Phallic girls?: Girls’ negotiation of phallogocentric power

This chapter critically responds to Judith Halberstam’s concern that studies of masculinities are confined to boys and boyhood and Angela McRobbie’s despair that the “phallic girl” with her licensed mimicry of masculinism disavows any resistance to regulatory gender/sexual regimes. Inspired by Judith Butler’s notion of performativity and her desire to trouble and undo gender/sex/sexuality binarisms, this chapter queers the field of masculinity/boyhood studies and addresses postfeminist concerns about the lack of a politics of resistance by foregrounding the seduction of contemporary tomboyism for young tweenage girls in their negotiation of an increasingly (hetero)sexualized girlhood (Mitchell & Reid-Walsh, Seven going on seventeen: Tween studies in the culture of girlhood. New York: Peter Lang, 2005). A central aim of the chapter is to problematize the binary logic of sexual difference that has informed past and current, even queer theorizations of tomboyism by queer(y)ing the ways in which girls’ ditching of or deviation from normative femininity is often theorized as performing masculinity. We argue, following Butler, that interpreting tomboyism as mimesis in this way misses how girls can manipulate norms, exceed them, and rework them and thus “expose the realities to which we thought we were confined as open to transformation” (Butler, Undoing gender. London: Routledge, 2004, p. 217). The chapter concludes by asking what would it mean (theoretically, methodologically, and empirically) to create gender taxonomies that are flexible enough to recognize a more capacious femininity that can embrace subversion and resistance without ejecting such queer performances into the realm of masculinity and thus reproducing dominant discourses of masculinity as ‘power’ and femininity as “lack.''

First-Principles Calculation of Electric Field Gradients and Hyperfine Couplings in YBa2Cu3O7

The local electronic structure of YBa2Cu3O7 has been calculated using first-principles cluster methods. Several clusters embedded in an appropriate background potential have been investigated. The electric field gradients at the copper and oxygen sites are determined and compared to previous theoretical calculations and experiments. Spin polarized calculations with different spin multiplicities have enabled a detailed study of the spin density distribution to be made and a simultaneous determination of magnetic hyperfine coupling parameters. The contributions from on-site and transferred hyperfine fields have been disentangled with the conclusion that the transferred spin densities essentially are due to nearest neighbour copper ions only with marginal influence of ions further away. This implies that the variant temperature dependencies of the planar copper and oxygen NMR spin-lattice relaxation rates are only compatible with commensurate antiferromagnetic correlations. The theoretical hyperfine parameters are compared with those derived from experimental data.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, accepted to appear in EPJ

PhEMaterialism: Response-able Research & Activism

This Special Issue offers PhEmaterialisms as a way to explore the world asvital and complex, while simultaneously being response-able to the multiple ethical imperatives of late-stage capitalism. We argue that PhEmaterialist thinking and practices can help us grapple with growing educational complexities, enabling strategies toresist and create alternatives to the patterns of injustice occurring across the world, from burgeoning ethno-nationalist and neo-fascist political movements, to rising global poverty levels, to massive population displacements, to environmental degradation, to toxic internet movements grounded in misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia (Strom & Martin, 2017a). To understand, enquire into, and generate action worthy of the complexity of our times requires a fundamental shift in our thinking and research practice. This shift disrupts the foundational logic on which dominant thinking in education (and indeed, all Western society) is based—humanism and anthropocentrism (Braidotti, 2013; Murris, 2016; Snaza et al, 2014). Instead, we argue that we need to put theories/concepts to work in education and educational research which can better account for the multiple, entangled, ever-shifting, difference-rich nature of processes of teaching, learning, schooling, and activism. For this work, we also draw on a rich feminist legacy attentive to unequal power relations (e.g., Ahmed, 1998; Anzaldua, 1999; hooks, 1994; Spivak, 1978), and our critical approach to rethinking Vitruvian “man” is especially informed by posthuman/new materialist feminist thinkings and thinkers, including Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, and Karen Barad

First principles study of local electronic and magnetic properties in pure and electron-doped Nd2_2CuO4_4

The local electronic structure of Nd2CuO4 is determined from ab-initio cluster calculations in the framework of density functional theory. Spin-polarized calculations with different multiplicities enable a detailed study of the charge and spin density distributions, using clusters that comprise up to 13 copper atoms in the CuO2plane. Electron doping is simulated by two different approaches and the resulting changes in the local charge distribution are studied in detail and compared to the corresponding changes in hole doped La2CuO4. The electric field gradient (EFG) at the copper nucleus is investigated in detail and good agreement is found with experimental values. In particular the drastic reduction of the main component of the EFG in the electron-doped material with respect to LaCuO4 is explained by a reduction of the occupancy of the 3d3z^2-r^2 atomic orbital. Furthermore, the chemical shieldings at the copper nucleus are determined and are compared to results obtained from NMR measurements. The magnetic hyperfine coupling constants are determined from the spin density distribution

Children, sexuality and sexualization

The entry below from ‘the sex goddess blues’ offers sage advice about the trials and tribulations of sociocultural and interpersonal shame and its effects on sexual expression, sexual exploration and sexual consent: Confidence in yourself is a lifelong process. It’s sometimes a long and winding road with potholes, roadblocks, and even massive collisions. The best place to start is to know that you, as a person, are worthwhile … You’re worth fighting for; you deserve good things in your life. You deserve to set goals for yourself. You deserve healthy relationships that make you feel good. You deserve to have your voice heard. You deserve to physically present yourself however you want. You deserve to feel at peace with your body. And, if you’re interested in sex, be it by yourself or with partners, you deserve pleasure and joy. ‘The Sex Goddess Blues: Building Sexual Confidence and Busting Perfectionism’, 2014, www.scarletteen.or

PhEmaterialism: Response-able Research & Pedagogy

This Special Issue offers PhEmaterialisms as a way to explore the world asvital and complex, while simultaneously being response-able to the multiple ethical imperatives of late-stage capitalism. We argue that PhEmaterialist thinking and practices can help us grapple with growing educational complexities, enabling strategies toresist and create alternatives to the patterns of injustice occurring across the world, from burgeoning ethno-nationalist and neo-fascist political movements, to rising global poverty levels, to massive population displacements, to environmental degradation, to toxic internet movements grounded in misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia (Strom & Martin, 2017a). To understand, enquire into, and generate action worthy of the complexity of our times requires a fundamental shift in our thinking and research practice. This shift disrupts the foundational logic on which dominant thinking in education (and indeed, all Western society) is based—humanism and anthropocentrism (Braidotti, 2013; Murris, 2016; Snaza et al, 2014). Instead, we argue that we need to put theories/concepts to work in education and educational research which can better account for the multiple, entangled, ever-shifting, difference-rich nature of processes of teaching, learning, schooling, and activism. For this work, we also draw on a rich feminist legacy attentive to unequal power relations (e.g., Ahmed, 1998; Anzaldua, 1999; hooks, 1994; Spivak, 1978), and our critical approach to rethinking Vitruvian “man” is especially informed by posthuman/new materialist feminist thinkings and thinkers, including Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, and Karen Barad

Posthuman co-production: becoming response-able with what matters

Purpose This paper introduces the concept of posthuman co-production. It explores how processual and relational onto-epistemologies inform an artful, response-able (Barad 2007) feminist new materialist praxis that decentres the human and re-centres matter. Design/methodology/approach Posthuman co-production gives prominence to crafting “dartaphacts” (Renold, 2018); creative research artefacts, carrying “what matters” and enacting change that can be mapped across time and multiple “problem spaces” (Lury, 2020), as an expansive, post-qualitative praxis of slow, co-production. Findings The paper stories this praxis across three “fugal figurations” providing glimpses into the post-qualitative journeys of assembled dartaphacts in the policy and practice field of relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in Wales. Each fugue hints at the polytical, resourceful and living potential of dartaphacts in the making and their mattering over a period of six years. Collectively, they chart a rhizomatic journey that re-configures co-production as a response-able, becoming-with what matters. Originality/value As more-than-human forces for change, dartaphacts continue to surface “the cries of what matters” (Stengers 2019) for children and young people well beyond the periods of funded research and engagement, giving new meaning to the sustainability and material legacies of research impact