We welcome Ballantyne & Schaefer’s discussion of the issues concerning consent and use of health data for research. In response to their acknowledgement of the need for public debate and discussion, we provide evidence from our own public consultation on this topic.

Ekphrasis, a part of the ancient Greek and Roman rhetorical practices, is, in its most basic sense, the verbal expression of a visual object. Since the description of Achilles’ shield in Homer’s Iliad, ekphrasis has been a literary practice used for the portrayal of visual artworks through fiction and poetry, as well as in prose written in history, art criticism and travelogues. Ekphrasis is a convenient literary tool for analysing the author’s treatment of the object depicted. Ekphrastic studies enable the (...) identification of the author’s relationship with objectivity and subjectivity, and the building blocks of the said subjectivity, through literary elements. What kind of fictional language does ekphrasis, which is essentially the act of making the mute object speak, point to, in Evliya Çelebi’s representation? This article will aim to examine the subjective factors, personal taste and cultural positioning that emerge in Evliyâ Çelebi’s writing practice, mainly in his “ekphrastic” narration of the Western paintings that he saw in the Balkans and Vienna, which he describes in great detail in his Seyahatnâme. It is of the author’s opinion that, although Evliyâ Çelebi’s cultural positioning imposed limitations on his aesthetic perception and ekphrastic narration, he had an admiration for the Western art; and his “actual” cultural position manifests itself in an “in-betweenness” in the East-West spiral, which also reflects his unique literary mode. (shrink)

Evliyâ Çelebi, who wrote accounts of his travels that lasted over forty years, was an enlightened Ottoman saraylı, a courtier as his name çelebi indicates. Seyahatnâme, a ten-volume, first-person narrative, is one of the few accounts of the seventeenth-century Ottoman world and its periphery from the perspective of a Muslim intellectual. Robert Dankoff states, "The Book of Travels is a unique geographical, social, cultural, and linguistic record of the places and peoples the author encountered, and an invaluable source for many (...) aspects of life in his time."1 Therefore, the work has been significant for a... (shrink)

Shame and guilt are negative social emotions that are sensitive to culture, and findings from past research have suggested that shame impairs perspective-taking cognitive ability more than guilt does. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is a lack of research that has considered culture and experimentally tested the effect of shame and guilt on perspective-taking. Taking an experimental perspective, this study aimed to examine how shame and guilt states affect perspective-taking performance in two different cultures. Data from German (...) and Turkish female college students provided support for the effect of emotional state and culture on perspective-taking, but there was no interaction between them. We discussed the results and possible explanations for them in light of the literature. (shrink)