bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Context, Idioculture, Invention
Authors: Attridge Derek
Published: February 2012

This essay examines three moments in the reception of the work of literature: the relation between the writer and his or her context; the relation between the reader and his or her context; and the relation between the reader and the original context of the writer. By introducing the notion of the idioculture—the singular, and constantly changing, combination of cultural materials that constitutes any individual—it is possible to move from the first two of these relations (where the work of invention and of creative reading can be seen in terms of the artist's or reader's internalization of the tensions within the circumambient culture) to the third, in which the play between contingency and historical connectedness produces the continuing experience of inventiveness for the reader.
Final Syllables in Northern Malakula
Authors: Lynch John
Published: February 2012

Although nearly all languages of Malakula in central Vanuatu regularly lose Proto-Oceanic (PO c ) word-final vowels, there is a group of four languages spoken along the north coast—Nese, Vovo, Botovro, and Vao—in which final vowels are retained if the vowel in the preceding syllable was high. These languages also show a paragogic vowel added after a PO c word-final consonant, but again only if the preceding vowel was high. I suggest in this short paper that paragogic vowels were added after all retained final consonants, that a sonority-driven stress shift moved stress from a high penult to a more sonorous nonhigh final vowel, and that only then were final unstressed vowels deleted.
On the Position of Bugotu and Gela in the Guadalcanal-Nggelic Subgroup of Oceanic
Authors: Pawley Andrew
Published: February 2012

Guadalcanal-Nggelic (GN) is one of two branches of the Southeast Solomonic subgroup of Oceanic. Citing phonological and lexicostatistical evidence, several scholars have proposed an internal classification of GN in which Bugotu is an isolate, coordinate with a branch consisting of all remaining languages including Gela. This paper will argue that there are stronger grounds for an earlier and contrary hypothesis of mine that Bugotu and Gela form a closed, second-order subgroup of GN, here labeled Nggelic. The existence of longstanding dialect networks in the GN area means that determining the most probable directions and sequence in which particular innovations spread requires considerable interpretive work. The distribution of morphological innovations points to an early divergence between a dialect area ancestral to the Nggelic and North and West Guadalcanal languages, on the one hand, and a dialect area ancestral to the Southeast Guadalcanal languages, on the other, the two areas being separated by the rugged central mountain range. The fact that there are some lexical isoglosses shared by certain Southeast Guadalcanal languages with North and West Guadalcanal languages exclusively of Nggelic can best be explained by supposing that, after Nggelic diverged from North and West Guadalcanal, all the Guadalcanal dialects participated in a network of speech communities within which there was considerable but uneven diffusion of lexical items.
Fernão and Fernando: Two Great Travelers
Authors: Blanco José
Published: February 2012

This paper attempts to draw a parallel between Fernão Mendes Pinto, the sixteenth-century adventurer, explorer and writer who spent twenty-one years travelling in the Middle and Far East, and Fernando Pessoa, the twentieth-century poet who spent his working life at the desks of commercial firms in downtown Lisbon. In Pinto’s case, the voyage was the actual physical movement from one place to another, through dangers and adventures, while in Pessoa the voyage was an immobile journey through the inner self. It is argued that Pinto’s book Peregrinação and Pessoa’s book Livro do desassossego can be read as entering a dialogue with each other.
Nietzsche and Pessoa's Heteronyms
Authors: Zenith Richard
Published: February 2012

The ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche – in particular the will to power – are patent in the psychology and writings of Álvaro de Campos, who was supposedly born on the philosopher’s birthday, October 15th. Prose pieces such as “Notes for a non-Aristotelian Aesthetics,” with its definition of art as “a struggle to dominate others” and its notion of an aesthetics founded on power rather than on beauty, and the “Ultimatum,” with its explicit invocation of the Superman, make the naval engineer read at times like a Pessoan Zarathustra. I propose, however, that Nietzsche’s influence is more pervasive, informing Fernando Pessoa’s entire literary project, concerned as it was with personal transformation, on the one hand, and domination of other people – namely us his readers – on the other. Self-enlargement and self-proliferation were an ontological as well as aesthetic program, both realized and theorized by the creator of heteronyms.
Victorian Fiction and the ''What If?'' Theory: Heritage and Inheritance in Daniel Deronda
Authors: Wajngot Marion Helfer
Published: February 2012

The laws and the literature of a society both express and influence the attitudes and norms of its members. The law, however, has a conservative function, while literature can work to change opinions and, in the longer run, legal systems. This essay argues that legal discourse possesses an inherent narrative potential, giving rise to fictional stories that serve to investigate and expose the effects of particular laws. Like many other novels, George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda seems to construct its plot on the basis of the reiterated question “But what if…?” exploring social and moral implications of inheritance law, in particular the principle of primogeniture. The two major strands of Eliot’s double plot, with Gwendolen Harleth and Daniel Deronda as the protagonists, together with the subplots involving a series of minor characters, embody four areas concerned with this theme: gambling; the duties that come with heritage; illegitimacy; and the conditions of women associated with a system based on privileging a male heir. By pressing the aesthetic effect of thematic recurrence as well as an element of readerly unease into the service of the ethical, this novel makes a powerful statement on the subject of inheritance. It may have contributed to social and political change, and counteracted the preserving effect of the law.
Parks, Malls, and The Art of War
Authors: Davidson Ronald A.
Published: February 2012

In the post-war years, Americans migrated en masse into suburbs punctuated by shopping centers that served as social and recreational hubs. Concerned about the civic wellbeing of shopping-centered suburbanites, a group called the Agora Coalition formed in the 1990s to enhance malls' civic functioning through a combination of design and programming strategies. This paper presents an adversarial alternative to such an approach. Rather than working "with" the mall as its prodding civic conscience, the paper recommends strategizing "against" it on behalf of civic life. The paper reveals four vulnerabilities in malls that such thinking can exploit: mall users may not find malls ego-enhancing places in which to socialize; the current economic recession has pointed up that many mall goods are frivolous nonessentials; malls are less likely to engender topophilia than are local public landscapes; and, as successful retail institutions in a competitive capitalist environment, malls employ successful strategies for gaining customers that designers of civic spaces can emulate. Indeed, the adversarial, zero-sum approach recommended here exemplifies the use of market-honed, "mall" strategizing. To nurture such thinking, I refer to Sun-Tzu's classic treatise The Art of War . The 2,400-year old text is required reading in MBA programs nationwide and presumably informs the thinking of many who build and manage malls. What would these people do if they were now competing against their creations on behalf of civic life?
How Meaning Moves: Tan Sitong on Borrowing across Cultures
Authors: Jenco Leigh K.
Published: February 2012

Much recent comparative political theory and philosophy engages the substantive ideas of historically marginalized thought traditions, but ignores the methodological insights that have structured cross-cultural thinking in diverse times and places. In contrast, this essay examines the cross-cultural methodology of Tan Sitong, an influential Chinese reformer of the Qing dynasty who thought critically and carefully about his country’s engagement with Western knowledge. Tan’s work draws attention to how dynamic and plural meaning (dao) in any society is embedded and produced through externally observable practices and institutions (qi) that can be replicable in other communities. Working from these metaphysical assumptions, he draws attention to the possibility of “authentic” imitation of foreign ways of life. His ambitions to authenticity, however, do not affirm a cultural essence so much as they recognize the process of meaning-production as driven by a necessary tension between continuity or replication, on the one hand, and innovation and interpretation, on the other. Tan therefore provides an important corrective to contemporary accounts that emphasizes how the emergent and hybrid character of cultural constructs tends to ignore the ways in which foreign learning can be a site of discipline as well as a target of inclusion.
Parasitism and Disjunctivism in Nyāya Epistemology
Authors: Dasti Matthew R.
Published: February 2012

This article examines a number of arguments I collectively term arguments from parasitism, which Nyāya employs to illustrate that rational reflection, the institution of language, and even error itself presuppose a ground-level basis of veridical cognitive interaction with the world. It further suggests that by such arguments, coupled with its stress on the inerrancy of pramāṇ a s, Nyāya anticipates and supports the contemporary philosophical movement known as (epistemological) disjunctivism.
Illustriousness in the Farmhouse Villa: Reading Virtue from a Flemish-Veronese Merchant Family's History
Authors: Dewhirst Catherine
Published: February 2012

The Italian nobility has a long history tied to landownership, a dynamic example of which lies in the history of Verona from the late sixteenth century. Sweeping economic change, intellectual currents, agricultural policies, and the built heritage facilitated the rise in status of some mercantile families. Tracing the pressures facing a foreign merchant family emigrating to Venice and settling in Verona's Valpolicella reveals the importance of social integration for the family's members. Their farmhouse villa estate represents an enduring monument not only to the contemporary value of civic virtue but also to the construction of a noble identity.
Dance Rehearsal Practices in Early Modern Court Spectacles
Authors: Nevile Jennifer
Published: February 2012

While a thorough understanding of pre-production processes for early modern court spectacles is probably now not possible, there is enough surviving documentation from Italian, English, and French courts to shed light on important characteristics of the dance rehearsal process. We know the importance placed on dance rehearsals, the length of the rehearsal period, when dancers started practising onstage, whether costumes were worn for any rehearsals, and whether the rehearsals were private or public events or somewhere in between. Often the dance performers included members of the elite who placed their attendance at rehearsals ahead of other state duties. Yet the dynamics of rehearsals with elite dancers and non-elite singers and musicians in early modern Europe could not have been what is normally found in rehearsals today.
'Mens Businesse and Bosomes': Bacon's Thetical Rhetoric in 'Of Truth' and 'Of Anger'
Authors: Derrin Daniel
Published: February 2012

Criticism of Bacon's 'literary' Essayes (1625) has sometimes involved a process of excluding from their rhetoric the relevance of the human faculty of reason, appropriating that faculty, rather, as a factor more relevant to Bacon's progressive philosophical writings on inductive logic and nature. The faculty of reason, however, needs to be considered as an element of Bacon's rhetorical planning in his Essayes in order to account better for the sorts of responses he needed to engage in his writing context. That is, looking more clearly at the reasoning faculty with respect to the Essayes should help us to make better sense of the practical aims of their rhetoric. If the Essayes are seen in the light of the meditative tradition and its rhetorical aspects, Bacon's method of engaging rational questions and responses will become clearer.
Changing of the Guard: Governance, Policing, Masculinity, and Class in the Porteous Affair and Walter Scott's Heart of Midlothian
Authors: Broomhall Susan , Barrie David G.
Published: February 2012

John Porteous, Captain of the Edinburgh City Guards, would be immortalized in the Porteous Riots of Edinburgh, 1736, in which he was murdered. These disturbances received renewed attention through Walter Scott's presentation of the events in his novel The Heart of Midlothian (1818). In contrast to eighteenth-century portrayals of the case, Scott's portrayal was significant in bringing to prominence a paradigm in which working-class men could contribute to civic management through policing, so long as they embraced long-held notions of masculine control held by both the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century urban elite.
Active Learning in the Library Instruction Environment: An Exploratory Study
Authors: Ross Alanna , Furno Christine
Published: February 2012

This paper describes an exploratory study investigating the impact of problem-based learning and clicker technology as active learning strategies at the American University of Sharjah Library, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Studies compared traditional and active learning classes. The present article maps the successes and challenges of these unique classroom encounters, and through correlation of findings from a broader educational context, considers the impact of these teaching strategies on student performance in the library instruction environment. Results provide insight into the potential and implications of active learning strategies as a means of engaging students in the learning process and the inherent difficulties associated with measuring impact on student learning. Future studies should consider other variables affecting student learning including student motivation, engagement, and learning styles, and consider a range of alternate assessment models from the education field.
"This Time Round": David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and the Apocalyptic Problem of Historicism
Authors: Hicks Heather J.
Published: February 2012

David Mitchell's experimental novel, Cloud Atlas , confronts the potentially apocalyptic effects of both linear and cyclical modes of temporality. Using as a framework Micea Eliade's well-known philosophical treatise, The Myth of the Eternal Return , the essay demonstrates that Mitchell's preoccupation with cyclical temporality can be understood as a reaction against what Eliade calls "the terror of history." Cloud Atlas 's characters, events, and motifs register the destructive effects of both historicist and cyclical understandings of time, culminating in its complex treatment of human clones as an embodiment of eternal return. The novel interrogates historicism through its formal experimentation.
Production Values: Fordism and Formalism in North by Northwest
Authors: Griffiths Michael R.
Published: February 2012

This essay analyzes the aesthetics of capitalist economics at the threshold of the transition from fordist to postfordist modes of production. The essay organizes this analysis around a close reading of Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 film North by Northwest . At stake is the relation between aesthetic productions which engage the economic base and thematize this engagement. In making this claim, the notion of capital's "axiomatic"--a concept by which Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari designate the relative autonomy of the economic base--is employed to examine the way that, from as early as the 1950s, U. S. capitalism's prodigious industries of entertainment and popular culture began to change to ungrounded, flexible, representational economies. An instance of this shift is the emerging pre-eminence of advertising, which the essay finds signaled in the "value" attributed to Cary Grant's Roger O. Thornhill in the farcical spy plot. This value is referred to as "advertising agency," and signals the collapse of such discrete spheres as the economy and state, as well as of production and consumption. Because of its historical position and its content, North by Northwest is a remarkable text for investigating the transformation of twentieth-century economic modes to a dereferentialized form which we continue to inhabit.
Under the Bus: A Rhetorical Reading of Barack Obama's "More Perfect Union"
Authors: Jones Laura
Published: February 2012

Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech, delivered during the 2008 presidential campaign in response to controversy surrounding Reverend Jeremiah Wright's sermons, responds to a split and often conflicting need both to reassure voters and to challenge conventional notions of identity. In doing so, the language of the speech simultaneously deploys and undermines the liberal models of subjectivity to which we are accustomed in American political rhetoric. While the resulting aporia have been read by some as throwing subjects (like Reverend Wright) "under the bus," they can also be understood as enactments of ethical subjectivity, especially in the terms of Emmanuel Levinas's thought. The article suggests that Obama's speech can serve as a study in the uneasy and generative coexistence of Levinasian ethics and liberal political thought, one that reveals liberalism's incongruities and asks listeners to imagine social relations otherwise.
The Tun Abdul Razak Memorial and the Promotion of a National Memory in Malaysia
Authors: Ahmad Abu Talib
Published: February 2012

This essay examines the national memory of the late Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, Malaysia’s second Prime Minister, his public and private life, as represented by his Memorial Museum. This representation is contrasted with that in public reports and other accounts of him. The article concludes that the systematic and selective representation undertaken by the Memorial Museum is no different from that done by museums during the colonial period.
The Hikayat Patani : The Kingdom of Patani in the Malay and Thai Political World
Authors: Porath Nathan
Published: February 2012

This paper looks at the Hikayat Patani as a mimetic text. It tries to capture Patani‘s power relations with neighbouring kingdoms. From the perspective of mimesis the text expresses similarity with Ayutthaya even as it describes the Patani sultan and sultana’s rebellions against Ayutthaya. In relation to the surrounding Malay kingdoms and fiefdoms the text expresses Patani’s superiority. In relation to Johor it fractures mimetic similarity. Building upon previous works on the Hikayat Patani, this paper offers some interpretations of the text that have been overlooked by previous scholars.
The Malaysia Cup: Soccer and the National Imagining in Singapore, 1965–1996
Authors: Emmanuel Mark
Published: February 2012

The Malaysia Cup is a soccer competition dating back to 1921. What began as a small competition between select Malay states grew over decades into the major soccer competition that involved all Malaysian states as well as the national teams of Brunei and Singapore. By looking at nation-building through the lens of the Malaysia Cup, the article provides an insight into the ordinary Singaporeans’ ‘national imagining’; of a national consciousness that resembles what Benedict Anderson has called a ‘deep, horizontal comradeship’. In other words, the national imagining yielded by participation in the Malaysia Cup stood outside or separate from the government’s efforts to construct the Singaporean nation.
Coloring the Poetic Voice in the Dominican Republic: Aída Cartagena's Yania Tierra
Authors: Williams Lorna V.
Published: February 2012

The assassination of the dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1961 and the civil war of 1965 sparked a revision of the symbolic categories of their cultural heritage among Dominican writers throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Themes that once were silenced or disregarded, such as the subordination of women and the contribution of non-European elements to Dominican culture, were now portrayed in literary works. This essay explores how, in its attention to the overlooked, Aída Cartagena's epic poem Yania Tierra opens up the possibility of rethinking the study of gender and race in Latin American literature. I argue that this hybrid text, which combines pictures, fragments of other poems, street signs, advertising slogans, prose sections, as well as verses of varying meters and typographies, assumes a paradoxical stance: it both works to counter the conventional portrayal of racial and gender differences, and recycles paradigms formulated by prior Dominican authors, such as Manuel de Jesús Galvún and Salomé Ureña de Henríquez.
La imaginación desmadrada de Juan José Millás: humor y melancolía en La soledad era esto
Authors: Morales-Rivera Santiago
Published: February 2012

This essay explores Juan José Millás's novel La soledad era esto (1990) as means of interrogating current appropriations of disenchantment and melancholy in discussions of contemporary Spanish culture and society. Through a detailed analysis of this novel as well as theoretical studies of affect, this essay aims to achieve three goals. First, to analyze how psychological and ideological processes of melancholy are transformed in Millás's text into a sort of autobiographical simulacrum that deliberately blends fiction and autobiography, thus laying the groundwork for a possible challenge to the tendency to reduce literary works to mere historical documents, and the creativity of writers to psychological diagnoses. Second, to reformulate the medical and political conception of melancholy in an aesthetic conception that locates a strange form of knowledge in black humor—understood both as melancholia in the Hippocratic tradition and as a comedy of despair. Finally, to examine how this reformulation of melancholy in humorous terms interrogates cultural critiques of "desencanto," insofar as such interpretations may themselves be self-referential and disenchanted—while melancholy may work as a model for hope.
Rhetorical Invention, Conflict Resolution, and Critical Awareness in Composition Instruction
Authors: Juergensmeyer Erik
Published: February 2012

This article argues for a more comprehensive application of conflict resolution principles in composition instruction. It demonstrates how the discipline of rhetoric and composition complements conflict resolution, especially through theories of rhetorical invention. It identifies three specific invention practices -- Karen LeFevre's social collective view, Carl Rogers' collaborative rhetoric, and Jim Corder's generative ethos -- and demonstrates how these strategies can improve students' critical awareness of conflicting viewpoints.
"Strange" Foods, Taboos, and German Tastes
Authors: Henderson Heike
Published: February 2012

This article examines three contemporary German reports of encounters with "strange" and "taboo" food: a newspaper article about the perils of eating in China, a biographical essay in which contemporary German novelist Birgit Vanderbeke discusses historical changes in the culinary habits of postwar Germany, and a rather unusual cookbook by the same author. These texts provide a snapshot of contemporary German sensibilities regarding food, and they allow us to gain insights about the cultural specificity of taste, historical shifts in our culinary value judgments, and the impact of culinary globalization.
Property, History, and Identity in Defoe’s Captain Singleton
Authors: Newman Ian
Published: February 2012

Daniel Defoe’s The Life, Adventures, and Pyracies, of the Famous Captain Singleton (1720) features a protagonist who has no family and no home and whose existence consists of a series of journeys. In contrast to Robinson Crusoe (1719), Defoe’s later novel explores the subjectivity of an adventurer who has not issued from the “middle way” and has no centering place that provides meaning to his actions. Singleton’s lack of self-conscious reflection and his indifference to the acquisition of property provide a suggestive model of identity that operates outside familiar paradigms of possessive individualism.
Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century
Authors: Looser Devoney
Published: February 2012

An assessment of recent scholarly work treating the literature of the Restoration and Eighteenth 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.
Posted Redux: Campaign Signs, Race, and Political Participation in Mississippi, 2008
Authors: Bass J. O. Joby
Published: February 2012

Entender los carteles de campañas locales como un elemento del paisaje cultural ofrece la oportunidad de examinar la distribución geográfica de la participación política y evaluar los procesos sociales y culturales relacionados con estos patrones. Examinando la distribución geográfica de la localización de los carteles de campaña en Hattiesburg, Mississippi, y comparando esto con información demográfica y resultados electorales, y estas mismas medidas para las elecciones de 2004, se observa que la participación política en las elecciones de 2008 se vio afectada a lo largo de líneas raciales. Los ciudadanos negros vieron un incremento en las tasas de participación, los ciudadanos blancos experimentaron una disminución en las tasas de participación, y toda el área de estudio observó un movimiento hacia el apoyo demócrata. Sin embargo, parte de este movimiento puede haber sido el resultado de una menor participación entre los votantes blancos conservadores. Los carteles de campaña parecen tener una relación con otras formas de participación política, a saber, derecho al voto, y también parecen ser datos útiles para representar potenciales resultados electorales.
The Preposterous Postness of Being: The Case of a Recent Bulgarian Adaptation of The Tempest
Authors: Niagolov Georgi
Published: February 2012

It has been acknowledged that following the political changes of 1989, The Tempest has noticeably engaged the interest of Bulgarian theater directors and audiences. The present article continues this discussion by exploring Stefan Moskov's  Bad Weather Makes a Good Story  - an adaptation (rather a complete rewriting) of  The Tempest . In Moskov's characteristic style the production dismantles and derides all familiar structures, jumbles registers, and drives the audience to the very verge of absurdity. Francis Drake defeats the Spanish Armada and becomes famous. People lose interest in theater and sail off to explore new territories. To avenge himself Shakespeare invents an island (he discovers it before Drake) and populates it with strange creatures and happenings. The characters are ordinary people from the street (an allusion to Moskov's well-known Pythonesque comic TV programme  The Street ) who stop by a theatre poster advertising  The Tempest  and enter their own version of the play. The Bard appears on the stage hidden behind a cliché mask nervously inquiring "Who am I, he, she or they?" and scolding the actors for their deviations from  his  text. Then, his mother turns up to scold him and call him home for supper. In a word: Moskov's  Bad Weather  is an extreme example of art tempestuously liberating itself from all constraints - a preposterous post-Shakespeare which holds a mirror up to the curious case of contemporary Bulgarians who have eventually found themselves washed out upon a post-colonial, post-communist, postmodern, post-structural, post-ideological, post-rational, post-literate, post-et-cetera bank and shoal of time.
No 'Happy Wrecks' - Pessimism and Suffering in Krzysztof Warlikowski's Adaptation of The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Authors: Sakowska Aleksandra
Published: February 2012

Krzysztof Warlikowski's 2003 production of  The Tempest  remains one of the most memorable in Poland: an avant-garde staging by a distinguished director, both politically aware and commercial. This essay addresses the historical, political and theatrical contexts of Warlikowski's  Tempest, and explores the nuances of the production, in order to establish it as an important statement on early 21 st -century disillusionment. Having located Warlikowski's interpretation within the canon of 20 th  and 21 st- century Polish  Tempests , it is then considered in terms of its reaction to then-current issues surrounding the reestablishment of democracy in the country. Warlikowsi's political engagement is analysed in specific terms - as with his Gonzalo's impression of newspaper editor Adam Michnik - and more generally: deliberately awkward performances, unsettling modernisations, and ironic use of Polish folk iconography contributed to an atmosphere of political pessimism and psychological suffering. Prospero's uneasy relationships with Miranda and a newly-female Caliban and Ariel are explored as a conduit for Warlikowski's anger at Poland's social barriers, patriarchal dominance, and matters of gender identity. Finally, the essay questions Warlikowski's sacrifice of the traditionally 'universal' Tempest  in favour of topicality, asking whether the production - or the aforementioned interpretations thereof - will stand the test of time.
"Unhappy Wrack": Re-Reading The Tempest in New Millennium Poland
Authors: Targanski Mateusz , Guntner Lawrence
Published: February 2012

This article begins by outlining political changes in Europe, specifically in Poland, where nationalist movements, tinged with Neo-Facist tendencies were rising after its inclusion in the European Union. In 1995 and 1997, the German director Karin Beier staged multinational, multilingual productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest as metaphors for the challenges facing a 'united Europe ideal'. Targanski and Guntner examine "The Shakespeers"'s production of The Tempest at the School of English at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. "The Shakespeers" are a student drama group who performed predominantly comedies until The Tempest. Targanski, who directed the play made bold cuts, shortening the play to just seventy-five minutes, and omitting several iconic scenes. The production, as a result, was minimalistic, designed to "expose the falsehood of the self-righteous claims of 'justice for 'our' nation by Polish, neo-Facist, parties." The article also discusses alternate gender castings, for example, Caliban being played by an attractive woman, which aimed to destabilise notions of aesthetic beauty, and Ariel becoming a shared role, played by a man and a woman. The article, as a final note, encourages the reader to consider amateur performances as daring, and potentially subversive, as in the case of Targanski's production.
Morphing The Tempest : Alexander Morfov's Bulgarian Wrecks
Authors: Sokolova Boika
Published: February 2012

This article discusses Alexander Morfov's productions of The Tempest (the 1992 original at the Sofia Theatre, and its later 1996 and 1999 revivals) which, though different in tone and emotion, all directly resonate with the tumultuous Bulgarian political landscape in which they were produced. Virtually unperformed in Bulgaria since its first translation in 1883, the play's central concern with an ousted monarch's stage-managed attempt to return to power finds parallels in the unstable power networks of the nation during the 1990s and at the turn-of-the-century: an uncertainty that is reinforced by the 1992 production's carnivalesque overturn of theatrical expectations and Shakespeare's cultural standing. Through a detailed analysis of performance aesthetics and techniques, the article considers the freeness with which Morfov adapted Shakespeare's text in order to magnify its parallels with the state of the nation, avoiding stable readings and instead provoking questions concerning the lives of the play's audience. It addresses the discrepancies of Morfov's significantly different 1996 and 1999 revivals at the National Theatre 'Ivan Vazov', in which the cathartic cleansing and cheerful festivity of the 1992 production gave way to pessimism and bitterness, again reflecting the concerns of a nation which had once more returned to a state of moral and political distress from which there appeared to be no way out.
Postmodern Shakespeare?: The Two Noble Kinsmen in Prague and the Search for Context
Authors: Potter Lois
Published: February 2012

Lois Potter's review of Ivan Rajmont's production of The Two Noble Kinsmen at the Estates Theatre in Prague considers the difficulties, for both director and reviewer, when a play - the first Czech production of the first Czech translation -- has few of the obvious contexts (previous performances, critical tradition, knowledge of social context). Her description focuses on its disparities of style and tone, particularly its unexpectedly comic moments, and on the deliberately inconsistent time frames within which the story is played out.
Nationalizing Volpone in French Cinema and Television: Mediating Jonson through Molière, Shakespeare and Popular Screen Comedy
Authors: Hatchuel Sarah , Vienne-Guerrin Nathalie
Published: February 2012

This article considers the challenges Jonson's  Volpone  presents to contemporary performance, where its apparent resistance to comprehension and apprehension frequently results in adaptation. In spite of this,  Volpone  has captivated the French imagination, resulting in a prominent national tradition of adapting and performing Jonson's work, evidenced by four screen versions: Maurice Tourneur's 1941 cinematic adaptation and Frédéric Auburtin's television film (2003), as well as two filmed theatre productions, directed by Jean Mayer (1978) and Francis Perrin (2001). The adaptations are the result of a re-mediation process which has taken the Jacobean play to French stages and screens in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, turning Jonson's work into a specifically 'French' item through more familiar cultural codes such as Molière, Shakespeare, and screen comedy. Through a focus on each film's insistence on the layers of rewriting that separate them from Jonson's text, the article considers how each screen adaptation both figures and disfigures its early modern source while acknowledging its debt to the Jacobean playwright, and their aesthetic and ideological consequences to specific moments of French culture. Such layers of rewriting reveal both the play's flexibility and malleability while also indicating its paradoxical resistance to adaptation, particularly in the play's ending, which is significantly altered in each of the four adaptations. These alternative endings, the article suggests, destabilise the original's categorisation of comedy mixed with dark satire and are suggestive of the early modern source text having lost significance in the eyes of French film and theatre practitioners and their audiences.
"What governs life": Švankmajer's Faust in Prague
Authors: Drábek Pavel , North Dan
Published: February 2012

In this article, Drabek and North examine Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer's adaptation of the Faust legend in 1994. Svankmajer's Lekce Faust follows three previous adaptations that he worked on : Emil Radok's short film, Johannes Doktor Faust (1958), as well as two theatre productions he staged himself in 1962 and in the early 1980s. Drabek and North begin by anaylsing the construction of Svankmajer's Faust, noting the stylistic differences from Marlowe's version of the character. Furthermore, Drabek and North argue that Švankmajer does not simply transplant the legend into a contemporary Prague, but infuses the 'folkloric, alchemical history of Prague' into the film. The article also discusses Švankmajer's use of marionette theatre elements in Lekce Faust , focussing on the figure of the puppet and its ability to interrogate the materiality and the function of the body in the film. In contrast to the puppet, Drabek and North note that Švankmajer 'mechanises' his Faust, paying close attention to the organic processes and needs of his body, in particular, his tongue. By drawing influences from marionette theatre, Švankmajer is able to comment on both previous adaptations of the legend and the rich tissue of Faust myths, as well as a turbulent, post-communist Prague.
Sexing Death: Giuseppe Patroni Griffi's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
Authors: Silverstone Catherine
Published: February 2012

John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1633), which narrates the tragedy of Annabella and Giovanni, the siblings whose sexual relationship cannot be sustained within the confines of Parma's religious and patriarchal social structures, is a play that drives relentlessly toward death. This article explores the implications of this drive for spectatorship via a consideration of Giuseppe Patroni Griffi's feature film 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1973) (released in Italian as Addio, Fratello Crudele (1971)). Through an examination of the death of Annabella and Patroni Griffi's directorial intervention into Ford's text in the final moments of the film-the massacre of the extended family and the display and beheading of Giovanni's naked body-I argue that the film's representation of death works to deprioritize the deaths of Annabella and her extended family, excising them from a community of mourners, in favor of reifying (in quasi-spiritual and erotic terms) Giovanni's death. In Patroni Griffi's film, death is not only made sexy in the deaths of Annabella and Giovanni but also "sexed" such that men are afforded more space for mourning-and being mourned-than women. By reading the representations of death in dialogue with one another and, on occasion, by considering differences between the VHS version and the cuts made to the DVD version, I draw attention to this differential. In so doing the article considers how spectators are enjoined to look upon violence and the possibilities that the film offers for thinking about the gender politics of death and mourning.
Features and Natural Classes in ASL Handshapes
Authors: Whitworth Cecily
Published: February 2012

This article argues for the necessity of phonetic analysis in signed language linguistics and presents a case study of one analytical system being used in a preliminary attempt to identify natural classes and investigate variation in ASL handshapes.

Robbin Battison (1978) first described what is now a widely accepted list of basic handshapes, including those involved in the ASL signs for the letters a , b , c , s , and o and the numbers 1 and 5. These handshapes are said to be theoretically similar to the more common (and thus more basic) phonemes of spoken languages, and an equally wide cross-linguistic distribution is expected. However, without a subhandshape level of description and analysis, precise differences and similarities among and between handshapes are impossible to examine. Robert E. Johnson and Scott K. Liddell (forthcoming) provide a componential, feature-based transcription system in which groups of symbols describe phonetic elements of the handshape (such as finger selection and joint flexion/extension), allowing the identification of natural classes and potential phonemes.

This study compares standard adult forms of signs with the forms produced by a two-year-old child and focuses on the phonetic features of hand configuration. Child-production errors have been noted to often involve the substitution of less marked hand configurations for more highly marked ones (see Siedlecki and Bonvillian 1993; Takkinen 2003); I suggest that the specific handshapes involved in the substitutions may be motivated by features shared between the target and the produced forms and that this phenomenon is apparent only with a phonetic feature-level (as opposed to the more usual phonemic category-level) transcription of the data.
Computer-Assisted Language Learning in British Sign Language Learning
Authors: Mertzani Maria
Published: February 2012

The fact that language teaching can be operationalized through computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has directed researchers’ attention to the learning task, which, in this case, is considered to be the unit that demands analysis of the communicative processes in which the learner is involved while working with CALL. Research focuses on understanding the cognitive and social processes that CALL tasks create, such as the input they provide to learners, the interactions they offer, and the opportunities they provide to learners to produce the language. This study investigated the use of CALL, specifically SignLab, in the teaching and learning of British Sign Language (BSL). The primary research objective was to identify how students and teaching assistants used the hardware and software in order to learn and teach BSL, as well as their attitudes toward this technology. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire and interviews with students and teaching assistants with regard to their perceptions of BSL learning and teaching. Classroom observations were also conducted to investigate the actual teaching and learning activity occurring in the SignLab classroom.
Human Rights in Deleuze and Bergson’s Later Philosophy
Authors: Lefebvre Alexandre
Published: February 2012

Gilles Deleuze’s later thought revolves around the problem of immanence. Indeed, his final piece, “Immanence: a Life”, restates his definition of philosophy as thought faithful to immanence. But Deleuze’s commitment to immanence also informs his scathing criticism of human rights. His objection is that they introduce a transcendence of the subject that vitiates political thought and practice. In this article, I argue that while Deleuze’s objection pertains to a dominant tradition of human rights, it is possible to conceive of human rights as consistent with a philosophy of immanence. My model is Henri Bergson’s Two Sources of Morality and Religion. In his last great work, Bergson identifies the driving force behind the history of human rights – from its Christian origins down to modern declarations – as an affirmation of the creative force of life and time. Bergson honors the received ends of human rights – such as the flourishing of human faculties and universal love – by framing them as concomitants of the open-soul: those individuals who most resolutely acknowledge the immanence of man and life. Bergson’s theory, I argue, leads to a surprising conclusion: It takes a philosopher (in Deleuze’s sense) to properly see the origin, function, and value of human rights.
Performance as Pathology: The Case of Munchausen's Syndrome and Performative Illness
Authors: Alvarez Natalie
Published: February 2012

Munchausen's syndrome is the term applied to patients who chronically perform or feign illness with seemingly no ulterior motive. In the absence of an apparent motive, the diagnosis of Munchausen's effectively pathologizes performance—a pathologization arising in response to virtuosic performances of illness that often succeed, for a time, in duping doctors. This essay examines Munchausen's as a performative illness wherein the simulated symptom has the potential to produce the symptom, leading to an understanding of the body as not merely extension or materiality, but also as psyche. In this psychophysiological understanding, the performer-patient who simulates the symptom effectively undergoes it, becoming in turn both ill and not ill.
Pigs Might Fly: Dance in the Time of Swine Flu
Authors: Rae Paul
Published: February 2012

This essay takes the coincidence of pandemic H1N1/09 virus (so-called swine flu) and a collaborative dance-making project in Beijing in 2009 as a starting point for exploring some of the corporeal consequences of "Asian modernity." Tasked with researching the dance-making collaboration, I found that public debate about the pandemic, and the attendant restrictions on travel and movement, threw into relief otherwise unnoticed aspects of the choreographic process and the meanings of the resulting performances. Accordingly, the essay locates the project in relation to some of the networks of mobility, meaning, and exchange that impacted inter-corporeal relations within the dance studio, and extended out from it along flight paths and vectors of disease. In so doing, the analysis considers human-animal relations, intercultural collaboration, the status of the dancer in a "risk society," and the ethics of performance research against the backdrop of China's reemergence to geopolitical prominence on the world stage.
Lakewood: Portraits of a Sacred American Suburb
Authors: Johnson Tom M.
Published: February 2012

The aftermath of 9/11 compelled Tom M Johnson to focus upon long-term concepts. Tom's first project, "Lakewood: Portraits of a Sacred American Suburb," returned him to the streets and neighborhoods of the suburb where he was raised in search of visuals and memories of his boyhood. Tom now lives in Lakewood with his wife and four cats and is in the process of working on a book of his Lakewood photographs.
Tract Homes on the Range: The Suburbanization of the American West
Authors: Bennett Robert
Published: February 2012

The suburbanization of the American West challenges western critics to develop a new and more complicated understanding of the material and cultural landscapes of the emerging American New West. In their penetrating and often critical explorations of how suburbanization has reshaped the American West, however, many western writers, musicians, filmmakers, and artists have explored a wide range of diverse perspectives from which to better understand how suburbia is reshaping western lands and cultures. In particular, recent popular music from and about the emerging suburban New West has developed a particularly trenchant, though perhaps also one-sided and hyperbolic, critique of suburbanization's destructive impact on the American West.
"A Kingdom of a Thousand Princes but No Kings": The Postsuburban Network in Douglas Coupland's Microserfs
Authors: Foster Tim
Published: February 2012

This essay argues that Douglas Coupland's 1995 novel Microserfs is a fiction that represents the postsuburban spaces of the West, and Silicon Valley in particular, as a direct contrast to previous conceptions of suburban space as restrictive and conformist. Critics of Coupland's work have positioned him as a writer happy to champion the older suburban forms of subdivisions and tract homes, but this essay suggests that he is equally as interested in engaging with changing socio-spatial forms and that Silicon Valley, written about by historians as an environment predicated on innovation and prosperity, and as a typical example of an 'Edge City', is scripted by Coupland as a new and empowering phase in the capitalist spatial matrix. Drawing on theoretical work that sees space as being socially produced, Foster shows how Microserf sasserts that the postsuburban spatiality of Silicon Valley is created through an interaction between the characters and the places they live and work in. He argues that the novel deconstructs such pre-existing binaries as city/suburb and home/work and that the new phase of the postindustrial capitalist production of space being entered into in the mid-1990s is directly influenced by the social relations the characters enact. As such, he demonstrates how the novel's narrative dramatizes the maturation of the lead characters through the creation of a communal and mutually beneficial Internet start-up and therefore allows for a revised conception of both the social hierarchies traditionally associated with capitalism and the centrality of the idea of the frontier to the making of a Western imaginary.