Addressed to you: nonhuman missives from Elizabeth Bowen’s A World of Love

Elizabeth Bowen's 1955 novel A World of Love arrives in our hands today like a letter from the past, insisting that we recognize the nonhuman forces at work in every act of writing and reading—as well as the ethical injunction such an apprehension engenders

Garden of Truth

On Oct. 27, 2011, a report entitled “Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota” was released in St. Paul, Minn. The report was the culmination of a three-year research project conducted in Minnesota by two nonprofit organizations: the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition, a grassroots organization of Native American women that is based in St. Paul and focuses on outreach and awareness for survivors of sexual assault, and Prostitution Research and Education, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco. This unique collaboration between advocates of Native American women and social scientists has produced a first-of-itskind report that illuminates a long-standing (yet invisible) problem suffered by Native American women in the United States. This article provides a summary of the major findings of the research that were included in the report

TEACHERS’ AND PRINCIPALS’ PERCEPTIONS OF CITIZENSHIP DEVELOPMENT OF ABORIGINAL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN THE PROVINCE OF MANITOBA: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

This study sought to investigate the congruence between Aboriginal student citizenship development and the prescribed outcomes of citizenship development in secondary schools in Manitoba. The perceptions of 106 high school teachers and principals in the province of Manitoba were acquired through survey distribution and interviews. This study found that Aboriginal students from Manitoba high schools frequently behave in a manner that is congruent with the values of citizenship development. Participants in this study described a need for the development of curricula that is congruent with traditional Aboriginal ways of learning, the provision of opportunities for practical experiences in the area of citizenship development, and increased research into schools on First Nations communities in the area of citizenship development. Such developments may facilitate citizenship development for Aboriginal students through the provision of education that is sensitive to Aboriginal perspectives and circumstances

Aboriginal Students and the Delivery of Citizenship Education

Aboriginal people, one of Canada’s most significant ethnic groups in regard to population and growth, are in crisis. This crisis can be characterized as one of social positioning where conditions of poverty, lack of opportunity, and other elements of marginalization are symptoms. Aboriginals and non-Aboriginal scholars have engaged in numerous discussions regarding what can be described as a struggle for a state of dignity in Canada. Citizenship education, an aspect of contemporary schooling that embraces such notions as equality, tolerance, and social justice, is reputed to provide some direction in regard to how all Canadians can develop and prosper regardless of ethnic or cultural background. This article will explore citizenship education and its possible implications for Aboriginal students in Canada. Aboriginal people, one of Canada’s most significant ethnic groups in regard to population and growth, are in crisis. This crisis can be characterized as one of social positioning where conditions of poverty, lack of opportunity, and other elements of marginalization are symptoms. Aboriginals and non-Aboriginal scholars have engaged in numerous discussions regarding what can be described as a struggle for a state of dignity in Canada. Citizenship education, an aspect of contemporary schooling that embraces such notions as equality, tolerance, and social justice, is reputed to provide some direction in regard to how all Canadians can develop and prosper regardless of ethnic or cultural background. This article will explore citizenship education and its possible implications for Aboriginal students in Canada

Integrating Aboriginal Perspectives in Education: Perceptions of Pre-Service Teachers

This study explored teacher candidates’ perceptions of the potentialities and challenges associated with the integration of Aboriginal perspectives into mainstream education. Participants in this study were 2nd-year teacher candidates of a two-year teacher education programme who have completed a course on Aboriginal education. Using a qualitative approach, the principal investigator conducted interviews with teacher candidates in an effort to acquire data on pre-service teacher perceptions of and attitudes towards Aboriginal perspectives as a field of study and practice. This study found that while some participants reported a great deal of comfort in the study and delivery of Aboriginal perspectives in their respective school experiences, a significant number of participants reported apprehension. The findings of this study suggest that there are a number of variables that may lend to a positive experience for teacher candidates who are responsible for integrating Aboriginal perspectives in their respective practices

(En)Gendering Indian Law: Indigenous Feminist Legal Theory in the United States

American Federal Indian law is often mistakenly assumed to be a gender-neutral discipline. Although Native women suffer disproportionately from numerous maladies, Indian law practitioners rarely engage with questions of gender discrimination or intersectional oppression. Several Canadian scholars have begun to explicate “indigenous feminist legal theory.” This is the first Article in the United States to consider how such a theory might informthe practice of Federal Indian law and tribal law

The Repetition of difference: Marginality and the films of Hal Hartley

PhD ThesisHal Hartley is prominent within the recent rise of the independent film-making movement in America. This thesis is centred around the issues of repetition, difference and marginality which characterise his films. Marginality inhabits Hartley's position as an American independent who makes a European art-house style of film. He is an auteur who articulates his influences through his reference to Godard. Marginality is also the dominant characteristic of those who people Hartley's films. Difference, which is marginality pushed to its greatest extent, is further imposed upon Hartley's characters. It is interposed through Hartley's concern with repetition, in which the degree of formal repetition becomes so high that difference is forefronted. This thesis asserts that the essential difference in Hartley's films lies in gender. After an introduction which engages with the issues highlighted above, Chapter I contains a literature review which serves both to delineate critical opinions on Hartley, and to demonstrate the lack of sustained material which this thesis hopes to go some way towards redressing. Chapter II's taxonomy emphasises the consistency of Hartley's concern with repetition. It establishes both the formal repetition, linear and cyclical, which structures Hartley's films, and the behavioural repetition which his characters exhibit. Chapter III extends the taxonomy by applying theories of repetition to Trust. It uses Deleuze to engage with the tensions between the linear and cyclical modes of formal repetition in the film. An analogy with minimalism introduces difference into this repetition. Finally, the chapter examines Matthew's marginality and crisis of masculinity, embodied within the compulsion to repeat passive behaviour, in light of Freud's theories on repetition. Chapter IV extends male marginality into the interrogation of Thomas' criminality in Amateur. It is a criminality largely instituted through parodic generic reference. Thomas' amnesia does not allow him either to repent or to escape the reputation through which his criminality is perpetuated. Religion, notably the figure of Redeemer, is introduced as a means to bring about Thomas' redemption. The film's engagement with the resonances of pornography problematises both the Redeemer, Isabelle (who is both Virgin and Whore) and wider gender issues. Chapter V extends the concern with pornography, which defiles the ecstatic experience of writing characteristic of Henry Fool's shamanic figures. The film questions Henry's status as a criminal who refuses to repent. The blurring of legal and moral judgement in the film suggests an analogy with the genre of a morality play. Without repentance, redemption occurs though forgiveness and trust. The pornographic, which in invoked but never seen, serves to interrogate gender positioning in relation to it. Chapter VI examines female agency, with The Unbelievable Truth's Audry ostensibly exerting control over her commodification. Audry is not as able to control her commodification as much as the film suggests. She loses her ideals through the sale of images of herself. The film attempts a Godardian engagement with the problem of the commodified female image. It does so without showing the images of Audry, resisting their inherently exploitative nature and not allowing them to become pornographic by eliciting viewing pleasure. Yet by not showing these images, Hartley increases their coding as objects of desire. He does not escape the problems of the auteur using female images. Chapter VII concerns Simple Men, a film which seeks to make reparation for the exploitative use of women by placing women as the film's necessary centre. However, in alluding to male-centred genres, Hartley's film displaces women into the margins of male scenarios, reducing them both to function and difference in relation to men. Rather than the problems of femininity, the film engages with the troubled masculinities which its genre invokes. Chapter VIII reprises repetition in light of Hartley's wider questioning of gender. Applying formal and behavioural theories of repetition to Flirt, the chapter asks: What is the difference in Hartley's repetitions? Since Flirt's repetitions involve the gendering of masochism as female, and mark femininity as the essential difference, it can retrospectively be asserted that it is gender that is the key difference, the ultimately signified, of Hartley's repetitions. It is with this that the thesis concludes by drawing together the central themes of Hartley's films. These include male marginality, and its association with troubled masculinities, and the problematic associations of pornography with the objectification and commodification of women. Although marginality extends across gender boundaries within Hartley's films, it is ultimately women who are more fundamentally marginalised by them. This is brought about through the association of the difference which inhabits repetition with femininity