Them and Uz: Harrison and me

The working-class writer, having moved into a middle-class dominated field, often feels alienated from their old and new cultures – separated as they are from their heritage and not quite grounded in the new elite circle. The markers of working-class culture are much harder to define in our hyper-modern situation, and this exacerbates the alienation. This position opens up possibilities in perception and expression from those in the margins and off-kilter positions. Tracing the multivoiced qualities of Tony Harrison’s ‘V’ and R. M. Francis’s poetics, alongside biographical and autobiographical details, this hybrid article argues that off-kilter and outcast voices, like those in the aforementioned class liminality, are in the best place to explore and discuss the difficult to navigate cultures, communities and identities. This fusion of personal essay, poetry and literary criticism considers the unusual, marginal and liminal positioning of working-class writers, researchers and academics.

Photoromance, she read: Fandom and the politics of Italian media

This article examines Italian non-fiction media productions of the late 1950s and 1960s that represent the photoromance industry and its female fans. I argue that state-controlled and/or privately owned media outlets and their contributors (among them, Cesare Zavattini and Mario Soldati) scapegoated photoromances in defence of moral, social and cultural respectability, but also on the basis of anxieties towards the increasing role played by female audiences in the making of culture. Furthermore, I show that politically engaged documentaries similarly chastised the photoromance industry without necessarily serving the cause of women’s emancipation. Blaming photoromances for the degeneration of Catholic values, for the debasement of working-class culture and for the degradation of consumerist society, all films serve the same purpose of maintaining a patriarchal society’s status quo, of diverging attention from ‘higher’ cultural products and their exploitation of women’s bodies and of minimizing the important role that female fans played in the success of a global market.

Class, Culture and Principles: Evaluating the Chinese Cultural Revolution on the Basis of its Aims and Strategies

Culture in any society is inherited from the past as a form of tradition. It is an automatic and unconscious process. It is usually taken as supra-class unifying category which binds a community. China during Mao proclaimed that old culture serves the interests of the exploiting class and therefore the proletariat as an emerging class should struggle against it and impose its own culture. On this premise ‘the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’ was launched. Its aim was to ‘prevent the restoration of capitalism’ by revolutionizing people’s thinking to realize the communist goal of classless society. It lasted from 1966 to 1976, however, debates still continue regarding its aims, principles and practices and achievements or the damages it caused. This article attempts to explore what it actually wanted to accomplish and what strategies and measures were employed to materialize these aims. For this purpose it uses the documents published by the Communist Party of China during that period as the primary sources and judges them on the basis of Marxist socialist principles. The paper reaches to the conclusion that the Cultural Revolution adopted principles, policies and methods which accord with Marxism.

Boarding school syndrome: reconsidered in social context and through the lens of attachment theory

I argue the time has come to expand the now recognised clinical diagnosis of boarding school syndrome to take account of its invisible precursors in the avoidant attachment patterns of British upper-class culture. This elite, comprising less than 1% of the population, has sustained fee-paying boarding “public” schools, and is sustained by them, in a remarkably effective nexus of power and influence. I propose to call this avoidant culture with its severe affective limits and entitled assumptions, “British upper-class complex trauma condition”. Until we can recognise it and understand it as a form of group trauma, we will not be able to deal with its grave incapacity when it comes to empathy with the lives of others. Like Bowlby1, I advocate the abolition of early boarding as a key part of transforming the condition’s psychosocial limitations, which profoundly impact us all.

LGBTQ+ CONSTRUCTION ON THE #FREETOLOVE CAMPAIGN IN CLOSE UP ADVERTISEMENT

The purpose of this study was to investigate the meaning construction of the signs contained in the #FreeToLove campaign in the Close Up advertisement that constructs LGBTQ+. This study applies both Ferdinand De Saussure's theory and methodology. The analysis was deeply discussed on the #FreeToLove campaign from the advertisement shot which was considered to construct the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Others (LGBTQ+) sign through the verbal aspect in the Close Up advertisement. This campaign aims to show and fight for different types of love and mutual respect for all love on various platforms ranging from couples of different ages, social caste/class, culture/race, religion, and even same-sex relationships. In the advertisement, same-sex relationship elements are seen to be more dominant than other elements. The formation of the idea originated from the existence of a declaration legalizing LGBT that has been included in the law and given protection. The campaign's prejudice was more towards LGBTQ+ when Unilever, which is the owner of Close Up, also supported LGBTQ + and through the Close Up brand, which represented the closeness of the #FreeToLove campaign, began campaigning and producing advertisements and films. Prejudice can lead to acts of discrimination that can be detrimental. LGBTQ+ symbols have been included in advertisements to create a new culture that leads people to know about their existence. People who didn't know before can find out through a Close Up ad campaign in 274 places in the world.

Using Learning Stories in Secondary Social Studies: Gathering, Analysing and Using Evidence to Support Learners' Conceptual Understandings.

<p>This research examined the use of learning stories as a way to gather, analyse and use evidence to support the development of social studies conceptual understandings. This is important because there is limited research in New Zealand related to social studies assessment in secondary school environments, or in the monitoring of conceptual changes in understanding. The limited research that can be drawn upon highlights the challenges social studies teachers face teaching and assessing conceptually. Sociocultural theory featured strongly throughout the research, through the decision to investigate learning stories as an assessment approach, as well as the lens with which to approach the methodology. In order to investigate the Learning Story Framework, as an intervention, a qualitative design-based methodology was utilised involving one in-depth case study. The research composed of three iterative phases, gathering evidence using semi-structured interviews, participant observation and documentation analysis, including reflective journals. The findings suggested that learning stories can be used to support the development of conceptual understandings in conjunction with a reflective class culture, strong community relationships, clarity of planning for and sharing conceptual understandings, and support for students to critically reflect.</p>

Using Learning Stories in Secondary Social Studies: Gathering, Analysing and Using Evidence to Support Learners' Conceptual Understandings.

<p>This research examined the use of learning stories as a way to gather, analyse and use evidence to support the development of social studies conceptual understandings. This is important because there is limited research in New Zealand related to social studies assessment in secondary school environments, or in the monitoring of conceptual changes in understanding. The limited research that can be drawn upon highlights the challenges social studies teachers face teaching and assessing conceptually. Sociocultural theory featured strongly throughout the research, through the decision to investigate learning stories as an assessment approach, as well as the lens with which to approach the methodology. In order to investigate the Learning Story Framework, as an intervention, a qualitative design-based methodology was utilised involving one in-depth case study. The research composed of three iterative phases, gathering evidence using semi-structured interviews, participant observation and documentation analysis, including reflective journals. The findings suggested that learning stories can be used to support the development of conceptual understandings in conjunction with a reflective class culture, strong community relationships, clarity of planning for and sharing conceptual understandings, and support for students to critically reflect.</p>

Strategic Analysis on the Construction of Class Culture in Colleges and Universities

In schools, the basic unit is a class, and each class is composed of different groups of students. In order to strengthen college education and improve the quality of education, it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive analysis and research on classes. A variety of organizations of college students constitute classes. As the manifestation of these organizations, classes carry out ideological and political education for students. In order to promote students’ progress and development, an excellent class culture should be established. On that premise, it is necessary to strengthen ideological and political education for students, ensure more coordination between education and culture, as well as improve students’ cultural literacy, management system, and the safety of campus life. This study focuses on the strategy of building class culture in colleges and universities, hoping that relevant staffs may be able to use this as a reference.

The American Renaissance in the West: Capital, Class and Culture Along the Northern Pacific Railroad

ABSTRACT Wealth from western investments lit up the Gilded Age. East and West, it financed the mansions, balls and philanthropy that were integral to upper-class culture. Historians of capitalism have argued that a national upper class coalesced during the late nineteenth century and that the development of a common culture was essential to its formation. Much of this work has focused on the Northeast. How did this play out in the Trans-Mississippi West? This article explores the roles that architects and the buildings they designed played in the intertwined processes of class formation, capitalist expansion and the advancement of white settler colonialism in the American West. It begins in the early 1880s, when Henry Villard (1835–1900), president of the Northern Pacific Railway, launched an ambitious plan to complete the transcontinental railroad and enlisted the architects McKim, Mead & White and their assistant, Cass Gilbert (1859–1934), to design buildings of all kinds along the line — an unprecedented move for a new western railroad. It then follows Gilbert back to St Paul to examine two major projects, one for local clients and one for Villard’s colleague, the eastern capitalist William Endicott, Jr (1826–1914). As agents for eastern capitalists and their counterparts in the West, the architects and the buildings they designed activated in the West an elite aesthetic and professional culture initially generated in the Northeast. Operating across local, regional and national scales, they contributed to the expansion of capitalist markets, the formation of a national upper class and, more broadly, the processes of settler colonialism in a rapidly changing region.