1,720,958 research outputs found
Identity Crisis in Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses
Full text linkThe issue of identity is one of the main issues that encounters man in each culture. Identity is a set of behaviors, emotions, and thought patterns which are unique to every individual that define him as a member of a certain group. Identity is shaped by race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, language, physical features, childhood experiences, sexual preferences and culture. Moreover, identity is usually recognized during adolescence or early adulthood in which both positive and negative features are essential in the development of individual identity. However, an identity crisis is the failure to establish identity during that age. In addition, an identity crisis is not only concerned with matters such as ethnicity or religion as it is also concerned with inner conflicts, search for identity, west vs. east, old Vs. modern. The diversity of identity in the American culture is expressed in many literary works by contemporary American writers who depict characters' search of their psychological and cultural identity. Among those contemporary writers is Cormac McCarthy (1933-) whose All the Pretty Horses (1992) tackles this quest for identity as its basic theme, both psychologically and culturally. This paper is an attempt to investigate both dimensions of the quest in this novel as being one of McCarthy's masterpieces.Keywords: Identity, Identity Crisis, Cultural Criticism, Contemporary American fictio
SEXISM IN FLANNERY O'CONNOR'S “WISE BLOOD”
Full text linkThis research paper aims to explore the theme of sexism, particularly within Flannery O'Connor's novel “Wise Blood”. Historically, societies have upheld a patriarchal structure where men were considered the standard while women were viewed as exceptions. For instance, Aristotle famously asserted that women were inferior to men but superior to slaves, elevating men as the epitome of human perfection. Despite progress over time, deep-seated prejudices against women have persisted, manifesting in various forms such as sexual harassment and domestic violence. Consequently, sexism permeates multiple aspects of life, not confined to any single domain. In recent years, there has been a notable increase in women's educational attainment, with more females attending college and graduating with degrees in traditionally male-dominated fields like the sciences. However, despite these advancements, disparities persist, with fewer women pursuing careers in areas such as science and academia. Numerous factors contribute to perpetuating sexism, including societal expectations surrounding motherhood and family commitments, early socialization patterns that shape interactions between genders, institutional barriers within certain fields, and even conjectures rooted in biological differences. This paper endeavors to examine these multifaceted aspects of sexism in both literature and contemporary society. Article visualizations
WOMEN'S RESISTANCE TO OPPRESSION IN A DEFIANCE TO APARTHEID'S LEGACY IN LUEEN CONNING'S A COLOURED PLACE
Full text linkLueen Conning explores in her play A Coloured Place (henceforth ACP), the destructive effects of the Apartheid system in South Africa on South African post- Apartheid women. This paper gives a critical, contextual analysis of ACP (1998) by Lueen Conning. It investigates the feminist elements that are found in the play to show how that authoritarian system affected their lives even after its fall, especially colored women and the need to raise awareness of its effects. The colored protagonist of the takes a key role in revealing the suffering of a hybrid females individuals in a post-Apartheid South African society and the potential consequences of that hybrid identity. This paper also examines the autobiographical elements that are found in the play. Therefore, it likewise shows how female playwrights like Lueen Conning (Malika Ndlovu) are trying to lead the social change in the post-Apartheid society through portrayal of heroines' abuse and raising awareness of women's problems in that racist oppressive society. They are successful to show the failure of the system although they are becoming lonely outsiders by that system. The context of the study and the literature review have paved the way by providing the theoretical basis for the analysis of the play. Thus, this short study sheds the light on how Apartheid South Africa state affects the social change, but it is similarly demonstrating the resistance to that abusive world of that era.
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
POSTMODERN PARODY IN THE IRAQI ALI BADER’S NOVEL “PAPA SARTRE”
Full text linkThis research paper investigates the impact of existentialism on Iraqi society, with a particular focus on the sixties generation as depicted in Ali Bader's novel "Papa Sartre." The study explores the use of parody as a postmodern literary device to satirically critique the influence of existentialist philosophy on individuals and society. By examining the negative repercussions of existentialist philosophy on societies, especially the Iraqi sixties generation, this research delves into the satirical critique embedded in Bader's novel. The primary focus is on parody as a means to highlight the superficial adoption and harmful consequences of certain philosophical ideologies, such as existentialism, within intellectual and societal contexts. The paper aims to demonstrate how individuals and communities can be swayed by philosophical theories without fully understanding their implications. Through the use of parody, the novel encourages readers to engage with the deeper nuances of its narrative, serving as a cautionary tale against the uncritical acceptance of imported ideologies. Furthermore, the research emphasizes the role of literary works in confronting and interrogating critical issues fostering social awareness and discourse. By highlighting the insidious spread of harmful ideologies across generations, the paper advocates for vigilance among future generations to protect against the influence of such detrimental philosophies. Article visualizations
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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