Euclidean Geometry in Two Medieval Islamic Encyclopaedias

Two early encyclopaedic treatises, written in Arabic, include extensive discussion of geometry. Although both the Rasā'il Ikhwān al-Safā' and the Kitāb al-Shifā' fall within the Euclidean tradition, their style and content differ radically. The Neo-Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic Ikhwān al-Safā' place mathematics at the head of their encyclopaedia, but develop their discussion of geometry using a "sub-Euclidean" approach. Ibn Sīnā, whose orientation is broadly Aristotelian, includes an epitome of Euclid's Elements in its entirety, yet modifies the text at numerous points.     

Celebration and Separation: A Troublesome Approach to Multicultural Education

Middle school classrooms can be fertile ground for positively impacting students' cultural and racial assumptions and understanding, given an effective multicultural curriculum and school structure. This article presents a narrative of the author's contrasting experiences teaching a text with racial themes. Applicable literature provides a framework for explaining the students' differing levels of receptivity towards the text. Three particular areas of study provide the framework for explaining student response: a school's approach to multicultural literature; school structure, in particular, tracking; and theories of racial identity development. In addition, the author challenges adults involved in the educational system to implement truly multicultural approaches to learning, despite the potential discomfort or unpopularity of such change.     

Main Features of Mark of Toledo's Latin Qurʾān Translation

Abstract

This article sets out to be a concise account of Mark of Toledo's Qur?ān translation. It will be structured as follows: first, it will provide information about when and in what circumstances it was realised. Second, it will present some examples, which will show Mark's way of translating and transferring form and content of the Qur?ān for his Latin-speaking Christian audience. Mark mostly translates words consistently throughout the text, and also tries to translate words derived from the same Arabic root with root-related Latin words. Moreover, he does not usually try to convey the semantic nuances a word may have, seemingly not paying attention to the context, but translating with a standard, basic meaning of the word. (This observation should be taken as a tendency and not as a rule, as the excursus at the end will illustrate.) Nevertheless, Mark does not violate the grammar of the Latin language. Despite his fidelity to the text, Mark's Christian cultural background sometimes influences the translation. In the conclusion, the features of Mark's translation will be set out in relation to the cultural and political activity of its commissioner, the Archbishop of Toledo Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada.     

Culturally and Linguistically Relevant Readalouds

The teacher readaloud is an instructional tool established in its ability to foster children's language and literacy development. Increasing cultural and linguistic diversity and changing standards place pressure on teachers to provide literacy and language instruction relevant to children's everyday lives and learning. This article presents a framework for conducting culturally and linguistically relevant readalouds within two essential components, talk and text, in terms of developing cultural competence, maintaining high academic expectations, and fostering a critical stance. Particular attention is given to the interactive nature of these readalouds and how they can be used to promote children's active co-construction of textually-based meaning.     

A Possible Connection between the Philosophy of the Castilian king Alfonso X and the Risālat ayy ibn Yaqān by Ibn ufayl

This article explores the textual connections between two narratives: Ibn ufayl's (581/1185–6) Risālat ayy ibn Yaqān and a brief history of religions present in two works – the General Estoria and the Stenario – produced in the Castilian court of king Alfonso X (1221–1284). Both literary narratives deal with the intersection of philosophy and metaphysics. First, Alfonso X's cultural renaissance is contextualized. Under Arabic influence, Alfonso's collaborators created a cultural synthesis that was denounced by his son Sancho in the 1290s. Second, we compare Ibn ufayl's and Alfonso X's narratives. Ibn ufayl's model was probably adapted to justify a cultural programme that blended Christianity and Pagan inheritance. Unfortunately, there is no physical evidence to prove that Alfonso's circle was familiar with Ibn ufayl's work. Nevertheless, the analysis of a common genre – following A.W. Hughes's theory – allows us to contend that Alfonso X reproduced this type of text within a Christian context.     

Steven Soderbergh's The Limey: Implications for the Auteur Theory and Industry Structure

In this article, I present an analysis of Steven Soderbergh's The Limey that is informed by auteurism and an effort to unpack the film's antinomies. Although it was not as high profile as subsequent Soderbergh films, The Limey presents an interesting entry in the director's corpus for its stylistic signature and its "liberal" politics; a political posture that, nonetheless, only extends so far in entertaining a critical discourse about the society that produced it. I begin the investigation by filling in the background. First, I unpack the newer formulations of auteur theory and emphasize themes, stylistic signature, and social determinations in constituting auteurs. Second, I characterize the independent sector of U.S. film production and its relation to the major studios while positioning Soderbergh as a chimerical case between an independent and a studio director. Thereafter, I orient to the film and its place within Soderbergh's corpus. I analyze Soderbergh's striking and acclaimed stylistic signature (notably with respect to editing). Proceeding to the themes embedded in the film, I examine some of the antinomies in The Limey and their political valence. In particular, I discuss The Limey's class antinomies, its presentation of the United Kingdom in contrast with that of its former colony, the US, and the tropes of femininity that circulate within the film. On the view developed here, Soderbergh's The Limey entertains some fundamental criticisms of the United States, class striation, masculinity and femininity, before making a partial and uneven retreat.     

Reading Chen Yingzhen: why and how

ABSTRACT

Since 2009, there has been a renewed trend in Taiwan's intellectual circles to explore Chen Yingzhen. In this lies a strong and unprecedented inclination to explore in Chen Yingzhen's literary works the enormous resources he provides as a thinker. As one of the researchers who has undertaken such an approach, I intend to address three issues in this article: first, his relation with people of my generation and the reason to re-read him at this moment; second, how I, as an amateur in terms of literary works or literary criticism, read literary texts. I address this issue in terms of methodology and theory, and propose a reading method consisting of a triple intersecting process among the text, the author and the history. Thirdly, and perhaps the most importantly, I address the issue of “why do we have to read Chen Yingzhen now” from three levels: history, thinking and literature in order to explore the particular situation his literary works have in contemporary literature, as well as its intellectual meaning in the contemporary world.     

The threat of global economics to multicultural studies

When viewed through the lens of critical pedagogy, children's literature offers a viable avenue for tapping the "funds of knowledge" abounding in culturally and linguistically diverse communities. It is an effective means for promoting dialogue, arousing critical consciousness, and facilitating the "coming to voice" of oppressed people. In this article I examine the tenets of critical pedagogy as practiced in the Libros y Familias Program, a family literacy program for Spanish-speaking families in Independence, Oregon. It gives practical examples of how children's literature can be used as a vehicle for building community and personal transformation and presents a model adaptable to other communities.     

Convention and Conversion: The Saracen Ending of the Taill of Rauf Coilzear

Uniquely among representatives of the "king-and-commoner" plot type (a king takes refuge with a humble fellow, who is then summoned to court for a reward), the fifteenth-century Taill of Rauf Coilzear adjoins a lengthy encounter between the newly knighted "hero" and a Saracen opponent. The narrative logic of this continuation has resisted explanation. I argue that the inclusion of the Saracen ending and other material derived from popular romance is motivated by the poet's desire to represent Rauf's entry into the nobility not as idle fantasy or as mere absorption, but as an ideal synthesis consistent with his pre-existing code of personal, and class, honour. In his assertive, temperamental otherness Rauf resembles the stock figure of the Saracen champion. The poet builds on this analogy (notably in a scene opposing Rauf to the martial-elitist Roland), so that the eventual conversion of the Saracen - presented conventionally as a matter requiring no ideological reconstruction - supplies the model for Rauf's own decidedly unconventional transition from commoner to aristocrat.     

Chekhov,Tolstoy and the Illustrated Press in the 1890S

ABSTRACT

This article demonstrates how Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy addressed an expanded reading public with new interests in the 1890s. It focuses on Chekhov's serialized book-length study The Island of Sakhalin (1893–4) and Tolstoy's last big novel, Resurrection (1899), which was also serialized. To reach an expanding diverse audience Tolstoy simplified his vocabulary, used a mono-dimensional plot and avoided subplots, foreign words and subtle shifts that could deflect the reader's attention. Chekhov also adapted his literary practice, adopting a unique documentary style, putting himself in the text. Each author engaged in a conversation about nationality, ethnicity and empire, issues of fundamental import to their readers and their society more broadly. Speaking about life and death, sin and redemption, good and evil, and about the common humanity of the most downtrodden of Russian citizens, men and women, Chekhov and Tolstoy addressed their contemporaries with fresh and timely words about pressing issues.     

Review Essay: Sex in Advertising: Perspectives on the Erotic Appeal and Measuring Up: How Advertising Affects Self-Image

This analysis argues that Grant Hill advances a critique of internal contradictions within Black communities; offers rival epistemologies of how to be Black, male, and an athlete; as well as connects concrete Black experience within an abstract museum setting. This examination grounds Hill's public statements of what he hopes to accomplish with the exhibition "Something All Our Own: The Grant Hill Collection of African American Art" within a rubric featuring theme, function, and quantity. Under examination are Hill's messages to understand the ways in which he seeks to demonstrate his multidimensionality and ability to transcend the one-dimensional identity position of Black male athlete.     

“The Horror” of Structural Racism: Helping Students Take a Critical Stance Using Classic Literature

The goal of this piece is to provide educators with the knowledge and practical application needed to build critical literacy within their students using a traditional text that might not be considered multicultural. This essay challenges the idea that “outdated” literary works have no place in today's multicultural classroom, as it connects critical literacy concepts to classic works and explores how such concepts are inherent in our society based on the ideas presented in the literature. Using Heart of Darkness, this work connects structural racism to Conrad's novella and explores how students can examine how structural racism is inherent in our society.     

‘Migrations of Chineseness’: in conversation with Ien Ang

This paper explores John Hersey's Hiroshima (1946) and Nagai Takashi's The Bells of Nagasaki (1949). These two best-selling books published in the US and Japan in the late 1940s portray the experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although they appeared in a similar period—a postwar transition and a herald of the Cold War—their reception was strikingly different. Hersey's piece acquired international currency when the representations of the atomic bombings in Japan were censored under the US Occupation. Since then Hiroshima has virtually remained the ‘first and only’ text about the atomic bomb victims widely read in the US. Nagai's memoir, a rare exception allowed to be circulated nationwide under the censorship, and elevated to a canonical voice of Nagasaki's experience, however, has been the subject of controversies in Japan from the 1970s. The paper argues that despite these differences, both works share parallels in narratological strategies, such as historical emplotment, the personalization of the event, compassionate identification, the valorization of the power of the atomic bomb, and the promotion of compartmentalized knowledge. These effects create a psychological deterrent for readers not to confront larger political and ethical problematics of Japanese colonialism and postwar US hegemony in Asia. Their discursive entanglement and ostensible dissociation symbolize the ways in which trans-Pacific knowledge on the atomic bombings has been shaped postwar for many decades.     

The Three-Hour Rule and Educational Television for Children

This article presents findings from 2 studies examining the impact of the 1996 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) processing guideline mandating educational television for children. The studies include (a) a content analysis of 3 episodes of each of 41 different programs listed as "core" educational programming under the FCC's requirements and (b) an examination of industry perspectives on children's educational programming based on 22 in-depth telephone interviews with independent producers, network executives, and program consultants. The article contrasts the results of the content analysis with findings from the industry interviews to explore the economic factors that determine what is offered as "educational and informational" (E/I) on commercial broadcast television for children. The article concludes by considering why broadcasters may be more likely to offer "prosocial" programming (i.e., shows that deal with social and emotional issues) than "traditionally academic" programming (i.e., shows related to school-type subjects) to satisfy their educational television obligations to children.     

Editors' Introduction: Mapping the Field of Popular Communication

Reality TV has become a key site for experiments in "advertainment," or the merging of advertising and entertainment programming, and hence provides insight into current developments in commercial culture. Focusing on the genre's exchange value, this article examines Reality TV's commodification of various aspects of experience from privacy to diversity and, even more pragmatically, its development as a rich advertising vehicle for the digital era. Product placement, sponsorship and co-production are among the techniques examined. A discussion of Reality TV's core brand identity-a special viewing access-underscores its relation to voyeurism, pornography and, to spot advertising, all traditional techniques for attracting an audience. In many instances, the genre's high degree of commercialization signals the triumph of the market in one conspicuous area of popular communication.     

"Asterix Repelling the Invader": Globalization and Nationalism in News Coverage of Jose Bove and the McDonald's Incident

This article examines Associated Press and Agence France-Presse wire service coverage of Frenchman Jose Bove's 1999 ransacking of a Millau, France, McDonald's, as well as his subsequent trial. News media coverage of this incident represents an opportunity to examine deeper issues surrounding globalization, nationalism, and the media's-in this case, international news agencies'-role in constructing and maintaining both. Analysis suggests that both services covered the Bove incidents similarly, downplaying the broader context of corporate capitalism and the global movement to resist it, while elevating Bove to be a key representative of the movement. At the same time that they anointed Bove as a French icon (contributing to "Bovemania"), the wire services constructed a comical caricature of him, which ultimately discredits the activists and the movement he represents.     

“Et sachiez qu’il se repenti fort quant yl y envoia” (Jean de Joinville,Vie de saint Louis). Par-delà la désillusion mongole. Mœurs et légendes “tartares” au temps du roi Saint Louis

The passage that John of Joinville, faithful companion of Louis IX, devotes to the Mongols in his chronicle of the Seventh Crusade, known as “La Vie de Saint Louis”, cross-conceives two structures under the sign of hope: historical facts and legends on the one hand, and Christian sensibilities on the other, giving way to a set of “ethnological” observations about what are presented as “barbarian” customs. The text gives a faithful reflection on sentiments which agitated the Crusaders and their King: hope and disillusion. But Joinville's testimony goes far beyond that: it is first and foremost a testimony of love upon which history could be re-written.     

Images of Animated Others: The Orientalization of Disney's Cartoon Heroines From The Little Mermaid to The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Because of the success of the first six animated feature films produced in the "new era" of Disney animation (The Little Mermaid, 1989; Beauty and the Beast, 1991; Aladdin, 1993; The Lion King, 1994; Pocahontas, 1995; The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1996) and their mass merchandising, Disney animated characters became ubiquitous for children of the 1990s. Although Bell, Haas, and Sells (1995) suggested that Disney films present a "sanitization of violence, sexuality, and political struggle concomitant with an erasure or repression of difference" (p. 7), an increasing emphasis on sexuality and the exotic is evident in the construction of the female heroines in these films, particularly in the female characters of color. This article analyzes what may be referred to in Said's (1978) terminology as the orientalization of women of color in five of these six Disney animated films and posits how these representations of gender and cultural difference operate within Disney's consumerist framework, which provides "dreams and products through forms of popular culture in which kids are willing to materially and emotionally invest" (Giroux, 1999, p. 89). Using a critical lens, I interrogate the unity of images regarding gender and race that these Disney texts offer and the ways in which these meanings operate within the larger socio-historical framework regarding women of color and the notion of Whiteness.