14 research outputs found
Letter to William Collver or John Roberts, 1849
Get PDFA letter to “my dear Mr. Collver and co.” The writer mentions the “circuit” that she has traveled, and a conference which she attended. In regard to the circuit, she talks about her interest in the Welland Canal. The references all seem to be religious in nature. She asks Mr. Collver how he likes the new preacher and says that in a letter that the preacher published in the newspaper he refers to the “breaking of Jordan Chapel”. She says that a society of teetotalers has been established in her town and they are known as “Sons of Temperance”. She also mentions “my man Brown” who was there but has left, leaving her to have the circuit by herself. She signs off with “I am yours affectionately [Eleanor Corman]. The second part of the letter is addressed to “my dear Mr. Roberts”. She asks him for some music that she would like, but cannot find in Kingston. She would like him to “come down and teach singing” this winter. She also asks him to give her regards to Mr. P. Beamer and family. She ends this part of the letter with “Nothing further yours affectionately [Eleanor Corman]”. There are 4 red postmarks on the outside of the letter and they are: Picton, July 31, 1849 Cobourg, August 2, 1849 St. Catharines, August 4, 1849 There is one other postmark which is too faded to be legible.1 handwritten letter (2 pages) 25 x 20 cm
DenCity: Stories of Crowds and Cities
Get PDFWhat can a comic book tell us about urban density? How might a comic represent the multiple relationship between density and the city? What can comics reveal about the life, experience, politics, and geographies of density? This edited comic book is an anthology of six short pieces, all of them showing very different styles of writing and art. It brings together contributors from across the world telling compelling stories of densities ranging from London, Sarajevo and New York, to Mumbai, Jakarta and Lima. The anthology provokes readers to think both about what density of different forms means to them, and what a focus on density might tell us about the experience and nature of the city and urban living
Alter egos: An exploration of the perspectives and identities of science comic creators
Get PDF© 2018 The Author(s). While academic interest in science comics has been growing in recent years, the creators of these materials remain understudied. This research aimed to explore the experiences and views of science comic creators through the lens of science communication. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 science comic creators. Interviewees felt that the visual, narrative, permanent, and approachable qualities of comics made them particularly adept at explaining science and bringing it to new audiences. Science comic creators often had complex identities, occupying an ambiguous territory between 'science' and 'art', but were otherwise unconcerned with strict definitions. They emphasised the importance of balance between entertaining and informing, striving to create an engaging visual narrative without overcrowding it with facts or compromising scientific accuracy. This balancing act, and how they negotiate it, sheds light on what it means to be a science communicator operating in the space between entertainment and information/education
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All Our Relations: Stars, Plants, and Mothers in the Mesoamerican Story of Mayahuel
Get PDFAll Our Relations: Stars, Plants, and Mothers in the Mesoamerican Story of Mayahuel, previously published as Mayahuel’s Mysterious Maguey: The Divine Mesoamerican Mother’s Sacred Story of Transformation, explores the narrative of Mayahuel as told in the Histoyre du Mechique, the extant French translation (via a lost Spanish translation) of the lost or destroyed original Nahua sacred narrative. This visual text adapts glyphs and iconography from the Indigenous-authored Codex Yohualli Ehecatl (Borgia), Codex Mictlan (Laud), Codex Tonalpohualli (Vaticanus B), and Codex Mendoza (as well as including Jordan Collver’s original artwork) to bring the story of Mayahuel’s transformation into maguey to contemporary readers. Embedded within this visual narrative are Indigenous, specifically Nahua, Aztec, and Mexica, ideologies related to motherhood, death, interconnectedness, nature, and teotl, a Nahuatl term not easily defined. Inspired by Felicia Rhapsody Lopez’s article, "Case Study for the Development of a Visual Grammar: Mayahuel and Maguey as Teotl in the Directional Tree Pages of the Codex Borgia," published in rEvista: A Multi-media, Multi-genre e-Journal for Social Justice, vol. 5, no. 2, 201
Storytelling for Science Communication Toolkit: Cognitive Biases, Memory & Objectives
Get PDFHumans have used stories to understand the world around us for millennia, from folktales to news stories, and from movies to the gossip we collect in the local pub. Science communicators have long been trying to monopolise on this most human instinct to hear and pass on the information we hear in the form of stories. For science communication, stories enable us to foreground relevance, emotion and engagement, which can be used to persuade audiences or make information stick with people.
Many people already get their science content through the mass media, which has a bias towards communicating through narratives[1], and many science communicators use storytelling in communication through video, stage shows or writing. As a result, research centring on the use of stories within science communication has exploded in recent years, inspiring dedicated books on the subject which act as introductory texts to how storytelling can be used in science communication. For example, Randy Olsen’s Houston, “We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story”.
This toolkit is not intended as an introduction to storytelling practice. Instead, it is concerned with tactics to make our storytelling in science communication more memorable. The fields of cultural evolution and cognitive science have been investigating the cognitive biases that make some stories stick with us while others are lost, and what makes us remember information from the stories we hear.
In this toolkit, we will describe different cognitive biases for storytelling, cover the empirical evidence that indicates what these biases are and how they work, and explore how they might be useful for science communication, but also areas where science communicators might want to be careful.
While cognitive biases can be powerful tools for engagement, it is crucial to use them responsibly and ethically. Therefore, the toolkit also considers the objectives, scientific integrity, and well-being of their audience as we discuss each bias.
The reflections for science communication practice come from practicing science communication professionals in an interview study (see Little and Dunstone, 2025). This study asked science communicators how they use stories, whether they can benefit from the evidence reviewed in this paper about cognitive biases for certain types of narratives, and what issues the cognitive biases reviewed might pose for their science communication practice
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How to Read an Aztec "Comic": Indigenous Knowledge, Mothers' Bodies, and Tamales in the Pot
Get PDFThis visual text represents some of the content from the article, Women, Childbirth, and the Sticky Tamales: Nahua Rhetoric and Worldview in the Glyphic Codex Borgia, by Felicia Lopez. Through the use of comic book conventions, readers are guided through the decipherment of logographic writing from Central Mexico and, in the process, are shown how colonization has limited our contemporary understanding of ancient Indigenous people. By offering reinterpretations of glyphs that reveal the cultural knowledge of women, this guided reading of a codex image paints a picture of Aztecs and other Indigenous people as intelligent, complex, and inventors of their own unique writing systems
Mayahuel’s Mysterious Maguey: The Divine Mesoamerican Mother’s Sacred Story of Transformation
No full textHocus Pocus:Using comics to promote skepticism about the paranormal
Get PDFThis study investigated the potential for comics to promote skepticism about the paranormal. Participants rated their interest in comics, read a skeptical account of alleged paranormal phenomena in one of three mediums (text, comic, and comic containing an interactive magic trick), and then rated their engagement, skepticism and recall. The text was rated as more interesting and entertaining than the comics, and participants’ prior interest in comics positively correlated with engagement and shift in skepticism. This suggests that for certain cohorts, comics may be an effective way to promote engagement and attitude change. The implications for future work are considered
Trust comes from a sense of feeling one's self understood by another mind:An interview with peter fonagy
No full textPeter Fonagy is Head of the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College London. He has occupied a number of key national leadership positions including Chair of the Outcomes Measurement Reference Group at the Department of Health, and Chair of two National Institute for Health and Care Excellence Guideline Development Groups. His clinical interests center on issues of early attachment relationships, social cognition, borderline personality disorder and violence, and today he will be speaking about epistemic petrification. He was interviewed at the Epistemic Petrification Conference, held on the 2nd-3rd July 2018, at Bristol University. The event was part of the Life of Breath project, sponsored by the Wellcome Trust.</p
