Encompassing the Intolerable: Laughter, Memory, and Inscription in the Fiction of John McGahern

Encompassing the Intolerable examines John McGahern\u27s depiction of individual consciousness struggling with postcolonial Ireland\u27s three dominant and interconnected institutions: nation, family, and the Catholic Church. While McGahern\u27s work, especially the early fiction, is often considered unremittingly bleak, this study argues that his exposure of abuse, repression, and disillusionment within these institutions does not finally entail a pessimistic vision. Instead, through close readings emphasizing character and epiphany, I contend that his texts use the motifs of laughter, memory, and inscription to demonstrate how consciousness can accommodate intolerable realities such as violence and loss rather than becoming defined or controlled by them. Moreover, these motifs trace a progression of subjectivity from survival (laughter) to private identity (memory) to public identity (inscription). Through this process, I argue that McGahern\u27s fiction uncovers a guarded sense of continuity with the above institutions and the awareness that they provide the raw materials for (re)constructing a valid worldview. Chapter 2 argues that for McGahern\u27s physically or psychically wounded characters, a self-reflexive and dianoetic laugh functions as a minimum confirmation of subjectivity and prepares consciousness to encompass the intolerable. Chapter 3 examines McGahern\u27s portrayal of the extraordinary power of memory to revivify images, refrains, or narratives, and argues that characters who successfully encompass a traumatic past do so by relinquishing the will to power expressed by silence or dogmatic interpretations of individual or collective history. Instead, these characters construct and continually revise dissertation-ended narratives and find that meaning resides in the recounting of such narratives rather than in affixing a final and singular meaning to events. Chapter 4 looks at both the public role of the writer and his or her audience. I argue that McGahern\u27s writing protagonists trace an approach to point-of-view that moves from a defensive posture of isolation and recrimination toward an dissertation posture based on community and forgiveness, and that the latter elicits new ways to encompass the intolerable

The association between industry-level discretion and strategic variety: long-term strategic positions and current behaviours

Executive discretion, the latitude for executives strategic decisions, is a powerful moderator of strategic decision making. In spite of its potential contribution to strategic management studies, Hambrick and Finkelstein's (1987) socio-political model of executive discretion has received little empirical research effort. Some of the basic propositions of the model, which incorporates industry, firm and individual characteristics as determinants of discretion have not been empirically tested. The restricted research effort is partly attributable to the lack of quantitative measures for industry-level discretion. This thesis initially uses the correlation between industry-level attentional homogeneity, the similarity in foci of attention of executives in an industry, and industry-level discretion to produce 116 new values for industry-level discretion for 23 U.S. 4-digit SIC coded industries for the years 1990 to1997. Predictive validity for the new values is demonstrated using long-term debt data and annual accounts adjustment data. Theil's (1992b) industry variety measure based on information theory is modified to produce strategic variety measures that permit pan-industry comparisons. Strong support is demonstrated for a positive association between variety in long-term strategic positions and industry-level discretion. Some weak evidence suggesting large firms in low discretion industries may compete using behaviours that impact on current accounts is also identified

Rapid Prototyping of a Low-cost Graphene-based Impedimetric Biosensor

This paper presents a preliminary investigation towards rapid prototyping of a low-cost biosensor based on reduced graphene oxide (rGO). The devices are fabricated via a laser scribing process and their functionality is demonstrated by their functionalization and subsequent immobilization of 7% bovine serum albumin (BSA). Non-faradaic electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) indicated a 33-42% decrease in impedance upon immobilization. An electroless nickel deposition process is demonstrated to enable electrical contacts to the device, with optimized plating conditions (pH, temperature) leading to a rGO-nickel contact resistance of 19 Ω/mm2

Sharyne Ryals Interview 2016

In a short interview, Sharyne Ryals discusses her experiences working as the Administrative Program Assistant as a part of the Social Science Division. At Western Oregon, she describes her responsibilities and interactions with students. She also explains how she arrived at Western Oregon University as well as her previous work at a chip manufacturing plant

Art Meets Sport::What Can Actor Training Bring to Physical Literacy Programs?

The aim of this communication is to highlight synergies and opportunities between the fields of education, sport and health and the performing arts for the promotion of physical literacy. First, physical literacy is introduced and then defined according to the definition used in this communication. Secondly, we highlight the gap in physical literacy interventions, in that they do not address learning based on a holistic comprehensive definition of physical literacy. Then we provide examples of interventions that do borrow from the arts, such as circus arts, and show how these approaches explicitly link to the discipline of arts. This is followed by program examples, which approach motor and language development from discipline-specific perspectives. Then we introduce actor training (within the discipline of arts) in terms of how this approach may be useful to our understanding of physical literacy and how to expand the conception of physical literacy to include affective meaning making, and tolerance for ambiguity and discomfort in not-knowing. Finally, we conclude with the next step for the bridging of disciplines in order to further our journey to understand and improve physical literacy