1,721,216 research outputs found
Introduction
No full textEnvironmental and global outlooks are currently at the center of the most lively and urgent international scholarship. This volume seeks to overcome the self-reference of American Studies by intersecting the study of American literature and history with the questions and concerns raised by these perspectives. It aims at re-conceptualizing the mutual and shifting positions of center(s) and margin(s), subject(s) and object(s) in terms of relation and particularly of an inclusive structure of relations based on an ecological ethics. The essays explore many methodological hypotheses, ranging from Christa Greve-Vollp’s work on eco-cosmopolitanism to Peter Bardaglio’s report on US climate activism to the ecocritical and ecofeminist viewpoints of Scott Slovic and Greta Gaard respectively. In addition to contributing to academic discourse, the essays – written both by young and by established international scholars and coherently arranged in four thematic sections – explore topics that are in some measure of interest to the broader public: identity and new forms of belonging; migration and environment; ecolanguage, ecopoetry and ecopoetics; translation and multilingualism; animal studies; environmental activism; shifting geographies; ecofeminism
A circulating centre: Naipaul’s the Enigma of arrival and European culture
No full textIn V.S. Naipaul's novel The Enigma of arrival, the role of sight is crucial in the relationship between the European 'center' and the colonial 'periphery'. I focus on the role of painting reproductions of European art as an example of the circulation of art beyond the culture of origin
The Legacy of Last Men : Narrations on Ecocatastrophe and Ecophobia
No full textIn her recent novels Oryx and Crake (2003) and The Year of the Flood (2009), Margaret Atwood stages two parallel plots in a post-apocalyptic scenery of great ecocritical interest. I focus on the debate on the value of literature and language in a technocratic society. Crake’s catastrophic actions – the use of genetic engineering to wipe out the human species and replace it with a new one – are clear manifestations of his ecophobia, as related to the question of control and dominion over nature
Eat Me Tender
No full textLove can be dangerous when it comes to cooking. In this image, the evidence that a ‘lover’ wants to possess his woman just like a ‘meat lover’ wants to eat his steak is exposed in a grotesque way. Sexist discrimination and animal exploitation are here associated to ‘love’, understood as an abuse mitigated by tenderness and care in the act of possessing and killing
OVER THE BRINK OF ENVIRONMENTAL COLLAPSE. POWER, RELIGION, AND NATURE IN MARGARET ATWOOD¿S MADDADDAM TRILOGY
Full text linkMargaret Atwood’s writings have been the subject of many critical studies from different theoretical angles, which outline the diverse and composite quality of the Canadian author’s literary explorations. The publication of the MaddAddam trilogy – Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013) – have opened yet another critical perspective, which is that of science fiction or, as Atwood herself defines it, speculative fiction. Moving from the Canadian roots of Atwood’s speculative texts and from the debate with Ursula K. Le Guin on science fiction, this study employs the interpretative tools provided by ecocriticism and posthumanism to investigate Atwood’s trilogy as a single and accomplished body of work. In the second chapter, devoted to Oryx and Crake, I explore the developments of Atwood’s lifelong interest in the nature and politics of power, and I argue that she employs parody as a subverting strategy that questions roles and discourses involved in power relations. In the third chapter, I analyze The Year of the Flood as an investigation in the religious roots of culture, which represents a bulwark against the ruthless dreams – or nightmares – of scientific and technological progress. Lastly, I engage with the critical discourses on nature and on the environmental crisis, to attain the conclusion that, in MaddAddam, hybridity and a revived awareness of the power of narration represent a strategy of survival. Ultimately, my goal lies in analyzing Atwood’s aesthetic responses to the urgency of the environmental crisis, which rely on the tools of storytelling and on the playful use of language. At bottom, I argue that these tools serve as aesthetic responses to the threat of a dystopian future
[Clinical and metabolic aspects of juvenile myocardial infarct]
No full textA clinical and metabolic study of 61 patients with myoocardial infarct before the age of 40 yr showed a high frequency of familial involvement, particularly in subjects with type IIA and IIB hyperbetalipoproteinaemia. Excess weight and arterial hypertension were rare, while premonitory angina was absent in 59%. Four subjects were diabetic. Oral glucose tolerance was normal in 14 and of diabetic type in 26 of 40 patients examined; the insulin response pointed to insulin-resistance. Dyslipidaemia was noted in 45%, including type IIA and IIB hyperbetalipoproteinaemia in 27%. Distribution of the frequency of infarct in function of cholesterolaemia classes gave a bimodal curve indicative of distinct normo- and hypercholesterolaemic groups within the series. Reduced glucose tolerance was more frequent in patients with low blood cholesterol. This suggests that reduced tolerance and high blood cholesterol are independent risk factors in coronary disease. No relation between the clinical and metabolic data could be ascertained
XMM-Newton observation of CXOUJ010043.1–721134: the first deeplook at the soft X-ray emission of a magnetar
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