Public Assembly Research Articles

Models of Dissertation Defense: From Post-Reform University to Soviet Era (Case of Saint Petersburg University)

This study explores the issue of obtaining academic degrees in prerevolutionary Russia, a process that was an integral part of scientific initiation, allowing individuals to enter the ranks of the country’s intellectual elite. The aim of this paper is to determine the interplay between socio-political, corporate, and scientific elements in shaping the discourse of academic disputation. The analysis presented herein draws upon data primarily concerning Saint Petersburg University, which was a leading center for Russian scholarly activity. Specifically, this research utilizes unpublished materials from the minutes of the University Council meetings, journals of public assemblies of various faculties, and archives managed by the Saint Petersburg educational district, containing information on planned disputes. The authors conclude that there were eight formal obstacles a candidate had to overcome in the pursuit of a degree. The key hurdle was access to the public defense, which was a closed affair, being an internal corporate matter that excluded not only the degree candidate but also external authorities and society at large. The public defense of a thesis served more as a socially significant rite of corporate initiation, demonstrating the public importance of the corporation.

Rethinking John and “the Synagogue” in Light of Expulsion from Public Assemblies in Antiquity

Abstract Since the immensely influential work of J. Louis Martyn, many Johannine scholars have interpreted John’s ἀποσυνάγωγος passages (9:22, 12:42, 16:2) as reflective of the gospel’s outsider position in relation to Jewishness. In Martyn’s model, as well as in the model of his contemporary Raymond E. Brown, “the synagogue” functioned as synecdoche for “Judaism,” leading both scholars to the conclusion that John’s ἀποσυνάγωγος passages reflected the experience of a late first-century community that was on its way out of the “household of Judaism.” In this article, I draw upon recent advances in scholarship on ancient synagogues to problematize the equation of “the synagogue” with “Judaism” in toto, still a very prominent analytical framework in Johannine studies today. I then argue that John’s expulsion passages are helpfully illuminated when the sociohistorical context of the events described in the text itself are viewed from the broader perspective of expulsions from public assemblies in Jewish and Greco-Roman antiquity. From this angle, John’s story of ἀποσυνάγωγος can be read as an account of the contentious politics of popular assemblies, in which there were winners and losers in the competition over political influence, rather than as part of a compositional strategy of disaffiliation from Jews and Judaism tout court.

Restrictions on Freedom of Religion in the Time of National Disaster—Lessons from Mohamed and Others v President of the Republic of South Africa and Others

In late 2019, reports of a novel influenza-like virus emerged from China, whose Province of Wuhan was severely affected. It was not until February 2020 that the World Health Organisation was able to give this virus the name Covid-19. At that stage, the world was clearly dealing with a pandemic. Governments worldwide, including the South African government, responded by declaring a state of disaster and imposing restrictions on travelling and public assemblies. After declaring a state of disaster, the government promulgated the lockdown regulations, which prohibited, amongst others, congregating for religious purposes. A group of adherents of the Islamic faith felt aggrieved by these regulations, alleging that they were irrational and unreasonable, to the extent that they unfairly limited their freedom of movement and religion. They launched a constitutional challenge in the High Court in the case of Mohamed and Others v President of the Republic of South Africa and Others. In casu, the court had to deal with the novel issue of the limitation of rights in the context of a pandemic, as well as the rights of religious minorities.

The utilization of appropriate technology in the form of breastshot to support agrotourism in Sawah Pelangi Pelawan

Water is the primary necessity for rice fields, and if not managed effectively, it can pose challenges. Rice fields in Namang village serve as both a source of sustenance and a cornerstone of the community's economy. The objective of this community service program is to promote the use of appropriate technology in the form of a breastshot wheel to address water supply shortages. Additionally, it aims to bolster the growth of agrotourism in Sawah Pelangi Pelawan. The program unfolds in various stages, program planning, public awareness initiatives, tool assembly and tool testing. The evaluation findings underscore the high satisfaction of Namang village residents with the adoption of this appropriate technology, as the advantages of the breastshot wheel directly meet the water requirements of rice fields and enhance agrotourism attractions.

Interwoven Models of Peacemaking – the Israeli-Palestinian Case and Beyond

ABSTRACT Two competitive approaches are dominant in the debate about the optimal strategy to cope with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Conflict-Management and Conflict-Resolution. This paper suggests looking at them as complementary. It presents four models of peacemaking. The first, the Strong Leader Model, involves drastic unilateral initiatives taken by one of the parties. The second, the Social Reformer Model, encourages domestic reforms within each of the parties. The third, the Political Elite Model, offers various forms of diplomatic interactions and is the dominant experience in Middle East peace processes. The fourth, the Public Assembly Model, proposes the creation of a major Israeli-Palestinian Public Negotiating Congress, based on the multiparty talks used in South Africa and Northern Ireland during the 1990s. This paper concludes that a multifaceted approach, which uses insights from all models in an integrated fashion, has the potential to create a momentum for a revolutionary peacemaking process.

Dancing with Anthems, Godzilla and Laser Pointers: Performance as Protest in the Post-Umbrella Movement Era and the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement in Hong Kong

In this paper, I explore public performances in protest as a form of civic participation, especially for performances that aim to challenge and critique two controversial laws in Hong Kong, the Anthem Law and the Anti-Extradition Law. I focus on how arguments presented in the protest are performed in public, particularly on how participants make use of their voices and bodies in improvised and choreographed ways. I focus on two examples. The first is a series of “flash mob” events organized by the pro-democracy political party, Demosistō, who performed and parodied the national anthem, “March of the Volunteers”. The second example is a public assembly during the Anti-Extradition Law movement, where protestors used laser pointers to transform a protest space into a disco-like dance floor. I read these cases in dialogue with scholarship on performativity by Judith Butler, Richard Schechner, Jorge Cadena-Roa and Cristina Puga. I focus on how protestors navigate identity through performing with music in public space, where civic engagement manifests as bodily movements, sound and voices.

Don’t Move! Choreography as a Means of Arranging Protest in Times of Curfew

This article investigates protesting when there are restrictions on public assembly. In spring 2020, social movements (partly unwittingly) used choreographic means in order to deal with the prohibition of public gatherings, imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Examples in Tel Aviv (Black Flag protest, 19 April) and the campaign Empty Chairs in Germany (24 April) have one prominent characteristic in common: The lack of expansive spatial movement. The article delineates the ways in which these protests aimed to make their voices heard: Choreographic arrangements of physically distanced bodies were assigned on site to produce highly affective images for social media, thus shifting the focus of the protests’ visibility into the online public sphere. In addition, the different situations of vulnerable bodies calling to action are of interest: Given the pandemic times, the concept of protection takes precedence.

More than words: a study on the visibility of hand gestures in public spaces

Hand gestures play an important role in human communication. Although the study of their repertoires and roles for past communities is a popular field of research, there has been no attempt so far to study their visibility during public events. The aim of this study was to determine the maximum number of people who could see hand gestures well enough to understand their meaning. Using gestures taken from ancient Roman rhetorical treatises, which we divided into three classes related to the detail of the gestures (fingers, hand, arm, or arms), we conducted a series of experiments to determine the maximum distance from which each class of gestures could be seen. We used the results, including regression analysis, to conduct visibility analyses for two case studies: one on the rostra on the Late Republican Forum Romanum in Rome; and the other on Pyramid No 3 in the centre of Late-Classical Mayan Tikal. We used the calculation of the areas where gestures were visible to estimate crowd sizes by drawing on crowd behaviour observation during contemporary public gatherings. They show not only how many people could have potentially seen the gestures, but also what percentage of the theoretically available space could have been occupied by people who had the potential to see them. According to the findings, only a little under half (44.8%) of the maximum possible audience were able to detect all types of gestures (various levels of detail) at the LR Roman Forum, while at Pyramid No 3 in Tikal, just a mere 16.7% were able to do so. We believe that the results presented and the methodology used can be applied to analyse any public space, regardless of place and time, thus providing a valuable tool to comprehend past public assemblies.

Public Assembly Offence: Does a Conviction Need to Be a Proportionate Interference With Convention Rights?

Public Assembly Offence: Does a Conviction Need to Be a Proportionate Interference With Convention Rights?

Public Meetings, Respectable Requisitions, and Popular Politics in Great Britain and Ireland, c.1769–1850

Abstract This article examines the practice of ‘requisitioning’ public meetings in Great Britain and Ireland. These written requests to office-holders emerged in Ireland and then Great Britain, following bitter contests over the authenticity and authority of addresses and meetings claiming to represent a county or town in the decade after 1769. If the Seditious Meetings Acts privileged meetings officially convened by local elites, they also codified the practice of householders signing their own advertisements to requisition meetings under magisterial oversight. This would, especially when revolutionary threats receded and local justices’ sympathies permitted, allow local organisers some legal and constitutional claims to public assembly, even if Peterloo demonstrated the continuing threat of the Riot Act. Alongside bi-partisan opportunism encouraging public meetings, the article emphasises the creative use of constitutional and legal claims by ‘political entrepreneurs’. Comparison with Ireland demonstrates ministers’ greater recourse to new legislation and executive powers, but also the exchange of political practices with Great Britain. The prosecution of intimidating numbers, rather than seditious conduct, after 1842 diminished the role of requisitions, as did the hybridisation of ‘public meetings’. This was not so much the loss of a demotic form of community deliberation, but a proliferation and multiplication of the meetings—and voices—claiming to represent public opinion. The changing uses of a subscriptional practice can illuminate the relationship between government initiatives and local enforcement, and highlight the talents of those forging new meanings of the law, the constitution, and the political nation from restrictive procedures.

Helbredelsen

On November 29, 2020, 500 inhabitants gathered in a parade around the public housing neighborhood AKB Lundtoftegade in Copenhagen. Uniting spiritual, aesthetic, and political forms and under the name The Healing, the inhabitants fought against the Danish government’s so-called ”Ghetto Law” – a set of comprehensive laws and policies targeting low-income, largely minority public housing neighborhoods.
 The present paper examines The Healing using Judith Butler’s elucidation of transient, public assembly and precarity – in this case, the ”Ghetto Law’s” destruction of the conditions of livability – in Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015).
 While The Healing as a public assembly exemplifies the critical potential of a transient, unexpected political and aesthetic assembly, the paper emphasizes how the aesthetic and spiritual elements help to ensure that The Healing can be repeated – that the fight against the ”Ghetto Law” can be recurring, caring, and healing.
 The Healing, I argue, is thus both a transient prefiguration, and a proof of AKB Lundtoftegade’s historical democratic, vivid, and caring way of organizing that is made invisible by the current discourse surrounding the ”Ghetto Law” describing social housing as AKB Lundtoftegade as ”ghettoes”, ”holes in the map of Denmark”, and ”stone deserts”.

Construction and validation of customized genomes for human and mouse ribosomal DNA mapping

rRNAs are transcribed from ribosomal DNA (rDNA) repeats, the most intensively transcribed loci in the genome. Due to their repetitive nature, there is a lack of genome assemblies suitable for rDNA mapping, creating a vacuum in our understanding of how the most abundant RNA in the cell is regulated. Our recent work revealed binding of numerous mammalian transcription and chromatin factors to rDNA. Several of these factors were known to play critical roles in development, tissue function, and malignancy, but their potential roles in rDNA regulation remained unexplored. This demonstrated the blind spot into which rDNA has fallen in genetic and epigenetic studies and highlighted an unmet need for public rDNA-optimized genome assemblies. Here, we customized five human and mouse assemblies-hg19 (GRCh37), hg38 (GRCh38), hs1 (T2T-CHM13), mm10 (GRCm38), and mm39 (GRCm39)-to render them suitable for rDNA mapping. The standard builds of these genomes contain numerous fragmented or repetitive rDNA loci. We identified and masked all rDNA-like regions, added a single rDNA reference sequence of the appropriate species as a ∼45 kb chromosome designated "chromosome R," and created annotation files to aid visualization of rDNA features in browser tracks. We validated these customized genomes for mapping of known rDNA-binding proteins and present a simple workflow for mapping chromatin immunoprecipitation-sequencing datasets. Customized genome assemblies, annotation files, positive and negative control tracks, and Snapgene files of standard rDNA reference sequences have been deposited to GitHub. These resources make rDNA mapping and visualization more readily accessible to a broad audience.

Architecture of the public assembly building in Tomsk

The article discusses one of the first large buildings by K.K. Lygin, a Tomsk architect. This is the house of the Public Assembly (Lenin Ave., 50). New information is given about the history of creation and construction of this building. The building is analyzed in the historical and architectural context. The space-planning and architectural analyses give a complete idea of the architectural characteristics of the object. New information obtained significantly complements the creative biography of the architect, expands knowledge about the Public Assembly building as a significant architectural structure in Tomsk and unique object of the cultural heritage.

Reclaiming Popular Documentary ed. by Christie Milliken and Steve F. Anderson

Reviewed by: Reclaiming Popular Documentary ed. by Christie Milliken and Steve F. Anderson Nora Stone (bio) Reclaiming Popular Documentary edited by Christie Milliken and Steve F. Anderson. Indiana University Press. 2021. 406 pages. $80.00 hardcover; $26.00 paper; also available in e-book. Over the past twenty years, documentary film and television have become far more popular and widely available than in previous decades. Yet the scholarship on documentary has tended to privilege the most formally inventive and politically radical documentary films, from Chronique d'un été (Chronicle of a Summer, Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, 1961) to Tongues Untied (Marlon T. Riggs, 1989) and The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012). Noël Carroll pointed out this tendency to focus on the "art-documentary" in 1996, and the trend has continued.1 It is easy to dismiss popular documentaries, from fawning celebrity portraits to protracted true-crime miniseries, but doing so leaves a vital area of film and media understudied at the very moment when audiences are viewing and engaging with documentary media more than ever before. Reclaiming Popular Documentary is an excellent start to correcting this oversight. Edited by Christie Milliken and Steve F. Anderson, the volume contains invigorating contributions that cover a wide swath of documentary media. In the introduction, Milliken and Anderson ask, "What is the relationship between documentary and entertainment and between popular documentary and advocacy? Can popular documentary be productively reconceived in relation to genre, modes, or rhetorical forms? Assuming the [End Page 219] popular is defined in contrast to other categories (either implicitly or explicitly), what might those other categories be?"2 The editors' capacious framing is wise because documentary's commercial relevance has not drained it of truth-telling potential or political urgency. The entrance of documentary into the mainstream media marketplace has only complicated its cultural standing. The anthology's first section covers the exhibition contexts of popular documentary. Contributors Ezra Winton and Patricia Aufderheide consider two institutions that remain important to the documentary film ecosystem: the film festival, specifically Toronto's Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, and public television, including the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The choice to foreground these two institutions is strategic—a reminder that while streaming services have invested heavily in documentary films and series, they are not the saviors of documentary. Film festivals and public television continue to be central sites for the circulation of documentaries, formation of critical consensus, and launch of new documentarians' careers. Archivist Rick Prelinger suggests some imaginative alternatives to these stalwart if imperfect institutions, however, in the book's final section, "Engaging Audiences." In film events such as Lost Landscapes of San Francisco (2006–2020) and No More Road Trips? (2013), Prelinger has assembled archival footage of a particular place or activity and screens it for audiences who are encouraged to react and chime in during the screening. The popularity of these film events is a strong argument for creating new spaces and conditions for communal engagement with documentary cinema. Prelinger acknowledges that his practice appears arcane against the streaming service landscape. He writes, "I do not seek to bury the algorithm. But I question any retreat from public assembly, especially if such retreat occurs under the rubric of engagement, as so much interactive cinema asserts.… I would also argue that restoring big-screen experience coupled with direct, dialogical participation is a route toward staging the meeting of difference without its dilution, a means to an end rather than an end in itself."3 The most groundbreaking section of Reclaiming Popular Documentary is its third, "Short Forms and Web Practices." The short online documentary is of outsized importance in today's mediascape but has commanded comparatively little scholarly attention within documentary studies. Anthony Kinik, Michael Brendan Baker, and Allison de Fren explore what the prevalence of short web docs means for professional and amateur documentarians—who they partner with, what subjects they take on, and how they develop their formal strategies—as well as for people who watch, share, and comment on them. For instance, Kinik investigates the convergence of documentary film and journalism. As the internet thoroughly transforms print journalism, leading newspapers and magazines have begun hosting short...

Don't Move! Choreography as a Means of Arranging Protest in Times of Curfew

Abstract: This article investigates protesting when there are restrictions on public assembly. In spring 2020, social movements (partly unwittingly) used choreographic means in order to deal with the prohibition of public gatherings, imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Examples in Tel Aviv ( Black Flag protest, 19 April) and the campaign Empty Chairs in Germany (24 April) have one prominent characteristic in common: The lack of expansive spatial movement. The article delineates the ways in which these protests aimed to make their voices heard: Choreographic arrangements of physically distanced bodies were assigned on site to produce highly affective images for social media, thus shifting the focus of the protests' visibility into the online public sphere. In addition, the different situations of vulnerable bodies calling to action are of interest: Given the pandemic times, the concept of protection takes precedence.

Learning From Art How to Disobey


 The text reflects on disobedience concerning informal art education. The aim is to trace possible directions of what artistic research today can represent for the scientific, social, and educational world in terms of the emancipatory potential it can foster. The text addresses the issue of disobedience from three perspectives. It reviews three historical experiences of artists who deal with the educational-pedagogical practice. It explores the digital archives of two curatorial projects, depositaries, and activators of dissident knowledge. It presents a performance in the form of a public assembly, where I was personally involved.

The efficacy of health experts’ communication in inducing support for COVID-19 measures and effect on trustworthiness: A survey in Hong Kong

To control the spread of COVID-19, governments may implement freedoms-infringing health measures. Therefore, citizens' support for these measures is important. This study investigates: (1) whether health experts' communication induces support for COVID-19 measures, and (2) whether health experts' agreeing or disagreeing with government directives affects their trustworthiness. A cross-sectional online questionnaire was completed by 1072 adults in the Hong Kong general population between May 26 and June 3, 2021. Three COVID-19 measures were examined: contact-tracing mobile application, restriction-testing, and ban of public assembly. For each, participants were randomly assigned to three groups to view, respectively: vignettes with a neutral government announcement only; vignettes with a government announcement and a health expert's quote supporting the government's decision; and vignettes with a government announcement and a health expert's quote disagreeing with the government's decision. The result shows that positive health experts' communication increased the support for banning public assembly; no effects were found for the support for contact-tracing mobile applications and restriction testing. Participants who only viewed health experts disagreeing with the government had higher trust in health experts relative to participants who viewed health experts agreeing with the government at least once. The results render doubtful the strategy that health experts can be involved for garnering support for unpopular health measures without jeopardizing public trust in them.

Genetic Diversity of Viral Populations Associated with Ananas Germplasm and Improvement of Virus Diagnostic Protocols.

Pineapple (Ananas comosus L. [Merr.]) accessions from the U.S. Tropical Plant Genetic Resources and Disease Research (TPGRDR) in Hilo, Hawaii were subjected to RNA-sequencing to study the occurrence of viral populations associated with this vegetatively propagated crop. Analysis of high-throughput sequencing data obtained from 24 germplasm accessions and public domain transcriptome shotgun assembly (TSA) data identified two novel sadwaviruses, putatively named "pineapple secovirus C" (PSV-C) and "pineapple secovirus D" (PSV-D). They shared low amino acid sequence identity (from 34.8 to 41.3%) compared with their homologs in the Pro-pol region of the previously reported PSV-A and PSV-B. The complete genome (7485 bp) corresponding to a previously reported partial sequence of the badnavirus, pineapple bacilliform ER virus (PBERV), was retrieved from one of the datasets. Overall, we discovered a total of 69 viral sequences representing ten members within the Ampelovirus, Sadwavirus, and Badnavirus genera. Genetic diversity and recombination events were found in members of the pineapple mealybug wilt-associated virus (PMWaV) complex as well as PSVs. PMWaV-1, -3, and -6 presented recombination events across the quintuple gene block, while no recombination events were found for PMWaV-2. High recombination frequency of the RNA1 and RNA2 molecules from PSV-A and PSV-B were congruent with the diversity found by phylogenetic analyses. Here, we also report the development and improvement of RT-PCR diagnostic protocols for the specific identification and detection of viruses infecting pineapple based on the diverse viral populations characterized in this study. Given the high occurrence of recombination events, diversity, and discovery of viruses found in Ananas germplasm, the reported and validated RT-PCR assays represent an important advance for surveillance of viral infections of pineapple.

Imposing a Condition on the Location of a Public Assembly: The Relevance of ‘Scene’ and the Need for Certainty

Imposing a Condition on the Location of a Public Assembly: The Relevance of ‘Scene’ and the Need for Certainty

The modern agoras - the relationship between urban open public space and political expression. The case study of the city of Poznań, Poland

Contemporary urban public open spaces are stages of political expression, reminiscent of the historical Greek agoras which performed similar functions thousands of years ago. What has clearly changed, however, is the form of political expression. Rather than individual speeches by ancient thinkers and politicians, we increasingly deal with collective protests and assemblies presenting the views of the communities involved. Nowadays public assemblies also take place in a much larger number of public spaces, depending on the needs. They are chosen on the basis of 3 main categories of factors: spatial, semiotic and reception-related, which may overlap. The main objective of this paper is to determine the role of urban public open spaces as places of expression of political views during public assemblies. The study was based on the analysis of data from the Municipality of Poznań, as well as individual in-depth interviews with people involved in the organisation of public assemblies in Poznań in 2019 and representatives of local associations.