Heterotopic Proliferation in E. S. Thomson’s Jem Flockhart Series

This article explores the convergence, inversion, and collapse of heterotopic spaces in E. S. Thomson’s neo-Victorian Jem Flockhart series about a cross-dressing female apothecary in mid-nineteenth-century London. The eponymous first-person narrator becomes embroiled in the detection of horrific murder cases, with the action traversing a wide range of Michel Foucault’s exemplary Other spaces, including hospitals, graveyards, brothels, prisons, asylums, and colonies, with the series substituting the garden for Foucault’s ship as the paradigmatic heterotopia. These myriad juxtaposed sites, which facilitate divergence from societal norms while seemingly sequestering forms of alterity and resistance, repeatedly merge into one another in Thomson’s novels, destabilising distinct kinds of heterotopias and heterotopic functions. Jem’s doubled queerness as a cross-dressing lesbian beloved by their Watsonean side-kick, the junior architect William Quartermain, complicates the protagonist’s role in helping readers negotiate the re-imagined Victorian metropolis and its unequal power structures. Simultaneously defending/reaffirming and contesting/subverting the status quo, Jem’s body itself becomes a microcosmic heterotopia, problematising the elision of agency in Foucault’s conceptualisation of the term. The proliferation of heterotopias in Thomson’s series suggests that neo-Victorian fiction reconfigures the nineteenth century into a vast network of confining, contested, and liberating Other spaces.

First person – Hannah Black and Rachel Livingstone

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Hannah Black and Rachel Livingstone are co-first authors on ‘ Knockout of syntaxin-4 in 3T3-L1 adipocytes reveals new insight into GLUT4 trafficking and adiponectin secretion’, published in JCS. Hannah conducted the research described in this article while a PhD student in Professor Nia Bryant and Professor Gwyn Gould's lab at the Henry Wellcome Laboratory for Cell Biology, University of Glasgow, UK. She is now a postdoc in the lab of Professor Nia Bryant at the Department of Biology, University of York, UK, investigating membrane trafficking of the glucose transporter protein GLUT4. Rachel is a PhD student in the lab of Professor Gwyn Gould at the Henry Wellcome Laboratory for Cell Biology, University of Glasgow, UK, where she is also investigating membrane trafficking of GLUT4.

Contributions of Body-Orientation to Mental Ball Dropping Task During Out-of-Body Experiences

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) provide fascinating insights into our understanding of bodily self-consciousness and the workings of the brain. Studies that examined individuals with brain lesions reported that OBEs are generally characterized by participants experiencing themselves outside their physical body (i.e., disembodied feeling) (Blanke and Arzy, 2005). Based on such a characterization, it has been shown that it is possible to create virtual OBEs in immersive virtual environments (Ehrsson, 2007; Ionta et al., 2011b; Bourdin et al., 2017). However, the extent to which body-orientation influences virtual OBEs is not well-understood. Thus, in the present study, 30 participants (within group design) experienced a full-body ownership illusion (synchronous visuo-tactile stimulation only) induced with a gender-matched full-body virtual avatar seen from the first-person perspective (1PP). At the beginning of the experiment, participants performed a mental ball dropping (MBD) task, seen from the location of their virtual avatar, to provide a baseline measurement. After this, a full-body ownership illusion (embodiment phase) was induced in all participants. This was followed by the virtual OBE illusion phase of the experiment (disembodiment phase) in which the first-person viewpoint was switched to a third-person perspective (3PP), and participants' disembodied viewpoint was gradually raised to 14 m above the virtual avatar, from which altitude they repeated the MBD task. During the experiment, this procedure was conducted twice, and the participants were allocated first to the supine or the standing body position at random. Results of the MBD task showed that the participants experienced increased MBD durations during the supine condition compared to the standing condition. Furthermore, although the findings from the subjective reports confirmed the previous findings of virtual OBEs, no significant difference between the two postures was found for body ownership. Taken together, the findings of the current study make further contributions to our understanding of both the vestibular system and time perception during OBEs.

First person – Mira Kuzmić

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Mira Kuzmić is first author on ‘ Septin-microtubule association via a motif unique to isoform 1 of septin 9 tunes stress fibers’, published in JCS. Mira conducted the research described in this article while a post-doc in the lab of Dr Ali Badache and Dr Pascal Verdier-Pinard's at Centre de Recherche en Cancérologie de Marseille (CRCM), France. Her life's vocation is cancer research.

Strategies, Tips, and Language to Support Parent and Educators Through the IEP Process

This chapter provides strategies, tips, and language through the IEP process from the first person perspective of a parent turned parent-advocate. This chapter shares with educators what the experience is like from a parent side of the table and the emotions involved. It also is meant to help build a knowledge base for parents and encouragement from the author's perspective as a parent. Lastly, this chapter shows that there are ways to bring the student's voice into their IEP regardless of their communication ability.

Building an Extended Reality Pedagogical Continuum Through 180° First-Person Point-of-View Video

The advancement of virtual reality (VR) technology for educational instruction and curricular (re)design have become highly attractive and newly demanding areas of both the technology and healthcare industries. However, the quickly evolving field is still learning about each of the associated VR technologies, whether they are evidence-based, and how they are validated to decrease cognitive load and in turn increase student/learner comprehension. Likewise, the instructional (re)design of the content that the student/learner is exposed to in VR, and whether it is immersive, and promotes memorable content and experiences can influence their learning outcomes. Here the Revinax® Handbook content library that is displayed in an immersive virtual reality application in first-person point-of-view (IVRA-FPV) is contrasted with third-person point-of-view (IVRA-TPV) through VR headsets to an individual, and computer displays to many individuals along with augmented reality (AR) are evaluated as emerging advancements in the field of VR and AR.

Autofiction and Shishōsetsu: Women Writers and Reinventing the Self

This chapter explores the shared characteristics, both in terms of thematic concerns and narrative structures and strategies, of autofiction and the distinct Japanese form of the I-novel, shishōsetsu. Focusing on the works of three contemporary Japanese writers, Kanai Mieko, Sagisawa Megumu, and Mizumura Minae, it examines the narrative strategies applied by female authors to redefine the self. The chapter focuses on the traits shared by shishōsetsu and autofiction: the ambiguity of first-person narratives such as the semantics of “I” within the text; the interdependence of author, narrator, and protagonist; the practices of fictionalizing the self; and the question of authorship. Exploring shishōsetsu as an autofictional form also expands the scope of existing theoretical discussions on the autofictional, which rarely take Japanese literature into consideration.