Question Writers Research Articles

Crónicas travestis: El periodismo transgresor de Alfonsina Storni, Clarice Lispector y María Moreno by Mariela Méndez

Reviewed by: Crónicas travestis: El periodismo transgresor de Alfonsina Storni, Clarice Lispector y María Moreno by Mariela Méndez Ashley Brock Méndez, Mariela. Crónicas travestis: El periodismo transgresor de Alfonsina Storni, Clarice Lispector y María Moreno. Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2017. 312 pp. Crónicas travestis traces a novel genealogy between the journalism of Alfonsina Storni (Argentina, 1892-1938), Clarice Lispector (Brazil, 1920-77), and María Moreno (Argentina, 1947-), focusing on the subversive engagement of all three writers with the conventions of the women's column and drawing connections between this body of work and Moreno's post-dictatorship journals alfonsina and El Teje. Méndez argues that, by introducing the genre-bending fluidity of the crónica, writing under multiple (sometimes gender-crossing) pseudonyms, and subtly parodying the prescriptions of the rigidly normative genre of the columna femenina, Storni, Lispector, and Moreno each destabilize gender binaries while laying bare the constructedness of gendered identity. In this way, Méndez reads these key figures in twentieth-century Latin American proto-feminist and feminist journalism as anticipating theories of gender performativity (Judith Butler), cross-dressing (Marjorie Garber), and queer temporality (J. Jack Halberstam). Méndez is not the first to associate these trailblazing women writers with a subversively feminist political project; she acknowledges a debt, for example, to the work of Gwen Kirkpatrick and Francine Masiello. The originality of Méndez's study lies in its engagement with contemporary queer theory as well as in its comparative nature. The connection between the two Argentine writers is well-established [End Page 415] (Moreno invokes Storni in calling the feminist journal she launches in 1983 alfonsina), but as Méndez points out, Storni's journalism receives far less critical attention than does her poetry. Clarice Lispector's journalism has been similarly overshadowed by her renowned fiction. Moreover, reading the Brazilian author alongside her Spanish American counterparts remains a rare comparative move. It is one that proves fruitful for Méndez, whose study not only moves between Argentine and Brazil but also unites several distinct historical moments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Méndez's analysis encompasses Storni's columns "Feminidades" and "Bocetos Femeninos" (in La Nota and La Nación, respectively, 1919-21), Lispector's columns "Correio Feminino-Feira de Utilidades" and "Só para Mulheres" (in Correio da Manhã and Diário da Noite, respectively, 1959-61), and Moreno's columns "La Mujer" and "Señores" (in Tiempo Argentino, 1982-86), as well as Moreno's writing in the journals alfonsina (1983-84) and El Teje (2006-10). Diligently attending to the historical and cultural specificities that make the context in which each author worked distinct, Méndez identifies compelling commonalities between them. She points, for example, to how all three writers entered the public space of journalism at times when the prevailing ideology (often linked to the state) sought to usher women back into domestic roles and regulate their bodies. This reactionary ideology rears its head not only in moments associated with conservative politics, such as during the last dictatorship in Argentina, but also in moments of rapid modernization and progressivism, such as the 1920s in Argentina, the late 1950s in Brazil, and Argentina's return to democracy in the 1980s. Crónicas travestis unfolds over four chapters, the first two building the case for comparison among the women's columns authored by the three writers in question and the last two analyzing Moreno's post-dictatorship journals as the most overt expression of a radical gender politics that has its roots in these earlier columns. The first chapter focuses on the difficulties and discomforts each author faced as a woman occupying public space and the common response of creating a multiplicity of public personas (some of them male) behind which to hide and between which to move. Méndez argues that, for these writers, the mask becomes a political praxis that troubles the possibility of fixing identity and questions notions of authority and authorship (97). Chapter two analyzes how Storni and Lispector queer the genre of the women's column through rhetorical cross-dressing, by which Méndez means not only writing in a...

“[They] would say she was betraying Poland already”: Major Themes in Contemporary Canadian Literature by Writers of Polish Origins

In June 2015 The Canadian Polish Research Institute organized a panel discussion chaired by professor Tamara Trojanowska called “Writing Change and Continuity: Culture, Languages, Generations.” The debate featured esteemed writers of Polish descent: Eva Stachniak, Andrew Borkowski, Ania Szado, Jowita Bydlowska and Aga Maksimowska. Although the writers in question do not belong to the same generation and do not share exactly the same emigration experience, nowadays they form a distinguished group of Canadian writers of Polish origins. The aim of this paper is to look at the selection of the latest texts written by authors of the Polish diaspora in Canada such as Eva Stachniak’s The Chosen Maiden (2017), Jowita Bydlowska’s Drunk Mom (2013) and Guy (2016), Ania Szado’s Studio Saint Ex (2013) and Aga Maksimowska’s Giant (2012) among others. This paper does not venture to repeat the conclusions drawn during the panel but rather to extend the exploration of the recent Polish diasporic, multivoiced writing as well as offer a modest supplement to the famous analysis of ethnic writing proposed by Smaro Kamboureli in her Scandalous Bodies: Diasporic Literature in English Canada (2009). Hence, the discussion comprises the authors’ choice of themes, (dis)appearance of immigrant motifs, references to Poland as a country of origin and Canada as the new homeland as well as an analysis of the genres the aforementioned authors use.

O canto na cidade calada à força: poder simbólico na poesia anticolonial moçambicana

A partir de poemas de José Craveirinha e Noémia de Sousa, ícones da poesia anticolonial moçambicana, serão discutidas as formas de luta pelo poder simbólico. Analisando a poesia desses escritores, é possível observar que a luta se constrói tanto no campo objetivo (luta explícita, material e política), quanto no campo simbólico (luta pelo espaço, cultura e símbolos sociais). Segundo Pierre Bourdieu (1989), os campos – sejam eles políticos, literários, religiosos ou científicos – estão em constante disputa, que é derivada da desigualdade de capital entre os agentes (dominantes ou dominados), que lutam pela conservação ou subversão das estruturas. Dessa forma, buscou-se analisar nos poemas como se construiu a luta pela palavra que foi aprisionada pelos agentes dominantes durante o período colonial.

Pushing Critical Thinking Skills With Multiple-Choice Questions: Does Bloom's Taxonomy Work?

Medical school assessments should foster the development of higher-order thinking skills to support clinical reasoning and a solid foundation of knowledge. Multiple-choice questions (MCQs) are commonly used to assess student learning, and well-written MCQs can support learner engagement in higher levels of cognitive reasoning such as application or synthesis of knowledge. Bloom's taxonomy has been used to identify MCQs that assess students' critical thinking skills, with evidence suggesting that higher-order MCQs support a deeper conceptual understanding of scientific process skills. Similarly, clinical practice also requires learners to develop higher-order thinking skills that include all of Bloom's levels. Faculty question writers and examinees may approach the same material differently based on varying levels of knowledge and expertise, and these differences can influence the cognitive levels being measured by MCQs. Consequently, faculty question writers may perceive that certain MCQs require higher-order thinking skills to process the question, whereas examinees may only need to employ lower-order thinking skills to render a correct response. Likewise, seemingly lower-order questions may actually require higher-order thinking skills to respond correctly. In this Perspective, the authors describe some of the cognitive processes examinees use to respond to MCQs. The authors propose that various factors affect both the question writer and examinee's interaction with test material and subsequent cognitive processes necessary to answer a question.

Mystical Traditions Are Political

Mystical Traditions Are Political

A question of quality: Conceptualisations of quality in the context of educational test questions

In educational contexts, questioning performs a number of functions. These include facilitating learning in the classroom and the recognition of achievement through examinations and other assessments. Good quality questions are important to ensuring that these functions are achieved. This research focused on educational exams and used views from question writers to explore conceptualisations of question quality and features thought to affect question quality. Seven examination question writers from four subjects were shown some example exam questions. Participants were asked to comment on the quality of the question, reflect on performance data, rate question quality and comment more generally on how they define quality in question writing. Three conceptualisations of question quality emerged, two relating to aspects of validity and one relating to pedagogical concerns. Participants varied in which definition dominated their views. Discussions also identified question features thought to affect quality. These are similar to features previously identified as affecting difficulty and fairness by studies analysing student performance.

How do question writers compose external examination questions? Question writing as a socio‐cognitive process

The focus of this research is on the practice of education examination question writing. Educational examinations are tests that are taken by candidates in schools or colleges but that are externally developed, administered and marked by an assessment organisation. Whilst the practice of writing external examination questions is ubiquitous, previous research in this area is limited and has tended to adopt a cognitivist approach. This current project sought to extend this area of enquiry by looking at educational examination question writing as a socio‐cognitive process. The project involved a group of seven examination question writers (known as ‘setters’) from a range of subject areas. To capture evidence of question writing practices, each setter was observed remotely using video technology whilst they carried out a question writing task. The video material was then used to facilitate a stimulated recall session where individual setters could explain the processes that motivated their observed behaviours. Analyses suggested that the setters shared a common model of the writing process, which comprised three basic but interconnected phases: thinking about writing; writing and reflective thinking; and reviewing. In addition, question writing practice was influenced by the social system of examining through the way in which the setters considered a variety of perspectives during the writing task. This insight gives an indication of how setter practice develops; implicating a sociocultural perspective which suggests that the broader social context of examination question writing is an inevitable influence on setter practice.

The effect of images on item statistics in multiple choice anatomy examinations.

Although multiple choice examinations are often used to test anatomical knowledge, these often forgo the use of images in favor of text-based questions and answers. Because anatomy is reliant on visual resources, examinations using images should be used when appropriate. This study was a retrospective analysis of examination items that were text based compared to the same questions when a reference image was included with the question stem. Item difficulty and discrimination were analyzed for 15 multiple choice items given across two different examinations in two sections of an undergraduate anatomy course. Results showed that there were some differences item difficulty but these were not consistent to either text items or items with reference images. Differences in difficulty were mainly attributable to one group of students performing better overall on the examinations. There were no significant differences for item discrimination for any of the analyzed items. This implies that reference images do not significantly alter the item statistics, however this does not indicate if these images were helpful to the students when answering the questions. Care should be taken by question writers to analyze item statistics when making changes to multiple choice questions, including ones that are included for the perceived benefit of the students. Anat Sci Educ 10: 68-78. © 2016 American Association of Anatomists.

Low Levels of Evidence on the Plastic Surgery In-Service Training Exam.

The Plastic Surgery In-Service Training Exam is written by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Examinees reasonably infer that tested material reflects the Society's vision for the core curriculum in plastic surgery. The purpose of this study was to determine the levels of evidence on which credited answers to the examination questions are based. Two recent Plastic Surgery In-Service Training Exams (2014 and 2015) were analyzed. Questions were categorized using a taxonomy model. Recommended journal article references for Level III (decision-making) questions were assigned a level of evidence. Exam sections were analyzed for differences in question taxonomy distribution and level of evidence. To look for studies with higher levels of evidence, a PubMed search was conducted for a random sample of 10 questions from each section. One hundred three Level I (25.8 percent), 138 Level II (34.5 percent), and 159 Level III (39.8 percent) questions were analyzed (p < 0.001). The hand and lower extremity section had the highest percentage of Level III questions (50.0 percent; p = 0.005). Journal articles had a mean level of evidence of 3.9 ± 0.7. The number of articles with a low level of evidence (IV and V) (p = 0.624) and the percentage of questions supported by articles with a high level of evidence (I and II) (p = 0.406) did not vary by section. The PubMed search revealed no instances of a higher level of evidence than the recommended reading list. A significant percentage of Plastic Surgery In-Service Training Exam questions test clinical management, but most are supported with a low level of evidence. Although that is consistent with low level of evidence of plastic surgery literature, educators should recognize the potential for biases of question writers.

The Impact of Parenthetical Phrases on Interviewers' and Respondents' Processing of Survey Questions.

Many surveys contain sets of questions (e.g., batteries), in which the same phrase, such as a reference period or a set of response categories, applies across the set. When formatting questions for interviewer administration, question writers often enclose these repeated phrases in parentheses to signal that interviewers have the option of reading the phrase. Little research, however, examines what impact this practice has on data quality. We explore whether the presence and use of parenthetical statements is associated with indicators of processing problems for both interviewers and respondents, including the interviewer's ability to read the question exactly as worded, and the respondent's ability to answer the question without displaying problems answering (e.g., expressing uncertainty). Data are from questions about physical and mental health from 355 digitally recorded, transcribed, and interaction-coded telephone interviews. We implement a mixed-effects model with crossed random effects and nested and crossed fixed effects. The models also control for some respondent and interviewer characteristics. Findings indicate respondents are less likely to exhibit a problem when parentheticals are read, but reading the parentheticals increase the odds (marginally significant) that interviewers will make a reading error.

Mistranslation of Three Cultural Signs: Rajm, Food, and Tayammum in Vambery’s Travels in Central Asia

Translation as a process of domesticating something alien is not restricted solely to linguistic domain; on the contrary, it can be extended to other arenas as well. For example, travel writing as an attempt to tame foreign culture and render it accessible for the audience in home culture, can be considered as a kind of cultural translation. When a travel writer enters into a new context (source culture), he encounters with signs which are radically different from those in his home culture. Hence, the travel writer is burdened to deforeignize hitherto unknown signs to render them familiar and consumable for his audience. Since the travel writer carries his cultural baggage which functions as a cultural filter, his cultural translation cannot be objective and free from cultural mistranslations, and as a result, the current article is going to focus on the cultural mistranslations in Arminius Vambery’s Travel to Central Asia. Thus, it argues that the travel writer in question in his journey to Central Asia which is a semi terra incognita in nineteenth century endeavors to translate the exotic aspects (foreign signs) of Central Asian culture; however, his cultural biases give rise to the cultural mistranslations in areas such as diet and religious punishment like stoning.

The Fate of Literary Émigré Generations in the Context of Russia-Latin America Dialogue of Cultures

The paper studies the personal aspect of literary emigration to Latin American countries as a part of the Russian world. Referring to the life and creative work of poet V. F. Pereleshin, writers P. P. Shostakovsky and Yu. G. Slepukhin that represent the Latin American branch of the Russian emigration of the 20th century, the author analyses human destiny in the context of the generation’s fate, its literary life, behavioural and artistic strategies. The writers in question belonged to different waves of emigration, but demonstrated a link between generations and at the same time an ability to integrate into the culture of the country of residence, as well as to make a transition to another language and to realise themselves in it. Being involved in the process of intercultural dialogue with the Ibero-American world, the representatives of different generations of Russian artistic intelligentsia solved the problem of keeping in touch with their homeland through culture and the printed word. They managed to preserve the national cultural values and at the same time to make them accessible for people of another culture. It is also important that the cultural works of the Russian people in exile were saved for Russia, as the authors themselves lived long enough to see their work return to their homeland.

Implementation of Online Reading Assessments to Encourage Reading Interests

&lt;p&gt;The current study reports a two-year research project funded by the Government of the Republic of Indonesia through a competitive research scheme. The aim is basically to respond to the fact most university students have very low interests in reading activities, such as finding out important information for their term papers as assigned by the lectures. Instead, most of the time is spent in BBM, IPhone chats and Facebooking of non-academic nature (mostly social encounters). This has triggered a team of researchers to find out ways to increase or encourage reading interests. Internet browsing was undertaken to search for possible software application systems which could be used to administer online assessments in reading class. It was Question Writer (QW3.5) selected for use in the current study. It is a paid software application system especially developed for online assessments. It can perform various types of question formats with the students’ responses directly forwarded to the teacher’s email, and feedbacks and scorings automatically performed by the system. In the current study, a discussion group called ‘Reading Maniacs’ was created in Facebook for the students to get access to both reading materials and assessments. Questionnaire and interviews were conducted to investigate how the students got motivated in reading class and if their reading interests got increased. The findings indicate that the students were very motivated to participate in the online assessments supported by Facebook group discussion, thereby their reading interests leveled up. It was therefore recommended that online assessment of reading skills be conducted as additional activities to the well-supervised offline reading examination. Future researchers may want to administer Questionnaire to the reading teachers to get some feedbacks.&lt;/p&gt;

Does Educator Training or Experience Affect the Quality of Multiple-Choice Questions?

Physicians receive little training on proper multiple-choice question (MCQ) writing methods. Well-constructed MCQs follow rules, which ensure that a question tests what it is intended to test. Questions that break these are described as "flawed." We examined whether the prevalence of flawed questions differed significantly between those with or without prior training in question writing and between those with different levels of educator experience. We assessed 200 unedited MCQs from a question bank for our senior medical student radiology elective: an equal number of questions (50) were written by faculty with previous training in MCQ writing, other faculty, residents, and medical students. Questions were scored independently by two readers for the presence of 11 distinct flaws described in the literature. Questions written by faculty with MCQ writing training had significantly fewer errors: mean 0.4 errors per question compared to a mean of 1.5-1.7 errors per question for the other groups (P<.001). There were no significant differences in the total number of errors between the untrained faculty, residents, and students (P values .35-.91). Among trained faculty 17/50 questions (34%) were flawed, whereas other faculty wrote 38/50 (76%) flawed questions, residents 37/50 (74%), and students 44/50 (88%). Trained question writers' higher performance was mainly manifest in the reduced frequency of five specific errors. Faculty with training in effective MCQ writing made fewer errors in MCQ construction. Educator experience alone had no effect on the frequency of flaws; faculty without dedicated training, residents, and students performed similarly.

Italian Women Writers: Gender and Everyday Life in Fiction and Journalism, 1870–1910 by Katharine Mitchell (review)

Reviewed by: Italian Women Writers: Gender and Everyday Life in Fiction and Journalism, 1870–1910 by Katharine Mitchell Ioana Raluca Larco Katharine Mitchell. Italian Women Writers: Gender and Everyday Life in Fiction and Journalism, 1870–1910. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. 250 pp. $65.00. Katharine Mitchell’s Italian Women Writers: Gender and Everyday Life in Fiction and Journalism, 1870–1910 proposes a re-evaluation of the everyday and the domestic as spaces of agency and change. The main argument of the author supports the idea of an active female readership in the case of women’s literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. This [End Page 234] same literature provided feminism with a very rich object of studies due to the “underlying sense of disillusionment” (ix) that it unveiled. Drawing on theories of gender and Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life, the scholar starts from the premise that similar patterns can also be identified in the female domestic fiction and journalism of post–Unification Italy and zooms in on the work of three important Italian women authors of the period: La Marchesa Colombi, Neera, and Matilde Serao. Mitchell maintains that such writings played a major role in engaging female readers and writers in crucial social and political issues regarding women’s access to education and paid labour, their legal rights, and female suffrage. Yet what distinguishes Italian domestic fiction from other women’s literatures of the late nineteenth century, she continues, is a constant ambivalence toward feminism: that is, Italian domestic fiction and numerous non-fiction writings by women authors tend to reinforce gender roles among the highest values of the middle class, while presenting scenes of domesticity that could clearly read as their authors’ disapproval of women’s condition at the time. Furthermore, this ambivalence is presented differently according to the genre: the non-fiction writings embrace a more conservative stance while the fictional works, through a realistic approach that abounds in objective descriptions, illustrate an extremely limiting female world compared to men’s. The five chapters of the book offer an insightful and methodical discussion of the above-mentioned claims, starting in the first two chapters with a well-documented overview of the development of a female readership in Italy and the specific contributions of the three above-mentioned writers to journals and newspapers. Mitchell brings a different nuance to the commonly recognized disjunction between their fiction as more ideologically feminist and their journalism that is perceived as more conservative by convincingly demonstrating in the second chapter, “Journalism, Essays, Conduct Books,” that such disjunction is only present in articles and non-fictional works that address a non-gender-specific readership. Moreover, the following chapter, “Gendering Private and Public Spheres,” shows with concrete examples from fictional works how the traditional division between the public and the private spheres should instead be read as a constant interchange between them. Adding to Habermas’s notion of “‘intermediary space,’ which expressed alternative forms of power and enabled women of the time to engage in the public sphere in particular ways” (61), the scholar suggests that, through faithful depictions of separate spaces within the home (the salotto, bedrooms and kitchens, the study), and the outdoors (the passeggiata in the streets, the countryside, public [End Page 235] buildings), La Marchesa Colombi, Neera, and Serao insist on the representation of a gendered space in a way that implicitly makes it subversive toward such limitations; additionally, their very writing about the private facilitated the entrance into the public sphere of these authors. The last two chapters of the present book, “Freeing Negative Emotions” and “Female Friendships, Sibling Relationships, Mother-Daughter Bonds,” close the circle of a well-rounded analysis with a discussion of gender-specific themes such as hysteria, sisterhood, and motherhood. Mitchell argues that the three Italian female writers in question “consciously dissociated themselves from the discourse of hysteria in their domestic fiction and journalism, which was addressed to a female readership, to endorse instead a discourse of nervousness” (95). Through such deep feelings, she continues, these authors explore the innermost thoughts and desires (including sexual desires) of their female protagonists, which becomes in itself a voluntary act of rebellion and search for...

RAŠYTOJAI RAŠYTOJAMS: KNYGOS SU DEDIKACINIAIS ĮRAŠAIS LIETUVOS MOKSLŲ AKADEMIJOS VRUBLEVSKIŲ BIBLIOTEKOS FONDUOS

The aim of this article is to discuss dedication inscriptions by the authors in books from personal libraries of several Lithuanian writers as an aid for at least partial reconstruction of such libraries. The main source for this research is a card catalogue of books with dedications from the holdings of the Rare Book Department of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences (hereafter WLLAS). The books with dedications listed in the catalogue have been examined de visu. Such a method is able to identify only part of the books previously owned by the writers in question. Three cases – the books dedicated by the authors to three writers – were selected for further analysis. These books, together with their former owners’ personal archives, came to the WLLAS Rare Book Department by the way of donation. The article presents an analysis of eleven books from the library of the poet, translator and children‘ s book writer Matas Grigonis (1889–1971). All the books carry gift inscriptions from their authors to the writer himself or his family. They were given to the library by the writer’s son, Matas Kastytis Grigonis, along with some archival documents, which supplemented the Matas Grigonis Archive Collection F202, already formed in the WLLAS Manuscript Department. Another case is a set of 47 autographed books from the private library of the poet Vladas Gurnevičius-Ramaškonis (1923–2002). They were given to WLLAS by the owner himself in 1992, together with his personal archive. In 1992–1993 the holdings of the Rare Book Department were enriched by books dedicated by the authors to emigrée writer Anatolijus Kairys (1914-08-28, St. Petersburg – 2008. U.S.A.) At the same time, in the WLLAS Manuscript Department, the Anatolijus Kairys personal archive collection (F337) was established, donated by the writer himself and later repeteadly supplemented. All three cases are connected by a common trait: authorial dedications, indicating book ownership. The dedications provide insights into socializing specifics of the book owners, a factor affecting certain aspects of book culture.

Posição do sujeito e posição social: um caso de competição de gramáticas em cartas dos séculos XIX e XX

Tarallo (1993) proposes that the turn of the 20th century is a landmark in the history of Brazilian Portuguese (BP), with the emergence of a Brazilian grammar different from the European Portuguese one specially in relation to the preference for lexical subjects, instead of null pronominal subjects and a strict Subject-Verb order (Tarallo, 1993). BP has been analyzed as a partially pro-drop language, in which the third person singular null subject is interpreted as an arbitrary subject (Holmberg, 2006, Cavalcante, 2007). One of the consequences of this change is that subjects are preferably placed before verbs, thus, it is possible to affirm that in BP VS order is restricted to unaccusative sentences. In this paper, we analyze the subject position in a sample of private letters which are part of the Corpus Compartilhado Diacronico: Cartas Pessoais brasileiras (Shared diachronic corpus: Brazilian private letters) http://www.letras.ufrj.br/laborhistorico/). It is a sample of letters written between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, exchanged between couples and/or among children, from the following collections: Ottoni; Oswaldo Cruz (1889-1915); Affonso Penna; Pedreira Ferraz Magalhaes and Jayme-Maria. The main hypothesis of the study is that it is possible to detect grammar competition (Kroch, 1989) between the correspondents regarding the position of the subject, mainly related to the social role of the writers in question. As they are couples correspondence, even in the nineteenth century, we can see in the women's letters a pattern of VS order very similar to the current BP pattern: they are restricted to unaccusative and VS constructions; while in the letters written by men, we found different patterns of VS order. This can be explained by historical contingencies that differentiate, as we can see, the configuration of BP grammar in texts written from the nineteenth century on: through the nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century the role of women in Brazil is restricted to household chores, whereas the men had not only the role of the provider, but in the case of our correspondents, a senator, doctor, president role. In this context, we believe that in women's letters we will find patterns closer to current BP than in men's letters.

WE-A-9A-01: Interactive Hands-On Question Writing Workshop

This workshop is designed to improve the question writing skills of the participants. After some brief introductory material the participants, working in small groups, will have the opportunity to edit questions under the guidance of experienced question writers. Learning Objectives: 1. The participant will improve their question writing skills.

The Scarecrow, Narnia, and Jesus of Nazareth

This article presents the Scarecrow Literature as a sub-genre of Fantasy literature, which was born in Anglo-Saxon countries in the 20th century. In it, a variety of traditions, cultures and religions are intertwined. They have several common characteristics: they embody and update Christianity’s values, they employ fantastical clothing and use imagination as a tool. In this sub-genre, children make a journey from our world to a secondary world, as happens with the Pevensie children and other young characters in Narnia. And depending upon the historical moment in which the writer in question places their work, the setting is generally rural and is steeped in pagan tradition. It is here where the children perform some heroic mission. When the adventure concludes, the young heroes return to their primary world, while maintaining their anonymity, and as a reward for their work obtain the warmth of family or community.

Questions We Are Asking: Hegel, Agamben, Dayan, Trouillot, Mbembe, and Haitian Studies

The traffic of images of global suffering for example, creates new communities of sentiment, which introduce empathy, identification, and anger across large cultural distances.Martin Munro, Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature1« C'est un autre monde, la-bas, Tatsumi, un pays perdu auxfrontieres de la soif [...] Tu as bien traverse l'ocean pour le voir, non ? Ton papier, il va faire sensation, n'est-ce pas ?Fito lâcha les derniers mots avec une colere qu'il ne put contenir. »Kettly Mars, Auxfrontieres de la soifINTRODUCTION: NATIONHOOD, CITIZENSHIP, PERSONHOOD, AND POVERTYThis article works through ways in which scholars are answering the following questions: how have scholars understood the project of and its citizens, over the past twenty years? More specifically, how does nationhood (the desire for it, the lack of it, its necessarily utopian intentions and resultant disappointing outcomes) relate to an individual and/or a community's sense of personhood? And finally, how does the discussion of nationhood and its citizenry relate to the ever-present dialogue around poverty? My intention is to look at how discussions about Haiti relate to the above interrogations.It is not my aim to make an explicit argument about nationhood or its various incarnations, but rather, I want to consider the complexity of the notion of nationhood and its associated vocabulary-citizenship, state, nation, personhood, and as I will argue at the end of this paper, poverty-as deliberated by scholars working in political philosophy and postcolonial studies in African, Caribbean, European, and North American contexts. As such, this article may also be read as a coordinated extended review of literature, a putting-into-dialogue of thinkers writing across a transatlantic space. I consider both the aspirations and the disappointments of what the notion and practice of nationhood can and cannot deliver in a contemporary era, one that is necessarily informed by the complex dynamic between modernity's enlightenment project and neo/post/colonialisms' exploitation of peoples and places.3In a roundtable session titled Encounters in the Archives: A Transdisciplinary Discussion, Ann Laura Stoler spoke of the relationship, the codependency even, between on the one hand, the ideas, texts, and objects that we put into our archives; and, on the other hand, the questions that we ask.4 What is important, Stoler insists, is that we pose questions that are worth asking; and to do so we must put into our archive, objects, books, and ideas that help us not so much to resolve the uncertainties that lead to the formulation of our questions, but rather that we construct our archives to help us better invite questions that interrogate the urgencies of our present human condition. I have chosen to read through Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1995), Colin Dayan's The Law Is a White Dog (2011), Michel-Rolph Trouillot's introduction to Haiti State Against Nation: The Origin and Legacy of Duvalierism (1990) and his essays in Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World (2003), Achille Mbembe's On the Postcolony (2001), and Sara Ahmed's The Promise of Happiness (2010) because, I argue, they deal similarly with how personhood has been constructed under the weight of the notion and practice of nationhood. The writers in question problematize the notion of successful nations. For example, the recent work by Harvard and M.I.T. economists Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson titled Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (2012), written for a general audience, studies the world's through a prism that organizes them according to those that succeed and those that fail. Yarimar Bonilla might criticize such scholarship, one which conceives of nations as fixed and bordered geographies, with communities attached to them, as scholarship that only reinforces normative assumptions of our contemporary political world, Western political categories of nationalism and sovereignty as pathologized sites of failed emancipation. …