“How Do We Play this Thing?”: The State of Historical Research on Videogames

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dany Guay-Bélanger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Game Theory ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Quality Work ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
Great Game

Abstract Though previously overlooked by academia, scholars from a wide array of fields now consider videogames as a serious subject of inquiry. The emergence of game studies as a standalone discipline has led to the publication of high-quality work on the medium, yet the field of videogame history is still immature. Initial attempts to introduce critical historical analysis of videogames in a field dominated by journalistic accounts were themselves plagued by an overemphasis on videogame canons and on the United States and Japan. In effect, early writings by videogame historians resembled “great man” theory, something one could qualify as “great game” theory. Over the last decade, this situation has started to be redressed and there are now growing efforts to produce solid historical scholarship on videogames. Still, game scholars and game historians need to collaborate, engage in conversation, and develop and adapt proper methods to conduct historical research on videogames in order to write relevant histories of this relatively young medium.

A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF DEPRECIATION ACCOUNTING — THE UNITED STATES STEEL EXPERIENCE

1989 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Auman Reed
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Physical Capital ◽  
Cost Accounting ◽  
The United States ◽  
Reporting Bias ◽  
Productive Capacity ◽  
Replacement Cost ◽  
Historical Cost ◽  
Steel Corporation

This paper examines the magnitude of the reporting bias inherent in the historical cost accounting of a firm's physical capital. Reported depreciation data pertaining to U.S. Steel Corporation (currently USX) between 1939 and 1987 are compared with standardized historical cost figures and replacement cost estimates. The findings suggest that replacement cost depreciation would have provided more information about U.S. Steel's ability to maintain its productive capacity than historical cost depreciation did. Thus, this analysis provides an illustration of one of the primary arguments for replacement cost accounting.

Ethnohistory's Ethnohistory

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Michael E. Harkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Theoretical Orientation ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
European Contact ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Foundational Work

This article examines the first decades of the field of ethnohistory as it developed in the United States. It participated in the general rapprochement between history and anthropology of mid-twentieth-century social science. However, unlike parallel developments in Europe and in other research areas, ethnohistory specifically arose out of the study of American Indian communities in the era of the Indian Claims Commission. Thus ethnohistory developed from a pragmatic rather than a theoretical orientation, with practitioners testifying both in favor of and against claims. Methodology was flexible, with both documentary sources and ethnographic methods employed to the degree that each was feasible. One way that ethnohistory was innovative was the degree to which women played prominent roles in its development. By the end of the first decade, the field was becoming broader and more willing to engage both theoretical and ethical issues raised by the foundational work. In particular, the geographic scope began to reach well beyond North America, especially to Latin America, where archival resources and the opportunities for ethnographic research were plentiful, but also to areas such as Melanesia, where recent European contact allowed researchers to observe the early postcontact period directly and to address the associated theoretical questions with greater authority. Ethnohistory is thus an important example of a field of study that grew organically without an overarching figure or conscious plan but that nevertheless came to engage central issues in cultural and historical analysis.

Forging Aztecness: Twentieth-Century Mexican Musical Nationalism in Twenty-First Century Los Angeles

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 127-146
Author(s):  
KRISTINA F. NIELSEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Cultural Frameworks ◽  
Music Research ◽  
Siglo Xx

Abstract (Spanish/English)Forjando el Aztecanismo: Nacionalismo Musical Mexicano del Siglo XX en el siglo XXI en Los ÁngelesHoy en día, un creciente número de músicos mexico-americanos en los Estados Unidos tocan instrumentos indígenas mesoamericanos y réplicas arqueológicas, lo que se conoce como “Música Azteca.” En este artículo, doy a conocer cómo los músicos contemporáneos de Los Ángeles, California, recurren a los legados de la investigación musical nacionalista mexicana e integran modelos antropológicos y arqueológicos aplicados. Al combinar el trabajo de campo etnográfico con el análisis histórico, sugiero que los marcos musicales y culturales que alguna vez sirvieron para unir al México pos-revolucionario han adquirido una nuevo significado para contrarrestar la desaparición del legado indígena mexicano en los Estados Unidos.Today a growing number of Mexican-American musicians in the United States perform on Indigenous Mesoamerican instruments and archaeological replicas in what is widely referred to as “Aztec music.” In this article, I explore how contemporary musicians in Los Angeles, California, draw on legacies of Mexican nationalist music research and integrate applied anthropological and archeological models. Pairing ethnographic fieldwork with historical analysis, I suggest that musical and cultural frameworks that once served to unite post-revolutionary Mexico have gained new significance in countering Mexican Indigenous erasure in the United States.

The Estado da India and the Estado do Brasil. Opportunities for Research in Portuguese Overseas History

Itinerario ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-129
Author(s):  
A.J.R. Russell-Wood
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Political History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
American Historical Association ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Interest In Research

In this year marking the sexcentenary of the birth of Prince Henry, known erroneously to the English speaking world as ‘the Navigator’, and the 450th anniversary of the Portuguese arrival in Japan, it is fitting to take stock of what has been achieved and what remains concerning research on Portuguese overseas history. In November 1969 a conference was held at the Newberry Library in Chicago to ‘stimulate in the United States scholarly interest in research on Brazil's colonial past’. In November 1978 an International Seminar on Indo-Portuguese History was held in Goa occasioned by ‘an awareness of a relative stagnation in the field of Indo-Portuguese historical studies, especially in India’. This was prompted by the feeling of a dearth of new interpretations, shortage of studies in English, and neglect of political history, biography and social and economic history. Whereas the tone of the Newberry Library meeting was upbeat as to what junior scholars were achieving, and Charles Boxer pointed with pride to scholarly accomplishments since 1950, by 1984 a lecture to mark the occasion of the centennial of the American Historical Association noted grounds for concern regarding studies in the United States on colonial Brazil and this situation has deteriorated further during the decades of the 80s and early 90s. By way of contrast, in 1981 Charles Boxer noted the vitality of the Estado da India in its broadest geographical meaning as a subject for historical research by Portuguese and how ‘after years — I might even say centuries – of neglect by foreigners, the history of the old Estado da India has lately come into its own in the wider world’. This was seconded by M.N. Pearson who noted that ‘Goan historiography seems to be on the verge of a renaissance’.

The Current Status of Hearing Care: Can We Change the Status Quo?

2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (07) ◽  
pp. 410-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Van Vliet
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Care Delivery ◽  
The United States ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Current Status ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Scientific Database ◽  
The Status

The members of the profession of audiology often express concern that the services and products that have been developed to provide benefit to the hearing impaired are not sought after or delivered to the majority of those diagnosed with hearing loss. A critical look at the status quo of hearing care delivery in the United States is needed to verify this assumption and to develop strategies to improve the situation. A key concern is the lack of a comprehensive high-quality scientific database upon which to build continuous improvements in the effectiveness of the services and products that are provided to the hearing impaired.

The Study of International Relations in Great Britain: Further Connections

1986 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 626-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gene M. Lyons
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Political Experience

Aside from language, students of international relations in the United States and Great Britain have several things in common: parallel developments in the emergence of international relations as a field of study after World War I, and more recent efforts to broaden the field by drawing security issues and changes in the international political economy under the broad umbrella of “international studies.” But a review of four recent books edited by British scholars demonstrates that there is also a “distance” between British and American scholarship. Compared with dominant trends in the United States, the former, though hardly monolithic and producing a rich and varied literature, is still very much attached to historical analysis and the concept of an “international society” that derives from the period in modern history in which Britain played a more prominent role in international politics. Because trends in scholarship do, in fact, reflect national political experience, the need continues for transnational cooperation among scholars in the quest for strong theories in international relations.

scholarly journals Fine-grained, spatio-temporal datasets measuring 200 years of land development in the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes H. Uhl ◽  
Stefan Leyk ◽  
Caitlin M. McShane ◽  
Anna E. Braswell ◽  
Dylan S. Connor ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Temporal Resolution ◽  
Data Extraction ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Land Development ◽  
Remote Sensing Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Spatio Temporal

Abstract. The collection, processing and analysis of remote sensing data since the early 1970s has rapidly improved our understanding of change on the Earth’s surface. While satellite-based earth observation has proven to be of vast scientific value, these data are typically confined to recent decades of observation and often lack important thematic detail. Here, we advance in this arena by constructing new spatially-explicit settlement data for the United States that extend back to the early nineteenth century, and is consistently enumerated at fine spatial and temporal granularity (i.e., 250 m spatial, and 5 a temporal resolution). We create these time series using a large, novel building stock database to extract and map retrospective, fine-grained spatial distributions of built-up properties in the conterminous United States from 1810 to 2015. From our data extraction, we analyse and publish a series of gridded geospatial datasets that enable novel retrospective historical analysis of the built environment at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. The datasets are available at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/hisdacus (Uhl and Leyk, 2020a, b, c, d).

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