Kinds Of Subject Matter Research Articles

The Symbolist aesthetic and the impact of occult and esoteric ideologies on modern art

Within the past couple of decades, art-historical scholarship has developed a more acute awareness of the need to reassess and re-evaluate its dominant narratives. It has become apparent that the value judgements that have guided modernist historiography can no longer be taken for granted, and there has been an ever-increasing demand for more diverse perspectives. One central issue which has gradually surfaced into broader consciousness, is the impact of occult and esoteric ideas on artistic theories and practices since the late nineteenth century. This article looks into the background of this phenomenon, locating a point of culmination in the new Symbolist direction of art that emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century. The aim is to demonstrate that central Symbolist principles, such as inwardness, intuition, and dematerialisation are linked with popular esoteric beliefs, and that the late nineteenth-century aesthetic theorisations of these issues have had significant effects on later artistic developments. The artists of this new movement were no longer satisfied with the old ‘window on the world’ paradigm. Instead of copying a tangible reality as it appeared to their eyes, they turned inward, towards the world of dreams, fantasies and nightmares, visions and hallucinations, ancient myths and fairy tales. But they were not merely looking for new kinds of subject matter in order to ‘shock the bourgeoisie’. The innovative aesthetic attitude that they developed in both theory and practice rested on a philosophical foundation that was deeply rooted in occult and esoteric ideologies and their quest for new directions and forms of expression in art was paralleled by an intensive religious searching.

Possibilities of Misidentification

Possibilities of Misidentification Lauren Ashwell (bio) We seem to have a special, seemingly direct, relationship to our own thoughts that we do not have to the thoughts of others; I can become aware of my thoughts in a way that I cannot become aware of yours: through introspection. Those who have delusions of thought-insertion, however, claim not only to be aware of another's thoughts, but to have another's thoughts in their own mind. These thoughts, of course, cannot actually be someone else's thoughts. However, if we take those who have this delusion at their word, it certainly seems to them that these thoughts belong to another. Although introspection is no longer generally thought to be absolutely error free, this misinterpretation seems quite a strange mistake to make. Surely, we cannot misidentify who has the thoughts we are aware of through introspection! Yet the existence of thought-insertion delusions shows that this kind of misidentification is not just possible—it actually happens. So thought-insertion delusions seem to threaten the principle of immunity to error through misidentification (IEM) of our introspective mental state attributions (Campbell, 1999a). However, in "Pathologies of Thought and First-Person Authority," Michael Young argues that thought-insertion delusions are not counterexamples to this immunity principle, once we properly formulate it. One might gloss IEM by saying things like, "we cannot misidentify who has the thoughts that we are introspectively aware of," just as I did above. And thought-insertion delusions, if we interpret these reports straightforwardly, certainly are counterexamples to this. Yet, as Young points out, they are not counterexamples to the following principle: Immunity Principle (IP): any agent who thinks a thought* (where thought*s are thoughts, based on introspection, attributing a mental state in the present tense) of the form 'I am F' cannot be right on the basis of the perspective grounding this thought that something is F but wrong about whether 'I am F.' If IEM for thought*s is correctly characterized by IP, then Campbell has not provided a counterexample, for the principle was only ever meant to apply to first-personal ascriptions of mental states (which Young calls I-thought*s)—those judgments wherein you ascribe the mental state to yourself through introspection. When suffering thought-insertion delusions, patients ascribe the mental state in question to someone else. Moreover, Young argues, if we reformulate descriptions of thought-insertion delusions so that they are in the first person (so the patient's ascription denies that the mental state in question is theirs), we end up with a different sort of error—an error of mispredication. That is, we simply end up with the patients making a mistake about which mental state they are in (or are not in), rather than an identification error. Although IP can be defended from counterexample in this way, I argue that IP does not show [End Page 161] us anything about introspection or the first person—which should make us wonder whether it really captures what is at stake in discussions of IEM. First, Young's defense of IP turns on features that are not peculiar to introspection or the first person—nor to any other kind of subject matter that is thought to have IEM. Second, although Young has given us a principle that actual-world thought-insertion delusions do not threaten, IP is not yet strong enough to capture the standard claim of IEM for introspective self-attribution. Without further supplementation, both IP and Young's defense of IP leave open the possibility that such immunity might be merely contingent. Furthermore, thought-insertion delusions provide prima facie evidence that IP is merely contingently true. The general structure of Young's argument can be used to defend a multitude of versions of IEM principles—not just ones that involve first-personal introspective judgments. For example: (BIP) Any agent who thinks a thought based on evidence concerning Bates College of the form 'Bates College is F' cannot be right on the basis of that evidence that something is F but wrong about whether Bates College is F. Of course, someone could think that Bowdoin College is in Lewiston on the basis of...

What kinds of subject matter and skills do teachers consider necessary for global education?

What kinds of subject matter and skills do teachers consider necessary for global education?

Still to learn from vicarious learning

The term ‘vicarious learning’ was introduced in the 1960s by Bandura, who demonstrated how learning can occur through observing the behaviour of others. Such social learning is effective without the need for the observer to experience feedback directly. More than twenty years later a series of studies on vicarious learning was undertaken in the context of technology-enhanced learning in mass higher education. These studies employed the idea in a rather narrower sense, defining it as learning through observing others in the act of learning, focusing in particular on the kind of conceptual learning that is typical in higher education and is best observed in tutorial settings. The key proposal was that multimedia recorded versions of tutorial dialogues could be chosen for their effectiveness in revealing the way concepts are grasped, questions posed and problems solved, from the perspective of real learners rather than from that imagined by teachers. These recorded dialogues could be linked to the primary subject matter and, it was hoped, would constitute a powerful resource for new students who would otherwise not have the opportunity to benefit from a teaching method which, if restricted to the original participants, simply does not scale. This paper reviews the subsequent research that has continued to explore this idea. Overall, the potential importance of vicarious learning in various kinds of subject matter has been confirmed. Research on vicarious learning continues to resonate with fundamental issues of the design of higher education in a digital world.

Fact, Value and Philosophy Education

In Fact, value and philosophy education I tried to show how philosophy can help to overcome the fact-value divide that continues to plague education. In attempting this, I applied John Dewey’s suggestion that philosophy may help to integrate beliefs about matters of fact with values in society at large, to the curricular division between subjects that deal with knowledge of matters of fact and those that are largely devoted to subjective understanding and personal expression. The paper centres on the claim that philosophical dialogue about what we should believe and value can help to effect a mutual adjustment between our reason and our sentiments and bring us to think as whole human beings. It argues the case by first looking at the use of reflective practical reason to effect a change in our desires and conduct when we deem them to be undesirable. The use of reason to provide us with courses of action and other practical remedies to deal with what we see as defects in our character suggests that our cognitive and affective powers are capable of working together through mutual adjustment. By extension, I argue that reason can help us to examine the moral dimension of problems and issues in various areas of study, while making our understanding of them responsive to our feelings. The introduction of an educational means to give effect to this mutual adjustment brings us back to the role of philosophy. Philosophy provides the opportunity for reasoned dialogue that brings the factual material that students encounter into connection with what they are learning to value. It brings a normative cast to the study of history, society, literature, art, science and technology and enables the knowledge that students gain through their studies to be applied to matters of value. In general, it brings moral sensitivity to all kinds of subject matter and enables students to apply their knowledge and intelligence to the formation of values. In the years since I wrote this piece, I had the privilege to assist with the initial draft of documents on ethical understanding as a general competence in the Australian national curriculum and of constructing and implementing a pilot program for ethical inquiry in New South Wales primary schools, which led to ethics becoming an option for students who do not attend religious instruction. In different ways, both experiences brought home to me the importance of incorporating considerations of value throughout the curriculum and the value of philosophical inquiry as a means of doing so. Reflection on these experiences resulted in my book Teaching Ethics in Schools (ACER Press 2010).

A Landmark Decision

A Landmark Decision Rodney Hill Laura Wittern-Keller and Raymond J. Haberski, Jr. The Miracle Case: Film Censorship and the Supreme Court University Press of Kansas, 2008 233 pages; $35.00. Anyone familiar with the history of American film censorship is at least nominally aware of the “Miracle Case” of 1952, in which the U.S. Supreme Court finally extended free-speech protection to motion pictures. Prior to that time, the high court had not ruled on this particular issue since 1915, when it concluded in Mutual Film Company v. Ohio that the movies were “entertainment, pure and simple,” and as such did not fall within the purview of the First Amendment. The court’s decision in the “Miracle Case” (more properly known as Burstyn v. Wilson) ended decades of prior-restraint censorship and helped to usher in a period of greater freedom in American cinemas, in terms of the international films that could be shown here, as well as the kinds of subject matter that Hollywood studios and independents could broach in their films. What many of us might not know about the “Miracle Case” is the history of the man who brought it about. Joseph Burstyn (1901 – 1953) was a Polish immigrant who got into the film business in the 1930s as a distributor of European motion pictures. After World War Two, he and his partner, Arthur Mayer, introduced American audiences [End Page 101] to the Italian Art Cinema, with such acclaimed and successful titles as Rome: Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), and Bicycle Thieves (1948). Burstyn’s contributions to the way we have come to understand the international art cinema cannot be overstated. When he began his career in the 1930s, the total American market for international screenplays consisted of roughly 500,000 people. By the time of Burstyn’s death in 1953, the U.S. art-house audience had ballooned to over 7 million, thanks in large measure to his efforts. Burstyn’s greatest notoriety came with Roberto Rossellini’s Il Miracolo (The Miracle, 1948), which he combined with two other short photodramas—Jean Renoir’s A Day in the Country (1936) and Marcel Pagnol’s Jofroi (1933)—into an omnibus film which he titled, Ways of Love (released in 1950). The film opened at New York’s Paris Theatre, to critical acclaim and enthusiastic audiences. The City License Commissioner, however, found The Miracle to be “personally and officially blasphemous.” Subsequently, the New York State Board of Regents withdrew the film’s license, effectively banning it from New York screens. As Burstyn, together with the brilliant young attorney Ephraim S. London, fought the case all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court, he garnered the support of organizations such as the New York Film Critics, the ACLU, the American Jewish Congress, and the American Book Publishers Council. Burstyn and London’s victory in the case rocked the film industry and indeed shaped the future of American film history, as the Supreme Court declared, “expression by means of motion pictures is included within the free speech and free press guarantees of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.” Authors Wittern-Keller and Haberski are legal historians, offering a fresh angle on their subject that film scholars should welcome enthusiastically. One of the book’s greatest strengths is that it explains the legal intricacies and far-reaching ramifications of Burstyn’s case without getting bogged down the slightest bit in legalistic jargon. As such, it offers an account that is at once rigorous and highly readable. Furthermore, the book goes to great lengths to contextualize Burstyn’s individual legal struggle within the larger history of American film censorship—going back to the first local moving pictures censorship board, formed in Chicago in 1907, and looking forward to the era of Jack Valenti’s ratings system, self-imposed by the industry and still in effect today. Wittern-Keller and Haberski also do a commendable job of situating Burstyn v. Wilson within larger American cultural contexts, such as the changing attitudes towards freedom of expression in the 20th century, especially during the McCarthy era. However, the fact that the authors are not film scholars does present a few problems here...

The Missing Link in Promoting Quality Education: Exploring the role of pedagogical design in promoting quality in teaching and learning

A major premise of this keynote address is that pedagogical design plays an important role in promoting and assuring educational quality. Pedagogical design has to do with approaches to teaching and learning which comprise, how learners interact with the subject matter content, their learning activities, how their learning is assessed, and how feedback is provided to them. Approaches to learning and teaching are informed by our knowledge and understanding of human learning and cognition, of which there are several major strands. These theories of how we learn help us develop models of learning and teaching which we believe are suitable for teaching particular kinds of subject matter, skills or attitudes. Our views and perspectives on learning and cognition have been changing over time and this has impacted how we approach and conduct our teaching activities. Currently, the popular view is that learning is a constructive process, that learning and teaching is most potent when they are “situated” within a meaningful context, and in the culture and the community within which learners live. This view suggests that learning is a process of developing understanding through problem-solving and critical reflection within a meaningful context. This paper discusses and demonstrates how this view and its attendant principles have been implemented in the Master of Arts in Teacher Education (International) Program ( MATE–I) currently on offer in the distance education mode at the Open University of Sri Lanka. The MATE–I program utilizes a situated cognitive approach to learning and teaching called “Scenario-Based Learning”.

West Coast Federal Appeals Court Upholds Chip Protection Act Violation Finding

The SCPA (Semiconductor Chip Protection Act) is an intellectual property law that Congress passed in 1984 to protect the US semiconductor industry from so-called chip piracy - the copying of IC layouts by what amounted to photoor xerographic duplication - which was then widespread. The SCPA combines aspects of copyright law and patent law; in some ways it differs from both of them. The Senate originally passed the SCPA as a part of an amendment to the US Copyright Law. In addition to the compromise preserving reverse engineering while prohibiting outright copying, the SCPA contains a compromise over the kind of subject matter that it protects: ideas, concepts, and principles cannot be protected from adoption by others. Similar to ideas and principles, layout features that function dictates cannot be monopolized under the SCPA

Econometric Theory and Methods, by Russell Davidson and James G. MacKinnon, Oxford University Press, 2004

Teaching graduate econometrics means covering three different kinds of subject matter: a grounding in the theory of econometrics, a long laundry list of available econometric techniques, and an introduction to the fact that the practice of linking models and data is every bit as untidy as mathematical statistics is neat. I assign Econometric Theory and Methods (ETM) as a primary text in our first Ph.D. econometrics course. ETM is in charge of getting the students their theoretical grounding. I also assign Greene's excellent Econometric Analysis (2003) for its coverage of a long list of techniques. My laptop, EViews, and I, together with a whole lot of real data, are responsible for being untidy.

At home and abroad with cine enthusiasts: Regional amateur filmmaking and visualizing the Mediterranean, ca. 1928–1962.

After the appearance of a portable Kodak cine camera in 1923, home moving making grew steadily in popularity in the years leading up to and following World War II. Cine enthusiasts, particularly in the pre-war period, tended to be male, white and middle class, although exceptions exist, and they tended to travel with their cameras much as earlier generations had documented their experiences in written and artistic form. Despite their amateur status, they were often very professional in their approach to cinematography and they produced material for a range of domestic and public audiences on varied topics and in different genres. Specialist publications and the rapid growth of local amateur film societies fostered the rise of an active non-professional film movement; the result is a highly distinctive although neglected component of film history. With reference to materials held at the North West Film Archives in Manchester, England, this discussion considers the rise of non-professional filmmaking at the regional level during the decades before and after the second world war. Making and showing home movies is placed within various socio-cultural contexts. The imagery discloses much about visual practice, including filmmakers' perceptions and their relationships with different kinds of subject matter. The making of holiday footage, in Mediterranean settings, and its subsequent screening in domestic or public places, connects with broader issues of visualization, social practice and leisure-related consumption.

Underground: The Shanghai Communist Party and the Politics of Survival, 1927-1937 (review)

Reviewed by: Underground: The Shanghai Communist Party and the Politics of Survival, 1927-1937 Rhoda S. Weidenbaum (bio) Patricia Stranahan . Underground: The Shanghai Communist Party and the Politics of Survival, 1927-1937. State and Society in East Asia. Lanham, Boulder, and New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1998. xii, 235 pp. Hardcover $65.00, ISBN 0-8476-8722-8. Paperback $22.95, ISBN 0-8476-8723-6. Patricia Stranahan's Underground is a tour de force. Stranahan is a disciplined scholar, who has maintained a tight focus on her subject, the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai from 1927 to 1937. The period of the 1930s is difficult, and this study therefore deserves, and will receive, much appreciation. This is not a coffee-table book. It is a serious contribution to the study of local politics in Shanghai as well as to the history of the Chinese Communist Party, and specialists on the history and politics of that time will value it for years to come. Stranahan's thesis is a refutation of the view that cities played only a supporting role in Mao's conquest of the countryside. Her broad range of sources includes most major works in English on the history of the Chinese Communist Party and of the Nanjing Decade as well as much documentation in Chinese. The early chapters rely heavily on Zhang Guotao's (Chang Kuo-t'ao) useful memoir, The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, 1928-1938. As the work proceeds, the author's most important evidence comes from Chinese primary sources, and the documentation is massive. She has immersed herself in the files of the Shanghai police, in the papers of communist leaders in Shanghai, and in discussions with currently active Chinese scholars and historians of the period. This energetic researcher has supplied detail that rounds out what has long been known about the experience of the CCP: taking orders from the Comintern or the Soviet Union usually meant disaster. This detail includes tables that show, [End Page 223] among other things, changes in the Party hierarchy over the years, the Party dues structure, and the expenses of Party members. She also goes into such matters as the routine jobs and occupations that Party members used as cover while carrying out their more clandestine revolutionary activities. Emphasis on these kinds of subject matter, in addition to the tables themselves, is a major aspect of this work. The author argues that the Party was more likely to be successful when it acted on its own. Thus, it is not surprising that the history of the Shanghai branch, which had to get along separately and in isolation, mirrors the overall history of the Chinese Communist Party. The author admires and empathizes with the discipline that characterized various leaders and the effect that it had on the way they carried out their duties. This discipline was acquired as a result of the Party's attempts to impose Leninist techniques. However, there is little evidence that communists of the era under study really were thoroughly imbued with Marxist-Leninist ideology. In the last part of the book, Stranahan argues that the communists could succeed only when they functioned as patriots working with other sectors of Chinese society. Patriotism and anti-Japanese sentiment were much more successful than the theoretical and usually impractical directives about making revolution that came down from the top. These generally had little relevance to the daily, often desperate problems and difficulties faced by either the Party members or the workers and other members of the population whom they were trying to persuade. Indeed, when one goes to the PRC these days and asks older CCP members why they became communists, the inevitable response is, "I wanted to fight the Japanese." The author demonstrates these points through her very meticulous documentation. Stranahan's writing style, however, seldom conveys the drama of the period; the work is somewhat drained of personality. In view of the fact that this was a very chaotic time in China, neither the author nor the individuals discussed and examined here come across with much vividness. For Stranahan, this research effort must have been an exciting and rewarding study, and yet...

The "Tender Gesture" of Georges Perros and the Lessons of Contemporary French Poetry

ince upon a time, American (and British and Irish) poets read French poetry in the original; or at least desired to do so, even if they could not really understand the language. Or am I wrong? In any case, such was one linguistic and poetic duty passed on-the debts and borrowings go back to Chaucer-by Pound and Eliot, however quaint some of their likes and dislikes seem today. These two modernists and several other expatriates, as well as others who stayed at home, enjoyed this profitable partnership, the Anglo-Americans taking both poetic forms and encouragement (with respect to certain kinds of subject matter) from the French, and-a little less often-vice versa. This being said, I have the impression that a gulf between American and French poetry has opened, indeed widened considerably over the past three or four decades-especially from the American standpoint. An American poet might peruse a translated volume or two by Yves Bonnefoy or Philippe Jaccottet (and let us hope that curious readers have unearthed the recent British version of Jacques Reda' s invigorating Les Ruines de Paris, or a much earlier American rendering of Jacques Roubaud's poignant Quelque chose noir), but it is doubtful that Americans who are not also book-sleuths and avid journal-browsers have even heard of Andre du Bouchet, Lorand Gaspar, Charles Juliet, Silvia Baron Supervielle, or

Screwball Comedies: Constructing Romance, Mystifying Marriage

As floating signifiers go, romance has gotten around more than usual. The term has long designated several different generic categories of prose fiction, as well as a particular kind of subject matter with which fiction, romance or novel, may deal. There are film genres, such as romantic comedy, that derive their identity from their concern with love and courtship. But in film studies, the term has additionally named both a self-conscious component of a Hollywood product, its love-interest, and also a frequent element of the ideological effect known as narrative displacement. Romance is very often the receptacle of displacement, which is fitting for a term that also has come to be almost a synonym for illusion. But to treat romance as merely illusion or false-consciousness will lead one to ignore the particular characteristics of its construction and effect. What most analyses of both literature and film have failed to acknowledge is that romance has itself been treated as an ideology by feminist writers such as Shulamith Firestone and Juliet Mitchell. While this ideology is pervasive in Hollywood films, it is perhaps most central to the screwball comedy.1 The most sustained analysis of screwball comedy to date is Stanley Cavell's Pursuits of Happiness. Despite the fact that the focus of Cavell's argument is marriage, he neglects the feminist perspective almost entirely and the significant body of feminist film study completely. This is certainly a major reason for his failure to understand the cultural work of the genre. Where Cavell goes wrongand it is hardly a peripheral place-is his position that the screwball comedies he discusses succeed in enlightening us about marriage itself. My argument is that they do just the opposite: they mystify marriage by portraying it as the goal-but not the end-of romance. The major cultural work of these films is not the stimulation of thought about marriage, but the affirmation of marriage in the face of the threat of a growing divorce rate and liberalized divorce laws. What an analysis of screwball comedies will show is that romance functions as a specific ideology that is used by these films to mystify marriage. I hope to show how screwball comedies typically construct the viewer as subject of their romance so that he or she must feel marriage as the thing desired. I will then consider how certain elements in the genre suggest a critique of marriage, and examine how these elements can become dominant in such films as Adam's Rib and Desperately Seeking Susan.

October Dusk (review)

is saying-and to see that he practices what he preaches-simply read His First, Best Country. Lorraine Corsale, a photographer trained at Pratt Institute, worked as a volunteer for the Christian Appalachian Project in Lancaster, Kentucky, and this new book is her stark record of the experience . Corsale's black and white photographs depict mostly the fringes of Appalachia , rural life in Kentucky's Garrard County, and the presentation is as elegantly simple as the pictures. These are not always "pretty" pictures. They are stark, understated depictions by an excellent photographer. -Garry Barker Quillen, Rita. October Dusk. Seven Buffaloes Press, Box 249, Big Timber, Montana, 59011. 1987. $5.00. Five dollars is a pittance to pay for this small (thirty-four page) but top-quality collection of poems. Every piece contains some breathtaking imagery, some bit of"oh, wow, that's right! " The three section headings, "Farm," "Friends," and "Family," indicate exactly the kind of subject matter in which Quillen excels. What is most exciting about the poems is that instead of surrendering to sentimentalism , a real temptation with this type of material, the writer retains toughness of character and objectivity of insight. In addition, there is metaphorical truthfulness that is extremely rare in what with mere versifiers would come out as folksy chatter. Examplesofexcellence abound. "Apple Butter, for instance, is not only a record ofapassing tradition but a liturgical statement . The motif of religious ceremony runs through the poem, bringing to mind rituals from purification to communion. Otherpoems exhibit the same high quality . "October Dusk," the title poem ofthe collection, for instance, contains the line "I am a candle flame drawing moths and mosquitoes, holding the moments in my cupped hands." "Time to Go" includes such gemsas"Theoldwoman spitsamber starsm thedust" and"She's thinkingwhat ahardtimetheywillallhaveandcongratulates herself for living just long enough." There are a few weaker lines and moments , ofcourse, times when Quillen slips into apparent stereotypes or passages that contain more narrative and more information than the reader needs. Once in a long while, also, Quillen's exciting freshness is lost in the echo of other fine Appalachian writers whom Quillen has known and admired. RobertFrostdescribedapoetas aperson who sees double. Rita Quillen, in her masterful metaphors and in her compassionate communication of the real meaning of human existence, is indeed a poet. While anticipating Quillen's nextpublication , many readers will go back again and again torelive and enjoy "October Dusk." -Barbara Smith Servitude Despite beatings from Mother Nature, from passing souls, those porchsteps still squat there. Despite rainstorms and heavyweights digging them an early grave, They've never sunk so low they won't stoop to help a body on its way. -Glenn McKee 67 ...

An Interview with Robert Stone

AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT STONE Robert Stone photo by Kelly Wise courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf An Interview with Robert Stone / Kay Bonetti This interview was conducted in California in April, 1982, for the American Audio Prose Library. Robert Stone is the author of three prize winning novels: A Hall of Mirrors; Dog Soldiers; and A Flag for Sunrise. Interviewer: You're the kind of writer who is associated with the long haul, the big form. You have such a large vision that I was a little startled at the presence of short stories in your canon. How much do you work in the short story form? Stone: Well, I started out writing quite a few. I find that I'm difficult to satisfy in terms of my own stories. I think I have destroyed many more than I have ever submitted. My stories are rather different from my novels. They're a bit more surreal, perhaps there's more humor in the short stories. The concerns, though, are the same. Perhaps I find I don't have the opportunity to really address those concerns in what I consider to be a serious way, in the story, in quite the same way that I can get to them in the novel, because in the novel I can go off in different directions. I can find resonances by setting up things like parallel structures where two different sets of people are doing totally different versions of the same thing, whereas in the short story everything must be particularly impacted. So I'm always waiting for some story to occur to me that I consider to be inevitable. Because I don't actively pursue the form but rather wait to be struck by some story that will come together in my mind, I don't do many. Interviewer: You said that the concerns were the same and by that did you mean the thematic concerns of your short stories? Stone: I think there's a common element in everything I've ever written. I started out in my first book and I think I was working my way toward the main subjects that I deal with. All of them touch on these subjects, and they are subjects that a great many educated people today don't take very seriously. I'm concerned with basic ontology, with questions that are perhaps more religious than political. I write about the presence or the absence of God and the significance that the The Missouri Review · 91 question of God's absence or presence has in people's lives. People's pursuit of the numinous, their desire for some kind of transcendent ground, seems to me to be a very large part of the human experience. It isn't something that is very often addressed in academic or literary or educated circles generally, but I think it's something that occurs in the lives of most people, even though they don't often talk about it. Interviewer: Is this just your personal material, or do you see those issues as the fundamental business of the novelist? Stone: Well, I suppose every novelist finds his fundamental business , decides what his fundamental business is. That, I think, is mine. Interviewer: What does that say to you about the fact that most contemporary novelists are somewhat embarrassed by this kind of subject matter, or consciously avoid it? Stone: Well, I understand why novelists do. It's very dangerous territory. It's very easy to be fatuous about transcendence and spiritual values. There's an awful lot of fatuous and sentimental stuff written about people's hunger for areas beyond their own ken. This is an area that you really can't fake. You come to it with either active belief or active disbelief or a position which takes its dynamics from somewhere in between. It has to concern you. If it doesn't, then you can't write about it. You can't, I think, effectively write about people's hunger for transcendence unless it's something that you yourself experience. It can't be done secondhand, it can't be rendered warmed-over. Interviewer: You said that you...

SSSA Publication Policy

Soil Science Society of America JournalVolume 46, Issue 1 p. 1-2 Article SSSA Publication Policy Soil Science Society of America (revised 6 August 1980) First published: 01 January 1982 https://doi.org/10.2136/sssaj1982.03615995004600010036xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Abstract Publication Policy. This policy statement was prepared by the 1963 Organization and Policy Committee of SSSA to provide details not covered in the revised Bylaws of SSSA. The policy includes new policy regarding developments such as the special publication series of SSSA and the new section on letters to the editor in the SSSA Journal. The publication policy is intended to provide members of the Society a more complete statement of policy than has been available heretofore and to answer most questions about policy and procedures for different kinds of subject matter and publications. The policy is subject to change at will by the Board of Directors within the broad limits set by the Bylaws. J. W. FITTS, W. R. GARDNER, M. L. JACKSON, W. L. NELSON, A. G. NORMAN, C. A. BLACK, Chairman, SSSA Organization & Policy Comm. 1963 Volume46, Issue1January-February 1982Pages 1-2 RelatedInformation

Learning to Listen to English

A listening program to be truly beneficial must adapt to the role which ESL/EFL listening will play in the career of each student. This article considers various materials and methods for preparing students to comprehend spoken English in different career contexts in English speaking countries. The five stages of listening development are delineated for career contexts to illustrate the different listening comprehension proficiency levels needed for different careers. Practically all ESL/EFL programs have a listening component. However, the instruction given in the listening class does not always fit the listening needs of the learners. This article suggests some reasons for this. Students of a foreign language appear to pass through various somewhat indeterminate stages as they learn to comprehend native speakers. One can arbitrarily distinguish five stages of foreign language listening development, but it is probably impossible to tell just when a learner passes from one stage to the next-and probably equally impossible to identify the stage for any learner at a given time. In addition, a learner may be at one stage in comprehending certain kinds of subject matter but at a different stage for other kinds. For purposes of analysis and discussion here, however, it is assumed that these five stages are both definable and recognizable.

More on understanding in the social sciences

A central mistake in Rolf Gruner's recent article on understanding in the socia sciences in ferreted out, and consideration of it is used both to analyse Gruner's interpretation of understanding and to sketch a more adequate interpretation. The mistake is in distinguishing meanings and facts. The analysis suggests that Gruner was forced to see understanding both as a special kind of explanation and at the same time as no explanation. The sketch offers a distinction of three senses of ‘understanding’ — as identification of a certain kind of subject matter, as explanation of it, and as a subjective feeling consequent upon such explanation.

"Statistics, science, and psychiatry": a comment.

The recent article on statistics and scientific methods by Thorpe and Baker, 1 while generally sound, contains some arguments which could be misleading to the practitioner without formal experimental training. These arguments revolve around the meaning of the word “population” in research. A population is the total supply or “universe” of a particular kind of subject matter. Populations, like concepts, have to be defined operationally for experimental purposes. The population definition ordinarily begins, “All the people who . . .,” and it is usually taken for granted that the number will be quite large. This is not necessary in theory. The absolute size of “all” is relative. Populations are defined arbitrarily, depending upon the purposes of the individual experimenter or theorist. A population could be defined equally validly as “all the paranoid schizophrenics in the world at any given moment,” or “all the paranoid schizophrenics who

Teaching Pupils to Read Arithmetic and Other Subject Matter

In his school work a pupil needs facility in the rapid, exact reading of subject matter more than he needs any other type of reading ability that he may be led to acquire. The facility that is needed does not usually result from general training in reading. Even training in reading the subject matter of one field does not provide sufficient ability to read other types of material. Each of several fields of subject matter possesses a specific vocabulary that the reader must be able to use and understand. The type of expression and the turn of phrase of each kind of subject matter are more or less its own. A particular portion of human experience lies back of the content of each subject, and that experience must be illuminated for the reader before he can adequately sense the meaning of the content which he reads. Each of several types of subject matter employs its own signs, symbols, technical expressions, maps, charts, tables, or other forms of thought representation. What has been said is not meant to minimize in any way the importance of good general training in comprehension and in thoughtful reading. Such training is essential. To it should be added specific training that is meant to function directly in the reading of the subject matter which the pupils are trying to master in their own school grades. This article contains some directions and suggestions that were prepared to aid the teachers in Hutchinson, Kansas, in giving such training. They are based on difficulties found in the subject matter used, and they contain some terms, types of information, and suggested experience that should be useful in overcoming such difficulties.