scholarly journals “Things Are Coming Out That Are Questionable, We Never Knew About”: DNA and the New Family History

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-294
Author(s):  
Matthew Stallard ◽  
Jerome de Groot

Family history is undertaken by millions around the world seeking to understand their past. This practice is understudied, and we need to work hard to understand how it works. Over the past decade, family history has been transformed through the use of DNA sequencing to enable genetic genealogy. Through analyzing data generated in a number of focus groups with family historians, this article contributes to our understanding of family history as a practice by engaging closely with the community. In particular, the article considers the responses of family historians to the challenge of the new data generated through DNA sequencing. Looking at the ways in which the practice is changing enables a clearer view of how family history works and how scholarship might engage with it.

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-28
Author(s):  
Jerome de Groot

This study of the genealogy and biotech company Ancestry analyzes the ways in which the organization has evolved over the past few years. Ancestry is difficult to categorize as a corporate entity. The company trades in servicing both “traditional” types of history (genealogical records) and, more recently, biotech-based investigation through the use of DNA sequencing. Ancestry is highly influential in the way that millions of people around the world access the past. Given this, the company’s shifts in focus are of great interest. Through considering various new elements of the way that Ancestry functions, and illustrating that this complexity is foundational to its purpose, the article suggests the company is redefining what a public historian or public historical institution might be, adding a scientific dimension to historical data and also acting to present a particular model of the past through its advertising campaigns. The article suggests that public history’s models for considering such protean organizations are in need of attention, and the complexity of such a company demonstrates new challenges and opportunities for scholars in the field.


Author(s):  
Laura Stamm

Delphinium: A Childhood Portrait of Derek Jarman (2009) portrays filmmaker Matthew Mishory’s interpretation of the childhood of Derek Jarman described in interviews and autobiographical writing such as At Your Own Risk. The portrait of Jarman honours his memory with a Super 8 inscription that repeats the queer sensibility of Jarman’s cinematic and painterly work. Mishory’s film positions Jarman as his filmmaking predecessor; even more so, it positions Jarman as a sort of queer ancestor. Delphinium’s sense of ancestry demands a reappraisal of Jarman’s work that foregrounds its creation of queer lineage. This article does just that, looking at Jarman’s Caravaggio (1986) and Edward II (1991) as both searches for queer origins and formations of queer futures. Through their explorations of queer continuity, Jarman’s films inscribe the process by which one learns to become queer and navigate a world that is so often hostile to queer existence. Their preservation of individual figures of the past provides a queer family history and a tool for education, a means for queers to understand their origins, as well as how to make sense of their own place in the world


Authorship ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Thacker

Beginning in the mid-1980s, Alice Munro drew attention in interviews to her rapt admiration for the work of William Maxwell, a writer she has called “my favorite writer in the world.” The two were not close, although they met a few times through their shared association with the New Yorker. In 1988 Munro published an appreciation of Maxwell’s work and, after his death in 2000, agreed to revise it for a tribute volume published in 2004. During those years too, Munro was at work on a family volume she had long contemplated, The View from Castle Rock (2006), one that was inspired in part by and modelled on Maxwell’s Ancestors: A Family History (1971). This article examines the Maxwell-Munro crux as an example of the dynamics of authorship; it is an important example of two compatible writers who, throughout their careers, created narrative rooted in the very stuff of their own experience in place and time—whether seen as fiction, autobiography, or memoir. Each did so in ways that accentuate, for the critic intent on analysing authorship, the play of the past in shaping of any narrative.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-130
Author(s):  
Horace G. Campbell

Silences in the discipline of International Relations on genocide amount to a form of genocide denial, which is one of the foundations of future genocide. The paper posits that in the era of militarized global apartheid, progressive scholars are challenged to critique and expose the past and current crimes against humanity that are occurring in Africa. Drawing from the consolidation of an alternative analysis in the context of the Bandung Project, the paper analyzed the contributions of the ideas that emerged out of the anti-apartheid struggles and the struggles for reparative justice. Struggles from the Global South had culminated in the World Conference against Racism (WCAR) process, elevating the anti-racist battles as a core challenge of Africa’s International Relations. This rejuvenation and energies coming out of the protracted struggle for bread, peace and justice took the form of the transition to the African Union leaving behind the concept of the noninterference in the internal affairs of states. The paper analyzed the ways in which afro-pessimism was being reinforced by the constructivist path in African International Relations. The contributions of radical African feminists are presented as one new direction where there is the coalescence of the progressive anti-imperialist intellectual traditions with radical feminisms. These two traditions open possibilities for an emancipatory project. This project has taken on extra importance in the period of the fragility of global capital when the precariousness of capitalism threatens new and endless wars and destabilization in Africa. Modern humanitarianism forms one component of the weaponization of everything and it is within this ensemble of ideas that scholars need to deconstruct the discussion of ‘failed states’ in Africa.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-381
Author(s):  
Horace G. Campbell

Silences in the discipline of International Relations on genocide amount to a form of genocide denial, which is one of the foundations of future genocide. The paper posits that in the era of militarized global apartheid, progressive scholars are challenged to critique and expose the past and current crimes against humanity that are occurring in Africa. Drawing from the consolidation of an alternative analysis in the context of the Bandung Project, the paper analyzed the contributions of the ideas that emerged out of the anti-apartheid struggles and the struggles for reparative justice. Struggles from the Global South had culminated in the World Conference against Racism (WCAR) process, elevating the anti-racist battles as a core challenge of Africas International Relations. This rejuvenation and energies coming out of the protracted struggle for bread, peace and justice took the form of the transition to the African Union leaving behind the concept of the noninterference in the internal affairs of states. The paper analyzed the ways in which afro-pessimism was being reinforced by the constructivist path in African International Relations. The contributions of radical African feminists are presented as one new direction where there is the coalescence of the progressive anti-imperialist intellectual traditions with radical feminisms. These two traditions open possibilities for an emancipatory project. This project has taken on extra importance in the period of the fragility of global capital when the precariousness of capitalism threatens new and endless wars and destabilization in Africa. Modern humanitarianism forms one component of the weaponization of everything and it is within this ensemble of ideas that scholars need to deconstruct the discussion of failed states in Africa.


Author(s):  
John Mansfield

Advances in camera technology and digital instrument control have meant that in modern microscopy, the image that was, in the past, typically recorded on a piece of film is now recorded directly into a computer. The transfer of the analog image seen in the microscope to the digitized picture in the computer does not mean, however, that the problems associated with recording images, analyzing them, and preparing them for publication, have all miraculously been solved. The steps involved in the recording an image to film remain largely intact in the digital world. The image is recorded, prepared for measurement in some way, analyzed, and then prepared for presentation.Digital image acquisition schemes are largely the realm of the microscope manufacturers, however, there are also a multitude of “homemade” acquisition systems in microscope laboratories around the world. It is not the mission of this tutorial to deal with the various acquisition systems, but rather to introduce the novice user to rudimentary image processing and measurement.


Chelovek RU ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 18-53
Author(s):  
Sergei Avanesov ◽  

Abstract. The article analyzes the autobiography of the famous Russian philosopher, theologian and scientist Pavel Florensky, as well as those of his texts that retain traces of memories. According to Florensky, the personal biography is based on family history and continues in children. He addresses his own biography to his children. Memories based on diary entries are designed as a memory diary, that is, as material for future memories. The past becomes actual in autobiography, turns into a kind of present. The past, from the point of view of its realization in the present, gains meaning and significance. The au-thor is active in relation to his own past, transforming it from a collection of disparate facts into a se-quence of events. A person can only see the true meaning of such events from a great distance. Therefore, the philosopher remembers not so much the circumstances of his life as the inner impressions of the en-counter with reality. The most powerful personality-forming experiences are associated with childhood. Even the moment of birth can decisively affect the character of a person and the range of his interests. The foundations of a person's worldview are laid precisely in childhood. Florensky not only writes mem-oirs about himself, but also tries to analyze the problems of time and memory. A person is immersed in time, but he is able to move into the past through memory and into the future through faith. An autobi-ography can never be written to the end because its author lives on. However, reaching the depths of life, he is able to build his path in such a way that at the end of this path he will unite with the fullness of time, with eternity.


This paper critically analyzes the symbolic use of rain in A Farewell to Arms (1929). The researcher has applied the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis as a research tool for the analysis of the text. This hypothesis argues that the languages spoken by a person determine how one observes this world and that the peculiarities encoded in each language are all different from one another. It affirms that speakers of different languages reflect the world in pretty different ways. Hemingway’s symbolic use of rain in A Farewell to Arms (1929) is denotative, connotative, and ironical. The narrator and protagonist, Frederick Henry symbolically embodies his own perceptions about the world around him. He time and again talks about rain when something embarrassing is about to ensue like disease, injury, arrest, retreat, defeat, escape, and even death. Secondly, Hemingway has connotatively used rain as a cleansing agent for washing the past memories out of his mind. Finally, the author has ironically used rain as a symbol when Henry insists on his love with Catherine Barkley while the latter being afraid of the rain finds herself dead in it.


The Eye ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (128) ◽  
pp. 19-22
Author(s):  
Gregory DeNaeyer

The world-wide use of scleral contact lenses has dramatically increased over the past 10 year and has changed the way that we manage patients with corneal irregularity. Successfully fitting them can be challenging especially for eyes that have significant asymmetries of the cornea or sclera. The future of scleral lens fitting is utilizing corneo-scleral topography to accurately measure the anterior ocular surface and then using software to design lenses that identically match the scleral surface and evenly vault the cornea. This process allows the practitioner to efficiently fit a customized scleral lens that successfully provides the patient with comfortable wear and improved vision.


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