Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Die Energiewende, Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Questioning Appropriation: Agency And Complicity In A Transnational Feminist Location Politics, Joseph D. Parker

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

In feminist circles agency is often opposed to complicity and associated with resistance to sexism and patriarchy, yet such binary oppositions make the political stakes of their presumed boundaries difficult to interrogate. By bringing location politics into dialogue with agency theory, boundaries of same/Other and location categories may move from a naturalized ground for political work to the contested center of a politics of resistance. I follow a Foucauldian interpretation of agency to reconsider the ethico-politics of established divisions of self and Other both individually and in terms of social movements. By following Gayatri Spivak, Meyda Yeğenoğlu, and Chandra Mohanty's …

Review: Robert H. Nelson, The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion Vs. Environmental Religion In Contemporary America, Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

This is a book review of Robert H. Nelson's The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion vs. Environmental Religion in Contemporary America. Nelson argues that environmentalism and economics represent competing religious worldviews. Within this framework, debates over issues like global warming and acid rain become veiled theological disputes between these two “secular religions.” Nelson paints with a broad, aggressive brush. This is both the strength and weakness of his book, as he conjures a world of epic battles between the economic faithful, who worship material progress, and the environmentally pious, who bemoan the corruption visited by humans upon the natural world. …

An Ethico-Politics Of Subaltern Representations In Post-9/11 Documentary Film, Joseph D. Parker

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

The World War Without End (WWWoE), formerly known as the War on Terror,ii is one of those rare occasions when a gendered subaltern population comes to the attention of the nation-state. If the subaltern is understood as something akin to illiterate rural women from the global South, then she now has the full attention of the White House and Downing Street, the US State Department, CNN and Time magazine.iii In official state positions and in media coverage, interest in the subaltern is often expressed in humanitarian attention to the rights or freedoms of these subaltern women in order to justify …

Review: Michael C. Carhart, The Science Of Culture In Enlightenment Germany, Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

This is a book review of The Science of Culture in Enlightenment Germany, by Michael C. Carhart. It is an entertaining book. Its chapters are organized around a series of vignettes: Carsten Niebuhr on camelback negotiating with his Bedouin guides; feral French children skinning rabbits with their bare hands; English gentlemen in Syrian deserts; Captian Cooks lieutenants carving "steaks" from teh severed heads of war victims. In case you've lost your bearings, let me assure you that The Science of Culture in Enlightenment Germany is indeed about Enlightenment Germany. But as the structure of the chapters suggests, Michael Carhart …

Review: Karin Hartbecke, Zwischen Fürstenwillkür Und Menschheitswohl: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Als Bibliothekar, Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

This is a book review of Zwischen Fürstenwillkür und Menschheitswohl: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz als Bibliothekar, edited by Karin Hartbecke. The title of the volume—at least the part before the colon—is misleading. This is not really a book about the tension between human welfare and absolute monarchy. It is instead an extended effort to reconstruct Leibniz's practices of categorizing and acquiring books; it is also about the relationship between Leibniz's written reflections on categorizing books and those practices.

Leibniz And The Wind Machines, Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz visited the Harz Mountains more than thirty times and spent almost three full years there between 1680 and 1686. His aim was to install wind machines for draining the Harz silver mines. Despite Leibniz’s best efforts—his commitment bordered on obsession—the enterprise ultimately failed. There is still disagreement about exactly what happened. Biographers and historians have mostly asserted that Leibniz, a universal genius dedicated to the greater good of science and society, was thwarted by stubborn mining officials. Historians of mining, on the other hand, have generally sided with the “professionals” in the Hannoverian mining administration. This essay …

Subjugated Knowledges And Dedisciplinarity In Cultural Studies Pedagogy, Joseph D. Parker

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Discussions of the contested politics of academic fields that have emerged from social movements often emphasize course content while deemphasizing the ways that power circulates through specific sites in the academy. Certainly women's studies, queer studies, and the different ethnic studies fields have struggled to maintain links to the social movements that engendered them. and a concomitant focus on social change. In a more complex fashion, the same is true of postcolonial studies. Similarly, cultural studies may be understood as an academic field emerging from class-based social movements that are affiliated in complex ways with various Marxist analyses whose academic …

Why Did Lagrange "Prove" The Parallel Postulate?, Judith V. Grabiner

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

In 1806, Joseph-Louis Lagrange read a memoir "proving" Euclid's parallel postulate to the Institut de France in Paris. The memoir still exists in manuscript, and we’ll look at what it says. We ask why he tried to prove the postulate, and why he attacked the problem in the way that he did. We also look at how the ideas in this manuscript are related to such things as Lagrange’s philosophy of mathematics, artists’ ideas about space, Newtonian mechanics, and Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason. Finally, we reflect on how this episode changes our views about eighteenth-century attitudes toward geometry, space, …

Learning From Foxwoods: Visualizing The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, Bill Anthes

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

The author discusses the Pequot Tribal Nation's use of income from their highly profitable casino venture to fund cultural revitalization projects and articulate Native sovereignty.

Indian Time At Foxwoods, Bill Anthes

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

An analysis of the self-representation of the Pequot Nation of Connecticut, one of the wealthiest Indian nations in the U.S. The article is a published version of a paper originally given at the 2005 conference (Im)permanence: Cultures In/Out of Time at Carnegie Mellon University.

Espousing Interactions And Fielding Reactions: Addressing Laypeople's Beliefs About Genetic Determinism, David S. Moore

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Although biologists and philosophers of science generally agree that genes cannot determine the forms of biological and psychological traits, students, journalists, politicians, and other members of the general public nonetheless continue to embrace genetic determinism. This article identifies some of the concerns typically raised by individuals when they first encounter the systems perspective that biologists and philosophers of science now favor over genetic determinism, and uses arguments informed by that perspective to address those concerns. No definitive statements can yet be made about why genetic determinism has proven so resilient in the face of empirical evidence pointing up its deficiencies, …

Review: Alix Cooper, Inventing The Indigenous: Local Knowledge And Natural History In Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2007), Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Reviewed work: Alix Cooper. Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe. xi + 218 pp., illus., bibl., index. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. $75 (cloth).

The Fiscal Logic Of Enlightened German Science, Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

This work is Chapter 14 in Knowledge and its Making in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400 –1800, edited by Benjamin Schmidt and Pamela Smith.

The fruits of knowledge—such as books, data, and ideas—tend to generate far more attention than the ways in which knowledge is produced and acquired. Correcting this imbalance, Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe brings together a wide-ranging yet tightly integrated series of essays that explore how knowledge was obtained and demonstrated in Europe during an intellectually explosive four centuries, when standard methods of inquiry took shape across several fields of intellectual pursuit.

Composed …

Review: Hubert Steinke, Irritating Experiments: Haller’S Concept And The European Controversy On Irritability And Sensibility, 1750-90 (Amsterdam And New York, 2005), Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Reviewed work: Hubert Steinke. Irritating Experiments: Haller's Concept and the European Controversy on Irritability and Sensibility, 1750-90. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2005. 354 pp. $97.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-90-420-1852-5.

Aboriginal Art- Warlpiri, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Indigenous Australians produce rich and diverse art expressive of their relationships with the land and the cosmos. By way of example, this entry focuses on Warlpiri graphic art of the Western Desert region of Australia.

Natural History And Indigenous Worldviews, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Beliefs about the relationship between humans and the natural environment are expressed through worldviews. A worldview is a mechanism system or complex of ideas through which the world makes cultural sense. As deeply seated belief systems, worldviews illuminate the ecological priorities and concepts of various peoples.

Sacred Space/Place, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Landscape, space, and place are three concepts that merge together to create the human experience of the environment. Space is the most basic concept of geography; it is the three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur. Landscapes and places are both contained within space.

Rock Art – Australian Aboriginal, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Aboriginal people of Australia have a rich heritage of carving and painting on rocks, extending back well more than 20,000 years. Rock art, Australia's oldest surviving art form, expresses the Aborigines' social, economic and religious concerns through the centuries

Review: Moira R. Rogers, Newtonianism For The Ladies And Other Uneducated Souls: The Popularization Of Science In Leipzig, 1687-1750 (New York, 2003), Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Reviewed work: Moira R. Rogers. Newtonianism for the Ladies and Other Uneducated Souls: The Popularization of Science in Leipzig, 1687-1750. New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 2003. xiii + 181 pp. $61.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8204-5029-2.

Review: Bettina Wahrig And Werner Sohn, Eds. Zwischen Aufklärung, Policey Und Verwaltung. Zur Genese Des Medizinalwesens, 1750-1850 (Wiesbaden, 2003), Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Reviewed work: Bettina Wahrig; Werner Sohn (Editors). Zwischen Aufklärung, Policey, und Verwaltung Zur Genese des Medizinalwesens, 1750–1850. 212 pp., index. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2003. €59.

Review: Roger Hahn, Pierre Simon Laplace, 1749-1827: A Determined Scientist (Cambridge, Mass., 2005), Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Reviewed work: Roger Hahn. Pierre Simon Laplace, 1749–1827: A Determined Scientist. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. Pp. xi+310. $35.

Is Empathy Gendered And If So, Why? An Approach From Feminist Psychological Anthropology, Claudia Strauss

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Difference feminists have argued that women have special virtues. One such virtue would seem to be empathy, which has three main components: imaginative projection, awareness of the other's emotions, and concern. Empathy is closely related to identification. Psychological research and the author's own study of women's and men's talk about poverty and welfare use in the United States demonstrate women's greater empathic concern. However, some cross-cultural research shows greater sex differences in empathy in the United States than elsewhere. This combination of findings (women tend to demonstrate greater empathic concern, but this typical difference varies cross-culturally) requires a complex biocultural …

Newton, Maclaurin, And The Authority Of Mathematics, Judith V. Grabiner

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Sir Isaac Newton revolutionized physics and astronomy in his Principia. How did he do it? Would his method work on any area of inquiry, not only in science, but also about society and religion? We look at how some Newtonians, most notably Colin Maclaurin, combined sophisticated mathematical modeling and empirical data in what has come to be called the "Newtonian Style." We argue that this style was responsible not only for Maclaurin’s scientific success but for his ability to solve problems ranging from taxation to insurance to theology. We show how Maclaurin’s work strengthened the prestige of Newtonianism and …

Review: Pamela O. Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts And The Culture Of Knowledge From Antiquity To The Renaissance (Baltimore And London, 2001), Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Reviewed work: Pamela O. Long. Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Pp. xii+364. $55.

Comment: The California Fires, Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Insights on the effect of wildfires on the Southern California community of Claremont.

Qui Est Numero Un? Classements Americains Et Universities Allemandes, Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Review: Liah Greenfeld, The Spirit Of Capitalism: Nationalism And Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Reviewed work: Liah Greenfeld. The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. Pp. xi+541. $45.00

Review: Ken Alder, The Measure Of All Things: The Seven Year Odyssey And Hidden Error That Transformed The World (New York, 2002), Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Reviewed work: Ken Alder. The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that Transformed the World. New York: The Free Press, 2002. Pp. x+422. $27.

Review: Philip G. Dwyer, Ed. The Rise Of Prussia, 1700-1830 (London And New York, 2000), Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Reviewed work: Philip G. Dwyer, ed. The Rise of Prussia, 1700-1830. London and New York: Longman, 2000. xiv + 321 pp. $67.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-582-29268-0.