The Garb of Being

This collection of essays explores how the body became a touchstone for late antique practice and the religious imagination. When we read the stories and testimonies of late ancient Christians, what different types of bodies stand before us in such stories and what do they tell us? How do we understand the range of bodily experiences—solitary and social, private and public—that clothed ancient Christians? How might such experiences and the body as garb itself serve as a productive metaphor by which to explore this attention to matters of gender, religious identity, class, and ethnicity? The essays in this book explore these and related questions through stories from the eastern Christian world of antiquity: monks and martyrs, families and congregations, and textual bodies from antiquity subject to modern interpretations.

Author(s):  
A.M. Satarkulova

The assessment and dynamic control over students’ status is a very important task. It allows timely detection of prenosological status prior to pathology and health maintenance in students. The objective of the paper is to assess the adaptive abilities of the body, to analyze changes in heart rate variability indicators in students with various types of autonomic regulation, to identify prenosological status and precursory pathological symptoms. Materials and Methods. The study enrolled 302 students from India, aged 21.54±1.43. Programming complex «Psychophysiologist» was used to register the main HRV parameters within 5 minutes. Health status was evaluated according to the index of functional changes and the scale of functional states. Results. N.I. Shlyk (2009) distinguished two groups of students with different types of autonomic regulation: type 1 (53 %) with moderate and type 2 (5 %) with marked characteristics of central regulation profile, type 3 (35 %) with moderate and type 4 (7 %) with marked characteristics of autonomous regulation profile. Main parameters of HRV and adaptation potential were defined for each student.All the parameters characterized functional and health status. Conclusions. It was shown that 82 % of trial subjects (type 1), 53 % (type 2), 94 % (type 3) and 95 % (type 4) demonstrated satisfactory adaptation and their physiological processes were at an optimal level. 18 % of students (type 1) demonstrated reduced adaptive abilities of the body. Moreover, they were under moderate stress. 47 % of subjects (type 2) were also under a significant stress, which was proven by excessively high SI, low SDNN and TP, and an increased index of functional changes. 5 % of students (type 4) revealed dysfunctional characteristics in the heart rhythm, peculiar to pathology. Keywords: foreign students, heart rate variability, types of autonomic regulation, adaptation potential, functional status. Оценка состояния студентов и динамический контроль за ним является важной задачей, поскольку позволяет своевременно выявлять у студентов донозологические состояния, предшествующие патологии, и способствовать сохранению здоровья. Цель. Оценка адаптивных возможностей организма, анализ изменений показателей вариабельности сердечного ритма у студентов с различными типами вегетативной регуляции, выявление донозологических состояний и ранних признаков патологии. Материалы и методы. В исследовании участвовало 302 студента в возрасте 21,54+1,43 года из Индии. Регистрировались основные параметры ВСР в течение 5 мин с использованием программно-аппаратного комплекса «Психофизиолог». Состояние и уровень здоровья оценивались по индексу функциональных изменений и шкале функциональных состояний. Результаты. По способу, предложенному Н.И. Шлык, выделены группы студентов с различными типами вегетативной регуляции: I (53 %) и II типы (5 %) – с умеренным и выраженным преобладанием центрального контура регуляции соответственно, III (35 %) и IV типы (7 %) – с умеренным и выраженным преобладанием автономного контура регуляции соответственно. У каждого из студентов определены основные параметры ВСР и адаптационного потенциала, характеризующие функциональное состояние и уровень здоровья. Выводы. Показано, что для 82 % обследуемых с I типом, 53 % со II типом, 94 % c III типом и 95 % с IV типом регуляции характерно состояние удовлетворительной адаптации, физиологические процессы сохраняются на оптимальном уровне. В группе студентов I типа у 18 % студентов адаптивные возможности организма снижены, выявлено состояние умеренного напряжения. У 47 % обследуемых II типа также зафиксировано состояние резко выраженного напряжения, индикатором которого является чрезмерно высокое значение SI, низкие величины SDNN и ТP, повышенное значение индекса функциональных изменений. В группе студентов с IV типом у 5 % учащихсяв регуляции ритма сердца выявлены дисфункциональные признаки, характерные для патологии. Ключевые слова: иностранные студенты, вариабельность сердечного ритма, типы вегетативной регуляции, адаптационный потенциал, функциональное состояние.


2021 ◽  
pp. 001946462110203
Author(s):  
Dikshit Sarma Bhagabati ◽  
Prithvi Sinha ◽  
Sneha Garg

This essay aims to understand the role of religion in the social work of Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922). By focusing on a twenty-five-year period commencing with her conversion to Christianity in 1883, we argue that religion constructed a political framework for her work in Sharada Sadan and Mukti Mission. There is a lacuna in the conventional scholarship that underplays the nuances of religion in Ramabai’s reform efforts, which we try to fill by conceptualising faith and religiosity as two distinct signifiers of her private and public religious presentations respectively. Drawing on her published letters, the annual reports of the Ramabai Association in America, and a number of evangelical periodicals published during her lifetime, we analyse how she explored Christianity not just as a personal faith but also as a conduit for funds. The conversion enabled her access to American supporters, concomitantly consolidating their claim over her social work. Her peculiar religious identity—a conflation of Hinduism and Christianity—provoked strong protests from the Hindu orthodoxy while leading to a fall-out with the evangelists at the same time. Ramabai shaped the public portrayal of her religiosity to maximise support from American patrons, the colonial state, and liberal Indians, resisting the orthodoxy’s oppositions with these material exploits. Rather than surrendering to patriarchal cynicism, she capitalised on the socio-political volatilities of colonial India to further the nascent women’s movement.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1097184X2110085
Author(s):  
Sofia Aboim ◽  
Pedro Vasconcelos

Confronted with the centrality of the body for trans-masculine individuals interviewed in the United Kingdom and Portugal, we explore how bodily-reflexive practices are central for doing masculinity. Following Connell’s early insight that bodies needed to come back to the political and sociological agendas, we propose that bodily-reflexive practice is a concept suited to account for the production of trans-masculinities. Although multiple, the journeys of trans-masculine individuals demonstrate how bodily experiences shape and redefine masculinities in ways that illuminate the nexus between bodies, embodiments, and discursive enactments of masculinity. Rather than oppositions between bodily conformity to and transgression of the norms of hegemonic masculinity, often encountered in idealizations of the medicalized transsexual against the genderqueer rebel, lived bodily experiences shape masculinities beyond linear oppositions. Tensions between natural and technological, material and discursive, or feminine and masculine were keys for understanding trans-masculine narratives about the body, embodiment, and identity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Anna-Klara Bojö

The Bodies’ Poetry: Eva Runefelt, Eva Ström and Swedish Poetry in the Late 1970’s In the mid 1970’s a new type of poetry, associated with the body, emerged in Sweden. Especially young women writers appeared to take Swedish poetry in new aesthetic directions, exploring questions regarding experience and language. This article focuses on two prominent writers, Eva Runefelt and Eva Ström, and discusses how their different types of poetry can be said to be a bodies’ poetry, and how it was discussed in contemporary literary critique. It also reflects on why this strand of poetry has been granted such a peripheral place in literary history.


2018 ◽  
Vol 138 ◽  
pp. 55-66
Author(s):  
Graeme Miles
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  

AbstractThe fragmentary biographical work by Damascius, known as either the Life of Isidore or Philosophical History, appears to have begun with the myths of the dismemberment of Osiris and Dionysus. These programmatic allusions establish an important theme in the text that followed: ‘becoming a Bacchus’. This, as is clear from Damascius’ Phaedo Commentary, refers to the process of unifying and liberating oneself from the body at the ‘cathartic’ stage in the Neoplatonic scale of virtues. The acquisition of likeness to this specific deity is, therefore, a vital though far from final stage in the progression towards the ultimate goal of late antique Platonic philosophy: ‘becoming like god as far as possible’.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 542-566
Author(s):  
Jessica Wright

In late antique theological texts, metaphors of the brain were useful tools for talking about forms of governance: cosmic, political, and domestic; failed and successful; interior discipline and social control. These metaphors were grounded in a common philosophical analogy between the body and the city, and were also supported by the ancient medical concept of the brain as the source of the sensory and motor nerves. Often the brain was imagined as a monarch or civic official, governing the body from the head as from an acropolis or royal house. This article examines two unconventional metaphors of the brain in the work of the fifth-century Greco-Syrian bishop Theodoret of Cyrrhus—the brain as a treasure within the acropolis, and the brain as a node in an urban aqueduct—both of which adapt the structural metaphor of governance to reflect the changing political and economic circumstances of imperial Christianity. Drawing upon medical theories of the brain, Theodoret expands upon the conventional governance metaphor of brain function to encompass the economic and the spiritual responsibilities of the bishop-administrator. Just as architectural structures (acropolis, aqueduct) contain and distribute valuable resources (treasure, water) within the city, so the brain accumulates and redistributes nourishing substances (marrow, blood, pneuma) within the body; and just as the brain functions as a site for the transformation of material resources (body) into spiritual goods (mind), so the bishop stands as a point of mediation between earthly wealth and the treasures of heaven.


2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karsten Senkbeil ◽  
Nicola Hoppe

This paper applies cognitive linguistic approaches, particularly conceptual metaphor theory, to the study of literature, and analyses how Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (1998) by Marya Hornbacher communicates embodied experiences such as sickness, hunger, and (self-)loathing with the help of conceptual metaphors. It explores how the author renegotiates and partly recontextualizes highly conventionalized metaphors around eating disorders, mental illness, and identity to create new meaning, and how this strategy helped explain the mindset of a person with anorexia and bulimia to a broad critical readership in the late 1990s. This paper hence hypothesizes that the book’s emphasis on metaphors as a means to articulate bodily experiences surrounding a mental disorder may hint towards larger trends concerning the representation of the body–mind relationship in literature and culture in the last two decades.


Aksioma ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-73
Author(s):  
Nurdin Nurdin ◽  
Ita Sarmita Samad ◽  
Sardia Sardia

Abstract: The theory distinguishes human based on four different personality types such as: sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic. Different types of personality caused by differences in the dominant fluid in the body. These differences will result in terms of behavior, ways of thinking and to get along. The type of this research that is descriptive qualitative which it is describing the logical reasoning based on Hippocrates personality types. The logical reasoning is analyzed through the four types of personality in relation to mathematical problem solving. The Analysis is done based on the logical reasoning indicator/ subindicator and the steps of problem solving stated by Polya. The result shows that there is a reasoning difference on each type of personalities. The difference can be terms of the strenght or the weakness. Sanguine is quicker in understanding problems and communicating results, choleric is more accelerated in work, melancholic is more perfect at work, and  phlegmatic is superior in terms of accuracy. Keywords: Logical reasoning, Hippocrates, sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-114
Author(s):  
Murat Çetkin ◽  
İlhan Bahşi ◽  
Mustafa Orhan

Massage is the manipulation of the body tissues by using techniques, such as rubbing, kneading, pressing, and rolling to sustain a state of health and wellness. Massage is one of the oldest and most natural healing applications in human history. Avicenna (980 – 1037) gained a very important position in the medical world with his most important work, the Canon of Medicine, known as the holy book of medicine in the Western world. Different types of massage were defined in the book. These were hard friction that braces the body, soft friction that relaxes the body, repeated friction that reduces the amount of fat in the body, moderately hard friction that improves the body, rough friction that leads the blood to the surface rapidly, gentle friction that increases blood flow in the application area, preparatory friction that prepares the body before exercise, and restorative friction that is applied after exercise which alleviates exhaustion. It may be seen that Avicenna, whose work shows influence of Greek and Roman physicians, was heavily influenced by Hippocrates and Galen. It is seen that the massage techniques and effect mechanisms defined by Avicenna about a thousand years ago have contributed a lot to the developments in massage through the historical process.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingwen He ◽  
Liang Wang ◽  
Hongxing Guo ◽  
Hui Zhao ◽  
Jiachen Sun

Rhubarb is one of the Chinese traditional medicines. About ninety-four compounds with five different types of skeletons (anthraquinone, anthrones, stilbenes, flavonoids and acylglucosides) have been isolated from rhubarb so far. These constituents are effective in purgative, clearing heat-fire, removing toxic materials from the body, cooling blood and promoting blood circulation. Recent studies have shown that the appropriate processing methods may directly impact on its nutraceutical activities and chemical compositions. Here, we summarize the update progress in the chemical compositions, pharmacological activities and processing methods of rhubarb.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document