Speaking Out Against Rape:Feminist (Her)Stories and Anti-Rape Politics

In 1976, Susan Brownmiller published 'Against Our Will', widely credited as the founding text of feminist anti-rape theory, in which she famously declared that rape was 'nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear'.While the scholarship and politics of Against Our Will have been subjected to numerous and compelling critiques, the work retains canonical and even foundational status within feminist anti-rape politics. In this article I attempt a critical re-examination of feminist (her)story telling practices. By situating the story told in Against Our Will beside and within Brownmiller's story of the creation of the book and her own coming-to-consciousness, a more general reexamination of the role of women's speech and (her)story-telling in feminist anti-rape politics is afforded. This re-reading draws out two central aspects of the politics of (her)story-telling which can be found in Brownmiller's work and in the Joan W. Scott quotation above. Firstly, the need to be recognised as a 'just source' of women's stories has resulted in the granting of epistemological primacy to stories of women's experience or personal statements. Secondly, the desire to compensate for the lack of a 'classical myth' to authorise women's claims, resulting in an attempt to imbue these feminist (her)stories with their own mythology.

Patient safety and communication: A new assessment for doctors trained in countries where language differs from that of the host country: Results of a pilot using a domain-based assessment

Objective

Global migration of healthcare workers places responsibility on employers to comply with legal employment rights whilst ensuring patient safety remains the central goal. We describe the pilot of a communication assessment designed for doctors who trained and communicated with patients and colleagues in a different language from that of the host country. It is unique in assessing clinical communication without assessing knowledge.

A 14-station OSCE was developed using a domain-based marking scheme, covering professional communication and English language skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing) in routine, acute and emotionally challenging contexts, with patients, carers and healthcare teams. Candidates (n = 43), non-UK trained volunteers applying to the UK Foundation Programme, were provided with relevant station information prior to the exam.

The criteria for passing the test included achieving the pass score and passing 10 or more of the 14 stations. Of the 43 candidates, nine failed on the station criteria. Two failed the pass score and also the station criteria. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.866.

This pilot tested ‘proof of concept’ of a new domain-based communication assessment for non-UK trained doctors.

The test would enable employers and regulators to verify communication competence and safety in clinical contexts, independent of clinical knowledge, for doctors who trained in a language different from that of the host country.

Listening to the World Through New Ears:Reinvention of the soundtrack in the works of Lucrecia Martel and Sofia Coppola

This paper explores the production and post-production techniques and tensions in designing sound for film. Considering the films of Lucrecia Martel and Sofia Coppola, amongst others, Greene and Yang will discuss how the soundtrack takes on a primary role in these films and becomes a medium for symbolism, reflection, characterisation, as well as storytelling. There will be a close examination of the processes involved in creating character-orientated soundscapes. These processes are sensitive to the effects sound has on an audience. Exploring how these filmmakers (with their sound teams) utilise the listening experience, including attention to point of audition and sound perception, this paper will critically unpick how such creative decisions are arrived at during various stages of the production process. Outlining the use of diegetic and non-diegetic sound and the potential musicality of sound effect design, issues of reverberation, noise and intent are discussed to highlight the sonic framing of these creative teams. Greene will approach these soundtracks from a production/post-production perspective, while Yang will explore the composer’s/designer’s ear.

The whole song is greater than the sum of its parts: Local and structural features in music listening

Four experiments reported here demonstrate the importance of structural as well as local features in listening to contemporary popular music. Experiment 1 established that listeners without formal musical training regard as salient the formal structure that links individual sections of songs. When asked to listen to and assemble the individual sections of unfamiliar contemporary songs to form new compositions, participants positioned the sections in ways consistent with the true structure of the music. In Experiment 2, participants were provided with only the song lyrics with which to arrange the individual sections of contemporary songs. It was found that in addition to musical features
studied in Experiment 1, lyrical content of contemporary music also acts as a strong cue to a song’s formal structure. Experiments 3 and 4 revealed that listeners’ enjoyment of music is influenced both by structural features and local features of music, which were carried by the individual song sections.
The influence of structural features on music listening was most apparent over repeated hearings. In Experiment 4, listeners’ liking for contemporary music followed an inverted U-shape trend with repeated exposure, in which liking for music took a downward turn after just four repeated hearings. In contrast, liking for restructured music increased with repeated hearings and almost eliminated an initial negative effect of restructuring by the sixth hearing. In sum, our findings demonstrate that structural features as well as local features of contemporary music are salient and important to
listeners.

Speaking Out Online:The Benefits and Risks of Speaking About Sexual Violence for Young People

Speaking out about sexual violence has been a fundamental part of feminist politics since the 1970s. The practice of narrating experiences of violence, either publicly or to friends and family aims to combat the culture of silence and stigmatisation that surrounds sexual violence while also helping individuals to gain a sense of empowerment and connect with other survivors. However, speaking out also contains inherent risks, especially for young people. Survivors may meet with stigmatising or disbelieving responses, and they may lose control over who knows their story and the way in which it is told and retold.
These risks and benefits are altered, and potentially exacerbated, in an online environment. While social media may increase survivors’ ability to contact and connect with others with similar experiences it also makes it harder to control when and how their story is shared. The disjuncture between online and offline environments may also increase feelings of stigmatisation and isolation.
There is a need to explore the specific risks and benefits of speaking out online given both young people’s extensive use of social media for social interactions and the increasing tendency for support and educational services targeted at young people to make use of social media and online environments. This paper draws on literature and some preliminary research to consider both risks and benefits of speaking out online and to open a conversation about the creation of supportive spaces and mechanisms for young people to speak about sexual violence in online environments.

"Should I prioritize medical problem solving or attentive listening?": the dilemmas and challenges that medical students experience when learning to conduct consultations

Objective: Communication skills can be trained alongside clinical reasoning, history taking or clinical examination skills. This is advocated as a solution to the low transfer of communication skills. Still, students have to integrate the knowledge/skills acquired during different curriculum parts in patient consultations at some point. How do medical students experience these integrated consultations within a simulated environment and in real practice when dealing with responsibility?

Methods: Six focus groups were conducted with (pre-)/clerkship students.

Results: Students were motivated to practice integrated consultations with simulated patients and felt like 'real physicians'. However, their focus on medical problem solving drew attention away from improving their communication skills. Responsibility for real patients triggered students' identity development. This identity formation guided the development of an own consultation style, a process that was hampered by conflicting demands of role models.

Conclusion: Practicing complete consultations results in the dilemma of prioritizing medical problem solving above attention for patient communication. Integrated consultation training advances this dilemma to the pre-clerkship period. During clerkships this dilemma is heightened because real patients trigger empathy and responsibility, which invites students to define their role as doctor.

Practice Implications: When training integrated consultations, educators should pay attention to students' learning priorities and support the development of students' professional identity.

A 'ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry': Joyce's Orientalism in the Context of 11 September 2001 and 1922

Chapters 3 and 15 of Joyce's Ulysses exhibit glimpses of three dreams, fantasies and eventual nightmares linked to the figure of 'Haroun al Raschid.' Historically speaking, the latter was a powerful Caliph of Baghdad, a medieval potentate about whom many of the most memorable of The Thousand and One Nights or The Arabian Nights' Entertainments were once and then again spun as tales of pleasure. Joyce seizes upon the figure of 'Haroun al Raschid' as a fictive measure to articulate the 'orientalist' fantasies of Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom. However, this evocative figure of Near Eastern history, of fabulous narrative and the progressively converging fantasies of two modern European literary characters is riddled with paradox. Such material provides Joyce a perceptive and proleptic sense of the paradoxes and brutal historical contradictions through which Western and Eastern dreams of theocratic nationalism, ethnic zealotry, colonial rebellion and Zionism are to be played out. W. B. Yeats' poem 'The Gift of Harun al-Raschid', written in 1923, the year after the book publication of Ulysses, provides both a fitting foil and a significant socio-historical point of reference for Joyce's own figurative use of the Caliph of Baghdad.

Listening to lanthanide complexes: Determination of the intrinsic luminescence quantum yield by nonradiative relaxation

The photophysical properties of lanthanide complexes have been studied extensively; however, fundamental parameters such as the intrinsic quantum yield as well as radiative and nonradiative decay rates are difficult or even impossible to measure experimentally. Herein, a photoacoustic (PA) method is proposed to determine the intrinsic quantum yield of lanthanide complexes with lifetimes in the order of milliseconds. This method is used to determine the intrinsic quantum yields for europium (III)-containing metallomesogens as well as terbium(III) complexes. The results show that the PA signal is sensitive to both the lifetime and the ratio of the fast-to-slow heat component of the samples. It is found that there is an efficient ligand sensitization and a moderate intrinsic quantum yield for the complexes. The intrinsic quantum yield of Eu3+ in the metallomesogens exhibits an obvious increase upon the isotropic liquid to smectic A transition. The proposed PA method is quite simple, and con contribute to a clearer understanding of the photophysical processes in luminescent lanthanide complexes.