Thematic Links Research Articles

Shakespeare and the theatre of early modern law

ABSTRACT Taking as my cue the Introduction to the First Folio edition of his plays, I examine Shakespeare's particular interest in English law and juridical procedure. It is likely that his considerable, detailed knowledge of law derived at least in part from his association with the Middle Temple, whose members included neighbours and friends from Stratford-upon-Avon. I proceed to consider the profound influence of The Commentaries or Reports of Edmund Plowden (Plowden himself was a member of the Middle Temple) over the content of his plays, notably Plowden’s report of Hales v Petit to Shakespeare’s depiction of the death by suicide of Ophelia in Hamlet. I develop the thematic link with the Middle Temple by interrogating the thesis, proposed by various scholars, that an early version of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida was given a performance there during the revels of 1597–98. The theatrical transplantation of the city of Troy to London, described by writers and lawyers alike as Troynovant, the utopian city of commerce and the mythical birthplace of English law, leads me to analyze the predominant tropes of the marketplace which populate Troilus and Cressida. I conclude with the observation that in his epilogue to the play, Pandarus addresses in appropriately base terms the very people (lawyers) whose skills were supposed to redress the injustices engendered by commerce and the marketplace, but who failed to acknowledge the relevance of ethics and community to the attainment of societal cohesion.

“Hip Hop and the Televisual Global South: Atlanta and Sintonia”

In recent years, audiences in the United States and around the globe have witnessed an explosion of television and streaming content focused on hip hop. Such content contemplates, historicizes, promotes, and represents the art form, artists, industry, and regional genres that have together emerged as a central feature of contemporary popular culture. This article explores the spatial and thematic links to the theoretical Global South in Atlanta and Sintonia. Analyzing the series’ respective portrayals of race and inequality from the margins, I examine how hip-hop/ funk and the Global South function as narrative tools and symbolic spaces through which notions of a shared precarity stemming from global flows of capital are constructed, consumed, and challenged. By considering the series’ connections to the Global South, this article contributes to a growing body of work that aims to move beyond research that centers the west and the nation-state.

Identifying leverage points for sustainable nutrient policy integration in Canada.

Addressing the 'wicked problem' of nutrient pollution requires coordinated policies spanning across diverse sectors and environmental systems. Using a case study of Canadian legislation, we apply semantic network analysis to identify thematic links across an inventory of 245 nutrient-related policies. Our analysis identifies twelve topics with unique types of connections across multiple facets of Canadian society. 'Hub' policies include broad environmental protection, land use planning, and climate-related legislation with close ties to multiple other topics. 'Bridge' policies create connections among otherwise disconnected topics in the network, representing opportunities to inform new policy proposals. Some legislation, such as food processing regulations, indirectly relates to nutrient use but could inform policy integration towards more coordinated and holistic nutrient management across the food system. A computational text network approach can be useful for addressing challenges in complex policy analysis, including by identifying unique entry points to guide more cross-cutting nutrient policy development.

Redating Barnabas

Abstract The undisturbed consensus that three verses in Barnabas (Bn) 16 refer to the Temple’s destruction by Titus, and to a rumoured rebuilding sometime in the subsequent 65 years, neglects to ask whether those verses would make good sense to readers in the generation before Titus. They would, and as references to the destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, and reconstruction by Zerubbabel, vassal of Cyrus, would cohere much better with the preceding 14 chapters. And since the intertextual ‘echoes’ between Bn and Pauline letters (and 1 Peter and Hebrews) are all more plausible when reversed, and the 11th ‘king’ in Bn 4 may be Agrippa I rather than Vespasian, Nerva, or Hadrian, we can look to a date c.40. Then Bn’s linguistic and thematic links with Acts’ accounts of Stephen’s Speech and of Barnabas in Syrian Antioch are best explained if Bn was written by Barnabas to his Antioch congregation, when fetching Paul to Antioch. The classic but long-doubted objections to Barnaban authorship weigh even less if Bn was thus a generation earlier than they assumed. Finally, the sequence of the earliest witnesses to the Christian Two Ways is clarified.

Alienation and Violence in Beatriz Cabur’s Plays

In the last decades of the 21st century, the growing interest in legitimising contemporary Spanish female playwrights is evident in the context of contemporary feminist theories. This research explores Beatriz Cabur's plays, published and performed nationally and internationally, insofar as they respond to some of the current feminist demands regarding trauma. This study delves into the need for appropriate critical and analytical models for the study of theatrical experimentalism, which, in addition to its academic value, addresses current feminist demands. The development of this study is supported by clear thematic links that are established, from which it is possible to delve into the implicit and explicit feminisms of contemporary Spanish theatre, as well as the shaping, development, and legitimisation of contemporary feminine identities.

Crafting Intellectual Community Online

By engaging in a close reading of the work of @snappydragon and @sexycyborg, “Crafting Intellectual Community Online” explores how they assert a personal identity that is strongly tied to their embodied experiences as women, each with distinct interests and positionalities: one a Jewish woman interested in historical clothing and identifying dress, and the other a Chinese woman interested in cyberpunk and augmentation. In addition to the thematic links in their work, both assert their personal agency by explaining their making process in ways that showcase the conceptual considerations of the project through to the material execution, inviting viewers to engage in similar considerations by taking up a making practice of their own. By placing their work in dialogue, “Crafting Intellectual Community Online” argues for an intellectual community that develops outside the academy and enables collaborative thought across physical and temporal distance. My work thinks through these invitations in relation to the theoretical work of Hannah Arendt and Paulo Friere, drawing on ideas related to the formation of an intellectual community of peers through a dialogic method which can then be reinterpreted in relation to the unique challenges of the internet as a new site of education beyond the academy.

Transition to Sustainable Energy System for Smart Cities—Literature Review

The article will contain a scientific analysis, showing thematic links between publications and consist of searching the data in the Scopus database. The timeframe of the searched publications will be 2010–2022. The parameters should also be narrowed down by selecting the following indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), which was intended to eliminate abstracts of books and conference materials, leaving only reviewed works with the highest level of relevance for furthering knowledge. An additional limit of five minimum citations will be introduced. The analysis included 342 articles. Texts cited at least 100 times were highlighted. The research showed that authors focus piecemeal on selected aspects or problems, so an attempt was made to show thematic connections of keywords, illustrating the complexity of the transformations underway. The discussion identifies the most active authors and countries, especially exploring the topic of a transition to a sustainable energy system for smart cities. The authors have employed scientometric analysis to provide an objective and data-driven exploration of the transformation of sustainable energy systems for smart cities. This approach offers valuable insights into the research landscape, trends, and relationships within the field, which can guide future scientific research and contribute to a deeper understanding of the subject matter. As an additional element of this conclusion, the authors proposed supplementing the scientometric analysis with the foresight methodology. The authors’ research approach is distinguished by the following stages: problem formulation, data collection, choice of scientometric methodology, analysis of advantages and limitations of scientometrics, clustering analysis, data analysis, and presentation of results. Our systematic literature review systematizes the existing literature on the sustainable energy systems for smart cities, isolates main research interests, identifies future research avenues, and provides several important hints for researchers.

The Effectiveness of Detecting Thematic Relations of Objects in 3–6 Years Old Children

In this work, the ability of preschoolers aged 3–6 to detect and understand the thematic connections of objects was assessed. Children (95 children; 53 girls and 42 boys) of four age groups of 3, 4, 5 and 6 years old (respectively, 17, 33, 18 and 27 children) solved two tasks aimed at the detection of thematic relations of objects within the framework of the standard “yes–no” procedure. In the first task, it was required to indicate whether the image of the shown object was relevant to a given context (the “object-context” task, O–C), and in the second – whether two objects were related thematically (the “object–object” task, O–O). A touch screen computer was used to present images and record motor responses. For each task, we measured the accuracy scores (the proportion of correct responses) and the delay in the motor response “yes” or “no” relative to the moment the image was presented (reaction time). Two components of the reaction time were analyzed separately: the duration of the latent phase and the duration of the overt movement towards the response button. With age, the accuracy of solving both tasks increased, and the time required to discover the thematic connection (reaction time) decreased. At the same time, the accuracy scores were lower, and the detection time was longer in the O–O task compared to the O–C. The gender of the child did not affect the accuracy value, and affected only the duration of the motor (but not the latent) phase of the motor response, and only in the O–O task. The data obtained show that (i) the O–O task is more difficult than the O–C task, and that this may be due to the necessity to activate the thematic links of two objects in the O–O task instead of just one, as in the O–C task, and (ii) the process of activation of thematic links probably does not end in the latent phase of the motor response and continues during its movement phase. The question of the extent to which the success and duration of the process of detecting the thematic links of objects can limit the success of cognitive planning in preschoolers aged 3–6 is also discussed.

Water (and Blood) in Ezekiel 16 and 36-37

This article compares Ezekiel 16 and Ezekiel 36:1-37:14 as an example of “resumptive exposition” (D. I. Block) with particular attention to the ways that the message of Israel’s restoration in the later chapters allude to the message of Jerusalem’s judgment and rehabilitation in the earlier one. Although commentators have occasionally noted various lexical and thematic links between Ezekiel 16 and Ezekiel 36-37, none has yet provided an integrative assessment of these chapters with respect to the foundling motif. The prophetic indictment of the adulterous Jerusalem in Ezekiel 16 recurrently appeals to YHWH’s merciful treatment of Jerusalem in her youthful years as an exposed orphan and uncovered virgin (vv. 1-14). The author proposes that the ancient Near Eastern texts on the birth ritual and the foundling inform the rhetoric of Ezekiel 16. A careful examination of the chapters warrants the conclusion that Ezekiel 36:1-37:14, in connection with Ezekiel 16, employ literary reversal and amplification through skillful interlacing of lexical elements (e.g., to multiply, to know, to remember, and to live) to augment the import of YHWH’s message for the eschatological renewal of Israel. Moreover, in both chapters (Eze 16 and 36), the water ritual intimated at the beginning of YHWH’s deliverance of the covenantal partner is allusively linked to priestly texts on riddance rituals (e.g., Num 19; Lev 16), underscoring the irony of divine forgiveness of the house of Israel to her shame. Ezekiel’s prophecy of the restoration of the — house of Israel (Eze 36:33-38) and the vision of the bones in the valley (Eze 37:1-14) parallel the depiction in Ezekiel 16 of Jerusalem’s encounter with YHWH as a foundling in response to his divine command, “Live!” (Eze 16:6/2x). The creative imperative reverberates throughout Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones in Ezekiel 37 (vv. 6, 9, 10, and 14) with the word to live ( חיה ) serving as a characteristic leitmotif. This pronouncement powerfully affirms YHWH’s eternal loving-kindness for his chosen people, whom their parents had abandoned (Eze 16:2), in contrast to the way these estranged parents entreat the river god for their lives while abandoning an unwanted child in the Mesopotamian riddance ceremony. Ezekiel 16 is thus a significant dialectical partner in understanding the prophetic discourse on the hopeful future of Israel in Ezekiel 36:1-37:14.

Gianni Barbiero, Marco Pavan, and Johannes Schnocks, eds. The Formation of the Hebrew Psalter

Gianni Barbiero, Marco Pavan, and Johannes Schnocks, eds. <i>The Formation of the Hebrew Psalter</i>

The negation of time as a fantastic postulate in "Tlön Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges

This article is an analysis of the tale «Tlön Uqbar, Orbis Tertius» by Jorge Luis Borges, which is included in his book Ficciones (1944). The conception of time in this story is analyzed from the fantastic postulate of the denial of time. To this end, a thematic link is established with the text «Nueva refutación del tiempo». Based on theories of the fantastic, it is argued that Tlön’s imaginary world is an inverse representation of our «reality». With this, the configuration of a bookish reality is established that, although it is textual in nature, can affect and alter what we know as the world.

The negation of time as a fantastic postulate in "Tlön Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges

This article is an analysis of the tale «Tlön Uqbar, Orbis Tertius» by Jorge Luis Borges, which is included in his book Ficciones (1944). The conception of time in this story is analyzed from the fantastic postulate of the denial of time. To this end, a thematic link is established with the text «Nueva refutación del tiempo». Based on theories of the fantastic, it is argued that Tlön’s imaginary world is an inverse representation of our «reality». With this, the configuration of a bookish reality is established that, although it is textual in nature, can affect and alter what we know as the world.

RECREATING HOME: AN ANALYSIS OF PREETHI NAIR'S ONE HUNDRED SHADES OF WHITE

Immigrant writers depict the multi-cultural ethos, which gyrate around questions of belonging, race, gender, sexuality, cultural differences and multiple identities. This involves the recognition of 'difference', 'otherness' 'femaleness', 'colour', 'ethnicity', in short, pluralism as such. The writers reveal the Indian diaspora as heterogeneous and not as something monolithic, for the paradigms from within which each immigrant writer works out her raw materials vary. The nuances of cultural interaction become the striking thematic link evident in their works. They incorporate the experiences of dislocation experienced by immigrant women protagonists in their respective foreign spaces. The Indian immigrants, who vacillate between the two cultures, confront identity crisis which is painful, yet inevitable. Preethi Nair's One Hundred Shades of White depicts the attempts made by the protagonists Nalini and Maya to nd a meaningful place for themselves in the foreign culture to which they have migrated.

Discursive construction of anti-hijab discourse on Facebook and Twitter: the case of Malaysian former-Muslim women

ABSTRACT This study sheds light on how Malaysian former Muslims construct their anti-hijab discourse in the context of Facebook and Twitter interactions and how a dichotomous meaning is assigned to the hijab. The five participants were identified using the snowball technique, starting from a well-known Malaysian former Muslim. Data was generated by observing the participants’ postings over nine months, from April to December 2019. Three hundred ten postings were collected which challenged Islam and its principles. However, this paper narrowed its scope to focus on 116 anti-hijab postings. The data were analysed using discourse analysis, particularly discursive psychology. The study revealed that participants’ postings had thematic links through which an overall theme emerged; the hijab is a tool of women’s oppression. This theme emerged through the discursive features such as assessment, category entitlement, extreme case formulation, blame, and corroboration with the anti-hijab ideology which exists on Facebook and Twitter, wherein former Muslims contest the wearing of hijab in certain Islamic countries and attempt to enhance the dichotomy of “women oppression versus women rights” to hijab.

Going to the Countryside: The Rural in the Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 1915–1965

Going to the Countryside: The Rural in the Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 1915–1965

The Waste Land and the Release of Social Energy: An Eliotean Reading of Thomas Pynchon’s Fiction

"This essay discusses the striking influence of The Waste Land on Thomas Pynchon’s oeuvre and evaluates the stylistic and thematic links connecting them. More specifically, the article centers on twin aspects of Pynchon’s intertextual reframing of Eliot’s representation of the waste land. The first refers to the use of certain motifs and symbols of the poem, such as the narrator’s bouncy character, the living-dead condition of some personages, and the evocation of the violet hour. The second aspect concerns Pynchon’s versions of the figure of Belladonna as a “lady of situations” and her relationship with the notion of waste associated with mythic thinking, ethics, and the complexity of life. These themes are developed intensely in Pynchon’s oeuvre and are reflected in his complex experimental style."

The Influence of the Personal Learning Environment Concept in the Educational Research Field

Almost 15 years after the start of the debate over Personal Learning Environments (PLE), the concept would still appear to be influential and even intrinsic to discussion over the future of educational technology and education in general. This paper aims to establish a clear thematic link between the concept of PLEs and educational academic literature over the last decade, exploring the influence of the PLE concept in the education research papers. To do this, it uses a systematized review of academic literature that relates the PLE concept to three themes identified as most relevant in that field during the last decade: emerging pedagogical practices, professional teacher development, and self-regulated learning. The analysis is focused on whether (and how) the PLE concept has intersected each of the themes, the level of importance of that intersection in each one of them and the way in which the concept is ‘materialized’. The purpose is to understand how (and if) a concept that has its origin in Educational Technology has been adapted to other areas of educational research.

Clara Wieck's A minor Piano Concerto: Formal Innovation and the Problem of Parametric Disconnect in Early Romantic Music

Clara Wieck's Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 7 (1833–35), presents an intriguing example of the formal developments in the genre of the Romantic concerto during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. In line with a growing number of concertos from this period, Wieck's work offers a number of "progressive" or non-Classical traits: a unitary exposition, truncated first-movement form, run-on movements, and cyclic thematic links between movements. Such features can be found individually or in conjunction in other concerted works from the preceding decade, but what distinguishes Wieck's work is the extent to which she combines all these traits in a single piece. This article examines the formal procedures of Wieck's Op. 7, which is taken as an exemplary case study of the development of Romantic form and syntax in the period after 1820. It argues that what is distinctive about this concerto is the extent to which parameters that had at one time been closely coordinated—tonal structure, form-functional phrase type, thematic identity, topic, and texture—now appear dissociated from their generically expected interrelation. This situation—which I term "parametric disconnect"—has far-reaching ramifications for how we are able to theorize Romantic form.

Gli incipit nelle opere francesi di d’Annunzio

This paper focuses on the incipit of d’Annunzio’s plays written in French and first staged on French theatres. It analyses on one hand the thematic and structural link between the first scene of the play and the dramatic development and, on the other, the correspondences with French theatrical poetics.

Integration of Arts and Humanities in Medical Education: a Narrative Review.

This narrative review aims to identify and review the extant literature describing methods and outcomes of embedding the arts and humanities (AH) into medical school curricula. The Association of American Medical Colleges changed the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) in 2015 to place new emphasis on the role of liberal arts in the process of developing well-rounded physicians. Consequently, medical schools have been implementing more connections to creative writing, literature, theater, movies, music, and the visual arts into their curricula. To review the current literature, we focused on methods medical educators used to embed content related to AH into their curricula to shape and drive associated learning outcomes. We conducted searches in PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and ERIC for peer-reviewed articles from 2011 to 2020. The authors selected three dyads in medical humanities and reviewed articles independently followed by discussion to identify thematic links to major findings. Out of 261 articles, a total of 177 full-text articles were reviewed with 34 selected for final inclusion. Our review included articles describing curriculum development and delivery in publications from Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and the USA. This review showed medical educators are implementing didactic and experiential instructional approaches to embedding the arts, humanities, and social sciences into the medical school classroom. Medical educators' attempts to embed AH into medical school curricula show promising results. Unfortunately, small sample sizes, short-term interventions, and an over-reliance of subjective assessment measures limit our knowledge of the true impact of these interventions. More rigorous assessments of required and longitudinal coursework are necessary to know the true impact of participation in AH coursework for medical students.