Contemporary Advice Research Articles

Disparagement humor permits unsafe COVID‐19 behaviors: A prejudiced norm perspective

AbstractExtending prejudiced norm theory, we hypothesized that memes diminishing the severity of the COVID‐19 pandemic promote tolerance of unsafe pandemic behaviors (as in contrary to contemporary advice of public health agencies, i.e., not wearing a protective mask) by establishing a perceived norm of tolerance for such behaviors. In Spring 2021, members of several Reddit communities (n = 106) reported their perceived threat of COVID‐19 and then completed a roleplay exercise in which they imagined they were with a group of friends in a church setting. In this context, participants viewed memes shared among their friends that belittled COVID‐19 (COVID‐19 disparagement condition) or memes unrelated to COVID‐19 (control condition). Then, participants responded to a vignette describing a woman confronting an usher about a couple who violated protocol by not wearing masks. The results supported our hypothesis. First, participants in the COVID‐19 disparagement condition perceived a greater norm of tolerance of the mask protocol violation among others in the immediate context compared to those in the control condition. Second, for participants who viewed COVID‐19 as a low threat, that local norm resulted in greater personal tolerance of the mask protocol violation. However, for participants who view COVID‐19 as a high threat, the local norm had no impact on their personal tolerance.

L’argent du libertinage. Actes de la journée d’étude virtuelle du 31 juillet 2021 ed. par Éric Turcat

Reviewed by: L’argent du libertinage. Actes de la journée d’étude virtuelle du 31 juillet 2021 ed. par Éric Turcat Theresa Varney Kennedy Turcat, Éric, éd. L’argent du libertinage. Actes de la journée d’étude virtuelle du 31 juillet 2021. L’Harmattan, 2021. ISBN 978-2-343-2-4677-2. Pp. 188. This book is a fascinating collection of essays that examine the relationship between libertine culture and money over time. The first three essays, by Kathryn A. Hoffman, Alice Brown, and Claire Quaglia, show how aristocrats struck the right balance between lavish spending and prudent budgeting. Hoffman’s intriguing essay, “Le libertinage doré: la culture matérielle de l’inclination au XVIIe siècle,” broadens our understanding of the “honest” man or woman in the seventeenth century, and the kinds of expenses that propelled one’s social standing. Brown’s “L’avare de Molière: richesse et ascension sociale face au libertinage” explains how Molière’s play demonstrated that greed was incompatible with social advancement. Quaglia’s essay, “L’argent du libertinage dans Les mémoires de Brienne le Jeune,” shows how libertinism could go overboard—that the pursuit of pleasure could become obsessive and quickly lead to one’s downfall. Other contributions explore how bourgeois female libertinism affected eighteenth-century France. Julia Abramson undertakes a broad analysis of the protagonist’s relationship to the new economy in Marivaux’s Le paysan parvenu and Prévost’s Manon Lescaut. Éric Turcat’s essay, cleverly titled “Manon des ressources? Le roman de Prévost comme livre de raison,” debunks the idea that Manon is an excellent businesswoman by blaming her bankruptcy on her inability to effectively manage her resources and maintain a budget. By contrast, Denis Grélé depicts Fougeret de Montbron’s Margot la ravadeuse as a more successful heroine who reaches personal financial independence. That said, as the final essays show, money does not always lead to satisfaction. Encarnación Medina Arjona’s essay, “Zola ou le libertinage des Rougon sous le Second Empire,” warns how social corruption, materialism, and obsession with power and wealth can lead to sexual perversion. Similarly, Giovanni Dotoli’s piece on Léon Bloy shows how the author uses money as an allegory for the world’s tendency toward evil, and its need for God’s redemption. Covering a wide period, this collection of essays is a welcome addition to students and scholars of French literature. Each piece stands on its own and adds to our knowledge of early modern France. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Taken together, Turcat’s edited volume not only provides scintillating detail about libertine culture, it also delves into contemporary advice and admonishments about the limits and perils of that culture. The book should be equally praised for its thought-provoking analyses of the literature. Furthermore, it admirably engages a variety of sources. It alludes to some of the best-known authors and works (e.g., Molière’s L’avare and Prévost’s Manon Lescaut) as well as lesser known, yet still important, authors (e.g., Brienne le Jeune and Fougeret de Montbron). The book is both a series of stand-alone essays and a comprehensive contribution. It is both engaging and delightful. [End Page 275] Theresa Varney Kennedy Baylor University (TX) Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French

The Experience of Employment in a 1930s East End Cinema

This article explores the employment experience of workers at the Eastern Palace Cinema in East London, in 1934. In August 1934, a member of staff murdered the cinema’s manager. The witness statements taken in the subsequent criminal investigation give a unique insight into the operations of 1930s cinemas and the working conditions of the people who were employed in them. The statements give voice to a group of service staff that had limited means of relating their lived experience. The article contrasts these statements with contemporary advice on cinema operations from guidebooks and trade papers to explore how trade advice translated into reality. It also draws on archival sources to excavate the backgrounds of cinema staff across roles. This adds to our understanding of the experience of staff employed in the most popular leisure industry of interwar Britain, an area that has not yet been extensively researched.

Science, Sexual Difference and the Making of Modern Marriage in American Sex Advice, 1920-40.

This article considers discussions of sexual difference in a range of popular prescriptive texts published between 1920 and 1940 in order to explore the relationship between science and American marital advice literature. It demonstrates the particular role science played in shaping, legitimising and enforcing changing discussions about what 'good sex' should look like in contemporary advice - supporting a hierarchy of sexual activities and desires that privileged a particular version of marital heterosexual expression. Through this, it also interrogates the 'popular' version of sexual science being consumed by the American public at this time. In addition to adding new perspectives to our understanding of contemporary advice and its relationship with science and medicine, it will also act as a provocation for further research into the ways the public engaged with sexual science in early twentieth-century America.

Being a good digital parent: representations of parents, youth and the parent–youth relationship in expert advice

Social concern about online behaviour and safety of children and youth has increased dramatically in the last decade and has resulted in an abundance of parenting advice on ways to manage and protect children online. The cultural context in which this is happening is one characterised by intensive parenting norms, heightened risk awareness, and growing concerns about the effects of ‘over-parenting’, especially in the teenage years. Using contemporary advice to parents on managing adolescents’ digital experiences, this study investigates the ways that parenting, youth and the youth–parent relationship are depicted. Parental roles, in this material, are portrayed as instrumental and pedagogical while youth are assumed to lack agency and judgement. Intensive parenting expectations are extended as parents face advice to be both highly vigilant agents of surveillance and trusted confidantes of their children, with an overall goal of shaping children’s subjectivity in ways that allow them to become self-governing.

Guidelines for managing people with lymphoedema remotely: a post-COVID-19 response document

During the COVID-19 pandemic it was initially not possible to see people with lymphoedema face-to-face at lymphoedema services, due to the potential risks of the virus, because they were shielding, because of redeployment of rooms or staff, and due to sporadic restrictions of movement. The pandemic therefore accelerated adjustments in lymphoedema service delivery, while ensuring effective and efficient care was paramount. This document presents a pragmatic guide for lymphoedema services. Although clinical and non-clinical staff need to comply with guidance from their own organisations/commissioners, this document aims to provide specific guidance and share good practice in relation to lymphoedema management. These guidelines are based on analysis of the national response of Lymphoedema Network Wales during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic and incorporate supporting contemporary advice. They have been used throughout NHS Wales, providing a standardised approach in supporting care for people with lymphoedema. In light of the enduring nature of COVID-19, it is imperative that lymphoedema services have a means to provide suitable care for patients. Although face-to-face appointments are sometimes deemed necessary, many patients can be suitably supported via telehealth consultations. These guidelines may help lymphoedema services restore and reset in a safe and acceptable manner.

An Ascetic State? Fashioning Christian Political Service Across the Early Sixth-Century Mediterranean

This article considers an issue surprisingly marginal both to cultural histories of late antique Christianity and political histories of the later Roman Empire: the Christian identities of imperial officials. It draws on three early sixth-century texts which tackled this problem head-on: the Selected Letters of Severus of Antioch, the Variae of Cassiodorus, and the Letter to Reginus of Ferrandus of Carthage. These letters to, by, and about, political servants split the difference between contemporary advice letters for aristocrats who had “renounced the world,” and the classicizing treatises on administrative ethics which have attracted so much attention from scholars of the age of Justinian. Severus, Cassiodorus, and Ferrandus set up the possibilities of a committed Christian lifestyle within the state in differing, but complementary, ways, rooted in the attainment of an idealized inner state. The authors use biblical exempla, concepts of ascetic progress, and ecclesiological ideas to frame the duties of an administrator. All in all, these letters show how, for at least some Christian writers and officials, ascetic discourse had reshaped the character of service to states across the sixth-century Mediterranean.

The impact of a pilot continuing professional development module on hospital pharmacists' preparedness to provide contemporary advice on the clinical use of vancomycin.

BackgroundRevised international clinical guidelines for the antibiotic vancomycin have changed the advice pharmacists need to provide to medical and nursing colleagues.Objectives(1) To determine the self-reported confidence of hospital pharmacists to provide contemporary advice on vancomycin and (2) to evaluate hospital pharmacists’ knowledge to provide contemporary advice on vancomycin following a pilot continuing professional development (CPD) module.MethodsThe study was a prospective two-phase design in an Australian teaching hospital. Phase one: a survey of pharmacist self-reported confidence to eight questions on providing contemporary advice on vancomycin. Responses were recorded using a Likert scales. Phase two: The provision of a pilot online CPD module on vancomycin containing knowledge-based assessment based on a clinical vignette. Likert scales recorded self-reported confidence were reported as median and interquartile range (IQR). Knowledge assessment was reported using descriptive statistics. The main outcome measure were the self-reported confidence, and knowledge of pharmacists regarding provision of contemporary advice on clinical vancomycin use.ResultsResponse rates for surveys; confidence n = 35 (72.9 %) and knowledge n = 31 (58.5 %). Phase one: confidence was highest regarding vancomycin dosing and monitoring with 71.4–81.6 % of respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing that they were confident in these domains. Respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing were least confident regarding intravenous administration and infusion related reactions, 57.1 and 45.7 % respectively. Respondents who provided advice on vancomycin >10 times in the prior 12 months reported significantly higher confidence in; therapeutic range 1 (IQR 1–2) versus 2 (IQR 1–3) p = 0.02; amending dosage based on therapeutic drug monitoring results 2 (IQR 1–3) versus 3 (IQR 2–3) p = <0.001, and providing general advice to prescribers on vancomycin 2 (IQR 1–3) versus 2 (IQR 2–4) p = <0.009. Knowledge questions were answered correctly post CPD by >75 % of pharmacists.ConclusionPharmacists’ self-reported confidence to managing vancomycin was variable but generally high. Knowledge scores were consistently high after pharmacists completed a pilot CPD module on vancomycin. These data provides impetus for a randomised controlled study across multiple sites to determine the extent to which pharmacist knowledge on vancomycin can be attributed to completion of an online CPD.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40064-016-1966-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Normal enough? Tools to aid decision making

When undertaking quantitative hypothesis testing, social researchers need to decide whether the data with which they are working is suitable for parametric analyses to be used. When considering the relevant assumptions they can examine graphs and summary statistics but the decision making process is subjective and must also take into account the robustness of the proposed tests to deviations from the assumptions. We review the contemporary advice on this issue available to researchers and look back to the roots of hypothesis testing and associated work undertaken by eminent statisticians since the 1930s. From this we create a set of flow charts to give researchers tools they can use to make decisions in a more objective manner.

Balzac's Unknown Masterpiece: spotting the next big thing in art and science.

There is no shortage of advice on how to become a creative writer, a creative artist or a creative scientist. Just in the last decade, hundreds of books and articles have been written on the subject, and in hundreds of TED lectures, inspired thinkers reveal their secrets for creative success. Despite this flood of contemporary advice, my favorite insight on creativity goes back over 100 years to the Irish playwright and wit Oscar Wilde, who famously proclaimed that “a writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave”—an assertion that can be applied to most creative individuals. One of the virtues of a misbehaving mind is its ability to spot the next big thing— whether it be in art or in science. A great example of a famous literary figure who passed the Oscar Wilde ‘misbehavior test’ with flying colors is the nineteenth-century novelist Honore de Balzac. In the 1830s, Balzac conceived the idea of writing a series of works that would describe the sweep and panorama of French society in all its splendor and squalor, from the highest aristocrats and politicians to the lowest swindlers and prostitutes. Over a 16-year period, he published a total of 91 novels and short stories, and shortly before his death in 1850 he organized his 91 works into a multivolume collection that he titled The Human Comedy. Balzac chose this title to contrast it with Dante’s The Divine Comedy, which portrayed Hell, Purgatory and Heaven and had nothing to say about the realism of the earthly life that Balzac presented. The Human Comedy contained many astute insights into human behavior. One of the most original and popular—and a prime example of his misbehavior—was his discussion about how certain people get ahead in life through advantageous marriages rather than hard work.

RAILROAD INVESTING AND THE IMPORTANCE OF FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING INFORMATION IN 1880s AMERICA

This study has a two-fold purpose. First, it seeks to determine the importance of financial accounting information to railroad investors (and speculators) in 1880s America. Second, a further goal is to ascertain what financial accounting information was readily available for use by these investors. Based on a comprehensive search of books of the era, the 1880s were a time of expanding advice for railroad securities holders that required the use of financial accounting information. Furthermore, new information sources arose to help service investors' needs. Statistics by Goodsell and The Wall Street Journal were two such sources. This article reviews these publications along with the ongoing Commercial and Financial Chronicle and Poor's Manual of the Railroads of the United States. Each of these sources helped railroad investors to follow contemporary advice of gathering financial accounting and other information when investing.

On the Make: Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America (review)

On the Make: Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America. By Brian P. Luskey. (New York: New York University Press, 2010. Pp. 228. Cloth, $48.00.)Reviewed by Donna J. RillingOn the Make is a cleverly conceived and tightly argued study of clerks in New York City between 1830 and 1870 that draws together social, business, and history approaches. It is well grounded in a wide range of sources, among them censuses, diaries, credit records, periodicals, and popular humor. The book contributes to recent approaches to capitalist transformations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that connect production to consumption, economic change to and political ideologies, and the home to the marketplace. Clerks are excellent subjects because they were the faces of capitalist transformation (2), Brian Luskey suggests. They were ubiquitous in the nation's commercial center, striving to rise up the social and economic ladder, and eagerly and visibly engaging in the city's consumer abundance. Their experiences in the workplace and in the streets capture debates over citizenship, class, race, and gender in antebellum America.Migrants from the countryside, immigrants from Europe, and urban sons flocked to antebellum cities, convinced that clerking in the commercial world would assure their rise to independence and respectability. Young men bought into the advice literature that held out eighteenthcentury successes (Ben Franklin, for example), even though these models were ill suited to the perils of the volatile antebellum economy. Still, they believed the narratives and internalized the ideology of selfmaking (2). If they failed, diarists reflected, their own lack of perseverance and character would be to blame; how could capitalism itself be rigged against them? Self-consciously and self-critically, they set about assembling the cultural capital - respectability, character, aloofness from the laboring masses - to complement their projected economic status.Clerks did not seek economic gain alone, but also social and political affirmation of their autonomous status as men. At each step, however, clerking plagued them with its ambiguities. Meager salaries, slow advancement, and menial tasks did not reconcile with the ideas youths held about their future prospects as proprietors. Were perseverance and the development of good character their own rewards if commercial success was elusive? Contemporary advice manuals seemed to hedge. Daily work toyed with the self-image of clerks and their ability to capture respectability. Headwork - keeping books, copying letters, taking inventory, serving customers - underscored their claim to the white collar. But the manual tasks they actually performed meant that those collars were soiled with sweat. Clerks chafed at doing the dirty work of the store (62), which was regularly though not exclusively assigned to African American or Irish porters. In practice, the line between headwork and hard work was porous. Discomforted by the slippage, clerks (who were overwhelmingly white) wore their collars as markers of refinement, and used popular culture to endorse racial and class stereotypes, limit access to their ranks, and bolster their sense of white superiority.Denying the physical labor of their station also cast doubt on clerks' rights to political capital. When the Early Closing Movement sought to free them from late evening hours, supporters championed their rights as workers - a status clerks rejected. Clerks stood aloof from labor associations and democratic politics, eschewing ruder participants and corrupt practices in lieu of a more respectable mode of politics centered in the lyceum and library (121). Critics nonetheless mocked the notion that young men would use evenings for self-improvement and study, pointing to urban leisurely pursuits - frequenting gambling houses and brothels - associated with unsupervised youth. …

Endocrine disruptors, travel-associated illness, and media violence: important health considerations for children and adolescents

This article addresses three important topics that are part of contemporary life for children: endocrine disruptors, hazards of international travel, and the impact of media violence on children and adolescents. Practitioners will learn about phthalates and Bisphenol-A as endocrine disruptors. In published studies, elevated phthalates were associated with an increase in pubertal gynecomastia and premature thelarche. Bisphenol-A was judged by the Food and Drug Administration as having some concern for potential effects on brain, behavior, and prostate gland in fetuses, infants, and young children: hence, the decision to take reasonable steps to reduce exposure of infants. In travel-related diseases, diarrheal disease (primarily Campylobacter and Salmonella), dermatologic conditions (animal bites), systemic febrile illness (malaria and dengue fever), and respiratory illnesses predominate. Children and adolescents spend more than 7 h using media per day. The degree to which media violence can be linked to behavior is not conclusive, but the prevention message for practitioners is important because parents can have an important mitigating effect. Endocrine disruptors, travel-related diseases, and media violence are part of modern day life for our children. Pediatricians need to stay abreast of recent findings and have access to up-to-date resources to assist them in providing contemporary advice and guidance to patients and families.

FC03-05 - Quality of care and patient outcomes: a randomised trial of clinical supervision in mental health settings in Queensland, Australia

ObjectivesHistorically, the treatment of mental illness in Australia has been inadequate. Clinical Supervision [CS], a structured staff support arrangement, has shown promise as a contribution to the clinical governance agenda; however, little is yet known about CS implementation issues. This study aimed to examined the effects of providing regular Clinical Supervision to nursing staff who worked in mental health settings, on their levels of personal well being, the quality of care they delivered and the outcomes for patientsMethodsA large scale landmark Australian randomised controlled trial [RCT] of CS, funded by the Queensland Treasury/Golden Casket Foundation [A$248,000], was located in 17 mental health facilities, across the State. The RCT trained 24 Supervisors and tracked their subsequent year-long personal experience [the Intervention] using psychometrically established instruments, supplemented by qualitative data, which was also collected from mental health nurses, other clinical staff, patients and administrators.ResultsSupervisors and Supervisees were found to value Clinical Supervision. The positive effect this had on the quality of care and patient outcomes was demonstrated in a controlled setting within this RCT, but remained elusive across a broad front. The importance of the prevailing service/managerial culture to the outcome of CS implementation was revealed.ConclusionsNovel findings will help to conceptualise Clinical Supervision education, management and policy decision making in the future. They will provide the basis for the best contemporary advice for service development and/or a framework for future CS evaluation, sufficient to be tested in another environment with other mental health disciplines.

Oral Traditions and Gender in Early Modern Literary Texts by Mary Ellen Lamb, Karen Bamford

MLR, 104.1, 2009 167 arrestingly prescriptive direction, and semi-legitimacy, by contemporary advice bookschallenging contemporary rules ofdeference, theoutwardforms thisculture adopted, Baileyshows, weredesignedtoadvertise-andnegotiate-theambivalent spacesbetween socialinclusion andexclusion. Theattendant emphasis onanaffected effeminacy, shelessconvincingly claims,alsonurtures implications aboutchanging Elizabethanand Jacobean attitudes towards manlyvirtue andgender difference. To engage with and demonstrate membershipof thisunconventional cultural network, self-fashioning gallants ostentatiously exhibited 'particular poses,attitudes and behaviours'(p. 7), embodiedin theflamboyance of their apparel,at socially optimallocations suchas the middleaisleofStPaul'sCathedral. TheLondon theatre ofJonson, Shakespeare, andMarlowewas,Baileylucidly demonstrates throughout, bothculturally reflective ofandcomplicitinsuchirreverent display, not leastsince these young menwere regular theatregoers, though theincreasing commercial suc cessof thestage meant thatthestudiedly immoderate new stylesitincorporated inevitably vitiatedsomeof theirsubversive power.This isa slimvolumewhich, though curiously bereft of illustrations, punchesabove its weight.In scrutinizing a subgroup which flagrantly violatedcontemporary socialnorms, Baileyelucidates both an intrinsically absorbing counter-cultural phenomenonand thesocialand aesthetic environment in which itflourished. BIRKBECK,UNIVERSITY OF LONDON PHILIP MAJOR Oral Traditions and Gender inEarly Modern Literary Texts. Ed. by MARY ELLEN LAMB and KAREN BAMFORD. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2008. XXV+250 PP. ?55. ISBN 978-0-7546-5538-1. Mary Ellen Lamb's introduction to this collection provides a clear and erudite ana lysis of theissuessurrounding oral narratives or,as she termsthem,'old wives' tales' (p. 1).AlthoughLamb describestheconventional setsofbinariesused to formulate oral tradition-written versusoral,upperversuslowerclass,andmale versusfemale-shequickly establishes thatthese divisions offer insufficient insight intoa complex andpersistently mutating genre. Theunderlying methodology ofthe collectionlooks,therefore, at the'blurring [. . .]betweenoralandwritten', and at 'cultural meanings,especiallythegendered meanings,oforal transmission itself' (p. 1).The subsequent essaysaredividedintothree cognateareas. TheessaysinPart Iexplorethe ways in which female storytellers arestereotyped inthe writings ofcanonical male authors. Therearetwo piecesonEdmundSpenser, thefirst byJacqueline T.Miller that concentrates on TheFaerieQueene,identifying womenwho arepersistently silencedand 'constantly thwarted bymen', and the secondbyKateGiglio thatlooksat MotherHubberds Tale,in whichSpenser'srearti culationof the'familiar wisdom' ofwomen healersbecomesan integral aspectof thetext's political allegory (pp.12and24).Romancere-emerges inJulie A. Eckerle's essayonPhilipSidney'sTheCountess ofPembroke's Arcadiaand MaryWroth's7he Countessof Montgomery's Urania, inwhich Sidney'sdepictionof thelower-class i68 Reviews foolishness of Miso andMopsa iscontrasted with Wroth's skilledfemalerhetoric. The final essayinthesection, by HenkDragster, dealswithJohn Aubrey'sreframing of thetalestoldhimbyhis nurse in a historical context, thereby reasserting the classicaldivision of male/written/scholarly versusfemale/oral/fiction. The fascinating essaysinPart IIcombine path-breaking research intothe way fe male identity was fashioned byoral tradition withperceptive closereading, thereby demonstrating thecloseengagement betweenliterary and socialdiscourses. Diane Purkiss'sessaysetsa 1673witchcraft depositionbyAnne Armstrong alongside Shakespeare'sTheWinter'sTale inorder to showhow adolescent womenwere obsessedwith food.Similarly, FionaMcNeill demonstrates that Orsino's flippant demandsfor musicalentertainment inTwelfth Nightcallupon the balladssungabout impoverished women labourers-maids,lace-makers, and thosesenttoserve, and starve, inVirginia. Natasha Korda also looks at the earlymodern femaleworkforce inheressayon street vendors, showing how they weremockedwhile trying toearn a livinginLondon'snewcapitalist markets.The finalessay, byLaRue Love Sloan, demonstrates theentrenched positioning ofgendersinoral tradition bylinking the curtain lecture inwhich a shrewish wife harangues her husband with the final tragic pillowsceneinOthello. The essaysinPart iII tendtobolsterand confirm theblurring ofgeneric boun dariesdiscussedbyLamb, withcontributions on libellous poetry byC. C.McGee, on Margaretand WilliamCavendishbyJames Fitzmaurice, onmultiplesexchanges by ReginaBuccola,onhumanist verbalperformance andTwelfth NightbyEric Mason, andon theassociation betweenfemale practice, oral tradition, andCatholicismby ClareKinney. However, whatmakes thiscollection notonlyinformative buthugelyenjoyable are the depictions of thewomen themselves: the imaginative 'Lucy'who wished to eat 'boyled capon with silver scrues'; 'Fair Winifright, and Bridget bright' who were treated like slaves; thewomen who, as theypawned theirpetticoats and prostituted themselves, were 'creatures soonevp,& soonedowne'; Marie Perman who 'showes herarsse';and, finally, the'Spinsters [. . .] [and]Huswifes'describedby Margaret Cavendish who sat on 'Cold Winter Nights' spinning their 'flax',weaving their 'Web', and-of course- singing 'ballads' (pp. 64, 112, 125, 140, 144, and 164). UNIVERSITY OF SURREY MARION WYNNE-DAvIES LaborandWritingin Early ModernEngland, 1567-1667.ByLAURIE ELLINGHAUSEN. Aldershot: Ashgate.2008. x+156 pp. ?45. ISBN978-0-7546-5780-4. Itisa notableparadoxthat despiteinhabiting a culturein whichmanualworkwas considered socially degrading, early modernwriters from ThomasSmithtoBen Jon sonused images ofphysicallabouras awayoffiguring their ownoccupation. Laurie Ellinghausen's argument in this book is thatforsomeauthors, presenting oneself as a worker was a way of laying claim to a surprisingly enabling marginal status: 'positing oneself on thedownsideofhierarchy, while suggestive ofoppression, can result inpayoffs fortheauthoraswell' (p.4). ...

William Wants A Doll. Can He Have One? Feminists, Child Care Advisors, and Gender-Neutral Child Rearing

Using an analysis of child care books and parenting Web sites, this article asks if second-wave feminism’s vision of gender-neutral child rearing has been incorporated into contemporary advice on child rearing. The data suggest that while feminist understandings of gender have made significant inroads into popular advice, especially with regard to the social construction of gender, something akin to “a stalled revolution” has taken place. Children’s gender nonconformity is still viewed as problematic because it is linked implicitly and explicitly to homosexuality.

Literary Interiors, Cherished Things, and Feminine Subjectivity in the Gilded Age

THE SO-CALLED GILDED AGE is generally perceived as time when materialist mentality took hold of Americans--a period when their country underwent tremendous economic and social transformations that had major impact on people's lives, attitudes, and ways of self-fashioning. Indeed, the dominant narrative about the Gilded Age is, as Winfried Fluck and Leo Marx have pointed out, the one about America's historical turn towards (415). In his recent study A Sense of Things (2003), Bill Brown draws attention to the centrality of the physical object world in late nineteenth-century American culture; he speaks of an age of things, referring to an era when the invention, production, distribution, and consumption of material objects took on unprecedented forms and quantities (5). My focus here will also be on things and the relations people maintain with them, but I am less concerned with discontinuity--the narratives of new materialism--than with certain continuities. I will concentrate on the domestic, subjective, and feminine dimensions of human object-relations--relations that are embedded in and shaped by specifically gendered interiors. In this paper, interiority denotes both subjectivity and interior space, and I explore the connections between spatial, material, and psychic aspects of interiority, including the inner or secret life of things. Accordingly, it is the inside of rather than its conspicuousness that interests me here--a materialism that is intimate rather than public, moral rather than fetishistic, idiosyncratic rather than narcissistic. Concretely, I will analyze the literary life of domestic objects in two short stories, one by Sarah Orne Jewett and one by Mary Wilkins Freeman. In these writings, the domestic is the major arena of women's development, influence, and self-articulation, and it is also the realm where the relations between the genders, parents, and children, and, most significantly, people and things are mapped out. I consider the literary treatment of domestic material culture with regard to the cultural revaluation of the so-called sphere in mid-nineteenth-century America, which attributed major responsibility to women as guardians of civilization. In this tradition, the white middle-class home was closely associated with an ideal of feminine domesticity. contemporary advice literature-most prominently Harriet Beecher Stowe and Catherine Beecher's American Woman's Home (1869)--emphasized women's vital role as ministers of the family home. A Christian and moral dimension was ascribed to the tasks of housekeeping, child-rearing, and interior decoration-and woman's civilizing role was estimated accordingly. My paper sets out from the perception that this ideal domesticity does not simply encompass woman's care and love of her husband and children but also that of physical objects. Like the family, domestic things are in her charge, they are objects of her affection and devotion as well as media of feminine self-expression that articulate her aesthetic sensibility and refinement. While the association of material and psychological forms works rather harmoniously in the work of Stowe, it is rendered more complicated in the stories by Jewett and Freeman where the emotional bonds between female characters and private objects are still significant but have ceased to correspond to an ideal of feminine domesticity in an unproblematic way. Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Motherly Chair I will briefly exemplify the relevant aspects of Stowe's sentimental (see Merish) with regard to the famous chapter in Uncle Tom's Cabin entitled The Quaker Settlement.' Here, the emotional investment in things is often accompanied by an animation of the home's object world; that is, things assume lively, sometimes even human aspect. A case in point is offered by Rachel Halliday's prominent rocking chairs: There is a larger sized one, motherly and old, whose wide arms breathed hospitable invitation, seconded by the solicitation of its feather cushions,-a real comfortable, persuasive old chair, and worth, in the way of honest, homely enjoyment, dozen of your plush or brochetelle drawing-room gentry (UTC 116). …

Ewald Hecker’s description of cyclothymia as a cyclical mood disorder: its relevance to the modern concept of bipolar II

1 . Historical note basis until they could be back on their feet. His work with outpatients and his intimate acquaintance with Ewald Hecker (1843–1909) was a disciple of Karl them enabled him to make observations which Ludwig Kahlbaum and his closest assistant for many escaped hospital psychiatrists. His incisive clinical years at the Kahlbaum Sanitarium in Goerlitz, Silesia description and his sophisticated understanding of (Germany). His cousin was Kahlbaum’s first wife. psychopathology made Hecker (1898) not only a Their collaboration was extremely fruitful and proforerunner, but also one who anticipated today’s duced landmark works on hebephrenia and conceptions of cyclothymia as the basis of bipolar II cyclothymia. Hecker’s progressive approach to psydisorder (Dunner et al., 1976; Akiskal et al., 1977; chiatry, which he recommended to Kahlbaum, comAkiskal et al., 1979; Akiskal, 1981; Depue et al., bated the coercive methods of his time and placed 1981; Cassano et al., 1992; American Psychiatric the accent on public education to eliminate the Association, 1994; Brieger and Marneros, 1997; stigma attached to mental illness. Like Kahlbaum, he Hantouche et al., 1998; Akiskal et al., 2000; Akiskal never attained a university chair in psychiatry, and Pinto, 1999). Indeed, he described cyclothymia perhaps because of his liberal ideas. Instead, he as brief depressions with mild excitements of short worked at his own private hospital in Wiesbaden, duration (measured in days), as well as longer which he bought in 1891. Hecker attained a reputadepressions (lasting weeks to months) and followed tion as hypnotherapist and psychotherapist for paby brief hypomanias. The latter of course correspond tients with cyclothymia, anxiety and sleep disorders, to today’s concept of bipolar II. He proceeded to anticipating today’s outpatient combination of psyprovide a superb description of the clinical picture of chiatry and psychotherapy. He attached such imporbipolar II as we know it today. Even his recomtance to humane practices that he even accommomendations not to tamper too much with the depresdated some patients into his home on a temporary sive phase and instead endeavour to limit the hypomanic phase, resonates with contemporary advice (Akiskal and Pinto, 1999; Wehr and Goodwin, 1987; *Tel.: 1 39-06-687-4415; fax: 1 39-06-6880-2345. Akiskal and Mallya, 1987; Koukopoulos et al., 1990; E-mail address: a.koukopoulos@flashnet.it (A. Koukopoulos). Akiskal, 2001)—alas not heeded often enough! The

The archaeology of middle-class domesticity and gentility in Victorian Brooklyn

In 1995, John Milner Associates excavated three privies and four cisterns dating to the 1860s at the Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, New York. Residents associated with the deposits were members of the burgeoning white-collar middle class. Examinations of the recovered ceramic and glass vessels, as well as children’s toys and household furnishings, show that these middle-class households used material culture to create what contemporaries referred to as a “genteel” lifestyle. By setting their tables with specific ceramic wares and vessels, these families both advertised their “respectability” to other families and taught their children the class-specific values needed to maintain their middle-class status. The analysis shows that each of the excavated households closely followed the contemporary advice literature on household furnishings and dining etiquette. Indeed, the similarities between the assemblages and conformity to the advice literature suggests that the desire to “keep up with the Joneses” and the corresponding insecurities commonly associated with the middle class during the 1950s and 1960s were firmly established one hundred years earlier.