themes in books with disabled characters
201640412
Deaf Characters in Young Adult Literature
The multicultural literature movement has its roots in civil rights and the desire to give voice and representation to marginalized cultures. Literature is a societal artifact that can inform and influence the development of cultural identity. Deaf culture is a unique culture that is underrepresented in young adult literature. This underrepresentation places more importance on accurate representations of Deaf culture since young adult fiction may be the only exposure to Deaf culture that both hearing and deaf teenagers may have. Accurate representation in literature is necessary for deaf to see themselves in what they read and for hearing to better understand this unique culture. This study analyzed 20 young adult novels published between 2000 and 2017. Each novel featured a deaf or hard of hearing teenager. A phenomenography approach with a qualitative content analysis method was utilized to inform a better understanding of the representation of deaf characters and Deaf culture within current young adult literature. Models of disability as established by Clogston (1990, 1991, 1993) and Haller (1995) were used to focus the coding analysis. Two research questions were addressed. What model of disability do these books represent? What aspects of Deaf culture, communication issues, and societal issues are represented in young adult fiction? Results of the study determined the most prevalent model of disability represented was the traditional medical model. The coding also revealed themes surrounding Deaf culture, the issues in communication that deaf face, and societal issues surrounding the deaf. Stories have power. From the oral tradition of telling stories, through today's modern methods of storytelling, stories have passed on knowledge from generation to generation. Stories can document the history of a culture and can shape and impact an individual's cultural identity and understanding of self. Since adolescence is a time of discovery when young adults learn more about the world and their place in it, young adult literature can impact the cultural identity development of adolescents. Reading about cultures and characters can help adolescents form connections to and understandings of not only their cultural identity, but also that of others (Koss, 2015, Louie, 2005) The power of literature means that how a culture is portrayed in literature impacts how young adults learn about not only themselves, but society as well. Because of the impact literary representations have on cultural identity, the representation of cultures needs to be authentic. Therefore, it is important to understand stereotypes in literature and how they impact the view of a culture; otherwise these representations can reinforce negative stereotypes and lead to misunderstandings concerning the culture (Gopalakrishnan, 2011, pg. 214) Without accurate representation of a culture in literature, a method of learning about cultures in an authentic way is lost. It is also important that authentic cultural representation be easily accessible and available. The social power of cultural groups is also represented in literature and those who lack cultural power tend to be excluded from literature and other important forms of cultural representation (Taxel, 1994) The publication and selection of books assigns value to the book and its contents. If the literature is not published or cannot be found, then the opportunity for learning about the culture and its inherent value is missed. Deaf culture is found in few modern, young adult literary works. This makes access to Deaf culture in literature limited and makes it even more important that the representation of Deaf culture in those young adult books be authentic. Because of the impact of literature on the development of cultural identity, it is important to know if Deaf culture is not only represented in young adult literature, but represented accurately. The purpose of this study was to investigate how deaf characters were represented in young adult fiction published between 2000 and 2017. The study applied a phenomenography approach with a qualitative content analysis method to inform a better understanding of the representation of deaf characters and Deaf culture within current young adult literature. 1 Gangwish: Deaf in Young Adult Literature Published by DigitalCommons@UNO, 2019 What Defines Deaf Culture? Deaf culture is not defined by a region or a shared ethnic background, but rather by a language and shared experience. Deaf culture is comprised of many variables and its members may encounter various obstacles and frustrations because of misunderstanding or lack of knowledge by those outside of Deaf culture (Padden Humphries, 2005) While many people may believe Deaf culture is defined by a lack of hearing, it is not. Rather it is defined by a focus on the beliefs and practices among deaf and the visual nature of their language. Padden Humphries (2005) stated: As a community made up of some individuals who do not speak and some who do, some who do not hear at all and some who hear some, and all of whom draw the label of "disabled" by the larger community, Deaf people are seen as clearly not like anyone else. We often feel besieged, controlled, and patronized, even as our remarkable sign language is celebrated and admired in public (p. 7) Those who associate with Deaf culture may be deaf, hard of hearing, or hearing. They may have grown up in deaf or hearing households. They may have attended deaf or hearing schools. The culture is defined by a personal decision to become a part of the culture because of the shared values and beliefs. This study will utilize the common convention of the capitalized word, Deaf, in reference to the cultural group and its practices, and the lowercase word, deaf, in reference to the medical condition of hearing loss. For the purposes of this study, Deaf culture is defined by a focus on beliefs and practices among the Deaf, especially the primary role that sign language plays in their community (Padden Humphries, 2005) It is because of the many variances within Deaf culture, that learning about it and becoming a part of it may be difficult. For instance, a deaf person who grows up in a hearing household and attends a hearing school may not have the opportunity to learn about Deaf culture. In many cases, Deaf culture is learned through interaction with the Deaf. If that interaction is not available, a deaf person may not have the opportunity to learn about a culture that could have great impact on their life. Mainstream society may view hearing loss as a disability, but Deaf culture rejects this concept and instead self identifies as a unique cultural group brought about by the visual nature of their language (Bailes, 2002) Willard (1998) addressed the perception of disability as portrayed in the media. He stated: If anyone has anything to overcome, I would say it's the people in the media. They are the ones who keep feeding the misconception that people with disabilities are not happy or whole until they have overcome their disability. Instead, why not recognize that a disability is often a part of our lives, something that makes us who we are? Our ears may not work as well as we'd like, but we have nothing to be ashamed of and certainly nothing that needs to be overcome (p. 274) In the United States, American Sign Language (ASL) is the primary language of the Deaf. This language is very visual in nature and is one of the core components of Deaf culture. Ariella Dramin, a current student at Gallaudet remarks, "We're a community, we're fine. We have a language" (Shah, 2017) The unique nature of ASL makes it a pathway towards bringing Deaf culture together and has become an avenue of pride for the community. Although many deaf individuals can read lips and voice, Deaf culture acknowledges that ASL is their language. It is important to remember that being born deaf does not make a person automatically a member of Deaf culture. Since Lane, Hoffmeister and Bahan (1996) found that "Nine out of ten deaf people come from hearing homes where deaf language and culture are rarely to be found," many deaf may not have the opportunity to interact with and learn about the larger Deaf culture. This can lead to a struggle during adolescence in the development of cultural identity with Deaf because many deaf children in these circumstances will not learn about Deaf cultural heritage from their hearing parents (Lane, Hoffmeister Bahan, 1996, p. 160) Lane, Hoffmeister and Bahan (1996) discussed the impact of having culturally different parents on deaf children. This situation can lead to a loss of connection with their Deaf identity. It can delay the acquisition of ASL. In many cases, deaf children born to hearing parents are faced with cochlear implants and speech drills in order to make them more acceptable in hearing society. But these choices can lead to lack of acceptance by Deaf culture. An anomaly exists in these situations though, because deaf children may seek out Deaf culture in order to identify with their language, find role models, and develop an understanding of the unique Deaf culture. 2 Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education, Vol. 4, Iss. 1 [2019] Art. 1 https:/digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/ctlle/vol4/iss1/1 Media and Cultural Identity Media, and for the focus of this study, literature in particular, as a societal artifact can impact not only view of self, but also influence how a culture is viewed by those outside of that culture. Fiction is a way of reflecting reality and can represent the concerns of that culture as well as how those concerns are addressed. It is a type of cultural artifact that reflects the perceptions and attitudes of society at the time, and as such it can inform and shape understanding about the values of a specific culture (Fairclough, 1989; Guella, 1983; Harris Baskin, 1987; Taxel, 1994) Accordin
Kim Gangwish
148799212
Disabling Characters: Representations of Disability in Young Adult Literature
Disabling Characters: Representations of Disability in Young Adult Literature Patricia A. Dunn. New York: Peter Lang, 2015. Print; E Book.Over the past 10 to 15 years, we have witnessed an explosion of young adult literature published in the United States. New and veteran authors are consistently offering more high quality titles to their audiences. As part of this increase, more attention (but still not enough) is being paid to diverse characters. If we want readers, and particularly our students, to understand and celebrate the diversity inherent in their lives and communities, then issues of disability should be included when we consider what it means to be diverse. If, as Rudine Sims Bishop has suggested, we seek mirror and window books to describe how we see both ourselves and others when we read literature, then we must seek out books that authentically represent issues of disability, as well as serve to push our thinking about how disability is represented in our society. With so many titles, and so many ways of looking at texts, selecting appropriate books can be difficult.Thankfully, we now have an outstanding guide to navigating this field. In Disabling Characters, Patricia A. Dunn examines classic and contemporary young adult titles through the lens of disability studies, a theoretical approach "that examines society's role in exacerbating whatever impairments individuals may have" (4) Disability studies has been applied to a range of disciplines in recent years, particularly composition studies; however, as Dunn notes, the approach has been relatively slow in affecting practice in K 12 schools. It is this gap that Dunn's work so expertly addresses. Disabling Characters offers a highly readable, theoretically grounded, yet practically applicable text that can be used by a wide range of teachers, scholars, and students.After a thorough and thoughtful introduction, which describes her terminology, her approach to texts as cultural artifacts, and theories that inform her own critical eye, Dunn devotes the book's remaining chapters to themed discussions of classic and contemporary YA novels. Books such as Ron Jones's The Acorn People (1976) Wendy Orr's Peeling the Onion (1996) Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian (2007) and Francisco Stork's Marcelo in the Real World (2009) among many others, receive careful examination as vehicles that can reveal powerful assumptions about disability.Dunn has chosen her titles well, and readers will see that each chapter opens up new awareness of the books individually, and in conversation with each other. I found myself learning things about books I have read (and taught) many times. The lenses that Dunn uses, and the questions that she asks, have influenced the way I look at any titles that discuss disability, and include disabled characters.
Mark Letcher
149703895
Disabling Characters: Representations of Disability in Young Adult Literature
Over the past 10 to 15 years, we have witnessed an explosion of young adult literature published in the United States. New and veteran authors are consistently offering more highquality titles to their audiences. As part of this increase, more attention (but still not enough) is being paid to diverse characters. If we want readers, and particularly our students, to understand and celebrate the diversity inherent in their lives and communities, then issues of disability should be included when we consider what it means to be her terminology, her approach to texts as cultural artifacts, and theories that inform her own critical eye, Dunn devotes the book's remaining chapters to themed discussions of classic and contemporary YA novels. Books such as Ron Jones's The Acorn People (1976) Wendy Orr's Peeling the Onion (1996) Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a PartTime Indian (2007) and Francisco Stork's Marcelo in the Real World (2009) among many others, receive careful examination as vehicles that can reveal powerful assumptions about disability. Dunn has chosen her titles well, and readers will see that each chapter opens up new awareness of the books individually, and in conversation with each other. I found myself learning things about books I have read (and taught) many times. The lenses that Dunn uses, and the questions that she asks, have influenced the way I look at any titles that discuss disability, and include disabled characters. For example, I appreciate (and have borrowed) the term "Rudolph the RedNosed Reindeer stories" to describe books in which a character's impairment allows her or him to make an almost superhuman contribution to the story, a contribution that moves the character from diverse. If, as Rudine Sims Bishop has suggested, we seek mirror and window books to describe how we see both ourselves and others when we read literature, then we must seek out books that authentically represent issues of disability, as well as serve to push our thinking about how disability is represented in our society. With so many titles, and so many ways of looking at texts, selecting appropriate books can be difficult. Thankfully, we now have an outstanding guide to navigating this field. In Disabling Characters, Patricia A. Dunn examines classic and contemporary young adult titles through the lens of disability studies, a theoretical approach "that examines society's role in exacerbating whatever impairments individuals may have" (4) Disability studies has been applied to a range of disciplines in recent years, particularly composition studies; however, as Dunn notes, the approach has been relatively slow in affecting practice in K 12 schools. It is this gap that Dunn's work so expertly addresses. Disabling Characters offers a highly readable, theoretically grounded, yet practically applicable text that can be used by a wide range of teachers, scholars, and students. After a thorough and thoughtful introduction, which describes Book Reviews Ken Lindblom, Column Editor
Patricia A Dunn
193906808
RECOVERING 1940S HORROR CINEMA: TRACES OF A LOST DECADE Ed. Mario DeGiglio Bellemare, Charlie Ellbe, and Kristopher Woofter. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015. 372 pp. $100.00 hardback.
Edited by Mario DeGiglio Belle mare, Charlie Ellbe, and Kristopher Woofter, Recovering 1940s Horror Cinema: Traces of a Lost Decade is a collection of seventeen essays covering an impressive range
Jessica Walker
149904731
From Disability to Eco ability [Review] Anthony J. Nocella II, Amber E. George, and J. L. Schatz, editors. The Intersectionality of Critical Animal, Disability, and Environmental Studies: Toward Eco ability, Justice, and Liberation
The Intersectionality of Critical Animal, Disability, and Environmental Studies: Toward Eco ability, Justice, and Liberation (hereafter, Intersectionality) edited by critical scholars Anthony Nocella II, Amber E. George, and J.L. Schatz, is the follow up collection to an earlier anthology edited by Nocella II, Judy Bentley and Janet Duncan. Published in 2012, Earth, Animal, and Disability Liberation: The Rise of the Eco Ability Movement was visionary in illuminating entanglements of the struggles that people with disabilities share with environmental and nonhuman animal oppression (similar to the realization of the shared oppression of women, animals and the environment that sparked ecofeminism) This connection is termed 'eco ability. Major themes from Earth, Animal, and Disability Liberation were that those not considered normal either physically, mentally, or emotionally are not disabled but merely differently abled, and that the underlying presumption of normalcy is itself a flawed social construction, not a well defined criterion for judging one's suitability for inclusion into moral and social consideration. This journal article is available in Animal Studies Journal: http:/ro.uow.edu.au/asj/vol7/iss1/18 FROM DISABILITY TO ECO ABILITY 330 From Disability to Eco ability [Review] Anthony J. Nocella II, Amber E. George, and J. L. Schatz, editors. The Intersectionality of Critical Animal, Disability, and Environmental Studies: Toward Eco ability, Justice, and Liberation. New York: Lexington Books, 2017. 168 pp. Nathan Poirier Michigan State University The Intersectionality of Critical Animal, Disability, and Environmental Studies: Toward Eco ability, Justice, and Liberation (hereafter, Intersectionality) edited by critical scholars Anthony Nocella II, Amber E. George, and J.L. Schatz, is the follow up collection to an earlier anthology edited by Nocella II, Judy Bentley and Janet Duncan. Published in 2012, Earth, Animal, and Disability Liberation: The Rise of the Eco Ability Movement was visionary in illuminating entanglements of the struggles that people with disabilities share with environmental and nonhuman animal oppression (similar to the realization of the shared oppression of women, animals and the environment that sparked ecofeminism) This connection is termed 'eco ability. Major themes from Earth, Animal, and Disability Liberation were that those not considered normal either physically, mentally, or emotionally are not disabled but merely differently abled, and that the underlying presumption of normalcy is itself a flawed social construction, not a well defined criterion for judging one's suitability for inclusion into moral and social consideration. Intersectionality proceeds through seven chapters that build on these foundational themes while making new connections. Contributors have backgrounds in special education or disability studies, and/or environmental science or education. Thus the expertise in this volume is admirable. With case studies and experiences from the U.S. and Canada, on the whole, Intersectionality focuses on inclusion of the disabled person into activism and liberation discourse, FROM DISABILITY TO ECO ABILITY 331 and not marginalizing individuals deemed 'others' or outside the norm, within social justice struggles. As a case in point, in her contribution, Judy K.C. Bentley describes going to a conference on disability studies as someone studying special education and feeling marginalized by other attendees. Disability studies scholars overgeneralized special education teachers as oppressive and an overall hindrance to students with disabilities and disability liberation because teachers uncritically followed unhelpful school and federal mandates. This constructed a scholarteacher dichotomous hierarchy, and came from those whom Bentley viewed as allies in proclaiming inclusion and speaking against 'Othering. Sarah Conrad addresses this theme further by stressing the point that the focus on in person, physically related activism as the hallmark of environmental and animal advocates marginalizes people with disabilities who may wish to participate but whose physical, emotional, and/or mental stresses impede the possibility. Other themes include: emphasising that Western education reinforces dualisms that value one category at the expense of another (such as able versus disabled, human versus animal) we must learn to be interdependent, not independent (value our diversity) not to work for those with needs, but work with everyone in community building; and that if we do not rethink and re practice the anthropocentric and ableist outlook, we will reconstruct the same oppressive web of circumstances we are in now. What is of invaluable importance about Intersectionality is that it alerts readers to the possibility that while we may proclaim inclusion, at the same time we may perpetuate potentially prejudicial oversights that exclude certain groups. Although a focused volume, Intersectionality does not limit itself to the intersections of animal, disability or environmental activism and liberation. It also encourages reflection on what other implicit biases might exist within individuals or organizations. Sarah Conrad gives examples of how racist, sexist, and ableist notions can contribute to a lack of professional care for those who need it. Only when such injustices are realized and exposed can we then take steps to begin to remedy them. Intersectionality powerfully argues that society generally views disabled people as holding back progress. The authors maintain that what needs to change is to instead view society as holding back the differently abled, and that this is what actually precludes progress. Disability is FROM DISABILITY TO ECO ABILITY 332 not a flaw in the individual that needs to be 'cured. However, the struggles faced by those with disabilities reflect an institutional flaw in mainstream Western culture and society that does need to be addressed. Disability liberation is not helping a person to 'overcome' their disability, but involves working with the disabled to include them in a holistic community and resist the tendency of society to enforce oppressive norms of ability, beauty, and health. We are continually reminded about the role capitalism plays in this with its focus on appealing to such norms to sell commodities through its construction of the 'desirable. In the first essay, by Scott Hurley, on 'the dog fancy' which is the promotion, breeding, and showing of dogs, the connection between capitalism, disability and nonhuman animals is drawn. Dogbreeding for competition is done to enhance and continue the breed, which has resulted in physical disabilities in many individual animals. Each breed has its own standard set by the American Kennel Club (AKC) These imposed ideals are often more akin to deformities and can create significant levels of discomfort and pain such as breathing problems or hip and back pain. If genetics do not cooperate with human desires, two outcomes arise. One is that surgical measures may be used to enhance a dog's look; another is that a dog may be deemed unsuitable for competition, in which case they are considered useless and somehow dispensed with. Dogs that fall outside the norms set by the AKC are considered disabled because they are not desirable for breeding, which recalls the human eugenics movement. Similar results are found in other animal breeding competitions. For instance, pigeon breeding creates body types that would have difficulty performing many essential life functions such as walking or flying in order to win awards (see the photo stream, Australian National Pigeon Association, n.d. Outside of prize competitions, these birds' bodies would be considered grotesquely deformed by most. Sarah Roberts Cady examines two ways in which animal, environmental, and disability studies intersect: reason and normalcy. Reason is the vastly favored quality in granting moral considerations to either living or nonliving beings. Normalcy is a social construction that upholds the status quo which is hurtful to those with disabilities. Roberts Cady argues that on the basis of having an impaired reasoning ability, society excludes people with disabilities from being able to participate which thereby creates the erroneous idea that people with disabilities cannot participate. This reinforces the stigmatized image of the disabled as a hindrance. Such FROM DISABILITY TO ECO ABILITY 333 discrimination has become so normalized that it is rendered invisible: most of us simply do not look at a set of stairs as a quiet but profound act of discrimination towards those in wheelchairs. While both The Intersectionality of Critical Animal, Disability, and Environmental Studies as well as its predecessor Earth, Animal, and Disability Liberation are explicitly intersectional in scope, they tend to focus slightly more on the (human) disability and environmental aspects. Animals are far from ignored, however. In addition to examples mentioned above, Bentley draws parallels between animals in factory farms and the elderly in nursing homes, based on both institutions being profit driven at the expense of the welfare of their occupants, and Amber E. George examines messages of queerness, speciesism, and disability in Looney Toons characters. George gives many examples of episodes where cartoons depict animals, the disabled, and nonheterosexuals as sources for entertainment. The reality of this portrayal creates and helps perpetuate the marginalization and violence towards these vulnerable groups. Altogether, Intersectionality provides a much needed voice that links humans, nonhuman animals, and the environment. At a time when the U.S. political establishment is threatening the healthcare of its sick, aged and disabled, as well as environmental and animal protections for the sake of personal profits, this book is exceptionally timely and
Nathan Poirier
149103497
'Telling Tales' An investigation into the representation of disability in classic children's fairy tales.
The research examined the cultural construction of disability found within children's traditional fairy tales that are employed to support the English National Curriculum. The study employed proto text analysis, a meta analysis process which combines textual analysis, critical discourse analysis and semiotics, to uncover the hidden representations and stereotypes relating to disability that were contained within well known children's fairy tales. The study, which examined five story books in detail, found consistent themes which included normalcy, the emphasis on the 'perfect' physical appearance, exclusion, avoidance and portrayal of the disabled character as an 'object of evil' as well as the employment of the 'happily ever after' story ending. The research concludes these children's fiction books, commonly employed to support the English National Curriculum, are problematic in terms of how they represent disability. The authors argue that this form of children's literature is introducing young children to ableist assumptions and oppressive attitudes towards disability which we suggest could be a factor in why these attitudes are replicated within society. Keywords Disability, Fairy
Jemma Park Alan Hodkinson
208137918
An investigation into the representation of disability in classic children s fairy tales
The research examined the cultural construction of disability found within children's traditional fairy tales that are employed to support the English National Curriculum. The study employed proto text analysis, a meta analysis process which combines textual analysis, critical discourse analysis and semiotics, to uncover the hidden representations and stereotypes relating to disability that were contained within wellknown children's fairy tales. The study, which examined five story books in detail, found consistent themes which included normalcy, the emphasis on the 'perfect' physical appearance, exclusion, avoidance and portrayal of the disabled character as an 'object of evil' as well as the employment of the 'happily ever after' story ending. The research concludes these children's fiction books, commonly employed to support the English National Curriculum, are problematic in terms of how they represent disability. The authors argue that this form of children's literature is introducing young children to ableist assumptions and oppressive attitudes towards disability which we suggest could be a factor in why these attitudes are replicated
Jemma Park Alan Hodkinson
62415109
Above by L. Bobet
Bobet, Leah. Above New York: Arthur A. Levine Books Scholastic, 2012. Print This Young Adult urban fantasy novel takes place in present day Toronto, Canada. The main character is Matthew, a teenager growing up in an underground, secret community known as Safe. This community was founded by Matthew's guardian, Atticus, for disabled outcasts and people with abnormalities. For example, Atticus has claws for hands, and Matthew has scales. In this underground community, Matthew is Teller, which means that he collects and remembers the stories of different individuals living in Safe. Matthew is in love with the traumatized girl Ariel, who can shape shift into a bee and has wings. Ariel came to the Safe as a teenager, and lived in the city before then, but she is slow to trust others, including Matthew, and runs away frequently. Safe is threatened by an exile, known as Corner, who works with an army of shadows. Eventually, Corner invades Safe by following Ariel home after one of the times she ran away. This causes the community to disperse Above, which is actually downtown Toronto. Once there, with the help of Ariel, Matthew has to reunite his community, and reclaim Safe. In order to do this, Matthew must discover the history of Corner, and its connection to Safe. He learns that there are two sides to every story, and not everything is black and white. Good people can make mistakes, and love and relationships are complex and defining elements of what it means to be human. Above has important messages about themes of "good" and "evil" and the gray areas in between. By blurring the lines between fantasy, magic, and medicine, these themes are easy to bridge into the real world. The focus on outcasts and disabled people gives the book a unique perspective, and the setting takes readers to both well known and often passed over areas of downtown Toronto. The book suffers from poor setup, however, and slow character development. Leah Bobet uses a stilted writing style, meant to reflect the main character's education and state of mind. Often this style makes the plotline difficult to follow, and undercuts some of the more intriguing descriptions of Toronto. Readers are also launched into the world without explanation, which can make it difficult to figure out what is going on for the first half of the book. The story can be even more confusing as it is told in patchworks. Outside of Matthew's main storyline, the narratives of other characters are interwoven into the book, so not all events are chronological. Above has a good premise that will appeal to the right group of young adults, but with the difficult writing level and the lack of setup, some of the target audience might lose interest before finishing the novel. It is worth nothing that some of the content deals with difficult topics, including mental illness, abuse, disability, poverty, gender identification, people of different and mixed ethnicities, experimentation on people, and death. Recommended with Reservations: 2 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Colette Leung Colette Leung is a graduate student at the University of Alberta, working in the fields of Library and Information science and Humanities Computing who loves reading, cats, and tea. Her research interests focus around how digital tools can be used to explore fields such as literature, language, and history in new and innovative ways.
Colette Leung
111400362
Book Review: Shaken Allegiances: Two Days from the Continuum of Nonsense
In most books written by earthquake engineering professors, the theme is illustrated with equations that are accompanied by explanations of fault rupture and ground motion, dynamic response and building performance. In this well written book by Professor Bruneau, the theme is illustrated by fictional characters who are accompanied by scenes of an earthquake disaster and the surreal level of incompetence and pettiness with which they respond to it. Most earthquake engineers write their books with dry, third person diction. Bruneau wrote this book with a combination of blunt first person language spoken by the novel's characters and well crafted narrative sentences that include such picturesque metaphors as "violent trespasser" (the earthquake that suddenly enters your house and trashes it) or the way a warehouse littered with debris looks like "the bedroom of some giant teenager." He portrays the perception of a person undergoing the earthquake in a way that you will recognize as quite accurate, if you have ever undergone one: "seconds and inches became minutes and feet." The magnitude 7 earthquake that sets the plot in motion hits Montreal with bull's eye accuracy right under the city, disabling all the bridges across the rivers that surround and divide it. Over 3.5 million people live in that urban region. Without giving away any of the plot, we can say that by the end of the book, the population is reduced by over 1,000 a plausible loss estimate for this scenario and one that certainly isn't sensationalist. The earthquake devastation collapsed or uninhabitable buildings, hazardous material releases and fires, disabled emergency services facilities happens in the midst of forty below weather. Conveniently, 40deg is the one spot on the temperature scales where Celsius and Fahrenheit temperatures match, so readers in the United States, as well as those familiar with metric units (the latter also known as "the rest of the world" will quickly understand how lethal that weather is in a city with no utility services intact. One need not know French to follow the plot and dialogue, though the frequent use of Quebecois swear words is a treat reserved only for those who do. (My high school French classes failed to cover that vocabulary, so I had to look them up; as foreign language phrases in this Englishlanguage book, they are conveniently italicized. Profanity in any language is not usually found in books written by earthquake engineering professors, but then again, novels are not usually written by earthquake engineering professors. The vivid and realistic speech is coarse, but coarse phrases in French are also mellifluous, something like bittersweet chocolate. The novel's earthy sarcasm is not a substitute for solid content about earthquakes, but rather an aid in communicating information about that subject. In its explanation of earthquake engineering facts, usually through the device of the dialogue of a structural engineer conducting earthquake recon
Robert Reitherman
208815564
NATURAL GENETIC ENGINEERING AND NATURAL GENOME EDITING
In 1983, when I finished my studies of philosophies of language and science in particular pragmatic action theory I did not know the direction my research interests would take. In the ensuing four years, I studied a number of articles concerning different subjects in biology and was struck by the key vocabulary that was used for the description of the essential activities of cellular life, such as "genetic code," "genetic information," "cell cell communication," "nucleotide sequences," "protein coding sequences," "self/nonself recognition" all of which connote themes of communication and exchange of information, similar to the themes I had encountered in my studies of philosophy and action theory. Of particular influence on my thinking were the articles and books of Karl von Frisch, who received the Nobel Prize for his work on the language of bees; and a book by Manfred Eigen, in which he developed a profound argument for the idea that the genetic code functions not only as an analogue of natural human language but that both the evolution of life and the evolution of the mind crucially depend on the characteristic features of languages. According to these and many other results of the discourse in the philosophy of science in the 20th century (especially between 1920 and 1980) it was clear that if the genetic code functions like a natural language then a variety of consequences follow because several preconditions must have been met. First, considering the genetic code as a natural language requires there to be a repertoire of signs (indices, icons, symbols)a that can be combinatorially arranged according to syntactic rules, similar to words composed of the characters of the alphabet, to generate information. Without syntactic rules to determine correct sequence order, the combination of signs could not carry informational content, that is, meaning (similarly, if our natural language had no syntactic rules, meaning could not be ascribed to randomly generated collections of words) In other words, a coherent syntax excludes randomly derived mixtures of characters of an alphabet; and for humans, coherent syntax is generated by humans who are competent with the syntactic rules. This book, for example, could contain the same characters but in a random order; such a book would be meaningless. Without competent authors who combine the characters according to a set of coherent syntactic and semantic rules, meaning does not exist. Signs cannot exist or function without sign using agents, and agents generate signs to communicate. In communicative action, agents can both exchange messages about