Golden Chains of Coincidence: A C.S. Lewis Puzzle Solved and Mystery to Ponder

Gives biographical background on the early 20th century evangelist Sundar Singh. Speculates that Singh, well-known in Lewis’s time, is the model for the Sura mentioned in That Hideous Strength

Introducing C.S. Lewis: Sincerity Personified

An overview of C.S. Lewis’s life, primarily based on Surprised by Joy and Letters, covering the entire period from his birth to death with special emphasis on his education and conversion. Includes personal reminiscences of the author’s own meeting with him in 1956. This is the first chapter of Lindskoog’s biography of Lewis

C.S. Lewis: Reactions from Women

Recounts the experiences of eight women (including the author) who knew C.S. Lewis

Farewell to Shadowlands: C.S. Lewis on Death

Examines death as portrayed in many of Lewis’s fictional and apologetic writings, and particularly in the Chronicles of Narnia. Discusses Lewis’s attitudes toward his own impending death as expressed to friends and his brother Warren

Ocular aberrations and visual quality in aspherical and multifocal contact lenses

Good visual quality and precise accommodation are required to be able to focus objects at distance and near, and are essential in order to be able to perform most tasks in life. Most eyes are not ideal eyes, i.e., they have different refractive errors which distort the produced image. The well-known refractive errors (lower order aberrations), myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism, have long been correctable. In addition to these common errors, irregularities in the refractive media create higher order aberrations, which are described by the Zernike polynomials. To achieve a higher level of visual quality, it is important to correct aberrations. Spherical aberration and chromatic aberration, present in polychromatic light, serve as cues for accurate accommodation in order to provide a clear image of the object. It is of interest to know how a reduction or increase of certain aberrations might affect visual quality and accommodation. The aim of this project was to develop techniques to measure the changes in optical aberrations and accommodation in subjects while wearing standard contact lenses, and lenses with aberration control and to find new strategies to enhance the fitting of these lenses in order to achieve a higher level of visual quality. Using an aberrometer, residual spherical aberration was evaluated with a standard contact lens and with a lens with spherical aberration control. Visual quality (i.e. visual acuity and contrast sensitivity) was also evaluated with the different contact lenses. Aberration and accommodation were measured with and without accommodative cues present. Accommodation was evaluated with a multifocal contact lens with a near reading addition. The results show that it is possible to evaluate residual spherical aberration with contact lenses on the eye, but the change in aberration gave no difference in visual acuity or contrast sensitivity at distance or near with the methods used. Spherical aberration and chromatic aberration were shown not to be strong directional cues for accommodation, indicating that there are other cues more important for directional information. Since the multifocal contact lens, a centre distance design with reading addition +1.00, was not able to relax the accommodation for the subjects, it is therefore unlikely that subjects with reduced accommodative ability can effectively be treated with such a lens. In conclusion, a wavefront measurement should be performed both with and without contact lenses, in order to know the amount of aberration in the eye and to note any change from a contact lens. The relatively small change in spherical aberration that non-customised lenses induce does not affect visual acuity, contrast sensitivity or accommodation. These lenses may then be fitted without worrying about affecting accommodation and they do not seem suitable to be fitted on young subjects with the ability to accommodate with the purpose of reducing their accommodative load. There is still reason to believe that there are subgroups of patients who can achieve better visual quality, but more sensitive clinical methods have to be developed

The First Chronicle of Narnia: The Restoring of Names

Notes how the names of people and things in Narnia are well-chosen to establish character and setting succinctly. Examines names and symbols for their usefulness in communicating the moral significance of events in the Chronicles of Narnia

Computer stylometry of C.S. Lewis's "The Dark Tower" and related texts

This paper looks at the provenance of the unfinished novel The Dark Tower, generally attributed to C.S. Lewis. The manuscript was purportedly rescued from a bonfire shortly after Lewis’s death by his literary executor Walter Hooper, but the quality of the text is hardly vintage Lewis. Using computer stylometric programs made available by Eder et al.’s (2016) “stylo” package and a word length analysis, samples of each chapter of The Dark Tower were compared with works known to be by Lewis, two books by Hooper and a hoax letter concerning the bonfire by Anthony Marchington. Initial experiments found that the first six chapters of The Dark Tower were stylometrically consistent with Lewis’s known works, but the incomplete chapter 7 was not. This may have been due to an abrupt change in genre, from narrative to pseudoscientific style. Using principal components analysis, it was found that the first and subsequent components were able to separate genre and individual style, and thus a plot of the second against the third principal components enabled the effects of genre to be filtered out. This showed that chapter 7 was also consistent with the other samples of C.S. Lewis’s writing

Refugees and Resistance: International Activism for Grassroots Democracy and Human Rights in New York, Miami, and Haiti, 1957 to 1994

This dissertation explores the evolution of political activism among Haitians in the United States from the formation of Haitian New York in the late 1950s to the return of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Haiti in 1994. It traces the efforts of Haitian activists to build bridges connecting New York and Miami to the grassroots organizations in Haiti, finding a considerable degree of success in their efforts to construct a transnational movement that had a substantial impact both in Haiti and in the United States. Shedding additional light on the interconnected history of Haiti and the United States, this dissertation also adds to the growing historiography on immigrant activism and international campaigns for democracy and human rights. At the outset, politics in Haitian New York was splintered among competing factions, though by the early 1970s there began to form a somewhat unified anti-Duvalier opposition movement. The arrival of the Haitian boat people in South Florida in the early 1970s continued the evolution of Haitian politics in the United States, triggering a refugee crisis that drew the attention of the activists in New York and forcing a reconsideration of political vision and strategy that had previously been solely concerned with the overthrow of the Duvalier dictatorship. The grassroots resistance in Haiti and in the United States saw a slight opening with the arrival of President Jimmy Carter, but with Carter\u27s successor, Ronald Reagan, came a wave of repression in Haiti and stringent new policies toward Haitian refugees. The uprisings of 1985 and 1986 that toppled the Duvalier dictatorship transformed Haitian politics at home and abroad, enabling an expanded and tightened network of activism connecting New York, Miami, and Haiti, which grew from 1987 to 1989. The years 1990 and 1991 were the pinnacle moment for the linked popular movements in New York, Miami, and Haiti, though Haitian activists were soon forced to pour their energy into the overlapping campaigns aimed at reversing the coup against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and defending the new wave of refugees that the coup produced