Jesus Christ, Superstar? Why the Gospels Don’t Make Good Movies

Though movies based on the Gospels might be entertaining and even deeply affective as movies, the medium of film must alter the form and function of the Gospels so much that they disappear into the film. The rhetoric and style of the Gospels do not translate into film, in contrast to other literary forms. Two films appearing within several years of each other—The Gospel of John and The Passion of the Christ—show how nearly impossible it is for Gospel narratives to be filmed. It would seem that only when the character of Jesus is portrayed in an iconic form within brief scenes do the Gospels make credible film material. Three movies helpfully show how this works: Andrei Rublev, Barabbas, and Bad Lieutenant

Flight of the Phoenix

This is a review of Flight of the Phoenix (2004)

Commercial scientific journals and their editors in Edinburgh, 1819-1832

This paper explores the editorial policies and practices of three scientific journal published in Edinburgh in the first half of the 19th century. The first of these was the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal (1819–1826), and its continuation as the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1826–1854). It was edited until 1824 by Robert Jameson, Edinburgh's professor of natural history, and David Brewster, who was a natural philosopher, scientific writer, and editor. Brewster left in 1824 to found his own journal, the Edinburgh Journal of Science (1824–1832). The third journal published in Edinburgh in this period was the Edinburgh Journal of Natural and Geographical Science (1829–1831), edited by Henry H. Cheek and William Ainsworth, two medical students at the University of Edinburgh. All three journals were direct competitors, being strikingly similar in form and content. As well as competing with Jameson's journal for readers and authors, Cheek and Ainsworth also used their journal to directly attack him in print. This paper sheds new light on the ways the editorship of these journals was used not only to consolidate and extend circles of patronage in early 19th‐century science, but also to challenge existing centres of authority.PostprintPeer reviewe

Physiology of the haunted mind : naturalistic theories of apparitions in early nineteenth-century Scotland

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw a resurgence of interest in the supernatural in Scotland as elsewhere in the United Kingdom. A number of intellectual figures responded by proposing naturalistic explanations for supernatural phenomena, drawing on the legacy of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy. These included the geologist and antiquarian Samuel Hibbert and the phrenologist George Combe. This paper explores the interrelations between these theories, their roots in the troubled cultural politics of Scotland in the early nineteenth century, and the reaction of different protagonists in the cultural conflicts of the period to their ideas.PostprintPeer reviewe

Race before Darwin : variation, adaptation and the natural history of man in post-Enlightenment Edinburgh, 1790–1835

This paper draws on material from the dissertation books of the University of Edinburgh's student societies and surviving lecture notes from the university's professors to shed new light on the debates on human variation, heredity and the origin of races between 1790 and 1835. That Edinburgh was the most important centre of medical education in the English-speaking world in this period makes this a particularly significant context. By around 1800 the fixed natural order of the eighteenth century was giving way to a more fluid conception of species and varieties. The dissolution of the ‘Great Chain of Being’ made interpretations of races as adaptive responses to local climates plausible. The evidence presented shows that human variation, inheritance and adaptation were being widely discussed in Edinburgh in the student circles around Charles Darwin when he was a medical student in Edinburgh in the 1820s. It is therefore no surprise to find these same themes recurring in similar form in the evolutionary speculations in his notebooks on the transmutation of species written in the late 1830s during the gestation of his theory of evolution.PostprintPeer reviewe

The ‘Stronsay Beast’ : testimony, evidence and authority in early nineteenth-century natural history

When an unknown sea creature was washed ashore on the Orkney Islands in September 1808, the Edinburgh anatomist John Barclay declared that this was the first solid scientific evidence for the existence of the ‘great sea snake’. The testimony of witnesses along with some of its preserved body parts were examined by both the Wernerian Natural History Society in Edinburgh and the surgeon and anatomist Everard Home in London. Contradicting Barclay's opinion, Home identified the creature as a decomposing basking shark. While Barclay took the testimony of the local witnesses largely on trust and accepted their interpretation of the Beast, Home discounted it and instead asserted his own expert authority to correctly interpret the evidence. Both made use of the preserved physical remains of parts of the creature in strikingly different ways: Barclay to support the accounts of the witnesses, Home to undermine them. The debate between the two anatomists has much to tell us about the uses of evidence and testimony in early nineteenth-century natural history, but also has broader resonances for the roles of evidence and authority in science that still remain relevant today.PostprintPeer reviewe

Napoleon Dynamite

This is a review of Napoleon Dynamite (2004)

RoMEO Studies 8: self-archiving: the logic behind the colour-coding used in the Copyright Knowledge Bank

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to show how the self-archiving of journal papers is a major step towards providing open access to research. However, copyright transfer agreements (CTAs) that are signed by an author prior to publication often indicate whether, and in what form, self-archiving is allowed. The SHERPA/RoMEO database enables easy access to publishers' policies in this area and uses a colour-coding scheme to classify publishers according to their self-archiving status. The database is currently being redeveloped and renamed the Copyright Knowledge Bank. However, it will still assign a colour to individual publishers indicating whether pre-prints can be self-archived (yellow), post-prints can be self-archived (blue), both pre-print and post-print can be archived (green) or neither (white). The nature of CTAs means that these decisions are rarely as straightforward as they may seem, and this paper describes the thinking and considerations that were used in assigning these colours in the light of the underlying principles and definitions of open access. Approach – Detailed analysis of a large number of CTAs led to the development of controlled vocabulary of terms which was carefully analysed to determine how these terms equate to the definition and “spirit” of open access. Findings – The paper reports on how conditions outlined by publishers in their CTAs, such as how or where a paper can be self-archived, affect the assignment of a self-archiving colour to the publisher. Value – The colour assignment is widely used by authors and repository administrators in determining whether academic papers can be self-archived. This paper provides a starting-point for further discussion and development of publisher classification in the open access environment

Contours of Inclusion: Inclusive Arts Teaching and Learning

The purpose of this publication is to share models and case examples of the process of inclusive arts curriculum design and evaluation. The first section explains the conceptual and curriculum frameworks that were used in the analysis and generation of the featured case studies (i.e. Understanding by Design, Differentiated Instruction, and Universal Design for Learning). Data for the cases studies was collected from three urban sites (i.e. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston) and included participant observations, student and teacher interviews, curriculum documentation, digital documentation of student learning, and transcripts from discussion forum and teleconference discussions from a professional learning community.The initial case studies by Glass and Barnum use the curricular frameworks to analyze and understand what inclusive practices look like in two case studies of arts-in-education programs that included students with disabilities. The second set of precedent case studies by Kronenberg and Blair, and Jenkins and Agois Hurel uses the frameworks to explain their process of including students by providing flexible arts learning options to support student learning of content standards. Both sets of case studies illuminate curricular design decisions and instructional strategies that supported the active engagement and learning of students with disabilities in educational settings shared with their peers. The second set of cases also illustrate the reflective process of using frameworks like Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to guide curricular design, responsive instructional differentiation, and the use of the arts as a rich, meaningful, and engaging option to support learning. Appended are curriculum design and evaluation tools. (Individual chapters contain references.

Barabbas in Literature and Film

Abstract Barabbas, unlike Pilate or Judas or even other biblical characters who, like him, are barely mentioned in various Gospel accounts and yet who have received much attention -such as Mary Magdalene or Salome -received little attention before the twentieth century. But since then his ambiguous status as bandit, murderer, or freedom fighter fits in well with the ambiguous positions of art and religion in the modern world. A person who was given just a few sentences in the Bible finally has become a subject of artistic interest, reflecting the contradictory aspects of modern culture in which rebellion can run the spectrum from noble self-sacrifice for the greater good to self-serving justification of the love of violence. Though some of the works exploring the meaning of Barabbas are obviously of inferior quality, the others offer trenchant explorations of an engrossing character, reflecting to us our struggles with religious faith in the contemporary, secularized world. Barabbas represents the condition most of us have experienced: through forces outside our control we are placed in a relationship with possible truth, a relationship we can either turn away from for other, proximate human truths, or we can turn toward, even if we cannot always decipher its meaning. Barabbas is a noble revolutionary, a vicious criminal, an accident of politics and mob psychology, perhaps even a love interest, and a shadowy figure whose brief contact with Jesus is left in the dark. In his own way, differing from that of Pilate or Judas, Barabbas can speak uniquely from the distant world of the Gospels to the modern world in ways we immediately recognize