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‘On Tennyson’s Legacy and His Family’s Archive: Unique Opportunities in The Tennyson Research Centre’
No full textBased on the 2023 Annual Tennyson Memorial Address, this article examines Tennyson's legacy paying particular attention to the importance of the Tennyson Research Centre as a unique space for original archival research and interdisciplinary collaborative scholarship. It reflects on the ways in which the legacy of Alfred Tennyson connects with Lincolnshire, its landscape and history, envisaging a map of a literary Lincolnshire that originates with Tennyson in the nineteenth century and flexibly develops a palimpsest of past and present layers, leading to the work of other Lincolnshire writers and intellectuals who bring to the fore a Lincolnshire heritage that must be explored further
Priming ideas of non-attachment in mindfulness practice alleviates state rumination and increases satisfaction with life.
No full textMindfulness-based interventions are known to produce a myriad of effects on psychological and physiological health. A core aspect of mindful thinking is non-attachment, defined as the attenuation of fixation. Influencing cognition has been shown to improve health. This study aimed to examine the effect of priming non-attachment through a brief mindfulness-based intervention. The study included 154 participants recruited using convenience sampling. Measures of state rumination and satisfaction with life were collected before and after a meditative breathing intervention. Participants were randomly assigned to either a non-attachment primer group or a mindful breathing primer group. Primers were administered before the intervention, and non-attachment to the self was measured post-intervention. Results revealed significant decreases in state rumination and increases in satisfaction with life in both primer groups, with the non-attachment primer yielding greater improvements in post-intervention measures. There was a significant interaction between time and condition for state rumination and a near-significant interaction for satisfaction with life. Mindfulness expertise partially moderated these effects
Extraterrestrials or terrestrial heretics? Being green in the Middle Ages
No full textIn this paper we seek to propose a novel solution to the Green Children of Woolpit, a 12th century ‘alien’ mystery by approaching the ‘otherworldly’ through a terrestrial, theological lens. In focusing specifically on their otherworldliness, we suggest a congruence between the children’s characteristics and the theological threat of early Catharism. When viewed Christologically, the Green Children mystery offers ample opportunity for exotheological discourse, focusing as it does on key Christian theological issues such as: Christ’s humanity, the Incarnation, and what it means to be human in the Middle Ages
Exploring the responses of non-churchgoers to a cathedral pre-Christmas son et lumiere
No full textTwo conceptual strands of research within the field of cathedral studies have theorised the capacity of Anglican cathedrals to engage more successfully than parish churches with the wider non-churchgoing community: one strand has explored mobilising cathedral metaphors, and the other strand has explored the notion of implicit religion. Both strands illuminate the power of events and installations to soften the boundaries between common ground and sacred space. Drawing on a quantitative survey among 978 people who attended the pre-Christmas son et lumiere at Liverpool Cathedral during December 2022, the present study analyses the qualitative responses of 123 participants who never attend church services. Three categories of themes emerged from these data, concerning the Cathedral itself, the installation, and discordant experience.
Contribution:
Situated within the science of cathedral studies, this paper draws on original qualitative data to illuminate the experiences of participants who never attend church services when engaging with the pre-Christmas son et lumiere at a major cathedral. Conceptualised within the framework of implicit religion these data confirmed how the son et lumiere succeeded in softening boundaries between the sacred and the secular and provided a deeply moving experience. As one participant said, ‘I am not religious, but I had the best experience ever’
Who is inspired to follow Bishop Barron? Applying psychological type and psychological temperament theory among lay Catholic participants at an event sponsored in London by the Word on Fire Institute
No full textThe present study draws on psychological type theory and psychological temperament theory to test the extent to which Bishop Barron’s ministry shaped by the Word on Fire Institute is reaching people less effectively reached by Catholic congregations. Data provided by 168 male and 292 female participants attending Bishop Barron’s day conference in central London during February 2023, who completed the Francis Psychological Type Scales, demonstrated that this event attracted significantly higher proportions of intuitive types and of thinking types, compared with Catholic churchgoers. However, like Catholic congregations, extraverts and perceiving types remained under-represented among the followers of Bishop Barron. The implications of these findings are discussed for the ongoing nurture of those attracted to Bishop Barron alongside inherited congregations
Creativity and Autism
No full textCreativity in autism extends to all areas of life - to the visual arts, to music, to dance - but our backgrounds in English and Applied Drama mean that it is a particular pleasure for us to explore autistic interaction with words. Stereotypes of autism suggest that autistic people are concrete thinkers, people who struggle to move beyond literal interpretations, and that language used by and understood by autistic people lacks flexibility and creativity. We challenge this perspective, instead suggesting that autism may bring new richness and originality to language that can provide creativity and insight. This book shares and discusses two recent projects using the written word to explore autism. The first used the shared reading of literature as a scaffold for discussion of autistic identity. The second involved creative writing by a group of autistic adults. All involved throughout were 'insider' members of the autism community, and both projects were completed collectively
Defending the Value of Education as a Public Good: Philosophical Dialogues on Education and the State
No full textPredictors of spiritual wellbeing in The Episcopal Church during the COVID-19 pandemic
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic seems to have caused both declines in psychological wellbeing and increases in spirituality and religious coping. This paper explores the relationships of spiritual and psychological wellbeing in a sample of 3,403 Anglicans from the Episcopal Church (USA) who completed an online survey in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Spiritual wellbeing improved more among women than among men, among older than younger people, among Black or African Americans than among other ethnicities, among those who lived alone, and among clergy than among lay people. Positive change in spiritual wellbeing was also associated with psychological type preferences for extraversion, intuition, and feeling. Emotional volatility was associated with more negative changes in spiritual wellbeing. Multiple regression suggested that spiritual wellbeing was more closely associated with positive, rather than negative, psychological affect
Catering and Hospitality Trade Press Periodicals: Their Emergence, Their Memories, Their Preservation
No full textIn Victorian England, cultural, industrial, technological, and financial flows led to two industries being subject to processes of professionalisation: catering and hospitality, and the independent press. As such, a new form of media emerged, the trade press, which catered for those working in the catering and hospitality industry.
This press content documents not only the industry’s operations, but also the aspirations and attitudes of employees, their employers, and other key stakeholders. This allows for us to glimpse into past lifeworlds and extract forgotten memories. We are able to witness how ethnoscapes characterised the trade, but also led to integration conflicts. Hence, uniting, while segregating those involved in the rise of restaurant dining with varying consequences. Nationalistic voices clash with cosmopolitan ideals in the pages of these periodicals.
Yet, these sources remain underutilised, while endowing historicity. The reasons for this may be because of issues with archival cataloguing and the scale of this material, as Shattock and Wolff (1982) have suggested. To add to this, I propose that this is due to the exigent nature of locating appropriate titles, which are often hardcopy, and the limited scholarship published on the topic of working with such sources. Accordingly, this paper seeks to not only supply details of these periodicals and their value, but calls for their preservation, via digitalisation, so that those interested in the history of food, now and in the future, might engage with and learn from these rich resources
Beyond Boundaries: Disability, DIY and Punk Pedagogies
No full textDIY is often viewed as a core element of punk, an aspect that enabled activism against an assumed authority and power (Guerra, 2018; Martin-Iverson, 2017). It is therefore often lauded as a means of engaging with/utilising punk in a pedagogical sense (Bestley, 2017; Cordova, 2016). It should be capable of working in tandem with education in developing and encouraging the ‘movement against and beyond boundaries’ (hooks, 1994). However, this is not necessarily simple or straightforward to realise through one’s own pedagogical practices, especially when one considers them through an intersectional lens. We argue that punk scholarship on DIY fails to account for its capacity to support ableist ideologies and structures - incorporating it into punk pedagogy in an uncritical manner risks further deepening asymmetrical power relations in regards to disability and the adversity that people with disability experience. We utilise collaborative auto-ethnography to unpack some of the complexities involved in pursuing punk pedagogical practices and unpacking the aforementioned critique of DIY further. We consider how DIY can/could potentially be a powerful, empowering pedagogical tool and consider the ways DIY purports a damaging, ableist narrative, which at times can even aid the neoliberal agenda within higher education