Professional Jealousy Research Articles

A Study of Professional Jealousy in Education System

The professional life of teacher connected with institution, colleagues and students. Every individual teacher is unique and different. But this individuality may be criticized by other colleague. The present study focus on’professioal jealousy among secondary school teachers. The study revealed that a significant difference was observed between government and private school teachers with respect to professional jealousy scores (t=-- 3.6442 , p<0.05) at 5% level of significance. Hence, the hypothesis is rejected. The alternative hypothesis is accepted It means that, professional jealousy scores are significantly higher private schools as compare to government secondary schools and a significant difference was observed between junior and senior teachers of secondary school teachers with respect professional jealousy scores (t=-2.6975 , p<0.05) at 5% level of significance. Hence, the hypothesis is rejected. It means that, professional jealousy scores are significantly higher among juniors as compare to senior teachers and asignificant difference was observed between head masters and assistant teachers with respct to professional jealousy scores (t= -3.3811 , p<0.05) at 5% level of significance. Hence, the hypothesis is rejected. It means that, professional jealousy scores are significantly higher among assistant teachers as compare to head masters.It is concluded that The private secondary school teachers and juniors and assistant teachers suffering lot because of professional jealousy of their colleagues. Hence these teachers need to be taken care and guided. The institutions and organizations heads and management should also need to be guided properly.The special guide lines should be framed to control the negative effect of professional jealousy . Key words: Career, Collabration, Compare, Compitation,J ealousy, Professional, Undermining

Exploring facilitators and barriers to implementing expanded nursing roles in MexicoEstudo de facilitadores e barreiras para a implementação de funções ampliadas de enfermagem no México

To explore the perceptions of nursing professionals regarding facilitators and barriers to the implementation of expanded nursing functions in a state in central Mexico. Qualitative descriptive phenomenological study. During 2022, 18 semi-structured interviews were conducted with three types of informants: a) head nurses at state-level facilities; b) head nurses at local-level facilities; and c) heads of health units and operational nursing staff who have direct contact with patients. The following facilitators were identified: willingness to adopt the strategy (seen as favorable by managers and acceptable by nursing staff); reorganization of functions (simplification of processes and analysis of the situation of health units); access to training; and characteristics of nursing staff (professionalization, work experience, and favorable attitude). Barriers included: conditions at the first level of care (personnel shortages, too many administrative activities, lack of physical space, materials, supplies, and consumables), resistance to change (professional jealousy of other disciplines and duplication of tasks), staff salaries, lack of training, not trusted with expanded duties, and attitude of patients (resistance to nursing care). By understanding the perceptions of nursing professionals, we can identify key elements for the successful expansion of nursing functions through expansion of the competencies of operational staff. Reorganization and proper management at different levels of decision-making will be necessary.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Case: Features of Intellectual Property Disputes in Private International Law

The case is known around the world as a drama steeped in mystery, international intrigue, professional jealousy, political tension and conspiracy, which raised the issue of copyright in biblical manuscripts. This legal saga has sparked debate not only in the academic community studying the scrolls, but also among copyright lawyers around the world. The decision of the Supreme Court raises a fundamental question about the choice made of the rule of private international law in the context of copyright and moral rights. The issues to be discussed essentially related to academic freedom, access to unpublished sources, exchange of knowledge and information before publication, possibility of free use of material after publication. More than 2,000 years after it was written and half a century after its discovery, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls finally has a "legitimate" author, according to an Israeli court.

Personal talent curation in the lifetime realization of gifted potential: The role of adaptive intelligence

This article introduces the construct of personal talent curation. Personal talent curation is one’s assessment of one’s talents—of one’s strengths and weaknesses—but also the building of an adaptive match in life between those talents and both one’s career pursuits and one’s personal lifestyle. Sometimes, this match means pursuing a lifelong passion, but other times, it means giving up that passion or transforming it into a passion that works in the broader context of the life one seeks for oneself. For example, one may be an exceptionally talented musician, scientist, or artist, but the concomitants of a life building relentlessly on those talents—competition, professional jealousy, and continual critiques—just do not fit the kind of life one wishes to lead. In such cases, it may turn out that what in a profession or in society is viewed as a “failure” or a “derailment” may represent a personal adaptive success.

Las amarguras de un intelectual republicano en Checoslovaquia

The historian, journalist and professor from La Coruña Francisco Fariña, of whom we now celebrate the 130th anniversary of his birth, came to Czechoslovakia in 1933. He collaborated with the Spanish and Ibero-American Institute and the Schools of Languages of Charles University in Prague and Masaryk University Masaryk in Brno. His students played a key role in Spanish and Ibero-American studies becoming a university degree. The political situation in Spain and professional jealousy clouded his stay in the Central European country and forced him to exile in Germany, where he died in 1955.

Playful Visions: Optical Toys and the Emergence of Children’s Media Culture, by Meredith A. Bak

Reviewed by: Playful Visions: Optical Toys and the Emergence of Children's Media Culture by Meredith A. Bak Monica Flegel (bio) Playful Visions: Optical Toys and the Emergence of Children's Media Culture, by Meredith A. Bak; pp. xi + 276. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020, $30.00. My initial thought when beginning Playful Visions: Optical Toys and the Emergence of Children's Media Culture was one of professional and personal jealousy that the author had chosen a research topic that allowed her to play with vintage optical toys. Meredith A. Bak describes her process as follows: "In the basement of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I twirled thaumatropes that reanimated nineteenth-century visual puns … At the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, I watched as a projecting praxinoscope's spinning drum sent a luminous scene onto the wall" (4–5). Lest other envious academics question just why some of our colleagues get to engage in more pleasurable research than others, I will say upfront that Bak's playful encounters with these optical toys are central to her efforts to understand their role in childhood education in the nineteenth century. What I appreciated most about this book, over and above the real pleasure I found in learning about the wide variety of optical technologies that were developed throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was Bak's careful attention to the "specificity of each of these devices" (22). In her thorough analysis of the materiality of the phenakistoscope, the kaleidoscope, the thaumatrope, and various other toys and [End Page 566] technologies, Bak highlights the importance of understanding just how each of these was absorbed into classed and raced narratives of visual competency in children's education. The overarching argument of Bak's monograph is that present-day "aspirations and anxieties" about the child as media consumer and spectator were shaped in the nineteenth century, and into the twentieth, through optical toys and their role in the home and the classroom (11). These toys were key to teaching children not just concepts such as persistence of vision, but also specific competencies that were linked to middle-class identity: "The power to visually surveil, discern, or scrutinize the social and material world was one strategy that members of the economically and socially unstable middle class used to fix their own positions" (13). For example, Bak devotes a chapter to the thaumatrope, which is a simple card on strings with images printed on either side. Twisting the strings while watching the quickly flipping card allows the viewer to see one image superimposed upon the other. Bak theorizes the connection between this toy's training of the persistence of vision and the skills required of the managerial class: seeing and interpreting sets those with visual competencies apart from the working classes, distinguishing between "mental and manual labor, helping to justify and reinforce a division of labor in those terms" (87). Throughout her text, Bak convincingly demonstrates how often these toys were linked to specific job training and skills, as well as to racialized, classed, and imperial ways of looking at the world. From her discussion of the depictions of "greenhorns" unable to distinguish between optical technologies and reality, to her analysis of the objectification of peoples and cultures via the stereoscope, Bak demonstrates how the training of the child's eye to master optical technologies was closely linked to social mobility aided by specific ways of seeing (84). While I appreciated the chapter organization of the book, which allowed for deep analysis of specific kinds of technologies, I did find that this made some of the overarching arguments a bit harder to follow through the text as a whole. Each chapter engaged with how various optical toys and teaching tools shaped the child viewer and participant toward classed forms of media spectatorship. However, the nature of that training was at times buried in the details of each technology. Additionally, there is some focus throughout on the agency of the user and their ability to "resist, negotiate, or challenge the visual logics that such toys sought to impart," but this is not fully developed in the book, and would perhaps require more thorough...

A Tolnay–Panofsky-affér, avagy hűség az ifjúsághoz: A bécsi iskola, Max Dvořák és A Vasárnapi Kör

The conflict between Charles de Tolnay and Erwin Panofsky that grew unprecedentedly acrimonious in the history of the discipline – the so-called Tolnay–Panofsky affair – was more than mere personal bickering. The documents clearly reveal that the “affair”, which basically affected financial and professional positions, was based on embarrassingly ordinary, occasionally petty-minded questions instead of scientific arguments, and led to a break of relationship probably in spring 1943, also directs the attention to the science political consequences of the hierarchic establishment of American science financing and academia in general in the interwar years and the 1940s, and to differences between European and American scholarship. It can be gleaned that Tolnay’s efforts to be allotted raised stipends (often by a great degree, as the documents unanimously testify) and a confirmed position led to the deterioration of his relationship with the Princeton IAS leaders and community – in spite of the fact that the former leader of the Institute Flexner took Tolnay’s side, at times with threats to Panofsky and Oppenheimer and accusing Panofsky of professional jealousy. Though Tolnay received raised scholarship up to 4000 dollars for three years, the institute decided to part with Tolnay in 1948. In the background of the affair, however, one may discover conflicts based on the diverging views on art history by Panofsky and Tolnay rooted far deeper, in the elementary influences of the Vienna School of Art History and Max Dvořák on the one hand, and of the Sunday Circle and György Lukács, on the other. The art philosophical aspects and methodological consequences of these dissenting concepts of art history may bear significance for the practitioners of the discipline today as well.

Young and Innocent: Becoming Joanie and Hitchy

Young and Innocent: Becoming Joanie and Hitchy Christina Lane (bio) The 1937 film Young and Innocent has been given far less consideration than Alfred Hitchcock’s more frequently discussed British romantic thrillers The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), and The Lady Vanishes (1938). Yet the jaunty romp taken by an unemployed screenwriter unjustly accused of murder and the young Constable’s daughter who joins him on the lam uniquely captures the director’s deep affection for the British countryside. And it features one of his all-time favorite female leads, Nova Pilbeam, admirably taking her first turn in a mature role at the age of eighteen, several years after playing the precocious adolescent kidnapped in The Man Who Knew Too Much. Indeed, Hitchcock notably referenced Young and Innocent as his personal favorite among his twenty-three British films.1 If Young and Innocent, chonologically at the center of Hitchcock’s British golden run, begs deeper examination, so too does the career of the Hitchcock collaborator just then beginning to come into her own. Joan Harrison joined Hitchcock’s Gaumont Studios production office as a secretary in Fall 1933, and within months was providing the director with story editing, script development, and producing assistance. I examine Harrison’s career at length in the full-length biography Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock (2020), and devote a section to the film’s production and themes. In this essay, I will delve deeper into the film’s [End Page 73] importance to Harrison’s career and how it illuminates the long-term collaboration between Harrison and Hitchcock. Young and Innocent was a turning point for Harrison, who later named it as the first Hitchcock film on which she had major impact—the first that she considered hers, in a creative sense.2 Prior to 1936, Harrison’s role in Hitchcock’s circle had been limited. Though Hitchcock had recognized that the literary-minded Oxford graduate should be added to his storytelling team within just a few weeks of hiring her, Harrison needed on-the-job training. The earliest films in which she participated (e.g., The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps, Secret Agent [1936], and Sabotage [1936]) offered opportunities for her to shape story, character, and central ideas, but there were writers in the room, particular Charles Bennett and Ian Hay, who consistently dominated.3 Bennett, for reasons that may have had to do with professional jealousy, misogyny, or a combination of the two, apparently posed a specific problem for Harrison.4 Hitchcock had relied heavily on Bennett to provide the essential architecture for four of the director’s most successful films to date, and he tended to give him center stage. As Hitchcock biographer Patrick McGilligan puts it, “Bennett boiled with ideas. And he fought for them too, which the young, feisty Hitchcock liked—up to a point.”5 In the early stages of scripting Young and Innocent, however—and while on vacation in St. Moritz, Switzerland, with Hitchcock, his wife Alma Reville, and Harrison—the screenwriter received a telegram inviting him to join Universal Pictures in Hollywood.6 With Bennett gone, Harrison began to enjoy unprecedented creative freedom at an opportune time. Harrison and Hitchcock were hitting a collaborative stride. Having worked together for three-and-a-half years and on four films, they were growing closer, collaboratively and otherwise, even calling each other “Joanie” and “Hitchy.”7 Harrison had adopted the Hitchcocks as a second family, spending holidays and vacations with them, and fitting easily into the coterie of writers, producers, actors, journalists, and [End Page 74] artists who regularly swept through the Hitchcocks’ Kensington residence at 153 Cromwell Road (fig. 1). Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. More important, Reville and Hitchcock had entrusted Harrison with supervising the distinctive system of film preparation that the couple had together developed early on. This was a private set of codes that translated ideas into script format and then to the screen. Hitchcock described the process as a “working on the script that is the real making of the film” in his 1937 Sight & Sound essay...

Conscious Decision to Engage in Defensive Silence: An Expectancy Theory Perspective

The supervisor’s negative attitude towards voice and unavailability of communication channels are considered significant predictors of defensive silence. However, lesser consideration has been given to provide an in-depth explanation of how and why these motivational forces influence employees’ step by step conscious decision to engage in defensive silence. This qualitative study incorporates semi-structured interviews with bank employees of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Thematic coding and causal networking techniques were used to transcribe and analyse data and derive emerging themes. Taking influence from the elements of Expectancy Theory, this paper extends theory in the context of service sector by presenting two expectancy theory based defensive silence models. The first model provides reasons such as favoritism, political appointment, supervisor’s self-interest etc., to explain how and why the supervisor’s negative attitude towards voice influences employees’ cognitive mechanism to adopt defensive silence. Similarly, the second model presents the emerging themes like centralized decision system, career ladder, leg pulling, professional jealousy etc., to explain how and why unavailability of communication channels predicts defensive silence. Thus, the study extends the application of expectancy theory and defensive silence phenomenon to new empirical context. The paper concludes with a discussion on implications and recommendations for future work. Keywords: Defensive Silence; Supervisor’s Negative Attitude Towards Voice; Unavailability of Communication Channels.

Estimation of Shortfall in Salary from 1996 to 2018 from Health and University, South Africa

Background: Professional jealousy is known to be rife among academics in various universities, but hardlyreduces their salaries. The productive staff is generally protected from external as well as internal threats bythe higher management of the university, but this did not happen in the case of Mr. BM.Case history: Mr. BM was appointed as acting head of department, a medical officer against the post ofprofessor and head of forensic medicine. He was not paid according to the University’s conditions of servicepolicy document. This was ignored by Human Resource department despite a resolution of the council. Mr.BM kept on receiving low salary to which he was entitled until his retirement after almost 20 years (1996-2018). This brought him close to financial ruin, as his pension was consequently also reduced by half.The estimated salary shortfall could be calculated, but the pain and suffering caused by three disciplinaryenquiries and suspension are difficult to assess without the help of an actuarial consultant.Conclusion: The shortfall in salary must be paid by the health, which is the major (80%) funder of his salaryin a dual employment. This shortfall entailed differences in payment of basic salary as well as allowancesbetween 1996 and 2018.

Exploring interprofessional teamwork at a tertiary public hospital in South Africa

ABSTRACT The landscape of health in South Africa has changed dramatically with the unprecedented rise in the burden of disease. Public health care facilities struggle to provide quality, patient-centered care to patients with complex health needs. Interprofessional teamwork is strongly advocated to improve the quality and patient-centeredness of care. This study explored the barriers and facilitators of interprofessional teamwork amongst health professionals working at a tertiary level public hospital in South Africa. The study employed a qualitative, descriptive, exploratory design. Data were collected during three focus group discussions with 14 purposively selected participants from several health professions. Barriers such as high patient turnover, lack of human resources, time, hierarchy, referral process, lack of knowledge of the roles and scopes of practice, negative attitudes, communication inefficiencies, language barriers, and professional jealousy were found to impede interprofessional teamwork. Facilitators of interprofessional teamwork included increased human resources, communication technology, respect, and relationship building. Although health professionals understand the barriers and facilitators of interprofessional teams in the provision of patient care, this study concludes that interprofessional capacity building is needed for successful interprofessional teamwork at a tertiary level public hospital setting.

McCarthyism in the Suburbs: Quakers, Communists, and the Children’s Librarian by Allison Hepler

Reviewed by: McCarthyism in the Suburbs: Quakers, Communists, and the Children’s Librarian by Allison Hepler Richard P. Mulcahy McCarthyism in the Suburbs: Quakers, Communists, and the Children’s Librarian. By Allison Hepler. (New York: Lexington Books, 2018. 193 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. Hardback, $90; ebook, $38.) McCarthyism was bullying combined with a demand for conformity. The stated concern about national security, while important, was not essential. Far more basic was people’s willingness to surrender their individual agency for the good of the nation. This meant signing loyalty oaths, denouncing proscribed organizations, and naming names as proof of devotion to flag, God, and country. This is the context of Allison Hepler’s excellent new study McCarthyism in the Suburbs: Quakers, Communists, and the Children’s Librarian. At the story’s center is Mary Knowles, a popular children’s librarian. She joined the Communist Party in 1943 after her husband, Clive, a communist and former Protestant minister, left for service in World War II. No ideologue, Mary Knowles supported racial and gender equality and opposed classism. In addition, as a young mother, the party provided her with a support system. Unfortunately, such fine distinctions were not possible in the overheated anticommunist hysteria that gripped the nation immediately after World War II ended. With the period’s hearings and informers, a web of intrigue emerged. Knowles was first caught in this web when former FBI informant Herbert Philbrick named her as a communist in testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security in May of 1953. Knowles had been hired in 1948 by the Morrill Memorial library, and despite the outstanding work she did for the library, Philbrick’s testimony resulted in her dismissal. Unemployed, Knowles took a position as children’s librarian with the William Jeanes Memorial Library in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia. Unlike the Morrill Library, William Jeanes was a Quaker-affiliated private institution, thereby affording Knowles the opportunity to restart her life. However, Philbrick, by then a national figure due to his book, I Led Three Lives, named her at another congressional hearing, which led to a new controversy. Moreover, Knowles refused to sign a loyalty oath, since she regarded such statements as counter-productive to good citizenship. The ensuing drama featured not only mendacity and professional jealousy but also fortitude and generosity, with the library under great pressure to fire Knowles. Yet she remained in place because of the Quaker tradition of “coming to unity” on a decision rather than following a strict majority rule. Allison Hepler’s narrative is well-documented and engaging. While she maintains scholarly detachment, the text reads as a modern morality play, with Knowles’s individual rights hanging in the balance. Hepler’s only weakness is her failure to address the FBI’s attitude concerning Philbrick. Clearly, he benefited from his association with the bureau. A comparable situation unfolded in Pittsburgh with Matt Cvetic, who capitalized on his former status as a confidential informant and whom the FBI regarded with contempt as a result. It would be [End Page 239] interesting to know if the bureau felt the same way about Philbrick. That, however, is a small matter compared to the contribution this book makes to the scholarship about the McCarthy era. It is highly recommended for both specialist and general readers. Richard P. Mulcahy University of Pittsburgh at Titusville Copyright © 2020 Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Innovative Strategies for Peer Review.

Peer review is a crucial part of research and publishing. However, it remains imperfect and suffers from bias, lack of transparency, and professional jealousy. It is also overburdened by an increasing quantity of complex papers against the stagnant pool of reviewers, causing delays in peer review. Additionally, many medical, nursing, and healthcare educators, peer reviewers, and authors may not be completely familiar with the current changes in peer review. Moreover, reviewer education and training have unfortunately remained lacking. This is especially crucial since current initiatives to improve the review process are now influenced by factors other than academic needs. Thus, increasing attention has recently focused on ways of streamlining the peer review process and implementing alternative peer-review methods using new technologies and open access models. This article aims to give an overview of the innovative strategies for peer review and to consider perspectives that may be helpful in introducing changes to peer review. Critical assessments of peer review innovations and incentives based on past and present experiences are indispensable. A theoretical appraisal must be balanced by a realistic appraisal of the ethical roles of all stakeholders in enhancing the peer review process. As the peer review system is far from being perfect, identifying and developing core competencies among reviewers, continuing education of researchers, reviewer education and training, and professional engagement of the scientific community in various disciplines may help bridge gaps in an imperfect but indispensable peer review system.

Is the medical teacher's mental health neglected? Effects of perceived student attitudes and behaviors on mental health and lifestyle of teachers in a rural university of western Maharashtra in India.

Background:A medical teacher is a practitioner, teacher, trainer, and researcher all at once. There are very few studies assessing stress among medical teachers. With landmark policy changes, disruption and ongoing pandemic, looking at the mental health of medical teachers assumes greater importance.Methods:A cross-sectional study was carried out in the teaching faculty of medical, dental, nursing, and physiotherapy colleges affiliated within a rural medical university in western Maharashtra. A convenience sample of 100 teachers was taken and a self-report questionnaire was used to collect data from the teachers. Stress was measured by the Perceived Stress Scale.Results:Low stress scores (0–13) were seen in 43% of teachers, 55% had moderate stress scores (14–26), and 2% had high stress scores (27–40). Teaching was reported as a stressor by only 8%, whereas administrative work, lifestyle, family responsibilities, finances, patient care, professional jealousy, competition, and frequently changing norms were more commonly reported stressors. The overt focus on entrance test preparation, over-reliance on mobile phones, short attention span, poor listening skills, lack of interpersonal skills, lack of initiative to acquire clinical skills, lack of punctuality, and transactional nature toward learning were some of the perceived faults in the attitude of medical students as reported by the teachers.Conclusion:Teachers are coping with changing trends in technology and attitude of students toward learning and shoulder a multitude of responsibilities while creating doctors and healthcare professionals of the future. Attention needs to be paid to their health.

On the frontiers of change: breast surgeons' views on demarcation between surgical sub-specialties in Australia.

The emergence of breast oncoplastic surgery provides women with more surgical options for improved aesthetics following breast-conserving surgery and for breast reconstruction (BR) following mastectomy. For some established breast and plastic surgeons, this development may be perceived as increasing competition for patients and raises the potential for demarcation issues between and within surgical sub-specialties. The objectives of the study were to document surgeons' views on demarcation between general/breast, oncoplastic/breast and plastic reconstructive breast surgeons in Australia, to examine the potential impact demarcation issues may have on informed patient choice and to recommend ways of reducing them. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of 31 (22 oncoplastic and nine plastic reconstructive) surgeons who performed BR. Descriptive analysis of the interviews revealed a range in the perceptions of the extent of demarcation. Six common themes were identified: oncoplastic techniques are unnecessary and potentially unsafe; reconstructive surgery should be left to 'the experts'; non-referral of patients for discussion of surgical options they do not offer; professional jealousy; workload capacity; and the old versus the new guard. Potential solutions suggested by the participants focused on improving relations between oncoplastic and plastic reconstructive surgeons and changes to breast surgical training. While most surgeons were optimistic about the current divide diminishing with time, a more pro-active stance is required if patient-centred care is to be improved. Roundtable discussions with a broad range of stakeholders are planned to begin this process.

Comunidades de sentimiento: Cartografías afectivas de las redes sororales del siglo XIX

This article engages key concepts in affect theory to study correspondence ex-changed within and referring to networks of women writers in nineteenth-cen-tury Lima (Matto de Turner, Cabello de Carbonera, and Gorriti). Drawing on interventions by Sarah Ahmed, Deleuze and Guattari, and Barbara Rosenwein, I study the role of emotion in creating and sustaining a close intellectual com-munity by tracing the circulation of affect in both public and private expressions of sisterhood. In particular, I highlight negative affects—envy, professional jeal-ousy—within sororal networks, and the writers’ need to control those emotions in public to exhibit solidarity to the outside world. While in the literary salon, women writers presented themselves as a cohesive sisterhood, in their secret cor-respondences with powerful male mentors (Figueroa, Palma), they expressed negative emotions such as envy and professional jealousy more freely. I argue that a close examination of these sororophobic episodes reveals the performative aspects of public sisterhood as well as the continued need at this time for women writers to secure their position at the periphery of male-centered networks.

How to overcome professional jealousy

Do you compare yourself with other people? When I was in graduate school, I admired the students who were a year or two ahead of me. They seemed smarter and more self-assured, and at group meetings they always had the right answers, delivered with a nonchalant cool that I desperately wanted to emulate. In the lab, I remember admiring the fluid motions of one of the senior graduate students as he set up reactions, even the way he flicked test tubes into the glass waste bin. I realized later that he, too, had his struggles during graduate school. While I was fumbling in my hood attempting to run experiments, he was battling doubts about getting manuscripts published and navigating the swift waters of applying for postdoctoral positions or industrial jobs. As a midcareer chemist, I haven’t stopped comparing myself with others. I’m keenly aware of which coworkers make key breakthroughs

An Examination of the 1960s Attempt at a New Brand Identity for the General Post Office

Abstract In 1965, the UK designer F.H.K. Henrion was commissioned by the General Post Office to survey the state of design within the organization. The survey report was to form the basis for commissioning a new corporate identity, or ‘house style’, intended to visually unify the various operational divisions of the GPO as well as cultivate the image of a modern and progressive public entity in the minds of the public. Ultimately, thanks to factors that actively or indirectly hampered his efforts, Henrion’s attempt to produce a new, modern identity would, in large part, collapse. While it is true many professional projects do not bear fruit, one does not typically have a detailed account of the factors which might lead an initiative to fail. In this instance, archival records present a tale of intransigence precipitated by career civil servants determined to secure their positions, the conscious obstruction of change because of professional jealousy, and an overall general ineptitude when strength of leadership was required. This paper uses records from client correspondence, PO Board minutes, and internal memos housed in the British Postal Museum to trace the development of Henrion’s efforts from the client’s perspective.

"Die Belange der Volksgemeinschaft erfordern …" Rechtspraxis und Selbstverständnis von Bremer Juristen im "Dritten Reich." by Christine Schoenmakers

Reviewed by: "Die Belange der Volksgemeinschaft erfordern …" Rechtspraxis und Selbstverständnis von Bremer Juristen im "Dritten Reich." by Christine Schoenmakers Dan McMillan "Die Belange der Volksgemeinschaft erfordern …" Rechtspraxis und Selbstverständnis von Bremer Juristen im "Dritten Reich." By Christine Schoenmakers. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2015. Pp. 498. Cloth €69.00. ISBN 978-3506781352. This book is a local case study of the politicization of the legal profession during the Nazi era. Drawing on case files, reports in the local and regional press, personnel files, contemporary legal commentary, and her interviews conducted with the children and grandchildren of some of her subjects, Schoenmakers sets out to examine criminal trials and the jurists who participated in them: a group of around one hundred Bremen judges, prosecutors, and attorneys, but with a particular emphasis on a handful of individuals, especially Emil Warneken, the de facto chair of Bremen's "Special Court" (Sondergericht). The Special Court's proceedings usually had political implications, e.g., prosecutions of foreign workers or of German citizens who made indiscreet remarks about Hitler, listened to forbidden "enemy radio," and so on. Although the book is overlong and somewhat lacking in focus, especially when it comes to summarizing her agenda (42–44), two recurring themes stand out. One is more implicit than clearly stated. Schoenmakers seeks to show that these judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys often acted unjustly, and that they did so willingly [End Page 669] rather than under duress. Her judgment seems reasonable (though sometimes difficult to substantiate) but hardly qualifies as news. The book's most prominently stated theme is the Nazis' idealized "national community" (Volksgemeinschaft), the legal profession's role in creating or affirming it, and her jurists' attitudes toward this vaguely formulated social and political construct. The book falls into three parts, each linked—sometimes uneasily—to the theme of Volksgemeinschaft. The first part of the book is built on the argument that the legal system, as an important institution upholding societal norms, played a crucial role in defining the Volksgemeinschaft. Because the regime gave no precisely articulated positive content to this concept of national (or "racial") community, it was easier to define it negatively. Jurists, Schoenmakers contends, marked the boundaries of the national community by punishing those people deemed to fall outside it, whether by birth (Jews, foreign workers) or by behavior, which could put a German citizen in the unenviable category of "racial pest" (Volksschädling). She advances the intriguing claim that this process of exclusion was ritualized and performed as public spectacle in trials. Unfortunately her sources do not allow her to flesh out this argument in any detail, nor to speak persuasively to the question of how legal processes might have shaped public opinion. The book's second part focuses more directly on some of the Bremen jurists she has studied, their socioeconomic background, and prior political history. Schoenmakers summarizes standard arguments about how and why these men adapted to Nazi expectations with apparent ease and became increasingly politicized and radicalized in their actions over time. But two biographical essays—on Warneken and a younger jurist—give few clues to the men's motives and outlook (204–225). Schoenmakers tries to argue that her jurists were substantially motivated by a commitment to the Volksgemeinschaft ideal and that disagreements over its meaning fueled important conflicts between jurists or between attorneys and the government or Nazi Party (239–271). On closer inspection, these conflicts seem driven by personal concerns, professional jealousy, or abrasive temperament, and the link to the Volksgemeinschaft seems tenuous. The book's final section examines the postwar era. A chapter on denazification and the prosecution of Nazi jurists holds few surprises: most of these men enjoyed untroubled postwar careers. The last chapter is insightful and at times quite moving. Schoenmakers probes, with nuance and empathy, the often painful process by which Nazi jurists came to terms with their own culpability (usually by denying it), how their descendants confronted this troubling past, and how this past—whether confronted or repressed—could damage intimate relationships and distort personalities. She ties these last two chapters to the "national community" by arguing, with little evidence, that its lingering appeal among the Germans hindered honest acknowledgment...

Words, Stones, & Herbs: The Healing Word in Medieval and Early Modern England (review)

Reviewed by: Words, Stones, & Herbs: The Healing Word in Medieval and Early Modern England Lea T. Olsan Keywords medieval healing, power of words, reading, materiality, vernacular translation Louise M. Bishop . Words, Stones, & Herbs: The Healing Word in Medieval and Early Modern England. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2007. Pp. xiv + 276. The phrase "words, stones, and herbs" in the title of Bishop's book derives from lines added to a Middle English translation of Gilbert the Englishman's [End Page 118] compendium of medicine, where it is said that God gives power to words, to herbs, and to stones. The tri-fold axiom was a commonplace that circulated mostly in Latin and usually carried the qualification that, of the three, words had the most power. Although the Gilbert quotation points straightforwardly to God as the source of the power in these elements, questions about exactly how these powers (virtus) operated led to sophisticated debates among high-profile medieval thinkers in the thirteenth century and generated doctrinal pronouncements that exacerbated fears of demonic involvement. Historians have subsequently examined medieval beliefs in the powers in stones, plants, and animals by studying conceptions of the properties of things, both ordinary and special, the influence of the stars, the capacities of demons, and reports of miracles. The power of words, especially the utilization of words and signs as a medical therapy, was a form of benevolent magic and marginal religious practice that was well known and widely practiced in the Middle Ages. Louise Bishop's book directs our attention away from medieval conceptions of the power of words employed in healing to the larger considerations of the "materiality" of medieval medicine, the healing powers of reading, the social construct of reading audiences, the significance of vernacular translations, and the political implications of self-help medical publications in the reign of Henry VIII. In Bishop's methodology, selected abstractions and metaphors are used to construct a historical social narrative. The "work joins medicine, materiality, vernacularity, and piety by reading medical texts literarily and literary texts medically." At the outset, she says, "[the book's] methodology is suggestive rather than exhaustive, cumulative rather than absolute." Bishop's project breaks ground because it brings together and cuts across disciplines and discourses in ways that more discipline-bound scholars rarely do. There are some positive results, as when in her Introduction (pp. 3-6), she explores the medical metaphors in Piers Plowman. Elsewhere the experiment does not work, either because a phrase under interpretation has been overloaded with irrelevant semantic content, as in the interpretation of the name of the remedy for the malady Noli me tangere, or because key interpretive terms such as "Galenic medicine" or "the feminine vernacular" are insufficiently or inaccurately explained. Bishop displays an admirably wide range of secondary reading and no lack of confidence in utilizing secondary sources to construct an argument. The risk here is that a seductive paradigm can highjack the argument, as does Harris Coulter's oversimplified idea that there existed from antiquity a divide between rationalist and empiricist medicine based on professional jealousy that led to a bias against non-university medicine in the Middle Ages and beyond. Unfortunately, this conception establishes a platform [End Page 119] for a social construction of medieval medicine that inaccurately sets the vernacular compilations and translations in opposition to learned Latin medicine. Bishop's first three chapters establish key interpretive terms: "Galenic medicine," "materiality," "healing word," "medical metaphors," "healing reading," and "vernacularity." Chapter 4 posits that the dangers of alchemical transmutation explicit in Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman's Prologue and Tale are analogous to the dangers of translation from Latin into the vernacular, with implied threats to the orthodox soul. The close readings of the tale lead to an excursus on the relation of alchemical transmutation and language translation. Chapter 5 treats the presence of women healers, however difficult they are to document, and Middle English translations of medical texts as interrelated phenomena. Then it examines Henry of Lancaster's Livre de seyntz medicine, which, like Piers Plowman, integrates medical metaphors into pious literature. Chapter 6 seeks to unpack the ways that one recipe—"For Noli me tangere," drawn from a...