This thesis explores how urban night spaces have been, and how they are currently produced, imagined, experienced, and narrated among the Cabo Verdean migrant community in Rotterdam. The common... Show moreThis thesis explores how urban night spaces have been, and how they are currently produced, imagined, experienced, and narrated among the Cabo Verdean migrant community in Rotterdam. The common thread that runs through this research is music, which is analysed through lyrics, performances, and as an integral part of nightlife. The Netherlands and Rotterdam are sung about or mentioned in many songs by Cabo Verdean artists from different generations. Cabo Verdean music about Rotterdam is distinctive in that it contributes significantly to processes of place-making as it reflects on and generates representations of specific places which were important during the times in which that music was written. It traces places and routes through the city and uncovers daily and nocturnal rhythms, echoing a particular atmosphere. Simultaneously, night spaces were used to mobilize the community politically in times of the independence struggle against Portugal and are still essential in generating a collective sense of self. With Rotterdam continuously developing, the histories of particular Cabo Verdean night spaces are appropriated in contemporary nightlife, as organisers draw on collective memories of historical nightlife events. As such, cultural texts and events not only shape Cabo Verdean life in the city, but they also facilitate the re-memorisation and re-experiencing of diasporic lives in current events and cultural productions. Show less
This dissertation was written within the NWO VIDI project __Cultural innovation in a globalising society, Egypt in the Roman world__, (Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University) directed by dr.... Show moreThis dissertation was written within the NWO VIDI project __Cultural innovation in a globalising society, Egypt in the Roman world__, (Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University) directed by dr. Miguel John Versluys. The general aim of this project is devoted to the understanding of the different contexts in which Egypt as style, imagery, object, and text, was integrated in the Roman world. It thereby wishes to give Egypt its proper place within the process of Roman cultural innovation through carefully studying its material and textual remains in the context in which they were created and appropriated. Studies on the Roman perception of Egypt, concerning both textual and archaeological sources, generally approach Egypt from fixated and normative concepts. For example, Aegyptiaca have traditionally been interpreted within a framework of oriental cults or Egyptomania. The research project, in contrast, demonstrates that the dichotomy Rome versus Egypt should be approached with care. Besides the present thesis, three other PhD-dissertations are written within the scope of the project: Marike van Aerde, examining the role of Egyptian material culture in Augustan Rome, Sander M_skens, focusing on the material analysis of stone Aegyptiaca in Rome, and Maaike Leemreize, studying the Roman literary perceptions of Egypt. The purpose of this particular dissertation is to obtain a better image of the use, perception, and integration of Egyptian artefacts in domestic contexts, using Pompeii (1st century BC __ 1st century AD) as a case study. The houses of Pompeii yielded many objects that scholars nowadays would call Egyptian or Egyptianised artefacts and are subsumed under the denominator of Aegyptiaca. For the case of Pompeii, Aegyptiaca form a heterogeneous group of both imported and locally produced objects spread throughout the town, consisting of statuettes, imported sculptures, furniture, jewellery, or wall paintings. The most predominant interpretations drawn about the use of these objects have mainly been done on the basis of two accounts: they were interpreted as religious artefacts and explained in the context of the cults of Isis, or they were interpreted as exoticum. The interpretations have been drawn mostly without any contextual analysis or any theoretical underpinnings, and more problematic: the collecting and interpretation of artefacts have been based on modern scholarly perceptions of what Egypt entails, while we as scholars recognise something __Egyptian__ on different grounds than the people of Pompeii once did. The category Aegyptiaca in itself should be seriously questioned and the way Romans categorised should be scrutinised. The aim of this thesis therefore is to analyse the perception of these objects from a bottom up perspective, avoiding the a priori cultural labelling of Egyptian artefacts, but starting instead from the object itself with its main goal to contextualise and to give the finds meaning from within their original use-contexts. For this, methods derived from recent developments in object agency and relationality are used. Show less
