bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Efficacy of Palivizumab Immunoprophylaxis for Reducing Severe RSV Outcomes in Children with Immunodeficiencies: A Systematic Review
Authors: Reicherz Frederic , Abu-Raya Bahaa , Akinseye Omolabake , Rassekh Shahrad Rod , Wiens Matthew O , Lavoie Pascal M
Published: January 2024

Background

Palivizumab is recommended for prevention of severe respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) disease in immunocompromised children, despite a lack of strong supporting evidence. The recent approval of substitute RSV-neutralizing monoclonal antibodies against RSV, offers an opportunity to synthesize the most current evidence supporting the palivizumab standard of care.

Objective

To evaluate the efficacy of palivizumab in preventing acute respiratory tract infection- or RSV-related hospitalization, or mortality in immunocompromised children.

Methods

We searched Ovid MEDLINE and EMBASE for published clinical studies that investigated outcomes of palivizumab use in children. We included clinical trials, cohort studies, and case–control studies. The primary outcomes were RSV-related or respiratory viral infection-related hospitalizations, or RSV-related mortality. This systematic review was registered in PROSPERO (ID CRD42021248619) and is reported in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines.

Results

From the 1993 records, six studies were eligible and included, for a total of 625 immunocompromised children with an heterogeneous composition of primary and acquired immunodeficiencies enrolled from palivizumab programs. There were no intervention studies. None of the studies included a control group. RSV hospitalizations were infrequent (0%–3.1% of children). Most children included received palivizumab, although one study (n = 56) did not specify how many received palivizumab. RSV mortality was neither observed, in three studies, nor reported, in three other studies.

Conclusions

The evidence supporting the use of palivizumab for prevention of severe RSV disease in immunocompromised children remains extremely limited and appears insufficient to justify prioritizing this intervention as the current standard of care over alternative interventions.
Treatment Patterns, Healthcare Resource Utilization, and Costs of Patients With Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia or Small Lymphocytic Lymphoma in the US
Authors: Yang Xiaoqin , Zanardo Enrico , Lejeune Dominique , De Nigris Enrico , Sarpong Eric , Farooqui Mohammed , Laliberté François
Published: January 2024

Background

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is the most common type of leukemia among US adults and has experienced a rapidly evolving treatment landscape; yet current data on treatment patterns in clinical practice and economic burden are limited. This study aimed to provide an up-to-date description of real-world characteristics, treatments, and costs of patients with CLL or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL).

Materials and Methods

Using retrospective data from the Optum Clinformatics DataMart database (January 2013 to December 2021), adults with diagnosis codes for CLL/SLL on two different dates were selected. An adapted algorithm identified lines of therapy (LOT). Treatment patterns were stratified by the index year pre- and post-2018. Healthcare resource utilization and costs were evaluated per patient-years.

Results

A total of 18 418 patients with CLL/SLL were identified, 5226 patients (28%) were treated with ≥1 LOT and 1728 (9%) with ≥2 LOT. Among patients diagnosed with CLL in 2014-2017 and ≥1 LOT (N = 2585), 42% used targeted therapy and 30% used chemoimmunotherapy in first line (1L). The corresponding proportions of patients diagnosed with CLL in 2018-2021 (N = 2641) were 54% and 16%, respectively. Total costs were numerically 3.5 times higher and 4.9 times higher compared with baseline costs among patients treated with 1L+ and 3L+, respectively.

Conclusion

This study documented the real-world change in CLL treatment landscape and the substantial economic burden of patients with CLL/SLL. Specifically, targeted therapies were increasingly used as 1L treatments and they were part of more than half of 1L regimens in recent years (2018-2021).
The Relationship Between Health-Related Quality of Life and Overall Survival in Patients With Advanced Renal Cell Carcinoma in CheckMate 214
Authors: Cella David , Choueiri Toni K , Hamilton Melissa , Blum Steven I , Ivanescu Cristina , Karu Karl , Ejzykowicz Flavia , Motzer Robert J
Published: January 2024

Background

In CheckMate 214 (median follow-up, 25.2 months), nivolumab plus ipilimumab yielded greater overall survival (OS) benefit than sunitinib in patients with intermediate-/poor-risk advanced renal cell carcinoma (aRCC). Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) assessed by the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Kidney Symptom Index-19 (FKSI-19) was also more favorable for the nivolumab plus ipilimumab group than the sunitinib group. We investigated whether HRQoL scores can predict OS of patients with 5 years follow-up in CheckMate 214.

Patients and Methods

CheckMate 214 was an open-label, phase III trial in previously untreated aRCC (N = 1096). Patients with intermediate-/poor-risk disease (International mRCC Database Consortium prognostic score ≥ 1; n = 847) were randomized to either nivolumab plus ipilimumab or sunitinib monotherapy. Pooled data for OS and FKSI-19 total and subscales (disease-related symptoms [DRS], DRS-physical [DRS-P], and function/well-being [FWB]) were analyzed. Relationships between HRQoL and OS were assessed using Cox proportional hazard models with baseline and longitudinal scores. Associations between HRQoL changes and OS were assessed by landmark analyses.

Results

Patients with higher FKSI-19 total and subscale scores at baseline had longer OS than patients with lower scores (HR ≤ 0.834; P < .0001). Longitudinal models indicated stronger associations between HRQoL and OS (HR ≤ 0.69; P < .001 for each). At 3 months after randomization, patients with stable/improved HRQoL versus baseline had longer median OS than patients with worsened/unobserved HRQoL versus baseline (55.9 and 26.0 months, respectively; HR = 0.56; 95% CI, 0.46-0.67; P < .0001). Results at 6-, 9-, and 12-month landmarks were consistent with these findings.

Conclusion

In aRCC, patient-reported outcomes are important for HRQoL and prognostic evaluation.

Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier

NCT02231749; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02231749.
Culture and Workplace Deviance
Authors: Raver Jana L.
Published: January 2024

Research and theory on culture and workplace deviance (including related constructs; e.g., bullying, aggression, counterproductive work behavior, harassment, incivility, abusive supervision) were rare until a decade ago, but this is now a flourishing area of scholarship. This chapter comprehensively reviews this body of research published since 2011. Key themes, findings, theoretical foundations, and methodologies are highlighted, along with the dilemmas and controversies surrounding the disparate treatment of workplace deviance in the literature. Key themes include evidence that several measures of workplace deviance are cross-culturally generalizable; increased methodological sophistication including tests of measurement equivalence and measuring theorized cultural mechanisms; and the emergence of larger multinational studies published by teams of global collaborators. Promising areas of inquiry for future research are also provided, grounded within theoretical principles that will advance scholarship. The chapter concludes with a synthesis of practical implications for organizational leaders and practitioners stemming from the current body of work.
Occupational Stress in the Global World
Authors: Spector Paul E.
Published: January 2024

The study of occupational stress had its beginning primarily in Scandinavia and Northern Europe and has only recently spread to the rest of the world. This chapter summarizes research that addresses cross-cultural and cross-national (CC/CN) occupational stress research. It begins with a discussion of typical design approaches, specifically collecting data in one country; collecting data in two or more countries, which allows comparisons of means and correlations; collecting data in multiple countries and analyzing at the country level (i.e., country means); and multilevel studies that analyze data at both the person and country level. Some studies use country as a proxy for culture (cross-national), whereas others include a cultural variable (cross-cultural). A review of the CC/CN literature found 32 studies. This literature is fragmented, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions. The review showed that even with rigorous backtranslation procedures, instruments do not always maintain psychometric properties. People in individualistic societies report higher levels of well-being, and stronger stressor-strain relationships. The same occupational stressor can manifest itself differently across countries.
Culture and Consumer Behavior
Authors: Torelli Carlos J. , Shen Jie (Doreen) , Rodas Maria A.
Published: January 2024

Culture is a fundamental driver of consumer behavior. This chapter reviews the three most common approaches for incorporating culture into frameworks of consumer behavior and describes key findings about: (1) the effect of culture on consumers’ attention and information processing, (2) the persuasiveness of culturally matched advertising messages, (3) the contexts in which culture is more likely to impact consumer behavior, and (4) the behavior of bicultural consumers. The chapter concludes with a discussion of a future research agenda that focuses on the study of the tightness–looseness (T-L) distinction for refining cultural predictions, the further integration of the different approaches to cultural research for understanding a variety of consumer phenomena in a globalized world, the adoption of a polycultural approach for explaining the behavior of multicultural consumers with knowledge about two or more cultures, and the potential insights from new methodologies borrowed from neuroscience, machine learning, and big data analyses.
Shifts in Research on Global Mobility
Authors: Lazarova Mila B. , Reiche B. Sebastian , Clegg Callen C.
Published: January 2024

This chapter provides a brief historical review and discusses seven major shifts that reflect contemporary expatriation research. The first shift concerns changing conceptualizations of the expatriation construct itself. Second, the portfolio of mobility options has been widening, with a matching shift in terminology from “managing expatriation” to “managing global mobility.” Third, there is a notable shift from research that centers on expatriates themselves to research that accounts for other stakeholders, notably expatriate family members and members of the local community. Fourth, the definition of “expatriate success” has evolved to encompass a much more diverse set of variables going beyond traditional indicators, such as expatriate turnover. Fifth, what repatriation is and how repatriation is managed are also changing. The last two changes reflect shifts in, respectively, theory and methodological approaches, suggesting a widening pool of theoretical lenses and increasing methodological sophistication. Our chapter concludes with a discussion of key theoretical principles and practical implications derived from our review.
Culture and Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability
Authors: Stahl Günter K. , Sully de Luque Mary , Miska Christof
Published: January 2024

The cultural context in which organizations and their members are embedded is increasingly being seen as a major factor influencing corporate social responsibility and sustainability (CSR/CS) strategies and practices, as well as organizational members’ propensities to engage in responsible and sustainable behaviors. Despite the potentially critical role of culture in CSR/CS, we know surprisingly little about how cultural values and practices influence the adoption of CSR/CS practices at both individual and organizational levels. In this chapter, we review existing research that has explored the linkage between culture and CSR/CS and “map” this body of research by juxtaposing two perspectives: (1) the extent to which the emphasis is on “doing good” (i.e., the factors promoting the adoption of socially responsible and sustainable practices) or on “avoiding harm” (i.e., the drivers of irresponsible and unsustainable practices); and (2) the extent to which the culture–CSR/CS link is analyzed from a comparative perspective (looking at differences in CSR/CS across cultures) or an intercultural perspective (focusing on the CSR/CS-related challenges facing organizations operating in different cultural contexts). We discuss the implications for research and show how work at the intersection of culture and CSR/CS might advance further.
Culture and Learning, Training, and Development
Authors: Dinh Julie V. , Salas Eduardo
Published: January 2024

Given an increasingly diverse and global workforce, successful organizations must understand and address the role of culture in employee learning, training, and development. To this end, we begin by reviewing the instructional systems design (ISD) model as a guiding framework. We then discuss cultural influences on learning and the challenges that they may pose at each stage in the development of educational interventions. We review considerations and solutions that training science may offer. Finally, we synthesize interdisciplinary bodies of literature to highlight relevant theoretical principles and best practices for the workplace. The chapter concludes by identifying and describing future areas for research.
Palmyra–Tadmor in the Syrian Desert
Authors: Raja Rubina
Published: January 2024

This chapter serves as an introduction to the thirty-six handbook chapters in the book and summarizes Palmyra’s archaeology and history and its development, as well as the city’s place in the history of research on the ancient world. It urges the reader to follow-up on bibliography in the footnotes and explore the literature about the broader history of the region, including the periods during which it was under Ottoman and later French rule, during the Mandate period. Those periods were also the time when archaeological interest in the site grew and when European touristic interests mixed with scholarly interests to produce publications on the site, its art, archaeology, history, and writing. Today scholars cannot ignore the impression that Palmyra’s colonial past has left on the way in which scholarship has been conducted at the site for far more than a century. The chapter opens with a discussion about how future scholarship should view this heritage in a critical light while acknowledging that Palmyra is also a world heritage site that stands at the centre of understanding a global cultural heritage that is important to the entirety of human kind.
Palmyra and the Parthians
Authors: Edwell Peter
Published: January 2024

This chapter analyses the relationship between Palmyra and the Parthians in the context of political and military developments in the Near East from the first century bc to the third century ad. It uses the plentiful evidence of inscriptions from Palmyra to explain how Palmyra and its citizens continued to engage with the Parthian world despite the increasing dominance of Rome over the city and its territory up to the second half of the second century ad. The chapter also investigates the possible causes of a decline in Palmyrene caravan trade with the cities of Parthian-controlled southern Mesopotamia after ad 160. The ongoing impact of Parthian culture on Palmyrene culture is also investigated.
Palmyra and Dura-Europos
Authors: Dirven Lucinda
Published: January 2024

Taking its point of departure in finds testifying to the presence of people from Palmyra in Dura-Europos on the Euphrates, this chapter sets out to discuss the economic, political, and cultural relations between the thriving oasis and its much smaller neighbour. After a short introduction to Dura-Europos and its finds, the mercantile relationship between Dura and Palmyra is discussed. It is argued that Dura was not a station on the route of the Palmyrene caravans, but rather that its Palmyrene community was primarily involved in regional trade. Subsequently, the artistic and the religious interactions between the Palmyrenes and the other inhabitants of Dura are examined. In this context, scholars must distinguish between the period before and after the Roman occupation. It is concluded that, notwithstanding the close and enduring ties between Palmyra and Dura-Europos, Palmyrene influence on the culture and religion of Dura was minimal.
The Palmyrene Tax Tariff
Authors: Healey John F.
Published: January 2024

This contribution provides an overview of the longest and arguably most significant of all the Palmyrene inscriptions, the Palmyrene municipal Tax Tariff (CIS II, 3913; PAT 0259), a bilingual text in Greek and Aramaic, dated ad 137 and concerned with local taxes rather than the caravan trade. A brief account of the discovery of the text, its original location, and its early study are presented, followed by an outline description of the text’s content, including a discussion of the role of Roman authorities from early in the first century ad. After clarifying the distinction between the major divisions of the text (New Law, Old Law, and the edict of the Roman governor Mucianus), and thus reconstructing the history of taxation in the city, the chapter discusses important specific details and comments on Palmyrene tax policy.
The Palmyrene Funerary Sculpture
Authors: Raja Rubina
Published: January 2024

Palmyrene funerary sculpture has long been acknowledged as constituting the largest group of funerary sculptural material stemming from one place in the classical world outside of Rome itself. Since the second half of the nineteenth century much of the funerary sculpture has been dispersed widely into collections and museums across the world. Only since 2012 has it begun to be studied as a corpus through the work done within the Palmyra Portrait Project. This focus on recontextualizing the funerary sculpture within its local framework in Palmyra, but also as part of a much broader cultural koine, with strong ties to both the western Roman world and the eastern Parthian world, but also beyond those realms, has given new insights into the portrait habit in the ancient world. Today the approximately four thousand surviving funerary portraits from Palmyra give us a unique opportunity to revise our views and approaches to the study of the classical world at a time when calls for diversity and equality and reframing of the Classics stand at the forefront of studies of the ancient world.
Representations of Men in Palmyra
Authors: Heyn Maura K.
Published: January 2024

This chapter discusses representations of men, with particular focus on the funerary sphere, in Palmyra. Frontal representations of men wearing the chiton and himation, with the right arm held in the sling created by the draping of the himation, proliferate in the tombs and appear in the civic and religious spaces in the city. The significance of this representational style is not straightforward, but its ubiquity in the city and its tombs suggests that it sent a potent message about identity. Alongside men featuring the arm-sling pose were others who opted for different attributes, poses, and garments. These latter men drew attention by these deviations from the norm to themselves, their families, and their activities in the community. Representations of men, both funerary and civic, were clearly a means by which the community, and everyone’s place within it, was strengthened.
Glimpses of Tadmūr Before Alexander
Authors: Healey John F.
Published: January 2024

This contribution draws together the archaeological and textual evidence for ancient Tadmūr (the later Palmyra) in the pre-Hellenistic period. The textual material is mainly in Akkadian of the second millennium bc (Old Assyrian trade archives, the Mari letters, Emar, and later Assyrian texts of Tiglath-Pileser I). All of these materials, and the small amount of archaeological evidence, suggest that Tadmūr was a minor though well-known waypoint on a major route between Mesopotamia and western Syria in the second millennium bc. In the first millennium bc it fell into obscurity, to emerge again in the Hellenistic age. Discussion is included of the confused Old Testament and later Jewish traditions about Tadmūr, which connect it with Solomon.
Palmyrene Women
Authors: Heyn Maura K.
Published: January 2024

This chapter presents the evidence concerning the life of women in Palmyra. Much of this evidence originates in the funerary sphere, where hundreds of surviving female portraits inform us about dress styles, gender-specific poses and gestures, attributes, and jewellery, among other aspects. Inscriptions and a scattering of reliefs from the Palmyrene civic and religious spheres corroborate and contradict the impressions given by the funerary evidence. The degree to which the elite women in Palmyra experienced greater independence and civic engagement in the third century, as clearly exemplified by Zenobia, is called into question, as the overall impression is still of status and activities that are largely tied to the family and the domestic sphere.
The Production Economy of Funerary Portraiture
Authors: Steding Julia
Published: January 2024

This chapter discusses the production of Palmyrene funerary portraiture. When studying the surfaces of the objects, all carved in local limestone, many tool traces can be detected. This makes it possible to reconstruct the steps of stone carving and to explain the process from the quarrying of stone to the finishing of a portrait. On the one hand, this leads to new insights into the carving of limestone in ancient Syria and the economic structures that were affecting or leading the production. On the other hand, the study of production processes will lead to insights into workshops and their organization. This includes the discussion of changes in style in relation to technical changes and changes in the production of portraits.
A Note on Quarries and Textiles in Palmyra
Authors: Schmidt-Colinet Andreas
Published: January 2024

The limestone quarries situated about 15 km north-east of Palmyra supplied the material for almost all the sculptures and buildings in the ancient city. The quarries give information about the ancient infrastructure of working life there. Caves were reused as as living quarters. The water supply was delivered by a system of channels and cisterns laid out over the entire area. The so-called ‘dragon houses’ were used as shelters for guards, and for storing equipment. Various quarrying techniques may be reconstructed and dated by the various tool marks left on the quarry walls and by the different sizes of the columns. The main change in technique may be dated to the first half of the second century, that is, parallel to the building boom in Palmyra during this period. Thus, an interdependency and correlation between the mentality of constructing buildings at Palmyra and the development of new methods of quarrying may be confirmed.
Queen Zenobia
Authors: Andrade Nathanael
Published: January 2024

Zenobia of Palmyra is one of the most famous women of the ancient world. Despite her fame, however, any attempt to situate Zenobia in her historical and social context confronts a paradox: there is little reliable source material about her. This chapter considers how ancient texts and Palmyra’s material culture may be used to create narratives for Zenobia’s life experiences. It also presents one such narrative by outlining her youth in third-century Palmyra, her marriage to Odainath, her guardianship of her son Wahballath, and her governance of the Roman Near East, all against the backdrop of the rise and fall of Palmyra as an imperial power.
Personality, Spirituality, and Religion
Authors: Wilt Joshua A. , Exline Julie J. , Rose Eric D.
Published: January 2024

The current review explores advances in research linking personality with religion and spirituality. The chapter is organized around five broad principles of personality research that may contribute to the understanding of individual lives: evolution, dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, narrative identity, and culture. First, we examine evolutionary theories of religion and spirituality, and we review informative behavioral genetic studies. Second, we summarize the links between aspects of religion and spirituality with dispositional traits associated with the Big Five (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience) and Big Six (the Big Five traits plus honesty-humility). Third, we describe evidence for the associations between various characteristic adaptations (attachment styles, motivational variables, values, and social attitudes) and religious/spiritual variables. Fourth, we briefly review nascent narrative identity work on religion/spirituality. We discuss cross-cultural research findings in the areas of dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and narrative identity when available. We conclude by offering directions for future research.
Translation of Eastern Meditative Disciplines into Western Psychotherapy
Authors: Semple Randye J. , Hatt Sean P.
Published: January 2024

This chapter describes the history and influence of Buddhist meditative disciplines in Western psychotherapy. We begin with an overview of Buddhist traditions and a brief discussion of some of the foundational tenets of Buddhist psychology. The dialogue between Buddhism and psychotherapy from the early 1900s to the present is traced to gain insights into the transformation from meditation as a spiritual discipline to mindfulness as a secular psychotherapy. Four of the most widely studied and practiced mindfulness-oriented psychotherapies are described: mindfulness-based stress reduction, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, dialectic behavioral therapy, and acceptance and commitment therapy. The chapter ends with an invitation to consider the role of compassion as a reciprocal influence connecting the spiritual practice of meditation to mindfulness as a clinical intervention. What benefits might be realized by reevaluating the therapeutic secularization of these ancient and profound spiritual practices? We consider the desirability, form, and likelihood of a possible reintegration.
Eastern Traditions, Consciousness, and Spirituality
Authors: Patel Kartikeya C.
Published: January 2024

This chapter discusses the constructs of consciousness and spirituality in the Eastern tradition of early Buddhism. The descriptive explanations of the following basic and yet complex questions are offered: What are the contents of consciousness? Are there content-less states of consciousness? What is spiritual inquiry? If states of consciousness are multileveled and multifaceted, how one can understand the process of transformation and attainment of these states? Although a comprehensive presentation of various Eastern traditions is not possible in a brief book chapter, it is hoped that a detailed look at early Buddhism will give the reader a taste of the issues that Eastern theories and practices attempt to address.
Nonlocal Consciousness and the Anthropology of Religions and Spiritual Practices
Authors: Schwartz Stephan A.
Published: January 2024

This chapter presents an anthropological assessment of religions and spiritual practices stripped of their sectarian dogmas. It discusses them not on the basis of faith but as systems of empirical observational science developed over generations for the purpose of allowing followers the opportunity to open to nonlocal consciousness. The chapter describes how religions begin as the result of a single individual having a nonlocal, or a series of nonlocal, consciousness experiences, laying out the steps by which that single personal experience becomes a religion, and then examines and explains why the spiritual rituals and practices common to religions across time, geography, and culture grow from the experiences of the founder. It describes all this using scientific experimental research from many different disciplines to show how the empirical sciences of religions, and the spiritual practices they engender are, in fact, supported by a myriad of studies, showing in the process why water and wine are so often a part of religious rituals; why healing is so common across religions; why sacred spaces are significant, and how they are created; and why scriptures, and even the manner in which they are written, matter in these empirical systems.
Parameters and Limitations of Current Conceptualizations
Authors: Watts Fraser N.
Published: January 2024

This chapter reviews the current state of the psychology of religion and spirituality. The recent broadening of the psychology of religion to include the psychology of spirituality reflects the growing number of people who are “spiritual but not religious.” At present, the psychology of religion is too selective in the range of phenomena it covers, and it should be broader geographically and in terms of spiritual traditions. In view of the diversity of religion, better ways of classifying religious phenomena are needed if research is to work with homogeneous categories. Though questionnaire methods have played an important role, the psychology of religion would benefit from making more use of both experimental methods and qualitative, first-person accounts. The “outsider’s” perspective of the psychology of religion could usually be brought into a dialogue with the insider’s perspective of practitioners. In addition, it would be mutually beneficial if the psychology of religion and spirituality had closer links with general psychology. Finally, there is a case for developing an approach to the psychology of religion that tackles practical issues while remaining research-based.
A Postmaterialist Human Science and Its Implications for Spiritual Activism
Authors: Goswami Amit
Published: January 2024

Various models of postmaterialist science are introduced with a brief exposition of the quantum physics and primacy-of-consciousness-based model that integrates all the various approaches. The chapter discusses new neuroscience data that verify the quantum model of two selves.
Beyond Ancient and Modern Superstitions
Authors: Radin Dean
Published: January 2024

Superstitions are persistent beliefs or practices thought to have no basis in fact. Two superstitions that have attracted high levels of interest from ancient times to the present day are magic and psychic phenomena. Neither of these exists according to the prevailing scientific worldview, so magic and psychic phenomena are regarded as superstitions. Most college-level psychology textbooks explain away widespread beliefs in these phenomena as being due to delusion, fantasy, or wishful thinking. When someone has a truly strange but objectively verifiable experience, it is rejected as mere coincidence. This chapter argues that such denials are modern-day superstitions. Rather than having no basis in fact, from a rigorous scientific perspective both magic and psychic phenomena have been demonstrated to exist with high levels of confidence. The reason these ancient beliefs have become a modern taboo, at least within the academic world, has very little to do with the empirical evidence, and very much to do with the sociopolitical and ontological challenge of ideas that were once thought to be superstitions but turn out to be true.
The Neuroscience of Savant Syndrome, Enlightenment, and Other Extraordinary States
Authors: Hennacy Diane Marie
Published: January 2024

The profound memories of people with savant syndrome cannot be explained by neuroscience’s current model. Similarly, neuroimaging of severely hydrocephalic individuals with superior IQs suggests that neural circuitry might not be what stores memories. Instead, our brains might simply be navigational tools for informational fields. Since antiquity, individuals have reported seeing consciousness fields, or energy bodies, around us in the shape of a torus. Neuroscience has ignored these biofields in its model, but if information can be encoded holographically in them, this could explain the abilities of savants and psychics to access nonlocal information. The updated model proposed here suggests our brains could be performing an analogous function to what electronic devices do when we navigate the Cloud. Electromagnetism and light do play a central role in brain function, as revealed by the functional properties and locations of these lesser-known brain components: neuromelanin, magnetite, microtubules, biophotons, glial cells, ventricles and electrical synapses.
Models of Spiritual and Transpersonal Development
Authors: Friedman Harris , Krippner Stanley , Riebel Linda , Johnson Chad
Published: January 2024

This chapter focuses on exploring various models of spiritual and transpersonal development. It first addresses philosophical dilemmas underpinning the concept of spiritual development by questioning whether these can be addressed without metaphysical assumptions embedded in religious worldviews and thus understood in any consensual way across different historical and cultural contexts. Traditional models of spiritual development are then reviewed, drawing from indigenous, Eastern, and Western cultures. Integrative-philosophical and scientific models, including those from the psychology of religion, transpersonal psychology, and neurobiology, are then presented. The chapter concludes by noting the complexities involved in understanding spiritual development accompanied by suggestions on future directions for these models by highlighting their commonalities and differences, and by providing some evaluative perspectives for thinking critically about them.
Awakening Education: Nurturing Spirituality in K–12 School Culture
Authors: Chapman Amy L. , Foley Lauren , Halliday Jen Hebda , Barth Karen , Miller Lisa J.
Published: January 2024

This chapter presents the basic science on child spirituality paired with the findings of collaborative educational field research to culminate in the initiative for Awakened Schools. Basic science shows a child’s spirituality to be an innate capacity, with roughly one-third of adult formation attributed to heritability and two-thirds attributed to environmental socialization. When the natural “spiritual core” of the child is supported, the likelihood of a lifetime of greater mental health and thriving, committed and meaningful relationships, and being outwardly effective in the world are all substantially increased. The traditional immersive places in society where spirituality has been fostered in children and adolescents are decreasingly engaged by families, mitigating their ability to fulfill that role. Thus, other youth-centered institutions must find ways to nurture children’s innate spirituality to provide the necessary two-thirds socialization of the spiritual core. Schools thus offer a rich context to support the spiritual core, in a way that is constitutional and consistent with any given school’s mission to focus or not focus on religion. This chapter presents the findings of a three-year qualitative study of 22 schools (private and publicly funded; religious and secular in mission) which intentionally have designed their relational cultures to be spiritually supportive. Our findings reveal 11 drivers of a spiritually supportive, or awakened, school culture. These 11 drivers are concrete and actionable, ready to be implemented by any school as well as other institutions (private or public; religious or secular) to nurture the development of spirituality in children and adolescents.
Virtues in Positive Psychology and the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
Authors: Worthington Everett L. , Cowden Richard G. , Davis Edward B. , Exline Julie J.
Published: January 2024

By the early 2000s, positive psychology had emerged as a complementary subfield to those who historically focused on treating psychopathology and solving psychological problems. Because positive psychology involves the scientific study of hedonic well-being and eudaimonic virtues, a reasonable expectation is that positive psychology has transformed the field of the psychology of religion into a related yet broader field of the psychology of religion and spirituality. This could be attributable to the study of virtue, which overlaps more directly with religion than does the study of hedonic well-being. Thus, positive psychology might have drawn investigators who had not previously studied psychology of religion to study virtue and spiritual formation and to contextualize them within religious frames. We examine trends in scholarship to identify whether such commonsense assumptions are warranted. The available evidence does not appear to support this interpretation. Rather, it appears that psychologists of religion and spirituality publish research related specifically to virtues and religion within journals focusing on religion and spirituality. When scholars venture into secular positive psychology journals, they infrequently include religious or spiritual measures. We discuss some implications of these trends and the potential benefits of integrating religious and spiritual variables into the study of processes that lead to the development and practice of virtues. The general considerations for counseling within and across faith traditions that we included pertain to culture, client welfare, client autonomy, and therapist competence. Religion and spirituality are treated as cultural issues.
Introduction
Authors: Akhimie Patricia
Published: January 2024

The introduction to The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race lays out the scope of the collection, which includes a review of critical frameworks for the subject of Shakespeare and race such as critical race theory, feminist, and postcolonial studies; intersections with work in related fields such as queer, trans, disability, and indigenous studies; new approaches from ecocriticism to book history; and a cross section of contemporary engagement with Shakespeare and race in theatre and performance, film, pedagogy, political activism, and elsewhere.
Race in Repertory
Authors: McInnis David
Published: January 2024

Scholarship on Shakespeare and race has broadened its scope to encompass more plays than such mainstays as Othello and Titus Andronicus. Moving beyond even Shakespeare’s ‘other race plays’, this chapter focuses on the benefits of a repertory studies approach in offering theatrical context for representations of race and identity on stage (Brown et al. 2022, 19). This can function in two related ways: the first examples in this chapter feature comparisons of plays being performed contemporaneously (or nearly so); the later examples, including discussion of lost plays, feature plays that a playgoer would be familiar with and bring their knowledge of to the current performance even at months or years remove, as part of their horizon of expectations. Such a repertory studies approach is valuable because it situates Shakespeare’s work in the historical and intellectual context of the London theatrical marketplace but still enables scholars to continue to develop and extend the critical and theoretical insights of pre-modern critical race studies.
Shakespeare, Race, and Queer Studies
Authors: DiGangi Mario
Published: January 2024

This chapter documents and promotes scholarship on the intersection of race and queer sexuality in Shakespeare’s plays. It provides a genealogy of the productive work that has been done at the intersection of these critical approaches and identifies ways in which the field might continue to grow. To illustrate that contemporary intersectional theory can still provide new insights even into the most familiar and frequently taught Shakespearean text ‘about’ race and sexuality, the chapter concludes with a reading of queer interracial eroticism in Othello. This reading argues that Iago uses racist language to inflame Othello with the desire to know his private thoughts, a process that involves both psychic identification and heightened intimacy between a black male body and a white male body. As such, Othello illustrates the insidious workings of what theorist Sharon Holland calls the ‘erotic life of racism’.
Melancholy Nature
Authors: Coles Kimberly Anne
Published: January 2024

The construction of race in early modern England relied upon the creation of non-Christian subjects. English colonial activity was largely directed against fellow Christians: Irish Catholics, Spanish Catholics, converted Africans or people of African descent. But the extermination or enslavement of a people becomes impossible to justify against acknowledged Christians. The means by which England becomes both ‘white’ and ‘Christian’ was a racial fiction that purged English Protestantism of Catholics and other Christians who were not regarded as properly part of the nation-state. This fiction simultaneously marked these people as available for English exploitation. The English strategy of racialization made conversion to Christianity impossible for certain groups of colonial subjects: black melancholy rendered them pagan by nature. This melancholy marking moves to the surface of the skin with the legal codification of chattel slavery. But Shakespeare shows the ground of the thinking and early stagings of the idea.
Shakespeare, Race, and Spain
Authors: Weissbourd Emily
Published: January 2024

Scholars have long recognized the centrality of Spain to representations of race in Shakespeare’s plays. Spain’s status as a site of racial difference in the English imaginary has largely been attributed to two factors: its ‘pure blood statutes’, and anti-Spanish ‘Black Legend’ propaganda. At times, however, an exclusive focus on racialized religious difference has occluded Spain’s significance to other forms of racial discourse. This chapter begins by surveying scholarship on purity of blood in The Merchant of Venice and Othello, then lays out two new avenues for studies of Shakespeare, race, and Spain. The first of these focuses on the history of the Afro-Iberian slave trade, arguing that references to Spain in early modern English drama evoke not only the pure blood statutes but also an emergent discourse linking Blackness with enslavement. The second draws attention to anxieties about Spanish imperial might in two of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies.
Shakespeare, Race, and Science
Authors: Park Jennifer
Published: January 2024

This chapter examines the interconnections between early modern ideas about race and early modern science to interrogate what it meant to pursue, consume, and master ‘knowledge’ in Shakespeare. By exploring science and race together as they weave through Shakespeare’s plays, I argue that the pursuit of knowledge as scientific inquiry was foundational to the formation of English ideas about race and/as hierarchy and mastery, as evidenced in how negotiations with race play out in the scientific epistemologies and practices that Shakespeare engages in his works. This chapter explores these various relationships between science and race in a range of Shakespeare’s plays, from Lavinia’s accusation of Aaron’s and Tamora’s ‘experiments’ in Titus Andronicus to Othello’s famous demand for ‘ocular proof’, from the presumptions that underlie early modern European ‘philosophies’ and knowledge systems in Hamlet to the exploration of alternative authorities of natural knowledge in Antony and Cleopatra and The Tempest.
Naturalizing Race and Racialized Geographies
Authors: Sarkar Debapriya
Published: January 2024

This chapter engages three major currents of Shakespeare scholarship—premodern critical race studies, postcolonial studies, and ecocriticism—to trace how the natural and political geographies of The Tempest and Antony and Cleopatra serve as engines of colonial race-making. It follows characters like Caliban and Cleopatra who are racialized through associations with aspects of the nonhuman world that fix them as inhuman. Both plays enact the imperial desire to dehumanize the Other through the techne of racializing geography; the physical world provides the tools—rocks, trees, rivers, and animals—to transform the racialized Other into natural object. By tracing how the historically contingent political and physical geographies of empire animate the naturalization of race in Shakespearean drama, we also see how early modern literature can play a vital role in enhancing our understanding of the long and connected histories of racial and environmental justice.
Teaching Shakespeare and Race
Authors: Burton Jonathan
Published: January 2024

This chapter asks Shakespeareans to begin with learning goals that advance diverse student ambitions, and with the question ‘Can I achieve this goal with a more creative use of a digital tool that my students are already using?’ It offers a set of ‘small teaching’ approaches to Shakespeare that draw upon pioneers in Culturally Responsive Teaching but also takes inspiration from the TikTok teens and Kpop Stans who are already changing the world. The eight suggestions included in this chapter work to dismantle the ideas that Shakespeare is unchanging and exclusively white and help our students to develop new, antiracist reading skills.
Teaching Shakespeare and Race in Secondary Classrooms
Authors: Turchi Laura B.
Published: January 2024

This chapter offers a snapshot of where and how Shakespeare and race can be found taught together in secondary schools, based on interviews with theatre company education leaders and professional development partners, as well as a review of websites, the policies of professional associations of teachers, and national curricula. It focuses largely on USA, UK, Canadian, and Australian teacher practices, with limited attention to countries where Shakespeare is taught in courses where English is studied as an additional language. It illuminates the contexts and practices of secondary school teachers who make race an explicit dimension of their Shakespeare teaching. It reviews the kinds of professional development initiatives that are seeking to support this important and politically complex secondary school teacher work.
Racialized Genders on the Shakespearean Stage
Authors: Arvas Abdulhamit
Published: January 2024

This chapter discusses race and trans, as well as sexuality and class, as inevitable and inseparable components of embodiment, hence crucially intersecting components of Shakespearean drama in performance, research, pedagogy, and performance, be it on stage or in the classroom. By discussing the intersection of gender, sexuality, and race studies, this chapter proposes to examine genders in variance rather than dichotomous cis-centric assumptions, to consider gender variance as inextricably interlinked with—and articulated through—the infrastructures of racialized and eroticized power hierarchies, and to think such structures projected on the embodiment in a global, cross-cultural context. Finally, this chapter discusses the potentiality of intersectional analysis in a classroom setting.
Resisting Analogies
Authors: Kumar Rebecca
Published: January 2024

In this chapter the author recounts her experience teaching Shakespearean film at a historically Black college (HBCU). She reminds instructors that despite the supposed fluidity of race and racism in the early modern period, in our contemporary world cinema has been used as a technology of antiBlackness—often in the name of Shakespeare. By charting adaptations of Othello from early cinema onwards, the author outlines how the film industry has used bardolatry to legitimate antiBlack violence on and offscreen. Though there are adaptations in which Othello is not meant to be Black—such as those from India which analogize race in the play with caste in the films—the author demonstrates how, without adequate racial context, they risk flattening disparate historical oppressions under the banners of universality or multiculturalism. A decontextualized film pedagogy thus obfuscates, rather than addresses, the specifically antiBlack violence with which cinema has long been complicit.