Replacing the "Urban Sublime": The City in Contemporary American Fiction

La ville a indéniablement perdu l’attrait mythologique qu’elle avait pour les écrivains modernistes. Pourtant, elle n’a pas totalement disparu de la fiction américaine récente. Elle pourrait être considérée, de manière concrète, comme l’environnement où s’inscrit l’expérience d’un quartier spécifique ou comme un lieu de transaction transculturelle (en particulier dans les romans récents consacrés aux communautés ethniques) mais aussi, de manière abstraite, comme le signe visible de forces invisibles qui simultanément transcendent et absorbent la ville dans des romans où semble se perpétuer la tradition moderniste du sublime urbain. Cet article s’intéresse à plusieurs romans contemporains où la ville est à la fois représentée comme localement concrète et globalement abstraite—comme un espace d’expérience sensuelle mais aussi comme un référent sémiotique où se rencontrent des forces nouvelles et désincarnées. De même que Dos Passes explorait les "merveilles" du sublime urbain dans Manhattan Transfer, ces romans—Lookout Cartridge de Joseph McElroy et Cosmopolis de Don DeLillo—entretiennent et transforment à la fois la tradition moderniste en révélant les possibilités et les limites d’une nouvelle réalité virtuelle

Jesús Benito, Ana Ma Manzanas, and Begoña Simal: Uncertain Mirrors: Magical Realisms in US Ethnic Literatures.

In their united assault on the concept and practice of realism in the 1970s and after, postmodern writers and poststructuralist critics made fabulation and/or metafiction the narrative tools which, via the deconstruction of their own narrative order, might subvert the institutional order of literature as well as of society since both could be metaphorically collapsed into a single system of repression: the order of mimesis. To that attack we owe a number of great postmodern novels (like Thoma..

Reducing the Probability of False Positive Research Findings by Pre-Publication Validation - Experience with a Large Multiple Sclerosis Database

*Objective*
We have assessed the utility of a pre-publication validation policy in reducing the probability of publishing false positive research findings. 
*Study design and setting*
The large database of the Sylvia Lawry Centre for Multiple Sclerosis Research was split in two parts: one for hypothesis generation and a validation part for confirmation of selected results. We present case studies from 5 finalized projects that have used the validation policy and results from a simulation study.
*Results*
In one project, the "relapse and disability" project as described in section II (example 3), findings could not be confirmed in the validation part of the database. The simulation study showed that the percentage of false positive findings can exceed 20% depending on variable selection. 
*Conclusion*
We conclude that the validation policy has prevented the publication of at least one research finding that could not be validated in an independent data set (and probably would have been a "true" false-positive finding) over the past three years, and has led to improved data analysis, statistical programming, and selection of hypotheses. The advantages outweigh the lost statistical power inherent in the process

Reducing the probability of false positive research findings by pre-publication validation – Experience with a large multiple sclerosis database

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Published false positive research findings are a major problem in the process of scientific discovery. There is a high rate of lack of replication of results in clinical research in general, multiple sclerosis research being no exception. Our aim was to develop and implement a policy that reduces the probability of publishing false positive research findings.</p> <p>We have assessed the utility to work with a pre-publication validation policy after several years of research in the context of a large multiple sclerosis database.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The large database of the Sylvia Lawry Centre for Multiple Sclerosis Research was split in two parts: one for hypothesis generation and a validation part for confirmation of selected results. We present case studies from 5 finalized projects that have used the validation policy and results from a simulation study.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In one project, the "relapse and disability" project as described in section II (example 3), findings could not be confirmed in the validation part of the database. The simulation study showed that the percentage of false positive findings can exceed 20% depending on variable selection.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We conclude that the validation policy has prevented the publication of at least one research finding that could not be validated in an independent data set (and probably would have been a "true" false-positive finding) over the past three years, and has led to improved data analysis, statistical programming, and selection of hypotheses. The advantages outweigh the lost statistical power inherent in the process.</p

Review of Susanne Rohr, Von Grauen und Glamour: Repräsentationen des Holocaust in den USA und Deutschland

Much has already been written on the Holocaust and its history, but the question of how we can cope with it, how we can live with what we know about it, or how we can imagine what has been called “unimaginable” has been haunting several generations of those who collectively inherited either a history of pain and suffering or a history of collective crime. In view of such moral complexities, Susanne Rohr’s study of representations of the Holocaust in the United States and Germany is a remarkable scholarly achievement. It deals with seventy years of artistic and literary documents—memoirs, autobiographies, fictions, films, graphic novels—written by subsequent generations of artists (survivors, the children and grandchildren of survivors, or the children and grandchildren of the perpetrators)—i.e., texts in at least two languages and in the changing historical contexts of at least two cultures and societies. (In addition to American and German documents Rohr occasionally includes Israeli sources.) She is also aware of the changing theoretical frame surrounding these documents—the problems inherent in the concept of a “generation,” of “collective memory,” of “trauma” and the possibility of its generational transmission; of the postmodern or poststructuralist rejection of even the possibility of representation. The questions raised by this book and its author concern the status of the Holocaust in the memory of those who did not experience it, for whom, therefore, it will always be a mediated event—mediated through historiography, literature, and, increasingly, through genres of popular culture (i.e., by films, TV-shows, comic books and graphic novels)

Howells’ Idea of the Reading Public

Howells' realism is closely connected with the idea of a democratic and enlightened reading public, a reading public that still, however, remains to be created. Caught in the contradictions of 18th-century universalist assumptions, Howells accepted the market as an instrument of enlightenment and at the same time loathed it for keeping readers in « dumb and passive need ». Starting with an analysis of Howells' speech at the celebration of his 75th birthday, this article traces the key terms of « forum » and market-place' in some of his critical writings. It also connects their semantic instability to Howells' lingering crises of identity and vocation.La conception du public littéraire chez Howells. Le réalisme de Howells est intimement lié à l'idée d'une communauté de lecteurs démocratiques et avertis, public qui, en fait, reste à former. Pris dans les contradictions des hypothèses universalistes du 18e siècle, Howells s'accommoda de l'idée que le marché était un instrument pour éclairer le public mais, en même temps, il le détesta parce qu'il tenait les lecteurs dans un état de passivité et de mutisme. Cet article, qui commence par une analyse du discours de Howells pour la célébration de son 75e anniversaire, trace l'évolution des termes clefs « forum » et « market-place » dans plusieurs de ses commentaires critiques. L'auteur lie leur instabilité sémantique aux crises prolongées d'identité et de vocation chez Howells.Ickstadt Heinz. Howells’ Idea of the Reading Public. In: Revue Française d'Etudes Américaines, N°17, mai 1983. Écrivains américains 1870-1914. pp. 257-264

The Creation of Normalcy

Étudiant les variations d'une esthétique démocratique, Heinz Ickstadt montre comment la question de la construction de la normalité, tissant le descriptif et le prescriptif, hante la littérature américaine et éclaire ses ambiguïtés. Évoquant d'abord le projet réaliste de William Dean Howells et sa pensée du Commun, ancrée à la fois dans V expérience et dans la norme, il explore ensuite une tendance de la fiction contemporaine à valoriser l'anormal et le marginal, puis il analyse les modalités de reconstruction d'une normalité alternative dans certains romans ethniques, avant de commenter les procédés de subversion des limites ou de problématisation du normal et de l'anormal à l'œuvre chez Robert Coover et Don DeLillo.Ickstadt Heinz. The Creation of Normalcy. In: Revue Française d'Etudes Américaines, N°85, juin 2000. L'invention de l'ordinaire. pp. 6-22