Women’s Erotic Desires and Perspectives on Marriage in Sappho’s Epithalamia and H.D.’s Hymen

In her collection Hymen (1921), the modernist poet H.D. engages in a collaborative, composite reception of the archaic Greek lyric poet Sappho. H.D. draws on Sappho as a source of lyric power and lesbian erotic authority, and brings together the various women’s voices and perspectives represented in Sappho’s poems—especially those that have to do with marriage—into her own present poetic moment. As the title Hymen suggests, of particular significance to H.D.’s Sapphic reception work is the genre of the epithalamium, or “wedding song.” Sappho, in her epithalamia, constructs a woman-centered and woman-identified thiasos that is centered on the bride, her companions, and the poet; she emphasizes these women’s experiences of the marriage rite and the several moments of transition necessitated by it. In Hymen, H.D. constructs a similar thiasos, and like Sappho prioritizes female perspectives of marriage, sex, desire, and loss. Yet, while Sappho’s epithalamia appear rather celebratory in tone and look with optimism toward the bride’s future as a wife and mother, H.D. reverses the ancient generic function of the epithalamium and uses the form to criticize rather than celebrate traditional heterosexual marriage. H.D. views marriage and the necessitated forfeiture of virginity as a symbolic death for the bride, and throughout Hymen highlights the various forms of loss that the institution entails

Cunningham\u27s Darwin\u27s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get it Wrong (Book Review)

A Review of Darwin’s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get it Wrong, by Conor Cunningham. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. 543 pp., $40.00; ISBN 978080284838

Women's Relationships in Sappho's Poetry

Sappho’s poetry has been the subject of much scholarship and speculation from antiquity up to the present day. Various theories about her role in society, poetic voice and persona, and sexual orientation have been suggested among classicists, poets, and feminist scholars, yet she and her work remain elusive. Much remains to be understood, not least because many of these studies have applied post-classical concepts and models to the anomalous fact and nature of her poetry. In particular, the subject of women’s relationships in Sappho deserves both greater attention and a more nuanced approach. Both female friendships and female sexual or erotic relationships are central features of her poetry. While scholarship has examined some of the different features of female relationships in Sappho’s work, further study of their context, the forms that they took, and their meaning to the women who participated in them, is needed. My aim in this thesis is to understand these female relationships in terms of archaic and ancient Greek culture, drawing on what is known about women’s religion and oral poetry instead of using post-antique models that project modern constructs and institutions onto ancient attitudes and behaviors. I will argue here that female religious rituals offered Greek women opportunities for important, meaningful relationships and activities, and that they provide a crucial context for the female relationships found in Sappho’s poetry.Bachelor of Art

Ligustrum vulgare L.

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/herbarium_specimens_byname/21092/thumbnail.jp

A Case Study: Change Facilitator Activity to Support the Implementation of a District's Pre-K-12 Aligned Mathematics Program

ABSTRACT James County Public Schools was a 74,000 student school district in Maryland that chose to implement a pre-K - 12 aligned mathematics program in response to state mandated assessments imposed by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal legislation. Schools that fail to demonstrate Adequate Yearly Progress on these assessments may descend into a spiral of sanctions. Consequently, districts must choose and implement programs that will increase student achievement. This study sought to determine the characteristics of the pre-K - 12 aligned mathematics program and explore and describe the dynamics of its implementation through the lens of a change facilitator. The study used a case study design methodology. The findings revealed the district implemented four parts of an instructional component: district assessments, pacing guides, professional development, and a single text adoption program. The change facilitator undertook activities to support the implementation. The study found three positive results of the implementation: Creation of Student Support Courses, Creation of a Benchmark Data System, and Creation of a University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) Cohort. When the pace of the implementation was analyzed, conflict surrounded the implementation and it yielded three negative results: Competition for Scarce Resources, Defensive Professional Development, Trail of Memos, and Professional Blunders. The findings of this study added to the research and literature on implementation, particularly the role of the change facilitator. The findings also will assist other districts in policy and practice as they too seek to implement new instructional programs in their efforts to comply with the demands of NCLB