From Memorization to Inspiration: Teaching Paleobiology in the Twenty-First Century

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Donald R. Prothero
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Population Variation ◽  
First Century ◽  
Basic Information ◽  
Old Field ◽  
Idiographic Approach ◽  
Nomothetic Approach ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Stratigraphic Ranges ◽  
The 1960S

For most of the twentieth century, paleontology instruction focused on memorization of taxa, morphology, and stratigraphic ranges. Consequently, paleontology got the reputation as a boring, stagnant, musty old field with this “idiographic” approach that focused on details at the expense of the broader implications. The “Paleobiology Revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s radically changed paleontological pedagogy. New generations of paleontologists who were weaned on the 1972 Raup and Stanley textbook (which had no systematic coverage of invertebrates) adopted a more dynamic, “law-like” or “nomothetic” approach. The emphasis on ideas, concepts, and controversies over memorization of names and dates makes paleontology far more interesting and relevant to geology majors, most of whom will not become paleontologists and will not need huge numbers of names to do their jobs. However, paleontology instructors still must include basic information about the major phyla of fossils or else the theoretical ideas lack any reference in reality. My own approach mixes both theoretical and systematic concepts, with lectures on major topics (taphonomy, ontogeny, population variation, speciation, micro and macroevolution, extinction, paleoecology, biogeography, functional morphology) alternating with lectures supplementing lab exercises.

Science, Play, and the Material Culture of Twentieth-Century American Boyhood

2020 ◽  
pp. 235-252
Author(s):  
Rebecca Onion
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Home Environment ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Parental Supervision ◽  
Acceptable Risk ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter uses the example of the child’s chemistry set to explore the way that American children’s material culture has shaped, and been shaped by, changing perceptions of acceptable risk in the home environment in the twentieth century. Chemistry sets, first sold in the United States in the 1910s, changed over the twentieth century, as companies worried about lawsuits have excluded potentially dangerous elements and presumed less initiative on the part of the child chemist, while calling for enhanced parental supervision. These alterations were first welcomed by parents in the 1960s and 1970s; now, for some, the defanged chemistry set embodies the undesirable unexpected consequences of the quest for new levels of safety in children’s material environments. This chapter follows the potent symbol of the chemistry set through the century to ask how the American movement to keep children safe in the home came about and to identify key cultural explanations for the early-twenty-first-century backlash against these efforts.

The Revival of Quantification: Reflections on Old New Histories

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Steven Ruggles
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second Wave

AbstractQuantitative historical analysis in the United States surged in three distinct waves. The first quantitative wave occurred as part of the “New History” that blossomed in the early twentieth century and disappeared in the 1940s and 1950s with the rise of consensus history. The second wave thrived from the 1960s to the 1980s during the ascendance of the New Economic History, the New Political History, and the New Social History, and died out during the “cultural turn” of the late twentieth century. The third wave of historical quantification—which I call the revival of quantification—emerged in the second decade of the twenty-first century and is still underway. I describe characteristics of each wave and discuss the historiographical context of the ebb and flow of quantification in history.

India and Global Governance

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Poorvi Chitalkar ◽  
David M. Malone
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
First Century ◽  
Climate Change Negotiations ◽  
Economic Diplomacy ◽  
Meaningful Participation ◽  
Tremendous Progress ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

India’s engagement with the institutions and norms of global governance has evolved significantly since independence in 1947. This chapter traces the evolution—beginning with early engagement with international organizations under Nehru, to the waning of its enthusiasm for multilateralism in the 1960s and 1970s, and its struggle for greater voice and recognition internationally in the twenty-first century. Through the prism of its quest for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, its approach to climate change negotiations, global economic diplomacy, and its engagement with global norms, this chapter traces India’s rise as a vital player in the rebalancing of international relations in a multipolar world. However, despite its tremendous progress, some ongoing challenges continue to constrain India’s meaningful participation in global governance at times. The chapter concludes with an assessment of India’s contribution to global governance and its prospects as a stakeholder and shareholder on the global stage.

Thai Buddhism, Thai Buddhists and the southern conflict

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan McCargo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Southern Border ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Financial Arrangements

Thailand's ‘southern border provinces’ of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat – along with four districts of neighbouring Songkhla – are the site of fiery political violence characterised by daily killings. The area was historically a Malay sultanate, and was only loosely under Thai suzerainty until the early twentieth century. During the twentieth century there was periodic resistance to Bangkok's attempts to suppress local identity and to incorporate this largely Malay-speaking, Muslim-majority area into a predominantly Buddhist nation-state. This resistance proved most intense during the 1960s and 1970s, when various armed groups (notably PULO [Patani United Liberation Organization] and BRN [Barisan Revolusi Nasional]) waged war on the Thai state, primarily targeting government officials and the security forces. In the early 1980s, the Prem Tinsulanond government brokered a deal with these armed groups and proceeded to co-opt the Malay-Muslim elite. By crafting mutually beneficial governance, security and financial arrangements, the Thai state was able largely to placate local political demands.

Collage and the Anxiety of Self-description: Blood and Guts in High School

Kathy Acker ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgina Colby
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Original Manuscript ◽  
Poetic Function ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Materiality Of The Text ◽  
The Voice

Chapter 2 addresses Acker’s practice of collage, and the anxiety of self-description. Blood and Guts in High School is positioned in relation to both the Dadaist collage and montage practices of artists such as Hannah Höch at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the subversive publications of the 1960s and 1970s: mimeographed magazines, and the punk and post-punk medium of Xeroxed publications. The original manuscript of Blood and Guts in High School housed in the archive possesses a different materiality to the published version of the novel. The materiality of the text in its collage and typographic experimentation is situated in a counter position to the language and hegemonic discourses within which Janey, the voice of the text, is imprisoned. Drawing on Acker’s practices of illegibility, and Denise Riley’s work on language and affect, the chapter argues that Blood and Guts in High School, through its experimental form, reveals the anxiety of self-description that Janey experiences within conventional language structures. Illustration, experimental typography, non-referential language, and the use of the poetic, function in Blood and Guts in High School as sites of an alternate language that emerges through compositional form and experimental forms of iteration.

“This Room is Yours, Personal!”: The Rise and Fall of Middle-Class Decoration Expertise in the Bedrooms of America’s Teens, 1900–1985

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-129
Author(s):  
Jason Reid
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Room Design ◽  
Do It Yourself ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

This article also examines how the decline of teen-oriented room décor expertise reflected significant changes in the way gender and class influenced teen room culture during the tail end of the Cold War. Earlier teen décor strategies were often aimed towards affluent women; by contrast, the child-centric, do-it-yourself approach, as an informal, inexpensive alternative, was better suited to grant boys and working class teens from both sexes a greater role in the room design discourse. This article evaluates how middle-class home décor experts during the early decades of the twentieth century re-envisioned the teen bedroom as a space that was to be designed and maintained almost exclusively by teens rather than parents. However, many of the experts who formulated this advice would eventually become victims of their own success. By the 1960s and 1970s, teens were expected to have near total control over their bedrooms, which, in turn, challenged the validity of top-down forms of expertise.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela E. Pennock
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
First Century ◽  
Arab Americans ◽  
Arab American ◽  
Muslim Americans ◽  
Politics And Culture ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

As we approach the third decade of the twenty-first century, the United States continues to wrestle with defining its role in Middle East conflicts and fully accepting and fairly treating Arab and Muslim Americans. In this contentious and often ill-informed climate, it is crucial to appreciate the struggles, priorities, and accomplishments of Arab Americans over the past several decades, both what has set them apart and what has integrated them into the politics and culture of the United States. Arab American organizing in the environment of minority rights movements in the 1960s and 1970s fostered a heightened consciousness of and pride in Arab American identity....

Synchronic Times

2017 ◽  
pp. 204-234
Author(s):  
Enzo Traverso
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

The seventh chapter retraces the encounter of the French philosopher Daniel Bensaid and the work of Walter Benjamin, that reveals a resonance between two crucial turns of the twentieth century—1940 and 1990—through a vision of history based on the idea of remembrance. After the fall of Berlin Wall, the survivors of the 1960s and 1970s met a vision of history engendered by the defeats of the 1930s. This encounter reveals the potentialities of a political reinterpretation of the tradition of melancholy Marxism.

The folk’ish heritage in Nordic democracy: Examples from Denmark and Norway

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 432-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeppe Nevers ◽  
Jesper Lundsby Skov
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
The People ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Drawing on examples from Danish and Norwegian history, this article traces the ideological origins of Nordic democracy. It takes as its starting point the observation that constitutional theories of democracy were rather weak in the Nordic countries until the mid-twentieth century; instead, a certain Nordic tradition of popular constitutionalism rooted in a romantic and organic idea of the people was central to the ideological foundations of Nordic democracy. This tradition developed alongside agrarian mobilization in the nineteenth century, and it remained a powerful ideological reference-point through most of the twentieth century, exercising, for instance, an influence on debates about European integration in the 1960s and 1970s. However, this tradition was gradually overlaid by more institutional understandings of democracy from the mid-twentieth century onwards, with the consequence that the direct importance of this folk’ish heritage declined towards the late twentieth century. Nevertheless, clear echoes of this heritage remain evident in some contemporary Nordic varieties of populism, as well as in references to the concept of folkestyre as the pan-Scandinavian synonym for democracy.

Small wetlands lost: a biological conservation hazard in Mediterranean landscapes

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 190-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUAN B. GALLEGO-FERNÁNDEZ ◽  
M. ROSARIO GARCÍA-MORA ◽  
FRANCISCO GARCÍA-NOVO
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Coarse Grained ◽  
Herbaceous Crops ◽  
Mediterranean Landscapes ◽  
Demographic Processes ◽  
Olive Groves ◽  
Type Of Land Use ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

In Spain, it is estimated that 60% of wetlands have disappeared in the last 50 years. The present study aimed to describe the relationships between loss of wetlands and land-use change in Azuaga County, Central-western Iberian Peninsula where during the period 1896-1996, 94% of the original wetlands disappeared. Forest, scrub, holm oak dehesas and olive groves have become fragmented or disappeared completely, having been substituted by eucalyptus plantations in areas of low productivity and by dry cultivation of herbaceous crops, mainly cereals, in more productive areas. These substitutions have resulted in a homogeneous, coarse-grained landscape with low diversity and high dominance. The type of land-use has depended on the evolution of demographic processes, with high human immigration rates toward the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, and high emigration rates during the 1960s and 1970s. The mechanization of agriculture and transition from closed to market economy in the second half of the twentieth century also played an essential role in the landscape changes described.

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