Childhood disrupted : Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s unfinished autobiography Before the knowledge of evil

As Mary Jean Corbett in Representing Femininity (1992), Linda Peterson in Traditions of Victorian Women’s Autobiography (1999) and David Amigoni in Life Writing and Victorian Culture (2006) have all noted, Victorian women could write about their lives in several ways: autobiographies, diaries, letters, journals, memoirs and disguised within their fiction. Braddon utilised several of these options, including diaries between the years 1880-1914 and an autobiographical account of her childhood that she tellingly entitled ‘Before the Knowledge of Evil’ (Reel 1).1 She began writing this account in 1914, but after one hundred and eighty-five pages of typescript she had only reached the age of nine; presumably she was going to continue to write her entire life history, but she died before its completion. Autobiographies can be used in several ways, and Braddon’s account will be discussed as an example of Victorian women’s autobiography of childhood; as a snapshot of history in the 1830-40s; as an exploration of the inner psychology of a child; as revealing Braddon’s nostalgia for a time past; and finally to explore how she makes a case for a child’s right to have a childhood

Writing the vampire : M. E. Braddon’s Good Lady Ducayne and Bram Stoker’s Dracula

By the fin-de-siècle, vampire fiction already had a long-standing Gothic heritage, and yet, in the mid-1890s, two authors published their own vampire tales, hoping to make their mark in the popular genre. One author was an established best-seller with thirty years’ experience of the market, while the other was a lawyer and theatre business manager by profession and wrote in his spare time. The professional writer, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, published her short story Good Lady Ducayne in 1896, while the part-time writer, Bram Stoker, published his novel, Dracula, a year later. Braddon’s tale was quickly lost to the annals of time while Stoker’s novel became a staple of the Gothic mode. As a result of this close proximity, a potential crossover has been noted by several scholars, with Richard Bleiler commenting: “[b]ecause Dracula (1897) was written in 1896, the question arises as to whether Stoker and Braddon discussed subject matter and, if so, who influenced whom, and how. This has not yet been resolved” (131). By comparing both authors’ theatrical backgrounds, literary careers and their life-long friendship, as well as their texts’ literary formations, sources, and themes, this article establishes their potential influence on each other and discusses their social commentary to examine how this impacted their popular and literary reputations. Engaging in contemporary debates such as the “New Woman”, scientific breakthroughs and technological advances, Stoker’s novel contrasted a bygone age with modernity while cementing the genre’s patriarchal male Count as the epitome of evil. Braddon’s “Good Lady Ducayne” dealt with the same concerns of modernization and women’s changing place in society, but has been critically neglected until the twenty-first century due to its short story form and anticlimactic ending. Yet Braddon’s tale is more radical than Stoker’s classic text in its representation of vampirism, scientific advances and rational influences, as well as its gender and genre expectations. Dracula may have captured the public’s imagination, leading to it being reproduced and adapted countless times over the last century, but Braddon’s short story was potentially too close to reality to bear thinking about. This article postulates that Braddon’s moving away from the supernatural to penning a scientifically and socially realistic vampire challenges the vampire’s literary landscape more effectively than Dracula, because the horror in her tale was not displaced onto the supernatural but firmly centered in modern life

You Belong Here: An \u27Interpellative\u27 Approach to Usability

Given the participatory, immersive Web 2.0 culture that characterizes digital experiences today, what is traditionally understood as \u27usability\u27 is insufficient to drive the engagement Web 2.0 audiences both crave and have come to expect from best-in-class interfaces. Thus, this dissertation presents a \u27constructivist\u27 vision of usability that helps designers \u27speak\u27 to audiences who demand excellence, and who will leave when confronted with mediocrity. The constructivist practice of usability occurs through what I call \u27interpellative design.\u27 Interpellative design is both a complement to, and a critique of, \u27accommodationist\u27 approaches to usability (Howard, 2010a) which tend to be associated with technical problem solving (Jordan, 2001), ease of use (Shedroff, 2001), and \u27expedient\u27 solutions (Katz, 1992) to mechanistic problems. As part of the under-theorized \u27constructivist\u27 approach to usability (Howard, 2010a), interpellative design allows usability to remain a \u27problem-solving discipline\u27 (Jordan, 2001); however, its focus on beauty, argument, and the figural dialogue between designers and users extends the purview of usability into non-algorithmic pursuits. To describe a constructivist approach to usability, I outline a theoretical taxonomy which identifies factors at play in interpellative user interfaces. An \u27interpellative interface\u27 is one which calls out or \u27hails\u27 (Althusser, 1971a) users and indicates that a given interface is a viable \u27place\u27 in which they can exert influence, accomplish tasks, or solve problems. The hail is facilitated through the construction of a habitus and use of social capital (Bourdieu, 1984). Briefly, a habitus is the space into which users are interpellated, and acts and artifacts of social capital are expressions of how they belong in that space. In examining how these factors manifest in digital interfaces, I argue that the constructivist approach to usability enacted through interpellative design enables usability engineers to identify flaws in interfaces that were not apparent before the mechanisms of habitus and social capital were explicated. The lens of interpellative design allows usability engineers to address the constructivist concerns pertaining to emotion, visual communication, and other types of \u27distinctions\u27 (Bourdieu, 1984) that could not be \u27seen\u27 before

The Effects of Sustained, High-Velocity Exercise on Gene Expression in California Yellowtail (Seriola lalandi)

California Yellowtail muscle fibers have been observed to exhibit two drastically different development patterns resulting from the speeds at which they are exercised. When fish are exercised at a moderate rate their epaxial fast-twitch muscle fibers grow in diameter—hypertrophy; when they are exercised at a fast speed, more new epaxial fast-twitch muscle fibers are produced—hyperplasia. To determine the underlying reason for this difference in muscle development, my summer research project and honors thesis exercised fish at: fast, moderate, and control speeds for a sustained amount of time to determine what is happening on a cellular level to cause the observed differences. Specifically, I am interested in the role of both IGF and HIF transcription factors in influencing the hyperplasia observed after sustained, high-speed exercise. My hypothesis is that an oxygen debt is incurred in the white muscle fibers and this leads to hypoxic conditions in the tissue. If HIF is found to be present in larger quantities in the tissues of fish that swam at fast speeds as opposed to the control and moderate speeds, it would suggest that there are very low levels of oxygen in the muscle fibers and that the HIF transcription factor is influencing various biochemical signaling pathways to induce a hyperplastic response

‘His most ardent desire is to be ranked with Zola and rejected by Mudie’: Gerard; or The World the Flesh and the Devil – M. E. Braddon’s Fin-de-Siècle Faustian Rewrite

Faust’s pact with the Devil and his subsequent decline into hedonism have been the basis for many rewritings and adaptations since Marlowe’s Elizabethan tragedy. Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s radical rewrite of the Faust myth from a fin-de-siècle perspective – Gerard; or the World, the Flesh, and the Devil (1891) – updates the conflict between God and the Devil vying for man’s soul into a non-supernatural tale to comment on fin-de-siècle bourgeois materialism, atheism and decadence. Braddon draws on two source texts for her adaptation: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust: A Tragedy (1808) and Honoré de Balzac’s La Peau de Chagrin (1831). Braddon’s three main characters critique different, yet interconnecting, social issues: the dandy hypnotist, Justin Jermyn, warns of the dangers of increasing pseudo-scientific knowledge; the nouveau riches Gerard Hillersdon illustrates the harm done to both mind and body when religious doubt and material culture collide; and the fallen woman, Hester, comments on women’s agitation for social change. Overall, Braddon’s combination novel transcends her trademark sensationalism to become an excellent example of the female aesthetic novel

A Poisoned Well: An Analysis of Divergent Narratives and their Consequences in Turkish Accession from 2013 to Present.

Since being accepted as a candidate in 2005, the Republic of Turkey has been part of erratic accession negotiations with the European Union. While initially hopeful, EU and Turkish narratives around this process have oscillated wildly between three separate states: convergence, cooperation, and divergence. This paper explores the steady changes in these themes and what they mean for Turkey’s public opinion and its future accession negotiations. Through its analysis of these themes, this paper concludes that institutional narratives on accession have a substantial impact on the way accession is viewed by the Turkish public. With this in mind, an exploration of causal links in the narratives of EU and Turkish institutions on the matter are key to determining the path of future negotiations, or perhaps even their cessation. Considering that the success of accession is largely dependent on popular support, the severe divergence in accession narratives has consequences for the future of Turkey’s accession bid. In light of this linkage of public opinion and narratives, it seems clear that the processes of accession actually lead to a culture of count-conduct amongst Turkish leaders and increased the strength of Eurosceptic sentiments, rather than inculcating European values. As such, the process of accession needs to be re-evaluated, instead being replaced with a strategic partnership

How Crime-Based Media Affect Perceptions of Crime, Race, and Fear of Crime

The effects of crime-based media have long been an area of study among scholars. The problem addressed in this study is the media’s representation of how crimes are perpetrated and processed within the criminal justice system; it is difficult for society to separate and understand factual depictions from fictional portrayals. Researchers have demonstrated that media negatively influences society’s perceptions of police officers’ violent encounters with individuals, particularly African American men, but they have not established wide-ranging contributing factors. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore whether crime-based media influences society’s perceptions of others based on crime, race, and fear of crime. There were 8 participants interviewed for this study. The participants were residents of Louisiana who acknowledged being consumers and viewers of crime-based media. The theoretical framework for this study included the social cognitive theory and cultivation theory. In-depth individual interviews were analyzed through inductive coding and thematic analysis. The findings of this study indicate that participants distrust law enforcement officers, have of fear governmental control, and sense injustice and inequality within the criminal justice system. Understanding the results of the study may improve police-community relationships and minimize the perceptions of injustice and inequality among Americans

Levelling Up: Designing and Testing a Contextual, Web-based Dreamweaver 8 Tutorial for Students with Technological Aptitude Differences

This thesis examines the user-centered design methods and methodology inherent to designing and testing a web-based Dreamweaver 8 tutorial for undergraduate and graduate students who enroll in certain English rhetoric and composition courses at Georgia State University. The tutorial’s three interfaces were rhetorically designed to support three corresponding types of user—novices, intermediates, and experts— whose familiarity with Dreamweaver and student web space determined their starting point of interaction with the artifact. Three usability tests examined each interface based on four usability attributes. Findings revealed the novice and expert interfaces to be usable, while the intermediate interface was more problematic. The analysis of findings indicated the advanced documentation theory to be sound; however, the practical implementation of the theory to this artifact was comparatively ineffective. More research is suggested for determining whether a multimodal tutorial design is the most useful and usable for the target audience(s)

‘His most ardent desire is to be ranked with Zola and rejected by Mudie’: Gerard; or The World the Flesh and the Devil – M. E. Braddon’s Fin-de-Siècle Faustian Rewrite

Faust’s pact with the Devil and his subsequent decline into hedonism have been the basis for many rewritings and adaptations since Marlowe’s Elizabethan tragedy. Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s radical rewrite of the Faust myth from a fin-de-siècle perspective – Gerard; or the World, the Flesh, and the Devil (1891) – updates the conflict between God and the Devil vying for man’s soul into a non-supernatural tale to comment on fin-de-siècle bourgeois materialism, atheism and decadence. Braddon draws on two source texts for her adaptation: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust: A Tragedy (1808) and Honoré de Balzac’s La Peau de Chagrin (1831). Braddon’s three main characters critique different, yet interconnecting, social issues: the dandy hypnotist, Justin Jermyn, warns of the dangers of increasing pseudo-scientific knowledge; the nouveau riches Gerard Hillersdon illustrates the harm done to both mind and body when religious doubt and material culture collide; and the fallen woman, Hester, comments on women’s agitation for social change. Overall, Braddon’s combination novel transcends her trademark sensationalism to become an excellent example of the female aesthetic novel