Galicyjska recepcja Chopina. W kręgu Marceliny Czartoryskiej i Stanisława Tarnowskiego

The paper is dedicated to the role of princess Marcelina Czartoryska, a friend and student of Chopin, as an initiator of the research into his life and work, and to Stanisław Tarnowski’s essay about the composer. On 19 March 1871, in the hall of the Saski Hotel, a public lecture on Chopin was presented by Tarnowski, accompanied by Czartoryska’s magnificent performance. The income from this event was donated to Towarzystwo Wzajemnej Pomocy (mutual help association) for the support of the poor students of the Jagiellonian University. Czartoryska accompanied Tarnowski, illustrating his speech by playing the piano. Tarnowski published his work twice: in 1871 and 1892. He set the life and work of Chopin in the context of the period. Based on the sources, he reconstructed the spiritual biography of the artist, his creative personality both in terms of the psychological and the social aspects. He saw in Chopin “the fourth greatest poet of the divided Poland,” the fourth Bard.

The Japanese Civil Service

This essay, based on a public lecture, deals with the last Civil Service (CS) Reform in Japan, which had been attempted since the 1990s and was completed in 2014. Bureaucrats enjoyed a “summer” where they actively were engaged in policy-making. But a series of policy failures and scandals revealed in the 1990s were attributed to their excessive autonomy, and centralized personnel control by the prime minister was introduced. However, discourse analysis of the Diet (Parliament) during the period of Reform indicates that there was neither a shared understanding of the meaning of CS impartiality, nor of the values to be borne by the CS. The driving force of the Reform was mainly people’s fury. It therefore resulted in relegating bureaucrats to being “lackeys” of the prime minister, ignoring their self-respect. This has given rise to various undesirable consequences. Will the CS see another “spring” in Japan?

George Victor Du Noyer’s large format paintings: Nineteenth-century lecture slides

ABSTRACT The National Museum of Ireland’s natural history collections include a range of large format artworks, many of paleontological subjects, which were painted by George Victor Du Noyer, the celebrated nineteenth-century geologist, antiquarian, and artist who worked for both the Ordnance Survey of Ireland and the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI). Letterbook references in the archives of GSI indicate that most, if not all of these, were commissioned by Joseph Beete Jukes, director of the GSI, for different public lecture series. The artistic qualities of the work suggest they were done at speed. However, they also are designed to be seen from a distance within a lecture hall, so an apparently crude technique is appropriate to the purpose. In effect, the watercolor paintings in this series are the PowerPoint presentation of the 1850s.

Public lecture of mr. Traycho Traykov – mayor of “Sredets” region at the municipality of Sofia – before law students on the topic: “What is good for the people is not always politically correct, but somebody must do it”

The public lecture is dedicated to the powers of regional mayors within a municipality. It focuses on the lack of financial decentralisation in the area of local self-government. It also describes the powers of regional mayors in the areas of ensuring public order and, in particular, the powers under the Ministry of Internal Affairs Act and the Condominium Ownership Management Act.

Public lecture of judge Atanaska Disheva – member of the Supreme Judicial Council – before law students on the topic: “The role of the prosecutor in the administrative proceedings

The public lecture is dedicated to the issue of the prosecutor’s supervision on the activities of the administrative bodies within the principle of separation of powers and the principle of rule of law. It provides the opportunity to make more specific the scope of the prosecutor’s function on ensuring the legal order.

Three Men in a Boat? How the Suminokura, Caron, and the Zheng Experienced the Regime Changes in East Asia (1600–1670): An Essay in Global Microhistory

This article, originally presented as a public lecture at the occasion of the Fukuoka Prize Ceremony in September 2019, approaches from biographical and microhistorical perspectives the careers of three early-modern protagonists, Suminokura Ryōi, François Caron, and Zheng Zhilong, who were all involved in the maritime trade of the Eastern Seas. It shows how these Japanese, Dutch, and Chinese entrepreneurs became entangled with the epochal changes of regime in China and Japan in the first half of the seventeenth century, and concludes with remarks on their agency, loyalty, and legacy.

Interruption and Interpellation

This chapter reflects on the significance of interruption in performance. Under which conditions might interruption be deemed political? And what precisely accords such interruptive gestures an interpellative quality, the capacity to usher a sense of political subjecthood into being? The chapter dwells on three scenes of interruption: in Walter Benjamin’s writings on Bertolt Brecht, in Louis Althusser’s ideology theory, and a scene from a 2018 public lecture-performance in Amsterdam by the scholar-artist Chokri Ben Chikha., In the artist’s gesture toward self-immolation, the protocols of theatrical performance are interrupted in order to reflect on the political efficacy of performance. By way of a complementary reading of Benjamin’s elaboration of the Brechtian ‘gestus’ and Louis Althusser’s conception of ideological interpellation, the chapter suggests that performance and politics are related by the ways in which they interrupt and interpellate each other.

Trends in Inaugural and Public Lecture Presentations at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO), 1986-2019

This study is designed to determine the trend of inaugural and public lecture presentations at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO), from 1986 – 2019. A total of thirty-five hard copies of the inaugural and thirty-three public lectures were retrieved from the University Library for the research. The frequency of presentation, gender of the lecturers, discipline/programme, subject matter and trend of presentation of the lectures were analyzed using descriptive statistics including frequency tables, percentages, charts and graphs. Findings revealed that only a few lecturers have presented their inaugural lectures compared to the number of Professors in the University. More males had presented lectures, when compared to females. Sciences, Engineering, Agriculture and Management had low presentation. The subjects of the public lecture revolved around and demonstrated the societal challenges and issues at the time of the presentations. Recommendations were made primarily to ensure motivation and policy position on inaugural and public lectures presentation. Keywords: Inaugural lectures, Public lectures, Research, Universities

"O języku pomocniczym międzynarodowym" 111 lat później

W 1908 roku Jan Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay wygłosił publiczny odczyt „O języku pomocniczym międzynarodowym”, w którym to prezentował tytułowe zagadnienie, skupiając się na językach sztucznych. Niniejszy referat ma na celu analizę powyższego tekstu i stwierdzenie, w jakim stopniu aktualne jest stanowisko tego wielkiego językoznawcy w świetle nie tylko dzisiejszej wiedzy językoznawczej, ale także pod kątem faktycznego rozwoju języków przez niego opisanych. “On an international auxiliary language” 111 years later. In 1908, Jan Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay gave a public lecture entitled “O języku pomocniczym międzynarodowym” (‘On an international auxiliary language’), in which he focused on artificial languages. This paper aims to analyse the ideas presented in Baudouin de Courtenay’s lecture and verify to what extent the great linguist’s views are still valid in the light not only of current linguistic knowledge, but also in terms of the actual development of the languages he described. Keywords: international auxiliary language, Esperanto, Volapük, artificial language, lingua franca