The Fictional in Autofiction

Autofiction and theories of fiction seem to be at odds. Whereas the notion of autofiction capitalizes on a postmodern consensus regarding the fictional status of self-narration, recent theoretical approaches to fiction and fictionality have reaffirmed the distinction between fictional and nonfictional narratives. It is possible to move beyond this impasse, however, by drawing on narratological and rhetorical theories of fictionality to describe the precise forms and degrees of fictionality and fictionalization discernable in works received as autofiction. Different configurations of the fact/fiction relationship can produce various autofictional effects, and theory can help us locate sites of fictionalization and factualization within literary works. Conversely, the ambiguity and hybridity of autofictional texts serve as a useful empirical testing ground for theories of fiction and fictionality.

Mapping the Mappers

Volunteered geographic information (VGI) platforms generate crowdsourced layers where a vast amount of shared and shareable geo-information is available. Monitoring the informative reliability of these sources is an important task, and the main VGI project, OpenStreetMap is a good testing ground to investigate how the collective intelligence made of users' networks creates public knowledge. OpenStreetMap (OSM) can be defined as a language of representation of real geographical entities shared as web maps. Mappers often work in solitude, but they stick to and strictly respect the rules given by their community. The aim is to create a geographical database used by anyone for any purpose. The chapter explores the following questions: How many contributors are there? Where are they and what do they collect? What are the interactions between them? The chapter illustrates what can be read from the OSM data, the available tools, and what could help researchers to understand this community.

Perception of Youth Towards Live-In Relationships in India

“A live-in relationship is an arrangement where two unmarried people live together on a long-term basis in an emotionally or sexually intimate relationship” (Gopal, n.d.). Live-in relationships have seen a remarkable rise in the Indian society in the past decade. This rise can be attributed to the changing perception of youth towards live-in relationships, the need to test compatibility before marriage or to establish financial security before marriage. This paper aims to study the current attitude of Indian youth towards heterosexual cohabitation, popularly known as live-in relationships. This paper has tried to understand whether gender-based differences play an important role in the formation of attitudes towards live-in relationships, whether live-in relationships have become a presumption for marriage and if it has taken precedence over the institution of marriage. I constructed a questionnaire to assess the current attitude of youth towards live-in relationships and used the survey method to collect data. According to the results, it can be said that gender-based differences play an important role in the formation of attitudes towards live-in relationships. Although live-in relationships help in assessing compatibility before marriage, it has not become a presumption for marriage, so it would be incorrect to say that live-in relationships have become a testing ground for marriage. The results also indicate that live-in relationships have not taken precedence over marriage.

The Photogrammetric Survey of the Phoenician and Punic Necropolis of Nora and Three-Dimensional Rendering Tools for Sharing Data

The hypogea of the Punic necropolis of Nora represented a testing ground for the use of photogrammetry as an archaeological survey tool in a highly critical context, both from the point of view of the survey itself and from the point of view of the understanding and dissemination of the underground evidence. The study describes the acquisition techniques and the tools used to share the 3D models, both among the research team and with external users, with a specific focus on web-based tools (Potree).

Yield dynamics of natural pine stands in the Forest Experimental Station of the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy with 1860

Due to the longevity of forest vegetation, the problem of its age-related changes remains the least studied and most urgent. For 150 years, the Forest Experimental Station has been an experimental testing ground for a number of generations of foresters who have created experimental facilities to solve a number of pressing problems. On the example of natural pine stands with 1860, it was shown that in an urbanized environment, the life cycle of stands is accelerated, and their durability is reduced. At the same time, under the influence of negative factors (emissions from transport, enterprises, recreational load, etc.), a decrease in yield is observed.

Borys Liatoshynsky’s 1910s–1920s Instrumental Chamber Music: Evolution from Salon Style to Symphonic Drama

This paper examines the evolution of the signature traits of Borys Liatoshynsky’s instrumental chamber music during the 1910s and 1920s in the context of the overall evolution of the composer’s expressive means. Also presented is the complex analysis of Liatoshynsky’s creative personality in his early (the 1910s) and modernist (1920s) periods in order to outline the impact of the cultural and historical environment the artist lived in during the late 1910s, as well as the influence of the troubled sociocultural situation of the time on his imagery. It was found that in the 1910s Liatoshynsky turned to modifying expressive means of late Romanticism; however, during the 1920s the palette of his instrumental chamber music shifted to symphonic experiments. For Liatoshynsky, instrumental chamber music becomes a testing ground for his creed as a symphonic composer with the respective imagery and existential drama behind his design

Interaction, Satisfaction, and the PCC

The person-case constraint (PCC) is a family of restrictions on the relative person of the two objects of a ditransitive. PCC effects offer a testing ground for theories of the Agree operation and of syntactic features, both those on nominals and (of special interest here) those found on agreement probes. In this paper, I offer a new theory of PCC effects in an interaction/satisfaction theory of Agree (Deal 2015a) and show the advantages of this framework in capturing PCC typology. On this model, probes are specified for interaction features, determining which features will be copied to them, and satisfaction features, determining which features will cause probing to stop. Applied to PCC, this theory (i) captures all four types of PCC effect recognized by Nevins (2007) under a unified notion of Agree; (ii) captures the restriction of PCC effects to contexts of “Double Weakness” in many prominent examples, e.g. in Italian, Greek, and Basque, where PCC effects hold only in cases where both the direct and indirect object are expressed with clitics; (iii) naturally extends to PCC effects in syntactic environments without visible clitics or agreement for one or both objects, as well as the absence of PCC effects in some languages with clitics or agreement for both the direct and indirect object. Two refinements of the interaction/satisfaction theory are offered. The first is a new notation for probes’ interaction and satisfaction specifications, clarifying the absence from this theory of uninterpretable/unvalued features as drivers of Agree. The second is a proposal for the way that probes’ behavior may change over the course of a derivation, dubbed dynamic interaction.

Occupying Maori Architectural Time: Reconstructing the architectural process through Maori interpretations of space

<p>This thesis investigates the occupation of an alternative Maori Architecture within Maori space/time constructions. The design research questions how to articulate a Maori architectural process in resisting lost identity within the colonised New Zealand landscape. The architectural programme addresses disconnections of Maori relationships to traditional landscape functions. A commercial paua farm, posed as a 'Maori gang business front', is designed as a testing ground for the Maori narrative framework. The programme adopts existing aquaculture methods within Maori space/time concepts to question possibilities of continual, cyclic architecture. The design research questions how Maori architectural typologies are governed by natural cyclic functions of continual change. The thesis is politicised through the narration of 'The Warrior', used as a framework for resisting colonised methodologies, consistently applied across writing, process and design.</p>