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The present study aims to shed light on the intellectual origins of medievalism studies, on the evolution of this historical research approach and the primary directions of inquiry employed in this field at the end of the 20th century and over the first two decades of the 21st century. The main focus of the present article is placed on the institutionalization of the research on medievalism (conferences, journals, editorial collections, university courses) and on the formation of several scholarly groups around the special research programs in this field (Kalamazoo, Yale, Medieval Electronic Multimedia Organization). Moreover, the present paper approaches the debates circling the contemporary historiography, particularly regarding the terminology (medievalism, neo/medievalism) and the establishment of medievalism as a research field (the relations with medieval studies, with literary and cultural studies, as well as with postmodernism and post-postmodernism).

"Counselors and therapists on addictions and recovery from addictions are employing a variety of methods and techniques to break through the wall of denial and resistance. Accordingly, new methods of research are needed in order to describe and eventually understand the phenomenon of addictions and the ways of recovery from addictions. The paper attempts to define and describe the internal conflict and the way it is brought to the surface and "resolved" (processed and eventually transformed) in therapeutic group interactions. For that, we are using a phenomenological approach to conceptualize addiction in terms of connectedness and methods inspired by the analysis of interactions in order to document the transformative experience necessary for the recovery from addiction. Keywords: addiction; recovery from addictions transformative experience; internal conflict; therapeutic group; phenomenological approach; analysis of interactions. "

The aim of this paper is to provide a brief overview of the jesters found in the Principality of Transylvania. Our analysis is largely based on memoirs, autobiographies and chronicles written by Transylvanian nobles and intellectuals, and occasionally on princely charters. The earliest records on court fools in the principality date to the 16th century, while the latest are from the 19th century. Two types of fools can be encountered in the sources: natural and artificial ones. Dwarfs, mentally ill, ugly or slow-minded adults fall in the first category. In contrast, the artificial or wise fools, as they are referred to, possessed special skills, and they were not only good entertainers, but often educated people, sometimes even members of the nobility. They distinguished themselves from their colleagues by the intimacy they manifested around the prince or nobles, and their freedom to comment and criticize politics, to offer advice and in general to speak freely.

The present study focuses on the situation in which mind-reading machines will be connected, initially through the incorporation of weak AI, and then in conjunction to strong AI, an aspect that, ongoing, will no longer have a simple medical role, as is the case at present, but one of surveillance and monitoring of individuals—an aspect that is heading us towards a future techno-panoptic singularity. Thus, the general objective of this paper raises the problem of the ontological stability of human nature which, within the limits of the technological singularity of mind-reading machines, leads to the loss of autonomy and a reduction in freedom when it comes to human thoughts. In this paradigm, the hypothesis of a future era of technological singularity is prefigured to be a cumulation of factors in which artificial intelligence holds a dominant position in relation to the human agent, in a techno-panoptic system of human supervision, in the form of a new world order of manifestation/imposition of power—that of a "singleton." The theoretical objective analyzes the phenomenon of "deterritorrialization" (Deleuze & Guattari, 2000, 2005) of the Foucauldian panoptic mechanism (Foucault, 1995, 2003, 2006, 2008)—which is based on the "biopolitical" system of "biopower"—and its "reterritorialization" in the "territory" of the techno-panoptic singularity, where the scenario of a strong AI "singleton" (Bostrom, 2004, 2006), represents the alienation of the Being into a hard technological determinism.

The study explores the changes in the Transylvanian Lord Lieutenants' corps during and after the First World War, using a prosopographical approach. The comparative analysis of the Lord Lieutenants' and prefects' corps in 1918-1919 aims to examine the impact of various political and regime changes on the recruitment of these high officials. In the autumn of 1918, one can already talk of a partial change of the elite, since part of the newly appointed Lord Lieutenants had a very different social and family background than their predecessors. When the political status of Transylvania changed, at the end of 1918 and in 1919, it brought further, more radical changes atop the administrative elite: the Hungarian Lord Lieutenants were replaced by Romanian prefects, who did have the necessary qualifications, but who had no prior experience in local government.
Keywords: Lord Lieutenant, prefect, elite change, Transylvania, 1918, First World War, recruitment

The present study focuses on the specific devotional models that were promoted by the Observant Dominican friars in the late Middle Ages. By closely investigating textual and visual sources, previous research has noted that the reformed friars were eager to disseminate, particularly within the communities of the Observant Dominican women, the cult for the Passion of Christ and cults of saints that were easily transformed into models that pious women would adopt and emulate. Since the Observance was an European phenomenon and strong contacts existed between local friars and influential centres of reform, the prerequisites of the Dominican forma vitae became the standard according to which the communities of Observant Dominican women were organized and functioned. An integral part of this process of standardisation concerned the holy companions of the pious women affiliated to the Order of the Friars Preachers, who were usually recruited from the same cohort of saints represented by the Virgin Martyrs.