Common and Uncommon Quotes: A Theory and History of Epigraphs

Jared A. Griffin, University of Alaska Anchorage

'Common and Uncommon Quotes: A Theory and History of Epigraphs' is a prolegomenon to the study of epigraphic paratextuality. Building on the work of Gerard Genette’s paratextual studies, this volume contextualizes and traces the practice of epigraphy in Anglophone literary history, from the fifteenth to the early twentieth century. This study explores how epigraphs are used by author-functions as a hermeneutic for their text and to establish ethos with their audience, and how that paratextual relationship changed as publishing opportunities and literacy rates grew over four centuries. The first broad-reaching study of this kind, 'Common and Uncommon Quotes' seeks to understand how epigraphs work: through their privilege on the page, their appeal to conjured ideas of the past, and their calls to citizenship.

Cesare Pavese Mythographer, Translator, Modernist: A Collection of Studies 70 Years after His Death

Edited by Iuri Moscardi, The Graduate Center, CUNY

This volume on Cesare Pavese is published on the 72nd anniversary of his death, and it aims to explore new perspectives to study this relevant intellectual. The multifaceted personality of Cesare Pavese took many different forms and allowed him to explore different aspects of literary production. He was a poet, a novelist, an essayist, a translator of some of the most important American writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. He also worked for 20 years at Einaudi Publishing House, where he became one of the most relevant figures of the company and the Italian literary and cultural scene between the 1930s and 1950s. This collection provides new perspectives of study by focusing on different aspects of his job and by analyzing the strong connections between his personal and professional life. It will appeal to graduate students and scholars in contemporary Italian literature.

Transculturación y trans-identidades en la literatura contemporánea mexicana

Edited by Herlinda Flores Badillo, Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico

La historia y cultura de México han sido transculturadas desde la época prehispánica. La mezcla surgida a partir de la llegada de los españoles dio lugar a un proceso de transculturación y al surgimiento de nuevas identidades, que se trasladaron a la literatura de esta época, dando cuenta de la transición vivida. La literatura se presenta en México como un producto heterogéneo y diverso, fruto del proceso de transculturación, no sólo en su literatura canónica, sino también en aquella de los otros Méxicos, o del México Profundo. “Transculturacion y trans-identidades en la literatura contemporánea mexicana” explora el juego de identidades en las obras de Pablo Soler Frost, Álvaro Enrigue o Fernanda Melchor, entre otros. Una colección de ensayos que abrirá un diálogo entre investigadores y académicos cuya área de estudio esté relacionada con la intersección de culturas, literaturas y escritores, así como un volumen de gran interés a todo público interesado en la literatura mexicana, los fenómenos de transculturación, migración, translacionalismo y políticas identitarias. Mexican history and culture have been transculturated since the pre-Hispanic era. The mixture that developed from the Spaniards arrival promoted the increase of transculturation and the development of new identities. Examples that can easily be spotted in Mexican contemporary literature, showing that due to this phenomena, Mexican literature is heterogeneous and diverse, not only in its canonic literature, but in that from the other Mexicos, or “deep Mexico”. “Transculturation and trans-identities in contemporary Mexican Literature” explores identities in the works of Pablo Soler Frost, Álvaro Enrigue or Fernanda Melchor, to only cite a few. A book that will open a dialogue among researchers, academics and students whose area of study is related to the intersection of culture, identities, spaces, literature and writers. An ambitious collection of essays, of great interest regarding Mexican culture, but also “border culture”, migration, transcultural issues and identity politics.

New to the LSP classroom? A selection of monographs on successful practices

Edited by Martina Vranova, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic

As Languages for Specific Purposes have always been defined as student-oriented, the rationale behind this volume is to use the rather neglected niche of the other necessary agent of language instruction and thus focus on the LSP practitioner. This turn towards the instructor has been motivated by the fact that a great number of LSP practitioners enter their jobs without previous expertise. They lack LSP education, or they may not even have a background in applied linguistics. This motivation has proven valid as many of the volume’s contributors have faced this particular situation in their professional lives. For insights into the LSP field and guidelines on the best practices, they must rely on their colleagues who offer to share their experience through workshops, conferences, or papers, which is what this volume provides. The primary goal of this volume is to present considerations of what challenges LSP practitioners face and should be prepared for in their jobs and to provide practice-tested methodological guidelines on such demanding teaching techniques as blended and flipped learning or tandem learning. All papers have been written by LSP practitioners and researchers in higher education. Thus, this volume provides both guidance and self-reflection. In other words, it is written by experienced LSP practitioners for aspiring LSP practitioners about how they see themselves and what effort they make to meet the challenges of their jobs. As proof that LSP practice is a global challenge, papers have been collected from many European countries, the USA, Uruguay. Even though most papers are naturally concerned with English, being the lingua franca of today, the collection also features guidelines for teaching Spanish, French and Dutch for specific purposes. Moreover, the target disciplines these languages are taught for encompass business, engineering, sociology or medicine, thus supporting the assumption of the universal character of problems LSP practitioners deal with.

Protomusic: The role of Prosodic Modulation in the Emergence of Language

Alessandra Anastasi, University of Messina, Italy

Anastasi introduces an alternative vision about language development and music involvement to the current scientific discourse. Her view is based on a rigorous evolutionary perspective, through which she not only demonstrates the hypothesis of vocal continuity with other species via morphological data but, more importantly, also demonstrates how music is first and foremost a biological and cognitive trait. The bond between animal and human communication is here interpreted as an interspecific universal with a clear evolutionary impact on the speech’s natural history. Such continuity does not undermine the species-specificity of our linguistic system and, at the same time, supports the theory according to which music had a clear evolutionary role in the inception of the prosodic and musical components of speech. In leaning towards a bio-naturalistic approach, the most convincing view is that of a vocal and functional continuity of music. This appears to be demonstrable through the evolutionary past of vocality in other animal species, not constrained from having some form of cultural transmission. The book evidences that the current research scenario on non-human animal communication benefits from the support of semiotics and, specifically, zoosemiotics. The latter approach enables us to interpret music and chant not only as a simple formal and meaningless exercise, but rather as a communicative element perceived and processed by organisms equipped with cognitive abilities. Anastasi argues that vocal continuity, made possible by biological constraints that mark its anatomical and physiological aspects, places human beings in a relationship of semiotic continuity with non-human communication forms. In turn, this enables us to better describe the phylogenetic processes which determined the development of musical behaviours in the Sapiens, as well as the way in which such behaviours interwove with the expressive vocality of the animal world.

Lazuri: An Endangered Language from the Black Sea

Edited by Züleyha Ünlü, Tokat Gaziosmanpasa University, Turkey and Brian George Hewitt, Emeritus Professor of Caucasian Languages (SOAS, London); Fellow of the British Academy; International Circassian Academy of Sciences, Jordan; Abkhazian Academy of Sciences

'Lazuri: An Endangered Language of the Black Sea' is a unique source in terms of presenting a close examination of the Laz language from multiple perspectives. This volume, edited by Züleyha Ünlü, and Brian George Hewitt, examines the current status of the Laz language, Laz speakers’ perceptions of ethnolinguistic vitality, the significance of the Laz language for theoretical research in linguistics, the examination of Laz lexical data from historical documents, the linguistic variation of the Laz language, the use of a Laz alphabet in literary genres, contemporary responses to preserve the Laz language, and reflections from applied linguistics for the future of the Laz language. Focusing on the main features of the Laz language and its present situation in Turkey and in other regions as well as the attempts to revitalize Laz and Laz culture, this book will be the first scholarly publication on Laz as a South Caucasian language in terms of being a road-map for future studies.

Gamification in the RhetComp Curriculum

Edited by Chris McGunnigle, Seton Hall University

Gamification is an up and coming popular trend in all levels and types of education, including public and private schools, higher education, the military, the private sector, and elsewhere. Gamification introduces aspects of game design like teamwork, competition, rewards and prizes, storytelling, and more into lesson plan units. In many cases, actual games, whether it be Scrabble, Hangman, Candy Crush, Dungeons & Dragons, and many others, are adapted into educational tools. This chapter collection will specifically look at the use of gamification techniques in Freshmen Writing courses and related Composition, Writing and Rhetoric classes. Each chapter will provide sample gamified lessons supported by relevant scholarship in both Gamification Theory and Writing Studies.

Transnational Spaces: Celebrating Fifty Years of Literary and Cultural Intersections at NeMLA

Edited by Carine Mardorossian, University of Buffalo and Simona Wright, The College of New Jersey

This volume celebrates fifty years of NeMLA’s important presence in the world of academia with a collection of essays that adopt a transnational critical lens. With the present selection, we intend to add our voices to the ongoing debate centered on the renegotiation of space, national, and cultural geographies; to foster both the re-thinking of language(s) and literature(s) not exclusively in English and the study of race, gender, sexuality, and class within and across national boundaries. Most pertinently for this collection, we hope to add meaningful material to produce new theoretical paradigms and to rethink the role and significance of the humanities in today’s world. In this light, 'Transnational Spaces: Celebrating Fifty Years of Literary, Cultural, and Language Intersections at NeMLA' offers a contribution to the study of our present, transnational condition, from the point of view of an organization, the 'Northeast Modern Language Association', that since its inception in 1969, has sought to provide a space of encounter, debate, and open intellectual exchange for all its members as well as for the academe at large. The essays contained in this volume emphasize the interdependency and interrelations engendered by the globalized world in which we live, highlighting the possibility to create new knowledge and forms of understanding across the boundaries of nationhood and region. At the same time, they remind us that the present situation calls for a radical self-examination of a history of systemic racism which continues to produce episodes of police brutality, rationalizes cultural and economic exclusion, and normalizes the incarceration of African Americans and “illegal” immigrants, including children and minorities. In this light, with this volume, we hope to have provided inclusive, egalitarian, and cosmopolitan spaces of encounter, exchange, and interrogation.

Theatre as Alter/"Native" in Derek Walcott

Nirjhar Sarkar, Raiganj University, India

'Theatre as Alter/“Native” in Derek Walcott' attempts a close and detailed politico-aesthetic analysis of his major plays. At the core of this book lies the attempt to answer the question of how postcolonial artists and intellectuals have dared to imagine radically different ways of living in the face of oppositional, binary choices. And as the title suggests, Walcott’s plays carve out critical spaces for new narratives of “becoming” and alternative priorities, entangled in contesting identities inscribed by race, language and ethnicity. Theatre, as Walcott knew, would be instrumental in demystifying Caribbean “Absence” and “Void” and generating an alternative version of dominant reality. By a deliberate unseating of the Western texts, filled with banal stereotypes and their representational biases, and by triggering “re-action” to the scripts of the colonizers in profoundly paradoxical ways, Walcott’s plays affirm the Caribbean identity. This study seeks to demonstrate how his plays open an alter/“native” universe in terms of aesthetics, dramaturgy and the performative, and reclaims ‘New World’ identity in terms of negotiation rather than negation—undermining the claim of “solid”, “authentic” culture. Placing the arts at the forefront of nation-building, Walcott situated his plays at a crucial juncture between the passing of the Empire and the newly-born Federation in his archipelago.

Issues in Kartvelian Studies

Edited by Tamar Makharoblidze, Ilia State University, Georgia

Georgia is a part of the Caucasus region, located at the intersection of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north and east by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. Georgia covers a territory of 69,700 square kilometres (26,911 sq mi), and its approximate population is about 3.716 million. Georgia is a motherland of Iberian or Kartvelian languages: Georgian, Svan, Megrelian and Laz, a language family native to the South Caucasus. This diverse collection is devoted to a wide range of linguistic works, such as descriptive studies of the Kartvelian languages and Georgian sign language, along with some theoretical contributions, dialectology, lexicography, psycholinguistics and computational linguistics, as well as history, ethnography, religion and educational issues. These articles are not only the best studies of Kartvelology but also clearly show its contribution to world science.

Novels, Rhetoric, and Criticism: A Brief History of Belles Lettres and British Literary Culture, 1680 – 1900

Jack M. Downs, Washington State University Health Sciences Spokane

Developing a history of the English novel requires the inclusion of a vast range of cultural, economic, religious, social, and aesthetic influences. But the role of eighteenth-century English rhetorical theory in the emergence of the novel – and the critical discourse surrounding that emergence – has often been neglected or overlooked. The influence of rhetorical theory in the development of the English novel is undeniable, however, and changes to rhetorical theory in Britain during the eighteenth century led to the development of a critical aesthetic discourse about the novel in Victorian England. This study argues that eighteenth-century 'belles lettres' rhetorical theory played a key role in developing a horizon of expectation concerning the nature and purpose of the novel that extended well into the nineteenth century. There is a connection between the emergence of the English novel, eighteenth-century rhetorical theory, and Victorian novel criticism that has been neglected; this study attempts to recover and articulate that connection.

Post45 Vs. The World: Literary Perspectives on the Global Contemporary

Edited by William G. Welty, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Much of the work done on the Post45 literary field carries an implicitly Americanist perspective. Even the name of the field suggests a certain literary history, with certain assumptions and blind spots about national spaces, identities, and histories. But what would Post45 look like when considered from outside of the United States? How do the current contours of the field exclude certain voices, either in the United States or elsewhere in the world? And how would such new perspectives shift the beginning and possible endpoint of that literary period? What new narratives of the contemporary emerge if we begin telling the story in a different year or from a different national or global perspective? This collection attempts to re-frame the discussions in Post45 by engaging with non-American writers, texts, and perspectives. Additionally, productive conversations emerge by attempting to think of canonical American writers like Mark Twain and Ishmael Reed from other national and global perspectives. The authors consider both the ways texts themselves as well as their reception histories approach and challenge our understandings of the contemporary. Ultimately, the collection interrogates prevailing narratives of history, culture, identity, and space within the Post45 field. In so doing, it re-considers the historical periodization of the field, which currently covers approximately 75 years of literary history. The resulting essays thus work towards a new intertwined narrative about what defines the contemporary and how national and global literatures fit into that moment of world history.

War, Espionage, and Masculinity in British Fiction

Edited by Susan L. Austin, Landmark College

'War, Espionage, and Masculinity in British Fiction' explores the masculinities represented in British works spanning more than a century. Studies of Rudyard Kipling’s 'The Light That Failed' (1891) and Erskine Childer’s 'The Riddle of the Sands' (1903) investigate masculinities from before World War I, at the height of the British Empire. A discussion of R.C. Sherriff’s play 'Journey’s End' takes readers to the battlefields of World War I, where duty and the harsh realities of modern warfare require men to perform, perhaps to die, perhaps to be unmanned by shellshock. From there we see how Dorothy Sayers developed the character of Peter Wimsey as a model of masculinity, both strong and successful despite his own shellshock in the years between the world wars. Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter (1948) and The Quiet American (1955) show masculinities shaken and questioning their roles and their country’s after neither world war ended all wars and the Empire rapidly lost ground. Two chapters on 'The Innocent' (1990), Ian McEwan’s fictional account of a real collaboration between Great Britain and the United States to build a tunnel that would allow them to spy on the Soviet Union, dig deeply into the 1950’s Cold War to examine the fictional masculinity of the British protagonist and the real world and fictional masculinities projected by the countries involved. Explorations of Ian Fleming’s 'Casino Royale' (1953) and 'The Living Daylights' (1962) continue the Cold War theme. Discussion of the latter film shows a confident, infallible masculinity, optimistic at the prospect of glasnost and the potential end of Cold War hostilities. John le Carré’s 'The Night Manager' (1993) and its television adaptation take espionage past the Cold War. The final chapter on Ian McEwan’s 'Saturday' (2005) shows one man’s reaction to 9/11.

The Enlightened Mind: Education in the Long Eighteenth Century

Edited by Amanda Strasik, Eastern Kentucky University

The rise of Enlightenment philosophical and scientific thought during the long eighteenth century in Europe and North America (c. 1688-1815) sparked artistic and political revolutions, reframed social, gender, and race relations, reshaped attitudes toward children and animals, and reconceptualized womanhood, marriage, and family life. The meaning of “education” at this time was wide-ranging and access to it was divided along lines of gender, class, and race. Learning happened in diverse environments under the tutelage of various teachers, ranging from bourgeois mothers at home, to Spanish clergy, to nature itself. The contributors to this cross-disciplinary volume weave together methods in art history, gender studies, and literary analysis to reexamine “education” in different contexts during the Enlightenment era. They explore the implications of redesigned curricula, educational categorizations and spaces, pedagogical aids and games, the role of religion, and new prospects for visual artists, parents, children, and society at large. Collectively, the authors demonstrate how new learning opportunities transformed familial structures and the socio-political conditions of urban centers in France, Britain, the United States, and Spain. Expanded approaches to education also established new artistic practices and redefined women’s roles in the arts. This volume offers groundbreaking perspectives on education that will appeal to beginning and seasoned humanities scholars alike.

How to Actively Engage Our Students in the Language Classes

Edited by Carmela B. Scala, Rutgers University

In a world that moves at a speed that only a few years ago seemed impossible to achieve, our students are used to having the universe at their fingertips and breathing technology. As educators in the 21st century, we need to understand its impact on society, especially on our students’ learning experience, and find a way to make it work to our, and most importantly, their advantage. This edited volume presents some inspiring research in second language acquisition, focusing on active learning, cooperative and collaborative approach, and other innovative strategies to engage the students and promote learning.

Languaging Class: Reflecting on the Linguistic Articulations of Structural Inequalities

Edited by Claudia Ortu, University of Cagliari, Italy and Francesco Bachis, University of Cagliari, Italy

This volume explores the issue of social class from the point of view of its linguistic articulations. Indeed, as Machin and Richardson (2008) stated, “discourses may be variously approached as (often simultaneously) reflecting class structures, as a site of class inequalities, as expressive of class identities or class consciousness and/or as a constituent part of more performative class action.” Some of the contributions that make up the volume were presented at a conference held at Cagliari University, Italy, in 2017 and responded to the call for analyses on the role of language in reflecting, maintaining, enacting, and inculcating ideas on social class in literary and non-literary texts and discourses in any cultural or linguistic setting. This volume aspires to encourage scholars in disciplines and academic fields that have shied away from reflections on structural inequalities in favor of studies on ethnic, gender, and cultural identities in the last decades to take back on board the concept of social class and to engage with it in a novel way. The variety of approaches – ranging from the more traditional sociolinguistic one, anthropology, to literary and discourse studies – and cultural settings – with case studies coming from 3 continents – represented in the chapters show that social class is a productive and illuminating concept for trying to (re)make sense of social reproduction and change.

TASTE: Why You Like What You Like

A Cultural Studies Analysis

Arthur Asa Berger, San Francisco State University

Taste is an enigmatic topic. We recognize that taste plays an important role in our life in that everything we buy and many things we do are governed by our sense of taste. But what exactly is taste? How do we get our sense of taste and how does it affect our everyday lives? Does it evolve as we grow older or is it a constant in our lives? Is it affected by all the “influencers” to whom we are exposed as we watch TikTok and commercials, or do influencers merely spark some kind of inner sense of taste that was with us all the time? Is our taste based on our social and economic status or something else? What role do income and cost have in determining what we choose to buy? What role do the qualities of what we buy and the choices we make shape our decisions? Is taste based on logical thinking about things we wish to do or buy upon emotions we have generated by things like identification, status, or cultural imperatives? Taste always involves some element of choice, because if there is no choice, taste is irrelevant or moot. But what are the determinants when we compare things to buy or get or do when we have choices to make? This book takes its point of departure from the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, whose book 'Distinction' is considered a classic work of sociological analysis. The topics dealt with are shown in the table of contents below. The book is distinctive in that it offers discussions of four methodologies/theories used in discussing taste: semiotics, psychoanalytic theory, sociological theory and Marxist theory and then applies these theories in the second part of the book to a variety of topics involving taste, such as yogurt, dogs, the singer Celine Dion, ocean cruises, brands, smartphones, men’s facial hair, and so on. Readers of the book will learn four methodologies they can use in analyzing taste and see how these methodologies were applied.

Advances in Brand Semiotics & Discourse Analysis

Edited by George Rossolatos

This volume addresses some of the most important conceptual, methodological, and empirical challenges and opportunities with which the sister disciplines of semiotics and discourse analysis are mutually confronted in the context of considering new avenues of cross-disciplinary application to distinctive branding research streams. In continuation of the collective volume 'Handbook of Brand Semiotics' (Kassel University Press, 2015), which sought to consolidate relevant scholarship and to identify the main territories that have been established at the cross-roads between branding and semiotic research, the current 'Advances in Brand Semiotics & Discourse Analysis' aims at accomplishing further strides in critical areas, such as the exigency for reconsidering the aptness of existing semiotic theories in the face of the radically shifting co-creative landscape of digital branding, the benefits of systematically micro-analyzing brand communities’ discourses by drawing on CAQDAS programs, the combination of big data analytics with discourse theory in corpus analysis, and the epistemological issues that emerge while combining discourse analysis with time-hallowed marketing qualitative and quantitative research methods. At the same time, the volume hosts a resourceful blend of empirical studies and novel conceptual frameworks in burgeoning streams, such as place, heritage, culinary, personal, and political branding.

In Search of the Lost World: The Modernist Quest for the Thing, Matter, and Body

Tsaiyi Wu, Shanghai Normal University

From a historical perspective, the book studies how modernist artists, as the first generation who began to rethink intensively the legacy of German Idealism, sought to recreate the self so as to recreate their relationships with the material world. Theoretically, the book converses with the topical de-anthropocentric interests in the 21st century and proposes that the artist may escape human-centeredness through the transformation of the self. Part One, “Artificiality,” begins the discussion with the fin-de-siècle cult of artificiality, where artists such as Theophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, J.K. Huysmans, and Gustave Moreau dedicate themselves to love stony sphinxes, marble statues, and inorganic appearances. The cult of artificiality is a mischievous subversion to Hegel’s maxim that inwardness is superior to matter. In the cult of artificiality, art is superior to nature, though art is no longer defined as immaterial imagination but rather reconfigured as mysterious appearances that defy signification and subjugate the feeling heart. Part Two, “Auto-philosophical Fiction,” discusses the genre where the artists (Marcel Proust, Walter Pater, and Virginia Woolf) set philosophical ideas in the laboratory of their lives and therefore translate their aesthetic ideals—the way they wish to relate to the world—into a journey of self-examination and self-cultivation. In Pater’s novel 'Marius the Epicurean', the hero explores how a philosophical percept may be translated into sentiments and actions, demonstrating that literature is a unique approach to truth as it renders theory into a transformative experience. Exploring the latest findings of empiricist psychology, the artists seek to escape the Kantian trap by cultivating their powers of reception and to register passing thoughts and sensations. Together, the book argues that de-anthropocentrism cannot be predicated upon a metaphysics that presumes universal subjectivity but must be a form of aesthetic inquiry that recreates the self in order to recreate our relationships with the world.

Voices From the Wreckage: Young Adult Voices in the #MeToo Movement

Edited by Kimberly Karshner, Lorain County Community College

'Voices From the Wreckage: Young Adult Voices in the #MeToo Movement' is an edited collection by Kimberly Greenfield Karshner (Lorain County Community College). This collection focuses on situating young adult voices in the #MeToo movement, and into American culture and identity. Children’s and young adult literature is an area of study that has rapidly evolved in the past ten years, bringing previously silenced voices to light. This is especially true for YA LGBTQ+ voices, and also for young narrators who are not only discovering, celebrating, and coming to terms with their identities, but also dealing with assaults on their identities. This collection will build on what writers like Laurie Halse Anderson have begun, first with her groundbreaking book on sexual assault, 'Speak', published in 1999, and more currently, her follow-up book, 'Shout' (2019). These authors continue what Anderson started, exploring texts from the perspectives of YA male and female voices, Native American and international perspectives, and LGBTQ+ character representation. Chapters investigate various literary forms such as graphic novels, memoirs, and novels, and cover topics such as sexual desire, consent, trauma, and survivorship. The literature featured in this volume will assure young people that they can tell their stories and that they will be heard. 'Voices From the Wreckage' will be a valuable tool for anyone who teaches Young Adult Literature, or for those who are avid readers and fans of the genre. The authors in this collection are starting and continuing very important conversations on the topic of sexual abuse and trauma, a conversation necessary for the intended audiences of these books, and for adult readers and teachers who are facilitating the emotions connected to these topics.