Use of Analogy to Achieve New Expertise

We will take the view that the end result of problem solving in some world should be increased expertness. In the context of computers, increasing expertness means writing programs. This thesis is about a process, reasoning by analogy that writes programs. Analogy relates one problem world to another. We will call the world in which we have an expert problem solver the IMAGE world, and the other world the DOMAIN world. Analogy will construct an expert problem solver in the domain world using the image world expert for inspiration.

Breaking the Rules: writing reflectively for yourself.

The rules which epitomise good writing may on occasions be broken, deliberately and with what the writers judge to be good purpose. This can well occur when students or staff set out to engage effectively with their personal and professional development, through personal reflection on and in experiences. They may do this in what has been called “stream of consciousness” writing, which is deliberately compiled in a manner at variance with the general rules for best practice. The rationale for such an unusual decision, namely to engage in what is frankly disorderly writing, is set out briefly in this chapter. Its characteristics are summarised, in implicit contrast with more conventional styles of writing. Examples are included of claims for the effectiveness of this style when used for developmental purposes by students and staff; and reference is made to the publications of some of those who have endorsed this approach.

New Collected Poems of W. S. Graham

Francis, Matthew, New Collected Poems of W. S. Graham, (London: Faber and Faber, 2004 RAE2008

Medieval Women's Writing

Watt, P., Medieval Women's Writing (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007) RAE2008

Women writing woman: representations of gender and sexuality

Pykett, Lyn. 'Women writing woman: representations of gender and sexuality', In: Women and literature in Britain 1800 - 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp.78-98, 2008. RAE2008

Rorty's Elective Affinities. The New Pragmatism and Postmodern Thought

The present book is devoted to "European connections of Richard Rorty's neopragmatism". The theme, chosen carefully and intentionally, is supposed to show the motivation behind the writing of the present work, as well as to show its intended extent. Let us consider briefly the first three parts of the theme, to enlighten a little our intentions. "European" is perhaps the most important description for it was precisely that thread that was most important to me, being the only context seriously taken into account, as I assumed right from the start that I would not be writing about rather more widely unknown to me - and much less fascinating (even to Rorty, the hero of the story) from my own, traditional, Continental philosophical perspective - American analytic philosophy. So accordingly I have almost totally skipped "American" connections (to use the distinction I need here) of Rorty's philosophy, that is to say, firstly, a years-long work within analytic philosophy, secondly struggles with it on its own grounds, and finally attempts to use classical American, mainly Deweyan, pragmatism for his own needs and numerous polemics associated with it - the questions that are far away from my interests and that arise limited interest among reading and writing philosophical audience in Poland, and perhaps also among Continental philosophers. It did not seem possible to me to write a book on Rorty in his American connections for they are insufficiently known to me, demanding knowledge of both post-war American analytic philosophy as well as pragmatism of its father-founders. I could see, setting to work on Richard Rorty, that a book on his American connections (leaving aside the issue that it would not be a philosophical problem but rather, let us say, the one of writing a monograph) written by a Polish philosopher in Poland and then in the USA was not a stimulating intellectual challenge but rather a thankless working task. Besides, having spent much time on Rorty's philosophy, writing extensively about him and translating his works, I already knew that the "Continental" context was extremely important to his neopragmatism, and that thinking about it could be relatively prolific (as opposed to the context potentially given by American philosophy).

READING AND RESPONDING: FINDING AND MAKING MEANING IN THE LIFE WRITING OF DIASPORIC IRANIAN JEWISH WOMEN

This project investigates the English-language life writing of diasporic Iranian Jewish women. It examines how these women have differentially imagined their diasporic lives and travels, and how they have in turn been imagined and accepted or rejected by their audiences. In the first chapter, I use “home” as a lens for understanding three distinct life writing texts, showing how the authors write about what it means to have a home and to be at home in contrasting and even contradictory ways. I show how, despite potential hegemonic readings that perpetuate unequal relationships and a normative definition of the ideal home, the texts are open to multiple contestatory readings that create spaces for new formulations and understandings. In the second chapter, I look more closely at the intersections between trauma stories and the life writing of Iranian Jewish women, and I argue that readers use life writing texts about trauma to support an egocentric reconstruction of American democracy and dominance. I also show how a critical frame for understanding trauma can yield interpretations that highlight, rather than ignore, relationships of power and privilege. In the final chapter of the thesis, I present a case study of two online reading groups, and I show that communal reading environments, though they participate in dominant discourses, are also spaces where resistance and subversion can develop.

'A new sword on an old anvil': W.B.Yeats, Robert Graves and the Anglo-Irish Tradition

Throughout his writing life, Robert Graves was consistently and often publicly hostile to the work of W.B. Yeats, whilst still also owing a considerable debt to the older poet (who he never met). This essay explores Graves' complex responses to Yeats, arguing that his antagonism may be understood in the light of his own Anglo-Irish background, and is implicated in his relations with his father, Alfred Perceval Graves, as well as his experience of the First World War. Probing the suggestiveness of Graves's claim in 1959 that his poems 'remain true to the Anglo-Irish poetic tradition into which I was born', it traces the relation between Yeats and Graves through correspondence, critical writings, and through a comparative reading of Yeats's A Vision and Graves's The White Goddess, and reveals underlying similarities in their critical and mythological thinking in spite of Graves's public disavowal of the Yeatsian aesthetic.

'Neo-Latin Writing in the British Isles'

This chapter seeks to identify cultural and generic trends and authorial methodologies that may serve to unify or to differentiate between the histories of neo-Latin literature in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. It considers ways in which Latin served to bridge horizontal spaces (both physical and metaphorical) between four British regions, between neo-Latin writers in Britain and their continental predecessors and peers, and between Latin and the respective vernacular(s). It also examines vertical spaces (both chronological and cultural) between the neo-Latin and the classical Latin text, and between the linear demarcations of ‘early modern’, ‘Augustan’ and ‘Romantic’. An assessment of links between nationhood and the neo-Latin text as evinced by anthologies, antiquarian and quasi-historical writing, is followed by examples of generic continuity and metamorphosis in the British neo-Latin pastoral, ode and epigram. The concluding sections offer two generic case-studies (neo-Latin epic and didactic) both of which, it is argued, engendered the birth of specifically British versions of the mock-heroic and mock-didactic.

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.

Who Knows What's Going On? Mapping New Security Landscapes in Contemporary Espionage Fiction

This article explores whether or to what extent the contemporary espionage novel is able to map and interrogate transformations in the post-9/11security environment. It asks how well a form or genre of writing, typically handcuffed to the machinations and demands of the Cold War and state sovereignty, is able to adapt to a new security environment characterized by strategies of “risk assessment” and “resilience-building” and by modes or regimes of power not reducible to, or wholly controlled by, the state. In doing so, it thinks about the capacities of this type of fiction for “resisting” the formations of power it wants to make visible and is partly complicit with.

Women of Letters: Gender, Writing and the Life of the Mind in Early Modern England

Women of letters writes a new history of English women's intellectual worlds using their private letters as evidence of hidden networks of creative exchange. The book argues that many women of this period engaged with a life of the mind and demonstrates the dynamic role letter-writing played in the development of ideas. Until now, it has been assumed that women's intellectual opportunities were curtailed by their confinement in the home. This book illuminates the household as a vibrant site of intellectual thought and expression. Amidst the catalogue of day-to-day news in women's letters are sections dedicated to the discussion of books, plays and ideas. Through these personal epistles, Women of letters offers a fresh interpretation of intellectual life in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, one that champions the ephemeral and the fleeting in order to rediscover women's lives and minds.

Feminist Genealogies in the Writing of the Self

Maria Tamboukou links Foucauldian ideas to feminism and education. Its central argument is that the Foucauldian notion of 'technologies of the self' needs to be gendered and contextualized. This argument is pursued through a genealogical analysis of auto/biographical narratives of women educators at the turn of the nineteenth century. This is a new theoretical approach, since Foucault's work has proved to be of great interest to feminist scholars, but as yet, his theroies have only intermittently been used in educational feminist work. The genealogical analysis of situated female sujectivities has highlighted the importance of space in the 'technologies of the female self' and has reconsidered the private/public couplet. It has acted as a continuous source of uncertainty, experimenting with Foucauldian questions of what we are, of how we have become what we are, but also and perhaps most importantly of how we can become other than what we are already.