Introductory Chapter Research Articles

Creating tasks for eLearning Slovenian under the LanGuide project

The introductory chapters of the article briefly outline the Slovene language, its origin, and its basic characteristics. Afterward, the article also offers an insight into Slovene as a second/foreign language, which more and more people have been learning in recent times. The main part of the article is to introduce the methodology of creating exercises for e-learning Slovene from A1 to B1 levels. To make it easier for the user to learn the language, the exercises are upgraded in terms of content and grammar. The paper presents ten examples of exercises for all three levels on the topic of mobility, in which the grammar and the vocabulary are based on narrowed thematic sections (greetings, presentations, numbers, countries, nationalities, languages, travel, and accommodation).

Chain of Gold: Greek Rhetoric in the Roman Empire by Susan Jarratt

Reviewed by: Chain of Gold: Greek Rhetoric in the Roman Empire by Susan Jarratt Anna Peterson Susan Jarratt, Chain of Gold: Greek Rhetoric in the Roman Empire. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2019. 200 pp. Coined by Philostratus in the early third century CE, the label “Second Sophistic” (c. 50-250 CE) is increasingly recognized as an imperfect periodic designation. Does it refer exclusively to the tradition of epideictic rhetoric as described by Philostratus? Or can it be expanded to include the full range of Greek literary production during the first three centuries CE? At its core the term reflects feelings of belatedness and nostalgia, such that the common narrative of the period has become one in which an elite Hellenic identity was defined above all by paideia (“education” or “culture”). While this rooting of an elite Greek identity in the classical past is well recognized as a response to Roman hegemony,1 recent scholarship has begun to expand on this conventional view, pointing to elements of continuity both with earlier Hellenistic literature and the literature of the fourth century CE.2 Jarratt’s monograph Chain of Gold consequently sets a tall task for itself in once again addressing the cultural politics of the Second Sophistic. It is an ambitious and thought-provoking work, even if in the end it does not completely succeed in what it sets out to do. At its core, it argues for a reappraisal of the “second sophistic habit of dwelling in the past” as something that was not “monologic and static” but “varied and dynamic” and that offered the writers and performers of the period “a politically protected way of ‘talking back’ to empire.” (17) For Jarratt, the obsession with the past that has come to define this period of Greek literature is not a simple matter of nostalgia but rather of critical memory, one that allowed the authors of this period to reimagine and keep alive a deliberative civic space. Jarratt’s aim in this book is not at its core an entirely new idea. That said, what makes her work so thought provoking is her desire to locate “a colonial counterdiscourse” in a broad range of works (38). Moreover, she is certainly correct that too often classicists have been overly hesitant about reading the literature of the period through the lens of postcolonial theory (3). In addition to an introductory chapter outlining the monograph’s methodology, Chain of Gold develops this argument across six case studies, covering respectively Dio Chyrsostom’s Euboean Discourse (Chapter 2), Aelius Aristides’ Roman Oration (Chapter 3), Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana [End Page 103] (Chapter 4) and Imagines (Chapter 5), Heliodorus’ Aithiopika (Chapter 6), and Libanius’ To Those Who Call Him Tiresome (Chapter 7). Generally speaking, this is a nice mixture of well-trod and often overlooked texts. Her strongest chapters are those which connect what she calls rhetorical vision to the post-colonial concerns outlined in the monograph’s first chapter. For example, her discussion in Chapter 3 of Aristides’ Roman Oration explores how “the ‘ sophist . . . draws on the resources of [Homeric] epic to enhance his powers of visualization,” providing his audience not only “a phantasm of [Rome’s] imperium but also a techne of viewing” (47). Likewise, Chapter 5 reads Philostratus’ Imagines—an intriguing collection of descriptions of works of art—as an exploration in rhetorical vision that pushes the limits of ekphrasis. Treating the text as a museum of sorts, Jarratt acts as curator, bringing out how the text handles reoccurring images of youth, women, and different ethnicities, among others. This is Jarratt’s most successful chapter, in part thanks to the inclusion of an appendix, which maps out the paintings in relation to one another. In a few instances, however, Jarratt does not make full use of the ancient evidence. The clearest example of this comes in her discussion of Dio Chrysostom’s Euboean Discourse (Or. 7). In this speech, Dio professes that he will narrate a personal experience, relating how, after being shipwrecked in Euboea, he was taken in by a huntsman, who recounted his own troubled participation in local politics. The huntsman’s tale then prompts Dio to expound on...

Dionysius Bar alībī’s Treatise Against the Jews. Edited and Translated with Notes and Commentary, ed. Rifaat Y. Ebied, Malatius M. Malki, and Lionel R. Wickham †. Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity, 15. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020, XVIII, 169 pp.

Abstract: This volume is part of “a major research project of publishing a comprehensive corpus of the Polemical Treatises of Bar alībī” (X) which “have only been published in a partial and piecemeal fashion” and “have never been translated as an entirety nor have they received systematic comment” (XI), as the editors state in their preface. Dionysius bar alībī (d. 1171) was a scholar and prolific writer of the period of the so-called Syriac Renaissance (11th–13th centuries). He first became the Syriac Orthodox bishop of Marash and later, in 1167, the metropolitan of Amid (Diyarbakır in Turkey). The vol­ume offers an edition and English translation of Bar alībī’s Treatise Against the Jews (37–141), with a few short introductory chapters (1–36). The treatise was prob­ably composed between 1165 and 1168 C.E. (12). It is part of a series of polemical treatises authored by Bar alībī that are directed also against Muslims (ed. and trans. Joseph P. Amar, Dionysius Bar alībī: A Response to the Arabs. CSCO 614–15. Louvain: Éditions Peeters, 2005), differing Christian traditions, and idolaters.

A Literate South: Reading before Emancipation by Beth Barton Schweiger

Reviewed by: A Literate South: Reading before Emancipation by Beth Barton Schweiger Christopher N. Phillips (bio) A Literate South: Reading before Emancipation beth barton schweiger Yale University Press, 2019 258 pp. Does reading lead to liberalization? If so, what reading, or kinds of reading? As Beth Barton Schweiger argues, what she calls "the ideology of literacy," which insists on a connection between literacy and liberalization, [End Page 283] has been firmly entrenched in American culture since the middle of the nineteenth century. While it can seem obvious that a literacy-liberty correlation does not always hold historically, studies of the nineteenth-century US have long operated under the assumption that the North's higher rate of literacy was a contributing factor in the turn away from slavery, and that the South's relative lack of print publishing infrastructure enabled public opinion to support slavery. Schweiger's careful, engaging study of female readers in two families, drawing on journals and other writings at the Virginia Historical Society and in continued family possession, shows that literacy practices were a lively, continual element in the lives of rural southerners, even those whose lifestyle and infrastructure prevented them from devoting long hours to print-based activity. A Literate South might seem late for a review in EAL, focusing as it does on reading and writing practices of the 1830s through the 1850s, but as book historians such as James Raven have pointed out, the circulation of texts originating in multiple eras is a fact of reading life, and some of the reading material and much of the literacy pedagogy that the Cooley and Speer sisters experienced belonged to an earlier era. This book is very much a history of reading, following in the tradition of the micro-history exemplified by Carlo Ginzburg's The Cheese and the Worms (Johns Hopkins UP, 1992) and more recently by Allan Westphall's Books and Religious Devotion (Pennsylvania State UP, 2014). Schweiger's study does what the best of these micro-histories do, examining and contextualizing the documented experiences of a few, seemingly marginal historical figures in order to illuminate where expected patterns of reading and writing held, and especially where we may need to rethink our assumptions about literacy, culture, and the place of print in everyday life. As in the case of the ideology of literacy, Schweiger moves from fine-grained analysis to big ideas and assumptions, showing that the two scales do not always easily match and that the details of women's and girls' literacy at a given time and place may tell us much about what and how literacy was. Schweiger begins with a long introductory chapter explaining the diverse ways that print suffused the South, even at significant geographical remove from printing presses, booksellers, and newspaper offices. The Cooleys were Virginia farmers who engaged in part-time smithing and clothes-making; the Speers were North Carolina tanners whose Whig politics and middle-class values shared a similar rural space, which included [End Page 284] a print world made up primarily of periodicals, schoolbooks, hymnbooks, Bibles, and more ephemeral texts. This was not a world of many books, but Schweiger demonstrates that it was one of wide and voracious print and reading. Her canny use of Shirley Brice Heath's notion of "ways of words" allows her to detect the Cooleys' and Speers' reading not just by the titles they name but also by the phrases, cadences, and diction they use. Part I demonstrates the importance of this method by highlighting the literacy practices of the two households through writings left by Amanda and Betsy Cooley, Jennie and Ann Speer, and a few of their relatives. The chapters in this section follow the sequence of literacy textbooks that was well-established by the early nineteenth century: spellers, grammars, and rhetorics. The chapter on spellers foregrounds the experience of Jincy, an enslaved teenaged girl on the Cooley farm who Amanda recorded as studying a speller while other members of the household read, wrote, or otherwise used their leisure time. Schweiger traces a history of enslaved people's use of spellers that includes both the more familiar dimensions of prohibition and clandestine learning, and an...

Tina Soliman Hunter, Jørnn Øyrehagen Sunde and Ernst Nordtveit (eds.), The Character of Petroleum Licences – A Legal Culture Analysis (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2020)

The Character of Petroleum Licences – A Legal Culture Analysis is the sixth book in the Edward Elgar’s “New Horizons in Environmental and Energy Law” series. It revisits the original study into the legal character of petroleum licenses in the relation between the licensor and licensee as of Daintith’s 1981 monograph The Legal Character of Petroleum Licences: A Comparative Study (University of Dundee, Centre for Petroleum and Mineral Law Studies, ISBN: 0906343089), and it looks at how it has been developed since then. The book incorporates not only the original jurisdictions – Australia, Canada, Norway and the UK – but also those of USA, the Netherlands, Uganda, Russia, Mexico and China. The introduction chapter pays attention to the fact that although the term “legal character” has been used in the 1981 monograph, little attention has been paid to its difference with regard to “legal culture”, which considers that politics, economy and law are intertwined, and displays the characteristics and internal relationships of the reviewed petroleum regimes.

Wonder and the Divine. The Eternal Chain in Plutarch’s, De E apud Delphos 384D-385D

The first two introductory chapters of De E apud Delphos are confusing from a chronological point of view. A close reading and detailed analysis, however, reveals that Plutarch hid a chain throughout this part of the text, by means of thematic and verbal connections. This chain highlights that every mystery related to Apollo raises wonder about the god that leads to philosophical discussions. These discussions never result in a full answer, but lead to a new mystery related to the god that will elicit new discussions. This not only shows that recent scholarship is correct in claiming that Ammonius’ lengthy reply at the end of De E is not the eventual solution to the meaning of the E, but also clarifies Sarapion’s precise function as Plutarch’s dedicatee.

Contribution of Kramik Pustak Malika of Chatur Pandit in the field of Indian Music and its Relevance

Indian Classical Music is the best gift of Indian culture to the world. Indian Classical Music is of two types – उत्तर हिन्दुस्तानी संगीत पद्धति एवं दक्षिण हिन्दुस्तानी संगीत पद्धति. The roots of Indian Music are found in Vedas. Sanskrit is the ancient language and we found it in the Vedas. Many treatises related to music systems are also found in Sanskrit Language. To learn music properly, every learner has to go through two paths – 1. Theoretical music (Ancient treatises) 2. Practical Music (which follows Guru Shishya tradition). Pandit Bhatkhande has given wonderful and helpful notation system to Indian Classical Music. With the help of it he has collected many Bandish from different people and made a large collection. This collection is known as Kramik Pustak Malika. (Parts 1 -6). All these six parts are having theory of 150 ragas divided Thata-wise, with introductory chapter on the general theory of music, besides a short description of every Raga, followed by Svar-vistar. They contain about 1000 traditional compositions including Pandit Bhatkhande’s own compositions which are about 300 in notation. To know the Raga deeply, one can refer the same book and can get many Bandish, Svar-vistar, information about Ragas, their descriptions given in Sanskrit treatises, Thata (थाट), Tala, etc. Therefore, Kramik Pustak Malika of Chatur Pandit is the treasure of Indian Music.

Chammah J. Kaunda (ed.), Genders, Sexualities, and Spiritualities in African Pentecostalism: “Your Body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit.”

Moral discourses pertaining to gender and sexuality in Africa are certainly shaped by various religious norms and cultural beliefs, and for more than a decade, Pentecostalism has emerged as a primary area of research focus on this subject.1 The particular book under review fits within the ever-expanding body of literature on the intersections between African Pentecostalism, gender, and sexuality. The introductory chapter by Chammah J. Kaunda and Sokfa F. John centres Pentecostal and Charismatic spirituality as the lifeblood that sustains “beliefs, attitudes, moralities and legalities surrounding sexualities in Africa today.”

Eve-Marie Becker, Helen Bond, and Catrin Williams, eds. John’s Transformation of Mark.

Eve-Marie Becker, Helen Bond, and Catrin Williams, eds. <i>John’s Transformation of Mark.</i>

Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From the Past to the Present ed. by Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench and Jean-Christoph Galipaud (review)

Reviewed by: Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From the Past to the Present ed. by Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench and Jean-Christoph Galipaud Anton O. Zakharov Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From the Past to the Present. By Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench and Jean-Christoph Galipaud (eds.) Singapore: NUS Press, 2021. Pp. xv, 383, ill. ISBN 978-981-325-125-0 (paperback) Sea nomads of Southeast Asia are vital actors in the history of the region and its neighbours. Sea nomads have had long histories and played crucial roles in forming seascapes and transmitting goods and ideas throughout Southeast Asia and/or the Indian Ocean. The first European accounts of sea nomads and their piratical activities date from the sixteenth century but sea nomadism is still underrated as a field of scientific, especially archaeological research. An international team of scholars under the baton of Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench and Jean-Christoph Galipaud aims to show a huge potential of examining sea nomads from archaeological, genetic, linguistic and historical points of view. Now there are three principal areas inhabited by sea nomads in Southeast Asia: the Mergui Archipelago, the Riau islands and Sumatra, and the area between Borneo, the Sulu Archipelago and northwest Papua (p.11). Bellina, Blench and Galipaud in the introductory chapter 'Sea Nomadism from the Past to Present' (pp.1–27) emphasize various types of sea nomads and difficulties in applying a strict definition of sea nomadism. 'Sea nomadism can be defined by the suite of subsistence strategies of populations based on the exchange of patchy maritime resources, staples and trade goods' (p. 4). The scholars connect the forms of sea nomadism with 'the rise of trading states or trading polities' (p. 6). The first firm evidence of links between sea nomads and a thalassocracy is the seventh-century Malay trading polity of Srivijaya. Bellina, Blench and Galipaud offer three main stages of sea nomadism development in terms of archaeology. The first is movements and circulations between the islands of the Pacific during the Paleolithic times. The second is the epoch of Austronesian expansion and Austronesian 'fisher-foragers'. The third is the time of early trade since 3000 BP (pp. 7–8). The dissemination of Dong Son drums throughout mainland and island Southeast Asia may be connected with the sea nomads. 'To summarise, sea nomads were probably originally coastal forager-traders, characterized by their adaptive capacities' (p. 9). The scholars stress the need of three main types of archaeological evidence for sea nomadism, i.e., material, locational/spatial and physical/biological (p. 10). Sue O'Connor, Christian Reepmeyer, Mahirta, Michelle C. Langley and Elena Piotto discuss 'Communities of Practice in a Maritime World: Shared Shell Technology and Obsidian Exchange in the Lesser Sunda Islands, Wallacea' (pp. 28–50). There are many shell fish hooks, beads and pendants, as well as obsidian artefacts excavated in Timor, Roti and Alor. These shell finds 'shared norms of personal adornment and/or craft production which were remarkably stable through time in terms of the items made, choice of shell taxa, the methods of manufacture and the accompanying use of hematite' (pp. 45–46). The beads were made of shells of Oliva spp., Nassarius spp., and Nautilus pompilius. The almost identical shape of hooks dated to the terminal Pleistocene and found in Alor Island, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste as well as 'their absence in MSEA [Mainland Southeast Asia] and other parts of ISEA [Island Southeast Asia] at [End Page 220] this early date refuted any suggestion of diffusion as the cause of the appearance of these hooks…' (p. 44). The shape of these hooks is a functional adaptation to similar ecological conditions. David Bulbeck examines 'Late Pleistocene to Mid-Holocene Maritime Exchange Networks in Island Southeast Asia' (pp. 51–101). He offers a synthesis of data concerning early habitation of anatomically modern humans in the region since 45,000 BP to middle Holocene. These data include maps and tables showing various sites, artefacts and practices. Artefacts include Pleistocene rock art, early osseous objects, worked marine shells. Bulbeck summarizes mortuary practices of early Island Southeast Asia, including flexed inhumation, cremation and burials as well as Neolithic extended inhumation...

Negotiating cultural and socio-economic flows in the era of Belt and Road Initiatives: An introductory overview

This introductory chapter provides a brief overview of the development of the Belt and Road Initiatives that comprises 6 BRI corridors. It explores the reasons behind the launching and promoting of the BRI by the Mainland Chinese government. The initiative by President Xi Jinping is, in part, the fulfillment of the China Dream and his focus on the “Community of Shared Future for Mankind.” In this sense, BRI provides a platform for Mainland Chinese business community and individuals to move out of the comfort of Mainland Chinese society and embark on economic and cultural connectivity with business community and the Chinese Diaspora in the global world. At the same time, BRI also serves as a platform for the global business and Chinese community to reach into China. As such, BRI could be regarded as a soft power and a cultural power that facilitate people-to-people connectivity and enhance sociocultural and economic activities along the BRI flowscape. The papers in this volume each provides a case study of how BRI serves as a soft and cultural power that enables the individuals and the business corporations to expand in their sociocultural and economic connectivity.

Fisher, Nicholas. Symon Patrick (1626–1707) and His Contribution to the Post-1660 Restored Church of England.

Fisher, Nicholas. <i>Symon Patrick (1626–1707) and His Contribution to the Post-1660 Restored Church of England</i>.

The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey

The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey

New Media and Revolution: Resistance and Dissent in Pre-Uprising Syria

New Media and Revolution: Resistance and Dissent in Pre-Uprising Syria

Engaging with technological sustainability

PurposeThis study aims to introduce the journal and its purpose.Design/methodology/approachThis study reviews a variety of issues to show the kind of research which is relevant to the journal and the approaches which can be used.FindingsThis study shows the great need for research in the ways in which technological development is needed in order to address the issues of sustainability.Practical implicationsThese can be many and diverse.Originality/valueAs the introductory chapter for this new journal its purpose is unique.

Hazel Wilkinson. Edmund Spenser and the Eighteenth-Century Book.

Hazel Wilkinson. <i>Edmund Spenser and the Eighteenth-Century Book</i>.

Book Review

Book Review

Lamprophyres, lamproites and related rocks as tracers to supercontinent cycles and metallogenesis

Abstract Proterozoic to Cenozoic lamprophyres, lamproites and related rock types hold a unique potential for the investigation of processes affecting mantle reservoirs. They originated from primary mantle-derived melts that intruded both cratons and off-craton regions, which were parts of former supercontinents – Columbia, Rodinia and Gondwana–Pangaea. Well known for hosting economic minerals and elements such as diamonds, base metals, platinum-group elements and Au, they are also significant for our understanding of deep-mantle processes, such as mantle metasomatism and mantle plume–lithosphere interactions, as well as large-scale geodynamic processes, including subduction-related tectonics and supercontinent amalgamation and break-up. This Special Publication presents an overview of the state of the art and recent advances as achieved by individual research groups from different parts of the world, and outlines future research directions. Mineralogical, geochemical, geochronological and isotope analyses are used to decipher the complex petrogenetic and metallogenetic evolution of these extraordinary rocks and unravel a complete history of tectonic events related to individual supercontinent cycles. The Special Publication including this introductory chapter also deals with some issues related to the classification of these rocks.

Cell-Penetrating Peptides.

In this introductory chapter, we first define cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs), give short overview of CPP history and discuss several aspects of CPP classification. Next section is devoted to the mechanism of CPP penetration into the cells, where direct and endocytic internalization of CPP is explained. Kinetics of internalization is discussed more extensively, since this topic is not discussed in other chapters of this book. At the end of this section some features of the thermodynamics of CPP interaction with the membrane is also presented. Finally, we present different cargoes that can be transferred into the cells by CPPs and briefly discuss the effect of cargo on the rate and efficiency of penetration into the cells.

Foodways in Roman Republican Italy By Laura M. Banducci. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2021. Pp. 366. $85. ISBN 9780472132300 (cloth).

<i>Foodways in Roman Republican Italy</i> By Laura M. Banducci. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2021. Pp. 366. $85. ISBN 9780472132300 (cloth).