177 research outputs found
Towards a model of distant healing
No full textThe studies presented in this dissertation examine distant healing using both
quantitative and qualitative methods. Distant healing purportedly works through
the mental intention of one living system affecting another at a distance. The
literature to date shows mixed results with regards to its efficacy and very little
examination of the experience of healers and healees who practice and receive
distant healing outside of research settings. This thesis aims to clarify some of the
gaps in the literature and to direct future investigations of distant healing through
the development of a more comprehensive model of distant healing.
To better understand the components that may contribute to distant healing,
the first study presented in this thesis is designed to understand the role that belief
and expectancy may have on outcomes in a trial of distant healing. Quantitative
approaches to the study of distant healing have yielded mixed results (Astin,
Harkness & Ernst, 2000), with some studies showing small positive effects of distant
healing and others no effect or a slight negative effect. This clinical trial utilized a
partially blind design to measure the impact of awareness of receiving distant
healing. Therefore, half of the participants were blind to their allocation condition,
while the other half were aware of their assignment to either the healing or no
healing condition. While no effect of distant healing was found overall, there was an
apparent effect of knowledge of allocation, with those aware they were receiving
healing reporting better outcomes than those aware that they were not receiving
healing (d = 0.76). This effect was not, however, significant in the analysis of
covariance, and thus should be interpreted with caution. In the future, studies with a
similar design and larger sample size should be pursued to confirm the effect of
expectancy on healing outcome.
The characteristics and perspectives of healers are largely ignored in the
available literature, and may aid in understanding the phenomenon of distant
healing. The primary goal of the second study was to investigate healer
characteristics (N = 130) in the areas of personality, spirituality, exceptional
experiences, boundaries and emotional intelligence. This was achieved using
questionnaire measures and comparisons with population norms where available.
Also included in the study was a series of open-ended questions that asked
participants to define and describe spiritual healing and healers. Thematic analysis
revealed that healers believed factors such as skill of the healer and healee receptivity to be especially important to the healing process. It was also recognized that healing
might not be appropriate in all situations. For example, healers report that it should
not be considered as a primary form of treatment for a broken leg and it may not be
as effective if the healee is in a negative and unsupportive environment.
Qualitative investigations of distant healing have been limited, with much of
the research focusing more broadly on spiritual healing or other alternative
approaches to healing. The third study investigated the experience of distant healing
as reported by healees with a strong cultural context of belief or acceptance in the
possible efficacy of mental healing. This study took place in Sri Lanka, and the
healees were recipients of distant healing from a Buddhist monk and healer, Bhante
Seelagawesi. Healees were interviewed about their experiences. Interpretive
phenomenological analysis (IPA) of interviewees’ accounts revealed participants’
attitudes towards traditional and modern approaches to healing, such that while
they showed an awareness and acceptance of the latter, they often preferred the
former. The experiences were overwhelmingly positive, however a number of
factors, in addition to distant healing, appeared to be therapeutic. There was a strong
community aspect to healing, and overall a theme of empowerment was evident.
Overall, these studies allow us to build a more complete and holistic model of
the distant healing phenomenon, which is presented in the final chapter. The studies
also fill in some of the gaps found in the current literature, particularly by utilizing a
mixed methods approach and focusing on both efficacy and also healer and healee
accounts
Extreme Horror Essentials Pt 7: Irreversible
No full textIn this episode host Zoë Rose Smith is joined by academic writer Alison Taylor, author of Troubled Everyday: The Aesthetics of Violence and the Everyday in European Art Cinema. Together they discuss one of the most controversial and hard to watch films, IRREVERSIBLE
Lawrence University Convocation Features Cartoonist, Author Alison Bechdel
No full textAward-winning cartoonist and author Alison Bechdel discusses her life and career in the Lawrence University convocation “Drawing Lessons: The Comics of Everyday Life” Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. She also will conduct a question-and-answer session at 2:30 p.m. in the Warch Campus Center cinema. Both events are free and open to the public.
Bechdel’s work includes the groundbreaking comic “Dykes to Watch Out For” and the graphic novel memoirs “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic“(2006) and “Are You My Mother: A Comic Drama” (2012).
Featuring a cast of quirky fictional characters navigating life’s daily struggles, “Dykes to Watch Out For,” is drawn from Bechdel’s own experiences as a politically active lesbian. It has enjoyed nearly three decades of syndication in more than 50 alternative newspapers and magazines. Ms. Magazine deemed it “one of the preeminent oeuvres in the comics genre, period.”
Bechdel’s national profile rose with the release of “Fun Home,” a book-length autobiographical work in which she explores her relationship with her closeted, bisexual father and his apparent suicide. It became the first graphic novel named Time magazine’s Best Book of the Year. It also was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, won the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work and has been a required text for students in Lawrence’s Freshman Studies course since 2011.
Her most recent work, “Are You My Mother,” complements “Fun Home,” with reflections on her fraught, complex relationship with her mother.
Beyond her self-syndicated comics and memoirs, Bechdel has drawn for Slate, McSweeney’s, The New York Times Book Review and U.K. literary magazine Granta. She was awarded a 2012-13 Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts and edited “Best American Comics 2011.” Other honors include a seat on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary in 2006, a fellowship at the University of Chicago and the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, which honors LGBT writers
40 Years Later: Discussing Andrzej Zulawski's POSSESSION
No full textTo celebrate 40 years of Andrzej Zulawski's POSSESSION we held a panel discussing the film in detail 🐍 Editor-in-Chief of Ghouls Magazine, Zoë Rose Smith, hosted the discussion, and was joined by an incredible line-up of guests: - Alison Taylor: Author of Troubled Everyday: The Aesthetics of Violence and the Everyday in European Art Cinema and upcoming POSSESSION book / Twitter- Lauren Hart: Owner of Let's Scare Lauren To Death and contributor to Ghouls Magazine / Twitter- Sloane Kay: Podcaster for The Ex Files and Is It Future Podcast, plus writer for Daily Grindhouse, Screen Queens and more / Twitter- Wren Crain: Author of upcoming Transploitation book and writer for Killer Horror Critic and Ghouls Magazine / Twitter<br/
Selling fashion: realizing the research potential of the House of Fraser archive, University of Glasgow Archive Services
No full textThe House of Fraser archive is a rich resource for the study of the development of fashion retailing in Britain since the mid-nineteenth century. It is, however, underexploited by textile, fashion and retail historians. During the summer of 2009, the University of Glasgow archive services will complete an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project which seeks to improve the accessibility of the Archive. Adopting a progressive approach to archival description, the project is developing an innovative online catalogue, providing fuller access to information about the Archive and the resources contained within it
Paranoia and irony in the Anglophone dectective narrative and the novels of Umberto Eco
No full textThe thesis provides a reading of Umberto Eco's three novels, The Name of the
Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, and The Island of the Day Before, that, while it
acknowledges the importance of the Italian literary tradition in which they stand, also
seeks to explain why their author appeals so frequently to literary models outside
Italy, and in particular the Anglo-American detective genre.
Chapter One explains Eco's relationship to the development of Italian literature
through his lifetime. It is noted that Eco is beginning, both in his semiotics and his
fiction, from a position where post-structuralism has been extensively explored by
neo-avant-gardew riters. Eco positions himself alongsides uchw riters as Italo Calvino
and Jorge Luis Borges, who wish to explore the ludic possibilities of working within
structures, while all the time acknowledging the epistemological limitations of so
doing. Eco's chosen structure, more often than not, is the highly defined genre of
the detective story.
From here, the following chapters engage in close readings of the three novels,
with particular emphasis on The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum,
demonstrating that they explore problems of interpretation central to the detective
narrative. In doing this, they display an intimate knowledge of generic developments
within the detective tradition, and of the philosophical and aesthetic uses made of the
genre by other writers. The embedding of intertextual references to other detective
narratives within Eco's novels is an important factor, as they come together to form
a narrative of epistemological inquiry that itself follows Eco's philosophical progress
through the years. In short, the novels, inter alia, map a systematic inquiry into the
possibility of systematic inquiry. They reserve the space to engage in such an ironic
and self-referential project precisely through their fictionality
How do we do race in design and technology?
No full textThis chapter deliberately takes a different format to others within this book. The authors and contributors have come together to co-author and collaborate on this work, which we think breaks new ground within design and technology. For the contributors, we are drawing on the teacher as researcher and teacher as reflexive practitioner; the authors are drawing on their lived experiences to explore the question, how do we do race in design and technology, and begin the road to exploring some possible answers.
We also wondering: Who are the voices that have shaped the design & technology curriculum around raceissues of decolonisation, definitions and clarifications?
The chapter starts with an overview of decolonisation and diversity in design and technology, and then broadens out into understanding the language around race and diversity. The design discourse takes us to globalisation and cultural values and the monolithic space taken by only structuring the current design and technology curriculum with a Eurocentric modelling of design history. The narrative voices of teachers then provide the backdrop to rest of the chapter, their voices speak of the differing experiences, their perspectives asreflective practitioners are there to offer thoughts and reflections, they do not yet provide answers. The chapter ends with a call to reclaim the curriculum and bring the marginalised voices in from the margins
A critical history of the international art journal Artforum
No full textThe American-based international art journal Artforum has proved one of the most prominent and influential of art history's discursive agencies, playing a critical role in framing, probing, and re-working particular beliefs of art
practice, art history, and art criticism broadly conceived of as 'Modernist' and 'post-Modernist.' This thesis investigates the development of Artforum's critical and historical writing on 'Modernist,' 'post-Modernist,' and feminist issues. It takes Artforum, from 1962 to 1993, as its 'archive' and undertakes a critical history of the journal's personnel, policies, and textual discourse, as
well as its look and design.
The first chapter, "The Language of Another Generation," focuses upon the 'old' Artforum, a concept of the magazine which attempts to articulate a retrospective perception of its critical power from the mid -1960s to the mid'
70s. Specifically, it challenges a conception of the magazine which portrays it as a mouthpiece for Clement Greenberg's theories of Modernist artistic and
critical practices. In attempting to elucidate this misconception of the journal, the chapter makes use of some of Michel Foucault's suggestions for a historical
analysis that focuses on the ruptures, rather than the continuities of Lhe object of study. To this end, the chapter identifies factors which contributed to the
construction of the idea of Artforum as a Greenberg-influenced journal and then locates a discourse working against that idea, a discourse that disrupts Greenbergian Modernism.
Chapter 2, "Shameless Hussies," centres on Artforum's November 1974 and November 1980 issues and questions the journal's gendered biases toward the human figure in art. It considers the magazine's attempt to wrest from body
and performance artists Lynda Bengiis, Lisa Lyon, and Carolee Schneemarln their artistic authority, and documents its struggle to maintain the producer/product, subject/object distinctions that these artists had blurred
through their practices. Indeed, the chapter propounds that Artforum's resistance to images of the female figure waxed when the body represented belonged to the artist herself and, in view of the evidence presented by the
November 1980 issue, waned when artist and body were either distinct identies or male. The chapter concludes with an analysis of whether or not the journal succeded in nullifying the artists' political power by preventing their bodies' final collapse into ambiguous representation. Chapter 3, "Autocritique," looks at Artforum's relationship to certain concepts of post-Modernism through its notable recourses to a self-referential criticality. It discusses examples of the journal's self-reflexivity under the editorships of John Coplans, Ingrid Sischy, and current editor Jack Bankowsky and proposes that the magazine oscillates between working with and exhibiting a Greenbergian notion of Modernist self-criticism on the one hand, and an idea of a post-Modernist deconstructive impulse on the other
New French Extremity: Fat Girl & Twentynine Palms with Ali Taylor
No full textNew French Extremity is more than gore and violence; it is controversial, it is taboo and it is shocking. This episode looks at Catherine Breillat’s FAT GIRL (2001) and Bruno Dumont’s TWENTYNINE PALMS (2003). Host Zoë is joined by academic and author, Ali Taylor to discuss these boundary pushing films
Engaging the manuscript: new editions and reading the 'whole book' in Chetham's Library MS 8009
No full textThis thesis considers the intersection of the manuscript and its literature through an examination of the late fifteenth century manuscript, Chetham’s Library 8009 (Mun. A.6.31) and provides four diplomatic editions. This manuscript contains fourteen texts in Middle English including romance, hagiography, courtesy literature, and a comic text. This thesis argues for the importance of reading medieval literature in its manuscript context. Although there is a growing trend to consider the ‘whole book’ and integrate analysis of the material artefact with interpretation, much work remains to be done.
In Part I, this thesis presents a new paradigm for reading medieval literature, and argues that the manuscript forms a very literal community of texts, and that each text acts as a co-creator of meaning with the others. It then demonstrates four brief contextual readings that may be made within Chetham 8009 across generic boundaries, and that produce a shift in interpretive focus .
Part II provides four diplomatic editions from Chetham 8009: the Life of St Katherine, the Liber Catonis, John Russell’s Book of Carving and Nurture, and the Book of the Duke and Emperor.
This thesis aims to contribute to the study of medieval literature by arguing for a methodological shift in the way the literature is approached and by providing access to four texts either previously unedited or not easily accessible
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