Singing Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow: Interfaces of Song, Narrative, and Sonic Performance

The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939: Martin, Terry: Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 496 pp., Publication Date: November 2001

Abstract: Weighing in at over five hundred pages, this formidable work of scholarship investigates the fifteen-year evolution of the Soviet Union's strategy towards its multi-ethnic jurisdiction from the 'Lenin Constitution' of 1923 through to the consolidation of the 'Stalin Constitution' of 1936. The touchstone of such a complex and convoluted topic is the principle of what is now termed 'affirmative action': received wisdom holds that the Soviet Union adopted 'korenizatsiia' or 'indigenisation' in the 1920s as \"a prophylactic policy designed to defuse and prevent the development of nationalism\" (p. 126) by simultaneously favouring the minority nonRussian nationalities and penalising the majority Russian nation. In the course of the 1930s, however, affirmative action was abandoned and then reversed, initially as a 'Great Retreat' and most calamitously in a 'Great Terror' which reasserted Russian dominance and victimised the previously-privileged non-Russians to create a covert 'Russian Empire' legitimised by the meretricious doctrine of the 'Friendship of Peoples'.

Critical Literature Review

Abstract: Q: Why do a review of the literature? 1. As a way to frame and focus a research project  When research questions are formed without sustained reference to the literature, the study is likely to be marred by 1. Naïve research instruments that lack conceptual underpinnings 2. Problems with sense-making because the researcher is not alert to themes that may be identifiable 3. Problems with claims-making because the researcher lacks the knowledge to state its significance for theory, policy or practice.  Knowledge of the literature can help: 1. Tighten research questions 2. Enhance conceptual sensitivity 3. Provide a source for making comparisons 4. Provide a cache of descriptive data 5. Provide questions for initial observations and interviews 6. Stimulate questions during the analysis 7. Suggest areas for theoretical sampling 8. Confirm findings, or, findings can be used to show where current literature is incorrect, simplistic, or partial 9. Model ways of making claims about the possible significance of your work

The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939

Abstract: The Soviet Union was the first of Europe's multiethnic states to confront the rising tide of nationalism by systematically promoting the national consciousness of its ethnic minorities and establishing for them many of the institutional forms characteristic of the modern nation-state. In the 1920s, the Bolshevik government, seeking to defuse nationalist sentiment, created tens of thousands of national territories. It trained new national leaders, established national languages, and financed the production of national-language cultural products. This was a massive and fascinating historical experiment in governing a multiethnic state. Terry Martin provides a comprehensive survey and interpretation, based on newly available archival sources, of the Soviet management of the nationalities question. He traces the conflicts and tensions created by the geographic definition of national territories, the establishment of dozens of official national languages, and the world's first mass "affirmative action" programs. Martin examines the contradictions inherent in the Soviet nationality policy, which sought simultaneously to foster the growth of national consciousness among its minority populations while dictating the exact content of their cultures; to sponsor national liberation movements in neighboring countries, while eliminating all foreign influence on the Soviet Union's many diaspora nationalities. Martin explores the political logic of Stalin's policies as he responded to a perceived threat to Soviet unity in the 1930s by re-establishing the Russians as the state's leading nationality and deporting numerous "enemy nations."

Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose

Abstract: Foreword Introduction Part I: Approaches and methods 1. Style and Choice 2. Style, Text and Frequency 3. A Method of Analysis and some Examples 4. Levels of Style Part II: Aspects of style 5. Language and the Fictional World 6. Mind Style 7. The Rhetoric of Text 8. Discourse and Discourse Situation 9. Conversation in the Novel 10. Speech and Thought Presentation Passages and topics for further study Further reading Bibliography Index of works discussed General index

Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey

Abstract: Contents User's Manual--xiii Materialities/The Nonhermeneutic/Presence: An Anecdotal Account of Epistemological Shifts--1 Metaphysics: A Brief Prehistory of What Is Now Changing--21 Beyond Meaning: Positions and Concepts in Motion--51 Epiphany/Presentification/Deixis: Futures for the Humanities and Arts--91 To Be Quiet for a Moment: About Redemption--133 Notes--155 Index--173 Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Aesthetics, Experience