Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Is The Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception Of Nature False?, Martin Zwick

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper assesses the main argument of Thomas Nagel's recent book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. The paper agrees with Nagel that, as an approach to the relation between mind and matter and the mystery of subjective experience, neutral monism is more likely to be true than either materialism or idealism. It disagrees with Nagel by favoring a version of neutral monism based on emergence rather than on a reductive pan-psychism. However, the paper invokes a reductive view when applied to information (as opposed to psyche), and posits a hierarchy of …

Ticket To Salvation: Nichiren Buddhism In Miyazawa Kenji’S 'Night On The Galactic Railroad' (Ginga Tetsudō No Yoru), Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Presentation focuses on the Night on the Galactic Railroad, a classic Japanese novel written by Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933).

Methodological Nationalism, Migration, And Political Theory, Alexander Sager

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Political theorists of migration have largely operated within a conceptual scheme that treats the nation-state as the natural political unit for analysis at the expense of transnational, regional, and local analyses. Migration is discussed in the contexts of nation-building or in an international framework of autonomous, sovereign states. I show that this paradigm of “methodological nationalism” ignores transnational networks, associations, and organizations and global social and economic structures. This in turn, blinds political theorists to questions of agency and structure and to causal relations that entail moral responsibilities. My aim is to show how debates on migration and distributive justice …

An Excerpt From Al-Sayyid Asghar Akbar By Murtedha Gzar, Yasmeen S. Hanoosh

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

The following is a translation of an excerpt from the novel Al-Sayyid Asghar Ak bar (Dar al-Tanwir, 2012) by Iraqi author Murtedha Gzar. This recent work by a young engineer from the southern city of Basra has received considerable attention in literary circles at home and abroad, significantly for the ways in which it departs from the mimetic norms of social realism that were found in the established narratological models of the pre-2003 U.S. occupation era, such as the varieties cultivated in the 1960s and 1970s in Iraq by seminal authors lik e Gha’ib Ṭu`mah Farman, Mahdi Isa al-Saqr, and …

A Hidden History: The Stories And Struggles Of Oregon's African American Communities, Walidah Imarisha

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

A Conversation Project program reveals the stories and struggles of Oregon's African American communities. Walidah Imarisha led this Oregon Humanities sponsored Conversation Project program entitled, “Why Aren't There More Black People in Oregon? A Hidden History.” This article describes her efforts in organizing and leading the program, and includes details of Oregon's history, how the state was "was created as a white utopian homeland," subsequent policies such as the "lash law," and hundreds of years of activism that is ushering change. The Hidden History Timeline embedded in this article starts with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, covers the founding of …

Go Local: Morality And International Activism, Aleksandar Jokić

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

A step towards constructing an ethics of international activism is proposed by formulating a series of constraints on what would constitute morally permissible agency in the context that involves delivering services abroad, directly or indirectly. Perhaps surprisingly, in this effort the author makes use of the concept of 'force multiplier'. This idea and its official applications have explanatory importance in considering the correlation between the post-Cold War phenomenal growth in the number of international non-governmental organizations and the emergence of the US as the sole, unchallenged superpower. Four moral constraints useful for morally assessing international activism are formulated and defended. …

Review Of "Strangers At Home: History And Subjectivity Among The Chinese Communities Of West Kalimantan, Indonesia" By Yew-Foong Hui, Sharon A. Carstens

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Review of "Strangers at Home: History and Subjectivity among the Chinese Communities of West Kalimantan, Indonesia" by Yew-Foong Hui, published by Brill, 2011.

The Myth Of Portlandia, Sara Gates

Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies Publications

An interview with Carl Abbott, professor of Urban Studies and Planning at PSU, and Karin Magaldi, chair of PSU's Theatre and Film Department, about Portland's recent trio of locally-filmed TV shows. How are they changing how the rest of the country perceives us? How are they changing us?

Business Partnerships And Practices From The 19th-Century Ottoman Balkans, Evguenia Davidova

International & Global Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article compares samples in commercial and epistolary guides, which provide a discursive framework to 'real' business partnership contracts and correspondence, dispersed in merchant archives that contextualize (and humanize) the dry contractual language. The guides offered pragmatism and standardization of economic behavior, envisioning commerce not only as a tool for achieving wealth but also a broader activity in the service of social progress and national prosperity. Contracts provide insights into everyday business practices, such as local economic reconfigurations, multiethnic regional cooperation, long-distance trade, and intergenerational communication. The article suggests that while the contract form followed old formulaic structure and language, …

Trans-Americanity: Subaltern Modernities, Global Coloniality, And The Cultures Of Greater Mexico, By José David Saldívar, Elena Avilés

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This book review evaluates the latest publication of comparative inter-American scholar José David Saldívar.

Review Of Repertoires And Choices In African Languages By Friederike Lûpke And Anne Storch, George Tucker Childs

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Repertoires and Choices in African Languages (RCAL) will interest not only Africanists but also specialists in other geographical areas and those generally concerned with language endangerment and language documentation. In short, this is a timely book for readers of this journal. The authors, Friederike Lüpke and Anne Storch, are two of the finest scholars working on African languages today and two of the most reflective thinkers in this field. The breadth and depth of their research records (they call themselves, somewhat modestly, ‘fieldworkers’) are both exemplary, and together constitute a whole that any two other scholars would find difficult to …

Estacada, Jeremy R. Young

Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies Publications

Jeremy Young takes us "close to everything, but away from it all" in Estacada.

Our Cup Runneth Over: Life-Stories From Fremantle Go National, Per Henningsgaard

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

Explores the interaction between literary culture & the public sphere in Australia in a series of informative, witty, intelligent & thought-provoking essays. Unearths the fascinating & changing role that literature has played in Australias sporting, political, civic & cultural life.

Australian Journalist Rocks New York: Lillian Roxon’S Rock Encyclopedia, Per Henningsgaard

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

Explores the interaction between literary culture & the public sphere in Australia in a series of informative, witty, intelligent & thought-provoking essays. Unearths the fascinating & changing role that literature has played in Australias sporting, political, civic & cultural life.

Beyond The Trauma Of War: Iraqi Literature, Yasmeen S. Hanoosh

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

A decade after the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, we cannot approach Iraqi literature today without recognizing the multiple shifts and varieties in its expression. In a matter of ten years, the post-Ba'thist era has witnessed the sudden fall of a long-lasting dictatorship, an encounter with Western occupation, and an unprecedented upsurge in sectarian discourses, to name only the most prominent events. In addition to these influences, the development of contemporary Iraqi literature is the product of several fluctuations in cultural expression that span the bulk of the twentieth century. The abrupt transitions from the Hashemite monarchy (1932–58) to 'Abd al-Karim …

Yet Another Crisis Of The Book, Bennett Gilbert

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Book bindings and binding decor can reveal deep parts of our attitudes toward books and toward culture. Changes in attitudes toward the codex book during the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution are part of continual change in book culture. The re-binding of early printed books is exemplary evidence of these changes. The new bindings express both a rejection of pre-Enlightenment culture and an attempt to stabilize traditional cultural values. This also suggests how we might view events customarily considered to be "revolutions".

Black And Blue: Police-Community Relations In Portland's Albina District, 1964-1985, Leanne Claire Serbulo, Karen J. Gibson

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

As in many cities across America, the relationship between African Americans in Portland, Oregon, and the city police force was fraught with tension through the late twentieth century. Scholars Leanne Serbulo and Karen Gibson argue that Portland's African Americans, who collectively made up less than ten percent of Portland residents and were segregated into neighborhoods including the Albina district, experienced police as figures of colonial oppression. The authors chronicle how, over two decades bordered by African Americans' deaths at the hands of police, neighborhood activists attempted to reform the police department and met resistance. The authors conclude that transformation of …

Peaceful Warrior-Demons In Japan: From Empress Kōmyō’S Red Repentant Asura To Miyazawa Kenji’S Melancholic Blue Asura, Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Strife, and the violence begotten from it, has long been a concern of Buddhism. Anger, ignorance, and greed, namely the three great evils, must be understood and overcome in order to advance towards enlightenment. Buddhism, as a syncretic religion, incorporated other religious figures from the Asian continent into it as a part of the process of appealing to new converts. The Asura embodies all three of these vices and yet in the process of being adopted into Buddhism, he was able to change from a violent demon into a peaceful guardian of the Buddha.

The Asura devas battled Indra in …

Syllabic Patterns In The Early Vocalizations Of Quichua Children, Christina E. Gildersleeve-Neumann, Barbara L. Davis, Peter F. Macneilage

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

To understand the interactions between production patterns common to children regardless of language environment and the early appearance of production effects based on perceptual learning from the ambient language requires the study of languages with diverse phonological properties. Few studies have evaluated early phonological acquisition patterns of children in non-Indo-European language environments. In the current study, across- and within-syllable consonant-vowel co-occurrence patterns in babbling were analyzed for a 6-month period for seven Ecuadorean Quichua learning children who were between 9 and 17 months of age at study onset. Their babbling utterances were compared to the babbling of six English-learning children …

Expectations And Preferences For Counseling And Psychotherapy In Native Americans, Mark Beitel, Ahkeyah Andrada Allahjah, Christopher Cutter, Ned Blackhawk, Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr., Declan T. Barry

Indigenous Nations Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

We provide a broad overview of the research on expectations and preferences for counseling and psychotherapy with Native Americans and identify a critical lack of research in this area. We conclude that increased research could improve the effectiveness of counseling and psychotherapy for Native peoples. For example, understanding and engaging patients’ expectations and preferences would likely lead to increased retention and satisfaction. Finally, we suggest that a Native American clinical practice network might be one way to generate clinical and research knowledge in the area of expectations and preferences for psychotherapy and counseling.

Conventional Wisdom About Yugoslavia And Rwanda: Methodological Perils And Moral Implications, Aleksandar Jokić

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

While ostensibly a response to a critique, the main goal of this Article is to demonstrate how easily conventional wisdom, usually shaped by the media and politics, can corrupt scholarship when it is simply presupposed by those engaged in what should be an academic polemic, yet often also includes ‘activism in scholarship’. The examples of approved narratives in the West on Yugoslavia and Rwanda are used for the sake of this demonstration.