bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Estrategias de lectura y creación en la obra de Jorge Luis Borges
Authors: Ruiz-Pérez Ignacio
Published: December 2012

En su obra, Jorge Luis Borges reconoce la tradición literaria mediante la práctica de la lectura. Esta idea de la literatura como crítica de la lectura parte de una función "ancilar" (Reyes 45) que se inserta dentro de la tradición en una labor que desplaza los márgenes y los límites del texto. Así, la glosa, el prólogo y la traducción se convierten en versiones de un mismo afán creativo. Esta política de lectura emplazada en los márgenes está formada por textos ancilares se articula desde una mirada oblicua que exige una escritura liberadora que desplaza las jerarquías y los significantes para reinsertar el significado: leer es también recodificar significantes o, aún más, ficcionalizar significados. Es de tal manera que, al plantear una teoría crítica de la lectura, Borges sienta también las bases de su obra literaria.
O português do Brasil nos Estados Unidos dos anos de 1940
Authors: Freitas de Luna José Marcelo
Published: December 2012

O presente artigo deriva de uma profunda pesquisa historiográfica sobre o ensino de português como língua estrangeira ao longo dos anos de 1940 nos Estados Unidos. Guiando-se exclusivamente por Koerner (1995), descrevem-se as influências de períodos anteriores sobre a referida década e, desta, breve e ilustrativamente, sobre a seguinte. Trata-se de um levantamento, a partir dos documentos impressos consultados, do contexto histórico-cultural e das concepções linguísticas, sócio-econômicas e políticas que influenciam e caracterizam o recorte histórico. Essa descrição permite interpretar os anos de 1940 como favoráveis ao Brasil, fato que implicou a escolha e a promoção de uma variante chamada brasileira para o ensino de português nos Estados Unidos em períodos posteriores.
Trazos proto-hipertextuales en la narrativa moderna latinoamericana: "La biblioteca de Babel"
Authors: Acuña-Zumbado Eduardo
Published: December 2012

Por sus innovaciones y técnicas narrativas, se puede leer parte de la producción narrativa de Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) dentro de la literatura moderna latinoamericana como un intento de establecer antecedentes proto-hipertextuales. La afirmación anterior no pretende sostener que fue la intención de Borges escribir proto-hipertextos, sino que, por sus artificios literarios, varios de sus textos contienen elementos que vendrán posteriormente a ser considerados características intrínsecas de los hipertextos. "La biblioteca de Babel" (1941) presenta estructuras narrativas circulares, laberínticas e infinitas que se constituyen en aparatos de recuadro. Aunque el lector-usuario del texto participa activamente en el desenvolvimiento e interpretación de la narrativa textual a nivel metafórico, padece de una pseudo-libertad textual debido a que no influye en la(s) dirección(es) que dicha narrativa puede tener. Por consiguiente, el lector-usuario proto-hipertextual en Borges no compite por control narrativo con el autor original del texto, sino por control semántico, ya que solo se le otorga mayor poder en el acto interpretativo a un nivel metafórico a través de las estrategias narrativas laberínticas y circulares, y es esta competencia semántica la que permite leer estos cuentos borgeanos como proto-hipertextuales.
Teaching Pragmatics in the Foreign Language Classroom: Grammar as a Communicative Resource
Authors: Félix-Brasdefer J. César , Cohen Andrew D.
Published: December 2012

This article focuses on the teaching of pragmatics in the Spanish as a Foreign Language classroom and examines the role of grammar as a communicative resource. It also aims to highlight the importance of teaching pragmatics from beginning levels of language instruction, with the spotlight on speech acts at the discourse level. After the concept of pragmatic knowledge, as one component of communicative language ability, is reviewed, this article will evaluate proposed pedagogical models for the teaching of pragmatics. We will then present ways for teaching grammar as a communicative resource through a look at the pragmatic functions of grammatical expressions used to express communicative action, such as the conditional, the imperfect, tag questions, impersonal expressions, and adverbials. The importance of classroom input and the role of pragmatic variation when teaching pragmatics in the classroom are also addressed. Finally, we propose a four-step pedagogical model for the teaching of pragmatics with online activities that can be used directly in the classroom, and this article closes with a recommendation that pragmatics be integrated into the language curriculum.
The Story Not Told: Sex and Marriage in Pardo Bazán's "Los cirineos" and "La argolla"
Authors: Willem Linda M.
Published: December 2012

This article examines how narrative strategies of indirection employed in "Los cirineos" and "La argolla" engage the reader's ethical participation in examining and questioning societal norms concerning sex and marriage. In "Los cirineos," the opposition between the moral and the immoral is broken down by the presence of what Shlomith Rimmon Kenan has called "doubly-directed clues," resulting in mutually exclusive readings of the text that exemplify C. Namwali Serpell's concept of oscillating narration. In "La argolla," the sexual content of a proposition is suggested rather than stated due to what Robyn Warhol has defined as its "antinarratable" nature, but it is revealed through what Gerald Prince has called "disnarrated" statements of negative possibility. In addition, the ultimate triumph of honor over dishonor in "La argolla" is undercut by a chain of associations linking the plural definition of words. In both of these short stories, the reader is obligated to mentally construct what is left untold, and in the process, is encouraged to explore beyond the limits of society's fixed standards.
Grammar in the Real World: Enhancing Grammar Lessons with Pragmatics
Authors: Rose Marda
Published: December 2012

Previous work in the field of interlanguage pragmatics suggests that learners of a second or foreign language benefit from metapragmatic instruction (e.g., Félix-Brasdefer 2008a; Kasper and Rose 2002; Koike and Pearson 2005). The most common approach taken in studies on instruction is to focus on a speech act and to develop a lesson that acts as a separate unit for the learners (or study participants). The current article presents a slightly different approach, suggesting that language educators enhance grammar lessons that are already part of the curriculum with instruction on pragmatics. Instead of developing additional units, this article shows how grammar lessons can be extended and enhanced using internet searches on Google and YouTube to find authentic materials in addition to authentic written texts. These lessons, in addition to providing metapragmatic instruction, also present opportunities to make cross-cultural comparisons between different Spanish-speaking countries and the United States.
Casa e(quivale a) rua: Comportamentos públicos e privados na Belle époque tropical de João do Rio
Authors: Silva Daniel
Published: December 2012

A Belle époque tropical , que visava recriar a Europa nos trópicos, caracterizou-se no Rio de Janeiro pelo lema "Rio civiliza-se". Promulgado pelo então prefeito, Pereira Passos, a ideia era "civilizar" a cidade em termos estéticos, mas acima de tudo, culturais e comportamentais através da adoção de modelos cosmopolitas das mais emblemáticas urbes europeias. Por intermédio da leitura de dois contos do flâneur da época, João do Rio, temos uma ótica pela qual podemos desconstruir o que acabou por ser um aparelho (re)civilizador dos trópicos. O que estes contos revelam é a perversa inviabilidade do projeto "Rio civilizase", pois a suposta depravação da rua que o projeto tencionava eliminar afigura-se como uma extensão e produto do ambiente domiciliário. O comportamento designadamente depravado é, subsequentemente, reproduzido pela infiltração do público no espaço privado e subjetivo da casa.
Reading Las Meninas : An Ekphrastic Approach to Teaching Don Quijote
Authors: Ortuño Marian
Published: December 2012

Reading and teaching Don Quijote present multiple challenges to twenty-first century students and instructors who are culturally and historically distanced from the seventeenth century. With Las Meninas serving as a visual lexicon for cuing correlative themes and events in Don Quijote , the instructor, through an ekphrastic, interdisciplinary approach, can help students gain intellectual access to Cervantes's text by showing how one art form elucidates another. Furthermore, focusing on the fractured perspectives characteristic of both the painting and the novel reveals how artist and author point to an extra-pictorial reality beyond immediate sense perception, one that calls into question the accuracy of visual perception itself.
Caballeros, ladrones, mujeres, magia y poder en Carlos Maynes y Enrique Fi de Oliva
Authors: González Cristina
Published: December 2012

Este artículo estudia la relación entre magia y robo en Carlos Maynes y Enrique Fi de Oliva , dos novelas de la Edad Media castellana que se publicaron en el reinado de Isabel I. La conexión entre magia y robo es muy antigua; recuérdese el caso de Alí Babá y los cuarenta ladrones. Esta conexión puede verse como la materialización de una metáfora. Los ladrones que obtienen posesiones mediante encantamientos, representan la idea de que robar es adquirir bienes como por arte de magia. En estas narraciones, los ladrones no son siempre malos. Al contrario, hay muchos ladrones buenos, como es el caso de Robin Hood o de los propios caballeros andantes. Tomando las obras de Geraldine Heng y Jared Diamond como fuentes de inspiración, este artículo sugiere que el "imperio de magia" propuesto en Carlos Maynes y Enrique Fi de Oliva refleja los ideales de la Reina Católica, ya que es una representación folclórica de una "cleptocracia benigna" en la que ocupan un papel muy importante las mujeres, principales víctimas de la "cleptocracia maligna" imperante al comienzo de la obra, así como principales agentes de cambio a un modelo político más equilibrado y seguro.
Targeting Oral and Cultural Proficiency for Medical Personnel: An Examination of Current Medical Spanish Textbooks
Authors: Hardin Karol
Published: December 2012

Demand for medical Spanish courses has grown with the rising needs of Spanish-speaking patients in the United States, but while there is no shortage of beginning medical Spanish textbooks, very few target the intermediate level. This article examines eighteen medical Spanish texts published in the last twenty years with respect to seven factors: 1) targeted proficiency level, 2) vocabulary, 3) oral and aural activities, 4) grammatical concepts, 5) pertinent cultural and sociolinguistic information beliefs, 6) pragmatic concepts, and 7) real-world situations. Although studies have shown negative medical outcomes associated with health providers' limited Spanish proficiency (Derose and Baker 2000; Diamond and Reuland 2009; Flores et al. 1998; Manson 1988), most texts currently aim at beginning levels. Only six of the books are designed for intermediate-level students, and only three offer communicative activities targeting oral proficiency, even though oral and cultural skills have been prioritized for prehealth professionals (Lepetit and Chicocki 2002). Likewise, cultural information is often relegated to simplified paragraphs. Beginner textbooks vary considerably and generally do not offer communicative oral activities or adequate cultural information. Recommendations are offered for improvements in future intermediate textbooks with respect to each of the targeted categories.
Intertextual Sexual Politics: Illness and Desire in Enrique Gómez Carrillo's Del amor, del dolor y del vicio and Aurora Cáceres's La rosa muerta
Authors: LaGreca Nancy
Published: December 2012

This study explores the intertextuality between Aurora Cáceres's La rosa muerta (1914) and the novel Del amor, del dolor y del vicio (1898) by her ex-husband, Enrique Gómez Carrillo. Cáceres strategically mentions Gómez Carrillo's novel in La rosa muerta to invite a reading of her work in dialogue with his. Both narratives follow the sexual awakening of an independently wealthy young widow, but exhibit important differences. Gómez Carrillo's sexually transgressive character closely follows the aesthetic and discursive norms of fin de siècle literature that pathologized female desire. His fictional women are a literary and aesthetic experiment in female decadentism, one that he ultimately puts aside by marrying the characters by the end of the novel. Cáceres's narrative revises Gómez Carrillo's representations of female sexuality and modernista representations of women more broadly. I analyze Cáceres's writing of the female body, illness, and desire to demonstrate the ways in which Cáceres simultaneously critiques misogynistic discourses of the turn of the century and presents positive and realistic images of women's sexuality for future generations of women. La rosa muerta is a modernista novel that anticipates the emboldened attitude toward female eroticism and the provocative writing style of women writers of the avant-garde and the boom.
Experiential Professional Development: Improving World Language Pedagogy inside Spanish Classrooms
Authors: Burke Brigid Moira
Published: December 2012

Experiential professional development (EPD), influenced by Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound design, was integrated in the classrooms of secondary Spanish teachers to create opportunities for them to learn to use communicative language teaching (CLT) through experience. Teachers collaborated with colleagues, students, and a researcher-consultant to design, teach, and reflect on communicative activities. This study asked: 1) how EPD affected the teachers' understandings of CLT and 2) how EPD affected the teachers' instruction. Qualitative analysis of multiple data provides evidence that, after participating in EPD, teachers were more willing to integrate communicative activities into their lessons while still using traditional classroom instruction.
Event, Exceptionalism, and the Imperceptible: The Politics of Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup
Authors: Spain Andrea
Published: December 2012

Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup dramatizes how the errant energies of the postcolonial as event exceed paradoxical discourses of national exceptionalism, while illustrating the weight of mounting failures of postapartheid social and economic transformations in a world of global capital. Through her masterful use of passive voice, her complex framing of characters as effects of discourses, racialization, material determinations, and time, Gordimer registers the “facts” of the event and forces of time irreducible to history. In doing so, Gordimer highlights expressions of the event insinuated into bodily action and collectivities, impersonal forces that might precipitate new political futures.
Mutating Toward the Future: The Convergence of Utopianism, Postcolonial SF, and the Postcontemporary Longing for Form in Amitav Ghosh’s the Calcutta Chromosome
Authors: O’Connell Hugh Charles
Published: December 2012

This article examines the way that secrecy and silence are raised from the level of colonial imposition to postcolonial methodology in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome. Drawing on Ghosh’s claim that any attempt at forming a counter-modernity to the experience of imperial modernization would necessarily have had to operate without record, it argues that silence and secrecy form a counter-hegemonic practice to the instrumentalizing form of Western rationality. As such, the novel performs a postcolonial decentering of futuricity from Western capitalist epistemology, eschewing a mastery of the past to reopen the possibility of a future beyond imperial logic.
A New Biological Citizenship: Posthumanism in Octavia Butler’s Fledgling
Authors: Nayar Pramod K.
Published: December 2012

This essay argues that Octavia Butler’s Fledgling traces, in the transformation of the protagonist Shori from mere zoē into bíos , the evolution of a posthumanist condition where vampires coevolve with humans. This occurs in three stages before climaxing in a posthumanist corporeality that involves a multispecies biological citizenship. Shori’s biovalue and biological citizenship is at once corporeal and moral. Biovalue in Butler’s posthumanist vision, I conclude, inheres in the moral enhancement of Shori and is the result of her multispecies citizenship.
Edward Said, Mahmood Mamdani, V. S. Naipaul: Rethinking Postcolonial Studies
Authors: Krishnan Sanjay
Published: December 2012

This essay works the insights of Edward Said, Mahmood Mamdani, and V. S. Naipaul to elaborate a style of reading that is attuned to the historical formation of the colonial periphery.
Coetzee’s Posthumanist Ethics
Authors: Ciobanu Calina
Published: December 2012

This article argues that J. M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace instantiates a posthumanist form of ethical thinking—an ethics that takes us beyond a humanist framework, making it possible to imagine the ethical subject as no longer exclusively human. It posits that Coetzee’s ethics, which is grounded in a Levinasian ethics of the Other that is extended to animals, depends on the text’s literary elements—specifically, on the intertextual relationship between Disgrace and Franz Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Colony.” The latter, this article argues, provides the model of “the disgrace” that Coetzee takes up and reimagines within his work.
Speaking with a Forked Tongue: Disgrace and the Irony of Reconciliation in Postapartheid South Africa
Authors: Roy Sohinee
Published: December 2012

This essay uses Kierkegaard and Schlegel’s concept of philosophical irony to read J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace . In the novel Coetzee uses irony to suggest that the contradictions of ethical representation are rooted in South Africa’s racial history. In effect, the novel argues that in South Africa ethical representation can be successfully achieved through irony because the other can be addressed only indirectly. Disgrace therefore speaks with a forked tongue, a deliberate avoidance of the priorities of literary realism by which Coetzee suggests that reticence about the other—and acknowledgement of the failure to capture the other as a complex being in time and space—is more ethical than realistic portrayal.
Toni Morrison’s A Mercy and the Counterwriting of Negative Communities: A Postnational Novel
Authors: Karavanta Mina
Published: December 2012

Toni Morrison’s A Mercy is the counterwriting of a negative community, forged on affiliations and affects, as much as conflict and inequalities, which define the early beginnings of modernity in America; this community remains on the edges of the national imaginary and betrays another history of community in modernity, not yet bound or enchanted by the myth of the national community. In her postnational narration of this prenational negative community, Morrison problematizes the concept of the exceptional community that runs at the expense of the constituencies and their communities defined as liminal, dysfunctional, and always already in the negative.
The Central Luzon Group of Languages
Authors: Himes Ronald S.
Published: December 2012

The Central Luzon microgroup of Philippine languages is composed of Kapam-pangan, Sinauna, the three major dialects of Sambal, and the Ayta languages spoken in and around the Zambales Mountains in Zambales, Pampanga, and Bataan provinces. A defining phonological feature of this group is the regular /y/ reflex of Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *R. The languages and dialects in question also share similar pronoun sets and a number of lexical and other innovations. The Northern Mangyan and Bashiic languages also reflect *R as /y/. The former group probably clusters with Central Luzon, but the Bashiic languages lack substantial sharing of innovative items with Central Luzon.
Whence the East Polynesians?: Further Linguistic Evidence for a Northern Outlier Source
Authors: Wilson William H.
Published: December 2012

Anthropologists and linguists have long assumed that East Polynesia was first settled from Central Western Polynesia, most likely from Samoa. Presented here is a very different history, one involving a northern settlement pathway from atolls off the east coast of the Solomon Islands some 2,000 miles (3,200 km) northwest of Samoa. Evidence includes 73 lexical and grammatical innovations reconstructible in the development of several nested Northern Outlier subgroups. East Polynesian is shown to share all of those innovations and thus subgroup with the Northern Outliers. The 73 reconstructions also provide evidence against an "Ellicean" subgroup and associated theories that East Polynesia was settled from Tuvalu, Tokelau, and/or Pukapuka.
The Proto—Malayo-Polynesian Multiplicative Ligature	*ŋa: A Reply to Reid
Authors: Blust Robert
Published: December 2012

In seeking a plausible morphological source for the "intrusive velar nasal" of Palauan, Reid has argued that the multiplicative ligature *ŋa posited by Blust is invalid, and that the shape of this morpheme in Proto—Malayo-Polynesian vowel-final numerals from '20' to '90' was *=m, from earlier *na. However, evidence extending from the northern Philippines to eastern Polynesia supports *ŋa, and shows that Reid has confused two distinct morphemes, the attributive ligature *na, and the multiplicative ligature *ŋa. His further attempts to account for the nonetymological velar nasal of Palauan from an independent ligature *ŋ that ultimately reflects *na are unconvincing because they appeal to ad hoc sound changes, because they are largely a prioristic statements of possibility rather than controlled efforts to track evidence in a single language, and because Palauan has a regular reflex of *na in the form of the ligature əl , which closely matches the functions of Tagalog na and the similar attributive ligature in other Philippine-type languages.
Kena Adversative Passives in Malay, Funny Control, and Covert Voice Alternation
Authors: Nomoto Hiroki , Kartini Abd.Wahab
Published: December 2012

This paper investigates the syntax of kena adversative passives in Malay. First, we establish the relation between kena passives and sentences with kena meaning 'have to' as a passive-active pair. These two constructions have been considered unrelated. A close examination of kena passive sentences in relation to their active counterparts reveals that kena is actually not a passive marker but a member of a class of predicates giving rise to funny control, a phenomenon whereby the external argument of these predicates is associated with either the internal or the external argument of the passive clause they embed. This enables a principled syntactic explanation for why kena is used in the two relevant constructions. We argue that voice, both active and passive, is indicated covertly in kena sentences when the lower verb bears no morphological voice marker. It is suggested that "covert voice alternation" is one of the typologically common voice alternations, and it enables us to understand the seemingly manifold voice systems of Austronesian languages in the Malay Archipelago in a more connected manner.
Structural Parallels between Vaeakau-Taumako and the Vanuatu Outliers: Capell Revisited
Authors: Næss Åshild
Published: December 2012

This paper examines a set of structural parallels between Vaeakau-Taumako (Pileni), a Polynesian Outlier spoken in Temotu Province in the Solomon Islands, and the Vanuatu Outliers Emae, Ifira-Mele, and Futuna-Aniwa. It shows that these four languages share a set of structural features that is not, as a whole, shared by other known Polynesian languages; other languages may show one or two of the features under discussion, but not all four. It argues that the parallels are too detailed to be coincidental, and asks why it should be that just these four languages show such detailed similarities in structure. While it is not possible on the basis of the available data to decide whether the similarities should be assumed to result from shared origins or contact (or both), it is proposed that they may be seen as tentative support for the suggestion made by Bayard that the Vanuatu Outliers (and West Uvean) received their primary settlement from the Vaeakau-Taumako area, rather than directly from Triangle Polynesia.
Mood and Transitivity in South Efate
Authors: Thieberger Nick
Published: December 2012

South Efate, an Oceanic language of central Vanuatu, allows the expression of temporal relations in several ways using markers of aspect and mood. Pronominal expression of arguments is obligatory and, as subject proclitics occur in one of three forms (realis, irrealis, and perfect), expression of aspect or mood is required in every sentence. South Efate is one of a group of Vanuatu languages that displays stem-initial mutation, whereby the initial consonant of a very small group of verbs changes to reflect mood. This paper presents evidence that fortis (realis) and lenis (irrealis) stem mutation also correlates with features of transitivity, not a surprising finding following the work of Hopper and Thompson. All else being equal, the fortis form of the verb occurs in clauses that have an overt expression of an object, while the lenis form occurs when there is no object in the clause. A further curiosity is that stem-initial mutation has been maintained for just a small class of verbs, so its correlation with transitivity in just this small class is all the more interesting. This paper explores the relationship between the morphological expression of mood and transitivity in South Efate, and suggests frequency of use as an explanation for the retention of this marginal system that affects only 7 percent of verb stems in the lexicon.
Distinguishing Cognate Homonyms in Indonesian
Authors: Mahdi Waruno
Published: December 2012

Cognate homonyms in standard Indonesian Malay can result from semantic shift, derivational conversion, or idiomatization. One problem in considering such homophonous expressions is how to differentiate between a compound word, a fixed expression, and a free phrase. Particular instances are compound and noncompound expressions having a monosyllabic component that is a clitic when not in a compound. Another source of cognate homonyms is the conversion of verb forms into nouns, or distinct word forms involving identical affixes. Finally, there are homonyms that result from grammaticalization or degrammaticalization.
Marking-Reversals and Their Relevance for Prehistory: An Eastern Indonesian Case
Authors: Forth Gregory
Published: December 2012

In languages of central Flores (eastern Indonesia), domestic goats are labeled with reflexes of the Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) term for 'deer' ( Cervus timorensis ). At the same time, deer are named with the same lexeme plus a modifier, being designated in effect as 'forest goats'. This development is best explained as the product of a marking-reversal. Like most large mammals, both goats and deer were brought to Flores by humans, yet the present naming of goats with reflexes of a PMP term for deer indicates that deer were introduced before goats. While some zooarchaeological evidence suggests deer were first brought to Flores by Europeans in the sixteenth century, other evidence indicates the presence of goats on the neighboring island of Timor for a very much longer period. In this way, particulars of Flores animal nomenclature inform a discussion of the faunal prehistory of the region.
On the Grammaticalization of the Kavalan SAY Verb zin
Authors: Hsieh Fuhui
Published: December 2012

SAY verbs crosslinguistically have been widely reported to undergo certain grammaticalization processes and to be used as quotative markers, complementizers, evidential markers, and discourse markers. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the grammaticalization of the SAY verb zin in Kavalan, a highly endangered Austronesian language spoken on the eastern coast of Taiwan. It is shown that the Kavalan SAY verb zin has undergone the process of grammaticalization and come to be used as a semicomplementizer and stance marker. It is proposed that zin has undergone two pathways of grammaticalization and that there are two different forces underlying these two pathways. On the one hand, the mechanism of morphosyntactic reanalysis leads zin to be grammaticalized as a semicomplementizer. On the other hand, it is the forces of (inter)subjectification that lead zin to be open to being reinterpreted as a stance marker.
International Events in the Non-Capital Post-Soviet City: Between Place-Making and Recentralization
Authors: Trubina Elena
Published: December 2012

Recent urban studies have examined the historical and cultural variability by which “the urban” and “the global” have been constructed by scholars and the public. I contend that post-socialist geographers must (1) consider this variability seriously and (2) advance it by exploring the place major events occupy in the institutional practices of urban officials and the strategies of developers. I focus on the run-up to the SCO and BRIC summits in Ekaterinburg (the fourth largest city in the Russian Federation) in 2009 and the ways they were presented to the public. I attempt to analyze these events in terms of the local politics and construction processes as the site of a multiscalarity of urban changes and globalized place-making in contemporary Russia. I argue that a growing and multiscalar international interdependence has a particular bearing on the legitimacy and operational feasibility of development authorities and urban institutions. This international interdependence affects the emergence of neoliberal strategies of alliance-making between subnational politicians and business communities.
For Whose Common Good?: The Russian Philanthropic Society in Finland and the Challenges of Russian Language Education in Late Imperial Russia
Authors: Lam Kitty
Published: December 2012

This article examines the extent to which efforts by the Russian Philanthropic Society in Finland (RBO) to provide funding for education in Russian-language primary and secondary schools helped foster a sense of solidarity among Russian migrants from the empire at the end of the nineteenth century. The RBO dealt with issues that had implications far beyond fundraising for Russian schools. How could the organization finance these schools when the Russian donor base in Finland was so small? How should the society decide who deserved funding? This study relates to the parameters of Finland’s Russian community at the end of the nineteenth century. It reflects on how voluntary associations complicated the mapping of social boundaries that united and divided people. This article demonstrates that voluntary associations’ activities can reveal as much about divisive factors as unifying ones within a cultural community.
Severed Heads and Living Corpses: Lev Tolstoy’s Hadji Murat
Authors: Wachtel Andrew
Published: December 2012

The central image of Leo Tolstoy’s late novella Hadji Murat is that of the eponymous dead hero’s severed head. Although severed heads have been objects of fascination in many cultures, in the modern West they have usually been linked to ideas of “oriental” brutality. Tolstoy, by contrast, opposes the curiously alive severed head of the non-European Hadji Murat, with its “childish, good-natured expression,” to the dead head of the living Tsar Nicholas I, with is “lifeless glance” and “dead eyes.” This contrast allows the reader to understand why Hadji Murat, who embodies many traditionally negative qualities for Tolstoy, is nevertheless a positive figure in the novella, and lets us see how Tolstoy attempted to overturn orientalist paradigms of “Eastern barbarity” in Hadji Murat.
The Impact of English in Russian Advertising
Authors: Amiri Liudmila , Fowler George
Published: December 2012

This article analyzes the widespread use of English in Russian advertisements. The analysis focuses on identifying individual lexical items which have independent meaning in English, and the resulting interlingual homonymy, which is directly related to the globalization of communication. The article provides a number of examples which demonstrate the spread of English in Russia and the ever-increasing fashion for everything foreign which is so typical of Russian youth.
Two Decades of Post-Soviet and Post-Socialist Stateness
Authors: Ilyin Mikhail , Meleshkina Elena , Stukal Denis
Published: December 2012

The collapse of the socialist system prompted the former USSR countries to “re-invent” their stateness. The paper focuses on factors that impede or smooth stateness transformations in post-Soviet countries. First, the paper examines internal and external factors of state formation in selected countries. Next, it introduces empirical research tools and empirical findings that present alternative patterns of stateness and outcomes of state formation. The paper concludes with a detailed review of certain cases that may be considered prototypes of state formation for post-Soviet countries.
Whither Soviet History?: Some Reflections on Recent Anglophone Historiography
Authors: Siegelbaum Lewis H.
Published: December 2012

The past decade and a half has been an extraordinarily productive time for the generation of scholarship on Soviet history by Anglophone historians. Much of this period has been dominated by the productive interface between so-called post-revisionist historians whose formative experience was as graduate students at Columbia University and what I refer to as the Chicago School situated around Sheila Fitzpatrick and Ronald Suny. The three main themes to emerge from the work of these historians and others influenced by them have been: (1) empire/nationality/borderlands/regions; (2) identity/subjectivity; and (3) dimensions of state terror and the Gulag previously understudied or unknown.

After providing brief summaries of this literature and the claims made therein, I offer six thematic threads of new work less dependent on or derived from these two schools and primarily situated chronologically and thematically in the post-Stalin era. These threads are: (1) the public and the private; (2) consumption and material culture; (3) Soviet space as transnational or transcultural; (4) migration; (5) youth and youth culture; (6) processing the Brezhnev era. This interpretive reflection on recent Anglophone historiography concludes with some remarks on the blurring of national or linguistic-based distinctions among historiographies but also the survival of their distinctiveness.
Othellos, Dickenses, and Dombeys
Authors: Glavin John
Published: December 2012

“Othellos, Dickenses, and Dombeys” situates Dickens’s Dombey and Son within the context of the novelist’s lifelong interest, indeed obsessive interest, in Shakespeare’s Othello , particularly the stage history of the play, and most particularly the play’s role as a source for popular Victorian burlesque. Seen in this light, the novel emerges as Dickens’s tortured meditation on the problem—a pressing one, apparently, for Victorian males—of how one might successfully dispatch one’s wife without at the same time becoming a black man.
Still Life: Suspended Animation in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette
Authors: Cohn Elisha
Published: December 2012

This essay considers Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853) as an intervention in Victorian literature’s assumptions about individual consciousness and its alliance with moral perfectionism. While the art theory and psychology of the mid-nineteenth century stressed cultivating vigilance, Brontë’s novel focuses its claims about aesthetics in scenes of stillness, passivity, reverie, and trance. Recent critics understand Villette as using models of autonomous action that privilege either resistance or subjection to the politics of social life, but the novel’s alternative modes of attention suggest a model of embodied, affective experience irreducible to individual agency.
In Hamlet’s Shadow: Mourning and Melancholia in Little Dorrit
Authors: Frank Lawrence
Published: December 2012

In Little Dorrit , Charles Dickens turned both to Romantic and Victorian appropriations of Hamlet and to an emerging naturalistic psychology to dramatize a condition anticipating, and influencing, Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia.” Arthur Clennam becomes identified with the ghost of Hamlet’s father and, implicitly, with his own father’s ghost. He retraces the father’s past, unconsciously seeking out the dimly remembered mother in the form of Little Dorrit. In his psychological bankruptcy, he embraces his Marshalsea imprisonment until, in his marriage to Little Dorrit (always “Little Mother”), he is released without recovering knowledge of his past that lies buried within him.
The Spiritual Economy of “Goblin Market"
Authors: Pionke Albert D.
Published: December 2012

“Goblin Market” offers readers seven tempting encounters with its superabundant goblins, including five episodes in which their wares are consumed, but only one explicit instance of redemption. This spiritual economy of scarcity hints at a moral and aesthetic imperative that includes heroic sisterhood while, through the poem’s appropriation of the conventions of parable, inviting further critical scrutiny. In the postredemptive moment enabled in the poem by Lizzie’s heroic resistance, and in the biblical narrative informing the poem by Christ’s death and resurrection, the interpretive fecundity of Rossetti’s critics emblematizes a world in which resistance and redemption are mutually constitutive.
Place in Charlotte Smith’s The Banished Man and Walter Scott’s Woodstock
Authors: Napton Dani , Russo Stephanie
Published: December 2012

Smith’s The Banished Man and Scott’s Woodstock contain a considered analysis of the social impacts of revolution and the potential for ideology to warp into an ugly reality of principles abandoned. The concept of place is intrinsic to each author’s arguments and can be explored through Malpasian concepts of regional mapping and nesting as the means for tracing the developments and the consequences of revolution in these two novels. J. E. Malpas’s notions of place form a prism through which to view both Smith’s and Scott’s explorations of the various ideological stances and associated domestic and political issues. In The Banished Man , Smith uses place to construct a revolutionary position grounded in cosmopolitanism. Scott’s focus on place enables him to establish a very different argument in Woodstock , maintaining a counterrevolutionary position but a wary, qualified one.
“Myriad-Headed, Myriad-Handed”: Labor in Middlemarch
Authors: Ding Chinnie
Published: December 2012

While Adam Bede remains the quintessential Victorian novel about work, George Eliot’s preoccupation in Middlemarch with labor and the “unhistoric acts” of laborers has been overlooked. This study examines how George Eliot resolves the social and economic problem of labor into ethical and aesthetic terms. Serving as the medium of this resolution is Caleb Garth—the land manager and soulful autodidact, whose feeling for labor as a “sublime music” and whose disquieting confrontations with laboring men enable George Eliot at once to idealize labor in principle and to relegate its actuality to a past at odds with the modernity she advocates.
Jobian Suffering in Shelley’s The Cenci
Authors: Kim Jane E.
Published: December 2012

While many readers of Percy Shelley’s The Cenci have justly considered the work’s Promethean themes, this essay examines the drama in relation to another figure of suffering—that of Job. The Cenci ’s thematic development and imagery make apparent its affinities with the biblical text. Moreover, the play introduces an important moral complication to the scriptural scheme by casting several characters as Jobian variants, or types. For Shelley, who, himself, identifies with Job, the Jobian influence deepens the work’s testing of the questions of innocence and the role of the father.
Recent Studies in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Jordan John O.
Published: December 2012

An assessment of recent scholarly work treating the literature of the nineteenth century and some general observations on the state of the profession. A full bibliography and price list of the works received by SEL for consideration follow.
Self-Citation in Maria Edgeworth’s Helen
Authors: Anderson Emily Hodgson
Published: December 2012

This article identifies a series of “self-citations” in Maria Edgeworth’s often-neglected final novel. Of the numerous literary allusions in Helen , many echo more within Edgeworth’s works than they do with any original source; such citations thus recall not only general literary traditions, but also Edgeworth’s own. This literary practice forms a self-reflexive critique of the linguistic appropriations practiced by Helen ’s characters, even as it becomes a way for Edgeworth to reflect on her authorial career. These allusions reveal continuities between Helen and Edgeworth’s prior work and suggest why this novel has been so difficult for literary historians to place in time.
Dousing the Fiery Woman: The Diminishing of the Prophetess Deborah
Authors: Skidmore-Hess Daniel , Skidmore-Hess Cathy
Published: December 2012

The prophetess Deborah presents an exception to prevailing gender patterns in biblical narrative and religious and political leadership. Her appearance in the Hebrew Bible is limited to two chapters in the Book of Judges, yet the roles and identities attributed to her in the biblical text are remarkable: judge, military strategist, poetess, and prophetess ( naviah ), one of only four named women so described in the biblical texts. This study traces the "diminishing" of Deborah, considering how such a remarkable figure could receive so little textual attention. We trace the lessening and even derogation of Deborah's significance from ancient commentary to contemporary commentary, a process that perhaps began as early as the redaction of biblical sources. We argue that by focusing on Deborah's "diminishing" we gain critical purchase on textual practices that to illuminate scriptural texts also have obscured female voices and even the presence of feminine leadership.
Living the Kindertransport: A Poetic Representation
Authors: Hanauer David I.
Published: December 2012

This article is a poetic rendition of a recorded and transcribed oral life history of John (Hans) Hanauer, a Holocaust-Kindertransport survivor. The aim of the poem is to reproduce in poetic form the experiences of the Kindertransport— the transportation of German-Jewish children, parted from their parents, to England just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Using an arts-based research approach, the poem offers insight into this lesser known Holocaust experience and adds to the literature of Holocaust testimony.
Why Giorgio Bassani Matters: The Elegiac Imagined World of Bassani and the Jews of Ferrara
Authors: Schwarz Daniel R.
Published: December 2012

In the United States, Giorgio Bassani (1916-2000) is undoubtedly the most neglected major European Jewish and Holocaust writer, although Bassani's novel, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1962), was made into an Oscar-winning film by Vittorio De Sica (1971). Yet in Italy Bassani, along with Primo Levi, is considered one of the two pre-eminent writers of Italian Jewry as well as one of the most important Italian writers of the twentieth century. Bassani was part of the Jewish community in Ferrara, Italy, that dates back hundreds of years. Focusing on twentieth-century Ferrara, he has written a series of magnificent historically inflected dramas of the human psyche living on the edge. Bassani's stature grows when one reads his major works one after the other because they are episodes in a fully rendered fictional history of Ferrara that is strongly related to Ferrara's actual history from 1860 to after World War II. Not only recurring characters but also recurring references to real historical events give authenticity to Bassani's Ferrara.
Malamud's The Assistant : Ward Minogue, Prodigal Son and Godfather Manqué
Authors: Rodden John
Published: December 2012

Although his presence in The Assistant covers no more than one dozen pages, Ward Minogue is a crucial, usually overlooked character in Malamud's delicately woven novel. Malamud's title obviously alludes to the relationship between Frank Alpine and Morris Bober. Yet before taking his job in the grocery store, Frank is Ward's assistant. Because Ward's relationship to both Frank and Morris possesses rich significance, a more inclusive angle of critical vision that acknowledges Malamud's title (and Frank as title character) to possess a duel focus heightens our appreciation of the novel. Frank's "assistanceship" is conducted under not just Morris but also Ward. If Frank is Ward's accessory in the crime of robbing Bober's grocery store, Ward is Frank's accessory in Malamud's art. Ward is Frank's first foster father and godfather manqué whose depravity contrasts with the purity and asceticism of Frank's childhood spiritual ideal, St. Francis of Assisi (his otherworldly Assis -tant).
The Story of "Hannah P": Recovering Portnoy's Sister
Authors: Schweitzer Ivy
Published: December 2012

Despite his palpable misogyny and misanthropy, Alex Portnoy has become an alienated "everyman," a modernist anti-hero. By contrast, there is virtually no critical literature on his older sister, Hannah, who fits neither of the prevailing stereotypes for fictional Jewish women: the Jewish Mother and the Jewish American Princess. This essay considers why we as critics and readers don't see Hannah, and how her erasure raises questions about the Jewish woman in the imagination of the time and today. To begin to explain Hannah's absence and reduction, the essay offers a counter-reading of Roth's famous text, in the spirit of Virginia Woolf 's meditation on "Shakespeare's sister," that finds evidence of a counter-narrative in which Hannah Portnoy is not the loser and nebbish her brother makes her out to be, but a powerful presence he can only barely acknowledge. Encrypted in Alex's misogynist and hysterical male rants is the almost lost story of his/the Jewish sister.
From Where Have I Eaten My Poetry?: On Bialik and the Maternal
Authors: Dekel Mikhal
Published: December 2012

The paper examines the image of the maternal in Hayyim Nahman Bialik's poetry and short prose. Contrary to most prior critical evaluations, which have viewed the autobiographical or symbolic mother in Bialik's works as a monolithic representation of misery, helplessness, and self-sacrifice, this paper emphasizes the mother's portrayal as a feared, loathed, and highly ambivalent object of identification vis-à-vis the emergence of the romantic Hebrew male poet. In a reading that spans from Bialik's early lyric poetry to his mature epic "Yatmut" (Orphanhood), the author traces the development of the mother image over the course of the poet's adult life and compares it to maternal images in the works of other romantic poets (William Wordsworth, for example). She also draws parallels between the ambivalent knot through which the poet is bound to his mother, and a similar ambivalent knot that cements the bond between national poet and his "people."