Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

Esa 12th Conference: Differences, Inequalities and Sociological Imagination: Abstract Book

Esa 12th Conference: Differences, Inequalities and Sociological Imagination: Abstract Boo

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

2022-2023 Course Catalog

2022-2023 Course Catalo

“Things are not separate”: literary symbiotic metamorphoses in the fiction and critical work of A. S. Byatt

My critical project in this dissertation examines the way Byatt’s work productively moves across, and in and out of apparently conflicting theoretical debates, such as Leavis’s views on reading and writing in the light of poststructuralist and feminist theoretical approaches; or the establishment of a separate female literary tradition within the male literary canon; or the postmodernist resistance to/ rejection of realist representation, to name but a few of the debates examined in this dissertation. Hence, it is not my intention to superimpose a particular theoretical view on my analysis of Byatt’s work, but rather analyse their particular relevance in the light of Byatt’s own politics of writing. I propose the term “literary symbiotic metamorphosis” to investigate Byatt’s negotiation of apparently conflicting theoretical debates, in which she examines the validity of each individual theory vis-à-vis their symbiotic relationship, and then reshapes them into a unique poetics of writing which combines the understanding of a text’s symbiotically creative as well as theoretical relationships with the capacity to rearrange them into a practice of writing which is much more than the sum of the different parts which constitute it. My term is also informed by the Hegelian dialectic as the critical investigation of “a process of change in which a concept or its realization passes over into and is preserved and fulfilled by its opposite” (Merriam Webster) in which “some assertible proposition (thesis) is necessarily opposed by an equally assertible and apparently contradictory proposition (antithesis), the mutual contradiction being reconciled on a higher level of truth by a third proposition (synthesis)” (Thesaurus). It is in light of all these interconnected threads that I will investigate Byatt’s creative and critical work.O meu projeto crítico nesta dissertação examina a forma como o trabalho de Byatt se move produtivamente em debates teóricos aparentemente conflituosos, como as opiniões de F. R. Leavis sobre a leitura e a escrita à luz de abordagens teóricas pós-estruturalistas e feministas; ou o estabelecimento de uma tradição literária feminina separada dentro do cânone literário masculino; ou a resistência pós-modernista à representação realista, para citar apenas alguns dos debates examinados nesta dissertação. Por conseguinte, não é minha intenção sobrepor uma visão teórica específica à minha análise do trabalho de Byatt, mas sim analisar a sua particular relevância à luz das próprias políticas de escrita de Byatt. Proponho o termo crítico “metamorfose simbiótica literária” para investigar o modo como Byatt se posiciona em debates teóricos aparentemente conflituosos, em que examina a validade de cada teoria individual, remodelando-as depois numa poética única de escrita que combina por simbiose as relações criativas e as relações teóricas de um texto com a capacidade de as reorganizar numa prática de escrita que é muito mais do que a soma das diferentes partes que constituem o produto final. O meu termo crítico também é informado pela dialética hegeliana como a investigação crítica de uma tese, necessariamente oposta por uma antítese, sendo a contradição mútua reconciliada num nível mais elevado de verdade por uma terceira proposta, ou síntese. É à luz de todos estes fios interligados que investigo o trabalho criativo e crítico de Byatt