Cultural History Research Articles

An allegory of Fama and Historia: rumor studies, collective memory, and semiotics

Abstract Compared with history, which is a compendium of statements of what happened in human past, rumors are a fleeting phenomenon that escapes scholarship from historiography. However, rumors, as the manifestation of local beliefs and the power relationships at the time, can expand the horizons of history by providing decentralized perspectives towards various events. The semiotic relationship between rumor and collective memory delves into respective cultures of social groups on both synchronic and diachronic planes. On the one hand, collective memory provides an integrated framework of rumor studies, which can be stratified by different layers, reaching different depths of the collective concern. On the other hand, it can contextualize rumors in the rich archive of cultural texts preceding rumor texts. In this regard, collective memory functions both as the corpus for rumor discourses to generate and as the context for such discourses to mesmerize the public by pre-selecting the audience as model readers, especially under a particular social concern. Moreover, these discourses can be sedimented for future recurrence of rumors of the same schema under certain social circumstances, which demonstrates the dynamics of culture as new rumor texts are generated out of the cultural context. Rumors, therefore, are framed in cultural history, which leads to further discussions on explosion as a cultural phenomenon.

R.J. Morris and public history

Abstract R.J. (Bob) Morris’ contribution to debates around the history of class, associational culture and urban governance have underpinned numerous publications across the decades. This article extends the appreciation of Bob’s work to reflect on how his approach to documenting, demystifying and disseminating the history and heritage of cities and industrial places – including through his use of photography – made a notable impact at the interface between urban and public history and has had a lasting impact on future generations of urban historians’ approach to understanding the historic built environment.

Thomas Sandkühler / Angelika Epple / Jürgen Zimmerer (Eds.), Historical Culture by Restitution? A Debate on Art, Museums, and Justice. Köln, Böhlau 2023

Thomas Sandkühler / Angelika Epple / Jürgen Zimmerer (Eds.), Historical Culture by Restitution? A Debate on Art, Museums, and Justice. Köln, Böhlau 2023

Locating the Professional Cook: An Historical and Anthropological Perspective

ABSTRACTHistorical scholarship on the topics of food, cooking, and eating has flourished in recent years. Within this growing body of literature, chefs have recently been introduced as a legitimate subject of historical investigation. However, to date, no clear theoretical or methodological model has been developed to study this underutilised and under‐theorised historical subject. Drawing upon anthropological readings of history, this article aims to provide a theoretical framework for the historical analysis of professional cooks. It suggests that, when examined from a cultural perspective, professional cooks are unique subjects of historical investigation that act as a window onto broader cultural and social transformations of the specific contexts in which they are embedded. The intention of this article is to bring thematic and methodological clarity to the category of professional cooks and reflect on the analytical utility that they can bring for cultural historians.

PENGGUNAAN BAHASA MELAYU RIAU DAN ORALITY DALAM LINGKUP MASYARAKAT

The use of Riau Malay language plays a significant role in preserving cultural identity and communication within local communities. As an integral part of orality traditions, this language functions not only as a communication tool but also as a medium for transmitting cultural values, customs, and history. This study aims to explore the role of the Riau Malay language and oral traditions in fostering social cohesion within the community. The method used is a literature review, examining various academic sources from 2018 to 2024. The findings indicate that Riau Malay language has sustained itself amidst globalization through the revitalization of oral traditions, such as folklore, rhymes, and poetry. This research highlights the importance of preserving local languages to strengthen cultural identity in the modern era.

Bridging past and present: exploring Cannabis traditions in Armenia through ethnobotanical interviews and bibliographic prospecting

BackgroundCannabis sativa L. (Cannabaceae) has been widely used by humans throughout its history for a variety of purposes (medicinal, alimentary and other uses). Armenia, with its rich cultural history and diverse ecosystems, offers a unique context for ethnobotanical research about traditional uses of Cannabis. The present work aims to study and preserve the local traditional knowledge about Cannabis in Armenia by conducting interviews with informants and through a literature review.MethodsThe first part of the dataset was gathered with ethnobotanical surveys, through questionnaires conducted with 27 informants. The second part of the data was obtained from a comprehensive bibliographic search in English, Armenian and Russian language. Since the data acquisition was different, the quantitative analyses (calculation of the number of use reports and percentages) were performed separately.ResultsDuring the interviews 52 use reports and 3 vernacular names were recorded, while the bibliographic data from 20 references, provided us with 56 use reports and 17 Cannabis vernacular names, from the 5th century to 2020. Our results indicate that medicinal applications, particularly for human ailments, and fibre use have markedly dwindled, contrasting with earlier epochs. However, the Cannabis seeds continue to be consumed in celebrative and symbolic dishes such as aghandz and tolma.ConclusionsThe recent decline in the medicinal use of Cannabis contrasts with earlier periods when access to pharmacological remedies was limited, and societal views of the plant were more positive. This shift can be partly attributed to the impact of legal restrictions. In contrast, the use of Cannabis seeds for alimentary purposed is importantly maintained nowadays. As medicinal use, fibre use has also declined, largely due to the availability of more competitive modern products. The loss of vernacular names over time, as detected in this study, also reflects the erosion of traditional knowledge, which correlates with diminishing use. Despite the small sample size and limited geographic scope, the combination of two approaches—information from contemporary informants and a systematic bibliographic review—has provided valuable insights into the changes in the traditional use of Cannabis in Armenia, that has not been explored in this way before.

Computational Analysis of Aluminum Corrosion Inhibition Potentials Using Selected Thiosemicarbazide Derivatives

Aluminum, a metal with a rich cultural history, remains vital in numerous industrial applications. However, its susceptibility to corrosion in harsh environments poses significant challenges. Traditional corrosion inhibitors have been developed to counteract this issue, but they often come with drawbacks such as high costs and harmful environmental and health impacts. This study employed density functional theory (DFT) to evaluate the potential of two compounds—2-(4-methylbenzylidene) hydrazinecarbothioamide (MBHC) and N-phenylhydrazinecarbothioamide (PHC)—as corrosion inhibitors for aluminum surfaces. Electrostatic potential (ESP) analysis revealed that the sulphur and nitrogen atoms in these compounds exhibit nucleophilic behaviour, making them effective for corrosion inhibition. The research highlighted MBHC's superior performance over PHC in corrosion prevention. Molecular orbital theory and Monte Carlo simulations demonstrated that MBHC formed stronger and more stable complexes with the aluminum surface, as reflected in its higher adsorption energy of −461.73 eV compared to PHC's −163.43 eV. These findings pave the way for developing environmentally friendly inhibitors to protect aluminum surfaces, combining efficiency with sustainability.

La construcción de la biografía de artista en el <i>Papel Periódico Ilustrado</i>: Espinosa, Groot, Matís y Torres Méndez

This article aims to study four biographical narrations published in Papel Periódico Ilustrado (1881-1187): José María Espinosa, José Manuel Groot, Francisco Javier Matís, and Ramón Torres Méndez, in order to examine how the image of the artist is configured in this relevant nineteenth-century journal that played a pivotal role in Colombia's cultural, literary, and artistic history. The research focuses on the analysis of portraits attached to the texts, the definition of artistic work, education, honors, and awards.

Detroit imagined: intertextuality and the photobook as urban history

ABSTRACT This article revisits Detroit Images: Photographs of the Renaissance City (1989), a photobook that challenges the dominant dichotomy in ruin photography between decline and resilience narratives. While much scholarship on Detroit’s ruin photography focuses on aestheticized deindustrialization, this study argues that Detroit Images provides a critical alternative. It employs intertextuality, narrative sequencing, and juxtaposition to critique and reinterpret urban narratives, particularly through its portrayal of the Renaissance Center (RenCen). The RenCen emerges as a recurring symbol, embodying Detroit’s contested renaissance rhetoric and highlighting tensions between economic opportunism and public belonging. The article positions photobooks like Detroit Images as expanding traditional urban pictorial histories. These works function not only as records of urban change but also as critical visual commentaries on broader socio-political dynamics. By advancing the concept of ‘Intertextual Urban Photobooks’, this study explores how photobooks draw on urban planning, art, media, and cultural history to critique dominant narratives and reframe urban imaginaries. Through a detailed intertextual analysis, the article demonstrates how photography actively shapes and participates in cultural discourses. It highlights photobooks as tools for challenging dominant planning visions, fostering alternative urban imaginaries, and offering innovative methodologies for understanding the intersections of visual storytelling, urban politics, and redevelopment.

The Posthumous Inventory of the Warmian Bishop Krzysztof Andrzej Szembek as a Source for the History of Material Culture in Poland

The Posthumous Inventory of the Warmian Bishop Krzysztof Andrzej Szembek as a Source for the History of Material Culture in Poland

Pipsan Saarinen Swanson’s Life Model Home: Mediation and Mythmaking in Postwar America

Abstract In a 1955 photographic essay, Life magazine published model interiors designed by Pipsan Saarinen Swanson, telling its readers they represented an authentic regional style called “Nordic Modern of the Midwest.” In this paper, I conduct a close visual and textual reading of the magazine spread as well as other archival documents related to Swanson’s model home. This reading I contextualize within design and cultural histories to demonstrate that Life framed the model home to suit its own agendas to, on the one hand, celebrate American culture and, on the other hand, promote modern design. I argue that in so doing, the magazine presented Swanson’s work in a manner that bolstered and expounded on a myth that had recently been circulating the design world in the United States. Promulgated by historians, writers, and designers, this myth revised the established history of modern design to relocate its origins from early twentieth-century Europe to pre-1900 America.

Bioactivity of plants used traditionally in the treatment and management of men’s sexual health

Background: In many African societies, men still rely on the long cultural history of utilising medicinal plants to treat and manage their sexual health.Aim: The study evaluated biological activities of 10 ethnobotanically selected medicinal plants.Setting: These plants are used traditionally to treat and manage men’s sexual health in villages under the Thengwe Tribal Authority, Limpopo province.Methods: Acetone extracts were investigated for their antioxidant activity, anti-inflammatory activity against 15-lipoxygenase, inhibition of nitric oxide production on RAW 264.7 macrophages and antimicrobial activity against Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Candida albicans. Phytochemical analysis was performed by determination of total flavonoid and total phenolic content.Results: All the extracts investigated showed moderate to high content of flavonoids and total phenolic content. Cytotoxicity of the extracts was assessed using the XTT reduction assay against Vero monkey kidney cells. Diospyros mespiliformis extract was less toxic and showed significant antioxidant (IC50 = 8.34 µg/mL), anti-inflammatory (IC50 = 63 µg/mL) and antigonococcal (MIC = 0.39 mg/mL) activities. Extracts from Garcinia livingstonei and Rhoicissus tridentata also exhibited promising bioactivity. While these three extracts seem to inhibit the production of nitric oxide, the rest of the extracts seem to promote its production.Conclusion: The findings of the study revealed that the selected plants possess biological activities directly and indirectly associated with men’s sexual health.Contribution: The investigated plants have potential therapeutic effects and can be used as leads in the development of new pharmaceuticals to manage men’s sexual disorders.

Before and Besides Werktreue: (Re)inventing Operatic Staging at the 1930s Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Abstract This article examines the role played by the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino as a kind of cultural laboratory for experiments in operatic staging in 1930s Italy. Founded in 1933, Florence's opera and arts festival was a key testing ground for ‘modern’ approaches both to set and costume design and to opera direction, two areas in which northern Europe (especially Germany) is normally held to have led the way, and through which the Maggio helped to reinvent Italian mise-en-scène as an act of independent, artistic creation. Setting the festival's overall project in the context of 1930s aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural debates about theatre, opera, and cinema, and drawing on a rich archive of as-yet-unexplored primary source materials, the article retraces an intellectual and cultural history of Italian staging c. 1930 that resonates productively with several present-day critical and scholarly concerns: from changing attitudes to the nineteenth-century operatic canon, to the early stirrings of Regietheater, to the intertwining histories of opera and film.

The Founders of Albanian Comedy: Language, Irony, and the Horizon of Expectation

This study examines the contributions of authors who laid the foundation for Albanian comedy, such as Kristo Floqi, Mihal Grameno, Foqion Postoli, and Ilo Mitkë Qafëzezi, emphasizing their significant role in early 20th-century Albanian literature. It also investigates their linguistic contributions, focusing on the language structures, stylistic choices, and rhetorical strategies employed in their works, and how these elements reflect the socio-political and cultural contexts of their time. By applying literary and linguistic theoretical criteria, the study seeks to establish the place of these authors in the history of Albanian literature and to analyze the reception of their works over time, highlighting their impact on the currents of national literary development. In the field of Albanological studies, these foundational comedic works have been largely overlooked. By addressing this gap, the paper not only contributes to the understanding of Albania’s literary heritage but also sheds light on the linguistic dimensions of these authors’ works, enriching the study of Albanian literature as a multifaceted cultural phenomenon. These writers must be analyzed within the broader historical, artistic, and linguistic frameworks that shaped their roles in the complex process of literary development. Furthermore, this research represents an important step in preserving and re-evaluating our cultural and literary legacy, providing valuable insights into the interplay between language, literature, and cultural history.

Memory as Pedagogical Tool: The Role of Objectives and Narratives in Learning Through Literature in the Works of Orhan Pamuk

The works of Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, who is most known for his novels, explore complex ideas of cultural interaction, memory, history, and identity. Subjectivity and the construction of one’s own meaning are common themes in Pamuk’s narratives. The idea that students build their own knowledge through their own experiences and interactions is central to constructivist pedagogy, which this practice echoes. His writings could serve as educational tools to demonstrate how valuable it is to consider different viewpoints and apply critical thinking skills when building knowledge. The utilisation of stories in the classroom is consistent with his elaborate storytelling approach. The three pillars of transformational education—engagement, empathy, and critical reflection—are nurtured through storytelling. Teachers could use Pamuk’s writings as examples or as starting points for class discussions on cultural and personal identity. Discussions regarding the function of art and aesthetics in the classroom would benefit from reading works by Pamuk because of the profound emotional and aesthetic reactions they elicit. His books provide a window into the ways in which feelings impact education, self-discovery, and moral reasoning.

Emergence of Postmodernism After World War II Characteristics of Being

This article examines the emergence and development of postmodernism as a literary and cultural movement following World War II. Postmodernism is characterized by its departure from modernist principles, embracing fragmentation, irony, black humor, and metafiction. The study investigates the philosophical underpinnings of postmodernism through prominent theories such as deconstruction and poststructuralism, drawing on works of key figures like Derrida, Lyotard, and Baudrillard. Methodologically, the analysis focuses on thematic and stylistic elements, emphasizing how postmodern literature questions traditional narratives, linearity, and universal truths. The findings reveal that postmodernism’s complexity and ambiguity reflect a critique of contemporary societal norms and values. Despite its challenges, such as inaccessibility and intricate structures, postmodern literature offers profound insights into human existence and societal constructs, making it a pivotal movement in cultural history. This article aims at analyzing postmodernism, the literary movement that emerged after the World War II, the factors influenced to its emergence, the main peculiarities of postmodernism and its impact on various areas of society and the reflection of the postmodernism in the works of contemporary writers have been investigated.

Beyond resilience? State failure, mutual aid and local action

Resilience offers an important framing for analysing responses to crises. However it is a highly contested concept, roundly condemned by many because of its associations with neoliberal logics of rule and the shedding of responsibility from states to citizens and ‘third sector’ organisations. In this paper we draw on the work of Cindi Katz to explore resilience as multi-faceted, and linked to Katz’s notions of ‘resistance’ and ‘reworking’. We use this framework to assess the political significance of mutual aid and other forms of grassroot support to the COVID pandemic in the UK. We draw on three empirical vignettes: one of a mutual aid group in south-east England that emerged during the pandemic; a second of a long-established voluntary sector organisation, part of the ‘Settlement’ movement; and a third of civic action in a small town with a strong tradition of volunteering. These offer vignettes of action at different geographical scales, and with different political and cultural histories. We argue that neither discourses of ‘resilience’ as self -reliance, nor the transformative promises in some accounts of mutual aid, adequately capture the shifting and contingent politics at play. Instead we stress the complex dynamics of different patterns of social action in particular places as practices of resilience, resistance and reworking emerge in response to perceptions of state failure. Following Katz’s framework we illuminate this fragile and emergent terrain of action, and suggest how such action might mitigate other emergent crises.

Narration, Memory, and the Construction of Self Fatna El Bouih’s Talk of Darkness as a Case Study

This paper investigates the intricate interplay between Memory and Literature as two interconnected symbolic systems that significantly conjure up in their representational capacities. It posits that literature transcends its marginalization in contemporary discourses by asserting its pivotal role in preserving and articulating both personal and collective memories. Literature’s unique ability to transform historical events, cultural identities, and collective experiences into enduring textual forms underpins its capacity as a mnemonic medium. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur's theory of mimesis and Astrid Erll's studies on memory, the paper examines how literature, particularly autobiography, mediates the reconstruction of Self and Memory within the frameworks of time and power structures. The analysis delves into the dual capacity of literature as both a locus of memory and a framework for organizing disparate experiences into coherent narratives, emphasizing its role in identity construction. It critically engages with Dariush Shayegan’s concept of "double fascination," which highlights the dynamic correlation of past and present in collective memory, alongside Ricoeur's tripartite model of mimesis that elucidates the narrative dimensions of memory. The article further critiques the tensions between individual and collective representations of memory, exploring how literature navigates these through emplotment and imaginative engagement with history. By foregrounding the relationship between time, narrative, and memory, the article underscores literature’s enduring relevance in preserving and interrogating cultural histories and identities, resisting homogenized narratives, and fostering a nuanced understanding of collective and individual consciousness. The article concludes by situating literature as a dynamic mediator that reshapes the past to resonate with present realities, thus contributing to both individual and collective consciousness in memory culture.

The dangerisation of drill music in Western Sydney: cultural signifiers, pre-crime policing and the decline of the presumption of innocence

ABSTRACT Despite Australian legal systems being underpinned by a presumption of innocence that reserves punishment for individuals found guilty of committing crimes, laws such as the Crimes (Criminal Organisations Control) Act 2012 have allowed an increasing number of exceptions to this foundational doctrine. As pre-emptive policing practices are guided by police-defined markers of criminality, potential offenders are often identified culturally and through aesthetic or symbolic markers. This criminalises particular iconographies and symbols that are only tangentially connected to offending behaviours. In this article, we examine the gradual development of legislation that undermined the presumption of innocence, and the mechanisms of dangerisation that associate serious crime with certain genres of music and performing musicians. By situating relations between New South Wales police and drill rap group ONEFOUR within legal, cultural history and using documents procured by the authors through Government Information Public Access requests (GIPAs), we argue that such laws and policing practices not only fail to enhance community safety but often uphold deeply intrenched colonial logics, exacerbating racial and socioeconomic inequity.

Moving out of the Background: Québec Women Filmmakers and the American Roads

In the American tradition of the road movie, female characters have often been relegated to being sex workers, third wheels, or background characters who can only be foils to the journeys of male characters on the road. This study examines how two Québécois documentaries, Hotel Chronicles (Léa Pool, 1990) and L.A. Tea Time (Sophie Bédard-Marcotte, 2019) comment on and subvert these expectations of women by placing them simultaneously behind the camera and behind the steering wheel as they travel these American roads. In completing close analysis of scenes from both films and comparing it with texts in feminist studies and Québécois cultural history, this study will reveal the fabricated nature of the American road as well as attest how Québécois women find their place on it.