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The Making of the Early Modern Witch: An Examination of the European Witch Hunt and Witchcraft as a ‘Female Crime’
No full textTales of witches and other magical creatures have fascinated humans for centuries, becoming become more elusive with the growing documentation of crime and the rise of what has sometimes been called the “Godly state.” Witches have become a staple in modern-day popular culture, especially in Western nations that celebrate the folk holiday of Halloween. Most imagery of witches takes on a feminine physiognomy, which is characterized by undesirableness such as old age, lower class, and being defined by ‘ugliness.’ It is not definitive when witchcraft or the image of witches took on the female form, nonetheless such an idea has remained the prominent understanding to this day. This paper analyzes witchcraft across early modern Europe and argues that witchcraft has been deemed a “female crime” due to the influence of patriarchal society and the misunderstanding of the female body
Citizenship and the Posthuman Corporation in US Poetry
No full textRecent US Supreme Court decisions have raised public awareness of and concern over the legal personhood of corporations. This article addresses a fundamental question raised by the ruling by way of poetry: if corporations can be persons under the law, what does it mean to be human and what does it mean to be a citizen? To begin to answer this question, this article looks at two volumes of US lyrical poetry: Timothy Donnelly’s The Cloud Corporation (2010) and Jena Osman’s Corporate Relations (2014). Both volumes address the legal and cultural impact of corporate personhood and explore the mind-body dualism that has become so constitutive for its emergence in the twentieth century. Understood in terms of transhumanist and posthumanist visions of persons, their poetic critique is both trenchant and ambivalent.
 
Disability and the Medical Posthumanities
No full textThis paper makes a case for being in but not of the medical posthumanities, cognisant of our contemporary times that continue to render some human beings as valued and others as expendable. I provide a brief reading of medical posthumanities before turning to a field (critical disability studies), an event (the deployment of Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation notices
to disabled people during the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK) and a response (reflected in the activism of People First, the international movement of people with learning disabilities). I contemplate some tensions that emerge when the field, event and response rub up against the medical posthumanities, working with the humanist register, more-than-human possibilities, and human troubles. I conclude with the argument that unless the medical posthumanities engage with disability then they are in danger of ‘ability-washing’ their research and scholarship
Increasing Self-Determination for Students with Disabilities Using the Ask.Explore.Connect Discussion Tool
No full textSelf-determination and self-advocacy are critical skills for students with disabilities (SWD). Around the world, practitioners and educators express concerns that students transitioning from school to post-high school settings often lack the awareness to discuss their strengths, preferences, and needs. To improve self-determination, a one-year randomized controlled trial design was utilized with high school students with high incidence disabilities (n = 198). These students matched on key variables before being randomly assigned to their respective groups. Both treatment and control groups received regular tiered transition services, activities, and support while the control group also received the Ask.Explore.Connect self-determination instruction and intervention. Results demonstrate that discussions are an effective practice to increase student self-determination. Treatment students had greater increases in self-determination than the control group across all disability categories and service levels. Benefits of the tool and intervention allowed for increased self-advocacy, self-determination, choice-making and social skills, field testing of evidence-based best practices, and use of authentic settings
From “Listen and Learn” to Learning to Listen Again: White NHL Player Responses to Black Lives Matter and the Work of Listening
No full textWhen support for Black Lives Matter protests grew throughout 2020, some NHL players spoke out to back the movement and joined Black-led marches across North America. “Listen and learn” became key words for white players showing support. Around the same time, Black professional hockey players created the Hockey Diversity Alliance (HDA) to push for “sustainable change” at various levels of hockey (HDA 2020). However, in October 2020, the HDA announced that it would “operate independent of the NHL” after not receiving any response to its pledge (2020). There is a collection of powerful voices in the NHL which includes players, coaches, managers, and league representatives. However, unlike the WNBA, NBA, MLB, MLS, and NFL, most players, coaches, managers, and representatives are white. As a result, it offers a sample from which to consider the responses of people who identify as white or are of white European settler descent to the calls for justice and support from Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour within and outside of hockey. The purpose of this discussion is to begin to breakdown the tangible work of responding to calls for justice for Black people in North America. Part of this process is the cataloguing of the range of responses. This paper will begin to gather, catalogue, and observe the different responses of white professional hockey players and league representatives to the work of Black Lives Matter organizations and protests and the HDA
Making Connections with Parents of English Learners: Promoting Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Classrooms
No full textParents of English learners (ELs) must navigate new waters as their children enter schools in the US. These families are wonderful resources for their students’ education, but they may not know the norms of the new educational environment. Educators in the US tend to want parents to be involved in schools but feel that these families are distant. To bridge the gap of understanding between these groups, a survey was created and administered to 90 parents of ELs. The survey aimed to discover how parents of ELs supported their children’s learning at home and in the community. The findings were used to inform teachers about how parents of ELs view their children’s education with the goal of producing optimal collaboration between parents and teachers to promote EL students’ success. The results showed that parents were involved in ways that can be enlightening to both teachers and teacher educators
Pre-Service Teachers’ Self-efficacy as Future Mathematics Teachers in a Second Language Classroom
No full textThis study contributes to the field of research on teacher self-efficacy by investigating a group of multilingual pre-service teachers’ perceptions of self-efficacy in Norwegian mathematics classrooms. In recent years, several quantitative studies exploring teacher self-efficacy have been conducted, but according to Xenofontos and Andrews (2020) there are few qualitative studies addressing conceptualizations of self-efficacy across various contexts. Furthermore, the cultural and language dimensions related to self-efficacy are usually not addressed. Pertaining to this group of multilingual pre-service teachers, all enrolled in the multilingual teacher preparation program at the University of Agder, we found that it was not sufficient for them to focus solely on acquiring mathematical knowledge or developing their mathematics teaching skills. They also needed to navigate a different classroom culture and a language that is not their first language. As a result, this study contributes crucial insights to complement the theory of teacher self-efficacy
Doyon-Gosselin, Benoit. Moncton mentor : géocritique d’une ville
No full textCompte rendu de Doyon-Gosselin, Benoit. Moncton mentor : géocritique d’une ville (2022
Weaving the Spiderweb: Mujeres Amazónicas and the Design of Anti-Extractive Politics in Ecuador
No full textThis article examines the strategic politics of an Indigenous network called las Mujeres Amazónicas (the Amazonian Women) that is resisting the expansion of extractive projects in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest. It asks, what are the Mujeres Amazónicas’ political strategies to resist extractive occupation and how do they develop and deploy these strategies in their territorial struggle? To answer this question, I analyze how their organizing is characterized by a political design that merges public expressions of resistance – such as mobilizations, protest marches, and other public actions – with communitarian practices that reproduce human and more-than-human life in the Amazon. To illustrate this strategic fusion, the article turns to an image that the Kichwa leader Elvia Dagua wove into an artesanía (handicraft) called la Araña Tejedora (the Weaving Spider). By analyzing Dagua’s artesanía and other self-descriptions of the Mujeres Amazónicas, the article shows how practices of communitarian reproduction are used and transformed by the Amazonian Women, thus enabling their political work and sustaining their lives at the same time. The strategic deployment of reproductive practices reveals how Indigenous women’s cultural and social identities are neither static nor unchangeable. It also illustrates that the Mujeres Amazónicas’ organizing should not be interpreted as a simple example of local politics responding to extractive occupation. By contrast, the article shows how the Mujeres Amazónicas are historical and political subjects with the power to shape the lines of political confrontation vis-à-vis the state and extractive capital, and to build global connections between Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of living