He's in a New Neighborhood Now: Religious Fantasy Themes About Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

Fred Rogers' death prompted many of his fans to post tributes to him and his show, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, on the PBSkids.org Web site. Fantasy theme analysis was conducted for specifically religious themes on tributes posted during the 1st week after his death. Themes fell into one of three broad classifications. The first category, religious attribution, included applying directly religious meaning to Rogers and the program. Fans spoke of Rogers as "saintly," an "angel," and "sent from Heaven," along with other fantasy chains. The second category, religious language, included comments about prayers and blessings and the use of religious phrases. The third, religious ideals, provided a category for themes related to the program's moral values and Rogers' "compassion" and "personal character." Findings suggest long-term impact of the program's values on viewers of many ages. They also show that a group of fans reflected on Rogers' noble character by participating in a social reality constructed of religious metaphors.     

Creating,Sustaining, or Dispelling Misconceptions: Discourse Analysis of Mainstream Print Media's Coverage of Obama's Religious Identity

This study considered the role the mainstream print media has played in creating, sustaining, or dispelling the confusion among some Americans regarding President Barack Obama's religious identity. Employing a qualitative discourse analysis of coverage of Obama's religious identity, the study noted several distinct themes, including current faith practices, connections to history, blame game, otherness, politicization, and Muslim connections. A number of articles failed to capture the social, political, and historical contexts of the issue. This failure resulted in coverage that implicitly accepted the questions' legitimacy surrounding the President's religion and delegitimized his beliefs. Other coverage legitimated the confusion over his religious identity by focusing on Obama's “nontraditional” path to Christianity. Such coverage accentuated Obama's otherness, and created the potential for distrust and doubt. The study concluded that the coverage Obama received from the mainstream print media played an important but inconsistent role in dispelling the confusion over his religious identity.     

Poetry of the Swamp: Blok’s “Folks” Cycle Bubbles of the Earth

Gogol'’s “A Few Words about Pushkin” has traditionally been viewed as evidence that Gogol' idolized Pushkin as a national poet par excellence. This article argues that behind Gogol'’s deference for Russia’s greatest poet lie layers of polemic and subversive iconoclasm. Though he initially proclaims Pushkin Russia’s national poet, Gogol' goes on to use his trademark rhetorical tools to effectively strip the poet of the honour. In doing so, he attempts to influence the reception of his own writings, which at the time predominantly concerned Ukrainian themes, in ways that would encourage his Russian audience to consider him—and not Pushkin—as Russia’s premier national writer. Countering Pushkin’s Russocentric model of national culture, Gogol' champions instead a centrifugal conception of national-imperial identity that places Russia’s imperial periphery at the center of the “Russian” experience.     

Searching for Yellowstone1

This experimental, layered, mixed‐genre narrative folds my biographical experiences into a critical reading of Wallace Stegner's autobiographical account of his childhood. This reading allows me to discuss three versions of the midcentury white male middle‐class American dream. I compare Stegner's father to my father and my grandfather, as I discuss a trip I almost made to Yellowstone Park with my grandfather before he died.     

Donald Edwin Super: The Career of a Planful Explorer

Donald Edwin Super was a member of the National Career Development Association from 1934 to 1994, a full 60 years. Starting at midcentury, his writings and lectures provided the main impetus to expand vocational guidance to encompass career counseling. This article, structured around the five stages in Super's life stage model and narrated in the language of vocational development tasks that he identified and researched, tells the story of Super's own career development and extrapolates the major themes in his unparalleled career as a vocational psychologist and career counselor.     

The Social Psychology of Robert E. Park: Human Nature,Self, Personality and Social Structure

Robert E. Park is widely recognized today for his contributions to urban sociology, race relations and collective behavior but his social psychology has been largely neglected. Park's inclusive and loose framework covered his interest in: (1) human nature and the bio-physiological instincts which for him were raw materials of personality; (2) formulation of self concept as an organization of roles; and (3) micro-macro linkages between individual and social structure. Each one of Park's three themes is still important for symbolic interaction theory and offers insights into contemporary investigations of emotions, role acquisition and identity.     

Revisiting 'communities in Britain'

In this article I re‐examine Frankenberg’s Communities in Britain (1966) and his use of a ‘morphological continuum’ within his analysis. This analysis is itself a re‐assessment of some influential community studies conducted within the British Isles. I look at some particular ideas within the more theoretical part of this book, especially the ideas of ‘social redundancy’ and the distinction between ‘complex’ and ‘complicated’. I then consider some themes arising from some more recent studies. These themes include identity, networks and social capital and time and I argue that Frankenberg's analysis can still provide the reader with useful tools to think through the ideas and practices of community.     

Analyzing Children's Learning and Development in Everyday Settings from a Cultural-Historical Wholeness Approach

The main point in this article is to conceptualise how demands connected to children's life conditions influence both children and caregivers. To pursue this aim I advocate an extension of Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory of children's learning and development. Vygotsky pursued a wholeness approach to children's development with his concept of “the child's social situation of development” as the child's dialectic experiential and motivational relation with his or her surrounding. This conception I extend with the concepts of institutional practice and activity setting. The conditions for children's activities are the institutional practice and its activity settings. But a child's activities in these settings also has to be seen from the child's perspective, that is, his or her motive orientation. To focus on the child's motive within an activity setting—requires the researcher to focus on the child's social situation of development to discern how the dialectic between the child's orientation within an activity setting and the demands from the setting and other persons influence the child's activities within the child's zone of proximal development.     

Peter Kireevskii and the Development of Moscow Slavophilism

Abstract

Although the name of the folklorist Peter Kireevskii is well known to historians of nineteenth-century Russia, comparatively little has been written about his place within the Slavophile circle. Some scholars have treated him as the 'first' Slavophile. Others have questioned whether his views were in any sense really Slavophile at all. This article argues that Peter Kireevskii's life-long interest in Russian folklore was rooted both in his understanding of the Russian countryside and his exposure to the influence of a Russian Romantic tradition that viewed the narod as the authentic representative of national identity. It suggests that Kireevskii was from his youth convinced that Russia possessed a culture and history that was equal in value to any country in the West, but that it was only in the late 1830s that he stressed the role played by Orthodoxy in shaping Russia's development. Although his mature views brought him closer to the Slavophile 'mainstream', there were always some elements that set him apart, perhaps reflecting the fact that Slavophilism was a more eclectic and diverse phenomenon than sometimes realized.     

Suffering and generativity: Repairing threats to self in old age

Suffering is a powerful experience that can be difficult to articulate. Suffering differs from pain alone and includes an individual's awareness of a threat to self through death, loss of identity, or uncertainty of the meaningfulness of one's life. In response to this threat, generative acts, especially creative expressions imbued with the self, may act as a means to repair the self in crisis. The case of Mr. A, an 85-year old man in good health, illustrates how various artistic pieces he created – a wooden dog and several poems – helps him to restore a “fading” self. For Mr. A. the idea of “fading away” or becoming weaker and less useful until eventually disappearing is a major source of personal suffering. Through his art, he creates unique, interactive and tangible entities that can outlive his physical body and help him reclaim or repair threats to selfhood.     

GERMAN BY VIRTUE OF OTHERS: THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY IN THREE DEBATES

This paper argues that German identity is primarily constructed in opposition to a negative ‘other’, with ‘the Jew’ as prototypical other. The general trajectory of German identity construction throughout the 1980s and 1990s was towards the normalization of German identity, a mending in response to the radical break in German history by the Nazi regime and the Holocaust. This development will be traced through three debates that crosscut the realms of professional scholarship and the public – the Historians' Debate of 1985/86, the German unification debate of 1989 and the Goldhagen debate of 1996 – with focus on the contributions by professional scholars. The basic dichotomous structure of self-other is complicated by recurring themes in the construction of contemporary German identity. Three central themes or problems are identified in the debates: efforts at exclusively positive definitions of German identity, the definition of German identity in relation to a negative other and the location of the Holocaust in German history. The focus in the interpretation of these themes is on the subtle changes of identity over time, conceptualized in terms of repetition with change. The essay closes with a plea for a more open and inclusive definition of German identity and some thoughts on the role of the public intellectual in German society.     

Sociology of Humor and a Critical Dramaturgy

Goffman's analytic framework can provide tools useful for a critical theory of modern society. While commentators have remarked on Goffman's apparent technical neutrality, a sociology of humor can help reveal his critical thrust. Using a latent content analysis, we demonstrate how several frames found in Jerry Seinfeld's humor are both dramaturgical and covertly critical. We use these themes to illuminate the critical analyses of modern social life provided by Goffman's method.     

Being a man in long term care

PurposeMen tend to represent a distinct minority in long term care (LTC) facilities. Here we explore men's seldom examined experience in LTC.Design and methodsAs part of a major study of Bereavement in Long Term Care, we focus on 21 men who live in five LTC facilities (assisted living facilities and nursing homes). Transcribed qualitative, in-person interviews are examined using standard qualitative analytic methods.ResultsThrough multiple rounds of coding three inter-related themes emerged as salient. (1) Men's work experience as central to their sense of identity. (2) The presence of a wife often is associated with men's sense of couplehood and of feeling protective. (3) Men often regulate their relationships with other LTC residents.ImplicationsDiscussion examines how these three themes are related to men's maintenance of a masculine role in LTC.     

Making sense of collective identity and trauma through drawing: the case study of a Palestinian refugee student

Abstract

Identity construction can be very complex for refugee children, especially for Palestinian refugee children. For refugee children, organised violence and immigration are important parts of their life experience that can lead to trauma, which in turn influences how they construct their collective identity. Schools have to consider this specific experience as the development of a meaningful identity is an important factor in refugee students’ well-being and school adjustment. School-based activities centred on creative expression can help refugee students in expressing trauma and in making sense of their identity and migration experience. This paper presents the case study of a 9-year-old Palestinian refugee boy in Canada and explores how he expressed and made sense of his multiple identities in his drawings. Many features of the boy’s drawings evoked a wounded identity, especially spatial disorganisation and enmeshment. Data analysis revealed that the boy might have been experiencing collective identity trauma and that he used drawing and a peer as props to heal his wounded identity. Both drawing and the space offered by his teacher to safely explore and experiment with different identities contributed to the integration of his multiple identities into a meaningful whole, which contributed to his school adjustment.     

A Qualitative Study of Middle Eastern/Arab American Sexual Minority Identity Development

The development of one's sexual minority identity is often stunted by a heterosexist society. For individuals with multiple minority oppressions, this process becomes even more complicated. As such, there has been a call among researchers for more empirical research on the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) individuals from racial/ethnic minority groups. This study uses qualitative methods to fill gaps in the literature related to identity development among same-gender attracted Middle Eastern/Arab individuals living in the United States. From 12 interviews, 13 themes associated with intersectionality, race/ethnicity, sexual identity development, discrimination, stigma, oppression, and invisibility. Themes, subthemes, and their implications are discussed.     

Ten Poems of Mato Kosyk (1853–1940) Translated and Introduced

Abstract

Mato Kosyk, the foremost Lower Sorbian (Lower Wendish) poet, was born in 1853 in Werben, fifty miles south-east of Berlin. Despite the limits of his literary inheritance (mainly devotional texts and folklore) he began in his mid twenties to produce secular lyric poetry in profusion. At the age of thirty he emigrated to the USA, where he became a Lutheran pastor, but his poetic activity was interrupted only by his death in 1940. The ten poems of which translations are appended to the article span a period of over fifty years and reflect various chapters in the poet's life story. An unusual feature is the juxtaposition of Sorbian and American themes.     

Object relations couple therapy for a married Korean man with sexual dysfunction

This study uses James Donovan's object relations couple therapy to examine the triangle of focus (conflict style, couple characteristics, and family of origin) and triangle of conflict (anxiety, defence mechanisms, and hidden emotions) of a married Korean man with sexual dysfunction (reduced sexual desire, premature ejaculation, and erectile dysfunction). This qualitative study uses thematic analysis to identify, describe, and analyse a family therapy case study. The aim of this study is to examine the couple's interaction patterns and experiences of conflicts related to the husband's erectile dysfunction. The researchers induced patterns or topics by repeatedly reading and comparing the data. Then, they textualised and analysed the relevant data. To ensure the reliability and validity of the data analysis, the researchers conducted shared coding sessions to review and discuss the initial codes and the generated main themes and subthemes, triangulating the qualitative data. Findings show that a newlywed husband's sexual dysfunction is associated with his emotional resistance towards his wife's unilateral pursuit over their sexual relationship and the negative emotions triggered by their dysfunctional interactions. Further, couple characteristics, conflict style (dysfunctional interactions), and family-of-origin factors (transference and patrilocality) influenced their sexual relationship. Therefore, therapists who counsel Korean couples with sexual issues may pay attention to the sociocultural factors, interactional patterns, and psychological factors associated with unresolved issues with their families of origin.