The corpse, the machine, the garden: immagini di guerra e ideologia pastorale in The Orchard Keeper

Cormac McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper is generally considered to be a requiem for the Southern pastoral idyll. Critics have already noticed how the author makes use of the classic "machine in the garden" motif to exemplify the destructive effects of historical and technological progress on the mythical dimension of the pastoral world. This detrimental intrusion is embodied in the novel by an enigmatic "government tank" and by the hidden corpse of a military veteran turned highwayman. Through the interpretation of these symbols as figurations of both WWI and WWII, this essay posits the centrality of war itself as the main threat to the pastoral order of life

Post-Southern Geographies: Space and Literature in the Contemporary American South

From a geocritical standpoint, American gothic literature historically relies on the symbolical space of the wilderness: a labyrinthine parapsychological realm of darkness and irrationality, and a rhetorical inversion of pastoral motives. The traditional sense of place of the American South stems from society’s projected cultural values on the environment and from a strict separation of Garden and Wasteland. This separation was no longer held after agricultural capitalism swept the region in the 1920s and 1930s, changing the landscape forever and bringing about semiotic chaos in what was once an orderly landscape of Jeffersonian descent. With the advent of the post-southern era, as described by Martyn Bone, literature struggled to redefine pastoral and gothic chronotopes in a quest for new geographical grounds in which the fragmented collective identity of the region could be rooted. Through the analysis of contemporary southern works, this essay aims at re-defining pastoral and gothic spaces in post-southern America

Southern Wastelands: Alas, Babylon, The Road, and the A-Bomb in the Garden

The U.S. South has often been depicted as the closest incarnation of an American Eden. From John Smith’s works, through Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, to W.J. Cash’s The Mind of the South, the southern states elicited comparison with a luxuriant natural paradise and an ecological (and, after Jefferson’s treatise, democratic) utopia. Southern Gothic destroyed the South’s pastoral pretensions on a socio-anthropological level, but not until recently this region was used as an overtly post-apocalyptic locale that replaced the image of the garden with that of a barren deathscape. Even if works such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Omar El-Akkad’s American War, and Frank Owen’s South don’t openly address nuclear scenarios, they evoke an imagery that, through the death of the biosphere, climatic disaster and the destruction of the status quo, re-inscribes and updates Cold War terrors into ecologically, existentially and politically conscious narratives that, inspired by atomic aftermaths, investigate the collapse of the U.S. South’s Edenic imagination, and of American society at large. Situated at the intersection between post-apocalyptic culture, social criticism, and environmental issues, this essay will analyze contemporary literary depictions of the U.S. South as a dystopian wasteland

Safety at LCs in Italy: evidence from the Safer-LC Project

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The impact of land use characteristics for sustainable mobility: the case study of Rome

Sustainable mobility requires actions to reduce the need for travel, to promote modal shift, to reduce trip lengths and to increase efficiency of transport system. Public transport could play an important role to solve part of the needs previously reported. Starting from these remarks, the present paper analyse the role, the importance and the impact of land use characteristics to develop services able to compete with automobile use. This analysis is carried out by studying the real world case of the city of Rome in Italy. The results of the test carried out highlight the importance of density of residences and activities, the need for a good quality access system to the transit services stops and the importance of the configuration of the transit network, identifying the best way to connect the different districts of the urban area. However, single actions are not sufficient to achieve a sustainable transport system: these actions can be successful only if they are planned in a complex unique system that helps the synergic development of the effects of the single actions proposed

Manifest Destiny: the American West as a Map of the Unconscious

The aim of this essay is to analyze the role of space and the different layers of significance associated to it in the Image Comics series Manifest Destiny. The American frontier epic still stand as one of the vastest and most important mythological sources of the US. The frontier space is not of course limited to its geographical dimension – at least from 1893 onwards, when the “closure” of the frontier and the publication of the Turner Thesis made it a polysemic “place” in which psychological, political and social elements met and conflicted with one another. Since the definition of this space was always dependent upon ideological stances, its depiction has always oscillated between the poles of Utopia and Dystopia, blending realism, imagination and ideology. Manifest Destiny is not an exception – its spatial dimension conjugates history and mythology, while also showing the strong influence of popular culture and pulp culture’s horror and weird literature, mainly via its most famous author: H. P. Lovecraft. Through the use of some classical outlooks on the American frontier like Frederick Jackson Turner and Richard Slotkin’s theses, together with some more general contributions on the cultural and narrative meaning of space like Edward Soja’s Thirdspace, Yi-Fu Tuan’s human geography and Ruth D. Weston’s analysis of the gothic space, the essay goes through the “mindscape” projected by Manifest Destiny’s geography and addresses its symbolic and allegorical meaning. As a result, the series’ unconventional take on American mythology and its iconoclastic political agenda are thoroughly deconstructed and examined

Modelo para análise do grau de assimetria de percepção (GAP) da marca corporativa: a contribuição do design no processo de branding

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Design, Florianópolis, 2016.As expressivas mudanças apresentadas no decorrer da história da humanidade, estabelecem caminhos trilhados por necessidades que a distancia de uma simples subexistência e caracteriza um ambiente cuja busca por melhoria de seu status quo oportuniza a concepção de uma dicotômica realidade: a existência de elementos tangíveis e requeridos às mais rotineiras atividades e a caracterização de elementos intangíveis e necessários ao fortalecimento dos relacionamentos entre indivíduos e organizações. A marca corporativa, advento mercadológico e necessário a atual conjuntura econômica se estabelece como relevante fator de diferenciação das organizações, pois evidencia sua distinção no mercado, determinando desta maneira, um complexo contexto para as ações implementadas para gerenciar este importante ativo. A consideração da marca como elemento intangível e investido de significado cuja existência se constitui em articular diferentes diálogos, traz consigo a ciência de distintas realidades e evidencia um processo delineado pela participação de diferentes atores e que constituem o ambiente interno e externo à organização, promovendo desta maneira, uma estreita relação entre as dimensões identidade e imagem. O objetivo deste estudo consiste na concepção de um modelo para análise da relação da identidade e da imagem de uma marca, a partir da participação de seus stakeholders e opinion makers, constituindo assim, um processo colaborativo. O pressuposto para sua realização, parte da necessidade de alinhamento entre as duas principais dimensões da marca corporativa: sua identidade e imagem, iniciando-se do cerne de uma marca (DNA) ao contexto em que está inserida (Posicionamento); dos itens que a identificam (Elementos) à constituição de um senso de grupo (Cultura), estabelecendo desta maneira, a perspectiva para a Identidade da Marca. Sob a ótica da Imagem, entende-se que a marca necessita estar Presente no contexto de seus públicos e que a partir das diversas interações (Pontos de Contato) constitui um conjunto de imagens relacionadas (Associações), fortalecendo desta maneira, às Experiências vividas por seus stakeholders. Este estudo caracteriza-se como qualitativo e exploratório, pois possibilita o aprofundamento dos dados advindos dos participantes do estudo, permitindo assim, a compreensão de uma situação em específica, por intermédio do Grau de Assimetria de Percepção da Marca Corporativa. A ótica para o trade hoteleiro de Baneário Camboriú / SC, foco deste estudo, proporcionou verificar a percepção de 80 stakeholders acerca de 8 estabelecimentos pela perspectiva do modelo GAP. Constatou-se ao final deste estudo a consciência das dimensões em pauta, mas distante do entendido como coerente ao se observar o estado da arte. Abstract : The significant changes introduced in the course of human history, establish paths taken by requirements that the distance of a simple subexistência and features an environment where the search for improvement of the status quo provides an opportunity to design a dichotomous reality: the existence of tangible and required elements the most routine activities and characterization of intangibles and necessary to strengthen the relationships between individuals and organizations. The corporate brand, market and advent necessary the current economic climate is established as a relevant factor differentiating organizations for demonstrating its distinction in the market, determining this way, a complex context for the actions taken to manage this important asset. Consideration of the brand as an intangible element and invested with meaning whose existence is to articulate different dialogues, brings the science of different realities and shows a process outlined by the participation of different actors and constitute the internal and external environment to the organization promoting this way, a close relationship between the dimensions of identity and image. The aim of this study is to design a model for analysis of the identity and image of a brand, from the participation of stakeholders and opinion makers, constituting thus a collaborative process. The assumption for its realization, of the need for alignment between the two main dimensions of corporate brand: its identity and image, starting from the core of a brand (DNA) to the context in which it operates (Positioning); items that identify (elements) to the constitution of a group of sense (Culture), establishing this way, the outlook for the Brand Identity. From the perspective of the image, it is understood that the brand needs to be present in the context of their public and from the various interactions (Contact Points) is a set of related images (Associations), strengthening this way, the lived experiences by its stakeholders. This study is characterized as qualitative and exploratory, it allows the deepening of the data arising from the study participants, thus, understanding a situation in particular, through the degree of asymmetry of perception of Corporate Brand. The optics for the hotel trade Baneário Camboriú / SC, the focus of this study, provided to verify the perception of 80 stakeholders about 8 establishments by the GAP model perspective. It was found in this study by the end of consciousness tariff in dimensions, but far from understood as coherent to observe the state of the art

Understanding the Walkability Propensity

Walkability analysis has grown in popularity in recent years: several studies have analysed the public health, economic, environmental, transportation and other benefits of promoting walkability. Different authors in the literature focus on the analysis of walking indicators related to the structure of the road network to explain the walkability of an area. However, extra efforts have to be made to study many other conditions that affect the propensity to walk: not just the shape of the network and the urban topology, but also the security and the attractiveness of the landscape, or specific characteristics of the infrastructure such as the size of the sidewalks, the automobile accommodation values (automobile and motorcycle parking) and the pedestrian route difficulty (slope and over length of the paths, dead-end streets). This paper aims to understand the walkability propensity, investigating explanatory variables related to the concept of the pedestrian path quality at the microscopic level. Several data have been collected in different zones of the Rome City (Italy), utterly dissimilar from the pedestrian point of view. These data have been compared with the real path for pedestrian choices and with other standard walkability measures from literature