Search Results

Rising to the Challenge

Michael J. North and Charles M. Macal

in Managing Business Complexity: Discovering Strategic Solutions with Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation

This chapter considers the who, what, where, when, why, and how of agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS).

Thynne and Tuke's Apocrypha ‘Chaucer’ and the Poetry of Moderation

Greg Walker

in Writing Under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation

This chapter looks in detail at the contents and arrangement of Thynne’s 1532 edition of Chaucer’s Works. It examines the three poems placed at the beginning of the volume: the anonymous Eight Goodly ... More

This chapter looks in detail at the contents and arrangement of Thynne’s 1532 edition of Chaucer’s Works. It examines the three poems placed at the beginning of the volume: the anonymous Eight Goodly Questions; Thomas Hoccleve’s To the King’s Most Noble Grace and to the Lords and Knights of the Garter; and the anonymous prophecy, When Faith Faileth in Priests’ Saws, arguing for their contemporary resonances in the troubled realm of 1531-2. It then examines the edition’s deployment of apocryphal material, suggesting that much of the conservative, catholic material, and social and political matter serves to shape the book into an extended work of counsel; a speculum principis cautioning princes in general, and its dedicatee, Henry VIII in particular, to behave with discretion and moderation in troubled times.Less

Beyond Libet: Long-term Prediction of Free Choices from Neuroimaging Signals

John-Dylan Haynes

in Conscious Will and Responsibility: A Tribute to Benjamin Libet

This chapter discusses experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and pattern classifiers to explore less immediate intentions and choices than Libet studied. The researchers ... More

This chapter discusses experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and pattern classifiers to explore less immediate intentions and choices than Libet studied. The researchers found signals from unconscious brain activity that predict, above chance, decisions 7–10 seconds in advance. They were also able to separate the “what” from the “when” in a decision.Less

Late Projects

Joseph McBride

in Hawks on Hawks

McBride queries Hawks on current projects. The director talks about his work on When It’s Hot Play It Cool and the challenges of filming in international locations due to political unrest. He also ... More

McBride queries Hawks on current projects. The director talks about his work on When It’s Hot Play It Cool and the challenges of filming in international locations due to political unrest. He also mentions some story ideas that are still in development.Less

Conclusion: The Singing Element

Christian McWhirter

in Battle Hymns: The Power and Popularity of Music in the Civil War

This conclusion discusses Alfred E. Williams' attempts to discern why songs such as “Dixie,” “John Brown's Body, ” “Just before the Battle”, “Mother, ” and “When This Cruel War Is Over” provided more ... More

This conclusion discusses Alfred E. Williams' attempts to discern why songs such as “Dixie,” “John Brown's Body, ” “Just before the Battle”, “Mother, ” and “When This Cruel War Is Over” provided more resonance and meaning during the Civil War. Whitman concluded that there was something about them that can only be described as the “singing element”, setting these songs apart from other literary and artistic forms.Less

Year Zero Art: A Lost Generation Finds Its Voice in The Female Man

Gwyneth Jones

in Joanna Russ

“Year Zero Art” situates Second Wave feminism in the context of the “domestic revival” decreed by Cold War politics; examines historical female-ordered utopias, and provides a close reading of the ... More

“Year Zero Art” situates Second Wave feminism in the context of the “domestic revival” decreed by Cold War politics; examines historical female-ordered utopias, and provides a close reading of the polemic, idyllic, and lyric voices; the layered realities and the “many worlds” speculative-science content of Joanna’s highly personal 1975 novel, The Female Man. Essays and reviews described include radical feminist criticism of Ursula K. Le Guin’s novels; the groundbreaking “Why Women Can’t Write”; the controversial “Image of Women in Science Fiction” and “Alien Monsters,” in which Joanna defines the pernicious sf figure of the “he-man.” Stories related to The Female Man (1971-75) include “When It Changed,” the Nebula Award-winning conventional sf version of The Female Man.Less

The Value of a Winning Corporate Reputation

Grahame R. Dowling

in Winning the Reputation Game: Creating Stakeholder Value and Competitive Advantage

In situations where people are uncertain about what a company is doing, or whether or not to engage with it, or what they are buying from it is of good quality, a good reputation can help to ... More

In situations where people are uncertain about what a company is doing, or whether or not to engage with it, or what they are buying from it is of good quality, a good reputation can help to alleviate this uncertainty. Over time markets for corporate reputation may emerge in these situations. One such market is for universities. Each year a number of different rankings appear to help students make their choice of where to go. When reputation markets operate then investing in a better reputation than one’s competitors can lead to a wide range of commercial payoffs – including a better and more resilient share price.Less

Pinocchio

James Bohn

in Music in Disney's Animated Features: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to The Jungle Book

Leigh Harline’s score to Pinocchio is his greatest contribution to film music. The feature garnered awards for both best score and best original song. The song in question, “When You Wish Upon a ... More

Leigh Harline’s score to Pinocchio is his greatest contribution to film music. The feature garnered awards for both best score and best original song. The song in question, “When You Wish Upon a Star,” has been adopted as a corporate anthem for the Walt Disney Company. The chapter investigates the song as a model for the Wish/Dream song archetype that appears in several Disney films. The melody for the song is analyzed in terms of melodic dissonance, and how that plays out in the course of the tune, as well as the implications for the film as a whole. The chapter also examines other songs, including “I’ve Got No Strings,” as well as the leitmotif for Jiminy Crickett.Less

The Radiance of a Blind Power: When the Time Comes (1949–1951)

Christophe Bident

in Maurice Blanchot: A Critical Biography

Concentrating on the narrative When the Time Comes, this chapter both sets out its aesthetic concerns and links it (subtly and non-reductively) to Blanchot’s life.

From Sitcoms to ‘Parody-corns’: Writing for American TV, 1949–89

Alex Symons

in Mel Brooks in the Cultural Industries: Survival and Prolonged Adaptation

Brooks's most innovative contributions to the American sitcom tradition were his two final shows, When Things Were Rotten and The Nutt House (NBC, 1989). Here Brooks took the sitcom tradition in a ... More

Brooks's most innovative contributions to the American sitcom tradition were his two final shows, When Things Were Rotten and The Nutt House (NBC, 1989). Here Brooks took the sitcom tradition in a untypical direction by adapting those familiar writing formulas together with the surreal jokes, characters and production values from his own commercially successful ‘parody’ films, Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974) and High Anxiety (1977). The resulting two ‘parody-coms’ show significant departures from the perceived ‘mainstream’ of the American sitcom tradition. More significantly, these shows are also part of a wider trend in American sitcom production whereby content in all manner of forms, including production values and joke formulas, has been appropriated from Hollywood film. This chapter discusses the intermedial origins (1949–57), the revival (1965–70) and the modern transformation of the American sitcom (1975–89).Less

The Final Years

in Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher

For more than two decades, Alain L. Locke worked out what might be called a group spiritual autobiography in his year-end reviews. They contain several important themes, such as the need for the ... More

For more than two decades, Alain L. Locke worked out what might be called a group spiritual autobiography in his year-end reviews. They contain several important themes, such as the need for the Negro novel to be more realistic, and tried repeatedly to take the temperature of an increasingly varied and complex culture. Some of his claims, such as the notion that the integration of black and white writing would one day be more or less complete, were too optimistic by far. Other positions, like the need to see Negro culture as part and parcel of American culture, more likely found widespread approval. The range of books was perhaps the most impressive aspect of the work, though the unfailingly literate writing was equally noteworthy. Like the interchapter commentaries in When Peoples Meet, the total intellectual expression of the year-end reviews taken together forms one of the major achievements of Locke's public life.Less

The Importance of Directing Doug

Michael Sragow

in Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master

Fleming joined United Artists and shot its first major picture. Soon after, he developed a friendship with Theodore Reed, who often worked with Fairbanks. In 1919, Fleming made his directorial debut ... More

Fleming joined United Artists and shot its first major picture. Soon after, he developed a friendship with Theodore Reed, who often worked with Fairbanks. In 1919, Fleming made his directorial debut with When the Clouds Roll By, a comedy with fantasy and adventure elements that starred Fairbanks. This chapter gives a detailed summary and analysis of that film. Kathleen Clifford was the female lead, and she and Fleming had a four-year relationship. Fleming’s next movie, The Mollycoddle (1920), which also starred Fairbanks, is also discussed here at length. Fleming’s technical mastery of film and good professional relationship with his actors soon made him a sought after director.Less

That Voodoo That You Do So Well: Mighty Aphrodite

Peter J. Bailey

in The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen

The good-feelings aura of Manhattan Murder Mystery was undermined by the lack of any real creativity in that movie; the Greek chorus framing Mighty Aphrodite and thematically connected to its search ... More

The good-feelings aura of Manhattan Murder Mystery was undermined by the lack of any real creativity in that movie; the Greek chorus framing Mighty Aphrodite and thematically connected to its search for origins makes it a more compelling comedy. Mighty Aphrodite dramatically opposes Allen’s pessimistic perception of human life with his desire to make movies that provide the condemned with consolatory laughter, the Greek chorus transforming itself from a prognosticator of dark fates to celebrants of “that voodoo that you do so well.” Heredity proves to be other than deterministic in Mighty Aphrodite,which offers as benignly comedic a validation as Allen could manage to create on film of his much-quoted self-justification during the tabloid wars, “the heart wants what it wants.”Less

The Heart Still Wants What it Wants: Vicky Cristina Barcelona and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

Peter J. Bailey

in The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen

Of his twenty-first-century releases, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger are his most consistently satirical films, and although both were met with highly mixed reviews, ... More

Of his twenty-first-century releases, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger are his most consistently satirical films, and although both were met with highly mixed reviews, largely because of the sardonic attitudes Allen takes toward the characters through his narrators, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and You Will Meet represent evolutions of the comedy/dramatic hybrids (Manhattan, Broadway Danny Rose, Hannah and her Sisters) of his earlier film production. In both Vicky Cristina Barcelona and You Will Meet, the presence of narrators distances the audience from the characters, their mediating presences making the characters seem to be operating under not-completely-benign surveillance. The plotting integrity of both films is the product of the consistency with which the characters bring their problems upon themselves.Less

“A Masterpiece of Modern Moisture”

Brent Phillips

in Charles Walters: The Director Who Made Hollywood Dance

This chapter looks at the production of two Esther Williams films, Dangerous When Wet and Easy to Love, both 1953. The latter brings Busby Berkeley back to M-G-M.

Gender, Generation and the Production of Locality in the Diasporic Family

Daniela Berghahn

in Far-Flung Families in Film: The Diasporic Family in Contemporary European Cinema

This chapter examines the dynamics of gender and generation in the diasporic family, broaching contested issues such as wearing hijab and honour killings in relation to (Muslim) patriarchy. Arjun ... More

This chapter examines the dynamics of gender and generation in the diasporic family, broaching contested issues such as wearing hijab and honour killings in relation to (Muslim) patriarchy. Arjun Appadurai’s concept of the production of locality and Laura Marks’s theory of embodiment in intercultural cinema of the senses provide pertinent critical frameworks. In many diasporic family films, the production of locality is imagined as the cause of gender and generational conflict. Through adhering to the traditions, language and rituals from the homeland, parents profess their allegiances to a place and community far away. Their Westernised offspring, by contrast, typically engage in the production of culturally hybrid localities in the streets and playground of urban youth culture and on their bodies. Close readings of When We Leave (Die Fremde), East is East, West is West and Couscous (La graine et le mulet) attend to the consumption of media and food and the performance of gendered and generational topographies.Less

Postcolonial Sri Lanka and “Black Struggles for Socialism”: Socialist Ethics in Ambalavaner Sivanandan’s When Memory Dies

Sonali Perera

in No Country: Working-Class Writing in the Age of Globalization

This chapter examines how Marxist thought and literary internationalism traverse between the colonial border and the imperial metropole—Sri Lanka and England, respectively. This dichotomy is ... More

This chapter examines how Marxist thought and literary internationalism traverse between the colonial border and the imperial metropole—Sri Lanka and England, respectively. This dichotomy is manifested in the readership of Ambalavaner Sivanandan, a Sri Lankan Tamil/black British writer and founder-editor of the London journal Race and Class. On one hand, recent postcolonial scholarship focuses solely on his 1997 book, When Memory Dies, which is set against the backdrop of the ongoing civil war in Sri Lanka. On the other, scholars of black British cultural studies tend to focus on Sivanandan's political journalism. The chapter looks at the uncanny doublings of scenes and subjects, and the repetitions and revisions that occur across Sivanandan's texts. Ultimately, Sivanandan claims that it is the turn to literature that allows an epistemic shift from debates in left-party politics to questions of socialist ethics.Less

A Dress Rehearsal for Life: Artloto and What? Where? When?

Christine E. Evans

in Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television

This chapter examines Artloto (1971–1978) and What? Where? When? (1975–present), two Central Television television game shows that mirrored the late Soviet phenomenon termed “being vnye”—the ... More

This chapter examines Artloto (1971–1978) and What? Where? When? (1975–present), two Central Television television game shows that mirrored the late Soviet phenomenon termed “being vnye”—the “explosion of various styles of living that were simultaneously inside and outside the system.” Artloto was presented as a televised lottery, while What? Where? When? was set around a roulette wheel and shot in a series of unconventional spaces. These connections to a liminal world of gambling and the rule of chance made possible creative and open-ended play as well as the elaboration of new ways of life. Both shows proposed forms of politics that were marginal to or clearly outside Soviet political culture and sought to convey to viewers what television without censorship might look like. This chapter considers how Artloto and What? Where? When? offer a broader context for understanding Mikhail Gorbachev's decision to experiment with the fundamentals of Soviet political life.Less

: The Victors and the Vanquished

I. F. Clarke (ed.)

in The Great War with Germany, 1890-1940: Fictions and Fantasies of the War-to-Come

From 1900 onwards, future-war stories proliferated as the relationship between the Germans and the British went from bad to worse. The non-stop production of such stories rapidly gave rise to a ... More

From 1900 onwards, future-war stories proliferated as the relationship between the Germans and the British went from bad to worse. The non-stop production of such stories rapidly gave rise to a composite myth of the war-to-come. Authors from both sides predicted how their nations would fare in ‘the Next Great War’, claiming that victory would go to the more powerful navy. German writers predicted Britain's defeat at the hands of Germany, while their British counterparts dismissed the German invasion as little more than annual manoeuvres. In The Invasion of 1910, William Le Queux asserts that the failure of the British armed forces ‘merely reflected the moral tone of the nation’. The Message presented the enemies of the nation as a collection of anti-militarists, socialists, and radicals who had no interest in the defence of their country. In The Riddle of the Sands (1903), Erskine Childers revealed the secret preparations for invasion. The contrast between the British and German styles in future-war fiction is most evident in the elegiac prose of When William Came (1913) by ‘Saki’.Less

‘When all that is to was is brought’: A Time of Endings and Thoughts of Flight

Greg Walker

in John Heywood: Comedy and Survival in Tudor England

This chapter examines Heywood’s fortunes in the early years of the reign of Elizabeth I, as he strove to maintain his position as a creative artist in a newly Protestant England and began to consider ... More

This chapter examines Heywood’s fortunes in the early years of the reign of Elizabeth I, as he strove to maintain his position as a creative artist in a newly Protestant England and began to consider the prospect of exile. Drawing on the remarkable poem, ‘When all that is…’, recently discovered by Jane Flynn, it draws out its implications for our understanding of the playwright’s state of mind as he took stock of his life, offered counsel to those friends and family members remaining in England, and turned his thoughts to exile and the ars moriendi. ‘When all that is…’ suggests a sense of recovery and of resolution at the same time as it speaks of loss and regret. It is the work of a writer who has seemingly at the eleventh hour regained his capacity for linguistic and generic innovation, for word-play, and a characteristically generative ambivalence at the same time as discovering new clarity of faith and purpose.Less