4,022 research outputs found

    The Divided Self: Internal Conflict in Literature, Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience

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    This thematic project examines the notion of self-division, particularly in terms of the conflict between cognition and metacognition, across the fields of philosophy, psychology, and, most recently, the cognitive and neurosciences. The project offers a historic overview of models of self-division, as well as analyses of the various problems presented in theoretical models to date. This work explores how self-division has been depicted in the literary works of Edgar Allan Poe, Don DeLillo, and Mary Shelley. It examines the ways in which artistic renderings alternately assimilate, resist, and/or critique dominant philosophical, psychological, and scientific discourses about the self and its divisions. This dissertation argues that the internal conflict portrayed by the writers of these literary characters is conscious: it is the conflict of the metacognitive “I” against akratic impulses, unwanted cognitions, and, ultimately, consciousness as a whole

    Non-Market Food Practices Do Things Markets Cannot: Why Vermonters Produce and Distribute Food That\u27s Not For Sale

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    Researchers tend to portray food self-provisioning in high-income societies as a coping mechanism for the poor or a hobby for the well-off. They describe food charity as a regrettable band-aid. Vegetable gardens and neighborly sharing are considered remnants of precapitalist tradition. These are non-market food practices: producing food that is not for sale and distributing food in ways other than selling it. Recent scholarship challenges those standard understandings by showing (i) that non-market food practices remain prevalent in high-income countries, (ii) that people in diverse social groups engage in these practices, and (iii) that they articulate diverse reasons for doing so. In this dissertation, I investigate the persistent pervasiveness of non-market food practices in Vermont. To go beyond explanations that rely on individual motivation, I examine the roles these practices play in society. First, I investigate the prevalence of non-market food practices. Several surveys with large, representative samples reveal that more than half of Vermont households grow, hunt, fish, or gather some of their own food. Respondents estimate that they acquire 14% of the food they consume through non-market means, on average. For reference, commercial local food makes up about the same portion of total consumption. Then, drawing on the words of 94 non-market food practitioners I interviewed, I demonstrate that these practices serve functions that markets cannot. Interviewees attested that non-market distribution is special because it feeds the hungry, strengthens relationships, builds resilience, puts edible-but-unsellable food to use, and aligns with a desired future in which food is not for sale. Hunters, fishers, foragers, scavengers, and homesteaders said that these activities contribute to their long-run food security as a skills-based safety net. Self-provisioning allows them to eat from the landscape despite disruptions to their ability to access market food such as job loss, supply chain problems, or a global pandemic. Additional evidence from vegetable growers suggests that non-market settings liberate production from financial discipline, making space for work that is meaningful, playful, educational, and therapeutic. Non-market food practices mend holes in the social fabric torn by the commodification of everyday life. Finally, I synthesize scholarly critiques of markets as institutions for organizing the production and distribution of food. Markets send food toward money rather than hunger. Producing for market compels farmers to prioritize financial viability over other values such as stewardship. Historically, people rarely if ever sell each other food until external authorities coerce them to do so through taxation, indebtedness, cutting off access to the means of subsistence, or extinguishing non-market institutions. Today, more humans than ever suffer from chronic undernourishment even as the scale of commercial agriculture pushes environmental pressures past critical thresholds of planetary sustainability. This research substantiates that alternatives to markets exist and have the potential to address their shortcomings

    Structuring the State’s Voice of Contention in Harmonious Society: How Party Newspapers Cover Social Protests in China

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    During the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) campaign of building a ‘harmonious society’, how do the official newspapers cover the instances of social contention on the ground? Answering this question will shed light not only on how the party press works but also on how the state and the society interact in today’s China. This thesis conceptualises this phenomenon with a multi-faceted and multi-levelled notion of ‘state-initiated contentious public sphere’ to capture the complexity of mediated relations between the state and social contention in the party press. Adopting a relational approach, this thesis analyses 1758 news reports of ‘mass incident’ in the People’s Daily and the Guangming Daily between 2004 and 2020, employing cluster analysis, qualitative comparative analysis, and social network analysis. The thesis finds significant differences in the patterns of contentious coverage in the party press at the level of event and province and an uneven distribution of attention to social contention across incidents and regions. For ‘reported regions’, the thesis distinguishes four types of coverage and presents how party press responds differently to social contention in different scenarios at the provincial level. For ‘identified incidents’, the thesis distinguishes a cumulative type of visibility based on the quantity of coverage from a relational visibility based on the structure emerging from coverage and explains how different news-making rationales determine whether instances receive similar amounts of coverage or occupy similar positions within coverage. Eventually, by demonstrating how the Chinese state strategically uses party press to respond to social contention and how social contention is journalistically placed in different positions in the state’s eyes, this thesis argues that what social contention leads to is the establishment of complex state-contention relations channelled through the party press

    Cultures of Citizenship in the Twenty-First Century: Literary and Cultural Perspectives on a Legal Concept

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    In the early twenty-first century, the concept of citizenship is more contested than ever. As refugees set out to cross the Mediterranean, European nation-states refer to "cultural integrity" and "immigrant inassimilability," revealing citizenship to be much more than a legal concept. The contributors to this volume take an interdisciplinary approach to considering how cultures of citizenship are being envisioned and interrogated in literary and cultural (con)texts. Through this framework, they attend to the tension between the citizen and its spectral others - a tension determined by how a country defines difference at a given moment

    A Critical Review Of Post-Secondary Education Writing During A 21st Century Education Revolution

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    Educational materials are effective instruments which provide information and report new discoveries uncovered by researchers in specific areas of academia. Higher education, like other education institutions, rely on instructional materials to inform its practice of educating adult learners. In post-secondary education, developmental English programs are tasked with meeting the needs of dynamic populations, thus there is a continuous need for research in this area to support its changing landscape. However, the majority of scholarly thought in this area centers on K-12 reading and writing. This paucity presents a phenomenon to the post-secondary community. This research study uses a qualitative content analysis to examine peer-reviewed journals from 2003-2017, developmental online websites, and a government issued document directed toward reforming post-secondary developmental education programs. These highly relevant sources aid educators in discovering informational support to apply best practices for student success. Developmental education serves the purpose of addressing literacy gaps for students transitioning to college-level work. The findings here illuminate the dearth of material offered to developmental educators. This study suggests the field of literacy research is fragmented and highlights an apparent blind spot in scholarly literature with regard to English writing instruction. This poses a quandary for post-secondary literacy researchers in the 21st century and establishes the necessity for the literacy research community to commit future scholarship toward equipping college educators teaching writing instruction to underprepared adult learners

    “MUSICA FATTA SPIRITUALE”: AQUILINO COPPINI, CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI, AND MADRIGAL CONTRAFACTS IN EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY MILAN

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    Between 1607 and 1609, the Milanese professor of rhetoric, Aquilino Coppini (d. 1629), published three volumes of spiritual contrafacts, mostly of madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643). Musicologists have already noted some of the ingenuities of Coppini’s close readings of Monteverdi’s music, but have treated them as an interesting yet inconsequential footnote. My dissertation offers a necessary reappraisal of Coppini’s approach to contrafacts both by contextualizing his project within post-Tridentine spiritualities in Milan under its new archbishop, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, and by reading his texts and their musical consequences far more carefully than has hitherto been the case. Informed by archival research and interdisciplinary approaches to music, literature, art, and religious studies, my close reading of these works demonstrates new intertextualities that connect a network of Humanists linked by a highly elaborate form of Milanese syncretism joining the sacred and the secular. Coppini’s contrafacts place Monteverdi’s music within a Milanese constellation of texts (musical, artistic, and literary) that sought to confront the rapidly changing world of the early seventeenth century. I argue that they provide a first-hand account of how Monteverdi’s madrigals were heard by reading them through the lens of Coppini’s rhetorical and poetic practices based on his own syncretic sense of religious affectivity. He catered both to secular audiences and to those in religious institutions, not least convents. It also becomes clear that Coppini must reconstruct texts that Monteverdi first deconstructed, which requires attention to musical rhetoric and not just oratory, prompting new analytical readings of the original madrigals themselves. My approach challenges the typical narratives of “Counter Reformation” contrafacts as didactic instruments of power to create a more nuanced view of works that served not just Coppini’s personal and professional needs, but also broader communities seeking new ways to perform their spiritual lives.Doctor of Philosoph

    Themes, Lexemes, and "Mnemes": Composite Allusions in the Gospel of John and other Jewish Literature

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    This thesis examines composite allusions to the Jewish scriptures in the Gospel of John and compares these to similar phenomena in late Second Temple Jewish literature. Composite allusions are defined in this study as allusions clustered together in a single literary unit that are best interpreted together. To analyze such allusions, I develop a three-fold method integrating 1) literary analysis; 2) Jewish catchword exegesis; and 3) insights from studies in ancient media culture. The passages I examine are, first, six passages from Jewish literature (CD 1:1–3; 1QHa 16:5–12a; Sir. 33:7–15; Exod. 15:3 LXX; Ps. 71:17 LXX; and Isa. 3:9 LXX); secondly, a double citation in John (12:37–40); and, finally, three composite allusions in John (1:29, 7:37–39, 15:1–11). I argue that the composite features across all of these passages function on the basis of common lexemes, common themes, and metonymy. For all the cases in question I offer fresh insights on how different ancient texts and traditions were likely to have become associated with each other, and how, in the Gospel of John, these associations are embedded in the narrative and utilized for the author’s theological and literary purposes. In my synthesizing conclusion, I apply the results of my findings to the current debate about the “Jewishness” of John. On the one hand, the Gospel of John demonstrates a sophisticated interaction with its scriptural sources—and thus situates itself squarely within the Jewish exegetical traditions of its day. On the other hand, scriptural allusions are employed above all in the interests of christology—setting it outside of and beyond the compass of other Jewish writings

    A Phenomenological Study Exploring the Lack of Baptist Church Participation in Seminole County, Florida

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    This phenomenological study explores the reasons for a lack of participation in in-person Baptist churches and the rise of participation in online Baptist churches in Seminole County, Florida. The theory guiding this study was Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutical framework which focuses on the commonality of experiences. Heidegger believed that to arrive at the essence of a phenomenon a researcher must go through the revisionary process of what Heidegger termed the Hermeneutic Circle. The principal research question in this study explored existing relationship(s) between in-person and online Baptist church leaders and how such relationship(s) contributed to a lack of church participation. The remaining questions explored what understanding of a lack of church participation existed amongst Baptist church leaders, how online Baptist church participation affected in-person Baptist church participation, and what relationship existed between in-person Baptist church members and online Baptist church members. Study data were derived from a qualitative research design which included interviews, a reflective journal, an audio recorder, and observations. Data were analyzed through the use of the NVivo 12 Pro qualitative data analysis computer software program
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