This thesis on the corporate history of the Concertgebouworchestra reveals that the culture of regents of the Concertgebouw gave the chief conductor more leeway than the orchestra's director... Show moreThis thesis on the corporate history of the Concertgebouworchestra reveals that the culture of regents of the Concertgebouw gave the chief conductor more leeway than the orchestra's director from the start, paving the way for a dominant position of the orchestra leader. Willem Mengelberg, a prominent man with a turbulent life, stipulated not only the artistic but also part of the corporate policy of the Concertgebouw orchestra, and was forceful in doing so. Thus 'model' regulary caused tension involving the talented conductor himself and, at a later stage, his successors. Given the fact that the board had few checks ans balances at its disposal to channel these tensions, conflicts could easily spin out of control. Although several aspects of these problems have been touched upon in literature before, they have never been interpreted and intergrated as in this thesis. This book clearly demonstrates that the Mengelberg model had a major impact on the way chief conductors were looked upon and on the mark they put on management. Thus, a fresh view emerged on a nineteenth-century institution searching its way into the twenty-first century. Within this quest, the entrepreneurial spirit of the Concertgebouw orchestra was slow to appear. Show less
Three Christian films have become popular in the Commune of Cobly of today's Republic of Benin, notably the American "Jesus Film" (1979), the American-Ivorian film "La Solution" (1994) and the... Show moreThree Christian films have become popular in the Commune of Cobly of today's Republic of Benin, notably the American "Jesus Film" (1979), the American-Ivorian film "La Solution" (1994) and the Beninese video film "Yatin: Lieu de souffrance" (2002). The discussion centres on how people receive and understand these films together with the digital video technology that facilitate their recent success. Christian films are so important in this part of Benin that the question needs to be raised whether Christianity is shifting from a religion of the book towards a religion of film. The theoretical starting point is semiotics, a theory that has been foundational not only for film, media and media reception studies, but more recently also for the study of materiality. This thesis' main theoretical contribution is a critique of semiotics, arguing that this theory, which has been foundational to Western science, is in fact too limiting. Semiotics, even in its Peircean orientation, cannot sufficiently explain how people in the Commune of Cobly understand shrines, film and media more generally, both through their material manifestations and interactively in terms of communication. Instead, a process called "presencing", which goes beyond semiotics, can explain better people's understanding of shrines and media. Show less
This dissertation analyses the use of the Leiden anatomical collections in the nineteenth century. It investigates what happened to anatomical preparations after they were added to institutional... Show moreThis dissertation analyses the use of the Leiden anatomical collections in the nineteenth century. It investigates what happened to anatomical preparations after they were added to institutional collections. Four chapters discuss the four main audiences of the Leiden collections: students, researchers, lay visitors, and university governors. The medical audiences (students and researchers) kept using the collections throughout the nineteenth century; the non-medical audiences (visitors and governors) stopped using the collections in the second half of the century. The dissertation argues that, to understand these developments, we need to see anatomical collections as dynamic entities: intended for active, hands-on use and containing objects that, as philosopher of biology Hans-J_rg Rheinberger has put it, are made of what they represent. These properties enabled researchers and students to continuously reinterpret the preparations as medical theories and practices changed. In the new medicine, the collections were placed in a closed laboratory environment, and the reinterpretations disconnected the preparations from their past and the moral stories once attached to them. Hence, they became hard to access and use for lay visitors and university governors. Even today, old preparations linger in hospitals and laboratories, waiting for new uses __ as do newly built collections of bodily material. Show less
