Diana Cavuoto Glenn

Perceptions of optimal conditions for teaching and learning: a case study from Flinders University

Effective teaching and learning in higher education is an important focal point of literature around the globe. Various models are presented as desirable and fostering optimal conditions for teaching and learning. However, each model must be examined within the context of its institutional culture, mission and strategic plan to ascertain if it meets the envisaged goals. The Reinventing Teaching Project survey conducted at Flinders University in 2009 provided a unique opportunity for academic staff and students across all faculties to respond to a survey that explored their perceptions of optimal learning conditions and assessed if the campus environment was conducive to effective teaching and learning practices. The exploratory study was designed to gather qualitative and quantitative data on the motivation of teachers and learners to engage with learning and learners (or not). The results of the survey present valuable insights into what teachers and learners consider to be important attributes of optimal teaching and learning and indicate a number of similarities and differences among teacher-student perceptions. This paper identifies and discusses some of the pertinent outcomes of the study to provide a framework for other similar studies.

Writing Campanian lives: Considerations of transnational identity and belonging

Australia experienced a period of mass migration from Italy in the immediate post-Second World War period. This article presents findings from the oral narratives of a cohort of first-generation Italians who migrated from the region of Campania, in southern Italy, to the city of Adelaide, in the state of South Australia, in the 1950s and 1960s. In the course of exploring the pre- and post-migratory vicissitudes of the informants, as well as their personal memories of the long sea voyage, the analysis examines the effects of cultural dislocation over a broad arc of time and discusses issues connected to identity formation, belonging, the loss of home and cultural maintenance on a group of migrants who are now senior citizens. The oral testimonies evidence the candid reactions of the project informants to the prospect of transnational migration, the cultural impact upon reaching the unfamiliar destination site and the transformative factors that motivated both the maintenance of core values and the enactment of cross-cultural communication strategies. The oral testimonies reveal the project conversants’ negotiation of cultural boundaries, in order to cope with the assimilation pressures being exerted by the dominant culture, and their honing of survival strategies in order to facilitate the identity formation and successful integration of subsequent generations. The article also includes excerpts from the oral testimonies of a second cohort of informants of Anglo-British origin who were residing in Adelaide during the post-war period.

Book Review: Dante's Two Beloveds. Ethics and Erotics in theHolmesOlivia. Dante's Two Beloveds. Ethics and Erotics in the Divine Comedy. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2008. Pp. 274.

ets, of whom Sannazaro may have been the most outstanding. It has been suggested that the urge to reject Christian Latin and to embrace the Ciceronian and Virgilian style made Latin no longer the lingua franca of Europe, since the elevated style was not accessible to any but the highly educated. The three books of Elegies, written in the favorite meter of Latin love poets, speak of many serious subjects, and include a striking poem reflecting on the ruins of ancient Cumae as symptomatic of the transitory nature of all human existence. Sannazaro also wrote three books of autobiographical epigrams of various lengths. Modeled on those of Martial, they run the gamut from praise to abuse, and criticize events of the times, not sparing even some of his most illustrious contemporaries. Michael Putnam has produced an accurate and literate translation. It is his more than one hundred pages of notes on the individual poems that are most impressive. He is able to identify the sources of Sannazaro’s borrowings — not only words, but the mythological references, as well as many of the Greek names that were taken from Theocritus. In short, this is a work of elegant scholarship, and one which makes idiosyncratic material readable and interesting to the informed reader. AARON W. GODFREY S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook ______________________

Understanding Dante (review)

Parergon 23.1 (2006) References to Jerusalem as the centre of the world also proliferated in the twelfth century. This idea had a long history in biblical texts and exegesis but only now, according to Schein, did it become an ‘almost universal’ concept (p. 141). The physical placement of Jerusalem on medieval maps reflects the transformation of an anagogical truth (Jerusalem as the heavenly fatherland) into an accepted literal and physical truth (Jerusalem as the centre of the known world). This concept was reinforced by the eschatological importance of the city as the expected scene of the End of the World and Last Days, an event some saw fulfilled by Saladin’s reconquest of the city in 1187. No-one summed up the new twist on old ideas better than Peter Abelard, according to whom ‘the soul of the world is found at the middle of the world; consequently Jerusalem, from whence comes salvation, is found at the centre of the world’ (p. 143). Gateway to the Heavenly City is a very well organized and clearly written consideration of changing intellectual and religious attitudes in the wake of the First Crusade. Most chapters are of a comfortable length and despite its primary focus as a work of academic history it would not be out of place in the hands of an intelligent and curious general reader. It is a great shame that Sylvia Schein’s death has robbed us of the opportunity to see further results from her ongoing research into the affairs of the Crusader States, especially her planned work on aspects of gender in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Lindsay Diggelmann Department of History University of Auckland