The Collusion of Feminist and Postmodernist Impulses in E.L. Doctorow’s "Ragtime"

Many critics of Doctorow have classified him as a postmodernist writer, acknowledging that a wide number of thematic and stylistic features of his early fiction emanate from the postmodern context in which he took his first steps as a writer. Yet, these novels have an eminently social and ethical scope that may be best perceived in their intellectual engagement and support of feminist concerns. This is certainly the case of Doctorow’s fourth and most successful novel, Ragtime. The purpose of this paper will be two-fold. I will explore Ragtime’s indebtedness to postmodern aesthetics and themes, but also its feminist elements. Thus, on the one hand, I will focus on issues of uncertainty, indeterminacy of meaning, plurality and decentering of subjectivity; on the other hand, I will examine the novel’s attitude towards gender oppression, violence and objectification, its denunciation of hegemonic gender configurations and its voicing of certain feminist demands. This analysis will lead to an examination of the problematic collusion of the mostly white, male, patriarchal aesthetics of postmodernism and feminist politics in the novel. I will attempt to establish how these two traditionally conflicting modes coexist and interact in Ragtime.

Overlapping Notions of Self and Other: the Case of the Anabaptist Body

This paper examines the complex interrelations between notions of ͚“elf͛ and ͚Otheƌ͛ with regards to human bodies, taking as a case study the bodily experiences of Anabaptist Christians, both historically and in the present day. It first examines body practices and discourses through the lens of Anabaptist approaches to baptism and conscience and it relates these to the Foucauldian notion of care of the Self. It then looks at biopolitical relations between individuals and the state through an examination of oath-taking and anti-war protests. Finally, it discusses the roles of bodies and bodiliness in contemporary Anabaptist commemorative practices. 

Introduction: Home Fronts, Gender War and Conflict

Introduction to special edition of Womens History Review special edition on Gender War and Conflict

The Influence of Informational and Emotional Advertising Appeals on Advertising Effectiveness – Consumers’ Perspective on the Over-the-Counter Product Advertisements in Finland

Consumers face enormous amounts of promotional messages daily whereas the pharmaceutical companies among other industries spend considerable time and money developing effective advertising strategies. There are multiple possible ways to appeal the target customer in order to increase the effectiveness of the advertisement. In spite of the various possibilities to categorize persuasive communication, the informational and the emotional appeals are the typical approaches. This study assesses the influence of the informational and emotional advertising appeals on the advertising effectiveness in the context of OTCs in Finland. The research method applied in this study is a quantitative survey. The data consists of 461 responses from the target population of 18–80 years old Finnish speaking consumers. The results from the marketing research indicate that the positive correlations of the emotional appeals are much stronger than the positive correlations of the informational appeals relating to the advertising effectiveness. However, on average the Finnish consumers experience the OTC advertisements relying on the informational appeals more effective than the OTC advertisements relying on the emotional appeals. Furthermore, within emotional appeals there is a much greater variety in the experienced advertising effectiveness not providing as stabile and consistent experienced advertising effectiveness compared to the informational appeals. Thus, the OTC advertisement relying more on the emotional appeals are much more risky in terms of advertising effectiveness. There are also differences with the experienced advertising effectiveness between the Finnish consumer groups and the information can be utilised when designing tailored OTC advertisements. The Finnish men consider humorous advertisements more effective than the Finnish women. In addition, the people living outside Uusimaa Region experience higher advertising effectiveness with the advertisements relying more on the informational advertisements compared to the people living in Uusimaa Region. In similar vein, the people with lower education experience higher advertising effectiveness with the advertisements relying more on the informational advertisements compared to the people with high education. Additionally, the older generation perceive an OTC advertisement with a middle-aged celebrity more effective than the younger consumers

Future consumers’ perceptions of sustainability, and their reflections on buying decisions

The purpose of this quantitative study is to study future consumers’ perception of sustainability in relation to business in general and specifically concerning the forest industry. The aim is to understand, what they feel is important for sustainable business and how the forest industry, in their opinion, is performing in this respect. Further, it aims to study how these perceptions reflect in their buying decisions. The research was conducted by a quantitative survey in two countries, Finland and Hong Kong, in the spring of 2015. All data used in the research is primary. The result indicate that consumers see sustainability issues important today and in the future. Sustainability is seen important both for business in general for the forest industry. The industry is considered sustainable now, but room for improvements exists. The appreciation of sustainability does not reflect to buying decisions, however. The buying of ecological products seems to be more up to chance than to intention. Consumers are not proactive in searching for more ecological or responsible options. Information needs to be taken to them. Ecologicalness as such is still not a strong selling point.

Metabolic tug-of-war in tumors results in diminished T cell antitumor immunity.

NlmCategory="UNASSIGNED">Glycolytic activity in T cells governs T cell responses by controlling various cellular processes, including proliferation, survival, and effector functions. We recently showed that the tumor microenvironment diminishes T cell antitumor responses by depriving glucose to infiltrating T cells. Moreover, metabolic rewiring tumor-reactive T cells sustain T cell metabolic fitness and antitumor responses.

The age of studies and reports: selected elements concerning the background of encounters defining the power of education

In the present paper, we discuss the time before the “age of reports”. Besides the Coleman Report in the period of Coleman, the Lady Plowden Report also appeared, while there were important studies in France (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1964; Peyre, 1959) and studies that inaugurated comprehensive education in Nordic countries. We focus on the period after the World War II, which was marked by rising economic nationalism, on the one hand, and by the second wave of mass education, on the other, bearing the promise of more equality and a reduction of several social inequalities, both supposed to be ensured by school. It was a period of great expectations related to the power of education and the rise of educational meritocracy. On this background, in the second part of the paper, the authors attempt to explore the phenomenon of the aforementioned reports, which significantly questioned the power of education and, at the same time, enabled the formation of evidence-based education policies. In this part of the paper, the central place is devoted to the case of socialist Yugoslavia/Slovenia and its striving for more equality and equity through education. Through the socialist ideology of more education for all, socialist Yugoslavia, with its exaggerated stress on the unified school and its overemphasised belief in simple equality, overstepped the line between relying on comprehensive education as an important mechanism for increasing the possibility of more equal and just education, on the one hand, and the myth of the almighty unified school capable of eradicating social inequalities, especially class inequalities, on the other. With this radical approach to the reduction of inequalities, socialist policy in the then Yugoslavia paradoxically reduced the opportunity for greater equality, and even more so for more equitable education. (DIPF/Orig.)

Shadows of militarism: an ethnography of trauma and resistance among soldiers and veterans in post-9/11 USA.

This thesis critically examines the military disciplining of trauma through a detailed ethnographic study of post-9/11 lower-enlisted soldiers and veterans in the U.S. who have links to a national movement of resistance to, and healing from, militarism. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork at two G.I. coffeehouses and with the post-9/11 veteran anti-militarism movement in U.S., it analyses the journey of joining the military, becoming a soldier, leaving the military and veteran identities. It explores militarism and military power as a cultural process which reproduces and conceals itself within normative conceptions of the everyday, and military trauma as a site of contested power and resistance. In doing so, this research addresses an urgent need to critically engage with military trauma as a means to challenge normalised discourses of militarism. This research reveals a disjuncture between the imagined and lived reality of military identities in the post-9/11 era. It explores the politics of recognition of veterans’ public and private lives, their contested identities, and their constrained relationship to the state. It argues that veterans are silenced and their identities reduced to symbolic tools in a public military imaginary which constructs military trauma into politically manageable categories, while disciplining and silencing the nation from critically examining war and militarism. In this way, this thesis argues that veterans serve a vital function in U.S. society by absorbing and containing the violence of the state, which then becomes unspeakable, unhearable, and inescapable. This thesis shows how a small number of soldiers and veterans are pushing back against this narrative. In sum, this thesis seeks to challenge the disciplinary effects of militarism upon trauma and support veteran voices to speak their own truths.

Incomplete information games of conflict and collective action

My thesis consists of three essays that investigate strategic interactions between individuals engaging in risky collective action in uncertain environments. The first essay analyzes a broad class of incomplete information coordination games with a wide range of applications in economics and politics. The second essay draws from the general model developed in the first essay to study decisions by individuals of whether to engage in protest/revolution/coup/strike. The final essay explicitly integrates state response to the analysis. The first essay, Coordination Games with Strategic Delegation of Pivotality, exhaustively analyzes a class of binary action, two-player coordination games in which players receive stochastic payoffs only if both players take a ``stochastic-coordination action''. Players receive conditionally-independent noisy private signals about the normally distributed stochastic payoffs. With this structure, each player can exploit the information contained in the other player's action only when he takes the “pivotalizing action”. This feature has two consequences: (1) When the fear of miscoordination is not too large, in order to utilize the other player's information, each player takes the “pivotalizing action” more often than he would based solely on his private information, and (2) best responses feature both strategic complementarities and strategic substitutes, implying that the game is not supermodular nor a typical global game. This class of games has applications in a wide range of economic and political phenomena, including war and peace, protest/revolution/coup/ strike, interest groups lobbying, international trade, and adoption of a new technology. My second essay, Collective Action with Uncertain Payoffs, studies the decision problem of citizens who must decide whether to submit to the status quo or mount a revolution. If they coordinate, they can overthrow the status quo. Otherwise, the status quo is preserved and participants in a failed revolution are punished. Citizens face two types of uncertainty. (a) non-strategic: they are uncertain about the relative payoffs of the status quo and revolution, (b) strategic: they are uncertain about each other's assessments of the relative payoff. I draw on the existing literature and historical evidence to argue that the uncertainty in the payoffs of status quo and revolution is intrinsic in politics. Several counter-intuitive findings emerge: (1) Better communication between citizens can lower the likelihood of revolution. In fact, when the punishment for failed protest is not too harsh and citizens' private knowledge is accurate, then further communication reduces incentives to revolt. (2) Increasing strategic uncertainty can increase the likelihood of revolution attempts, and even the likelihood of successful revolution. In particular, revolt may be more likely when citizens privately obtain information than when they receive information from a common media source. (3) Two dilemmas arise concerning the intensity and frequency of punishment (repression), and the frequency of protest. Punishment Dilemma 1: harsher punishments may increase the probability that punishment is materialized. That is, as the state increases the punishment for dissent, it might also have to punish more dissidents. It is only when the punishment is sufficiently harsh, that harsher punishment reduces the frequency of its application. Punishment Dilemma 1 leads to Punishment Dilemma 2: the frequencies of repression and protest can be positively or negatively correlated depending on the intensity of repression. My third essay, The Repression Puzzle, investigates the relationship between the intensity of grievances and the likelihood of repression. First, I make the observation that the occurrence of state repression is a puzzle. If repression is to succeed, dissidents should not rebel. If it is to fail, the state should concede in order to save the costs of unsuccessful repression. I then propose an explanation for the “repression puzzle” that hinges on information asymmetries between the state and dissidents about the costs of repression to the state, and hence the likelihood of its application by the state. I present a formal model that combines the insights of grievance-based and political process theories to investigate the consequences of this information asymmetry for the dissidents' contentious actions and for the relationship between the magnitude of grievances (formulated here as the extent of inequality) and the likelihood of repression. The main contribution of the paper is to show that this relationship is non-monotone. That is, as the magnitude of grievances increases, the likelihood of repression might decrease. I investigate the relationship between inequality and the likelihood of repression in all country-years from 1981 to 1999. To mitigate specification problem, I estimate the probability of repression using a generalized additive model with thin-plate splines (GAM-TPS). This technique allows for flexible relationship between inequality, the proxy for the costs of repression and revolutions (income per capita), and the likelihood of repression. The empirical evidence support my prediction that the relationship between the magnitude of grievances and the likelihood of repression is non-monotone.

Plan of the siege of Plattsburg and capture of the British fleet on Lake Champlain the 11th Sptr. 1814 : to accompany B. Tanner's print of Macdonough's victory.

Relief shown by hachures.

Towards sustainable transport: A comparison of demographic and behavioural characteristics of Finnish and international car sharing users

Strong evidence suggests that the climate is changing and that these changes are largely caused by human activities. A consensus exists among researchers that human activity is causing global warming and that actions to mitigate global warming need to be taken swiftly. The transportation sector, which relies heavily on fossil fuel burning and primarily oil, is one of the big contributors to air pollution problems at local, regional and global levels. It is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions and is estimated to be responsible for nearly a quarter of global energyrelated carbon dioxide emissions. Car sharing is a mobility solution encouraging its users to decrease private car usage in favour of communal transit and environmental goals. The idea of car sharing originates from the aspiration to decrease personal car ownership and to reduce vehicle distance travelled. This thesis seeks to complement the understanding of Finnish car sharing users and their usage through better categorization. Through better categorization and segmentation of Finnish car sharing users the thesis seeks to provide information for improved marketing insight. Research is done on the demographic and behavioural characteristics of Finnish car sharing users and they are compared with international findings about the characteristics of International car sharing users. The main research problem is Are Finnish car sharing users similar to international ones? A theoretical research framework on the determinants of individual car sharing usage is built based on international research about demographic and behaviouristic characteristics. After this a quantitative survey is performed to the customers of a Finnish car sharing organization. The data analysed in the thesis consist out of 532 answers received from the car sharing organizations customers. The data is analysed with descriptive and other exploratory methods, which create an understanding of Finnish car sharing users. At the end of the analysis the demographic and behavioural characteristics of Finnish car sharing users are compared with international ones. The research findings of the thesis indicate that the demographic and behavioural characteristics of Finnish car sharing usage largely follow those of their international counterparts. Thanks to the thesis results the car sharing organization is able to better target their customers through improved marketing insight.

Sequestering of Fe and Pb ions from Wastewater by Canarium schweinfurthii after carbonization and chemical treatment: Isothermal and Kinetic Modeling

In this paper agricultural waste; Canarium schweinfurthii was explored for the sequestering of Fe and Pb ions from wastewater solution after carbonization and chemical treatment at 400oC. Optimum time of 30 and 150 min with percentage removal of 95 and 98% at optimum pH of 2 and 6 was obtained for Fe and Pb ions. Kinetics model followed pseudofirst order as sum of absolute error (EABS) between Qe and Qc greater than that of pseudo second order. Parameters evaluated from isothermal equation (Freundlich and Langmuir) showed that KL and QO for Fe > Pb and R2 for Langmuir> Freundlich. The study reveals the suitability of the adsorbent for sequestering of Fe and Pb ions from industrial wastewater.

Effects of Organic and Inorganic Fertilizers on the Growth of NH-Ae 47-4 Variety of Okra

The paper evaluates the effects of organic and inorganic fertilizers on the growth of okra (variety NH-Ae 47-4. Organic fertilizers (cow dung and poultry droppings) and inorganic (NPK 15:15:15 and Urea 64:0) fertilizers were used for the experiment. The fertilizers were weighed and applied at 5g, 10g and 15g and were replicated three times and each having a control. Vegetative growth parameters taken include, shoot fresh weight (g), dry weight (g), plant height (cm), leaf number, stem girth (cm), leaf area (cm2). The results obtained from the experiment showed that the effect of the treatments were significantly difference from the control for all the parameters accessed with urea fertilizer having least effect. Plants treated with poultry litters have best performance by recording the highest fresh and dry weight (0.39g) at 4 weeks after planting (WAP); highest stem height 29.33cm for all the concentrations applied. Similarly, it has highest leaf area and stem girth (64.67cm2and 2.23cm respectively) at 8WAP.

"To Hold the World in Contempt": The British Empire, War, and the Irish and Indian Nationalist Press, 1899-1914

The era between the close of the nineteenth century and the onset of the First World War witnessed a marked increase in radical agitation among Indian and Irish nationalists. The most outspoken political leaders of the day founded a series of widely circulated newspapers in India and Ireland, placing these editors in the enviable position of both reporting and creating the news. Nationalist journalists were in the vanguard of those pressing vocally for an independent India and Ireland, and together constituted an increasingly problematic contingent for the British Empire. The advanced-nationalist press in Ireland and the nationalist press in India took the lead in facilitating the exchange of provocative ideas—raising awareness of perceived imperial injustices, offering strategic advice, and cementing international solidarity. Irish and Indian press coverage of Britain’s imperial wars constituted one of the premier weapons in the nationalists’ arsenal, permitting them to build support for their ideology and forward their agenda in a manner both rapid and definitive. Directing their readers’ attention to conflicts overseas proved instructive in how the Empire dealt with those who resisted its policies, and also showcased how it conducted its affairs with its allies. As such, critical press coverage of the Boxer Rebellion, Boer War, Russo-Japanese War, and World War I bred disaffection for the Empire, while attempts by the Empire to suppress the critiques further alienated the public. This dissertation offers the first comparative analysis of the major nationalist press organs in India and Ireland, using the prism of war to illustrate the increasingly persuasive role of the press in promoting resistance to the Empire. It focuses on how the leading Indian and Irish editors not only fostered a nationalist agenda within their own countries, but also worked in concert to construct a global anti-imperialist platform. By highlighting the anti-imperial rhetoric of the nationalist press in India and Ireland and illuminating their strategies for attaining self-government, this study deepens understanding of the seeds of nationalism, making a contribution to comparative imperial scholarship, and demonstrating the power of the media to alter imperial dynamics and effect political change.

The Ultimate Secrecy: Feminist Readings of Masculine Trauma in Vietnam War Literature

It is a widely acknowledged and often unquestioned fact that patriarchy and its modes of behaviour and social organization favour the appearance of trauma on the weakest (and defenceless) members of society: women. In the last decades, trauma seems to have taken the baton of typically female maladies such as 19th c. hysteria or 20th c. madness. Feminists in the 20th c. have long worked to prove the connection between the latter affections (and their reflection in literary texts) and patriarchal oppression or expectations of feminine behaviour and accordance to roles and rules. With Trauma Studies on the rise, the approach to the idea of the untold as related to femininity is manifold: on the one hand, is not trauma, which precludes telling about one’s own experience and keeps it locked not only from the others, but also from ourselves, the ultimate secrecy? On the other hand, when analyzing works that reflect trauma, one is astounded by the high number of them with a female protagonist and an almost all-female cast: in this sense, a ‘feminist’ reading is almost compulsory, in the sense that it is usually the author’s assumption that patriarchal systems of exploitation and expectations favour traumatic events and their outcome (silence and secrets) on the powerless, usually women. Often, traumatic texts combine feminism with other analytical discourses (one of the topics proposed for this panel): Toni Morrison’s study of traumatic responses in The Bluest Eye and Beloved cannot be untangled from her critique of slavery; just as much of Chicana feminism and its representations of rape and abuse (two main agents of trauma) analyze the nexus of patriarchy, new forms of post-colonialism, and the dynamics of power and powerlessness in ethnic contexts. Within this tradition that establishes the secrecies of trauma as an almost exclusively feminine characteristic, one is however faced with texts which have traumatized males as protagonists: curiously enough, most of these characters have suffered trauma through a typically masculine experience: that of war and its aftermath. By analyzing novels dealing with war veterans from Vietnam or the Second World War, the astounding findings are the frequent mixture of masculine or even ‘macho’ values and the denial of any kind of ‘feminine’ characteristics, combined with a very strict set of rules of power and hierarchy that clearly establish who is empowered and who is powerless. It is our argument that this replication of patriarchal modes of domination, which place the lowest ranks of the army in a ‘feminine’ situation, blended with the compulsory ‘macho’ stance soldiers are forced to adopt as army men (as seen, for example, in Philip Caputo’s Indian Country, Larry Heinemann’s Paco’s Story or Ed Dodge’s DAU: A Novel of Vietnam) furthers the onset and seriousness of ulterior trauma. In this sense, we can also analyze this kind of writing from a ‘feminist’ point of view, since the dynamics of über-patriarchal power established at the front at war-time deny any display of elements traditionally viewed as ‘feminine’ (such as grief, guilt or emotions) in soldiers. If trauma is the result of a game of patriarchal empowerment, how can feminist works, not only theoretical, but also fictional, overthrow it? Are ‘feminine’ characteristics necessary to escape trauma, even in male victims? How can feminist readings of trauma enhance our understanding of its dynamics and help produce new modes of interaction that transcend power and gender division as the basis for the organization of society?