Tessa Morrison

Individual Differences in Individualism and Collectivism Predict Ratings of Virtual Cities’ Liveability and Environmental Quality

ABSTRACT. The present research investigated individual differences in individualism and collectivism as predictors of peoples reactions to cities. Psychology undergraduate students (N = 148) took virtual guided tours around historical cities. They then evaluated the cities’ liveability and environmental quality and completed measures of individualism and collectivism. Mediation analyses showed that people who scored high in self-responsibility (individualism) rated the cities as more liveable because they perceived them to be richer and better resourced. In contrast, people who scored high in collectivism rated the cities as having a better environmental quality because they perceived them to (1) provide a greater potential for community and social life and (2) allow people to express themselves. These results indicate that peoples evaluations of virtual cities are based on the degree to which certain aspects of the cities are perceived to be consistent with individualist and collectivist values.

Villalpando’s Sacred Architecture in the Light of Isaac Newton’s Commentary

Volume II of Juan Battista Villalpando’s Ezechielem Explanationes of 1604 contains a re-creation of the Temple of Solomon illustrated by a portfolio of exceptionally detailed architectural drawings. His designs were built on the principles of Platonic musical harmonies and his interpretation of ancient measurements. Villalpando envisaged the temple as a building encapsulating the entire formal grammar of classical architecture. However, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries his critics included Louis Cappel, Samuel Lee, Louis Compiegne de Veil, Nicolaus Goldmann and others who produced alternative reconstructions of Solomon’s Temple. In the twentieth century criticism from what appears to be an unusual source was uncovered. In Sir Isaac Newton’s unpublished manuscripts he claimed that although Villalpando had created the best of the reconstructions of the Temple of Solomon, the reconstruction had many problems. This paper examines Villalpando’s reconstruction of the Temple in the light of Newton’s unpublished commentary.

Law and Government in England during the Long Eighteenth Century: From Consent to Command by David Lemmings (review)

chapter returns to specific miracles, this time celestial phenomena, such as fire in the sky. Here, Lapina is interested in the spatial and spiritual meanings of ‘east’ and ‘west’, showing that the First Crusade led to a transformation in understandings of these categories: ‘chroniclers suspected that this spread of Christianity from west to east was to bring about the end of time, which the spread of Christianity from east to west a thousand years earlier had failed to do’ (p. 141). This is an excellent and rigorous study of what many would see as a niche group of texts. As Lapina has shown, however, these texts were nothing less than medieval efforts to understand the meaning of the crusade. As such, they connected with much more than the events they purported to describe. Rather, those who wrote about the First Crusade simultaneously reached back to older histories of sacrality and conflict, and stretched their vision forward into the eternal eschatology of Christ’s promise.

The Culture of Equity in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Britain and America by Mark Fortier (review)

The Afterword reflects on how the desire to control or comprehend an ever-changing and diverse world is a constant theme in the plays. Duxfield concludes that even attempting to understand such diversity in Marlowe results in ambiguous critical readings. Christopher Marlowe and the Failure to Unify represents an original, wellresearched thesis investigating overlooked historical and critical sources. Undergraduates, academics, and interested readers will find in Duxfield’s book invaluable and entertaining insights into Marlowe’s plays.

Do utopian city designs from the social reform literature of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries resonate with a modern audience

AbstractUtopian cities from social reform literature from the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries were a serious attempt to improve living and working conditions of their time. Some of this literature included a design for a city that would be complimentary to and enhance the political philosophy of the respective authors. Four of the most famous works which include a plan of a city are, Tommaso Campanella’s Civitas Solis (City of the Sun) (1602), Johann Valentin Andreae’s Christianopolis (1619), Robert Owen’s Villages of Co-operation (1817 & 1830) and James Silk Buckingham’s Victoria (1849). These works are frequently featured in literature on utopian cities. However, no consideration is given to whether these ‘utopian’ cities have any value as urban plans or whether they incorporate any desirable urban features. These urban designs of the city are significant to political philosophies because the cities are presented as being integral to such philosophies. This paper considers the following questions: ...

Leon Battista Alberti and Nicholas Cusanus: Towards an Epistemology of Vision for Italian Renaissance Art and Culture by Charles H. Carman (review)

war ideologies echo these early Christian militant themes. This helps to explain why America has frequently fought ‘moral wars’ against internal and external enemies. I would agree with Buc that the Christian Roman Emperors, Constantine and Justinian, would have understood the notions of exceptionalism and the easy mingling of ‘mildness and strength’ preached by American presidents such as Abraham Lincoln and George W. Bush. While recognising the innovative aspects of medieval crusade, Chapter 2 rightly points out the dangers of underestimating the extent to which these earlier militant Christian ideologies motivated eleventh-century Western crusaders. According to Buc, ‘late antique holy war slowly morphed into high medieval crusade’. So, rather than considering the indiscriminate slaughter of Muslim men, women, and children in the First Crusade of 1096–1100 as an aberration of a violent age, Buc believes we should seek its origins in the late Roman and early medieval Christian worlds. Moreover, we should not underestimate the extent to which Western crusaders were motivated by an ‘apocalyptic atmosphere’, in which a ‘literalization or historicization of the Old Testament’ led men to die thousands of miles from home in the arid sands of the Levant. Certainly, the recent rise of ISIS has exposed how rigorist apocalyptic ideologies can drive largely devout individuals to commit heinous acts of violence against populations labelled dangerous others and/ or heretics. As Buc demonstrates in his sections on the eighteenth-century French terror and Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, states, groups, and individuals do not need to be outwardly Christian to be influenced by these earlier Christian ideals. Some scholars will be uncomfortable with the parallels Buc makes between events like the medieval crusades in the Middle East and modern conflicts. Buc, indeed, is aware that his methodology will open him up to myriad critiques. Yet, he should be congratulated for charging forward nevertheless.

Albrecht Dürer and the Ideal City

Nuremberg artist Albrecht Dürer was a polymath of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. He is generally known as a painter, engraver, printmaker, mathematician, and art theorist; architect, social reformer, and utopian writer are not in the normal list of his achievements. In 1527, Dürer published Etliche Unterricht, zur Befestigung der Städte, Schlösser und Flecken (Instruction on the Fortification of Cities, Castles, and Towns). The book goes beyond being an instruction manual on the design of a fortified city. His plan was functional, pragmatic, and socially responsible, and the purpose of its design was to improve the status and lifestyle of German artisans. Dürer’s ideal city was not an isolated work; it was compatible with his other writings that were directed towards the improvement of artisans’ skills and conditions.

Bitter Honey: Recuperating the Medical and Scientific Context of Bernard Mandeville by Phillip Hilton (review)

long process. In fact the whole book, despite being an English translation and slightly revised version of the original Spanish edition, is beautifully written. It is also deeply analytical. The widespread peasant recourse to violence for challenges to honour or masculinity is a good example of how the occupants of this valley are treated with an approach which is close to anthropological. This research reveals, not a story of lordly oppression or religious bigotry, but rather one of almost timeless persistence. Garcia-Oliver is at pains to highlight precisely how ‘the peasants’ culture identified itself with the mountains and the forests’ (p. 42). It is a study that unpicks the rhythms of the agricultural cycles, and which engages with intra-communal cooperation and competition. Peasants vying with each other for land, jockeying for social position, worrying about their old age and descendants, and counting their animals, and watching their crops, all populate the pages of this book. In this respect it is a snapshot of the longue durée of Iberian peasantry. We are also introduced to particularly Iberian novelties like silk and rice. We see the economic life of the peasantry in considerable detail. Networks of debt and credit, the lack of legal tender, and widespread peasant mobility will be familiar to specialists concerned with other valleys and other peasants. This is a magnificent study, and one could almost believe that, for a time, Garcia-Oliver lived in the Valley of the Six Mosques. Nicholas Brodie School of Humanities The University of Tasmania

Structuring spaces: oral poetics and architecture in early medieval England (book review)

Review(s) of: Structuring spaces: Oral poetics and architecture in early medieval England, by Garner, Lori Ann, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2011, paperback, pp. xvi, 367, R.R.P. US

Persecution, Plague, and Fire: Fugitive Histories of the Stage in Early Modern England by Ellen MacKay (review)

45.00, ISBN 9780268029807.