bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Water Ethic:
Authors: Mridha Shibaji 
Published: June 2023

The recent scholarship has evidently established the nexus between modernism and ecocriticism which reinforces modernist writers’ anxiety of humans’ changing relationship with nature. T S Eliot, one of the high priests of modernism, not only displays the evolving urban landscape but also cautions us about an imminent diseased and dysfunctional world. To further the burgeoning ecocritical discussion for understanding Eliot’s poetry, this paper explores the depiction of one crucial elemental matter – water – in his literary masterpiece The Waste Land, and argues how water is presented as a dynamic entity in contrast to being a passive and fixed matter. Referring to some of the recent scholarship of elemental ecocriticism, eco materialism, and environmental ethics, it aims to discuss how humanity’s failure to recognize water’s agency has wrecked the earth, forcing us to live in a waste land. Thus, this paper is an attempt to read The Waste Land as a water ethic that recognizes a world of reciprocity and cautions us not to treat the non-human world as a commodity
The Struggle of Memory against Forgetting in Kamila Shamsie’s Salt and Saffron
Authors: Osman Khan Touseef 
Published: June 2023

This article studies the ethics of remembrance and its transformative potential through the reading of the postmemorial narrative of Kamila Shamsie’s Salt and Saffron. While it is the story of a particular individual’s journey of memory transformation, it speaks to a shared experience of rupture in the wake of Partition violence and what it might mean to confront and transform the powerful impact that this collective memory has on everyday lives. The analysis of the central character’s evolution seeks to demonstrate the way in which memories of Partition violence are connected to the continuation of an oppressive class system in Pakistan and how transforming these memories also implies transforming a worldview that maintains class prejudices. In so doing, the article offers broader insights for understanding the nature of intergenerational memory, mourning, and transformation in the wake of historical violence.
“The best in this kind are but shadows”:
Authors: Shoilee Nishat Atiya 
Published: June 2023

Aesthesia or the art of perception involves an awareness of human tendencies and the Greek origin of the word, aisthesis stands for “one who perceives.” As much as an author might or might not find it significant to observe their surroundings and then fictionalize them to be able to emulate a lived reality, seen and heard all too well – one cannot disagree that once the vision they try to communicate achieves a heightened focus and is given a shape of words – the writer finds themselves in a mode of paradoxical nonexistence, in other words, aesthetic alienation. This paper aims to identify the very process through which a writerly vision comes true as an author decidedly chooses creative sincerity over domestic comfort as seen in George Gissing’s 1891 novel, New Grub Street, and Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, a DC Vertigo comic series (1993). Closely examining the dramatis personae and their intimate imitation of the respective authors’ aesthetic beliefs, the article makes use of both primary and secondary data and discovers that the domain of creative genesis is always separated from the finished literary products, autonomous and distant.
Understanding Deviant Space:
Authors: Uddin Kazi Ashraf 
Published: June 2023

This paper, preoccupied with intersectionality in spatial criticism and broadly portraying the visual representation of urban space in popular culture (film), critically looks into the lived experiences around the Delhi neighborhood, Paharganj, as illustrated in Rakesh Ranjan Kumar’s 2019 film Paharganj. Theoretically grounding on Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad and production of space, and on Michel Foucault’s “panopticon” and “heterotopia,” this paper investigates (a) ways in which Paharganj turns into a deviant and dangerous space with its countercultural brooding and camouflaged criminality and how such deviant “lived space” negates or adds dimension to the “conceived space,” and (b) how such subversive space (Paharganj) challenges territorial jurisdiction by creating an alternative and resistant power nexus which sometimes leads to its denomination as the “Republic of Paharganj,” a status as “dangerous” or desired space in the film. As a part of its spatial reading of popular cultural texts, this paper primarily takes on Paharganj. However, to substantiate Paharganj’s spatial representation in popular culture, this paper also secondarily makes reference to two other films: Holy Smoke! (1999) and Dev. D (2009).
Confusion as an Ideological Tool in Malaysian Newspaper Op-Eds
Authors: Khan Mahmud Hasan , Samuel Moses Stephens Gunams 
Published: June 2023

This paper offers an analysis of the lexical item confusion in opinion-editorials published by a Malaysian newspaper. The data was collected from The Star, a Malaysian English daily, between 1 January 2009 and 30 June 2010. To contextualize, in April 2009, the previous Prime Minister departs and the country welcomes a new leader with an apparently nationalist identity discourse of 1Malaysia (Malaysia as an inclusive nation). This is also when religious debates surfaced regularly in the country’s courtrooms and media. The findings of the study reveal that the authors of op-eds used the lexical item, confusion, to articulate normative and non-normative positions regarding various religious issues in Malaysia (e.g., Allah controversy, Islamic jurisprudence and religious conversion). Those who argued for the normative view, confusion arose within the discursive space of the religion of Islam; while for those who argued against the normative view, confusion arose due to the differences between the religious and the secular positions. It is important to note that the construction of meaning depended on both the semantic field of the lexical item and the context of utterance. However, what is more crucial to follow is that the term confusion served as an ideological tool in the Malaysian context to further the agenda of those individuals who are representatives or spokespersons for specific ideological groups within a contested polity.
Classroom Interaction as a Way of Developing Students’ Speaking Skill at the Tertiary Level EFL Classroom:
Authors: Patwary Md. Nurullah , Chowdhury Swarna 
Published: June 2023

Teaching speaking skills through classroom interaction is usually a neglected program at the tertiary EFL education in Bangladesh. This study primarily aims at discovering the current scenario of the practices and problems of classroom interaction at a Bangladeshi tertiary EFL classroom. This study further proposes some strategies for developing speaking skills through classroom interaction. The data were collected from 110 student respondents and 11 teacher respondents of 4 universities based on the stratified random sampling. For collecting and analyzing data, a mixed-methods approach (QUAN-QUAL) was applied. The data collection methods were a questionnaire survey on the tertiary EFL students and a semi-structured interview of the tertiary EFL teachers. The results show that though students and teachers were aware of classroom interaction, very little communication actually took place in the classroom because of teachers’ monopolizing the talk time and learners’ getting little to no talk time at all. The study also exposes that most of the students did not interact spontaneously and teachers used a great deal of Bangla in the EFL classroom. These hampered students’ speaking skills development. Finally, this paper presents some pedagogical implications and offers some recommendations for the considerations of the tertiary EFL teachers, learners, and policymakers
Formatting in Forster’s A Passage to India
Authors: Abdullah Al Mamun Abdullah Al Mamun 
Published: June 2023

This paper highlights the complicated relationship between the colonizer and the colonized in a typical colonial context as manifested in Forster’s masterpiece, A Passage to India. It also exposes the stereotypes which the Orientals are depicted with and the constant process of ‘formatting’ or brainwashing by the British. This article pursues Albert Memmi’s theory as promoted in his book The Colonizer and the Colonized as well as those of other cultural philosophers. The concept of difference in resemblance observed by Homi Bhabha as working in this novel shows how desperately Forster struggles to reconcile the differences between the nomenclature ‘English’ and the other one, known as, ‘Anglicised’. This paper by applying post colonial concept of formatting to A Passage to India attempts to study the complex web of human relationships ramified through identity crisis, racial conflict and the complexities of colonial discourse in a hybrid context.
Things Fall Apart:
Authors: Islam Nasrin 
Published: June 2023

Things Fall Apart has mostly been regarded as a ‘sexist’ text in that it portrays a phallocentric society where women are regarded as mere ‘objects’ or ‘property’ of their husbands, and we cannot but say that the portrayal is a true and honest representation of Igbo society. But an undercurrent of the writer’s endeavour to present women as individual human beings and important members of society is deducible from the very beginning of the novel, which runs in parallel with the patriarchal ideology prevalent in the society at large. One of the vital points to be argued in this regard is his portrayal of two female characters Ekwefi and Ezinma who possess strong personality and have their own ways of doing things and who even play a significant role in sustaining the family and social values. Moreover, this portrayal has further been fortified by the hero’s response towards these two women, which Achebe has conjoined with the structural design of the novel. So it is important to note how Achebe has made Okonkwo, one of the chief adherents of phallocentric ideology. recognize and appreciate the wisdom and courage of his second wife and her daughter and rely on them in his sheer needs. Similarly important is the fact that he is sustained by the female power during the most critical phase of his life–his exile to his motherland in the second part of the novel.
The Notion of Eternal Return in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Authors: Kabir Shahnewaz 
Published: June 2023

Milan Kundera, in his most popular and critically acclaimed novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), contemplates on the idea of eternal return devised by Friedrich Nietzsche and the idea of binary opposition between lightness and weight proposed by Parmenides. The novel sets in motion a set of complicated relationships mostly between Tomas, Tereza and Sabina, which are juxtaposed with the duality of lightness and weight based upon the idea of eternal return. Although Parmenides posits that lightness is positive and weight negative, Milan Kundera, in favor of Nietzsche, observes that the heaviest of weights, such as eternal returns, designates the most intense fulfillment in human life. This paper attempts to show that in spite of the deliberate ambiguity we observe in the novel the attainment of meaning can be compared to weight in the terms of Parmenides. Lightness, the binary opposition of weight, is suggestively denounced by the way the novel is developed along with the narratives, being guided by explanatory digressions. The illustration of Tomas designates a gradual shift from the course of lightness to weight and thus attains the Nietzschean doctrine of human greatness through embracing fate even at the cost of severe sufferings. The portrayal of Sabina in contrast with that of Tomas and Tereza implies Kundera’s denouncement of lightness to make a full circle. This essay presents the philosophical backgrou4d of the idea of eternal recurrence followed by a brief sketch of the story. Then it attempts to show how Kundera explores the Nieatzean ideas through the three central characters and their inter–relationships in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Opportunities and Challenges in Teaching ESP in Private University of Bangladesh
Authors: Huq ATM Sajedul 
Published: June 2023

With new television channels, media firms, and telecoms coming out in Bangladegh every day, there is now, more than ever, a need for graduates who possess competent communication and language skills. Students’ future prospects’*e increasingly becoming contingent not only upon academic success at the tertiary level but also upon their level of English proficiency.
However, it is a matter of concern that even though the demand is there, the majority of the graduates produced every year, fail to fulfil the needs of employers. It is clear that the gap between what is required and what is taught must be addressed.
In fact, in order to bridge this ever widening gap, many major national and multinational companies, banks, NGO’s, telecom’s and software companies have been conducting their own in-house language training programmes (e.g. HSBC, BRAC Bank, Robi, Hotel Sonargao etc ) for quite some time now. They focus on their immediate needs for English without wasting time and effort on teaching irrelevant elements.
This paper will focus on the limitations of General English language courses designed for students of diverse disciplines in private universities in Bangladesh, and examine whether introducing ESP courses would be more effective in raising the proficiency level of the students and at the same time meet the needs of both students as well as prospective employers.
K. Anis Ahmed's The World in My Hands:
Authors: Chowdhury Golam Sarwar 
Published: June 2023

K. Anis Ahmed,The World in My HandsRandom House India, 2013Rs. 299, pp.316.
K. Anis Ahmed’s The World in My Hands is indeed a powerful novel containing satire, humor laced with bitterness, and characters that are no strangers to readers living in Bangladesh…
Not Winnin’ Anymore:
Authors: Brooker Joseph 
Published: June 2023

This article addresses representations of working-class life in Britain during the 1980s; specifically, experiences of recession, unemployment, and difficulty in the workplace. The primary text considered is the television drama series Boys from the Blackstuff (1982), written by Alan Bleasdale; more briefly this is linked to James Kelman’s novel The Busconductor Hines (1984), and to the post-industrial landscape of the poetry of Sean O’Brien. In the wake of the socialist criticism of Raymond Williams, the article explores how the “Industrial Novel” of the 1840s may be succeeded, in the Thatcher years, by the literature of recession and deindustrialization.
To the Lighthouse:
Authors: Husain Adrian A. 
Published: June 2023

The study, diverging from current critical discourse on Virginia Woolf as eccentric author, sets out expressly to look at Woolf as enigmatic text. In so doing, it explores largely untapped Woolf terrain. Its broad focus is on Woolf’s two major novels, Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse though it concerns itself more particularly with the latter – and more mature – work. It takes in Woolf’s distinctive angle on modernism, as evinced by her first short story, “The Mark on the Wall,” besides considering her unique aesthetic, as laid out in her quasi-memoir, “A Sketch of the Past.” The discussion likewise engages with Woolf’s understanding of the tensions and disjunctions inherent within fiction and the nature of fiction as a deconstructive mode. Principally, it engages with Woolf’s individual understanding of time and her ostensible resolution of the conundrum of time’s slippage. Equally significantly, the essay looks at the impact of the revolution in pictorial art, especially Picasso, on the shape of fiction, as conceived of by Woolf. It considers the possibility, in the light of this revolution, understood as pivotal to modernist thought, of a transition from theme to form taking place, for instance, in To the Lighthouse.
Academic Language across Disciplines
Authors: Shaila Mahmuda Yasmin 
Published: June 2023

Building Academic Language: Meeting COMMON CORE Standards across Disciplines, Grades 5-12Jeff ZwiersSan Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2014 (2nd ed.). 336 pp.ISBN-13: 978-1118744857, ISBN-10: 11187
Building Academic Language: Meeting COMMON CORE Standards across Disciplines, Grades 5-12 by Jeff Zwiers is a much needed addition in the field of teaching and learning. In this text, the author reveals the importance of academic language and portrays the ways through which teachers in the classroom ...
Petro-culture as an Oppressor of Women and Nature:
Authors: Mahzabeen Bushra 
Published: June 2023

Oil, arguably a crucial natural resource for the development of human civilization, has often been treated in petrofiction as a representation of male power and consequently an apparatus for repression of women. Historically, nature and women have been dominated at the hands of the petro-capitalist male societies. In Egyptian author Nawal El Saadawi’s novel Love in the Kingdom of Oil, it is found that the question of dominance over environment and suppression of women are inextricably linked. Oil is a commodity in the narrative which is used in an Islamic Gulf state as an agent to confine women in stereotypical roles and strip them of their unique identities as individuals. The petro-capitalism in the novel also works against creating a sustainable environment for the future generations. The female protagonist here fights for her dignity and right to freedom while facing the harsh realities of her social condition. This paper analyzes the text in order to expose the degeneration of oil societies and offers a view of how petro-cultural capitalism and politics, using religion as a shield, arguably work as key influencers behind the exploitation of women and nature.
“Talking like Men”:
Authors: Rahman Rumana 
Published: June 2023

Myths unravel an overwhelmingly patriarchal order in society and consequently validate the androcentrism of language. As cultural texts, they show and legitimize the victimization of women. “Revisionist mythmaking” is a process, suggested by Alicia Ostriker, which tends to subvert the patriarchal structure of the cultural elements and “correct” the gender stereotypes of women. Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife is a remarkable addition to the tradition of revisionist mythmaking in English literature. Almost all the poems focus on hitherto invisible and “silenced” female counterparts of mythical and quasi-mythical characters. The ending of the stories remains unchanged, but the perspectives change as Duffy subverts the male-subject position into a female one. This paper argues that here the female speakers attain superiority mainly through speech and considers it the main strength of the process of revisionist mythmaking. Duffy’s use of dramatic monologue, as the dominant genre in this collection, helps to capture the essence of “performance” through the speech in a brilliant way. The female-subject speakers give commands which are meant to be executed; they narrate acts of violence, stories of victimization, and experience of motherhood. They adopt colloquial language and masculine expressions which make the subversion more effective. Austin’s speech-act theory has been used to explain the locutionary effect of the speeches. The paper also draws upon Judith Butler’s notion of performativity, as it helps to theorize the revision of myth that occurs through subversion of the masculine discourse.
The Language Debate:
Authors: Zobaer Sheikh 
Published: June 2023

Thiong’o’s groundbreaking book Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature is one of the most discussed and critically acclaimed postcolonial works. The book has four essays; “The Quest for Relevance” is the last essay which discusses the importance of prioritizing African literature in the academia. According to Thiong’o, the only way African students can benefit from studying literature is by prioritizing the study of their own literature in their own language. In fact, Thiong’o has taken his view to such an extreme that he has declared this book to be his “farewell to English” as a means of any of his writings (1). In contrast, Chinua Achebe embraced English as a medium of his writings which not only made him famous, but also earned him a permanent place in the pantheon of the greatest postcolonial authors and scholars. Like Thiong’o, Achebe was also a strong proponent of promoting African literature and African experience; but unlike Thiong’o, he did not shun the use of English. This paper examines Achebe in light of Thiong’o’s essay “The Quest for Relevance” and explores Achebe’s success as an author in Things Fall Apart.
Culture, Constrictions, and Subversion in Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine
Authors: Sengupta Mamata 
Published: June 2023

Right from its very inception, both society and culture require man to adhere strictly to a set of norms in order to get accommodated into its protective fold. Such a prerequisite, however, robs man of his freedom of thought, action, and expression. The present paper seeks to re-read famous British playwright Caryl Churchill’s much celebrated play Cloud Nine (1979) with a view to highlighting how society frustrates man’s rights on their own bodies and beings by levelling every act of defiance or deviance as abnormality, sickness, possession and/or corruption. Efforts will also be made to trace how the marginalized characters of the play like Betty, Joshua, Edward, and Victoria break free from the shackles of “normative” and then therefore “normal” existence, and how they brave the dangers inherent in such acts of utter defiance and try to articulate their long-silenced tales of forbidden and potentially disruptive experiences.
Effects of Tillage Depth and Tractor Speed on Implement Speed for Three Tillage Implements on a Clay Loam Soil
Authors: Okoko Paul , Akpankpuk Samuel Nditoi 
Published: June 2023

The utilization of agricultural machinery represents the main aspect contributing to the total energy input in the agricultural system. The trials were achieved using five tractor speeds(3.6, 5.4, 7.2, 9.0 and 10.8 km/hr) and five tillage depths(10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 cm) to determine implement speed at different tillage depths for 3-bottom disc plough, spring tine cultivator and offset disc harrow on a clay loam soil. The design of the experiment used were two factors, five levels factorial of Central Composite Rotatable Design of Response Surface Method. The implement speed for 3-bottom disc plough, spring tine cultivator and offset disc harrow ranged from 0.78 to 1.95, 0.67 to 2.19 and 0.70 to 2.11 m/s, respectively. The effects of tillage depths and tractor speeds on implement speed for the three tillage implements were assessed. The results indicated that increasing the tillage depth decreased the implement speed for all the tested implements but increasing the tractor speed increased the implement speed. The tractor speed had more pronounced effect on the implement speed than the tillage depth. This study therefore recommends that the availability of time and implement width should be used in determining the speed required to finish the work on time.