Punctive grace : reading religion in Barthes’ Mourning Diary

This discussion locates the doctrine of grace as one way of negotiating Barthes’ references to Christianity in his late writings. The dynamic influence of the divine experienced by the believer through faith, grace has the capacity to transform suffering into a meditative or ‘neutral’ thinking analogous to meditation or prayer. For the grieving Barthes, grace promises relief without negating the course of bereavement and so enables the act of writing. In recalling the maternal, grace also allows a focus on the mother Barthes develops in relation to the work of George Bernanos and Blaise Pascal, as well as Marcel Proust. After establishing Barthes’ interest in grace in Mourning Diary as well as A Lover’s Discourse, The Neutral and Camera Lucida, the essay discloses the working or movement of grace in three ideas current to these writings: ‘twinklings’, the ‘punctum’ and tears. These terms not only map the way to Barthes’ projected ‘new life’, or Vita Nova, but reveal an attentive engagement with Christianity and mysticism through which he discovers his neutral or non-egoic way of mediating grief. If ‘literature is like religion’, as Barthes claimed, then his writing is like grace, moving him and his reader towards an equanimity framed by, if not faithful to, Christian discourse

Re-thinking religion and literature

Rethinking religion and literature in a series of chapters by leading international scholars, Reading the Abrahamic Faiths opens up a dialogue between Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Post-Secular literary cultures. Literary studies has absorbed religion as another interdisciplinary mode of inquiry without always attending to its multifacted potential to question ideologically neutral readings of culture, belief, emotion, politics and inequality. In response, Reading the Abrahamic Faiths contributes to a reevaluation of the nexus between religion and literature that is socially, affectively and

'Entanglement in fir : thinking matter in Peter Larkin’s “praying // firs \\ attenuate”'

This article reads Peter Larkin’s poem “praying // firs \\ attenuate” (2014) as a way to think the divine in relation to the ecological as a mutual poetic giving. It suggests that the poem entangles the reader in a series of relational imaginings that complicates the modern commodification of the nonhuman and questions a secular fatigue with the divine. Through a Catholic metaphysics in which all things—human, nonhuman, holy—are entangled, Larkin’s religious ecology maps the way to horizons promising that which cannot yet be imagined. In an entangled, layered, rhythmic, and echoing poetic form, Larkin reveals the intimate relationship between plenitude and the attenuated, gift and scarcity

GIS on the Qualla Boundary: Data Management for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Tribal Historic Preservation Office

The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has become increasingly important for the preservation of cultural resources by tribal entities. This project serves as a platform for the management of archaeological site data on the Qualla Boundary to be used by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) members. Over the course of a year, data was gathered from various agencies in order to export and create geospatial data that can be visualized, analyzed, and managed using ArcGIS software. A map and detailed data set were created to provide the user with the locations and attributes of archaeological sites, which can be used by the EBCI THPO as a tool for archaeological research and to protect sites on the Qualla Boundary. Additionally, a preliminary settlement pattern study was performed for the broader Qualla Boundary, along with a more in-depth analysis of sites along the Oconaluftee River

Learning about Professionalism within Practice-based Education: what are we looking for?

Health and social care professions are being held to account concerning their professionalism in ways that would have been unprecedented in the recent past. Students of the School of Health Sciences (HSC) within the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the United Kingdom have professionalism taught and assessed in a number of ways and have overt opportunities to develop their professional performance during practice education. In order to augment this further, a UEA Professionalism Charter has been developed, which helps students to define, learn and apply professionalism in a particular way. Since professionalism is being scrutinised by a number of bodies it is important that there is agreement about its nature. Without an overt definition of professionalism from the Health and Care Professions Council (the regulatory body for occupational therapy, physiotherapy and speech and language therapy) this study set out to explore what could be learned about this body’s perspective through analysis of its Fitness to Practice hearings. The outcome revealed that a definition could be identified and that this bears a close resemblance to that used within the UEA Professionalism Charter. The study therefore supports the continued use of the Charte