Queen Caroline’s pains and penalties: Silence and speech in the dramatic art of British women’s suffrage

In Britain, the act that launched the militant campaign of the suffragettes in 1905 was the interruption of a political meeting in Manchester. The violent silencing and arrest of the women ensued. The women’s suffrage campaigns in Britain became more vigorous in the early twentieth century. They frequently foregrounded the oppressive silencing of women in their political speeches at public meetings, in newspapers, and in the courts. Having deliberately sought arrest, some militant suffrage activists exploited the arena of the court room to expound on their political position. In various audacious and spectacular ways, the exclusion of women from the democratic process was challenged, not least by a sustained attack on the legal system. Drama, one of the more successful cultural forms of protest, was often used to expose the inequities of the existing social fabric, and as an aesthetic form it deploys the body as well as the voice. This paper will examine the forceful, anti-rhetorical function of silence in British women’s suffrage drama from the early twentieth century, focusing on the appropriation of Queen Caroline (1768–1821) as a silent proto-suffragette in Pains and Penalties, a play about her trial, written by Laurence Housman (1865–1959) and directed by Edith Craig for the Pioneer Players theatre society

Becoming plant and posthumanism in Jeff Noon's Pollen (1995)

This article examines Jeff Noon’s cyberpunk novel Pollen (1995), arguing for its innovative treatment of spatial and species identities. In addition to the challenging representations of gender and feminism identified by Val Gough, there are other kinds of decentering enacted, notably in the novel’s speculative treatment of “becoming plant” and the location of the action in the North of England

Hrotsvit 2014: Pageants and Pioneers

This document forms the programme for an interdisciplinary international symposium on the playwright Hrotsvit, which was held at the University of Hull on Saturday 31st May 2014

Prospective evaluation of chronic pain associated with posterior autologous iliac crest bone graft harvest and its effect on postoperative outcome

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Autogenous Iliac Crest Bone Graft (ICBG) has been the "gold standard" for spinal fusion. However, bone graft harvest may lead to complications, such as chronic pain, numbness, and poor cosmesis. The long-term impact of these complications on patient function and well-being has not been established but is critical in determining the value of expensive bone graft substitutes such as recombinant bone morphogenic protein. We thus aimed to investigate the long-term complications of ICBG. Our second aim was to evaluate the psychometric properties of a new measure of ICBG morbidity that would be useful for appropriately gauging spinal surgery outcomes.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Prospective study of patients undergoing spinal fusion surgery with autologous ICBG. The SF-36v2, Oswestry Disability Index, and a new 14-item follow-up questionnaire addressing persistent pain, functional limitation, and cosmesis were administered with an 83% response rate. Multiple regression analyses examined the independent effect of ICBG complications on physical and mental health and disability.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The study population included 170 patients with a mean age of 51.1 years (SD = 12.2) and balanced gender (48% male). Lumbar fusion patients predominated (lumbar = 148; cervical n = 22). At 3.5 years mean follow-up, 5% of patients reported being bothered by harvest site scar appearance, 24% reported harvest site numbness, and 13% reported the numbness as bothersome. Harvest site pain resulted in difficulty with household chores (19%), recreational activity (18%), walking (16%), sexual activity (16%), work activity (10%), and irritation from clothing (9%). Multivariate regression analyses revealed that persistent ICBG complications 3.5 years post-surgery were associated with significantly worse disability and showed a trend association with worse physical health, after adjusting for age, workers' compensation status, surgical site pain, and arm or leg pain. There was no association between ICBG complications and mental health in the multivariate model.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Chronic ICBG harvest site pain and discomfort is reported by a significant percentage of patients undergoing this procedure more than three years following surgery, and these complications are associated with worse patient-reported disability. Future studies should consider employing a control group that does not include autologous bone graft harvest, e.g., a group utilizing rhBMP, to determine whether eliminating harvest-site morbidity does indeed lead to observable improvement in clinical outcome sufficient to justify the increased cost of bone graft substitutes.</p