This project proceeds from a narrow question: What, if anything, is a brain wave? Beguiling in its simplicity, this question prompts a cultural-historical investigation that spans over 150 years of science, technology, and society. Proposed in 1869, the original theory of brain waves cites etheric undulations to explain reports of apparent thought transference. Though most modern thinkers no longer believe in outright telepathy, I argue that dreams of thought transmission and other mental miracles subtly persist—not in obscure and occult circles, but at the forefront of technoscience. A hybrid of science and fiction, brain waves represent an ideal subject through which to explore the ways in which technical language shrouds spiritual dreams. Today, the phrase “brain waves” often function as shorthand for electrical changes in the brain, particularly in the context of technologies that purport to “read” some aspect of mental function, or to transmit neural data to a digital device. While such technologies appear uniquely modern, the history of brain waves reveals that they are merely the millennial incarnation of a much older hope—a hope for transmission and transcendence via the brain’s emanations.

Edkins' theory is mainly consisted of two parts, comparative linguistics and researches on religious ideas of ancient Chinese people. At the same time, he also attempted to find western elements in ancient Chinese astrology, astronomy, philosophy and technology. His theory, together with other supporters, formed a special visual angle through which some Sinologists connected the Chinese culture with the main stream of the general history of human civilization constructed by western scholars. It seams to them that the Chinese civilization and the western civilization are not two different systems. To some Sinologists at that tine, whether the Chinese civilization could be correctly understood or not, rests on whether scholars could find its relation with western civilization. After a series of researches, almost all the elements of Chinese civilization were brought into the hermeneutic system of the west. The mystic color of China faded. / Edkins' theory is not completely new. In the 16th century, Jesuits began to interpret Chinese language, history and religion through the theory of the western origin of Chinese civilization. From the second part of the 19th Century to the first years of the 20 th century, this theory became popular, and among many advocates, there are not only westerners like John Chalmers, Joseph Edkins, Terrien de Lacouperie and Thomas Kingsmill, but also Chinese like Zhang Tai-Yan, Liu Shi-Pei and Huang Jie, etc. Meanwhile, various versions evolved from this theory, different from one another in the time and place that civilization came to China from the west. Some of them mix religious faith with academic studies together, and others' opinions are much more like scientific researches. Strange in the sight of scholars nowadays, this theory had its special meaning at the very beginning of western Sinology. / It seems that Sinologists of the 19th century did not try to describe China as an utter other, totally different from the west. On the contrary, they attempted to eliminate the difference. So this dissertation can also help us to get a deeper insight into the conception of Orientalism. / This dissertation is to discuss the methods that some Sinologists used to decipher the Chinese civilization by examining Joseph Edkins' works on Chinese language and civilization. Edkins is a missionary and Sinologist who advocated the theory of the western origin of Chinese civilization. / 陳喆. / Adviser: Xue Yu. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: 2069. / Thesis (doctoral)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 152-164) and index. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / School code: 1307. / Chen Zhe.

"The Science of Antislavery" explores the critical though rarely studied role scientists played in the early antislavery movement. It argues that scientists not only helped legitimize abolitionism but also helped create the myth that slavery was a backward institution. During the Age of Revolution (1770-1830), when antislavery societies first took root, abolitionism attracted many scientific supporters. Though their refutations of scientific racism are perhaps better known, they also made many arguments that went beyond race. Chemists argued that new chemical techniques would fertilize the soil more effectively, which would in turn reduce the need for slave labor. Botanists touted the natural environments of new British colonies in Africa and Southeast Asia, contending that they would make ideal free labor alternatives to Caribbean plantations. Geologists argued that the western American frontier, with its unique mineral deposits, was best suited to free white agricultural settlements rather than slavery’s expansion. Even by the 1830s, when the movement was taken over by a more radical, less elite multiracial coalition, scientific arguments continued to influence antislavery arguments. From the 1830s until the Civil War, antislavery supporters on both sides of the Atlantic argued that slaveholders’ alleged refusal to adopt new machinery was evidence of their backwardness. Today, as a new generation of historians demonstrate how modern slavery in fact was, The Science of Antislavery shows how the idea that it was somehow never modern came into being.

In Athens in the early 5th century BCE, a new genre of funerary vase, the white-ground lêkythos, appeared and quickly grew to be the most popular grave gift for nearly a century. These particular vases, along with their relatively delicate style of painting, ushered in a new funerary scene par excellence, which highlighted the sorrow of the living and the merits of the deceased by focusing on personal moments of grief in the presence of a grave. Earlier Attic funerary imagery tended to focus on crowded prothesis scenes where mourners announced their grief and honored the dead through exaggerated, violent and frenzied gestures. The scenes on white-ground lêkythoi accomplished the same ends through new means, namely by focusing on individual mourners and the emotional ways that mourners privately nourished the deceased and their memory. Such scenes combine ritual activity (i.e. dedicating gifts, decorating the grave, pouring libations) with emotional expressions of sadness, which make them more vivid and relatable. The nuances in the characteristics of the mourners indicate a new interest in adding an individual touch to the expression, which might “speak” to a particular moment or variety of sadness that might relate to a potential consumer. To facilitate a meaningful discussion of the range of ways that white-ground painters articulated grief and lament in their vases, the dissertation is divided into six chapters, each of which concentrates on a particular type of mourner: women, men, elderly men, infants, vocal visitors and the deceased. Discussing the visual iconography across these different groups demonstrates that the shared and individual, public and private, intentional and candid aspects of grief and mourning can be shown simultaneously and that it was of interest to the Athenians to look at images that incorporated all of these aspects.

A proposta deste trabalho é refletir de que forma a construção do horror presente em alguns contos de Horácio Quiroga revela aspectos da dicotomia, civilização e barbárie do Facundo de Sarmiento. Trata-se de buscar entender os contornos que o horror recebe deste contista uruguaio, a partir do horizonte estético e temático das suas influências ou pressupostos, bem como discutir alguns aspectos possíveis do Estado Nacional Argentino em suas fantasmagorias, enquanto espaço de inclusão e exclusão de atores e cenários sociais e históricos. / The purpose of this paper is to reflect on how the construction of horror in some tales of Horacio Quiroga reveals aspects of dichotomy, civilization and barbarism of Facundo de Sarmiento. It seeks to understand the contours that receives this Uruguayan horror short story writer, from the aesthetic and thematic horizon of their influence or assumptions, as well as discuss some possible aspects of the Argentine Government in its phantasmagoria, for as much as an area of inclusion and exclusion of actors and social and historical settings.

The term apotropaia is conventionally understood to refer to a specific type of protective magic in which an object possesses a supernatural ability to avert evil from its human users, the practice of which is generally assumed to be a facet of human behavior so fundamental in nature that it is applied universally and rarely subjected to critical review. The application of such a universal approach to the tutelary magic of ancient Greece is problematic, particularly in light of the concept’s origination in outdated treatments of the ancient world. This study intends to examine the human agency that directs the selection and use of protective magic in the art of Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Greece, to explore how, why, and under whose agency the visual expression of apotropaic motifs developed, and to situate all of these answers in their relevant historical and cultural contexts. A chronological examination of the evidence reveals a distinct shift in agency over time, in which early appeals to the gods for protection gradually give way to a preference for human ritual behaviors that purport to provide the same security. The apotropaic element of the iconography of the ancient gorgon is developed gradually, as it grows from an image that symbolizes divine action to one that can be used by humans with individual, non-divine agency, all of which occurs against a backdrop of larger changes in the perception of the roles of gods and men. These shifts reveal the existence of a clear human need, in the years following the Hellenistic period, to secure protection from non-standard sources, or, in those cases where the Greek gods are preferred, to use the deities as tools in service to human needs. Furthermore, these diachronic shifts in tutelary agency correspond to periods of socio-economic crisis, perhaps as the result of general losses of faith in the divine. As a result, a pattern emerges in which the early reliance on the gods for protection gives way to a human need to assert control over one’s circumstances by any means necessary. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Classics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2017. / May 5, 2017. / apotropaic, evil eye, gorgon, protective magic, ship eyes / Includes bibliographical references. / Christopher Pfaff, Professor Directing Dissertation; David Levenson, University Representative; Svetla Slaveva-Griffin, Committee Member; Daniel J. Pullen, Committee Member.

In the so-called postmodern era, when networked media are increasingly ubiquitous in everyday life, where the ‘real’ and the ‘simulation’ become ever more indistinguishable; the physical and virtual intertwine; machines and man merge, and audience and stars transpose. To understand consumption in a time when realness and authenticity are no longer relevant, this thesis draws attention to the consumption and production of media content through case studies of consumer participation and social trends in Japan. The work begins in a themed shopping mall, Venus Fort in Tokyo Bay; continues with the reproduction of Audrey Hepburn‘s image; expands to the dramatised ‘realness’ of television; and finally moves to the omnipresent mobile phone and the impact of networked personal media on our idea of the ‘real’. First, through an analysis of a themed consumption environment, it is suggested that a transition is taking place in consumption from objects to experiences, services and spectacle. Secondly, by showing Audrey Hepburn‘s transition from a Hollywood star to a virtualised idol, technologically-aided illusions are shown to make hierarchical realness irrelevant. Thirdly, via Reality TV dating programs, the focus shifts to the role of audience participation in the consumption of media content. These themes are demonstrated individually, then merged into the last example – the social and cultural evolution induced by the mass consumption of networked media, that promise to revolutionise the way we consume, communicate and connect between people, machines and consumer goods.The thesis grounds its analysis of contemporary trends in the culture of consumption in Japan in theories of commodity and culture, the real and the simulation, speed and reality, the spectacle and the self in mediated spaces, and probes further into the collapse of demarcations between the virtual and the real, the event and the everyday and media and the self in the network society / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

As cultural studies has consolidated its claim to constitute a distinct field of study in recent years, debate has intensified about its characteristic objects, concepts and methods, if any, and, therefore, its relationship to traditional disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In History in Australian Popular Culture 1972-1995, I focus on an intersection of cultural studies with history. However, I do not debate the competing claims of 'history' and 'cultural studies' as academic projects. Rather, I examine the role played by historical discourse in popular cultural practices, and how those practices contest and modify public debate about history; I take 'historical discourse' to include argument about as well as representation of the past, and so to involve a rhetorical dimension of desire and suasive force that varies according to social contexts of usage. Therefore, in this thesis I do cultural studies empirically by asking what people say and do in the name of history in everyday contexts of work and leisure, and what is at stake in public as well as academic 'theoretical' discussion of the meaning and value of history for Australians today. Taking tourism and television ('public culture') as my major research fields, I argue that far from abolishing historical consciousness -- as the 'mass' dimension of popular culture is so often said to do -- these distinct but globally interlocking cultural industries have emerged in Australian conditions as major sites of historical contestation and pedagogy. Tourism and television are, of course, trans-national industries which impact on the living-space (and time) of local communities and blur the national boundaries so often taken to define the coherence of both 'history' and 'culture' in the modern period. I argue, however, that the historical import of these industries includes the use of the social and cultural spaces they make available by people seeking to publicise their own arguments with the past, their criticisms of the present, and their projects for the future; this usage is what I call 'popular culture', and it can include properly historical criticism of the power of tourism and television to disrupt or destroy a particular community's sense of its past. From this it follows that in this thesis I defend cultural studies as a practice which, far from participating in a 'death' or 'killing' of history, is capable of accounting in specific ways for the liveliness of historical debate in Australia today.

This Masters thesis examines the process of the Islamisation of Bosnia from the eighth century to the end of the fifteenth century. This era of early Islamic influence has not previously been systematically studied, and remains an area little understood by many medievalists. The major foci of the analysis are the pre-Ottoman era and early Ottoman periods. This thesis raises the following research questions: When and how did the first Islamisation of the Balkan Slavs (including Bosnians) occur? How did Islam influence Bosnian society and culture, and where were the Bosnian Muslim settlements established? This thesis includes a detailed historical investigation that makes use of a range of bibliographic materials. These consist of fragmentary works, archival and administrative documents and other relevant factography collected from a research field trip to Bosnia between June 27 and July 24, 2003. The main findings reveal the complexity of this culturo-religious process in terms of both the early Islamic influence and contemporary cultural diversity. While different theoretical approaches to cultural representation and social space assist in exploring the hybrid nature of Bosniak identity, the primary and secondary data analyses highlight the significance of the phenomenon of the early Islamisation of Bosnia

This thesis examines the concept of the state in the context of the Indus River Valley, located in northwest India and Pakistan. In the first section, I synthesize several popular trends in state discussion from both inside and outside of archaeological theory. I then apply my synthesized approach to state definition to the archaeological record from the Indus River Valley. The resulting work visits both the concept of the state and the rich cultural history of the Indus Civilization. I determine that there was a state in the Indus River Valley, but that the Indus state was very different from others scholars have identified in the archaeological record.