‘No one is safe from the beggar’s pack’: Portability and Precarity

Author(s):  
Emily Ridge

Chapter 3 traces the progressive alignment of portability with precarity from the late 1920s to the 1940s against a backdrop of political instability. The unfolding crisis of mass displacement across Europe served to reduce earlier literary fantasies of travelling light to nightmarish visions of involuntary exodus. These changing resonances are perceptible in the pointed obfuscations of tropes of tourism, adventure and dispossession in 1930s literature as well as the noticeable intrusion of the figure of the refugee on the artistic consciousness. If luggage becomes a figurative focal point in the works of political exiles and refugees, it is not in aid of a fantasy of creative renewal but of material, cultural and individual preservation. The chapter ends with an analysis of the fictional and non-fictional work of Elizabeth Bowen, with the inclusion of an extended close reading of The House in Paris as an updated version of Forster’s Howards End in a troubled 1930s context.

2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-452
Author(s):  
Henrike Manuwald

Abstract The ›Rennewart‹ by Ulrich von Türheim describes a daily habit Willehalm pursues shortly before his death: vespertine walks that help him to say his prayers fully. The description of this routine serves as the focal point for studying how the text frames different forms of religious life in addition to the contrast between chivalric and monastic or eremitic forms of life. The article argues that the main issue in the text is not establishing a hierarchy between different forms of life, but rather addressing the question to what extent an individual can adapt established forms of life. Drawing both on a close reading of the moniage part of the text and on a reconstruction of the cultural semantics of promenading, the article interprets Willehalm’s habit of walking as an idiosyncratic practice of religious life.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Corbit ◽  
Chris Moore

Abstract The integration of first-, second-, and third-personal information within joint intentional collaboration provides the foundation for broad-based second-personal morality. We offer two additions to this framework: a description of the developmental process through which second-personal competence emerges from early triadic interactions, and empirical evidence that collaboration with a concrete goal may provide an essential focal point for this integrative process.


Author(s):  
R. W. Carpenter ◽  
I.Y.T. Chan ◽  
J. M. Cowley

Wide-angle convergent beam shadow images(CBSI) exhibit several characteristic distortions resulting from spherical aberration. The most prominent is a circle of infinite magnification resulting from rays having equal values of a forming a cross-over on the optic axis at some distance before reaching the paraxial focal point. This distortion is called the tangential circle of infinite magnification; it can be used to align and stigmate a STEM and to determine Cs for the probe forming lens. A second distortion, the radial circle of infinite magnification, results from a cross-over on the lens caustic surface of rays with differing values of ∝a, also before the paraxial focal point of the lens.


Author(s):  
Gertrude F. Rempfer

I became involved in electron optics in early 1945, when my husband Robert and I were hired by the Farrand Optical Company. My husband had a mathematics Ph.D.; my degree was in physics. My main responsibilities were connected with the development of an electrostatic electron microscope. Fortunately, my thesis research on thermionic and field emission, in the late 1930s under the direction of Professor Joseph E. Henderson at the University of Washington, provided a foundation for dealing with electron beams, high vacuum, and high voltage.At the Farrand Company my co-workers and I used an electron-optical bench to carry out an extensive series of tests on three-electrode electrostatic lenses, as a function of geometrical and voltage parameters. Our studies enabled us to select optimum designs for the lenses in the electron microscope. We early on discovered that, in general, electron lenses are not “thin” lenses, and that aberrations of focal point and aberrations of focal length are not the same. I found electron optics to be an intriguing blend of theory and experiment. A laboratory version of the electron microscope was built and tested, and a report was given at the December 1947 EMSA meeting. The micrograph in fig. 1 is one of several which were presented at the meeting. This micrograph also appeared on the cover of the January 1949 issue of Journal of Applied Physics. These were exciting times in electron microscopy; it seemed that almost everything that happened was new. Our opportunities to publish were limited to patents because Mr. Farrand envisaged a commercial instrument. Regrettably, a commercial version of our laboratory microscope was not produced.


Author(s):  
P.M. Houpt ◽  
A. Draaijer

In confocal microscopy, the object is scanned by the coinciding focal points (confocal) of a point light source and a point detector both focused on a certain plane in the object. Only light coming from the focal point is detected and, even more important, out-of-focus light is rejected.This makes it possible to slice up optically the ‘volume of interest’ in the object by moving it axially while scanning the focused point light source (X-Y) laterally. The successive confocal sections can be stored in a computer and used to reconstruct the object in a 3D image display.The instrument described is able to scan the object laterally with an Ar ion laser (488 nm) at video rates. The image of one confocal section of an object can be displayed within 40 milliseconds (1000 х 1000 pixels). The time to record the total information within the ‘volume of interest’ normally depends on the number of slices needed to cover it, but rarely exceeds a few seconds.


Author(s):  
Firas Massaad ◽  
Frédéric Dierick ◽  
Adélaïde van den Hecke ◽  
Christine Detrembleur

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 167-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvie Vincent-Höper ◽  
Sabine Gregersen ◽  
Albert Nienhaus

Abstract: In recent years, transformational leadership as a health-related factor has become a focal point of interest in research and practice. However, the pathways and mechanisms underlying this association are not yet well understood. In order to gain knowledge on how or why transformational leadership and employee well-being are associated, we investigated the mediating effect of the work characteristics role clarity and predictability. The study was carried out on 618 employees working in the health-care sector in Germany. We tested the mediator effect using structural equation modeling. The results indicate that role clarity and predictability fully mediate the relation between transformational leadership and negative indicators of well-being. These results give credit to the notion that work characteristics play an important role in identifying health-relevant aspects of leadership behavior. Our findings advance the understanding of how to enhance employee well-being and have implications for the design of leadership-related interventions of workplace health promotion.


CounterText ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-238
Author(s):  
Nicholas Birns

This piece explores the fiction of John Kinsella, describing how it both complements and differs from his poetry, and how it speaks to the various aspect of his literary and artistic identity, After delineating several characteristic traits of Kinsella's fictional oeuvre, and providing a close reading of one of Kinsella's Graphology poems to give a sense of his current lyrical praxis, the balance of the essay is devoted to a close analysis of Hotel Impossible, the Kinsella novella included in this issue of CounterText. In Hotel Impossible Kinsella examines the assets and liabilities of cosmopolitanism through the metaphor of the all-inclusive hotel that envelops humanity in its breadth but also constrains through its repressive, generalising conformity. Through the peregrinations of the anti-protagonist Pilgrim, as he works out his relationships with Sister and the Watchmaker, we see how relationships interact with contemporary institutions of power. In a style at once challenging and accessible, Kinsella presents a fractured mirror of our own reality.


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