Master´s thesis aims at giving an overview of public and cultural diplomacy used in the middle-sized countries such as Austria and the Czech Republic. The thesis explains what does the public and cultural diplomacy mean, as well as what are contributions for countries which participate either in bilateral or in multinational cooperation. The thesis is focused on national foreign cultural policy made by different actors, as well as on common foreign policy and common projects which these two states have worked on. The very last part of the thesis summarizes effectiveness and successes of promoting a national culture abroad, what sort of diplomacy is used to do so and which institutions are the most important ones.

This doctoral thesis deals with fundamental changes in West German foreign cultural policy during the 1960s and 1970s. Its objective is not only to examine how and under what circumstances the first (West) German conception of foreign cultural policy was conceived or which institutions and individuals participated most actively in its formation, but also to assess the understanding and definitions of foreign cultural policy and its role in the overall foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany. Further, the topic is analysed within a broad historical and international context. The research primarily uses the methodology of political history but has also been inspired by cultural history and political science.

Au sens strict, les peintures à l'huile chinoises du XXème siècle proviennent de la France. Plus précisément, au début du XXème siècle, grâce à Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret et ses collègues, la peinture à l'huile et le système éducatif de la France sont introduits en Chine par Xu Beihong et ses camarades. Les méthodes d'enseignement et les approches picturales de l'académisme français constituent un tournant original de la formation plastique et académique en Chine. Cette thèse, dans ses deux aspects de l'histoire et de la création contemporaine, explore et présente le contexte culturel, l'expérience sentimentale, la pensée esthétique, le concept académique et la qualité picturale de Dagnan-Bouveret. Cet artiste a influencé profondément, idéologiquement et picturalement, des étudiants chinois dont l'influence est aujourd'hui déterminante sur la peinture chinoise contemporaine. En parallèle, j'essaie d'évaluer l'histoire du développement de la peinture à l'huile chinoise, lié au statut de l'art académique en Chine et de ses origines. / Strictly speaking, the Chinese oil paintings of the twentieth century come from France. More specifically, in the early twentieth century, thanks to Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret and his colleagues, the oil painting and the education system of France are introduced in China by Xu Beihong and his comrades. The French academic teaching methods and painting skills are the turning point of the Chinese education in the field of plastic art and academic training. In this thesis, the cultural background, the emotional experience, the aesthetic thought, the academic ideas and the value of oil painting of Dagnan-Bouveret are explored and introduced in both modern history and creation way. This artist has deep influence, including ideology and painting skill, on Chinese students and it plays a key role in the development of the current contemporary Chinese painting. Meanwhile, I am trying to evaluate the history of the development of Chinese oil painting, related to the status of academic art in China and its origins.

This study investigates language varieties, non-verbal behaviour and language attitudes as cultural barriers which inhibit successful communication between Blacks and Indians at Durban Institute of Technology. The investigation reveals that Indians and Blacks often misunderstand each other. Sometimes these groups feel misunderstood because they use different varieties of English. To compensate for these differences, participants use non-verbal strategies. However, non-verbal behaviour is culturally determined and people tend to transfer it to intercultural situations. One finds that this transfer leads to miscommunication and negative stereotypes. Furthermore, non verbal behaviour which does not meet the politeness criteria leads to negative attitudes and strained relations amongst peers and supervisors. The study suggests these solutions: the introduction of intercultural awareness campaigns for all employees and Zulu conversational skills for all Indians. For the whole South African community, the spirit of ubuntu should be cultivated between all racial groups to foster mutual respect. / Sociolinguistics / M.A.

Before the 1990's, African migrants did not perceive South Africa as an ideal migration destination. This changed after the end of the apartheid era. The new political climate in the country and the new migration movements linked to increased globalisation changed the situation significantly. South Africa became an attractive migration destination, particularly also for professional African migrants. In this dissertation a select group of black professional/skilled migrants from non-SADC countries, who are resident in Cape Town, are studied. It is shown that such transients defy any migration typology within the South African context. Their position in the world of economic migrants is not automatically one of cosmopolitanism, privilege and glamour. Their decision to migrate is also not necessarily voluntary. The explication and analysis of the context and circumstances of the migrants are conducted with specific reference to: - professional mobility vis a vis identity, culture and community - human mobility and globalisation - the demographics and legalities of immigration to South Africa - origin, identity and the construct of `home' - the `host' nation and perceptions, stereotypes and xenophobia - personal networks and adaptation - the notion of space becoming place. What is thus demonstrated and interrogated is that `belonging' in this world is a process of change and fluctuation. `Crossing borders' will mean different things to different people - especially also for skilled/professional migrants. Issues such as class, gender, race, citizenship, ethnicity and sexuality, play a role in how `belonging' is defined and how people assign meaning to movements across borders. / Anthropology and Archaeology / (MA (Anthropology))

Proceeding from the premise that the meaning of performances flows from contextual, textual, and nonverbal elements, this dissertation explores layers of meaning arising from performances of selected South African struggle songs, poems and plays. In particular, it focuses on performances of the Mayibuye Cultural Group which functioned as an adaptive mechanism in the changing sociopolitical landscape of the 1980s and early 1990s, and on contemporary performances. The analysis of the songs, poems and play underscores the importance of nonverbal elements for the interpretation of performances, and proposes that performances functioned as debate and as a discursive presence in the public sphere. In particular, the performances glorified a masculine conception of the struggle and of South African society which highlighted the fragile gender politics in South Africa, and functioned as a vibrant mechanism for the expression of sanctioned criticism especially for the marginalised and for those at the fringes of power. / Anthropology / M.A. (Anthropology)

The master thesis analyzes a development of Czech-Dutch relations from the first contacts in the Middle Ages till the present. The thesis is divided into chapters chronologically but the emphasis is placed on the 20th century also because of the number of sources. Bilateral relations of these two actors of the international relations are examined on the political, economic and cultural level. The master thesis is based first of all on the archival sources of the Ministry of Foreign Affaires of the Czech Republic and it is the first overview which is given on the mutual Czech-Dutch relations according to the three above mentioned levels.

Comment l’étude de la réception d’une littérature étrangère dans les revues – objets hybrides et fluides dont les spécificités essentielles sont l’inscription dans la durée et le rapport entretenu avec le temps historique, ainsi que le fait d’être le résultat polyphonique d’une création collective – permettrait-elle de dépasser les distinctions entre les approches de l’« esthétique de la réception » et de l’« histoire de la réception » (et encore, de la sociologie et de la sociopolitique), et entre les notions de « réception critique » et de « réception créatrice » ? Notre recherche, portant sur un corpus hétérogène composé de trente revues littéraires et politico-littéraires italiennes, s’est articulée autour de cette question. En s’appuyant sur les notions de transfert et de réseaux et en croisant les approches quantitative et qualitative des textes français, des traductions et des contributions critiques publiés dans les revues, notre travail vise à identifier les lieux et les modalités de la réception, ses évolutions et ses invariants après la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. L’optique interdisciplinaire adoptée, s’attachant aux multiples facettes de ce phénomène, porte un nouveau regard sur les histoires croisées des littératures française et italienne, ainsi que sur l’activité des revues et les pratiques de la critique littéraire. En interrogeant les mécanismes par lesquels les revues s’approprient la littérature étrangère, ce sont les rapports qui existent entre la réception des œuvres littéraires, l’histoire d’un champ littéraire national et les facteurs extra-littéraires (historiques, politiques, idéologiques…) que nous nous proposons de sonder. / Being periodicals a hybrid and fluid object, whose essential particularities are periodicity and the relationship with historical time, as well as being the polyphonic results of a collective creation, how would the study of the reception of a foreign literature in periodicals allow to overcome the distinctions in approaches between the aesthetics of reception and the history of reception, and between the notions of critical reception and creative reception? My research focuses on this question through the analysis of a heterogeneous corpus of thirty Italian literary and politicalliterary periodicals. Building on the notions of “transfer” and “networks” and by crossing quantitative and qualitative approaches in the analysis of French texts, translations and criticism edited in the reviews, my research aims at identifying reception’s places and modalities, its evolutions and invariants after World War II. The interdisciplinary point of view adopted, focusing on the phenomenon’s many aspects, takes a new look on the intermingled histories of French and Italian literature, as well as on the periodicals’ activity and forms of literary criticism. By questioning the mechanisms through which periodicals adapt foreign literature, I aim at surveying the relationships between the reception of literary works, the history of a national literary field and the extraliterary factors (history, politics, ideologies…).

La investigación ha abordado los contactos oficiales y extraoficiales entre España y la Unión Soviética durante el siglo XX, y, especialmente, se ha centrado en la proyección del modelo soviético desplegado por las Asociaciones de Amistad, tales como la Sección Española de los Amigos de la Unión Soviética y la Asociación España - URSS, como un medio de calibrar su impacto en España. Asimismo, se ha prestado atención a las asociaciones de amistad británicas para comparar el relativo éxito de estas asociaciones en los dos países. Las principales fuentes utilizadas han sido los fondos VOKS y SODD, procedentes de los archivos estatales rusos, documentos privados de las Asociaciones y testimonios, los cuales han sido cruciales para comprender estas asociaciones, los problemas que encararon así como sus éxitos y fracasos. Las Asociaciones de Amistad con la Unión Soviética fueron un medio de difundir ideales - el antifascismo y la coexistencia pacífica- defendidos por el gobierno Soviético. Así, estas asociaciones constituyeron un tipo de diplomacia popular. En términos generales, la gente que creía en un modelo diferente al capitalista se unió a estas asociaciones y proveyeron ejemplos de respecto en un mundo multicultural. Debido a ello, su mensaje no es obsoleto en el mundo de hoy. / The research deals with the official and unofficial contacts between Spain and the Soviet Union, focussing particularly on those perceptions of the latter disseminated through the various Friendship societies, such as the Spanish Friends of the Soviet Union and the Spain - USSR Society. As a way of assessing their impact in Spain, a chapter is dedicated to the British Friendship societies, which will compare the relative successes of these societies in the two countries. The main sources utilized have been the VOKS and SSOD files from the Russian Federation archives, private documents of the societies and testimonies, which have been crucial to understanding these associations, the problems they faced, as well as their successes and failures.The friendship societies with the Soviet Union were a way of spreading ideals -antifascism and peaceful coexistence - championed by the Soviet government. As such, these societies were a type of popular diplomacy. Broadly speaking, people who believed in a different model than capitalism joined these associations and they provided examples of respect in a multicultural world. Because of that, their message is not obsolete in today's world.

Lo studio propone un primo censimento delle fonti storiche e letterarie ungheresi, manoscritte e a stampa e redatte in lingua italiana o latina, conservate nelle biblioteche di Bergamo (Civica Angelo Mai) e Milano (Ambrosiana e Nazionale Braidense); spesso inediti, tali documenti costituiscono, accanto alle consuete fonti archivistiche, valide testimonianze delle profonde relazioni politiche e culturali stabilitesi tra la nazione italiana e quella ungherese nei secoli XV-XVII. Se nel fondo manoscritto dell’Ambrosiana è stato possibile rinvenire ben 284 "hungarica", 251 sono gli stampati reperiti nei fondi antichi delle tre biblioteche. Di tale materiale, suddiviso in due cataloghi, è stata fornita un’accurata descrizione bibliografica, preceduta da un capitolo introduttivo, in cui, individuate le antiche collocazioni dei documenti (tra le quali spicca la biblioteca padovana dell'erudito Gian Vincenzo Pinelli), si fornisce un’analisi delle diverse tipologie di fonti (suddivise nelle categorie: "Autori ungheresi"; "Avvisi e scritture relativi alla Lunga Guerra"; "Dedicatari ungheresi"; "Epistole, discorsi e orazioni"; "L’Ungheria nella leggenda"; "Testi con riferimento non esplicito all’Ungheria"; "Testi storici"; "Trattatistica") e si dà risalto ad alcune opere, che, tra numerosissime altre, ben si sono prestate a testimoniare i rapporti italo-magiari durante il Basso Medioevo e l’età moderna. / This study takes a first census of handwritten or printed historical and literary Hungarian sources, written in Italian or Latin, kept in the libraries of Bergamo – Civica Angelo Mai –, and Milan – Ambrosiana and Nazionale Braidense. Often unpublished, those documents make up, next to the usual archivial sources, valid evidence of the important political and cultural relations established inbetween the Italian and the Hungarian nations in the 15th-17th centuries. If it has been possible to find out 284 "hungarica" in the manuscripts of the Ambrosiana Library, 251 are the printed one found in the three libraries. A careful bibliographic work has been done describing this material, divided in two catalogues, with an introducing chapter which, once discovered the ancient classification of those documents – one of the most important is the Gian Vincenzo Pinelli’s library of Padua –, analyzes closely the different tipology of sources. These documents has been subdivided in classes: "Hungarian authors"; "Long war dispatches and writings"; "Hungarian dedicatees"; "Epistles, speeches and orations"; "Legendary Hungary"; "Texts not explicitly referred to Hungary"; "Historical texts"; "Treatises". Finally, some texts are emphasized, among many others, to give testimony of the Italian-Hungarian relations during early Middle Ages and Modern Age.