Showing papers in "Humanities research in 2016"
TL;DR: The food sovereignty movement as discussed by the authors was initiated by a transnational organization of peasants, La Via Campesina, representing 148 organizations from 69 countries, and became central to self-determination and decolonial mobilization embodied by Indigenous peoples throughout the world.
Abstract: The food sovereignty movement initiated in 1996 by a transnational organization of peasants, La Via Campesina, representing 148 organizations from 69 countries, became central to self-determination and decolonial mobilization embodied by Indigenous peoples throughout the world. Utilizing the framework of decolonization and sustainable self-determination, this article analyzes the concept of food sovereignty to articulate an understanding of its potential for action in revitalizing Indigenous food practices and ecological knowledge in the United States and Canada. The food sovereignty movement challenged the hegemony of the globalized, neoliberal, industrial, capital-intensive, corporate-led model of agriculture that created destructive economic policies that marginalized small-scale farmers, removed them from their land, and forced them into the global market economy as wage laborers. Framed within a larger rights discourse, the food sovereignty movement called for the right of all peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food and the right to define their own food and agricultural systems. “Indigenizing” food sovereignty moves beyond a rights based discourse by emphasizing the cultural responsibilities and relationships Indigenous peoples have with their environment and the efforts being made by Indigenous communities to restore these relationships through the revitalization of Indigenous foods and ecological knowledge systems as they assert control over their own foods and practices.
133 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present their work with Indigenous girls in an Indigenous girls group that resists medical and individual definitions of trauma, and instead utilizes an Indigenous intersectional framework that assists girls in understanding and locating their coping as responses to larger structural and systemic forces including racism, poverty, sexism, colonialism and a culture of violence enacted through state policy and practices.
Abstract: The health of Indigenous girls in Canada is often framed and addressed through health programs and interventions that are based on Western values systems that serve to further colonize girls’ health and their bodies. One of the risks of the recent attention paid to Indigenous girls’ health needs broadly and to trauma more specifically, is the danger of contributing to the “shock and awe” campaign against Indigenous girls who have experienced violence, and of creating further stigma and marginalization for girls. A focus on trauma as an individual health problem prevents and obscures a more critical, historically-situated focus on social problems under a (neo)colonial state that contribute to violence. There is a need for programs that provide safer spaces for girls that address their intersecting and emergent health needs and do not further the discourse and construction of Indigenous girls as at-risk. The author will present her work with Indigenous girls in an Indigenous girls group that resists medical and individual definitions of trauma, and instead utilizes an Indigenous intersectional framework that assists girls in understanding and locating their coping as responses to larger structural and systemic forces including racism, poverty, sexism, colonialism and a culture of violence enacted through state policy and practices.
48 citations
TL;DR: This paper revisited, reviewed and revises the much cited and magisterial description of successive historical death mentalities from the Middle Ages to modern society as proposed several decades ago by French historian Philippe Aries.
Abstract: This article revisits, reviews and revises the much cited and magisterial description of successive historical death mentalities from the Middle Ages to modern society as proposed several decades ago by French historian Philippe Aries. The article first outlines Aries’s position starting out with the medieval “tamed death,” then moves on to point to several inherent limitations in his history-writing, before suggesting a revision and update of it. Whereas Aries ended his history-writing with modern “forbidden death,” the author suggests that contemporary death mentality in Western society rather be labelled “spectacular death” in which death, dying and mourning have increasingly become spectacles. Moreover, the author proposes that what is currently happening in contemporary Western society can be interpreted as an expression of a “partial re-reversal” of “forbidden death” to some of the characteristic features of previous historical death mentalities, which—coupled with contemporary scientific and technological possibilities—creates several paradoxical tendencies making death linger uneasily between liberation and denial as well as between autonomy and control.
41 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present four case synopses from across Canada's boreal forest and highlight both sides of the extractivism/ACTIVISM formulation, exposing the political roots of resource-related conflicts and contributes to an emerging comparative political ecology of settler colonialism.
Abstract: This article approaches contemporary extractivism as an environmentally and socially destructive extension of an enduring colonial societal structure. Manifested in massive hydroelectric developments, clearcut logging, mining, and unconventional oil and gas production, extractivism removes natural resources from their points of origin and dislocates the emplaced benefits they provide. Because externally imposed resource extraction threatens Indigenous peoples’ land-based self-determination, industrial sites often become contested, politicized landscapes. Consequently, I also illuminate the struggles of those who strive to turn dreams for sovereign futures into reality through extrACTIVIST resistance to extractivist schemes. Presenting four case synopses—from across Canada’s boreal forest and spanning a broad range of extractive undertakings—that highlight both sides of the extractivism/ACTIVISM formulation, this article exposes the political roots of resource-related conflicts and contributes to an emerging comparative political ecology of settler colonialism. While extractivism’s environmental effects are immediate and arresting, these physical transformations have significant cultural consequences that are underlain by profound political inequities. I ultimately suggest that because extractivism is colonial in its causal logic, effective opposition cannot emerge from environmentalism alone, but will instead arise from movements that pose systemic challenges to conjoined processes of social, economic, and environmental injustice.
38 citations
TL;DR: The Humanities Special Issue on Deep Mapping as mentioned in this paper explores the broad-ranging nature of perspectives and practices that fall within the "undisciplined" interdisciplinary domain of spatial humanities and argues that what deep mapping "is" cannot be reduced to the otherwise a-spatial and a-temporal fixity of the "deep map".
Abstract: This paper provides an introduction to the Humanities Special Issue on “Deep Mapping”. It sets out the rationale for the collection and explores the broad-ranging nature of perspectives and practices that fall within the “undisciplined” interdisciplinary domain of spatial humanities. Sketching a cross-current of ideas that have begun to coalesce around the concept of “deep mapping”, the paper argues that rather than attempting to outline a set of defining characteristics and “deep” cartographic features, a more instructive approach is to pay closer attention to the multivalent ways deep mapping is performatively put to work. Casting a critical and reflexive gaze over the developing discourse of deep mapping, it is argued that what deep mapping “is” cannot be reduced to the otherwise a-spatial and a-temporal fixity of the “deep map”. In this respect, as an undisciplined survey of this increasing expansive field of study and practice, the paper explores the ways in which deep mapping can engage broader discussion around questions of spatial anthropology.
34 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a history of transpersonal psychology and the transpersonal human caring moment is discussed, along with guidelines for educators who desire to support students' capacity for growth in enacting transpersonalhuman caring states.
Abstract: Jean Watson’s Theory of Human Caring and the caring moment are based in part in theconcepts of transpersonal psychology. This paper will provide a historical background aroundtranspersonal psychology and how it relates to Watson’s human caring moment. The purpose ofexplicating these humanities-based concepts is to support nurses and nurse educators in creatinga deeper understanding of Watson’s caring-healing moment as a time-space continuum, where thenurse’s caring supports a mutually created environment for healing. The article provides usefulbackground information, as well as outlining simple steps to revising nursing curricula so that theybecome supportive of nursing students’ growth as transpersonal-caring beings. Keywords: Jean Watson; human caring theory; transpersonal; nursing; theory; philosophy;humanities; pedagogy 1. Introduction “Transpersonal refers to values of deep connectedness, of relationship, subjective meaning,and shared humanity . . . Transpersonal conveys a connection beyond the ego, capturingspiritual dimensions all humans share with a deeper self, others, nature, and theuniverse.” ([1], p. 13)Jean Watson, nursing’s living legend, began the development of the Theory of HumanCaring/Caring Science over 35 years ago; since that time, the theory has evolved, and yet theconcept of the creation of a transpersonal caring-healing moment remains as central to the coreof both understanding and enacting the theory in nursing practice. This paper explores the history oftranspersonal psychology (TP) and explicates how TP relates to Watson’s theory, the human caringmoment, and caring science. The reader is supported with a greater understanding of both thedevelopment of Watson’s theory and the process of creating and experiencing the transpersonalcaring-healing moment with patients. The reader is provided with guidelines for educators who desireto support students’ capacity for growth in enacting transpersonal human caring states. The valueof this work resides in the readers’ capacity to explore the historical and humanities-based roots ofWatson’s human caring moment; in deepening our understanding of the transpersonal roots of caringscience, nurses can strive to appropriately place the transpersonal aspects of human caring clearlywithin the realm of nurses’ work.Due to the heavy science-based curricula most nursing students experience, many nurses maystruggle with the spiritual and humanities-based background necessary to unpack human caringtheory in order to apply it at the bedside [2]. By taking a transdisciplinary exploration into thehumanities-based field of TP, the nurse educator is afforded the opportunity to explore how TPtheory and caring consciousness support the need for the paradigm shift beyond technical-medical
33 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors reviewed assertions that near-death and out-of-body experiences (ND/OBE) offer proof of extra-corporeal existence when the brain is supposedly dead.
Abstract: This paper critically reviews assertions that near-death and out-of-body experiences (ND/OBE) offer proof of extra-corporeal existence when the brain is supposedly “dead”. While this field has almost moved away from mere anecdotal recording, the current trend is focussed on demonstrating existence without functional brains. These endeavours have fallen far short of anticipated results—that cardiac patients would report on strategically-placed markers around acute resuscitation units. Two problems arise: a failure to produce corroborative empirical evidence for extra-corporeal cognition (a) when the brain is “dead”, (or “clinically dead”, so-called) and (b) how the memory required for recall could paradoxically be set down at that critical time-point. The view advanced here is that ND/OBE occur as subjects’ states are returning to complete resumption of conscious-awareness and which, from several published accounts, is particularly abrupt but which nevertheless accounts perfectly for memory—and recall. Similar transcendental adventures accompanying returns to conscious-awareness occur with other preceding states of reduced consciousness. Most recollections are intensely geo-physical, anthropomorphic, banal and illogical: their dream-like fantasy provides nothing revelatory about life without a brain, or importantly, about other supposed cosmic contexts. Additionally, it is proposed that since prevalence rates are so extremely low (<1% globally), the few subjects undergoing ND/OBE may have predisposed brains, genetically, structurally or resulting from previous psychological stress. In a somewhat similar vein to post-traumatic stress disorder, subjects with predisposed brains exhibit markedly changed post-experiential phenotypes, so that the ND/OBE itself could be viewed as a transient, accompanying epiphenomenon.
31 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored how global environmental organizations unintentionally fostered the notion of indigenous people and rights in a country that officially opposed these concepts, and discussed the unintended consequences after a major environmental organization, The Nature Conservancy, carried out a project using the language of indigeneity in China.
Abstract: This article explores how global environmental organizations unintentionally fostered the notion of indigenous people and rights in a country that officially opposed these concepts. In the 1990s, Beijing declared itself a supporter of indigenous rights elsewhere, but asserted that, unlike the Americas and Australia, China had no indigenous people. Instead, China described itself as a land of “ethnic minority” groups, not indigenous groups. In some sense, the state’s declaration appeared effective, as none of these ethnic minority groups launched significant grassroots efforts to align themselves with the international indigenous rights movement. At the same time, as international environmental groups increased in number and strength in 1990s China, their policies were undergoing significant transformations to more explicitly support indigenous people. This article examines how this challenging situation arose, and discusses the unintended consequences after a major environmental organization, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), carried out a project using the language of indigeneity in China.
24 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the framing and footing approach that focuses on talk emerging in contexts of face-to-face interaction and that derives most directly from the work of Erving Goffman.
Abstract: In engaging with acts of self-narration that cross species lines, creators of animal autobiographies also broach questions about genre, truth status, and the structure as well as the politics of narrative representation. To address these questions, the present article draws not just on scholarship on (animal) autobiography but also on ideas from the fields of linguistic semantics, politeness theory, and discourse analysis, including the “framing and footing” approach that focuses on talk emerging in contexts of face-to-face interaction and that derives most directly from the work of Erving Goffman. On the basis of this research, and using case studies that range from animal riddles to Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the Animals (2014), a collection of life stories posthumously narrated by a variety of nonhuman tellers, I profile autobiographical acts that reach beyond the human as ways of speaking for or in behalf of animal others. Some animal autobiographies correlate with acts of telling for which humans themselves remain the principals as well as authors; their animal animators remain relegated to the role of commenting on human institutions, values, practices, and artifacts. Other examples, however, can be read as co-authored acts of narrating in behalf of equally hybrid (or “humanimal”) principals. These experiments with narration beyond the human afford solidarity-building projections of other creatures’ ways of being-in-the-world—projections that enable a reassessment, in turn, of forms of human being.
22 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors encourage those in the energy humanities to cast a broader net in their analyses and recognize the full diversity of energy systems in their scholarship, and encourage them to give proper attention to other aspects of the social and cultural dimensions of energy.
Abstract: Oil is currently over-represented in the energy humanities, a state of affairs I describe as petromyopia. While oil constitutes a vital source of energy in the modern world, focusing too heavily on petroleum can distract scholars from giving proper attention to other aspects of the social and cultural dimensions of energy. The goal of this article is to encourage those in the energy humanities to cast a broader net in their analyses and recognize the full diversity of energy systems in their scholarship.
20 citations
TL;DR: The marriage of literature and science might not be possible strictly speaking, but a marriage of humanities with philosophy, psychology, religion, ethics, ecology, and social studies might well work, as a close analysis of some medieval narratives will illustrate as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The marriage of literature and science might not be possible strictly speaking, but a marriage of humanities with philosophy, psychology, religion, ethics, ecology, and social studies, for instance, might well work, as a close analysis of some medieval narratives will illustrate. This paper intends to demonstrate once again what the humanities could truly mean, insofar as the discussion will not only lay bare textual elements or philological concerns, but it will also indicate how much relevant literature helps us to address crucial questions of religious, ethical, social, moral, and philosophical kinds, building powerful bridges between the past and the present. In order to test this premise even in extreme situations, here a number of medieval texts will be introduced and analyzed as to their timeless message and hence their extremely important function of creating meaning for readers/listeners both from the Middle Ages and today.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors offer case studies from Ecuador, Peru and Alaska that chart some recent indigenous experiences and strategies for such scenarios, including meta-communication, communication about communication, and meta-truthfulness.
Abstract: During the twentieth century, indigenous peoples have often embraced the category of indigenous while also having to face the ambiguities and limitations of this concept. Indigeneity, whether represented by indigenous people themselves or others, tends to face a “double bind”, as defined by Gregory Bateson, in which “no matter what a person does, he can’t win.” One exit strategy suggested by Bateson is meta-communication—communication about communication—in which new solutions emerge from a questioning of system-internal assumptions. We offer case studies from Ecuador, Peru and Alaska that chart some recent indigenous experiences and strategies for such scenarios.
TL;DR: This article analyzed the complexity of memory landscapes in Eastern Europe and the difficulty of acknowledging traumas experienced by non-Western groups on their own terms, and identified alternative ways of thinking about the nexus of trauma and difference by addressing how complexity and vulnerability can help to transcend competing victimhoods.
Abstract: The movement to decolonize trauma theory conceptualizes traumas as rooted in particular contexts. Scholars working within this framework caution against the monumentalism of traumas as singular events and press for the acknowledgment of traumas experienced by minorities and liminal groups. In addition, this body of literature suggests a question of fundamental significance to memory politics: How to make sure that postcolonial attempts to memorialize the traumatic histories of colonialism do not become sources of state subjugation and oppression? Using examples from Eastern Europe, this article analyzes the complexity of memory landscapes in this region and the difficulty of acknowledging traumas of “non-Western” groups on their own terms. Drawing on works by three authors from the region (Ene Koresaar, Svetlana Aleksievich and Jasmina Husanovic), this essay identifies alternative ways of thinking about the nexus of trauma and difference by addressing how complexity and vulnerability can help to transcend competing victimhoods in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
TL;DR: Fan fiction alternate universe stories (AUs) that combine Game of Thrones characters and settings with fairy tale elements construct a dialogue between realism and wonder as mentioned in this paper, which is a particularly tricky concept to tie down in fantasy.
Abstract: Fan fiction alternate universe stories (AUs) that combine Game of Thrones characters and settings with fairy tale elements construct a dialogue between realism and wonder. Realism performs a number of functions in various genres, but becomes a particularly tricky concept to tie down in fantasy. Deployments of realism in “quality TV” series like Game of Thrones often reinforce social stigmatization of feminine genres like the romance, melodrama, and fairy tale. The happily-ever-after ending receives significant feminist criticism partly because it falls within a larger framework of utopian politics and poetics, which are frequently accused of essentialism and authoritarianism. However, because fan fiction cultures place all stories in dialogue with numerous other equally plausible versions, the fairy tale happy ending can serve unexpected purposes. By examining several case studies in fairy tale AU fan fiction based on Game of Thrones characters, situations, and settings, this paper demonstrates the genre’s ability to construct surprising critiques of real social and historical situations through strategic deployment of impossible wishes made manifest through the magic of fan creativity.
TL;DR: A survey of the state of the humanities at this critical time can be found in this paper, where the authors discuss the current challenges of globalization, economic shifts, and extensive budget cuts.
Abstract: This essay surveys the state of the humanities at this critical time. What will be the role of the humanities at the end of this century and beyond? I discuss the “crisis of the humanities” by examining the current challenges of globalization, economic shifts, and extensive budget cuts. I also discuss the social and political divisions that contribute to a crisis within the humanities. Since the culture wars that began in the 1960’s, the content, scope, and focus of the humanities have changed dramatically, and this has impacted how the humanities are perceived and valued by the general public. The second half of the essay makes the case for the vital importance of the humanities. I argue that the fate of the humanities is inseparable from the future of human beings. I highlight the current problems of war, environmental degradation, and mass surveillance that must be managed before they overwhelm and derail the potential for dramatic progress. Following recent scholarship and research trends, I explain how technological advancements will lead to the most significant evolutionary changes to the human being in aeons. Through technologies such as bionics, transgenesis, robotics, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence, Homo sapiens might be enabled to transcend its former limits and usher in an era of transhumanism. The relevant question is: What do we want to be? I argue that enhancement technologies will make their beneficiaries more robotic and less human, and explain why we must treasure the advantages of our distinctly human capacities and resist the prospect of empowering ourselves to become automatons. My underlying thesis is that developing an understanding of the most insightful ideas and cultivating an appreciation for the greatest creative works that humankind has produced will be crucial for maintaining our humanity. The humanities thus make a unique and indispensable contribution to defining what and who we want our descendants to be.
TL;DR: This paper used the term "vulnerable life" to recalibrate discussions of how life is valued and violence is justified in the contemporary bio-insecurity regime, and pointed out how dangerous the proliferation of postracial and posthuman discourses can be if they serve to elide historical limitations about the highly political determinations of just who is quite human.
Abstract: This essay offers an intervention in biopolitical theory—using the term “vulnerable life” to recalibrate discussions of how life is valued and violence is justified in the contemporary bioinsecurity regime. It reads the discursive structures that dehumanize and pathologize figures in U.S. zombie narratives against the discursive structures present in contemporary legal narratives and media reports on the killing of black Americans. Through this unsettling paralleling of structures, the essay suggests how the current ubiquity of zombies and the profusion of racial tension in the U.S. are related. In the process, the essay emphasizes the highly racialized nature of the zombie itself—which has never been the empty signifier it is often read as—and drives home just how dangerous the proliferation of postracial and posthuman discourses can be if they serve to elide historical limitations about the highly political determinations of just who is quite human.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that human rights practices may be fruitfully guided by the way minority cultures around the world evoke ethical universals to challenge violations, and they consider a novel Sea of Poppies that treats the issue of colonialism in South Asia during the 19th century.
Abstract: The debate on universality in current human rights scholarship has been overly limited. Commonly, the idea is either dismissed as Eurocentric or it is compared to a global political consensus. I evoke certain alternate and underexplored views on the topic from literary and culture studies. Scholars like Kwame Appiah, Patrick Hogan and Seyla Benhabib have articulated principles that include patterns of non-coercive ethical thinking emergent across diverse cultures, particularly the way minority cultures ethically respond to oppression. I argue that human rights practices may be fruitfully guided by the way minority cultures around the world evoke ethical universals to challenge violations. To develop this, I consider Amitav Ghosh’s novel Sea of Poppies that treats the issue of colonialism in South Asia during the 19th century. Ghosh foreshadows the arrival of human rights in two ways. He shows that a conception human rights has origins in Western colonialism, precisely in the colonial idea of civilizing mission. But more importantly, he demonstrates that ethical universals allow colonized characters in the novel to form cross-cultural solidarities that subvert colonialism through conceptions of universal human rights. This understanding of universality is largely missing in current human rights scholarship, with consequences that extend well beyond Ghosh’s novel.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors developed Zizek's work on Lacan's concept of objet petit a by relating it to a phenomenological interpretation of Jung by integrating other Lacanian concepts, such as subject, drive, fantasy, jouissance, gaze, desire, and ego as well as the imaginary, symbolic and Real.
Abstract: This article continues my earlier work of reading Jung with Lacan. This article will develop Zizek’s work on Lacan’s concept of objet petit a by relating it to a phenomenological interpretation of Jung. I use a number of different examples, including Zizek’s interpretation of Francis Bacon, Edvard Munch, Hans Holbein and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, to describe the objet petit a and its relationship to a phenomenological interpretation of complexes. By integrating other Lacanian concepts, such as subject, drive, fantasy, jouissance, gaze, desire, and ego as well as the imaginary, symbolic and Real, this work also highlights how Hegel and Heidegger can elucidate the relationship between objet petit a and complexes. Jung’s transcendent function and the Rosarium Philosophorum also elucidate the relationship between Jung and Lacan.
TL;DR: The authors focus on the convergence of animal studies and trauma theory in literature, and offer new animal-centered close readings of Tolstoy's Strider and Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog, paying attention to animal pain rather than seeing it.
Abstract: Following the recent “animal turn” in literary studies, which has inspired scholars to revisit traditional human-centered interpretations of texts narrated by animals, this article focuses on the convergence of animal studies and trauma theory. It offers new animal-centered close readings of Tolstoy’s Strider and Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog, paying attention to animal pain rather than seeing it, and the text as a whole, as an allegory of human society. Like many other authors of literary fiction featuring animal narrators, Tolstoy and Bulgakov employ a kind of empathic ventriloquism to narrate animal pain, an important project which, however, given the status of both the animal and trauma outside human language, and thus susceptible to being distorted by it, produces inauthentic discourse (animal-like, rather than animal narration); therefore, these authors get closest to animal pain, not through sophisticated narration, but through the use of ellipses and onomatopoeia. Ultimately, any narratological difficulty with animal focalization is minor compared to the ethical imperative of anti-speciesist animal-standpoint criticism, and the goal is to reconceive the status of animals in literature so as to change their ontological place in the world, urging that this critical work and animal rights advocacy be continued in the classroom.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider transforming forms and their purposes in the popular culture trope of the televised Monster of the Week (MOTW) episodes and recognize Baba Yaga's role as villain in these episodes and acknowledge that these series also shift between episodic and serial narrative arcs involving close relationships between characters and among viewers and fans.
Abstract: This paper considers transforming forms and their purposes in the popular culture trope of the televised Monster of the Week (MOTW). In the rare televised appearances outside of Slavic nations, Baba Yaga tends to show up in MOTW episodes. While some MOTW are contemporary inventions, many, like Baba Yaga, are mythological and fantastic creatures from folk narratives. Employing the concept of the folkloresque, we explore how contemporary audiovisual tropes gain integrity and traction by indexing traditional knowledge and belief systems. In the process, we examine key affordances of these forms involving the possibilities of wonder and the portability of tradition. Using digital humanities methods, we built a “monster typology” by scraping lists of folk creatures, mythological beasts, and other supernatural beings from online information sources, and we used topic modeling to investigate central concerns of MOTW series. Our findings indicate connections in these shows between crime, violence, family, and loss. The trope formulates wonder and families through folk narrative and monster forms and functions. We recognize Baba Yaga’s role as villain in these episodes and acknowledge that these series also shift between episodic and serial narrative arcs involving close relationships between characters and among viewers and fans.
TL;DR: The authors compare Le Guin's short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (1974) to the book of Job, and draw on George Bataille's theory of sacrifice as useless expenditure, and develop his concept of the will to chance in my reading of how each set of characters responds to the complex moral impasses faced.
Abstract: This article compares Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (1974) to the book of Job. Both stories feature characters who can be read as innocent victims, but whereas the suffering in Le Guin’s tale benefits many, Job is the victim of useless suffering. Exploring this difference, I draw on George Bataille’s theory of sacrifice as useless expenditure, and developed his concept of the “will to chance” in my reading of how each set of characters responds to the complex moral impasses faced. In the end, I read both stories as being about the struggle to create a viable, meaningful life in a world that is unpredictable and structurally unjust.
TL;DR: In a recent special issue as discussed by the authors, 13 scholars in the fields of folklore and fairy-tale studies tackled the significance of the fairy tale for society and its social uses in a nuanced fashion.
Abstract: Ever since the beginning of the 21st century, the fairy tale has not only become a staple of the small and silver screen around the globe, it has also migrated into new media, overwhelming audiences with imaginative and spectacular retellings along the way. Indeed, modern fairy-tale adaptations pervading contemporary popular culture drastically subvert, shatter, and alter the public’s understanding of the classic fairy tale. Because of the phenomenally increasing proliferation of fairy-tale transformations in today’s “old” and “new” media, we must reflect upon the significance of the fairy tale for society and its social uses in a nuanced fashion. How, why, and for whom have fairy-tale narratives, characters, and motifs metamorphosed in recent decades? What significant intermedial and intertextual relationships exist nowadays in connection with the fairy tale? This special issue features 11 illuminating articles of 13 scholars in the fields of folklore and fairy-tale studies tackling these and other relevant questions.
TL;DR: In this paper, a hermeneutic phenomenological study provided new understandings of the experience of listening in nursing education, including ways nurse educators can open and interpret a dialogue, shift the way they think about teaching and make connections with students.
Abstract: The role of the nurse has become considerably more demanding in the past twenty years through increased complexity of patient care within a rapidly changing health care environment. Research is needed to expand the pedagogical literacy of nurse educators and address the needs of students entering a complex health care system. Narrative Pedagogy was identified as a research-based nursing pedagogy and has been enabled in nursing education for over a decade. The Concernful Practices emerged from Narrative Pedagogy research, which helped identify what teachers, students, and clinicians considered meaningful in teaching. Listening was one of the Concernful Practices and became the focus of this study. This hermeneutic phenomenological study provided new understandings of the experience of listening in nursing education. The research question addressed “How do nurse educators who enable Narrative Pedagogy experience Listening: knowing and connecting?” One of the themes, Listening as Dialogue, emerged from the study and included ways nurse educators can open and interpret a dialogue, shift the way they think about teaching, and make connections with students.
TL;DR: The authors investigates how Toni Morrison's God Help the Child (2015) offers a timely exploration of the hurting Black female body that calls into question, if not outright refutes, whether Americans have entered a post-racial, post-Black, and post-feminist era.
Abstract: In the midst of the proliferation of post-discourses, this essay investigates how Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child (2015) offers a timely exploration of the hurting Black female body that calls into question, if not outright refutes, whether Americans have entered a post-racial, post-Black, and post-feminist era. This essay opens with a critical context section that situates God Help the Child within and against post-discourses, before examining how resemblances with Morrison’s prior works like Beloved (1987) and The Bluest Eye (1970) confirm that the legacy of slavery still dictates the way Black female bodies are seen and treated in twenty-first-century America. Ultimately, what this study intends is to speak the unspeakable: race still matters despite the silencing effects of post-discourses.
TL;DR: Alessandro Spina, ne Basili Shafik Khouzam, was born in Benghazi in 1927 into a family of Maronites from Aleppo and spent most of his life between Libya and Italy, speaking several languages and writing in Italian as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Alessandro Spina, ne Basili Shafik Khouzam, was born in Benghazi in 1927 into a family of Maronites from Aleppo and spent most of his life between Libya and Italy, speaking several languages and writing in Italian. He may be described as the “unsung” writer of Italian colonial and post-colonial past in North Africa. Spina’s oeuvre—collected in an omnibus edition, I confini dell’ombra. In terra d’oltremare (Morcelliana)—charts the history of Libya from 1911, when Italy invaded the Ottoman province, to 1966, when the country witnessed the economic boom sparked by the petrodollars. The cycle was awarded the Premio Bagutta, Italy’s highest literary accolade. In 2015, Darf Press published in English the first instalment of Spina’s opus with the title The Confines of the Shadows. In Lands Overseas. Spina always refused to be pigeonholed in some literary category and to be labeled as a colonial or postcolonial author. As a matter of fact, his works go beyond the spatial and imaginary boundaries of a given state or genre, emphasizing instead the mixing and collision of languages, cultures, identities, and forms of writing. Reading and re-discovering Spina in a transcultural mode brings to light the striking newness of his literary efforts, in which transnational lived life, creative imagination, and transcultural sensibility are inextricably interlaced.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors bring together the affective porous subject with the modern sentiment idea of the sensible body, focusing in particular on the 17th and 18th-century neurological discourses of sensibility in the work of Albrecht von Haller, Georg Ernst Stahl and others.
Abstract: This article brings together two ideas that authors in theoretical humanities tend to consider in isolation—of affect and of sentiment—and investigates what conceptions or imaginaries of the subject these ideas have historically relied on and reproduced. When viewed from the lens of the theory of subjectivation, the contemporary notions of affect and the modern sentiment tradition not only reveal significant conceptual, epistemic and ideational overlaps, but they are both kinds of critique of the liberal individualistic subject. Engaging the methodology of juxtaposition, I bring together the affective porous subject (drawing on the work of Teresa Brennan) with the modern sentiment idea of the sensible body, focusing in particular on the 17th- and 18th-century neurological discourses of sensibility in the work of Albrecht von Haller, Georg Ernst Stahl and others. I argue that the modern sentiment tradition forms part of the genealogy of affect in that its ideas of sensibility and sympathy foreground one of the tenets of affective subjectivity: namely, that the subject emerges through (rather than predates) ecological exposure, membranous permeability and nervous responsiveness. In this sense, both the sentimental and affective notions of the subject operate as forms of critique of the idea of Cartesian self and of the disavowal of relational and/or dialogical subject in Western philosophy.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used secondary data to explore the issues Taiwan universities currently face, such as a low birth rate and global competition, which will result in a lower registration rate and less tuition revenue, making some universities struggle to survive.
Abstract: The dramatic expansion of Taiwan universities/colleges from about 100 to 160 from the late 1980s has encountered problems due to social and global changes. What should Taiwan universities move toward and how? This research relies on secondary data to explore the issues Taiwan universities currently face—a low birth rate and global competition. The decreasing number of incoming students will result in a lower registration rate and less tuition revenue, which will make some universities struggle to survive. Hence, government policies, proposed by the Ministry of Education, have been implemented to assist Taiwan universities to adjust to external changes. The Innovative Transformation Policy, adopted in 2015, consists of strategies for university–industry cooperation, university mergers, university closures, and a re-shaping of the university paradigm. This policy has begun to be implemented and its initial outcome will be continually evaluated. In accordance with the Innovative Transformation Policy, this study encourages Taiwan universities to improve governance, set prominent unique characteristics of development, and enhance global competitiveness.
TL;DR: In this paper, an affect theory framework is used to show how the audience has the power to intensify the circulation of affect in the theatrical encounter, and to impact on the unique felt quality of the performance.
Abstract: This article uses an affect theory framework to show how the audience has the power to intensify the circulation of affect in the theatrical encounter, and to impact on the unique felt quality of the performance. Assessment is made of the vital function of affect to performance through the images, sensations and expressions that performers use to describe audience engagement. Intermittently, from 2010 to 2012, the author embarked on practice-led research to find out how performers describe the experience of being on stage with regard to their engagement with an audience. Conversations were recorded with more than 50 performers (mainly actors and dancers) from the USA and Brazil, as well as Portugal and other European countries.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the gender norms of the novelle offer intriguing precedents for characterizations that we find in the visual arts, from Botticelli to Leonardo to Michelangelo, which rarely match what we know of societal expectations of the day.
Abstract: Artists figure fairly frequently in novelle, so it is not unreasonable to suppose that they may have taken more than a passing interest in the genre. Although much scholarly effort has been dedicated to the task of exploring how Horace’s adage “ut pictura poesis” affected the course of the visual arts during the Italian Renaissance and vast scholarly effort has been assigned to the study of Boccaccio’s literary efforts (much more so than the efforts of his successors), relatively little effort has been spent on the dauntingly interdisciplinary task of estimating how the development of prose literary imagination may have affected habits of perception and may also have augmented the project of integrating quotidian observations into pictorial compositions. In contrast to these issues of “realism”, the essay also addresses questions of how the literary conventions of novelle, although they may have been created in deliberate defiance of current social norms, may eventually have helped to shift those norms. More specifically, the gender norms of the novelle offer intriguing precedents for characterizations that we find in the visual arts, from Botticelli to Leonardo to Michelangelo, ones that rarely match what we know of societal expectations of the day. The argument, though necessarily speculative, is addressed as much to the question of how readers and viewers might have had their thinking shaped by their combined aesthetic experiences as by the more traditional question of identifying artists’ sources. Did theorizing about style, or simply thinking about what made for vividness or impressiveness, shift readily between the verbal and the visual, and perhaps more easily then than now? Can we create a history of art that seeks evidence from the whole literary record rather than consistently prioritizing poetry and the “poetic”?
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the sustainability practices in the motion picture industry and challenges to that by focusing on the British film and television industry as a case study, and discuss the possibilities of creating a change in behavior in the film industry, not only in terms of embedding green measures but also reconstituting industrial mechanisms on behalf of environmental sustainability.
Abstract: Environmental themes and representations on screen are examined as a part of environmental social studies and can be considered a way of creating awareness of environmental issues. However, how often do we consider the environmental impact of a film or television shoot as an industrial process? In this article, I examine the sustainability practices in the motion picture industry and challenges to that by focusing on the British film and television industry as a case study. Using the interviews with industry representatives and some case studies, I discuss the possibilities of creating a change in behavior in the film industry, not only in terms of embedding green measures but also reconstituting industrial mechanisms on behalf of environmental sustainability.