Object Lessons: Joyce and Things

My research project, Object Lessons: Joyce and Things, looks at the variety of everyday objects portrayed in James Joyce’s works to show how their perception inflects the cognitive and emotional states of both his fictional characters and his readers. At the intersection of philosophical posthumanism, ecology, and literary studies, my thesis analyzes Joyce’s works through the lens of such contemporary theories as “Thing Theory”, “situated cognition”, “waste studies”, and “Actor-Network Theory” in order to consider their ability to expose the entanglement between the human subject and non-living entities. Deploying a panoply of approaches to the mundane material things of daily life—which are parsed under such categories as symbols, commodities, stuff, waste, and the substance of art—Joyce’s texts investigate and redefine collaborations and dissonances between human and nonhuman agents. Such enquiry is rendered compelling by Joyce’s treatment of language, the radical departures of his styles reshaping our conception of what it means to enter into contact with everyday objects. My work develops along two interlinked axes. On the one hand, it analyzes selected passages from Joyce’s texts to explore how things as common as a clock, a collection of diary entries, a rusty boot, and a handkerchief are represented and instigate interaction with human characters. On the other hand, it considers how language itself acquires density, becoming an object amongst objects with a particular texture and qualities liable to provide new ways of engaging with the unobtrusive, often unnoticed stuff of the world. Taking a chronological approach to Joyce’s oeuvre, the project follows the evolution of the key concept of “epiphany” in Joyce’s body of work. Initially focusing on the achievement of a single moment of revelation, and later highlighting the multiple relations and correspondences between subjects and objects, the epiphany appears as a mediating link able to chronicle sympathies and hostilities between a subject and its material environment

Construction and disruption : an analysis of the thematic contribution of extraordinary children and animals in the works by Paola Masino and Anna Maria Ortese

This thesis sets out to examine the thematic function of extraordinary children and animals (characters who possess a metamorphic nature, magical traits or supernatural powers) in the works of two Italian women writers of the twentieth century, Paola Masino and Anna Maria Ortese. Drawing on a range of theoretical and critical works (on the literary representation of childhood and the animal world, on women writers, on the fantastic), I argue that these characters, thanks to their Otherness, have both a constructive as well as disruptive function. On the one hand, they enable the authors to construct and develop themes, arguments, statements of poetics and references to other works and, on the other hand, they allow them to 'disrupt', challenge and unmask a society trapped in its perbenismo and dehumanising rules and ideals. Carrying out a literary reading in a historical context, the thesis explores thematic areas, such as the victimisation of weaker beings, the portrayal of a reality not perceivable by the senses, the conflicting relationship between mankind and nature and the hidden truths of modern society. The thesis will also highlight how these characters contribute to the building of a thick web of intertextual references, unconscious or voluntary echoes to other literary and artistic works, as well as of the folkloric tradition. Despite a rediscovery of Masino's writing, previous critical studies have not focused on the representation of childhood or the animal world. The more consistent critical apparatus on Ortese's oeuvre has also not looked at the contribution of extraordinary children and animals as a category, examining them individually and in isolation. This thesis is the first study to look at the two authors' extraordinary children and animals as an instrumental cohort of characters to build on themes, convey criticism and create a dialogical dimension with other works

Design of a time-compensated EUV and soft X-ray monochromator with multilayer mirrors for high-order harmonics

A time-compensated monochromator for ultrashort high-order harmonics in the EUV and soft X-ray regions is presented. The system consists of two grazing-incidence toroidal mirrors used, respectively, as collimating and refocusing elements and of two multilayer normal-incidence plane mirrors illuminated in parallel light that rotate along a vertical axis to select the operative wavelength, but remain parallel to guarantee the constant direction of the exit beam. This is performed by simultaneously rotating and translating one of the two mirrors along an axis parallel to the exit direction. The pulse time duration is not altered up to few femtoseconds

A Theory of Gamification Principles Through Goal-Setting Theory

Goal-setting theory has been used for decades to explain how to motivate people to perform better in work-related tasks, but more recently gamification has also gained attention as an alternative method to increase engagement and performance in many contexts. However, despite goals and feedback being common elements of gameful implementations, there is a lack of literature explaining how gamification works through the lens of goal-setting theory or suggesting how goal-setting concepts and recommendations can be employed to improve gameful systems. Therefore, we present a literature review and a conceptual framework that establishes a relationship between goal-setting and gamification concepts. Next, we describe how this framework can help explain gamification principles and suggest potential improvements to current gameful design methods. Finally, we propose directions for future empirical research aimed to apply this conceptual framework in practice

Advanced instrumentation for spectral and spatial investigations of high-order laser harmonics

We report on the design and characterization of a grazing-incidence flat-field spectrograph that allows simultaneously the measurement of spectrum, beam divergence, and absolute flux of EUV and soft X-ray radiation for a beam of high-order laser harmonics generated by the interaction between an ultrashort femtosecond laser pulse and a gas jet. The instrument seems a very powerful tool for the understanding of the generation process

CHI PLAYGUE: A Mobile Conference Networking Game

© Lennart Nacke, 2016. This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ISS '16 Proceedings of the 2016 ACM on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces, https://doi.org/10.1145/2992154.2996870Modern professional networking relies on social media. To take advantage of this fact, we present CHI PLAYGUE, a conference game designed to facilitate interaction among strangers and encourage social networking to create a community. The game integrates digital technology (mobile devices and large displays) within the space of the conference venue, combined with a mixed-reality narrative and people's social interactions to facilitate the emergence of social dynamics. By providing a platform for large-scale, playful interaction, the game creates an experience that fosters the development of mutually beneficial, personal, and professional relationships among players.Peer-reviewe

A non-dispersive approach for a Raman gas sensor

Although Raman spectroscopy is widely used on solids and liquids, its application on gaseous samples is far less commonplace due to technical issues related to dealing with very weak signals over a strong background. A demonstration of a possible approach for a simple, noninvasive Raman-based gas detector is presented and evaluated. This setup is meant to perform nitrogen and oxygen gas concentration measurements through Raman scattering working with optical filters instead of the traditional spectrograph and a lighting-grade 532 nm diode-pumped solid state laser as the pumping source. An industrial-grade CMOS camera is used as the detector, taking full advantage of the low noise and spatial resolution of this device. The system has been tested for both oxygen and nitrogen in a gas flow cell. Nitrogen measurement in a glass vial is reported in order to demonstrate and show some of the advantages that could be obtained with the use of an imaging detector instead of a single pixel one. The reported measurements show that even without using a dispersion spectrometer, this approach enables an indicative, noninvasive gas detection through glass vials with significant rejection of the elastic scattering contribution

Gamification Research: a 50-years Retrospective from PBLs Towards Conscious Evolution

Abstract This paper presents a critical design fiction in the format of an envisioned plausible future scenario for gamification research and practice in the next years. We envision a possible path that gamification research can take that would lead it to effectively being able to help develop human potential, increase wellbeing, and contribute to conscious evolution in the future. Our goal is to promote reflection and discussion on the topic

James Joyce and the Epiphanic Inscription: Towards an Art of Gesture as Rhythm

In Agency and Embodiment, Carrie Noland describes gesture as “a type of inscription, a parsing of the body into signifying and operational units”, considering it as a means to read and decode the human body. Through an analysis of James Joyce’s collection of Epiphanies, my paper will examine how gesture, as a mode of expression of the body, can be transcribed on the written page. Written and collected to record a “spiritual manifestation” shining through “in the vulgarity of speech or gesture, or in a memorable phase of the mind itself”, Joyce’s Epiphanies can be considered as the first step in his sustained attempt to develop an art of gesture-as-rhythm. These short pieces appear as the site in which the author seeks, through the medium of writing, to negotiate and redefine the boundaries of the physical human body. Moving towards a mapping of body and mind through the concept of rhythm, and pointing to a collaboration and mutual influence between interiority and exteriority, the Epiphanies open up a space for the reformulation of the relationship between the human body and its environment. Unpacking the ideas that sit at the heart of the concept of epiphany, the paper will shed light on how this particular mode of writing produces a rhythmic art of gesture, fixing and simultaneously liberating human and nonhuman bodies on the written pag