Scripps Faculty Publications and Research Copyright (c) 2013 Claremont Colleges All rights reserved. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub Recent documents in Scripps Faculty Publications and Research en-us Sun, 28 Apr 2013 01:39:31 PDT 3600 Language and Hegemony: Principles, Morals and Pronunciation http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/30 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/30 Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:40:30 PDT There can be no doubt that the comparatively recent interest taken in the works of Gramsci stems from his formulation of the concept of hegemony. In particular, most attention has been paid to what can be crudely described as his revision of the classical Marxist position on the relations of the economic base and the cultural superstructure ― that is to say, a revision of the reductive formula which sees such relations as determinist and unidirectional, and according to which the economic base simply (or not so simply, according to certain versions) determines the forms of superstructural expression. The revision was not a simple reversal ― according to which superstructure would determine base ― but a dialectical view in which Gramsci stressed the interactive nature of the relations between the different levels of the social whole.

]]> Tony Crowley Age Differences in the Frontal Lateralization of Verbal and Spatial Working Memory Revealed by PET http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/29 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/29 Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:40:28 PDT Age-related decline in working memory figures prominently in theories of cognitive aging. However, the effects of aging on the neural substrate of working memory are largely unknown. Positron emission tomography (PET) was used to investigate verbal and spatial short-term storage (3 sec) in older and younger adults. Previous investigations with younger subjects performing these same tasks have revealed asymmetries in the lateral organization of verbal and spatial working memory. Using volume of interest (VOI) analyses that specifically compared activation at sites identified with working memory to their homologous twin in the opposite hemisphere, we show pronounced age differences in this organization, particularly in the frontal lobes: In younger adults, activation is predominantly left lateralized for verbal working memory, and right lateralized for spatial working memory, whereas older adults show a global pattern of anterior bilateral activation for both types of memory. Analyses of frontal subregions indicate that several underlying patterns contribute to global bilaterality in older adults: most notably, bilateral activation in areas associated with rehearsal, and paradoxical laterality in dorsolateral prefrontal sites (DLPFC; greater left activation for spatial and greater right activation for verbal). We consider several mechanisms that could account for these age differences including the possibility that bilateral activation reflects recruitment to compensate for neural decline.

]]> Alan Hartley et al. Age Differences in Behavior and PET Activation Reveal Differences in Interference Resolution in Verbal Working Memory http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/28 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/28 Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:40:27 PDT Older adults were tested on a verbal working memory task that used the item-recognition paradigm. On some trials of this task, response-conflict was created by presenting test-items that were familiar but were not members of a current set of items stored in memory. These items required a negative response, but their familiarity biased subjects toward a positive response. Younger subjects show an interference effect on such trials, and this interference is accompanied by activation of a region of left lateral prefrontal cortex. However, there has been no evidence that the activation in this region is causally related to the interference that the subjects exhibit. In the present study, we demonstrate that older adults show more behavioral interference than younger subjects on this task, and they also show no reliable activation at the same lateral prefrontal site. This leads to the conclusion that this prefrontal site is functionally involved in mediating resolution among conflicting responses or among conflicting representations in working memory.

]]> Alan Hartley et al. How American Bandstand Created the American Teenager http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/27 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/27 Tue, 18 Dec 2012 15:37:35 PST In this Claremont Discourse Lecture, Matthew Delmont speaks on research that contributed to his book, "The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock 'n' Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950's Philadelphia" (University of California Press, 2012)

]]> Matthew Delmont Death's Brother http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/26 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/26 Thu, 02 Aug 2012 09:17:32 PDT Gayle Greene The Art of Memory: The Murals of Northern Ireland and the Management of History http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/25 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/25 Fri, 22 Jun 2012 12:32:12 PDT The online archive Murals of Northern Ireland, held in Claremont Colleges Digital Library and covering the period from the late 1970s to the recent past, shows how the nature and function of murals in Northern Ireland have changed. In Derry and Belfast, they are the focal point of a tourist trail that has been established in the decade or so since the official end of the conflict following the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Now figured as 'heritage' and commodified in various forms -- postcards, posters, books and guided taxi tours (Fig. 1) -- the murals have become a source of revenue and profit for a number of organizations: ex‑prisoners' associations, artists' collectives, local community groups, and traditional commercial projects. The impulse behind some of the tours appears to be genuinely educative; in others, crassly exploitative. One West Belfast tour, for example, exhorts its customers to 'touch the peace wall, or write your name on it, like millions of others, famous and otherwise, after all it is longer than the Berlin wall!', while another offers a 'welcome to the biggest outdoor art gallery in the world', and yet another promises to 'get into the heart of the areas that bore the brunt of the conflict' while guaranteeing 'the opportunity to take photographs and a brief stop at the souvenir shop'. While it is easy to sneer at the blatant selling of 'history' at £8 per head for an hour and a half's tour, it should be remembered that the locally based organizations provide employment and wages in some of the most economically deprived areas of Western Europe. Although this commodification is a long way from the directly war-related function of the earliest murals (Fig. 2), it is by no means the only change that deserves attention. Two others are: the attempt by the state to influence the development of murals in both republican and loyalist areas; and the shift in the nature of republican murals, particularly in Belfast, and the political difficulties that this poses for the republican movement — or at least that part of the republican movement that signed up to the peace process and is now involved in the political administration of Northern Ireland.

]]> Tony Crowley Fragments: Selections from the Profiled Series http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/23 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/23 Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:25:19 PDT Aftershocks continued in the weeks following the tragic earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Questions about radiation leaks at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remained unanswered. In Egypt, mass protests forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign from office and triggered a wave of social and political unrest across the Middle East. In California, many wondered about the safety risks of having two nuclear power plants so near to earthquake fault lines. While recent events undoubtedly influenced my selection of images for this project in X-TRA, these objects came into being under very different circumstances. Photographed and re-presented here, they are but a small sampling from a larger project that looks to the depiction of race and the construction of whiteness. The Profiled series asks what comes after ideologies and their aesthetic manifestations have run their course. Cast, carved, burned, and broken, these are lingering shadows of people that once lived in this world, or in the imaginations of their makers, and serve to question the very idea of progress.

]]> Ken Gonzales-Day Searching for California's Hang Trees http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/22 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/22 Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:25:18 PDT Also known as the Hang Tree Series, this was part of Ken Gonzales-Day's eight year project to search for, and photograph, possible, probably, and verifiable lynching sites in California. Perhaps most significantly, his project included the discovery and documentation of over 350 cases of lynching in the state of California between 1850 and 1935. Contrary to the popular image of 'cowboy justice' and Wild West vigilantism as being an exclusively white-on-white crime, Gonzales-Day was able to document, that in California, the majority (nearly two thirds) of cases of vigilantism involved the lynching of African Americans, Native Americans, Chinese, and Latinos of Mexican and Latin American descent, but Gonzales-Day documented more than the sites themselves. He was able to prove that Mexicans and Mexican Americans were the victims of racial violence, a fact which may help to shed some light on the contemporary debates around citizenship, immigration, and the migration of persons between Mexico and the United States.

The photographs are silent reminders that lynchings and other acts of racial violence were not simply part of some distant past but continue to influence California born Latinos, their families and loved ones, today as one hundred and sixty years ago.

]]> Ken Gonzales-Day Signs of Belonging: Languages, Nations, and Cultures in the Old and New Europe http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/15 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/15 Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:25:06 PDT This work examines aspects of contemporary Europe's linguistic and cultural heritage, taking a multidisciplinary approach to the subject. Topics covered include language and national identity, language policy for Europe, and translation as cross-cultural communication.

]]> Tony Crowley The Nicest Kids in Town http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/14 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/14 Wed, 21 Dec 2011 11:36:27 PST A website (click "Link to Full Text" in upper right corner) in 3 sections, including images and video, exploring the topic of American Bandstand, rock 'n' roll and the struggle for civil rights in 1950's Philadelphia.

]]> Matthew Delmont How Television Thwarted Busing for School Desegregation http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/13 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/13 Fri, 09 Dec 2011 08:52:11 PST Matthew Delmont is Assistant Professor of American Studies at Scripps College. He is the author of "The Plight of the 'Able Student': Ruth Wright Hayre and the Struggle for Equality in Philadelphia's Black High Schools, 1955-1965," in the History of Education Quarterly (2010) and "Michael Jackson & Television before Thriller," in the Journal of Pan-African Studies (2010), as well as the forthcoming book, The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand and School Segregation in Postwar Philadelphia.

]]> Matthew Delmont Distant Smiles: Painting of Yishai Jusidman http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/12 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/12 Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:49:54 PDT Jusidman's eclectic mix of imagery spans everything from geisha and clowns to nameless psychiatric patients in Mexico City. Part of his ongoing exploration of the interrelationship between "distance" and "presence," his work explores the in-between spaces that separate objects from their representations, For Jusidman, this discrepancy "constitutes the soul of painting." It could be said that he uses paint the way others use language. His command of the grammar of painting and the vocabulary of its technique allows him to work beyond a singular style. (As might be expected, many are seduced by Jusidman's Virtuosity, as an artist but also as a writer. He holds degrees from the Californfa Institute of the Arts [Bachelor of Fine Arts] and New York University [Master's degree].) Though critically informed, his work relies upon traditional representational techniques that challenge conventional expectations of modernist painting. Jusidman employs those techniques to expand his critique of painting.

]]> Ken Gonzales-Day An M.F.A. in L.A. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/11 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/11 Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:49:53 PDT The author, an artist, discusses M.F.A. (Masters of Fine Arts) degree programs in the Los Angeles area, with attention to the balance of theory and practice in these programs. Article is in both English and Spanish.

]]> Ken Gonzales-Day Psychic Transformation: One Woman's Journey http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/10 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/10 Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:49:52 PDT The author discusses the role of the unconscious in the production of her artwork.

]]> Nancy Macko Different Looks http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/9 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/9 Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:49:51 PDT In this essay from an exhibition catalog, the author discusses works by various artists in the exhibition within the context of the aesthetics of difference.

]]> Ken Gonzales-Day Seeing Gray: Whiteness and the Erasure of Difference http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/8 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/8 Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:49:50 PDT The author, a studio artist, discusses the ambivalent representation of whiteness in several works of contemporary art.

]]> Ken Gonzales-Day Choloborg: The Disappearance of the Latino Body http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/5 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/5 Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:49:48 PDT The author discusses body politics in contemporary latino/a visual culture.

]]> Ken Gonzales-Day Analytical Photography: Portraiture, From the Index to the Epidermis http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/4 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/4 Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:49:47 PDT The current abundance of scholarship concerning the technological development of photography has coexisted with a proportionate absence of recent critical analysis of photographic images. Given photography's long-standing embrace of technological advances, even predating the portable camera or roll film, this article revisits some early uses of scientific photography in order to clarify the impact of digital technology on contemporary photographic practice. The author uses scientific photography and photographic archives as the groundwork for photographic experiments into what might be called analytical photography. This essay concludes with a reconsideration of the photographic portrait.

]]> Ken Gonzales-Day A View of the Intersection of Art and Technology http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/3 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/3 Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:49:46 PDT Using technology to teach art and design.

]]> Nancy Macko La Belle Rêve http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/2 http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_fac_pub/2 Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:49:45 PDT Artist and academic Nancy Macko discusses her sabbatical residency in Brittany, France.

]]> Nancy Macko