bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Dopaminergic Modulation of Prefrontal Cortical Input to Nucleus Accumbens NeuronsIn Vivo
Authors: Brady Anne Marie , O'Donnell Patricio
Published: February 2004

Dopaminergic transmission in the nucleus accumbens has been proposed to modulate the effects of converging excitatory inputs from the cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala. Here, we usedin vivointracellular recording in anesthetized rats to examine the response of nucleus accumbens neurons to stimulation of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the ventral tegmental area (VTA). The EPSP elicited in accumbens neurons by PFC stimulation was attenuated by VTA train stimulation in a pattern mimicking dopamine cell burst firing. PFC-elicited EPSPs were smaller in amplitude and faster to decay after VTA stimulation. These changes could not be explained by membrane depolarization alone, because EPSPs evoked during the sustained depolarization after VTA stimulation were significantly smaller than EPSPs evoked during spontaneously occurring up states. Furthermore, no attenuation of PFC-elicited responses was observed during depolarization produced by positive current injection through the recording electrode. Administration of a D1antagonist (SCH 23390; 0.5 mg/kg, i.p.) had no effect on the VTA reduction of PFC-elicited responses, whereas administration of a D2antagonist (eticlopride; 0.5 mg/kg, i.p.) reversed the reduction of PFC inputs when the analysis was limited to comparisons with spontaneous up states. These results suggest that the ability of PFC inputs to drive accumbens neurons is dampened by dopamine acting primarily at D2receptors. Along with previous reports of dopaminergic attenuation of limbic afferents to the accumbens, these findings support the hypothesis that dopamine mediates the selection and integration of excitatory inputs and thus shapes information processing in accumbens output neurons.
Linearity of Cortical Receptive Fields Measured with Natural Sounds
Authors: Machens Christian K. , Wehr Michael S. , Zador Anthony M.
Published: February 2004

How do cortical neurons represent the acoustic environment? This question is often addressed by probing with simple stimuli such as clicks or tone pips. Such stimuli have the advantage of yielding easily interpreted answers, but have the disadvantage that they may fail to uncover complex or higher-order neuronal response properties. Here, we adopt an alternative approach, probing neuronal responses with complex acoustic stimuli, including animal vocalizations. We usedin vivowhole-cell methods in the rat auditory cortex to record subthreshold membrane potential fluctuations elicited by these stimuli. Most neurons responded robustly and reliably to the complex stimuli in our ensemble. Using regularization techniques, we estimated the linear component, the spectrotemporal receptive field (STRF), of the transformation from the sound (as represented by its time-varying spectrogram) to the membrane potential of the neuron. We find that the STRF has a rich dynamical structure, including excitatory regions positioned in general accord with the prediction of the classical tuning curve. However, whereas the STRF successfully predicts the responses to some of the natural stimuli, it surprisingly fails completely to predict the responses to others; on average, only 11% of the response power could be predicted by the STRF. Therefore, most of the response of the neuron cannot be predicted by the linear component, although the response is deterministically related to the stimulus. Analysis of the systematic errors of the STRF model shows that this failure cannot be attributed to simple nonlinearities such as adaptation to mean intensity, rectification, or saturation. Rather, the highly nonlinear response properties of auditory cortical neurons must be attributable to nonlinear interactions between sound frequencies and time-varying properties of the neural encoder.
Acid-Sensing Ion Channel 2 Is Important for Retinal Function and Protects against Light-Induced Retinal Degeneration
Authors: Ettaiche Mohamed , Guy Nicolas , Hofman Paul , Lazdunski Michel , Waldmann Rainer
Published: February 2004

pH variations in the retina are thought to be involved in the fine-tuning of visual perception. We show that both photoreceptors and neurons of the mouse retina express the H+-gated cation channel subunits acid-sensing ion channel 2a (ASIC2a) and ASIC2b. Inactivation of theASIC2gene in mice leads to an increase in the rod electroretinogram a- and b-waves and thus to an enhanced gain of visual transduction.ASIC2knock-out mice are also more sensitive to light-induced retinal degeneration. We suggest that ASIC2 is a negative modulator of rod phototransduction, and that functional ASIC2 channels are beneficial for the maintenance of retinal integrity.
Pakistan in 2002: Democracy, Terrorism, and Brinkmanship
Authors: Talbot Ian
Published: February 2004

This article focuses on three areas that dominated Pakistan during 2002. The first was the transition to democracy in October. The background to the elections and the controversies surrounding this are examined along with the main party groupings and the outcomes. Second, the article considers the tense relations with India that threatened war both in January and May. The military standoff is explained in terms of the cross-border terrorism issue. Third, the article explains that Pakistan itself was a major victim of terrorism during the year. These outrages were designed to hit out at soft Western targets and to undermine the Musharraf government. Uncertainties abounded in Pakistan throughout much of the year. These arose firstly from the military standoff with India that followed the December 13, 2001, attack on India's Parliament; secondly, from the threat of terrorist outrages within Pakistan; and thirdly, from anxieties concerning the future of civil-military relations in the wake of the October parliamentary elections.
Constitutional Debates in the Philippines:From Presidentialism to Parliamentarianism?
Authors: Rüland Jürgen
Published: February 2004

The ouster of President Joseph Estrada initiated a new constitutional debate in the Philippines. In view of the fixed term of office, which allows for removal of a malperforming president only by way of an impeachment, political analysts are demanding a shift from the existing presidential to a parliamentary system of government. This article argues that such a shift does not necessarily solve the problems blamed on the 1987 Constitution, such as the rigidities of the presidential term, executive-legislative gridlock, presidential concentration of power, political instability, a weak party system, populism, and patronage. It proposes incremental reforms by amending the 1987 Constitution where needed, without scrapping the presidential system of government.
Myth and Reality in the Discourse of Confucian Capitalism in Korea
Authors: Cha Seong Hwan
Published: February 2004

This article argues that so-called Confucian capitalism in Asia is based on a superficial reading of Max Weber. The major points Weber has can still apply in Asia today. Thus, controversial issues such as Asian values and Confucian capitalism need to be re-examined in this globalized age.
JAPAN AND SOUTH KOREA
Authors: Manosevitz Jason U.
Published: February 2004

Analysis of Japan-South Korea security interaction shows a solidifying security relationship rooted less in threats from North Korea and more in shared economic interests. Remarkable as the ongoing security relationship is, it is limited in operation and narrowly focused. This has implications for regional security organization and proponents of the U.S.-Japan-South Korea “virtual alliance.”
"We the Others": Interpretive Community and Plural Voice in Herodotus
Authors: Chamberlain David
Published: February 2004

When Herodotus uses the first person plural in phrases like "We know," "We say," and so on, the modern reader naturally takes this either to refer to his ethnic group (Greeks) or to be something like the scholarly first person plural: an appeal to consensus among a group of qualied experts. Neither is the case. Only once does Herodotus' "we" refer to the Greeks as a group; in virtually every other instance it must be interpreted as plural for singular. It refers, that is, to Herodotus himself, and himself alone. Most importantly, it refers to him in his activity as inquirer, arbiter and composer of stories. History, as Herodotus presents it, has a plural voice. We can understand this, first, in relation to the poetic plural in lyric and epic. In epic, the plural voice is that of the audience, spectator and (in some sense) arbiter to a contest of powerful individuals. In lyric, a poet uses the plural in order to speak with the authority of the whole chorus, which is itself a kind of involved audience to the events it represents. A second way to understand the historian’s plural voice to is see how characters within Herodotus’ text use, or attempt to use, the same pluralising rhetoric. In one instance, a competitive individual tries and fails to assume the plural voice; in another, the voice belongs to a genuinely plural — and strangely anonymous — group of bystanders. Again, the plural voice is that of the interpreting, assessing audience, rather than that of the competing individual.
Herodotus' Use of Attic Tragedy in the LydianLogos
Authors: Chiasson Charles C.
Published: February 2004

This essay explains the appearance of tragic narrative patterns and motifs in the Croesus logos not as a passive manifestation of "tragic influence," but as a self-conscious textual strategy whereby Herodotus makes his narratives familiar and engaging while also demonstrating the distinctive traits of his own innovative discourse, historie. Herodotus' purposive appropriation and modification of tragic technique manifests the critical engagement with other authors and literary genres that is one of the defining features of the Histories. Herodotus embellishes the story of Atys and Adrastus with numerous formal and thematic features of Attic tragedy. Uniquely in the Histories, the story traces the full arc of a tragic drama, from the king's ominous dream of Atys' death to catastrophe, lament, and burial. The celebrated climactic description of Adrastus' suicide, however, transcends Herodotus' dramatic model. In describing Adrastus as the most unfortunate man "of all that he (Adrastus) himself knew," Herodotus introduces an idiom used elsewhere in the Histories to portray the activity of the histor, and thus places the unmistakable stamp of his own genre upon tragic narrative. In a fully mimetic episode that lacks the author's characteristically intrusive "voiceprint," Herodotus seems to suggest that he could beat the dramatists at their own game if he chose to play it. Two other episodes (thought by some to be based upon pre-existing tragedies) make similar use of tragic motifs on a smaller scale. In the story of Gyges and Candaules Herodotus adapts the Aeschylean motif of the decision made under duress to focus attention on human causation and socio-political issues of fundamental interest to him. Finally, the tragic stylization of Croesus' pyre scene allows Herodotus to manipulate audience expectations while subtly demonstrating, through the use of indirect discourse, the interest in source criticism that sets Herodotean historie apart from the poetic tradition.
Fragments of Autobiography in HoraceSatiresI
Authors: Gowers Emily
Published: February 2004

Horace's first book of Satires is his poetic debut, and has traditionally been read as a reliable account of the poet's coming of age and arrival in society. Recently, scholars have taken a more skeptical view of the authenticity of this account and have argued that Horace's self-portrait is generically determined, with the author invisible behind a composite of comic stereotypes. Nonetheless, this collection of casual and scattered fragments can, according to a less literal and more flexible definition of autobiography, be regarded as a coherent life history or self-presentation. This paper attempts to rehabilitate and expand the notion of the autobiographical in Satires I, and indeed to treat autobiography as the driving impulse of the book. Close readings of individual passages, some of them more overtly autobiographical than others, reveal striking patterns in the telling of this life-story, with special prominence given to the elements of self-preservation, socialization, and development of speech. Horace repeatedly replays various formative acts of emergence - from speechlessness, from his birthplace, from Philippi - even though these are referred to only indirectly. Critical events that are apparently underplayed in the book - Horace's official pardoning and his rebirth as a civil servant - are signaled instead by means of metaphor, displaced activity, or moral advice; they can also be found concealed beneath the trivial-seeming or circumstantial incidents Horace records from his daily life. As for the more obviously autobiographical highlights of the book - Horace's moral lessons at his father's knee or his first interview with Maecenas - these are not just isolated "moments," but can be shown to conflate an entire aspect of the poet's development, linguistic, moral, or social, in all its different stages. Other passages, apparently dealing with non-personal subjects - human behavior, the progress of civilization, Roman history, or the history of satire - can also be read as narratives of Horace's own civilizing process.
Intercultural Exchanges in Fourth-Century Attic Decrees
Authors: ALLEN KATARZYNA HAGEMAJER
Published: February 2004

Focusing on the analysis of Athens' relations with both Greeks and non-Greeks as recorded in extant fourth-century decrees, this paper challenges the applicability of the notion of Greek/barbarian antithesis to the interpretation of formal diplomatic exchanges between Athens and the non-Greek states. A comparison of the types of decrees and honors reveals a remarkable uniformity in the forms of Athens' foreign relations irrespective of the ethnicity of honorands. The distribution of honors among individuals and groups of recipients within single decrees further demonstrates that the Athenian honorific system typically elevated individuals over communities they represented, suggesting that political differences between Athens and non-Greek states did not adversely influence the methods of exchanges between them. Apart from the provisions contained in the decrees, this paper also considers their function within the city as monuments that attest to the important place of philobarbaric discourse and practice in fourth-century Athens.
English-only Triumphs, but the Costs are High
Authors: Portes Alejandro
Published: February 2004

The long war between English-only and bilingual education appears to have been settled, with English-only education winning. But its costs are high for immigrant families, the communities where they reside and society as a whole.
Crime Decline in Context
Authors: Rosenfeld Richard
Published: February 2004

Skyrocketing violent crime rates obsessed Americans for decades. Crime rates have now been dropping for 10 years. What has happened, and how can we learn from it?
Generations X, Y and Z: Are they Changing America?
Authors: Alwin Duane F.
Published: February 2004

The beliefs and behavior of Americans—from political convictions to sexual mores—have changed dramatically in the past several decades. It is often surmised that the attitudes and ideas of a younger generation are displacing those of their parents and grandparents. The reality is more complex.
How Countries are Made: The Cultural Construction of European Nations
Authors: Thiesse Anne-Marie , Norris Sigrid
Published: February 2004

The identities of European nations were built by 19th and 20th century intellectuals. By defining seminal events, national symbols, and heroes, they transformed what had been kingdoms and subjects into nations and citizens. Education reform, literature, monuments and statues, museums, and international expositions contributed to the shaping of these nations' modern histories and traditions.
And Transfer to Cemetery: The Streetcars Named Desire
Authors: Leff Leonard J.
Published: February 2004

The 1993 rerelease of A Streetcar Named Desire restores four scattered minutes of footage that Catholic censors in the Legion of Decency ordered cut from the picture before its original 1951 release. Praising 1993 over 1951 (or vice versa) misses an important point: the 1993 rerelease is less the "Original Director's Version"(as it has been advertised) than the one the industry's own censors negotiated and endorsed. Moreover, these two texts, when paired, raise important questions about authorial intention as well about as the workings of style, censorship practices,and the tensile strength and curious tensions of an enduring American drama.
Hot Spots, Avatars, and Narrative Fields Forever: Buñuel's Legacy for New Digital Media and Interactive Database Narrative
Authors: Kinder Marsha
Published: February 2004

This essay explores Buñuel's legacy for interactive database narratives and their discreet pleasures. Using Buñuel's 1933 conceptual" as an interface design for an interactive installation and for adapting his experimentation to cyberspace, the essay analyzes three strategies: 1) Buñuel's reliance on incongruous objects("hot spots") rather than montage as the primary means of navigating from one scene or level to another; 2)his use of puppet-like avatars who don't conform to psychology or narrative logic but are engaging nevertheless; 3) his creation of a narrative field where story possibilities are limitless, repetition and randomness rampant, and search engines motored by desire.
Asparagus Ice Cream, Anyone?
Authors: Quinzio Jeri
Published: February 2004

In the late 17th and early 18th century, long before refrigeration was available, Europeans were making ices and ice creams. Although they were often unsure about freezing techniques, they began experimenting with flavors immediately. Confectioners tried everything from breadcrumbs to grated cheese to candied orange flowers in these new frozen treats. They molded them into fanciful shapes and served them with style and flair. Once in a while, they stumbled -- putting foie gras or pured asparagus in ice cream, for example -- but most of their experiments were successful. They led the way to the wonderful range of flavors we enjoy today.
Sonja Alhääuser's Sweet Installations
Authors: Dupree Catherine
Published: February 2004

Don't we visit museums to look at art, not 'heaven forbid' to smell it, salivate at it, and eat it? Don't we arrange our sculptures on pedestals, and contemplate aesthetic at arm's length? German artist Sonja Alhuser thumbs her nose at such convention. She makes sculptures from sweets, and gleefully invites us to devour them. Soon, chocolate crumbs litter the gallery floor and her sculptures are reduced to rubble. There's an alluring naughtiness to this endorsed destruction-by-consumption of art in such an elegant setting. But as we nibble, aren't we contradicting the museum's mission to preserve and honor art? Haven't we dismantled the museum-goer's role as observer? Alhuser's gradually disappearing sculptures prompt us to question traditional beliefs and expectations about art's immortality and its function in museums. By instructing us to eat (and alter) her work, Alhuser relinquishes aesthetic control, and denies the dictum that great art is perfect as is. Instead, she lures us with chocolate's evocative and nostalgic aromas, and asks us to participate in her work and its destruction. We are no longer mere observers, but have been invited inside.
Categorization of Musical Motifs in Infancy
Authors: Mélen Marc , Wachsmann Julie
Published: February 2004

This article reports a study on categorization of music by 6- to 10-month-old infants. In the first experiment, infants were taught to categorize different sequences from a piece by Schubert into two categories. The results obtained were consistent with the categorization hypothesis; however, they did not reach statistical significance. We assumed that the results did not reach significance because the balance between the intercategorical and the intracategorical contrasts was tipped in favor of the intracategorical contrasts. The second experiment was a control experiment on adult participants, which aimed to evaluate the degree of similarity between the different exemplars for each category involved in the first experiment. The third experiment replicated the first one, but with sequences taken from two distinct pieces in order to increase the contrast between the categories. The data were fully consistent with the categorization hypothesis. The results are interpreted in terms of the model of sameness anddifference (I. Deliège, 1987).

Le présent article rapporte une étude relative à la catégorisation musicale chez les nourrissons de six à dix mois. Dans la première expérience, les nourrissons apprenaient à répartir en deux catégories différentes séquences issues d'une pièce de Schubert. Les résultats obtenus étaient conformes à l'hypothèse de catégorisation, mais sans être statistiquement significatifs. Nous avons supposé que cela était dû à un déséquilibre entre les contrastes inter- et intracatégoriels, les seconds étant favorisés. La deuxième expérience était une expérience de contrôle avec des participants adultes; elle visait à évaluer le degré de similarité entre les différents exemplaires des deux catégories impliquées dans la première expérience. La troisième expérience répliquait la première, mais cette fois les séquences provenaient de deux pièces distinctes, de façon à augmenter le contraste entre les catégories. Les données furent pleinement compatibles avec l'hypothèse de catégorisation. Les résultats sont interprétés à la lumière du modèle du même et du différent (I. Deliège, 1987).
Melodic Cue Abstraction, Similarity, and Category Formation: A Formal Model
Authors: Cambouropoulos Emilios
Published: February 2004

In the first part of this article, the notions of identity, similarity, categorization, and feature salience are explored; musical examples are provided at various stages of the discussion. Then, formal working definitions are proposed that inextricably bind these concepts together. These definitions readily lend themselves to the development of a formal model for clustering - the Unscramble algorithm - which, given a set of objects and an initial set of properties, generates a range of plausible categorizations for a given context. Finally, as a test case, the clustering algorithm is used to organize a number of melodic segments, taken from a monophonic piece by J. S. Bach, into motivic categories; the algorithm also determines a prototype for each cluster and uses these prototypical descriptions for membership prediction tasks. The results of the computational system are compared with the empirical results obtained for the same data in two earlier studies (I. Deliège, 1996, 1997).
Embodying Music: Matching Music and Dance in Memory
Authors: Mitchell Robert W. , Gallaher Matthew C.
Published: February 2004

We examined the ability to detect a match between a piece of music and a dance intended to express it. We used three pieces of music and three dances, and we presented these under the four following conditions. (1) Sequential selection: participants were presented with a piece of music and then selected, from among three sequentially presented dances, the one that best matched the music; or they were presented with a dance and then selected, from among three sequentially presented musical pieces, the one that best matched the dance. (2) Sequential judgment: participants were presented with a piece of music followed by a dance, or with a dance followed by a piece of music, and decided how well these matched. (3) Simultaneous judgment: participants were presented simultaneously with a piece of music and a dance and decided how well these matched. (4) Isolated presentation: participants were presented with either a dance or a musical piece and answered questions about its characteristics and their responses to it. Participants in the first three conditions answered similar questions about how they made their decision about the match between music and dance. A total of 942 university students participated. In the sequential selection condition, participants successfully matched the music with the dance intended to express it. In the sequential judgment and simultaneous judgment conditions, participants acknowledged matches between congruent music and dance, but also noted matches between music and dance not intended to be congruent. The various means by which participants detected a match between music and dance are examined.
Memory and the Experience of Hearing Music
Authors: Dowling W. Jay , Tillman Barbara , Ayers Dan F.
Published: February 2004

We report five experiments in which listeners heard the beginnings of classical minuets (or similar dances). The phrase in either measures 1-2 or measures 3-4 was selected as a target, tested at the end of the excerpt. A "beep" indicated the test item, which was a continuation of the minuet as written. Test items were targets (repetitions of the selected phrase), similar lures (imitations of targets), or different lures, and occurred after delays of 4-5, 15, or 30 s. We estimated the proportion of correct discriminations of targets from similar lures and targets from different lures. In Experiment 1, discrimination of targets from similar lures (but not of targets from different lures) improved between 5 and 15 s. Experiment 2 extended this result to a delay of 30 s. Discrimination of targets from similar lures improved over time, especially for second-phrase targets. This improvement was due mainly to decreasing false alarms to similar lures. Experiments 3 and 4 replaced the continuous music with silence and with a repetitive "oom-pah-pah" pattern, and the improvement in discrimination of targets from similar lures disappeared. Experiment 5 removed listeners' expectations of being tested, and the improvement also disappeared. Results are considered in the framework of current theories of memory, and their implications for the listener's experience of hearing music are discussed.
Do[n't] Change a Hair for Me: The Art of Jazz Rubato
Authors: Ashley Richard
Published: February 2004

This article examines a number of different performances of jazz ballad melodies in order to investigate the nature of expressive timing used by jazz soloists. Three performances of My Funny Valentine and two performances of Naima, taken from commercial recordings by master soloists, are examined. Expressive timing is seen to be a kind of tempo rubato involving a flexibility of melodic rhythm over a steady underlying beat. A typical strategy used is to begin the melody "late" relative to the accompaniment, and speed up over the course of a phrase. This delay-accelerate strategy is modulated in a number of ways. First, the nominal rhythms of motives are modified so as to preserve their categorical identity; below the level of the motive there is more expressive freedom. Second, there is a strong tendency for melodies to align with the accompaniment at cadential locations, serving to clarify hierarchic phrase structure. Finally, notes belonging to the underlying harmonies tend to be displaced more than nonharmonic tones, a tendency which is more pronounced at downbeats. These rhythmic procedures are thus found to be related to musical structure in a variety of ways.
Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti—Constraints, Congruity, and Musical Training: An Event-Related Brain Potentials Study of Musical Expectancies
Authors: Granot Roni , Donchin Emanuel
Published: February 2004

In this study, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) are used to measure subjects' responses to violations of musical expectancies elicited in seventone sequences. We manipulated the structure of the sequence (strongly vs. weakly constraining), the congruity of the terminal tone (congruent vs. incongruent), the form of sequence presentation (both types intermixed vs. blocked), and subjects' musical training. The degree of expectancy violation was measured by the P300 component of the ERP known to be sensitive to subject's expectations. As predicted, musically trained subjects generate specific expectancies in strongly constraining sequences. Expectancies may also be generated in weakly constraining sequences, however, only when these are intermixed among strongly constraining sequences. Otherwise, musically trained subjects refrain from expectancy generation and rely on their knowledge of the structure of musical scales. Musically naive subjects respond, overall, slower and less accurately than trained subjects but show similar overt behavioral effects, suggesting that these differences reflect only varying degrees of processing efficacy. ERP data, on the other hand, suggest that processing differs significantly between musically trained and untrained subjects. One such difference is that musically naive subjects generate expectancies regardless of the level of constraints in the sequence.
Preference for Sensory Consonance in 2- and 4-Month-Old Infants
Authors: Trainor Laurel J. , Tsang Christine D. , Cheung Vivian H. W.
Published: February 2004

The preferences of 2- and 4-month-old infants for consonant versus dissonant two-tone intervals was tested by using a looking-time preference procedure. Infants of both ages preferred to listen to consonant over dissonant intervals and found it difficult to recover interest after a sequence of dissonant trials. Thus, sensitivity to consonance and dissonance is found before knowledge of scale structure and may be based on the innate structure of the inner ear and the firing characteristics of the auditory nerve. It is likely that consonance perception provides a bootstrap into the task of learning the pitch structure of the musical system to which the infant is exposed.
Musical Chords as Affective Priming Context in a Word-Evaluation Task
Authors: Sollberge Bernhard , Rebe Rolf , Eckstein Doris
Published: February 2004

Using an affective priming paradigm, we demonstrated that the affective tone of musical chords influences the evaluation of target words. In Experiment 1, participants heard either consonant chords with three tones or dissonant chords with four tones as primes and then saw a positive or a negative word as target. Even participants who were unaware of the hypothesis of the experiment evaluated target words faster if the words were preceded by a similarly valenced chord (e.g., consonant-holiday) as compared to affectively incongruent chord-word pairs (e.g. dissonanthumor). In Experiment 2, results of Experiment 1 were replicated even when chord density was held constant at three tones per chord. Results suggest that the affective tone of single musical elements is automatically extracted and might therefore be viewed as a basic process contributing to the strong connection between music and affect.
Time Tagging: A Key to Musicians' Superior Memory
Authors: Jakobson Lorna S. , Cuddy Lola L. , Kilgour Andrea R.
Published: February 2004

Years of formal music training and proficiency at a nonmusical skill— verbal recall—are surprisingly associated (e.g., A. R. Kilgour, L. S. Jakobson, & L. L. Cuddy, 2000). The present study proposes an indirect mechanism to account for this association. It is proposed that music training strengthens auditory temporal-order processing, and that temporalorder processing then mediates the relationship between years of music training and prose recall.
"Adulterations Detected": Food and Fraud in Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"
Authors: Stern Rebecca F.
Published: February 2004

Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" (1862) has garnered seemingly limitless critical interpretation — the goblins' remarkable fruit inviting allegorical readings of the poem that reference, most popularly, Christianity, sexuality, and capitalism. In this essay I read fruit simply as food, situating the poem within the context of food adulteration contemporary with its 1859 composition. Food adulteration was a widespread problem in Victorian England, as increasing numbers of merchants cut flour with alum, doctored curry with mercury, and enhanced the appearance of potted fruits and vegetables with copper and lead. Public alarm regarding this form of fraud reached its height in the 1850s, largely due to the work of an independent Analytical Sanitary Commission, which published its findings in The Lancet between 1851 and 1854. While Parliament responded to these reports with the formation of a Select Committee in 1855, the popular press responded with articles, tracts, and ballads addressing this pandemic problem. Manuals that instructed consumers how to protect themselves by acquiring the accoutrements of home laboratories proliferated, as did references to adulteration in popular literature. In this essay I read Rossetti's poem as an example of this type of reference. The market of the poem's title, I argue, references a literally contaminated marketplace in which the numbers of people who ate ostensibly nutritious food, only to wither and die in consequence, provoked both governmental and popular alarm.
The Professionalization of the Woman Artist in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Authors: Losano Antonia
Published: February 2004

Critics of Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) have frequently noted the artistic endeavors of the novel's heroine, Helen Graham, yet they have not fully considered the historical and narratological ramifications of Helen's career as a painter. This essay argues that Helen's artworks cannot be considered as mere background to the novel or as simply symbolic reflections of the heroine's (or the author's) emotions. Instead, we must see the scenes of painting in Tenant as indicators of the novel's radical view of women's role as creative producers during a particularly complex moment in art history, one in which early-nineteenth-century female amateurism began its gradual transition from amateur "accomplished" woman to the professional female artist—a historical transition that, as is suggested in readings of various nineteenth-century novels, is in its earliest stages at precisely the moment of the writing and publication of Tenant. At the narrative level, the novel's many scenes of painting provide its readers with detailed, if oblique, guidelines for interpretation; the novel is formally and ideologically impacted by the presence of its painter-heroine. Most particularly, such a reevaluation of the role of painting in the novel resolves a central critical debate over the novel's problematic narrative structure.
Another Look at Critical Partisanship in the Viennese fin de siècle: Schenker's Reviews of Brahms's Vocal Music, 1891-92
Authors: Karnes Kevin C.
Published: February 2004

In 1891-92 Heinrich Schenker published a pair of analytical reviews of new vocal collections by Johannes Brahms, the songs, op. 107, and the choral pieces, op.104. In these essays, Schenker sought not only to provide a critique of the works in question, but also to counter a prevailing perception amoung critics that Brahms's late style as a whole is both emotionally tepid and difficult to understand. In order to elucidate the structure and significance of Brahms's music for his readers, Schenker relies on a hermeneutic approach, alternately considering what he characterizes as "objective" and "subjective" modes of description. Schenker's observations are often provocative, and at times reveal his indebtedness to conceptions of musical structure and meaning that are distinctly Wagnerian. In this way, Schenker's reviews are revealing of the complexities not only of his own intellectual history but also of the critical discourse in which he worked, as they call into question a commonly held belief that musicians and writers were sharply divided in their adherence to either Brahm's music or Wagner's aesthetic ideals at the turn of the century. In spite of their provocative nature, Schenker's reviews were received enthusiastically by several prominent members of his community, including some who considered themselves to be partisans in the critical debate. This fact reminds us that, critical politcs aside, there were many musicians and writers during this time who did not believe that Brahm's music was antithetical to Wagner's aesthetics. Rather, they considered both manifestations of a common ideal of musical expressiveness.
Suicide Attacks or "Martyrdom Operations" in Contemporary Jihad Literature
Authors: Cook David
Published: February 2004

Martyrdom operations are a factor in contemporary radical Islam. These operations have their roots in classical jihad literature, but fundamentally are a by-product of widespread frustration and perceived humiliations on the part of Muslims. The attacks of 11 September 2001 are rooted within this tradition.
How Falun Gong Practice Undermines Li Hongzhi's Totalistic Rhetoric
Authors: Burgdoff Craig A.
Published: February 2004

This article is based upon participant-observation of a Falun Gong group in Columbus, Ohio and includes a descriptive account of the exercises and local organizational structure. The totalistic rhetoric of Falun Gong founder, Li Hongzhi, is undermined by the non-hierarchical organizational structure of the movement. The privileging of orthopraxy over orthodoxy at the local level further undermines Li's totalism. However, the persecution of Falun Gong and the vilification of Li Hongzhi by the government of the People's Republic of China have resulted in an escalation of Li's totalistic and apocalyptic rhetoric. The ongoing persecution is currently the greatest threat to the structural stability of the Falun Gong movement. Nonetheless, barring external pressure, Falun Gong organizational structure and orthopraxy sufficiently counterbalance Li's totalistic tendencies.
Bloody Christmas and the Irony of Police Professionalism: The Los Angeles Police Department, Mexican Americans, and Police Reform in the 1950s
Authors: Escobar Edward J.
Published: February 2004

On December 25, 1951, approximately fifty Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers brutally beat seven young men in their custody, including five Mexican Americans. The ensuing controversy became known as Bloody Christmas. Mexican American activists demanded investigations into allegations of police brutality and LAPD accountability to civilian control. The LAPD's new chief, William Parker, however, had just launched a reform campaign based on the police professionalism model, which stressed police autonomy, particularly about internal discipline. Parker and his allies in city government stifled external investigations into department matters, vilified LAPD critics, and even ignored perjury by officers. They thus helped create an organizational culture that valued LAPD independence above the rule of law and led to the LAPD's estrangement from Mexican American and other minority communities.
"There's no Yellow in the Red, White, and Blue": The Creation of Anti-Japanese Music during World War II
Authors: Moon Krystyn R.
Published: February 2004

This article focuses on the production of anti-Japanese music during World War II through the frameworks of popular culture, consumption, and propaganda and by analyzing the music itself, as well as lyrics and sheet music covers. Anti-Japanese music codified certain racial beliefs while distinguishing among Asian nationalities. Portraying Japan in racialized and gendered terms told Americans something about themselves and white male superiority. These musical images also demonstrated the dialogue between the music industry and its consuming audience. Publishers and composers tried to describe the nation's emotions toward the enemy. Although their early efforts were somewhat successful, overall, anti-Japanese songs were not. Consumers looked to other musical forms and lyrics to embody the war, not necessarily voting against racism, but for more innovative music.
Western Literature at Century's End: Sketches in Generation X, Los Angeles, and the Post-Civil Rights Novel
Authors: Comer Krista
Published: February 2004

Since the early 1990s several "serious" southern California writers have begun writing science fiction, detective stories, mysteries, comic satires, even magical realism, finding freshly relevant ways to represent western life at century's end. Through novels by Sandra Tsing Loh and Cynthia Kadohata, I locate this turn to the popular within a larger political and cultural context we might call "post-Civil Rights." In such novels, texts do not take racial alterity as a starting, radically disruptive fact, although they do not claim that America has outgrown racism. Rather, a new racial subject and/or series of racial formations is under construction, invested in updating and reformulating the status of the nonwhite racial other, to account for the enormity of change in recent years, especially the place of youth within globalization discourse.
Hollywood Theology: The Commodification of Religion in Twentieth-Century Films
Authors: Smith Jeffery A.
Published: February 2004

A motion picture is a product formed by the intricate inter-play of film industry forces and cultural expectations. Hollywood must attract audiences and audiences crave gratification or, perhaps, edification. Movies with religious themes can deal with momentous issues, but take the risk of affronting deeply held beliefs. Problems naturally arise when matters as sensitive and speculative as the activity of the Creator and the role of the created become entertainment marketed to mass audiences. Technicolor scenery, special effects, celebrity actors, spiced-up scripts, and other big-screen production values may seem disrespectful or may divert attention away from serious reflection. Critics of consumer society have pointed to the manipulation, superficiality, and commercialization found in mass media environments and film scholars have evaluated movies with religious topics, but questions remain about cinematic treatments of ultimate meaning. The motion picture industry's customers have a multitude of spiritual perspectives.
“Praying for a Wicked City”: Congregation, Community, and the Suburbanization of Fundamentalism
Authors: Dochuk Darren
Published: February 2004

Sunday, March 21, 1993, was a memorable day for the more than two thousand members of Highland Park Baptist Church (HPBC) in Southfield, Michigan, for it marked the end of the church's fiftieth annual missions conference. The event had gathered people from HPBC and other churches to discuss the many social, economic, and moral issues threatening the vitality of community life in metro-politan Detroit. Following several rousing hymns, including “Raise Up an Army, O God” and “The City Is Alive, O God,” HPBC senior pastor Leonard Crowley ended the historic proceedings by offering an impassioned sermon on the Judaic institution of “Jubilee,” an Old Testament mandate that called for restoration of land and property to original ownership. Crowley had much to say about this antiquated ideal and its personal application to HPBC members, but the most pointed and intriguing elements of his jeremiad concerned the con-gregational body as a whole.
Dirty Pictures: John Ruskin,Modern Painters, and the Victorian Sanitation of Fine Art
Authors: Cleere Eileen
Published: February 2004

WHILE MY PROJECT IS BROADLY INTERESTED in the interdisciplinary work of what I will call sanitary art in nineteenth-century Britain, this essay is primarily concerned with a watershed moment in the production of that interdisciplinarity. In 1842, Edwin Chadwick published his Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population; the following year, John Ruskin published the first volume of Modern Painters. Incomparable in subject, genre, and style, these texts would nonetheless participate in the same cultural project, producing between them a discourse of ''dirty'' art that challenged and eventually redefined nineteenth-century aesthetic standards. This essay argues that Ruskin employed the discourse and ideological necessity of sanitary reform from his earliest work, enforcing through his celebration of modern painters an aesthetic preference for the bright, clean colors of J.M.W. Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites over the pestilential tones and dark obscurity of the Renaissance Old Masters. Moreover, Ruskin's sophisticated preferences were circulated and popularized by a cultural event more generally accessible than Modern Painters. Isolating a mid-Victorian moment when the agitation for urban cleanliness began to dominate a variety of social discourses, this essay will also argue that Chadwick's powerful sanitary idea was channeled through a public controversy in the mid-forties about the aesthetic status of ''picture cleaning'' in the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square. When the dust from this debate finally settled, it was swept away along with the dirty aesthetic theories that had accumulated over previous centuries. Left in its place was the thesis of Modern Painters, and a new standard of aesthetic hygiene for Victorian art.
Vampire Religion
Authors: Herbert Christopher
Published: February 2004

THIS ESSAY HIGHLIGHTS AND SEEKS to trace the conflicted logic of the strong religious motivation exemplified in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). First it analyzes the tensions in Stoker's polemic against the primitive other of religion/ superstition, setting that polemic off against those of two late-Victorian anthropologists, William Robertson Smith and James Frazer. For these theorists, the basis of the superstitious mentality lies in the principle of taboo, according to which the divine and the unclean are one and the same and divinity manifests itself in contagious physical transmission. Dracula on the level of its overt homiletic rhetoric presents the campaign waged against vampirism by Van Helsing and his friends as an allegory of the suppression of wicked archaic superstition in the name of enlightened, spiritualized Christian religion. Yet the novel is itself an emanation of a deeply superstitious mentality: it powerfully endorses a moral conception (a familiar one to the Victorian middle classes) based on the perils of the contagious transmission of uncleanness, it portrays the disgustingly filthy Count as an object of religious veneration, and it ascribes frightening magical agency to religious instruments like crucifixes and communion wafers. Along the way it proclaims an ideology of the violent purification of society from the influence of enemies of religion, particularly unclean women and, implicitly, Jews - the ideology against which Frazer particularly warns as posing a lethal danger for the future of European civilization. The argument of Dracula about the relations of religion and superstition is irresolvably contradictory. At the same time, Stoker carries out an exposé (or offers a case in point) of the perversely reflexive relations obtaining between vampirism and Christian religion in the age of the dominance of evangelicalism. He echoes earlier writers, notably Feuerbach, in diagnosing a strain of vampiric sadism at the heart of Christian piety. In its theme of erotically charged blood-drinking, Dracula evokes in particular the dominant motifs of the Wesleyan hymnal, and thus bears witness to the pathology that energizes Victorian spirituality.