The Grand Jury: A Critical Evaluation

It seems in retrospect that our grand jury was a microcosm of grand juries generally in that many of the problems noted in the literature were manifest throughout our term. This supports the proposition that the weaknesses and defects of grand juries are not reflective of lack of zeal or devotion to duty on the part of individual members of the juries, but rather are indicative of systemic and institutional dysfunctionalities that are inherent in the grand jury system as it is presently constituted and organized. Thus, the critical comments that appear herein ought not to be taken as an attack upon the competence or integrity of a particular prosecutor, judge or grand jury, but rather as directed at reformation of the current institutional arrangement

Incidencia de los préstamos lingüísticos en el quechua escrito de Tarabuco

Especialistas y aficionados piensan que el quechua está siendo mezclado con el español, la vitalidad de la lengua disminuye, y la sociedad dominante discrimina a los hablantes. El quechua de Tarabuco es una variedad más conservada y sin la influencia del aimara. Pero no hay descripciones lingüísticas ni estadísticas sobre la mezcla. Tabulamos el caudal léxico, los préstamos, la morfosintaxis en un escrito de 15104 palabras. Encontramos 1004 palabras únicas, repeticiones, préstamos del castellano (17.31%), dando 46.02% castellano y 53.98% quechua en el caudal léxico. En contraste, la morfología proporciona una gran vitalidad a la expresión. El colonialismo lingüístico ha incidido en el caudal léxico. Pero, los préstamos han sido quechuizados, y los recursos de la morfología y las oraciones compensan el impacto del colonialismo lingüístico. El problema no está en la estructura lingüística, sino en la falta de educación quechua, la migración y ruptura de la transmisión intergeneracional

Norwegian Innvandrerlitteratur and the Spell of Transnationalism

This paper focuses on the current evolution of Norwegian literature, namely on the branch of Norwegian literary activity that falls within the theoretical frame of ‘immigrationist literature’ (innvandrerlitteratur). The paper is to be seen as a pledge against the implementation of cultural studies in the field of literary theory when dealing with such works that, through their number, are unrepresentative for a wider literary context. The argumentation relies on the fact that the phenomenon of innvandrerlittertur cannot be fully addressed from a cultural studies perspective, which often tends to produce reductionist claims and thus lead to ready-made conclusions that fail to reveal the inner workings of the literary phenomenon it aims to present. Moreover, such an approach tends to divert the interpreter’s attention from the actual literary works and funnel all interest in the direction of politics and extra-literary contexts

Transnational Aspects of German-Turkish Literature

This paper aims to shed light on the different aspects of transnationalism and transnational literature in regard to the German cultural space and the so-called (Im)Migrantenliteratur (immigrant literature and migrant literature, respectively). By this approach, the historical context of post-war Germany will prove itself to be of great relevance, especially in studying the sociological consequences brought about by the import of Turkish work force in Germany, the concept of difference and its modes of realisation, and the prevalence of cultural specific characteristics in works belonging to Turkish-born German authors (f.e. Feridun Zaimoğlu). Last, but not least, our study will include a series of considerations regarding translation and the problems and debates resulting from the effort of transferring the symbolic signs of one culture into another

Producing social mobility. Class and Travel in the Romanian Novel 1901-1932

The present article addresses the Romanian novelistic production between 1901 and 1932 in the attempt of identifying a series of patterns regarding the protagonists’ social mobility. Starting with the most mentioned destinations throughout the novels, I analyse how and why the different social classes travel and try to determine the landmarks between which they dispute their physical presence, on the one hand, and their aspirations, on the other. On this basis, the second part of the article conducts a quantitative analysis of the major means of transport in the period – the train, the tramway, the coach/carriage, the automobile, the aeroplane, the ship, and the waggon – and attempts to pinpoint what they convey about the social mobility of the characters that use them.</jats:p

Who’s afraid of Mihai Iovănel? Regimes of Relevance and New Literary Historiography

The present article addresses Mihai Iovănel’s recently published History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020 while pursuing a series of similarities with other contributions to postcommunist national literatures in the Central and Eastern European cultural space, on the one hand, and with previous ways of understanding the concept of literary history, on the other. The article argues that Iovănel’s History is one of the first to assess the importance of the social in the production, study, and national, as well as transnational dissemination of Romanian literature, an emphasis without which the study of literary phenomena risks falling into the blindness of aesthetic autonomy, whose shortcomings are well documented in the book. Lastly, I will argue that Iovănel unwillingly describes several of the most notable shifts in the “regimes of relevance” (Galin Tihanov) that literature has undergone from the communist period to contemporary times.</jats:p