مطالب

Purpose : The current study examined the effectiveness of gamified reading of electronic books among adolescents in school libraries. Method : A randomized sample of students aged 11 to 12 years including two control and experimental groups from four schools participated in this study. According to the Mechanics, Dynamics, and Emotions (MDE) framework, six gamification elements were implemented as group challenges. The experiences were then evaluated based on a quasi-experimental design with a post-test via the GAMEX scale. Findings : Multiple independent t-tests using SPSS 26.0 showed that the gamified experience and its relevant subscales including enjoyment, absorption, creative thinking, activation, absence of negative affect, and dominance differed significantly between the two groups. Therefore, the results revealed that implementing gamification in the reading experience within a gamified environment is highly effective and will influence adolescents' interest, motivation and ability to read in library contexts, which can be of interest to experts and policymakers in education and computer science. Conclusion : Various game mechanisms can be integrated into the educational context or platforms like electronic books to make learning interesting and motivating to the students.

Purpose : This research aims to develop an advertising policy model in digital marketing based on eye tracking. Method : The research method is qualitative and based on grounded theory. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect information, and data analysis was performed using the Strauss and Corbin method and the paradigm model. Sampling was theoretical sampling using targeted (judgmental) techniques, based on which 15 interviews were conducted with managers and marketing and advertising experts. Findings : The findings of the research show that during the process of open, central and selective coding, the advertising policy model based on the use of eye tracking consists of Causal categories that include Advertising content, Quality of environmental advertising and Promotional features; contextual categories consist of advertising slogans,  billboard elements, analysis of customer eye movements;  intervening categories consist of online advertising,  advertising costs, advertising through media and mass communication; Central categories that consist of environmental advertising status, development of advertising influence, effective advertising on customers' intentions; category of strategies includes advertising message attractions, evaluation of target environmental advertising selection process, advertising based on customers' taste; consequence category includes competitive advantage, currency innovation, Promotion of strategic marketing decisions. Conclusion : The study concludes that the eye tracking-based advertising policy model provides a comprehensive framework for enhancing advertising strategies. The model emphasizes the importance of considering various factors such as advertising content, consumer behavior, and contextual elements in developing effective advertising campaigns. The research highlights the potential of eye tracking in optimizing advertisements and gaining a competitive edge in the market. From a managerial perspective, the model offers actionable insights for marketers to improve customer engagement and increase advertising effectiveness by leveraging eye tracking data. It also suggests that advertisements should be tailored to consumer preferences and the context in which they are viewed. The study advocates for further research in this area to broaden the application of eye tracking technology in other marketing domains and service sectors. From an academic standpoint, this research contributes to the limited body of knowledge regarding environmental advertising and the use of eye tracking in marketing. It provides a foundation for future studies to explore the relationship between visual marketing and consumer behavior, offering insights that could foster innovative advertising strategies in the digital marketing field.

The present article intends to apply Deleuzist tenets on Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra . Deleuze posits that an artwork is a desiring machine endowed with the basic components of becoming woman, becoming animal, nomadism, war machine as well as BwO (body without organs). Drawing upon them, this research aims to dissolve Rome-Egypt duality and its corresponding genderized subjectivity and racial bias. The major questions raised in the research include: First, how do the early modern biracial lovers, from contrasting geographical spaces, merge in parallelism, and to what effect? Second, to what extent is the course of desubjectification carried out? Third, what vantagepoint (in culturalists’ parlance) is envisioned for the future polity? To answer these questions, the present study probes into Deleuzist theories to demonstrate the characters’ decisiveness to transgress hegemonic codes and legitimate ideological power relations. These formulations align with Ovidian tradition of metamorphosis. Bodies in flux, reenact Shakespeare’s lovers in perpetual passage both within and without until Rome and Egypt – summing up the white/nonwhite polarity – consolidate. The disruptive theories appropriated by the lovers drive them to the communion of the disadvantaged. The final egalitarian gesture would envision a future polity of inclusion, diversity and equity.

A Reviving Rationality Theory offers a knowledge-based and practical framework to rebuild rational thinking in response to the complex crisis of our time. This crisis comes from the limits of traditional rationality, modern instrumental rationality, and postmodern relativism, which have led to stagnation, alienation, environmental destruction, and theoretical paralysis. Reviving Rationality defines rationality as an evolving system of knowledge and action based on three principles: coherent epistemic pluralism, constructive criticism, and evolutionary responsibility. Using multilayered critical realism, it examines reality at four levels (empirical, event-based, structural, and evolutionary) and draws knowledge from five sources (logical reasoning, empirical experience, practical intuition, social dialogue, and historical wisdom). By solving the paradox of fallibilism through distinguishing between the content, method, and purpose of knowledge, and emphasizing human dignity as a core principle for both knowledge and action, this theory moves beyond classic dualities like structure versus freedom or individual versus society. It systematically critiques instrumental rationality, postmodern relativism, and static traditionalism, proposing a three-stage process (analysis, synthesis, decision) and four criteria (logical coherence, alignment with evidence, practical effectiveness, and ethical consistency) to evaluate beliefs and decisions. Reviving Rationality is not a return to traditional or modern rationality, nor a full acceptance of postmodern critiques; instead, it provides an evolutionary, responsible, and inclusive framework that combines the strengths of scientific methods and logical analysis with diverse knowledge sources and ethical considerations to tackle complex issues like climate change and social inequality. This framework is a theoretical tool for rational and humane thinking, open to critique and improvement.

Today, we encounter a question that has rarely been treated as a serious or provocative issue: women and sexuality as a philosophical problem. This theme now acts as a critical marker—an axis that divides entire fields of thought into a before and after. The beginning of this epistemic shift can be traced back to a Freudian question: What does a woman really want? In this article, we follow this question through the lens of Lacanian theory, in which he introduces the concept of sexuation and illuminates the foggy, ambiguous terrain of femininity through the formulation of the hysterical discourse. Moving beyond a purely hysterical approach to womanhood, the French psychoanalyst carved a path for the re-inscription of her historically ambivalent and fragmented image. For Lacan, woman is a symptom—an embodiment of the fundamental contradiction and rupture within the symbolic order. The Woman does not exist; rather, la femme is a rebel who struggles to exist

This paper is a comparative study of two war novels, namely The Book of Collateral Damage by Sinan Antoon and The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers. Both Antoon, an Iraqi-American author, and Powers, an American writer, describe war critically but from very different points of view. In Antoon’s novel, an Iraqi scholar living in the U.S. during the conflict tries to review the war, collect newspaper pieces of war news, and create a catalogue of the people, the land, and the human and non-human entities he knew before and during the war in Iraq. In Powers’ autobiographical account, the narrator is a young soldier struggling with war trauma and trying to express his bereavement for his dead friend. Both novels address war trauma, but the dimensions of trauma and the way memory and remembering operate in the lives of the narrators are very different. This paper argues that the positionality of the authors determines the way they narrate war. The Iraqi scholar tries to revisit the past and finds recollection a therapeutic act, while the young American soldier is haunted by the memory of his lost friend, and forgetting often becomes a survival strategy for him. The approach used to answer the question—How is war trauma experienced differently on the two sides of the same battlefield?—is a postcolonial one. The study borrows some ideas from postcolonial theoreticians such as Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak to analyse the two novels comparatively.

Background: Economic misinformation may result in people making poor financial choices. Multi-level marketing organizations often target women as potential salespeople. The majority of multi-level marketing organizations are predatory. Oftentimes, their online promotion effectively reaches people. Aims: In order to better identify the differences in color used in online advertisements for multi-level marketing organizations, I chose to explore whether health multi-level marketing organization advertisements had colors that corresponded with traditional gender norms or traditional health advertisements. Methodology: I obtained and analyzed exclusively online advertisements for multi-level marketing organizations. I found that there was indeed a difference in both color and brightness between organizations that targeted men and organizations that targeted women. Results: Health multi-level marketing organizations pose a unique danger. Specifically, they promote both economic and health misinformation. Not only do these organizations recruit people to sell products using spurious techniques, but in many cases, these products may be directly harmful to consumers’ health. As a result, more insight into detecting a health multi-level marketing advertisement is necessary. Conclusion: Color is a major element in advertisements. Specifically, distinct colors may be used in advertisements that target different genders. Understanding the differences in multi-level marketing advertisement colors is important: if consumers can identify which organizations are multi-level marketing companies, they will distrust the advertisements.

This article presents new outlooks toward gender transfiguration in David Hare’s Skylight and Pravda in the light of Judith Butler’s theory of Gender Performativity. It examines whether the linguistic performance of Hare's characters is an innate feature or a hallucinatory effect of their naturalized and gendered bodies. Butler asserts that performativity is a ritualized production and a constrained reiteration of cultural intelligibility under the prohibition pressed by power regimes. Surveying Skylight and Pravda elucidates that gender identity is an imitation, which leads Hare’s characters to resignify and recontextualize the parodic gender reproductions. Moreover, the gendered subjects were subordinated to the language that interpellated them, so that each individual became a linguistically stylized occasion. Therefore, the ever-shifting identities of Hare’s characters were established by the power of the injurious language that interpellated the subjects. Springing from the discussion about gender performativity of Hare’s characters, the article concluded that identity is a phantasmatic construction, and what an individual performs is a non-intrinsic parody of the culturally constructed regulations. As a result, the culturally acquired gender is crafted based on the socially recognizable standards, which shape the directionality of the self-representation.

This study aims to compare the ethical systems of Aristotle and Al-Biruni. The former was built in the ‘West’, but the latter was on the ‘Middle’ toward the ‘East’. Reviewing their literature and introducing the new concepts, this study found that while Aristotle’s system influenced Al-Biruni’s in the application of a scientific frame to ethical issues, the two systems shared a concern not for the moral judgment but for the moral agent. However, they differ from each other in the conceptualization of the agents. Aristotle’s model is the person of virtue evaluated by the golden mean, but Al-Biruni’s is the person of manliness rated by the reversibility of others. This comparison advanced the differentiation that the moral pragmatic is devoted to Aristotle’s and the moral practical to Al-Bruni’s. The study would contribute to resolving the current moral confusion and would demonstrate a model to integrate the systems of the western and eastern worlds.

This paper explores the structure of time and the possibility of the future within it, challenging conventional linear representations of temporality. The central thesis argues that the future does not lie on a vertical line above or to the eternally far right of a horizontal timeline; rather, the it emerges logically, not merely sequentially, following the past and present. For the future to fully manifest, the past and present must be thoroughly processed and, in some sense, exhausted. However, catastrophes, which have occurred and will presumably continue to occur, disrupt the flow of time by halting the past and indicating future occurrences in unpredictable ways. Therefore, to truly engage with the future, it is sometimes necessary to revisit the past, much like in psychoanalysis, where exploring repressed experiences helps illuminate present and future trajectories. This brings us to a crucial idea of this article: history and historiography are not solely concerned with understanding past events but also with anticipating and shaping future possibilities. In this light, many future catastrophes have their roots in the past. Recognizing this dynamic allows us to see that many future catastrophes have their origins in unresolved past events, reinforcing the necessity of engaging with history not only as retrospective analysis but as a mode of future-oriented thinking.

Understanding the descriptions of graves and historical mortuary practices is crucial for interpreting contextual information and broader social significance. This study employs an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from archaeological literature, anthropological evidence, and sociological theory to expand the range of possible interpretations. The research is based on ethnoarchaeological research on the mourning ritual of the Bakhtiari people in southwest Iran. A ritual that exemplifies memorials is embodied in monuments called Mafegeh for individuals or groups whose remains are elsewhere. The conceptual framework encompasses the theoretical and methodological aspects of comparing ethnographic and archaeological data. This framework provides a comprehensive approach to effectively analyzing and drawing connections between these two data types. Fieldwork involves conducting archaeological surveys, interviews, and direct ethnographic observations to document the Mafegeh. The study shows theoretical considerations and emphasises the reluctance to forget the dead. Nonreligious beliefs and mental states underlie many motivations of this practice. It may be that mafageh is driven by other symbolic, emotional, and practical reasons, and that has little to do with a belief in immortal souls. Such historically and culturally recurring funerary practices suggest that humans are predisposed to believe in and prepare for an afterlife. A possible reason would have been that the deceased had died elsewhere; thus, the memorial structure was erected to honour him. The research exclusively involves men, and no instances related to women were found.

Duels, despite their cultural visibility and symbolic significance, were never a common nor universal form of conflict resolution. In the Iranian tradition, as presented in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, however, they hold a special place as an element of the hero’s ethos. This raises questions about the extent of the practice of such encounters and about their ritual, whether the fighting took place on foot or on horseback. The article addresses this issue in the context of pre-Islamic Iran, juxtaposing three perspectives: the narrative of Ferdowsi’s epic, historical accounts concerning rulers and commanders, and the iconography of reliefs. In the Shahnameh, mounted combat appears as the most prestigious form, yet the poet subtly challenges its superiority, pointing instead to victory as the true criterion of honor. The comparison of these three sources allows for a deeper understanding of the significance of duels in pre-Islamic Iranian tradition.