Search results

This paper discusses the history of outdoor education at a university in the South West England, starting in 1840.

This research uses secondary sources of data; original unpublished work from the university archive is used alongside published works on the university founders and first principals, as well as sources on the developments of outdoor education in the UK.

Both founding principals were driven by their strong values of social justice and their own experiences of poverty and inequality, to establish a means for everyone to access high-quality education regardless of background or means. They saw education as key to providing a pathway out of poverty and towards opportunity and achievement for all. Kay-Shuttleworth, founder of St John's, wrote that “the best book is Nature, with an intelligent interpreter”, whilst Derwent Coleridge, St Mark's first principal, had a profound love of nature and reverence for his father's poetic circle. His father, the famous English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor–Coleridge, made the first recorded use of the verb “mountaineering”. Coleridge was using a new word for a new activity; the ascending of mountains for pleasure, rather than for economic or military purposes.

The Romantic influence on outdoor education, the early appreciation of nature and the outdoors for physical and psychological well-being and the drive for social justice have not been told in any case study before.

Immanuel Kant, a revered eighteenth century philosopher, largely laid the groundwork for modern methods of analysis that transcend formal scientific analysis. He did so by affirming that the human mind possesses inherent ways of reasoning that can often transcend the contrived methods of science. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, furthermore, Kant was a key inspiration within the romantic movement and, as such, he influenced Hegel, Marx, Freud, and modern social theorists. Since modern marketing research is clearly indebted to these intellectual traditions, a knowledge of Kant is vital to well groomed marketing researchers and to the decision makers who use their services.

The term “globalisation”, although ubiquitous, has lost precision due to the fact that it can be applied in diverse ways. Here, multiple implications of globalisation are discussed in order to clarify its impact upon modern business and vice versa. In specific, the concepts of homogenisation, polarisation, and hybridisation are examined. By comparing these models to earlier paradigms (such as those provided by the Enlightenment and the Romantic Movement), more precise discussions of globalisation result. The concept of dialectics, furthermore, provides a valuable tool to use when analysing the process of hybridisation.

A strange phenomenon among women writers of the late eighteenth century, both conservative and liberal minded, was the predominance of female villains in their novels. While this can be seen as an after-effect of masculine patriarchal discourse, particularly for those women writers who possessed a more religious-based ideology, why was it prevalent among feminist writers of the time who should have been aware of misogynistic stereotypes? Two such writers who emulated this strange paradox were Mary Robinson and Charlotte Smith. Both these women had been vilified by the Anti-Jacobin British 18th press as notorious and corrupt ‘female philosophers’ who followed in the footsteps of Mary Wollstonecraft. This chapter will conduct a historical feminist close comparative reading of Robinson's novel, Walsingham, and Smith's novel, The Young Philosopher, based on feminist scholarship on eighteenth-century female writers. It will examine how the female villains in the novels overpowered even the male antagonists and were often the cause behind the misfortunes, directly or indirectly, of the heroines/heroes. While these villains did serve as warnings against inappropriate behaviour, they illustrated the disaster for women when there is a lack of female community. Specifically, in the case of Robinson, her Sadean villains illustrated that no one is spared from the corruption of power and that the saintly female figure is nothing but an illusion of the male imagination. They were fallen Lucifers, rebels who relished in their freedom and power despite their damnation and punishment. The patriarchal system was temporarily demolished by them.

What access did readers have to fiction in Britain during the Romantic period? To what extent might the fiction market have been segmented into readers who borrowed their novels from libraries ‐ sometimes stealing or failing to return them ‐ and those who bought them new or second‐hand at bookshops? Many circulating‐library proprietors would also serve the novel‐reading population in their capacity as professional booksellers. As librarians, they would promote the value‐for‐money aspect of renting fiction to readers of limited means; as booksellers, they enabled readers to purchase their particular favourites among their bookstocks as well. Purchasing a book, though, did not equate with genuinely wishing and intending to read it. Failing to return a circulating‐library novel, or stealing one, may have been a stronger indication that a title was indeed being selected to be read ‐ and then being retained to be re‐read.

The Finno-Ugric identity, originally formulated by 19th century academics and nurtured as part of national-identity movements, has revived since the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991). This chapter explores the transnational vitality of the Finno-Ugric identity for Estonians in the post-Soviet era. In particular, I ask, “How has the Finno-Urgic identity remained meaningful in the contemporary geopolitical context?” I draw on Schiffman's (2006) “linguistic culture” framework to understand the renewed relevance of the Finno-Ugric identity. I argue that the identity's continuing significance and renewed vitality stems from the new meanings that Finno-Ugric culture has taken on in the particular post-Soviet geopolitical context. I examine the key role of Finno-Ugric identity in Estonian efforts to sustain lesser-used-language (LUL) instruction domestically and to support its development internationally. By analyzing Estonia's varied experiences with LUL advocacy and development, I explore how Finno-Ugric linguistic culture functions as a rich resource in developing Estonian national identity, in making statements of ethnic solidarity, and in providing new methods for language revitalization.