bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
"He Had Never Written a Word of That": Regret and Counterfactuals in Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"
Authors: Harding Jennifer Riddle
Published: June 2011

Analyzes narrative counterfactuals in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," examining these unrealized scenarios in three distinct storytelling modes: the dialogue and focalization representing the narrative present set in Africa, the italicized vignettes representing the main character's thoughts, and the two endings representing a false rescue and the protagonist's death. Argues that counterfactuality unites the disparate elements of the story and that Hemingway employs this theme to dramatize the productive tension between possibility and foreclosure in the creation of narrative. Focuses on readers' interpretation and judgment of counterfactuals and regret in the story.
The Names of Rivers and the Names of Birds: Ezra Pound, Louis Agassiz, and the "Luminous Detail" in Hemingway's Early Fiction
Authors: Shakespeare Alex
Published: June 2011

Ernest Hemingway and Ezra Pound shared a background in and an enthusiasm for the "Agassiz method" of scientific observation. Hemingway had been a member of the Agassiz Society from the age of four. Pound, for his part, referred to the "Modern" era more than once as "AFTER the era of 'Agassiz and the Fish.'" While Hemingway's apprenticeship to Louis Agassiz's naturalism and Pound's modernism have sometimes been understood to be at odds, this essay suggests instead their dual influence, and indeed their confluence, particularly in Hemingway's vision and revision of "Big Two-Hearted River."
Taboo or Tolerable?: Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls in Postwar Spain
Authors: Twomey Lisa A.
Published: June 2011

This article examines how Spanish critics received For Whom the Bell Tolls in the 1950s. Although For Whom the Bell Tolls was an immediate success around the world, the same cannot be said for its reception in postwar Spain. The novel was not published in the country until 1968, but starting in the 1950s—when other works by Hemingway were first published in Spain—many critics commented on For Whom the Bell Tolls in their articles on the author, and their remarks paint a telling picture of the novel's diverse and problematic reception.
The Rationale Behind Informal Finance: Evidence from Roscas in Bolivia
Authors: Donoso Sebastian Baixeras , Altunbaş Yener , Kara Alper
Published: June 2011

We investigate the determinants of rosca participation in Bolivia by using a sample of 5,746 households. Evidence shows that in Bolivia rosca is a consumption driven phenomenon. The probability of participating in roscas increases parallel to households' income. Middle-income families with more members and higher expenses are more likely to join roscas. We also find that people who are likely to be excluded from formal credit instruments, such as younger individuals, females, less educated, and indigenous people, are more inclined to participate in roscas.
Determinants of Technical Efficiency of Rice Farms in North-Central and North-Western Regions in Bangladesh
Authors: Bäckman Stefan , Islam K.M. Zahidul , Sumelius John
Published: June 2011

This paper estimates a quadratic stochastic frontier production function to examine the determinants of technical efficiency in rice farming in Bangladesh using the computer program FRONTIER 4.1. Primary data has been collected using multi-stage random sampling technique from twelve villages in north-central and north-western regions in Bangladesh. Rice cultivation displayed much variability in technical efficiency ranging from 0.16 to 0.94 with mean technical efficiency of 0.83 which suggested substantial gains in output with available resources and existing technologies. The analysis of the determinants of technical efficiency revealed that the age and education of the household heads, availability of off-farm incomes, land fragmentation, access to microfinance, extension visits, and regional variation were the major factors that caused efficiency differentials among the farm households studied. Hence, the study proposes strategies such as providing better extension services and farmer training programs, ensuring access to agricultural microfinance, reducing land fragmentation and raising educational level of the farmers to enhance technical efficiency.
Fiscal Adjustment in Developing Countries Through Tax Administration Reform
Authors: Vehorn Charles L.
Published: June 2011

Many developing countries undertaking a fiscal adjustment have followed the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) recommendation to create a large taxpayer unit (LTU) to ensure stable or enhanced revenue flows, but the problem is that researchers have not conducted a systematic evaluation (other than a survey) of this recommendation's revenue raising effects. It is important to understand the effects of this reform measure because limited country resources should be allocated carefully to policy reforms that have a reasonable chance of success. In order to address the issue, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of this fiscal reform using economic data. A unique panel data set has been assembled to evaluate performance of LTUs based on each country's tax share (tax revenue divided by GDP) over a seven-year period. Employing a straightforward empirical methodology of comparing changes in the average annual tax share before and after implementation, a surprising 43 percent of countries experienced a decline in the tax share after implementing an LTU. The implication for policy makers is that successful reform not only includes adopting the correct policy, but also taking adequate steps to ensure that the policy is well-implemented.
The Influences of Ownership Structure: evidence from China
Authors: Huang Bor-Yi , Lin Cho-Min , Huang Chien-Ming
Published: June 2011

This paper examines that the impact of firm-specific characteristic on firm capital structure in Chinese-listed companies and attempts to solve a few puzzles existing in previous related studies. The key factors include state ownership, institutional ownership, and the risk of default. From the analyses of all samples, our results confirm that the expected default risk is important in explaining debt decision, but the influence of ownership structure is not significant. However, after separating high- and low-level from the firm leverage we find that the ownerships of state and institutions have a positive effect on corporate leverage in high-leveraged companies but not in low-leveraged firms. In addition, the positive impacts of external governance commonly occur in large firms. The observed findings provide some important implications for the role of external governance in Chinese-listed companies.
A comparison of DEA and SFA methods: a case study of farm households in Bangladesh
Authors: Theodoridis Alexandros M. , Anwar Md. Mazharul
Published: June 2011

Non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and parametric Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) have become very popular in the analysis of productive efficiency. This study undertakes a comparison of the SFA and the constant returns to scale (CRS) and variable returns to scale (VRS) output-oriented DEA models, based on a sample of 240 farms in Bangladesh. However, the aim of this paper is not only to compare estimates of technical efficiency obtained from the two approaches, but also to examine the determinants of inefficiency. The detection and measurement of technical inefficiency and its determinants can be used as a basis of policy recommendations. The results from both the approaches indicated that there is a potential for increasing farm production through efficiency improvement and that farmers' age and educational level have a significant effect on efficiency.
Nexus Between Inflation Rates and Institutional Rigidities in Bangladesh: An Overlooked Aspect for the Cause of Inflation
Authors: Nasir ABM
Published: June 2011

In this study, we argue that institutional rigidities contribute to the inflation rates in Bangladesh. Using annual data covering the period 1982-2005 and incorporating three new measures of institutional rigidities, we estimate an inflation model by ARDL and OLS techniques. The results do confirm our prediction that higher degree of institutional rigidities leads to higher inflation rate in Bangladesh. Evidence also suggests that inflation is unlikely to be "monetary phenomenon" in Bangladesh. The results are reliable and robust to the inclusion of alternative measures of institution, money supply, real economic activities, and estimation techniques.
Determinants of Private Investment: Time Series Evidence from Bangladesh
Authors: Hassan A. F. M. Kamrul , Salim Ruhul A.
Published: June 2011

This article examines the determinants of private investment in Bangladesh using the standard time series econometric analysis. The empirical results partially support the flexible accelerator hypothesis. It is partial in the sense that real interest rate is not statistically significant in determining private investment whereas national output is very much effective in the long run. Further, government expenditure is found to be a significant determinant of private investment, both in the long- and short run. Government expenditures crowd out private investment, however, the effect is minimal as the investment is not interest responsive. Thus, government expenditure can be used effectively to lift output in case of recession while monetary policy is not so effective in recession because reducing the interest rate investment cannot be increased.
The Role of Family Networks and Gender on Borrowing Behavior in Indonesia
Authors: Johar Meliyanni , Rammohan Anu
Published: June 2011

In this paper, we use the nationally representative Indonesian Family Life Survey dataset (IFLS-3), to examine if access to loans from informal networks such as family and friends influences borrowing behavior in formal credit markets. Our empirical results show that there is a gender dimension to borrowing behavior, with females being more likely to receive loans from family members. However, access to loans from family does not lower their propensity to seek out formal credit. For males, access to family loans does not affect borrowing propensity but it increases the size of borrowing from the formal sector. From a policy perspective, our results indicate that education plays an important role in improving an individual's access to financial credit markets and reducing their dependence on internal networks.
Exchange Rate Regime Transition Dynamics in Southeast Asia
Authors: Hossain Monzur
Published: June 2011

This paper investigates the currency regime choices of six Southeast Asian (SEA) countries, namely Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, for the period 1973-99 from the perspectives of optimum currency area (OCA), macroeconomic stabilization and currency crisis. Regime transition dynamics are insignificant among three broad categories of regimes, such as fixed, intermediate and floating regimes but significant among a variety of intermediate regimes. Economic development, financial liberalization and inflation are found to be significant to the pegged regime choice, while high degree of trade openness, capital mobility, real exchange rate volatility and fiscal performance are significant to the choice of a more flexible regime. However, the policy of financial (capital account) liberalization under a pegged (intermediate) regime was paradoxical in nature and has been proved to be inappropriate in the aftermath of crisis. Except this, the static regime choice in SEA countries is largely consistent with the predictions of international macroeconomics.
Emerging Market Pension Funds and International Diversification
Authors: Pfau Wade D.
Published: June 2011

Many countries are currently increasing the advanced funding of their public pension systems to improve their sustainability in the face of rapidly aging populations. When pensions are funded, the issue of asset allocation becomes of paramount importance. Standard portfolio selection theory provides a fundamental justification for international diversification: by widening the pool of potential assets, investors can potentially increase returns while possibly even reducing risks through the selection of complementary assets with low correlations. Nonetheless, many emerging market countries have regulations that strictly limit the choice of investments for pension funds, in some cases excluding international assets entirely. This paper uses modern portfolio theory to determine the optimal asset allocation for public pension systems in emerging market countries. We find that on average, about half of the portfolios of emerging market countries should be in world assets. The paper then quantifies the costs of prohibiting international diversification.
Optimal Seigniorage and Tax-Smoothing in West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ): An Econometric Assessment
Authors: Udoh Elijah
Published: June 2011

The fiscal performance of many sub-Saharan African countries has been quite dismal over the past, with a number of them accumulating huge deficits. This paper examines fiscal sustainability in the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ). It departs from the standard model of fiscal sustainability and adopts the optimal seigniorage and tax smoothing model. Using vector autoregressive model and data from two selected countries, Ghana and Nigeria, the study finds no concrete evidence in support of the optimal seigniorage and tax smoothing in WAMZ. The findings call for important fiscal reforms to reverse the persistent fiscal deficits. Such reforms should include measures to ensure compliance and eliminate fiscal corruptions
Does the Choice of Exchange Rate Regime Affect the Economic Growth of Developing Countries?
Authors: De Vita Glauco , Kyaw Khine Sandar
Published: June 2011

This paper revisits, empirically, the question of whether the choice of exchange rate regime (floating currency, fixed rate or intermediate arrangement) has a direct effect on the long-term growth of developing countries. We use fixed effects panel estimation on a relatively large sample of 70 developing countries for the period 1981 to 2004. In addition to controlling for the level of income of these economies, we draw from alternative exchange rate regime classification schemes and account for the presence of an explicit monetary anchor to characterize policy. Our results indicate the absence of any robust relation between the choice of exchange rate regime and economic growth. The policy implication of these findings is clear. The choice of exchange rate policy has no direct impact on the long-term growth of developing countries.
Estimating an Ethical Index of Human Wellbeing
Authors: Choudhury Masudul Alam , Hossain Mohammad Zakir , Hossain Mohammad Shahadat
Published: June 2011

A theory of strongly endogenous interactive relationship in participatory development is expounded through the use of a class of models of complementarities between selected variables representing their underlying agencies. Such a model is referred to as circular causation approach and resembles the social causation theory propounded by Gunnar Myrdal. The paper sets up the theoretical groundwork of circular causation in the context of development sustainability by virtue of estimating and simulating quantitative policy-theoretic approach that is applied to the exemplary problem of population and economic growth contra the neoclassical stand on their marginal substitution in population versus growth paradigm. Thus out of studying the theoretical and quantitative policy-theoretic perspective of the learning type endogenous model of development participation between variables and their agencies the ethical index is established. The participatory process of inter-variable complementarities between the selected variables conveys the substantive idea of development sustainability. The resulting functional objective criterion then represents the human wellbeing index. Several of the neoclassical theories as of the immserization theory of economic growth principally are critically examined.
The Nature of Trends in the Per Capita Real GDP of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Countries: Some Evidence and Implications
Authors: Genc Ismail H , Darayseh Musa , AbuAl-Foul Bassam
Published: June 2011

In this paper we attempt to determine whether the per capita real incomes of GCC countries are trend or difference stationary. The distinction is crucial for at least three reasons: first pertains to forecasting; while a trend stationary series tends to return to its long run steady state following a shock, a difference stationary series would tend to carry the impact of such a shock forever. The second has econometric implications because even minor divergences from difference stationarity would lead to non-robust cointegration estimations. The third is about economic theory where the distinction between the neoclassical and endogenous growth models can be settled via empirics of difference or trend stationarity. As the GCC countries strive for more economic integration, correct identification of trends becomes vital in policy making. Our research shows that there is evidence that the per capita real GDP of GCC countries is difference stationary.
The Level-Specific Effects of Education on Economic Growth: Evidence from Four Caribbean Countries
Authors: Conrad Daren A.
Published: June 2011

The supply of human capital in the economy's production activities is a function of the quality and volume of education services provided at the secondary and tertiary levels in the education system. Hence, the allocation of resources by government to education is an important determinant of human capital formation. Depending on its level-specific variations, a given amount of human capital accumulation can have differential impacts across sectors and on economic growth. This study posits that government spending on education can be identified as an important indicator of human capital formation that propels economic growth and confirms that for the countries considered, there are level-specific effects of human capital on output in the manufacturing and service sectors, and ultimately on aggregate output. Given this information, policy makers can therefore consider opportunities for enhanced budgetary allocations aimed at building capital that has a positive impact on economic growth.
Estimation of Economic Discounting Rate for Practical Project Appraisal: The Case of Turkey
Authors: Halicioglu Ferda , Karatas Cevat
Published: June 2011

This study focuses on estimating an economic discounting rate (EDR) to be used in project appraisals by the State Planning Organisation (SPO) of Turkey. The EDR is a policy tool used for selecting the best projects to meet the economic targets of development plans and to enable planners to choose the most profitable and feasible projects. Since the resources available to the economy are scarce, planners are expected to use cost-benefit analysis (CBA) especially, Net Present Value (NPV) criteria. The NPV is considered to be more reliable than the internal rate of return. Therefore, selection of an appropriate social discount rate is a key issue in the application of CBA for project appraisal. In this article, an attempt is made to estimate the EDR of Turkey via a "growth models" approach, providing fresh evidence for enhancing the project appraisal system in Turkey. The results reveal that the EDR of Turkey is 12.94% in the estimation period of 1985-2009.
Regional Differences of Production and Efficiency of Mexican Manufacturing: An Application of Nested and Stochastic Frontier Panel Models
Authors: Braun Frauke G. , Cullmann Astrid
Published: June 2011

This study examines the regional divide for Mexican manufacturing. Mexico's north-south disparity is widely noted, but rarely analyzed empirically and at detailed regional level. We use a panel of municipality-level data to estimate regional production functions. An important contribution is the application of nested panel and stochastic frontier models to capture latent regional characteristics and the computation of performance indicators for all municipalities. There is evidence for considerable differences in economic structure and productivity of the south to the central manufacturing belt and the north. Variation of efficiency is however pronounced, indicating that strong municipalities prevail in highly inefficient states.
Determinants of Women's Success in Microcredit Programs
Authors: Faridi Rushad
Published: June 2011

This paper studies the determinants of women's welfare outcome in microcredit programs. These determinants are in the form of different types of characteristics of women: their own characteristics (age, schooling etc) or the characteristics of the household or village they live in. Observed effects are often biased due to correlation between some explanatory variables and unobserved ability. As finding suitable instruments of the endogenous variables are often difficult, this study finds information about unobserved ability from the marriage market. It is found that incorporating estimates of women's unobserved characteristics alleviates the problem of endogeneity. Therefore, we gain a better and reliable understanding of women's performance in the microcredit programs by combining information from both marriage market and microcredit programs.
Properties of Revenue Neutral Auctions: An Analysis for Tradable Pollution Rights
Authors: Bandyopadhyay Simanti
Published: June 2011

The paper is the first to derive and analyse theoretically the equilibrium properties of 'revenue neutral auctions', in the context of tradable pollution rights. By 'revenue neutrality' we mean that the objective of the agency distributing the rights is not to maximize earnings from the auction but to have an efficient allocation of rights by identifying the most deserving buyer through the process. The revenues earned are distributed back to the bidders following a rule. The experimental literature addresses the problem by analysing the behavior of the bidders in a revenue neutral auction but so far there has been no theoretical analysis on the equilibrium properties of such auctions. The analysis is done in a game theoretic framework. We introduce revenue neutral auction as a mechanism for reallocation of rights in the original tradable permit framework (Montgomery, 1972), in a single unit set up. The paper shows that a standard second price auction fails to be incentive compatible if revenue neutrality is introduced in the framework. Also, the efficiency of a tradable permit system with a revenue neutral auction for reallocation of rights is not independent of the initial distribution of permits, which is contrary to what has been established in the original work with a competitive secondary market.
Oil Prices and Real Exchange Rates in Oil-Exporting Countries: A Bounds Testing Approach
Authors: Jahan-Parvar Mohammad R. , Mohammadi Hassan
Published: June 2011

We test the validity of the Dutch disease hypothesis by examining the relationship between real oil prices and real exchange rates in a sample of fourteen oil exporting countries. Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds tests of cointegration support the existence of a stable relationship between real exchange rates and real oil prices in all countries, suggesting a strong support for the Dutch disease hypothesis. As for short-run, there are evidence of causality from oil prices to exchange rates in four countries; from exchange rates to oil prices in two countries; and bidirectional relations in another four countries. There is no evidence of causality in the remaining four countries.
In Defense of Reading: Or, Why Reading Still Matters in a Contextualist Age
Authors: Armstrong Paul B.
Published: June 2011

Suspicion of reading as a lived experience is a consequence of the rhetorical success of a few key arguments that together have defined a critical landscape dominated by various forms of contextualism. Where the contextualist consensus prevails, reading is tacitly or explicitly regarded as an epiphenomenon, inasmuch as the real locus of meaning-creation is elsewhere. The essay analyzes three core contextualist doctrines (about consciousness, history, and the status of the subject) and argues that they need not delegitimate the experience of reading. Rather, in each case the defining assumptions and beliefs of contextualism require attention to reading in order to do their interpretive work. Giving reading its due may also have a corrective function to the extent that contradictions caused by its neglect have thwarted an understanding of issues such as the relation of form and history, the status of the aesthetic, and the disciplinary purpose of the lettered humanities. Recognizing reading as the hidden ground of our critical and theoretical activity can help get us past various conundrums, impasses, and dead ends that haunt our profession.
The Obbligato Effect
Authors: Schwenger Peter
Published: June 2011

Beginning with a quirky example by Aris Fioretos, this essay considers the peripheral and unintended associations that accompany any act of reading. After some contextualization in genetic criticism and the thought of Maurice Blanchot, it contrasts two versions of what goes on unconsciously while reading a literary work. The first version follows the author’s implicit directions; the second gives free rein to personal associations. It may seem that the second reader is missing the text’s true meaning; however, these free-ranging associations are necessary in order to create any meaning at all, according to Daniel Dennett’s “multiple-drafts” theory of consciousness. Whether we validate it or not, an obbligato of associations always accompanies our reading. Such an obbligato is not only necessary and useful in producing meaning; it is part of the pleasure of the text.
Friending the Past: The Sense of History and Social Computing
Authors: Liu Alan
Published: June 2011

Reflecting on the relation between the media ages of orality, writing, and digital networking, Liu asks the question: what happens today to the “sense of history” that was the glory of the high age of print? In particular, what does the age of social computing—social networking, blogs, Twitter, etc.—have in common with prior ages in which the experience of sociality was deeply vested in a shared sense of history? Liu focuses on a comparison of nineteenth-century historicism and contemporary Web 2.0, and concludes by touching on the RoSE Research-oriented Social Environment that the Transliteracies Project he directs has been building to model past bibliographical resources as a social network.
A Precarious Balance: Adorno and German Classicism
Authors: Hohendahl Peter Uwe
Published: June 2011

The essay explores Adorno’s complicated relationship to the German literary tradition, using Goethe’s play “Iphigeneie” as a key. The context for this reexamination is the deficient literary public sphere of postwar Germany and Adorno’s role as its critic. More specifically, the essay looks at Adorno’s reading of the play against the backdrop of more conventional academic readings of the postwar era, which underscore the importance of German classicism. Special emphasis is placed on Adorno’s complex response to Max Kommerell and his understanding of Goethe’s role in German classicism.
Fatal Contiguities: Metonymy and Environmental Justice
Authors: Hsu Hsuan L.
Published: June 2011

“Fatal Contiguities” considers the roles of metaphor and metonymy in novels that represent environmental injustices. Focusing on Helena María Viramontes’s depiction of East L.A. during the time of freeway construction in Their Dogs Came With Them , this essay suggests that metonymy, which works along the linguistic axis of contiguity, is especially effective in making visible the fatal contiguities between bodies and their surroundings characteristic of risk-laden places. The novel deploys and reshapes conventions of literary naturalism to show how characters’ lives are paradoxically determined by ubiquitous yet indeterminate forms of risk.
Doing Without Art
Authors: Connor Steven
Published: June 2011

In recent years, the idea of the “aesthetic” seems to have gathered a surprising new credibility and force. This essay resists this trend, maintaining that there are no features that are unique to artworks, nor any single feature that all artworks possess. This does not countermand the study of particular features of particular art forms, or necessarily cast doubt that these particular features or art forms might have particular kinds of value. But it does suggest that there is exactly nothing about art

qua

art that is available for investigation by what calls itself aesthetics. This essay considers first of all the function that the idea of art serves, as a placeholder for the possibility of a Great Good Thing, or of a good that is good in itself. It then suggests that doing without art will best be accomplished, not by rigorous critique of the idea of art, but by a withering of interest in the idea of the aesthetic. Finally, it proposes that doing without the idea of art will help open us to the many contingent forms of value to be found in many different aspects of life.
Elizabeth Costello , Embodiment, and the Limits of Rights
Authors: Anker Elizabeth Susan
Published: June 2011

Critics have commonly interpreted J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello as a defense of animal rights. However, this essay argues that it more accurately demonstrates the liabilities of enlisting the idiom of rights to advocate for animal welfare. It thus develops a phenomenology of embodiment indebted to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thought as an analytic through which both to elucidate the status of the animal in Coetzee’s text and to probe the limits of the liberal logic of rights. In doing so, it argues that liberal discourses of rights paradoxically occlude the ontological condition of embodiment. Although the text of Elizabeth Costello often appears closer to philosophy than literature, this essay further maintains that its narrative stages a plea for art’s superior ability to manifest animal being—in particular its deeply embodied texture.
Doing Without the Ideology of Art
Authors: Dissanayake Ellen
Published: June 2011

My invited comment on Steven Connor’s essay, “Doing Without Art,” proposes that a fuller understanding of the implications of my notion of “making special”—referred to by Connor in his essay as somewhat relevant to his own position—would expand his view of the human art impulse and allay some of his disaffections. Rather than contributing to aesthetic theory, the ideology of art, my work proposes an ethology of art: it suggests why members of the human species, in all times and places, made and otherwise engaged with the arts (plural). An ethology of art requires a new way of regarding its subject, not philosophically as an entity or essential quality but as a behavior, something that people everywhere “do.” What characterizes all instances of “doing with art,” from prehistory to the present, is making something (a rock surface, face or body, implement, sound, space, place, movement, utterance) special. A summary of the development and ramifications of the concept of “making special”—called “artifying” in my most recent work—answers Connor’s three questions and suggests that placing our modern ideology or ideologies of art in the wider and deeper context of artification enables an understanding of the arts as intrinsic and even necessary to human lives everywhere.
The World Laid Waste: Herder, Language Labor, Empire
Authors: Robinette Nicholas
Published: June 2011

Johann Gottfried von Herder has been unevenly received in recent years: postcolonial theorists have regarded his philosophy primarily for its contribution to nationalism and anthropology, while scholars in comparative literature have noted his importance to philology and the concept of world literature. This essay argues that these contradictory readings may be resolved and, indeed, a very timely set of theoretical animadversions may be reclaimed, by turning to Herder’s early works such as “Fragments on Recent German Literature” and “This Too a Philosophy for the History of Mankind.” In these works, the young Herder developed a highly original philosophy of language, rejected the principle of linguistic arbitrariness, and set afoot philology as a historically situated, transnational study of literary and cultural development. Moreover, the young Herder mounted a vociferous critique of colonialism for its economic rapacity and human destructiveness. His thought thus evinces the strong associations between anticolonialism, philology, and materialist critique.
Physiognomy and the Reading of Character in Our Mutual Friend
Authors: Zirker Angelika
Published: June 2011

In Our Mutual Friend , Charles Dickens uses physiognomy as an indirect way of portraying characters that observe their fellow-characters rather than as a direct means of portraying the characters observed. This reading of faces often constitutes misinterpretation: Dickens links Our Mutual Friend to the issue of reading itself, providing models of reader response. Misreadings thus become morally and aesthetically relevant to the overall structure and effect of the novel.
"Part of the Dreadful Thing": The Urban Chronotope of Bleak House
Authors: Gomel Elana
Published: June 2011

This essay addresses the paradox of Dickens as an urban writer through exploration of his narrative space. On the one hand, like Mayhew, Engels, and other Victorian urban explorers, Dickens is a fierce critic of the social ills of the industrial metropolis. On the other hand, Dickens is ranked alongside Baudelaire and Benjamin as the creator of a new vocabulary for urban pleasures, such as flânerie , consumption, visual distraction, and psychological stimulation. This ambiguity of Dickens' urban attitudes is encapsulated in the doubleness of his urban chronotope. The city of Dickens is often imaged in vertical terms as the dichotomously divided space of the rich and the poor. But equally often, it is structured horizontally as a maze, network, or ring of contagion that unites all the city dwellers in a complex ecology of mutual interdependence. These two axes of representation correspond to the two types of urban involvement, that of the reformer and of the flâneur. In Bleak House they are epitomized by the omniscient narrator's "bird's eye" view of society and Esther's "street level" vision of it. The essay explores the tension and interaction between the detached aesthetics of flânerie and the passionate involvement of social reform in the narrative fabric of Dickens's world. It analyzes the narrative architecture of Bleak House by focusing on the techniques of vision and focalization rather than on the novel's thematic concerns and/or characters' actions.
Always Fiction?: The Limits of Authorial License in Our Mutual Friend
Authors: Harrison Bernard
Published: June 2011

This essay concerns the connection between literature and reality. It argues that the existence of such a connection is made possible by the dual role of social practice in founding, on the one hand, human reality (including character), and on the other, linguistic meaning. While an author is free to determine such matters as plot or imagery under the control of nothing stronger than general plausibility and verisimilitude, a far stronger constraint from the side of reality comes into play the moment he sets about deploying the resources of a natural language, which is not his private property but a public possession, whose possibilities of meaning stand before him independently of his wishes, already richly charged with references, both historic and contemporary, to the structures of practice constitutive of the social order from which it has emerged, and the complexities of whose daily intercourse on all levels it serves to mediate. In developing these themes, the essay explores the relationships between fairy tale, language, and reality in Our Mutual Friend , and the way in which Dickens' language mediates between our "uneasy" sense that, on the one hand, we are reading a fairy tale, or rather a set of interwoven fairy tales, and on the other hand, that the novel is, nevertheless, in some sense a work of "realism," though not at all concerned with "social reality" in any sense seriously analogous to, say, Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor . The title and the epigraph pick up a passage in Cynthia Ozick's early novel Trust : "here was a man who shunned novels on the ground that they were always fiction."
The Victim-Aggressor Duality in Great Expectations
Authors: Ciugureanu Adina
Published: June 2011

The article focuses on the aggressor-victim paradigms upon which Dickens builds three of his female characters in Great Expectations : Mrs. Joe Gargery, Miss Havisham, and Molly. Usually described as monstrous, the three characters are here discussed in terms of the hidden motives of their strange behavior, one of the sources of uneasy pleasures in the reading process. Viewed from the feminist standpoint, the representation of the three characters is associated with Victorian views concerning the treatment of women, sexuality, crime, and marriage; viewed in psychological terms, all the three display symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder, wit the roles of victim and aggressor shifting over time.
Introduction: Uneasy Pleasures
Authors: Toker Leona
Published: June 2011

A survey of the models constructed in the articles of this special issue to explain the compatibility of, on the one hand, the entertainment value and the aesthetic pleasure yielded by Dickens's works and, on the other hand, their consciousness-raising social agenda.
Dickens and Dance in the 1840s
Authors: Morgentaler Goldie
Published: June 2011

Dickens's depictions of dance are usually read as manifestations of the jovial fun-loving aspect of his fiction. In what is arguably the most famous depiction of dance in the early works, the Fezziwigs' ball in A Christmas Carol , Dickens not only uses the dance to suggest all the positive values associated with good feeling and sociability — the very things missing from Scrooge's life — but also allows his prose to echo the actual rhythm of the dance, so that sound and sense work together to convey the message to both the reader and Scrooge that dancing is a pleasurable, life-affirming, socially positive activity. This paper explores the complex social and literary implications of Dickens's presentation of dance, especially in the fiction that he wrote during the 1840s. While Dickens's juxtaposition of dancing and social misery antedates the 1840s, the paper concentrates on the ways in which Dickens's works of that period, primarily A Christmas Carol and The Battle for Life , depict dance as simultaneously a life-affirming activity and a deflection of the decade's more serious social, medical and economic ills.
Reading Dickens Writing London
Authors: Baumgarten Murray
Published: June 2011

Carlyle's view of modern life as a palimpsest serves as a postulate for his Victorian contemporaries and successors, who make it into the defining idea of the modern city. Following Carlyle's lead, they explore the urban palimpsest, yet nor for them is his prophetic voice of guilt and punishment. Rather, in exploring the uneasy pleasures in the juxtaposition of the urban layers of modern experience, in The Pickwick Papers, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend and other novels Dickens strikes the modern note of the attraction of repulsion as well as shifting, alternating, alternative realities. The boundaries of class and species are honeycombed by pathways which hum with traffic and constant crossings of the layers of the palimpsest of modern urban life, and the reader navigates among unstable places together with the narrators who are often split and divided along the fault lines of urban life.
Dickens and the Pleasure of the Text: The Risks of Hard Times
Authors: Sicher Efraim
Published: June 2011

This essay examines the pleasure of the text in Dickens's novel Hard Times (1854) and considers the risks it takes in its performance as a novel in a utilitarian economy. Walking a tightrope between employing the genre as an agent of social change and entertaining middle-class readers, Dickens fuses homo ludens with homo faber . The sheer pleasure of reading must be shown to be useful, yet the novel has not proven popular until recent years and its moral message does not wear will in a postmodern hedonistic culture. Nevertheless, imagination as means as well as metaphor must be tested by its success, and the author, like Mr Jupe, cannot afford to miss a trick.
"What Wilt Thou Do, Old Man?" — Being Sick Unto Death: Scrooge, King Lear, and Kierkegaard
Authors: Kállay Géza
Published: June 2011

At the end of A Christmas Carol , the Last of the Spirits points its finger towards "One" gravestone, upon which Ebenezer Scrooge can read his own name. His vexing question is whether he has seen "the shadows of things that Will be" or "the shadows of Things that May be, only"; he takes a solemn oath that he will "sponge away the writing" on the stone. At the end of The Tragedy of King Lear , Lear appears howling, with the dead Cordelia in his arms. He puts a looking-glass to her mouth and declares that, if she lives, "[i]t is a chance which does redeem all sorrows" he has ever felt. At the beginning of his Sickness unto Death , Søren Kierkegaard claims that to be "sick unto death is, not to be able to die - yet not as though there were hope of life"; "when the danger is so great that death has become one's hope, despair is the disconsolateness of not being able to die". This paper examines the question of death via juxtaposing Dickens's and Shakespeare's respective texts in a Kierkegaardian framework. Is it possible to face the death of one's self at all? Or is it only the death of someone whom one loves most which reveals the meaning of death (and life)? Is death a part of life, or does a "living death" permeate our whole life? How can watching people die in a tragedy be elevating? Or is it the muting of death, as in comedy, which liberates us to live?
Subdued by the Dyer's Hand: Dickens at Work in Bleak House
Authors: Paroissien David
Published: June 2011

This essay examines the implications of Dickens's statement in the preface to the one-volume edition of Bleak House (September 1853) that in the novel he "purposely dwelt upon the romantic side of familiar things." This claim, I argue, goes to the core of Dickens's art as a writer, an art that combines the presentation of disturbing news about the contemporary state of society with a skilful attempt to provide narrative pleasure, pleasure designed to ensure that the narrator retains his hold over readers for 67 chapters. Dickens's achievement, I conclude, constitutes literary art of the highest order, one that instructs readers in social and ethical truths while also delighting them and holding their attention in the course of telling a compelling story.
Onto, Up, Off the Academic Faculty Ladder: The Gendered Effects of Family on Career Transitions for a Cohort of Social Science Ph.D.s
Authors: Morrison Emory , Rudd Elizabeth , Nerad Maresi
Published: June 2011

With event history analysis, we examine the impact of gender, marital status and spouse type, and parenting at key transition points in the early careers of more than 2,000 social science Ph.D. graduates. This analysis (a) uses data from recent Ph.D. graduates; (b) disentangles the effects of marriage and parenting; and (c) observes the effects of different marriage configurations. Results suggest that the negative impacts of motherhood and marriage on women's careers are diminishing, but that for men fatherhood and marriage are beneficial. Most importantly, marriage to a less-educated spouse is associated with significant career advantages for men; however, women do not realize similar benefits from this type of marriage.
The Causal Effect of Campus Residency on College Student Retention
Authors: Schudde Lauren T.
Published: June 2011

Despite theoretical evidence positing a positive relationship between campus residency and collegiate outcomes, prior research has not established a causal link. Utilizing propensity score matching and national longitudinal data, this study investigates whether living in university-owned housing impacts retention. The results suggest that the impact of living on campus is not negligible: the probability of remaining enrolled into the second year of college is 3.3 percentage points higher for on-campus residents than off-campus residents. Colleges should consider evaluating the impact of their campus housing programs on academic outcomes to inform important housing policy decisions.
Union Status and Faculty Job Satisfaction: Contemporary Evidence from the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty
Authors: Myers Carrie B.
Published: June 2011

This study tests the association between union status and job satisfaction using 8,000+ U.S. faculty at four-year public institutions surveyed in the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty. The results from hierarchical linear models that included individual and institutional variables found that nonunion faculty reported significantly higher levels of satisfaction with their jobs' instructional and employment components. These results depended on whether faculty were nonunionized by choice, unavailability, or ineligibility. The most satisfied faculty are those at institutions that offer unionization but who have chosen not to join the union. The discussion focuses on possible causes linking unionization and satisfaction.
Borders, Border-Crossing, and Political Art in North Carolina
Authors: Valdivia Gabriela , Palis Joseph , Reilly Matthew
Published: June 2011

Desde la década de 1990, el Sureste ha experimentado un crecimiento continuo y dramático en la población latina, tanto en zonas rurales como urbanas de toda la región. Este crecimiento se basa en el incremento de una población inmigrante que está estableciendo comunidades, transformando el paisaje y produciendo diversas culturas en comunidades que tradicionalmente no son demográficamente latinas. En este artículo nos centramos en el trabajo del artista mexicano Cornelio Campos, quien vive en Carolina del Norte y cuyas obras representan viajes de migración entre México y Estados Unidos e imaginarios de fronteras culturales, políticas y físicas para examinar como el arte engendra preguntas y reflexiones sobre estas fronteras. Argumentamos que las obras de Campos acercan la frontera México-Estados Unidos a una audiencia no latina en Carolina del Norte y que este acercamiento influye en la producción de imaginarios geográficos de la latinización del Sureste. El documento se basa en entrevistas con el artista, observación participativa, y proyectos realizados por estudiantes de pregrado de la Universidad de Carolina del Norte.
We Play Too: Latina Integration through Soccer in the “New South”
Authors: Cuadros Paul
Published: June 2011

La migración de latinos al Sur rural actualmente esté bien documentada. La creación de espacios culturales como campos de fútbol para los inmigrantes y sus familias esté floreciendo en toda la región. Estos campos, por mucho tiempo un bastión de las ligas masculinas y juegos enfocados a los hombres, estén siendo integrados por las mujeres latinas con sus propios equipos y ligas. Esta nota de campo ofrece la perspectiva personal de tres jóvenes jugadoras de fútbol femenino, las cuales se ven en el dilema de estar entre las expectativas tradicionales de las mujeres en su cultura y su deseo de ser atléticas y competitivas en los deportes. Las historias de las mujeres revelan que las latinas se estén integrando a la sociedad y estén desafiado las normas, así como desarrollando una nueva identidad latina.