Afrikaner nationalism, apartheid, and the conceptualisation of "race"

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 23 September, 1991In recent years our historical understanding of Afrikaner nationalism has been transformed. No longer is it possible to talk of Afrikaner nationalism in terms of an unchanging, timeless tradition. Nor can we speak of the Afrikaner nationalist movement as a socially undifferentiated entity, pursuing its own primordial ethnic agenda. We now have a much deeper understanding of the ways in which Afrikaner identity was forged from the late nineteenth century, and the means by which Afrikaner ethnicity was mobilised in order to capture state power in the twentieth century. Gaps in our knowledge nevertheless remain. One such silence concerns the relationship between Christian-nationalism and the conceptualisation of racial difference. This omission partly reflects a general state of amnesia about the place of racist ideas in Western thought. In South Africa it has been exacerbated by materialist scholarship's fear of "idealism'. The ideology of race has therefore tended to be discussed in terms of its functional utility: for example, the extent to which racist ideas can be said to express underlying class interests. My intention in this paper is not to dispute the ways in which race, understood as a sociological phenomenon, has been treated in the literature on Afrikaner nationalism. Rather, it is to consider the content and internal logic of racist ideology. The focus of this study is therefore on the conscious elaboration of race in the development of Christian-nationalist thought from around the 1930s to the 1950s. Specifically, it considers the extent to which an explicitly biological concept of race informed apartheid theory, and how this related to theological and cultural explanations of human difference. The argument in this paper is that Christian-nationalism was flexible and eclectic in its use of racist ideas. In constructing an intellectually coherent justification for apartheid, Afrikaner ideologues frequently chose to infer or to suggest biological theories of racial superiority, rather than to assert these openly. Both for pragmatic and doctrinal reasons, the diffuse language of cultural essentialism was preferred to the crude scientific racism drawn from the vocabulary of social Darwinism

Summer learning experience for girls in grades 7–9 boosts confidence and interest in computing careers

Academic exposure to computer science, encouragement to study computer science, and connecting personal interests to computing areas influence women to pursue degrees in computer science. Guided by these recommendations, we designed and offered a summer learning experience for girls in grades 7--9 in summer 2016. The goal of the program was to improve girls\u27 perceptions of learning computer science through academic exposure in the informal setting of a girls-only summer camp. In this paper we present a study of the girls\u27 perceptions of CS learning. Four constructs were used to develop pre- and post-survey items: computing confidence, intent to persist, social supports, and computing outcomes expectations. The camp appeared to have positively influenced the girls on two of the four constructs, by improving computing confidence and positive perceptions of computing careers

Creative Computing Challenge: A Teacher Professional Development to Enhance Non-Computing Career and Technical Education Curriculum with Engaging Computational Practices for All Students (Poster Abstract)

The Creative Computing Challenge (CCC) project (2014-2018) is funded by the National Science Foundation and is designed to broaden participation in computing by providing professional development (PD) for high school teachers at Career & Technical Education (CTE) programs throughout the state of New Hampshire. Teachers receive a stipend and tablets for their classrooms; they attend several in-person PD sessions through the year, where master teachers and PD facilitators introduce modeling of inquiry and equity-based practices, as well as teach the App Inventor tool and how to inculcate computational thinking in students. Project evaluation has included teacher interviews, classroom and PD observations, as well as student and teacher surveys. External evaluation of this project has been an integral part of the project from the beginning and, along with the project team’s observations and input, has significantly reshaped the project activities. It became clear after the first year that a central challenge of this project would be working with a mix of teachers across multiple domains -- from teachers who had little experience even using computers to teachers who had computer science degrees; from teachers who came to teaching from professional backgrounds to those who had education degrees; and from beginning teachers to those who had been teaching the same courses for twenty years. Through evaluation data and really listening to teacher feedback, we not only tailored the PD content and structure, but also refined the data collection instruments and evaluation design to bridge the gap between different teacher experiences and levels of preparation. As a result, we have been able to bring computing into non-technical content areas such as Hospitality and nonprogramming classes such as Photography, as well as support computing educations in New Hampshire CTE programs. In Year 4, we now better understand the range of benefits and challenges involved in working with CTE programs and inserting CCC-inspired curricular modules in non-computing courses

Race, civilisation and culture: The elaboration of segregationist discourse in the inter-war years

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented March 3, 198

Comparison of Adaptive Optics Scanning Light Ophthalmoscopic Fluorescein Angiography and Offset Pinhole Imaging

Recent advances to the adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscope (AOSLO) have enabled finer in vivo assessment of the human retinal microvasculature. AOSLO confocal reflectance imaging has been coupled with oral fluorescein angiography (FA), enabling simultaneous acquisition of structural and perfusion images. AOSLO offset pinhole (OP) imaging combined with motion contrast post-processing techniques, are able to create a similar set of structural and perfusion images without the use of exogenous contrast agent. In this study, we evaluate the similarities and differences of the structural and perfusion images obtained by either method, in healthy control subjects and in patients with retinal vasculopathy including hypertensive retinopathy, diabetic retinopathy, and retinal vein occlusion. Our results show that AOSLO OP motion contrast provides perfusion maps comparable to those obtained with AOSLO FA, while AOSLO OP reflectance images provide additional information such as vessel wall fine structure not as readily visible in AOSLO confocal reflectance images. AOSLO OP offers a non-invasive alternative to AOSLO FA without the need for any exogenous contrast agent

Rethinking the British World

Copyright @ 2013 The North American Conference on British StudiesThis article rethinks the concept of the “British World” by paying close attention to the voices of those who attended the 1903 Allied Colonial Universities Conference. They identified not one, but three different kinds of British world space. Mapped, respectively, by ideas and emotions, by networks and exchange, and by the specific sites of empire, this article suggests that, in the light of criticisms the British World concept has faced, and in the context of recent scholarship on the social and material production of space, this tripartite approach might offer a useful framework for British and imperial historians interested in the history of the global

Comparison of Deep-Water Viromes from the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea

The aim of this study was to compare the composition of two deep-sea viral communities obtained from the RomancheFracture Zone in the Atlantic Ocean (collected at 5200 m depth) and the southwest Mediterranean Sea (from 2400 m depth)using a pyro-sequencing approach. The results are based on 18.7% and 6.9% of the sequences obtained from the AtlanticOcean and the Mediterranean Sea, respectively, with hits to genomes in the non-redundant viral RefSeq database. Theidentifiable richness and relative abundance in both viromes were dominated by archaeal and bacterial viruses accountingfor 92.3% of the relative abundance in the Atlantic Ocean and for 83.6% in the Mediterranean Sea. Despite characteristicdifferences in hydrographic features between the sampling sites in the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, 440 virusgenomes were found in both viromes. An additional 431 virus genomes were identified in the Atlantic Ocean and 75 virusgenomes were only found in the Mediterranean Sea. The results indicate that the rather contrasting deep-sea environmentsof the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea share a common core set of virus types constituting the majority of bothvirus communities in terms of relative abundance (Atlantic Ocean: 81.4%; Mediterranean Sea: 88.7%)

Classification of Human Retinal Microaneurysms Using Adaptive Optics Scanning Light Ophthalmoscope Fluorescein Angiography

Purpose. Microaneurysms (MAs) are considered a hallmark of retinal vascular disease, yet what little is known about them is mostly based upon histology, not clinical observation. Here, we use the recently developed adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscope (AOSLO) fluorescein angiography (FA) to image human MAs in vivo and to expand on previously described MA morphologic classification schemes. Methods. Patients with vascular retinopathies (diabetic, hypertensive, and branch and central retinal vein occlusion) were imaged with reflectance AOSLO and AOSLO FA. Ninety-three MAs, from 14 eyes, were imaged and classified according to appearance into six morphologic groups: focal bulge, saccular, fusiform, mixed, pedunculated, and irregular. The MA perimeter, area, and feret maximum and minimum were correlated to morphology and retinal pathology. Select MAs were imaged longitudinally in two eyes. Results. Adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscope fluorescein angiography imaging revealed microscopic features of MAs not appreciated on conventional images. Saccular MAs were most prevalent (47%). No association was found between the type of retinal pathology and MA morphology (P = 0.44). Pedunculated and irregular MAs were among the largest MAs with average areas of 4188 and 4116 μm2, respectively. Focal hypofluorescent regions were noted in 30% of MAs and were more likely to be associated with larger MAs (3086 vs. 1448 μm2, P = 0.0001). Conclusions. Retinal MAs can be classified in vivo into six different morphologic types, according to the geometry of their two-dimensional (2D) en face view. Adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscope fluorescein angiography imaging of MAs offers the possibility of studying microvascular change on a histologic scale, which may help our understanding of disease progression and treatment response