Ontological security as temporal security? The role of ‘significant historical others’ in world politics

This article explores the link between collective memory and state behaviour in international relations. In that regard, it develops a new concept entitled ‘temporal security’. Building on the existing ontological security literature, it extends a temporal understanding to its underlying identity concept. Countries are now assumed to be temporal-security seekers vis-a-vis a ‘significant historical other’ from their past. Decision makers thus enter into a self-reflective conversation with their country’s ‘collective memory’ when choosing courses of action. Contrasted with existing physical-security and ontological security explanations for state behaviour, the explanatory potential of the temporal-security approach is in a second step illustrated by the empirical case of West Germany and Austria, two former Nazi perpetrator states, and their respective assignments of support during conflict in the Middle East. Through a comparative, qualitative discourse analysis of historical documents during the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War and oil crisis of 1973, the empirical study finds that West Germany and Austria adopted different courses of action in their international politics, because they looked to Nazi Germany as their significant historical other.

‘Architectural literacy’: Functions of architectural drawing

‘Literacy’ refers to the ability to both assign meaning to – and to create messages. Transposing this concept to ‘architectural literacy’ could refer to the assigning of meaning to architectural messages and the ability to create such messages. ‘Architectural literacy’ suggests that architects employ a distinct language to communicate, process and design spatial propositions and that the knowledge of such literacy could be of importance to a broader community. In architectural practices, drawing is used to discourse about forms and spaces. Our approach to disassemble architectural drawings in a set of functions, aims to add understanding about a specific ability to learn and understand architecture. Disassembling architectural drawing in a set of functions stems from a reflective conversation upon our practices as drawing teachers in architectural faculties. In an attempt to (re)structure the didactic foundations of our own teaching practices, we started discussing the kind of drawings architects resort to. This research gradually revealed a set of distinct, yet interrelated functions and activities. We introduce architectural drawing as a specific faculty of a large field of drawing practices, which revolves around the convergence of perception, imagination, disclosure and artistic expression. Learning about the distinct activities and abilities to process forms and spaces provides a knowledge base to explore foundations of architectural reasoning.

Translanguaging in writing: a bilingual PhD student’s reflection

With a critical narrative approach, this reflective practice research aims to do a personal narrative inquiry on the researcher herself during her dissertation research/writing period. The researcher explores and reflects on her various translanguaging strategies used throughout the course of her dissertation research and writing. Data collection includes her reflective journal entries, interview recordings and transcriptions with her research participants, reflective conversation audio recordings with her peers and research voice memos during her dissertation writing process. Using narrative analysis, this study indicates translanguaging allows the researcher to establish her dual-identities in both U.S. and Chinese educational settings, and helps her to develop her own writer’s voice and also engages her to think more creatively and critically as a researcher and a writer. This study presents a first-person reflective practice that deconstructs bilingual PhD students’ dissertation writing journey. It highlights the significance of bilingual international graduate students’ language repertoire to their academic writing, which matters not only to individual students, but may better serve international student community cross the world.

Episode One: Introduction

In this introductory episode, Rajni Shah, Ria Righteous, and Julietta Singh reflect on their time working together towards what was originally planned as a symposium (also called how to think) and has (for) now been translated into this podcast. The episode begins with an extract from a meditation led by Ria Righteous, followed by Julietta, then Ria, then Rajni reflecting on where they are situated and what’s present for each of them. The episode includes short narrations in which Rajni introduces some of the context for this conversation and the podcast as a whole. Most of the episode is composed of extracts from a reflective conversation in which Rajni, Julietta, and Ria touch on themes of home, grief, friendship, disaporic identities, listening, trust, and preparing for a pandemic world. Click here for full episode and credits.

Reflective Conversation and Knowledge Development in Pre-service Teachers: The Case of Mathematical Generalization

This article examines the development of professional knowledge in pre-service mathematics teachers. From the discussion of a task associated with the multiplication of consecutive integer numbers, generalization is recognized as a process that allows to explore, to explain, and to validate mathematical results, and as an essential ability to develop in the teaching of arithmetic, algebra, and geometry by using various representations. The study was conducted during three sessions of a didactic mathematics course, in which the instructor and ten students participated. The conversations of each session were recorded on audio and video. It was found that the reflective conversation fosters this knowledge from questions about the nature and processes of construction of mathematical concepts from a mathematical and didactic point of view.

A Reflective Conversation With Professor Louis Markos About Myths And The Humanities?

Louis Markos holds a BA in English and History from Colgate University and an MA and PhD in English from the University of Michigan. He is a Professor of English and Scholar in Residence at Houston Baptist University, where he holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities and teaches courses on British Romantic and Victorian Poetry and Prose, the Greek and Roman Classics, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien. He is the author of twenty books, including The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes, Ancient Voices: An Insider’s Look at Classical Greece, On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis, Apologetics for the Twenty First Century, From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics, Lewis Agonistes: How C. S. Lewis can Train us to Wrestle with the Modern and Postmodern World, Atheism on Trial, and The Dreaming Stone and In the Shadow of Troy, children’s novels in which his kids become part of Greek Mythology and the Iliad and Odyssey. He has produced two lecture series on C. S. Lewis and literary theory with The Teaching Company/Great Courses, published 300 book chapters, essays, and reviews, given well over 300 public lectures in some two dozen states as well as Rome, Oxford, and British Columbia, and had his adaptations of The Iphigenia in Tauris of Euripides, The Helen of Euripides, and The Electra of Sophocles performed off-Broadway. He is committed to the concept of the Professor as Public Educator and believes that knowledge must not be walled up in the Academy but must be disseminated to all who have ears to hear. Visit his amazon author page at amazon.com/author/louismarkos In this interview he responds to questions about his latest book!