• 2013-2022close
• Article close
• Journal of Education Culture and Society close
• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage close

This paper analyzes the relationship between permanent monuments and temporary art projects, as temporality is one of the strategies employed by Romanian artists to counterbalance the support that the Romanian state has shown only towards monuments and memorials dedicated to affirming its value. The complex nature of public art requires a careful consideration of the different dimensions this practice employs, and for that the Western debate on this matter can be a reference point in understanding Romanian public art. We will be looking at possible aspects of the functions of these two main directions in Romanian public art, as they stand methodically one in opposition to the other, in connection with the texts of Piotr Piotrowski (Art and Democracy in Post-communist Europe, 2012) and Boris Groys (Art Power, 2008).

At the beginning of the XXI century Ukrainian art observed activization of the artist’s interest for the political life of the country. The starting point was 2004, marked by protests against unfair elections in the country, the birth of the first “Maidan” and “Orange revolution”. In a number of artistic actions organized by art groups we can see the reflection of the revolution events and, later, the frustrations of its ideals. The most striking manifestation of political issues in contemporary art in Ukraine was the great creativity following the second “Maidan” (2013). In this spontaneous Performance everyone plays a role: the participants are the protesters, official persons, fighters of “Berkut” and interior force troops, journalists and others. Protesters’ tents, barricades, a statue of Lenin and “Maidan” itself (or Independence Square) as a place of free will and creativity became the Symbols of the “Maidan” and its own art objects.

In general, community archives are grass-roots documentary initiatives built around a broadly defined community, which collect, preserve, describe and provide access to historical sources concerning a previously chosen topic, e.g. local history and traditions, a social movement, a minority, an ethnic group, an event or a person. The phenomenon of community archiving is not new, but only several years ago it started to be described by scholars in Poland.The article describes educational activities performed by two biggest and most influential community archives in Poland: the KARTA Centre Foundation in Warsaw and the General Elżbieta Zawacka Foundation in Toruń. Actions of these archives are shown referring to general understanding of education in historical archives, as well as specific situation of Polish archives, especially their mission to promote historical knowledge and local identity. Also promotional qualities of educational endeavours in archives are stressed. 

The ageing population is a great challenge for the whole world including churches, Christian communities, Christian families and the so-called “Christian countries”. The respect and support for elderly people is almost a common rule of social life in developed countries regardless of religious views. But in the Christian world this obligation has very strong religious justification – obligation enshrined in the Commandments of Old (the fourth/fifth Commandment) and New (the second one of The Greatest Commandments of Love) Testaments. Therefore between the Christianity – understood as a set of different communities sharing their beliefs in Jesus Christ – and aging population there are many very different connections including among others: honour and respect, privilege, obligations, giving – receiving relations, duty, charity, solidarity, dependency. They are present both in the teaching and the practice of different Christian communities starting with Churches, through NGOs and Christian societies, ending with Christian families. The paper shows some of these connections. It also tries – based on a case of Poland – to answer the question whether the Christianity is ready to face the aging of global population.

The paper is concerned with Maksimilian Voloshin’s Japanese woodblock print collec-tion. It starts with a short historical sketch of Orientalism in Europe and Russia, illustrating various highlights and the evolution of the image of the East in the minds of Europeans, and designed so that the emergence of Voloshin’s interest in Japanese art and his activity of collecting Ukiyo-e prints can be considered in the context of European Orientalism.

Aim. The aim of the research is to study the symbolic capital of northern cities (semiotic potential) contained in "urban texts" and the influence of the historical memory of a multiethnic region on the political process of the region and the country as a whole, through a comprehensive and interdisciplinary study of the symbolic space of cities in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Methods. The study used the cognitive approach, the method of space-time analysis, and the method of historicism and questionnaire survey. Symbolic space as a text is a heterogeneous content. Results. The results of the study show the importance of a symbolic resource as a brand tool, first, depending on the political context and introduction into the collective memory through a constant "reminder" of its importance and significance in the socio-cultural and everyday life of citizens. The resulting databases of monuments served as the basis for compiling a virtual album of monuments and art objects in the cities of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The research results can practically be applied in the field of education, politics, culture, in the study and promotion of the cultural and historical heritage of the regions of Russia. Conclusions. The urgent problem is the task of preserving the accumulated experience and values, places of memory, relics of the past, as well as ideas about the past that are stored in the memory of its inhabitants and the transfer of this knowledge to the younger generation.

The purpose of this presentation is to address the issue of female criminality in early modern Cluj, and to analyze women’s position before the law. Our investigation is based on the records of the secular Court from the town Cluj, where we have identified more than 250 cases of women accused of fornication, adultery, witchcraft, infanticide, theft and drunkenness, poisoning, swearing and slander. There were a significant number of female convictions during the century, from which most ended with light sentences, such as banishment, corporal punishments, stigmatizations with hot iron, mutilations and only occasionally death. We would like to analyze in detail the types of crime and their punishments presenting the legal background, the jurisdiction and the habitual practices of the Court. We would also like to underline the importance of the narrative strategies used in these inquisitorial trials, since our documents reveal female criminality from a male perspective, as in these times men ran the legal system, consequently the Court records, in our reading contain moral, legal and sexual elements of a male discourse on female crime.

Aim. We tend to believe that the religious life of Romanians in the diaspora – living in the proximity of the Romanian borders (we do not take into account the groups that left towards Spain, Italy, Germany, and so on at the beginning of the third millennium) - is a taboo subject. The Orthodox (Romanian) clerical elite focused less on the assiduous study of the religious life of their Romanian brothers outside the borders; in this case, in Hungary. Therefore, we have the scientific duty—but more importantly, the moral duty—to bring to light the truths that are either not known or are known in a distorted form. The road of Voniga (Giula-Giroc) that we followed during the PhD research period was a blessing from the point of view of a scientific void/niche. Methods. In our study, we have applied two “simple” components: the archive and the specialised bibliography. Results. The archive was largely preserved only by Elena Csobai and Emilia Martin. The respectable ladies professionally structured the archive (Romanian Orthodox Church in Hungary) and saved hundreds of research sources from the depth of history. Conclusion. As Moisa noted (2011), the puzzling ethnographic, linguistic, cultural, and historical bulk material is without a doubt focused on the Church. The church is inextricably linked to the lives of Romanians in Hungary. Going through the tens of thousands from the mentioned fields, even superficially, there is an undeniable truth: the spirituality is present, more or less, in the writings of most of the select researchers who have worked in the scientific field for the past three decades.

Mihai Eminescu is known as the Romanian national poet, the most important writer of the XIXͭʰ century in Romanian literature, whose writings have been intensely interpreted since his poetic debut. Therefore, this paper proposes a study of the way the literary dictionaries build the image of “the national poet”. This identity construct is significant to our investigation because it influences the interpretation of the poet figure through history. In order to have a wider view of the problem, we consulted a series of literary dictionaries and, also, dictionaries for students use to see how the figure of Eminescu is taught in schools. Moreover, we did not put aside foreign dictionaries, which bring a more objective perspective to the issue. The majority of Romanian dictionaries alter the poet’s portrait in favor of a “national construct”, created partly by the use of rhetoric figures. Another way of composing him a deformed image is accomplished by writing subjective and opaque interpretation of his poems. Consequently, such hermeneutics focuses on developing a myth that reflects mainly the way Romanians as nation want to be recognized and remembered.

Programmes of formal education establish a systematic transfer of knowledge as well as universal values from one generation to another. By that, they ensure the survival of social structures, prevent radical disruptions in their continuity, and serve as basis for general development of a society. Their content and didactic arrangements include interweaving of two basic aspects: the cognitive one and the one related to vzgoja (i.e. upbringing, moral/value education etc.). The latter aims to achieve the ideals of a tolerant, just and lifelong learning society, but seems to be facing increasing challenges, mainly emerging from neoliberal capitalist mentality. Art history as a school subject area in elementary and secondary education may provide an insight beneath the surface of historical events. Thus, it helps develop a critical view towards them and consequently towards the present real-life situations, which contributes to ascending the taxonomic scale of conative educational goals.