15th Annual HarrisonSymposium Abstracts (2012)
The paper examines the emerging involvement of youth (ages 15-24) in peace processes of developing states. “Developing states” is a key term in my paper because developing states make up the majority of civil wars and have large populations of youth in relation to their overall populations. In my paper, I use a constructivist lens to examine how demographics/populations of youth get “categorized” in relation to their involvement in armed, internal conflicts; the categories include “victim” (mostly young women, girls, and child soldiers) “perpetrator” (young men directly involved in the conflict), or “peacebuilder” (a less explored, new category in peacebuilding literature). Through this categorization, youth receive different governmental services and access to resources during the peace process that directly follows the end of a conflict. An example might be that young men face criminal charges for wartime activities in government justice systems whereas young boys instead undergo trauma-related rehabilitation or enroll in primary schooling, even though both examples might have fought with the rebel army.
I traveled to Sierra Leone this past winter break and conducted a focus group of youth and interviews with leaders of youth organizations. From my research, it became clear that Sierra Leone developed an alternative category for its youth and considered them active agents in the peace process; as “peacebuilders” they educate their peers on the importance of peace, engage in civil society at a local level, and serve as youth representatives for their community in national political activities. Sierra Leone is remarkable in that the government has created long-term institutions, such as a National Youth Commission, in an attempt to provide youth with a “voice” in government and realistic tools, such as vocational schooling, for creating sustainable lives. The timing of my trip allowed me to see the aftermath of the formal, United Nations peace process (successfully pulled out in 2005) as well as the state’s success a decade after the conflict’s ending in 2001. My conclusion stems from Sierra Leone by suggesting that this case study provides a positive representation of youth as “peacebuilders” because Sierra Leone has benefited from their large youth population by viewing them as valuable resources to the peace process.
In 1894, Lockwood de Forest designed an Indian-inspired carved teakwood room for a house in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The room was commissioned by Alice Greenwood Chapman, the heiress of T.A. Chapman Company, a dry-goods store, for her music room after she viewed a similar room at the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition (Figure 1). After Chapman’s death in 1938, the room was transfered to the campus of Milwaukee-Downer College before it was relocated to Lawrence University in 1968. The Teakwood Room was named appropriately after the room’s intricately carved and sculpted teakwood that encompasses most of the space in hand-carved columns, beams, brackets, arches, cabinets, fireplace mantel, desk, table, and four chairs. The room is further decorated with six hanging light fixtures that were designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, two oriental rugs, and various sculptural decorations that are from Chapman’s collection (Figure 2). De Forest created his Indian-inspired rooms, such as the Teakwood Room, with the aim of preserving the art and architecture of Ahmedabad before it disappeared and the trade of wood carving was lost. After further research and investigation into Lockwood de Forest’s published photographic books of wood-carved domestic houses in Ahmedabad, India, it is evident that the Teakwood Room exemplifies how de Forest copied specific architectural and decorative elements from traditional Indian woodcarvings and adapted them into a product that could be marketed and sold to the American upper class patron. This paper will examine the extent to which de Forest borrowed and copied decorative designs and architecture from Ahmedabad, and how he adapted these traditional Indian characteristics into a new product that appealed to the European and American elite.
This paper explores the question of whether or not the goals of the “modest” courtship novel are compatible with those of realist fiction by analyzing Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela through the lens of John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Realist fiction by nature requires some level of “immodest” material—material that might even be described as “pornographic” by some—because of its pretence of exhibiting the real, which Richardson refers to as “VICE in its proper Colours” (31). At the same time, however, Richardson was resolute in styling his narrative around supposedly “modest” rhetorical strategies. I endeavor to illustrate the ways in which Richardson misunderstood linguistic modesty as the obligation to eradicate all direct references to sexuality from his text and to show that, by meticulously abiding by this obligation, he unintentionally opened his novel up to pornographic readings. I argue that, instead, truly “modest” language acknowledges open discussion of sexuality as an imperative of realist fiction, even as it takes pains to steer the narrative style away from vulgarity. Cleland’s overtly pornographic response to Pamela serves as an example of a text that strives to adhere to the principles of genuine linguistic modesty. Through a comparison of the language of both novels, it is possible to observe a divide between the “moral” novel and the “modest” language that ostensibly accompanies this type of narrative. What Cleland reveals is that it is not modesty but morality that ultimately causes the conflict perceived in Pamela; if the moral novel is to conform to the principles of realism to which Richardson so firmly clings, it must self-consciously sacrifice some of its own morality. Cleland, then, allows for Pamela to be read as a hypocritical novel, one that undermines its dual identity as a realist and a moral fiction through its insistence that the two genres are fundamentally compatible.
The Marshall Field & Co. department store on State Street in Chicago has been a landmark in architecture, merchandizing and customer service since 1873. At the turn of the twentieth century, its pioneering approach to modern retail appealed to a customer base made up largely of upper- and middle-class women. My paper seeks to explain what the experience of visiting and shopping at Marshall Field’s meant to these well-to-do Chicagoans. Why did the aesthetics of the store appeal to them? What does the merchandise tell us about their tastes? To what extent did the store shape their interaction with nascent consumer capitalism? I use Marshall Field’s as a case study to examine the confluence of late Victorian gender roles and consumer capitalism in “the City of the Century.” In so doing, my paper fills several gaps in the existing historiography. Primarily, there has been little scholarly research on the daily life and culture of middle-class and elite women in Chicago. Most academic writing about Chicago women concerns vice (e.g. the infamous Everleigh Club and many less opulent brothels), poverty (e.g. Jane Addams’ efforts at Hull-House), or progressivism and temperance (e.g. the philanthropic activities of the Chicago Women’s Club and Women’s City Club). There does not seem to have been much scholarly interest in quotidian aspects of the life of well-off women in Chicago. Secondly, existing historiography about Marshall Field’s either situates the store as just another player in the developing culture of department stores in America, or gives a nuts-and-bolts business and genealogical history of the Marshall Field’s empire. But because Chicago experienced such an unprecedented period of economic vitality between 1871 and World War I, and because as the city’s largest mercantile house, Marshall Field’s was a prominent indicator of Chicago’s economic strength, I argue that it warrants closer inspection as a cultural index. My paper asserts that Marshall Field & Co. was a nexus point linking the daily life and aesthetic ideals of well-off Chicago women to the rapid expansion of consumer capitalism. Furthermore, as the store both shaped and reflected the social aesthetic of the bourgeois shopper, it was implicated in the culture of the shopper’s children and grandchildren for the next hundred-and-twenty-odd years. Marshall Field’s thus became inextricably linked with Chicago’s identity: even in the decade before it closed in 2005, the store was the third most visited tourist attraction in the city. What is remarkable about this fact is not that a major American city came to be identified by an enormous store, or even that its citizens developed an emotional attachment to the store. What is remarkable is that the cultural identity of a major American city was permanently remolded by a generation of bourgeois Victorian housewives over a century ago, with nothing much more than French lace and furs, Oriental carpets and a businessman’s honest promise to “Give the lady what she wants!”
This paper discusses the defining characteristics of the Impressionist movement and how the movement in Latin America differed from that in Europe. I propose that, although examples of Impressionist paintings from Europe and from Latin America appear similar, the artists had different intentions behind their paintings. The paper focuses in particular on Fernando Fader, an Argentine painter.
SMART (Skills Mastery and Resistance Training) Girls is a national Boys and Girls Club of America program that seeks to build confidence and life skills in young adolescent girls. I have taught the program to 5th and 6th grade girls for the past two years as a part of my job as a Program Assistant at the Boys and Girls Club of the Fox Valley at Badger Elementary. In my Senior Capstone paper, I sought to update the program by revising the lessons to re-focus them on the issues that girls are facing today, and by incorporating elements of the depression prevention program Coping with Stress. My paper details the changes I made to each lesson from the original SMART Girls course based on questionnaires which I collected from the 5th and 6th grade girls at Badger in order to help me identify the areas and issues in their lives that they find the most stressful. Additionally, I explain the logic behind my selection of certain depression prevention concepts from the Coping with Stress course and how I incorporated these ideas into my revision of the program. Finally, my paper contains detailed lesson plans for the revised SMART Girls program.
With the support of the Mellon Foundation Senior Experience Grant, I am currently running a pilot test of the revised program with a group of 12 5th and 6th grade girls at Badger Elementary. In order to measure the effectiveness of the program, the pilot test will include several assessments which the participants complete once before the program begins and once again after the program has ended. Additionally, I have plans to conduct small focus groups with the participants in order to gain feedback on the revised program that may guide my further refinement of the program. This project has been approved by the Lawrence University IRB. Finally, with the support of the Boys and Girls Club of the Fox Valley, I am developing plans to teach the revised SMART Girls program to other SMART Girls program facilitators at other Boys and Girls Club of the Fox Valley after school program sites in June 2012. I hope to see my revised program in use at other after school program sites in Fall 2012.
As a controversial filmmaker, Spike Lee consciously infuses his films with what he deems is black history. This begs a larger question of how history manifests differently in various mediums and whether or not these manifestations represent opposing types of historical truths. If Lee is anything, he is a historian of what I identify as metaphorical history as opposed to “history.” I identify metaphorical history as consisting of communal history based on a group's perceptions, attitudes, and collective memory, whereas, “history” consists of science, facts, documentation, and traditionally written historical books. The audience cannot pin down the history represented in Lee's films to a singular event or understanding because his history is amorphous in quality, pervading his movies with the sense and feel of the period in question. Do the Right Thing, Lee's third professional piece, is a film mean to bring unconscious racial tensions to the audience's attention. While Do the Right Thing is a fictional story, it embodies many cultural understandings inherent to the minority populations of New York in the eighties and thus serves as a prime example of metaphorical history. At times, Lee even manipulates “history” to underscore and heighten his version of metaphorical history. To prove Lee’s stance as a metaphoric historian, my paper interrogates the sense of history in Do the Right Thing through a cross-examination of the film with traditional works of history. I first identify the historical references contained within the movie and analyze how Lee functions as a traditional historian. I found that with many of the historical events referenced in the film, such as the death of Edmund Perry, Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Stewart, and Michael Griffith, Lee fails to depict in an appropriate manner befitting a historian. Next, I compare Do the Right Thing with history books to demonstrate the extent to which the film engages with an implicit understanding of history. The traditional works of history I used are William Julius Wilson's book The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy; Robert Sam Anson's book Best Intentions: The Education and Killing of Edmund Perry; and, Jonathan Rieder's book Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn against Liberalism. I found that Lee's depiction of racism within the film corresponds quite strongly with the “histories” recorded by other historians. In all, I found that Do the Right Thing does not constitute a “historically” accurate portrayal of a singular ghetto; however, it metaphorically embodies and portrays ghetto life and contemporary racism.
My paper explores British Journalism at the turn of the twentieth century. Specifically, it claims that the Boer War (1899-1902) was a pivotal moment for British newspapers, and new ways of journalism would emerge during the conflict. The paper first examines how the established way of journalism, “Old Journalism” would come into conflict with the changes and innovations of the “New Journalism.” It then explores the early pioneers of New Journalism; W.T. Stead and Alfred Harmsworth. Through these two men, the twin branches of New Journalism would be formed, to be seen later during the Boer War. Stead, through his sensationalist expose pieces for the Pall Mall Gazette crusading for social justice, was the first prominent Britain journalist to engage in investigative journalism. Stead’s side of New journalism, which relied on personal accounts from investigative reporting to promote the welfare of those without a voice, would come into prominence during the Boer War. Emily Hobhouse, a British anti-war activist, would use the techniques of investigative journalism to discover and publicize the deaths of Afrikaner detainees, mostly women and children, in the British run internment camps. Hobhouse’s efforts proved the power of New Journalism, and by pushing the bounds of acceptable reportage in newspapers, would usher in a new stage in British Journalism. On the other hand, Harmsworth’s contribution to New Journalism would be to create the first profitable, populist paper. Harmsworth began his career in journalism early, and worked on George Newnes’s innovative weekly newspaper Tit-Bits, which emphasized human interest stories, contests, and most of all, a very readable writing style. Harmsworth believed that Newnes’s formula could be applied to a daily newspaper. His Daily Mail became the first mass circulation paper in Britain, reaching a million copies sold daily in late 1899. During the Boer War, Harmsworth’s direction for the Daily Mail would be instrumental in proving the vitality of New Journalism, and showed how the Old Journalism would in later decades be washed away. For instance, the Daily Mail’s coverage of the siege of Mafeking would immortalize Colonel Baden-Powell in the hearts of the British Public, and the Mail’s special correspondent Sarah Wilson emphasized his heroic qualities. Additionally, the Daily Mail had a jingoistic tone during the war, which helped push circulation amongst the highly patriotic middle and lower classes. In conclusion, the changes that New Journalism ushered in, could be observed during the Boer War, and its modernizations would eventually transform the entire British newspaper industry in the early twentieth century.
This paper investigates the quality of education in San Pedro, Ecuador. San Pedro is a very small community in the highlands of the Andes Mountains in the province of Imbabura. The school in which the study was conducted was “Nazacota Puento,” which serves students from the pre-school level through the ninth grade. The paper goes into detail about the education students receive in relation to the standards provided by the Ecuadorian state. The researcher, who taught at the school, describes her experience as both a teacher and a co-worker in the community and addresses the challenges faced by teachers and students alike. In this section, the researcher addresses issues of communication, respect, and dependability between teachers as well as the nature of the relationship between the school and community.
Through interviews of teachers, parents, and students, the researcher looks into the meaning of an education for this small community and discusses discrepancies between the theory and reality of these beliefs surrounding education. The original research question was, “why is there a discrepancy between the reality and ideology of the education being experienced in San Pedro, Ecuador?”
Further, the researcher offers her own suggestions about how to improve the quality of education being offered at Nazacota Puento. She promotes the possibility of localized curriculum where the content being taught at the school is based on the needs and assets of the community it serves. She gives some examples of what an education that serves the future and present of its learners and community and is based on the beliefs and traditions where the education is taking place could look like.
While developmental psychologists widely acknowledge the importance of socioeconomic status (SES) to children’s developmental outcomes, the SES variable is notorious being inconsistently and poorly defined. Definitions of SES vary widely, often held together only by the commonality that they describe stratification of groups or individuals within a system of limited resources. Aware of this problem, the American Psychological Association recently created a Task Force on SES, charged with suggesting better ways of defining and using the SES variable in psychology. However, reports from this Task Force have not addressed the particular difficulties of defining and measuring SES as it relates to children.
Measuring SES in children, however, is worth specific attention. This is not only because SES has been documented as highly impactful on child development, but also because SES should not be assumed to be experienced by children in the same way as an adult. More specifically, measuring SES for children requires taking into account the child’s family situation. While an adult’s SES might typically be measured by that individual’s educational status, income and occupation (a methodological standard which itself has been questioned by many researchers), for a child, a number of adults, such as parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles might affect the manner in which the child experiences SES.
This permits situations in which children’s experiences of socioeconomic status may not equate with their adult parents’. For example, adults close to the child may collaborate to potentially buffer the child from the reality of the adults’ socioeconomic situation. On the other hand, children with divorced parents might become more aware of socioeconomic realities if one parent has a very different SES than the other. Unfortunately, a common way psychologists assess SES for children is through basic dichotomous measures such as free lunch status or being above or below the poverty line. Such measures fail to account for the potentially complex socioeconomic environments children experience, thus failing to provide much information on the particular mechanisms through which child development is affected by SES. This leaves researchers with little ability to explain how or why SES is so significant to child development, hampering psychology’s contribution to suggesting policy actions that can be taken to reduce the harmful effects of low SES on children.
For these reasons, I argue that psychology is in need of a new standard measure of SES for children and their families. In particular, I draw on advances in public health and sociology to illuminate possible pathways for approaching the challenge of measuring SES in psychological research with children. These fields have emphasized the importance of grounding SES measures in theoretical perspective to avoid making unwarranted assumptions about what SES means and thus how it should be measured. Through this explicit, multi-theoretical approach, these fields have progressed to the idea of subjective SES, or measuring SES in terms how individuals perceive their own SES. I ultimately argue for the development of a child- and family-friendly version of a subjective SES measure to complement objective measures in psychology.
On May 14, 2011, Nafissatou Diallo, a maid at Sofitel Hotel New York, entered the room of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, general director of the IMF. Several hours later, Strauss-Kahn was arrested by the New York police while he was waiting to board a plane at JFK airport. DSK, as he is known in France, was accused of having sexually assaulted Diallo while she was trying to clean his room.
Upon hearing of the arrest, media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic began harshly judging both Diallo and DSK— Diallo was both a “seductress” and an innocent victim; DSK was simultaneously a "pervert” and “just seducing, as a politician should.” One of the most intriguing discussions surrounding this event was that of French and American feminist scholars. While most American feminists condemned DSK’s actions, a section of well-respected French feminists, including Irene Thery, Claude Habib, and Mona Ozouf, defended the politician. Thery, DSK’s most virulent feminist defender, went as far as to publish two articles framing seduction as a French cultural value, defending “the delicious surprise of stolen kisses.”
The stakes of this debate are much larger than the guilt or innocence of DSK or the scandalous statements made by Thery. In fact, the feminist discourse surrounding the DSK affair is linked to both the way modern French society conceives of sexual violence and the philosophical base of the French Republic. The arguments of Thery, Habib, and Ozouf are based on a conception of the individual solidified during the French Revolution, a conception which holds that it is the abstract individual, the individual removed from his or her social circumstances, who belongs to the French nation. Feminist arguments in DSK’s defense reveal the tendency of the French political system, because of this conception of the individual, to ignore and deny social inequality. Thus the reactions of Thery, Ozouf, and Habib show the need for the French to reconsider how the individual is understood in political discourse in order to be more faithful to the value that French republicanism places on equality.
Yves Saint Laurent introduced his “Mondrian Dress” to a small group of clients in his private salon in Paris on August 2, 1965. Days later, American newspapers and popular magazines were featuring Saint Laurent’s dresses. Saint Laurent’s original design was a boxy, shift dress, a type of dress that is cut to hang straight down from the shoulders and fit very loosely. The dresses, made out of wool jersey, were divided into grids with thick black lines and color-blocked so that the rectangles created by the grid lines were filled in with different primary colors, in order to resemble Dutch painter Piet Mondrian’s recognizable compositions from the 1920s and 1930s. The “Mondrian style,” as it came to be known, was an instant sensation with American fashion devotees and casual shoppers alike; American designers appropriated Saint Laurent’s appropriation and applied it to everything from dresses to shoes to make-up products. An analysis of advertisements and news articles from 1965 unquestionably reveals the dress’s popularity and influence in American culture.
This paper will explore why a Mondrian-inspired fashion design became such a hit with a population that consisted of young Americans who were decidedly not art connoisseurs. An examination of the fashion trends in American culture prior to the debut of the Mondrian dress reveals that the dress would have been seen as breaking from the more traditional-looking styles of the fifties and early sixties, appealing to the growing interest in British Mod styles. However, in order to fully understand why the dress was such a success, it is necessary to establish what Mondrian and Saint Laurent meant to the American audience. Both men can be examined in terms of what they signified to Americans during the 1960s; although Mondrian stood for the serious, spiritual art of the Modernist avant-garde, he was also represented in the public eye in the works of Tom Wesselmann and Roy Lichtenstein, artists who characterized the highly visible new artistic movement pop art, which began in the late 1950s in America. Saint Laurent embodied the elite world of French couture, which was highly influential on American fashion throughout the fifties and early sixties. By combining signifiers of both high and low culture, the Mondrian dress successfully blurred the lines between these typically mutually exclusive realms, aligning the dress with the larger artistic goals of the pop art movement. Saint Laurent’s dress not only challenged Modernism by parodying the art of Piet Mondrian, but perhaps fulfilled Mondrian’s artistic goals better than the original paintings. Mondrian was interested in democratizing art, and believed that everyday objects should be raised to the level of works of art. However, Mondrian’s paintings, confined to the museum, have not reached the level of mass appeal that Mondrian had hoped to achieve. Saint Laurent’s dresses were able to infuse everyday life with works of art and brought Mondrian’s designs, if distilled through a Pop-art lens, to every woman, man, and child in America in 1965.
Homi K. Bhabha describes stereotype as phobia and fetish: changing the object of analysis itself and preventing the concretization of racial schema. It paves the way for a colonial fantasy that culminates in Otherness: “an articulation of differences contained within fantasy of origin and identity.” 17th century Lima, Peru was a cosmopolitan trading hub that continuously rewrote its convoluted stereotypes of ethnicity, class, and occupation, complicating the Inquisitorial proceedings that were framed by European beliefs about diabolism. It is within this space that the colonial witch was created; desperate clients and ingredients with shifting functions were the tools of the women accused of working as magical practitioners. They used the tri-continental syncretism that created them to continuously negotiate their identities and reap the benefits of their position within Otherness.
Anna Jankowski: Memoria de prácticas: Observación de proyectos bajo la dirección de la Dra. Sara Quandt (Wake Forest University) sobre la salud pública de los argicultores temporeros hispanohablantes de la región de Winston-Salem, Carolina del Norte
[Internship Memoir: Observation of Projects Under the Direction of Dr. Sara Quandt (Wake Forest University) Focusing on the Public Health of Spanish-speaking Migrant Workers in the Region of Winston-Salem, North Carolina]
This paper is a reflective statement on what I learned during my internship with Lawrence alumna, Dr. Sara Quandt (’73) of Wake Forest University, as she conducted research on various health issues among Spanish-speaking migrant workers throughout North Carolina. I discussed how I accomplished goals set by Dr. Quandt in order to gain insight into the field of public health while observing her work as an applied medical anthropologist. My goal in this paper was to reflect on the overall experience while also highlighting how this internship allowed me to evaluate my interdisciplinary interests in public health, Hispanic culture, and the Spanish language.
The question of women in Chinese society has consistently been an important one. Throughout history, the role of women has been both strictly defined and harshly criticized. According to traditional Confucian doctrine, women are on the very bottom of the social hierarchy of relationships created to mirror the so-called “natural” hierarchy of the ruler and his subject. Within the home, which was the only appropriate place for a woman, the preservation of this “natural” hierarchy meant that the ideal woman was expected to be completely subservient and obedient for her entire life. There was no time during a woman’s life that she was able to be an autonomous human being free from male control and influence. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, women’s rights were beginning to become a key social issue that would eventually lead to the emancipation of China as a whole. Both women and men were gaining access to education and to foreign thought. Foreign texts were translated into Chinese vernacular, making them more accessible to the newly literate population. As modern authors also began writing in the vernacular, they were influenced by the generally more progressive thought of the foreign authors whose works had been translated earliest.
During a 1923 talk entitled “What Happens after Nora Leaves Home?” given at the Beijing Women’s Normal College, China’s first vernacular short story author Lu Xun (1881-1936) asked his audience to consider what would happen were a woman in Chinese society to abandon the traditional role assigned to her, as per Henrik Ibsen’s (1828-1906) Nora, a woman who had escaped an abusive marriage to live on her own. He asked his audience to consider the relationship between society and the individual, and to consider by what means the Chinese Nora could be at least as emancipated as her male counterparts. When the Chinese Nora leaves home, she is no longer a valuable or successful member of society. Unless she wanted to starve to death, she had to either turn to a life of crime and prostitution or return to her husband, thus becoming once again a puppet controlled by men.
As Chinese authors explored the possibilities for a Chinese Nora, the “new woman” character emerged. However, as Lu Xun hypothesized, even the “new woman” was unable to escape from the bondage of Confucian gender roles and traditional values if she lacked economic resources. Throughout the May Fourth Period (1915-1925), authors explored this possibility of a “new woman” character who is free from the bonds of traditional Confucian gender roles. However, female characters continued to be problematized by many of these same authors in early twentieth century writing. Authors preserved traditional literary tropes in which female characters are the bringers of tragedy, both to themselves and to those around them, and despite the encouragement of female emancipation, authors maintained these traditional literary tropes to keep the “new woman” in literature trapped in Confucian gender roles.
One of the most striking aspects of Sierra Leonean music is the extent to which it is politicized. Explicitly political music—in which musicians criticize or praise specific political parties and politicians—is ubiquitous in Sierra Leone. The music dominates popular radio stations and pervades street corners; street vendors blast the newest politically charged hits through distorted speakers, while club DJ’s repeatedly play their favorite tunes at eardrum-bursting volumes. Most importantly, fans have frequent and passionate discussions about political music.
Indeed, virtually any discussion of Sierra Leonean music reflects on the country’s political environment. While some Sierra Leoneans wax poetic about a musician’s sensual singing voice, intoxicating grooves, or good looks, most of the Sierra Leonean youth I talked to like music for political reasons.
Several scholars have attempted to explain the popularity of Sierra Leonean political music, and most explanations focus on the “voice of the youth.” According to the “voice of the youth” explanation, the youth—a large and volatile but unrepresented demographic—use political music to communicate their grievances to politically powerful elders. Since widespread illiteracy limits the effectiveness of print media, and since few Sierra Leoneans can afford televisions, political music (mostly played on the radio) has sparked a “national conversation.” (1) Musicians act as an “informal opposition,” and by embodying “the voice of the youth,” they have significantly contributed to Sierra Leone’s “democratic awakening.“ (2) The Sierra Leonean youth and musicians I spoke with emphatically agreed that music is the “voice of the youth.”
(1)Ibrahim Abdullah “Popular culture, subaltern agency, and people’s power: the 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections and democracy in Sierra Leone,” CODESRIA Bulletin 1 & 2. (2007).15.
(2)Zuhari Wai, “The Role of Youths and the Sierra Leonean diaspora in democratic awakening,” in Zak Williams, The Quest for Sustainable Democracy, Development and Peace. (2008), 57.
Approximately 2 million children in the United States live in single-parent families because the other parent is dead (SSA, 2007 as cited in McClatchy & Vonk, 2009). This leaves a surprisingly large population without the added nurturing of two parents, left to work their way through issues of grief on top of the typical stressors of development and adolescence. However, the reactions to parental loss by children and adolescents often follow a different and prolonged course compared to the grieving process of adults (Freudenberger & Gallagher, 1995; Howarth, 2011). Thompson and Payne (2000) give reasons as to why childhood bereavement should be considered independently from adult bereavement including that the time frame of the grieving process is different between children and adults. Young adolescents and children sometimes lack the moral or cognitive skills to understand and process the immediate or long-term consequences of the death. Completing the grieving process, therefore, is a long and arduous task for parentally bereaved children, who are simultaneously developing their cognitive and reasoning abilities to work through the grieving process.
Auman (2007) describes unresolved grief, or complicated bereavement, as when people have difficulty completing the grief and bereavement process. This can happen when other factors impede on the person’s ability to grieve. Research has found that several factors can interfere with grieving, including the type of the relationship that the child had with the deceased parent, the circumstances around the death and the lack of support systems (Auman, 2007). Much of the literature on parentally bereaved children states that children have higher risk factors or a greater chance of developing depression and anxiety later on in life (Auman, 2007; Bembry & Ericson, 1999; Biank & Werner-Lin, 2011; Savikko, 2006). Yet, mental health professionals do not have standardized measures for determining whether or not a child is suffering from complicated grief , therefore there is a lack of resources widely available for them (Auman, 2007; Kirwin & Hamrin, 2005). The lack of resources and social support can further complicate their grieving processes and lead to unresolved grief and further psychological issues (Auman, 2007).
In my paper, I argue that there is a lack of understanding of unresolved grief associated with the death of a parent in childhood and because of this lack, there is inadequate attention to support services. Society seems to underestimate unresolved childhood grief and its long term consequences. I argue for more defined and careful diagnosis of unresolved grief or bereavement and create specific clinical measures that can be used to diagnose if a child is having trouble moving through the grieving process. Furthermore, I examine the moderating factors that can lead to unresolved grief, specifically the role of the surviving parent, if gender differences have an effect and the circumstances surrounding the death. Finally, I examine the lack of mental health services offered and provide suggestions for clinical guidelines for identifying unresolved grief.
As a result of the African Diaspora caused by the Transatlantic Slave Trade of the 16th through 19th century, many aspects of African cultures can be found all over the world. The Anancy stories of West Africa are a testament to this phenomenon. This study focused on the cultural role of Anancy stories in Costa Rica. A literature review was done, two interviews were conducted, and thirty-two surveys were administered to Afro-descendant high school students in Cahuita, Costa Rica. It was found that the significance of the Anancy stories lies in the cultural heritage, moral lessons and family time, and cultural ceremonies. The results of the survey show that only two of the thiry-two participants were educated about the Anancy stories showing that the culture is changing and that these stories are dying out. However, there are some current efforts to preserve the Anancy stories and their cultural significance to the Afro-Costa Ricans. The purpose of the project and my paper was to investigate the role of Anancy stories in Afro-Costa Rican culture and find out whether the stories are being preserved by the youth. During the presentation, I will give background information on Anancy’s origin (Ghana) and discuss the cultural diaspora. I will read an Anany story from Costa Rica in Spanish and then I will have Kwaku Sarpong read the story in Twi (original language of the stories) and Ornella Hill read it in Costa Rican creole. I will then discuss the field work I conducted and the surveys I administered. I will discuss the results and then some conclusions, including current cultural preservation efforts in Costa Rica.
Thomas Matusiak: Homo Sacer: la biopolítica y el mundo globalizado en el cine de Alejandro González Iñárritu (Trans. Homo Sacer: Biopolitics and the Globalized World in the Cinema of Alejandro González Iñárritu)
This paper analyzes Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film Amores perros (2000). A central theme of the work is the status of the subaltern and his animalization in the postcolonial world of Mexico City. My goal, therefore, is to study the subaltern’s place in contemporary Latin American society. To do so, I adopt notions from both postcolonial theory and biopolitics, with the intention of opening a dialogue between subaltern studies and the political philosophy of Giorgio Agamben, principally his concept of “bare life.” Agamben argues that society has long been divided into two groups: one whose bodies and lives are valued by society and one whose lives and bodies lack any recognition or legal status and who thus occupy the same sphere in society as the animal. I study the figure of the animal in Amores perros, specifically the relationship between humans and their dogs, to better understand the relationship between the subaltern and the society from which he is excluded.
Does mental health and illness differ across cultures? What factors influence the way mental illness is experienced and understood? These questions regarding disability and cultural context address the central topic of my research: how understandings of normality and abnormality are culturally mediated. What individuals in one culture may be quick to call weird, unusual, or different, individuals in another culture may be less inclined to even notice or comment on. Based on five months of participant observation, interviews, and data gathering at an autism school in Cape Town, South Africa, this study explores the unique experiences and understandings of caregivers of children with autism and staff members at the school. Through an analysis of socialization and culture, explanatory models of autism, and caregiver help-seeking behaviors, it becomes clear that mental illness is heavily mediated by culture, particularly with regards to individual, communal, social, and structural factors. Specifically, South African caregivers of children with autism are influenced by their personal capacity to cope with a special needs child, their experience with family and community members, and the availability of services and resources, among other things.
This essay deals with the use of the child’s perspective in films from Europe and South America. The films I work with are Pan’s Labyrinth, Cría cuervos, Machuca, Germany Year Zero, and Au Revoir Les Enfants. These particular films take place in historical moments of war, violence, uncertainty, and all center on child protagonists. I use specific texts from Giorgio Agamben, José Colmeiro, Jo Labanyi, Sigmund Freud, Carlos Medina, Tzvetan Todorov and others to explore how these films employ the trope of the child’s eyes/understanding to create a portrait of a particular historical time. Some themes that these authors work with and that I am exploring in these academic and cinematic works are testimony, autonomy, the fantastic, the child and the child’s perspective, and the uncanny. The main question or problem I ask in this essay is why does the use of the child to recreate or remember or portray a historical moment of violence, such as war or dictatorship recur and what are the implications of this trope? In answering this question I use the work of the mentioned authors to support my ideas, as well as propose my own original answers. This essay is exemplary of the focus I have developed on film and the child in my Spanish studies.
The Beatles paved the way for musicians and society to explore altered states of consciousness through drugs, while expanding cultural, artistic, political, and social changes that encompassed the youth explosion into the counter culture of the 1960’s. The Beatles’ music and lifestyle was unique because of their transformation throughout the 1960’s while experimenting with drugs. The expansion of their drug use affected their appearance, values, religion, and all other aspects of life. Public saw the Beatle’s change through the lyrics on Rubber Soul as well as the media. Youth copied the band and the youth became inspired around the world. Through drugs, the number one selling band of all time set the tone that grew into and encouraged the counter culture of the 1960’s to follow.
In the early 1960’s, the Beatles represented the best of what people longed for and as a result, their popularity soared. The Beatles represented laughter rather that tears, hope rather than despair, love rather that hatred, and life rather than death. Dylan gave the Beatles the key that opened a door to a new dimension in pop music and the Beatles took the youth of the world across the threshold with them. The Beatles still represented a spirit of freedom but were dealing with inner freedom as well as outer freedom. They still wrote songs about love but were much more interested in the idea of cosmic love as well as sex, companionship, and heartbreaks. Rubber Soul popularized the thoughts of poets like Ginsberg and advanced a sexual revolution. Even though they disliked touring, they did not want to become unpopular and their music to be dull. The Beatles still wanted their music to bring ecstasy but not necessarily hysteria. Rubber Soul did not only show that the Beatles were maturing but it also showed the maturity of their audience.
Primarily a music of revelry and a medium for lifting people up, rock and roll helped people dance their blues away. Rubber Soul created a new music due to the combined influences of marijuana and Dylan’s unkempt persona. The Beatles created a music of introspective self-absorption that became a medium fit for communicating autobiographical intimacies, political discontents, and spiritual elation. The new sound invited audiences not to dance but to listen quietly, attentively, and thoughtfully. The Beatles laid the foundation that allowed other musicians to follow their new songwriting style. Other pop musicians wrote personal songs that involved the struggle of their own relationships. Dylan and marijuana influenced the slower tempo and created meaningful, personal, and mature lyrics.
Rubber Soul contained a number of hidden messages that pertained to both drugs and sex that only some people understood while other listeners just listened unknowingly. Some critics believed that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band changed the Beatles music and culture however it was Rubber Soul that introduced society to the beginning of the transformation. While Sgt. Pepper’s had distinct drug references, Rubber Soul hid the references, which unknowingly “turned people on.” The Beatle’s revolutionary album laid the foundation for the counterculture and allowed the rest of the free loving, psychedelic sixties to happen.
Waldorf, a unique educational system based on the teachings of anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner, has always been considered a European phenomenon. However, despite originating Europe, one could argue that Waldorf education came of age, so to speak, in America. The evolution from what historian Ida Oberman calls, “The European cradle to the American crucible” follows Waldorf education from its beginnings in Germany as a fledgling educational philosophy, to a well established and successful educational model in America, with schools, groups and training centers all across the continent. However, despite Waldorf education’s eventual success, the transition from Europe, and subsequent development in America was difficult. Americans involved in the Waldorf movement had to struggle with the question of how closely to follow the original Stuttgart model and how much to adapt Waldorf to their own specific needs. American anthroposophists brought Waldorf education to America, because they realized Waldorf education’s universal potential. The subsequent American schools struggled with questions of fidelity to the original Waldorf model as well as forging a uniquely American Waldorf identity. By examining the histories of three pioneering American Waldorf schools—The Rudolf Steiner School for Boys and Girls in New York City, The Kimberton Farm School in Pennsylvania, and the Rudolf Steiner School in Sacramento, California—it is possible to see the trajectory of this development from what Waldorf historian Ida Oberman calls “Fidelity to Flexibility.” The three schools can be categorized as three distinct “generations.” The first, represented by the New York Rudolf Steiner School for Boys and Girl, constitutes the European generation, because according Stephen Sagarin, these educators clung most closely to the European purist model for Waldorf education. The second generation is characterized as American or accommodationalist, because American educators took a more active role in shaping Waldorf in order to accommodate American needs. Finally, the last generation discussed is called the alternatives, because they chose to create a different approach to Waldorf education than those that came before. Additionally, each generation coincides with a major shift in American history. The Europeans entered an America that was caught up in the politics and social scene of the 1920s. The Americans became prominent when the US was taking center stage as the World Superpower, after World War Two. Finally, the Alternative movement corresponds with the two major counter-cultural movements: the beatniks and the counter-culture of the 1960s. The spread of Waldorf in the United States tells the story of how each of these three approaches –purist or European, accommodationalist or American, and alternative—was, as Ida Oberman states, “enacted, shaped and shaping specific historical moments.”
My paper explores the co-optation of endogenous Maasai ethnomedicine and exogenous Western biomedicine among the northern Tanzanian Maasai. Building on previous research with the Tanzanian Maasai during my study abroad experiences, my paper examined the economic, political, and sociocultural factors (specifically religion and spirituality) that influence the health-seeking behavioral patterns and treatment preference of indigenous peoples living in a medically pluralistic society at the level of the individual experience.
My senior experience is a natural combination of my government major and religious studies major as it includes political and Islamic aspects, something inseparable in Muslim-majority countries. Specifically my project, Egypt in Transition: An Ecology of Media, analyses the relationship of the three media types functioning in Egypt: International, state-run, and social media. Specifically, I am analyzing the relationship between the three levels, seeing how and what is reported or not. I then develop an answer to why it is this way. As a case study, I am using Egypt’s transition process (military control and elections), post former President Mubarak’s overthrow. The first level is Al-Jazeera, an international news organization based in the Middle East. It reports especially on the Middle East, but also all major international events, and has received special praise for its reporting since the beginning of the Arab Spring. The second media level is Al-Ahram, Egypt’s main state-run news paper. The third media level is social media in Egypt. This includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc. However, I specifically analyze a Twitter account named Zeinobia. She has 40,000 followers and regularly tweets about what is happening in Egypt. She represents a more general Egyptian view. Following her Twitter account is useful because it gives insight into how social media reports on Egypt’s revolution and transition period. Also, I am able to easily see how the different social medias are linked through tweets. For example, Zeinobia may tweet about military abuse and then include a link to a YouTube video to see it as proof and a blog post which further explains the event.
My research question focuses on the ecology of these three media levels and how they report on Egypt’s transition. I want to know what the similarities and differences are between the levels. How does the government affect Al-Ahram the state-run news source? Is social media a source for exaggerating facts to gain attention, or a real news outlet for an oppressed people? Does Al-Jazeera take a certain angle on the Egyptian transition, positive or negative? Most importantly, the answer to such questions will allow me to see how each of the three levels of media relate to one another in regard to Egypt’s transition process to a new regime and comment on the bigger role it plays in the Middle East. The methodology I use is a qualitative analysis of the ecology of media levels functioning at the transition of a country using Egypt’s current transition as a single case study. My analysis is strictly of the media levels as they relate in Egypt currently. However, it gives insight to a bigger ecology of media relationships in the revolutions and transition periods of other Middle Eastern countries since the beginning of the Arab Spring. This is especially important given the use of social media during the Arab Spring in promoting awareness and mobilizing citizens and the controversy over this. I conclude with a model of the relationship of the three media levels.
My paper focuses on the “Hometown Memories” series of work by the contemporary painter Thomas Kinkade, an artist best known for selling high-quality reproductions of his work in mall stores. Shunned by the art establishment but immensely popular with the public, Kinkade uses formulaic nostalgia in his work to trigger reminisce for an idyllic, non-existent past in the minds of his viewers. While there is no issue with the use of nostalgia in art in general, Kinkade’s nostalgic formula presents a problem because of its exclusivity under the guise of populism. Kinkade bills himself as a creator of popular art for the masses, but his work and his use of nostalgia caters exclusively to the memories of the white, suburban, middle class Christian demographic. In this paper, I argue that Kinkade’s paintings utilize a specific nostalgia formula, but that this nostalgia actually denies exclude groups from participating in his works’ idyllic reminisce while simultaneously exploiting nostalgia for profit.
I begin by exploring the various formal elements that Kinkade uses to trigger nostalgia – his signature “light,” his subject matter, and his stock Kinkadian iconography. These formal elements are inherently linked to Clement Greenberg’s conceptions of kitsch, which is a tag that most members of the art establishment apply to Kinkade’s work. Despite this prejudice on the part of the art establishment and the generally problematic nature of Kinkade’s nostalgia formula, my paper does some reading against the grain by placing Kinkade’s mission and work in conversation with the ideas of postmodernism. Kinkade’s stated goal of freeing art from the white cube of the gallery and his outsider status (right-leaning conservative versus the more left-leaning art community) actually fit in well with some ideals of postmodernism, even if his art is stylistically pre-modern. In addition to this pre/postmodern discussion, my paper deals with the idea of nostalgia in art more generally and the distinctions between “good” and “bad” artistic nostalgia. Here, I draw comparisons to the comic-based work of Roy Lichtenstein and to Norman Rockwell, two artists whose work often deals in nostalgia in some way. I also place Kinkade’s art in conversation with the work of nostalgia theorist Fred Davis, arguing that Kinkade’s art blurs the boundary between public and private nostalgia, only heightening the nostalgic effect. The other main section of my argument addresses the exclusionary aspects of Kinkade’s art through an analysis of Kinkade’s particular iconography in comparison to the art of Jos Sances. Sances is a Bay Area artist who created a series of works updating Kinkade’s art to feature marginalized groups. My paper ends with a discussion of the ways in which Kinkade’s company exploits his art’s perceived nostalgia for profit.
This paper addresses the changing face of protected landscapes and the reason for their varied successes around the world. Over the last thirty years the modern conservation movement has increased rapidly in both size and scope, as protected areas have shifted focus from specific resources to biodiversity as the conserved entity. Conservation methodologies have changed accordingly, with increased contact with locals leading to formal power-sharing between conservation authorities and local communities. Identified as co-management, this power-sharing is different around the world. It sometimes includes locals merely as figureheads and sometimes includes locals as the main conservation authorities. In limited previous research, it has been suggested that social capital, or mutual trust, can help understand this variation. Therefore, in order to explore the relatively unknown role of social capital in the relationship between co-managed biodiversity and local communities, the proposed study will investigate how and why social capital influences the success of co-management efforts and impacts the relationships between local peoples and co-managed protected areas.
To explore this relationship, this paper proposes a year long, explanatory, ethnographic study comparing two politically and ecologically similar conservation areas in Northern Tanzania. Importantly, the two field sites, Tarangire National Park and Ngorongoro Conservation Area, have different co-management situations. Both officially employ co-management, but it enjoys limited success in the Tarangire area. To facilitate the comparison of these sites, the proposed research will target four populations, the local population and the park officials at each field site. In each population, research will begin with a brief period of participatory rapid assessment, to gain a presence in the community and begin dialogues with informants. This will be followed by four weeks administering a face-to-face questionnaire to provide quantitative data and establish the scope of local opinions. Finally, research will conclude in each population with four weeks of semi-structured interviewing with key informants to provide ethnographic data. Analysis will focus on creating a theoretical model of the effects of social capital on co-management. Semi-structured structured interview data will be used to first create this model, using grounded theory analysis. The researcher will then use questionnaire data to test the model and adjust it accordingly. Finally, semi-structured interview data will be used to explain the model in the final report in order to include informants’ voices. The results will thus be a model to understand the effects of social capital on co-management.
The results and conclusions of this study will have both academic and applied value beyond the limits of Northern Tanzania. First, the results will significantly bolster the limited existing literature relating social capital to varied co-management realities. The results of this study can also be applied to other co-management situations. Through such application, this research will help to construct a plan of action to change co-management practices in order to increase its successful impact on local welfare around the world.
As new college students become autonomous eaters, they may independently develop behaviors related to food that fulfill both biological and cultural purposes. I report here on the results of a biocultural, mixed-methods study of 21 students’ first term of college residence. Interview data and anthropometric measurements permit exploration of the interaction between a shift in participants’ cultural surroundings, physical condition, and food-related thoughts and actions. Participants’ goals of fulfilling their student responsibilities and maintaining social relationships predominantly dictated when, where, and what they ate, while their level of satisfaction with these behaviors was associated with whether their actions were consistent with personal definitions of “healthy.” Participants who demonstrated a conscious effort to eat in a healthy manner generally expressed the highest satisfaction with their food-related behaviors, but did not all experience similar changes in their physical conditions. By upholding their articulated goal of eating healthy, participants indicated that the biological role of their actions, rather than other aspects of their cultural surroundings, primarily influenced the eating behaviors they developed. Participants who demonstrated a commitment to healthy eating may also be more concerned with the health outcomes of their eating behaviors than the participants whose behaviors were dictated by other cultural pressures.
Sierra Leone is often considered to be an archetypal case of the “resource curse,” a widely observed association between an abundant natural resources, such as diamonds, on the one hand and economic and political instability on the other. However, Sierra Leone’s experience of the resource curse does not appear to be consistent with most theories that seek to explain the precise causal link between natural resources and economic and political crises. This project seeks to explore why has Sierra Leone been unable to translate their vast deposits of natural resources into economic prosperity and why the government lacks the state capacity to regulate and promote a legal diamond trade and curb the rampant illicit trade. It argues that the colonial legacy of British indirect rule was unique in relation to other resource rich British African colonies such as Botswana, South Africa and Nigeria. In Sierra Leone the British strengthened parallel informal institutions led primarily by the local Paramount Chiefs, which eventually grew stronger than the formal central government. The development and strength of these informal institutions in Sierra Leone coupled with corrupt and weak rule from the central government following independence has led to the widespread corruption and prevalence of the illicit diamond trade. These informal institutions are highly sophisticated and efficient in relation to formal institutions, favoring tradition, personalistic, and paternalistic methods over formalized legal channels. The findings have implications for explanations of the resource curse, institutional formation in formerly colonized states and the development of informal institutions. Previous attempts to understand institutional formation only focused on origins of the colonizing states however this paper suggests emphasis should be placed on the objectives and methods employed by the colonizer. Utilizing the British colonization of Africa as an example the paper highlights how verifying degrees of indirect rule employed in different regions during the same colonial authority have significant implications for future institutional development. Although many may view a country such as Sierra Leone as a “failed state” this obscures the larger picture; while the formal institutions have failed the informal Chiefdom institutions have flourished.
As the 1960s drew to a close, mainstream America realized that the rebellious youth counterculture was not going to go away quietly. Meeting the problem head on as the authorities had in Kent State resulted in violent deaths and even more protests. This trend broke, possibly for the first time, at McIver Park in Portland, Oregon during the first ever state-sponsored rock concert. To make the concert, called ‘Vortex One,’ possible, Tom McCall, the Governor of Oregon, and The Family commune joined forces to create a peaceful alternative to possible violent opposition of the American Legion National Convention. The concert, however, did much more than was intended. Politically it led to the re-election of McCall and the perpetuation of northwest issue-driven politics. Perhaps more importantly, it provided the ideal setting for humble learning and peaceful conversations between the right and left cultural ideologies. Vortex marked the beginning of the right’s cautious acceptance – or at least tolerance – of this counterculture, and the counterculture’s gradual re-assimilation into mainstream society.
Lucy Schwob, more commonly known as the androgynous Claude Cahun, is primarily noted for her literary and artistic contributions to the Surrealist movement throughout the early 1920s and late 1930s. However, upon first viewing Claude Cahun's body of work, it is difficult to imagine that they were staged and produced during an era in which homosexuals were predominantly viewed as pathological perverts and women were unable to vote or easily pursue the profession of their choice. As a woman, a lesbian, a radical political activist, and an artist, Cahun defied the archetypal expectations of heteronormativity and femininity of her time. This defiance of societal norms is echoed in Cahun's work, particularly in her series of photographic self-portraits. In these images, Cahun dons a cavalcade of costumes and masks that challenge conventional gender signifiers during a time when views of gender roles and sexuality were decidedly conservative. Consequently, these photographs were primarily ignored by her peers and the general public; her provocative images and prose merely resulted in relative obscurity and ostracism. Cahun's work remained relatively unknown after her death in 1954, primarily owing to the cultural climate of the 1960s and the 1970s. It was not until the discovery of a cache of her self-portraits in the 1980s, with its understanding of semiotics and queer theory, that she rose to a prominent position in the world of art history.
Even though Cahun's series of self-portraits were conceived and executed in the 1920s and 1930s, they are subversively post-modern in both their subject matter and execution; they address issues, such as the unfixed nature of identity, particularly the performative nature of gender. These ideas are essential tenets of queer theory and post-modernism, which both arose in the 1980s after the maturation of the feminist movement and the evolution of semiotics and deconstruction. It is rather difficult to fully understand and effectively interpret Cahun's work without knowledge of these fields of study. Consequently, the academic climate of the 1980s and early 1990s was an exceedingly fortuitous time for the discovery of Cahun's self-portraits, as the academic vocabulary necessary to appreciate them was beginning to emerge within the writings of Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler. In particular, this paper will look at Cahun's "Don't Kiss Me" portrait in great depth to support the claim that the theories, which arose during the 1980s, are essential for fully understanding her work. If Cahun's photographs had emerged before the formulation and acceptance of these post-modern theories, it is unlikely that they would have received the amount of attention that they did; the world of academia would have been almost as ill-equipped as Cahun's contemporaries were to understand her work.
My paper attempts to explain the motivations of the first Russian terrorists through the memoirs of four women. I first describe the historical background, then the unique relationship Russian intelligentsia had with literature in that period. I propose that there were three requirements that needed to be met for a terrorist to turn to violence: they must have had a liberal education, they must have spent time working among either the peasants or the factory workers, and they must have been attracted to the ideas of martyrdom, violence and suffering. I draw conclusions based on the memoirs and experiences of the women I researched, and use their stories to demonstrate the effect radical literature, experience among the common people and a desire for suffering had on the Russian students who became terrorists.
Bolivia is one of the poorest nations in Latin America, and faces many challenges in development of a basic system of health education, especially for its rural areas. Topographical and linguistic barriers, as well as lack of basic resources in rural schools, have prevented much success in the development of this system on a large scale. However, Mano a Mano Bolivia, a non-governmental organization located in Cochabamba, is working on a pilot health project for two rural towns located in the mountains surrounding the city, San Pedro, and Sillada. This paper will focus on the materials and strategies being developed in this pilot project, its overall aim, and some of the main challenges that Mano a Mano Bolivia continues to face in the execution of such projects throughout Bolivia.
In 1913, Marcel Proust published what would become known as one of the most famous passages of French literature, the famous scene of an involuntary memory provoked by a tea-soaked madeleine cookie. Coming from the overture of The Way by Swann’s the first volume of Proust’s seven-volume masterpiece In Search of Lost Time, the madeleine scene sets the stage for Proust’s recurring theme of memory and in particular what he calls “involuntary memory”.
It wasn’t by chance that Proust chose memory as the central theme of his masterpiece. As some historians describe, the great scientific, political and economic changes of the 18th and 19th century lead to a societal “memory crisis”. In this time of progress, Proust vehemently rejected the belief that technology and science could give man a more objective understanding of the world, and particularly the function of memory. This bias also appears throughout In Search of Lost Time.
Despite his opposition to science, Proust was directly influenced by the psychological sensibility of the day. In 1905, eight years before publishing The Way by Swann’s, Proust put himself under the care of psychologist Paul Sollier, a protégé of Charcot who, despite being nearly forgotten in the history of psychology, was one of the first experts in the field of memory. In comparing the psychological works of Sollier with the accounts of memory in In Search of Lost Time, it is clear that Proust knew Sollier’s work very well and took inspiration from his writings.
Many 21st century readers may criticize Proust’s writings for their lack of relevance to today’s audience; however In Search of Lost Time has new relevance to the 21st century reader. As a liberal arts student, I have come to appreciate the ability to use as many different lenses for seeing the world as possible and for appreciating the validity of different perspectives. Proust’s representation of memory shows that despite his affirmations that literature and science must be separated, In Search of Lost Time is a hybrid text that mixes psychological theories and esthetics in a manner that explains memory and the experience of time more completely than either theory could have explained it separately. In Search of Lost Time is exemplifies the collaboration of esthetics and reason and the distinct roles these two areas play in explaining the human condition.