Dual Legacies : Cultural Memory, Emancipation, and Tordesillas in Teixeira de Pascoaes and Gilberto Freyre

The breakup of Yugoslavia has become one of the key events of the postbipolar world order and has occupied a special place in the discourse in both politicians of Serbia and Russia. However, interpretations of the crisis, its causes and main driving forces, as well as its use as a reference object in contemporary national and political discourse differ significantly in Serbia and Russia. One of the important subjects is that in both countries, at the level of both discourses, there is a convergence of radical versions, and in the changing structure of European international relations, the role of an external factor in the tragedy of disintegration acquires a special sound. In this article, a discourse analysis of narratives of the Yugoslav crisis in academic and political discourse in a cross-country perspective is conducted using a social constructivist approach. The study seeks to deconstruct the images of the “guilty ones” in the Yugoslav crisis and to consider the features of using peculiarities of the crisis image in contemporary political discourse. It explores how the formal discourse of academics further influenced the discourse of politicians in the Russian and Serbian cases.

This article considers the representation of the history of Belfast in Glenn Patterson's 2012 novel The Mill for Grinding Old People Young. It situates this novel within the context of Patterson's previous work and the history of the Northern Irish novel, as well as with the representation of maritime Belfast in the Titanic centenary year. This novel will be read as a recovery and rehabilitation of a Protestant history which could be problematic for Patterson, an avowedly liberal writer, but instead this context allows for an exploration of the uses of history in contemporary Northern Irish cultural and political discourse.

This article chronicles the roundtable held at LUISS University in Rome on 23 May 2025, marking the eightieth anniversary of the Italian Resistance. Organised alongside the launch of the special issue of Modern Italy titled ‘The Italian Resistance: Historical Junctures and New Perspectives’, the event gathered prominent scholars to revisit the legacy of the Resistance in contemporary historical, cultural and political discourse. Contributions highlighted emerging research on marginal actors, transnational perspectives, gendered memory and the symbolic dimensions of antifascism. Discussions revealed a shared concern with pluralising memory and resisting reductive narratives. This reflection emphasises the enduring relevance of the Resistance as a site of democratic imagination and critical historical inquiry, as well as the journal’s continued commitment to fostering innovative and inclusive scholarship on modern Italy.

The proposition of “culture as an excuse” is assuming greater prevalence in contemporary cultural and political discourses. On the one hand, this proposition has been heavily criticised as a disguise and a pretext for infringing the inalienable human rights of particular groups, including women (Erturk & Purkayastha, 2012; Holtmaat & Naber, 2011; Voestermans & Verheggen, 2013; see also Hallevy in this volume), deaf people (O’Rourke, Glickman, & Austen, 2013), ethnic minorities (see Lim in this volume), and foreigners in certain countries (see Rivers in this volume). It has also been posited as helping to perpetuate unhelpful cultural stereotypes, such as those pertaining to so-called Confucian cultures (Huang, 2009; Li, 2013) and as sanctioning lower expectations by teachers of children who belong to specific communities (Brown & Kraehe, 2010), as well as constituting an alibi for repressive actions by authoritarian governments (Eko, 2010) and for deeper power imbalances and structurally embedded inequities. On the other hand, some commentators recognise “culture as an excuse” as a bulwark against the forces of cultural homogenisation and globalisation and as a valuing of some of the specificities of cultural diversity (Zwart, 2012; see also Cuadrado-Fernandez in this volume).

Trans bodies and lives—and by extension, voices—are at the forefront of contemporary cultural, legislative, and political discourses in the United States and beyond. In this article, I apply a disability lens to concerns about exogenous testosterone (T) and transmasculine vocality, as well as larger anxieties around the transmasculine body as constructed or even irreversibly damaged. Inspired by the use of bodymind as a term in disability studies and activism, I propose bodyvoice as a term in vocal studies to express that the body, voice, and perceptions around them are often interdependent. On social media, the photographic transition timeline constructs a stagnant, binary, before-and-after narrative in contrast to the more fluid sonic transition timeline, in which trans people on T record and display a series of vocal changes, either spoken or sung, over time. The sonic transition timeline functions as a vital way of sharing embodied transvocal knowledge in an increasingly hostile climate.

ABSTRACTThe Staffordshire Hoard is the largest Anglo-Saxon gold hoard ever found. On display from soon after its discovery in 2009 during fundraising to secure it for the region, the Hoard has become a source of local pride in Staffordshire, receiving over a million visitors. This article explores the Hoard as a marker of identity, both in the past and in the present, and evaluates how the ‘treasure process’, museums, and museum volunteers are shaping public identification with the Anglo-Saxon past of the Mercian kingdom. Drawing on focus-group data, we argue that aspects of the naming and display of the Hoard have encouraged its inclusion in existing narratives of belonging and ‘authenticity’ in Staffordshire. Such archaeological discoveries have the potential to provide points of continuity between the post-industrial present and the distant past, and stimulate a reconsideration of the present status of the region in contemporary cultural and political discourse.

Clausewitz’s writings from the reform period combine themes that were central to his thought from his earliest texts and his correspondence, such as the value of the individual as the primary political agent. At the same time, they reflect a thorough engagement with the intellectual context of his time. In the Bekenntnisdenkschrift he presented a notion of war that emphasized its existential and emancipatory qualities. Clausewitz formulated his notion of war in its existential form against the backdrop of contemporary intellectual, political, and cultural discourses in Prussia and Germany more broadly. After the experience of the French Revolution’s descent into terror, the key question facing Clausewitz and his contemporaries was how to advance the liberation of the individual and society more broadly from traditional forms of political authority without risking a degeneration of all political institutions.

Through an analysis of the Byzantine Achilleid, this chapter demonstrates that, although the Byzantine romances are often defined by the violence and patriarchal control exemplified by the hero-hunter Achilles, the enclosed gardens wherein the heroines of romance reside nevertheless depict a posthuman world in which humans, animals, and anthropogenic landscapes thrive in peaceful co-existence. Ecocritical readings of the medieval Greek romance, therefore, can also critique current environmental practice, modeling how Byzantine studies can become a discipline more aware of how its discourses are used in contemporary political and cultural discourses both within and beyond the academy, and how the practice of ethical cultural and literary studies—of which ecocriticism is a part—can be relevant to both scholarly and political debates.

In this article we present an integrated curricular model for addressing the transition from the intermediate to the advanced language level through peer‐assisted learning activities in the post‐secondary German classroom. In a series of group projects between students in second‐ and third‐year conversation courses, we employed a learner‐centered approach that encouraged reciprocal peer mentoring. Both the contemporary focus on multiculturalism and the format involving collaborative work between students in two different language courses were critical components of our project. Engaging with contemporary political and cultural discourses in a peer‐assisted learning environment, course participants obtained important skill sets, which served to enrich their linguistic, cultural, cognitive, and interpersonal competencies.

The book offers an analysis of carnivalesque or popular festive laughter in O'Casey's drama. Drawing upon the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, Malik argues that a fuller understanding of the artistic and ideological significance of O'Casey's drama can be arrived at by situating it in the “low” or popular cultural traditions of his society. A detailed discussion of O'Casey's plays is attempted to show how the forms of laughter function to interrogate contemporary hegemonic political, economic, and cultural discourses. The Dublin trilogy counters the nationalist ideology and its constructions of history, while the later comedies focus on the issues of cultural domination and religious authoritarianism. This negative critique of the dominant order is accompanied, in these plays, by a celebration of the rich energy of popular collective life, and its capacity to resist domination and to create an alternative society. The study extends this perspective to include a consideration of O'Casey's dramaturgic choices and his deployment of popular forms of theatrical representation which are radically different from and often inimical to established aesthetic norms.

Cosmopolitanism is a view that human beings belong to one community irrespective of social and political boundaries (Kleingeld and Brown 2006). Raja Rammohan Roy, a scholar and social reformer from Bengal, wrote a letter in 1831 imploring Talleyrand, the famous French diplomat who served under Napoleon Bonaparte, to abolish the passport system ‘to promote the reciprocal enjoyment and advantage of the whole human race’. Rammohan Roy continued that religion, common sense and science all lead to the conclusion that mankind was one great family with numerous nations and tribes as its branches (Aravamudan 2007: 11). Cosmopolitanism is broadly classified into ethical, political and economic strands (Kleingeld and Brown 2006). In this chapter, I argue that the idea of unity in diversity has permeated Indian cultural understanding, influenced pre-and post-independence debates that led to the formation of the Indian republic and continues to influence contemporary social, political, and cultural discourse. The Rig Veda explains the idea of unity in diversity as follows: reality is one but the wise describe it in many forms (Ekam sat viprah bahudah vadanti). I argue that the progression of cosmopolitan ideas has a dual motion, one dialectical and the other antistrophical (Bloom 1991: 288-99).1 To the dialectical moment, I attribute the evolution of various institutions and processes, and to the antistrophical the specific relationship between the cosmopolitan and the vernacular. The antistrophical relationship played a unique role in the formation of linguistic states after independence and also defines the contemporary era of coalition politics in India.

The article focuses on the Russian epos as well as Russian fairy tales: the images that are frequently there tend to be projected on the contemporary political discourse. The author assumes that the analysis of the folklore stories might allow defining the archetypes, which in a certain manner affect the contemporary political thought in Russia. The author demonstrates the way in which the national cultural archetypes relate to the common cultural ones (Greek myths), on the one hand, and, on the other hand, contain their specific national modification. Thus, the Hero Archetype in Russian epos appears to be nationally marked (its Russianness is particularly stressed) as well as the image of an enemy, filling in the Shadow Archetype. Russian ‘bogatyr’ is traditionally on a state service and remains faithful to his grand duke, notwithstanding the injustice of the latter. The characters of fairy tales wage “preventive wars” in which they become the winners. The contemporary Russian political discourse inherits, to a certain extent, the value as well as the worldview aspects of the Russian epos.

While there is no blatantly racist discourse among the French political class per se, the modern politics of citizenship in France is rooted in France's racialized colonial legacy. Upon critical examination, contemporary French political discourse and policy implementations indeed speak to France's colonial past. The concept of ‘otherness’ is situated at the centre of French political discourse, and is manifested in constructions of whiteness. ‘Otherness’ has created a double standard for legal non-European immigrants compared with French and European citizens. The politics of integration and assimilation are founded on the ideological backdrop of universality, which falsely represents French society in colour-blind terms. This is evident in both moderate and extremist political party rhetoric in regards to new policies of immigration, citizenship and nationality. We contend that the contemporary political discourses in France closely resemble the colonial period in spite of (and precisely because of) France's historical amnesia. In this article, we explore the redefinition of French citizenship as an expansion of whiteness as rooted in the concept of ‘otherness’. In so doing, we contextualize the contemporary discourse of inclusion, exclusion, citizenship, and whiteness on the backdrop of France's colonial legacy.

This edited volume offers new insights into contemporary political discourses in Slavic speaking countries by focusing on discursive and linguistic means deployed in relevant genres, such as parliamentary discourse, commemorative and presidential speeches, mediated communication, and literal and philosophical essays. The depth of the linguistic analysis reflects different levels of linkage between language and social practice constituting the discourse. The theoretical and methodological approaches discussed range from interactional pragmatics over corpus linguistics to CDA. The chapters contain original language material in Russian, Polish, Czech, Croatian, Serbian and Macedonian, and the authors address issues such as the affiliation to different political and social groups within parliamentary settings, national identity, gender and minorities, as well as cultural memory and reconciliation.

This article focuses upon the recent emergence of the Dublin born musician, Imelda May, as a cultural icon in post-Tiger Ireland. May has become a significant figure in the recent socio-political remaking of ‘Irishness’, both globally and domestically, performing at the Year of the Gathering in 2012 and the Glaoch: The President’s Call in 2013. Following Bramall the article argues that Mays’s celebrity embodies a form of ‘disruptive performativity’ embodied in the aesthetic appropriation of austerity as an expression of feminine subjectivity. May’s self-consciously retro feminine aesthetic simultaneously problematizes and legitimates the structural inequalities and ideological constructions of Irelands recent economic past. The article concludes that May embodies a popular nostalgia for a radical, collectivist ‘Irishness’, while also manifesting the passive normalization of austerity within contemporary Irish cultural and political discourse. The postmodern historicity of May’s particular ‘retro femininity’ simultaneously locates her within contemporary discourse as a revivalist of conservative gendered identities and (post-)feminist revisionist.