scholarly journals Jamming the Works: Art, Politics and Activism Introduction

2014 ◽  
Vol 100 ◽  
pp. 133-138
Author(s):  
Linda Dittmar ◽  
Joseph Entin

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, art that aims to actively challenge the social order continues to spark controversy and encounter resistance. In one recent instance, the University of California at San Diego threatened to revoke the tenure of Ricardo Dominguez, a professor of visual art, who developed what he calls “transborder immigrant tools”—recycled cell phones loaded with GPS software that point border-crossers to caches of fresh water in the desert. Dominquez has called the phones, which feature an audio application that plays inspirational poetry to migrants, a “mobile Statue of Liberty.”

Author(s):  
George Slusser

This book explores the life and work of Gregory Benford. Born in 1941 in Mobile, Alabama, Benford has strong roots in the American South. But as member of a military family, he spent much of his adolescence in other countries such as Germany and Japan. In the process he developed a cosmopolitan perspective, which gave rise to a lifelong fascination with “alien” cultures. Benford earned a doctorate in physics at the University of California, San Diego, and received his PhD in 1967. This book examines Benford's distinguished career as science fiction writer as well as his ideas on science and scientists “doing science,” the writing of science fiction, and the social and cultural issues raised by science. It also considers Benford's literary production in terms of its main categories.


Author(s):  
Eunsong Kim

The Archive for New Poetry (ANP) at the University of California San Diego was founded with the specific intention of collecting alternative, small press publications and acquiring the manuscripts of contemporary new poets. The ANP’s stated collection development priority was to acquire alternative, non-mainstream, emerging, “experimental” poets as they were writing and alive, and to provide a space in which their papers could live, along with recordings of their poetry readings. In this article, I argue that through racialized understandings of innovation and new, whiteness positions the ANP’s collection development priority. I interrogate two main points in this article: 1) How does whiteness—though visible and open—remain unquestioned as an archival practice? and 2) How are white archives financed and managed? Utilizing the ANP’s financial proposals, internal administrative correspondences, and its manuscript appraisals and collections, I argue that the ANP’s collection development priority is racialized, and this prioritization is institutionally processed by literary scholarship that linked innovation to whiteness. Until very recently, US Experimental and “avant-garde” poetry has been indexed to whiteness. The indexing of whiteness to experimentation, or the “new” can be witnessed in the ANP’s collection development priorities, appraisals, and acquisitions. I argue that the structure of the manuscripts acquired by the ANP reflect literary scholarship that theorized new poetry as being written solely by white poets and conclude by examining the absences in the Archive for New Poetry.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 551-552
Author(s):  
Thomas Willard

Shakespeare is well known to have set two of his plays in and around Venice: The Merchant of Venice (1596) and The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice (1603). The first is often remembered for its famous speech about “the quality of mercy,” delivered by the female lead Portia in the disguise of a legal scholar from the university town of Padua. The speech helps to spare the life of her new husband’s friend and financial backer against the claims of the Jewish moneylender Shylock. The play has raised questions for Shakespearean scholars about the choice of Venice as an open city where merchants of all nations and faiths would meet on the Rialto while the city’s Senate, composed of leading merchants, worked hard to keep it open to all and especially profitable for its merchants. Those who would like to learn more about the city’s development as a center of trade can learn much from Richard Mackenney’s new book.


2008 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 29-35
Author(s):  
Theodor Strohm

Abstract This article shows clearly the experiences of the author concerning the social restart of Germany after 1945. The ZEE was and is a place for reflection and reorientation. Personal encounters with personalities of the »first hour« constitute the opening. This is followed by five central situations which were witnessed and devised by the author. They had a direct effect on the ZEE. 1. The participation in the senior staff of Willy Brandt had an effect on the contemplation of an »ethos of inner reforms«. 2. The reform process in South Africa with its »peaceful revolution« brought the author there, having intense working relations to the leaders of the »black majority«. These experiences found their way into the ZEE. 3. As chairman of the chamber for social order of the EKD (Evangelical Church in Germany) the author worked nearly 20 years intensively on memoranda concerning the reorientation of the welfare state in many dimensions. The ZEE was a central place of scientific debate. 4. and 5. As head of the Diakoniewissenschaftliches Institut (I. for Christian social work) of the University of Heidelberg basic questions of deaconry theologically and at the same time world wide aspects were at the centre of interest also at the ZEE


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristela Garcia-Spitz ◽  
Kathryn Creely

How are ethnographic photographs from the twentieth century accessed and represented in the twenty-first century? This report from the Tuzin Archive for Melanesian Anthropology at the University of California San Diego Library provides an overview of the photographic materials, arrangements and types of documentation in the archive, followed by summaries of specific digitization projects of the photographs from physician Sylvester Lambert and anthropologists Roger Keesing and Harold Scheffler, among others. Through the process of digitization and online access, ethnographic photographs are transformed and may be discovered and contextualized in new ways. Utilizing new technologies and forming broad collaborations, these digitization projects incorporate both anthropological and archival practices and also raise ethical questions. This is an in-depth look at what is digitized and how it is described to re/create meaning and context and to bring new life to these images.


2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (8-9-10) ◽  
pp. 343-357
Author(s):  
Adam Kuspa ◽  
Gad Shaulsky

William Farnsworth Loomis studied the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum for more than fifty years as a professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego, USA. This biographical reflection describes Dr. Loomis’ major scientific contributions to the field within a career arc that spanned the early days of molecular biology up to the present day where the acquisition of high-dimensional datasets drive research. Dr. Loomis explored the genetic control of social amoeba development, delineated mechanisms of cell differentiation, and significantly advanced genetic and genomic technology for the field. The details of Dr. Loomis’ multifaceted career are drawn from his published work, from an autobiographical essay that he wrote near the end of his career and from extensive conversations between him and the two authors, many of which took place on the deck of his beachfront home in Del Mar, California.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document