18 results
Chapter 13 - Blood
- from Part III - Old Materialisms
- Edited by Lindsay V. Reckson, Haverford College, Pennsylvania
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- Book:
- American Literature in Transition, 1876–1910
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- 24 August 2022
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- 18 August 2022, pp 245-262
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Summary
Blood has long been a signifier as well as a substance. As such, it discloses historical changes in the way language conceptualizes life – in particular, the shared life that is human kinship. A scene from Joel Chandler Harris’s novel Gabriel Tolliver (1902) captures with vivid precision one of the postbellum transformations of the trope of blood. Set in the troubled era of US Reconstruction, the scene begins when white leaders of a local Union League meet with Black parishioners in a church in Georgia in hopes of building a new political alliance. But the meeting is soon interrupted by thirteen white-robed riders on horseback, a show of force by the local Ku Klux Klan. At first the riders circle the church in a menacing silence. When the terrified Black parishioners finally flee the rustic church, the riders fire pistols and repeatedly chant the word “blood.” In this moment of high drama, “blood” is deployed as a complex speech act, at once a threat of violence (blood as substance) and an assertion of racial identity (blood as signifier).
Economic change after the agricultural revolution in Southeast Asia?
- Charlotte L. King, R. Alexander Bentley, Charles Higham, Nancy Tayles, Una Strand Viðarsdóttir, Robert Layton, Colin G. Macpherson, Geoff Nowell
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Three prehistoric sites in the Upper Mun River Valley of north-eastern Thailand have provided a detailed chronological succession comprising 12 occupation phases. These represent occupation spanning 2300 years, from initial settlement in the Neolithic (seventeenth century BC) through to the Iron Age, ending in the seventh century AD with the foundation of early states. The precise chronology in place in the Upper Mun River Valley makes it possible to examine changes in social organisation, technology, agriculture and demography against a background of climatic change. In this area the evidence for subsistence has been traditionally drawn from the biological remains recovered from occupation and mortuary contexts. This paper presents the results of carbon isotope analysis to identify and explain changes in subsistence over time and between sites, before comparing the results with two sites of the Sakon Nakhon Basin, located 230km to the north-east, to explore the possibility of regional differences.
Contributors
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- By Rose Teteki Abbey, K. C. Abraham, David Tuesday Adamo, LeRoy H. Aden, Efrain Agosto, Victor Aguilan, Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, Charanjit Kaur AjitSingh, Dorothy B E A Akoto, Giuseppe Alberigo, Daniel E. Albrecht, Ruth Albrecht, Daniel O. Aleshire, Urs Altermatt, Anand Amaladass, Michael Amaladoss, James N. Amanze, Lesley G. Anderson, Thomas C. Anderson, Victor Anderson, Hope S. Antone, María Pilar Aquino, Paula Arai, Victorio Araya Guillén, S. Wesley Ariarajah, Ellen T. Armour, Brett Gregory Armstrong, Atsuhiro Asano, Naim Stifan Ateek, Mahmoud Ayoub, John Alembillah Azumah, Mercedes L. García Bachmann, Irena Backus, J. Wayne Baker, Mieke Bal, Lewis V. Baldwin, William Barbieri, António Barbosa da Silva, David Basinger, Bolaji Olukemi Bateye, Oswald Bayer, Daniel H. Bays, Rosalie Beck, Nancy Elizabeth Bedford, Guy-Thomas Bedouelle, Chorbishop Seely Beggiani, Wolfgang Behringer, Christopher M. Bellitto, Byard Bennett, Harold V. Bennett, Teresa Berger, Miguel A. Bernad, Henley Bernard, Alan E. Bernstein, Jon L. Berquist, Johannes Beutler, Ana María Bidegain, Matthew P. Binkewicz, Jennifer Bird, Joseph Blenkinsopp, Dmytro Bondarenko, Paulo Bonfatti, Riet en Pim Bons-Storm, Jessica A. Boon, Marcus J. Borg, Mark Bosco, Peter C. Bouteneff, François Bovon, William D. Bowman, Paul S. Boyer, David Brakke, Richard E. Brantley, Marcus Braybrooke, Ian Breward, Ênio José da Costa Brito, Jewel Spears Brooker, Johannes Brosseder, Nicholas Canfield Read Brown, Robert F. Brown, Pamela K. Brubaker, Walter Brueggemann, Bishop Colin O. Buchanan, Stanley M. Burgess, Amy Nelson Burnett, J. Patout Burns, David B. Burrell, David Buttrick, James P. Byrd, Lavinia Byrne, Gerado Caetano, Marcos Caldas, Alkiviadis Calivas, William J. Callahan, Salvatore Calomino, Euan K. Cameron, William S. Campbell, Marcelo Ayres Camurça, Daniel F. Caner, Paul E. Capetz, Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi, Patrick W. Carey, Barbara Carvill, Hal Cauthron, Subhadra Mitra Channa, Mark D. Chapman, James H. Charlesworth, Kenneth R. Chase, Chen Zemin, Luciano Chianeque, Philip Chia Phin Yin, Francisca H. Chimhanda, Daniel Chiquete, John T. Chirban, Soobin Choi, Robert Choquette, Mita Choudhury, Gerald Christianson, John Chryssavgis, Sejong Chun, Esther Chung-Kim, Charles M. A. Clark, Elizabeth A. Clark, Sathianathan Clarke, Fred Cloud, John B. Cobb, W. Owen Cole, John A Coleman, John J. Collins, Sylvia Collins-Mayo, Paul K. Conkin, Beth A. Conklin, Sean Connolly, Demetrios J. Constantelos, Michael A. Conway, Paula M. Cooey, Austin Cooper, Michael L. Cooper-White, Pamela Cooper-White, L. William Countryman, Sérgio Coutinho, Pamela Couture, Shannon Craigo-Snell, James L. Crenshaw, David Crowner, Humberto Horacio Cucchetti, Lawrence S. Cunningham, Elizabeth Mason Currier, Emmanuel Cutrone, Mary L. Daniel, David D. Daniels, Robert Darden, Rolf Darge, Isaiah Dau, Jeffry C. Davis, Jane Dawson, Valentin Dedji, John W. de Gruchy, Paul DeHart, Wendy J. Deichmann Edwards, Miguel A. De La Torre, George E. Demacopoulos, Thomas de Mayo, Leah DeVun, Beatriz de Vasconcellos Dias, Dennis C. Dickerson, John M. Dillon, Luis Miguel Donatello, Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev, Susanna Drake, Jonathan A. Draper, N. Dreher Martin, Otto Dreydoppel, Angelyn Dries, A. J. Droge, Francis X. D'Sa, Marilyn Dunn, Nicole Wilkinson Duran, Rifaat Ebied, Mark J. Edwards, William H. Edwards, Leonard H. Ehrlich, Nancy L. Eiesland, Martin Elbel, J. Harold Ellens, Stephen Ellingson, Marvin M. Ellison, Robert Ellsberg, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Eldon Jay Epp, Peter C. Erb, Tassilo Erhardt, Maria Erling, Noel Leo Erskine, Gillian R. Evans, Virginia Fabella, Michael A. Fahey, Edward Farley, Margaret A. Farley, Wendy Farley, Robert Fastiggi, Seena Fazel, Duncan S. Ferguson, Helwar Figueroa, Paul Corby Finney, Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, Thomas E. FitzGerald, John R. Fitzmier, Marie Therese Flanagan, Sabina Flanagan, Claude Flipo, Ronald B. Flowers, Carole Fontaine, David Ford, Mary Ford, Stephanie A. Ford, Jim Forest, William Franke, Robert M. Franklin, Ruth Franzén, Edward H. Friedman, Samuel Frouisou, Lorelei F. Fuchs, Jojo M. Fung, Inger Furseth, Richard R. Gaillardetz, Brandon Gallaher, China Galland, Mark Galli, Ismael García, Tharscisse Gatwa, Jean-Marie Gaudeul, Luis María Gavilanes del Castillo, Pavel L. Gavrilyuk, Volney P. Gay, Metropolitan Athanasios Geevargis, Kondothra M. George, Mary Gerhart, Simon Gikandi, Maurice Gilbert, Michael J. Gillgannon, Verónica Giménez Beliveau, Terryl Givens, Beth Glazier-McDonald, Philip Gleason, Menghun Goh, Brian Golding, Bishop Hilario M. Gomez, Michelle A. Gonzalez, Donald K. Gorrell, Roy Gottfried, Tamara Grdzelidze, Joel B. Green, Niels Henrik Gregersen, Cristina Grenholm, Herbert Griffiths, Eric W. Gritsch, Erich S. Gruen, Christoffer H. Grundmann, Paul H. Gundani, Jon P. Gunnemann, Petre Guran, Vidar L. Haanes, Jeremiah M. Hackett, Getatchew Haile, Douglas John Hall, Nicholas Hammond, Daphne Hampson, Jehu J. Hanciles, Barry Hankins, Jennifer Haraguchi, Stanley S. Harakas, Anthony John Harding, Conrad L. Harkins, J. William Harmless, Marjory Harper, Amir Harrak, Joel F. Harrington, Mark W. Harris, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Van A. Harvey, R. Chris Hassel, Jione Havea, Daniel Hawk, Diana L. Hayes, Leslie Hayes, Priscilla Hayner, S. Mark Heim, Simo Heininen, Richard P. Heitzenrater, Eila Helander, David Hempton, Scott H. Hendrix, Jan-Olav Henriksen, Gina Hens-Piazza, Carter Heyward, Nicholas J. Higham, David Hilliard, Norman A. Hjelm, Peter C. Hodgson, Arthur Holder, M. Jan Holton, Dwight N. Hopkins, Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, Po-Ho Huang, James Hudnut-Beumler, Jennifer S. Hughes, Leonard M. Hummel, Mary E. Hunt, Laennec Hurbon, Mark Hutchinson, Susan E. Hylen, Mary Beth Ingham, H. Larry Ingle, Dale T. Irvin, Jon Isaak, Paul John Isaak, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Hans Raun Iversen, Margaret C. Jacob, Arthur James, Maria Jansdotter-Samuelsson, David Jasper, Werner G. Jeanrond, Renée Jeffery, David Lyle Jeffrey, Theodore W. Jennings, David H. Jensen, Robin Margaret Jensen, David Jobling, Dale A. Johnson, Elizabeth A. Johnson, Maxwell E. Johnson, Sarah Johnson, Mark D. Johnston, F. Stanley Jones, James William Jones, John R. Jones, Alissa Jones Nelson, Inge Jonsson, Jan Joosten, Elizabeth Judd, Mulambya Peggy Kabonde, Robert Kaggwa, Sylvester Kahakwa, Isaac Kalimi, Ogbu U. Kalu, Eunice Kamaara, Wayne C. Kannaday, Musimbi Kanyoro, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Frank Kaufmann, Léon Nguapitshi Kayongo, Richard Kearney, Alice A. Keefe, Ralph Keen, Catherine Keller, Anthony J. Kelly, Karen Kennelly, Kathi Lynn Kern, Fergus Kerr, Edward Kessler, George Kilcourse, Heup Young Kim, Kim Sung-Hae, Kim Yong-Bock, Kim Yung Suk, Richard King, Thomas M. King, Robert M. Kingdon, Ross Kinsler, Hans G. Kippenberg, Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Clifton Kirkpatrick, Leonid Kishkovsky, Nadieszda Kizenko, Jeffrey Klaiber, Hans-Josef Klauck, Sidney Knight, Samuel Kobia, Robert Kolb, Karla Ann Koll, Heikki Kotila, Donald Kraybill, Philip D. W. Krey, Yves Krumenacker, Jeffrey Kah-Jin Kuan, Simanga R. Kumalo, Peter Kuzmic, Simon Shui-Man Kwan, Kwok Pui-lan, André LaCocque, Stephen E. Lahey, John Tsz Pang Lai, Emiel Lamberts, Armando Lampe, Craig Lampe, Beverly J. Lanzetta, Eve LaPlante, Lizette Larson-Miller, Ariel Bybee Laughton, Leonard Lawlor, Bentley Layton, Robin A. Leaver, Karen Lebacqz, Archie Chi Chung Lee, Marilyn J. Legge, Hervé LeGrand, D. L. LeMahieu, Raymond Lemieux, Bill J. Leonard, Ellen M. Leonard, Outi Leppä, Jean Lesaulnier, Nantawan Boonprasat Lewis, Henrietta Leyser, Alexei Lidov, Bernard Lightman, Paul Chang-Ha Lim, Carter Lindberg, Mark R. Lindsay, James R. Linville, James C. Livingston, Ann Loades, David Loades, Jean-Claude Loba-Mkole, Lo Lung Kwong, Wati Longchar, Eleazar López, David W. Lotz, Andrew Louth, Robin W. Lovin, William Luis, Frank D. Macchia, Diarmaid N. J. MacCulloch, Kirk R. MacGregor, Marjory A. MacLean, Donald MacLeod, Tomas S. Maddela, Inge Mager, Laurenti Magesa, David G. Maillu, Fortunato Mallimaci, Philip Mamalakis, Kä Mana, Ukachukwu Chris Manus, Herbert Robinson Marbury, Reuel Norman Marigza, Jacqueline Mariña, Antti Marjanen, Luiz C. L. Marques, Madipoane Masenya (ngwan'a Mphahlele), Caleb J. D. Maskell, Steve Mason, Thomas Massaro, Fernando Matamoros Ponce, András Máté-Tóth, Odair Pedroso Mateus, Dinis Matsolo, Fumitaka Matsuoka, John D'Arcy May, Yelena Mazour-Matusevich, Theodore Mbazumutima, John S. McClure, Christian McConnell, Lee Martin McDonald, Gary B. McGee, Thomas McGowan, Alister E. McGrath, Richard J. McGregor, John A. McGuckin, Maud Burnett McInerney, Elsie Anne McKee, Mary B. McKinley, James F. McMillan, Ernan McMullin, Kathleen E. McVey, M. Douglas Meeks, Monica Jyotsna Melanchthon, Ilie Melniciuc-Puica, Everett Mendoza, Raymond A. Mentzer, William W. Menzies, Ina Merdjanova, Franziska Metzger, Constant J. Mews, Marvin Meyer, Carol Meyers, Vasile Mihoc, Gunner Bjerg Mikkelsen, Maria Inêz de Castro Millen, Clyde Lee Miller, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Alexander Mirkovic, Paul Misner, Nozomu Miyahira, R. W. L. Moberly, Gerald Moede, Aloo Osotsi Mojola, Sunanda Mongia, Rebeca Montemayor, James Moore, Roger E. Moore, Craig E. Morrison O.Carm, Jeffry H. Morrison, Keith Morrison, Wilson J. Moses, Tefetso Henry Mothibe, Mokgethi Motlhabi, Fulata Moyo, Henry Mugabe, Jesse Ndwiga Kanyua Mugambi, Peggy Mulambya-Kabonde, Robert Bruce Mullin, Pamela Mullins Reaves, Saskia Murk Jansen, Heleen L. Murre-Van den Berg, Augustine Musopole, Isaac M. T. Mwase, Philomena Mwaura, Cecilia Nahnfeldt, Anne Nasimiyu Wasike, Carmiña Navia Velasco, Thulani Ndlazi, Alexander Negrov, James B. Nelson, David G. Newcombe, Carol Newsom, Helen J. Nicholson, George W. E. Nickelsburg, Tatyana Nikolskaya, Damayanthi M. A. Niles, Bertil Nilsson, Nyambura Njoroge, Fidelis Nkomazana, Mary Beth Norton, Christian Nottmeier, Sonene Nyawo, Anthère Nzabatsinda, Edward T. Oakes, Gerald O'Collins, Daniel O'Connell, David W. Odell-Scott, Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Kathleen O'Grady, Oyeronke Olajubu, Thomas O'Loughlin, Dennis T. Olson, J. Steven O'Malley, Cephas N. Omenyo, Muriel Orevillo-Montenegro, César Augusto Ornellas Ramos, Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, Kenan B. Osborne, Carolyn Osiek, Javier Otaola Montagne, Douglas F. Ottati, Anna May Say Pa, Irina Paert, Jerry G. Pankhurst, Aristotle Papanikolaou, Samuele F. Pardini, Stefano Parenti, Peter Paris, Sung Bae Park, Cristián G. Parker, Raquel Pastor, Joseph Pathrapankal, Daniel Patte, W. Brown Patterson, Clive Pearson, Keith F. Pecklers, Nancy Cardoso Pereira, David Horace Perkins, Pheme Perkins, Edward N. Peters, Rebecca Todd Peters, Bishop Yeznik Petrossian, Raymond Pfister, Peter C. Phan, Isabel Apawo Phiri, William S. F. Pickering, Derrick G. Pitard, William Elvis Plata, Zlatko Plese, John Plummer, James Newton Poling, Ronald Popivchak, Andrew Porter, Ute Possekel, James M. Powell, Enos Das Pradhan, Devadasan Premnath, Jaime Adrían Prieto Valladares, Anne Primavesi, Randall Prior, María Alicia Puente Lutteroth, Eduardo Guzmão Quadros, Albert Rabil, Laurent William Ramambason, Apolonio M. Ranche, Vololona Randriamanantena Andriamitandrina, Lawrence R. Rast, Paul L. Redditt, Adele Reinhartz, Rolf Rendtorff, Pål Repstad, James N. Rhodes, John K. Riches, Joerg Rieger, Sharon H. Ringe, Sandra Rios, Tyler Roberts, David M. Robinson, James M. Robinson, Joanne Maguire Robinson, Richard A. H. Robinson, Roy R. Robson, Jack B. Rogers, Maria Roginska, Sidney Rooy, Rev. Garnett Roper, Maria José Fontelas Rosado-Nunes, Andrew C. Ross, Stefan Rossbach, François Rossier, John D. Roth, John K. Roth, Phillip Rothwell, Richard E. Rubenstein, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Markku Ruotsila, John E. Rybolt, Risto Saarinen, John Saillant, Juan Sanchez, Wagner Lopes Sanchez, Hugo N. Santos, Gerhard Sauter, Gloria L. Schaab, Sandra M. Schneiders, Quentin J. Schultze, Fernando F. Segovia, Turid Karlsen Seim, Carsten Selch Jensen, Alan P. F. Sell, Frank C. Senn, Kent Davis Sensenig, Damían Setton, Bal Krishna Sharma, Carolyn J. Sharp, Thomas Sheehan, N. Gerald Shenk, Christian Sheppard, Charles Sherlock, Tabona Shoko, Walter B. Shurden, Marguerite Shuster, B. Mark Sietsema, Batara Sihombing, Neil Silberman, Clodomiro Siller, Samuel Silva-Gotay, Heikki Silvet, John K. Simmons, Hagith Sivan, James C. Skedros, Abraham Smith, Ashley A. Smith, Ted A. Smith, Daud Soesilo, Pia Søltoft, Choan-Seng (C. S.) Song, Kathryn Spink, Bryan Spinks, Eric O. Springsted, Nicolas Standaert, Brian Stanley, Glen H. Stassen, Karel Steenbrink, Stephen J. Stein, Andrea Sterk, Gregory E. Sterling, Columba Stewart, Jacques Stewart, Robert B. Stewart, Cynthia Stokes Brown, Ken Stone, Anne Stott, Elizabeth Stuart, Monya Stubbs, Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, David Kwang-sun Suh, Scott W. Sunquist, Keith Suter, Douglas Sweeney, Charles H. Talbert, Shawqi N. Talia, Elsa Tamez, Joseph B. Tamney, Jonathan Y. Tan, Yak-Hwee Tan, Kathryn Tanner, Feiya Tao, Elizabeth S. Tapia, Aquiline Tarimo, Claire Taylor, Mark Lewis Taylor, Bishop Abba Samuel Wolde Tekestebirhan, Eugene TeSelle, M. Thomas Thangaraj, David R. Thomas, Andrew Thornley, Scott Thumma, Marcelo Timotheo da Costa, George E. “Tink” Tinker, Ola Tjørhom, Karen Jo Torjesen, Iain R. Torrance, Fernando Torres-Londoño, Archbishop Demetrios [Trakatellis], Marit Trelstad, Christine Trevett, Phyllis Trible, Johannes Tromp, Paul Turner, Robert G. Tuttle, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Peter Tyler, Anders Tyrberg, Justin Ukpong, Javier Ulloa, Camillus Umoh, Kristi Upson-Saia, Martina Urban, Monica Uribe, Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu, Richard Vaggione, Gabriel Vahanian, Paul Valliere, T. J. Van Bavel, Steven Vanderputten, Peter Van der Veer, Huub Van de Sandt, Louis Van Tongeren, Luke A. Veronis, Noel Villalba, Ramón Vinke, Tim Vivian, David Voas, Elena Volkova, Katharina von Kellenbach, Elina Vuola, Timothy Wadkins, Elaine M. Wainwright, Randi Jones Walker, Dewey D. Wallace, Jerry Walls, Michael J. Walsh, Philip Walters, Janet Walton, Jonathan L. Walton, Wang Xiaochao, Patricia A. Ward, David Harrington Watt, Herold D. Weiss, Laurence L. Welborn, Sharon D. Welch, Timothy Wengert, Traci C. West, Merold Westphal, David Wetherell, Barbara Wheeler, Carolinne White, Jean-Paul Wiest, Frans Wijsen, Terry L. Wilder, Felix Wilfred, Rebecca Wilkin, Daniel H. Williams, D. Newell Williams, Michael A. Williams, Vincent L. Wimbush, Gabriele Winkler, Anders Winroth, Lauri Emílio Wirth, James A. Wiseman, Ebba Witt-Brattström, Teofil Wojciechowski, John Wolffe, Kenman L. Wong, Wong Wai Ching, Linda Woodhead, Wendy M. Wright, Rose Wu, Keith E. Yandell, Gale A. Yee, Viktor Yelensky, Yeo Khiok-Khng, Gustav K. K. Yeung, Angela Yiu, Amos Yong, Yong Ting Jin, You Bin, Youhanna Nessim Youssef, Eliana Yunes, Robert Michael Zaller, Valarie H. Ziegler, Barbara Brown Zikmund, Joyce Ann Zimmerman, Aurora Zlotnik, Zhuo Xinping
- Edited by Daniel Patte, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
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- The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity
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- 05 August 2012
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- 20 September 2010, pp xi-xliv
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LITERARY FORMS AND MASS CULTURE, 1870–1920
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- By Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania
- Edited by Sacvan Bercovitch, Harvard University, Massachusetts
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- The Cambridge History of American Literature
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- 28 March 2008
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- 15 September 2005, pp -
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Transition From Early Intervention to School: A Family Focussed View of the Issues Involved
- Robyn Bentley-Williams, Nancy Butterfield
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- Australasian Journal of Special Education / Volume 20 / Issue 2 / 1996
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 February 2016, pp. 17-28
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- 1996
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This paper focuses on the concerns facing families of young children with disabilities as their child approaches transition to school. Three families were interviewed to gain insight into a) their feelings and concerns about their child’s transition to school, b) their understanding of the supports that currently exist and those that are needed to facilitate transition, and c) the influence of society on the development of the family’s values and attitudes which affect decisions about transition to school.
The results of the three interviews confirm earlier research findings which indicate the necessity to involve parents fully in the transition to school planning process. The anxiety and stress expressed by these families highlights the need for systematic planning, regular communication with families about the processes available to support them and the provision of opportunities to share information about their child with staff in the school setting.
By listening and reflecting on the feelings and concerns expressed by these three families, the complexity of the transition to school period is highlighted. Each family’s uniqueness needs to be respected. The perceptions they have developed about the situation, guide their beliefs and actions at this time. Such perceptions develop over time resulting from previous experiences, the influence of friends and family, and the attitudes and acceptance of members of the community.
2 - Edith Wharton and the Science of Manners
- Edited by Millicent Bell, Boston University
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- The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton
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- 28 May 2006
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- 30 June 1995, pp 47-67
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Summary
Edith Wharton was present at the famous 1913 debut of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps when the Parisian ballet patrons erupted in protest at the work's cacophonous sounds and sacrificial themes. She therefore witnessed two ongoing dramas of early modernism: the absorption of primitivism into the high arts, and the outrage it could provoke among the arts establishment. It is not surprising that the cosmopolitan Wharton, by this time a famous expatriate, was on hand for one of the signal events of European art history. But her reputation as a cultural conservative distrustful of avant-garde experimentation offers little to account for her deep admiration of the ballet: her notebook records that she found it “extraordinary”. The gap between reputation and reality here is provocative, for it hints at the complexity of Wharton's relation to her cultural context - and to the changing concept of culture itself, the subject at the heart of her fiction.
Of particular interest is the historical turn to primitivism reflected in both Stravinsky's score and Nijinsky's choreography, for this contemporary trend can also provide an illumination of Wharton's own art. Her intellectual interest in the subject of tribal or “primitive” culture is well known; R. W. B. Lewis writes that she was “passionately addicted” to anthropology from an early age, and it is easy to speculate that her ethnographic knowledge provided much of the pleasure she took in the ballet's harsh ritualism. Like many contemporary artists Wharton had a taste for the exotic. At first glance, though, it may appear that ethnographic themes appear in Wharton's fiction merely as a marker of taste, only one among the hundreds that she records in her novels. Newland
5 - Edith Wharton and the alienation of divorce
- Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania
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- The Ethnography of Manners
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- 24 October 2009
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- 31 March 1995, pp 160-212
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Summary
Marriage is a form of sex-union recognized and sanctioned by society. It is a relation between two or more persons, according to the custom of the country.
–Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and EconomicsSurveying the “fantastic” spectacle of international social life at a Paris restaurant, in Wharton's Custom of the Country, the Frenchman Raymond de Chelles is unable to properly classify American women. “Your young girls look so experienced, and your married women sometimes so – unmarried”. His American companion, Charles Bowen, supplies the key to the puzzle: “Well, they often are – in these days of divorce”. Charles's description of the American divorcee as an “unmarried married” woman locates what will become an important kind of female identity or status in the novel. It is a status that is legally precise – she's either married or she's not – but socially far more complex: if divorced, she can be both. Charles's wordplay must be taken seriously, because Raymond's comment is prompted by the sight of the central protagonist in the novel, Undine Spragg. Though Charles assures Raymond that Undine is married, we will later learn that she is also already unmarried (divorced from Elmer Moffatt). What is more, she is at this moment about to embark with Peter Van Degen on a trip she chooses to call a “honeymoon”, making her in a sense doubly married and waiting only for the law to “ratify the bond” (862).
Frontmatter
- Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania
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- The Ethnography of Manners
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- 24 October 2009
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- 31 March 1995, pp i-vi
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The Ethnography of Manners
- Hawthorne, James and Wharton
- Nancy Bentley
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- 24 October 2009
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- 31 March 1995
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This book examines fiction and ethnography as related forms for analysing and exhibiting social life. Focusing on the novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, and Edith Wharton, the study argues that novels and ethnographies collaborated to produce an unstable but powerful master discourse of 'culture', a discourse that allowed writers to turn new social energies and fears into particular kinds of authorial expertise. Crossing a range of institutions (anthropology, literature, museums, law) and texts (novels, ethnographies, travel books, social theory), this study allows fiction to take its place in a web of social practices that categorize, display and regulate what Wharton calls 'the customs of the country'.
1 - The equivocation of culture
- Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania
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- The Ethnography of Manners
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- 24 October 2009
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- 31 March 1995, pp 1-23
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Summary
Of all learned discourse, the ethnological seems to come closest to a fiction.
–Roland BarthesAfter his arrival in London, where he would establish his career as a novelist, Henry James wrote, “I take possession of the Old World. I inhale it – I appropriate it”. Beginning his fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands, Bronislaw Malinowski wrote in his diary of “feelings of ownership”: “This island, though not ‘discovered’ by me, is for the first time experienced artistically and mastered intellectually”. James's life in London, of course, was dramatically different from Malinowski's in the Trobriands, but coupled together, the quotations point to a striking similarity. In these two ventures – an American crossing the Atlantic to repossess the Old World, and an anthropologist mastering a “primitive” world – the language of colonial discovery is cast in new terms: these travelers come not to seize lands and people but to write them. Despite their differences, James's innovations in realist fiction and Malinowski”s in ethnography are part of a new way of seeing and writing about social life that developed in the later nineteenth century. Each writer refashions an earlier, more provincial genre of manners – the novel of manners, in one case, and the traveler's customs-and-manners survey, in the other – to produce a complex professional and international discourse. Each discourse, in turn, fosters for the writer an enhanced authority over a bounded sphere of culture, an aesthetic and intellectual “ownership” of manners intended to surpass coarser forms of cultural possession.
Index
- Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania
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- The Ethnography of Manners
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- 24 October 2009
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- 31 March 1995, pp 237-242
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3 - The discipline of manners
- Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania
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- The Ethnography of Manners
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- 24 October 2009
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- 31 March 1995, pp 68-113
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Summary
The manners, the manners: where and what are they, and what have they to tell?
–Henry James, The American SceneThe figure of the savage has sponsored several kinds of fiction. By the end of the nineteenth century, a number of subgenres of quasiethnographic fiction were in place and flourishing, from the “imperial gothic” of exotic adventure novels to the highbrow primitivism of writers like Joseph Conrad. It might seem wrongheaded to place the fiction of Henry James and Edith Wharton in this context. With few exceptions, they write about the hypercivilized. Their characters, that is to say, are on the opposite end of E. B. Tylor's “scale of civilization” from “savages” and their imputed traits. Tylor's savage was dominated by impulse and incapable of any sustained reflection, while the typical Jamesian character is virtually defined by the habit of reflection, a habit of sometimes bizarre proportions. In one of the more familiar story lines from literary history, the fiction of James and Wharton appears at the end of the tradition – some would say the exhausted tradition – of the novel of manners. I do not want to dispute their place in the genre but instead to reconsider what it could mean to write about manners at the turn of the century.
Unlike stories by Kipling and Conrad, James and Wharton's plots rarely take us outside of a transatlantic world of cosmopolitan capitals.
Notes
- Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania
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- The Ethnography of Manners
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- 24 October 2009
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- 31 March 1995, pp 213-236
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Acknowledgments
- Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania
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- The Ethnography of Manners
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- 31 March 1995, pp ix-xii
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4 - Henry James and magical property
- Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania
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- The Ethnography of Manners
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- 31 March 1995, pp 114-159
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Summary
The classification of things reproduces the classification of men.
Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, Primitive ClassificationAs in the kula, so in such tournaments of value generally, strategic skill is culturally measured by the success with which actors attempt diversions or subversions of culturally conventionalized paths for the flow of things.
Arjun Appadurai, The Social Life of ThingsEdith Wharton, discussing favorite kisses in literature with a dinner companion, gave as her “crowning” example the kiss on the stairs in James's Spoils of Pojmton. She called it “one of the most moving love-scenes in fiction”. But in spite of this impressive kiss, the love story in Poynton is a curious one. For the story of the love between Fleda Vetch and Owen Gereth is often eclipsed by a property story, the tale of the even more intimate attachment between Mrs. Gereth and her furniture. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the love story is utterly entangled with the property story: Fleda, with her complex passion for both the Poynton property and its legal owner, Owen, fuses the novel's two inseparable plots. That James so tightly wove together ambiguities of marriage, sexuality, and property has earned the novel a reputation as one of his most problematic fictions. Yet for all its complexities, the novel's explicit focus on relations between people and their property throws into relief a theme that preoccupied James throughout his career.
Titles in the series
- Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania
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Contents
- Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania
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- The Ethnography of Manners
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2 - Nathaniel Hawthorne and the fetish of race
- Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania
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Summary
Arise and fly
The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;
Move upward, working out the beast.
–Alfred Tennyson, In MemoriamIn an 1862 travel essy about his trip to wartime Washington, Hawthorne compared a group of escaped slaves with mythic fauns. The men and women walking north on a Virginia road, he wrote, “were unlike the specimens of their race whom we are accustomed to see at the North”:
So rudely were they attired, – as if their garb had grown upon them spontaneously, – so picturesquely natural in manners, and wearing such a crust of primeval simplicity (which is quite polished away from the northern black man), that they seem a kind of creature by themselves, not altogether human, but perhaps quite as good, and akin to the fauns and rustic deities of olden times.
This striking fantasy appears in the middle of a narrative piece that Hawthorne wrote in the name of realism. He begins by distinguishing the essay from his fiction, telling of his reluctant turn away from the “fantasies” of romance in order to face the “dread time of civil war”: “I determined to look a little more closely at matters with my own eyes”. Hawthorne takes up a new role as eyewitness, tracking “signs” of war from New England to Virginia.
The fanciful image of a faun, of course, had been central to Hawthorne's most recent romance novel, The Marble Faun, published just over a year earlier.