scholarly journals Agency and Self Expression: Fan Writing as Life Writing

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Renu Elizabeth Abraham ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Freudian Psychoanalysis ◽  
Technical Sense ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
And Function

Fans, fandoms and fan activities have been part of every culture from time immemorial. Homer’s epics, Plato’s work all could be considered in a broad sense as belonging to the larger domain of fan activity or fan ‘art’ as they are termed in modern-day parlance. This paper examines India Forums a digital fan community based in India for audiences and fans of Indian television soaps/serials and attempts to understand how fanfiction and fan activities within this forum act as means of self-expression and enable its fans to develop a sense of agency that is indigenous to the space in itself. This community is predominantly populated by women or ‘gender anonymous’ and function as a space that allows fans to construct their own voices, identities and thereby agency, which is most often restricted to that space alone. The fans though not subaltern, in the technical sense of the term, as they belong to the urban space, have access to a computer and can read, write and speak English although not fluently, are still urban middle-class women who have been spoken for and never spoken themselves; and India Forums enable these unheard voices to be heard. This reading analyses the dynamics of this agential space, the politics of this agency and argues that all fan writing within this space functions as life writing within a hypertextual metaconversational paradigm which is not necessarily reflective of traditional forms of life writing using notions of revisionist Freudian psychoanalysis and paradigms of life writing.

Social Justice and Community-Based Rehabilitation Counseling

2021 ◽  
pp. JARC-D-20-00032
Author(s):  
Michael J. Millington
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Rehabilitation Counseling ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Community Based Rehabilitation ◽  
International Identity ◽  
And Function ◽  
Role And Function ◽  
Model Of Practice

This invited article reports and reflects upon the proceedings of a presentation at the NRCA Symposium on Social Justice held on in Memphis Tennessee in 2019. The author posits that a proper understanding of social justice opens the door for a new, international vision for rehabilitation counseling in the context of community. The model reinterprets rehabilitation counseling as social justice counseling within the framework of community-based rehabilitation as currently defined within the established matrix and guidelines. This model augments our understanding of rehabilitation counseling role and function with an emerging practice in advocacy/empowerment. The construct of empowerment is operationalized for development in practice across community settings. The author reflects upon lessons learned in advancing this model of practice in the Asia/Pacific region. In a call for collaborative next steps, he concludes that the way to an empowered international identity for rehabilitation counseling is through an activist, inclusive, international community of practice that advocates for our role as agents of social justice.

Restoring the Memory of the Forgotten Dutch Embroidery Designer Nellie van Rijsoort

Costume ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-96
Author(s):  
Marta Kargól
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Function ◽  
Second World ◽  
Insight Into

In 1932, Nellie van Rijsoort (1910–1996), the Dutch embroidery maker and designer, opened her atelier in Rotterdam. Among her clients were prestigious fashion stores in the Netherlands as well as wealthy middle-class customers. After the Second World War, van Rijsoort left Rotterdam and continued her career in Melbourne in the rapidly developing fashion network of Australia. Today, samples of embroidered fabrics and fashion drawings by Nellie van Rijsoort are part of the collections of the Museum Rotterdam and the National Trust of Australia in Melbourne. These collections provide insight into half a century of history of embroidered fabrics. This article illustrates the largely forgotten career of the embroidery designer. The first part of the article outlines the position and meaning of van Rijsoort's atelier in the fashion networks of the Netherlands and Australia, while the second part provides an analysis of embroidery samples and drawings, which reveal the place and function of embroideries as dress decorations.

scholarly journals 17 Tailored exercise for survivors with brain tumours: A case series

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (S3) ◽  
pp. S3-S3
Author(s):  
R.A. Spychka ◽  
C.M. Sellar ◽  
J.C. Easaw ◽  
A.D. Murtha ◽  
S.N. Culos-Reed ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Health ◽  
Brain Tumours ◽  
Symptom Control ◽  
Case Series ◽  
Post Intervention ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Primary Brain Tumours ◽  
Ace Study ◽  
Risk Of Falls ◽  
And Function

Purpose: Exercise has been shown to be beneficial for the physical and psychological health of cancer survivors, however, little research has been conducted on the effects of exercise in the brain tumour population. Survivors with brain tumours present with unique challenges in terms of mobility and function that may compromise their ability to safety take part in community-based exercise. Methods: Three survivors with primary brain tumours will be profiled in this case series presentation. Participants were screened using a cancer specific intake questionnaire and the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire, and triaged to supervised clinic-based or community-based exercise. All participants completed the 12-week intervention for the Alberta Cancer Exercise (ACE) study. Measurements were taken at baseline, and post-intervention including measures of body composition, aerobic fitness, musculoskeletal fitness, balance and flexibility. Self-reported measures included questionnaires to assess impact on physical functioning, symptoms and quality of life, and to evaluate satisfaction with programming. Results: One participant was referred to supervised clinic-based exercise programming due to a high risk of falls, and two participants were deemed safe and approved for community-based supported exercise programming at a preferred location closer to their home. Preliminary results suggest high program satisfaction, maintenance and/or benefit of physical fitness, balance, and symptom control. Conclusions: Further efforts are needed to better tailor programming to the needs of the survivor and consideration given to the advantages of the supervised clinic-based environment when compared to the survivor preference for a “closer to home” community-based setting.

Mapping the Public Space

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-270
Author(s):  
Pramod Kumar Mohanty
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
The Public ◽  
South Asian History ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Asian History

The article intends to give a comprehensive understanding of the colonial urbanisation as a cultural process in colonial Odisha centred at Cuttack city as manifest in the evolving public sphere and in the process contribute to the historical studies on colonialism in one of the neglected regions of South Asia and also from such a neglected perspective in South Asian history. While trying to assess the ‘problematic objectively’, it adopts the theoretical perspectives associated with ‘new cultural history’. Against this backdrop, the article tries to look at the issues of class, community and nationalism and the attendant politics during the ‘decisive phase’ of late nineteenth and early twentieth century of colonial Odisha by trying to explore the emergence of Cuttack as a city, a colonial urban space. As the capital city of Odisha, Cuttack is seen as the site around which ‘evolved and revolved the modern regional cultural tradition of Odisha’ and more crucially so, the ‘citizenry’ including its middle class, constituted the ‘microcosm of Colonial Odisha’. The article examines the issues by negotiating with the growth of the middle class, shaping up of the concept of ‘public space’ and the structuring of ‘public’ as a ‘discursive entity’ along with the crystallisation of cultural politics underlying competing hegemonies and identities.

scholarly journals Common Upper Extremity Disorders and Function Affect Upper Extremity-Related Quality of Life: A Community-Based Sample from Rural Areas

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (5) ◽  
pp. 669
Author(s):  
Dong Kyu Moon ◽  
Young Jin Park ◽  
Sang-Youn Song ◽  
Mi Ji Kim ◽  
Jin Sung Park ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Upper Extremity ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Upper Extremity Disorders ◽  
Related Quality ◽  
And Function

Narrating Dalit womanhood and the aesthetics of autobiography

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-37
Author(s):  
Laura R. Brueck
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Life Narratives ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Narrative Authority ◽  
Dalit Women ◽  
Hindi Language

This article will consider two Hindi-language autobiographies by Dalit women, to explain how we can emphasize the collective, relational, and specifically gendered character of Dalit women’s life writing without simplistically categorizing them as testimonio, “witnessing”. Nor should we over-privilege their gendered specificity, thereby effacing the very real narrative authority, purposefulness, and perspectival control of their authors. Instead, we must be especially attentive to the language of a text and understand how the relationality and collectivity of experience is not accidental or necessarily organic to a woman’s view on her world, but is actively, politically, and consciously constructed in the course of a narrative. Predicated on a reasonable concern over the appropriation of a revolutionary new literary voice, attention to narrative form has been slow in coming to the critical and scholarly analysis of Dalit literature, somewhat paradoxically resulting in the rendering of this literature too as “untouchable”. In exploring what is therefore only a nascent formal criticism of the Dalit autobiographical genre, I believe it is important to express a note of caution against replicating the same kinds of essentializing processes of differentiation (the kind we have seen before in the critical reception of life writing in other cultures and languages) between men’s and women’s Dalit life narratives as ego-driven and individualistic linear progressions to political awakening versus relational, community-based, politically and purposefully diffuse “witnessings”. In this exciting moment in which we have the opportunity to engage with a critically important and rapidly expanding rhetorical movement such as Dalit literature, it is, I believe, a diligent recourse to textual analysis that may yet save us from such facile stereotyping.

scholarly journals Needles, China Cups, Books, and the Construction of the Victorian Feminine Ideal in Rhoda Broughton’S Not Wisely, but too Well and Elizabeth Gaskell’S North and South

2012 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-60
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Setecka
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Reality Effect ◽  
Class Status ◽  
Elements Of Style ◽  
And Function ◽  
North And South ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract Considering Victorian presentation of women as angelic, that is, spiritual, beings, it is rather surprising how much their presence was manifested by material objects. Baskets of needlework, tea equipage and novels lying around in a parlour were an unmistakable sign of the house being occupied by women. Indeed, my contention is, the objects did not clutter Victorian interiors, either real or imagined, merely for practical reasons or to produce the “reality effect.” They are a material representation of the immaterial and function as metaphors for angelic women’s spiritual qualities. Rather than functioning merely as details to enhance the illusion of the real (and thus as elements of style) or simply reflecting the Victorian world (and thus as empty forms), material objects are essential in constructing a middle-class (feminine) identity. My paper concentrates on Rhoda Broughton’s Not wisely, but too well and Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South with an attempt to show how objects help construct a feminine ideal and, simultaneously, reveal the ideal to be just a construction. Broughton’s Kate Chester and Gaskell’s Margaret Hale find themselves in situations where their middle-class status might be compromised. Still, they both manage to reassert their position through effectively manipulating the signs of middle-class respectability. The “flimsy and useless” things they surround themselves with point to their “essentially feminine” qualities. Yet, the very superfluity of the objects reveals their relation to the characters’ economic status. They are, then, the site where the material and immaterial meet, where the borders between the economic world and the domestic world blur.

“Sweet Home”: Audre Lorde's Zami and the legacies of American Writing

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
MONICA B. PEARL
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
Audre Lorde ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
American Life ◽  
Forms Of Life

Although Audre Lorde calls the narrative of her life Zami: A New Spelling of My Name a “biomythography,” suggesting that the life of an African American lesbian cannot be told in any previously available generic forms of life-writing or self-expression, Zami actually derives from two extant American literary traditions – the African American slave narrative and the lesbian coming out story – rendering it, after all, not a marginal text, but rather a text that falls obviously and firmly in a tradition of American literature. Both traditions turn siginificantly on the trope of “home,” of finding a home where one belongs. In finding the “home” that she is seeking not, ultimately, geographically, but, rather, generically – in the very text she is writing – Lorde's life story also ends up signifying the similarity of these two ostensibly disparate forms: the slave narrative and the coming out story, suggesting a common narrative trajectory of marginal American identities in the tradition of American life-writing.

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