Narrative Questions Research Articles

Psychogeography: Walking through strategy, nature and narrative

Proposed as an urban pedestrian practice in French texts of the 1950s, the current vogue for English-language references to psychogeography dates from the 1990s. Sampling this corpus, much of it outside academic geography, this article examines some of psychogeography’s trajectories, connections and affinities, notably with nature writing. In minding gaps, the article considers gendered, decolonial and Muslim registers that extend the range of sites and protagonists, heralding other priorities and opportunities both within and beyond the North Atlantic. Finally, reflecting on what lessons lie in psychogeography and its margins for human geography, the article reconsiders questions of narrative and scale.

The last chapters of life: A proposed research agenda for studying narrative identity in older adulthood

AbstractThe study of narrative identity—the ongoing process of authoring our life stories and being shaped by them—has provided a rich conceptualization of adult personality, yielding important insights about the storied nature of meaning making in personality, particularly for young and midlife adults. However, little research has been done to investigate narrative identity in older adulthood, potentially resulting in a constrained understanding of narrative identity across the life span. I propose that much‐needed research on narrative identity in late life could substantiate or undermine a hypothesized shift in emphasis from authoring to reading life stories (McAdams, 2015), complicate and refine the master narrative framework (McLean & Syed, 2015), and offer new targets for narrative identity questions across the entire life span.

Recorded Mental Health Recovery Narratives as a Resource for People Affected by Mental Health Problems: Development of the Narrative Experiences Online (NEON) Intervention.

BackgroundThe internet enables sharing of narratives about health concerns on a substantial scale, and some digital health narratives have been integrated into digital health interventions. Narratives describing recovery from health problems are a focus of research, including those presented in recorded (eg, invariant) form. No clinical trial has been conducted on a web-based intervention providing access to a collection of Recorded Recovery Narratives (RRNs).ObjectiveThis study presents knowledge produced through the development of the Narrative Experiences Online (NEON) Intervention, a web-based intervention incorporating the algorithmic recommendation of RRNs.MethodsKnowledge was gathered through knowledge integration (KI) activities. KI1 synthesized previous studies to produce the NEON Impact Model describing how accessing RRNs produces health-related outcomes. KI2 developed curation principles for the NEON Collection of RRNs through consultation with the NEON Lived Experience Advisory Panel and the curation of a preliminary collection. KI3 identified harm minimization strategies for the NEON Intervention through consultation with the NEON International Advisory Board and Lived Experience Advisory Panel. The NEON Intervention was finalized through 2 research studies (RS). In RS1, mental health service users (N=40) rated the immediate impact of randomly presented narratives to validate narrative feedback questions used to inform the recommendation algorithm. In RS2, mental health service users (n=25) were interviewed about their immediate response to a prototype of the NEON Intervention and trial procedures and then were interviewed again after 1 month of use. The usability and acceptability of the prototype and trial procedures were evaluated and refinements were made.ResultsKI1 produced the NEON Impact Model, which identifies moderators (recipient and context), mechanisms of connection (reflection, comparison, learning, and empathy), processes (identification of change from narrative structure or content and internalization of observed change), and outcomes (helpful and unhelpful). KI2 identified 22 curation principles, including a mission to build a large, heterogeneous collection to maximize opportunities for connection. KI3 identified seven harm minimization strategies, including content warnings, proactive and reactive blocking of narratives, and providing resources for the self-management of emotional distress. RS1 found variation in the impact of narratives on different participants, indicating that participant-level feedback on individual narratives is needed to inform a recommender system. The order of presentation did not predict narrative feedback. RS2 identified amendments to web-based trial procedures and the NEON Intervention. Participants accessed some narratives multiple times, use reduced over the 4-week period, and narrative feedback was provided for 31.8% (105/330) of narrative accesses.ConclusionsRRNs can be integrated into web-based interventions. Evaluating the NEON Intervention in a clinical trial is feasible. The mixed methods design for developing the NEON Intervention can guide its extension to other clinical populations, the design of other web-based mental health interventions, and the development of narrative-based interventions in mental health.

A Holy Mess of a Story: Maternal Reflections on Caregiving, Chaos, and Intellectual Disability

Drawing on Frank’s illness narratives, the mother of a profoundly disabled son argues that Vanier and Nouwen’s descriptions of caregiving conform to the socially mandated quest narrative requiring stories of triumph. Their stories of spiritual growth have become a master text colonizing the experiences of mothers caring for children with intellectual disabilities, particularly among faith communities. Rather than a journey of spiritual growth, research indicates that the lives of mothers often resemble a chaos narrative of spiritual confusion, paradoxically fused with joy. Providing effective spiritual care requires that faith communities honor anti-narratives of caregiving chaos.

“Prompter’s Whisper”: History, Travel and Narrative in Post-Colonial Indian English Travel Writing

The theory revolution and the counter-traditional wave in humanities in the 1980s have garnered attention towards new localism by positing alternatives to the great tradition. In this, Travel writing has proved adaptable and responsive to post-colonial and Globalization studies, thereby shaking off its ‘middlebrow’ status. Keeping in mind the relevance of travel writing in Global politics, the paper aims to engage with In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveller’s Tale (1992) by Amitav Ghosh to delineate the question of History, Travel and Narrative in Indian English Travel Writing. The paper contends that Ghosh uses the Hybrid non-fiction space of the travelogue to write a counter-narrative to the Eurocentric discourse of Travel writing. It seeks to foreground that the reverse Grand tour of Amitav Ghosh problematizes the western hegemonic hold on the field of Ethnography and History. The paper is divided into two parts- the first part will establish In an Antique Land as Resistive subaltern history, followed by the second part, which focuses on Ghosh’s privileging of third world ethnography to write an alternative narrative.

Topologies of the Classical World in Children’s Fiction: Palimpsests, Maps, and Fractals by Claudia Nelson and Anne Morey

Reviewed by: Topologies of the Classical World in Children’s Fiction: Palimpsests, Maps, and Fractals by Claudia Nelson and Anne Morey Elizabeth Hale (bio) Topologies of the Classical World in Children’s Fiction: Palimpsests, Maps, and Fractals. By Claudia Nelson and Anne Morey. Oxford University Press, 2019. The past few years have seen a surge of scholarship on how children’s literature draws on the Classical world. Most recent scholarly work in this field has been driven by classicists, more interested (naturally) in how the classical world appears in children’s literature: the narrative patterns, ideas, texts, historical and mythical figures that children’s literature transmits to new generations of readers, and how particular cultural emphases shape their depiction, and use, of classical material. See for instance Lisa Maurice, ed., The Reception of Ancient Greece and Rome in Children’s Literature: Heroes and Eagles (2015); Katarzyna Marciniak, ed., Our Mythical Childhood: The Classics and Literature for Children and Young Adults (2016); Owen Hodkinson & [End Page 219] Helen Lovatt, eds., Classical Reception and Children’s Literature: Greece, Rome and Childhood Transformation (2018); Sheila Murnaghan & Deborah Roberts, Childhood and the Classics: Britain and America, 1850–1965 (2018); Katarzyna Marciniak, ed., Chasing Mythical Beasts : The Reception of Ancient Monsters in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture (2020). Morey and Nelson, on the other hand, are scholars of children’s literature, interested in the uses to which children’s texts put classical material, and the effect of historical engagement on children’s literature. To that end, they take an approach drawing from recent scholarship on cognition (currently influential in some areas of children’s literature scholarship), in order to show how authors shape representations of the past, and shape children’s (i.e., child protagonists’) ideas about their place in time and their view of the world. This work involves bringing together a range of ideas about literary cognition, and Topologies of the Classical World covers considerable ground in doing so, providing close readings of a wealth of British and American children’s novels (and some poetry) from the twentieth century on. Three main structuring metaphors shape the book: History is a Palimpsest, History is a Map, and History is Fractal, and these metaphors are explained in the introduction, which orients the argument within cognitive theory. The metaphors are convincing, though the discussion is quite dense, and a set of “sample exceptions” intended to test and challenge them might have been better placed towards the end of the book. In History is a Palimpsest, the “past and present exist in a many layered series of deposits” (6). Protagonists can find their way forwards and backwards through time, learning about the past as they go. Chapter 2, “The Layers of Ancient Rome in Puck of Pook’s Hill and Its Successors” features stories about individual protagonists who travel in time to the past, solving mysteries or problems as they go. Focus texts include Rudyard Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906), Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising (1973) and Silver on the Tree (1977), and Joan Aiken’s The Shadow Guests (1980). Chapter 3, “Time Zones, Scars, and Family in (Mostly) Realistic Works,” explores how the ideas of trauma and the family connect through the layers of the past. Modern protagonists, who engage with the traumas of the past also uncover and resolve traumas of the present. Focus texts include Edith Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle (1907), Caroline Dale Snedeker’s Theras and His Town (1924), The Forgotten Daughter (1933), and The White Isle (1940), Elizabeth George Speare’s The Bronze Bow (1961), and Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth (1954). History is a Map 1 and 2 (chapters 4 and 5) focus on texts that use maps and other orienting devices to help young readers (and protagonists) understand the past: here, often in quest narratives, they learn about the shape and color of the ancient world. Chapter 4, “Navigating the Underworld,” considers stories in which [End Page 220] protagonists visit the underworld (a dominant quest narrative in mythology and in fantasy literature), tracing the paths of figures such as Demeter and Persephone, or Orpheus and Eurydice. The discussion covers Nesbit...

“ENTERING LIFE” OF POETRY BY E.T.A. HOFFMANN AND GÜNTER GRASS

In this scientific article, it is assumed that the literary works of the Nobel Prize laureate and the German national poet Günter Grass are characterized by romantic features. For this reason, the novel Ein weites Feld (“A Wide Field”) by Grass and the fairy tale Der goldene Topf (“The Golden Pot”) by E.T.A. Hoffmann are examined in terms of their similarities and differences. It is noteworthy that E.T.A. Hoffmann has so far only been associated with Grass in relation to his fairy tale “Klein Zaches, called Zinnober”, and the main hero of the fairy tale served as a literary model for Oskar Matzerath from “The Tin Drum”. Thus, this article makes it possible to throw a new light on Grass’es research. In this paper the following aspects are analyzed: questions of poetics, genesis, main characters, narrative or fictional levels, structural principles, as well as the role of the reader. The results are summarized in the final part of the investigation.

My Victorian Novel: Critical Essays in the Personal Voice ed. by Annette Federico

Reviewed by: My Victorian Novel: Critical Essays in the Personal Voice ed. by Annette Federico Kathy Rees (bio) Annette Federico, editor. My Victorian Novel: Critical Essays in the Personal Voice. U of Missouri P, 2020. Pp. xiii + 316. $36.00. ISBN 9780826222077 (hb). How can the essay, traditionally a personal and subjective form, with its graceful and often witty expression, bear the weight of today's academic literary criticism, which tends to be impersonal, jargonheavy, and combative? This question has gathered increasing momentum over the past four decades, and Annette Federico's new collection of essays makes an elegant contribution to the debate. Federico and her fourteen contributors write creatively about well-known works of fiction, producing essays that are critically authoritative but also engagingly personal. Each essay operates on two levels, integrating an interpretation of a critical aspect of a specific Victorian novel with a sense of the essayist's own cerebral and reflective journey. Notably, Federico's volume is book-ended by commentary from two of the most vocal advocates of the personal essay in academia: Jane Tompkins writes the foreword and G. Douglas Atkins echoes her sentiments in his dust-cover endorsement. Federico has challenged her contributors to select one text over which they feel ownership, to explore "my Victorian novel." For many, this text is not necessarily a long-cherished favorite, but a novel read many times, researched from many angles, taught, presented, published on, and pondered, usually over several years. It may be a novel which, to borrow Dickens's description of his feelings about David Copperfield, is difficult "to get sufficiently far away from … to refer to it with … composure" (Dickens 11). The essayists, all accomplished Victorianists, express their engagement with their subjects – Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Trollope, Conan Doyle, Thackeray, Eliot, Hardy, Gaskell, Dickens, Gissing, and Stoker – in ways that are liberating, or at times discomposing, for both author and reader. Three essayists have chosen to write about a novel by Dickens. Catherine Robson explores erotic relationships in Bleak House, considering in particular, "What Esther Thinks about Sex," and more broadly, how Esther's sexual awareness helps us to understand the vexed question of the novel's dual narration (193). Lillian Nayder offers a refreshing reading of the breachof-promise case in Pickwick Papers in light of her experience as a graduate researcher positioned on the edge of an academic "exclusively male club" (252). Michael Flynn recalls his own graduate-school encounter with David Copperfield and compares it with the perceptions of current-day students who read the world through a virtual lens. Since the time of Michel de Montaigne, essays have often sported enigmatic or poignant titles, and Flynn's "Liking David Copperfield" is no exception. If your first reading of that word "liking" assumes an act of appreciation, then I should remind you [End Page 212] that "to like" something on social media is a form of communication used by millions of people every day to signal their validation of something or someone by a single click. In this context, then, Dickens is being positioned onto a new kind of "platform." It is striking how the voice and performance of each essayist situates them in one's imagination. I envisage Robson in a seminar with her peers, energetically arguing her case, and periodically referring to some wellthumbed philosophical or literary critical authority from a pile on the desk. My impression of Nayder dates to the 1980s basement of the Dickens House (now Museum) on Doughty St., seated around a large table in the company of box-files, tea-cups, and fellow-researchers. Flynn, by contrast, strides around a classroom, listening intently to his students. The presence of the essayist is so compelling that the customary "Notes on Contributors" constitute a pale afterthought. Space limits my more detailed comments to Robson and Flynn's essays; these are chosen because they provide interesting parallels in terms of the reader's response. Robson wears her learning lightly and has an enviable knack of making her readers feel clever, keeping them involved in the complex strands of her intense discussion. Her elliptical references to Bleak House, her assumptions of shared knowledge, of not needing to...

Sexuality In Dangdut Lyrics: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Dangdut is claimed to be the original music genre of Indonesia has been undergoing radical change lately in both rhythm and lyric. The latter is manifested into sub-genre called dangdut koplo which manipulates the rapid beat of ketipung ‘tom-tom’. The latter is expressed by altering message of the lyric to be blatant vulgar which leads to sexuality. This study investigated mainly on the latter case; the language expression and linguistic features used in dangdut lyric to exploit sexuality, the form of relation among the participants, and socio-cultural phenomena reflected within dangdut lyric with sensual content. The qualitative analysis using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) proposed by Fairclough (1995) were used to be the conceptual framework. There were 19 controversial dangdut songs lyric considered as sensual and exploit sexuality were taken as the source of the data and twenty listeners were interviewed. The results of the study show that: Firstly, the lyrics employed Bahasa Indonesia and Javanese, figurative language in both dialogue and monologue, narrative text, rhymes, rhetorical question, seducing expression, and incomplete sentence structure. Secondly, the songs talked about man and woman relationship, sensual desire, and gender stereotype. Finally, the songs concern on the justifiability of the sensual content and economy motive. Besides, free sex and gender stereotype are the reflection of sociocultural phenomena.

Response to Gerald Prince

Response to Gerald Prince

Using Placeholder Text in Narrative Open-Ended Questions in Web Surveys

Abstract Narrative open-ended questions are suitable for gathering detailed information without limiting respondents to a predefined set of response categories. However, despite efforts to improve the quality of open-ended responses using different verbal and visual design features, respondents are often unwilling to expend effort on substantive and comprehensive responses. Based on a Web survey experiment conducted with opt-in panelists in Germany, we test whether placeholder text (i.e., lorem ipsum) in the answer box of a narrative open-ended question can be used as a visual stimulus to promote high-quality responses without discouraging respondents from answering the question. We find that, although placeholder texts that suggest long and extensive responses elicit more extensive responses, they also result in longer response times and less substantive responses. As the disadvantages of such lengthy placeholder texts thus appear to outweigh their advantages, we advise against using them. We further find that shorter placeholder texts do not provide any additional benefits. These findings also suggest that any kind of visual design feature should always be tested thoroughly before use.

Exploring narrative, convictions and autoethnography as a convict criminologist

Convict criminology draws from personal experience of imprisonment to offer critical criminological perspectives on punishment and prisons. In this article I discuss how some of these are aligned with questions of narrative and post-colonial perspectives in criminology. I use autoethnographic vignettes to communicate the experiences of imprisonment that inform the development of convict criminology, and I explore their relationship to narrative criminology’s interest in personal stories.

Contextual factors of self-regulation in children and adolescents with chronic diseases \u2013 a qualitative analysis

BackgroundIn recent decades, the prevalence of chronic diseases in children and adolescents has increased significantly. Contextual factors play a central role in the self-regulation of chronic diseases. They influence illness and treatment representations, disease management, and health outcomes. While previous studies have investigated the influence of contextual factors on children’s beliefs about their illness, little is known about subjective contextual factors of treatment representations of children and adolescents with chronic diseases, especially in the context of rehabilitation. Therefore, the aim of this qualitative analysis was to examine the contextual factors reported by chronically ill children and adolescents in relation to their treatment representations. Furthermore, we aimed to assign the identified themes to classifications of environmental and personal contextual factors in the context of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF).MethodsBetween July and September 2018, semi-structured interviews were conducted with N = 13 children and adolescents in rehabilitation to explore their rehab-related treatment representations and associated contextual factors. The interviews started with an open narrative question about expectations and beliefs about rehabilitation, followed by further detailed questions. The interviews were recorded on audio tape, transcribed, and analysed using thematic content analysis.ResultsParticipants raised six themes associated with their rehab-related treatment representations that were interpreted as contextual factors: the living situation before rehabilitation, the idea of rehabilitation, previous solution attempts, rehab pre-experiences, information that the children and adolescents received from the clinic or sought themselves, and the assumed attitudes of their parents concerning rehabilitation. All the themes could be assigned to the classification of environmental and personal factors in the context of the ICF for children and youth.ConclusionsAlthough contextual factors have an important impact on self-regulation, little attention is paid to their investigation. Personal and environmental factors probably influence patients’ treatment representations in terms of expectations and concerns as well as emotions regarding the treatment. Considering contextual factors could lead to the more appropriate allocation of medical care and the better customisation of treatment.

Spoiler Alert

Spoiler Alert

Estilística tradutória, temas e gênero em “Psychology” de Mansfield e em três de suas traduções para o português brasileiro

Partindo da Estilístia Tradutória (MALMKJAER, 2003, 2004), a qual é a análise estilística de textos traduzidos, em comparação ao texto fonte, para o entendimento das modificações tradutórias; e da Linguística Sistêmico-Funcional (HALLIDAY; MATTHIESSEN, 2014), a qual vê a linguagem como produtora de significado e procura entender como tal significado é construído dentro de um determinado texto, o presente artigo analisa o conto “Psychology” (MANSFIELD, 2001) e três de suas traduções para o português brasileiro feitas, respectivamente, por Julieta Cupertino (MANSFIELD, 2000), por Paola Castro Oliveira (MANSFIELD, 2015) e por Denise Bottmann (MANSFIELD, 2016). O intuito é verificar como os Temas se realizam no corpus e como as personagens se manifestam através dos Temas ideacionais participantes e ideacionais participantes elípticos. Procura-se verificar, também, como questões de gênero são apresentadas nas narrativas (SIMON, 2005). Para a realização da análise, elencamos as seguintes perguntas: a) Como se realizam os Temas no corpus?; b) Como se manifestam as personagens no âmbito dos Temas ideacionais participantes e ideacionais participantes elípticos?; e c) O que pode ser afirmado acerca de questões de gênero e de narratividade com base na classificação dos Temas ideacionais participantes e ideacionais participantes elípticos? Cumpre salientar que a investigação da estrutura temática, de questões de gênero e da narratividade não é exaustiva, mas é um bom exemplo de como esses assuntos podem ser relacionados. Os Temas foram anotados manualmente no corpus em formato eletrônico e quantificados no programa computacional WordSmith Tools (versão 4.0). Podemos concluir que a estrutura temática nos contos, em relação de tradução, não é restrita, sendo que uma ampla variedade de Temas pode ser observada. O texto fonte e os textos alvos apresentam maior número de Temas múltiplos do que de Temas simples, sendo os primeiros Temas interpessoais e/ou Temas textuais, vinculados aos Temas ideacionais. Também podemos concluir que, quando se trata de uma análise em conjunto, as personagens femininas são mais frequentes do que as personagens masculinas. No entanto, o mesmo não acontece quando se analisa apenas a personagem feminina principal e a personagem masculina principal.

The relationships between bonding social capital, personal belief in a just world and well-being: an analysis of a diverse student sample

The current study investigated the relationships between bonding social capital, perceptions of justice, and well-being (i.e. the level of depressive symptoms endorsed) in middle and high school students. Previous research has found personal belief in a just world (BJW) and bonding social capital to be associated with positive student well-being outcomes; however, prior research has not yet examined the relationships between these three variables simultaneously. Students from four schools (N = 602) completed questionnaires to better understand the relationships between bonding social capital, personal BJW, and well-being, and how these variables differ based on racial and socioeconomic background. Of note, the questionnaire included one narrative response question to better understand the sources that influence perceptions of justice. There were racial and/or socioeconomic differences in all three variables. Students from racially and/or socioeconomically privileged backgrounds reported significantly higher bonding social capital, higher personal BJW, and/or more positive well-being outcomes. Students’ families and their own lived experiences (i.e. past negative experiences) were cited most frequently as impacting perceptions of justice on the narrative response question. Finally, personal BJW partially mediated the relationship between bonding social capital and well-being. Data from the narrative responses and the mediating effect of personal BJW highlight the importance of students’ interactions with their immediate environments in shaping perceptions of justice and well-being.

A Note from the Editor

Previous articleNext article FreeA Note from the EditorSuzanna Danuta WaltersSuzanna Danuta WaltersNortheastern University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreLeo Tolstoy may be right that “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” but feminist scholars know that whatever their varying levels of happiness, family remains a fraught place, so often where the seeds of sexist inequity and gender normativity are planted. But familial roles—performed differently and imagined otherwise—can also be sites for transformative self making, political engagement, and creative resource management, as Brady G’sell articulates in her analysis of the “multiple maternities” of poor women in the Point neighborhood of Durban, South Africa. Family and home crop up in another manner in Leanne Trapedo Sims’s article on prison writing in Hawai‘i, where the space of home is “both wound and desire” (224) for incarcerated women, refracted through the lies and violence of domesticity and the realities of reconfigured attachments.Reconfigured attachments also appear in this issue through some robustly queer and queerly feminist scholarship. I admit I’ve been a bit disappointed that we haven’t received more queer work, especially queer scholarship working within a feminist analytic. So it is exciting indeed to include the pieces by Hélène Frohard-Dourlent et al., Carla Rice et al., and Anahi Russo Garrido, all of which engage with the complicated—and often contradictory—ways in which people live and name their sexual practices and gender identities. From the creatively queer and polyamorous relationships in post–same sex marriage Mexico City that engage radically with existing state traditions even as new names are invented; to the trans youth of Canada who employ both essentialist and social-constructionist renderings of identity in an attempt to make, as Judith Butler would have it, livable lives; to the queer women participants who reimagine body politics in a video project, these contributions are all testaments to the determined ways in which feminists mold self and collectivity in the face of intractable odds. Questions of representation also crop up in Jessica Ringrose and Kaitlyn Regehr’s methodologically innovative piece on the varied responses to racialized and sexist advertising throughout the London transport system.And speaking of intractable odds, it’s hard to overstate the persistence of sexual violence in women’s lives, and our scholarship reflects this harsh reality. Nary a month goes by without numerous submissions from across the globe analyzing and contesting and bemoaning. In this issue, Rupal Oza examines how complicated the question of false narratives can be in a context in which female sexual agency is always already suspect and how hegemonic discourses of “false cases” attempt to undermine all women’s credibility, just as some attention is finally beginning to be paid to the prevalence of sexual violence in Indian women’s lives. And turning to the United States, Rosanne Kennedy and Hannah McCann examine feminist responses to campus sexual assault through a broad and generous/critical engagement with the work of legal scholar Janet Halley in conjunction with the controversial film The Hunting Ground.In this same tradition of thoughtful interrogation of our own intellectual production, Sami Schalk and Jina Kim ask “what would feminist disability studies look like if it were grounded in feminist-of-color theory?” (31) and provide a rich framework that adds much to contemporary theorizing. And last, but certainly not least, Lindsey Stewart’s (re)investigation of Zora Neale Hurston’s complicated and contested racial politics as refracted through Beyoncé’s epic visual album Lemonade exemplifies the kind of creative interdisciplinary scholarship that Signs has always championed: bold, innovative, edgy. Once again, a treasure trove of feminist scholarship from Signs: enjoy! Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 46, Number 1Autumn 2020 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/709253 © 2020 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Hero at a Thousand Places: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five as Anti-Monomyth

ABSTRACT Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) has remained the most widely discussed of his novels in the five decades since its publication. However, the volume of critical work produced on it far outweighs the unique lines of thought investigated. The critiques have mostly been limited to – diagnoses of Billy Pilgrim’s mental disorder, locating the sources of the diagnosed ailments, examinations of Vonnegut’s intended philosophy, comparisons of the novel to other anti-war works, and investigations of the elements of humor and science fiction in the novel. This article attempts a close reading of the novel along the lines of the hero quest, or monomyth, as chronicled in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) by Joseph Campbell. The article disentangles the novel to release the inherent quest narrative from its non-linear structure and reinterprets it in terms of Campbell’s quest stages to reveal an uncanny resemblance to the mythical hero’s journey. The nature of the journey and the hero’s traits, and the departures observed in Vonnegut’s monomyth from Campbell’s determine the relevance and implications of Billy’s quest and warrant the need to coin his quest anew, namely the anti-monomyth.

Illness Narratives Through the Eyes of Parents of Children With End-Stage Renal Disease.

The purpose of the present study was to learn about the experiences of parents of children diagnosed with renal failure at different stages of the disease in order to get closer to the process they carry out as caregivers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 parents and analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis method. Data analysis revealed two axes: spatial and temporal. The present article focuses on the temporal axis comprised of diagnosis, coping, and remission. These phases are discussed according to Frank's illness narratives of chaos, quest, and restitution, representing stages in the sequence people undergo while coping with a disease. However, in the case of incurable diseases, such as end-stage renal disease, when there is no restitution and regression in the medical condition is followed by chaos, we suggest a new narrative structure, the Sisyphean Narrative, to symbolize the recurring nature of struggling with the disease.

Unburdening dementia – a basic social process grounded theory based on a primary care physician survey from 25 countries

Objective To explore dementia management from a primary care physician perspective. Design One-page seven-item multiple choice questionnaire; free text space for every item; final narrative question of a dementia case story. Inductive explorative grounded theory analysis. Derived results in cluster analyses. Appropriateness of dementia drugs assessed by tertiary care specialist. Setting Twenty-five European General Practice Research Network member countries. Subjects Four hundred and forty-five key informant primary care physician respondents of which 106 presented 155 case stories. Main outcome measures Processes and typologies of dementia management. Proportion of case stories with drug treatment and treatment according to guidelines. Results Unburdening dementia – a basic social process – explained physicians’ dementia management according to a grounded theory analysis using both qualitative and quantitative data. Unburdening starts with Recognizing the dementia burden by Burden Identification and Burden Assessment followed by Burden Relief. Drugs to relieve the dementia burden were reported for 130 of 155 patients; acetylcholinesterase inhibitors or memantine treatment in 89 of 155 patients – 60% appropriate according to guidelines and 40% outside of guidelines. More Central and Northern primary care physicians were allowed to prescribe, and more were engaged in dementia management than Eastern and Mediterranean physicians according to cluster analyses. Physicians typically identified and assessed the dementia burden and then tried to relieve it, commonly by drug prescriptions, but also by community health and home help services, mentioned in more than half of the case stories. Conclusions Primary care physician dementia management was explained by an Unburdening process with the goal to relieve the dementia burden, mainly by drugs often prescribed outside of guideline indications. Implications: Unique data about dementia management by European primary care physicians to inform appropriate stakeholders. Key points Dementia as a syndrome of cognitive and functional decline and behavioural and psychological symptoms causes a tremendous burden on patients, their families, and society. •We found that a basic social process of Unburdening dementia explained dementia management according to case stories and survey comments from primary care physicians in 25 countries. •First, Burden Recognition by Identification and Assessment and then Burden Relief – often by drugs. •Prescribing physicians repeatedly broadened guideline indications for dementia drugs. The more physicians were allowed to prescribe dementia drugs, the more they were responsible for the dementia work-up. Our study provides unique data about dementia management in European primary care for the benefit of national and international stakeholders.