Part Of My Work Research Articles

Brontë’s Domestic Uncanny

©rontg’s ©omgatic Oneanny by Karen Chase Levenson Elizabeth Gaskell begins her biography ofCharlotte Bronte with a description of Haworth, the town where the family moved the day before Charlotte’s fourth birthday, on April 21, 1820. Gaskell insists that we cannot understand the Brontean sensibility without comprehending the peculiarities of this north Yorkshire region, steeped as it was in a culture fixed and unyielding in spirit, and yet dynamic and adaptable to the rough demands of industrial development and expansion. Every region clutches and extrudes habits as it hurtles through time, but Yorkshire people apparently hold tighter and release more violently than others do. According to Gaskell, “For a right understanding of the life of my dear friend, Charlotte Bronte, it appears to me more necessary in her case than in most others, that the reader should be made acquainted with the peculiar forms ofpopulation and society amidst which her earliest years were passed, and from which both her own and her sisters’ first impressions of human life must have been received” (60). Here—where rebellion and fixity were partners, where provinciality marched with vision—is where the Bronte children lived and died, and wrote the works that even now bring shivers to the spine, tempest to the soul, and yearning to the heart. But although Haworth was home to Charlotte Bronte, home in her works bore as much relation to Haworth as Wonderland or the Looking Glass world bear to Oxford in Carroll’s Alice books. Not that Bronte fictionalizes Haworth; but for her (as for many others) hominess transcends the home from whence it was engendered and represents states ofmind and associated spaces that continue to be as relevant today as they were two hundred years ago. National identification is one acknowledged form of regionalism, as well as a familiar displacement of “home.” Since the turn of the century, several notable analyses of Bronte’s intricate dance between Britain and the rest of the world have generated important discussions about the relations between home (and its affective corollaries with engagement, proximity, familiarity) and foreign (with its corollaries Victorians Journal 125 in detachment, distance, and alienation). But no one has accounted adequately for the fizz or fear, the excitement or dread that attends contact between home and not-home in Bronte’s fiction. This discussion addresses the convergence of familiarity with estrangement, which for Bronte occurs precisely in the home—not necessarily the building, but the mental space or structure identified with the concept of home—that convergence which, for other writers and theorists, occurs in the concept of the uncanny. The uncanny is among the coziest ofFreud’s bequests—the lost-in-the-funhouse, thrill-a-minute eeriness, when the ghost walks and the flesh creeps, while memories return and fantasy blooms. It has had a lively after-history, not least in our own field, being a short essay with a long life. What is notable is scholars’ confinement within the terms that psychoanalysis first outlined. Part ofmy work is to abrade the uncanny, to roughen up its edges, by bringing it close, bringing it “home” as it were, to Bronte, looking for a way out of a close space, a repetition, a cliche. The uncanny had a sluggish growth in use until the very end of the nineteenth century. One telling early use occurs in Scott’s novel, Guy Mannering (1815), when the gypsy Meg Merrilies leads Harry Bertram during a wandering through the wood: “‘Captain,’ said Dinmont, in a half whisper, ‘I wish she binna uncanny! her words dinna seem to come in God’s name, or like other folks’. Od, they threep in our country that there ARE sic things.’ ‘Don’t be afraid, my friend,’ whispered Bertram in return” (394). The second sentence of this passage—‘“I wish she binna uncanny!”’—forms the first exemplar in the dictionary definition of the word in the 1883 Dictionary of Imperial English (Ogilvie and Annandale np). Through the nineteenth century, it is Scott, and indeed Scottishness, that infuse the semantics ofthe uncanny. Ghostly fear is the keynote, the semantic center. This is what Freud finds and wants and elaborates. He uses English dictionaries, but quickly moves...

Bion’s Thinking on Psychotic and Non-Psychotic Functioning Applied to Work with an Adolescent Psychotherapy Group

This paper explores Bion’s thinking about the co-existence of psychotic and non-psychotic states in the personality. I contend that Bion’s description of psychotic states, in particular, is highly relevant when applied to adolescent states of mind. The processes that emerged from an adolescent psychotherapy group are presented to provide an illustration of Bion’s thinking and to reinforce the idea that such states are indeed present during the adolescent process. This work was undertaken in London, and the paper began its journey towards publication during the latter part of my work with this group and since my arrival here in Aotearoa New Zealand.
 Whakarāpopotonga
 E wherawhera ana tēnei pepa i te tirohanga a Bion ki te nohotahitanga o te mate rangirua me te kore-rangiruatanga mai o te āhua tuakiri. E tautohe ana au i te whakamāramatanga o te noho rangiruatanga, inarā, e tino hāngai ana inā whakatauhia ki te hinengaro o te taiohi. Ko ngā whakaputaranga i puta mai i ngā whakarōpūtanga kaiwhakaora hinengaro taiohi e whakatauhia ana hai whakaahua i ngā whakaaro o Bion, ā, hai tautoko ake i te whakaaro e mau ana aua āhua i te wā tipuranga o te taiohi. I mahia tēnei mahi i Rānana, ka tīmata ake te haerenga o tēnei pepa kia tāia i te pito whakamutunga o taku mahi i te taha o tēnei rōpū, ā, mai i taku taenga mai ki Aotearoa.

Pictures in Words – Kanji, Images in Literature – Sōshi

Abstract From ancient times, the Japanese have been exploiting the image in as many ways as possible. They have used it in linguistics, literature, art - and the list is certainly much longer. Thus, the first part of my work tries to explain the importance of the kanji writing system and the “image” of a kanji, so that readers who do not understand the Japanese language can become familiar with it (origin, structure, mnemotechnics etc.). The second part of my work explains that later, in the 14th century, when “sōshi”or “zōshi” literature was born, n all of its books the relation between the text and the image was more than important. In the end, I conclude that the “image” is a defining element in understanding Japanese language and literature even in the 21st century.

Insightful, Scholarly, and Synthetic: Eville Gorham and the Chemistry of Surface Waters

“Encyclopedic” and “exciting” are not often used to describe the same scientific paper , but that was my reaction upon reading Eville Gorham’s paper on the factors influencing the chemistry of surface waters (Gorham 1961) as a graduate student in the 1970s. It remains my reaction to re-reading it today, for at least the third time. In his paper, Eville sought to explain the enormous differences in chemistry that occur among lakes and rivers across the world. Among many factors, he identified the importance of atmospheric deposition as often representing a major contributor to differences in water chemistry, and further identified human activity as sometimes being a substantial component of atmospheric deposition. In describing the role of human activity, he built upon his earlier work that first identified acid rain as an important phenomenon (Gorham 1955, 1958). All right, so that topic would not be exciting to everyone, but to a Ph.D. student studying the regulation of streamwater chemistry in New England and of necessity the role of human activities (atmospheric deposition and the legacies of past land use) in shaping that chemistry (Vitousek and Reiners 1975, Vitousek 1977), it was a revelation. A couple of years later after I completed my Ph.D., Eville wrote to my advisor and collaborator Bill Reiners (a former colleague of his at the University of Minnesota) with queries and some disagreements. I then re-read his 1961 paper and realized how closely I had been following Eville’s approach—how the original parts of my work had come about through use of a research design that Eville had suggested, how he had recognized the likely importance and potential magnitude of mechanisms that Bill and I had developed as the core of my dissertation. Because of his approach to us, and his generosity in suggesting that we write a review of the topic together, rather than simply publishing a critique, I then had the opportunity to work on a manuscript with Eville and Bill (Gorham et al. 1979) that explored issues of mutual interest. When I received the invitation to write for The Paper Trail on a publication that had influenced me, it was easy to select this one. I then got in touch with Eville and asked him how his 1961 paper came to be. There is some information on this topic in his own inaugural contribution to The Paper Trail (Gorham 2014); among others, he cites the influence of the Berkeley soil scientist Hans Jenny (Jenny 1941), whose work also later influenced me substantially. In his response, Eville said (among other things) “After publishing several papers on the chemistry of both lakes and precipitation (which included his foundational work on acid rain), I thought that I had read enough and done enough to review the subject, in which I was greatly encouraged by Preston Cloud....” He further noted what he calls the role of chance and serendipity in his research career—a topic on which he has written compellingly (Gorham 2012), but to my mind not entirely convincingly. I don’t doubt that chance has played a major role in his career, as it has for most of us, but I believe that by focusing on chance he plays down the role of the breadth of his scholarship, his own enormous curiosity, and above all his drive to make sense of the world. He quotes Pasteur’s comment “Chance favors the prepared mind”; and few minds are prepared as well as Eville’s. What makes a >50-year-old paper—in a field for which we now have powerful techniques like Sr isotopes, which in some cases allow us to trace the influence of atmospheric deposition vs. rock weathering

Mental health emergencies

I gained experience of psychiatric assessment in previous roles when working in a secure psychiatric ward and within the prison service. Although I have often performed mental state assessments and assessments of suicidal intent as part of my work, I read the CPD article to refresh my knowledge in this area.

Reflections on six years in paediatric ART

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Reflections on six years in paediatric ART

As part of my work at a primary care clinic in Khayelitsha, I started the paediatric arm of the antiretroviral therapy (ART) service in our clinic six years ago. When I first started, many children were being cared for by family members or foster carers because their mothers had died.

Deterministic Chaos

This thesis concerns on dynamical systems whose behavior can be described as a deterministic in time thus based on initial conditions it is possible to predict how the system will behave. The main goal of the work is to analyze deterministic chaos with special attention to usability of this phenomenon in mechanical systems in everyday life, moreover the work indicate the typical symptoms, circumstances that germinate and support their occurrence. The project is an attempt to correctly identify and describe definitions of: deterministic chaos, chaos quantifiers, attractors, fractals and of course chaos in conservative systems. Experimental part of my work represents the basic chaotic event that can be noticed in daily life.

The Modern Science of Multicriteria Decision Making and Its Practical Applications: The AHP/ANP Approach

This paper presents a summary of the discrete mathematical part of my work, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and its generalization to dependence and feedback, the Analytic Network Process (ANP), for measuring tangible and intangible factors, particularly as applied to decision making. The factors of the decision are arranged in hierarchical or network structures and judgments are then made by the decision maker, or by an expert, about the dominant element for each pair with respect to a common property. From simple judgments on two elements at a time with respect to a common property, priority vectors are obtained that are combined throughout the structure to give the best outcome for a decision. The judgments may be inconsistent, and there is a mathematical way to measure inconsistency so that the outlying judgments may be revised by the decision maker in an acceptable way or a decision may be delayed until more consistent information is obtained. In practical applications using either hierarchical or network structures, decisions are often analyzed in separate parts for their benefits, opportunities, costs, and risks, and the results are then combined in an appropriate way into an overall synthesis of those priorities. The mathematics has been generalized in the literature to the Neural Network Process (NNP), the continuous case for modeling how the brain synthesizes signals. There has been a diversity of applications over the past 30 to 40 years, and some of these are reported here. A brief mention is made of other methods of decision making and how AHP/ANP may compare with them.

‘Disabling’ the Museum: Curator as Infrastructural Activist

This paper will explore how I attempt to ‘disable’ the museum through curating my third exhibition containing disability-related content, that I consider to be part of my work as a radical, infrastructural activist: Cripping Cyberspace: A Contemporary Virtual Art Exhibition (2013) hosted by and in conjunction with the Common Pulse Intersecting Abilities Art Festival and Symposium and the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies . The space for this exhibition offers a new experimental virtual platform hosted by an online journal. I argue that part of the decolonizing work of disability studies is to offer opportunities to both curators and artists where their work can be displayed within unconventional gallery settings (such as the virtual platform) in order to ‘crip’ art history and contemporary art practice.

Breathlessness

As part of my work as a nurse practitioner, I chair palliative care meetings where management of patients with end-stage disease is discussed and a multidisciplinary approach for their care needs is planned.

Making A Place: Art, Writing, and a More‐Than‐Textual Approach

In this article I discuss both process of making artwork about particular landscape--the forests in parts of north of Scotland--and an arts practice that has expanded to include ethnographic fieldwork. Not only have I shadowed foresters, ecologists, and other people who work in these outdoor spaces, I have actually performed tasks with them. My work is concerned with familiarization of that can come through repeated visits, processes of coming to know, and exploring how others' knowledge can be brought to bear on process, practice, and outcome. In following description and discussion of some of my work, I explore ways in which concerns and interests of my practice-based research may sometimes overlap with concerns and interests of geographical inquiry. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] I am interested in how than written (and, perhaps, other-than, or not-quite, explained) can add value to investigations of and how kind of writings on landscape and that Hayden Lorimer described as more-than-representational--the diverse work that seeks better to cope with our self-evidently more-than-human, more-than-textual, multisensual worlds (2005, 83)--can add texture, depth, and context to an arts practice. In doing so, I draw on writers such as J.-D. Dewsbury and his coauthors, who argued for accounts that leave space for something else to happen (2002, 439), and John Wylie, who wrote about how forms of narrative--memoir, montage, travelogue, ethnography--are being used both within and beyond academia as creative and critical means of expressing post-humanist philosophies of place (2005, 237). More recently, Wylie has claimed that there exists a desire for different types of writing, methods, formats and 'outputs,' and shared stress also on affective, emotive and praxis based aspects of life (2010, 213). My interest is in how theoretical writings, my own narratives, and narratives of people I encounter and walk with in these places intertwine and influence process of art-making, which itself contributes to understandings of place. The work I go on to discuss has evolved through being in and passing through places, journeying, resting, and revisiting, sometimes alone and sometimes with others. Whereas Rebecca Solnit likened journey to something that unfolds rather like story does (2001, 72), Doreen Massey asserted that space could be seen as of interrelationships and that perhaps we could imagine space as simultaneity of stories-so-far (2005, 12). I am interested in weaving interconnections between lines of walking, discovery, making, stories of place, and in creating paths of narrative, with and beyond text. In this article, lightly flecked with insights from theory (Lorimer, in Peter Merriman and others 2008, 197), I reflect on some of different iterations of my arts practice before focusing on series of works more directly evolving from fieldwork practice that entails more deeply rooted and task-based immersions in place. I also discuss role that line of walk has come to play in this work. As an artist-researcher, my engagement with landscape has sometimes involved standing back, looking upon, recording, and extrapolating. At other times--particularly during fieldwork that has come to be part of my work--it has come also to include immersion and performing tasks within landscape. The works I have created about these places include: two-dimensional photographs, drawings, and etchings; pieces that are potentially more immersive (video, sound, and installation); interactive pieces such as bookworks; and explorations with essay form. Intrinsic to scope of these enquiries is an openness to world, to as it appears--or becomes apparent. Beth Greenhough understands that geographies take into account fact that the world does not wait passively to be enlivened, but is already lively, active and capable of intruding upon us (2010, 41). …

Geraldine Wright

Geraldine Wright

National Society of Genetic Counselors Natalie Weissburger Paul Lifetime Achievement Award Address: The Power of Connecting

National Society of Genetic Counselors Natalie Weissburger Paul Lifetime Achievement Award Address: <b><i>The Power of Connecting</i></b>

Rationality, Intuition and Emotion - Exploring an Artistic Process

This exploratory text communicates the relation between my figurative sculpture and abstract drawings in an attempt to find the deeper grounds in my artistic work. During this project writing has become a connecting element, both as a description of my artistic process and as an integrated part of my work. In this writing I have tried to be open to underlying motives and early in this project it became clear that memories of psychotic episodes that I experienced in my twenties would start to play a crucial part in the description of my process. The psychoses had a prodigious impact on the formation of the person I have become and still play an important role as an undercurrent of emotional energy in my daily life and in my art. However, since I don’t want my art to be perceived through the point of view that I was once a psychiatric patient, I hardly ever talk about it. In this exposition I explore how, if I want to explore deeper layers in my work, I can no longer avoid this part of my past.

Memories of Violencia in the work of the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo: A subjective view

The work of Colombian artist Doris Salcedo has become an important reference when talking about art and its representation of violence and exclusion. Following a tradition stemming from the artistic movements of the twentieth century, Salcedo has been acknowledged as one of the most intriguing and original artists in her exploration of public tragedy, the delicate issue of human rights and the trace of violence in those who are left behind. Salcedo’s undertaking does not address those tangible manifestations of evil; instead, her work goes beyond the surface, inviting the spectator to a journey inside … into memories and feelings, into fears and intimate spaces. In this article, I offer a discussion regarding places, intersections and motivations in Salcedo’s oeuvre and suggest some echoes between certain philosophical foundations of her work in relation to human rights in the case of Colombia. This article addresses the invitation for this Special Issue on Arts and Human Rights, focusing on the case of Colombia, where a systematic and ongoing crisis has damaged fundamental human rights for those affected by the civil conflict. In addition, as part of my work in management and organizational studies, I consider how Doris Salcedo’s reflection is relevant to our understanding of labour and contemporary organizations.

10th Anniversary Special Issue: From Fringe to Mainstream—We Have Come a Long Way

10th Anniversary Special Issue: From Fringe to Mainstream—We Have Come a Long Way

When Worlds Collide

I went into healthcare hoping to do something that would make a difference. My wife and I pursued masters' degrees in public health, and my first job out of graduate school was doing consulting, helping manufacturers get novel therapies covered by managed care and other payers using clinical and economic arguments. As part of my work, I developed a comprehensive reimbursement guide for dialysis centers and nephrologists' offices. I then worked on the first set of the National Kidney Foundation KDOQI guidelines that centered on the care and management of the dialysis patient. When I started the work in 1994, I was already aware of my own form of slow-moving kidney disease, but I had no idea that one day I would benefit directly from the guidelines myself. Drafting and publishing evidence-based clinical practice guidelines is no small task, and it involves many people with different skill sets. Of course, it was led by nephrologists and other healthcare providers who are on the front lines of patient care and often are affiliated with academic medical centers. But it also involved many people working behind the scenes to make it all possible. My role was to be the project manager for the methodology aspect of the guidelines. My team and I served as staff to the workgroups, helping them conduct literature searches (before the Internet could do what it does today), review the relevant literature, come to a consensus on guidelines based on either evidence or opinion, and draft them. Once the guidelines were drafted, I managed the team that oversaw the review of the guidelines by various entities and individuals in the nephrology community until finally, nearly three years later, the guidelines were published and became part of the standard of care across their four areas: hemodialysis adequacy, peritoneal dialysis adequacy, vascular access, and anemia management. ESRD can be very empowering: you have nothing to lose in asking questions, seeking information, and offering your thoughts. At first, I was simply managing the comorbid conditions associated with stage 3 and 4 CKD, such as hypertension, anemia, and hyperparathyroidism. Later, as I approached stage 5, my discussions with my nephrologist focused on options for renal replacement and were enriched tremendously given my years working on KDOQI. In October of 2006, my serum creatinine and uremic symptoms led my nephrologist to conclude it was time to start dialysis while waiting for a living-related renal transplant from my brother. After years of working around dialysis, either from a billing or literature perspective, I was now the patient in the dialysis center, coming three times a week for four or more hours each session. My worlds collided: suddenly what had been simply an academic exercise became very personal; it truly was life and death. As I underwent dialysis and then proceeded on to transplant and beyond, I can honestly say that the important lessons and advances of KDOQI were evident in the trenches everywhere. And I became a truly empowered patient—always asking questions, either to understand what was being done or to ensure, in my own mind, that it was the right thing. I came to think of myself as a partner in my own care, and empowered by my education, experiences, and information from the Internet and other sources, I truly participated in my own care. End-stage renal disease is a very emotional disease. It can make you feel very vulnerable, living on the edge, with death as one possible outcome. It can also be very empowering, because you have nothing to lose in asking questions, seeking information, and offering your thoughts. I am thankful that so many of my caregivers welcomed my participation and input, and I think we worked well together as a team. So, my two worlds, which had been so separate, collided. I do not believe it was accidental, and I am so grateful for the experience. I am also thankful for the work of so many colleagues who gave of their time and talents to advance nephrology to benefit patients like me.

Between Teaching and Learning: Personal Notes on the Scholarship of Artistic Practice

The artist’s studio is one of the more fascinating spaces in contemporary culture, particularly because it operates in a dark cloud of misconceptions, myths, and distortions. It is assumed to be an intensely private place where creativity happens, somehow and in some way, although no one really knows what that means. This potent combination of mystification and ignorance creates problems for studio art education in the academy because the studio space is at the heart of the education of the artist. An important part of my work as an historian of modern art and critic and curator of contemporary art is the study of studio practices. And I am convinced that greater clarity about studio practice will benefit the studio art curriculum. And I am likewise convinced that the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning can assist in this necessary project of curricular revision by providing a coherent and consistent pedagogical framework.

Genetic Suppressors and Recovery of Repressed Biochemical Memory

Many of the Reflections articles in this journal have focused on particular biological problems that the authors have devoted their careers to or on particular techniques that have facilitated their biological studies. Although I began my career as a biochemist, one of the most common threads to my research has been the exploitation of a genetic approach, the analysis of suppressor mutations. Particularly in the last 20 years, the success of this approach has led me into biological problems that required a remembering or relearning of my early training in biochemistry. This article will describe the voyage from chemistry and biochemistry to genetics and then to a recovery of remnants of my biochemical memory. As a graduate student working under Lowell Hager at Harvard in the late 1950s, my thesis research was chemical and biochemical, as I performed the chemical synthesis and studied the biosynthesis of the chlorinated mold product caldariomycin (2,2-dichloro-1,3-cyclopentanediol) (1–3). With his postdoctoral fellow Paul Shaw, Lowell had discovered an enzyme, chloroperoxidase, that was capable of utilizing chloride ion to chlorinate organic compounds (4). Part of my work was to determine how this enzyme might be involved in the biosynthesis of caldariomycin. Apparently, the work became somewhat well known. This I learned when, toward the end of my Ph.D. work, I attended a FASEB meeting in Atlantic City to give a short presentation. As I walked into the conference center on the first day, a scientist passing by me stopped to look at my badge, hesitated a moment, and then commented “Beckwith... hmmm, oh yes, I remember... chlorination!” Despite this really quite limited chemical/biochemical notoriety, I became more and more fascinated by bacterial genetics in graduate school. I proceeded to do postdoctoral work in several bacterial genetics laboratories.