In this paper we address three interconnected issues arising from the question: ‘how to support reminiscing?” The first issue examines why people reminisce, looking at the functions it serves both for the individual and the social group. The second issue relates to the types of stories people recollect and share, which may sometimes be difficult or distressing events in their lives and how to deal with these. This connects to the third issue examining the process of choosing materials such as photographs and artifacts to stimulate people to recollect and recount their personal stories. Our contributions to the workshop will be of interest to a wide range of researchers engaged in developing reminiscence systems, broadly defined, as we (i) draw on our experience with groups of younger and older adults from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds to address these three issues and (ii) offer suggestions arising from this work for how to deal with them.

From social to environmental transformation, the curatorial essay for the exhibition "Butterflies count not months but moments, and have enough time" brings together artistic perspectives from the young generation of EU and ASEAN artists on the idea of nature as a site of environmental and philosophical imagination to question the very notion of sustainability in terms of circular economy and in relation to cultural belonging. Do we identify with our environment? Is the environment simply the place we live in, or also the place we leave behind? Does the term ‘sustainability’ resonate equally in different parts of the world or is it tinted by cultural and social beliefs and behaviours?

English version of the poetry collection ”Efectul fluturelui” de Aurora Ciucă (2020, Iași, Editura Cartea Românească Educațional), with Preface and Post-face by the translator. It is meant for Anglophone readership.

The Vietnam War, homosexual extramarital affairs, and the Japanese geisha. These three seemingly unrelated phenomena all collide when reviewing the multiple artistic endeavors that sprouted out of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1904). This opera, based on the 1898 short story by John Luther Long, tells the tragic story of a young Japanese geisha and her American naval officer lover, who fathers her child before returning home. As one of the most frequently performed operas, Madama Butterfly has interested a variety of artists, spawning a long list of adaptations from an assortment of mediums including plays, musicals, movies, comic books, and even rock band albums. Two of these works, David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly (1988) and Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Miss Saigon (1989), are of particular interest for retelling the story of Puccini’s opera in unique ways through different theatrical mediums. Both shows opened, and also had revivals, around the same time. In fact, in the fall of 2017, one could see both Miss Saigon and M. Butterfly on Broadway and then travel just a few blocks to the Metropolitan Opera to see Puccini’s masterpiece that started it all 113 years earlier. However, this original masterpiece has been scolded, by scholars and laymen alike, for perpetuating stereotypes of Asian women as weak, submissive, hyper-sexualized, and enchantingly exotic. Regardless, it remains one of the most commonly performed operas and has spawned successful artistic endeavors such as Miss Saigon and M. Butterfly. In this paper I hope to examine these two adaptations and their 2017 productions against Puccini’s original work in order to elicit a greater understanding about the possibilities and practices of adapting problematic storylines for contemporary audiences.

Butterflies are diurnal insects belonging to the order Lepidoptera. They are holometabolous insects with brightly coloured wings adapted for fluttering flight. They can be further classified as true butterflies, skippers and moth butterflies. They exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Monarch butterfly is known to travel long distances. Some have developed symbiotic and parasitic associations with certain organisms like ants. Some species are considered as pests as their larval stages or the caterpillars are known to cause extensive damage to our agricultural crops. Some butterflies are known as pollinators and the larvae of some species are known to feed on harmful insects. Butterflies deserve a special significance in art and culture.

I later found that the "butterfly problem" is one of those linguistic curiosities that has lurked at the edges of scholarship for some time without much in the way of a full research effort--the linguistic equivalent of the study of yawning by biomedical researchers. Briefly stated, the word for "butterfly" seems to be unique for nearly every language--even closely cognate languages in the same language family, like Romance or Germanic languages. This paper explores this curious fact and suggests some explanations for it.