Scientific Rhetoric in the Consolidation of a Therapeutic Monopoly. Medical Discourses of Spanish Radiotherapists, 1895-1936

1997 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. M. M. DOMENECH
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Rhetoric ◽  
Medical Discourses

Ethan Campbell, The Gawain-Poet and Fourteenth-Century English Anti-Clerical Tradition. Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications / Western Michigan University, 2018, pp. 238.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 427-429
Author(s):  
Jane Beal
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Dual Language ◽  
Pearl Poet ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Sir Gawain ◽  
Link Type ◽  
Western Michigan University ◽  
Facsimile Edition ◽  
Scientific Rhetoric ◽  
Gawain Poet

In the past four years, there has been a flurry of valuable new work on the poems of the Gawain-poet (also known as the Pearl-poet), which includes new editions, translations, monographs, pedagogical studies, and online resources. Among the editions and translations are Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron’s excellent facsimile edition and translation of Cotton Nero A.x (Folio Society, 2016), Simon Armitage’s verse translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl (W.W. Norton, 2008 and 2016 respectively) and, I allow myself to mention, my own dual-language edition-translation of Pearl with supplementary materials for collegiate teaching (Broadview, forthcoming). Academic monographs include Piotyr Spyra’s Epistemological Perspective of the Pearl-Poet (Ashgate, 2014), Cecelia Hatt’s God and the Gawain-Poet: Theology and Genre (Boydell & Brewer, 2015), my Signifying Power of Pearl: Medieval Literary and Cultural Contexts for the Transformation of Genre (Routledge, 2017), and Lisa Horton’s Scientific Rhetoric of the Pearl-Poet (Arc Humanities Press, forthcoming). Editors Mark Bradshaw Busbee and I have published Approaches to Teaching the Middle English Pearl (MLA, 2017), which contains insightful pedagogical essays from several professors. The journal Glossator provides a complete commentary on each section of Pearl, available online (<ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="https://glossator.org/2015/03/30/glossator-9-2015-pearl">https://glossator.org/2015/03/30/glossator-9-2015-pearl</ext-link>/), and additional resources are available at “Medieval Pearl” (<ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="https://medievalpearl.wordpress.com">https://medievalpearl.wordpress.com</ext-link>). Now Ethan Campbell’s The Gawain-Poet and the Fourteenth-Century English Anticlerical Tradition joins the ranks, making a meaningful contribution to our understanding of the poet in his cultural milieu.

Female Onanism: Condemned Pleasures, Medical Probes, and Late-Victorian Pornography

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-164
Author(s):  
Stefano Rossi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Sexual Desire ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Female Self ◽  
Erotic Literature ◽  
Medical Discourses ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The more Victorian physicians deepened their research into female sexuality, the more a culture of lust infected the hypocritical façade of a nation strictly attached to social norms of order, formality, and bigotry. Lascivious sexual desire and carnal appetite – here embodied in female masturbation – were taboos that had to be forcibly silenced. Yet, late-Victorian pornography mocked medical discourses on female onanism, as well as fears related to female sexuality, and revealed ‘unspeakable’ secret domestic settings marred by ‘dangerous’ practices, scandalous carnality and deviant desires. Furthermore, contemptuous of literary censorship and strict morality, the plenteous erotic literature, represented here by William Lazenby's pornographic magazine The Pearl, not only dared to taunt physicians’ concerns about female ‘self-pollution’ circulating at that time, but also found a great inspiration in the huge domestic success of some innovative medical tools – specifically patented to assuage women's nerves – being produced in those years: electric vibrators. Those ‘engines’ rapidly invaded pornographic literature of the late nineteenth century and became central to a great number of erotic stories, titillating fables and poems, as clearly demonstrated by the contents of The Pearl.

scholarly journals Defining “the marijuana problem”: An Analysis of the Polish daily press, 2015–2016

2020 ◽  
pp. 145507252093680
Author(s):  
Piotr Kępski
Keyword(s):  
Social Constructionism ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Medical Marijuana ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Daily Press ◽  
Medical Discourses ◽  
Recreational Marijuana ◽  
The Media

Aim: This study analyses discourses on marijuana in the Polish daily press and explores ways of defining “the marijuana problem” during a debate about legalisation of medical marijuana. Methods: 384 press articles published in three national newspapers in 2015–2016 were analysed. The method used was discourse analysis. The theoretical background was social constructionism, including Spector and Kitsuse’s four-stage constructionist model of defining social problems. Results: The study shows that marijuana problems were mainly constructed through criminal and politically medical discourses. In addition to celebrity and pop culture discourses, recreational marijuana use discourses and social problems discourses were identified. Discussion: The marijuana problem can be defined differently through various discourses. Definitions pertain to diverse marijuana meanings ranging from a negative marijuana-as-drug, through an ambivalent recreational marijuana up to a positively valued medical marijuana. The research pointed out that, from a discursive standpoint, the marijuana problem may be viewed as a complex network of relations between particular discourses, marijuana meanings, claim-makers and the media. Conclusion: Different definitions of the marijuana problem are constructed through a dynamic discursive and social process. Various claim-makers try to impose their meanings on marijuana. Mass media are not neutral. They also participate in defining the marijuana problem.

scholarly journals No Man’s Land? Gendering Contraception in Family Planning Advice Literature in State-Socialist Poland (1950s–1980s)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agata Ignaciuk
Keyword(s):  
Family Planning ◽  
Sexual Interest ◽  
Contraceptive Methods ◽  
Advice Literature ◽  
Medical Discourses ◽  
Health Project ◽  
Mixed Messages ◽  
No Man's Land ◽  
State Socialist ◽  
Party State

Summary This article examines popular medical discourses on contraception produced in state-socialist Poland following the legalisation of abortion in 1956, a time when the party state declared family planning to be a public health project. By analysing popular medical literature, I argue that the popularisation of family planning constructed and relied on gender norms that could ease anxieties about the mainstreaming of ideas relating to sexuality and contraception, as well as about gender equality in a state-socialist context. I show that the femininity constructed in Polish birth control advice was based in fertility and the physical attractiveness required to maintain a husband’s sexual interest. Although masculinity was represented as distant, egoistic and violent, experts broadcast mixed messages about the effectiveness and usefulness of popular male contraceptive methods, some of which were at times utterly demonised.

Continuity, change and possibility in older age: Identity and ageing-as-discovery

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peta S. Cook
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Older People ◽  
Social Integration ◽  
Older Age ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Age Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Medical Discourses ◽  
Active Exploration

Traditionally, sociology has framed older age as a time of disengagement, withdrawal and reduced social integration. While now largely dismissed in contemporary sociological understandings of ageing, narratives of decline still feature heavily across social, media, and medical discourses. This negativity towards ageing could be at odds with how older people experience their age and identity. In this article, I will explore how 16 older people construct their self-identity. Drawing on participant-generated imagery and interview data, this article exposes that they experience older age as a time of continuity, discovery, possibility and change, where identity is multiple and fluid, and emerges through the links they make between the past, present and future. Thus, while ageing is not without its difficulties, the research participants challenge the social myths that reductively and negatively frame older age by constructing an identity that builds on their past through an active exploration of new possibilities and experiences.

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