Extraordinary Vision Research Articles

Visual attention and processing in jumping spiders

Jumping spiders have extraordinary vision. Using multiple, specialized eyes, these spiders selectively gather and integrate disparate streams of information about motion, color, and spatial detail. The saccadic movements of a forward-facing pair of eyes allow spiders to inspect their surroundings and identify objects. Here, we discuss the jumping spider visual system and how visual information is attended to and processed.

Mouth of the Donkey: Re-imagining Biblical Animals

Mouth of the Donkey: Re-imagining Biblical Animals

“The Medium is the Massage”: Exploring the Influential Role of Slow Variety Shows

“The Medium is the Massage”, first proposed by Marshall McLuhan, as another theory in communication science with an extraordinary vision, provides a new perspective for understanding the impact of slow variety shows on the emotional role of audiences in research. In recent years, slow variety shows such as “Welcome Back To Sound” and “Life to Live” have spurted on and won wide attention from audiences. In this paper, we will take the second season of “Welcome Back To Sound” as an example and analyse the influence of slow variety shows on audiences’ emotions from the perspective of “The Medium is the Massage”. Specifically, it takes sound as the entrance, “massaging” the audience’s sensory system from visual presentation, discourse and aesthetic performance, thus causing emotional resonance and reawakening the audience’s aspiration and pursuit of a better life. It is worth noting that while enjoying the “media massage” of slow variety shows, we also need to be wary of the excessive consumption of audience emotions by commercial capital and new media.

A living legend with an extraordinary vision who changed the perspective of ophthalmology in India - Padma Bhushan Dr. Sengamedu Srinivasa Badrinath.

A living legend with an extraordinary vision who changed the perspective of ophthalmology in India - Padma Bhushan Dr. Sengamedu Srinivasa Badrinath.

March 28, 2021

The first time I met Nawal—at least I think it was the first time—was at a women’s studies conference here in the United States sometime in the early 1980s. All I remember about that conference today was a conversation between Nawal and the woman who had invited her there, a conversation that, for some reason, I was party to. In the course of it, Nawal’s host—I’ll call her Ms. A.—was telling Nawal that she was not to speak about such and such issues. Nawal’s instant response was astonished outrage. “You’re telling me, Nawal El Saadawi,” she said, “what I can and cannot speak about?” This, obviously, was absurd, given that Nawal was famous for having gone to prison for saying and writing exactly what she thought. I joined her in her protest and Ms. A. soon backed down.The author of more than forty books, Nawal was a dynamo of intellectual and imaginative creativity, forever generating new ideas, new books, new novels, new forms of writing. She was an innovator as a writer, too, and had the gift, among other things, of being able to write—often compellingly, even mesmerizingly—in both her fiction and her nonfiction.In addition, she continually challenged not only patriarchy but all systems of power and oppression, wherever she saw them. Her primary targets were often, at least through the first decades of her career, the cultural practices and beliefs of Egypt, the Arab world, and Islam. More recently she was often also incisively critical of problems elsewhere, and her work consequently is of relevance well beyond the region from which she hailed. It would be a mistake to ghettoize her as relevant only to Islam and the Arab world.Nawal was a force of nature, a global figure and global thinker. Her thought and body of work, consistently critical of systems of power, raise questions about many aspects of our lives and world today, in whatever culture or country we find ourselves.Am I therefore also saying that I always agreed with Nawal about everything, or even that one should always agree with her about everything? Of course not. In fact, one doesn’t typically agree or disagree with forces of nature—the wind, the sea, or people of the extraordinary vision, creativity, and imagination of Nawal El Saadawi.My sense of loss at this moment, with Nawal’s living presence and living voice now gone from this world, is acute and personal. We’ve been colleagues and fellow workers in relation to women in Islam, as well as warm and cordial friends, over these many decades. I will miss her voice, and miss learning from her typically insightful perspectives on whatever is going on in our world. It was a great honor and privilege to have known her, as well as a wonderful gift and a pleasure.

Doran H. Ross: His Fabulous Fowler Years

Doran H. Ross: His Fabulous Fowler Years

“Straightaway Their Vision Came to Them”: Maya Ancestral Vision and Blood Memory

According to the Popol Vuh, a Maya text compiled soon after the Spanish Conquest in the sixteenth century, the first men created by the gods had the gift of extraordinary vision whereby they could see all things: “Perfect was their sight, and perfect was their knowledge of everything beneath the sky. If they gazed about them, turning their faces around, they beheld that which was in the sky and that which was upon the earth. Instantly, they were able to behold everything. They didn’t have to walk to see all that existed beneath the sky. They merely saw it from wherever they were. Thus, their knowledge became full. Their vision passed beyond the trees and rocks, beyond the lakes and the seas, beyond the mountains and the valleys” (Christenson 2007: 197). Although the creator gods eventually clouded this vision so that men could only see those things which were “nearby,” the progenitors of the Maya and their descendents nevertheless bore within their blood the potential for divine sight, bestowed upon them by their creators. Present-day Maya traditionalist priests in the highlands of Guatemala believe that their divine ancestors, who set the pattern for contemporary rituals, continue to operate through them as conduits at appropriate times and under appropriate circumstances. It is their sacred ancestral vision that allows indigenous priests to “see” beyond the limits of time and distance as the first men once did as they conduct divination ceremonies connected with the ancient Maya calendar.

A Call to World Governments: Save Youth Generations from Obsoleted Education Systems!

My research is a result of accumulated provocation of obsolete and paralyzing education that has been frozen since the middle ages. We have to admit that before the pandemic, education was already in crisis. Governments have been ignoring to adopt any comprehensive plan to reform the educational systems till it has been unprecedently disrupted by COVID-19. I try through this paper to make a global call for governments to immediately start cooperating together for setting international qualifications framework that best suit future competencies. This call should be prioritized on the world agenda. It would be more plausible for governments, UNESCO and other education stakeholders to seize the opportunity of the 2020 disruption of life cycle for the maximum benefit of humanity. For this to happen we need exceptional leaders with extraordinary vision to transform education instead of ensuring children can keep learning and that every single child returns to school after the pandemic. Another challenge to be expected is the reduction in education budgets being under pressure as governments shift spending towards the health and economic response to the pandemic. The impact of schools closing on a generation of children will be immense on the long term. We must act now to save the education and life chances of generations of youth. At this time of unprecedented crisis, the world must come together to protect education and put it at the very heart of the global recovery effort. Recovery, not as before but as convenient and sustainable with the perspective requirements. It is time to expose youth to real life experiences; we need our children to learn about finance from characters like Jef Bezos or Bill Gates or Mukesh Ambani; to learn about psychology from John Anderson, Eliot Aronson and Ahmed Ukasha; to know approaches of math and physics as Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak. We shouldn’t settle for less when it comes to building minds and souls of our children. With all due respect to teachers and university professors, they are not the only best option for qualifying and training our youth for tomorrow’s challenges. However, those entrepreneurs are not teachers or willing to be, education specialists and strategists are required to set the vision and the procedures required to pave the way for highly practical competencies framework. Analgesics are no longer feasible.

The Politics of Recruiting Dr. R Lee Clark Jr. as the First Permanent Director of The University of Texas MD Anderson Hospital for Cancer Research : Part II: The Process and Politics of Recruiting Lt. Colonel R. Lee Clark Jr. to The University of Texas MD Anderson Hospital.

Dr. R. Lee Clark Jr. was a man of bold and extraordinary vision. He was truly a surgical oncology leader of the twentieth century. His leadership had a significant impact on the cancer community nationally and internationally. Historically, it is intriguing that Dr. Clark almost did not become President of the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, since five other candidates were first offered the position and turned it down, and then Clark himself almost withdrew during the search process because of the political stalemate among the UT Regents to select a candidate. The saga began in 1945, when the Acting Director of MD Anderson Hospital for Cancer Research, Dr. Ernst Bertner, pressed the UT Regents to recruit a permanent Director, since he had just been appointed as the first President of the Texas Medical Center. Bertner was a major figure in recruiting Dr. R. Lee Clark, who was then a Lt. Colonel in the Army Air Force. Dr. Clark's vision for this unique cancer facility was firstdrafted onRandolph Army Airfield stationary in February 1946. An interesting twist to the story is that Dr. Clark almost did not get the job because of an alternative candidate, and because of the political vicissitudes among the University of Texas Board of Regents. Many of these political barriers were eventually overcome, and Dr. Clark was unanimouslyapproved as the first permanent Director on 13 July 1946, and his leadership over the next 32 years changed the course of history.

C. Radhakrishna Rao: A Century in Statistical Science

SummaryIn this article, the authors provide a glimpse into the legendary career of centenarian Professor C. Radhakrishna Rao, a career that is inextricably linked to the history of modern statistics from Pearson and Fisher to the age of big data and Artificial Intelligence. A scientist of extraordinary vision, his ground‐breaking contributions have influenced not only the field of statistics, but the mathematical, social, biological and economic sciences. An outstanding researcher, a gifted and inspirational teacher who could make complex concepts come to life in a classroom and a mentor who demanded excellence from his students, Professor Rao continues to inspire generations of statisticians and scientists around the world.

G Factor Injection and Activation into the Enterprise System in a Management Pioneer Vision: The Paccess' Way for the Governance of Complex Organizations

Introduction: This paper examines, through a biographical approach, the practical activities and overall theoretical corpus of Pacces, an Italian technician and pre-cursor of managerial economy and culture, focusing on his formula for governing the 1970s ‘macro-enterprises', a complex organization's emblem. The article then, through a long period of empirical research, investigates the applicability of this ‘recipe' to large modern companies. Aims of the work: This Article has three objectives: a) to fill a cognitive gap within the existing literature; b) to show, putting on an organizational lens, how some of Pacces' ideas were not only exceptional for his time but still current - confirming his extraordinary vision - and harbingers of important implications for the mana-gerial world; and c) to be a starting point for subsequent studies, stimulating intel-lectual debate and research proliferation. Methodological approach: Consists of two techniques: 1) analysis and critical ex-amination of the Pacces' opera omnia, with a focus on organizational theory; 2) empirical analysis, over a decade, on the applicability of the conceptual system to homogeneous companies (to those studied by the Author), conducted with quali-tative techniques, mainly participant observation and semi-structured interviews with Senior Management. Main findings: The study adds a unique contribution to the knowledge of the Au-thor's organizational thinking. The empirical research shows, moreover, how his intuitions are extraordinary and highly topical but remain rarely applied by the Ital-ian Companies. Originality: Originality therefore lies in the organizational focus, never used before in the Professor's study, and in the long managerial applicability test of the theo-retical-practical corpus. Tools, not only conceptual, indicated by the Theorist to improve organizational practices could be used by management in a continuous improvement perspective

Genesis: Donald J. Greene and the Founding of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

Genesis:Donald J. Greene and the Founding of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Howard D. Weinbrot (bio) Donald Greene was teaching at the University of California, Riverside, in 1966–67. Probably late in 1967, he asked his three eighteenth-century junior colleagues if they were interested in forming a national eighteenth-century society. We were. Enthusiastically. Greene, after all, studied the relationships between religion, literature, and politics and had written a major revisionist book on Samuel Johnson and eighteenth-century politics. He was among the most eminent students of eighteenth-century British culture. He embodied multidisciplinary scholarship. Greene never was awed by the Great and the Good because he was among them. A few days after the invitation, John Norton, David Hansen, and I joined Greene for lunch at a local restaurant and discussed possibilities. The interdisciplinary society would of course encourage research areas other than literature. Its official journal would reflect such breadth of interest. The society would be North American and encourage regional branches. It would have geographical and disciplinary representation. When occasion allowed it would be more broadly international. It would have an elected executive board and secretary as cementing forces. My own efforts were to begin by organizing a western and, for the time being, largely Californian regional society for eighteenth-century studies. The talk was good and [End Page 3] the options many. In the event, Messrs. Norton and Hansen soon left the Riverside English Department, and in the summer of 1969 I departed for the University of Wisconsin, Madison. After I arrived in Wisconsin, I continued to exercise Greene's vision of supporting regional eighteenth-century societies. He saw these as a way of furthering eighteenth-century studies locally in order to expand them nationally. On 28 July 1970, he told Peter Stanlis that five regional societies had been established: "All to the good, I'm convinced—the wider the 'grass roots' are extended, the stronger and healthier the whole organization will be, I'm sure."1 I hoped to put that concept into practice. I paid special attention to the Johnson Society of the Central Region, which soon was invited to become an affiliate of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) and is now a thriving sixty-one-year-old scholarly enterprise. I encouraged the University of Wisconsin Press to offer a three-year contract for Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture. I attended several regional ASECS meetings during my amiably long tenure in Madison. As President of the Midwestern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies in 1979–80, I hosted a large conference in Madison. I also served on two national meeting planning committees, presented a plenary paper and thereafter the Clifford Lecture for the national conference, and had the pleasure of serving on the Editorial Board of Eighteenth-Century Studies (1977–80) and on the Executive Committee (1996–99). Greene's vision of international affiliations never left my mind. I was part of the joint exchange committee for ASECS and the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (1999–2000) and the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS)'s planning committee for the wonderfully successful 2003 meeting in Los Angeles. That happy conclave exemplified Greene's concept of regional, national, and international eighteenth-century societies as a unified and unifying intellectual and social force. I confess to special delight in returning to the fledgling ASECS's founding and to Donald Greene's seminal role during those years. I now write with a combination of always unreliable memories and the more reliable ASECS archives. Paul Alkon, Greene's successor as Leo S. Bing Professor at the University of Southern California, wisely arranged to have these moved to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA, where they have been stored since 1994. The volunteer archivist Ann Soady expertly sorted them into useful preliminary files. The Society owes thanks to each helpful individual as well as the Clark Library. Some of the information I cite below comes from my own experience. Most of the narrative, however, draws upon the Clark's ASECS archives. They demonstrate our founder's extraordinary vision and manifold generosities. Predicting the past is almost [End Page...

A call to World Governments; Save youth generations from obsoleted education systems

My research is a result of accumulated provocation of obsolete and paralyzing education that has been frozen since the middle ages. We have to admit that before the pandemic, education was already in crisis. Governments have been ignoring to adopt any comprehensive plan to reform the educational systems till it has been unprecedently disrupted by COVID-19. I try through this paper to make a global call for governments to immediately start cooperating together for setting international qualifications framework that best suit future competencies. This call should be prioritized on the world agenda. It would be more plausible for governments, UNESCO and other education stakeholders to seize the opportunity of the 2020 disruption of life cycle for the maximum benefit of humanity. For this to happen we need exceptional leaders with extraordinary vision to transform education instead of ensuring children can keep learning and that every single child returns to school after the pandemic. Another challenge to be expected is the reduction in education budgets being under pressure as governments shift spending towards the health and economic response to the pandemic. The impact of schools closing on a generation of children will be immense on the long term. We must act now to save the education and life chances of generations of youth. At this time of unprecedented crisis, the world must come together to protect education and put it at the very heart of the global recovery effort. Recovery, not as before but as convenient and sustainable with the perspective requirements. It is time to expose youth to real life experiences; we need our children to learn about finance from characters like Jef Bezos or Bill Gates or Mukesh Ambani; to learn about psychology from John Anderson, Eliot Aronson and Ahmed Ukasha; to know approaches of math and physics as Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak. We shouldn’t settle for less when it comes to building minds and souls of our children. With all due respect to teachers and university professors, they are not the only best option for qualifying and training our youth for tomorrow’s challenges. However, those entrepreneurs are not teachers or willing to be, education specialists and strategists are required to set the vision and the procedures required to pave the way for highly practical competencies framework. Analgesics are no longer feasible.

From the Mast-Head

From the Mast-Head Brian Yothers This issue of Leviathan marks more than one transition in the life of this journal. The transition that I suspect will be most immediately evident to current subscribers is that we are resuming our normal issue length and scope after a series of four substantially expanded issues for the 2019 bicentennial of Herman Melville’s birth. The other significant transition that we are observing with the June 2020 issue is a change in our editorial staff. With this issue, volume 22, number 2, I am moving into the role of Editor of Leviathan. Samuel Otter, who has served as Editor with extraordinary vision, care, and scrupulous attention to detail for the past six years, has now moved to our Advisory Board, and John Bryant, who guided the journal as Editor from its inception in 1999 through 2013, continues to hold the title of Founding Editor in addition to his role on the Advisory Board. As the third Editor of Leviathan, I feel immense gratitude to John and Sam, as I have learned more than I could have imagined from working closely with Sam over the past six years, and I have been and continue to be proud to be a part of the endeavor that John established more than twenty years ago when he founded Leviathan. I cannot conceive of better mentors or bigger shoes to fill. Our new Associate Editor, who now steps into the role that I held from 2014 to 2019 and that Samuel Otter and Wyn Kelley held before me, is Jennifer Greiman of Wake Forest University. Jennifer is known to readers of this journal as the author of outstanding work on Melville and democracy, and she brings a combination of theoretical and critical acumen and close attention to textual detail that will serve the journal’s continued flourishing and development well. I am delighted to be able to welcome this outstanding Melvillean to our editorial staff as the journal’s fourth Associate Editor. Mary K. Bercaw Edwards of the University of Connecticut continues in the role of Extracts editor, and Dawn Coleman of the University of Tennessee has graciously agreed to continue for one more year in the role of Book Review Editor, after which Paul Hurh of the University of Arizona will be stepping into that role. I am particularly grateful to Mary K. and Dawn as they have put extraordinary work and care into shaping the journal as it now exists; it is a pleasure to continue to work with them on Leviathan this year, and I hope in Mary K.’s case for years to come. [End Page 1] Although Dawn is moving on to other opportunities after 2020, this seems like the right occasion to mention the truly remarkable work that she has done in shaping the role of Book Review Editor. She is the first Book Review Editor in the journal’s history, and her careful planning and sharp editorial eye have meant that we have had a steady stream of consistently incisive and thoughtful reviews over the past six years. She has also developed the Books in Brief feature, which has substantially expanded the array of volumes to which our readers are exposed. Mary K.’s work on Extracts as the journal’s first Extracts editor has served to broaden and enrich that portion of the journal as well, emphasizing the public-facing dimensions of Melville scholarship and also bringing an array of fascinating developments and discoveries into view. The special issues that she has edited on the Melville Society conferences from 2013 to the present have made an especially vibrant contribution to Melvilleans’ sense of the ongoing vitality of both Melville studies and Melville’s place in the literary imagination. We are fortunate to have a rich selection of essays coming up in future issues, with a substantial focus over the next couple of years on the transnational dimensions of Melville studies. This issue features a special collection of essays on “Melville’s England / England’s Melville” edited by Janet Floyd and Edward Sugden. We look forward in future issues to a cluster of essays by scholars working in France on...

Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions: Dante Cicchetti.

The American Psychological Association Awards for Distinguished Scientific Contributions are presented to persons who, in the opinion of the Committee on Scientific Awards, have made distinguished theoretical or empirical contributions to basic research in psychology. Dante Cicchetti is a recipient of the 2019 award "for groundbreaking research and leadership that forged the integrative science of developmental psychopathology. Through extraordinary vision, prodigious publication, and inspiring mentorship, Dante Cicchetti nurtured this multidisciplinary science that bridges typical and atypical development, basic and translational research, levels of analysis from genes to relationships, and diverse disciplines concerned with human development." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Hidden in Plane Sight: The Extraordinary Vision of Ernest Irving Freese

Abstract We assess selected geometric dissections associated with, or inspired by, Ernest Irving Freese’s 1957 manuscript and identify noteworthy features that lay beneath their surface. These include a dissection of a regular dodecagon to a regular hexagon, a hingeable dissection of a Greek Cross to an equilateral triangle, a hingeable dissection of an equilateral triangle to a regular hexagon, a hingeable dissection of ten regular pentagons to a decagonal ring, a translational dissection of two regular decagons to one, a translational dissection of a dodecagram and a co-dodecagram to a regular dodecagon, a translational dissection of ten regular pentagons to two 5-pointed pseudo-stars and a regular decagon, a translational dissection of ten regular heptagons to four 7-pointed pseudo-stars and a regular 14-gon, a translational dissection of three regular octagons to a larger octagon, a hingeable dissection of regular pentagons for (sin π/5)2 + (cos π/5)2 = 1, a translational dissection of squares of areas 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 to a large square, and a translational dissection of squares for 82 + 92 + 122 = 172. Unsubstantiated claims by Freese are also evaluated.

Oral health knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) in rural Haiti: a 40-year follow-up study.

This paper reports the changed findings over a 40-year period on oral health knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) of a very remote and rural population living the Jeremie region of Haiti. The far-sighted investigators of that original 1970 survey stated in their published 1972 paper that our "…findings are descriptive, but have to be accepted tentatively rather than definitively because time was short, transportation was difficult, and the small sample that had to be used could not random." They further insightfully stated their hopes that their "…results may be regarded as an anthropological cultural baseline from which to review further findings concerning Haitian dental beliefs." The two follow-up surveys in 1997 and 2010 using the same exact KAP questionnaire on the same population of rural Haitians living in the Jeremie region fulfilled the extraordinary vision of those two initial investigators, Dr. Wesley Young (a nationally renowned U.S. public health dental academician) and Paul Rundberg (then a dental student at the University of Kentucky).

Editorial Comment

Editorial Comment Jen Parker-Starbuck As the preparations for this issue are reaching completion, the United States is experiencing an unprecedented political shift. During the week I wrote this people were debating whether to watch or boycott the presidential inauguration, and millions more were preparing to take to the streets the day after the inauguration in peaceful protest. By the time this issue is published the country will have a new president, but one who has divided and stirred up more controversy than any global leader in recent memory. As I have engaged with these essays, all of which point to important and/or overlooked historical data, figures, and performances or recall critical moments that foreshadow our neoliberal times, it has been difficult to accept this "post-fact" climate. While information is interpretable and history is in need of expansion to become more inclusive, the notion of "alternative facts" is anathema to all we do as academic researchers and scholars. The new administration's attempt to claim these alternative facts is just another way of framing lies, and this new order emanating from the United States needs a great deal of fact-checking. This election has caused (or made too clear) a schism that will take a long time to heal, and this moment is just the beginning. It is then necessary to return to moments in history to show how crucial it is to unearth the forgotten and set records straight. The authors in this issue have done just this: they reach back to moments forgotten and people overlooked; they turn to data analysis and to a life cut too short to fulfill an extraordinary vision; they have in some cases sought alternative lines of narrative, but ones that complicate, correct, or augment the record. Now, days after the historic women's street marches that galvanized people across the globe, it is fitting to open the issue with an analysis of street theatre in David Calder's essay "2CV Théâtre: Transgression, Nostalgia, and the Negative Space of French Street Theatre." This essay returns us to post-1968 France to describe the theatre company Théâtre de l'Unité's touring production of 2CV Théâtre—a tiny theatre within a Citroën automobile that was seen in twenty countries during the years 1977 to 1997. Calder's retracing of the origin stories of French street theatre to both the student protests of May 1968 and a premodern carnivalesque argues that 2CV Théâtre resists and complicates the populist (street) versus elite (indoor) origin stories. This theatre, according to the essay, works almost homeopathically by playing up the elitism, but also theatrically, as it ironically comments on the boundaries between, for example, actor and spectator. I was struck by a quote in the essay, that the company's performers "have not taken to the streets to escape theatricality so much as they have taken theatricality to the streets," and find it a potent strategy to challenge divisions in the contemporary moment. Calder pushes historiographic assumptions about street theatre through this historically under-examined example, and suggests a more complex narrative emerging from industrial modernity to trouble the populist versus elitist divide through performance interwoven with the automobile industry. [End Page vii] Katie Johnson's "An Algerian in Paris: Habib Benglia's The Emperor Jones" brings to historical attention the largely overlooked work of Algerian-French actor Habib Benglia, specifically in his portrayal of Brutus Jones in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones (1923, reprised in 1950). As Johnson notes, Benglia, "the first African actor to appear on a French national stage," was well-documented in the international press for this performance, but has not been significantly covered in theatre scholarship. Her essay analyzes aspects of Benglia's "remains," such as a misfiled press photograph, commentary, reviews (often incorrect or full of assumptions), and Benglia's legacy as a nightclub owner and dancer in Paris, to subvert notions of colonial subjectivity and narratives of empire. Her exacting research not only introduces Benglia as a key actor in this role and contributes to the performance history of O'Neill's play, but also importantly argues how these performative remains can...

Robert Lockhart Johnston

The son of a general practitioner and a professor of surgery, and one of five siblings, Robert Lockhart Johnston (“Rob”) graduated from Bristol University in 1989. His ophthalmology training was...

Advancing in Bahá’í-inspired Education

In order to advance significantly in Bahá’í-inspired education, we need to keep in mind Bahá’u’lláh’s extraordinary vision of the human being who will walk this earth in the fullness of time. While being respectful of accomplishments in the field of education, we need to remember that in its present state, it is incapable of cultivating such an individual. Humbled by the realization of the magnitude of the work ahead, a growing number of us, together with other like-minded individuals, have to labor in diverse cultural and ecological settings, identifying educational needs, developing elements of a coherent pedagogy, and creating a series of teaching-learning experiences in which these elements are given practical expression. The experience of the Junior Youth Spiritual Empowerment Program is offered as an example of an endeavor to advance Bahá’í-inspired education in which modest contributions accumulate and lead to significant progress.