Heliacal Phenomena is a parallel to the author's Eclipses, being another astronomical introduction for Humanists. The aim is that of providing Humanists with a general overview on the importance of heliacal phenomena from the standpoints of history, literature, astronomy. The book is an invitation for students and scholars to consider this subject, as it has been incredibly useful to science, agriculture, people in several ways. The book covers documents dating back to the ancient texts from Babylon, China, Greece, Rome or the Academies and Scientists, up until the present time. That is, from the epochs in which stars were gods, to the modern applications of high speed astronomical photometry. Heliacal Phenomena is useful as a compendium of information, from which to develop further studies.The new publication series, opened by the present volume, has the ambition to fill a gap in the research landscape in the field of Asian Studies. In spite of the considerable development of comparative and contrastive research into Indo-Iranian languages and civilizations, and notwithstanding the general trend to interdisciplinarity in the studies of the multicultural areas of Central Asia, of Iran maior, of the Indian subcontinent and the surrounding territories, we still miss a forum for publications in the sphere of Philology, Cultural and Social History, with a special focus on the topics and regions in question. Therefore we would like to establish the Indo-Iranica series as a deliberately large as well as thematically and methodologically open framework of scholarly discussions, in which both monographs and miscellaneous volumes on relevant subjects may find their place.

After the “digital turn,” sexual representations have been increasing both quantitatively (thanks to the multiplication of production and distribution channels) and qualitatively (giving rise to a plurality of new representational forms). In this context, several social groups – including women and non-normative sexual subcultures – have obtained full citizenship rights within the “pornosphere,” moving beyond their traditional marginalization or, indeed, exclusion. These “nonconventional” pornographies exist in a dialectical relationship with mainstream production insofar as they are at the same time a development and a repudiation of the latter (on an aesthetic, economic and political level). This volume investigates the emergences of alternative pornographies, highlighting their discursive heterogeneity, their cultural status and connections to identities and non-normative practices, as well as their role in redefining the very idea of pornography. This publication will map the main areas relating to alternative pornographies, such as alt porn, queer pornography, indie porn, post porn, feminist pornography, and amateur porn. With a foreword by Feona Attwood.

The present volume collects some contributions about the Yaghnob Valley inspired by or directly developed in the framework of the various scientific missions of the University of Bologna in Tajikistan (2007-2012). The articles here collected follow, as far as it is possible, a chronological order, starting with the studies concerning the history of the Yaghnobis considered in the framework of the Upper Zarafšan region, beginning from the Sogdian period to the early Islamic age, up to those essays focusing on ethno-linguistics and related political aspects. Thus, old questions have to face new problems and social needs, in a very delicate and politically complex area, which now is experiencing a deep economic crisis, but that holds important energetic and mining resources. Both the researches aiming to clarify which were the political and economic role of the Yaghnob Valley during the Sogdian period, and the studies that try to explain the peculiar use and development of the Yaghnobi language, in the light of the socio-cultural politics of the Republic of Tajikistan, deserve great attention. From different point of views it has been deeply discussed the problem of the Yaghnobis’ isolation and uniqueness: the results seem to be very innovative. Also particular historical cases, such as the terrible Anzob plague (1898), have been analysed as a case-study in order to better understand the Czarist policy towards minorities in Central Asia, a relevant theme in Soviet and post-Soviet time, too. The strong humanitarian profile of these missions is well represented by some pharmacological and medical contributions. Finally, useful and detailed maps of the Yaghnob Valley, created with the GIS technology, were included at the end of the volume.

From Italy to Mexico, and all the way to Japan, then returning to the United States. By spanning the annus mirabilis which has witnessed the centenary of Merleau-Ponty’s birth celebrated everywhere, Chiasmi International has captured some of its most important echoes in this issue which presents as well important news in the journal’s structure. The relocation of its American seat and a change in direction accompany the contributions of Merleau-Ponty specialists who are the most representative of four different generations. Reviews and a new section of essays “around” Merleau-Ponty’s thought complete this issue with which Chiasmi International caps off its tenth anniversary. Texts by: Suzi Adams, Emmanuel Alloa, Alia Al-Saji, Claudia Baracchi, Josep Maria Bech, Paride Broggi, Mauro Carbone, Paola Chiesa, Françoise Dastur, Daniela De Leo, Carmine Di Martino, Lester Embree, Véronique Foti, Simone Frangi, Giovanni Invitto, Stefan Kristensen, Mariana Larison, Federico Leoni, Enrica Lisciani-Petrini, Liu Zhe, Shôichi Matsuba, Rita Messori, Pierre Rodrigo, Davide Scarso, Emmanuel de Saint Aubert, Beata Stawarska, Luca Taddio, Jacques Taminiaux, Tommaso Tuppini, Luca Vanzago, Jean-Jacques Wunenburger.

Merleau-Ponty cinquante ans après sa mort: éléments pour une biographie intellectuelleMerleau-Ponty fifty years after his death: desiderata for an intellectual biographyMerleau-Ponty a cinquant’anni dalla morte: elementi per una biografia intellettualedossier // special section:Merleau-Ponty et Deleuze. Dissonances et résonancesMerleau-Ponty and Deleuze. Dissonances and resonancesMerleau-Ponty e Deleuze. Dissonanze e risonanzevaria // diverse****comptes rendus // revues // recensioniTESXTES DE // TEXTS BY // TESTI DI:Guillaume Carron, Frank Chouraqui, Gilles Deleuze, Annabelle Dufourcq, Josef Fulka, Paolo Godani, Stella Maranesi, Glen Mazis, Judith Michalet, Pierre Montebello, Marta Nijhuis, Stephen A. Noble, Cameron O’Mara, Dorothea Olkowski, Irene Pinto Pardelha, Pierre Rodrigo, Claudio Rozzoni, David Scott, Danilo Saretta Verissimo, Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel, Daniel W. Smith, Judith Wambacq.

Merleau-Ponty : Sciences, images, events **** dossiers // special sections : Merleau -Ponty et les sciences / MERLEAU-PONTY AND SCIENCES / Merleau-Ponty e le scienze La réalité de l’imaginaire / Reality of the Imaginary / La realtà dell’immaginario **** varia // diverse **** COMPTES RENDUS // REVIEWS // RECENSIONI Texts by: Josep Maria Bech, Etienne Bimbenet, Guillaume Carron, Daniela De Leo, Philippe Descola, RobertaDreon, Simone Frangi, MarcelloGhilardi, TimIngold, ChristopherLapierre, Mariana Larison, Kwok-ying Lau, Len Lawlor, Federico Leoni, Mara Meletti, David Morris, Marcos- José Müller Granzotto, Elena Pagni, Pierre Rodrigo, Stéphane Roy-Desrosiers, Marcus Sacrini, EmmanueldeSaintAubert, DavideScarso, DominiqueSéglard, Luca Vanzago, Shiloh Whitney, Keith Withmoyer.

Existence, diacritiques, animalité Existence, Diacritics, Animality Esistenza, diacritico, animalità *** DOSSIERS – SPECIAL SECTIONS – DOSSIERS Merleau-Ponty – Patočka : un rendez-vous manqué Merleau-Ponty – Patočka: a Missed Encounter Merleau-Ponty – Patočka: un incontro mancato Merleau-Ponty, Saussure, et l’instance du diacritique Merleau-Ponty, Saussure, and the Diacritical Merleau-Ponty, Saussure e l’istanza del diacritico Phénoménologie de l’animalité Phenomenology of Animality Fenomenologia dell’animalità *** Varia Diverse Varia COMPTES RENDUS REVIEWS RECENSIONI *** IN MEMORIAM Hugh J. Silverman (1945-2013) textes de // texts by // testi di: Emmanuel Alloa, Christiane Bailey, Renaud Barbaras, Donald Beith, Jakub Čapek, Nicolas Dittmar, Duicu Dragoş, Annabelle Dufourcq, Anna Petronella Foultier, Simone Gustafsson, Frédéric Jacquet, Richard Kearney, Eliška Luhanová, James Mensch, Karel Novotný, David Peña-Guzmán, Tano Posteraro, Pierre Rodrigo, Emre şan, Marco Spina, Beata Stawarska, Ondřej Švec, Elena Tavani, Ted Toadvine, Peter Warnek, Clélia Zernik

Chiasmi International publishes for the first time two previously unpublished working notes from Merleau-Ponty that date from 1959 and the first chapter of a previously unpublished text that Simondon had written some years earlier: texts that testify to the intersecting reflections that Merleau-Ponty and Simondon were conducting on one of the most decisive themes for the philosophy of the 20th Century: individuation. Some authors, who are among the best known specialists in the question of individuation, make their contributions bear on the subject matter of these texts, and on the relations between the thought of Merleau-Ponty and that of Simondon. The theme of the second section is the topic of life, which runs across Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on nature, and shows itself to be perfectly complementary of that of the first one. The contributions devoted to the second theme essentially come from the Merleau-Ponty Circle (University of Western Ontario, 2003). Texts by: Giuliano Antonello, Daniela Calabrò, Mauro Carbone, Fabrice Colonna, Miguel De Beistegui, Emmanuel De Saint Aubert, Helen A. Fielding, Paolo Gambazzi, Jacques Garelli, Xavier Guchet, Mariana Larison, Leonard Lawlor, Kym Maclaren, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, David Morris, Mario Neve, Felix Ó Murchadha, Franck Robert, Davide Scarso, Gilbert Simondon, Jenny Slatman, Ted Toadvine, Robert Vallier, Veniero Venier.

According to both ordinary and scientific thought, two objects can enter into relation not only simultanously, but also at different times, namely cross-temporally. For instance, we understand comparisons between entities as they are at different times, such as when we say that John is now taller than Michael was three years ago; causally related events are often not simultaneous, and objects of perceptions and perceivers usually have different temporal locations (we see ordinary things as they were a few milliseconds ago, we see the sun as it was eight minutes ago, and so on). However, many philosophers consider cross-temporality deceptive. Relations, according to the “standard view”, can hold only between things existing in the same time. In this book Torrengo defends the opposite view, according to which relations can be cross-temporally instantited and thus cross-temporal talk must be taken seriously. The theory is based on the idea that persisting in time is tantamount to possessing temporal parts at different times, and its central tenet is that persisting entities (objects and events alike) are cross-temporally related by having distinct temporal parts entering into relations.

In a historical moment when cinema is definitively abandoning analogue production, the cinematographic work of Paolo Gioli occupies an important and meaningful place in the academic and artistic debate related to the present and future position of cinema and media art in the digital era. For this reason, the Film Forum Festival decided to organize a one-day seminar in Gorizia on 17th March 2013 in order to analyze and discuss the artistic production of this Italian artist. This book records and expands topics and reflections developed by international scholars and curators during that event and contains an original text by Paolo Gioli about his cinema and his artistic production.

The digital age has witnessed the development of a new kind of archive: immaterial, “living and moving,” largely user-generated, and conceived for managing a wide variety of audio-visual materials, besides traditional films and videos. The first part of this anthology investigates the ways in which media forms like web-documentaries, video art and digital art, web series, amateur productions, and also mobile films can be stored and preserved within the new digital repositories. The second part focuses on archival and preservation practices of the video game. This approach understands the archive not simply as a “memory box,” but as a fully contemporary practice that locates new media objects in the present and acknowledges their changing cultural and social configurations. The democratic, often immaterial, living, mobile nature of contemporary archives forces us to question whether or not the traditional notion of “the archive” still has a heuristic value. Or if it would be perhaps better to reject any “conventional” idea of archive and embrace the notion of anarchive.

Year after year, day after day, minute after minute, billions of non-human animals are slaughtered for several purposes and aims (food, clothing, entertainment, research). An analogous situation whose objects were humans instead of animals would obviously never be accepted. But why do we tolerate and even justify one practice while deploring the other? The answer is far from banal: this book is an attempt at finding it beyond the everyday life, through politics and philosophy.

The role of Yemen in the War on Terror throughout the 2000s has been crucial. It is a complex country, all too often trivialized by statistics focusing on its inconvenient position as the youngest and poorest country in the Arab world. Working on the most updated economic, social, political, and strategic data, the authors bring the attention to the new scenarios after Saleh’s era, in which Yemenis are called to rebuild their country and outline a new national pact for the future. The results of this research (supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) give also a chance to overcome political stereotypes in Arab countries. The panoramic view on Yemen displayed in this book helps the reader access the core issues that the current dialogue on reforms will unavoidably deal with, as well as the knowledge concerning the new political phase and the role of Yemen’s partners.

All over is a collection of epic songs, of epinician odes for our day. The heroes praised are boxers, men the author identifies as the last able to truly astound, to induce awe. These epinician odes on Pindaric models are transformed in the making. What they sing about is not victory but defeat. The hero, the boxer, is deprived the possibility of attaining true “victory” through the gods’ obliging and favorable presence — a limitation that never pertained in antiquity. This is a fragile hero. An all-too human human. He is a “simple” boxer. Nothing but a man. The epinician odes, therefore, end up being direct, and matter-of-fact, in their style and content. They wind up as epigraphs, tragedies in verse form that narrate the real exploits of workday heroes, even if the resulting events are exceptional, moving us to weep, and to feel great admiration and compassion.

This study explores different visions of contemporary London using the tools of cultural and literary studies and comparing works by Iain Sinclair and Will Self. Both indebted to the tradition of psychogeography, these two authors consider the act of walking as the best way to investigate the changes, evolutions and revisions of the city. For both, London is basically an experience where the physical and topographical environment evokes the endless reservoir of films, novels, images, and cultural materials that finds in this city a fruitful source of inspiration. The book features individual chapters devoted to the analysis of Great Apes, Sorry Meniscus, London Orbital, and The Book of Dave.

How was national consciousness developed? The present book aims to investigate such matter trough a series of different case studies, in which the terms nation, homeland and people have been applied. This Romantic lexicon identifies similar conceptions of the national idea in some countries dominated by Italian, German and Slavic cultures, and in some groups or minorities such as the Jews and the Vlachs in Central and Mediterranean Europe. In order to clarify the cultural framework, the authors explore the construction of identity through folk tunes, poetry inspired by popular culture, and opera in which the national myths or heroes appear. In the self-making tradition, the national traits are sustained by the process of embodiment of any regional utterance, and also by the elimination of the ‘other’, especially the minorities. The symbols of the nation, as an achievement of the power that flourishes from the sense of belonging, are defined per differentiam.