Representing Shylock: The Performance History of Shakespeare’s Jew as an Indicator and Instigator of Cultural Change

Since its earliest performances, The Merchant of Venice garnered attention for its depiction of Shylock, the greedy Jewish moneylender who takes the protagonist of the play to court, demanding a pound of flesh. Over the centuries, depictions of this character have varied as much as the critical and popular reception to him. In the hands of each actor who newly embodies the character, Shylock can take the shape of a grotesque antisemitic caricature or a sympathetic anti-hero speaking truth to power. While Shylock began as a comic villain whose defeat allows the comedic resolution, almost all modern directors, actors, and audiences are forced to reckon with the cruel antisemitism voiced by the play’s protagonists. In tracing the performance history of this character from the turn of the 17th century, to the Third Reich, to his most recent incarnations, this research resists reducing Shylock to any single interpretation. Instead, this essay argues that Shylock serves as a reflection of the place and time in which he is performed, both an indicator of cultural attitudes and a potential instigator of cultural action towards oppression, justice, and representation of those deemed outsiders.

What Shapes Attitudes Toward Homosexuality among European Muslims? The Role of Religiosity and Destination Hostility

Muslim migrants and their descendants in Western Europe have consistently been shown to hold more negative attitudes toward homosexuality, the more religious they are. In this article, we go beyond this mono-dimensional view of religiosity and develop a theoretical framework that combines (a) the role of different dimensions of religiosity in anchoring cultural attitudes and (b) the potential impact of destination hostility and discrimination on the retention of cultural attitudes toward homosexuality among Muslim migrants in Western Europe. For the analysis, we use eight rounds of the European Social Survey, enriched with country-level data. Findings indicate that Muslim migrants’ mosque attendance, as a dimension of religiosity, has the negative effect that was expected. Particularly, Muslims who grew up in Western Europe are negative about homosexuality if they attended mosque regularly, whereas among first-generation Muslim migrants, origin-country norms are a strong predictor of attitudes toward homosexuality. In addition, we find that perceived group discrimination drives the maintenance of negative attitudes toward homosexuality, especially among mosque attendees. These results imply that the development of more liberal attitudes among European Muslims is held back by a combination of socialization in conservative religious communities and hostility from host-country populations.

The “Exaggerated” Colors of Black Narcissus (1947 and 2020)

This article explores the correspondences and differences in terms of color design between two screen versions of Black Narcissus, a popular novel by Rumer Godden published in 1939. Conceptual approaches drawn upon include ideas of “the figural,” intertextuality and hybridity as central to understanding how Black Narcissus operates on many complex levels, arguing that color is a key expressive mode in their articulation. Powell and Pressburger’s 1947 film and a 2020 television mini-series directed by Charlotte Bruus Christensen are for the first time compared in relation to landscape and the natural environment; interior spaces; costume; race. The texts’ experimentation with color, lighting and diffusion enables boundaries between exterior and interior spaces, as well as between characters’ memories and repressed desires, to be problematized. As “end of empire” texts, the literary and screen iterations of Black Narcissus are related to postcolonial theories in which a series of hybrid, “in-between” spaces and cultural attitudes are explored.

A Telecollaboration Project on Giving Online Peer Feedback: Implementing a Multilateral Virtual Exchange During a Pandemic

Telecollaboration, also called virtual exchange or online intercultural exchange, is a form of collaborative learning whereby language learners in different locations engage in computer-mediated communication to complete tasks online. There is ample evidence that telecollaboration promotes the acquisition of language skills, intercultural competence, and digital literacies. Challenges faced implementing virtual exchanges include differences in time zones, learning objectives, academic calendars, and cultural attitudes. The present article describes a case of a multilateral telecollaboration project based on the facilitated dialogue model involving four institutions—two in Europe and two in the United States—that was designed to prepare students for the experience of giving online peer feedback on collaborative writing assignments. Our initial goal was to explore the challenges students would face and the benefits they would receive from a complex telecollaboration project involving multiple institutions and two task sequences: 1) input and reflection on giving and receiving peer feedback, 2) completion of the collaborative writing task to be peer reviewed. However, new challenges and opportunities emerged after the switch to emergency e-learning and remote teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic. Relying upon multiple data sources—including correspondence, observations, class discussions, surveys, reflective writing, and information stored in virtual learning environments—our methods of data collection involved convenience sampling, while data analysis was predominantly descriptive. Our results demonstrate that even during a global pandemic, students and instructors face similar logistical challenges and reap similar benefits as has been reported in the literature. Yet our experience also reveals the resiliency of telecollaboration in the face of extreme disruption as well as the potential to exploit virtual exchange to develop learning strategies—such as methods for giving and receiving peer feedback—and meta-awareness of how language is used in the real-world—such as the implications of English as a lingua franca.

Pengaruh Tayangan Indonesia Bagus NET TV terhadap Kebudayaan Siswa-Siswi MAN Baturaja Sumatera Selatan

The rise of television programs has an impact on the audience who watch them. This influence can have a positive or negative impact depending on the type of impression itself. If a show is watched for a long enough period of time and repeatedly, it will have an impact on the audience. This study aims to determine whether there is an influence watching the Indonesian Bagus program on NET TV with the level of knowledge about culture and cultural attitudes of the students of MAN Baturaja, South Sumatra. This study uses a quantitative explanatory approach with an experimental design. The theory used is cultivation which was developed to explain the impact of watching television for heavy viewers. George Gerbner stated that for heavy viewers of television, it will essentially monopolize and include information sources. The result of this research is if a show will not affect the heavy viewers audience. However, a show can have an impact, depending on the quality of the show itself.

AI and the cardiologist: when mind, heart and machine unite

Artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning has made much headway in the consumer and advertising sector, not only affecting how and what people purchase these days, but also affecting behaviour and cultural attitudes. It is poised to influence nearly every aspect of our being, and the field of cardiology is not an exception. This paper aims to brief the clinician on the advances in AI and machine learning in the field of cardiology, its applications, while also recognising the potential for future development in these two mammoth fields. With the advent of big data, new opportunities are emerging to build AI tools, with better accuracy, that will directly aid not only the clinician but also allow nations to provide better healthcare to its citizens.

Social Interactions While Grieving Suicide Loss: A Qualitative Review of 58 Studies

The effects of suicide are both widespread and long-lasting in the lives of those closest to the deceased. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), suicide is the third leading cause of death in adolescents. Some research has shown that families who lose someone to suicide are at a higher risk of complicated grief compared to those bereaving from other types of losses. These risks may be emphasized given the socio-cultural context surrounding suicide that may problematize the grieving process. In this review, we analyzed 58 qualitative studies describing the experiences of family who lost someone to suicide. We discuss how negative social interactions due to cultural views towards suicide impacted their grieving process. We provide an integrative interpretation of the experiences of family who lost someone to suicide across the following themes: social withdrawal, family communication approaches, role change, cultural attitudes, the role of professional support, interactions with health care providers, and interactions with religious institutions. We examine these findings using the Assumptive World Theory which proposes that humans seek preservation of their reality by using their perceptions of the past to establish expectations for the future. We find that suicide loss is an experience that challenges people's assumptive worlds; suicide loss can be an unexpected trauma that can have a “shock effect” on the assumptive worlds of the bereaved. The assumptive worlds of relatives grieving suicide loss face unique challenges compared to other forms of bereavement because of ambiguity in social norms surrounding suicide that influence interactions.

Gender-Based Violence In Bangladesh: A Critical Analysis

This study tried to explore the current nature of gender-based violence and harassment in Bangladesh. Specifically, gender-related harassment and discrimination with violence against women and children have been explored throughout the study. However, the study is based on secondary data collected from gender-focused scholars and organizations. The data of ASK and BSAF have been used for critical analysis regarding violence, harassment, and discrimination against women and children in Bangladesh. As findings, the study found that the prevalence of domestic violence and oppression against wife and housemate including cleaner, housekeeping, and cooker have existed in the forms of torture, negligence, rape, forced rape, physical assault, and sexual assault. The study also found that women and girls are being harassed in transportation as they feel unsecured in movement through abusive and negative attitudes and behavior such as touching, closely standing, intentionally pushing, and gripping in shoulders, bad beckon and comment, and touching in the sensitive part of the body. It is also seen that the business environment is not favorable for women Entrepreneurs due to constraints social and cultural attitudes, lack of political commitment, and insufficient governmental provisions for establishing a women-friendly business environment.

Americans’ cultural attitudes to group work: Insights from the proverbs

The role of culture, especially the American culture, in group work is relatively understudied because it is often presumed to be no different from the colonialist West, or is alternatively stereotyped as individualistic and competitive. Thus, this paper studies English-language proverbs used in America, as culturally rich symbols, at three levels of discourse, conceptual metaphor, and content to discern what attitude American culture, as represented in the proverbs, has to group work, and what world views and psychosocial factors can inform such attitudes. The findings suggest that American culture is marginally cooperation friendly, with a considerable penchant for individualism and competition. This ambivalence was not simply a proverbial phenomenon, rather a cultural reality because it was observed to be the result of the interplay between heterogeneous conceptual metaphors, representing different world views. Psychosocially, many factors were observed to have molded the American culture’s attitude to group work, noticeably, egoism, distrust, altruism, and socially shared cognition.