532 research outputs found
Liam Rector, 14th Annual ODU Literary Festival
No full textLiam Rector is the author of The Sorrow of Architecture, a book of poems. He\u27s also the editor of The Day I Was Older: On the Poetry of Donald Hall. He has taught at Old Dominion University, George Mason, Goucher College, and Phillips Academy at Andover. In addition, he has administered literary programs at the Folger Academy of American Poets. Currently, Liam Rector is executive director of Associated Writing Programs, which has lately taken a leading role in defending the 1st amendment. Rector has been awarded both NEA and Guggenheim fellowships for poetry
Liam Rector, 12th Annual ODU Literary Festival
No full textLiam Rector is the author of a book of poetry, The Sorrow of Architecture, 1984, and editor of The Day I Was Older: On the Poetry of Donald Hall, 1989, and is currently working on a second book of poems, tentatively titled The Persistence of Virginia. He is executive director of the Associated Writing Programs, located at Old Dominion University
The Political Novel in Europe and the Challenges of the Digital Era:Response to Verónica Paula Gómez
No full textIn his response to Gómez’s essay, Liam Connell questions whether the democratic potential of internet-based texts still holds in an era dominated by the reassertion of big tech and private property – which calls into question the utopian quality of the communicative infrastructure we commonly refer to as the internet. He also considers whether postcolonial novels have already achieved the kind of deterritorialisation that Gómez ascribes to electronic literature: “Translation technologies may promise to achieve something more but would that re-enshrine national belonging or further disperse the reader from a national frame?
Offshore cosmopolitanism: reading the nation in Rana Dasgupta’s Tokyo Cancelled, Lawrence Chua’s Gold by the Inch and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger
Full text linkFollowing Ronen Palan’s The Offshore World (2003) Connell understands the central feature of the offshore as the‘bifurcation of the nation state’: the state splits itself in two by continuing to govern those areas that remain easy to legislate while surrendering to the international realm those which do not. Connell considers how the offshore can be understood as a form of cosmopolitanism, with a particular emphasis on the way that the obligations of the state are stretched to accommodate foreign businesses, foreign capital and even foreign citizens. Yet, as Connell demonstrates, the cosmopolitan promise of the offshore conceals the double nature of the nation-state which functions both as a node for discursive community formation and, simultaneously, as cover for the evasion of any communal responsibilities that this might imply. Reading Lawrence Chua’s Gold by the Inch (1998), Rana Dasgupta’s Tokyo Cancelled (2006) and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger (2008) Connell examines how the idea of national belonging struggles to survive in representations of the offshore. In particular Connell’s analysis shows that the difficulty that arises from trying to represent the offshore leads these texts to open up new perspectives on global capitalism by focussing upon its differential relationships to the state
Offshore cosmopolitanism: reading the nation in Rana Dasgupta’s Tokyo Cancelled, Lawrence Chua’s Gold by the Inch and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger
Full text linkFollowing Ronen Palan’s The Offshore World (2003) Connell understands the central feature of the offshore as the ‘bifurcation of the nation state’: the state splits itself in two by continuing to govern those areas that remain easy to legislate while surrendering to the international realm those which do not. Connell considers how the offshore can be understood as a form of cosmopolitanism, with a particular emphasis on the way that the obligations of the state are stretched to accommodate foreign businesses, foreign capital and even foreign citizens. Yet, as Connell demonstrates, the cosmopolitan promise of the offshore conceals the double nature of the nation-state which functions both as a node for discursive community formation and, simultaneously, as cover for the evasion of any communal responsibilities that this might imply. Reading Lawrence Chua’s Gold by the Inch (1998), Rana Dasgupta’s Tokyo Cancelled (2006) and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger (2008) Connell examines how the idea of national belonging struggles to survive in representations of the offshore. In particular Connell’s analysis shows that the difficulty that arises from trying to represent the offshore leads these texts to open up new perspectives on global capitalism by focussing upon its differential relationships to the state
Project Triton : A study into delivering targeted information to an individual based on implicit and explicit data.
No full textThe World Wide Web is frequently seen as a source of knowledge, however much of this remains undiscovered by its users. In recent times, recommender systems (e.g. Digg and Last.fm) have attempted to bridge this gap, alerting users to previously untapped knowledge. As more socially oriented services appear on the Web (e.g. Facebook and MySpace), it has never been easier to obtain information pertaining to an individual’s interests. At present, solutions for automated data recommendation tend to be highly topic specific (recommending only a certain topic such as news) and often only allow access to the system using monolithic interfaces. This report hopes to detail the stages from research to evaluation involved in creating an extensible framework, which will operate without the need for human intervention. The framework will feature several proof-of-concept plugins residing in a custom workflow, which target information that is useful to the user. Information will be retrieved automatically through plugins involved with data gathering (such as feed processing and page scraping), while users’ interests will be obtained implicitly (for example, using header information to derive location) or explicitly (taking advantage of Social Network APIs such as Facebook Connect). Finally, Third Parties will be able to integrate the framework into their own solutions using the customisable XML API (written in PHP), so that their products can provide custom user interfaces without style constraints
Design, fabrication and molecular modeling of protein subunits for use in a novel hydrogel:
No full textUse of bioinspired, genetically engineered proteins in tissue engineering scaffolds represents a new opportunity for engineering these constructs. However, the production and rational modification of new, artificial proteins is hindered by significant gaps in knowledge regarding expression of artificial gene constructs in E. coli and their molecular modeling. This thesis focuses on the production of a novel hydrogel scaffold composed of four self-assembling protein modules and their rational modification using Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. Two of the modules are based on the ABA triblock copolymer design. In this triblock, a hydrophilic, random coiled region is flanked by 28 amino-acid α−helical endblocks. The purpose of these endblocks is to function as virtual crosslinkers and support network formation. The length of the endblocks can be changed by the addition of two unlinked, fiber-forming peptides and thus potentially alter the gelation and melting points of the hydrogel. We evaluate the efficacy of production of these endblocks by two separate expression strategies in E. coli and demonstrate their ability to form hydrogels. Furthermore, we analyze the Gibbs free energy of formation of oligomeric intermediates that arise early on during fibrillogenesis from the unlinked peptides using the MM/PBSA module of Amber 9. Thermodynamic data demonstrates changes in the primary structure of these peptides affect the stability of the intermediate that seeds fiber formation. This analysis also suggests a shift in the fiber forming mechanism from monomer addition to protofibril addition. We offer how this data can be used to improve interhelical interactions between endblocks and unlinked peptides and how to develop coarse-grain models of fiber formation.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Christopher Liam Gaugha
Precarious labour and the contemporary novel
Full text linkThe focus of this book is on the condition of precarious labour as it is depicted in recent novels. Since the late 1970s the nature of work and our understanding of it has changed significantly. In this period work has become increasingly insecure but due to the period of Keynesian social captialism that preceded the present era workers workers often continue to think of work as something that will bring them security and prosperity.What marks out the contemporary period is not simply growing levels of insecurity but rather an accompanying sense of loss for socialised forms of security that are recent in the memory but that no longer apply. This has profound implications for those in work who often feel vulnerable or precarious. Precarious labour does not only refer to the threat of unemployment, nor does it only cover conditions of work that are insufficient to secure the good life. Instead, the idea of precarious labour signals workers whose relationship to the social, whose very being, is contingent or at risk. By looking at the way that these changes are depicted in contemporary fiction this book suggests that contemporary novels are driven by an engagement with flexibility as the characteristic conditions of work in the contemporary period and that this generates various depictions of precariousness. It is divided into two sections: the first of these tries of offer an historical reading, exploring the broad changes to the conditions of employment during the era of flexibility since the late 1970s. In the second section the book group texts into different national case studies in order to compare how the general conditions of neoliberal labour form different meanings within different national traditions for thinking about work. Focusing on the USA, the UK and India it suggests that a general historical reading needs to be spatially refracted by different national contexts and traditions
Literature and globalization: a reader
No full textGlobalization has had a huge impact on thinking across the humanities, redefining the understanding of fields such as communication, culture, politics, and literature. This groundbreaking reader is the first to chart significant moments in the emergence of contemporary thinking about globalization and explore their significance for and impact on literary studies. The book’s three sections look in turn at:- an overview of globalisation theory and influential works in the field - the impact of globalisation on literature and our understanding of the ‘literary’ - how issues in globalisation can be used to read specific literary texts. Containing essays by leading critics including Arjun Appadurai, Jacques Derrida, Simon Gikandi, Ursula K. Heise, Graham Huggan, Franco Moretti, Bruce Robbins and Anna Tsing, this volume outlines the relationship between globalization and literature, offering a key sourcebook for and introduction to an exciting, emerging field.<br/
Crisis, Labour, and the Contemporary
No full textThis chapter considers the difficulty that economics has found in defining labour as a practice separate from its product. Looking first at Classical and Marxist economics, it uses feminist economics to highlight the omissions that conventional definitions of labour contain, especially concerning the work of women. By comparing feminist economics with recent novels by women, including Halle Butler’s The New Me, Alice Furse’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Heike Geissler’s Seasonal Associate, Hilary Leichter’s Temporary and Ling Ma’s Severance, it argues that contemporary fiction has been attentive to the same omissions. Through a reading of the techniques of literary fiction, including realism and a range of experimental narrative devices, this essay proposes that the contemporary novel offers kinds of writing that expand our conception of labour. Contemporary fiction contains narratives that highlight the work of social reproduction as central component of the economies of labour and that offer a wider critique of economic categories of value
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