Across continents or across the street: using local resources to cultivate intercultural awareness

This paper describes a project designed for college students unlikely to participate in international exchange programs but who, nonetheless, can learn much about intercultural communication through available resources in their own communities. The project involved a mentoring program between third and fourth year university students and first and second year ESL students at the same institution. The project was conducted over a 15‐week semester‐long course, and learning outcomes were documented through journal entries, written reflective statements, class discussions, oral presentations and instructor observations. A qualitative analysis of these data sources, framed through transformative learning theory, revealed outcomes leading to increased intercultural awareness. While engaging in face‐to‐face conversations, students transformed their prior knowledge about ‘others’ into a deeper understanding of themselves, their culture and their intercultural relationships.     

Gambling and the family: From the stress‐coping‐support Perspective 1

Abstract

Aims: To apply the stress‐coping‐support perspective to the study of the effects of problem gambling in the family. Specifically, to examine the ways in which family members cope and the nature and sources of support they receive. To compare coping strategies of family members of gamblers with those of individuals living with other addictive behaviour in the family. Design: Cross‐sectional interview and questionnaire study of close relatives of problem gamblers. Participants: Sixteen close family members of gamblers from separate families, mainly parents and partners. Data: Semi‐structured interview; adapted version of the Coping Questionnaire (CQ). Findings: Data from the CQ and qualitative analysis of interview data suggested considerable use of ‘engaged’ (specifically controlling) ways of attempting to cope with such problems, comparable to the use of such strategies by relatives of people with alcohol or drug problems, but little use of ‘tolerant‐accepting’ and ‘withdrawal’ ways. Interview data on the support received (or not) by family members confirmed previous research showing that relatives of people with addiction problems often feel unsupported, but particularly appreciate positive emotional and practical support for themselves and their problem gambling relatives. Conclusions: The stress‐coping‐support perspective, previously applied to families with alcohol and drug problems, also offers an appropriate framework for understanding problem gambling and the family.     

Affective Ankylosis and the Body in Fanon and Capécia

Frantz Fanon examines the function of affect to describe colonization as a mode of the production of the body. His idiosyncratic analysis adjusts prevailing conceptions of the body in affect theory, the psychoanalytic study of narcissism, and non-psychoanalytic theories of racialization. This article focuses on the temporality of retroaction that characterizes what he describes as “affective ankylosis,” and links this notion of affect to the process of racialization that organizes a body in the Lacanian mirror stage. Affect under colonial conditions detemporalizes the subject and petrifies a racial schema into a non-binary dual narcissism—leading to the conclusion that the black body is a version of, or name for, the white body. In the same clinical vein inaugurated by Fanon’s literary analysis, I contrast the affective ankylosis and one of its phenomenological manifestations, a neurotic “affective erethism,” to the imaginary exchange that the black Martinican novelist Mayotte Capécia recounts in her semi-autobiographical I Am a Martinican Woman, prefiguring therein the desire of the woman of color as excessive to those politics of the body that colonization renders unsubversive.     

Older LGBT Adult Training Panels: An Opportunity to Educate About Issues Faced by the Older LGBT Community

Older lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) adults face unique issues that can impede their well-being. Although many advances have helped address these issues, there is a need for education efforts that raise awareness of service providers about these issues. This study explores evaluation data of training panels provided by older LGBT adults and the views of training participants on issues faced by the older LGBT community after attending the panels. Participants were 605 students and professionals from over 34 education and communication settings. Implications for trainings on participants and older LGBT trainers are discussed.