Anti-Crusoes, Alternative Crusoes: Revisions of the Island Story in the Twentieth Century

In lieu of an abstract, here are the chapter\u27s first two paragraphs: Everyone thinks they know the plot of Robinson Crusoe. The story of the man who is shipwrecked on an island alone is ubiquitous and feels deeply familiar, even for those who have not read it. Robinson Crusoe has been plagiarized, cannibalized, and serialized almost since the moment it hit the streets of London in 1719. Here is a passage from an Argentinean novel by Victoria Slavuski published in 1993 that captures the sense of familiarity and also the distance twentieth-century readers have in their relationship to Robinson Crusoe: “On days like these we promised each other that at long last we would take the time to read the copy of Robinson (Crusoe) that each household kept alongside the Bible and Twenty-five Ways to Prepare Lobster, written on Juan Fernandez by Amelita Riera. Nobody got past page fifteen of Robinson and almost nobody opened the Bible.”1 Literary critics often treat the multitude of twentieth-century versions of Crusoe as antagonistic to Defoe’s character. They tend to consider contemporary novels or films or poems as entities in competition with Robinson Crusoe’s fictional world. However, these modern renderings are never so neatly drawn. More often than not, writers use these alternative Crusoes to forge lines of affiliation and empathy, between the eighteenth century and our own time as well as between different regions and languages. Argentinean, Caribbean, and African Crusoes are in conversation with one another as much as they are in dialogue with the historic Defoe. Writers around the globe adapt and transform Crusoe and Defoe’s novel to establish a literary web of connection that has come to define our own global moment where fiction travels beyond national and linguistic borders. In this chapter I will move through a few observations on nineteenth-century Crusoes before delving into the twentieth-century map of literary islands crisscrossing the globe

Elizabeth Singer Rowe and the Development of the English Novel

Elizabeth Singer Rowe played a pivotal role in the development of the novel during the eighteenth century.Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRLElizabeth Singer Rowe and the Development of the English Novel is the first in-depth study of Rowe’s prose fiction. A four-volume collection of her work was a bestseller for a hundred years after its publication, but today Rowe is a largely unrecognized figure in the history of the novel. Although her poetry was appreciated by poets such as Alexander Pope for its metrical craftsmanship, beauty, and imagery, by the time of her death in 1737 she was better known for her fiction. According to Paula R. Backscheider, Rowe's major focus in her novels was on creating characters who were seeking a harmonious, contented life, often in the face of considerable social pressure. This quest would become the plotline in a large number of works in the second half of the eighteenth century, and it continues to be a major theme today in novels by women.Backscheider relates Rowe’s work to popular fiction written by earlier writers as well as by her contemporaries. Rowe had a lasting influence on major movements, including the politeness (or gentility) movement, the reading revolution, and the Bluestocking society. The author reveals new information about each of these movements, and Elizabeth Singer Rowe emerges as an important innovator. Her influence resulted in new types of novel writing, philosophies, and lifestyles for women. Backscheider looks to archival materials, literary analysis, biographical evidence, and a configuration of cultural and feminist theories to prove her groundbreaking argument

Ultra Wide Band Signal Modeling for Radar Receiver Characterization

Results for modeling, simulation, and analysis of interference effects that modern wideband signals have on existing narrowband radar system performance are presented. In particular, radar detection performance is characterized using a basic radar receiver model and operational parameters consistent with those of the ARSR-4 air route surveillance radar. Two modern wideband signals (interferers) are addressed in this work, including the GPS military signal (M-Code signal) and a direct sequence ultra wideband (DS-UWB) waveform meeting outdoor emission restrictions imposed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Interference effects are characterized for an unmodulated sinusoidal pulse as well as linear frequency modulated (LFM) and bi-phase Barker coded pulse compression waveforms. Finally, coherent pulse integration is addressed and interference mitigation demonstrated via improved detection performance. Worst case detection scenarios from the radar\u27s perspective are considered for all cases. M-Code interference results indicate that at proposed received power levels of -160 to -130 dBW, radar detection performance is severely degraded with expected improvement occurring when pulse integration is employed. DS-UWB interference results indicate that at maximum transmit power levels specified by the FCC, the DS-UWB waveform has minimal impact on detection performance for radar receiver/UWB transmitter separation distances beyond 0.5 meters. This separation distance is reduced further when pulse integration is employed. (8 tables, 42 figures, 25 refs.

Eliza Haywoods geschichte des fräuleins Elisabeth Thoughtless (1756): frühe selbsterkenntnis und ehekritik in der englischen ubersetzungsliteratur

Die Tradition, Frauenerleben aus weiblicher Perspektive zum Mittelpunkt eines Romans zu machen, beginnt in Deutschland nicht mit Sophie La Roches Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771), sondern mit den Werken englischer Schriftstellerinnen, die bereits bedeutend früher in deutschen Übersetzungen erschienen und bisher von der Germanistik nicht beachtet worden sind. An Eliza Haywoods Geschichte des Fräuleins Elisabeth Thoughtless (1756) soll hier exemplarisch gezeigt werden, wie in Deutschland Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts bereits eine Form der Literatur von Frauen erscheint, die die Entwicklung eines weiblichen Charakters zum Mittelpunkt hat. Obwohl der Übersetzer die in diesem Roman enthaltene Kritik an der patriarchalisch geführten Ehe und der Idealisierung der Frau durch eine bewusst gewählte Übersetzungsstrategie abschwächt, um der Leserschaft den für deutsche Verhältnisse zu radikalen Text angenehmer zu machen, ist dieser, von Lessing als das Werk eines Genies bewertete Roman ein Meilenstein in der Literatur von Frauen

Women We Loved: Paradoxes of public and private in the biographical television drama

Broadcast to critical acclaim and relatively large audiences for its niche channel, the Women We Loved season consisted of biographical dramatisations of three prominent female figures of 20th-century British culture. These dramas shared in common narratives that centre on the two aspects of ‘the public’ and ‘the private’: the tension between public career and personal life and the discrepancy between celebrity persona and private individual. Combining theoretical insights from feminist studies of biography with close textual analysis, this article analyses how performance, aesthetics and narrative express the ambivalent placement of their protagonists between public and private spheres

Financial Aid Packaging at Community Colleges: Which types of awards packages increase student persistence?

Increasing college costs, coupled with decreasing financial aid has raised public concerns over the affordability of higher education. For the past four decades, the nation has seen the cost of tuition rise at levels that exceed inflation, and financial assistance rates that have not kept pace with that growth. Studies suggest that these financial resources play a role in influencing college attendance decisions and persistence for low-income students. This study examines the characteristics of zero-EFC students as compared to non-zero EFC students and determines the extent to which a gift-aid only, and gift-aid plus loans awards package affects the likelihood of persistence. Also, it explores the relationship between the ratio of loans-to-gift-aid, and the likelihood of persistence across income levels. By employing logistic regression, this study aims to determine if there are differential effects among financial aid award packages, and if the ratio of a loans-to-gift-aid package affects persistence by income status. Results demonstrated that a gift-aid only package, and a gift-aid plus loans package negatively influenced the enrollment outcomes of zero-EFC students and positively influenced the enrollment outcomes of high-income students. Additionally, when examining the ratio of loans-to-gift-aid for students with a gift-aid and loans package, results showed that the higher the ratio of loans to gift-aid, the higher the likelihood of persistence for all income levels. In an era where the rising costs of a college education are becoming more difficult to cover with present levels of financial aid, earning a higher education credential is possible if students are willing to take on educational debt. A comprehensive higher education plan that acknowledges financial barriers as fundamental obstacles to the college success of its lowest income students is necessary to preserving equal opportunity to upward social mobility