bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Voicing in Contemporary Hebrew in Comparison with Other Languages
Authors: Laufer Asher
Published: February 2012

As some scholars believe that voicing is only an accompanying, non-phonemic feature and that the essential characteristic in Hebrew is the force of articulation, we were encouraged to check the phonetic voicing in Hebrew. Since final sounds cannot be measured with an ordinary VOT method, we used also the "Voice into Closure" (ViC) method. Measurements of fourteen Hebrew subjects revealed that in every voiced stop the phonetic voicing extends longer than in its voiceless counterpart Comparing our VOT findings to those in twelve other languages, revealed that in a "voiced" sound there is always longer voicing than in its voiceless counterpart. Some characteristics that differentiate between languages are reported (e.g., Hebrew speakers resemble Spanish and Polish speakers with a large span of VOT, in comparison to the nine other languages checked). Perception tests of synthesized words (on English, Spanish, Thai, and Hebrew listeners) demonstrated that the voice timing cue by itself suffices to differentiate between the voiced-voiceless categories. While the hypothesis of "force" could not be supported, "voice timing" was found to be an actual physical feature, and it is reasonable to assume that this feature is the main cause of a categorical differentiation in all the languages.
Acquisition of Israeli Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic: A Review of Current Research
Authors: Berman Ruth A. , Ravid Dorit D.
Published: February 2012

The article concerns features of Israeli Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic, two contemporary Semitic languages spoken in the same geographic region. It reviews the complex situation of linguistic diglossia in these two languages as the sociolinguistic context in which each is acquired as a first language by children growing up in Israel. In psycholinguistic perspective, the article considers the impact of literacy on register distinctions and metalinguistic awareness in child language acquisition in general and in these two languages in particular. Empirical studies of children's developing knowledge of the consonantal root as the basis for new-word formation are reviewed as evidence for the interaction between universally shared, general processes of language acquisition and the typologically specific and language-particular tasks faced by children acquiring a Semitic language like Israeli Hebrew or Palestinian Arabic.
Narratives without an Answer to the Question "Why?" Hanoch Levin's רצח (Murder)
Authors: Rokem Freddie
Published: February 2012

This article examines Hanoch Levin's play Murder as a narrative about terrorism in the context of the current political developments of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also examines these narrative strategies within the context of Levin's work as a playwright and director. The larger context of this article is the relationship between theatre and history.
The Terror of Barbarism and the Return to History: Between the Text and the Performance of Murder by Hanoch Levin
Authors: Brenner Rachel Feldhay
Published: February 2012

This essay argues that the two versions of the play, namely, the written text and its mise-en-scène do not communicate an identical message: to a large extent, the production resists the nihilistic world picture projected in the text. The play argues that the compulsive destructiveness of the Israeli occupier vitiates the occupied, drawing them into endless cycles of mutually inflicted suffering. While trying to remain as faithful as possible to the play, the conceptualization of the theatrical event was bound to take into consideration the Israeli spectators' political and emotional mindset vis-à-vis the occupation. The production thus treads a thin line between the play's dark vision of Israel irrevocably sliding into savagery and a humanistic-liberal perspective which attenuates the message by seeking a balanced representation of the conflict.
Arad Ostracon No. 7: In Search of the True Solution to the Riddle
Authors: Shveka Avi
Published: February 2012

As commonly interpreted, ostracon 7 from Tel Arad orders Elyashib—the commander of the Judean fortress of Arad—to issue supplies for a troop of soldiers who were supposed to pass through Arad at the first day of the tenth month, and to record that event at the second of the month. This one-day delay has been a riddle for research. The common interpretation of the letter explains it by the assumption that it reflects the custom to rest from work on the first of the month (New Moon day). The different variants of this approach fail, however, to explain how that can be the case if Elyashib is ordered to profane the New Moon day by violating the prohibition which was most important in ancient periods to the character of the rest day, namely, the injunction against issuing loads. Recently Nadav Naaman has proposed a new interpretation to this ostracon, based on a new suggested reading for one of its words. According to his interpretation, Elyashib was ordered to issue the supplies not (only) on the first of the month, but (also) on the second; hence, the letter does not instruct him to postpone the act of recording, but rather to do it on time. Following a thorough examination of all relevant aspects, we conclude that Naaman's reading and interpretation cannot stand, and the accepted reading must be adhered to. The abovementioned problem still, then, remains unsolved. The paper suggests a new understanding to the relevant sentence in the ostracon, according to which Elyashib was not ordered to delay the recording of the issue, but rather to falsify it; he was to write down that the issue took place in the second of the month, while it was actually done in the first. The reason for that was obviously the will to prevent a clash with people who would not have seen the desecration of the holy in a good light—probably the priests who served in the Arad temple.
Israel as Foundling: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Fatherhood of God
Authors: Miles Jack
Published: February 2012

Paternity as a standard metaphor for God's relationship either to humankind or to Israel is striking for its absence in the Tanak before the rise of the Israelite monarchy. A set of daring oracles insisting that divine fatherhood can only be adoptive both illumines the earlier reticence and foreshadows the later importance of this metaphor.
Qoheleth in "The House of God": Text and Intertext in Qoh 4:17-5:6 (Eng. 5:1-7)
Authors: Fidler Ruth
Published: February 2012

Qoh 4:17-5:6 has been titled "the most explicit example of intertextuality" in Qoheleth, but the Jacob-Bethel tradition (e.g., Gen 28:10-22; 31:13; 35:1, 7, 14) has so far played a marginal role in the exegesis of this passage. This article argues for the inclusion of this group of texts among the intertexts to the Qoheleth passage. The argument is based on (1) numerous common features (e.g., "House of God," link between heaven and earth, a problematic vow, a dream) whose co-occurrence is unique to text and intertext; (2) special contribution to the interpretation of the Qoheleth passage, its irony and its coherence, particularly in Qoh 4:17; 5:2, 5-6. The significance of evoking Bethel is explained in terms of the late history of that tradition and of Qoheleth's forms of expression.
Scratched Silver and Painted Walls: Can We Date Biblical Texts Archaeologically?
Authors: Zevit Ziony
Published: February 2012

This article is a contribution to ongoing discussions about the problem of dating biblical texts. Initially, it sketches briefly progress in dating—defining "progress" as movement toward a designated goal that is measurable by the success with which researchers are able to determine and eliminate incorrect answers to their questions—made by employing literary, socio-anthropological, and linguistic criteria. It then considers the usefulness of archaeological discoveries for such dating through an evaluation of what might be learned from Iron Age inscriptions with biblical connections discovered in excavations, concluding that "the contribution of archaeology to dating biblical texts is nil."
Feminist Hebrew Literary Criticism: The Political Unconscious
Authors: Fuchs Esther
Published: February 2012

This article charts the basic outlines of my forthcoming collection on the historical and theoretical evolution of feminist Hebrew literary criticism in the last two decades. In this article, I argue that Hebrew feminist criticism, as an emerging field, is motivated by the desire to change the subject, shifting the almost obsessive concern with politics in the conventional sense of the word to discursive and cultural politics, from a concern with the collective and questions of national survival and security to interpersonal politics, and from the public to the private. My argument is that this shift is political. As I argued in my book, Israeli Mythogynies: Women in Contemporary Hebrew Fiction (1987), this shift has the potential to generate an internal re-evaluation of ethical and aesthetic values as well as a post-Zionist critique of national priorities. Hebrew feminist literary critics then question the canonic and ideological priorities of the critical establishment and use gender as a point of departure for critical assessments of various dichotomies that structure the Zionist narrative. Gender thus becomes a point of departure for reading the national canon, and the politics of literary presentation—differently. The shift away from national politics paradoxically leads back to it, but this time the topic is visited critically from both Zionist and post-Zionist perspectives (e.g., Naomi Seidman, Yael Feldman, Iris Parush, Hannah Naveh, Hannan Hever, and Orly Lubin).
Language Contact in Judea: How Much Aramaic is There in the Hebrew Documents from the Judean Desert?
Authors: Mor Uri
Published: February 2012

Hebrew was spoken alongside Aramaic during the days of the Second Temple, and ceased to be spoken around the beginning of the third century C.E. Its status in the period between the destruction of the Second Temple and the Bar Kokhba revolt is a different matter, which can be solved with the aid of the Hebrew documents from the Judean Desert—mostly military letters and legal documents. A detailed philological investigation and a socio-linguistic inspection of this corpus reveal that it represents a living spoken Hebrew dialect, very close to Rabbinic Hebrew. Even though it was shadowed and influenced by Aramaic, it maintained its Hebrew character, both in speech and in writing.
A Hasidic View of Dreams, Torah-text, and the Language of Allusion
Authors: Wineman Aryeh
Published: February 2012

A conception of dreams found in a hasidic text, Or Yiẓḥak , by Isaac of Radville (d. 1825), explaining the phenomenon of dreams in terms of the soul's leaving the body and roaming through the world while the body is asleep, can be found in rabbinic sources (reflecting very similar notions in other cultures) and also in the Zohar. Isaac of Radville, however, added his own elaboration to that conception, adding that while the soul experiences its nocturnal journey on its own higher level, upon the body's awakening, the soul conveys its experience to the body in a way that the body can understand, making for a distinction between the dream-as-experienced and the deeper meaning of the same dream, a distinction recalling later Freudian theory. Though never explicitly stated, the real significance of the Radviller's conception of dreams lies in an implicit parallel with his view of the Torah as he viewed the surface-meaning of the Torah-text—like the scenario in a dream—as a garment of its deeper and truer meaning. And furthermore, also foreshadowing later psychological theory, he held that the dream-as-experienced contains allusions to its real meaning and, similarly, the pshat (surface-level) of the Torah is to be read as a network of allusions to the Torah's deeper and truer meaning. Both dreams and Torah (like poetry) speak in a language of allusion.
Producing the (Eretz-) Israeli Place: On the Documentary Urge in Kibbutz Literature
Authors: Keshet Shula
Published: February 2012

The present article suggests returning to the starting point of kibbutz literature, to observe several of the avant-garde models created within the kibbutz society from the perspective of a century. The writers' avant-garde urge spurred them to create an ex nihilo repertoire for those spheres of life in which the old repertoire was unsuited to the needs of the new reality. New models of collective or semi-collective forms of writing were created, which were compatible with the experience of communal life; and the narrator perceived himself, first and foremost, as an emissary, a narrator-witness. This study will serve as a preface to a poetic and ideological discussion of Assaf Inbari's 2009 novel, Habayta (Home). Inbari's novel continues the tradition of documentary avant-garde writing that seeks to relate a collective story, the story of the creation of the "place." The writer's transformation of documentary material, and his sophisticated use of the collective voice, which is also simultaneously personal, makes this novel an innovative and complex work of art.
Letting the Air Into a Relationship: Metaphorical Abortion in 'Hill White Elephants'
Authors: Wyche David
Published: February 2012

The proposed abortion in Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" functions as a metaphor for the fate of the story's protagonist and is an allegorical vehicle for the author's response to a series of truncated relationships in his own life. Jig and the American conduct an emotional debate in which both adopt negotiating positions diametrically opposed to their true beliefs, while each heart remains unmoved. The ultimate consequence, whether or not Jig's pregnancy is allowed to continue, is the termination—the abortion—of the couple's relationship. This reading suggests Hemingway's estrangement from friends and mentors, and events surrounding the dissolution of his first marriage, as significant influences on the story.
Leo Bersani, Terrence Malick’s Witt, and Henry James: A Future Past for Astyanax?
Authors: Caserio Robert L.
Published: February 2012

Leo Bersani’s A Future for Astyanax argues that Henry James’s fiction strains against the conventions of literary realism but does not successfully free itself from aesthetic realism’s ideological shortcomings. Despite Bersani’s consequent consignment of James to the cultural past, however, Bersani’s later writing, especially his analysis of the character of Witt in Terrence Malick’s film The Thin Red Line , suggests that Bersani might yet number James among the companions of Astyanax. It is possible to see in Bersani’s emphasis on Witt’s capacity for passively registering experience and being, penetrated by it, a potential for a closer convergence of James’s art with Bersani’s thought.
Henry James’s Virtual Beast
Authors: Moses Omri
Published: February 2012

This article draws some connections between Leo Bersani’s early work and his late book, Intimacies , tracking how he accounts for individuals who succeed in embracing a future more open to possibility. He extols literary characters such as the protagonist of Henry James’s “The Beast in the Jungle,” who lives his life in a fantasy of anticipation. The piece criticizes Bersani for extolling a “pure,” unrealized form of desire over one that is more pragmatically oriented. James, it suggests, explores a form of “virtuality” or potential within situations that requires individuals to make distinct choices, rather than perpetually to suspend choice.
Can Counter-Terrorist Internment Ever be Legitimate?
Authors: de Londras Fiona
Published: February 2012

Counter-terrorist internment is generally rejected as illegitimate from a human rights perspective. However, while the practice of counter-terrorist internment has long resulted in the infringement of human rights, this article argues that the concept of internment holds some potential for legitimacy. This potential can only be realized if four legitimacy factors are fully embraced and complied with: public justificatory deliberation, non-discrimination, meaningful review, and effective temporal limitation. Outlining these factors, this article imagines a system of internment that is legitimate from a human rights perspective and can serve both real and pressing security needs, and rights-based legitimacy needs.
Engendering the Reparations Jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: The Promise of the Cotton Field Judgment
Authors: Rubio-Marín Ruth , Sandoval Clara
Published: February 2012

This article puts forward the elements of a holistic gender approach to reparations to be followed by international tribunals in cases of violence and discrimination against women, and uses them to test the reparation’s jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, giving particular attention to the Castro Castro Prison and the Cotton Field decisions. The article considers the significant progress made by the Court so far, as well as the major challenge that still lies ahead in making reparations gender-sensitive and delivering, although in a modest way, transformative remedies able to subvert sexual hierarchies.
Information, Choice and Political Consumption: Human Rights in the Checkout Lane
Authors: Scruggs Lyle , Hertel Shareen , Best Samuel J. , Jeffords Christopher
Published: February 2012

Politically motivated consumption behaviors (such as boycotts) are a significant source of human rights mobilization, yet the roots of individual consumption decisions are under-explored in the human rights literature. This article uses original national survey data to evaluate key factors that influence individual decisions to stop purchasing products for broader social purposes, highlighting the role that personal interest, access to particular types of information, and a sense of efficacy play in shaping the decision to consume ethically.
Capitalism and the Development of the Tin Industry in Burma
Authors: Hillman John
Published: February 2012

Although Burma played an important role in the Asian tin industry during the era of mercantile capital, it faded into insignificance during the nineteenth century, the era of finance capital, but recovered in the first part of the twentieth as its deposits were exploited by western industrial capital. The first phase rested on the strategic location of Tenasserim astride the trade routes across the isthmus of Kra and outside the control of Western mercantile trading companies. However, that same location made it a site of the Burmese- Siamese wars which brought this era to end in devastation. Although the East India Company promoted exploitation of the mineral resources of Tenasserim following the first Anglo-Burma war, it was unable to establish the institutional infrastructure that allowed Chinese capitalists to finance the tin industry elsewhere. As tin prices rose in the twentieth century, British, South African and Australian capital reinvigorated the industry not only in Tenasserim but also in the Shan States. One of these ventures proved to be so profitable that became the basis of the first tin conglomerate to operate on a global basis. The new role for Burma is explored during the depression of the 1930s, both in the negotiations with the International Tin Committee which regulated the global industry and in the continued expansion of production. Although western capital remained dominant it rested on an uneven financial base, but it provided the framework which allowed small scale primitive workings by both Chinese and Burmese to flourish.
From Gold Leaf to Buddhist Hagiographies: Contact with Regions to the East Seen in Late Burmese Murals
Authors: Green Alexandra
Published: February 2012

In 1767 the Burmese army sacked the Thai city of Ayutthaya, and multitudes of people were captured and relocated to the Burmese central zone, including artists and theatrical performers. This event has been considered seminal in the emergence of Thai influences on Burmese art, including mural painting. Yet, Burmese deportations of people from the Thai, Lan Na, Sipsong Panna, and Shan States regions occurred on a number of occasions prior to the late eighteenth century attack. And, trade networks and religious exchanges between monasteries formed alternative routes of communication between Burma, Ayutthaya, Lan Na, Sipsong Panna, and the Shan States. Unsurprisingly, such variant interactions had an impact on artistic production in Burma prior to the destruction of Ayutthaya and the relocation of artists to the Ava region. The information utilized in Burmese murals ranges from central Thai elements of style and dress to the narratives and methods of religious practice found particularly in Tai regions. This paper explores these aspects in Burmese mural paintings from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries in order to suggest the extent and nature of this impact, as well as the various means – social, religious, political – by which it came about. The murals ultimately present a view of Burma readily absorbing external material due in part to shared religious beliefs and fluid political relationships in the region.
The Making of the Culprit: Atula Hsayadaw Shin Yasa and the Politics of Monastic Reform in Eighteenth-Century Burma
Authors: Kirichenko Alexey
Published: February 2012

The paper attempts to reconstruct the career of Atula Hsayadaw Shin Yatha (1700-1786), one of the key monastic leaders of eighteenth-century Burma, an advisor to the king Alaungmintaya, a
prolific author, and a culprit portrayed as the enemy of the sāsana in several influential religious chronicles of the Konbaung period. It is built as a survey of available materials on this important historical figure with a special emphasis on his monastic affiliation, his role in shaping the religious policy of Alaungmintaya, his banishment from the capital in the 1770s, and his trial, which took place in 1784. The paper explores how the image of Atula as a culprit was constructed and how that has affected the current understanding of monastic reforms in eighteenth-century Burma.
China and East Asian Democracy: The Taiwan Factor
Authors: Chu Yun-han
Published: February 2012

Abstract:
If the People’s Republic of China (PRC) moves toward democracy, it is likely to be in no small part due to the influence of the Republic of China (Taiwan). This influence comes not only from the direct impact of Taiwanese political and social actors in promoting change, but also from Taiwan’s being the first and only democracy yet to be installed in a culturally Chinese society. In addition to demonstrating the compatibility of democracy and Chinese culture, Taiwan’s successful democratic transition illustrates a possible exit strategy that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could follow if it seeks to move away from one-party authoritarianism.
Corruption in India: Can the Right to Information Help?
Authors: Sarangi Prakash
Published: February 2012

Abstract:
India’s Right to Information Act (2005) has brought about a quiet revolution in her quest for good governance. Any citizen can seek information from government and thereby demand transparency and accountability in governance. The Act is the result of a movement at the grassroots level organized by the poor and the marginalized. If properly implemented, this Act will be the initial first step in establishing a deliberative democracy.
A Fragment of Abū Al-Faraj Hārūn's Al-Kitāb Al-Muštamil in Arabic Script
Authors: Basal Nasir
Published: February 2012

In this paper I deal with MS II Firk. Arab.-Evr. 301, in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, which consists of a single leaf. A comparison of this manuscript with II Firk. Evr.-Arab. I. 2388 (fol. 56a, 1.8 to fol. 57a., 1.11) which contains most of part one of Abū al-Faraj Hārūn's al-Kitāb al-muštamil ʿalā al-ʾuṣūl wa-al-fuṣūl fī al-luġa al-ʾibrāniyya (The Comprehensive Book concerning the Foundations and Branches of the Hebrew Language), the first grammar book that he wrote, proves beyond doubt that the leaf in question is a fragment of Abū al-Faraj's al-Kitāb al-muštamil in Arabic script. The two first lines of the manuscript leaf contain the end of the author's discussion on ḥāl (accusative of state). Then comes the entire section on tamyīz (accusative of specification), followed by the first seven lines of the chapter on the method for designating the various kinds of verbal conjugation in Hebrew. The chapter on the tamyīz shows the influence of two books, Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī's (d. 987) Kitāb al-ʾiḍāḥ and Ibn al-Sarrāj's (d. 928) Kitāb al-ʾuṣūl fī al-naḥw , from which Abū al-Faraj copied several key statements and Arabic examples. He used both books to construct his own chapter, quoting examples from Biblical Hebrew that parallel the Arabic examples in these two books.
Shem Ṭov Ben Isaac, Glossary of Botanical Terms, Nos. 1-18
Authors: Bos Gerrit , Mensching Guido
Published: February 2012

This article provides a critical edition and translation of the first eighteen items of the letter Aleph in the first list of the medico-botanical glossary compiled by Shem Ṭov ben Isaac of Tortosa in the second half of the 13th century. It is part of his translation into Hebrew of Book 29 of the medical compendium entitled Kitāb al-taṣrīf , whose original author is the Arabic physician al-Zahrāwī (10th century). The glossary is actually an autonomous one, composed by Shem Ṭov ben Isaac himself, containing two alphabetical lists of synonyms. The lemmata of the first list are Hebrew or Aramaic plant names gleaned from the Bible or rabbinic literature, in which each entry gives the Arabic, Latin, and Occitan synonyms. The second list is organized according to Old Occitan names of drugs and offers their Arabic, biblical/rabbinic, and sometimes also the Latin equivalents. For an Arabic equivalent to a rabbinic term Shem Ṭov ben Isaac consulted (as he tells us) medieval commentators, while for an equivalent to a biblical term he consulted Saʿadya Gaon (882-942) and R. Jonah ibn Janāḥ. The edition of the complete glossary is part of an interdisciplinary project at the Martin Buber Institute for Jewish Studies of the University of Cologne and at the Department of Romance Philology of the Free University of Berlin, the goal of which is the edition and the analysis of unedited texts of medico-botanical literature written in Middle Hebrew.
A Non-Rabbinic Law Rejected by the Tannaim
Authors: Henshke David
Published: February 2012

The biblical law requiring the redemption of the firstborn of unclean animals appears in the Torah in two formulations. While Exodus limits the commandment to a firstborn ass, Numbers refers to an "unclean animal" in general. The Rabbis had two possible ways to reconcile the verses: (1) the ass was mentioned as an example, but the commandment actually applies to all unclean animals; (2) the commandment is restricted to the ass, which was intended in the phrase " unclean animal." While the Rabbis adopted the second alternative, Philo adopted the first, as did the Karaites. This paper examines the thesis put forward by others that traces of Philo's interpretation may be found in rabbinic literature, and that both possible explanations were debated by the Rabbis. Examination of the sources, ranging from the covenant of the Returnees of Zion to the late tannaitic period, reveals that, although the Rabbis were aware of the alternative intrepretation that the firstborn of any unclean animal must be redeemed, throughout tannaitic literature this interpretation was rejected in favor of the position that the obligation applies only to the firtborn of an ass. This essay also discusses the various explanations offered by the Rabbis, on the one hand, for the singling out of the ass, and, on the other hand, for the general formulation "unclean animal."
Early Evidence for Steelmaking in the Judaic Sources
Authors: Levene Dan , Rothenberg Beno
Published: February 2012

The discovery of steelmaking can be considered one of the important leaps in the evolution of homo faber . Once iron smelting techniques were widely used, iron became the most common metal available. Although iron corrodes easily and is rather soft, with relatively simple skills and materials Its surface can be "steeled" (carbon enriched) to produce a hard metal "case." The production of homogeneous steel by a more complicated technique was achieved in India and China a millennium before it was manufactured elsewhere. In those preceding years, "Indian steel" was known only as a traded commodity in the Near East. The present paper is the result of a working dialogue that has developed over the last few years between an archaeo-metallurgist and a philologist. Though the textual material is not generally concerned with conveying technological information, it inevitably reflects the realia of its own environment in both language and simile, if not always in the portrayal of significant political and commercial events. Our research shows that already in the Hebrew Bible, iron is portrayed as something more than just the common metal that it is, indicating an awareness of hardening and steeling techniques. In postbiblical literature, descriptive evidence of the processes of case hardening (carburization and quenching), the forge welding of steel tips, and the involvement of the Babylonian Jewish community in the trade of the highest quality Indian steel already in the 4th century CE are identified. The juxtaposition of descriptions of technical processes, based on up-to-date archaeo-metallurgical scholarship, with textual references clarifies the metal-technological meaning of terms and descriptions used in the Judaic sources. The Judaic sources are here for the first time used as a source for secular metal-historical studies; at the same time, especially due to comparisons with up-to-date archaeological data, these studies contribute to a better understanding of the often enigmatic Judaic texts.
The Epistolary Story in Haskalah Literature: Isaac Euchel's "Igrot Meshulam"
Authors: Pelli Moshe
Published: February 2012

This study of the epistolary genre in Hebrew Haskalah literature examines several epistolary pieces published in Hameʾasef , the journal of German Haskalah. In particular, it looks at Isaac Euchel's "Igrot Meshulam ben Uriyah Haʾeshtemoi," considered the first epistolary writing in modern Hebrew belle lettres . Past literary criticism attributed Euchel's piece to the influence of Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes . I argue that many of the arguments for such an influence are based on a superficial resemblance of the two works, and I suggest that such similarities exist in other literary works belonging to the genre of epistolary writing and to Enlightenment literature in general, which are in effect literary conventions of the genre. A number of representative works in the epistolary, psuedo-oriental genre published prior to 1721—the publication date of Lettres Persanes —as well as works published subsequently, such as The Jewish Spy, Turkish Spy , and Chinese Spy , were studied to see whether the alleged similarities could be found in these works as well. The result undermines the theory of an exclusive dependence of "Igrot Meshulam " on Montesquieu and shows its possible affinity to other epistolary writings. More importantly, the writer argues that Euchel's non-fictional epistolary work, "Igrot Yitsḥaq Eichel Letalmido Michal Friedländer," which was also published in Hameʾasef , sheds more light on the fictional work.
Gendering Hebrew Modernism: Rachel Bluvstein and Avraham Shlonsky on the Pages of Musaf Davar
Authors: Brenner Naomi
Published: February 2012

Hebrew poets Avraham Shlonsky and Rachel Bluvstein have been inscribed in the literary canon in very different manners: Shlonsky as a trailblazing, combative modernist, Rachel as a popular, sentimental poetess. Yet both poets were active contributors to the newpaper Davar's literary supplement in the mid-1920s, which in August 1926 featured Rachel's poem "Like a Fowl in a Butcher's Grasp" and Shlonsky's "On the Smooth Floor" together on its cover. The visual juxtaposition of the poems provides a glimpse of the Yishuv's vibrant literary environment in which two poets with divergent modernist approaches were reading and commenting on each other's work. This article examines a poetic and critical interchange between Rachel and Shlonsky that took place on the pages of Musaf davar and other literary journals during 1926-1927. Literary scholarship has typically placed Rachel in the context of her female contemporaries and Shlonsky in the male arena of the Hebrew literary center, but a closer look at the work, and specifically, the language, of the poets themselves shows a deft manipulation of gendered rhetoric as part of a veiled exchange about maximalist and minimalist poetics. Their critical conversation demonstrates the versatility of gender as a modernist concept, as well as the importance of reading the work of these two poets together, as joint participants in emergent Hebrew modernism.
Natural Syntax of Slovenian: The Complex Sentence
Authors: Cvetko-Orešnik Varja , Orešnik Janez
Published: February 2012

This paper applies the framework of Natural Syntax to complex sentences in Slovenian, with the twin goals of introducing the framework to Slavicists and showing how it deals with Slavic language data. The framework of Natural Syntax as initiated by Janez Orešnik, in the tradition of (morphological) naturalness as established by Wolfgang Dressler and Willi Mayerthaler, is a developing deductive theory. The naturalness judgments are couched in naturalness scales, which follow from the basic parameters (or "axioms") listed at the beginning of the paper. The predictions of the theory are calculated in what are known as deductions, the chief components of each being a pair of naturalness scales and the rules governing the alignment of corresponding naturalness values. Parallel and chiastic alignment are distinguished and related to Henning Andersen's early work on markedness.
On Speaker Identifiability
Authors: Kagan Olga
Published: February 2012

In this paper, I investigate the notion of speaker identifiability, a term that is strongly associated with the pragmatic approach to specificity. Following Haspelmath 1997, I provide evidence from Russian for the linguistic relevance of speaker identifiability. In particular, I discuss two series of existential indefinites, koe - items and - to items, which are inherently specified as identifiable or not identifiable to the speaker. This specification is shown to be independent of such phenomena as the free-choice effect or narrow scope relative to another operator in the logical form of the sentence. I propose a formal analysis of speaker identifiability formulated within the framework of possible-world semantics. According to this account, an NP is speaker-identifiable if and only if it picks up the same individual in every possible world that is compatible with the speaker's worldview. Speaker identifiability is analyzed as a condition on the relative scope of an existential operator that ranges over individuals and a universal quantifier which quantifies over a set of possible worlds introduced by the context. I also argue that the speaker (non-)identifiability meaning component contributed by the investigated items constitutes a conventional implicature.
The Influence of Socioeconomic Status and Fuelwood Access on Domestic Fuelwood Use in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest
Authors: Wilcox-Moore Kellie , Brannstrom Christian , Sorice Michael G. , Kreuter Urs P.
Published: February 2012

No estado de Minas Gerais, domicílios rurais usam a lenha da Mata Atlântica como fonte energética doméstica. Pesquisamos as motivações das desições energéticas domiciliares em quatro comunidades rurais mineiras por meio de um questionário aplicado a 48 domicílios e entrevistas semi-estruturadas. O variável para status sócio-econômico e a interação entre status e acesso à lenha explicaram uma porcentagem significativa da variação na coleta da lenha, o variável que usamos para medir, indiretamente, o uso da lenha. O uso domiciliar da lenha pode ser explicado pelas circunstâncias particulares dos domicílios, o que geralizamos em quatro tipologias que podem informar estudos futuros sobre o uso da lenha.
Perception of exuberant exponence in Batsbi: Functional or incidental?
Authors: Harris Alice C. , Samuel Arthur G.
Published: February 2012

Abstract: Batsbi has multiple exponence (redundant marking) in gender-number agreement, and in this article we explore the question of whether marking of this kind is functional. In a series of three experiments, we compare verbs that have no agreement marker with ones that have a single marker, and we compare verbs with one agreement marker with ones that have two. We find that word recognition is slower with agreement than without it; and words with two agreement markers are recognized more slowly and with more errors relative to verbs with a single marker. For grammaticality judgments, subjects were generally slower to respond when the verb carried more markers. For verbs with no marker versus verbs with one marker, this extra cognitive effort yielded improved accuracy; however, this advantage did not extend to multiple exponence, as the extra processing time did not produce much improvement in accuracy. In cued recall, the presence of one marker conferred a clear advantage in accuracy, but the presence of two agreement markers actually resulted in decreased accuracy. Overall, multiple exponence was found not to confer a functional advantage in these experiments.
Terrors of the Mirror and the Mise en Abyme of Graphic Novel Autobiography
Authors: Chaney Michael A.
Published: February 2012

Why are so many of the most critically acclaimed graphic novels autobiographical? Why do so many of these works contain scenes of mirroring or the trope of mise en abyme , in which the picture has within it an identical miniature picture? This essay probes the formal mechanics of autobiographical graphic novels to show how mirror scenes and their self-conscious play with pictorial identity forge autobiographical subjects. This essay, therefore, analyzes not simply the form of autobiographical graphic novels but their formal unconscious as well. Drawing on comics scholarship, autobiography studies, and psychoanalysis, it investigates Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (2003) and James Kochalka’s American Elf: The Collected Sketchbook Diaries (2004) to show that in frequency and function these mirror moments mark “failed encounters with the real.”
Heroic Identity in the Dilessi Affair, Aris Velouhiotis, and Alexander: A Reading of Angelopoulos's Megalexandros
Authors: Myrsiades Linda
Published: February 2012

Theodoros Angelopoulos's Megalexandros might have achieved only mixed critical and popular success, but as an eye into Greek history the film provides a psychological autopsy of the Greek hero in his many contradictory guises and enables us to move through its several conflations and transformations to view Greek history in a newly striking light. This paper will examine the film's construction of heroic identity, an identity that has its roots in listes (the Dilessi affair), andartes (Aris Velouhiotis), popular culture (Karagiozis), and history (the historical Alexander the Great), providing a run-up of Greek history from the Hellenistic through the Byzantine period up to the 1940s. The ambiguous and often perplexing nature of Megalexandros is clarified in this paper as an historical pastiche that capitalizes on invented rituals, storying as a constructive technique, and resemblances that connect memory to yield a paranoid narrative. It is a narrative that speaks to a split heroic identity that both complicates history and is fractured by it. The hero is understood here as a complex double that confounds the monster-slayer with the monster and the hero with pariah in a narrative that emerges out of liberationist mythic Byzantine folk culture only to collapse into a failed text of Greek against Greek that can only end, as it does, in an anthropophagic feasting on the hero that cannibalizes the social fabric even as it enables a starved body politic to survive its savior.
Race/Class/Language: "El Negro" Speaks Cuban Whiteness in the Teatro Bufo
Authors: Civantos Christina
Published: February 2012

This essay focuses on the intersections between race, class, and language — hierarchical conceptions of "proper," yet "authentic," Cuban speech — in representations of pseudo-intellectual Afro-Cubans in 19 th -Century Cuban blackface theatre. The analysis of three key figures that emerge in the theatrical genres of the day (the negro bozal and two different versions of the negro catedrático ) indicates that each one is part of the simultaneous appropriation and rejection of the Afro-Cuban, as well as the intertwined presence of the Cuban intellectual and the linguistic and cultural authority for which he (she) stands. Thus, whites carry out self-definition through the representation of blacks speaking different conceptions of "improper" language. The desired white, yet creole, Cuban identity is always intertwined with the Afro-Cuban, as well as with definitions of what constitutes "true" or "proper" Cuban language.
El jefe máximo de Ignacio Solares y la posmodernidad
Authors: Rivera Tomás Chacón
Published: February 2012

This essay examines postmodern aspects in the play El jefe máximo by Ignacio Solares. The drama presents constant transformations between performers and their historical characters, strong men of the Mexican postrevolution and their use of justice and power. Postmodern aspects arise through fragmented scenes that portray realities affecting the perception of characters and performers. The steady changes of scenes put into crisis, for example, padre Pro and Plutarco Elías Calles who also produce crisis in the performers. All of them interact between a paranormal manner and an intertextuality which creates a kind of fragmentation similar to a film. Personalities, performers, characters and events are thus affected by the fragmentation of the dramatic treatment of the play.
Popular Theatre and the Guatemalan Peace Process
Authors: Millar Michael
Published: February 2012

Latin American popular theatre moved away from entertainment and toward
consciousness-raising throughout the twentieth century as socio-political criticism and calls
for action replaced such notions as catharsis and resolution. This article examines the
development and performance of the play No hay cosa oculta que no venga a descubrirse in
the Guatemalan community of Santa María Tzejá. The play was produced following the
1992 return of the refugees and consists primarily of the memories of their experiences with
violence. The lasting effects of this play show that the type of emotional purgation historically
employed as and derided as an instrument of social control returns here as a vital element for
collective social transformation.
Out of Place: Space as Trope in Recent Argentine Theatre
Authors: Magnarelli Sharon
Published: February 2012

Although any performance we see necessarily affects how we read and interpret the play or performance text, scholarly critics seldom address this aspect of theatre and how the choices made during the course of production refigure or enhance textual elements and impact the construction of meaning. Focusing specifically on the deployment of scenic space as a generator of meaning and developing on the premises of Ubersfeld and McAuley, this essay examines three twenty-first-century productions of Argentine plays: Eduardo Rovner's Lejana tierra mía , Patricia Suárez's "La Varsovia," and Griselda Gambaro's La señora Macbeth and argues that space, literal and figurative, metaphoric and metonymic, is far more important in theatre than we have often acknowledged and has too seldom been afforded the serious critical attention it deserves.
Situating Subjectivity between Humanism and Anti-Humanism: An Allegory of Existential Faith in Caifás
Authors: Hague Daryl R.
Published: February 2012

Caifás , a work by Panamanian José de Jesús "Chuchú" Martínez, focuses upon universal metaphysical questions that are principally existential. In particular, Caifás expresses support for situated subjectivity, an essentially existentialist subjectivity that occupies a middle ground between humanist and anti-humanist accounts of subjectivity. Caifás supports this subjectivity through an arresting allegory of faith. That allegory of faith grounds the human agency required for situated subjectivity, suggesting that people can exercise agency and establish a meaningful relationship with the real conditions of their existence.
Memoria y final del juego en Una noche cualquiera de Susana Torres Molina
Authors: Ruiz Reina
Published: February 2012

Argentine playwright Susana Torres Molina presents in Una noche cualquiera (1998) a metadrama that serves as an ideological vehicle to recover Argentine memory under the military dictatorship during the period of la guerra sucia (1976-1983). Democracy has not yet lawfully solved the atrocities of that time. The play portrays the frustration and pain of some individuals who, tired of waiting for justice, are ready to take it into their hands. Through role-playing, the leading characters perform a series of games to make their victims confess hidden truths about their past. Illicit methods are used including psychological torture, violent threats, verbal abuse, etc. but at the end, the desired sense of personal closure is achieved.
Entre el diletantismo y la profesionalización: hibridez y transculturación en Las de Barranco de Gregorio de Laferrère
Authors: Carballo Alejandra K.
Published: February 2012

At the turn of the twentieth century, as dramatic changes were occurring in Argentina in literature and the socio-political arena, Gregorio de Laferrére synthesized the historical, socio-political and cultural elements that produced local meaning. Transculturation in this essay is understood to be an issue of political positioning and selection in which two cultural systems not only coexisted but also stimulated and transformed one another. Probably more than any other literary genre, theatre proved to be one of the cultural "non-spaces" in Argentina where the two systems interacted. Moreover, Laferrère's plays, Las de Barranco in particular, illustrate the fusion of these systems. In this paper I examine the ways in which this play underscored the fissures resulting from the confrontation and experiences of alterity between an emerging dynamic bourgeoisie and an outdated oligarchy.
Prácticas escénicas y políticas en Latinoamérica: Escenarios liminales peruanos
Authors: Diéguez Ileana
Published: February 2012

This article explores examples of artistic practices in Peru during recent decades, including those of Yuyachkani and the Colectivo Sociedad Civil, among others. The creative activities studied in this essay transgress forms of traditional theatre in Latin America, which has been conditioned by intense and abrupt socio-cultural change. The performances and "situations" are theorized as liminal practices through which complex artistic, political and ethical considerations can be emphasized. Turner's concept of the liminal entity is used as a metaphor for the in-between state of the artist-citizen who uses artistic strategies to intervene in the public sphere.
Tortured Silence and Silenced Torture in Mario Benedetti's Pedro y el capitán , Ariel Dorfman's La muerte y la doncella and Eduardo Pavlovsky's Paso de dos
Authors: Gates-Madsen Nancy J.
Published: February 2012

This essay examines the characterization of torturer and victim in three plays about state terrorism and torture in the Southern Cone. Given the inherent complexities involved in the practice and representation of torture, I argue that the portrayal of a stubbornly silent, heroic victim, especially when contrasted with a torturer who is all-too-human, risks converting victims into flat symbols of resistance instead of multidimensional characters. Furthermore, heroic representations of torture unwittingly reveal a disturbing reluctance to bear witness to uncomfortable truths about the slippery relationship between torture and betrayal and the power of radical evil.