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Abstract
This introduction to the forum on imagination and emotion highlights the possibilities of attending to imagination within emotions scholarship. It draws attention to how a range of disciplines have articulated imagination, not least its weight in the Western tradition, where imagination is associated with visual imagery, and asks how the emotional turn might allow new questions to be asked of its nature. The introduction introduces the forum and briefly reflects on possible future directions.
Abstract
This paper is investigating the use of rock art by local/regional powers in the Lower Nile Valley in the late 4th millennium bc. It situates the rock art record in its historical and archaeological settings and proposes methodological options (which are, in some cases, still theoretical) to elucidate it further in its social context. Two research questions are addressed: the first one discusses the existence of rock art commissioned by authorities and the criteria that could help identify them. The second deals with the ways in which rock art may express political power. The iconographic and technical aspects of rock art are discussed. This preliminary survey suggests that rock art specialists appeared at the end of the Predynastic period and that rock art may have been a strategic element in the competition between the polities that were rising in the Lower Nile Valley at that time.
Abstract
Utilizing ancient Chinese, Latin, and Greek literary sources, this paper examines the interconnected evidence relating to maritime trade from the late 2nd century bc to the 6th century ad. By analyzing the similarities and differences found in texts regarding regions from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean, the paper explores aspects that transcend the geographical boundaries of both Chinese and Greco-Roman civilizations, with the goal of throwing light on the flourishing of Sino-Roman maritime trade during late antiquity.
Abstract
This paper aims to contribute new data to understanding early Predynastic settlement patterns in Egypt at the beginning of the state formation process in the 4th millennium bce. It focuses on the early settlements of the First Nile Cataract region. We employ three different datasets to address the issue retrieved from a recent archaeological investigation and drill coring and from Nile records available from archaeological and historical sources. The analysis is performed in a gis-based environment and through inundation modelling. Data suggest early Predynastic settlements at the First Cataract may have been settled all year round. They appear to be deliberately placed above the annual high flood level and have water resources for most of the year. The new geo-archaeological data further suggests that the average high inundation level for the early 4th millennium bce was similar to that documented for the end of the millennium.
Abstract
This essay focuses on the experiences, emotions and aspirations of lay volunteers who in the long 1960s contributed to the emergence of non-governmental humanitarianism in Italy. I argue that we cannot disconnect the analysis of relief practices from that of the relievers’ feelings and emotions, because they have moulded each other in specific historical, cultural and social contexts. Young lay volunteers who joined missionaries in the 1960s and the early 1970s received specific assignments, but performed their tasks driven by enthusiasm and frustration, commitment and distress, love for others and a sense of isolation. Their daily work sprang out of this complex entanglement. This essay analyses this by intertwining multiple sources: reports, journal articles, interviews, letters and diaries. These sources allow the reconstruction of lay volunteers’ collective experiences and reveal what they felt, thought, and imagined.
Abstract
In June 1913, Dr Joshua Sweet, Assistant Professor of Surgical Research at the University of Pennsylvania, was charged with ‘unnecessary cruelty to dogs’. Sweet’s trial would take place the following April. My account of that trial, its context and its aftermath, is primarily concerned with the contested experience of ‘humanity’: a nebulous concept that incorporates other-oriented feelings and practices, couched in broader social and moral frameworks. Ultimately, it is an account of the contextual entanglement of humane feelings – emotions and senses – with practices, politics, belief systems, knowledge systems, professional networks, gender and class dynamics and moral/ethical imperatives.
Abstract
Idioms describing specific emotional states with reference to hot or cold body temperatures are ubiquitous across cultural groups and appear to reflect the interpretive affordances of basic physiological processes. Thus high-arousal emotions tend to be associated with heat and low-arousal emotions with cold. Nonetheless, these associations are not universal but are shaped by cultural history. The description in the Gospel of Luke of the disciples’ ‘burning hearts’ provides an illuminating case study. Although often read by modern interpreters as a transparent metaphor for elation or excitement, ancient usage points in a decidedly different direction, reflecting a prevailing moral and medical assumption in the Greco-Roman world that the dysregulation of the body’s innate heat is a symptom of affective and physical disorder. If Luke’s phrase nonetheless depicts desirable feelings, it would appear to be a harbinger of a new chapter in the history of emotions wherein certain ‘hot feelings’ might be understood not as unregulated passions but rather righteous fervour.
Abstract
This article analyses and compares ancient Greek and Indian social contract theories. On the Greek side, social theories comprising a contractual understanding of the origins of society are encountered, inter alia, in the works of Herodotus, Plato and Polybius – while comparable Indian accounts may be gathered from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, the Dīgha Nikāya and the Mahābhārata. Through close readings of these and other texts, it is shown that both the Greek and Indian theories largely rely on the concept of monarchy as the cornerstone of social order. The Greek and Indian accounts also incorporate certain elements reoccurring in early modern European social contract theories, yet in other respects the former fundamentally differ from the latter.
Abstract
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the magic lantern emerged as a prominent tool for colonial propaganda, notably for missionaries seeking support. This essay examines the propaganda efforts of the Belgian Scheut Missionaries, focusing on Jozef Napoleon Flameygh (1888–1969), a West Flemish priest deeply involved in these campaigns. By analysing Flameygh’s lantern lectures, personal correspondence and archival materials, this study uncovers the complex interplay of emotions and identity in missionary discourse. Through a microhistorical lens, these sources elucidate the role of the magic lantern in colonial propaganda and missionary self-fashioning, revealing Flameygh’s public and private personas. Despite projecting heroism in public, Flameygh’s private writings expose sentiments of fragility and vulnerability, highlighting the multifaceted nature of missionary identity and the performative dimensions of colonial discourse in constructing emotional communities.
Abstract
This paper aims to explicate the hermeneutic engagement of the commentators with the epic. The engagement is better revealed in the opening of the commentaries, particularly while commenting upon the maṅgala of the epic. This paper offers a comparison of insights on maṅgala and anubandhacatuṣṭaya in the three commentaries: Devabodha (11 ce), Vādirāja (16 ce) and Nīlakaṇṭha (17 ce). The singularity of this engagement is that it deals with the text as one meaningful whole. While doing so they not only analyse the text, but also renew the text by offering it its own due textuality. The due textuality is understood in contrast to the view of modern scholars who have dealt with the epic text as a conglomerate of several parts. The contexts and departures that commentators have with the text of the epic are obviously different from ours and are therefore of significance to us. The antiquity, grandeur and complexity of the epic are the obvious challenges before us as we attempt to comprehend the text. The commentaries come through as a resource as they offer their reading and comprehension of the epic. The very names of the commentaries illuminate the specific hermeneutic engagement of the commentators with the epic. Thus, Devabodha’s commentary is called Jñānadīpikā or the Lamp of Knowledge, whereas Nīlakaṇṭha’s commentary has been named as Bhāratabhāvadīpa, or the Lamp Illuminating Inner Meaning (of the Mahābhārata).