We carried out a systematic review of psycholinguistic, empirical, quantitative studies on verbal irony use and individual differences (i.e. psychological, not demographic, traits that significantly differentiate individuals). Out of 5,967 publications screened, 29, comprising 35 studies in total, were included. Following a qualitative content analysis, six thematic clusters were identified, representing areas of research in individual differences in irony use: (a) psychological well-being, (b) personality traits, (c) humor-related traits, (d) cultural factors, (e) social skills, and (f) cognitive factors. The results (...) of the studies in each cluster are summarized and conclusions for further research are presented. In particular, the systematic review suggests that irony and sarcasm should be clearly delineated as separate, yet related phenomena due to differing patterns of correlations with specific individual differences. Additionally, significant methodological heterogeneity between the studies suggests the need for greater standardization of irony use measures. (shrink)

While all chairs of classics after the war were entrusted to already well-established pre-war professors, female scholars, junior often only by rank, took care of the mind-boggling logistics of setting up the defunct departments and preparing them for the first cohort of students. It was an unusual group composed of various ages and levels of knowledge. Older ones saw their education put on hold during the war or attended underground university classes but did not obtain their degrees. Younger ones completed (...) high school within the same clandestine system. Things began to change during the second post-war decade with women advancing in their careers, obtaining degrees and university positions. The paper discusses the careers of seven prominent classicists: Zofia Abramowiczówna (1906–1988), Leokadia Małunowicz (1910–1980), Daniela Tennerówna-Gromska (1889–1973), Izydora Dąmbska (1904–1983), Anna Maria Komornicka (1920–2018), Iza Bieżuńska-Małowist (1917–1995), and Stefania Światłowska (1914–2009). (shrink)

This important new book by one of the world's leading political theorists boldly questions the moral justification for organizing our world as a territorial states-system and proposes major changes to states' sovereign powers.

Ameriški bogovi (Starz 2017–2021) in Peščeni mož (Netflix 2022– ), dve izrazito gledljivi avdiovizualni seriji, sta priredbi priljubljenega romana Neila Gaimana (2001) in njegove predhodne serije stripov (1989–1996). Obe sta navdihnjeni s klasično in nordijsko mitologijo ter odražata razvoj kulturno in družbeno pomembnih tem, do katerega je prišlo med objavo njunih literarnih predlog in predvajanjem televizijskih serij. Zanimivo je, da priredba romana vključuje več olimpskih bogov, vendar zamolči vpliv Herodota. Po drugi strani je Peščeni mož v svoji televizijski različici, natančneje (...) v tu obravnavani zadnji epizodi prve sezone z naslovom Kaliopa, v prizorih spolne zlorabe precej manj grafičen; drastičnejše podobe prepušča gledalčevi domišljiji, a hkrati doseže še bolj izrazito empatijo do trpeče žrtve in ostro obsodbo storjene nezaslišanosti. (shrink)

There were few Marxist sympathizers among Polish classicists decimated during World War II. How they fared during the tense and uncertain first postwar decade depended on their Communist connections and personality. Kazimierz Majewski (1903–1981), a classicist from Lviv, commanded quasi-universal respect in the academic community – despite his Communist views – because of his scholarly, organizational, and didactic achievements. Tasked with organizing and inaugurating a new Polish University in Wrocław in 1945, he contributed to creating three thriving classical departments – (...) philology, ancient history, and archaeology – a scholarly society, academic journals, and a vibrant academic community. When he moved to Warsaw four years later, he founded an institute for material culture, developed a multidisciplinary research team, and launched within the Soviet bloc two major archaeological excavation projects, in Olbia and in Novae, where generations of archaeologists learned how to perform fieldwork and communicate its results internationally through regular publications and cooperation. Through his Party connections, he protected and ensured support for colleagues less fortunate in this respect. (shrink)

The article is an attempt to determine the role of the media in shaping the image of the Polish- German borderlands. As examples, press releases published (from August 1994 to November 1996) in Gazeta Pogranicza [Borderland Gazette] were used. The newspaper is the result of cooperation between local editorial supplements to Gazeta Wyborcza and the Brandenburg regional daily newspaper Märkische Oderzeitung. An important element of this research is the assumption that the foundation of any international communication is the need to (...) know and understand. (shrink)

This book surveys research in quantification starting with the foundational work in the 1970s. It paints a vivid picture of generalized quantifiers and Boolean semantics. It explains how the discovery of diverse scope behavior in the 1990s transformed the view of quantification, and how the study of the internal composition of quantifiers has become central in recent years. It presents different approaches to the same problems, and links modern logic and formal semantics to advances in generative syntax. A unique feature (...) of the book is that it systematically brings cross-linguistic data to bear on the theoretical issues, discussing French, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Russian, Japanese, Telugu (Dravidian), and Shupamem (Grassfield Bantu), and pointing to formal semantic literature involving quantification in around thirty languages. -- -/- 1. What this book is about and how to use it; 2. Generalized quantifiers and their elements: operators and their scopes; 3. Generalized quantifiers in non-nominal domains; 4. Some empirically significant properties of quantifiers and determiners; 5. Potential challenges for generalized quantifiers; 6. Scope is not uniform and not a primitive; 7. Existential scope versus distributive scope; 8. Distributivity and scope; 9. Bare numeral indefinites; 10. Modified numerals; 11. Clause-internal scopal diversity; 12. Towards a compositional semantics of quantifier words. (shrink)

Wie verändern sich Mensch und Körper durch Technik? Und welches Menschenverständnis vertritt der Transhumanismus? Anna Puzio befasst sich in der ersten philosophischen Studie zur Anthropologie des Transhumanismus mit führenden Personen des Feldes, u. a. mit Nick Bostrom, David Pearce und Natasha Vita-More. Neben Körperoptimierung und Medizintechnologien beleuchtet sie auch Alltagstechnologien wie Wearables. Dabei entwickelt sie einen neuen Ansatz zur Technikanthropologie und ein neues inklusives Menschen- und Körperverständnis im Anschluss an Donna Haraway und den Kritischen Posthumanismus im amerikanischen Raum.

Difficulty is often treated as blame-mitigating, and even exculpating. But on some occasions difficulty seems to have little or no bearing on our assessments of moral responsibility, and can even exacerbate it. In this paper, I argue that the relevance (and irrelevance) of difficulty with regard to assessments of moral responsibility is best understood via Quality of Will accounts. I look at various ways of characterising difficulty – including via sacrifice, effort, skill and ‘trying’ – and set out to demonstrate (...) that these factors are only blame-mitigating where, and to the extent that, they complicate ascriptions of insufficient concern. Matters become more complex, however, when we turn to difficult circumstances that seem to generate such objectionable attitudes. This is arguably the case with epistemic difficulty and certain instances of moral ignorance. Here I argue that certain difficult circumstances diminish the sense in which false moral beliefs are genuinely revelatory of the agents who hold them. In particular, I draw on the distinction between difficulty that generates objectionable attitudes, and objectionable attitudes that generate difficulty. I argue that the former, but not the latter, can plausibly be viewed as blame mitigating, and that this would apply to (limited) cases of moral ignorance. (shrink)

One of David Rosenthal’s many important contributions to the philosophy of mind was his clear and unshirking account of introspection. Here we argue that while there is a kind of introspection (we call it “reflective introspection”) that Rosenthal’s account may be structurally fit to accommodate, there is also a second kind (“primitive introspection”) that his account cannot recover. We introduce Rosenthal’s account of introspection in §1, present the case for the psychological reality of primitive introspection in §2, and argue that (...) Rosenthal’s account lacks the resources to accommodate it in §3. (shrink)

Grounding theorists insist that grounding and explanation are intimately related. This claim could be understood as saying either that grounding ‘inherits’ its properties from explanation or it could be interpreted as saying that grounding plays an important—possibly an indispensable—role in metaphysical explanation. Or both. I argue that saying that grounding ‘inherits’ its properties from explanation can only be justified if grounding is explanatory by nature, but that this view is untenable. We ought therefore to be ‘separatists’ and view grounding and (...) explanation as distinct. As it turns out, though, once grounding has been in this sense distinguished from the explanation it backs, the view that the role grounding plays in explanation justifies its introduction ends up in serious trouble. I conclude that the role grounding plays in explanation does not justify attributing to grounding whatever nature we think it has, and it most likely does not give us any special reason to think grounding exists. (shrink)

The study aims at exposing Meinong's ideas that may be of interest to analytic philosophers. It contains all the basic information concerning Meinong's theory of objects with a special focus upon 'objectives', which are Meinong's propositions. Meinong's theory of meaning and his epistemological views are discussed in detail. An outline of his conception of truth, which is classified as firmly realistic, is followed by a review of the critical works touching upon Meinong's epistemological ideas. Finally, Meinong's theory of objects is (...) presented as inspiring the development of Meinongian logics, with his Aussersein as the prototype of an all-inclusive semantic domain. The issues considered include reference of terms and sentences as well as the general features of a Meinongian-style semantics. (shrink)

Within debates concerning responsibility for ignorance the distinction between moral and factual ignorance is often treated as crucial. Many prominent accounts hold that while factual ignorance routinely exculpates, moral ignorance never does so. The view that there is an in-principle distinction between moral and factual ignorance has been referred to as the “Asymmetry Thesis.” This view stands in opposition to the “Parity Thesis,” which holds that moral and factual ignorance are in-principle similar. The Parity Thesis has been closely aligned with (...) volitionist accounts of moral responsibility, whereas the Asymmetry Thesis has been closely aligned with Quality of Will accounts. Two central questions are at work here: how ignorance excuses, and whether it excuses in the same way for both moral and factual ignorance. I will argue that these questions have often been confused in the present debate, and once we have distinguished more clearly between them, it seems that Quality of Will accounts are compatible with the Parity Thesis. And more generally: that the distinction between moral and factual ignorance is far less important in debates about responsibility for ignorance than it has often appeared. (shrink)

Modifying the descriptive and theoretical generalizations of Relativized Minimality, we argue that a significant subset of weak island violations arise when an extracted phrase should scope over some intervener but is unable to. Harmless interveners seem harmless because they can support an alternative reading. This paper focuses on why certain wh-phrases are poor wide scope takers, and offers an algebraic perspective on scope interaction. Each scopal element SE is associated with certain operations (e.g., not with complements). When a wh-phrase scopes (...) over some SE, the operations associated with that SE are performed in its denotation domain. The requisite operations may or may not be available in a domain, however. We present an empirical analysis of a variety of wh-phrases. It is argued that the wh-phrases that escape all weak islands (i.e., can scope over any intervener) are those that range over individuals, the reason being that all Boolean operations are defined for their domain. Collectives, manners, amounts, numbers, etc. all denote in domains with fewer operations and are thus selectively sensitive to scopal interveners—a “semantic relativized minimality effect”. (shrink)

This chapter argues that human and animal minds indeed depend on a collection of domain-specific, task-specific, and encapsulated cognitive systems: on a set of cognitive ‘modules’ in Fodor's sense. It also argues that human and animal minds are endowed with domain-general, central systems that orchestrate the information delivered by core knowledge systems. The chapter begins by reviewing the literature on spatial reorientation in animals and in young children, arguing that spatial reorientation bears the hallmarks of core knowledge and of modularity. (...) It then considers studies of older children and adults, arguing that human spatial representations change qualitatively over development and show capacities not found in any other species. Finally, it presents two new experiments that investigate the role of emerging spatial language in uniquely human navigation performance. (shrink)

Democratic innovations have been widely presented by both academics and practitioners as a potential remedy to the crisis of representative democracy. Many argue that deliberation should play a pivotal role in these innovations, fostering greater citizen participation and political influence. However, it remains unclear how digitalization affects the quality of deliberation—whether digital democratic innovations (DDIs) undermine or enhance deliberation. This paper takes an inductive approach in political theory to critically examine three features of online deliberation that matter for deliberative democracy: (...) scale, transparency, and the facilitation of equality. It argues that the enhancement of equality should be given special attention when designing and implementing deliberative DDIs. Equality is a basic democratic value that is crucial for the intrinsic quality of deliberation. One way of enhancing equality through digital deliberative practices is via AI facilitation, which can assist human facilitators and help mitigate power dynamics, often present in non-digital settings. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, virtual and augmented reality, (semi-)autonomous ve- hicles, autoregulatory weapon systems, enhancement, reproductive technologies and human- oid robotics – these technologies (and many others) are no longer speculative visions of the future; they have already found their way into our lives or are on the verge of a breakthrough. These rapid technological developments awaken a need for orientation: what distinguishes hu- man from machine and human intelligence from artificial intelligence, how far should the body be allowed to (...) be changed and what are the dangers and opportunities presented by these technologies? Many of these questions are also addressed to theology. For example, questions about the image of humanity, the understanding of creation, the ethics of technological body interventions or the moral status of robots. What does theology have to say about these technological developments? It is the right time for theology to scientifically explore tech- nologization and AI and to formulate answers. As technology changes the various areas of human life, society and the world around us, the places and topics of theology are also undergoing transformation. Puzio, Anna: Theology Meets AI: Examining Perspectives, Tasks, and Theses on the Intersection of Technology and Religion. In: Puzio, Anna/Kunkel, Nicole/Klinge, Hendrik (Hg.): Alexa, How Do You Feel About Religion? Theological Approaches to Technology and Artificial Intelligence (Theology and AI 1). Darmstadt: wbg 2023, S. 29–41. DOI: 10.53186/1030373. (shrink)

The treatise attempts to approach and deal with some of the most fundamental problems facing anyone who wishes to uphold some version of the so-called theory of tropes. Three assumptions serve as a basis for the investigation: tropes exist, only tropes exist, and a one-category trope-theory along these lines should be developed so that the tropes it postulates are able to serve as truth-makers for all kinds of atomic propositions. Provided that these assumptions are accepted, it is found that the (...) trope-theorist will have to deal with two important problems. First, some atomic propositions seem to require universal truth-makers. Second, some atomic propositions seem to require concrete truth-makers. As tropes are abstract particulars, it follows that the trope-theorist, in order to fulfil assumption, must provide an account of exactly how he or she could construct universality and concreteness from his or her basic stock of tropes. In the treatise such constructions are attempted and some basic problems with such constructions are revealed. Although these problems are serious enough it is argued that it is nevertheless possible to deal with these basic issues while staying squarely within the boundaries of a one-category trope-ontology. (shrink)

Whatever societies accept as "knowledge" is embedded in specific epistemological, political and economic power relations. How is knowledge produced and functionalized? What is the difference between knowledge and the sciences? Can there be science without universal truth claims? Questions like these, all of them highly relevant, are discussed in twelve essays from the perspective of Sociology, Law, Cultural Studies and the Humanities.

Jones recognizes the existence of “primitives of conceptual structures,” out of which “local representations of kinship are constructed.” NSM semantics has identified these primitives through a cross-linguistic search for lexical universals (“NSM” stands for Natural Semantic Metalanguage and also for the corresponding linguistic theory). These empirical universals provide, I argue, a better bridge between cognitive anthropology and evolutionary psychology than the abstract constructs of OT, with dubious claim to conceptual reality.

Ways of Scope Taking is concerned with syntactic, semantic and computational aspects of scope. Its starting point is the well-known but often neglected fact that different types of quantifiers interact differently with each other and other operators. The theoretical examination of significant bodies of data, both old and novel, leads to two central claims. (1) Scope is a by-product of a set of distinct Logical Form processes; each quantifier participates in those that suit its particular features. (2) Scope interaction is (...) further constrained by the semantics of the interacting operators. The arguments are developed using Minimalist syntax, Generalized Quantify theory, Discourse Representation Theory, and algebraic semantics. The contributors (Beghelli, Ben-Shalom, Doetjes, Farkas, Gutiérrez Rexach, Honcoop, Stabler, Stowell, Szabolcsi and Zwarts) make tightly related theoretical assumptions and focus on related empirical phenomena, which include the direct and inverse scope of quantifiers, distributivity, negation, modal and intensional contexts, weak islands, event-related readings, interrogatives, wh/quantifier interactions, and Hungarian syntax. An introduction to the formal semantics background is provided. Audience: Linguists, philosophers, computational and psycholinguists; advanced undergraduates, graduate students and researchers in these fields. (shrink)

Prologue: autumn aroma -- What's left? -- Arts of noticing -- Contamination as collaboration -- Some problems with scale -- Interlude: smelling -- After progress : salvage accumulation -- Working the edge "freedom" -- Open ticket, Oregon -- War stories -- What happened to the state? : two kinds of Asian Americans in translation -- Between the dollar and the yen -- From gifts to commodities and back -- Salvage rhythms : business in disturbance -- Interlude: tracking -- Disturbed beginnings (...) : unintentional design -- The life of the forest : coming up among pines -- History -- Resurgence -- Serendipity -- Ruin in gaps and patches -- In science as translation -- Flying spores -- Interlude: dancing -- In the middle of things -- Matsutake crusaders -- Ordinary assets -- Anti-ending : some people I met along the way -- Spore trail: the further adventures of a mushroom -- Notes -- Index. (shrink)

Trope theory is the view that the world is a world of abstract particular qualities. But if all there is are tropes, how do we account for the truth of propositions ostensibly made true by some concrete particular? A common answer is that concrete particulars are nothing but tropes in compresence. This answer seems vulnerable to an argument (first presented by F. H. Bradley) according to which any attempt to account for the nature of relations will end up either in (...) contradiction, nonsense, or will lead to a vicious infinite regress. I investigate Bradley’s argument and claim that it fails to prove what it sets out to. It fails, I argue, because it does not take all the different ways in which relation and relata may depend on one another into account. If relations are entities that are distinct from yet essentially dependent upon their relata, the Bradleyan problem is solved. We are then free to say that tropes in compresence are what make true propositions ostensibly made true by concrete particulars. (shrink)

Section 1 provides a brief summary of the pair-list literature singling out some points that are particularly relevant for the coming discussion. -/- Section 2 shows that the dilemma of quantifi cation versus domain restriction arises only in extensional complement interrogatives. In matrix questions and in intensional complements only universals support pairlist readings, whence the simplest domain restriction treatment suffices. Related data including conjunction, disjunction, and cumulative readings are discussed -/- Section 3 argues that in the case of extensional complements (...) the domain restriction treatment is inadequate for at least two independent reasons. One has to do with the fact that not only upward monotonic quantifi ers support pairlist readings, and the other with the derivation of apparent scope out readings. The reasoning is supplemented with some discussion of the semantic properties of layered quantifi ers.  The above will establish the need for quantifi cation, so the question arises how the objections explicitly enlisted in the literature against quantifi cation can be answered. Section 4 considers the de dicto reading of the quantifi er s restriction, quanti cational variability, and the absence of pairlist readings with whether questions, and argues that they need not militate against the quanti ficational analysis. -/- Section 5 summarizes the emergent proposal -/- Finally, section 6 discusses the signifi cance of the above findings for the behavior of weak islands. (shrink)

This issue’s target articles cover some of the most hotly debated topics in neuroethics: neurorights and the potential establishment of international governance frameworks for neurotechnology. The...

This commentary offers a linguistic perspective on “pride”. On the basis of a semantic analysis it demonstrates that the interpretation of pride put forward by Tracy, Shariff, and Cheng (2010) is Anglocentric and is consistent with the contemporary use of the English word pride. It compares the English concept of pride with the Russian concept of gordit’sja and demonstrates their differences. It calls for a psychological account of “pride” free from an ethnocentric bias.

This paper considers how women and gender are conceptualised within early German Romanticism and argues that work by early German Romantic women should be addressed in scholarship on this movement. The chapter addresses feminist critiques of early German Romanticism as exemplified by the work of Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, concluding that an essentialist view of traditional gender characteristics informs central aspects of these writers’ work, including their view of the relationship between human beings and nature and their theories of language (...) and poetry. The paper argues that a thoroughgoing critique of gender categories and development of the implications of this critique are found in the early German Romantic writings, not of Schlegel and Novalis, but of Dorothea Veit-Schlegel and Karoline von Günderrode. (shrink)

A summary of an interview conducted by Adrian Szopa and Andrzej Gillmeister on April 22, 2016, in the cycle “Conversations with Mentors,” sponsored by the Centre for Film Documentation of Polish Scholarship, Pedagogical University of Kraków and the Polish Society of Ancient Studies. Available online at the Oral History Archive of the Polish Society for Ancient Studies (SHS). Translated by ElŻbieta Olechowska.

Figuren des Akrobatischen sind in der Literatur der Moderne omnipräsent. Zwischen 1850 und 1925 werden sie zum Träger poetischer, philosophischer und politischer Visionen der Zeit. Um die lange Jahrhundertwende bricht sich in Europa eine überwältigende Faszination für Zirkus und Varieté Bahn: Das Artistenmilieu wird motivischer Stichwortgeber der Künste, Projektionsfläche antibürgerlicher Imaginationen und gesellschaftsutopischer Gegenerzählungen. Im Kontext dieses Popularitätshochs gerät das akrobatische Vermögen den literarischen Taktgebern der Zeit zum Träger einer vielgestaltigen Semantik der Überschreitung: Flaubert erklärt sich zum Artisten, Kafka zum (...) Kunstreiter, Baudelaire fordert akrobatische Disziplin, Nietzsche seiltänzerische Kühnheit. Als Grenzgänger, der scheinbar mühelos die Schwerkraft überwindet und unter Einsatz des Lebens über dem Abgrund balanciert, gilt der Akrobat noch den Avantgarden als programmatisches Symbol für ein neues Subjektverständnis im Spannungsfeld von spielerischer Leichtigkeit und tödlichem Ernst, von Disziplin und Überwältigung, von Möglichkeit und Unmöglichkeit. Anna Luhn untersucht die Konzeptualisierungen des Akrobatischen im literarischen Diskursraum der Moderne erstmals in ihren historischen Voraussetzungen, ästhetischen Effekten und utopischen Fluchtpunkten. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a new version of the acquaintance view of the nature of introspection of phenomenal states. On the acquaintance view, when one introspects a current phenomenal state of one's, one bears to it the relation of introspective acquaintance. Extant versions of the acquaintance view neglect what I call the phenomenal modification problem. The problem, articulated by Franz Brentano in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, is that drawing introspective attention to one's current conscious experience may modify (...) its phenomenology. Failing to take phenomenal modification into account affects the adequacy of extant versions of the acquaintance view. The purpose of this paper is to develop a better version, the integration account, that meets the phenomenal modification challenge while preserving the merits of other versions. (shrink)

I focus on the No-Paradise Dilemma, which results from some initially plausible epistemic ideals, coupled with an assumption concerning our evidence. Our evidence indicates that we are not in an epistemic paradise, in which we do not experience cognitive failures. I opt for a resolution of the dilemma that is based on an evidentialist position that can be motivated independently of the dilemma. According to this position, it is rational for an agent to believe a proposition on the agent’s total (...) evidence just in case the (total) evidence stably supports the proposition. Based on this evidentialist position, I argue that it is not an epistemic ideal in the actual world that we hold rational beliefs that are logically equivalent to our rational beliefs. The dilemma is resolved by giving up this ideal for the actual world and adopting the evidentialist position in terms of stable evidential support. (shrink)

Ever since F. H. Bradley first formulated his famous regress argument philosophers have been hard at work trying to refute it. The argument fails, it has been suggested, either because its conclusion just does not follow from its premises, or it fails because one or more of its premises should be given up. In this paper, the Bradleyan argument, as well as some of the many and varied reactions it has received, is scrutinized.

This article focuses on the emergence of a new subfield of emotion research known as “history of emotions.” People’s emotional lives depend on the construals which they impose on events, situations, and human actions. Different cultures and different languages suggest different habitual construals, and since habitual construals change over time, as a result, habitual feelings change, too. But to study construals we need a suitable methodology. The article assumes that such a methodology is provided by the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) (...) and it applies the NSM approach to the history of “happiness,” an emotion which is very much at the forefront of current debates across a range of disciplines. The article shows how the “history of emotions” can be combined with cultural semantics and why this combination opens new perspectives before the whole interdisciplinary field of emotion research. (shrink)

A summarized fragment of an interview conducted on April 22, 2016, as an installment of the cycle “Conversations with Mentors,” sponsored by the Centre for Film Documentation of Polish Scholarship, Pedagogical University of Kraków and the Polish Society of Ancient Studies. Available online at the Oral History Archive of the Polish Society for Ancient Studies (SHS). The summary covers only Prof. Wipszycka’s biography until the change of regime.

This content analysis examines the ways that genocide is included in the high school world history content standards of eleven states with legislative mandates requiring genocide education, as well as if the content standards in those states differ from those of states without mandated genocide education. The null curriculum theorizes that the content that is not taught may be as important as what is taught; this lens allows for a nuanced analysis of the ways that genocide is included and excluded (...) in state standards. The findings suggest that states with legislative mandates requiring genocide education do not necessarily have high school world history content standards that require genocide education. The content standards in states with legislative mandates often omit acts of genocide, refrain from using the term “genocide,” and frame genocides as less important than the Holocaust, perpetuating the null curriculum of genocides. (shrink)

While it is well-known that the intense albeit short-lived Hegel renaissance of the 1930s’ and 1940s’ France had a huge influence on later intellectual currents of the 20th century, its importance to Simone de Beauvoir is often left unnoticed or reduced to her appropriation of the master/slave dialectic. This paper argues that Beauvoir – who came to know Hegel through the work of Alexandre Kojève as well as her own studies during the war – in fact, makes recourse to Hegelian (...) dialectics in her conceptual composition of the ‘woman problem’ in The Second Sex. The paper identifies four figures of femininity, from the abstract mystique of the ‘Sphinx’ to the internal conflict of ‘The Little Mermaid’, and shows how the negative determinations culminate in a figure of contradiction, which implies that we may interpret The Second Sex as a work of critical thought. This means that the Hegelian legacy of feminist critique has as its objective an emancipatory project rather than equality. (shrink)

Anna Kornbluh provides an overview of Marxist approaches to film, with particular attention to three central concepts in Marxist theory in general that have special bearing on film: “the mode of production,” “ideology,” and “mediation.” In explaining how these concepts operate and how they have been used and misused in film studies, the volume employs a case study to exemplify the practice of Marxist film theory. Fight Club is an exceptionally useful text with which to explore these three concepts (...) because it so vividly and pedagogically engages with economic relations, ideological distortion, and opportunities for transformation. At the same time, it is a very typical film in terms of the conditions of its production, its marketing, and its popularity. Adapted from a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the film is a contemporary classic that has lent itself to significant re-interpretation with every shift in the political economic landscape since its debut. Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club models a detailed cinematic interpretation that students can practice with other films, and furnishes a set of ideas about cinema and society that can be carried into other kinds of study, giving students tools for analyzing culture broadly defined. (shrink)