The haunted text: Form and history in the American gothic

Traditionally, the gothic genre has been identified as a formula fiction worthy of little serious study. With its ghostly visitations and family curses, its predictable and never-ending plots, the gothic has been classified as an escapist genre with a defective form. My study contests this assessment, arguing instead that the gothic is intensely engaged with historical concerns and that its formal incoherence registers the difficulty of negotiating that history. Contrary to its traditional representation as primarily an expression of psychological states, this dissertation argues that the gothic is haunted by history. Instead of fleeing reality, the gothic registers social dislocations and cultural contradictions; obsessed with the anxieties of its culture, the gothic presents a distorted, not a disengaged version of reality. Focusing on the gothic\u27s cultural context as well as its narrative form, this study explores the relationship between linguistic disorder and social disease.^ Specifically, this dissertation focuses on the peculiar problem of the American gothic. It argues that in an American context, the gothic counters America\u27s myth of new world innocence by voicing the historical contradictions--slavery and the massacre of Native Americans, for example--that undermine America\u27s idealized identity. Moreover, it claims that the American gothic rejects the discourse that naturalizes this myth--the plain style. While examining specific representations of cultural contradiction, ranging from the social disorder of post-revolutionary America in Brown\u27s plague-ridden Arthur Mervyn and the problem of the encounter in John Neal\u27s Logan, to the gender trouble of Hawthorne\u27s The Blithedale Romance and Louisa May Alcott\u27s gothic tales, and the role of slavery in the African American gothic, this study discusses the stylistic strategies through which these historical horrors are inscribed in the gothic. Finally, by recovering those disturbing texts which have remained in the shadows of the American canon and by discussing the gothic\u27s alternative account of American literature, this dissertation challenges traditional notions of America\u27s literary history.

The haunted text: Form and history in the American gothic

Traditionally, the gothic genre has been identified as a formula fiction worthy of little serious study. With its ghostly visitations and family curses, its predictable and never-ending plots, the gothic has been classified as an escapist genre with a defective form. My study contests this assessment, arguing instead that the gothic is intensely engaged with historical concerns and that its formal incoherence registers the difficulty of negotiating that history. Contrary to its traditional representation as primarily an expression of psychological states, this dissertation argues that the gothic is haunted by history. Instead of fleeing reality, the gothic registers social dislocations and cultural contradictions; obsessed with the anxieties of its culture, the gothic presents a distorted, not a disengaged version of reality. Focusing on the gothic\u27s cultural context as well as its narrative form, this study explores the relationship between linguistic disorder and social disease.^ Specifically, this dissertation focuses on the peculiar problem of the American gothic. It argues that in an American context, the gothic counters America\u27s myth of new world innocence by voicing the historical contradictions--slavery and the massacre of Native Americans, for example--that undermine America\u27s idealized identity. Moreover, it claims that the American gothic rejects the discourse that naturalizes this myth--the plain style. While examining specific representations of cultural contradiction, ranging from the social disorder of post-revolutionary America in Brown\u27s plague-ridden Arthur Mervyn and the problem of the encounter in John Neal\u27s Logan, to the gender trouble of Hawthorne\u27s The Blithedale Romance and Louisa May Alcott\u27s gothic tales, and the role of slavery in the African American gothic, this study discusses the stylistic strategies through which these historical horrors are inscribed in the gothic. Finally, by recovering those disturbing texts which have remained in the shadows of the American canon and by discussing the gothic\u27s alternative account of American literature, this dissertation challenges traditional notions of America\u27s literary history.

Young Children Are Wishful Thinkers: The Development of Wishful Thinking in 3‐ to 10‐Year‐Old Children

Previously, research on wishful thinking has found that desires bias older children's and adults' predictions during probabilistic reasoning tasks. In this article, we explore wishful thinking in children aged 3- to 10-years-old. Do young children learn to be wishful thinkers? Or do they begin with a wishful thinking bias that is gradually overturned during development? Across five experiments, we compare low- and middle-income United States and Peruvian 3- to 10-year-old children (N = 682). Children were asked to make predictions during games of chance. Across experiments, preschool-aged children from all backgrounds consistently displayed a strong wishful thinking bias. However, the bias declined with age

Young Children Are Wishful Thinkers: The Development of Wishful Thinking in 3- to 10-Year-Old Children.

Previously, research on wishful thinking has found that desires bias older children's and adults' predictions during probabilistic reasoning tasks. In this article, we explore wishful thinking in children aged 3- to 10-years-old. Do young children learn to be wishful thinkers? Or do they begin with a wishful thinking bias that is gradually overturned during development? Across five experiments, we compare low- and middle-income United States and Peruvian 3- to 10-year-old children (N = 682). Children were asked to make predictions during games of chance. Across experiments, preschool-aged children from all backgrounds consistently displayed a strong wishful thinking bias. However, the bias declined with age

Exploring the post-genomic world: Differing explanatory and manipulatory functions of post-genomic sciences

Richard Lewontin proposed that the ability of a scientific field to create a narrative for public understanding garners it social relevance. This article applies Lewontin's conceptual framework of the functions of science (manipulatory and explanatory) to compare and explain the current differences in perceived societal relevance of genetics/genomics and proteomics. We provide three examples to illustrate the social relevance and strong cultural narrative of genetics/genomics for which no counterpart exists for proteomics. We argue that the major difference between genetics/genomics and proteomics is that genomics has a strong explanatory function, due to the strong cultural narrative of heredity. Based on qualitative interviews and observations of proteomics conferences, we suggest that the nature of proteins, lack of public understanding, and theoretical complexity exacerbates this difference for proteomics. Lewontin's framework suggests that social scientists may find that omics sciences affect social relations in different ways than past analyses of genetics