A Mona effect: How place discourse constitutes culture‐led change

The arrival of the Museum and Old and New Art (Mona) in the disadvantaged municipality of Glenorchy was heralded as the beginning of significant social change in Australia's island state of Tasmania. These expectations were premised on a local place discourse known as the “Tasmanian gothic,” and, in this article, our aim is to illustrate the importance of place specifications in culture‐led change, including in relation to how place discourse constitutes such change. To do this work, we illustrate a Mona effect that comprises a critical account of the Tasmanian gothic informed by an empiric of tourist movement to and from Mona. We demonstrate that tourist movements follow existing socio‐spatial patterns, with tourists from higher socio‐economic backgrounds bypassing Glenorchy and those from lower socio‐economic backgrounds more likely to stop in this disadvantaged municipality. This socio‐spatial account unsettles the characterisation of Tasmania and Tasmanians provided by the Tasmanian gothic and we conclude by observing (1) a lack of significant social change resulting from Mona, in part explained by well‐established socio‐economic patterns; (2) signs of more subtle change that warrant further investigation; and (3) how local place discourse can act to curtail culture‐led change by reinforcing existing socio‐economic patterns.     

The Feasibility of Teaching Scientific and Technical Russian without the Prerequisite of a General Russian Language Course

The plot of the short novel La mano en la trampa (Beatriz Guido, 1961) is about a young woman who becomes a heroine while trying to find out the truth about a family secret known as “El Opa.” Her work as a spy needs to be done in complete secrecy. Her family is behind her and she needs to escape from censorship. Her family story is similar to Argentina's context at that time when many people had to avoid the control and excessive power of Peron's government. Everything seems to be double in this novel: spaces, characters, life stories, ghosts, vampires, haunting and repressive atmospheres. All of these elements contribute to the gothic spirit in La mano en la trampa that I explore in this article.     

The Catastrophic Repairs of Holyrood Abbey Church in 1760

The collapse of the significant church of Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh in December 1768 is discussed as the result of the ill-conceived repair of the roof in 1760, i.e., the substitution of the timber trusses with closelyspaced diaphragm masonry walls that aggravated the delicate equilibrium of the vaults and the poor state of a building being mutilated over 250 years. This study interprets these repairs by demonstrating the authorship and partnership of the architect John Douglas with the mason-developer James McPherson, who combined architectural ambition (the aesthetics of a flagstone roof) with the (cheaper) option of diaphragms, which would not involve a wright. The detailed examination of the procurement, the process of the intervention, the collapse, and the limited impact of its aftermath, are framed in a wider technical and historical context in Edinburgh and Scotland, during a period marked by several failures of medieval churches, and reveals a poor understanding of a critical element in Gothic construction. Analysis of all public archive material available sheds light on key events of the case, and critical study of the work of the two partners’ attempts to identify the intentions of their project, whose limitations were inevitable once the partnership was formed.