bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Cross-Border Brides: Vietnamese Wives, Chinese Husbands in a Border-Area Fishing Village
Authors: Châm Nguễn Thị Phương
Published: January 2015

This article traces the lives of a group of Vietnamese women driven by poverty and loss of marriageability to cross the border into China to marry men from the fishing village of Wanwei. Wanwei’s location, only 25 kilometers from the border with Vietnam, enables these women to make fairly regular trips back to their native villages to visit their birth families. Yet, despite the fact that they now live in a designated Jing (ethnic Vietnamese) village, where a significant proportion of the population shares their ethnicity, their illegal residential status and recent arrival excludes them from the community of villagers who claim descent from Vietnamese immigrants in the sixteenth century. Despite the hardships these women face as a result of continuing poverty, lack of emotional intimacy in their marriages, and marginal social status, few see themselves as victims of human trafficking. Instead, most take pride in their agency and achievements.
The Case of the Disappearing Altar: Mysteries and Consequences of Revitalizing Chinese Muslims in Yunnan
Authors: Caffrey Kevin
Published: January 2015

This article takes the example of a disappeared altar in a Himalayan valley as revelatory of contradictions within the mechanics of a Hui Muslim revitalization project. The community example—a group of historically identifiable Muslims in China—centers on the disappearance of a gifted propitiation altar that once stood as an instantiation of community cohesion among ethnically varied populations in the valley. The investigation examines transformations of modernity and the erosion of the “social glue” that held valley communities together as the disappearance of this gift is revealed to be a telling instance of the large-scale productivities and corrosions effected by China’s contemporary renaissance of reemerging religious movements and community identifications, processes in which Chinese Muslims serve as a potential indicator for a long view of reform contemporary social transformation.
In Pursuit of Islamic “Authenticity”: Localizing Muslim Identity on China’s Peripheries
Authors: Turnbull Lesley
Published: January 2015

In this ethnographic sketch, I analyze the complex processes of Sino-Islamic identity formation by examining the variety and diversity of locally produced “authenticity,” situated within a global understanding of Islam. Even within a single province, among a single official minzu (nationality) that People’s Republic of China propaganda, media, and scholarship often construct as a unified, static group, localized practices and processes of identity formation are remarkably diverse. This article investigates how trans/national discourses and practices of Islamic authenticity are localized within two specific field sites: the provincial capital of Kunming and the rural Muslim enclave of Shadian. For the purposes of this article, I focus primarily on how life is temporally and spatially structured, both in everyday practice and in imaginings of one’s place in history, modernity, the Muslim world, and the Chinese state. By setting out details of the daily lives of two Hui Muslim women, I aim to elucidate how temporal and spatial structures of life, which are tied to urban or rural location, reflect and shape local identity formation. I argue that as actors involved in their own self-production, Hui Muslims in Kunming and Shadian negotiated, appropriated, and contested both monolithic notions of Islam and the official state-propagated minzu classificatory system, producing their own versions of authentic Hui Muslim identities. What constituted authentic Hui Muslim identity depended to a great extent on the residence of the individual.
“Righteous Yang”: Pirate, Rebel, and Hero on the Sino-Vietnamese Water Frontier, 1644–1684
Authors: J.Antony Robert
Published: January 2015

This article is a case study of a little-known but important historical figure, known variously as Yang Yandi (Dương Ngạn Địch), Yang Er, and, more colloquially, “Righteous Yang” (Yang Yi), who lived during the turbulent Ming-Qing transition (1644–1684). In that age of anarchy, it was easy for charismatic individuals like Yang to possess multiple identities and affiliations—in Yang’s case, pirate, rebel, and hero. Based on written historical documents and historical fieldwork, this article traces Yang’s life in the chaotic water frontier of the Gulf of Tonkin and argues that he was but one in a long line of pirates and dissidents who operated in this region.
The Opposition of a Leading Akhund to Shi’a and Sufi Shaykhs in Mid-Nineteenth-Century China
Authors: Wang Jianping
Published: January 2015

This article traces the activities of Ma Dexin, a preeminent Hui Muslim scholar and grand imam (akhund) who played a leading role in the Muslim uprising in Yunnan (1856–1873). Ma harshly criticized Shi’ism and its followers, the shaykhs, in the Sufi orders in China. The intolerance of orthodox Sunnis toward Shi’ism can be explained in part by the marginalization of Hui Muslims in China and their attempts to unite and defend themselves in a society dominated by Han Chinese. An analysis of the Sunni opposition to Shi’ism that was led by Akhund Ma Dexin and the Shi’a sect’s influence among the Sufis in China help us understand the ways in which global debates in Islam were articulated on Chinese soil.
“Tiger Country”: Kidneys for Sale in London in the 1980s
Authors: Tannenbaum Joel
Published: January 2015

Throughout the 1980s, the city of London played host to a “black market” in renal transplantation, one in which both donors and recipients were recruited abroad. The practice came to light in 1988 and culminated in the thirty-six-day hearing of two surgeons and a prominent nephrologist. These practices required an atmosphere of minimal oversight and regulatory opacity in order to function. This essay argues that precisely such an environment was created by the expansion of the United Kingdom’s for-profit healthcare sector beginning in 1979.
Crocodilian Transmission: Correspondence Networks in William Bartram and Thomas De Quincey
Authors: McCown Julie
Published: January 2015

This essay brings William Bartram’s 1791 Travels and Thomas De Quincey’s 1849 “The English Mail-Coach” into productive conversation with each other, focusing on crocodilians as a central point of connection. As both physical and semiotic specimens in correspondence networks, crocodilians become a medium of exchange through which Bartram and De Quincey confront the limits of personal identity and imperial expansion. By bringing together these two writers, the essay shows how crocodilians, as a medium of exchange, shift from physical, material specimens to abstract, imaginary symbols, and how natural history’s correspondence networks facilitate an abstraction and effacement of animals.
Hope Logics: Biomedicine, Affective Conventions of Cancer, and the Governing of Biocitizenry
Authors: Ehlers Nadine , Krupar Shiloh
Published: January 2015

This essay explores the deployment of hope within biomedicine. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s account of biopolitics , it argues that hope works in the service of biopolitical imperatives to govern life, and to secure, optimize, and speculate on that life. The essay broadly considers the operations of affect in biomedicine, and specifically examines the governing function of affective conventions of hope —that is, the perceptual, emotional, and corporeal modes of managing and responding to events that support biomedicine’s telos toward the affirmation of life. In relation to illness, hope conditions responses to bodily vulnerability and uncertainty, manages the present for the future, and relentlessly affirms life. The essay grounds these claims in an investigation of cancer activism and treatment, wherein hope is a weapon to fight cancer, as the target of war. Documenting the ways that hope is increasingly militarized, commodified, routinized, and delimited in the neoliberal era, the essay explores how such conventions of hope are actively made and maintained through aspects of cancer-related biomedical encounters—in what it calls infrastructures of care and bioethics of faith within oncology. The essay concludes by considering alternative hope tactics—“hoping for other things”—in relation to cancer.
Analogical Animals: Thinking through Difference in Animalities and Histories
Authors: Creedon Genevieve
Published: January 2015

This essay takes up practices of comparison and analogy between human populations and animals that have been so problematized in discussions of J. M. Coetzee’s work. Through readings of Derrida and Haraway alongside German novelist Uwe Timm’s Morenga , it argues that analogical structures function as simultaneous differentiations and de-differentiations that allow for both similarities and differences to emerge. Far from collapsing differences, analogical thinking in Timm’s novel allows for specificities to emerge, rendering the broad, generic category of the animal far more complex.
Virtue in Corruption: Privateers, Smugglers, and the Shape of Empire in the Eighteenth-Century Caribbean
Authors: Schmitt Casey S.
Published: January 2015

Violent encounters between Spanish American guarda costas and British vessels during the early decades of the eighteenth century sparked the War of Jenkins’ Ear in 1739, a war that started in the Caribbean over issues of inter-imperial contraband trade. Despite the causes of the war, Spanish American guarda costas out of port cities such as Cartagena de Indias outfitted their ships through illicit British supply chains. Moreover, the maritime violence leading up to the declaration of war helped the Spanish official José Patiño push for British acquiescence to Spain’s territorial designs on the Italian peninsula. Sent to the Caribbean to seek revenge for Spanish depredations against their shipping, the British Royal Navy also engaged in contraband trade so they could fully equip their vessels in the competitive environment of the eighteenth-century maritime world. Contraband trade in the circum-Caribbean served as a tool in Britain’s and Spain’s political economy while simultaneously producing the need for more smuggling and eventual conflict. For Spanish America, moreover, British contraband supplies in places such as Cartagena de Indias proved invaluable for its defense against invasion by British forces during the war itself.
“Shelburnian Manners”: Gentility and the Loyalists of Shelburne, Nova Scotia
Authors: Huskins Bonnie
Published: January 2015

The Loyalist refugees who made their way to Shelburne, Nova Scotia, in the aftermath of the American Revolution have been denigrated in various accounts as Loyalist “layabouts” and “dancing beggars” who spent too much of their time and capital on genteel sociability and conspicuous consumption. The writings of three of the sharpest critics of Shelburne—the Scottish merchant James Fraser, the Loyalist surveyor Benjamin Marston, and British Royal Engineer William Booth—often appear in modern academic works without sufficient contextualization. This paper asserts that the commentaries of Fraser, Marston, and Booth are not merely critiques of Shelburne per se, but part of a larger trans-Atlantic debate about the dilution and democratization of gentility. Indeed, the uprooted populations that made their way to Shelburne took advantage of the fluidity of the pioneer settlement to negotiate a form of middling gentility that acted as a vehicle of social mobility and identity reformation.
Accidental Encounter: Why John Quincy Adams Translated German Culture for Americans
Authors: Belgum Kirsten
Published: January 2015

This article explores the significance of a chance encounter with a foreign culture during the early American republic. It examines the diaries, letters, essays, poems, reviews, and translations produced by John Quincy Adams during his four-year diplomatic appointment in Berlin (1797–1801). His transmission of German works and perspectives to America coincided with a growing American resistance to the legacy of English and French cultural influence. His contribution, while inspired by a curiosity about German culture, was primarily intended to provide Americans with a fresh way of viewing the United States. Adams’s accidental encounter with German society, ideas, and culture highlights key cultural concerns in the early republic and alerts us to the productive unpredictability of cultural transfer.
Le Jeune Dreams of Moose: Altered States among the Montagnais in the Jesuit Relations of 1634
Authors: Lopenzina Drew
Published: January 2015

This article explores ruptures of colonial representation in the 1634 contribution of Paul Le Jeune to the Jesuit Relations , particularly in regard to Le Jeune’s intense antipathy to the faith Native Americans placed in dreams and dream interpretation. Native peoples had highly ritualized frameworks for interpreting dreams that stood in stark opposition to the expressed evangelical agendas of the Jesuits. The Montagnais, with whom Le Jeune wintered in 1633–34, used dreams to speak to manitous, who would assist them in finding game and other endeavors. Dreaming itself, with its claims to prophetic vision, was a phenomenon that threatened to override doctrinaire stances. It had the power to erase familiar boundary lines of identity and culture, to express desires either unwelcome or unthinkable, and to force traumatic memories back into the forefront of one’s consciousness. Although the Jesuit order in New France labored to bring Native faith in dreams under colonial control, Le Jeune’s Relation reveals the inherent strains of imposing a dominant discourse of containment on an indigenous framework of engagement—strains that make themselves apparent in Le Jeune’s foray into liminality and his own dream of moose.
On the Easel of Independence
Authors: Seguín Bécquer
Published: January 2015

This article examines “courtroom paintings” in Latin American art, focusing on the works of Martín Tovar y Tovar, Juan Lovera, and especially Pedro Subercaseaux. Drawing from the philosophical work of Alain Badiou, the article offers a comparative reading of the theme of “anticipation” in several of their paintings, suggesting that this theme may point to an underlying democratic element in art about independence. The article ends by discussing Subercaseaux’s work in the context of the Argentine centenary celebration of independence, exploring the ways in which its use of “anticipation,” counterintuitively, might have made it easier for the regime to co-opt in its attempt to rewrite the moment of independence in 1910.
Relaciones de sucesos en romance impresas en pliegos de cordel (siglo XVI)
Authors: Sánchez-Pérez María
Published: January 2015

There are various different investigative approaches to narratives of special events in Spanish. One that has been quite neglected is the study of the metric forms employed in the composition of these pieces. The goal of the present work is to provide an overview of the preserved verse narratives of special events dating back to the sixteenth century. Once presented, it is our aim to focus exclusively on those pieces that were composed as romances, to be able to draw some conclusions concerning the metric forms chosen by popular copleros to write these pieces.
Anorexia as Idealization: Clemente Pereda’s Protest Fast (Puerto Rico, 1934)
Authors: Trigo Benigno
Published: January 2015

In this essay, I argue that Clemente Pereda’s works of art (including his protest fast from 1934) are examples of a necessary process both at the level of the individual and at the level of the community that sublimates what Julia Kristeva calls abjection: an idealization of the link between self and other that is constituted of both symbolic and physical material. I emphasize the need for the social sphere to continue to generate the conditions of possibility for this necessary process, to support works of art like Clemente Pereda’s fast, which worked as an antidote to the anorectic and suicidal effects of colonialism.
Dialécticas de la novela moderna: realismo y tipología narrativa en Fortunata y Jacinta
Authors: Valero Carles Ferrando
Published: January 2015

Fortunata y Jacinta explores the dialectics between idealism and low-brow literature in late-19th-century Madrid. Hence, the popular folletín constitutes an indispensable intertext in the novel, since, despite Galdós's awareness that Spain had lost its imperial grandeur, many of its inhabitants continued to live according to abstract ideals and outdated values. His rejection of such an anachronistic worldview is perspicuous in the falso Pituso episode, in which the narrative parodies melodramatic imagination and one of its archetypical moments: the recognition scene. Questioning the existence of irrefutable truths in the modern world, the novela pitusiana offers several considerations on narrative typology and the role of Realism, which shed light on Galdós's aesthetic ideal.
Beyond the Dialectics and Polemics: Canadian Catholic Schools Addressing LGBT Youth Issues
Authors: Liboro Renato M. , Travers Robb , St. John Alex
Published: January 2015

In 2012, Canadian media coverage on Bill 13—an Ontario legislative proposal to require all publicly funded schools to support Gay-Straight Alliances as a means of addressing issues concerning bullied lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students—instigated a divisive exchange among representatives of the Ontario Catholic school sector. Beyond these dialectics and polemics, a proactive mix of advocates from schools in the Waterloo Catholic District School Board (WCDSB) of Ontario took steady steps to address the circumstances of their LGBT students. This study included semi-structured interviews with ten stakeholders from the WCDSB to determine if strategies and programs deemed successful for supporting LGBT students in public, secular schools in the United States could also be successful in supporting LGBT students in publicly funded Canadian Catholic schools. The study findings revealed that the strategies and programs could indeed be successful in supporting LGBT students in Canadian Catholic schools. We further found that the success of strategies and programs was influenced by factors such as acknowledging the priority of LGBT youth’s needs over ongoing disputes, realizing the significant influence of Catholic values, and recognizing the necessity for school boards to maintain legitimacy as publicly funded institutions.
Accountability Strain, College Readiness Drain: Sociopolitical Tensions Involved in Maintaining a College-going Culture in a High “Minority”, High Poverty, Texas High School
Authors: Welton Anjale , Williams Montrischa
Published: January 2015

Currently school reform discourse encourages states to adopt college readiness standards. Meanwhile, federal and state accountability and related mandated reforms remain a policy concern. As such, it is important to examine the interplay between accountability and the establishment of a college-going culture in high “minority”, high poverty high schools. This qualitative case study integrated critical ethnographic approaches to examine how a high “minority”, high poverty enrollment high school negotiated the politics of implementing a college-going culture in the midst of responding to state accountability sanctions. In-depth interviews with faculty and students as well as observations revealed that the state accountability sanctions were not the only stressors that conflicted with the establishment of a college-going culture. Multiple sociopolitical factors precipitated a negative academic climate as well. For instance, pressures to improve the high school’s poor accountability rating led to a school-wide instructional focus on the state exit exam, which interfered with the school’s college-going culture. Finally, while the school offered programs and supports that provided college information, this information was not disseminated in a systematic way that would reach all students.
Students’ Perceptions of Factors that Contribute to Risk and Success in Accelerated High School Courses
Authors: Shaunessy-Dedrick Elizabeth , Suldo Shannon M. , Roth Rachel A. , Fefer Sarah A.
Published: January 2015

In this qualitative study, we investigated 15 successful and 15 struggling high school students, perceived stressors, coping strategies, and intrapersonal and environmental factors that students perceive to influence their success in college-level courses. We found that students’ primary sources of stress involved meeting numerous academic demands and seeking a balance between academic goals, social needs, and extracurricular activities. The most frequently described and commonly used coping responses viewed as effective involved time and task management, seeking temporary diversions, and cognitive reappraisal. Students perceived a strong work ethic and high achievement motivation as personal traits aligned with success, and support from a broad network of peers, parents, and teachers as environmental factors that are also related to optimal performance in rigorous accelerated high school programs.
Approaching Praxis: YPAR as Critical Pedagogical Process in a College Access Program
Authors: Scott Mary Alice , Pyne Kimberly B. , Means Darris R.
Published: January 2015

To address the persistent failure of schooling to support underserved students, youth participatory action research (YPAR) has emerged as an alternative and critical paradigm for educational practice. YPAR re-centers authority on marginalized voices and understands research as a tool for social change. Grounded in critical pedagogy, such projects enable students to collaboratively critique oppressive structures and envision more equitable possibilities. In this article, the authors analyze a YPAR project on educational inequities conducted with high school students in a college access program. Through case study analysis of in-depth interviews with student-researchers and participant observation of the research process, the article suggests that the YPAR model moves students towards praxis by helping them develop more authoritative voices, renegotiate identity as part of a social process of belonging, and begin to envision their roles in creating a more just world. We argue that the tensions inherent in critical pedagogical processes like that of YPAR present fruitful challenges for continuing reflection on working both within and against existing educational systems.
Searching for a Lost Identity: Serbian Librarianship at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century
Authors: Simončić Gordana Stokić , Vučković Željko
Published: January 2015

There are three related aspects of the problem of identity that beset Serbian librarianship after 1991: 1) identity as survival during the war crisis and subsequent sanctions; 2) identity as change during the time of a global information and communication revolution; and 3) identity as self-awareness during a time of change in status, social responsibility, and professionalism for library personnel. Judging by the difference in the conditions under which libraries operated in Serbia during the 1990s and 2000s, the two decades can be characterized as the antipodes of each other. At the same time, they are also two sides of the same whole, in that the old system of librarianship collapsed and has not yet been replaced with a new one. This paper offers a survey of the situation in Serbia through an analysis of the present state of the difficulties currently besetting the various activities of Serbian libraries: automation, digitization, communication, scientific research, and continuing education. The need to develop a new discourse on librarianship in Serbia is crucial so that librarians may have a voice in the processes of formal and public education and the acceleration of economic, scientific, and cultural growth in Serbia.
An Ongoing Process of Modernization: Libraries and Librarianship in Estonia
Authors: Lepik Aira
Published: January 2015

Libraries are a component of our ever-changing social environment. Organizational change in libraries involves many activities, including the development of mission statements, the refinement of goals regarding the role of the library in the knowledge society, the restructuring of organizations, the use of information and communication technologies, the training of librarians, and the management of finances. Estonian libraries are information centers that support research and innovation by providing the access to scholarly and professional information; supporting education, lifelong learning, and cultural development; introducing world culture; ensuring information provision to all social groups; supporting the development of the information society through the implementing new technologies; contributing to the integration of the European information treasury; and helping to gain an international reputation for Estonia.
Polish Libraries: Leaping from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-first Century
Authors: Śliwińska Maria
Published: January 2015

This paper traces computerization in Polish research libraries, from microfilming initiatives in the immediate post–World War II era to the inauguration of digitization programs from the 1990s onward. It describes the initiatives taken by the new, independent Poland during the 1990s to develop an information society, including library networking, computerization, and digitization, and credits the work of the Mellon Foundation in bringing changes to Polish libraries.
A Friendly Conquest: German Libraries after the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
Authors: Wimmer Ulla , Seadle Michael
Published: January 2015

This paper provides an overview of the development of libraries in the geographical area of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) after it joined the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in 1990. It briefly describes the situation of libraries in the GDR and the major changes that accompanied the unification process. It also touches on a series of three nationwide studies on reading and library-user behavior, and on library legislation and major national-planning initiatives since 1989. For academic libraries, the unification process was mainly favorable, as a structured plan and continuous funding were introduced as part of higher education development. For public libraries, the process was less structured, severely reducing a previously very dense system within a very short time. Recent library statistics indicate, however, that the integration of the two library systems has benefited the remaining libraries and left no clearly visible difference between library systems in the eastern and western parts of Germany.
Hungarian Libraries and Librarianship, 1990–2013: An Overview
Authors: Németh Márton
Published: January 2015

This paper offers an overview of the transformation in Hungarian librarianship after 1990 and addresses the most important elements of professional development during the same period. The main organizations and types of libraries in the Hungarian library world are described. Information is provided on digital library projects and services, professional training and publications, and the development of international relations involving Hungarian librarians.
A Tale of Public Libraries in Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania: The Case of Three Gates Foundation Grants
Authors: Fried Sandra , Popova Desislava , Dąbrowska Małgorzata , Chiranov Marcel G.
Published: January 2015

The Global Library (GL) initiative at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation supports public libraries as engines for individual and community development. Funding enhances access to information through publically available information technology in libraries. This technology is complemented by the provision of training and content to make it accessible and useful, and by impact assessment and advocacy to make the new services sustainable. GL has supported library modernization programs at scale in fourteen countries around the world. Based on findings on library perceptions, use, and impact from recent GL research across seventeen European Union (EU) member states, this paper focuses on projects in Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania. It offers a sense of how libraries in these countries have changed during the grant periods, presents key results obtained, and sets out prospects for the future. These prospects include greater attention paid by the EU to the increasingly important role that libraries can play in strengthening communities and improving people’s lives.
The Library Sector in Lithuania at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century
Authors: Macevičiūtė Elena
Published: January 2015

The aim of this paper is to provide readers with a snapshot of the Lithuanian library sector since the year 2000. The sector functions as a modern, open, user-oriented, and professional system comparable to other library sectors in Europe. The community of Lithuanian librarians is organized in several professional associations that help in developing different aspects of library work: cooperation, supporting and expanding library activity, and coordinating mutual initiatives. The legal foundations for providing access to information, and the institutions providing information and ensuring its preservation in various forms, are set out in the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania and a set of laws regulating library work. The Lithuanian Ministry of Culture is authorized to regulate state administration of all libraries in Lithuania. The library system consists of the networks of public libraries, academic libraries, school libraries, and special libraries. This paper presents the developments in each of these networks over the past fourteen years. In 2011, a “scientifically” derived strategic plan was developed, which marked a new turn in the management of the state library sector.
The Development of Czech Libraries, 1990–2013
Authors: Richter Vít
Published: January 2015

In the last twenty years, libraries in the Czech Republic have undergone extensive changes, which were evoked by a transition to a democratic society and market economy. At the beginning of the millennium, the development of libraries was gradually stabilized; this process culminated in the adoption of the new library act in 2001. The role of the Ministry of Culture is characterized in relation to libraries and grant programs in support of libraries. This paper studies the changes and trends in the individual areas of library activities, such as library collections and information resources, the construction of libraries, the automation of library processes, the retrospective conversion of Czech library catalogs and portals, the digitization of library collections, the training of library staff, and the activities of library societies and associations. An emphasis is placed on the transformations connected with the development of information technologies. The paper is complemented by selected statistical data on the development of libraries.
Drowning Ulysses: Saving Levi from Agamben’s Remnant
Authors: Planinc Zdravko
Published: January 2015

This article is a critique of the reading of Primo Levi's If This is a Man and The Drowned and the Saved given in Giorgio Agamben's Remnants of Auschwitz . It examines Agamben's interpretation of the "gray zone" as the "territory" in which "the oppressed becomes oppressor and the executioner in turn appears as victim," and it questions Agamben's claim to have discovered "Levi's Paradox." The article develops a critique of Agamben's project by reading Levi's If This is a Man against Remnants of Auschwitz . It attempts, first, to set the record straight; but more, it attempts to articulate Levi's understanding of "the ethical and political significance" of the Shoah by discussing the philosophical importance of the literary aspects of If This is a Man overlooked or misrepresented by Agamben.
Playing the Whore: Illicit Union and the Biblical Typology of Promiscuity in the Toledot Yeshu Tradition
Authors: Latteri Natalie E.
Published: January 2015

Toledot Yeshu , or "Stories about Jesus," have been transmitted by Jews for centuries but only recently have begun to garner significant scholarly attention as part of a tradition of anti-Christian polemic. This paper contends that the varied depictions of Jesus' conception in the Toledot corpus reflect the intracommunal issues of forced conversion, apostasy, and over-familiarity with non-Jews. The theme was neither new to the Toledot nor a product of the late-antique and medieval contexts that Jewish stories of Jesus first circulated in. Rather, it echoes biblical representations of, and admonishments against, illicit relationships with non-Jews which ancient authors commonly depicted through a typology of sexual promiscuity. It is only when viewing Toledot presentations of Jesus' conception in light of both contemporary events and the Jewish biblical literary tradition that we are able to grasp their previously unnoted functions as 1) Jewish self-criticism regarding intercommunal relations; and, 2) a didactic warning to future generations against making similar mistakes.
Sexual Violence during the Holocaust—The Case of Forced Prostitution in the Warsaw Ghetto
Authors: Person Katarzyna
Published: January 2015

This article discusses the topic of forced prostitution as a case of sexual violence against women in the Warsaw Ghetto. Despite a proliferation of studies on the ghetto experience, women who manipulated sex for their own and their families' survival remain an untold story of the Holocaust. This was brought about by the attitude of both those relating their experiences and those listening to them. Victims, motivated either by shame or perceived appropriate gender roles, were in general unwilling to return to these events in their testimonies. Their silence was further reinforced by the attitude of the researchers, who could not, or perhaps for various reasons did not want to, ask directly about sexual abuse. By examining the history of sex for survival in the Warsaw Ghetto, the article demonstrates how a vital part of women's Holocaust experience was marginalized and their memory silenced.
Kol Isha : Malka Zipora’s Lekhaim as the Voice of the Hasidic Woman in Quebec
Authors: Skinazi Karen E.H.
Published: January 2015

Over the last quarter century, tensions in Quebec have run high between Hasids and their francophone Québécois neighbors over the question of “reasonable accommodation” of the nonmainstream ethnic group. There is much ignorance about the insular Hasidic communities, and fear by the modern, egalitarian province that Hasidic women are being oppressed. Several francophone writers have exploited this ignorance and fear for their fiction, and their stories of Hasids often appeal through sensationalism (e.g., tales of forbidden love). Malka Zipora, however, entered the fray in 2007 through the mundane: writing as a “Hasidic mom,” she suggests, in her short story collection, Lekhaim!: Chroniques de la vie hassidique à Montréal , that her life, and the lives of her peers, are little different from those of other women, moms, Canadians struggling with brutal winters. Through her universalizing literary bridge, Zipora persuades her readers to rethink positions on fraught issues like the legality of succahs, while also giving voice and agency to Hasidic women, altering their popular perception.
Honest to One’s Self: Censorship and Variants in American Editions of Meyer Levin’s in Search
Authors: Duban James
Published: January 2015

What do bowdlerized printings of Meyer Levin’s first autobiography, In Search (1950), reveal about his concessions to censorship? And how might Levin’s later restoration of the original text to one of the paperback reprints of In Search respond to the suppression—as orchestrated by Lillian Hellman and Otto Frank—of Levin’s staging of the Anne Frank diary? This study reveals disparities between the first French (though published in English) and American editions of In Search and suggests that the changes provide insight into the politics and biases of the publishing worlds of the 1950s, into Levin’s sometime propensity toward self-censorship, and—by virtue of his eventual restoration of original text to a 1973 paperback printing of In Search —into his growing resolve to be honest to one’s self through freedom of expression.
The formation of innovation system in the context of the participants and their relationships: The case of Lithuania
Authors: Binkauskas Gintaras
Published: February 2015

This article examines the emerging national innovation system (NIS) in Lithuania and identifies the major reasons hindering a successful cooperation between universities and business companies within the emerging NIS. The study highlights the peculiarities of Lithuanian phenomenon: ‘The most educated and least innovative in terms with the economic effect of innovation’.
A rare case of gastric signet ring cell carcinoma in a patient with acromegaly
Authors: Oleinik O V , Molitvoslovova N N , Soldatova T V , Leites Yu G
Published: February 2015

Acromegaly is frequently associated with the development of colon and thyroid cancer. Stomach cancer concomitant with this pathology is a rare form of tumorigenic complications of acromegaly. The present paper reports a 33 year-old woman with verified diagnosis of acromegaly characterized by enhanced serum IGF-1 and GH levels and the presence of pituitary microadenoma confirmed by the MRT study (2006). The patient was many times advised to undergo neurosurgical treatment that she flatly refused. The patient was regularly treated with sandostatin and dopamine agonists. In 2008, the patient began to complain of uncomfortable feeling in the epigastric region and was examined in the ultrasound study of the abdominal cavity and small pelvis organs. She was found to develop ascites and bilateral ovarian tumour. By way of preparing for the surgical treatment of ovarian cancer, the patient underwent gastroscopy that revealed infiltrative ulcers in the stomach. The histological study of gastric biopsies gave evidence of gastric signet ring cell carcinoma while the bilateral ovarian tumour turned out to be Krukenberg's metastases.
Federal clinical practice guidelines on the diagnostics and treatment of Shereshevsky-Turner syndrome
Authors: Volevodz N N
Published: February 2015

Shereshevsky-Turner syndrome is a chromosomal pathology related to partial or complete monosomia. Characteristic manifestations of this condition include growth retardation, sexual infantilism, and various inborn anomalies of the physical development. The present recommendations present information on etiology of this disease, its pre- and postnatal diagnostics, protocols of relevant studies and treatment of the patients belonging to different age groups.
Liebessemantik und Sozialstruktur
Authors: Morikawa Takemitsu
Published: February 2015

Nach dem Muster von Niklas Luhmanns Analysen in »Liebe als Passion« analysiert Takemitsu Morikawa den Wandel der Liebessemantik in Japan im Übergang von stratifikatorischer zu funktionaler Gesellschaftsdifferenzierung: von der Frühen Neuzeit bis ca. 1920. In Auseinandersetzung mit Texten der literarischen Tradition Japans (beispielsweise Romanen, Novellen, Erzählungen und Dramen) fragt er, inwieweit sich Luhmanns theoretische Konstruktion des wechselseitigen Verhältnisses von Evolution der Semantik einerseits und Differenzierung der Gesellschaft andererseits im japanischen Kontext bewährt.
Adding confidence to knowledge
Authors: Goodson Ludwika Aniela , Slater Don , Zubovic Yvonne
Published: February 2015

This paper reviews knowledge surveys as a best practice in assessment and illustrates how this assessment tool was used to compare teaching methods and its value to students during a 5-year study. The goal was to improve assessment, active learning, and course design. On each survey, students rated a type of confidence known as self-efficacy before and after instruction, used the survey as a study guide during instruction, and rated its value at the end of the course. Results showed gains in self-efficacy (p<.001), high value for the survey experience, and differences in scores across teaching methods (p<.001).
Collaborative learning supported by rubrics improves critical thinking
Authors: Saiz Sanchez Carlos , Fernandez Rivas Silvia , Olivares Moral Sonia
Published: February 2015

In previous works we developed and assessed a teaching program, ARDESOS v.1, with which we aimed to improve the fundamental skills of Critical Thinking. The results obtained were positive, but modest. After analyzing the limitations of the program we introduced certain modifications and assessed the new version. The changes involved designing the activities programmed by means of rubrics and making the students perform them with less direct orientation from the instructor. In sum specificity and initiative proved to be the key variables in the improved program, ARDESOS v.2. The data collected pointed to a significant improvement of the new version over the old one in the following aspects: a) version 2 improved all the fundamental dimensions, mainly in the pre- and post-test measurements, to a significant extent (Student’s t test); b) the effect size (Cohen’s d) was significantly higher, and finally c) these improvements in the program elicited better performance. Accordingly, an improvement in Critical Thinking can be achieved via an instruction design that attends to the factors that really induce change. Currently, these results have allowed us to successfully add a new improvement to the instruction, which we havere-evaluated.
Periodic review sessions contribute to student learning across the disciplines in pharmacology.
Authors: Barry Orla Patricia , O'Sullivan Eleanor , McCarthy Marian
Published: February 2015

AbstractBackground: The teaching of the discipline of pharmacology is in constant flux. In order to meet the challenges of teaching pharmacology effectively we investigated a new teaching and learning strategy. Aim: Our aim was to investigate whether structured periodic review sessions could improve teaching and learning for students in a multidisciplinary undergraduate pharmacology module. Methods: Following each lecture students were asked to identify topics of difficulty in pharmacology using the one minute paper classroom assessment technique (CAT).  Three review sessions were then introduced based on the problematic issues identified by students. They completed a pre- and post-review session MCQ examination to gauge improvements in their learning. Feedback was obtained from students at the end of the module regarding the acceptability, advantages and limitations of the CATs and the review sessions. Results: There was active participation by students in all thirteen CATs (71.15% ± 1.2%), three review sessions (78.3% ± 1.6%) and the end of module questionnaire (81%).  A significant increase in student learning across all disciplines was observed in all three review sessions (**, p<0.01; ***,p<0.001 and **, p<0.01 for review sessions 1-3 respectively). The majority of students (99%) expressed the opinion that the review sessions enhanced their learning of pharmacology. A limitation expressed by some students was the necessity to complete multiple CATs to support each of the three review sessions. Conclusion: Strategically structured student directed review sessions which are carefully designed and executed are an interesting and effective educational tool for improving and complementing student learning across the disciplines in pharmacology.
PADDY DRYING IN MIXED ADSORPTION DRYER WITH ZEOLITE: DRYING RATE AND TIME ESTIMATION
Authors: Djaeni Mochammad , Ayuningtyas Dewi , Asiah Nurul , Hargono Hargono , Ratnawati Ratnawati , Wiratno Wiratno , Jumali Jumali
Published: February 2015

Recently, the main problem of the rice stock and distribution in Indonesia is the quality degradation as indicated in unpleasant odor (smelly), stained, yellowness, and high percentage of broken rice. This is due to the low of paddy quality dried by from either direct sunlight or conventional fluidized bed dryer. As a result, the paddy cracks and breaks easily during milling in which causes the storage life being shorter as the enzymatic degradation by germ or fungi occurs. Air dehumidified with zeolite at drying medium temperature is potential to improve the quality of paddy. Zeolite is a material having high affinity to water vapor. In this case, the paddy and zeolite was mixed and fluidized with the air. The air will evaporate water from paddy, and at same time, the zeolite will adsorb water from air. Hence, the humidity of dryer can be kept low in which improves the driving force for drying. This work discusses the effect of presence of zeolite in the dryer, operational drying temperature, air velocity and relative humidity on drying rate of paddy. The results showed that increasing of zeolite as well as operational temperature increased the drying rate. In addition, using the model, the air dehumidification with zeolite and increase of air velocity can speed up drying time significantly at operational temperature below 80oC. This condition is very suitable for paddy drying since the quality degradation can be avoided.
THE PROPERTIES OF CHARCOAL FROM THE BLACK LIQUOR OF THE SODA PULPING OF RICE STRAW
Authors: Wistara Nyoman Jaya , Silaban Gokma , Pari Gustan
Published: February 2015

The main goal of the present works was to determine chemical changes, thermal decomposition, and the content of moisture, ash, volatile, fixed carbon and calorific value of soda pulping black liquor of the rice straw. Neutralized black liquor was dried to a moisture content of 10% and then pyrolized at 106oC-750oC. It was found that calorific value, fixed carbon, volatile mater, and moisture content were in the range of 2782-4716 cal/g, 49.2-81.6%, 15.5-47.5%, and 0.2-3.5%, respectively. Ash content was not influenced by the temperature of pyrolysis and was thought to depend on its initial silicate content. The weight loss of pulp was higher than that of black liquor. Extreme weight loss has been found in the temperature of 200-400oC. Noticeable functional groups changes were found with the increasing temperature of pyrolysis. Hydroxyl group completely disappeared at 300oC and above. Carbonyl related groups were also disappeared at 300-500oC, but it was reformed at 650 and 750oC. It might be brought about by the deformation of chemical bonding of oxygen ring in lignin structures. SIFAT-SIFAT ARANG LINDI HITAM DARI PEMASAKAN JERAMI DENGAN LARUTAN SODA API. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menentukan perubahan sifat kimia, dekomposisi termal dan kadar air, abu, zat terbang, karbon terikat serta nilai kalor arang lindi hitam pemasakan soda jerami padi. Dalam penelitian ini, lindi hitam netral dikeringkan (kadar air 10%), kemudian dipirolisis pada selang suhu 100-750oC di dalam reaktor berpengatur suhu. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa nilai kalor, karbon terikat, zat terbang dan kadar air masing-masing berselangdari 2782-4716 cal/g, 49,2-81,6%, 15,5-47,5%, dan 0,2-3,5%. Kadar abu tidak dipengaruhi oleh suhu pirolisis dan diduga bergantung pada kadar silika bahan bakunya. Nilai kalor meningkat dengan meningkatnya kadar karbon terikat. Perilaku kehilangan berat arang dari lindi hitam berbeda dengan perilaku kehilangan berat pulp jerami. Kehilangan berat pulp lebih tinggi dari kehilangan berat arang lindi hitam. Kehilangan berat yang tajam terjadi pada selang suhu 200-400oC. Perubahan gugus fungsi yang nyata terjadi dengan meningkatnya suhu pirolisis. Gugus hidroksil menghilang pada suhu 300oC atau lebih. Gugus terkarbonilasi menghilang pada suhu 300-500oC, tetapi terbentuk kembali pada suhu 650oC dan 750oC. Hal ini kemungkinan disebabkan oleh deformasi ikatan kimia oksigen di dalam cincin dari struktur lignin.