Presidential Address 1999: Humanism and Heroism

PMLA ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 115 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward W. Said

I recall two things about my exchange with the friendly soul who rang me several years ago with the offer to stand for the second vice presidency of the MLA. First is the vivid recollection of my serious and mostly incapacitating illness at the time: as it turned out this was to disable me almost completely for the first year's Executive Council meetings. The second is my somewhat ungracious response to the (mostly undeserved) compliment contained in the suggestion that I should accept the nomination: “Do I have to do anything if I get elected?” I asked with almost ridiculous impertinence. I think the answer was no, and I think I should say in my own defense that I formulated my question very specifically to mean only “do I have to do anything very much as second vice president?,” a position I had frivolously assumed was not usually thought of as bearing a great responsibility. In any case, I was elected, and I did nothing the first year except, as I said, miss most of the meetings because of illness, unending treatment, and pain. Never having had much to do with administration during the many, too many, decades of my teaching life, I have to report to you that in my year as first vice president I had the opportunity at the outset to see how a major professional organization is run by really competent people and, second, to witness its humane and rational responses to the various demands of our time and those of our by now somewhat anxious guild, especially its younger members, for whom the job crisis has been so disabling and discouraging a symptom of this fin de siècle. Because of this genuine learning experience throughout my presidency, I am really grateful to, and happy to mention in particular, the extraordinary talents of our superb executive director, Phyllis Franklin, whose sensitive intelligence and marvelous skills not only guided us as a very large professional organization through a series of new challenges but, to speak personally, rescued your faltering president on numerous occasions when his temper and peculiar sense of humor got the better of him. May I also mention Phyllis Franklin's senior colleagues in the association, to whom I and all the other elected officers and members owe so much: Martha Evans, director of MLA book publications; Terence Ford, director of Bibliographic Information Services and editor of the MLA International Bibliography; Judy Goulding, managing editor of MLA publications; Amilde Hadden, director of financial operations; Maribeth Kraus, director of convention programs; David Laurence, director of English programs and ADE; Regina Vorbeck, associate executive director and head of the Division of MLA Operations; Elizabeth Welles, director of foreign language programs and ADFL; and Carol Zuses, coordinator of governance and assistant to the executive director?

PMLA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (3) ◽  
pp. 450-458
Author(s):  
Anne Ruggles Gere

I attended my first MLA convention in Chicago, in 1973. A frugal graduate student, I stayed at a nearby YMCA but huddled in the evenings with a friend from graduate school in the Palmer House lobby where we shared, surreptitiously, a flask of bourbon and laments about the awful job market. I could never have imagined that forty-five years later I would be delivering the presidential address. During the years since that Chicago convention, I have worked with the executive director Phyllis Franklin, who invited me and a few others to think with her about how the MLA might accommodate what we then called composition and rhetoric. I have worked with Rosemary Feal, who became the executive director as I joined the Delegate Assembly Organizing Committee and who left the MLA shortly after persuading me to stand for election to the office of second vice president. In my participation on task forces, division committees, the Publications Committee, the Delegate Assembly Organizing Committee, the Executive Council, and most recently as an officer, I have been continually impressed by the talent, commitment, and resourcefulness of those who work for the MLA. I am grateful to belong to an association with such an excellent staff, and I want to offer special thanks to my friend Paula Krebs, whose first full year as executive director coincided with my term as president. Her keen intelligence, administrative skill, and fierce advocacy for our profession convince me that the MLA is in very good hands.


2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (4I) ◽  
pp. 269-272
Author(s):  
Asad Zaman

Honourable Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms and Chancellor PIDE, Past Presidents and Distinguished Members of the Society, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is my pleasure to welcome you all to the 29th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists. On behalf of the members of the PSDE, I would like to thank you, Honourable Prof. Ahsan Iqbal for having spared your precious time to open this important meeting. I would also like to especially thank our members and guests who have come from different parts of the country and from different continents to participate in the Conference. We are extremely pleased to see here today many young students— Pakistan’s future economists and business leaders—who I am sure are enthusiastic to learn from the many leading specialists attending this Conference on the critical issue of ‘Energy’ that we in Pakistan face today. Let me join Dr Durr-e-Nayab in especially welcoming Dr Ilhan Ozturk, Professor at the Çağ Üniversitesi in Turkey who will be delivering the The Mahbub Ul Haq Memorial Lecture. Dr Prof. Zhaoguang Hu, Vice-President and Chief Energy Specialist at the State Grid Energy Research Institute in Beijing who will deliver Gustav Ranis Lecture. Professor Mohan Munasinghe, Chairman of the Munasinghe Institute of Development, Sri Lanka who will be delivering The Allama Iqbal Lecture and Dr Rajendra K. Pachauri, Chief Executive of the Energy and Resources Institute, New Dehli who will deliver The Quaid-i-Azam Lecture this year


2021 ◽  
pp. 030157422097623
Author(s):  
Shweta A. Kolhe ◽  
Shivani S. Khandelwal ◽  
Amol A. Verulkar ◽  
Twinkle D. Bajaj ◽  
Niyati Bhupesh Potode

Introduction: Pursuant to the notification published by Dental Council of India, dated May 17, 2018, no. DE-14-MDS-2018/2131, the committee amended the regulation on postgraduate (PG) Masters of Dental Surgery (MDS) students and made provision of giving MDS paper I at the end of the first year. Assessment of this survey will provide clear information between the responses of PG students and teachers. The focus of this article is to report and discuss the characteristics of new learning process. Material Method: A total of 150 sample sizes and 50 PG teachers were included. Questions were generated using Google Form to gain access and establish rapport with participants and to obtain open, honest understanding of the participants’ “learning experience.” The link was sent to the participants, using emails or WhatsApp number. Result: The analysis of survey data was carried out using Likert scale. The comparison of mean scores was carried out using unpaired t-test. Figures 1 to 10 provide responses of participants. Conclusion: Postgraduate students and PG guides are neutral toward the initial protocol of examination. The participants have a positive attitude toward new framework. But curriculum activities such as library dissertation (LD), dissertation selection, and patient work get disturbed somewhere. It might take time for both students and guides to get familiar with the new framework.


1956 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 156-159
Author(s):  
O. G. S. Crawford

The prudent contributor to a Festschrift will select some subject about which he thinks he knows as much as the professor who is to receive it. That is peculiarly difficult here because of the vast range of Professor Childe's knowledge, both in time and space, far exceeding the present contributor's. This Note is offered as a grateful tribute from one of the many who have been intellectually enriched by his writings and encouraged by his devotion to scholarship. It is little more than an amplification and criticism of the Abbé Breuil's classic Presidential Address to the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, delivered in 1934; but on the strength of observations made in August and September, 1955, I have come to different conclusions.The Abbé Breuil detected five successive techniques, all of them found on the stones of the Boyne Tombs:(1) Incised thin lines (pl. XIX, B).(2) Picked grooves left rough (pl. XVIII).(3, a) Picked grooves afterwards rubbed smooth; in this and the preceding group ‘it is invariably the line (groove) itself on which the pattern depends, which gives and is the design’.(3, b) Picked areas which ‘only define the limits of the pattern, the surface, left in relief by the cutting down of the background, constituting the actual design’ (pl. xx, B).(4) Rectilinear patterns where also the pattern is residual, consisting of raised ribs, forming triangles or lozenges, left standing by picking away the surrounding surface (pl. xx, A).


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 589-592
Author(s):  
WILL C. TURNBLADH

INCREASINGLY, in recent years, pediatricians have been called on to work with the problem of juvenile delinquency. Published statistics on crimes and antisocial activities by children have sometimes been frightening, and loose remarks are often made about drastic remedies being needed to "curb" modern youth. In such a situation, parents naturally turn to their physicians for advice and counsel. Within the community pattern of the attack on juvenile delinquency, the "juvenile court" has a central role. If the ignorance of this editor is any index, pediatricians, in general, know little of the structure, responsibilities, jurisdiction, community relationships, and standards of juvenile courts. It is, for example, both revealing and reassuring to learn that ". . . the court stands in the position of a `protecting parent' rather than a prosecutor. . . ." The National Probation and Parole Association, a nonprofit citizen and professional organization with professional and technical staff, seeks to extend and improve probation and parole services for both children and adults throughout the country, to promote juvenile and domestic relations courts and to develop specialized facilities and programs for the detention of children. At the request of the editor, Mr. Will C. Turnbladh, Executive Director of the Association, has prepared the following interesting and informative article on the background and some of the problems of juvenile courts.


Author(s):  
Sanchit Ingale ◽  
Anirudh Srinivasan ◽  
Diana Bairaktarova

Spatial visualization is the ability of an individual to imagine an object mentally and understand its spatial orientation. There have been multiple works proving that spatial visualization skills can be improved with an appropriate training. Such training warrant a critical place in the undergraduate engineering curricula in many engineering schools as spatial skills are considered vital for students’ success in the technical and design fields [1–4]. Enhanced spatial skills help not only professionals in the engineering field but also everyone in the 21st century environment. Drawing sectional views requires mental manipulation and visual thinking. To enhance students spatial reasoning, one of the authors of this study, conducted a class in spatial visualization. The course-learning goal aimed at improving first-year engineering students’ spatial reasoning through instruction on freehand drawings of sectional view. During the semester, two teaching assistants had to grade more than 500 assignments that consisted of sectional views of mechanical objects. This was a tedious and a time consuming task. Motivated by this experience, this paper proposes a software aiming at automating grading of students’ sectional view drawings. The proposed software will also give live feedback to students while they are working on the drawings. This interactive tool aims to 1) improve the learning experience of first year students, with limited CAD knowledge, and 2) introduce a pedagogical tool that can enhance spatial visualization training.


1993 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 377
Author(s):  
Diane F. Ging ◽  
Gladys C. Lipton

2007 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Rousmaniere

Of the many organizational changes that took place in public education in North America at the turn of the last century, few had greater impact on the school than the development of the principal. The creation of the principal's office revolutionized the internal organization of the school from a group of students supervised by one teacher to a collection of teachers managed by one administrator. In its very conception, the appointment of a school-based administrator who was authorized to supervise other teachers significantly restructured power relations in schools, realigning the source of authority from the classroom to the principal's office. Just as significant was the role that the principal played as a school based representative of the central educational office.


Author(s):  
Liudmila Konyakhina ◽  
◽  
Lora Yakovleva ◽  

The article discusses a number of issues related to developing the linguistic persona and intercultural competency and focuses on educational ideas, strategies, technologies, and practices that embody intercultural approaches to foreign language education. To ensure the high quality of foreign language education, our priorities must include the development of competences in the area of professional communication in foreign languages. In that regard, the article identifies pedagogical conditions conducive to fostering the socio-cultural competence and the successful development of the learner’s linguistic persona. The authors present mechanisms of implementing the said pedagogical conditions in the following areas: a) developing communication skills and competencies of foreign language instructors; b) modeling situations with communication barriers in diverse ethnocultural environments; c) acquiring and selecting ethnocultural information; d) integrating in-class and out-of-class activities in a foreign language; and e) establishing a good rapport between an instructor and her students. The authors go on to describe the methodological basis for designing the content of foreign language programs, identify optimal approaches to teaching and learning foreign languages, and reflect on the context of the intercultural paradigm in university-level foreign language education.


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