Storied Bodies in Motion and Stillness: Shifting Meanings of Physical Activity in Women\u27s Life History Narratives

Gender is a rarely studied social determinant of health. Qualitative methodologies, while underutilized in health promotion, may facilitate understanding of the gender and health relationship. The purpose of this work is to determine if narrative inquiry is a meaningful approach to study the relationship between femininity and physical activity and to examine this relationship within women’s life histories. Five women between 30 and 40 participated in two semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed holistically, structurally, and categorically. This dissertation is comprised of five integrated articles, in which I locate myself epistemologically as researcher through a discussion on the feminist underpinnings of performative social science, I autoethnographically examine my own resistance to dominant exercise discourses for women while highlighting the complex nature of theorizing lived experience, I ‘play’ with numerous approaches to emplotment while introducing the reader to each participant individually and the plot that holds her physical activity life history together, I present the shared structure of the women’s life histories and emergent themes, and I use metaphor to encompass the lived realities of my own and my participants’ lives. Findings demonstrate shifting meanings of physical activity throughout the women’s lives from play to sport competition, a means to weight loss, re-embodiment through physical activity, and imagined future roles of motherhood. Emergent themes include A hierarchy of activities, Triangle of exercise, diet, and thinness, and The importance of social influencers. This research has the potential to inform future health promotion initiatives that are grounded in women’s lived experiences

Some stylistic features of twentieth century American poems : with particular reference to ambiguity

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D51939/84 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

The image and the body in modern fiction’s representations of terrorism: embodying the brutality of spectacle

My research arises from a critique of the tendency within terrorism debates to equate the terrorist act with the production of spectacular images. Chapter 1 uses the work of Luce Irigaray to critique this trend in terrorism discourses, arguing that such a characterisation relies on a repression of the very materiality that terrorist action exploits. Moreover, placing the concept of terror in an Irigarayan framework reveals that the concept of terrorism is bound up with concepts of masculinity. In developing this critical approach, I build on the thinking of both Irigaray and Gayatri Spivak in turning to literary representations of terrorism to find a means of articulating a new understanding of the concept of terrorism and its place within our culture. Chapter 2 brings together the figure of the woman terrorist in terrorism studies, Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter(1979), and Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist (1985) in order to critique the portrayal of the feminine in terrorism discourses. Chapter 3 then moves on to ask how the global reach of terrorism discourses after September 11th, 2001, has impacted on our understanding of masculinity and femininity, looking at the relationship between the body and subjectivity in Ian McEwan’s Saturday (2006). Finally, Chapter 4 examines how Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007) figures the body as a site of resistance to such global narratives of terror, as he explores the possibility of an embodied ethics opening up a suspension of photographic and filmic modes of perception. By setting up a dialogue between terrorism studies and literary fiction, I reintroduce the body to our conceptualisation of terrorism. In doing so, I show how literature can open up new ethical horizons in an otherwise closed rhetoric

Kaleidoscopes : an imaginative look at the aesthetic and existential dimensions of education

The major purpose of this study is to offer an explanation of an aesthetic theory of knowledge as well as to illustrate the usefulness of aesthetics as a lens for examining issues in educational theory. Arising from the belief that man is essentially spirit, and that he has a will or directing force within that makes him intentionally purposeful, the study attempts to examine that spiritual definition in ethical terms, that is, in terms of what constitutes intelligent and authentic choice. Three questions arise from such a definition: what comprises man's artistic capacities, what is the role of the imagination in perception and cognition, and what are appropriate criteria of judgment with which to evaluate educational decisions. These questions are addressed in the three parts of the paper

Describing Faces for Identification: Getting the Message, But Not The Picture

Although humans rely on faces and language for social communication, the role of language in communicating about faces is poorly understood. Describing faces and identifying faces from verbal descriptions are important tasks in social and criminal justice settings. Prior research indicates that people have difficulty relaying face identity to others via verbal description, however little is known about the process, correlates, or content of communication about faces (hereafter ‘face communication’). In Chapter Two, I investigated face communication accuracy and its relationship with an individual’s perceptual face skill. I also examined the efficacy of a brief training intervention for improving face description ability. I found that individuals could complete face communication tasks with above chance levels of accuracy, in both interactive and non-interactive conditions, and that abilities in describing faces and using face descriptions for identification were related to an individual’s perceptual face skill. However, training was not effective for improving face description ability. In Chapter Three, I investigated qualitative attributes of face descriptions. I found no evidence of qualitative differences in face descriptions as a function of the describer’s perceptual skill with faces, the identification utility of descriptions, or the describer’s familiarity with the face. In Chapters Two and Three, the reliability of measures may have limited the ability to detect relationships between face communication accuracy and potential correlates of performance. Consequently, in Chapter Four, I examined face communication accuracy when using constrained face descriptions, derived using a rating scale, and the relationship between the identification utility of such descriptions and their reliability (test-retest and multi-rater). I found that constrained face descriptions were less useful for identification than free descriptions and the reliability of a description was unrelated to its identification utility. Together, findings in this thesis indicate that face communication is very challenging – both for individuals undertaking the task, and for researchers seeking to measure performance reliably. Given the mechanisms contributing to variance in face communication accuracy remain largely elusive, legal stakeholders would be wise to use caution when relying on evidence involving face description

Fitness Philanthropy, Failed States, and Physical Cultural Fissures: The Problem of Addressing "Urban" Youth in Baltimore

Situated within a severely polarized Baltimore City, this dissertation explores the increasing role of voluntary organizations in addressing health disparities and various "crises" commonly associated with the "urban" environment (juvenile delinquency, crime, poverty, and ill-health). Given renowned cultural geographer, David Harvey's (2001) proclamation that Baltimore is a city "emblematic of the processes that have moulded cities under US capitalism" (p. 7), the rise of privatized voluntarism reflects a distinct shifting of responsibility inherent to neoliberalization processes. The failures of the state in providing adequate public resources for physical activity and health for example, has resulted in more private citizens deploying their educational and professional expertise, wealth and spare time, and creative ambitions to intervene in ways they deem most appropriate. Amidst an effort to map the broad structures of racial and class inequality shaping Baltimore's divisive environments, the specific focus of this project entailed a close ethnographic engagement with one non-profit organization that sought to reform the health and fitness lifestyles of "at-risk" and underserved African American youth between 2008 and 2012. As a participant observer, I examined the everyday operation of fitness pedagogies, disciplinary structures, and power relations between wealthy, white philanthropists and middle class fitness professionals ("faculty"), and the underserved working class black youth ("students") they attempted to instruct about fitness and health. Employing what Wolcott (2008) defined as the ethnographic methods of experiencing and inquiring, I observed and spoke with people concerning their perceptions of fitness and health, and their experiences within the program. I also examined programmatic documents from several fitness-based non-profit organizations across Baltimore. Issues of white privilege, philanthropic intent, colormuteness, and the normalization of neoliberal healthism emerged as key findings. As an embodied participant, I also encountered scenarios that challenged my habitual ability to cross the racial and class boundaries typified by the positionalities and lived experience of faculty and students. Having been reared in, and routinely experienced, such divisions in my own life, the performative politics of embodiment became an important point of analysis to make sense of my cultural "betweenness" (England, 1994), and the role that self-reflexive writing practices played during fieldwork

The Twenty-Frist Century Pantagruel: The Function of Grotesque Aesthetics in the Contemporary World

This dissertation examines whether the grotesque, an aesthetic form associated with the carnivalesque literary mode and commonly seen as aesthetically and politically subversive, can resume its function within the contemporary context in which carnivalisation of everyday life is a frequently noted aspect of capitalist culture. Locating as its primary image the human body in the process of often-violent deformation, this study explores this problem by theorising the grotesque as Janus-faced: existing on the boundary between the Symbolic and the Real. As such, I argue that the grotesque is: a) deeply related to cultural attempts to challenge hegemonic structures, even as these challenges become themselves implicated in the power structures they oppose (Chapters 1, 2, and 3); and b) a concept that reveals the realm of the Real as independent of human consciousness while also being of profound interest for this consciousness and the subjectivity which it underpins (Chapters 3 and 4). In outlining this argument, this study deploys the theories of Gilles Deleuze, Slavoj Žižek, and Alain Badiou, as well as the work of Jacques Rancière, Henri Lefebvre, Thomas Metzinger, Catherine Malabou, Quentin Meillassoux, and Ray Brassier. It, furthermore, works its way backwards from the Anglo-American cultural scene of the late 1990s and early 2000s (Sarah Kane’s Cleansed and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds), through elaborations of punk anti-Thatcherite London(s) of the late 1970s/early 1980s (Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell, and Iain Sinclair White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings), to post-1968 attempts to reinvigorate a progressive vision of the USA and write it (back) into existence through Gonzo autobiography and journalism (Oscar Zeta Acosta’s The Revolt of the Cockroach People and The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, and Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). In this way, the argument of this work tries to find a path – through a deformed human body in works of literature, film, and comics – toward a non-human world that can be deployed in the service of a progressive political vision, even while the autonomy of this non-human world is recognised