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The late Gore Vidal occupied a unique position within American letters. Born into a political family, he ran for office several times, but was consistently critical of his nation’s political system and its leaders. A prolific writer in several genres, he was also widely known – particularly in the United States – on the basis of his frequent appearances in the various electronic media. In this groundbreaking work examining the central theme of power throughout Vidal’s writings, Heather Neilson focuses primarily on Vidal’s historical fiction. In his novels depicting American history and those set in ancient times, Vidal evokes a world in which deliberately propagated falsehood – ‘disinformation’ – becomes established as truth. Neilson engages with Vidal’s representations of political and religious leaders, and with his deeply ambivalent fascination with the increasingly inescapable influence of the media. She asserts that Vidal’s oeuvre has a Shakespearean resonance in its persistent obsession with the question of what constitutes legitimate power and authority.
This is the first book that comprehensively examines Indigenous filmmaking in North America, as it analyzes in detail a variety of representative films by Canadian and US-American Indigenous filmmakers: two films that contextualize the oral tradition, three short films, and four dramatic films. The book explores how members of colonized groups use the medium of film as a means for cultural and political expression and thus enter the dominant colonial film discourse and create an answering discourse. The theoretical framework is developed as an interdisciplinary approach, combining postcolonialism, Indigenous studies, and film studies. As Indigenous people are gradually taking control over th...
The IDEAL conference boast a vibrant and successful history dating back to 1998, th and this edition marked the 10 anniversary, an important milestone demonstrating the increasing popularity and high quality of the IDEAL conferences. Burgos, the capital of medieval Spain and a lively city today, was a perfect venue to celebrate such an occasion. The conference has become a unique, established and broad int- disciplinary forum for researchers and practitioners in many fields to interact with each other and with leading academics and industries in the areas of machine lea- ing, information processing, data mining, knowledge management, bio-informatics, neuro-informatics, bio-inspired models, a...
Before the 1969 Stonewall Riots, LGBTQ life was dominated by the negative image of "the closet"--the metaphorical space where that which was deemed "queer" was hidden from a hostile public view. Literary studies of queer themes and characters in crime fiction have tended to focus on the more positive and explicit representations since the riots, while pre-Stonewall works are thought to reference queer only negatively or obliquely. This collection of new essays questions that view with an investigation of queer aspects in crime fiction published over eight decades, from the corseted Victorian era to the unbuttoned 1960s.
Feature binding is the process whereby different features such as shape, colour, size, orientation, location, etc. are linked together to form a coherent representation of the object. It is a ubiquitous physiological sequence and an essential phase in information processing, for it provides the basis of mental representations, which in turn, are requisite for all cognitive functions. It is important to realize though, that binding is not an isolated process. There are myriad stimuli impinging on our senses at all times, vying to gain entry into our consciousness. Further, not only does sensory input emanate from a complex, dynamic environment, but it also enters a neural system that is alrea...
The challenge of creating a real-life computational equivalent of the human mind requires that we better understand at a computational level how natural intelligent systems develop their cognitive and learning functions. In recent years, biologically inspired cognitive architectures have emerged as a powerful new approach toward gaining this kind of understanding (here “biologically inspired” is understood broadly as “brain-mind inspired”). Still, despite impressive successes and growing interest in BICA, wide gaps separate different approaches from each other and from solutions found in biology. Modern scientific societies pursue related yet separate goals, while the mission of the ...
Dealing with recent developments in the literatures of minority peoples in the USA and Canada, the introductory survey and individual essays are concerned with questions of multiculturalism and intercultural relations. Contributors discuss aspects of ethnicity, gender, class and ecology in Asian American autobiographical writing, Black Fiction, autobiography and feminist fiction by Chicana and Chicano authors, fiction, poetry and criticism by contemporary Native Americans as well as the literary development of Inuit and Mdevelopment of Inuit and Métis writing in Canada. Among the authors whose works are dealt with are: Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maxine Hong Kingston, Estella Portillo, N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, Markoosie, Maria Campbell, Beatrice Culleton. The introduction places these minority literatures in a broader cultural, political and social context, and extensive bibliographies make this an indispensable source of reference for scholars, teachers and students interested in multicultural aspects of literature.
Gore Vidal is one of the most significant American writers of the second half of the twentieth century, having produced a large number of best selling novels, essays, plays and pamphlets which have impacted on major political and social debates for fifty years. He is both a serious writer and a television and movie celebrity, whose increasingly acerbic picture of the United States guarantees he is both revered and reviled. Gore Vidal's America examines the ways in which Vidal's writings on history, politics, sex and religion throw into focus our understandings of the United States, but also recognizes his versatility and inventiveness as a creative writer, some of whose novels - Julian; Myra...
Through a wide-ranging series of essays and relevant readings, A Companion to Twentieth-Century United States Fiction presents an overview of American fiction published since the conclusion of the First World War. Features a wide-ranging series of essays by American, British, and European specialists in a variety of literary fields Written in an approachable and accessible style Covers both classic literary figures and contemporary novelists Provides extensive suggestions for further reading at the end of each essay