Distempered Visions: Reading Narratives of Specular Mourning in Victorian fiction

This thesis questions the phenomenological force and function of mourning in the fiction of Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot, bringing together models of contemporary visuality with modalities of loss, to emphasise a dialectic of affective pain as intimate vision. While Victorian visual culture has been substantially addressed by recent scholarship, there remains a paucity of investigation into what I read as an optic chiasmus of altered modes of seeing and modes of feeling. With a focus on two of the key novelists of the period, I have selected four novels that are fascinated by the nature of warped vision and blindness, questioning how literature might depict mourning in a world newly crowded by the visual. From this starting point, I examine the ways in which both novelists appropriated optical tropes to articulate the lived experience of a traumatised consciousness. The mourning subject becomes the site of specular, phantasmal inquiry in their works, and thus my own method follows the conditions of this connection. This particularised account of the themes of loss and mourning has not been significantly addressed in the scholarship, despite the fact that all four texts explicitly emphasise subjective trauma. How is the private and intimate altered by the fluid specularity of the new optics of the period? Weaving together nineteenth-century physics, optics, and visual technologies with changing notions of subjectivity and the experience of consciousness, my work foregrounds the phenomenological depictions of visualised suffering in the novels. Exploring the intersection of the technologized Victorian eye and the feeling, grieving subject, I draw out the transitivity of optical fragmentation that Brontë and Eliot manipulate to extend the textual scope of elegiac representation. By looking closely at the slippage of socio-cultural modes of vision and inner life, I argue that the precarious nature of the visual became a space in which both writers could articulate a phenomenology of loss. Taking Brontë’s fears for her father’s encroaching blindness as a point of departure, I begin with Jane Eyre (1847), conventionally read as a narrative of resolute visual authority. Through a series of close readings, I draw out the anxiety that shadows the novel’s depiction of the eye. I am interested in the ways the biographical meets the socio-cultural in Brontë’s discourse of vision, and Jane Eyre’s theme of blindness is a fruitful place of entry into that query. Villette (1853) was written after Brontë’s visits to London’s Great Exhibition and offers a distinct engagement with the Victorian visual culture, employing a more sophisticated and complex imbrication of the private and the social modes of visualised loss. This chapter explores how Brontë’s most devastating and final work accommodates the problem of the mourning subject in a hyper-visual sphere. In the second half of the thesis, I turn to Eliot’s The Lifted Veil (1859) andRomola (1862-3), two works which have traditionally garnered the least amount of critical attention, often described as misplaced in the author’s oeuvre. In The Lifted Veil the various epistemological crises of the mid-century moment find expression in Eliot’s horrifying first-person account of delimited, inescapable sensory experience. Contravening the established critical view of the tale, with an emphasis on the protagonist’s preternatural visionary capacities, I focus on Eliot’s use of the terms of Victorian lens culture to elucidate the blind spots of this first-person narrative. In Romola, Eliot depicts a heroine who imagines more profoundly than her counterparts what it might mean to live with the endlessness of mourning. Taking up Eliot’s exploration of phenomenal embodiment, which contrasts with the empirical, observational aesthetic of traditional realism, I point to the tension that defines the sensory life in the novel. Through being attentive to the correspondences of mourning and decentralized perspectival geographies, I argue for a closer look at the phenomenally descriptive in its own right as performing a different ontology of radical loss

Psychology and the research enterprise: Moving beyond the enduring hegemony of positivism

Almost since its inception, psychology has embraced the positivist orientation of the natural sciences. The research enterprise in psychology has reinforced this through its insistence that psychological science is objective, generalisable, and value free (or neutral). Consequently, experimental designs are privileged over other forms of enquiry and alternate epistemologies, methodologies, and methods remain marginalised within the discipline. We argue that alternate methodologies, and the philosophies that underpin the research endeavour, should be included in mainstream psychology programmes so that the existing imbalance is rectified. Achieving this balance will mean that psychology will be better positioned to address applied research problems and students will graduate with the skills and knowledge that they will need in the multidisciplinary workforce they will enter. We discuss recommendations for how psychology in Australia can move towards embracing methodological and epistemological pluralism. Breen, L. & Darlaston-Jones, D. (2008). Psychology and the research enterprise: Moving beyond the enduring hegemony of positivism. Australian Journal of Psychology, 60 (S1), 107-208. doi:10.1080/0004953080238555

The association between macular pigment optical density and glare recovery time with selected macular degeneration and ocular vascular perfusion risk factors

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common cause of severe visual impairment affecting older adults in the developed world. The pathogenesis of AMD is not fully understood. This study sought to investigate the association between macular pigment optical density (MPOD) and glare recovery time (GRT) with a selection of other confirmed and putative AMD risk factors (RF): age, gender, body mass index (BMI), calculated percentage body fat (%BF), iris colour, family history (FH) of AMD, and ocular vascular perfusion (OVP) RF: migraine, Raynaud's phenomenon (Rph) and vascular dysregulation (VDys). Interocular comparison was assessed for MPOD and GRT. The effect of ocular dominance on MPOD and GRT, and GRT repeatability was also examined. The use of GRT as a surrogate measure for MPOD was assessed. In this healthy, mixed-gender, White population no significant association was found between MPOD measured by heterochromatic flicker photometry (HFP) at 0.5° eccentricity and any AMD or OVP RF assessed by this study. No significant interocular difference in MPOD was found. No significant association was found between MPOD and ocular dominance. GRT after 30-second duration bleach using the direct ophthalmoscope was significantly and positively associated with age. No significant association was found for any other AMD or OVP RF examined, after correction for age. No significant interocular difference was found. No significant association was found with ocular dominance. GRT intra-session repeatability was good and inter-session repeatability was moderate. This method of GRT was not found to be a good surrogate measure for MPOD. This study generated three new theories: the possible association between the OVP RF migraine, Rph and VDys and AMD risk, the Müller cell (Mc) / neuroglial cell hypothesis for macular pigment, and the retinal theory for Meares-Irlen syndrome (MIS) also known as Visual Stress

Bodily sensation in contemporary extreme horror film

Bodily Sensation in Contemporary Extreme Horror Film provides a theory of horror film spectatorship rooted in the physiology of the viewer. In a novel contribution to the field of film studies research, it seeks to integrate contemporary scientific theories of mind with psychological paradigms of film interpretation. Proceeding from a connectionist model of brain function that proposes psychological processes are underpinned by neurology, this thesis contends that whilst conscious engagement with film often appears to be driven by psychosocial conditions – including cultural influence, gender dynamics and social situation – it is physiology and bodily sensation that provide the infrastructure upon which this superstructure rests. Drawing upon the philosophical works of George Lakoff, Mark Johnson and Alain Berthoz, the argument concentrates upon explicating the specific bodily sensations and experiences that contribute to the creation of implicit structures of understanding, or embodied schemata, that we apply to the world round us. Integrating philosophy with contemporary neurological research in the spheres of cognition and neurocinematics, a number of correspondences are drawn between physiological states and the concomitant psychological states often perceived to arise simultaneously alongside them. The thesis offers detailed analysis of a selection of extreme horror films that, it is contended, conscientiously incorporate the body of the viewer in the process of spectatorship through manipulation of visual, auditory, vestibular, gustatory and nociceptive sensory stimulations, simulations and the embodied schemata that arise from everyday physiological experience. The phenomenological film criticism of Vivian Sobchack and Laura U. Marks is adopted and expanded upon in order to suggest that the organicity of the human body guides and structures the psychosocial engagement with, and interpretation of, contemporary extreme horror film. This project thus exposes the body as the architectural foundation upon which conscious interaction with film texts occurs

The senses in early modern England, 1558–1660

This book attempts to interrogate the literary, artistic and cultural output of early modern England. Following Constance Classen's view that understandings of the senses, and sensory experience itself, are culturally and historically contingent; it explores the culturally specific role of the senses in textual and aesthetic encounters in England. The book follows Joachim-Ernst Berendt's call for 'a democracy of the senses' in preference to the various sensory hierarchies that have often shaped theory and criticism. It argues that the playhouse itself challenged its audiences' reliance on the evidence of their own eyes, teaching early modern playgoers how to see and how to interpret the validity of the visual. The book offers an essay on each of the five senses, beginning and ending with two senses, taste and smell, that are often overlooked in studies of early modern culture. It investigates Robert Herrick's accounts in "Hesperides" of how the senses function during sexual pleasure and contact. The book also explores sensory experiences, interrogating textual accounts of the senses at night in writings from the English Renaissance. It offers a picture of early modern thought in which sensory encounters are unstable, suggesting ways in which the senses are influenced by the contexts in which they are experienced: at night, in states of sexual excitement, or even when melancholic. The book looks at the works of art themselves and considers the significance of the senses for early modern subjects attending a play, regarding a painting, and reading a printed volume

Spatial Displays and Spatial Instruments

The conference proceedings topics are divided into two main areas: (1) issues of spatial and picture perception raised by graphical electronic displays of spatial information; and (2) design questions raised by the practical experience of designers actually defining new spatial instruments for use in new aircraft and spacecraft. Each topic is considered from both a theoretical and an applied direction. Emphasis is placed on discussion of phenomena and determination of design principles

The senses in early modern England, 1558–1660

This book attempts to interrogate the literary, artistic and cultural output of early modern England. Following Constance Classen's view that understandings of the senses, and sensory experience itself, are culturally and historically contingent; it explores the culturally specific role of the senses in textual and aesthetic encounters in England. The book follows Joachim-Ernst Berendt's call for 'a democracy of the senses' in preference to the various sensory hierarchies that have often shaped theory and criticism. It argues that the playhouse itself challenged its audiences' reliance on the evidence of their own eyes, teaching early modern playgoers how to see and how to interpret the validity of the visual. The book offers an essay on each of the five senses, beginning and ending with two senses, taste and smell, that are often overlooked in studies of early modern culture. It investigates Robert Herrick's accounts in "Hesperides" of how the senses function during sexual pleasure and contact. The book also explores sensory experiences, interrogating textual accounts of the senses at night in writings from the English Renaissance. It offers a picture of early modern thought in which sensory encounters are unstable, suggesting ways in which the senses are influenced by the contexts in which they are experienced: at night, in states of sexual excitement, or even when melancholic. The book looks at the works of art themselves and considers the significance of the senses for early modern subjects attending a play, regarding a painting, and reading a printed volume

Engineering Data Compendium. Human Perception and Performance, Volume 1

The concept underlying the Engineering Data Compendium was the product an R and D program (Integrated Perceptual Information for Designers project) aimed at facilitating the application of basic research findings in human performance to the design of military crew systems. The principal objective was to develop a workable strategy for: (1) identifying and distilling information of potential value to system design from existing research literature, and (2) presenting this technical information in a way that would aid its accessibility, interpretability, and applicability by system designers. The present four volumes of the Engineering Data Compendium represent the first implementation of this strategy. This is Volume 1, which contains sections on Visual Acquisition of Information, Auditory Acquisition of Information, and Acquisition of Information by Other Senses

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationProgressive retinal ganglion cell (RGC) degeneration in glaucoma, the leading cause of permanent vision loss, is commonly caused by elevated intraocular pressure (IOP). Neuroprotective treatments complementing current IOP-reducing therapies could improve glaucoma management (Chapters 1, 3). IOP elevations induce glial reactivity (Chapter 4) and dysregulate RGC calcium (Chapters 2-3, 5-7), contributing to RGC degeneration (Chapters 5, 7), but it is unknown how glaucomatous forces perturb RGC and glial Ca2+ homeostasis. We discovered that mouse RGCs and Müller glia respond to osmotic pressure and tensile stretch with a cytosolic Ca2+ elevation that is primarily mediated by opening of the mechanosensitive cation channel transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 (TRPV4; Chapters 5-7). We therefore hypothesized that TRPV4 activation by glaucomatous forces drives RGC excitotoxicity. Consistent with this, intraocular injection of a selective TRPV4 agonist (GSK1016790A) induced mouse RGC loss (Chapter 7). This was prevented by systemic administration of a selective TRPV4 antagonist (HC-067047). Sustained exposure to glaucomatous mechanical strain caused RGC apoptosis, which was rescued by Ca2+ chelation or pharmacological/genetic TRPV4 antagonism, indicating that Ca2+ influx via TRPV4 is required for mechanical excitotoxicity (Chapter 7). Furthermore, RGCs and Müller glia swell during the progression of glaucoma and other blinding conditions, indicating the presence of aberrant osmotic gradients and loss of volume control. We found that RGC and Müller iv cell swelling is exacerbated by TRPV4-dependent Ca2+ influx. Swelling differentially activated TRPV4 in neurons and glia, the later of which required phospholipase A2- dependent production of 5,6-EET, an endogenous TRPV4 agonist. The water channel aquaporin 4 (AQP4) facilitated water entry, which enhanced glial TRPV4 activation (Chapter 6). Finally, we found that TRPV4 antagonism in mouse and primate glaucoma models lowered IOP to normal levels, potentially by promoting fluid drainage from the eye via the trabecular meshwork (TM). Although IOP elevation for eight weeks caused mouse RGC loss, this was prevented by daily treatment with a TRPV4 antagonist (Chapter 7). TRPV4 inhibition, therefore, simultaneously lowers IOP and increases RGC resilience. This, together with our finding that TRPV4 is expressed in human RGCs, Müller glia and TM cells (Chapters 6, 7), makes TRPV4 an attractive therapeutic target for prevention of glaucoma