Re-envisioning dance technique pedagogy

This pedagogical practice-based research flows from the dance studio. It explores experiences of learning dance technique with groups of undergraduate and postgraduate students at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. The study is contextually located within the multifaceted discourses of higher education, conservatoire training and contemporary dance techniques. Central to this is the experiences of learners which are considered through three overlapping and concomitant dimensions: engagement with movement materials, relationship with the teacher and the influence of peers. Critical feminist pedagogy provides an overarching theoretical frame through which to critically reflect upon the pedagogical values underpinning transformative learning and educational empowerment as they are experienced in practice. A feminist interpretive ethnographic approach has been employed enabling an inductive process that prioritises subjective and embodied knowing. In this way, the dance technique class is posited as a situated cultural site wherein the teacher/researcher is co-participant. Through the unfolding discussion, a re-envisioning of dance technique pedagogy is developed. Its polymorphic potentialities are explored through the pedagogical priorities of active learning, shared responsibility and interdependent relationships. Thus, learning among students, teacher and peers is reconceptualised thematically, as explorative, comfort(able) and collective. Arising from the research findings, in-depth and intimate insights of dance technique pedagogy are revealed in their richly layered and multidimensional complexity

Leger est aprendre mes fort est arendre;: Wool, Debt and the Dispersal of Pipewell Abbey (1280 - 1330)

has long been known that English Cistercian monasteries often sold their wool in advance to foreign merchants in the late thirteenth century. The abbey of Pipewell in Northamptonshire features in a number of such contracts with Cahorsin merchants. This paper looks again at these contracts in the context of over 200 other such agreements found in the governmental records. Why did Pipewell descend into penury over this fifty year period? This case study demonstrates that the promise of ready cash for their most valuable commodity led such abbots to make ambitious agreements – taking on yet more debt to service existing creditors - that would lead to their eventual bankruptcy.

Advance Contracts for the Sale of Wool in Medieval England; An Undeveloped and Inefficient Market?

While it is commonly believed that derivative instruments are a recent invention, we document the existence of forward contracts for the sale of wool in medieval England around 700 years ago. The contracts were generally entered into by English monasteries, who frequently sold their wool for up to twenty years in advance to mostly foreign and particularly Italian merchants. Employing a unique source of data collected by hand from the historical records, we determine the interest rates implied in these transactions and we also examine the efficiency of the forward and spot markets. The calculated interest rates average around 20%, in accordance with available information concerning the interest rates used in other types of transactions at that time. Perhaps surprisingly, we also find little evidence of informational inefficiencies in these markets.Wood market, forward contracts, market efficinecy, Medieval England, Interest rates

Living on the Edge: welfare and the urban poor in 1930s Beijing

This article examines poverty and welfare provision in early twentieth-century Beijing as dialogue and transaction between the city government and the urban poor. Earlier studies of the Chinese urban have tended to emphasize the material aspects of urban development, and the efforts of planners and city governments to modernize China’s cities, rather than the human experience of the city. This article draws on the extensive archives of the Beijing Municipal Government Social Affairs Bureau to extend our understanding of the experience of poverty and the agency of the poor. The archive confirms that Beijing’s growing and increasingly formalized welfare institutions were designed to discipline the poor as they alleviated poverty. However, the correspondence between applicants for welfare and the Social Affairs Bureau also reveals that the poor often approached these institutions instrumentally and assertively. Recourse to the welfare institute became a livelihood tactic, a claim on the authorities in pursuit of which certain sub-groups within the poor mobilized intangible assets, from social networks to understanding of the intended terms of the system, to sway the terms of their engagement with the authorities in their own favour

Bifurcation and vibration of a surface-coated elastic block under flexure

The behaviour of a surface-coated rectangular, non-linearly elastic block subject to (plane-strain) flexure is investigated in this thesis. We consider a rectangular block of incompressible, isotropic elastic material coated with a thin elastic film on part of its boundary. Initially, the bulk material undergoes a non-homogeneous deformation and the equilibrium of the coated body is examined on the basis of the elastic surface coating theory derived by Steigmann and Ogden (1997a). Incremental displacements are then superimposed on the finitely deformed configuration in order to study possible bifurcation of the deformed block. Numerical bifurcation results pertaining to two particular strain-energy functions (for the bulk material) and a general energy function (for the coating material) are subsequently obtained. These results allow the influence of the surface coating on the bifurcation behaviour of the block to be determined and assessed with reference to corresponding results for an uncoated block. Next, use is made of the dynamic equivalent of the static surface coating theory, developed by Ogden and Steigmann (1999), to establish incremental equations of motion for the coated block. Corresponding incremental governing equations for an uncoated, pre-flexed block then emerge as a special case. The resulting frequency equations are solved numerically, again on specialization of the form of strain-energy function. The numerical vibration results then provide evidence of the effect of surface coating on the dynamic behaviour of the considered coated block relative to the uncoated case. Finally, we turn our attention to the (non-linear) shear responses of bonded elastic bodies. We examine the plane-strain problem of a rectangular compressible isotropic elastic block bonded to two rigid parallel plates. The deformation behaviour of the block is described by applying minimum energy and maximum complementary energy principles to obtain upper and lower bounds on the shear stress-strain relationship. Although maximum and minimum principles are not generally justifiable in non-linear elasticity we show that under certain conditions they are applicable and, for a particular form of strain-energy function, derive explicit energy bounds which we illustrate graphically

The Relation of Social Dominance Orientation to Moral Decision-Making Using a Process Dissociation Approach

Two studies were conducted to investigate the relation between individual differences in Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) and moral inclinations when responding to situations of moral conflict. In Study 1 the correlation between scores on SDO and deontological and utilitarian parameters was investigated. The results showed that SDO was significantly negatively related to deontological parameters, (r(49) = -.354, p = .013), and unrelated to utilitarian parameters (r(49) = -.104, p = .479). In Study 2 we attempted to replicate the results of Study 1 and investigate whether increasing the salience of harm in dilemmas would increase levels of deontological processing, particularly in individuals with lower levels of SDO. The results of Study 2 were mixed. The results of Study 1 were replicated, with scores on SDO being negatively related to the deontological parameter r(143) = -.173, p = .039, and unrelated to the utilitarian parameter, r(143) = -.035, p = .682, but increasing the salience of harm did not differentially affect deontological responses in participants, β = -.191, p = .365. The results of these studies extended the literature on both SDO and moral decision-making, and have implications for who may be best suited for making difficult decisions in the real world

Effects of Virus Infection and Volatiles on Aphid Virus Vector Behavior on Sweetpotato

Sweetpotato is affected by a wide variety of viruses worldwide, which can cause yield losses of up to 90%. Many of these viruses are transmitted by aphids in a non-persistent manner. Non-persistent viruses are acquired and transmitted within minutes, and thus conventional control, such as insecticides, are ineffective. Altering aphid movement and feeding behavior may affect the rate of virus transmission. One potential method to alter aphid behavior is volatile organic compounds (VOC), including volatiles emitted by virus infected plants, plant hormones, and commercial control agents. Aphid movement near sweetpotato fields was monitored to determine trends throughout the growing season. Low vector numbers were recorded through the entire season, consistent with previous research. Volatiles for infected and uninfected sweetpotato were collected to determine what effect virus infection has on volatile emission. Infected plants emitted a greater diversity of volatiles than uninfected plants. The effect of virus infection, as well as volatile compounds methyl jasmonate (MEJA), methyl salicylate (MESA), stylet oil and neem oil, with the potential to alter aphid behavior, were tested. Y-tube and settling assays were performed with green peach aphid (GPA) and cotton aphid (CA). GPA was more attracted to virus infected than uninfected plants, as well as plants and MESA odor. GPA was less attracted to plants and MEJA or neem oil odor than plants alone. Orientation towards volatile sources did not always correspond to settling preference as GPA preferred to settle on uninfected plants and plants treated with neem oil as well as MESA treated plants. CA did not orient towards volatiles or show any settling preference in any treatment. The electrical penetration graph technique (EPG) was performed to determine the effect of headspace volatiles from the four compounds on aphid feeding behavior related to virus transmission on infected and uninfected plants. In all treatments tested, headspace volatiles altered behavior related to virus transmission. However, headspace did not affect virus transmission rates in either aphid in virus transmission assays, suggesting that changes in aphid feeding behavior were not enough to alter transmission efficiency

Life histories and national narratives : remembering occupied Manchuria in post-war China

Recent studies of memory work in China have explored productively the uses of national narratives of war and victimhood, at times supported by personal testimony, in service of a ‘public transcript’ of Party-state legitimacy. However, oral histories of education in Japanese-occupied north-east China, collected by Chinese researchers and published in 2005, hint at more complex relations between story, storyteller and imagined audience. Without challenging established judgements on the occupation itself, these personal histories articulate more nuanced and ambivalent social histories of wartime schooling, suggesting that former students were neither passive victims of occupation nor passive consumers of state-sponsored historical narrative

Song Zheyuan, the Nanjing government and the north china question in Sino-Japanese relations, 1935-1937

The focus of this study is the relationship between the Chinese central government and Song Zheyuan, the key provincial leader of North China, in the period immediately preceding the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the impact of tensions in that relationship on Japan policy. The most urgent task confronting the Chinese government in the late 1930s was to secure an equitable and formally-negotiated settlement of outstanding questions with the Tokyo government. The efforts of the Nanjing government are examined in terms of the divisions within the government and in the context of the public debate on Japan policy which was extended to cover fundamental questions of the regime's diplomatic maturity and the function of diplomacy in the new state. However, the Sino-Japanese question was not purely a diplomatic issue. Tensions between central and northern regional authorities and continuing provincial independence combined with persistent political and military interventions by the Japanese armies in North China to undermine the initiatives of the centre as the lack of an effective central Japan policy eroded regional confidence in the centre. By 1935 Nanjing's control in the North was breaking down and the initiative in contacts with Japan in the region passed to provincial leaders: Song Zheyuan emerged as a key figure in relations with Japan. In 1935-7 Song occupied all the significant political and military offices in Hebei and Chaha'er provinces. Nanjing was entirely dependent on Song for the defence of the North, yet Song remained ambivalent towards Nanjing and Japan, berating the central authorities for their 'abandonment' of the North while maintaining close contact with the Japanese military. While he had no formal role in foreign affairs, his informal function in the relations with Japan demands closer attention