bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Continuity and Memory in San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala
Authors: Kistler S. Ashley
Published: May 2017

In Chamelco and beyond, the Q'eqchi' are one of Mesoamerica's largest indigenous groups, registering close to one million speakers in Guatemala alone. The department of Alta Verapaz is home to 776,246 residents, 720,741 of whom identify ethnically as indigenous. Spanish chroniclers suggest that Alta Verapaz has served as the Q'eqchi' homeland since the Pre-Columbian era. Chamelco's contemporary population consists of more than 38,973 individuals, a small fraction of Guatemala's total Q'eqchi' population, This chapter discusses the history of the Q'eqchi' homeland of Alta Verapaz. It argues that continuity with the ancestors and with the ancient past is a category that grounds Q'eqchi' notions of value.
Recognition and Immortality in the Market and Beyond
Authors: Kistler S. Ashley
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines how Chamelqueños define prestige and status and how market women accrue prestige through their roles as marketers. It argues that Chamelqueños earn prestige in their daily pursuits and social interactions. Participating in resurgence movements, helping to preserve and promote Q'eqchi' culture, working to support others, showing strong personal character, joining municipal and family celebrations, and in some cases, accruing financial wealth and resources, are among the many ways by which Chamelqueños garner prestige and define their status. For some Chamelqueños, marketing also serves as a way to generate status. The recognition earned through these means generates immortality, ensuring that their legacies will persist and be remembered by future generations of community members long after they are gone.
The Temple of Music
Authors: Bauman Thomas
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on the “Little Pekin,” a theater opened by Robert T. Motts in Chicago in 1904. Chicago's black population around 1900 could not be called segregated in the modern sense of the term. It first provides an overview of the Black Belt, a neighborhood predominated by blacks, before discussing the role of social divisions among Chicago's black populace in the early history of Motts's theatrical venture. It then discusses the Pekin Theater, which Motts called “Temple of Music,” and its three elements that were to remain fundamental to its character: music, family, and vaudeville. It also considers the Pekin's strategy for racial uplift as part of Motts's commitment to his positive philosophy of economic activism. Finally, the chapter describes the entertainment that various performers offered at the Pekin on a nightly basis during its first seventeen months of operations, including bands playing ragtime as well as musical acts, comedians, dancers, acrobats, and other novelties.
Tacking to the Wind
Authors: Bauman Thomas
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the philosophy that Robert T. Motts had imprinted on the Pekin Theater and how it resonated with George Walker's belief in the possibilities for the growth and maturation of black theater as a special case of racial development and acceptance. From start to finish, Motts remained an entrepreneur ideologically committed to the doctrine of economic success as the surest engine of racial uplift. He left artistic aspirations in the hands of the Pekin Stock Company, and this meant primarily those of J. Ed. Green. This chapter describes the musical comedies served up at the Pekin and the Columbia Theater between September 1907 and May 1908, including The Isle of Pines and Peanutville, along with the operetta The Merry Widow. It also considers the battle among seven vaudeville and movie houses at The Stroll, an entertainment district on Chicago's South State Street.
Performing Gender
Authors: Jack Jordynn
Published: May 2017

This chapter deals with individuals' performance of gendered characters in more recent debates about vaccines and autism. Mothers engaged in these debates perform traditional feminine characters in order to claim epistemic authority over their children's diagnosis and treatment and to argue against the scientific establishment, using character as an element of conformation, or as support for a cause. Thus, mothers who actively argue for increased research funding or for specific theories of autism's etiology draw on topoi of experiential knowledge, caregiving, and maternal instinct, sometimes embracing the character of mother warrior or autism mother. They are countered by experts, most often males, who take on the character of the good doctor or father figure to argue against the vaccine theory.
More Movies than News
Authors: Vogan Travis
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the productions of NFL Films that not only document but also exalt the National Football League (NFL). NFL Films productions document and provide historical records of NFL games. It creates the league's history by arranging exceptional moments into celebratory narratives, such as Greatest Moments in Dallas Cowboys History (1992), Era of Excellence: The 1980s,(1989), and the syndicated television program NFL Game of the Week. NFL Films' documentaries suggest the NFL's past is constituted by extraordinary moments—diving touchdown catches, punishing blocks, and graceful runs—that evidence the league's unique excitement and epic importance. This chapter discusses NFL Films' production practices that aim to glorify pro football and how its material is influenced by the media outlets for which the company produces content. It shows that NFL Films' highlights offer a model through which to explain the emergence of the contemporary sports highlight—perhaps the most powerful and prevalent genre in sports media.
What Digital Remediation Does to Critical Editions and Reading Practices
Authors: Hillesund Terje , Bélisle Claire
Published: May 2017

This chapter analyzes critical edition digitization ambitions, ranging from the conception and aims of editors to the expectations of readers. The first part deals with issues and questions raised by the digital trend in scholarly text editions as they migrate from one media to another. The chapter explains, through the concept of remediation, how the traits and configuration of editions that are present in print technology live on in digital technology, even though text creation and dissemination have profoundly changed. Digital remediation of text is taking place within a digital context impelling new reading habits. The remainder of the chapter explores these new emerging reading practices, coupled with a probing of readers' expectations.
Markup Technology and Textual Scholarship
Authors: Huitfeldt Claus
Published: May 2017

This chapter describes how digital critical edition supposes a mastery of markup systems, providing an overview in the form of an inventory of standards, and of markup, presentation, and archiving techniques. It discusses the state of the art while focusing on key architectures and techniques considered as the basis of digital critical edition. The chapter introduces some aspects of markup technology that are particularly relevant to textual scholarship, such as the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), and considers some of their limitations, possibilities, and future potential. Since there is no need to be conversant with all aspects and details of the markup technology, most of what is covered here is of a general nature, albeit focusing on issues assumed to be of particular relevance for textual scholarship.
Toward a New Political Economy of Critical Editions
Authors: Régnier Philippe
Published: May 2017

This chapter analyzes the political economy of digital critical editions and the development of research networks, as well as the ecological environment and the concrete human resources in digital critical edition. The first part builds on the scope of scholarly editing's “political economy in a pre-digital era,” and describes the human resources context that has followed the migration of critical edition to the digital world. Meanwhile, the second part discusses the impacts of collaborative work, human networks, open software ideology, and resource sharing on the new political economy of digital scholarly edition. Particular attention is given to the role of institutions such as publishers, research organizations and universities, and scientific networks in this new production environment.
Scientific Analysis
Authors: Burnham Karen
Published: May 2017

This chapter addresses the scientific underpinnings of several of Greg Egan's novels. It first considers the “subjective cosmology” of the universes depicted in Quarantine, Permutation City, and Distress, with their attendant quantum mechanical weirdness. Next, it tackles theories about how our own universe works as seen in the novels Diaspora, Schild's Ladder, and Incandescence. Finally, the chapter provides a rough overview of the alternate-world physics shown in the Orthogonal trilogy, with a particular focus on Clockwork Rocket and Eternal Flame, the two volumes published at the time of writing. It concludes with a section on Egan's use of scientific principles as metaphors for larger philosophical points.
Science and Society
Authors: Burnham Karen
Published: May 2017

The vast majority of Greg Egan's writings concern science and the scientific process. Even when pointing out all the ways things can be unfair or go wrong, his fiction reflects a shining optimism that through the advancement of science the human race can achieve wonders. This chapter sets Egan's work in the context of some broader clashes between science and society at large. Several of his stories address the conflict between science and religion, and others look at the conflict between the humanities and scientific fields in academia. The chapter applies some criticisms of pure science to various Egan stories and then ends with a defense of science and science fiction as meaningful elements of human experience.
Introduction
Authors: Davis Coralynn V.
Published: May 2017

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Maithil women and storytelling. Through the imperatives of purdah, Maithil womanhood entails a significant degree of constriction of movement and speech both in and outside domestic spaces. They do, however, tell and listen to stories in the context of women- and children-only settings and have collectively promulgated a rich body of tales, which, while inevitably modified at least slightly with each telling, nonetheless display strong continuities in their themes, structures, and complexity of cosmological thinking and moral lessons. The behavioral norms of purdah have never been totalizing, yet they have been subject to new challenges as well as reassertion in the era of globalization, with its attendant and uneven expansion of mobility, mediation, education, and consumption. It is in these shifting conditions that Maithil women continue to weave their tales and navigate the terrain of their increasingly unstable lives.
Ponds, the Feminine Divine, and a Shift in Moral Register
Authors: Davis Coralynn V.
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores the meaning of ponds in Maithil women's tales. In many stories featuring ponds and occasionally, by extension, other bodies of water, female characters demonstrate special capacities. In Maithil women's folktales, ponds are often sites for the articulation of women's insights, as well as social and metaphysical agency in plots featuring male protagonists. Frequently, the trope of ponds shifts the imaginative register toward women's perspectives and to the importance of women's knowledge and influence in shaping their world. The tales in which such register shifts occur can be called “pond-woman tales” and the insightful women characters found in them “pond women.”
Cross-Racial Empathy: Viewing the White Self through Black Eyes
Authors: Davis Kimberly Chabot
Published: May 2017

This introductory chapter focuses on the progressive potential of empathetic feeling to redress a scholarly bias against compassion, empathy, and sympathy, particularly in American studies. Rather than viewing empathy as a “passive ideal” and an impediment to political change, the chapter argues that it is an active cognitive process that can play an important role in changing attitudes and self-perception or even catalyzing action. Tying in with this volume's overall response to critics who believe that the forces of commodification render cultural consumption a tainted vehicle for cross-racial understanding, the chapter argues against a too-hasty dismissal of white consumption of black cultural texts as a potential conduit for social change. In addition, the chapter also discusses multiplex subjectivity and the insider–outsider debate as part of the book's broader ethnographic study.
All the Dead Generations
Authors: Foley Barbara
Published: May 2017

This chapter illustrates how Toomer appears to have gleaned about his family's history while he was conceiving and creating Cane. This material features the fabulous fortune gained and lost by his father, Nathan Toomer, on the death of his second wife, the Georgia heiress Amanda America Dickson, said to be the “richest colored woman in America.” It also involves a near-Gothic narrative of attempted seduction and rape of his half-sister, Mamie Toomer, by her stepbrother, Charles Dickson. This buried family history gave rise to a complex admixture of shame and guilt that compounded Toomer's already conflicted consciousness as a pro-socialist radical born into Washington's light-skinned Negro aristocracy.
“Outside” Europe
Authors: Halle Randall
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses how the apparatus of European film extends beyond the ideational boundaries of Europe, and analyzes the distinction between an “inside” and “outside” production. Within the European Union, a number of programs have emerged to develop synergy with non-European filmmakers and film industries. For instance, the MEDIA program alone sponsors Outside MEDIA, MEDIA MUNDUS, and coordinates with the European–Mediterranean (EUROMED) partnership. The programs presented here aim to foster the distribution and exhibition of European films abroad, especially in the Mediterranean regions. The coproduction funds foster an ease of distribution in European film markets, giving rise to a complex network that reaches across the globe.
Interzone Xperimental
Authors: Halle Randall
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the rapid and accelerating technological transformations to film that have been happening in the last decade. These transformations make it anachronistic to speak solely of film and require the analysis of a more inclusive moving image. Moreover, these transformations have occurred simultaneously with the developments of globalization and transnationalism. Broadband, streaming video, and networked social relationships have been central to the formation of new communities and new forms of engagement with existing social conditions. The chapter seeks to highlight the interconnection between technology politics and economy by focusing on the question of moving-image experiments and migration. It focuses on the works of filmmakers who have worked in an experimental mode.
Conclusion
Authors: Halle Randall
Published: May 2017

This concluding chapter explains how studies of “transnational” German, Japanese, or Brazilian literatures or cinemas create for themselves a conundrum that cannot be properly studied: if it is transnational, it cannot be assessed within national parameters. To recognize the relationship of the cinematic apparatus to the current social configuration unfolding in Europe and beyond, this book has necessitated a broad comparative and historical approach. At the same time, to invoke the term transnational here is itself misleading. The book set out to correct and revise the research on transnationalism by rejecting the neo-Hegelian assumption that informs much of the work on transnationalism in Europe.
Mahopac, New York
Authors: Whitmire Ethelene
Published: May 2017

This chapter describes Regina's active retirement years and examines her legacy. Regina lived for nearly a decade as a widow until February 5, 1993, when she died at the age of ninety-one in the Bethel Nursing Home. Regina's death was reported in the New York Amsterdam News—the newspaper that had covered her social engagements, creative pursuits, wedding, and professional accomplishments. Regina's last will was a testimony to her strong commitment to various organizations. Regina left several thousand dollars to various organizations located in New York City, including two thousand dollars to the National Urban League and an equal amount to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; one thousand dollars to National Council of Women of the United States, two thousand dollars to the American Council for Nationalities Services, and one thousand to the Washington Heights Branch of the New York Public Library.
Introduction
Authors: Miller Leta E.
Published: May 2017

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Aaron Jay Kernis's achievements. His current Schirmer catalog lists more than one hundred compositions: a dozen orchestral works; another dozen concerti with large orchestra or wind ensemble; a group of works for soloist with chamber orchestra; nearly two dozen compositions for two to six players and the same number of pieces for chorus; fourteen pieces for solo voice accompanied by piano or chamber groups; and a dozen compositions for keyboard. Quantity, however, is but one measure of achievement. In Kernis's case, quality has been repeatedly affirmed by a steady stream of awards and commissions, by the enthusiastic reception from renowned performers, and by the strong response his music elicits from audiences. Indeed, he has already won three major prizes coveted by contemporary composers: the Pulitzer Prize (1998), the Grawemeyer Award (2002), and the Nemmers Prize (2012).
Learning the Craft
Authors: Miller Leta E.
Published: May 2017

This chapter studies Kernis's early years and training. During the seventh grade, Mary Jane Scholl, a freelance music teacher, started Kernis on the violin. She also introduced him to some basic concepts of music theory and elementary composition—writing simple counterpoints and four-part chorales—which eventually led him into free composition and his first instrumental pieces. Kernis then began to teach himself piano “by sight-reading all the music [he] could get [his] hands on.” During high school, he studied jazz keyboard harmony at Temple University. He also took private piano lessons there, but after acting as his own teacher for so many years, he had developed enough bad habits that both he and the teacher were frustrated. By the time Kernis left for college in the fall of 1977, he had already won awards in composition from the National Federation of Music Clubs (NFMC).
Kernis Meets the New York Philharmonic
Authors: Miller Leta E.
Published: May 2017

This chapter recounts a highly public—and widely publicized—event on June 7, 1983 that catapulted the twenty-three-year-old Kernis into the national spotlight. At 8:00 that evening, in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, in front of an audience of nearly a thousand, the New York Philharmonic spent an hour reading through and rehearsing Kernis's “dream of the morning sky” (Cycle V), conducted—and critiqued—by music director Zubin Mehta. Nearly every biographical sketch of Kernis cites this event, with varying degrees of accuracy. Major national publications ran stories about it at the time as well. Most critics gave little more than generalized descriptions of Kernis's score. One called it “intoxicatingly beautiful”; a second found its finale “soaring and rhapsodic”; a third called it “rich and imaginative” but “a little spoiled at the last by the rhetorical insistence of the pantheistic text.”
Triumphs and Tribulations
Authors: Miller Leta E.
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on Kernis's music in the years 1995–2001. In 1995, the American Academy of Arts and Letters honored Kernis with a $7,500 prize to facilitate a recording. During the following five years, Kernis would continue down the “road of excess,” churning out new works at a prodigious rate. In the summer of 1995, Kernis appeared for the first time as one of the featured composers at the Cabrillo Music Festival in Santa Cruz, California—a two-week contemporary music extravaganza held annually since 1963. Commissions also added to Kernis's increasing renown—he received one in August 1995 from the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for an arrangement of piano music, another in September from the Birmingham Bach Choir for a short choral work, and a third in October from the Chicago Symphony for a choral symphony. Meanwhile, Kernis was frantically working on the Double Concerto for Violin and Guitar, which continued to give him trouble.
Mr. Perry’s Sweet Shop and a New Old Time Dance
Authors: Spalding Susan Eike
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the role of of cultural exchange in the evolution of old time dancing and the creation of a new style in dance in the coal town of Dante in Russell County, Virginia. It begins with a historical background on the Cumberland Plateau and the town of Dante as well as the community's transition from farming to coal mining. It then discusses the impact of social and economic factors, including the interaction among local residents, African American southerners, and European immigrants, on Dante's dance traditions. It also looks at the exchange of dance ideas that took place in venues like Mr. Perry's Sweet Shop, along with the ways that dancing forged connections among African American communities in the coalfields. Finally, it explores changes in the old time dancing in Dante, citing the role played by the values embedded in the movement of the old and new dances and to people's beliefs about community, change, and the individual's relationship to it.
The Carcassonne Square Dance
Authors: Spalding Susan Eike
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the revival of the Carcassonne square dance in Carcassonne, Eastern Kentucky. In its current incarnation, the Carcassonne square dance began spontaneously in 1967, soon after the establishment of the Carcassonne Community Center. The dance at the turn of the twenty-first century reflected the century-old history of square dancing in Letcher County. This chapter first provides a historical background on Carcassonne School and how it helped to shape the Carcassonne dance before discussing life in the area throughout the twentieth century, with particular emphasis on farming and coal mining. It then traces the origins of square dancing in Letcher County and goes on to explore its decline during World War II. It also considers the role of folk revival and the Office of Economic Opportunity in the renewal of square dancing in Carcassonne, along with the Carcassonne square dance's relation to community identity and sense of self within the community. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the Carcassonne square dance after three decades of existence as well as growing attention and concerns for its future.
Fixing the Meaning of the Movement
Authors: Dow Bonnie J.
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on the ABC documentary on the Ladies' Home Journal sit-in entitled “Women's Liberation,”, produced by reporter Marlene Sanders. The documentary is 1970's key example of a supportive reporter's self-conscious effort to represent the movement fairly. It also serves as the most developed example of network news' reliance on race–sex and feminism–civil rights analogies. In her memoir of her reporting career, Sanders makes clear that she saw the documentary as an intervention into poor media treatment of the movement, echoing the contention of many feminists that the movement's image problems resulted from reporting by men. Refuting negative stereotypes about women's liberation (including, importantly, man-hating) was among the program's central strategies, as was an analogy to the moderate civil rights movement. Sanders's effort to package feminism in comprehensible and commonsensical terms that would make sense to her imagined white male viewer resulted in an evolutionary liberal narrative that narrowed the meaning of the movement in crucial ways, diminishing rather than demonizing its radicalism and presenting the Equal Rights Amendment as the answer to what ailed women.
“Hale Diabolo”
Authors: Carr James Revell
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the popularity of American minstrelsy in Hawaii during the nineteenth century. It looks at professional touring minstrel troupes from the mainland, amateur troupes consisting of the crews of various visiting ships, and local indigenous troupes of Hawaiian minstrels. An examination of Hawaiian newspapers, personal diaries, and theatrical playbills indicates that blackface minstrelsy was one of the most popular entertainments in Honolulu in the mid-nineteenth century. Not only were professional minstrel troupes imported from the mainland, but amateur troupes consisting of Euro-American sailors and local troupes of Hawaiian minstrels were also common fixtures of the Honolulu stage. The chapter examines the Hawaiian minstrel show as representative of the emergence of modern Hawaiian popular music, influencing all levels of Honolulu society, showcasing the mimetic and syncretic nature of Hawaiian popular music. It also tells the story of the man who managed the Royal HawaiianTheatre for twenty years, Charles Derby.
Pickets, Protests, and Prayers
Authors: Lucander David
Published: May 2017

This chapter shows how St. Louis March on Washington Movement (MOWM) used a major rally to launch a sustained campaign for the integration of African American workers into St. Louis's burgeoning wartime economy. A public prayer demonstration, pickets, and marches helped advance the position of black workers in a number of businesses with defense contracts, including U.S. Cartridge, the world's largest bullet manufacturer. The rising tide of African American workers at U.S. Cartridge came at the confluence of many currents, including a labor shortage, the threat of federal intervention through EO 8802, and constant grassroots pressure from MOWM. By necessity, St. Louis MOWM stepped in as an arbiter of workplace dissension at job sites when greater numbers of African American workers were met by an increase of animosity.
Battle, 1918
Authors: Faith Thomas I.
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on the American Expeditionary Force's (AEF) experiences with poison gas on the Western Front and the logistical effort made by the United States to support chemical warfare during World War I. The nascent Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) had to support battlefield operations in 1918 as the AEF faced poison gas in Europe. On the whole, the CWS found itself seriously challenged by conditions on the Western Front and dependent on U.S. allies for information and equipment. This chapter examines the CWS's efforts to train the AEF, manufacture chemical weapons, and use poison gas on the battlefield throughout 1918. It discusses the comparatively heavy gas casualties suffered by the AEF in the fighting due to the inadequacy of the gas-mask training that its soldiers were given. It also considers the AEF's limited use of chemical weapons against the Germans and the U.S. Army's inability to organize for chemical warfare jeopardized the gas warfare program's status after World War I ended.
Crisis, 1919–1920
Authors: Faith Thomas I.
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the Chemical Warfare Service's (CWS) struggle to continue chemical weapons work in the face of a hostile political environment as the U.S. Army sought to digest the lessons learned from World War I under the budget constraints of the postwar period. It considers the uncertain future of the CWS and chemical weapons after the war as the American public reacted against modern weapons in general and poison gas in particular because of the battlefield suffering it had caused. It also discusses the attempts of policymakers in the Department of War and the U.S. Army to limit all chemical warfare activities in the armed forces after the armistice. Finally, it examines how the CWS, primarily under the leadership of Amos A. Fries, tried to counter anti-gas sentiment and promote chemical weapons and manage to lay a foundation that would allow them to continue improve their reputation through the 1920s.
Marriage Hits Home
Authors: Kitch Sally L.
Published: May 2017

This chapter investigates the particulars of Marzia's and Jamila's decisions to marry, the circumstances of their marriages, and the impact of their new status on their professional activities. It was clear that marriage had changed their lives, bringing both joys and disappointments. Jamila's life was especially changed because she had produced two children in four years. Both women believed they had married worthy men and had used their knowledge of how marriage practices should work to affect how they would work in their own marriage arrangements. In their situations, it was also clear that region, economic capacity, education, and individual family practices affected their expectations of spouses and married life as well as their experiences as married professional Afghan women.
Addressing Afghanistan’s Problems
Authors: Kitch Sally L.
Published: May 2017

This chapter assesses the significance of the obstacles Marzia and Jamila identified in 2010 and 2011, which included criticisms of Afghan women leaders and the fear that their limitations would keep ordinary women's prospects from flowering in the desert of their own delayed opportunities. When the author met and spoke to the women in 2010 and 2011, Marzia and Jamila had given much thought to the strategies their country should adopt in order to address the problems it faces. In their conversations, the women offered some pointed suggestions about moving Afghanistan forward on a number of fronts. In their usual manner, their discussion combined hopes and fears, but it was increasingly clear that obstacles were casting a longer shadow over possibilities for change than they had in 2005. The author was impressed that the two women wanted to discuss strategies for change in the midst of their discouragement, but even as she clung to their positive insights, the pain in their voices as they discussed enduring obstacles was unmistakable.
Future Prospects
Authors: Kitch Sally L.
Published: May 2017

This chapter interprets contemporary analyses of Afghanistan's future by mainstream political observers, historians, economists, and other “experts” through the perspectives of women's rights advocates, feminist theorists, gender scholars, and others. It takes into account, first, the continued presence of international donor governments and aid agencies in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, despite the scheduled allied troop withdrawal. It then considers what various approaches to Afghanistan's future central government might mean for the country's women and for their social status and access to resources and opportunities. The chapter further analyzes the implications for women's rights of negotiating with the Taliban and of conceptualizing Afghanistan as a coherent nation-state. The final section explores possible new ground for transnational collaboration between Western and Afghan feminist activists and theorists in light of the checkered history and structural power inequities that have hampered mutual understanding and plagued collaborations in the past.
Did They Jump?
Authors: Corsino Louis
Published: May 2017

For the greater part of the last century, Chicago Heights Italians found themselves on the wrong end of the cultural, political, and economic hierarchy in the city. This position made it extremely difficult for Italians to make recognizable gains in social mobility for themselves or their families. This chapter examines the collective mobilization strategies—labor organizing, mutual-aid societies, and ethnic entrepreneurship—that Chicago Heights Italians pursued in response to the diminished opportunities for mobility. Each collective mobilization was fueled by the social capital in the community. Each generated success stories. But each also came up against obstacles that limited their appeal in the Italian community.
Meta ⌿ Hodos
Authors: Tenney James
Published: May 2017

In this essay, James Tenney discusses a phenomenology of twentieth-century musical materials and an approach to the study of form. Before describing the musical materials, Tenney examines the factors that account for the increased aural complexity of much of the music of the twentieth century and of some of its effects in our perception of music. He analyzes the gradual use of more and more complex sound-units in place of single tones, one manifestation of which can be seen in the expansion of the very concept of “melodic line” by way of various kinds of doublings. He also talks about the notion of equivalence in Arnold Schoenberg's arguments about consonance/dissonance and compares it with his own principle of equivalence. Tenney goes on to explore the gestalt-factors of cohesion and segregation by referring to the ideas of Max Wertheimer and concludes with an assessment of formal factors in the clang and sequence.
Computer Music Experiences, 1961–1964
Authors: Tenney James
Published: May 2017

James Tenney reflects on his experiences with computer music during the period 1961–1964. He recalls arriving at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in September 1961 with a number of what he calls musical and intellectual baggage, including various instrumental compositions reflecting the influence of Anton von Webern and Edgard Varèse; a dissatisfaction with all purely synthetic electronic music that he had heard up to that time, particularly with respect to timbre; and a growing interest in the work and ideas of John Cage. He left in March 1964 with six tape compositions of computer-generated sounds and a far better understanding of the physical basis of timbre, among others. Tenney goes on to discuss some of his compositions using computer-generated sounds, such as Analog #1: Noise Study, Four Stochastic Studies and Dialogue, Stochastic String Quartet, Ergodos I and Ergodos II, and Phases. He also describes his rise-time experiment on tone.
Form in Twentieth-Century Music
Authors: Tenney James
Published: May 2017

James Tenney reflects on form in twentieth-century music, first by offering an alternative to the conventional definition of form and introducing a number of new terms. He then considers three factors that determine form: shape, structure, and state. In relation to these factors, he describes three aspects of form to consider at each hierarchical level: the structural (internal relations), the morphological (shape), and the statistical (state, condition). These relations between state, shape, and structure at adjacent hierarchical levels are relevant to the old problem of “form versus content.” Tenney also emphasizes the importance of perception in the matter of form and proceeds with a discussion of new formal conditions in twentieth-century music at each of the three hierarchical levels he mentioned earlier in relation to sound elements, the clang, and the sequence. Finally, he explores higher levels of organization and perception with regards to shape and structure.
Hierarchical Temporal Gestalt Perception in Music
Authors: Tenney James
Published: May 2017

James Tenney talks about hierarchical temporal gestalt perception in music based on a metric space model, which he applied to compositions by Anton Webern, Edgard Varèse, and Claude Debussy. He begins with a discussion of temporal gestalt-units (TGs), using the terms “element,” “clang,” and “sequence” to designate TGs at the first three hierarchical levels of perceptual organization. He then considers a number of questions that might be the most relevant to musical perception, such as: how the perceptual boundaries of a TG are determined; or the extent to which the factors involved in temporal gestalt perception are objective. In an effort to provide some tentative answers to such questions, Tenney proposes a hypothesis of temporal gestalt perception and presents some results of a computer analysis program based on this hypothesis. The program, written by Larry Polansky, represents a simplified model of this aspect of musical perception, and Tenney describes some of the implications, limitations, and possible extensions of this model.
Introduction to “Contributions toward a Quantitative Theory of Harmony”
Authors: Tenney James
Published: May 2017

James Tenney presents the introduction to his 1979 essay “Contributions toward a Quantitative Theory of Harmony.” In this introduction, Tenney discusses the history of consonance/dissonance, paying attention to the semantic problem, relations between pitches, qualities of simultaneous aggregates, and contextual as well as operational and functional senses of consonance/dissonance. He also explores the structure of harmonic series aggregates, focusing on harmonic intersection and disjunction, harmonic density, and harmonic distance and pitch mapping. Finally, he considers problems of tonality by analyzing harmonic-melodic roots and the “tonic effect,” along with harmonic (chordal) roots, the “fundamental bass,” and a model of pitch perception in the auditory system. In an epilogue, Tenney describes new harmonic resources as well as prospects and limitations of his contributions.
Review of Music as Heard by Thomas Clifton
Authors: Tenney James
Published: May 2017

In this review of Thomas Clifton's book Music as Heard, James Tenney reflects on Clifton's new approach to music theory intended as a remedy for a problem that he and others had recognized, namely, “the lack of coordination between the activity of analyzing the score and that of analyzing the experience of the music in the score.” According to Tenney, those who believe that there is an unhealthy disparity between the results of current practice in music theory and the actual experience of listening to music will see Music as Heard as an important contribution to the music-theoretical literature. Before proceeding with his review of Clifton's book, Tenney provides some background on the discipline of phenomenology. Despite expressing reservations about the book, Tenney argues that Clifton makes a significant contribution to a new kind of music theory that might be built upon a phenomenological foundation.
Diana and Beyond
Authors: Shome Raka
Published: May 2017

The death of Princess Diana unleashed an international outpouring of grief, love, and press attention virtually unprecedented in history. Yet the exhaustive effort to link an upper-class white British woman with “the people” raises questions. What narrative of white femininity transformed Diana into a simultaneous signifier of a national and global popular? What ideologies did the narrative tap into to transform her into an idealized woman of the millennium? Why would a similar idealization not have appeared around a non-white, non-Western, or immigrant woman? This book investigates the factors that led to this defining cultural/political moment and unravels just what the Diana phenomenon represented for comprehending the relation between white femininity and the nation in postcolonial Britain and its connection to other white female celebrity figures in the millennium. Digging into the media and cultural artifacts that circulated in the wake of Diana's death, the book investigates a range of salient theoretical issues surrounding motherhood and the production of national masculinities, global humanitarianism, transnational masculinities, the intersection of fashion and white femininity, and spirituality and national modernity. The book's analysis explores how images of white femininity in popular culture intersect with issues of race, gender, class, sexuality, and transnationality. Moving from ideas on the positioning of privileged white women in global neoliberalism to the emergence of new formations of white femininity in the millennium, the book explains the late princess's never-ending renaissance and ongoing cultural relevance.
White Femininity in the Nation, the Nation in White Femininity
Authors: Shome Raka
Published: May 2017

This book examines how the narrative of white femininity transformed Princess Diana into a simultaneous signifier of a national and global popular. Situating the discussion of white femininity and national modernity in the New Labor cultural scape of 1997 that promoted the rhetoric of a New Britain, the book analyzes the different facets of white femininity that the Diana phenomenon mobilized and stabilized in the production of a (new) national narrative of Britishness in the 1990s and beyond. It also considers a constellation of images of privileged white women in order to illustrate a larger formation of white femininity through which many neoliberal logics of national identity and citizenly belonging were being rewritten in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; how national identity intersects with celebrity culture, cultural politics, and global struggles over (what constitutes) modern subjectivity; and how representations, articulations, and actions of privileged white women of the Global North impact, inform, and intersect with larger geopolitics.
Growth amid Depression?
Authors: Schiller Dan
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines whether the metamorphosis of communications around internet commodity chains contributed to economic growth or led to a further episode of crisis. More specifically, it considers whether the U.S. information and communications industry, which invested more in information and communications technology (ICT) and software than any other sector including banking and manufacturing, signified that a basis was being laid for market expansion and economic growth. It also discusses whether investment in Web communications commodity chains siphoned revenue and profit mostly from old to new media, so that growth overall remained flat. Finally, it highlights shifts in the territorial profile of communications markets that reflected the ongoing and unfinished historical mutation into digital capitalism.
“A New Foreign Policy Imperative”
Authors: Schiller Dan
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on the Obama Administration's International Strategy for Cyberspace which, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared, constituted nothing less than “a new foreign policy imperative.” It examines several interlocked U.S. Executive Branch initiatives that were organized during the digital depression in an effort to affirm and bolster U.S. policy for the extraterritorial internet. The Department of State's contribution to this policy program was to project a refurbished rhetoric of human rights centered on what Secretary Clinton in 2010 pronounced as “internet freedom.” The chapter considers the role played by Google in the State Department's cyberspace initiative, which signaled the United States's determination to project power over critical internet resources and over the extraterritorial internet, primarily in an attempt to secure the continued, untrammeled movement of data throughout networked commodity chains.
Beyond a U.S.-centric Internet?
Authors: Schiller Dan
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the mechanism of the United States's internet control over the Domain Name System (DNS). The mechanism of U.S. internet control over the DNS was formalized after President Bill Clinton directed the Commerce Department to privatize the DNS in 1997. Legal contracts were drawn up, binding the Department to a for-profit corporation called VeriSign and to a private, not-for-profit corporation, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The chapter considers the Commerce Department's DNS initiative as an example of the geopolitics of today's internet, an extraterritorial projection of U.S. policymaking that was extraordinary for transforming into a venue where other countries mounted a concerted diplomatic challenge to U.S. power. The chapter also discusses the multi-stakeholderism in U.S.-centric internet and Edward Snowden's revelations regarding the National Security Agency's surveillance of global internet traffic.
Introduction
Authors: Schiller Dan
Published: May 2017

This book explores the notion of digital capitalism and its crash in 2007–2008, which it attributes to the uneven character of information and communications technology (ICT). It advances two main arguments: that the economic contributions made by ICT to digital capitalism rendered digital technology a fundamental pole of growth; and that, when it arrived, the economic crisis could be traced not only to financial speculation but to capital's multifaceted integration of digital systems into the political economy. In this account, the contradictory matrix of technological revolution and stagnation that constitutes capitalism today is highlighted. The book also elucidates the role of information and communications in the political economy's chief developmental processes, including capital's reorganization of the system of production, through fresh cycles of labor restructuring and spiking foreign direct investment; capital's concurrent ingress into finance; escalating military procurement spending; and the wide-ranging changes in the ICT sector. Finally, it considers how commodity chains bring together diverse labor systems to effect globally distributed production processes.
Normative Desires and Visual Sobriety
Authors: Pravadelli Veronica
Published: May 2017

This chapter argues that in the mid-1930s, American cinema perfected a classical form that dominated till the end of the decade. This form arose out of a new convergence between lifestyle and film style: in ideological terms, the period supported normative and traditional images of femininity and masculinity, and its film style privileged unified narratives based on action, dialogue, and continuity editing. The return to traditional values is manifested by a renewed interest in masculinity: in contrast to the earlier period, which is dominated by female stars, the most popular figured in the second half of the 1930s are male stars, along with child and teenage actors. This trend influences the most important genres of the period: screwball comedy, adventure, and biopic.
Introduction
Authors: Githire Njeri
Published: May 2017

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book explores the preeminence of alimentary-related tropes—particularly cannibalism—and their political significance in the works of select Caribbean and Indian Ocean women writers. These women include Monique Agénor of the Reunion Island; Lindsey Collen, a Mauritian writer of South African background; Maryse Condé of Guadeloupe; Edwidge Danticat, an American writer whose Haitian roots inspire most of her works; Andrea Levy, an English writer of Jamaican descent; Marie-Thérèse Humbert of Mauritius; and Gisèle Pineau, a French writer of Guadeloupean parentage. These writers were chosen based on the significance they have given to metaphors of (non)eating and incorporation to express social, cultural, economic, and political processes through which relations of power are drawn and perpetuated.
Introducing Muddying the Waters
Authors: Nagar Richa
Published: May 2017

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book explores the ever-evolving journeys—frequently described through stories, encounters, and anecdotes—that confront and embrace the messiness of solidarity and responsibility. In so doing, it aims to both separate and intimately link the question of scholarship with that of political action. Far from providing a methodological engagement with questions such as “how to” undertake transnational feminist studies or alliance work across the borders of academia and activism, this book places question marks on the utility and logic of neat positions and categories. It underscores the necessity of muddying theories and genres in order to embrace the risks of solidarities that might fail and translations that might refuse to speak adequately.