For the soul of Rafael /

Music throughout.

The Virgin of Charity in the Soul of the Cuban People, Book Presentation by Author Emilio Cueto, Comments by Uva de Aragón

This flyer promotes the event "The Virgin of Charity in the Soul of the Cuban People, Book Presentation by Author Emilio Cueto, Comments by Uva de Aragón" cosponsored by the National Associate of Cuban-America Educators (NACAE) and Herencia Cultural Cubana.

The Ideological Transformation of the Icon Chairman Mao during the Four Modernisations period : As illustrated by "Melody of Youth, Beautiful Soul"

After Chairman Mao's death, in the late 1980's, Mao was removed from official government communications and his iconography transformed from having a specific meaning generation role linked to Maoist ideology, to becoming available for use as a commodity. In this research I use cultural theorist Jacques Derrida's theory of Hauntology and the deconstruction method to analyse a representative Chinese Propaganda poster, "Melody of Youth, Beautiful Soul", in order to ascertain the effect Mao's death had on the Iconography of Chairman Mao, and how Mao is ideologically transformed during this period. Analysing the painting I found specific symbols associated with the iconography of Mao that had been adopted and transformed for the purposes of the CCP. These symbols both suggested the presence of Chairman Mao, as well as negated that presence through being co-opted for other purposes. Using these symbols and writings about the period I deduced that during this period the CCP had to rely on existing symbols of power and authority in order to communicate and legitimise regime change whilst maintaining the semblance of continuity. At the same time they had to decouple these symbols from their original meanings in order to distance themselves from the past and redefine the ideology of China. In the process, Mao's iconography was decoupled from its Maoist ideological heritage and transformed into abstract symbols of power, doctrine and so on. This means that the transformation had made them available to use as an "open basket" into which new, related meanings could be placed – including serving as a commodity.

Joseph McKeen and the soul of Bowdoin College: an analysis of the chapel sermons of Rev. Joseph McKeen, first president of Bowdoin College, as they relate to his call to serve the common good

The Reverend Joseph McKeen (1757-1807) was the first president of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, USA, (founded 1794). McKeen is famous for his inaugural address in which he calls students to serve the common good. His view of common good is a deeply theological view, coloured by the theological era in which he lived and worked. This study examines the idea of common in the light of McKeen’s college sermons, taking note of the following subjects: Scottish Common Sense Realism; The Nature of True Virtue; The Controversy with Unitarianism; and Science and Mathematics. McKeen’s view of common good is not simply a political view. He is not merely a republican, expressing his views on the future of the republic in a classical political way. He is also, indeed primarily, a pastor and theologian.

Nervous Kitchens: Critical Readings of Black Women's Food Practices in The Soul Food Imaginary

Nervous Kitchens intervenes in the story of soul food by treating the kitchen as a central site of instability. These kitchens reveal and critique their importance to constructions of Black womanhood. Utilizing close readings of Black women’s culinary practices in popular televisual kitchens and archival analysis of USDA domestic reforms, the project locates sites that challenge how we oversimplify soul food as a Black cultural product. These oversimplifications come through what I term the soul food imaginary. This term underscores how the cuisine is tangible (i.e., how dishes are made) but also the ways that histories of enslavement, migration, and domesticity are disseminated through fictionalized representations of Black women in the kitchen offering comfort through food. The project explores how images of these kitchens adhere to and diverge from the imaginary's four conventions: (1) Soul food originates in enslavement where master’s scraps became mama’s meal time; (2) Soul food is not healthy food; (3) Soul food moves South to North uninterrupted during the Great Migration and is evidence of and fuel for struggle, survival, and transformation; and 4) Black women cook it the best, naturally, and alone in the kitchen.

Non-reductive Physicalism, Irreducibility of the Mental and the Problem of Mental Causation : A study of Donald Davidson's and Georg Henrik von Wright's positions in the philosophy of mind

In this study I consider what kind of perspective on the mind body problem is taken and can be taken by a philosophical position called non-reductive physicalism. Many positions fall under this label. The form of non-reductive physicalism which I discuss is in essential respects the position taken by Donald Davidson (1917-2003) and Georg Henrik von Wright (1916-2003). I defend their positions and discuss the unrecognized similarities between their views. Non-reductive physicalism combines two theses: (a) Everything that exists is physical; (b) Mental phenomena cannot be reduced to the states of the brain. This means that according to non-reductive physicalism the mental aspect of humans (be it a soul, mind, or spirit) is an irreducible part of the human condition. Also Davidson and von Wright claim that, in some important sense, the mental aspect of a human being does not reduce to the physical aspect, that there is a gap between these aspects that cannot be closed. I claim that their arguments for this conclusion are convincing. I also argue that whereas von Wright and Davidson give interesting arguments for the irreducibility of the mental, their physicalism is unwarranted. These philosophers do not give good reasons for believing that reality is thoroughly physical. Notwithstanding the materialistic consensus in the contemporary philosophy of mind the ontology of mind is still an uncharted territory where real breakthroughs are not to be expected until a radically new ontological position is developed. The third main claim of this work is that the problem of mental causation cannot be solved from the Davidsonian - von Wrightian perspective. The problem of mental causation is the problem of how mental phenomena like beliefs can cause physical movements of the body. As I see it, the essential point of non-reductive physicalism - the irreducibility of the mental - and the problem of mental causation are closely related. If mental phenomena do not reduce to causally effective states of the brain, then what justifies the belief that mental phenomena have causal powers? If mental causes do not reduce to physical causes, then how to tell when - or whether - the mental causes in terms of which human actions are explained are actually effective? I argue that this - how to decide when mental causes really are effective - is the real problem of mental causation. The motivation to explore and defend a non-reductive position stems from the belief that reductive physicalism leads to serious ethical problems. My claim is that Davidson's and von Wright's ultimate reason to defend a non-reductive view comes back to their belief that a reductive understanding of human nature would be a narrow and possibly harmful perspective. The final conclusion of my thesis is that von Wright's and Davidson's positions provide a starting point from which the current scientistic philosophy of mind can be critically further explored in the future.

The Evolution of the Russian Romance Through the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries

This performance dissertation traced the evolution of the Russian romance from 1800 to the present. The Russian romance is a relatively unknown and greatly neglected genre of classical art songs. It is commonly believed that the Russian romance began with Dargomizhsky and Glinka proceeding directly to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. Forgotten are the composers before Dargornizhsky and Glinka, the bridge composers, and the post-Tchaikovsky and post-Rachmaninoff composers. This may be, in part, because of the difficulties in obtaining Russian vocal scores. While most of the musical world is acquainted with the magnificent Russian instrumental music, the "true soul" of the Russian people lies in its romances. I presented examples of the two different schools of composition, reflecting their philosophical differences in thinking that came about in the 1860s: (1) Russian National school, (2) Western European school. Each school's influence on generations of Russian composers and their pupils have been represented in the recital programs. Also represented was the effect of the October Revolution on music and the voice of the Russian people, Anna Akhmatova. The amount of music that could be included in this dissertation greatly exceeds the amount of available performance time and represents a selected portion of the repertoire. The first recital included repertoire from the beginning of the romance in the early nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century and the second recital focused on the music of the twentieth century, pre and post, the October Revolution. Finally, given the status of Anna Akhmatova and her contributions, the third recital was devoted entirely to her poetry. The "Russian soul" is one of deep, heartfelt emotions and sorrow. Happiness and joy are also present, but always with a touch of melancholy. The audience did not simply go through a musical journey, but took a journey through the "Russian soul". With the strong response of the audience to these recitals, my belief that this repertoire deserves a prominent place in recital programming was confirmed.

The philosopher and the rhetorician : a study of persuasion in Plato's Gorgias and Aristotle's Rhetoric /

In his treatise, On Rhetoric, Aristotle argues that there are three species within an art of rhetoric, judicial, deliberative, and epideictic. Aristotle's threefold rhetorical art, which is based on the functioning of the soul toward justice, reveals the possibilities for persuasive speech found in the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle suggests that the soul and political life can be ordered according to reason through speeches pursuing justice, efficiency, and noble action. The relation between rhetoric and the soul also demonstrates how Socrates' rhetoric in Plato's Gorgias is based on an well-ordered soul, which is a just soul. In contrast to his own persuasion, Socrates demonstrates that the persuasive speech employed and taught by Gorgias, the rhetorician, is based on disorder and injustice. These two texts reveal that the intent of rhetoric is not separate from its practice. A study of the art of rhetoric, based on a study of the just soul and the good life, leads to the higher inquiries into politics and philosophy. Thus, political life and philosophy may benefit when citizens examine the nature of rhetoric, and subsequently, justice, within a community and within a soul.

Conscience and Attestation : The Methodological Role of the “Call of Conscience” (Gewissensruf) in Heidegger’s Being and Time

Travail réalisé en cotutelle (Université de Paris IV-La Sorbonne).

Representações do feminino em Dom Casmurro e The Turn of the Screw

Pós-graduação em Letras - FCLAS

The Lord of the rings e a estética da finitude

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Problem of Tragedy and Tragic Consciousness in Russia at the turn of the 19th Century

This project intertwines philosophical and historico-literary themes, taking as its starting point the concept of tragic consciousness inherent in the epoch of classicism. The research work makes use of ontological categories in order to describe the underlying principles of the image of the world which was created in philosophical and scientific theories of the 17th century as well as in contemporary drama. Using these categories brought Mr. Vilk to the conclusion that the classical picture of the world implied a certain dualism; not the Manichaean division between light and darkness but the discrimination between nature and absolute being, i.e. God. Mr. Vilk begins with an examination of the philosophical essence of French classical theatre of the XVII and XVIII centuries. The history of French classical tragedy can be divided into three periods: from the mid 17th to early 19th centuries when it triumphed all over France and exerted a powerful influence over almost all European countries; followed by the period of its rejection by the Romantics, who declared classicism to be "artificial and rational"; and finally our own century which has taken a more moderate line. Nevertheless, French classical tragedy has never fully recovered its status. Instead, it is ancient tragedy and the works of Shakespeare that are regarded to be the most adequate embodiment of the tragic. Consequently they still provoke a great number of new interpretations ranging from specialised literary criticism to more philosophical rumination. An important feature of classical tragedy is a system of rules and unities which reveals a hidden ontological structure of the world. The ontological picture of the dramatic world can be described in categories worked out by medieval philosophy - being, essence and existence. The first category is to be understood as a tendency toward permanency and stability (within eternity) connected with this or that fragment of dramatic reality. The second implies a certain set of permanent elements that make up the reality. And the third - existence - should be understood as "an act of being", as a realisation of permanently renewed processes of life. All of these categories can be found in every artistic reality but the accents put on one or another and their interrelations create different ontological perspectives. Mr. Vilk plots the movement of thought, expressed in both philosophical and scientific discourses, away from Aristotle's essential forms, and towards a prioritising of existence, and shows how new forms of literature and drama structured the world according to these evolving requirements. At the same time the world created in classical tragedy fully preserves another ontological paradigm - being - as a fundamental permanence. As far as the tragic hero's motivations are concerned this paradigm is revealed in the dedication of his whole self to some cause, and his oath of fidelity, attitudes which shape his behaviour. It may be the idea of the State, or personal honour, or something borrowed from the emotional sphere, passionate love. Mr. Vilk views the conflicting ambivalence of existence and being, duty as responsibility and duty as fidelity, as underlying the main conflict of classical tragedy of the 17th century. Having plotted the movement of the being/existence duality through its manifestations in 17th century tragedy, Mr. Vilk moves to the 18th century, when tragedy took a philosophical turn. A dualistic view of the world became supplanted by the Enlightenment idea of a natural law, rooted in nature. The main point of tragedy now was to reveal that such conflicts as might take place had an anti-rational nature, that they arose as the result of a kind of superstition caused by social reasons. These themes Mr. Vilk now pursues through Russian dramatists of the 18th and early 19th centuries. He begins with Sumarakov, whose philosophical thought has a religious bias. According to Sumarakov, the dualism of the divineness and naturalness of man is on the one hand an eternal paradox, and on the other, a moral challenge for humans to try to unite the two opposites. His early tragedies are not concerned with social evils or the triumph of natural feelings and human reason, but rather the tragic disharmony in the nature of man and the world. Mr Vilk turns next to the work of Kniazhnin. He is particularly keen to rescue his reputation from the judgements of critics who accuse him of being imitative, and in order to do so, analyses in detail the tragedy "Dido", in which Kniazhnin makes an attempt to revive the image of great heroes and city-founders. Aeneas represents the idea of the "being" of Troy, his destiny is the re-establishment of the city (the future Rome). The moral aspect behind this idea is faithfulness, he devotes himself to Gods. Dido is also the creator of a city, endowed with "natural powers" and abilities, but her creation is lacking internal stability grounded in "being". The unity of the two motives is only achieved through Dido's sacrifice of herself and her city to Aeneus. Mr Vilk's next subject is Kheraskov, whose peculiarity lies in the influence of free-mason mysticism on his work. This section deals with one of the most important philosophical assumptions contained in contemporary free-mason literature of the time - the idea of the trinitarian hierarchy inherent in man and the world: body - soul - spirit, and nature - law - grace. Finally, Mr. Vilk assess the work of Ozerov, the last major Russian tragedian. The tragedies which earned him fame, "Oedipus in Athens", "Fingal" and "Dmitri Donskoi", present a compromise between the Enlightenment's emphasis on harmony and ontological tragic conflict. But it is in "Polixene" that a real meeting of the Russian tradition with the age-old history of the genre takes place. The male and female characters of "Polixene" distinctly express the elements of "being" and "existence". Each of the participants of the conflict possesses some dominant characteristic personifying a certain indispensable part of the moral world, a certain "virtue". But their independent efforts are unable to overcome the ontological gap separating them. The end of the tragedy - Polixene's sacrificial self-immolation - paradoxically combines the glorification of each party involved in the conflict, and their condemnation. The final part of Mr. Vilk's research deals with the influence of "Polixene" upon subsequent dramatic art. In this respect Katenin's "Andromacha", inspired by "Polixene", is important to mention. In "Andromacha" a decisive divergence from the principles of the philosophical tragedy of Russian classicism and the ontology of classicism occurs: a new character appears as an independent personality, directed by his private interest. It was Katenin who was to become the intermediary between Pushkin and classical tragedy.

Bodily and Embodied: Being Human in the Tradition of the Hebrew Bible

A depiction of the ancient Hebrew understanding of the human being must take into account the fact that the Bible does not contain a systematic anthropology, but unfolds the multiplicity of human existence inductively, aspectively, and in narrative fashion. In comparison to Greek body/soul dualism, but also in the context of body-(de-)construction and gender debates, this circumstance makes it a treasure trove of interesting, often contrasting recollections and insights with liberating potential. This assertion will be illustrated concretely in terms of the nexus points of the human body (throat, heart, and womb), the relationship of humans to animals and angels, and the questions of the power and value of a human being.

Chromosomal control of the dominant suppression of {\it ras\/}-mediated transformation

The role of tumor suppressor function in the multistep process of carcinogenesis was studied in the human teratocarcinoma cell line PA-1. Early passage PA-1 cells ($<$P100) are preneoplastic while late passage ($>$P100) PA-1 cells are spontaneously transformed. Previous work demonstrated a causal role for the N-ras oncogene in the neoplastic transformation of this cell line and the gene was cloned. A clonal cell line established at passage 40 has been shown to suppress the neoplastic transformation potential of the PA-1 N-ras oncogene in gene transfer experiments. This phenotype has been termed SRT+ for suppression of ras transformation. A clonal cell line established at passage 63 is neoplastically transformed by the N-ras in similar gene transfer experiments and is regarded as srt$-$. Somatic cell hybrids were formed between the SRT+ cell and two different N-ras transformed srt$-$ cells. The results indicate that five of the seven independent hybrid clones, and all 14 subclones, failed to form tumors in the nude mouse tumor assay. Chromosomal analysis of rare neoplastic segregants which arose from suppressed hybrid populations demonstrate that the general loss of chromosomes correlates with the reemergence of neoplastic transformation. Karyotype analyses demonstrate a statistically correlative loss of chromosomes 1, 4, 19, and to a lesser extent 11, 14, and 16. DNA hybridization analysis demonstrates a single copy of the intact N-ras oncogene in parental cells, suppressed hybrids, and neoplastically transformed hybrids. These results indicate that functional ras transformation suppression is a trans-dominant trait which may be controlled by sequences residing on particular chromosomes in the human genome. Furthermore, the suppression of ras transformation results from a unique step in the multistep process of carcinogenesis that is different from the induction of immortality. Thus, the neoplastic process of the PA-1 cell line involves at least three steps: (1) induction of immortality, (2) activation of the N-ras oncogene, and (3) loss of tumor suppressor function. ^