Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Forum Magazine, Graduation Issue, 2014

Forum Magazine

No abstract provided.

Forum Magazine, Fall 2014

Forum Magazine

No abstract provided.

Made In Germany: Integration As Inside Joke In The Ethno-Comedy Of Kaya Yanar And Bülent Ceylan, Kathrin M. Bower

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

As the largest “foreign” population in Germany, Turkish immigrants have been the primary target for concerns about integration and the impact of immigration on German culture. Since the founding of the first Turkish German cabaret in 1985 by Şinasi Dikmen and Muhsin Omurca, the misconceptions and one-sided expectations associated with integration have been played, parodied, and satirized by Turkish German performers. As producers of contemporary ethno-comedy, Kaya Yanar and Bülent Ceylan appeal to mass audiences with a new approach, inverting questions of integration by creating communities through laughter in which audiences are at once in on the joke and its …

Forum Magazine, November 2013

Forum Magazine

No abstract provided.

Mormonism And The Family (Forum), Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

When we speak of the family in Mormonism, the term can mean many things. There is an idealized Mormon family, the one described in church magazines, General Conference talks, and Mormon public service commercials. There is the family of the Mormon theological tradition, stretching endlessly off into the eternities, bound together with temple ordinances, the forever family of Mormon bumper stickers. There is another family, product of a more speculative bent in Mormon theology, which comes of an eschatological reading of the Abrahamic covenant, and which imputes to a temple-sealed Mormon couple the right to an endless seed, a posterity …

[Introduction To] Leadership And Elizabethan Culture, Peter Iver Kaufman

Bookshelf

Bringing together contributions from political, cultural, and literary historians, Leadership and Elizabethan Culture identifies distinctive problems confronting early modern English government during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

This diverse group of contributors examines local elites and church leadership, explores the queen, her councillors, as well as her struggles with Mary Stuart and Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, raises questions about Elizabeth's leadership, and the advice she received as well as the advice she rejected.

Selected, influential works by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Sidney, and Bacon are put in their Elizabethan and contemporary critical contexts, rounding off the study of Elizabethan …

[Introduction To] Racism In The Nation's Service: Government Workers And The Color Line In Woodrow Wilson's America, Eric S. Yellin

Bookshelf

Between the 1880s and 1910s, thousands of African Americans passed civil service exams and became employed in the executive offices of the federal government. However, by 1920, promotions to well-paying federal jobs had nearly vanished for black workers. Eric S. Yellin argues that the Wilson administration's successful 1913 drive to segregate the federal government was a pivotal episode in the age of progressive politics. Yellin investigates how the enactment of this policy, based on Progressives' demands for whiteness in government, imposed a color line on American opportunity and implicated Washington in the economic limitation of African Americans for decades to …

Forum Magazine, Spring 2013

Forum Magazine

No abstract provided.

Forum Magazine, Orientation Issue

Forum Magazine

No abstract provided.

Development And Hope: Comments On Thomas Mccarthy's Race, Empire, And The Idea Of Human Development, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Thomas McCarthy’s Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development is an intriguing and important book; moreover, despite its heavy themes and its fine scholarship, it is extremely readable. And it is very timely. The questions it takes up are some of the most pressing of our age: globalization, international distributive justice, and sustainable economic development in particular. Its central problematic concerns the detrimental effects of developmental thinking as a core feature of modernity. The book seeks, says McCarthy, to make “a contribution to the critical history of the present” (2), but it does not stop with critical analysis; McCarthy …

Play Fair With Recidivists, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

Retributivists thus face a difficult challenge. Either we must go against the social grain, and perhaps our own intuitions, by insisting that a criminal offense carry the same penalty or punishment no matter how many previous convictions an offender has accrued; or we must find a way to justify the recidivist premium. I shall take the second route here by arguing that recidivism itself is a kind of criminal offense. In developing this argument, I shall rely on Youngjae Lee's insightful analysis of "recidivism as omission." I shall complement his analysis, however, by grounding it in a conception of criminal …

Playing Fair With Prisoners, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

Oddness aside, however, I think there is much to recommend the attempt to restore rehabilitation to a central place in the practice of punishment. Nor do I think that rehabilitation must displace retribution in that practice. Properly understood, the two aims are not only compatible but also complementary. If we are to understand them properly, though, we shall need to see them as components of a theory of punishment that is grounded in considerations of fair play. Such a theory also has the advantage of offering guidance with regard to other controversial matters of penal policy, such as the question …

She Wears The Masks: Bluefacing In Nilaja Sun's Black And Blue And La Nubia Latina, Patricia Herrera

Theatre and Dance Faculty Publications

This article examines how Nilaja Sun explicitly employs the minstrelsy traditions of blackface to push the conceptual limits of racial identity, and expand the nodes of intersection within diasporic identities. The act of bluing up, as opposed to blacking up, is Sun's way of provoking her audience to think more expansively about the performance of racialized identity outside of black and Latino paradigms, and toward a more complicated and not-clearly discernible Afro-Latino hybrid subjectivity. Sun uses what I call bluefacing, a performance tactic that magnifies the constrictive and monolithic perceptions of blackness and Latinidad as a means of generating …

Serdar Somuncu: Reframing Integration Through A Transnational Politics Of Satire, Kathrin M. Bower

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

Founded by Şinasi Dikmen and Muhsin Omurcu in Ulm in 1985, Knobi-Bonbon is widely recognized as the first Turkish German cabaret in the Federal Republic. Dikmen and Omurcu focused on ethnic stereotypes, integration, and coexistence in their early programs, with an emphasis on the German misunderstanding of integration as cultural assimilation (Boran 202, 219). With a run of successful performances, Knobi-Bonbon established a momentum that has carried through to the present day, making Turkish German comedy a fixture on the German stage. Responding to the wave of nationalism and xenophobia that followed in the wake of unification, Knobi-Bonbon’s shows became …

Norms And Survival In The Heat Of War: Normative Versus Instrumental Rationalities And Survival Tactics In The Blockade Of Leningrad, Jeffrey K. Hass

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

When war challenges civilian survival, what shapes the balance between normative and instrumental rationalities in survival practices? Increasing desperation and uncertainty can lead civilians to focus on their own material interests and to violate norms in the name of survival or gain—to the detriment of the war effort and of other civilians. Do norms, boundaries against transgressions, and considerations of collective interests and identities persist, and, if so, through what mechanisms? Using diaries and recollections from the 872-day Blockade of Leningrad (1941–1944)—an extreme case of wartime desperation—this article examines how three forms of cultural embeddedness shape variation in the strength …

Jean Hampton’S Theory Of Punishment: A Critical Appreciation, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

Jean Hampton’s work first came to my attention in 1984, when the summer issue of Philosophy & Public Affairs appeared in my mailbox. Hampton’s essay in that issue, “The Moral Education Theory of Punishment,” did not persuade me—or many others, I suspect—that “punishment should not be justified as a deserved evil, but rather as an attempt, by someone who cares, to improve a wayward person” (Hampton 1984, 237). The essay did persuade me, though, that moral education is a plausible aim of punishment, even if it is not the “full and complete justification” Hampton claimed it to be (Hampton 1984, …

Locas Al Rescate: The Transnational Hauntings Of Queer Cubanidad, LáZaro Lima

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

“Locas al Rescate: The Transnational Hauntings of Queer Cubanidad” (originally published in Cuba Transnational) offers a significant contribution both to transnational American Studies and to gender studies. In telling the insider story of the alternative identity formation, practices, and forms of “rescue” initiated by the affective activism of the Cuban American society in drag in 1990s Miami/South Beach, Lima resuscitates the liberatory gestures of a subculture defined by its pursuit of its own acceptance, value, and freedom. With their aesthetic and political life on a raft, the gay micro-communities inside Cuban America asserted their own islandic space, Lima observes, …

Decapitating Power, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In “Society Must Be Defended” Foucault examines 17th century race war discourse not so much in order to understand 20th century racism or concepts of race but primarily because it constitutes an historical example of an attempt to think power without a head or king. This essay examines his account of race war discourse and the sources he used to construct it. It then takes issue with his claim that early race war discourse can be separated from 18th and 19th century racisms. Finally, it returns to the question of power and argues that the effect of the 1976 lecture …

Republicanism And The Foundations Of Criminal Law, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

This chapter makes a case for the republican tradition in political philosophy as a theory that can provide a rational reconstruction of criminal law. It argues that republicanism offers a reconstruction of criminal law that is both rational and plausible. In particular, it shows that republicanism can help us to make sense of three important features of criminal law: first, the conviction that crime is a public wrong; second, the general pattern of development of criminal law historically; and third, the public nature of criminal law as a cooperative enterprise. To begin, however, it explains what republicanism is and why …

Waves Of Feminism: Discussions And Disruptions, Melissa Ooten, Emily Miller

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

As an educator and a student situated in women, gender and sexuality studies, we find it of great importance to analyze our relationship with each other and with our fellow students and teachers. As both student and teacher, we are already actively engaged in social justice work. As a teacher, Melissa wants not only to support and nourish the work of her students, but she also wants to give students the theoretical tools necessarily to fully analyze and frame their experiences. In other words, she wants them to understand the connections between theory and practice in order to be informed …

Church Burnings, Eric S. Yellin

History Faculty Publications

On 15 September 1963 a bomb exploded in the basement of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. The ensuing fire and death of four little girls placed the violence of white supremacy on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. It also entered the 16^th Street Church into a long history of attacks against houses of worship in the American South. Though churches burn for any number of reasons, including accident and insurance fraud, church arson in southern culture has frequently been associated with a symbolic assault on a community’s core institution.

Serdar Somuncu: Turkish German Comedy As Transnational Intervention, Kathrin M. Bower

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

A reconceptualization of Germanness, combined with a reconsideration of what constitutes “Germanness” and “Turkishness” and how they are linked, is a central theme in the programs of a younger generation of Turkish German cabaret artists and comedians. As a member of the new generation of performers, Serdar Somuncu stands out, not only for his unapologetic embrace of political theater critical of both German and Turkish social politics, but also for his assertion of a right and responsibility to engage with Germany’s past, coupled with an insistence on differentiation and balanced comparison when discussing integration. After gaining notoriety through his Mein …

Minority Identity As German Identity In Conscious Rap And Gangsta Rap: Pushing The Margins, Redefining The Center, Kathrin M. Bower

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

After rap entered the German music scene in the 1980s, it developed into a variety of styles that reflect Germany's increasingly multiethnic social fabric. Politically conscious rap assumed greater relevance after unification, focusing on issues of discrimination, integration, and xenophobia. Gangsta rap, with its emphasis on street conflict and violence, brought the ghetto to Germany and sparked debates about the condition of German cities and the erosion of civic consciousness. Alternately celebrated and reviled by the media, both styles utilize rap's synthesis of authenticity and performance to redefine the relationship between minority identity and German identity and debunk Leitkultur.

Writing Southern Race Relations: Stories Ellen Douglas Was Brave Enough To Tell, Suzanne W. Jones

English Faculty Publications

When Ellen Douglas started writing, she drew inspiration from the way William Faulkner and other southern writers whom she admired, like Eudora Welty, depicted southern places. Douglas planted all of her fiction firmly in the region of Mississippi that she knew best; her Homochitto is modeled of Natchez, where she was born, and her Philippi on Greenville, where she lived with her husband and their children. But Douglas reacted against the gothic and mythic elements in Faulkner's work and used as her first literary models the great nineteenth-century realists: Dostoevsky, Flaubert, James, and Tolstoy. She admired Eudora Welty, but found …

Invisible Dread, From Twisted: The Dreadlock Chronicles, Bertram D. Ashe

English Faculty Publications

This excerpt traces the issues and process surrounding the dreadlocking of an Afri­can-American professor's hair. The personal history leading up to the decision to grow locks is briefly addressed, as is the experience of getting twisted for the first time and some reactions to the new hairstyle. Twisted discusses issues of cultural authenticity and academic nonconformity. It examines dreadlocks as a pathway to explore black identity, but in opposing ways: the act of locking ones hair does dis­play unconventional blackness - but it also participates in a preexisting black style. To what extent, the excerpt asks, can the adoption of …

The Cultural Politics Of Slam Poetry: Race, Identity, And The Performance Of Popular Verse In America (Book Review), Matthew Oware

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Review of the book, The Cultural Politics of Slam Poetry: Race, Identity, and the Performance of Popular Verse in America, by Susan Somers-Willett, University of Michigan Press, 2009

Racism And Biopower, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

While ignorance, or at least a lack of clear and distinct experience, does not seem to have stopped our predecessors from philosophizing about all manner of things from matter to immortal souls, in the latter half of the twentieth century North American philosophers became increasingly timid about advancing propositions based primarily not on logic informed by material evidence but on intuition, creative imagination, and passionate desire. By the 1960s our generation's teachers and mentors, perhaps battered by the McCarthy years or humbled by the dazzling successes of their colleagues in the "hard" sciences, had redrawn the disciplinary boundaries tightly enough …

Book Panel Response: Symposium On Ladelle Mcwhorter's Racism And Sexual Oppression In Anglo-America: A Genealogy, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Unfortunately I do not have space to address individually each issue these four papers raise. Instead, I will first situate my work in relation to identity politics and address fears that my approach is reductive. Then, building on comments from Professors Wilkerson and Al-Saji, I will offer some remarks about aims, methods, and shortcomings.

Racism, Eugenics, And Ernst Mayr’S Account Of Species, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

At his death at age one hundred in 2005, Ernst Mayr was hailed as the greatest evolutionary biologist of the twentieth century. His definition of species, published in 1942 in Systematics and the Origin of Species and known as the “biological species concept,” is familiar to every tenth grader: “Species are groups of interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups.” That definition, together with Mayr’s and Theodosius Dobzhansky’s theory of speciation, enabled the integration of modern genetics and Darwinian evolutionary theory. In this paper I will argue that it imported racism into the heart of modern …

The Experience Of War And The Construction Of Normality. Lessons From The Blockade Of Leningrad, Jeffrey K. Hass

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

In this essay I use the example of the Blockade of Leningrad - an extreme example of the Soviet experience of World War II, and an extreme example of the experience of war generally - to address two issues. The first is a more general, theoretical issue: the importance of war to the construction of political and social normality and practices. Political science and sociology have examined the impact of war on structures and institutions, such as states or gender roles and relations; but the impact of war on meanings and meaning systems is addressed only empirically, often without much …