۱.
This article will explain how and why does Dickens use home as a symbol in his novels. The concept of home is a constant preoccupation in Dickens’s novels. The ideal house is an implicit criticism of the general condition within the total system. The home becomes a microcosm of an ideal society, with love and charity replacing the commerce and capitalism of the outside world. Home is a haven, a sanctuary, and an answer to the ills of the world. It is a protected place not only from dishonest values of the system but from alienating effects of the division of labor. The appropriate method that speaks clearly to this paper’s question is Kenneth Burke’s Cluster analysis. Burke defines cluster analysis as a critical approach to help a critic find rhetors’ worldviews through an examination of the rhetoric that forms their terministic screens. The task of a critic using this method is to notice what subjects cluster about other subjects. This paper argues that through Dickens’s novels, readers come to comprehend the virtues of love and the pleasures of home in an imperfect world. In his lexicon, the patriot is the thankful partaker in history who fights persistently to defend the beauty of his home.
۲.
Simultaneous with the arrival of Arabs, Sistan in the southeastern part of Iran although conquered, still preserved some of the pre-Islamic elements that could survive for centuries. The study and analysis of historical texts and resources reflect religious freedom among the people who had settled in Sistan for centuries. In that area, pre-Islamic Iranian beliefs such as Zoroastrianism and other religions and sects such as Christianity and Judaism were prevalent. Islam had also sects in Sistan, such as Kharijites (or the Khavarij), Karamis and Ismailis. In the meantime, the Khavarij, who were formed after the adversarial process and disintegration of the supporters of Imam Ali (PBUH) and later settled in the eastern parts of Iran due to the pressure of the Umayyads and Abbasids with branches such as Ghali Arzagheh, Atvieh, and Ajardeh, played an effective role in the survival of other religions and sects. In this research, the authors try to use the descriptive-analytical method by referring to historical sources. The goal is to give more clarity to the role of the Khawarij in the life and persistence of different religions in Sistan during the Islamic period, proving its accuracy by providing clear evidences and solid documents.
۳.
This study focuses on the significant lines of development characterizing the history of educational research methodology in Iran. A “historical case study” employed to collect, verify, and synthesize evidence about the same as such appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Education. The results indicated that the educational research in Iran has experienced five, distinct yet, overlapping and simultaneously operating historical moments. The first is the pre-methodology (1919- 1985) stage, during which scholars carried out their investigations without a distinct systematic scientific method. The second (1985- 1994) is a period of rising quantitative approach, during which quantitative methods were becoming central in the education field. The third (1995- 2004) is characterized by insistence on the monopoly of quantitative, during which educational and other social science researchers relied primarily on quantitative methods and statistical inference understood as a means to test the proposed hypotheses. The fourth (2005–2014), is a replacement stage started with the wave of qualitative taking over the traditional and provoked the appearance of a new hegemony. The concern for quality stage (2015-2019) is the fifth when the threat of losing credibility and leaving a relativistic impression were considered by members of the research community. It is concluded that Iran’s educational research urgently requires mobilized and rationalized methodological pluralism with the ultimate goal of improving on existing pedagogical practices.
۴.
This is a comparative study of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea and Iris Murdoch’s Under the Net . The main focus is on the role of trauma in the creation of unreliable narrators. Both Sartre and Murdoch have witnessed the horrors of World War II and it seems that their narratives are affected by such a terrible event. The characters look traumatized and suffer from the burden of the past which has never left them alone. In other words, past events have formed their identity and have rewritten their personality under the situation of World War II. Here, with the help of Wayne C. Booth’s theory of unreliable narrator, the narrators of the selected novels are scrutinized at the social and political contexts of the novels. Accordingly, considering this context and its consequent trauma, the research tries to reveal the presence and function of the unreliable narrators in the selected literary works.
۵.
Hegemonies imposed from sources of power have been an issue of investigation for many years. In recent years, media and movies have gained particular attention due to their society-affecting power. The present study explores how male and female characters are represented in American movies based on the Van Leeuwen’s (2008) social actor categorization. Hence, the researchers focus on the scripts of the movies available in fiction genre of COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English). A representative sample of words depicting each gender was chosen based on their frequencies, and accordingly, their collocations were extracted. The findings indicate that men and women representations were following stereotypical depiction of gender roles; while men tended to be associated with high-ranked jobs, positions, activities, and identification categories, women were shown to be passively linked with inferior features, low-income jobs, child-bearers, and sexual aspects. More specifically, women were mostly objectified through a patriarchal perspective. The results might shed light on the archetypical imposition of power from above and may pave the way for unbiased media where depths, not just the appearances, of characters are of greater significance.
۶.
The Central Plateau of Iran, which has been called by various names until now, has special place in terms of Archaeological developments from the fifth millennium BC to the beginning of the third millennium BC. Archaeological evidence indicates the desolation, destruction, displacement, moving, and formation of sites during that period. Despite the dominance of this situation in the field of settlement, the analysis of pottery data in the first place, followed by architecture, metallurgy, and burial, indicates that there was an ongoing cultural continuity. The sites in the area did not have high sustainablity due to environmental factors. Therefore, the analysis of relevant data based on chaos and complexity theories as well as the general theory indicates that the communities in the region followed a particular pattern from the Transitional Cholcolithic to the Early Bronze Age 1. They would survive with a movement. While the continuity of social life was guaranteed by the abandonment of one site and the formation of a new one, technological, architectural, and economic revolution took place at the new site. It is often observed that this life continuity was accompanied by technological developments and innovations. In fact, the aforementioned societies did not collapse but leaving a site ensured their social and economic life. In the Central Plateau of Iran, we encounter with communities that have pursued the process of endogenous development while at the same time expanding inter-regional communication.
