Приемната грижа в медийното пространство

Author(s): Hristinka Basheva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2017

The general aim of this article is to promote the idea and organization of foster care as a protection measure and social service as reflected by the media. The media plays an important role in introducing, popularizing and evaluating the foster care – showing examples of both „bad“ and „good“ practices. The positive direction it creates is to inform the public about the service by showing these practices. The negative direction, the sceptical thinking and even the denial of this new form of care for children in need and risk, which is still seeking its place in Bulgaria and worldwide, come from the media suggestions that the foster parents are living and often profiting on the back of the children.

Власт и неподвластни страсти: проституцията в османското общество (XVIII век)

Author(s): Orlin Sabev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2017

The paper deals with prostitution in 18th century Ottoman society, Bulgarian lands including. Legislation on prostitution, resting both on the intransigent rules of religious law (sharia) and on the more tolerable Ottoman state law (some customary laws included), is taken into consideration. The paper is based on comparative analyses of literary narratives, “urban legends” and documentary sources from Ottoman archives related to prostitution and its persecution. The archives dating from the 18th century show that all measures (systematic and accidental) undertaken by the Ottoman authorities to combat and wipe out prostitution – mainly through imprisonment and expulsion of prostitutes and state servants caught in immoral contacts with prostitutes – had but a minimal effect. It was realized in the 19th century that prostitution is nothing but the “necessary evil” and that it is better to control through legalization of brothels and taxation of prostitutes (after the western pattern) than to apply rigorous measures, death penalty including.

Стари надгробни паметници от района на Судак, Крим

Author(s): Leniyara Dzhelilova,Akhtem Dzhelilov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2017

The paper presents the authors’ research on gravestones found in villages near Sudak. Most gravestones date back to the second half of 19th and early 20th centuries. Gravestones in the villages near Sudak have their own history. The most ancient one is dated by 1218 a.h./1802–1803 c.e., and the most recent one – by 1362 a.h./1943 c.e. The gravestones found in Khoz, Tokhlukh and Tarakhtash can be classified in three groups:1. Ancient gravestones;2. Fragments (remnants) of ancient gravestones; 3. Top parts of the ancient gravestones – fez, dal fez [turban], sarykh, fragments of an astrakhan cap.Crimean Tatar gravestones found in these three villages were made in pillar on in slabstone form. The face plate contains inscriptions, called epitaphs (from Greek έπιτάφιος – “specific of gravestone”). The other sides of gravestones contain engravings (decorations and drawings): the Islamic symbol of a star and crescent, Koran, ewer and plants, including fig-tree, six-petal flowers, etc.The tradition of Crimean Tatar gravestones, found in Khoz, Tokhlukh and Tarakhtash villages near Sudak, originated from Ottoman Turkey. There is also some similarity between the gravestones in Sudak and the thombstones from the Roman period on the territory of contemporary Turkey.

Международна научна конференция “The ‘State Artist’ in Romania and Eastern Europe”, Букурещ, 5 октомври 2016 г.

Author(s): Lina Gergova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2017

Scholarly Conference

Научна конференция „Агрокултурни ориентации и практики: локални трансформации в условията на европеизация и глобализация“

Author(s): Ivaylo Markov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2017

COORDINATORS FOREWORD

Author(s): Corina Moldovan,Christian Schuster / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

The second issue of the Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai, Digitalia, offers a selection of papers and projects that were presented on the occasion of the first conference of the Digital Humanities Transylvania Centre, DigiHUBB, titled ‘Early digital computing in Eastern-Europe’, held on the 28 and the 29th of November 2017 at the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. The conference was inaugurated with the key-note speech given by Professor Willard McCarty, one of the first scholars to enthusiastically support the launch and the activities of DigiHUBB, the first digital humanities centre in Romania. In his plenary lecture, professor McCarty underlined the fact that the prospects of a new centre always brings into mind the causes of the disappearance of once brilliant ones, with the main reason being the lack of an intellectual agenda. In his paper entitled The programmer and the scholar: A conversation which opens the volume, the professor interrogates the meaning of the ‘common understanding’ that is vital for the resistance of the digital humanities as a field, a common ground understood as ‘a fundamentally interdisciplinary and methodological enterprise’ that gives value to the field of ‘intellectual ecology of the arts and the letters’. For McCarty, the programmer and the scholar are not two different kinds of people but ‘two states being in an evolving cognitive resonance’. Thus, the intersection between machine and the enquirer creates an intersection ‘where a genuine digital humanities – a practice of as well as in the human disciplines – takes place.’

THE PROGRAMMER AND THE SCHOLAR: A CONVERSATION

Author(s): Willard McCarty / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

The prospects of a new centre for digital humanities brings to mind those once prominent centres that have disappeared, hence the question of what they did or did not do that would have made the difference. Here I suggest that they failed for lack of an intellectual agenda. Drawing from the early history of digital humanities, an ethnographic vignette of my own research, close attention to the machinery of computing and work in the history of the physical sciences, I suggest a beginning to such an agenda.

THE STORY OF THE FIRST ELECTRONIC COMPUTER IN HUNGARY

Author(s): Balint Domolki / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

After several preparatory activities in the early 50s, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences decided that it is necessary to have an electronic computer in Hungary. The Research Group for Cybernetics was established in mid-1956 and charged with the task of obtaining one. As commercial solutions proved to be impossible at that time it was decided to build the clone of a recently developed Soviet computer. The M-3 was a medium sized member of one of the first families of Soviet computers. Complete documentation and a package of key components were received in the framework of scientific cooperation. (Similar clones were built in Tallinn, Beijing, Erevan and M-3 was later manufactured in Minsk) Building of the M-3 started late 1957 (with the author's participation). Some life-signs were emerging in 1959, while more-or-less stabile operation was reached in 1960. Several improvements were made over the original design. Magnetic drum memory was exported to Timisoara for MECIPT. Despite its low performance, M-3 was successfully used to solve many real-life problems both for scientific-engineering calculations and in mathematical economics. Applications in other fields, like linguistics started too. The most important contribution of M-3 was its role in educating computer experts: many of the future leading personalities - both on the development and on the application side - got acquainted with computing around the M-3. M-3 served academic computing until 1965, extended with three more years at Szeged University. In the first part of the 60s commercial computers started to arrive to Hungary both from the USSR and the West.

COMPUTER ORIENTED HIGHER EDUCATION IN HUNGARY – THE BEGINNINGS

Author(s): Edit Sántáné-Tóth / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

The history of computer-oriented higher education in Hungary started in 1957, when Prof. László Kalmár started the education of “applied mathematicians” at the University of Szeged. (The author graduated in the second year of this course, later called the “Szeged School.”) This paper starts with the computing experience around M-3, the first computer made in Hungary, and the use of this experience for educational purposes. It then continues with the initiatives of the University of Szeged, and, after surveying some basic and higher-degree courses, goes on to the institutions of higher learning offering education in computer studies, all the way to the programmer and program developer mathematician courses started in 1972 at three science-universities. However, the institutions of technical education will not be discussed in such detail; although teaching applied computing skills necessary for the technical field had begun quite early, the teaching of professional IT specialists was started only around 1990. The paper contains a table listing the first elective and founding subjects and the first specializations and independent training programmes offered by each university and college. Finally there is a short overview of the connections between contemporary professors and a list of the first conferences organized for IT teachers in Hungary.The IT History Forum (iTF) within the John von Neumann Computer Society (NJSZT) was founded at the beginning of 2009. At one of its events, it occurred to the author that information about the beginnings should be gathered while the persons in question are still alive. The study took 3 years to prepare and is the product of a large-scale collaboration: a total of 130 contemporary and present day teachers, researchers, and librarians participated in the work. Typotex published the material in the form of a book in 2012 . This study, which provides insight into the everyday lives of 30 institutions, is the source for this paper. (The book includes a name-index containing 300 entries and a list of almost 500 definitive contemporary articles, textbooks and technical books published until 1980.) – The paper is concluded with a brief presentation of the digitalised “Data Archive” (see the iTF website: http://itf2.njszt.hu) that serves to preserve the history of computing in Hungary.

PAST AND PRESENT OF THE FIELD OF INFORMATICS AT “BABEȘ-BOLYAI” UNIVERSITY AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS IN CLUJ-NAPOCA

Author(s): Grigor Moldovan / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

This article is centered on the story of the pioneering endeavors in the field of informatics in Romania and more specifically in Cluj-Napoca. Stemming from personal experience and reverence towards the very first professors and specialists that opened up this vast and formidable domain, this article which reads as a history of Romanian informatics, has the added benefit of filling in a noticeable gap in texts that take into account this interesting subject. Spanning from the 50s and all the way up to the 90s and tracing the opening, and transformations, and eventual closure of research centers, laboratories, and various institutional collaborations, this article brigs a better understanding of the efforts and challenges that are always seem to be intertwined with progress, but which were eventually overcome through the persistence of brilliant scholars, and sometimes even the occasional favorable policy. Special attention is given to the entity of the Calculus Centre at Babeș-Bolyai University, founded in 1975, as the author himself was its director for 17 years until it was dismantled in 1992. This too however did not mark and end, but rather a new beginning, a different model of institution that was meant to tackle the ever-changing issues informatics face today.

MEMORIES, RECOLLECTIONS, AND LANDMARKS OR HOW I BECAME A PIONEER

Author(s): Mihai Stanislav Jalobeanu / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

The paper presents a pioneering period (68-76) in the context and with the difficulties of those years remembered all of a sudden in 2006 on the occasion of the celebration of Herbert Francke in Bremen. This leaded without further explanations to a partial restart of the educational activity in the ‘graphic-imagery’.

VALUABLE INSIGHTS INTO “ALBINA BANK” HISTORY REVEALED BY THE LECTURE OF DIGITAL ECONOMIC JOURNAL “REVISTA ECONOMICA” (1899-1918)

Author(s): Adriana Tiron-Tudor,Teodora Viorica FARCAS,Gianluca Zanellatto / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

The paper reveals some valuable insights into “Albina Bank” history from a journalistic lens. This study is based on digital resources, in particular, the Economic Review journal “Revista economica” taking into consideration 20 years (1899-1918). Using a qualitative research method based on narrative inquiry and research techniques correlated to the type of data used, our study resorted to documentary research, historiography or the critical review of the business literature, and discourse analysis. In the analyzed period, the numerous mentions done by Economic Review Journal reveals the prolific activities of Albina Bank, helped and sustained the Romanian spirit and economic initiative. A new attempt of reconstructing the Romanian banking system’s activity of Transylvania was necessary due to the tracing of new possibilities to valorize both sources and a new effort, to achieve its framing within Austro-Hungary’s socio-economic and financial context. Albina Bank should be considered as a prototype, an innovation, as the successful introduction of an idea, perceived as new, into a given social system.

DAGUERREOBASE: DIGITIZING PHOTOGRAPHIC HERITAGE

Author(s): Călina Bârzu / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

The tendency to digitize and create online archives has recently become more common among cultural institutions. Digitizing collections and crowdsourcing the information bring more benefits to museums and the public because the digital medium facilitates a wider exposure and the circulation of a more consistent body of work. In the same line of practice, the Daguerreobase Project is a conservation initiative to digitally archive daguerreotypes on a large scale.

THE STORY OF A PROJECT: A COLLECTIVE MEMORY 1950-2000

Author(s): Andrada Cațavei / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

Conceived and started in 2007 as a result of a private initiative, the collective memory 1950-2000 transdisciplinary project is one whose story (creation, evolution, valorization) is of great interest in the history of digitalization in Romania. As one of the pioneering project of digitalization in the country, it focuses on the creation of an online image archive (www.memoriecolectiva.org) and of its contemporary cultural use. Dedicated to Romanian images especially but not only from the 1950-2000 period, is unique in the field both on the Romanian and international level by how it was conceived, theme, concept, complexity and display.Part of its uniqueness and values is due to the fact that besides collecting, preserving, archiving, digitalizing or presenting the images online it has an oral history component by presenting all the images together with records (voice, video, text) of their stories or/and the stories of their collectors or photographers. Thus an interesting and important asset of the project come into be discuss: the fact that the archive is an emotional one even if is created to be impartial, to have a scientific approach, to promote and encourage researchers and artists to work with it patrimony and an important part of the project it’s dedicated to research, study and to the cultural exploiting of the online archive.

Civilization that will survive

Author(s): Ladislav Bučko / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

The article shows the situation of the Catholic Church in today’s united socialist Vietnam. The author, a Slovak misiologist, does this on the basis of the experiment of life at the monastery of Vincentian brothers in Ho Chi Minh City as well as through small research. This qualitative research was carried out by means of in-depth interviews with a research sample of participants, which consisted of priests from the missionary society of St. Vincent de Paul and a Franciscan missionary from South Korea. The results are surprising and show that the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam and the unification of the country under communist rule was not a tragedy for the Catholic Church but, on the contrary, this situation helped her to consolidate inwardly and strengthen its mission.

Local Communities and the Social Involvement of the Ethnographic Museums

Author(s): Nikolay Nenov / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

This text describes and problematizes examples of Bulgarian and foreign museums focusing on mechanisms of social involvement. Examples are united by an anthropological discourse which gives Bulgarian ethnographic museums an opportunity to expand the thematic issues of their exhibits and activities. Alternative ways to develop and use the museum as an instrument for social criticism are part of the quest of today’s ethnographic museums. At the same time, the author makes his bias towards the Ecomuseum format clear in the search for an ethnographic reading, showing that the establishment of these museums creates a connection between local communities and the museum, which makes it possible to share local identity with various audiences.

National Character and Folklore in the Distorting Mirror of Bulgarian Animated Cinema

Author(s): Nadezhda Marinchevska / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

The article examines various interpretations of folklore elements in Bulgarian animatedcinema as well as authors’ personal generalizations about main features of theBulgarian national character and ethos in the period from the late 1940s to these days.In the 1960s, the process, which has begun in the framework of ideological censorship,Bulgarian folklore tradition included, quickly transformed into satirical film model aiming its criticism at the Bulgarian national character. This model was based on the unconventional visual representation of folklore through the modern graphics and caricature, through the grotesque and decorative drawing. The next stage of the transformation of mythological and legendary subjects in the 1980s was related to radical neo-vanguard practices in Bulgarian animated cinema, which compared Bulgarian tradition to foreign cultures and ideas on a global scale and in a wide range– from the direct parallels in art to the psychoanalytical interpretations visualized insurrealistic stylistics.After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, all aspects of Bulgarian culture experienced a crisis – institutional, financial, and artistic. One could expect that the abolishment of ideological sanctions would push artists to openly revive topics that were forbidden until then, to interpret plots from folklore that had been unacceptable until that moment, or at least would prompt a new understanding of the meaning of the national character, broadening the worldview from the 1980s. Unfortunately, nothing of the sort occurred.

Bulgarian Mosaic

Author(s): Rossitza Guentcheva / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

The article is dedicated to the travel notes on Bulgaria, Down the Donkey’s Path.Bulgarian Mosaic, written in 1978 in East Germany by the East German writer Kurt Bizalski and republished in 2001 in united Germany without any changes, explanations or supplements. Bizalski based the book on his experience in Bulgaria in 1977 when he paid an official visit at the invitation of the Union of the Bulgarian Writers.However, the Embassy of People’s Republic of Bulgaria in Berlin criticizes the travel notes, stigmatizes the author and recommends not to translate the book into Bulgarian.The Committee for State Security accuses the work in distorting the socialist reality and prevents its distribution in Bulgaria. This article presents Down the Donkey’s Path as a mobile book – restricted but not everywhere, prohibited but not completely,occupying the extra-national art space extended across the political borders within the socialist bloc from the 1970s and the 1980s. Analysing the author of travel notes as an anthropologist, Bulgaria as a field of research and the Bulgarian readers as a local critical public allows us to look at the problem of the relation between anthropology, literature and political censorship from another angle.

Amateur Football – Identity and Memory

Author(s): Iva Kyurkchieva / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

This paper analyses the role of a village near Sofia’s football tournament and the football museum established in that same village as specific times and places of memory.The author’s interest is provoked by the fact that football occupies a significant part of the living world of the bearers of that culture; it touches them emotionally and their experiences related to it are extremely important to them. Football gives meaning to their workdays and holidays and at the same time, it becomes a kind of regulator of neighbourly and village relations. It also contributes to the adaptation of young people into modern society. The football occupations of the local people seriously influence their social life. By means of football, they provide themselves with the components of their local identity construction, which increase communal confidence and differentiate them from others.

“Don’t Underestimate the Girls... Some of them are More Genuine Ultras than You”

Author(s): Kremena Iordanova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2017

Sports and football in particular are always considered a typical male occupation,which stresses male values and where the presence of the opposite sex is regarded as unnatural. In the last decade, the European stadiums witness the unprecedented presence of women attending the football games. This leads to the conclusion that the idea of male hegemony on the stadium could be questioned. The study is conducted among women–football fans in Bulgaria. The main questions, which it aims to answer,are: What are the ways of becoming a football fan? How do the female football fans spend their time in the circles that were until recently considered male? To what extent is their behaviour on the stadium independent?