Interjections in literary readings and artistic performance

Interjections in literary readings and artistic performance

Reviewed by: Doctrine and Difference: Readings in Classic American Literature by Michael J. Colacurcio Jonathan A. Cook Michael J. Colacurcio Doctrine and Difference: Readings in Classic American Literature. New York: Routledge, 2021. xiv + 271 pp. In Doctrine and Difference: Readings in Classic American Literature, Michael J. Colacurcio continues to consolidate his place as a leading contemporary critic of classic American literature, with his main focus on writings of the Puritans and the impact of their beliefs on the American Romantics. Composed of essays published over the last two decades, the volume under review is one of several recent offerings from Colacurcio that bring to fruition a lifetime of teaching, thinking, and writing about the national literature—an output that now includes a capacious new two-volume study of Emerson and Other Minds (2021), and a recently published collection of essays entitled Hawthorne's Histories, Hawthorne's World: From Salem to Somewhere Else (2022), to follow up on his earlier The Province of Piety: Moral History of Hawthorne's Early Tales (1984). Additional evidence of this critic's broad impact on literary studies is the Festschrift of essays assembled by his former students and colleagues for his retirement, A Passion for Getting It Right (2015). Such a steadily growing roster of publication puts Colacurcio in a special class of historicist scholars, starting with the transformative figure of Perry Miller, whose foundational understanding of Puritan religious history and doctrine has provided productive insights into the larger development of American literature, particularly in that perennially appealing era known as the American Renaissance. While always rewarding in terms of breadth of comprehension and generosity of analysis, reading Colacurcio can sometimes be a labor of love, given the writer's embrace of a deliberately improvisatory style that at times resembles scat singing in its unpredictable assemblage of insights, strung together on extended fragments and elliptical aperçus. For Colacurcio is seemingly as much a postmodern performance artist engaged in a perpetual play of signifiers as a methodical expounder of ideas, and it occasionally takes some habituation to his style in order to appreciate the remarkable erudition that underlies his analyses. While some readers may be put off by the more gratuitous flippancies [End Page 101] and aporias, Colacurcio's passionate engagement with his subjects always provides productive grounds for thought, making the reader eager to reexamine the works under discussion to test his arguments. In the dozen essays contained in the current volume, Colacurcio examines a wide range of subjects: the tension between religious faith and emotional attachment in the poetry of Anne Bradstreet (Chapter 1); the paradoxical combination of cosmopolitan reading and provincial subject matter in Hawthorne's fiction (Chapter 2); the comparable literary aesthetics of Hawthorne and Poe (Chapter 3); the play of skepticism and subjectivity of Emerson's "Experience" (Chapter 4); the Melvillean idea of the "power of blackness" in Hawthorne's tales, notably "The Bosom Serpent" and "The Christmas Banquet" (Chapter 5); an anatomy of the use of genre in Melville's Polynesian narratives (Chapter 6); the suggestive relationship of Hawthorne's "Ethan Brand" to related scenes in Moby-Dick (Chapter 7); the attenuated liberal Christian ideas of original sin dramatized in The House of the Seven Gables (Chapter 8); the religious and political dynamics in three works of Melville's short fiction (Chapter 9); winter as the implicit seasonal climax of Walden (Chapter 10); the shadowy skeptical world of Emerson's "Illusions" from the otherwise pragmatic Conduct of Life essays (Chapter 11); and, in a rare foray into postbellum American fiction, a study of manners and morals in Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham and James's The American (Chapter 12). Given this heterogeneous mix of contents, I will focus here on the three chapters devoted to Melville's fiction, examining what they offer the reader and the value of their approaches. In "The South Seas in Melville: Genre, Myth (and Sex) in Typee, Omoo, and Mardi," Colacurcio provides an overview of generic affiliations for Melville's first three narratives set in Polynesia, which he identifies as "first, captivity narrative well disguised as travel report, next, political critique masquerading as strolling island adventure, then, comparative mythology dressed in the...

The objective of the research is to find out whether Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) Strategy able to improve the students’ reading comprehension at the Twelfth Grade Students of SMA Negeri 3 Bulukumba. The method of the research used pre-experimental design. It consisted of pre-test, treatment and post-test design. The population of this research is the twelfth grade students of SMAN 3 Bulukumba. The researcher used Purposive Sampling Technique which involve one class XII IIS 3. Total sample are 29 students. The result of the study showed that Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) Method could improve the students’ reading comprehension especially in literal reading comprehension at the Twelfth Grade Students of the SMAN 3 Bulukumba. It was proved that the mean score of Pre-Test is 64 and the Post-Test mean score is 70,6. Based on the difference from the mean score students get in reading comprehension show the improvement from pre-test to post-test where the increase of students reading comprehension increased by 12%. The improvement of students’ achievement significantly. Thus, the null hypothesis (H0) is discarded, while the alternative hypothesis (H1) is accepted. The researcher emphasizes that the Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) made active because its activity foresees various strategy and it was meaningful for the daily students life. Also, Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) strategy in the learning reading comprehension is very effective, because the students more easy to understand with the prediction that identifying main idea and supporting details and it can be seen from the result of students’ reading scores is better.

This paper aims to evaluate the faculty research performance on the basis of publication output, citations and h- index of professors working in Sri Lankan universities. Six hundred fifty professors from different universities of Sri Lanka served as respondents. Using scientometrics, publications of professors spanning 1980-2014 are analyzed. It found that based on the mean h-index used in this study, faculty of science is the best performer with the mean h-index of 5.55, followed by medicine (5.24), engineering (3.81), agriculture (3.76), management (2.74) and arts (2.62). This study further revealed that, the faculty of agriculture has the highest percentage (97.37 %.) of professors with published output; they have at least one research paper. Study also measured the universities’ position in the each disciplines on the basis of the mean h-index. The results showed that out of six faculties, which are grouped in this study, University of Peradeniya (PDN) is found to be the most predominant in agriculture, arts, science and engineering). In medicine, University of Kelaniya is the best on the basis of the mean h-index with 6.85. In the case of the faculty of management, University of Jaffna had the highest mean h-index of 7.75. On the other hand result indicates that the performance of arts among almost all of the universities except University of Colombo and PDN were very poor and similar. It is recommended that research output on arts, social sciences and management across the university faculty must be strengthened and mechanism should be introduced by the authorities.Journal of the University Librarians’ Association of Sri Lanka, Vol. 19, Issue 1, October 2015, Page 54-70

DSM-5 substance use disorder: how conceptual missteps weakened the foundations of the addictive disorders field.

The history of Western classical music and the development of its notational system show that composers have tried to control more and more aspects of their compositions as precisely as possible. Total serialism represents the culmination of compositional control. Given this progressively increasing compositional control, the emergence of chance music, or aleatoric music, in the mid-twentieth century is a significantly interesting phenomenon. In aleatoric music, the composer deliberately incorporates elements of chance in the process of composition and/or in performance. Consequently, aleatoric works challenge the traditional notion of an art work as a closed entity fixed by its author. The philosophical root of aleatoric music can be traced to post structuralism, specifically its critique of the Enlightenment notion of the author as the creator of the meaning of his or her work. Roland Barthes' declaration of "the death of the author" epitomizes the Poststructuralists' position. Distinguishing "Text" from "Work," Barthes maintains that in a "Text," meanings are to be engendered not by the author but by the reader. Barthes conceives aleatoric music as an example of the "Text," which demands "the birth of the reader." This essay critically re-examines Barthes' notion of aleatoric music, focusing on the complicated status of the reader in music. The readers of a musical Text can be both performers and listeners. When Barthes' declaration of the birth of the reader is applied to the listener, it becomes problematic, since the listener, unlike the literary reader, does not have direct access to the "Text" but needs to be mediated by the performer. As Carl Dahlhaus has remarked, listeners cannot be exposed to other possible renditions that the performer could have chosen but did not choose, and in this respect, the supposed openness of an aleatoric piece is closed and fixed at the time of performance. In aleatoric music, it is not listeners but only performers who are promoted to the rank of co-author of the works. Finally, this essay explores the reason why Barthes turned to music for the purpose of illustrating his theory of text. What rhetorical role does music play in his articulation of "Work" and "Text"? Precisely because of music's "difference" as a performance art, music history provides the examples of the lowest and the highest moments in Barthes' theory of text, that is, those of Work and Text. If, for Barthes, the institutionalization of the professional performer in music history demonstrates the advent of Work better than literary examples, the performer's supposed dissolution in aleatoric music is more liberating than any literary moments of Text. This is because the figure of music - as performance art-provides Barthes with a reified and bodily "situated" model of the Subject.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the restoration process of juveniles who are serving their sentences at Kavaja Minors Institution, through the therapy of literature and art. In order to understand the process, it is essential to answer the following questions: does art therapy have a transformative effect on the psychology of adolescents who have problems with the law? If so, how and to what extent does it affect and by what means do we measure the result? Methods that were used in order to process the data were the empirical, analytical, comparative and descriptive ones. The data were registered before and after sixteen therapeutic sessions that were essentially related to reading literature and dealing with other arts. If art therapy is utilized through a structured program to ensure informal education (ie, discovering oneself and others by creating and practicing process), it may help to improve adolescents' behaviors. Juveniles that are in re-education institutions may even ameliorate their psychological conditions if they are engaged to literature and art therapy. Art in itself deals with the personal dimension and consequently the interpersonal one, giving minors the opportunity to self-heal and later to self-regulate. The findings of this case study justify the importance of art therapeutic sessions in transforming and improving behaviors, learning and commitment to the creative process. This therapy was difficult to implement during the closure of institutions due to COVID-19. As a result, some of the therapeutic sessions were performed virtually and indirectly. Literature and art therapy improves young people emotionally, mentally and promotes their artistic skills. Their creativity and artistic performance (poetry, essays, debate, drama, role-play, dance and singing) remain an important proof of this restoration process.
 
 Received: 8 January 2021 / Accepted: 22 February 2021 / Published: 5 March 2021

Cognitive ecocriticism draws on research in neuroscience and cognitive narratology to explore how literary reading can lead us to care about natural environments. Ann Pancake’s novel Strange as This Weather Has Been (2007) serves as an example of a novel that cues both direct and empathetic emotions for an actual environment—the Appalachian Mountains—that is wounded and scarred. I argue that the novel’s protagonists allow readers to imaginatively experience what it is like to love an environment and then witness its destruction by mountaintop removal mining. Pancake’s decision to relate large parts of the story through the consciousness of teenagers allows for highly emotional perspectives that have the potential to engage readers in the social and moral issues around resource extraction.

Human Papillomavirus in Older Women: New Infection or Reactivation?

In a double-blind experiment, participants were exposed to facial images of anger, disgust, fear, and neutral expressions under 2 body odor conditions: fear and neutral sweat. They had to indicate the valence of the gradually emerging facial image. Two alternative hypotheses were tested, namely a "general negative evaluative state" hypothesis and a "discrete emotion" hypothesis. These hypotheses suggest 2 distinctive data patterns for muscle activation and classification speed of facial expressions. The pattern of results that would support a "discrete emotions perspective" would be expected to reveal significantly increased activity in the medial frontalis (eyebrow raiser) and corrugator supercilii (frown) muscles associated with fear, and significantly decreased reaction times (RTs) to "only" fear faces in the fear odor condition. Conversely, a pattern of results characterized by only a significantly increased corrugator supercilii activity together with decreased RTs for fear, disgust, and anger faces in the fear odor condition would support an interpretation in line with a general negative evaluative state perspective. The data support the discrete emotion account for facial affect perception primed with fear odor. This study provides a first demonstration of perception of discrete negative facial expressions using olfactory priming.

A Quantitative Description and Analysis of Courtship and Reproductive Behavior in the Anabantoid Fish Trichogaster Leeri (Bleeker)

Using a sample of 466 grants of stock options to executives of Japanese firms over the years 1997–2001, this study tests the managerial power theory of compensation design developed by Bebchuk, Fried, and Walker (2002) and Bebchuk and Fried (2004). This theory argues that managers of firms with weak corporate governance will use their “power” to design executive compensation that is “manager-advantageous.” Using our option grants sample, we test to determine if any of the firm's governance mechanisms are able to limit managerial self-dealing with respect to executive stock options. We find that smaller boards and a higher percentage of independent directors are important governance mechanisms for the control of managerial influences in the design of stock-option compensation. An alternative hypothesis, that firms elect to grant advantageously designed options to encourage risk taking by managers, is not supported by our empirical results. Finally, we determine that the market response to the announcements of such grants varies inversely with the extent to which the options are managerially advantageous. Overall, we conclude that managerial power effects are present in the design of executive stock options and that theory of managerial power advanced by Bebchuk et al. holds internationally.

Grafts of posterior tissue placed anterior to the limb bud in the salamander embryo exert a polarizing influence. To explain this result, the idea that the anteroposterior axis of the developing forelimb is polarized by a diffusible morphogen has been proposed. An alternative hypothesis, and the working hypothesis of the present study, is that the polarization of the developing salamander forelimb is accomplished by short-range cellular interactions resulting in intercalation rather than by the more global influence of a diffusible morphogen. One prediction of this intercalation hypothesis is that cells will be contributed to the limb from the "polarizing tissue." To test this idea, grafts of triploid marked polarizing tissue were implanted anterior to the limb bud in 82 diploid axolotl embryos at stages 32-34 of development. A total of 27 (33%) of the limbs that resulted were symmetrical and ranged in complexity from one to seven digits. Histological analysis of a subgroup of the original symmetrical limbs revealed that mesodermally derived tissues in the anterior side of these limbs (the side which formed as a duplication in response to the influence of the graft) contained high percentages of trinucleolate cells (muscle, 12.1%; connective tissue tissue, 12.5%; and cartilage, 13.4%) when compared to similar tissues in the posterior side of the same symmetrical limbs (muscle, 1.8%; connective tissue , 0.7%; and cartilage, 0.6%). When symmetrical limbs were amputated, 73% regenerated symmetrical limbs. When these regenerated limbs were again amputated, 63% formed symmetrical secondary regenerates. Histological analysis of the first generation of regenerated limbs revealed that the pattern of distribution of trinucleolate cells in each regenerate was similar to the pattern seen in the original symmetrical limb. These results indicate that there is considerable cellular contribution to the anterior side of the symmetrical forelimb from the mesoderm of grafted "polarizing tissue." This result supports the idea that short-range cellular interaction are sufficient for formation of symmetrical forelimbs in salamander embryos.

Cabanellas-Reboredo, M., Alós, J., Palmer, M., and Morales-Nin, B. 2012. Environmental effects on recreational squid jigging fishery catches. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 69: 1823–1830. Experimental fishing sessions simulating the operating procedures of the recreational fishery for the European squid that operates at inshore Palma Bay (Balearic Islands, Spain) were conducted to investigate the effects of environmental variables on squid catches. The catch per unit of effort (cpue) of recreational-like jigging sessions showed a seasonal pattern (higher cpue during colder months). Two alternative hypotheses can explain such a pattern. First, squid could migrate inshore during colder months to seek spatio-temporal windows within which the sea temperature maximize spawning success. Second, the timing of the seasonal reproductive peak and the growth rate of any given cohort would result in a higher percentage of squid whose body size is greater than the gear-specific vulnerability threshold during the colder months. The combination of environmental variables that maximized cpue was a low sea surface temperature, a low windspeed, low atmospheric pressure, and days close to the new moon. A specific period of the day, narrowly around sunset, favoured the catches. Within this narrow period, the sunlight is still sufficient to allow the recreational fishing lures to be effective, and the squid have already shifted to a more active pattern of movement characteristic of the night-time period.

Choreographing the Disabled Body: Performing Vulnerability and Political Change in the Work of Tamar Borer Ilana Szobel (bio) With the most powerful tool we have as human beings—the imagination—we produce change, healing and transformation of both our mind and physical condition.1 –Tamar Borer The Israeli-Jewish performance artist Tamar Borer, born in 1965, was trained in many different forms of dance in institutions worldwide. She studied classical ballet at the American Ballet Theatre in New York, modern dance at the Rina Sheinfeld Dance Theatre (where she performed for seven years), authentic Balinese dance in Indonesia, and trance dance in Mexico. In 1992, she traveled to Japan to study with Kazuo Ohno, the well-known and skilled founder of Butoh-soul dance. More than two decades after this formative encounter, Borer remains one of the most innovative and influential Butoh performers and teachers, not just in Israel but worldwide.2 She has been invited as an esteemed guest to a variety of dance festivals across the globe and has won many awards and prizes, including the first prize at the Gvanim beMahol (Shades in Dance) Competition for First Independent Work (1988), the Distinguished Artist Award from ballet master Albert Gaubier’s Foundation (1996), and the Buchman Hyman Fund’s Promising Artist Award (1997).3 Borer choreographs and performs solo, duets, and ensemble productions throughout the world. Despite her worldwide presence, her studio is located in Tel Aviv, and the vast majority of her noteworthy performances and collaborations take place in Israel. Her performances raise questions and concerns about Israeli subjectivity—particularly in relation to the Israeli– Palestinian conflict. In this context, while creating a home-grown as well as transnational artistic venue for addressing the political situation in which Israel is embroiled, Borer’s work functions not just as a productive point of departure for social critique and change, but most pointedly as an invitation to a kind of social self-reflection for contemporary Israelis. [End Page 55] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Piano Forte. Photographed by Tamar Lem (2013), courtesy of Tamar Borer. In 1990, Borer was involved in a car accident that left her paralyzed in both legs. This life-changing experience prompted a continued exploration of her body and sense of embodiment, alongside her physical training, creative expression, teaching, and professional performances. Her remarkable talent and dedication won her the Willie and Celia Trump Medal of Mercy and Equality Award (Ot Hachesed) in 2002, “for serving as a role-model for growth and empowerment in the face of disability.”4 Experiencing dance in a new way enabled—and forced—Borer to critically examine both her capabilities as well as her own limitations, and it prompted her to encounter dance and performance through her unique body and self. This process is shared by many professional artists, but as Western dance traditionally idealizes and privileges the able and “capable” body—the Apollonian robust and stable body5—the integration of a disabled body into contemporary Israeli dance resulted in radical redefinitions of physical expression and grace by disrupting and challenging the cultures that have evolved around dance. In understanding Borer’s work as a physically disabled dancer, I examine the implications of disability and embodiment, focusing on the artistic and aesthetic in Israeli society. Thus, I am interested in questions such as: What does it mean to address the political arena from the position of the disabled occupier? In what ways do the visual markers of “limited” mobility, such as walkers, wheelchairs, or canes, affect sociopolitical concepts such as [End Page 56] control, agency, and authority? And, in a broader sense, how can the physical, emotional, social, and existential perspectives of the non-Apollonian frame challenge Israeli perceptions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict?6 My study examines the nexus of disability and performance, which introduces us to new perceptions of bodies, agency, and space, and invites us to rethink our personal, collective, and national stability. This rethinking of what constitutes stability challenges our conceptualization of the Zionist movement in general, and of the Israeli occupation in particular. Politicizing the Disabled Body From its inception, the Zionist movement has created a conceptual connection between...