Cultural Scene Research Articles

Punks in Peoria: Making a Scene in the American Heartland by Jonathan Wright and Dawson Barrett

Reviewed by: Punks in Peoria: Making a Scene in the American Heartland by Jonathan Wright and Dawson Barrett David Woken Jonathan Wright and Dawson Barrett, Punks in Peoria: Making a Scene in the American Heartland. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021. xi, 238 pp. $22.95 (paper). In Punks in Peoria, Jonathan Wright's and Dawson Barrett's account of the underground youth music scene in Peoria, Illinois, Gared O'Donnell of local band Planes Mistaken for Stars remarks on their decision to move to Denver: "I guess in your early twenties … Peoria was a great place to be from, but it wasn't a great place to stay" (171). Many of us who first encountered underground music in the declining Rust Belt towns that dotted the Midwest did indeed find our hometowns better places to be from than to stay, and Wright's and Barrett's account of youth seeking escape from the stifling confines of their culturally conservative and economically stagnating surroundings is a welcome addition to studies that complicate canonical accounts of punk rock and broader do-it-yourself (DIY) youth culture that focus on the most famous bands and major cities. "There is no obvious place for Peoria in the punk rock pantheon" (7), they note, yet the story they [End Page 85] tell makes a powerful argument for paying attention to peripheral cultural scenes around the world, and it provides useful context to understand how discontented midwestern youth sought creative expression amid the economic and social changes sweeping the industrial heartland. Based on local news reports, zines, social media reminiscences, and, most importantly, interviews with a wide range of participants in the Peoria DIY scene, Punks in Peoria tells a rollicking story of youth culture in a town that is synonymous with conservative middle-American values and tastes. The book chronicles bands that enjoyed local notoriety but largely failed to burst onto the national stage. Shows thrown together in diverse spaces (fairgrounds, college gymnasia, record stores, skate parks, rented VFW and American Legion halls, short-lived all-ages night clubs, private houses, and even an abandoned mental hospital) occupied informal spaces familiar to those who experienced similar small-town scenes. Enlivening the text are colorful profiles of local characters like long-running shock artist Bloody F. Mess, explanations of local slang like the regional term for an outsider teen ("cornchip"), and descriptions of short-lived show spaces that entered local legend like the Airwaves skate park and anarchopunk Tiamat Records. The authors also provide accounts of legendary shows by internationally famous (or infamous) acts that demonstrate how DIY culture offended the sensibilities of staid Midwesterners while offering ecstatic liberation to the young. These included GG Allin's scatological 1985 performance that saw him chased off by police and Legionnaires after just two songs, and a 1999 show by anarchist metallic hardcore provocateurs Catharsis that ended in the band leading the audience into the alley behind Tiamat for a round of impromptu drumming and fire-dancing that stopped only when police arrived to shut the event down. Wright's and Barrett's focus remains firmly on telling details and anecdotes about the local musicians, zinesters, and show organizers who built and re-built their scene, and their stories make for entertaining and engrossing material. The opening chapter paints a vivid picture of pre-1980s Peoria, an industrial town of breweries, distilleries, and the Caterpillar tractor factory, and home to a strong union tradition. But it was also one of the most segregated cities in the nation (a fact noted in the stand-up comedy of the town's most famous son, Richard Pryor) and one with a reputation for conservative, middlebrow sensibilities despite the fact that it had long been a stop for vaudeville and blues musicians traveling between Chicago and St. Louis. Yet this sort of big picture falls short in much of the rest of [End Page 86] the book when they consider DIY youth culture. They do succinctly sum up one of the core tensions in punk rock, between nihilistic rejection and positive change, by contrasting Bloody Mess's shock antics with the positive DIY spirit of Peoria's first hardcore punk band...

Interactive Cultural Communication Effect in VR Space of Intelligent Mobile Communication Network

Virtual reality technology can provide more display techniques to realize the interactive design of multiexhibition area of red humanities and natural resources. First of all, through the three-dimensional interactive display of cultural relics and scene reproduction of historical events, visitors can enjoy the unrestrained and immersive appreciation, make up for people’s lack of understanding of history, and let tourists personally feel the difficulties and hardships in the development of Chinese revolutionary history. Second, the digital method also provides for the pavilion and the scenic spot design personnel more creative method; dynamic scene reappearance interaction design based on virtual reality technology to promote education, protection of cultural relic collection and utilization, academic research, and the industrial development and multidimensional public welfare publicity results is blended in among them, through the panoramic, immersive, and interactive display technique, such as multilevel multiway spread red brigade culture. Virtual reality constantly imitates the real-life environment, and the application of perception sensing equipment has perception. This new technology requires us to continue to explore and research it. Virtual reality technology is a very cutting-edge subject and research field, which is very challenging. The communication form of culture has also been constantly evolving. Virtual reality technology (VR) has changed the way of traditional culture appreciation through the transmission of visual information, bringing people a new aesthetic enjoyment. Mainstream media is used to mobilize the red cultural heritage protection and scholars at home and abroad, to explore the application of virtual reality in the red culture tourist attraction planning, and to explore virtual reality applications in red open spot virtual roaming: exploration of virtual reality in the application of historical and cultural sites to red tourism management and exploration of virtual reality in the brand historical and cultural sites in the application of the travel marketing, to build an intelligent mobile communication network communication platform and broaden the new path of inheritance and protection. On the basis of studying the communication effect of traditional culture, this paper studies the possible communication effect of symphony orchestra under the new technology format under the framework of communication studies. It also analyzes and explores various factors such as the practical value, difficulty, civilized prestige, adaptability, and resistance to adversity of the culture in cultural communication and compares the methods of cultural communication. By developing a virtual instrument placed in the sphere of virtual reality space, the traditional symphony orchestra can be transformed into an interactive culture communication in virtual reality space. In this communication design, users can define their own instruments to play interactive culture communication, change the position of the instrument on the sphere interactively, and even change the sound effect of the symphony interactively by rotating or adjusting the size of the sphere, so as to achieve the best communication effect of the symphony.

The post-colonial novel and the re-construction of national identity in Morocco: conflicts and paradoxes

ABSTRACT Tainted by decades of direct colonial influence, Moroccan cultural identity in the postcolonial era became the battleground for conflicting discourses and competing voices grappling for recognition and dominance. The project of cultural decolonisation and national identity construction was avidly endorsed by Moroccan nationalist authors whose ‘engaged’ literature aimed at resurrecting Moroccanness on solid Islamic and nationalist foundations. Modernist writers, however, espoused a different vision that is based on modernisation, liberalism and secularism. Some other writers wrote ‘undesirable’ literature that is highly individualistic and unconcerned with the question of identity. The cultural scene in general and the novel genre in particular, being a new and a widely receptive genre, vehicled these postcolonial conflicting discourses and ideologies and reflected the discursive and ideological heterogeneity of postcolonial Morocco. This article sheds light on this heterogeneity as manifested in the works of prominent Moroccan post-colonial novelists. I, therefore, contend that there were several literatures at play subsequent to Morocco’s political independence; one is progressive, another reactionary, and the other is ahistorical; all representing the three major currents of post-colonial Moroccan literature.

The experience of cultural festivals: evidence from Hong Kong

ABSTRACT Cultural festivals can attract cultural tourists, extend the tourist season and add vibrancy to the cultural scene. However, there is relatively little research on how festivals affect tourist experience of the destination or outcomes such as satisfaction or repeat visitation. This study used the Event Experience Scale to measure tourist experiences at three cultural festivals in Hong Kong – the Lantern Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and the Cheung Chau Bun Festival. The findings show that tourist experiences of these festivals are distinct, and they positively affect destination image and behavioural outcomes. Relative to permanent attractions and tours, festival experiences elicit stronger affective, conative and novelty responses. Festivals also convey a stronger impression of Hong Kong as a destination exhibiting Chinese and traditional culture, but less as a global city. The festival experience is associated with positive outcomes, namely greater satisfaction, intention to recommend and intention to return.

Samuel Beckett as World Literature

Samuel Beckett as World Literature

Surrealism Beyond Borders

Surrealism Beyond Borders

When the Sky Is Low and Heavy: David Lamelas and Transnational Heritage in Flanders

In 1992, artist David Lamelas installed Quand le ciel bas et lourd at the temporary exhibition America: Bride of the Sun—500 Years of Latin-America and the Low Countries at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), a show that explored the cultural, economic, and political exploitation of indigenous America by European forces, and its project of colonization and erasure. Lamelas’ work remained a public installation in KMSKA’s garden until March 2021 when it was dismantled as a result of the museum’s years-long renovation. This article examines the work in the context in which it was exhibited and later destroyed as a lens to examine two aspects of contemporary art and history in Flanders. Firstly, it foregrounds the complex, transnational heritage that Lamelas’ work presents and considers its implications upon the local, cultural scene in which it resided from the 1960s to 70s, in the 1990s and in the present. Secondly, the text frames Quand le ciel bas et lourd and America: Bride of the Sun as reverberating with the emergence of nationalism in Flanders and a global, postcolonial discourse in the art world. This article considers how aspects of Lamelas’ work and its elusive meanings over space and time might challenge monolithic understandings of Flemish art.

“The social and cultural dimension of ‘platforming’ live music : the case of the Hong Kong independent music scene during the Covid-19 pandemic”

ABSTRACT This article explores the implications of the rise of digitally–mediated live music performances in the context of one marginalized cultural scene, the Hong Kong independent music scene, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Combining observation of live-streamed events with interviews of key actors in the scene, this article analyses the processes by which the partial ‘platformization’ of live music activities has led to the deterritorialization and reterritorialization of the scene - through collaborations between some Hong Kongand international indie music actors and the reaffirmation of the‘local’ via the use of visual represesentations of the city in online concerts, as well as to forms of digital disengagement. In turn, the article argues that analyses of the platformization of culture music must take into consideration the socio-cultural effects of digital platforms on specific localized contexts of cultural creation and consumption such as cultural scenes.

Introduction: Anthropocene Austria

Introduction:Anthropocene Austria Caitríona Ní Dhúill and Nicola Thomas In the eighth of his 'Lectures on the New Climatic Regime', Bruno Latour discusses an intervention which took place on the fringes of the Conference of Parties (COP) 21 in Paris, 2015. In the course of a performance entitled 'Theatre of Negotiations', young people playing the role of delegates negotiated a model climate agreement on behalf of forty-two groupings, twenty-four of which represented nation-states and eighteen a diverse range of non-state actors. '[T]hey began to climb up on stage,' Latour writes, 'delegation after delegation, "Forest" after "France," "India" next to "Indigenous Peoples," the "Atmosphere" delegation before "Australia," "Oceans" after "Maldives," each one introducing itself with pride, equal in sovereignty to all the others.'1 For Latour, this theatrical performance illustrates the 'earthbound' in all its complexity. 'Theatre of Negotiations' calls into question the historically contingent political formation we call the nation-state, but does so without advocating its abolition in favour of a globe or planet without borders. Instead, the nation-state takes its place as one type of grouping among others; one of many, messy, overlapping ways of distributing agency on an Earth that has never been, and will never be, conceivable as a whole. A dizzying leap of scale is required to think about a small nation like Austria against the background of the seemingly all-encompassing and ever more theorized predicament called the Anthropocene. The critical move implied by the title of this volume risks seeming arbitrary at best or parochial at worst. But, as the 'Theatre of Negotiations' suggests, the juxtaposition of the national (and thus transparently political) and the planetary is not only possible but also necessary. The mere fact that Austria and Austrian culture are undeniably part of the earthwide network of forces which shape, and are shaped, by anthropogenic climate and environmental change is enough to warrant closer examination of this thematic constellation. Timothy Clark has referred to the paradox of focusing on a single national culture in the context of the Anthropocene as 'methodological nationalism'.2 By sitting with this very [End Page 1] paradox, the current volume aims to enable relationships between regional or national context and planetary crisis to come more clearly into view. The category of the national — along with its political and cultural institutions, which include a body of literature and a scene of culture somehow identified with the nation — belongs to the 'old but still useful world of states', as Clemence Hallé and Anne-Sophie Milon describe it, a world which coexists alongside trans-, inter-, sub- and supra-national forces, systems and factors.3 Pace Clark, 'methodological nationalism' may serve as a starting point for analysis, if not a final destination for understanding. It is in this spirit that the current volume brings together readings of Austrian literature and film which engage with the notion of the Anthropocene. If the idea of Austria, like that of any national formation, is 'old but still useful', the other keyword of this volume's title is contrastingly new and of as yet uncertain value. Beyond its original geological context, in which it refers to the current geological epoch of indelible anthropogenic impacts on the fabric of the planet, the term Anthropocene has become a convenient if controversial shorthand for a bundle of interconnected features and effects of industrial civilization in the age of fossil fuels. These effects include climate breakdown and global heating, ecological destabilization, habitat and species loss (which are now also recognized as factors in the rise of zoonotic diseases such as Covid-19), systematic addiction to consumption, including the consumption of fossil fuels, and the political, ideological and discursive regimes that uphold, exacerbate, manage and disavow these realities. Critiques of the term are not hard to find, and the proliferation of alternatives has become something of a running joke in the humanities.4 The most frequently cited and compelling objections relate to the flattening effect of grouping together all humans on Earth into the species-category anthropos: 'the fossil economy', as Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg note, 'was not created nor is it upheld by humankind [End Page 2] in general...

Arts and culture in the Paris of Appalachia: Pittsburgh abounds in national treasures

Pittsburgh will be thrilled to welcome the ACRL 2023 Conference from March 15 to 18, 2023. We want to introduce the vibrant arts and culture scene in Pittsburgh, AKA Paris of Appalachians, AKA the City of Bridges (clocking in with a total of 446 of these structural feats). Many of these sites are within easy walking distance of the conference center. Audrey Biega surveys the rich number of arts, architecture, and cultural institutions in our city. William Daw and Kathy Kienholz describe the history and impact of two of Pittsburgh’s celebrated African American artists, August Wilson and Teenie Harris. And, finally, I must highlight one of my favorite hidden gems of Pittsburgh (or, well, Millvale), the Maxo Vanka murals ( https://vankamurals.org/ ) at the St. Nicholas church. These church paintings, created by the artist Maxo Vanka in 1937 and 1941 with Vanka’s bold socialist-informed and emotional style, will forever change how you think about ecumenical art and politics. —Chloe Persian Mills, article editor

Anatomy and Physiology of a Rebellion

The text is a personal testimony that provides a detailed account of the sequence of events surrounding the "Ugričić case." As someone who was both personally involved with and close to the protagonist of the affair, Ilić doc uments incidents that led to Ugričić's removal from the helm of the National Library of Serbia. Although the event has importance in and of itself, it is even more important to see it as an emblem of highly problematic practices that shape the Serbian political and cultural scene, which is controlled by similar media witch hunts and manipullations.

Social divisions and identity engineering of transitional cultural policy in Serbia

Starting from the relationship to the government, we study the social division into ?off-institutional? and ?institutional?, ?independent? and ?dependent? actors of cultural life in Serbia and their mutual interactions within the four families of the transitional cultural system. Due to the similarity with self-management in culture, we observe the phenomenon through two time points that represent turning points in the conduct of cultural policy based on the political, legal and financial authority of the govern?ment acquired on the basis of election results. Empirical research is based on interviews with actors of transitional cultural policy in Serbia and contextualization of the content of internet presentations and media texts. In addition to the comparative analysis, a nor?mative analysis of the document ?Protocol on cooperation between the Ministry of Culture and the Independent Cultural Scene of Serbia? (2011) was also applied, which is a con?firmation of cultural hegemony and identity engineering by the alternative model of cultural policy ?state double?. The results of the research showed that this alternative model in 2011 obstructed the decision-making system defined by law which does not provide for the transfer of decision-making authority to an independent body; that the independent scene is not aware of the joint responsibility for the disastrous results of a weak state according to the Index of states weaknesses in the developing world; that it uses the weaknesses of the transitional cultural policy in order to achieve benefits for itself and related organizations by excluding undesirable value systems in culture, especially those that are the bearers of Serbian cultural identity.

Underground Films in Factory Town: The New American Cinema Group Travels to Turin, Italy in 1967

Underground Films in Factory Town:The New American Cinema Group Travels to Turin, Italy in 1967 Giaime Alonge (bio) The topic of this essay is the retrospective of New American Cinema works organized in Turin, Italy, in May 1967, at the Unione Culturale, a left-wing cultural organization, very active at the time (as well as today).1 I researched the papers regarding this retrospective, held by the archive of the Unione Culturale, along with some papers held by Susanna Fadini, the daughter of late Edoardo Fadini, a man who plays a very important role in the story I am about to tell. Moreover, I also interviewed a few people who attended the retrospective—experimental filmmaker Tonino De Bernardi; painter and sculptor Ugo Nespolo, who also made several experimental films; and Paolo Bertetto, who at the time was a young film critic and later became an academic with a specific interest in avant-garde cinema.2 I thank all these people, as well as the archive of the Unione Culturale, for their help and the time they devoted to me. I will start by briefly sketching the context in which the 1967 retrospective was held. Then I will analyze the content of the retrospective and the way it was organized. Finally, I will close with a few remarks on the impact of the retrospective on the Italian film culture. As you can see from Fay Corthésy's essay included in this dossier, the 1967 Turin retrospective was not the very first retrospective of New American Cinema films that took place in Italy. The first one—the first one in the whole world, actually—according to Fay's extensive and very important research, was held in Spoleto, in the Summer of 1961, at the "Festival dei Due Mondi," the Festival of Two Worlds. But even if it was the Ur-retrospective, the Spoleto program had a relatively modest impact on the Italian cultural scene. In all the [End Page 159] documents, letters, and articles regarding the Turin retrospective that I saw, the Spoleto screenings are never mentioned. On the one hand, it is self-evident that the organizers of the new retrospective had an interest in presenting their program as the first one. But on the other hand, even journalists and critics, who had no connection with the organizers, ever mention the Spoleto program. I do not know exactly why the memory of Spoleto was erased. Maybe 1961 was too early. There was no real interest, in Italy, for underground cinema at the time, while in the late sixties a young generation of avant-garde artists and enthusiasts was emerging. Maybe the Festival dei Due Mondi, dominated by non avant-garde figures such as Luchino Visconti, was not the ideal place to present experimental cinema to a film audience whose culture was deeply connected to the notion of realism. On the contrary, the Unione Culturale in Turin, notwithstanding the relative marginality of both the institution and the city, was a good place to start a revolution. I say "marginality" because Turin was—and still is—a "second city." Albeit a very important economic and cultural center, it has always been a much smaller city than Milan, where real economic power rested, while the political power was, of course, in Rome. In the late sixties, Turin was a sleepy, conformist, provincial city, basically owned by FIAT, the main Italian automaker, which was the biggest employer in town. Moreover, FIAT owned the major local newspaper, La Stampa, and one of the two local soccer clubs, Juventus. So, almost nothing happened in town that the Agnelli family, who owned FIAT, did not like. And what FIAT did not control was controlled either by the Catholic Church or the Communist Party, which both had deep roots in the city, playing a big role in its social and cultural life.3 So, from this perspective, Turin seems a very unlikely place to present experimental films made by a bunch of bohemians. But besides being a provincial factory town, or maybe precisely because it was a provincial factory town, Turin could count on small but very active artistic and intellectual groups. During the twentieth century, many...

The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene by Theodora K. Dragostinova

Reviewed by: The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene by Theodora K. Dragostinova Emilian Kavalski (bio) Theodora K. Dragostinova, The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021). 302 pp., ill. Index. ISBN: 978-1-5017-5329-9. It is hard to believe that just thirty odd years ago, some scholars thought it pertinent to demand a "freeze" on the study of the Cold War, because there is nothing new to be written about the period.1 The suggestion was that while it might be possible to glean some overlooked facts, occurrences, or data from previously inaccessible archives, these are unlikely to challenge, let alone change, the existing frameworks for explanation and understanding. It seems however that time has proved such assessments premature, if not flawed. Instead of wilting, Cold War scholarship has blossomed into more than a "hundred flowers," if we are to paraphrase Chairman Mao's well-known adage. There has been a sustained and growing interest in troubling the bifurcated historical and geopolitical imaginaries of the Cold War by examining complex cultural trends and everyday practices. Rather than the relentless struggle between the homogeneous monoliths of a capitalist West and a communist East, such studies have challenged the dichotomized stereotypes pervading the established accounts of the Global Cold War by providing much more nuanced and variegated depictions of the period. The recognition of such diversity of experiences, actors, and roles has provided the analytical foundation for the contestations of dominant narratives. In particular, the scholarship focusing on the cultural practices and everyday life of the Cold War have been offering important input into the diversity of contingent and oftentimes contradictory dynamics that have been defining the broader pattern of complex interactions between individuals, societies, states, and the international. Labeled as the "Cultural Cold War," the attention to such processes illuminates the critical role played by culture in framing entrepreneurial and idiosyncratic engagements with diplomatic outreach, nationalism, domestic legitimation, and transnational connections under the guise of a global ideological confrontation. At the same time, this mode of inquiry puts the production, dissemination, and control of cultural representations at the heart of Cold War studies. It should probably not be surprising that the bulk of these studies [End Page 346] have tended to focus on the experience of the so-called Third World. Such attention appears justified by the unique positioning of the Global South betwixt and between the two protagonists of the Cold War as well as the distinctive interactions engendered by this location. Yet this focus does little to challenge the uniformity uploaded into the bloc structure of the bipolar international systems. In particular, East European countries – and the so-called Second World, more broadly – appear to have been persistently marginalized in assessments of the "Cultural Cold War." This absence is at the heart of Theodora K. Dragostinova's book. It seeks to redress the exclusion of East European experiences from the record and studies of Cold War histories. The small Southeast European country of Bulgaria provides the context for Dragostinova's endeavor. Considered one of the closest allies of the Soviet Union in the former communist bloc, Bulgaria's experience – both during and after the Cold War – has rarely been considered a fashionable subject for scholarly, policy, or public engagement. Yet Dragostinova's book demonstrates that this lack of attention has overlooked important trends and perspectives that have much broader relevance. Her account indicates that Bulgaria's case is critical for understanding simultaneously the actorness and the historical experience of small states on the margins in playing on the world stage. In this setting, Bulgaria offers a good illustration of the "advantages of smallness," which have provided the country with "unexpected opportunities" to carve entrepreneurial policy space (P. 7). Dragostinova's book thereby challenges the established explanations and understanding about the workings of global order – both during and after the Cold War. As her analysis indicates, since culture was not at the forefront of strategic calculations or threat perceptions of either of the two superpowers, East European countries deployed their positions of marginality to develop meaningful...

The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene by Theodora Dragostinova

Reviewed by: The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene by Theodora Dragostinova Elizabeth Banks (bio) Theodora Dragostinova, The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021). 307 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-5017-5329-9. Theodora Dragostinova enriches understandings of the cultural Cold War by examining cultural exchange in and from Bulgaria in the long 1970s and by demonstrating the centrality of culture to socialist and nationalist nation branding in Bulgaria. Emphasizing Bulgaria's status as a "small state," Dragostinova additionally invites scholars to rethink the concept of periphery in cold war history and global history more generally. The body of the book consists of a preface, an introduction, which establishes the importance of the global cultural scene amid the challenges of the 1970s, six chapters, and an epilogue. Chapters 1 and 2 present the efforts within Bulgaria to use complex cultural events to reinvigorate state and society during this crucial decade. The most important of these events was the 1300th anniversary of Bulgaria, which took place in 1981 but was celebrated through anticipation and preparation for much of the late 1970s. This celebration, like the embrace of culture writ large, was the initiative of Liudmila Zhivkova, the daughter of the longtime state leader Todor Zhivkov. She is the book's central character, and was the cultural secretary from 1975 until her death in July 1981. The remaining four chapters explore overseas uses of Bulgarian culture in the same years. They demonstrate the enmeshing of international cultural performance with domestic, the variety of socialist world making in the seventies and eighties, and the pursuit of foreign audiences as central to Bulgarian self-expression. Dragostinova refreshingly avoids any sense of surprise that a small state would actively pursue global ambitions, focusing instead on documenting its details. The international cultural tour begins closest to home, with chapter 3 examining exchange with Bulgaria's nearest neighbors. Chapter 4 heads farther afield to the FRG and United States to document the creation of a multivalent Bulgarian diaspora through cultural exchange. The chapter reveals elaborate state plans for recruiting émigrés of various backgrounds and political persuasions for socialist Bulgaria, while highlighting varied responses and forms of national affinity among Bulgarians abroad and their descendants. The final two chapters travel farther still to cover cultural exchange with India, Mexico, and [End Page 321] Nigeria. They show how connections with the developing world, where audiences had little or no prior knowledge of Bulgaria, offered officials more space to craft their cultural national self-image. These chapters usefully show how Bulgarian cultural officials presented one message for audiences miles apart, underlining the international cultural project as primarily domestic, while noting local variations in expression and reception. Dragostinova's vibrant account of Bulgarian cultural initiatives in the long 1970s is driven by a method-as-argument she calls a "pericentric approach." It disturbs traditional historical narratives by centering on states and people usually considered small or peripheral. Cultural exchange generated a whole range of local meanings that can only be seen and understood in the specific sense; paying attention to these details makes clear the polyphony of socialist world making even in a single national case. This is an important contribution, especially as histories of the Cold War may suffer more than other subfields from an obsession around causality or a hangover assumption that Eastern Europe was overshadowed by the USSR. Following a long line of scholars who have delved into the specific to demonstrate the falsehood of this claim, the book displays honest fidelity to the Bulgarian point of view, even as two-thirds of the book is about Bulgarian culture abroad in various forms. Dragostinova is always very careful about the limitations of her sources, which are Bulgarian, and makes observations about Bulgaria rather than an ephemeral "socialist world" even as she rightly insists her method would be fruitfully applied in other settings. At times this reader found herself wishing for more contextualization that would help make sense of the metrics of smallness and bigness that underlay the argument. Between 1977 and 1981, for...

THE GREAT ABSENTEE: NOTES ON THE ITALIAN RECEPTION OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY RUSSIAN POETRY FOR CHILDREN

The article offers a review of 20 th century Russian children’s poetry translated into Italian. Despite the fact that Russia can boast a great tradition of children’s literature in verse, the number of existing Italian translations is not very large and the authors translated are only some happy few. They are Vladimir Mayakovskiy, Osip Mandel’shtam, Boris Pasternak, Korney Chukovskiy and Samuil Marshak. Their not very many texts have mostly appeared for little publishers with scarce circulation. Attention to formal aspects has also not always been impeccable, and no Italian poet has systematically devoted himself to elaborate Italian versions that could aspire to true aesthetic autonomy. This is why, in spite of some notable translations in recent times, we must continue to speak of Russian poetry for children as the great absentee on the Italian cultural scene.

The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene. By Theodora K. Dragostinova. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. xxi, 307 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Photographs. $19.95, Paperback.

The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene. By Theodora K. Dragostinova. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. xxi, 307 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Photographs. $19.95, Paperback. - Volume 81 Issue 3

MUZIKA U SRPSKOM ANIMIRANOM FILMU U PERIODU 1949–1969.

Тhe aim of the paper is to understand the position of music in the Serbian animated film during the first two decades of organized production of this artistic type in socialist Yugo- slavia (1949-1969). It is about the period that begins with the creation of the first (post-war) Serbian animated film, Pupil and a Bad Mark, authored by Vera and Ljubiša Jocić (1949). In this regard, we used the historical method, the method of analysis and a case study. The paper first provides insights into the context of the emergence and stages of development of Ser- bian cinematographic animation, and looks at the problems of understanding the poetics and status of this art, position, and function of music in an animated film, and then turns to the selected titles. The works analyzed in this paper assume the anthological oeuvres of the most prominent names of Serbian animation of the said period (Vera and Ljubiša Jocić, Divna Jova- nović, Marijan Vajda, Slavko Marjanac, Nikola Majdak, Ivo Kušanić, Borislav Šajtinac); the selection, therefore, refers to the totality of the visual, cinematographic, and auditory qualities. The result of this research suggests a considerable range in terms of the relations between music and image, that is, the important position of music as a constituent of narration; reveal- ing the rapid rise of the then still young artistic domain on the Serbian cultural scene. It is important to point out that the research we have conducted is the first attempt to consider the position of music in the historical context of the art of animation in Serbia.

Moje večery : vzpomínky Ljudmily Ivanovny, tetičky ruské hudby

Lyudmila Ivanovna Shestakova, the younger sister of composer Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka, is an almost forgotten figure of 19th century Russian musical culture. She was undoubtedly very important person in Glinka's life, and after his death she tied her name to the care of his legacy. Her fate was intertwined with that of many contemporary representatives of the St Petersburg cultural scene, including members of the so-called Mighty Handful. She wrote a memoir of her acquaintances under the title My Evenings (Moi Vechera), which provides quite an exceptional look at the Russian Five, especially from a personal perspective and her friendship with them. Some of these recollections may shed new light on research into the New Russian School.

Overcoming awkwardness

As Chinese people engaged with the Australian cultural scene in recent years, two posts about its humour attracted considerable attention from netizens in the People’s Republic of China. The post authors believed that their firsthand accounts of events demonstrated how Australians used humour to overcome awkward situations and regarded this as an essential national characteristic. In each case, other interpretations were possible if cultural factors had been taken into account, including the contemporary culture of China, Putonghua language usage and the Anglo-centrism that is common to cross-cultural studies. This exploratory generalist textual study concludes that the authors’ interpretations were largely determined by their cultural bias and by traditional regard for ‘face’ and politeness, and reflect the fact that, ultimately, the extent of cross-cultural communication is governed by international politics.