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The book aims to reflect on the characteristics of urban centers of the kingdom of Italy between the ninth and the eleventh centuries, filling a noticeable historiographical gap. The cities in Northern Italy in this period have not yet been analysed with a multidisciplinary approach, able to outline their specific and distinctive characteristics and to relate this particular period both to the post-Roman past and also to the following Communal phase. Urban identities are examined from different points of view: from a political perspective, in relation to the dialectic between center, periphery and to the border areas of the kingdom; from an institutional and territorial standing point, analyzing the structures of local power and public territorializations; according to social and military history approaches, highlighting the continuities and transformations in comparison with former and following centuries. The issue of urban identities is also investigated archaeologically, in relation to urban development and to topographic transformations, and culturally explored, examining mutual exchanges between the cities of the kingdom. Another aspect rarely addressed by previous literature is ultimately to compare the results of this research on the Italic kingdom with studies on the Transalpine Carolingian and post-Carolingian empire and kingdoms, outlining common trends, but also specific peculiarities

Towers (campaniles, seigniorial, military towers) characterize the panorama of the Italian medieval towns and urban centers. The presence of towers in Northern Italy is substantially different in the communal and seigniorial cities; in the latter, the symbols of the religious power contrast with the secular one, but little space is given to the town noblemen to be represented through buildings of remarkable impact in height. In the communal towns, where the public administration government is entrusted to the families of greater importance and political weight, the urban tissue is enriched by a "crowd" of towers. Bell and civic towers were, in fact, visual poles, authentic topoi of the city skyline: these are important key-elements in the urban formation process. My article was intended to examine: -the significance of the bells and towers of the urban image of medieval cities: their presence in the urban landscape, reciprocal relations and architectural and design choices.- the relationship between architecture and patronage in the choices made for the building of towers within the medieval urban tissue.The longer-range research developed in the last few years on the territory of North-Western Italy resorts to documental, iconographic and material sources and analysis. In particular, the study is attempting to identify the references of architectural languages which belong to every type of tower (religious, communal or private). The iconography of Modern Age often reports a still unchanged status quo in the towns of medieval tows of Northern Italy. The building techniques and the solutions adopted shall allow contributing to the definition of categories linked to the choice of the patronage as related to the use and representativeness of the architecture. This paper proposes a synthesis of the research which has been developed so far with specific interest in Northern Italy, and in particular the regions of Piedmont and Lombardy, where today the towers are symbols of many cities, able to withstand any urban change, which is useful to define the lines of development which can be noticed also in many other areas of Italy.

Dancehall music may be seen as a commentary over the socio-political events that are unfolding in Zimbabwe since 2008, a period characterised by political and economic uncertainty. The study focuses on how this genre of music reflects identities that emerge from the context characterised by the disintegrating state institutions and fragile households. With such a context, dancehall music may be interpreted as offering hope and courage. Notably, the music carries a unique theological injunction where God is called upon to witness and offer strength, not to punish or change the status quo. I call this genre of music wilderness music to explain that the music provides spaces of hope and courage to fragile and less certain identities. ; http://www.hts.org.za ; am2017 ; New Testament Studies

Since its inception, New Zealand film production has often been characterized by a strong focus on the promotion and marketing of local scenic locations. However, over the last few decades and simultaneously with New Zealand's rapidly increasing urbanization rates, urban narratives have gained prominence in the cinematic representation of the country, gradually becoming important aspects of national tourism marketing campaigns. This article first provides an overview of New Zealand tourism film's dynamics of production and recurring themes and narratives from the early twentieth century to the 1960s. It then focuses on Toehold on a Harbour and This Auckland – tourism films produced by the government-led New Zealand National Film Unit and released respectively in 1967 and 1966 – and identifies a turning point in the manufacturing of local urban narratives and in New Zealand urban tourism marketing. My critical and textual analysis of these two case studies notably relies on the examination of archival documents related to their production and on an interview with This Auckland's director Hugh Macdonald. It ultimately shows how the emergence of 'cities with a character' as a tourism marketing tool was in fact a carefully planned, articulated and years-long government-driven strategy.

In this paper, I examine some literary texts of two turn-of-the century Hungarian women writers, Anna Tutsek and Terka Lux who left behind their childhood environment in remote regions of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in order to move to Budapest, the capital of the eastern part of the Empire. Assuming that individuals hold multiple identities that are flexible and inevitably affected by environmental and social changes, my main focus is on the transformation of their ethnic, regional, occupational and gender identity influenced by the disengagement from their birthplace. Within a context of Hungarian−Eastern-European women's social history, I investigate how migration had led them to reshape their original identities and create new ones and how these emigrant writers reacted to the loss of cultural and social norms in which they had previously lived.