Globally, cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major cause for morbidity and mortality. Exaggerated postprandial lipaemia has been implicated in the development of atherosclerosis, and by lowering postprandial triacylglycerol (TAG) concentrations, atherogenic progression may be delayed. Many studies have revealed that exercise, in particular acute exercise, can attenuate postprandial TAG concentration. Most of this evidence relates to studies conducted in Western participants. South Asians are a population predisposed to CVD, and their adverse lipid profiles and physical inactivity may be among the underlying reasons. Hence, the studies described in this thesis examined the potential of acute bouts of exercise to favourably modify postprandial lipaemia and other CVD risk markers in young, healthy, South Asian men. The first experimental study described in this thesis compared the effect of 60 minutes of brisk walking on postprandial TAG concentration in 15 South Asian and 14 White European men. Trials were conducted over two days with exercise (or rest) taking place on day 1 and postprandial testing on day 2. A key finding from this study was that postprandial TAG, glucose and interleuklin-6 (IL-6) concentrations were elevated in South Asian compared with White European participants after consumption of high fat meals. This study also revealed a non-significant trend for brisk walking to reduce postprandial TAG concentrations in response to high fat meals in both groups. The second experimental study reported here examined the effect of 60 minutes of treadmill running at 70% of max on postprandial lipaemia and other CVD risk makers on the next day in 10 South Asian and 10 White European men. A significant main effect of trial was shown for postprandial TAG, IL-6 and soluble intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (sICAM-1), showing that TAG and IL-6 concentrations were lower on the exercise trial while sICAM-1 concentrations were higher on the exercise trial. In addition, ethnic group differences were observed for postprandial TAG, glucose and insulin concentrations indicating higher values in South Asians than White Europeans. A significant trial by group interaction effect was also observed for TAG, indicating a greater decrease after exercise in the South Asian men than the European men. In the third experimental study in this thesis the effect of 30 minutes of treadmill running on one day was compared with running for 30 minutes on three consecutive days in 11 South Asian men with regards to postprandial lipaemia. Neither a single bout of running nor three consecutive days of running influenced postprandial TAG in response to high fat meals when compared with the response on a control trial. It is not clear why exercise was ineffective in reducing postprandial lipaemia in this study but possibly the energy expenditure of exercise was insufficient to elicit change. The final experimental chapter described in this thesis combined the data from the first three studies. The objective of this chapter was to enhance the sample size in an effort to clarify the effects of acute exercise and to clarify the effects of ethnic group with respect to several fasting and postprandial CVD risk markers. The key findings were: 1) fasting and postprandial TAG and postprandial glucose concentrations were significantly reduced by exercise; 2) There were significant main effects of ethnic group for fasting high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), total cholesterol/ HDL-C, IL-6 and systolic blood pressure (SBP), indicating lower values of HDL-C and SBP and higher values of total cholesterol/HDL-C and IL-6 in South Asian participants. Additionally, there were significant main effects of ethnic group for postprandial TAG and IL-6 indicating higher values in South Asian participants. Taken together, these data indicate that South Asians have an adverse CVD risk factor profile in comparison with White Europeans and this may explain, at least in part, their elevated risk of CVD. Importantly, the data produced within this thesis show for the first time that acute bouts of exercise can be effective for lowering postprandial plasma TAG concentrations in South Asians, at least transiently. Thus, exercise has the potential to serve as a non-pharmacological medicine in South Asians.

Historians have long connected the emergence of the early modern state with increased efforts to discipline populations. Allying with religious authorities to monitor private lives, states sought to limit sexual activity to marriage and to support patriarchal authority in order to create orderly societies and obedient subjects. Governments legitimated their increased intrusions into people's lives by arguing that it was their responsibility to bring about moral reformation in their subjects, but their new interest was also rooted in achieving more direct control over individuals for the purposes of preventing crime and disorder, rationalizing tax collection, eliminating legal pluralities, and inculcating military discipline. This dissertation argues that the same motives that informed the policies of emerging states in this period lay at the heart of the Dutch West India Company's marriage regulation during its brief existence from 1621 to 1674. Company representatives sought to institute and enforce strict marriage discipline upon their colonists, soldiers, sailors, conquered subjects, and indigenous allies in order to transform them into proper subjects and to extend Company governance over vast, new territories. Like the centralizing states of the early modern period that justified their increased power by arguing that they were reforming their subjects, the West India Company responded to potential critics of their state-like power and their sovereign authority with the same rationale. Company efforts to regulate marriage and sex were, however, challenged by the existence of overlapping jurisdictions emerging both from the Dutch Republic's own tradition of legal plurality and from the existing institutions of conquered European populations and indigenous allies. Whereas emerging absolutist states were able to either gain the cooperation of or eliminate institutions with competing claims to authority, examining the conflicts over marriage regulation in the Dutch colonies shows that the West India Company failed in its efforts to tame competing institutions and bring them under its authority. Looking at the Company's governance through the lens of its marriage and sex regulation, therefore, upends traditional understandings of the Company as a trading enterprise and suggests that its directors were engaged in the process of state formation. It also suggests a novel way to understand the Company's repeated setbacks and ultimate failure in 1674. Despite its claims to absolute authority and its efforts to negotiate and secure this authority, competing institutions never acquiesced to Company jurisdiction.

My dissertation explores the formative stages of European interest in, engagement with and consumption of Indian pictorial art over a period of one hundred and fifty years, from the mid-16th century up to the early 18th century. During this period, European cabinets of curiosities witnessed the arrival of increasing numbers of a previously unknown class of collectible: Indian paintings on paper. Interest in these paintings was spurred by a growing curiosity about the East, combined with a general re-orientation of the European system of knowledge towards a more “scientific” methodology of inquiry, which encouraged a revision of the stereotypes that had informed medieval European conceptions of India through engagement with original sources. The relevance of this phenomenon to the history of early modern exchanges between India and Europe can hardly be overstated. Yet, modern scholarship has tended to ignore it, focusing instead on the Indian fascination with and reception of European artistic forms and techniques. This dissertation seeks to develop a more exhaustive picture of the early modern artistic encounter between India and the West, one in which European consumption of Indian paintings is dutifully represented and India plays an active role in the emerging system of knowledge. The starting and central point of my investigation consists of the vast and diversified collection of Indian paintings gathered by a Venetian traveler to India, Niccolò Manucci (1638-ca. 1720), as a visual accompaniment to his travel account, the so-called Storia do Mogor. This collection, which has remained largely ignored, makes a crucial case-study for approaching issues relative to the nature of European interest in Indian paintings in early modernity, the contexts and modalities through which this interest was articulated, as well as its relevance to processes of knowledge making and identity construction that were prompted by European encounters with alterities. The first part of my study provides an in-depth analysis of Manucci’s collection performed through a careful examination of the paintings it comprises along with contemporary textual sources, including the original manuscripts of the Storia do Mogor. My analysis exposes the interrelatedness of Manucci’s collecting enterprise with his authorial project, as well as assessing its broader scope and intended aims. The second part of the dissertation situates this collecting enterprise within its broader historical context by examining other European collections of Indian paintings dating from the 16th and 17th centuries and characterized by comparable subject matter: portraits of historical and living personages associated with Indo-Muslim dynasties, depictions of native Indian peoples and socio-religious customs, and representations of deities of the Hindu pantheon. Besides delving into the specifics of these collections, I explore their dialogic relation to one another and to descriptive practices and interpretative discourses that gained shape in European travel writing and print culture. In doing so, I highlight their participation in broader cultural trends and their contribution to evolving European approaches towards the Orient. This corpus of largely neglected works offers precious insights into the complex dynamics of cross-cultural encounter, as well as exposing the pivotal role played by early modernity in shaping later trends in Indo-European artistic interactions. Offering a direct antecedent to “Company painting,” a 19th-century Indian pictorial genre for European consumption, these works call for a revision of traditional understandings of the latter as an artistic development prompted by the rise of British colonial interests and agendas, and invite a broader reassessment of a unique historical era – the early modern one – that is key to understanding the roots of institutionalized Orientalism.

O trabalho analisa um conjunto de fragmentos de Safo e Alceu em busca de resquícios da poesia praticada pelos povos indo-europeus. A análise parte da comparação entre aspectos da poesia de ambos autores dentro do contexto mais amplo da poesia de culturas de origem indo-europeia, centrando-se em aspectos de dicção, fórmulas, métrica e uma mitologia comum. Com isso, descobrem-se amplos laços de contato entre a poesia dos autores lésbios com diversas tradições poéticas, tais como a indiana, a iraniana, a irlandesa, a germânica, dentre outras. Além disso, o trabalho toca um pouco em um aspecto correlato, que são as relações entre a poesia lésbia e outras tradições poéticas gregas, especialmente a épica, representada por Homero. Por fim, conclui-se que a poesia lésbia se centra dentro de uma firme tradição indoeuropeia comum a toda a poesia grega, recebida diferentemente por cada um dos dois poetas: de maneira mais conservadora para Alceu, e Safo, em diversos momentos, ressignificando essa tradição, sem contudo se afastar dela. / This work investigates a group of fragments by the Lesbian poets Sappho and Alcaeus in search of relics from the poetry of the ancient Indo-European people. The investigation starts from the comparison between aspects of the poetry of both poets in the wider context of poetry of Indo-European origin, focusing on aspects of diction, formulae, metrics and a common inherited mythology. Numerous links are discussed between the Lesbian poets and several poetic traditions such as Indian, Iranian, Irish, Germanic, among others. Besides, this work touches a correlate point by screening the relations between Lesbian and other Greek poetic traditions, specially epic, as represented by Homer. At last, the conclusion is that Lesbian poetry represents a firm Indo-European poetic tradition, one that is common to all Greek poetry and received differently by each of both poets: more conservatively by Alcaeus, and Sappho, in several moments reshaping this tradition without distancing itself from it.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Chinese Historical Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Thesis (Ph.D. History)--University of Waikato, 2007. / Title from PDF cover (viewed April 9, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 315-347)

Thesis (B.A.(Hons.)) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of English and Dept. of History, 2000. / "November 2000" Bibliography: leaves 42-43.

O trabalho analisa um conjunto de fragmentos de Safo e Alceu em busca de resquícios da poesia praticada pelos povos indo-europeus. A análise parte da comparação entre aspectos da poesia de ambos autores dentro do contexto mais amplo da poesia de culturas de origem indo-europeia, centrando-se em aspectos de dicção, fórmulas, métrica e uma mitologia comum. Com isso, descobrem-se amplos laços de contato entre a poesia dos autores lésbios com diversas tradições poéticas, tais como a indiana, a iraniana, a irlandesa, a germânica, dentre outras. Além disso, o trabalho toca um pouco em um aspecto correlato, que são as relações entre a poesia lésbia e outras tradições poéticas gregas, especialmente a épica, representada por Homero. Por fim, conclui-se que a poesia lésbia se centra dentro de uma firme tradição indoeuropeia comum a toda a poesia grega, recebida diferentemente por cada um dos dois poetas: de maneira mais conservadora para Alceu, e Safo, em diversos momentos, ressignificando essa tradição, sem contudo se afastar dela. / This work investigates a group of fragments by the Lesbian poets Sappho and Alcaeus in search of relics from the poetry of the ancient Indo-European people. The investigation starts from the comparison between aspects of the poetry of both poets in the wider context of poetry of Indo-European origin, focusing on aspects of diction, formulae, metrics and a common inherited mythology. Numerous links are discussed between the Lesbian poets and several poetic traditions such as Indian, Iranian, Irish, Germanic, among others. Besides, this work touches a correlate point by screening the relations between Lesbian and other Greek poetic traditions, specially epic, as represented by Homer. At last, the conclusion is that Lesbian poetry represents a firm Indo-European poetic tradition, one that is common to all Greek poetry and received differently by each of both poets: more conservatively by Alcaeus, and Sappho, in several moments reshaping this tradition without distancing itself from it.

Vocal polyphonic music, as one of Georgia’s primary cultural exports that has been gaining popularity in the world, plays a big part in the effort of creating a marketable Georgian identity – an effort tied to the Georgian state’s desire to join the EU and get away from its Soviet past. Whether state-sponsored or private, a number of institutions have risen to prominence in recent years, all proclaiming to be dedicated to the preservation and popularization of Georgian folklore. While their contribution to these missions is extensive, their policies and practices often carry an eerie resemblance to the Soviet attempts at selective promotion of indigenous cultures. By the very nature of their structure, these institutions impose a particular idea of power and hierarchy: wherein a few select people control the distribution of finances, information, and other resources, performers adhere to dress codes, and ensembles have centralized leadership. My argument in this work is that this idea of power and hierarchy is at odds with the practice of Georgian polyphonic singing, which involves (usually) three distinct voices coming together, without designating a “chief” or “main” one among them. Rather, the singers trade off taking the lead, with endless opportunities for melodic and textual improvisation, and the songs in question are not possible if all the voices are not present. Through a close analysis of ethnographic data from the provinces of Guria and Svaneti in Western Georgia, this project explores how power, preservation, and death — both semiotic and literal — coincide, intersect, and diverge in the Georgian folk singing communities. I approach the tradition as a dynamic habit, with its practitioners as participants in a continuous process, which can only die if performance reaches the “perfect” form, so often exulted by the very institutions that vow to keep it alive. My discussion of the singing practice in this dissertation poses broader questions within the disciplines of anthropology and ethnomusicology, such as: how does the growing popularity of a musical practice shape the worldwide discourse and local policies around it? What happens when rigid institutional power structures are imposed onto a tradition that is pre-disposed against them? And what options and choices do the practitioners of this tradition have when it comes to maintaining their commitment to it?

“The Artist as Curator: Diego Velázquez, 1623-1660” reconsiders the career of Diego Velázquez at the court of Hapsburg king Philip IV as a major episode in the history of curatorial practice. By this it means to examine the ways Velázquez’s activities as a painter and his activities as curator of the Hapsburg art collection transformed each other. Velázquez’s paintings express ambitions and attitudes towards his predecessors that would motivate Velázquez’s reorganization of parts of the royal collection that included their works. In turn, the collection and display of paintings in royal exhibition sites would cultivate in Velázquez a knowledge of art and its history that would inform the paintings he produced at court. Velázquez was a singularly art-historical painter, many of whose works investigate the nature of art itself. This dissertation seeks to prove that these aspects of Velázquez’s work were cultivated in the early modern museum that was the Alcázar palace, where he was surrounded by a veritable history of art under the Hapsburgs. The dissertation has five chapters; each closely examines a significant project in Velázquez’s trajectory as artist-curator at the Hapsburg court. The first uses the first major installation that Velázquez would witness at the Hapsburg court to set up the problematic of the dissertation as a whole - namely, that meaning was made on the walls of galleries, and that if Velázquez was going to make his name at court, it would be by engaging the royal art collection as it appeared on gallery walls. The second investigates Velázquez’s first curatorial project, the redecoration of the Octagonal Room; it argued that Velázquez’s interest in art itself—an interest characteristic of his painting practice—found a new medium in his work as curator of this gallery. The third chapter reexamines The Rokeby Venus as a function of what Velázquez witnessed over the course of the assembly of the Vaults of Titian, where paintings of nudes were exhibited all together; it thus demonstrates the impact of the royal art collection and its display on his creative imagination as a painter. The fourth chapter considers the culminating curatorial project of Velázquez’s career—the redecoration of the Hall of Mirrors—in tandem with the suite of paintings he made for it—the painting cycle including Mercury and Argus, examining the ways that these two projects mutually informed one another. The final chapter proposes that Las Meninas again evidences Velázquez’s curatorial and painterly imaginations at work simultaneously; then it uses the painting as a point of entry into the reception of both of these aspects of Velázquez’s work at the Hapsburg court, arguing that to make art after Velázquez was to acknowledge both. All together, these chapters tell the story of Velázquez’s increasing engagement with the royal art collection, from the start of his career at the Hapsburg court through his legacy beyond it.