Touching the Deep Past

ABSTRACT

The nineteenth century was fascinated with the display of human remains in museums. The most celebrated of such exhibits was the Egyptian mummy, which served as the subject of a range of sensorial investigations. Museum mummies were gawked at and sometimes handled by museum goers. Outside of the museum, mummy unwrappings were popular public spectacles. Travelers to Egypt often brought back a mummy hand or foot as an essential tourist souvenir. Scientists, for their part endeavored to categorize mummies by their varying colors, textures, and aromas. These multisensory responses to the mummy were complemented by fictional accounts in which revivified mummies were depicted as exerting their own tactile power over their modern handlers. Such practices and stories point to a desire to physically connect with a bygone world in a modern age—a desire often accompanied by a fear of such contact with the past proving overwhelming. The fact that mummies might be regarded as trophies of conquest by imperialist Europeans suggests that the concern with touching and being touched by the mummy also represented a Western ambivalence towards colonial subjects.     

Internalized homophobia and depression in lesbian women: The protective role of pride

This study sought to examine the association between internalized homophobia and depressive symptoms in lesbian women, and establish whether such a relationship was mediated by collective self-esteem, self-esteem, and self-disclosure. Participants were 225 self-identified lesbian women in the community. Structural equation modeling was used to demonstrate that an underlying construct, labeled pride, reflected participants’ levels of self-esteem, collective self-esteem, and self-disclosure. Internalized homophobia was moderately and negatively predictive of pride, and pride was strongly and negatively predictive of depression. Results highlight the potentially protective role of pride in the prevention of depression among lesbian women.     

What's Fair Is Fair? Role of Justice in Family Labor Allocation Decisions

ABSTRACT

The theoretical basis on which wives and husbands in the United States evaluate the fairness of the division of household labor is explored. Based on distributive justice theory, separate interviews with wives and husbands are conducted to identify and define the household inputs or contributions that are valued as well as the underlying justice principles that guide household labor allocations. The findings suggest considerable variation in the value placed on household chores and the underlying justice principles used when allocating housework. Gendered expectations also play an important role in these allocations.     

Conflict or Divorce? Does Parental Conflict and/or Divorce Increase the Likelihood of Adult Children's Cohabiting and Marital Dissolution?

The short- and long-term effects of family structure on child well-being remains a hotly contested area among both researchers and policymakers. Although previous research documents that children of divorce are more prone to divorce themselves, much of this research has been plagued by multiple data and analytic problems. A second problematic issue relates to whether it is the divorce per se that leads to increased divorce or rather the conflict that may precede the divorce. In this article we examine whether children who experience parental conflict and/or divorce are more likely to experience a cohabiting breakup or divorce as adults compared with children from low conflict and/or intact families. Our examination improves on past research by using a three-wave longitudinal data set and by controlling for predivorce family characteristics, including the conflict between parents before divorce. We extend previous research on the effect of parental conflict and divorce on adult children's likelihood of divorce by also examining the likelihood of a cohabiting dissolution.     

Nine-year psychiatric trajectories and substance use outcomes: an application of the group-based modeling approach

This study identifies longitudinal psychiatric trajectories of 934 adult individuals entering chemical dependency treatment in a private, managed care health plan and examines the relationship of these trajectories with substance use (SU) outcomes. The authors apply a group-based modeling approach to identify trajectory groups based on repeated measures of psychiatric severity for 9 years and identify four distinct groups. Results of multivariate logistic generalized estimating equation models find an association between psychiatric trajectories and long-term SU. Older cohorts and life course measures of marital status and employment status as individuals changed over time are related to drug and some alcohol outcomes.