"How do you like my darkness now?": women, violence, and the good "bad girl" in 'Buffy, the Vampire Slayer

The representations of violent women in Joss Whedon's 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' (1997-2003) and the development of this trope compare intriguingly with Charlotte Dacre's early nineteenth-century protagonist in 'Zofloya; or, The Moor' (1806). Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt and Jean Elshtain, this chapter argues that Whedon's exploration of the relationship between women and violence suggests ways in which to reconsider the consequences and responsibilities - as well as potentials - for women's use of violent means to oppose systematic oppression

Haunting History: Women, Catholicism, and the Writing of National History in Sophia Lee's 'The Recess'

This chapter explores strategies of re-writing British history in The Recess, with particular attention to the ways in which hagiography and historiography shape responses to the nation’s past. The assumption of Catholicism as Britain’s foreign ‘other’ ignores the experiences of British Catholics and the tenacity of history and tradition that does not necessarily obey political or legislative edicts. Lee’s adaptation of British history for the purposes of her late eighteenth-century audience is apparent in some respects and subtle in others. Catholicism is explicitly condemned but is not expelled from the narrative; it enables particular discourses associated with haunting and spectrality that the ‘Age of Reasons’ sought to distance. Linked with primitivism, superstition, and political tyranny, Catholicism represents antithesis of the kind of individual and collective freedom that increasingly defined the desired ‘Britain’. The Recess returns to the site of Protestant Britain’s mythological origin and produces possible strategies of mourning and remembering, linking together Britain’s abandoned Catholic heritage and women’s experiences of cultural abandonment with hagiographic and historiographic strategies of narrating national history

Public Attitudes Toward Crime and Incarceration in Finland

The following paper provides insights into Finland’s criminal justice system and discusses the policies that emphasize using prison for rehabilitation, not merely for punishment. These methods of prevention and rehabilitation, in conjunction with correctional and educational staff within and outside the prison walls, have contributed to consistently low recidivism rates in Finland. This study discusses many ideological similarities between public opinions towards criminals and crime in Finland and the United States. Like Americans, Finns are intolerant of crime and violence, yet open to the idea of alternative forms of punishment, especially for non-violent and juvenile offenders. People in both countries tend to believe criminals are not born into a criminal life and that societal factors play a role in creating criminal behavior. This study sheds light on both the public support for ex-offenders’ rehabilitation in Finland and the extent to which Americans support alternative forms of punishment. It also provides a narrative of the disconnect between public opinion and what public officials think public opinion is

Case Study: Exploring the Implementation of an Integrated STEM Curriculum Program in Elementary First Grade Classes

This study explored the implementation of Project Lead The Way (PLTW) integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curriculum in four first grade classrooms. Data was collected from four teachers and two media specialists via interviews and student PLTW Light and Sound unit assessment scores. A self-efficacy survey was administered to all first grade teachers in the studied district to measure teacher beliefs about their ability to teach science. Teacher responses indicated that teachers were relatively confident implementing science curriculum. Interviews, however, revealed that teachers required more training designed to increase teacher science background knowledge to properly teach an integrated science unit. Although there were issues with implementation involving materials and scheduling, the benefits for student learning through the PLTW curriculum were substantial. The most important finding of this study was the fact that integrated STEM curriculum, such as PLTW, has the innate ability to reach and challenge students at all levels, from gifted learners to at-risk students. Using the hands-on approach, students can experiment and find solutions. Students, through the process, develop an understanding of the concept and can apply their learning. However, to implement integrated STEM effectively, teachers need support from their administrators and dedicated training in the PLTW program

Rethinking Surrender: Elizabeth Inchbald and the "Catholic Novel"

Published in the 1790s, but begun considerably earlier during the promise and upheaval of the 1770s and 80s, Elizabeth Inchbald’s A Simple Story (1791) negotiates the challenging terrain of religious difference at the end of the ‘Age of Enlightenment’. Inchbald’s experience of English Catholicism and her wide-ranging literary and cultural network inform her carefully-wrought narrative, which displays both the fond familiarity of personal experience and a clear sense of the complexity of religious doctrine and difference. A Simple Story is certainly not a sentimental defence of Catholicism – English or Roman – but neither does it attack Catholicism as threatening and foreign. Instead, Inchbald uses fiction to participate in debates about the future of religious freedom in Britain. The novel has been called ‘the first Catholic novel’, but little attention has been paid to how a novel might be ‘Catholic’ rather than Protestant. For a novel of such acclaimed originality, it is remarkable how little criticism (until recently) recognized Inchbald’s participation in traditionally masculine discourses of religious doctrine and legislation. Inchbald’s own Catholicism has long been the subject of dispute and only recently have critics begun to seriously explore the relationship between the eighteenth-century novel and Catholicism. While JMS Thompkins locates the ‘Catholicism’ of the novel in outward details, praising Inchbald for keeping it in check, Bridget Keegan’s recent article (2006) explores the complex depths of Inchbald’s knowledge of Jesuit doctrine via her close friendship with Philip Kemble. Focusing on the first half of the novel, this chapter explores how Inchbald participates in public and political debates through her focus on intimate, domestic spaces of the novel. Inchbald’s ‘dramatic’ style highlights the potential for gesture and body language to harmonize communities threatened by religious difference. The chapter concludes with a close reading of the pose of kneeling in the first half of Inchbald’s novel. The act of kneeling, common in eighteenth-century literature, opens and closes this crucial part of the narrative. A pose of surrender and of power, kneeling demonstrates the ways in which Catholics and Protestants struggled towards reconciliation