Digital Competencies and Transformation in Higher Education

Extension action promotes inclusive, equitable, and quality education, a goal of sustainable development that guides educational actions around the world. The development of digital skills is a differential, together with the encouragement of open educational practices. This chapter provides reflections, as well as lessons learned, through experience in a biomedical engineering course. Encouragement, through the development of actions that correlate important skills and abilities, is essential for professional development. The carrying out of teaching, research, and extension activities and actions contributed to promote the interdisciplinarity of the various fields of study, necessary for professional development in the digital age. Thus, the actions developed stimulated the investigation, improvement, and study of topics of interest related to education and health and technology areas related to the role of the biomedical engineer, the main protagonist of this project.

„Mordercy? To byli ci z SS.” O micie niewinnego Wehrmachtu na marginesie powieści Ulli Hahn Unscharfe Bilder (,Nieostre zdjęcia’, 2003)

This article looks at the idea of the “Clean Wehrmacht”, as opposed to the SS, who were implicated in the mass executions of Jews and other civilians in the East. This narrative is proven wrong in Ulla Hahn’s Unscharfe Bilder wherein an exhibition on the Wehrmacht exposes the crimes of its soldiers. The main protagonist in Ulla Hahn’s novel Unscharfe Bilder recognizes in one of the photos a character strikingly similar to her father, and so she starts questioning him about his past. He insists that the Wehrmacht was a regular German army and tries to put individual cases into perspective. It turns out that the historical of the Wehrmacht is not so clear.

Williama Goldinga Siłą bezwładu w perspektywie ontologii zorientowanej na przedmiot

The paper applies selected devices of the methodology of Object-Oriented Ontology to study William Golding’s novel Free Fall. Particular attention is given to Graham Harman’s project, whose definition of an object accounts for all beings, humans included. Within the ontological structure of an object two components can be distinguished: the “sensual object”, which can engage in relationships with other objects, and the “real object”, which refrains from any connections. The author aims to show how the main protagonist of Golding’s novel is impacted on by material objects, how other humans are perceived by him as inherently dual beings, but most importantly how the protagonist himself discovers the thing-like quality of his own human condition.

Silence and Media Encounters in Noah Hawley’s Before the Fall

Silence is enfolded with voice—the two phenomena are complementary. The presence of silence inevitably points to the presence of sound, and by extension, to the presence of meaning. Still, encountered silence can be meaningful in itself. The article explores interactions between different media (TV news, painting and black box recordings) and the corresponding silences in Noah Hawley’s Before the Fall: the silence of the main protagonist and his avoidance of news reporters; the silence of catastrophic art voiced by the use of ekphrasis; and the silence recorded by the black boxes. The rhetoric of each medium in question and its interaction with the corresponding silence are investigated to show that silence “speaks volumes” in the novel.

Der Zauberberg in philosophical, psychological and sociological contexts: an intertextual reading of Thomas Mann

<p>Life, death, disease and Eros are themes of universal relevance that have been addressed in works of science, philosophy, literature and art throughout recorded human history. In the early 20th century, the unprecedented scale of human extermination during World War I necessitated the adaptation of old ideas to a new reality. This is manifest in the work of the German author Thomas Mann, whose developing ideas on life, death, disease and Eros are clearly apparent in his novel Der Zauberberg (1913-1924). Der Zauberberg is set at a Swiss tuberculosis sanatorium in the years leading up to World War I. The main protagonist, Hans Castorp, arrives at the sanatorium as a visitor and is subsequently diagnosed with tuberculosis. During his sanatorium stay, Castorp comes into contact with three pedagogic figures: Ludovico Settembrini, Leo Naphta and Mynheer Peeperkorn. These men represent various attitudes towards life, death, disease and Eros. The humanist Settembrini, for example, affirms life but is repulsed by Eros, disease and death; the Jesuit ascetic Naphta glorifies erotic suffering and death while denying life, and the coffee magnate Peeperkorn celebrates life and Eros – yet to a pathological extent. My thesis follows the dialogic clash between the views of these pedagogues, as well as their influence on Hans Castorp, and is divided into sections that relate these views to their sociological implications. After examining the nature of death, life and disease within the novel, I relate these to the novel’s portrayal of society. I follow this with an investigation of the connection between death, life, disease and Eros, and conclude by examining these themes within their sociological context in Der Zauberberg. The conceptions of life, death, disease and Eros in Der Zauberberg are largely borrowed, following Thomas Mann’s creative technique of “Montage”, which allowed him to incorporate themes, concepts, paraphrased passages and quotations from other thinkers into his own work. These borrowed ideas create a complexity of textual relationships that corresponds to the theory of intertextuality; accordingly, my thesis examines Thomas Mann’s novel from an intertextual angle. Although Der Zauberberg has been the subject of intensive, source-critical study, the newer field of intertextual theory has largely been ignored, notable exceptions being the analyses of Thomas Mann’s works by Barbara Beßlich, Claudia Gremler, Michael Maar and Franziska Schößler. These scholars have narrowed the original, prohibitively wide scope of intertextual theory to enable intertextual analysis of individual texts. Following their example, I limit my definition of the intertext to philosophy, sociology and psychology, specifically to the works of the philosopher-poet Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), of the philosophers and sociologists Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, and of the psychologist and sociologist Sigmund Freud. My analysis of Der Zauberberg identifies connections to the intertexts within the novel, and examines how clearly these are presented and what form they take. Most importantly, I investigate the heuristic impact of the novel’s intertextuality, that is, how the intertextual relationships in Der Zauberberg influence the reader’s interpretation of both the nature of life, death, disease and Eros, and their effect on culture in the novel.</p>

Der Zauberberg in philosophical, psychological and sociological contexts: an intertextual reading of Thomas Mann

<p>Life, death, disease and Eros are themes of universal relevance that have been addressed in works of science, philosophy, literature and art throughout recorded human history. In the early 20th century, the unprecedented scale of human extermination during World War I necessitated the adaptation of old ideas to a new reality. This is manifest in the work of the German author Thomas Mann, whose developing ideas on life, death, disease and Eros are clearly apparent in his novel Der Zauberberg (1913-1924). Der Zauberberg is set at a Swiss tuberculosis sanatorium in the years leading up to World War I. The main protagonist, Hans Castorp, arrives at the sanatorium as a visitor and is subsequently diagnosed with tuberculosis. During his sanatorium stay, Castorp comes into contact with three pedagogic figures: Ludovico Settembrini, Leo Naphta and Mynheer Peeperkorn. These men represent various attitudes towards life, death, disease and Eros. The humanist Settembrini, for example, affirms life but is repulsed by Eros, disease and death; the Jesuit ascetic Naphta glorifies erotic suffering and death while denying life, and the coffee magnate Peeperkorn celebrates life and Eros – yet to a pathological extent. My thesis follows the dialogic clash between the views of these pedagogues, as well as their influence on Hans Castorp, and is divided into sections that relate these views to their sociological implications. After examining the nature of death, life and disease within the novel, I relate these to the novel’s portrayal of society. I follow this with an investigation of the connection between death, life, disease and Eros, and conclude by examining these themes within their sociological context in Der Zauberberg. The conceptions of life, death, disease and Eros in Der Zauberberg are largely borrowed, following Thomas Mann’s creative technique of “Montage”, which allowed him to incorporate themes, concepts, paraphrased passages and quotations from other thinkers into his own work. These borrowed ideas create a complexity of textual relationships that corresponds to the theory of intertextuality; accordingly, my thesis examines Thomas Mann’s novel from an intertextual angle. Although Der Zauberberg has been the subject of intensive, source-critical study, the newer field of intertextual theory has largely been ignored, notable exceptions being the analyses of Thomas Mann’s works by Barbara Beßlich, Claudia Gremler, Michael Maar and Franziska Schößler. These scholars have narrowed the original, prohibitively wide scope of intertextual theory to enable intertextual analysis of individual texts. Following their example, I limit my definition of the intertext to philosophy, sociology and psychology, specifically to the works of the philosopher-poet Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), of the philosophers and sociologists Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, and of the psychologist and sociologist Sigmund Freud. My analysis of Der Zauberberg identifies connections to the intertexts within the novel, and examines how clearly these are presented and what form they take. Most importantly, I investigate the heuristic impact of the novel’s intertextuality, that is, how the intertextual relationships in Der Zauberberg influence the reader’s interpretation of both the nature of life, death, disease and Eros, and their effect on culture in the novel.</p>

Youth solving pandemics: hopeful futures in Maths Claesson’s novel Pandemic

Are representations of pandemics in fiction always bleak dystopian tales understood as nature’s revenge on the modern Faustian man, or could they also express hope and expand our imagination in a time of environmental crisis? In this article, we analyse the young adult novel Pandemic (Swedish title: Pandemi, 2018) by Swedish author Maths Claesson. Pandemic is the third novel in a trilogy (2013–2018) with 15-year-old astronaut-trainee Linux as the main protagonist. During his astronaut program on a space station, a pandemic breaks out on Earth. While scientists on Earth struggle to isolate the virus and find a vaccine, Linux and his fellow astronaut-trainees are asked by the WHO to try out a simulation, a computer game aimed at isolating a pandemic outbreak and finding a vaccine. Their simulation is successful and eventually becomes decisive for the solution of the current pandemic crisis on Earth. Departing from Critical Future Studies (Goode and Godhe, Cult Unbound J Curr Cul Res 9(1):108–129, 2017), we focus on the figures of hope (cf. Moylan, Demand the impossible: Science fiction and the utopian imagination, Methuen, pp. 1–2, 1986) for a sustainable future and analyse how the novel is widening the scopes of possible futures. We show how the computer simulation and the successful solution of the crisis serves as a vehicle for a broader discussion about what kind of future we want, a future where the conquest of space offers new opportunities, e.g. for solving the environmental crisis. While normally in Y/A speculative fiction, technology is almost exclusively depicted as ostensibly serving human needs, in Pandemic it is thanks to technology, and the younger generation’s particular skills, that the disease is conquered. In this sense, the novel is hopeful since it depicts the younger generation as being capable of developing different thinking patterns from those of the adult society.

MODERN WOMENS ASPIRATIONS IN SHASHI DESHPANDE THE DARK HOLDS NO TERRORS

Shashi Deshpande in her novel has presented a realistic picture of the modern educated, intelligent middle class woman in the novel. The New Woman is neither fully traditional nor fully modern. A new paradigms related to a womans life came into existence i.e. tradition and modernity, economic dependence, self-assertion, aspiration and independent in life in her novel.The New Woman in Deshpandes novel gets all types of rights in their life hence they struggle a lot to get free from the traditional world andin quest for her own identity. The present paper is an attempt to analyze Shashi Deshpandes novel The Dark Holds No Terrors.The Methodology followed in the analysis is of comparative and contrast.Sarita is the main protagonist of the novel, who is modern emancipated middle-class educated woman in the novel. She plays different roles to achieve her goals and aspirations in her life through facing various traumas in the novel.An attempt has been made to highlight Deshpandes story The Dark Holds No Terror that allocates the educated women in all possible ways.

Bimala in Ghare-Baire: Tagore’s New Woman Relocating the “World in Her Home”

The character of Bimala in Tagore’s Ghare- Baire or The Home and the World as a symbol of struggle for the liberation of Bengali woman as well as Bengal remains at the centre of scholarly discussion since the publication (1916), translation (1919) and the film adaptation (1984) of the novel. Bimala, the main protagonist of the novel is presented as a native Indian woman who gets western education and lives a modern lifestyle due to her marriage. She has conflicting attitudes, feelings and thoughts which recur randomly in the narrative. The paper focusses on the character of Bimala and interrogates the location of her agency with respect to the rising Swadeshi movement and the political excesses on one hand and her relationship with Nikhil and Sandip on the other. On a further note, reflecting on the political and epic underpinnings of Bimala (caught between the gradual and the radical approach to Swadeshi), the paper intends to stretch beyond her “situation” (the apex of the triangular relationship) and explore her self-realization at the end of the novel. Bimala, the woman set between the option of choices between the ‘motherland’ and the ‘two-men’ gradually transgress from the shackles of her naïve identity to become the beset New Woman. To explore Tagore’s rewritten epic of a woman (epitomized in real life as the New Woman), we need to discuss how the writer helped shaping the image of the New Woman through his conscious evoking of Bimala in the role of Sita, Nikhil in the role of Rama and Sandip in the role of Ravana. In response to the popular inscriptions of Bharatmata, Tagore allegorises the iconographic representation of Bimala resembling the “divine feminine strength (Shakti)for creation and (Kali) for the cause of destruction.” (Pandit 1995,217-19).

The Making of a Success Story

This chapter introduces the main protagonist of the book: Carlo Calà Duke of Diano, a jurist and high-ranking official in the viceregal administration. This chapter also sets the historical context of the story of the forgery by describing the main political, economic, social, and religious characteristics of the Kingdom of Naples in the seventeenth century. More specifically, this chapter explains the social, cultural, and intellectual advantages that a noble pedigree conferred to the Neapolitan non-aristocratic elites; explores the main sources of tension between the papacy and the Neapolitan viceroy; sheds light on the power dynamics between the Roman Inquisition and the local ecclesiastical leaders; and introduces the complexities of the liturgical and devotional life of early modern Catholics.