The Stacks (Library of Anglo-American Culture & History - FID AAC, Göttingen State and University Library)
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Challenging Power Positions in Selected Anglophone Fiction
No full textThis collection presents five student theses on unique topics in Anglophone literature. From the dystopian worlds of cyberpunk cinema to the fluid and experimental universe of Finnegans Wake, these works cover a range of compelling issues that will captivate any literature enthusiast. Fans of contemporary literature will be intrigued by the analysis of the Twilight series and its impact on readers’ views of body image and eating disorders. Read up on the cultural anxieties explored through literary monstrosity and discover overlooked voices through the examination of marginalised figures in various texts. Each thesis offers fresh insights and profound interpretations of core texts from Anglophone literature
Extracting Census Data for Analysis of Prisoner Inflow, Transfer and Release
No full textResponding to the dearth of fully-comprehensive or summary data on prisoner or ‘carceral mobilities’, this paper provides the first comprehensive case study analysis of the flow into, between and out from prisons. By uniquely extracting data from the 2011 UK Census to identify and visualise trends in movement, highlight centrality of institutions and observe the self-containedness of regions of operation, findings reveal specific volumes and geographies of prisoner flow as well as discrepancies with the expected practices of prison category transfers and disparities between the distances travelled by prisoners in establishments with different functions. Such analysis is a critical tool in appraising (in)efficiencies with the governance of prisons at the regional and national level. In conclusion, Census Data is revealed as a viable source of data for analysis in situations where institutional data is not forthcoming/available, which provides significant potential for the advancement of the range and scope of studies in carceral mobilities and criminological research more broadly
Locating Anglo-Italian Communities in Bevis and the Naples Manuscript
No full textThis article contextualises the Anglo-Italian aspects of Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS XIII.B.29. This fifteenth-century paper miscellany contains Bevis of Hampton, Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale, St Alexius, Libeaus Desconus, as well as a recipe collection, a section of Lydgate’s “Doublenesse”, and a fragment of Sir Isumbras . The book is among a very select number of codices containing Middle English texts that are presently preserved in an Italian institution. Previous research has demonstrated XIII.B.29 must have travelled to the Italian peninsula at a relatively early date, but the exact reason behind its compilation and the method by which it arrived in Italy remain uncertain. This article reviews the manuscript’s design, provenance, and contents, arguing the book is not just an English manuscript in Italy, but also to some degree an English manuscript about Italy and Italian experiences. Specifically, the article contends that an episode in the manuscript’s Bevis, which describes a street fight near Lombard Street in London, benefits from a reading that acknowledges late medieval developments in finance and long-distance Anglo-Italian commerce, as well as the emergence of Italian communities in Southampton and the capital.Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (3102
Building Sustainable Information Systems and Transformer Models on Demand
No full textThe growing practice of archiving research data in repositories reflects an upward trend. However, storing data in an RDR (Research Data Repository) does not guarantee that the archived data will always be readily reusable, even if this fulfils the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable Reusable) principles. To ensure sustainable RDM (Research Data Management), archiving must consider the future potential for data reuse in a low-threshold fashion. In this article, we demonstrate the utilisation of straightforward methods to implement a so-called warm or hot archiving for research data within an RDR, as opposed to the conventional cold archiving approach. We explore the additional value of using research data in the humanities, emphasising the advantages of maintaining data accessibility and relevance over time. In the humanities, evaluating numerous data sets efficiently is crucial for current and future projects. Reviewing and evaluating relevance is important, particularly when dealing with a substantial number of data sets. Rapid evaluation facilitates profound decisions on the utility of the data for one’s ongoing or upcoming projects. For hot archiving, this means that in addition to the research data, the data should be available in a human-friendly way, i.e., a viewer application to visualise the data should be easily accessible. However, as rapid developments in the IT sector mean that after a few years, it cannot be guaranteed that these viewers or other tools will work, we also show how data can be viewed in a user-specific way via the RDR and how sustainable viewing can be integrated into the RDR. This article presents a generic approach to building sustainable viewers, which we call information systems, or transformer models on demand using data from pre-modern Arabic. In addition, we show that the easy-to-use chatbot ChatGPT can alternatively be context-specifically prepared to deliver more precise results and associated resources in the field of humanities. On the one hand, we have achieved a substantial reduction in the development time of an information system, from months to seconds, as well as the ability to fine-tune BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) models without specific knowledge in selecting models or tools. On the other hand, we have developed a chatbot that not only provides project-specific responses but also references the sources
Exploring Language Proficiency through Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA)
No full textRecurrence quantification analysis (RQA) is a time-series analysis method that uses autocorrelation properties of typing data to detect regularities within the writing process. The following paper first gives a detailed introduction to RQA and its application to time series data. We then apply RQA to keystroke logging data of first and foreign language writing to illustrate how outcome measures of RQA can be understood as skill-driven constraints on keyboard typing performance. Forty native German students performed two prompted writing assignments, one in German and one in English, a standardized copy task, and a standardized English placement test. We assumed more fluent and skilled writing to reveal more structured typing time series patterns. Accordingly, we expected writing in a well-mastered first language to coincide with higher values in relevant RQA measures as compared to writing in a foreign language. Results of mixed model ANOVAs confirmed our hypothesis. We further observed that RQA measures tend to be higher, thus indicating more structured data, whenever parameters of pause, burst, and revision analyses indicate more fluent writing. Multiple regression analyses revealed that, in addition to typing skills, language proficiency significantly predicts outcomes of RQA. Thus, the present data emphasize RQA being a valuable resource for studying time series data that yields meaningful information about the effort a writer must exert during text production.Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover (1038
Representations of Monstrosity and the Posthuman in Adaptations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
No full textBystanders' Collective Responses Set the Norm against Hate Speech
No full textHate speech incidents often occur in social settings, from public transport to football stadiums. To counteract a prevailing passive attitude towards them, governmental authorities, sociologists, and philosophers stress bystanders’ responsibility to oppose or block hate speech. Here, across two online experiments with UK participants using custom visual vignettes, we provide empirical evidence that bystanders’ expression of opposition can affect how harmful these incidents are perceived, but only as part of a collective response: one expressed by a majority of bystanders present. Experiment 1 ( N = 329) shows that the silence or intervention of three bystanders affects the harm caused by hate speech, but one bystander does not. Experiment 2 ( N = 269) shows this is not simply a matter of numbers but rather one of norms: only unanimous opposition reduces the public perception of the damage created by the incident. Based on our results, we advance an empirical norm account: group responses to hate speech modulate its harm by indicating either a permissive or a disapproving social norm. Our account and results, showing the need to consider responses to hate speech at a collective level, have direct implications for social psychology, the philosophy of language and public policies
Aesthetics
No full textThis “conversation” explores questions which first appeared during the Snowden era, a time when the stakes surrounding — and the theoretical resources for — thinking about secrecy had more clarity than they seem to now. Returning to earlier work, Potolsky and Birchall consider ways to update their accounts of the aesthetics of secrecy for a world shaped by the explosion of online conspiracism and by renewed urgency surrounding questions of race, gender, and identity. There has since been a dramatic shift in the ways that we conceive secrecy, the form that it takes, and how we think about the dichotomy of public and private. The “conversation” is built out of four questions posed by the authors to each other, with revised answers forming the basis for this discussion
Histories of Northern and Regional Australia
No full textThis article examines Townsville’s distinctiveness as a site for festivals which looked to the Pacific region in presenting arts and culture. Two festivals – the Townsville Pacific Festival (1970-1991), a ten-day celebration of arts and culture in northern Australia that ran for over two decades, and the fifth Festival of Pacific Arts (1988) – made their home in Townsville. In placing these two very different festivals side by side, we draw attention to the distinctive flavour of engagement with arts and culture prosecuted in Townsville in the 1970s and 1980s. Leading from the north, the celebration of “high art” alongside Indigenous cultural heritage of the region points to the role of Australia’s north in reorienting the focus of Australian cultural life. In this article, we introduce the two festivals, which, while being independent of one another, demonstrate a shared aspiration for defining far north Queensland as a site of diverse cultural practice. Each festival negotiated the Australian arts landscape represented by government departments and arts bodies including the Australia Council for the Arts and Musica Viva, but also created a distinctly localised leadership that guided the priorities of the Townsville Pacific Festival and the 5th Festival of Pacific Arts
Engaging with Mortality in Collaborative Fantasy Narratives
No full textFictional narrative texts frequently explore concepts of death and dying through their protagonists. Fundamentally, readers understand fictional characters as human consciousnesses that experience the events of the narrative, up to and including death. Fantasy narratives offer writers and readers the opportunity to ask: How would this human consciousness react not only to its own death, but to its resurrection? Moreover, tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) based on fantasy conventions place the reader in the role of the protagonist. This paper argues that TTRPGs bring participants even closer to the experience depicted in the narrative, allowing them to reflect on death from a unique perspective.Fiktive Erzähltexte erkunden durch ihre Protagonist_innen oft Konzepte von Tod und Sterben. Grundsätzlich verstehen Leser_innen eine fiktionale Figur als ein menschliches Bewusstsein, das die Ereignisse in der Erzählung bis hin zum Tod erlebt. Fantasy-Geschichten bieten Autor_innen und Leser_innen die Möglichkeit, zu fragen: Wie würde dieses menschliche Bewusstsein nicht nur auf den eigenen Tod, sondern auch auf sein Wiederauferstehen reagieren? Auf Fantasy-Konventionen basierende Tabletop-Rollenspiele (TTRPGs) versetzen Leser_innen darüber hinaus selbst in die Rolle der Protagonist_innen. Dieser Beitrag untersucht, wie TTRPGs Teilnehmer_innen näher an die in der Erzählung dargestellte Erfahrung heranführen und es ihnen ermöglichen, den Tod aus einer einzigartigen Perspektive zu betrachten