India's Revolutionary Spiritual Urge: Bhagat Singh and the Naxalites

Bhagat Singh is an iconic figure of the radical left tradition in India. If Singh, killed in the resistance to British colonialism, were to return from the dead, would he feel that the India of today, brought about by its ruling classes and their political representatives, was really worth his and his comrades' martyrdom?

Anniversary of Edith Hinkley Quimby

At the beginning of the 20th century, the whole world was searching for radioactive substances application, in particular radium. Radium can be used to treat oncology, but no one knew the verge of overdosing and underdosing. The founder of radiobiology can be considered Lewis Gray, who introduced unit for absorbed dose of radiation [1]. It was Edith Quimby who started looking for that therapeutically effective absorbed dose. It’s to calculate the minimum effective dose of activity for each patient. She has written 75 articles, published books that have become used concepts in biophysics, and handbooks of modern editions of radiologists. She became the first woman and the first physicist to become president of the American Radium Society, an organization dedicated to the study and treatment of cancer. At one time, Arthur Compton spoke about the need to introduce and apply physics in medicine, and Quimby, in her acceptance speech, outlined the need for an organization of medical physicists, and in 1958, owing to her, the American Society of Medical Physicists was created. Edith Quimby was and remains an iconic figure in the history of the development of medical physics.

Spain in the Making and Reception of García Márquez’s Works

Gabriel García Márquez is one of the most beloved and read writers of the last century in Spain. Yet his early literary works went almost unnoticed for more than a decade among Spanish publishers, critics, and readers. The success of One Hundred Years of Solitude and subsequent works transformed him into a popular bestselling writer and iconic figure in that country. Using little-known and new sources, including documents from contemporary reviews and readers’ reactions as well as the author’s archives, this article studies the reception of García Márquez’s works and his rise to stardom in Spain. Key to the successful response to his oeuvre were (1) the literary education of the author, which allowed him to develop a writing style with appeal to Spanish audiences; (2) the diffusion and consecration of the New Latin American Novel (aka Boom novel) during a crisis in Peninsular fiction; (3) the modernization of Spain’s book industry, which benefited the promotion of García Márquez’s works among the rising middle classes; and (4) the writer’s involvement in the country’s cultural and political affairs during its transition to and consolidation of democratic rule. The intersection of these threads resulted in the appropriation of García Márquez as a Spanish writer and his transformation into one of Spain’s cultural icons. This article builds on analytical tools developed by the fields of cultural sociology and the history of reading practices.

“My Skin Is Not Me”: The Transformations of William Shakespeare’s Othello in Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) and Djanet Sears’s Harlem Duet

Both Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (1990) and Harlem Duet (1997) are Canadian feminist appropriations of William Shakespeare. Both deal, at least partly, with Othello, and both can be considered subversive re-visions of Shakespeare’s play which aim to articulate oppositional intervention in the canon. These similarities notwithstanding, the plays have not often been studied concurrently. Also, while several critics have explored them, mostly separately, in terms of their adaptation/appropriation of Shakespeare, seeking to spell out the transformations they have brought to the “original” text, little has been said about how the iconic figure of Shakespeare still holds sway in these new dramas, albeit in different ways and to varying degrees. Likewise, their dramatization of the character of Othello remains rather understudied. This essay explores the “new” Othellos of the two plays, contending that their positioning in the two texts evinces some similarities while their characterization differs widely, given the plays’ generic difference, but mostly the two playwrights’ rather divergent feminist perspectives which, in turn, substantially shape the plays’ respective appropriation techniques.

The Chosen People: The Hudson River School and the Construction of American Identity

This article considers nineteenth-century riverscapes of the Hudson in relation to the formation of American identity. It argues that riverscapes in the United States contributed to welding a national identity to a Christian one, although officially the identities were distinct. I examine the role of the Hudson River School in the creation of the ‘wilderness’ as an image of American homeland, and how this construct incorporated the iconic figure of the Euro-American Christian ‘pilgrim-pioneer.’ America looked more to the future than to the past for its national narrative, and an orientation to the future was symbolized in art by the flow of the Hudson toward distant horizons, while the pioneer identity was extended to embrace the entrepreneur-developer. The pioneer has remained an iconic figure for American nationalism, but is now more firmly located in the nation’s past; Janus’s gaze has been adjusted, demonstrating the potentially fluid character of nationalist discourse.

The Nomadic War Machine in Jack Kerouac’s Vanity of Duluoz and On the Road

This study inquiries into Jack Kerouac’s Vanity of Duluoz (1968) and On the Road (1957) from the perspective of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s nomadic war machine. It shifts from a rigorous scrutiny of Vanity of Duluoz for its general account of the Duluoz legend, Kerouac’s alter ego, to the study of On the Road for its more specific narrative of a certain period in Kerouac’s life. Being an iconic figure of rebellion and non-conformity in capitalist America during the postwar era, Kerouac’s literary works have a certain social and political magnitude that falls within the discourse of deconstructing orthodoxy and dogma. The study elucidates how Kerouac’s characters subvert the social norms and the state’s institutions in order to break free from pre-structured beliefs. The thesis of the article is to corroborate that such non-conformity and insubordination, exemplified in Kerouac’s autobiographical works, align with the nomadic characteristic of Deleuze and Guattari’s war machine. By extension, it aims at presenting Kerouac as the Deleuzeguattarian nomad who creates nomadic characters that deterritorialize post-war America from within.

Sherlock Holmes introduces critical thinking

Sherlock has been admired in medical and criminal investigative education for his detection abilities. What makes him such an iconic figure is his “science of deduction and analysis”. Are there critical thinking traits in Sherlock Holmes’ method which can be used for instruction? Can Holmes be considered an exemplar of critical thinking? The argument here is that Holmes’ methods overlap with educational outcomes of critical thinking courses. A teaching activity designed to allow an exploration of the detective’s abilities in an introductory class is described here.

At the Centre of Two Revolutions

This chapter talks about the Beit Ya’akov (Bais Yaakov), the extensive network of haredi educational institutions for girls that ranged from kindergartens to vocational teacher-training seminaries. It mentions the founder of Beit Ya’akov, Sarah Schenirer, who was labelled the ’mother’ of all haredi women and became an iconic figure as she was the only woman in haredi society to have inspired a foundation myth. It also refers to Dr Leo Deutschländer, who set Beit Ya’akov on a sound financial and pedagogical basis that spearheaded its rapid expansion. The chapter recounts the foundation of Beit Ya’akov in 1918 and the appointment of Rabbi Judah Leib Orlean as its director in 1935, which marked a conservative turn in the development of the institution. It identifies the most influential factors and figures that shaped the development of the Beit Ya’akov network prior to the Holocaust.

Features of Chinese Animalistic Prose on the Example of Gerel-Сhimeg Black Crane’s Novel Black Flame

The article examines the themes, images, and artistic features of the animalistic novel Black Flame (2006) by the Chinese writer of Mongolian origin Gerel-Сhimeg Black Сrane’s. The general and comparative analysis of the novel not only reveals the peculiarities of the author’s individual style, but also characterizes the general trends in the development of animalistic prose in China and abroad. Respect for the laws of nature, as well as the theme of love and devotion of an animal to man, run through the entire novel Black Flame as red threads. A characteristic feature of the work is the combination of scientific and artistic styles. Such qualities of the writer as truthfulness and subtle understanding of animal psychology are also remarkable. Among the features of Black Crane’s artistic style, one can note the poetic language enriched with original metaphors and epithets. Instead of the usual narration of the characters’ actions, Gerel-Chimeg focuses on the physical and mental sensations evoked by these actions and transmitted to the readers. The writer does not humanize animals, nevertheless, he manages to penetrate their inner world through the use of a rich arsenal of smells, sounds and even tactile sensations. Today, Gerel-Chimeg is an original and iconic figure among Chinese writers of this genre. The article emphasizes that animalistic literature of such a level plays an important role both in the study of the wild world as well as in the education of humanity in people. The novel Black Flame not only enriches our knowledge of nature and animals of northern and western China, but also evokes a powerful emotional response from the readers.