Speaking and Mourning: Working Through Identity and Language in Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker

In my essay entitled “Speaking and Mourning: Working Through Identity and Language in Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker,” I argue that the novel’s protagonist Henry Park finds himself at a critical juncture in his life at the novel’s beginning. I analyze the protagonist’s relationship to language acquisition and identity, which have been developed by Lee to be associated as traumas. Furthermore, these topics are complicated by the death of his son, Mitt. This loss is a trauma of the heart and of the self for the main character who sees a successful navigation of language and immigration lost by his son’s accidental passing. Lelia and Dr. Luzan are characters that help to promote Henry’s change and working through of the traumas he has encountered. By the novel’s conclusion, Henry has begun to work through his psychological insecurities with language and identity and begins to mourn his son’s death. I find that Lee leaves the reader with a hopeful outlook for the protagonist’s future. This essay theoretically frames Asian American identity and the concept of “working through.

Hadwiger Integration of Random Fields

Hadwiger integrals employ the intrinsic volumes as measures for integration of real-valued functions. We provide a formula for the expected values of Hadwiger integrals of Gaussian-related random fields. The expected Hadwiger integrals of random fields are both theoretically interesting and potentially useful in applications such as sensor networks, image processing, and cell dynamics. Furthermore, combining the expected integrals with a functional version of Hadwiger's theorem, we obtain expected values of more general valuations on Gaussian-related random fields

Book Review: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

I first stumbled across the research of Angela Duckworth after she was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 2013 for her work investigating the character traits that impact the achievement of long-term goals. So, when it was announced that she would be publishing a book in 2016, I immediately pre-ordered copy so that I could dig into her insights as soon as possible. When I received my copy of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance in the mail, I was excited to crack it open… and then the self-doubt settled in. “What if, after reading the brilliant ideas of a scholar whom I highly regard, I realize that I have no grit… What if I don’t have what it takes?” I was terrified. But, I am convinced that I am not alone. In our current educational culture, one that reinforces a transactional ideology that success is unequivocally defined by test scores and GPA, what is one to do if they literally do not “measure up” to the competition? Is that the end of the road? Is success forever out of reach

'5 Minutes With Matt': the Innovative use of Micro Video Blogging in Higher Education

Recent developments in online learning platforms and associated technologies have changed the dynamics of higher education by forcing practitioners to reconsider traditional assumptions of teaching and learning (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004). This has fundamentally changed the nature and parameters of pedagogy within higher education whilst also shifting the associated expectations of students (HEA, 2000). Today, face-to-face teaching alone is considered somewhat antiquated; instead an effective higher education practitioner is now someone who can draw upon a myriad of blended learning strategies (see HEFCE, 2009). Because of this, the author of this paper contends that it is a fundamental responsibility of higher education practitioners today to be responsive to such changes and to continually seek ways of innovatively ‘blending’ traditional face-to-face methods of teaching and learning with new technologies and online platforms. In this vein, this short paper provides an example of how micro-video-blogging has been used as a blended learning tool within a social science programme