Madness and narrative understanding: A comparison of two female firsthand narratives of madness in the pre and post enlightenment periods.

This study uses a narrative analytic approach to explore the similarities and differences between pre-Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment firsthand accounts of madness in order to answer the question; what is the relationship between madness, narrative, understanding, identity and recovery? Drawing on the work of Foucault, the research traces the historical and cultural development of conceptualisations of reason and unreason, the rise of psychiatry and the marginalisation of the voice of madness. I argue that this marginalisation is continued in narrative research where the focus is on the stories of the physically ill, rather than madness. The narrative method provides a means of giving space to these marginalised voices and it is Bakhtin¿s constructs of dialogicism, polyphony, unfinalizability and the chronotope that provide the tools for the narrative analysis of two female English writers; Margery Kempe and Mary Barnes. The analysis highlights three critical issues in relation to firsthand narratives of madness. First, the blurred boundaries between madness and mysticism and the role of metaphor in understanding distressing experiences. Second, the complex, multi-dimensional nature of subjective timespace that challenges the linear assumptions underlying both narrative and recovery, which, I argue, demands a radical reconceptualisation of both constructs. Third, the liminal social positioning within the analysed accounts is closely related to Bakhtin¿s notion of unfinalizability, a form of being that enables the search for meaning and the transformation of the self. Insights can be gained from this research that may place stories and understanding central in contemporary healthcare.School of Health Studies at the University of Bradford

An open-source database for the synthesis of soil radiocarbon data: International Soil Radiocarbon Database (ISRaD) version 1.0

Radiocarbon is a critical constraint on our estimates of the timescales of soil carbon cycling that can aid in identifying mechanisms of carbon stabilization and destabilization and improve the forecast of soil carbon response to management or environmental change. Despite the wealth of soil radiocarbon data that have been reported over the past 75 years, the ability to apply these data to global-scale questions is limited by our capacity to synthesize and compare measurements generated using a variety of methods. Here, we present the International Soil Radiocarbon Database (ISRaD; http://soilradiocarbon.org, last access: 16 December 2019), an open-source archive of soil data that include reported measurements from bulk soils, distinct soil carbon pools isolated in the laboratory by a variety of soil fractionation methods, samples of soil gas or water collected interstitially from within an intact soil profile, CO2 gas isolated from laboratory soil incubations, and fluxes collected in situ from a soil profile. The core of ISRaD is a relational database structured around individual datasets (entries) and organized hierarchically to report soil radiocarbon data, measured at different physical and temporal scales as well as other soil or environmental properties that may also be measured and may assist with interpretation and context. Anyone may contribute their own data to the database by entering it into the ISRaD template and subjecting it to quality assurance protocols. ISRaD can be accessed through (1) a web-based interface, (2) an R package (ISRaD), or (3) direct access to code and data through the GitHub repository, which hosts both code and data. The design of ISRaD allows for participants to become directly involved in the management, design, and application of ISRaD data. The synthesized dataset is available in two forms: the original data as reported by the authors of the datasets and an enhanced dataset that includes ancillary geospatial data calculated within the ISRaD framework. ISRaD also provides data management tools in the ISRaD-R package that provide a starting point for data analysis; as an open-source project, the broader soil community is invited and encouraged to add data, tools, and ideas for improvement. As a whole, ISRaD provides resources to aid our evaluation of soil dynamics across a range of spatial and temporal scales. The ISRaD v1.0 dataset is archived and freely available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2613911 (Lawrence et al., 2019).Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry; European Research CouncilEuropean Research Council (ERC) [695101]; USGS Land Change Science mission area; US Department of AgricultureUnited States Department of Agriculture (USDA) [2018-67003-27935]; US Geological Survey Powell Center for the working group on Soil Carbon Storage and FeedbacksOpen access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Madness, Narrative Loss and Identity Making

This paper explores the relationship between madness and identity making, focussing on the impact of the loss of language. In this exploration, I shall argue that in times of distress or trauma, language eludes us, but this is not a loss of self as is often attributed to so-called psychotic states such as schizophrenia, rather it is a loss of articulation. This is an important distinction that leads to the paper’s central argument; that silence does not necessarily equate to narrative loss. Using the case of Mary Barnes, I shall illustrate how silence and actions both express and transform the self in ways that are narratively meaningful, suggesting that we need to move beyond conventional definitions and forms of narrative, looking instead for alternative means of narrative expression

Margery Kempe: Madwoman or Mystic – A Narrative Approach to the Representation of Madness and Mysticism in Medieval England

Historically, the boundaries between madness and mysticism have been characterised by fluidity. However, since the emergence of psychiatry in the 1800s, attempts have been made to place a firm distinction between the two experiences. In our increasingly Western, secularised society, experiences of mysticism have become marginalised outside of their religious context and in some cases, pathologised within the classificatory systems that construct mental illness. In this paper, I want to examine this contested boundary by discussing my analysis of a medieval woman’s experience of both madness and mysticism. I shall argue that rather than this text being interpreted as an early narrative of madness, it is primarily an attempted hagiography, that is a narrative of a saint's life