The fevered novel from Balzac to Bernanos:frenetic Catholicism in crisis, delirium and revolution

Book Review: The Fevered Novel from Balzac to Bernanos: Frenetic Catholicism in Crisis, Delirium and Revolution. By Francesco Manzini. (IGRS Books). London: Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, 2011. 264 pp. Full text: This monograph is an important and compelling account of a novelistic tradition that stretches from Georges Bernanos back to Balzac, by way of Léon Bloy, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Barbey d'Aurevilly. Depending on a master plot that evokes Maistrean themes of blood, sacrifice, and redemption, working in a feverish female body, this canon combines Romantic freneticism and anti-Enlightenment religion to create a compound that Francesco Manzini calls ‘frenetic Catholicism’. The theme of fever, Manzini tells us, was commented on by Huysmans in writing about Barbey d'Aurevilly. When André Gide read Bernanos's Sous le soleil de Satan, he dismissed it as a rehash of Bloy and Barbey. In this present work Manzini aims to make us aware once more of the gradually intensifying themacity of fever in writings more usually classed in theologo-literary categories. His analysis encompasses (though is not restricted to) Balzac's Ursule Mirouët, Barbey d'Aurevilly's Un prêtre marié, Huysmans's En rade, Bloy's Le Désespéré and La Femme pauvre, and Bernanos's Nouvelle histoire de Mouchette. Thus, as Manzini argues in his conclusion, between the freneticism of the Romantics and that of the surrealists this corpus represents an intermediary wave of freneticism, foregrounding fever, hyperconsciousness, dreamlike episodes, and female automatism. Manzini's knowledge of, and ease amidst, the sources is constantly impressive. Much like Richard Griffiths before him (The Reactionary Revolution: The Catholic Revival in French Literature, 1870–1914 (London: Constable, 1966)), he has read both the bad novels and the good ones. For that we are in his debt. His commentary thrives on the oddities of his subjects. He points quite rightly to the peculiar hubris of writers whose contempt for the secular excesses of scientism leads them down a cul-de-sac of primitive medical quackery. Likewise, he underlines how Zola's attempt to unwrite Barbey — exorcising the former's anti-Romantic animus, as much as scratching his anticlerical itch — leads him to recapitulate Barbey's religious authoritarianism in the secular vernacular of patriarchy. Les espèces qui se rapprochent se mangent, to paraphrase Bernanos (Les Grands Cimetières sous la lune). In spite of all Manzini's tightly organized analysis, however, this reader wonders whether the fevered novel ‘best allowed contemporaries — and now […] literary critics and historians — to imagine the issues at stake in the amorphous scientistic, religious, and political debates’ of the period (p. 17). Below the ideological clashes of nineteenth-century science and religion, the two contending dynamics of anthropocentrism and theocentrism are attested and, it can be argued, even more perfectly dramatized in other Catholic literature (Charles Péguy's poetry, for example). In these terms, what distinguishes the Catholic frenetics from their Romantic or surrealist counterparts is that their fevered subject represents an attempt to build a road out of what Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls ‘buffered’ individuality, and back towards the theocentric porous subject who is open to divine influence. By way of minor corrections, nuns do not take holy orders (p. 94) but make religious profession by taking vows. Also, the last Eucharistic host is not extreme unction (p. 119) but viaticum.

Surface microbial consortia from Livarot, a French smear-ripened cheese

The surface microflora (902 isolates) of Livarot cheeses from three dairies was investigated during ripening. Yeasts were mainly identified by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Geotrichum candidum was the dominating yeast among 10 species. Bacteria were identified using Biotype 100 strips, dereplicated by repetitive extragenic palindromic PCR (rep-PCR); 156 representative strains were identified by either BOX-PCR or (GTG) 55-PCR, and when appropriate by 16S rDNA sequencing and SDS-PAGE analysis. Gram-positive bacteria accounted for 65% of the isolates and were mainly assigned to the genera Arthrobacter, Brevibacterium, Corynebacterium, and Staphylococcus. New taxa related to the genera Agrococcus and Leucobacter were found. Yeast and Gram-positive bacteria strains deliberately added as smearing agents were sometimes undetected during ripening. Thirty-two percent of the isolates were Gram-negative bacteria, which showed a high level of diversity and mainly included members of the genera Alcaligenes, Hafnia, Proteus, Pseudomonas, and Psychrobacter. Whatever the milk used (pasteurized or unpasteurized), similar levels of biodiversity were observed in the three dairies, all of which had efficient cleaning procedures and good manufacturing practices. It appears that some of the Gramnegative bacteria identified should now be regarded as potentially useful in some cheese technologies. The assessment of their positive versus negative role should be objectively examined.

Effects of phonetic/phonics instruction on reading pronunciation (French level I)

Pronunciation training has been traditionally viewed as of limited importance in a communicatively oriented foreign language curriculum (Pennington & Richards, 1986). Many language instructors seemingly deny the usefulness of phonetic training and rely on a listen-and-repeat method with the use of audiotapes (Bate, 1989; Callamand & Pedoya, 1984; Jones, 1997). Beginners in French classes face the challenge of mastering a complex sound and grapheme-phoneme correspondence system without the benefit of specific instruction. Their pronunciation errors develop mostly from bad habits while decoding from print to sound (Dansereau, 1995). ^ The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of basic phonetic/phonics instruction on reading pronunciation accuracy in a French I language course. ^ The sample consisted of two groups of French I students from Florida International University, who received the same instruction in French language and culture during the fall semester of 1999. Only the experimental group received additional phonetic/phonics training. ^ The instrument consisted of three recorded reading tasks: isolated familiar words, isolated unfamiliar words, and dialogue. Research questions were analyzed using a one-way multivariate analysis of variance. Significant differences were found between the two groups on scores for each of the three sections of the instrument, and on the total scores. These findings support the hypothesis of the study and reveal the effectiveness of phonetic/phonics training for beginners of French. ^ The findings imply that beginning language students should receive the minimum knowledge they need to master the French phoneme-grapheme (sound-spelling) system. ^

Perceptions of French and Creole Among First-Generation Adult Haitian English Language Learners

Context: Due to a unique combination of factors, outdoor athletes in the Southeastern United States are at high risk of lightning deaths and injuries. Lightning detection methods are available to minimize lightning strike victims. Objective: Becoming aware of the risk factors that predispose athletes to lightning strikes and determining the most reliable detection method against hazardous weather will enable Certified Athletic Trainers to develop protocols that protect athletes from injury. Data Sources: A comprehensive literature review of Medline and Pubmed using key words: lightning, lightning risk factors, lightning safety, lightning detection, and athletic trainers and lightning was completed. Data Synthesis: Factors predisposing athletes to lighting death or injury include: time of year, time of day, the athlete’s age, geographical location, physical location, sex, perspiration level, and lack of education and preparedness by athletes and staff. Although handheld lightning detectors have become widely accessible to detect lightning strikes, their performance has not been independently or objectively confirmed. There is evidence that these detectors inaccurately detect strike locations by recording false strikes and not recording actual strikes. Conclusions: Lightning education and preparation are two factors that can be controlled. Measures need to be taken by Certified Athletic Trainers to ensure the safety of athletes during outdoor athletics. It is critical for athletic trainers and supervising staff members to become fully aware of the risks of lightning strikes in order to most effectively protect everyone under their supervision. Even though lightning detectors have been manufactured in an attempt to minimize death and injuries due to lightning strikes, none of the detectors have been proven to be 100% effective. Educating coaches, athletes, and parents on the risks of lightning and the detection methods available, while implementing an emergency action plan for lightning safety, is crucial to ensure the well being of the student-athlete population.

Data compilation on the biological response to ocean acidification: environmental and experimental context of data sets and related literature

The exponential growth of studies on the biological response to ocean acidification over the last few decades has generated a large amount of data. To facilitate data comparison, a data compilation hosted at the data publisher PANGAEA was initiated in 2008 and is updated on a regular basis (doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.149999). By January 2015, a total of 581 data sets (over 4 000 000 data points) from 539 papers had been archived. Here we present the developments of this data compilation five years since its first description by Nisumaa et al. (2010). Most of study sites from which data archived are still in the Northern Hemisphere and the number of archived data from studies from the Southern Hemisphere and polar oceans are still relatively low. Data from 60 studies that investigated the response of a mix of organisms or natural communities were all added after 2010, indicating a welcomed shift from the study of individual organisms to communities and ecosystems. The initial imbalance of considerably more data archived on calcification and primary production than on other processes has improved. There is also a clear tendency towards more data archived from multifactorial studies after 2010. For easier and more effective access to ocean acidification data, the ocean acidification community is strongly encouraged to contribute to the data archiving effort, and help develop standard vocabularies describing the variables and define best practices for archiving ocean acidification data.

Location and ages of terrestrial peatlands located on continental shelves and in coastal sediments

This synthesis dataset contains records of freshwater peat and lake sediments from continental shelves and coastal areas. Information included is site location (when available), thickness and description of terrestrial sediments as well as underlying and overlying sediments, dates (when available), and references.

Dependence and Masculinity in Contemporary French Writing about Disability

Peer reviewed

Inventing "French Feminism:" A Critical History

French Feminism has little to do with feminism in France. While in the U.S. this now canonical body of work designates almost exclusively the work of three theorists—Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva—in France, these same thinkers are actually associated with the rejection of feminism. If some scholars have on this basis passionately denounced French Feminism as an American invention, there exists to date no comprehensive analysis of that invention or of its effects. Why did theorists who were at best marginal to feminist thought and political practice in France galvanize feminist scholars working in the United States? Why does French Feminism provoke such an intense affective response in France to this date? Drawing on the fields of feminist and queer studies, literary studies, and history, “Inventing ‘French Feminism:’ A Critical History” offers a transnational account of the emergence and impact of one of U.S. academic feminism’s most influential bodies of work. The first half of the dissertation argues that, although French Feminism has now been dismissed for being biologically essentialist and falsely universal, feminists working in the U.S. academy of the 1980s, particularly feminist literary critics and postcolonial feminist critics, deployed the work of Cixous, Irigaray, and Kristeva to displace what they perceived as U.S. feminist literary criticism’s essentialist reliance on the biological sex of the author and to challenge U.S. academic feminism’s inattention to racial differences between women. French Feminism thus found traction among feminist scholars to the extent that it was perceived as addressing some of U.S. feminism’s most pressing political issues. The second half of the dissertation traces French feminist scholars’ vehement rejection of French Feminism to an affectively charged split in the French women’s liberation movement of the 1970s and shows that this split has resulted in an entrenched opposition between sexual difference and materialist feminism, an opposition that continues to structure French feminist debates to this day. “Inventing ‘French Feminism:’ A Critical History” ends by arguing that in so far as the U.S. invention of French Feminism has contributed to the emergence of U.S. queer theory, it has also impeded its uptake in France. Taken as a whole, this dissertation thus implicitly argues that the transnational circulation of ideas is simultaneously generative and disabling.

Performance Information and Innovation in the Canadian Government (Working Paper 43)

The presentation made at the conference addressed the issue of linkages between performance information and innovation within the Canadian federal government1. This is a three‐part paper prepared as background to that presentation. • Part I provides an overview of three main sources of performance information - results-based systems, program evaluation, and centrally driven review exercises – and reviews the Canadian experience with them. • Part II identifies and discusses a number of innovation issues that are common to the literature reviewed for this paper. • Part III examines actual and potential linkages between innovation and performance information. This section suggests that innovation in the Canadian federal government tends to cluster into two groups: smaller initiatives driven by staff or middle management; and much larger projects involving major programs, whole departments or whole-of-government. Readily available data on smaller innovation projects is skimpy but suggests that performance information does not play a major role in stimulating these initiatives. In contrast, two of the examples of large-scale innovation show that performance information plays a critical role at all stages. The paper concludes by supporting the contention of others writing on this topic: that more research is needed on innovation, particularly on its link to performance information. In that context, other conclusions drawn in this paper are tentative but suggest that the quality of performance information is as important for innovation as it is for performance management. However, innovation is likely to require its own particular performance information that may not be generated on a routine basis for purposes of performance management, particularly in the early stages of innovation. And, while the availability of performance information can be an important success factor in innovation, it does not stand alone. The commonality of a number of other factors identified in the literature surveyed for this paper strongly suggests that equal if not greater priority needs to be given to attenuating factors that inhibit innovation and to nurturing incentives.

The Impact of Geographic Mobility on Canadian Military families and their Children’s Access Special Education Services

To achieve academic success, children with learning-related disabilities often receive special education supports at school. Currently, Canada does not have a federal department or integrated national system of education. Instead, each province and territory has a separate department or ministry that is responsible for the organization and delivery of education, including special education, at the elementary level. At the macro (national) level, inclusive education is the policy across Canada. However, each province and territory has its own legislation, definitions, and policies mandating special education services. These variations result in little consistency at the micro (individual school) level. Differences between eligibility requirements, supports offered, and delivery methods may present challenges for highly mobile families who must navigate new special education systems on behalf of their children with medical or learning challenges. One of the defining features of the Canadian military lifestyle is geographic mobility. As a result, many families are tasked with navigating new school systems for their children, a task that may be more difficult when children require special education services. The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of geographic mobility on Canadian military families and their children’s access to special education services. The secondary objective was to gain insight into supports that helped facilitate access to services, as well as supports that participants believe would have helped facilitate access. A qualitative approach, interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA), was employed due to of its focus on individuals’ experiences and their understandings of a particular phenomenon. IPA allowed participants to reflect on the significance of their experiences, while the researcher engaged with these reflections to make sense of the meanings associated with their experiences. Nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with civilian caregivers who have a child with special education needs. An interview guide and probes were used to elicit rich, detailed, first-person accounts of their experiences navigating new special education systems. The main themes that emerged from the participants’ combined experiences addressed the emotional components of experiencing a transition, factors that may facilitate access to special education services, and career implications associated with accessing and maintaining special education services. Findings from the study illustrate that Canadian families experience many, and often times severe, barriers to accessing special education services after a posting. Furthermore, the impacts reported throughout the study echo the existing American literature on geographic mobility and access to special education services. Building on the literature, this study also highlights the need for further research exploring factors that create unique barriers to access in a Canadian context, resulting from the current special education climate, military policies, and military family support services.

Proving My Competency One Test at a Time: Internationally Educated Nurses and the Canadian English Language Benchmark Assessment for Nurses

Abstract Professional language assessment is a new concept that has great potential to benefit Internationally Educated Professionals and the communities they serve. This thesis reports on a qualitative study that examined the responses of 16 Canadian English Language Benchmark Assessment for Nurses (CELBAN) test-takers on the topic of their perceptions of the CELBAN test-taking experience in Ontario in the winter of 2015. An Ontario organization involved in registering participants distributed an e-mail through their listserv. Thematic analyses of focus group and interview transcripts identified 7 themes from the data. These themes were used to inform conclusions to the following questions: (1) How do IENs characterize their assessment experience? (2) How do IENs describe the testing constructs measured by the CELBAN? (3) What, if any, potential sources of construct irrelevant variance (CIV) do the test-takers describe based on their assessment experience? (4) Do IENs feel that the CELBAN tasks provide a good reflection of the types of communicative tasks required of a nurse? Overall, participants reported positive experiences with the CELBAN as an assessment of their language skills, and noted some instances in which they felt some factors external to the assessment impacted their demonstration of their knowledge and skill. Lastly, some test-takers noted the challenge of completing the CELBAN where the types of communicative nursing tasks included in the assessment differed from nursing tasks typical of an IENs country or origin. The findings are discussed in relation to literature on high-stakes large-scale assessment and IEPs, and a set of recommendations are offered to future CELBAN administration. These recommendations include (1) the provision of a webpage listing all licensure requirements (2) monitoring of CELBAN location and dates in relation to the wider certification timeline for applicants (3) The provision of additional CELBAN preparatory materials (4) Minor changes to the CELBAN administrative protocols. Given that the CELBAN is a relatively new assessment format and its widespread use for high-stakes decisions (a component of nursing certification and licensure), research validating IEN-test-taker responses to construct representation and construct irrelevant variance is critical to our understanding of the role of competency testing for IENs.

British Romantic Criticism and the Fine Arts: A Study in Philosophical Theories of Literary Unity

This dissertation is an exploration of how a small but important group of Romantic critics, finding fault in the ideal of three unities developed by neoclassical Academicians and wrongly attributed to Aristotle, turned to the terminology and practices of the fine arts to emphasize their conception of organic unity in literature. The Romantic analogy to painting in particular enables a philosophical criticism of literature to present the aesthetic semblance of painting, the comprehension of a multitude of details in a harmonious whole that is a natural unity to its medium, as a paradigm of modern-romantic poetry and its aspirations to similar complexity, particularity, and imaginative colour. Further, in extension of the French Querelle des anciens et des modernes of the seventeenth century, the division of ancient and romantic art by Romantic critics like August Schlegel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Hazlitt not only establishes an ethnological and historical difference between the artistic productions of these two cultural periods but also allows, unlike the neoclassical unities, a non-anachronistic philosophical vocabulary of whole and parts or of the general and particular in the criticism of poetry, which involution provides a “rule” more consonant with the laws of the imagination rather than with the rhetorical and absolutist dicta that were thither available in the literary canon.

Conjuring Canadas: Historians and the Quest to Define a Canadian Nation and its Past, 1920-1967

This dissertation examines the various ways in which Canadian historical researchers confronted the “Canada question,” namely the challenge of defining the basis of a unified national community. In doing so, it follows the scholarship and activities of a network of historians and intellectuals centred on the Canadian Historical Review, a quarterly publication founded in 1920. This study examines their scholarship with the aim of identifying not only the various solutions they posed to the problem, but also the philosophical undercurrents that informed their reasoning in the process. It also traces the rise of a rival network in the Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, a French-language historical publication founded in 1947 that by its very existence posed a significant challenge to the definition of the nation at the core of the Canadian Historical Review. This dissertation argues that the network bound together by the Review was engaged in a hegemonic project, one that sought to present a particular definition of Canada through a historical narrative that rested upon a liberal logic. Yet the greatest sustained challenge they faced in this endeavour emerged from Francophone historical scholars, who, although proposing vastly different Canadas to those imagined at the Canadian Historical Review, came under the sway of a number of liberal currents of thought as well. A detailed summary of the key traits of these liberal Canadas is found in the conclusion.

A HARD PUSH FOR SOFT SKILLS: AN EXAMINATION OF POLICY AND RESEARCH ON NON-COGNITIVE SKILLS IN CANADIAN K-12 SCHOOLING

Non-cognitive skills have caught the attention of current education policy writers in Canada. Within the last 10 years, almost every province has produced a document including the importance of supporting non-cognitive skills in K-12 students in the classroom. Although often called different names (such as learning skills, cross curricular competencies, and 20th Century Skills) and occasionally viewed through different lenses (such as emotional intelligence skills, character skills, and work habits), what unifies non-cognitive skills within the policy documents is the claim that students that are strong in these skills are more successful in academic achievement and are more successful in post-secondary endeavors. Though the interest from policy-makers and educators is clear, there are still many questions about non-cognitive skills that have yet to be answered. These include: What skills are the most important for teacher’s to support in the classroom? What are these skills’ exact contributions to student success? How can teachers best support these skills? Are there currently reliable and valid measures of these skills? These are very important questions worth answering if Canadian teachers are expected to support non-cognitive skills in their classrooms with an already burdened workload. As well, it can begin to untangle the plethora of research that exists within the non-cognitive realm. Without a critical look at the current literature, it is impossible to ensure that these policies are effective in Canadian classrooms, and to see an alignment between research and policy. Upon analysis of Canadian curriculum, five non-cognitive skills were found to be the most prevalent among many of the provinces: Self-Regulation, Collaboration, Initiative, Responsibility and Creativity. The available research literature was then examined to determine the utility of teaching these skills in the classroom (can students improve on these skills, do these skills impact other aspects of students’ lives, and are there methods to validly and reliably assess these skills). It was found that Self-Regulation and Initiative had the strongest basis for being implemented in the classroom. On the other hand, Creativity still requires a lot more justification in terms of its impact on students’ lives and ability to assess in the classroom.

Correlation between anxiety and academic self-concept in interpreter trainees

This paper focuses on two basic issues: the anxiety-generating nature of the interpreting task and the relevance of interpreter trainees’ academic self-concept. The first has already been acknowledged, although not extensively researched, in several papers, and the second has only been mentioned briefly in interpreting literature. This study seeks to examine the relationship between the anxiety and academic self-concept constructs among interpreter trainees. An adapted version of the Foreign Language Anxiety Scale (Horwitz et al., 1986), the Academic Autoconcept Scale (Schmidt, Messoulam & Molina, 2008) and a background information questionnaire were used to collect data. Students’ t-Test analysis results indicated that female students reported experiencing significantly higher levels of anxiety than male students. No significant gender difference in self-concept levels was found. Correlation analysis results suggested, on the one hand, that younger would-be interpreters suffered from higher anxiety levels and students with higher marks tended to have lower anxiety levels; and, on the other hand, that younger students had lower self-concept levels and higher-ability students held higher self-concept levels. In addition, the results revealed that students with higher anxiety levels tended to have lower self-concept levels. Based on these findings, recommendations for interpreting pedagogy are discussed.