No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis advisor: Paul Gray / "Compassion-focused therapy" (CFT) aims to increase the self-compassion of participants while reducing self-stigma. Although CFT is theorized to be effective for alcohol dependents, who suffer from high levels of self-criticism and self-hate, few clinical studies examine which factors facilitate the development of self-compassion and subsequently reduce harmful drinking. This qualitative study therefore values the subjective perspectives of female alcohol dependents as they participate in CFT in Northern Ireland. In doing so, it explores how self-compassion may be increased through modifications in self-labeling and self-concept. It is proposed that the development of a compassionate mindset, along with spirituality and mindfulness, grant alcohol dependents cautious optimism for the future. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Sociology.

Thesis advisor: Thomas H. Groome / What does it mean to "be church"? How can we foster a sense of collective faith identity through religious education? What resources can we draw upon in this endeavor? I propose that the authentic early Irish Church offers insights that add to the field of religious education by suggesting that religious educators focus on forming persons in faith to be Christians both within a community of believers and in the world. Doing so not only enriches the individual, but also invigorates the Church and allows it to reclaim its voice in the twenty-first century public square. This thesis suggests an approach to religious education rooted in the example of the early Irish tradition yet pertinent to the contemporary desire for faith, spirituality and community. The faith of the early Irish centered upon the triad of Christ the King, covenant, and community. Together these three Christian principles foster holistic lives where faith and life become inseparable, what I term abiding faith. My approach to this task is threefold: 1. To survey the original texts and practices, and catechetical efforts of Early Christian Ireland (5th - 10th centuries) in an effort to recover an authentic understanding of the Early Irish Church. 2. To place the prominent Early Irish Christian understandings of a) Jesus Christ, b) covenantal relationship, and c) community of believers, into conversation with modern theology. 3. To bring the Irish recovery into conversation with the field of contemporary religious education. Chapter 1 contextualizes the research by sketching the historical setting of pre-Christian Ireland through the arrival of Christianity with Palladius in the early fifth century. Chapter 2 continues the historical survey concentrating on the Christianization process, pedagogical practices and the subsequent transformation of Irish society. Chapter 3 turns to the content of the evangelization of Ireland first examining the Irish use of the heretics Pelagius and Theodore of Mospsuestia. I demonstrate that their influence in Ireland was primarily exegetical and that Irish use of their texts did not render the Irish Church heterodox. Secondly, I focus on the texts produce by the Irish Christians with an eye towards their christological and ecclesiological motifs. Chapter 4 engages the wisdom of the early Irish Church, their emphasis on Christ the King, covenant, and community with modern theological understandings. Here, I liberate these understandings from unnecessary tangential concepts that are detrimental to forming persons for an integrated, life-giving, abiding faith. I then take these recovered Christian foci into a conversation with contemporary religious education text. Chapter 5 demonstrates the viability for religious education for abiding faith through the shared Christian praxis approach of Thomas Groome. I offer a description of shared Christian praxis followed by a discussion of its use in both the formal educational setting and the liturgy. Chapter 6 offers, as the title states, some concluding thoughts on the development of the work as a whole. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.

No description available.

Troubling Spaces explores the relationship between the representation of space and place on the Northern Irish stage and the production of space that occurs within Northern Irish society during the Troubles. Drawing from Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space, I examine how Nationalists and Unionists produced a series of communal narratives which allowed them to reorder Northern Irish space and its social relations. Additionally, I examine how these communal ideologies create divergent concepts of Northern Irish place which Doreen Massey refers to as negative and enclosed concepts of place. This not only reinforces the dualistic binary between Nationalism and Unionism, it also incites tribal associations and allegiances. Moving on from this, I conduct a close reading of three Troubles plays, Stewart Parker’s Northern Star and Pentecost and Christina Reid’s Tea in a China Cup, to examine how their dramatic narratives intersect and interact with non-traditional stage space to produce dramatic environments which provide compelling commentaries on Northern Irish spatiality. My examination of Northern Star traces the development of the ideological structures which shape Northern Irish spatiality; in Pentecost, I explore how its liminal domestic space is perfectly suited to illustrate the dynamic conceptualisation of place Massey argues for; and, finally, in Tea in a China Cup, I develop the distinction between private domestic spaces and public social spaces further by examining matrilineal narratives in relation to communal symbols within a female-coded domestic space. Through these close readings, I will demonstrate that a dialogical relationship can be discerned between the production of space and place that occurs within Northern Irish society and the representation of it on the Northern Irish stage. While many plays have the potential to act as an endorsement of the restrictive and enclosed concepts of space and place in the ideological frameworks of Nationalism and Unionism, the three that I have chosen provide important counterpoints during the Troubles that actively resist their cultural hegemony.