349 research outputs found

    "Born aloft on the wings of imagination": modern women of genius in Anne of Green Gables and The Well of Loneliness

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    On the surface, the two early twentieth century novels Anne of Green Gables and The Well of Loneliness do not appear to share much in common. However, the two books actually share striking similarities, particularly because the protagonists of both books – Anne and Stephen, respectively-can be read as homosexual characters. Although both characters display some masculine tendencies, their homosexuality is linked to a uniquely feminine imagination that leads to creative acts distinct from masculine creativity. Most frequently, their imaginations are depicted through nature, as Montgomery and Hall subtly argue that lesbianism is a natural part of the world. The feminine genius practiced by Anne and Stephen continues into adulthood and reflects the biographies of both Montgomery and Hall. Although Anne and Stephen’s genius initially begins out of their childhood isolation, their creative work actually develops as a highly social act distinct from both the non-empathetic and unemotional writing of male modernists and the female modernists (like Gertrude Stein) who mimic male modes of writing. Through their characters, Montgomery and Hall argue for a decidedly female version of genius and at the same time respond to an inherent male bias in the definition of genius. More broadly, they also reinforce the idea that modernism was defined by a blurring of the lines that divided multiple dichotomies: namely, medicine versus art; child versus adult; nature versus self; and-most importantly, male versus female.M.A.Includes bibliographical referencesby Christina M. Singletar

    Religious intellectuals : the poetic gravity of Emily Brontë and Christina Rossetti

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    This thesis examines the writing of Emily Brontë and Christina Rossetti in terms of its expression of religious culture and belief. It is my argument that Brontë and Rossetti experienced religion as intellectuals, questioning and exploring doctrine and dogma neither as sentimental lady Christians nor dismissive, secular critics. I contend that by close reading their poetry, the genre both women privileged as most appropriate for the consideration of religious matters, the reader may trace the sermons and theological works they read. Moreover, their writing, I suggest, evinces their intellectual response to theological, ecclesiological and ecclesiastical developments that took place in the nineteenth century. I thus label Brontë and Rossetti 'religious intellectuals,' a phrase suggestive of their intense understanding of, rather than their mild acquaintance with, religious debate. Many women writing within the nineteenth century found that religion granted them a field within which to freely read and research, but were denied the professional title of 'theologian.' Brontë and Rossetti are thus examples of a wider phenomenon wherein women encountered religion like scholars, one disregarded by current criticism unable as it is to categorize a female activity simultaneously religious and intellectual. I use Brontë and Rossetti as examples of what I call the 'religious intellectual' because they represent different sides of this classification. Where Brontë struggled away from her Methodist background, serving as a cultural commentator on its enthusiastic belief-system, Rossetti forged a scholarly identity as a late member of the High Church Oxford Movement. Both poets, I contend, wrote about religion in order to signal their intellectual ability. I conclude that Brontë's interest in Methodism and Rossetti's fascination with Tractarianism reveals the poets to be both independent of family pressures and false consciousness, and fully engaged with a subject central to their age

    A sojourn in Paris 1824-25: sex and sociability in the manuscript writings of Anne Lister (1791-1840)

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    This thesis examines the day to day practices that constituted Anne Lister's (1791-1840) sexuality and sociability within the range of her writings, as well as her society. Anne's writings were a detailed account, spanning her lifetime, of her own love and relationships with the 'fairer sex' (Whitbread 1988, 145). Anne's sociality, seen in her correspondence and plain handwritten journal entries, has been explored by Muriel Green in Miss Lister of Shibden Hall and Jill Liddington in Female Fortune and Nature's Domain (Green 1992; Liddington 1998; 2003). As a gentlewoman of adequate means, Anne has garnered some attention from women's historians interested in her agency within an early nineteenth century social and historical context. Anne's sexual identity has been extensively analysed over the past nearly twenty years by lesbian feminists, queer theorists, women's historians and historians of sexuality concerned with the history and development of modern Western female homosexuality and gender. The source for theorising Anne's sexuality has been the edited selections of the crypted journal entries, published by Helena Whitbread in I Know My Own Heart and No Priest but Love (Whitbread 1988; 1992). However, many analyses deal either with the theorisation of Anne's sexuality or her sociality; the theoretical difficulty with reconciling these categories has troubled the analysis of her complex subjectivity. Drawing upon the archival materials, I have used an interdisciplinary feminist approach to analyse the sexual and social processes of Anne's everyday interactions in her writings. Taking the seven month period of the sojourn to Paris in 1824-25, I have focused upon Anne's textual practices within her journal volume and letters during her residence in Paris, her social practices with the other guests at the guesthouse 24 Place Vendome and her sexual practices with her lover, the widow Mrs. Maria Barlow. The journal volumes and correspondence are a valuable historical record of one gentlewoman's engagement with early nineteenth century British culture

    Lifestyle Intervention and Prevention of Spontaneous Preterm Delivery in Obese Pregnant Women

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    Maternal obesity and preterm birth (PTB) both contribute to increased risk of infant morbidity and mortality.The association between obesity per se and increased risk of spontaneous PTB is not fully understood but is recently demonstrated from large population-based studies.This fact gives rise to speculate if lifestyle intervention and prevention of obesity may reduce the risk of spontaneous PTB.This chapter highlights the existing literature about lifestyle intervention in obese pregnant women and discusses the implication of intervention to prevent PTB in ongoing and future studies.</p

    The Course and Predictors of Patient Participation in Inpatient Occupational Therapy: Understanding the Impact on Outcomes and Implementation Barriers

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    Abstract Date Presented 3/31/2017 Patient participation (engagement) is a keystone of patient-centered care. This study provided evidence to support how active participation in occupational therapy would enhance patient outcomes at discharge and 1 yr postinjury. We also identified barriers to patient participation in rehabilitation. Primary Author and Speaker: Alex Wong Contributing Authors: Christina Papadimitriou, Arielle Goldsmith, Katrina Christopher, Gale Whiteneck, Anne Deutsch, Eric Lenze, Allen W. Heinemann</jats:p

    Mary-Anne Elizabeth Plaatjies-Van Huffel: A First Voice on Gender Equity in South Africa

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    The article contains and expands on the previously unpublished first “Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel Memorial Lecture” that was given by the author on 12 August 2020. This was the day on which Mary-Anne Elizabeth Plaatjies-Van Huffel, who died on 19 May 2020, was to give her inaugural lecture as the first black woman to become a full professor in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. The article concentrates on the pioneering work Plaatjies-Van Huffel did in her first doctorate, which she submitted in 2003 under the supervision of the author. The question is asked why, after almost 20 years, the proposals for gender equity set forward by Plaatjies-Van Huffel in her 2003 thesis have still not been heard, either by local academia or by the church to which she belonged, the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA). In answering this question, her involvement in the equally neglected “Policy on Gender Equity,” accepted by URCSA in 1994, and adapted in 2005, will be highlighted

    The influence of conversational context and the developing lexicon on the calculation of scalar implicatures: Insights from Spanish-English bilingual children

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    Although monolingual children do not generally calculate the upper-bounded scalar implicature (SI) associated with ‘some’ without additional support, monolingual Spanish-speaking children have been reported to do so with algunos (‘some’), and further distinguish algunos from unos. Given documented cross-linguistic influence in interface phenomena in bilinguals, we asked whether young Spanish-English bilinguals calculate SIs with algunos, or if there is an effect of acquiring languages with overlapping but diverging lexical entries. Two experiments reveal that not only do bilinguals inconsistently calculate SIs, Spanish monolinguals do not always either. In Experiment 1, bilinguals did not calculate the SI associated with algunos. However, in Experiment 2, which calls upon their awareness of speaker-hearer dynamics, they did. This research highlights the challenges arising from interpreting linguistic phenomena where lexical, semantic, and pragmatic information intersect, and is a call for further investigation with bilinguals in a rapidly growing area where bilingual research is lacking
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