bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Proinsulin Binds with High Affinity the Insulin Receptor Isoform A and Predominantly Activates the Mitogenic Pathway
Authors: Malaguarnera Roberta , Sacco Antonella , Voci Concetta , Pandini Giuseppe , Vigneri Riccardo , Belfiore Antonino
Published: February 2012

Proinsulin is generally regarded as an inactive prohormone because of its low metabolic activity. However, proinsulin appears to regulate embryo development in animal models. In this study, we evaluated whether proinsulin may differentially bind to and activate the two insulin receptor (IR) isoforms (IR-A and IR-B), because IR-A is a relatively low-specificity receptor that is prevalent in fetal and cancer cells and is able to mediate the growth effects of IGF-II. Mouse R− fibroblasts devoid of IGF-I receptor (IGF-IR) and stably transfected with cDNA encoding either human IR-A or IR-B (R− /IR-A and R− /IR-B cells) were used. Three human cancer cell lines were also studied. We found that proinsulin stimulated phosphorylation of IR-A with an EC50 of 4.5 ± 0.6 nm and displaced [125I]insulin from IR-A with a similar EC50. In contrast, proinsulin EC50 values for stimulation of IR-B phosphorylation and for [125I]insulin displacement from IR-B were approximately 7-fold higher. Proinsulin did not bind or activate IGF-IR or IR/IGF-IR hybrids. Via IR-A, proinsulin activated the ERK/p70S6K pathway to a similar degree as insulin but elicited a weaker Akt response. Despite its low metabolic activity, proinsulin was almost equipotent as insulin in inducing cell proliferation and migration in cells expressing various IR-A levels. In conclusion, proinsulin is a selective IR-A ligand and may induce biological effects through this IR isoform.
Changing environments and structure–property relationships in marine biomaterials
Authors: Waite J. Herbert , Broomell Christopher C.
Published: February 2012

Most marine organisms make functional biomolecular materials that extend to varying degrees ‘beyond their skins’. These materials are very diverse and include shells, spines, frustules, tubes, mucus trails, egg capsules and byssal threads, to mention a few. Because they are devoid of cells, these materials lack the dynamic maintenance afforded intra-organismic tissues and thus are usually assumed to be inherently more durable than their internalized counterparts. Recent advances in nanomechanics and submicron spectroscopic imaging have enabled the characterization of structure–property relationships in a variety of extra-organismic materials and provided important new insights about their adaptive functions and stability. Some structure–property relationships in byssal threads are described to show how available analytical methods can reveal hitherto unappreciated interdependences between these materials and their prevailing chemical, physical and ecological environments.
Seascapes: the world of aquatic organisms as determined by their particulate natures
Authors: Jackson George A.
Published: February 2012

The interactions between planktonic organisms and their aquatic environment are mediated by diffusive processes on the scale of millimeters and smaller. The uptake of nutrients and food and the release of metabolic products creates localized patchiness that diffusive processes homogenize. Organism size determines, to a large extent, the character of these interactions. This paper builds a framework for considering these interactions, starting with an analysis of the diffusive environment around individual organisms and concluding with an integration over a range of organism sizes to describe aggregated properties. Several examples show the importance of the size-based abundance of organisms and other particles in determining the duration, spatial extent and frequency of environmental cues. One implication of these results is that microbial chemotactic behavior does not help them to find and utilize the majority of nutrient releases.
Biogenic inputs to ocean mixing
Authors: Katija Kakani
Published: February 2012

Recent studies have evoked heated debate about whether biologically generated (or biogenic) fluid disturbances affect mixing in the ocean. Estimates of biogenic inputs have shown that their contribution to ocean mixing is of the same order as winds and tides. Although these estimates are intriguing, further study using theoretical, numerical and experimental techniques is required to obtain conclusive evidence of biogenic mixing in the ocean. Biogenic ocean mixing is a complex problem that requires detailed understanding of: (1) marine organism behavior and characteristics (i.e. swimming dynamics, abundance and migratory behavior), (2) mechanisms utilized by swimming animals that have the ability to mix stratified fluids (i.e. turbulence and fluid drift) and (3) knowledge of the physical environment to isolate contributions of marine organisms from other sources of mixing. In addition to summarizing prior work addressing the points above, observations on the effect of animal swimming mode and body morphology on biogenic fluid transport will also be presented. It is argued that to inform the debate on whether biogenic mixing can contribute to ocean mixing, our studies should focus on diel vertical migrators that traverse stratified waters of the upper pycnocline. Based on our understanding of mixing mechanisms, body morphologies, swimming modes and body orientation, combined with our knowledge of vertically migrating populations of animals, it is likely that copepods, krill and some species of gelatinous zooplankton and fish have the potential to be strong sources of biogenic mixing.
The Most Original of Our Authors
Authors: Jacobs Theodore J.
Published: February 2012

This paper reviews James McLaughlin's creative contributions in light of his personal history and classical analytic training. In particular, the author focuses on both McLaughlin's utilization of nonverbal behavior and his subjective experiences in sessions as a means of accessing unconscious communications in analysis.
Reading the Mind, Reading the Text: Reflective Functioning, Trauma Literature, and the Task of the Psychoanalytic Critic
Authors: Rashkin Esther
Published: February 2012

This essay considers whether the developmental concept of “reflective functioning”—which emerged from attachment research—is relevant for the study of literature and especially for examining narratives concerned with trauma. Since the ability to construct narrative and show an awareness of one’s own and others’ intrapsychic worlds is key to reflective functioning, can we legitimately think of fictional characters who reflect on their own inner states and intentions, as well as on those of other characters, as having reflective capacity? What about characters who show similar reflective capacity in literary works dealing with trauma in which narrative is invariably impeded in some way? The author argues that reflective functioning in such texts can only be illusory, but that the more convincing the illusion the more compelling the text for average readers who try to create narratives to explain inaccessible motivations for characters’ actions. Ultimately, it is the psychoanalytically oriented literary critic who has the trained capacity for reflective functioning and can guide ordinary readers to identify how authors misdirect them and how texts block understanding. The strained relations between critics and readers today may thus potentially be rehabilitated as critics help readers navigate complex narratives concerned with core human issues of love, loss, attachment, and separation.
Air War and Dream: Photographing the London Blitz
Authors: Sliwinski Sharon
Published: February 2012

This paper treats Lee Miller's photographs of the London Blitz as a species of dream, which is to say, the Surrealist's images are regarded as a special form of thinking in which the conflicts and horrors of the times are represented in an effort to discharge their destructive force. This treatment calls upon Freud's discussion of dream-work, but also upon Didier Anzieu and Wilfred Bion's later writings, which consider the defensive and protective qualities of oneiric life. Miller's photography, like dream, provides a glimpse into the interior dimension of human existence. The essay argues that this interior dimension provides protection not only from inner psychological and biological traumas, but also from social and political aggression. In the era of air war, photography provides a powerful tool of civil defense.
On the existence of Hamiltonian stationary Lagrangian submanifolds in symplectic manifolds
Authors: Joyce Dominic , Lee Yng-Ing , Schoen Richard
Published: February 2012

Let $(M,\omega)$ be a compact symplectic $2n$-manifold, and $g$ a Riemannian metric on $M$ compatible with $\omega$. For instance, $g$ could be K\"ahler, with K\"ahler form $\omega$. Consider compact Lagrangian submanifolds $L$ of $M$. We call $L$ {\it Hamiltonian stationary}, or {\it H-minimal}, if it is a critical point of the volume functional $\mathop{\rm Vol}\nolimits_g$ under Hamiltonian deformations, computing $\mathop{\rm Vol}\nolimits_g(L)$ using $g\vert_L$. It is called {\it Hamiltonian stable\/} if in addition the second variation of $\mathop{\rm Vol}\nolimits_g$ under Hamiltonian deformations is nonnegative. Our main result is that if $L$ is a compact, Hamiltonian stationary Lagrangian in $\mathbin{{\Bbb C}}^n$ which is {\it Hamiltonian rigid}, then for any $M,\omega,g$ as above there exist compact Hamiltonian stationary Lagrangians $L'$ in $M$ contained in a small ball about some $p\in M$ and locally modelled on $t L$ for small $t>0$, identifying $M$ near $p$ with $\mathbin{{\Bbb C}}^n$ near $0$. If $L$ is Hamiltonian stable, we can take $L'$ to be Hamiltonian stable. Applying this to known examples $L$ in $\mathbin{{\Bbb C}}^n$ shows that there exist families of Hamiltonian stable, Hamiltonian stationary Lagrangians diffeomorphic to $T^n$, and to $({\cal S}^1\times{\cal S}^{n-1})/\mathbin{{\Bbb Z}}_2$, and with other topologies, in every compact symplectic $2n$-manifold $(M,\omega)$ with compatible metric~$g$.
Weighted homogeneous singularities and rational homology disk smoothings
Authors: Bhupal Mohan , Stipsicz András I.
Published: February 2012

We classify the resolution graphs of weighted homogeneous surface singularities which admit
rational homology disk smoothings. The nonexistence of rational homology disk smoothings is
shown by symplectic geometric methods, while the existence is verified via smoothings of
negative weight.
On the descending central sequence of absolute Galois groups
Authors: Efrat Ido , Mináč Ján
Published: February 2012

Let $p$ be an odd prime number and $F$ a field containing a primitive
$p$th root of unity. We prove a new restriction on the group-theoretic
structure of the absolute Galois group $G_F$ of $F$. Namely, the third
subgroup $G_F^{(3)}$ in the descending $p$-central sequence of $G_F$ is
the intersection of all open normal subgroups $N$ such that $G_F/N$ is
$1$, ${\Bbb Z}/p^2$, or the extra-special group $M_{p^3}$ of order $p^3$
and exponent $p^2$.
Nombres de Weil, sommes de Gauss et annulateurs Galoisiens
Authors: Nguyen Quang Do Thong , Nicolas Vésale
Published: February 2012

For an abelian number field $K$ containing a primitive $p^{{\rm th}}$ root
of unity ($p$ an odd prime) and satisfying certain technical conditions,
we parametrize the ${\Bbb Z}_p[{\rm G}(K/\Bbb{Q})]$-annihilators of the
``minus'' part $A_{K}^{-}$ of the $p$-class group by means of modules of
Jacobi sums. Using a reflection theorem and Bloch-Kato's reciprocity law,
we then determine the Fitting ideal of the ``plus'' part $A_{K}^{+}$ in
terms of ``twisted'' Gauss sums.
What's Love Got to Do with It?: Mapping Cynthia in Propertius' Paired Elegies 1.8A-B and 1.11-12
Authors: Lindheim Sara H.
Published: February 2012

As he concludes poem 1.12, Propertius romantically asserts that Cynthia was prima and will be the finis . This article explores the supplemental readings that open up if we focus not on the temporal but on the geographical meaning of the word finis , a move invited by the poem itself and by the poems (1.8a, 1.8b, 1.11) with which it belongs interpretively, all containing several allusions to space. Drawing on both Lacanian and cartographic theory, I suggest that the poet's engagement with questions of fines reveals Propertius' response to a growing awareness and concern with issues of physical space and empire in the Augustan period.
In Search of the Historical Development of Double-Reed Pipe Melodies in Japanese Tōgaku : Early Hypotheses and New Perspectives
Authors: Ng Kwok-Wai
Published: February 2012

This paper represents the first attempt to trace the historical development of the double-reed pipe melodies in tōgaku, a musical repertory imported into Japan from China between the seventh and the ninth centuries and performed to this day. In this study, I analyze the double-reed pipe melody in each historical period, and by comparing it with the development of the transverse flute, which plays similar melodies to those of the double-reed pipe today, I shed light on the differences in melodic development between the double-reed pipe and transverse flute.
Spaces Betwixt and Between: Musical Borderlands and the Manganiyar Musicians of Rajasthan
Authors: Ayyagari Shalini
Published: February 2012

Scholars and musicians alike have described the music of the Manganiyar musician community almost entirely in terms of Hindustani classical music. As a result of the Manganiyar community’s straddling of the India-Pakistan border, their lives inhabit a borderland in political space, religious belief, and cultural practice. Their music, while utilizing elements of Hindustani raga, also draws considerably on Sindhi surs , a body of musical/poetic texts more closely associated with Pakistani music. The Manganiyar meld these musical systems into their own practices in order to assert their borderland identities, and ultimately complicate broader dichotomies and binaries in South Asian contemporary music.
Caught between Heaven and Hell: The Morality of Music and Cosmologies of the Past in Persian Writings on Listening, c. 1040–c. 1800
Authors: Lucas Ann E.
Published: February 2012

This article examines the relationship between music and Islam in Persian texts about listening from the twelfth century to the cusp of the modern era. In refutation of modern claims that Islam has always actively rejected music and treated it as morally suspect, Persian writings about listening reflect a much more nuanced understanding of humanly organized sound that embodies the unique cosmological, political, and spiritual concerns of Muslims living in the age of empire.
No Caller ID for the Soul: Demonization, Charisms, and the Unstable Subject of Protestant Language Ideology
Authors: Bialecki Jon
Published: February 2012

The ethnography of Christianity has only one area where a sort of Khunian "normal science" has been achieved: Christian Language practices has been agreed on as a topic of vital and sustained ethnographic interest, and is usually understood analytically as being shaped by a referentially oriented, individuating "Christian [or, at times, Protestant] Language Ideology." Relying on a review of the ethnographic literature regarding Christian Language use, and on an impromptu deliverance from demons observed during fieldwork with "The Vineyard," a Southern California originated but now world-wide Church Planting movement, this article argues that such an understanding is not wrong, but only partially apprehends the relevant dynamics of language use. This piece posits that Christian language use can be understood by delineating two sharply contrasting, but both valued, forms of speech—"centripetal" and "centrifugal"—each of which has different implicit concerns about the importance of self-identity and the sorts of boundaries that comprise the ethical subject.
Violent Virtuosity: Visual Labor in West Africa’s Mano River War
Authors: Hoffman Danny
Published: February 2012

In this essay, I argue that the Mano River War should be understood as a conflict to which the ubiquitous presence of digital media was crucial. This was a war structured by the economy of attention. To profit in this economy, combatants and non-combatants were required to play to an audience that they knew was there, but often could only sense or apprehend in the most abstract way. The realities of constantly being available to be seen were crucial to understanding the spectacular performance of violence in this conflict.
Berenice and her Lock
Authors: Clayman Dee L.
Published: February 2012

Callimachus's "Lock of Berenice," which concludes the Aetia , was written for and about Berenice II, the wife of Ptolemy III Euergetes. This poem and Callimachus's "Hymn to Athena" are presented as portraits of the queen that treat some aspects of her questionable past in a way that is positive, yet nuanced. Material evidence, including a cameo, a mosaic portrait, faience jugs, and documentary papyri shed further light on her public persona.
Deus ille noster : Platonic Precedent and the Construction of the Interlocutors in Cicero's De oratore
Authors: Stull William
Published: February 2012

In a letter to Atticus defending the treatment of Scaevola in De oratore , Cicero appeals both to the example of Plato, "that god of ours," and to the memory of what the real Scaevola was actually like. Turning from the letter to De oratore itself, I show how this juxtaposition of Platonic divinity and Roman memory reflects a pattern present in the prefaces to each of the three books. I argue that Cicero presents his characters, in pointed response to Plato in general and the Phaedrus in particular, in such a way as to privilege history and oratory over philosophy.
Quiet Comfort: Noise, Otherness, and the Mobile Production of Personal Space
Authors: Hagood Mack
Published: February 2012

Marketing, news reports, and reviews of Bose QuietComfort noise-canceling headphones position them as essential gear for the mobile rational actor of the neoliberal market—the business traveler. This article concerns noise-canceling headphones’ utility as soundscaping devices , which render a sense of personal space by mediating sound. The airplane and airport are paradoxical spaces in which the pursuit of freedom impedes its own enjoyment. Rather than fight the discomforts of air travel as a systemic problem, travelers use the tactic of soundscaping to suppress the perceived presence of others. Attention to soundscaping enables the scholar to explore relationships between media, space, freedom, otherness, and selfhood in an era characterized by neoliberalism and increased mobility. Air travel is a moment in which people with diverse backgrounds, beliefs, and bodies crowd together in unusually close proximity. Noise is the sound of individualism and difference in conflict. Noise is othered sound , and like any type of othering, the perception of noise is socially constructed and situated in hierarchies of race, class, age, and gender. The normative QuietComfort user in media representations is white, male, rational, monied, and mobile; women, children, and “chatty” passengers are cast as noisemakers. Moreover, in putting on noise-canceling headphones, diverse selves put on the historically Western subjectivity that has been built into their technology, one that suppresses the noise of difference in favor of the smooth circulation of people, information, and commodities.
Reproducing U.S. Citizenship in Blackboard Jungle : Race, Cold War Liberalism, and the Tape Recorder
Authors: Stoever-Ackerman Jennifer
Published: February 2012

This essay examines interconnections between postwar racialization, U.S. citizenship, and audio technology through a cultural history and analysis of the tape recorder’s emergence in the 1950s. Combining sound studies, critical race studies, cinema studies, and the history of technology, I trace how the recorder frequently functioned as a metonym for reproducing appropriately nationalized bodies, especially in the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle. In the film, English teacher Richard Dadier tries to use the recorder to “quiet a class of screaming animals”: the working class, racialized students at inner-city North Manual High. Relying on the machine’s advertised ability to produce obedient silence and proper sound, Dadier is frustrated by the students’ resistance; they thwart him by pushing heavily accented Pete Morales to the microphone. While Dadier’s pedagogy ultimately backfires, the struggle over Morales’s recording exposes sound and audio reproduction technologies as key modalities of national and racial identity formation.
Intertextual Dynamics in Moschus's Europa
Authors: Smart Jonathan
Published: February 2012

This article seeks to reassess our understanding of the nature of intertextuality in Moschus's Europa and to challenge scholarly preconceptions of the poem's (lack of) sophistication more broadly. The focus is on two essential intertextual moments: the interaction of Europa's dream with that of Atossa in Aeschylus's Persians and the question of the heroines' “willingness” in the Europa and in the Hymn to Demeter . Building on previous scholarship, the readings presented here offer novel interpretations of these important passages.
Arthur's Ermine Arms
Authors: Lacy Norris J.
Published: February 2012

This essay traces the motif, particularly popular in the late nineteenth century but known also in chronicles from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, of Arthur's battle with Flolo (Frollo) in Brittany. Following the battle, Arthur adopts the Breton ermine arms as his own, and legend has emphasized the king's close connection to Brittany.
Silence, Disobedience, and African Catholic Sisters in Apartheid South Africa
Authors: Higgs Catherine
Published: February 2012

This article considers the choices made during the apartheid era by Catholic sisters who were members of one of the largest orders for African women, the Montebello Dominicans, based in KwaZulu-Natal, and one of the smallest orders, the Companions of Saint Angela, based in Soweto, the sprawling African township to the southwest of Johannesburg. The Montebellos took an apolitical stance and embraced “silence,” but they could not avoid the political tensions that defined KwaZulu-Natal. The Companions became activists, whose “disobedience” brought them into direct confrontation with the state. History, region, ethnicity, and timing help explain what it meant for African women religious to be apolitical, and what it meant to be politicized, in the context of state repression so effective that every action could be interpreted as a political act.
Revisiting “Mandingization” in Coastal Gambia and Casamance (Senegal): Four Approaches to Ethnic Change
Authors: Thomson Steven
Published: February 2012

“Mandingization,” the gradual process of cultural change whereby Jola peoples of the Casamance region of southern Senegal are becoming more like their Mandinka neighbors, is analyzed in this article as comprising four distinguishable processes: ethnogenesis, ethnocultural drift, ethnic osmosis, and ethnic strategizing. By distinguishing among these four processes and analyzing their interaction, we can understand the dynamics of Mandingization more clearly and also derive insights for understanding ethnic change generally. The current moment of ethnic change in The Gambia includes a resurgence in Karon Jola ethnic identity, but we need to view this process as contingent, not yet accomplished, and a challenge to the pattern of Mandinka dominance in a time of broader social change.
The Participation of SADC and ECOWAS in Military Operations: The Weight of National Interests in Decision-Making
Authors: Tavares Rodrigo
Published: February 2012

Over the last decade, African regional organizations have gained considerable scope in peacekeeping and peace enforcement. Two subregional organizations in particular, ECOWAS and SADC, have gathered significant experience in military interventions in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast, Lesotho, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This article assesses the decision-making processes of both organizations ahead of the interventions and concludes that African states participate in military interventions for reasons of national and personal interests rather than humanitarian reasons or out of a primary interest in preserving regional stability. The article draws from extensive fieldwork in four African countries.
The New Asianism: Japanese Foreign Policy under the Democratic Party of Japan
Authors: Sneider Daniel
Published: February 2012

This article examines the foreign policy views of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), from the party's founding through its first year in power.
Koreans in America: A Demographic and Political Portrait of Pattern and Paradox
Authors: Lee Taeku
Published: February 2012

This essay analyzes basic demographic trends and patterns of political participation for Koreans in the United States and considers the prospects for an engaged and organized Korean-American political voice.
Mothering Daughters and the Fair and Lovely Path to Success
Authors: Johri Rachana
Published: February 2012

Fair skin has always been a marker of success in India. This paper examines mother-daughter relations in television commercials for the fairness cream, "Fair and Lovely" through a recent television commercial of the brand. Earlier representations of mother-daughter relationships were marked by an absence broken only through depictions of the mother adorning the daughter or bidding farewell at the time of her marriage. A recent advertisement of Fair and Lovely, in contrast, depicts the daughter as a successful professional cyclist buying a new home for her mother. This paper analyzes the figure of the mother in this advertisement in the context of new-media representations of global womanhood. The argument of the paper is that the advertisement represents the mother as a passive observer of the daughter's entry into the global market. The apparently feminist theme of the advertisement hides a subtle message of the irrelevance of the older woman in a neoliberal economy.
Motherhood, Advertising, and Anxiety: A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Danonino Commercials
Authors: Coutant Alexandre , de La Ville Valérie-Inés , Gram Malene , Boireau Nathalie
Published: February 2012

This explorative and qualitative paper analyzes how risk and anxiety are socially constructed and interlinked with mothering in advertising. Through an analysis of how risk and anxiety appear in Danonino™ commercials from 2001-07, the focus is on how commercial communications both enact and co-generate these social constructions. With a point of departure in a literature review of motherhood, anxiety, food, and advertising, this analysis is based on 167 advertisements for the Danonino brand, broadcast in five European countries, and uses Hetzel's concept of "tensive rhetorics." Our findings show that in the European commercials for the Danonino brand, five kinds of anxieties are dealt with: anxieties linked to the responsibility for providing healthy food to support a child's physical growth; anxieties associated with the responsibility for providing appropriate nutrients to foster a child's intellectual development; anxieties linked to the social exclusion of a child from his/her peer group; anxieties raised due to repeated conflicts about food intake that may threaten family bonding relationships and mothers' anxiety for not being present enough for the child due to their own busy schedules. While these themes appear in all examined contexts, some are more prevalent in some markets than others, and the ways these anxieties are staged differ from context to context. The commercials first emphasize risk in culturally relevant situations and afterwards offer resolutions to recreate mothers' peace of mind.
Melvyn Helstien
Authors: Foley Kathy
Published: February 2012

Melvyn Helstien, a professor of theatre at UCLA, undertook extensive research in South and Southeast Asian puppet genres in the 1960s and through his teaching and exhibition work had impact on developing the study of Asian puppet forms in the United States.
Donald Keene
Authors: Wetmore Kevin J.
Published: February 2012

Donald Keene of Columbia University is an important translator of Japanese plays and culture whose work in literature has been important to the establishment of Japanese theatre studies in the US academy.
Intimate Economies: PostSecret and the Affect of Confession
Authors: Poletti Anna
Published: February 2012

This article argues that the scale and success of the PostSecret project evidences the continuing influence of confession in contemporary autobiography. It analyzes the importance of materiality as a signifier of authenticity in a participatory media project that functions as an intimate public by coaxing life writing texts and detaching them from their authorial subjects.
“Suffused by Feeling and Affect”: The Intimate Public of Personal Mommy Blogging
Authors: Morrison Aimée
Published: February 2012

Personal mommy blogging forcefully enacts a productive tension linking the story of the self to broader public discourses. Mommy bloggers seem to understand their texts as at once public and private, in ways that are for the most part enabling rather than paralyzing or paradoxical. Based on an anonymous online survey I conducted of mommy bloggers, I conclude that they deliberately court and manage “intimate publics” that nurture a community of shared practice around the emotional, physical, and intellectual labor of parenting.
Life Writing and Intimate Publics: A Conversation with Lauren Berlant
Authors: Berlant Lauren , Prosser Jay
Published: February 2012

Prosser and Berlant focus on some paradoxes of autobiography: notably, that individual stories are impersonal too, in their formal and emotional conventionality. Relatedly, they discuss how different genres, media, and political situations produce the sense of immediacy, of belonging and survival that Berlant associates with what binds people to intimate publics.
Becoming Joaquin and Mind If I Call You Sir? : Exploring Latino Masculinities
Authors: Torres Lourdes
Published: February 2012

Becoming Joaquin and Mind If I Call You Sir? are autobiographical transgender narratives that offer insider perspectives on transgender realities. These two texts productively complicate our understanding of contemporary nonnormative female Latino masculinities. While one text is fi ctional and the other features autobiographical histories, both rely on the trope of life story telling to address non-normative Latino masculinities in contemporary culture.
"Cupido atropellado": The Dominance of Friendship in Tirso de Molina's Cómo han de ser los amigos
Authors: Wyszynski Matthew A.
Published: February 2012

Friendship is one of the most basic of all social interactions. Classical theorists, especially Aristotle and Cicero, wrote treatises praising true friendship, enumerating the qualities of a friend, and describing the obligations friends have toward one another. Renaissance theorists carried on this tradition, echoing the sentiments found in the works of antiquity. Friendship was also an important theme for the creative process, and nearly every playwright of the Spanish Golden Age wrote at least one play that portrayed friendship. Tirso de Molina was no exception; in fact, he wrote several such works. One of his most interesting is Cómo han de ser los amigos , a play set in the time of Alfonso VIII (1155-1214). Don Manrique and Don Gastón are portrayed as friends in the classical mold, but their friendship faces destruction because of the deception of a woman. In this work, Tirso pits love, kingship, and honor against friendship. In the end friendship triumphs over every other social bond, and Tirso demonstrates the radical importance of friends and friendship to every other human relationship.
The Vatican and the Reagan Administration: A Cold War Alliance?
Authors: Gayte Marie
Published: February 2012

Vatican-American relations were closer in the second half of the twentieth century than at any time in their history; they were said to have been particularly close during the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the pontificate of John Paul II, in light of their common anticommunist feelings. However, a closer look at the nature of the relationship indicates that, although the United States and the Vatican had a convergence of interests, this did not mean that the Holy See backed all American initiatives, for the Vatican pursued its own agenda and was not likely to change its stance simply to satisfy the United States.
Catholic Cacophony: Richard Nixon, the Church, and Welfare Reform
Authors: McAndrews Lawrence J.
Published: February 2012

President Richard Nixon’s 1969 welfare reform proposal, the Family Assistance Plan (FAP), debuted to rave reviews from conservatives (who appreciated its work requirement) and liberals (who lauded its minimum income). The two-thirds of Americans who approved of FAP included many Catholics and their bishops. However, Nixon ran out of enthusiasm, and Congress ran out of time. By 1972, the bishops had turned left, insisting on a higher income floor and a work incentive rather than a mandate, whereas many of their congregants had turned right. Nixon stopped courting the bishops and started wooing their flock, helping to ensure his re-election victory and FAP’s legislative defeat.
Brazilian Immigration to Canada
Authors: Barbosa Rosana
Published: February 2012

Although the number of Brazilians in Canada is still small, this group has increased significantly in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This is mostly a consequence of a rise in the rate of violent crimes in Brazil and of Canada’s immigration policy, which attracts people who have a high level of education. It is also a consequence of the fact that the most popular choice for Brazilian emigrants, the United States, is becoming less attractive for a small, but growing, number of individuals. Instead, these Brazilians are finding in Canada the security, stability, and acceptance that they believe they cannot obtain in the United States.

Même s’il n’y a encore que peu de Brésiliens au Canada, leur nombre a augmenté de façon marquée au tournant du 21 e siècle. Cela est surtout dû à l’accroissement de la violence au Brésil et aux politiques canadiennes d’immigration qui attirent ceux qui ont un niveau élevé d’instruction. En outre, la destination la plus populaire des émigrants brésiliens, les États-Unis, est de moins en moins séduisante pour un nombre petit, mais grandissant, de personnes pour qui le Canada offre une sécurité, une stabilité et un accueil qu’ils pensent ne pas trouver aux États-Unis.
A Conceptual Model of the Retrospective Accounts of Chinese Adults Who Immigrated to Canada as Children
Authors: Mac Lori L. , Alderson Kevin G.
Published: February 2012

This phenomenological study explores the retrospective accounts of 11 Chinese immigrant adults (9 F, 2 M) who immigrated to Canada when they were children. Six categories and 31 themes were extracted during the analysis of the transcripts. The categories include: (a) Adjusting to a Different Culture; (b) Family; (c) Language; (d) Environment; (e) Friendships; and (f) Self and Identity. In addition to these six categories, two types of variables were discovered that affected the participants’ attainment of a bicultural identity: moderating variables and aggravating variables.

A conceptual model of the participant’s experience was developed to reflect the process through which participants develop a bicultural identity. The means by which the model conceptualizes this process and its various components are discussed.

Cette étude phénoménologique examine les comptes-rendus rétrospectifs de 11 immigrants chinois adultes (9 F, 2 H.) qui sont venus enfants au Canada. L’analyse des transcriptions a donné six catégories et 31 thèmes. Les catégories incluent a) un ajustement à une culture différente, b) la famille, c) la langue, d) l’environnement, e) l’amitié et f) le Soi et l’identité. Outre ces six points, nous avons découvert deux types d’éléments modificateurs qui ont eu un effet sur l’acquisition d’identités biculturelles : les uns, un effet modérateur, les autres, un aggravateur.

Nous avons développé un modèle conceptuel de l’expérience des participants afin de refléter le processus par lequel ces derniers ont atteint une identité biculturelle, et nous examinons la manière dont ce modèle conceptualise ce processus et ses diverses composantes.
La question de la taxe scolaire à Montréal au XIX e siècle (1870 – 1903) : un nouveau regard sur l’intégration sociale des Juifs
Authors: Croteau Jean-Philippe
Published: February 2012

En 1903, l’Assemblée législative du Québec adopte une loi qui consacre l’intégration des élèves juifs aux écoles protestantes. En règle générale, les historiens ont interprété l’adoption de cette loi comme le résultat de l’exclusivité religieuse pratiquée par les élites éducatives catholiques à l’endroit des immigrants juifs. En se basant sur l’analyse des éditoriaux de la presse, des archives des commissions scolaires et du Congrès juif canadien, l’auteur arrive plutôt à la conclusion que la question du mode de partage de la taxe scolaire, intimement liée à celle de l’instruction des enfants juifs, a joué un rôle déterminant dans leur intégration aux écoles protestantes.

In 1903 the Legislative Assembly of Quebec adopted a law recognizing the integration of Jewish students in Protestant schools. As a rule, historians have interpreted the adoption of this law as the result of religious exclusivity practised by the elite Catholic educators towards Jewish immigrants. Based on an analysis of editorials in the press and archives from school boards and the Jewish Canadian Congress, the author has instead concluded that the question of how the education tax was shared (and closely linked to the education of Jewish children) played a crucial role in their integration into Protestant schools.
John Foxe's Book of Martyrs and the Child Reader
Authors: Wooden Warren W.
Published: February 2012

This paper suggests that Foxe wrote the Book of Martyrs (1563) for a general audience which specifically included children. Foxe's strategies for reaching a youthful audience are examined, especially his lavish use of pictures, his simplified glosses and humorous scolia, his vivid technique of caricature, and his dramatic storytelling power. Finally, several of his direct addresses to children and examples included for their particular benefit are considered in detail. The paper concludes that the Book of Martyrs may be considered a children's book not only as a result of historical accident but by authorial design and intent.
Hitting the “Vérité Jackpot”: The Ecstatic Profits of Freeze-Framed Violence
Authors: Rust Amy
Published: February 2012

This essay proposes that the conspicuous appearance of freeze-frames in commercial cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s figures the popularization of ecstatic fantasy in American culture during this period. Setting the contingency of photography against cinema’s comparatively abstract construction, freeze-frames not only crystallize ecstasy’s answer to unsatisfying realities but also register the violent hypostatizations of “inside” and “outside” on which it depends.
Audiovisual Change: Viral Web Media and the Obama Campaign
Authors: Vernallis Carol
Published: February 2012

Focusing on audiovisual viral web media distributed during the 2008 presidential campaign, this article registers a cultural shift in which political debate now happens online. It analyzes clips like “Yes We Can,” “Barack RickRoll’d,” and the presidential debates on YouTube for the ways they work aesthetically and intertextually.
The Necessity of “Necessity”: Hume’s Psychology of Sophisticated Causal Inference
Authors: Roth Abraham Sesshu
Published: February 2012

Much of what Hume calls probable reasoning is deliberate and reflective. Since there are aspects to Hume's psychology that tempt some commentators to think, on the contrary, that for Hume all such reasoning is simple and immediate, I will be concerned to emphasize Hume's recognition of the sophisticated sort of probable reasoning (section I). Though some of the details of my case may be new, the overall point of this section should not be news to recent scholarship. But once we recognize that this reflective and deliberate reasoning constitutes a significant portion of all probable reasoning, it becomes legitimate to ask how Hume accommodates this reasoning in his psychology, his ‘science of man.’ I believe that Hume has an answer to this question. I will explain in what way Hume could have thought that probable reasoning can be sophisticated: in short, sophisticated probable reasoning involves the use of the concept of evidence or epistemic support (section II). Hume's psychology, constrained by his empiricism, must therefore explain how we come to have this idea.
The Progymnasmata in Imperial Greek Education
Authors: Penella Robert J.
Published: February 2012

The progymnasmata were graded prose compositional exercises, often begun under the grammarian and continued under the sophist or rhetor. They were preliminary to exercises in declamation. This paper examines their content and role in education in the Roman Empire. Considerable attention is paid to their discussion in theoretical treatises, almost entirely in Greek. Appreciation of these modes of discourse is important to the student of antiquity, not only because of their role in education, but also because they continued to surface in the writings of adults into whose heads they had been ingrained during their school days.
Between the Forge and the Assembly Line: The Time of the Tool in the Work of Andrei Platonov
Authors: Witte Georg
Published: February 2012

Drawing on the novel Chevengur , as well as the short stories "The Old Mechanic," "In the Wonderful and Furious World," and "The Homeland of Electricity," the essay describes a fabricistic chronotopos in Andrei Platonov's prose. This chronotopos is characterized by a tension between two temporal models of technical operativity: one based upon craftsmanship, and the other upon industry. Platonov's technicians are divided between these incompatible models. The ideal of an almost Heideggerian "caring" and "careful" contact with the tool captured by a notion of craftsmanship ( umenie ) results in monstrous discrepancies to dysfunctional aestheticism. Platonov's technicians act "anachronistically": they do not find adequate time for a synthesis of handicraft and industry.
The Author as Photographer: Tret'iakov's, Erenburg's, and Il'f's Images of the West
Authors: Wolf Erika
Published: February 2012

The essay considers the role of photography in the work of the early Soviet writers Sergei Tret'iakov, Il'ia Erenburg, and Il'ia Il'f in terms of Walter Benjamin's essay "The Author as Producer." Identifying Tret'iakov as a model for emulation, Benjamin described the revolutionary transformation of the role of the author and the nature of literary work. Calling for the overthrown of "the barrier between writing and image," Benjamin exhorted writers to take up photography. Committed to creating a distinct Soviet literature, these authors turned to explicitly journalistic forms and incorporated photography into their publications. Using a Leica camera, each created a significant body of photographic work, much of it featuring non-Soviet subjects. The essay examines Tret'iakov's photographs of a collective farm in the Caucasus and of Hamburg, Erenburg's photo-book My Paris , and Il'f's photographs of the United States, relating this photographic literary work to related developments in Soviet literature that accompanied the rise of Socialist Realism during the 1930s.
From Romantic Tools to Technics: Heideggerian Questions in Novalis's Anthropology
Authors: Holland Jocelyn
Published: February 2012

As much as primitive tools extended the reach, capacity, and power of the human body, in the course of their development they have also threatened it with extinction. Heidegger realized that what was at stake in the technics of the modern world was the capacity for a loss that would extend beyond the body to include the very being of mankind. The potential tragedy underlying these reflections is mitigated, however, by an inherent ambivalence: just as the usefulness of the earliest tools cannot be denied, the same goes for their sophisticated modern counterparts. For all his criticisms about the dangers involved, Heidegger does not conclusively answer the question concerning the effect of industrialization on the human condition. The essay shows how concerns that are usually considered products of the twentieth-century discourse on technics are already raised by the Romantic anthropology of Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), and argues that the affinity between Novalis and Heidegger is greater than has been acknowledged. Prior scholarship has described a common interest in problems relating to being and language in aesthetic and philosophical contexts. The essay puts these topics in a new light by shifting the focus to their writing on technics and technology.
Eupalinos, or The Master Shipwright: The Threshold between Land and Sea as a Design Tool
Authors: Siegert Bernhard
Published: February 2012

The essay discusses the epistemic quality of the famous " objet ambigu " in Paul Valéry's dialogue "Eupalinos, or The Architect" in the context of the history of naval architecture and the methods of ship design. Thus not only the motif of the seashore becomes essential for the understanding of the objet ambigu , but even more can the episode of the shipwright Tridon be read as a counterpart that competes against the objet ambigu episode. Since Tridon's design method is clearly anti-Platonic, the thesis puts forward the possibility of Tridon's discourse and the possibility of conceiving such a thing as the objet ambigu , which is affirmed historically by the appearance of a new ship-design method during the second half of the eighteenth century. The imaginary waterlines that this new method used to describe the shape of hulls originated from contour lines that came into use with the first cartographic representations of the seafloor, which for a long time represented the shapeless chaos par excellence. As the threshold between architectonic structure and the chaotic sea became a dynamic tool of design, shapes were generated from methods to describe shapelessness.
Poetics of the Tool: Word-Work in the Language Laboratories of the Russian Avant-Garde (Aleksei Gastev)
Authors: Strätling Susanne
Published: February 2012

The past decades have led to a growing interest in the impact of writing implements on creative processes. However, due to an overwhelming influence of media theoretical approaches, the notion of the tool has been mostly limited to various kinds of apparatuses and machines, thus reducing the history of the tool to its technical aspects and excluding the crucial role of the word as tool itself. The essay retraces the story of the word as organon from ancient philosophy to contemporary thinking and places the work of the Russian poet and ergonomist Aleksei Gastev within this context. Gastev's work not only offers an insight into the frequently hidden fact that symbolic action is far from being a mere act of abstraction, but always remains rooted in the material shaping of things. His concept of the word as an instrument allows for an understanding of aesthetic objects as active entities. Even though deeply rooted within the ideology of productionism, this activity sharpens our awareness of how tools, just as words do, tend to subvert their subordination to a purposive rational power of control and expand the options of mere technical ideas of shaping and forming.
Paper and Poetics
Authors: Giuriato Davide
Published: February 2012

The essay investigates selected writing scenes with regard to a comprehensive poetics of paper. In these scenes, writing materials are subject to literary contemplation, in accordance with their specific material properties. Size, color, texture, and even the watermarks of paper are carefully chosen by writers and can thus become part of the message. The essay examines the nexus between the writing tool and literary production, between media use and reflections on media, with examples drawn from the work of Clemens Brentano, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Walter Benjamin.