A Jaded Romantic: Uncovering the True Nature of Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1913?, has become renowned in the Civil War world for his sharp-witted and cynical short stories that frequently feature ghastly death and the terrible irony of survival. His life has become somewhat of a caricature, used by historians such as Mark Snell and Gerald Linderman to demonstrate the utter disillusionment of the common soldier and the retreat into hibernation in an attempt to escape the trauma experienced during the war. This view of Bierce fails to capture the complexity of the man and his war experience. Rather than a skeptical realist, Bierce demonstrates the characteristics of a jaded romantic. [excerpt

The rise of the comics künstlerroman, or, the limits of comics acceptance: the depiction of comics creators in the work of Michael Chabon and Emily St. John Mandel

The künstlerroman is a genre with a long and celebrated past. From Bret Easton Ellis’ Lunar Park (2005) to John Irving’s The World According to Garp (1978) and Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift (1975), the genre has occupied a prominent place in bestseller lists and awards shortlists. The enduring popularity and continued critical celebration of the künstlerroman makes it all the more striking that, since the turn of the millennium a new kind of author-protagonist has emerged — the graphic-novelist-protagonist. This move not only inducts graphic novelists into this existing — and prestigious — literary genre, it also draws them into the same struggle for recognition in which other novelist-protagonists have long been involved. Drawing on the recent examples of Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000) and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014), in this article I argue that there is a clear move toward the serious discussion of comics and comics creators in contemporary literature, an increasing willingness to talk about comics and their makers that is marked by a surprising faith in the fitness of comics as a mode of self-expression and a recognition of the clear kinship between prose authors and graphic novelists.N/

The Daily Texan

Texas Student Medi

Grand narratives then and now: can we still conceptualise history?

Reading the Communist Manifesto today, it is impossible not to be struck by the confidence with which it conceptualises history. The positive energy of this bold grand narrative stands in such stark contrast to the negative and jaded mentality of our times, which conceives of grand narratives only to tell us that there can be none. Such talk as there is of history today is more likely to be of "the end of history". There are three senses in which references to the end of history feature in contemporary debates: apocalyptic prediction, postmodernist pronouncement and capitalist triumphalism. This paper addresses the crisis of historicity in our time in relation to these positions and asks what is it about our age that produces them. It explores the widespread rejection of grand narratives, as well as grand narratives, which nevertheless persist, implicit and explicit, right and left. It looks at the position of marxism in the 1990s, counterposing it to postmarxism and postmodernism in particular on the question of grand narratives. It calls for resistance to the detotalising pressures of the age and revival of a totalising (as opposed to totalised) philosophy of history

Coming of Age at the End of Nature edited by Julie Dunlap and Susan A. Cohen

Review of Julie Dunlap and Susan A. Cohen\u27s edited collection Coming of Age at the End of Nature: A Generation Faces Living On a Changed Planet

Industry effects in the stock returns of banks and nonfinancial firms

Stock - Prices ; Risk ; Bank stocks

Interpreting the term structure of interest rates

Interest rates ; Government securities

Book Review of Village Journey by Thomas R. Berger

This review is as submitted to the Tundra Times. A revised version of the review, as edited by Tundra Times editorial staff, was published as "Doctrinal Overload Flaws Berger's 'Village Journey'" by Stephen Conn, Tundra Times, 23 Sep 1985, pp. 7, 11–12.This article reviews Village Journey: The Report of the Alaska Native Review Commission by Thomas R. Berger (New York: Hill and Wang, 1985). The Alaska Native Review Commission, headed by former Canadian parliamentarian and justice Thomas Berger, initiated an inquiry into the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1984, visiting 62 villages and hearing 1600 residents to determine ANCSA's impact on Alaska Native lands and communities. Berger found that ANCSA had placed Native land at risk, endangering not only its title but the rights of Alaska Natives to subsist upon it.Book review / Appendix: Letter to Justice Thomas Berger, October 28, 198

Unveiling the Mail-Order Bride: Mutated Arranged Marriages in Chitra Divakaruni's "Clothes" and Linh Dinh's Love, Like, Hate

[Abstract] This Master's thesis explores the impact of contemporary globalisation on the nature of the arranged marriages in the Asian diaspora. In order to highlight the differences between the old tradition and the mutated form of arranged marriages—the term I use to refer to the renewed method—, I have organised this paper using a contrasting, comparative structure. After a brief sociohistorical contextualisation of the evolution of the arranged marriage procedure, I explore the main ways in which globalisation may have affected the latter and, subsequently, I point out the major transformations of the mutated phenomenon. Finally, I illustrate those changes in the close analysis of the proposed textual corpus. In order to accurately portray the greater placement of the arranged marriage business in recent years in the Indian American and Vietnamese American diasporas, I have selected two narratives that deal with such ethnic minorities: "Clothes," by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and Love, Like, Hate, by Lihn Dinh. The aim of this study is not only to stress the mutations of the arranged marriage phenomenon through its depiction in the literary field, but also to evidence the need for urgent action in order to regulate the current mail-order bride industry.Traballo fin de mestrado (UDC.FIL). Estudos ingleses avanzados e as súas aplicacións. Curso 2019/202