Hegemonic masculinity, a framework where stereotypically masculine traits are over-emphasized, plays a central role in sport, partly due to an excessive focus on winning. This type of masculinity marginalizes those that do not possess specific traits, including many women and men. I argue sport reform focused on mitigating hypercompetitive attitudes can reduce this harmful and marginalizing hegemonic masculinity in sport. I make this argument first by challenging the dichotomous nature of sport, especially in recognizing that all outcomes are a (...) blend of winning and losing, that ties are relevant and informative outcomes to contests, and that winning and losing do not always tell accurate stories of the outcome. Secondly, I contend that expanding the potential outcomes in sport can help broaden the emphasis of competitive sport to take into account playing well and improving, in terms of both the test and the contest. I conclude that these reforms decrease hegemonic masculinity, making sport better for all. (shrink)

Reforms surrounding the teacher’s role in fostering students’ social competences, especially those associated with empathy, have moved to the forefront of global higher education policy discourse. In this context, reform in higher education teaching has been focused on shifting teachers’ practices away from traditional lecture-style teaching—historically associated with higher education teaching—towards student-centred pedagogical approaches, largely because of how the latter facilitate students’ social learning, including the development of students’ abilities connected to empathy, such as intercultural understanding. These developments towards (...) learner-oriented higher education teaching may offer promising opportunities; however, a central problem within these current policy recommendations is that the connection between cultivating empathy and cultivating imagination is not explicitly foregrounded. Against this background, I turn to Dewey’s notion of imagination to show how imagination is indispensable to all learning, and therefore has a role to play in teaching. In this article, I show how imagination is not only deeply connected to empathy, but also critical for gaining intercultural understanding and is a condition for the possibility that, as human beings, we can learn with and from others. On this basis, I argue that Dewey’s notion of imagination provides significant insight on how to rethink what is needed to create inclusive classrooms in higher education, especially under conditions of cultural, linguistic and religious diversity. First, I consider Dewey’s concept of learning and the indispensable role of imagination in learning. Second, drawing on the work of Martha Nussbaum, I examine how teaching through the narrative arts in higher education cultivates the imagination and helps us engage the lives of others. I use an example from my own teaching to illustrate how the narrative arts can foster dialogue across difference through the development of what I call ‘third voice’—a different or other ‘position’ that productively mediates reflective interaction between participants, including teacher and learners. In closing, I consider the implications of my discussion for present and future higher education policy on the evaluation of ‘quality teaching’. (shrink)

A woman from the Republic of Ireland has successfully challenged the country's restrictive abortion legislation at the European Court of Human Rights. 1 The woman was in remission from cancer and believed that she was at increased risk of relapse due to her unintended pregnancy. She believed that continuing with the pregnancy would have put her life at risk. She travelled to England for an abortion in 2005 and subsequently experienced medical complications when she returned to Republic of Ireland. Abortion (...) in the Republic of Ireland is permitted if the life of the pregnant woman is at risk, but given the uncertainty around interpreting the legislation and the fear of criminal sanctions, the provision is not always effective in practice. The woman argued that her right to an abortion had been denied because there was no law or procedure through which she could have her clinical entitlement established. The ECtHR was unanimous that her right to private and family life had been violated but did not uphold her challenge under Articles 2, 3 and 14. The woman was joined by two other women in the challenge but the other women were unsuccessful as their circumstances differed; their lives had not been at risk if they had continued with their pregnancies. 2The Court concluded ‘that neither the medical consultation nor litigation options, relied on by the Irish government, constituted effective and accessible procedures which allowed [her] … to establish her right to lawful abortion in Ireland’.3At the time of writing, the Irish government was considering how to implement the judgement.Review of arm's-length bodiesAs previously reported here, in July 2010 the UK Government announced plans to reform and abolish a large number of arm's-length bodies. 4 …. (shrink)

In mid-2018, following a survey of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups, the UK government issued a consultation on the proposed reform of the Gender Recognition Act for England and Wales.1 When it was first introduced in 2004, the GRA was considered innovative, even world-leading legislation.2 The act enables any adult to seek to change their legal gender provided several criteria are met. These include: If the applicant is successful, he or she is issued with a ‘gender recognition certificate’, (...) their birth certificate is changed and ‘for all purposes’ they become, legally, their acquired or affirmed gender. Since 2004, cultural change in relation to gender identity has been rapid. During the government’s preliminary survey, several concerns were raised about the GRA, particularly among those who have changed, or who may be seeking to change, their gender. These included: The government has stated that being trans is not a mental illness—more a fact of human diversity. It points to the World Health Organisation’s revision of the International Classification of Diseases, in which ‘gender incongruence’, another term for gender dysphoria, is no longer classed under ‘mental and behavioural disorders’.3 ### Draft proposals for change The government considers the reform of the GRA …. (shrink)

Innovation is a key concept of modernity. It acquired its lettres de noblesse in the twentieth century, thanks to or because of economics and technology. However, for centuries the concept was essentially pejorative. How can we explain this connotation? This article suggests that one of the crucial moments is the Reformation. Using official documents of the time, the article studies the vocabulary of the English Reformation and documents the meanings and the uses made of innovation. The article suggests that (...) innovation served two functions or purposes: an injunction and an accusation of non-conformity. Thereafter, innovation became a linguistic tool of polemic. (shrink)

This article addresses three topics. It describes Chartisms creation of a ‘peoples history’ as an alternative to middle-class history, whether Whig or Tory. It locates the sources, most of which have not been noticed before, for the Chartist narrative of the English Reformation. William Cobbetts reinterpretation of the English Reformation is well known as a source for the working-class narrative; William Howitts much less familiar but more important source, antedating Cobbetts History of the Protestant Reformation in England, is (...) used for the first time. The article reconstructs that narrative using printed and manuscript lectures and published interpretations dating from the first discussions of the Peoples Charter in 1836 to the last Chartist Convention in 1858. The manuscript lectures of Thomas Cooper are an essential but little-used source. The article contributes to historical understanding of the intellectual life of the English working class. (shrink)

Thomas Cromwell, chief architect of the English Reformation, served as minister of Henry VIII from 1531 to 1540, the period during which more political and religious reform was accomplished than at any other time in Henry's thirty-seven-year reign. This biography_the first in a generation and the only one now in print_looks at his work and achievements during this period, and includes earlier and more critical assessments that view Cromwell as a disciple of Machiavelli.

Adiaphora and permissive natural law both conceptually pointed towards an arena of liberty in which the individual remained free to take up particular courses of action. In the Reformation debates over the external regulation of Christian freedom for the maintenance of peace and order, these two concepts became freighted with political significance; but they also in turn shaped attitudes over when and where obedience was due in relation to the civic regulation of liberty. Tudor apologetics deployed both ideas in order (...) to defend the English Reformation, especially the claim of the royal supremacy to have due authority to regulate ecclesiastical affairs in indifferent matters, limiting Christian freedom and requiring obedience. By situating these debates within the context of the conceptual development of adiaphora and permissive natural law from their original philosophical roots through to the Reformation, this article establishes the genealogy of claims that defined such apologetics. After surveying the seemingly intractable dilemmas in the thought of Thomas Starkey and John Whitgift over why obedience to lay ecclesiastical supremacy was due, this article considers the radical return to the permissive natural law traditions of the medieval period in the Elizabethan conformist thought of Richard Hooker. In this return, Hooker supplanted divine permissions and scriptural principles as the guide for the proper regulation of indifferent matters with an appeal to the light of reason as the divine instrument through which binding human laws are made to govern society and limit freedom for the public good, even in the life of the national church. (shrink)

This article charts and discusses the reasons for various significant shifts and developments during the nineteenth century of the reception of the Reformation amongst different denominations and groups within British Protestantism. Attitudes towards Foxes ‘Book of Martyrs’ are explored as but one among several litmus tests of the breakdown of an earlier fragile consensus based on anti-Catholicism as a unifying principle, with the Oxford Movement and the intra-Protestant reaction to it identified as a crucial factor. The selfidentity of the various (...) British Protestant,denominations, notably the various Nonconformist bodies as well as the established Church and evangelicalism per se was at stake in the process of ‘reception’. Moreover, the emergence of more secular Protestant understandings of the significance of the Reformation as an essential stage in the emergence of modernity and liberty, often at odds with nineteenth-century evangelical theological interpretations of its meaning and legacy, are also highlighted. The result is an attempt to transcend the traditional focus on Protestant-Catholic disputes over the Reformation in narrowly bipolar terms. (shrink)

Under the title The Reformation of Morals , the tenth-century Syrian Orthodox scholar Yahya ibn 'Adi offered encouragement to the effort to promote moral perfection, especially among kings and other members of the social elite: his tract, on the social virtues and vices, gives extensive advice about the cultivation of the former and the extirpation of the latter. Where there are many echoes of Hellenistic moral philosophy in his presentation, the topical profile of the work and the language the author (...) uses reveal his participation in the Baghdad circle of philosophers and intellectuals--both Christian and Muslim--who were responsible for much that has come to be regarded as typical of the classical culture of the Islamic world. In fact, this text has occasionally been attributed to one or another famous Muslim author. It now stands as an important Christian contribution, in Arabic, to a strand of moral philosophy that is an integral component of the intellectual tradition of the world of Islam. (shrink)

This study draws on the ecological perspective of teacher agency to examine the manifestation of English teachers' agency toward the ongoing curriculum reform in China and the factors that impact it. This study surveyed 353 high school English teachers and then collected data from three case study participants through in-depth interviews. The findings showed that the majority of teachers surveyed exhibited positive attitudes and beliefs about implementing the reform and inclinations to change, but the teachers also (...) showed a constrained state of agency in practice. Teacher agency developed as the teachers exerted sustained pedagogical change and reflection on reform-based practices. Through the findings, prior experiences and reform-oriented beliefs were found to mediate teachers' agency, and reform-related experiences were more influential than future goals in shaping agency. The factors of perceived school culture that involved teachers' interaction with students, colleague cooperation, and administrative support also medicated teachers' agency in practice. Implications are proposed for policymakers and school leaders to help teachers coordinate inconsistencies between high-stakes examination preparation and holistic education and make positive sense of professional development in the context of educational changes. (shrink)

Frank Mitjans is an architect who has worked in London since 1976. He was introduced to the significance of the figure of St. Thomas More by Andrés Vázquez de Prada, author of the biography, Sir Tomás Moro, Lord Canciller de Inglaterra. In 1977 Vázquez de Prada invited Mitjans to visit with him the Thomas More Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, which stimulated his interest in representations of More, his family and his friends. Since August 2002 he has given many (...) presentations and talks on the topography of More’s London to groups of students and other interested people in Britain, Ireland, and Sweden. Frank Mitjans, architecte qui travaille à Londres depuis 1976, fut initié au personnage de Saint Thomas More par Andrés Vázquez de Prada, auteur de la biographie Sir Tomás Moro, Lord Canciller de Inglaterra. En 1977 Vázquez de Prada l’invita à l’accompagner dans sa visite de l’exposition Thomas More à la National Portrait Gallery, évènement qui aiguisa son intérêt pour les représentations de More, de sa famille et de ses amis. Depuis août 2002 il a régulièrement fait des présentations et des exposés à des groupes d’étudiants et d’autres en Grande-Bretagne, Irlande et Suède au sujet de la topographie du Londres de Thomas More. The recent exhibitions of the works of Holbein in London and Basel, and scholarly publications such as Holbein and England, have rekindled interest in the Portrait of Thomas More and his Family, and in the late sixteenth-century versions of Holbein’s presumed lost original. The present paper analyses the differences between the sixteenth-century versions and Holbein’s 1527 composition sketch, and concludes that the sketch is a more reliable witness to Holbein’s lost painting than the later versions, as well as the only authentic witness to More’s intentions; though anything we learn from the drawing must be checked against what we know from More’s letters and writings and other biographical data. From the later versions, however, and in particular from the references to Seneca on them, we can learn about those who commissioned them and England’s peculiar historical circumstances. (shrink)

The article explores some aspects of the intellectual climate of the first half of the nineteenth century and the new ideas about race and national identity. These in turn help to explain contemporary changes in historical perspective, particularly in respect to the English Reformation. Disraeli‘s novels reflect the ideas of the time on the above topics and echo contemporary historians in their views on the Reformation, its causes, and the religious and social changes that it brought about.

This article will provide a critique of tworecent English marriage law decisions, thefirst concerning a (female to male) transgenderman and the second a (male to female)intersexed woman. It will do so throughconsideration of the dialogue between each andthe landmark transgender case of Corbett v. Corbett. It will highlight howboth decisions, in seeking to minimise the factof `departure' from Corbett, serve toreproduce key elements of that decision whichserve to undermine the future prospects fortransgender law reform in the English (...) context.In particular, both decisions, in differentways, or with different emphases, ensure that`legal sex' continues to be determined by(bio)logical and temporal factors. Crucially,however, as in Corbett, it is legalanxiety over the boundaries of the `natural',and the homophobia of law, that underscoresthis anxiety, that account for these particularconstructions of `legal sex'. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:English Classical: The Reform of Poetry in Elizabethan England STEPHEN ORGEL Roger ascham, writing in the 1560s, in the course of a treatise on education, urged the reform of English poetry on classical models: “Our English tongue, in avoiding barbarous rhyming, may as well receive right quantity of syllables, and true order of versifying... as either Greek or Latin....”1 He cites as an example (...) of right quantity of syllables and true order of versifying this translation by the scholar and poet William Watson of a verse from the Odyssey: All travelers do gladly report great praise of Ulysses. For that he knew many men’s manners, and saw many cities. This does not sound much like English poetry, but if we count it out we can see that it does, more or less, follow the quantitative rules. The trouble is that the rules have little to do with English pronunciation. Vowels are long by position (followed by two consonants) regardless of how they are pronounced ; moreover, Watson makes vowels long if they are stressed (such as the a in “travelers” and “manners” and the i in “cities”), again regardless of how they are pronounced. For the Elizabethans, this was a problem not with the rules, but with English, both in its dissimilarity from the classical tongues and in the variety of spelling and pronunciation at the time—proponents of quantitative verse in English observe that a necessary first step would be to stabilize the language, as Gabriel Harvey wrote to Edmund Spenser, “there is no one more regular and justifiable direction, either for the assured and infallible certainty of our English artificial prosody particularly, or generally to bring our language into art and to arion 27.2 fall 2019 frame a grammar or rhetoric thereof, than first of all universally to agree upon one and the same orthography.”2 But even with a stable orthography, the application of quantitative rules to English is problematic. To begin with, it is not clear in what sense an English vowel can be said to be long or short—to consider the vowels in stressed syllables invariably long, as Watson does, is entirely arbitrary. There is obviously a difference between the a sound in “rat” and in “rate”; such vowels are now described as short and long, but in pronunciation, they may or may not be of equal extension : thus, the a in “rate” is not, in speaking, longer than the a in “rat,” it is simply pronounced differently; whereas the i in “rise” is certainly longer than the i in “rid.” If quantity means length, English vowels are too erratic to serve—Harvey observed to Spenser that in some quantitative hexameters Spenser had sent him, “the,” “ye” and “he” were treated as short, but “me” was long.3 The issue is especially vexed in the case of vowels that are long by position. The most common examples in English are the -ing endings of participles, which are invariably unaccented and stubbornly short when spoken. In fact, Thomas Campion confronted precisely this problem; and his way of dealing with it gives a clear sense of how willed the whole quantitative system in English necessarily was: For though we accent the second [syllable] of Trumpington short, yet is it naturally long, and so of necessity must be held of every composer.4 What can “naturally” mean here? Are the rules of Latin prosody laws of nature? Harvey had a clear sense of the practical problems, writing to Spenser, “in short, this is the very short and long: position neither maketh short nor long in our tongue,” and concludes that some other rule must be found for English “that should as universally and canonically hold amongst us as position doth with the Latins and Greeks.”5 The larger assumption behind Ascham’s and Harvey’s proposals for a new poetry was that the “barbarous” England 44 english classical of the time could be rectified by the application of classical rules. A return to the classics held out the promise of culture and civility—not only in poetry, of course, but poetry seemed a particularly clear example. Nobody thought the transformation would be easy; a hectoring... (shrink)