Representing older people: towards meaningful images of the user in design scenarios

Designing for older people requires the consideration of a range of difficult and sometimes highly personal design problems. Issues such as fear, loneliness, dependency, and physical decline may be difficult to observe or discuss in interviews. Pastiche scenarios and pastiche personae are techniques that employ characters to create a space for the discussion of new technological developments and as a means to explore user experience. This paper argues that the use of such characters can help to overcome restrictive notions of older people by disrupting designers' prior assumptions. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences using pastiche techniques in two separate technology design projects that sought to address the needs of older people. In the first case pastiche scenarios were developed by the designers of the system and used as discussion documents with users. In the second case, pastiche personae were used by groups of users themselves to generate scenarios which were scribed for later use by the design team. We explore how the use of fictional characters and settings can generate new ideas and undermine rhetorical devices within scenarios that attempt to fit characters to the technology, rather than vice versa. To assist in future development of pastiche techniques in designing for older people, we provide an array of fictional older characters drawn from literary and popular culture.</p

Fictional Characters and Toponyms in Kwabena Adi’s “Brako”

This paper examines the creation and use of fictional characters and fictional toponyms in Akan literature, both written and oral. The emphasis is however on a book entitled Brako in Akuapem Twi by Kwabena Adi (1973). The paper looks at the characters and places created by the author and the fictional names given to them.  We will analyse the morphology and semantics of these names looking at what they connote, their appropriateness, precision and socio-cultural functions within the Akan society.  The paper will then be able to evaluate the creativity of the author and his in-depth knowledge of the Akan language and culture. The paper is based on the theory of onomastics that looks at names and what they connote

As If We Were Alive - Trauma Recovery in Toni Morrison\u27s Beloved and The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison\u27s The Bluest Eye and Beloved each explore issues of traumatized individuals and the effects of this trauma on their lives and the lives of those around them. An oft-overlooked piece of Morrison\u27s work, however, is her focus on recovery from trauma and the unique presentations of these possibilities through narrative. In these selected texts, the need for a community to act, engage, and remember the trauma of individuals and collectives shine through as the key ways to move twaords the hope of recovery from traumatic events

Elements of Western Culture and History in Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. A Possible Resource for Teaching English as a Foreign Language

This paper aims to explore the elements of Western culture and history in Neil’s Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere and show how it can be used in teaching efl. The novel is an urban fantasy set in London, in which the protagonist by accident discovers the existence of London Below, a realm ruled by its own laws, but very connected to its counterpart in the “real” world. The city of London is almost a character in the novel, with both its dark and illustrious moments of history and the complexities of a modern city. The novel may be used to teach London geography and explore its rich history. Each tube station or street name which is mentioned contains an additional meaning, which helps the reader broaden their vocabulary and improve the use of metaphoric language. The novel also abounds in allusions to literary works, from Robinson Crusoe, Shylock from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, to Mansfield Park. Lastly, by exploring the reality of London Below, the novel may be used as a teaching tool for the problem of homelessness and the attitudes that surround it, all in the context of tefl

An Analysis of Female Characters in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure.

La finalidad de esta tesis será el análisis de la novela de Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure. Más concretamente, el estudio y comparación de los dos personajes protagonistas femeninos: Sue Bridehead y Arabella Donn, dos mujeres atrapadas en un contexto determinista y naturalista, marcadas por sus diferentes orígenes y posiciones en la obra. Sue es la individualista, la mujer con ideas muy avanzadas para su tiempo, mientras que Arabella forma parte del folclore rural, y está siempre dispuesta a adaptarse para poder sobrevivir. El trabajo mostrará cómo la dicotomía entre ambas mujeres ofrece una crítica abierta a instituciones como el matrimonio. Asimismo, Hardy ofrece un final que no deja indiferente. La incapacidad de Jude de adaptarse solo le traerá desgracias. La última novela de Thomas Hardy muestra, por consiguiente, la incertidumbre del fin-de-siècle y las diferentes reacciones que sus personajes principales muestran ante esta época de grandes cambios. ABSTRACT The main purpose of this dissertation will be the analysis of Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy and, more specifically, the comparative study between the two main female characters: Sue Bridehead and Arabella Donn, two women trapped in a determinist and naturalist context and marked by their different origins and positions in the book. Sue is the individual, a woman ahead of her time, whereas Arabella is member of the folk and always willing to adapt in order to survive. Moreover, this work will show how the dichotomy encapsulated by these two women launches an open critique against institutions such as marriage. Likewise, Hardy offers an ending that does not leave readers indifferent. Jude’s incapacity to readjust will only bring about disgrace. This novel will therefore show the uncertainty prompted by the fin-de-siècle and the different reactions that the characters show towards these drastic changes. <br /

Genre, History and the Stolen Generations: Three Australian Stories

This article explores the role that genre plays in fictional depictions of the Stolen Generations (Australian Indigenous children removed from their homes) in three twenty-first-century Australian middle-grade novels: Who Am I?: The Diary of Mary Talence, Sydney 1937 by Anita Heiss (2001); The Poppy Stories: Four Books in One by Gabrielle Wang (2016); and Sister Heart by Sally Morgan (2016). It argues that the genres of fictional diary, adventure story and verse novel invite different reading practices and approaches to history, and shape the ways in which the texts depict, for children, the suffering and resilience of the Stolen Generations.acceptedVersio

“The Crime Scene as Museum: The (Re)construction in the Bresciano Series of a Historical Gibraltarian Past”

The “Bresciano” series of seven historical detective novels (2010-2015) by Sam Benady and Mary Chiappe set in a period of four decades early in the British imperial history of Gibraltar from the 1780s to the 1820s provides an excellent opportunity not only for reconstructing a significant image of the historical past of the colony – and possibly also of its current status – but also for investigating a complex of critical approaches to such writing in terms of historical crime fiction, post-coloniality, and the wider ramifications of the function of cultural-historical “museumification” and its impact on the literary narrative. The present brief study should be regarded as an introductory discussion rather than a definitive analysis

"The way you wave your hat": performativity and self-invention in Jackie Kay's "Trumpet" and Duncan Tucker's "Transamerica"

Kay's "Trumpet" and Tucker's "Transamerica" make explicit use of transgender subjects to deal with the intricate and hybrid nature of identity. These characters dismantle their surrounding universe where family choices and social identifications can be no longer predetermined. Likewise, as paradigmatic queer texts, both stories transgress conventional categories and paradoxically, their epistemological collapse turns into a powerful source of meaning, inasmuch as those categories -sex, gender, nationality, race, family, genealogy- are eventually confronted with their own contingency and their openness for new meanings. Through the exploration of overt themes as adoption, jazz, nomadism and transsexuality -which work also as powerful metaphors for the fluidity and precariousness of the Self- these authors align themselves with the performativity paradigm in their assumption that identity must be invented and reinvented. In this context, the transgender subject becomes the epitome of instability and diasporic meaning, generating a scenario of ambiguity which invites alternative ways of coping with subjectivity

Autumn in a New Residential Area

Autumn in a New Residential Are

João Paulo Borges Coelho, João Albasini e a Globalização da Literatura Moçambicana

In O Olho de Hertzog (2010), set in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, the Mozambican writer João Paulo Borges Coelho presents a cosmopolitan panorama of colonial south-eastern Africa. «Mozambique» emerges here not primarily as a Portuguese colonial space but as a site of multipleentanglements between interests: transnational and local, European and African, South African and Mozambican, British and German, colonial and proto-nationalist. In such a way, and differently from previous Mozambican literature, O Olho de Hertzog performs a complex act of worlding that exceeds the bounded colonial/ national space of Mozambique, but resists synthesis. This cosmopolitanism can be read expressive of the strained relations and constitutive hierarchies ofcolonial society as well as, by implication, of contemporary globalisation. The most important index of such a critical cosmopolitanism is the trope of the «two worlds» of Lourenço Marques, embodied in the central character João Albasini, legendary mestiço activist and founder of the proto-nationalist journal O Brado Africano (1918-1974). Albasini functions as a Virgil for the protagonist Hans Mahrenholz’s descent into the colonial inferno of Mozambique. Not least byciting documentary material –Albasini’s editorials and shop signs in Lourenço Marques– Coelho problematises the divisions of the colonial city, sustained by international capital, and provides a sharp contrast to the otherwise dominant «European» narrative of novel, which revolves around a fabled diamond and white South African intrigue.Em O Olho de Hertzog, situado no pós-guerra em 1919, o escritor moçambicano João Paulo Borges Coelho apresenta um panorama cosmopolita da África austral e oriental nos tempos coloniais. «Moçambique» manifesta-se aqui não tanto como uma colónia portuguesa, mas sim como um sítio ondemúltiplos e divergentes interesses se entrelaçam: locais e transnacionais, europeus e africanos, sul-africanos e moçambicanos, britânicos e alemães, coloniais e proto-nacionais. Deste modo, e de uma forma que distingue o romance no quadro da literatura moçambicana, O Olho de Hertzog alcança um tipo de «worlding» que vai além do espaço colonial/nacional de Moçambique, sem no entanto admitir uma síntese. Este cosmopolitismo poderá ser lido como uma expressão das relações complexas e das hierarquias inerentes à sociedade colonial, e também (implicitamente) da globalização contemporânea. A mais importante concretização dum tal cosmopolitismo crítico é a figura dos «doismundos» de Lourenço Marques, incorporada na personagem central de João Albasini, o lendário ativista mestiço e fundador de O Brado Africano, um jornal proto-nacionalista (1918-1974). Albasini funciona como um Virgílio tutelar para a descida do protoganista Hans Mahrenholz ao inferno colonial de Lourenço Marques. Em especial, por citar material documentário –desde editoriais deAlbasini a anúncios em Lourenço Marques– Coelho problematiza as divisões da cidade colonial, sustentadas pelo capital internacional, e fornece um contraste agudo à narrativa «europeia» –que tem a ver com um diamante famoso e intrigas sul-africanas– que domina o romance.En O Olho de Hertzog, situado la posguerra de la Primera guerra mundial, el escritor Mozambiqueño João Paulo Borges Coelho presenta un panorama cosmopolita del África colonial del sudeste. "Mozambique" surge aquí no principalmente como un espacio portugués colonial, sino como un sitio de múltiples enredos entre intereses: transnacional y local, europeo y africano, sudafricano y Mozambiqueño, británico y alemán, colonial y proto-nacionalista. De tal modo, y de manera diferente de la literatura anterior Mozambiqueña, la O Olho de Hertzog realiza un acto complejo de mundialización que excede el espacio colonial / nacional de Mozambique, pero se opone a la síntesis. Este cosmopolitanism puede ser leído expresivo de las relaciones estiradas y las jerarquías constitutivas de sociedad colonial así como, por implicación, de globalización contemporánea. El índice más importante de cosmopolitanismo crítico es el titulado "Dos mundos " de Marques Lourenço, incorporado en el carácter central João Albasini, el activista legendario mestiço y el fundador del diario proto-nacionalista Brado Africano (1918-1974). Albasini actúa como Virgilio en el descenso del protagonista Hans Mahrenholz en el infierno colonial de Mozambique. No lo menos por citando los editoriales del-Albasini documental material y la tienda firma a Marques Lourenço - Coelho problematises las divisiones de la ciudad colonial, sostenida por la capital internacional, y proporciona un contraste agudo para la narrativa dominante de otra manera "europea" de novela, que gira alrededor de una intriga fabulosa de diamante y blanca sudafricana