Embodying Artistic Reflexive Praxis: An Early Career Academic's Reflections on Pain, Anxiety, and Eating Disorder Recovery Research

Wenn wir als Forscher_innen über unsere Körper schreiben, werden wir diesem vielbewegten Gegenstand mit all seinen Verwobenheiten in die Prozesse und "Produkte" unseres Forschungshandelns nicht immer gerecht. In diesem Beitrag beschreibe ich meine reflexive Auseinandersetzung mit künstlerischer Praxis zu Beginn meiner wissenschaftlichen Laufbahn. Die Beschäftigung mit verkörpert-reflexiver Praxis durch Tanz, Film und Schreiben ermöglichte es mir, Forschung nicht nur zu "produzieren", sondern auch zu fühlen und noch ungeordnete, schmerzhafte Erfahrungen zu verarbeiten. Der Reflexivitätszugang hat dabei nicht nur meine Zugehörigkeitsräume zu den Forschungsteilnehmer_innen sichtbar werden lassen, sondern auch dazu geführt, meine Beziehung zu Schmerz, Behinderung, Genesung von Essproblemen und zu Forschung selbst (neu) zu untersuchen.Writing about our bodies, as researchers, does not always do justice to their ebbs and flows—their entanglements with the processes and "products" of our research journeys. In this piece, I share my reflexive engagement with artistic praxis over the course of my early career. Engaging with embodied reflexive praxis through dance, film, and writing enabled me to not only produce but also to feel research and to work through messy and painful experiences. Beyond simply unearthing my spaces of belonging in relationship to participants, reflexivity has meant examining and re-examining my relationship to pain, disability, recovery from eating distress, and research itself

Expert Opinion? A Micro-Analysis of Eating Disorder Talk on Dr. Phil

In this study, we explored how eating and identities of individuals diagnosed with eating disorders are constructed on a popular television talk show, Dr. Phil. Informed by conversation analytic and discursive psychological research traditions, we show how Dr. Phil, jointly with guests, constitutes guests as mentally ill and accountable for their illness. Specifically, we highlight Dr. Phil’s unilateral pursuit of a solution to the “puzzle” of the eating disorder, including its origins and meanings, as he enlists the guests’ endorsement of his versions of their situations and experiences. We examine broader implications of such a framing for societal understandings of the subjectivity of individuals diagnosed with eating disorders

Cultivating Disability Arts in Ontario

Although Deaf and disability arts has been practiced under this name since the 1970s in Canada, within the last 15 years it has begun to be recognized as its own field of arts practice and production by arts councils and cultural funding bodies (Gorman 2007). Increased funding has accelerated the production of Deaf and disability art and has increased attention from arts organizations and audiences alike. With this leveling-up of Deaf and disability arts comes the advancement of a discourse specific to this sector, one that includes conversations about how we make arts accessible and how we blend accessibility with aesthetics and curatorial practices, about the development of distinct disability, crip, Mad, Deaf aesthetics, and about the role the arts play, and have always played, within the achievement of disability rights and justice

An open invitation to productive conversations about feminism and the spectrum of eating disorders (Part 2): Potential contributions to the science of diagnosis, treatment, and prevention

The role of feminism in eating disorders research, treatment, and advocacy continues to be debated, with little agreement in sight about the role—or lack thereof—of feminist eating disorders work. In these debates, the opportunity to open fruitful conversations about eating disorders that generate new possibilities for researching, treating, and preventing, them is missed. This article is the second in a series of two papers that invite such a discussion. In this article, we focus on five key contributions that feminist eating disorder work has made and can make moving forward. These are contextualizing treatment, attending to lived experiences, expanding the meanings of “sociocultural influences,” diversifying methodologies, and situating recoveries. We do not propose to offer a “final word” on feminisms and eating disorders, but instead to start conversations about how we understand, research, and treat eating disorders

An open invitation to productive conversations about feminism and the spectrum of eating disorders (part 1): Basic principles of feminist approaches

Despite the long history of feminist research in the field and the clear relevance of questions of gender to this sphere, many continue to question the relevance of feminism for understanding and treating eating disorders in 2021. In this set of two papers, we explore some of the tensions, omissions and misconceptions which surround feminist approaches to eating disorders. At the core of these two papers is our assertion that such approaches can make significant contributions in the eating disorders field along six key lines: enriching the science of eating disorders, unpacking diagnostics, contextualizing treatment and prevention, attending to lived experiences, diversifying methodologies, and situating recoveries. In this first paper, we outline what feminist approaches are and dig into some key tensions that arise when feminist approaches come to the table. These include critiques of sociocultural approaches to understanding eating disorders, the relationship between feminist approaches and biological and genetic attributions for eating disorders, and the role of men. We then offer a key contribution that feminist approaches have made to eating disorders scholarship: an invitation to unpack diagnostic approaches and situate eating disorders within the landscape of food, weight, and shape concerns in the 21st century

Structural characterization of the Hepatitis C Virus NS3 protease from genotype 3a: The basis of the genotype 1b vs. 3a inhibitor potency shift

AbstractThe first structural characterization of the genotype 3a Hepatitis C Virus NS3 protease is reported, providing insight into the differential susceptibility of 1b and 3a proteases to certain inhibitors. Interaction of the 3a NS3 protease with a P2–P4 macrocyclic and a linear phenethylamide inhibitor was investigated. In addition, the effect of the NS4A cofactor binding on the conformation of the protease was analyzed. Complexation of NS3 with the phenethylamide inhibitor significantly stabilizes the protease but binding does not involve residues 168 and 123, two key amino acids underlying the different inhibition of genotype 1b vs. 3a proteases by P2–P4 macrocycles. Therefore, we studied the dynamic behavior of these two residues in the phenethylamide complex, serving as a model of the situation in the apo 3a protein, in order to explore the structural basis of the inhibition potency shift between the proteases of the genotypes 1b and 3a

Planck intermediate results XXIV : Constraints on variations in fundamental constants

Any variation in the fundamental physical constants, more particularly in the fine structure constant, a, or in the mass of the electron, me, affects the recombination history of the Universe and cause an imprint on the cosmic microwave background angular power spectra. We show that the Planck data allow one to improve the constraint on the time variation of the fine structure constant at redshift z - 10(3) by about a factor of 5 compared to WMAP data, as well as to break the degeneracy with the Hubble constant, H-0. In addition to a, we can set a constraint on the variation in the mass of the electron, me, and in the simultaneous variation of the two constants. We examine in detail the degeneracies between fundamental constants and the cosmological parameters, in order to compare the limits obtained from Planck and WMAP and to determine the constraining power gained by including other cosmological probes. We conclude that independent time variations of the fine structure constant and of the mass of the electron are constrained by Planck to Delta alpha/alpha = (3.6 +/- 3.7) x 10(-3) and Delta m(e)/m(e) = (4 +/- 11) x 10(-3) at the 68% confidence level. We also investigate the possibility of a spatial variation of the fine structure constant. The relative amplitude of a dipolar spatial variation in a (corresponding to a gradient across our Hubble volume) is constrained to be delta alpha/alpha = (-2.4 +/- 3.7) x 10(-2).Peer reviewe

Planck Intermediate Results. XXXVI. Optical identification and redshifts of Planck SZ sources with telescopes at the Canary Islands Observatories

We present the results of approximately three years of observations of Planck Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) sources with telescopes at the Canary Islands observatories as part of the general optical follow-up programme undertaken by the Planck collaboration. In total, 78 SZ sources are discussed. Deep-imaging observations were obtained for most of these sources; spectroscopic observations in either in long-slit or multi-object modes were obtained for many. We effectively used 37.5 clear nights. We found optical counterparts for 73 of the 78 candidates. This sample includes 53 spectroscopic redshift determinations, 20 of them obtained with a multi-object spectroscopic mode. The sample contains new redshifts for 27 Planck clusters that were not included in the first Planck SZ source catalogue (PSZ1).Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in A&