Nature · Animals · Non-Human: A Study of Community Consciousness in The Night Watchman

The Night Watchman written by Louis Erdrich won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The core characters running through the novel are not only Thomas Wazhashk, but Patrice who bears the burden of narrating the natural world of the Turtle Mountain reserve. Louis Erdrich not only noticed the connection between females and nature with keen eyes, but also human and non-humans. The interaction among them reflects the author’s thoughts on the ecological environment, human survival, and indigenous tradition conflicted with modern appeal. Therefore, this article, using the Biocentric Equality of deep ecology, explores the Community Consciousness in the novel.

African American history in Natasha Trethewey’s “Native Guard”

The article presents interpretations of the poetry collection “Native Guard” of the American writer Natasha Trethewey — the Pulitzer Prize winner (2007), and Poet Laureate (2012–2014). Through the lens of African American and Critical Race studies, Trethewey’s “Native Guard” is analyzed as the artistic Civil War reconstruction which writes the Louisiana Native Guard regiments into national history. Utilizing the wide range of poetic forms in the collections “Domestic Work” (2000), “Bellocq’s Ophelia” (2002), “Thrall” (2012), — ekphrastic poetry, verse-novellas, epistolary poems, rhymed and free verse sonnets, dramatic monologues, in “Native Guard” (2006) Natasha Trethewey experiments with the classical genres of villanelle (“Scenes from a Documentary History of Mississippi”), ghazal (“Miscegenation”), pantoum (“Incident”), elegy (“Elegy for the Native Guard”), linear palindrome (“Myth”), pastoral (“Pastoral”), sonnet (the ten poems of the crown sonnet sequence “Native Guard”). Following the African American modernist literary canon, Trethewey transforms the traditional forms, infusing blues into sonnets (“Graveyard Blues”), and experimenting with into blank verse sonnets (“What the Body Can Tell”). In the first part of “Native Guard”, the poet pays homage to her African American mother who was married to a white man in the 1960s when interracial marriage was illegal. The book demonstrates the intersections of private memories of Trethewey’s mother, her childhood and personal encounters with the racial oppression in the American South, and the “poeticized” episodes from the Civil War history presented from the perspective of the freed slave and the soldier of the Native Guard, Nathan Daniels. The core poems devoted to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Louisiana regiments in the Union Army formed in 1862, are the crown sonnet sequence which variably combine the formal features of the European classical sonnet and the African American blues poetics. The ten poems are composed as unrhymed journal entries, dated from 1862 to 1865, and they foreground the reflections of the African American warrior on historical episodes of the Civil War focusing on the Native Guard’s involvement in the military duty. In formal aspects, Trethewey achieves the effect of continuity by “binding” together each sonnet and repeating the final line of the poem at the beginning of the following one in the sequence. Though, the “Native Guard” crown sonnet sequence does not fully comply with the rigid structure of the classical European form, Trethewey’s poetic narrative aims at restoring the role of the African American soldiers in the Civil War and commemorating the Native Guard. The final part of the collection synthesizes the two strains – the personal and the historical, accentuating the racial issues in the American South. Through the experience of a biracial Southerner, and via the polemics with the Fugitives, in her poems Natasha Trethewey displays that the Civil Rights Act has not eliminated racial inequality and racism. Trethewey’s extensive experimentation with literary forms and style opens up the prospects for further investigation of the writer’s artistic methods in her poetry collections, autobiographical prose, and nonfiction.

“他無法面對身體”：東尼、克許納劇作《美國天使》中的肉體顛覆

<p>東尼、克許納的普立茲得獎作品《美國天使，國家議題的同志幻想》探討同性戀、宗教、政治、同志恐懼症、和身份等重大議題，亦激發意識型態、畏懼、及焦慮等種種意見衝突。然而，探討本劇的學術研究，無論為關於政治、宗教、或文化的意識型態戰爭，都不經意地透露出某方面的忽略或迴避──肉體。肉體在本劇中不僅舉足輕重且一再地帶給觀眾深痛的衝擊。《美國天使》中無所不在的肉體展現，尤其是感染愛滋病的男同志病體，在在證實了劇中具強烈身體感官的言語、意象、和行動的重要性。本文深究《美國天使》中運用肉體的意識型態和䇿略意涵，並論述克許納將肉體政治化，透過展現怪誕醜陋的男同志愛滋病體、疾病敍述、及性暴露的方式，為男同性戀者和愛滋病患爭取平權，並激發同情心與善解的人性光輝。</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><p>Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels in America, A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (1992) brings ponderous issues such as homosexuality, religion, politics, homophobia, and identity together in a fascinating and profound clash of warring beliefs, ideologies, fears, and anxiety. However, the plethora of scholarship which the play has inspired on the wars of ideology, be they political, religious, or cultural, has betrayed an unwitting negligence or avoidance in one regard&mdash;corporeality, which not only abounds in the play but also insistently makes poignant impressions on the audience. The pervasiveness of corporeality in Angels in America, specifically the AIDS-infected male homosexual body, attests to the centrality of visceral language, imagery, and action in the play. This study delves into the ideological and strategic implications of corporeality in Angels in America and postulates that Kushner politicizes corporeality to strive for equity for homosexual males and AIDS patients and to inspire sympathy and understanding humanity through the AIDS-infected male homosexual grotesquery, illness narratives, and sexual explicitness.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

A Postcolonial Reading of Frank McCourt

Post-colonialism, as an academic discipline, analyzes, explains, and responds to the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism. The Irish American writer Frank McCourt won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1996 memoir Angela’s Ashes, a tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood. Later in 1999, he authored ‘Tis, which continues the narrative of his life, picking up from the end of Angela’s Ashes and detailing his life after he returned to New York. Being mostly analyzed within the framework of personal growth or feminism, Frank McCourt’s memoir, therefore, has been regarded as a motivational life story. Within the postcolonial context, however, his memoir can be interpreted from a quite different perspective. Although Ireland has never been a colony of America, certain critical concepts from post-colonialism can be applied to the exploration of the identity formation of Frank McCourt.

Steve Reich

Steve Reich (b. 1936) is an American composer who, alongside Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young, is considered an originator of musical minimalism. His compositions consist primarily of instrumental pieces for various ensembles, ranging from solo instruments with prerecorded tape to pieces for full orchestra. The most frequent configurations make prominent use of melodic percussion instruments, attesting to his training as a percussionist. Reich engaged periodically with disparate musical traditions throughout his early career—technological experimentalism in the 1960s, African drumming and Hebrew cantillation in the 1970s—and has since forged a compositional idiom distinguished by its attention to pattern and pulsation. Born and raised primarily in New York City, Reich studied philosophy at Cornell University and music at Juilliard before moving across the country in 1961 to study at Mills College with Luciano Berio. Moving within the Bay Area’s experimental art scenes, Reich discovered the process of phasing when working with tape loops, leading to his first acknowledged pieces: It’s Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966). After relocating to downtown New York in 1965, Reich translated this phasing process into instrumental music, resulting in works such as Piano Phase and Violin Phase (both 1967), as well as his influential manifesto, “Music as a Gradual Process.” In the early 1970s, Reich’s palette expanded to encompass new timbres and processes of pattern and repetition. The large-scale Drumming (1970–1971) and Music for 18 Musicians (1974–1976)—both conceived for his ensemble, Steve Reich and Musicians—are exemplars of his mature minimalist style and helped establish his reputation both within and outside of the classical music world. By the early 1980s, Reich’s music began a process of legitimation within academia and performance institutions: Tehillim (1981) and The Desert Music (1983), for instance, were composed for major orchestras. Both reveal a rekindled interest in voice, text, and speech which found new expression in Different Trains (1988), a string quartet which utilized speech fragments of Holocaust survivor testimonies as generative melodic and harmonic material. Reich continued to explore this technique in large-scale documentary music video theater works (The Cave [1990–93] and Three Tales [2000–03]), as well as chamber works such as City Life (1995) and WTC 9/11 (2010). By the end of the millennium, Reich was widely regarded as America’s foremost living composer; his Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for Double Sextet (2007) seemed a belated affirmation of this perspective.

Wonderful Worth & Worthy Wonder: The revival of a forgotten concept to strike a balance in technological exhibition design

<p>As museums develop their roles as social and political forces, the role of the exhibition designer has evolved and become more complex. The new role demands increased consideration as new technologies impact the demand for recreational learning experiences (Lake-Hammond & White, 2015). Nearly thirty years ago Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stephen Greenblatt introduced the terms ‘resonance and wonder’ to describe the viewer’s experience and connection to the exhibits. Greenblatt asserted both ‘resonance and wonder’ as essential to an exhibition experience but stressed the need for a balance between the two (1991). The significance of Greenblatt’s perspective has become more prominent with the current shift in museum exhibitions that engage technological forms of representation. This study asserts that Greenblatt’s argument continues to be relevant today, as museum professionals arbitrate the balances and imbalances posed between resonance, now interpreted as worth, and wonder. The terms were first defined through thematic analysis to identify consistent elements that produce the concepts and further applied to the narrative analysis on perspectives of technological integration in museums. Using the broader contemporary definitions of ‘wonder and worth’ this research then applied what was learned from the literature to a physical context by analysing use of wonder and worth in two current exhibitions; Te Papa’s 2015 “Gallipoli: Scale of Our War” and Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum’s 2014 interactive pen design. In doing so the main finding suggested that the balance of wonder and worth can be achieved through encouraging a human connection and empathy which can be extended with the use of new technologies that are appropriate for the intent of the exhibit. These findings were delivered in the form of a manifesto to facilitate the exhibition design process, encourage consideration for the balance between wonder and worth and lessen the stigma around technological representation in museums.</p>

Wonderful Worth & Worthy Wonder: The revival of a forgotten concept to strike a balance in technological exhibition design

<p>As museums develop their roles as social and political forces, the role of the exhibition designer has evolved and become more complex. The new role demands increased consideration as new technologies impact the demand for recreational learning experiences (Lake-Hammond & White, 2015). Nearly thirty years ago Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stephen Greenblatt introduced the terms ‘resonance and wonder’ to describe the viewer’s experience and connection to the exhibits. Greenblatt asserted both ‘resonance and wonder’ as essential to an exhibition experience but stressed the need for a balance between the two (1991). The significance of Greenblatt’s perspective has become more prominent with the current shift in museum exhibitions that engage technological forms of representation. This study asserts that Greenblatt’s argument continues to be relevant today, as museum professionals arbitrate the balances and imbalances posed between resonance, now interpreted as worth, and wonder. The terms were first defined through thematic analysis to identify consistent elements that produce the concepts and further applied to the narrative analysis on perspectives of technological integration in museums. Using the broader contemporary definitions of ‘wonder and worth’ this research then applied what was learned from the literature to a physical context by analysing use of wonder and worth in two current exhibitions; Te Papa’s 2015 “Gallipoli: Scale of Our War” and Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum’s 2014 interactive pen design. In doing so the main finding suggested that the balance of wonder and worth can be achieved through encouraging a human connection and empathy which can be extended with the use of new technologies that are appropriate for the intent of the exhibit. These findings were delivered in the form of a manifesto to facilitate the exhibition design process, encourage consideration for the balance between wonder and worth and lessen the stigma around technological representation in museums.</p>

Commentary from Established Scholars: A man is not a tree, The Aftermath

In 30 June 2020, Dr. Farid Shomali, an architect meditating on current religion debates and human behaviors, was the first person on planet earth to reject the burial of the body in a peer review condensed two pages research paper or manifesto. While people from all thoughts and religions; the educated, the intelligent, the illiterate, even the rich and the broke practiced or witnessed that, in site or in media, from the beginning of creation tell now. His research paper: A man is not a tree will show you why GOD will never say to put people under the ground let alone cremate them, and how burial and cremation are deadly sins since GOD rejected it in his words, and practicing it will lead to complete destruction of Human thoughts and feelings. Then he tries to come up with his best solution.He is calling prohibiting burying and cremation the 11th commandment. The message must be spread to the entire world, so the Author encourages people to include his idea in religion debates, schoolbooks, university books, TVs, newspapers and manifestoes. Dr. Shomali while waiting for biblical institutions and all other religious institution in the whole world, to justify their position; telling us from where did they get this stupid and wrong idea called “burying” "you don't even bury a pencil, you bury a human!". Which is the most disgusting and stupid idea in the whole world that shows they got it wrong. He ask people to give him the Nobel peace prize for his research paper and if not the Templeton Prize or Pulitzer prize or at least a certificate from all of those recognized institutions and he also asks to announce June 30th 2020 a “no burial and no cremation day”- Note: no co-authors, Institutional or Influencers’ interventions

Taliban takeover: Charlotte Bellis faces perils outside ‘enemy territory’

New Zealand-born Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Peter Arnett was one of a handful of journalists allowed to stay in Baghdad as the American offensive against Iraq began in 1991. Reporting first from the rooftop of the Al-Rashid Hotel, he chronicled—quite literally – the impact of the bombing campaign. But on Day Four he was taken to a bombed-out building in a suburb that was then an infant milk formula factory would later gain notoriety thanks to investigative reporter Seymour Hersh—Abu Ghraib. His report was accurate. In 2003, Arnett was once again in ‘enemy territory’ and (by his own later admission, unwisely) gave an interview to Iraqi television during the Second Iraq War. In the interview, he stated that the civilian casualties inflicted by the Coalition forces were counterproductive. In August 2021, it was the turn of another New Zealand journalist, Charlotte Bellis reporting for Al Jazeera English, to tell us what she sees. And much of the world has now seen her. The author examines the pitfalls that she may face.