We provide a comprehensive overview of existing systems for the computational generation of verbal humor in the form of jokes and short humorous texts. Considering linguistic humor theories, we analyze the systematic strengths and drawbacks of the different approaches. In addition, we show how the systems have been evaluated so far and propose two evaluation criteria: humorousness and complexity. From our analysis of the field, we conclude new directions for the advancement of computational humor generation.

In this article, we describe a two-step processing pipeline for identifying text reuse of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in a corpus of postmodern fiction by comparing n-grams from both sources. A key feature of our approach lies in a pre-filtering step, in which we select target sentences in the fiction corpus that are potential candidates for Hamlet text reuse. Without pre-filtering, the amount of text reuse pairs (that are no actual quotes) would be extremely high. In a second filtering step, we compare potential text reuse pairs by their vector representation using a neural network trained in an unsupervised manner. We found that using the vector similarity produces a problematic amount of false positives. The created vector representations are created using an unsupervised training approach, resulting in similarity aspects that are unfavorable for our use case.

Obwohl Kinder- und Jugendbücher sowohl weltanschauliche als auch religiöse Inhalte und Normen widerspiegeln, sind sie von Seiten der (Religions-)Wissenschaft als Untersuchungsgegenstand bisher vernachlässigt worden. Während Theolog*innen, Literaturwissenschaftler*innen und Pädagog*innen mit Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts allmählich damit begonnen haben, religionsaffine Kinder- und Jugendbücher auf ihre Aussagen zu Kategorien wie Geschlecht und Toleranz wie auch zu ihren Repräsentationen zu Religion(en) selbst zu untersuchen, sind religionswissenschaftliche Arbeiten zu dem Forschungsfeld weiterhin kaum vorhanden. Die vorliegende Publikation versteht sich als Beispiel für eine religionswissenschaftliche Herangehensweise an (neu-)heidnische Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. An dem Kinder- und Jugendbuch Die Geschichten von Yggdrasil. Das kleine Familienbuch der Nordischen Sagen von Luci van Org (2017) wird exemplarisch gezeigt , wie durch einen zweifachen methodischen Zugang aus Qualitativer Inhaltsanalyse und Narrativer Analyse die religiösen und weltanschaulichen Vor- und Darstellungen im Buch eruiert werden können.

This article serves as an introduction to the phenomena of transgender and intersex, contextualizes these fields of studies, and delineates the major aims of this research anthology, that being: to take both transgender and intersex positions into account and—instead of playing them off against each other—to ask about commonalities and strategic alliances, in terms of knowledge, theory, philosophy, art, and life experience. The aim is to strike a balance between work on literature, film, photography, law, sports, and general theory, bringing together humanistic approaches with social science approaches and integrating lenses for studying gender. Further, this introduction argues that what is needed is a non-hierarchical, multi-perspective approach that endeavors to overcome the limitations of sex and gender research within the disciplines and fields of studies mentioned above by asking how transgender and intersex issues are negotiated and conceptualized from a variety of different points of view, what specific findings arise from there, and to what extent artistic and creative discourses offer their own uniquely relevant forms of knowledge and expression. The last part of this article introduces the reader to the different contributions, emphasizing how they relate to and communicate with each other.

This study explores the application of computational linguistic methods for the semantic analysis of textual data to the text of the Greek New Testament. After an in-depth discussion of the author's computational application of distributional semantics, he moves on to use these methods to explore three different areas which are of great interest in New Testament studies: lexicography, translation, and exegesis. In terms of lexicography, Munson carefully examines the differences in semantic relationships published in 'The Louw-Nida Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains' and those returned by his own methods. He focuses primarily on what the biblical exegete can learn from each of these sources both by themselves and in tandem. The focus then shifts to the translation of the Greek word 'ekklesia', which is normally translated as 'church' in English. His methods here reveal a close relationship between the use of 'ekklesia' in the New Testament and in the writings of Philo of Alexandria. Munson then discusses these findings in relation to the translation of this theologically laden term. And finally, Munson takes up the nearly stagnated debate revolving around the phrase 'pistis Iesou Christou', which can be literally translated as 'faith of Jesus Christ.' The new forms of data produced by computational methods for semantic and syntactic analysis lead Munson to the conclusion that this phrase refers to belief in the trustworthiness of God's promises, a trustworthiness which, for St. Paul, was demonstrated clearly in God's resurrection of the faithful Jesus Christ.

One of the consequences of emphasizing plurality – so characteristic for current masculinity studies – is that the question of commonalities and similarities of masculinities has been neglected, and therefore the relationship between mas- culinity as a concept and its plural forms has to be rethought. One way of doing this involves conceiving of masculinity as having a largely discursive or narrative structure and focusing on the relationality and interdependency of masculinities by paying special attention to stories and genres as their paramount components. If one takes narrative to be an ontological condition of social life which exemplarily manifests itself in literature and the arts, it is precisely here that a plethora of narratives of masculinity becomes ‘visible’ in a reading process that can be conceptualized as an act of imagining and a process of transfer during which readers perpetually ‘stage’ themselves, while the performative function of narrative allows for a variety of new masculine gender identities that become available through their very conception in literature/art. Combining comparative masculinity studies with the concept of narrative paves the way for a new, more encompassing, relational and intersectional understanding, if not definition of masculinity.

Dieser Beitrag möchte Reflexionen über ein prominentes Beispiel der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur anhand des Zauberlehrlings Harry Potter mit seinen Geschichten und magischen Welten vorstellen. Die britische Autorin Joanne Kathleen Rowling hat im Jahr 1990 den Zauberschüler Harry Potter erfunden. Aus dem Blickwinkel von Hauptfiguren im Alter von Kindern und Jugendlichen beschreibt Rowling das Angesicht einer überraschenden, aufregenden und faszinierenden aber auch ungleichen, in sich zerrissenen und auseinanderdriftenden Schule und ihrer Umwelt – diese Welt wirkt wie ein Spiegel unserer Zeit und vielleicht ist genau deshalb Harry Potter als Bildungsromanreihe so erfolgreich.

Disruption is a phenomenon that has gained the attention of a broad and diverse range of academic disciplines. Building on this work we propose that disruptions are by no means solely destructive but rather have productive consequences. We aim to establish disruption as a starting point for the analysis of formulas of societal self-description. In this, epistemological and aesthetic aspects of disturbances will be focused since these moments of interruption or loss of order evoke efforts of theoretical or practical consolidation of the social sphere. After discussing the history of experimentalization of the life sciences, we point out how art can be understood as an experimental system that integrates and explores the function of disruption. Second, the relationship between factual and fictional knowledge and how both impact on society through the fabrication of different worlds are to be questioned. Finally, we will argue that art such as literature, film, modern theatre, or performances use disruptions as a tool, with which the perception of the past, present and future and of the society itself can be shaped. They achieve this by employing powerfully repercussive narratives that construct political and socio-cultural coherence through the symbolic re-integration of imaginary or real disruptive incidents.

The ‘Red Phone’, understood as a telephone connection between the Cremlin and the White House, never existed. In this paper I treat it as a hybrid object of knowledge, whose materiality is mixed with facts and fictions. When the fictitious object first appeared in literature and film it was still relatively amorphous and insignificant. Only due to an increased production of signs, symbolic attributions, narrative strategies and rhetorical figures was the notorious Cold War apparatus constituted. As a discursive object the ‘Red Phone’ in turn provides specific information on a form of knowledge characteristic of this period. The ‘Red Phone’ is closely connected to crisis situations that deal with apocalyptic scenarios. To better understand this hybrid object this paper will analyze the short story „Abraham ’59 – A nuclear Fantasy“ (Harvey Wheeler) and the novel Fail-Safe (Eugene Burdick/Harvey Wheeler) that both stage a telephone connection between Moscow and Washington, which aims at deescalating a crisis situation.

Der Beitrag untersucht die Filme WarGames (USA 1983), Krieg und Frieden (BRD 1982) und Der Dritte Weltkrieg (BRD 1998) als Dokumente aus der letzten Phase des Kalten Krieges. Die Filme behandeln Ausnahmesituationen, in denen jeweils die Grenzen souveräner Entscheidung in einer lebensbedrohlichen Krise verhandelt werden. Sie entwerfen eine mögliche Zukunft ebenso wie einen kontrafaktischen Verlauf der Geschichte. Ihre Dynamik beziehen die zwar fiktionalen, aber denkbaren Erzählungen aus der Spieltheorie, aus Simulationen und aus der Kraft der historischen Imagination.