scholarly journals Dance Studies in the International Academy: Genealogy of a Disciplinary Formation

2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Richard Giersdorf
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Art History ◽  
Home Country ◽  
The United States ◽  
Dance Studies ◽  
Final Destination ◽  
The Past ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
The Moment ◽  
International Academy

For the past thirteen years, I have been traveling to the United States from my home country of Germany, first as a graduate student in California and later as a professor living in New York. Every time I pass through immigration, I am asked a series of questions regarding my final destination and my occupation. The latter always leads to some confusion, because when I am asked what I do, my accent seems to turn “dance history” into “dentistry.” Forced by phonetics to use the term “dance studies,” when confronted by the blank face of the customs officer, I inevitably embark on an explanation of what “dance studies” might be. Just in the moment when I finally see some comprehension of my profession lighting up the officer's face, the question is asked: “And we pay you to do this?”I constantly find myself in the position of having to explain my work. Usually I avoid a long-winded, defensive justification by comparing dance studies to one of its neighboring disciplines: “It is like art history, just writing about dance instead of paintings.” That usually does the trick, but it leaves a foul taste in my mouth. I know that dance studies isn't like art history and I certainly don't want it to be.

scholarly journals 'The Full Monty'

M/C Journal ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Wolffram
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Political Act

The 'scholarly striptease', particularly as it is manifested in the United States, has attracted an increasing number of participants during the past decade. Unbeknownst to many, some academics have been getting their gear off in public; that is, publicly and provocatively showcasing their identities in order to promote their politics. While you might imagine that confessions about sexual orientation, ethnicity and pet hates could only serve to undermine academic authority, some American feminists -- and a small number of their male colleagues -- have nevertheless attempted to enhance their authority with such racy revelations. Nancy Miller's admission of a strained relationship with her father (Miller 143-147), or Jane Gallop's homage to the three 36-year-old men she had affairs with (Gallop 41), might make interesting reading for the academic voyeur (or the psychoanalyst), but what is their purpose beyond spectacle? The cynic might argue that self-promotion and intellectual celebrity or notoriety are the motivators -- and certainly he or she would have a point -- but within such performances of identity, and the metacriticism that clings to them, other reasons are cited. Apparently it is all to do with identity politics, that is, the use of your personal experience as the basis of your political stance. But while experience and the personal (remember "the personal is the political"?) have been important categories in feminist writing, the identity of the intellectual in academic discourse has traditionally been masked by a requisite objectivity. In a very real sense the foregrounding of academic identity by American feminists and those other brave souls who see fit to expose themselves, is a rejection of objectivity as the basis of intellectual authority. In the past, and also contemporaneously, intellectuals have gained and retained authority by subsuming their identity and their biases, and assuming an "objective" position. This new bid for authority, on the other hand, is based on a revelation of identity and biases. An example is Adrienne Rich's confession: "I have been for ten years a very public and visible lesbian. I have been identified as a lesbian in print both by myself and others" (Rich 199). This admission, which is not without risk, reveals possible biases and blindspots, but also allows Rich to speak with an authority which is grounded in experience of, and knowledge about lesbianism. Beyond the epistemological rejection of objectivity there appear to be other reasons for exposing one's "I", and its particular foibles, in scholarly writing. Some of these reasons may be considered a little more altruistic than others. For example, some intellectuals have used this practice, also known as "the personal mode", in a radical attempt to mark their culturally or critically marginal subjectivities. By straddling their vantage points within the marginalised subjectivity with which they identify, and their position in academia, these people can make visible the inequities they, and others like them, experience. Such performances are instances of both identity politics at work and the intellectual as activist. On the other hand, while this politically motivated use of "the personal mode" clearly has merit, cultural critics such as Elspeth Probyn have reminded us that in some cases the risks entailed by self-exposition are minimal (141), and that the discursive striptease is often little more than a vehicle for self-promotion. Certainly there is something of the tabloid in some of this writing, and even a tentative linking of the concepts of "academic" and "celebrity" -- Camille Paglia being the obvious example. While Paglia is among the few academics who are public celebrities, there are plenty of intellectuals who are famous within the academic community. It is often these people who can expose aspects of their identity without risking tenure, and it is often these same individuals who choose to confess what they had for breakfast, rather than their links with or concerns for something like a minority. For some, the advent of "the personal mode" particularly when it appears to contain a bid for academic or public fame signifies the denigration of academic discourse, its slow decline into journalistic gossip and ruin. For others, it is a truly political act allowing the participant to combine their roles as intellectual and activist. For me, it is a critical practice that fascinates and demands consideration in all its incarnations: as a bid for a new basis for academic authority, as a political act, and as a vehicle for self-promotion and fame. References Gallop, Jane. Thinking through the Body. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Miller, Nancy K. Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts. New York: Routledge, 1991. Probyn, Elspeth. Sexing the Self: Gendered Positions in Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1993. Rich, Adrienne. Blood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985. New York: W.W Norton, 1986. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Heather Wolffram. "'The Full Monty': Academics, Identity and the 'Personal Mode'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.3 (1998). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9810/full.php>. Chicago style: Heather Wolffram, "'The Full Monty': Academics, Identity and the 'Personal Mode'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 3 (1998), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9810/full.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Heather Wolffram. (1998) 'The full monty': academics, identity and the 'personal mode'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(3). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9810/full.php> ([your date of access])

Since 1945: New Amenities, New Hazards

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
William B. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
World History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
American Society ◽  
Service Employment

If the average citizen's surroundings defined the national climate, then the United States grew markedly warmer and drier in the postwar decades. Migration continued to carry the center of population west and began pulling it southward as well. The growth of what came to be called the Sunbelt at the "Snowbelt's" expense passed a landmark in the early 1960s when California replaced New York as the most populous state. Another landmark was established in the early 1990s when Texas moved ahead of New York. In popular discussion, it was taken for granted that finding a change of climate was one of the motives for relocating as well as one of the results. It was not until 1954, though, that an American social scientist first seriously considered the possibility. The twentieth-century flow of Americans to the West Coast, the geographer Edward L. Ullman observed in that year, had no precedent in world history. It could not be explained by the theories of settlement that had worked well in the past, for a substantial share of it represented something entirely new, "the first large-scale in-migration to be drawn by the lure of a pleasant climate." If it was the first of its kind, it was unlikely to be the last. For a set of changes in American society, Ullman suggested, had transformed the economic role of climate. The key changes included a growth in the numbers of pensioned retirees; an increase in trade and service employment, much more "footloose" than agriculture or manufacturing was; developments in technology making manufacturing itself more footloose; and a great increase in mobility brought about by the automobile and the highway. All in one way or another had weakened the bonds of place and made Americans far freer than before to choose where to live. Whatever qualities made life in any spot particularly pleasant thus attracted migration more than in the past. Ullman grouped such qualities together as "amenities." They ranged from mountains to beaches to cultural attractions, but climate appeared to be the most important, not least because it was key to the enjoyment of many of the rest. Ullman did not suppose that all Americans desired the same climate. For most people, in this as in other respects, "where one was born and lives is the best place in the world, no matter how forsaken a hole it may appear to an outsider."

The Many Lives of Chief Kisco

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 40-61
Author(s):  
Madeline Bourque Kearin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Cultural Geography ◽  
The United States ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Communal Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Art Object ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Village

This paper deconstructs the folklore surrounding an early twentieth-century zinc figure of an American Indian that stands in the center of the village of Mount Kisco, New York. The identity that “Chief Kisco” has assumed over the past hundred years elides the nature of the origins of the statue, which was intended not as a statement of communal identity, but rather as the exact opposite. As a ready-made art object, the statue was emblematic of a new network of commodified goods that transformed the cultural geography of the United States; as it was utilized in Mount Kisco, the statue was a piece of temperance propaganda with strong nativist undertones that tapped directly into the class, religious, and ethnic divisions running through the turn-of-the-century village.

Introduction: Immigration and Incorporation

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rubén G. Rumbaut
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Immigrant Settlement ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Subject ◽  
American Society

In at least one sense the “American century” is ending much as it had begun: the United States has again become a nation of immigrants, and it is again being transformed in the process. But the diversity of the “new immigration” to the United States over the past three decades differs in many respects from that of the last period of mass immigration in the first three decades of the century. The immigrants themselves differ greatly in their social class and national origins, and so does the American society, polity, and economy that receives them—raising questions about their modes of incorporation, and challenging conventional accounts of assimilation processes that were framed during that previous epoch. The dynamics and future course of their adaptation are open empirical questions—as well as major questions for public policy, since the outcome will shape the future contours of American society. Indeed, as the United States undergoes its most profound demographic transformation in a century; as inexorable processes of globalization, especially international migrations from Asia, Africa, and the Americas, diversify still further the polyethnic composition of its population; and as issues of immigration, race and ethnicity become the subject of heated public debate, the question of incorporation, and its serious study, becomes all the more exigent. The essays in this special issue of Sociological Perspectives tackle that subject from a variety of analytical vantages and innovative approaches, covering a wide range of groups in major areas of immigrant settlement. Several of the papers focus specifically on Los Angeles and New York City, where, remarkably, fully a quarter of the total U.S. immigrant population resides.

Low Friction Composite Film Bearings

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andras Z. Szeri
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
New York City ◽  
Composite Film ◽  
Friction And Wear ◽  
The United States ◽  
Low Friction ◽  
The Past ◽  
Surface Modification Techniques

Experts estimate that in 1978 alone over 4.22 × 1018 joule of energy were lost in the United States due to simple friction and wear — enough energy to supply New York City for the entire year. Energy loss through friction in tribo-elements is a major factor in limits on energy efficiency [1]. The two major approaches that have been pursued in the past for reducing frictional losses in tribological contacts were surface modification techniques such as laser texturing and modification of lubricant properties. Here we advocate yet another option, modification of the structural character of the lubricant film. The Composite-Film bearing (CFB) is investigating this third possibility.

Erwin Panofsky

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wagner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Art History ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Full Professor ◽  
New York University ◽  
Erwin Panofsky ◽  
The University

Erwin Panofsky (b. 1892–d. 1968) was a German art historian who, after immigrating to the United States in 1933, became one of the most influential figures in 20th-century art history. His method of reading works of art as historical documents and understanding their interpretation as intimately connected to the literary and philosophical currents of their times is called iconology. While his early writings reflect the theoretical problems of art historical analysis, his later writings aim more at applying than at justifying this procedure. Panofsky was born in Hanover. He went to high school in Berlin and subsequently studied art history at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, where he completed his doctorate in 1913 with a prize thesis on Albrecht Dürer’s art theory. He worked as a Privatdozent from 1920 at the University of Hamburg, where he was appointed to the chair of art history in 1926 after defending his thesis on formal principles in the works of Michelangelo and Raffael. In his Hamburg years two important influences on Panofsky’s thought stand out: On the one hand, the neo-Kantianism of Ernst Cassirer and on the other, Aby Warburg’s iconological project of the afterlife (Nachleben) of Antiquity in Western art. Cassirer’s neo-Kantianism contributed to Panofsky’s project to define principles by which one may evaluate the artwork’s transhistorical aesthetic values. Aby Warburg’s concern for the shifts of meaning caused by the artwork’s relation to historical discontinuities contributed to Panofsky’s insight that a purely stylistic interpretive system, as proposed, for example, by art historian Heinrich Wölfflin would not do. Panofsky’s focus on the complex historical embeddedness of an artwork’s content in relation to its formal aspects, a focus influenced by his 1920 reworking of art historian Alois Riegl’s concept of Kunstwollen, facilitated the success of his iconological method. Panofsky taught in Hamburg as full professor until 1933, when he and his Jewish colleagues were dismissed. The new Nazi law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service excluded non-Aryans from teaching at universities. In 1934 Panofsky immigrated to the United States, where he had already taught at New York University as a visiting professor for alternate terms since 1931. In 1935 he became professor of art history at the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. All of his later publications were written in English. Panofsky’s importance for art history rests as much on his groundbreaking work for this academic discipline as on his ability to popularize his research via public lectures and eloquent studies.

The MAD Nuclear Policy

Worldview ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 15 (11) ◽  
pp. 16-20
Author(s):  
Paul Ramsey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Strategic Thinking ◽  
Nuclear Forces ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nuclear Policy ◽  
The Difference ◽  
To Come

What are the imperatives for strategic thinking for the seventies? At the beginning of the seventies the United States adheres even more firmly to a policy of minimum or finite deterrence. Our power at all other levels of war and deterrence is increasingly challenged or outstripped. Even the possible vulnerability of our nuclear forces is tolerated for the sake of strategic disarmament treaties to come. It is difficult to tell the difference, for example, between editorials on strategic questions in the New York Times over the past two or three years and Dulles's “more bang for a buck” policy. The upshot seems clearly to be a i greater reliance on the most politically immoral nuclear posture imaginable, namely, Mutual Assured Destruction.

Dinosaur Studies in the Pre-K Through Junior High Curriculum

1994 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 109-116
Author(s):  
M. Dinah Zike
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Growth And Development ◽  
Developmental Stages ◽  
Junior High ◽  
Human Growth ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Human Growth And Development ◽  
Pass Through

I have always loved dinosaurs, and I feel fortunate to be able to teach teachers and students about dinosaurs as part of my profession; and yes, my name is really Dinah. Every year for the past 10 years, I have worked with thousands of teachers and students across the United States. During this time, I have made a startling discovery not mentioned in any of the classic human growth and development textbooks. I have found that most Americans pass through the following developmental stages, based upon dinosaurs:

scholarly journals Prevalence of Streptomycin-Resistant Erwinia amylovora in New York Apple Orchards

Plant Disease ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 100 (4) ◽  
pp. 802-809 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. A. Tancos ◽  
S. Villani ◽  
S. Kuehne ◽  
E. Borejsza-Wysocka ◽  
D. Breth ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Fire Blight ◽  
Erwinia Amylovora ◽  
The United States ◽  
Streptomycin Resistance ◽  
Apple Orchards ◽  
Wayne County ◽  
The Past ◽  
Shoot Blight

Resistance to streptomycin in Erwinia amylovora was first observed in the United States in the 1970s but was not found in New York until 2002, when streptomycin-resistant (SmR) E. amylovora was isolated from orchards in Wayne County. From 2011 to 2014, in total, 591 fire blight samples representing shoot blight, blossom blight, and rootstock blight were collected from 80 apple orchards in New York. From these samples, 1,280 isolates of E. amylovora were obtained and assessed for streptomycin resistance. In all, 34 SmR E. amylovora isolates were obtained from 19 individual commercial orchards. The majority of the resistant isolates were collected from orchards in Wayne County, and the remaining were from other counties in western New York. Of the 34 resistant isolates, 32 contained the streptomycin resistance gene pair strA/strB in the transposon Tn5393 on the nonconjugative plasmid pEA29. This determinant of streptomycin resistance has only been found in SmR E. amylovora isolates from Michigan and the SmR E. amylovora isolates discovered in Wayne County, NY in 2002. Currently, our data indicate that SmR E. amylovora is restricted to counties in western New York and is concentrated in the county with the original outbreak. Because the resistance is primarily present on the nonconjugative plasmid, it is possible that SmR has been present in Wayne County since the introduction in 2002, and has spread within and out of Wayne County to additional commercial growers over the past decade. However, research is still needed to provide in-depth understanding of the origin and spread of the newly discovered SmR E. amylovora to reduce the spread of streptomycin resistance into other apple-growing regions, and address the sustainability of streptomycin use for fire blight management in New York.

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