Possession, Gender and Performance in Revolutionary Cuba: Eugenio Hernández Espinosa'sMaría Antonia

2010 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-138
Author(s):  
LEO CABRANES-GRANT
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Cuban Revolution ◽  
Class I ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Strong Reaction ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
And Performance

Eugenio Hernández Espinosa'sMaría Antonia(1967) is regarded as one of the most important theatrical works to be produced during the first decade of the Cuban Revolution. Although most readings of the play tend to emphasize its investment in possession ceremonies (the use ofsanteríarituals and symbols provoked a strong reaction from both audiences and critics), Hernández Espinosa's conflicted presentation of gender roles is what claims my attention in this article. By showing how María Antonia is unable to alter the strictures of machismo or successfully challenge hegemonic discourses of race and class, I argue that the play suggests thatsanteríasupports a social context in which female agency is seriously restricted, and may even be reduced to a utopian and self-destructive fantasy.

scholarly journals Observer-based robust integral of the sign of the error control of class I of underactuated mechanical systems: Theory and real-time experiments

2021 ◽  
pp. 014233122110313
Author(s):  
Afef Hfaiedh ◽  
Ahmed Chemori ◽  
Afef Abdelkrim
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Error Control ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
Sliding Mode ◽  
Mechanical Systems ◽  
Class I ◽  
Control Input ◽  
Underactuated Mechanical Systems ◽  
Control Scheme ◽  
And Performance

In this paper, the control problem of a class I of underactuated mechanical systems (UMSs) is addressed. The considered class includes nonlinear UMSs with two degrees of freedom and one control input. Firstly, we propose the design of a robust integral of the sign of the error (RISE) control law, adequate for this special class. Based on a change of coordinates, the dynamics is transformed into a strict-feedback (SF) form. A Lyapunov-based technique is then employed to prove the asymptotic stability of the resulting closed-loop system. Numerical simulation results show the robustness and performance of the original RISE toward parametric uncertainties and disturbance rejection. A comparative study with a conventional sliding mode control reveals a significant robustness improvement with the proposed original RISE controller. However, in real-time experiments, the amplification of the measurement noise is a major problem. It has an impact on the behaviour of the motor and reduces the performance of the system. To deal with this issue, we propose to estimate the velocity using the robust Levant differentiator instead of the numerical derivative. Real-time experiments were performed on the testbed of the inertia wheel inverted pendulum to demonstrate the relevance of the proposed observer-based RISE control scheme. The obtained real-time experimental results and the obtained evaluation indices show clearly a better performance of the proposed observer-based RISE approach compared to the sliding mode and the original RISE controllers.

The tough Westerner

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-146
Author(s):  
Gillian Kelly
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Real Life ◽  
World War ◽  
Career Trajectory ◽  
Performance Style ◽  
Major Curve ◽  
Star Image ◽  
And Performance

This chapter explores Power’s work within the Western genre. When Power was cast in the title role of Hollywood’s first ‘A Western’ of the 1930s: Jesse James (Henry King) in 1939 it marked the first major curve in Power’s career trajectory. When it became Twentieth Century-Fox’s biggest hit of the year this proved that audiences were ready to accept Power in more masculine roles at the close of the decade. Released in the period directly preceding America’s entry into World War II, the film was integral in developing a much-needed shift in Power’s screen masculinity, appearance and performance style, reflecting the shifting industrial and social context in which it was made. In advancing his star image away from a womaniser, and instead placing it within an overtly homosocial environment, Power was able to convincingly demonstrate male bonding and leadership through a tougher masculinity which was essential for both the historical timeframe and Power’s own upcoming real-life war service. Despite the film’s huge success, it was another 12 years before Power starred in another Western, and made just four in overall: Jesse James, Rawhide (Henry Hathaway, 1951), Pony Soldier (Joseph M. Newman, 1952) and The Mississippi Gambler (Rudolph Maté, 1953).

“Smartness,” “Toughness,” and “Autonomy”: Drug Use in the Context of Gang Female Delinquency

1996 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Brotherton
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Drug Use ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Entrepreneurial Success ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Female Delinquency ◽  
Drug Sales ◽  
Focal Concerns

This paper, based on data from interviews with a selective sample of self-identified gang females, compares the practices and characteristics of three gangs, highlighting the interrelationship of drugs, delinquency, and social context. Using themes developed from the classical gang delinquency study of Walter Miller in 1958 (Journal of Social Issues, XIV, no. 3), this paper argues that just as he was able to discern major “focal concerns” among lower-class gang males, the same might be said of gang females. However, during the era in which Miller was writing, gang females were still considered mere “appendages” of male gangs and left unanalyzed. This paper refocuses attention on the importance of gang female agency, showing how the degree of autonomy obtained by gang females is shaped by the entrepreneurial success of their delinquent activities, especially in the field of drug sales.

scholarly journals Causing a Ruckus: Complicity and Performance in Stories of Port Moody

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 38-53
Author(s):  
Matthew Hayes
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Public History ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Long Time ◽  
And Performance ◽  
History Book ◽  
The Way

This article is about the suicide of the chief of police of a small Canadian town, which - according to some - did not actually happen. While employed as a researcher and writer with a museum in Port Moody, British Columbia, the author heard this story as one of many told by the ‘old-timers’ who assisted with the writing of a history book. The controversy over the potential suicide provided the means by which this article reflects on issues of ethics, advocacy, and performance when doing public history. The main request of the old-timers was to ‘put the good stories in’ when writing the book. This expectation caused tension between the author and the museum, reflecting the divide between doing ‘history’ and ‘heritage’. This article draws on Anthropological theories of ‘complicity’ and performance in storytelling to make sense of the author’s role within the context of a museum working to record the stories of long-time residents. The stories of the old-timers were filtered through the lens of early 20th century ideas about gender, race, and class, and affected by a lingering frontier mentality. As such, they wished to see their town’s history told in a very specific way. The story of the police chief’s suicide betrayed this intent, allowing for an analysis of how these expectations can affect the way in which public history is done.

scholarly journals Dangerous Encounters, Ambiguous Frontiers

2016 ◽  
Vol 90 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 225-256
Author(s):  
Pilar Egüez Guevara
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Class I ◽  
Contact Zones ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Ruling Elites ◽  
Dense Point ◽  
The Caribbean

Dance balls, masquerades, and street carnivals functioned as frontier spaces of otherwise reprehensible encounters between people of different gender, race, and class. I examine dance as a dense point of contact in nineteenth-century Cuba by showing how dance served ruling elites as a disciplining instrument to enforce social and legal boundaries, and was simultaneously used by colonial subjects as a tactic of survival to navigate these barriers. Because dancing lent itself to situations of intimacy and mis-recognition, it challenged Cuban ruling elites’ efforts to police dancing bodies. Dance is offered as a useful methodological venue to illuminate the predicament of the colonial state in governing colonial subjects and bodies. I offer the case of colonial Cuba as a contribution to the study of contact zones and colonial intimacies in Latin America and the Caribbean, in a much-needed examination of the relationships between imperialism, sexuality, and the governance of dance.

Psycholinguistics: Competence and Performance

1976 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 79-90
Author(s):  
Judith Greene
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Linguistic Context ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Verbal Cues ◽  
Linguistic Communication ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Dinner Party ◽  
Standing Up ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Linguistics

There has been a tendency, natural perhaps in such ‘verbal’ disciplines as philosophy and linguistics, to assume that language and communication are the same thing. But while no one would deny that language is one powerful medium of human communication, is it the only one? Is there any real distinction between communicating one's desire to leave a dinner party by making verbal remarks like, ‘I must go’ or ‘We could only get Jane as a babysitter’, as opposed to fidgeting, standing up and looking longingly towards the door? As Michael Argyle argues, a great deal of information is conveyed by non-verbal cues. To take the argument a step further, are even verbal statements examples of purely linguistic communication ? Whereas the manifest linguistic content of ‘I must go’ is obvious to anyone who speaks English, the meaning of the remark about the babysitter can only be understood by those who know the particular neighbourhood social context in which it was uttered. Does it make sense, then, to try and analyse the linguistic structure and content of an utterance without taking into account the use to which it is being put in a particular extra-linguistic context?

scholarly journals Dopamine neurons change their tuning according to courtship context in singing birds

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vikram Gadagkar ◽  
Pavel A. Puzerey ◽  
Jesse H. Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Courtship Song ◽  
Dopamine Neurons ◽  
Evaluation Systems ◽  
Self Evaluation ◽  
Opportunities For Learning ◽  
Performance Error ◽  
And Performance

Attending to mistakes while practicing alone provides opportunities for learning1, 2, but self-evaluation during audience-directed performance could distract from ongoing execution3. It remains unknown how animals switch between practice and performance modes, and how evaluation systems process errors across distinct performance contexts. We recorded from striatal-projecting dopamine (DA) neurons as male songbirds transitioned from singing alone to singing female-directed courtship song. In the presence of the female, singing-related performance error signals were reduced or gated off and DA neurons were instead phasically activated by female vocalizations. Mesostriatal DA neurons can thus dynamically change their tuning with changes in social context.

scholarly journals Talking Past Each Other - Staff and Student Reflection in Undergraduate Software Projects

10.28945/2850 ◽  
2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart Fleming
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Software Engineering ◽  
Engineering Education ◽  
Group Work ◽  
Software Projects ◽  
Flexible Approach ◽  
Student Reflection ◽  
Software Engineering Education ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Performance

Group projects are an important part of Software Engineering education. However, conflicts that arise from group work can affect overall class learning and performance. It can be difficult for teachers to fully understand the social context of these issues. We explore the nature of self, peer and staff reflection to identify and mediate issues within a class. We have used a protocol that encourages reflection to explore conflicts that arise from group work in a Software Engineering course. We have found a way to explore and mediate student impressions and expectations and to identify conflicts with staff expectations and course objectives. We present a lightweight and flexible approach for such investigations.

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