Popular Literature Research Articles

Handbook of the circular economy: Transitions and transformation : Book review

[Alexander, A., Pascucci, S. & Charnley, F. (eds., 2023). Handbook of the circular economy: Transitions and transformation. De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston. 504 pp. ISBN 978-3-11-072322-9] Since the term “circular economy” emerged in the economic and environ-mental literature at the beginning of the 2010’s, an ever-growing number of articles, papers, reports and books have been published on this new concept that aims at the ending of the so-called linear economy and ushering into a new economic paradigm. The circular economy’s foundations lay on several schools of thought of the past almost sixty years which pro-mote closed-loop systems and nature-inspired metabolisms in the econ-omy, starting from Boulding’s seminal work “The Economics of the Com-ing Spaceship Earth” (1966) through Stahel’s “Product-Life Factor” (1982) and Pearce and Turner’s “Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment” (1994), until McDonough and Braungart’s „Cradle to Cradle” (2002) or Gradel and Allenby’s “Industrial Ecology” (2003) – just to name a few. Since the term “circular economy” was born in the past dec-ade, this concept has been a popular subject of the economic, business, environmental, technical and even popular literature (Freed & Ritchie, 2021).

Popular science books in Russian libraries: Status, problems and prospects

The authors discuss the findings of the study “Popular science books in Russian libraries”. The purpose of the study was to get data on the existence, quantity and relevancy of these publications in the libraries. The authors cite the results of the survey and provide their conclusions on the libraries’ managing their popular science collections and related user services. The digital survey was based on Yandex Forms service and comprised quantitative data acquisition and analysis. The authors conclude that with the government’s focusing on science popularization among the population, the libraries act proactively, promote popular science literature and hold various events. However, further system organizational and methodological support is needed to build the unified system of straight interdepartmental control of popular science literature publishing and relevancy, and to improve libraries performance in this area. The authors specify several problems, in particular, lacking the common approach to publishing and using of popular science literature. The solutions lie in new approaches toward typological classification of this targeted publications and target user audience.

'These Chicks are Damaged Goods': The Abject Female Body in Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary and Warner's The Sopranos

The female body as a disruptive force was a dominant topic in the popular culture and literature of the 1990s, as well as in debates of the postfeminist theorists of the decade. As culture began to constantly scrutinise women’s bodies and obsessively fixate on unhealthy thinness and perpetual youth, an idealistic model of the female body was conceptualised: self-contained, perfectly smooth, with no biological functions or needs (vide McRobbie 57-8). Due to the impossibility of meeting these voyeuristic standards, the uncomfortable biological reality of womanhood has been perceived as deserving of societal degradation and unyielding control. This essay will examine the nature of Kristevan's abjection of female bodies in Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (1997) and Alan Warner’s The Sopranos (1999). I shall follow the thesis of Margrit Shildrick and Janet Price, which delineates the relationship between the physicality of the female body and the negative perception of women, outlined as such: ‘the body has a propensity to leak, to overflow the proper distinctions between self and other, to contaminate and engulf. Thus, women themselves are, in the conventional masculinist imagination, not simply inferior beings whose civil and social subordination is both inevitable and justified, but objects of fear and repulsion’ (3). I will argue that the female protagonists of these novels are unwilling to reject their corporeality despite its negative connotations; however, due to the all-encompassing nature of their patriarchal environments, they are unable to liberate themselves from the oppressive demarcations of female abjection.

Chartism’s Critical Carbon Theology: What Fossil Power’s Nineteenth-Century Demonizers Contribute to the Ethics of Energy Justice Today

Recent scholarship on religion and energy highlights the religious attachments some groups of people form with fossil fuels that have served to facilitate their extraction and use in building socially and economically stratified worlds. This scholarship foregrounds the business owners, managers, scientists, inventors, industrial spokespersons, and other panegyrists of the beneficent, civilizing power of coal and oil. However, little research to date has examined the religious attachments formed with fossil fuels by those who mined them, labored with machines powered by them, and lived in places that were diminished to extract, burn, and waste them. This article builds on the work of Andreas Malm and Terra Schwerin Rowe to examine these “critical carbon theologies”. It focuses in particular on the theological themes in popular literature produced by the nineteenth-century British Chartist movement—the first great social movement led by those who experienced in their bodies, communities, and environments the traumas that accompanied the introduction of fossil fuels as a motive power. These Chartist activist-theologians condemned coal power as a demonic force in history and envisioned a way to exorcize an industrializing society of its demons. This article uncovers and evaluates the largely overlooked theological dimensions of this movement and applies them toward a consideration of the ethics of energy transition today.

As authentic as a Christian hipster: navigating authenticity within Emerging Christianity and Western culture

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the current pejorative understanding and usage of the term ‘Christian hipster’ within the context of Emerging Christianity through a case study of a Dutch emerging project: PopUp Kerk. The (Christian) hipster is approached as a linguistic ideal type within a broader Western cultural discourse, in both popular culture and literature on Emerging Christianity, regarding the paradox of authenticity. I argue that, in contemporary and academic ‘hipster bashing’, the Christian hipster becomes both the stereotypical embodiment and the scapegoat of a paradox inherent in a Western culture focused on authenticity. In the second part of the article, I introduce an ideal typology to conceptualize the type of authenticity sought in hipster Emerging Christianity. I argue that taking the Christian hipster seriously can provide insights into the way the Zeitgeist is influencing the ways in which Western evangelical Protestantism more broadly understands and seeks authenticity. Finally, the article explores what theological insights the Christian hipster may offer regarding (in)authenticity and faith.

The unpopular (manosphere) men of popular feminism

ABSTRACT This article draws from Stuart Hall and Sarah Banet-Weiser to examine how ‘orthodox’ and ‘dissident’ popular feminist literature cite the manosphere to reflect and (re)produce cultural norms about men, masculinity and, politically pressingly, the possible relations men can have with feminism. While orthodox feminism represents men as patriarchal threats to the realization of a feminist social order, dissident feminism represents men as natural threats to women and criticizes other feminists for refusing to accept the ‘reality’ that men and women are ‘naturally’ different. Despite this difference, each contributes to a feminist culture in which it is both ‘popular’ to extract insights about man as a general social category by making use of the manosphere, and in which the idea that men and feminism are necessarily antagonistic is central. Each participates, in other words, in a representational project wherein ‘man’ poses a fundamental threat to ‘woman’.

Iḥsān ʿAbd al-Quddūs’ Paths to Freedom Between Journalism and Popular Fiction in the Novel "Anā Ḥurra" (I Am Free)

Iḥsān ʿAbd al-Quddūs (1919-1990) is one of the best-known journalists in the history of Egyptian political journalism. He began his career at Rūz al-Yūsuf magazine, founded by his mother, the celebrated actress and journalist who named the journal after herself. He was also a famed author of popular fiction, which was serialised in Egyptian mainstream weeklies from the late forties through the eighties. His name is associated with mass readership and sentimental novels and short stories whose protagonists often are young women struggling for freedom in a traditional and patriarchal society. In this article we will analyse his first success, the novel Anā Ḥurra (I Am Free), which was written a year after the 1952 Egyptian revolution. The aim of this study is to re-evaluate the underrated field of popular and middlebrow Arabic literature. We will focus on the relation between female liberation and politics in the novel, in particular how the story of the young protagonist’s search for freedom reflects the failures of the 1952 revolution. Keywords: Iḥsān ʿAbd al-Quddūs, Rūz al-Yūsuf, Anā Ḥurra, Journalism, Popular literature, Rebellion, Freedom.

Australia at an educational crossroads: special schools and inclusive education

The ongoing debate surrounding special schools and inclusive education in Australia has come to the forefront since the recommendations of the 2023 Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, where the Commissioners were split on the implementation of full educational inclusion and the elimination of special schools. The authors discuss the controversy surrounding segregated special education classes and schools, particularly considering the push for full inclusion. The concept of inclusion is examined through a brief review of national and international policies and academic and popular literature, including how the inclusion continuum is conceptualized by policymakers, academics, and families. Stakeholder perspectives on the complexities and challenges of implementing full inclusion in mainstream school settings offer differing experiences and opinions on what is possible. Lastly, by examining the nuances of the special school controversy, the authors provide recommendations on how best to meet the educational needs of all students, across the spectrum of abilities.

OTHERNESS REPRESENTATION: A POSTCOLONIAL ANALYSIS OF TARZAN OF THE APES

This paper investigates the question of representation in Burrough’s Tarzan of the Apes. It probes into the representation of otherness, with focus on the signification of race, religion, and gender. Written against the backdrop of postcolonialism, the paper contends that the construction of the black other, religious discrimination, and female inferiority by western imperialists and patriarchy prefigure persistent domination in the new world order. In this qualitative descriptive study that is based on textual analysis as a research method, the primary data were collected from the novel Tarzan of the Apes. Concerning secondary data, articles and books pertinent to postcolonial studies and popular literature were consulted. It was discovered that blacks are represented as the ‘unorthodox’ religious other embodying evil, darkness, ignorance, and primitive sensualism. Moreover, the black woman is pushed to the periphery and represented as a subject of barbarous polygamy, uncontrolled birth, and toys to satisfy men’s desires. Furthermore, blacks are represented as hairless apes that are incapable of civilization. Finally, we discovered that, the issue of the black other in particular, was not a mistake by imperialists, but a well-planned scheme to concretize all the different forms of domination listed above, including the colonial agenda.

The Motion of the Mutable and the Constant: An Analytical Study of the Temporal Rotation in the Poetry of Khaled Al-Faisal

This research is based on the conviction that dialect literature carries a cultural and artistic value that demands attention. Categorizing this literature as “popular” or “colloquial,” has been adopted to distinguish it from formal Arabic-language literature, but this research intentionally stays away from these two names, since their implications detract from the value of popular literature and considers it simple and spontaneous consequently, addressing the commoners, based solely on its use of colloquial dialects in direct expression. Surely, oral circulation does not diminish the ability of language to express, nor does it exclude poetry from acquiring the elements of high literature. One of the best representatives of the innovative leap in Nabati dialect poetry is Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, whose tireless effort to activate the mind, and to expand the circle of knowledge, manages successfully to merge the inherited modes of poetic traditions with the vibrant exploration of new patterns of thinking. This paper studies the concept of time in Khaled Al-Faisal’s poetry and his deep reflections on the meaning of the dynamic changes in the cycles of transformation of history. The relationship with the past is one of consolidation and rooting that anticipates the future and prepares for it: every epoch consists of units that interact in a rotational movement: it does not follow a straight linear system of progress from back to front, but rather tends toward the natural cosmic upward spiral movement, whose successive cycles activate the process of filling and emptying, possessing and abandoning, youthfulness and decaying, living and dying. The importance of researching the poetics of time in Khaled Al-Faisal’s poems lies in the fact that such an approach applies a modern and different critical method which traces the philosophy of time in poetry as a new key to reveal the cognitive system which drives the general pattern of his poetic experience. This reading opens up an intellectual and contemplative horizon for us to deal with the essence of time and its paradoxes as manifested in present existence, past retrieval, and futuristic anticipation, three different movements in time that cannot be isolated from the stability of their continuous sequences.

The Image of the Negative Man in the Folk Tale (Qalat Hamida & Qalat Ajibiya) is a Model A Study According to the Descriptive Analytical Approach

The folk tale or Popular tale, as a popular prose art, is transmitted orally from one generation to another. Therefore, the folk tale has occupied a prominent place among other literary genres, due to its characteristics and features that have made it present to various nations and peoples. It expresses the hopes and dreams of those peoples who have taken It is a way to have fun...and get rid of the harsh reality. These folk tales included different images of that life, as they represented the image of the negative man, and the traits of betrayal and weakness that characterized him. The folk tale is one of the means that preserve cultural heritage and consolidate cultural identity. It is one of the most important forms of expression. It is a summary of the experiences of generations, formulated in an interesting narrative form, full of lessons and noble values. It is a creation of the imagination in which the wisdom of society is revealed. It is a reflective mirror of the society in which it grew, so that the story is considered Folklore is one of the genres of popular literature that is beloved by adults and children, due to the elements it contains that attract, excite, and enrich the imagination, in addition to the positive values it contains. It is the ancient, common art of spontaneous speech, passed down from generation to generation, linked to customs and traditions. The story is the backbone of popular heritage, and it is what we metaphorically call popular literature. Among the studies of the folktale in which the researcher invested the importance of the folktale is a study by M. Furqan Abdel Kadhim Katyou Hammadi, tagged with (the popular story in the book of Qalat Ajibiya, Tihami Myths, Structure and Function).

When the Dead Cry: Crime, Population, and Popular Literature in Early Modern Southwark

Drawing on parish registers, records from the assizes, and an anonymous ballad, this article reconstructs the events surrounding the murder of John Clarke by his own master, silk weaver Richard Price. Price, it turns out, had killed before, and in many respects fits what we would today call a serial killer. The article thus examines the way parish registers might usefully be supplemented by legal and literary texts to get at not only the births, marriages, and deaths of parishioners in the aggregate but also their lived experience, how they responded to tragedy not on the nearby stage but in their neighborhood. The article thus argues for the importance of careful examination of the archives to understand the lives of ordinary people in the early modern period, and the article further suggests a symbiotic relationship between “big data” and microhistory.

The Schnorrer in Israel Zangwill's Work

Abstract This article charts the historical and literary origins of the schnorrer, a Yiddish term for ‘proud beggar’ and a character of Eastern European Jewish culture. It aims to shed light on the schnorrer's entrance as a protagonist in British popular literature in the work of Israel Zangwill, and to show its originality. To do so, it focuses mainly on the novella The King of Schnorrers (1894), in which the schnorrer holds the leading role, and on Children of the Ghetto (1892), in which the schnorrer is a secondary and yet essential character. By locating the schnorrer outside of the Ashkenazi ethno-social context, Zangwill carries out a refashioning of this figure and grounds him in a wider social and literary lineage. He turns him into a literary character who challenges Western capitalist societies, thanks to a multi-layered identity, conflicting contexts and plural literary genres.

Relayed Revolutionary Sentiment: Chinese Appropriation of Russian Nihilism in Popular Literature

ABSTRACT This article examines the relay translation of William Tufnell Le Queux’s (1864–1927) Strange Tales of a Nihilist, which the prominent Chinese translator of nihilist fiction, Chen Jinghan 陳景韓 (1878–1965), completed based on Matsui Shōyō’s 松居松葉 (1870–1933) Japanese rendering. By exploring the transcultural process through which a story of Russian nihilism traveled from Europe to East Asia, the author tests the translatability of the revolutionary structure of feeling across different cultures. The author reveals how English and Japanese media and literature inspired Chinese interpretations of Russian nihilism, and how a key Chinese translator channeled his own revolutionary commitments through intensive borrowing of traditional Chinese literary motifs and narrative devices. As a result, the Chinese vision of nihilism diverged from nihilism’s Russian political connotations and was assimilated into a thrilling cultural topos of vengeful assassination plots in Chinese popular culture. Ultimately, this transculturation of revolutionary sentimental, which aroused sinicized emotions of love and revenge, not only generated public sympathy for nihilists in China but also motivated Chinese revolutionary actions.

Sequential query prediction based on multi-armed bandits with ensemble of transformer experts and immediate feedback

We study the problem of predicting the next query to be recommended in interactive data exploratory analysis to guide users to correct content. Current query prediction approaches are based on sequence-to-sequence learning, exploiting past interaction data. However, due to the resource-hungry training process, such approaches fail to adapt to immediate user feedback. Immediate feedback is essential and considered as a signal of the user’s intent. We contribute with a novel query prediction ensemble mechanism, which adapts to immediate feedback relying on multi-armed bandits framework. Our mechanism, an extension to the popular Exp3 algorithm, augments Transformer-based language models for query predictions by combining predictions from experts, thus dynamically building a candidate set during exploration. Immediate feedback is leveraged to choose the appropriate prediction in a probabilistic fashion. We provide comprehensive large-scale experimental and comparative assessment using a popular online literature discovery service, which showcases that our mechanism (i) improves the per-round regret substantially against state-of-the-art Transformer-based models and (ii) shows the superiority of causal language modelling over masked language modelling for query recommendations.

Michael D'Alessandro, Staged Readings: Contesting Culture in Popular American Theater and Literature, 1835–75

Michael D'Alessandro, <i>Staged Readings: Contesting Culture in Popular American Theater and Literature, 1835–75</i>

The past, present, and future of tumour deposits in colorectal cancer: Advancing staging for improved prognosis and treatment decision-making.

Tumour deposits (TDs) significantly impact colorectal cancer (CRC) prognosis. Integrating TDs into the TNM staging system can enhance individualized disease management. Keeping abreast of evolving TDs research is pivotal for clinical advancement. We comprehensively reviewed both recent and popular literature to grasp the field's essence. Subsequently, a data retrieval sourced articles on TDs in CRC for bibliometric analysis, spanning from 1 January 1935 to 30 April 2023. Bibliometrix software facilitated paper analysis and visualization. Bibliometric indicators, the trends and hotspots were determined. A total of 2147 articles were successfully retrieved. Brown G emerged as the most productive author, and the USA as the most prolific country. Central South University and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center led productivity. Bradford's law categorized 48 journals into zone 1. Keywords co-occurrence analysis identified three main clusters: the application of TDs in TNM staging, the pathogenesis of TDs, and the assessment of TDs. The trend topic analysis highlighted research focused on refining TDs incorporation into tumour staging. TDs wield enduring medical significance, shaping ongoing research. Much literature focused on confirming TD's prognostic value and optimizing TNM integration. Additionally, it is worth highlighting that TD's enigmatic pathogenesis demands research priority, as it holds the potential to unveil concealed knowledge regarding their development.

미동북부 지역 대학교의 교양 음악교과 운영현황 분석 -예일 대학교, 존스 홉킨스 대학교, 컬럼비아 대학교, 바너드 대학교를 중심으로-

This study aims to analyze the operation status of liberal arts music education courses at universities in the Northeastern United States and draw implications for South Korea. The study investigated the liberal arts curricula and music courses listed on the official websites of Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and Barnard College. Across all universities, a total of 106 liberal arts courses were offered from the spring of 2023 to the spring of 2024. The research findings are as follows: First, liberal arts music education courses focused more on theoretical lectures rather than practical lessons, regardless of the scale or educational content of music majors. Second, all types of liberal arts music courses were distribution requirements. Columbia University had both core and distribution requirement courses. Additionally, advanced courses were offered based on students’ musical background knowledge. Third, the category names of liberal arts music courses were related to ‘Humanities’ or ‘Humanities &amp; Arts’. Fourth, the courses were classified into music courses (theory 76.93%, performance 24.53%) and convergence courses (theory 5.66%, performance 1.89%). Fifth, the content of the courses, if theoretical, covered various fields of musicology, while practical courses provided actual musical experiences such as composition and stage performance. They included classical music, jazz, popular music, and ethnic music from certain period. Integrated courses included subjects related to popular culture studies, theater, and literature. Based on these findings, the study suggests improving the liberal arts music education infrastructure of domestic universities, expanding core or distribution requirements, designating specific categories related to music or humanities, and developing courses of various topics and difficulties.

Letters from Sodom: ‘Emotional’ Agency and Evidence of Sexual Crime in the Early Modern Courts of Italy and Spain

In the judicial system of the Ancien Régime, some crimes were notoriously difficult to prove. It was essential for the prosecution to properly argue the case and, to this end, it was necessary to develop a hierarchical system of evidential means that would allow any hint of suspicion to yield results. The goal of the essay is to carry out a detailed study of the written documents confiscated in judicial proceedings for sodomy in civil courts of the Mediterranean area during the early modern period. The objective is to understand the ‘expressiveness’ that this judicial evidence contributed to the process of signalling criminal practices within the judicial system of Spanish and Italian courts. In addition, by studying love letters between men, missives from their relatives and friends commenting on disagreements, the popular literature consumed by the defendants, certificates and other official documents, and their demands for employment, the essay will shed light on their everyday life and forms of dissidence, with the aim of understanding the particular ‘emotional’ agency of these individuals.

Cosmic pears from the Havelland (Germany): Ribbeck, the twelfth recorded aubrite fall in history

AbstractIn 1889 the German poet and novelist Theodor Fontane wrote the popular literary ballad “Herr von Ribbeck auf Ribbeck im Havelland.” The Squire von Ribbeck is described as a gentle and generous person, who often gives away pears from his pear trees to children passing by and continued donating pears after his death. Now, 135 years later the rock called Ribbeck is giving us insight into processes that happened 4.5 billion years ago. The meteorite Ribbeck (official find location: 52°37′15″N, 12°45′40″E) fell January 21, 2024, and has been classified as a brecciated aubrite. This meteoroid actually entered the Earth's atmosphere at 00:32:38 UTC over Brandenburg, west of Berlin, and the corresponding fireball was recorded by professional all sky and video cameras. More than 200 pieces (two proved by radionuclide analysis to belong to this fresh fall) were recovered totaling about 1.8 kg. Long‐lived radionuclide and noble gas data are consistent with long cosmic ray exposure (55–62 Ma) and a preatmospheric radius of Ribbeck between 20 and 30 cm. The heavily brecciated aubrite consists of major (76 ± 3 vol%) coarse‐grained FeO‐free enstatite (En99.1Fs&lt;0.04Wo0.9), with a significant abundance (15.0 ± 2.5 vol%) of albitic plagioclase (Ab95.3 An2.0Or2.7), minor forsterite (5.5 ± 1.5 vol%; Fo99.9) and 3.5 ± 1.0 vol% of opaque phases (mainly sulfides and metals) with traces of nearly FeO‐free diopside (En53.2Wo46.8) and K‐feldspar (Ab4.6Or95.4). The rock has a shock degree of S3 (U‐S3), and terrestrial weathering has affected metals and sulfides, resulting in the brownish appearance of rock pieces and the partial destruction of certain sulfides already within days after the fall. The bulk chemical data confirm the feldspar‐bearing aubritic composition. Ribbeck is closely related to the aubrite Bishopville. Ribbeck does not contain solar wind implanted gases and is a fragmental breccia. Concerning the Ti‐ and O‐isotope compositions, the data are similar to those of other aubrites. They are also similar to E chondrites and fall close to the data point for the bulk silicate Earth (BSE). Before the Ribbeck meteoroid entered Earth's atmosphere, it was observed in space as asteroid 2024 BX1. The aphelion distance of 2024 BX1's orbit lies in the innermost region of the asteroid belt, which is populated by the Hungaria family of minor planets characterized by their E/X‐type taxonomy and considered as the likely source of aubrites. The spectral comparison of an average large‐scale emission spectrum of Mercury converted into reflectance and of the Ribbeck meteorite spectrum does not show any meaningful similarities.