Pourquoi? Explaining Ourselves to the Literature Major

PMLA ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 117 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-519
Author(s):  
H. Jay Siskin
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Twelfth Night ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Arts

Sir Toby. Pourquoi, my dear knight?Sir Andrew. What is “Pourquoi”? Do or do not? I would I had bestowed that time in the tongues that I have in fencing, dancing, and bear-baiting. O, had I but followed the arts!–William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (1.3)I was asked to address thequestions “why major in literature?” and “What do we tell our students?” I make this assignment explicit because my initial reflections left me bewildered. Is not the study of literature part of the humanistic mission of the liberal arts? Or has the major changed in some way that would prompt these questions? To be certain that I had not missed any reconceptualizations of the discipline, I decided to investigate the rationales for the study of literature over the past century.

Legal Inquiry: A Liberal Arts Experiment in Demystifying Law

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (03) ◽  
pp. 311-325
Author(s):  
David Sandomierski
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Science Program ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Inquiry Approach ◽  
The World ◽  
Basic Understanding

Abstract For the past four years, two instructors and approximately one hundred students have participated in a novel experiment in liberal arts legal education. Legal Inquiry, an upper-year course in the Arts & Science Program at McMaster University, seeks to “demystify legal knowledge for the curious student of the world.” It brings together two kindred yet previously isolated academic traditions: an open-ended inquiry approach to knowledge and a critical pluralist understanding of law. To explore the compatibility of “law” and “inquiry,” the instructors wanted students to gain confidence and skills in engaging with formal legal sources, apply critical thinking to law, and appreciate informal and everyday law. These objectives were met with surprising success given the brevity of the course. Students achieved a basic understanding of formal law and legal reasoning, generated a vocabulary of what it means to think critically about law, and began to identify the continuity of formal and informal law.

Creativity and Learning

2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 96-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Knox
Keyword(s):  
Adult Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Creative Activity ◽  
Creative People ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Personal Reflections

This article explores personal, organisational and societal perspectives on creativity, arts, and adult education. Attention to creativity in the United States has increased during the past century. Fifty years ago, scholars and practitioners interested in the arts and sciences were focused on extraordinary creative achievements. Since then the scope of such interest has expanded from innovative and useful outcomes such as paintings and inventions, to include characteristics of very creative people, their ways of working, and various influences. The scope has also broadened from a few outstanding examples to increasingly include all people and their lifelong learning in a society in which change and learning have become widespread. This article demonstrates how creative adult education can help enhance the creativity of all people in all aspects of their life. I combine my parallel experience in art and adult education to explore the beneficiaries of art; characteristics of artists; venues where creative activity takes place; and how appreciation is shown for creative endeavours. I also use artistic metaphors and combine a review of trends regarding major writings about creativity, with personal reflections about future directions to strengthen attention to creativity in adult education.

Medieval Thought

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Luscombe
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Reformation

This chapter examines contributions made by Fellows of the British Academy in the past century to the study of medieval thought. It explains that medieval thought is a lost term used to refer to the period between Late Antiquity and the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and a range of intellectual endeavour that embraces the arts of the trivium and the quadrivium, as well as the other branches of philosophy. It suggests that the British academic contribution to the study of medieval thought has been substantial but not very distinctive.

The zoonotic potential of bat-borne coronaviruses

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-381
Author(s):  
Ny Anjara Fifi Ravelomanantsoa ◽  
Sarah Guth ◽  
Angelo Andrianiaina ◽  
Santino Andry ◽  
Anecia Gentles ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Material ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Sympatric Species ◽  
Animal Origin ◽  
Mammalian Host ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Novel Host ◽  
Horseshoe Bat ◽  
Human Infections

Seven zoonoses — human infections of animal origin — have emerged from the Coronaviridae family in the past century, including three viruses responsible for significant human mortality (SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2) in the past twenty years alone. These three viruses, in addition to two older CoV zoonoses (HCoV-229E and HCoV-NL63) are believed to be originally derived from wild bat reservoir species. We review the molecular biology of the bat-derived Alpha- and Betacoronavirus genera, highlighting features that contribute to their potential for cross-species emergence, including the use of well-conserved mammalian host cell machinery for cell entry and a unique capacity for adaptation to novel host environments after host switching. The adaptive capacity of coronaviruses largely results from their large genomes, which reduce the risk of deleterious mutational errors and facilitate range-expanding recombination events by offering heightened redundancy in essential genetic material. Large CoV genomes are made possible by the unique proofreading capacity encoded for their RNA-dependent polymerase. We find that bat-borne SARS-related coronaviruses in the subgenus Sarbecovirus, the source clade for SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, present a particularly poignant pandemic threat, due to the extraordinary viral genetic diversity represented among several sympatric species of their horseshoe bat hosts. To date, Sarbecovirus surveillance has been almost entirely restricted to China. More vigorous field research efforts tracking the circulation of Sarbecoviruses specifically and Betacoronaviruses more generally is needed across a broader global range if we are to avoid future repeats of the COVID-19 pandemic.

PCSK9 inhibition for LDL lowering and beyond – implications for patients with peripheral artery disease

VASA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 165-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrin Gebauer ◽  
Holger Reinecke
Keyword(s):  
Cardiovascular Risk ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Ldl Receptor ◽  
Density Lipoprotein ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Pcsk9 Inhibitors ◽  
Cardiovascular Risk Reduction ◽  
Simultaneous Application ◽  
The Past ◽  
Pcsk9 Inhibition

Abstract. Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) has been proven to be a causal factor of atherosclerosis and, along with other triggers like inflammation, the most frequent reason for peripheral arterial disease. Moreover, a linear correlation between LDL-C concentration and cardiovascular outcome in high-risk patients could be established during the past century. After the development of statins, numerous randomized trials have shown the superiority for LDL-C reduction and hence the decrease in cardiovascular outcomes including mortality. Over the past decades it became evident that more intense LDL-C lowering, by either the use of highly potent statin supplements or by additional cholesterol absorption inhibitor application, accounted for an even more profound cardiovascular risk reduction. Proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9), a serin protease with effect on the LDL receptor cycle leading to its degradation and therefore preventing continuing LDL-C clearance from the blood, is the target of a newly developed monoclonal antibody facilitating astounding LDL-C reduction far below to what has been set as target level by recent ESC/EAS guidelines in management of dyslipidaemias. Large randomized outcome trials including subjects with PAD so far have been able to prove significant and even more intense cardiovascular risk reduction via further LDL-C debasement on top of high-intensity statin medication. Another approach for LDL-C reduction is a silencing interfering RNA muting the translation of PCSK9 intracellularly. Moreover, PCSK9 concentrations are elevated in cells involved in plaque composition, so the potency of intracellular PCSK9 inhibition and therefore prevention or reversal of plaques may provide this mechanism of action on PCSK9 with additional beneficial effects on cells involved in plaque formation. Thus, simultaneous application of statins and PCSK9 inhibitors promise to reduce cardiovascular event burden by both LDL-C reduction and pleiotropic effects of both agents.

Archaeology in the Past Century

1901 ◽  
Vol 51 (1309supp) ◽  
pp. 20976-20977
Author(s):  
W. M. Flinders Petrje
Keyword(s):  
Past Century ◽  
The Past

Catholicism and Cosmopolitanism: the Confluence of Three Catholic Scholars and the Cosmopolitan Democrats on State Sovereignty and the Future of Global Governance

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-51
Author(s):  
Matthew Bagot
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Jacques Maritain ◽  
The Past ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Future ◽  
Cosmopolitan Democracy ◽  
Catholic Tradition

One of the central questions in international relations today is how we should conceive of state sovereignty. The notion of sovereignty—’supreme authority within a territory’, as Daniel Philpott defines it—emerged after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 as a result of which the late medieval crisis of pluralism was settled. But recent changes in the international order, such as technological advances that have spurred globalization and the emerging norm of the Responsibility to Protect, have cast the notion of sovereignty into an unclear light. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the current debate regarding sovereignty by exploring two schools of thought on the matter: first, three Catholic scholars from the past century—Luigi Sturzo, Jacques Maritain, and John Courtney Murray, S.J.—taken as representative of Catholic tradition; second, a number of contemporary political theorists of cosmopolitan democracy. The paper argues that there is a confluence between the Catholic thinkers and the cosmopolitan democrats regarding their understanding of state sovereignty and that, taken together, the two schools have much to contribute not only to our current understanding of sovereignty, but also to the future of global governance.

Aftershocks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seva Gunitsky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
International System ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sudden Rise ◽  
The World ◽  
National Borders

Over the past century, democracy spread around the world in turbulent bursts of change, sweeping across national borders in dramatic cascades of revolution and reform. This book offers a new global-oriented explanation for this wavelike spread and retreat—not only of democracy but also of its twentieth-century rivals, fascism, and communism. The book argues that waves of regime change are driven by the aftermath of cataclysmic disruptions to the international system. These hegemonic shocks, marked by the sudden rise and fall of great powers, have been essential and often-neglected drivers of domestic transformations. Though rare and fleeting, they not only repeatedly alter the global hierarchy of powerful states but also create unique and powerful opportunities for sweeping national reforms—by triggering military impositions, swiftly changing the incentives of domestic actors, or transforming the basis of political legitimacy itself. As a result, the evolution of modern regimes cannot be fully understood without examining the consequences of clashes between great powers, which repeatedly—and often unsuccessfully—sought to cajole, inspire, and intimidate other states into joining their camps.

Variable oil and argumentative conflict in the Middle East

2020 ◽  
pp. 824
Author(s):  
Malik Daham Mata’ab
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Large Area ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World

Oil has formed since its discovery so far one of the main causes of global conflict, has occupied this energy map a large area of conflict the world over the past century, and certainly this matter will continue for the next period in our century..

Mahmood Hasan Khan. Underdevelopment and Agrarian Structure in Pakistan. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. 1981. pp.xviii+ 307.

1981 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas H. Perry
Keyword(s):  
Ownership Structure ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ownership Patterns ◽  
Agrarian Structure

Students of the land ownership patterns in Pakistan have always been hampered by extreme lack of data, neither the 1960 census nor the 1972 census reveal anything about the actual ownership structure of land. Khan's book goes some distance in providing numbers on land ownership (for 1971 and 1976), and also documents methods and failures of land reform efforts over the past century in Pakistan, disaggregated to show efforts in this regard in both the provinces of Sind and Punjab. The book actually provides an overwhelming amount of data - some 87 pages of charts and tables document a book of under 200 pages of text.

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