مطالب

The theoretical vagueness of a concept such as genius loci (spirit of the place) makes often feel unsatisfied. To avoid the widespread more rhetorical trend to attributing a spirit to every place - a trend already discernible in the progressive secularisation from the Greek world (an uncanny daimon) to the Roman world (a familiar genius) – and/or to explaining it as the outcome of creative human planning (especially architectural-urban), my paper states that a place has its specific genius only if it radiates a specific and particularly intense-authoritative atmosphere. That is, when the place is pervaded by a quasi-objective feeling that affects the perceiver and finds in their felt (or lived) body its precise sounding board. Just as there are different types of atmospheres (prototypic, derivative, spurious) and atmospheric encounters, there are therefore different types of genius loci, also depending on one's conception of space, here always understood as lived space, i.e. qualitative-anisotropic, and not in a physical-geometric (isotropic) sense. Contrary to the today’s prevailing projectivist-constructionist explanation (culturalist as well as neuroscientific) and the tendency to explain every affective quality inherent in the external world as a subjective projection, i.e. according to an hydraulic model following the Platonic “invention” of the soul, a “pathic aesthetics” based on a neo-phenomenological approach means with genius loci, in the authentic and original sense of the term, a lifewordly qualitative-emotional experience: in brief a spatialised atmospheric feeling that can sometimes be protected, maybe also improved but never arbitrarily created.

Purpose : The main objective of this research is to present an agile data management system for the intelligent banking industry, by leveraging agile principles, the proposed system aims to support banks in generating data-driven value and smart banking. Method : The research is grounded in the principles of systems thinking, data-centricity, lean thinking, and the agile manifesto. With a practical and developmental purpose, it employs deduction and exploration to draw conclusion. The methodology combines design science and meta-synthesis. Following the design science process, explaining the problem, describing the solution, designing initial solution (using meta-synthesis) validating the solution, and then sharing the results were all steps in the study. Findings : The results consist of codes organized into four-tier structure: design domain, theme, category, axial code, and open code. These are presented as a conceptual model-compromising level zero and level one- which serves as the reference model for an agile data management system for smart banking. Conclusion : An agile data management system, like any other system, it is essential to consider the data management system as having four elements: input (goals), processing (enablers), output (results), and feedback (based on agile and lean thinking). The banking industry has been slow to adopt new technologies, with many banks still reliant on mainframes. This hesitation stems partly from increased caution due to rising cyber-attacks and partly from concerns about regulatory requirements. The proposed model addresses banks' concerns by demonstrating how to integrate agile methods into a data management system for a smart bank.

Objective: This study analyzes the role of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) in representing and steering the nationwide protests of autumn 2022 in Iran from the perspective of psychological operations and hybrid warfare. It demonstrates how the organization sought to construct a fabricated social reality against the Islamic Republic of Iran through targeted narrative-building. Method: The research adopts a descriptive–analytical approach using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), based on Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model (1995) and Teun A. van Dijk’s cognitive–ideological framework (2006). Data were purposively collected from the organization’s official media outlets (Simaye Azadi, Iran Azadi, statements of the National Council of Resistance, and affiliated social media channels) from September to December 2022 and systematically analyzed. Results: By employing techniques such as emotional provocation, antagonistic binary construction (us vs. them), appropriation of the slogan "Woman, Life, Freedom," simulation of the scale of uprising, making hero of protesters, victimization, persistent labeling of the ruling system, and the discursive linkage of internal and external "Resistance," the MEK produced a fully ideological and regime-change–oriented narrative of the protests. In doing so, it played an active role in the project of hybrid and cognitive warfare against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Mahsa Amini functioned as a "Discursive nodal point," while the Iranian woman was framed as the "Revolutionary Subject," constituting the central signifiers of this narrative. Conclusion: During the 2022 protests, the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization did not merely reflect reality; rather, it acted as an active agent in constructing a fabricated social reality and engineering public opinion. Its performance should be understood as part of a broader strategy of narrative warfare and psychological operations against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

En admettant le rôle dynamique du lecteur, la théorie de la réception littéraire se propose l'enquête sur la réaction culturelle et critique du récepteur. La langue française a trouvé ces deux derniers siècles une place importante dans la bibliothèque d’Iranien. Nous nous proposons d’étudier celle occupée par d’écrivains belges francophones, bien connus en Iran pendant les centes années dérnières (de 1921 à 2021) : Maurice Maeterlinck, Georges Simenon et Amélie Nothomb. Nous aborderons tout d’abord les traces des influences littéraires et culturelles des œuvres de ces écrivains en Iran. Puis, nous ferons l’analyse des versions traduites des œuvres de ces derniers, des articles, des textes critiques et des notes des traducteurs publiés sur eux, et ce à la lumière des évènements sociaux en Iran. Ces écrivains ont la faveur des traducteurs, des maisons d'édition et des lecteurs persans. Même si la diffusion de leurs ouvrages n’est pas toujours régulière, elles ont eu une influence sur le roman et le théâtre persans. De plus, les recherches faites sur ces écrivains montrent qu'ils connaissaient bien souvent la littérature persane dont ils se sont même inspirés pour écrire leurs œuvres.

The study was carried out to investigate effects of ChatGPT on 21st century skills of university students. Since there are several 21st century skills, the study focused on only five (i.e. critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, and problem-solving skills). The study employed systematic review of literature in which PRISMA framework was employed to facilitate selection of studies included in the review. Findings revealed that ChatGPT poses effects to students on each of the 21st century skills. However, the type and magnitude of effects depends on the type of skill. ChatGPT was found to bring more positive impacts to university students’ communication skills while more negative impacts on collaboration skills. While that was the case, the study found that ChatGPT can bring either positive or negative impacts on critical thinking, creativity and problem-solving skills. The effects depend mainly on the magnitude of students’ dependency on it. Those that depend more on it are likely to be more negatively affected. For instance, the more the students depend on ChatGPT, the less the ability for them to think critically and solve problems. The study recommends, therefore, that universities should embrace ChatGPT instead of avoiding it. However, they should find ways to reduce students’ over-reliance on it, among other recommendations.

Gilles Deleuze argues that in Samuel Beckett’s Film the perception of self by self, though agonizing, opens onto a promising vision: for one confined to the personal reduction of life, it discloses a transcendental expansion of LIFE. In cinematic perception, this transformation marks the shift from the classical cinema of movement, where protagonists made films, to a modern cinema of time, where the camera becomes the protagonist, inviting actors, like the audience, to watch the film enriched by its transcendental perspective. This article shows what appears in Deleuzian time-cinema as a proliferation of life, by sustaining the audience’s belief in transcendental time as a horizon of perpetually emerging life-events, is, in fact, an entropic eventization of the audience’s memory, a process that, according to Bernard Stiegler, entails the loss of savoir-faire. Thus, the revelatory shock-images in Beckett’s Film signify an entropic loss of memory’s ground, becoming pathological shocks that require therapeutic care and invention of new life-therapies, anticipating a negentropic reinvention of time the transcendental camera must watch and read its film from. Here, E is seen as a therapeutic camera, healed out of transcendental time through O’s analysing the pharmacological shock.

Award-winning novelist, cultural anthropologist, and environmental advocate, Amitav Gosh is well known for his Ibis trilogy: Sea of Poppies (2008), River Smoke (2011), and Flood of Fire (2015) wherein he dramatizes the First Opium War between England and China in the first half of the nineteenth century. His nonfictional Smoke and Ashes (2023) is the fruit of his research notes collected while writing the trilogy providing good background information for the trilogy’s intricate world. Besides Gosh’s scholars, the book will prove worthwhile for postcolonial historians and anyone interested in the complex machinery of the British Empire in nineteenth-century India and China. The book’s great intellectual charm and strength lie in its genre-defying quality. It synthesizes historical analysis with travel narrative, personal memoir, socio-cultural investigation, and the examination of artistic works related to the opium industry. In addition, it does not confine its analysis to the colonial past since it tracks the vicious consequences of the opium trade in modern times, in particular America. Indeed, the book is a scholarly endeavor to expose not only the fictionality of Western capitalism but also the depth of the British Empire’s gross injustice to subjugated people and their world through critical engagement with extensive colonial archives. He achieves his goal thanks to his lucid prose, powerful arguments, thorough research, and ethical stance.

Transfer of learning from English course to other contexts is one of the most fundamental objectives of English for Special Academic Purposes (ESAP) instruction. Providing opportunities to transfer the acquired knowledge from the ESAP writing course to writing tasks of specialized disciplines as well as analyzing students’ perceptions of transfer catalysts and barriers might suggest a foundation for future educational planning. This study examines how engineering graduate students who participated in an ESAP course assessed the four constructs of learning transfer inventory that might facilitate or inhibit the transfer of learning in discipline-specific academic writing programs. Sixty engineering graduate students participated in this study. During the ESAP course, collaboratively designed discipline-specific writing tasks were presented and practiced through multimodal input. The variation in participants’ writing skills throughout the semester was recorded and analyzed. The catalysts and the barriers to the learning transfer act were identified by administering the Learning Transfer System Inventory (LTSI). The participants’ evaluations of the treatment they had received was assessed through a focus group interview. Results indicated that the students could obtain significant levels of academic writing skills and finally transfer their acquired instruction to authentic discipline practices. Furthermore, data analysis of the LTSI demonstrated that transfer of writing outcomes will be increased if more consideration of work-related factors is considered in higher education. All participants reported personal capacity as the main impediment induced by the work-related construct. Students’ positive attitudes toward three ability factors and all motivational factors suggested that an auspicious foundation for future educational planning exists if disciplinary and institutional considerations are embraced.

The aim of this research is to analyze and map international scientific publications related to Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV). This study adopts an interpretive paradigm and employs a descriptive approach using a systematic review method. By utilizing specific search terms in the Web of Science database, covering the period from 1985 to 2024, and after thorough screening and qualitative assessment of the studies, the final analysis was conducted on 639 articles. An in-depth examination of the selected articles revealed a notable increase in international research in this field, particularly during the last twenty years. However, there have been periods of decreased research activity in years such as 2008, 2017, and 2023. The primary focus of this research has been on customer lifetime value and customer segmentation, with a significant association to the keyword "data mining," highlighting the importance of this technique in the discipline. Moreover, it was found that countries like Iran, Canada, and Turkey have lower average citation rates, whereas the United States, France, and Germany exhibit higher average citation rates. This suggests different patterns of co-authorship among these countries. By examining the most and least productive countries and researchers through scientometrics, new research opportunities in the field of customer lifetime value can be identified, providing insights for Iranian researchers to enhance the visibility of their findings on an international scale.

Forough Farrokhzad (1934-1966) emerged as a distinguished intellectual contemporary Iranian poet whose poetry, while embracing the notion of “tragic culture,” rejects every dualistic structure and gender essentialism. Instead, it posits the potential for human empathy, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of gender dynamics within the broader context of human experience. According to “Typology of Women” in Nietzsche's writings, the tragic vision is determined in the theory of the “Dionysian Woman” after passing through the stages of “desire for illusion” and “desire for truth.” On the other hand, this potentiality within Farrokhzad's poetic corpus exhibits a gradual and evolutionary character. In accordance with her aesthetic approach, it serves as a manifestation of the “transformations of the soul” delineated by Nietzsche. His conceptual framework posits a “transformative journey of the soul,” progressing from the stage of submission (camel) through rebellion and destruction (lion) to ultimately attain the stage of innocent creation (child). Employing an analytical-descriptive methodology, this study elucidates the manifestation of the transformative paradigm in Farrokhzad's poetry, primarily evident in her dual modes of "erotic" and "rebellious" poetic expressions, which reflect her engagement with metaphysical themes. Furthermore, an exploration of the imprint of the "love of fate" concept in Farrokhzad's verse is presented as a derivative outcome.