Speak\u27st, Art Sound: The Material Voice in Early Modern England

This thesis argues that early moderns conceived of speech as a material phenomenon; voice struck out from bodies into environments. Early modern voices thus participate in what sound studies scholars call the soundscape, which I link to current new materialist and ecological theories of network and assemblage. Within this soundscape, I pay special attention to the role of language as a semantic system of meaning. Current ecological criticism takes for granted the utter “flatness” of ontology, and as such discards the question of human language so central to previous deconstructive and discursive scholarship. My thesis attempts to account for the role of human language in ecological thought by turning to the early modern voice, which blended sonic and semiotic properties. I contend that the early seventeenth century was a liminal moment in the history of language, as it had not yet lost its sonic properties nor yet fully become textualized and representational. Thus, early modern speech embedded the human in its environmental context, without separating it as a discrete or superior entity. The first chapter, on King Lear, situates the early modern voice in the context of new materialist theory, establishing a “posthuman cosmography” in which humans have no pride of place. The next two chapters refine and even challenge the writ-large generality of their predecessor. The second chapter, on The Alchemist, zooms in to the level of the individual, to explore what life might be like for a single person inside this buzzing network. The third chapter grinds an even finer grain, focusing on both the gendered voice and its relation to technological prosthesis in The Duchess of Malfi

An anatomy of change : profiling cohort difference in beliefs and attitudes among Anglicans in England

Conservatism in theological belief, moral values and attitude toward ecclesiastical practices was measured in a sample of 5967 ordained and lay Anglicans in the Church of England. Average scores were compared between those who classed themselves as Anglo-catholic, broad church or evangelical, and by six different age cohorts. Overall, most measures of conservatism showed decline among more recent cohorts, but there were marked differences between traditions. Younger evangelicals showed little or no decline in theological or moral conservatism, and, in the case of Bible beliefs, were more conservative than their older counterparts. In ecclesiastical variables, however, Anglo-catholics were often more conservative and younger evangelicals showed less conservatism than other traditions or older evangelicals. The findings suggest that the divide between traditions is increasing among younger generations mainly because those in Anglo-catholic and broad-church traditions are becoming more liberal on theological or moral matters, whereas evangelicals are maintaining traditional conservative views of theology and morality but becoming less traditional in matters ecclesiastical

Internal consistency reliability and construct validity of the Attitude toward Muslim Proximity Index (AMPI): a measure of social distance

The Attitude toward Muslim Proximity Index (AMPI) is a six-item scale that uses tolerance to different degrees of social distance to assess prejudice towards Muslims. It was tested on 1777 teenage school children from northern England who indicated their religion as either 'Christian' or 'no religion', and demonstrated good internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha = .81). The index was higher among pupils who supported the views of the British National Party and among those who believed that British Muslims should adopt Western culture; but lower among those who knew Muslims or had Muslim friends. The AMPI is a useful measure of Islamophobic attitudes that does not rely on responses to specific events or on detailed knowledge of the Muslim religion

User interaction for visual lifelog retrieval in a virtual environment

Efficient retrieval of lifelog information is an ongoing area of research due to the multifaceted nature, and ever increasing size of lifelog datasets. Previous studies have examined lifelog exploration on conventional hardware platforms, but in this paper we describe a novel approach to lifelog retrieval using virtual reality. The focus of this research is to identify what aspects of lifelog retrieval can be effectively translated from a conventional to a virtual environment and if it provides any benefit to the user. The most widely available lifelog datasets for research are primarily image-based and focus on continuous capture from a first-person perspective. These large image corpora are often enhanced by image processing techniques and various other metadata. Despite the rapidly maturing nature of virtual reality as a platform, there has been very little investigation into user interaction within the context of lifelogging. The experiment outlined in this work seeks to evaluate four different virtual reality user interaction approaches to lifelog retrieval. The prototype system used in this experiment also competed at the Lifelog Search Challenge at ACM ICMR 2018 where it ranked first place

Uncertainty explicit assessment of off-the-shelf software: A Bayesian approach

Assessment of software COTS components is an essential part of component-based software development. Poorly chosen components may lead to solutions of low quality and that are difficult to maintain. The assessment may be based on incomplete knowledge about the COTS component itself and other aspects (e.g. vendor’s credentials, etc.), which may affect the decision of selecting COTS component(s). We argue in favor of assessment methods in which uncertainty is explicitly represented (‘uncertainty explicit’ methods) using probability distributions. We provide details of a Bayesian model, which can be used to capture the uncertainties in the simultaneous assessment of two attributes, thus, also capturing the dependencies that might exist between them. We also provide empirical data from the use of this method for the assessment of off-the-shelf database servers which illustrate the advantages of ‘uncertainty explicit’ methods over conventional methods of COTS component assessment which assume that at the end of the assessment the values of the attributes become known with certainty

Local attitudes toward Apennine brown bears: Insights for conservation issues

Human-carnivore coexistence is a multi-faceted issue that requires an understanding of the diverse attitudes and perspectives of the communities living with large carnivores. To inform initiatives that encourage behaviors in line with conservation goals, we focused on assessing the two components of attitudes (i.e., feelings and beliefs), as well as norms of local communities coexisting with Apennine brown bears (Ursus arctos marsicanus) for a long time. This bear population is under serious extinction risks due to its persistently small population size, which is currently confined to the long-established protected area of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park (PNALM) and its surrounding region in central Italy. We interviewed 1,611 residents in the PNALM to determine attitudes and values toward bears. We found that support for the bear's legal protection was widespread throughout the area, though beliefs about the benefits of conserving bears varied across geographic administrative districts. Our results showed that residents across our study areas liked bears. At the same time, areas that received more benefits from tourism were more strongly associated with positive feelings toward bears. Such findings provide useful information to improve communication efforts of conservation authorities with local communities

Have Anglo-Catholics lost their vision for mission agencies? : an empirical enquiry among newly ordained clergy in Britain

Attitude toward Christian mission agencies was investigated in a sample of 827 Anglican clergy ordained in the UK from 2002 to 2006. The Scale of Attitude Toward Mission Agencies (SATMA) consisted of six items related to the work that agencies do, and whether clergy wished to engage with this work. It had a high internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.80). After controlling for theological liberalism or conservatism, attitudes were most positive among evangelicals and least positive among Anglo-Catholics. Both liberal and conservative Anglo-Catholic clergy showed less positive attitudes toward mission agencies than did other clergy