Contemporary consequences of the 1967 Referendum

The 1967 Australian Referendum and subsequent constitutional reform are widely considered a victory for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and an elevating moment in Australia’s history. However, this analysis reveals the Referendum was in some ways an anticlimax, enabling paternalistic policies and exploitation of the First Peoples of Australia

Storytelling and Performance as Dance/Movement Therapy: A Literature Review

Inspired by a personal experience, this thesis discusses the use of storytelling and performance as dance/movement therapy. I answer these research questions: What practices, if any, exist in the field of DMT? What is the full spectrum of benefits for dancers and witnesses? What populations are best suited for this work? Non-DMT resources were chosen for their therapeutic value and adaptability to DMT contexts. I categorize the literature by these themes: “Making the Invisible Visible: Stories of Mental Illness”; “Processing Tragedy”; “Storytelling and Performance with a Social Justice Aim”; “Exploring Individuality”; “Crafted by Intuition: DMT’s Authentic Movement”; and “Physical Storytelling.” This research demonstrates that storytelling through dance and movement allows participants to convey what words cannot, and that the embodied process allows for a fuller catharsis than might be achieved through speech. Sharing one’s story of suffering can become a healing balm for others, and thereby create additional healing for the storyteller, as their story is transformed into something of meaning. Embodied storytelling can be used to challenge dominant discourses, uplift the oppressed, and open up difficult conversations. The same practices can be used to teach about mental health and otherwise shed light on harmful stigmas. Storytelling through dance and movement also allows for identity exploration and confidence building. The majority of practices discussed involve able-bodied adults; however, the practices might be adapted by skilled facilitators. Further research is recommended, especially around the drama therapy practice of Autobiographical Therapeutic Performance, and the therapeutic benefits of traditional/folk dance forms which are inherently storied. All in all, the DMT field has yet to take full advantage of existing practices in the field or to grab hold of what the broader dance field is modeling

Dogs and Dehumanization

Oppressors have categorized enslaved groups as less than human through animalization. In my research I find the role that comparisons with dogs had and look at the impacts on our current society.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/fsrs2020/1066/thumbnail.jp

A QUALITATIVE EXAMINATION OF PROSTATE CANCER TREATMENT DECISION-MAKING AMONG BLACK MEN

This ethnographic study explored the experience of treatment decision-making among urban Black men who were diagnosed with prostate cancer in San Diego, California. Specifically, this research was conducted to further understand the decision-making process among Black men and the barriers they face when making treatment decisions about prostate cancer. The study is important because prostate cancer disproportionately affects Black men in the United States, and yet they are underrepresented in research studies (Randolph, Coakley, & Shears, 2018). These inequities are poorly understood and need considerable analysis and exploration. Still unclear is the possible effect of historical trauma or negative healthcare experiences on these treatment decisions. Findings revealed that Black men diagnosed with prostate cancer need a trusting patient-provider relationship, accurate and complete treatment information, and enough time to make effective treatment decisions

Grace Crowley's contribution to Australian modernism and geometric abstraction

Grace Crowley was one of the leading innovators of geometric abstraction in Australia. When she returned to Australia in 1930 she had thoroughly mastered the complex mathematics and geometry of the golden section and dynamic symmetry that had become one of the frameworks for modernism. Crowley, Anne Dangar and Dorrit Black all studied under the foremost teacher of modernism in Paris, André Lhote. Crowley not only taught the golden section and dynamic symmetry to Rah Fizelle, Ralph Balson and students of the Crowley-Fizelle Art School, but used it to develop her own abstract art during the 1940s and 1950s, well in advance of the arrival of colour-field painting to Australia in the 1960s. Through her teaching at the most progressive modern art school in Sydney in the 1930s Crowley taught the basic compositional techniques as she had learnt them from Lhote. When the art school closed in 1937 she worked in partnership with fellow artist, Ralph Balson as they developed their art into constructive, abstract paintings. Balson has been credited with being the most influential painter in the development of geometric abstraction in Australia for a younger generation of artists. This is largely due to Crowley’s insistence that Balson was the major innovator who led her into abstraction. She consistently refused to take credit for her own role in their artistic partnership. My research indicates that there were a number of factors that strongly influenced Crowley to support Balson and deny her own role. Her archives contain sensitive records of the breakup of her partnership with Rah Fizelle and the closure of the Crowley-Fizelle Art School. These, and other archival material, indicate that Fizelle’s inability to master and teach the golden section and dynamic symmetry, and Crowley’s greater popularity as a teacher, was the real cause of the closure of the School. Crowley left notes in her Archives that she still felt deeply distressed, even forty years after the events, and did not wish the circumstances of the closure known in her lifetime. With the closure of the Art School and her close friend Dangar living in France, her friendship with Balson offered a way forward. This thesis argues that Crowley chose to conceal her considerable mathematical and geometric ability, rather than risk losing another friend and artistic partner in a similar way to the breakup of the partnership with Fizelle. With the death of her father in this period, she needed to spend much time caring for her mother and that left her little time for painting. She later also said she felt that a man had a better chance of gaining acceptance as an artist, but it is equally true that, without Dangar, she had no-one to give her support or encourage her as an artist. By supporting Balson she was able to provide him with a place to work in her studio and had a friend with whom she could share her own passion for art, as she had done with Dangar. During her long friendship with Balson, she painted with him and gave him opportunities to develop his talents, which he could not have accessed without her. She taught him, by discreet practical demonstration the principles she had learnt from Lhote about composition. He had only attended the sketch club associated with the Crowley- Fizelle Art School. Together they discussed and planned their paintings from the late 1930s and worked together on abstract paintings until the mid-1950s when, in his retirement from house-painting, she provided him with a quiet, secluded place in which to paint and experiment with new techniques. With her own artistic contacts in France, she gained him international recognition as an abstract painter and his own solo exhibition in a leading Paris art gallery. After his death in 1964, she continued to promote his art to curators and researchers, recording his life and art for posterity. The artist with whom she studied modernism in Paris, Anne Dangar, also received her lifelong support and promotion. In the last decade of her life Crowley provided detailed information to curators and art historians on the lives of both her friends, Dangar and Balson, meticulously keeping accurate records of theirs and her own life devoted to art. In her latter years she arranged to deposit these records in public institutions, thus becoming a contributor to Australian art history. As a result of this foresight, the stories of both her friends, Balson and Dangar, have since become a record of Australian art history. (PLEASE NOTE: Some illustrations in this thesis have been removed due to copyright restrictions, but may be consulted in the print version held in the Fisher Library, University of Sydney. APPENDIX 1 gratefully supplied from the Grace Crowley Archives, Art Gallery of New South Wales Research Library

The Lived Experience of the African American Pregnancy that Ends in Preterm Birth

The research study was undertaken to help fill the gap in understanding the disparity between the current preterm birth rates of African American women and White women. A phenomenological methodology was used with a sample of seven African American women who had experienced preterm birth. The findings provide insight into experience of a pregnancy that ends in preterm birth. An in-depth understanding of the contextual factors associated with preterm birth in African American women was provided through a description of experiences as voiced by the participants themselves. Their stories provided rich, detailed data and insight into their lived experiences, revealing new insights and perspectives on the phenomenon of the African American pregnancy ending in preterm birth. Two Themes emerged: Strong Black Woman Ideal and Feeling Trapped. Awareness regarding the need to peel back layers of generational factors which influence stress on and the types of stressors specific to African American women were noted. While it is safe to say that stressors, stress, and stress responses are experienced by all pregnant women, it may be that African American women are unique in their cumulative experiences of and response to stress. Reflection on and review of extant knowledge in the literature on the extracted themes revealed some concepts that may be related to the extracted themes Strong Black Woman Image and Feeling Trapped. Permeating both themes was the experience of stress these women felt in having to live up to self- and other-imposed expectations of strength resulting from the image of a strong Black woman and feeling trapped by the expectations of the image, along with other responsibilities and obligations. The end result is feelings of being trapped by the expectations of that image and a pregnancy that is affected by the cumulative effects of the two. Knowledge gained from this study will contribute to future knowledge development regarding factors that may be associated with preterm birth among African American women