Groundwork for the Public

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-44
Author(s):  
Jesse Holcomb
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
The United States ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Local News ◽  
Collaborative Practices ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Local Journalism ◽  
Theoretical Considerations

Public-facing research institutions and university centers have played an outsized role in collecting and disseminating knowledge about local news trends in the United States. Philanthropic support, attention by policymakers, and a sense of urgency around the crisis facing local journalism have incentivized the emergence of this particular kind of research that sits adjacent to, but not fully inside, the scholarly environment. This material is well positioned to engage and activate interventions aiming to help address the crisis in local journalism and provide empirical grist for deeper scholarly work. At the same time, however, this line of public scholarship is sometimes unmoored from theoretical considerations, highly descriptive, and exists outside of peer review systems. Many of these institutions setting the agenda for research about local journalism are bound by their own norms and cultures from making robust normative claims about how the industry should respond and adapt to their findings. This chapter traces the brief history of para-scholarly groundwork mapping local news, outlines the strengths and weaknesses of this model, and suggests collaborative practices going forward that connect this important groundwork with theory-driven and peer review practices.

“The Pleasures of Merely Circulating”

2014 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-174
Author(s):  
Caroline Gelmi
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Early American ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Early National ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Cultural Functions

Caroline Gelmi, “‘The Pleasures of Merely Circulating’: Sappho and Early American Newspaper Poetry” (pp. 151–174) This essay examines how early national verse cultures Americanized the popular figure of Sappho. Newspaper parodies of fragment 31, which circulated widely in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, mocked English poet Ambrose Philips’s well-known translation of Sappho’s “Phainetai moi” ode in order to address concerns over the role of Englishness in the United States. The parodies achieved these political effects by allegorizing their own conditions of print circulation and deflating the cultural associations of fragment 31 and Philips’s translation with the lyric. In this way, these poems were able to address a number of political issues, from English imperialism in Ireland to the specter of English aristocracy in the U.S. federal government. This study of Sappho’s role as a figure for American print circulation in the early nineteenth century also offers a pre-history of the more familiar midcentury association of Sappho with the Poetess. As a figure for the Poetess, Sappho came to embody anxieties over female authors in the marketplace, representing concerns that the public circulation of the Poetess’ work and the promiscuous circulation of her body were one and the same. This essay tells the rich backstory to these more familiar concepts, tracing Sappho’s earlier entanglements with print circulation and the political and cultural functions she served.

scholarly journals “Ag-Gag” Laws: Evolution, Resurgence, and Public Health Implications

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 664-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlin A. Ceryes ◽  
Christopher D. Heaney
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Health ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Animal Production ◽  
Public Access ◽  
State Laws ◽  
The Public ◽  
Food Animal ◽  
Health Community ◽  
History Of

The term “ag-gag” refers to state laws that intentionally limit public access to information about agricultural production practices, particularly livestock production. Originally created in the 1990s, these laws have recently experienced a resurgence in state legislatures. We discuss the recent history of ag-gag laws in the United States and question whether such ag-gag laws create a “chilling effect” on reporting and investigation of occupational health, community health, and food safety concerns related to industrial food animal production. We conclude with a discussion of the role of environmental and occupational health professionals to encourage critical evaluation of how ag-gag laws might influence the health, safety, and interests of day-to-day agricultural laborers and the public living proximal to industrial food animal production.

Privatization—Chipping Away at Government

2020 ◽  
pp. 106-128
Author(s):  
Donald Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Public Services ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

This chapter focuses on the right wing's astonishingly successful efforts to privatize public goods and services. Privatization has been one of the highest priorities of the right wing for many years, and the chapter shows how it threatens both labor and democracy. Intentionally blurring the lines between public and private institutions, private companies and market forces undermine the common good. This chapter documents the history of privatization in the United States, from President Reagan's early efforts to Clinton and Gore's belief in private markets. Showing how privatization undermines democratic government, the chapter describes complex contracts that are difficult to understand, poorly negotiated “public–private partnership” deals, and contracts that provide incentives to deny public services. With huge amounts of money at stake, privateers are increasingly weighing in on policy debates—not based on the public interest but rather in pursuit of avenues that increase their revenues, profits, and market share. Privatization not only destroys union jobs but also aims to cripple union political involvement so that the corporate agenda can spread unfettered. Nevertheless, community-based battles against privatization have succeeded in many localities, demonstrating the power of fighting back to defend public services, public jobs, and democratic processes.

Santa Anna and His Legacy

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Fowler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican War ◽  
Early National Period ◽  
The Public ◽  
Early National ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Alamo ◽  
The U.S

Antonio López de Santa Anna (b. Xalapa, February 21, 1794; d. Mexico City, June 21, 1876) was one of the most notorious military caudillos of 19th-century Mexico. He was involved in just about every major event of the early national period and served as president on six different occasions (1833–1835, 1839, 1841–1843, 1843–1844, 1846–1847, and 1853–1855). U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary Waddy Thompson during the 1840s would come to the conclusion that: “No history of his country for that period can be written without constant mention of his name.”1 For much of the 1820s to 1850s he proved immensely popular; the public celebrated him as “Liberator of Veracruz,” the “Founder of the Republic,” and the “Hero of Tampico” who repulsed a Spanish attempt to reconquer Mexico in 1829. Even though he lost his leg defending Veracruz from a French incursion in 1838, many still regarded him as the only general who would be able to save Mexico from the U.S. intervention of 1846–1848. However, Mexicans, eventually, would remember him more for his defeats than his victories. Having won the battle of the Alamo, he lost the battle of San Jacinto which resulted in Texas becoming independent from Mexico in 1836. Although he recovered from this setback, many subsequently blamed him for Mexico’s traumatic defeat in the U.S.-Mexican War, which ended with Mexico ceding half of its territory to the United States. His corruption paired with the fact that he aligned himself with competing factions at different junctures contributed to the accusation that he was an unprincipled opportunist. Moreover, because he authorized the sale of La Mesilla Valley to the United States (in present-day southern Arizona) in the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, he was labeled a vendepatrias (“fatherland-seller”). The repressive dictatorship he led donning the title of “His Serene Highness” in 1853–1855, also gave way to him being presented thereafter as a bloodthirsty tyrant, even though his previous terms in office were not dictatorial. Albeit feted as a national hero during much of his lifetime, historians have since depicted Santa Anna as a cynical turncoat, a ruthless dictator, and the traitor who lost the U.S.-Mexican War on purpose. However, recent scholarship has led to a significant revision of this interpretation. The aim of this article is to recast our understanding of Santa Anna and his legacy bearing in mind the latest findings. In the process it demonstrates how important it is to engage with the complexities of the multilayered regional and national contexts of the time in order to understand the politics of Independent Mexico.

Centennial Bibliography: Annotated Selections on the History of the Petroleum Industry in the United States

1959 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-447
Author(s):  
Walter Rundell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Petroleum Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Treatment

This bibliography represents an effort to survey and evaluate selected literature dealing with the history of the petroleum industry in the United States. The goal has not been to include everything ever written, but rather, to produce a compact reference work that I hope will be useful to the industry, to students, and to the public.My research has revealed that only one of the four major phases of this industry has been given anything approaching a full historical treatment. This phase is production.

History of Sport Psychology in Cultural Magazines of the Victorian Era

1995 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 376-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Brett King ◽  
Brittany L. Raymond ◽  
Jennifer A. Simon-Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Sport Psychology ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spectator Sports ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Magazines ◽  
The 19Th Century

The 19th century can be characterized as a time of avid public interest in team and spectator sports. As diverse and challenging new sports were developed and gained popularity, many articles on a rudimentary sport psychology began to appear in cultural magazines in the United States and Great Britain. Athletes, physicians, educators, journalists, and members of the public wrote on topics such as profiles and psychological studies of elite athletes, the importance of physical training, exercise and health, and the detrimental effects of professional sports to the role of age, gender, and culture in sports. Although a scientific foundation for such observations was largely absent, some of the ideas expressed in early cultural magazines anticipate contemporary interests in sport psychology.

Breaking the Taboo: Architects and Advertising in Depression and War

2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 406-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Shanken
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
History Of ◽  
Public Relations Campaign ◽  
American Institute Of Architects ◽  
Second World

Breaking the Taboo: Architects and Advertising in Depression and War chronicles the fall of a professional interdiction in architecture, precipitated by the Second World War. For much of the history of their profession in the United States, architects——unlike builders and engineers, their main competition——faced censure from the American Institute of Architects if they advertised their services. Architects established models of professional behavior intended to hold them apart from the commercial realm. Andrew M. Shanken explores how the Great Depression and the Second World War strained this outdated model of practice, placing architects within consumer culture in more conspicuous ways, redefining the architect's role in society and making public relations an essential part of presenting the profession to the public. Only with the unification of the AIA after the war would architects conduct a modern public relations campaign, but the taboo had begun to erode in the 1930s and early 1940s, setting the stage for the emergence of the modern profession.

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