Copyright (c) 2013 Claremont Colleges All rights reserved. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub Recent documents in Pomona Faculty Publications and Research en-us Sun, 19 May 2013 01:36:34 PDT 3600 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/107 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/107 Fri, 17 May 2013 11:18:52 PDT The “ptychopariid” Elrathia kingii is the most familiar and abundant trilobite in North America, but it occurs at only a few localities in the Middle Cambrian Wheeler Formation of Utah. E. kingii's unusual abundance and typically monospecific community association resulted from a novel, opportunistic ecological strategy. We infer that the trilobite occupied the exaerobic zone, at the boundary of anoxic and dysoxic bottom waters. E. kingii consistently occur in settings below the oxygen levels required by other contemporaneous epifaunal and infaunal benthic biota and may have derived energy from a food web that existed independently of phototrophic primary productivity. Although other fossil organisms are known to have preferred such environments, E. kingii is the earliest-known inhabitant of them, extending the documented range of the exaerobic ecological strategy into the Cambrian Period. We consider it likely that some other monospecific trilobite assemblages consisting of abundant articulated individuals may also be related to extreme, low-oxygen conditions.

]]> Robert Gaines et al. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/106 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/106 Fri, 17 May 2013 11:18:50 PDT Although Cambrian Burgess Shale–type (BST) biotas are fundamental to understanding the radiation of metazoans, the nature of their extraordinary preservation remains controversial. There remains disagreement about the importance of the role of early mineral replication of soft tissues versus the conservation of primary organic remains. Most prior work focused on soft-bodied fossils from the two most important BST biotas, those of the Burgess Shale (Canada) and Maotianshan Shale (Chengjiang, China). Fossils from these two deposits do not provide ideal candidates for specimen-level taphonomic study because they have been altered: the Burgess Shale by greenschist facies metamorphism and the Maotianshan Shale by intensive subsurface weathering. Elemental mapping of soft-bodied fossils from 11 other BST deposits worldwide demonstrates that BST preservation represents a single major taphonomic pathway that may share a common cause wherever it occurs. The conservation of organic tissues, and not early authigenic mineralization, is the primary mechanism responsible for the preservation of BST assemblages. Early authigenic mineral replacement preserves certain anatomical features of some specimens, but the preservation of non-biomineralized BST fossils requires suppression of the processes that normally lead to the degradation of organic remains in marine environments.

]]> Robert Gaines et al. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/105 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/105 Fri, 17 May 2013 11:18:46 PDT A new Burgess Shale–type assemblage, from the Stephen Formation of the southern Canadian Rocky Mountains, is described herein. It occurs near Stanley Glacier in Kootenay National Park, 40 km southeast of the type area near Field, British Columbia. While at least a dozen Burgess Shale localities are known from the “thick” Stephen Formation, the Stanley Glacier locality represents the first discovery of Burgess Shale–type fossils from the “thin” Stephen Formation. The Cathedral Escarpment, an important regional paleotopographic feature, has been considered important to the paleoecologic setting and the preservation of the Burgess Shale biota. However, the Stanley Glacier assemblage was preserved in a distal ramp setting in a region where no evidence of an escarpment is present. The low-diversity assemblage contains eight new soft-bodied taxa, including the anomalocaridid Stanleycaris hirpex n. gen., n. sp. (new genus, new species). Nektonic or nektobenthic predators represent the most diverse group, whereas in relative abundance, the assemblage is dominated by typical Cambrian shelly benthic taxa. The low diversity of both the benthic taxa and the ichnofauna, which includes diminutive trace fossils associated with carapaces of soft-bodied arthropods, suggests a paleoenvironment with restrictive conditions. The Stanley Glacier assemblage expands the temporal and geographic range of the Burgess Shale biota in the southern Canadian Rockies, and suggests that Burgess Shale–type assemblages may be common in the “thin” Stephen Formation, which is regionally widespread.

]]> Jean-Bernard Caron et al. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/105 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/105 Fri, 17 May 2013 11:18:41 PDT Since Michel Foucault's seminal essays on the asylum, prison, and hospital in the Age of Reason, architectural historians have begun to examine these major public institutions in the life and pathology of the early modern city. This volume extends the disciplinary focus to public assistance and monumental housing for the poor, which was often closely related in ideology and building type to asylums, prisons, monasteries, and hospitals. Foucauldian intellectual history and urban history, with its concomitant interest in vernacular traditions, converge in this comparative study of Genoa, Palermo, and Naples during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

]]> George Gorse http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/104 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/104 Fri, 03 May 2013 16:31:24 PDT This paper reconsiders Andrea Doria's 16th-century villa in Genoa as an architectural and garden monument in relation to its original suburban setting.¹ The villa has thus far been discussed primarily as a decorative monument, with scholars focusing their attention upon the interior fresco and stucco decorations of Perino del Vaga and façade paintings by Perino, Beccafumi, and Pordenone.² However, these paintings have not been understood fully in terms of the architectural, garden, and suburban context of the villa, which serves as the focus of this study.

]]> George Gorse http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/103 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/103 Fri, 03 May 2013 16:31:22 PDT Every few years there is a resurgence of interest in what has come to be known as danse du ventre¹ or, less elegantly, belly dancing. By whatever name it may be called, however, this dance has inevitably elicited an exaggerated response from those not accustomed to the social background to which it belongs. In the past a climate of disapproval has hampered any attempt at serious evaluation of this dance form; at the present time the situation has reversed to a point where the enthusiasm of its protagonists has become the chief hindrance to an objective assessment. A dance whose enduring charm has managed to survive not only a body of disparaging commentary, but the spurious and tawdry aura surrounding so many of its practitioners, seems deserving of a fresh appraisal.

]]> Anthony Shay et al. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/102 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/102 Fri, 03 May 2013 16:31:20 PDT Sixteenth-century Genoa produced a distinctively new type of urban space in the Strada Nuova (or, since 1882, the Via Garibaldi)—the residential palace street or linear piazza—designed to legitimize and enhance the authority of a ruling elite.¹ Laid out in 1550-51 and built between 1558 and 1591, the Strada Nuova (Fig. 1), when taken as a whole, represents two significant themes for the history of Genoa and the interpretation of Renaissance cities. First, this major example of Italian Renaissance architecture and urban planning was conceived, and indeed, functioned as a classical stagelike space for the old nobility, who governed and controlled the tightly restrictive Genoese aristocratic republic of 1528.² This scenographic urban enclave proclaimed the exclusive social, economic, political, and ceremonial position of the old noble families who commissioned ostentatiously rich, decorated palaces along the Strada Nuova's central, monumental perspective axis (Figs. 1, 19, 23). As such, the Strada Nuova became the major public presentation space for the regime these families led.

]]> George Gorse http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/101 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/101 Fri, 03 May 2013 16:31:19 PDT Recent scholarship on the Renaissance villa in Italy has emphasized its two major functions, as a pleasure retreat from the city and as a ceremonial entry into the city. This documentary note publishes a previously unknown Mantuan description of the Villa Doria in Genoa, addressed to Isabella d'Este, during the triumphal entry of Charles V into Genoa from March 28 to April 8, 1533. The document has interest for Renaissance scholars as the first description of the Villa Doria and of Perino del Vaga's decorations of 1529-33. It also shows the villa as part of a ceremonial sequence of entry into the city, which helps to explain many aspects of the villa's design and decorative program.

]]> George Gorse http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/100 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/100 Wed, 01 May 2013 12:17:02 PDT "A Californian would hardly pause in a dance for an earthquake, and would renew it before the vibrations ceased." It would be simplistic merely to say that the Californios loved to dance and play, because it is a truism. Dancing fulfilled a number of very real needs of a society which was politically and economically peripheral, and which was characterized by rigorous social customs and segregation of sexes. Almost every description of early California attests to the fanatical love for dancing, the numerous occasions when the Californians danced, and the importance and prestige accorded to an outstanding dancer. For an understanding of Colton's oft-quoted remark which depicts the passion and intensity with which the Californians danced, two factors must be taken into consideration.

]]> Anthony Shay http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/99 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/99 Wed, 01 May 2013 12:17:00 PDT Bologna is a uniquely beautiful Italian city with broad, arcaded streets, richly textured brick and sandstone facades, majestic piazzas, public sculpture, high towers, and a cuisine to take time over. However, the previous historiographic emphasis upon Florence, Rome, and Venice has diverted attention from more fully preserved medieval and Renaissance cities such as Bologna, where urbanism—the urban fabric—takes precedence over individual buildings and architects, and where the urban context defines the architectural monument. Bologna is the work of art. And for this reason, one welcomes the fine book on this major, yet understudied, urban center by Naomi Miller, a distinguished architectural historian at Boston University.

]]> George Gorse http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/98 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/98 Wed, 01 May 2013 12:16:59 PDT In this introductory essay I put forth several concepts and elements that can be profitably examined before any meaningful analysis of these ensembles and their choreographic output can be properly addressed. These include issues of authenticity and representation, as well as the variety of social and technical restrictions and limitations—political, financial, artistic—faced by the artistic directors of these companies. Thus, the main intent of this essay is to establish a theoretical and methodological model for the study of professional and semi-professional state folk dance ensembles as well as the numerous amateur performing and exhibition groups that emulate the state dance companies.

]]> Anthony Shay http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/97 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/97 Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:56:11 PDT Iranian women's comic improvised traditional theatre is a rich and important, but little-known, source of performative and textual material that has been rarely documented or discussed by serious students of folklore and dance, either in Iran or in the West. I argue that this amateur theatrical form performed and created by women for other women is the single most important source representing the multivocality of traditional Iranian women of all classes. Both in content and performance, these theatrical plays or games are a unique form of expression that needs several analytic approaches to elucidate its meaning and place in women's lives as well as in the wider area of traditional Iranian performance practices.

]]> Anthony Shay http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/96 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/96 Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:56:08 PDT The ballet and modern dance establishment has a stranglehold on dance programs throughout North America. Dance ethnology, with one or two exceptions, takes a back seat to the study of Western theater dance forms and its major figures. Individuals highly trained in dance ethnology have a difficult time accumulating sufficient "cultural capital," in Bourdieu's terms, to secure meaningful positions. As a consequence, we must "spread our nets" in order that our research and writings become more relevant outside the dance field. Dance ethnologists are uniquely poised to respond to the strong emphasis on popular culture that currently characterizes the social studies and humanities.

]]> Anthony Shay http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/95 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/95 Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:56:07 PDT Serious, scholarly studies on dance in the Middle East are rare, and Middle Eastern dance traditions constitute one of the least analyzed and investigated aspects of dance scholarship. Perhaps no area of dance ethnography has been so routinely subject to romanticized, exoticized, and orientalist analysis and writing as Middle Eastern dance by admiring Western belly dance hobbyists. So sparsr are well-researched, analytical works in this field that frequently the standards imposed on its authors are dramatically less demanding that in other areas of current dance scholarship.

]]> Anthony Shay http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/94 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/94 Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:56:05 PDT This essay will address several issues that are raised by the phenomenon of belly dancing and its transformation, globalization, and acculturation in the West; it is designed to develop a newly emerging area of performance/cultural research, drawing from the fields of dance and transnational studies. Using the solo Middle Eastern form as the site of production of the rapidly expanding genre of performance labeled "intercultural performance," we hope to interrogate that genre and its definitions as a way of investigating the changing relationships between "ethnic" and "hybrid" and the related national and cultural boundaries associated with them. For some time, ethnic artists have collaborated with Western artists and/or strategically deployed Western aesthetics within or alongside ethnic performance forms, complicating the "cross-cultural" aesthetic, historical, and ideological dialogue implicit in this study.

]]> Anthony Shay et al. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/92 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/92 Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:11:14 PDT Cambrian Burgess Shale-type (BST) deposits are among the most significant deposits for understanding the “Cambrian explosion” because they contain the fossilized tissues of nonmineralized organisms and provide a substantially different window on the radiation of the Metazoa than is afforded by the more “typical” fossil record of skeletal parts of biomineralized organisms. Despite nearly a century of research, BST deposits remain poorly investigated as sedimentologic entities largely because they comprise fine-grained mudrocks. Here,we describe a new, integrative approach to understanding a single BST deposit, the middle Cambrian Wheeler Formation of Utah, which reveals a dynamic interplay of paleoenvironmental, paleoecologic, and sedimentologic/diagentic factors within a superficially homogeneous lithofacies.This millimeter-scale microstratigraphic and paleontologic approach is augmented by both outcrop and microscopic study.These types of data are applicable to issues of quite different scales, including micron-scale diagenetic processes involved in fossil preservation, organism-environment interactions and paleoecology of the early Metazoa, and regional and global controls on the distribution of BST deposits.

]]> Robert Gaines et al. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/91 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/91 Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:11:13 PDT "That night ‘Abdi Jan’s troupe had been called so that the harem occupants could watch the show. Of course, you remember ‘Abdi well. Let me, nonetheless, give you a description of his looks. He was a lad of about twelve or thirteen, with large black eyes, languid and incredibly beautiful and attractive. His face was tanned and good-looking, his lips crimson, and his hair black and thick. Renowned throughout the town, the boy had a thousand adoring lovers. Being a dancer, however, he was unworthy of being anyone’s beloved." (Taj Al-Sultana 1993, 163) Within this quotation the reader may find a rich description of historical and even contemporary Middle Eastern attitudes toward dance and male dancers in particular, penned from a native point of view.¹ In this article I address those attitudes, but more importantly challenge several cherished, long-held assumptions and theoretical stances expressed by native elites and Westerners interested in Middle Eastern dance and dancers.

]]> Anthony Shay http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/90 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/90 Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:11:12 PDT In order to create a contextual basis for a discussion of these four titles, I connect them through the authors’ uses of anthropological and archaeological methods and theories, and discuss how these have changed through time.

]]> Anthony Shay http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/93 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/93 Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:08:55 PDT This catalogue is divided into two parts. Part 1 (pages 1-5) presents basic bibliographical information on books and journal issues that consist exclusively or in large part in papers devoted to the Presocratics and the Sophists. Part 2 (pages 6-42) lists the papers on Presocratic and Sophistic topics found in the volumes, providing name of author, title, and page numbers, and in the case of reprinted papers, the year of original publication. In some cases Part 2 lists the complete contents of volumes, not only the Presocratic and Sophistic-related papers.

]]> Richard D. McKirahan http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/89 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_fac_pub/89 Mon, 15 Apr 2013 08:41:48 PDT Cambrian konservat-lagerstätten are the most significant fossil deposits for our understanding of the initiation of Phanerozoic life. Although many modes of preservation may occur, these deposits most frequently contain nonmineralized fossils preserved in the form of kerogenized carbon films, a rare yet important taphonomic pathway that has not previously been explained for any unit by a comprehensive model. The middle Cambrian Wheeler Formation of Utah, one of these lagerstätten, contains abundant kerogenized preservation of nonmineralized tissues, which occurs within a distinctive taphofacies that accumulated under the following conditions: (1) domination of the siliciclastic fraction by clay-sized particles, (2) close proximity to a carbonate platform, which resulted in mixed carbonate-clay sediments, (3) a well-developed oxygen minimum precluding benthic colonization and burrowing, and (4) relative proximity to oxic bottom-waters, facilitating transport of organisms from a habitable environment to one that favored their preservation. We propose that preservation of nonmineralized tissues in the Wheeler Formation may have resulted from a combination of influences that reduced permeability and, thus, lowered oxidant flux, which in turn may have restricted microbial decomposition of some nonmineralized tissues. Those influences include near bottom anoxia, preventing sediment irrigation by restriction of bioturbation; reducing conditions near the sediment–water interface that may have acted to deflocculate aggregations of clay minerals, resulting in low permeability face-to-face contacts; early diagenetic pore occluding carbonate cements; and an absence of coarse grains such as silt, skeletonized microfossils, fecal pellets, or bioclasts. This model may be applicable to kerogenized preservation of macrofossils in other fossil lagerstätten.

]]> Robert Gaines et al.