The Early Writings of Joy Davidman

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don King

Joy Davidman’s place in the canon of twentieth century American literature deserves more attention than it has heretofore received. For instance, in her role in the late 1930’s as poetry editor for New Masses (the weekly voice of the Communist Party of the United States of America), Davidman published poets such as Langston Hughes, Margaret Walker, Alexander Bergman, and Aaron Kramer. At the same time, her poems in Letter to a Comrade (1938) touting a Communist agenda, while clearly written in the tradition of “proletarian literature,” are nonetheless well done; although a political agenda drives her selection of subject matter in these poems, they are not simply set pieces. She uses irony effectively and her imagery is evocative and striking. In fact, Davidman was very much a conscious craftswoman, spending the summers of 1938, 1940, 1941, and 1942 at the MacDowell Colony, a writers’ retreat in New Hampshire, where she honed her skills. For instance, her best piece of fiction, Anya (1940), is a direct result of her time at the colony. She understood the intellectual energy it takes to become an effective writer of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, and she never backed away from hard work. Her commitment to writing—especially her voice, her rhetoric, her style, and the literary influences informing her work—merit more scholarly attention. In this essay I explore Davidman’s early devotion and commitment to the craft of writing; in addition, I evaluate the poems, fiction, and non-fiction she produced before she wrote for New Masses and published Letter to a Comrade.

Author(s):  
Harris Feinsod

The Poetry of the Americas offers an expansive, detailed history of relations among poets in the United States and Latin America, spanning three decades from the Good Neighbor diplomacy of World War II through the Cold War cultural policies of the late 1960s. Connecting works by Martín Adán, Elizabeth Bishop, Paul Blackburn, Jorge Luis Borges, Julia de Burgos, Ernesto Cardenal, Jorge Carrera Andrade, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, José Lezama Lima, Pablo Neruda, Charles Olson, Octavio Paz, Heberto Padilla, Wallace Stevens, Derek Walcott, William Carlos Williams, and many others, Feinsod reveals how poets of many nations imagined a “poetry of the Americas” that linked multiple cultures, even as it reflected the inequities of the inter-American political system. This account encompasses a rich contextual study of the state-sponsored institutions and the countercultural networks that sustained this poetry, from Nelson Rockefeller’s Office of the Coordinator for Inter-American Affairs to the mid-1960s avant-garde scene in Mexico City. This innovative literary-historical project enables new readings of such canonical poems as Stevens’s “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction” and Neruda’s “The Heights of Macchu Picchu,” but it positions these alongside lesser-known poetry, translations, anthologies, literary journals, and private correspondences culled from library archives across the Americas. The Poetry of the Americas thus broadens the horizons of reception and mutual influence—and of formal, historical, and political possibility—through which we encounter midcentury American poetry, recasting traditional categories of “US” or “Latin American” literature within a truly hemispheric vision.


Author(s):  
Taylor F Brinkman

During the past decade, forty-six professional sports venues were constructed in the United States, while only 16 expansion teams were created by the major sports leagues. Nearly two thirds of these newly built stadiums and arenas were funded with public tax revenues, despite substantial evidence showing no positive economic impact of new sports stadium construction on local communities. In reviewing the economic literature, this article investigates the role of professional sports organizations in the construction and public subsidization of new sports venues. Franchise relocation and public stadium subsidization is a direct result of the monopoly power of professional sports leagues, whose franchise owners extract large subsidies from their host communities by threatening to relocate to viable alternative locations. After explaining how the most common methods of stadium subsidization project a disproportionate allocation of the benefits and costs of hosting a professional team to local community interests, this article outlines several considerations for local policymakers who seek to reinvigorate public discussion of equity concerns in professional sports finance.


This collection examines the phenomenon of the operatic canon: its formation, history, current ontology and practical influence, and future. It does so by taking an international and interdisciplinary view: the workshops from which it was derived included the participation of critics, producers, artistic directors, stage directors, opera company CEOs, and even economists, from the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Italy, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Canada. The volume is structured as a series of dialogues: each subtopic is addressed by two essays, introduced jointly by the authors, and followed by a jointly compiled list of further reading. These paired essays complement each other in different ways, for example by treating the same geographical location in different periods, by providing different national or regional perspectives on the same period, or by thinking through similar conceptual issues in contrasting milieus. Part I consists of a selection of surveys of operatic production and consumption contexts in France, Italy, Germany, England, Russia, and the Americas, arranged in rough order from the late seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century. Part II is a (necessarily) limited sample of subjects that illuminate the operatic canon from different—sometimes intentionally oblique—angles, ranging from the influence of singers to the contiguous genres of operetta and musical theater, and the effects of recording and broadcast over almost 150 years. The volume concludes with two essays written by prominent figures from the opera industry who give their sense of the operatic canon’s evolution and prospects.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Hajer Al-Faham

How does surveillance shape political science research in the United States? In comparative and international politics, there is a rich literature concerning the conduct of research amid conditions of conflict and state repression. As this literature locates “the field” in distant contexts “over there,” the United States continues to be saturated with various forms of state control. What this portends for American politics research has thus far been examined by a limited selection of scholars. Expanding on their insights, I situate “the field” in the United States and examine surveillance of American Muslims, an understudied case of racialized state control. Drawing on qualitative data from a case study of sixty-nine interviews with Arab and Black American Muslims, I argue that surveillance operated as a two-stage political mechanism that mapped onto research methodologically and substantively. In the first stage, surveillance reconfigured the researcher-researchee dynamic, hindered recruitment and access, and limited data-collection. In the second stage, surveillance colored the self-perceptions, political attitudes, and civic engagement of respondents, thereby indicating a political socialization unfolding among Muslims. The implications of this study suggest that researchers can mitigate against some, but not all, of the challenges presented by surveillance and concomitant forms of state control.


Author(s):  
James Lee Brooks

AbstractThe early part of the twenty-first century saw a revolution in the field of Homeland Security. The 9/11 attacks, shortly followed thereafter by the Anthrax Attacks, served as a wakeup call to the United States and showed the inadequacy of the current state of the nation’s Homeland Security operations. Biodefense, and as a direct result Biosurveillance, changed dramatically after these tragedies, planting the seeds of fear in the minds of Americans. They were shown that not only could the United States be attacked at any time, but the weapon could be an invisible disease-causing agent.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 239920262110056
Author(s):  
John B Hertig ◽  
Shannon M James ◽  
Connor J Hummel ◽  
Matthew J Rubin

Background: An estimated 95% of all online pharmacies operate unlawfully. Illegal online pharmacies distribute substandard and falsified medical products that may result in patient harm and suboptimal treatment, leading to an overall mistrust of medications, healthcare providers, and health systems. As medication experts, pharmacists are trusted to guide patients in selection of safe and effective medication therapy. Objective: The objective of this study was to determine gaps in knowledge and recognition of the negative clinical and safety impacts associated with illegal Internet pharmacies by licensed pharmacists. Methods: A 37-question electronic survey was developed and distributed to pharmacists across the United States by email via a database from the American Pharmacists Association. Descriptive statistics was utilized to analyze data. Results: A total of 347 pharmacists from across the United States responded to at least one question in the survey. In all, 58% of pharmacists reported a lack of confidence in their ability to counsel patients on the identification of illegal pharmacy websites. Fewer than 60% of pharmacists were able to accurately identify the legitimacy of a webpage based on visual characteristics. In addition, 75% of pharmacists reported being unfamiliar with resources available to help consumers identify safe and legitimate online pharmacies. Conclusion: Integration of the topic into pharmacy education curricula, training on available resources, and additional research into the prevalence and impact of illegal pharmacy websites are necessary to ensure that pharmacists and other healthcare professionals are adequately prepared to protect their communities from the threat of illegal online pharmacies.


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