Sinners and saints: The evangelical construction of gender and authority in New England, 1740-1830.

This dissertation charts the emergence of a newly gendered model of authority within the Baptist churches of New England in the period between the First and Second Great Awakenings. Using a variety of texts ranging from conversion narratives to church discipline records, the study focuses on the relationship between language and relations of power within the evangelical community. Before the revolutionary crisis of the late eighteenth century, the Baptist church was an inclusive community bound together by a commitment to an intense spiritualism. Rejecting conventional forms of religious worship and politically isolated as dissenters, Baptist men and women together shared in the important tasks of community-building. After the American Revolution, however, the evangelical church (like other colonial institutions) suffered a crisis of identity. The shifting nature of church-state relations and the rise of new, competing ideologies and denominations required that the Baptist church more aggressively compete for members and prestige in the marketplace of religious ideas. The transformation of the Baptist community from a dissenting sect to a mainstream denomination was accomplished by reforming the internal structure of the churches and purging its membership of unstable elements. Women, in particular, were singled out as especially prone to "disorderly conduct" and accused of those sins considered most damaging to the community: slander, lying, and spreading false rumors. The redefinition of the female character as inherently disorderly followed women's disenfranchisement within the church, as they no longer participated in church governance after 1780. The "feminine" became an appropriate metaphor for the diminished status of the evangelical community as a whole after 1780. Yet, despite the emergence of gender inequities within the institutional structure of the church, the evangelical community remained committed to a language of sexual equality. Conversion narratives from the early 1800s reveal an androgynous understanding of the nature of salvation that contrasts with the hardening of gender roles within the meetinghouse. This gap between language and experience ultimately allowed new, less restrictive, norms of gender identity to develop even as the structural conditions of gender inequality persisted.Ph.D.HistoryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/103705/1/9034450.pdfDescription of 9034450.pdf : Restricted to UM users only

Forensics and autopsies: exploiting popular culture to teach design for commercial manufacture?

Forensic science is the discipline that students and parents consider as most interesting, providing a well paid and satisfying career (Manufacturing Foundation 2003). The influence of popular culture and the high level of media exposure may be a reason for this positive perception. Contrary to this, there seems to be a negative image of manufacturing, often perpetuated by the media. This anti-manufacturing attitude has prevailed for some time and is acknowledged by many (e.g. Scottish Executive, Make It Scotland, RSA, Foresight, MORI/EMTA, Unipart, The Manufacturing Institute). Industry and universities alike are finding it increasingly difficult to find enthusiastic recruits. This paper reviews current approaches to teaching the relatively new curriculum content (SQA, 1999) of commercial manufacture in the Scottish secondary school system and describes development work with in-service teachers and school students. The development work described aims to challenge the anti-manufacturing stereotype through a pedagogy designed on motivational principles and explicit use of the language and tools of popular media culture. The approach taken exploits the interest in all things ‘forensic’ and uses ‘product autopsy’. It aims to link the author’s previous work in exploring values and expressing opinions in Technology Education (McLaren, 1997) with recent curriculum developments and related teaching strategies. The integrated approach attempts to encourage greater engagement in aspects of technological sensitivity and technological perspective (SCCC, 1996) when learning about designing for commercial manufacture

Chronic Physiologic Effects of Stress Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Adults: Results From the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

ObjectiveSocial disadvantage is associated with markers of physiological dysregulation, which is linked to disease trajectories. Chronic experiences with discrimination are thought to result in the accumulation of physiological "wear and tear" known as allostatic load (AL) among socially marginalized populations such as sexual minorities. Using a nationally representative US sample, we examined whether (1) people who self-identified as homosexual or bisexual display higher levels of AL than heterosexual individuals and (2) subgroups of sexual identity would further differ from each other as a consequence of distinct experiences of marginalization.MethodsWe use data from the 2001-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Employing multivariate regression methods with sex-specific analyses, we examined AL score differences among lesbian/gay (n = 211), bisexual (n = 307), homosexually experienced (n = 424), and exclusively heterosexual (n = 12,969) individuals, adjusting for possible confounding due to demographics, health indicators, and, among men, HIV infection status.ResultsResults indicate that elevated AL was more common in bisexual men compared with exclusively heterosexual men (adjusted β = 0.25, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.05 to 0.44), with significantly higher levels of glycosylated hemoglobin A1c (adjusted odd ratio = 3.51, 95% CI = 1.46-7.92) and systolic blood pressure (adjusted odd ratio = 2.07, 95% CI = 1.02 to 4.18). Gay-identified men evidenced significantly lower AL (adjusted β = -0.22, 95% CI = -0.41 to -0.04). No significant differences in AL were observed among women.ConclusionsThese findings indicate that physiological dysregulation is more common in bisexual males compared with all other men. The results are discussed with regard to differences in health outcomes between individuals with different sexual orientations

A Century of Work and Leisure

We develop comprehensive measures of time spent in market work, home production, schooling, and leisure in the United States for the last 106 years. We find that hours of work for prime age individuals are essentially unchanged, with the rise in women's hours fully compensating for the decline in men's hours. Hours worked by those 14 to 24 years old have declined noticeably, but most of this decline was offset by a rise in hours spent in school. Overall, per capita leisure and average annual lifetime leisure increased by only four or five hours per week during the last 100 years. (JEL D13, J16, J22)