Книги 2014–2015 г.
Selected bibliography in the field of Bulgarian Studies published in 2014-2015
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Selected bibliography in the field of Bulgarian Studies published in 2014-2015
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Selected bibliography in the field of Bulgarian Studies published in 2015-2016
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Selected bibliography in the field of Bulgarian Studies published in the current year.
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Selected bibliography in the field of Bulgarian Studies published in the current year
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Selected bibliography in the field of Bulgarian Studies published in the current year
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The link between silence and death has been a recurring theme of human thought and can often be found in reflections on music. Among many attempts to approach this problem, the author of this paper focuses on those done by Gisèle Brelet and Tōru Takemitsu. The “faithful companion” of music which “perpetually is born, dies and is born again” – this is one of the ways in which French musicologist describes silence. “For a human being, there is always the duality of life and death. Music as an art form always has to connect vehemently with both” – notices Japanese composer, who in another statement combines silence with “the dark world of death”. Interestingly, both Brelet and Takemitsu arrive at the conclusion that such connotations may well be the source of the fear of silence that affects some composers or performers. Despite different contexts, some analogies to their thought – like connecting silence with nothingness and loneliness – may be also found in the Canadian composer Raymond Murray Schafer’s writings, presented fragmentarily in the last subsection. The differences in the notion of the problem between the authors are, moreover, discussed in this paper.
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There are testaments from the 16th century preserved in Kremnica state archive. They are written in Latin, German and in one sample also in Slovak language. Last wills prepared a man for a death in spiritual and secular (division of property) way. Testaments eliminated conflict between secular property and desire for an eternal life. Formally testaments consist of several parts – invocation, intitulation, profession of faith, passages about human mortality, composing of the last will and redress of sins, heritages of property, confirmation, corroborating and date formulas. The content of the testaments is an important historical source for economic, law, culture, regional history and also history of material culture and everyday life.
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The aim of the article is to reconstruct the image of the town of Košice produced by members of Slovak historiography, and by Czech historians working in Slovakia in the period of existence of the First Czechoslovak Republic 1918 – 1938. The article focuses on answering the questions: how was the „magyarized“ image of the town „slovakized“ by Czechoslovak historians, how they refl ected on the pre-Trianon Magyarization of the town, how they referred to importance of Košice in the Hungarian nation narrative; which processes and events in the history of Košice were emphasised, and which were obeyed. The article deals with variety of strategies in picturing the town and in reinterpretation of the respective historical events in its history. It also attempts to evaluate what role Košice played in the constructed Czechoslovak national discourse. Finally, the article aims to explain reasons, why Košice in the inter-war period, despite becoming a strategic metropolitan hub of East Slovakia, was left in the peripheral position in the context of the Slovak national narrative.
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The article presents the program of sexual education prepared and offered by Krakow Branch of the Planned Parenthood Association in the wider context of socio-political situation in Krakow (1956 – 1989). Since the beginning of the Association’s existence, the special attention was paid to the development of educational program, which concerned the different aspects of „family life“. The article is going to answer the questions about its goals, the educational tools used to achieve them and its social targets. To accurately determine the position of the Association in the city‘s community I will analyse its foundation and activities in wider context of the pre-war traditions of the organisation and the activities regarding premarital counselling undertaken by the Krakow Catholic Church.
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Mefküre Mollova was the first Turkish woman and university professor in Bulgaria, who defended her Ph.D. thesis in the field of turkology and gained international fame for her research. She is the author of over 150 publications in prestigious international journals that continue to be cited today. Mefküre Mollova was among the founders of the Turkish Philology at the University of Sofia. She had worked for only about 7 years (1953-1961), when she and her husband were dismissed from their academic positions on false claims, and the Department was closed. She remained outside the academia until the end of her life.
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This text analyzes – from ethnological viewpoint – a relatively short period of the history of Bulgarian ethnos, and in particular of the citizens of the town of Samokov and Samokov region. This is the period between the end of Kurdzhali genocide and (the second decade of the nineteenth century) and the Liberation of Bulgaria through the Russian – Turkish War in 1877–1878. This was the period (about half of a century) when the the Bulgarian folk religiosity was developed in a form in which it was recorded in the twentieth century. The author discusses the following characteristics of the local religiosity: The Theotokos (Virgin Mary) rules “the town of the alive,” while St. Nicolas of Myra rules “the town of the dead.”In local churches, the icon of the patron of the church is placed on the iconostasis on the right side of the icon of Jesus Christ and not on the left side of the Theotokos in contrast to the usual arrangement of the icons on the iconostasis.An important element of the celebration of Easter is that the believers visit the cemeteries immediately after the priest announces, “Christ is Risen!” The grouping of the patrons of the churches in Samokov ethnoregion is clearly expressed.
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According to the definition by ICOM, „A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.“ (https://icom. museum/en/resources/standards-guidelines/museum-definition/) At first glance, the museums in Bulgaria, and correspondingly those in Southwestern Bulgaria, adhere to the definition provided by ICOM. They are non-profit institutions and engage in research, collection, preservation, interpretation, and presentation of tangible and intangible heritage. However, upon closer examination and precise analysis of their structure and operations, we would have to classify museums as serving administrative bodies rather than serving society. According to Article 25, paragraph 3 of Regulation No. N-00-0001 of February 14, 2011, concerning field archaeological research, public access to archaeological documentation is severely limited, and comprehensive access to the full range of archaeological materials is practically impossible. In practice, visitors have access to minimal artifacts and information, which need to be improved to create a fundamental understanding of the respective archaeological culture, settlement, or structure. There are no annual, medium-term, or long-term plans for archaeological, ethnographic, historical, interdisciplinary, or exhibition development. There is no strategy for restoration and conservation. Practically no activity is conducted regarding intangible cultural heritage. The closure of museums in Southwestern Bulgaria within municipal administrations and their limited resources restricts public interest in museums and their capabilities. In order to compensate for this, as well as to be attractive to society, museums shift from presenting culture to presenting shows. Instead of authenticity, reconstruction, a product of the subjective views of specific researchers, is exhibited. The article directs the attention of museums and their activities towards the needs and resources of society. If museums have real, not fictitious, communication with society and scientific communities, they will achieve sustainability and a real presence in cultural life.
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In 2011, the author noticed in the city of Russe four cast-iron pillars abandoned in a small garden. After 2012, they disappeared. The pillars are believed to have been manufactured by the Austrian company Waagner & Biro and transported to Russe in the late 19th or early 20th century. They are part of the modernization process of Ruse after the Liberation from Ottoman rule. The article describes and analyzes this artifact in order to preserve the information about it as a part of the cultural history of Russe. The author proposes several hypotheses about the nature and the purpose of the pillars.
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The Bulgarian photographer and researcher, Petar Boev, was appointed as the leader of the first journalistic delegation that visited Vardarska Macedonia from June 8th to June 16th, 1942. The delegation visited dozens of towns, capturing moments of the lives of Bulgarians in Vardarska Macedonia. He took over 100 photographs, which are diligently arranged in an album from Petar Boev’s personal archive. The album was entirely designed by Petar Boev, with beautifully written texts. In addition to the texts, a detailed map of the visited places during the journey was drawn. These photographs, besides being exquisite photographic specimens, hold historical and ethnographic significance. They serve as evidence of the authentic way of life of Bulgarians from the Macedonian folklore region, which remained characteristic until the middle of the 20th century. Petar Boev was a prominent figure active in various spheres of Bulgarian cultural life in the 20th century.
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Colours are one of the most important signs and symbolic systems in Antiquity. They reflect a certain cosmic symbolism, manifested as deities in various cosmogonies. They are present, always and everywhere, at the core of the symbolic models, and can be examined from both a semantic and a semiotic perspective. The eschatological significance of the red colour in Thracian culture as well as other ancient societies, i.e. the transition from one space to another, is saturated with signs and symbols. According to ancient treatises related to the making of colours and pigments in ancient Greece during the Hellenistic period, ochre was the most commonly used red pigment. The colour reconstruction of cultural values approximates their authentic appearance and is a scholarly contribution to examine and preserving Bulgarian cultural heritage. Research conducted in 2023 on stelae from Apollonia Pontica necropolis proved the use of red ochre in their inscriptions. The findings of the study confirmed that the verification and valorisation of the cultural-historical heritage of Thracian civilization, particularly in terms of painted decoration, are a necessary consequence of in-depth and targeted comprehensive expertise.
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The book “Kicked a Building Lately? Architectural Criticism after the Digital Revolution” by Aneta Vasileva also becomes a history of writing about architecture in the first decades of the digital revolution. But it is also a history of the parallel lives of paper newspapers and online blogs. The tension between digital/analog is very well sketched in her text. This allows her to describe the transition of architectural criticism from the media to social networks. The author introduces us to the history of criticism, which tries to make visible the processes in an increasingly invisible architectural history.
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This special issue reflects on the cultural relations of state-socialist Romania between the 1950s and 1980s from the perspective of “cultural internationalism” and “cultural transnationalism”, both within the state-socialist world, and beyond.
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In the focus of the article are the stories of three Bulgarian women who moved back to Bulgaria in the period 2020-2021, influenced by the pandemic of COVID-19. The ethnographic study was done in October-November 2021, exploring return migration and self-identification processes among Bulgarian returnees within which, in these three particular cases, COVID-19 is given as the key trigger for the return or the permanence of the return. The stories are interesting because they elaborate on the correlation between the emigration motives, migration stories, return motives, and the self-actualisation of the women upon return, synthesising one core motive for their return – caregiving. The complexity of return decisions is typologised around the three objects to which the caregiving is addressed – the personal, extended, and larger family, seen as a community/country. The article concludes that return could be explained as a mix of the women’s responsibility to closer or larger circles and structures and triggered and initiated by the COVID-19 pandemic through their strong female will and agency.
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Conspiracy thinking has always been part of our lives, but nowadays, it is almost the default way of understanding the world. When the disease associated with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS CoV-2) emerged, causes and culprits were sought and found wherever the public imagination perceived a concentration of power and resources. Conspiracy theories about the virus’s origin as a bioweapon, the 5G technology connection, the ongoing plans of a New World Order, or Bill Gates’s scheme to microchip everyone with the COVID-19 vaccines became extremely popular around the globe. The paper discusses the conspiracy ideas and notions of the COVID-19 pandemic on Bulgarian social media, where they circulate in interactive conversational contexts via verbal texts, shared links, or images. It focuses on the local reception and interpretation of globally spread conspiracy narratives and their use to articulate underlying political, social, or public healthcare problems. The Facebook discussions examined here – respectively expressing COVID-19 scepticism (from April 2020) and COVID-19 vaccines/vaccination criticism (from April 2021) – are interpreted as discourses of distrust and perceived corruption in at least three major public spheres: the professional media, the political establishment, and the healthcare system.
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