scholarly journals Our past creates our present: a brief overview of racism and colonialism in Western paleontology

Paleobiology ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Pedro M. Monarrez ◽  
Joshua B. Zimmt ◽  
Annaka M. Clement ◽  
William Gearty ◽  
John J. Jacisin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Historical Science ◽  
Scientific Communities ◽  
Biological Resources ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
The Past ◽  
Direct Participation ◽  
History Of

Abstract As practitioners of a historical science, paleontologists and geoscientists are well versed in the idea that the ability to understand and to anticipate the future relies upon our collective knowledge of the past. Despite this understanding, the fundamental role that the history of paleontology and the geosciences plays in shaping the structure and culture of our disciplines is seldom recognized and therefore not acted upon sufficiently. Here, we present a brief review of the history of paleontology and geology in Western countries, with a particular focus on North America since the 1800s. Western paleontology and geology are intertwined with systematic practices of exclusion, oppression, and erasure that arose from their direct participation in the extraction of geological and biological resources at the expense of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Our collective failure to acknowledge this history hinders our ability to address these issues meaningfully and systemically in present-day educational, academic, and professional settings. By discussing these issues and suggesting some ways forward, we intend to promote a deeper reflection upon our collective history and a broader conversation surrounding racism, colonialism, and exclusion within our scientific communities. Ultimately, it is necessary to listen to members of the communities most impacted by these issues to create actionable steps forward while holding ourselves accountable for the past.

A Long, Long Way

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Garrett
Keyword(s):  
People Of Color ◽  
Racial Reconciliation ◽  
Cultural Narratives ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Race And Culture

Hollywood films are perhaps the most powerful storytellers in American history, and their depiction of race and culture has helped to shape the way people around the world respond to race and prejudice. Over the past one hundred years, films have moved from the radically prejudiced views of people of color to the depiction of people of color by writers and filmmakers from within those cultures. In the process, we begin to see how films have depicted negative versions of people outside the white mainstream, and how film might become a vehicle for racial reconciliation. Religious traditions offer powerful correctives to our cultural narratives, and this work incorporates both narrative truth-telling and religious truth-telling as we consider race and film and work toward reconciliation. By exploring the hundred-year period from The Birth of a Nation to Get Out, this work acknowledges the racist history of America and offers the possibility of hope for the future.

scholarly journals Patterns of Memory in Askold Melnyczuk’s Novels as an Example of Ukrainian-American Émigré Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-137
Author(s):  
Marta Koval
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
European History ◽  
Family Stories ◽  
Traumatic Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Definition Of

Although Ukrainian emigration to North America is not a new phenomenon, the dilemmas of memory and amnesia remain crucial in Ukrainian-American émigré fiction. The paper focuses on selected novels by Askold Melnyczuk (What is Told and Ambassador of the Dead) and analyzes how traumatic memories and family stories of the past shape the American lives of Ukrainian emigrants. The discussion of the selected Ukrainian-American émigré novels focuses on the dilemmas of remembering and forgetting in the construction of both Ukrainian and American narratives of the past. The voluntary amnesia of the Ame- rican-born Ukrainians in Melnyczuk’s novels confronts their parents’ dependence on the past and their inability to abandon it emotionally. Memories of ‘the old country’ make them, similarly to Ada Kruk, ambassadors of the dead. The expression becomes a metaphoric definition of those wrapped by their repressed, fragmentary and sometimes inaccessible memories. Crucial events of European history of the 20th century are inscribed and personalized in the older generation’s stories which their children are reluctant to hear. For them, their parents’ memories became a burden and a shame. Using the concept of transgenerational memory, the paper explores the challenges of postmemory, and eventually its failure. 

Religion and Culture in Uganda

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-118
Author(s):  
David A. Hoekema
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Communities

In the past two centuries, relations among Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim communities in Uganda have been marked by competition and mistrust more than cooperation. The interfaith initiative of northern religious leadersv is a noteworthy exception. In this chapter the history of these communities is briefly reviewed, setting the background for the group’s formation. An important historical event that helped bring Catholics and Protestants together was the execution of 45 Christian pages to the Buganda king in 1886. Mention is also made of the far more prominent role that religion plays in public life in East Africa than in Europe and North America, and of the persistence of traditional beliefs and practices.

Certeau, Michel de (1925–86)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Conley
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
South America ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
The Other ◽  
General Philosophy ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Past ◽  
Michel De Certeau ◽  
History Of ◽  
Strategic Policies

Michel de Certeau, a French philosopher trained in history and ethnography, was a peripatetic teacher in Europe, South America and North America. His thought has inflected four areas of philosophy. He studied how mysticism informs late-medieval epistemology and social practice. With the advent of the Scientific Revolution, the affinities the mystic shares with nature and the cosmos become, like religion itself, repressed or concealed. An adjunct discipline, heterology, thus constitutes an anthropology of alterity, studying the ‘other’ and the destiny of religion since the sixteenth century. De Certeau opens the hidden agendas that make representations of the past a function of social pressures, so that sometime histories are rearticulated in mirrored or subversive forms. This subversion makes accessible a general philosophy of invention that works within and against the strategic policies of official institutions. De Certeau’s writings also belong to activism, the history of ideological structures, psychoanalysis, and post-1968 theories of writing (écriture) as defined by Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard.

Leaves of Karwinskia axamilpense sp.nov. (Rhamnaceae) from Oligocene sediments, near Tepexi de Rodríguez, Puebla, Mexico

1998 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 410-419
Author(s):  
Patricia Valasco de León ◽  
Sergio RS Cevallos-Ferriz ◽  
Alicia Silva-Pineda
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Acute Angle ◽  
Monotypic Genus ◽  
Fossil Species ◽  
Operational Taxonomic Units ◽  
The Past ◽  
Average Linkage ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Entire Margin

A new plant from the Los Ahuehuetes locality, near Tepexi de Rodríguez, Puebla, Mexico, is described based on its leaves. They are characterized by being ovate to elliptic, 4.5 cm long by 2.1 cm wide, having an entire margin, eucamptodromous venation, a midvein that is slightly curved and attenuated towards the leaf apex, seven pairs of secondary veins diverging at an acute angle from the midvein, percurrent tertiary veins forking or sometimes reticulated forming areoles, and having a petiole 1.3 cm long and 0.3 cm wide. An agglomerative nonhierarchical analysis with average linkage, based on the definition of 41 character states in 18 operational taxonomic units allows distinction between Karwinskia, Berchemia, and Rhamnus; the recognition of an extinct monotypic genus, Berhamniphyllum; and the identification of two fossil species of Karwinskia, among which the new plant from Puebla, Karwinskia axamilpense Velasco de León et al., is well defined. This new fossil leaf not only adds to the recently known Tertiary plants of the Los Ahuehuetes locality, but it gives new insights into the past flora of tropical North America and further supports the long history of some neotropical endemics, suggesting that, during the Tertiary, at least some areas in southern latitudes of North America could have been important for the origin and radiation of some taxa.Key words: Oligocene, Mexico, paleobotany, Rhamnaceae, Karwinskia.

Ethnobotany in North America: an historical phytogeographic perspective

1981 ◽  
Vol 59 (11) ◽  
pp. 2178-2188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard I. Ford
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Economic Plant ◽  
Eastern United States ◽  
Plant Macroremains ◽  
The Past ◽  
Plant Environment ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Ecological Changes ◽  
History Of

In 1855 Alphonse de Candolle challenged his contemporaries to describe and to explain the geographical and historical distribution of economic plants. It was only in the 20th century, however, that ethnobotany, the direct interrelationships between human populations and their plant environment, and paleoecology and archaeology could combine to delineate from antiquity the history of economic plant usages, to describe the ecological changes introduced by humans, and to detail the cultural determinants of new plant evolution.The prehistory of plant uses depends upon paleoecological and archaeological data. Pollen and plant macroremains have demonstrated that only during the past 2000 years in North America have humans expanded the number of taxa they used. Ecologically humans have become important agents for transforming the landscape during the same time period in areas where plant food production was practiced. Fire was the principle agent for clearing the land and plant husbandry intensified the disjunction of plant species. Humans, then, became significant ecological and evolutionary factors in the landscape with the introduction of domesticated cucurbits from Mexico in the eastern United States about 5000 years ago. It was not until 3000 years ago that indigenous North American Helianthus and Iva were domesticated and other plants were cultivated and introduced beyond their known ranges. In the Southwest com cultivation started 3000 years ago and spread rapidly as a staple and source of phytogeographical changes. Com-field farming in the past 1000 years by prehistoric Americans created new habitats and had the greatest effect on the geographical distribution of plants. Ethnobotany and its associated discipline, archaeobotany, have brought an indispensible complement to paleoecology and a new dimension to historical phytogeography.

Occupy College Street: Student Radicalism in Kolkata in the Sixties

Slavic Review ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. 904-911
Author(s):  
Ranabir Samaddar
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
West Bengal ◽  
New Left ◽  
Youth Movement ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Legacies

1968 saw a wave of protests and student radicalism in India, some of the tactics and issues of which were reminiscent of those in Europe and North America. The anti-imperialist theme was similarly strident, and the student and youth movement posed serious challenges to the old established Left, sharing traits of a global New Left agenda. The upsurge of post-independence radicalism in India, however, drew on different historical legacies, and exhibited many specific features, all of which culminated in the student and youth upsurge of 1968–69. In order to demonstrate the complex history and legacy of 60s radicalism in India, this essay takes us back to  the sixties in Kolkata when the insurgent movement in West Bengal had developed the tactic of occupation, which helped the movement crystallize and caused, ironically, the undoing of the mobilization in the end. Occupy as a tactic thus has a history, and the radicals of today perhaps in their enthusiasm for the New Left ethos have ignored the history of the insurgent tactics of the past, especially tactics developed in the postcolonial context.

Updating the Bibliography of Interbreeding among Canis in North America

2020 ◽  
Vol 111 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridgett M vonHoldt ◽  
Matthew L Aardema
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Endangered Species Management ◽  
Species Management ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Experimental Crosses

Abstract This bibliography provides a collection of references that documents the evolution of studies evidencing interbreeding among Canis species in North America. Over the past several decades, advances in biology and genomic technology greatly improved our ability to detect and characterize species interbreeding, which has significance for understanding species in a changing landscape as well as for endangered species management. This bibliography includes a discussion within each category of interbreeding, the timeline of developing evidence, and includes a review of past research conducted on experimental crosses. Research conducted in the early 20th century is rich with detailed records and photographs of hybrid offspring development and behavior. With the progression of molecular methods, studies can estimate historical demographic parameters and detect chromosomal patterns of ancestry. As these methods continue to increase in accessibility, the field will gain a deeper and richer understanding of the evolutionary history of North American Canis.

scholarly journals Strokes to the Portrait of Sergiy Bachynski

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Taras A. Glodya
Keyword(s):  
Human Factor ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Soviet System ◽  
Historical Science ◽  
The Past ◽  
Biographical Research ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
Democratic Revolution ◽  
Political Figure

As a result of the conducted scientifically-searching work with bringing in of new sources, analysis of the found archived documents, information is specified about the course of life of Serhij Baczynskiy as a result of her verification with other documents and materials, in particular information is improved about his journalistic work. Ukrainian history of the first half of ХХ century is a difficult period of social and political, military and cultural processesin that active voice was accepted by Ukrainian intelligentsia. Traditionally exactly this social class was and remains the leader of Ukrainian motion. On the modern stage of development of historical science scientists more and more apply to prosopography as to direction of historical and biographical research that envisages personification of the past by the study of historical events and their consequences through the prism of human factor. The names of many participants of Ukrainian national-democratic revolution in the second half of ХХ century were unfairly forgotten or intentionally held back the soviet system, that resulted in "cleaning" out of information. Andonly with therevival of Ukrainian independence back to scientific turnover historical memory began to go about the forbidden past and about the representatives of twenty-fourhours, that created him. To their number it is possible to take a native of Katerynoslavschyny, public-political figure, publicist, agriculturist, teacher of the first Ukrainian gymnasium, secretary of presidium of Labour congress of Ukraine(to parliament of People’s Republic of Ukraine), and afterwards emigrant Serhij Baczynskiy (1887-1941).

scholarly journals Neurology of Ukraine in the mirror of exonumia

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. 57-62
Author(s):  
O.V. Syniachenko ◽  
M.V. Yermolaeva ◽  
S.M. Verzilov ◽  
K.V. Liventsova ◽  
T.Yu. Syniachenko ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Historical Science ◽  
History Of Neurology ◽  
Level Of Education ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
First Time

The main goal was to analyze the history of neurology of Ukraine using exonumia materials. Exonumia (a form of medallic educational art) is a branch of historical science numismatics (from the Latin numisma — coin), which originated in the 19th century and became closely related to economics, politics, culture and law; it includes the thematic study of medals and plaques. The medal became the prototype of a commemorative (memorial) coin. This work presents a catalogue of 43 numismatic materials (me­dals), including some unique ones, presented for the first time, brief biographies of physicians (21 persons) who have made an invaluable contribution to the formation of this scientific discipline. Unfortunately, for now the memory of famous doctors of the past has not been sufficiently marked by the release of numismatic (exonumia) products, so in the future we hope for a systematic approach to this matter, for the purposeful promotion of the achievements of neurology by meaning of numismatics, which provides an illustrative example for studying the history of medicine, contributes to an increase in the level of education of doctors. The authors expect the appearance of new interesting materials of such small forms of art.

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