Emily Dickinson\u27s Echology: A Listener\u27s Reconceptualization of Citizenship, Consciousness, and the World

What I call Emily Dickinson’s “echology” combines the terms “echo” and “ecology” to understand how Dickinson’s work echoes – and is an echo – of the world and how, consequently, her work resides not just in her handwritten documents and their publication in various editions but in an ecology that’s tied to the earth that hosted her, the air that faced her, and the sea kept her listening. To assess the critical value of Dickinson’s echology, this dissertation begins by apprehending how the story of the echo is a story about sound masking, specifically about how the echo that is an acoustic phenomenon has been masked by the Echo that is the nymph in mythology, which parallels how the echo that is a responsive interaction has been masked by the Echo that is a repeatable broadcast in and beyond mythology. With the masking of the echo by the Echo begun in mythology has come the masking of being by Being in philosophy and the masking of voice by Voice in lyric poetry, and while all these maskings have upheld the role of the speaking subject in western culture, they have also fashioned the world into a reflector of humans. The enduring popularity of Dickinson’s work is an occasion to go back to the story of the echo and approach it through perception rather than narrative because perception in her echology can, I argue, turn the inevitable path from Echo to Being to Voice into the ethical path from voice to being to echo. In chapter one, the democratic Voice of national citizenship unmasks a democratizing voice of earthen citizenship, and so citizenship itself is reconceptualized. In chapter two, the cognitive Being of sovereign consciousness unmasks the embodied being of shared consciousness, and so consciousness itself is reconceptualized. And in chapter three, the Echo of the world speakable through human nature unmasks the echo of the world speakable at the expense of human nature, and so the world itself is reconceptualized. Contextualized by the theories of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida and in conversation with nineteenth-century pieces by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, John Tyndall, Edward Hitchcock, and Asa Gray, these un-maskings in Dickinson’s echology esteem the role of the listening subject over the speaking subject in western culture even as they refashion humans as reflectors of the world and not vice versa. Dickinson’s echology is an opportunity to read her work and listen to the range of human, nonhuman, and nonliving subjects with whom she shared a vast sonic space – one rendered as an acoustic state of radical belonging that yet remains open to everything outside of it, especially the mystery of connection without belonging. While the chapters remain focused on the reconceptualization of citizenship, consciousness, and the world, the conclusion considers how the elements of earth, air, and sea make these reconceptualizations possible and bring our attention to fire as the element in human hands and in the lyric poem as a product not just of this fire but of the balance sought between fire, earth, air, and sea

Mandolin Engine

Mandolin Engine is a collection of lyrical poems, mostly translations of dreams or those dream-like moments when sensation, memory, and meditation converge. In these poems, what happens always seems to ride the coattails of what the dream or moment feels like. So the language lives on the verge of surrealism; similes quest for immediacy and accuracy, coughing up metaphors---especially ones that love impossibility, like the mandolin engine. Interested in those hours after the town is painted red and before sunrise brags, this work exists in the solace of intimate landscapes---those of both the natural world and of emotion. The engaged sensibility constantly desires and reconsiders precision with beauty

Development of a Model of Hemispheric Hypodensity (“Big Black Brain”)

Subdural hematoma (SDH) is the most common finding after abusive head trauma (AHT). Hemispheric hypodensity (HH) is a radiological indicator of severe brain damage that encompasses multiple vascular territories, and may develop in the hemisphere(s) underlying the SDH. In some instances where the SDH is predominantly unilateral, the widespread damage is unilateral underlying the SDH. To date, no animal model has successfully replicated this pattern of injury. We combined escalating severities of the injuries and insults commonly associated with HH including SDH, impact, mass effect, seizures, apnea, and hypoventilation to create an experimental model of HH in piglets aged 1 week (comparable to human infants) to 1 month (comparable to human toddlers). Unilateral HH evolved over 24 h when kainic acid was applied ipsilateral to the SDH to induce seizures. Pathological examination revealed a hypoxic-ischemic injury-type pattern with vasogenic edema through much of the cortical ribbon with relative sparing of deep gray matter. The percentage of the hemisphere that was damaged was greater on the ipsilateral versus contralateral side and was positively correlated with SDH area and estimated seizure duration. Further studies are needed to parse out the pathophysiology of this injury and to determine if multiple injuries and insults act synergistically to induce a metabolic mismatch or if the mechanism of trauma induces severe seizures that drive this distinctive pattern of injury

Blood pressure response to treatment of obese vs non-obese adults with sleep apnea.

To access publisher's full text version of this article click on the hyperlink belowMany patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), but not all, have a reduction in blood pressure (BP) with positive airway pressure (PAP) treatment. Our objective was to determine whether the BP response following PAP treatment is related to obesity. A total of 188 adults with OSA underwent 24-hour BP monitoring and 24-hour urinary norepinephrine collection at baseline. Obesity was assessed by waist circumference, body mass index, and abdominal visceral fat volume. Participants adherent to PAP treatment were reassessed after 4 months. Primary outcomes were 24-hour mean arterial pressure (MAP) and 24-hour urinary norepinephrine level. Obstructive sleep apnea participants had a significant reduction in 24-hour MAP following PAP treatment (-1.22 [95% CI: -2.38, -0.06] mm Hg; P = .039). No significant correlations were present with any of the 3 obesity measures for BP or urinary norepinephrine measures at baseline in all OSA participants or for changes in BP measures in participants adherent to PAP treatment. Changes in BP measures following treatment were not correlated with baseline or change in urinary norepinephrine. Similar results were obtained when BP or urinary norepinephrine measures were compared between participants dichotomized using the sex-specific median of each obesity measure. Greater reductions in urinary norepinephrine were correlated with higher waist circumference (rho = -0.21, P = .037), with a greater decrease from baseline in obese compared to non-obese participants (-6.26 [-8.82, -3.69] vs -2.14 [-4.63, 0.35] ng/mg creatinine; P = .027). The results indicate that the BP response to PAP treatment in adults with OSA is not related to obesity or urinary norepinephrine levels.United States Department of Health & Human Services National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA Icelandic Research Fun