Textual Expression Research Articles

Emulation on the Shakespearean Stage by Vernon Guy Dickson (review)

Vernon Guy Dickson. Emulation on Shakespearean Stage. Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013. Pp. xx + 189. 60.00 [pounds sterling]. Early in Emulation on Shakespearean Stage, Vernon Guy Dickson quotes Quintilians The Orators Education: I do want Paraphrase to be mere passive reproduction, but to rival and vie with original in expressing same thoughts (quoted 11). Appearing in final paragraph of Dicksons book, another quotation from The Orators Education tempers ancient rhetoricians teaching on contentious imitation: no man can draw level with man in whose footsteps he feels bound to tread (quoted 172). In Dicksons account, in English combined these precepts. At once competition and homage, textual expression and lived behavior, emulation was seen as rote repetition but as an act of or construction, self-construction in daily life--governed by decorum, though also potentially generative of transgressive invention (12). This understanding of moreover, created that bred individuals who read selves closely like texts and attempted to shape themselves based on wide range of models, and persons, historical and contemporary--sometimes as agonists, sometimes as exemplars, sometimes simply as peers (xvii). In mounting case for this culture of emulation, Dickson draws on and deviates from Rene Girard's mimetic rivalry, Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance self-fashioning, and Thomas M. Greenes era of imitation. Emulation on Shakespearean Stage thus ends up enacting very concept it examines. The result is study of English rhetorical and dramatic practice that provides useful review of scholarship and reads early modern drama in often generative ways. Emulation on Shakespearean Stage begins with genealogy of of in which early modern dramatists and their audiences engaged. In chapter 1 Dickson reviews principal early theories of imitation, with particular attention to Aristotle and Quintilian and to Thomas Wilson, Roger Ascham, and Sir Philip Sidney. This chapter proves especially useful in demonstrating differences in priorities between ancient and early modern rhetoricians and among English writers. For instance, although they all emphasize self-fashioning through emulative education, Wilson privileges imitation in context of classroom learning; Ascham, of social codes of behavior; and Sidney, of virtuous action (14-24). This blurring of texts (fiction and nonfiction, art and life), Dickson argues, is only foundational to emulative theory in but also the necessary condition of humanist ideal of an emulative theater on Shakespearean stage (62). The next four chapters closely read plays by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Philip Massinger that take classical Rome, including its texts, culture, and ethos, as object of emulation. Each of plays also portrays a confounding enactment of Roman models (29). This compelling turn of phrase appears in chapter 2, arguably strongest chapter in book. Here, Dickson demonstrates how in Andronicus characters compete to outdo available texts and each others imitations of these texts and precedents, constructing a destructive pattern of conflicted, partial, and uncritical emulations (28). Classroom learning sets Shakespearean stage for Roman patterns of behavior that ought to promote social and political action worthy of but miscalculations in characters' discernments of what and how to emulate lead to escalating retributive violence rather than mercy. Although not as overt as Titus (53), Hamlet enacts failure of emulative reading of classical models to yield anything other than rote repetition. In chapter 3 Dickson focuses on Hamlet and lapse of decorum (match[ing] deeds to . …

The language of racism. Textual testimonies of Jewish-Arab hostility in the Israeli Academia

The persistent Jewish Arab conflict is present in every aspect of life in Israeli society and its echoes penetrate the everyday reality of higher educational institutions. Feelings of mutual hostility among Arab and Jewish students, faculty and administration are common experiences on Israeli campuses. This article analyzes two textual expressions of this mutual resentment which were circulated in 2011 in Tel Hai College, Israel. One of the texts was produced by Muslim Arab student association and the other by a Zionist Jewish organization. Both groups are present on every campus in Israel. Despite the significant difference of the political location occupied by each organization in the Israeli power structure, we argue that these texts share similar attitudes to the conflict and parallel operational strategies. The paper demonstrates the attempts by these texts to encourage the mutual hostility between Jews and Arabs by employing racist and violent discourse. The article tries to explain the silence of the college administration and faculty in the face of these racist acts, subsequently outlining a vision of a responsible academia which will banish any acts of racism.

A Linguistic Approach to Identify the Affective Dimension Expressed in Textual Messages

The digital mediation resources used in Distance Education can hinder the teacher's perception about the student's state of mind. However, the textual expression in natural language is widely encouraged in most Distance Education courses, through the use of Virtual Learning Environments and other digital tools. This fact has motivated research efforts in order to identify feelings expressed by students in textual messages. A significant part of the known approaches in this area apply textual analysis without a deep linguistic representation, which can lead to some weakness in the results obtained. This paper reports an approach using theories of Computational Lexical Semantics for the representation of the lexicon of emotion. The methodology was developed through studies regarding corpus analysis, lexical unit description, and the implementation of a computational system to identify the feelings expressed in the textual messages in natural language, using the lexicon of emotion. This system was used in evaluation experiments that indicate improvements when comparing the adopted approach with other similar approaches.

Transforming Violence and Death in Marguerite de Navarre's Chansons spirituelles

This article considers various representations of death and physical violence in Marguerite de Navarre's Chansons spirituelles. These include the impact of violence on one's spiritual life, on the experience of union with God, and on the shaping of the believer's will and identity. Marguerite employs violent images both as a critique of those who would use self-brutalization to feign humility, and as a sign authenticating a sincere desire for union with the divine. The negative use of asceticism to earn God's favour, leading to pride, gives way to a positive view of suffering and death deeply embedded in and indispensable to one's experience of the divine. By differentiating the source of violence, the poems reveal that even though suffering is painful, it is necessary to transform the believer's will. More than a simple metaphor, however, death and violence become the means to and textual expression of this metamorphosis.

Paideia as Metanoia: Transformative Insights from the Monastic Tradition

Silent men were observed about the country, or discovered in the forest, digging, clearing and building; and other silent men, not seen, were sitting in the cold cloister, tiring their eyes and keeping their attention on the stretch, while they painfully copied and recopied the manuscripts which they had saved. There was no one who contended or cried out, or drew attention to what was going on, but by degrees the woody swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a seminary, a school of learning and a city. — John Henry Newman, The Mission of the Benedictine Order Among the many privileges of her posterity, Rome tends to enjoy a larger space on the metaphorical palate of cultural critics during perceived times of crisis. Narratives comparing her decline to contemporary conditions often bring along an homage to Benedict of Nursia, in many ways the founder of Western Christian monasticism. Newman’s image of “silent men” often rallies would-be cultural preservers toward nostalgic hibernation in response to some imminent and inevitable cataclysm. The trope has recently been taken up in reference to the plights of higher and secondary education. Thomas Benton’s op-ed in The Chronicle of Higher Education encourages us to “get medieval on education,” forsaking an academy marked by tenure-track cuts and diminishing humanities enrollment in favor of small institutions where faculty poverty is at least intentional. 1 In Septmeber 2015, the Archbishop of Canterbury instituted a “gap year” program of monastic living for high school graduates seeking shelter from a chaotic modern world. 2 For those not ready to retreat into the cloister, a new PBS documentary, The Rule, holds up a New Jersey Benedictine high school as a potential model for urban education. 3 In the last decade, particular elements of the Benedictine educational tradition have garnered interest outside the monastery. In an increasingly instrumental environment, intentionally nonpragmatic and nonpositivistic approaches hold an understandable appeal. Among philosophers of education, Angelo Caranfa, Kevin Gary, and Samuel Rocha have recently provided accounts of the potential educational value of both monastic silence and literary modalities. 4 In light of the 2015 Philosophy of Education Society conference theme, I would like to further this discussion by examining how principles of monastic learning might inform a poetic and transformative educational vision. As a particular appropriation of Platonic paideia, monastic education carries specific ontological, anthropological, and linguistic considerations. When enacted in practice, these positions yield a literacy model that can be described as metanoia, or “turning toward.” In this model, readers “turn toward” and encounter an Other in the form of textual expression and are transformed through what monastics considered an organic “digestion” of the Other’s mind. 5 This essay seeks to contribute to the current literature by advancing metanoia as a notional framework and by drawing on the work of Ivan Illich as well as Raymond Studzinski’s recent phenomenological analysis of monastic lectio. After proposing a narrative of continuity between Platonic

RLIMS-P 2.0: A Generalizable Rule-Based Information Extraction System for Literature Mining of Protein Phosphorylation Information.

We introduce RLIMS-P version 2.0, an enhanced rule-based information extraction (IE) system for mining kinase, substrate, and phosphorylation site information from scientific literature. Consisting of natural language processing and IE modules, the system has integrated several new features, including the capability of processing full-text articles and generalizability towards different post-translational modifications (PTMs). To evaluate the system, sets of abstracts and full-text articles, containing a variety of textual expressions, were annotated. On the abstract corpus, the system achieved F-scores of 0.91, 0.92, and 0.95 for kinases, substrates, and sites, respectively. The corresponding scores on the full-text corpus were 0.88, 0.91, and 0.92. It was additionally evaluated on the corpus of the 2013 BioNLP-ST GE task, and achieved an F-score of 0.87 for the phosphorylation core task, improving upon the results previously reported on the corpus. Full-scale processing of all abstracts in MEDLINE and all articles in PubMed Central Open Access Subset has demonstrated scalability for mining rich information in literature, enabling its adoption for biocuration and for knowledge discovery. The new system is generalizable and it will be adapted to tackle other major PTM types. RLIMS-P 2.0 online system is available online (http://proteininformationresource.org/rlimsp/) and the developed corpora are available from iProLINK (http://proteininformationresource.org/iprolink/).

Sorrowful Voices: Performing Mahler's Kindertotenlieder

Gustav Mahler's Kindertotenlieder is arguably one of the most daunting of song cycles, not only on account of its technical demands but due to the intrinsic emotional weight of Rückert's poetry. In performance the singer becomes the conduit of the textual and musical expression and bears the artistic weight of enabling both poet and composer to ‘speak’. This paper considers the multiple ‘voices’ that inform and inhabit performance of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder in addition to those of poet and composer. It explores the ‘performing voices’ as represented by the interpretative gestures of iconic performances, including those of Kathleen Ferrier and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, considers the ‘mythological voices’ emanating from the superstitions surrounding the work, and finally considers the ‘personal voice’ of the performer with its entwined physical and emotional characteristics. This paper underlines the role of vocal technique and controlled nuances of expression in the ability of the singer to convey the multilayered ‘sorrowful voices’ of the Kindertotenlieder to the listener.

Applying a Text-Based Affective Dialogue System in Psychological Research: Case Studies on the Effects of System Behaviour, Interaction Context and Social Exclusion

This article presents two studies conducted with an affective dialogue system in which text-based system-user communication was used to model, generate, and present different affective and social interaction scenarios. We specifically investigated the influence of interaction context and roles assigned to the system and the participants, as well as the impact of pre-structured social interaction patterns that were modelled to mimic aspects of 'social exclusion' scenarios. The results of the first study demonstrate that both the social context of the interaction and the roles assigned to the system influence the system evaluation, interaction patterns, textual expressions of affective states, as well as emotional self-reports. The results observed for the second study show the system's ability to partially exclude a participant from a triadic conversation without triggering significantly different affective reactions or a more negative system evaluation. The experimental evidence provides insights on the perception, modelling and generation of affective and social cues in artificial systems that can be realized in different modalities, including the text modality, thus delivering valuable input for applying affective dialogue systems as tools for studying affect and social aspects in online communication.

How “consistent” is “consistent”? A clinician-based assessment of the reliability of expressions used by radiologists to communicate diagnostic confidence

To evaluate the degree of variability in clinicians' interpretation of expressions used by radiologists to communicate their level of diagnostic confidence within radiological reports. Clinicians were solicited to complete a prospective survey asking them to select the approximate perceived level of certainty, expressed as a percentage, associated with 20 expressions used by radiologists to communicate their level of diagnostic confidence within radiological reports. The median and inter-decile range (IDR) were computed for each expression, with a smaller IDR indicating greater reproducibility. Clinicians were also asked questions regarding their attitudes about radiologists' communication of diagnostic confidence. Forty-nine surveys were completed. Median confidence associated with the expressions ranged from 10-90%. Reproducibility of the expressions was variable, as IDR ranged from 15-53%, although a median IDR of 40% indicated overall poor reproducibility. Expressions with relatively higher reproducibility included "most likely", "likely", and "unlikely" (IDR 15-20%), whereas expressions with relatively lower reproducibility included "compatible with", "suspicious for", "possibly," and "can be seen in the setting of" (IDR ≥45%). Only 20% of clinicians agreed or strongly agreed that radiologists consistently use such expressions within their reports. Fifty-five percent of clinicians preferred that diagnostic confidence be communicated as a percentage rather than as a textual expression. There was poor reproducibility in clinicians' interpretations of many expressions used by radiologists to communicate their level of diagnostic confidence. Use of percentages to convey diagnostic confidence within reports may mitigate this source of ambiguity in radiologists' communication with clinicians.

An ABC of drumming: children's narratives about beat, rhythm and groove in a primary classroom

In this paper, I use a bricolage of arts-based research and writing practices to explore narratives by Grade 4 children about their experiences in a drumming circle called ‘Bam Bam’ as represented in a text they created with me called An ABC of drumming. The term ‘narrative’ is used here in a contemporary sense to simultaneously invoke a socially and musically situated and constructed story (Chase, 2005 p. 657); as an ‘account to self and others’ (Barrett & Stauffer, 2009, p. 7) about drumming in a particular place, with a particular group of children during a particular set of events; and, to explore narratives of drumming as the ‘shared relational work’ of myself as a drummer, teacher, researcher and ‘story-teller/story-liver’ (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990, p. 12) alongside the children. In synchronicity with the ABC of drumming produced by the children, the paper itself is framed and written creatively around letters of the alphabet and variously includes poetry and data or research poetry; ethnographic ‘thick descriptions’ (Geertz, 1973) of our drumming circle; and, visual and textual expressions by the children. By doing so, my aim is to move collectively from ‘narrative as a “story-presented” to narrative as a “form of meaning-making”, indeed, a form of “mind-making”’ (Barrett & Stauffer, 2009, p. 10) about the children's experience of drumming and the drumming circle itself. The central question underpinning this paper then is, what makes children's experience in a drumming circle meaningful, and how do they make sense of such meaning?

Las palabras del silencio de santa Rosa de Lima o la poesia visual del inefable

Las palabras del silencio de santa Rosa de Lima o la poesia visual del inefable

Reading people’s minds from emotion expressions in interdependent decision making.

How do people make inferences about other people's minds from their emotion displays? The ability to infer others' beliefs, desires, and intentions from their facial expressions should be especially important in interdependent decision making when people make decisions from beliefs about the others' intention to cooperate. Five experiments tested the general proposition that people follow principles of appraisal when making inferences from emotion displays, in context. Experiment 1 revealed that the same emotion display produced opposite effects depending on context: When the other was competitive, a smile on the other's face evoked a more negative response than when the other was cooperative. Experiment 2 revealed that the essential information from emotion displays was derived from appraisals (e.g., Is the current state of affairs conducive to my goals? Who is to blame for it?); facial displays of emotion had the same impact on people's decision making as textual expressions of the corresponding appraisals. Experiments 3, 4, and 5 used multiple mediation analyses and a causal-chain design: Results supported the proposition that beliefs about others' appraisals mediate the effects of emotion displays on expectations about others' intentions. We suggest a model based on appraisal theories of emotion that posits an inferential mechanism whereby people retrieve, from emotion expressions, information about others' appraisals, which then lead to inferences about others' mental states. This work has implications for the design of algorithms that drive agent behavior in human-agent strategic interaction, an emerging domain at the interface of computer science and social psychology.

Relocalizing wrestler: performing texts across time and space

In this paper, I examine the textmaking potentials of the popular cultural resources of professional wrestling, including its modes of textual expression, as performed by Kyle, a boy in the middle years of elementary school. Kyle remixed wrestling, and its performative affordances, style and textmaking potentials across time and space. Using a spiral as metaphor, I explore how practices, texts and identities travel across particular moments by tracing the trajectory of a textual resource in new texts that Kyle made. I focus on how hybrid textmaking practices can be viewed as productive, creative and playful through Pennycook's concept of relocalization, which recognizes the roles of time and place in hybrid forms. This examination of textmaking and popular culture points to transformative possibilities in educational practice.

Chaucer’s Feminine Subjects: Figures of Desire in the Canterbury Tales by John A. Pitcher (review)

Reviewed by: Chaucer’s Feminine Subjects: Figures of Desire in the Canterbury Tales by John A. Pitcher Giselle Gos John A. Pitcher, Chaucer’s Feminine Subjects: Figures of Desire in the Canterbury Tales. The New Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012. pp. 214. ISBN: 978–1–4039–7322–1. $85 Pitcher engages deconstructionist and psychoanalytic theories of the subject to study the presentation of female characters as subjects of desire in four tales and their prologues. Pitcher contends that Chaucer’s use of figurative language and the [End Page 119] resulting ‘rhetorical instability’ are ‘the very matrix for his presentation of decentered subjectivity’ (p. 3). In other words, Chaucer’s construction of the self is not the liberal, humanist individual but the decentered, unstable, even contradictory subject of poststructuralism and psychoanalysis. Chapter One, on identity and desire in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, suggests that Chaucer capitalizes on the ‘indeterminacy of reference’ (p. 36) of several multivalent signifiers (the city of Bath, the incubus and Midas) to ‘demystif[y] the self as a linguistic effect’ (p. 36). Ultimately Pitcher sees Alison’s desire not as a desire for mastery, but a desire ‘to be the other’ (p. 42), thereby explaining her submissiveness in response to Jankyn’s obedience. The chapter ends with a discussion of Jankyn as an exemplary masculine subject whose abuse of the Wife is a symptom of the ‘production of masculine identity in relation to an ideal image’ (p. 57) of a rival lover that is the preferred object of women’s and the Wife’s desire. At times thought-provoking, this chapter could benefit from more careful consideration of the following issues. Pitcher observes that ‘Chaucer has made the witness of the truth of violent antifeminism: a woman accomplished in the art of rhetoric and deception’ (p. 40), but despite his investment in Chaucer’s sexual politics, he does not discuss the important political implications of this observation. Nor does he address the fact that his theorization of masculine subjectivity—identification with an imaginary rival—encodes misogynistic violence as its inevitable by-product. Finally, despite Pitcher’s insistence that Chaucer intentionally demystifies feminine difference (pp. 44–45), in his discussion, masculine subjectivity (as exemplified by Jankyn) appears to be formed through a straightforward identification with an idealized image, whereas feminine subjectivity (exemplified by Alison) is a rhetorical construct that that does not ‘coalesce around a core of identity’ (p. 36). This unheralded distinction between masculine and feminine subjectivity recurs in the second chapter, in which Pitcher discusses Dorigen in the Franklin’s Tale as a ‘divided subject.’ He argues that Dorigen’s rash promise to Aurelius, clearly intended as a rejection, nonetheless implies her latent, repressed desire for him. Pitcher justifies this reading via reference to Freudian psychoanalysis, namely that ‘an individual’s self-understanding is not likely to be a reliable guide to unconscious motivations’ (p. 69). The problem is that these alleged unconscious desires of Dorigen have no textual expression, so Pitcher has to co-opt evidence of the opposite to support his point. The resulting logic is circular: her identification with the ideal of a faithful wife is exactly what provides the motivation for her repression: ‘any hint of desire for Aurelius would be forced into just the realm of fantasy offered by her promise’ (p. 69). Again, Pitcher portrays feminine desire and subjectivity as contradictory and decentered, whereas masculine subjectivity appears straightforward and unified. The chapter is as much about Arveragus and Aurelius’ desire as Dorigen’s, but these male characters are not psychoanalyzed in such a way as to isolate and alienate them from their reported desires. The third chapter is dominated by a concern to disentangle the Clerk’s intentions in telling the tale of Walter and Griselda through attention to the Clerk’s ‘rhetorical nuances’ (p. 84), and to psychoanalyze Walter’s desire to test his wife. Griselda’s desire [End Page 120] and subjectivity take up only a little more than a third of the chapter. Pitcher finds that the Clerk’s motivation for telling the tale is to problematize unconditional submission and adherence to a vow as ‘self-destructive’ (p. 107). Walter’s...

A configurable use case modeling metamodel with superimposed variants

There are a variety of approaches to use case modeling, especially regarding textual use case description as their true form. Under certain circumstances, the use of each one of these approaches may be justified. It appears that use case modeling notations are close enough to each other to allow for constructing a common, configurable use case modeling metamodel. Such a metamodel is proposed in this paper. It adapts and extends UML metamodel elements relevant to use cases that covers their graphical portion to cover different use case modeling notations with a special attention given to the elements of textual expression of flows of events in use cases. The configuration options of the proposed use case modeling metamodel and its configurations representing Jacobson's and Cockburn's notation are presented and discussed. To better express configuration dependencies and avoid option interaction (due to which an unexpected behavior occurs), revealed in a practical evaluation by a configurable use case modeling tool prototype, the options have been arranged into a feature model and the approach of superimposed variants has been applied to the metamodel. The metamodel may serve as a basis for a configurable use case modeling tool or notation-specific tools. More important, it provides a framework for a consistent application of the use case modeling notation in one or across several organizations. It can also be used to facilitate a use case model interchange between notation-specific tools based on the metamodel.

Постсемиозис Андрея Монастырского в традициях московского концептуализма: Экфразис и проблема визуально-иронической суггестии

The article surveys the problem of textual expression in Moscow Conceptualism. It discusses the peculiar way this movement constructed its pictorial art, creating a unique example of ekphrasis. It seems that the key to adequate understanding of the legacy of the Conceptualist experiment in Russian culture is the language of the comical and the diversity of the humorous agenda. Moscow Conceptualism authorizes and encourages the use of multiple languages in addition to pictorial expression per se. The article therefore analyses the ways in which Conceptualists juxtapose verbal textuality with more traditional “artwork”.Russian Conceptualism made extensive use of cognitive dissonance, exploiting the contradictory, conflicting feeling conveyed by their art to illustrate the ironies covertly undermining societyʼs official discourse. The common Conceptualist goal was to demythologize the mainstream narrative of a happy socialist society by means of ideological mockery primarily based on the concept of “stiob”. Ekphrastic representations worked to create bitter parodies of Soviet metaphysics, travestying typical slogans of official propaganda. The essay explores unique mechanisms of embedding textual practice in the art of the elder conceptualist Ilʼia Kabakov and his younger contemporary Andrei Monastyrskii. The latterʼs ironic art theory is discussed in greater detail.

Affect and Social Processes in Online Communication--Experiments with an Affective Dialog System

This paper presents an integrated view on a series of experiments conducted with an affective dialog system, applied as a tool in studies of emotions and social processes in online communication. The different realizations of the system are evaluated in three experimental setups to verify effects of affective profiles, as well as of fine-grained communication scenarios on users' expressions of affective states, experienced emotional changes, and interaction patterns. Results demonstrate that the system applied in virtual reality settings matches a Wizard-of-Oz in terms of chatting enjoyment, dialog coherence, and realism. Variants of the system's affective profile significantly influence the rating of chatting enjoyment and an emotional connection. Self-reported emotional changes experienced by participants during an interaction with the system are in line with the type of applied profile. Analysis of interaction patterns, i.e., usage of particular dialog act classes, word categories, and textual expressions of affective states for different scenarios, demonstrates that a communication scenario for social sharing of emotions was successfully established. The experimental evidence provides valuable input for applications of affective dialog systems and strengthens them as valid tools for studying affect and social aspects in online communication.

Dimensions of diaconia: the public, political and prophetic

Abstract In this article, I inquire into the concept of diaconia by examining the relationship between its public, prophetic and political dimensions. Firstly, I introduce the main constitutive features of public, political, and prophetic theology and the related controversies within and between them. Secondly, I present the document A Moment of Truth. A word of faith, hope, and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering (Kairos Palestine 2009). This document articulates a Christian ecumenical theology that combines critical social analysis with theological reflection on current socio-political issues. I show how it exemplifies how the public, political, and prophetic can be combined and integrated in a textual expression of diaconia. I conclude by arguing that all three approaches need to be critically combined in Christian social work. The tensions between them must be viewed as tensions within diaconia itself. Accordingly, it is a key task for the academic field of diaconia to study and interpret the...

“Andrea Dworkin was probably turning in her grave”: Pornography, (Post)Feminist Backlash and Contemporary Women's Memoirs

Summary In a comment that is perhaps representative of new voices in contemporary feminist criticism, Natasha Walter states that in the 1970s “[a]ll treatments of sexuality in culture were forced to reveal the imprint of sexism”. She concludes that a minority of feminists perceived “any hint of sexuality in culture” as “proof of sexism” (Walter 1999: 112). Now, in the 21st century, the representation of dominant female sexuality, across all mediums of visual and textual expression, predominantly avoids the usual cultural trap of promiscuity; the image of the uncontrolled nymphomaniac, and it is this climate of active female sexual expression and a more inclusive (post)feminist discourse that has seen recent erotic non-fiction memoirs thrive. In this article, I will discuss three recent erotic memoirs: Melissa P.'s One Hundred Strokes of the Brush before Bed (2004), Toni Bentley's The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2006) and Catherine Townsend's Breaking the Rules: Confessions of a Bad Girl (2008). In the context of these memoirs, I will discuss the manner in which the texts celebrate, rather than contest, the eroticisation of male power and sexual values ascribed by the mainstreaming of the sex industry, and demonstrate how, in the context of postfeminist rhetoric and second-wave feminist backlash, this eroticisation of male power is represented, contentiously and divisively, as ostensibly liberating to women.

‘Elastic band strategy’: women's lived experience of coping with domestic violence in rural Indonesia

Background: Experiencing domestic violence is considered a chronic and stressful life event. A theoretical framework of coping strategies can be used to understand how women deal with domestic violence. Traditional values strongly influenced by religious teachings that interpret men as the leaders of women play an important role in the lives of Javanese women, where women are obliged to obey their husbands. Little is known about how sociocultural and psychosocial contexts influence the ways in which women cope with domestic violence.Objective: Our study aimed to deepen our understanding of how rural Javanese women cope with domestic violence. Our objective was to explore how the sociocultural context influences coping dynamics of women survivors of domestic violence in rural Purworejo.Design: A phenomenological approach was used to transform lived experiences into textual expressions of the coping dynamics of women survivors of domestic violence.Results: Experiencing chronic violence ruined the women's personal lives because of the associated physical, mental, psychosocial, and financial impairments. These chronic stressors led women to access external and internal resources to form coping strategies. Both external and internal factors prompted conflicting impulses to seek support, that is, to escape versus remain in the relationship. This strong tension led to a coping strategy that implied a long-term process of moving between actively opposing the violence and surrendering or tolerating the situation, resembling an elastic band that stretches in and out.Conclusions: Women survivors in Purworejo face a lack of institutional support and tend to have traditional beliefs that hamper their potential to stop the abuse. Although the women in this study were educated and economically independent, they still had difficulty mobilizing internal and external support to end the abuse, partly due to internalized gender norms.