This work presents an accuracy study of the open source OCR engine, Kraken, on the leading Arabic scholarly journal, al-Abhath. In contrast with other commercially available OCR engines, Kraken is shown to be capable of producing highly accurate Arabic-script OCR. The study also assesses the relative accuracy of typeface-specific and generalized…[Read more]

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Italian intellectuals participated in Italy’s reconstruction with an ideological commitment inspired by the African-American struggle for equal rights in the United States. Drawing on the work of authors including Italo Calvino, Giorgio Caproni, Cesare Pavese, and Elio Vittorini, this essay argues that p…[Read more]

This article reflects on the pedagogical legacy of bell hooks.

To encourage classroom dialectic I often turn to the “quitting” structure of “The Canterbury Tales,” within which pilgrims offer requitals of previous tales that range from exuberant acclamations to
raucous attacks. Within these extremes lie productive forms of correction that emerge as subtle critiques, opposing arguments, and timely (or…[Read more]

The first incarnation of this Broadview edition of Heart of Darkness appeared in 1995, the second in 1999; both were widely acclaimed, and the Goonetilleke Heart of Darkness remained for many years one of Broadview’s best-selling titles. For the third edition the book has been completely revised and updated to take account of the scholarship of t…[Read more]

As neural language models begin to change aspects of everyday life, they understandably attract criticism. This position paper was commissioned for a roundtable at Princeton University, dedicated to one of the most influential critiques: “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?” by Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru,…[Read more]

Gene Wolfe, living though Severian, re-experiences via Thecla’s characterization of him as not being worth enough to value highly for being what he thought he could only amount to her when he first met her, that is, simply a boy at hand, his own once being lured into the attentions’ of his mother and then dismissed by her when she was done usi…[Read more]

Gene Wolfe, living though Severian, re-experiences via Thecla’s characterization of him as not being worth enough to value highly for being what he thought he could only amount to her when he first met her, that is, simply a boy at hand, his own once being lured into the attentions’ of his mother and then dismissed by her when she was done usi…[Read more]

This volume explores the history, evolution, and future of Luso-Hispanic Cultural Studies as a discipline, a pedagogical tool, and a set of working practices by bringing together a diverse group of renowned specialists to examine how the field has grown out of and radically reconsidered some of the basic premises of British Cultural Studies since…[Read more]

Canon, tradition, and origin anchor developmental accounts of Black literary history, describing the forward movement from a singular beginning in terms of birth, maturation, and inheritance. This model delimits a specialized field of study, but also obscures texts, practices, and archives that do not cohere with it. In the study of slave…[Read more]