Stories Of Experiences Research Articles

“Tur pilnīgi cita pasaule”: vides jautājumi Lucavsalas dārzkopju stāstos

The article focuses on experience stories of Lucavsala (an island in the river Daugava close to the Riga city centre) gardeners collected during the fieldwork in 2021. Sixteen semi-structured interviews were taken with gardeners and locals; historical transition, life and gardening in Lucavsala were fixed in observations, audio recordings and photography. As a result of the industrial development in the first half of the 19th century in Europe, allotment gardens were established for low-income urban citizens. The first colony of allotment gardens in Riga was established in 1909 near the area of Klijānu street, whereas gardens in Lucavsala appeared much later – in 1947. The total area devoted to gardening on the island has been both expanded and reduced over time. Lucavsala has also become a place for various cultural and artistic events and an object for research during the past ten years. Lucavsala informants’ experience stories cover a wide range of environmental issues reflected in a multifaceted manner. Environmental awareness is disclosed through stories about the geography of the city and the island, and gardening and stories about the quality of the environment and the landscape elements. The topic emerging in almost every interview is acquiring, settling in and managing a garden. There are rather detailed narratives covering their own garden and the close neighbourhood, while gardeners have hardly ever been to more distant places in Lucavsala and do not know them well. The garden houses are signifying objects in the overall landscape of the island, mostly self-built from recycled materials. A self-built house requires a lot of inventive skills as well as a creative approach to living in the garden. That is why the stories on the intentional burning of the houses are especially emotional. One of the reasons why urban people rent an allotment garden in Lucavsala is the desire to feel the presence of nature. However, the island is encircled by water and combines the elements of the rural environment, wildlife and urban world. While longing for nature, gardeners are also concerned with the quality of the environment. Even though waste on the island is mentioned in almost every interview, the environmental quality is judged to be relatively high. Fresh air, peace and quiet of Lucavsala seem to be important indicators of the environment’s cleanliness in the informants’ view.

Izdzīvošanas spēks un dzīves vērtības Liepājas Universitātes folkloras arhīva dzīvesstāstos

The folklore materials of the Liepāja University record many life stories of various Latvian narrators. Some of them are more extensive and cover the people’s ability to survive during difficult periods of history. The purpose of the article is to systematize and analyze the main values depicted in the life stories available in the Liepāja folklore archive. These values helped people survive during the changing times of the 20th century and helped them overcome difficult life situations. The article explores stories of personal experiences which indicate an event experienced by the narrator, as well as life stories that talk about the narrator’s life in general. In addition to life stories, the article also analyzes the folklore materials included by the narrators and their included explanations. The study provided a deeper understanding of the narrators’ outlook on life and their value system. In order to locate the topic in the context of folkloristic theory, the author has used the guidelines developed by several recognized researchers in the studies of personal narratives. The life values depicted in the narrated stories recorded in the folklore materials are arranged according to their thematic lines. These are values related to human character and virtues, attitude to life, emotional balance, physical and mental health. The life stories and personal accounts indicate the main values discussed by narrators during the period. Among these are values nurtured in the family – like virtues of work, patience and perseverance, positive outlook to life and inner strength, values on interpersonal relationships – like optimism, gratitude and helpfulness, kindness, love and trust in nature and natural order. Along with these, values of joy, singing and celebrating are also mentioned – as they restore strength and create a balance between work and relaxation. Overall, it is clear that the values and virtues mentioned in the classical folklore sources have been very important in surviving the changing times of the 20th-century Latvian territory.

ANALISIS TEMA, AMANAT, DAN NILAI MORAL DALAM NOVEL "JANJI" KARYA TERE LIYE

A novel is composed of internal elements that are composed of themes and messages. Novels have a moral value that is beneficial to the reader. Since Tere Liye's novel Janji is a best-selling novel containing stories of people's life experiences, researchers are interested in analyzing the novel. The purpose of this study is to explain the themes, messages and moral values ​​of Tere Liye's novel "Janji". The research methods used are descriptive and qualitative. The data source for the analysis is Tere Liye's novel "Janji". After research, I found that Tere Liye's novel Janji has two kinds of her themes, the main her theme about promises and the sub-her theme about life's struggles. The novel Junji's message is an implicit message about mutual cooperation and an explicit message about the power of belief. The moral values ​​contained in Janji's novels include her four dimensions: relationship with self, relationship with others, relationship with nature, and relationship with God.

The development of narrative identity in the psychodynamic treatment of avoidant personality disorder: A case study.

Avoidant personality disorder (AvPD) is characterized by feelings of shyness, inadequacy, and restraint in intimate relationships and has been associated with a disturbance in narrative identity, which is the internalized and evolving story of past, present, and future experiences. Study findings have indicated that an improvement in overall mental health through psychotherapy may increase narrative identity. However, there is a lack of studies incorporating not only the examination of narrative identity development before and after psychotherapy but also within psychotherapy sessions. This case study examined the development of narrative identity in short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy treatment of a patient with AvPD, using therapy transcripts and life narrative interviews before, after, and 6 months following treatment termination. Narrative identity development was assessed in terms of agency, communion fulfillment, and coherence. Results showed that the patient's agency and coherence increased over the course of therapy, whereas communion fulfillment decreased. At the six-month follow-up, agency and communion fulfillment increased, whereas coherence remained stable. The results of this case study suggest that the patient's sense of narrative agency and ability to narrate coherently improved after undergoing short-term psychodynamic therapy. The decrease of communion fulfillment during psychotherapy and later increase after termination suggests that the patient became more aware of conflictual patterns in their relationships, therefore realizing that their wishes and desires were not being fulfilled in their current relationships. This case study displays the possible impact short-term psychodynamic therapy may have by helping patients with AvPD develop a narrative identity.

“I don’t even recognize myself anymore”: An autoethnography of workplace bullying in higher education

The purpose of this autoethnography was to contextualize a personal workplace bullying experience in higher education with the intention to promote action and change within higher education policy and practice. The research questions that guided this study were: How do I tell the story of my experience with workplace bullying in higher education? What are the personal and social impacts of my experience with workplace bullying? What strategies did I use to persevere through the workplace bullying experience? Bullying and incivility in higher education contexts persists despite having knowledge of the negative implications and desire of institutions for change. Three themes emerged in this autoethnography: (1) I don’t even recognize myself anymore; (2) Reliving past trauma: I thought that part of my life was over; and (3) Coping and Survivor’s Guilt. This autoethnography adds to the body of literature surrounding bullying and incivility in the workplace; offers examples of how workplace bullying and incivility impacted a victim’s professional and personal life, along with the victim’s psychological and physical well-being; and facilitates critical reflection on this experience in order to generate innovative methods to address the prevalence and minimize the impacts of similar experiences in the higher education environments.

A sport-health centre open to mental health

Physical activity is a determinant of the overall health and well-being of patients with mental disorders. The story of a clinical experience in a physical activity and sports center, recognized as a health and sports center, allows us to highlight the specific issues of adapted physical activity in psychiatry, oriented towards recovery and social integration. The opening of sport-health centres in mental health is an inclusive step forward that contributes to the improvement of care practices in psychiatry.

The Soul of Desire: Discovering the Neuroscience of Longing, Beauty, and Community

The Soul of Desire: Discovering the Neuroscience of Longing, Beauty, and Community

Shadow Play: Visualizing Asexuality in New

Shadow Play:Visualizing Asexuality in New Kari Barclay (bio) Asexuality—the perspective of not experiencing sexual attraction to others—is sometimes called the "invisible orientation" for its lack of representation in popular culture (Decker). Popularized in the early 2000s, the term "asexual" describes a spectrum of non-normative desire and is usually presented as a sexual orientation akin to "heterosexual," "bisexual," or "homosexual." While framed as an essential, minority identity, asexuality can also describe a sensibility akin to queerness. Within the past few years, television series such as BoJack Horseman, Sex Education, Sirens, and Everything's Gonna Be Okay have all spotlighted asexual characters. In theatre, however, asexual representation has remained rare. Being one of a few out asexual playwrights, I have stumbled upon pockets of asexual theatre-makers, often by chance, as colleagues have connected via social media or word of mouth through mutual friends. I have noticed (and been part of) a cohort of artists working to tell stories of asexual experience and shift social understandings of what constitutes "natural" sexuality. Here, I spotlight a sample of plays from this cohort to investigate what asexual aesthetics and representation might lend to theatrical discourse more broadly. In December 2021, I hosted an online gathering of asexual playwrights to build community and assess the state of the field. I was curious to understand not only how artists imagined asexual representation but also how asexuality shaped their artistic work's form. How does one theatricalize what is often viewed as a "failure to perform"? Whereas asexuality is often defined in terms of lack—a lack of attraction, a lack of visibility—what I found instead are works that indulge in fantasy and strategically mix naturalistic and non-naturalistic forms. In this article, I analyze four plays by artists on the asexual spectrum and position them in relation to queerness. These four plays each situate asexual characters alongside lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender characters, using the differences and similarities to make asexuality legible. I describe this dynamic as asexual shadow play, an attempt to make asexuals' lack of sexual desire visible in the shadow of other forms of queer experience. With the concept of shadow play, I push back on the drive for visibility in sectors of the LGBT movement. For some queer subjects, visibility has facilitated concrete gains like marriage equality, employment protections, cultural funding, and resources for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. However, as some queer theorists argue, efforts at visibility also enable surveillance, backlash, and cooptation.1 At first glance, asexual art-making appears to jump on the bandwagon of LGBT visibility, trailing it like the A in the LGBTQIA+ initialism. However, not all formulations of asexuality focus on identification or visibility. Here, I offer a third alternative to invisibility and visibility: shadow play. Theatre that incorporates asexual identity often does so in conversation with other queer identities as a kind of foil or bas-relief to queer visibility politics. My idea of shadow play cites the theatrical device of using puppets held against a light source to project images onto a curtain. Shadow play conceptually challenges the dichotomies between lack and excess, which often dominate discussions of asexuality. A shadow combines lack and excess, absence and presence; it is an absence of light that becomes a visible, living presence by virtue of the light around it. Similarly, asexual visibility in theatre tends to reveal not only asexual experiences but also the sexual cultures surrounding them. [End Page 5] Playing in the Shadows The move to connect asexuality and queerness is not self-evident. The first explicit mention of asexuality I encountered in theatre was in Fun Home. In the musical, a young Alison Bechdel is exploring her sexuality as a first-year at Oberlin College. Talking to her friend Joan after a Gay Student Union meeting, Alison says, "The only thing I really know about myself is that I'm asexual. I'm not attracted to men but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm attracted to women" (Tesori and Kron 35). The next moment, Joan kisses her, and we're swept into the soaring ballad "Changing My Major," in which Alison describes her sexual awakening and overwhelming...

The People of Rose Hill: Black and White Life on a Maryland Plantation by Lucy Maddox

Reviewed by: The People of Rose Hill: Black and White Life on a Maryland Plantation by Lucy Maddox Whitney Nell Stewart (bio) The People of Rose Hill: Black and White Life on a Maryland Plantation. By Lucy Maddox. ( Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. Pp. 244. Cloth, $54.95.) Scholarly consensus of what defines a plantation has often focused on the estate's number of laborers or the type of crop they harvested, yet we know that these sites were about far more than agriculture. They were workplaces, but also homeplaces. They were shaped by the individuals who lived there and by the relationships, both imposed and chosen, those individuals formed. And they were structured by a violent, oppressive system that denied so much to Black southerners for the benefit of white enslavers. What makes plantations fascinating, then, is that they can reveal to us big stories of deeply ingrained structural inequality and small stories of personal experience. In The People of Rose Hill, Lucy Maddox attempts the difficult task of telling both the macro and micro of plantation life in the U.S. South, giving us an engaging deep dive into a single estate on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Maddox provides a history of Rose Hill and, with the plantation mistress's diaries as her primary account, extracts an impressive amount of information about dozens of plantation residents, their work, and their relationships. The narrative is, for the most part, chronologically structured and focused on the first half of the nineteenth century. Maddox reveals how, in this transformative time, a Maryland plantation could embody the simultaneous stability of the plantation model and its capacity to quickly change, emphasizing for the reader just how contingent, unexpected, yet drearily repetitive life could be on an antebellum plantation. Long before the sectional crisis came to full civil war, most Maryland enslavers recognized that slavery was on the decline in their state. However, in the particular area where Rose Hill sat—the Eastern Shore—planters such as Rose Hill owner Thomas Forman refused to believe it. Historians Ira Berlin and Barbara Jeanne Fields have noted that peculiar stubbornness among Eastern Shore planters before; yet Maddox's single plantation [End Page 119] focus allows her to dig deeper into the particularities that produced a different kind of Maryland enslaver and plantation. The tobacco industry had collapsed in the Chesapeake by the late eighteenth century, eventually leading to the rampant selling or emancipating of enslaved Marylanders throughout the state in the nineteenth century. Yet Rose Hill was relatively stable economically, maintaining its enslaved population of roughly thirty to forty throughout the first four decades of the nineteenth century. Rose Hill had adjusted, focusing on sustainable agriculture, selling such household products as butter, and reaping profits from Forman's other properties in Delaware. Rose Hill is not necessarily representative of a southern plantation or even of a Maryland plantation. But its history reiterates the flexibility and longevity of slavery and capitalism even in a time and place in which many believed the institution was floundering. Maddox is not only interested in the enslaving, plantation-owning Forman family, however. She weaves together stories of Black and white folks, enslaving and enslaved people, hired hands and wealthy visitors to reveal the array of experiences at Rose Hill. The short biographical vignettes of Rose Hill's enslaved residents found throughout the book are especially key in decentering enslavers and showing diversity within the shared experience of plantation slavery. At the heart of The People of Rose Hill is Maddox's investigation of the complicated, difficult, and often destructive relationships between the various individuals and groups that made up the plantation. For instance, the analysis of Thomas and Martha Forman's relationship is balanced and persuasive, painstakingly comparing two different versions of Martha's diary to illuminate the tension between a husband and wife's ideals of marriage, manhood, and womanhood on a southern plantation. Indeed, Maddox's work in recovering these contemporaneous diaries, both written by Martha but one with the editorial oversight of Thomas, is an important reminder of why careful archival research is so necessary. Maddox is especially clear about what her main source—Martha...

Flood Stories: Agency of Water and Relationality of Narrative

Based on flood stories from the lower Daugava neighborhoods in Riga, this article seeks to explore the relational capacity of environmental narrative. Reverberating ideas of recent posthumanist and new materialist origin, it aims to bring to the fore personal oral accounts as a source for phenomenological inquiry into how people experience the agency of matter and how they narratively build relationships with their environment. I argue that personal experience stories have a unique epistemological value for the study of relational ontologies in that they provide access to the subjectivities of people’s varied engagement with the environment.

“The Stuff That Dreams Are Made of”—Restoring Cinema Colors: A Roadmap for Real Research

Since 1895, through the analog and the digital eras, color is among the many narrative and aesthetic tools cinema language used in its creative process to shape a unique, multi-sensorial experience for its audience. Over these 120+ years, endless cinema color techniques, technologies, aesthetics, and ideologies came and went. One thing that stayed the same is that color in cinema, more than a technology, is a complex system made up by many components: filmmakers’ ideas and intent, negotiations with the audience, technologies (such as film stocks, chemicals, cameras, printers, developing machines, projectors), and laboratory processes and practices. Taken individually, none of these elements tells the whole story of color use and experience in cinematographic works. This complexity adds to the fact that much of film color technology history is not recorded in books, journals and patents and is often forgotten as so much of it relies on individuals’ practices and memories. Consequently, a novel and more comprehensive theoretical and methodological approach is needed in order to make it possible to preserve and restore cinema colors, that is, to faithfully recreate their original chromatic effects in a modern, completely different environment.

Science for humanity

This year marks the 175th anniversary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, the publisher of Science). In striving to advance its mission, the organization's theme for its annual meeting (2 to 5 March in Washington, DC), "Science for Humanity," reiterates its commitment to explore and make sense of the world through inquiry, evidence seeking, and discovery. The words of archbishop and Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu are a reminder that this pursuit must be shared by everyone if it is to serve all of society: "My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together." These words aptly capture the essence of the ties that bind us, which include our shared DNA, our need to bond with others, and our ability to collaborate. Science is intertwined with the human condition and stories of the human experience and is hence the great connector. The more we embrace our common humanity-and science as a unifier-the better we will understand what it means to be human and what it will take to sustain ourselves and our planet.

Applying Context, Input, Process and Product (CIPP) Model for Course Evaluation

The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the course titled ELT Pedagogy and Materials from the M.Ed. III semester programme of education under Tribhuvan University by using context, input, process and product (CIPP) model. The evaluation process had gone through qualitative research method using purposively selected five M.Ed. graduates and a course teacher as research participants for data collection. The data was obtained through semi-structured interview and story of everyday class experience of research participants to have an in-depth understanding of their phenomenon. The result indicated that the course has sufficiently identified the needs of secondary level teachers but there seems a lack of coordination between theory and practice. Both students and teachers agreed that objectives of the course are very realistic. However, micro context could not be covered such as lack of focusing in rural context of English language teaching (ELT) and also teachers could not come out from stereotypical teaching pedagogy, brought a sort of disappointment regarding the course and its outcome. Hence, this study implies the worth of implication of CIPP model for programme evaluation and helps to mitigate its pedagogical challenges for better teaching and learning outcomes.

Racial reckoning, resistance, and the revolution: A call to community psychology to move forward.

This article introduces a special issue of the American Journal of Community Psychology that features racial reckoning, resistance and the revolution in the context of a syndemic, the historical subjugation of communities of Color (COC) to racial hierarchies and the coronavirus (COVID-19). More specifically, this special issue underscores the need for community psychology and other allied disciplines to address this syndemic facing COC. The special issue delivers on the stories of the lived experiences from researchers and community members as it relates to COVID-19 and COC. Twelve articles are illuminated to challenge the field to create social change.

의사 소통 향상을 위한 부부 미술 치료 경험에 관한 존재론적 탐구

Objectives The inquiry purposed to explore the meaning of the that lifestyle or beliefs acquried in the original family relationship affected marital communication.
 Methods The inquiry adopted an ontological inquiry method, performed 12 parenting coach sessions for the couple who a child protection agency commissioned, and analyzed resources such as artworks, interviews, and the art therapist’s journals. The therapist guided participants to create artwork and interviewed at their workplace.
 Results The inquiry experience stories were <I'm not a slave>, <I'm scolded>, <I suffered by too much talking>, <Let it go>, <Ignore>, <Distrust>, <We are different>, <All men are trash>, <Converstation experience>, <Responsibility>, <My father>, <How to resolve conflicts>, and <Attempt to transform>.
 Conclusions By inquiring about the couple's therapy experience, it was valuable to observe how the lifestyle and beliefs acquired in the original family and the process of their communication skills improvement. Thus, this inquiry method may assist in improving the couple's relationship that is at risk.

Investigating How People Who Self-harm Evaluate Web-Based Lived Experience Stories: Focus Group Study.

The positive and negative effects of interacting with web-based content on mental health, and especially self-harm, are well documented. Lived experience stories are one such type of static web-based content, frequently published on health care or third-sector organization websites, as well as social media and blogs, as a form of support for those seeking help via the web. This study aimed to increase understanding about how people who self-harm engage with and evaluate web-based lived experience stories. Overall, 4 web-based focus groups were conducted with 13 people with recent self-harm experience (aged 16-40 years). In total, 3 example lived experience stories were read aloud to participants, who were then asked to share their reactions to the stories. Participants were also encouraged to reflect on stories previously encountered on the web. Data were analyzed thematically. Overall, 5 themes were generated: stories of recovery from self-harm and their emotional impact, impact on self-help and help-seeking behaviors, identifying with the narrator, authenticity, and language and stereotyping. Lived experience stories published on the web can provide a valuable form of support for those experiencing self-harm. They can be motivating and empowering for the reader, and they have the potential to distract readers from urges to self-harm. However, these effects may be moderated by age, and narratives of recovery may demoralize older readers. Our findings have implications for organizations publishing lived experience content and for community guidelines and moderators of web-based forums in which users share their stories. These include the need to consider the narrator's age and the relatability and authenticity of their journey and the need to avoid using stigmatizing language.

A narrative approach to the formation of place attachments in landscapes of expanding renewable energy technology

Renewable energy technologies are expanding in rural landscapes, where they are changing the character and meaning of place. This study explores the experience of living and recreating in proximity to landscapes undergoing this development, namely in a Swedish municipality where a major wind park is located. Using place attachment, it addresses how people construct meaning around places of everyday life through stories of their experience of place. Results show that individuals form coherent narratives of the past, present and future of places undergoing transformation. Stories of experiences of renewable energy technology and their impact on landscape relate to persisting feelings of rootedness, changing land-use activities and hope for a sustainable future. Place attachments are a form of social action as their formulation enables people to deal with change and embrace discourses of sustainability. Results highlight the discourses and practices that rural dwellers adopt in the wake of renewable energy transitions.

Structure of personal narratives in Thai children aged 4 to 6 years old

Background: Understanding children’s narratives is crucial as it represents language capacity in a naturalistic context and also relates to children’s academic success. However, studies showed that narratives vary not only with age but also in content and structure across cultures. Objectives: To study and compare components and patterns of personal narratives in Thai children aged 4-6 years old. Also, to find narrative structure differences between genders. Materials and methods: Stories of past experiences were elicited from 86 participants aged 4-6 years old. The longest narratives from each participant were analyzed in terms of both narrative components and patterns by using high-point analysis. Comparisons were then drawn for the proportions and differences in narrative structure between age groups and between genders. Results: For narrative components, Thai children told complicating action most frequently. With age, the use of resolution increased significantly from 4-6 years old. For narrative patterns, chronological patterns were found commonly at age 4. Moreover, the incidence of classic patterns rose significantly between the ages of 4 and 6 and reached the highest proportion in usage at ages 5 and 6. No gender difference was found in the narrative structure. Conclusion: Thai children’s narrative structure was presented in this study. The abilities to range events in sequence and resolve the high-point of narratives were found more commonly with their increasing age.

Evaluating Sci-fi Readers’ Perspective: Correlation between Immersive Emotion and Speculative Factors

The narrative experience in stories influences subsequent beliefs related to it but no quantitative research has been conducted in the sci-fi genre. Therefore, this study identified factors for the quantitative evaluation of the narrative experience of science fiction (sci-fi). Data on sci-fi readers were collected using a questionnaire survey in 2022. The questionnaire items were developed based on the narrative engagement scale and sci-fi studies. The scale explains factors consisting of the narrative experience that novels bring to readers. A total of 978 samples were statistically analyzed using exploratory factor analysis. As a result, three latent constructs were found: “comprehension,” “immersion,” and “speculation,” which is a specific factor in sci-fi. Next, a correlation analysis was performed for the three constructs. The results showed that the correlation between immersion and speculation was higher than any other correlation. The study’s findings such as: (1) the narrative engagement scales could be applied to sci-fi evaluation, (2) the identification of an evaluation factor unique to the narrative experience of sci-fi “speculation” and (3) clarification of the relationship between the emotional immersive factor and speculation factor, suggests that the influence of sci-fi on immersive emotion changes the future perspective of readers.&nbsp

Stories of deaf students acculturation experiences on the college campus: A narrative inquiry

The purpose of this qualitative narrative study was to explore how deaf college students tell stories reflecting on their acculturation experiences at a four-year university in California. The problem addressed by this study was the lack of knowledge about the acculturation experiences of deaf college students on campuses. The target population was deaf university students enrolled at a four-year university in California. A purposive sample of 11 deaf students participated in interviews to share acculturation experiences. Data were collected through narrative interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. Results were organised according to research questions, and the participants' experiences were retold through a composite narrative. Results revealed participants had common experiences of integration, rejection, assimilation, and marginalisation relative to interacting with hearing faculty and students on the collegiate campus. Recommendations are for policy and practise to include deaf and hearing students working together to increase knowledge of the deaf culture. The faculties are becoming more knowledgeable of school policy on how to provide accommodations and services for deaf students. Recommendations for future research include conducting additional research on hearing faculty members and students' acculturation experiences interacting with deaf individuals on college campuses and conducting research at colleges and universities without programs for the deaf to explore deaf students' acculturation experiences. Furthermore, recommendations for future research include exploration of deaf students' acculturation experiences in collegiate extracurricular activities and the acculturation experiences of other students with disabilities in a college environment.