Toward a "Culture" for the Masses: The Socio-Psychological Function of Popular Literature in Germany and the U. S., 1880-1920

In recent years, the popular literature of the masses (so-called Trivialliteratur) has received increasing attention from literary and cultural historians, as has the response of the social elite to this form of popular culture. Yet few scholars have seriously investigated the history of what must surely be one of the most pervasive genres of mass literature: pornography. This is unfortunate since (as Steven Marcus has shown in his pioneering study of sexuality in Victorian England) the view of human sexuality that surfaces in a society's pornographic subculture is often a reflection, however distorted or reversed, of officially sanctioned attitudes toward sex. Likewise, the extent to which a society seeks to control a popular phenomenon like pornography is an indication of the fears, both conscious and unconscious, harbored toward that object; stigmatization and repression of pornographic literature helps define and uphold the authority of socially sanctioned sexual norms, while at the same time revealing something about how stable or vulnerable that society imagines its established values to be.

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Heart of the masses: Thematic trends in popular literature in South Africa and Nigeria

AFRREV IJAH An International Journal of Arts and Humanities ◽

10.4314/ijah.v5i2.19 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 241

Author(s):

Ifediora Okiche

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Popular Literature ◽

The Masses

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In situ irradiation effects studies in medium- and high-voltage TEM

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100137549 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 53 ◽

pp. 234-235

Author(s):

Charles W. Allen

Keyword(s):

Cross Section ◽

Particle Flux ◽

Threshold Value ◽

High Energy ◽

Irradiation Damage ◽

Defect Complexes ◽

Lattice Position ◽

Electrons And Ions ◽

The Masses

With respect to structural consequences within a material, energetic electrons, above a threshold value of energy characteristic of a particular material, produce vacancy-interstial pairs (Frenkel pairs) by displacement of individual atoms, as illustrated for several materials in Table 1. Ion projectiles produce cascades of Frenkel pairs. Such displacement cascades result from high energy primary knock-on atoms which produce many secondary defects. These defects rearrange to form a variety of defect complexes on the time scale of tens of picoseconds following the primary displacement. A convenient measure of the extent of irradiation damage, both for electrons and ions, is the number of displacements per atom (dpa). 1 dpa means, on average, each atom in the irradiated region of material has been displaced once from its original lattice position. Displacement rate (dpa/s) is proportional to particle flux (cm-2s-1), the proportionality factor being the “displacement cross-section” σD (cm2). The cross-section σD depends mainly on the masses of target and projectile and on the kinetic energy of the projectile particle.

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