Yoko Ono's Magical Thinking

In this piece I analyse Yoko Ono's recent artwork Mended Cups and link this to other creative works concerned with grief and mourning

British Columbia Colonial History Conference

Historians and other scholars of early British Columbia marked the 150th anniversary of the colonial foundations of the west coast province with a conference at Fulford Harbour, Salt Spring Island, on the weekend of 9-10 January 1999

The monstrous feminine : media representations of women who commit crime in New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology, Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

Women who have committed crime appear to be portrayed by the media as sick, deviant and/or dangerous and positioned as the monstrous feminine, deviant from natural womanhood. Several syndromes and disorders have been created by the psychological community to explain the ‘abnormal’ behaviour of these women. The New Zealand media engages in the use of stereotypes to frame their stories to position women within these specific discourses which are legitimized by the ‘experts’. This research aims to understand how women who commit crime are represented in the media and how the discourses that maintain the underlying structures of power in society are produced and reproduced through the continuous retelling of a particular narrative that maintains gendered social power relations. This research seeks to understand how media representations of women who have committed a crime are reproduced through discourses of sexual difference. Discourses were analysed using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis to unpack the relationship between psychological knowledge of women’s deficit and media representations of madness. The analysis of 39 articles determined the discourses of women’s madness and badness were common when discussing the reasons for women’s criminal activity. The discourses of madness are based on highly gendered assumptions of what constitutes hegemonic femininity. These discourses are legitimised by the DSM and have become common knowledge via the media. The monstrous feminine is applied to those women who exhibit socially deviant behaviour unacceptable for women and those seen as responsible for the destruction of traditional societal values and going against women’s ‘natural’ maternal instincts. Analysis concluded the discourse of badness is enacted when women cannot be positioned as mad to explain her unfeminine behaviour. ‘Badness’ is apparent when discussing mothers who commit crime. These mothers are positioned as having deviated from the motherhood mandate by not conforming to the moral trajectory of the ‘good’ mother. By merely positioning women as mad or bad because of their failure to conform to traditional gender norms, we are missing the opportunity to help women and address the issues within their lives that led to committing a crime. Without understanding the conditions of women’s lives, the context of women’s offending continues to be rendered invisible, and leaves little opportunity for intervention. The assumptions that inform the construction of the discourses of madness need to be challenged so that women’s criminal behaviour is not masked by assumptions of a deficit biology, and her distress is not pathologised

A Canadian on Horseback: 9 July 1944 Memorialized in Bronze

Canadian and British troops liberated Caen after 33 days of the bloodiest battles of the Normandy campaign. A small but dramatic ceremony in the main square marked the historic first raising of the French flag. But a Canadian artillery officer on horseback made the moment symbolically Canadian too

Priming good parenting : can positive affective priming influence fathers' causal attributions and consequent disciplinary responses for child misbehaviour? : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Clinical Psychology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

This thesis combines affective priming with the cognitive processes and behavioural sequences found in parenting decisions, to explore whether a father’s attributions for child misbehaviour and consequent disciplinary responses can be influenced by a priming intervention. Forty eight fathers of children aged between 5 and 12 years were questioned on their opinions regarding the causes of child behaviour, and how they would choose to respond to or discipline such behaviour, before and following a priming intervention consisting of full-colour images of fathers interacting with their children. These primes differed in content in both emotional valence and the fathering roles depicted dependent upon the group to which participants were randomly assigned. These groups were General Positive, General Negative, Evolutionary Positive, and Evolutionary Negative priming images. Results showed that all research groups were successfully primed, as measured by a word completion task, however consistent and expected changes in attributions for child behaviour and disciplinary choices did not occur due to the priming intervention. Proposed reasons for this include unforeseen priming effects obscuring the main effect, additional corrective cognitive factors altering or obscuring the priming effect, or difficulties with the way the cognitive and behavioural changes were measured. Proposed methods for further exploration in future research regarding how to translate a priming effect into meaningful and consistent change are discussed. Priming as an adjunctive parenting intervention remains an interesting and worthwhile consideration, and ideas around utilisation of this technique are discussed in light of the results of this research

Different track - same destination? exploring the potential of 'Curriculum for Excellence' to improve educational practice in Scotland

This paper provides a commentary on the current opportunities open to policy makers and educators in developing the new national Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) for Scotland. It identifies areas of commonality between educational professionals from different sectors around the notion of curriculum. It explores different interpretations of the concept of curriculum and uses examples from informal education to highlight how youth workers and teachers could develop useful ways of working together. Further, the paper argues that an expression and prioritisation of values within the CfE policy provides the platform on which they can work more closely together in spite of their historically different pedagogical starting points. Ultimately, the paper seeks to convince both sectors that the CfE can be used creatively to offer an enhanced educational experience for young people in Scotland based on equity and social justice. This is an important and current issue for Education in Scotland and it is a debate which needs to be articulated, if we are to succeed in delivering a service which matches the aspirations of our nation and our young people

Creating a Quantum Degenerate Gas of Stable Molecules via Weak Photoassociation

Quantum degenerate molecules represent a new paradigm for fundamental studies and practical applications. Association of already quantum degenerate atoms into molecules provides a crucial shortcut around the difficulty of cooling molecules to ultracold temperatures. Whereas association can be induced with either laser or magnetic fields, photoassociation requires impractical laser intensity to overcome poor overlap between the atom pair and molecular wavefunctions, and experiments are currently restricted to magnetoassociation. Here we model realistic production of a quantum degenerate gas of stable molecules via two-photon photoassociation of Bose-condensed atoms. An adiabatic change of the laser frequency converts the initial atomic condensate almost entirely into stable molecular condensate, even for low-intensity lasers. Results for dipolar LiNa provide an upper bound on the necessary photoassociation laser intensity for alkali-metal atoms ~30 W/cm^2, indicating a feasible path to quantum degenerate molecules beyond magnetoassociation.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, 39 references; published version (essentially