scholarly journals Reaching New Heights

2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (5) ◽  
pp. 51-56
Author(s):  
Jim Coaker, P.E. ◽  
George W. Gibson

Abstract The history of the ASME A17 elevator safety code is intertwined with the ability to build ever-taller skyscrapers. One key landmark, the Empire State Building, may have been impossible without the contribution of ASME code committee members.

2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (5) ◽  
pp. 51-56
Author(s):  
P.E. Jim Coaker ◽  
W. Gibson George

Abstract The history of the ASME A17 elevator safety code is intertwined with the ability to build ever-taller skyscrapers. One key landmark, the Empire State Building, may have been impossible without the contribution of ASME code committee members.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Polly Root Sturgeon

Indiana limestone, known to geologists as the Salem Limestone,is quarried in a narrow 30-mile-long area of south-central Indiana that is alsohome to Indiana University. Gracing up to 75 percent of all limestonebuildings in North America, this stone is known for its particularstrength, durability, and ageless beauty, and clads the nation’s most eminentbuildings, including the Empire State Building, Pentagon, andNational Cathedral. For more than 100 years, this local stone hasbeen used for buildings on the Bloomingtoncampus. Beginning in 1890 with Maxwell Hall,to 2017 and the completion of Luddy Hall,home of the School of Informatics, Computing,and Engineering, nearly all academic buildingshave been built of Indiana limestone. Architectural styles on campus span threecenturies. From the highly ornate carvings andpointed arches that define Collegiate Gothicarchitecture to the streamlined Art Deco styleof the early 1900s, the beauty of the campusreflects the skills of local stone artisans. In1979, the National Register of Historic Placesadded the Old Crescent portion of campus toits list to ensure its preservation. Walking around campus, you’ll see manycarvings on the exteriors of the buildings. Fish,maize, and chemical symbols can be foundon the science buildings on the south side ofcampus, while decorative scrolls of text adornseveral of the art buildings to the east. Themost common carved figure on campus is theowl, a symbol of learning and education, andtwelve are scattered on various buildings. Today, the history of Indiana’s limestone legacyis preserved in several campus collections andarchives. Most of the photographs used for themosaic on this calendar belong to the IndianaLimestone Photograph Collection. Curated bythe Indiana Geological and Water Survey since2012, this impressive archive consists of morethan 26,000 architectural photos depictingquarries, mills, and buildings from the earlyto mid-1900s. The digitized photographs arestored on IU Libraries Image Collections Online(http://go.iu.edu/16dx). Other photos in the mosaic are from researchand outreach efforts and the collections of theIndiana Geological and Water Survey.


2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 695-718 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK CONDOS ◽  
GAVIN RAND

AbstractSince 2001, the geo-strategic priorities of the ‘War on Terror’ have prompted renewed attention to the historically significant region of Waziristan. Ironically, given the apparent failure of British attempts to pacify the region in the century after 1849, Waziristan’s colonial history has been picked over by policy-makers, commentators, and scholars for lessons which might be applied to current projects of state-building and counter-insurgency. Unabashedly instrumentalist, these works have reproduced the reductive stereotypes of the colonial sources and helped to entrench partial understandings of the frontier which obscure the dynamic and contingent nature of imperial state-building. This article offers an alternate frame for writing the history of the colonial frontier by re-examining how British officials attempted to constitute colonial authority through their engagements with one of the region’s most powerful groups: the Mahsud Wazirs. Challenging historiographical emphases on oscillating metropolitan strategies, this article maps crucial and largely overlooked continuities in British attempts to pacify the Mahsuds, providing new insights into state-building at the edge of empire and a more nuanced account of how imperial power was engaged, resisted, and deflected by those it sought to control.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0957154X2110284
Author(s):  
Joelle M Abi-Rached

My book, published in 2020, reconstructs the history of ʿAṣfūriyyeh, one of the first ‘modern’ mental hospitals in the Middle East. It uses the rise and fall of this institution as a lens through which to examine the development of modern psychiatric theory and practice in the region as well as the socio-political history of modern Lebanon. ʿAṣfūriyyeh becomes a window into social-policy questions relating to dependency and welfare, definitions of deviance, the relation of mission to empire, state-building processes, and the relation of medical authority to religion. The book also examines the impact of war on health and healthcare infrastructures. Reflecting on the afterlife of this and other institutions, the book calls for a new ‘ethics of memory.’


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Harris

This essay draws upon the author’s performance script Fall and Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project as a provocation for considering the ways performance texts provide a threshold for somatic inquiry, and for recognizing the limits of scholarly analysis that does not take up performance-as-inquiry. Set at the Empire State Building, this essay embodies the connections and missed possibilities between strangers and intimates in the context of urban modern life. Fall’s protagonist is positioned within a landscape of capitalist exchange, but defies this matrix to offer instead a gift at the threshold of life/death, virtual/real, and love/loss. Through somatic inquiry and witnessing as threshold experiences, the protagonist (as Benjamin’s flaneur) moves through urban space and time, proving that both scholarship and performance remain irrevocably embodied, and as such invariably tethered to the visceral, the stranger, risk, and death.


2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-57
Author(s):  
Mattias Jacobsson ◽  
Timothy L. Wilson

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinne Lefèvre

Relying on the Majalis-i Jahangiri (1608–11) by ʿAbd al-Sattar b. Qasim Lahauri, this essay explores some of the discussions the Mughal Emperor Jahangir (r. 1605–27) conducted with a wide range of scholars, from Brahmans and ʿulama to Jesuit padres and Jewish savants. By far the most numerous, the debates bearing on Islam and involving Muslim intellectuals are especially significant on several accounts. First, because they illuminate how, following in the steps of his father Akbar (r. 1556–605), Jahangir was able to conciliate his messianic claims with a strong engagement with reason and to turn this combination into a formidable instrument for confession and state building. These conversations also provide promising avenues to think afresh the socio-intellectual history of the Mughal ʿulama inasmuch as they capture the challenges and adjustments attendant on imperial patronage, depict the jockeying for influence and positions among intellectuals (particularly between Indo-Muslim and Iranian lettrés), and shed light on relatively little known figures or on unexplored facets of more prominent individuals. In addition, the specific role played by scholars hailing from Iran—and, to a lesser extent, from Central Asia—in the juridical-religious disputes of the Indian court shows how crucial inter-Asian connections and networks were in the fashioning of Mughal ideology but also the ways in which the ongoing flow of émigré ʿulama was disciplined before being incorporated into the empire.


Author(s):  
Volodymyr Holovko ◽  
◽  
Larysa Yakubova ◽  

The key problems of nation- and state-building are revealed in the concept of the chronotope of the Ukrainian “long twentieth century,” which is a hybrid projection of the “long nineteenth century.” An essential feature of this stage in the history of Ukraine and Ukrainians is the realization of the intentions of socioeconomic, ethnocultural and political emancipation: in fact, the end of the Ukrainian revolution, which began in the context of World War I and the destruction of the colonial system. The third book tells about the contradictions of post-Soviet transit. The three modern revolutions, the development of “oligarchic republics,” the subjectivization of Ukraine in the world through self-awareness of the European choice are visible manifestations of the final stage of the century-old Ukrainian revolution and anti-colonial liberation war. The essential transformations of the Ukrainian project are understood in the broad optics of post-totalitarian transit, the successful completion of which now rules for the national idea of Ukraine. For a wide audience.


Author(s):  
Carter Malkasian

The American War in Afghanistan is a full history of the war in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2020. It covers political, cultural, strategic, and tactical aspects of the war and details the actions and decision-making of the United States, Afghan government, and Taliban. The work follows a narrative format to go through the 2001 US invasion, the state-building of 2002–2005, the Taliban offensive of 2006, the US surge of 2009–2011, the subsequent drawdown, and the peace talks of 2019–2020. The focus is on the overarching questions of the war: Why did the United States fail? What opportunities existed to reach a better outcome? Why did the United States not withdraw from the war?


Author(s):  
D. Juodis

In 2019 comes the 70th anniversary of the founding of LLKS – the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters (Lietuvos Laisvės Kovos Sąjūdi). This underground organization had been founded in February of 1949. It united the people, who had been fighting against the Soviet power in Lithuania. Heads of the LLKS were active partisans and they called themselves freedom fighters. In the same time, other people called partisans ‘forest men’, ‘greens’ etc. The main purpose of this article – to consider the process of unification of the forces of Lithuanian partisans under unified command and to highlight the main circumstances of this process. The article is based on the archival materials and modern research writings. So far, very few research papers about Lithuanian anti-Soviet struggle have been published outside Lithuania. That’s why one of the goals of the author – to provide the information about this episode of the modern history of Lithuania to Ukrainian readers. Perhaps, the similarity with Ukrainian national insurgent movement during the 2nd World War will be found. The final ambition of the armed struggle of Lithuanian partisans was the creation of free democratic Lithuania. Partisans considered the mistakes of Lithuanian state-building during the interwar period, such as authoritarian regime and weak social politics. Freedom fighters hoped to get help from the West countries – Great Britain of the USA – through the mediation of Lithuanian emigrants. The unification of partisans was difficult because of the activity of infiltrated Soviet security agents. The chronological framework of the article covers the period of 1946-1949, when where held the main events of the unification of partisans. Active partisan struggle against the Soviet in Lithuania power lasted to 1953.


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