Search Results (5)

This study analyzes the award-winning documentary film Searching for Rodakis, directed by Kerem Soyyilmaz, produced in 2023. The aim of this study is the historic comprehension and analysis of this filmic narrative in the field of social–semiotic literacy and its utilization in historical studies for approaching issues of conflict in modern history, otherness, collective experience and trauma, and collective memory. The research material is the documentary Searching for Rodakis (produced by Denmark, Turkey 2023; screenplay/director, Kerem Soyyilmaz; duration, 57’), which received the following awards: Adana Golden Boll FF 2023 Turkey | Best Documentary, Thessaloniki International Doc. Festival 2023 Greece, Greek Film Festival Los Angeles 2023 USA, and Istanbul Documentary Days 2023 Turkey. As regards the historic context, the year of production, 2023, coincides with the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, where Turkey’s current borders were set and the “population exchange” legally sealed, i.e., the violent expulsion of 400,000 Muslims, citizens of Greece, many of whom spoke only Greek, and 200,000 Orthodox citizens of Turkey, who in the majority spoke Turkish. At the same time, the Treaty of Lausanne ratified and finalized the expulsion of approximately one million Orthodox who were forced to leave the Ottoman Empire, as well as 120,000 Muslims who had fled Greece since the beginning of the Balkan Wars (1912–1913). About two million people were deported and lost their citizenship and property, in the context of “national homogeneity” (which connotes an ethnic cleansing), with the official states ignoring the criticisms of lawyers and academics who spoke of violations of constitutional rights. Mohammedan Greeks, estimated at around 190,000 as early as 1914, based on ecclesiastical statistics in the Pontus region, did not receive attention from the provisions of the Treaty of Lausanne, even though linguistically and culturally (origin, customs, culture and traditions) they did not differ in any way from the Orthodox Greeks. In Turkey, there was general indifference to the thousands of desperate people who arrived, with the exception of a few academics and the Lausanne Exchange Foundation. The filmic scenario is as follows: as a Greek tombstone of unknown origin is discovered underneath the floorboards in an old village house in Turkey, an almost forgotten story from the country’s creation unravels—the forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923. The engraved Greek letters tell of a woman, Chrysoula Rodaki, who died in 1887. Thus the search for her descendants begins. It leads director Kerem Soyyilmaz to local archives, where his own family’s role in history is laid bare; to abandoned ghost towns, and through the memories of older villagers—all while Soyyilmaz meets massive support for his quest from Greeks on the other side of the border. The stone becomes a portal to the past—and for a while, the trauma becomes redeemed when the previous owners of the village house return. Searching for Rodakis is a movie that reconnects people, culture, and the stories that were discarded in order to build a strong, nationalist state—told through the director’s personal experiences. The research questions, as they arise from the cinematographic material itself, are as follows: How is the historical memory of traumatic events of the previous century, such as the exchange of populations according the Treaty of Lausanne, recorded in the cinematographic narrative? What are the historical sources? To what extent did the origin, ethnicity, and geographical location of the narrators as participants influence the preservation of historical memory and the historical research? What are the criteria of the approach of the creator, and what are the criteria of the participants? Methodologically, we apply historic and socio-semiotic analyses in the field of public and digital history. The results: The types of historical sources found in filmic public discourse include the oral narration of testimonies, of experiences and of memories, as well as the director’s historical research in state archives, the material cultural objects, and the director’s digital research. Thus, historic thematic categories occur, such as the specific persons and actions in Turkey/Greece, actions on-site and in online research, and the types of historical sources, such as oral testimonies, research in archives, and objects of material culture. Sub-themes such as childhood, localities and kinship also emerge. These cinematic recordings of biographical oral narratives as historical and sociological material help us understand the political ideologies of the specific period, between the years 1919 and 1923. The multimodal film material is analyzed to provide testimonies of oral and digital history; it is utilized to approach the historical reality of “otherness”, seeking dialogue in cross-border history in order to identify differences, but above all the historic and cultural similarities against sterile stereotypes. The historic era and the historic geography of the Greek and Turkish national histories concern us for research and teaching purposes a hundred years after the Treaty of Lausanne which set the official borders of the countries. Full article

Africa is considered to be the second largest continent of the world—only subsequent to Asia. However, its intellectual and cultural contributions to the world remain among the least influential, if not the most undermined, particularly when one considers the written records about the continent and its people as sources and generators of knowledge. Much of what is known of Africa is anchored in the perceptions and attitudes of missionaries, merchants, and historians who occupied the continent due to foreign religious persuasions, commerce, or some biographical accounts of the continent and its people that aided and advanced the undertakings of colonisers in subduing the Africans. In such a context, the African narrative was told from an otherly view, with the main objects of reconnoitring being treated as spectators. For this reason, the essence of the indigenous religions of Africa was destabilised. Using document analysis as a methodological approach, this study critically reflects on neo-colonialism as a system that thwarted the development of indigenous religions of Africa; shows how such a system eroded indigenous religions, such as the San, Ibibio, and Basotho religions; and offers a reformist approach in which the emancipation of indigenous religions of Africa may be based. Full article

This paper draws on biographical research among the Akamba and the Luo communities in Eastern and Western Kenya, respectively. Our research explored how practices of adolescence as a process, an institution, and a performance of identity interact with colonial modernities and imaginaries in complex ways. The biographical research was carried out predominantly with women born in the late colonial period in Kenya. We provide critical reflections on the process and affordances of our embodied storytelling approach, which we position as an Africanist methodology and a decolonial research practice. This research and approach provided women with a space to narrate and perform their lived experience, potentially disrupting epistemic inequities that are embedded in the way research on growing up in the past is carried out. The discussions show how colonialism interacted with other factors, including gender and generational power, tradition, girls’ agency, and other life characteristics like poverty and family situation, in order to influence the lived experiences of women. Going beyond the narratives of victimhood that characterise coming of age in similar spaces, we present women’s emergent, incomplete, and incongruent agency. We position this agency as the diverse ways in which people come to terms with their difficult contexts. The discussion also points to the need for unsettling the settled thinking about girlhood and coming of age in specific historical spaces in the global South. Full article

The paper presents the results of a study that implemented a mixed methods approach to explore the question of correlation between online and offline activities of Buddhist organizations and communities in Russia. The research was carried out in 2019–2020 and addressed the following key issues: How do Buddhist websites and social media communities actually interact with offline organizations and Russian-speaking Buddhist communities? How do the ideological specifics of Buddhist organizations and communities influence their negotiations with the Internet and strategies towards new media technologies? Within the methodological frame of the religious–social shaping of technology approach by Heidi Campbell, we used the typology of religious digital creatives to reveal the strategies created by the Russian-speaking Buddhist communities developing their own identity, authority, and boundaries by means of digital technologies. In the first stage, we used quantitative software non-reactive methods to collect data from social media with the application of mathematical modeling techniques to build a graph model of Buddhist online communities in the vk.com social network and identify and describe its clusters. The second stage of the research combined biographical narratives of Buddhist digital creatives and expert interviews. Full article

In light of ongoing controversies concerning expressive arts education in Portuguese primary schools, the life history of one primary-school teacher who lives and works in the city of Porto (Portugal) is the starting point for problematizing this issue from the perspective of lived experiences. Data collection comprises oral reports, visual materials, and emotional accounts. Feelings were shared in a relational environment framed by ethical commitments. Through these processes, it was possible to create a narrative within the framework of a biographical narrative research approach. The main purpose was to highlight the voice of one primary-school teacher whose life history is blended with the foundations and practices of artistic expression in basic education—such as language, communication, knowledge, and lived experiences—making it an important starting point for reconceptualizing expressive arts education. The results showed that this reconceptualization can be achieved through three dimensions: seducing people, mediating places, and governing senses. Full article