On Bounded Linear Codes and the Commutative Equivalence

The problem of the commutative equivalence of semigroups generated by semi-linear languages is studied. In particular conditions ensuring that the Kleene closure of a bounded semi-linear code is commutatively equivalent to a regular language are investigated

Relationships Between Bounded Languages, Counter Machines, Finite-Index Grammars, Ambiguity, and Commutative Equivalence

It is shown that for every language family that is a trio containing only semilinear languages, all bounded languages in it can be accepted by one-way deterministic reversal-bounded multicounter machines (DCM). This implies that for every semilinear trio (where these properties are effective), it is possible to decide containment, equivalence, and disjointness concerning its bounded languages. A condition is also provided for when the bounded languages in a semilinear trio coincide exactly with those accepted by DCM machines, and it is used to show that many grammar systems of finite index — such as finite-index matrix grammars (Mfin) and finite-index ET0L (ET0Lfin) — have identical bounded languages as DCM. Then connections between ambiguity, counting regularity, and commutative regularity are made, as many machines and grammars that are unambiguous can only generate/accept counting regular or com- mutatively regular languages. Thus, such a system that can generate/accept a non-counting regular or non-commutatively regular language implies the existence of inherently ambiguous languages over that system. In addition, it is shown that every language generated by an unambiguous Mfin has a rational char- acteristic series in commutative variables, and is counting regular. This result plus the connections are used to demonstrate that the grammar systems Mfin and ET0Lfin can generate inherently ambiguous languages (over their grammars), as do several machine models. It is also shown that all bounded languages generated by these two grammar systems (those in any semilinear trio) can be generated unambiguously within the systems. Finally, conditions on Mfin and ET0Lfin languages implying commutative regularity are obtained. In particular, it is shown that every finite-index ED0L language is commutatively regular

On the Commutative Equivalence of Algebraic Formal Series and Languages

The problem of the commutative equivalence of context-free and regular languages is studied. Conditions ensuring that a context-free language of exponential growth is commutatively equivalent with a regular language are investigated

Languages Generated by Iterated Idempotencies.

The rewrite relation with parameters m and n and with the possible length limit = k or :::; k we denote by w~, =kW~· or ::;kw~ respectively. The idempotency languages generated from a starting word w by the respective operations are wDAlso other special cases of idempotency languages besides duplication have come up in different contexts. The investigations of Ito et al. about insertion and deletion, Le., operations that are also observed in DNA molecules, have established that w5 and w~ both preserve regularity.Our investigations about idempotency relations and languages start out from the case of a uniform length bound. For these relations =kW~ the conditions for confluence are characterized completely. Also the question of regularity is -k n answered for aH the languages w- D 1 are more complicated and belong to the class of context-free languages.For a generallength bound, i.e."for the relations :"::kW~, confluence does not hold so frequently. This complicatedness of the relations results also in more complicated languages, which are often non-regular, as for example the languages WWithout any length bound, idempotency relations have a very complicated structure. Over alphabets of one or two letters we still characterize the conditions for confluence. Over three or more letters, in contrast, only a few cases are solved. We determine the combinations of parameters that result in the regularity of wDIn a second chapter sorne more involved questions are solved for the special case of duplication. First we shed sorne light on the reasons why it is so difficult to determine the context-freeness ofduplication languages. We show that they fulfiH aH pumping properties and that they are very dense. Therefore aH the standard tools to prove non-context-freness do not apply here.The concept of root in Formal Language ·Theory is frequently used to describe the reduction of a word to another one, which is in sorne sense elementary.For example, there are primitive roots, periodicity roots, etc. Elementary in connection with duplication are square-free words, Le., words that do not contain any repetition. Thus we define the duplication root of w to consist of aH the square-free words, from which w can be reached via the relation w~.Besides sorne general observations we prove the decidability of the question, whether the duplication root of a language is finite.Then we devise acode, which is robust under duplication of its code words.This would keep the result of a computation from being destroyed by dupli cations in the code words. We determine the exact conditions, under which infinite such codes exist: over an alphabet of two letters they exist for a length bound of 2, over three letters already for a length bound of 1.Also we apply duplication to entire languages rather than to single words; then it is interesting to determine, whether regular and context-free languages are closed under this operation. We show that the regular languages are closed under uniformly bounded duplication, while they are not closed under duplication with a generallength bound. The context-free languages are closed under both operations.The thesis concludes with a list of open problems related with the thesis' topics

Pursuing unhappiness: city, space, and sentimentalism in post-Cold War American literature

My dissertation examines how contemporary American writers have revived and revised literary sentimentalism to fashion their engagement with publicized scenes of suffering, to critique dominant narratives of national identity, and--in some cases--to offer alternate notions of publicness built on fellow-feeling. I propose that much American literature of the 1990s and early post-millennium--texts often characterized as postmodern--evince a profound, yet veiled investment in sentimentalism's characteristic mode of affective pedagogy. In the texts examined here (including works by Philip Roth, Anna Deavere Smith, John Edgar Wideman, Chang-Rae Lee, Jonathan Safron Foer, John Updike, and Don DeLillo), one encounters a recurrent mode of affective engagement: a suffering figure is spectacularly exposed, sometimes "directly" to the reader but much more often through an intermediary figure whose sympathetic, affective, and/or diagnostic reaction to the suffering pedagogically models ideal affective responses for the reader. One also encounters many of the tropes and topoi characteristic of sentimentalism in the 19th century: a metaphoric linking of domestic, familial spaces for the space of the nation, sustained grief for the lost child, and the possibility of a redemptive community established through fellow feeling. Popular American culture has never set aside its investments in the power of sympathy, the guile of sentiment, and the lure of the endearingly oppressed, but the intertextual recovery of sentimentalism's pedagogical modes, tropes, and topoi by writers renowned for their sophistication, experimentation, and reflexiveness would seem more remarkable. Indeed, this resurrection of an aesthetic mode built on feeling goes directly against the diagnosis of Fredric Jameson, who declared famously that postmodern culture is characterized by a "waning of affect" (10). On the contrary, because many "postmodern" writers in the post Cold War period have made use of the performative power of sympathetic witness and reengaged with the nineteenth-century sentimentalist tradition, I maintain that, if anything, the cultural power of affect has been magnified and inflamed. Thus, this dissertation studies the ways in which many contemporary American writers, writers customarily thought of as literary, academic, and postmodern, have borrowed much from a discourse generally considered popular and debased, have employed sentimentalism's tropes for their power, modified its affective pedagogy for their political purposes, and revised many of its assumptions about the power of sympathetic witnessing. I attempt to elucidate these literary reengagements and give shape to my broader inquiry by situating them in relation to scenes of urban crisis, ruin, and unrest--that is, by reading them in relation to the changes characterizing American cities during the post-Cold War period and in the years immediately preceding it. Following the implementation of neoliberal austerity in the late 1970s, a process of deindustrialization and social stratification that had began in the 1960s rapidly accelerated. During this period, urban life in America was marked by the increasing immiseration of the underclass, the massive influx of new immigrants from Asia and Central America, conflict over scant resources, and an escalation of tensions between the highest and lowest elements in society. Using urban conflict to contextualize these postmodern revisions of sentimentalism is not an arbitrary choice; I follow the lead of the texts themselves. In each chapter, I consider how these authors bring the power of sympathetic witness and the hope of a coherent social body built of fellow-feeling--bring, in short, the power of sentimentalism--to bear on scenes of urban tension, strife, and ruin. The net is cast wide enough to include the relative banality of anti-immigrant chauvinism alongside the spectacular explosion of the 1992 Los Angeles riots as well as the smoldering urban ruin left in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Though these events and circumstances differ in vast and important ways, each can be thought of as fiery evidence against narratives of America's pastoral unity, coherence, and placid omnipotence. The writers who responded to these sites of turmoil made use of sentimentalism's power and investment in sympathetic projection to engage candidly with the suffering of others, to pedagogically mold the affective responses of their readers, and to suggest the existence of a social body to which both sufferer, witness, and reader belong. However, these texts reveal a persistent ambivalence over sympathy: its nature, its power, and its political provenance. Furthermore, because many of these authors model emotional engagement and witness through the figure of the writer, their scrutiny of the politics of sympathy is inseparable from their performative duplication of it. Thus their ambivalence about the community of fellow feeling goes into the text's performance and reception. Reading these authors for their thematic treatment of America's politics of feeling necessarily leads to reading their modes of sentimental ambivalence performatively. The reading practice governing this study therefore reveals the ways in which these writers entangle the publics they address in powerful sympathetic bonds while nevertheless calling into question what power feeling really has

THE MUSLIM FEMALE BODY IN TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY DISCOURSES BY ARAB AND ARAB AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS

Abstract The Muslim Female Body in Twenty-First-Century Discourses by Arab and Arab American Women Writers employs a culturally symptomatic approach in its reading of various modes of representation of the Muslim female body. Analyzing visible as well as buried topics in selected twenty-first century Arab and Arab American women’s novels, the dissertation examines dominant cultural constructions of the body within socio-political frameworks. In this context, both present and absent themes are equally important for understanding the production of knowledge by a literary text and, hence, the culture(s) a text symptomizes. To this end, it studies four twenty-first-century novels by Arab American women authors and three novels by Arab women writers, including Syrian American Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006), Jordanian American Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent (2003), Palestinian American Randa Jarrar’s A Map of Home (2008), Egyptian American Samia Serageldin’s The Cairo House (2000), Egyptian Nawal El Saadawi’s Zeina (2010; trans. 2011), Saudi Arabian Rajaa Abdalla Al-Sane’s Banāt al-Riyāḍ (2005); trans. Girls of Riyadh (2007), and Egyptian Bedouin Miral al-Tahawy’s al-Khibāʾ (1996); trans. The Tent (1998). Part of the contribution of this dissertation is that it puts in the foreground what is in the background. By this I mean, it minutely traces and scrutinizes scattered details about the subject of the body of Muslim women across 21st-century Arab and Arab American women’s literatures. Its main claim is that the perception of the Muslim female body is based on cultural fabrications. It seeks to deconstruct dominant one-dimensional interpretations of the position of the Muslim female body today, by laying out the multiplicity of the ideological constraints that the body currently confronts. It views those ideologies as interwoven constituents of a web. At the same time, it teases out multiple modes of resistance that these writers develop to counteract Orientalist, Islamist, and other powers which manufacture and enforce dominant body images. The dissertation highlights the heterogeneity of the authors it deals with, paying close attention to the singular subjectivities of their production of knowledge. To do so, it shows how differences are augmented, multiplied, and rendered more nuanced when delineated within diasporic as well as national contexts. It evaluates how each novel positions itself in relation to damaging ideologies by assessing the counter-images that the writers create. The study discusses how those counter-pictures trouble, adhere to, or refute conventional constructions. This project is both appreciative and critical of Michel Foucault’s theory of the body. It extends Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology. In analyzing the social construction of the Muslim female body, it aligns itself with a handful body theorists, particularly Gayle Rubin, Elizabeth Grosz, Susan Bordo, and Lennard J. Davis. Keywords: Arabophobia, Body Politics, Counterhegemonic Powers , Diaspora, Discourse, Feminism, Gender Construction, Habitus, Identity Politics, Ideology, Islamism, Islamophobia, Oppositional Cultures, Orientalism, Survivance, the Veil, and Zionism

Democracy and Difference: The US in Multidisciplinary and Comparative Perspectives Papers from the 21st AISNA Conference

The volume collects contributions stretching from the Humanities to the Social Sciences and examines the challenging conjugation of two keywords in contemporary societies—democracy and difference. The overall project of this collection is to share knowledges and methodologies across disciplines, languages, and national cultures in order to investigate processes of homogenization and differentiation, and to embrace transnational, intercultural, and interdisciplinary perspectives. By exploring topics that are central to American Studies—including race/ethnicity, sex/gender, nationality, religion, language, landscape, migration, law, status, economy, dispossession, and expansion—and by engaging them both in English and Spanish, the collection aims to both foster cultural dialogue in an interconnected world and reflect the dynamism and instability of American Studies as a discipline that is constantly redrawn and redefined by a difficult yet fruitful interaction with diverse cultures, locations, and communities. This volume situates critique at the very heart of American Studies, not only to question and redraw the boundaries of this porous discipline, but also to point the way towards more hospitable configurations of the global world. EDITORIAL BOARD Joan Anim-Addo, Goldsmiths, University of London Luisa Antoniolli, Università di Trento Ferdinando Fasce, Università di Genova Cristina Giorcelli, Università di Roma 3 Donatella Izzo, Università di Napoli l'Orientale Giorgio Mariani, Università di Roma Andrea Mariani, Università di Chieti John MacGowan, University of North Carolina Stefano Rosso, Università di Bergamo Pietro Taravacci, Università di Trento PEER REVIEWERS Gianfranca Balestra, Università di Siena Paola Boi, Università di Cagliari Andrea Carosso, Università di Torino Daniele Crivellari, Università di Salerno Jane Danielewicz, University of North Carolina Anna De Biasio, Università di Bergamo Vincenzo della Sala, Università di Trento Sonia di Loreto, Università di Torino Mina Karavanta, University of Athens Marco Mariano, Università del Piemonte Orientale Franco Minganti, Università di Bologna Elèna Mortara, Università di Roma Tor Vergata Gigliola Nocera, Università di Catania Andrea Pradi, Università di Trento Daniela Ciani Sforza, Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia Maurizio Vaudagna, Università del Piemonte Orientale Elisabetta Vezzosi, Università di Trieste Paola Zaccaria, Università di Bari Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements GIOVANNA COVI, LISA MARCHI, Introduction. Differencing Democracy, Democratizing Differences ADA AGRESSI, “What Are We to Do With Becky?”: The Search For Identity in Rolando Hinojosa’s Becky and Her Friends PIRJO AHOKAS, Chinese American Masculinities and Asian AmericanHumor: Jen’s “Birthmates” and Louie’s “Pangs of Love” ELENA BALDASSARRI, “Everything’s connected to everything else”: The documerica Photographic Campaign and the Costs of Progress in the 1970s US VINCENZO BAVARO, Cruising the Gay Bathhouse NICOLANGELO BECCE, “An accident at sea is better than an act of terrorism”: Deferring Democracy in NCIS GIOVANNI BERNARDINI, Westernization vs. Americanization after World War II: Still a Debate Issue? An Overview of the Historiography Dispute over Shapes and Times of US Influence over Postwar Germany SILVIA BETTI, El Spanglish: ¿Un puente entre el mundo hispano y el mundo estadounidense? NATASHA BONNELAME, What does America mean to us? What do we mean to it? Locating the Other America in Joan Anim-Addo’s Imoinda or She Who Will Lose Her Name LEONARDO BUONOMO, Family Hierarchy in the American Sitcom: The Case of Bewitched ALICE CASARINI, “You Have a Sarcasm Sign? ”Fansubbing and the Egalitarian Decryption of American Comedy PAOLA CASTELLUCCI, Emily Dickinson’s Self-publishing ALESSANDRO CLERICUZIO, Laughing the Cold War Away with Auntie Mame ERMINIO CORTI, La humanización del Otro absoluto: una lectura de El entenado de Juan José Saer GABRIELE D’OTTAVIO, Debating Americanization and Westernization: The Development of Political Science in Germany After WWII VALERIO MASSIMO DE ANGELIS, Deferring the Dream: Langston Hughes’s Critique of American Democracy MARINA DE CHIARA, Letters from Distant Shores: Ana Castillo ALESSANDRA DE MARCO, Wasting Labour and Materiality: the Financialization of the US Economy in Don DeLillo’s Fiction CHRISTINA DOKOU, Dim-ocracy/In-Difference: A Portrait of the Yankee Intellectual as a Mirage DANIELA FARGIONE, Words and/as Waste in Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things Auster’s Fantastic and Realistic Journeys CLAUDIA FIMIANI, “The Party’s Over”: Jazz and Disillusionment in Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s America and the Haruki Murakami’s Westernized Japan SIMONE FRANCESCATO, “The Futility of Time In Between”: Americans Abroad in Dave Eggers’s You Shall Know Our Velocity (!) SABRINA FUSARI, “The Pearly Gates Have Opened and Shut”: Alitalia’s Privatization in the US American Press SERENA FUSCO, “Cowardice Is What You Make of It”: Threat and Collaborative Happiness in Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker GINEVRA GERACI, A Map of the New World. Unsystematic Charts and Travelling Atlases in Paule Marshall’s and Toni Morrison’s Caribbean SERENA GUARRACINO, Representative Democracy and the Struggle for Representation: Caribbean and US Performances of Difference in Caryl Phillips’ Dancing in the Dark FIORENZO IULIANO, The End of the World Novel. Strategies of Lust and Surveillance in Bret E. Ellis’s The Rules of Attraction RICHARD KIDDER, The Reactor in the Garden, or Working Nature Over GIUSEPPE LOMBARDO, Democracy and Difference in Jerre Mangione's Mount Allegro STEFANO LUCONI, How Wide Is the Italian-American “Circle of the ‘We’”? MARCO MANGANI, “Speaking with the hands and eyes”: Ella Fitzgerald’s Art of Signifying LISA MARCHI, Mapping Democracy and Dissent in Arab-American Poetry ELISABETTA MARINO, Teaching Difference in Democratic America: Maria Mazziotti Gillan as a Poet and Editor MENA MITRANO, Photography and Dissent: Susan Sontag MARINA MORBIDUCCI, From How to Write (1931) to Brain Versioning 1.0 (2008), and Back: Transmutations at Work KIM NALLEY, Losing Its Grease: Black Cultural Politics and the Globalization of Jazz PAOLA ANNA NARDI, “This neighborhood was kind of like home”: American cities in Irish-American fiction VIRGINIA PIGNAGNOLI, New Voices and the Difference They (May) Make: David Shields’s Reality Hunger and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes FRANCESCO PONTUALE, House of Leaves, House of Leaves, house of leaves: Sameness, Differences, and Old Paradigms SIMONA PORRO, The ‘Waste’ of the American Dream in E. L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel FLORIANA PUGLISI, Against the Grain: Reconfiguration of Democratic America in Rosmarie Waldrop’s Work UMBERTO ROSSI, Waste Lands: Trash and the American Mindscape in Science-Fiction Narratives CARLA SASSI, Glocalising Democracy: The Quest for Truth and Justice in Lockerbie 103 by Des Dillon CRISTINA SCATAMACCHIA, Eliza Jane Poitevent Holbrook Nicholson and the City of New Orleans CINZIA SCHIAVINI, Writing the Crisis in Contemporary American Non-Fiction Narrative PAOLO SIMONETTI, Why Are Comics No Longer Comic? Graphic Narratives in Contemporary America LORENA CARBONARA AND ANNARITA TARONNA, In search of new sea(e)scapes: the metaphors of the Mediterranean from mythological to contemporary narratives CRISTINA TINELLI, From “The Mysteries of the Hyphen” to the Mysteries of Italy: the Poetry of Sandra M. Gilbert FLUTUR TROSHANI, ‘Poiesis of Sounds in the Wind’: A Glimpse into Trans-Aesthetic Innovation/Renovation MIRELLA VALLONE, Borders, Crossroads, Bridges: Negotiating Boundaries NICOLETTA VALLORANI, Democracy on the Rocks: Outlawing Law in Touristic Dystopias, from Vonnegut’s Caribbean islands to Self’s Holiday Resorts GIORGIO RIMONDI, “Tempo della musica e tempo dell’immagine”: A Contribution to Jazz Photography Studies SOSTENE MASSIMO ZANGARI, The Rotting Pot: the Aesthetic of Junk in Garibaldi Lapolla’s The Grand Gennar

7th International Meshing Roundtable '98

The goal of the 7th International Meshing Roundtable is to bring together researchers and developers from industry, academia, and government labs in a stimulating, open environment for the exchange of technical information related to the meshing process. In the past, the Roundtable has enjoyed significant participation from each of these groups from a wide variety of countries