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This essay engages Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex to explore perverse forms of protest depicted in three films: Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, David Fincher’s Gone Girl, and Lars von Trier’s two-volume Nymphomaniac. In each film, agency is linked to both sexuality and violence and is depicted as stemming from a range of affects—boredom, melancholy, anxiety, anger, desire, paranoia, revenge, and frustration. Emotions simmer until at some point, they produce violent outbursts, or what might be described as perverse protests. Why should feminists take an interest in these films about women who might easily be dismissed, even condemned, by viewers as crazy, vengeful, and slutty? Presented on screen, these women’s stories do not so much veer between pleasure and danger but rather sit at the apex of their conjunction. Read with Beauvoir, we can see that the films capture the ambiguities, intensities, and pathologies of women’s feelings and forms of protest.

Beauvoir and Wright met in France in 1946, and Wright was Beauvoir’s host when she came to the United States in 1947. Together they talked about race, gender, and oppression. In this chapter, Lori J. Marso engages these conversations across their work, taking up Wright’s early writings in 12 Million Black Voices, his trip to Ghana after the victory of Kwame Nkrumah, and his address to the Paris Congress of Black Writers in 1956. With Wright and Beauvoir in conversation, the dangers of identity politics are illuminated and an alternative source of solidarity emerges. Both take seriously the weight of identity in creating oppression but refuse to yield to it as a political strategy.

Following the eruption of January 1992, episodes of lava dome growth accompanied by generation of dome-collapse nuees ardentes occurred in 1994–1998. In addition, nuees ardentes were generated by fountain-collapse in January 1997, and the 1998 events also suggest an explosive component. Significant tilt and seismic precursors on varying time scales preceded these events. Deformation about the summit has been detected by electronic tiltmeters since November 1992, with inflation corresponding generally to lava dome growth, and deflation (or decreased inflation) corresponding to loss of dome mass. Strong short-term (days to weeks) accelerations in tilt rate and seismicity occurred prior to the major nuees ardentes episodes, apart from those of 22 November 1994 which were preceded by steadily increasing tilt for over 200 days but lacked short-term precursors. Because of the combination of populated hazardous areas and the lack of an issued warning, about 100 casualties occurred in 1994. In contrast, the strong precursors in 1997 and 1998 provided advance warning to observatory scientists, enabled the stepped raising of alert levels, and aided hazard management. As a result of these factors, but also the fortunate fact that the large nuees ardentes did not quite descend into populated areas, no casualties occurred. The nuee ardente episode of 1994 is interpreted as purely due to gravitational collapse, whereas those of 1997 and 1998 were influenced by gas-pressurization of the lava dome.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles-Louis Montesquieu, and Germaine de Stael tell stories that warn against adopting the model of manly citizenship that emerged from the basic tenets of Enlightenment thought. This model includes idealization of the individual as autonomous self, faith in the possibility of a unitary public, the twinning of increasing enlightenment with increasing freedom and progress, and belief that political judgment is best made from an Archimedean point outside of time, space, particular experiences or interests, and familial loyalties. Though Rousseau, Montesquieu, and de Stael are often interpreted as adherents of the Enlightenment, their stories of particular women excluded from the philosophy and politics of Enlightenment reason beckon us toward new ways of defining and practicing citizenship in a democratic community.

More than 50 volcanic debris flows or lahars were generated around Mt Merapi during the first rainy season following the nuees ardentes of 22 November 1994. The rainfalls that triggered the lahars were analyzed, using such instruments as weather radar and telemetered rain gauges. Lahar dynamics were also monitored, using new non-contact detection instrumentation installed on the slopes of the volcano. These devices include real-time seismic amplitude measurement (RSAM), seismic spectral amplitude measurement (SSAM) and acoustic flow monitoring (AFM) systems. Calibration of the various systems was accomplished by field measurements of flow velocities and discharge, contemporaneously with instrumental monitoring. The 1994–1995 lahars were relatively short events, their duration in the Boyong river commonly ranging between 30 min and 1 h 30 min. The great majority (90%) of the lahars was recognized at Kaliurang village between 13:00 and 17:30 h, due to the predominance of afternoon rainfalls. The observed mean velocity of lahar fronts ranged between 1.1 and 3.4 m/s, whereas the peak velocity of the flows varied from 11 to 15 m/s, under the Gardu Pandang viewpoint location at Kaliurang, to 8–10 m/s at a section 500 m downstream from this site. River slopes vary from 28 to 22 m/km at the two sites. Peak discharges recorded in various events ranged from 33 to 360 m3/s, with the maximum value of peak discharge 360 m3/s, on 20 May 1995. To improve the lahar warning system along Boyong river, some instrumental thresholds were proposed: large and potentially hazardous lahars may be detected by RSAM units exceeding 400, SSAM units exceeding 80 on the highest frequency band, or AFM values greater than 1500 mV on the low-gain, broad-band setting.

Four experiments were conducted to examine variables associated with response practice as an instructional technique for individuals with intellectual disabilities. In Experiment 1, the effect of the cover component in the “cover write” method was evaluated, as were the comparative effects of written versus oral practice of spelling words by rehabilitation clients. The results showed that the cover procedure generally did not enhance performance over and above that produced by practice alone, and written practice generally was not superior to oral practice. Experiment 2 demonstrated that less response practice (i.e., five times) was as effective as more practice (i.e., 10 and 15 times) for teaching spelling to adolescents with developmental disabilities. Experiments 3 and 4 also showed that even less response practice (i.e., one time) was as effective as more practice (five times), and irrelevant practice following errors was as effective as relevant practice for teaching spelling and sight vocabulary to adolescents with behavior disorders and developmental disabilities, respectively. The findings suggest that a parsimonious procedure of limited response practice and positive reinforcement may be effective for the tasks and populations studied.