The "Cognitive Turn": A Short Guide for Nervous Drivers.

In this brief primer on the emergent field of cognitive literary criticism, I aim to offer a tentative outline of its more representative lines of research after roughly twenty to twenty five years of activity. One of my main concerns will be to attend to some of the main objections that the field has been charged with in its short life, and to highlight the ways in which cognitive critics have addressed such objections. After a brief sketch of the main fields of activity, I will consider some of the possible future directions, with a focus on the different ways in which cognitive critics have embraced enactive approach-es to embodied and embedded cognition

Taking EU Equality Law to the next level: in search of coherence

EU employment equality law is the product of fifty years of law-making. This gradual evolution has led to fragmentation and differences in the protection afforded to protected grounds, often referred to as a ‘hierarchy of discrimination grounds’. This paper argues that human dignity is one of the underlying values of EU equality law, and therefore, the existence of a ‘hierarchy’ is not deliberate, but rather the accidental product of progressive waves of legislative evolution. It is thus submitted that EU equality law should keep evolving to achieve a coherent approach to address discrimination. This requires a legal framework that is logical, consistent and aligned with international human rights instruments. On this basis, the paper discusses two proposals to improve the coherence of EU employment equality law, namely, explicitly prohibiting gender identity discrimination and embracing reasonable accommodation for religious practices through a broad interpretation of the concept of indirect discrimination

The UK pay transparency regulations: apparent transparency without accountability?

The UK enacted its first legal measure to address gender pay inequity, the Equal Pay Act 1970, more than 50 years ago. Yet, in 2021, the Gender Pay Gap (GPG) still stood at 15.4%. Departing from the remedial and individual approach that characterises equal pay legislation, the 2017 Gender Pay Gap Information Regulations (‘the Regulations’) require private and voluntary sector organisations with 250+ employees to annually publish pay data broken down by gender. The long-term aspiration of the Regulations is to contribute to closing the GPG within a generation but it is also hoped that they will encourage employers to change workplace policies to reduce organisational GPG (immediate aims) and improve employers' accountability (underlying aim). This article considers if the Regulations have what it takes to meet those immediate and underlying aims. Our assessment framework is built on the premise that for public disclosure to be useful and for employers to tackle the causes of the GPG, the information reported must be of sufficient quality, meaningful and relevant. The article draws on both doctrinal analysis and empirical data reported by FTSE 100 Index companies to assess the Regulations and determine if they hold the potential to meet those aims

Faith versus Reason as Reflected in Salman Rushdie´s Two Years, Eitgh Months and Twenty-Eight Nights.

The main objective of this Final Degree Dissertation will be to analyse the novel Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie. A good example of the literary movement known as magic realism, it illustrates what the great majority of critics consider to be the main characteristic of this sort of texts: the gradual insertion of the magic element onto the apparently realist text until the total superposition/overlapping of reality and fiction takes place. This is here done in order to represent the rationalism/religion binary and, more precisely, to denounce the rejection of reason in order to impose religious fanaticism, which is currently booming in certain parts of the world. The shocking and strange lack of gravity with which the novel beings will progressively dovetail into a whole fantastic world, which will put into question, not only the rationalism on which our modern world is based, but also the mere relevance and existence of it. By means of the use of magic realism, the novel manages, in the first place, to send some warning about the potential danger of religious fanaticism taking control of the world and, secondly, to show that fiction can be a very useful tool/vehicle to bring to the surface the contradictions of the real world.ResumenEl objetivo principal de este Trabajo de Fin de Grado será analizar la novela Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, de Salman Rushdie, como un buen ejemplo del movimiento literario conocido como realismo mágico, ya que ilustra lo que la mayoría de críticos consideran como la característica principal de este tipo de textos, a saber: la introducción gradual del elemento mágico en una narración aparentemente realista hasta dar lugar al solapamiento/ superposición total de realidad y fantasía. Todo ello, en este caso, en aras a representar el binarismo racionalismo/religión, y más en concreto a cuestionar el abandono del primero con el objetivo de imponer el fanatismo religioso, tan en auge hoy en día en ciertas partes del mundo. La inicial y chocante falta de gravedad con la que la novela comienza dará paulatinamente lugar a todo un mundo fantástico, que no sólo pone en tela de juicio el racionalismo sobre el que supuestamente se basa el mundo moderno, sino también la propia relevancia y existencia de este. A través del uso del realismo mágico la novela en cuestión consigue, no solo advertir acerca del peligro que supondría que el fanatismo religioso acabara controlando el mundo, sino también demostrar que la ficción puede ser un instrumento muy útil para poner de relieve las contradicciones del mundo real.<br /

PENGEMBANGAN SISTEM INFORMASI AKADEMIK DI SMK 1 PUNDONG UNTUK MENINGKATKAN MUTU LAYANAN SEKOLAH

ABSTRAK PENGEMBANGAN SISTEM INFORMASI AKADEMIK DI SMK 1 PUNDONG UNTUK MENINGKATKAN MUTU LAYANAN SEKOLAH Oleh: Juri Benedi 09501244026 Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui (1) kebutuhan sistem informasi (2) pengembangan sistem informasi akademik (3) unjuk kerja Sistem Informasi Akademik dan (4) penerapan Sistem Informasi Akademik diSMK 1 Pundong untuk membantu kinerja guru dan karyawan dalam peningkatan mutu layanan. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode penelitian pengembangan (research and development). Teknik pengumpulan data pada penelitian ini menggunakan angket dan wawancara. Teknik analisis data dilakukan dengan menggunakan teknik analisis deskriptif kuantitatif. Penelitian ini dilakukan di SMK Negeri 1 Pundong dengan melibatkan guru dan karyawan sebagai subyek penelitian. Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa: (1) Sekolah membutuhkan sebuah sistem informasi yang mampu menampung semua data sekolah. (2) Sistem Informasi yang di kembangkan berupa Sistem Informasi Akademik. Sistem tersebut memiliki delapan menu utama yaitu data guru, data siswa, data karyawan, inventaris sekolah, persuratan, jadwal pelajaran, jadwal, guru dan dawal ruang. Pengembangan sistem informasi tersebut melalui empat tahapan yaitu analisis kebutuhan, dessain, pengkodean dan pengujian. (3) Pengujian unjuk kerja Sistem Informasi Akademik yang telah dikembangkan mendapatkan persentase penilaian sebesar 86,81%. Nilai tersebut menunjukkan bahwa sistem informasi yang telah dikembangkan sangat baik dan layak digunakan. (4) Pengembangan Sistem Informasi Akademik di SMK Negeri 1 Pundong sangat disetujui karena berpengaruh terhadap mutu layanan sekolah. Hal ini terbukti dengan didapatkannya persentase sebesar 86,33% pada pengujian fungsionalitas sistem. Sehingga dapat disimpulkan bahwa Sistem Informasi Akademik di SMK Negeri 1 Pundong yang telah dikembangkan layak digunakan. Kata kunci: pengembangan, sistem informasi akademik, unjuk kerja, fungsionalita

Posthumanism and Environmental Poetics in American Literature

The global climate crisis is perhaps the most pressing issue that is bringing increasing attention (of governments, activists, and intellectuals) to the environment and the relations of the human with the organic and inorganic nonhuman world in the Anthropocene. On the other hand, the recent academic preoccupation for the ways in which subjectivity, its manifestations – agency, creativity, intentionality, etc. – and its terms of engagement with language have been called into question by what can be synthetically called philosophical posthumanism, has inaugurated a productive season of critical engagement with the question of the relation between art and literature and the environment. Beside igniting a steady process of revision of the epistemic premises on which human claims about the environment are made, this critical engagement has also expanded the academic conversation about the impact of environmental concerns on literary aesthetics and, vice versa, about the influence of art and literature on conventional perceptions and definitions of the environment. As a result, a growing body of literary, artistic, and philosophical works, often characterized by a marked interdisciplinary orientation, has brough into the horizon of academic criticism an acute awareness of the interconnections between humans and their environments. It is on the terrain of this interconnection and of the deep revision it entails of our ways of thinking the role of the literary work in relation to, on the one hand, the philosophical and theoretical, and, on the other, the ecological, that we present papers addressing American literature and art’s creative interventions on how we understand the world around us, our place in it, and the place of the literary in it