The dancer, the choreographer and modern dance scholarship: a critical reading

This paper undertakes a critical re-examination of the ways in which dance-making relationships between the dancer and the choreographer in American modern dance have been conceptualised in dance discourses. The essay proposes that a defining aspect of modern dance practices (from the moment that, after Duncan and Fuller, it became a group as well as a solo form) was the dancing together of the choreographer and the dancer(s) as the central mode of dance creation and transmission. In dance discourses, however, this dancing relationship is frequently not acknowledged. Texts by dance scholars Susan Leigh Foster, Amy Koritz and Randy Martin which draw on theoretical frameworks from outside dance are analysed in terms of the ways the theoretical frameworks that underpin them both make it possible to raise the question of the nature of the dance-making relationship while at the same time can also make the dancer's and the choreographer's dancing together invisible or unrepresentable. The analysis shows how scholarly discourses and the theoretical frameworks upon which they are built are already invested in regimes of intelligibility and visibility which have consequences for the representation of modern dance. This analysis forms the basis for proposing the need for a non-individualised, inter-subjective and intercorporeal understanding of the dancer and the choreographer and their relationship in modern dance.

Historical evolution and modern implications of concepts of consent to, and refusal of, medical treatment in the law of trespass

Many mischiefs arise on the change of a maxim and rule of the Common Law, which those who altered it could not see when they made the change.

Investigating the development of traditional and modern housing design in Libyan architecture

The design of housing is one of the most difficult tasks in the field of architecture. Housing meets people’s functional, social and spiritual needs. The fundamental task of this study has been to investigate the features of traditional and contemporary housing making it possible to describe them and then use this comparison to understand the differences between them

The modern Medea : Euripides, anti-imperialism and infanticide

Euripides' Medea has been reinvented several times in the twentieth century. This paper uncovers the impetus that informs the lineage of Medeas that are overt in their politicisation of the problems of colonialism and/or institutionalised gender dissymmetry: the Medeas of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Heiner Mller, Brendan Kennelly, Liz Lochhead, Christa Wolf, Diana Wakoski, Tony Harrison - and more recently Wesley Enoch. What, however, lends the Euripidean narrative to such politicisations? To answer this question, the paper looks back to Euripides' play, offering a reappraisal of its representation of infanticide. The paper argues that while this motif is routinely dismissed in the scholarship as a demonising representation of the cultural and sexual Other, the infanticide motif is also the key to understanding Medea's radicality and politicisation of rights-bearing subjectivity in its ancient and modern incarnations.

Machismo and the construction of immigrant latin American masculinities

While a growing number of North American authors have researched Latin American men and masculinities within Latin America as well as the experiences of Latin American men migrating to the United States, there has been little research on the specific issues facing Latin American men in Australia. In this chapter we explore the experiences in Australia of a variety of male migrants from Latin America through three key elements which emerged through our research: the importance of men as 'providers' for the family and the place in men's sense of self; the changing nature of men's and women's roles and statuses in Australian society and their difference from Latin America; and the shifting nature of what constitutes 'home' and a sense of belonging for Latin American men. In addressing the issues that the men face, we also examine the nature of the discourses on machismo and the almost fetishised nature of its oversimplified usage in relation to Latin American men generally and in defining their identities in Australia.

Observations of loxocythere (loxocythere) ouyenensis (chapman, 1914) (ostracoda) from the cenozoic of S.E. Australia with comments on species attributed to microcytherura müller, 1894 and hemiparvocythere hartmann, 1982 from Australian and New Zealand ma

The type material of Loxocythere (Loxocythere) ouyenensis (Chapman, 1914) from mid Cenozoic strata of the Mallee Bore No. 11 in the Murray Basin, S.E. Australia is partially redescribed and refigured. This species belongs to a discrete group of large elongate Cenozoic fossil and living Loxocythere species, the carapaces of which possess sub-rectangular inner margin outlines, and broadly rounded posterior extremities. Some much smaller but otherwise very similarly shaped species, that have previously been placed under the genus Microcytherura (i.e. Microcytherura? peterroyi Yassini and Jones, 1995) or the genus Hemiparvocythere Hartmann, 1982 (i.e. Hemiparvocythere Iagunicola Hartmann, 1982), are also known from marine Cenozoic strata and modern seas of the Australasian region. There is a marked difference in the shape of the inner margin between this group of small Australasian forms and European species of Microcytherura s.s .. The former have broadly rounded posterior inner margins, whilst the latter have acutely rounded posterior inner margins. The latter also usually present posterior extremities located well below mid carapace height. It is here argued that this difference in inner margin shape between smaller Australasian species such as Microcytherura? peterroyi, and European species of Microcytherura s.s ., suggests that there is not a direct phylogenetic relationship between these two species groups.

The cultural role of capital cities : Hanoi and Hue, Vietnam

Hanoi promotes itself both as a place for foreign investment in urban development and as the 'cradle of Vietnamese civilisation'. Special status is given to places of national heritage significance, and policy makers and planners face challenges of balancing heritage conservation and modern development. By contrast, the former capital, Hue, continues to decline economically relative to other Vietnamese cities and is discovering value in its imperial heritage as a 'vector for development'. These Vietnamese capital cities demonstrate that heritage conservation is a key consideration in government efforts to improve the position of their constituencies in the newly-shaping global and national economic systems.

Roman concept of mental capacity to make end-of-life decisions

When assessing decisional competence of patients, psychiatrists have to balance the patients' right to personal autonomy, their condition and wishes against principles of medical ethics and professional discretion. This article explores the age-old legal and ethical dilemmas posed by refusal of vital medical treatment by patients and their mental capacity to make end-of-life decisions against the background of philosophical, legal and medical approaches to these issues in the time of the Younger Pliny (c62–c113 CE). Classical Roman discourse regarding mental competency and "voluntary death" formed an important theme of the vast corpus of Greco-Roman writings, which was moulded not only by legal permissibility of suicide but also by philosophical (in modern terms, moral or ethical) considerations. Indeed, the legal and ethical issues of evaluating the acceptability of end of life decisions discussed in the Letters are as pertinent today as they were 2000 years ago. We may gain valuable insights about our own methodologies and frames of reference in this area of the law and psychiatry by examining Classical Roman approaches to evaluating acceptability of death-choices as described in Pliny's Letters and the writings of some of his peers.

Infanticide and anti-imperialism in Pasolini's Medea

Euripides’ Medea has been reinvented several times in the twentieth century. While some modern Medeas reiterate conservative tropes of the monstrous feminine or the evil of the cultural Other, the infanticidal figure of Medea is also open to more politically progressive usages. Indeed, several modern versions of Medea are overt in their politicisation of the problems of colonialism and/or institutionalised gender dissymmetry: the Medeas of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Heiner Müller, Christa Wolf, and more recently the indigenous Australian version by Wesley Enoch, for example, enact resistance to the interpretative closures that construct Medea as a caricature of the evil Other. But what lends the Euripidean narrative to such politicisations? And what role does the infanticide have in modern politicisations of the narrative?

To answer these questions, the paper examines Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 film Medea from his Trilogy of Life series. Focussing on Pasolini’s representation of Medea’s signature act, maternal infanticide, the paper outlines the complex ways in which this motif is integral to the film’s contestation of imperialist ideologies, values and practices, and its affiliations with Marxist and feminist criticism. Drawing upon theories of subjectivity and postcolonial discourse, the paper argues that the infanticide motif is politically enabling precisely because it exalts the politics of the ways in which subjectivity is defined. That is, the apparent blessing of the sun god over Medea’s murderous act speaks to the ways in which subjectivity is formed by the symbolic order: a point recalling Medea’s earlier articulation that society systematically demonises and oppresses foreigners and women. The films representation of infanticide, then, can be read in the light of the narratives politicisation of the discourses that define subjectivity and the hegemonic practices that subjugate and dominate the subaltern. So, while Medea’s infanticide is sometimes dismissed as a demonising representation of the cultural and sexual Other, it can also be read as the key to understanding Medea’s political radicality, drawing attention to the discourses of rights-bearing subjectivity in both its ancient and modern incarnations.

Pasolini’s project of anti-colonialism, however, is fraught with certain paradoxes. To politicise the predicament of imperial subjugation, Pasolini’s Medea places the burden of authenticity on the cultural and sexual Other, on Medea - and on Medea’s culture of origin, Colchis. In this way, Pasolini’s Medea mobilises the problematic discourses of ‘First World’ modernity that define the ‘Third World’ as the carrier of the symbolic burden of authenticity as well as of ‘the sacred.’ Pasolini’s Medea thus offers an overly schematic and abstract representation of the relationship between coloniser and colonised. However, Pasolini’s Medea is not simply or finally a reification of these discourses; rather it strategically mobilises them – just as it strategically mobilises the monstrous act of infanticide – to make its political point.