Double exposures: Embodiment, vulnerability and agency in Letizia Battaglia’s photography

Letizia Battaglia is best known for her photojournalistic work during the 1970s and 1980s, when she assembled a vast archive of images of Mafia victims and perpetrators and of poor Sicilians. In recent years, she has created captivating new photographs named Re-elaborations. These works combine in a single frame her historic photographs of Mafia violence with new subjects – women, children and nature. This article investigates how Battaglia’s earlier and new photographs have succeeded in raising awareness about Mafia violence. Engaging with gender and visual theory, the article shows how these works offer compelling narratives of violence and poverty that capture the attention of viewers, involve them in the construction of meaning and prompt empathetic reactions. Despite having received many international awards, only recently has Battaglia’s work been recognized with significant retrospectives in Italy. No major studies on her work have been produced to date, and her recent photographs have received scarce critical attention. This article intends to fill that lacuna, enrich existing conversations on the artist and foster future investigations of her work.

Designing an Autism Healing Center with Emphasis on Nature Therapy

BackgroundAutism is a mental disorder which influences children’s learning ability and social skills. The children who suffer from autism are capable of learning, but comparing normal children, different facilities are required.The architectural space highly signifies the matter of teaching autistic children; interior and exterior design interacting nature and environment also plays a very significant role. Thus nature can be used as a healing agent, since the psychological impact of nature is highly effective.PurposeDesigning a healing center for autism considering a compatible design with nature in order to treat autism in children, improving their social skills in communication, decreasing hysteric behavior, and developing cognitive and emotional capacities, is the major aim of designing this project.Methods and ResultsUtilizing the data analysis related to autistic children and nature-based therapy, this article attempts to present the concept of a healing center in order to hold an educational space compatible with nature. This echo-therapy would be highly helpful in treatment of autistic children.SignificanceThere has been lots of information about the influence of echo-therapy on autistic children during recent years, but the practical use has rarely occurred. Children’s physical safety which is more guaranteed in a closed space is one reason; therefore, designing a safe construction interacting with nature, which can be under the control of instructors, seems very difficult. Thus, in this nature-based healing center, besides improving the skills mentioned, the children’s safety has been highly considered.

Applied Research on Training Children’s All-round Abilities in Nature Education

Economic development and the expansion of cities have added to the tension between human and nature, and intensified the conflicts among human, nature and the society. Urbanization has narrowed the gap between human communities, but widened the distance between human and the natural world. Against this backdrop, the term “natural deficiency” came into being. This term was first proposed by the American scholar Richard Louv in 2008 in his book “The Last Child in the Forest”, indicating that children had long been cut off from the nature and nature had been reduced to a mere imagination. A survey report on the intimacy between urban children and nature released by a research center in Shanghai in 2013 pointed out that “out of the more than 1, 300 children surveyed, over 150 children have natural deficiencies. The tendency is mainly manifested as: inability to concentrate, inability to blend into the environment quickly, and lack of curiosity about the natural world.” The reasons for this symptom are mainly twofold: first, in the information age, children are so attached to a slew of electronic products such as mobile phones and computers that few prefer to spend time outdoors; secondly, the prevalence of off-campus training classes has robbed the children of time to go to parks and natural scenic spots where they can be exposed to the natural environment. Nature education can combine classroom teaching with natural activities to effectively narrow the distance between people and nature.

The child-nature-time relationship-New challenges for special education in the 21st century – study report

Joanna Godawa, The child-nature-time relationship-New challenges for special education in the 21st century – study report. Interdisciplinary Contexts of Special Pedagogy, no. 27, Poznań 2019. Pp. 83–98. Adam Mickiewicz University Press. ISSN 2300-391X. e-ISSN 2658-283X. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14746/ikps.2019.27.04 The objective of the article is to show an individual’s relationship with nature in the context of the nature deficit disorder. In light of the limited volume of Polish studies concerning children and nature, the author had conducted a study concerning the relationship between children with special education needs and nature. The research shown in this article is part of a broader study conducted by the author of the article and concerning the nature deficit disorder.

“Rain, Rain, Go Away!” Engaging Rain Pedagogies in Practices With Children: From Water Politics to Environmental Education

Inspired by the popular children’s song “Rain, Rain, Go Away,” this paper explores what it would look like to consider inviting rain to stay in our practices with children. This invitation acts as a provocation for pedagogical practice that has the potential to engage thinking differently about the ways we work with children and youth. Framed from the vantage point of current curricular practices in environmental education, this paper fuses discussions about water (including racialized and gendered politics) with a consideration of the histories of environmental educational practices as they are currently situated within childhood teaching. In pushing ourselves to think about our bodies as watered/weathered, especially in the context of educational practices, we are able to explore new territory that moves us toward a critique of the taken-for-granted ways in which children and nature are continuously conceptualized, and we open up room for dialogue that moves beyond developmental psychology frameworks. Through considering rain and inviting water to stay in our practices with children, it is suggested that these moments provide critical insight into the more-than-human relationship between children and nature that goes far beyond the romanticized understandings that exist today to consider children’s common worlds.