Online Conferences: A New Paradigm for Periodical Studies?

In spring 2020, during the cataclysmic first wave of COVID-19, academic conferences across the world were postponed or cancelled. A rare exception was in the field of periodical studies: an asynchronous online conference, Future States: Modernity and National Identity in Popular Magazines, 1890–1945, co-directed by Andrew Thacker (NTU) and Tim Satterthwaite, which opened on schedule and ran for three weeks (30 March–17 April 2020). A selection of five papers from the conference forms the body of this special issue of the Journal of European Periodical Studies, and these are introduced below. Given the spate of online academic events that have followed, this introduction first offers some general thoughts on the Future States conference model, in the hope that its pioneering approach may be of interest.

Mimesis and Experience: A Platonic Perspective on Ricoeur's Time and Narrative

Ricoeur's Time and Narrative is duly cited in footnotes but does not seem to have had a strong impact on anglophone narratology. One of the reasons for this is certainly Ricoeur's emphasis on plot, which does not harmonize with the focus on consciousness in cognitive narratology. This article suggests that a reconsideration of the concept of mimesis could help build a bridge between Ricoeur's phenomenological approach and cognitive studies in narrative. More specifically, it argues that Plato's discussion of poetry in the Republic, unanimously criticized by modern scholars, can enrich Ricoeur's concept of mimesis. While Ricoeur follows Aristotle, who ties mimesis to plot, Plato, in Republic 2 and 3, considers mimesis an act of impersonation and thereby paves the way to the level of character, on which cognitive narratologists tend to focus. This article first offers a new reading of the Republic's examination of poetry, trying to show that Plato's account of the effects of poetry on the listeners’ souls resonates with current cognitive approaches. Equipped with this reading, it then turns to Ricoeur again. Ricoeur's description of mimesis III, the reader's adoption of the narrative configuration of time in life, remains vague and abstract. Through its focus on the impact of characters on audiences, Plato's idea of mimesis permits us to integrate a cognitivist perspective into Ricoeur's phenomenological account.

Memory Formation and the Valorization of Commemoration

Chapter 2 focuses on collective memory formation. It first offers a narrative of the events in both Beijing and Hong Kong during the 1989 student movement in order to shed light on the production of an emotional imprint on Hong Kong people’s mind. It then analyzes the characteristics of media representations of not only the Tiananmen crackdown but also the commemoration activities in Hong Kong. The analysis highlights the role of discursive valorization and scandalization of counter-commemoration discourses in the emergence, consolidation, and strengthening of collective memory of Tiananmen from the 1990s to the early 2010s.

Speaking English With Preschoolers: Using Language to Further Children’s Development

Language is not only a tool for communication, but it is also a framework for mental activity. Increased use of language in specific ways with preschoolers can guide them to develop new mental skills such as planning steps for taking action, imagining the future, and remembering details of past events. This article suggests that adults, even those whose first language is not English, can further the development of preschoolers. To that end, it first offers an overview of the importance of language development and explains how it is holistically integrated into learning activities in preschools. Next, the article details techniques early childhood educators (ECEs) and other adults can use to further children’s mental development and introduces activities incorporating these techniques, when engaging preschoolers in speaking English. Finally, it introduces the author’s classroom experience in the practical training of future ECEs as part of a Japanese university’s English language program. 言語はコミュニケーションの道具だけではなく、精神活動の枠組みでもある。未就学児童に特定の手法で言語使用を増やすことで、行動の手順を計画したり、先のことを想像したり、または過去の出来事の詳細を思い出したり、といった新しい精神スキルの発達へと導いていくことができる。本論文では、英語を第一言語としない成人でも、未就学児童の発達を促進することができることを提示した。その目的を達成するために、まず言語発達の重要性を概観し、幼稚園での学習活動にそれがどのように統合的に組み込まれているのかを説明した。次に、幼児教育者やその他の成人が児童の精神発達を促進するために使えるテクニックと、未就学児童に英語を話すよう仕向けるため、それらのテクニックを取り入れた活動を紹介した。最後に、日本の大学の英語プログラムの一環として、筆者が教室で行った将来の幼児教育者育成のための実践的なトレーニングを紹介する。

Driving a Hard Bargain is a Balancing Act: How social preferences constrain the negotiation process

We investigate the haggling process in bargaining. Using an experimental bargaining game, we find that a first offer has a significant impact on the bargaining outcome even if it is costless to reject. First offers convey information on the player’s reservation value induced by his social preferences. They are most often accepted when they are not above the equal split. However, offers which request much more than the equal split induce punishing counteroffers. The bargaining outcome is therefore critically influenced by the balance of toughness and kindness signaled through the offers made in the haggling phase.

Buyers, Maybe Moving Second Is Not That Bad After All: Low-Power, Anxiety, and Making Inferior First Offers

The behavioral decision-making and negotiations literature usually advocates a first-mover advantage, explained the anchoring and adjustment heuristic. Thus, buyers, who according to the social norm, tend to move second, strive to make the first offer to take advantage of this effect. On the other hand, negotiation practitioners and experts often advise the opposite, i.e., moving second. These opposite recommendations regarding first offers are termed the Practitioner-Researcher paradox. In the current article, we investigate the circumstances under which buyers would make less favorable first offers than they would receive were they to move second, focusing on low power and anxiety during negotiations. Across two studies, we manipulated negotiators' best alternative to the negotiated agreement (BATNA) and measured their anxiety. Our results show that, when facing neutral-power sellers, weak buyers who feel anxious would make inferior first offers (Studies 1 and 2). When facing low-power sellers, weak buyers would make inferior first offers across all anxiety levels (Study 2). Our findings shed light on two critical factors leading to the Practitioner-Researcher paradox: power and anxiety, and offer concrete guidelines to buyers who find themselves at low power and highly anxious during negotiations.

Beckett, Atwood, and Postapocalyptic Tragicomedy

Ecological catastrophe has challenged the contemporary novel to find forms that convey the scale and affective conditions of life amid looming planetary devastation. While sincere tragedy has been the dominant mode and tone of the novel's approach, recent scholarship has explored the possibilities of the comic, which presents its own limitations and ethical problems. This article argues that Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake moves past these limitations of genre and tone through engagements with the more complicated tragicomic sensibility of Samuel Beckett. The tragicomic first offers Atwood a mode that better conveys the complexity of mixed possible fortunes and futures amid ecological catastrophe while it also better evokes the strange, often contradictory affects of life in the Anthropocene. Yet Atwood sees greater promise in Beckett's tragicomedy beyond his mere endurance of unchangeable existential conditions. She instead repurposes the tragicomic for the ecological and political needs of the contemporary to produce “survival laughter,” an attitude that recognizes the tragic conditions of catastrophe but simultaneously uses comedy to protect the psyche from despair in the face of devastation. Unlike Beckett's laughter that merely endures entropic decline, Atwood's survival laughter opens the possibility for dynamic, creative action oriented to the hope of transformation and flourishing, even amid seemingly total loss. Through tragicomic survival laughter, Atwood moves the ecological novel beyond its dominant mode of sincere tragic disaster while also avoiding the pitfalls of pure comedy to instead imagine more integrated and realistic forms of ecological resilience that powerfully combine mitigation and adaptation.

Introduction

The chapter provides an overview of this book on religious non-affiliation in American society. It first offers some social science background on the non-affiliated in the United States, so that readers will have some general knowledge before they embark on the book. Then it provides a brief overview of each chapter, so that readers will be familiar with what is to come. The chapter’s author is an identity scholar, so there follows a discussion of how we might understand the changing nature of the religious identity in American society. The chapter ends on a personal note with the author’s own experience and a brief evaluation of religious non-affiliation.

Varietals of Control’s Exercise

This chapter first offers a clear explication of control’s exercise. It then briefly discusses control over omissions, before turning to a discussion of different varietals of control. So, in particular, voluntary control is central to several debates in philosophy. No acceptable account exists. This chapter extends the account of control to offer an explication of voluntary control. It then discusses this account in light of Alfred Mele’s recent work on direct control. Finally, this chapter offers an explication of a notion that is important to many who think and write about free will. This is the notion of what is “up to” an agent. The explication turns on the notion of voluntary control.