bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Exploring Visually the Known and the Ill-Known About Kraków’s Center Urban Evolution
Authors: Blaise Jean-Yves , Dudek Iwona
Published: March 2020

Analyzing and depicting in 3D the design and transformations of urban structures have been concerns ever since the nineteenth century, for both historians and urban planners. What exactly is the impact of the digital humanities on the way we use today’s means of investigation? How can we usefully support the analyst’s tasks, by visual means, in the context of historical research and on the large scale of a city? This chapter describes real experiments that were carried out on the city center of Kraków, former capital of Poland. Through these experiments, the authors consider the fundamental issues of imperfect knowledge in the historical sciences, the need to and constraints of handling ill-defined temporal data, and the necessity to at least complement “classic” virtual reconstruction efforts with visual solutions that better match the nature of the underlying data. The data are a heterogeneous collection of structures that differ in terms not only of morphology and use but also of documentation quality. The authors introduce an approach that is based on the idea that the gap between the historical sciences and information visualization (via InfoVis) should and can now be filled. They show the potential added value of InfoVis-inspired abstract graphics in supporting analysis tasks regarding the evolution of urban structures, with the hope that this methodological bridge can be a solution particularly in the context of urban analysis.
Experiencing Past, Present, and Future Urban Environments Through Digital Representation, Storytelling, and Simulation
Authors: Pietroni Eva
Published: March 2020

Digital technologies can have a great impact on the methodological and epistemological research regarding urban contexts, not only for the documentation and reconstruction of the built heritage but also in the simulation and transmission of intangible values. 3D representation is a powerful tool for communication and also for interpretation. It has perceptive and cognitive impact while also providing a visual interface toward making multiple and deeper connections of meaning and contents. The chapter analyzes the approaches commonly adopted in 3D reconstruction of urban contexts. Methodologies, technologies, software, and data are examined, together with possible outputs (2D or 3D GIS, computer-graphic movies, real time or augmented-reality applications) while offering new perspectives. A study case is presented of the Matera Città Narrata project, whose aim was the creation of a multi-channel digital platform able to support public tourism of this World Heritage Site. It includes, for instance, 3D reconstructions of the urban context evolution through eight chronological phases. It also tells the stories behind those ancient sites, provides real fragments of life, as well as myths, events, characters, and memories.
At-Risk World Heritage and Virtual Reality Visualization for Cyber-Archaeology
Authors: Levy Thomas E. , Smith Connor , Agcaoili Kristin , Kannan Anish , Goren Avner , Schulze Jürgen P. , Yago Glenn
Published: March 2020

In this chapter, the issue of at-risk cultural heritage in the Middle East is addressed through the application of cyber-archaeology tools for data capture and dissemination. Working with an economic model to create a Heritage Asset District in the environs of Jerusalem, virtual reality for personal head-mounted devices and immersive CAVE platforms are used to help create high-value cultural heritage attractions designed to attract visitors to the district, thereby generating economic benefits. In the case study presented here, the district focuses on the Kidron Valley, which has its origin near the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, and follows the river flowing eastward through the Judean Desert, where it empties into the Dead Sea. The most prominent cultural heritage site along the wadi (riverbed) is the Mar Saba Greek Orthodox monastery, dating to the fifth century CE. A helium-balloon photographic platform with high-definition photography and Structure from Motion (SfM) processing was used to create a 3D model of this impressive site that could be used for VR demonstrations. The demo is then made available over the MedArchNet (http://medarchnet.calit2.net/) online digital atlas to enable public engagement with Middle Eastern cultural heritage. This research is part of a University of California Office of the President Catalyst Grant concerning “At-Risk Cultural Heritage and the Digital Humanities.”
Oporto’s Historic Center
Authors: Leonor Botelho Maria
Published: March 2020

In 1996, the World Heritage Committee added the Historic Center of Oporto, Portugal, to the World Heritage List, recognizing its outstanding value, identified by its urban fabric and its many historic buildings. The area’s value is the result of a complex topography, articulated through streets, lanes, alleyways, stairs, and squares, while its architecture (residences and monuments) projects cultural values accumulated over successive eras. In the state of art section, this chapter presents some significant references and visual resources that contribute to the understand city´s urban development and to visualize the city in the past. This chapter presents two case studies of the authors’ attempts at visualization of that historic district. One describes a 3D scale model—Oporto’s Medieval Scale Model - and the other is a virtual reality project—Virtual Porto in the Sixteen Century—both shown as examples of thorough research, careful documentation of processes, and clear and approachable presentation. The authors also consider the potential of expanded development of such presentations, in light of uses in tourism and furthering greater knowledge, with the goals of facilitating the process of heritage conservation and the dissemination of information. As such, the two case studies are viewed in terms of principles of the London Charter regarding the creation of virtual heritage, as well as cite other examples of projects in European cities.
At the Interface: Multimodal Sensing and Intelligent Learning Systems
Authors: Seaman Bill
Published: March 2020

The contemporary city is quickly changing in line with the quixotic nature of today’s array of computational media. As a result, we need to begin to create new technological methodologies to aid in the study of the cityscape over time. This chapter presents some interesting ideas, given that the physical nature of buildings and material infrastructures change at a different rate from that of contemporary digital media. In terms of the cityscape, the digital media and their presence in differing forms are evermore ubiquitous. The author’s approach is to combine two areas of study—cyber-archaeology and media archaeology—in the service of future research. The notion is to create intelligent new systems for the archiving and perusal of multimodal media. He proposes new computationally intelligent approaches to generative virtual environments and relational databases. Also, he points to the nature of context and the limits of current computing in terms of discerning that context. And he asks: As humans we can quickly size up situations, shifting conceptual contexts without a problem; can we build new polysensing systems to help augment the machinic understanding of context and define a vast compendium of relationalities, as well as develop new multimodal search methodologies? This would help us create contemplative media contexts that lend insights into our ongoing learning in terms of research and cultural understanding of the present, enfolding multiple chosen perspectives.
Results from the Mechanical Turk Online Written Questionnaires
Authors: Stanford James N.
Published: March 2020

This is the second of the two chapters (Chapters 4 and 5) that present the results of the author’s online data collection project using Mechanical Turk. This chapter analyzes the results of the online written questionnaires; 534 people responded to online questions about New England dialect features, including phonological features and lexical items. The author maps the results in terms of regional features in different parts of New England, comparing them to prior surveys and to the acoustic analyses of the prior chapter. The chapter also analyzes 100 free-response answers where New Englanders gave further insights into the current state of New England English.
Fieldwork Results from Northeastern New England
Authors: Stanford James N.
Published: March 2020

This is the first of two chapters (Chapters 8 and 9) that present the Dartmouth-based fieldwork results from northern New England. Chapter 8 provides a graphical and statistical analysis of the combined data set from central New Hampshire and Maine. This chapter shows that many traditional New England dialect features are receding in northeastern New England, and analyzes the social and phonological factors that play a role in these changes.
Outward Orientation, Leveling, and Hub Social Geometry
Authors: Stanford James N.
Published: March 2020

Chapter 11 considers the overall results of this New England project in terms of current sociolinguistic theory, including Labov’s “outward orientation of the language faculty,” dialect leveling, convergence and divergence, and other frameworks. The chapter then proposes that a notion of “Hub social geometry” can provide additional insights into how and why New England dialect features have changed over time. This chapter also considers the major findings of the book in light of ethnographic written responses from young adults who grew up in the area and experienced sharp generational changes and dialect leveling. The chapter also reviews other scholars’ work on perceptual dialectology in the region, and suggests future lines of research on New England English.
Structure of the Text
Authors: Brereton Joel P. , Jamison Stephanie W.
Published: March 2020

This chapter treats the remarkably systematic structure and arrangement of the text. This systematicity testifies to the authority of a central organizing body overseeing the collection of the hymns from the separate bardic families and the arrangement of each collection on a similar template. The existence of such an authority suggests a significant change in the sociopolitical situation in the period following the period of composition, from a loose network of clans each with its own poetic lineage and ritual practice, to a central political force aiming to consolidate the clans and produce a uniform religious system. It also treats the later transmission of the Ṛgveda, which remained entirely oral for several millennia, even after writing was introduced. Because of the perceived holiness and “revealed” nature of the text (a category known as śruti), the transmission focused on preserving the exact verbal form of the text, even when some of it ceased to be understood.
The Business of Love and Sex
Authors: Hatfield Elaine , Rapson Richard L. , Purvis Jeanette
Published: March 2020

Any time a new form of communication appears—from the penny dreadfuls to Morse code and the telegraph, skywriting, the wireless radio, TV, or iPads and computers—men and women find creative ways to use that technology to find love and sexual partners. This chapter discusses the evolution of modern-day matchmaking services. Topics addressed include computer matching, online dating, popular dating sites, dating apps, and the dangers as well as the advantages of matching. The chapter also discusses online dating personal profiles, qualities to look for in a mate, and matches made via DNA and immunological sampling. A list of various matchmaking websites and phone apps is also provided.
Introduction
Authors: Haw Richard
Published: March 2020

A young German emigrant sets sail across the Atlantic Ocean toward the United States. He dreams of his new adoptive land, where he understands that success will depend upon him casting off the old and embracing the new. Luckily, his life up to this point has prepared him for this. Despite coming from a provincial backwater, he has embraced the modern world and seeks to establish his place in it. His life is reviewed as is the main themes of the book that is to follow: the need for order, harmony and balance amid a shifting world; a somewhat contradictory commitment to freedom; a genius and a visionary who was strangely attracted to fads and foolish trends.
Berlin and the Culture of Revolution (1824–25)
Authors: Haw Richard
Published: March 2020

In Berlin, John came face to face with the Industrial Revolution. At the Building Academy, he took courses in a variety of subjects, most importantly on fledgling art and science of suspension bridge engineering. He was hooked, and he ended the year as one of the Building Academy’s best students. He also signed up for G. W. F. Hegel’s lectures on logic, and the experience transformed him. Hegel’s ideas helped form a system that embraced and explained the seemingly chaotic reality unfolding all over Europe. In Berlin, John shed his provincial outlook and his religiosity and embraced reason; following Hegel’s lead, he started to think for himself. Suffused with this spirit, he left Berlin to get some practical experience building roads and bridges in the Prussian province of Westphalia. He never returned to Berlin.
Making Wire Rope and the Wire Rope Industry (1840–48)
Authors: Haw Richard
Published: March 2020

After missing out on the Schuylkill Bridge contract, John turned his attention to manufacturing wire rope, an entirely new idea in the United States. John undertook an extensive campaign to have his ropes adopted on the Allegheny Portage Railroad. The effort had John recruiting advocates, dodging political shenanigans, fixing technical hitches, and marching up and down the Allegheny Mountains, and his efforts were successful. Slowly, as each new rope met the demands of the mountain, more and more of the inclines switched over and started to use John’s ropes, as did others in the haulage business. John’s successes made him rich and led to the establishment of the American wire rope industry, in the process helping drag elevators up and down new tall buildings; pull funiculars up steep hills; power rigs, derricks, and cranes all over the nation; hold up suspension bridges of prodigious length; and drive mass transit cable car systems all over the United States.
Rebuilding Pittsburgh (1845–46)
Authors: Haw Richard
Published: March 2020

The Great Fire of Pittsburgh devastated the city, in the process consuming the old wooden Smithfield Street Bridge, leaving only the piers in the river. With John already at work on a similar structure across the river, and with the city desperate to rebuild, John received the contract to rebuild the Monongahela crossing almost immediately. His Allegheny Aqueduct was opened afterward to universal acclaim, after which he retreated to Saxonburg to recuperate and plunged wholeheartedly into his next big obsession: the water cure. Despite devoting much of his life to science, John was always distrustful of doctors and traditional medicine, and he relied increasingly on his own theories and practices, many of which we would now call deluded at best. Thankfully, John soon returned to what he was undoubtedly good at and set about rebuilding the Monongahela Bridge. Again, the effort was immense and the results spectacular. The bridge was finished and opened the following spring, by which time John was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost suspension bridge engineers in the world.
The Sun-Sounding Scythian
Authors: Dimova Polina
Published: March 2020

The chapter examines the relationships between Prokofiev’s early music and the poets that inspired him. Guided by Konstantin Balmont’s poetic characterization of him in the early 1920s as a “sun-sounding Scythian,” it looks at two specific facets of Russian Symbolism and post-Symbolism that informed Prokofiev’s works: the sun cult and Scythianism. Prokofiev’s luminous Scythianism encompasses the paradox of the lyricism of his early songs and the perceived barbarism of his rejected ballet Ala and Lolli, from which the composer derived his Scythian Suite. By analyzing Prokofiev’s collaboration with Gorodetskii on Ala and Lolli and the composer’s settings of Balmont’s and Akhmatova’s poems, we can understand how the incarnations of the sun god in the Russian Silver Age informed both the sunrise music and the aesthetics of horror in the ballet and the suite. The chapter also reflects on Ala and Lolli as an unrealized ballet in the shadow of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
Editing Prokofiev’s Seven, They Are Seven
Authors: Moron Nicolas , Guillaumier Christina , McAllister Rita
Published: March 2020

While he was finishing the Classical Symphony in 1917, Prokofiev began work on a now almost-forgotten score: Seven, They Are Seven, op. 30—an “incantation” for dramatic tenor, choir, and orchestra, based on a poem by Konstantin Balmont. He took great care in analyzing and restructuring the text, then designing the various sections of the work, before sketching fragments of melodies and orchestration. The Revolutionary events of 1917, however, postponed the printing of the score until 1922, with Prokofiev having no involvement in the editorial process. In 1933, he revised the work. This chapter traces the history of the incantation, from its genesis in pre-Revolutionary St. Petersburg to the drafting of its second version in 1930s Paris. It concludes with a discussion of the issues encountered in the preparation of a critical edition of the score, based on archival documents, both literary and musical, most of them unpublished.
From Film Score to Art Music and Back
Authors: Khait Julia
Published: March 2020

Sergei Prokofiev was one of a few composers who worked equally successfully in the fields of film music and art music. His scores for Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible are as significant for the history of film music as are his operas and ballets for musical theater. He approached film projects with the same creative rigor as his stage and symphonic works. And so we must think of his film scores not as a separate enterprise but, rather, as one of the various theatrical and dramatic genres at which he tried his hand. While the operatic features of his music for Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible have become widely recognized, Prokofiev’s other film scores can also be placed in a broader context of the composer’s output. The cross-connections between genres can be traced at different levels, from common themes and literary ideas and similar stylistic evolution, to shared compositional techniques and borrowings of musical material from one work to another.
Semyon Kotko and War and Peace
Authors: Dean Terry
Published: March 2020

Prokofiev was both a voracious reader and a compulsive writer—of letters, diaries, an extensive autobiography, and even of poems and short stories. His interest in text, and in particular in its dramatic impact, determined that, for almost all his operas, he was his own librettist. This allowed him not only control of all compositional elements but also realized his preference for setting passages of non-rhyming prose in a declamatory style, which he believed to be more realistic and dramatically effective. Nevertheless, upon his return to the Soviet Union, Prokofiev found that this approach to text sources was seldom compatible with the demands of Socialist Realism. The chapter explores his reliance on collaborators more familiar than he was with Soviet aesthetics, and it focuses, in particular, on his collaboration with his second wife, Mira Mendelson on the opera War and Peace, with reference to their manuscript notebooks.
Audiovisual Montage in Ivan the Terrible
Authors: Ermolaeva Katya
Published: March 2020

While new scholarship on Prokofiev and Eisenstein continues to emerge, there has been surprisingly little written about Prokofiev’s film scores as they relate to Eisenstein’s theories on music and sound. Eisenstein considered “sound imagery” to be as important as visual imagery in film, and with the advent of sound film in the late 1920s, he began writing essays on the subject. Many musicologists have expertly discussed Prokofiev’s music in Eisenstein’s films, and film historians have long considered Eisenstein’s theories on sound and how they function generally in his films. Until recently, however, very few scholars have attempted to merge a close reading of Eisenstein’s theories with an analysis of Prokofiev’s music. This chapter helps to bridge this gap in scholarship by examining Eisenstein’s late theories on music and sound from his essay “The Music of Landscape” in relation to Prokofiev’s score for Ivan the Terrible.
Prokofiev’s Reception in the United Kingdom
Authors: Schultz Joseph
Published: March 2020

Chapter 19 examines the reception of Prokofiev’s music in the United Kingdom over the course of the last century, providing a case study of the evolving critical reactions in Western Europe to the composer’s works. It illustrates the ways in which Western views of Soviet musical creativity have been influenced by ideological assumptions and stereotypical constructs of Russianness and Soviet-ness. Prokofiev’s early work prompted highly conflicted responses, focusing on commentators’ construction of an exoticized image of a Slavic musical barbarian. Attitudes developed with the composer’s return to the USSR and became increasingly condescending during the Cold War, but these opinions subsequently warmed as more of his operatic and symphonic works became familiar to the general public. Standard scholarly writings, music journals, and newspaper reviews have been extensively consulted, with the focus upon those commentators, such as Ernest Newman, Gerald Abraham, and David Nice, who helped shape Prokofiev’s standing in the United Kingdom.
Prokofiev in the Popular Consciousness
Authors: Kupfer Peter
Published: March 2020

Prokofiev’s legacy in the concert hall is well established, but there has been little study of his legacy in the popular consciousness. If we examine the multitude of uses of his music in popular contexts (television programs, television advertisements, film, in the works of other musicians, etc.), what patterns emerge? Which Prokofiev pieces appear most often and to what associative ends? Can viewers even recognize the music as Prokofiev? If not, are there particular stylistic features of Prokofiev’s music that lend themselves to certain kinds of uses? What, in short, is (and has been) the use and meaning of Prokofiev’s music in the popular consciousness? This chapter sketches out answers to these questions using analytical methods from musicology, music and multimedia studies, music psychology, music sociology, and the analysis of viewer responses to the range of uses of Prokofiev’s music in everyday media.
Prokofiev’s Problems—and Ours
Authors: Taruskin Richard
Published: March 2020

The concluding discursive chapter surveys the vicissitudes of Prokofiev’s life and creative career. In particular, it examines the personal and professional tragedy—indeed, the catastrophe—of the composer’s later years, considers the problems Prokofiev faced in setting morally questionable texts, and confronts the dilemma they pose for us as listeners, beguiled by the musical strength and/or beauty of works like the Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution, Zdravitsa!, or the film music for Ivan the Terrible, but perhaps unable to ignore their more sinister undertones.
Finding Belonging
Authors: Cassidy Parker Elizabeth
Published: March 2020

Chapter 5 examines adolescent experiences of belonging through musical engagement. Adolescent belonging includes three key ingredients: experiencing relational bonding and attachment to key individuals who support one’s music-making, feeling responsible to others for one’s role or roles in musical groups, and being provided opportunities to make music in ways that elevate a shared experience with others. At the end of the chapter, Peter Benson’s developmental assets is introduced, and the reader is encouraged to complete two developmental assets exercises to locate external assets and asset pathways that can foster adolescents’ sense of belonging in the musicking contexts with which they engage.
Emerging Leadership and Giving Back
Authors: Cassidy Parker Elizabeth
Published: March 2020

Chapter 8 focuses how on adolescents described their futures with special attention to adolescent perspectives on leadership. The reader is introduced to three interweaving and interdependent themes, namely, (1) embracing compassion and care for others, (2) giving back to communities, and (3) reaching out to change the world. Susan Komives’s relational leadership model is presented as a framework for building adolescent leaders. Discussion topics include fostering purpose, valuing difference, empowering ownership, and valuing work with others. The chapter highlights the significance of hope and the importance of educators in building up critical hope in students. The chapter ends with a discussion of adolescent exploration and access.
China's Western Horizon
Authors: Markey Daniel S.
Published: March 2020

This book explains how China’s new foreign policies like the vaunted “Belt and Road” Initiative are being shaped by local and regional politics outside China and assesses the political implications of these developments for Eurasia and the United States. It depicts the ways that President Xi Jinping’s China is zealously transforming its national wealth and economic power into tools of global political influence and details these developments in South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Drawing from extensive interviews, travels, and historical research, it describes how perceptions of China vary widely within states like Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Iran. Eurasia’s powerful and privileged groups often expect to profit from their connections to China, while others fear commercial and political losses. Similarly, statesmen across Eurasia are scrambling to harness China’s energy purchases, arms sales, and infrastructure investments as a means to outdo their strategic competitors, like India and Saudi Arabia, while negotiating relations with Russia and America. The book finds that, on balance, China’s deepening involvement will play to the advantage of regional strongmen and exacerbate the political tensions within and among Eurasian states. To make the most of America’s limited influence along China’s western horizon (and elsewhere), it argues that US policymakers should pursue a selective and localized strategy to serve America’s aims in Eurasia and to better compete with China over the long run.
Beijing’s Global Aspirations
Authors: Markey Daniel S.
Published: March 2020

This chapter explains the historical wellsprings and national interests that motivate China’s increasingly ambitious global policies including the Belt and Road Initiative. It discusses how Chinese security concerns, especially those related to Xinjiang, along with broader strategic aims lead Beijing to play a greater role in continental Eurasia. There China’s involvement tends to start with economic and trade relations, but in recent years (and especially under the leadership of President Xi Jinping), China has moved from “keeping a low profile” to “striving for achievement” in ways that stray from “non-interference.” To accomplish its global aims, China is developing new tools of economic statecraft, security, and diplomacy. These are described in detail, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the China International Development Cooperation Agency, a modernized military with greater power projection capabilities, the port facility in Djibouti, private security contractors, the China Global Television Network, and new technologies for political repression.
US-China Competition in Eurasia
Authors: Markey Daniel S.
Published: March 2020

This chapter summarizes the interplay between China and South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, then assesses the geopolitical implications for America, and offers recommendations for US policy. Marshalling evidence from previous chapters, it shows that anticipating the political consequences of China’s overseas activities in any particular instance requires an appreciation of the other state’s preexisting domestic political-economic conditions and geopolitical relationships. It finds that across Eurasia, China’s involvement tends to undercut healthy pressure for economic and political reform within states and appears to be exacerbating or rekindling tensions among them. The chapter evaluates current US policy in the context of global competition with China and identifies a range of strategies for Eurasia, including “benign neglect,” “peaceful accommodation,” “critical publicity,” “selective competition,” and “militarized competition.” To make the most of America’s limited influence, it argues that US policymakers should pursue a selective and localized strategy in Eurasia.
Introduction
Authors: Davis Mark , Lohm Davina
Published: March 2020

This chapter sets the scene for the book by introducing the significance of narrative and its mediations for the experience of a global public health emergency. It provides some necessary detail on the swine flu pandemic of 2009 to help the reader situate the empirical material to come in following chapters. The chapter also introduces “Cameron’s infection story” to explain how we use narrative in this book and make links with narrative theory in the social sciences. Cameron’s story also helps to locate the book in the lived experience of everyday people in 2009 and foregrounds the focus of this book on the stories of individuals affected in different ways by the pandemic.
Pandemic Tales
Authors: Davis Mark , Lohm Davina
Published: March 2020

Chapter 2 considers in more detail the growing significance of narrative approaches to health communication on pandemic threats, reflecting on the conceptual bases for this turn in light of perspectives from narrative theory and biopolitical accounts of infectious diseases. Key themes are the folk-tale undercurrents of pandemic narratives that appear in news media and in the advice of experts and therefore also their significance for the individuals who engage with them. A key point is that narrative and its mediations are a primary point of contact for publics coming to know of a rapidly emerging public health crisis. In this respect, we introduce Sarah’s story of how she realized that she was herself possibly at risk of the virus, in part because of stories on the pandemic circulated in media she consumed.
“Be Alert, Not Alarmed!”
Authors: Davis Mark , Lohm Davina
Published: March 2020

Chapter 3 examines the keynote of pandemic communications in 2009: “Be alert, not alarmed.” A central communication challenge of the 2009 pandemic was advising publics throughout the world to prepare themselves for a possible health catastrophe, but without inspiring panic and therefore jeopardizing effective government. This imperative has been characterized by scholars in the field as the “Goldilocks” approach to messaging, underlining the folktale qualities of the public life of pandemics. As people in our research pointed out, reassuring the general public that they should not be overly alarmed undermined the sense of urgency that came into the lives of “at risk” people. The chapter therefore explores how our research participants contended with the preparedness message and its potentially contradictory effects.
Immunity
Authors: Davis Mark , Lohm Davina
Published: March 2020

Immunity is another important biopolitical metaphor that helped to shape storytelling about swine flu in everyday life. Immunity has a double meaning in that it is a biomedical concept linked with bodies and vaccines, but it is also a legal concept concerning self and the suspension of responsibilities to collective life in particular circumstances. Chapter 5 explores how talk of personal immunity was seen as a means of surviving what was seen to be an unavoidable infection and also an individual possession open to acquisition and cultivation. This “choice immunity,” as we call it, appeared to trouble efforts by public health systems in the United Kingdom and Australia to promote vaccination, particularly in the collective sense of “herd immunity.”
Vulnerabilities
Authors: Davis Mark , Lohm Davina
Published: March 2020

Chapter 6 explores the narratives of people who, due to vulnerabilities associated with their health status, including severe respiratory illness and HIV-positive serostatus, and because of coincident pregnancy, had to respond to the pandemic to protect themselves and unborn children. This chapter, therefore, addresses the importance of biography for understanding the social impact of pandemics. It shows how pandemics as historical events intersect with biographies and, from the point of view of individuals, cannot be meaningfully separated. This temporal intersectionality of pandemics and lived experiences is particularly well illuminated by a narrative approach. A feature of this chapter, too, is a focus on invisibility, that is, the ways in which being at risk was invisible to the “healthy” majority.
News Media Hype?
Authors: Davis Mark , Lohm Davina
Published: March 2020

A common theme in the stories of the people we interviewed was the action and reputation of news media, including printed, digital, and television news. These media were often the first source of knowledge about the emerging pandemic and for some the basis for adoption of a new at risk identity. This chapter examines a key finding that individuals regarded the news media to have hyped the pandemic alongside textual analyses from other scholars that shows news media in 2009 to have been mainly fact driven and not inflammatory. The chapter takes up this apparent paradox in light of audience expectations shaped by previous experiences of pandemic narratives and the large volume of news reporting during the period. The chapter explains how individuals were skeptical of media and therefore cautiously took on their new pandemic risk identities through what we have framed as “persuasion” narrative.
“The Boy Who Cried Wolf” and Other Post-Trust Stories
Authors: Davis Mark , Lohm Davina
Published: March 2020

The 2009 swine flu pandemic turned out to be milder than it seemed to be in the first few weeks, yet it was serious for those with serious illness or who were pregnant at the time. These features of the pandemic produced communications dilemmas for experts, including a threat to public trust. With reference to the moral tale of the “boy who cried wolf,” this chapter reflects on how people in our research spoke of the eventual mildness of the 2009 pandemic and how this situation was construed as a false alarm, with implications for public trust in science and politics surrounding world-scale problems such as pandemics, population vaccination, superbugs, and health security.
Conclusion
Authors: Davis Mark , Lohm Davina
Published: March 2020

The concluding chapter revisits the key themes of the book and reflects on them in light of the prospects for “narrative public health.” The significance of narrative and its mediations for a global public emergency and the more general turn to narrative in health communications, can be construed as the formation of a narrative public health. We reflect on how these uses of narrative are more or less undertaken at face value, without some of the benefits to be found in critical scholarship on narrative. The chapter argues therefore for a reassertion of the narrative’s potential for critical reflection on how life can be lived, and the salience it may have for health crisis. A keynote of this chapter is the critical reflexivity exhibited in the persuasion narratives constructed by publics to explain their engagements with the emergence of a pandemic threat in their life worlds.
Liberating Cities from Cars
Authors: Fitzgerald Joan
Published: March 2020

This chapter begins with a range of actions cities can pursue to deprioritize cars while making room on their streets for transit, cyclists, and walkers. It then describes how these strategies work in greenovating cities. The chapter presents the case of Oslo, which is moving toward a car-free downtown. It then looks at three American cases that illuminate the technical, political, and cultural barriers to deprioritizing cars. Efforts in Seattle illustrate that even in a liberal city committed to climate action, deprioritizing cars is painful and politically charged. Nashville’s two failed ballot initiatives to fund transit infrastructure reveal the challenges many cities will face in trying to introduce public transit. Finally, Salt Lake City has been successful in implementing transit. With broad public support and constraints caused by mountains and lakes, Salt Lake City has been able to forge new transit links to reduce congestion.
“A Matter of Momentous Importance”
Authors: Einboden Jeffrey
Published: March 2020

This chapter details events leading up to and after the evening of October 3, 1807, when Thomas Jefferson received a cryptic note written by a traveler from the “Territory of Louisiana.” This note was a single page petition, pleading with the President for “an interview.” I have “a matter of momentous importance to communicate,” the author insisted, but added no details. The note was signed with a name unknown to the President: “I. Nash.” By the evening of October 4, 1807, Jefferson held in his hands strange writings carried to him from the country’s edges. Nash’s “matter of momentous importance to communicate” turned out to be two manuscripts authored by two enslaved Africans, resisting their captivity in rural Kentucky.
“Mr Jefferson is in Reality a Musselman”
Authors: Einboden Jeffrey
Published: March 2020

This chapter describes events surrounding the Louisiana Purchase. On November 30, 1803, New Orleans passed from Spain to France, along with the entire Louisiana Territory. Spain’s surrender of New Orleans was an expected prelude, anticipating yet another “transfer of sovereignty” from France to America just three weeks later on December 20. However, the legitimacy and logistics of this land deal were questioned, especially by Jefferson’s Federalist foes in Congress. The same day that New Orleans passed to France, New England minister and congressional representative Manasseh Cutler wrote a letter to friend expressing his anxieties. Cutler was bothered by the President’s new powers, which seemed to grant him unlimited sway over all of Louisiana. For Cutler, this vast territory’s transfer transformed Jefferson into a “Grand Turk”—an Oriental despot reigning over Western domains.
“The Runners”
Authors: Einboden Jeffrey
Published: March 2020

This chapter describes the fanciful character “Mustapha Rub-a-Dub Keli Khan” created by early America’s leading fiction writer, Washington Irving. Mustapha is a Tripoli ship captain “held prisoner in New York.” Trapped behind enemy lines, he spies on the land of his captivity, writing home to his friend Asem. Mustapha’s concern, however, is America’s own “Bashaw”: Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson is pictured as a “grand” Sultan who “governs” a New World “empire.” Although Irving’s letters were facetious, they capitalized on serious anxieties confronting Jefferson’s America. Interweaving Islam and imprisonment, while sending covert reports of an American President to a “slave-driver” in North Africa, Irving’s parody cuts rather close to home, even though framed through a Muslim lens.
“Seven of the Arab Dialects”
Authors: Einboden Jeffrey
Published: March 2020

This chapter focuses on the task President Jefferson assigned Robert Patterson, i.e., to find a translator for two Arabic manuscripts written by Muslim slaves. Over a few days in late October 1807, Patterson consulted with three of the most remarkable figures he could find in Philadelphia, a triad that represented diplomacy, trade, and academia. The three men each had their own reaction, reflecting their professional interests and personal experiences, as well as individual prejudices. In October 1807, the two manuscripts constituted a type of “Rorschach test” for surprised American reviewers. Although visiting these three various men, first in Patterson’s mind was the single man whom Jefferson himself had named. In the race against time to translate Arabic writings, Philadelphia was home to an American whose years of experience in Arabic-speaking regions exceeded all others, Richard O’Brien.
“Supposed to be Spys”
Authors: Einboden Jeffrey
Published: March 2020

This chapter focuses on the suspicions surrounding the two African fugitives that Ira P. Nash and Jefferson sought to help. In October 1807, Jefferson sought a translator, discreetly circulating two Arabic manuscripts on the East coast. Out West, it was not outlandish writings, but strange rumors, that were reportedly circulating. These whispers, unlike the President’s search, were unsympathetic. From Washington, the African captives appeared unduly incarcerated, “confined, on suspicion, merely,” in Jefferson’s words. On the frontier, however, “suspicion” was not so easily dismissed. Racial prejudice had initially halted the two Muslim fugitives in the spring; by the autumn, it was not bias, but apprehensions that seemed to be rising on the Cumberland River. The two Africans, whose “business” remained unknown, appeared to “some” not as escapees, but agents of espionage.
“A Sect by Myself”
Authors: Einboden Jeffrey
Published: March 2020

This chapter describes the effort to replenish Monticello’s library. In October 1816, Richard Rush climbed Jefferson’s mountain and found its occupant “lamenting” the loss of his library. Bereft of its books, Monticello seemed a little airy. Although pilgrims kept coming to provide company for Jefferson, without his volumes to read, a vacancy reigned on Jefferson’s peak. Miles of shelving needed restocking to make up for the “6,487” books that had migrated north to Washington. Edward Everett and George Ticknor had travelled to Europe with a pledge to help replicate Monticello’s library. Instead, the American youths would replicate Jefferson’s experiences. Back in 1785, during Jefferson’s European residence, he was forced to contend with Muslim lands, negotiating war and peace with Arabic-speaking Africans. In 1815, three decades later, arriving to Europe with Jefferson in mind, Ticknor and Everett would find Arabic and Africa once more intertwined.
Who's the Bigot?
Authors: McClain Linda C.
Published: March 2020

Charges, denials, and countercharges of bigotry are increasingly frequent in the United States. Bigotry is a fraught and contested term, evident from the rejoinder that calling out bigotry is political correctness. That is so even though renouncing—and denouncing—bigotry seems to be a shared political value with a long history. Identifying, responding to, and preventing bigotry have engaged the efforts of many people. People disagree, however, over who is a bigot and what makes a belief, attitude, or action bigoted. This book argues that bigotry has both a backward- and forward-looking dimension. We learn bigotry’s meaning by looking to the past, but bigotry also has an important forward-looking dimension. Past examples of bigotry on which there is consensus become the basis for prospective judgments about analogous forms of bigotry. The rhetoric of bigotry—how people use such words as “bigot,” “bigoted,” and “bigotry”—poses puzzles that urgently demand attention. Those include whether bigotry concerns the motivation for or the content of a belief or action; whether reasonableness is a defense to charges of bigotry; whether the bigot is a distinct type, or whether we are all a bit bigoted; and whether “bigotry” is the term society gives to beliefs that now are beyond the pale. This book addresses those puzzles by examining prior controversies over interfaith and interracial marriage and the recent controversy over same-sex marriage, as well as controversies over landmark civil rights law and more recent conflicts between religious liberty and state anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBTQ persons.
Putting the Question in Perspective
Authors: Purves Dale
Published: March 2020

Basic to the question of whether or not the brain and the rest of the human nervous system have a simple operating principle are some central facts about biology and its relation to neuroscience. What nervous systems do is best appreciated in the context of what all organisms must accomplish in order to survive and prosper, with or without neural assistance. Although the author’s understanding of these issues is no more than that of any other student who pays a modicum of attention to the broader sweep of scientific progress, this chapter considers some points of consensus. The aim is to situate the quest for a principle of neural function in the context of biology writ large.
Organisms With Nervous Systems
Authors: Purves Dale
Published: March 2020

Definitions of the term “animals” in dictionaries and textbooks are surprisingly vague. The characteristics usually mentioned are eukaryotic, multicellular, heterotrophic, sexually reproducing, and capable of rapid and independent movement. But some or all of these properties are characteristic of many organisms in the other kingdoms of life on Earth. In fact, the major distinguishing feature of animals in most cases is the presence of a nervous system. But if nervous systems are indeed one of the main attributes that distinguish organisms in the animal kingdom, what exactly are nervous systems and what advantages do they bring? Without at least some provisional answers, seeking the operating principle of neural systems would be futile.
The Organization of Nervous Systems
Authors: Purves Dale
Published: March 2020

Nervous systems employ some or all of the senses to convert energy at the level of receptor cells into neural information. This conversion generates electrochemical signals carried centrally that, via a series of additional neurons, determine behavior. The most obvious behaviors are those mediated by skeletal muscles, cardiac muscles, smooth muscles, and glands. But motor responses are members of a longer list that includes attention, perception, emotion, memory, thought, motivation, and others. How to describe these additional “systems,” and how to decipher what the relevant circuits do and how they do it, are unanswered questions. This chapter describes the main features of neural processing, asking whether the principle of neural function is simply to make associations that lead to useful behaviors.
Neural Associations
Authors: Purves Dale
Published: March 2020

If the operating principle of nervous systems is making trial-and-error associations among neurons by accumulated learning over evolutionary and individual time, a next step is to define “associations” more exactly and to review the ways they are created. Neurobiologists have generally focused on the cellular mechanisms that alter synaptic structure, physiology, and biochemistry as a result of individual experience (“neural plasticity”), while psychologists have approached neural associations from the perspective of behavior. Neuroscientists of all stripes agree, however, that associations are based on the connections among neurons and neuronal populations. This chapter examines more specifically how neural connectivity evolves, how it arises during development, and how it is modified over animal lifetimes.
Evidence from Lightness and Color
Authors: Purves Dale
Published: March 2020

What, then, is the evidence that sensory systems link stimulus inputs to useful responses empirically as a means of generating successful behavior in a physical world that the senses cannot measure? This chapter focuses on evidence derived from studies of lightness and color in vision, the brain system that has been most extensively studied in this regard. The argument here, and in the following chapters that consider other perceptual qualities and systems, is that evolved circuitry based on accumulated experience with frequency of occurrence of biologically useful stimuli accomplishes this feat. This strategy, called empirical ranking theory, explains why the qualities we perceive are always at odds with physical measurements.