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This essay aims to explore the possibilities of alliance and posthuman community through the theoretical frameworks of new materialism and neuroscience. The film After Yang, directed by Kogonada and produced in 2021, poetically depicts a world where Yang, a techno-sapient android, serves as a companion to Jake, Kyra, and their adopted daughter Mika. Yang was primarily purchased to educate and befriend Mika, who was adopted from China. However, Yang abruptly malfunctions due to an unknown problem. In his quest to repair Yang, Jake delves into the unexplored realm of Yang’s memories. While the film’s setting portrays a multicultural and peaceful future, it subtly reveals a dystopian past marked by a war between China and the U.S., and Mika’s experiences of bullying by her schoolmates. Furthermore, posthuman beings such as clones and androids face violence and discrimination. Despite these challenges, Yang’s poetic universe of memories transcends his immediate reality, presenting themes of creativity and mourning as an autopoietic entity. This essay particularly delves into the new materialist and posthuman interpretations of Yang’s existence as an autopoietic being and his experiences. The essay concludes by exploring the possibilities of mnemonic alliance and posthuman community.

This article explores the evolving nature of comics as a legitimate cognitive and narrative medium, challenging traditional perceptions that prioritize language as the primary vehicle for thought. Drawing on Evelina Fedorenko’s research, the article argues that visual thinking mediated by comics plays a crucial role in engaging the brain in ways that verbal texts alone cannot achieve. In doing so, the article uncovers the multimodal nature of comics, emphasizing their capacity to blend visual and verbal elements in a way that fosters complex thought, memory retention, and cognitive engagement. Theories from scholars such as Hillary Chute and Neil Cohn underscore the sophisticated mental processes in reading sequential art, revealing how comics facilitate a unique form of meaning-making that transcends traditional literary forms. By examining affordance and the relational nature of comics, the article positions the medium as a dynamic, participatory storytelling form that challenges conventional views of literature and cognition. It concludes by advocating for a holistic study of comics that incorporates cultural, experiential, and stylistic factors to fully appreciate their cognitive and interpretive richness, affirming their role as a vital form of intellectual and artistic expression.

This study examines rebellious role of ekphrasis poems of Tate Britain on Google Arts and Culture. Tate Britain online museum exhibits John Hegley’s two ekphrasis poems representing C.R.W Nevinson’s Arrival and Soul of Soulless City. Traditionally, Nevinson’s two paintings have been analyzed through the lenses of Modernism and Futurism, with an emphasis on simultaneity divorced from historicity. Hegley’s two ekphrasis poems discover personal stories from three small persons painted in Arrival and give them a prosopopoeia voice. This voice speaks personal history, which has been silenced under the grand vision of Futurism and makes the text uninterpreted by using both languages English and French and multiple perspectives. In the poem of Soul of Soulless City, the prosopopoeia voice also mocks Futurism by evoking nostalgia and undermining the seriousness of Modernism. The principles of the ‘father’ that Futurism once sought to uphold are undermined by the nostalgic lament of the ‘mother.’ Likewise, the seriousness that Modernism embraced as poetic beauty is shattered by the comical backdrop of light-hearted music of the poem. With Hegley’s two ekphrasis poems, Nevinson’s two paintings in the online museum are re-created as new texts that resist Futurism.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the apocalyptic vision in Lord Byron’s poem “Darkness” as Anthropocene eco-anxiety. The poem was written in 1816, often called the ‘year without a summer,’ due to extreme weather from the Tambora volcano eruption the year before. The extreme weather, poor harvests, ensuing famine and social unrest are reflected in “Darkness”, Byron’s darkest poem, which describes an apocalypse. The ecological catastrophe of the sun’s extinction leads to the destruction of ecosystems, civilization and humanity, offering a grim vision of the impact of environmental disaster on the human psyche. The ecological anxiety of “Darkness” paralles the concept of ‘dark ecology’ in that it explores the interconnectedness of humans and the environment, and draws attention to the darker aspects of the impact of climate change and ecological crises on the planet and on humans. By vividly depicting the ecological anxiety stemming from the collapse of the natural world, “Darkness” demonstrates a deep concern about humanity’s unsustainable behaviour and its potential consequences for the environment. The eco-anxiety manifested in the poem thus provides a much-needed act of imagination in today’s ecological crisis, warning of the timeless consequences of environmental catastrophe.

This paper seeks to provide an in-depth ecocritical analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, utilizing deep ecology as the central theoretical framework. By delving into Santiago’s arduous journey and his interactions with the natural world, this study reveals the ecocritical elements embedded within the novel’s narrative. Through Santiago’s evolving relationship with the marlin, the paper contends that his victory should not be seen as a triumph of humanity over nature, but as a shared achievement between man and the natural world. Santiago’s initial perception of the marlin as a formidable adversary gradually shifts as he develops a sense of camaraderie, kinship, and mutual respect, eventually seeing the marlin as an extension of himself. This shift not only reflects a deep ecological perspective but also underscores the interconnectedness of all living beings. Furthermore, the novel’s portrayal of nature as both adversary and companion highlights the complex, reciprocal relationship between humans and the environment. Ultimately, this paper aims to highlight how Hemingway’s novel conveys a message of harmony, respect, and balance between humans and the natural world, encouraging a more sustainable and holistic approach to life.

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple explores Celie’s journey from suffering to forgiveness and coexistence. Celie is raped by her stepfather and is threatened to remain silent. However, she breaks the silence by writing numerous letters to God, Nettie, and others. This article provides a brief history of bibliotherapy and journal therapy, including research findings and journal techniques by Kathleen Adams and James Pennybaker. As the novel progresses, the recipients of Celie’s letters change, reflecting her evolving viewpoints and attitudes. This change signifies her transformation from a passive sufferer to an active agent through expressive and reflective letter writing. Celie’s perspectives on sexuality and Christianity begin to shift when she meets Shug, who acts as a mentor. Shug plays a crucial part when Celie tries to kill Mr.____, who hid Nettie’s letters and treated Celie like a cow. With Shug’s advice, Celie chooses a needle instead of a razor. After this incident, Celie’s letters feature more vivid descriptions of nature, indicating her altered outlook and post-traumatic growth. By the end of this novel, Celie finds peace and clarity by forgiving Albert and, more significantly, by letting go of Shug, even though she really likes her. The final letter, expressing gratitude for everything, reveals that Celie has ultimately found peace and happiness.

This article explores the process of deconstructing heteronormative narratives in Juliet and Juliet, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Juliet and Juliet follows the plot of Romeo and Juliet but reconfigures the content to foreground female homosexuality. Playwright Han Songhee situates the story of Juliet and Juliet as a prequel to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, expanding the homosexual motif in the play into a project of concealing and recovering homosexual narratives. A new character, Juliet from the Montague family, who does not exist in the original, is created and falls in love with Juliet from the Capulet family. Their love, opposed by their families, ultimately leads to a tragic death. The mature love of the two Juliets, who transform each other, transcends the tragic and forms new meanings outside of the compulsive heterosexual society. The female queer narrative in this play expands into a narrative of growth of finding one’s identity, confronting a closed reality. In a time when women’s narratives and solidarity are expanding in literature, popular culture, and the performing arts, Juliet and Juliet holds significant meaning as yet another creative work that embodies contemporary awareness.

In this article, I discuss the foundational value of Therese Park’s A Gift of the Emperor (1997) in an investigation of anticommunism as the shared political unconscious in Korean and Korean American literary works of the ‘comfort women’ issue. My discussion begins by reading the novel’s assimilationist representation of a U.S. anticommunist policy called multiracial democracy through its portrayal of a romantic relationship between a Korean comfort woman, Soon-ah, and a Japanese deserter-cum-American soldier, Sadamu. Then, I examine how this assimilationist representation signals the intertextual implementation of the policy and the accompanying exacerbation of Cold War amnesia of the U.S. involvement in the ‘comfort women’ issue in the other three Korean American novels―Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life (1999), Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman (1997), and Mary Lynn Bracht’s White Chrysanthemum (2018). I arrange these three novels in chronological order to trace their gradual intensification of the policy’s implementation and the resulting amnesia. Lastly, I compare all these four Korean American novels and their Korean counterpart, Lim Chul Woo’s Farewell Valley (2010), to critique the challenges raised by the shared anticommunist political unconscious of the two kindred groups’ literatures of comfort women.

This paper aims to examine whether the lifestyle of Korean participants influences temporal ambiguity resolution in English and Korean. The experiment investigated lifestyle differences between administrators and university students, focusing on their preferred temporal perspectives. The results indicate that administrators averaged significantly higher conscientiousness scores than students, while students averaged significantly higher procrastination scores than administrators and that administrators were significantly more likely to adopt the Time-moving perspective (responding Monday) than students, while both administrators and students were more likely to adopt the Time-moving perspective. Specifically, in the case of English question, the number of time-moving consistent responses significantly differs between administrators and students, while in the case of Korean question, the number of time-moving consistent responses does not significantly differ between administrators and students. This study shows an influence of lifestyle on Korean people’s temporal perspectives on the movement of events in time. Furthermore this study indicates that Korean participants have a baseline preference for the Time-moving perspective in the interpretation of the ambiguous ‘Wednesday’s meeting’ question.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the distribution of alveolar obstruents in palatalization across word boundaries in American English, with a focus on sociolinguistic factors and individual preferences. Utilizing the Buckeye Corpus of Conversational Speech, eight sample word combinations were examined: that you, but you, did you, would you, unless you, this you, because you, and as you. Through audio file analysis and spectrogram examination, we determined the palatalization patterns of word-final alveolar obstruents, /t/, /d/, /s/, and /z/, across word boundaries. The results showed that /t/ is less likely to be palatalized, while /d/, /s/, and /z/ are more frequently palatalized before /j/. The study also revealed that gender significantly influences the palatalization of /d/, with women showing a greater tendency to palatalize than men, who often retain a non-palatalized /d/. For the other consonants, /t/, /s/, and /z/, both genders exhibited similar palatalization patterns, and age was found to have no significant impact on the palatalization of any alveolar obstruent. Logistic regression analysis further identified /t/ as a key predictor of a speaker’s overall palatalization tendency, suggesting that a high preference for palatalizing /t/ correlates with a higher likelihood of palatalizing other consonants as well.

The C-command relationship between negative polarity items (NPIs) and negation is generally unrestricted in English, except when an island intervenes. This paper observes that in Korean, the relationship between NPIs and negation remains similarly unrestricted, except when an island or tense is involved. NPIs receive long-distance licensing across the complementizer ‘-ko’ only when the non-finite embedded predicate is both individual-level and non-finite. However, NPIs receive long-distance licensing across the complementizer ‘-ki’ regardless of whether the non-finite embedded predicate is individual-level or stage-level. NPIs are not licensed across the embedded clauses containing the predicate ‘–ess’, which denotes a foreseeable future tense. A bi-clausal structure is deemed unacceptable because the NPI within the finite embedded clause fails to meet the licensing conditions, although a higher NPI satisfies the clause-mate condition. The NPI ‘-pakkey’ also receives long-distance licensing across a non-finite embedded clause. Additionally, the paper argues that NPIs of the ‘amwuto’ type are licensed by the adverbial subordinator ‘-ceney’, whereas the NPI ‘-pakkey’ is not. Finally, the paper contends that the NPI ‘-pakkey’ cannot be licensed from an adverbial clause.

English exhibits a peculiar agreement phenomenon in thereconstructions, where T agrees with the first conjunct of conjoined nominals rather than the entire conjoined phrase. Based on Lasnik’s (1995) proposal that the expletive there is an LF affix, Bošković (1997) suggested an account for this phenomenon. While attractive, Bošković’s analysis does not align with the latest syntactic theory. This paper proposes a solution for this phenomenon within Chomsky’s (2013, 2015) labeling algorithm framework, maintaining Bošković’s explanatory point. Specifically, it argues that the expletive there merges externally with the associate, forming {there, associate}, and undergoes obligatory movement due to the labeling algorithm. This reduces the issue to split phi-feature agreement of T. The analysis is further validated by explaining three challenging cases: lack of adjacency between there and its associate, unergatives and ergatives’ unsuitability for there-constructions, and a case difficult to explain without the Merge-over-Move Principle. This paper’s analysis offers a cohesive explanation for variations across different syntactic structures involving there-constructions. If this paper’s discussion is on the right track, it supports the validity of Chomsky’s labeling algorithm framework.

This study puts forth a new constraint-based analysis of vowel insertion occurring in the English word formation process in which a base word gets affixed with two derivational suffixes: An epenthetic vowel does not appear when the first affix is attached, but it gets inserted after the affixation of the second suffix. English speakers insert a vowel to break up a medial consonant cluster, which is rooted in the idea that a stressed syllable maximally has two positions or moras in the rhyme. With no vowel insertion, we render the final syllable of the base excessively heavy. As to epenthetic vowel position, we designate it at the end of the base before the first suffix because a vowel insertion never occurs between derivational suffixes in English. To explain these, we adopt *3μ(σˊ) and Contig-Aff to reflect the restriction of moras in stressed syllables and the position of the epenthetic vowel. Intriguingly, when stress does not fall on the final syllable of the base, and the base gets suffixed with identical affixes, the multiple coda clusters in an unstressed syllable are formed and are tolerated even if a vowel insertion does not apply. The constraints used in the study can explain these asymmetrical realizations of the multiple consonant clusters in stressed and unstressed syllables in English.

This study examines the achievements and limitations of the 2015 Revised National English Curriculum in South Korea, focusing on high school English teachers’ perceptions of the four language skills. A survey of 40 high school English teachers revealed that while teachers had a relatively high understanding of the curriculum, there were significant gaps between curriculum goals and classroom implementation. Teachers perceived students’ achievements in reading skills as significantly higher than listening, speaking, and writing. Despite reporting the integrated use of language skills in their classes, teachers primarily focused on reading and writing activities. The study identified several challenges in implementing the curriculum, including exam-oriented education, limited class time, and difficulties in assessment. While teachers mostly acknowledged the need for integrated language skill use, practical constraints hindered effective implementation. The findings suggest a misalignment between curriculum objectives, classroom practices, and assessment methods. The study concludes by discussing implications for the upcoming 2022 Revised Curriculum and recommending comprehensive reforms in teacher training, assessment systems, and educational structures to bridge the gap between curriculum ideals and classroom realities.