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The purpose of this paper is to explore teacher candidates’ response to young adult literature (prose and comics) featuring fat identified protagonists. The paper considers the textual and embodied resources readers use and reject when imagining and interpreting a character’s body. This paper explores how readers’ meaning making was influenced when reading prose versus comics. This paper adds to a corpus of scholarship about the relationships between young adult literature, comics, bodies and reader response theory.

At the time of the study, participants were enrolled in a teacher education program at a Midwestern University, meeting monthly for a voluntary book club dedicated to reading and discussing young adult literature. To examine readers’ responses to comics and prose featuring fat-identified protagonists, the author used descriptive qualitative methodologies to conduct a thematic analysis of meeting transcripts, written participant reflections and researcher memos. Analysis was grounded in theories of reader response, critical fat studies and multimodality.

Analyses indicated many readers reject textual clues indicating a character’s body size and weight were different from their own. Readers read their bodies into the stories, regarding them as self-help narratives instead of radical counternarratives. Some readers were not able to read against their assumptions of thinness (and whiteness) until prompted by the researcher and other participants.

Although many reader response scholars have demonstrated readers’ tendencies toward personal identification in the face of racial and class differences, there is less research regarding classroom practices around the entanglement of physical bodies, body image and texts. Analyzing reader’s responses to the constructions of fat bodies in prose versus comics may help English Language Arts (ELA) educators and students identify and deconstruct ideologies of thin-thinking and fatphobia. This study, which demonstrates thin readers’ tendencies to overidentify with protagonists, suggests ELA classrooms might encourage readers to engage in critical literacies that support them in reading both with and against their identities.

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel image sensor technology for raised characters based on line structured‐light. It can convert raised character's three‐dimensional (3D) features into image's grayscale levels.

The measurement principle and mathematical model are described. An experimental device is established and system parameters are calibrated. A grayscale conversion algorithm is proposed to convert the distortion of laser stripe to the grayscale intensity of image. The article also introduces a four‐factor method to assess the image quality of characters.

Experimental results show that the method can get high‐contrast images of raised characters that are conventionally low‐contrast with the background. Besides, the method does not need complicated calibration and mass computation, which makes the system structure simple and increases the speed of image acquisition.

The paper presents a novel image acquisition method for raised characters.

WordPerfect offers several facilities to handle foreign languages and multi‐lingual documents. This paper discusses two aspects of language handling in WP: the language code, which is a WP formatting code that gives access to language modules and the keyboard editor, which facilitates entering foreign characters. The paper discusses the possibilities offered in the 5.1 version of the program. The last section discusses improvements in WP 6.0.

Character coding systems such as ASCII and EBCDIC are unable to deal with the worldwide range of characters and so possible solutions, such as ISO 10646 and Unicode, involving 16‐bit codes have been suggested. The paper examines how libraries deal with multi‐lingual character sets and describes work being undertaken on the definition of a basic European character set as part of the National Bibliographies on CD‐ROM project being funded as part of the Commission of the European Communities Action Plan for Libraries.

Examines the history of branded characters in children’s marketing; these go back to the Michelin Man in 1898, and include the Robinson Golly and the Jolly Green Giant. Shows how reliance on these characters diminished with television advertising, which allowed animated stories to carry the brand, rather than mere static poster and press characters; some of the characters have now been pensioned off. Outlines three stages of child development related to brand characters, followed by the different form of commercial character usage: licensed product (the character is the brand), brand spokespeople like Tony the Tiger, characters associated with the brand over time (like the Dulux dog), borrowed equity using entertainment characters, and pack design with character visuals. Warns that increased sophistication of children with respect to brands and advertising means that character brands can alienate older children if they are perceived as too childlike.

Professional storytelling and interpretive techniques can be successfully adapted for the classroom. For educators, character interpretation is an especially effective teaching tool. The author uses her extensive experience as an actress, storyteller, and educator to explain why character interpretation works so effectively to engage students and capture their attention. More than traditional methods of instruction, these established techniques put a “face” on history: They place people and events in a relatable, humanizing context that supports the teaching of controversial topics such as human rights and revolution. Using real-world examples, Tucker explains how character interpretation attracts people at all levels of ability and interest. Such presentations enable students to not only connect with historical figures' perspectives and motivations but also compare their own contemporary worldviews. Further, teachers can connect STEM education with history through their choice of people to portray, drawing from contemporary as well as historical figures to illustrate key learning concepts. This chapter outlines the educational value of framing a presentation within a socio/political/scientific context; doing so helps students to relate the presentation content to their own perceptions and to frame appropriate questions for the character if a Q&A takes place. The chapter further deconstructs the complexities of character interpretation into a series of manageable steps, explaining the sequence of storytelling from character conception to performance. Guiding questions at the end provide useful suggestions for dramatic presentations by teachers and students.

The Archers is a much-loved soap opera which relies entirely on audio outputs: on actors speaking and listeners listening. Despite this, many silent characters populate the drama. In fact, from Rosaline in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to Godot in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and not forgetting Tracey the barmaid in Eastenders, silent characters have long played a crucial role in dramatic productions, an influence all the more acutely felt if they are unseen as well as unheard. Therefore, using key examples of silent characters, and with reference to Freda Fry in particular, I discuss the expanding role and influence of the silent characters in The Archers. In addition, by invoking philosophies of language and silence, I will suggest they have an influence and potency in the storylines that speaking actors should envy, and that Freda Fry reigns supreme over all others.

Most fairy tale narratives have a hero, a damsel in distress and the ever-present opposing villain. The villains, or antagonists, share several commonalities across the various narratives as well as one over-arching trait of evil. However, as television viewers have become more intuitive, and demand for more sophisticated narratives have increased, contemporary portrayals of villains, as in the television series Once Upon a Time (Horowitz & Kitsis, 2011–2018), have shifted away from presenting villains as one-dimensional and restricted characters.

Instead, the construct of evil is depicted as a multifaceted and evolutionary trait of the character. Whereas previously evil was the fundamental core of the character it is now presented as a fluid concept. This chapter investigates how the construct of evil, and therefore the villain, has been redefined through a contemporary television narrative.

“Dora! Dora!” squealed my 18-month-old son from his stroller on the crowded subway platform. I scanned the crowd but could not locate the source of his excitement. Then a young girl turned her back to us and I saw on her purple backpack the face of “Dora the Explorer,” whose name had made its way into my son's small vocabulary. This scene could have easily taken place in any city or town in the US; young children of all ethnicities are familiar with Dora's animated television program. Worldwide, parents have spent over $3 billion on Dora the Explorer merchandise since 2001, and most products feature English and Spanish phrases (Jiménez, 2005). And Dora is not alone: her show was just the first in a recent wave of animated educational children's programs featuring Latino main characters and dialogue in Spanish.

This study aims to further investigate the relationship between perceived adherence to gender norms and binge drinking in college students. Thus, researchers examined college students’ perceptions of adherence to masculine and feminine gender norms when gender and alcohol consumption of a vignette character were manipulated.

Undergraduate participants (N = 368) were randomly assigned to one of four vignette conditions: female moderate drinker, female binge drinker, male moderate drinker, male binge drinker and then surveyed regarding perceptions of the vignette character.

The results of this study indicate that there are significant relationships between the vignette character’s alcohol consumption and perceived adherence to feminine gender norms. The character’s gender, as well as the participant’s own alcohol consumption patterns, also related to perceived adherence to feminine gender norms.

College students’ perceptions of binge drinkers are influenced by gender norms, which has important implications for safe consumption of alcohol. When young men (or young women) are encouraged to drink to avoid appearing too feminine, negative consequences may be more likely. In this study, perceptions of the vignette character’s safety were also found to be related to alcohol consumption of the vignette character, as well as the alcohol consumption of the participant, suggesting that a heavy drinker might not show as much concern for another’s heavy consumption.