• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.237-264
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• 2011

Based on its geophysical feature, the island has long been recognized as a separate and self-sustaining space independent of neighboring continent or other islands. Literary tradition has used the island as a metaphor for a utopian alternative to mundane human society with its various kinds of wrongdoings. Recent nature writings have taken up this island metaphor to emphasize the wholeness of the ecosystem in specifically designated natural community or landscapes such as national parks or wilderness preservation areas. Human-nature relations as border-divided area is also recognized as the island. Modern island biogeography, however, has disproved such a concept of islands as autonomous, revealing the contrasting fact that the richness of species on an undisturbed island is determined largely by species immigration from and emigration to a source of colonists. This scientific finding has posited the island as the interconnected nature, but the public and metaphoric use of it still resorts to the old concept of it as isolated and autonomous nature, because this image has been ingrained deeply in our consciousness and culture. Considering the negative consequences from the recognition of nature and nature-humans as isolated space, we need a new nature metaphor that embodies interconnectedness in nature and of human-nature relations. Such feature of interconnectedness is best embedded in the concept of ecotone. Some ecotones are created and maintained through human participation in nature, and this human induced nature of ecotone denotes the possibilities of a constructive relation between them. The substitution of the island with the ecotone as the concept of nature and the image of human-nature relations is expected to correct ecocritical practices of reading of nature writing, which has been predominantly interpreted within the orientation of nature itself and nature-human relations as an isolated and self-autonomous island. Adopting the ecotone in literary study enables ecocriticism to dig out cultural elements embedded in nature writing and reveal socio-political, ideological factors hidden behind the writers' portrayal of nature as islands.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.553-580
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• 2011

This article addresses how the British Empire administered the discipline of space in nineteenth century Ireland. Space control is a part of modern disciplinary practices. I approach this issue in light of the two modern mapping of space: the geometric mapping of space and the Romantic mapping of space. The former, as seen in map-making, is characterized by imposing a standardized, stratified grid on space by eliminating local characteristics of nature. On the other hand, the latter, as shown in picturesque landscaping, aims to balance a close-up observation of nature and a far-sighted view of it, with the result of creating an ironic tension of local diversity and perspectival totality. These modern disciplinary projects of space repeat themselves in the British management of the colonized Irish territory. As the British conquer other lands, they put to good use both geometric and Romantic disciplinary methods of space. Supervising the Ordnance Survey of Ireland from 1824 to 1846, Thomas Frederick Colby, British Director of Ordnance Survey, made a mathematically strict and scientific mapping of Ireland as a scale of six inches to one mile. Parallelled to this geometric colonization of space, the Romantic colonization of space is efficiently used for the Empire's management of Ireland as well. British tourists and pro-unionist Anglo-Irish landed gentries transform it into the nature of picturesque beauty; Ireland's wild boglands turn aesthetically into desolate but beautiful scenery. Picturesque landscape in England is reborn as an aesthetics of desolation in Ireland.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.947-971
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• 2010

Anna Letitia Barbauld's poem "Washing-Day" (1797) has sparked a variety of feminist critical endeavors over the past two decades. While many feminist literary critics try to salvage the poem as a successful tongue-in-cheek riposte directed at the male dominant literary world, more rigorous Marxist feminists accuse Barbauld of being limited by her own middle-class woman's view on women's domestic labor. Legitimate as they may be, these readings fail to elucidate Barbauld's place in a larger literary and intellectual discourse during the eighteenth century. In this paper I read "Washing-Day" as a woman's georgic, a genre or mode concerned with agricultural labor, the public value of which was highly recognized in eighteenth-century England. Alluding to canonical texts by writers like Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope, Barbauld's "loaded lines" in mock-heroic form create a space in which the women's domestic labor of washing interrupts men's daily routines and disrupts their poetic assumptions. While she makes women's work visible, Barbauld also addresses its quintessential nature. Women's work is affective labor; women have to labor physically and mentally to produce the desired domestic comfort. By allowing the image of the soap "bubble" to echo with many "bubbles" in other writers' texts, from the soap bubbles the narrator used to play with as a child to the hot-air balloon "bubble" of the Montgolfier brothers, Barbauld pleasantly equates work and day-dreaming, men's toil and children's play, and finally public, scientific, and recognized labor and private, domestic, and imaginative activities.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.661-692
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• 2009

From the Darwinian perspective, all the human behaviors and thoughts are operated by "the selfish gene," the term coined by Richard Dawkins, which has long been evolving to survive by utilizing the limited quality and quantity of resources. And an organism which fails to regenerate by creating its "replicator" is doomed to extinction, for gene combinations which help an organism to survive and reproduce tend to also improve the gene's own chances of being passed on through generations. Dawkins also coins the term "meme" for a unit of human cultural evolution analogous to the gene, suggesting that such selfish replication may also be the principle for human culture. Ian McEwan is not only a controversial but more importantly influential writer in the 21st century academic world. His 1997 book Enduring Love is not exceptional in that it draws both literary and scientific attention. Intentionally set up with the dynamic conflict between the two cultures, namely art and science, the book explores the way in which the state of the modern minds is misinterpreted and estranged by each other. In this novel, the three main protagonists, Joe, Clarissa, and Jed, each representing the very important three elements of human civilization-cognition/science, emotion/art, and faith/religion-meet an unexpected peril of life. The author of the novel employs the narrative of evolutionary science-in particular the narratives of gene and meme-to provoke the question of the two cultures famously addressed by Snow in the mid 20th century and the further discussions followed by the later Darwinian scholars such as Richard Dawkins. In this paper I aim to illustrate the way in which the author develops the idea of gene science and literature and how he proceeds to provide a sophisticated bridge between the two cultures and induce a kind of consilience by the recurrent name of love in the story of Enduring Love.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.6
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• pp.1151-1171
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• 2011

Conrad's novels, specifically the Lingard Trilogy-Almayer's Folly, An Outcast of the Islands, and The Rescue-and Lord Jim, set in the Southeast Asian or Malay Archipelago can be considered travel literature that played a significant role in British imperial expansion. Conrad's Malay novels were based not only on his experience in the region during his commercial journey but also on information from earlier travel writings about the Malays and their customs, including James Brooke's journals. The English traders in Conrad's novels, namely Lingard and Jim, were partly modeled on Brooke, the White Rajah, who founded and ruled the English colony on the northwest of Borneo in the 1840s. The white traders in Conrad's novels, who act as enlightened rulers, represent the British commercial expansionism, which was obscured by the phenomenon of the civilizing mission in the late nineteenth century. On the other hand, the colonial official Clifford's tales and novels about British Malaya demonstrate the typical travel accounts of the late nineteenth century that stress the civilizing mission over commercial exploitation. The concept of the enlightening mission was rooted in evolutionary anthropological thinking, which developed as part of the natural history in the early nineteenth century. In fact, the development of natural history, stimulating British expansion in search of commercially exploitable resources and lands, enabled travel writing as the collection of natural knowledge to become a profitable business. In Conrad, the white characters are mainly traders acting as colonial rulers, while in Clifford, they are scientific rulers with their commercial interests rarely apparent. In sum, Conrad's novels reveal that the new imperialism of the civilizing mission is still a commercial one, which disturbs rather than contributes to the imperial expansion-in contrast to other travel literature such as Clifford's.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.277-299
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• 2010

This study explores Witi Ihimaera's The Whale Rider (1987) from ecological and postcolonial perspectives. Ihimaera is one of the prominent Maori writers who have critically voiced their concerns about the fragmentation of Maori tradition and the alienation of an environmentally friendly culture in New Zealand. Throughout the novel The Whale Rider, with his mythic imagination and cultural sensitivity, Ihimaera raises ecological awareness in terms of environmental justice and promotes critical consciousness regarding sociocultural and histo-political realities of the Maori people as alienated others in their ancestors' land. Revolving around the developmental process of a young Maori girl named after a mythical Maori ancestor Kahutia Te Rangi also known as the Whale Rider to inherit the Maori leadership, the novel describes the historical, cultural, emotional landscape of the Maori community in the white-centered society of New Zealand. In particular, this paper analyzes the leaving and homing process of narrator Rawiri which is deeply embedded in Maori myth and philosophy toward an eco-friendly culture and postcolonial reality. Indeed, Ihimaera skillfully juxtaposes young man Rawiri's experience outside the Maori community and young girl Kahu's life at the Maori home. In the end, while Kahu achieves her destiny in a mythical way to foster a new vision of harmonious co-existence that is rooted in Maori heritage and compatible with Western culture, Rawiri comes to understand the interrelatedness of all existence and embraces both the rational knowledge of scientific empiricism and the traditional knowledge of spiritual experiences. The novel The Whale Rider was also turned into a film by New Zealand's most influential female film director Niki Caro in 2002, and the film Whale Rider received international acclaim.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.723-752
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• 2012

Although his mythic poetry deals with the fall and resurrection of Albion as the origin of humankind, William Blake (1757-1827) simultaneously links it to the professionalization and unification of disciplinary knowledge itself. He particularly takes a great interest in the cross-referential relation of poetry to science. He argues for the communication of poetry and science on equal footing with each other without the former's prioritization over the latter, or vice versa. In his works Vala, or The Four Zoas (1797-1807) and Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (1804-1820), on which I focus in this essay, Blake's primary problematic is to display strong conflicts among different systems of knowledge. I approach this issue in light of the ideological clash of Newtonian thought, Romantic thought, and postmodern thought. In his poetry, Blake thematizes the very clashes of these different thought patterns. From the standpoint of Romantic thought, first of all, Blake problematizes Newtonian Enlightenment. He criticizes abstract universalization both in poetry and science, which Urizen, one of four Zoas, propagates. Protesting against Urizen's Newtonism, Los values "living form." Thus, Blake demonstrates, through this figure, that poetic imagination and scientific organicism are discursively communicative. Blake, however, also questions the network of Romantic science and Romantic poetry so as to suggest what current critics would call postmodern thought. Blakean postmodernism pursues the self-similarity of organic structure in science and poetry. Precisely, Blake sees polypus as a proliferation of organic body; he arranges four Zoas' self-repetitive stories in a non-linear way. Blake aspires for the conflicting coexistence of different thought patterns.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.293-305
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• 2016

Objective: This study aims to measure cognitive load levels by analyzing the EEG of Koreans and foreigners, when they read a Korean text with care selected by level from the grammar and vocabulary aspects, and compare the cognitive load levels through quantitative values. The study results can be utilized as basic data for more scientific approach, when Korean texts or books are developed, and an evaluation method is built, when the foreigners encounter them for learning or an assignment. Background: Based on 2014, the number of the foreign students studying in Korea was 84,801, and they increase annually. Most of them are from Asian region, and they come to Korea to enter a university or a graduate school in Korea. Because those foreign students aim to learn within Universities in Korea, they receive Korean education from their preparation for study in Korea. To enter a university in Korea, they must acquire grade 4 or higher level in the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK), or they need to complete a certain educational program at each university's affiliated language institution. In such a program, the learners of the Korean language receive Korean education based on texts, except speaking domain, and the comprehension of texts can determine their academic achievements in studying after they enter their desired schools (Jeon, 2004). However, many foreigners, who finish a language course for the short-term, and need to start university study, cannot properly catch up with university classes requiring expertise with the vocabulary and grammar levels learned during the language course. Therefore, reading education, centered on a strategy to understand university textbooks regarded as top level reading texts to the foreigners, is necessary (Kim and Shin, 2015). This study carried out an experiment from a perspective that quantitative data on the readers of the main player of reading education and teaching materials need to be secured to back up the need for reading education for university study learners, and scientifically approach educational design. Namely, this study grasped the difficulty level of reading through the measurement of cognitive loads indicated in the reading activity of each text by dividing the difficulty of a teaching material (book) into eight levels, and the main player of reading into Koreans and foreigners. Method: To identify cognitive loads indicated upon reading Korean texts with care by Koreans and foreigners, this study recruited 16 participants (eight Koreans and eight foreigners). The foreigners were limited to the language course students studying the intermediate level Korean course at university-affiliated language institutions within Seoul Metropolitan Area. To identify cognitive load, as they read a text by level selected from the Korean books (difficulty: eight levels) published by King Sejong Institute (Sejonghakdang.org), the EEG sensor was attached to the frontal love (Fz) and occipital lobe (Oz). After the experiment, this study carried out a questionnaire survey to measure subjective evaluation, and identified the comprehension and difficulty on grammar and words. To find out the effects on schema that may affect text comprehension, this study controlled the Korean texts, and measured EEG and subjective satisfaction. Results: To identify brain's cognitive load, beta band was extracted. As a result, interactions (Fz: p =0.48; Oz: p =0.00) were revealed according to Koreans and foreigners, and difficulty of the text. The cognitive loads of Koreans, the readers whose mother tongue is Korean, were lower in reading Korean texts than those of the foreigners, and the foreigners' cognitive loads became higher gradually according to the difficulty of the texts. From the text four, which is intermediate level in difficulty, remarkable differences started to appear in comparison of the Koreans and foreigners in the beginner's level text. In the subjective evaluation, interactions were revealed according to the Koreans and foreigners and text difficulty (p =0.00), and satisfaction was lower, as the difficulty of the text became higher. Conclusion: When there was background knowledge in reading, namely schema was formed, the comprehension and satisfaction of the texts were higher, although higher levels of vocabulary and grammar were included in the texts than those of the readers. In the case of a text in which the difficulty of grammar was felt high in the subjective evaluation, foreigners' cognitive loads were also high, which shows the result of the loads' going up higher in proportion to the increase of difficulty. This means that the grammar factor functions as a stress factor to the foreigners' reading comprehension. Application: This study quantitatively evaluated the cognitive loads of Koreans and foreigners through EEG, based on readers and the text difficulty, when they read Korean texts. The results of this study can be used for making Korean teaching materials or Korean education content and topic selection for foreigners. If research scope is expanded to reading process using an eye-tracker, the reading education program and evaluation method for foreigners can be developed on the basis of quantitative values.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.113-123
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to understand the elementary student's growth and its implications from the students' experience participating in the science fair by phenomenological study. The results are as follows. First, the students have various experiences. They acquire scientific knowledge and inquiry skills by conducting in-depth experiments, visiting several places, and interviewing experts. They have some experience in writing experiment journals to record the inquiry process in their own language, and presenting their results in public. Second, the students suffer several difficulties while preparing for the science fair. They have some difficulties when the results were not consistent with the hypothesis, or they had to repeat the experiment over and over. They feel burdened in writing the experiment journal. They had a few time to meet friends or for hobbies. Third, the students improve scientific attitude through the science fair, and they receive a positive effect on the affective side. They developed scientific interest, curiosity, cooperation, etc. And they also gained a sense of accomplishment, confidence, friendship, good relationship with teachers, career interest, etc. This study finds out that students participating in the science fair have a lot of experience that cannot be done easily in a normal science class. Even though students confront some difficulties in the inquiry process, they make good progression and feel accomplished. So the science fair is valuable experience for them.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.12 no.8
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• pp.13-19
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• 2012

This paper introduces a test-bed toolkit for evaluating and enhancing text analysis engines which extract technological knowledge from articles, patents, reports and so forth. The toolkit consists of two test-beds for technical entity recognition and relation extraction engines, which are capable of identifying technical entities and predicting semantic relation types between the entities. With using the introduced toolkits, users and developers can efficiently perform the execution monitoring and error analysis of the technical text analysis engines.