Transgressing Goodness in Breaking the Waves

This analysis of Breaking the Waves falls into two sections: 1) the \u27good\u27; and 2) transgressing goodness. The focus is Bess, her status as woman in a patriarchal culture and her struggle to be \u27good\u27. The reading that I propose explores von Trier\u27s meditation on competing notions of goodness and the cultural assumptions that inform them. In the first section, I explore how Bess negotiates the moral landscape within which she lives as daughter, sister-in-law, member of a religious community, and wife. The church elders and Bess represent von Trier\u27s vision of the two extremes of the contested notion of the \u27good\u27. In the second section, I consider how the tension between a static and a dynamic understanding of the \u27good\u27 is experienced. What choices are available to Bess as she struggles to make sense of her life in the aftermath of Jan\u27s accident? How does she reimagine her desire to be a \u27good girl\u27 under these circumstances? As I reflect on the \u27good\u27 as a moral category, I turn to Female Perversions by Louise J. Kaplan, who argues that submission and purity are culturally encoded expectations of femininity and consequently, of what it means to be a \u27good\u27 woman. These expectations function to demean and constrain women. I explore the unfolding of Bess\u27s desire and inquire whether she does indeed choose out of her own sense of freedom, whether she is coerced or both. Bess\u27s desire to be \u27good\u27 by transgressing culturally constructed values offers an insight into the cost to women for making choices informed by a deeply held personal belief in goodness

A Picture\u27s Worth: Teaching Religion and Film

I believe the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. As Berger claims, seeing comes before words. Pictures, particularly the moving kind, have always fascinated me. Consequently, for over a decade, I have included films among the required readings in my courses in the hope of encouraging students to experience films as religiously pertinent texts that invite critical reading. Convinced as I am that we live in a highly visual culture, I am equally convinced that films, more often than not, elude the critical eye. In my experience, students tend to: 1) see films merely as entertainment; b) distrust the ability of films to contribute to their understanding of religion; and c) apply few of their critical thinking and reading skills to the interpretation of films. For these reasons I have tried to make the case for the importance of film in the religion curriculum. In what follows, I describe my own critical perspective and the rationale for including films among course texts. Furthermore, I comment on courses in which the interpretation of films has enriched students\u27 understanding of religion and of the complexity of cultural contexts

The Magdalene Sisters: How to Solve the Problem of ‘Bad’ Girls

This article focuses on Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters which explores the scope and complex nature of the punishment experienced by the women incarcerated in the Magdalene Asylum near Dublin. The analysis reflects my long-standing interest in religion, film and feminist values as well as my revulsion at the sexual abuse and predatory practices of countless Catholic priests and nuns. It is the same revulsion that drove Mullan to bring the horrors of the Magdalene Asylums out from beneath the culturally sanctioned shadows into plain sight. My analysis focuses not only on women as victims of abuse, but also on women, and in this case religious women, as victimizers—as the monstrous-feminine. Erving Goffman’s Asylums: Essays on the Social Situations of Mental Patients and Other Inmates provides the initial framework for my analysis. I also consider Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison to further illuminate the relationship between sin/crime and punishment, and Barbara Creed’s The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis to deepen my understanding of wicked women. Each of these scholars offers valuable insights into human behaviors and their consequences

Holy Smoke!

This is a review of Holy Smoke! (1999)

The future of professional work? The rise of the `network form¿ and the decline of discretion

This article explores the implications of `networked¿ and `flexible¿ organisations for the work and skills of professionals. Drawing on material from four different case studies it reviews work that is out-sourced (IT professionals and housing benefit caseworkers), work done by teachers contracted to a temporary employment agency and work done through an inter-firm network (chemical production workers). In each of these cases work that was out-sourced was managed very differently to that which was undertaken in-house, with managerial monitoring replacing and reducing employees¿ discretion. New staff in these networks had fewer skills when hired and were given access to a narrower range of skills than their predecessors. By contrast, the production staff employed on permanent contracts in the inter-firm network were given (and took) significant amounts of responsibility, with positive results for both their skills and the work processes. Despite these results, out-sourcing and sub-contracting are a far more common means of securing flexibility than organisational collaboration and the implications of this for skills is considered

EVALUASI PELAKSANAAN PELATIHAN MEMBUAT MEDIA PRESENTASI INTERAKTIF GENIALLY BAGI GURU SDN 7 BUKIT TUNGGAL

Penelitian ini betujuan untuk melakukan evaluasi terhadap pelaksanaanpelatihan membuat media presentasi interaktif genially menggunakan modelKirkpatrick level 1 dan 2. Metode penelitian menggunakan deskriptif kuantitatifdengan metode sampling jenuh yaitu 25 peserta pelatihan yang merupakan guruSDN 7 Bukit Tunggal. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan pada level reaction, aspekpenyampaian materi rata-rata 85% dengan kategori sangat baik, aspek narasumberrata-rata 87% dengan kategori sangat baik, pada aspek penggunaan fasilitas ratarata83%, pada aspek konsumsi rata-rata 85% dengan kategori sangat baik. Padalevel learning hasil posttest menunjukkan bahwa rata-rata guru menguasai caramembuat materi presentasi interaktif melalui aplikasi genially, hal ini ditunjukkandengan penilaian produk media presentasi yang sudah dibuat oleh guru-guru yangmereka presentasikan satu persatu. Sebagian guru sudah bisa membuat mediapresentasi interaktif dengan tampilan yang sederhana sesuai dengan mata Pelajaranyang mereka ajarkan, Sebagian juga sudah mampu menghasilkan media presentasiinterakif dengan tampilan visual yang menarik dengan mengkombinasikan antarateks, gambar dan video

Molecular and biochemical characterization of pseudomonas putida isolated from bottled uncarbonated mineral drinking water

Pseudomonas putida belongs to a group of opportunistic pathogens that can cause disease in people with weakened or damaged immune systems. Some strains have medical significance, and for most ingestion is not the primary route of infection. If water used by predisposed subjects is contaminated by P. putida, they may become ill. The aim of this work was the biochemical and molecular characterization of strain ST3 of P. putida isolated from non-carbonated bottled drinking water from Jakov Do 4 on Mt. Vlasina. Characterization of P. putida was performed to assess the risk to human health of the indigenous strains present in the water. Biochemical characterization of strains was performed using the manual identification system ID 32 GN (BioMerieux). Identification was obtained using the database identification software ATB System (Bio-Merieux). Molecular characterization was performed by PCR amplification and 16S rDNA "thermal cycling sequencing". Biochemical identification of the strain ST3 was accurate (Id = 99.8%). Comparing the sequences obtained for strain ST3 with NCBI gene bank sequences for 16S rRNA, the highest similarity of our strain (96% identity) with a strain of P. putida, designated as biotype A (gi vertical bar 18076625 vertical bar emb vertical bar AJ308311.1 vertical bar.PPU308311) isolated in New Zealand, was obtained. While comparison with the NCBI collection of all deposited sequences showed that the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain ST3 has very high homology, it is not identical, indicating indirectly that strain ST-3 is an indigenous strain

Early Childhood Science and Engineering: Engaging Platforms for Fostering Domain-General Learning Skills

Early childhood science and engineering education offer a prime context to foster approaches-to-learning (ATL) and executive functioning (EF) by eliciting children’s natural curiosity about the world, providing a unique opportunity to engage children in hands-on learning experiences that promote critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, persistence, and other adaptive domain-general learning skills. Indeed, in any science experiment or engineering problem, children make observations, engage in collaborative conversations with teachers and peers, and think flexibly to come up with predictions or potential solutions to their problem. Inherent to science and engineering is the idea that one learns from initial failures within an iterative trial-and-error process where children practice risk-taking, persistence, tolerance for frustration, and sustaining focus. Unfortunately, science and engineering instruction is typically absent from early childhood classrooms, and particularly so in programs that serve children from low-income families. However, our early science and engineering intervention research shows teachers how to build science and engineering instruction into activities that are already happening in their classrooms, which boosts their confidence and removes some of the stigma around science and engineering. In this paper, we discuss the promise of research that uses early childhood science and engineering experiences as engaging, hands-on, interactive platforms to instill ATL and EF in young children living below the poverty line. We propose that early childhood science and engineering offer a central theme that captures children’s attention and allows for integrated instruction across domain-general (ATL, EF, and social–emotional) and domain-specific (e.g., language, literacy, mathematics, and science) content, allowing for contextualized experiences that make learning more meaningful and captivating for children