2,044 research outputs found
Alan Moore Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel
No full textEclectic British author Alan Moore (b. 1953) is one of the most acclaimed and controversial comics writers to emerge since the late 1970s. He has produced a large number of well-regarded comic books and graphic novels while also making occasional forays into music, poetry, performance, and prose. In Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel , Annalisa Di Liddo argues that Moore employs the comics form to dissect the literary canon, the tradition of comics, contemporary society, and our understanding of history. The book considers Moore's narrative strategies and pinpoints the main thematic threads in his works: the subversion of genre and pulp fiction, the interrogation of superhero tropes, the manipulation of space and time, the uses of magic and mythology, the instability of gender and ethnic identity, and the accumulation of imagery to create satire that comments on politics and art history. Examining Moore's use of comics to scrutinize contemporary culture, Di Liddo analyzes his best-known works-- Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, Watchmen, From Hell, Promethea , and Lost Girls . The study also highlights Moore?s lesser-known output, such as Halo Jones, Skizz , and Big Numbers , and his prose novel Voice of the Fire. Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel reveals Moore to be one of the most significant and distinctly postmodern comics creators of the last quarter-century.Intro -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- CHAPTER 1. Formal Considerations on Alan Moore's Writing -- CHAPTER 2. Chronotopes: Outer Space, the Cityscape, and the Space of Comics -- CHAPTER 3. Moore and the Crisis of English Identity -- CHAPTER 4. Finding a Way into Lost Girls -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- ZEclectic British author Alan Moore (b. 1953) is one of the most acclaimed and controversial comics writers to emerge since the late 1970s. He has produced a large number of well-regarded comic books and graphic novels while also making occasional forays into music, poetry, performance, and prose. In Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel , Annalisa Di Liddo argues that Moore employs the comics form to dissect the literary canon, the tradition of comics, contemporary society, and our understanding of history. The book considers Moore's narrative strategies and pinpoints the main thematic threads in his works: the subversion of genre and pulp fiction, the interrogation of superhero tropes, the manipulation of space and time, the uses of magic and mythology, the instability of gender and ethnic identity, and the accumulation of imagery to create satire that comments on politics and art history. Examining Moore's use of comics to scrutinize contemporary culture, Di Liddo analyzes his best-known works-- Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, Watchmen, From Hell, Promethea , and Lost Girls . The study also highlights Moore?s lesser-known output, such as Halo Jones, Skizz , and Big Numbers , and his prose novel Voice of the Fire. Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel reveals Moore to be one of the most significant and distinctly postmodern comics creators of the last quarter-century.Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries
Post-war British working-class fiction with special reference to the novels of John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, Stan Barstow, David Storey and Barry Hines
No full textThis study is about British working-class fiction in the post-war period.
It covers various authors such as Robert Tressell, George Orwell, Walter Greenwood, Lewis Grassic Gibbon and DH Lawrence from the early twentieth century; writers traditionally classified as 'Angry Young Men' like John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, Shelagh Delaney, John Wain and
Kingsley Amis; and working-class novelists like John Braine, Stan Barstow, David Storey, Alan Sillitoe and Barry Hines from the 1950s and 1960s.
Some of the main issues dealt with in the course of this study are language, form, community, self/identity/autobiography, sexuality and relationship with bourgeois art. The major argument centres on two questions: representation of working-class life, and the
relationship between working-class literary tradition and dominant ideologies.
We will be arguing that while working-class fiction succeeded in challenging and rupturing bourgeois literary tradition, on the level of language and linguistic medium of expression for example, it utterly failed to break away from dominant, bourgeois modes of literary production in relation to form, for instance.
Our argument is situated within Marxist approaches to literature, a political and aesthetic position from which we attempt an analysis and an evaluation of this working-class literary tradition. These critical approaches provide us also with the theoretical tool to define the political perspective of this tradition, and to judge whether it was confined to a descriptive mode of representation or
located in a radical, political outlook
The construction of Karen Karnak: The multi-author-function
No full textThis thesis is situated within the comparatively recent developments of Web 2.0 and the emergence of interactive WikiMedia, and explores the mode of authorship within a Read/Write culture compared to that of a Read/Only tradition. The hypothesis of this study is that the role of the audience has become merged with the author, and as such, represents new functions and attributes, distinct from a more conventional concept of authorship, in which the roles of audience and author are more separate. Read/Write and participatory culture, as defined by this study, is focused on collaboration, and includes the influences of D.I.Y. culture, Open-Source practices and the production of text by multiple authors. Multi-authorship presents a re-thinking of several concepts which support the notion of the individual author, since the focus of multi-authorship is not on attribution and ownership of a finished text, but on the continued malleability of a text. Modes of multi-authorship, demonstrated in the use of the pseudonyms Alan Smithee and Karen Eliot, represent declarative authors whose names signify multiple origins, whilst concurrently indicating a distinct body of work. The function of these names form an important context to this study, since primary research involves the construction of an experimental mode of multi-authorship utilising WikiMedia technology and the interaction of thirty nine participants, who are invited to create a body of work under the collective pseudonym Karen Karnak. The data generated by this experiment is analysed using aspects of Michel Foucault's author-function to identify and determine power structures inherent in the WikiMedia context. The interplay of power structures, including concepts such as identity, ownership and the body of work, affect the resulting mode of authorship and contribute to the construction of Karen Karnak, suggesting further areas of research into the emerging multi-author
Surgery in Language Learning
No full textA key problem in the learning of phonologies is contending with the interdependence of the mapping and the lexicon. This paper presents an learning algorithm combining an existing procedure for learning restrictive mappings (Biased Constraint Demotion) with inconsistency detection, and illustrates the algorithm using a system of both predictable and lexical stress grammars. The heart of the algorithm's strategy is to respond to the failure of a hypothesis by attempting to modify the mapping first, and only considering modifying the lexicon when altering the mapping proves inadequate. The construction of the mapping via Biased Constraint Demotion involves the accumulation of ranking arguments (winner/loser pairs) which make reference to hypothesized lexical entries. This creates a potential problem when the learner considers altering the lexical entries referred to by the ranking arguments. The proposed algorithm deals with this by altering the list of ranking arguments whenever the lexicon is changed, via a process termed "surgery", so that they accurately reflect the updated lexicon. This process allows the learner to more quickly determine if a proposed change to the lexicon will actually resolve the failure of the preceding hypothesis. Computer simulation results are provided to demonstrate the algorithm's efficiency.The definitive version of this paper was published in WCCFL 22: Proceedings of the 22nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (2003) and is available at http://www.cascadilla.com/wccfl22.htmlTesar, B., Alderete, J., Horwood, Mechant, N., Nishitani, K., & Prince, A. (2003). Surgery in Language Learning. In G. Garding and M.Tsujimura (Eds.), WCCFL 22: Proceedings of the 22nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 477-490). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press
Probability and The F.A. Cup
No full textThis article, created by Alan G. Hawkes of the University College of Swansea, illustrates the difficulty in defining an event you are dealing with and that, even if you can define the event properly, you may encounter rough bounds on the probability of that event instead of a precise probability. The author uses a soccer match between Swansea City and Grimsby to illustrate these concepts. In addition to this lesson, he offers up an additional example and external references for further study on the topic
Design, analysis and presentation of factorial randomised controlled trials
No full textBackgroundThe evaluation of more than one intervention in the same randomised controlled trial can be achieved using a parallel group design. However this requires increased sample size and can be inefficient, especially if there is also interest in considering combinations of the interventions. An alternative may be a factorial trial, where for two interventions participants are allocated to receive neither intervention, one or the other, or both. Factorial trials require special considerations, however, particularly at the design and analysis stages.DiscussionUsing a 2 × 2 factorial trial as an example, we present a number of issues that should be considered when planning a factorial trial. The main design issue is that of sample size. Factorial trials are most often powered to detect the main effects of interventions, since adequate power to detect plausible interactions requires greatly increased sample sizes. The main analytical issues relate to the investigation of main effects and the interaction between the interventions in appropriate regression models. Presentation of results should reflect the analytical strategy with an emphasis on the principal research questions. We also give an example of how baseline and follow-up data should be presented. Lastly, we discuss the implications of the design, analytical and presentational issues covered.SummaryDifficulties in interpreting the results of factorial trials if an influential interaction is observed is the cost of the potential for efficient, simultaneous consideration of two or more interventions. Factorial trials can in principle be designed to have adequate power to detect realistic interactions, and in any case they are the only design that allows such effects to be investigated
How to tell the difference between production and consumption : a case study in Doctor Who fandom
No full textA television series is tagged with the label "cult" by the media, advertisers, and network executives when it is considered edgy or offbeat, when it appeals to nostalgia, or when it is considered emblematic of a particular subculture. By these criteria, almost any series could be described as cult. Yet certain programs exert an uncanny power over their fans, encouraging them to immerse themselves within a fictional world.In Cult Television leading scholars examine such shows as The X-Files; The Avengers; Doctor Who, Babylon Five; Star Trek; Xena, Warrior Princess; and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to determine the defining characteristics of cult television and map the contours of this phenomenon within the larger scope of popular culture.Contributors: Karen Backstein; David A. Black, Seton Hall U; Mary Hammond, Open U; Nathan Hunt, U of Nottingham; Mark Jancovich; Petra Kuppers, Bryant College; Philippe Le Guern, U of Angers, France; Alan McKee; Toby Miller, New York U; Jeffrey Sconce, Northwestern U; Eva ViethSara Gwenllian-Jones is a lecturer in television and digital media at Cardiff University and co-editor of Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media.Roberta E. Pearson is a reader in media and cultural studies at Cardiff University. She is the author of the forthcoming book Small Screen, Big Universe: Star Trek and Television
Higher education in Egypt
No full textEgypt's policy on higher education, the author argues, must take account of the realities of declining government budgets and employment and increasing reliance on the private sector, which must become more competitive internationally. Education in Egypt must increase Egyptians'ability to cope with economic disequilibria: to respond quickly and effectively to changing technological and market opportunities. The Government of Egypt's strategy for achieving this goal is to stabilize the number of university students and raise the quality of instruction. This fundamentally sound strategy, pursued since the mid-1980s, has required considerable courage of policymakers, who are struggling to correct a longtime, inequitable misallocation of educational resources. The Nasser regime greatly expanded higher education and guaranteed jobs to university graduates. As a result of rapidly growing enrollment in the 1970s and 1980s, the quality of education seriously deteriorated. Classes are too big and resources too scarce for anything but professorial salaries, so learning amounts to little more than memorization and repetition. The system does not foster the development of synthesizing, problem-solving, or creative thinking abilities. And with tertiary institutions over-enrolled, academic success requires the use of tutors, whose fees are beyond the reach of students of modest means.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Teaching and Learning,Gender and Education,Tertiary Education
Numerical stability of Lanczos methods
No full textThe Lanczos algorithm for matrix tridiagonalisation suffers from strong numerical instability in finite precision arithmetic when applied to evaluate matrix eigenvalues. The mechanism by which this instability arises is well documented in the literature. A recent application of the Lanczos algorithm proposed by Bai, Fahey and Golub allows quadrature evaluation of inner products of the form . We show that this quadrature evaluation is numerically stable and explain how the numerical errors which are such a fundamental element of the finite precision Lanczos tridiagonalisation procedure are automatically and exactly compensated in the Bai, Fahey and Golub algorithm. In the process, we shed new light on the mechanism by which roundoff error corrupts the Lanczos procedure
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