Presence, Kinesic Description, and Literary Reading

CounterText ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 322-337
Author(s):  
Dan Irving
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Body Position ◽  
Literary Reading ◽  
Bodily Movement ◽  
Innate Knowledge ◽  
Cognitive Narratology ◽  
American Author ◽  
Shed Light

In light of the oft-cited critique of a ‘mimetic bias’ in narrative theory, and especially in cognitive narratology, I propose that insights from embodied (or ‘second-generation’) cognitive science, particularly those dealing with kinesic and proprioceptive intelligence – that is, experience-derived knowledge of how movement and body position affect perception – can help shed light on a range of ‘weak’ narratives ( McHale 2001 ). Taking as a case study two short pieces by the contemporary American author Lydia Davis, I extend arguments made by Abbott (2013) and Pettersson (2012) regarding hermeneutical and experiential modes of thinking about reading. The presence-based mode of reading I outline here embraces the inherently embodied, multisensory aspects of both multimodal (The Cows) and ostensibly monomodal (or text-only) narratives (‘Oral History [With Hiccups]’). In what follows, I discuss the possibility of kinesic and proprioceptive description – sentences that describe and subsequently tap into innate knowledge of bodily movement and position as it relates to perception – being understood as affordances for feeling ‘present’ in a storyworld.

scholarly journals Meaningful and meaningless suffering

Human Affairs ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-424
Author(s):  
Sami Pihlström
Keyword(s):  
Meaning In Life ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
Literary Reading ◽  
Ethical Argument ◽  
Literary Structure ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract The problem of suffering crucially focuses on meaninglessness. Meaningful suffering—suffering having some “point” or function—is not as problematic as absurd suffering that cannot be rendered purposeful. This issue is more specific than the problem of the “meaning of life” (or “meaning in life”). Human lives are often full of suffering experienced as serving no purpose whatsoever – indeed, suffering that may threaten to make life itself meaningless. Some philosophers—e.g., D.Z. Phillips and John Cottingham—have persuasively argued that the standard analytic methods of philosophy of religion in particular ought to be enriched by literary reading and interpretation, especially when dealing with issues such as this. The problem of evil and suffering can also be explored from a perspective entangling literary and philosophical approaches (Kivistö & Pihlström, 2016). This double methodology is in this paper applied to the problem of evil and suffering by considering an example drawn from Holocaust literature: Primo Levi’s work is analyzed as developing an essentially ethical argument, with a philosophical-cum-literary structure, against theodicies seeking to render suffering meaningful. By means of such a case study, I hope to shed light on the problem of meaningless suffering, especially regarding the moral critique of “theodicist” attempts to interpret all suffering as meaningful.

Case Study: Rome's House of Memory and History: The Politics of Memory and Public Institutions

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Portelli
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Political Events ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ambitious Program ◽  
The City

This article centers around the case study of Rome's House of Memory and History to understand the politics of memory and public institutions. This case study is about the organization and politics of public memory: the House of Memory and History, established by the city of Rome in 2006, in the framework of an ambitious program of cultural policy. It summarizes the history of the House's conception and founding, describes its activities and the role of oral history in them, and discusses some of the problems it faces. The idea of a House of Memory and History grew in this cultural and political context. This article traces several political events that led to the culmination of the politics of memory and its effect on public institutions. It says that the House of Memory and History can be considered a success. A discussion on a cultural future winds up this article.

Case Study: The Southern Oral History Program

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall ◽  
Kathryn Nasstrom
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
American South ◽  
New Era ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
Integral Role ◽  
The American South ◽  
And Gender ◽  
History Department ◽  
The University

A case study of the southern oral history program is the essence of this chapter. From its start in 1973 until 1999, the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) was housed by the history department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), rather than in the library or archives, where so many other oral history programs emerged. The SOHP is now part of UNC's Center for the Study of the American South, but it continues to play an integral role in the department of history. Concentrating on U.S. southern racial, labor, and gender issues, the program offers oral history courses and uses interviews to produce works of scholarship, such as the prize-winning book Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World. The folks at the Institute for Southern Studies tried to combine activism with analysis, trying to figure out how to take the spirit of the movement into a new era.

scholarly journals Participative decision making in schools in individualist and collectivist cultures: The micro-politics behind distributed leadership

2021 ◽  
pp. 174114322110013
Author(s):  
Mor Hodaya Or ◽  
Izhak Berkovich
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Distributed Leadership ◽  
Multiple Case Study ◽  
Extreme Case ◽  
Public High Schools ◽  
Case Study Method ◽  
Case Selection ◽  
Multiple Case ◽  
Shed Light

Despite the popularity of distributed leadership theory, the investigation of the micro-political aspects of such models have scarcely been explored, and insights on the cultural variety of distributed practices in schools are limited. The present study aimed to explore what micro-political aspects emerge in participative decision making in collectivist and individualist cultures. To this end, a multiple case study method was adopted, focusing on four Israeli public high schools. Schools were chosen to represent an ‘extreme’ case selection rationale: two non-religious urban schools representing individualist cases, and two communal schools in religious kibbutzim representing communal schools. The analysis shed light on three micro-political points of comparison between the prototypes of participative decision making in collectivist and individualist cultures related to control, actors, and stage crafting. The findings and implications are discussed.

scholarly journals “Why Not Nuevo Mexicano Studies?”: Interrogating Latinidades in the Intermountain West, 1528–2020

Genealogy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 68
Author(s):  
Ed A. Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
South Florida ◽  
Intermountain West ◽  
Institutional Processes ◽  
Historical Essay ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Group Diversity ◽  
Shed Light

While there has been an explosion of scholarly interest in the historical and contemporary social, economic, and political status of U.S. Latinx individuals and communities, the majority focuses on traditional Southwestern U.S., Northeastern U.S., and South Florida rural/urban enclaves. Recent “New Destinations” research, however, documents the turn of the 21st century Latinx experiences in non-traditional white/black, and rural/urban Latinx regional enclaves. This socio-historical essay adds to and challenges emerging literature with a nearly five-century old delineation of Latinidad in the Intermountain West, a region often overlooked in the construction of Latina/o identity. Selected interviews from the Spanish-Speaking Peoples in Utah Oral History and Wyoming’s La Cultura Hispanic Heritage Oral History projects shed light on Latinidad and the adoption of Latinx labels in the region during the latter third of the 20th century centering historical context, material conditions, sociodemographic characteristics, and institutional processes in this decision. Findings point to important implications for the future of Latinidad in light of the region’s Latinx renaissance at the turn of the 21st century. The region’s increased Latino proportional presence, ethnic group diversity, and socioeconomic variability poses challenges to the region’s long-established Hispano/Nuevo Mexicano Latinidad.

scholarly journals Towards DC Energy Efficient Homes

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (13) ◽  
pp. 6005
Author(s):  
Daniel Villanueva ◽  
Moisés Cordeiro-Costas ◽  
Andrés E. Feijóo-Lorenzo ◽  
Antonio Fernández-Otero ◽  
Edelmiro Miguez-García
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Electric Vehicles ◽  
Energy Efficient ◽  
Electricity Consumption ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Mean Values ◽  
Led Lighting ◽  
Shed Light

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the question regarding whether the integration of an electric battery as a part of a domestic installation may increase its energy efficiency in comparison with a conventional case. When a battery is included in such an installation, two types of electrical conversion must be considered, i.e., AC/DC and DC/AC, and hence the corresponding losses due to these converters must not be forgotten when performing the analysis. The efficiency of the whole system can be increased if one of the mentioned converters is avoided or simply when its dimensioning is reduced. Possible ways to achieve this goal can be: to use electric vehicles as DC suppliers, the use of as many DC home devices as possible, and LED lighting or charging devices based on renewables. With all this in mind, several scenarios are proposed here in order to have a look at all possibilities concerning AC and DC powering. With the aim of checking these scenarios using real data, a case study is analyzed by operating with electricity consumption mean values.

scholarly journals Becoming a Crorepati: From Glocal TV Game to Grobal Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-520
Author(s):  
Nicola Pozza
Keyword(s):  
Effective Means ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Slumdog Millionaire ◽  
Interactive Nature ◽  
Tv Show ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Way

AbstractNumerous studies have dealt with the process of globalization and its various cultural products. Three such cultural products illustrate this process: Vikas Swarup’s novel Q and A (2005), the TV quiz show Kaun banega crorepati? (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), and Danny Boyle’s film Slumdog Millionaire (2008). The novel, the TV show and the film have so far been studied separately. Juxtaposing and comparing Q and A, Kaun banega crorepati, and Slumdog Millionaire provides an effective means to shed light on the dialogic and interactive nature of the process of globalization. It is argued through this case study that an analysis of their place of production, language and content, helps clarify the derivative concepts of “glocalization” and “grobalization” with regard to the way(s) contemporary cultural products respond to globalization.

scholarly journals Education for Social Change: The Case of Teacher Education in Wales

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8574
Author(s):  
Rebecca Weicht ◽  
Svanborg R. Jónsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Entrepreneurial Education ◽  
Constructive Learning ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
The University ◽  
Action Competence ◽  
Shed Light

Entrepreneurial education offers valuable opportunities for teachers to foster and enhance creativity and action competence, which are also important for sustainability education. The University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) is a leader in the development of entrepreneurial education in teacher education both in Wales and internationally. The objective of this article is to shed light on how an entrepreneurial education approach can help foster social change. The aim of this study is to learn from teacher educators at UWTSD about how they support creativity, innovation, and an enterprising mindset in their learners. A case study approach is applied. By analysing documentary evidence such as module and assignment handbooks, we explore how teacher educators at UWTSD deliver entrepreneurial education for social change. Our findings indicate that UWTSD’s development of entrepreneurial education in teacher training has enabled constructive learning, cultivating creativity and action competence. We provide examples that display how the intentions of the Curriculum for Wales and entrepreneurial education approaches of the UWTSD emerge in practice. These examples show outcomes of the entrepreneurial projects that evince the enactment of social change. The findings also show that the educational policy of Wales supports entrepreneurial education throughout all levels of the educational system.

scholarly journals From the ghetto to the Gulag, from the ghetto to Israel: Soviet collaboration trials against the Shargorod ghetto’s Jewish Council

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
Mitigating Circumstances

Beginning in 1944, Soviet authorities arrested former Jewish Council members of different ghettos and put them on trial for collaboration with the Axis powers. This case study examines the 1944 trials of Meir Teich and Isaak Sherf, two leading figures of the Shargorod ghetto’s Jewish administration. Drawing on trial documents, oral history interviews and memoirs, this article focuses on two aspects: how Soviet courts selectively accepted support for the partisans as mitigating circumstances, and how survivor networks among the witnesses influenced the trials. These aspects are discussed in the context of the (re-)Sovietization of formerly occupied territories, in this case Transnistria, the Romanian occupation zone.

Linguistic Evidence for ‘Romanization’: Continuity and Change in Romano-British Onomastics: A Study of the Epigraphic Record with Particular Reference to Bath

Britannia ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 35-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mullen
Keyword(s):  
Online Database ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
Archaeological Material ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Introductory Section ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Shed Light

Based on a new online database of Celtic personal names, this research demonstrates how the study of Romano-British onomastics can shed light on the complexities of linguistic and cultural contacts, complementing archaeological material and literary sources. After an introductory section on methodology, Part One analyses naming formulae and expressions of filiation as evidence for both continuity and change dependent on social and geographical factors. Confusion and contamination between the Latin and Celtic systems proved much less common than on the Continent, where earlier contact with Roman culture and the written tradition for Continental Celtic occasionally facilitated an unusual form of syncretism. Part Two examines the naming formulae attested at Roman Bath and the mechanisms by which Celts adopted Latin names. The case-study of Bath relates continuity and change in both naming formulae and nomenclature to an acceptance of, or resistance to, ‘Romanization’ in Britain.

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