'It was as if she had said....': May Sinclair and reading narratives of cure

May Sinclair was one of the most widely read and successful English women novelists of the first half of the twentieth century. She had interests and themes in common with many of those now considered to have been at the heart of English modernism. In terms of formal experimentation too her concerns chime with the aesthetic innovations of, for example, pound, Eliot and Woolf. Her early interest in psychoanalysis and support for the suffrage campaign also mark her out as a modern. Despite some work from feminist literary critics and her partial categorisation as modernist, however, her work still lacks a critical framework within which it can be read. Indeed, some of the work done by feminist critics on her has paradoxically re-marginalised her. In this thesis I aim to provide one critical framework through which Sinclair's work can be read. My contention is that the occluding of one aspect of her work and thought- its movement toward intellectual, emotional and aesthetic wholeness - has marred previous critical readings of her. By paying attention to this through a focus on discourses of cure, this thesis reads Sinclair's work with an awareness of its language, cultural context and intertextual relations. Early twentieth-century medical discourse, psychoanalysis, mysticism, the chivalric and the psychical are all used to read the works. At the same time, my aim is to read Sinclair's work without eliding its difficulties. Rather, I aim to read her in a way that acknowledges the difficulties of and fraught moments in her writing as markers of its significance.

(Un)settling the Irish emigrant identity: representation and construction of an Irish emigrant/exile identity in the travel narratives of Kathleen Nevin and William Bulfin

Through an examination of the travel works of William Bulfin, Tales of the Pampas (1900) and Kathleen Nevin's You'll Never Go Back this paper considers the representation of the Irish in Argentina and the contribution of these narratives in the construction of identity and the reconstruction of the emigrant identity into an exilic one. Escaping one colonial framework (Britain/Ireland), travelling to and writing from within another postcolonial construct (Argentina and the Spanish Empire), this paper analyses how Bulfin and Nevin use language as a tool to construct, and even invent, an Irish identity. This identity is inextricably linked to home and the desire to return there. Despite this desire, Argentina becomes internalised to some extent, which in Bulfin can be seen in the mix of the Spanish, English and Irish languages in his stories, highlighting that the Irish were doing with language what they had already done with their lives; trying to adapt it to their new situation. In Nevin, the contrast between us and them (Irish and 'Native') demonstrates her attempts to shape an exilic rather than emigrant mentality. Through these texts I analyse how Argentina never quite becomes a new home, but a place where Irish identity is played out and acquires form.

Is childhood a 'disability'? Exploring the exclusion of children from age discrimination provisions in the Equality Act 2010

The Equality Act 2010 was enacted with the aim of simplifying existing equality legislation and included extending age discrimination protection beyond the workplace to cover the provision of goods, facilities and services. Under-18s, however, were omitted from such provisions, despite lobbying from a number of different organisations and parliamentarians. This article considers the significance of this exclusion. It both challenges the legitimacy of the decision to exclude children, and considers the difficulties that arise from including under-18s within age discrimination provisions, namely those relating to children’s autonomy, capacity and right to equal treatment. In particular, it asks whether the question of children’s capacity to make decisions, the main ground on which children are denied all the human rights enjoyed by adults, should be revisited in light of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, under which a finding of incapacity on the basis of disability constitutes discrimination. It goes on to explore other areas of convergence between childhood and disability studies, and particularly the benefits, and shortcomings, of a ‘social model’ approach to childhood.

Academics across borders: narratives of linguistic capital, language competence, and communication strategies

This article reports on a study that examined the personal employment paths of six international academics at a British university. To complement previous accounts of difficult migration, it focuses on the successful experiences of such academics, in particular how proficiency in English facilitated their move into employment in higher education (HE), and the linguistic competences and communication strategies they deploy in their daily activities. The article identifies key factors that have facilitated to their academic achievements and contributes to the understanding of the benefits and consequences of skilled migration. In conclusion, it suggests workplace pedagogy and policy responses that could facilitate other international academics' successful experiences in the UK HE sector.

(un)childhood: performing the voices and times of childhood through relational video-making

This practice-based PhD is comprised of two interrelated elements: (i) ‘(un)childhood’, a 53’ video-essay shown on two screens; and (ii) a 58286 word written thesis. The project, which is contextualised within the tradition of artists working with their own children on time-based art projects, explores a new approach to timebased artistic work about childhood. While Stan Brakhage (1933-2003), Ernie Gher (1943-), Erik Bullot (1963-) and Mary Kelly (1941-) all documented, photographed and filmed their children over a period of years to produce art projects (experimental films and a time-based installation), these projects were implicitly underpinned by a construction of childhood in which children, shown as they grow, represent the abstract primitive subject. The current project challenges the convention of representing children entirely from the adult’s point of view, as aesthetic objects without a voice, as well as through the artist’s chronological approach to time. Instead, this project focuses on the relational joining of the child’s and adult’s points of view. The artist worked on a video project with her own son over a four-and-a-half year period (between the ages of 5 and 10) through which she developed her ‘relational video-making’ methodology. The video-essay (un)childhood performs the relational voices of childhood as resulting from the verbal interactions of both children and adults. The non-chronological nature of(un)childhood offers an alternative to the linear-temporal approach to the representation of childhood. Through montage and a number of literal allusions to time in its dialogue, (un)childhood performs the relational times of childhood by combining children’s lives in the present with the temporal dimensions that have traditionally constructed childhood: past, future and timeless.

Values in middle childhood: Social and genetic contributions

Theories of value development often identify adolescence as the period for value formation, and cultural and familial factors as the sources for value priorities. However, recent research suggests that value priorities can be observed as early as in middle childhood, and several studies, including one on preadolescents (Knafo & Spinath, 2011), have suggested a genetic contribution to individual differences in values. In the current study, 174 pairs of monozygotic and dizygotic 7-year old Israeli twins completed the Picture-Based Value Survey for Children (PBVS–C; Döring et al., 2010). We replicated basic patterns of relations between value priorities and variables of socialisation – gender, religiosity, and socioeconomic status– that have been found in studies with adults. Most important, values of Self-transcendence, Self-enhancement, and Conservation, were found to be significantly affected by genetic factors (29%, 47% and 31% respectively), as well as non-shared environment (71%, 53% and 69% respectively). Openness to change values, in contrast, were found to be unaffected by genetic factors at this age and were influenced by shared (19%) and non-shared (81%) environment. These findings support the recent view that values are formed at earlier ages than had been assumed previously, and they further our understanding of the genetic and environmental factors involved in value formation at young ages.

Introduction to the Special Section Value Development from Middle Childhood to Early Adulthood: New Insights from Longitudinal and Genetically Informed Research

Research into values at an early age has only started recently, although it has expanded quickly and dynamically in the past years. The purpose of this article is twofold: First, it provides an introduction to a special section that aims to help fill the gap in value development research. The special section brings together four new longitudinal and genetically informed studies of value development from the beginning of middle childhood through early adulthood. Second, this article reviews recent research from this special section and beyond, aiming to provide new directions to the field. With new methods for assessing children's values and an increased awareness of the role of values in children's and adolescents' development, the field now seems ripe for an in-depth investigation. Our review of empirical evidence shows that, as is the case with adults, children's values are organized based on compatibilities and conflicts in their underlying motivations. Values show some consistency across situations, as well as stability across time. This longitudinal stability tends to increase with age, although mean changes are also observed. These patterns of change seem to be compatible with Schwartz's (1992) theory of values (e.g., if the importance of openness to change values increases, the importance of conservation values decreases). The contributions of culture, family, peers, significant life events, and individual characteristics to values are discussed, as well as the development of values as guides for behavior.