Narrative Scripts Research Articles

Apocrypha Hiberniae II: Apocalyptica 2

Apocrypha Hiberniae II: Apocalyptica 2

Can We Detect Non-playable Characters’ Personalities Using Machine And Deep Learning Approaches?

Personality recognition and computational psychometrics data have become prevalent in personnel selection processes. Such assessment tools are adequate for human resources seeking tools to assess a large volume of diverse player personalities in the current "war of talents." Recently, studies about using Gamified situational judgment test approaches have shown positive results in assessing players' behavior and personality.
 Gamified situational judgment tests combine the advantages of gamification, such as enhancing players' reactions and flow state, with the acknowledged traditional situational judgment test approach. To gamify a situational judgment test, an innovative approach using the visual novel game genre has shown positive results in the gamification by adding game elements such as narrative scripts, non-player characters, dialogs, and audiovisual assets to the test. Indeed, these elements play an essential role in the validity of the players' personality results by using a stealth-assessment method to minimize social bias and player's stress. However, to our knowledge, as gamification in personality detection is still recent, little is known on the possible positive outcomes of designing game elements such as the dialogues and non-player character personalities in the validity of the team cohesion measure. To this end, we propose an empirical study to build personality trait models based on non-players characters' speeches. 
 We used the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator based on four dichotomies to classify the personalities as one of companies and organizations' most used personality typology. For each of the four dimensions, we train twenty-four separate binary classifiers and one 16-class classifier, using well-established machine learning and a convolutional neural network in the domain of natural language processing, text analytics, and computational psychometrics. The results of this study show that it is possible to recognize non-playable characters’ personalities and thus can help game designers to understand their characters' personalities using natural language processing.

Understanding barriers to men’s support for family planning in rural Ethiopia—findings from the USAID Transform: Primary Health Care Project Gender Analysis

BackgroundEvidence suggests that supportive male engagement in health care services, including family planning, remains low in many countries, despite known benefits for female partners. In 2017–2018, the United States Agency for International Development Transform: Primary Health Care Project conducted a participatory gender analysis, collecting relevant data to better understand Ethiopian men’s lack of support for the uptake of family planning services.MethodsQualitative data were collected through 96 unique participatory group discussions with community members via a semistructured discussion guide and participatory activity; data were disaggregated by sex, age, and marital status. In-depth interviews (91) conducted with service providers, health system managers, and health extension workers used semistructured guides. Discussants and interviewees were selected purposefully, drawn from 16 rural woredas in four project regions: Amhara; Oromia; Tigray; and Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region. Data collectors took notes and transcribed audio recordings. The research team deductively and inductively coded transcripts to develop preliminary findings later validated by key technical project staff and stakeholders.ResultsFindings reinforce existing knowledge on the dominant role of men in health care–related decision making in rural Ethiopia, although such decision making is not always unilateral in practice. Barriers at the societal level impede men’s support for family planning; these include norms, values, and beliefs around childbearing; religious beliefs rooted in scriptural narratives; and perceived adverse health impacts of family planning. Lack of efforts to engage men in health care facilities, as well as the perception that health care facilities do not meet men’s needs, highlight systems-level barriers to men’s use of family planning services.ConclusionsFindings indicate several opportunities for stakeholders to increase men’s support for family planning in rural Ethiopia, including systems-wide approaches to shape decision making, social and behavior change communication efforts, and additional research and assessment of men’s experiences in accessing health care services.

Virtual reality curriculum increases paediatric residents' knowledge of CHDs.

Virtual reality has emerged as a unique educational modality for medical trainees. However, incorporation of virtual reality curricula into formal training programmes has been limited. We describe a multi-centre effort to develop, implement, and evaluate the efficacy of a virtual reality curriculum for residents participating in paediatric cardiology rotations. A virtual reality software program ("The Stanford Virtual Heart") was utilised. Users are placed "inside the heart" and explore non-traditional views of cardiac anatomy. Modules for six common congenital heart lesions were developed, including narrative scripts. A prospective case-control study was performed involving three large paediatric residency programmes. From July 2018 to June 2019, trainees participating in an outpatient cardiology rotation completed a 27-question, validated assessment tool. From July 2019 to February 2020, trainees completed the virtual reality curriculum and assessment tool during their cardiology rotation. Qualitative feedback on the virtual reality experience was also gathered. Intervention and control group performances were compared using univariate analyses. There were 80 trainees in the control group and 52 in the intervention group. Trainees in the intervention group achieved higher scores on the assessment (20.4 ± 2.9 versus 18.8 ± 3.8 out of 27 questions answered correctly, p = 0.01). Further analysis showed significant improvement in the intervention group for questions specifically testing visuospatial concepts. In total, 100% of users recommended integration of the programme into the residency curriculum. Virtual reality is an effective and well-received adjunct to clinical curricula for residents participating in paediatric cardiology rotations. Our results support continued virtual reality use and expansion to include other trainees.

Making and Mending Our Selves

Theological anthropology has tended to view human flourishing as consisting in the loving communion of our selves with God. Recently, Natalia Marandiuc has brought the tools of attachment theory to theological anthropology to argue that a self is not inherent to human persons but rather is co-created through our loving relationships with one another and with God. In this paper I argue for the introduction of narrative, particularly as understood through the work of Eleonore Stump, to Marandiuc’s account as a practical means by which healing love might be communicated, particularly through Scriptural narratives. In evidence of narrative’s usefulness, I offer a brief exegesis of the Gospel of John’s account of the Woman at the well. This synthesis fills a gap in our understanding of the self’s flourishing by not only adopting a model demonstrating its emergence but also by providing a method by which the model can be applied.

Theatre and Pentecostalism: A place of encounter

ABSTRACT Theatre has been regarded with some scepticism by Pentecostal churches. This paper argues for a reconsideration of its role, suggesting not only that theatre can be a place of spiritual encounter, but that the church service is inherently theatrical. The paper ultimately argues for a story-acting church in which the performance of liturgical drama forms a central part of the church service and a place of encounter, helping Christians to experience ‘holy theatre’ and situate their own faith stories within the narrative of Scripture.

Paul and the Author of 1 Clement as Entrepreneurs of Identity in Corinthian Crises of Leadership

When Paul and the author of 1 Clement write letters to Corinth to address crises of leadership, both discuss Moses’ παρρησία (frankness and openness), yet they evaluate it rather differently. In this article, I view both authors as entrepreneurs of identity and explore the ways in which they try to shape their audience’s social identity and influence their behaviour in the crisis by selectively retelling scriptural narratives related to Moses. The article shows that social psychological theories under the umbrella term of the social identity approach help to illuminate the active role of leaders in identity construction as well as the processes of retelling the past in order to mobilize one’s audience.

Script or Scripture? The Ritualization of Discourse in Marthe Cosnard’s Les Chastes Martirs

Abstract Although it has been acknowledged in recent years that Marthe Cosnard’s Les Chastes Martirs (1650) is a sophisticated example of martyr tragedy, the play has received little critical attention. This article investigates Cosnard’s treatment of the martyrological subject with a focus on the relationship between subjectivity and discourse. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s 1982 essay ‘The Subject and Power’, which emphasizes the key role that discourses of power hold in the production of subjectivity, this article examines the construction of character by means of various ‘external’ discourses, most prominently that of the Christian faith. With its Christian subject, Les Chastes Martirs invokes a ritualization of discourse to the extent that martyr figures become fully defined through their adherence to a scriptural narrative. Simultaneously, the tragic theatrical function is reliant upon the specific martyrological discourse for its realization. This interdependency of Christian identity and tragic function embodied by the martyr figure recalls the traditional status of theatre as a site of ritual, alluding to the contemporary critical polemic surrounding the separation of Church and stage. Cosnard’s play can consequently be recognized as a significant and underappreciated contribution to the debate surrounding martyr tragedy’s rebuttal of the seventeenth-century secularization of the theatre.

Atonement: Jewish and Christian Origins.

Atonement: Jewish and Christian Origins.

“And I dedicate this win to…”

Arthur Bochner 1 wrote that even though he’d written about grief, he never really understood it until the death of his father. I suspect many of us recognize a truth in what he said. Often unannounced, death creeps like an unwelcome stain into our lives. I wonder how many of us are ready for it, and what narrative scripts are available to us at these times as we try to make sense and bring meaning to our loss. In sport, the path that I trod for my first occupation, the pervasiveness of the performance narrative means that following the death of a parent, an athlete is expected to continue with their sport, regardless of their pain and grief. “The show,” or that competition you trained so hard for, so the story goes, “must go on.” Within high performance sport the grief and loss experienced by well-known athletes seems also to provide an additional newsworthy opportunity for reporters and journalists to spice up their copy with stories of how “I did it for Dad.” But is winning the only way to represent or honor this relationship? And what of those athletes who never win? How do they honor their dead? Over the past twenty years, I have often drawn on my own experiences in professional sport to challenge the dominant performance narrative that frames winning as the only accepted and valued goal of the athlete. In this performance autoethnography I hope to extend my previous work by turning the spotlight on some of the ways the performance narrative frames how athletes and media alike represent grief and loss and what the father–child relationship means. My aim and purpose in this work is to contribute to the creation of counterstories and alternative narrative maps. Through creating such resources it may provide some athletes whose lives and experiences are currently disenfranchised or silenced, and I include myself in this group, a way to negotiate this difficult terrain in ways that are more authentic. In Mark Freeman’s terms, I seek to “break away” from this powerful monologue and sap its “coercive power.” 2

The Use of Simulation to Enhance LGBTQ+ Care Competencies of Nursing Students

Current literature demonstrates that a lack of education in nursing programs regarding culturally-competent care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual identities outside of the heterosexual norm (LGBTQ+), results in health disparities. A simulation experience using a narrative script and a high-fidelity manikin was incorporated into an undergraduate nursing course (N = 91). A simulation scenario designed to facilitate the delivery of healthcare to a transgender identifying patient was piloted within the undergraduate curriculum. A pre-simulation and post-simulation survey served as the evaluation for this pilot program. Paired sample t-tests compared participants’ (n = 77) attitudes, beliefs, comfort, and competency regarding providing care for LGBTQ+ individuals. There was a significant difference in pre- and post-simulation scores. Results demonstrate that simulation can be an effective educational intervention for promoting knowledge related to culturally-sensitive LGBTQ+ healthcare.

Post-Slavery Negotiations? On (Slave) Narrative and Impossible Stories in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy

The article examines Toni Morrison’s historical novel A Mercy for the ways in which it interrogates the intricate connections between slavery, self-making, private property, and narrative. The rich pool of critical readings of A Mercy often situates itself within an environment of 21st- century ‘post-racial’ discourse, not least since it was published one week after Barack Obama was elected as President of the USA in 2008. The article pushes against such readings by means of an examination of the character of the enslaved mother minha mãe. By showing how this character revisits the African American slave narrative tradition, and by reading the minha mãe in line with the groundbreaking work of Black feminist scholars on the entanglements between slavery, property, and reproduction, my close reading of the minha mãe text establishes Atlantic slavery’s sexual economies as the novel’s explicit frame of reference and signification. My reading of A Mercy is also an attempt at positioning the novel within a broader critical context of recent Black Studies theorizing, in which questions concerning narrative’s ability to account for the social death of the enslaved on a deeper level have taken centre stage. My reading situates itself within African American studies, Black feminist thinking, and Early American studies.First, I situate the minha mãe and her textual fragment in A Mercy against the novel’s critical reception and the prominent tendency to read this character only in tandem with the novel’s other characters—and not as a character that needs to be examined in its own right.Second, I juxtapose the minha mãe fragment with the tradition of the women-authored African American slave narratives. I suggest that the textual fragment of the minha mãe invokes and allegorizes the slave narratives authored by Mary Prince and Harriet Jacobs, creating intertextual moments with them. In their respective narratives, Prince and Jacob follow the literary conventions of the slave narrative as a genre in that they more or less implicitly draw attention not only to the sexual subjection by their master but also to how the regimes of property ruptured recognized kinship relations for the enslaved. The character of the minha mãe takes up these concerns raised by Prince’s and Jacobs’ narratives and brings them to the novel’s fictional representation of colonial Virginia.Third, the article expands on this argument by suggesting that the fragment of the minha mãe, while relying on particular features of the slave narrative tradition, in fact also challenges the generic structure of these narratives, which are strongly invested in an ethos of liberation. Unlike the protagonists of the above mentioned women-authored slave narratives, the minha mãe does not gain freedom at the end of her text. Her fragment, as I suggest, therefore needs to be read as a challenge to the slave narrative script and its narrative gestures to liberation.In conclusion, the article enters its close reading of the minha mãe into conversation with recent Black Studies theoretical trajectories stressing the varied ways in which the ‘afterlife’ (Hartman) of New World slavery continues to structure Black existence in the U.S., and their inquiry into whether narrative can account for the enslaved. Finally, I suggest that A Mercy takes up these theoretical concerns with the minha mãe and argue that her textual fragment in the novel amplifies them through its non-resolution.

Vulnerable Situations in the Classroom

The Covid-19 pandemic confronts us with the vulnerability of our health, but no less important is the vulnerability of our psychological well-being. In this contribution I explore the possible strength(s) of vulnerability – of persons and religion(s). First, I introduce the work of the theologian Caroline Gustavsson who distinguishes between: “experienced vulnerability,” “narrated vulnerability” and “induced vulnerability.” As examples and il­lustrations of these concepts, I focus on the voices of primary school pupils, secondary school pupils and a RE teacher. In RE classes it is stated that religion(s) is/are vulnerable because there is no ‘proof’ that God exists, or con-versely that scriptural narratives are about ‘real’ things. By touching upon experiences of young people, using cur­rent-day expressions and metaphors, the vulnerability – of persons, of religion(s) – can turn into a strength.

Understanding Holiness in Exodus 3 from the Lens of Biblical Spirituality

Holiness is studied from the lens of Biblical Spirituality. Situated in the Divine-Huma relational process, the movement from being un-holy to holy; from being unclean to Divine Purity is given close attention. God as the רק קדוש, draws his people into Himself through purification and in intimacy with Him. The human reality responds with respect and reverence not only to God but to his people as well. However, God has a special preference for the poor and helpless for the clothes them with Himself like a soldier wears his armor. Through a spiritual reading of Exodus 3 and other related Scriptural narratives, these understanding of holiness is surfaced specifically, in the lived experience of Holiness, its nearness in day-to-day life.
 References
 
 Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica, Prima Pars.
 __________. Summa Contra Gentiles.
 Carmody, Denise and John Carmody. Mysticism, Holiness East and West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
 Ciorra, Anthony. Everyday Mysticism. Cherishing the Holy. Spring Valley: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1995.
 Christian Spirituality. Five Views of Sanctification. ed. Donald Alexander. Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1988.
 Sheldrake, Philip. Images of Holiness, Exploration in Contemporary Spirituality. US: Ave Maria Press, 1988. Sproul, R. C. The Holiness of God. Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 1998.
 The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version. UK: Bible Society Resources Ltd., 2011.
 Waaijman, Kees. Spirituality: Forms, Foundations, Methods. Leuven: Peeters, 2002.
 __________. Holiness in Spirituality, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, 72:4 (2016), a3463. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v7214.3463
 Welzen Huub. Contours of Biblical Spirituality as a Discipline, Acta Theologica, 15 (2011), 37-60.

The Sacramental Ontology of the Church

Abstract This article seeks to construct a renewalist ecclesiology foundations on the idea that the church is an ontological reality with the epistemological purpose of traditioning its members. To accomplish this, I construct, in conversation with Simon Chan and Simon Oliver, a sacramental ontology of the invisible church from the Garden of Eden via the incarnation. Then, interacting with the work of Chan and James K.A. Smith, I explore the role of the visible church to tradition its members. Finally, I offer a framework for an ecclesial traditioning praxis. This praxis is founded in prayer, shaped by the narrative of Scripture, and utilizes both the weekly service and ongoing discipleship training.

Aquinas, Contemplation, and Theology

AbstractJonathan Lear's account of Aristotle and the human person as a systematic understander can shed light on how Thomas Aquinas sees the passage from contemplation of worldly things to the contemplation of the divine essence. In grasping the essences of mundane particulars, the systematic understander ‘spiritualizes’ them, and simultaneously comes to grasp both self and God. This account of contemplation can further help illuminate Aquinas's understanding of the nature of the theological task as an exercise of systematic understanding of the particulars from which the scriptural narrative of signs and examples is constructed. Finally, the theologian's own path as a systematic understander is retraced for his or her students in sharing the fruits of contemplation through teaching.

Exploring a Social Identity Theory of Shared Narrative: Insights from Resident Stories of Police Contact in Newark, New Jersey, and Cleveland, Ohio

Narrative identity theorists have long held that individuals construct identities as a coherent tale of their past, present, and future selves. These life stories are structured along predictable scripts borrowed from cultural master narratives. Heretofore, legitimacy theorists have relied on social identity theory to explain legitimation processes. I propose integrating elements of narrative identity theory with social identity for a more complete legitimation theory. I analyze 92 in-depth interviews with individuals who encountered the police departments of Newark, New Jersey, and Cleveland, Ohio. Respondents’ narratives followed common narrative scripts, suggesting a shared master narrative guiding interpretations of police encounters. A significant proportion of the sample interpreted their views of the police from a group-based lens, while an equally significant proportion used alternative narratives. An integration of social identity, narrative identity, and current legitimacy theory holds promise for a more comprehensive model of legitimation and a more complete theory of self.

Ethical Ambiguity in the Hebrew Bible: Philosophical Analysis of Scriptural Narrative

Ethical Ambiguity in the Hebrew Bible: Philosophical Analysis of Scriptural Narrative

How to Be a Pilgrim: Guidebooks on the Norwegian St. Olav Ways and the Heritagization of Religion

Abstract The Norwegian St. Olav Ways are currently the largest Northern European project re-institutionalizing pilgrimage as cultural heritage, providing a new framework for vernacular religious practices to a wide audience. In this article we approach the current pilgrimage revival in Northern Europe as part of a trend toward a heritagization of religion that allows new religious self-understandings to emerge. We analyze pilgrim guidebooks to the St. Olav Ways with regard to their narrative scripts, detailing how they can create expectations, inform the pilgrims’ conduct, and direct their attention toward a history that translates into a heritage. Based on a corpus of published pilgrim journals and diaries, we argue that the guidebooks instruct a process of interpretive drift, which influence the pilgrims toward embracing and embodying a new role within the religious field. The guidebooks invite the pilgrims to take on the role of heirs to a medieval European tradition.

Putting “Theological Interpretation” in Its Place: Three Models and Their Limits

Putting “Theological Interpretation” in Its Place: Three Models and Their Limits