Unexpected allies: advancing literacy in a ‘Science-English’ cross-curricular context

Critical reading of science-based media reports is an authentic context in which to explore the mutual interests of teachers of science and English, who want to use science in the media to promote their subject discipline while encouraging cross-curricular learning. This empirical study focused on 90 teachers of science and English to explore their aptitude and capability for critical reading of science-based news reports. The influences of specialist subject culture and the extent of classroom experience contributed to the distinctive nature of the responses. The study revealed features in critical reading that were characteristic of the subject background of the participants. It suggested approaches to initial teacher education and ongoing professional development that would be mutually beneficial to teachers from different disciplines in promoting among pupils a critical approach to science-related news media.

Unheard Voices: Stories from the Troubles

Produced in association with WAVE Trauma Centre, this short film records the experiences of six victims and survivors of the Northern Irish Troubles. Filmed and edited collaboratively, UV addresses issues of trauma, loss, justice and recovery. The story-tellers range from a police widow, to the brother of a sectarian victim, to a youth worker who lost is legs in an explosion. This film has been screened, with public discussions, between 2010 and 2012 by the Good Relations Departments of the following Borough and City Councils - Belfast, Derry/Londonderry, Lisburn, Ballymena, Coleraine, Moyle and Newtownabbey. It has also been screened at the Hallwells Contemporary Arts Centre, Buffalo, and at St Bonaventure University, NY (2012)

http://www.wavetraumacentre.org.uk/about-us/wave-projects/unheard-voices

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This 30 minute documentary film was produced in collaboration with WAVE Trauma Centre, Belfast. Working closely with six survivors of the Troubles violence in Northern Ireland through all stages of production and exhibition, the film contributes to on-going discussions about dealing with the conflicted past in a contested present. The role of storytelling, identified by two government reports – the Bloomfield Report and the Eames-Bradley Report - as an important method of addressing the violent past, is one of the key research questions involved in the research. Public screenings and discussions have been organised by the Good Relations Departments of seven borough councils (Belfast, Lisburn, Derry, Ballymena, Newtownabbey, Coleraine and Moyle). The film has also been screened in New York State and London. One of the recurring themes brought up in these public discussions in the role and limits of storytelling alongside the legal issues of justice, prosecutions and reparations. An accompanying co-written article with PhD student, Jolene Mairs, 'Unheard Voices' in Mc Keogh, C. and O'Connel, D. (eds) (2012) Documentary in a Changing State,Cork University Press, is part of the portfolio presented for REF.

From an American Plantation to Interwar Poland: How Uncle Remus Became Bam-Bo the Negro

The article opens with the introduction of Joel Chandler Harris and his literary output. As one of “local colourists,” Harris depicted American plantation life in 19th-century Georgia and included many cultural as well as folk elements in his works. The following analysis of his stories about Uncle Remus focuses on (1) the levels of narration; (2) the linguistic complexity of the text (the stories abound in slang and dialectal expressions); (3) the form; and (4) the folklore value. These four aspects guide the discussion of the only Polish translation of the Uncle Remus stories. Prepared by Wladyslawa Wielinska in 1929, it was addressed to children. Therefore, the article aims to determine the profile of the translation as a children’s book, to consider it in relation to the skopos of the source text and to establish the extent to which it preserved the peculiar character of the Uncle Remus stories.

The Church of Scotland and the English apocalyptic imagination, 1630-1650

This article explores the evolution of the eschatological identity of the Church of Scotland within the framework of English puritan apocalyptic thought in the period 1630–50. From the beginnings of reformation, English protestant theologians constructed an elaborate series of readings of Biblical apocalyptic texts through which they attempted to understand contemporary events. By the 1630s, English puritan exegetes had begun to identify within the Biblical text a distinctive role for Scottish Presbyterianism. The Scottish church, which, in the opinion of many English puritans, moved towards a more rigorously reformed ecclesiology as the 1630s progressed, was identified as a harbinger of the millennial glory that English puritans would shortly share. But as the relationship between Parliament and Presbytery turned sour, English puritans increasingly identified the Scottish church as the apocalyptic menace that stood in the way of their millennial fulfilment – a feeling made vivid in the rhetoric of the Cromwellian invasion.