Do You Bant? William Banting and Bantingism: A Cultural History of a Victorian Anti-Fat Aesthetic

In the second half of the nineteenth century, a retired Victorian undertaker named William Banting (1796-1878) dramatically altered attitudes toward fat by initiating the profoundly consequential idea of the diet as a saleable commodity capable of marking identity within particular social and racial contexts and connecting obesity with degeneracy, illness, and evil. His work Letter on Corpulence Addressed to the General Public self-published in 1863 describes how, with physician William Harvey, Banting reduced his weight by nearly fifty pounds by following a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet. Banting and his dieting phenomenon transformed the English cultural consciousness of fatness, and created a Victorian cultural craze that valorized slimness as a marker of privilege and prestige by drawing on the escalating regularization of medicine and the conventions of medical discourse that were increasingly popular among readers. Though there were both positive and negative reactions to Banting, his work undoubtedly became a subject of busy popular conversation, challenging and transforming Victorian notions of body, self, and power in social and national contexts. After its importation into India, the diet served as a way to maintain colonial control and to reify the English imagination of its imperial identity. It likewise established a form of control over Indian subjects of the British raj, who, after the Mutiny of 1857, were seen increasingly as a threat that needed to be addressed. A study of Banting\u27s work thus invites skepticism of the various ways such anti-fat discourses are deployed to further entrench hierarchies of power and preference. It also recognizes the perpetuation of the colonial episteme in modern discourses about healthful dietary practice

An epic redemption: Re-reading some aberrant eleventh- century bodies

The text of the Junius 11 manuscript and the illustrations accompanying it are marked by an apparent discord, whereby the ecclesiastical nature of the work often seems threatened by the eroticism of the images. This thesis sets out to explain the disjunction, not by eliding it but rather showing it to be highly significant. To uncover the attitudes prevailing towards the corporeal (both erotic and numinous), the analysis undertakes a close examination of late tenth-/early eleventh-century conceptions of the body, especially those informed by the discourses of the Church. Such discourses frequently did pose the body in erotic formations, but in most of these it is possible to demonstrate multiple frameworks of social control being applied to them to determine correct meaning. The Junius Eve, however, does not conform to such structuralist paradigms. Her erotic subversion is driven by something beyond, even antithetical to, expositions of exterior power advanced by, for example, Michel Foucault or Judith Butler. To compensate for such structuralist lack, this thesis advances a psychoanalytic inflexion to develop a fusion that resolves the otherwise incongruous eroticism in the Junius Eve. The result is an Eve that completely subverts the text in a celebration of the libidinal

Somatic movement and education: a phenomenological study of young children's perceptions, expressions and reflections of embodiment through movement

This reflexive account is of a phenomenological study that took place over two years. It explores how a group of primary-aged children perceive, express and reflect on their embodiment through movement. Children aged between four and eleven took part in sessions of yoga, somatic movement and developmental play during the school day. The data include field notes, observations, a reflexive journal, photographs of and by the children, their drawings, mark-makings, writing and posters. Children were also interviewed at the end of the study, when they had an opportunity to reflect on all their work and experiences. All the children were capable of expressing and reflecting on their experiences, and the oldest children in particular appeared to enjoy and seemed to benefit from the reflective process. By linking together a sense of self-awareness and reflection, the children appeared able to gain insight into their embodied experience and reflect on emotions, feelings and events. Embodiment is a process as much of a state of being, and as such has implications for perceptions of mind and body, learning, and reflective practice. This approach to embodied reflective practice thus has potential for educators, and teacher trainers as well as direct work with children

Measuring Behavior 2018 Conference Proceedings

These proceedings contain the papers presented at Measuring Behavior 2018, the 11th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research. The conference was organised by Manchester Metropolitan University, in collaboration with Noldus Information Technology. The conference was held during June 5th – 8th, 2018 in Manchester, UK. Building on the format that has emerged from previous meetings, we hosted a fascinating program about a wide variety of methodological aspects of the behavioral sciences. We had scientific presentations scheduled into seven general oral sessions and fifteen symposia, which covered a topical spread from rodent to human behavior. We had fourteen demonstrations, in which academics and companies demonstrated their latest prototypes. The scientific program also contained three workshops, one tutorial and a number of scientific discussion sessions. We also had scientific tours of our facilities at Manchester Metropolitan Univeristy, and the nearby British Cycling Velodrome. We hope this proceedings caters for many of your interests and we look forward to seeing and hearing more of your contributions