Aspects Of Reception Research Articles

Vinnie Nørskov. Greek vases in new contexts: the collecting and trading of Greek vases - an aspect of the modern reception of antiquity. 407 pages, 87 colour & b&w figures, 17 tables. 2002. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press; 87-7288-886-5 hardback.

Vinnie Nørskov. Greek vases in new contexts: the collecting and trading of Greek vases - an aspect of the modern reception of antiquity. 407 pages, 87 colour & b&w figures, 17 tables. 2002. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press; 87-7288-886-5 hardback. - Volume 77 Issue 297

II. Reception within Antiquity

This chapter is in three sections. The first sets out the proposition that movements in ancient oral, written and material culture themselves involved reception and refiguration of material from inside and outside the Hellenic and Roman world. The second section looks at some aspects of these receptions and at the scholarly and critical tools which were developed in association with them and which have often set the parameters for subsequent investigation and evaluation. The third section identifies some important examples of how different aspects of reception within antiquity have contributed to the patterns of reception with which scholars and practitioners have engaged in subsequent periods. Overall, the model used is one which will be taken forward in later chapters of the book. It consists of an axis between reception as activity, as ‘doing’, ‘making’, ‘responding’ and ‘creating’ and reception as selecting, analysing and evaluating. The points of intersection are many but the more divergent areas of the model are also significant and may also contribute to dialogue between ancient and modern. Many critical terms and categories set out in the ancient world have fed into modern systems and in turn many aspects of modern practice, of reception ‘activity’, have prompted further analysis of cultural practices in the ancient world.

Seen and Starting to Be Heard: Women and the Arab Media in a Decade of Change

Introduction WOMEN’S unequal access to the media is a universal concern, because negative stereotyping of women and lack of promotion for female editorial staff not only reflect wider disadvantages facing women but also help to sustain and reproduce them. This dynamic led to the inclusion of representation in and through the media and new communication technologies as one of 12 “critical areas of concern” in the Beijing Platform for Action, the agenda for women’s empowerment drawn up at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. As the media component of that agenda has been pursued since then, changes in the global media landscape have also proceeded apace. Transnational media corporations from developing countries have deployed satellite and cable networks to turn what was once a one-way traffic of “NorthSouth ” communication flows into a multidirectional phenomenon connecting dispersed linguistic communities all over the globe. In both developed and developing countries, some of the novelty of what were once “new” technologies of communication has worn off. What have these developments meant for media representation of women? For example, in cases where discrimination against women is embedded in legal systems and social customs, have tangible benefits resulted from activism aimed at SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Fall 2002) Seen and Starting to Be Heard: Women and the Arab Media in a Decade of Change BY NAOMI SAKR the media at a time when aspects of media production, distribution , and reception are all undergoing perceptible change? The Arab world suggests itself as a suitable focus of research into this question. Women in this region experience what Deniz Kandiyoti (2000: xiv) has called a “double jeopardy.” They are not only subject to the widespread restrictions on civic and political participation affecting both sexes, but are further denied autonomy by discriminatory “personal status laws.” Under variants of these laws, it is not women but their male guardians who have the authority to decide issues such as whether they may work or travel, or whom they may marry. History shows that structures of patriarchy were not uniform across the region before colonialism. Yet the Western model of the nation-state, complete with its gendered concepts of citizenship, became the compulsory model for Middle Eastern states emerging from colonialism, where it was imposed on already gendered systems of social stratification. The resulting “intersection” of patriarchies (Joseph and Slyomovics, 2001: 9) created a historically specific momentum of increasing control exercised over women by men, families, communities, and the state. It is beyond the scope of this paper to consider whether changes at the local and national level are combining with novel forms of transnational interconnectedness to slow or alter that momentum. Instead, the paper has a more modest but related aim. It examines developments in the Arab media and in the activism of Middle Eastern women as they relate to women’s representation in terms both of media portrayal and access to media decision making. In general there is nothing intrinsic to “new” or cross-border media that makes them more or less likely to benefit disadvantaged groups. Technology is neutral and its deployment is subject to existing structures of power. Indeed, the history of communications technology suggests that, since new technologies are introduced in response to certain social relations, we should not be surprised if their use reflects the comparative stasis of those relations (Winston, 1989: 71). Digitalization is a case in point. An 822 SOCIAL RESEARCH abundant literature points up the opportunities created for women’s advancement by new information and communication technologies (ICTs). Women at the center of experiments in networking for advocacy purposes report that the Internet can facilitate mobilization in times of crisis, along with active participation in policy debates and articulation of new perspectives. They also point out, however, that there is nothing automatic about such potential being realized. The Internet can equally be used to do the same things in the same way, “perpetuating the inequality, squelching diversity or fostering exclusivity” (Gittler, 1999: 100). Where women have used the Internet to create alternative media—in the form of e-zines, for example—they have been criticized for restricting their activism to an already committed audience (Gallagher, 2001...

The Use and Misuse of Rembrandt: An Overview of Popular Reception

This essay surveys four categories of non-art literature and commodities: 1) the biographical novel which refers in some varying measure to historical accuracy; 2) the a-historical references to Rembrandt in serious literature, in ways that offer insight into fictional or actual characters, or into the nature of reception of the artist; 3) the fictional or embellished appearance of Rembrandt in ways that are wholly disassociated from the historically based Rembrandt; 4) the emblematic meaning of the name ‘Rembrandt,’ detached from the historical character, that may be applied to literary and other endeavors. This order takes us from the historically grounded to the arbitrary application of the name, and explores generally overlooked aspects of reception of the artist.

Emotive health advertising and message resistance

Health-promotion advertising campaigns often induce high levels of negative affect to stimulate self-regulation of unhealthy behaviours. Although the use of negative emotion may increase the salience and accessibility of campaign messages, there is also a risk that it may induce resistance toward those messages. This paper describes four specific forms of resistance: repression, defensive processing, downward comparison, and reactance. Each may be triggered by emotive stimuli, and each can impair aspects of message reception or processing. Thus, negative emotion may inhibit the likelihood of self-change rather than enhance it. Recommendations for the conduct of advertising campaigns and future research are made.

Euripides in Megale Hellas: some aspects of the early reception of tragedy

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Multiuser demodulation and iterative decoding for frequency-hopped networks

Demodulation and decoding for frequency-hopped spread-spectrum multiple-access (FH/SSMA) systems have been traditionally conducted by conventional single-user (noncollaborative) demodulation and error- and erasure-correcting decoding techniques. In this paper, we study the demodulation and decoding aspects of collaborative multiuser reception for FH/SSMA and propose methods which increase the number of users the system can support. In particular, we propose and analyze the optimum maximum a priori probability demodulation of multiple symbols or type, and the use of iterative multiuser decoding after the demodulation. Since hits from one or two other users are the most likely hit events in FH/SSMA, the joint demodulation of two or of three users is performed based on likelihood ratio tests. M-ary frequency-shift keying modulation with noncoherent demodulation and Reed-Solomon codes with hard-decision minimum distance decoding are used in the FH/SSMA system. Results are derived for both synchronous and asynchronous frequency-hop systems. The performance of the proposed multiuser detector in additive white Gaussian noise and flat Rayleigh fading channels is evaluated. Scenarios when all simultaneous users or only a subset of them are collaboratively demodulated and decoded are simulated.

"Looking Radiant": Science, Photography and the X-ray Craze of 1896

"Looking Radiant": Science, Photography and the X-ray Craze of 1896 Sylvia Pamboukian Wilhelm Roentgen discovered X-rays in late 1895, and X-rays were immediately popularized in Britain as a new form of special effect photography. During the late nineteenth-century, special effect photographs using, for example, microscopes or different exposures were popular items, and visual gadgetry, including stereoscopes and kaleidoscopes , had been a mainstay in the Victorian parlour since the early part of the century, exploiting the popular fascination with novelty and technology. As engineer A.A.C. Swinton observed, "new discoveries and inventions multiply with increasing rapidity every year" ("Photographing" 290). TheQuarterly Review enthused that the "familiar surface-photography has . . . obtained as an ally a wonderful art of organic portraiture" and that the "'too too solid flesh' had virtually resolved itself into a dew at the magic touch of the Röntgen rays" ("Photography" 500). X-ray apparatus was relatively affordable to buy and fairly simple to construct. X-rays could be easily produced at home, at photography shops and at fairs and exhibitions, and volunteers lined up to have their purses or hands X-rayed by the "wonderful," "magic," and "organic" phenomenon. In addition to its imaging abilities, the X-ray was initially hailed for its germicidal potential and for its curative properties. It figured largely in many popular narratives about spectacular or miraculous cures of hitherto incurable conditions through modern medical technology (Knight 11). These accounts became so popular that one doctor wrote to the BritishMedicalJournalcomplaining about the X-ray's hold on the public imagination: 56volume 27 number 2 "Looking Radiant" A girl, aged 16, ran a long needle-like splinter of well-seasoned pine into the sole of her left foot. The case did not come under my care until a month after the accident. The parts at that time were extensively swollen and inflamed. I then had three skiagraphs [X-rays] of the foot taken. These photographs gave no indication of the site of the splinter, the rays passing through the wood as readily as through the soft tissues. By exploratory incision, I discovered and removed the splinter, which was about 2 Vi inches long, and although it had entered at the ball of the great toe, it was found imbedded in the middle third of the sole of the foot. The report of this case in the local paper described the splinter as having been exactly located by means of the rays, and as having saved an amputation. It is much to be regretted that more care is not exercised in reporting this class of news, more especially as such publications are likely to foster the false impressions about the possibilities of the new process, which are only too prevalent It was, of course, impossible to locate the splinter by means of the rays, wood being very transparent. (Deeping 1238) Sydney Rowland, the journal's chief correspondent on the X-ray, comments that the incident is an example of the "loose and irresponsible manner in which the lay press is in the habit of dealing with cases in which the ? rays have been applied to diagnosis" ("Report" 1238). This exchange illuminates several aspects of the X-ray's reception in the late Victorian period. Since the press reported on such a commonplace accident, the technology itself clearly commanded popular interest. In addition, the press's habitual exaggerations about "this class of news" indicate that popular interest in the X-ray arose as much from the X-ray's strange and wondrous qualities as from the technological achievement it represented. Finally, the doctor's anxiety to distance himself from the press account, because it is "likely to foster false impressions about the possibilities of the new process," hints at medicine's proprietary impulse toward the X-ray, although the doctor obviously shared in the popular optimism when he tried to X-ray a splinter of wood. Victorian Review57 S. Pamboukian Jonathan Crary notes that visual gadgets, including those originally intended for medical use, had been popular entertainment since the 1820's. Crary describes visual gadgetry as "points of intersection where philosophical, scientific, and aesthetic discourse overlap with mechanical techniques, institutional requirements, and...

Las afasias: semiología y tipos clínicos

Human language is the final result of a group of brain activities directed towards the reception, integration and elaboration of linguistic messages. The disorganization of these activities following brain damage brings about a new linguistic functional level which constitutes the aphasic syndrome. Its assessment provides the clinician with information on the destroyed and impaired aspects and on those that have remained intact. The rehabilitation of aphasia should take into account the different components of the neurolinguistic semiology which have been evidenced by previous assessment, without forgetting that the rehabilitation process does not only have to deal with the expressive and receptive aspects of language, but also with a range of other possible cognitive impairments caused by the cerebral lesion and with the social and emotional problems that follow the new personal and social situation after the lesion.

Poets and poetry in mid‐17th‐century Istanbul: additions to the Divan of Fa'izi by the Copyist Yahya Efendi and others in the John rylands university library MS Turkish 81 (Manchester)

The mainstream of Ottoman literature, on its 'higher' and more popular levels, both written and oral, consisted of poetry. It shares this characteristic with the other 'classical' literatures of the Islamic Middle East, Arabic and Persian. Thousands of poems—gazels, kasides and other forms—were written during the six centuries the Empire existed. Relatively little of this material has been edited and studied, and this is particularly true for the 17th century. We have no up-to-date history of Ottoman literature and we also lack some essential tools to approach the subject. A few biographical dictionaries of Ottoman poets have been edited, but only one concerning the 17th century. This is the more lamentable because the eight or so works known to cover that century are rare and European libraries seem to possess only a few manuscript copies of a minority of them. If we know little about the production of this literature, we know even less about its reception. The Ottomans themselves hardly wrote about the subject although some data can be found in the (few) more elaborate biographical works. Another, albeit indirect, source is the contents and marginal notes of personal anthologies (mecmu'as) which have survived in quite a large number in almost all Turkish manuscript collections. These are even less studied than the mainstream collections of poetry (divans). An interesting sample of such a personal collection of verse is found in the John Rylands Library MS Turkish 81, which I have described succinctly in my forthcoming Catalogue of Turkish Manuscripts. Although the main part is a copy of the Divan of Kafzade 'Abdulhayy Efendi, who wrote under the name Fa'izi (d. 1031/1622), some margins, the empty pages preceding (la-8b) and following (36b-57b) the main text as well as the inner boards have numerous additional scribblings, mostly verses, about 150 in number, higgledy-piggledy jotted in blank spaces. Some of these additions are in prose and contain the usual calculations, prayer formulas, a recipe for an aphrodisiac and lexicographical glosses. A letter (lb) and an ebced table (to calculate the numerical value of the letters of the alphabet, 45a) are also found. These additional poems and notes can be considered to form a mecmua in itself, and were understood to be one by earlier owners: the word mecmu'a occurs on the title page, fia. The contents of this mecmua give us some insight into the aspect of reception, or at least into the predilections of a small group of Istanbul poetry aficionados, among them the earliest owners of the manuscript. They were also literary men themselves who responded with

Music between Metaphysics and Politics

Three articles in this issue of MQ touch on aspects of compositional intention and audience reception with respect to symphonic music. They are Howard Pollack's discussion of Sibelius in the context of Samuel Barber's evolution, Charles Youmans's analysis of Strauss's two last symphonies, and Gavin Campbell's review of the relationship between the progressive movement and the advocacy of classical music during the first quarter of the twentieth century. Youmans seeks to place Strauss in the context of the controversy surrounding the nature and character of the symphonic form during the late nineteenth century. Following Dahlhaus, he sees Strauss as approaching the symphony as medium by which an alternative world disassociated from the spirit of the age could be created for the audience. The symphony had achieved, in this view, status as fulfilling a spiritual, cultural, and ideological function of enormous significance. The Symphonia domestica and the Alpensymphonie are in Youmans's view an explicit critique of this presumed relationship between symphonic music and penchant for metaphysical idealism among listeners. Perhaps, as Mark Evan Bonds has argued, this link between idealist metaphysics and symphonic music was forged in the reception of Beethoven. Strauss overwhelms the expectations of purely musical experience, one determined by an acquaintance with earlier models of symphonic form and informed by self-conscious adherence to an idealized notion of thinking and listening musically. Such mental operations were understood as functioning without reference to images and narratives. Strauss also undercut the equally prevalent anticipation of some sort of philosophizing through music where the emphasis was not on pictures or stories but on ideas and ideals. Youmans properly takes Strauss's reading of Nietzsche seriously. By perfecting the power of instrumental music to create serious illusion of realism, Strauss ended up shocking the listener by thwarting and interrupting any expectation either that music is only about itself or that it inhabits some higher realm of truth. The irony is, as Youmans points out, that Strauss never seems to have forgotten Cosima Wagner's critique of Don Juan as too intellectual

Analysis of music–brain interaction with simultaneous measurement of regional cerebral blood flow and electroencephalogram beta rhythm in human subjects

To elucidate the neural substrates of the receptive aspect of music, we measured regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) with positron emission tomography (PET) and simultaneously recorded the electroencephalogram (EEG) in eight normal volunteers. Compared with the rest condition, listening to music caused a significant increase in EEG beta power spectrum (13–30 Hz) averaged over the posterior two third of the scalp. The averaged beta power spectrum was positively correlated with rCBF in the premotor cortex and adjacent prefrontal cortices bilaterally, the anterior portion of the precuneus and the anterior cingulate cortex in both the rest and the music conditions. Listening to music newly recruited the posterior portion of the precuneus bilaterally. This may reflect the interaction of the music with the cognitive processes, such as music-evoked memory recall or visual imagery.

Trial by ordeal: Thomas Hardy and the critics

This book demonstrates how critical appropriations of Hardy's work often promote a simplifying, conventional, or conservative image that a sophisticated view of his creative intentions by no means confirms. Neill shows how tendentious and traditional approaches that diminish or even traduce Hardy's literary achievement have achieved a cultural prominence that still gives a false impression of the nature of those achievements. The first chapter discusses the biographical tradition, such a powerful aspect of Hardy's critical reception, defining the problems presented by biographically-based criticism in general and by Hardy, one of the slipperiest of literary practitioners, in particular.The second chapter offers a map of critical misreadings, suggesting how a certain ideology of critical reproduction emphasizes limited aspects of Hardy in a cult of nostalgic reaction, ignoring disconcertingly subversive or interrogative aspects of this intellectually progressive writer. The third chapter concentrates on the response to Hardy's poetry, persistently misrepresented as a series of essays in innocuous or eccentric rusticity; the fourth examines Jude the Obscure, the most provocative and controversial of Hardy's works, which still moves critics to howls of execration or considered, complex mediation. The bibliography includes in addition to more well-known critical works on Hardy a range of unusual and little-consulted items.

Brecht in Italy: Aspects of Reception

Brecht in Italy: Aspects of Reception

Brecht in Italy: Aspects of Reception

The reception of a literary work — like that of any other aesthetic phenomenon — is determined by specific historical and cultural conditions. Between the two World Wars, the recognition of contemporary German literature in Italy was hampered by the different political conditions existing in the two countries. Before that time, and certainly no later than the Risorgimento, the tradition of German-Italian cultural relations, vis-a-vis contemporary literary practice. was distinguished in large part by mutual indifference, if not outright aversion. Fascism and the continuation of nineteenth-century Italian cultural traditions had blocked access to the avant-garde movements of the Weimar Republic to such an extent that even reputable literary connoisseurs such as Bonaventura Tecchi and Mario Pensa failed to take note of Expressionism.

O senso comum, a história e a Teoria da Relatividade

The relationship between modern physics and common sense is discussed by investigating whether there is any substantial role left for the latter in the scientific activity. It is shown that ordinary judgement is needed in some of the most crucial decisions that a researcher has to make in his or her work. The history of a notorious counter-intuitive physical theory (i. e. relativity) is quoted to provide examples in support of this claim, and some little-known aspects of this theory's reception by the scientific community are discussed. A simple model of collective behaviour leading to a consensus formation is briefly described, as an example of a non-technical argument which is, nonetheless, useful at making sense of the scientific activity. Some indications for the teaching of science arising from this approach are sketched in the final section.

Arias, Communists, and Conspiracies: The History of Still's Troubled Island

On the evening of 31 March 1949, William Grant Still's first opera, Troubled Island, premiered in New York. It was the first performance by a major opera company of an opera by an African American composer. Based on a libretto by Langston Hughes, Troubled Island was greeted with a standing ovation by the first-night audience. However, success would prove to be short lived for Still and Hughes. Although the audience was enthusiastic, reviews over the next few days struck the composer and his associates as cold and unforgiving; at best they could be described as mixed. On 1 May 1949, after three performances, Troubled Island closed permanently. Thus began Troubled Island's troubled history. Still's wife, Verna Arvey, and possibly even Still himself, believed that the negative reviews resulted from a conspiracy among the New York critics to thwart the success of an African American composer. In addition, Still raised the possibility that cold-war politics had affected some aspects of the opera's reception. In this article I will discuss the history and reception of the opera in relation to these issues.

Eisenstein at 100: Recent Reception and Coming Attractions

1. This brief and summary account, occasioned by a centenary celebration, of some aspects of recent Eisenstein reception in both East and West will offer something of a cautionary tale, as might be inferred from its title. Attractions are, in any case, here understood not in a specifically Eisensteinian sense, but as in the terminology of American film marketing and its deployment of the trailer, the announcement of future programming. One cannot, of course, ignore the status of Eisenstein as a privileged site of post-Soviet iconoclasm, but I shall go on to consider a rather more recent and exotic effort at reintegration within the shifting canon of cultural production and its theorization in the West. My epigraph for these reflections is that adopted for the celebration, ten years ago, of the ninetieth anniversary of Eisenstein's birth. I begin, however, with some recall of the earlier stages of the iconoclastic movement that was then gathering strength within the period of glasnost', a movement directed, as we know, at many aspects of what one might well term the Culture of Revolution. This current was, however, particularly aggressive in its assault upon the resonantly innovative Soviet cinema of a privileged decade, upon the heroic era of film history of roughly 1924-33. One recalls, as an especially salient example, the Festival of Totalitarian Film, organized by the film historian Maya Turovskaya in 1989 as a kind of side show to Moscow's Biennial Film Festival of the early glasnost' era. And, like others, no doubt, over time I had compiled my own little anthology of antiEisenstein texts that antedate glasnost'by some years.1 I offer now, however, an account by the late Nestor Almendros, cameraman and man of the Left, of his meeting during the early days of glasnost' with a group of Soviet filmmakers who

Aspects of the Critical Reception and Intellectual History of Baxandall’s Concept of the Period Eye

This article firstly traces a range of critical reception to Michael Baxandall’s concept of the Period Eye, which he articulated in his 1972 book Painting and Experience in Fifteenth‐Century Italy; secondly, the piece examines various aspects of the intellectual history of the concept through consideration of some of Baxandall’s sources and comparisons with other art‐historical works which test similar methodological terrain, such as Panofsky’s Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism and the ‘Beholder's Share’ section of Gombrich’s Art and Illusion.The article takes the Period Eye as a case through which to explore how different art‐historical camps evaluated the concept in the 1970s, crucial as it was as a novel approach to the idea of a social history of art. While Gombrich and Marxist art historians were suspicious of the Period Eye, the anthropologist Clifford Geertz thought Baxandall’s elaboration exemplary, as did the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The immediate and enduring popularity of the book, progenitor of the notion of visual culture, makes it a significant marker in the anthropological turn art history took in the 1970s and 1980s.

Molecular and cellular aspects of endometrial receptivity.

Endocrine and paracrine controls regulate the endometrium during the luteal phase of the cycle to permit implantation. Part of this differentiation process is the production of a specific secretion which fills the intrauterine cavity and glandular lumen. Its molecular composition originates from the gland secretion, from transudations from stroma, from the endometrial blood vessels, and last, but not least, from cellular components of apoptotic and exfoliated cells. We have studied the secretions of all phases during the menstrual cycle using patterns evaluated by SDS-PAGE, by laser densitometry or Western blots. Uterine secretion electrophoresis (USE) permits detailed analyses of the intrauterine micromilieu and allows clinical assessment of the receptive stage of endometrium during the luteal phase. Several individual protein bands have been defined as characteristic markers for such receptive pattern. We have isolated and identified the molecular structure of several of these proteins, e.g. histones, cyclophilin, transthyretin, haptoglobin and uteroglobin. Investigations on the endocrine regulation of these proteins, were carried out on the uterine secretions of patients treated with progesterone antagonists (mifepristone and onapristone). The results demonstrate how progesterone-dependent components produce a receptive pattern, which can serve as a useful and precise marker in the clinical diagnosis of the luteal phase. Essential progesterone-dependent components differentiating during the luteal phase may provide new targets for contraceptive interventions by preventing the physiological changes typical of receptivity.