Notes on Nightingale: The Influence and Legacy of a Nursing Icon

{Excerpt}The centenary of the death of Florence Nightingale occurs on 13 August 2010. Like Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, and John Stuart Mill, Nightingale is one of those monumental Victorians who were genuine household names in their day and for the generations that followed. Like her peers, she was a highly educated individual on a lifelong path of discovery, dedicated to knowledge and science in the service of a better society. But Nightingale was a singular individual among the great Victorians in that she was a woman—a woman who achieved a level of fame arguably surpassed only by the queen herself. Nightingale was also exceptional in that the work for which she is best known was not her science, literature, or philosophy, but the professionalizing of a domain of low status and semidomestic women\u27s work: nursing. In compiling this book, we have sought to take key elements of the Nightingale story and legacy and bring fresh analyses from leading scholars and thinkers in the field. The aim has been to provide both an update on the scholarship in several areas—the story of Nightingale in the Crimean War, her influence on the colonies of the British Empire, her contribution to statistical sciences, and her impact on the American nursing story—and a review of the current state of play with respect to the endless historiographical myths around her. The contributors represent a wide range of specialized knowledge on the heterogeneous topic of Florence Nightingale. Scholars, of course, have strongly held views and do not necessarily agree with one another. We do not attempt to adjudicate between competing perspectives in the discussion surrounding Nightingale, believing them to be symptomatic of a lively academic field in which scholars continue to debate the interpretation of sources and the significance of events. If Nightingale did not inspire controversy (and its sister, passion), would we still be interested in her a century after her death? Throughout the book there are shades of interpretation and emphasis that vary among contributors. Was Nightingale an opponent of germ theory? Did she create the new model of nursing from which all modern nursing sprang? Read on and make up your own mind! Our hope is that readers develop an awareness of the nuances of historical scholarship and the complexity of the past, as opposed to seeing it as a set of facts. Facts, as any good historian knows, are not set in stone but matters of interpretation. Nightingale lived a long time. She was also a prolific correspondent and writer, and thus the historical record from her own hand is plentiful. This surfeit of riches creates its own methodological challenges. Individuals change their views over time, they sometimes contradict themselves, they write their different messages to different audiences, and their words may mean something different to a contemporary reader. Nightingale\u27s persona evolved from a young passionate woman to a politically astute social actor to a much revered icon, and her writings reflect this evolution

From The book of Margery Kempe : The trials and triumphs of a homeward journey

Margery Kempe (c. 1373-1438), the author--not the writer--of The Book of Margery Kempe, lived--when she was not traveling to the Holy Land or Assisi, the Shrine of St. James at Compostela, the Chapel of St. Bridget in Rome, or to Norway, Danzig, or Aachen--in the prosperous East Anglian town of Lynn.1 She was the daughter of John Burnham, who, she did not hesitate to say when required to identify herself, was five times mayor of Lynn; the wife of John Kempe, a respected burgess; and the mother of fourteen children. Her adversaries saw Margery Kempe as a heretic, a Lollard, and hence a danger to the social order. She saw herself, if not as a potential saint, at least as a servant of God who lived a life comparable to that of St. Bridget of Sweden.Issue title "Slavica.

The authority of the spoken word : Speech acts in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

In the following consideration of the Connecticut Yankee's triple-barreled verbal power I will be using the terms "speech act," "locution," "illocution," and "perlocution" as they are defined in Austin's How To Do Things with Words (1962) and further developed by John R. Searle in Speech Acts (1969). I will first give attention to a scene in which Hank is saved by an opportune eclipse (it comes just in time to save him from being burned at the stake), then move on to his restoration of the fountain of the Valley of Holiness, to the rescue of Morgan and the king by Sir Launcelot and his bicycle brigade, and finally to a concluding account of the defeat of ten thousand armored knights by Morgan and his "boys."/

From Honor to Ridicule to Shame to Fame: The Naming and Re-Naming of Túrin Son of Húrin

No abstract

Time and J.R.R. Tolkien\u27s Riddles in the Dark

Close reading of the two riddle games in The Hobbit—the first between Bilbo and Gollum, and the second a three-sided game where both Smaug and the reader try to decode Bilbo’s riddling self-references. Discusses “priming” in riddling, how riddles work as a speech act, and the sources of riddles used in these games. Includes a translation of Bilbo’s riddles to Smaug into Old English

An Onomastic Approach to \u27The Story of Edgar Sawtelle\u27: David Wroblewski’s Transformation of Shakespeare’s \u27Hamlet\u27

No abstract

J.R.R. Tolkien\u27s Leaf by Niggle : An Allegory in Transformation

Nelson demonstrates that Tolkien’s allegorical short story, “Leaf by Niggle,” owes a debt to the medieval play Everyman as its primary spiritual ancestor, and discusses changes Tolkien makes to its message in the light of concepts he developed in “On Fairy-stories,” along the way touching on the differences between works meant for performance and silent reading

The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm\u27s Son : J.R.R. Tolkien\u27s Sequal to The Battle of Maldon

Considers the application of speech act theory to Tolkien’s “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son” and its source, “The Battle of Maldon,” and how different speech acts propel the action of each story

Grit, Student Engagement, and Academic Performance at a Historically Black Community College

Obtaining a college degree benefits individuals and society, yet only 20% of students are graduating from community colleges. At many institutions, graduation rates have decreased over the last 5 years, including one historically Black community college in the southern United States. To explore possible causes of low graduation rates at this unique and understudied type of college, this correlational study examined the relationships among student engagement, academic performance, and grit-persistence and passion toward long-term goals. Tinto\u27s theory of student persistence served as the theoretical framework for this study. The convenience sample included 116 college students who already had a first-year grade point average (FYGPA). Grit was measured by the Grit-Short Scale; student engagement by the Student Engagement Instrument-College, and academic performance by FYGPA. No statistically significant relationships were found between grit and academic performance, or between student engagement and academic performance, however. Recommendations included additional research with larger samples of students and other HBCUs. Recommendations also included exploring other non-cognitive constructs, such as academic mindsets, learning strategies, socials skills, and academic behaviors to understand those relationships with academic performance. Implications for positive social change include disseminating initial research findings to the college administration for continued research on efforts toward producing more graduates, thereby increasingly providing quality higher education to underserved groups of students