American Studies Commons^™

Subjectivity, Institutions And Language In Contemporary Israeli Film, Ari Ofengenden

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Subjectivity, Institutions and Language in Contemporary Israeli Film" Ari Ofengenden analyzes the transnational characteristics of contemporary Israeli films (from 2000 until today). He claims that a new regime of globally networked production and distribution of Israeli film has articulated a specific kind of subjectivity presented in these films. In this article, he will concentrate on two characteristics of this subjectivity: the relations of protagonist with social institutions and use of language. Relations with social institutions starts with the highly prevalent representations of a sensitive and individualist protagonist who suffers under collective and coercive institutions like the army, …

Watching Fight Club In Tel Aviv: Or The 2011 Social Protests In Israel, A Political Postmortem, Eran Kaplan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Watching Fight Club in Tel Aviv: Or The 2011 Social Protests in Israel, a Political Postmortem,” Eran Kaplan provides an analysis of the ideological underpinnings of the social protests that swept Israel in 2011 and the failure of these protests to bring about actual political change. The article draws on the manner by which David Fincher’s film Fight Club exposes the ideological dimensions of modern, neoliberal consumerist society as a way to understand the driving forces behind the Israeli protests and to suggest a possible way out of the ideological quagmire that the protesters and their leaders …

Coping With Fear: Frontier Kibbutzes And The Syrian-Israeli Border War, Orit Rozin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Coping with Fear: Frontier Kibbutzes and the Syrian-Israeli Border War,” Orit Rozin discusses the practices and norms of border kibbutzes coping with daily hostilities. The Israel-Syrian border was a constant point of friction. Hostilities erupted over the cultivation and the control of the demilitarized zones and over water resources. Northern Kibbutzes both took part in triggering Syrian violence and were victims of that violence. Covering the interwar period 1956-1967, Rozin traces the subjective emotional reaction of kibbutz members exposed to Syrian violence. Focusing on fear and employing Barbara Rosenwein’s concept of emotional communities, she shows that members …

The Catastrophic Horizon: Contemporary Israeli Cinema's Critique Of Neo-Liberal Israel, Yael Munk

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, Munk analyzes the gradual decline in social solidarity of the once-socialist Israeli society has become discernible in arts and society alike. This process has been voiced in films that described the dangers of a segregated society in a graphic manner, pointing an accusing finger at what Israeli society has become. In these films, the prolonged Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories considered by some as the source of all evil, has been removed from the intellectual foreground in order to provide by a deeper look into the catastrophic outcomes of the social dead end Zionism has reached. …

Suburban Realities: The Israeli Case, Tamar Berger

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Suburban Realities: The Israeli Case" Tamar Berger discusses the nature of the new building in Israel in the last 3-4 decades. Israel, she claims, has been going through a process of massive suburbanization, which is drastically changing the face of the country. Some of the features of the new space are similar to those of other places, globally, but it has its particularity, the result of both the local spatial history and the nature of Israeli society. Suburbs in general are hard to define. Still, a set of typical features of the Israeli suburbs can be noted: …

Irony, Revenge, And The Naqba In Yehuda Amichai’S Early Work, Hannan Hever

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article offers a materialist reading of the poetry of Yehuda Amichai, the most well-known Israeli poet outside Israel. The article explores the political role of irony in Amichai’s early work, situating him as a prominent member of the “State Generation” poetry. Challenging accepted readings, the essay argues that Amichai’s poems that deal with the 1948 war, should be read as a post-traumatic response, which uses irony and rich and bold metaphorical devices to distance itself from the horrors of the war, and therefore also form the political and ethical meanings of the Naqba. That Amichai’s poetry translates the language …

Introduction: Israeli Critical Reflection After Post-Zionism, Or The Opening As Interpretive Horizon, Oded Nir, Ari Ofengenden

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This essay attempts to situate this special issue as an intervention, from a materialist perspective, in the field of Israeli cultural studies. We interrogate the common periodizations of Israeli culture, and its contemporary characterization as “post-post-Zionist.” We try to show that the latter betrays an unacknowledged failure of historical narration, present throughout Israeli cultural production. We then argue that rather than being satisfied with this failure, the goal of Israeli cultural critique today should be to search for new ways to narrate “big” history, to reassert the indispensability of relating personal experience of the present, in all its details, to …

Universe Of Things: A Human Presentation Of Food-For-Thought., Madeline Halpern

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

I present this statement under three loose categories: People, Objects and their Environment. I consider People as human, Objects as art objects, domestic objects, and food, and Environment as the shared space of the former groups. Food directs this statement as I present each concept and creative process as a metaphorical dish. Material exploration carried me from a direct practice of reorienting acrylic paint and questioning object functionality through personified sculptures into theoretical thesis work in which I use interpersonal relations and the idea of consumption to translate tactile, gustatory and olfactory sensations into digital film. In this meal I …

3rd Place Contest Entry: Aesthetic Activism: Protest Art In The Delano Grape Strike, Felicia Viano

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This is Felicia Viano's submission for the 2019 Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize, which won third place. It contains her essay on using library resources, a three-page sample of her research project on the use of art as a social movement tactic by the United Farm Workers during the Delano Grape Strike, and her works cited list.

Felicia is a senior at Chapman University, majoring in History and Peace Studies. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Robert Slayton.

Vulnerability And Resistance In Carmen Aguirre’S Mexican Hooker #1, Cinta Mesa

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, “Vulnerability and Resistance in Carmen Aguirre’s Mexican Hooker#1,” Cinta Mesa examines Chilean-Canadian playwright and actress Carmen Aguirre’s latest autobiographical novel, Mexican Hooker#1, to analyze Latina vulnerability in relation to exile, emigration, gender violence and stereotypes. The article relies upon Judith Butler’s definition of vulnerability (20), which is excluded from official texts. The consequences of these types of trauma, which are written on female bodies, are expressed through post-traumatic stress disorder. The author expresses the difficulty of acting because of her post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and the challenges she meets on her way to heal herself and …

Motherhood, Vulnerability And Resistance In The Elysium Testament By Mary O’Donnell, María Elena Jaime De Pablos

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Mary O’Donnell’s novel The Elysium Testament (1999) narrates the story of Nina, an accomplished grotto restorer, but a neglectful wife and mother according to the Irish patriarchal symbolic order –the “register of regulatory ideality” (Butler, Bodies that Matter 18). Estranged from her husband, Neil, she sends him a series of letters, her “testament,” where some of the most significant aspects of her life are exposed. Readers discover that Nina’s and Neil’s marriage begins to crumble after the birth of their second child, Roland, to whom Nina attributes a frightening dual nature, which she tries to control through physical and psychological …

Chase Riboud’S Hottentot Venus (2003) And The Neo-Victorian: The Problematization Of South-Africa And The Vulnerability And Resistance Of The Black Other, Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article touches upon issues of captivity, suppression, misrepresentations and exclusion of black people from a historical and cultural point of view through the analysis of Chase-Riboud’s neo-Victorian novel Hottentot Venus (2003). It also focuses on the implications and consequences for contemporary South Africa of situations of slavery and exploitation of African descended peoples. Notions of identity and moral and legal inclusion of black women into past and contemporary societies and communities will be also discussed from the point of view of postcolonial and gender and sexuality studies. The complexities of blackness and the violation of human rights as a …

The Commodified Body And Post/In Human Subjectivities In Frears’S Dirty Pretty Things And Romanek’S Never Let Me Go, Rocio Carrasco

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Following new materialist analysis, this article takes the body as the central locus of analysis, and relates it to broader questions such as ethics, ideology, power and/or technologies. Specifically, it revolves around the idea of embodied subjectivity as articulated by scholars Rosi Braidotti, Sherryl Vint or Cary Wolfe, whereby body and subjectivity are indissolubly and interestingly connected. Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go (2010) exploit the idea of the commodified body, understood here as a vulnerable body, a disposable commodity at the service of powerful and/or wealthy people. Victims of the cruelties inflicted …

Introduction, Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz, Manuela Coppola

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This special issue addresses contemporary representations of “vulnerable” bodies in transit in Anglophone literature and culture and explores their strategies of resistance. The use of the expression “bodies in transit” in this issue has to be understood both as a reference to the materiality of diasporic, exiled, migrating, trafficked bodies, and as an allusion to the metaphorical transition of these marginalized subjects from alienation to regeneration in multiple contexts. The interdisciplinary contributions in this special issue tackle vulnerability as a marginal(ized) and potentially enabling condition entailing the crossing of bodily, sexual, mental, ethical, cultural, and national borders. Ranging from literature …

‘Some Foods Are Considered Aphrodisiac Because They Resemble Sexual Organs’: On Isabel Allende’S Aphrodite, Anke Klitzing

Articles

At the age of 56, well into her second marriage and a grandmother herself, novelist Isabel Allende decided to find out whether aphrodisiacs are all they are made out to be. She wrote Aphrodite: The Love of Food and Food of Love after extensive research into erotic literature across some centuries and continents, and this foundation of age-old wisdom also means that the book, while published in 1998, remains a timeless source of inspiration and enjoyment.

Morris High School: A Biography, Naomi Sharlin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Morris High School was conceived and built in the Bronx with a lofty mission: to provide a comprehensive, world-class secondary education to the children of immigrant and working-class families, and in so doing to elevate the American public education system and America itself. Such a weighty mission for an institution would result, one could expect, in painstaking record keeping, the lionization of great leaders, consistent investment in the building, and attention given to problems encountered or created over the years. And yet, the life of Morris High School remains elusive. Key figures in its story are lost to obscurity like …

Archeological Survey Report Us 80 Project, Dallas District, Christopher Goodmaster

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Integrated Environmental Solutions, LLC (IES), under contract to Halff Associates, Inc. on behalf of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Dallas District, conducted an archeological survey for the proposed U.S. Highway (US) 80 Project located between Interstate Highway (IH) 30 in Dallas County and Farm-to-Market Road (FM) 460 in Kaufman County, Texas (see Area of Potential Effects on Aerial Photograph Map and Area of Potential Effects on USGS Topographic Map).

The purpose of this investigation is to ensure compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (Section 106) of 1966, as amended, and the Antiquities Code of Texas …

An Archaeological Survey For The City Of Bryan’S Eastside Facility Project In Brazos County, Texas, Edward P. Baxter

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

An archaeological survey of the proposed 78 acre (32 hectares) City of Bryan’s Eastside Facility Project, in Brazos County, Texas was performed by Ed Baxter, Consulting in May of 2019. Edward P. Baxter was the Principal Investigator and the Project Archaeologist. The survey took a total of three man days in the field. This study was performed under Texas Antiquities Committee Permit Number 8903. The project area was investigated using the pedestrian survey method supported by shovel testing. No previously recorded archaeological sites or cemeteries were found in the project area. The survey found no new archaeological sites. Copies of …

Archaeological Survey Of The Proposed Dwu 84-Inch Wastewater Main 16-357/358e, Cid 5910 Dallas County, Texas, Philip Fisher

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

The City of Dallas is proposing to construct an 84-inch diameter wastewater main across the old Trinity River channel in Dallas County, Texas. The project area is located in the floodplain of the old Trinity River channel, northeast of the Market Center Boulevard and Turtle Creek Boulevard intersection in Dallas, Texas. AR Consultants, Inc. (ARC) conducted trench monitoring in an area approximately 40-meters long by 4.25-meters wide (0.04-acres) on March 7, 2019 under the authority of Texas Antiquities Permit number 8680. Two trenches one meter in width were excavated to the depth of proposed disturbance, approximately 8 ft (2.45 m), …

A Phase I Cultural Resources Survey Of The Orbit Pipeline Project Jefferson, Liberty, And Chambers Counties, Texas, Jennifer Cochran, Abby Peyton, Karissa Basse

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Energy Transfer Company (ETC) is proposing to construct the Orbit Pipeline Project (Project) located in Jefferson, Liberty, and Chambers counties, Texas. The Project consists of approximately 68.7 miles (mi) (110.6 kilometer [km]) of new 20.0-inch (in) (50.8-centimeter [cm]) diameter pipeline that will be used to transmit ethane and propane. The Project is located within the jurisdictional boundary of the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) - Galveston District.

At the request of ETC, Perennial Environmental Services, LLC (Perennial) conducted an intensive Phase I cultural resources investigation for the proposed Project to comply with anticipated USACE permitting requirements. Archaeological investigations …

Csj 0221-05-065, Us 271 South Of Talco Intensive Archaeological Survey, Titus County, Atlanta District, Jon Budd

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

On May 20-23, 2019, an Intensive archeological resources survey was conducted south of Talco, northwest Titus County, Texas, along US 271 for the Titus County Improvement Project (CSJ-0221-05-065). The survey area is an irregularly-shaped linear area measuring 0-feet-wide at its northern extent, 83-feet-wide (25-m) at its approximate center, and 67-feet-wide (21-m) at its southern extent. Its average width is 70 feet (21 m). The total survey area is comprised of approximately 2.02 acres of new right-of-way (ROW) and 0.37 acres of new easement and was surveyed for cultural resources in advance of road improvements and bridge removal and replacement. The …

Archaeological Survey Of The Proposed Crawford Memorial Park Improvements Dallas County, Texas, Philip Fisher, Kathryn A. Cross

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

The City of Dallas is proposing to improve the existing Crawford Memorial Park in central-southeastern Dallas County, Texas. DIPS Environmental, Inc., contracted with AR Consultants, Inc. to conduct an intensive archaeological survey of Crawford Memorial Park under the authority of Texas Antiquities Permit number 8747. Crawford Memorial Park totals approximately 265 acres. However, modern landscape modifications including a number of sports fields, the Crawford Aquatic Center, parking lots, cement walking paths, a playground, pavilion, bathrooms, and a City of Dallas Park and Recreation Maintenance Facility exist within the park boundary and project area. As Crawford Memorial Park has never been …

Final Report For Archeological Survey Proposed Roadway Expansion Along Business (Bs) 71 East (71e), West Of La Grange, Fayette County, Yoakum District Csj 0265-14-008, Allen Bettis

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

On behalf of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), AmaTerra Environmental, Inc. (AmaTerra) conducted an archeological survey for the proposed bridge construction along Business (BS) 71 East (71E) in La Grange at the Colorado River in Fayette County, Texas. Work consisted of visual inspection of the entire project area, including 100 percent pedestrian survey and excavation of 17 shovel tests and 11 backhoe trenches. Fieldwork was conducted May 15–17, 2019 by a team of two archeologists. Two archeological sites were recorded, consisting of a deeply buried isolated mussel shell concentration and a scatter of late nineteenth to early twentieth century …

Archaeological Survey Of The Proposed Crawford Memorial Park Improvements Dallas County, Texas, Philip Fisher, Kathryn A. Cross

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

The City of Dallas is proposing to improve the existing Crawford Memorial Park in central-southeastern Dallas County, Texas. DIPS Environmental, Inc., contracted with AR Consultants, Inc. to conduct an intensive archaeological survey of Crawford Memorial Park under the authority of Texas Antiquities Permit number 8747. Crawford Memorial Park totals approximately 265 acres. However, modern landscape modifications including a number of sports fields, the Crawford Aquatic Center, parking lots, cement walking paths, a playground, pavilion, bathrooms, and a City of Dallas Park and Recreation Maintenance Facility exist within the park boundary and project area. As Crawford Memorial Park has never been …

Final Cultural Resources Report Of The Salt Creek Midstream, Llc Proposed Olifant Eight Inch Pipeline Project On University Lands In Ward County, Texas, Gary D. Edington, J. Matthew Oliver, Jerry L. Riggs, Christopher D. Flowers

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Enercon Services, Inc. (ENERCON), in support of Salt Creek Midstream, LLC, conducted an intensive archeological survey for the proposed Olifant Eight Inch Pipeline Project located near Pyote in Ward County, Texas. The proposed project consists of the construction of an approximately 800 foot (244 m) long eight inch steel pipeline on University Lands, extending from a tie-in at an existing well pad, trending generally south-southeast to a tie-in on the existing Quito Draw pipeline. The Olifant Eight Inch Pipeline Project area is mapped on the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Soda Lake NE, Texas (1967, photorevised 1981) 7.5 Minute Quadrangle …

Archeological Survey For The Proposed Atmos Energy D9 Natural Gas Pipeline Replacement, Dallas And Denton Counties, Texas, Brett Lang, Melissa M. Green

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

On 23 October 2019, an archeological survey was completed in order to evaluate potential impacts to archeological resources associated with the proposed construction of Atmos Energy Corporation’s (Atmos) proposed D9 natural gas pipeline replacement in Dallas and Denton Counties, Texas. Approximately 5.5 miles of the replacement line is expected to be installed through open-cut trenching with approximately 1.5 miles installed through directional boring; this method will be utilized at all waterways and roadway crossings. Brett Lang (Project Archeologist) of Cox|McLain Environmental Consulting, Inc. (CMEC) carried out the survey for Atmos under Texas Antiquities Permit 9124; Melissa M. Green served as …

An Intensive Cultural Resources Survey Of The Pugh Park Trails, Tom Green County, Texas, Mary Jo Galindo

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

On behalf of Tom Green County, Galindo Environmental Consulting, LLC (Galindo Environmental) conducted an intensive cultural resources survey of the Pugh Park Trails Project in Tom Green County, Texas. Trail improvements are proposed for the existing 10-foot-wide trail on both sides of Farm-to-Market Road 2084 (FM 2084; signed Toe Nail Trail) at Pugh Park, with a new 0.6-mile segment of trail planned for the west side. The existing trail on the east side of FM 2084 traverses Christoval High School property and is about 1.13 miles long, while the length of existing trails within Pugh Park on the west side …

Intensive Archeological Survey For Proposed Improvements To Farm-To-Market Road 1735 South Of State Highway 49, Titus County, Texas, Brett Lang, Melissa M. Green

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

On April 30 and May 1, 2019, CMEC staff completed an intensive archeological survey augmented with shovel testing to inventory and evaluate archeological resources within the footprint of proposed improvements to Farm-to-Market (FM) 1735 south of State Highway (SH) 49 in Mount Pleasant, Titus County, Texas. The project is identified under Texas Department of Transportation control-section-job number 1226-02-016. The work associated with this archeological survey was carried out under Texas Antiquities Permit 8882 by Brett Lang (Project Archeologist) and Floyd Kent of Cox|McLain Environmental Consulting, Inc. under guidance from Melissa M. Green (Principal Investigator).

The area of potential effects (APE) …

San Pedro Park Tree Irrigation Monitoring, San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas, Stephen Smith

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

During mid-December 2014, the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) conducted archaeological monitoring of trenching and air tilling for irrigation facilities in portions of San Pedro Springs Park, San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas, for the City of San Antonio (COSA) Parks and Recreation Department. The entire park is a designated State Antiquities Landmark site (41BX19) and a City of San Antonio Landmark, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The park, which was established about 1729, is the one of the oldest public parks in the United States. …

Archeological Survey Of The Chalupa Wind Project - Arroyo Colorado Transmission Line Crossing Cameron County, Texas, Jon J. Dowling, Sarah Himes Morris, Joe Sanchez

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Between December 3 and 8, 2018, Blanton & Associates, Inc. (B&A), on behalf of La Chalupa, LLC, conducted an archeological survey within the proposed Chalupa Wind Project - Arroyo Colorado Transmission Line Crossing (the Project), in Cameron County, Texas. The proposed overhead transmission line would be approximately 10.4 miles in length, 1.7 miles of which would be located on property owned by the Port of Harlingen Authority, a political subdivision of State, triggering compliance with the Antiquities Code of Texas and associated regulations outlined in 13 TAC 26. The project would also require a federal permit to be issued under …