bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Where Will They Be in the Future? Implementing a Model for Ongoing Career Tracking of Library and Information Science Graduates
Authors: Marshall Joanne Gard , Marshall Victor W. , Morgan Jennifer Craft , Barreau Deborah , Moran Barbara , Solomon Paul , Rathbun-Grubb Susan , Thompson Cheryl A.
Published: July 2012

This article provides an overview of Workforce Issues in Library and Information Science 2 (WILIS 2), a study aimed at developing a career-tracking and program evaluation system that can potentially be used by all library and information science (LIS) programs. Such a system could enable stakeholders at all levels to collect data on an ongoing basis, informing their planning process and resulting in more effective ways to educate, manage, and retain the LIS workforce. WILIS 2 is informed by the experience of the research team in developing WILIS 1, an in-depth career retrospective study conducted between 2005 and 2009. WILIS 2 is using a community-based participatory research approach that involves members of the LIS community in the major aspects of project design and implementation. Three working groups on survey design, data reporting, and sustainability have been formed to increase the likelihood that the data collection system will meet the needs of a wide range of LIS programs. Members of the working groups are being drawn from the WILIS project advisory committee and representatives of the participating LIS programs as well as stakeholder groups such as the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), the American Library Association (ALA), and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Eight programs are participating in a pilot test of the survey, and an additional thirty-five programs will join in the full launch. Results from a WILIS survey of LIS program administrators regarding their existing alumni-tracking practices as well as key results from the recent graduates section of the WILIS 1 survey are included in this paper. The administrators' survey found a high level of interest in a shared approach to alumni tracking, and the results from the recent graduates section of WILIS 1 serve to illustrate the type of data that programs can gather through a recent graduates' survey.
The Job Itself: The Effects of Functional Units on Work Autonomy among Public and Academic Librarians
Authors: Patillo Ericka J. , Moran Barbara B. , Morgan Jennifer Craft
Published: July 2012

Job autonomy is a topic that should be of concern to both library managers and employees because job autonomy may predict job satisfaction and retention. This article describes job autonomy among public and academic librarians using data reported by respondents to the Workforce Issues in Library and Information Science (WILIS 1) Research Project survey. The authors extracted a subset of the LIS professionals, public and academic librarians, focusing on the autonomy measures and the variables related to the broad areas of responsibility: administration; access and collections; information services, education and research; digital information technology and Web access; and information technology and consulting. Findings indicate that there are significant differences in perceived autonomy based on areas of responsibility. Administrators and information technology librarians reported higher autonomy, regardless of type of library. Also, public librarians have less freedom in scheduling their time than academic librarians. As today's professionals seek more autonomy and flexibility, managers struggle with the pressure of increased attention to accountability within their organizations. Library administrators will need to find a balancing point in order to maintain organizational effectiveness.
Public Librarianship as a Career: Challenges and Prospects
Authors: Rathbun-Grubb Susan , Marshall Joanne Gard
Published: July 2012

Over twenty-five years of research has shown that in spite of low salaries, few opportunities for advancement, and challenging work environments, most public librarians are satisfied overall with their jobs and careers, primarily because of the intrinsic rewards of the profession. In this article we present results from the Workforce Issues in Library and Information Science 1 (WILIS 1) project that are related to public librarianship. We give an overview of the careers and perspectives of current and former public librarians with respect to their experience of the challenges and rewards of public library service, and compare their views with those found in previous research.
Where Are They Now? Results of a Career Survey of Library and Information Science Graduates
Authors: Marshall Joanne Gard , Marshall Victor W. , Morgan Jennifer Craft , Barreau Deborah , Moran Barbara B. , Solomon Paul , Rathbun-Grubb Susan , Thompson Cheryl A.
Published: July 2012

This paper provides an overview of Workforce Issues in Library and Information Science 1 (WILIS 1), a large scale retrospective career study of graduates of all library and information science (LIS) programs in North Carolina from 1964–2007. The interdisciplinary research team used a multiple methods approach to data collection consisting of a survey of LIS graduates, a survey of administrators of LIS programs, and key informant interviews. This article presents an overview of the study design and methods followed by key results from the survey of graduates. The specific research goals of WILIS 1 were: (1) to gain a comprehensive understanding of the educational, workplace, career, and retention issues facing LIS graduates; (2) to investigate the way in which LIS programs track their graduates and use these data for educational and workforce planning; (3) to explore possibilities for a career tracking model that could be used by all LIS programs in the future; and (4) to disseminate the study results in a manner that would facilitate LIS workforce planning. WILIS 1 has now been joined by a second study known as WILIS 2, which is further developing the alumni tracking model that all LIS programs can potentially use.
Web Accessibility
Authors: Brophy Peter , Craven Jenny
Published: July 2012

The increasing provision of Web-based information resources has moved from a simple text interface to dynamic and interactive designs. While this move has provided people with a more creative and flexible experience, there are dangers that some people will be excluded because they cannot use standard methods of access. Research has shown that people with disabilities are most at risk of being excluded from access, and in particular people who are blind or visually impaired and who use assistive technologies such as screen readers. In a library environment, ensuring access for all is important because the method of delivery is predominantly Web-based and the development of e-book provision will provide increased opportunities to access library services remotely. This article reviews some key issues relating to Web accessibility, identifying methods of access, principles of accessibility and usability, and how Web accessibility can be assessed. Studies show that despite a growing awareness of Web accessibility issues, people are still experiencing barriers to access. Research initiatives identified in this article, and the development of the W3C WAI WCAG version 2.0, show that the research momentum is being maintained, and together with specific library-oriented research this can only be positive for the development of the profession's practice in this area.
The Impact of the Integrated Digital Library System on the CNIB Library
Authors: McGrory Margaret , Williams Margaret , Taylor Karen , Freeze Barbara
Published: July 2012

Technological change has been the norm for libraries serving people who are blind or otherwise print disabled. Technology is required to produce and disseminate books in various formats, and technical devices are often used as a means for a person to read the books. However, the development of digital technology combined with the evolution of the Internet has prompted significant change for library services and operations in the past few years. The CNIB Library recognized the opportunity to create more content faster, provide more choice and accessibility, and to streamline and revolutionize processes by building the Integrated Digital Library System (IDLS) in partnership with industry technology leaders. This article describes the technology of the IDLS and the impact on the organization.
Library and Resource Center Facilities for Visually and Print Impaired People in Developing Countries
Authors: Tucker Richard N. (Richard Neil)
Published: July 2012

The notion of developing countries needs definition, as do the concepts of visual and print impairment. The article looks at the situation of print impaired people in various countries and proposes possible activities to meet their needs based on existing projects and experience.
The Paradox of Preservation
Authors: Cloonan Michèle Valerie
Published: July 2012

Abstract This article explores historical, political, and professional paradoxes that underlie efforts to preserve cultural heritage. These paradoxes are illustrated through five case studies: the discovery of the Nag Hammadi bindings, approaches to the preservation of Auschwitz, the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad, the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, and the creation of a protective structure for the Hamar Cathedral ruins. Although it is not possible to preserve everything, it is suggested that the shift from the traditional custodial model of caring for collections to one with greater community input may lead to new preservation strategies—and to new ways of defining preservation. Through our attempts to preserve under highly complex circumstances and equally complex issues, our standard notions of what constitutes preservation come into question, and some aspects of preservation remain paradoxical.
A Natural Collaboration: Preservation for Archival Collections in ARL Libraries
Authors: De Stefano Paula , Walters Tyler O
Published: July 2012

In-house collaboration between the archives and preservation departments of Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member libraries is not well established. This article presents data from a survey of special collections repositories in ARL member libraries, conducted in 1995 and repeated in 2006, that document the low levels of collaboration. The authors probe the history and development of preservation efforts in archives and in libraries and make a case for further examination of how the expertise and resources of archives and preservation departments can be shared in managing the preservation of archival materials.
The Conservator's Gaze and the Nature of the Work
Authors: Eggert Paul
Published: July 2012

Aesthetic philosophers, theorizing literary critics and editors, and reflective commentators on the restoration of paintings, buildings, and monuments have repeatedly shown that the concept of the work is anything but self-evident. The present essay examines major attempts to conceptualize this problematic area since the 1930s, before proposing a solution based on the semiotics of C. S. Peirce and Theodor Adorno's negative dialectics that will help clarify thinking when practices of preservation and conservation are being determined. The language and thinking come ultimately from scholarly editorial activity; the working assumption is that, with suitable adjustments for the medium, it will apply to other historically orientated forms of cultural conservation.
Training Professionals to Preserve Digital Heritage: The School for Scanning
Authors: Russell Ann
Published: July 2012

From 1995 to 2005, the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) presented its School for Scanning conference eleven times in cities across the United States, serving a total of nearly four thousand professionals. The program addressed a seemingly insatiable need for training on building, managing, and preserving digital collections. Because the conference was presented by an organization whose mission is preservation, the emphasis was on standards, quality, and assuring long-term access to digital collections. Since 1995 the content of the conference has evolved as institutional digitization programs have matured and as standards and best practices have developed. The succession of conference agendas provides a series of snapshots of the effort that has gone into bringing digital programs into being. This article, originally written as a paper for the 2006 Congress of the International Federation of Library Associations [IFLA] in Seoul, Korea, looks at how the needs of the audience changed over the decade. It evaluates the factors that have contributed to the school's ongoing success and at current challenges to this continuing education program as the experience level of professions in the field advances rapidly.
Cultural Politics and Populist Uses of the Ancients
Authors: Leontis Artemis
Published: July 2012

Populism is a discourse made up of a specific signs, techniques, strategies, and truth claims that set in motion certain ways of talking about "the people" ( laós ). This discourse has served to regulate Greek culture for nearly a century. It offers the story of an indigenous organic community struggling to express itself authentically and to survive against outside threats. The populist investment in the ancient past happened in two successive stages. First, demoticists (like Psiháris) appropriated all aspects of the national past, including classical Hellas, for a Roméic present. Then modernists (like Elytis) incorporated ancient images and texts into a high modern idiom as transubstantiations of the everyday. Both demoticists and modernists depicted the Neohellenic "people" as the true bearers of the classical heritage, of which foreign powers were seeking to deprive them. In this manichean order, power perpetually evades "the people," while freedom becomes a question of aesthetic deposition rather than political practice.
Freedom Within the Margin: The Café in the Poetry of Cavafy
Authors: Gumpert Matthew
Published: July 2012

Cavafy's poetry should remind us not only that all socialized space is politically significant (in the city, there are no havens from meaning), but conversely, that critical language tends to be expressed in spatial terms. The café is a privileged space in Cavafy's cities; in it, we witness the rites of a new poetics and the elaboration of a theory of meaning. Sanctuary from the powers that be, domain of other powers that long to be, Cavafy's café is a site of social, sexual, ethical, and ultimately semantic resistance and allegiance. What we learn there is that the freedom to mean as well as to be can only be granted by the authority of a bounded space—be it that of the temple, the bar, the brothel, or Cavafy's supreme institution, the poem.
Greeks or "Strangers at Home": The Experiences of Ottoman Greek Refugees during Their Exodus to Greece, 1922–1923
Authors: Giannuli Dimitra
Published: July 2012

Settlement in Greece was not a uniform experience for the approximately one million Ottoman Greeks who fled Turkey in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish war of 1920–1922. Contemporary primary sources ranging from government reports to eyewitness accounts and memoirs of relief workers point to a mixed reality: while some Ottoman Greek refugees enjoyed hospitality and warm support upon arrival in Greece, many others found settlement in the new country a painful experience of material hardship, segregation, and status deprivation. The precarious circumstances of the massive exodus created the refugee drama. The inability of the Greek state to handle a crisis of such magnitude, along with serious incidents of refugee discrimination and exploitation by Greek officials and civilians, exacerbated the refugees' plight.
Reflections on the Impact of Membership in the European Communities on Greek Legal Culture
Authors: Kozyris P. John
Published: July 2012

The European Community's legal order, itself an amalgam mostly of Continental origin, is already incorporated into all member states, including Greece, in a quasi-federal mode. Beyond its formal applicability, such order is also bound to pervade Greek law in many fields, affecting especially the law professionals. However, its impact will not be of major consequence in terms of legal culture because it itself traces its roots to the same Ancient Greek notions of justice and Roman-Byzantine legal system and also because Modern Greece has already been heavily influenced by Western legal models. The more intriguing question is whether certain attitudes current among the Greek public and shared with other peoples in the region-attitudes whose power to undermine the spirit of legality and to reduce formalized social cooperation through the rule of law is partially explained or justified as (1) resistance to a remote, bureaucratic, heavy-handed state and (2) impatience with all abstract rules-will be moderated (or perhaps aggravated) by integration into Europe, possibly also moderating in reverse the formalism of the Community order. Finally, integration raises for Greece once again, as for other states, the difficult issue of balance of powers not only between Brussels and Athens but among Brussels, Athens, and the regional and local communities where a truly indigenous, albeit limited, legal culture may eventually emerge.
Interlectal Awareness as a Reflex of Linguistic Dimensions of Power: Evidence from Greek
Authors: Joseph Brian D.
Published: July 2012

Modern sociolinguistic research has demonstrated that speakers are aware of different varieties of their language. Moreover, such "interlectal awareness" can affect linguistic usage and can involve issues of power in relation to language. In the context of Greek, for example, normative pressures promoting the use of standard (roughly, urban) as opposed to nonstandard (roughly, rural) varieties of the language correlate with the low stylistic status accorded many words, generally of regional dialectal origin, containing the sounds ts or dz . In addition, Greek shows an extension of "interlectal awareness" involving the recognition of non-native forms, as is evident in the way English is providing a new type of learned plural in Modern Greek and is thus enjoying a power in Greece not accorded to other foreign languages.
Defining the Self through the Body in Four Poems by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke and Sylvia Plath
Authors: Bohandy Susan
Published: July 2012

The human body plays an elemental role in the process of self-definition and in the determination of codes of behavior governing the relationships between men and women. Replete with images of the body, the poetry of Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke and Sylvia Plath demonstrates how central is a woman's conception of her body to her sense of who she M and who she can be. The fictive female personae that these two poets construct as speakers of their poems are both internalizations and critical expressions of traditional notions of gender and sexuality. Close readings of four poems, «Ο θρίαμβος της σταθερής απώλειας» and «Παραβίαση» by Anghelaki-Rooke, and "Edge" and "Lady Lazarus" by Plath, reveal that in grappling with the question of a woman's role and place in male-dominated society, Anghelaki-Rooke turns to the human body as the source of potential liberation from oppression, whereas Plath envisions empowerment through transcendence of the body.
The Legal Status of Minorities in Greece Today: The Adequacy of their Protection in the Light of Current Human Rights Perceptions
Authors: Stavros Stephanos
Published: July 2012

International human rights law commands states not to discriminate against members of ethnic, religious, or linguistic minorities. Moreover, the world community expects states to adopt positive measures that give distinct minority identities an equal chance of surviving. Although Greece is a largely homogeneous country, it has always played host to a number of ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups that qualify as minorities under international law. The situation of many of these groups has improved significantly in recent years; however, some inherently discriminatory legislation survives to date and Greek courts continue to issue decisions that occasionally deny equal rights to members of minorities on rather shaky grounds. Moreover, the special rules for the protection of minorities established under the Treaty of Lausanne appear clearly inadequate and unfair today. To ensure full compliance with existing obligations and the current expectations of the international community, the Greek legal system must reconsider its response to the minority question.
Revising a Matrimonial Life: An Alternative to the Conduct Book in María de Agreda’s Mística ciudad de Dios
Authors: Risse Katherine
Published: July 2012

Between 1637 and 1660, the Conceptionist nun, María de Agreda, composed a 1500 page biography of the Virgin Mary, posthumously published in 1670 as Mística ciudad de Dios . Correspondent with and advisor to King Philip IV, as well as other high political figures, Sor María never actually left her convent. Yet she effectively challenged the entire cultural and economic construct of womanhood dominant in the European tradition, by rejecting the objectifying, sexualized ideology that appraised woman as sin or honor, and fashioned, instead, an alternative model of feminine comportment in which her archetypal woman is subject and active in the roles of teacher, apostle, warrior and leader, as well as wife and mother in an egalitarian household. My paper focuses on Sor María’s reinterpretation of Renaissance prescriptive formulas for maidens, wives, and widows. Through innovation and invention, Sor María constructs a Virgin Mary whose achievements, within both the domestic and public sphere, interrogate dominant hermeneutics of power and influence. As mother to Christ, wife to Joseph, and finally widow, the Virgin subverts the traditional prescriptions of silence and seclusion by leaving the home to teach, preach, govern, and engage in battle, while simultaneously realizing a healthy and optimistic motherhood that compels her readers to contemplate the context from which power and change emerge.
"And When is Now?" (On Some Limits of Perfect Intelligibility)
Authors: Weber Samuel
Published: July 2012

This article examines the notion of "intelligibility" as it appears in recent writings of Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida on friendship. The two writers demonstrate very different understandings of the "intelligible" and its limits by and in language. At issue is the question of "intelligibility" in relation to historical transformation, and thus also in relation of "tradition" as a process involving interpretation, selection and exclusion.
Transparency Dreaming Freedom (Maurice Blanchot's The Most High )
Authors: Geroulanos Stefanos
Published: July 2012

This essay considers the literary deployment of antihumanist tropes as these appear in Blanchot's immediate postwar writings. Centering on Blanchot's "Literature and the Right to Death," and his last novel, the 1948 The Most High, it addresses a series of contemporary Hegelian and phenomenological problems, notably the "end of history," embodiment, and the problem of freedom as well as some political problems related to the debate on communist humanism. Paying particular attention to Blanchot's anti-foundationalist literary engagement with atheism and freedom, it interrogates life in a world where humanism never reached the promised secular utopia, but perverted it to the point of absurdity.
Archaeological Field Survey at San Felice in Apulia
Authors: Small Carola , Small Alastair
Published: July 2012

Le site de l’Âge du Fer et du Moyen Âge de San Felice, situé sur un plateau dominant la rivière Basentello. est à une faible distance du site de l’époque impériale romaine (fouillé actuellement sous la direction de Hans VanderLeest et de Myles McCallum) et à 1,2 km de Vagnari qui fut occupé à l’époque romaine et sous l’Antiquité tardive. Une prospection intensive de notre site révèle la configuration de l’établissement, ses liens culturels, son essor du X e au III e siècles av. J.-C. et son abandon vers l’époque de la fondation de Vagnari. Le site de San Felice fut réoccupé pendant le haut Moyen Âge alors qu’un hameau, construit au-dessus de la partie ouest des niveaux de l’Âge du Fer, fut habité jusqu’au XIV e siècle.
An Intertextual Spiderweb in Nabokov's "Cloud, Castle, Lake"
Authors: Waysband Edward
Published: July 2012

It is well known that Nabokov's short story "Cloud, Castle, Lake" abounds in allusions to Tiutchev's lyrics, functioning as its metatextual "re-reading." The article takes its departure from calling attention to an unexplored Tiutchevian allusion in the story—the image of "the fine hair of a spiderweb," the pivotal image of Tiutchev's famous nature lyric "There is in early autumn …" ("Est' v oseni pervonachal'noi …"; 1857). I propose to examine the recurrence of this Tiutchevian topos in Nabokov's Russian writings, focusing on its function as a nostalgic sign of a Russian "paradise lost." I will also take into account Nabokov's possible polemic references, in "Cloud, Castle, Lake," to two other Russian readers of the same Tiutchev poem, Leo Tolstoy and Osip Mandelstam.
The Bird's-Eye View: Looking at the City in Paris and Algiers
Authors: Graebner Seth
Published: July 2012

In the forty years following 1830, hundreds of travelogues, city descriptions, and histories of Algeria appeared, forming a literary topography for the new colony. This literature, part of the exoticist tradition in North Africa, did not develop in isolation: descriptions of Algiers took shape concurrently and symbiotically with descriptions of Paris published in even greater numbers. Conversely, perspectives and polemics from the metropolitan center were often informed by writing about the city on the colonial periphery. The French learned to describe cities through modes of observation elaborated in both Paris and Algiers. Moving to the supposed antipodes of the modern, to the anti-Paris constructed in the French imagination of Algiers, questions the received history of modernité . It suggests other loci for the tropes and techniques associated with it, and opens a new way to understand the role of the colony in the development of nineteenth-century French culture. (SG)
Savoir c'est pouvoir : Integral Education in the Novels of André Léo
Authors: Beach Cecilia
Published: July 2012

" Savoir c'est pouvoir : Integral Education in the Novels of André Léo" André Léo (1824–1900), best known as a participant in the Commune, also published over twenty socially conscious novels. Her works not only provide a critique of the educational practices of the second half of the nineteenth century, but also advocate the secularization of public schools, the expansion of education for workers and for women, co-education, and the development of new libertarian methods of teaching. These reforms resemble theories of "integral education" developed by such key figures in nineteenth-century socialism and anarchism as Fourier, Proudhon and Bakunin. In this article, after a brief introduction to theories of "integral education," Beach explores how André Léo used the novel to criticize the French school system and to promote radical educational reform. (CB)
Justice, Zola's Global Utopian Gospel
Authors: Mayer-Robin Carmen
Published: July 2012

Following the paean to colonial expansion Zola had developed at the end of Fécondité, it comes as a surprise perhaps that Justice, Zola's unwritten conclusion to the Quatre Évangiles, should promise so consistently to focus on anti-imperialism. Judging by the beginnings of the Dossier préparatoire for this novel, which Zola was already assembling simultaneously to penning Fécondité, and on the basis of the author's evident shift in thinking about society-building, this study highlights Zola's sensitivity to the changing mentalities of the period, his ability at times to predict the future of humanistic striving, his polyvalence, finally, as he envisioned the exemplary role France would play in shaping a pan-European economy.
Apostasy Apostasized: The Effects of Censorship and Self-Censorship on Baudelaire's "Le Reniement de saint Pierre"
Authors: Olmsted William
Published: July 2012

For the 1857 Fleurs du mal Baudelaire restaged earlier poetry to suit his changed religious and political views. "Le Reniement de saint Pierre," originally a blasphemous challenge to both institutional Christianity and the idealistic Christian socialism of 1848, became part of Baudelaire's "douleureux programme" of dramatizing evil at once sympathetically and judgmentally. Partly shielded from the censors by his formal choice of dramatic monologue, Baudelaire used context and paratext to ensure that the apparently lyric expression of religious apostasy and militant politics would appear symptomatic of "l'agitation de l'esprit dans le mal." Censorship, both self- and state-imposed, motivated a poetic revision that achieved deniability of the very blasphemy the poem still affirmed.
Madame de Staël et Victor Hugo face à la réalité et la légende napoléoniennes
Authors: Ousselin Edward
Published: July 2012

A la fois témoins privilégiés et participants actifs aux bouleversements sociopolitiques de leur époque respective, Germaine de Staël et Victor Hugo devinrent, chacun à sa manière, des écrivains "engagés" avant la lettre. Adversaire très tôt déclarée du régime napoléonien, l'auteure de Considérations sur la Révolution française décrivit "la longue lutte [que Napoléon] a établie entre sa toute-puissance et ma faiblesse" (218). L'auteur de Napoléon-le-petit, cependant, fut initialement un admirateur et propagateur d'une légende napoléonienne qu'il ne récusa entièrement que lorsqu'il fut confronté à la réalité du Second Empire, devenant à son tour un opposant politique et un exilé. (In French)
The World in Play: A Portrait of a Victorian Concept
Authors: Kaiser Matthew
Published: July 2012

The extent to which the multifaceted concept of play structures the Victorian sense of self, indeed, the Victorian experience of modernity, has never been fully explored. From the sportive logic underlying Darwin’s theory of natural selection, through the middle-class faith in rational recreation and autotelic amusements, to the political efficacy of holidays in the promotion of national identity, popular debates raged in the nineteenth century about the meaning and value of play as a central component of human experience. A totalizing concept, unsettling and exhilarating, play appeared, in the eyes of many Victorians, to have swallowed the world whole. Modern life seemed truly

in

play, caught in a network of proliferating, contradictory rhetorics of play, from which no exit appeared. This essay maps the unsettled world inside the concept of play, paints a new portrait of Victorian modernity.
This is Play
Authors: Nachmanovitch Stephen
Published: July 2012

Context is everything. Playing, exploring, artmaking, religion, literature, are not activities but contexts. Play is the way we encounter the multilayered nature of communication in humans and animals, in art forms and nature. Living beings learn to say as-if and sort-of; playing with these messages is the starting place of creativity, and one of the great primal life functions. Without play, learning and evolution are impossible. In the 1950s, Gregory Bateson elucidated how all this works and set the stage for innumerable insights into how messages like “this is play,” “this is art,” “this is science,” affect our understanding of what we see and hear, do and say. “This is play” can be our great opening into artistic and metaphoric activity, but such messages can also be perverted to manipulate us in innumerable ways. Levels of communication connect over, under, around and through each other. Mixtures and degrees of play, mixtures and degrees of friendship or romantic love—all these contexts, like the Klein bottle, have no inside and no outside, and are more intricate than any idea we can have of them. To be able to function in joy and freedom is the gift of play. We come to understand that not only is all communication inflected, but the inflection is the communication itself.
From Playfields to Fictional Worlds: A Second Life for Ariosto
Authors: Ryan Marie-Laure
Published: July 2012

This paper investigates the structuration of space imposed, on one hand, by games and, on the other, by narrative fiction. While most games create an alternative space, separated from ordinary reality by what Johan Huizinga called a magic circle, narrative fiction transports its users into an alternative possible world separated from the real world by the conventions of make-believe. Games can be divided into those that take place on an abstract playfield strategically structured by lines, and those that interpret the playfield as a fictional world populated with concrete objects that speak to the player’s imagination. An early attempt to turn a playfield into a fictional world permeated with narrative content is a seventeenth century dice game based on Ludovico Ariosto’s poem

Orlando Furioso

. In the Ariosto game, the activity that constitutes gameplay—throwing dice and advancing a token on the game board—remains unrelated to the narrative theme; it is only with digital technology that the gap between gameplay and narrative is bridged through a symbolic interpretation that maps the player’s real-world actions (hitting keys, manipulating controls) into events that take place in a fictional world (defeating enemies, acquiring merit). While the Ariosto game contrasts in this respect with computer games, the narrative thematics of Ariosto’s poem present a striking similarity with the design of today’s multiplayer online games.
Playing in Earnest
Authors: Motte Warren
Published: July 2012

The relationship of the playful and the earnest is an intriguing question in the history of thought from antiquity to the present. Most of the time, those terms are taken to designate dispositions of spirit that are mutually exclusive ones, defining the two poles of a spectrum of attitudes, which may color our ways of being and doing but must never commingle. Symptomatically enough, the

Oxford English Dictionary

defines the word “earnest” (in its nominative form) as “Seriousness, serious intention, as opposed to jest or play,” clearly excluding it from any ludic vocation. Two features of that distinction might be noted in a preliminary manner. First, like many binary oppositions, it is characteristically advanced as being isotopical and balanced, yet closer inspection often reveals it to be hierarchical and top-heavy, insofar as the “earnest” is invested with meaning, importance, and value, while the “playful” is relegated to the domain of the trivial, the otiose, the supplementary. Second, many meditations on what might be called the “play concept” founder on the shoals of the earnest; that is, while they take considerable pains to persuade us of their own seriousness of purpose, the radical character of that opposition leads them to logical obstacles that prove very difficult to negotiate. Some of those meditations evince moreover a longing for another kind of thought, one in which play and seriousness converse more fluently. In short, the relationship of the playful and the earnest is a significantly vexed question, and like many vexed questions, it testifies to a persistent cultural malaise. In this essay I reflect upon that question, approaching it from three angles in an effort to determine what shapes it might assume. First, I examine the way it animates—and, at certain key points, distresses—the arguments of three powerful, influential, contemporary thinkers who have turned their attention toward the play concept. Second, I invoke three recent examples of literary practice wherein play and earnestness engage each other in productive, mutually illuminative ways. Finally, I offer some addenda, drawing upon my own experience as a critic, a teacher, and a reader.
An Oceanic Origin for Äiwoo, the Language of the Reef Islands?
Authors: Ross Malcolm , Næss Åshild
Published: July 2012

Whether the languages of the Reefs--Santa Cruz (RSC) group have a Papuan or an austronesian origin has long been in dispute. Various background issues are treated in the introductory section. In section 2 we examine the lexicon of the RSC and Utupua-Vanikoro languages and show that there are regular sound correspondences among these languages, and that RSC languages display regular reflexes of Proto-Oceanic etyma and are therefore Austronesian. We also show that together the RSC and Utupua-Vanikoro languages form an Oceanic subgroup, which we label "Temotu," and that the Temotu group is probably a first-order subgroup within the Oceanic family. In section 3, we examine a variety of constructions and morphemes in Aiwoo, the language of the Reef Islands, to see whether they have plausible Oceanic sources. The answer in most cases is that they do. This is important, as several of these constructions have in the past been given as evidence that the RSC languages have a Papuan origin. We conclude that the RSC languages are Austronesian and that there is no need to posit a Pauan element to explain their origin.
Lexical Perspectives on Voice Constructions in Tsou
Authors: Huang Huei-ju , Huang Shuanfan
Published: July 2012

Very few verbs in formosan languages are known to carry a full set of voice affixes, but it remains unclear how and to what extent the lexical meaning of a verb influences constructional variability. In this study we sort out where the gaps may lie, and probe the complex and interwoven nature of the relationships between the semantic roles of nominative arguments and various non-Actor Voice clauses in Tsou. We argue that voice forms are not automatic mechanical processes based on leical selection alone, and we often we insights that show that both lexical and constructional meaning interact in licensing Benefactive Voice (BV) clauses. The argument is also made that two types of BV clauses must be distinguished, causativized and noncausativized. Verbs in noncausativized BV clauses "subcategorize" for nomative NPs that would normally function as "noncore" or peripheral argments in a European language like English, which thus constitutes important evidence that Tsou is a language that does not grammatically make the core/oblique distinction. Causativized BV clauses, on the other hand, have the effect of bringing in an extra argument to the source clauses and marking it with oblique case, while retaiing the case markings on the nominal arguments in the source clauses, violating the well-known causee accessibility hierarchy.
The Emergence of Oedipus’s Blessing: Evoking Wolfgang Iser
Authors: Budick Sanford
Published: July 2012

In these pages I present my interpretation of Iser’s model of emergence. I emphasize that what I am presenting is my understanding and exemplification of the relations among the chief terms in Iser’s model, namely, recursion, negativity, and emergence. At the same time, what I offer is, I believe, an extrapolation from what we know of Iser’s terms. I propose that the recursive relations and emergences traced by Iser in effect constitute an interactive experience of that which he called the “imaginary.” This recursive experience is a way of collectively taking part in the emergence of imagined being. This is to suggest that in his theoretical work Iser was moving from a theory of the individual act of reading to a theory of cultural and artistic transformation that is necessarily a shared activity. In its fully specified form I believe that this theory must have profound ontological implications, in other words, for how we participate in the being that, via negativity and the imaginary, we are presently helping to bring into being. Iser, I believe, had begun to explain how the greatest works of art and culture enact an interactive, transformative, and emergent way of being in recursion. The exemplifications of emergence that I analyze are from the works of Sophocles, Milton, and Kant.
How (if at All) Can We Encounter What Remains Latent in Texts?
Authors: Gumbrecht Hans Ulrich
Published: July 2012

As readers, we sometimes have the impression that texts “know” more than their authors ever did. The article refers to this type of (supposed) textual knowledge as latency . It argues that, if there is no direct, methodological, deductive or inductive way towards that which appears to be latent, the Stimmung (mood, atmosphere) produced by the text, as a maximally light and yet invariably physical environment, can become a symptom of what remains latent -- without transforming latency into a situation of open excess. Thus, for instance, in Thomas Mann’s novella “Death in Venice” the detailed descriptions of the ever changing weather of Venice produce in the reader what is best described as a mood — a quasi-physical certainty of being in the presence of something latent, that will eventually reveal itself as a longing for death permeating the homoerotic desire that has overcome the protagonist.

In those cases where long processes of crystallization of latency do not lead to situations of evidence, the intervention of our judgment is required -- the intervention of a judgment that can make itself dependent on better or worse reasons but will never be regarded as exclusively true, or exclusively adequate.
Conflict, Identity, and Creation: Isaiah Berlin and the Normative Case for Pluralism
Authors: Plaw Avery
Published: July 2012

Is there a compelling normative case for value pluralism? Would we be better off in a world of irreducibly diverse and sometimes tragically conflicting values rather than one in which our values fit harmoniously together? This article identifies, examines and evaluates a normative argument for value pluralism suggested in Isaiah Berlin’s essays on the history of ideas and particularly on Russian writers – that is, that deep conflicts of identity bound up with conflicting values sometimes contribute critically to the creation of great works of art, philosophy, and politics. Berlin attributes such deep identity conflicts to a range of important European historical figures, from Marx and Disraeli to Tolstoy and Turgenev to Hamann and Mill, and argues that their works of creative genius were motivated in part by the need to transcend their internal conflicts. On his interpretation, value conflicts appear to have been a necessary condition for their great works. In so far as we value these great creative works, it would then appear that we have a reason for embracing the underlying plurality of values that made them possible. But Berlin never linked these insights to his case for value pluralism or political liberalism. This article ends by evaluating those potential linkages. It concludes that there is a good reason that Berlin did not explicitly build a normative argument for value pluralism on these great works: on careful examination the argument reveals a paradoxical quality that at least partially undermines his critique of monism. By consequence, the argument from great works does not lend support to Berlin’s famous defense of pluralist liberalism, but rather to a form of creative liberalism that does not need to choose between pluralist sensibilities and monist aspirations.
The Painless Brain: Lobotomy, Psychiatry, and the Treatment of Chronic Pain and Terminal Illness
Authors: Raz Mical
Published: July 2012

This article examines the use of lobotomy as a treatment for chronic intractable pain and reconstructs then-common perceptions of pain and of the patients who suffered from it. It delineates the social expectations and judgments implicit in physicians' descriptions of the patients, analyzing what was expected from such patients and how the medical establishment responded to non-normative expressions of suffering. I argue that the medicalized response to an expectation for normativity demonstrates the convergence between psychiatric and palliative interventions. Based on a historically informed perspective of psychiatric interventions in the field of pain medicine, I examine the use of psychiatric medications for pain syndromes today and evaluate the interface between depression, chronic pain, and terminal illness. While not detracting from the medical imperative to alleviate pain, I question the usage of social criteria and normative judgments in the clinical decision of how to treat pain. What normalizing social function does the use of psychiatric interventions in pain treatment fulfill? This approach leads to a reexamination of perceptions of dualism in pain medicine.
Interconnecting Spaces: Truck Drivers, Diesel Pollution, and Networking in the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles
Authors: Ngo Mary , Thien Deborah
Published: July 2012

Through public networking, people with a variety of positionalities are able to come together within interconnecting spaces to navigate through similar goals toward equality and fairness. This article assesses the position of port truck drivers (predominantly Latino, immigrant, male, and economically marginalized) who are caught between their regulatory misclassification as independent contractors and the consumerist fantasies of a neoliberal citizenry, impeding their efforts to receive better treatment and obtain cleaner-burning trucks. We examine how a community coalition endeavors to enable people with a variety of positionalities to come together in and across the dynamic spaces of Long Beach and Los Angeles to fight against diesel pollution emitted by the ports, creating a potent combination that politicians and city officials cannot ignore. Employing feminist and geographical analyses, we argue that within such contentious politics, such coalitions offer a critical means to interconnect diverse spaces, making space for emotion, fostering collaboration, and offering alternative imaginaries to challenge environmental and civil rights violations from industrial exploitation.
Railroad Abandonment: A Catalyst for Urban Renewal in the San Fernando Valley, California
Authors: Fetters Douglas E.
Published: July 2012

Since the 1980s, railroad abandonment rates have escalated in the United States. Of greater significance, public officials and community leaders have often associated its occurrence with urban blight, de-industrialization, and depressed commercial activity. While some academic research has forecasted these effects, other studies have concluded that their severity was far less pronounced, and some areas exhibited urban renewal. Given the absence of a clear academic consensus on the effects of urban railroad abandonment, this study tested an argument that it stimulates urban renewal by releasing urban property for new development, and influences redevelopment in adjacent areas, thus contributing to revitalization. The Burbank Branch line, located in the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles, was examined as a case study. In two out of three regional cities, compelling spatial and statistical evidence was found to conclude that railroad abandonment served as a catalyst to accelerate already-occurring urban renewal adjacent to that right-of-way.