Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Census As A Techology Of Empire, David W. Darrow

History Faculty Publications

A census is an example of the social construction of knowledge and the politics of measurement. Measuring people assumes a political significance because it entails converting heterogeneous populations into numbers—stable pieces of knowledge that can be easily combined and manipulated. In constructing such numerical representations, census officials claim to be creating an objective portrait of the population. Censuses, however, also contribute to something less tangible by playing a key role in the creation of what Benedict Anderson has termed an “imagined community.” General censuses provide states with a unique opportunity to unify space and populations with a single instrument. Furthermore, …

Review: Stuart Banner's 'The Death Penalty: An American History', William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

In this dispassionate but chillingly detailed survey of capital punishment, Banner, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, documents and explains the dramatic "changes in the arguments pro and con, in the crimes punished with death, in execution methods and rituals ... [and] in the way Americans have understood and experienced the death penalty."

Is There A Center To American Religious History?, William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

Is there a center to American religious history? Of course, this question grows out of what David Wills has referred to as “the perennial debate that always seems to hold center stage as the Big Issue in the field ... [that is,] the ongoing quarrel between those who center their stories on the culturally formative role of a dominant Protestantism and those who emphasize the countervailing forces of religious pluralism and toleration.”

As I take the question, Is there some sort of center to American religion – dominant Protestantism or otherwise – that enables us to tell the story of …

Statistics And Sufficiency: Toward An Intellectual History Of Russia's Rural Crisis, David W. Darrow

History Faculty Publications

The article examines the impact of the ‘rise of statistical thinking’ and statistical measurement on elite perceptions of the condition of the Russian Empire's post-emancipation peasant economy. Using archival and published sources, it argues that the increased use of statistical measurement did much to concretize in numerical (‘objective’) terms the idea of rural crisis. In particular, the combination of traditional paternalistic concerns about the sufficiency of peasant resources and the use of cadastre measurement yielded an image of the peasant household economy in which the value (the income-producing capabilities) of post-emancipation peasant allotments nearly always fell short of subsistence requirements …

Neil Armstrong, Monish Ranjan Chatterjee

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In addition to his outstanding and pioneering contributions to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) crewed spaceflight program, Armstrong served with distinction as a professor of aerospace engineering, chairman and director of several corporations, and member of presidential commissions.

Review: 'Portraits In Steel: An Illustrated History Of Jones & Laughlin Corporation', John Alfred Heitmann

History Faculty Publications

Recent developments at the time of this review (2001) call for the addition of one final chapter to Portraits in Steel: An Illustrated History of Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation. Jones & Laughlin's (J&L's) successor firm, LTV Steel, is currently declaring bankruptcy. Consequently, numerous questions concerning the fate of its workers, the future of a once-vibrant industrial region, and the role of the federal government in industrial planning are subjects of intense private and public concern. This work, therefore, is most timely, as it places the controversial current event in historical context, and it does so in a most elegant …