Gli oggetti e la documentazione degli scavi britannici di karkemish: Una nuova analisi

Questa tesi comprende la ricerca sui materiali provenienti dagli scavi britannici, avvenuti fra il 1911 e il 1920, del sito di Karkemish (Gaziantep - Turchia). Vengono qui studiati gli oggetti (a eccezione delle sculture) databili all’Età del Bronzo e del Ferro, che sono nella quasi totalità inediti. Si sono prese in considerazione i reperti attualmente conservati al British Museum di Londra, nei Musei Archeologici di Istanbul e al Museo delle Civiltà Anatoliche di Ankara.

Cultura materiale ed espansione di Roma: Il caso dell'Ager Gallicus

Lo scritto ha l’obiettivo di definire dinamiche e cronologie di quel complesso processo espansionistico che portò Roma alla conquista dei territori dell’Ager Gallicus, partendo dall’analisi dettagliata della cultura materiale e dei rispettivi contesti di provenienza emersi dalle recenti indagini archeologiche realizzate dal Dipartimento di Storia Culture Civiltà dell’Università degli Studi di Bologna nella città di Senigallia. In armonia con quanto testimoniato dalle sequenze stratigrafiche documentate, si delineano quattro principali fasi di vita dell’abitato: la prima preromana, la seconda riferibile alla prima fase di romanizzazione del sito, la terza inerente allo sviluppo dell’insediamento con la fondazione della colonia romana e l’ultima riferibile all’età repubblicana. Emerge con chiarezza la presenza già dalla fine del IV-inizio III a.C., di un insediamento romano nel territorio della città, sviluppatosi con la fondazione di un’area sacra e la predisposizione di un’area produttiva. La scelta del sito di Sena Gallica fu strategica: un territorio idoneo allo sfruttamento agricolo e utile come testa di ponte per la conquista dei territori del Nord Italia. Inoltre, questo centro aveva già intrecciato rapporti commerciali con gli insediamenti costieri adriatici e mediterranei. La presenza di ceramica di produzione locale, il rinvenimento di elementi distanziatori e le caratteristiche geomorfologiche del sito, fanno ipotizzare la presenza in loco di un’officina ceramica. Ciò risulta di grande importanza dato che tutte le attestazioni ceramiche prodotte localmente e rinvenute nel territorio, fino ad oggi sono attribuite alle officine di Aesis e Ariminum. Dunque Sena Gallica sarebbe stata un centro commerciale e produttivo. La precoce presenza di ceramica a Vernice Nera di tipo romano-laziale prodotte localmente prima dell’istituzione ufficiale della colonia, che permette di ipotizzare uno stanziamento di piccoli gruppi di Romani in territori appena conquistati ma non ancora colonizzati, attestata a Sena Gallica, trova riscontro anche in altri centri adriatici come Ariminum, Aesis, Pisaurum, Suasa e Cattolica.

"Unser Volk ist vereint, unser Land unabhängig" - zum Umgang mit nationalen Identitätsmodellen im postsowjetischen Kasachstan

Für alle fünf zentralasiatischen Teilrepubliken kam der Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion im Jahr 1991 relativ plötzlich und eher unerwartet. Der Prozess der „Transformation“ beinhaltete für die neu entstandenen Staaten nun nicht nur die Umstellung politischer und wirtschaftlicher Systeme, sondern ebenso die Organisation von Erinnerung und die Konstruktion von Identität, bei der die staatliche Nationalisierungspolitik oft Paradebeispiele von invented traditions her-vorbrachte. rnIn Kasachstan, dem Land, das während der Sowjetzeit am stärksten russifiziert wurde und heute offiziell 120 Minderheiten zählt, stellt sich dabei die Frage, wie nationale Identitätsmus-ter konstruiert werden und wie Politik. Medien und Bevölkerung damit umgehen. Zwanzig Jahre nach der Unabhängigkeitserklärung des Landes und einer Phase, in der die Regierung mit einer Vielzahl von Maßnahmen versucht, den Identitätsfindungsprozess zu steuern, wurde im Rahmen dieser Arbeit erstmals eine empirische Studie zu der Frage durchgeführt, welche Bedeutungen bestimmte Identitätskonzepte für die lokale Bevölkerung haben. Während meh-rerer Forschungsaufenthalte von insgesamt vier Monaten in den Jahren 2010 und 2011 wurden in Hinblick auf die Fragestellung leitfadenorientierte Interviews und informelle Gespräche mit Teilen der kasachstanischen Bevölkerung geführt, teilnehmende Beobachtung, zwei Fragebo-genaktionen und eine Zeitungsanalyse durchgeführt sowie wissenschaftliche Studien und poli-tische Dokumente analysiert.rnDie Arbeit kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass die Mehrheit der Befragten sich mehr oder weniger stark entweder über die Staatsbürgerschaft oder die ethnische Zugehörigkeit zur Titularnation mit dem Staat identifiziert. Auffällig ist die Bedeutung regionaler Identitäten für die Befrag-ten, die weder in der nationalen Identitätspolitik noch in der wissenschaftlichen Literatur von Wichtigkeit sind. Ethnische und religiöse Nivellierungen scheinen im Alltagsleben belanglos zu sein, aber in bestimmten anderen Kontexten eine entscheidende Rolle zu spielen. Starke Unterschiede in der Bedeutung verschiedener Identitätsmodelle lassen sich zwischen Stadt- und Landbevölkerung beziehungsweise zwischen sowjetisierten und nach der Wende repatri-ierten Kasachen ausmachen.rnEs ist anzunehmen, dass die Regierung der entscheidende Agent in der Identitätsfindung des Landes ist. Unter den Befragten zeigte sich, dass Identitätspolitik auf der pragmatischen Ebe-ne, beispielsweise in der Anerkennung von Russisch und Kasachisch als Staatssprachen, er-folgreicher ist als auf der emotionalen. rn

Poema of Lieutenant Schmidt’s End: Pasternak’s Dialogue with Tsvetaeva through the Prism of Genre.

Boris Pasternak’s poemy are acutely self-conscious of their place in the epic tradition. Lieutenant Schmidt (LS) represents one attempt at exploring the parameters of the poema itself as the poet makes a “difficult” transition from “lyric thinking” to “the epic.” In this article I examine this transition against a contemporaneous example in the genre, Tsvetaeva’s Poema of the End (PE). In LS, structural elements of the poema are counterposed to those of PE. While PE amplifies the individual voice, LS muffles what is personal for the sake of the public voice. While PE is atemporal, LS is historical. While PE unfolds on symbolic planes, with elements of plot kept to a bare minimum (a single moment of separation), LS is a plot-driven account based on concrete, documentary material. Finally, while PE is an “overgrown lyric”—representing the “lyric thinking” that Pasternak hopes to transcend— LS is an exploration of the possibilities that a more traditional model of the poema can offer. Although in the present analysis I draw on several theories of poetic genres, this is by no means an exhaustive study of epic versus lyric forms of poetry. Instead, my analysis focuses on those structural and thematic features of the poema that the poets themselves perceived as central to their texts. Pasternak, for his part, develops the structure and thematics of his poema in ways that are inspired by PE, but also, as we will see, in more significant ways, contrast with it.

The Visual, the Epic, and Pasternak’s ‘Devjat’son pjatyj god’

In this study I consider the role of poetic description in Pasternak’s ‘Deviat’sot piatyi god’ (‘1905’) in the context of the genre of the poema. Descriptive passages in poetic narratives, as a rule, provide a static setting for a protagonist’s actions. In the absence of any single hero in Pasternak’s poema, topography itself begins to move. I examine the categories of stasis and motion, central to ‘1905’, at the intersection of the visual and the verbal. The idea of reanimating the events of the first Russian revolution twenty years after the fact borders on the ekphrastic in places, where the poet transposes techniques and genres from the visual arts into a verse epic. Finally, I suggest that aesthetic perception itself is the dominant principle in the poema, as opposed to documentary faithfulness, which is traditionally emphasized in the scholarship on this work.

Ogawa Mimei's Children's Stories: A Case Study of the Rise of Childhood in the Context of Westernization and Japanese Modernization

In this thesis, I examine the influences of westernization, the tension between Japanese modernity and tradition, and the stories of Hans Christian Andersen on Ogawa Mimei’s children’s stories. I begin the body of my thesis with a brief historical background of Japan, beginning with the start of the Meiji period in 1868. Within the historical section, I focus on societal and cultural elements and changes that pertain to my thesis. I also include the introduction of Hans Christian Andersen in Japan. I wrap up the historical section by a description of Ogawa’s involvement in the Japanese proletarian literature movement and the rise of the Japanese proletarian children’s literature movement. Then, I launch into an analysis of Ogawa’s works categorized by thematic elements. These elements include westernization, class conflict, nature and civilization, religion and morals, and children and childhood. When relevant, I also compare and contrast Ogawa’s stories with Andersen’s. In the westernization section, I show how some of Ogawa’s stories demonstrate contact between Japan and the West. In the Class Conflict section, I discuss how Ogawa views class through a socialist lens, whereas Andersen does not dispute class distinctions, but encourages his readers to attempt an upward social climb. In the nature and civilization section, I show how Ogawa and Andersen share common opinions on the impact of civilization on nature. In the religion and morals section, I show how Ogawa incorporates religion, including Christianity, into vii his works. Andersen utilizes religion in a more overt manner in order to convey morals to his audience. Both authors address religious topics like the concept of the afterlife. Finally, in children and childhood, I demonstrate how both Ogawa and Andersen treat their child protagonists and use them and their situations to instruct their readers. Through this case study, I show how westernization and the tensions between Japanese modernization and tradition led to the rise of the proletarian children’s literature movement, which is exemplified by Ogawa’s stories. The emergence of the proletarian children’s literature movement is an indication of the establishment of a new concept of childhood in Japan. Writers like Ogawa Mimei attempted to write children’s stories that represented the new Japanese culture that was a result of adapting Western ideals to fit Japanese society. Some of Ogawa’s stories are a direct commentary on his opinion of Japanese interaction with the West. By comparing Ogawa’s and Andersen’s stories, I demonstrate how Ogawa borrows certain Western elements and possibly responds directly to Andersen. Ogawa also addresses some of the same topics as Andersen, yet their reactions are not always the same. What I find in my analysis supports my thesis that Ogawa is able to maintain Japanese tradition while infusing his children’s stories with Western and modern elements. In doing so, he reflects a largely popular social and cultural practice of his time.

Must We Forgive?: Exploring the Limits and Possibilities of Forgiveness and Resentment

Conflict has marked civilization from Biblical times to the present day. Each of us, with our different and competing interests, and our desires to pursue those interests, have over time wronged another person. Not surprisingly then, forgiveness is a concern of individuals and groups¿communities, countries, religious groups, races¿yet it is a complex idea that philosophers, theologians, political scientists, and psychologists have grappled with. Some have argued that forgiveness is a therapeutic means for overcoming guilt, pain, and anger. Forgiveness is often portrayed as a coping mechanism¿how often we hear the phrase, ¿forgive and forget,¿ as an arrangement to help two parties surmount the complications of disagreement. But forgiveness is not simply a modus vivendi; the ability to forgive and conversely to ask for forgiveness, is counted as an admirable trait and virtue. This essay will explore the nature of forgiveness, which in Christian dogma is often posited as an unqualified virtue. The secular world has appropriated the Christian notion of forgiveness as such a virtue¿but are there instances wherein offering forgiveness is morally inappropriate or dangerous? I will consider the situations in which forgiveness, understood in this essay as the overcoming of resentment, may not be a virtue¿when perhaps maintaining resentment is as virtuous, if not more virtuous, than forgiving. I will explain the various ethical frameworks involved in understanding forgiveness as a virtue, and the relationship between them. I will argue that within Divine Command Theory forgiveness is a virtue¿and thus morally right¿because God commands it. This ethical system has established forgiveness as unconditional, an idea which has been adopted into popular culture. With virtue ethics in mind, which holds virtues to be those traits which benefit the person who possesses them, contributing to the good life, I will argue unqualified forgiveness is not always a virtue, as it will not always benefit the victim. Because there is no way to avoid wrongdoing, humans are confronted with the question of forgiveness with every indiscretion. Its limits, its possibilities, its relationship to one¿s character¿forgiveness is a concern of all people at some time if for no other reason than the plain fact that the past cannot be undone. I will be evaluating the idea of forgiveness as a virtue, in contrast to its counterpart, resentment. How can forgiveness be a response to evil, a way to renounce resentment, and a means of creating a positive self-narrative? And what happens when a sense of moral responsibility is impossible to reconcile with the Christian (and now, secularized imperative of) forgiveness? Is it ever not virtuous to forgive? In an attempt to answer that question I will argue that there are indeed times when forgiveness is not a virtue, specifically: when forgiveness compromises one¿s own self-respect; when it is not compatible with respect for the moral community; and when the offender is unapologetic. The kind of offense I have in mind is a dehumanizing one, one that intends to diminish another person¿s worth or humanity. These are moral injuries, to which I will argue resentment is a better response than forgiveness when the three qualifications cannot be met.

Literature in Bosnia and Hercegovina till 19th Century in South Slav Context

Mr. Gajevic traced the development of literacy and literature in Bosnia and Herzegovina from the 12th to the 19th in relation to other south Slavic literatures and civilisations, studying their interrelations, links and influences. From the 12th to the 15th centuries, literature in this area developed under strong influence from the neighbouring South Slavic countries, which were directly connected with more developed foreign cultures and civilisations. The literatures of these countries had differing religious and cultural backgrounds, some developing under Byzantine and Orthodox influence and others as a part of Latin civilisation and the Catholic religion. This led to different and sometimes contradictory literary, religious and other influences on Bosnia and Herzegovina, making spiritual and religious unity for the country virtually impossible. Under the influence of the Bosnian state and church, however, there were signs of a search for compromise, leading to some mixing of the difference traditions. Following the Turkish conquest, however, three denominational communities (Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim) developed in Bosnia and Herzegovina and this became the general framework for life, including literature. This led to three separate literary traditions - Serb-Orthodox, Croat-Catholic and Bosniac-Islamic. This internal disintegration of Bosnian literature did however facilitate the process of integration of some of its denominational traditions with similar traditions in other countries. The third aspect considered in the research was the genesis and expansion of vernacular and folk literature from Bosnia and Herzegovina throughout the South Slavic areas and its contribution to the language and literature integration of four peoples - Serbs, Croats, Bosniacs and Montenegrins. Of special interest here were the aspirations of the Catholic church to establish the Bosnian language as the common South Slavic literary language for its religious and propaganda activities, and the contribution of Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic to the effort to establish the "Bosnian language" as the common literary language of the South Slavic peoples.

The Dynamics of the Policies of Ethnic Cleansing in Silesia in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Through studying German, Polish and Czech publications on Silesia, Mr. Kamusella found that most of them, instead of trying to objectively analyse the past, are devoted to proving some essential "Germanness", "Polishness" or "Czechness" of this region. He believes that the terminology and thought-patterns of nationalist ideology are so deeply entrenched in the minds of researchers that they do not consider themselves nationalist. However, he notes that, due to the spread of the results of the latest studies on ethnicity/nationalism (by Gellner, Hobsbawm, Smith, Erikson Buillig, amongst others), German publications on Silesia have become quite objective since the 1980s, and the same process (impeded by under funding) has been taking place in Poland and the Czech Republic since 1989. His own research totals some 500 pages, in English, presented on disc. So what are the traps into which historians have been inclined to fall? There is a tendency for them to treat Silesia as an entity which has existed forever, though Mr. Kamusella points out that it emerged as a region only at the beginning of the 11th century. These same historians speak of Poles, Czechs and Germans in Silesia, though Mr. Kamusella found that before the mid-19th century, identification was with an inhabitant's local area, religion or dynasty. In fact, a German national identity started to be forged in Prussian Silesia only during the Liberation War against Napoleon (1813-1815). It was concretised in 1861 in the form of the first Prussian census, when the language a citizen spoke was equated with his/her nationality. A similar census was carried out in Austrian Silesia only in 1881. The censuses forced the Silesians to choose their nationality despite their multiethnic multicultural identities. It was the active promotion of a German identity in Prussian Silesia, and Vienna's uneasy acceptance of the national identities in Austrian Silesia which stimulated the development of Polish national, Moravian ethnic and Upper Silesian ethnic regional identities in Upper Silesia, and Polish national, Czech national, Moravian ethnic and Silesian ethnic identities in Austrian Silesia. While traditional historians speak of the "nationalist struggle" as though it were a permanent characteristic of Silesia, Mr. Kamusella points out that such a struggle only developed in earnest after 1918. What is more, he shows how it has been conveniently forgotten that, besides the national players, there were also significant ethnic movements of Moravians, Upper Silesians, Silesians and the tutejsi (i.e. those who still chose to identify with their locality). At this point Mr. Kamusella moves into the area of linguistics. While traditionally historians have spoken of the conflicts between the three national languages (German, Polish and Czech), Mr Kamusella reminds us that the standardised forms of these languages, which we choose to dub "national", were developed only in the mid-18th century, after 1869 (when Polish became the official language in Galicia), and after the 1870s (when Czech became the official language in Bohemia). As for standard German, it was only widely promoted in Silesia from the mid 19th century onwards. In fact, the majority of the population of Prussian Upper Silesia and Austrian Silesia were bi- or even multilingual. What is more, the "Polish" and "Czech" Silesians spoke were not the standard languages we know today, but a continuum of West-Slavic dialects in the countryside and a continuum of West-Slavic/German creoles in the urbanised areas. Such was the linguistic confusion that, from time to time, some ethnic/regional and Church activists strove to create a distinctive Upper Silesian/Silesian language on the basis of these dialects/creoles, but their efforts were thwarted by the staunch promotion of standard German, and after 1918, of standard Polish and Czech. Still on the subject of language, Mr. Kamusella draws attention to a problem around the issue of place names and personal names. Polish historians use current Polish versions of the Silesian place names, Czechs use current Polish/Czech versions of the place names, and Germans use the German versions which were in use in Silesia up to 1945. Mr. Kamusella attempted to avoid this, as he sees it, nationalist tendency, by using an appropriate version of a place name for a given period and providing its modern counterpart in parentheses. In the case of modern place names he gives the German version in parentheses. As for the name of historical figures, he strove to use the name entered on the birth certificate of the person involved, and by doing so avoid such confusion as, for instance, surrounds the Austrian Silesian pastor L.J. Sherschnik, who in German became Scherschnick, in Polish, Szersznik, and in Czech, Sersnik. Indeed, the prospective Silesian scholar should, Mr. Kamusella suggests, as well as the three languages directly involved in the area itself, know English and French, since many documents and books on the subject have been published in these languages, and even Latin, when dealing in depth with the period before the mid-19th century. Mr. Kamusella divides the policies of ethnic cleansing into two categories. The first he classifies as soft, meaning that policy is confined to the educational system, army, civil service and the church, and the aim is that everyone learn the language of the dominant group. The second is the group of hard policies, which amount to what is popularly labelled as ethnic cleansing. This category of policy aims at the total assimilation and/or physical liquidation of the non-dominant groups non-congruent with the ideal of homogeneity of a given nation-state. Mr. Kamusella found that soft policies were consciously and systematically employed by Prussia/Germany in Prussian Silesia from the 1860s to 1918, whereas in Austrian Silesia, Vienna quite inconsistently dabbled in them from the 1880s to 1917. In the inter-war period, the emergence of the nation-states of Poland and Czechoslovakia led to full employment of the soft policies and partial employment of the hard ones (curbed by the League of Nations minorities protection system) in Czechoslovakian Silesia, German Upper Silesia and the Polish parts of Upper and Austrian Silesia. In 1939-1945, Berlin started consistently using all the "hard" methods to homogenise Polish and Czechoslovakian Silesia which fell, in their entirety, within the Reich's borders. After World War II Czechoslovakia regained its prewar part of Silesia while Poland was given its prewar section plus almost the whole of the prewar German province. Subsequently, with the active involvement and support of the Soviet Union, Warsaw and Prague expelled the majority of Germans from Silesia in 1945-1948 (there were also instances of the Poles expelling Upper Silesian Czechs/Moravians, and of the Czechs expelling Czech Silesian Poles/pro-Polish Silesians). During the period of communist rule, the same two countries carried out a thorough Polonisation and Czechisation of Silesia, submerging this region into a new, non-historically based administrative division. Democratisation in the wake of the fall of communism, and a gradual retreat from the nationalist ideal of the homogeneous nation-state with a view to possible membership of the European Union, caused the abolition of the "hard" policies and phasing out of the "soft" ones. Consequently, limited revivals of various ethnic/national minorities have been observed in Czech and Polish Silesia, whereas Silesian regionalism has become popular in the westernmost part of Silesia which remained part of Germany. Mr. Kamusella believes it is possible that, with the overcoming of the nation-state discourse in European politics, when the expression of multiethnicity and multilingualism has become the cause of the day in Silesia, regionalism will hold sway in this region, uniting its ethnically/nationally variegated population in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity championed by the European Union.

Cultural and Educational Society of Muslims "Narodna Uzdanica" /"National Hope"/ 1923-1941

Ibrahim Kemura. The Muslim Cultural-Educational Society Narodna uzdanica from 1923/4 to 1941 One of the features of the cultural history of the Bosniacs between the two world wars (1918-1941) was a cultural and educational society named Narodna uzdanica, which was a significant institutional and cultural-intellectual centre of the Bosniac people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Narodna uzdanica expressed the aspirations and needs of the Bosniac citizens who were its main support and axis and was aimed at fulfilling their interests. This was reflected in an ideological-cultural orientation towards the West and the adoption of positive western achievements while at the same time stressing its Slavic origins and individuality, the education of young people and the formation of a European-type civic intelligentsia, adaptation to life in capitalist society, the development of modern trade and crafts, the emancipation of women, and cultural education based on European values. Thus conceived, the programme enjoyed the support of a wider circle of members, the reading public and the cultural consumers of those particular elements such as education and economic prosperity which it sought to achieve. The political involvement of Narodna uzdanica and its use as a platform for the leading Bosniac political party Jugoslovenska muslimanska organizacija (JMO - Yugoslav Muslim Organisation) which had founded the society, played a significant role in the socio-political life and development of Bosniacs. The opposition to the ruling regime, often expressed through close cooperation with similar Croat organisations and through the pro-Croat attitude of some of the society's leading figures, offered both the regime and Narodna uzdanica's political adversaries grounds for describing it as separatist and Croat and served as a pretext for repressive measures to hinder its normal operations. This research proved these accusations to be groundless, showing that the pro-Croat orientation was primarily political and cultural and that throughout its existence Narodna uzdanica was active in the cultural and educational renaissance of Bosniacs, helping to strengthen their national identity.