CONTEMPLATING THE DIVERSE BEAST: ANALYZING SCIENCE FICTION'S MARGINALIZATION

Jeffrey Vincent Yule

There is perhaps more nonsense spoken about science fiction than any other

variety of narrative.

—David Hartwell, Age of Wonder

There is an old Indian folk tale about four blind men who encounter an elephant and try to identify it. Since each man's vantage point is different, they all describe the elephant differently. One fellow finds the animal's tail and assumes it is a rope; another believes a leg is a log; the third man thinks an ear is a fan. The fourth man is sure that whatever he and his companions have found is infinite, because he cannot find an end to the massive animal's body. The "point" of this story is that our understanding of things depends on how completely we perceive them and how well we, as a group, synthesize the information we obtain. Science fiction's current situation on the margin of academia and criticism has many parallels with the situation of the elephant, with academics and critics most often filling roles analogous to those of the blind men. Everyone is quite sure of what it is they have found, but they cannot agree because everyone is too busy defining the whole based on its parts instead of synthesizing their findings to produce a more satisfactory answer.

The use of the word "beast" in my title is not meant to suggest that I consider science fiction a genre of beastly fiction. In fact, although much of the writing is clumsy, I consider the genre no more beastly than any other sort of fiction. (What fictional form, after all, doesn't have more than its share of clumsy writers and flawed texts?) Instead, I chose the term "beast" to suggest the great size and diversity of the science fiction corpus. Simply put, as the fourth blind man recognizes, the elephant is a very large animal. "Beast," for me, captures something of that magnitude which "animal," with its neutrality regarding matters of size, does not. My title is simply meant to suggest that the large, diverse genre of science fiction is often categorized by critics who are relying on insufficient information (critics, as it were, feeling the texture of only a tail or a leg) or who are drawing imprecise conclusions (assuming too quickly that the tail or leg beneath their hands reveals not only the texture of the entire object under study but its "true nature" as well), or both. In order to analyze science fiction's current situation in the academy and literary criticism, I will begin by setting my hands on the beast.

A Historical Overview

Hugo Gemsback coined the term "science fiction" in 1929, referring to the type of fiction he began publishing in the magazine Amazing Stories in 1926. "Science fiction" supplanted the earlier term "scientifiction," while still carrying the same meaning: "the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe type of story—a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision" (Gemsback in Fiedler, Dreams 11).

Gernsback's definition is serviceable although not particularly comprehensive, but it recognizes that science fiction predates Amazing Stories. Thus, although Gernsback mentions only Verne, Wells, and Poe specifically, he could easily have added Mary Shelley for Frankenstein (1818), Herman Melville for "The Tartarus of Maids," Samuel Clemens for the posthumously published "Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes," Nathaniel Hawthorne for, among other stories, "Rappaccini's Daughter," George Chesney for The Battle of Dorking (1871) or Robert Louis Stevenson for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886).1 Certainly not all these works are charming in the modern sense of the term, but they fulfill the spirit of Gernsback's definition at least as well as Poe's fiction. Later in this introduction I shall return to the issues involved with defining science fiction; to prepare for that venture, though, I will first review some of the fundamentals relating to Gernsback's science fiction publications and their effect on the genre's literary status.

Before the 1920s, there was no stigma attached to science fiction, nor was it differentiated from other fiction as it is today (Blish 23; Fiedler, Dreams 11; Lern 49). H. G. Wells, for instance, was a central literary figure of his day and carried on literary correspondences and friendshipswith, among others, Joseph Conrad and Henry James. Although he eventually fell out with both men, in the years before those breaks they saw him as a talented peer.2 Thus, although James disagreed with Wells on numerous matters of style, he also praised some of his works, especially The Time Machine. Indeed, it is some measure of the Wellsian influence that after James's death, a substantial but unfinished story of time travel entitled The Sense of the Past (1917) was found among his papers (Franklin x), while parallels between Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907) and Wells's The Invisible Man (1897) suggest a similar Wellsian influence (McConnell 48, 116).

During the last decades of the nineteenth-century and the first decades of the twentieth, nothing resembling today's well-established academic and critical circles existed. New novels were reviewed in a variety of newspapers and magazines, but fiction as a whole was not subjected to the sort of scrutiny characteristic of contemporary academic criticism. Nonetheless, as literature was gauged during this period, Wells was well-respected, both as a popular writer in the sense that his books sold very well and as a technician in that the authors of the period who aspired to art rather than simple craft took his work, including the scientific romances, seriously.

By the late 1920s and '30s, however, science fiction had fallen into disrepute due to a process which is commonly referred to today as "ghettoization." Traditionally, critics explain this phenomenon as the result of the inferior writing in Gernsback's Amazing Stories and its imitators (Aldiss; Blish 21-28; Hartwell; et al). Gernsback's editorial standards placed great emphasis on ideas but not on style, originality, or even what might best be described as simple linguistic fluency. As a result, works by authors like Wells and Poe were presented alongside distinctly derivative stories by writers whose fiction was limited by a lack of creativity or a lack of concern with the fundamentals of good writing—or both. The situation was exacerbated by commercial considerations. So many science fiction periodicals demanded material during the pulp boom that editors were forced to print inferior material if they were unable to locate anything better, and the dynamics on the demand side of the economic equation were equally problematic. Since pulp writers were poorly paid, they were forced to write quickly to make even subsistence salaries. As a result, productivity rather than carefully edited prose or stylistic innovation was their paramount concern. This insular, popular fiction environment is the ghetto where modern science fiction began. One can hardly be surprised that these manifestations of science fiction were not well-accepted by selective readers, despite their popularity with pulp audiences. But we ought to remember that science fiction was very popular.

Indeed, there was an explosion of science fiction during the '20s and '30s, in fiction as well as in comic books, films, and radio. Not surprisingly, however, science fiction's very popularity was a major contributing factor to its commercial, academic, and literary ghettoization, just as its popularity continues to contribute to its general marginalization. After all, to appeal to a broad, popular audience, any artistic form must cater to the lowest common denominators of taste. It must be simple so that as many people as possible can understand it. The result in science fiction is sci-fi—all the inferior manifestations of science fiction.

So it was that science fiction gained popularity and notoriety but not respectability. Later, a variety of editors would supplant Gernsback's authority and, working at other publications, dictate which sorts of science fiction would be published. John Campbell's Astounding, Horace Gold's Galaxy, and Michael Moorcock's New Worlds began to recognize science fiction's sociological and thematic possibilities, developed an interest with basic stylistic and grammatical competence, and established a hospitable environment for innovative science fiction. Since Gernsback, a host of authors, including but not limited to Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, Ursula Le Guin, and Kurt Vonnegut, has written science fiction that bears little resemblance to the clumsy, ungrammatical fiction many readers associate with the pulps.

Many mainstream authors and academics have also experimented with and/or commented on one or more forms of science fiction, including Kingsley Amis, Margaret Atwood, Anthony Burgess, William Burroughs, Leslie Fiedler, Aldous Huxley, Doris Lessing, C. S. Lewis, and Robert Scholes. Samuel Moskowitz taught the first college class on science fiction at the College of the City of New York in 1953 (Delany, Starboard 166).

In 1959, the Modern Language Association inaugurated the continuing seminar on science fiction (Delany, Starboard 166), and now there are hundreds of science fiction classes at high schools, colleges, and universities all over the nation. Currently, numerous academic conferences, scholarly books, and journals are devoted to the form. Yet despite all these considerations and the fact that science fiction is now both widely published and available, the academic-critical community's acceptance of science fiction is at best qualified.

Many university English departments, for instance, still offer no courses in science fiction, while others offer them more as a concession to student interest than out of a sincere belief that science fiction is as worthy of study as Victorian novels, Renaissance drama, or twentieth-century poetry. The courses do exist, but they are taught by whichever faculty members or graduate students can be found to handle them, often regardless of their experience or familiarity with the genre. As Leslie Fiedler phrases it, the genre has been claimed by academics "who need it to bring life into dying classes in traditional literature" (Dreams 22). That core reading lists for masters and doctoral exams rarely include works of science fiction only further suggests that the universities' embrace of science fiction is halfhearted, especially in light of the fact that the genre has been one of the most prevalent twentieth-century fictional forms. Old prejudices die hard. And so it is that I come to this study.

Defenses generally counter specific charges. Such is the case, for instance, with Sidney's An Apologie for Poetrie (1580-83) or John Dennis's The Usefulness of the Stage (1698), both of which replied to Puritan attacks—one on poetry and the other on theater. A defense of science fiction, or at least this particular defense of science fiction, takes a slightly different approach. I am interested in coming to a more complete understanding of science fiction's current marginalization. A blow-by-blow refutation of the attacks made against science fiction would be both simplistic and tedious. Thus, by the same principle that encourages reviewers and critics to expend as much time as possible paying attention to the best work available, I will focus primarily on the criticisms, both explicit and implicit, which are the most significant either because their incorrect assumptions have influenced the way science fiction is perceived or because those critiques accurately locate weaknesses in science fiction and suggest avenues for real improvement.

I shall begin by defining science fiction as I and others have used the term. This should avoid many of the problems which arise when critics use the same term to refer not only to different texts but also to different social or cultural phenomena. My first chapter locates science fiction on the contemporary academic-critical landscape and more clearly defines the nature of its current marginalization. Chapters two and three address the most significant criticisms of the genre, explaining how, despite their flaws, these critiques offer valuable insights into the genre. In my second chapter, I focus on the issue of characterization, both to address the matter on its own terms and to set the stage for the following chapters, where the matter of characterization remains a central thread of my discussion. Chapter three responds to the broad critique of science fiction offered by Stanislaw Lem's pivotal essays: "Science Fiction: A Hopeless Case—with Exceptions" (1973), "Cosmology and Science Fiction" (1977), and "Metafantasia: The Possibilities of Science Fiction" (1981). In my final chapter, I move beyond an analysis of science fiction's current situation to attempt some corrective criticism by examining two overlooked examples of characterization. By offering a case study of William Gibson's short stories "Hinterlands" (1983) and "The Winter Market" (1986), I seek to show how criticism, even by well-intentioned commentators familiar with science fiction, can fail, while suggesting the manner in which both those inside and outside of the science fiction community can address the work of an author who is seen by both groups as a significant writer.

Definitions and Terminology

Although genres resist definition (Delany, "Reflections" 236; Rose 1 -4), and, indeed, the term "genre" is itself problematic (Frye 246-248; Roberts 199-204, 217, 225), critics traditionally open discussions of science fiction with definitions anyway. For the purposes of this study, I will outline the generally accepted boundaries which previous criticism has established for science fiction before explaining the specific terms I will use. The necessary starting point for both of these tasks is an overview of the difficulties in formulating specific, generally applicable definitions of science fiction. Existing genre definitions admit a wide range of works which quite clearly are not science fiction—including Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, and Bram Stoker's Dracula— while excluding such central science fiction texts as John Campbell's "Night," Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, and Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz (Knight, "What Is" 62-63). John Campbell even states that since science fiction encompasses all fictional possibilities, all other fictional forms represent special cases of science fiction (Spinrad 35).

The overarching absurdity of attempts to define science fiction is perhaps best reflected by Roger Zelazny, who comments that whenever he hears a reasonable definition of the genre, he writes a science fiction story which violates that definition (Alterman 25). But this effort provokes more than authorial playfulness; it leads to the critical fatigue captured in observations that even a "generally acceptable literary definition" of science fiction is impossible (Spinrad 34). Briefly put, seeking a comprehensive definition of science fiction is something of a Grail quest, and past attempts suggest that the most critics can hope to do is describe the genre's overall tendencies (Delany, "Reflections" 236), defining science fiction as a historical phenomenon, "a developing complex of themes, attitudes, and formal strategies that, taken together, constitute a general set of expectations" (Roberts 200; Rose 4; Suvin in Stableford 68).

Fortunately, although I, like my predecessors, cannot formulate a comprehensive definition of science fiction, an overview of the genre's tendencies and the wide range of expectations readers bring to science fiction texts will adequately serve my purposes. Still, within the confines of that framework, a variety of distinctions will be both necessary and useful.

Most broadly, science fiction is a subcategory of fantasy whose events represent extrapolations of current scientific facts, hypotheses, or methods. Often, science fiction writers construct worlds and societies by positing fundamental differences between the technology, biology, sociology, and/or scientific advancement of our world and their fictional worlds. These differences are used as points of departure. Some obvious examples include dystopias such as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and George Orwell's 1984, as well as such diverse works as Samuel Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, William Gibson's Neuromancer, Robert Heinlein's Star ship Troopers, Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, and Stanislaw Lern's Solaris. We cannot, however, readily distinguish between fantasy in general and science fiction in particular, because many science fiction stories, including most of H. G. Wells's scientific romances, straddle the boundary. The notable exception is The Island of Dr. Moreau, where the fantastic events—the creation of beast people from animals—represent straightforward possibility, as Wells himself realized.

The beast people created by Moreau's procedures are the stuff of "hard" science fiction; that is they adhere to the realities of scientific possibility. Current technology may not yet allow for such procedures, but they are certainly within human reach. In First Men in the Moon, however, Wells imagines a substance which directly contradicts accepted physical laws. The substance, Cavorite, resists the effects of gravity and allows Wells's protagonists to propel their ship to the moon. If we were to consider only Cavorite in making a genre evaluation of First Men, Wells's novel could hardly be looked upon as science fiction. There is nothing remotely "scientific" about Cavorite—it is a purely fantastic creation. Still, in a broader manner, First Men in the Moon exhibits the general tendencies I have outlined, because, like The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and The War of the Worlds, it extrapolates carefully and systematically using evolutionary theory as a point of departure. The creatures inhabiting the moon in First Men, the Selenites, represent one potential outcome of evolution, just as do the Martians in The War of the Worlds, the devolving beast people of The Island of Dr. Moreau, and the Eloi and the Morlocks of The Time Machine.

In fact, science fiction, even the hard-core variety, almost always embraces at least some decidedly unscientific elements, including "impossibilities" such as anti-gravity, faster-than-light space crafts, and time machines, as well as occasional instances of sloppy science, such as a recurrent blunder in some science fiction works where Jupiter's gravity is erroneously described as "crushing" when it is approximately four earth gravities—significant by terrestrial standards but far from lethal (Blish 37). Of course the difficulty is that while we can identify sloppy science, we cannot be as certain about supposed impossibilities. There always exist a chance that some "impossible" science fiction creations might become possible as a result of future discoveries. Opinions vary among scientists— particularly physicists, whose field is most generally at issue—on the distinction between possible and impossible (Geffe et al), but one need only examine the theories of some physicists—Stephen Hawking, for instance— to see a wide range of remarkable possibilities that are being set forth as viable. Indeed, in light of theoretical work and recent discoveries made accessible to nonscientists by such scientist-authors as Stephen J. Gould, Carl Sagan, and Lewis Thomas, it has become something of a cliché to note that contemporary science is far stranger than contemporary science fiction.

To a large extent, the ambiguous boundary between what is possible and what is impossible prevents critics (and scientists) from formulating a comprehensive, generally acceptable definition of science fiction based on distinctions between scientific possibilities and impossibilities. The boundary between the two is simply too hazy, and even when it is not, the works under discussion, like Wells's scientific romances, contain a combination of hard scientific possibilities and apparent impossibilities. As a result, each reader must decide for her- or himself which works do or do not constitute science fiction. Consequently, definitions of science fiction remain remarkably subjective with individual sensibilities rather than standardized, quantifiable criteria determining what amounts of hard science, questionable science, and outright fantasy allow a work to be categorized as science fiction, as straightforward fantasy, or as a category which straddles the boundary, science fantasy. This subjectivity also characterizes efforts to define science fiction, since critics invariably define science fiction to match their own idea of the genre's "true" nature (Knight, "What Is" 62), particularly in their tendency to avoid describing the genre as it exists in favor of making prescriptions for its "proper" composition (Stableford 68). Still, as Delany observes, "Words mean what people use them to mean" {Jewel 9), so although definitions describing science fiction as those works we point to when we use the term (Knight in Gunn 71) may seem flippant, they actually recognize the broad definitional difficulties involved with science fiction.

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CHILDREN OF THE GULAG

W. Alayne Switzer

Prior to the collapse of the USSR, Western scholars had limited access to official government archives. The right to access the archives was strictly regulated and subject to the whims of Soviet officials. With the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, scholarly exploration into the extent of Soviet repression expanded at an astounding rate. The opening of official archives to Westerners during the 1990s has enabled historians to document and analyze information previously unavailable to Western scholars. These newly available documents have begun to shed light on the complex and troubled history of the Soviet era and illustrate the considerable gap between official Soviet ideology-based propaganda and the extent of atrocities suffered by a significant percentage of the population.

Bolshevik Party leaders spread slogans promising power. Communist ideology promised a socially harmonious society based on long-term social reform that would eliminate exploitation of the working class and eventually eliminate social classes altogether. All Soviet citizens would realize the full extent of human freedom through cooperative efforts and Soviet children would realize the happy childhood so eloquently described by Tolstoy in his oft-quoted work, Childhood. But the nascent government inherited a countryside ravaged by years of war, civil unrest, disease, and famine. The euphoric vigor was quickly replaced by confusion and tension as Soviet leaders struggled to tackle insurmountable crises with limited resources and little experience.

By the time Joseph Stalin achieved full party leadership the country was irrevocably on the road to becoming a totalitarian state ruled by an iron fist. The Stalinist government let loose a reign of terror upon the countryside through collectivization; dekulakization;2 deportation and exile; and political purges. Millions of Soviet citizens were victimized by Stalin's policies of political repression and many eventually ended up in Gulag labor camps.

The youngest members of the population were not immune to this wave of terror. Countless children were arrested or born in prison and labor camps to women who were pregnant when they were arrested or who became pregnant through rape or camp relationships. Some children were actually arrested along with their mothers and many more children were sent directly to children's homes when their parents died as a result of starvation or war, or who were executed or sent to the Gulag during Stalin's great purges. Oftentimes juveniles convicted of crimes were subject to the same sentencing standards as adults and were sent to prisons or camps to perform "corrective" labor.

Innocent children were caught up in the waves of atrocities inflicted upon the Soviet people under Stalin's leadership. Poverty, illegitimacy, starvation, and poor health care had long been a problem among the underprivileged classes in pre-Soviet Russia, but the policies of dekulakization, collectivization, and the great purges victimized children who historically had known some sense of security and happiness. Children were not overlooked in Stalin's campaigns designed to rid the country of "socially harmful elements." Orphanages and children's homes quickly became overcrowded and the appalling condition of the homes ensured that many children languished or perished.

This thesis sets out to tell the story of these children. I shall illustrate how millions of children were victimized, either directly or indirectly, by Soviet policies of repression. They were abandoned, neglected, and marginalized. Many were sent to corrective camps, orphanages, special settlements and even prisons. Much of this thesis incorporates the voices of the children survivors as depicted in translations taken from Deti Gulaga;3 1918-1956, a collection of documents that includes letters, diaries, and memoirs of children of the repressed during this period. All translations from this source are the authors unless otherwise indicated.

Millions of children fell victim to Stalin's policies of repression. They were orphaned when their parents were caught up in the waves of oppression; they were abandoned by the state and left to fend for themselves on the streets; they were left to starve in the wake of man-made famines that spawned under collectivization; they were neglected and abused in the camps and orphanages; and some were even killed outright. The state chose to use expedience rather than compassion when attempting to solve the problems of homelessness, abandonment, and orphanage. In keeping with their campaign mentality, authorities rounded up the waifs and herded them into children's homes, orphanages, and colonies. When these children became unwieldy as they struggled to survive, the authorities labeled them "hooligans" and shipped them off to colonies or the Gulag. The state's policies, whether directly or indirectly, were nonetheless responsible for creating the"mutilated generation" so aptly described by AI'dona Volynskaia.

Children who were released from the camps and settlements were not released from their suffering. The fortunate ones were able to stay with family members but the majority were abandoned or sent to state orphanages which were seriously overcrowded, dirty, understaffed, and often lethal. Children of political prisoners who were placed in these homes would frequently find themselves accused of counterrevolutionary activities and wrecking.

Many children ran away from the orphanages and ended up living on the streets in the criminal world. Sooner or later they would be arrested and returned either back to the orphanages or to the prisons and camps. Those who did manage to stay out of the camps after being released had difficulty re-assimilating into society.

For those Gulag survivors who had families, returning to them was complicated and often problematic. Unable to shed the camp culture to which they had become accustomed, returnees struggled to find a place in society. The family was the main point of re-entry into society for the survivors but the familial setting had become a distant memory for most and for the children who grew up in the camps it was a completely unknown entity. Reintegration into normal society was a difficult if not impossible task for individuals who had become so thoroughly segregated from society. Family members who had waited for their loved ones to return often didn't understand how to cope with the changed person who returned to their doorsteps. Couples who had remained married during incarceration often found their marriages crumbled shortly after re-assimilation. Couples where both spouses had shared the experience of the camps had a better chance of surviving since they had both "been there."

For Soviet Gulag survivors, the repression continued throughout the victim's lifetime. Freed from the physical surroundings of their prisons they remained captives psychologically, economically, and socially. The effects of their experience with Soviet repression continued to haunt them throughout their lives and they would never escape their sense of being "second-class" citizens. They were faced with the problem of finding housing and employment in a society that rejected them and they lived in constant fear of being re-arrested.

Fear of re-arrest was often with good reason. Zoia Dmitrievna Marchenko had been arrested three times: in 1931,1937 and 1949. She was arrested first for the possession of ant-Soviet literature in the form of notes she had taken while visiting her brother in prison. Her second arrest came for refusing to sign a false deposition against her husband who had been arrested the year before and she was later accused of counterrevolutionary Trotskyite activity.

Suspicious of everything, survivors were perpetually afraid of committing even minor infractions for fear of reprisal. They had lost their youth and in the case of many women, the ability to bear children. the problem of homelessness was not a new phenomenon to the Russian people when the Soviet Union was formed. But Stalinism represented a significant rupture within society that was driven by terror. Following the death of Stalin in 1953, the terror abated and the Khrushchev thaw gave the Russian people a glimmer of hope, but it would take many generations to heal the damage created by Stalin's reign of terror.

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FACTORS INFLUENCING ACCULTURATIVE STRESS AMONG INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS IN THE UNITED STATES

ROSEMARY WILLIAM EUSTACE

The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the acculturation process of international students by examining the relationships among the concepts depicted in Berry’s (1987) Acculturative Stress model: acculturative stressors, social support and acculturative stress. In addition, specific socio-cultural and demographic characteristics that were present prior to and during acculturation were identified and their influences on acculturative stress were explored. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the study’s findings and draw appropriate implications and conclusions. The discussion focuses on how the acculturative variables are interrelated as proposed in Berry and associates’ acculturative research framework as well as on how the ecological environment contributes to the international students’ acculturation outcomes.

Relationship between Acculturative Stressor(s) and Stress

This study investigated how acculturative stressors of international students relate to their acculturative stress levels. The results clearly support the hypothesis about the effect of students’ perceived difficulty with the stressors on their stress level. Overall, students who reported higher levels of difficulty on acculturative stressors were more likely to exhibit higher levels of stress related to their adjustment in a new culture. This finding is consistent with the prediction that as the acculturating individual evaluates the meaning of his/her acculturation as a source of difficulty, the outcome is likely to induce stress (Berry, 1997).

In addition, when examining the prevalence of acculturative stress among international students, results indicate that all international students are experiencing some form of acculturative stress with the majority of them experiencing relatively high levels. This finding is consistent with other studies that have conceptualized acculturative stress utilizing the Index of Life Stress scale (e.g. Lee, Koeske, & Sales, 2004; Yang & Clum, 1995) as well as those studies using other acculturation stress measurement tools (e.g., Msengi, 2003; Poyrali, Kavanaugh, Baker & Al-Timimi, 2004).

Former studies investigating the experiences of international students utilizing Berry’s acculturation model only partially addressed the conceptualization of the stressor component. Instead, they focused on the levels of stress without specifically identifying or measuring the sources of the stress (what Berry labeled as “acculturative stressors”). A major contribution of the current study is the emphasis put on the role of the stressors themselves. A new measurement tool was created (the Acculturative Stressors Scale) that allowed the opportunity to examine the influence of the stressors on the experience of stress itself. One interesting finding related to the stressors was that the majority of the students perceived their level of difficulty with the stressors as somewhere between “somewhat difficult” and “difficult.” This finding implies that most of students who come to the U.S. for international study perceive some of their acculturation experiences as a source of difficulty. This may be partly explained by the high expectations they held regarding their U.S. educational and social experiences prior to international study.

The Relationship between Social Support and Acculturative Stress

Social support plays a major role in the adjustment of individuals who come in contact with a new culture (Hovey, 2000). This important component of the students’ microsystem was included in Berry’s (1987) model and has been shown to have a significant influence on international students’ acculturation experience (e.g., Lee, Koeske & Sales, 2004). Overall, the current study demonstrates that international students had relatively high amounts of social support; with the highest levels of support coming from important others, followed by friends and family. This finding on the prevalence of social support is consistent with previous studies (e.g. Lee, Koeske, & Sales, 2004; Yang & Clum, 1995).

As for the hypothesis that social support moderates the relationship between acculturative stressors and stress, the results suggest that students who reported high social support during acculturation are likely to experience less impact of the experienced difficulty with the stressors on their stress levels. This finding is consistent with the Berry and associates’ (1987) acculturation framework proposition that social support serves as a moderator or “buffer” on the degree of relationship between an individual’s stressor(s) and stress as well as other buffering stress models (e.g., Mallinckrodt & Leong, 1992; Sam, 2001). As for the individual contributions of the different dimensions of social support (i.e. family, friends or important others) on the relationship between stressor and stress, the results were not conclusive.

However, when exploring the main effects of the three kinds of support, important others support was the only significant predictor of acculturative stress. Students who experienced higher levels of support from important others (i.e. community, religious places, faculty, international student centers and student organizations) were more likely to experience more stress independently of the perceived levels of difficulty of the stressors. These results support the prior studies that have examined types of support other than family and friends. For instance, it has been reported that international students who experience significant amounts of faculty support are more likely to also experience psychological distress and somatic complaints (Kaczmarek, Matlock, Merta, Ames & Ross, 1994). It is important to remember that this is a correlational finding; therefore, it does not indicate causality. With this in mind, it is possible that in the current sample, students who were seeking support from important others were already experiencing higher levels of stress. This could illustrate that the students coped with the stress by seeking assistance from these important others.

It is well documented that international students lose their shared identity and support from their families and friends as they pursue studies in a foreign country (Hayes & Lin, 1994; Perdersen, 1991). This loss of support forces them to develop new cross-cultural friendships with individuals from the host nation as well as with other international students. However, most of the time this kind of support is also limited because they too are likely to be going through the same life changes. As a result, international students will be more likely to turn to faculty members and counselors, and less likely to turn to friends for support (Leong & Sedlacek, 1986).

This finding suggests that important others, such as religious organizations, faculty, advisors and international student centers, have a significant role to play in the acculturation of international students, especially those who are already experiencing stressful life events. International student centers help with orientation of new students, community events, cultural and academic issues (Scott, 1994). International student organizations and religious organizations offer an opportunity to develop a sense of community for the students (Scott).

More studies need to be done to determine how to encourage these microsystem influences on international students’ adjustments.

The Relationship between Socio-Cultural and Demographic Variables and Acculturative Stress

When the relationships between the selected socio-cultural and demographic variables and acculturative stress were concurrently explored, findings indicated that several macrosystem level variables were important: perceived cultural values in country of origin as collectivistic (cultural distance), use of the assimilation mode of acculturation, having a low monthly income and describing one’s social-class during acculturation as lower- middle class and lower class. For instance, when examining the predictive role of cultural distance on acculturative stress, the results show that the greater the cultural differences during acculturation, the lower the positive adaptation (Berry, 1997).

Students in the current sample identified their home country’s cultural value as relatively collectivistic when compared to the current U.S. community which they identified as individualistic. This notion of individualism-collectivism has been discussed in the acculturation literature to signify the cultural differences between the so called “Western” and “Eastern” cultures. The differences between these value systems include the basic attributes of individual expression (individualistic) and dependence and conformity (collectivistic). Thus, the hypothesis that students from a collectivistic country will experience more significant acculturation problems is supported by the current study findings. For example, in academic settings within collectivistic cultures that emphasize conformity, students are expected to be extremely respectful of their teachers. They expect to remain quiet in class and receive knowledge from the instructor. However, students in the U.S. (an individualistic culture) are expected to participate actively in class discussions and be assertive – even challenge a teacher’s ideas. Clearly, these differences in cultural values within the classroom can (and do) cause stress for these students.

This suggests that as long as the majority of the international students who come to study in the U.S. continue to perceive their cultural values as significantly more “collectivistic” than U.S. culture, some kind of stress is inevitable because of the difference in these cultural value orientations. This finding is important especially when designing programs that focus on preventing potential negative stress outcomes such as stress induced morbidity and poor adaptation.

Exploration of the acculturation strategies, descriptively, suggested that the majority of the international students in this sample utilized the integration strategy, followed by assimilation, separation and then marginalization. It was hypothesized that integration would stand out to be the best predictor of lower stress levels than assimilation, separation and marginalization. The hypothesis was based on the earlier literature that the integrationist strategy offers a bicultural base of support in which acculturating individuals have the most protective factors (i.e., two social support systems) (Berry, 1997). Marginalization, on the other hand, offers the least adaptation while assimilation and separation are intermediate. However, the findings suggest that the assimilation strategy significantly predicted lower acculturative stress levels better than integration. Why this is so, however, is not clear. Berry (1997) has argued that the choice of strategy depends on personal preferences of which strategy is more useful and satisfying according to a given context and time period. Therefore, it is possible that with the current socio-political and cultural changes that reflect how the host nation perceives illegal immigrants in the United States, the traditional “melting pot” or assimilationist phenomenon might also work best for international students’ positive adaptation. Individual personality characteristics also could help explain this phenomenon. Persons who are flexible in nature may be more likely to choose the assimilation acculturation strategy. These individuals, because of their flexible personalities, also would be less likely to experience high levels of stress than those who are less flexible and may use another acculturation strategy. Also, the use of the integration strategy may not significantly lower stress levels. This is to be expected because the use of this strategy, especially early in the process of acculturation, includes the challenges of dealing with more than one culture as one defines oneself and interacts with the host culture. In the long run, however, integration would be useful for lowering stress levels because it would assist in adaptation. The outcome of integration (meshing the two cultures) should help produce a positive sense of self and a healthy set of coping strategies for use within the host culture. Future studies should explore the process of the application of the acculturation strategies to more fully understand the relationship between strategy and acculturation stress. Longitudinal data would be especially helpful in examining the process over time.

High socio-economic status (SES) is a protective resource against life stressors (Berry, 1997). In the present study, the findings indicate that perceived lower social-class during adjustment and lower income are significant predictors of higher acculturative stress. In addition, this study also demonstrates that the majority of the students described their place in the economic world before acculturation as a relatively higher status than during acculturation. This is not a new phenomenon in the acculturation literature of other acculturating groups, such as immigrants. For instance, it has been reported that when individuals decide to migrate to a new environment, they forego their resources and experience status loss and limited status mobility (Berry, 1997). These factors are important predictors of economic adaptation (Aycan & Berry, 1996) as well as stress among acculturating individuals. As reflected in the current study, students who are in the lower social status are more likely to experience high stress. However, this finding should be interpreted with caution. The results might imply that international students, like any other students, are prone to experience stress related to the temporary loss of their economic status, which will eventually change after completing their studies.

As mentioned earlier, having a low income was predictive of higher stress for this sample. This finding is consistent with those of earlier studies that lack of adequate funding is a major source of stress among acculturating individuals (e.g., Hovey, 2000; Padilla, Wagatsuma & Lindholm, 1985). This finding could be explained by the students’ immigration limitations.

According to the U.S. visa restriction policies, international students are full-time students and are not allowed to work outside their academic institution while in the U.S. This limits their employment opportunities. In addition, international graduate students must report assistantships as the only source of income (which applies to majority of these graduate students); therefore, one also becomes limited for on-campus employment opportunities. Students often need their graduate assistantship stipends not only for paying tuition and fees, but also for their daily activities of living (e.g., food, rent, transportation and emergency funds). As a result, they might experience adjustment difficulties. However, given the average monthly income of about $1200 for this sample and a substantial number of students indicating zero income, this finding should be interpreted with caution. It was not clearly established how students conceptualized income. Maybe some students who indicated no income at all did so because they did not regard a scholarship, family support or any other financial support as income. Future studies should examine the role of these varied sources of income for international students and investigate how these sources impact their academic and socio-cultural adjustments.

Marital status was found to significantly correlate with acculturative stress. However, in terms of predictive power, marital status was not a significant predictor of stress in this study. Therefore, the prediction that international students who were single would display higher levels of stress than the married ones was not statistically supported. However, on a closer look at the influence of the marital status categories, the data indicated that students who were in the “other” category (i.e. students who identified themselves as divorced, separated, widowed, engaged and other) were less likely than those who were single to experience higher stress levels. This is an interesting finding. Why did these individuals in the “other” category report lower levels of stress than those who were single? It may be that they have left behind unsuccessful or conflictual relationships (e.g., separated, divorced). Or they have more resources and career experience than the single students. This needs to be examined specifically before any implications are drawn. It seems surprising that being married was not significantly related to levels of stress. This may be because marriage can provide both a supportive system as well as serve as a stressor - especially for international students with spouses who are not well integrated or who feel very isolated within U.S. society. Further examination of the role of marital relationship must be explored as it relates to the students’ acculturative stress.

Future research could benefit the acculturation literature by identifying additional contributory factors to the variance of acculturative stress such as international student-faculty relationship, student’s personality, expectations prior to acculturation and previous international experiences. Moreover, following the inconsistent findings on the relationship between the socio-cultural and demographic characteristics and acculturative stress, future studies may also benefit the international students literature by exploring the influence of these variables on the specific stress attributes (such as discrimination, loneliness, homesickness) to determine if any difference exists. This suggestion stems from some earlier interesting findings. For example, Razavi (1989) found that younger and older international students had similar degrees of difficulty, but voiced separate issues. In some studies, males compared to females were more likely to experience prejudice and fear (Sodowsky & Plake, 1992), perceived hatred (Ye, 2006), estrangement (Klomegah, 2006), greater adjustment issues related to financial responsibility and were less likely to use the English language (Sodowsky & Plake). These findings suggest that students’ individual characteristics may be influenced by their situational and personal factors which eventually affect their stress levels.

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Harry Potter crosses over and a partial translation of Mugglenet.com’s What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7? Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Falls in Love and How Will the Adventure Finally End?

Nancy Seghers

"I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story."

C.S. Lewis in Beckett, 1999

“All grown-ups were once children”.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I would like to start by giving you something to think about: what do the works on the following list have in common?

The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Lord of the Flies, Star Wars, E.T., Indiana Jones, Treasure Island, King Kong, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, Le Petit Prince, Sophie’s World, Brave New World, 1984, Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, Little House on the Prairie, Just So Stories, Jungle Book, Whinnie-the-Pooh, The Wind in the Willows, Charlotte’s Web, His Dark Materials’ trilogy, the Discworld series, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, The War of the Worlds, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musqueteers, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Toy Story, Shrek, Stuart Little, The Simpsons, Southpark, Friends, Wallace and Gromit, The Lion King, …

I can go on like this for another few pages, but as deforestation is threatening our planet, I prefer to safe some paper and assume that you must have found the answer by now. Probably you have read or seen them all (maybe even more than once) but that is not the common feature I am aiming at: each and every book, movie, musical and series on this list has somehow successfully crossed the age boundaries, whether from child to adult or vice versa. The great variety and diversity of these works already proves that it is not always obvious what is to be understood by ‘crossover’. As the list contains school and family stories, science fiction novels, magic and epic fantasies, religious allegories, fairy tales, comedies, animal fables, etc, it certainly isn’t a generic matter. Roughly speaking, just like the Harry Potter series, they all appeal to both children and adults.

This list also proves that although ‘crosswriting’, ‘dual audience,’ or ‘crossover literature’ might all be rather new terms, the concept already exists for quite some time now. Just take into account a fairy tale. Everyone knows the fairy tales of, for example, Charles Perrault or the animal fables by Jean de La Fontaine: children enjoy them and love it when you read them before bedtime while parents often seem to believe that the latest Disney DVD collection can easily serve as a good babysitter. Meantime, they can read real Literature, with capital L, of course, because sometimes we seem to forget that those fairy tales were once told to us when we were only toddlers ourselves, and most of us aren’t even aware of the fact that they were originally written for adults. Only the few of us that question, for example, the fact that the wicked stepmother is actually maybe a bit too evil a character for children to cope with in these times of complex and alternate families, will wonder whether those nice fairy tales are as innocent as they look at first sight.

Robinson Crusoe, Huckleberry Fin, Tom Sawyer, Alice, … the list of classical examples, initially written for adults, that made it to the canon of children’s literature, is endless. In recent years the Harry Potter books also seem to have crossed the border between child and adult, but we should not generalise here, because there clearly are differences: these so-called ‘classics’ all have crossed from adult literature to children’s literature, often in an abridged version, while the Harry Potter series has crossed in the opposite direction, without any adaptation concerning content. Harry Potter does not only catch the attention of children but also appeals to adults. Since the beginning of the series in 1997 the term ‘crossover fiction’ became fashionable, although, according to Helen Kenward in The Challenge of Crossover (2005), its attraction was first recognised in other media who “have exploited the crossover appeal for years […] it is literature which has only recently caught on” (p. 72). She points out that many movies like Steven Spielberg’s E.T. or George Lucas’s Star Wars already had a dual audience long before Harry Potter came in the picture, while recently, movies such as Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and series like The Simpsons or South Park are watched by children, teenagers ánd adults.

Academic agreement on what crossover literature actually is or should be, is hard to find, primarily because the terms ‘childhood’ and ‘children’s literature’ are often ambiguous and very hard to define. Before the eighteenth century there was no such thing as what we now call ‘children’s literature’. According to Zohar Shavit (1999), the concept of childhood was less developed as it is now, so both adults and children read books like Perrault’s Mother Goose Tales (1697). As Kenward states in her study, “all fiction was crossover fiction” (p. 7). Throughout the eighteenth century, the development of books written specifically for children widened the gap between adults and children’s literature and several books originally written for an adult audience became known as children’s books. According to Peter Hunt (2001), children and adults’ books started to demonstrate different characteristics and some distinguishing features were established like the fact that children’s books were shorter, or, for instance, that adult books had multiple characters. Many scholars believe that this division gave children’s literature its ‘inferior’ status.

Hunt claims that children’s novels aren’t inferior, only different. In Translation and intertextuality: A descriptive study of contemporary British children’s fantasy literature in Spain (1970-2000), Belén González Cascallana cites him: “they should be treated as a separate group of texts, without reference (at least in principle) to ‘literature’ as it is known and misunderstood’ (Belén, 2003: 15). She also cites the Australian critic Barbara Wall who points out that “good writing for children does not necessarily appear to be for children” Wall further insists on the idea that different skills are used when writing for children: “All writers must, in a sense, be writing down” (Wall, 1991: 15). It is Wall who identified three different address categories in children’s literature: authors can write for children only (single address), they may write for adults as well as for children (double address), and they can address the child while simultaneously satisfy the adult reader (dual address) (Wall, 1991: 35-36). She suggests that the single address is most characteristic of the twentieth century children’s literature. Hunt, however, argues that dual address prevails.

Some authors and critics state that, even today, there is no such thing as ‘pure’ children’s literature at all, implying that what does not exist, cannot crossover. In Beckett’s Transcending Boundaries Zohar Shavit points out that children’s literature always has an additional (adult) addressee because children’s books are written, published, evaluated, interpreted and distributed by adults. In her essay “The Double Attribution of Texts for Children and How it Affects Writing for Children”, she says that “every book is first read by adults” and that adults “are the only ones in a position to decide whether a book will be published, how it will be published, and how it will be distributed to its official readership of children” (in Beckett, 1999: 84). Jack Zipes of the University of Minnesota even states that children haven’t got any finger in the children’s literature pie at all because “Everything we do to, with, and for our children is influenced by capitalist market conditions and the hegemonic interests of ruling corporate elites. In simple terms, we calculate what is best for our children by regarding them as investments and turning them into commodities” (2001: xi). To this end publishers reissue books originally written for adults with another cover. The Harry Potter books too, have gotten different covers for different audiences. Not only is there an adult and a child version available of the British edition, they have also designed a separate cover for the American version.

Although, as already demonstrated, it is not exactly a matter of genre, Rachel Falconer of the University of Sheffield points out that “the genre that is crossing age groups most frequently in western countries today is fantasy; and the most visible direction of crossover is from child to adult audiences” (“Crossover Literature” in Hunt’s International Companion Encyclopedia, p. 564). She states that Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) and Richard Adams’s Watership Down (1972) have paved the way for contemporary fantasy like Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy and Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, which “have had little difficulty in crossing between child and adult readerships”. Journalist S.F. Said agrees: according to him, Watership Down is “one of the original popular culture crossovers: a book that hooked adults and children on such a vast scale that it made publishing history” (cited in Hunt, 2004: 564).

What exactly triggered the recent popularity of crossover fiction? Falconer cites Chris Anderson (in Hunt, 2004: 569) who believes that, due to technological innovations on the workfloor, youngsters have become more dominant in recent years. They achieve technological skills a lot easier than older people do, this being one of the reasons for the major corporate restructurings of the last two decades, which enrolled a lot of younger employees. Furthermore, as Falconer puts it: “age is becoming a matter of choice. You can opt to be young, culturally if not chronologically, at thirty-five, you can dress and behave as a twenty-year-old, listen to the same music, play the same sports, lead the same social life”, buying, for example, Sony Playstations and scooters.

Meanwhile, in the opposite direction, “while adults regressed to 'kidults', 'chadults' and 'middlescents', children aged to 'tweenagers', using mobile phones, reading glossy magazines […] buying sexualised clothes, make-up and perfumes” (2004: 570). However, here too, the opinions are divided: a lot of people think children grow up too fast, while others believe that some adults refuse to grow up.

Beckett points out that “In the eyes of some authors and critics, children’s literature that is not read and enjoyed by adults is not worthy of the name. […] Some authors approach the border from the opposite direction, maintaining that good adult literature also can be read by children” (1999: 32). Falconer agrees: a text may activate an adult's 'inner child' or indeed any number of argumentative and mutually incompatible inner children. Equally, a text may activate a child's 'inner parent'. She also mentions that “many children are curious about adult perspectives, and one reason they read books and watch films is to gain insight into adult discourses and constructions of reality” (Falconer, 2004: 572).

Nikolajeva (2004: 167) states that it is a common prejudice that children’s literature is: a 'simple' literary form. In terms of narrativity, simplicity conceivably includes one clearly delineated plot without digressions or secondary plots; chronological order of events; a limited number of easy-to-remember characters - 'flat' characters with one typical feature, either 'good' or 'evil', or with simplistic external characterisation. It also includes a distinct narrative voice, a fixed point of view, preferably an authoritarian, didactic, omniscient narrator who can supply readers with comments, explanations and exhortations, without leaving anything unuttered or ambiguous; a narrator possessing greater knowledge and experience than both characters and readers. The idea of a 'simple' narrative excludes complex temporal and spatial constructions. The fictionality of the story, the reliability of the narrator or the sufficiency of language as the artistic expressive means cannot be interrogated. Obviously, the spectrum of children's literature is significantly broader than suggested by these features.

Falconer mentions that some critics like Jack Zipes and Neil Postman are worried that children’s literature is disappearing under the pressure of the consumerism boom of television, games, movies, pulp books and the pop culture. Nikolajeva, on the other hand, argues that children’s literature ‘has finally come of age’ (cited in Hunt, 2004: 571). Falconer herself states that it is only some kind of childhood that is disappearing, while she notices that Zipes final essay (Sticks and Stones) is flawed by inconsistency […] he argues on the one hand that Harry Potter is only being bought and read by adults […] and on the other hand that this kind of derivative, sexist and banal book is responsible for turning children into consumerist clones. […] It is hard to see how the Potter books could exert such influence on children, if they are not actually reading them.’ Furthermore she believes that his arguments ‘are hard to square with the fine introductory essay, which encourages academics to study not only classic children's literature but also what contemporary children are actually reading now. (Falconer, 2004:571)

I agree with Falconer that the best single-volume introduction to crossover literature is Sandra L. Beckett’s Transcending Boundaries: Writing for a Dual Audience of Children and Adults (in Hunt, 2004: 558). In the same edition of Hunt’s International Companion Helma van Lierop-Debrauwer gives David Galef’s division of dual readership authors, who, in his essay Crossing Over: Authors Who Write Both Children’s and Adults’ Fiction, are divided into three categories: writers of adult literature who start writing children’s literature during their career (e.g. Roald Dahl, Toon Tellegen), authors who start off with children’s books to end up writing adult literature, and a third group of writers who appeal to both children and adults in the same book. A.A. Milne (Winnie- the-Pooh) is considered a famous example of this third category and C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series also appeals to both younger and older readers. Kenward points out that “in line with Galef’s third description of a crossover fiction author, the general concept underlying the term ‘crossover fiction’ is that of a single book appealing to a mixed age range” (Kenward, 2005: 73), which brings us to Harry Potter’s dual audience. 

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