St. John's College

New York Times on education, St. John's College, and Sarah Benson --

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Sarah Benson last encountered college mathematics 20 years ago in an undergraduate algebra class. Her sole experience teaching math came in the second grade, when the first graders needed help with their minuses.

And yet Ms. Benson, with a Ph.D. in art history and a master’s degree in comparative literature, stood at the chalkboard drawing parallelograms, constructing angles and otherwise dismembering Euclid’s Proposition 32 the way a biology professor might treat a water frog. Her students cared little about her inexperience. As for her employers, they did not mind, either: they had asked her to teach formal geometry expressly because it was a subject about which she knew very little. . . .

Alan Schwarz, "Seeing Value in Ignorance, College Expects Its Physicists to Teach Poetry," New York Times, 17 October 2011.

Inequality

Nicholas D. Kristof on Occupy Wall Street -

The 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million Americans.

The top 1 percent of Americans possess more wealth than the entire bottom 90 percent.

In the Bush expansion from 2002 to 2007, 65 percent of economic gains went to the richest 1 percent.

Nicholas D. Kristof, "America's 'Primal Scream,'" New York Times, 16 October 2011.

Sims Like Old Times

Did Herman Cain take his 9-9-9 tax plan from Sim City? This brings a whole new dimension to the notion of role of the think tank in American politics. According to the Huffington Post,

WASHINGTON -- In Herman Cain's America, the tax code would be very, very simple: The corporate income tax rate would be 9 percent, the personal income tax rate would be 9 percent and the national sales tax rate would be 9 percent.

But there's already a 999 plan out there, in a land called SimCity. . . . (more)

"Herman Cain 999 Plan: Did It Come from SimCity?" Huffington Post, 13 October 2011.

The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era

David W. Blight, American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, a century after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King, Jr., declared, “One hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.” He delivered this speech just three years after the Virginia Civil War Commission published a guide proclaiming that “the Centennial is no time for finding fault or placing blame or fighting the issues all over again.”

David Blight takes his readers back to the centennial celebration to determine how Americans then made sense of the suffering, loss, and liberation that had wracked the United States a century earlier. Amid cold war politics and civil rights protest, four of America’s most incisive writers explored the gulf between remembrance and reality. Robert Penn Warren, the southern-reared poet-novelist who recanted his support of segregation; Bruce Catton, the journalist and U.S. Navy officer who became a popular Civil War historian; Edmund Wilson, the century’s preeminent literary critic; and James Baldwin, the searing African-American essayist and activist—each exposed America’s triumphalist memory of the war. And each, in his own way, demanded a reckoning with the tragic consequences it spawned.

Blight illuminates not only mid-twentieth-century America’s sense of itself but also the dynamic, ever-changing nature of Civil War memory. On the eve of the 150th anniversary of the war, we have an invaluable perspective on how this conflict continues to shape the country’s political debates, national identity, and sense of purpose.

David Brooks on Occupy Wall Street

If there is a core theme to the Occupy Wall Street movement, it is that the virtuous 99 percent of society is being cheated by the richest and greediest 1 percent.

This is a theme that allows the people in the 99 percent to think very highly of themselves. All their problems are caused by the nefarious elite.

Unfortunately, almost no problem can be productively conceived in this way. A group that divides the world between the pure 99 percent and the evil 1 percent will have nothing to say about education reform, Medicare reform, tax reform, wage stagnation or polarization. . . .

David Brooks, "The Milquetoast Radicals," New York Times, 11 October 2011.

Amending Senate Debate Rules

On Thursday, Republicans tried to get around that limit with a multitude of “motions to suspend the rules,” which violate the concept of cloture and could keep debate going even after a supermajority votes to move on. Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, decided that he had had enough and prompted a majority to vote to end this practice. It will now be out of order to try to suspend the rules once 60 senators have voted to end debate.

Any change that chips away at the gridlock in the Senate should be encouraged. Over the last three or four years, Senate Republicans have made a mockery of the minority party’s protections, routinely filibustering virtually every bill, blocking nominations and spending hours on political stunts designed to stymie and embarrass President Obama and the Democrats. . . .

"Chipping Away at Gridlock in the Senate," Editorial, New York Times, 11 October 2011.

Voter Fraud

It has been a record year for new legislation designed to make it harder for Democrats to vote — 19 laws and two executive actions in 14 states dominated by Republicans, according to a new study by the Brennan Center for Justice. . . .

Editorial, New York Times, 10 October 2011.

What They Want - What We Need

"Protesters Against Wall Street," editorial, New York Times, 9 October 2011

The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening. . . . No wonder then that Occupy Wall Street has become a magnet for discontent. There are plenty of policy goals to address the grievances of the protesters — including lasting foreclosure relief, a financial transactions tax, greater legal protection for workers’ rights, and more progressive taxation. The country needs a shift in the emphasis of public policy from protecting the banks to fostering full employment, including public spending for job creation and development of a strong, long-term strategy to increase domestic manufacturing.

Debit Card Fraud

Lloyd Constantine, "Debit Card Fees Are Robbery," New York Times, 8 October 2011.

Banks that charge customers to use debit cards are trying to rationalize one of the largest illegal transfers of wealth from consumers to banks in American history.

Naomi Klein at Wall Street

Here's Naomi Klein's speech to Occupy Wall Street, reprinted in The Nation:

“Why are they protesting?” ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the rest of the world asks: “What took you so long?” “We’ve been wondering when you were going to show up.” And most of all: “Welcome.” . . .

Naomi Klein, "Occupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the World Now," The Nation, 6 October 2011.

Cheering for Occupy Wall Street

Paul Krugman on Occupy Wall Street:

. . . It would probably be helpful if protesters could agree on at least a few main policy changes they would like to see enacted. But we shouldn’t make too much of the lack of specifics. It’s clear what kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators want, and it’s really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians to fill in the details.

Rich Yeselson, a veteran organizer and historian of social movements, has suggested that debt relief for working Americans become a central plank of the protests. I’ll second that, because such relief, in addition to serving economic justice, could do a lot to help the economy recover. I’d suggest that protesters also demand infrastructure investment — not more tax cuts — to help create jobs. Neither proposal is going to become law in the current political climate, but the whole point of the protests is to change that political climate.

And there are real political opportunities here. Not, of course, for today’s Republicans, who instinctively side with those Theodore Roosevelt-dubbed “malefactors of great wealth.” Mitt Romney, for example — who, by the way, probably pays less of his income in taxes than many middle-class Americans — was quick to condemn the protests as “class warfare.”

But Democrats are being given what amounts to a second chance. The Obama administration squandered a lot of potential good will early on by adopting banker-friendly policies that failed to deliver economic recovery even as bankers repaid the favor by turning on the president. Now, however, Mr. Obama’s party has a chance for a do-over. All it has to do is take these protests as seriously as they deserve to be taken.

And if the protests goad some politicians into doing what they should have been doing all along, Occupy Wall Street will have been a smashing success.

Paul Krugman, "Confronting the Malefactors," New York Times, 7 October 2011.

What's on your list? The media may be concerned that Occupy Wall Street has no obvious leader or spokesperson, and that it has no coherent message, all of which make it hard for the news to create a story. But see Tod Gitlin's The Whole World Is Watching, in which he tells how SDS foundered on its interaction with the media's hunger for stars.'

A variety of writers on the left are offering lists of suggested objectives for the Occupy Wall Street movement to support -- that in itself is an accomplishment, as it has reached the level of visibility and energy that good thinkers are being drawn to offer shaping messages. Something like this happens in the run-up to an important Presidential speech -- op-ed writers offer hypothetical drafts. If the movement has already reached a point where concerned citizens can project longings in its direction, that's something. Not the whole story, and not enough, but something interesting from a rhetorical perspective.

Ecofeminism and Rhetoric

Douglas A. Vakoch, Ecofeminism and Rhetoric: Critical Perspectives on Sex, Technology, and Discourse (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011).

contents, from the publisher:

Foreword
Glynis Carr, Bucknell University

Preface
Douglas A. Vakoch, California Institute of Integral Studies and SETI Institute

Chapter 1. “The rhetorics of critical ecofeminism: Conceptual connection and reasoned response”
Jeffrey Bile, Spalding University

Chapter 2. “Into the wild: An ecofeminist perspective on the human control of canine sexuality and reproduction”
Karla Armbruster, Webster University

Chapter 3. “Gender representations in orangutan primatological narratives: Essentialist interpretations of sexuality, motherhood and women”
Stacey K. Sowards, University of Texas at El Paso

Chapter 4. “Invitational rhetoric: Alternative rhetorical strategy as ecofeminist practice for transformation of perception and use of energy in the residential built environment from the Keweenaw to Kerala”
Merle Kindred, Centre of Science and Technology for Rural Development

Chapter 5. “Ecofeminist ethics and digital technology: A case study of Microsoft Word”
Julia E. Romberger, Old Dominion University

Afterword
Patrick D. Murphy, University of Central Florida

Epilogue: “Unwrapping the enigma of ecofeminism: A solution to the illusion of incoherence”
Jeffrey A. Lockwood, University of Wyoming

Politics of Child Care

Natalie M. Fouseckis, Demanding Child Care: Women's Activism and the Politics of Welfare, 1940-1971 (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

During World War II, as women stepped in to fill jobs vacated by men in the armed services, the federal government established public child care centers in local communities for the first time. When the government announced plans to withdraw funding and terminate its child care services at the end of the war, women in California protested and lobbied to keep their centers open, even as these services rapidly vanished in other states.

Analyzing the informal networks of cross-class and cross-race reformers, policymakers, and educators, Demanding Child Care: Women's Activism and the Politics of Welfare, 1940–1971 traces the rapidly changing alliances among these groups. During the early stages of the childcare movement, feminists, Communists, and labor activists banded together, only to have these alliances dissolve by the 1950s as the movement welcomed new leadership composed of working-class mothers and early childhood educators. In the 1960s, when federal policymakers earmarked child care funds for children of women on welfare and children described as culturally deprived, it expanded child care services available to these groups but eventually eliminated public child care for the working poor.

Deftly exploring the possibilities for partnership and the limitations among these key parties as well as the structural forces impeding government support for broadly distributed child care, Fousekis helps to explain the barriers to a publicly funded comprehensive child care program in the United States.

The National Woman's Party

Belinda A. Stillion Southard, Militant Citizenship: Rhetorical Strategies of the National Woman's Party, 1913-1920 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Between 1913 and 1920, the National Woman’s Party (NWP) waged a campaign to write women’s voting rights into the U.S. Constitution. Unlike the more moderate campaign strategies adopted by other woman suffrage organizations of the Progressive Era, the NWP remained committed to militant agitation—that is, holding political party leaders responsible for social change and doing so through nontraditional means of protest. Some of these militant strategies included heckling President Wilson, protesting silently outside the White House gates, and publicly burning his speeches in “Watch Fires.”

Such militancy resulted in institutional acts of social control including censorship, arrests, beatings, and force-feedings. And yet, by the end of the woman suffrage movement, the NWP had earned the endorsements of every major political party, as well as of prominent politicians (including Wilson), and had found its name splashed across the front pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. One Times article even referred to the NWP as the “suffrage leaders.” Exploring the ways in which the militant NWP negotiated institutional opposition and secured such a prominent position in national politics drives the analysis offered in this manuscript.

In light of the NWP’s militant identity and its demonstrated political viability, Belinda A. Stillion Southard treats the party’s campaign for woman suffrage as an example of how a relatively powerless group of women constituted themselves as “national citizens” through rhetoric. To this end, she uses volumes of NWP discourse, including correspondence, photographs, protests, and publications, to situate the NWP in the historical and ideological forces of the period, particularly as they are inflected by meanings of nationalism, citizenship, and social activism. In addition to this project’s historical focus, this study features the critical concept of political mimesis to help explain the ways in which the NWP mimicked political rhetorics and rituals to simultaneously agitate and accommodate members of the political elite.

Taking root in Aristotle’s notion of mimesis as the process of representation and drawing upon more postmodern theories that link mimesis to identity-formation, this study demonstrates that the NWP’s mimetic strategies took multiple forms, including parody and appropriation. Through the rhetoric of political mimesis, the NWP militantly inserted itself into U.S. politics while it also earned the political legitimacy needed to assert women’s citizenship rights. Ultimately, the strength of political mimesis as a strategy of social change was demonstrated by the ways in which the NWP’s rhetoric circulated within national and international political discourse and solicited a response from political leaders, the U.S. news media, and NWP supporters.

Who Occupies Wall Street?

Nicholas Kristoff of the Times has some suggestions for the Occupy Wall Street protests - here is his list:

So for those who want to channel their amorphous frustration into practical demands, here are several specific suggestions:

¶Impose a financial transactions tax. This would be a modest tax on financial trades, modeled on the suggestions of James Tobin, an American economist who won a Nobel Prize. The aim is in part to dampen speculative trading that creates dangerous volatility. Europe is moving toward a financial transactions tax, but the Obama administration is resisting — a reflection of its deference to Wall Street.

¶Close the “carried interest” and “founders’ stock” loopholes, which may be the most unconscionable tax breaks in America. They allow our wealthiest citizens to pay very low tax rates by pretending that their labor compensation is a capital gain.

¶Protect big banks from themselves. This means moving ahead with Basel III capital requirements and adopting the Volcker Rule to limit banks’ ability to engage in risky and speculative investments. Another sensible proposal, embraced by President Obama and a number of international experts, is the bank tax. This could be based on an institution’s size and leverage, so that bankers could pay for their cleanups — the finance equivalent of a pollution tax.

Nicholas D. Kristoff, "The Bankers and the Revolutionaries," New York Times, 2 October 2011.

Media History in the U.S.

Janice Peck and Inger L. Stoller, eds., A Moment of Danger: Critical Studies in the History of U.S. Communication Since World War II (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2011).



contents:

Chapter 1: Introduction: Moments of Danger and Challenges to the “Selective Tradition” in U.S. Communication History
Janice Peck 1

Chapter 2: Politics as Patriotism: Advertising and Consumer Activism During World War II
Inger L. Stole 13

Chapter 3: The Revolt against Radio: Postwar Media Criticism and the Struggle for Broadcast Reform
Victor Pickard 35

Chapter 4: “Our union is not for sale”: The Postwar Struggle for Workplace Control in the American Newspaper Industry
James F. Tracy 57

Chapter 5: “Things will never be the same around here”: How See It Now Shaped Television News Reporting
Dinah Zeiger 83

Chapter 6: “We can remember it for you wholesale”: Lessons from the Broadcast Blacklist
Carol A. Stabile 105

Chapter 7: Foreign Correspondents, Passports and McCarthyism
Edward Alwood 133

Chapter 8: “Love that AFL-CIO”: Organized Labor’s Use of Television, 1950-1970
Nathan Godfried 15

Chapter 9: The Postwar “TV Problem” and the Formation of Public Television in the U.S.
Laurie Ouellette 179

Chapter 10: Lockouts, Protests, and Scabs: A Critical Assessment of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner Strike
Bonnie Brennen 207

Chapter 11: The Reporters’ Rebellion: The Chicago Journalism Review, 1968-1975
Steve Macek 231

Chapter 12: Oprah Winfrey and the Politics of Race in Late Twentieth Century America
Janice Peck 253

Chapter 13: Public Radio, This American Life and the Neoliberal Turn
Jason Loviglio 283

Chapter 14: “Sticking it to the man”; Neoliberalism: Corporate Media and Strategies of Resistance in the 21^st Century
Deepa Kumar 307

Chapter 15: Contesting Democratic Communications: The Case of Current TV
James F. Hamilton 331

Chapter 16: Critical Media Literacy: Critiquing Corporate Media with Radical Production
Bettina Fabos 355

Where is liberal rhetoric?

Michael Kazin in the Times:

SOMETIMES, attention should be paid to the absence of news. America’s economic miseries continue, with unemployment still high and home sales stagnant or dropping. The gap between the wealthiest Americans and their fellow citizens is wider than it has been since the 1920s.

And yet, except for the demonstrations and energetic recall campaigns that roiled Wisconsin this year, unionists and other stern critics of corporate power and government cutbacks have failed to organize a serious movement against the people and policies that bungled the United States into recession. . . .

Michael Kazin, "Whatever Happened to the American Left?" New York Times, 25 September 2011.

VIDEO: The Elizabeth Warren Quote Every American Needs To Hear

VIDEO: The Elizabeth Warren Quote Every American Needs To Hear

ElizabethWarren.com

Human Rights Rhetoric

Wendy S. Hesford, Spectacular Rhetorics: Human Rights Visions, Recognitions, Feminisms (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).

From the publisher:

Spectacular Rhetorics is a rigorous analysis of the rhetorical frameworks and narratives that underlie human rights law, shape the process of cultural and legal recognition, and delimit public responses to violence and injustice. Integrating visual and textual criticism, Wendy S. Hesford scrutinizes “spectacular rhetoric,” the use of visual images and rhetoric to construct certain bodies, populations, and nations as victims and incorporate them into human rights discourses geared toward Westerners, chiefly Americans. Hesford presents a series of case studies critiquing the visual representations of human suffering in documentary films, photography, and theater. In each study, she analyzes works addressing a prominent contemporary human rights cause, such as torture and unlawful detention, ethnic genocide and rape as a means of warfare, migration and the trafficking of women and children, the global sex trade, and child labor. Through these studies, she demonstrates how spectacular rhetoric activates certain cultural and national narratives and social and political relations, consolidates identities through the politics of recognition, and configures material relations of power and difference to produce and, ultimately, to govern human rights subjects.

Model T Bliss, Ithaca

Paul Carter, "Ithaca, New York. Interior of a shack in which a man lived for twenty-five years. His wife would not let him live with her. She was mad at him for having backed a Model T Ford over her on their honeymoon." (1936 June).

Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection. LC-USF341- 011053-B. fsa 8c51333 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8c51333

Political Poster Collection

A collection of political posters -- most of them from Berkeley in May 1970 -- is now online at the Penn State Libraries. I collected the posters at the time, and donated them to Penn State a couple of years ago, where they have been under development as a special collection, thanks to James Quigel, Head of Historical Collections and Labor Archives in the Special Collections Library, and the staff of the Libraries. Ellysa Cahoy at the Libraries has also been important to its development, and tells me the collection will soon be mounted on Flickr, as the Library's first-ever interactive on-line exhibit.

Thomas W. Benson Political Protest collection

Making Chastity Sexy

Christine J. Gardner, Making Chastity Sexy: The Rhetoric of Evangelical Abstinence Campaigns (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Even though they are immersed in sex-saturated society, millions of teens are pledging to remain virgins until their wedding night. How are evangelical Christians persuading young people to wait until marriage? Christine J. Gardner looks closely at the language of the chastity movement and discovers a savvy campaign that uses sex to “sell” abstinence. Drawing from interviews with evangelical leaders and teenagers, she examines the strategy to shift from a negative “just say no” approach to a positive one: “just say yes” to great sex within marriage. Making Chastity Sexy sheds new light on an abstinence campaign that has successfully recast a traditionally feminist idea—“my body, my choice”—into a powerful message, but one that Gardner suggests may ultimately reduce evangelicalism’s transformative power. Focusing on the United States, her study also includes a comparative dimension by examining the export of this evangelical agenda to sub-Saharan Africa.

Security and Liberal Reform

Katherine Henry, Liberalism and the Culture of Security: The Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric of Reform (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Figures of protection and security are everywhere in American public discourse, from the protection of privacy or civil liberties to the protection of marriage or the unborn, and from social security to homeland security. Liberalism and the Culture of Security traces a crucial paradox in historical and contemporary notions of citizenship: in a liberal democratic culture that imagines its citizens as self-reliant, autonomous, and inviolable, the truth is that claims for citizenship—particularly for marginalized groups such as women and slaves—have just as often been made in the name of vulnerability and helplessness.

Katherine Henry traces this turn back to the eighteenth-century opposition of liberty and tyranny, which imagined our liberties as being in danger of violation by the forces of tyranny and thus in need of protection. She examines four particular instances of this rhetorical pattern. The first chapters show how women’s rights and antislavery activists in the antebellum era exploited the contradictions that arose from the liberal promise of a protected citizenry: first by focusing primarily on arguments over slavery in the 1850s that invoke the Declaration of Independence, including Harriet Beecher Stowe’s fiction and Frederick Douglass’s “Fourth of July” speech; and next by examining Angelina Grimké’s brief but intense antislavery speaking career in the 1830s.

New conditions after the Civil War and Emancipation changed the way arguments about civic inclusion and exclusion could be advanced. Henry considers the issue of African American citizenship in the 1880s and 1890s, focusing on the mainstream white Southern debate over segregation and the specter of a tyrannical federal government, and then turning to Frances E. W. Harper’s fictional account of African American citizenship in Iola Leroy. Finally, Henry examines Henry James’s 1886 novel The Bostonians, in which arguments over the appropriate role of women and the proper place of the South in post–Civil War America are played out as a contest between Olive Chancellor and Basil ransom for control over the voice of the eloquent girl Verena Tarrant.

Workers' Gospel

Erik S. Gellman and Jerod Roll, The Gospel of the Working Class: Labor's Southern Prophets in New Deal America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

In this exceptional dual biography and cultural history, Erik S. Gellman and Jarod Roll trace the influence of two southern activist preachers, one black and one white, who used their ministry to organize the working class in the 1930s and 1940s across lines of gender, race, and geography. Owen Whitfield and Claude Williams, along with their wives, Zella Whitfield and Joyce Williams, drew on their bedrock religious beliefs to stir ordinary men and women to demand social and economic justice in the eras of the Great Depression, New Deal, and Second World War.

Williams and Whitfield preached a working-class gospel rooted in the American creed that hard, productive work entitled people to a decent standard of living. Gellman and Roll detail how the two preachers galvanized thousands of farm and industrial workers for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. They also link the activism of the 1930s and 1940s to that of the 1960s and emphasize the central role of the ministers' wives, with whom they established the People's Institute for Applied Religion.

This detailed narrative illuminates a cast of characters who became the two couples' closest allies in coordinating a complex network of activists that transcended Jim Crow racial divisions, blurring conventional categories and boundaries to help black and white workers make better lives. In chronicling the shifting contexts of the actions of Whitfield and Williams, The Gospel of the Working Class situates Christian theology within the struggles of some of America's most downtrodden workers, transforming the dominant narratives of the era and offering a fresh view of the promise and instability of religion and civil rights unionism.

Critical Rhetorics of Race

Michael G. Lacy and Kent A. Ono, editors, Critical Rhetorics of Race (New York: New York University Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

According to many pundits and cultural commentators, the U.S. is enjoying a post-racial age, thanks in part to Barack Obama's rise to the presidency. This high gloss of optimism fails, however, to recognize that racism remains ever present and alive, spread by channels of media and circulated even in colloquial speech in ways that can be difficult to analyze.

In this groundbreaking collection edited by Michael G. Lacy and Kent A. Ono, scholars seek to examine this complicated and contradictory terrain while moving the field of communication in a more intellectually productive direction. An outstanding group of contributors from a range of academic backgrounds challenges traditional definitions and applications of rhetoric. From the troubling media representations of black looters after Hurricane Katrina and rhetoric in news coverage about the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres to cinematic representations of race in Crash, Blood Diamond, and Quentin Tarantino’s films, these essays reveal complex intersections and constructions of racialized bodies and discourses, critiquing race in innovative and exciting ways. Critical Rhetorics of Race seeks not only to understand and navigate a world fraught with racism, but to change it, one word at a time.

Shooting Nature

Ronald B. Tobias, Film and the American Moral Vision of Nature: Theodore Roosevelt to Walt Disney (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

With his square, bulldoggish stature, signature rimless glasses, and inimitable smile — part grimace, part snarl — Theodore Roosevelt was an unforgettable figure, imprinted on the American memory through photographs, the chiseled face of Mount Rushmore, and, especially, film. At once a hunter, explorer, naturalist, woodsman, and rancher, Roosevelt was the quintessential frontiersman, a man who believed that only nature could truly test and prove the worth of man. A documentary he made about his 1909 African safari embodied aggressive ideas of masculinity, power, racial superiority, and the connection between nature and manifest destiny. These ideas have since been reinforced by others — Jesse “Buffalo” Jones, Paul Rainey, Martin and Osa Johnson, and Walt Disney. Using Roosevelt as a starting point, filmmaker and scholar Ronald Tobias traces the evolution of American attitudes toward nature, attitudes that remain, to this day, remarkably conflicted, complex, and instilled with dreams of empire.

Contesting Public Space in New York

Benjamin Shepard and Gregory Smithsimon, The Beach Beneath the Streets: Contesting New York City's Public Spaces (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Focusing on the liberating promise of public space, The Beach Beneath the Streets examines the activist struggles of communities in New York City—queer youth of color, gardeners, cyclists, and anti-gentrification activists—as they transform streets, piers, and vacant lots into everyday sites for autonomy, imagination, identity formation, creativity, problem solving, and even democratic renewal. Through ethnographic accounts of contests over New York City’s public spaces that highlight the tension between resistance and repression, Benjamin Shepard and Gregory Smithsimon identify how changes in the control of public spaces—parks, street corners, and plazas—have reliably foreshadowed elites’ shifting designs on the city at large. With an innovative taxonomy of public space, the authors frame the ways spaces as diverse as gated enclaves, luxury shopping malls, collapsing piers, and street protests can be understood in relation to one another. Synthesizing the fifty-year history of New York’s neoliberal transformation and the social movements which have opposed the process, The Beach Beneath the Streets captures the dynamics at work in the ongoing shaping of urban spaces into places of repression, expression, control, and creativity.

Tourist Ethics

Dean McCannell, The Ethics of Sightseeing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Is travel inherently beneficial to human character? Does it automatically educate and enlighten while also promoting tolerance, peace, and understanding? In this challenging book, Dean MacCannell identifies and overcomes common obstacles to ethical sightseeing. Through his unique combination of personal observation and in-depth scholarship, MacCannell ventures into specific tourist destinations and attractions: “picturesque” rural and natural landscapes, “hip” urban scenes, historic locations of tragic events, Disney theme parks, beaches, and travel poster ideals. He shows how strategies intended to attract tourists carry unintended consequences when they migrate to other domains of life and reappear as “staged authenticity.” Demonstrating each act of sightseeing as an ethical test, the book shows how tourists can realize the productive potential of their travel desires, penetrate the collective unconscious, and gain character, insight, and connection to the world.

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Culture and Rhetoric

Christian Meyer and Felix Girke,eds., The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011).

contents, from the publisher:

Introduction
Felix Girke and Christian Meyer

PART I: INTERSUBJECTIVITY

Chapter 1. The Dance of Rhetoric: Dialogic Selves and Spontaneously Responsive Expressions
John Shotter

Chapter 2. Co-opting Intersubjectivity: Dialogic Rhetoric of the Self
John W. DuBois

Chapter 3. Echo Chambers and Rhetoric. Sketch of a Model of Resonance Theory
Pierre Maranda

Chapter 4. Discourse beyond Language: Cultural Rhetoric, Revelatory Insight, and Nature
Donal Carbaugh and David Boromisza-Habashi

Chapter 5. The Spellbinding Aura of Culture. Tracing its Anthropological Discovery
Bernhard Streck

Chapter 6. Tenor in Culture
Ivo Strecker

PART II: EMERGENCE

Chapter 7. Attending the Vernacular. A Plea for an Ethnographical Rhetoric
Gerard A. Hauser

Chapter 8. Enhoused Speech: The Rhetoric of Foi Territoriality
James F. Weiner

Chapter 9. Transcultural Rhetoric and Cyberspace
Filipp Sapienza

Chapter 10. Jesuit Rhetorics: Translation Versus Conversion in Early-Modern Goa
Alexander Henn

Chapter 11. Evoking Peace and Arguing Harmony. An Example of Transcultural Rhetoric in Southern Ethiopia
Felix Girke and Alula Pankhurst

PART III: AGENCY

Chapter 12. In Defense of the Orator. A Classicist Outlook on Rhetoric Culture
Franz-Hubert Robling

Chapter 13. Rhetoric, Anti-Structure, and the Social Formation of Authorship
James Thomas Zebroski

Chapter 14. Attention & Rhetoric: Prolepsis and the Problem of Meaning
Todd Oakley

Chapter 15. Emergence, Agency and the Middle Ground of Culture: A Meditation on Mediation
Stephen A. Tyler

Remembering the AIDS Quilt

Charles E. Morris III, ed., Remembering the AIDS Quilt (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

A collaborative creation unlike any other, the Names Project Foundation's AIDS Memorial Quilt has played an invaluable role in shattering the silence and stigma that surrounded the epidemic in the first years of its existence. Designed by Cleve Jones, the AIDS Quilt is the largest ongoing community arts project in the world. Since its conception in 1987, the Quilt has transformed the cultural and political responses to AIDS in the U.S. Representative of both marginalized and mainstream peoples, the Quilt contains crucial material and symbolic implications for mourning the dead, and the treatment and prevention of AIDS. However, the project has raised numerous questions concerning memory, activism, identity, ownership, and nationalism, as well as issues of sexuality, race, class, and gender. As thought-provoking as the Quilt itself, this diverse collection of essays by ten prominent rhetorical scholars provides a rich experience of the AIDS Quilt, incorporating a variety of perspectives, critiques, and interpretations.

Debating the Economy

Paul Krugman on the economic debate:

Yet a destructive passivity has overtaken our discourse. . . . The truth is that creating jobs in a depressed economy is something government could and should be doing. Yes, there are huge political obstacles to action — notably, the fact that the House is controlled by a party that benefits from the economy’s weakness. But political gridlock should not be conflated with economic reality.

Paul Krugman, "No, We Can't? Or Won't?" New York Times, 11 July 2011.

Robert Frank's "The Americans"

Jonathan Day, Robert Frank's "The Americans": The Art of Documentary Photography (Intellect Books; distributed by University of Chicago Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

In the mid-1950s, Swiss-born New Yorker Robert Frank embarked on a ten-thousand-mile road trip across America, capturing thousands of photographs of all levels of a rapidly changing society. The resultant photo book, The Americans, represents a seminal moment in both photography and in America's understanding of itself. To mark the book’s fiftieth anniversary, Jonathan Day revisits this pivotal work and contributes a thoughtful and revealing critical commentary. Though the importance of The Americans has been widely acknowledged, it still retains much of its mystery. This comprehensive analysis places it thoroughly in the context of contemporary photography, literature, music, and advertising from its own period through the present.

Visual Anthropology

Marcus Banks and Jay Ruby, ed., Made to Be Seen: Perspectives on the History of Visual Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Made to be Seen brings together leading scholars of visual anthropology to examine the historical development of this multifaceted and growing field. Expanding the definition of visual anthropology beyond more limited notions, the contributors to Made to be Seen reflect on the role of the visual in all areas of life. Different essays critically examine a range of topics: art, dress and body adornment, photography, the built environment, digital forms of visual anthropology, indigenous media, the body as a cultural phenomenon, the relationship between experimental and ethnographic film, and more.

The first attempt to present a comprehensive overview of the many aspects of an anthropological approach to the study of visual and pictorial culture, Made to be Seen will be the standard reference on the subject for years to come. Students and scholars in anthropology, sociology, visual studies, and cultural studies will greatly benefit from this pioneering look at the way the visual is inextricably threaded through most, if not all, areas of human activity.

Ponzi Gas?

The New York Times publishes a story today with some evidence that the natural gas fracking rush is a giant and corrupt financial bubble in the making -- with risks of doing enormous damage to investors and the economy, and at the same time leaving behind enormous environmental damage in unproductive and abandoned wells. Is this a Ponzi scheme?

“Money is pouring in” from investors even though shale gas is “inherently unprofitable,” an analyst from PNC Wealth Management, an investment company, wrote to a contractor in a February e-mail. “Reminds you of dot-coms.”

“The word in the world of independents is that the shale plays are just giant Ponzi schemes and the economics just do not work,” an analyst from IHS Drilling Data, an energy research company, wrote in an e-mail on Aug. 28, 2009.

Get-rich-quick mining and drilling schemes have been a feature of American life for a couple of centuries at least -- are we at it again?

Ian Urbina, "Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush," New York Times, 26 June 2011.

Lawrence W. Rosenfield

Larry Rosenfield died yesterday in Minneapolis.

Larry was an inspirational teacher and a major scholar in rhetorical studies. He earned the B.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Cornell University and went on to teach at the University of Wisconsin, Hunter College, Queens College, Penn State University, and the University of New Hampshire.

I will post an obituary here when it becomes available.

From Betsy Hall: "Larry will have a memorial this coming Tuesday at 11:30 A.M. at Tifereth Israel in Lincoln Nebraska. The funeral home is Butherus Funeral Home in Lincoln. An obituary may be in Sunday's Lincoln Journal. He will be buried on Sunday, July 3rd at West Lawn Cemetery in Johnson City, NY (outside Binghamton) at 11:00 A.M. All are welcome."

The following obituary appeared online at the Butherus, Maser & Love Funeral Home:

Lawrence William (Larry) Rosenfield, 72, a retired professor of speech communication and rhetoric, died Friday, June 24, 2011, at his home in Lincoln, where he had lived since 2005.

He was born August 11, 1938, in Binghamton, N.Y., to Sam and Nettie (Feinberg) Rosenfield and grew up in Hancock, N.Y., where his parents owned a general dry goods store.

He spent a long career in university teaching and scholarship, beginning in 1963 at the University of Wisconsin, continuing at Hunter College and Queens College of the City University of New York in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and a visiting appointment at Penn State University in the 1980s, and ending at the University of New Hampshire from 1998 to 2005.

He graduated from Hancock Central School in 1956 and then attended Cornell University on a National Merit Scholarship, participating in intercollegiate forensic debate as a member and vice president of the Cornell Debate Association and graduating in 1960 with high honors. He went on to complete a master’s degree at the University of Illinois and then returned to Cornell, where he earned a Ph.D. in speech and drama in 1963.

In 1999 the National Communication Association presented him with its Lifetime Teaching Excellence Award.

Preceded in death by his parents; a sister, Edna Rosenfield; and a brother, Jerry Rosenfield, he is survived by his wife, Sylvia Hermanson, of Lincoln; a brother, Arthur Rosenfield, of Randolph, N.J.; and numerous cousins around the country.

Services are at 11:30 a.m., Tuesday, June 28, 2011, at Tifereth Israel Synagogue.

A graveside service is scheduled for 11 a.m., Sunday, July 3, 2011, at Westlawn Cemetery in Johnson City, N.Y.

A panel to remember Larry's work is is being organized for the November 2011 meeting of the National Communication Association.

Bonnie Johnson Shurman

Bonnie Johnson Shurman, a dear friend and former student and colleague, died on June 2, 2011. Bonnie earned the Ph.D. in speech communication at SUNY Buffalo and taught for some years at Penn State in the 1970s.



Here is an obituary from Palo Alto online:

Bonnie Johnson Shurman
Jan. 20, 1944-June 2, 2011
Oak Island, North Carolina

Bonnie Johnson Shurman, age 67, of Oak Island, formerly of Palo Alto, Calif., passed away Thursday, June 2, 2011, in Southport, N.C.

She was born in Baytown, Texas, to the late Buck and Osie McDaniel. A loving wife, mom and grandmother, she celebrated each day of her life with joy and was cherished by her many friends, fellow church members and family.

A university professor for almost two decades and then another two decades as a visionary/strategic planner in corporate and consulting settings, Bonnie left Silicon Valley after a life-changing Acute Leukemia terminal diagnosis. Her miracle remission allowed her to follow her spirit to discern God's purpose for her life and enroll in the Episcopal Divinity School in Boston Massachusetts.

Her years at EDS were ones of tranquility, love, learning and inspiration. Bonnie lived for many more years infused with joy and grace and surrounded by her family and friends' constant love and support. While we are in sorrow, we also rejoice that Bonnie has let go of her earthly body to join her loving God. As Bonnie said in her Lenten sermon at St. Phillips, "Remember that we are love, and to love we shall return."

She is survived by her husband, Daniel; son, Ron and fiancée Amber; daughter, Jennifer and husband Scott; and her much-loved grandchildren, Zac, Lucas, Abi and Landen; and many dear friends.

Friends and family are invited to a memorial service to celebrate Bonnie's life on Friday, June 10, at 2 p.m. at St. Phillips Episcopal Church, Southport, N.C. Reception in the Parish hall to immediately follow the service.

Bonnie's family requests that in lieu of flowers that a donation may be made to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. You may offer online condolences at www.peacocknewnamwhite.com Peacock-Newnam & White Funeral and Cremation Service, Southport, NC.

other links:

http://peacocknewnamwhite.com/?p=2318

Terry Winograd eulogy

Italian American Filmmakers

Jonathan J. Cavallero, Hollywood's Italian American Filmmakers: Capra, Scorsese, Savoca, Coppola, and Tarantino (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Hollywood's Italian American Filmmakers explores the different ways in which Italian American directors from the 1920s to the present have responded to their ethnicity. While some directors have used film to declare their ethnic roots and create an Italian American "imagined community," others have ignored or even denied their background. Jonathan J. Cavallero examines the films of Frank Capra, Martin Scorsese, Nancy Savoca, Francis Ford Coppola, and Quentin Tarantino with a focus on what the films reveal about each director's view on Italian American identities. Whereas Capra's films highlight similarities between immigrant characters and WASP Americans, Scorsese accepts his ethnic heritage but also sees it as confining. Many of Coppola's films provide a nostalgic treatment of Italian American identity, with little criticism of the culture's more negative aspects. And while Savoca's movies reveal her artful ability to recognize how ethnic, gender, and class identities overlap, Tarantino's films exhibit a playfully postmodern engagement with Italian American ethnicity.

Cavallero's exploration of the films of Capra, Scorsese, Savoca, Coppola, and Tarantino demonstrates how immigrant Italians fought prejudice, how later generations positioned themselves in relation to their predecessors, and how the American cinema, usually seen as a cultural institution that works to assimilate, has also served as a forum where assimilation was resisted.

"This book makes a significant contribution to the limited academic literature on Italian American filmmakers. The description and analysis is first-rate and convincing, and its subject matter will appeal to the general public as well as to scholars, researchers, and students in many disciplines."--Frank Tomasulo, coeditor of More than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film Performance

Eloquentia Perfecta

Here's an interesting e-mail from the Rhetoric Society of America --

June 23, 2011

RSA AFFILIATE FEATURED IN AMERICA MAGAZINE

One of RSA's oldest affiliate organizations is the Jesuit Conference on Rhetoric and Composition, organized by RSA former president Pat Bizzell (Holy Cross) and some of her colleagues at the other 27 Jesuit universities. The members are involved in recovering a Jesuit tradition in rhetoric and in using that rediscovery to reinvigorate undergraduate studies around the study and practice of rhetoric. The conference is featured in an article by Kevin Clarke in the May 16, 2011 issue of America magazine. If you would like to know more about this affiliate organization, look at http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=12858 .

The Situationist Beach

McKenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (New York: Verso, 2011).

Patrick Leigh Fermor

Patrick Leigh Fermor died "last Friday at his home in Worcestershire," according to the New York Times.

Fermor was 96 at the time of his death.

Patrick Leigh Fermor was the author of many wonderful travel books, including A Time of Gifts, an account, written many years later, of his journey on foot (and boat, horse, and automobile) from London to Constantinople in 1933-35, starting when he was 18 years old.

Another book, Between the Woods and the Water, describes the next leg of the journey, taking up after A Time of Gifts; he never published an account of the final leg of the journey.

In World War II, Fermor led a group that kidnapped the German general in command of Crete.

Rhetoric of Falun Gong in China

Xiao Ming, The Cultural Economy of the Falun Gong in China: A Rhetorical Perspective (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011).


from the publisher:

Emerging in China in the early 1990s, Falun Gong is viewed by its supporters as a folk movement promoting the benefits of good health and moral cultivation. To the Chinese establishment, however, it is a dissident religious cult threatening political orthodoxy and national stability. The author, a Chinese national once involved in implementing Chinese cultural policies, examines the evolving relationship between Falun Gong and Chinese authorities in a revealing case study of the powerful public discourse between a pervasive political ideology and an alternative agenda in contention for cultural dominance.

Posited as a cure for culturally bound illness with widespread symptoms, the Falun Gong movement's efficacy among the marginalized relies on its articulation of a struggle against government sanctioned exploitation in favor of idealistic moral aspirations. In countering such a position, the Chinese government alleges that the religious movement is based in superstition and pseudoscience. Aided by her insider perspective, the author deftly employs Western rhetorical methodology in a compelling critique of an Eastern rhetorical occurrence, highlighting how authority confronts challenge in postsocialist China.

The author, writing under the pseudonym Xiao Ming, was a Chinese diplomat and official of the Ministry of Culture before coming to the United States. A graduate of Wake Forest University and the University of Pittsburgh, she now teaches communication at a private college in Pennsylvania.

Hubert Humphrey at 100

Hubert Humphrey at the Democratic National Convention, 1948:

“To those who say this civil rights program is an infringement on states’ rights,” he thundered from the convention podium, “I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”

qtd in Rick Perlstein, "America's Forgotten Liberal," New York Times, 27 May 2011.

Speaking Hermeneutically

John Arthos, Speaking Hermeneutically: Understanding in the Conduct of a Life (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011), series in Rhetoric / Communication.

from the publisher:

John Arthos discovers and promotes an organic reciprocity between rhetoric as a humanist practice and hermeneutics as a theoretical comportment. Although these two traditions have a long and rewarding collaboration, it is only now that we begin to realize their potential for radically remaking the way we think and speak as social animals. Arthos marries the performative competencies of rhetorical practice with the circularity of hermeneutic understanding in a way that redefines the syntax of a humanist education in the twenty-first century. As a counter to the linear, technical rationalism that permeates common culture and educational praxis, Speaking Hermeneutically shows how a hermeneutically inflected rhetoric can lead to refashioning habits of thought and speech, the constitution of personal identity, the conventions of social engagement, and the deliberative practices that form the basis of public institutions. Arthos adapts the hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur to a series of classic rhetorical texts and landmark political moments, modeling the revitalized interchange of traditions in a way that will be accessible to scholars and students in both fields of inquiry.

John Arthos is an associate professor in the Department of Communication and the John and Christine Warner Chair at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. He is also the author of The Inner Word in Gadamer's Hermeneutics.

Roots of new media

Sheila C. Murphy, How Television Invented New Media (Rutgers University Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Television is a global industry, a medium of representation, an architectural component of space, and a nearly universal frame of reference for viewers. Yet it is also an abstraction and an often misunderstood science whose critical influence on the development, history, and diffusion of new media has been both minimized and overlooked. How Television Invented New Media adjusts the picture of television culturally while providing a corrective history of new media studies itself.

Personal computers, video game systems, even iPods and the Internet built upon and borrowed from television to become viable forms. The earliest personal computers, disguised as video games using TV sets as monitors, provided a case study for television's key role in the emergence of digital interactive devices. Sheila C. Murphy analyzes how specific technologies emerge and how representations, from South Park to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog, mine the history of television just as they converge with new methods of the making and circulation of images. Past and failed attempts to link television to computers and the Web also indicate how services like Hulu or Netflix On-Demand can give rise to a new era for entertainment and program viewing online. In these concrete ways, television's role in new and emerging media is solidified and finally recognized.

In the Land of Cotton

Karen L. Cox, Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

From the late nineteenth century through World War II, popular culture portrayed the American South as a region ensconced in its antebellum past, draped in moonlight and magnolias, and represented by such southern icons as the mammy, the belle, the chivalrous planter, white-columned mansions, and even bolls of cotton.

In Dreaming of Dixie, Karen Cox shows that the chief purveyors of this constructed nostalgia for the Old South were outsiders of the region, especially advertising agencies, musicians, publishers, radio personalities, writers, and filmmakers playing to consumers' anxiety about modernity by marketing the South as a region still dedicated to America's pastoral traditions. Cox examines how southerners themselves embraced the imaginary romance of the region's past, particularly in the tourist trade as southern states and cities sought to capitalize on popular perceptions by showcasing their Old South heritage. Only when television emerged as the most influential medium of popular culture did views of the South begin to change, as news coverage of the civil rights movement brought images of violence, protest, and conflict in the South into people's living rooms. Until then, Cox argues, most Americans remained content with their romantic vision of Dixie.

Republicans and the Social Compact

Is the Republican Party trying to repeal the New Deal? An editorial in today's New York Times:

Six months after voters sent Republicans in large numbers to Congress and many statehouses, it is possible to see the full landscape of destruction that their policies would cause — much of which has already begun. If it was not clear before, it is obvious now that the party is fully engaged in a project to dismantle the foundations of the New Deal and the Great Society, and to liberate business and the rich from the inconveniences of oversight and taxes.

"The New Republican Landscape," New York Times, 18 April 2011.

Fracking PA

Governor Tom Corbett wants Pennsylvania to be the Texas of the next oil and gas boom, based on the exploitation of the natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation under Pennsylvania. He has said he will veto any attempt to tax the industry, which is alleged to be responsible for toxifying underground water reserves, and for breaking up roads all over Pennsylvania. He is also attempting to evade environmental regulations that might identify and prevent damage to the environment.

Now a new Congressional study on the environmental dangers of fracking -- the hydraulic fracturing system used to extract gas from underground shale.

WASHINGTON — Oil and gas companies injected hundreds of millions of gallons of hazardous or carcinogenic chemicals into wells in more than 13 states from 2005 to 2009, according to an investigation by Congressional Democrats.

Ian Urbina, "Chemicals Were Injected into Wells, Report Says," New York Times, 17 April 2011.

Return of the Maine Mural

See "Maine Mural Projection Artists Discuss 'Photo-Bombing,'" Huffington Post, 11 April 2011.

Digital Griots

Adam J. Banks, Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011).

LionSearch

New search function unlocks Libraries' resources

The University Libraries will test a powerful new search function on March 21 that will allow users to find all library resources -- books, articles, newspapers, databases and more -- from a single search box. Called LionSearch, the new service is designed to mimic open Web search methods. Entering a search term in LionSearch will return, nearly instantaneously, a list of relevant physical and digital materials from the Libraries’ collections. LionSearch can be accessed from the Libraries’ homepage, www.libraries.psu.edu, and will debut initially in beta mode. Students, faculty and other users are encouraged to test the functionality of the service and leave feedback.

Penn State is one of a handful of universities around the world pioneering this service for their library collections. This simple and fast way of retrieving information will enhance the research process for students and unlock the wealth of resources available at Penn State.

"New search function unlocks Libraries' resources"

Net Neutrality -- Once There Was an Internet

The House of Representatives has voted to end Net Neutrality --

WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives approved a measure on Friday that would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from regulating how Internet service providers manage their broadband networks, potentially overturning a central initiative of the F.C.C. chairman, Julius Genachowski. . . .

Edward Wyatt, "House Votes against 'Net Neutrality,'" New York Times, 8 April 2011.

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% Society: vanityfair.com

Joseph Stiglitz, "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%," Vanity Fair, May 2011

. . . a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology. The United States and the world have benefited greatly from government-sponsored research that led to the Internet, to advances in public health, and so on. But America has long suffered from an under-investment in infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in basic research, and in education at all levels. Further cutbacks in these areas lie ahead. . . . <more>

Of the 1&#37;, by the 1&#37;, for the 1&#37; Society: vanityfair.com

Academic Research and State Propaganda in Britain

D. D. Guttenplan reports in the New York Times on how British research funding for humanist scholars is being used to force them into doing the political work of the current government.

"Two historians have accused the British government of pressuring researchers to study Prime Minister David Cameron's 'Big Society' or lose their funding."

D. D. Guttenplan, "Academic Freedom, With Strings Attached?" New York Times, 3 April 2011.

The Memory Purge in Maine

Peter Catapano on the memory purge in Maine:

Last weekend, on the order of Maine’s governor, Paul LePage, a 36-foot-wide, 11-panel mural, pictured in part below, was removed from the lobby of the state’s Department of Labor building in Augusta. The mural, which depicts scenes from Maine’s labor history, was completed with a $60,000 federal arts grant. (The artist, Judy Taylor, has expressed her dismay at the removal, but should probably send a thank-you note to the governor for the exposure.) LePage, who has been in office for about two months, claimed he removed the mural because of complaints from “some business owners” that it was too pro-union. (A spokesperson for the governor said it was “not in keeping with the department’s pro-business goals.”) . . . [more]

Peter Catapano, "The Mural Vanishes," New York Times, 1 April 2011.

image from Reuters, via New York Times

see also "Buddhas of Bamiyan," Wikipedia