Open Storey Research Articles

To be green and profitable

In 2008, my boss, C&EN editor in chief Rudy Baum, asked me to write the opening story for a special issue of the magazine devoted to sustainability. My piece laid out the chemical industry’s argument that while the industry had caused a lot of society’s environmental problems, it was also the source of many of the solutions. Fifteen years later, we still have a lot of environmental problems. Plastic waste, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and chlorinated solvents are just a few products of the chemical industry that society is grappling with today. Yet, more so than 15 years ago, there’s general agreement that our world’s most overarching environmental problem is the buildup of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere. Global warming was on the radar back then, and it was a problem that industry executives said they could address. But today, it dominates public discussion of the environment like no

Parent-Child Open Story: Issues in Between Parents and Children Posed Underachievement

Parent-Child Open Story: Issues in Between Parents and Children Posed Underachievement

R. El̔azar son of R. Šim̔on the thief catcher ( bB. Metz. 83a–84a)

The article analyses the first half of the story cycle about R. El̔azar son of R. Šim̔on with regard to its literary and redactional aspects and its web of contexts. The cycle’s chiastic structure is identified, as well as its ‘symphonic’ character: motifs appearing for the first time in the Mishnah are repeated in different variations throughout the sugya, creating a dialogue among its various units. The article concludes that, despite R. El̔azar’s irregular conduct, this is not a tale of repentance. The stories instead depict the changes in R. El̔azar’s attitude towards ‘natural law’. In the opening story R. El̔azar seeks divine order through observing the outside world; in the last story he arrives at the conclusion that his body is the tool through which divine order can be recognized.

Hikayat Indarjaya sebagai Suplemen Materi Cerita Fantasi Kelas VII Kurikulum Merdeka: Analisis Ciri Cerita Fantasi dan Implementasi Pembelajarannya

This study aims to determine the suitability of Hikayat Indarjaya as a supplement to fantasy story material and describe the implementation of Hikayat Indarjaya in teaching fantasy stories for class VII SMP/MTs. The method used in this research was descriptive qualitative research. The data source was Hikayat Indarjaya, the result of a study published in 1995. The instruments used to collect data were data codification guidelines, data collection rubrics, and data analysis rubrics. The results of this study state that Hikayat Indajaya corresponds to the characteristics of fantasy stories, namely (1) there are magical, mysterious, or strange events, (2) open story ideas, (3) using various settings in places and times, (4) has a unique character, (5) fictitious, and (6) the use of language. Students can be given this hikayat material to strengthen understanding and be used as a supplement to fantasy story text material either through pupuh or script summaries.

Whispers and Dances: Construction of Heterochronism in Alice Munro’s “Walker Brothers Cowboy”

Alice Munro stitches a patchwork of short stories in her 1968 short story collection, Dance of the Happy Shades. The collection is constructed as a rhizomatic multiplicity wherein stories relate to each other in a rhizomatic pattern, as off-shoots of the same organic body. Each story in Dance of the Happy Shades is also internally constructed in the same way as a multiplicity, where micro-narratives are assembled as pieces of a patchwork to form a whole. This paper, however, explores only the opening story “Walker Brothers Cowboy” through a geocritical and geophilosophical lens and shows how Munro builds it through the same pattern. The story comprises multiple micro-narratives of different lengths and forms, each of which functions as part of this organic growth. The essay also shows how the juxtaposition of such micro-narratives, and of smoothing and striating images, creates a heterochronian heterotopia at the climax of the story.

Cognitive Grammar and Readers’ Perceived Sense of Closeness: A Study of Responses to Mary Borden’s ‘Belgium’

This article analyses the degree to which readers report a perceived sense of closeness to the events depicted in ‘Belgium’, the opening story of Mary Borden’s The Forbidden Zone. Theoretically, I draw on Ronald Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar, which models language primarily through its notion of construal, an aspect of which claims that - ing forms impose an internal perspective on a scene that results in the interpretative effect of it being ‘close by’. This study tests this idea empirically by utilising a quantitative tool (Likert scale) to elicit two sets of verbal data, which are then analysed qualitatively. My analysis demonstrates that readers respond to the events in the story and articulate the relationship of particular language features to their responses in different – and often surprising – ways. The study is the first in stylistics to empirically test the interpretative effects of verb forms as theorised by Cognitive Grammar and thus contributes new knowledge both by exploring how the landscapes of First World War literature are experienced by readers and analysing how the language of those landscapes may give rise to particular reported effects.

Rien dans le ciel par Michael Delisle

Reviewed by: Rien dans le ciel par Michael Delisle Eilene Hoft-March Delisle, Michael. Rien dans le ciel. Boréal, 2021 ISBN 978-2-7646-2653-5. Pp. 144. The eight assembled short stories of this volume begin in despair and end with a modest renewal of hope. The evenly written pieces draw their subtle dramatic force from an unpretentious prose and not entirely banal action. Each one represents the tribulations of aging: thwarted ambitions, loss of purpose, growing isolation, revised self-image—all of it unrelieved by the drama of death. The opening story is about an aging hoarder of graphic novels living in squalor in a Montreal high-rise. The building having been sold to a wealthy investor, the old man lives under orders to decamp, unable to commit himself to become the literal human sacrifice to gentrification inspired by his BD imagery. A darker tale follows in which a newly minted retiree unearths an unthinkable act in his father’s past so consistently misrepresented in family lore that it deforms the history with which he himself identifies. On the theme of misrecognized identities, a third story begins with a man reeling from a recent divorce who encounters another only just bereft of his sister. Their chance meeting begets an effortless camaraderie that endures several years. When at last the man accepts his friend’s offer of a cabin getaway to be able to write, he is stunned to encounter the cognitive dissonance of his friend’s unexamined adherence to religious dogma paired with his casual sexual comportment. The story that follows begins with two men having little in common: a temporary chauffeur and the fading Argentinian and former TV heartthrob he squires about. The two ill-matched men come to an important exchange of views on dying, aging, and being oneself, in that order. Three more stories explore relationships of characters who have caved under the weight of age and diminishing expectations: one who cheerfully and pragmatically adopts a young “niece” who will inherit his estate; another who attempts to save an immigrant from deportation with a quiet altruism that the young migrant cluelessly exploits; and a third who reunites briefly with an old flame only to experience “une peine insondable” (117) for what she has (not) become. The very last story serves as an antidote to these bitter conclusions. It opens with the narrator receiving the dis concerting news of his imminent death. He hastily liquidates his possessions, most notably all documentation of his existence, in order to leave definitively for Cambodia to live out his shortened life. The story’s delightful peripety offers a different angle on the wisdom threaded throughout the collection: that the present is all we ever have to work with. [End Page 243] Eilene Hoft-March Lawrence University (WI) Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French

I-Docs and New Narratives


 
 
 Digital media make it possible to move from a conventional storytelling medium to other avenues that allow open stories to be told, maintaining the traditional basis of narratives while also adding other elements that enrich and deepen storytelling innovation. Therefore, it is important to analyze how the characteristics of digital storytelling work together in order to create meaning through new narratives. Recent documentary projects show how new ways of telling stories involve new ways of relating meaning and form, multiple platforms, and strong interaction and engagement from the side of the viewer. Interactivity and participation change the way in which a story is told and received, thus changing its nature as a narrative. To delve deeper into this field, I will analyze Highrise. The Towers in the World. World in the Towers, (http://highrise.nfb.ca) by Katerina Cizek. This is a complex project produced by the National Film Board of Canada, a multiyear, many-media collaborative documentary experiment that has generated many projects, including mixed media, interactive documentaries, mobile productions, live presentations, installations and films. I will develop a textual analysis on part of the project, the interactive documentary Out My Window, by focusing on its ways of meaning-making and the specific narrative implications of the relationship between meaning and form. The project is ambitious: Cizek's vision is "to see how the documentary process can drive and participate in social innovation rather than just to document it, and to help reinvent what it means to be an urban species in the 21st".
 
 

Behavioural Study of Infill’s Walls on Soft Story Building

Open ground storey or soft storey is a typical feature in multistory structures in urban areas. This open storey is provided to accommodate parking, reception lobbies, office, communication hall etc. Many of structure having soft storey suffered major damage and collapsed in recent earthquakes. During an earthquake, because of variation in stiffness in soft story and its adjacent floors the inter story drift can occur and the lateral forces cannot be well distributed along the height of building. Lateral forces concentrate on soft story causes large displacement. In this work, an attempt has been made to observe the behavior of gradual decrease in stiffness of building, by using different types of infill material. This work discusses Optimum Earthquake response of tall buildings by response spectrum method as per IS 1893:2002 (Part- I) in ETAB’S software. Seismic parameters like storey stiffness and storey displacement are checked out.

INFLUENCE OF MEDIA INFORMATION ON THE FORMATION OF PUBLIC OPINION

The media's ability to set the information agenda, to draw the public's attention to several major public issues, is known to be a large-scale and clearly proven influence. People not only get accurate information from the media about important state issues, but they also determine the level of importance of a particular topic based on how much attention is given to that topic in the broadcasting process. The article summarized the idea of the impact of published media information on public life, including the formation of public opinion on any issue, using the method of comparative analysis. Traditional print media emphasize the importance of topics in daily issues with capital letters, while television news conveys the significance of an event through the opening story, length, and attention to detail in the newscast, while new media prioritize online features with the advantage of direct communication. These signs, which are always in use, effectively convey the importance of each topic. In other words, the media can set the agenda by drawing the public's attention to a particular issue that shapes public opinion.

The polyphony of nature

The polyphony of nature

Playing marbles, playing music

Playing marbles, playing music

Seismic performance assessment of reinforced concrete hilly buildings with open story

This study focuses on investigating the effect of one or more open stories in reinforced concrete hilly buildings. Two building configurations, i.e., (i) stepback and (ii) split-foundation, with three different story ratios, are considered. Open stories are provided at different levels in a building according to the prospective location of the approach road level. These buildings are subjected to bi-directional earthquake excitation, and non-linear dynamic analyses are performed under a suite of 22 ground motion records. Dynamic characteristics and seismic responses such as peak inter-story drift ratio, peak floor acceleration, peak roof displacement, and maximum story shear of the buildings are investigated. A probabilistic performance assessment of these buildings with different probable locations of the open story is presented. In general, the probabilistic assessment reveals that the presence of the open story significantly reduces the seismic performance of these buildings. Moreover, the buildings with the open story at the uppermost foundation level are found to be the most vulnerable under earthquake excitation.

“The Ones Who Stay and Fight”: N. K. Jemisin's Afrofuturist Variations on a Theme by Ursula K. Le Guin

Abstract This article discusses N. K. Jemisin's Afrofuturist utopian short story entitled “The Ones Who Stay and Fight,” the opening story of her 2018 collection, How Long 'Til Black Future Month? As is suggested by its title, Jemisin's story is a direct reply to Ursula K. Le Guin's “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” and this article discusses the ways in which Jemisin, one of the most prominent members of a new generation of SF/Fantasy writers, pays homage to, replies to, and reimagines Le Guin's 1973 story in the twenty-first century. In particular, drawing on utopian scholarship, scholars of Afrofuturism, and the work of African American studies scholar-activists, it argues that Jemisin's utopia builds a world that embodies the “revolution of value” as well as the intersectional Black feminist praxis at the foundation of contemporary activist groups such as Black Lives Matter. It also argues for the ways in which Jemisin's text confronts common criticisms of utopia as well as the limits of the utopian imagination.

Stripped and Script: Loyalist Writers of the American Revolution

Stripped and Script: Loyalist Writers of the American Revolution

Mind style and visibility in translation – A stylistically aware translation of Judith Hermann’s short story Rote Koralle

This project was created out of three things: a deep affection for the literature of Judith Hermann, curiosity of how her work has been translated into English, and a strong interest in pursuing my own translation of one of her texts. But before I go on any further, I need to make one thing very clear: there is nothing wrong with the existing translation of Hermann’s 1998 debut, Sommerhaus, später, out of which I have chosen the opening story as the subject matter of this essay. On the contrary: the existing translation is coherent, reads fluently, and was honoured with the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize in 2003 as “an excellent transposition of the German work, which resulted in an impressive and rhythmically strong English text (…), captured the atmosphere of the original and admirably recreated the tone and language pulse of the German short stories.”1 And so, when I say a strong interest in pursuing my own translation, I do not mean this in any way that suggests the existing translation is faulty and needs re-doing. Rather, the objective behind this project was to employ a different translation strategy in order to carry over essential aspects of Hermann’s text.

The “fugitive notes” of Teju Cole’s Open City

ABSTRACT While Julius, the narrator of Open City (2011), foregrounds walks, intellectual digression, and stories of minor characters, personal traumatic memories paired with traces and remnants of chattel slavery and the slave trade haunt him. My analysis of Teju Cole’s novel focuses on flight as a physical and mental movement that Julius performs, trying to flee from an association with his Nigerian past and the past of the Atlantic world. His compulsive walks and cosmopolitan musings offer only temporary, improvised refuge. The text remains caught in the gendered history and anti-black legacy of the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery as well as the ways in which Julius is implicated not only as a witness and victim but also as a perpetrator. Gendered anti-black violence, I argue, forms the obscured ground on which Julius’s narration is built, while the novel’s narrative techniques of oversharing and evasion ultimately negotiate its narratibility.

Review of: Cates, James. 2020. <em>Serpent in the Garden: Amish Sexuality in a Changing World</em>.

James Cates offers a fascinating look at Amish views and experiences of marriage, family, sexuality, and gender in the book, Serpent in the Garden: Amish Sexuality in a Changing World. The analysis is based on “many years of interaction, informal interviews, and conversations with Amish confidantes…” (p. xiii). The upside of this approach is that the book has an “insider” feel to it. The downside is that the reader is not always sure how representative the stories are of the Amish community. From the opening story in the Preface to similar, colorful anecdotes throughout, the book may lend itself to a kind of salience bias because accounts are emotionally compelling in areas in which little research with the Amish has been conducted. Cates acknowledges this, as it was brought to his attention by a reviewer. There are the appropriate clarifications and qualifications surrounding the more colorful stories, but still the reader is left with an impression and little knowledge of the frequency of such behaviors. Thus, the representativeness of the accounts and indeed the basic validity of the analysis hinges upon the accuracy, veracity, and wisdom of the personal anecdotal accounts of the author or of those he informally interviewed. [First paragraph.]

Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock

Reviewed by: Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock Elizabeth Bush Hitchcock, Bonnie-Sue Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town. Lamb, 2021 [208p] Library ed. ISBN 9781984892607 $20.99 Trade ed. ISBN 9781984892591 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781984892614 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 8–12 The opening story, “Angry Starfish,” situates readers in familiar YA territory: Gina, furious with her father’s new relationship, takes her anger out on the new girlfriend’s daughter, Poppy, a young child who sublimates an unspecified trauma through an intense friendship with an imaginary friend. Readers of Hitchcock’s The Smell of Other People’s Houses (BCCB 4/16) will know this deceptively self-contained tale is leading somewhere, but where should they look? To Gina and the parental drama? Or to Poppy and her Elizabeth? As story after story unfolds, bouncing among locales in Alaska, Colorado, and the coastal Pacific Northwest, Hitchcock patiently guides readers along a shadowy path through twin mysteries involving a predatory priest and an abducted child, with clues to the solutions cagily hidden among the quotidian friendship, romantic, and domestic dramas that inexorably interconnect. Most tales are intriguing in their own right: the friends who suspect they might share the same father; a young man suffering from amnesia brought on by shellfish poisoning; the high school seductress with no compunction over lengthening her list of conquests; a wildfire that draws together a diffident young woman and a firefighter ready to break a troublesome relationship There’s an purposeful orderliness to the tales’ positioning that allows references and clues from previous stories to accumulate en route to the final reveals. This will inspire readers to count degrees of separation and ponder the temporal and spatial distances tragedy can reach. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Empathetic-Reflective-Dialogical Restorying for decolonisation: an emancipatory teaching-learning strategy for Religion Education

ABSTRACT This article argues for the inclusion of Empathetic-Reflective-Dialogical Restorying as a teaching-learning strategy for Religion Education. This strategy, employed in three small-scale research projects in a South African Higher Education Institution, addresses decolonisation of the Religion Education curriculum in the following ways: changing how teaching-learning takes place; transdisciplinary engagement; empowering students as agents of their own learning; depatriarchisation; and dispelling the myth of African inferiority. Both self-dialogue and self-narrative were used to create open space stories when approaching content that is relevant to the lived experience of gender (in)equality and patriarchy. Engaging in a safe space in Communities in Conversation, Communities in Dialogue, and Communities for Transformation, students troubled entrenched beliefs and worldviews and co-constructed (restoried) understandings. They expressed the view that this emancipatory teaching-learning strategy has the potential to facilitate classroom praxis that is both reflective and reflexive. This can be transformative for the greater society.