bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Program of Physical Rehabilitation during Hemodialysis Sessions Improves the Fitness of Dialysis Patients
Authors: Gołębiowski Tomasz , Kusztal Mariusz , Weyde Wacław , Dziubek Wioletta , Woźniewski Marek , Madziarska Katarzyna , Krajewska Magdalena , Letachowicz Krzysztof , Strempska Beata , Klinger Marian
Published: February 2012

Aim: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the influence of cycle exercise during hemodialysis (HD) on patients’ physical proficiency, muscle strength, quality of life and selected laboratory parameters. Patients and Methods: In a group of 29 (15 female, 14 male) HD patients (age 64.2 ± 13.1 years), 3 months of cycle training during dialysis sessions was performed. The following data were analyzed: strength of lower extremities (six-minute walk test, isokinetic knee extension, flexion peak torque), nutrition parameters (albumin, BMI), inflammation intensity (CRP, IL-6), and quality of life (SF-36v2). Results: In the six-minute walk test, the increase in walk velocity was 4% (3.56 km/h before and 3.73 km/h after cycle training; p < 0.01). At angular velocity (AV) of 60°/s, extension peak torque in the knee joint rose by 7% and at AV of 300°/s by 4% (p = 0.04). Flexion peak torque at AV of 180°/s increased by 13% (p = 0.0005). The program does not influence nutrition or inflammation parameters. No complications directly related to exercise were observed. Conclusion: Cycle exercise during dialysis is safe even in older HD patients with multiple comorbidities. It results in a significant increase in general patient walking ability and in a gain in lower extremity muscle strength.
Atherothrombotic Burden and Medium-Term Prognosis in Patients with Acute Ischemic Stroke: Findings of the SIRIO Study
Authors: Cimminiello Claudio , Zaninelli Augusto , Carolei Antonio , Sacco Simona , Toni Danilo , Gensini Gianfranco
Published: February 2012

Background: Short- and medium-term mortality after acute stroke is related to the severity of the index event and the patient’s age. However, recent studies have reassessed the prognostic value of the systemic atherothrombotic burden in these patients, not only in the long term. This post hoc analysis of the findings of the SIRIO trial (Stroke in Italy and Related Impact on Outcome) examined the prognostic impact of systemic atherothrombosis. Methods: SIRIO was a multicenter observational study enrolling patients during the acute phase of stroke of both ischemic and hemorrhagic origin. The present analysis, however, only covered patients with ischemic stroke. At baseline, the main personal and clinical details were recorded and patients were classified as having either polyvascular disease or single arterial disease on the basis of whether they had symptomatic atherothrombotic disease in other sites besides the cerebrovascular location. For all patients we calculated the Essen Stroke Risk Score (ESRS), dividing them into groups with scores of less than 3 or 3 and more. We recorded total mortality and nonfatal vascular events 12 months after enrolment. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to select predictors of medium-term mortality and nonfatal cardiovascular events. There were 2,561 patients with ischemic stroke, 823 of them classified as having polyvascular disease; 940 (out of 2,485) had an ESRS of less than 3 and 1,545 had a score of 3 or more. Results: The combined endpoint ‘death (all causes) and nonfatal cardiovascular events within 12 months of hospital discharge’ was significantly dependent on the following factors: ESRS, Rankin scale and National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale scores, and polyvascular disease. Polyvascular disease status significantly affected mortality and nonfatal cardio- and cerebrovascular events after discharge (OR = 1.44, 95% CI = 1.10–1.88). Age was also confirmed as a significant predictor of the combined endpoint. Conclusions: Besides age and the clinical severity of the index event, symptomatic involvement of several vascular districts was also an important predictor of mortality and nonfatal cardiovascular events in the medium term in patients with ischemic stroke.
Disappearance of Association in Diabetic Patients on Hemodialysis between Anemia and Mortality Risk: The Japan Dialysis Outcomes and Practice Pattern Study
Authors: Inaba Masaaki , Hayashino Yasuaki , Shoji Tetsuo , Akiba Takashi , Akizawa Tadao , Saito Akira , Kurokawa Kiyoshi , Fukuhara Shunichi
Published: February 2012

We previously demonstrated that anemia was not associated with mortality in hemodialysis patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD). Since diabetes mellitus (DM) accelerates CVD, the influence of DM on the relationship between anemia and mortality was examined using the data obtained from 1,385 DM patients and 2,583 non-DM hemodialysis patients recruited into the Dialysis Outcomes Practice Pattern Study in Japan (J-DOPPS). When all patients were stratified into four groups on their hematocrit levels, mortality rate was significantly and steadily lower in the subgroups with the higher levels of hematocrit by the Kaplan-Meier method (p = 0.0003 by log-rank test). When DM and non-DM patients were analyzed separately, a significant association of lower hematocrit levels with higher mortality disappeared in DM patients (p = 0.6280), in contrast with its retention in non-DM counterparts (p < 0.0001). Multivariable-adjusted Cox proportional hazards models demonstrated a significant association between hematocrit with all-cause mortality in non-DM patients after adjustment for age, gender, BMI, hemodialysis duration, SBP, DBP, albumin, total cholesterol, calcium, phosphorus, and intact PTH (p = 0.046), whereas this association disappeared in DM patients in the same model (p = 0.583). In conclusion, these results suggested that the association between anemia and higher mortality disappeared in DM hemodialysis patients, in contrast with non-DM counterparts.
Variation of Second Cancer Risk by Family History of Retinoblastoma Among Long-Term Survivors
Authors: Kleinerman Ruth A. , Yu Chu-ling , Little Mark P. , Li Yi , Abramson David , Seddon Johanna , Tucker Margaret A.
Published: February 2012

Purpose

To evaluate the risk of second cancer (SC) in long-term survivors of retinoblastoma (Rb) according to classification of germline mutation, based on family history of Rb and laterality.

Patients and Methods

We assembled a cohort of 1,852 1-year survivors of Rb (bilateral, n = 1,036; unilateral, n = 816). SCs were ascertained by medical records and self-reports and confirmed by pathology reports. Classification of RB1 germline mutation, inherited or de novo, was inferred by laterality of Rb and positive family history of Rb. Standardized incidence ratios and cumulative incidence for all SCs combined and for soft tissue sarcomas, bone cancers, and melanoma were calculated. The influence of host- and therapy-related risk factors for SC was assessed by Poisson regression for bilateral survivors.

Results

We observed a relative risk (RR) of 1.37 (95% CI, 1.00 to 1.86) for SCs in bilateral survivors associated with a family history of Rb, adjusted for treatment, age, and length of follow-up. The risk for melanoma was significantly elevated for survivors with a family history of Rb (RR, 3.08; 95% CI, 1.23 to 7.16), but risks for bone or soft tissue sarcomas were not elevated. The cumulative incidence of SCs 50 years after diagnosis of bilateral Rb, with adjustment for competing risk of death, was significantly higher for survivors with a family history (47%; 95% CI, 35% to 59%) than survivors without a family history (38%; 95% CI, 32% to 44%; P = .004).

Conclusion

Rb survivors with bilateral disease and an inherited germline mutation are at slightly higher risk of an SC compared with those with a de novo germline mutation, in particular melanoma, perhaps because of shared genetic alterations.
Development, Sex Steroid Regulation, and Phenotypic Characterization of RFamide-Related Peptide (Rfrp) Gene Expression and RFamide Receptors in the Mouse Hypothalamus
Authors: Poling Matthew C. , Kim Joshua , Dhamija Sangeeta , Kauffman Alexander S.
Published: February 2012

Arginine-phenylalanine-amide (RFamide)-related peptide 3 (RFRP-3, encoded by the Rfrp gene) is the mammalian ortholog of gonadotropin-inhibiting hormone and can inhibit GnRH neuronal activity and LH release. However, the development and regulation of the RFRP-3 system in both sexes is poorly understood. Using in situ hybridization, we examined changes in Rfrp-expressing neurons in mice of both sexes during development and under different adulthood hormonal milieus. We found no sex differences in Rfrp expression or cell number in adult mice. Interestingly, we identified two interspersed subpopulations of Rfrp cells (high Rfrp-expressing, HE; low Rfrp-expressing, LE), which have unique developmental and steroidal regulation characteristics. The number of LE cells robustly decreases during postnatal development, whereas HE cell number increases significantly before puberty. Using Bax knockout mice, we determined that the dramatic developmental decrease in LE Rfrp cells is not due primarily to BAX-dependent apoptosis. In adults, we found that estradiol and testosterone moderately repress Rfrp expression in both HE and LE cells, whereas the nonaromatizable androgen dihydrotestosterone has no effect. Using double-label in situ hybridization, we determined that approximately 25% of Rfrp neurons coexpress estrogen receptor-α in each sex, whereas Rfrp cells do not readily express androgen receptor in either sex, regardless of hormonal milieu. Lastly, when we looked at RFRP-3 receptors, we detected some coexpression of Gpr147 but no coexpression of Gpr74 in GnRH neurons of both intact and gonadectomized males and females. Thus, RFRP-3 may exert its effects on reproduction either directly, via Gpr147 in a subset of GnRH neurons, and/or indirectly, via upstream regulators of GnRH.
The role of structured stirring and mixing on gamete dispersal and aggregation in broadcast spawning
Authors: Crimaldi John P.
Published: February 2012

Broadcast-spawning benthic invertebrates synchronously release sperm and eggs from separate locations into the surrounding flow, whereupon the process depends on structured stirring by the flow field (at large scales), and sperm motility and taxis (at small scales) to bring the gametes together. The details of the relevant physical and biological aspects of the problem that result in successful and efficient fertilization are not well understood. This review paper includes relevant work from both the physical and biological communities to synthesize a more complete understanding of the processes that govern fertilization success; the focus is on the role of structured stirring on the dispersal and aggregation of gametes. The review also includes a summary of current trends and approaches for numerical and experimental simulations of broadcast spawning.
YbxF and YlxQ are bacterial homologs of L7Ae and bind K-turns but not K-loops
Authors: Baird Nathan J. , Zhang Jinwei , Hamma Tomoko , Ferré-D'Amaré Adrian R.
Published: February 2012

The archaeal protein L7Ae and eukaryotic homologs such as L30e and 15.5kD comprise the best characterized family of K-turn-binding proteins. K-turns are an RNA motif comprised of a bulge flanked by canonical and noncanonical helices. They are widespread in cellular RNAs, including bacterial gene-regulatory RNAs such as the c-di-GMP-II, lysine, and SAM-I riboswitches, and the T-box. The existence in bacteria of K-turn-binding proteins of the L7Ae family has not been proven, although two hypothetical proteins, YbxF and YlxQ, have been proposed to be L7Ae homologs based on sequence conservation. Using purified, recombinant proteins, we show that Bacillus subtilis YbxF and YlxQ bind K-turns (Kd ∼270 nM and ∼2300 nM, respectively). Crystallographic structure determination demonstrates that both YbxF and YlxQ adopt the same overall fold as L7Ae. Unlike the latter, neither bacterial protein recognizes K-loops, a structural motif that lacks the canonical helix of the K-turn. This property is shared between the bacterial and eukaryal family members. Comparison of our structure of YbxF in complex with the K-turn of the SAM-I riboswitch and previously determined structures of archaeal and eukaryal homologs bound to RNA indicates that L7Ae approaches the K-turn at a unique angle, which results in a considerably larger RNA–protein interface dominated by interactions with the noncanonical helix of the K-turn. Thus, the inability of the bacterial and eukaryal L7Ae homologs to bind K-loops probably results from their reliance on interactions with the canonical helix. The biological functions of YbxF and YlxQ remain to be determined.
The Role of Counselors Serving Deaf or Hard of Hearing Students in Public Schools
Authors: Lomas Gabriel I. , Nichter Mary , Robles-Pina Rebecca
Published: February 2012

Since enactment of Public Law 94-142, residential schools for d/Deaf or hard of hearing (d/Dhh) students have lost enrollment to public schools. Public school counselors now must meet d/Dhh students' counseling needs. There is little literature on if and how counselors are doing this. The present study used a survey to evaluate the job satisfaction and expectations of 22 counselors working with d/Dhh students in programs across the United States. Follow-up interviews were conducted with 6 participants functioning as counselors for d/Dhh students. Results indicated that the counselors were generally pleased with their role, which, however, diverged markedly from the American School Counselor Association (2003) national model. The interviews revealed 5 themes that may be unique to counselors serving d/Dhh students in public schools: Authority Based on Experience, Director of Collaborations/Negotiations, Isolation, Surrogate Parent/Insightful Social Confidante , and Martyr .
Psychoanalysis as a “Journey”: A Clinical Method for the Transmission of Psychoanalysis at Universities
Authors: Borgogno Franco
Published: February 2012

The author discusses how psychoanalysis can be transmitted to today’s students in order to arouse and develop their sustained interest. The significance of this issue is paramount in view not only of the current “crisis” in psychoanalysis but also of the lack of research on this subject—a lacuna possibly connected with Freud’s original ambivalence towards academia. The author begins his argument by discussing Freud’s ideas outlined in “Some Elementary Lessons in Psychoanalysis.” He then goes on to describe in detail the methodology he has adopted in his teaching practice, as well as the different stages of its development. Finally, he illustrates his reasons for choosing this method both in a Tavistock-style school of child psychotherapy and in his university courses with postgraduate and advanced students of clinical psychology.
Data Learns to Dance: Star Trek and the Quest to Be Human
Authors: Rashkin Esther
Published: February 2012

This essay explores how the episode "Data's Day" from the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation functions allegorically as a drama of human psychic development and also a commentary on psychoanalytic treatment and the anxiety it can evoke. Drawing on the work of Winnicott and concepts such as "holding," "primary maternal preoccupation," and the "false self," among others, the author argues that the android Data's efforts to learn different dances, specifically tap and ballroom, represent stages of infantile development and the progression from narcissistically oriented desires and needs toward a sense of relatedness and the capacity for self-object connections. As various impingements interfere with Data's attempts to feel more authentic and alive, the episode emerges as a sophisticated reflection on the creation of the "false self" personality. After exploring parallels between Data's quest to become human and other incarnations of the false self in literature and dance, including Pinocchio, Petrushka, and Franz from Delibes's Coppélia , the essay reveals how the episode implicitly comments on the differences between psychoanalytic and cognitive behavioral approaches to treating psychic distress, on the rise of managed care and its effect on modes of therapy, and on the anxiety provoked in many patients by the very idea of being analyzed or "taken apart."
Nina Coltart: A Truly Independent Analyst
Authors: Brafman A. H.
Published: February 2012

The author, who trained in the British Psychoanalytical Society with Nina Coltart, presents his recollections of his valued colleague and friend. Coltart is commended for having told the truth about what went on in her consulting room. Her many contributions not only to the British Society but also to other psychotherapy groups are recalled, as are her notable gifts as a consultant. Coltart was a cultivated and deeply caring person who, paradoxically, had few close friends.
Bion and Mysticism: The Western Tradition
Authors: White Robert S.
Published: February 2012

Bion is widely acknowledged to be an innovator in the Kleinian tradition responsible for drawing attention to the communicative aspects of projective identification, introducing the container/contained distinction, and postulating the existence of an undifferentiated unconscious. His late writings concerning O, F, and K, however, are generally dismissed or ignored by contemporary Kleinians. The author argues that these writings are coherent if we understand Bion's aims and sources. Bion's aim is to find a method to understand what is unsymbolized and exists only in fragments, so as to transform these fragments into words that can be interpreted to the patient. The author likewise suggests that Bion's technical language of O, F, and K is derived from philosophical and theological sources, most notably Plato, Plotinus, Eckhart, and Kant. He proposes that the unease felt by many in reading the late Bion stems from his belief in transcendence and the existence of Platonic Forms.
Algebraic theory of dicritical divisors
Authors: Abhyankar Shreeram S. , Luengo Ignacio
Published: February 2012

The topological theory of dicritical divisors is algebracized which makes it valid for nonzero characteristic as well as mixed characteristic.
Nearly Round Spheres Look Convex
Authors: Figalli A. , Rifford L. , Villani C.
Published: February 2012

We prove that a Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$, close enough to the round sphere in the $C^4$ topology,
has uniformly convex injectivity domains---so $M$ appears uniformly convex in any exponential chart.
The proof is based on the Ma-Trudinger-Wang nonlocal curvature tensor, which originates from the
regularity theory of optimal transport.
The Political Agency of Musical Beauty
Authors: Shank Barry
Published: February 2012

This article argues that music’s political agency derives from its capacity to combine relations of difference into experiences of beauty. The experience of musical beauty can reinforce already existing aesthetic and political relations. But it also has the capacity to redistribute an auditory sensible and to change, thereby, the sonic sens of the political. This article blends concepts from the philosophers Jean-Luc Nancy, Chantall Mouffe, and Jacques Ranciere to create an analytical framework that can make sense of Vera Hall’s collaborations with folklorists and techno musicians over a period of 50+ years. The beauty of her voice shines through those collaborations, compelling a leaning listening attentiveness and evoking an emergent political community.
Splitting Sight and Sound: Thomas Dewing’s A Reading , Gilded Age Women, and the Phonograph
Authors: Naeem Asma
Published: February 2012

With the invention of the phonograph in 1877, listening became detached from its visual referent; no longer was the listening subject required to look at the source or transmitter of sound. Amidst this reconfiguration of the senses, certain artists began to represent the act of listening and its relationship to vision in profound ways. This essay examines one such work, Thomas Dewing’s A Reading (1897), in light of these historical events, particularly in terms of gender and cultural implications. Dewing’s image of patrician women absorbed in an oral reading can be read as a complex visualization of a rigid sensorial hierarchy that was gaining momentum during the Gilded Age with the domestic and secretarial uses of the phonograph. With its passive feminine protagonists, tropes of reproduction, and sensory fragmentation, A Reading echoes the visual culture of the phonograph and its reorganization of the dialectic between looking and listening.
Forced Listening: The Contested Use of Loudspeakers for Commercial and Political Messages in the Public Soundscape
Authors: Sewald Ronda L.
Published: February 2012

Beginning in the late 1920s, loudspeaker technology transformed the American soundscape. Through applications such as storefront radios, sound trucks, and transcast radio in modes of public transportation, advertisers, political parties, and religious organizations used this new medium to capture and hold the attention of nearby listeners. Seeking to expand upon existing theoretical models by scholars such as Jacques Attali and Karin Bijsterveld, this piece focuses on sound trucks and the contested use of soundscapes by powerful interest groups and organizations for the delivery of amplified commercial and political oratory. As sound trucks became widespread, unwilling listeners quickly pushed for their regulation arguing that freedom of speech did not invest the speaker with the right to force the attention of captive audiences nor to invade others’ sonic privacy. These debates culminated in two U.S. Supreme Court cases in 1948 and 1949.
Abolitionism’s Resonant Bodies: The Realization of African American Performance
Authors: Black Alex W.
Published: February 2012

This article examines the performances of Elizabeth Greenfield and Mary Webb, two African American women who toured the US and the UK in the mid nineteenth century. The author argues that the understated performances of these understudied women challenged the culture’s strategies for representing them: The way Greenfield and Webb sounded affected the way they were seen. The texts and images that attempted to represent Greenfield and Webb actually documented and reenacted the performers’ project. These verbal and visual materials reproduced the experience of attending one of Greenfield’s or Webb’s performances. Both spectator and reader were unable to determine the performer’s identity.
Intimacy Threats and Intersubjective Users: Telephone Training Films, 1927–1962
Authors: Scott D. Travers
Published: February 2012

Drawing on approaches from sound studies, this essay explores a historical role of a sound technology, telephony, in assessing desirable people, especially ideal and sanctioned consumers, as conveyed by seven short instructional films from the 1920s to the 1960s. After examining how telephony is represented visually and aurally, I argue that the essence of telephony’s sonic experience—intimate intersubjectivity—is largely missing from these depictions. These depictions contribute to constitutive discourses of telephone usership; they help define a proper or sound telephone user and ideal telephonic practices. Yet such discourses are also entangled with other flows of social meaning-making and power relations. In mapping the contours of good and bad users, telephone training films harness social stereotypes pertaining to gender, age, and race, imbuing seemingly neutral technological practices with hierarchical power relations of different social categories. This suggests what might be the specific threat from intersubjectivity: empathy. I conclude with a methodological postscript.
Audible Citizenship and Audiomobility: Race, Technology, and CB Radio
Authors: Blake Art M.
Published: February 2012

In the mid-1970s, the press and popular culture represented the era’s craze for citizens band (CB) radio, a simple two-way radio communications device, as limited to white Americans. In fact, CB radio had thrived in African American communities since the early 1960s. But African Americans used CB in a different manner and for different purposes than their white counterparts. This article argues that black CB use developed in response to the racial politics of the postwar period concerning meaningful desegregation and full citizenship. The emergence of a distinct black CB culture by the 1970s epitomizes how black use of CB, as a form of “audiomobility,” circumvented white prohibitions against black mobility and audibility, denied white assumptions of technical and verbal superiority, as well as internal black class politics about “sounding black.” From these origins, as an audiomobility network counteracting racism directly and indirectly, black CB evolved into an intra-racial competitive arena, a technocultural practice suited only to the audibly toughest competitors. Black CB’s historical significance rests in its functioning as a nexus for, and challenge to, various histories: of the politics of black speech and oral culture; of the role of radio programming in the creation of black cultural identity; of race and technology. Through research in newspapers and periodicals, interviews with participants, and close listening to recordings, I argue that black CBers built on an already existing black aural public sphere and adapted CB technology to combine with that aural-oral sphere to create a technologically-mediated community based on perceived audible racial identity.
"They lived their life and they didn't bother anybody": African American Female Impersonators and Pittsburgh's Hill District, 1920-1960
Authors: Grantmyre Laura
Published: February 2012

Photographs taken in Pittsburgh's Hill District during the 1940s and 1950s show African American female impersonators riding in street parades and performing in front of jazz bands. Many historians depict queer American life in this era as invisible and isolated, but these photographs, the Pittsburgh Courier , and residents' recollections offer a more complex narrative. The Hill's cultural diversity, black-white sex district, and risqué entertainment subculture lent the neighborhood a "live and let live" ethos that facilitated gender crossing in the neighborhood's nightclubs, streets, beauty shops, and churches. Here female impersonators interacted with their neighbors, introducing them to the reality that "boys" will not always be "boys." Thus female impersonators carved out a visible, enduring, and, at times, intimate presence for themselves in the Hill.
What is a Propertian Poem?
Authors: Miller Paul Allen
Published: February 2012

With the publication of Heyworth’s new OCT, the long-standing debates about the nature of the Propertian text have been renewed. I seek to interrogate the logic and assumptions under which this debate proceeds. My argument is that every time a judgment is made about where a poem begins or ends or whether one textual variant is to be preferred to another, “literary aspects of interpretation” (Heyworth) are unavoidable. The task of determining the text, I contend, is always interpretive and always involves judgments about what the nature of a Propertian poem should be. I illustrate my position by examining both the explicit statements of recent editors and critics and the assumptions behind their editorial decisions, with special reference to the opening of Propertius 4.4.

I demonstrate four things. First, that the ancient evidence Butrica, Hubbard, Heyworth, and others cite as a warrant for the production of large-scale conjectures and transpositions is, in fact, thin on the ground, subject to more than one interpretation, and not able in and of itself to authorize specific textual corrections. Second, concepts like “elegance,” “polish,” and “nature,” without detailed and specific aesthetic argumentation, are far from self-evident or universally agreed upon and cannot in themselves be appealed to as the basis for one correction or another. Third, what lies behind the textual choices we make are specific assumptions about the nature of Propertian poetry and about poetry in general. More fundamentally, what lies behind the textual choices we make, and that goes for everyone from the most radical editor to the most conservative, are specific assumptions about what the ontology of a poetic text is and how we conceive of its relation, or lack thereof, to the authorial subject. So long as we fail to be explicit about those assumptions, our arguments will ultimately be appeals to “common sense” and “intuition” and will not be capable of rational resolution. Fourth, there is nothing impossible or irrational about reading the vulgate in poems such as 4.4, and it requires you to make very few extra-textual assumptions.

In the end, I argue, we are not faced with a choice between a self-transparent, centered, rational intending subject and an arbitrary or unreadable text. This is a false dilemma dictated by an assumed and, I would contend, indefensible humanist ontology. Indeed, the assumption of the first is a separate, often unargued and hence ideological postulate upon which the status of the second need in no way depend.
The Charm of the (Re)making: Problems of Arthurian Television Serialization
Authors: Elliott Andrew B.R.
Published: February 2012

The representation of Arthurian subjects in film has received a great deal of attention, yet the cinema's small-screen sibling is often overlooked. The serialization of Arthurian subjects on television, however, raises important questions about sequentiality and the ways in which we re-imagine Arthurian worlds.
Chivalric Failure in The Jeaste of Sir Gawain
Authors: Lindsay Sarah
Published: February 2012

The Jeaste of Sir Gawain critiques the repeated failure of chivalric violence to build relationships among knights, protect women or provide beneficial solutions to conflicts. Through the character of the woman, the romance suggests that verbal and legal modes of reconciliation could create more social benefit than knightly violence does.
Communism: Intimate Publics
Authors: Luca Ioana
Published: February 2012

My article examines Anca Vlasopolos’s No Return Address: A Memoir of Displacement (2000) and Kapka Kassabova’s Street Without A Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria (2008) in order to demonstrate how, in the case of communism, “intimate publics” was a space of survival, a means to evade full ideological indoctrination and also the very space of continuous state oppression.
Autobiography and the Problem of Finish
Authors: Sullivan Hannah
Published: February 2012

Both diaries and autobiographies are difficult to end. Where diarists struggle to find the last words, autobiographies are prone to being revised after a first draft is complete. This essay compares several heavily rewritten autobiographies from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Leslie Stephen’s Mausoleum Book , Virginia Woolf ’s “A Sketch of the Past” and James Joyce’s novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It argues that the problem of finishing a text is historically constituted, and shows why critics interested in life writing should pay closer attention to genetic processes.
Raymond Briggs: Controversially blurring boundaries
Authors: Evans Janet
Published: February 2012

Janet Evans provides food for thought examining the work of Raymond Briggs and his conception of his own visual narratives. Evans goes on to analyze the body of Briggs’s oeuvre by asking, “Who are Raymond Brigg’s books for?” and “What are his books about?”
Dave McKean’s art: Transcending limitations of the graphic novel genre
Authors: Panaou Petros , Michaelides Frixos
Published: February 2012

The authors argue that Dave McKean’s art breaks from standard conventions of genre and in doing so transcends their limitations. Panaou and Michaelides analyze several of his books and convincingly portray Dave McKean as an innovative groundbreaker who produces extraordinary visual stories.
Representations of Trauma and Recovery in Contemporary North American and Australian Teen Fiction
Authors: Norbury Kate
Published: February 2012

Several recent examples of teen trauma fiction from North America and Australia depict teen protagonists enduring a range of symptoms as a consequence of trauma experienced earlier in their lives. Each protagonist is represented as experiencing his or her own individual trauma, but they share a similar range of symptoms, such as disturbed sleep patterns, a lack of control over their lives, shattered social relationships, indirection and, at times, a seemingly inexplicable inability to act. The past is represented as intruding on the present either in the form of "ghosts" and memories, or in the form of "memory traces." Total psychological recovery is presented as being impossible, although all four protagonists are in a better mental state at the close of each novel than they were at the beginning. The protagonist is assisted by someone outside the family, who guides them towards recovery and enables them to strengthen his or her sense of self.
Death Row Everyman: Stanislas Gros's Image-Based Interpretation of Victor Hugo's The Last Day of a Condemned Man
Authors: Fedo Amelia
Published: February 2012

In countries with a high readership of graphic literature, such as France, comics serve as a crossover medium, bridging the gap between genres and age groups. France has exploited the versatility of the medium, in the service of profit and, more notably, of cultural capital, with comics being used to initiate young readers into literary classics, mostly from the Western canon. The most striking example is the collection "Ex-Libris," published by Delcourt and directed by the comics writer Jean-David Morvan, which includes an adaptation of Victor Hugo's The Last Day of a Condemned Man , a work particularly well-suited for a young adult audience given that young adults and Romantic writers often share a similar sensibility and values: a passion for justice, a love of humanity and the natural world, and a fascination with the macabre. Stanislas Gros, the writer and illustrator of the adaptation, does not shy away from the darker aspects of Hugo's work, creating a work that is both engaging and authentic.
Pathways' End: The Space of Trauma in Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking
Authors: Kertzer Adrienne
Published: February 2012

Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking is a trilogy of ideas obsessed with the experience and healing of trauma. Using the conventions of speculative fiction to probe the relationship between the language of choice and the experience of trauma, Ness frames his representation of Holocaust-like trauma through his depiction of the collective memory and governance of the Land (the planet's indigenous inhabitants). As a result, Chaos Walking differs from many realist historical novels for young people that focus their narrative energy upon trauma as an individual psychological disorder. The trilogy's growing interest in its final two volumes upon the place of traumatic memory in the mind of the sole indigenous survivor of what is repeatedly referred to as genocide enables Ness to ask contentious questions about the healing of trauma, and how individual trauma differs from cultural trauma.
The Catholic Church and the Woman Question: Catholic Feminism in Italy in the Early 1900s
Authors: Dawes Helena
Published: February 2012

At the turn of the twentieth century the Catholic Church promoted women’s associations in an attempt to reassert Christianity in a struggle against its liberal and socialist adversaries. Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) called on Catholics to address a raft of serious problems resulting from social and economic transformations. This gave rise to a Christian Democratic movement and, within it, to Catholic feminism. Focusing on two Catholic women’s periodicals, L’azione muliebre and Pensiero e azione, the author studies the emergence and the nature of Catholic feminism as well as its suppression by the Church.
Vatican Diplomacy after the Cuban Missile Crisis: New Light on the Release of Josyf Slipyj
Authors: Schelkens Karim
Published: February 2012

The author, drawing on original documentation from several archives, examines the February 1963 release of Josyf Slipyj, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic archbishop, by the Soviet government. Slipyj's liberation is explored against the complex background of the Second Vatican Council and the emergence of Catholic ecumenism, as well as the diplomatic and political aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The significant roles of Pope John XXIII; Belgian friar Felix A. Morlion, O.P.; U.S. journalist Norman Cousins; and Dutch monsignor Johannes Willebrands—who all played a part in Slipyj's release—are described.
For Prosperity or Penury: A Comparison of Large and Small English Augustinian Houses and Their Lay Patrons in Late-Medieval England
Authors: Nichols Nick
Published: February 2012

The status, feudal ties, and generosity of the founder and hereditary patrons of a religious house played a role in the monastery’s prosperity. The author argues that although smaller Augustinian priories may have been less expensive to establish and maintain than larger ones of their monastic brethren, it was not always the case that the patrons of smaller priories were of lower social status and/or that they were less active in these priories. As is seen with the Augustinian monasteries in the Diocese of Worcester, the patrons of smaller monasteries frequently were of high social position and played an active role in the monasteries under their patronage.
The New Elites of Italian Catholicism: 1968 and the New Catholic Movements
Authors: Faggioli Massimo
Published: February 2012

After the Second Vatican Council, new movements arose within the Catholic Church. In Italy this phenomenon crossed paths with the movement called 1968 and spawned a new elite not only in the Catholic Church but also in Italian Catholicism. These movements reacted to and participated in 1968 in Italy in different ways, marking the development of a deeply rooted diversity within Italian Catholicism. These Catholic movements represented an initial step in the ongoing replacement of old clerical elites in Catholic Europe.
The Importance of Ethnicity and Religion in the Life Cycle of Immigrant Churches: A Comparison of Coptic and Calvinist Churches
Authors: van Dijk Joanne , Botros Ghada
Published: February 2012

This paper explores the stages of ethnic and religious adaptation and transformation of two immigrant groups: Christian Orthodox Egyptians—Copts—and Dutch Canadian Calvinists. While the Copts are relatively new to the religious tapestry of North America, the Calvinists established churches and other ethno/religious structures soon after their arrival in Ontario after World War II. Established Coptic migrant churches are “vessels of faith”; a source of emotional rejuvenation to nostalgic migrants; institutions for the retention and negotiation of an ethno-religious identity in immigrant societies; and facilitators for the integration of newcomers. Religious identity was more important than ethnic identity in the establishment of Dutch Calvinist churches and other organizations. The orthodox Calvinists, who believe that all of life is religious, undertook the building of their own structures because they could not find Canadian organizations based on their ideological and religious beliefs. The literature on other Canadian immigrant groups provides a context for the comparison between the Copts and the Dutch Calvinists. Research for both groups is based on oral histories and on historical information. The theoretical framework for this study is Driedger’s (1996, 39) model of voluntary pluralism and integration.

Cet article porte sur les étapes de l’adaptation ethnique et religieuse et la transformation de deux groupes immigrants : les Chrétiens othodoxes coptes d’Egypte et les Calvinistes canadiens-hollandais. Tandis que les Coptes sont relativement nouveaux dans la toile de fond religieuse de l’Amérique du Nord, les Calvinistes ont fondé des temples et d’autres établissements ethno-religieux dès leur arrivée en Ontario après la deuxième guerre mondiale. Les églises coptes sont des “vaisseaux de foi” : une source de réjuvénation émotionnelle pour des immigrants nostal-giques, des institutions pour sauvegarder et accomoder une identité ethno-religieuse dans leurs associations, et un intermédiaire pour faciliter l’intégration des nouveaux arrivants. L’identité religieuse était plus importante que l’identité ethnique pour les Calvinistes quand ils ont fondé leurs temples et autres organisations. Les Calvinistes orthodoxes, qui croient que tout est religieux dans la vie, ont décidé de bâtir leurs propres édifices parce qu’ils ne trouvaient pas d’organisations canadiennes basées sur leurs convictions idéologiques et religieuses. La documentation sur d’autres groupes immigrants au Canada fournit un contexte qui permet de comparer Coptes et Calvinistes hollandais. Les recherches sur les deux groupes sont basées sur des récits oraux et sur de l’information historique. Le cadre théorique de cette étude suit le modéle du pluralisme et de l’intégration volontaire de Driedger (1996, 39).
Wrestling with Religion: Pullman, Pratchett, and the Uses of Story
Authors: Gruner Elisabeth Rose
Published: February 2012

This essay examines the role of religion in two recent fantasy series, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and Terry Pratchett’s four Tiffany Aching books. Both series engage with religion as a cultural force, taking seriously the threat posed by unquestioning belief in the unseen, in a truth beyond knowing expressed especially in religious texts. Drawing on feminist and narrative theologies, the essay argues that despite Pullman’s public atheism, his methods in the trilogy ironically revitalize the very myths the series overtly works to discredit; but Pratchett’s series, by working outside the constraints of religious language and overtly religious (especially Christian) narrative, more subtly empowers his heroine to wrestle successfully with religion itself.
Radical Children's Literature Now!
Authors: Mickenberg Julia L. , Nel Philip
Published: February 2012

This article surveys a range of recent literature for younger children that challenges the status quo. The authors ask: What pressing issues of the day are treated in children's literature, and how? What are the incentives and disincentives for creating, distributing, and reading radical children's literature? To what degree have radical children's books made it into libraries and schools? In what ways is radical children's literature of today different from that of earlier decades? Finally, what do all of these characteristics reveal about childhood, politics, and publishing?
A Certain Explicitness: Objectivity, History, and the Documentary Self
Authors: Malitsky Joshua
Published: February 2012

This essay is a comparative analysis of Esfir Shub's late 1920s compilation documentaries and Santiago Álvarez's early 1970s chronicle films. Despite their apparent formal differences, Shub's and Álvarez's works can be seen as responding to a comparable set of sociopolitical and cultural conditions that manifest themselves in similar methodological and aesthetic choices. Recent work by historians of science provides a framework for understanding Shub's and Álvarez's shift toward a more "restrained" cinema as one that continues to embrace visions of social and political transformation.
Lacan’s Harpo
Authors: Flaig Paul
Published: February 2012

This essay develops a reading of the Marx Brothers’ films following Lacan’s discussion of Harpo Marx in his Seminar VII. Analyzing Harpo’s role as an object-machine of enjoyment, it connects his status, as well as the larger realm of the brothers’ humor, to Lacan’s perverse and perverting analytic discourse.
Doing Justice: A Ritual-Psychoanalytic Approach to Postmodern Melodrama and a Certain Tendency of the Action Film
Authors: Pope Richard
Published: February 2012

Conjoining ethnographic and psychoanalytic approaches, this essay analyzes audience reception of Rambo: First Blood (Ted Kotcheff, 1982) and the more recent Bourne films (Doug Liman, 2002; Paul Greengrass, 2004; Greengrass, 2007). Respondents attest to the ongoing importance of the cinematic experience in the digital era; in particular, they suggest that they sympathize with the action hero's precarious and melodramatic situation of "fighting injustice." The results suggest a need to broaden our understanding of the action genre and, more broadly, of audience investment in cinema narrative.
Subset Realization and Physical Identification
Authors: Morris Kevin
Published: February 2012

According to a prominent line of thought, we can be physicalists, but not reductive physicalists, by holding that mental and other ‘higher-level’ or ‘nonbasic’ properties — properties that are not obviously physical properties — are all physically realized. Spelling this out requires an account of realization, an account of what it is for one property to realize another. And while several accounts of realization have been advanced in recent years, my interest here is in the ‘subset view,’ which has often been invoked explicitly in defense of nonreductive physicalist positions.
Description, Disagreement, and Fictional Names
Authors: Alward Peter
Published: February 2012

In this paper, a theory of the contents of fictional names — names of fictional people, places, etc. — will be developed. The fundamental datum that must be addressed by such a theory is that fictional names are, in an important sense, empty: the entities to which they putatively refer do not exist. Nevertheless, they make substantial contributions to the truth conditions of sentences in which they occur. Not only do such sentences have truth conditions, sentences differing only in the fictional names they contain differ in their truth conditions. It is, after all, commonplace to note such things as, for example, that

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit

is true, and

Sherlock Holmes is a hobbit

is false, while acknowledging at the same time that neither Baggins nor Holmes exists. The central problem, therefore, is that of reconciling the emptiness of fictional names with their substantial contributions.
On the Divide: A Classicist/Musician Who Refused to Grow Up
Authors: Porter David
Published: February 2012

This paper had its origins at the 2010 Classical Association of the Atlantic States meetings in Newark. For a panel on music and the classics I was slated to offer "The Well-Tampered Clavier: Play, Musical and Otherwise," a lecture-recital that features music by Ives, Cowell, Cage, and Satie but that is really about the centrality of play and playfulness in creative endeavor of any sort. When it proved impossible to find the two pianos required for this performance the organizer, Judith Hallett, agreed that an alternative might be for me to speak about the interplay between music and classics in my own career. The following paper, a playful backward glance that might perhaps be called "A Well-Tampered Classicist," is the result.
Lessons in Reading: Horace on Homer at Epistles 1.2.1-31
Authors: Keane Catherine
Published: February 2012

In Epistles 1.2, Horace designs his summaries of the Iliad and Odyssey to function as critical exercises for someone who intends to read Homer's epics for moral insight. Horace models two approaches to reading Homer, one insufficiently self-reflective and the other excessively so. With allusions to metapoetically significant episodes in the epics, Horace points out the attractions and pitfalls of the readings he models, and implies that a moral reading of Homer requires a balanced and individualized approach.