bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
“Even though it be against yourselves, or your parents and kinsmen” (Q 4:135)
Authors: Simonsohn Uriel 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
The tension between kinship and community is at the heart of this chapter. Based on a selection of literary sources, diverse in their religious origin and genre, the chapter focuses on the significance of kinship ties for promoting religious agendas. The ancient conflict, witnessed in the terrible scene of the binding of Isaac, persisted in the endeavors of rabbinic sages, ecclesiastical leaders, and Muslim religious scholars to prioritize God over family, or community over kinship. Yet kinship was not seen only as a rival to the divine, but also as a path to it. Extensive attempts on the part of communal agents to enter and dominate the private household, by overseeing the proper administration of family affairs and assemblies, offer a useful indication of the perception of the family as a vehicle for transmitting religious ideals. Moreover, a sophisticated discourse, reflected in the writings of different religious leaderships, in which a vocabulary of kinship was employed to explicate the bond between God and believers, is a reminder of both the strength of kinship and its communal utility. It is here, at the center of competing and completing kinship and communal affiliations that women stood, both vulnerable and powerful at the same time. The final part of the chapter thus moves to explore the manner in which the presence of women in religiously mixed families was perceived as both threat and opportunity for communal agendas.
Under the Bhasha Gaze
Authors: Raveendran PP 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
Under the Bhasha Gaze: Modernity and Indian Literature is a study of literatures in India in the context of recent discussions on modernity. It is a critique of the aesthetics and politics of modernity as they are embodied in Indian bhasha writing of the past two centuries. Exploring the trajectory of modernity after Indian literature came into contact with colonialism in the early nineteenth century is the book’s primary object, though the intricate ways in which the bhasha imagination negotiated questions clustering around such concepts as the literary, the historical and the social receive focused attention in the analysis. The work can also be regarded as a critical intervention in the current debates on comparative Indian literature. Though the study acknowledges the European provenance of modernity as a historical idea, it also recognizes the concept’s inherent complexity and its equivocal connotations when used with reference to the multilingual bhasha environment in India. Theoretical issues debated in relation to modernity such as its conceptual affinities with the western enlightenment project, its ideological investment in European aesthetics, and its implication for the evolution of the hermetic aesthetic are important for the study. The work also examines the local and regional strengths of the bhasha imagination that renders inevitable a specifically Indian conception of modernity. Although the book is concerned with issues pertaining to Indian literature in general, the theoretical postulates undergirding it are illustrated with the help primarily of Malayalam literature, with supplementary inputs from literatures in other bhashas and Indian English.
Introduction: Bhasha in Focus
Authors: Raveendran PP 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
The chapter sets up the general ground for the study and outlines the broad theoretical framework adopted for the analysis to be conducted in the subsequent chapters. It reviews and elaborates the key concepts that are central to the book’s argument, concepts such as modernity, the everyday, the social imaginary, bilingualism, and, above all, the deeply nuanced bhasha, which is used in the present study as an index to Indian literary modernity’s non-hegemonic character and its rich resistance potential The chapter begins with an analysis of the monolithic, European modernity that in essence signifies a non-traditional organization of social life that emerged in Europe in the eighteenth century and then spread to the rest of the world, but gives way in the course of the analysis to the idea of a proliferation of modernities evolving around the concept’s non-European models. Modernity, it is argued, can manifest in diverse forms across cultures, and it is not imperative that it should always remain in an adversarial relation with tradition. It is in this context that one is justified in talking about alternative modernities and their specifically Indian variants constructed around individual bhasha literatures.
Bhasha Writing as World Literature
Authors: Raveendran PP 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
This chapter rethinks the idea of world literature, which at a preliminary level can be understood as a universal and representative compendium of the ‘best’ literature written in languages across the world. Though the sense of universalism that this implies might force one to consider the term to be a weak ally of modernity, a closer examination of the term’s genesis and its subsequent evolution, especially in the possible context of its assimilation by Indian bhasha literatures, would indicate that it partakes of all the dangers that one might associate with western modernity, such as Euro-centrism and a bias for the hermetic aesthetic. In postulating a role for bhasha writing in the larger dispensation of a West-centred world literature, the chapter sees some historical parallels in the relation between the ancient Prakrit languages and the hegemonic Sanskrit in the pre-modern Sanskrit cosmopolis.
Realism in the Bhasha Novel
Authors: Raveendran PP 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
This chapter is on Gopinath Mohanty’s pre-Independence Odia novel, Paraja. The novel, set in the tribal world, is often regarded as a typical social realist narrative that deals with the everyday travails of the tribal people in the tradition of nineteenth-century western realism. Making a close scrutiny of the text of Paraja, the chapter argues that the realism implied by Paraja is not merely a mode of representation that attempts to communicate the authenticity of experience, but is the manifestation of a vision of life and a method of writing that is simultaneously modern and Indian. The novel illustrates the divide in the modern Indian mind, which comes from its ambivalent attitude to western modernity. The ambivalence is more evident in the writer’s approach to progress and his vision of the future. Mohanty’s repudiation of the idea of progress as nature in this context is also to be understood as linked to his implied vision of an alternative modernity.
S.K. Pottekkat
Authors: Raveendran PP 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
This chapter discusses the literary output of S.K. Pottekkat, fictionist and travel writer, who thought of himself basically as a writer of romantic fiction. A serious chronicler of his times, Pottekkat is one of the early Indian writers to internalize the everyday context of modernity into his practice of writing. As a travel writer, he is a pioneering figure in bhasha writing. While travel in a literal sense offered him opportunities to get to know people and places, in a metaphorical sense it offered him room for mobility and mental expansion, which must have permitted him to see modernity in a new light. Writing for Pottekkat is surrogate travel, perhaps an act of fantasy travel, which brings the writer and the reader together, and then drives both into contact with new and strange environments.
Ayyappa Paniker
Authors: Raveendran PP 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
An architect of poetic modernism in Malayalam, Ayyappa Paniker nevertheless cannot be treated as a strict adherent to the tenets of modernism in his poetic practice. He is a kind of maverick in his practice of writing. His deep respect for the tradition of romantic writing in his language illustrates that his modernism contains within it a number of contradictory elements. Paniker’s modernism also represents a kind of literary cynicism that even as it upholds certain characteristics of modernism, chooses to unearth the paradoxes in the modern mind which are left undocumented by dominant versions of writing. One might say that he is a modernist, a postmodernist, a romanticist, and an anti-romanticist, all at the same time. His prose works would furthermore reveal him to be the formulator of a unique theory of reading that brings together the principles of Indian and western aesthetics in a creative way.
Madhavikkutty
Authors: Raveendran PP 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
The life writings of the bilingual writer Madhavikkutty (Kamala Das) form the topic of discussion in this chapter. Madhavikkutty’s materialism, her attitude to the body, her conception of the immanence of experience, and her practice of genre-crossing are all seen as intimately connected to her understanding of the self, which, as her writings indicate, is a divided one. The divide between the memoirs and the autobiographical pieces that she wrote in English and Malayalam is a clear indication of the self-divide in her. Works like My Story, Neermatalam Pootha Kalam, and Januvamma Paranja Katha are critically reviewed here in order to discover how history and memory lie intermeshed in them.
Hemp, Tobacco, and Hot Commodities on the English Stage
Authors: Steffen William H. 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
In plays such as Romeo and Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and A Christian Turn’d Turk, ladders of rope are used in scenes where male suitors seek to access commodified female bodies. In each of these “ladder plays,” the ladder (presumably made from hemp rope) is in close proximity to a real or metaphorical fire. Furthermore, Shakespeare’s ladder scenes reference Phaeton’s scorching of the earth, which implicates hemp in the same anti-tobacconist discourse that cautioned White English consumers against smoking tobacco, and conflates industrial hemp with psychoactive cannabis and tobacco. These ladder scenes stage hemp’s complex role in signaling the risks and punishments of economic expansion on the one hand, while laying the groundwork of a racial ideology on the other. Not unlike cork and galls, hemp on the English stage helps to create an inextricable link to the objectification of African bodies in the English imaginary.
Shaking the Superflux
Authors: Steffen William H. 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
This chapter proposes that King Lear overturns a religious model of redemption offered by the medieval flood plays (where human sin is punished with divine retribution and global deluge) in favor of a more secular model of redemption. Whereas “faults” are recognizable as human sins in the flood plays, they are also in Lear the geological fault-lines by which nature achieves balance. One antiquarian, Richard Verstegan, imagined that the white cliffs of Dover had formed as the result of a superflux finding its balance in nature, a theory that informs the white cliffs as the site of Gloucester’s economic redistribution. Both storm and cliffs suggest that the play’s economic imbalances might be restored with the help of the earth’s restoration of natural imbalances. Through Lear, we learn to take responsibility for the economic imbalances generated by a long history of human (and geologic) “faults.”
Introduction
Authors: Hokama Rhema 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
In my reading of The Winter’s Tale, I posit that English Calvinism provided not only a theology but also an epistemology—one that articulated a sensory and experiential model for ascertaining knowledge and truth. For Calvin, epistemological certainty was not based solely on intellectual apprehension, but also on firsthand experience. I outline my aim to demonstrate the continuities between the forms of worship that took place within the official ceremonies of the Reformed English church and the forms of experientialist popular devotion that shaped English religious and erotic life outside of the confines of the official church services. In doing so, I maintain that the Reformed liturgy and communion—as imagined in The Winter’s Tale and the literary culture of the Reformation—subscribed to an epistemology inspired by Calvinist experientialism that was shared by popular devotional writers like William Perkins.
Byzantium
Authors: Crostini Barbara 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
Production of Greek manuscripts, from papyri to codices, overlaps with the territorial extent of the Byzantine empire and even spreads to outlying areas marked by its cultural influence. Piecing together the history of the Byzantine book entails keeping all these places in view, from Egypt to Georgia, from southern Italy to Russia and Armenia. The codex primarily enshrined the authority of the Bible and was chosen as the mark of identity for Christianity in terms of both learning and liturgy. Besides practical considerations such as the resistance of parchment to destructive agents such as humidity or fire, the ease of consultation of the book format, and the portability of bound quires, the codex became an object of reverence, made ornate within and without by artistic works such as carved bindings and gold-backed miniatures. The history of the Byzantine book is here retold from both a practical and an ideological perspective. Evolution in materials and forms of scripts is retraced in detail through many examples. At the same time, books are considered as carriers of identity displayed both inside and outside their communities, at times affirming continuity with the classical and Jewish heritage, at others emphasizing alterity and uniqueness. In closing, the chapter points to the current work of digitization and conservation of Greek manuscripts around the world that will ensure future access to this precious heritage.
Medieval Western Europe
Authors: Rundle David 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
During the millennium surveyed in this chapter, Western Christendom was defined, on the one hand, by its respect for the book and, on the other, by the inability of many of its peoples to read the texts that books contained. These were societies in which the tasks of reading and writing were delegated to a small minority of the population. This, however, did not diminish the power of the book but achieved the opposite. This chapter considers how the book was endowed with mystical, even sometimes magical, aura. The range of elements which formed the hand-written volume—the manuscript—combined together to enhance this potency. This continued for a markedly long time, even as the availability of books was transformed by both social and material changes, including for example, the rise of universities and the introduction of paper to Christian cultures. The mystical aura of the book remained a feature even as print began to be a presence.
“Some Call It Arsmetrike, and Some Awgryme”
Authors: Barany Michael J. 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
Algorithms found significant new audiences in early modern mathematical pedagogy through vernacular arithmetics like Robert Recorde’s 1543 Ground of Artes. Recorde presented rule-based algorithmic methods as powerful but error-prone, requiring practice and expertise to apply effectively. This view of algorithms is apparent in Recorde’s exposition through pedagogical dialogue, with a frequently erring Scholar continually corrected by a learned Master. In contrast to later mechanistic views of algorithms, sixteenth-century algorithmic thinking reflected experience and discernment, not just in the manipulation of numbers but in the contextual appreciation of mathematical knowledge. This chapter explores these aspects of early modern algorithmic thinking through a close reading of Recorde’s presentation of long division, framed by Recorde’s discussion of the terminology of arithmetic and algorism, and concludes with a meditation on farts and algorithmic modernity.
Capitalism by Algorithm
Authors: Rosenthal Caitlin C. 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
In nineteenth-century America and the Atlantic world, the “rule of three” was usually regarded as the endpoint of a basic mathematics education. This essay considers the importance of the rule as an algorithmic technology that enabled broader access to the calculations necessary to participate in the increasingly global market economy. Used by workmen, women, and even enslaved people, the rule and related tools translated basic literacy into practical numeracy. By doing so, they offered a diverse range of people the ability to negotiate more effectively. At the same time, however, the spread of the rule and other calculating technologies helped to legitimate particular types of exchange and commensuration, and with them the emerging capitalist economy.
“For Computing Is Our Duty”
Authors: Fiss Andrew 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
This chapter explores the class and gender connotations of algorithmic work through investigating the many ways that people became computers at the 1870s Harvard Observatory. Famously, the 1893 speech “A Field for ‘Woman’s Work’ in Astronomy” drew attention to the observatory’s practice of employing teams of women as human computers who performed complex, time-consuming calculations for astronomers and observers. Yet the initial employment of women was not so straightforward. The Harvard Observatory was also a home, so early computing was done by wives, daughters, and maids. The 1879 Observatory Pinafore, a scientific parody of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, particularly showcased the blurred boundaries of the 1870s observatory, how it was unclear who would perform algorithmic work at the time, just as it was occasionally unclear who was male or female. Inspired by this libretto, as well as its 1929 performance, this chapter argues that the “woman’s work” of computing emerged from servants’ and families’ practices. Its analyses provide a fuller picture of the Harvard Observatory and the work of human computers generally, encouraging further interrogation of STEM business practices, especially ones that proclaim “computing is our duty.”
Seeds of Control
Authors: Dryer Theodora 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
At its roots, the history of algorithmic computing is a history of how information and data are conceptualized, ordered, and put to use in economic and political decision-making, and how these data-driven systems impact the environment and human life. In this chapter, author Theodora Dryer traces the New Deal origins of algorithmic control and digital agricultural management, which constitutes a triple concurrence of linked data-driven transformations in industrial manufacturing, sugar beet breeding, and New Deal policy and administration. At the center of the story is the Statistical Quality Control chart, an emblem of control computing. The chapter reveals the stratified layering of algorithmic design and data processing, agricultural and industrial practices, and institutional reorganization and political powers built in the name of a control society. Unearthing these seeds of control makes the relationships between data extraction and policy visible and confronts the entrenched political myth that algorithms are in control of data and economy.
Decision Trees, Random Forests, and the Genealogy of the Black Box
Authors: Jones Matthew L. 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
This chapter concerns the genesis and development of one of the foremost kinds of algorithms for supervised learning: decision trees. A series of researchers came obliquely to trees in the 1970s: a data-driven statistician, a machine learning expect focused on large data sets, social scientists unhappy with multivariate statistics, and a physicist interested mostly in computers who eventually was tenured in a statistics department. The history of trees is iterative: the implementation of algorithms on actually existing computers with various limitations drives the development and transformation of the techniques. Before the recent renaissance and current triumph of neural networks, decision trees were central to the transformation of artificial intelligence and machine learning of recent years: the shift in the central goal to a focus on prediction at the expense of concerns with human intelligibility, and a shift from symbolic interpretation to potent but inscrutable black boxes. Trees exploded in the late 1980s and 1990s as paragons of interpretable algorithms but developed in the late 1990s into an example of powerful but opaque ensemble models, predictive but almost unknowable. In some cases, techniques imported from academic statistics have made them even less attractive objects within traditional statistics, even as they are embedding in increasingly ubiquitous systems making judgments on our behalf. We need to explain, rather than take as given, the shift in values to prediction—to an instrumentalism—central to the ethos and practice of the contemporary data sciences. Studying trees, as this chapter does, will help us do this.
Precursors
Authors: Helfont Samuel 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
The first decade of Saddam’s rule in Iraq was bloody and tumultuous. He had inherited the ideology and institutions of the Ba‘th Party, but he restructured them to meet the challenges created by mass migration and the rise of political Islam. After establishing a Ba‘thist regime in Iraq, Branches of the Iraqi regime spread throughout Arab and Muslim communities around the world to influence local and international politics. At home, Saddam created a highly personalized regime that became synonymous with violence and repression. He fought a grinding war with Iran, crushed his regime’s opposition, and attempted to control all access to information in Iraq.
Building Networks in the West, 1991–2
Authors: Helfont Samuel 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
Western Europe and North America were the liberal core around which post–Cold War politics was supposed to be built. Their institutions and political values were supposed to radiate out to the rest of the world until the entire globe fell under the umbrella of the new world order. Yet within Western politics, humanitarian impulses and the ability to organize freely opened the door for dissent. As the Iraqi Ba‘thists learned to navigate this political landscape, they built important networks and amplified voices that were beneficial to Baghdad. This process was subtle at first, but by the end of the decade, it would become impossible to ignore.
Escalation Dynamics in Cyberspace
Authors: Lonergan Erica D. , Lonergan Shawn W. 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
This book challenges the conventional wisdom that cyberspace is a dangerous environment prone to escalation. It offers a theoretical framework to explain the general absence of cyber escalation that draws on core conceptions in security studies and extends their logic to the cyber domain. It also draws on central characteristics of cyber operations, arguing that they mitigate pathways to escalation and dampen the potential for intensification of strategic interactions between rival states. The theory’s logic is extended to explore the conditions under which cyber operations could contribute to the de-escalation of crises and articulate a proposition for specific scenarios in which escalation could nevertheless occur. The book offers a comprehensive perspective on the nature of cyber escalation, from competition to crisis and conflict. As well as interrogating long-held assumptions about escalation in cyberspace, it also reframes the conversation away from binary debates about whether or not escalation is probable to identifying the conditions under which escalation—or de-escalation—may be more or less likely. It assesses cyber behavior in the context of a number of different crises and strategic rivalries, particularly several dyads involving the United States and its rivals. This is important as there are direct, significant implications for states that may discount, overestimate, or miscalculate the risks of operating in and through cyberspace. The book concludes with policy recommendations, focusing on the implications for U.S. cyber strategy and operations.