Luxury and corruption: a literary and cultural study, 1800-1875

This thesis explores the connection between luxury and corruption – an eighteenth-century axiom – in nineteenth-century literature and culture. Literary critics have mostly interpreted nineteenth-century luxury in terms of material culture: fetishised commodity (Andrew Miller) or, an example of recent reaction to this approach, historical metonym (Freedgood). There is little interest in broader understandings, as if a concept held responsible for the downfall of civilizations disappeared overnight. My own work aims to open out our sense of its nineteenth-century meanings by extending Sekora’s intellectual history of luxury (1977), which concludes with Smollett, and Berry’s politically focused study (1994), to discover what happened between the age of luxury as pathology and fall and nineteenth-century fin-de-siècle notions of luxury as biological degeneration and decadence. This study is structured around five key novels and corresponding themes that reveal nineteenth-century attitudes to luxury: Austen’s Mansfield Park, 1814 (slavery), Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, 1848 (temperance), Gaskell’s Mary Barton, 1848 (prostitution), and Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, 1865 with Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, 1875 (national decline). Combining an historicist approach with close reading, the thesis foregrounds political and economic ideas, from Ferguson’s classical republicanism to Malthus’s population theory. It attends closely to nuanced language use in representing human wants: valorised ‘necessities’, moralised ‘luxuries’, sometimes evasive ‘comforts’ and ‘refinements’. Despite luxury’s apparent rehabilitation in an economically liberal age, persisting concerns are found regarding its corruption of individuals and nations, especially at the beginning and towards the end of the nineteenth century, when national decline was more feared. This thesis finds a liberty-slavery dichotomy as the nineteenth-century luxury issue, whether manifested negatively – other-enslavement to procure luxury, self-enslavement to luxurious appetites, or national enslavement caused by luxury-led emasculation and political decay – or positively – free trade, affirmation of acquisitive desire or celebration of luxurious excess as antidote to rigid control

Moving Image Manuscripts and Access: A Content Analysis

This study is a content analysis that investigates moving image access on the websites of moving image, academic, and local archives. This study was performed by analyzing the websites of twenty archives, and the findings of this study indicate moving image archives more frequently display and promote audiovisual materials than academic and local archives. This study shows that archivists should look outside of traditional archival access, description, and promotional methods when displaying audiovisuals. It also shows that archivists should not forget about basic principles of access, such as providing tutorials, manuals, guides, and explanations of restrictions on moving image materials

Luxury and corruption: a literary and cultural study, 1800-1875

This thesis explores the connection between luxury and corruption – an eighteenth-century axiom – in nineteenth-century literature and culture. Literary critics have mostly interpreted nineteenth-century luxury in terms of material culture: fetishised commodity (Andrew Miller) or, an example of recent reaction to this approach, historical metonym (Freedgood). There is little interest in broader understandings, as if a concept held responsible for the downfall of civilizations disappeared overnight. My own work aims to open out our sense of its nineteenth-century meanings by extending Sekora’s intellectual history of luxury (1977), which concludes with Smollett, and Berry’s politically focused study (1994), to discover what happened between the age of luxury as pathology and fall and nineteenth-century fin-de-siècle notions of luxury as biological degeneration and decadence. This study is structured around five key novels and corresponding themes that reveal nineteenth-century attitudes to luxury: Austen’s Mansfield Park, 1814 (slavery), Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, 1848 (temperance), Gaskell’s Mary Barton, 1848 (prostitution), and Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, 1865 with Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, 1875 (national decline). Combining an historicist approach with close reading, the thesis foregrounds political and economic ideas, from Ferguson’s classical republicanism to Malthus’s population theory. It attends closely to nuanced language use in representing human wants: valorised ‘necessities’, moralised ‘luxuries’, sometimes evasive ‘comforts’ and ‘refinements’. Despite luxury’s apparent rehabilitation in an economically liberal age, persisting concerns are found regarding its corruption of individuals and nations, especially at the beginning and towards the end of the nineteenth century, when national decline was more feared. This thesis finds a liberty-slavery dichotomy as the nineteenth-century luxury issue, whether manifested negatively – other-enslavement to procure luxury, self-enslavement to luxurious appetites, or national enslavement caused by luxury-led emasculation and political decay – or positively – free trade, affirmation of acquisitive desire or celebration of luxurious excess as antidote to rigid control

An assessment of high touch object cleaning thoroughness using a fluorescent marker in two Australian hospitals

An Unassigned Group, An Unassigned DepartmentFull Tex

Reliability of the Lateral Reach Test in People with Unilateral Transfemoral Amputations

Lateral reach testing has been established as useful in quantifying stability and fall-risk for older populations without limb loss,1 and has potential for providing useful information about fall-risk, recovery, and rehabilitation of individuals after unilateral trans-femoral amputation. Investigators sought to determine the feasibility and reliability of the Lateral Reach Test (LRT) in people with unilateral trans-femoral amputations. Nine individuals, aged 20-68, with a unilateral trans-femoral amputation were recruited for this study. Two females and seven males participated, and the average height and weight for the group was 167cm and 76kg, respectively. Three participants had right trans-femoral amputations while six had left trans-femoral amputations. Participants were over 18 years old, were currently using a lower-limb prothesis for walking and were able to walk independently 50 meters without help from others. Exclusion criteria included history of low back pain surgery, bilateral leg pain, radiological/clinical diagnosis of spinal stenosis, radiological/clinical diagnosis of structural scoliosis, spinal malignancy, spinal infection, shooting pain down the leg, allergy to adhesive and current involvement in an insurance claim or litigation relating to back pain. Participants stood on a dual-belt split treadmill instrumented with Bertec force plates, with an overhead harness for safety. Each foot was placed on a force plate. Participants reached out laterally with a closed fist, horizontally displacing a marker on a meter stick. In order for the trial to be counted, the participant had to successfully return to the original standing position without any assistance. Testing was completed twice, at least one week apart. The average of three measures for each side was used for analysis. Reliability measurement consisted of comparing the distance reached on each day. The intra-rater ICC was 0.86 when the participant reached to the amputated side. The intra-rater ICC was 0.96 when the participant reached to the non-amputated side. There is no significant difference between mean distance reach to the amputated side compared to the non-amputated side. The lateral reach test has excellent reliability and was found to be fast and easy to administer in this population. Further studies are needed with regard to the test’s validity. The Lateral Reach Test is reliable can be carried out easily and quickly in a clinical setting in persons with a transfemoral amputation. It may be a useful assessment tool for balance and mobility to improve quality of life in this population

The Evolution and Growth of the Eco-Community Psychology Conferences

In the 1960s and 1970s, community psychologists argued for shifting traditional approaches of treating mental illness (e.g. institutionalization, psychotherapy, etc.) toward prevention and more active involvement through community interventions (Bennett et al., 1966). In light of these events, researchers and students committed to the emergent field of community psychology developed several channels to exchange resources and provide support among one another over the past decades. This paper describes the annual Ecological Community Psychology Conference (Eco), which was created by professors and students in 1978, as a vehicle to promote exchanges of ideas and support among community psychology graduate students, community activists, and academics

The Evolution and Growth of the Eco-Community Psychology Conferences

In the 1960s and 1970s, community psychologists argued for shifting traditional approaches of treating mental illness (e.g. institutionalization, psychotherapy, etc.) toward prevention and more active involvement through community interventions (Bennett et al., 1966). In light of these events, researchers and students committed to the emergent field of community psychology developed several channels to exchange resources and provide support among one another over the past decades. This paper describes the annual Ecological Community Psychology Conference (Eco), which was created by professors and students in 1978, as a vehicle to promote exchanges of ideas and support among community psychology graduate students, community activists, and academics