• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.38
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• pp.215-243
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• 2015

This paper looks at the literary mood of southwestern Russia in the late Russian Empire, while examining the writers of this area and their literary tendencies. Southwestern literature was formed in the late Russian Empire, and prospered centering around Odessa. Because of the uniformity in the Soviet culture, however, it could not stay alive but disappeared in the history of Russian literature. Odessa, the center of southwestern literature was a multiracial region unlike other Russian cities. A unique culture was created, therefore, combining the western European culture and local ethnicity. Jews in Odessa could enter into the Russian society and assimilate naturally. They could utilize their talents as a strength to enrich the Russian culture without giving up their cultural heritage. For example, in lingual aspects, using Yiddish was not against the Russian culture. In addition, it contributed to interesting new coinages and led to efforts among writers to minimize the gap between the two languages. Many Jewish writers showed special interest not only in Yiddish but also in French, German and other languages. Therefore, they took the lead in translating and introducing west classics. As evident in the way Yiddish language was formed, mixing their language with other languages enabled jews to soak their way into other cultures naturally. Their yearning for the Russian and western European cultures, combined with their unique sense of humor, led to generic twists and problematic experiments. From another point of view, it is also unusual that southwestern literature diversified locational settings and heroic characters in literary works. European style heros, appearance of multiracial people, pain or waggery experienced by Jews in their assimilation process, thrilling revenge to unfair violence of Russians, and espiegle swindlers are the new domains that southwestern literature pioneered. In summary, southwestern literature was formed in a heterogeneous cultural climate, which was entirely different from the Russian Empire. In this regard, it was in deviation from the Russian literary tradition. From the Soviet point of view, it existed as a heresy which was against the Russian Empire.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.38
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• pp.265-295
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• 2015

This article is concerned about a reason for which Cervantes participates an arabic author named Benengeli and morisco translator in his work instead of christian author. From the multi-cultural point of view, the time in which Don Qujote was published, belongs to the Golden Age. In other words, the society can not be supported by the ideology of Purity of Blood in that the morisco, converso (Christian Jewish) have been permitted to coexist in the name of christian proselyte or New Christian despite of invisible discrimination. An invisible discrimination is based on the prejudice and negative stereotype of Old Christian against the New Christian. Cervantes offers an o open space for readers to participate in the creative reading, giving up the absolute authority of author named Benengeli. The deep-rooted prejudice against morisco or muslim author makes the readers of Don Quijote do reinterpret the contents and have question about his sincerity. This disbelief is partly on the basis of hypothesis that Don Quijote would be passed on orally by an arabic or morisco. Leaving the hypothesis alone, Romance, festival performances of morisco or the aljamia literature in the Iberian Peninsula have the chivalry or knights of the Occident. The chivalry in Romance of morisco means that morisco would seek assimilation into the mainstream of Occidental Christian community. At the same time, morisco would be faced with the dilemma of loss of religious identity. But Taqiyya, islamic doctrine, offsets the dilemma between yearning to assimilate into mainstream and religious conscience of morisco in that Taqiyya permits morisco to convert to Christianity in case that they are in danger of life or the following risk. From this point of view, There is no room for doubt about the fact that Taqiyya contributed to social assimilation or multicultural society of the Iberian Peninsula. It has been a long time since a narrow-minded religious dogma and ideology became a anachronistic relic in multicultural society of Spain such as the Purity of Blood. From a relative viewpoint, Don Quijote provides a ground for the collective intelligence among christian, muslim(morisco) and converso through a liberal community between readers and authors who form a pluralistic society.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.82 no.1
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• pp.15-26
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• 2019

The pathogen Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) is the most common cause of nontuberculous mycobacterial pulmonary disease worldwide. The decision to initiate long-term antibiotic treatment is difficult for the physician due to inconsistent disease progression and adverse effects associated with the antibiotic treatment. The prognostic factors for the progression of MAC pulmonary disease are low body mass index, poor nutritional status, presence of cavitary lesion(s), extensive disease, and a positive acid-fast bacilli smear. A regimen consisting of macrolides (clarithromycin or azithromycin) with rifampin and ethambutol has been recommended; this regimen significantly improves the treatment of MAC pulmonary disease and should be maintained for at least 12 months after negative sputum culture conversion. However, the rates of default and disease recurrence after treatment completion are still high. Moreover, treatment failure or macrolide resistance can occur, although in some refractory cases, surgical lung resection can improve treatment outcomes. However, surgical resection should be carefully performed in a well-equipped center and be based on a rigorous risk-benefit analysis in a multidisciplinary setting. New therapies, including clofazimine, inhaled amikacin, and bedaquiline, have shown promising results for the treatment of MAC pulmonary disease, especially in patients with treatment failure or macrolide-resistant MAC pulmonary disease. However, further evidence of the efficacy and safety of these new treatment regimens is needed. Also, a new consensus is needed for treatment outcome definitions as widespread use of these definitions could increase the quality of evidence for the treatment of MAC pulmonary disease.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.33-64
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• 2018

Through the experimental narrative construction by authorial divinity, Muriel Spark's novels and films based on her fiction show the difficulty of living like a human being under various inhumane and manipulative circumstances of the modern capitalistic society. By adopting flash-forward, self-reflection, and deceptive omnipotent viewpoints, her work has surprisingly predicted the post-modern trend in which humans are increasingly attracted and interpellated to the digitalized media. Muriel Spark called the recent anesthetic situation by stimulation "a driver's seat" because it is a symbol of how humans should act to maintain the critical subject. Emphasizing the value of self-reflection, religion and morality in the mechanized society, Muriel Spark stressed literature should play the role of helmsman who sails safely in the rough sea. In Muriel Spark's works, God is often synonymous with writers. As a Jewish immigrant she experienced alienation in Scotland, marital violence, prejudices of the London-based publishing world, Nazism, and Watergate. For her, the harsh reality of the modern society needs to be guided and complemented by something beyond human control. But rather than relying entirely on traditional Catholic doctrines such as Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark has taken a personal, religious view of literature and insists that the genuine writer must play God's play. Seeking for the speculative vision for the future of human life in God's plan, she tries to understand the complex twisted motives of human beings which are often far from the ideal form. Simply put, her search of self-reflection, religion and ethics is modeled on the God's plan for the ideal human being who is supposed as the writer with the transfigurative imagination of the trinity.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.259-292
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• 2009

When AIDS evolved into a narrative, there were lots of mythologies on AIDS. Among them, the one that AIDS is a gay plague was accepted without any special rejection. Now AIDS is no longer a gay-related disease. At the beginning of the epidemic, however, AIDS was said to be a gay plague and gays were blamed for their life styles. Although AIDS was new, it had been in the mind of people. That is, the truths about AIDS were distorted and misunderstood. The social aspects of AIDS were based not on real scientific facts but on the prejudice and the practices which heterosexual society had invented for homosexuals. Here the AIDS crisis is said to be politicized. The socio-political responses to AIDS were effected by the dominance of Reaganism. So this paper investigates the effects of AIDS on the gay community and the reactions of the Reagan administration through analyzing ten American AIDS plays. Four issues are discussed to develop the paper's main idea: the meaning of AIDS, the past to be remembered, the new family system, and the indifference of President Reagan and the silence of media. AIDS means death; the relation between homosexuality and AIDS cannot be separated. Under these social circumstances AIDS becomes a symbol for moral corruption and the person with AIDS is thought to be punished. But a gay person can overcome the fear of death through regaining promiscuous sex and confirming his identity as a gay. Also to survive in the heterosexual society a gay has to make a new family system. Finally the indifference of the Reagan administration and the virtual silence of the media make the crisis more serious. In the conclusion homosexuals are compared to the Jewish people and the responsibility of gay community is also discussed. The important thing is that facing the AIDS crisis, the gay community has spiritually grown up.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.53-82
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• 2022

The Hebrew word for silk, meshi, is mentioned in the Bible only once and there is a possibility that the item to which it referred was made of local wild silk. Although Jewish historical sources from the Roman and Byzantine periods mention silk many times, only a few silk textiles have been discovered at a sited dated to the Byzantine period (4^th-7^th centuries CE). The word "silk" occurs in the New Testament, although only once. A turning point in the history of the Negev (Southern Israel) occurred around 400 CE when it underwent a period of prosperity related to the advent of Christianity and pilgrimage, which enabled the purchase of imported silk textiles. The Early Islamic period (7-8th centuries CE) yielded four (out of 310) silk textiles from Nahal 'Omer on the Spice Routes joining Petra, in the Edom Mountains of modern Jordan, and the mercantile outlets on the Mediterranean Sea, notably Gaza and El Arish. The most important silk textile assemblage in the Southern Levant was found near Jericho at Qarantal Cave 38 and dates to the medieval period (9th-13th centuries CE). Linen textiles decorated with silk tapestry originating in Egypt date back to the 10-11th centuries CE. Mulham textiles - silk warp with hidden cotton wefts - were discovered in the medieval fortress on Jazirat Fara'un (Coral Island) in the Red Sea, 14 kilometers south of Elat and today located in Egypt. Mulham is mentioned in literary sources of the ninth century in Iraq and Iran, whence it spread through the Islamic world. The article will present aspects of the origin, transmission, and exchange of these textiles.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.5
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• pp.809-837
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• 2012

Philip Roth rejects the narrative unity and singularity of the traditional novel and creates instead a multi-levelled, fragmentary, and repetitive narrative. It is not easy to distinguish fact from fiction in The Plot Against America. As an entertaining and creative work of the postmodern historiographic metafiction, Philip Roth's The Plot Against America interrogates the existence of historically verifiable facts, the validity of authentic and official version of history, and reexamines the narrative conventions of history writing. The aim of this paper is to examine Roth's narrative experiment or 'thought experiment' and to explore the intention of creating alternative history in The Plot Against America. Roth does a 'thought experiment' in The Plot Against America. In this cautionary "what if" political fable, Roth hypothesizes that in 1940 aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, an ardent isolationist who was sympathetic to Hiltler, won the presidency. Jewish communities are stunned and terrified as America flirts with fascism and anti-semitism. Reimagining his children-with considerable fact mixed in with the fiction-Roth narrates an alternative history that has an unsettling plausibility. Roth has constructed a brilliantly telling and disturbing historical prism by which to refract the American psyche as it pertain to the discord of individual, race, history in The Plot Against America. Roth analyzes the life of individual in a historic space, the situation of anti-semitism in world of invisible order, racial conflict between black and white in world of visible order, and the darkest side of national power in this work. Roth's stories argue for the equality of various cultures grounded on the common notion of humanity, for an ethic of mutual respect, and for the peaceful resolution of conflicts.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• no.119
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• pp.129-159
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• 2017

The study of Freud's Moses and the background of the establishment of monotheism has become a subject of attention in the new atmosphere of the spreading of political theology and the recent rediscovery of Egyptology. This paper examines the publishing background and intentions of Freud's last book, Moses and Monotheism. And it will emphasize the fact that the Moses-Egyptian theory and his criticism of monotheism hid political theological intentions to prevent the spread of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. According to the Egyptologist Jan Assmann, there is a difference in that Moses' Judaism is monotheism, but Akhenaten's Aton-religion is a cosmotheism, and while Freud emphasizes Moses the 'historical figure' of that name, Assmann refers to Moses as a 'mnemohistorical figure.' Just as Freud said that the source of Jewish hatred is in Moses himself who established monotheism, Assmann argues also, monotheism is based on the so-called "Mosaic distinction" that distinguishes between true religion and false religion, thus it is possible to dismantle oppression and violence through the abolition of the Mosaic distinction. Assmann estimates that Freud had a clear stance to stop the spread of anti-Semitism as "the most explicit opponent of the Mosaic distinction." While anti-Semitic hatred spread to Christians in the Nazi era, Freud regards the real founder of Christianity, a jew Paul, as both a "Judaism destroyer" and a "successor to Judaism." At this point, Taubes began to see Paul's theology from a political theological point of view, and Assmann succeeded it. The "historical Moses" described by Freud are not "Prophet Moses" but "Moses as lawmaker and political reformer", and Jewish hatred has arisen in his distinction. Thus, Freud's monotheistic criticism as "disintegration by historical reduction"(Nietzsche) has political theological power. Just as Taubes interpreted Paul as a political theologian, Assmann found political theological elements in Freud's criticism of monotheism.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.643-654
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to examine the implications of religious activities to longevity in a perspective of religious people in the ancient near east. The major sources of the study are the records of Adad-Guppi in the Neo-Babylonian Empire, prayers of Daniel in the Old Testament and records of Anna in the New Testament. The research method is a synchronic method based on final forms of the texts. Adad-Guppi lived for 104 years with temple-centered lives, fasting-like dedication, prayer and mission for the nation. Daniel fasted and prayed for the return of Jewish nation, and restoration of the city and the temple in Jerusalem, resulting in longevity of late eighties in the court of Babylon. Anna lived for more than 100 years old with her life mission for the messiah in spite of limitations of her times as an old widow. The implications of religious activities with temple-centered lives, fasting, prayer, and mission for the ages are understood to be beneficial to longevity in a perspective of the ancient near east.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.107-130
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• 2008

The study of Korean diaspora has focused on migration, adaptation, and identity of overseas Koreans in China, the CIS, Japan, and the United States. However, the contemporary concept of a diaspora is a way of understanding migration, cultural difference, identity politics, and so on. Thus, this more broadly defined diaspora is used to mean a dispersion of people of a common national origin or of common beliefs living in exile. As of 2007, it is estimated that there are about 7 million Koreans living in 170 countries outside the Korean peninsula. Some have left Korea involuntarily and some others voluntarily. But most of them actively try to maintain their identity and culture as Koreans. With the large number of overseas Koreans, there has recently been the recognition of the importance of networking among overseas Koreans in the 21st century. The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the necessity of Korean Global Network of overseas Koreans. In doing so, this paper reviewed the case of Jewish and Chinese network. Then, this paper indicates the problems in the networking of overseas Koreans and suggests the policy implications for Korean Global Network. Above all, there should be changes in the government's policy towards overseas Koreans in the direction of organizing networks of overseas Koreans to coexist with the mother country. The government should adopt a policy to restore trust in overseas Koreans. It should take a pragmatic approach to the mutual interests in the socioeconomic relations instead of taking a political approach to overseas Koreans.