Hermeneutics: A Literary Interpretive Art

This thesis examines the historical traditions of hermeneutics and its potential to enhance the process of literary interpretation and understanding. The discussion draws from the historical emplotment of hermeneutics as literary theory and method presented in the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism with further elaboration from several other texts. The central aim of the thesis is to illuminate the challenges inherent in the literary interpretive arts by investigating select philosophical and linguistic approaches to the study and practice of literary theory and criticism embodied within the canonical works of the Anthology. The narrative begins in ancient Greece, traverses medieval and modern developments in the western literary interpretive arts and closes with a brief survey of twentieth-century writings that form a diverse mosaic of disaggregated literary theory and criticism from several perspectives. The thesis concludes with suggestions for improving the literary interpretive process and forecasts the continuing expansion of the field into new culturally informed topic areas in the decades to follow

Emperical and fantasied realities: Methodologies of qualitative social scientists and fiction writers

The purpose of this research project then is to make an investigation of the methodological assumptions and practices of qualitative sociologists and/or anthropologists and of writers of fiction

On Locating Malicious Code in Piggybacked Android Apps

To devise efficient approaches and tools for detecting malicious packages in the Android ecosystem, researchers are increasingly required to have a deep understanding of malware. There is thus a need to provide a framework for dissecting malware and locating malicious program fragments within app code in order to build a comprehensive dataset of malicious samples. Towards addressing this need, we propose in this work a tool-based approach called HookRanker, which provides ranked lists of potentially malicious packages based on the way malware behaviour code is triggered. With experiments on a ground truth of piggybacked apps, we are able to automatically locate the malicious packages from piggybacked Android apps with an accuracy@5 of 83.6% for such packages that are triggered through method invocations and an accuracy@5 of 82.2% for such packages that are triggered independently

Multimodal biometrics scheme based on discretized eigen feature fusion for identical twins identification

The subject of twins multimodal biometrics identification (TMBI) has consistently been an interesting and also a valuable area of study. Considering high dependency and acceptance, TMBI greatly contributes to the domain of twins identification in biometrics traits. The variation of features resulting from the process of multimodal biometrics feature extraction determines the distinctive characteristics possessed by a twin. However, these features are deemed as inessential as they cause the increase in the search space size and also the difficulty in the generalization process. In this regard, the key challenge is to single out features that are deemed most salient with the ability to accurately recognize the twins using multimodal biometrics. In identification of twins, effective designs of methodology and fusion process are important in assuring its success. These processes could be used in the management and integration of vital information including highly selective biometrics characteristic possessed by any of the twins. In the multimodal biometrics twins identification domain, exemplification of the best features from multiple traits of twins and biometrics fusion process remain to be completely resolved. This research attempts to design a new scheme and more effective multimodal biometrics twins identification by introducing the Dis-Eigen feature-based fusion with the capacity in generating a uni-representation and distinctive features of numerous modalities of twins. First, Aspect United Moment Invariant (AUMI) was used as global feature in the extraction of features obtained from the twins handwritingfingerprint shape and style. Then, the feature-based fusion was examined in terms of its generalization. Next, to achieve better classification accuracy, the Dis-Eigen feature-based fusion algorithm was used. A total of eight distinctive classifiers were used in executing four different training and testing of environment settings. Accordingly, the most salient features of Dis-Eigen feature-based fusion were trained and tested to determine the accuracy of the classification, particularly in terms of performance. The results show that the identification of twins improved as the error of similarity for intra-class decreased while at the same time, the error of similarity for inter-class increased. Hence, with the application of diverse classifiers, the identification rate was improved reaching more than 93%. It can be concluded from the experimental outcomes that the proposed method using Receiver Operation Characteristics (ROC) considerably increases the twins handwriting-fingerprint identification process with 90.25% rate of identification when False Acceptance Rate (FAR) is at 0.01%. It is also indicated that 93.15% identification rate is achieved when FAR is at 0.5% and 98.69% when FAR is at 1.00%. The new proposed solution gives a promising alternative to twins identification application

An HCI-Centric Survey and Taxonomy of Human-Generative-AI Interactions

Generative AI (GenAI) has shown remarkable capabilities in generating diverse and realistic content across different formats like images, videos, and text. In Generative AI, human involvement is essential, thus HCI literature has investigated how to effectively create collaborations between humans and GenAI systems. However, the current literature lacks a comprehensive framework to better understand Human-GenAI Interactions, as the holistic aspects of human-centered GenAI systems are rarely analyzed systematically. In this paper, we present a survey of 291 papers, providing a novel taxonomy and analysis of Human-GenAI Interactions from both human and Gen-AI perspectives. The dimensions of design space include 1) Purposes of Using Generative AI, 2) Feedback from Models to Users, 3) Control from Users to Models, 4) Levels of Engagement, 5) Application Domains, and 6) Evaluation Strategies. Our work is also timely at the current development stage of GenAI, where the Human-GenAI interaction design is of paramount importance. We also highlight challenges and opportunities to guide the design of Gen-AI systems and interactions towards the future design of human-centered Generative AI applications

Conceptualisation and exposition: a paradigm of character creation

While the concept of the fictional character has been widely discussed at an interdisciplinary level, a foundational theory of character creation in Creative Writing is yet to follow. As a result, Creative Writing students refer to post-construction analysis in Literary Theory, or even the formulaic advice often suggested by popular writing manuals. Aiming to fill this gap, and at the same time reconcile the chasm between Literary Theory and Creative Writing, my thesis shall initiate a paradigm of character creation, by combining creativity with craftsmanship. More specifically, my approach consists of two interrelated stages: Conceptualisation entails the conception of the character by means of authorial perception, imagination and judgement, which precedes her textual birth; and Exposition, which pertains to the conveyance of such a priori knowledge on paper. My research is conducted through both synthesis and critical analysis. I will be presenting, analysing and thus substantiating my own method of work and at the same time I will examine existing theories I wish to encompass or challenge. My sources are interdisciplinary: Literary Theory and Criticism, Cognitive Psychology, Theory of Mind, Theory of Person and Linguistics are some of them. Examples from Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm (1994), J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) and Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith (2002) will be used to support my hypotheses. I will not be presuming upon the novelists’ original intentions, but rather testing my own method against their texts