Suchergebnisse

The diaries and letters of Etty Hillesum (1914-1943) have a special place among the Jewish-Dutch testimonies of the Shoah, so much so that Etty Hillesum studies has become its own field. This book offers the most important contributions from the past fifteen years of international research into Hillesum?s work and life, studying her ethical, philosophical, spiritual, and literary existential search

This thesis combines methods from sociology of literature and natural language processing to answer the questions: what is the relationship between author gender and the perceived literary quality of her work? And to what extent can textual qualities be ascribed to author gender? I first assess Dutch female authors' chances of gaining literary prestige. Even though female authors publish many literary works, they still have a harder time climbing the literary ladder. Results of the 2013 National Reader Survey mirror this skewness. Respondents were asked to supply ratings of literary quality, on a list of 401 recent, bestselling Dutch-language novels in several genres (the Riddle of Literary Quality corpus). Even within genre works by female authors' are judged to be of lesser quality, and 'feminine' novels are seen as the worst; formulaic detectives score better. Female author gender is not a conscious motivation, but analysis of respondents' motivations shows that instead, the text is associated with 'femaleness' - through genre, topics or style. Such associations lead to perception of lower literary quality. I then analyze the text of the novels themselves to examine to which extent such femaleness of text exists. First, computational analysis of the Riddle corpus indicates that author gender is too easily assumed to be the cause of text differences. Moreover, additional visualizations show that gender group differences are often caused by outliers. In the final chapters, I focus on a 'feminine' topic, attention to characters' physical appearance. I show that it is not exclusive to the genre of chick-lit, nor to female authors. In fact, male literary authors write most about physical appearance, in describing female love interests. This novel approach shows that female author gender is connected to the text differently than expected. By reading differently, literary quality can be judged separate from female author gender

The burning man of Tunisia -- The universal political animal -- What economics can and cannot predict -- The invention of the political litmus test -- Unearthing the three roots of political orientation -- Tribalism on the political spectrum -- Ethnocentrism vs. xenophilia -- Religiosity vs. secularism -- Attitudes toward sexuality, homosexuality, and gender roles -- The biology of tribalism -- When outbreeding is fit and inbreeding isn't -- When inbreeding is fit and outbreeding isn't -- How optimal mating happens -- Why gender inequality and fertility change across human history -- The biology of war and genocide -- Do we live in a just world? -- Attitudes toward inequality and authority in society -- Attitudes toward inequality and authority within the family -- The biology of family conflict -- Why sibling conflict occurs and polarizes political personalities -- Are people by nature cooperative or competitive? -- Sages through the ages -- Do perceptions of human nature change as we age? -- Illuminating our true human nature -- The conservative altruism : kin-selection -- The liberal altruism : reciprocity -- Altruism across the lifespan : the neurological development of -- Cynicism -- The altruism that isn't : self-deception among people and -- Politicians -- The enigmatic altruism of heroic rescuers.