Epic Cruelty: On Post-Pandemic Performance

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Rick Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
California State University ◽  
The State ◽  
State University ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Disaster Capitalism

As today’s catastrophic Covid-19 pandemic exacerbates ongoing crises, including systemic racism, rising ethno-nationalism, and fossil-fuelled climate change, the neoliberal world that we inhabit is becoming increasingly hostile, particularly for the most vulnerable. Even in the United States, as armed white-supremacist, pro-Trump forces face off against protesters seeking justice for African Americans, the hostility is increasingly palpable, and often frightening. Yet as millions of Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrated after the brutal police killing of George Floyd, the current, intersecting crises – worsened by Trump’s criminalization of anti-racism protesters and his dismissal of science – demand a serious, engaged, response from activists as well as artists. The title of this article is meant to evoke not only the state of the unusually cruel moment through which we are living, but also the very different approaches to performance of both Brecht and Artaud, whose ideas, along with those of others – including Benjamin, Butler, Latour, Mbembe, and Césaire – inform the radical, open-ended, post-pandemic theatre practice proposed in this essay. A critically acclaimed dramatist as well as Professor of English and Playwriting at California State University, Northridge, Mitchell’s published volumes of plays include Disaster Capitalism; or Money Can’t Buy You Love: Three Plays; Brecht in L.A.; and Ventriloquist: Two Plays and Ventriloquial Miscellany. He is the editor of Experimental O’Neill, and is currently at work on a series of post-pandemic plays.

scholarly journals The origins and persistence of psychosurgery in the state of Iowa

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. E8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis J. Jareczek ◽  
Marshall T. Holland ◽  
Matthew A. Howard ◽  
Timothy Walch ◽  
Taylor J. Abel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Mental Health ◽  
The State ◽  
Medical Community ◽  
State University ◽  
University Of Iowa ◽  
The University ◽  
Frontal Lobotomy

Neurosurgery for the treatment of psychological disorders has a checkered history in the United States. Prior to the advent of antipsychotic medications, individuals with severe mental illness were institutionalized and subjected to extreme therapies in an attempt to palliate their symptoms. Psychiatrist Walter Freeman first introduced psychosurgery, in the form of frontal lobotomy, as an intervention that could offer some hope to those patients in whom all other treatments had failed. Since that time, however, the use of psychosurgery in the United States has waxed and waned significantly, though literature describing its use is relatively sparse. In an effort to contribute to a better understanding of the evolution of psychosurgery, the authors describe the history of psychosurgery in the state of Iowa and particularly at the University of Iowa Department of Neurosurgery. An interesting aspect of psychosurgery at the University of Iowa is that these procedures have been nearly continuously active since Freeman introduced the lobotomy in the 1930s. Frontal lobotomies and transorbital leukotomies were performed by physicians in the state mental health institutions as well as by neurosurgeons at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (formerly known as the State University of Iowa Hospital). Though the early technique of frontal lobotomy quickly fell out of favor, the use of neurosurgery to treat select cases of intractable mental illness persisted as a collaborative treatment effort between psychiatrists and neurosurgeons at Iowa. Frontal lobotomies gave way to more targeted lesions such as anterior cingulotomies and to neuromodulation through deep brain stimulation. As knowledge of brain circuits and the pathophysiology underlying mental illness continues to grow, surgical intervention for psychiatric pathologies is likely to persist as a viable treatment option for select patients at the University of Iowa and in the larger medical community.

scholarly journals What’s behind OA2020? Accelerating the transition to open access with introspection and repurposing funds

2018 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 85
Author(s):  
Rachael Samberg ◽  
Richard A. Schneider ◽  
Anneliese Taylor ◽  
Michael Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Open Access ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
The United States ◽  
California State University ◽  
University Of California ◽  
State University ◽  
Scholarly Journals ◽  
International Effort

In 2017, four University of California (UC) campuses took a public stance on accelerating the transition to open access (OA) by endorsing the Open Access 2020 (OA2020) initiative’s Expression of Interest (EOI). OA2020 is an international effort to convert the existing corpus of scholarly journals from subscription-based access to OA. In March 2017, when the first three UC campuses—UC-Berkeley, UC-Davis, and UC-San Francisco—endorsed,1,2 there had been only one U.S. signatory institution (California State University-Northridge, having endorsed in July 2016). Six months later in September 2017, another UC campus, Merced, added its affirmation. As of this writing, these five California universities remain the only OA2020 EOI signatories from the United States.3

The Adoption of Criminal Disenfranchisement Provisions in the United States: Lessons from the State Constitutional Convention Debates

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 282-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Dinan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Constitutional Convention ◽  
Legal Strategies ◽  
Number Of Individuals ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
The Way

State criminal disenfranchisement provisions have recently attracted much scholarly attention. Some scholars have examined the consequences of these policies, such as the number of individuals they have disenfranchised (particularly the high percentage of African Americans), the way in which they have altered election outcomes, and their effect on voter turnout. Other scholars have assessed the persuasiveness of various justifications for these policies. Still other scholars have analyzed legal strategies that might be used to repeal these policies.

Teaching About Religion at the State University

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 38-42
Author(s):  
Robert D. Baird (1933–2015) ◽  
Robert N. Minor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public University ◽  
The State ◽  
State University ◽  
Value System ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Religious System ◽  
Teaching Religion ◽  
Teaching About Religion

In 1983 Robert N. Minor and Robert D. Baird wrote a piece for The Bulletin that discussed what it means to teach religion academically in a public university in the United States. By dismantling other popular notions of what it meant to teach religion in a public university—such as the inculcation of values despite the preference this method shows for one religious system over another—the authors illustrate the flaws in these pedagogical styles and ultimately propose a new purpose for teaching religion. This new purpose they highlight strives not to promote one value system over another, or to propose one way of doing religion is right or wrong, but to promote understanding among students by showcasing the individuality that exists within religious traditions.

David Hare's Stuff Happens in Seattle: Taking a Sober Account

2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 402-418
Author(s):  
J. Chris Westgate
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Assistant Professor ◽  
The United States ◽  
California State University ◽  
State University ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
The Status ◽  
Direct Contrast ◽  
Contemporary Theater

As The Power of Yes, the third play by David Hare to document recent history, opens at London's National Theatre, J. Chris Westgate examines in this article Hare's Stuff Happens in a regional production in the United States, at Seattle's A Contemporary Theater in 2007. He tracks the emphasis placed on controversy during the advertising and marketing of the play, which stands in direct contrast to the response to the play, which was received with self-satisfaction rather than increased insight in this highly liberal city. From this contrast, he discusses the way that this production of Hare's play – and the play itself – fails to produce controversy because it never holds those actually attending US productions as accountable for the Iraq War. Controversy, then, becomes a marketing device rather than a way of challenging the status quo. J. Chris Westgate is Assistant Professor in English and Comparative Literature at California State University, Fullerton. He has recently edited an anthology of essays entitled Brecht, Broadway, and United States Theatre and has published articles in Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, and The Eugene O'Neill Review.

scholarly journals Internet Reviews

2017 ◽  
Vol 78 (11) ◽  
pp. 621
Author(s):  
Joni R. Roberts ◽  
Carol A. Drost
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
California State University ◽  
Geological Survey ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
State University ◽  
Digital History ◽  
World Energy

CSU Japanese American History Digitization Project: A Collaborative Digital History Project of the California State University LibrariesWater Resources of the United States, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)World Energy Council

scholarly journals On Localism and the Persistent Power of the State

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 285-289
Author(s):  
Cinnamon P. Carlarne
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Extensive Body ◽  
Private Actors ◽  
Political Economic

On June 1, 2017, President Trump declared that the United States would “cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country.” The United States’ de facto withdrawal from the Paris Agreement represented an important inflection point for conceptualizing the role of nonstate actors in addressing climate change. President Trump's announcement was met with an outpouring of resistance and widespread and concerted efforts to mobilize substate, nonprofit, and private actors to step into the void created by his announcement and to help keep the United States on track to pursue domestic and international commitments to address climate change despite federal recalcitrance. Within the leadership void created by the Trump Administration and amidst the increasingly extensive body of sub- and nonstate climate efforts, it is tempting to decenter the role of the state or to underestimate the persistent power of the state to shape the approach and effectiveness of nonstate actions. Failing to recognize that the state retains significant power in this field undermines efforts to understand the realities within which nonstate actors operate. This creates a set of heightened expectations for these actors that defies the reality of the political, economic, and social resources available to them and masks the challenges inherent in relying upon a fragmented, shifting, and differently accountable set of actors to effect pervasive change.

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