bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Some Issues in and Perhaps a New Methodology for Abnormal Hieratic
Authors: Donker van Heel Koenraad
Published: March 2020

Abnormal hieratic is defined as a development of Ramesside-era administrative hieratic and is discussed vis-à-vis early Demotic in terms of script and clause formation. While abnormal hieratic is viewed as an organic development from early forms of writing, early Demotic is theorized to have been a conscious and standardized writing system because of early Demotic’s standard phraseologies, which are more precise than those of abnormal hieratic, and because of early Demotic’s uniform ways of writing words, which contrasts with the varied ways of writing particular words in abnormal hieratic. Online tools to facilitate the study of abnormal hieratic texts include a Leiden-based database of published sources that will include color photographs, a dictionary, a palaeography, videos, secondary literature, and educational tools.
Demotic Palaeography
Authors: Quack Joachim , Korte Jannik , Wespi Fabian , Maderna-Sieben Claudia
Published: March 2020

This chapter covers all aspects of Demotic palaeography. It deals with its research history and names its most important tools. Palaeographic methodology and issues of sign definition are discussed from a Demotic point of view. The problems of classifying Demotic scribal hands and assigning them to chronologically and topographically defined palaeographic stages are addressed. The chapter furthermore discusses the influence of text types, palaeographic “registers,” and scribal schools on sign shapes as well as the interactions between Demotic and other Egyptian scripts. It addresses the categorization of the Demotic signs and also orthography.
Issues and Methodologies in Coptic Palaeography
Authors: Boud'hors Anne
Published: March 2020

Due to the drastic change of the graphic system that accompanied the emergence of the Coptic language and manuscripts (third century), the issues and methods in producing texts have also changed, becoming closer to those related to Greek texts copied and written in Egypt. The most difficult issue in Coptic codicology is assigning scripts a date, which is linked to their description. The article discusses in some detail these dating issues, first for literary manuscripts, taking into account the dialect and considering not only writing but also other parameters, such as the various aspects of copying and manufacturing a book or the provenance, and then for documents, where regional practices are important variables.
The Epigraphy of Egyptian Monuments in the Description de l’Égypte
Authors: Gady Éric
Published: March 2020

The Description de l’Égypte, published between 1809 and 1828, made available to Europeans a huge amount of genuine Egyptian art and texts. Although the French expedition to Egypt might not be called an “epigraphic survey” in the current and modern sense of that term, the work that was accomplished was an important step in providing Europe with Egyptian inscriptions and iconographic material. The quantity of texts and scenes published and the precision with which they were recorded make this work much more important than collections of Egyptian scenes that were published up to that point. Despite not knowing the language represented by hieroglyphs, the scientists’ adherence to a strict methodology prefigured the first great Egyptological expeditions of the mid-nineteenth century.
Audiences
Authors: Navratilova Hana
Published: March 2020

A search for audiences in ancient Egypt involves an assessment of the concept of cultural communications, accepted communicative practices, understanding of space, and other elements. Traces of many communicative acts and performances in antiquity will remain elusive, yet it is possible to recognize dedicated communicative spaces as well as strategies that involved ancient audiences. Edifices and texts targeted their specific audiences, for instance in a royal monumental discourse or a private commemorative discourse included within Egyptian autobiographies. Ancient works of art also often bear marks by a second or a third hand that was engaged in inspecting, changing, copying, as well as destroying them, as well as by visitors, exemplified by graffiti. Apart from the emic audiences, there are also etic audiences, standing outside the Egyptian culture, but constituting a distinct link in the chain of cultural memory.
Designers and Makers of Ancient Egyptian Monumental Epigraphy
Authors: Laboury Dimitri
Published: March 2020

Egyptian epigraphy and palaeography may significantly contribute to the study of the artists and craftsmen responsible for the creation of ancient Egyptian monumental decoration, and, in return, this double discipline can also greatly benefit from a better knowledge of those crucial actors in the production of its own object of research. A consideration of all marks of a work’s history (from its genesis to its decline) allows one to detect—and document—the material traces of the making of the monument, and hence of its maker(s). This chapter discusses those issues as well as the societal identity of the actors of artistic and epigraphic production in ancient Egypt; the great diversity of their skills, education, and literacy; the social and geographical mobility among their ranks; their varying work conditions, involving issues such as ergonomics and work organization; and evidence of their adaptation of parts of their work, such as standard formulae and work procedure.
The Materials, Tools, and Work of Carving and Painting
Authors: Stocks Denys A.
Published: March 2020

Monumental incised and raised texts and figural depictions were carved and painted on a variety of materials, including sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous stones; wood; plaster; and metals such as gold and silver. The tools, including copper, bronze, and iron flat- and crosscut-tapered chisels and flint chisels, punches, and scrapers, together with the techniques employed to carve and paint reliefs were developed slowly over millennia by ancient workers, reflecting the challenges of creating writing and scenes in hard and softer stones, as well as in other materials. This chapter explores important archaeological evidence for creating reliefs in disparate materials and compares the results of experiments using replica and reconstructed tools. The physical conditions affecting ancient carvers and painters are also discussed.
Richard Wagner’s Medieval Visions
Authors: Eichner Barbara
Published: March 2020

This contribution will focus on three aspects of Wagner’s medievalism: the historic medievalism of Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, set in a recognizable historical framework but also invoking the aura of the Middle Ages through marvel and miracle; the mythical medievalism of the Ring cycle where Nordic myth displaces the more familiar sphere of the medieval Nibelungenlied; and finally the civic medievalism of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg where a medieval city is imagined in a way that glosses nineteenth-century issues of German patriotism, nationhood, and the relationship of the creative individual with the community of the people. Instead of focusing on Wagner’s relationship with and adaptation of his medieval sources, this essay will examine the kind of Middle Ages he created.
“What England Has Done for a Thousand Years”
Authors: Sagrans Jacob
Published: March 2020

This chapter uses medievalism as a critical framework for examining the modern appeal of Christmas Lessons and Carols services. Although the first such service took place in 1880, it has been suggested that it is a form of worship that dates back to the Middle Ages. First, the history of Lessons and Carols services is traced. Then, the service at King’s College, Cambridge, is examined in depth as a case study. It is argued that Lessons and Carols services engage with medievalism in three main ways: (1) they evoke a sense of long-standing traditions and identities, particularly with regard to nationality, religion, gender, and race; (2) they feature seemingly “authentic” modes of musical performance; and (3) they present contemporary carols that set medieval texts and evoke medieval musical styles.
Medievalism and Antiromanticism in Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana
Authors: Yri Kirsten
Published: March 2020

This chapter traces Orff’s musical medievalism along several trajectories. Against the backdrop of “official” medievalism espoused under Wilhelmine Germany and under the National Socialists, the chapter examines the influence of medieval organum and paraphony on Orff’s compositional idiom. It also distinguishes this influence from a form of medievalism that can be described as style, where sacred medieval musical forms are imitated for their associative meanings. Though these styles are altered somewhat to fit Orff’s compositional purpose, they are by and large recognizable as pastiche and, as such, provide another level of interpretation for the poetry. Pastiche is also apparent in Orff’s use of two-storied medievalism, in which the primary reference is not to medieval materials per se, but rather to an intermediary form of medievalism, namely, to familiar musical styles associated with medievalism in nineteenth-century Germany. Examining Orff’s allusions to various medieval musical styles against an interpretation of the poetry, the chapter suggests that Carmina Burana voices a parody of the romantic, imperial, and idealistic medievalism of the late nineteenth century.
The Return of Ars subtilior?
Authors: Vojčić Aleksandra
Published: March 2020

This chapter explores different medieval techniques of organizing rhythmic parameters to illuminate the ancestry of many purportedly novel techniques popularized in later twentieth-century works. Three categories of structural medievalism—evocation, adaptation, and assimilation—delineate the types of organizing parameters used by composers separated in time by six centuries. The process of defining this far-reaching ancestry unfolds in the context of a broad range of contemporary repertory that is often distinct in sound from its medieval antecedents but exhibits tangible conceptual connections. Further interest lies in the dichotomy between the apparent complexity of notation in the works of the Ars subtilior, similar to that found in many contemporary scores, and a rather simpler notion of aiming to achieve emancipated polyphonic lines that can readily stand in contrast and juxtaposition to one another when rhythmically distinct.
Medievalism and Rued Langgaard’s Romantic Image of Queen Dagmar
Authors: Petersen Nils Holger
Published: March 2020

Rued Langgaard’s organ piece, Fantasy on “Queen Dagmar Lies Sick in Ribe,” was written in 1942 for a festal service in Ribe Cathedral in connection with the opening of a newly renovated archeological site of a medieval royal castle outside of Ribe where, according to popular traditions, the Danish queen Dagmar had died in 1212. Although Langgaard based his work on a traditional melody for a medieval ballad, his Fantasy does not use medieval compositional procedures, but rather uses the ballad to invoke the legend of Dagmar to give voice to a romantic and nationalist image of the Danish nation.
The Many Musical Medievalisms of Disney
Authors: Haines John
Published: March 2020

This essay argues that the Disney Company is one of today’s main purveyors of medievalism. The idea of Disney as a force for medievalism may strike some academic readers as odd, given the still common view of medievalism as a primarily academic phenomenon. Rather, as argued in the first part of this essay, medievalism is a widespread cultural phenomenon, originating in the sixteenth century, out of which academic medievalism emerged in the eighteenth century. As part of this broader cultural medievalism, the Disney Company has played an increasingly important role in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Rather than the literalist historical medievalism that usually preoccupies academics, the Disney Company has followed a looser approach centered on key stereotypes, in keeping with the earliest and most pervasive concept of the Middle Ages from the sixteenth century onward. In all its medievalist products, ranging from early animated films to Fantasyland’s iconic monument the Sleeping Beauty Castle, Disney has made music a primary concern.
Evil Medieval
Authors: Deaville James
Published: March 2020

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a noticeable shift occurred in the plots and soundtracks of narrative film in the United States. The genre of horror came to occupy a leading position among new releases (Rosemary’s Baby, 1968; The Devils, 1971; The Exorcist, 1973; The Omen, 1976), accompanied by music that would invert the signification of the church’s most sacred spiritual heritage: Latin became the language of the devil and chant his music. This chapter explores the historical and cultural bases for this turn to the dark side, to an evil medieval, by examining such concurrent events as Vatican II, the publication of Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Bible, the Charles Manson murders, and the Vietnam War.
Introduction
Authors: Yri Kirsten , Meyer Stephen C.
Published: March 2020

Medievalism—broadly construed as retrospective immersion in the images, sounds, narratives, and ideologies of the European Middle Ages—has left a powerful mark in both art music and popular music culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Picking up with the extent to which the distinction between medievalism and medieval studies is possible and/or desirable, the introduction acknowledges that medievalism involves multiple discourses of the Middle Ages, and even when its goal is recovery, it is embroiled as much in contextual modes as in scientific methods. As the chapter discusses, questions about authenticity and intentionality central to much of the scholarship on music histories of the Middle Ages, performance practices of medieval music, and medieval music revivals are valid, but they are called on to speak in a complex sociohistorical and aesthetic analysis. The introduction also provides an overview of several taxonomies that inform the theorization of medievalism as well as an overview of the six sections of the handbook and some of the themes (nationalism, romanticism, rejections of modernism) that connect them.
Liszt’s Medievalist Modernism
Authors: Mikusi Balázs
Published: March 2020

The essay investigates the diverse strategies through which Liszt appropriated elements of medieval music for his own compositions. The obvious focus is on the composer’s religious works, some of which provocatively distance themselves from the standard musical language of nineteenth-century church compositions in an effort to return to earlier styles more directly derived from Gregorian chant. While Liszt’s interest in these older styles may primarily have been motivated by his efforts to invoke a more “authentic” religious feeling, it inevitably also became an important source of inspiration for his transcultural modernism—the ongoing renewal of his own musical language through the integration of elements from geographically or chronologically distant musics.
Schooling for Democracy
Authors: Rebell Michael A.
Published: March 2020

Education in America today lacks a meaningful vision. The equal educational opportunity goal proclaimed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education has been undermined by the failures in the decades since of the federal courts to implement school desegregation effectively and of Congress and the state legislatures to follow through on their stated commitments to ensure that all children can learn at high levels. This chapter argues that both equity and excellence can be achieved in American education if (1) preparation for capable citizenship, the original purpose of public education in America, can be revived in a manner that responds to twenty-first-century needs for both equity and excellence, and (2) the courts play a sustained, constructive role in bringing about these changes by enforcing relevant constitutional provisions that require schools to prepare students for capable citizenship. The first part of the chapter describes how for the past half century, schools have systematically failed to prepare students to be capable citizens, and the causes of this failure. It then provides a detailed analysis of how children can be prepared appropriately to function productively as civic participants. The second part explains why the promotion of educational equity and excellence of this sort cannot, however, be realized without the active involvement of the courts, both to validate the importance of education for civic preparation and to establish the necessary preconditions for adequate and equal funding and racial and cultural integration that are necessary for these reforms to succeed.
Maintenance and Destruction of an East Side Los Angeles Indie Rock Scene
Authors: Taylor Timothy D.
Published: March 2020

This article is based on an ethnographic study of the independent (indie) rock scene in the east side Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park. There is very little money derived from music circulating in this scene (musicians are routinely paid only about $35–40 for a show), and musicians, indie label owners, and others attach symbolic values to certain amounts of money, which are viewed in terms of what they can help the musicians purchase, such as gas for the band’s van. People in the scene also produce and exchange value in a number of ways that aren’t capitalist, from generalized reciprocity to several forms of patronage. This article ultimately argues that scenes such as this are simultaneously maintained and destroyed by capitalism: maintained because capitalism needs a reserve army of those who operate outside of it but destroyed because such scenes are deprived of their ability to reproduce themselves given how little money circulates.
Subordination and Coordination
Authors: Egan Thomas
Published: March 2020

This chapter describes the forms and functions of the main types of subordinate clauses, as well as various types of both phrasal and clausal coordination. The two main types of subordination, modification and complementation, are distinguished in relation to both finite and non-finite subordinate clauses. Various means of signalling subordination are described. It is shown how subordinate non-finite clauses, which lack primary tense, are largely dependent on the main clause predicate for their temporal interpretation, and how understood subjects in subordinate clauses may be coreferential with various nominals in the main clause. As for coordination, both bare heads and heads with dependents may be coordinated and, although we normally coordinate like with like, the items being coordinated do not necessarily have to be identical in form, nor indeed in function. Some constructions are discussed that straddle the binary distinction between coordination and subordination.
Dependency and Valency Approaches
Authors: Herbst Thomas
Published: March 2020

This chapter provides a survey of various approaches within the field of dependency grammar. First, the basic concepts of Tesnière’s Éléments de syntaxe structurale (1959) such as actants, circonstants, junction, and translation are outlined. Then the application of the concept of dependency in different approaches such as that taken in Hudson’s Word Grammar and in Mel’čuk’s approach are discussed. Section 7.4 focuses on the development of valency theory and related approaches and their application to English, discussing the complement–adjunct distinction, the idea of optionality of complements and the approach taken to the description of valency in the Valency Dictionary of English. Finally, it will be shown how valency and dependency can be related to more recent constructionist theories.
Constructional Approaches
Authors: Hilpert Martin
Published: March 2020

This chapter discusses what a constructional approach to language can reveal about English grammar. Construction Grammar adopts a perspective that has been characterized as ‘the view from the periphery’, which pays particular attention to structures that are irregular and idiosyncratic with regard to form and meaning. A substantial body of work on such structures indicates that speakers’ knowledge of grammar contains a large number of small-scale generalizations. The constructional view openly questions whether grammar can be conceived of as a well-defined set of morpho-syntactic rules. The wider implication of a constructional view is that a clean separation of grammar on the one hand and the lexicon on the other is not a realistic representation of linguistic knowledge.
Noun Phrases
Authors: Keizer Evelien
Published: March 2020

This chapter provides a brief overview of some widely debated issues in discussions of the English noun phrase, and illustrates how these issues have been dealt with in different theoretical approaches. After a general characterization of the noun phrase from a pre-theoretical point of view, the chapter proceeds to discuss the internal structure of the noun phrase from a generative, functional, and cognitive perspective. Subsequently, the differences between these approaches are illustrated by addressing two basic notions in the analysis of English noun phrases: headedness (in regular noun phrases, as well as in headless and pseudo-partitive noun phrases) and the distinction between relational and non-relational nouns (and, consequently, between complements and modifiers). In both cases the various types of criteria for analysis are discussed, as well as some problems in applying these criteria.
Grammar and Phonology
Authors: Hellmuth Sam , Cushing Ian
Published: March 2020

In the majority of theoretical linguistic frameworks, grammar and phonology are typically kept ‘separate’, which arguably leads to a somewhat reduced understanding of how language works. In this chapter, we explore some of the historical reasons for this separation, framing the discussion around degrees of linguistic modularity and autonomy which different grammatical frameworks assume. After providing an overview of this debate, we then illustrate how phonology interacts with grammar. We discuss how grammar and phonology interact at word and sentence level, present a case study for the role that phonology plays in word class categorization, and finally, examine how two different grammatical paradigms (namely formal-generative and cognitive-functional grammar) incorporate phonology into their descriptions.
Theoretical Approaches to Morphology
Authors: Spencer Andrew
Published: March 2020

The chapter contrasts the still popular traditional approach to morphology, based on the classical morpheme concept, with contemporary approaches which significantly modify that concept (Distributed Morphology, Construction Morphology) or reject it altogether (Paradigm Function Morphology, Network Morphology). I extend the scope of the latter, ‘lexeme-and-paradigm’, models by introducing types of morphology intermediate between inflection and derivation: argument-structure alternations and transpositions (such as deverbal participles), together with other problematic phenomena such as clitics, light verbs, periphrasis. The chapter ends with a discussion of derivational morphology as a subtype of lexemic relatedness, briefly outlining the principal theoretical issues facing approaches to lexemic relatedness and lexical representation: ‘blocking’, semantic primitives, lexical semantics, and derivation.
Cognitive Linguistic Approaches
Authors: Taylor John R
Published: March 2020

After a brief account of the salient characteristics of Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar, this chapter highlights the distinctive perspective which this approach offers on traditional topics in the description of English, including the question of word classes, the nature of syntactic relations, and the status of constructions as an alternative to rule-based accounts of linguistic knowledge. It presents three case studies illustrating the role of background cognition, not only as a factor in semantic interpretation but also for its grammatical effects. These concern (i) the role of grounding in nominal and verbal systems, (ii) some of the manifestations of cognitive reference points in such diverse areas as possessive expressions and constraints on the use of participles, and (iii) processes of subjectification, as exemplified in such areas as modals, fictive motion, and causal relations.
Grammar and Corpus Methodology
Authors: Wallis Sean
Published: March 2020

This chapter explores the potential of natural language corpora for grammatical research. The chapter distinguishes three main types of data (evidence) that a corpus can provide: factual evidence, frequency evidence, and interaction evidence. The chapter makes the research case for parsing a corpus completely, correcting the annotation by human linguists. It uses the cyclic ‘3A’ perspective (Nelson et al. 2002) to relate a series of exploratory algorithms and tools relevant to the grammatical researcher, including concordancing tools, grammatical exploration tools, and bottom-up generalization algorithms. The aim is not merely to describe what is found in a corpus but to perform systematic ‘natural experiments’. The rich grammatical analysis of a parsed corpus gains a new role: in reliably obtaining examples of grammatical units within which research may be conducted. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some simple experiments, and the methodological issues that arise in carrying them out.
Phrase Structure
Authors: Borsley Robert D.
Published: March 2020

The phrase structure of English has been a central concern for most approaches to syntax, including various forms of Transformational Grammar, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, and the earlier Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar framework. They have developed detailed analyses of verb phrases, nominal phases, clauses of various kinds, including unbounded dependency clauses and elliptical clauses, and adjective phrases and prepositional phrases, and coordinate structures. There are similarities and differences between the various approaches in all these areas. They differ in whether or not they are confined to binary branching, whether or not they assume that all phrases are headed, and in the extent to which they assume heads which are phonologically empty. More generally they vary in how complex they take phrase structures to be and in how much variety they see in the local trees that they consist of.
Postcritical
Authors: Felski Rita
Published: March 2020

“Postcritical reading” slices across the dichotomy of sceptical detachment versus naïve absorption. Rather than interrogating what a text represents or fails to represent, it invites other questions: what does a text do? what does it set in motion? what ties a text to its readers? Such questions can do justice to the work of literature—the work that literature does, in the classroom and the world—while also leaving room for contingency and surprise. And here the language of attachment offers an alternative to the usual accounts (whether aesthetic or sociological) of why literature matters. Attachment, it should be emphasized, is not just a matter of feeling; it is also normative, involving questions of ethics or politics. In this sense, it allows us to look more closely at the similarities between academic criticism and lay reading, yet without denying their differences.
Touch
Authors: Silverman Gillian
Published: March 2020

This chapter examines the importance of touch to the practice of reading. While all reading begins with touch (we hold books and turn pages), accounts of literacy tend to downplay this contact with the text, conceiving of reading as a purely cognitive activity. We speak not of touching books but of finding them touching. But thinking about reading in relation to touch is important because it can upset the logic of linearity and rationalism associated with an optic approach to literacy. Through its reciprocity, touch destabilizes agency, exposing the complex dependencies of subjects and objects. This chapter examines a variety of texts that invite a haptic response, including artist’s books, book performances, and digital apps that highlight cutaneous contact. It argues that post-Enlightenment ideals of distanced cognition must be tempered by the textured trace of the physical book and its affective role in our lives.
Deafness
Authors: Sanchez Rebecca
Published: March 2020

This chapter describes deaf experiences of reading, particularly those that occur in signed languages. It explores both visual and tactile methods of signed language reading and analyzes the ways these practices enable alternative theorizations of reading and its potentials as well as the reasons that referring to the processes of decoding signed language utterances as reading is appropriate. Specifically, it focuses on the implications of encountering the human body as text and the relationships between human subjects and language that become possible in such contexts through readings of several ASSL poems including Bernard Bragg’s “Flowers and Moonlight on Spring Water” and “The Pilot and the Eagle,” Ian Sanborn’s “Caterpillar,” and Ayisha Knight-Shaw’s “Until.”
Accessibility
Authors: Lazar Jonathan
Published: March 2020

Accessibility means flexibility. In terms of format, some people prefer to read a print book or a newspaper, and other people prefer to read their texts digitally and on different types of devices and screens. All books are now “born-digital,” ready to be transformed into multiple formats, but are often turned into inaccessible formats (such as improperly formatted PDFs). Even when people with disabilities have the legal right to access reading material in the format that they need and can process, often they must enforce that right when book publishers, content providers, educational systems, and administrators do not provide reading content in appropriate formats. This chapter discusses both the legal foundations and the technical foundations of accessible reading. The chapter closes with ten suggestions for how to encourage publishers and others to make reading material more accessible.
Mental Representation
Authors: Elfenbein Andrew
Published: March 2020

Book history, media studies, and digital humanities have foregrounded the physical medium of texts and have shown special interest in the rise of digital media. This essay acknowledges the value of these disciplines but also points to their limitations as sites for analyzing reading. Scholars should not draw conclusions about reception based on a work’s medium of presentation. The comprehension process, as described in cognitive psychology, provides a powerful alternative for understanding reading; psychologists have argued for the existence of general comprehension skills that operate across media. Whatever the origin of a text, comprehension occurs in the same medium, the mind of the reader. The study of reading in the humanities needs to separate itself from the disciplines with which it is usually associated (book history and media studies) because these mask critical aspects of the reading process.
Pleasure
Authors: Starr G. Gabrielle , Belfi Amy M.
Published: March 2020

This chapter provides an overview of ways of understanding the pleasures of reading, blending literary criticism with behavioral psychology. Pleasure has at least two basic functions with works of art, the first is to help identify salient elements of form, and second to release attention for exploration. While pleasure might be imagined to be the final result of engaging with a whole object, we show through an experiment the disjunction between pleasure and complete aesthetic form.
Dyslexia: Through the Eyes of da Vinci
Authors: Wolf Maryanne
Published: March 2020

This chapter examines the formation of a reading brain circuit and how it represents the gradual, ever-more-elaborated connections among visual and auditory perception, multiple language and cognitive functions, and affective processes. Based on this multi-component view of reading, we then approach why this circuit can be quite different in various writing systems and in different mediums like print and digital media. Finally, we examine why the circuit fails to develop in conventional ways in persons with dyslexia and, quite possibly, in one of the greatest and most unconventional artists and inventors of the last millennium, Leonardo da Vinci.
Tracked
Authors: Trettien Whitney
Published: March 2020

How do technologies track our reading? Digital devices today can monitor not only what you read electronically, but when, where, and for how long. From an artist’s book by Heather Weston and eighteenth-century commonplacing techniques to Kindle Highlights and social reading sites like GoodReads, this chapter takes a wide-ranging, playful look at the ways both humans and machines have used various platforms to track their reading over time. By critically examining the deep history of social reading practices, this chapter aims to bring into relief what is new or different about emerging digital technologies and the forms of reading they foster.
Translated
Authors: Walkowitz Rebecca L.
Published: March 2020

This chapter argues that new approaches to the global history of books and the circulation of literatures across national and linguistic boundaries have changed the way we think about reading in translation. We now understand that reading in translation should involve more than an encounter with a stand-alone object and should be regarded as an intellectual and ethical imperative for any genuine student of literature, rather than a secondary or compensatory practice. Writers, translators, and publishers have been raising questions about what we need to read and why, what constitutes native and foreign literatures, the distinction between authors and translators, and the complexity of establishing an original or first version of a work. This chapter examines three recent works in translation that dramatize these changes in striking ways.
Machine
Authors: Ramsay Stephen
Published: March 2020

This chapter argues that data mining and machine learning technologies “read” in the strong sense of the word, and that this represents an epochal shift in the history of reading as such. It considers various categories of responses to the idea of “non-human reading” that the world that has emerged from this shift is better than ever, that it is obviously inferior to the one now ending, and that it merely repeats attributes of technological modernity easily identified in ages past. But following the strong view of machine reading, this chapter suggests that the present technological moment is actually unprecedented. This makes concrete predictions difficult. What we can be sure of, however, is that like other truly unprecedented technological shifts, the move to a world in which machines truly read will give rise to ethical frameworks as yet unconceived.
Not
Authors: Gitelman Lisa
Published: March 2020

A lot of the way people talk about reading today is in reference to not reading. The absence or negation of reading comes up in many different contexts, frequently as a cause for concern. Digital media are often to blame. Information overload is epidemic. When conversations turn to not reading, what is it about reading itself that is being implied? How are conversations about not reading working to consolidate particular notions about readers, readership, and the function of reading? Is reading really in peril?
Actual
Authors: Stewart Garrett
Published: March 2020

As opposed to other things one does or can do with text, its “actual reading” is defined here as the actualization of scriptive (hence phonetic) signals in the construction of its aesthetic as well as semantic force. The silent sounding of literary letters is the base-line of textual generation, thrown into relief by contrast with a parodic story by American novelist Bennett Sims about a film scholar’s willful and absurd lip reading of silent background players in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo. This satirized overreading of phonic shapes is then entered into the famous terms of debate between Paul de Man and Michael Riffaterre on what “really reading” means, to which, after their fraught example from Victor Hugo, further literary examples from Charles Dickens through Virginia Woolf to Adrienne Rich are recruited to help arbitrate.
Introduction
Authors: Muro Diego , Lago Ignacio
Published: March 2020

This handbook examines Spanish politics and government since the transition to democracy. The volume studies the political history, institutional changes, bureaucratic decision-making, political behaviour, and foreign affairs of Spain. The introductory chapter provides an overview of the main themes of democratic Spain and discusses the end of Spanish exceptionalism. It also introduces Spanish politics to an international audience of scholars and practitioners to be considered either in its own right or as a case among others in a comparative perspective. The driving force of the handbook is to move away from complacent analysis of Spanish democracy and provide a nuanced view of some of its strengths and challenges. The introduction also explains the rationale for the volume and outlines its organization and themes.
The 1978 Spanish Constitutional Design
Authors: Vallès Josep M.
Published: March 2020

Forty years after its making, the 1978 Spanish Constitution is now subject to growing criticism and demands for reform. This chapter examines first the context in which this constitutional design developed, and the main influences it received: the West European welfare state model, external economic and geostrategic constraints and a tight balance of power between the most significant actors in the Spanish political arena. It then points to the key founding bargains achieved during the democratic transition over traditional and new political and social issues. Finally, it assesses the constitutional design performance and looks at its prospective development. Having exceeded all its historical precedents in time and efficiency, the 1978 Constitution is now challenged by a deep social and economic unrest, a recurrent national-territorial conflict and public distrust of political institutions
Multilevel Governance in Spain
Authors: León Sandra , Jurado Ignacio
Published: March 2020

Multilevel governance challenges some of the essential mechanisms that make democratic accountability work. On the one hand, citizens may struggle to assign responsibility for policy outcomes when powers are fragmented between different levels of government. On the other hand, in light of this institutional complexity, citizens may resort more frequently to their cognitive biases—such as partisanship—to assign credit and blame for policy outcomes. This chapter delves into the accountability challenges of multilevel governance in Spain. It explores the level of knowledge of Spanish citizens about who is responsible for what, and the variation over time and across regions of the assignment of responsibility for policy outcomes to different levels of government. We also analyse the biases in the attribution of responsibility, as well as the preferences about multilevel governance in Spain.
Public Administration and Its Problem-Solving Capacities
Authors: Parrado Salvador
Published: March 2020

Spanish public administration belongs to the Rechtsstaat tradition in which the state is society’s driving force and relies on a procedural and legalistic system to engage with citizens. This chapter argues that this tradition has an impact on the state capacity, in particular in the coordination, delivery, and analytical functions of central government, whose role shifted towards coordination and regulation after the devolution of powers to the regions. The global economic and financial crisis of the mid-2010s forced the core executive to implement strategies to obtain efficiencies in service delivery. But the administrative system suffers from enduring problems of politicization, inadequate organizational design that is procedure oriented rather than focusing on outputs and outcomes, and the lack of a competency framework to support civil servants in the use of a more managerial style of designing and delivering policies and services.
The Spanish Electoral System
Authors: Bosch Agustí
Published: March 2020

This chapter examines the Spanish electoral system, meaning—first and foremost—the one used to elect the lower house (Congreso de los Diputados). After a brief description of its components, the chapter assesses how its scarce proportionality has traditionally led Spanish politics towards a two-party system. The chapter also assesses some other of its alleged outcomes (such as the malapportionment, the weight of the regional parties, or the robustness of democracy) and its prospects for the future. Finally, the chapter also examines the ‘other’ Spanish electoral systems—that is, the ones used to elect the Senate, the local councils, the regional parliaments, and the Spanish seats in the European Parliament.
Migration Politics
Authors: Pardos-Prado Sergi
Published: March 2020

Despite experiencing high immigration inflows and strong economic downturns in recent times, Spain has been surprisingly resilient against anti-immigrant attitudes and parties. While the radical party Vox might bring the Spanish exceptionalism to an end, its long-term prospects in national politics and its status as new or old radical right are still unclear. This chapter reviews the state of the art in migration politics research in Spain, and analyses the merits of different theories when accounting for why immigration has lacked a pivotal role in Spanish politics. When putting things in comparative perspective, the unidimensionality of the political space benefitting the centre-right and the particular structure of labour market dualism emerges as the most promising explanations for the Spanish exceptionalism.
Social Movements
Authors: Romanos Eduardo
Published: March 2020

According to cross-national surveys, Spaniards are among the Europeans who participate the most in street protests. At the same time, Spanish social movements have been generally understood as deploying a less radical protest repertoire and a relatively weak organizational model. Building upon central concepts in social movement studies, this chapter analyses these and other features of the Spanish activist tradition as compared to other Western countries. An especial attention is paid to the strongest protest cycles in Spanish recent history: the years of the democratic transition and the Great Recession. In doing so, this chapter aims to address the long-term effects of regime transition on domestic collective action and organized protest.
Public Policies
Authors: Subirats Joan , Gomà Ricard
Published: March 2020

The objective of this chapter is to trace and present the main characteristics of the public policy system in Spain, incorporating policy change over time, as well as the policy style that has characterized its different stages. The transition between Francoism and democracy generated significant continuities and discontinuities both in the decision-making processes and in the actors’ system. The full incorporation into the European Union also involved significant changes in content, processes and networks. Finally, the impacts of the 2007 crisis and the effects of globalization and technological change also generated significant disruptions that will also be incorporated. The chapter will distinguish the conceptual, substantive, and operational aspects of the public policy system in Spain, as well as the main elements of the multilevel government. This aspect is especially complex in the Spanish case, given the combination of Europeanization of policies and the very remarkable regional decentralization generated by 1980.
Welfare State
Authors: Pino Eloísa del
Published: March 2020

The first part of this chapter describes the main features of the Spanish Welfare State, trying to place it in a comparative perspective. The second part identifies the socioeconomic and political factors which explain its evolution since the beginning of the new century to the current situation, focusing on the attempts at recalibration of the system since 2000 and the interruption of this process due to the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008. The third part analyses the main challenges that the Welfare State has to face in the post-crisis period, which include some structural problems such as its inability to address inequality or poverty during the periods of economic growth. Finally, the chapter speculates about the future of the Welfare State in Spain.
Economic Policy-Making in Contemporary Spain
Authors: Fernández-Albertos José
Published: March 2020

This chapter analyses the institutional, political, and economic determinants of the main dimensions of economic policy in contemporary Spain in the hands of domestic policy-makers: fiscal and regulatory policies. It describes its effects on redistribution, and analyses its variation across the ideological leanings of governments and across time, paying special attention to how the Spanish economy has coped with the Great Recession. The last sections advance an explanation for the main features of Spanish economic policy-making by analysing the supply-side (institutional) and demand-side (political-economy) constraints in which it operates, and suggests possible implications for how it will evolve in the near future.
Education Policy
Authors: Cebolla-Boado Héctor
Published: March 2020

In the European context, Spain is a late modernizer, which experienced a delayed educational expansion. However, after 1970, and especially after the restoration of democracy in 1978, the Spanish education system completed its expansion and modernized significantly, converging with its neighbours on most outcomes related to the quality of education. Notwithstanding remarkable levels of stability of institutional design and framework policies, it is widely believed that education in Spain is subject to constant political reforms. This is partly explained by the frequent use of education in political and electoral debates, and, particularly, by the overrepresentation in public debates of a limited repertoire of normative and organizational aspects of educational policies. While the current education system in Spain has achieved a high level of quality combined with low levels of educational inequality by social background when compared with other developed countries, there are secular problems that need to be addressed, particularly the reform of teacher selection, training programmes, and careers; modernization of school curricula; adaptation of pedagogical innovations; rationalization of retakes; and diversification of tracks to offer less successful students an alternative and prevent early dropout. This chapter describes this transformation and problematizes key educational reforms in Spain, focusing on the democratic period, using different international datasets including PISA (OECD, several years), PIACC (OECD 2016), TIMSS, and PIRLS (IEA, several years), the European Social Survey as well as several national sources of data including the Spanish General Social Survey (CIS 2013) and the Labour Force Survey (several years).
Gender Policy
Authors: Verge Tània
Published: March 2020

This chapter discusses how Spain transitioned from being a latecomer to an early-adapter country in the field of gender equality and LGBTI policy. Such transformation is assessed against the type of gender regime that has taken root in the country as regards the share of women in the workforce, the degree of inequality in employment, the reach and scope of public childcare provision, the levels of women’s representation in decision-making positions and the guarantee of sexual and reproductive rights. The chapter also looks at the implementation of state feminism, paying attention to the strength of both the regulatory framework on gender equality and of equality promotion institutions. In outlining major policy advances, it also examines how the European Union and the multilevel structure of Spain have shaped gender equality and LGBTI policy. Lastly, it discusses the extent to which conservative setbacks and gendered austerity measures have jeopardized progress in these policy areas, fuelling the mobilization of the women’s movement.