Reading For Scholars Research Articles

Mobilizing Mutations: Human Genetics in the Age of Patient Advocacy by Daniel Navon

Reviewed by: Mobilizing Mutations: Human Genetics in the Age of Patient Advocacy by Daniel Navon Lewis A. Grossman Daniel Navon. Mobilizing Mutations: Human Genetics in the Age of Patient Advocacy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. 396 pp. $40.00 (978-0-226-63809-6). Mobilizing Mutations examines social mobilization efforts around genetic mutations in recent decades. Navon focuses on mutations with ambiguous and diverse effects, rather than those with clear causal relationships to established medical conditions. He examines how a "genomically designated condition becomes a category of practice and social action" (p. 35), giving rise to its own clinical guidelines, treatment centers, advocacy organizations, and support groups. Although Navon describes his book as "a comparative-historical analysis of genomically designated conditions" (p. 14), it is obviously the work of a sociologist rather than a historian. As such, it is a challenging read for scholars from other disciplines (like this reviewer). Nevertheless, the insight Navon provides into the complex interactions among genetics, disease, and society is well worth the effort. Mobilizing Mutations depends heavily on the deployment of several technical concepts. One is philosopher Ian Hacking's "looping" effect, by which the classification of people into categories transforms the identity and behavior of the people themselves and thus creates a new "kind of person." These changes reshape experts' categorizations, which then recursively loop back to influence the conduct of the classified group, and so on. The specific type of classification that Navon explores in his book is "genomic designation." This term, which he coins (p. 34), refers to the delineation of medical conditions strictly according to the presence of abnormal genomes. Navon's goal is to show how social mobilization transforms such mutations into potent categories of identity and community formation and how activists (in alliance with experts) forge the creation of new clinical guidelines, treatment protocols, and research agendas. In short, Navon argues that "what it means to have a genetic mutation is as much a sociological phenomenon as it is a biomedical one" (p. 7). [End Page 429] Chapter 1 familiarizes the reader with the phenomenon of "genomic designation" in the context of 22q13 and 22q11.2 Deletion Syndromes. Chapter 2 goes back in history to explore how in the 1960s and 1970s, newly discovered mutations had little impact outside the field of human genetics research because American culture was not yet fertile ground for social mobilization around genetic categories. Navon calls the broad societal interest in XYY syndrome during this period and its discredited link to criminality and "super male" behavior as "the exception that proves the rule" (p. 61). Returning to recent instances of successful social mobilization, Chapter 3 introduces the notion of "leveraging," a strategy by which rare mutation activists increase their resources and influence by persuading a community organized around a common disease that research on the mutation will improve understanding and treatment of the disease. For example, Fragile X advocates have effectively hitched their mission to that of the autism community—which itself has reconceptualized autism by pulling Fragile X and other mutations into its orbit, as shown in Chapter 4. Chapters 5 and 6 describe how networks of advocates and experts have mobilized mutations into "new kinds of people" in forums ranging from the biomedical literature, specialist clinics, and doctors' offices to support groups, social media, and summer camps. Chapter 7, perhaps the most fascinating, discusses how mere knowledge of a genetic mutation can redefine the border between normal and pathological, most often by recasting what would otherwise be a normal clinical observation into a pathological finding deserving of attention and treatment. Finally, Chapter 8 assesses possible future paths for genetic mutation mobilization, with an eye toward the potential eugenic consequences of prenatal testing for mutations. Critics often dismiss patient advocacy groups as manipulated pharmaceutical industry shills. Notably, however, patients and (especially) their parents were indisputably the primary impetus behind the mobilization campaigns Navon examines. Indeed, drug companies had no particular interest in the rare mutations discussed in the book until patient groups mobilized around these mutations and leveraged them to attract some of the resources devoted to more widespread conditions like autism and ADHD. So far, no targeted drug therapies have...

Fictional Environments: Mimesis, Deforestation, and Development in Latin America by Victoria Saramago

Reviewed by: Fictional Environments: Mimesis, Deforestation, and Development in Latin America by Victoria Saramago Charlotte Rogers Saramago, Victoria. Fictional Environments: Mimesis, Deforestation, and Development in Latin America. Northwestern UP, 2021. 274 pp. Can literature literally shape the landscape? In Fictional Environments, Victoria Saramago explores this question and others in a thoroughly researched and elegantly written examination of canonical mid-twentieth-century Latin American [End Page 819] novels. The impressive breadth of this book, which analyzes João Guimarães Rosa's Grande sertão: Veredas, Alejo Carpentier's Los pasos perdidos, Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo, Clarice Lispector's A cidade sitiada, and Mario Vargas Llosa's Amazonian fiction, is matched by the depth of its engagement with ecocritical theory and the extensive critical bibliographies on each of these well-studied authors. Saramago argues that the fictional texts in her corpus do not merely reflect each author's vision of the physical biome, but rather that they serve as "sites for the production of knowledge about, imaginations of, and interventions in Latin American environments" (5). In doing so, she stakes a significant claim for the ongoing importance of studying canonical novels through innovative theoretical and methodological lenses. Most importantly, by showing how literature informs ecological perceptions, Fictional Environments points out the agency, and therefore the urgency, of literary works on our rapidly changing planet. A major contribution to Latin American literary studies, this book is also essential reading for scholars of the broader field of environmental humanities interested in how literature configures physical spaces and collective imaginations. Fictional Environments proposes that these iconic novels published from the 1940s to the 1960s sparked ecological imaginaries, inspired the creation of conservation areas, and contributed to environmental policies even before the advent of organized environmentalist movements in Latin America. Deforestation, a hallmark of the ecological history of the South American continent that accelerated rapidly in the period she studies, forms the backdrop against which varying forms of extractivism, agricultural industrialization, and urbanization play out. The complex, mimetic relationship between the physical landscape and the fictional realm during times of ecological change lies at the heart of Fictional Environments. Saramago offers sure-footed explanations of the shifting role of mimesis in literary studies, including Auerbach's classic text and Timothy Morton's concept of ecomimesis. The author makes her own original contribution to this field in coining the term "reverse mimesis" to indicate how physical environments have been shaped to more closely resemble literary texts in national parks and conservation areas. At the same time, Saramago shows, referential reality becomes a painfully spectral presence in literary works as deforestation, urbanization, and industrialization make the contemporary landscape diverge sharply from its earlier fictional representations. Rather than organizing her study according to language, geography, or temporality, Saramago divides the book into three sections: "Conservation," "Development," and "The Rights of Nature, the Rights of Fiction." In each section, Saramago offers a bird's-eye view of the literary texts' reception history and socioecological context, and occasionally swoops down to perform close readings of key ecological entanglements in the works themselves. Special credit is due to the editors of the Flashpoints series at Northwestern University Press for retaining the original Spanish and Portuguese quotations in addition to English-language translations, which deepens the richness of Saramago's analysis. "Conservation" consists of two chapters examining how Grande sertão: Veredas and Los pasos perdidos distill environments in fiction and simultaneously shape preservation efforts. For example, the famous sertão is now the site of extensive soy, [End Page 820] corn, rice, and eucalyptus monoculture plantations, and the larger savannah biome known as the cerrado is predicted to disappear entirely by 2030. Saramago's argument for reverse mimesis is strongest in this first chapter, which shows how the Guimarães Rosa Tourist Circuit, the Manuelzão Project, and the Grande Sertão Veredas National Park each attempt to make their protected area imitate the sertão of the novel. This remarkable intervention "challenges the very notion of literary representation as a one-way process" (33). Los pasos perdidos, Saramago proposes, is one of several works (including Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World and Richard Schomburgk's Travels in...

Francisco de Osuna's "Norte de los estados" in Modernized Spanish: A Practical Guide to Conjugal Life in Sixteenth-Century Europe ed. by Dana Bultman

Reviewed by: Francisco de Osuna's "Norte de los estados" in Modernized Spanish: A Practical Guide to Conjugal Life in Sixteenth-Century Europe ed. by Dana Bultman Elizabeth Rhodes Francisco de Osuna's "Norte de los estados" in Modernized Spanish: A Practical Guide to Conjugal Life in Sixteenth-Century Europe. Edited by Dana Bultman. AMSTERDAM UP / ARC HUMANITIES P, 2019. 360 PP. FRANCISCO DE OSUNA (1492?–1540) was one of several Observant Franciscans who codified their practice of recogimiento, a method of intense self-discipline and affective prayer. He is most known as the author of Tercer abecedario espiritual (1527), the book that Teresa de Ávila identified as her spiritual primer. Dana Bultman here presents another of his prescriptive texts, Norte de los estados, a guide to mid-sixteenth-century Catholic morality for secular men as defined by the male Catholic establishment that Osuna represents. The text is in the form of a dialogue between the author and the character Villaseñor, who stands "en persona de todo mancebo Cristiano" (76). Composed in Spanish, the treatise was first published in 1531 and appeared only twice again, in 1541 and 1550. Bultman attributes the book's failure to endure to its author's endorsement of relatively liberal views about marital behavior, views censored in Spain in the late 1500s. The fact that the author expresses overt support of the Franciscan nun Magdalena de la Cruz (1487–1560) in his treatise was perhaps another reason why his book met with limited publishing success, since Magdalena, who claimed to have had revelations and the stigmata, was discredited in 1546. The map of Francisco de Osuna's travels with which the book opens provides evidence of his itinerant life, which traced a triangle whose far points are Santiago de Compostela, Tripoli, and Antwerp. Opening her sixty-one-page introduction, Bultman provides a synopsis of the author's life and influence, detailing his military career, his subsequent education, and his residence in the spiritual hotbed in Escalona (Toledo) from 1526–28, where illuminists mingled with other reform-minded types such as Juan de Valdés (1509–41). Bultman follows a helpful review of other scholarly readings of the text with a detailed summary of its contents, but readers should not use that summary as an excuse to skip the text itself. In her introduction, she notes that Francisco de Osuna relied on Church fathers for many of his ideas, often [End Page 151] glossing Augustine's On the Good of Marriage and On Holy Virginity. Bultman characterizes the treatise as a reformist Catholic response to Protestantism for its emphasis on the sacramental nature of marriage and points to the author's high regard for monastic virtues such as chastity. I am less convinced than she that "Osuna's model of marriage was well outside the views that were later to become dominant in the Catholic Church" (2). His defense of women's inheritance rights and their subject status in the context of certain activities, such as their control of the household, might be considered moderately liberal. However, since Luis de León's La perfecta casada of 1583 takes a similar position on those topics, it is not clear that Osuna's ideas about marriage were later repressed, and cautious readers might not affirm their liberal slant in the first place. Although he defines the house as the wife's domain, he also states that her husband has the right to beat her behind its closed doors. More convincing is Bultman's insistence on the importance of monastic morality that clergymen such as Francisco de Osuna attempted to impose on secular Catholics, noting not only the twelve-chapter rulebook for married couples in the text, chapters that mimic those of the Franciscan rule itself, but also the text's insistence on the analogy of the married state to other sacred relationships, such as that of Christ to the Church. A two-page list of chapters precedes the edited text, making it easy to identify the embedded nondialogic sections, which, being long, anagogical lectures, make for slow reading. Those include a sermon for weddings, a rulebook for the good marriage, a sermon against adultery, a sermon...

МИФ О ВЕЧНОМ ВОЗВРАЩЕНИИ В РОМАНЕ Е.Д. АЙПИНА «В ПОИСКАХ ПЕРВОЗЕМЛИ»

The title of the new novel by the Yugra writer Eremey Aipin In Search of the Primordial Land, first published in Russian in 2019, contains an obvious reference to the cultural tradition and suggests the possibility of a scholarly reading of a literary text from the perspective of mythopoetics. The novel organically continues the attitude characteristic of all Aipin’s previous works. This attitude clearly discerns the writer’s desire to see the essence of modern life realities through the prism of traditional values enshrined in the myths and legends of his people. In Aipin’s artistic picture of the world, myth does not just appear as one of its elements. It enters the very flesh of this world, constitutes its foundation, its pivotal ontological and axiological axis. Aipin does not limit himself to the role of a popularizer of the mythological repertoire of the Khanty people. On the basis of traditional images, plots and motives, he builds his own mythological paradigm, in which the system of national and universal values is superimposed on the personal life experience of the author and his heroes. This fundamentally determines the basic principles of Aipin’s artistic expression organization. The article aims to reveal the meaning-forming role of the myth of the eternal return in Aipin’s In Search of the Primordial Land and to characterize the means of its artistic actualization in the text. During the research, the results of the latest developments in the field of philological regional studies and mythopoetics were taken into account. The analysis of the novel in the context of the traditional culture of the indigenous peoples of Yugra shows that Aipin inextricably connects reflections on the historical fate of Russia with the fate of a person. Despite the fact that the novel is based on the dramatic events of a worldwide scale, it is full of high optimistic sound. According to Aipin’s idea, Russia, which is at the turn of the millennium, is experiencing a situation of the “second world flood”, since the human community lost its spiritual values. The protagonist of the novel is the artist Matvey Taishin. He goes through difficult life trials, but acquires the desired sense of being; he finds it in love and in the awareness of the need to continue life. Using the example of Taishin, Aipin convincingly demonstrates that the revival of Russia is impossible without recognizing its cultural and spiritual origins, without moving towards its own metal Primordial Land. It is this saving path, based on the return to the eternal, timeless values, that will give Russia the opportunity to realize its historical destiny and overcome the state of chaos and decay. The article is the first experience of a conceptual and contextual analysis of Aipin’s In Search of the Primordial Land in Russian literary criticism, which constitutes the novelty of the research.

A sea of miracles: Reflections on narrative space in medieval Serbian hagiography

The broad purpose of this essay is to demonstrate how scholarly readings of medieval hagiography might benefit from a theoretical-methodological shift towards space as the principal focal point of analysis. More specifically, it aims to put forward a new, spatial interpretation of two well-known miracle episodes from the Lives of St Sava of Serbia, both of which are said to have transpired on the high seas.

New books & media

x + y: A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking GenderSection:ChooseTop of pagex + y: A Mathematician’s ... <<Tycho Brahe and the Measu...Anti-vaxxers: How to Chal... x + y: A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender, Eugenia Cheng, Basic Books, 2020, $28.00 Women face more barriers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics than men. To get at the root of the problem, Eugenia Cheng explores personal characteristics in her new book, x + y. She argues that society values ingressive behaviors, such as being competitive and independent, more than congressive ones, such as being collaborative and caring toward others. But if we focus less on whether those characteristics have masculine and feminine connotations and instead redefine successful people to include those with predominantly congressive behaviors, the representation of women and other underrepresented groups in science may improve. —al Tycho Brahe and the Measure of the HeavensSection:ChooseTop of pagex + y: A Mathematician’s ...Tycho Brahe and the Measu... <<Anti-vaxxers: How to Chal... Tycho Brahe and the Measure of the Heavens, John Robert Christianson, Reaktion Books, 2020, $22.50 A new biography aims to restore early modern Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe to what the author, historian John Robert Christianson, asserts is his rightful place as a “world-class figure of the late Renaissance.” Richly illustrated and based on a detailed analysis of Tycho’s surviving texts, Tycho Brahe and the Measure of the Heavens also draws on significant new scholarship written in the Nordic languages. Christianson deftly depicts Tycho’s tumultuous relationship with his one-time assistant Johannes Kepler, while paying careful attention to the context of Tycho’s position in the Danish and Bohemian courts and the sociopolitical ramifications of the Reformation. Ultimately, Christianson argues that Tycho’s empirical methods had a “profound and enduring” effect on the history of science. The book is required reading for scholars of early modern astronomy. —rd Anti-vaxxers: How to Challenge a Misinformed MovementSection:ChooseTop of pagex + y: A Mathematician’s ...Tycho Brahe and the Measu...Anti-vaxxers: How to Chal... << Anti-vaxxers: How to Challenge a Misinformed Movement, Jonathan M. Berman, MIT Press, 2020, $19.95 (paper) Written by renal physiologist and science educator Jonathan Berman, Anti-vaxxers is a how-to guide for those looking to counter rising anti-vaccine sentiment across the globe. Nevertheless, much of the book describes the intertwined history of vaccinations and anti-vaccine movements; surprisingly, Berman shows that anti-vaccine sentiment has existed since the first vaccine was developed in the 19th century. Today the movement is fueled by social media, “fake news,” and other disinformation. Berman argues that “community-based” strategies that consider the identity and values of parents and groups targeted by anti-vaxxers are the most likely to succeed in convincing them of vaccine safety. The book will be of interest to science-minded parents and policymakers alike. —rd © 2020 American Institute of Physics.

Critical Readings of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim

There are much scholarly readings of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. This paper randomly picks some of the papers according to the various ways the scholars have studied the text for a review. Such critical readings have been examined here, considering the topical, thematic as well as theoretical and conceptual frameworks that have guided the studies. By so doing the paper answers the question on ways through which Lord Jim is read. The paper therefore shows that source study, reader response investigation, aesthetics analysis, modernist view, postcolonial readings, religious and moral approaches, stylistics, queer reading and other heterologous readings have dominated the scholarly works on Lord Jim. The conclusion is that these readings have assumed Lord Jim offers codes for interpreting society or life. Thus, most of the critics read the text as philosophy, while others read the texts as allegory or a testimony of the author or his society. But such interpretations have often offered a less clear view about the texts and as a result, many accuse the author of being obscured. However, few studies have approached the text as an art. The study remains important as it draws together many of these readings that have differently treated Lord Jim (literature) both as ideology, discourse, and art.

Carolyn Williams, ed., The Cambridge Companion to English MelodramaChristine Gledhill and Linda Williams, eds., Melodrama Unbound: Across History, Media, and National Cultures

The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama and Melodrama Unbound are excellent exemplars of a recent turn in melodrama studies toward transmedial, transnational, and trans-historical approaches. The two edited volumes are essential reading for melodrama scholars working in the fields of theatre, film, television, gender studies, and musicology.

Thomas Fuller: Discovering England’s Religious Past. By W. B. Patterson

Thomas Fuller (1608–61) is, of course, the author of The Church-History of Britain (1655), the first comprehensive ecclesiastical history of Britain from antiquity down to the Civil War. Though widely and often anonymously used by later historians as a source, Fuller has not, by and large, had a good press. The egregious Peter Heylyn accused him of writing little better than tittle-tattle, rechristening the Church History as ‘A Hundred Merry Tales’. Gilbert Burnett similarly mistook Fuller’s relaxed and conversational style for triviality. It was not till the changing literary tastes of the nineteenth century, and the magisterial edition of J. S. Brewer in 1845, that the work was retrieved for serious scholarly reading. Even so, apart from John Eglinton Bailey’s 1874 treatment, Fuller’s life has been largely neglected by scholars. Discovering England’s Religious Past is, therefore, to be welcomed—all the more so because it is a felicitous match between author and subject, as Patterson applies his extensive knowledge of early modern English religious history and ideas to exploring Fuller’s life and works and placing him and his writings in their contemporary context. It also, one might incidentally note, represents one of the longest ever transitions from thesis to book (move over, Nicholas Tyacke), having begun its life as a 1966 Harvard PhD dissertation.

20 Recommended Scholarly Readings

20 Recommended Scholarly Readings

Advances in Clinical and Cellular Immunology

Recent work by Ciernia et al. (2020) identified how genetic and epigenetic mechanisms interact to regulate innate immune memory in bone marrow derived macrophages. The authors examined the BTBR strain, a naturally occurring mouse model of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) that captures the complex genetics, behavioral and immune dysregulation found in the human disorder. Immune cell cultures from the BTBR strain compared to the standard C57 showed hyper-responsive immune gene expression that was linked to altered chromatin accessibility at sites with genetic differences between the strains. Together, findings from this work demonstrated that multiple levels of gene regulation likely dictate the formation of innate immune memory and are likely disrupted in immune cells in ASD. Future work will be needed to extend these findings to immune gene regulation in the brain and how changes in immune function are related to abnormal behaviors in brain disorders.

The Modernist Corpse: Posthumanism and the PosthumousAntebellum Posthuman: Race and Materiality in the Mid-Nineteenth CenturyNarratology beyond the Human: Storytelling and Animal Life

The Modernist Corpse: Posthumanism and the PosthumousAntebellum Posthuman: Race and Materiality in the Mid-Nineteenth CenturyNarratology beyond the Human: Storytelling and Animal Life

Active/Passive, ‘Diminished’/‘Beautiful’, ‘Light’ from Above and Below: Rereading Shekhinah’s Sexual Desire in Zohar al Shir ha-Shirim (Song of Songs)

In Zohar al Shir ha-Shirim, the Zohar’s reading of Song of Songs, Shekhinah, echoing themes associated with the Shulamite of the biblical text, consistently initiates cosmic union. Sexual desire in the zoharic texts is a form of capital necessary to facilitate sefirotic intercourse, although scholarly readings of the zoharic corpus often identify Shekhinah as a passive receptacle. This, however, is only true if the endemic contradictions within the texts are glossed over. In Song of Songs, the Shulamite’s sexual ‘initiative’ is core. This was not lost on the author(s) of Zohar al Shir ha-Shirim, who, in struggling to explain Shekhinah’s sefirotic role in line with the erotics of Song of Songs, inescapably echoed the ‘depatriarchalizing’ themes of the biblical text. As this article demonstrates, in Zohar al Shir ha-Shirim, Shekhinah is active and repeatedly encourages and frustrates cosmic sexual intercourse. Zohar al Shir ha-Shirim shows that it is possible to reread Shekhinah’s role beyond the androcentrism of the authors as well as scholarly assumptions about her passivity.

Student-Centered Reading Using PDF Software as an Innovative Teaching Strategy in Graduate Nursing Education.

Student engagement in scholarly reading and critical thinking contributes to nursing science. However, graduate students often lack the skills and experience needed to read and analyze scholarly writings in depth. This case example describes use of portable document format technology with reading prompts to improve student scholarship in a master of science in nursing program. Theory and research guided development of the visible reading innovation. Student work with this pilot assignment sequence indicates an increase in student engagement with the text, as evidenced by student comment content, comment spacing throughout the text, and text integration into a summative writing assignment.

The Types of Publications Read by Finnish Scholars Vary with Their Purposes for Reading

A Review of:&#x0D; Late, E., Tenopir, C., Talja, S., &amp; Christian, L. (2019). Reading practices in scholarly work: From articles and books to blogs. Journal of Documentation, 75(3), 478-499. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-11-2018-0178&#x0D; Abstract&#x0D; Objective – To closely examine the role of reading in scholarly work, with particular attention to the relationships between reading practices and characteristics of the scholars, the types of publications they read, and the context of reading.&#x0D; Design – Survey.&#x0D; Setting – Universities in Finland.&#x0D; Subjects – 528 academics (research directors/managers, professors, post doctoral researchers, doctoral students, lecturers, and researchers).&#x0D; Methods – An online survey was distributed in Finland, October-December 2016. The first part of the survey asked about scholars’ general reading practices; the second part asked about their most recent reading of two particular publications, one a journal article and the other a different publication type. In relation to these two readings, the scholars provided information about the documents read, the reading process and context, how the document was identified and obtained, and the effect of the reading on their work.&#x0D; Main Results – On average, the scholars read 59 publications per month: 20 journal articles, 3 books, 5 conference proceedings or research reports, 17 newspaper articles, 9 magazine articles, 4 blogs, and 2 non-fiction/fiction books. There was no statistically significant difference in the number of journal articles read across disciplines, but the number of books read was highest in the humanities and social sciences and lowest in the sciences and medical sciences. Frequency of reading of particular publication types also varied by work focus (research vs. teaching/administrative) and by the nature of the scholar’s research (basic vs. applied).&#x0D; The scholars were also asked about the importance of reading different publication types. Overall, scholarly journals and article compilations were rated as most important for scholarly reading. Differences in these ratings were found across disciplines, work focus, nature of the research, and scholar rank/status.&#x0D; Part 2 of the survey focused on the most recent items read by the scholars. Their reading of journal articles, scholarly books, and conference proceedings/research reports was mainly for the purpose of research and writing. Their reading of newspaper articles, magazine articles, and blogs was mainly for current awareness and continuing education. Their reading of non-fiction/fiction books was mainly for their personal interest or pleasure. None of these publication types was specifically focused on supporting the scholars’ teaching.&#x0D; Over 70 percent of the recent readings were new, rather than re-readings. Across all publication types, the scholars read at least parts of the item “with great care”. Almost half of the journal articles recently read have been or will be cited in the future; this proportion was also high for scholarly books and conference proceedings/research reports, but not for the other publication types.&#x0D; The most recently read journal articles were brought to the scholar’s attention primarily through searching; they became aware of scholarly books and conference proceedings/research reports through both searching and because another person told them about the item. Scholars mainly obtained journal articles and scholarly books from their libraries, but they also obtained articles on the Internet and scholarly books from another person.&#x0D; Forty percent of the scholars read journal articles by printing a downloaded copy, but over half read them on a computer, mobile phone, or e-reader. Over half of the scholarly books were read from published/printed copy, but 18% read the book in an electronic version. Most reading occured in the scholar’s office or lab.&#x0D; Over half the journal articles and conference proceedings/research reports read were published within the last year; just under half the scholarly books read were published within the last year. While these scholars worked in Finland, 91% of the journal articles and 73% of the scholarly books they read were published in English.&#x0D; Conclusion – The results from this study confirmed and extended findings from previous studies (e.g., Tenopir et al., 2010, 2015). They demonstrated that scholars read a variety of types of publications for a variety of purposes. However, journal articles still dominated the reading and the perceptions of importance among the various publication types, particularly for the purposes of research and writing. This paper provides a first look at scholars’ uses of the other publication types and the influence of work tasks on reading practices; further research is needed to understand these relationships more fully. In general, the disciplinary differences in reading practices found in this study mirror the different publishing practices of the disciplines and so may be affected by future evolution toward open access and social media use for scholarly communication.

The Arts of Imitation in Latin Prose: Pliny's Epistles/Quintilian in Brief by Christopher Whitton

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 175 ship, for example, the author’s overstressing of fertility as an interpretative paradigm of women’s religion.5 As Meghan DiLuzio has noted, Boëls-Janssen overemphasises the role of the priestess Flaminica Dialis as a “fertility talisman.”6 Interpreting fertility as a function of many women’s rituals and of many gods and goddesses is indeed too generalising. Therefore, Panoussi should have been more cautious in basing her interpretations on Boëls-Janssen’s conclusions (Bacchus as a fertility god, 20; descriptions of rituals of Bona Dea, Fortuna Muliebris, and Mater Matuta as showcasing the value of female sexuality and fertility, 172). Furthermore, taking for granted Tacitus’ and Suetonius’ presentation of the emperor Nero as a bride or a groom in his weddings with two cinaedi (76–77) is problematic, since both authors severely distort the portrayals of the Roman emperors in order to undermine their masculinity along with the political system that enabled such “bad” emperors to rule in Rome. It would be much more fruitful to query how and with what aims Tacitus and Suetonius introduced compromising elements from Petronius’ satirical representation of the wedding of Giton and Pannychis, as discussed by Panoussi (66–74), into their depiction of Nero’s alleged homosexual weddings.7 A more intensive scholarly dialogue with recent literature on the religions of Rome would have also allowed Panoussi to address other problematic points in the reconstruction of Roman rituals and their literary representations, for instance her assumption that a holy marriage was usually a part of mystery cults (75). Nevertheless, Brides, Mourners, Bacchae: Women’s Rituals in Roman Literature is a thought-provoking read for students and scholars, offering complex discussions of multiple levels of representations of gender, ethnicity, and women’s rituals in Roman literature. Humboldt University Berlin Darja Ï Sterbenc Erker The Arts of Imitation in Latin Prose: Pliny's EPISTLES/Quintilian in Brief. By Christopher Whitton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2019. Pp. xviii, 557. Although the phenomenon of poetic intertextuality has been extensively discussed during the last three decades, that of prose intertextuality has yet to receive similar attention. Whitton’s learned book is an excellent contribution in this direction. It focuses on Pliny’s intertextual debt to Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria in his Epistles, which up until now had gone largely unnoticed, but at the same time it also examines many other aspects of Plinian intertextuality, including echoes of a variety of Greek and Latin authors. As a result, the value of this original and thought-provoking study lies not only in its exploration of Quintilian’s reception by his pupil and in the new light it sheds on the artistry of Pliny’s Epistles, but also, more broadly, in significantly improving our understanding of Roman rhetorical culture, prose intertextuality, and literary imitation. 5 N. Boëls-Janssen, La vie religieuse des matrones dans la Rome archaı̈que (Rome 1993). 6 M. DiLuzio, A Place at the Altar: Priestesses in Republican Rome (Princeton 2016) 23, n. 33. 7 Tacitus sought to shock his readers by depicting transgressions of gender norms in his portrayals of the emperors. Cf. Thomas Späth, “Skrupellose Herrscherin? Das Bild der Agrippina minor bei Tacitus,” in id. and B. Wagner-Hasel (eds.), Frauenwelten in der Antike: Geschlechterordnung und weibliche Lebenspraxis (Darmstadt 2000) 271. 176 PHOENIX The book starts with a few pages (xii–xvii) that present its aims and dispositio in lieu of a preface; in the following twelve chapters Whitton examines thematic clusters in Pliny’s Epistles that demonstrate his textual and ethical imitation of his teacher’s work. The first two chapters, entitled “Two Scenes from the Life of an Artist” (1–19) and “Setting the Stage” (20–68) respectively, play an introductory role. Chapter One convincingly establishes Quintilian’s intertextual presence in two letters of Pliny’s self-portrait (Ep. 1.6 and 9.36), where the latter meticulously, subtly, and minutely blends, reworks, and modifies aspects of Quintilian’s advice on writing (especially on dictation and country composition). Chapter Two, which serves as prolegomena, presents and compares the two protagonists as individuals and as authors (with the help of Ep. 2.14, 4.11, 4.13...

Gaming the Iron Curtain: How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games by Jaroslav Švelch

Reviewed by: Gaming the Iron Curtain: How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games by Jaroslav Švelch Elisabeth van Meer (bio) Gaming the Iron Curtain: How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games. By Jaroslav Švelch. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018. Pp. 400. Hardcover $45. The first monograph to appear in MIT's Game Histories series, Gaming the Iron Curtain offers an engaging, well-researched, and clearly organized social history of DIY gaming culture in 1980s Communist Czechoslovakia. It places the amateurs and teenagers who imported, "cracked," played, and circulated Czechoslovakia's gaming technologies deservedly front and center. Their inventions did not achieve the commercial success of Soviet-invented Tetris, and their pioneering political games did not end the Communist regime in 1989. Instead, Czechoslovak youths turned games into their medium of expression, carving out their own digital spaces despite the restrictions that life behind the Iron Curtain entailed. By analyzing games as continuous bricolage, Švelch greatly adds to our understanding of technological development, youthful agency, and "everyday life" during the final decade of state socialism. Gaming the Iron Curtain underscores that Communist power was not "monolith[ic]" but operated through "numerous rules" that gamers creatively "circumvented or subverted" (p. xxxiv). The book's first three chapters detail the tactics involved in assembling hardware in a "shortage economy." For although Czechoslovakia's authorities endorsed computing for productivity and education purposes, their production plan focused on mainframes and minis. The Federal Ministry of Electrotechnical Industry tried to game the lack of micros themselves by calling for "bottom-up" initiatives (p. 22). This resulted, by the mid-1980s, in the PMD 85, the IQ 151, and the Ondra (all using COMECON components), while agricultural cooperative Didaktik even managed to develop a home computer for retail with imported British ULA chips. Combined [End Page 702] domestic output, however, remained small. The Iron Curtain was only successfully gamed by committed enthusiasts who "hunted" down their hardware through individual Western imports (p. 38), preferring the British Sinclair ZX Spectrum—not the Atari—for its affordability and compatibility with local electronics. Hobbyists also gamed their own accessories (with DIY mice, joysticks, and keyboards) and repurposed furniture in cramped family apartments. All these individual acts of bricolage, Švelch stresses, were ultimately anchored in hundreds of computer clubs, embedded in state-sponsored youth and paramilitary organizations, across Czechoslovakia. By accepting official patronage, youths gamed access to local buildings where they could use computers, share technical know-how, exchange games, and communicate with peers, all largely uncensored. Czechoslovakia's gaming culture, including its national discourse on gaming, its informal distribution networks, its hobbyist and homebrew productions, and their expressive significance, is analyzed in the final four chapters. Drawing on interviews, club publications, and an impressive range of gaming technologies, Švelch finds that for many Czechoslovaks, "playing with the game was [as] rewarding as playing the game" itself (p. 118). This pro-hacking attitude was encouraged by hobbyists in charge of computer clubs but also necessitated by the scarcity of games. Czechoslovak authorities, moreover, did not consider games part of culture or politics (unlike Western music or dissident literature). They saw little reason (and lacked the knowledge) to stop youths from "poking," "cracking," "cloning," or "converting" Western originals. While engaged in such distribution bricolage, Švelch argues, youths learned to code and, by the mid-1980s, produced over two hundred originals for their peers. Text adventures (textovkas) became the hallmark of Czechoslovak gaming; amateurs employed the medium to comment on unofficial popular culture, on their local surroundings (e.g., turning one's mundane socialist dwelling into a text adventure); even political protests were incorporated into games just days from their occurrence. ("Text adventures" are a subset of games, dating back to the 1976 U.S. text-based game Adventure, in which the player controls the protagonist by typing in "verb+object" style commands [p. 175]. The Czech term textovka refers to text-based games in a broader sense, including "text-based management and strategy titles" and "hacking games" [p. 178].) In sum, Gaming the Iron Curtain offers a fascinating read for students and scholars of STS, history, and media studies alike...

Indigenous Life Projects and Extractivism: Ethnographies from South America ed. by Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard and Juan Javier Rivera Andía

Reviewed by: Indigenous Life Projects and Extractivism: Ethnographies from South America ed. by Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard and Juan Javier Rivera Andía Piergiorgio Di Giminiani and Viviana Huiliñir-Curío Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard and Juan Javier Rivera Andía, eds., Indigenous Life Projects and Extractivism: Ethnographies from South America. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 282 pp. Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard and Juan Javier Rivera Andía, eds., Indigenous Life Projects and Extractivism: Ethnographies from South America. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 282 pp. The volume Indigenous Life Projects and Extractivism: Ethnographies from South America, edited by Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard and Juan Javier Rivera Andía, is one of the latest works within the growing body of literature on extractivism and indigeneity in the region. Clearly written and yet rich in always surprising ethnographic material, this volume is essential reading for scholars and students interested in both Amerindian anthropology and political ecology in general. By examining how "indigenous life projects" are redefined through both negotiations and contestations with state and market actors, the nine contributions to this volume—set in Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Guyana, Venezuela, and Bolivia—make a strong case for the value of the ethnographic gaze in dealing with uncertainties and dilemmas emerging from natural resource extraction within indigenous territories. Thanks to its ethnographic commitment, this volume succeeds in highlighting the historically deep colonial features of contemporary practices of natural resource extraction in alignment with the interests of their interlocutors, without falling for essentialist and romantic representations of indigenous resistance to capitalism, as evidenced, for example, in Li's and Paredes's chapter on the strategic use of indigeneity in environmental activism in Peru and Bolivia. From a theoretical standpoint, this book is built around the ambitious project of bridging three streams of literature typically developed with little communication among them. With [End Page 267] different proportions, each chapter deals with materialistic questions of dispossession inspired by political ecology, debates on indigeneity and subject formation, and theoretical insights on world-making inspired by authors—such as Descola and Viveiros de Castro—typically associated with the so-called ontological turn. While this volume is certainly exemplary in attempting to bring together these three bodies of inquiry, in itself such an attempt is not a novelty. Nonetheless, it is truly refreshing in the ways in which the connection between these three bodies of questions and approaches allows authors to examine problematics, dilemmas, and controversies emerging from experiences of extractivism as they are conceptualized locally and contingently by indigenous actors. The volume's focus on the local articulation of extractivist problematics and controversies has several significant implications on the broader debate about natural resources in the region. Two implications, however, seem particularly relevant. Firstly, as this volume illustrates, indigenous experiences with extractivism cannot be reduced to a clash between novel exogenous modernist assumptions (sensu Latour) on natural resource extraction and ahistorical and consensual indigenous ideas about nonhuman agency. Rather, ideas about objectivation and ownership of natural resources deriving from specific industrial and Western approaches to human-environmental relations are necessarily made sense of and resignified under local ontological and political terms. In contrast with accusations of essentialism, an ontological attention to natural resource extraction revolves around uncertain knowledge concerning the nature of a particular being and its agency within contingent controversies on natural resource extraction and its questions. For instance, Andia's chapter set in the Peruvian highland focuses on the role of apparently non-indigenous artifacts, such as a Catholic church (Iglisya) imbricated in ownership controversies around mining areas, in informing mutual determinations between humans and their landscape; Kroijer's examination of the impact of the oil industry on the Secoya people of Ecuador shows how the dangerous effects of oil leakages are predicted and identified not through a characterization of oil as powerful non-human spirit, but rather through a consideration of the role of uncontrolled flows in eco-cosmological relations. Secondly, while many ontological principles of capitalism remain incommensurable with several indigenous notions of life, in extractivist contexts indigenous life projects are not necessarily carried out through political opposition to natural resource extraction. This volume draws attention [End Page 268] to the dilemmas that many indigenous people face in incorporating certain...

Kako zvuči i izgleda Dostoevskij (i što to može značiti za znanost o književnosti)

HOW DOES DOSTOEVSKY SOUND AND LOOK (AND HOW COULD THAT BE RELEVANT TO CONTEMPORARY LITERARY STUDIES) The paper confronts two dominant scholarly readings of Dostoevsky in order to re-examine the role that textual analysis plays in contemporary literary studies. In Bakhtin’s reading of Dostoevsky, the main focus is on confronting different voices, perspectives, and valuation accents. The incoherence and polyphony of different discourses are considered as the author’s main literary innovation. In more recent studies, the focus has shifted to the author’s philosophical and religious views, conveyed in a complex literary verbal icon. Instead of choosing one of the two approaches in analysing the role of literary text in Dostoevsky’s works, the paper highlights the interdependence of both aspects as the main feature of his literary writing. The paper shows how crucial this duality is for constitution of Dostoevsky’s literary heroes and for the author himself, and points out this duality as the objective invariant of Dostoevsky’s literary oeuvre. Such an analysis can also shed light on the issues contemporary literary studies encounter in their attempt to make sense of the category of literary text and answer the question of the extent to which literary text can still be the subject of scientific (subject-object) cognition.

New Perspectives on Delarivier Manley and Eighteenth-Century Literature: Power, Sex, and Text ed. by Aleksondra Hultquist and Elizabeth J. Mathews

Reviewed by: New Perspectives on Delarivier Manley and Eighteenth-Century Literature: Power, Sex, and Text ed. by Aleksondra Hultquist and Elizabeth J. Mathews Carole Sargent New Perspectives on Delarivier Manley and Eighteenth-Century Literature: Power, Sex, and Text, ed. Aleksondra Hultquist and Elizabeth J. Mathews. New York: Routledge, 2017. Pp. xvii + 242. $150; $57.95 (e-book). If Delarivier Manley came back today she might favor border walls or cheer for Brexit. What rescues her from dislikeability is a wit more worthy of Elaine May than Theresa May, and memorable political firepower that helped bring down a government. With this irascibility in mind I approach this collected volume, one that aspires to fresh perspectives yet remains polite, only occasionally manifesting Manley's mixture of shocking libel, alarming politics, and unexpected laughs. In "The Adventures of Rivella as Political Secret History," Rachel Carnell, one of Manley's most rigorous scholars, explains why Manley's autobiography is not a postmodern mashup, but a political secret history in code, much like its explosive predecessor The New Atalantis (hereafter TNA), and also a successful dunning letter to Lord Harley. Reading Rivella in its proper political context gives us the real Manley, as "we begin to understand the counter-narrative of Queen Anne's reign, told through the voice of a Tory blackmailer" (Manley), "rather than a Whig one" (Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough). "The Politics of Servitude: The Husband's Resentment. In Two Examples in Delarivier Manley's The Power of Love," presents Manley torn between two patrons, George I and the Jacobite lady to whom she dedicates The Power of Love. Earla Wilputte sees this as being "emotionally involved with one … but legally bound to another," reflecting a national "adulterous attraction" for the Stuart Pretender. However, where Wilputte's Manley is "not explicitly endorsing Jacobitism" and "probably not really pining for the Stuart Pretender," I would counter that where there's smoke there's fire. Wilputte's chapter adds essential content from an understudied work to continue scholarly debate about Manley's politics. [End Page 224] In "Vengeance, Vows, and 'Heroick Vertue': Reforming the Revenger in Delarivier Manley's Almyna: or, The Arabian Vow," Misty Krueger astutely offers revenge as "a lynchpin in Manley's turn from heroic tragedy to civic drama." She compares "Almyna" to "The Royal Mischief" from a decade earlier, recasting the strong female heroine as one who "must not instigate revenge," but instead become, in Dennis's words, "the preserver of nations." Krueger concludes that Manley "shows the potential for language to combat men's destructive tendencies and for women to champion civil rights." While I might quarrel with the last two words, since my Manley was more about royalist order than civil freedoms, I agree that a "masculine female heroic" genre captures her style. "'Through the Black Sea and the Country of Colchis': A Geocentric Approach to Delarivier Manley's The Royal Mischief" goes where Manley scholarship should have eighty years ago, to "explicitly Islamicate themes" of women playwrights in the late seventeenth century. Focusing on the well-known triumvirate of "Female Wits," Bernadette Andrea locates elements of a "counter-orientalist stance" in Manley's otherwise predictably fashionable orientalist imagination. Manley is not writing about Turkey or Persia in The Royal Mischief, Andrea argues, but "Colchis and Abcas in the Caucasus region bordering the Black Sea," Islamic sites of the era, and the literary goal of Jason, his Argonauts, and Medea. We do not get to sex until part 2, and Manley would never have made us wait! In chapter 5: "Interrupting Pleasure: Ideology and Affect in The New Atalantis," Erin M. Keating finds key TNA incidents in line with tropes from late-seventeenth-century pathetic tragedy. The notorious story of Charlot and the Duke, one of Manley's most exploitatively sexual, shows how Restoration tragedy could have predicted that "desire … is ultimately destructive of its object." Dismissing important scholarly readings of Elonora as allegorical, Keating treats her as a literary character, an approach I contend the text itself resists. Her observation that Elonora is the only distressed woman to retain her virginity, however, marks a core contribution for future work. Jennifer Frangos enlists twenty-first-century asexuality studies...