Digital Commons Network^™

Bellum Iustum: Hagiography And Venetian Imperialism In The Later Middle Ages, Karen Mccluskey

Karen McCluskey

The presence of the relics of Mark the Evangelist in Venice, and the myth of his providential link to the city, gave rise to Venetian assertions of religious and moral superiority throughout the Middle Ages. Considering their city an apostolic foundation and God’s pre-eminent locus sanctus, Venetian mythology perpetuated this view by suggesting the city had a special calling to spread the word of God. Their perceived vocation was articulated at the end of Mark’s gospel, where Christ commands the apostles to “Go to all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” [Mark 15: 16] Girded by …

Making Monsters: Bio-Engineering And Visual Arts Practice, Elizabeth Stephens

Associate Professor Elizabeth Stephens

No abstract provided.

Action Without Regeneration: The Deracination Of The American Action Hero In Michael Mann's Heat, Ari M. Mattes

Ari Mattes

Michael Mann is one of the most respected auteurs operating in commercial Hollywood cinema, and it is no surprise that his films continue to be the subject of scholarly investigation. This article approaches Mann’s Heat (1995) in the context of broader American mythical impulses, in relation to Richard Slotkin’s “regeneration through violence” paradigm. “Regeneration through violence” has been used by both Lisa Purse, and, especially, Eric Lichtenfeld, as a conceptual framework for investigating commercial Hollywood action films. However, Slotkin’s paradigm fails to account for the fundamentally pessimistic end game of numerous action films such as Heat. Mann’s mapping of Los …

Vampires And Werewolves: Rewriting Religious And Racial Stereotyping In Stephenie Meyer’S Twilight Series, Georgina Ledvinka

Georgina Ledvinka

Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series (2005–8) demonstrates a strong connection with the theology, cultural practices and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), of which Meyer is an active member. One of the strongest ways in which this connection is demonstrated is through characterisation: specifically, by featuring vampires and werewolves as prominent supernatural characters in the text. Twilight employs vampires as a metaphor for the LDS Church. By eschewing literature’s traditional association of vampires with subversive acts, especially subversive sexuality, and rewriting them as clean-cut pillars of the community, Twilight not only charts but promotes the progression …

Dsm-5 And Evidence-Based Family Therapy?, Tom Strong, Robbie Busch

Robbie Busch

The publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, (DSM-5) extends a profession and practice-defining direction for family therapy. Warranting and expediting this medicalised direction has been a scientific and administrative coupling of diagnosed symptomatic conditions with evidence-based treatments for addressing those conditions. For systemically or poststructurally oriented family therapists tensions can follow from this direction which we elaborate upon in this article. Specifically, we examine the premises behind this medicalised direction for family therapy, juxtaposing these premises with systemic and post-structural premises of practice. We relate these juxtapositions to tensions family therapists may need …

Png Provincial Hospital Boards' Compliance With Statutory Financial Reporting Obligations, Mignon Shardlow, Alistair Brown

Mignon Shardlow

This article employs textual analysis to examine the financial statement reporting by provincial hospital boards in Papua New Guinea(‘PNG’) as they attempt to comply with mandatory financial statement reporting. Hospital boards in PNG are established under the Public Hospital Act 1994 (PNG), which requires the boards to satisfy the accounting, financial management and reporting requirements indicated under the Public Finances (Management) Act 1995 (PNG). The existing literature on hospital board reporting compliance has previously focused on developed countries with sound governance systems and developed infrastructures. In contrast, this paper provides an examination of hospital boards that operate in troublesome governance …

Celebrating Kate: The Criminal-Celebrity Of Sydney Underworld Figure, Kate Leigh, Leigh Straw

Leigh Straw

Combining historical study with cultural criminology, this paper analyses the criminal-celebrity of Sydney underworld figure Kate Leigh. It seeks to demonstrate how the three main factors of public resonance—crime type, context and image—created the celebrated criminality of Leigh. Without public resonance, Leigh would have simply remained another criminal within society. An important element of Leigh’s celebrated criminality was her ability to manage a public image that was accepted within the impoverished, working-class communities of eastern Sydney. Leigh became a criminal icon through an entrepreneurial style based on the anti-authoritarian and egalitarian values of working-class life in eastern Sydney. Criminal-celebrity theory …

Aboriginal Australian And Canadian First Nations Children's Literature, Angeline O'Neill

Angeline O'Neill

In her article "Aboriginal Australian and Canadian First Nations Children's Literature" Angeline O'Neill discusses Canadian First Nations and Australian Aboriginal children's picture books and their appeal to a dual readership. Inuit traditional storyteller and writer Michael Kusugak, Nyoongar traditional storyteller and writer Lorna Little, and Wunambal elder Daisy Utemorrah are cases in point. Each appeals to Indigenous and non-Indigenous, child and adult readerships, thus challenging two assumptions in Western scholarship on literature that 1) the picture book genre is necessarily the domain of children and 2) that traditional Indigenous stories are, similarly, best suited to children. O'Neill considers the ways …

Accountability And Control: The Politics Of Privatisation In Wa, Martin Drum, Daniel Baldino

Daniel Baldino

The virtues of privatizing security in Western Australia have been brought into question by the much publicized death of an Indigenous elder in Kalgoorlie at the beginning of 2008. Since that time, there have been a range of instances in WA (and nationally) where the management of prisoner security has been the subject of intense public debate. In this paper, we examine how a government has difficulty in maintaining control of a private company service when contracting it out, yet retains the ongoing responsibility for its success or failure and the exercise of due diligence. In the area of protecting …

Critical Insights: Film-Casablanca, James Plath

James Plath

From Salem Press:

Considered one of the greatest films of the twentieth century, Casablanca earned three Academy Awards (including Best Picture) and instant critical and commercial success following its release in 1942. Directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, this romantic drama is still hailed for its all-star cast, exceptional screenwriting, and memorable soundtrack, and continues to be ranked as one of the greatest motion pictures ever made.

Accountability And Control: The Politics Of Privatisation In Wa, Martin Drum, Daniel Baldino

Martin Drum

The virtues of privatizing security in Western Australia have been brought into question by the much publicized death of an Indigenous elder in Kalgoorlie at the beginning of 2008. Since that time, there have been a range of instances in WA (and nationally) where the management of prisoner security has been the subject of intense public debate. In this paper, we examine how a government has difficulty in maintaining control of a private company service when contracting it out, yet retains the ongoing responsibility for its success or failure and the exercise of due diligence. In the area of protecting …

Is Faith A ‘No Go Area’ In Modern Politics? A Case Study Of Newly Elected Mps In Western Australia’S State Parliament, Martin Drum

Martin Drum

It has been recently suggested that Parliamentarians are invoking Christian beliefs with increasing frequency within Australian public life. In particular, it has been suggested that these beliefs have been used to justify their policies and decisions. At the most recent election in Western Australia in September 2008, a number of new Members of Parliament were regarded as having strong links to Christian churches. Indeed, one newspaper article labeled these MPs as “a god squad of devout Liberals”. Given the above discussion, it is worth considering, 18 months after their election, what sort of rhetoric these members use in public life, …

The Privatisation Of Prisoner Transfer Services In Western Australia. What Can We Learn From The Ward Case?, Daniel Baldino, Martin Drum, Ben Wyatt

Martin Drum

In 2008, Aboriginal elder Mr Ward died of heat stroke while being transported in the back of a prison van operated by private security company GSL (now G4S). This article will address the role accountability mechanisms can play in improving correctional and custodial services and whether existing oversight frameworks can provide a proper supervision and quality control of private security operators. It will focus on the key reports issued by Western Australia's Inspector of Custodial Services, the independent office to oversee the prisoner transfer system. Another central source of information will be an examination of the report and recommendations handed …

Lineages Of The Literary Left: Essays In Honor Of Alan M. Wald, Howard Brick, Robbie Lieberman, Paula Rabinowitz

Robbie Lieberman

For nearly half a century, Alan M. Wald’s pathbreaking research has demonstrated that attention to the complex lived experiences of writers on the Left provides a new context for viewing major achievements as well as instructive minor ones in United States fiction, poetry, drama, and criticism. His many publications have illuminated the creative lives of figures such as James T. Farrell, Willard Motley, Muriel Rukeyser, Philip Rahv, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Kenneth Fearing, and Arthur Miller. He has delved into a consideration of Sidney Hook and pragmatism, brought attention to debates within tendencies associated with Cannonism and Shachtmanism, and developed …

Gifted Beggars In The Metaxu: A Study Of The Platonic And Augustinian Resonances Of Porosity In "God And The Between", Renee Köhler Ryan

Renée Köhler-Ryan

This essay explores William Desmond’s concept of porosity, especially as developed in God and the Between. The author analyses Desmond’s imagery of the clogging and unclogging of pores in relation to the ability to sense signs of the transcendent, and thus one’s givenness, in the between. The origins of Desmond’s concept of porosity in Plato’s Symposium are then explored, particularly the significance of the dual parentage of Eros (Poros and Penia) in the myth of Diotima. Finally, Desmond’s understanding of porosity is related to St. Augustine’s philosophy of prayer. In conclusion, the significance of the relation between thought and …

Book Review: The William Desmond Reader, Renee Köhler Ryan

Renée Köhler-Ryan

This is a book review of The William Desmond Reader, edited by Christopher Ben Simpson. The review focuses on the ethical implications of Desmond's work, but places these in the broader context of his philosophy of the between, or metaxu.

Christian Ethics : Moral Dilemmas Or Something More?, Tom Ryan

Tom Ryan

No abstract provided.

Readers And Writers In The Ancient Novel [Review], Lawrence Kim

Lawrence Kim

Are there still new and worthwhile things to be said about the ancient novel? There has certainly been an explosion in publications; the volume under review is the twelfth Ancient Narrative Supplement to appear since 2002, and more are on the way, as the multi-volume proceedings of the fourth International Conference on the Ancient Novel begin publication in 2011. The eighteen articles reviewed here were originally delivered at a smaller conference in 2007 at Rethymno, and it was the organizers’ hope that the contributors would “tease out…new perspectives” on the topic of “readers and writers” by focusing on those “ …

Poetry, Extravagance, And The Invention Of The 'Archaic' In Plutarch's De Pythiae Oraculis, Lawrence Kim

Lawrence Kim

No abstract provided.

Homer Between History And Fiction In Imperial Greek Literature, Lawrence Kim

Lawrence Kim

Did Homer tell the ‘truth' about the Trojan War? If so, how much, and if not, why not? The issue was hardly academic to the Greeks living under the Roman Empire, given the centrality of both Homer, the father of Greek culture, and the Trojan War, the event that inaugurated Greek history, to conceptions of Imperial Hellenism. This book examines four Greek texts of the Imperial period that address the topic – Strabo's Geography, Dio of Prusa's Trojan Oration, Lucian's novella True Stories, and Philostratus' fictional dialogue Heroicus – and shows how their imaginative explorations of Homer and his relationship …

Children Of A Lesser God: Truth As Bodiliness And Forgiveness, Glenn J. Morrison

Glenn J Morrison

The article aims in two parts to develop a sense of truth as bodiliness and forgiveness. In bodiliness, we suffer by the suffering of the other and in forgiveness there arises an existential journey of sensibility and feelings. Together, bodiliness and forgiveness provide a relational horizon to journey towards truth. Part I of the article sets out to establish a theoretical background for Part II to engage theology with the study of the film, Children of a Lesser God (1986). Given that films today are popular mediums for encountering revelation and the sacred, the application of film to theology provides …

Good Teaching, Spirituality And The Philosophy Of Emmanuel Levinas, Glenn J. Morrison

Glenn J Morrison

The essay aims to show that nurturing a spirituality of good teaching could provide a more committed and responsible attitude towards education. Spirituality speaks of relationships, the search for meaning and, in Levinasian terms, having a heart for another. Students demand that teachers should be many things such as passionate, engaging, intelligent, fun, challenging, fair and creative. The more we can develop meaning and a spirituality in teaching, the more we may meet these demands and also attend to the students’ enthusiasm, frustration, uncertainty, impatience, fears and dreams. Part I of the essay will explore some Levinasian-inspired ways how spirituality …

Grapes, Olives And Yams: Towards A Theology Of The Garden In Oceania, Glenn J. Morrison

Glenn J Morrison

Pursuing a theology of the garden in Oceania, the article develops Ilaitia Tuwere’s Fijian theological perspectives with Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy and Talmudic readings. The defining experience in the Oceanic garden is mercy. Through the bodiliness and otherness of Jesus, the chief Gardener, an immemorial truth emerges: the land (vanua) testifies to the mercy (maternity) of God, revealing a garden (were) of justice, repentance, peace, healing and the forgiveness of sins. Indeed, our hope for the reign of God is not useless and for nothing, for it becomes the very source of the fecundity of time and the positive value of …

The Concept Of Health: Beyond Normativism And Naturalism, Richard Hamilton

Richard Hamilton

Philosophical discussions of health and disease have traditionally been dominated by a debate between normativists, who hold that health is an inescapably value-laded concept and naturalists, such as Christopher Boorse, who believe that it is possible to derive a purely descriptive or theoretical definition of health based upon biological function. In this paper I defend a distinctive view which traces its origins in Aristotle's naturalistic ethics. An Arisotelian would agree with Boorse that health and disease are ubiquitous features of the natural world and thus not mere projections of human interests and values. She would differ from him in rejecting …

Wikipedia: Medium And Model Of Collaborative Public Diplomacy, Caitlin Byrne, Jane Johnston

Caitlin Byrne

Public diplomacy is an inherently social endeavour, engaging public audiences at home and abroad to shape perceptions and influence foreign policy outcomes. Social media has a part to play in this, with sites such as Facebook and Twitter gaining visibility and traction as ‘must-have’ tools for public diplomacy 2.0. This article casts light on the less visible but pervasive social media platform of Wikipedia. Taking a case-study approach, the article posits that Wikipedia holds a dual relevance for public diplomacy 2.0: first as a medium; and second, as a model for public diplomacy’s evolving process. Exploring Wikipedia’s folksonomy, crowd-sourced through …

Making Wikipedia Work: Authentic Assessment And Research Skills In The Classroom, Kathleen Delaurenti, Christopher Delaurenti

Christopher DeLaurenti

Authentic Assessment aims to provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of skills and ideas through real-world projects. This session will describe a faculty-librarian partnership to develop a semester-long Authentic Assessment project using Wikipedia to increase accessible information about women composers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Certify Your Existence, Paul Young

Paul Young

This is a manipulated image from a series of eight images in which the type has been altered using Adobe Photoshop. The original photo was taken in Salisbury, England. For more information, see http://spark.parkland.edu/wisdom/1FoundWisdom.pdf.

What Did He Just Say? Did She Really Just Say That?: Vignettes Of Racism In Claudia Rankine’S Citizen: An American Lyric, Susan Ayres

Susan Ayres

No abstract provided.

Behind The Symbol -- Chicago, Paul Young

Paul Young

This is a manipulated image from a series of eight images which incorporate a graffiti symbol created in Adobe Illustrator and merged with a photograph using Photoshop. For more information see http://spark.parkland.edu/symbol/BehindTheSymbol.pdf.

Behind The Symbol -- New York City, Paul Young

Paul Young

This is a manipulated image from a series of eight images which incorporate a graffiti symbol created in Adobe Illustrator and merged with a photograph using Photoshop. In order to tell a story, the location name was changed. The actual photograph was taken in Moscow. For more information see http://spark.parkland.edu/symbol/BehindTheSymbol.pdf.