Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid In Post-Civil Rights America And Unfinished Business: Closing The Racial Achievement Gap In Our Schools, Kristopher B. Burrell

Publications and Research

This book review of Segregated Schools and Unfinished Business assesses each author's views on the question: can schools be agents of social change? Both books also illustrate that there is much more work that needs to be done in order to fulfill the letter and spirit of the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954.

Review Of The Database Proquest Obituaries, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the database ProQuest obituaries.

Fifth Millennium Anthropomorphic Figurines In Southeastern And Central Anatolia: Comparative Museum Research., Ellen H. Belcher

Publications and Research

The Halaf cultural horizon occurred during the fifth millennium B.C. (uncalibrated) and extended throughout upper Mesopotamia, including southeastern Anatolia. Halaf material culture is well-known for its imaginative and beautifully made architecture, polychrome-painted pottery, geometric stamp seals and figurines. The regional character and variation of Halaf figurine assemblages however, is poorly understood, particularly in southeastern Anatolia. My research and study of these figurines reveals distinct southeastern Anatolian styles and technologies, some of which demonstrate direct connections to central Anatolia.

This article presents preliminary conclusions from a comparative analysis of contemporaneous anthropomorphic figurines belonging to the Halaf and Chalcolithic cultures …

Mode, Melody, And Harmony In Traditional Afro-Cuban Music: From Africa To Cuba., Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Book Ancestral Trails: The Complete Guide To British Genealogy And Family History, 2nd Ed., John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book Ancestral trails: The complete guide to British genealogy and family history, 2nd ed.

Joan Beverly Kroc, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Joan Kroc, who was the third wife of McDonald’s Corporation founder Ray Kroc, was a peace advocate and philanthropist.

From The Scenes Of Queens: Genre, Aids And Queer Love, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Identidad Y Entendimiento. Schelling O Una Instancia Intermedia Entre Kant Y Hegel, Adriana Renero

Publications and Research

Resumen:

Existe una tendencia a estudiar los puntos de encuentro o desencuentro entre Kant y Hegel pero se olvida la reflexión de Schelling, crucial para comprender el diálogo entre estos sistemas de pensamiento. Un caso en que se patentiza este olvido se advierte en Sublime Understanding, Aesthetic Reflection in Kant and Hegel (2005) de Kirk Pillow, quien desarrolla un modelo estético para ensanchar la noción de entendimiento humano. Partiendo de la Crítica del juicio de Kant y las Lecciones de estética de Hegel, Pillow encuentra una instancia intermedia entre el valor cognoscitivo de la determinación conceptual hegeliana y la indeterminación …

The Man-Made Disaster: Fire In Cities In The Medieval Middle East, Anna Akasoy

Publications and Research

Considering the building materials and climatic conditions in the medieval Middle East, fires must have been a major problem. This article provides a first survey of sources which are relevant for studying the impact of fires in urban environments. Evidence can be found, for example, in historiographies such as Ibn Kathīr's The Beginning and the End, or in legal discussions. Most fires mentioned in these sources were caused during riots or war, or by accidents in markets. The article also analyses how far fires fit into the general pattern of discussions around disasters in medieval Arabic literature.

"Unrighteous Compact": Louisa May Alcott's Resistance To Contracts And Promises In Moods, Nina Bannett

Publications and Research

Alcott’s first adult novel, Moods, initially published in 1864, presents oral promises between women as extralegal alternatives to standard legal contracts between men and women. In the 1864 edition of Moods, Alcott's protagonist, Sylvia Yule, fails to understand the constraints of marriage as a type of contract, and the results are dramatic. In fact, Alcott undermines the idealized marriage plot so crucial to her later, wildly popular works like Little Women (1868-69). In the 1864 Moods, Alcott boldly questions both legal contracts and oral promises characteristic of nineteenth-century conceptions of romantic love and heterosexual friendship.

Stacking The Wax: The Structure Of Laura Nyro's Studio Albums, Patricia Spence Rudden

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Review Of Help!, Michael Adams

Publications and Research

Review of Richard Lester's Help!: http://www.media-party.com/discland/2008/01/help.html

The Missing Child In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Thomas R. Frosch

Publications and Research

The Indian boy over whom the king and queen of fairies quarrel is the most important of several characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream who do not appear on stage: his parents, who form with him a missing nuclear family; a child god, Cupid; and a female authority figure, the dowager to whose property the lovers Lysander and Hermia flee. In its narrative structure the play presents a healing regression to the early mother and the primary process. However, the regressive movement has disturbing, as well as adaptive, elements; in addition, while the characters are still in the forest, the …

Harlem, New York, Kristopher B. Burrell

Publications and Research

This encyclopedia entry takes a brief span of the history of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City from the 17th century until the present day.

Embracing Diversity For The Sake Of Unity: Linguistic Hegemony And The Pursuit Of Total Spanish, José Del Valle

Publications and Research

This article analyzes the linguistic ideologies associated with the international promotion of Spanish and with the constitution of a panhispanic community. It focuses of the ideological dimension of diversity within these linguistic ideologies.

Madame De Staël, The Protestant Reformation And The History Of ‘Private Judgement’, Helena Rosenblatt

Publications and Research

It is a well-known fact that Madame de Staël held the Protestant Reformation in high regard and preferred Protestantism to all other religions. To her, Protestantism was the most moral and the most enlightened religion available; it was the the religion most compatible with, and even conductive to, progress.

But why was this so, and what exactly did Madame de Staël mean by Protestantism? It is an important question, because answering it will shed light on the nature of her liberalism and, more particularly, on the interconnectedness of her religious and her political views.

Edward Said And The Study Of Music, Kofi Agawu

Publications and Research

My first encounter with Edward Said’s work was in the 1980s with the book, Beginnings: Intention and Method (1975). I was exploring a semiotic approach to late 18^th-century music, specifically, a beginning-middle-ending paradigm (an Aristotelian paradigm) that seemed to me to capture the rhetorical intentions of Classic composers. Said’s wide-ranging reflections and ruminations on beginnings – as inaugural moments, as sites for the establishment of difference, as authorially privileged moments, and as "first steps in the intentional production of meaning" – proved inspiring. My enduring impression of him at the time was that he was a very good …

The New York Police Officer: Democratic And Moral Accountability In Conflict, Sarah Ryan, Dan Williams

Publications and Research

The following case draws upon two views of accountability. One is democratic accountability the other is accountability to one's own moral conscience. As the story unfolds, other facts may get in the way but these central views should not be forgotten. The focus of this case is on the individual. However, the material also covers institutional decisions and policies that deserve considering. The institutional story is the background, not the foreground, of this case. Yet, when the institutional features are considered, they may give new insight to the individuals' decisions.

Roots Of Modern Arabic Script: From Musnad To Jazm, Saad D. Abulhab

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Cuban Femininity And National Unity In Louisa May Alcott's Moods And Elizabeth Stoddard's "Eros And Anteros", Nina Bannett

Publications and Research

This book chapter compares the depictions of Cuban women in Louisa May Alcott's first adult novel Moods (1864) and Elizabeth Stoddard's short story "Eros and Anteros" (1862). Both writers configure a love triangle between an Anglo man and two women, one Anglo and one Cuban. In both texts, the Cuban woman is rejected as an unsuitable choice for an Anglo man. Alcott’s and Stoddard’s decision to re-value the Anglo woman as the more appropriate choice can be read as a rejection of the popular nineteenth-century political doctrine of manifest destiny and, at least with Alcott, of the United States’s dependence …

Review Of The Page Turner, Michael Adams

Publications and Research

Review of Denis Dercourt's 2006 film: http://www.media-party.com/discland/2007/07/the-page-turner.html

On The Intellectual Sources Of Laïcité: Rousseau, Constant, And The Debates About A National Religion, Helena Rosenblatt

Publications and Research

That French Protestants gave strong support to laïcité is by now well established. In recent work, Patrick Cabanel has even made a compelling case for the Protestant sources of laïcité, placing particular emphasis on the Protestant entourage of Jules Ferry (1832-1893) and stressing the inspiration provided by the pro-Protestant intellectual, Edgar Quinet (1803-1875.)

This article suggests that we look even earlier in time for the intellectual sources of laïcité. Seminal ideas can be found in the writings of two liberal Protestants, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Benjamin Constant (1767-1830.) Rousseau is usually counted among the opponents, and not the …

To Cite Or Not To Cite? Confronting The Legacy Of (European) Writing On African Music, Kofi Agawu

Publications and Research

English Abstract:

The current citational practice in Western scholarship is ideologically loaded, being far more suited to a written economy than a primarily oral culture in which knowledge is preserved in memory and disseminated through repeated performance. The impact of orality on musical scholarship should be more closely investigated; African scholars have all too often become informants rather than theorists of their own traditions. It is therefore proposed that the routine citation of a body of scholarship developed without Africa's historically-specific intellectual needs and ambitions in mind should in fact be discouraged.

German Abstract:

Die heutige Zitierpraxis der westlichen Wissenschaft …

Stonewall, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

This is a brief history of the Stonewall Inn in New York City's Greenwich Village, site of massive resistance to police harassment in June 1969. The Stonewall Riot immediately became a rallying point for U.S. gay liberation movements. The Stonewall resistance is commemorated by annual gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) protests and celebrations around the world.

Review Of Pretty Things, Michael Adams

Publications and Research

Review of Gilles Paquet-Brenner's Pretty Things: http://www.media-party.com/discland/2007/12/pretty-things.html

Review Of Hamlet, Michael Adams

Publications and Research

Review of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet: http://www.media-party.com/discland/2007/09/hamlet-1996.html

Playing And Eating Democracy: The Case Of Puerto Rico's Land Distribution Program, 1940s-1960s, Ismael Garcia-Colon

Publications and Research

In the early 1940s, the colonial government of Puerto Rico with the consent of the U.S. federal government began to elaborate a land reform. Under Title V of the Land Law of 1941, the government established resettlement communities for landless families. One of their goals was to transform landless agricultural workers into an industrial and urban labor force by teaching them “democratic, industrial, and modern” habits. Government officials distributed land to landless families through lotteries, portraying the ceremonies as acts of democracy. Community education programs produced literature, films, and posters aimed at fostering development and political participation. The colonial state …

Review Of The Website Online Searchable Death Indexes & Records: A Genealogy Guide, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the website Online searchable death indexes & records: A genealogy guide.

The Sacred Performative: Holy Wednesday And Colonial Ritual/Theatre, Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

"Holy Wednesday" is a late sixteenth century adaptation of a Spanish auto sacramental (sacred play) written in alphabetized Nahuatl, the predominant pre-Columbian language spoken on the High Central Plateau of Mexico. The author remains unknown, however he was likely a Nahua amanuensis educated by Franciscans at Colegio de Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco. Religious drama was one of the important evangelizing tools of the Catholic brotherhoods in colonial Mexico and although a record of performance of Holy Wednesday does not exist, this dramatic depiction of the final meeting of Christ and Mary prior to the crucifixion was almost certainly performed as …

The Riddim Method: Aesthetics, Practice, And Ownership In Jamaican Dancehall, Peter L. Manuel, Wayne Marshall

Publications and Research

The Jamaican system of recording and performance, from the 1950s to the present, constitutes a distinctive approach to notions of composition, originality and ownership. Emerging from a tradition of live performance practice mediated by (and informing) sound recordings, the relative autonomy of riddims and voicings in the Jamaican system challenges conventional ideas about the integrity of a song and the degree to which international copyright law applies to local conceptions, as enshrined in decades of practice, of musical materials as public domain. With the spread of the ‘riddim method’ to the sites of Jamaican mass migration, as evidenced by similar …