Making Photographs Speak

It has often been said that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Making that picture spit out those mythical thousand words, as we can all attest, is no easy task. Over the course of the first half of the fall semester, the three of us were tasked with developing brief interpretive captions for two Civil War photographs each, with the end goal to display our work at the Civil War Institute’s 2019 Summer Conference. What initially appeared as a simple project quickly revealed itself to be a difficult, yet rewarding, challenge that taught us all important lessons concerning history, photography, and writing that we will not soon forget. Producing the photography exhibit enhanced our skills as historical writers, introduced us to the challenge of writing for a popular audience, and deepened our understanding of Civil War photography. [excerpt

“What Is Meant To Be, Will Be”: Hip-hop and the continuum of Gender Politics

The mainstream Hip-hop narrative positions itself as hypermasculine, violent, greed obsessed and overtly misogynistic. Even in spite of this, those at the margins (historically women), have arisen to appear a cut above the stereotypical rap discourse. This piece takes on the journey of expanding the dominant narratives surrounding Hip-hop. We must both back at the past and towards to future to truly the expansive landscape that Hip-hop culture has to offer the world. This piece mainly examines the function of gender identity politics through a Hip-hop lens. Analyzing both the work of renowned artist Lauryn Hill, but also the queer identified music of Mykki Blanco. This piece utilizes the methodologies of performances studies, lyrical analysis and queer theory to construct its viewpoints

Making informed choices in social care: the importance of accessible information

The current policy trend is to encourage greater choice in the use of welfare services. To make informed choices, people need information. The process of finding and using information has costs for individuals in terms of effort, time and material resources. These costs are different for different people and impact on their use of information in different ways. Thus, the accessibility of information is important in ensuring those people who need to make choices can do so in an informed way. This paper discusses the importance of information in making informed choices about social support by drawing on the findings of a scoping review of government research and development activity on the accessibility of information about adult social care services. The scoping review was carried out in spring 2006. Details of recent, current and planned projects were obtained through discussions with staff in government departments, government agencies and other related organisations identified using a snowballing technique. Forty-two contacts were made. Eleven research and 36 development projects were identified that aimed to investigate or improve the accessibility of information about social care services. A limited literature search was undertaken on information needs in areas not already under investigation by government. Eighteen articles were identified. Information and helpline staff from six voluntary organisations gave their views on the accessibility of information about social care services. Our findings show that there is no government-related or other recent research evidence on the specific information access needs for some user groups and services, for example, people from ethnic minority groups. For other user groups, such as people with chaotic lifestyles, there is evidence on information needs but no current or planned development projects to address these needs. The implications for the costs of finding and processing information to aid informed choices are discussed

Longstreet’s Attack from Seminary Ridge to the Rose Woods

This is an overview of a theoretical tour at Gettysburg focusing on Longstreet’s attack on the second day from Seminary Ridge to the Rose Woods. The three tour stops are the Mississippi Monument on West Confederate Avenue, the Peach Orchard, and photos of dead Confederate soldiers in the Rose Woods. After a brief overview of the attack, the paper introduces several questions raised by the historical landscape concerning the sense of history it conveys, how well the landscape currently reflects the experiences of soldiers, what drove soldiers to fight, and how the landscape expresses its own changing meanings. The paper then presents four main themes that will guide the tour: the significance of the attack, the tension between the pastoral landscape and the savagery of the battle, the role of Sentimental culture, and the use of photography. An analysis of each tour stop follows, using these questions and themes to provide a new level of complexity to the interpretation of the stops and to complicate the dominant narrative of Gettysburg

'I know how I feel': listening to young people with life-limiting conditions who have learning and communication impairments

UK government policy advocates involving children in decisions about their lives. However, disabled children are often marginalized and not consulted, especially those with learning and communication impairments. Drawing on an ongoing English Government funded longitudinal study exploring different groups of service users' choices, this article demonstrates the important contribution that qualitative research methods, especially non-traditional methods, can procure when working with young people who are non-verbal or have limited speech. Working with young people with life-limiting conditions raises some specific challenges for researchers. Here, adapting project wide materials and research methods in order to gain some thematic continuity across different service user groups. Some of these considerations and challenges will be discussed, especially the development of non-verbal forms of communication (talking matsTM). Practical experiences, both positive and negative will be examined. The article concludes by considering some wider implications of using symbols based methods for future research and how these methods can be used across disciplines and by practitioners in their everyday work

Refocusing and Redefining Hip Hop: An Analysis of Lecrae\u27s Contribution to Hip Hop

Hip Hop scholarship has overlooked and separated emcees who publicly identify themselves as Christians who exist to make God famous. This deficiency contributes to an inadequate understanding of Hip Hop and places Hip Hop in a dangerous position of alienating ostracized voices. This paper aims to draw attention to these shortcomings by analyzing Lecrae\u27s contribution to Hip Hop. Influenced by his worldview, Lecrae leads a socially conscious movement and helps to bridge the sacred and secular gap. Lecrae redirects Hip Hop back to its roots. I will examine Lecrae\u27s lyrics, websites, social media and interviews. Interviews of Lecrae will come from several mainstream Hip Hop websites and videos found on YouTube. The combination of all these areas of inquiry will present a holistic view of Lecrae. The goal of this paper is to provide one article about Christians in Hip Hop with the hopes of spurring more discussion around such a vast field of study

Policy and service responses to rough sleeping among older people

Rough sleeping in Britain has a long history, and interventions have alternated between legal sanctions and humanitarian concern. This paper critically examines recent changes in homeless policies and services, with particular reference to the needs of older people who sleep rough. The characteristics and problems of the group are first described. Single homeless people were formerly accommodated in direct-access hostels but, from the 1970s, individualised rehabilitation and resettlement have spread. Most recently, services dedicated to older people have begun (although remain few and are unevenly provided). Their achievements are reviewed and drawn upon in formulating normative proposals of the appropriate service mix. The 1990s ‘Rough Sleepers Initiative’ and related programmes promoted a ‘social care market’ of not-for-profit organisations that compete for increased (but short-term) funds to provide services, and the new Labour government will build upon these changes and increase funds. Low tolerance towards the ‘social exclusion’ of homelessness is promised but unerringly constructed as exclusion from work; while rough sleeping is dubbed as anti-social, coercive approaches to achieve a two-thirds reduction are foreseen. The proposed target might stall the development of diverse and effective services, or reduce providers' capacity to combat the perversities of resource allocation. The overall prospects for the improvement and expansion of services to provide significant help to single older homeless people are uncertain

Lines of Flight: Everyday Resistance along England’s Backbone

The visual and the cultural impact of ‘social industry’ has made a permanent impression on the landscape and on individual minds, whether for ill or for good, particularly in the Peak and Pennines region of northern England. In the current research we examine this impact and consider how both its visible and less apparent effects took hold and how they set in motion an ongoing process of productive/consumptive estrangement from life’s primordial forces, which continue to be alien and obscure, or else appear arcane and overly nostalgic to present-day life. Drawing on the methodology of a short film (incorporating narrative and verse) and using rock climbing as an illustration, we will invoke several, radically dynamic ‘lines of flight’ to open up and articulate an aesthetic appreciation of concrete experience in the fight against coding and to engender a call for action and passion so that we might come to a renewed belief in free activity, which can prompt us, in turn, to think about how we live and work and how we might change things