Cultural Transfer And Political Conflicts

Film festivals during the Cold War were fraught with the political and social tensions that dominated the world at the time. While film was becoming an increasingly powerful medium, the European festivals in particular established themselves as showcases for filmmakers and their perceptions of reality. At the same time, their prestigious, international character attracted the interest of states and private players. The history of these festivals thus sheds light not only on the films they made available to various publics, but on the cultural policies and political processes that informed their operations. Presenting new research by an international group of younger scholars, Cultural Transfer and Political Conflicts critically investigates postwar history in the context of film festivals reconstructing not only their social background and international dispensation, but also their centrality for cultural transfers between the East, the West and the South during the Cold War.

This volume analyzes the conditions that promote the creation and development of educational technology in advanced industrial nations and the subsequent transfer of that technology to developing countries. Four technologies: print media, television/radio, computers and operating systems are examined in the context of both industrialized and developing nations. The problems that the developing countries face when adopting new technologies for their educational needs, political and economic conditions and cultural characteristics are discussed.

The conference volume Frictions and Failures: Cultural Encounters in Crisis focuses on those dynastic marriages which ran into difficulties of various kinds, and examines a wide range of cases in order to determine what caused these problems. Conflict situations could easily arise from the queen consort's presence at her new court. These conflicts might be religious (consorts were often of a different faith from that of their husband and new country), personal (rivalries with mistresses or favorites), diplomatic, or political. The case studies elucidate what these frictions tell us a) about the specific context in which they occurred, and b) about the problems, limitations and challenges of cultural transfer in general. The volume also considers (in a broader sense) whether success and failure are adequate and helpful terms in assessing the impact of the queen's consort. The geographical range of the territories discussed covers not only West and Central Europe but extends to Hungary, Lithuania, Muscovy, and Russia. This is particularly valuable as it helps to take orthodox consorts into consideration, as well as the elective monarchy of Poland, in which the role of the consort is, by definition, different from that of a consort in a system of dynastic succession.

Queens Consort, Cultural Transfer and European Politics examines the roles that queens consort played in dynastic politics and cultural transfer between their natal and marital courts during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. This collection of essays analyses the part that these queens played in European politics, showing how hard and soft power, high politics and cultural influences, cannot be strictly separated. It shows that the root of these consorts’ power lay in their dynastic networks and the extent to which they cultivated them. The consorts studied in this book come from territories such as Austria, Braunschweig, Hanover, Poland, Portugal, Prussia and Saxony and travel to, among other places, Britain, Naples, Russia, Spain and Sweden. The various chapters address different types of cultural manifestation, among them collecting, portraiture, panegyric poetry, libraries, theatre and festivals, learning, genealogical literature and architecture. The volume significantly shifts the direction of scholarship by moving beyond a focus on individual historical women to consider ‘queens consort’ as a category, making it valuable reading for students and scholars of early modern gender and political history.

This book is the first to focus specifically upon the relationship between refugees and intercultural transfer over an extensive period of time. Since circa 1830, a series of groups have made their way to Britain, beginning with exiles from the failed European revolutions of the mid-nineteenth century and ending with refugees who have increasingly come from beyond Europe. The book addresses four specific questions. First, what roles have individuals or groups of refugees played in cultural and political transfers to Britain since 1830? Second, can we identify a novel form of cultural production which differs from that in the homeland? Third, to what extent has dissemination within and transformation of the receiving culture occurred? Fourth, to what extent do refugee groups, themselves, undergo a process of cultural restructuring? The coverage of the individual essays ranges from high culture, through politics and everyday practices. The volume moves away from general perceptions of refugees as ‘problem groups’ and rather focuses on the way they have shaped, and indeed enriched, British cultural and political life. This book was previously published as a special issue of Immigrants and Minorities.

Literary Prizes and Cultural Transfer addresses the multilevel nature of literary and translation prizes, with the aim of expanding our knowledge about them as an international and transnational phenomenon. The contributions to this book analyse the social, institutional, and ideological functions of such prizes. This volume not only looks at famous prizes and celebrities but also lesser known prizes in more peripheral language areas and regions, with a special focus on cultural transmitters and their networks, which play a decisive role in the award industry. Cultural transfer and translations are at the heart of this book and this approach adds a new dimension to the study of literary and translation prizes. The contributions reveal the diverse ways in which a cultural transfer approach enhances the study of literary prizes, presenting the state of the art regarding recent developments in the field. Articles with a broader scope discuss definitions, concepts, and methods, while other contributions deal with specific case studies. A variety of theoretical and methodological approaches are explored, applying field theory, network analysis, comparative literature, and cultural transfer studies. By providing multiple perspectives on the literary prize, this volume aims to contribute to our knowledge and understanding of this intriguing phenomenon.

Why were Hollywood producers eager to film on the other side of the Iron Curtain? How did Western computer games become popular in socialist Czechoslovakia's youth paramilitary clubs? What did Finnish commercial television hope to gain from broadcasting Soviet drama? Cold War media cultures are typically remembered in terms of an East-West binary, emphasizing conflict and propaganda. Remapping Cold War Media, however, offers a different perspective on the period, illuminating the extensive connections between media industries and cultures in Europe's Cold War East and their counterparts in the West and Global South. These connections were forged by pragmatic, technological, economic, political, and aesthetic forces; they had multiple, at times conflicting, functions and meanings. And they helped shape the ways in which media circulates today—from film festivals, to satellite networks, to coproductions. Considering film, literature, radio, photography, computer games, and television, Remapping Cold War Media offers a transnational history of postwar media that spans Eastern and Western Europe, the Nordic countries, Cuba, the United States, and beyond. Contributors draw on extensive archival research to reveal how media traveled across geopolitical boundaries; the processes of translation, interpretation, and reception on which these travels depended; and the significance of media form, content, industries, and infrastructures then and now.

Examining the cultural dynamics of translation and transfer, Cultural Transfer Reconsideredproposes new insights into both epistemological and analytical questions. With its focus on the North, the book opens perspectives mainly implying textual, intertextual and artistic practices and postcolonial interrelatedness.