This essay argues that changes in American energy infrastructure from carbon-based power plants to distributed, renewable energy networks precipitate changes in American literary regionalism. Examining recent regional fiction including Jay Tyrell’s Wind Army, Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Tamarisk Hunter,” and Richard Powers’s The Echo Maker, I argue that stories of climate-change...
Using data collected from a non-random electronic survey of (N=116) Trinidadian origin men and women and data gleaned from a content analysis of roti shop websites on the Internet (n=80). This paper examines how the Trinidadian diaspora currently residing in places like New York, Toronto or London’s are influenced by...
This article examines the influence of Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy on the ethical aspects of the life and work of André Schwarz-Bart. The essay is framed through recent re-interest in Schwarz-Bart’s collaborative works with his wife, Simone, as a bridge between Holocaust and postcolonial studies. The publications, arguments, and key points...
This paper asks whether animals can ever break out of anthropocentric value systems in literary narratives and, if so, what critical methods might be enlisted to reveal a literary animal’s independent agency. Examining the representation of a gray wolf in Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Crossing, it concludes that the animal’s...
Faculty and librarians agree on the qualities of a good research question. However, in an exploratory study, they differed on when students should develop their research question. While librarians stated that students should develop their question early, first-year writing faculty advocated for delaying the development of the research question. The...
Undergraduate students are expected to find, evaluate and use peer-reviewed or scholarly literature, but they rarely learn about the process of creating new knowledge or the roles the literature plays in the work of scholars. A desired outcome of undergraduate education is the understanding that knowledge is created, evolving and...
This article seeks to make a compelling case for authors’ rights training through emphasis on academic librarians’ dual roles as both authors and as liaisons to research and teaching faculty. Using the example of the Rights Well Workshop developed at Oregon State University Libraries, the article demonstrates the value of...
How are academic libraries organizing themselves in order to engage in the content selection and digitization of local collections? Are libraries creating new positions or units, assigning responsibilities to existing departments, setting up cross-functional collaboration among existing departments, or using a combination of these strategies? Who holds responsibility for the...
Our institutions of record are facing a new digital knowledge management challenge: stakeholder communities are now expecting customized Web interfaces to institutional knowledge repositories, online environments where community members can contribute content and see themselves represented, as well as access archived resources. Digital curation can be used to address these...
For more than a decade, feature films produced by the GDR film company DEFA have been popular items in Germany. I analyze these films as commodities, arguing that this success by DEFA cinema needs to be read in conjunction with clever marketing strategies employed by the nonprofit foundation DEFA-Stiftung and...