title: A Distant Star: Creative writing thesis: speculative science fiction

authors: Childs, Rachel Jade

subjects: Creative writing

abstract: When Humanity left a ruined Earth, they vowed to leave behind everything that brought them to that bleak choice. It was the end of the world; if they could not change, they weren’t worthy of a second chance on another planet. Tearing down unliveable cities, they built kilometres-long space-ships, able to support generations of travellers on their Migration to the most likely habitable exoplanets. A Distant Star opens at the end of the city-ship La Sesa’s journey, as it comes into orbit around their new homeworld. 
However, the planet is already inhabited by a native sapient species. Acknowledging that Humanity doesn’t have a great track record with such situations, La Sesa sends a historian, Lirit Sanget, and her team – medic Anahera and comm-tech Hikoa – to open communication with the local peoples. 
Lirit has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder and the common comorbid condition Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. Her limitations change the way she navigates a dangerous environment, but she forges her own path on an uncharted world. 
Lirit, Ana, and Hikoa are pulled into a parallel world even less familiar than their new home. In this polarized reality, they find two species in a generational war. The three realize that their own biases affect their perception of the conflict: whose side they believe, which species they relate to, how they interact with warriors when all they know of war is a historical footnote. As the three piece the two species’ stories together, they struggle with the realization that they have to watch their ancestors’ mistakes play out all over again, and they cannot step in to stop it. They can only see their own choices in new light and find a way to change the trajectory of their future. 

Positive, forward-looking, scientifically sound speculative science fiction is crucial right now. The trends in our modern-cycle news, media, fiction reflect the bleak dystopia of our global reality. We need stories that show us ways of pulling us out of the hell we’re heading for, of fixing what is broken, of reaching Humanity’s potential. Sci-Fi is so much more than escapist popular drivel or cool futuristic aesthetic; sci-fi is, and always has been, a way to tell such stories. 
I was largely inspired to write this book by reading the Wayfarers Trilogy by Becky Chambers, especially the last book in the trilogy, Record of a Spaceborn Few. It was the first time I had a clear example of how a “post-inequity” society could function, what issues might arise in that society, and how to address those issues. It gave a tangible goal for activist work, and it gave me hope in our future. With this thesis, I aim to illustrate an equitable society; to use my lived experience to increase accurate, meaningful representation of people with disabilities in fiction; and redefine who can be considered a “science fiction action hero”. Writing this manuscript is a way I can help others the same way stories like the Wayfarers have helped me.

text: A Distant Star: Creative writing thesis: speculative science fiction When Humanity left a ruined Earth, they vowed to leave behind everything that brought them to that bleak choice. It was the end of the world; if they could not change, they weren’t worthy of a second chance on another planet. Tearing down unliveable cities, they built kilometres-long space-ships, able to support generations of travellers on their Migration to the most likely habitable exoplanets. A Distant Star opens at the end of the city-ship La Sesa’s journey, as it comes into orbit around their new homeworld. 
However, the planet is already inhabited by a native sapient species. Acknowledging that Humanity doesn’t have a great track record with such situations, La Sesa sends a historian, Lirit Sanget, and her team – medic Anahera and comm-tech Hikoa – to open communication with the local peoples. 
Lirit has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder and the common comorbid condition Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. Her limitations change the way she navigates a dangerous environment, but she forges her own path on an uncharted world. 
Lirit, Ana, and Hikoa are pulled into a parallel world even less familiar than their new home. In this polarized reality, they find two species in a generational war. The three realize that their own biases affect their perception of the conflict: whose side they believe, which species they relate to, how they interact with warriors when all they know of war is a historical footnote. As the three piece the two species’ stories together, they struggle with the realization that they have to watch their ancestors’ mistakes play out all over again, and they cannot step in to stop it. They can only see their own choices in new light and find a way to change the trajectory of their future. 

Positive, forward-looking, scientifically sound speculative science fiction is crucial right now. The trends in our modern-cycle news, media, fiction reflect the bleak dystopia of our global reality. We need stories that show us ways of pulling us out of the hell we’re heading for, of fixing what is broken, of reaching Humanity’s potential. Sci-Fi is so much more than escapist popular drivel or cool futuristic aesthetic; sci-fi is, and always has been, a way to tell such stories. 
I was largely inspired to write this book by reading the Wayfarers Trilogy by Becky Chambers, especially the last book in the trilogy, Record of a Spaceborn Few. It was the first time I had a clear example of how a “post-inequity” society could function, what issues might arise in that society, and how to address those issues. It gave a tangible goal for activist work, and it gave me hope in our future. With this thesis, I aim to illustrate an equitable society; to use my lived experience to increase accurate, meaningful representation of people with disabilities in fiction; and redefine who can be considered a “science fiction action hero”. Writing this manuscript is a way I can help others the same way stories like the Wayfarers have helped me.

year: 2022

title: British Women Travellers And The Harems: Liberties, Enslavement and Domesticity

authors: Ammar, Hiba

abstract: This thesis examines the complex perspective of a woman traveller. Wortley Montagu, Martineau, Burton and their contemporaries, represented the harem through various lenses. The Oriental harem has fascinated Western civilization since time immemorial. This sacred place, reserved for the women and children of the Muslim household, had long been a terra incognita to British outsiders, until the publication of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s (1689-1762) Turkish Embassy Letters (1763), which gave impetus to a whole tradition of travel writings, particularly harem accounts, penned by British women. The aristocratic Wortley Montagu recasts Turkish women from their previous Western image as over-sexed and soulless beings to idealized domestic goddesses, living in an ideal world, the harem. Harriet Martineau(1802-1876) , travelled to the Ottoman Empire more than a century after Wortley Montagu’s residency in Oriental lands. Martineau was a rare talent. She was an accomplished journalist and a pioneering figure in Western sociology. She spent her life validating a place for herself and her sex in a patriarchal and male-dominated society; she earned her own keeping, and lived independently. Martineau related her eastern experience in Eastern Life: Past and Present (1848), in which the Oriental harem figures very little. Martineau pitied the women she encountered in Egypt, and depicted them as slaves of a corrupt system, the harem and the practice of polygamy. My thesis ends with the travel writings of Lady Isabel Burton (1831-1896) whose view of the Oriental women she met in Syria is the most tempered. Her Inner Life of Syria, Palestine and the Holy Lands: from my Private Journal (1875) displays a tolerance of other cultures and a move toward moral and cultural relativisms.
Each of the women considered in this thesis formed her own harem, projecting on to this distant Oriental structure her fears, hopes and desires. Wortley Montagu’s harem was a utopia for women only. The Victorian Martineau opined that the Oriental harem was a hell on earth. Lady Isabel Burton constructed a happy medium between the two. Although at times ambivalent towards the Syrian women she encountered, she partook in their customs and manners, particularly public bathing, smoking and other Eastern indulgences. Her attitude illustrates that the British home and the Oriental harem are not so dissimilar, bridging the gap between us and them.

text: British Women Travellers And The Harems: Liberties, Enslavement and Domesticity This thesis examines the complex perspective of a woman traveller. Wortley Montagu, Martineau, Burton and their contemporaries, represented the harem through various lenses. The Oriental harem has fascinated Western civilization since time immemorial. This sacred place, reserved for the women and children of the Muslim household, had long been a terra incognita to British outsiders, until the publication of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s (1689-1762) Turkish Embassy Letters (1763), which gave impetus to a whole tradition of travel writings, particularly harem accounts, penned by British women. The aristocratic Wortley Montagu recasts Turkish women from their previous Western image as over-sexed and soulless beings to idealized domestic goddesses, living in an ideal world, the harem. Harriet Martineau(1802-1876) , travelled to the Ottoman Empire more than a century after Wortley Montagu’s residency in Oriental lands. Martineau was a rare talent. She was an accomplished journalist and a pioneering figure in Western sociology. She spent her life validating a place for herself and her sex in a patriarchal and male-dominated society; she earned her own keeping, and lived independently. Martineau related her eastern experience in Eastern Life: Past and Present (1848), in which the Oriental harem figures very little. Martineau pitied the women she encountered in Egypt, and depicted them as slaves of a corrupt system, the harem and the practice of polygamy. My thesis ends with the travel writings of Lady Isabel Burton (1831-1896) whose view of the Oriental women she met in Syria is the most tempered. Her Inner Life of Syria, Palestine and the Holy Lands: from my Private Journal (1875) displays a tolerance of other cultures and a move toward moral and cultural relativisms.
Each of the women considered in this thesis formed her own harem, projecting on to this distant Oriental structure her fears, hopes and desires. Wortley Montagu’s harem was a utopia for women only. The Victorian Martineau opined that the Oriental harem was a hell on earth. Lady Isabel Burton constructed a happy medium between the two. Although at times ambivalent towards the Syrian women she encountered, she partook in their customs and manners, particularly public bathing, smoking and other Eastern indulgences. Her attitude illustrates that the British home and the Oriental harem are not so dissimilar, bridging the gap between us and them.

year: 2013

title: Just take a second to breathe: Empowering youth through mindfulness at Atawhai 2019

authors: McAllister, Suzanne Maree

subjects: Mindfulness

abstract: This research was an evaluation of The Kindness Institute’s 2019 Atawhai programme. It examined the effects that exposure to mindfulness-based skills, Māori cultural practices, mentoring, and the creative arts had on a cohort of marginalised youth. Specifically, the research aimed to determine (1) if learning mindfulness-based skills helped the youth to positively deal with challenges, (2) what effect learning mindfulness-based skills has on their positive and negative emotions and (3) were youth empowered to share the skills they learned within their homes, families and communities to enable a wider benefit from the mindfulness-based skills. Participants included 12 youth who attended the Atawhai programme during 2019. They all completed shortened versions of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), Adolescent Self-Regulatory Inventory (ASRI), The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ), Revised Children’s Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) and Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) at seven stages over a nine-month period from March 2019 to December 2019. Self-report debrief questionnaires and researcher observations were recorded during the October 2019 residential intensive of 5 days. Inferential statistics (repeated measures ANOVA and post-hoc paired t-tests) indicated a statistically significant increase in positive emotions (p<0.01) with a large effect 1.07 over the duration of the evaluation period from March 2019 to December 2019; the October 2019 intensive, p<0.01, d=1.37; and the April 2019 intensive, p<0.01, d=1.89. Statistically significant decreases in anxiety (p<0.01) with a large effect d=1.99 were indicated over the duration of the evaluation period from March 2019 to December 2019; the October 2019 intensive, p=0.07, d=0.57; and the April 2019 intensive, p≤0.01, d=1.19. Self-report measures indicated the youth; found the mindfulness-based skills beneficial, preferred a particular skill over others, and found their mentors supportive in helping them incorporate the skills into their daily lives. Youth reported they had continued their mindfulness-based practice outside Atawhai and were regularly sharing the skills within their homes, families and communities including their schools. These findings suggest the Atawhai programme has a profound and significant positive effect on the wellbeing of the young people it serves.

text: Just take a second to breathe: Empowering youth through mindfulness at Atawhai 2019 This research was an evaluation of The Kindness Institute’s 2019 Atawhai programme. It examined the effects that exposure to mindfulness-based skills, Māori cultural practices, mentoring, and the creative arts had on a cohort of marginalised youth. Specifically, the research aimed to determine (1) if learning mindfulness-based skills helped the youth to positively deal with challenges, (2) what effect learning mindfulness-based skills has on their positive and negative emotions and (3) were youth empowered to share the skills they learned within their homes, families and communities to enable a wider benefit from the mindfulness-based skills. Participants included 12 youth who attended the Atawhai programme during 2019. They all completed shortened versions of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), Adolescent Self-Regulatory Inventory (ASRI), The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ), Revised Children’s Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) and Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) at seven stages over a nine-month period from March 2019 to December 2019. Self-report debrief questionnaires and researcher observations were recorded during the October 2019 residential intensive of 5 days. Inferential statistics (repeated measures ANOVA and post-hoc paired t-tests) indicated a statistically significant increase in positive emotions (p<0.01) with a large effect 1.07 over the duration of the evaluation period from March 2019 to December 2019; the October 2019 intensive, p<0.01, d=1.37; and the April 2019 intensive, p<0.01, d=1.89. Statistically significant decreases in anxiety (p<0.01) with a large effect d=1.99 were indicated over the duration of the evaluation period from March 2019 to December 2019; the October 2019 intensive, p=0.07, d=0.57; and the April 2019 intensive, p≤0.01, d=1.19. Self-report measures indicated the youth; found the mindfulness-based skills beneficial, preferred a particular skill over others, and found their mentors supportive in helping them incorporate the skills into their daily lives. Youth reported they had continued their mindfulness-based practice outside Atawhai and were regularly sharing the skills within their homes, families and communities including their schools. These findings suggest the Atawhai programme has a profound and significant positive effect on the wellbeing of the young people it serves.

year: 2020