Horse-drawn Carriages Research Articles

The puzzling soundmark of a cultural and tourism city: The case of Yogyakarta

Yogyakarta is a city rich in culture and heritage, making it the second tourist destination in Indonesia after Bali. However, unlike Bali, Yogyakarta losses its intangible uniqueness quicker. This paper explores societies' and stakeholders' perceptions of Yogyakarta's soundscape, particularly the vanishing soundmark. Quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed to collect data through questionnaires and focus group discussions. Quantitative data were processed using a modest statistical method to show trends, and qualitative data were processed using the Colaizzi protocol. Quantitatively, respondents stated that the sounds of gamelan (a set of traditional musical instruments) and andong (horse-drawn carriages) are two soundmarks of Yogyakarta. They also recognize a third soundmark, namely the mystical sound of a marching band heard at certain times, whose origins are still debated. It truly represents the term “intangible.” Through the FGD, the discussants revealed that determining the iconic sound is intricate. It needs consent on what “icon” means because different areas have unique sounds. However, they agreed that Maliboro is still the most iconic place but has lost its soundmark due to traffic noise. The challenging part in developing soundscapes and soundmark is the varying perceptions between residents, visitors, and generations about the pleasant and memorable sound.

Lost on the Freedom Trail: The National Park Service and Urban Renewal in Postwar Boston

Lost on the Freedom Trail: The National Park Service and Urban Renewal in Postwar Boston

Dynamics and Existence of Angkong in East Sumatra

This paper reviewed the 'Dynamics and Existence of Angkong in East Sumatra'. Angkong is one of the public transportation used during the Dutch East Indies period in East Sumatra. This transportation is also known as the Hong Kong rickshaw. Humans formerly pulled it by running. These human-drawn angkong were generally brought indirectly by the Chinese who worked on the plantations. As Viktor Purcell wrote, most Chinese worked in the logging industry and as angkong porters. Before this, other forms of transportation were used, such as horse-drawn carriages, ox-carts, or buffalo carts. These kinds of transportation were used for special needs, such as in forest areas, and as a means to enter plantation areas that gardeners used at that time. This research intended to explain the dynamics and existence of rickshaw transportation in East Sumatra using the desk research method on research reports, various sources of books, journals, and related articles. This research also utilized the historical explanation theory from Kuntowijoyo. The distribution of angkong in East Sumatra did not immediately become public transportation but started from private ownership. It started with the gardeners seeing and supervising the plantations they manage.

Tuna'da Seyrüseferin Yönetilmesinin Süreci

Tuna nehri Paleolitik Dönem kültürlerinden başlayarak birçok toplum ve devlete ev sahipliği yapmıştır. Tuna havzasında yaşayan devletlerin yaşam kaynağı olan Tuna nehri, devletlerin büyümesi ve yayılması ile daha stratejik hale gelmiş ve bu topraklarda var oluşun anahtarı durumuna gelmiştir. Ortaçağ’da sadece içme suyu ve tarımsal sulamada kullanılan Tuna zamanla ticaretin ana aracı durumuna gelmiştir. Tuna üzerinden at arabalarıyla kıyıdan yedeklenerek yapılan taşımadan başlayarak, yerini modern teknelere bırakmıştır. Suyolundaki hakimiyetin paylaşılması süreci Tuna’nın yönetilmesinde temel hedef olmuştur. Tuna’da seyrüseferin yönetilmesi sürecini dört dönem halinde değerlendirmek mümkündür. Birinci dönem, 1792 ve öncesinden başlayan ikili anlaşmalar dönemi; ikinci dönem, 1856 Paris Barış Konferansı ile başlayıp 1920 Birinci Dünya Savaşı arası devam eden, kısa süreli olarak planlanan fakat defalarca görev süresi uzatılan komisyon dönemi; üçüncü dönem, 1920’den İkinci Dünya Savaşına kadar devam eden Tuna Nehri’nin uluslararasılaştırılması çabaları; dördüncü dönem ise Tuna’nın uluslararasılaştırılması sürecidir. Ancak yüzyıllardır seyrüseferin yönetilmesi için anlaşan Tuna devletlerinin gemi kaynaklı kirliğin önlenmesi, kontrol altına alınması ve bertarafına ilişkin antant kaldığı bir hukuksal doküman bulunmamaktadır.

Strategies to Develop Resilience: Lessons from a Civil Rights Activist, a Scientist, and an Astronaut.

Strategies to Develop Resilience: Lessons from a Civil Rights Activist, a Scientist, and an Astronaut.

Analisa Pengaruh Hambatan Samping terhadap Kinerja Jalan Di Jalan Orang Kayo Pingai Kota Jambi

Increased volume of traffic flow will cause changes in traffic behavior of a road segment, especially on urban roads. This increase is caused by the increasing number of residents and the need for transportation facilities so that enough space is needed for traffic infrastructure such as roads, parking locations and so on. High road side activity has a major effect on road capacity and performance in an urban area. Among them such as pedestrians, road crossings, street vendors (Street vendors), slow-walking vehicles (rickshaws, bicycles, horse-drawn carriages), vehicles stopped carelessly (city transportation, inner-city buses), parking on the street (on street parking), and vehicles in and out of road-side land use activities. The purpose and purpose of the study conducted by this author is to find out the performance of the road against side obstacles. And the objectives can be described as follows, namely:To find out the volume of traffic, the amount of capacity and level of service on the road people kayo pingai during rush hour.To analyze the modeling of side barriers and road capacity of Kayo Pingai people using simple linear regression. As for the benefits that are expected and can be taken by the authors of the implementation of this study, including: Increase knowledge and insight into the characteristics of traffic and vehicle parking on the road body and know the various lalaulintas problems that occur in urban areas, especially on Jalan Orang Kayo Pingai.

The History of the Development of Emergency Medical Services as Reflected by World Philately

This article presents materials of research devoted to the reflection in the means of world philately of the questions concerning the practical activity of the “Ambulance” service and special medical land transport, the history of their creation and use in different countries of the world. It gives a selection of philatelic materials, representing the involvement of special vehicles in the medical care: horse-drawn carriages, wagons, cars of different designs and different years of operation, special ambulances.

Modern Mobility Aloft: Elevated Highways, Architecture, and Urban Change in Pre-Interstate America by Amy D. Finstein (review).

Reviewed by: Modern Mobility Aloft: Elevated Highways, Architecture, and Urban Change in Pre-Interstate America by Amy D. Finstein Geoff D. Zylstra (bio) Modern Mobility Aloft: Elevated Highways, Architecture, and Urban Change in Pre-Interstate America By Amy D. Finstein. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2020. Pp. 289. Part transportation history and part architectural history, Amy D. Finstein's Modern Mobility Aloft positions urban elevated highways, constructed in the early twentieth century, as harbingers of modern automobile-focused cityscapes. Beginning with a brief history of the automobile, Finstein shows that the quintupling of automobiles in the United States between 1920 and 1945—from 8.1 million to 40.4 million—created traffic problems related to speed and density, and required new infrastructures that included parking spaces, filling stations, and repair shops. Focused on three elevated highways—Chicago's Wacker Drive, New York City's West Side Elevated Highway, and Boston's Central Artery—this book projects elevated highways as modern twentieth-century technologies against the backdrop of preexisting nineteenth-century cities, constructed of brick and wood at the scale of pedestrians and horsedrawn carriages (p. 2). Finstein argues that "[u]rban elevated highways of the 1920s and 1930s developed in response to a complex dialogue among designers, engineers, social scientists, and municipal leaders about how to reconcile automotive freedoms with existing landscapes" (p. 39). Two themes tied to modernity animate Finstein's analysis of these elevated roadways. First, she uses the vertical transformation of cities that began in the 1880s to place these highways in the context of utopian, modernist technologies. Following the invention of the skyscraper, the vertically oriented city offered many possibilities for solving urban problems. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, urban designers suggested elevating street railways, crosswalks, pedestrian sidewalks and promenades, parking lots, and streets and highways. Finstein explains that "large-scale city plans sought to unite, coordinate, and systematically implement changes to multiple layers of urban form" (p. 53). Elevated highways were utopian approaches to constructing automobile-focused cities. Second, Finstein employs privatization as a way to analyze automobile culture as it related to urban design. Earlier technologies such as streetcars brought privatization to public space via corporate ownership and reorganized public spaces to accommodate privately owned vehicles. Automobiles intensified privatization by bringing autonomous drivers into street space and making streets into "arteries serving private automotive interests" (p. 34). Elevated highways, by separating individual transportation interests from adjacent aspects of cities, represented an unprecedented form of privatization. Three case studies demonstrate Finstein's argument that elevated highways brought modernity into U.S. cities. Chicago's metamorphosis into a [End Page 878] modern city produced a revisioning of urban highways. The architects Bennett and Burnham, along with the Chicago Plan Commission, designed Wacker Drive as a double-deck boulevard along the Chicago River that replaced South Water Street. This roadway "transformed South Water Street from a transportation channel to an essential piece of the city's armature. It would act as a building and thoroughfare, connector and border, mediating between the different components of the city's fabric" (p. 95). The development of Wacker Drive helped reimagine highways as architectural features of cities. Treatment of highways as urban architecture continued in New York City with the construction of the West Side Elevated Highway. The city's Board of Estimate hired the firm Sloan and Robertson, famous for their art deco buildings, "to synthesize modern transportation, modern engineering, and modern architecture into the public realm" (p. 123). Finstein makes clear that the architectural design of the West Side Elevated Highway matched the buildings that defined early twentieth-century vertical New York City. While engineering priorities dominated the state-sponsored Central Artery in Boston, architectural considerations influenced the design of the highway's ramps and substructure, which reflected mid-century modern trends emphasizing horizontal stripes and banding (p. 147). Finstein demonstrates that these highways brought modern design as well as automobiles into U.S. cities. Like many architectural histories, the analysis in Modern Mobility Aloft focuses on the aesthetics of the structures, the design decisions that went into these highways, and their legacies. In a few places, Finstein highlights the implications of these highways for the social lives...

Production of Horse-Drawn Carriages in Latvia in the 20th Century

In the first half of the last century, wood craftsmen and blacksmiths collaborated in the manufacture of carriages, but in most cases, they worked individually. There were also larger companies operating mainly in cities. The author’s main focus is on the Madona area. The carriage and sled workshop of Augusts Mazurs (1885–1975), which was the most significant in the area, is used as an example. It was established in 1924 and continued its work during the Soviet era. Horse-drawn carriages were the main mode of local transport in the Republic of Latvia and its territory also in the decade after World War II. Later, the role of road transport gradually increased. Carriages and sleds were made on site, most cars were imported.

Pragmatic Tips for Optimizing Remote Classroom Instruction in High School and College

Pragmatic Tips for Optimizing Remote Classroom Instruction in High School and College Khadija Khalifé Near the end of Marcel Proust's Du côté de chez Swann (1913), the narrator describes his negative reaction to the use of the recently invented automobiles. He tended to prefer the traditional horse-drawn carriages that made the experience of traveling seem more elegant, more authentic, more "real." Although the automobile was perceived as a conspicuous sign of the modernity and wealth that all wanted, the narrator exclaimed: "Quelle horreur! me disais-je: peut-on trouver ces automobiles élégantes comme étaient les anciens attelages?" <fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Du_côté_de_chez_Swann/Partie_3>. Today, we may find this reaction amusing, but when it comes to changing our habits because of a new technology or a new challenge, do we not have the same reaction? After all, we often say or hear others explaining: "I prefer to read real books rather than electronic versions because of the more genuine feeling!" As the academic world readjusts to the online classroom, we certainly feel that something is "missing": the real experience, the authentic face-to-face touch. The truth is, whether we are nostalgic for our past "normal" or not, tele-education, tele-work, and tele-life will certainly gain traction even after this pandemic subsides. As an instructor who has shifted, like everyone else, to teaching her students remotely, I have composed a few applicable strategies to optimize remote learning. These are based on the key ingredients I have learned and on the feedback I have received from my students, as well as other students in other institutions using different technological platforms: Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Classroom, Google Meeting, etc. Therefore, my suggestions are general, and not related to the use of a specific platform. I hope you will find them valuable, as our central goal remains the same: to create a successful remote classroom outside of the so-called "real classroom." [End Page 17] At the Beginning of the Semester a. At the beginning of the semester or school year, establish ground rules and make students commit to them. b. Establish when students are expected to join the remote classroom and when the class officially begins (for example, if the class starts at 10:00, we join the remote room a little before 10:00, etc.). c. Acknowledge that you expect students to be fully present during the whole class. This is harder remotely, as it is difficult to notice if a student is multitasking on the computer, but the instructor and students should commit their attention to one another for the class period. d. Explain how you would like students to participate (raise hand or write note in the conversation or chat box, etc.). e. Establish when, and if, to allow students to turn off their speaker and/or camera. Personally, I always recommend that students' cameras be activated throughout the class time. f. Ask students to fix all technical problems before joining remote classes. According to your institution's policy, give students your institution's IT link and other helpful links where they can obtain relevant information and easily reach the remote technical helpdesk. Before Each Class Unlike other courses, language classes are typically small in size, which is a bonus for us in terms of the quality of our interactions with our students. a. Clarify the format and timing of the class to students, so that they may establish a general pattern (for example: whole class the first 15 minutes; then mini-classes the next 15 minutes). Establishing this format will allow students to know what to expect, which is important when adjusting to this new setting. Having a scattered classroom where the material and format are inconsistent will make students feel unprepared, especially during this turbulent time. b. Design the lesson specifically in a way that will allow every student to participate. Otherwise, it is easy for students to get distracted. c. Be specific about the work that should be done by students before they join the online class. Again, it is important to be detailed and specific so that students do not feel confused. [End Page 18...

Horse-drawn carriages: sustainability at the nexus of human-animal interaction

With their nostalgic connotations, horse-drawn carriages are part of the tourism imaginaries of most cities that are simultaneously sacralized as sustainable ways of transportation and condemned as representations of oppression. This study looks at the sustainable tourism and transport debate, specifically the human-animal relationship, by taking horse-drawn carriages as objects of inquiry. The city of İzmir and the island of Büyükada in İstanbul, Turkey, were chosen as the cases because horse-drawn carriages are promoted as key features of the tourism imaginaries of both destinations and a part of everyday life there. A qualitative research design was chosen for this exploratory study. The results show the importance of imaginary, daily, ethical, political, economic, embodied, and social network relationships. Given the oppression felt in both human-animal and human-human relations, a solid regulatory framework decided by both public and civil actors is essential. The study indicates how socio-cultural and socio-technical assemblages are emerging in the transition to multispecies and hybrid sustainability.

Exploration of Javanese culture ethnomathematics based on geometry perspective

This study aims to explore the ethnomathematics of Javanese society using cultural elements of living equipment and technology systems that are based on geometry perspective. The method used in this study was exploration. Data collection was collected through document collections, interviews and observations. Life equipment and technology systems includes in the form of transportation equipment, housing, and clothing materials. Types of transportation equipment, housing, and clothing are artefacts. Mathematics elements are explored on horse-drawn carriages, Joglo houses and batik (Lereng, Ceplok, and Jlamprang motifs). This research is important to explore information related to ethnomathematics in Java that can be used for mathematics in schools. Batik motifs (Lereng, ceplok, and Jlamprang) are ethnomatematics related to lines and angles, triangles and quadrilaterals, circles. Ethnomatematics in Joglo homes can be associated with line and angle material, triangles and quadrilaterals, constructing flat side spaces, building curved, congruent and Pythagorean theorems. Ethnomatematics in horse-drawn carriages can be associated with constructing curved side spaces.

A Study on Horse-drawn Carriages in Jane Austen's Works

A Study on Horse-drawn Carriages in Jane Austen's Works

“Clean and Dirty” on Batavia Canal and Colonial Spatial Transformation

&lt;p&gt;The issue of cleanliness is not only related to the physical aspect, but it is also closely related to social and cultural dimensions. The concept of "clean" and "dirty" can be used as a marker of differences of race, class, and color of skin, either in relation to clothing, body, natural environment, or built environment. Batavia canals as artificial environment of the colonial period, now dirty and smelly, is a phenomenon that needs to be revealed by understanding its long history through photographs, paintings, and stories in terms of "clean" and "dirty" as well as all the activities on the canals. That evidence can be traced synchronically and diachronically.In the beginning of the 17th century, Batavia Canal was a wide, clean, and beautiful stream for defensive purposes, recreation, flood control, and status markers, then it transformed into a dirty, smelly, and disgusting canal in the mid 18th century. Finally the Batavia canal was abandoned, and the authority the Europeans was moved the administrative center to a higher area called Weltevreden for hygiene reasons. It resulted on the development of landhuis along the Molenvliet canal, that was ever built in 1648 was revived and used as the access that connects the upper and lower town. In the beginning of the 20th century, the Molenvliet and Pasar Baru canalsin Weltevreden area were no longer used by the European, especially when technology,transportation, and sanitation were developed. At that time, Europeans had to choose whether to live in a more classy and civilized lifestyle. Instead, they prefer to choose horse-drawn carriages and trams as a means of transportation and a bathroom at the backyard as a space for cleanliness. Whereas, the canal is used only by indigenous people to do daily activities, such as bathing, washing, fishing and others. Canal became a marker of stratification status of indigenous and European. The European used a room bounded walls as personal services area, while indigenous people used canal as their sanitation public services.The canal is recognized as a ‘dirty’ area because of the history. Therefore, the public should create the concept of cleanliness deriving from their own cultural identity instead of imitating others.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keywords: Canal, Cleanliness, Dirty, Transformation.&lt;/p&gt;

Alamedas, paseos y carruajes: función y significación social en España y América (siglos XVI-XIX)

An analysis of boulevards and promenades linked to horse-drawn carriages in Spain and the Americas. Carriages have rarely been studied as a means of interpreting the evolution of cities. Nevertheless, to understand these urban aspects it is essential to relate them, to places such as Seville, Madrid, Mexico, Lima or others towns on both shores of the Atlantic Ocean.

ERGONOMIC ANALYSIS OF A HORSE-DRAWN CARRIAGE USED FOR A JOY RIDE IN INDIA.

Horse-drawn carriages popularly known as Tanga in India provide a popularjoy ride. Such vehicles were selected from two cites in Central India and the other from a city in Western India, based on complaints from the users that these vehicles were not comfortable to ride. Twelve male and twelve female participants were selected for the user study. Two of the members of the research team travelled on the vehicle on twelve trips over a 7 kilometer stretch (considered to be the maximum stretch for a Tanga ride). The study comprised three phases; direct observation and activity analysis, a questionnaire study and another questionnaire study of body part discomfort, with the aim to get an insight into the ergonomic design issues of the vehicle. There were gross mismatches in the design and human anthropometric dimensions together with other issues like safety and reliability involved. Based on the initial observations, four concept prototypes were developed which were later handed to the respective authorities for further implementation.

The Creative Rights Act of 2020: Rethinking Copyright for the Future

The Creative Rights Act of 2020: Rethinking Copyright for the Future

In the Shadow of Freedom: The Politics of Slavery in the National Capital

This collection focuses on how slavery affected life in Washington, D.C., and examines the broad imprint that the “peculiar institution” and race had on politics in the capital until the Compromise of 1850. Though the number of slaves in the District of Columbia declined from over 6,000 in the 1820s to under 4,000 by 1850, the capital’s free black population had mushroomed from under 800 in 1800 to more than 10,000 in 1850. Washington was, as Mitch Kachun notes correctly in his essay on emancipation celebrations, “a staunchly proslavery city” (p. 221). Paul Finkelman observes that slaves were ubiquitous in the district, “working in the places congressmen lived, serving in the restaurants at which they ate, and driving the horse-drawn carriages in which they rode” (p. 4). Southern congressmen “had to face the reality of a slave city with a growing free black population and an increasingly discontented slave population” (p. vii).

Editor’s Introduction

Editor’s Introduction Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr. The disparate topics of articles in this issue are bound by a common concern for power relations and their associated conflicts over spaces, resources, and representations. Michael D. Pante revisits the horse-drawn carriages that served as the most popular means of transportation in American-occupied Manila before the advent of motorized transport in the 1930s. He emphasizes the gamut of representations to which the rig drivers or cocheros were subjected. It is not easy to reconstruct the narrative of these cocheros as an occupational category for the sources tend to speak either glowingly or disparagingly, the latter particularly when the carriages did not disappear despite the spread of motorized transport. Pante states that for now the best that can be done is analyze those representations. Nevertheless, this article provides empirical data on the socioeconomic conditions of cocheros as a group, which locate them in Manila’s social structure. The discussion is also highly suggestive of the multiple meanings of a piece of urban space called a road and the extent to which rules govern or do not govern the human competition over the traversal and temporary use of this space. The article offers a window to social relations between state and society and among members of a highly stratified society that resonate with contemporary Metro Manila. In analyzing a procession ritual in Catanduanes, Ramon Felipe A. Sarmiento retells the narrative of contestation (that begins in the early 1900s) over an object of piety, a stone that was quickly transported from its place in the indigenous spirit-world to that of Marian devotion. Two groups representing popular piety and the institutional church have engaged in a long-running tussle over the possession of this object and the appropriate expression of devotion and the attendant regulations. The procession ritual that emerged, Sarmiento argues, sought to efface its constructed nature and imprint unity and connectedness upon the [End Page 427] path, now a paved road, that links a far-flung village that claims the stone as its own to the parish center that seeks to impose its hegemony. Across this ritual space the oppositional relationship between center and periphery is smoothened out. However, as Sarmiento points out, the procession has also served as the arena for the persistent contestation between village and center. Ritual encapsulates this social tension even as it mediates this conflict. Resources in the uplands have been both highly valued and highly contested, and the exploitation and depletion of the forest reserve suggest the often wilful flouting of state rules, even as upland peasants justle for a share of the resources dominated by large corporate entities. Commercial loggers did not reforest the areas they harvested, and left behind access roads that made it easier for the landless to trek to residual forests and convert denuded land into farms. The government’s final recourse was to ban the export of log and timber in the late 1980s. To restore the forest cover, the state has sought to mobilize upland dwellers in Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM) schemes since the 1970s. Jungho Suh argues that these strategies have not been successful because these have not ensured food on the family plate and, like the rest of the forestry sector, have not been linked institutionally to the demand for timber from other industries. Developing CBFM’s connections to other economic sectors is the task of policy. The article by Resto S. Cruz I returns to the theme of our previous two issues: overseas migration. Cruz advocates an approach he calls postfeminization that goes beyond the quantitative calculation of the number of men and women who find their routes to overseas work, but rather delves into a critical analysis of notions of masculinity and femininity in various discursive terrains. Both men and women migrants have been represented in contradictory ways, which emanate from migration’s tensions with gender and kinship ideals that, in turn, are intertwined with class and status hierarchies and anxieties and the place of the Philippines in the global political economy. Cruz argues that sticking to the current discourse on feminization unwittingly replicates middle-class and state constructs, which must be replaced by...

The Metaphysical Fantasias of Zoran Živković

SPECIAL SECTION Behind a story read, a taletold, something elseissaidaswell, like a nagging voice half heard amid a conversation. Wehave the certainty that this voice isimportant, a necessity, andyet wecannot exactly make itout. - Alberto Manguel, BlackWater: TheAnthology ofFantastic Literature A patient has recall "Virus nothing is told 451/' of by whose their hisdoctor lives sufferers but that have can he has "Virus451/'whosesufferers can recallnothing oftheir livesbuthave photographic memoriesof everybook they haveeverread.Anelderly recluse whocollects photographs of himself he has takenonce a month foryearsdiscovers thathisimagehas beguntofadefrom eachphoto.Theteacher of a freestyle drawing classforautistic children onedayplaysfor hisclassa recording ofChopin 'sSecondPianoConcerto, whereupon one of his wards does something impossible for anyhumantodo. Suchis everyday lifeinthe worldsofSerbian fantasist Zoran2ivkovic. Perhaps becausehisfirst novel,TheFourth Circle(1993),incorporates devicesassociated with sciencefiction (aliens,artificial intelligence , parallelworlds), 2ivkovicis often misconstrued as a "science-fiction writer" - a label he aggressively disavows. And rightly so. 2ivkovicdoes notwritesciencefiction. Even whenheappropriates science-fictional conceits, hedoesnotusethem as sfwriters do. Neither does he writefantasy. His story worldsare not thoseof faerie - Oz, Narnia, MiddleEarth; they arefamiliar worlds ofeveryday .Nordoes he write horror. Thefrisson of supernatural fearis as alientohisaesthetic as explicit sexandgraphic physical violence. 2ivkovic belongstono genre. He writes a modern form oftheancient storytelling mode of the fantastic, whichhe calls "fantastika" and whichhe elucidates in theinterview that appearsinWLTonline. Lacedwith postmodern play, surrealjuxtapositions, and (especially) absurdist humor, his storiesmix,in varying proportions, themundane andtheMarvelous. 2ivkovic'sfiction issuesfrom thecentral andeastern European tradition ofmetaphysical fantasy; inourinterview, henumbered among hisliterary influences NikolaiGogol,E. T. A. Hoffmann, MikhailBulgakov, Stanistaw Lem, KarelCapek,Umberto Eco,and Russiansymbolist Valerie Bryusov. Inthisrespect, ifinfew others, hisworkfollows longstanding trends in Serbian prose. The supernatural and themystical have figuredprominently in written Serbianliterature from thefirst Christian religious and monastic worksofthetwelfth century. During thelong"Turkish night" ofdomination bythe Ottoman Empire (1478-1878), written literature all butvanished.Butfiction and poetry persistedin oral epic poems,legends,folktales, andparables. Following Serbian independence, written literature returned - primarily, realistic accounts ofpeasantlivesin smallvillages.By thelateeighteenth century, however, Serbian proponents ofEuropeanmodernism beganto challenge ruralrealists - first in poetry, then, after World WarI,inprose. By1948, theyearof2ivkovic's birth, many Serbian writers hadmovedtoward moremodern ,oftenexperimental formsthatincluded innovativeuses of the fantastic. Notwithstandingthe continuedimportance of real26 1 World Literature Today istssuchas 1961Nobel LaureateIvo Andric (1892-1975)and regionalists such as Janko Veselinovic (1862-1905), postwarSerbianliterature aboundswithwriters suchas Danilo Ki§ (1935-89), MiloradPavic(1929-2009), and BorislavPekic(1930-92),whose worksoften combine realism withthefantastic, sometimes usingtactics ofpostmodernism. Anyone wantingan overview ofcontemporary Serbianfictionshouldseekouttheinvaluable anthology ThePrince ofFire , editedbyRadmilaJ.Gorup andNadezdaObradovic (1998). Evenreaders familiar withthesmallfractionofSerbian literature available intranslation willfindZivkovic's workatypical, foritinno way alludesto Serbia,itsculture, or itstortured history. Hiswork islargely indeterminate geographically, historically, culturally, politically , eventemporally. Whilemany stories containmarkers tosometimeperiod - computers, horse-drawn carriages, anancient monastery veryfewcontaindatesor allusionsto events that wouldsituate them moreprecisely. v Zivkovic's dreamlike fictions reduction aredistinguished ofstory toessentials. bytheir dreamlike reduction ofstory toessentials. Witha fewverbalbrushstrokes Zivkovic rendersimmediate settings so theycomealivein ourimagination. Butthat'sall we get."Compartments " (2004)openswitha manrushing to catch a train abouttoleavethestation. Inwhat city isthestation? Inwhatcountry? Whatisthe train's destination? Whyis he taking thistrip? Whendoesthestory takeplace?We'renottold. As Zivkovicrenderssetting, so does he rendercharacter. About the protagonist of "Compartments" welearn only that heispolite, amiable, and unflappable - traits he willneed in orderto cope withthebizarreencounters thatawaithimaboardthetrain. Whatis his profession, his background, his name?We're nottoldbecausewe don'tneedtoknow. Elisionof the extraneous is essentialto Zivkovic'sart.His stories'lackofperipheral context, theirspatial and temporalindeterminacy , makesthemaccessible to anyreader, anytime, anywhere.By omitting characters' nationalities, backgrounds, cultural, political, andsocialcontexts butvividly rendering their innerlives,Zivkovicconnects thepersonal meticulously individuated people - totheuniversal - commonalities his charactersshare withallhumans. Zivkovicpopulateshis worldsnot with superheroes, serialkillers, masterminds, orevil villainsbut withordinary, ifofteneccentric, humanbeingswhose quotidianrealitiesare as familiar as yoursormine.Theirimmediate environs are citystreets, coffee shops,bookshops ,antiquestores, hospitals, libraries . . . eachvivified withprecise details. True,readersmayfindit hardto identify withMissTamara,a lifelong readerwho one day decides,on thebasisofno evidence whatsoever, thatto read even one sentence in anybook in herlibrary will resultin her instant death;orwiththenameless bibliophile in "NobleLibrary," a story intheaward-winningTheLibrary (2002), whowageswarwitha miraculously empowered paperbackthat,for all his increasingly hysterical efforts, persistently reappearsin his fastidiously arranged bookshelf. But anyonecan empathizewith themiddle-aged undertaker in Hidden Camera (2003).A slaveto routine and ritual, he daily dealswiththedeadbutneverengagestheliving .His mostintimate relationship is withhis fish, withwhomheshares"nothing morethan reciprocated indifference." Thenone day,on impulse, hegiveshimself overtounseenforces thatguidehimthrough a heroicstruggle to...