Translingualism in Three University Roles: Pedagogical Postures and Critical Cautions

This essay offers and develops some useful parameters toward the ongoing conversations on multilingual and multi-dialectic writing students in Europe and the United States, two settings with oft-competing views of writers’ varied language backgrounds. I present a synchronic snapshot of writing pedagogy as it relates to translingualism at this temporal moment. Specifically, I seek to link three different university roles—classroom teachers, writing center directors, and WAC directors—to certain translingual postures and their consequential applications. By introducing and elaborating upon the labels “Traditionalist,” “Allied Enthusiast,” and “Active Advocate” as they attend each role, I wish to offer helpful ways to understand the consequences of embracing these postures. This charting of stakeholders and their characteristics can more readily facilitate concrete scholarly discussion concerning translingual writing instruction as it moves forward. I conclude with recommendations and cautions, bringing into question some of the settled assumptions remaining in our field.

Liberty Restored

Of the issues confronting Perkins’ approach to the next two states of human nature, regeneration and glorification, the restoration of the will, specifically the lost “libertie of grace,” is the most complex. This is because he has assumed that the fallen will retains its basic freedom of choice and is both bound in sinfulness and incoercible. Given its condition, grace is not an object of choice for the will. It is not chosen—it is applied by God without abridging the freedom of the will. This is done in such a way that the will is freely active toward faith, obedience, and the good in the same temporal moment as the divine act of grace.

Having a moment: the revolutionary semiotic of COVID-19

The time of COVID-19 represents a distinct, but currently under-defined and under-theorised, temporal moment. Using semiotic methods, this paper examines how the mechanical actions of the virus, through becoming social, create a new viral time, heralding an already-arrived new historical epoch. This epoch, which is simultaneously both homogenous and undifferentiated at one tempo, and supercharged with change, events and radically uncertain futurity at another, is riven with revolutionary potential. The existential challenge posed to the faltering socio-economic order is evidenced by a panicked political response combining reactionary attempts to reimpose temporal certainty and fixity, with desperate material concessions to a public suddenly expelled from a previously subsuming dominant productive time of capitalism. As such, this temporal crisis offers the necessary, if not sufficient, moment for profound re-imaginings of our productive and social relations, and an opportunity to look beyond the possible end of the world, and towards the end of capitalism.

Determinants of Suicidality in the European General Population: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Close to one million people commit suicide each year, with suicidal attempts being the main risk factor for suicide. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to achieve a greater understanding of suicidality in the general population of Europe by studying associated factors and their statistical significance with suicidality, as well as the effect of the temporal moment in which suicidality is observed in a relationship. A search strategy was carried out in electronic databases: Proquest’s Psychology Database, Scopus, PsycINFO, Medline and Embase. Odds ratios (ORs), publication bias, influential studies on heterogeneity and analysis moderators were calculated. Twenty-six studies were included after meeting the inclusion criteria. Factors statistically associated with suicidality are female gender, age over 65 years, unemployment, low social support, adulthood adversity, childhood adversity, family history of mental disorder, any affective disorder, major depression, anxiety/stress/somatoform disorders, tobacco and substance use, any mental disorder and body mass index. As a limitation, a high heterogeneity between studies was found. Factors associated with suicidality in the general population are relevant for understanding the suicidal phenomenon.