English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Teacher's Perceptions and Use of Mobile Devices and Applications

Author(s): Elias Bensalem / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

This paper reports on a study of how a group of tertiary level EFL teachers perceived and used mobile devices in their teaching and personal learning. One hundred and fifty teachers (66 female, 84 male) from public universities in Saudi Arabia completed an online questionnaire. Results showed that the majority of participants used mobile devices and applications in their teaching and learning. Survey data showed that the vast majority of teachers had positively perceived and frequently used mobile technologies in their teaching and personal learning. In addition, there was a correlation between teachers’ use of mobile technologies in their teaching and their use in learning. There was also a correlation between how teachers perceived the value of mobile technologies in learning, and how they use them in their teaching.

Wehikuł grozy – element transcendencji fantastycznej

Author(s): Barbara Tomalak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 33/2019

A universal conviction of mass culture creators is that people enjoy being scared. This conviction has a deeply rooted basis, whose essential part is not only fear, but also a need to experience something mysterious and supernatural. The dread of the “vehicles of horror” is usually two-dimensional: one of the aspects comprising their scariness is their look and supernatural origin, however, also the traveller using the vehicle can be terrifying. The examples analysed in this article show that the texts of culture follow the aforementioned pattern: they combine the horror of the vehicle with the horror of its passenger(s). A normal vehicle takes on the features of the passengers, it can also be infected by their hatred, desire for murder, aggression or madness. On the opposite pole there emerges a vision of the transcendent presence of a demon who takes on the form of the vehicle. All examples of the autonomous vehicles of horror share some features of puzzling anthropomorphism. Hence the obvious conclusion may be drawn: the provenience of the phenomenon (whether internal or external to the human psyche) is unimportant – what really matters is its anthropomorphisation. It is in fact us that we are scared of in the demonic machines.

Why Are They So Afraid of Children’s Books? The Subversive Power of Imagination (Part 1)

Author(s): Olga Bukhina / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

The article discusses the subversive power of children’s books as it is expressed in many classical and contemporary works for young readers. Starting with a brief psychological explanation of the source of creativity and playfulness in children’s literature, the author uses a Bakhtinian approach in analysing the carnivalesque quality of these books in their ability to create a topsy-turvy world, to use ‘a festive laughter,’ to present grotesque bodily transformations, and to discuss the lower stratum bodily functions such as food consumption and excretion. Many adults often underestimate the power of children’s literature, and at the same time, some books are considered dangerous; therefore, they need to be protected from various attempts to censor or to ban them as unappropriated for children.

Why Are They So Afraid of Children’s Books? The Subversive Power of Imagination (Part 2)

Author(s): Olga Bukhina / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

The second part of the article explores particular examples of subversive books in American, Soviet, and Russian children’s literature as well as the revolutionary role of fantasy and innovative literary forms through different periods of the history of the USA, the Soviet Union, and Russia. To show how children’s literature was often at odds with particular governments and common opinions, the article uses the examples of the American Left writings for young readers, the 1920s Soviet children’s prose and poetry, and contemporary Russian children’s books. The article discusses the various attempts of governmental censorship and control over this literature and the ability of writers and publishers to resist the ideological and political pressures.

Disability, Race, and the Black Satyr of the United States of America: The Case of Grover Underwood from Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief and its Film Adaptation by Chris Columbus

Author(s): Anna Mik / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

This article aims to present the book-to-film metamorphosis of Grover Underwood from Rick Riordan’s novel The Lightning Thief (2005), adapted in 2010 by Chris Columbus for the screen. This character in both works is presented as an excluded member of the society: in the empirical world, as a disabled person, in the mythological one, as a satyr. What is more, in the motion picture, Grover, played by a Black actor, poses as an even more marginalised character, as a representative of a community discriminated in the USA. Therefore, the images of this character reflect the various levels of exclusion and show the ideological significance of a contemporary adaptation for the young audience. The comparative analysis is performed with the use of reception studies and critical race theory perspectives.

O ciałach, które się stają. Feminizm materialny w literaturze dla dzieci i młodzieży

Author(s): Adrianna Zabrzewska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2019

Trites, R. S. (2018). Twenty-first-century feminisms in children’s and adolescent literature. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. As a review article dedicated to Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children’s and Adolescent Literature (2018) by Roberta Seelinger Trites, the paper aims to discuss the material turn in feminist theory and its implications with respect to research on gender in literature for young readers. After presenting Trites as a researcher and briefly discussing her earlier works, the author of the article takes a little detour to retrace various approaches to embodied subjectivity in feminist thought. An account of different approaches to the question of corporeality – as expressed in the writings by Susan Bordo, Judith Butler, or Elizabeth Grosz – serves as a background against which the theories of material feminists such as Karen Barad’s can be fully displayed. Simultaneously, this discussion sets the scene for showing how Trites’s employment of material feminism can be translated into research on literature for children and teenagers in a way that opens new fields of inquiry and new planes of interpretation. The subsequent part of the article discusses each of the chapters of the book to show how questions of mattering, becoming, and knowing in being intersect with perspectives crucial to contemporary feminisms, e.g. critical race theory, ecocriticism, queer theory, and disability studies.

ЧУДО ЗАДАНОГ СВЕТА

Author(s): Olja S. Vasileva / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 70/2019

Utopia of School, Disobedience, and Translation. Two Biblical Myths in the Interpretation of Erich Fromm and George Steiner

Author(s): Rafał Włodarczyk / Language(s): English Issue: 55 (2)/2020

It can be assumed that two biblical myths – about Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden and about the builders from Babel – are interesting expressions of the utopian imagination, because these myths narrate about two places where projects of sufficiently perfect social order were implemented in two different ways. At present, the school is one of the places that could be understood as the ambiguous effect of an implemented utopia of the industrial revolution era; the school is an education space designed as an important part of the project of a sufficiently perfect social order. Two original readings of the mentioned biblical myths – by Erich Fromm and George Steiner – shall contribute some new themes and outlooks to the discussion of the condition of the modern school and the discourses of critical pedagogy or the pedagogy of resistance and hermeneutic pedagogy.

Octavia Butler’s Kindred: The Cultural Context of Production

Author(s): Marietta Kosma / Language(s): English Issue: 11/2021

Through Butler’s Kindred, numerous tensions are raised around the notions of accessibility, disability, equality and inclusion exposing the crisis of black futures. My analysis focuses on the way that disability informs Dana’s experiences in the context of slavery, her positioning in the contemporary discourse of neo-liberalism and her positioning in the prospective future. Very few scholars perceive Dana’s subjectivity as an actual state of being that carries value both materially as well as metaphorically. The materiality of disability has not constituted part of the larger discourse of the American slave system. Through rendering disability both figuratively and materially, I establish a connection between the past, the present and the future. The different figurations of space and time exposed through Dana’s time travelling help conceptualize her accessibility in different structures. Previous scholarship has been extensively focusing on the origin and legacy of trauma, inflicted on the black female body of the twentieth century, however, there has been too little, if any criticism in relation to the active construction of black female subjectivity, located at the level of the body. I wish to explore how spectacles of violence against black female bodies function in the wider political imagery of the twenty-first century. The physical and psychological displacement of Dana, as a black female body, exposes her traumatization and the difficulties she faces in order to reclaim her subjectivity in a society burdened by a history of violence and exploitation. Even though Kindred was written before the Black Lives Matter movement emerged, it could be analysed in a way that asserts the continuity of African-American trauma, the perpetuation of systematic racism in USA and the crisis of blackness in the future. Systematic violence threatens black women’s wholeness and renders their bodies at risk.

Gullah as a literary dialect: Phonological and morphosyntactic features in 19th century writings. A case study

Author(s): Costin-Valentin Oancea / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

Starting from the 18th century, writers began using Gullah in different stories and plays, and speculated about its origins. Gullah is an American English-based creole spoken along the coast of Georgia, South Carolina and in the Sea Islands. It is also known as Sea Island Creole or Geechee. Several American writers have used this creole in their writings. This paper focuses on the way Edgar Allan Poe used Gullah as a literary dialect, in the short story The Gold-Bug, to render the speech of Jupiter, an old Negro slave. The first part of the paper presents phonological and morphosyntactic features that have been attested in Gullah. The second part of this study analyzes the phonological and morphosyntactic features found in the speech of Jupiter and attempts to demonstrate that Jupiter used the regional superstrate variety of Gullah, as expected from house servants. It will also be shown that Jupiter’s speech also contains many features found in Gullah’s sister variety, African American Vernacular English.

Illustrating Death in Caitlin Doughty’s Creative Nonfiction: 𝐹𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝐻𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝐸𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦 and 𝑊𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑀𝑦 𝐶𝑎𝑡 𝐸𝑎𝑡 𝑀𝑦 𝐸𝑦𝑒𝑏𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑠?

Author(s): Cristina-Mihaela Botîlcă / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

The purpose of illustrations is to enhance the reading experience, improve the text, and add another layer of representation. In death-acceptance literature, such as Caitlin Doughty’s creative nonfiction books 𝐹𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝐻𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝐸𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦 and 𝑊𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑀𝑦 𝐶𝑎𝑡 𝐸𝑎𝑡 𝑀𝑦 𝐸𝑦𝑒𝑏𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑠?, illustrations portray the highly sensitive topic of death. Landis Blair and Dianné Ruz, the illustrators whose works complete the two books, create a multimodal text with the help of literal and conceptual illustrations. This article aims at analysing the use and structure of these illustrations in the context of multimodality and death acceptance. In addition, the paper also contains two interviews that are meant to offer the perspective of the two illustrators on their own work and on illustrating death in nonfiction.

ALICE WALKER’S WOMANIST OUTLOOK

Author(s): Amada Mocioalcă / Language(s): English Issue: 23/2020

Walker’s womanist credo seems exemplified in the words and the passions of Shug. Walker’s literature and life work have been an expression of splendour and love of life. But they have also arisen from Walker’s immersion in the stuff of lamentation, outcry, blues.

DEVELOPING INTEGRATED SKILLS AND LANGUAGE CONTENTS THROUGH JOSEPH CONRAD’S STORIES: YOUTH, TYPHOON, THE DUEL, THE WARRIOR’S SOUL

Author(s): Dimitrie Andrei Borcan / Language(s): English Issue: 28/2022

This study based on a class research and experiment states that all skills are and should be taught as integrated, alongside with integrated language contents and functions. Literature can and should be used as a resource for teaching integrated skills and language contents, for its formative use (both as a means of developing integrated skills, language contents and functions and as a cultural, intellectual moulding instrument). The study has used four stories by Joseph Conrad as resource texts: “Youth”, “Typhoon”, “The Duel”, “The Warrior’s Soul”. All the activities have been built up on the base of Conrad’s respective stories.

DIASPORA MISSIOLOGY THEORY, METHODOLOGY, AND PRACTICEIN AMY TAN’S ‘THE VALLEY OF AMAZEMENT’

Author(s): Maria Cristina Chintescu / Language(s): English Issue: 33/2023

This piece of writing focuses on the theme of ‘Otherness’ in Amy Tan’s novel ‘The Valley of Amazement’ but from an opposing view now, that of a genuine woman and mother who skillfully struggles to mingle and adapt to the Chinese way of life proposing a cultural theme now, that of the Courtesan Houses in China. The balance switches for the time being. We are dealing in the reversed In-group (the genuine Chinese) and Out-group (Lucia Minturn, born American and who came to China in the hope to marry the father of her daughter, Violet). The article brings the following themes to the center of attention: assimilation, ethnicity, family, prostitution, Chinese and American worlds. The article underlines the alterity between the In-group and the Out-group. The connection is made by Violet, who, as a regular half- Chinese, is hesitant to learn about her Chinese origins. We focus on the constant gap between Lucia's life and Violet's. What is spectacular about this novel is Lucia's return to America and Violet's staying in China.

Zygmunt Haupt’s radio shows in the Voice of America: American literature, art, science and social life

Author(s): Barbara Krupa / Language(s): English Issue: 32/2023

The article focuses on Zygmunt Haupt’s shows for the Voice of America in the period 1951-1958. Broadcast transcripts are part of the writer’s archive, which is hosted by the Special Collections of C.H. Green Library at Stanford University in California. The shows devoted to the literary, cultural and scientific life in the USA are a treasure trove of knowledge about Haupt’s contemporary America. Most of them are informative and popularizing in nature, although there are also more propagandist ones. Particularly illuminating are the shows concerning specific works, genres and trends in literature and music. Others focus on specific authors and composers. Still others concern culture, science, customs and daily lives of Americans. The article has analysed a few series: American Literature, What America Is Reading, American Panorama, Music In America, Musicals From Broadway and Cultural Life In America.

Nomadic Sisters: Migrant Identity in Joanna Bator’s Cloudalia and Sandra Cisneros’ Caramelo

Author(s): Agnieszka Gondor-Wiercioch / Language(s): English Issue: 33/2023

The article provides a comparative analysis of Joanna Bator’s Cloudalia and Sandra Cisneros’ Caramelo with regard to similar identity construction of the main female characters. Both authors concentrate on young women (Dominika Chmura in Cloudalia and Celaya Reyes in Caramelo) who set out for a journey of feminist self-discovery, crossing the boundaries of geography, history and culture. The author of the article argues that, despite the obvious differences between Poland and Mexico, the protagonists rebel against the same legacy of the Catholic patriarchal culture, reinforced by national visions of history and literary canon in the respective countries, and they gradually manage to rework historical trauma by reconstructing the doppelganger figure and creating new transcultural feminist paradigms. The arguments are reinforced not only by references to autobiographical motives in Bator’s and Cisneros’ fiction and diaries, but also by transnational identity studies of Zygmunt Bauman and Amaryll Chanady

Cultural Contexts and Masculinity Shifts

Author(s): Florian Andrei Vlad / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

Masculinity and men’s studies, initially seen as one particular section of explorations of what it means to be a man, appeared as a secondary field, even if linked to Simone de Beauvoir’s “the first sex.” In de Beauvoir’s feminist manifesto of the second wave, “woman” apparently had an identity of her own, but was only defined as being the absence, the “lack,” the Other, against which man defined himself. The current essay examines the historicity of gender roles and the developing contexts in which perceptions of them and theories about them are largely defined by new contexts for which the activation of hegemonic or feminine masculinities, for example, is more than a reasonable choice. The last section engages with literary responses to masculinity as articulated by Lowell, Vonnegut, and Heller in a less-than-heroic age where significant masculinity shifts emerged in American fiction as well.

MARK TWAIN`S HUCKLEBERRY FINN - A LESSON OF THE RIVER IN THE SPIRIT OF PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION AND AN INVENTION OF LANGUAGE IN AN EMERSONIAN SENSE

Author(s): Lucian Radu / Language(s): English Issue: 35/2023

This paper illustrates that Mark Twain`s Huckleberry Finn survives mostly because Huck`s search for a freedom of “consciousness”, which takes the form of a journey and transforms itself into a life lesson in terms of progressive education as it was conceived by John Dewey, in his educational theory, and because it is an invention of a language for American fiction as it was envisaged by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Pnin’s Unforgettable Digressions: Towards a Nabokovian Approach to the Unconscious

Author(s): Zihao Liu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

Defining the unconscious in a Husserlian manner as that which appears through reproductive acts of consciousness, this article attempts to investigate how Vladimir Nabokov tackles this theme in Pnin both as a stylist and as a storyteller. Nabokov understands literature as the art of language that imposes lived experiences on readers, and he achieves literary representations of the unconscious in Pnin by juxtaposing experiences containing tacit expectations that are incongruent with one another. Tracking the scenes where Pnin performs reproductive acts throughout the novel, it is found that the unconscious functions as a thematic pattern in Pnin and mirrors the protagonist’s progress in his quixotic war against cruelty and callousness in the world.

Zénó Vernyik, Cities of Saviors. Urban Space in E. E. Cummings’ Complete Poems

Author(s): Lívia Klára Szélpál / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

Review of: Zénó Vernyik, Cities of Saviors. Urban Space in E. E. Cummings’ Complete Poems, 1904-1962 and Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor. AMERICANA eBOOKS, University of Szeged, 2015, 170 pages