1,720,954 research outputs found
Transformative Belief: Flight and Transcendence in Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s The Theory of Flight
No full textSiphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s novel, The Theory of Flight, uses the theme of flight to depict issues of self-belief, freedom, and identity in postcolonial Africa. Ndlovu portrays the importance of belief as a means of transcending and dealing with one’s difficulties. Her dislike of dualities and categorisations is evident in her unification of the natural and the supernatural in the novel, as well as the characterisation of the protagonist as a “hybrid” being. The novel’s anti-binarist stance exemplifies the divisions that have echoed and developed from colonialism, such as sexism and racism. Such issues are prevalent in modern-day South Africa owing to the dehumanising system of apartheid, and can be seen through the country’s high rate of gender-based violence and racial inequality. The Theory of Flight suggests that self-belief is humanising and allows individuals to take back their power and free themselves from racist classifications, allowing for a postcolonial society to heal and move forward. This article begins with a brief summary of events in the novel relevant to this analysis. Thereafter, the usefulness of the theoretical frameworks of spiritual realism and postcolonialism are discussed. The theme of flight in the novel is then explored, as well as its significance in the context of the text. Together with this, further links between tropes and images of flight are drawn, allowing for an in-depth analysis of the significance of flight in Ndlovu’s novel
Matters of the mind: analysing the depictions of mental health issues in three contemporary African novels.
No full textMasters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.This dissertation is a literary analysis, and the selected texts have been examined through the theoretical lenses of postcolonialism, spiritual realism, and liminality. Although issues such as identity, race, and culture are examined in postcolonial literature, not many texts focus on the mental health effects of these issues from an African viewpoint. To better understand the postcolonial experience in terms of mental health, it is important to not use a Western model as a universal measure for mental disorders (Nwoye, 2015). This is because different worldviews influence how mental health is viewed. For example, in the West, mental health issues are largely examined through a “bio-psycho-social” approach (Nwoye, 2015:306), with a distinct focus on the self, whereas the African approach also includes a spiritual element (Laher, 2014; Nwoye, 2015). This spiritual element can be seen in Akwaeke Emezi’s debut novel, Freshwater, which incorporates Igbo cosmology, thus adding a supernatural element to the novel. Irenosen Okojie’s debut novel, Butterfly Fish, also encompasses the supernatural, and this brings up the concept of spiritual realism. The mental health struggles of the characters in these novels are interpreted from both a literal African viewpoint as well as a metaphorical lens which sees the spiritual elements in the novels as representations of the mental health issues faced by the characters. Although Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom does not comprise a mystical element, it does examine mental health struggles that stem from postcolonial issues like identity and racism. All three novels therefore offer an explanation of mental health that is relevant not only to Africans living in the West but also to other Neocolonial populations, including those in Africa
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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