancing strategy against China nor a simple bandwagoning with the US, since both South Korea and Singapore have been increasing bilateral and multilateral security cooperation with China.     

Preaching and History: The Audience of Ranulf Higden’s Ars componendi sermones and Polychronicon

In his Ars praedicandi sermones, in traditional yet rich metaphoric language, Ranulf Higden compares Christ to a fountain, a shepherd, a rock, a lily, a rose, a violet, an elephant, a unicorn, and a youthful bridegroom wooing his beloved spouse. Ranulf encourages preachers to use such metaphors while using them himself, rendering his text a performed example of what he encourages. This text is clearly linked to two others: Ranulf’s Latin universal history, the Polychronicon, and John Trevisa’s English translation of it. In the Polychronicon, Ranulf relates the life of Christ, utilizing some of his own rhetorical suggestions from his preaching manual. He also depicts a cross-section of good and bad preachers, including Gregory, Wulfstan, Eustas, St Edmund, and one William Long-Beard and his kinsman, who exemplify (in different ways) the wisdom conveyed in Ranulf’s instruction in the Ars praedicandi. This essay suggests that the literary relationship between the preaching manual and the Polychronicon supplies additional support for the idea that the audience of the latter was not noblemen exclusively, but also clergymen who preached and had responsibility for the care of souls (cura animae).