Showing papers on "Wonder published in 2009"
TL;DR: In this article, an ethnographic study of wildlife tourists revealed the commonalities and complexities of the wildlife experience during wildlife encounters at home and while on holiday, revealing the emotional response of awe, wonder and privilege that unlocks ecocentric and anthropomorphic connections to wild animals and a feeling that is beyond words.
Abstract: This article presents the results of an ethnographic study of wildlife tourists. The findings reveal the commonalities and complexities of the wildlife experience during wildlife encounters at home and while on holiday. Nature's design, performance and immense biodiversity initiate an emotional response of awe, wonder and privilege that unlocks ecocentric and anthropomorphic connections to wild animals and a feeling that is ‘beyond words’. There is time to stand and stare, and contemplate. Nature and wildlife are not only spatial events but also temporal ones. In this liminal, embodied space of a wildlife encounter, socially constructed modern fast time dissipates and is replaced by stillness and nature's time whereby participants are totally absorbed in the spectacle. All thought and action is concentrated on the moment. This provokes a deep sense of well-being that transcends the initial encounter leading to spiritual fulfilment and psychological health benefits. The implications of this research has re...
229 citations
[...]
TL;DR: Holmes as discussed by the authors described on the jacket of this book as ‘our finest Romantic’ and wrote The Age of Wonder: how the Romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science.
Abstract: Richard Holmes, The age of wonder: how the Romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science . Harper Press, London, 2008. Pp. xxi +554, £25 (hardback). ISBN-13: 978-0-00714952-0.
What good news it is that Richard Holmes, described on the jacket of this book as ‘our finest Romantic
67 citations
TL;DR: Hutson, Lorna, and DiMatteo as mentioned in this paper show that the use of suspicion has been a master political art in modernity and perhaps the very hallmark of modernity, with techniques and goals first identified by Machiavelli.
Abstract: Hutson, Lorna. 2007. The Invention of Suspicion: Law and Mimesis in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama. Oxford: Oxford University Press. $99.00 he. 383 pp.Anthony DiMatteoNew York Institute of TechnologyWe usually speak of casting suspicion or having it raised, but in these times when terrorism and counter-terrorism can be hard to distinguish, we have had to relearn what it means to invent suspicion. That there is a long history of individuals and governments inventing such a thing - of generating suspicion about those persons "which walke in the night, or sleep in the day," as William Lambarde prescribed for Elizabethan constables (Hutson 331) should at least give us pause to suspect our own suspicions. Indeed, the use of suspicion, whether there is something to be suspicious about or not, has comprised a master political art in modernity, and perhaps the very hallmark of modernity, with techniques and goals first identified by Machiavelli.No wonder the arts of suspicion are powerfully displayed in English Renaissance drama, which from one perspective can be seen as responding to monopolistic, centrist pressures from above - despite royal proclamations by Queen Elizabeth I not to make windows into men's souls, or by James I that commoners had their own Solomon-like conscience when acting as jurors. Hutson convincingly develops another view of the prevalence of suspicion in the drama of George Gascoigne,Thomas Kyd, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, a view from below, as it were, turning the Foucauldian approach on its head. The English common man and woman were more and more participating in forensic inquiry, as evidenced by the great amount of litigious activities going on in the final decades of the sixteenth century. The playwrights hold a mirror not up to nature but to the motives and consequences of a society in a chronic state of suspicion, as they were trained to do not only by their own experiences but by their Roman forerunners in drama - Plautus and especially Terence - whose works were often cited in Roman law books. The forensic rhetoric of Roman New Comedy, with its ability to summon up realities that may or may not exist, had a pervasive effect across all the genres of English Renaissance drama as Hutson demonstrates, provocatively showing how this development in Tudor and Jacobean drama links to major reformations in the understanding and practice of law and justice.The connections that Hutson identifies have roots in the classical ideal that acknowledges poets as legislators, "giving rules for wedded life, building towns, and engraving laws on tablets," in Horace's impressive formulation of the Orphic archetype. In Hutson's reading, when we weigh evidence for and against, raising as well as reflecting upon causes for why people act, we are like poets weaving stories, entertaining conjectural answers to questions of who, what, when, where, how and why. We "see into" evidence so that, at least in our minds, we can judge for ourselves and sound plausible to others, our accounts taken as socially and legally valid. From the perspective of forensic rhetoric Hutson writes a complex history of the relations of law and literature in Tudor and Jacobean England, showing the importance of poets who were trained in law such as Thomas Norton, Thomas Sackville, Christopher Yelverton, and John Foxe. From Cicero and Quintilian, they learned a forensic conception of narrative that aimed to weave together circumstances and testimonies into a seamless account, "making the intelligible spring from the accidental" in Paul Ricoeur's phrase, which Hutson finds especially useful in understanding how emplotment (muthos) functions as both matter and arrangement in Aristode's conception of mimesis. Hutson charts how this forensic training - in making one's account of some action sound true by mounting artificial and inartificial proofs - filtered throughout early modern England as processes of justice involved more and more people. …
60 citations
Book•
05 Mar 2009
TL;DR: Rubenstein this paper argues that the experience of wonder before the mystery of existence is the very opposite of a mystification that obstructs critical enquiry; it can either be inquisitively endured or it can be covered over with unquestionable premises and conclusions that obstruct further inquiry.
Abstract: Strange Wonder, indeed: philosophers or theologians might wonder about this choice of topic. Does it conjure up eyes wide with sophomoric reverence, unstrained by dogmatics, doubt, or deconstruction? Or does it just sound tangential to the serious problems of philosophy and theology today? As it turns out, Mary-Jane Rubinstein’s first book offers one of the most gripping and timely accounts of Continental Philosophy, in the wake of Heidegger, written in English. Meditating on the question of wonder—with its etymological “wound” (Wunde), its classical status as the origin of philosophy, its politics of shock and awe—Rubenstein crafts a stunningly precise opening, an invitation into the presumed impossibilities of thought, where an alternative thinking becomes possible. “Because it attends to the strangeness of the most familiar,” she writes, “such wakeful thinking might finally endure, rather than close down, the perilous openness of wonder” (p. 19). For the sake of that opening, ancient as Socrates’ dialogue with the “bulging-eyed” young Theaetetus, Rubenstein tracks key closures and disclosures in the recent history of philosophy. She investigates, in sequence, the work of Heidegger, Levinas, Nancy, and Derrida as they find (and sometimes lose) a mode of thought beyond calculation, beyond the transcendental subject and his [sic] object-world. Not accidentally, this adventure into the limits of the speakable—for wonder, as she cites Nancy, is “nothing other than that which happens or arrives at the limits” (p. 125)—exposes the very edge where philosophy cannot lose theology. And where theology may, therefore, find fresh language for its oldest mystery. The thesis of the book is roughly this: thinking itself “rests” upon a “groundless awe”, thaumazein, or apophatic indeterminacy. It “can either be inquisitively endured or it can be covered over with unquestionable premises and conclusions that obstruct further inquiry” (p. 23). In other words, the experience of wonder before the mystery of existence is the very opposite of a mystification that obstructs critical enquiry. Criticism—from Socratic not-knowing to Derridean undecidability—is the active voice of wonder; it wonders if. . . . But philosophy often follows Aristotle—and his Christian disciples—for whom the initiating awe is just what thought is designed to outgrow. Even in the practices of deconstructive uncertainty, wonder may not survive the simmering skepsis. Working in intimate affinity with her authors, especially Nancy and Derrida, Rubenstein never fails to wonder about their own inadvertent closures. Delicate in her own deconstructions, she does not read them against so much as with themselves, their more awesome selves. Rubenstein organizes the book according to four themes, as they correspond (more or less) to her four major authors: repetition, openness, relation, decision. In her 308 Reviews
55 citations
Book Chapter•
01 Jun 2009
TL;DR: Field, Gallacher and Ingram as discussed by the authors pointed out that people have had to adjust their expectations; constantly being told that "A job is not for life any more", they have learned to expect uncertainty regardless of whether things are actually changing or not.
Abstract: References to constant change are something of a cliche, but are none the less apt. Well over a decade ago, in the early days of the current policy preoccupation with lifelong learning, Richard Edwards drew attention to the ways in which the language of change had become a pervasive theme of our times (Edwards 1997). Familiar suspects parade before us as the drivers of change: globalisation, new technologies, science-based innovation, organisational restructuring, and the search for competitive advantage (for a detailed analysis at transnational level see Schemmann 2007). To these we might add cultural and social factors, such as the continuing rise in the aspirations of – and expectations from – women, the apparently inexorable growth in average life expectancy, and (perhaps more controversially) a tendency towards individualisation of values and lifestyles. Little wonder, then, that life transitions have become such a focus of attention among researchers. Surrounded by a wall-to-wall discourse of change, people have had to adjust their expectations; constantly told that “A job is not for life any more”, they have learned to expect uncertainty, regardless of whether things are actually changing or not. And for many people, life is bringing new challenges and experiences, which This pre-print is being published in: John Field, Jim Gallacher and Robert Ingram (editors),
47 citations
TL;DR: The baroque is the original modern culture of spectacle in the West, and its deployment of spectacle is both a mode of presentation and a statement about what that mode represents.
Abstract: of early modern classicism, imperialism, and science?that is, out of the high Renaissance?to become a kind of antiprogram of resis tances: to the absolutist state, the rise of empirical science, the pres sures of empire, and other sixteenth-century signs of the gathering regimentation of knowledge. With a flourish of forms and a play of perspectives, the baroque embodies the recoil from such regimenta tion and the gathering sense that all these systems for organizing human experience fall short in the face of disorder, contingency, and death. Seen from certain vantages, the specimens of the baroque of ten seem complicit with the projects of absolutism, empire, and late humanism; but regarded in all their dimensions, such works are of ten complex reactions, critical and compromised, to those projects.1 Moreover, while the baroque is the original modern culture of spectacle in the West, its deployment of spectacle is both a mode of presentation?an environment of sensations?and a statement about what that mode represents. Baroque spectacle often seems to con firm its objects (monarchs or marriages or discoveries) in manner, but no less often it denaturalizes them in authority and substance. If the story of their power can be told, is such power a property of be ing or an effect of representation? If they can be rendered into light and shape and color, what is the nature of their reality? Posing such questions, the baroque leaves the early modern world in exquisite pieces, asking us to exchange their lost value?the whole they once made?for the novelty and wonder of the pieces themselves. As first conceived, the baroque not only spans the world that radiates out ward from western Europe, from Poland to Sicily to Mexico City to Macao, but operates as one of the original cultural idioms across this world, bringing the wash of forms and ideas back to Europe. Unlike humanism, which belongs first to places such as Florence and Rotterdam, the baroque depends on?is an effect of?dispersal. Churches in Mexico City and northern Luzon show as much of the ROLAND GREENE, professor of English and comparative literature at Stanford University, recently completed a book length study of cultural semantics in sixteenth-century Europe and the Ameri cas, entitled "Five Words," and a polemi cal book about close reading. He is now working on a project called "Figures and Grounds," concerning rhetorical and geographic commonplaces of the early modern transatlantic world.
44 citations
01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: The philosophy of science invisibly guides much of our work, how we think, what we assume as mentioned in this paper, and the dictates of philosophy still tell us what we are supposed to achieve and how to behave in our work.
Abstract: The philosophy of science invisibly guides much of our work, how we think, what we assume. Although social science is fundamentally empirical, the dictates of philosophy still tell us what we are supposed to achieve and how to behave in our work. We generally accept the dictum known as Occam’s Razor – that the simplest explanation is usually the best one. We still take our reference points in discussions of causation from the voluminous work in philosophy – discussions driven by the issue of causality in a physical, not social, world – and wonder how we can approximate the ideal set by this discourse.
38 citations
04 Mar 2009
TL;DR: In this paper, a collection of statements collected in my research on relational uncertainty are presented. But they do not consider the relationship between spouses and their children, and do not address the uncertainty in their interpersonal relationships.
Abstract: We know that nothing in life is certain (except maybe death and taxes); we
can not begin to anticipate the unforeseen events, mysterious surprises,
and unexpected adventures that fate has in store for us. Our uncertain futures make our interpersonal relationships equally ambiguous. Consider an
assortment of statements I have collected in my research on relational uncertainty:• “I sometimes wonder about what having our first baby is going to do
to our marriage.”
35 citations
[...]
TL;DR: This article explored how theory as method might enable us to revisit methodological approaches that have conventionally relied upon semantic readings of the text, and explored how we might offer some new ways of thinking "human" "agency" "subject" in a creative assemblage of mind, body, world, and where encounters with the "unthought" "unknown" "uncertain" "unclear" need not be paralyzing but a call towards a wonder of methodology itself.
Abstract: Postmodern and deconstructionist approaches are necessarily concerned with ‘making visible’ and working with marginalized ‘others’. This article explores how theory as method might enable us to revisit methodological approaches that have conventionally relied upon semantic readings of the text. Deconstruction clears the way for such approaches without necessarily providing an optimistic or hopeful way forward. This article seeks to explore how we might offer some new ways of thinking ‘human’ ‘agency’ ‘subject’ in a creative assemblage of mind, body, world, and where encounters with the ‘unthought’ ‘unknown’ ‘uncertain’, and ‘unclear’ need not be paralyzing but a call towards a wonder of methodology itself.
TL;DR: The capacity of humans to see beyond themselves, to become more than they are, to see mystery and wonder in the world around them, is defined as a way of being that includes the capacity of human beings to become beyond themselves as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Background/ContextSpirituality refers to a way of being that includes the capacity of humans to see beyond themselves, to become more than they are, to see mystery and wonder in the world around th...
[...]
01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: The story of the twentieth century is viewed as a bloody competition between information systems to organize the power unleashed by the industrial revolution, a competition between open systems that use information to liberate public energy and imagination to shape social, economic, and political life and closed systems that control information to direct public energies and thought into predetermined systems as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: WAY TO READ THE STORY of the twentieth century is as a bloody competition between information systems to organize the power unleashed by the industrial revolution, a competition between open systems that use information to liberate public energy and imagination to shape social, economic, and political life and closed systems that control information to direct public energy and thought into predetermined systems. This reading took root in my mind toward the end of the century at a conference of journalists from the U.S. and journalists from the crumbling Soviet Empire. For three days in Prague we listened to speaker after speaker talk with deep emotion of his or her intellectual liberation as the Iron Curtain was breached by the new communications technology that allowed independent, uncensored information to pour through. Vaclav Havel drove home the point when he said this open flow of uncontrolled information "allowed us to take back our language. A language which had been stolen by propagandists to convince us that show trials were 'justice' and slavery was 'freedom.'" "Only when the language had been freed," he said, "could people begin to have honest thoughts about political affairs, about the real state of the world and about their place in that world." It was exhilarating to survey the rubble of an old order based on thought control, and eagerly discuss the role of the press in the dawning of a new age of information. Now, not two decades later, as we drown in information many of us wonder whether information will continue to serve to inform a selfgoverning public or become the path through which the power elites restore centralized authority.
TL;DR: The authors presented an autoethnographic account of a feminist who created an art project about her connection to men and engaged in a search for Wonder Woman, whom she views as a role model who encourages both masculinity and femininity in women.
Abstract: This article presents an autoethnographic account of a feminist who created an art project about her connection to men and, as a result, engaged in a search for Wonder Woman, whom she views as a role model who encourages both masculinity and femininity in women. As a result of the search for Wonder Woman, a small social movement began as friends, family members, and social work students became aware of the role of patriarchy in shaping young women and became determined also to find Wonder Woman. Engaging in a narrative account, self-reflection, and a critique of culture, this feminist autoethnography also attempts to resist patriarchal standards that enforce male-dominant expectations of writing and research. Implications for social work education and practice are discussed.
TL;DR: Synchronicity as discussed by the authors is defined as the low probability intersection of two or more events, usually a thought or image: the other takes place in the person's environment, and corresponding internal and external events generally occur within a narrow window of time.
Abstract: The coincidence experience permeates all domains of life. We speak of the coincidental nature of falling in love, the experience of having a job “fall into one’s lap,” and we read about coincidences in literature and see them occur regularly in movies and plays. To many of us, there is some degree of awe and wonder involved in experiencing an improbable coincidence. We may question why it happened, what it means, or simply stand back in amazement. C.G. Jung coined the term “synchronicity” to imbue instances of “meaningful coincidence” with a specifi c status as indicators of an “acausal connecting principle;” he used his coincidence observations to support his theories of archetypes and the collective unconscious. 1 The general idea (with broader defi nitions including serendipity, happenstance, and chance events) has drawn increasing attention over the past few decades; it is being studied by both Jungian and non-Jungian psychotherapists, neuropsychologists, and career counselors. Synchronicity is generally characterized by the low probability intersection of two or more events. One of the events is usually a thought or image: the other takes place in the person’s environment. The corresponding internal and external events generally occur within a narrow window of time. The incident strikes the person experiencing it as “weird” or out of the ordinary. The unexpected nature of the experience often generates some degree of emotion and with it the search for its possible meaning. Although Jung defi ned synchronicity in many different ways throughout his career, 2 the most accepted Jungian defi nition requires that the coincidence help with the person’s individuation — coincidence as a therapeutic agent. The primary method for studying synchronistic experiences has been through case studies sometimes accompanied by in-depth analysis. Comprehensive and systematic methods of studying synchronicity are sparse. The prevalence of synchronistic experiences within a representative sample is currently an open question. Although case reports often associate synchronicity with spirituality, the association has not been systemati
TL;DR: Robson as discussed by the authors pointed out that "we are witnessing a proliferation of books on cognition" and "we might wonder whether we don't have enough books on cognitive science" (p. 210).
Abstract: by Sue Robson, London/New York, Routledge, 2006, 210 pp., US$31.95 (paperback), ISBN 0‐415‐36108‐7 We might wonder whether we don’t have enough books on cognition. We are witnessing a proliferation...
TL;DR: The OAIS Reference Model is a standard that attempts to address all the major activities of an information preserving archive in order to define a consistent and useful set of terms and concepts and has much to offer to the archival profession.
Abstract: You may have noticed that the word ingest has been creeping into professional archival discourse, and you may not like it. Did you ever wonder where the word comes from? This phenomenon can be larg...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an ontological and spiritual approach to career counseling from the perspective of "Being", which they describe as the Socratic ability to wonder, the meditative way of "undoing" and the artful act of creation.
Abstract: We are approaching career counselling from the perspective of “Being”, which we recognize to be a daunting task. Nevertheless we find it extremely important that the counsellor become aware of and try to think, talk and act from his or her embeddedness in being, and by that help the client to do the same. This process involves an ontological and spiritual approach, and builds upon the Socratic ability to wonder, the meditative way of “undoing” and the artful act of creation.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors introduce the Knowing Knowledge by Siemens, a wiki in progress, which is an anticonventional, aesthetically pleasant and stimulating paper, with a lively style and an amusing graphics, characterized by frequent aphorisms and metaphors.
Abstract: We are talking about a concept which is entering more and more the technological debate, above all with regard to the solutions of the 2.0 web, and which someone starts adding, as fourth name, to the canonical triad of “isms”, behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism: connectivism. We wonder whether we are handling a new paradigm. A text that should be considered is Knowing Knowledge by Siemens1 which, in the form of wiki in progress2, enlightens on the thought of the author who does not see the book anymore as final object but thinks about network notes, conversations, interactive systems. It is an anticonventional, aesthetically pleasant and stimulating paper, with a lively style and an amusing graphics, characterized by frequent aphorisms and metaphors. But the reader who would look for an organic view or for instructions easily transferable in a real working context, will be disappointed: the work, declaredly chaotic, has the character of a creative bricolage, in which overlapping, incongruities, open suggestions are part of the game. Presuppositions follow some concepts (or would it be better say slogans?) which have been accompanying the reflection on the knowledge society for at least twenty years: network technologies condition the ways of building
TL;DR: The Responsible Intellectual Discussion (Rid) project as discussed by the authors was designed to take the dread out of discus sion in a first-year interdisciplinary humanities course at Sewanee University, a private liberal arts college in Tennessee.
Abstract: Classroom discussion, with its focus on active learning, critical thinking, and cooperative inquiry, is attractive in theory but often disappointing in practice. The following scenario, described by professor Mark Edmundson (1997), may sound familiar: "Teaching Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey,' you ask for comments. No one responds. So you call on Stephen. Stephen: 'The sound, this poem really flows.' You: 'Stephen seems interested in the music of the poem. We might extend his comment to ask if the poem's music coheres with its argument. Are they consistent? Or is there an emotional pain submerged here that's contrary to the poem's appealing melody?'" (p. 43). Edmundson suggests that this scenario might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it is not far off the mark. Despite our high hopes, discussions often flounder, marked by awkward silences, blank stares, and superficial comments. Is it any wonder that this pedagogical approach has earned the moniker "The Dreaded Discussion" (Frederick, 1981)? In this article, I describe a project designed to take the dread out of discus sion in a first-year interdisciplinary humanities course at Sewanee: The Univer sity of the South, a private liberal arts college in Tennessee. The Responsible Intellectual Discussion project, known as rid, was created in conjunction with the college's Eloquence Initiative, a speaking-across-the-curriculum effort in which I served as a consultant.1 By virtue of its association with the speak ing initiative, rid was informed not only by familiar literature on discussion methods (e.g., Brookfield & Preskill, 1999; Neff & Weimer, 1989; Rosmarin,
01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website as mentioned in this paper, in case of legitimate complaints the material will be removed.
Abstract: Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible.
Journal Article•
TL;DR: The development of female characters in comic books, a genre of literary text that has been slow to gain recognition as a medium of cultural expression and slower still to be examined through a critical lens as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Wonder Women: Feminisms and Superheroes. By Lillian S. Robinson. New York: Routledge, 2004. Pp. ix-148, preface, afterward, works cited, index. In Wonder Women: Feminisms and Superheroes, Lillian S. Robinson focuses on the development of female characters in comic books, a genre of literary text that has been slow to gain recognition as a medium of cultural expression and slower still to be examined through a critical lens (2). Adopting a feminist position, she argues that the stories of female superheroes in the genre "transgress [the] use of mythological sources, borrowing from various traditions and creating new ones in order to tell different stories about gender, stories that come closer to the universe of belief than do masculine (and masculinity) adventure comics" (6). The book sets the creation and evolution of various female superheroes against a background of other factors, varying from political to personal. However, Robinson orients the book's format around a discussion of specific eras in the development of the original female comic superhero: Wonder Woman. Utilizing a critical feminist perspective to interrogate the comic book genre allows the author to tease out the effects of social movements on the development of the comic heroine while simultaneously lending itself to appropriate interjections of the author's own experience as a lifelong reader of comic books. Chapter titles even "Chronicle" comic conventions. Combining these elements creates an illuminating analysis of the impact of female heroes on the genre. Describing her lifelong love affair with comics, Robinson reveals that she began reading comics shortly after the introduction of the Wonder Woman character. Her combined personal and professional interest in comics lends itself to the use of a variety of sources in the construction of the book, ranging from Judith Butler to pop culture artifacts. Much of her evidence also comes directly from the comics themselves, giving readers a plethora of primary sources to add to the discussion. Accordingly, the book is presented in a format that makes it accessible to a variety of readerships: Robinson's critiques are sound and relevant, appealing to a scholarly audience; however, her easy writing style and anecdotal evidence make this book an enjoyable read for a non-scholarly audience as well. Just as important as critical analysis and empirical evidence to Robinson's book, is the author's ability to situate herself as a consumer of comics during different periods of their production. Robinson believes that her subjective imprint on the analysis cannot be erased and should be laid bare--especially since she is a participant in the history she discusses. Instead of treating this as an obstacle, she proclaims her interpretive stance as participant by opening the book with an article, written previously, entitled "Looking for Wonder Woman." This passage, and the threads of subjectivity that are continued on for the duration of the book, allows readers to extrapolate the author's intentions and cultural position for themselves and gives them more opportunity to glimpse how Robinson reads comics as literary texts. Robinson recounts her own experience with comic books as a young reader during Wonder Woman's primordial development, a position returned to and reflected upon throughout the book. This is the position that colors Robinson's analytical moves, and deserves special attention if the book is to be properly understood. In addition to examining Robinson's own developing perspective, the overall genre is examined from a feminist perspective. The tension between domesticity and empowerment in a modern capitalist society, a tension Robinson reflects on in her own life, is a tension which must be confronted by all comic heroines, and which is crystallized by Wonder Woman. …
TL;DR: In the 1860s, Henri Robin's theatre on the then-infamous Boulevard du Temple in Paris presented magic shows featuring ghostly visions from the beyond, and it also held one of the city's allegedly most complete cabinets of physics as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In the 1860s, Henri Robin’s theatre on the then-infamous Boulevard du Temple in Paris presented magic shows featuring ghostly visions from the beyond, and it also held one of the city’s allegedly most complete cabinets of physics. On Robin’s stage, the supernatural, the magical, and the scientific merged with one another to form a unique performance. Every evening at eight o’clock, the showman, or physicist as he preferred to call himself, entertained his audience with an act in which ghosts of the dead interacted with the living through a play of mirrors and optical illusions. This incredible performance was then followed by demonstrations of mechanical and electrical effects or shows on geology, archaeology, and various sorts of natural phenomena. Robin had a name for this type of entertainment: he called it scientific theatre. His establishment was not the only one in the capital at the time proposing magic shows that combined tricks and illusions with scientific learning. Since the 1840s, the renowned Theâtre-Robert-Houdin had featured shows of recreational physics and white magic where the public could witness a young boy levitating, spirits of the dead seemingly communicating with the audience, and basic physical experiments and chemical wonders, all in a single night. Some of the most accomplished magicians of the period had performed on its stage. Often calling themselves professors of amusing physics or professors of abstract sciences, these nineteenth-century conjurers continually shaped and reshaped the meanings of science and magic, stretching their boundaries to the needs of their presentations. By the second half of the nineteenth century, scientific learning and technological developments were being moulded and incorporated into the world of conjuring where they were given an aura of mystery and wonder for the amusement of the crowd. At the hands of the magicians, the popularization of science was entering the magic shows. Ambiguous boundaries between science and magic were not a novelty of the nineteenth-century magic shows. In his work on Parisian fairs a century earlier, the historian Robert Isherwood has argued that there was no clear distinction between science and magic in the popular mentality of the eighteenth century; that the crowds were equally fascinated by mechanical wizardry, magic lanterns, electrical healing, funambulism, fireworks, aerostatics, and phantasmagoria without much thought for what was white or black magic, technological developments, or tricks. Isherwood has successfully depicted the world of the eighteenth-century fairs and popular entertainment in all that it held of the mysterious and the marvellous for the public. Here, I suggest that this sense of wonder did not disappear in the following decades; that,
01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: In this article, the authors introduce two formats of the Poetry in Two Voices form of poetry (namely, Five senses in two voices and Scientific Approach in Two voices) that they use to help students in Grades 1-5 develop science observation skills and adopt a scientific approach during their science investigations.
Abstract: Poetry can be used during science instruction to foster interest, excitement, and wonder among elementarylevel students. Children can read poetry, or have poetry read to them, as a way of learning about their world. They can also create poems to share their own science learning with others. We introduce two formats of the Poetry in Two Voices form of poetry (namely, Five Senses in Two Voices and Scientific Approach in Two Voices) that we use to help students in Grades 1-5 develop science observation skills and adopt a scientific approach during their science investigations. Integrating poetry with science is a historically accurate pedagogical approach in that poetry was at one time the language of philosophy and science. The purpose of this action research report is to share our experiences and the results of utilizing these two poetry formats with elementary-level children.
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Barbour and Schafft as mentioned in this paper pointed out that rural education is indeed more complex than perhaps my book allows and there is a particular danger in a community study to treat the community as a space cut off from other overlapping spaces.
Abstract: To begin I would like to thank Michael Barbour for suggesting this themed issue in the Journal of Research in Rural Education. I would also like to thank Kai Schafft for taking up this suggestion and recruiting such an outstanding group of scholars concerned with rural education broadly defined. These scholars suggest in similar yet different ways that we need to think more broadly about what rural means and indeed how the connections between people and place matter. As each commentator seems to agree, all manner of these connections are currently under threat. In addition to the established historical stories of dispossession so well articulated by each author, contemporary economic upheavals have destabilized the connection between people and place secured by stable financial systems and real estate markets. Little seems certain these days and rural North America feels the heat disproportionately, as usual. Further, each of the commentators seeks to problematize simplistic notions of rurality, thinking through what it is that more nuanced understandings of the rural and place might point toward in education. This is the kind of theorizing we need in rural education at this moment. The most powerful thread in the commentaries is the consistent focus on issues around the education in Aboriginal communities and the potential for dialogue between educational scholars in rural education and in Aboriginal education. It is perhaps here that we might find space to pursue Paul Theobald (1997) and Chet Bowers' (2006) vision of imagining a non-commodified "commons" of/in education. I think this is exciting and suggests that a future set of articles in this journal might be devoted to exploring this connection further. It has been my impression that one of the biggest problems with the idea of the rural is the way that it has tended to have an exclusive focus on a monoethnic farming demographic. Without getting into convoluted debates about what counts as rural, suffice it to say that people who are connected to the land and sea in a variety of ways and for a variety of historical reasons often have similar kinds of struggles. It is obvious that the longstanding struggles of Aboriginal people represent particularly strong claims to connection between specific cultural, environmental, productive, and spiritual practices and so I am gratified that three of the four responses to Learning to Leave deal with these questions specifically and directly.1 The other piece takes up questions of alterity and identity in different ways, I think troubling the idea that people and place ought to be intimately connected and suggesting that learning to leave a variety of social and physical spaces represents an important objective for contemporary rural schooling. Assimilation I think Arlie Woodrum's piece (2009), speaking forcefully to the assimilatory project of modern education, probably comes closest to my own analysis of the challenges faced by rural people-be they situated in Appalachia, New Mexico, or Atlantic Canada. Woodrum situates the problem historically, tracing the history of immigration to New Mexico as well as the history of schooling and curriculum in the United States. Interestingly the one chapter from the dissertation upon which Learning to Leave was based that is not in the trade book recounts a similar history in Canada.2 What my chapter failed to address was the schooling of Aboriginal people in Canada, and it is wonderful to see Woodrum take his argument in this direction. Rural education is indeed more complex than perhaps my book allows and there is a particular danger in a community study to treat the community as a space cut off from other overlapping spaces. This is a very important critique of place-based education generally and various attempts to rethink or revive simplistic notions of community in social theory (Bauman, 2001) and in educational thought (Nespor, 2008). Woodrum also seems to wonder if there is any hope for a different kind of education, or a different way of doing school that is not an assimilatory project or that does not disembed and displace people. …
Journal Article•
TL;DR: The authors argue that the current superficial reading practices in creative writing programs are serving not only to marginalize the discipline from the larger body of English studies but also to stifle the creative, intellec tual, and professional progress of its students.
Abstract: One might call it a slow awakening. Blinking and groggy, some of us creative writers seem to be coming to a set of conclusions about our discipline? conclusions regarding its isolation, its pedagogy, its intellectual aspirations (or lack thereof), and its institutional identity?that highlight the striking lack of attention that creative writers have paid to the history and even the very purpose of their own art. We pass most of our writing lives in a state of blithe incu riosity about why we are able to do what we do, how we have come to be what we are. If such questions bear only indirectly on our creative work, why ask them? This is how we move forward, covering our tracks, reading The New Yorker. At least until recently. Recently, some of us have begun to wonder why we are this way: why we can be (or must be) so vehemently ahistorical, insular, egocentric. For myself, I wonder why it is that we don't really read. By reading, of course, I do not mean simply getting to the end of a book. In this essay, I argue that the current superficial reading practices in creative writing programs are serving not only to marginalize the disci pline from the larger body of English studies but also to stifle the creative, intellec tual, and professional progress of its students. Reading for creative writers must be viewed as a critical practice, one informed and complicated by context, history, and theory.
01 Aug 2009
TL;DR: In the UK, people in England can easily come to regard England and Britain as synonymous with each other as mentioned in this paper, and they can happily and freely describe themselves as English on one occasion, British on another, and mean little or nothing by the difference.
Abstract: Such an imaginary exchange captures a commonly held view about national identity in England (Kumar, 2003). As members of by far the predominant part of the Union, people in England can easily come to regard England and Britain as synonymous with each other. The remainder of the United Kingdom impinges little on their everyday lives or consciences. As a result they can happily and freely describe themselves as English on one occasion, British on another – and mean little or nothing by the difference. It is perhaps little wonder that national identity in England has been described as ‘fuzzy’ (Cohen, 1995).
01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: Martin Heidegger has been described as the philosopher of being as mentioned in this paper, which is a critique of the dualistic thinking of the metaphysical tradition, where being is regarded as a fundamental ground, and indubitable knowledge is prioritised over sensuous experience.
Abstract: Martin Heidegger has been described as the philosopher of being. His work is a critique of the dualistic thinking of the metaphysical tradition, where being is regarded as a fundamental ground, and indubitable knowledge is prioritised over sensuous experience. Heidegger’s own view is that being is an absence of ground, and a dynamic process in which things emerge into presence from concealment. Whereas the tradition interprets being as a concept, Heidegger focuses on what he describes as “the experience of being.” His inquiry draws upon the medieval mystics’ relationship to God, and the Presocratic philosophers’ experience of wonder at the mystery of existence. In an attempt to understand being itself, Heidegger analyses the being of the human, “Dasein.” He argues that because we find ourselves thrown into the world and having to face the imminent possibility of death, we engage in a process of self-creation by projecting ourselves into possibilities. In his later work, Heidegger presents the idea that being and Dasein belong to each other, and can only be understood on the basis of an originary form of difference that is both a union and a separation. My theory is that the dualities structuring thought and language are a consequence of our existence as embodied, spatio-temporal beings, and that metaphysics is one of the ways in which that duality is expressed. I compare Heidegger’s notion of originary difference with the concepts of chōra in Plato, and the apeiron in
Journal Article•
TL;DR: This article showed that there is an ethics of thought at work in James's "œuvre" and that it is a pragmatic constraint, a constraint which confers on the refusal of certain effects, accepted as perfectly legitimate by many 'ethical' philosophers, the power to put thinking to the test, to oblige it to expose itself to the violence of the world.
Abstract: William James’s pragmatism, and in particular the thesis according to which the sole truth of ideas is the difference that they make, and therefore also the interest that they create, has often been felt to be an offence by those who consider themselves to be engaged ‘for’ thought. Shouldn’t ideas be disinterested, supremely indifferent to the interest that they create? I will try to show here that – at once both thematically, that is to say in a declared manner, and practically, that is to say immanently – there is an ethics of thought at work in James’s œuvre. This ethics is pragmatic, certainly, because the question is posed at the level of effects, not at the level of what authorizes. But it will be a matter here, we will see, of a pragmatic constraint, a constraint which confers on the refusal of certain effects, accepted as perfectly legitimate by many ‘ethical’ philosophers, the power to put thinking to the test, to oblige it to expose itself to the violence of the world. If my attempt succeeds, it should lead to wonder about the tranquil and consensual judgement like this one: ‘history is lit by the deeds of men and women for whom ideas were things other than instruments of adjustment. Pragmatism explains everything about ideas except why a person would be willing to die for one’.