Child Journalists, the Civil War, and the Intersectional Work of Reporting Grief

In 1864, editors of two nationally-circulating periodicals, Nellie Williams (aged 14) and her sisters, Allie and Mary (aged 12 and 17), reported that their only brother and Union Soldier, Leroy K. Williams, was missing in action. Filtering personal trauma through the performative discourses of nineteenth-century journalism, these young writers publicised their anguish over their brother’s capture. The culturally-situated intersectional identities reflected in and contested by their reporting—as white Northerners, working-class youth, loyal sisters, and enterprising journalists—expose a kaleidoscope of fissures and collisions between private and public, silence and enunciation, gender and class, trauma and resilience. The resulting tensions illustrate the ways by which genres shaped, and were shaped by, children’s articulations of suffering for a national audience during wartime.

Gabab Receptors: Are They Missing In Action In Focal Epilepsy Research?

: GABA, the key inhibitory neurotransmitter in the adult forebrain, activates pre- and postsynaptic receptors that have been categorized as GABAA, which directly open ligand-gated (or receptor-operated) ion-channels, and GABAB, which are metabotropic since they operate through second messengers. Over the last three decades, several studies have addressed the role of GABAB receptors in the pathophysiology of generalized and focal epileptic disorders. Here, we will address their involvement in focal epileptic disorders by mainly reviewing in vitro studies that have shown: (i) how either enhancing or decreasing GABAB receptor function can favour epileptiform synchronization and thus ictogenesis, although with different features; (ii) the surprising ability of GABAB receptor antagonism to disclose ictal-like activity when excitatory ionotropic transmission is abolished; and (iii) their contribution to control seizure-like discharges during repetitive electrical stimuli delivered in limbic structures. In spite of this evidence, the role of GABAB receptor function in focal epileptic disorders has been attracting less interest when compared to the numerous studies that have addressed GABAA receptor signaling. Therefore, a main aim of our mini-review is to revive interest in the function of GABAB receptors in focal epilepsy research.

Missing in Action: Reports of Interdisciplinary Integration in Canadian Palliative Care

Palliative care has an interdisciplinary tradition and Canada is a leader in its research and practice. Yet even in Canada, a full interdisciplinary complement is often lacking, with psychosocial presence ranging from 0–67.4% depending on the discipline and region. We sought to examine the most notable gaps in care from the perspective of Canadian palliative professionals. Canadian directors of palliative care programs were surveyed with respect to interdisciplinary integration. Participants responded in writing or by phone interview. We operationalized reports of interdisciplinary professions as either “present” or “under/not-represented”. The Vaismoradi, Turunen, and Bondas’ procedure was used for content analysis. Our 14 participants consisted of physicians (85.7%), nurses (14.3%), and a social worker (7.1%) from Ontario (35.7%), British Columbia (14.3%), Alberta (14.3%), Quebec (14.3%), Nova Scotia (14.3%), and New Brunswick (7.1%). Psychology and social work were equally and most frequently reported as “under/not represented” (5/14, each). All participants reported the presence of medical professionals (physicians and nurses) and these groups were not reported as under/not represented. Spiritual care and others (e.g., rehabilitation and volunteers) were infrequently reported as “under/not represented”. Qualitative themes included Commonly Represented Disciplines, Quality of Multidisciplinary Collaboration, Commonly Under-Represented Disciplines, and Special Concern: Psychosocial Care. Similar to previous reports, we found that (1) psychology was under-represented yet highly valued and (2) despite social work’s relative high presence in care, our participants reported a higher need for more. These finding highlight those psychosocial gaps in care are most frequently noted by palliative care professionals, especially psychology and social work. We speculate on barriers and enablers to addressing this need.

Missing in action and lost in thought: a grassroots implementation of genre pedagogy by practitioner researchers in an English language classroom for adults

This paper reports on the grass roots adoption of a methodology for teaching reading and writing based on genre theory (Martin and Rose, 2012; Rose and Martin, 2012) in English for general purposes classes at an English language teaching (ELT) centre at an Australian university. We report on teachers’ experiences on using genre pedagogy, informed and inspired by the Reading to Learn (R2L) program and genre pedagogy from the so-called ‘Sydney School’ (Martin & Rose, 2007; Martin & Rose, 2008; Rose & Martin, 2012). We report on how we introduced elements of the R2L program into our lessons using a ‘bottom up’ approach with the view that individual teachers might find this useful for implementation of this methodology in their own contexts. We found that genre pedagogy can be adopted by teachers and implemented at the classroom level despite such challenges as teachers learning new classroom practices and reconciling differences with previous classroom practices.

DUTY OF PATERNAL FAMILY MEMBERS IN THE MAINTENANCE OF CHILDREN ACCORDING TO SECTION 73(2) OF ISLAMIC FAMILY LAW (SELANGOR) ENACTMENT 2003

Section 73 of Islamic Family Law (Selangor) Enactment 2003 provides that it is the duty of the paternal family to provide maintenance to the children in the event of the father’s death, missing in action or suffers from any disabilities. However, the efficiency of this provision depends on the understanding and application by the courts and the person who is said to be liable under ‘hukum syarak’. Currently there is not many studies conducted on the efficiency of this provision in solving cases where there is a failure to provide maintenance to children in the circumstances stated above. This study analyses the application of section 73 of Islamic Family Law (Selangor) Enactment 2003 with the aim of looking into the efficiency of this section in solving the issue children’s maintenance. The study adopts a qualitative method that involves doctrinal study, arm-researcher approach and semi-structured interviews. The provision, scope and jurisdiction of section 73 of Islamic Family Law (Selangor) Enactment 2003 is analysed in detail. The semi-structured interview delves into the current practice of the court in the Federal Territories where the views of selected respondents ranging from the judges in the Shariah courts in the Federal Territories, Shariah law practitioner, and academics. This study finds that the existing laws are somewhat insufficient in addressing issues of child maintenance and lack of awareness on the claimant (mother and children) on the responsibility of the extended family. The study proposed some recommendations for some reforms of the current law and practice.

Spectres of M.I.A

<p><b>M.I.A, born Mathangi Arulpragasam, is a British Sri Lankan Tamil artist-activist whose acronymised stage persona refers to the military term Missing in Action. Set against hegemonic readings which privilege postcolonial, feminist, or transnational categories of analyses, my original contribution to knowledge is to locate M.I.A’s work in the political contexts in which they are produced. I thereby foreground the hidden Tamil erasures of the Sri Lankan civil war (1983-2009) that traverse the artist’s productions. The historicisation of M.I.A’s politics of haunting is not only a research gap, but central in understanding the artist’s texts. Using hauntology as a framework and close textual analysis as a method, this thesis constitutes a Tamil-centric reading of M.I.A’s work as well as a nuanced contribution to hauntology studies. </b></p><p>My study identifies the Tamil cemeteries evoked in four songs—“Galang” (2003), “Bucky Done Gun” (2004), “Born Free” (2010), and “Borders” (2015)—inquiring into their visual translations, functions, objectives, and larger political significance. I particularly focus on their visual language that emerge from the collective absence-presences of the war, shared by the Tamil diaspora, of which the artist and I are part. My analyses also extend to probing salient aspects of the lyrics, performance, sound- and sartorial politics. </p><p>My textual analyses render the following findings: M.I.A’s productions recirculate histories of Tamil erasure as sites of death. They replicate and extend the funerary work of the cemeteries of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)—a Sri Lankan Tamil nationalist, separatist, and militant organisation that fought for an independent state in the north and north east of Sri Lanka. The artist recartographises Tamil cemeteries into ubiquitous popcultural expressions, in which the aesthetic techniques—animated stencils, flags, murals, photo montages, and performative bodies—visibilise and physicalise the materiality of violence enacted upon Tamils. M.I.A’s topographies of death rematerialise the architecture of cemeteries as inconspicuous yet omnipresent sites of absence, marking a simultaneous obscuration and ubiquitisation of cemeterial landscapes. These memory locales tend to Tamil graves, expose Tamil truth claims, and let the dead speak with and through the depiction of their brutalised bodies. Urging a responsibility for the (living) dead, they challenge the state’s control over ontology and visibility that renders Tamil lives unlivable and absent.</p>

Spectres of M.I.A

<p><b>M.I.A, born Mathangi Arulpragasam, is a British Sri Lankan Tamil artist-activist whose acronymised stage persona refers to the military term Missing in Action. Set against hegemonic readings which privilege postcolonial, feminist, or transnational categories of analyses, my original contribution to knowledge is to locate M.I.A’s work in the political contexts in which they are produced. I thereby foreground the hidden Tamil erasures of the Sri Lankan civil war (1983-2009) that traverse the artist’s productions. The historicisation of M.I.A’s politics of haunting is not only a research gap, but central in understanding the artist’s texts. Using hauntology as a framework and close textual analysis as a method, this thesis constitutes a Tamil-centric reading of M.I.A’s work as well as a nuanced contribution to hauntology studies. </b></p><p>My study identifies the Tamil cemeteries evoked in four songs—“Galang” (2003), “Bucky Done Gun” (2004), “Born Free” (2010), and “Borders” (2015)—inquiring into their visual translations, functions, objectives, and larger political significance. I particularly focus on their visual language that emerge from the collective absence-presences of the war, shared by the Tamil diaspora, of which the artist and I are part. My analyses also extend to probing salient aspects of the lyrics, performance, sound- and sartorial politics. </p><p>My textual analyses render the following findings: M.I.A’s productions recirculate histories of Tamil erasure as sites of death. They replicate and extend the funerary work of the cemeteries of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)—a Sri Lankan Tamil nationalist, separatist, and militant organisation that fought for an independent state in the north and north east of Sri Lanka. The artist recartographises Tamil cemeteries into ubiquitous popcultural expressions, in which the aesthetic techniques—animated stencils, flags, murals, photo montages, and performative bodies—visibilise and physicalise the materiality of violence enacted upon Tamils. M.I.A’s topographies of death rematerialise the architecture of cemeteries as inconspicuous yet omnipresent sites of absence, marking a simultaneous obscuration and ubiquitisation of cemeterial landscapes. These memory locales tend to Tamil graves, expose Tamil truth claims, and let the dead speak with and through the depiction of their brutalised bodies. Urging a responsibility for the (living) dead, they challenge the state’s control over ontology and visibility that renders Tamil lives unlivable and absent.</p>