Crossroads of the Transatlantic

This conference builds on the concept of South Florida as the crossroads of a Transatlantic world and asks students to develop presentations that explore the humanities and this convergence of cultures, values and ideas not only in South Florida but throughout the Americas. The Humanities Student Conference strives to incorporate diverse perspectives and topics from a range of humanities fields including history, philosophy, literature, languages, cultural theory, and the arts. We also invite papers in legal studies, political science, national security, communication, conflict resolution studies, and international relations when approached with a humanities lens

Myth and history in Commonwealth literature

The author's interest in Commonwealth Literature is grounded in a concern about the place of English in post-colonial Malta. The writing of those who have been, like the Maltese, through the process of renegotiating their identity through and beyond Independence is of particular interest to our students. In addition, the fact that the author teaches English Colonial, Australian and African Literature within the Department of English has shown her how quick Maltese students are to grasp different aspects of identity construction in the work of these writers. An exploration of myth and history in Commonwealth Literature showed that the traditional European opposition between mythological thought and historic vision was untenable vis-a-vis the writer's practice in Africa, Australia and other Commonwealth countries. Writers such as Chinua Achebe, Ayi Kwei Armah, Wole Soyinka, Patrick White and Randolph Stow often show a mythopoeic sensibility as well as political consciousness. Such writers utilise myth but do not allow their novels to move outside a time referent. They project indigenous religions with their gods and rituals but remain grounded in their society's actual situation, which they are fully committed to ameliorate.peer-reviewe

History, Literature, and Authority in International Law

One consequence of international law’s recent historical turn has been to sharpen methodological contrasts between intellectual history and international law. Scholars including Antony Anghie, Anne Orford, Rose Parfitt, and Martti Koskenniemi have taken on board historians’ interest in contingency and context but pointedly relaxed historians’ traditional stricture against presentist instrumentalism. This essay argues that such a move disrupts a longstanding division of labor between history and international law and ultimately brings international legal method closer to literature and literary scholarship. The essay therefore details several more or less endemic ways in which literature and literary studies confront challenges of presentism, anachronism, meaning, and time. Using examples from writers as diverse as Anghie, Spinoza, Geoffrey Hill, Emily St. John Mandel, China Miéville, John Hollander, Pascale Casanova, Matthew Nicholson, John Selden, Shakespeare, and Dante, it proposes a “trilateral” discussion among historians, international lawyers, and literary scholars that takes seriously the multipolar disciplinary field in which each of these disciplines makes and sustains relations with each of the others.

The History and Literature of America's Oysters

Historically, America's use and enjoyment of the oyster extend far back into prehistoric times. The Native Americans often utilized oysters, more intensively in some areas than in others, and, at least in some areas of the Caribbean and Pacific coast, the invading Spanish sought oysters as eagerly as they did gold-but for the pearls. That was the pearl oyster, Pinctada sp., and signs of its local overexploitation were recorded early in the 16th century. During the 1800's, use of the eastern oyster grew phenomenally and, for a time, it outranked beef as a source of protein in some parts of the nation. Social events grew up around it, as it became an important aspect of culture and myth. Eventually, research on the oyster began to blossom, and scientific literature on the various species likewise bloomed-to the extent that when the late Paul Galtsoff wrote his classic treatise "The American oyster Crassostrea virginica Gmelin" in 1954, he reported compiling an extensive bibliography of over 6,000 subject and author cards on oysters and related subjects which he deposited in the library of the Woods Hole Laboratory of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (now NMFS). That large report, volume 64 (480 pages) of the agency's Fishery Bulletin, was a bargain at $2.75, and it has been a standard reference ever since. But the research and the attendant literature have grown greatly since Galtsoff's work was published, and now that has been thoroughly updated

Usage History of Scientific Literature: Nature Metrics and Metrics of Nature Publications

In this study, we analyze the dynamic usage history of Nature publications over time using Nature metrics data. We conduct analysis from two perspectives. On the one hand, we examine how long it takes before the articles' downloads reach 50%/80% of the total; on the other hand, we compare the percentage of total downloads in 7 days, 30 days, and 100 days after publication. In general, papers are downloaded most frequently within a short time period right after their publication. And we find that compared with Non-Open Access papers, readers' attention on Open Access publications are more enduring. Based on the usage data of a newly published paper, regression analysis could predict the future expected total usage counts.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures and 4 table

Territories of literary history: the shifting boundaries of Francophone literature in Canada

The writing of literary history opens up a range of questions about territory and boundaries. While recognising the energising role of Quebec nationalism in the emergence and affirmation of Québécois literature in the second half of the Twentieth Century, it is important to recognize the effects of such a national(ist) narrative on the shape of literary history, on its focus, its inclusions and exclusions. No single narrative can account for the complex literary history of Francophone literature in Canada. The enduring impact of Canada’s colonial past on the indigenous population, on the two settler communities and on subsequent waves of inward and outward migration has resulted in a literary and cultural life which needs to be viewed from a range of different perspectives. This article will begin to explore how notions of territory might contribute to a more flexible and inclusive understanding of the literary histories of Francophone literature in Canada