The Origins of American Literature Studies

Abstract

Although American literature is a standard subject in the American college curriculum, a century ago few people thought it should be taught there. Elizabeth Renker uncovers the complex historical process through which American literature overcame its image of aesthetic and historical inferiority to become an important field for academic study and research. Renker's extensive original archival research focuses on four institutions of higher education serving distinct regional, class, race and gender populations. She argues that American literature's inferior image arose from its affiliation with non-elite schools, teachers and students, and that it had to overcome this social identity in order to achieve status as serious knowledge. Renker's revisionary analysis is an important contribution to the intellectual history of the United States and will be of interest to anyone studying, teaching or researching American literature.

After-pulsing and cross-talk in multi-pixel photon counters

“…PPD, also called silicon photo-mutipliers (SiPM) are becoming a mature technology, both for particle physics and medical imaging [5][6][7]. A PPD is an array of 100 to several 1000 s photodiodes arranged into square pixels operating in Geiger-mode with a current limiting resistor.…”

“…They have been extensively tested in the context of the ND280 detector within the T2K experiment [4,5,16], together with similar devices [17]. A total number of about 50,000 MPPCs will be used in the T2K experiment.…”