Prominent Publications Research Articles

Key Factors of Successful Corporate Environmental Practice in Selected Malaysia Public Listed Companies

Today, the issue of corporate environmental practice has been discussed extensively in research and operation because the future of sustainability is at stake. Thus, this paper’s objectives are 1) to understand the corporate environmental practice and 2) to determine the key factors of successful corporate environmental practice. Data were gathered from semi-structured interviews with representatives from several prominent Public Listed Companies (PLCs) in Malaysia, which are the pioneer in this area. Findings from this study reveal that companies should have clear environmental guidelines, and most importantly enhanced data governance for greater corporate environmental practice. The conclusion discusses the continuous improvement in navigating and planning future research. Keywords: Corporate environmental practics; Operationalisation, Data governance; Resilience eISSN: 2398-4287© 2020. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v5i15.2421.

The Alliance to “Civilize” the East Indies Government and Catholic Missionaries in Manggarai-Flores

The present paper deals with the reestablishment of Catholic missionary activity in the Dutch East Indies during the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth. It pays particular attention to the arrival of missionaries in western Flores in the twentieth century, when conversion to Catholicism saw a spectacular growth in the Manggarai region. It delves into the complex interaction of government officials, missionaries and local leaders and how particular social practices and economic modes of production were advanced. It aims to understand how the particular set of civilizing discourses that the missionaries upheld at the time dovetailed with the objectives of the Dutch colonial government. It relies on Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze the contents of the article The Scientific Role of the Missionary, by Monseigneur Alexander Le Roy, superior general of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, which appeared in prominent publications of the main Catholic congregation working in Flores during the twentieth century, the Society of the Divine Word (SVD). However, it demonstrates that the ideologues of Catholic missiology of the time, such as Monseigneur Le Roy, went beyond the civilizing discourses on development. Furthermore, it argues that many of the progressive stances that characterize the church in Flores today can be traced back to the ideas espoused by their missionary forefathers.

Workplace incivility: a literature review

PurposeThere have been strides in workplace incivility (WI), but in what direction, angles and theoretical streams are they taking place? In light of it, the purpose of this review is to analyze the overall WI research output yielded in the initial decades of this century.Design/methodology/approachThis investigation searched exclusively for empirical articles written in English that matched the terms incivility and WI in the websites of prominent peer-review publications covering the period of 19 years (i.e. 2000–2019). As a result, 93 peer-reviewed empirical studies were properly gathered and classified.FindingsWI is one of the most relevant topics in OB studies under scrutiny in this moment. Corroborating such a perception is the huge amount of outlets that have been publishing about WI. In this sense, it is a topic that has gained strong interdisciplinary status, given the manifested interest of very distinct areas. Cross-sectional studies have prevailed in terms of method preferences, yet other approaches have been used. Of noteworthy is the shortage of qualitative and meta-analytic studies. Data provided evidence that a very limited number of nations (only 18 countries) have been investigated and it is not exactly surprising that the United States be the target of the majority of studies in this field. The antecedents and consequences of WI are the major focus of the investigations. But I found some evidence that that WI has been tested as performing the role of measure, mediator and moderator.Research limitations/implicationsIt focused exclusively on peer-review journals and articles written in English.Originality/valueThis endeavor contributes to the theory of WI by encompassing crucial aspects such as time horizon, major outlets, study types, country-level output, samples features, constructs perused, theoretical function of WI and research outcomes. In addition, it points out new potential research streams.

A reappraisal of luck versus skill in the cross-section of mutual fund returns

The first contribution we make to research on measuring U.S. mutual fund performance is to show that the cross-section bootstrap procedure used in one prominent publication on this topic can easily accommodate conditional asset pricing models. Using this result, we reestimate US fund performance using the conditional asset pricing model of Ferson and Schadt (1996) for the period of time covering January 1984 to September 2006, the same period of time used in this prominent publication. Unlike most of the current research on the performance of U.S. mutual funds, including the latter research, the estimates of fund performance produced here suggest that some funds, on a net return basis, performed very well over this period. Our second contribution is to update the U.S. mutual fund data to the end of 2018 and then to re-estimate fund performance over this longer period of time. These results show that fund performance, on a net return basis, is poor, confirming the findings of previous research that used data ending before 2018. The third contribution is to provide a detailed guide on how the mutual fund data widely used in this literature is constructed. Until now much of the information required to do this has not been made widely available. Our last contribution is to make some policy recommendations that should better align fund manager incentives with the interests of investors, an alignment which current practices have hindered.

Peace News and Radical Disability Writing in 1970s Britain: Perceptions of Welfare and the Welfare State

The 1970s were an important decade for disability policy in Britain. The 1970 Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act promised services for all disabled people and a series of cash benefits appeared to comprise a national disability income. By the 1980s, however, these measures had failed, and some disabled people had taken radical stances against the perceived failures of capitalism. This article shows that radical views amongst disabled people began earlier and were more common than has been assumed. It examines Peace News, a prominent activist publication, as evidence of this phenomenon. Disabled people in the 1970s became radicalised in response to traditional failures of British welfare and recent failures of the welfare state. They self-identified as a minority group—alongside homosexuals and ethnic minorities—and fought against discrimination. Unlike major disability organisations in the 1970s, disabled people had a militant approach to improving their welfare and their position in the welfare state.

A Bibliometric Analysis on Ethical Climate

The purpose of this study is to retrieve and explore past studies done on ethical climate. A search using the bibliometric analysis method was made on the Web of Science (WoS) database for publications of between 1970 until 2020. The VOS Viewer software was used to retrieve and explore numerous aspects of these publications, such as author keywords, bibliographic coupling of the publications, journals, countries, and authors. Analysis indicated that the most prominent publication was, “Bad Apples, Bad Cases and Bad Barrels: Meta-Analytic evidence about sources of unethical decision at work” authored by Kish-Gephant, Harrison and Trevino (2010). It was also noted that the journal with the most impact was the Journal of Business Ethics followed by the journal of Nursing Ethics. The prominent countries engaged in ethical climate publications were: the USA, China and Turkey, in that order. Analysis also showed that the most prominent authors/researchers were Borhani and Fariba, with eight articles. In examining the concepts that were associated with ethnical climate, it was identified that ethical leadership, moral distress, organizational climate and employee burnout were the most frequently studied.

From the beginning to the present state of molecular microbial pathogenesis-A tribute to Pascale Cossart.

The universe of Molecular Microbial Pathogenesis is filled with many female and male stars. But there are two particularly bright shining supernovae-like stars: the late Stanley Falkow and the very lively and creative Pascale Cossart. These two outstanding luminaries, surrounded by numerous planets, do not only belong to different scientific generations but their splendor also comes from very different scientific concepts. Stanley Falkow, often referred to as the 'Father of Molecular Microbial Pathogenesis', made many groundbreaking contributions to this field by addressing almost all important bacterial pathogens. Pascale Cossart, who could be called in analogy the 'Queen of Modern Molecular Microbial Pathogenesis' by combining the Microbiology and Cell Biology, concentrates in her similarly impressive scientific work essentially on a single bacterial species which she studied and still studies in great depth: the facultative intracellular bacterial pathogen Listeria monocytogenes-and the vast majority of her most prominent publications deals with this pathogen in almost all facets. It is certainly not an exaggeration to say that she together with her co-workers and collaborators developed this model bacterium into a paradigm among the intracellular bacterial pathogens.

Overview of Research in the field of Video Compression using Deep Neural Networks

Deep Neural Networks (DNN) have emerged in recent year as a best-of-breed alternative for performing various classification, prediction and identification tasks in images and other fields of study. In the last few years, various research groups are exploring the option to harness them to improve video coding with the primary purpose of reducing video compression rates while retaining same video quality. Evolving neural-networks based video coding research efforts are focused on two different directions: (1) improving existing video codecs by performing better predictions that are incorporated within the same codec framework, and (2) holistic methods of end-to-end image/video compression schemes. While some of the results are promising and the prospects are good, no breakthrough has been reported as of yet. This paper provides an overview of state-of-the-art research work, providing examples of few prominent publications that illustrate and further explain the different highlighted topics in the field of using DNNs for video compression. Our conclusion is that the benefits have not been fully explored yet and additional work is expected to accomplish the next generation, neural networks based codecs.

Map of the existing research on business innovation, funding, and policy framework

In the last decade, empirical studies focusing on business-related innovation, funding of innovation activities, and policy (implications) have continued to increase. However, not enough effort has been undertaken yet to investigate existing literature on the subject matter. To fill the gap, the present study seeks to synthesize and map out existing empirical studies on business innovation, financing, and policy framework published between 1990 and February 2019. Bibliographic analysis of relevant articles retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection was performed using Vosviewer. The bibliometric results show the prominent publication outlets, authoritative scholars and items, dominant higher learning institutions, and countries. Still, selected articles were content analyzed, providing a summary of the publications, the methodology adopted, country and period covered. The papers were classified into different themes based on the study focus, thus pinpointing areas that have received more or less scholarly attention. The identified gaps from both bibliographic and content analysis offer future research opportunities in different aspects touching on business innovation, how its financed and related policy issues.

The Medieval in the Modern: Nazi and Italian Fascist Use of the Ritual Murder Charge

Abstract Addressing both the debate over the “modern” nature of the German and Italian fascist regimes, and the related question of the role played by the Christian churches in making the Holocaust possible, we examine the most prominent antisemitic publications aimed at the broad public in each country: Der Stürmer in Germany and La Difesa della razza in Italy. Our study traces the heavy use of the ritual murder charge in both publications, and demonstrates the direct influence of the Nazi antisemitic campaign on the subsequent Italian one. Differences between the two publications in their use of the ritual murder charge are linked to differences between the two regimes in their relations to Christianity and the Christian churches.

Illuminating the invisible college: An analysis of foundational and prominent publications of engagement research in public relations

Researchers and practitioners assert that engagement is a fundamental element of public relations with some claiming the field is in an era of engagement. Yet, many have lamented that engagement is disorganized and conceptually murky. To address this, this study examines how researchers have stood on the shoulders of “giants”. Results from the bibliometric network analyses of 91 journal articles and over 3000 citations reveals the structure of the invisible college of engagement research and identifies foundational and prominent publications. A close reading and analysis documents how these publications are influencing the theoretical development of engagement research in public relations.

Rameaus langer Schatten: Studien zur deutschen Musiktheorie des 18. Jahrhunderts. By Ludwig Holtmeier

According to Ludwig Holtmeier, we have gotten the history of eighteenth-century harmonic theory all wrong. Historians of music theory have consistently cast Rameau in the leading role in the story of eighteenth-century music theory. But our one-sided focus upon the Frenchman’s theory of the basse fondamentale or the acoustical generation of harmony through the corps sonore has led to a highly skewed history that has obscured the accomplishments of many other theorists of harmony, in particular some German writers who resisted boarding the Rameau bandwagon. Worse still, perhaps, Rameau’s own work has been distorted by the singular attention that has been accorded to his systematic or “scientific” theorizing contained in a few of his most prominent publications. If we look more carefully into a number of several less familiar practical writings by Rameau, however (some of them never even published in his lifetime or under his own name), a differing and far more complex figure comes into view. With the long-awaited publication of his 2010 dissertation, Ludwig Holtmeier elaborates these arguments in great—one might even say tendentious—detail. But we can well understand why he does so, as the stakes are high. Rameaus langer Schatten: Studien zur deutschen Musiktheorie des 18. Jahrhunderts (Rameau’s Long Shadow: Studies on German Music Theory of the Eighteenth Century) has the potential of rewriting two centuries of historical scholarship on eighteenth-century music theory.

Retro-atlases II: a new edition of the first Statistical Atlas of Switzerland (1897)

Abstract. In 2018, the Swiss Federal Statistical Office celebrated the 125th edition of its most prominent annual publication – the “Statistical Yearbook of Switzerland”. This celebration was also an opportunity of reissuing as a supplement a selection of attractive, but not well-known visualisations from the first Statistical Atlas of Switzerland initially published in 1897 and yearbooks from the 19th century. The original atlas produced issued by the Swiss Federal Statistical Bureau contained 22 coloured “plates”, including 6 maps and 16 diagrams. The techniques of visual display of statistical information were still in their infancy in statistical offices at this time, but this remarkable atlas already shows an expertise and judicious use of these techniques borrowed from the then reference book of Dr Georg von Mayr. The foreword of the original atlas gives a clue of what the authors intended with this visual collection: their main objective was to democratise interest in public statistics and their results using visualisations. In an educational effort, also an explanatory preamble on the methods of graphical representation in general was offered.The data used were relatively recent at the time of publication and the datasets even contain first long-time series, ranging from 1850 to 1898. The themes addressed testify to the development of public statistics at the time and the historical context. We find the traditional demographic themes (birth rate, mortality, marriage, population structure, emigration and health), territorial aspects (surfaces and occupation and land use), political life (elected representatives and voting result), trade aspects (imports and exports) and the development of means of communications (railways, telegraph and telephone). The data visualisation techniques that were used already reflect a certain diversity: choropleth and proportional symbol maps, bar charts, pie charts, line charts and population pyramids, displayed as simple figures or as small multiples.Following a similar first publication of a retro-atlas (The “Graphical-statistical Atlas 1914–2014”), published in 2015, he this latest atlas edition combines the 22 plates from the 1897 atlas as well as 7 older visualisations from the 1891–1899 yearbooks, and enriches this “retro” selection with their counterpart visualisations produced with recent data and modern tools around the year 2017. As the original atlas, the new atlas is fully bilingual and was printed in 2000 copies.It is thus possible for the reader to compare different themes and developments in a broad historical perspective, as well as to appreciate the statistics bureau’s early know-how in visual communication. This anniversary edition is therefore an opportunity to bring the first statistical atlas back to the public's attention, and to show the early interest of official statistics in this excellent “intuitive means of teaching, particularly suitable for popularising the interest in the work of statistics”.

Crisis State of Medical Readiness and Citizen Preparedness Importance for Radiological and Nuclear Incidents

Introduction:In 2017, members of our workgroup published on the readiness for nuclear and radiological incidents among emergency medical personnel.1 Our findings, along with a review of pertinent literature, suggest that the state of medical preparedness for these incidents is in crisis. A 2018 publication addressing nuclear terrorism preparedness relegates medical preparedness to a low priority and describes it as potentially dangerous.2 The crisis status of medical preparedness for these incidents is addressed.Aim:To establish a prepared medical workforce and trained public for those at risk from nuclear or radiological disasters.Methods:This Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved survey published an article and used a relevant literature review.Results:Readiness for nuclear and radiological incidents is lacking in multiple areas including education, training, identifying medical needs, willingness to come to work, and perception of relative risk among medical personnel.1 Confounding this is recent prominent publication downplaying and discouraging medical preparedness for nuclear terrorism.2 The importance of a readied workforce and a prepared public is identified.Discussion:In 2013, we formed a multi-national workgroup focused on preparing health professionals and the public for clinical management of casualties during nuclear and radiological disasters. Modeling has demonstrated predictable casualty injury and illness patterns suggesting that early appropriate medical response will save lives. Readiness demands an educated, skillful, and willing-to-engage medical workforce. Our 2017 publication identified several areas that place medical preparedness at risk.1 A significant risk to medical preparedness may lie in prominent publications discouraging the pursuit.2 We firmly believe that medical preparedness is essential and begins with a prepared public.

Monumental and decorative art of the second half of the 20th century in specialized literature

The article deals with a number of issues highlighted in the research of monumental painting during the 1960–2000s, and follows the development of art studies literature during the specified period. Ukrainian monumental painting during the second half of the 20th century evolved rather unequally, which affecte the art criticism reflections. In the 1960's and 80's the active and dynamic development of monumental art took place. Research in this area also reached the peak of its popularity. For example, the article of I. Pronina contains a review of publications from 1973–1974, and the author brought the statistics indicating more than 200 works. (180) Since the mid-1960's, academics have been increasingly focusing on monumental art. The attitude to monumental painting in the art history literature of the 1960's is ambiguous. However, most researchers are still critical of post-war practice and consider monumental works of the late 1950`s and 1960`s as a step forward. The distinctive differences between the 1960's and 1970's – 1980's lie in various attitudes towards themes and scenes of the monumental painting. In the 1960's the monumentality was associated with the laconic content, using a set of all understandable associative attributes. The expansion of the range of themes in monumental painting in the professional literature occured in the 1970's. Since the research problem stands at the crossroads of various branches of art, important scientific advancements were reflected in such prominent professional publications as: "Architecture of the USSR", "Decorative art of the USSR" and "Fine Arts". In the 1970's the publishing house "Soviet artist" released a series of articles compilations called "Soviet monumental art." The state of monumentalism significantly changes in 1990's as there was a significant decline in the activity of this artistic direction. At this time the monumental painting fell into the field of wide-scale artistic studies. In the professional literature of the last decade the scope of art study themes has changed to a certain extent as the art historians more often address the issues previously tabooed in Soviet times, and some of them partially or fully relate to the monumental painting. To such themes belong the Sixties and Boichukizm. Today the problem of the preservation of Soviet monumental works sharply appears. Many authors turn to the theme of monumental art in order to attract the attention of society to the rapid destruction of mosaics and wall murals, and to prove their value for Ukrainian fine arts.

Measuring ecological capital: State of the art, trends, and challenges

It is essential to assess the value of nature, as it provides various benefits for human economic development and well-being. It has been 20 years since two prominent publications came out in valuing nature. New concepts and methods have emerged since then. This study aimed to (1) investigate the relationship between the new proposed concept (ecological capital) and the existing two concepts: natural capital and ecosystem services and (2) examine the research trends of ecological capital accounting publications from 1997 to 2017. Bibliometric analysis was used to reveal the research trends. The results showed that the total number of publications has rapidly increased since 1997 and this growth trend will be maintained in the future. The most productive journal, country, institute, and author were Ecological Economics, USA, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Verburg, respectively. Ecosystem services and land were the most frequent types of ecological capital. Non-economic evaluation approaches became less of a favorite over time and economic valuation methods were mostly applied in last five years. The integration of different methods has attracted increasing academic attention. The progress, advantages, and limitations of different methods were summarized in this study, including SEEA, ecological footprint, exergy, emergy, LCA, and economic valuation approaches, as well as newly developed modelling approaches. The last part of this study presented three challenges in this academic field – the need to (1) establish a standard framework, (2) consider the transfer/transport of ecological capital, and (3) improve capabilities for decision-making.

What does ‘pornography’ mean in the digital age? Revisiting a definition for social science researchers

ABSTRACT‘Pornography’ is a protean term, rendered more complex by the digital age. Social science researchers need not only a useful definition but also awareness of how the term is applied (by researchers and research participants) and clarity about the scope of material to be included. As part of our attempts to understand the meaning of ‘pornography’, we thematically analyzed definitions presented in recent and prominent pornography research publications and scholarly articles dedicated to defining pornography. We concluded that a useful definition has three components: content, the intention of the producer, and contextual judgement. We then identified implications for pornography of new technology: expanded opportunities for access and content, the interaction and immersion enabled by virtual reality, ‘pornification’ of culture, and challenges to the meaning of consent presented by self-produced content. We argue that pornography should be distinguished from material produced and distributed without participants’ consent. We propose that researchers incorporate new technologies into measurement tools and suggest that they acknowledge context and practise reflexivity. We present as a working definition of ‘pornography’: ‘Material deemed sexual, given the context, that has the primary intention of sexually arousing the consumer and is produced and distributed with the consent of all persons involved’.

El marketing multinivel: una herramienta para el desarrollo de los mercados de menores recursos

La pobreza y la desocupación azotan nuestro tiempo y —paralelamente— el empleo ya no representa el único modo de alcanzar ingresos e inclusión social. A partir de una revisión bibliográfica de autores y publicaciones de relieve, se presenta un análisis de las posibilidades del marketing multinivel como herramienta necesaria a los fines de dar impulso al sector poblacional de menores recursos —conocido como La Base de la Pirámide—, el que incluye a unos cuatro billones de personas de todo el mundo. Se concluye que el desarrollo personal y profesional de quienes componen la base de la pirámide presenta una gran brecha entre su nivel actual y su potencialidad, y que el marketing multinivel y el emprendimiento pueden resultar vehículos apropiados para la mejora de la calidad de vida de tantas personas, sin importar la condición o el nivel de estudios que posean2. El propósito final se conecta con ayudar a reducir/erradicar la pobreza en el mundo, por lo que se insiste en que debe haber un compromiso más activo de los distintos actores, así como un cambio en los pensamientos y prejuicios con que se encara este gran segmento poblacional. La investigación es cualitativa, con estudio exploratorio descriptivo y diseño no experimental.

Topic Modeling and Textual Analysis of American Scientific Journals, 1818–1922

When performing a distant reading of some of the most prominent American scientific publications in the nineteenth-century U.S., some very clear patterns emerge. LDA topic modeling and textual analysis methods of over one hundred years of the American Journal of Science (AJS), Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (PAAAS), and the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) between 1818 and 1922 helps historians to understand how these journals evolved over the nineteenth-century. Overall, there was an increase in discussion of business and professional issues and a shift in the journals that scientists used to discuss these issues. This shift happened during a very specific period, 1870-1890, the very same time that specialized scientific societies, particularly the American Chemical Society, split from the more generalized American Association for the Advancement of Science. Further analyses of these datasets may help to better understand shifts American science in the nineteenth century, and topic modeling methods allow historians of science to better identify this evolution of American science.

The “Ulysses” Delusion: Rethinking Standards of Literary Merit by Cecilia Konchar Farr

Reviewed by: The “Ulysses” Delusion: Rethinking Standards of Literary Merit by Cecilia Konchar Farr Mallory Young THE “ULYSSES” DELUSION: RETHINKING STANDARDS OF LITERARY MERIT, by Cecilia Konchar Farr. American Literature Readings in the 21st Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 199 pp. $89.99 cloth; $59.99 paper; $24.99 ebook. Cecelia Konchar Farr’s focus in The “Ulysses” Delusion: Rethinking Standards of Literary Merit is immediately clear in the book’s title. The author provides her readers with a new set of guidelines for judging literary works, specifically novels. What impresses me above all about Konchar Farr’s argument is, however, not what it contributes to a revised assessment of the novel—though I will come to that in a moment—but what it contributes to the current state of literary analysis. The “Ulysses” Delusion is an ideal model of clear, thoughtful, balanced, witty, and well-written criticism—something I find in extremely short supply these days. Konchar Farr is also willing to include memorable and relevant accounts of her own reading experience, providing more than a glimpse of the critic as a real person. In fact, Konchar Farr’s measuring rod for assessing novels, asking that they be absorbing, relatable, discussable, and informative—a list of qualifications she lightheartedly refers to as ARDI (pp. 6–7)—is equally applicable to literary criticism itself, and Konchar Farr’s own writing succeeds admirably. This book really is a page-turner. Konchar Farr contends that the standards the professional literary community uses for granting novels literary merit and canonical status need to be reassessed. Both the academic community and the world of professional reviewers, she argues, have focused on elements that ignore or even reject the very characteristics most avid novel readers seek and enjoy. The result is that James Joyce’s Ulysses (1918) tops the professional community’s lists of best novels while readers choose to indulge in the works of George R. R. Martin and J. K. Rowling. This is the titular “Ulysses delusion.” Konchar Farr is not by any means asking that we dismiss aesthetic standards and [End Page 469] simply rate novels according to their popularity—though she does ask that we stop rejecting them for that reason. In the book’s ten chapters, she applies her ARDI qualifications to a number of novels that pass her test—including Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and all the Harry Potter books—and to a number that fail—Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (1957) and E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey (2011), along with all the novels of Jodi Picoult and, yes, Ulysses. I will admit—as Konchar Farr herself indicates, particularly in her footnotes—that many of her claims are not new, at least in the academic community. A number of the chapters that make up this book were written and originally published over ten years ago, and much of what she puts forward has already been addressed. I do not know of any universities that continue to oppose the inclusion of popular works in the literary curriculum. It is not, of course, only the classroom that has broadened its scope. Scholarly conferences and publications are replete with panels and papers focused on popular novels, and as Konchar Farr notes, the scholarly field of “Middlebrow Studies” has seen wide growth over the past decade (p. 162, n. 12). When it comes to the professional assessment of newly published novels, on the other hand, the issue might still be a pressing one. Judging by those books selected—and not selected—for review in prominent literary publications, the community of professional reviewers has not, in this respect, caught up with the academy. In any case, Konchar Farr’s development of appropriate aesthetic standards for making such judgments is an important undertaking. Rather than giving in to current popular demands in the hope that our students will read something rather than nothing, Konchar Farr has provided legitimate criteria, both for and against those unschooled preferences, and her individual analyses are engaging and convincing. In addition to providing solid aesthetic grounds, Konchar Farr makes a convincing argument for the essentially anti-elitist and feminist framework of her revised standards. It...