A room of one\u27s own, revisited: An existential-hermeneutic study of female solitude

This study presents an existential-hermeneutic analysis of nine women\u27s first-person accounts of extended periods of solitude. The accounts were analyzed along the five existential dimensions of spatiality, temporality, embodiment, language, and co-existentiality, producing a rich portrait of the women\u27s lived experience of solitude. One of the first-person accounts was provided by the author of the study, who underwent three solitary retreats in the interest of this project, adding an autoethnographic component to the work. Theory from the existential-phenomenological, monastic, ecopsychological, and feminist literatures was applied to the data, enabling us to interpret the significance of the shifts the women experienced through an interdisciplinary set of lenses. The women experienced both subtle and profound shifts in their senses of self and modes of being in the world over the course of their retreats. In the absence of direct human relations, the women developed greater intimacy with things, non-human beings, and the Divine. Through the practice of simplicity, the women cultivated humility and more contemplative modes of seeing, revealing previously hidden contours of the material world and fostering a child-like sense of wonder. By leaving clock time and slowing down, the women became increasingly oriented toward the present moment, entrained to the rhythms of the natural world, and attuned to their desire. By retreating from the gaze of the (human) other, the women worked to heal a sense of alienation from their own bodies, experienced a respite from feminine performativity, and came to move through the world more seamlessly and comfortably. And by observing silence, the women cultivated the ability to listen beyond the human conversation and the chattering of their own minds, developed a more sacred relationship to language, confronted their emotional demons, and found themselves increasingly drawn toward the poetic. Overall, through their solitudes, the women developed a greater stance of receptivity toward the more-than-human world, deconstructed elements of identity and modes of being aligned with the false self, and recovered aspects of their lived experience which had been neglected or suppressed over the course of becoming an adult, and especially a woman, in the context of contemporary American culture

Subject to Change: Writings and Interviews

Subject to Change: Writings and Interviews brings together catalogue statements, essays, conversations, lecture notes, communications with gallerists and writers, and unpublished writings by Liz Magor, of the most important contemporary artists of the last fifty years. In addition to writings spanning more than four decades, the book features a preface by Magor, as well as an introductory essay by critic and curator Philip Monk. A sculptor who replicates quotidian objects, often combining them with found ephemera or complicating their shape or size, Liz Magor prompts viewers of her sculptures to endow them with stories and histories of their own making. As a writer, Magor uses narrative to make sense of her own work, but she also returns to themes over the course of her career including subject/object relations and transformations; training systems for artists; consumption and commodification; human attachment and relationships; and complexities of time, place, and situation, particularly her own as a feminist artist in a settler-colonial society. Subject to Change is essential reading for anyone interested in Magor's practice, as well as broader questions in art since the 1970s. Liz Magor is a sculptor who lives and works in Vancouver. She is a recipient of the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts (2001), the Audain Prize (2009), and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2014). Her work was the subject of a 2017 traveling exhibition at the Kunstverein (Hamburg), Migros Museum (Zurich), and MAMAC (Nice). Other recent solo exhibitions include Esker Foundation (Calgary, 2020); Carpenter Center and Renaissance Society (Cambridge, MA and Chicago, 2019); Le Crédac (Ivry-sur-Seine, 2016); Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal (2016); Art Gallery of Ontario (2015); and Peep-Hole (Milan, 2015). She participated in documenta 8 (1987) and the 41st Venice Biennale (1984). For a number of years Magor combined an artistic practice with a teaching one and she has been on the faculty of the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD University) and Emily Carr University. In 2019 she was named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Government of the French Republic

'A kind of singing in me' : a critical account of women writers of the Beat generation

Abstract available: p.

Geek Cultures: Media and Identity in the Digital Age

This study explores the cultural and technological developments behind the transition of labels like \u27geek\u27 and \u27nerd\u27 from schoolyard insults to sincere terms identity. Though such terms maintain negative connotations to some extent, recent years have seen a growing understanding that geek is chic as computers become essential to daily life and business, retailers hawk nerd apparel, and Hollywood makes billions on sci-fi, hobbits, and superheroes. Geek Cultures identifies the experiences, concepts, and symbols around which people construct this personal and collective identity. This ethnographic study considers geek culture through multiple sites and through multiple methods, including participant observation at conventions and local events promoted as geeky or nerdy ; interviews with fans, gamers, techies, and self-proclaimed outcasts; textual analysis of products produced by and for geeks; and analysis and interaction online through blogs, forums, and email. The findings are organized around four common, sometimes overlapping images and stereotypes: the geek as misfit, genius, fan, and chic. Overall, this project finds that these terms represent a category of identity that predates the recent emergence of geek chic, and may be more productively understood as interacting with, rather than stemming from, dimensions of identity such as gender and race. The economic import of the internet and the financial successes of high-profile geeks have popularized the idea that nerdy skills can be parlayed into riches and romance, but the real power of communication technologies has been in augmenting the reach and persistent availability of those things that encourage a sense of belonging: socially insulated safe spaces to engage in (potentially embarrassing) activities; opportunities to remotely coordinate creative projects and social gatherings; and faster and more widespread circulation of symbols - from nerdcore hip-hop to geek-sponsored charities - confirming the existence of a whole network of individuals with shared values. The emergence of geek culture represents not a sudden fad, but a newly visible dimension of identity that demonstrates how dispersed cultures can be constructed through the integration of media use and social enculturation in everyday life

Occam\u27s Beard: Belief, Disbelief, and Contested Meanings in American Ufology

The purpose of this dissertation is to critically examine the emergence, maintenance, evolution, and dissemination of belief traditions in New Mexico and the United States that are most commonly associated with the UFO phenomenon. This critical analysis incorporates theoretical frameworks from a multitude of interrelated disciplines, including folklore, history, anthropology, popular culture studies, sociology, and psychology. The primary goal of this dissertation involves the attempt to formulate a typology of UFO accounts in American culture, and how said accounts are interpreted, communicated, and publicly evaluated. To achieve this end, a database of UFO-related experiences was compiled in New Mexico and accompanied with a sample of extensive firsthand interviews from New Mexico and other parts of the United States, collected from 2007 to 2009. These data were analyzed for both their correlation to socio-demographic variables, and for patterns and variations in narrative form and content. The findings of this dissertation suggest that personal experience narratives--or memorates--containing UFO-related content remain relatively common among a sample New Mexican population. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, the overarching explanation for this commonality involves the complex interplay of a variety of social factors, including: the continued presence of Cold War-related anxieties and cultural paranoia; the ubiquitous presence of UFO and alien imagery in American popular culture; broad-based public mistrust in the scientific establishment; the usefulness of the phenomenon in modern technospiritual reconciliations; the occasional presence of a seemingly core experience comprised of near universal characteristics, and the influence of UFO-centric cognitive models in the perceptions, interpretations, and reconsiderations of said experiences. These findings further suggest that many proponents of UFO-based belief traditions publicly position their opinions against a hostile skeptical community. To gain further insight into this competing perspective, a sampling of self-professed skeptics were interviewed in 2008. Their attitudes about the UFO phenomenon and other anomalous belief systems generally supported the idea of a broad competition in which proponents and skeptics grapple over cultural authority regarding public consensus on normative belief and experience in American life. The UFO phenomenon remains a key component in this public struggle, while continuing to symbolize deeper social anxieties involving issues of scientific ethics, governmental secrecy, racial disharmony, and spiritual hybridity

Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, showing the operations, expenditures, and condition of the Institution to July, 1889

Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution. 1 July. HMO 224 (pts. 1 and 2), 51-1, v20-21. 18llp. [2779-2780] Research related to the American India

Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, showing the operations, expenditures, and condition of the Institution to July, 1893.

Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution. 1 July. HMD 184 (pts. 1 and 2), 53-2, v29-30, 1622p. [3257-3258] Research related to the American Indian

Volume 34, Number 11 (November 1916)

What the American Girl Should Know About an Operatic Career Last Days of Stephen Foster Half Hour of Daily Technic Useful Addition to the Gallery Collecton Superlative Importance of Tempo Some Interesting Musical Historical Facts Hundred-Dollar Lesson Difficult Pronunciations Scale Wheel Composer: A Powerful and Fascinating Romance of Modern Musical Life Great Composers and the Harp Study with Beads Studio Visiting Days Beethoven and the Blind Girl Learning a Piece by Forgetting It Musician\u27s Worry Habit Master Lesson for Earnest Students on Mendelssohn\u27s Charming Spinning Song What Kind of Music is Best? How Verdi Sought to Avoid Pomp Even in Death Some Facts About the Chopin Nocturneshttps://digitalcommons.gardner-webb.edu/etude/1629/thumbnail.jp

A Mosque Among the Stars

A Mosque Among The Stars was the first anthology that dealt with the subject of Muslim characters and/or Islamic themes and Science Fiction

Bowdoin Orient v.17, no.1-17 (1887-1888)

https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/bowdoinorient-1880s/1009/thumbnail.jp