Digital Commons Network^™

Introduction To New Work On Electronic Literature And Cyberculture, Maya Zalbidea, Mark C. Marino, Asunción López-Varela

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Action-Based Learning For Language Proficiency And Cross-Cultural Competence: Learners’ Perspectives, Yi Zhou

Global Business Languages

The purpose of this article is to investigate how students perceived the effect of an action-based/action learning (AL) approach used in a course called Global Business Project (GBP) in their learning of a foreign language and culture. A total of 112 students’ descriptive data and responses from GBP course evaluations over the past three years (2011–2013) were examined. Quantitative data indicated that the majority of students held positive beliefs that their language proficiency and cultural competence had improved as a result of the AL experience in this course. The findings also suggested that students’ degree of satisfaction was significantly associated …

Contributors

Global Business Languages

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Allen G. Wood, Ahmed Idrissi Alami

Global Business Languages

No abstract provided.

Electronic Literature And The Effects Of Cyberspace On The Body, Maya Zalbidea, Xiana Sotelo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Electronic Literature and the Effects of Cyberspace on the Body" Maya Zalbidea and Xiana Sotelo discuss how new technologies are facilitating the emancipation of subjugated subjects aimed at transforming unequal social relations through an intersectional and performative approach. This perspective is discussed through the exploration of the so-called intersectional approach described by Berger and Guidroz, Haraway's situated knowledges, and Butler's performative agency based on transgressions. Framed within the posthuman, post-biological deconstruction of social and cultural hierarchies, Zalbidea and Sotelo argue for the value of a conjuncture between postcolonial post-modern/post-structuralist literature and the field of feminist cultural studies. …

Antibacterial Activity Of Novel Cationic Peptides Against Clinical Isolates Of Multi-Drug Resistant Staphylococcus Pseudintermedius From Infected Dogs, Mohamed F. Mohamed, G. Kenitra Hammac, Lynn F. Guptil, Mohamed N. Seleem

Department of Comparative Pathobiology Faculty Publications

Staphylococcus pseudintermedius is a major cause of skin and soft tissue infections in companion animals and has zoonotic potential. Additionally, methicillin-resistant S. pseudintermedius (MRSP) has emerged with resistance to virtually all classes of antimicrobials. Thus, novel treatment options with new modes of action are required. Here, we investigated the antimicrobial activity of six synthetic short peptides against clinical isolates of methicillin-susceptible and MRSP isolated from infected dogs. All six peptides demonstrated potent antistaphylococcal activity regardless of existing resistance phenotype. The most effective peptides were RRIKA (with modified C terminus to increase amphipathicity and hydrophobicity) and WR-12 (α-helical peptide consisting exclusively …

Gender Identity Construction Through Talk About Video Games, Sara M. Cole

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Gender Identity Construction through Talk about Video Games" Sara Cole discusses the construction of gender identity in terms of experiences of digital media and interactive play. Digital literacy expresses, shares, and reaffirms gendered self-identification through experiences of video game play with narratives that either confirm or deny stereotypical biases. In-depth interviews were used to explore the effects of play practices on conceptions of masculinity and personal identity in males who grew up in the 1980s by focusing on a linguistic analysis of the pragmatics of their shared thoughts on play, fantasy, use of digital media, and violence. …

Towards A History Of Electronic Literature, Urszula Pawlicka

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Towards a History of Electronic Literature" Urszula Pawlicka investigates the development of theoretical frameworks of and for the study of electronic literature. Pawlicka's objective is show how electronic literature developed and posits that the field underwent to date three transitional phases including several sub-phases where certain aspects and perspectives overlapped. She argues that by distinguishing developments in different phases we can see that electronic literature moved from text to technotext, from text as decoding meaning to text as a process of information and information system, from an interpretation to experience, from visual perception to performativity, from close …

The Racial Formation Of Chatbots, Mark C. Marino

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Racial Formation of Chatbots" Mark C. Marino introduces electronic literature known as chatbot or conversation agent. These programs are all around us from automated help centers to smartphones (e.g., Siri). These conversation agents are often represented as text or disembodied voices. However, when programmers give them a body or the representation of a body (partial or full), other aspects of their identity become more apparent—particularly their racial or ethnic identity. Marino explores the ways racial identity is constructed through the embodied performance of chatbots and what that indicates for human identity construction on the internet.

A Survey Of Electronic Literature Collections, Luis Pablo, María Goicoechea

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "A Survey of Electronic Literature Collections" Luis Pablo and María Goicoechea describe characteristics and functions of collections of electronic literature and analyze descriptors used and the way information can be accessed. Based on their observations, Pablo and Goicoechea advocate a database structure which is flexible and can produce a dynamic archiving model as texts are registered and collected so that tags form a close set for the texts in the collection and this set can expand as new texts make new tags necessary. Further, the organization of tags into ever more complex taxonomies seems inevitable, since this …

Introduction To Western Canons In A Changing East Asia, Simon C. Estok

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Canon Of East Asian Ecocriticism And The Duplicity Of Culture, Hannes Bergthaller

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Canon of East Asian Ecocriticism and the Duplicity of Culture" Hannes Bergthaller begins with the premise that ecocritical scholarship often locates the roots of environmental crisis in Western modernity and that it looks towards pre-modern or non-European traditions for a remedy. Bergthaller argues that such forms of cultural critique tend to reiterate a quintessentially modern gesture. Following Niklas Luhmann's account of culture, Bergthaller examines how these reiterations functions as a semantic mechanism for coping with the contingency of social forms. To describe a social practice as cultural, Bergthaller contends, is to valorize it as a marker …

Environmental Literature And The Change Of Its Canon In Korea, Won-Chung Kim

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Environmental Literature and the Change of Its Canon in Korea" Won-Chung Kim examines how US-American ecocritical writings were introduced and received in Korea and how the change of educational curricula in Korea is influenced by changes owing to globalization. Kim shows that the limited reception of US-American ecocritics' works led Korean scholars to reformulate the canon of works in Korean ecocriticism and how they reinvestigate their own cultural heritage and ecological ideas. Kim refers in particular to the thought of thirteenth-century Kyubo Lee and today's Chiha Kim and argues that Korean ecological discourse has the potential to …

Metalanguage In Carroll's "Jabberwocky" And Biggs's Reread, Asunción López-Varela

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Metalanguage in Carroll's 'Jabberwocky' and Biggs's reRead" Asunción López-Varela discusses Simon Biggs's installation reRead <http://www.littlepig.org.uk/reRead/reRead.htm> in relation to Lewis Carroll's poem. López-Varela posits that both works draw attention to the functioning of self-reflexive semiotic mechanisms present in human discourse and gestures. Based on the examples of the poem and the installation, López-Varela discusses how the human mind creates narratological coherence out of random and recursive patterns and argues that it does so by including other media which enable formats beyond the textual and the iconic. Further, López-Varela discusses how we are pre-disposed to process any semiotic …

Incorporating New Areas Of Business Into Business Language Studies: Social Media Marketing, Annie Abbott

Global Business Languages

Despite the fact that social media marketing has established itself as a vital area of marketing for businesses both large and small, global and local, Business Language Studies (BLS) has yet to turn its full attention to this business activity that requires a keen sense of language, culture, and business. As BLS continues to build and articulate its theoretical and methodological grounds, social media marketing provides rich research and teaching possibilities. However, social media is a dynamic, constantly changing environment that can seem intimidating to BLS educators who are unfamiliar with its platforms and uses. This article serves as an …

Pullinger's And Joseph's Inanimate Alice And Intercultural Engagement, Ana Abril

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Pullinger's and Joseph's Inanimate Alice and Intercultural Engagement" Ana Abril analyzes Kate Pullinger's and Chris Joseph's digital graphic novel and game. Inanimate Alice offers a model for online education environments and has been widely acclaimed. However, Abril's ana-lysis suggests possible ways for improving the empathic and educational potential of the novel/game for interpersonal and intercultural benefit. Abril bases her analysis on the theories of human interpersonal communication and then applies these findings to Inanimate Alice and suggests improvement so that participants would be able to decide if they want to play from the viewpoint of their own …

Canon Formation And The Reception Of William Blake's And Dickinson's Poetry In Korea, Hyesook Son

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Canon Formation and the Reception of Blake's and Dickinson's Poetry in Korea" Hyesook Son examines a range of aspects with regard to the reception and scholarship of William Blake's and Emily Dickinson's poetry. Son demonstrates by what process these two poets have become canonized and what intellectual factors and ideologies have produced this canonization. The reception of Blake's and Dickinson's work has symptomatically displayed the characteristic Korean interpretive frames working through the last six decades and their limits and inherent possibilities. Today, Korean scholars are examining both their literary inheritance and reconstitute literary scholarship in general in …

Huang's And Donaldson's Global Shakespeares And The Digital Turn, Tsu-Chung Su

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Huang's and Donaldson's Global Shakespeares and the Digital Turn" Tsu-Chung Su explores the Global Shakespeares Video & Performance Archive <http://globalshakespeares.org> founded by Alexander C.Y. Huang and Peter Donaldson. Su traces the nature and history of the Archive and its raison d'être of the two founders' concern with archives and archival performance. Further, Su examines how authority and order are exercised in the project with regards to its purposes, cybernetic laws, digital logics, and the overall organizing principles concerning the Archive, its potentials, gains, and prospects, as well as its limits, difficulties, and disadvantages. Overall, …

Electronic Poetry And The Importance Of Digital Repository, Manuel Brito

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Electronic Poetry and the Importance of Digital Repository" Manuel Brito analyzes selected early digital repositories of electronic poetry. In addition to issues concerning efficiency and discursive practice, Brito's discusses the objectives, contents, and the funding of digital repositories. Brito argues that digital repositories promote poetry, enable networking and quick publishing of innovative poetry, they intensify the reading experience, and make a readership possible that is larger than that of print poetry. Networking, interaction, and web-based communication intensify the writing and reading experience while new modes of discourse are emerging continually. Not just passive consumerism promoted by an …

Canon Formation And Children's Literature During The May Fourth Period, Chu Shen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Canon Formation and Children's Literature during the May Fourth Period" Chu Shen discusses the translation of children's literature as a site in which nationalism is mirrored and is in turn constructed. For the New Culturalists during the May Fourth Period (1915-1927), nationalism was mirrored through a progressive cultural and literary agenda that included the translation of foreign literatures and hence contributed to canon formation. Shen's study refers to the importance of the study of translation with regard to topics of nationalism in the May Fourth period and it advances our knowledge not only about an important transitional …

E-Literature, New Media Art, And E-Literary Criticism, Janez Strehovec

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "E-Literature, New Media Art, and E-Literary Criticism" Janez Strehovec explores the commonalities between electronic literature and new media art. Rather than deploying the traditional conceptual apparatus of e-literary criticism directed first and foremost to the new media elements of e-literature, Strehovec takes into account approaches from current theories in the social sciences and humanities. In doing so, he draws upon examples of new media art as a practice in which the novel's social paradigms change the way of art-making and challenge the very function of art. Close-readings of some new media art projects including Bookchin's Mass Ornament …

Canonization And Ba Jin's (李堯棠) Work In Chinese And Us-American Scholarship, Miaomiao Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Canonization and Ba Jin's (李堯棠 1904-2005) Work in Chinese and US-American Scholarship" Miaomiao Wang discusses the reception of and scholarship on a major Chinese author. Wang explores similarities of and differences in studies on Ba's work in China and the U.S. and analyses the reasons for different viewpoints including research methods and reasons which motivates(d) Chinese and U.S. scholars to study Ba's work. Wang argues that her analysis will be beneficial for Chinese scholars in order to learn about the present situation of studies on Ba's work in US-American scholarship and thus effect a change—as limited this …

Translation And The Canon Of Greek Tragedy In Chinese Literature, Rongnü Chen, Lingling Zhao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Translation and the Canon of Greek Tragedy in Chinese Literature" Rongnü Chen and Lingling Zhao discuss when and how ancient Greek drama were introduced and merged into Chinese literature. Since Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound was first translated into Chinese and published in 1932 up to now, it has been translated eight times in China from 1932 to 2013. Starting from the Chinese translations and reception of Prometheus Bound, Chen and Zhao explore why so many translators have chosen to translate it in the past eighty years. Chen and Zhao also discuss how these translating activities advanced the …

The Meaning And Relevance Of Video Game Literacy, Jeroen Bourgonjon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Meaning and Relevance of Video Game Literacy" Jeroen Bourgonjon argues that video gaming deserves scholarly attention as a social practice and a site for meaning-making and learning. Based on an overview of contemporary trends in literacy and cultural studies, he argues that video games cannot be approached like traditional text forms. He contends that video games serve as an important frame of reference for young people and call for informed decision making in the context of culture, education, and policy. Bourgonjon provides an integrated perspective on video game literacy by employing theoretical insights about their distinctive …

Review Article About Chinese Comparative Humanities Journals Published In 2013, Yuan Liu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Incorporating Global Sustainability In The Business Language Curriculum, Steven J. Sacco, Altina M. Jones, Richard L. Sacco

Global Business Languages

“Providing food, water, energy and other human needs to the world's entire population without harming the environment is a formidable task,” according to Purdue University’s Global Sustainability Institute. Global sustainability is an academic discipline that has infiltrated all levels of education. Inherently interdisciplinary in nature, global sustainability involves all colleges of any university. International business and its academic twin, foreign languages for business and economics, can play a critical role in the teaching of global sustainability. In this article, the co-authors describe the teaching of global sustainability in foreign language classrooms through the use of case studies. The co-authors specifically …

Reviews, Maida Watson

Global Business Languages

Felices, Ángel, María Ángeles Calderón, Emilio Iriarte, and Emilia Núñez. (2003). Cultura y negocios: El español de la economía española y latinoamericana. Rpt. 20l0. Madrid: Edinumen; Libro de claves, 20l0.

Iriarte, Emilio, and Emilia Núñez Pérez. (2009). Empresa siglo XXI: El español en el ámbito profesional. Madrid: Edinumen. Libro de claves, 2009.

Graduate Courses In Languages For Specific Purposes: Needs, Challenges, And Models, Diana M. Ruggiero

Global Business Languages

The 2007 MLA assessment of the state of foreign languages in higher education correctly identifies the need for restructuring both program curricula and governance in order to meet current student needs. In its recommendations for doing so, however, the committee inadvertently defines the goals and objectives of graduate foreign language programs as narrowly focused on the production of future academics. The current reality of the academic job market, institutional demands, and of the global economy calls for a critical reassessment of this assumption. This article considers the potential benefits of, and challenges to, broadening existing graduate curricula, specifically through the …

Sustainability Pedagogies For The Business Language Classroom, Margaret Gonglewski, Anna H. Helm

Global Business Languages

Heightened urgency about the question of the earth’s survival has generated increased attention to how to teach sustainability across the curriculum. The business language course, positioned at the nexus of business and the humanities, is the ideal environment for bringing to bear perspectives from multiple disciplines on questions around sustainability. This article examines the notion of “sustainability pedagogies” framed within three key aspects of sustainability education noted in the scholarship: interdisciplinarity, transformative learning, and experiential learning. In each of these areas, we provide an example of how the sustainability pedagogies can be implemented in business language courses.

Teaching Digital Humanities In Romania, Mădălina Nicolaescu, Adriana Mihai

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Teaching Digital Humanities in Romania" Mădălina Nicolaescu and Adriana Mihai describe a research project that sets out to promote digital humanities with an internet based platform in Shakespeare studies at the University of Bucharest. Texts have been collected and catalogued and the platform's technical construction is in construction. Based on the Shakespeare platform's content and presentation, Nicolaescu and Mihai propose participation strategies for involvement in the creation of a digital database that is both a research tool and a digital storytelling environment. The database is a collection of digitized translations of Shakespeare in Romanian followed by participants' …