bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
From an Enclosed Traditional Space to a Sprawling Urban Space
Authors: Zou Hongyan
Published: January 2022

This chapter explores cinematic Xi’an through the lens of flâneur’s street-level observation represented in Huang Jianxin’s two urban features, Back to Back, Face to Face [Beikaobei, Lianduilian] (1994) and Signal Left, Turn Right [Hongdengting, lüdengxing] (1996), and argues that filmic Xi’an creates an enclosed and open space characterised by the coexistence of urban and rural values. Urban comedies set in Xi’an invariably employ local dialects and include landmarks of the city, fostering a strong sense of locale. In contrast, Huang Jianxin’s cinematic Xi’an restrains from the above features and portray Xi’an either as an anonymous modern space where intact socialist ideological/political order contains modernisation progress or as an enclosed and open space where ordinary citizens’ daily practices unfold. In Back to Back, the urban space is depicted within layers of walls and “guild halls”, creating an enclosed space overwhelmed by traditional power structures and rural values. In Signal Left, Turn Right, phantom of obsolete political and ideological discourse persists in characters’ daily practices, while the power of capital produces an open and sprawling urban space, overwhelming traditional values and ways of conduct.
Cinematic Western China: An Open Space for Spatial Imagination
Authors: Zou Hongyan
Published: January 2022

This chapter concludes that city films set in urban centres of western China engage with, respond to and reimagine China’s complex and heterogeneous urbanisation and modernisation in an increasingly globalised world. The four cinematic urban centres examined in this book configure a space of the subaltern, the marginalised and the dominated. This configuration defies the glamorised success stories of China’s economic boost, questions the dominance of political and capital power imposed on the designation and transformation of cityscape and urban life, and asserts the value of cultural and social pluralism and hybridity. However, limitations on the book’s length mean it cannot fully cover all urban centres in western China such as Kunming, Lasa, Ürümchi, Xining and Hohhot, etc, the capital city of Yunnan, Tibet, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Qinghai and Inner Mongolia, etc. These cities are inhabited by many minorities and often represented in minority films with their cultural uniqueness and religion foregrounded. Given the complicated relationship between minority groups and the Han, and the role of minority films in cultural diversity in central government’s neoliberal policies, minority films set in western China are indicated as a new area for future studies.
Introduction: Historicism, Modernity and Religion
Authors: Ringer Monica M.
Published: January 2022

Historicism, as the premise of historical context, together with ideas of universalism and progress, created a new epistemological and methodological landscape that by the 19th century demanded a redefinition and reconceptualization of the nature and function of religion. Muslim intellectuals, like modernists in other religious traditions, historicized Islamic history and proposed a new approach to the Quran, Hadith and the nature of tradition itself. They rejected tradition as historically constructed and thus contingent, proposing that tradition as content, and precedent as method, be discarded in favor of the reinterpretation of the ‘essence’ of Islam according to contemporary needs. Studies of modernity should shift from an attempt to align definitions with empirical realities, and instead focus on the emergence of claims to the modern. This enables us to understand commonalities and differences among various modernities – and to avoid falling into worn paths of seeing modernity as a process of diffusion from the West to the ‘Rest’ while also not asserting the irrelevance of Europe. Islamic modernism has been treated as an instrumentalist language in the historiography of Middle Eastern modernization projects, and not appreciated for its deeply theological innovations and participatory role in engendering modernity.
Reverberations of the Haitian Revolution: Media, Narratives and Political Debates, 1791–1863
Authors: Kappeler Florian
Published: January 2022

Florian Kappeler’s chapter examines reactions to the Haitian Revolution in the German-speaking world. After the defeat of Napoleon’s army in 1803, discussion of the events in Haiti was heavily censored in France. In German-speaking countries, however, the events were debated in historico-political journals and later in historical monographs. As Kappeler shows, German writers focused primarily on three issues: racial equality, the potential economic impact of the abolition of slavery, and the question of whether the events in Haiti were simply an imitation of the French Revolution or an independent phenomenon. Although writers disagreed about these issues, the debates called into question the ideologies of racism, slavery and Eurocentrism in significant ways.
Ribbons of Revolution: Tricolor Cockades Across the Atlantic
Authors: White Ashli
Published: January 2022

Ashli White’s chapter focuses on one of the most important emblems of the French Revolution: the tricolor cockade. Small, cheap and portable, the French accessory quickly spread from the Old to the New World, where it almost immediately generated conflict. In the United States, disputes over tricolor or black cockades led to riots, and in Saint-Domingue, the emblem became associated with the abolition of slavery. Tracing the travels of two men who departed from Philadelphia in the 1790s – a Quaker bookseller who travelled to Montpellier and an indentured servant from the Indian subcontinent who escaped to Saint-Domingue – White draws attention to the ambiguity and instability of the cockade, which took on different meanings in different contexts. The icon could be a military emblem, a gesture of conformity, a sign of political conviction, or a depoliticized adornment, depending on the situation and the perspective of the observer.
The Noble Turk: Estanislao de Cosca Vayo’s Grecia, ó la doncella de Missolonghi (1830) and the Spanish Response to the Greek War of Independence
Authors: Amann Elizabeth
Published: January 2022

Elizabeth Amann’s essay considers the representation of the Greek War of Independence in a romantic novel published in Spain in 1830: Estanislao de Cosca Vayo’s two-volume Grecia, ó la doncella de Missolonghi. Although Spain had also experienced a liberal revolution in 1820, an absolutist regime had been reestablished in 1823 through French intervention, and discussion of the events in Greece was heavily censored. Cosca Vayo’s work seems to be the only original novel written in Spanish on the subject. It is unusual in that, unlike most European Philhellenic texts in which a white European man saves a Greek heroine from a sexually predatory Ottoman, its plot centers around a love story between a Greek woman and a Turkish man. Amann argues that this plot and Cosca Vayo’s vision of the uprising in general are colored by his view of Spain’s history of domination by a Muslim other.
Epilogue
Authors: Girdwood Megan
Published: January 2022

This final chapter asks what became of the veiled woman-in-movement as Salome’s popularity waned and the period of canonical modernism drew to a close. Briefly discussing Salome’s mid-twentieth-century afterlives in Martha Graham’s Herodiade (1944) and Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), this epilogue primarily traces references to Salome across the work of Samuel Beckett. Scattered and disparate though they may be, these traces point to Beckett’s deeper absorption of this paradigmatic modernist dance as a ‘metamorphic phantom’ that he would harness to the demands of his own theatre. If his late nineteenth and early twentieth-century precursors imagined the dancer to be ‘invisible’ beneath her veils, Beckett at once deconstructed and paradoxically re-embodied this dancer in his abstract stage choreographies, organising his works around dramatically reduced gestures and forms of movement. Beckett’s work provides us with one way of recovering the often-underplayed continuities between late nineteenth-century Symbolism and modernist theatre at its most abstract, showing how the forms associated with Salome’s dance were adopted and transformed in the second half of the twentieth century.
‘This is a story-telling age’: Spectral Nostalgia in Bracebridge Hall
Authors: Murray Hannah Lauren
Published: January 2022

In his historical folk tales, Washington Irving makes colonial male characters ghostly by connecting them to the ‘vanishing Indian’ disappearing across the early nation. This chapter argues that Irving employs liminal White figures marked by spectral indigeneity to enshrine a colonial vision of hierarchical yet interdependent community and citizenship, itself vanishing in the early national period. Bracebridge Hall’s spectral men are relics of a past America, who protest the increasing professionalisation of White male citizens and the destruction of colonial communal structures. In his intertwined tales of colonial America and Georgian England, Irving is involved in a project of ‘spectral nostalgia’, reproducing scenes of supernatural storytelling and ghost stories as a means of rescuing and propagating these fading civic structures of relation and feeling.
Slavery, Secession and Benjamin’s Confederate Years
Authors: Gilmore William C.
Published: January 2022

This chapter acts as a bridge between the consideration of Benjamin’s two separate legal careers; first in the United States and thereafter in England. Its initial focus is on the political, legal, and constitutional positions he adopted in the US Senate on the pivotal and connected issues of the future of slavery and southern secession. With the crystallisation of the latter it outlines how he sided with the Confederacy, became a close confidant of President Jefferson Davis, and served throughout the Civil War in his Cabinet; first as Attorney General, then as Secretary of War, and finally as Secretary of State. It concludes by tracing how, upon the disintegration of the Confederate government in the spring of 1865, Benjamin evaded capture by Union forces, made a daring escape to the Bahamas and sought sanctuary in the United Kingdom.
The Rise and Rise of Benjamin the Barrister
Authors: Gilmore William C.
Published: January 2022

This charts the stellar rise of Benjamin from a humble junior in 1866, reliant to an extent for briefs from Confederate contacts and sympathisers, to his undisputed leadership of the English Bar in appellate cases, particularly before the House of Lords and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, by the time of his retirement in 1883. The factors contributing to this transformation, including the impact of his 1868 treatise on the law of sale and his ability to turn the apparent disadvantage of his origins within the civil law tradition of Louisiana into a significant asset in Scottish and colonial appeals, are identified and examined. The depth and breadth of his command of the law is illustrated especially through an analysis of Regina v Keyn before the Court of Crown Cases Reserved in 1876 – the case which many commentators, and Benjamin himself, regard as his greatest
Introduction
Authors: Mallon Ryan
Published: January 2022

The introduction sets out the period between 1843 and 1863 as one of transition in Scottish Presbyterianism, between the schismatic trauma of the Disruption and the commencement of negotiations for merger between the Free Church of Scotland and the United Presbyterian Church. The introduction outlines the book’s four thematic sections – assessing those two churches’ ideological, ecclesiastical, political, and social connections – which attempt to explain the reconfiguration and realignment of Scottish Presbyterian identity, especially within Scotland’s dissenting groups, which occurs in the twenty years following the Disruption.
New Lights: The Growth of Dissent and Voluntaryism in Scotland, 1712–1843
Authors: Mallon Ryan
Published: January 2022

This chapter questions what ‘dissent’ historically meant in Scotland prior to the Disruption. Following a brief overview of post-Reformation Scottish religious history, the chapter details the origins of the eighteenth-century secessions from the Church of Scotland and the varying reasons for these schisms, before assessing the growth of ‘New Light’ voluntary thought within the main seceding churches and their increasing influence in Scottish society from the turn of the nineteenth century. Finally, the chapter discusses the role of these new groups of urban middle-class dissenters in the major ecclesiastical and political controversies of the first half of the nineteenth century: the Voluntary Controversy of the 1830s and the ‘Ten Years’ Conflict’, which directly resulted in the Disruption and the formation of the Free Church.
Truth, Error and Principle: Anti-Catholicism in Presbyterian Dissent
Authors: Mallon Ryan
Published: January 2022

This chapter outlines the dissenting churches’ reaction to the Maynooth controversy, the restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England during the so-called ‘papal aggression’, and the anti-popery movement that dominated British public discourse in the late 1840s and 1850s. While the Maynooth controversy and the papal aggression appeared to offer a shared common enemy against which Scotland’s dissenters could unite, the chapter will question how far this dissenting co-operation moved beyond simple anti-popery and allowed for a dissenting and anti-erastian vision of Protestantism to emerge within the churches. It assesses how far a united dissenting effort against popery and Maynooth in particular was able to be maintained despite differences in principle and approach. It also questions whether dissenting unity in the anti-popery movement of the mid-nineteenth century was based simply on a narrow opposition to Roman Catholicism or a more positive assertion of Protestant dissenting identity. The chapter concludes by examining how this period of militant anti-popery impacted the churches’ perceptions of themselves, and how the 1860 tercentenary of the Scottish Reformation emphasised, despite the common ground achieved, their competing claims to Scotland’s Protestant heritage and nationality.
Conclusion
Authors: Mallon Ryan
Published: January 2022

The conclusion discusses the union negotiations between the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church between 1863 and 1873. While these talks ultimately failed due to establishmentarian resistance within a section of the Free Church, the increased co-operation between the two churches in the areas discussed in this book proved that in the twenty years after the Disruption the two major non-established Presbyterian churches, while by no means in total ideological agreement, were able to stand side by side on the common platform of dissent. The ‘national’ and ‘dissenting’ characteristics fostered by the Free and United Presbyterian churches after 1843 paved the way not only for the disestablishment campaign of the 1870s but also for the eventual reunion of the vast majority of Scottish Presbyterians within a reformulated Church of Scotland in 1929.
Jesuits, Mission and Gender in Post-Reformation Scotland
Authors: Barton Patricia
Published: January 2022

This chapter assesses the role of Jesuits in preserving liturgical and prayer life of Scottish Catholics in an environment of increasingly virulent anti-Catholic legislation. It assesses Fr Robert Abercrombie’s 1580 report which offered a common-sense approach to the liturgical requirements in the context of mission-scape, the underground practice of faith. Abercrombie also singled out the importance of Scottish women as a force for maintaining the faith, later exemplified in dangers faced protecting Jesuits and trying to gain a Catholic education for their sons. It concludes with an analysis of the early eighteenth century Gaelic poet, Sìleas na Ceapaich, as an example of the enduring importance of Jesuit contacts with Scottish women. Using these examples, a more nuanced picture of the role of the Jesuits in the Scottish Mission emerges.
Jurors and Qualified Clergy: Adopting the Liturgy at Home and Abroad
Authors: Clarke Tristram
Published: January 2022

This chapter considers the evidence for the adoption of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer of 1662 by Episcopalians, and its importance in shaping their identity, rather than the controversies surrounding this process, which have been examined elsewhere. This chapter shows that divisions between jurors and non-jurors on the Anglican liturgy were not set in stone. Juring and non-juring clergy assisted each other in Glasgow. Even although use of the 1662 Anglican Book of Common Prayer was readily adopted by juring congregations in Edinburgh and Dundee, non-jurors there were not averse to its use.
Archibald Campbell: A Pivotal Figure in Episcopalian Liturgical Transition
Authors: Nimmo A. Emsley
Published: January 2022

This chapter argues that while, for Scottish non-jurors, support for the Jacobites was a political, physical, ecclesiastical and temporal disaster, as far as theology, ecclesiology and liturgy were concerned there was another side to the story; the opposite obtained. The Non-jurors, on account of earthly disappointment, concentrated on the things that were necessary for spiritual well-being and eternal salvation. The Revolution Settlement of 1689-90 gave them a freedom from Erastianism which created an opportunity that pushed the Scottish Episcopal Church towards the cutting edge of liturgy and placed her at the forefront of liturgical development in the Western Church and theological debates on the intermediate state between heaven and hell, as on prayers for the dead, came to be viewed as a spiritual aspect of Enlightenment based on rigorous patristic scholarship and forensic historical enquiry that also drew strength from sacramental continuity since the Reformation. It gave the Scottish Epsicopal Church a unique and distinguished liturgy that had influence beyond Scotland, most notably in the American Episcopal Church after the consecration of Samuel Seabury by three Aberdeenshire Bishops.
Bishop Thomas Rattray: His Eucharistic Doctrine, The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem and its Influence on the Scottish Liturgy of 1764
Authors: Kornahrens W. Douglas
Published: January 2022

This chapter scrutinizes the Scottish Liturgy of 1764. Built on the Service Book of 1637, the non-juring Prayer Book of 1718 and, above all, The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem of 1744, it consolidated a Eucharistic perspective that can be traced back beyond the Revolution to the Aberdeen Doctors. It also reaffirmed liturgical continuity with the Roman Catholic pre-Tridentine tradition. By permitting the reserving of sacramental elements, the new liturgy enabled non-jurors to circumvent reimposed penal laws that restricted the Eucharist to a handful of communicants in one room or meeting place. This liturgy was testament to the growing rapprochement between the jurors who adhered to Anglicanism and the non-jurors who remained committed to a universal, Catholic and Orthodox Church. This Jacobite tradition was exported to America after the surviving non-juring hierarchy consecrated Samuel Seabury at Aberdeen in 1784 as the first Episcopalian bishop of the fledgling United States. His Communion Office, published in New London, Connecticut, in 1786 was based on the Scottish liturgy of 1764.
The New Realism of the Factish and the Political Ecology of Humans and Non-Humans: Bruno Latour and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy
Authors: Kaup Monika
Published: January 2022

This chapter explores Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory side-by-side with Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, focusing on Latour in the first, and Atwood in the second part. The chapter argues that independently but closely paralleling Latour’s call to overcome what he calls the “modern constitution,” the MaddAddam trilogy pictures the formation of a cross-species ecology of humans and non-humans. Critiquing genetic determinism, Atwood’s novels are shown to envision to autonomous ontogeny and cultural history of artificial species that have gone feral after the destruction of modern civilization. Supreme instances of Latour’s hybrids, these artifacts of laboratory experimentation acquire autonomous modes of existence in the post-apocalyptic world. This development is epitomized by the Crakers, a peaceful breed of humanoids, who undergo an ontological transformation to become full-fledged actants. The chapter suggests that the specifically ecological critique of modernity formulated by Latour also underpins the MaddAddam trilogy. After the ecological collapse, artificial species and human survivors, stripped of their power to subject nature to their will, join forces to form a trans-species collective, embarking on an unprecedented biological and cultural evolution that interconnects natural and artificial species.
Three Philosophical Poems
Authors: White Kenneth
Published: January 2022

Three poems by Kenneth White that take up aspects of the relation of thinking and poetizing to place, self, and world.
Imperialism and Colonialism
Authors: Spolsky Bernard
Published: January 2022

In the ancient world, conquest had limited effects on language policy. With the spread of colonialism, imperial languages were spread, and plantation slavery produced pidgins and creoles. Language policy in Portuguese, French, Spanish and other empires required any schooling to be in the metropolitan language; although there was some use of local languages in British colonies, secondary and further education required English. Inertia and elite closure (the status of an educated elite) led many nations to continue colonial language policies after independence.
Treaties, Charters and Other Supranational Sources of Rights
Authors: Spolsky Bernard
Published: January 2022

Although some linguists cite language rights, it seems wiser to speak of human rights including language choice. For the last two centuries, there have been arguments for the language rights of minority groups, now increasingly recognized in many countries and regions. The Council of Europe favoured language learning; the European Union protects its national languages and calls on its members to recognize selected local minority languages. Languages of immigrants and refugees are usually excluded.
The Representation of the Beloved’s Body
Authors: Alharthi Jokha
Published: January 2022

In this chapter, the theme of how the beloved’s body is represented is set within the generic conventions of classical Arabic poetry. Particular attention is drawn to the image of a corpulent woman and the depiction of a woman as a gazelle. The chapter also contains an extended treatment of what might be termed the ethereal aspects of female beauty in ‘udhri poetry.
The Representation of the Lover’s Body in the ‘Udhri Tradition
Authors: Alharthi Jokha
Published: January 2022

This chapter argues that the ‘udhri tradition puts great emphasis on the lover-poet’s own body, considering it the greatest recipient of the effects of profound emotion. It is his body that is malnourished, sick, suffering from insomnia and prematurely aged. This chapter shows that the ‘udhri lover sometimes even reaches the point of madness, and that death alone seems to offer the only possible escape from excessive passion.
Scott and Shorter Fiction
Authors: Cook Daniel
Published: January 2022

The first chapter of this book positions Walter Scott within his historical arena of short prose writing, and then in a broader nineteenth-century survey in Scotland. By any formal or generic definition it is clear that Scott’s shorter fictions came in different shapes and sizes, and live in different types of publications. Even completed novels were augmented with snatches of new prose that ought to be treated as separate stories. However, Scott has been all but ignored by historians of the short story, for whom the modern form only emerged with the Victorians. While it may be true that some authors increasingly identified as short story writers by profession after the 1880s, the variegated format of Scott’s short-form fiction fits with, but also complicates, standard definitions. Placing Scott and his peers astride competing oral and print traditions as practiced in the earlier part of the century, we can more readily appreciate their adaptation of the sketch, the sketch-like tale, and other misunderstood types of shorter fiction.
Slaving in Space and Time
Authors: Vlassopoulos Kostas
Published: January 2022

This chapter constructs a framework for examining the diversity of slaveholding societies on the one hand, and the processes and forces of historical change on the other. The first section challenges the traditional approach to Greek slavery; the concept of epichoric slaving systems allows us to incorporate diversity and change in the study of local slaving practices. The second section dismantles the traditional distinction between societies with slaves and slave societies; the concept of the intensification of the advantages for masters and disadvantages for slaves that slaving offered provides a better way of comprehending the major differences between slaveholding societies. The third section focuses on the forms of change in the history of slaving: rise and fall; cyclical processes of intensification and abatement; conjunctures; and long-term change. These forms of change were put into motion by three major forces: the wider processes that shaped the four major slaving contexts; the impact of slaving in shaping these wider processes; and, finally, slave agency.
Passion’s Slave: Reminiscences on Latinx Shakespeares in Performance
Authors: Alvarez Frankie J.
Published: January 2022

The essay weaves Alvarez’s personal stories about auditioning for, working on, and running Latinx versions of Shakespeare plays: Measure for Measure at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2011, and the bilingual rep production of Hamlet: Prince of Cuba at Asolo Repertory in 2012. This chapter espouses on the virtues of the bilingual exercise, the importance of diverse stories on stage, how the Spanish and English version of Hamlet were in constant conversation during our run, and the various research and techniques—both vocal and physical—that I used to prepare for and run the show. This chapter also addresses how it has affected the subscriber base and the audience turn-out in the respective communities of Ashland and Sarasota. This chapter addresses the disparity in diversity within the ranks of the theatre administration (those choosing the season and providing the infrastructure for these shows), and argues that the lack of diversity in those positions directly affects the success of a particular production, with OSF being more successful at it than Asolo Rep.
Caliban’s Island: Gender, Queerness and Latinidad in Theatre for Young Audiences
Authors: Burbano Diana
Published: January 2022

In this chapter, Burbano details her trajectory as a performer and playwright to attend to the ways in which classical training and Latinx identity intersect in children’s storytelling. She details her efforts for addressing intersectional identity, crossing gender, sexuality, and ethnicity, in her TYA play, Caliban’s Island, an appropriation of characters and stories from Twelfth Night and The Tempest. In it, she provides gender-fluid and non-gender conforming characters to engage young people across demographics, and the “monster” in the play is a society that cannot accept differences. Ultimately, Burbano argues theatre for young audiences has historically been welcoming to diverse communities, and through her work, she hopes to continue to engage young people with Shakespeare. This chapter offers a model for Latinx Shakespeares as a possibility for theatre for young audiences.
‘Lleno de Tejanidad’: Staging a Bilingual Comedy of Errors in Central Texas
Authors: Falocco Joe
Published: January 2022

This chapter chronicles efforts to stage a bilingual adaptation of The Comedy of Errors on the campus of Texas State University. The conceit behind this production was that all the characters from Syracuse would speak English and all those from Ephesus would speak Spanish. The hope was that the, resulting linguistic confusion would accentuate the farcical misunderstandings at the center of this play. On a deeper level, this bilingual strategy amplified the play’s theme of the quest for identity in a twenty-first-century America where so many identities are divided between two languages and two cultures. The setting of The Comedy of Errors, where two city-states have been involved in a low-level conflict for decades, also eerily recalls the situation that has long existed between the United States and Cuba. The production was first mounted in 2015 and restaged in 2017. The Texas State campus had been marred by expressions of racist propaganda following the election of Donald Trump.
Creating a Canon of Latinx Shakespeares: The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play on!
Authors: Boffone Trevor
Published: January 2022

This chapter focuses on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s (OSF) much-debated Play on! initiative which commissioned 39 playwrights to translate the Shakespeare canon into contemporary English. The work of Latinx playwrights involved in Play on! expands the confines of what a Latinx Shakespeare can be, demonstrating how these Latinx translations can become a source of inclusion in the American Regional Theatre. Notably, Play on! Tapped 7 Latinx playwrights to do this work, something that led to the groundbreaking La Comedia
of Errors, a bilingual community engagement project that saw OSF move from equity and diversity measures to legitimate inclusion of previously marginalized communities in Oregon’s Rogue Valley. This chapter examines the question of double-authorship and, specifically, what it means for Latinx playwrights to share authorship with Shakespeare.
What I Learned from My Shakespeare Staycation with Macbeth and Richard III
Authors: Cruz Migdalia
Published: January 2022

In this chapter, playwright Migdalia Cruz unpacks her process of translating Macbeth and Richard III into contemporary English as part of Play on! As a Puerto Rican woman from the Bronx, Cruz was eager to become part of the Western canon in such a subversive way. Even so, this work was not without its cons, specifically the possible negative press of tinkering with such a White theatrical icon. Inevitably, Cruz--and other Play on! Playwrights--lend themselves to be compared to Shakespeare. Yet, this act doesn’t necessarily mean that contemporary playwrights take a backseat to the Bard. As Cruz details, her work as a translator doesn’t detract from Shakespeare’s drama; it only enhances it. In fact, by vibrating off of another writer’s work, Cruz explains how she came to understand her own work more deeply.
Criterios de uso de pruebas diagnósticas para la COVID-19 e implicancias de las variantes del SARS.CoV-2
Authors: Vásquez-Velásquez Cinthya , Fernández-Delgado Kevin , Fano-Sizgorich Diego , Quispe-Bravo Bernardo E. , Marquina-Quispe Renzo , Ramírez-Herrera Julio , Alfonso Accinelli Roberto , Gamboa-Serpa Henry , Robles-Camarena Rigoberto , Gonzales Gustavo F.
Published: January 2022

La rápida propagación mundial de un nuevo coronavirus denominado SARS-CoV-2, detectado en la cuidad de Wuhan, China, hace necesario del conocimiento e implementación de métodos de diagnóstico confiables para detectar y tratar adecuadamente a los pacientes. Para ello, los métodos más utilizados para el diagnóstico son: la técnica de inmunocromatografía (IC), la cual enmarca tanto a las pruebas detectoras de anticuerpos como a la prueba de detección de antígenos; y las pruebas de diagnóstico molecular basadas en tecnología de PCR, detectando cuantitativa y cualitativamente al virus, como por ejemplo qRT-PCR y al LAMP. Mediante la revisión de las bases de Scielo, Pubmed y Scopus se compara la utilidad diagnóstica de las pruebas LAMP, qRT-PCR e IC aplicadas al diagnóstico de SARS-CoV-2, y cómo las distintas variantes del virus han impactado sobre la confiabilidad de estas pruebas.
RIGHTS REDISTRIBUTION AND COVID-19 LOCKDOWN POLICY
Authors: Garzarelli Giampaolo , Keeton Lyndal , Sitoe Aldo A.
Published: January 2022

What is the tenet upon which the public policy of lockdown by fiat experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic is based on? The work approaches this question about the rationale of the mandatory shelter-in-place policy as an interpersonal exchange of rights, but where the exchange occurs coercively instead of voluntarily. It compares, in positive political economy terms, the normative principles of utilitarianism and Rawlsianism, and shows that lockdown by fiat is a policy that is closer to a maximin equity criterion rather than to a utilitarian one. The work moreover shows, also with the aid of a thought experiment in the spirit of Rawls and with factual applications, that the fiat redistribution of rights to liberty in favor of rights to health – from those least affected to those most affected by COVID-19 – is, in the main, a policy choice that is to be expected under certain constraints.
ENSURING ECONOMIC SECURITY OF THE ENTERPRISE
Authors: Hromozdova Larysa , Nikolaieva Svitlana , Ivanyuta Viktoriа , Stenicheva Inna , Smirnova Elena , Nikolaieva Svitlana
Published: January 2022

The purpose of the article is to identify problems in the operation of the enterprise and ensure its economic security; formation of a financial risk management
system as an important component of economic security of the enterprise.
The research methodology is based on the use of general scientific and specific methods, in particular: analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, modeling, systematization and generalization.
The scientific novelty of the obtained results lies in the substantiated essence of the main dangers and threats, the nature of their impact on the economic security
of the enterprise and the need to identify them to economic security.
Conclusions. It is established that the structural composition of the economic security system is formed by domestic and non-industrial components. Many nonproduction components of economic security of enterprises are provided, which include market and information. The main components of economic security of enterprises are generalized and their essence is determined, the services responsible for them are specified. A group of principles for building a system of economic security of enterprises: legality, systematic construction, economic feasibility, efficiency of management decisions, efficiency, cost optimization, validity, complexity, balance, timeliness, continuity, continuous monitoring, activity, coordination and interaction, centralization, integration, direction on strategic goals, objectivity, efficiency and dynamism, variability, adequacy of response, adaptability, flexibility of management, development and improvement, incentives and responsibilities.
Key words: enterprise, economic security, economic security system of the
enterprise, external and internal threats, national security
Valuation Ecologies and Academic Governance
Authors: Kreiner Kristian
Published: January 2022

University managers are forced to assume responsibility for more and more aspects of academic life. This essay focuses on academic publishing and how deans and department heads attempt to manage the volume and quality of publications at their university because others, including politicians and scholars, rate the quality and effectiveness of the university on their publication output. How managers assume and practice this responsibility for academic publishing may seem self-evident but proves to hide both paradoxes and loopholes. Reflections build on an empirical illustration derived from the adoption of a conventional publication strategy. The implementation of this strategy is fueled by a large dose of strategic expediency. However, such expediency incurs costs related to impression management when managers need to show a sense of command in response to a disappointing performance. Both material costs (time and money) and symbolic costs (demonstrating allegiance to an embarrassingly naive conception of academia) are incurred. Exactly because management is exercised on the premise of an embarrassingly naive conception of academia, the presumed coercive forces are exceedingly loose and ineffective. The room for value judgment at all levels of the university organization is not closed but rather enshrined (for good or bad) behind a façade of objectivity and factuality.
An Empirical Study of Graph-Based Approaches for Semi-supervised Time Series Classification
Authors: Bünger Dominik , Gondos Miriam , Peroche Lucile , Stoll Martin
Published: January 2022

Time series data play an important role in many applications and their analysis reveals crucial information for understanding the underlying processes. Among the many time series learning tasks of great importance, we here focus on semi-supervised learning based on a graph representation of the data. Two main aspects are studied in this paper. Namely, suitable distance measures to evaluate the similarities between different time series, and the choice of learning method to make predictions based on a given number of pre-labeled data points. However, the relationship between the two aspects has never been studied systematically in the context of graph-based learning. We describe four different distance measures, including (Soft) DTW and MPDist, a distance measure based on the Matrix Profile, as well as four successful semi-supervised learning methods, including the recently introduced graph Allen–Cahn method and Graph Convolutional Neural Network method. We provide results for the novel combination of these distance measures with both the Allen-Cahn method and the GCN algorithm for binary semi-supervised learning tasks for various time-series data sets. In our findings we compare the chosen graph-based methods using all distance measures and observe that the results vary strongly with respect to the accuracy. We then observe that no clear best combination to employ in all cases is found. Our study provides a reproducible framework for future work in the direction of semi-supervised learning for time series with a focus on graph representations.
Characterization and Categorization of Various Human Lower Limb Movements Based on Kinematic Synergies
Authors: Huang Bo , Chen Wenbin , Liang Jiejunyi , Cheng Longfei , Xiong Caihua
Published: January 2022

A proper movement categorization reduces the complexity of understanding or reproducing human movements in fields such as physiology, rehabilitation, and robotics, through partitioning a wide variety of human movements into representative sub-motion groups. However, how to establish a categorization (especially a quantitative categorization) for various human lower limb movements is rarely investigated in literature and remains challenging due to the diversity and complexity of the lower limb movements (diverse gait modes and interaction styles with the environment). Here we present a quantitative categorization for the various lower limb movements. To this end, a similarity measure between movements was first built based on limb kinematic synergies that provide a unified and physiologically meaningful framework for evaluating the similarities among different types of movements. Then, a categorization was established via hierarchical cluster analysis for thirty-four lower limb movements, including walking, running, hopping, sitting-down-standing-up, and turning in different environmental conditions. According to the movement similarities, the various movements could be divided into three distinct clusters (cluster 1: walking, running, and sitting-down-standing-up; cluster 2: hopping; cluster 3: turning). In each cluster, cluster-specific movement synergies were required. Besides the uniqueness of each cluster, similarities were also found among part of the synergies employed by these different clusters, perhaps related to common behavioral goals in these clusters. The mix of synergies shared across the clusters and synergies for specific clusters thus suggests the coexistence of the conservation and augmentation of the kinematic synergies underlying the construction of the diverse and complex motor behaviors. Overall, the categorization presented here yields a quantitative and hierarchical representation of the various lower limb movements, which can serve as a basis for the understanding of the formation mechanisms of human locomotion and motor function assessment and reproduction in related fields.
Effect of Microgroove Structure in PDMS-Based Silicone Implants on Biocompatibility
Authors: Chen Yao , Zhou Xin , Huang Shuqing , Lan Yujie , Yan Rongshuai , Shi Xiaohua , Li Xiang , Zhang Yiming , Lei Zeyuan , Fan Dongli
Published: January 2022

Capsule and capsule contracture around implants are important concerns in a clinic. The physical topology of the material surface regulates the formation of the capsule, but the specific regulatory mechanism is unclear. In this study, four types of silicone implant materials with different microgroove structures (groove depths of 10 and 50 μm and widths of 50 and 200 μm) were constructed using lithography to form different gradient surface topologies. Mass spectrometry, Cell Counting Kit-8, 5-ethynyl-2′-deoxycytidine (EdU), enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, western blot, immunofluorescence, and immunohistochemistry were used to explore the changes in protein adsorption, cell adhesion, cell proliferation, and collagen deposition on the surface of the materials. At the same time, RNA-seq was used to detect transcriptome differences caused by different structures. Furthermore, collagen deposition and capsule formation were observed in the rats. The groove structure was observed to significantly increase the surface roughness of the material. The deeper groove and the narrower width of the polydimethylsiloxane would increase the surface roughness of the material and the surface water contact angle but reduce the total amount of adsorbed protein in the first two hours. In vitro cell experiments revealed that microtopology affected cell proliferation and adhesion and regulated collagen secretion. Further analysis indicated the deeper and narrower groove (group 50–50) on the surface of the material caused more evident collagen deposition around the material, forming a thicker envelope. Surface roughness of the material was thus related to collagen deposition and envelope thickness. The thickness of the envelope tissue around smooth materials does not exceed that of the materials with surface roughness. In conclusion, the narrower and deeper grooves in the micron range exhibited poor histocompatibility and led to formation of thicker envelopes around the materials. The appropriate grooves can reduce envelope thickness.
Comprehensive Analyses of Glucose Metabolism in Glioma Reveal the Glioma-Promoting Effect of GALM
Authors: Xu Jiacheng , Guo Yuduo , Ning Weihai , Wang Xiang , Li Shenglun , Chen Yujia , Ma Lixin , Qu Yanming , Song Yongmei , Zhang Hongwei
Published: January 2022

Glioma is the most common tumor with the worst prognosis in the central nervous system. Current studies showed that glucose metabolism could affect the malignant progression of tumors. However, the study on the dysregulation of glucose metabolism in glioma is still limited. Herein, we firstly screened 48 differentially expressed glucose metabolism-related genes (DE-GMGs) by comparing glioblastomas to low-grade gliomas. Then a glucose metabolism-related gene (GMG)-based model (PC, lactate dehydrogenase A (LDHA), glucuronidase beta (GUSB), galactosidase beta 1 (GLB1), galactose mutarotase (GALM), or fructose-bisphosphatase 1 (FBP1)) was constructed by a protein–protein interaction (PPI) network and Lasso regression. Thereinto, the high-risk group encountered a worse prognosis than the low-risk group, and the M2 macrophage was positively relevant to the risk score. Various classical tumor-related functions were enriched by Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses. Since protein GALM was rarely studied in glioma, we detected high expression of GALM by western blot and immunohistochemistry in glioma tissues. And experiments in vitro showed that GALM could promote the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) process of glioma cells and could be regulated by TNFAIP3 in glioma cells. Overall, our study revealed the critical role of glucose metabolism in the prognosis of patients with glioma. Furthermore, we demonstrated that GALM was significantly related to the malignancy of glioma and could promote glioma cells’ EMT process.
Activity of Sulbactam-Durlobactam and Comparators Against a National Collection of Carbapenem-Resistant Acinetobacter baumannii Isolates From Greece
Authors: Petropoulou Dimitra , Siopi Maria , Vourli Sophia , Pournaras Spyros
Published: January 2022

Background

Acinetobacter baumannii is a leading cause of healthcare-associated infections worldwide, due to both its persistence in the hospital setting and ability to acquire high levels of antibiotic resistance. Carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii isolates (CRAB) limit the activity of current antimicrobial regimens and new alternatives or adjuncts to traditional antibiotics are urgently needed. Durlobactam is a novel broad-spectrum inhibitor of serine-type β-lactamases that restores sulbactam (SUL) activity against A. baumannii. The sulbactam-durlobactam (SD) combination has recently completed Phase 3 testing in the global ATTACK trial.

Objectives

The aim of this study is to evaluate the in vitro activity of SD versus comparators against a representative nationwide collection of CRAB isolates.

Methods

One hundred ninety CRAB isolates were collected from clinical samples of patients hospitalized in 11 hospitals throughout Greece during 2015. In vitro activities of SD and comparators (SUL alone, amikacin, minocycline, imipenem, meropenem, colistin, SD and imipenem combined with SD) were determined by broth microdilution.

Results

Durlobactam restored sulbactam activity against the majority of the strains tested, with SD exhibiting the lowest MIC90 (8 μg/ml) relative to the other single comparators tested; 87.9% of the isolates had SD MICs ≤4/4 µg/ml. The most active comparator was colistin (MIC90 = 16 μg/ml). The addition of imipenem further lowered the MIC90 of SD by one two-fold dilution.

Conclusions

This study demonstrated the potential utility of SD for the treatment of infections caused by A. baumannii. If its clinical efficacy is confirmed, SD may be an important therapeutic option for CRAB infections.