This exciting new study draws on objects excavated or discovered in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century at three Mediterranean sites. Through the three case studies,Materia ...Magicaidentifies specific forms of magic that may be otherwise unknown. It isolates the practitioners of magic and examines whether magic could be used as a form of countercultural resistance. Andrew T. Wilburn discovers magic in the objects of ancient daily life, suggesting that individuals frequently turned to magic, particularly in crises. Local forms of magic may have differed, and Wilburn proposes that the only way we can find small-town sorcerers is through careful examination of the archaeological evidence.
Studying the remains of spells enacted by practitioners, Wilburn's work unites the analysis of the words written on artifacts and the physical form of these objects. He situates these items within their contexts, to study how and why they were used.Materia Magicaapproaches magic as a material endeavor, in which spoken spells, ritual actions, and physical objects all played vital roles in the performance of a rite.
Materia Magicadevelops a new method for identifying and interpreting the material remains of magical practice by assessing artifacts within their archaeological contexts. Wilburn suggests that excavations undertaken in recent centuries can yield important lessons about the past, and he articulates the ways in which we can approach problematic data.
Bodies of tomorrow Vint, Sherryl
Bodies of tomorrow,
c2007, 20070224, 2006, 2000, 2007, 2006-01-01
eBook
Bodies of Tomorrowargues for the importance of challenging visions of humanity in the future that overlook our responsibility as embodied beings connected to a material world.
Roman {2}-domination Chellali, Mustapha; Haynes, Teresa W.; Hedetniemi, Stephen T. ...
Discrete Applied Mathematics,
05/2016, Letnik:
204
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
In this paper, we initiate the study of a variant of Roman dominating functions. For a graph G=(V,E), a Roman {2}-dominating function f:V→{0,1,2} has the property that for every vertex v∈V with ...f(v)=0, either v is adjacent to a vertex assigned 2 under f, or v is adjacent to least two vertices assigned 1 under f. The weight of a Roman {2}-dominating function is the sum ∑v∈Vf(v), and the minimum weight of a Roman {2}-dominating function f is the Roman {2}-domination number. First, we present bounds relating the Roman {2}-domination number to some other domination parameters. In particular, we show that the Roman {2}-domination number is bounded above by the 2-rainbow domination number. Moreover, we prove that equality between these two parameters holds for trees and cactus graphs with no even cycles. Finally, we show that associated decision problem for Roman {2}-domination is NP-complete, even for bipartite graphs.
The slave experience was a defining one in American history, and not surprisingly, has been a significant and powerful trope in African American literature. In Re-Forming the Past, A. Timothy ...Spaulding examines contemporary revisions of slave narratives that use elements of the fantastic to redefine the historical and literary constructions of American slavery. In their rejection of mimetic representation and traditional historiography, postmodern slave narratives such as Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada, Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Charles Johnson’s Ox Herding Tale and Middle Passage, Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories, and Samuel Delaney’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand set out to counter the usual slave narrative’s reliance on realism and objectivity by creating alternative histories based on subjective, fantastic, and non-realistic representations of slavery. As these texts critique traditional conceptions of history, identity, and aesthetic form, they simultaneously re-invest these concepts with a political agency that harkens back to the original project of the 19th-century slave narratives. In their rejection of mimetic representation and traditional historiography, Spaulding contextualizes postmodern slave narrative. By addressing both literary and popular African American texts, Re-Forming the Past expands discussions of both the African American literary tradition and postmodern culture.
Every year thousands of foreign-born Filipino and Indian nurses immigrate to the United States. Despite being well trained and desperately needed, they enter the country at a time, not unlike the ...past, when the American social and political climate is once again increasingly unwelcoming to them as immigrants. Drawing on rich ethnographic and survey data, collected over a four-year period, this study explores the role Catholicism plays in shaping the professional and community lives of foreign-born Filipino and Indian American nurses in the face of these challenges, while working at a Veterans hospital. Their stories provide unique insights into the often-unseen roles race, religion and gender play in the daily lives of new immigrants employed in American healthcare. In many ways, these nurses find themselves foreign in more ways than just their nativity. Seeing nursing as a religious calling, they care for their patients, both at the hospital and in the wider community, with a sense of divine purpose but must also confront the cultural tensions and disconnects between how they were raised and trained in another country and the legal separation of church and state. How they cope with and engage these tensions and disconnects plays an important role in not only shaping how they see themselves as Catholic nurses but their place in the new American story.
Since antiquity, the she-wolf has served as the potent symbol of Rome. For more than two thousand years, the legendary animal that rescued Romulus and Remus has been the subject of historical and ...political accounts, literary treatments in poetry and prose, and visual representations in every medium. In She-Wolf: The Story of a Roman Icon, Cristina Mazzoni examines the evolution of the she-wolf as a symbol in western history, art, and literature, from antiquity to contemporary times. Used, for example, as an icon of Roman imperial power, papal authority, and the distance between the present and the past, the she-wolf has also served as an allegory for greed, good politics, excessive female sexuality, and, most recently, modern, multi-cultural Rome. Mazzoni engagingly analyzes the various role guises of the she-wolf over time in the first comprehensive study in any language on this subject.
Il volume miscellaneo che qui si presenta è stato pensato da amici e colleghi non solo come omaggio a Paolo Mastandrea, ma anche e soprattutto come illustrazione delle innumerevoli prospettive aperte ...dai suoi studi: l’indagine dei meccanismi dell’intertestualità nel mondo antico; l’analisi filologica di tradizioni controverse; i numerosi problemi storico-letterari offerti dai testi della Tarda Antichità latina; l’esame della ricezione umanistica e rinascimentale dell’eredità classica. Non si è naturalmente trascurato il contributo cruciale portato dallo studioso alla teorizzazione e allo sviluppo, fin dagli anni Novanta, di strumenti informatici di ricerca testuale, la cosiddetta ‘galassia Musisque Deoque’, di cui si tiene conto in molti dei lavori presenti nel volume.
In The Restoration of the Roman Forum in Late Antiquity, Gregor Kalas examines architectural conservation during late antiquity period at Rome's most important civic center: the Roman Forum. During ...the fourth and fifth centuries CE—when emperors shifted their residences to alternate capitals and Christian practices overtook traditional beliefs—elite citizens targeted restoration campaigns so as to infuse these initiatives with political meaning. Since construction of new buildings was a right reserved for the emperor, Rome's upper echelon funded the upkeep of buildings together with sculptural displays to gain public status. Restorers linked themselves to the past through the fragmentary reuse of building materials and, as Kalas explores, proclaimed their importance through prominently inscribed statues and monuments, whose placement within the existing cityscape allowed patrons and honorees to connect themselves to the celebrated history of Rome. Building on art historical studies of spolia and exploring the Forum over an extended period of time, Kalas demonstrates the mutability of civic environments. The Restoration of the Roman Forum in Late Antiquity maps the evolution of the Forum away from singular projects composed of new materials toward an accretive and holistic design sensibility. Overturning notions of late antiquity as one of decline, Kalas demonstrates how perpetual reuse and restoration drew on Rome's venerable past to proclaim a bright future.
The Roman Empire was based on law, and it was vital for rulers and ruled that laws should be understood. They were often given permanent form in stone or bronze. This book transcribes, translates, ...and fully illustrates with photographs, the inscription (more than 155 lines, in its damaged state) that carries the regulations drawn up over nearly two centuries for the customs dues of the rich province of Asia (western Turkey). The regulations, taken from Roman archives, were set up in Greek in Ephesus, and the book provides a rendering of the text back into Latin. The damaged text is hard to restore and to interpret. Six scholars offer line-by-line commentary, and five essays bring out its significance, from the Gracchi to Nero, for Rome's government and changing attitudes towards provincial subjects, for the historical geography of the Empire, for its economic history, and for the social life of Roman officials.
God’s laboratory Roberts, Elizabeth F. S
2012., 20120425, 2012, 2012-05-25, 20120101
eBook
Assisted reproduction, with its test tubes, injections, and gamete donors, raises concerns about the nature of life and kinship. Yet these concerns do not take the same shape around the world. In ...this innovative ethnography of in vitro fertilization in Ecuador, Elizabeth F.S. Roberts explores how reproduction by way of biotechnological assistance is not only accepted but embraced despite widespread poverty and condemnation from the Catholic Church. Roberts' intimate portrait of IVF practitioners and their patients reveals how technological intervention is folded into an Andean understanding of reproduction as always assisted, whether through kin or God. She argues that the Ecuadorian incarnation of reproductive technology is less about a national desire for modernity than it is a product of colonial racial history, Catholic practice, and kinship configurations. God's Laboratory offers a grounded introduction to critical debates in medical anthropology and science studies, as well as a nuanced ethnography of the interplay between science, religion, race and history in the formation of Andean families.
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