bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Relocating Racism in Bride and Prejudice and Jindabyne
Authors: Roberts Gillian
Published: January 2024

This chapter analyses Bride and Prejudice (2004), British director Gurinder Chadha’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and Jindabyne (2006), Australian director Ray Lawrence’s adaptation of American author Raymond Carver’s short story ‘So Much Water So Close to Home.’ Both adaptations radically resituate their sources through geographical shifts that facilitate an exploration of race relations: Chadha’s film, set in the present day, relocates Austen’s English narrative to India, London and Los Angeles; Lawrence’s film migrates from the American location of Carver’s story to New South Wales. Transnational production features prominently in both films, through the intersection of Indian, British, and Hollywood industries and sensibilities in Bride and Prejudice and the international casting of Jindabyne, with major implications for the ideological positions of the films. Bride and Prejudiceadds racism and ethnocentrism to the class bias probed by Austen and critiques the economic gap between India and the West while closing the aesthetic gap by blending Bollywood and Western cinematic conventions. Jindabyne’s updating and relocation of Carver to Australia, in which a group of white men disregard an Indigenous woman’s death, offers a Sorry Day allegory. Both films include translator figures to bridge transcultural gaps, with varying degrees of success.
Told-to Adaptations: Rabbit-Proof Fence , Whale Rider and The Lesser Blessed
Authors: Roberts Gillian
Published: January 2024

This chapter conceptualises the ‘told-to adaptation,’ in which non-Indigenous filmmakers adapt authors is adapted the work of Indigenous writers, as in Rabbit-Proof Fence(2002), adapted by Australian director Phillip Noyce from Mardudjara writer Doris Pilkington/Nugi Garimara’s Stolen Generations memoir, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence; Whale Rider (2002), adapted by Pākehā director Niki Caro from the Māori writer Witi Ihimaera’s novel The Whale Rider; and The Lesser Blessed (2012), adapted by Ukrainian-Canadian director Anita Doron from the novel by Tłı̨chǫ (Dogrib) author Richard Van Camp. Rabbit-Proof Fence adapts the narrative of Doris Pilkington Garimara’s mother, aunt, and their cousin’s abduction by authorities from their community, taken to the Moore River Native Settlement from whence they escaped, returning home along the longest fence in the world. Whereas Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider retells a Māori Traditional Story, most of the adaptation’s crew was Pākehā; further, the film is a New Zealand-Germany coproduction, diverging, sometimes sharply, from Ihimaera’s unused screenplays. The Lesser Blessed narrates a Dogrib teenager’s experiences in the Northwest Territories in the aftermath of his abusive father’s traumatic death. The novel’s contextualisation of this violence through the legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools does not appear in the film.
The Paradigms of Contemporary Art: The Contemporary versus the Specific
Authors: Keshmirshekan Hamid
Published: January 2024

It investigates the emerging concerns and thoughts with which the Iranian art community were engaged during the late 1990s and 2000s, coinciding with the beginning of the ‘Reform’ period (1997–2005) and its aftermath. It discusses the rather conflicting views in the visual arts in Iran as expressed through artistic practices and events in this period, including art productions and exhibitions as well as critical reviews. The chapter’s focus is on the analysis of the dominant dichotomy in cultural and artistic ideas including the idea of contemporaneity and specificity. It explores concepts, mechanisms, strategies and paradigms of contemporaneity in art of Iran, and tries to connect these paradigms to a burgeoning ‘New Art’ tendency as a new type of practice that initially appeared to be an institutionally (mainly by the TMoCA) sponsored art in the 2000s. Through interviews with a number of artists and examination of their works, the chapter shows how the preference for specificity changed in this period. It contends that in the 2000s, even with the official interest, the search for identity through art and the need to produce ‘authentic’ works was predominantly expelled from the art scene.
Artists’ Attempts to Reclaim Cultural Space versus the State’s Cultural Prescriptions
Authors: Keshmirshekan Hamid
Published: January 2024

It focuses on different strands of identity politics, their association with the post-revolutionary state’s cultural strategy and the artist’s aesthetic rebellion versus the state’s prescriptions. It explores the ways in which the artists’ focal beliefs about social relations and cultural essentialism find expression in their artwork. The chapter attempts to identify what has happened in the course of contemporary Iranian cultural politics after the 1979 Revolution, which has formed the current struggle between the state’s formulation and the artists’ attempts to reclaim their cultural spaces. It contends that the over-centralised and ideological nature of the Islamic Republic forces any alternative reaction to be similarly and simultaneously in essence ‘political-cultural’. During the past two decades, new interpretations of national culture and counter-narratives of the state’s hegemonic narrative, particularly in artistic strategies, have visibly emerged. The chapter also explores how artistic involvement with activism is increasingly moving away from the prescriptive agendas promoted by the state, and hence echoing more widely the ‘subjective turn’ of social movements.
Exhibiting Essentialism: Exoticism and its Attendant Uniformity
Authors: Keshmirshekan Hamid
Published: January 2024

It provides a critical account of the subject of the politics of identity and examines issues of reception and the politics of representation within the international (Euro-American) exhibition system. Drawing on Said’s study of Orientalism and that of Mitchell’s exhibitionary order, the chapter examines works of contemporary artists from Iran in relation to the stereotypes deployed by Orientalist and neo-Orientalist practices. It shows how the majority of the artistic events relating to the contemporary art of Iran in Europe and America have tended to rely upon ethno-cultural categories and political identity markers. It addresses the problematic of the ‘constructed identity’ that is generated by external definitions. I contend that it is directly related to the process of exoticisation, which represents ideological materials by highlighting selected segments of a culture that are presented to consumers who desire to underpin their common identities, as Mitchell has already explained it, by exaggerating the ‘Otherness’ of different cultures. The aim is to explore the tensions that arise when artworks created in the specific socio-cultural context of Iran are viewed in a different cultural environment.
Humorous Art Practices: A Strategic Response to Stereotyping
Authors: Keshmirshekan Hamid
Published: January 2024

It concentrates on strategies deployed by artists, living either in or outside the country, against those forces, particularly through the language of humour, irony and satire. It argues that deploying irony and addressing contradictions via humorous subversion of cultural expectations and standardisation are the key strategies in artistic practices in Iran. Here art acts as agency criticising the status quo, self-exoticisation or categories constructed only on foreign values or formulation by domestic authorities. For artists residing in Iran, parody serves a normative critical function specifically when certain contemporary art forms allow artists to offer parodic references to art of the past. Drawing on Dentith, Apte, Ziv, Bergson and Hutcheon’s theories of humour and parody, the chapter examines the works of a number of artists and how they address their critical views against formulations constructed by local political forces or the metropolitan art system.
Struktur , History and Determinism
Authors: Verstegen Ian
Published: January 2024

In Chapter 3, the way in which history is structured according to the new Vienna School is sketched out. Discussing the relationship between art, history, and society, it departs from the problematic concept developed by Riegl of the Kunstwollen. The super-individualism of the Kunstwollen is usually interpreted ominously but its positive characteristics are brought out by portraying it with the sociological ideas of the "objective mind." These concepts, ultimately found in Hegel, are not actually deterministic but tendential. Discussing sociologists and psychologists like Alfred Vierkandt, Karl Mannheim, and Wolfgang Metzger, the interconnectedness of cultural elements and the role of individual agency in shaping societies is sketched out. In this way, a determinist spirit directing history is dismissed in favor or moment by moment development.
Introduction: ‘A systemic disorder, an extravagant research, and an abjuration of common sense’: Defining the Italian Gothic
Authors: Malvestio Marco , Serafini Stefano
Published: January 2024

The introduction discusses the (lack of) reception of the Gothic in Italy, exploring the historical and cultural circumstances that led to its marginalisation. While the Gothic has a long, if hidden, history in Italian literature and culture, it is undeniable that it has never been properly investigated in a scholarly perspective. This erasure can be explained by a general disregard of Italian scholars for the irrational and for popular forms of expression. Specifically, a rich and lively debate concerning supernatural fiction at large did actually develop in Italy in the 1980s, following Todorov’s influential essay on the fantastic. Nevertheless, the Italian fantastic was re-conceptualised as an inherently highbrow, intellectual genre. As a consequence, popular literature and trans-medial contaminations were inevitably belittled. In our introduction, we argue that, on the contrary, the Gothic constitutes a fundamental critical instrument that enables the exploration of cultural areas that the fantastic consistently overlooks.
The Age of Permutations: 1915–1956
Authors: Foni Fabrizio
Published: January 2024

Even after her death in 1916, Carolina Invernizio’s gentrified – although less than reassuring – Gothic novels would serve as a model for decades to come. Italy’s cultural landscape, however, is not devoid of minor writers uncompromisingly indulging in the occult. A major trend in popular fiction consists in fashioning adventure narratives in the style of Jules Verne and Emilio Salgari, borrowing their macabre atmospheres. The historical novel, in turn, as already happened in the nineteenth century, has a liking for Gothic elements that simultaneously recur in the works of authors either joining or gravitating towards Futurism. Following the overnight success of Mondadori’s Libri Gialli, Gothic tropes are also appropriated by such writers of detective fiction as Vasco Mariotti and Renato Umbriano. The two world wars’ death-toll inevitably leaves its dark imprint on Italian narrative fiction featuring Gothic traits by authors such as Roberto Bracco, Alberto Savinio, Dino Buzzati, and Tommaso Landolfi.
The Golden Age of the Gothic: 1957–1979
Authors: Curti Roberto
Published: January 2024

This chapter discusses the development of the Italian Gothic between 1957 and 1979, exploring its productive, stylistic and thematic characteristics, with a main focus on cinema. Prompted by the diffusion of the Gothic in popular culture after the success of Hammer Film’s Dracula, the first wave of Italian Gothic texts (1957-1966) was formed of low-budget, stylistically homogeneous products; they revised classical staples (vampirism, reincarnation, supernatural revenge) with an emphasis on eroticism, conveying a will to transgress what was common to Italian society. By the late 1960s, the latter component stood out, often paired with the insistence on graphic violence. Aside from erotically charged re-readings of the classical Gothic, the decade provided different approaches to the genre, including political allegories, connections to Italian folklore, and additions to the ‘Female Gothic’ canon. Likewise, the themes encompassed the influence of adults-only comics, and the widespread interest in the paranormal and the occult.
Gothic Poetry
Authors: Di Martino Simona
Published: January 2024

This chapter outlines the rise and the development of an autochthonous strain of Italian sepulchral poetry and the employment of Gothic themes in the late eighteenth century. It emphasises the complex imagery that will provide nineteenth-century popular literature with a set of macabre and deathly motifs contributing to the creation of a Gothic writing. Scholarship has traditionally considered eighteenth-century Italian sepulchral poetry as derivative from foreign models, primarily focusing on the influence of British ‘graveyard poetry’. However, the chapter investigates the largely autochthonous roots of Italian sepulchral poetry (e.g. Dante’s works, religious texts, Christian eulogy) as well as the specificity of the ways Italian literature deals with what Julia Kristeva calls the ‘abjection’ of death (e.g. from a Classical viewpoint) through thematic close readings of selected texts. Therefore, this contribution provides a gallery of poetical deathly images like horrific depictions of dead bodies, corpses, and visions of one’s own death.
The Gothic in Periodicals and Magazines
Authors: Foni Fabrizio
Published: January 2024

By focusing on fiction published in periodicals between 1880 and the late 1940s, this chapter aims to challenge a prejudice which has held sway for decades, namely the denial of the existence of an Italian popular literature purposely drawing on the most typical tropes of the Gothic mode and geared towards the broadest possible audience. In spite of low literacy levels, many national publishing houses issued magazines that offered a type of reading analogous to that of the penny dreadful, dime novels, and pulp magazines. The spiritualist and theosophical craze of the era, the coeval scientific and technological discoveries, as well as the colonialist penchant for exoticism, blend into usually stereotyped stories which combine the eerie and the supernatural with mad science, Grand-Guignol stunts, and voyages of exploration. Such narratives, to a certain extent, are echoed by stories appearing in avant-garde magazines or written for periodicals by authors now considered canonical.
Gothic Cinema
Authors: Giusti Giulio
Published: January 2024

The most prolific period in Italian horror filmmaking is commonly classified into two main cycles or filoni: the Gothic of the 1960s and the giallo of the 1970s. That said, this chapter seeks to add nuance to this acknowledged distinction by further exploring the Gothic influence on the giallo as well as the close intertwining of the two cycles in relation to their narratives and style. The purpose of this investigation is twofold. On the one hand, this chapter provides a detailed historical account of the development of the Gothic and the giallo in a domestic context, the dynamics of their production and their major thematic affinities and shared practices. On the other hand, it explores how and to what extent this strict interrelationship has also served to differentiate the Gothic and giallo film production from its Anglo-American models and make it one of global popular culture’s most iconic trademarks.
Ecogothic and Folk Horror
Authors: Malvestio Marco
Published: January 2024

This chapter traces the presence of ecological issues in the Italian Gothic, with particular attention to the phenomenon of folk horror. The Gothic, as a literature of the re-emersion of the repressed, can provide a tool to discuss and redefine the boundaries between human and non-human in an anthropocentric cultural system. The analysis takes into account examples of Eco-Gothic through all Italian modern literature, as well as Italian folk horror cinema. As a sub-genre profoundly interested in the representation of the landscape and the portrayal of isolated communities, folk horror explores and develops peculiar themes and traits connected to the historical and contemporary traumas of Italian culture and landscape. Italian folk horror explores those parts of the country (such as Southern Italy or the margins of the Po Valley) that modernity has left behind.
Putting the ‘Peace’ in Peacekeeping: Martial Peace, Martial Politics and the Objects of Our Peacekeeping Desires
Authors: Wegner Nicole
Published: January 2024

Building upon literatures that conceptualise militarism, militarisation and martial politics, this chapter outlines how the peacekeeping myth relates to existing frameworks and puts forward a concept to bridge existing work in critical military studies and peace studies: martial peace. Martial peace is not novel, rather another way to understand disciplinary preoccupation with negative peace and a heuristic to explain how martial politics (or the overlooked violence within liberal societies) is upheld through the association of peace with orderliness.
Myths, Peacekeeping and the Peacekeeping Myth
Authors: Wegner Nicole
Published: January 2024

An overview of the political functions of myths and maps the peacekeeper myth throughout United Nations (UN) doctrine and academic theorisations about UN peacekeeping in international relations. Details how distinctions between traditional peacekeeping (associated with consent, neutrality and non-violence) and second- or third-generation peacekeeping (exemplified by UN missions post-1970 that involve significantly more robust mandates) have imbued discourses about peacekeeping with the understanding that it is distinct from other forms of militarised violence, including peace-making, counterinsurgency and warfare.
Cultural Nostalgia and the Political Construction of the Canadian Peacekeeping Myth
Authors: Wegner Nicole
Published: January 2024

This chapter introduces the cultural specificities of the Canadian peacekeeping myth and demonstrates how this mythology has been reinforced through academic theorisation, popular culture and political memorialisation. Outlines how four key values have been associated with the Canadian peacekeeping mythology – paternal helpfulness, altruism, non-violence and innocence – and suggest that the power of the peacekeeper mythology lies in the emotional resonance of these characteristics believed to reflect unique Canadian ethico-political values
* The Peacekeeping Myth and the War in Afghanistan
Authors: Wegner Nicole
Published: January 2024

Explores how the Canadian peacekeeping myth was manoeuvred in discourses about Canada’s role in the war in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014. Assesses efforts by elites to ‘shed’ the peace- keeping myth, believed by many in defence circles to be a feminising image that did little to protect Canada’s reputation and national security from racialised threats in the global ‘war on terror’. Shows how elites were able to legitimise explicitly non-peacekeeping activities in Afghanistan by aligning these activities with symbolism of the peacekeeping myth.
Creating Martial Peace: Martial Politics and Militarised ‘Peace’ Enforcement in Canada
Authors: Wegner Nicole
Published: January 2024

Considers how the peacekeeping myth, and assumptions about ‘peace’ and order in Canada, has been negotiated alongside the use of militarised force against Indigenous populations. Considers how extensive reproduction of the Canadian peacekeeping myth detailed in Chapter 3 occurred alongside decades of militarised police actions against Indigenous land rights activists in Canada. Makes connections between global peacekeeping and domestic police ‘peace-keeping’, this chapter considers what is really at stake in the celebration of Canadian peacekeeping mythology: a distraction from Canada’s colonial and imperialist history through the promotion of ‘peace’ as centred on orderliness for settler populations.
The Role of Material Objects in the Home Interiors of Russian Speakers in Finland
Authors: Protassova Ekaterina , Reznik Kirill
Published: January 2024

The geographic position of Finland as Russia’s neighbour and the resultant historical, economic, and cultural ties mean that the Russian language and the Russian-speaking minority occupy an exceptional and complex position in Finland, difficult to compare with that of other countries. Russian speakers are the largest linguistic minority in Finland, and their number is expected to increase still further in the near future. In the past three decades, discussions about the status of the Russian language have become more audible in Finnish discourses on language policy. Material for this study was collected through video and audio interviews, group discussions, records of self-reflections in the form of semi-structured essays, analysis of blog entries, and printed materials. Participants showed interviewers their family archives, cherished objects, and photos. These served to illustrate the narratives in which these émigrés/immigrants to Finland recalled their “Russian” lives. Telling us what it meant to be a Russian speaker in Finland in different epochs, by showing their belongings, participants shared their memories. We compare different waves of migration in their attitudes toward material culture of their former and current homelands.
The Hollywood Kazwup : Historic Russian Restaurants in Los Angeles, 1918–1989
Authors: Razor Sasha
Published: January 2024

The history of Los Angeles’s restaurants of the White Emigration reflects the complexities of their identity as gleaned from these establishments’ interior decors, menus, and biographies of their owners. Many cities across the world, including Berlin, Paris, Shanghai, and New York, hosted large populations of Russian White émigrés, but it was the proximity of the Hollywood film industry that contributed to the uniqueness of the Los Angeles nightlife. For a number of the city’s émigré restaurateurs, recreating a home away from home went hand-in-hand with the manufacturing of Russia’s image on screen. In 1980s, the few remaining eateries owned by the first wave and their heirs went out of business. The primary sources of the study include archival photographs, newspaper articles, and commercial advertisements. The exilic identity struggles that these restaurants endured were akin to the way in which Russia itself was captured on screen, a “slippery relation between invented and authentic Russianness, between simulacra and their originals” (Matich). Beginning as cabarets and cultural clubs in the 1920s, these establishments expanded to include the local audience, especially the community of Hollywood filmmakers whose productions would inform the rhetorical tropes for Russian ethnic restaurants and gastronomic criticism to come.
Naomi Mitchison’s ‘Europe’
Authors: Purdon James
Published: January 2024

This chapter introduces the previously-unpublished Naomi Mitchison short story, “Europe”, placing it in the context of Mitchison’s work for the international writers’ organisation PEN, post-Second World War cultural diplomacy, and the German tradition of Märchen, or fairy tales.
The Rise of Taiwan New Cinema and the Festival Strategy
Authors: Tsai Beth
Published: January 2024

The book begins by mapping out the postwar history of Taiwan cinema, from the Golden Age of commercial Taiwanese-language cinema (taiyupian) to films favoured by the Kuomintang (KMT, or Nationalist Party), which looked at Taiwan from a Nationalist-oriented, anti-Communism Chinese perspective, and explores the various degrees of reception in the international contexts. While New Cinema has sporadically made its way into festival competitions, it was not until 1989, when A City of Sadness won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, that Taiwan New Cinema was granted much visibility and recognition in Europe. Tracing the roots and routes of how Taiwan cinema is situated in the international film festival circuit, this chapter contends that the festival strategy was prompted by what the New Cinema cohort wanted, needed, and desired. It was a push-and-pull process between challenging traditions and working with the system.
An afterlife – et cetera, et cetera, et cetera
Authors: Paasonen Susanna
Published: January 2024

In 1976, Brynner returned on Broadway with a stage revival of The King andI, versions of which he played up until shortly before his death in 1985. Starting with the press reception of these shows, this chapter considers the tight association between the actor and the role – one that continued in posthumous forms of remembrance. The kingly reverberation of the actor as ‘The King’ continued in the titles of later biographies; in 2012, a statue of Brynner as King Mongkut was erected in front of his childhood home in Vladivostok. The chapter considers various forms and diverse technologies of remembrance: obituaries, posthumously aired infomercials, biographies, statues and contemporary products of vernacular digital culture. Focusing on both repetitions and variations within these, it asks what remains of film stardom after an actor’s demise.
Canine Companions, Race and Affective Anthropomorphism in Florence Ayscough’s The Autobiography of A Chinese Dog (1926) and Mary Gaunt’s A Broken Journey (1919)
Authors: Wu Juanjuan
Published: January 2024

This chapter examines the ways that different forms of affective anthropomorphism are enacted for the (re)configurations of cross-species and interracial relationships by providing a critical assessment of the changing roles of beasts, dogs in particular, in female-authored narratives of China between the 1910s and the 1920s, an era of high modernism in the west and of parallel movement in China. I focus on representations of ‘James Buchanan’ and ‘Yo Fei’, two Chinese dogs adopted, separately, by two white women, as intimate companions in China. Named after the fifteenth president of the United States famous for his ambiguous feelings towards slavery, ‘James Buchanan’ is rhetorically racialized into a ‘white’ dog by Mary Gaunt (1861-1942), a British-Australian popular novelist and travel writer during her wanderings into what was to her as China’s unknown parts in 1913 and 1914. ‘Yo Fei’, however, takes the name from a twelfth-century Chinese historical figure constructed in the early twentieth as a national hero for defence of his country. ‘‘Yo Fei’’ is the protagonist of The Autobiography of a Chinese Dog (1926) written by Florence Ayscough (1878-1942), a self-claimed ‘citizen of the world’. In exploring the intersection between cross-species relations and interracial dynamics, this chapter will bring a transnational and comparative perspective into ‘beastly modernisms’, enriching studies of the beast in its relation to planetary modernisms.
The Barking Dog and Crying Bird in Partition Stories: Beastly Modernism and the Subaltern Animism of Manto, Rakesh and Anand
Authors: Pandey Beerendra
Published: January 2024

Critics have categorized much of the modernist story in Urdu, Hindi and English of the Indian Subcontinent from the 1930s to the 1950s as Progressive literature. The fictional push for reform in the society and reformulation of humanism in Progressive stories shows the agency of the detritus of society. The thrust for social reform and reconstruction of humanistic values had become all the more urgent in the wake of the cataclysmic violence engulfing the Subcontinent at the time of Partition—in the years between 1946 and 1948. The immediate, shocking responses to the holocaust-like events of the Partition in the Subcontinental discourse of the time harp on men becoming animals and humanity turning into beasts. In sharp contrast to the prevailing cultural discourse, three leading Progressive writers: Saadat Hasan Manto (Urdu), Mohan Rakesh (Hindi), and Mulk Raj Anand (English) fall back upon the animals—the barking dog and the crying parrot—to expose the animality of humanity, both as victimizer and the victimized, one the one hand, and to dramatize the human attributes of the animal on the other hand.
The Modernist Jellyfish
Authors: Murray Rachel
Published: January 2024

Focusing on the work of Wyndham Lewis, Virginia Woolf, Marianne Moore, and H.D., this chapter will examine the role of jellyfish in modernism as disruptors of thought, arguing that their appearance gives rise to a series of mental blockages, in which the subject appears unable to think clearly, as though having been plunged into sudden darkness. In a series of close readings, I will suggest that these moments of cognitive arrest, though disabling, also have a galvanic effect, directing ‘lightning flashes of electric power to slash across and destroy the world of dead, murky thought’ (H.D.).Building on recent work on the aesthetic and political significance of jellyfish in contemporary culture, I will argue that modernism can offer an alternative perspective on creatures that we tend to dismiss all too easily as spineless saboteurs or Anthropocene opportunists. As Stacy Alaimo argues, popular representations of jellyfish have tended to transform them into aesthetic commodities (likening them to jewels and treasures) in order to convert ‘their perplexing liquidity to a more reassuring solidity’ (Alaimo). Modernist writing, on the other hand, tends to linger on the ontological confusion and panic provoked by their perplexing formlessness, thus preserving a sense of the curious affective and ethical force of these watery creatures.
Louis Malle and Uncle Vanya
Authors: Wrenn Angus
Published: January 2024

The chapter examines Louis Malle’s final film, Vanya on 42nd Street (1994). It argues that the decision to make his final film based on Chekhov is personal. The film can be also seen AS of importance when viewed within the context of Russo-Franco-American cultural history over a longer period. It was in New York that Malle encountered the work of the experimental stage director Andre Gregory. Gregory, from a family originating in Russia but settled in the early 20th century in France, had migrated with them to the USA in 1939, and was trained by Lee Strasberg, the American heir of Konstantin Stanislavsky. By discussing the film within the frame of a commentary (rather than fidelity) adaptation, the chapter demonstrates how Malle’s Vanya on 42nd Street emerged from Gregory’s experimental theatrical workshop rehearsals in New York.
Thanatophobia on the Soviet Screen: Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Il’ích and Aleksandr Kaidanovsky’s A Simple Death
Authors: Boele Otto
Published: January 2024

Although for Soviet filmmakers Tolstoy’s oeuvre always presented a rewarding source of inspiration, in practice the options were limited. If the novels of the ‘pre-crisis period’ lend themselves to promoting the preferred image of Tolstoy the social critic, the patriot, and even the repenting nobleman, for dramatic, as well as ideological reasons the stories written after 1880 were deemed less appropriate. With the exception of After the Ball (Dudorov, 1961), the later Tolstoy almost never made it to the Soviet screen. The policies of Glasnost created the possibility of exploring other themes in Tolstoy’s work such as sexuality (The Kreutzer Sonata, 1987) and thanatophobia. Aleksandr Kaidanovsky’s film A Simple Death (Prostaia Smert′, 1985) is a loose adaptation of The Death of Ivan Il′ich and a mosaic of lesser-known texts that deal with mortality. The chapter argues that by making thanatophobia the central focus of his film, Kaidanovsky introduced the Soviet viewer to a largely ignored aspect of Tolstoy’s later work, turned the ‘petty-bourgeois’ fear of death into a subject in its own right, and, finally, sought to overcome his own fear of the inevitable end.
War and Peace : A New Visual Dimension
Authors: Sobolev Olga
Published: January 2024

Without disregarding all earlier adaptations of the novel, the chapter focuses on its most recent cinematic translation, written by Andrew Davies, and serialised on BBC-1 in 2016. Moving away from the ‘fidelity criticism’ standpoint, the discussion draws upon Robert Stam’s framework of ‘dialogical intertexuality’, underpinned by an assumption that an adaptation and a source text are mutually inflected (through the lens provided by the cultural shift). Attention is paid to the means of cinematic expression arising from the very process of text-to-film transformation, as well as to an array of factors pertinent to the public reception of this type of text-based screen-works. In relation to the latter, the BBC series is examined as a case study for exploring the role and function of screen adaptations in the process of cultural branding – a significant factor in today’s world of cultural consumers, which apart from being a purely commercial indicator, casts light on some structural changes, developing within the frame of the literary-cinematic cultural space.
In Search of the Blue Flower
Authors: Hamilton Alexander
Published: January 2024

In the first in the Scottish Photographic Artists series Alexander Hamilton reflects on how his engagement with the cyanotypes process has informed his art practice, from his time at Edinburgh College of Art, to his exhibitions, residencies and work in public arts. Alongside a personal history are essays by scholars and curators who engaged with the intellectual roots of his practice. A comprehensive selection of Hamilton’s photography, including his unique plant- based cyanotypes, completes this beautiful book.
Introduction
Authors: Stevenson Sara
Published: January 2024

The introduction by Sara Stevenson, presents the unique approach taken by the artist Alexander Hamilton, in capturing the spirit and the essence of plants through the cyanotype method.
Edinburgh College of Art
Authors: Hamilton Alexander
Published: January 2024

The artist discovers the work Anna Atkins at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. An introduction into the Avant Garde through Strategy: Get Arts, working with 35 artists from Germany as a gallery assistant. Moving from Edinburgh to a caravan in the Pentland Hills to create work for his final year at the Art School.
Paris
Authors: Hamilton Alexander
Published: January 2024

The artist, taking up a residency in Paris, with a studio and finds a new gallery, moves out of Paris to a rural location to prepare for a major project on the Genealogy of the Peace Rose. Exploring the idea of pursuing plant perfection, creates a major new body of cyanotype works.
Public Arts
Authors: Hamilton Alexander
Published: January 2024

The artist receives his first public art commission, the Dundee Seed Chamber, a 9 metre high glass prism celebrating the plant, Rosebay Willowherb. Further commissions follow. New exhibitions with a major project examining the issue of air pollution. Expands his public Art Studio to take on partners, to explore new media projects with a major commission for a concert hall.
Opportunities to exhibit in Poland at the Foksal Gallery. Residencies including a Leverhulme Fellowship at Ruskin House, Brantwood. Major public art commission for New Hospitals in Scotland.
The Art of Cyanotype
Authors: Hamilton Alexander
Published: January 2024

Articles about the artist from writers on his work over a 30 year period. With essays by Richard Ovenden, Euan McArthur, Mike Ware, Vanessa Sellers, Julie Lawson, Jaromir Jedlinski, and Christian Weikop.
SAĞLIK MESLEK YÜKSEKOKULU ÖĞRENCİLERİNİN RUH SAĞLIĞI OKURYAZARLIĞININ BELİRLENMESİ
Authors: UZUNHASANOĞLU Günseli , ŞEN Harika , UGRAK Ugur
Published: January 2024

Ruh sağlığı okuryazarlığı, ruhsal sağlık davranışları üzerindeki etkisi giderek daha fazla tanınan ve bilimsel araştırmalarda büyük ilgi gören bir faktördür. Ruh sağlığı okuryazarlığının ruhsal hastalıkların erken teşhisi, yardım arama eğilimleri ve önleme üzerindeki etkisi birçok çalışmada ortaya konmuştur. Bu çalışma, 2023 Nisan ve Temmuz ayları arasında 507 üniversite öğrencisinin ruh sağlığı okuryazarlığı durumunu değerlendirmeyi amaçlamıştır. Veri toplama sürecinde gönüllü onam, sosyo-demografik özellikler ve ruh sağlığı okuryazarlığı ölçeği kullanılmıştır. Yapısal geçerlilik değerlendirmesi için doğrulayıcı faktör analizi kullanılırken, ölçek puanlarını belirlemek için Kruskal Wallis H ve Mann Whitney U testleri uygulanmıştır. Ortalama ruh sağlığı okuryazarlığı puanı 91.67 (±11.20) olarak belirlenmiş olup, belirli boyutlar şu şekilde puan almıştır: Ruhsal sorunlara yardım arama tutumları (31.43 ±5.21), ruhsal hastalığı olan bireylere yönelik tutumlar (16.64 ±4.62), ruhsal bozuklukları tanıma yeteneği (31.63 ±3.95) ve bilgiye erişim (11.96 ±2.19). Öğrencilerin ruh sağlığı okuryazarlığı puanları karşılaştırmalı olarak oldukça düşüktür. Bu durum, ruh sağlığı okuryazarlığını geliştirmek için kapsamlı eğitim programlarına olan ihtiyacı vurgulamaktadır. Ayrıca, ruh sağlığı okuryazarlığı ölçeğinin geçerliliği ve güvenilirliğini incelemek için daha fazla araştırma önerilmektedir.
Crowdsourced Adaptive Surveys
Authors: Velez Yamil
Published: January 2024

Public opinion surveys are vital for informing democratic decision-making, but responding to rapidly changing information environments and measuring beliefs within niche communities can be challenging for traditional survey methods. This paper introduces a crowdsourced adaptive survey methodology that unites advances in natural language processing and adaptive algorithms to generate question banks that evolve with user input. The CSAS method converts open-ended text provided by participants into Likert items, and applies a multi-armed bandit algorithm to determine user-provided questions that should be prioritized. The method’s adaptive nature allows for the exploration of new survey questions, while imposing minimal costs in survey length. Applications in the domains of Latino information environments and issue importance showcase CSAS’s ability to identify claims or issues that might otherwise be difficult to track using standard approaches. I conclude by discussing the method’s potential for studying topics where participant-generated content might improve our understanding of public opinion.
An Account of Humor in Covid-19 Internet Memes from the Perspective of Cognitive Relevance: A Contrastive Case Study
Authors: Hamed Maha SalahEldin Mohamed
Published: January 2024

: In response to Covid-19 pandemic, online humor proliferated across social media platforms as a vital coping mechanism in dealing with the unendurable pandemic-related restrictions through creating a sense of bonding in the face of this calamity regardless of geographical area, nationality, ethnicity, or socio-political affiliations. This research is a cross-lingual case study of internet screenshot memes on Covid-19 in both Arabic and English languages. It explores differences and/or similarities in establishing cognitive relevance and instigating humorous incongruity. The paper uses a three-dimensional theoretical framework that integrates Relevance Theory (RT), as a communication theory in the field of cognitive cyber-pragmatics, with the theories of Intertextuality and Incongruity in humor. Qualitative descriptive analysis revealed a consensus to regard the mass reaction to the pandemic as exaggerated, to use an interplay of intertextuality and incongruity to achieve the rhetorical purpose of critically satirizing such reactions by instigating laughter at one’s silliness. The analysis demonstrated that humorous incongruity springs from the opposing scripts between the content of IMs and the social context surrounding the pandemic as well as a marked similarity in the sources used for establishing cognitive relevance such as background knowledge and logical and lexical information reflecting RT principles.
Examining the Impact of a Digital Reading Progress Tool on Saudi L2 Learners’ Reading Aloud Performance and Proficiency
Authors:  Alahmadi Nesreen Saud
Published: January 2024

: Few studies have considered the use of digital reading tools for improving the fluency and proficiency of Saudi learners of English as a second language (ESL). Hence, in this study, the researcher investigated the impact of Microsoft’s Digital Reading Progress tool on 30 Saudi ESL learners’ reading performance and proficiency. The participants were all at the B1 intermediate English language level in academic ESL, according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) English language proficiency test. The students were given one reading passage per week, and the researcher examined their performance in reading aloud over a period of four weeks using the Digital Reading Progress tool. The researcher employed a quantitative analysis, including post-assessments, to measure five aspects of participants’ reading performance: mispronunciation of words, self-corrections, omissions, repetitions, and correct words per minute. The findings revealed significant improvements in participants’ reading performance, fluency, and accuracy, as evidenced by increased accuracy after engaging with the Digital Reading Progress tool, increased scores across the five rated categories, and reduced pronunciation and word omission errors. This study contributes to the growing body of research on technology-enhanced language learning by demonstrating the positive impact of the Digital Reading Progress tool on L2 learners’ reading performance and proficiency. The findings have practical implications for ESL instructors in integrating digital tools as valuable pedagogical resources for enhancing L2 reading learning and performance.
Validation of a Screening Tool for Dyslexia in English among Arabic-Speaking University Students in the Gulf Area
Authors: Tiruchittampalam Shanthi  ,  Ross Alistair
Published: January 2024

When teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, at times, dyslexic students may confound instructors at the lack of improvement in their English language ability. Such students may not have the specialist diagnostic assessment to access support services. A simple but inexpensive measure to screen for dyslexia would facilitate a more inclusive and equitable educational environment. This study examined whether an Arabic-translated version of a widely-used English L1 (first language) dyslexia checklist could identify Arabic L1 students who exhibited difficulties in English. Participants were 734 female EFL undergraduates studying EAP in one gulf university. The participants completed Arabic versions of the checklist. Using prescribed cut off scores, participants were divided into three groups: non-dyslexic, mildly dyslexic, and dyslexic. To validate the checklist, a subsample of 110 students were randomly selected for further assessment of dyslexia using the following indicators: word reading, pseudoword reading, spelling ability, phonological awareness, and rapid automatized naming skills. Results showed significant differences among the three groups for nearly all measures, suggesting that the Arabic translated checklist can be an easily administered, useful screening tool to identify Arabic L1 students who are at-risk of dyslexia in EFL.
Advancing EFL Writing Proficiency in Jordan: Addressing Challenges and Embedding Progressive Strategies
Authors: Alsariera Anas Hashem ,  Alsaraireh Mohammad Yousef
Published: January 2024

Considering the critical role of writing in EFL contexts, this study sets out to examine the writing skills of Jordanian EFL students, addressing both the challenges they encounter and the potential strategies for enhancing their capabilities. To achieve this, the researchers implemented two distinct methods of data collection: a survey and semi-structured interviews. The survey data were analysed utilizing basic descriptive statistics, while the interview data were examined based on Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis framework. The participants in this study included 150 Jordanian EFL students majoring in English language across three public universities, alongside eight experienced EFL writing instructors. The results revealed a set of writing challenges confronted by the students, such as the struggle to compose grammatically accurate and coherent text. These difficulties originated from a variety of factors, notably a deficiency in linguistic knowledge and a lack of motivation. Moreover, the study emphasized the crucial influence of the teaching process, which holds the potential to impact the students' writing proficiency either positively or adversely. To address the challenges in EFL writing, this study has outlined potential strategies, encompassing effective instruction, the enrichment of students' linguistic knowledge, the integration of advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the encouragement of student motivation. Notably, the integration of AI tools emerges as a novel strategy with the potential to revolutionize teaching practices by offering personalized feedback and enhancing the learning experience. This research substantially contributes to the existing body of literature on EFL writing, revealing the specific challenges among Jordanian EFL students, and providing a comprehensive set of practical and innovative solutions for EFL writing instructors.
AI-Driven Learning Analytics in STEM Education
Authors: Nuangchalerm Prasart
Published: January 2024

In recent years, the integration approach of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is called for many disciplines, it also STEM education has paved the way for transformative advancements. This paper provides an example of AI-driven learning analytics within the context of STEM education. It provides a thorough analysis of the AI-driven STEM curriculum and its associated paradigm. Additionally, it highlights the obstacles and possible threats that educators and institutions face when implementing technological innovations in the classroom. The serves as a valuable resource for educators, researchers, and policymakers seeking to harness the power of AI-driven learning analytics to enhance STEM education. The transformative potential of AI is now shaping the future of STEM learning environments while advocating for a responsible and ethical approach to data-driven education. Ethical concerns and moral considerations should be discussed in school AI and STEM education.
Engineering Graduates' Skill Acquisition and Employers Skill Need as applied to Science Education in Ethiopia
Authors: Teshome Asmera , Oumar Jeilu
Published: January 2024

Demand for relevant skills and competences have increased with changing science and technology, globalization, and the intensity and complexity of the business environment across the world. This study investigated levels of engineering graduate skill acquisition and employers' skill needs as applied to science education. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study employed both primary and secondary sources of data. The study involved 275 participants recruited using simple random and purposive sampling techniques. Data were analyzed using the mean, standard deviation, and one-way ANOVA. The study found a wider mismatch between levels of higher education supply and labor market needs for indicators of academic, technical, interpersonal, and generic skills. While higher education moderately equipped engineering graduates with the majority of indicators of these skill sets, labor market needs for the same skills remain high. The mismatches between the demand and supply of skills have several implications, it compromises firms' productivity, result in market losses, hamper economic growth, competitiveness, and innovative capacity at the macro-economic level, decrease quality human capital by discouraging investment in education and training, and challenge graduates in finding jobs suitable for their field of study. These require universities and employers to conduct real labor market skills' needs assessments before designing training curriculum; shifting curriculum delivery from theory-focused to practical-oriented modes of teaching and ensuring learners' acquisition of skills demanded by employers; and establishing strong and sustainable linkages between industries and training institutes. It is also good if future research focuses on skills employees acquire at work through experience and factors attributed to mismatches between higher education skill supply and employers' skill needs.