Between 1660 and 1880 a number of Royal Patents were granted and Acts of ParI iament passed whose purpose and effect, it has generally been acknowledged, was to restrict the spread and availability of English theatre, in particular that within the two cities of the metropolis, and to limit its potential as a forum of debate for the examination of ideas or the promotion of political dissent. During the same period, although not necessarily at the same time, theatre came under fire from religious groups of many different denominations. This condemnation and the measures taken by this special interest group in society to combat the influence of the stage has also been held to have had a restrictive effect on the institution of theatre. This research has been primarily based on an examination and analysis oflegislation, parliamentary debates, religious tracts, papers and letters in Lambeth Palace Library, letters in the Manuscript Department of the British Library, theatre texts, the writings of contemporary theatre critics, articles in contemporary newspapers and journals specialising in theatrical topics, specialist reports and magazines published by various religious denominations, contemporary pamphlets, diaries, biographies, theatre ephemera and current critical writing in specialist magazines and books devoted to theatrical and religious topics. After discussing the reasons for setting the parameters of 1660 and the late 1880s for this research, the thesis considers the importance of the institution of theatre in the particular period studied and its relationship to the whole panorama of the history of theatre. After detailing a number of questions regarding the purpose of theatre and the effect it has and has had on society, this research examines the objects, effects and motivation behind the main statutes that were enacted to deal with the phenomenon of theatre between 1660 and 1880. In particular the genesis and context of The Restoration Patents, the Licensing Act (1737), the Disorderly Houses Act (1751), the Theatrical Representations Act (1788), the failed Sadler's Wells Bill (1788), and Interludes Bill (1788), and the Theatres Act (1843) have been examined, the aims of each debated and the effects of each of the legislative measures on theatre as a whole is explored. The opposition that came from religious forces within the country during the period under study is also examined and analysed. The complaints from Church and Chapel were various: blasphemy, indolence, vice, perversion (particularly of the young), consorting with unwholesome company and drawing people away from God were all cited as sins of the stage. The underlying causes ofthe censure of important religious figures as well as that which came from different denominations is examined. The various measures put into operation to combat the dangers perceived to be coming from theatre are explored and their efficiency debated. Finally the study examines the nature of the theatrical experience and how this has been affected by the legislation and condemnation of the religious interest in the country. A principal conclusion is that theatre in England was not repressed or rendered impotent by any of the legislation nor was it by the tactical opposition of the religious faction in society. Indeed theatre gained strength and potency by finding ways to circumvent the opposition it encountered. So successful was it in overcoming the ploys of the legislature and religious interests and so instrumental was theatre as a focus for life in England during the period under study that both of the forces of opposition eventually had to adopt theatre as an ally in the implementation of their own political agenda.

This is an ethnographic study of a sample of Hindu students in a Further Education college. The students are all following a course leading to the Certificate of Pre- Vocational Education. The data consists of transcripts of informal interviews and of classroom teaching situations; and is analysed from the perspective of an interpretive paradigm. The purpose of the study is to reveal the methods used by the students in reaching an understanding of their own social world. The study seeks to construct a series of world views which reflect the ways in which the students perceive their own sense of reality. The research attempts to explore the views of students on several areas including religion and culture, their feelings about the education system, and their aspirations for employment and a career. Generally speaking, research studies in the sociology of education tend to focus on the schools sector, and it is the intention of this research to redress the balance somewhat in the direction of Further Education. Moreover, studies in multicultural education often describe their samples in non-specific ways such as "Asian students" or "ethnic minorities", and place little emphasis upon the social influences of specific religion and culture. By investigating a particular religious group it is hoped to encourage more studies which place an emphasis upon the importance of religion in defining the social life of Asian people. The study of this sample of Hindu students suggests that there exists a specifically Hindu perception of the world, and that the maintenance of this is of importance to the students. The students appeared to have a profound desire to succeed in the educational system, and to apply that success to particular vocational contexts. An apparently strong motivation to achieve something of value in life was sustained in part by a sense of parental support and interest. The students did not appear to be preoccupied with the racism which they encountered in society. It was also noted that the female students tended to reject firmly the traditional Hindu gender roles. Generally there was a tendency for these young people to develop considerably greater proficiency in spoken rather than written English. The thesis concludes with a reflexive account which seeks to describe the particular perspectives and approaches of the author in arriving at an understanding of the data.

This research was carried out in three villages in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, and looked at the ways in which Ngaju Dayak Christian women passed on their skills, beliefs and values to their children. It was an educational, ethnographic, collective case-study which was both descriptive and interpretive. The main data collecting methods were participant observation and ethnographic interviews, undertaken over a two year period from 2007 to 2008. The motivation for carrying out the study was to try to find more effective ways of delivering Christian Education to rural Christian women, based on their traditional ways of teaching and learning. The research reveals that traditional Ngaju Dayak teaching and learning fits into a situated learning model. I claim that educational practices based upon that model are not necessarily in conflict with a Christian worldview. While this study confirms many of the findings of studies which have been carried out amongst indigenous people in other parts of the world it broke new ground in that it looked for the first time at traditional education methods among the Ngaju Dayak women. It found that the mothers especially, played the dominant role in passing on skills, beliefs and values to their children. Their methods were almost totally informal, frequently modelling or demonstrating in situations where children were present and included. The younger generation learned through observation, participation and imitation and by listening and experimenting. The context for the teaching and learning was the real and meaningful environment of the village, fields and/or family and was almost always connected to ‘real-life’ situations. Skills, beliefs and values were passed on orally. Also much was visually transmitted especially through the use of artefacts used in ceremonies. With the advent of local or personal electricity supplies, skills, beliefs and particularly values were also being transmitted via the mass media. Although there were some gender specific roles and mothers were dominant in passing on the skills, beliefs and values, overall there was minimal gender differentiation among the recipients. The study showed that these Ngaju Dayak women are ‘functionally illiterate’. They are able to read and write but their main ways of learning are oral. Story telling, has always played an important role in the lives of the Ngaju Dayak people. Further, it is evident that they prefer visual, kinesthetic, modes of learning to passive, formal ones. Cultural transmission from parents to children clearly takes place, but with certain modifications. Even though culture was transmitted by the parents and the wider family, motivation and relevance were important reasons for passing on the skills, beliefs and values. In summary, learning and teaching remains strongly influenced by the traditional Dayak worldview.

Blazars, active galactic nuclei with relativistic jets pointed almost directly at Earth, are powerful and highly variable sources of nonthermal electromagnetic radiation, including very-high-energy gamma rays. We can detect these gamma rays with arrays of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs), including the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) and the upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). After reviewing the science of blazars and the methods used by IACTs, we investigate how gamma-ray variability can provide insight into blazars' physical properties while also complicating efforts to understand these sources as a population. We first present a study of three flaring blazars observed with VERITAS and analyze these sources' spectral and variability characteristics, taking into account data at other wavebands, including that of the Large Area Telescope aboard the Fermi space telescope (Fermi-LAT). Next, after laying out how observing biases and intrinsic variability can confound blazar population studies with IACTs, we propose methods to account for these effects, and use simulated data to report expectations for a blazar luminosity function measurement with VERITAS. Sophisticated new instruments and data analysis methods can further expand the frontier of gamma-ray blazar science. To that end, we design a camera software system to enable safer and more efficient operations of a next-generation IACT being developed for CTA, the prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (pSCT). Finally, we develop methods to apply deep neural networks to the analysis of IACT data and employ these methods to reject background events detected by simulated arrays of IACTs.

A study of the evangelist Asahel Nettleton and his work, especially in contrast to that of the more famous Charles Grandison Finney.

La présente thèse porte sur quatre aspects différents de l’astronomie des hautes énergies.La première partie de ma thèse est dédiée à un développement instrumental pour les télescopes Cherenkov imageurs, le système de déclenchement de niveau 2 du télescope de 28 mètres du réseau H.E.S.S. (High Energy Stereoscopic System). Mon travail s’est focalisé sur l’invention d’algorithmes et les simulations Monte-Carlo du système de déclenchement, ainsi que la comparaison de la reconstruction au niveau de la carte de déclenchement à la reconstruction ”hors-ligne” (Moudden,Barnacka, Glicenstein et al. 2011a; Moudden, Venault, Barnacka et al. 2011b). Je décris le système et j’évalue ses performances.Le réseau H.E.S.S. a observé le blazar PKS1510-089. La deuxième partie de ma thèse traite de l’analyse des données et la modélisation de l’émission large bande de ce blazar. C’est un exemple de quasar radio à spectre plat (FSRQ), pour lequel il n’est attendu aucune émission aux très hautes énergiesJ’ai modélisé les données observées pendant un "flare” de PKS1510-089. Ce modèle est basé sur un scénario de choc interne à une zone.Le troisième chapitre de ma thèse est une étude d’un autre phénomène affectant potentiellement les blazars observés par FERMI-LAT: l’effet de lentille gravitationnelle fort. Cette partie de ma thèse montre le premier indice de présence d’un effet de lentille gravitationnelle dans le domaine des photons de haute énergie. Cet indice provient de l’observation d’un écho dans la courbe de lumière du blazar distant PKS1830-211, qui est une lentille gravitationnelle connue. Les méthodes d’estimation des retards temporels dans les systèmes de lentille gravitationnelles reposent sur la corrélation croisée des courbes de lumière individuelles. Dans l’analyse présentée dans cette thèse, j’ai utilisé des photons de 300 MeV à 30 GeV détectés par l’instrument FERMI-LAT. L’instrument FERMI-LAT ne peut pas séparer spatialement les images des lentilles gravitationnelles fortes connues. La courbe de lumière observée est donc la superposition des courbes de lumière des images individuelles. Les données du FERMI-LAT ont l’avantage d’être des séries temporelles régulièrement espacées,avec un bruit de photons très bas. Cela permet d’utiliser directement les méthodes de transformées de Fourier. Un retard temporel entre les images compactes de PKS1830-211 a été recherché par deux méthodes : une méthode d’auto-corrélation et la méthode du ”double spectre”. La méthode du double spectre fournit un signal de 27 ± 0.6jours (statistique) avec une significativité de 4.2 σ. Ce résultat est compatible avec ceux de Lovell et al (1998) et Wiklind et Combes (2001).La dernière partie de ma thèse est consacrée à un effet de lentille différent, le ”femtolensing”. La recherche d’effets de femtolensing a été utlisée pour obtenir des limites sur l’abondance de trous noirs primordiaux. Celle-ci a été contrainte de manière significative dans un large domaine de masses. Les limites les moins contraignantes ont été établies pour les objets de faible masse, pour lesquels la détection représente un défi expérimental. J’ai utilisé les sursauts gamma de redshift connus d´etectés par le Fermi Gamma Ray Burst Monitor (GBM) pour rechercher d’éventuels effets de femtolensing produits par des objets compacts sur la ligne de visée. L’absence de ces effets de femtolensing montre que des trous noirs primordiaux de masse comprises entre 5×10^17 et 10^20 g ne constituent pas une fraction importante de la matière noire. J’ai effectué mes études de thèse en co-tutelle entre le Centre Astronomique Nicolaus Copernicus de l’académie des sciences polonaise, à Varsovie et l’Institut de Recherches sur les Lois fondamentales de l’Univers du CNRS à Saclay, en France. / This thesis presents the study of four aspects of high energy astronomy.The first part of my thesis is dedicated to an aspect of instrument development for imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, namely the Level 2 trigger system of the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.). My work on the project focused on the algorithm development and the Monte Carlo simulations of the trigger system and overall instrument (Moudden, Barnacka, Glicenstein et al. 2011a; Moudden, Venault, Barnacka et al. 2011b). The hardware implementation of the system is described andits expected performances are then evaluated. The H.E.S.S. array has been used to observe the blazar PKS 1510-089.The second part of my thesis deals with the data analysis and modeling of broad-band emission of this particular blazar. In part II of my thesis, I am presenting the analysis of the H.E.S.S. data: the light curve and spectrum of PKS 1510-089, together with the FERMI data and a collection of multi-wavelength data obtained with various instruments. I am presenting the model of PKS 1510-089 observations carried out during a flare recorded by H.E.S.S.. The model is based on a single zone internal shock scenario.The third part of my thesis deals with blazars observed by the FERMI-LAT, but from the point of view of other phenomena: a strong gravitational lensing. This part of my thesis shows the first evidence for gravitational lensing phenomena in high energy gamma-rays. This evidence comes from the observation of a gravitational lens system induced echo in the light curve of the distant blazar PKS 1830-211. Traditionalmethods for the estimation of time delays in gravitational lensing systems rely on the cross-correlation of the light curves from individual images. In my thesis, I used 300 MeV-30 GeV photons detected by the Fermi-LAT instrument. The FERMI-LAT instrument cannot separate the images of known lenses. The observed light curve is thus the superposition of individual image light curves. The FERMI-LAT instrument has the advantage of providing long, evenly spaced, time series with very low photonnoise. This allows to use directly Fourier transform methods. A time delay between the two compact images of PKS 1830-211 has been searchedfor both by the autocorrelation method and a new method: the “double power spectrum”. The double power spectrum shows a 4.2 σ evidence for a time delay of 27.1±0.6 days (Barnacka et al. 2011), consistent with the results from Lovell et al. (1998) and Wiklind & Combes (2001).The last part of my thesis concentrates on another lensing phenomena called ”femtolensing”. The search for femtolensing effects has been used to derive limits on the primordial black holes abundance. The abundance of primordial black holes is currently significantly constrained in a wide range of masses. The weakest limits are established for the small mass objects, where the small intensity of the associated physical phenomenon provides a challenge for current experiments. I have usedgamma-ray bursts with known redshifts detected by the FERMI Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) to search for the femtolensing effects caused by compact objects. The lack of femtolensing detection in the GBM data provides new evidence that primordial black holes in the mass range 5 × 10^17 – 10^20 g do not constitute a major fraction of dark matter (Barnacka et al. 2012). My Ph.D. studies have been carried out jointly between the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences, in Warsaw in Poland and the IRFU institute of the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives(CEA) Saclay in France.

No description available.

台灣在文化與流行方面一向受鄰近國日本的影響，舉凡服飾流行、音樂、電影、動漫等，其中影響青少年最大的應該可以說是動漫畫，近幾十年來，動漫畫中的「耽美文學」，又可以說是一股在台灣出版界新興的文體類型。 「BL」漫畫即指「Boy's Love」，又稱耽美漫畫。原本是指女性漫畫家創作給女性讀者看的「少年愛」漫畫，內容以美貌男子之間的愛情為主。BL漫畫算是少女漫畫中比較另類的內容類型，內容唯美浪漫，而「耽美」的日文原意就是「唯美主義」。日本耽美漫畫在台灣從單純的閱讀，到現在發展出作家、網站、同人團體、甚至還有專門的商業出版社；而出版的物品，也從當初的日文翻譯漫畫、動畫到現在國人自行創作的漫畫、小說、周邊產品等。在台灣的耽美迷中，可以初分為兩種：一種只是純粹的耽美文本閱聽人，另一種除了閱聽文本外，還會主動衍生新的創作與文本，而在這些耽美迷的衍生文本中，居然有大半是台灣本土霹靂布袋戲迷所創作的耽美文本。 台灣的本土布袋戲為何會跟耽美牽上關係？日本式的耽美到了台灣又有什麼樣的變化？而這在台灣本土形成的新型耽美中佔最大比率的文本─「霹靂耽美文本」，竟也被日本耽美迷所承認，在日本有了台灣霹靂耽美文本的閱聽人。本研究將從日本的耽美文化在台灣的演化，以及文化逆流的現象，勾勒出一個屬於台灣在地耽美文化的輪廓。 關鍵字：漫畫、動漫、同人誌、Boy's Love(BL)、霹靂布袋戲 / The culture and fashion of Taiwan are historically influenced by Japan. Among many, the Slash Literature, or ‘Boy’s Love’ (BL), is one of rising style in recent decades. BL, which originally means ‘aestheticism’ in Japanese, features aesthetic and romantic in its content. While it is an alternative to mainstream style, BL allures remarkable amount of audience. The audience can be distinguished into two types: passive receiver on the one hand and active creator on the other. Surprisingly, most of the active creator of derivative BL context comes from enthusiasts of Pili Hand Puppet Show, a traditional Taiwanese culture. The locally shaped ‘Pili BL context’ not only is the most popular one in derivative BL context in Taiwan, but is recognized by Japanese BL enthusiasts. Thus, ‘Pili BL context’ is the countercurrent of BL culture back to Japan. This phenomenon prompts research questions of this study: how does Taiwanese Hand Puppet Show relate to BL? What are the transformations of Japanese BL adapted in Taiwan? To answer these questions, this study will investigate the evolution of Japanese BL culture in Taiwan and the countercurrent of ‘Pili BL context’ and will seek to contour the local BL culture of Taiwan. Keywords: Slash Literature, BL, Aestheticism, Subculture, Pili Hand Puppet Show.

The present work is an exploration of the relationship between love and law in Islam and Christianity through the works of al-Ghazālī (c.1056-7-1111 C.E.) and Thomas Aquinas (c.1224/5-1274 C.E). In doing so, it aims to provide the historical theological perspective of two thinkers, each pivotal to their respective tradition, with a view to contributing to contemporary Christian-Muslim discourse, which, since the 2007 Common Word initiative, has had a strongly scholarly focus on love. Notably, however, this discourse has tended to avoid discussion pertaining to how we ‘act out’ such love, particularly in regard to legal frameworks. To redress the balance of scholarly discourse, this thesis aims to present key aspects of al-Ghazālī’s and Aquinas’ thought in order to provide the conceptual background necessary to understand and then synthesize how they likely conceived of the love-law relationship. From this, it becomes clear that for al-Ghazālī, the relationship between the heart, intellect, and various categories of knowledge is integral in fostering love for God. In a similar manner, the intellect for Aquinas is integral and its formation is based on our cumulative knowledge and experience. The key facet of the intellect for both is its ability to abstract from particulars to universals. This position is essential to the thought of both writers as God for them is beyond creation and yet in some sense also reflected in and intimately related to creation. As such, the intellect acts as a ‘bridge’ between the immanent and the transcendent. It is both affected by the knowledge gained through this-worldly legal frameworks and the other-worldly divine attributes in which it can share: this includes the divine attribute of love. The extent to which one can share the latter is dependent on the extent to which one is formed by the former. The intellect is, however, aided in this process by the gratuitous gift of revelation, which acts as immanent ‘certain’ knowledge of the transcendent. Such thinking provides the background for a detailed exploration of love and law. Towards this end, first noted is how both authors consider this-worldly law to be an appropriation of other-worldly law, represented by The Preserved Tablet for al-Ghazālī and the eternal law for Aquinas. Reasoning is essential in mankind’s attempt to understand this divine, other-worldly paradigm, although man is aided by a partial manifestation of ‘certain’ knowledge within the created order by way of revelation. Human reasoning on law results in this-worldly legal frameworks, which, in some sense, aim to provide knowledge of God either explicitly or implicitly by way of orientating towards the maintenance of the common good. However, as all good is derivative of God, this-worldly law, whether orientated to a temporal or ultimate good, should be understood as orientation to God. Inclining to our good according to our nature is something both al-Ghazālī and Aquinas maintain is ‘in-built’ within us. At its most fundamental level this good is God, but it does not exclude the material goods and objects that constitute the necessities of life. Thus law orientated towards the good (to whatever degree) encourages orientation to God (to some degree). Inclination to the good is natural within our being, and both al-Ghazālī and Aquinas define love, in the first instance, as inclination to the good according to our nature. The more we are inclined to the good, the more ‘goodness’ is made manifest within us; that is, the more we ‘participate’ in or ‘reflect’ the divine attributes. Thus the more law-abiding we are, the more we are drawn to the good. This eventually forms the intellect in such a way that it is drawn to the good in itself: al-Ghazālī calls this ‘contentment’ and Aquinas calls this ‘charity’. Based on their respective positions, this thesis will therefore firstly argue that the relationship between love and law for al-Ghazālī and Aquinas is as follows: before one can love, one must know, and law provides knowledge; however, such knowledge reflects a gratuitous gift from the creator and therefore divine love underpins the knowledge that enables human love. In course of this study, it will become evident that both al-Ghazālī and Aquinas have a strong apophatic-cataphatic emphasis to their work. That is, their methodologies affirm issues of immanence and transcendence, the knowability and unknowability of God. The only ‘certain’ knowledge for both authors is that which is represented by revelation, and to which all other knowledge should be correlated. However, all other knowledge is reflective of acquired knowledge and human reasoning, which are by nature imperfect. Providing we deploy ‘reason’ effectively in relation to the ‘certain’ knowledge of revelation, we can talk about God to an extent. In such an instance, human language points towards and reflects the divine, but does not totally encapsulate or definitively define the divine. Ultimately, the divine is beyond comprehension while equally somehow reflected or detectable within creation. Indeed, for both authors, genuine experience of the divine exhausted their prolific works and words; this realisation resulted in each adopting a state of ‘silence’ at various points in their respective careers. That is, both come to an appreciation of the insufficiency of words and concepts in the face of a transcendent, immutable God. Noting the centrality of this emphasis in both authors, this study then turns to the present day Christian-Muslim milieu touching upon the ‘reason debate’ that formed the background to the Common Word initiative. Using this as a platform, this thesis argues for a ‘re-emphasis’ or ‘re-discovery’ of the apophatic-cataphatic reasoning that both al-Ghazālī and Aquinas display for contemporary Christian-Muslim discourse. The final hope for the study is two-fold. Firstly, to encourage further discourse on how ‘love’ is ‘acted out’ between the two traditions. And secondly, to remind Christians that law has an important theological tradition within their heritage with a view to providing encouragement for further studies in the neglected area of comparative law in Christian-Muslim discourse.

Socially and politically significant Muslim communities are posing a challenge to the public spheres of Western Europe: can public reason in a liberal democracy be so conceived as to accommodate the religious reasons of Muslims and other religiously motivated citizens? This question, often discussed from the perspective either of political philosophy or of particular religious traditions, is addressed here instead by drawing on the theory and practice of inter-religious dialogue. The dialogue movement known as ‘scriptural reasoning’ is analysed for its potential to provide a way of conceptualising the nature of reasoning in the public sphere. ‘Reasoning with texts’, it is argued, is a way of describing much of the reasoning that takes place within the public sphere and not just religious reasoning. This approach to understanding public reasoning is established through a combination of example and theory. A model of communicative hermeneutics as public reason based on an (inter)textual rationality is proposed. As well as providing space for textually based religious arguments, this (inter)textual imagination can be situated alongside and complement postmodern developments of Jürgen Habermas’s conception of the public sphere. Whilst this approach to reasoning in the public sphere initially appears very different from the classic statement of the idea of public reason in John Rawls’s political liberalism, it is shown to have significant continuity with Rawls’s theory when this is viewed through the lens of the Supreme Court as exemplar of public reason. This highest level of public reason involving legislation is also a form of reasoning with texts. But in order for religious and more popular levels of public discourse and deliberation to impact on the political and legislative processes, these too must be conceived as modes of reasoning having some continuity with higher levels of public reasoning. It is such continuity that this thesis seeks to theorise.