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New scholarship in the literature and print culture of the Progressive Era emphasizes the socially and politically transformative power of aesthetic experience. Through their attention to the physical as well as ideological spaces in which the dual projects of political reform and cultural formation via textual production and consumption were carried out, these scholars offer an account of Progressive-Era aesthetic products ranging from fiction to journalism to comics to productions of Elizabethan drama as democratic sites of social good. While previous criticism of the era's literature aligned its ideological orientation with the regressive politics of nativism and rising class divisions, these scholars, through both recovery and rereading, take a more optimistic approach that emphasizes the reciprocal nature of the textual engagement undertaken by immigrants and the working class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mind the Gap! Working Papers On Practice Based Doctoral Research in the Creative Arts and Media, Desmond Bell (ed.) (2016) Dublin: Distillers Press in association with the National College of Art and Design, 267 pp., ISBN: 978-1-870225-02-1, p/bk, £12 A Different Kind of Black and White: Visual Thinking as Epistemic Development in Professional Education, Prue Bramwell-Davis (2015) Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Lady Stephenson Publishing, 346 pp., ISBN (10): 1443877093; ISBN (13): 9781443877091, £26.99 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how documentary cinema in war contexts can challenge gender representations. To do so, we adopt a feminist and postcolonial approach to analyze the work of Catalan non-fiction filmmaker Alba Sotorra in Kurdistan, Afghanistan and Catalonia. In her films, Sotorra positions herself close to a series of subjects absorbed by wars and armed conflicts that (re)define their identities while acting beyond gender stereotypes. In particular, the paper analyzes the modes of production and representational strategies of two of Sotorra's latest feature films, Game Over and Commander Arian, documentaries with which the filmmaker aims at overcoming the visual exploitation of alterity. After an introduction to Sotorra, and a brief revision of the theory of postcolonial feminist cinema, our argument unfolds in four parts. Firstly, we reflect on cinematic representations of women and men at war; secondly, we introduce our methodology, based on in-depth interviews with the director to support our film analysis; thirdly, we contrast our hypotheses by means of close-readings of the films; lastly, we reflect on how the filmmaker aligns herself with intersectional feminism by using empathy and solidarity towards her subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Western gaze instituted by the cinematographic apparatus constructs racialized subjects and supports processes of dispossession. My present transmedial artistic research project engages with the biopolitics of representation in archival film material, from a decolonial perspective. By drawing from academic and non-academic sources on relations between colonialism, capitalism, and technologies of control, this paper studies manifestations of surveillance in non-fiction film, to analyze the sub-genre of medical propaganda in former European colonies. Moreover, it proposes to scrutinize the long-term impact colonial cinema and its structures of representation had and still have on processes of subjectification, haunting present-day gender and race-determined profiling by mainstream film, CCTV, and drones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the gap between familiar popular narratives describing Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as the trope of the killer robot, and the realistic near-future implications of machine intelligence and automation for technology policy and society. The authors conducted a series of interviews with technologists, science fiction writers, and other experts, as well as a workshop, to identify a set of key themes relevant to the near future of AI. In parallel, they led the analysis of almost 100 recent works of science fiction stories with AI themes to develop a preliminary taxonomy of AI in science fiction. These activities informed the commissioning of six original works of science fiction and non-fiction response essays on the themes of "intelligence" and "justice" that were published as part of the Slate Future Tense Fiction series in 2019 and 2020. Our findings indicate that artificial intelligence remains deeply ambiguous both in the policy and cultural contexts: we struggle to define the boundaries and the agency of machine intelligence, and consequently find it difficult to govern or interact with such systems. However, our findings also suggest more productive avenues of inquiry and framing that could foster both better policy and better narratives around AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the old days of descriptivism, fictional reference and non-fictional reference with proper names were treated on a par. Descriptivism was not an intuitive theory, but it meritoriously provided a unitary semantic account of names, whether referentially full or empty. Then the revolution of the new theory of reference occurred. This new theory is definitely more intuitive than descriptivism, yet it comes with a drawback: the referentially full use and the referentially empty use, notably the fictional use, of names are semantically no longer on the same footing. How the use of names from fiction is referentially empty has even been seen as a symptom of its not being a use at all. In this paper, I ask the following question: can one keep the merits of the new theory of reference and still provide a unitary account of both fictional and non-fictional reference with names? My answer is positive, provided that one conceives proper names as a special kind of indexicals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Moroccan feminist sociologist Fatema Mernissi (1940-2015) is probably best known for her pioneering scholarly work on gender equality in Islam. This paper, however focuses on her life writing: her memoir, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood, published in 1994 and her reflections on its Eurocentric reception, which culminated in the publication of her work of creative non-fiction Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems in 2001. Written in popular genres in accessible registers, Mernissi's texts translate her scholarly feminism into stories of the everyday in order to encourage her readers to see possibilities of feminist practices within and against oppressive social structures. Both texts deal with the way in which women's agency is circumscribed by particular horizons of constraint determined by their social contexts and thus the texts contrast local, particular forms of constraint with more diffuse forms of oppression that characterise western modernity. This paper offers a reading of her harem childhood to trace some of the alternative modes of enacting small freedoms that the memoir documents. As becomes apparent in Mernissi's reflections on the memoir's reception, these achievements seem to be largely illegible within meritocratic scripts of success. In contrast, Mernissi asserts that care for self and other - via modes of storytelling, performance, artistic production and looking after one's physical wellbeing - mark direct, albeit subtle, forms of resistance even if they are not recognised as such. Drawing on a popular cultural repertoire, the well-known figure of Scheherazade emerges in Mernissi's texts as a central role model for women crafting pockets of resistance and webs of care. In this way, Mernissi's texts offers a Moroccan perspective on the debate of the conditions of possibility of ordinary feminist practices inspired by popular artistic forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been a growing jurisprudential and philosophical literature on the concept of harm, in particular, what it means to suffer harm. This paper defends the most unpopular account of what it means to suffer harm, the temporal comparative account of harm (TCA). According to TCA, what it means to suffer harm just is for a person to come to be in a state in which they are worse off than they were before. My defence of the TCA proceeds as follows. Firstly, I explain why it is that one might find the TCA appealing to begin with. Then, I respond to three sets of concerns that have been levied against the TCA: (1) concerns about the sufficiency of historical worsenings for harm; (2) concerns about the necessity of historical worsenings for harm; and (3) concerns about the downstream consequences of adopting the TCA in general. If my arguments are successful, we ought to take the TCA much more seriously as a plausible account of what it means to suffer harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although students in college science courses typically learn laboratory techniques and practices, few are taught about the communicative interactions that occur within the larger scientific community. In this paper, I propose that to educate a scientifically literate public — one that comprehends the centrality of argument in the production of scientifically sound information — science instructors must generate an understanding of how consensus is reached within a community of scientists. I use a chapter from a popular science book as an exemplar to illustrate how narrative can be used in an introductory undergraduate science course to inculcate contextual understanding as to why scientists argue. It is in the undergraduate classroom that we groom students to be our future scientists, science teachers, and scientifically literate citizens. The lively and often contentious debates detailed in this chapter can help these students gain a contextual understanding of the role of argumentation in constructing scientific knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades of film theory, significant scholars and acclaimed filmmakers have established that documentary, just like fiction, must resort to ambiguous and subjective rhetorical figures to represent the world. This claim has led some scholars to conclude that documentary as a term referring to itself as being non-fictional might be disregarding its inevitable fictional elements. This argument may suggest that documentary, just like fiction, when representing the historical world fictionalizes reality. If we accept this claim as true, we need to ask whether terms such as fiction and non-fiction or documentary make sense when discussing the process of representing reality. Does this claim mean that cinema can only fictionalize reality and therefore we should eradicate from this discussion terms such as non-fiction or documentary?. The questions that this paper intends to answer are: Can the term fiction exist without referring to the term non-fiction or documentary? What roles do documentary and fiction play in representing the historical world? Are these terms necessary to communicate and understand the process of representing reality?. This paper has established that fiction and documentary are necessary terms that emerge in cinema narration as a means to mirror human experience's needs to organize, communicate and understand reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies of fictionality within narrative theory have emphasized the permeability between global fictions and nonfictions. That is, global nonfictions often deploy elements of local fictionality without compromising their global commitments. This paper seeks to contribute to this ongoing exploration by arguing that nonfictional illness narratives deploy fictionality to enrich their referential content. I examine Brian Fies' graphic memoir Mom's Cancer , emphasizing how the text utilizes fictionality to address the complicated question of how to narrate the illness experience of others. I also move beyond the particulars of Mom's Cancer to consider (a) how the graphic medium lends itself to the inventions of fictionality, (b) why authors of illness narrative often turn to the indirections of fictionality to come to terms with the actual experiences of illness, and c) how a rhetorical understanding of fictionality can help answer recent challenges to the role of narrative studies in the medical humanities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recently emerged post-secular literary studies is a response to what Jürgen Habermas dubs as 'postsecularisation.' While the definition of the term remains obscure, a post-secular criticism of literary texts overcomes this elusiveness by identifying the possible areas of scholarly interest and attempting to establish a scope of interpretive frameworks. The body of post-secular texts constantly grows, and this paper suggests yet another one, by contemporary writer, Julian Barnes, whose fiction and non-fiction contribute to the makeup of post-secular moments. The present paper takes as a focus The Survivor, the fourth chapter of A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters; Nothing to be Frightened of is also considered along with the interviews with the writer. In this reading of The Survivor, based on existing interpretive models, a 'revisionary return' (McClure) in the life of the central female protagonist, a secular doubter, is presented as provisional and non-final. In resisting master narratives and challenging the secular/religious binary, Barnes uses postmodernist poetics and invokes the practices of Pyrrhonism, such as the suspension of judgement, or what has been called epochē. Furthermore, the literary manifestations of the post-secular are put in a broader context, as the paper also discusses ways of amplifying the theory of 'post-secular,' suggesting similarities between the contemporary post-secular and the early modern, and thus emphasising the tradition of religious scepticism and doubt in English literature since the time of the Renaissance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between Pierre Nora's lieux de mémoire and Paul Ricoeur's body-object there appears to be a relation of community and personal memory. Before death, the human body holds three meanings: material, symbolic, and functional, but post-mortem the body also becomes a place where both community and individual can update their relationship with death and mortality. In the twenty-first century, secularization of death practices inevitably leads to a secular view of the body. In Cailin Doughty's nonfiction, the body seems to stand at the crossroad between spirituality and secularization, so between the meaning of the body and the body as a lieu. This paper will discuss how Nora's and Ricoeur's interpretations of memory and body apply to Doughty's representation of the dead body within a death denying twenty-first century Western society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of recent philosophical argument concerning the distinction between fiction and non-fiction.Design/methodology/approach A critical view of the literature.Findings A consensus that had emerged that defined fiction in terms of the imagination, and imagination in terms of its functional role, has recently been questioned.Research limitations/implications The overview was written by a contributor to the field, and so may be considered partial.Practical implications There might be some implications regarding the ways books are classified.Originality/value The paper is not original, in that it puts forward points made elsewhere, however it is a completely up-to-date review of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This paper is an exploration of the potential impact of narrative writing and creative non-fiction on historical scholarship. Framed by the question of where a manuscript would be shelved in the library, this paper aims to survey the role of space, physical and metaphorical, in how we categorize, curate, cultivate and present narrative scholarship.Design/methodology/approach Using primary source material related to Newark stadium building and a broad-range scholarship concerning space, the author will place them in conversation with historian John Demos’ autobiographical narrative writing style.Findings The author hopes this paper furthers the conversation on the impact of narrative on scholarly writing and literacy.Originality/value By advancing this conversation, the author’s hope is that scholars will expand the possibilities of topics, sources, analysis, narrative styles and presentation of the information they both find and produce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to build on limited understandings of how readers engage with non-fiction. Drawing from prior research and three recent case studies involving non-fiction reading, this paper considers heterogeneity in modes of reading and the central role of libraries in fostering non-fiction reading cultures.Design/methodology/approach Findings from three recent case studies of non-fiction reading about relationship advice; developmental disorders; and financial planning, based on qualitative interviews, participant observation and survey data, are used to assess and expand understandings of non-fiction reading and collections.Findings There is considerable heterogeneity in modes of non-fiction reading, and readers often appropriate non-fiction texts for purposes unintended by the authors. Both physical and online libraries function as sites where non-fiction reading can be used by a broad range of demographic groups to participate in individual or group-based resistance to structural and cultural sources of power and inequality.Practical implications This paper provides insight into the role and value of non-fiction collections.Social implications Findings speak to the value of robust funding for print and online non-fiction collections in communities and schools.Originality/value This paper offers new empirical and theoretical insight into how non-fiction collections are used by a range of demographic groups in community and school contexts. Sociological theories are introduced to highlight the role of non-fiction collections in facilitating social change at individual and group levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This paper aims to problematise the basis of the use of non-fiction as an explanatory category in libraries that have mandates to deliver information to civil society users to initiate debate on its ongoing value.Design/methodology/approach A range of literature from the fields of information science, philosophy, literary studies and the sociology of knowledge was critically surveyed to uncover reasons for the use of the non-fiction concept when librarians are dealing with documentary knowledge. A process of thematisation of relevant material was then conducted using a methodology informed by historicist and hermeneutic-phenomenological approaches to social scientific inquiry.Findings The extreme simplicity of the concept of non-fiction masks a complex range of factors associated with common sense understanding of life and our conceptualisation of what constitutes knowledge in civil society information environments. By restricting the nature of questions associated with knowledge and documentary knowledge the non-fiction concept contributes to a far too narrow view of how these concepts interrelate.Practical implications Preliminary reasons are offered for why the non-fiction concept is problematic, and an alternative discursive formation is put forward which may enable more fruitful caretaking of documentary collections in school and public libraries.Originality/value This paper helps to open discussion among collection management theorists and practitioners regarding how the concept of documentary knowledge can be more usefully theorised so that it is better able to support the epistemic learning and socialisation goals of libraries characterised by their civil society setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Reisinger, William M., and Bryon J. Moraski. The Regional Roots of Russia's Political Regime. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017. xii + 268 pp. $75.00. ISBN 978-0-472-13018-4. Tönsmann, Susanne. What Is Citizenship For? Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2017. 218 pp. €49.00. ISBN 978-3-8305-3595-9. Gabowitsch, Mischa. Protest in Putin's Russia. Cambridge: Polity, 2016. 300 pp. $69.95. ISBN 978-0-7456-9625-6. Trenin, Dmitri. Should We Fear Russia? Cambridge: Polity, 2016. 144 pp. $45.00. ISBN 978-1-5095-1090-0. Raikhel, Eugene. Governing Habits: Treating Alcoholism in the Post-Soviet Clinic. Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016. xiv + 232 pp. $26.95 (paper). ISBN 978-105017-0313-3. Pallot, Judith, and Elena Katz. Waiting at the Prison Gate: Women, Identity and the Russian Penal System. London: I. B. Tauris, 2017. xx + 252 pp. $110.00. ISBN 978-1-78453-660-2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]