No description available.

No description available.

This is a hermeneutical study of an attempt to inculturate a Redemptorist parish mission in a black township parish. The purpose of Redemptorist parish mission is conversion and renewal. This study is influenced by - - the spirit of St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) founder of the Redemptorists - Vatican II (1962-1965) and by - the African Synod (1994); and it uses the systemic stage model of Rambo and the spiral model of Costas, as a framework to understand conversion. The conversion experiences of ten parishioners of St. Peter's parish are used as data for the study. A theological reflection on the ten conversions confirmed the following: that cultural context is important for understanding conversion; that conversion is both a distinct moment and a continuous process; that it is imperative to understand conversion from the perspective of the convert him/herself. For 'mission preaching' to effect genuine conversion it must be inculturated. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / Th. M. (Missiology)

La leucémie myéloïde chronique (LMC) est un syndrome myéloprolifératif rare traité par des inhibiteurs de tyrosine kinase, tel que l’imatinib. Malgré son efficacité, la résistance au traitement est un problème récurrent. Des variants génétiques responsables d’une altération de la mort cellulaire programmée (apoptose) pourraient notamment expliquer l’hétérogénéité de la réponse au traitement entre les patients. Dans un premier temps, l’objectif était de rechercher des variants candidats. Pour cela un panel de 45 gènes impliqués dans l’apoptose a été étudié par séquençage nouvelle génération chez 24 patients atteints de LMC, 12 répondeurs et 12 résistants au traitement par imatinib. A l’aide d’outils informatiques, 473 polymorphismes ont été détectés. Le nombre de patients étudiés étant limité, de nouvelles méthodes statistiques ont dû être développées pour analyser les résultats obtenus. Tout d’abord, les fréquences de survenue des variants chez les patients résistants et répondeurs ont été comparées aux fréquences observées dans la population générale et visualisées par une approche de statistiques descriptives. Cette stratégie a permis de réduire la liste à 95 polymorphismes pouvant être impliqués dans la résistance au traitement. Par la suite, les gènes ont été classés selon leur enrichissement en allèles variants. Au final, trois gènes candidats ont été choisis et séquencés chez 103 patients. Cette méthodologie, automatisée grâce à un algorithme informatique, a permis de mettre en évidence, un variant non synonyme dans le gène BCL RAMBO, retrouvé plus fréquemment chez les patients résistants de manière significative. Dans un second temps, l’objectif était de caractériser le rôle de ce variant dans la réponse à l’imatinib à l’aide de lignées cellulaires modifiées par la technologie CRISPR-Cas9. Des cellules n’exprimant plus la protéine ont été obtenues et ont permis de mettre en évidence le rôle majeur de la protéine BCL RAMBO dans l’inhibition de l’apoptose. Des lignées cellulaires portant le variant candidat ont également été créées à l’aide d’une nouvelle technique utilisant CRISPR-Cas9 : l’exon entier contenant le nucléotide d’intérêt a été remplacé par un exon modifié. La modification d’un acide aminé induite par le variant a été associé à une perte de la sensibilité au traitement par imatinib dans ces lignées, comme suggéré après séquençage des patients. Ces données indiquent que BCL-RAMBO, facteur anti-apoptotique dans une lignée modèle de LMC, pourrait devenir une nouvelle cible thérapeutique afin de surmonter la résistance à l’imatinib / Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a rare myeloproliferative syndrome treated by tyrosine kinase inhibitors, such as imatinib. Despite its efficacy, resistance to treatment is a persistent clinical issue. Notably, genetic variants causing alterations in apoptosis may explain heterogeneity of imatinib sensitivity between patients. First, the goal was to look for candidate variants. For that purpose, a panel of 45 apoptotic genes was assessed by next-generation sequencing on 24 CML patients, 12 sensitive and 12 resistant to imatinib treatment. Using informatics tools, 473 polymorphisms were detected. As the number of sequenced samples was limited, novel statistical methods had to be developed to interpret the results. The variant frequency in resistant and sensitive patients was compared to variant frequency in the general population and visualized using descriptive statistics. This strategy allowed to obtain a restricted list of 95 polymorphisms that might be involved in resistance to the treatment. Then, genes were ranked according to variant allele enrichment. At the end, three candidate genes were chosen and sequenced for 103 CML patients. This methodology, automated using a computer algorithm, permitted to highlight a nonsynonymous variant in the BCL RAMBO gene, significantly found more often in resistant patients. Second, the objective was to characterize the role of this variant in response to imatinib using model cell lines modified by CRISPR-Cas9 technology. BCL-RAMBO knock-out cells were obtained and allowed to demonstrate the major role of BCL-RAMBO protein in apoptosis inhibition. Additionally, cell lines carrying the variant were created using a new CRISPR-Cas9 mediated technique: the whole exon carrying the nucleotide of interest was replaced with a variant exon. The amino acid change induced by the identified polymorphism was associated with a loss of sensitivity to imatinib treatment in these cell lines as suggested after patient sequencing. These data indicate that BCL-RAMBO, anti apoptotic factor in a CML cell line, could become a novel therapeutic target to overcome drug inefficacy for a subset of resistant patients.

This is a hermeneutical study of an attempt to inculturate a Redemptorist parish mission in a black township parish. The purpose of Redemptorist parish mission is conversion and renewal. This study is influenced by - - the spirit of St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) founder of the Redemptorists - Vatican II (1962-1965) and by - the African Synod (1994); and it uses the systemic stage model of Rambo and the spiral model of Costas, as a framework to understand conversion. The conversion experiences of ten parishioners of St. Peter's parish are used as data for the study. A theological reflection on the ten conversions confirmed the following: that cultural context is important for understanding conversion; that conversion is both a distinct moment and a continuous process; that it is imperative to understand conversion from the perspective of the convert him/herself. For 'mission preaching' to effect genuine conversion it must be inculturated. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / Th. M. (Missiology)

Since the 1960’s there has been a marked increase in the number of known conversions from Islam to Christianity. This thesis asks whether certain of these ex-Muslim Christians engage in the process of theology-making and, if so, it asks what these theologies claim to know about God and humans’ relation to God. Utilizing the dialectic of contextuality-contextualization of Shoki Coe, and the sociology of theological knowledge of Robert Schreiter, the thesis seeks to answer these questions by the use of two case studies and an examination of some of the texts written by ex-Muslim Christians. Lewis Rambo’s theory of religious conversion and Steven Lukes’ theory of power will be used to clarify the changing dynamics of power which have helped to foster modern contexts wherein an unprecedented number of Muslims are both exposed to the Christian message and, if they choose to do so, able to appropriate it through religious conversion. The two case studies are of a Christian community which founded a Muslim-background church in the Arabophone world and some Iranian Christian congregations in the USA and UK Diaspora. Aspects of the contexts of these believers are investigated in some detail, including motives for religious conversion, numbers and locations of the converts, how apostates may be treated by Muslims, changes in migration and communications, and the Christian concept of religious conversion. The concept of inculturation which helps to describe the meeting of a specific community with the Christian message will aid in analyzing the communities and individuals being studied. The final chapter brings together the various threads which have been raised throughout the thesis and argues that ex-Muslim Christians are engaged in theology-making, that areas of interest to them include theology of the church, salvation and baptism, and that the dominant metaphor in these theologies is a conceptualization of love and power that sees the two divine traits as inseparable from each other; they represent a knowledge about who God is and what he is like, which, in their understanding, is irreconcilable with their former religion, Islam.

<p>In his Dispatches, Michael Herr quotes the gonzo photojournalist Tim Page: "Take the glamour out of war! I mean, how the bloody hell can you do that?[...] Ohhhh, war is good for you, you can't take the glamour out of that. It's like trying to take the glamour out of sex, trying to take the glamour out of the Rolling Stones." This dissertation is in essence an exploration of Page's question, examining how popular media during the American conflict in Indochina first removed and then restored the glamour of war. For most of its history, the United States has been defined by a certain level of militarism, a glamorizing of the process of regeneration through violence reflected in this quotation, but the late 1960s and early 1970s saw a challenging of this warrior ethos; this challenge was reversed by the 1980s, when American militarism was taken to a new, paramilitary, level. In this project, I propose that this oscillation in the association of masculinity and violence was directly linked to popular media's depiction of the Vietnam war and of the soldiers who fought it. American society is haunted by Vietnam, not just because it was the first war the US lost (as the cliché would have it), but because of the ways in which popular culture presented the war to Americans: in particular, because of the ways the American public received this war through the emerging technologies of their television screens. The rapid response of television news to the conflict created an image of mundane warfare not through any intention on the part of broadcasters but because of the nature of the medium itself; over the next twenty years this image was both mystified and moderated by the more delayed media of film and literature and eventually molded into the now-familiar Vietvet killing machine.</p><p>In five chapters, I chronicle the evolution of the iconic Vietvet through the twenty years following the war. Following the methods of Raymond Williams and the Birmingham School, I trace the history and development of images from Vietnam as well as the interaction of those images with popular narratives of war, violence, masculinity and heroism in America. I start with Susan Jeffords' work in The Remasculization of America, taking her emphasis on the cultural narratives that fostered the restoration of patriarchal ideologies; I then move through Marita Sturken's discussion of the creation of cultural memory from historical artifacts in Tangled Memories. To these foundational texts, I bring an emphasis on form and technology to shift the focus from the narratives to the mechanisms of transmission themselves. In my first chapter, I show how the relatively new medium of television, and the depiction on the nightly news of Vietnam as both mundane and corrupt, called into question the image of the heroic soldier, finally replacing that image with the demon of the uncontrollable violent vet, driven insane by an unjust war. My next two chapters look at how this image was rehabilitated through its recharacterization in the less immediate channels of novels and film, a recharacterization driven by national debates over the diagnosis of PTSD and the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. And in my final two chapters, I show how the image of the overly-muscled Supervet killing machine from pulps and blockbusters replaced the broken, victimized effigy.</p><p>I focus on the evolving history of veterans of the Vietnam War in particular because the strong interdependence of the history of that war and popular culture functions as a spotlight on the nature of the relation between media, history and cultural memory. Television coverage of the Vietnam War to a large extent worked not only to expose the inherent immorality of that particular conflict, but also of war more generally and of the image of the soldier hero. But in the two decades between the end of the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War, the standard history of the war had resolidified into one glorifying combat and violence. By looking at this changing social understanding of Vietnam, I hope to reveal the greater mechanisms by which the newly emerging media technologies of the 1960s through the 1980s drastically changed the nature of representation of warfare, violence, and masculinity: first routinizing, then rejecting, and finally enthroning the image of the explosively violent soldier yoked to the state.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis is an examination of why South Africans have converted to Buddhism, how this conversion has come about and what the meaning of the conversion has been in their lives. Chapter one is a literature review which revealed very little literature available on conversion to Buddhism and less on the conversion of South Africans to Buddhism. L.R. Rambo's Theory of Conversion is used in this thesis to see if these conversions to Buddhism can be understood within this theory. In Chapter two Rambo's theory, which is a holistic model for conversion, is analyzed in detail. He proposes seven stages within his model: crisis, quest, encounter, interaction, commitment and consequences. Context is Rambo's first stage and in Chapter three the socio-historic and religious background of these converts is examined. In order to understand how and why these conversions have come about there needs to be an understanding of the background from which these converts come. Taking Refuge (or the Gohonzon Ceremony) was used for the purpose of this thesis to be the turning point from non-Buddhist to Buddhists. In Chapter four the meaning and importance of Taking Refuge is discussed. The empirical aspect of this thesis was to interview twenty South Africans who had converted to Buddhism. Chapter five is a detailed analysis of these interviews and Appendix two gives the questionnaire used. The aim of this analysis was firstly, to investigate whether these conversions to Buddhism can be understood in the context of Rambo's theory, secondly, to see whether Taking Refuge is the correct choice of the turning point from non-Buddhist to Buddhist. In the conclusion it was found that Rambo's theory did not fully account for the conversion of the interviewees to Buddhism, and that Taking Refuge was not necessarily a good focal point in the conversion process. In the light of this a Developmental theory of becoming a Buddhist was proposed which has the following steps: Context, exposure, interest invoked, practical application, commitment and consequences. From the analysis of the people interviewed their conversion to Buddhism was a developmental process rather than a conversion as such. Hence their conversion fitted more closely with a Developmental theory than with Rambo's theory of conversion. This ties in with the discovery amongst the interviewees that none of them experienced one focal point at which they became Buddhist. For most of the interviewees becoming a Buddhist was a developmental process, with many of them having some sort of proto-Buddhist tendency within them before ever hearing about Buddhism. / RELIGIOUS STUDIES & ARABIC / DLITT ET PHIL (REL STUD)

This thesis is an examination of why South Africans have converted to Buddhism, how this conversion has come about and what the meaning of the conversion has been in their lives. Chapter one is a literature review which revealed very little literature available on conversion to Buddhism and less on the conversion of South Africans to Buddhism. L.R. Rambo's Theory of Conversion is used in this thesis to see if these conversions to Buddhism can be understood within this theory. In Chapter two Rambo's theory, which is a holistic model for conversion, is analyzed in detail. He proposes seven stages within his model: crisis, quest, encounter, interaction, commitment and consequences. Context is Rambo's first stage and in Chapter three the socio-historic and religious background of these converts is examined. In order to understand how and why these conversions have come about there needs to be an understanding of the background from which these converts come. Taking Refuge (or the Gohonzon Ceremony) was used for the purpose of this thesis to be the turning point from non-Buddhist to Buddhists. In Chapter four the meaning and importance of Taking Refuge is discussed. The empirical aspect of this thesis was to interview twenty South Africans who had converted to Buddhism. Chapter five is a detailed analysis of these interviews and Appendix two gives the questionnaire used. The aim of this analysis was firstly, to investigate whether these conversions to Buddhism can be understood in the context of Rambo's theory, secondly, to see whether Taking Refuge is the correct choice of the turning point from non-Buddhist to Buddhist. In the conclusion it was found that Rambo's theory did not fully account for the conversion of the interviewees to Buddhism, and that Taking Refuge was not necessarily a good focal point in the conversion process. In the light of this a Developmental theory of becoming a Buddhist was proposed which has the following steps: Context, exposure, interest invoked, practical application, commitment and consequences. From the analysis of the people interviewed their conversion to Buddhism was a developmental process rather than a conversion as such. Hence their conversion fitted more closely with a Developmental theory than with Rambo's theory of conversion. This ties in with the discovery amongst the interviewees that none of them experienced one focal point at which they became Buddhist. For most of the interviewees becoming a Buddhist was a developmental process, with many of them having some sort of proto-Buddhist tendency within them before ever hearing about Buddhism. / RELIGIOUS STUDIES and ARABIC / DLITT ET PHIL (REL STUD)

Violence can be handled in a variety of ways across a wide variety of film genres and specific grasps of genres. The goal of this thesis is to explore the different functions of violence in films and then show how different is the acceptance of violence by Western film critics, ie journalists, in the same genre with similar motivations of the main characters, but with a slightly different approach of these characters to the use of violence. In the theoretical part I will describe the terms of review, criticism, film and at the same time the function of violence in films across genres. The practical part will then show how the concept of violence and its function may differ even within one larger genre, although the motivations of the main characters may sometimes be similar. Certain parallels as well as differences in the use and function of violence will be discussed on the example of selected scenes from two action film series Ip Man and Rambo. Subsequently, the reactions to the manifestations of violence by film critics will be analyzed and in the end it will be assessed whether the critics reacted to the processing of violence at all, how they reacted to it and what generally follows from the critics' approach to various possibilities on depicting violence. The partial goal of the thesis will...