Gordon Keith Chalmers and the Politics of Advanced Placement

This article investigates the role of mid-century conservatism in shaping the College Board's Advanced Placement program. Kenyon president Gordon Keith Chalmers and superintendent of New Trier public schools William Cornog, who led the committee that directly gave rise to the AP Program, understood themselves as classically liberal but socially conservative, and their proposed program was rooted in principles associated with that movement. In keeping with other mid-century conservative thinkers, they promoted humanistic inquiry that introduced all American students, regardless of backgrounds, to the notion of individual freedom, in spaces set apart from economic activity. This article explains that Chalmers and Cornog agreed that schools should focus on reinforcing and transmitting a distinctly American heritage of constitutionalism, individualism, and universal morality by way of the liberal arts. The article ends by establishing how this ideological framing contradicts the Advanced Placement program's current shape.

Prepositional phrases and case in North American (heritage) Icelandic

The paper investigates the use of PPs, specifically prepositions and the case marking on their DP arguments, in moribund North American (heritage) Icelandic (NAmIce), using data from a map task experiment. Since prepositional phrases combine semantic properties with morpho-syntactic properties, PPs allow us to investigate the relative vulnerability of both domains at once. Our results show that while the prepositional inventory of NAmIce is not reduced as compared to Modern Icelandic, the choice of prepositions is subject to crosslinguistic influence from the dominant language English. For case, we find an increase in the use of nominative and accusative case at the expense of the dative; prepositions may take over case functions too. Our results are in line with previous research on case in heritage languages as well as studies on language change, while partially contradicting the assumption that loss is reversely related to acquisition.

Latinxs, Discrimination, and Crime

The Latinx community is ever expanding in America, accounting for over half of the population growth since 2010. While immigration numbers have decreased, Latinxs are still projected to represent 27.5% of the total American population by 2060. The Latinx community holds a distinct position in the American racial hierarchy, sometimes sandwiched between their White and Black counterparts, but often intertwined with the oppressions faced by Blacks as well as confronting their own marginalization. Furthermore, Latinxs often find themselves in a unique disjuncture between their cultural heritage and American norms. Such factors coalesce into a distinct lived experience for Latinxs in America. Due to their structural position in American society, it is unsurprising that Latinxs are disproportionately entangled in the criminal justice system at the state and federal levels, with Latino men being incarcerated at a rate nearly three times higher than their White counterparts. The unique American history of the Latinx community created factors that distinctly impact those labeled Latinx. From the Spanish colonization of Latin and North Americas, the Mexican-American War, Mexican Repatriation, to the modern conservative push to “build the wall,” those of Latinx American heritage have been racialized, marginalized, and oppressed in the United States. This history has led to an era of Juan Crow and a crimmigration system that distinctly legalizes the discrimination and perpetuates the marginalization of Latinxs in America. The lived experiences of Latinxs, particularly their encounters with discrimination, cannot be separated from their entanglement with the American criminal justice system. Several unique cultural factors, such as ethnic identity, familism, and religion, also aid Latinxs in their resilience against discrimination and its impacts. Further research to empirically inform the development of culturally appropriate interventions and policies for Latinxs is imperative in promoting equity and inclusion for one of America’s most overlooked and vulnerable populations.

Mahjong

Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture illustrates how the spaces between tiles and the moments between games have fostered distinct social cultures in the United States. When this mass-produced game crossed the Pacific it created waves of popularity over the twentieth century. Mahjong narrates the history of this game to show how it has created a variety of meanings, among them American modernity, Chinese American heritage, and Jewish American women’s culture. As it traveled from China to the United States and caught on with Hollywood starlets, high society, middle-class housewives, and immigrants alike, mahjong became a quintessentially American pastime. This book also reveals the ways in which women leveraged a game for a variety of economic and cultural purposes, including entrepreneurship, self-expression, philanthropy, and ethnic community building. One result was the forging of friendships within mahjong groups that lasted decades. This study unfolds in two parts. The first half is focused on mahjong’s history as related to consumerism, with a close examination of its economic and cultural origins. The second half explores how mahjong interwove with the experiences of racial inclusion and exclusion in the evolving definition of what it means to be American. Mahjong players, promoters, entrepreneurs, and critics tell a broad story of American modernity. The apparent contradictions of the game—as both American and foreign, modern and supposedly ancient, domestic and disruptive of domesticity—reveal the tensions that lie at the heart of modern American culture.

The Reciprocal Classroom

The essay presents a comprehensive overview of Diane di Prima’s life work as reflecting her Italian American heritage. The essay links di Prima’s multicultural heritage to other Beat texts and includes numerous examples of how she uses di Prima’s work to teach writing and literature to traditional and non-traditional college students, many of them first generation.

TOM CIPULLO (b. 1956)Long Island Songs (2005)

This chapter examines Tom Cipullo’s Long Island Songs (2005). Cipullo’s Italian-American heritage, combined with a family background in jazz, makes for a potently individual brand of unabashed romanticism. His intimate understanding of the voice has enabled him to mine a vein of luxuriant lyricism without exceeding bounds of taste. His harmonies are richly sensual and the music flows freely through constantly changing metres, capturing fluctuating moods effortlessly. Arching phrases exploit the voice’s full capacity and highlight the sensuousness of language and timbre. These texts by William Heyen, set with meticulous care, prove to be ideal vehicles for his musical vision. Every nuance is calibrated, yet the effect is entirely spontaneous. One is sometimes reminded of the great French song composers, such as Debussy, in the use of sudden tender, floated pianissimi.

DAVID BRUCE (b. 1970)That Time With You (2013)

This chapter addresses US-born British composer David Bruce’s That Time With You (2013). This impressive cycle retains clear stylistic traces of Bruce’s American heritage. His basic idiom is tonal and strongly grounded, and also contains modal elements. It demands a well-schooled singer with a wide expressive range, stamina, and good breath control. The singer must also be calm and unflappable, so as not to be fazed by the relentlessly fast, irregular rhythmic patterns in the first and third songs. The vocal writing in general is warm, earthy, and womanly. The composer sensibly keeps within the voice’s richest and most rewarding middle range, avoiding extremes. This means that words can be heard easily, and a palette of sensual colours explored. Ultimately, the specially commissioned poems evoke an intuitive response. Bruce sees the cycle as belonging to the tradition of ‘sorrowful songs’ and, of course, the blues. In the first and third settings (‘The Sunset Lawn’ and ‘Black Dress’), the singer is the voice of Death, but in the other two (“That Time with You’ and ‘Bring me Again’), the outpouring of regret is more personal, yet somehow strangely distanced.