Albion College

About: Albion College is a education organization based out in Albion, Michigan, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Higher education. The organization has 485 authors who have published 754 publications receiving 20907 citations.

Classical Discourse in British India I: Coping with Life in India

Abstract: Among the remarkable collection of Mountstuart Elphinstone’s papers in the British Library, there is a tiny traveller’s edition of the collected works of Virgil. It carries two inscriptions: ‘M. Elphinstone Benares’ and ‘This book was given me by my mother in 1794; it once belonged to my uncle, Capt. Ruthven’.628 The book, so perfectly suited to travel, so evocative of family, and, as we will see, so in tune with Elphinstone’s abiding passion for the classics, was the perfect present for a much loved younger son about to embark on an Indian career. That he carried it to India we know from the presence of ‘Benares’ in the inscription. That he kept it close through his thirty-two years in India is clear from his journals, which regularly mention him reading it. Indeed, Elphinstone’s journals preserve a remarkable record of reading and study, much of it classical. The apocryphal story that Elphinstone went nowhere without his copy of Thucydides is of course hyperbole, but not in the way that might be expected. The exaggeration lies solely in the claim that it was always Thucydides. His Virgil, for one, was just as likely to be with him, along with any number of other books. On one occasion, he recorded the theft of fifteen to twenty books from his tent, including multiple volumes of Thucydides, Herodotus, and Cicero.629 And on his famous mission to ‘the Kingdom of Cabul’ in 1808–9, two of the five chests in his baggage were filled with books, including Quintus Curtius.630 These classics were neither ornaments nor paperweights. Like the Virgil, they were read, re-read, pored over, often, as we will see, in truly remarkable circumstances and with remarkable outcomes.

Classical Discourse and British Imperial Identity: The Nature of Empire

Abstract: Because classical discourse and imperial discourse overlapped to such an extent — being in many cases created and consumed by the same people — it will come as no surprise that close comparisons between classical antiquity and Britain’s imperial present were as common in the latter as the former. Nor is it surprising to find the same pre-occupation with the present and exploitation in the literature comprising the imperial annex of classical reception studies. No one has done more to advance this perspective in recent years than Vasunia. His recent essay tracing Virgil’s place in British imperial discourse offers an extended and trenchant discussion of the ‘translatio imperii […] at the heart of the comparison between the Roman and British empires’ and in which ‘Rome functioned as a figure of empire… available to those who wished to transfer imperium to themselves and claimed the authority to speak for empire in their own time.’267

Having Your Cake and Eating It Too: Autonomy and Interaction in a Model of Sentence Processing

Abstract: Is the human language understander a collection of modular processes operating with relative autonomy, or is it a single integrated process? This ongoing debate has polarized the language processing community, with two fundamentally different types of model posited, and with each camp concluding that the other is wrong. One camp puts forth a model with separate processors and distinct knowledge sources to explain one body of data, and the other proposes a model with a single processor and a homogeneous, monolithic knowledge source to explain the other body of data. In this paper we argue that a hybrid approach which combines a unified processor with separate knowledge sources provides an explanation of both bodies of data, and we demonstrate the feasibility of this approach with the computational model called COMPERE. We believe that this approach brings the language processing community significantly closer to offering human-like language processing systems.

Selective Deoximation Using Alumina-Supported Potassium Permanganate.

Abstract: Ketoximes are converted to the parent ketones in good yields when treated with potassium permanganate supported on neutral alumina (ASPP). An optimized procedure has been developed, the simple work-up minimizes loss of product and oximes have been selectively oxidized in the presence of alkenes.