Roman Jakobson and the history of Saussurean concepts in North American Linguistics

1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia S. Falk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
North American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
American Interest ◽  
History Of Linguistics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Jakobson

Summary Leonard Bloomfield was the major force in the initial dissemination of Saussurean concepts in North America (Joseph 1989a, Koerner 1989), but his role was limited to his middle years from 1922 to 1933, and for some time thereafter American linguists paid little attention to Saussure’s Cours. In fact, studies on Saussure tend to move directly from Bloomfield to Noam Chomsky (e.g., Gadet 1989, Joseph 1990), with little discussion of the intervening quarter century in American linguistics. However, when Roman Jakobson arrived in New York in 1941, he brought with him a long record of commentary and criticism on Saussure’s ideas, and through his American teaching and publications, Jakobson became the next major source of attention to Saussure’s work. In this paper, I examine Jakobson’s complex positions on Saussure, with special attention to his first two decades in the United States. I then briefly consider Jakobson’s role in a third period of Saussurean concepts in the history of American linguistics, a period of revived interest that began in the late 1950s, engaging linguists from a diversity of theories and coinciding in the next decade with the republication of Jakobson’s European writings and with the rise of North American interest in the history of linguistics.

Schools & the Diversity Transition

Daedalus ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 142 (3) ◽  
pp. 155-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Alba
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Educational Policy ◽  
North American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Abundant Evidence ◽  
Working Age ◽  
History Of

In the next quarter century, North American and Western European societies will face a profound transformation of their working-age populations as a result of immigration, combined with the aging of native majorities. These changes will intensify the challenges of integrating the children of lowstatus immigrants. Abundant evidence reveals that most educational systems, including that in the United States, are failing to meet these challenges; and sociological theories underscore these systems' role in reproducing inequality. However, the history of assimilation in the United States shows that native-/immigrant-origin inequalities need not be enduring. An examination of variations across time and space suggests educational policy changes and innovations that can ameliorate inequalities.

An Interview with Harris Gaylord Warren: From the Borderlands to Paraguay

1989 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 443-460
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
United States Army ◽  
North American ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
History Of

Harris Gaylord Warren was, by common consent, the father of Paraguayan studies in the United States. His broad-ranging activities —from diplomatic undertakings in South America to military service in Italy to administrative and scholarly work at various North American universities—marked him as an historian of rare depth and insight. Not commonly known is that Dr. Warren began his career as a historian in the 1930s as a borderlands specialist. The Sword was their Passport: A History of American Filibustering in the Mexican Revolution (Baton Rouge, 1943) is yet recognized as the definitive work on North American adventurers in that turbulent era. As an officer in the United States Army in World War II he was selected for various military history projects. After the war Dr. Warren returned to teaching and then administration. At that time his publications ranged from texts to Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression, (New York, 1959).

Gastbeitrag: A Letter from America

2015 ◽  
Vol 132 (1) ◽  
pp. 441-462
Author(s):  
James Q. Whitman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Legal History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
German History ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
American Life ◽  
American Interest ◽  
American Law ◽  
History Of

This contribution describes the life and work of an American law professor who writes about European legal history. It is a sad truth that American interest in European scholarship has been in steady decline for some decades. The author remains a believer in the fundamental importance of European legal history despite that; the contribution describes his quarter century of research in the United States, and his efforts, not always successful, to convince his colleagues that Europe matters. After beginning his career working on the German history of Roman law, the author was drawn into topics that spoke more directly to the dilemmas and oddities of American life. Many of those topics involved the comparative legal history of dignity; more recently they have included work on criminal procedure and the law of war.

Book Review: The Shaping of American Higher Education

NASPA Journal ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary H. Knock
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early History ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
American Higher Education ◽  
History Of ◽  
Broad Understanding

In the introduction of this book, Arthur Cohen states that The Shaping of American Higher Education is less a history than a synthesis. While accurate, this depiction in no way detracts from the value of the book. This work synthesizes the first three centuries of development of high-er education in the United States. A number of books detail the early history of the American collegiate system; however, this book also pro-vides an up-to-date account of developments and context for under-standing the transformation of American higher education in the last quarter century. A broad understanding of the book’s subtitle, Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System, is truly realized by the reader.

Fragments of the American Dream: Immigration, Race, and Medical Care in the Segregated South, 1929

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
John R Phillips
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Black Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Single Woman ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sunflower County

The cover photograph for this issue of Public Voices was taken sometime in the summer of 1929 (probably June) somewhere in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Very probably the photo was taken in Indianola but, perhaps, it was Ruleville. It is one of three such photos, one of which does have the annotation on the reverse “Ruleville Midwives Club 1929.” The young woman wearing a tie in this and in one of the other photos was Ann Reid Brown, R.N., then a single woman having only arrived in the United States from Scotland a few years before, in 1923. Full disclosure: This commentary on the photo combines professional research interests in public administration and public policy with personal interests—family interests—for that young nurse later married and became the author’s mother. From the scholarly perspective, such photographs have been seen as “instrumental in establishing midwives’ credentials and cultural identity at a key transitional moment in the history of the midwife and of public health” (Keith, Brennan, & Reynolds 2012). There is also deep irony if we see these photographs as being a fragment of the American dream, of a recent immigrant’s hope for and success at achieving that dream; but that fragment of the vision is understood quite differently when we see that she began a hopeful career working with a Black population forcibly segregated by law under the incongruously named “separate but equal” legal doctrine. That doctrine, derived from the United States Supreme Court’s 1896 decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, would remain the foundation for legally enforced segregation throughout the South for another quarter century. The options open to the young, white, immigrant nurse were almost entirely closed off for the population with which she then worked. The remaining parts of this overview are meant to provide the following: (1) some biographical information on the nurse; (2) a description, in so far as we know it, of why she was in Mississippi; and (3) some indication of areas for future research on this and related topics.

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