Stage(d) mothers: mother-daughter tropes in Twentieth-Century American drama

The relationship between mother and daughter is an important one for many women. In learning how to best become a successful member of society, daughters look to their mothers to demonstrate the behaviors and beliefs appropriate to a female. Such explicit and implicit instruction makes the mother-daughter relationship a central one in the socialization of women. Because it is such a powerful site, the mother-daughter relationship has received attention in the world of representation. Of particular import to this study is the representation of the mother-daughter relationship in Twentieth-Century American drama. Recent scholarship has shown that such representations can, however, have greater import than simply as representations of an interpersonal relationship. Instead, representations of mother-daughter relationships often represent and reinforce patriarchal norms of feminine behavior and social constraints. This study puts this recent scholarship into dialogue with many plays from the twentieth century, in order to explore this relationship between dramatic and theatrical representations of the mother-daughter relationship and patriarchal conventions. It is arranged thematically, so that plays with similar features of the mother-daughter relationship—“tropes”—are put into dialogue with one another. As a work of feminist scholarship, this work seeks to both identify patriarchal messages contained in plays throughout twentieth-century America, as well as the potential for resistance to those messages. It is not intended as a master-narrative of the discourse on the mother-daughter relationship, but rather as an opening of that discourse to the world of theatrical and dramatic representation

More on the Origin of Refuge

editoria

“Non-linguistic” Browning: Meter and music in “Pietro of Abano”

Sapir (1921) suggests that Robert Browning’s poetry is “non-linguistic” in the way he uses the English language to convey thought. We explore the meter of a much criticized example of his poetry, his “Pietro of Abano” (1880), and conclude otherwise. The poem is in trochaic metre with extensive and systematic catalexis, i.e. unrealized metrical constituents possible only at phrase boundaries. We show that Browning locates phrase and even word boundaries so that they work sometimes for, but also sometimes conspicuously against these requirements, thus drawing attention to them. We also look at one of the poem’s most curious features, a musical score where the poem’s final lines would be expected to be, and note that rather than resolve these issues, it likewise accentuates them. We conclude that Browning’s poem draws attention to linguistic form, thus allying his practice more with Jakobson’s (1960) approach to poetry than Sapir’s

The individual and the nation : a qualitative analysis of US liberal and conservative identity content

Recent research highlights the significant role of political ideological identities in America’s increasing political polarisation. In line with social identity theory, self-placement as a US liberal or conservative predicts favouritism toward the ideological in-group and negative attitudes and behaviours toward the outgroup. The theory also holds that the link between self-categorisation and behaviour is mediated by the content of that identity, by what an individual believes it means to be a member of that group. Although previous research has done much to analyse the differences between US liberals and conservatives on various a priori dimensions, little work has been aimed at gaining a holistic account of ideological identity content from the individual’s lay perspective. Through qualitative analysis of 40 interviews (20 liberals and 20 conservatives), this study identifies central themes in the meaning self-identified US liberals and conservatives attribute to these labels and finds evidence for asymmetrical constructions of these identities. The liberal participant group’s identity construction revolved around identification as, and concern for, individuals, supported by reference to personal values and political issues and underpinned by a motivation to move toward a more equal society. Conversely, the conservative participant group connected the understanding of their identity directly to the political ideology of the nation through a thread of self-reliance and reverence for the national group. Implications for political behaviour and the study of ideological identity are discussed

Letters

With this issue I take my leave of the editorship of Refuge, and have the pleasure of announcing that the new editor will be Dr. Howard Adelman. Dr. Adelman is Director of the Refugee Documentation Project at York University. Refuge will be publicizing the work of the Project and will share support services with it

Mitigating the identity and health threat of COVID-19: perspectives of middle-class South Asians living in the UK

The recognition and representation of BAME community as 'high risk' of Covid-19 in the UK presents both a health and an identity threat to this ethnic group. This study employed thematic analysis to explore response to these threats as related by a sample of 13 middle class members of the South Asian community. This work advances both health and identity psychological theory by recognising the affinity between expressions of health efficacy and identity. Our findings identify South Asian intragroup stigmatisation and commonalities that have implications for the promotion of health behaviour and health communications for minority groups