Understanding Foreign Masters : the examples of Rabindranath Tagore and Fyodor Dostoyevskiy

The Indian author Rabindranath Tagore was received like royalty during his visits to the West after winning the Nobel Prize in 1913. Dreams of foreign cultures offered a retreat from a complicated age. In a time when the West appeared to be living under threat of disintegration and when industrialism seemed like a cul-de-sac, he appeared to offer the promise of a return to a lost paradise, a spiritual abode that is superior to the restless Western culture. However, Tagore’s popularity faded rapidly, most notably in England, the main target of his criticism. Soon after Tagore had won the Nobel Prize, the English became indignant at Tagore’s anti-colonial attitude.Tagore visited Sweden in 1921 and 1926 and was given a warm reception. His visits to Sweden can be seen as an episode in a longer chain of events. It brought to life old conceptions of India as the abode of spirituality on earth. Nevertheless, interest in him was a relatively short-lived phenomenon in Sweden. Only a few of his admirers in Sweden appreciated the complexity of Tagore’s achievements. His “anathema of mammonism”, as a Swedish newspaper called it, was not properly received. After a steady stream of translations his popularity flagged towards the end of the 1920s and then almost disappeared entirely. Tagores visits in Sweden gave an indication that India was on the way to liberate itself from its colonial legacy, which consequently contributed to the waning of his popularity in the West. In the long run, his criticism of the drawbacks in the western world became too obvious to maintain permanent interest. The Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevskiy’s Crime and Punishment (1866) has enticed numerous interpretations such as the purely biographical approach. In the nervous main character of the novel, the young student Raskolnikov, one easily recognizes Dostoyevskiy himself. The novel can also be seen as a masterpiece of realistic fiction. It gives a broad picture of Saint Petersburg, a metropolis in decay. Crime and Punishment can also be seen as one of the first examples of a modern psychological novel, since it is focused on the inner drama of its main character, the young student Raskolnikov. His actions seem to be governed by mere coincidences, dreams and the spur of the moment. it seems fruitful to study the novel from a psychoanalytical approach. In his book Raskolnikov: the way of the divided towards unity in Crime and Punishment (1982), a Swedish scholar, Owe Wikström, has followed this line of interpretation all the way to Freud’s disciple C G Jung. In addition to this, the novel functions as an exciting crime story. To a large extent it is Viktor Sjklovskij and other Russian formalists from the 1920s and onwards who have taught the western audience to understand the specific nature of the crime story. The novel could be seen as a story about religious conversion. Like Lasarus in the Bible (whose story attracts a lot of attention in the novel) Raskolnikov is awakened from the dead, and together with Sonja he starts a completely new life. The theme of conversion has a special meaning for Dostoyevskiy. For him the conversion meant an acknowledgement of the specific nature of Russia itself. Crime and punishment mirrors the conflict between traditional Russian values and western influences that has been obvious in Russia throughout the history of the country. The novel reflects a dialogue that still continues in Russian society. The Russian literary historian Mikhail Bakhtin, who is probably the most famous interpreter of the works of Dostoyevskiy, has become famous precisely by emphasizing the importance of dialogues in novels like Crime and Punishment. According to Bakhtin, this novel is characterized by its multitude of voices. Various ideas are confronted with each other, and each one of them is personified by one of the characters in the novel. The author has resigned from his position as the superior monitor of the text, and he leaves it to the reader to decide what interpretation is the correct one..The aim of the present study is thus to analyze the complex reactions in the west to Tagore’s visits in Sweden and to Fyodor Dostoyevskiys novel Crime and Punishment.. This leads to more general conclusions on communication between cultures.

The Bird and its Flight: A Struggle for Freedom in Bulgakov's Master and Margarita

The Russian senior seminar this semester focused on Bulgakov’s famous novel, Master and Margarita. This presentation focuses on one of the themes of the novel, specifically Bulgakov’s use of birds in his work. Birds appear numerous times in Master and Margarita, and it always has a connotation of either a lack of freedom or a recent achievement of this goal. There are even instances in which characters themselves, as they seek freedom from their former oppressive lives, become the “birds” in the novel. This paper is an exploration of bird imagery in the novel.

Modernist Success in a Postmodern Failure: Jackson Pollock and Abstract Expressionism, the Avant-Garde and the Ascension of Late Capitalism, Art after 1945

It is hard to imagine the magnitude of the events at the end of World War II. The thought produced in the face of a myriad of deaths is almost unfeasible sixty years after the fact, but the energy was integral to the changing social landscape. Because of the country's prominence in and fortitude after the war, the U.S. was left responsible for reshaping and rejuvenating the international landscape that was destroyed by the years of brutal fighting and vile contestation. The American establishment was granted a major opportunity to establish itself amongst the global leaders. Such a grand responsibility must account for the multiplicity of thought that arises in such a decisive moment. In order to align the Abstract Expressionist art movement with the intersection of the intense, multifaceted thought developed during the postwar period, the following will discuss the political, philosophical, economic, and art historical overlap that occurred in the mid to late 1940s in the hopes of illustrating the fertility yet lingering problems associated with the restructuring of the world with America at the helm. In this way, the duration of the Abstract Expressionist moment will be better understood for both its triumphs and downfalls.

Short fiction of Thomas Hardy: an exploration and assessment

Hardy's novels and poetry have received extensive criticism, in due proportion to their merit. Hardy's short stories, however, have been virtually excluded from the annals of Hardy criticism, even though Hardy wrote over forty short stories, several of which are truly outstanding. In part, the reason for this neglect is because of the neglected state of the short story in Victorian England. Short fiction, published mainly only in periodicals and never collected in volume form, was obscured to a large extent by the highly popular serial novel. This thesis examines Thomas Hardy's short stories in the context of both the Victorian period and the Victorian short story genre, and explores the ways in which Thomas Hardy improved upon and deviated from some of the common types of short fiction being written in his day.

Children's status and children's rights, historically and cross-culturally

In this thesis, my goal is to construct a vision of an ideal setting for children. By examining different ways of thinking about children and childhood, and by considering different approaches which have worked or do work practically, I will seek to envision something better for children. Trying to reach a better context for children will also include an inherent criticism of current conditions. Based on these criticisms, I will identify the elements that I believe can contribute to an ideal setting in which children can not only lead safe, healthy and happy lives, but also develop their own unique potential. The discipline of the history of childhood as well as cross-cultural studies show the relativistic nature of childhood. The concept of childhood, expectations of children, and societal roles for children have changed drastically over time and differ across cultures today. Children's advocates and the children's rights movement both reflect and promote changes in the context of childhood. As attitudes about childhood change, efforts arise to bring reality into line with the new ideals and images. Efforts toward improving children's rights also spread new ideas about children through the society.

Theoretical Approximations Between Brazilian and Spanish Authors' Production in the Field of Knowledge Organization in the Production of Journals on Information Science in Brazil

This work identifies and analyzes literature about knowledge organization (KO), expressed in scientific journals communication of information science (IS). It performs an exploratory study on the Base de Dados Referencial de Artigos de Periodicos em Ciência da Informacio (BRAPCI, Reference Database of Journal Articles on Information Science) between the years 2000 and 2010. The descriptors relating to "knowledge organization" are used in order to recover and analyze the corresponding articles and to identify descriptors and concepts which integrate the semantic universe related to KO. Through the analysis of content, based on metrical studies, this article gathers and interprets data relating to documents and authors. Through this, it demonstrates the development of this field and its research fronts according to the observed characteristics, as well as noting the transformation indicative in the production of knowledge. The work describes the influences of the Spanish researchers on Brazilian literature in the fields of knowledge and information organization. As a result, it presents the most cited and productive authors, the theoretical currents which support them, and the most significant relationships of the Spanish-Brazilian authors network. Based on the constant key-words analysis in the cited articles, the co-existence of the French conception current and the incipient Spanish influence in Brazil is observed. Through this, it contributes to the comprehension of the thematic range relating to KO, stimulating both criticism and self-criticism, debate and knowledge creation, based on studies that have been developed and institutionalized in academic contexts in Spain and Brazil.

Lessons of spin and torsion: Reply to Consistent coupling to Dirac fields in teleparallelism

In reply to the criticism made by Mielke in the preceding Comment on our recent paper, we once again explicitly demonstrate the inconsistency of the coupling of a Dirac field to gravitation in the teleparallel equivalent of general relativity. Moreover, we stress that the mentioned inconsistency is generic for all sources with spin and is by no means restricted to the Dirac field. In this sense the SL(4,R)-covariant generalization of the spinor fields in the teleparallel gravity theory is irrelevant to the inconsistency problem.

Raúl Prebisch and the development agenda at the dawn of the twenty-first century

Includes bibliography

Heroínas e Vilões: os símbolos na obra Heroes and Villains de Angela Carter

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Defining and Measuring Poverty in Nebraska

Data recently released by the Census Bureau estimate that 47.4 million Americans, or about one-insix, are living in poverty. This latest estimate has drawn criticism from some observers who see it as an attempt to artificially inflate the magnitude of poverty in America. The criticism results from a change in methodology that included not just income (the Whitehouse Office of Management and Budget (OMB) poverty threshold for 2009 is $22,050 a year for a family of four), but also made adjustments, taking into account such things as region, out-of-pocket medical expenses and child care costs, that in total add about seven-million individuals to the poverty population.

Webinars in higher education: use and misuse

[EN]Web meetings have recently become a common tool for eLearning in higher education. But what are they used for? How well do they work? How do they fit into the pedagogical context? In this paper, the wider context of social and technological change over recent years is discussed and, in this light, the (mis)use of webinars to recreate traditional classroom dynamics online is held up to criticism. Possible future educational fits for this technology are indicated.

New associations between native parasitoids and exotic insects introduced in Italy and in Europe

The introduction of exotic species is one of the most important threats to biodiversity.This phenomenon may cause economic and environmental damage. To prevent these invasions there are institutions like EPPO. Nevertheless, the introduction of exotic pests is an increasing issue, difficult to control. Classic biological control, based on importation of natural enemies from the country of origin, has been successfully used for over 120 years, but it has also raised some criticism. My research work has focused on the study of the new associations occurring between indigenous parasitoids and three exotic pests introduced in Italy and Europe. The three target insects considered were: Cacyreus marshalli Butler (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae), a pest of Geranium plants; Dryocosmus kuriphilus Yasumatsu (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae), a plague of Castanea sp. and Harmonia axyridis (Pallas) (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae). This ladybug has been introduced as a biological control agent, but since some years it considered as an invasive species. For C. marshalli I performed laboratory tests on acceptance and suitability of immature stages of this butterfly by Exorista larvarum (Diptera: Tachinidae) and Brachymeria tibialis (Hymenoptera: Chalcidicae). The experiments showed that these two parasitoids could be used to contain this pest. For D. kuriphilus I performed field samplings in an infested chestnut area, the samples were maintained in rearing chamber until gall wasp or parasitoids emergence. In the 3-year research many parasitoids of gall wasps were found; one of these, Torymus flavipes (Walker), was found in large number. For H. axyridis the research work included a first phase of field sampling, during which I searched indigenous parasitoids which had adapted to this new host; the only species found was Dinocampus coccinellae (Schrank) (Hymenoptera: Braconidae). Laboratory tests were performed on the wasp rearing, biology and capacity to contain H. axyridis.

Evaluation of Antitumoral activity of bone targeted drugs/conventional chemotherapies and identification of biomarkers for the selection of patients with breast cancer for the bone targeted therapy in adjuvant setting

Bone metastases are responsible for different clinical complications defined as skeletal-related events (SREs) such as pathologic fractures, spinal cord compression, hypercalcaemia, bone marrow infiltration and severe bone pain requiring palliative radiotherapy. The general aim of these three years research period was to improve the management of patients with bone metastases through two different approaches of translational research. Firstly in vitro preclinical tests were conducted on breast cancer cells and on indirect co-colture of cancer cells and osteoclasts to evaluate bone targeted therapy singly and in combination with conventional chemotherapy. The study suggests that zoledronic acid has an antitumor activity in breast cancer cell lines. Its mechanism of action involves the decrease of RAS and RHO, as in osteoclasts. Repeated treatment enhances antitumor activity compared to non-repeated treatment. Furthermore the combination Zoledronic Acid + Cisplatin induced a high antitumoral activity in the two triple-negative lines MDA-MB-231 and BRC-230. The p21, pMAPK and m-TOR pathways were regulated by this combined treatment, particularly at lower Cisplatin doses. A co-colture system to test the activity of bone-targeted molecules on monocytes-breast conditioned by breast cancer cells was also developed. Another important criticism of the treatment of breast cancer patients, is the selection of patients who will benefit of bone targeted therapy in the adjuvant setting. A retrospective case-control study on breast cancer patients to find new predictive markers of bone metastases in the primary tumors was performed. Eight markers were evaluated and TFF1 and CXCR4 were found to discriminate between patients with relapse to bone respect to patients with no evidence of disease. In particular TFF1 was the most accurate marker reaching a sensitivity of 63% and a specificity of 79%. This marker could be a useful tool for clinicians to select patients who could benefit for bone targeted therapy in adjuvant setting.