Frances E. W. Harper’s “Death of Zombi”: A Palmares for North Americans

(Ex)Isles in the Harlem Renaissance: The Insular and Archipelagic Topographies of Wallace Thurman's The Blacker the Berry Brian Russell Roberts (bio) A Generation of Columbuses and the Islands of the Sea African american writer Wallace Thurman has been known as the "enfant terrible" of the Harlem Renaissance. After the Salt Lake City native arrived in Harlem in 1925, he quickly assumed the role of bombastic spokesperson for the Renaissance's younger artists. By November of 1926, he had edited the first and only issue of the magazine Fire!!, a publication that (as Langston Hughes remembered) sought to "burn up a lot of the old, dead conventional Negro-white ideas" of such influential race magazines as the Crisis, Opportunity, and the Messenger (Big Sea 235-36). Further shoring up Thurman's image as the Renaissance's young artist agonistes, he loudly rejected W. E. B. Du Bois's call to use black expressive culture as propaganda and publicly criticized Alain Locke's landmark anthology, The New Negro (1925), as a collection revealing "the Negro literary renaissance" as merely "a new source of revenue" for white publishers and a "fad" for "white intellectuals" ("High Low" 219; Henderson 295). Indicative of his sense of radical departure from the aesthetic and propagandistic programs of the Renaissance's old guard, Thurman in 1928 claimed that the voices of "articulate negroes [sic] of the past" were "so busy justifying their presence [within an] inimical environment that [End Page 91] they ceased to be human beings." In opposition to such ostensibly retrograde figures, Thurman wrote that he saw himself as part of a generation of "Columbuses . . . discovering things about themselves and about their environment which it seems to them their elders have been at pains to hide" (qtd. in van Notten 141-42). When read within the context of modern African American literature, Thurman's willingness to consign previous African American writers to the dustbin of history is far from exceptional. A generation earlier, Du Bois had made a similar move in wresting the mantel of race leadership from Booker T. Washington (Souls 33-44). And less than ten years after Thurman claimed previous black voices had conciliated to the point that they "ceased to be human," Richard Wright dismissed the black writers who preceded him as having devolved into "French poodles who do clever tricks" for white Americans ("Blueprint" 53). In many ways Thurman fits neatly into an oedipal procession of black male US writers and cultural figures of the twentieth century. Yet I would argue that Thurman's situation within this procession is also exceptional—in no small part because of the metaphor through which he conceived of his oppositional relationship with older and better established writers. Thurman narrated himself as one of a generation of "Columbuses" in search of terrae incognitae. Within the economy of his Columbian narrative, he and his generation were voyagers seeking unexplored islands (psychological, racial, and aesthetic) that long had been hidden within a forbidding sea of cultural mores and prescriptive statements on the nature of valid African American racial artistry and propaganda. We have access to one of Thurman's most significant voyages of discovery in his novel The Blacker the Berry, which since its 1929 publication has been famous for sailing past the well-colonized project of critiquing the US's interracial prejudice and landing instead upon what had remained the unsettled (and unsettling) terrain of color prejudice within the African American community. Remarking upon the novelty of this focus has been a commonplace in discussions of The Blacker the Berry. 1 What has gone unremarked, however, is that in setting out as a Columbus to discover the hidden islands of color prejudice within black US society and communities, Thurman fittingly wrote a novel that draws upon and seeks to reconstellate a distinctly insular (i.e., island-based) topography. Though its immediate geography is confined to the continental United States, The Blacker the Berry's geospatial awareness [End Page 92] extends from the Philippines in the East to the Caribbean in the West, all the while testing the linkages between these island chains and the archipelago of black individuals and communities scattered throughout the big sea...

A scholarly article by authors William Patrick O'Brien, Maceo Crenshaw Dailey, and James Riding In published in The International Journal of Diversity in Organizations, Communities, and Nations: Annual Review

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Echocardiography plays a critical role in the assessment of cardiac disease. Important differences in echocardiographically derived cardiac chamber dimensions have been previously highlighted in different population groups in adult studies, but this has not been systematically studied in children, whose body size changes throughout childhood. The aim of this study was to review the distribution of available reference ranges for the left cardiac chamber dimensions in older children and adolescents. The following electronic data bases were searched: Medline, Embase and Web of Science were searched to identify studies which have established echocardiographic reference ranges of left heart parameters in children and adolescents from 1975 to December 2017. There was no geographical limitation. All results were imported into Endnote. Retrieved articles were screened and data extracted by two independent reviewers. A total of 4398 studies were retrieved, with 36 studies finally included in this review. 29 (81%) references were from North America and European (Caucasians) populations, with only one study each from Africa and South America. Two-dimensional and M-mode techniques were the most commonly used echocardiography techniques. There were methodological variations in techniques and normalisation of references. Comparison of selected cardiac measures showed significant differences for interventricular septal thickness among Black African, Indian, German and US American children. Available echocardiographic references cannot be generalised to all settings and therefore, there is need for locally relevant reference ranges. Africa and South America are particularly under-represented. Future studies should focus on developing comprehensive echocardiographic reference ranges for children from different racial backgrounds and should use standardised techniques.

How does geography constrict or define historical imagination? In a 2004 paper, W. Dirk Raat of Arizona State University a range of new conceptual maps of world. Raat's particular intent was to challenge Euro-centric bias that underscores representation of North America on world maps, but lessons he imparts are just as applicable to an intra-North American line of questioning. In his work, Raat deals with what authors Martin W. Lewis and Karen E. Wigen term the myth of continents. According to all of these scholars, current classification of world into seven distinct continents is an interpretation begun by three-continent model of Ancient Greece and then expanded to encompass land masses that were later discovered and explored by Europeans. problem with classification is not in division of land per se, but in assumptions which that division fosters. Thus, for example, one might conclude under seven-continent scheme that dividing line between North and South America reflects a shift in patterns of flora and fauna, when in fact northern Mexico is true ecological border in Western hemisphere. Moreover, continental boundaries are highly politicized; even those only marginally aware of European history can understand arbitrary eastern border with Asia, and unnatural inclusion of Iceland and Greenland in West. (1) Raat suggests that continental system be abandoned and that it be replaced with a regional scheme. (2) To do so, he draws upon Joel Garreau's Nine Nations of North America; in this 1981 work, Garreau suggested that few of actual cultural, social, and trade boundaries in North America are actually reflected in existing national and international borders. Instead, Garreau maintained, North America is made up of nine distinct regional cultures, separated not only by national boundaries but by architecture, music, language ... ways of living ... [and by] its own list of desires. (3) Region--as defined by physical geography, economics, cultural patterns, or even social values--has since become a dynamic paradigm in study of North American societies. As such, past two decades have seen works ranging from (to give a few of many examples) geologically-based premise of John C. Hudson, to culturally-based premise of Carol Higham and Robert Thacker, to values-based premise of Michael Adams. (4) Garreau, followed by Raat and others who accept this line of reasoning, helped craft a body of literature that reorients North American scholars away from traditional international boundaries and pushes them toward more organic divisions not based on political and legal convention. (5) implicit question in all of these works, however, is this: How should we organize and conceptualize our representation of physical space? In answering that question, we must make a choice as to factors that we take into consideration. Do we use political boundaries, such that, in North America, U.S.-Canada border and U.S.-Mexico border are primary indicators? Do we use natural boundaries, so that rivers, mountains, temperate zones, and plant patterns determine characteristics of one zone or another? Do we use cultural elements--whether languages, patterns of settlement, historic agricultural practices, or social institutions--to suggest a more accurate reflection of where boundaries lie in world of practical experience? In this article, I ask all of these questions, and then ask whether or not these concerns have helped put emphasis in wrong place. In short, I suggest that rather than concerning ourselves with developing best model to apply to geographic representation, we study choices which lie behind those representations, whatever they happen to be. Is Map Territory? Alfred Korzybski, popularly known as creator of general semantics, gave rise to expression, The map is not territory. …

The acquisition of an empire that stretched across North America, the Caribbean, Central America, and the Pacific world transformed the United States during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. While scholars have examined many aspects of U.S. expansionism, a neglected issue involved the imperial labor migrations it required. From across North America, the Caribbean, southern Europe, and Asia, men and women were recruited to labor in the service of building U.S. global power at the turn of the twentieth century. Officials saw recruiting and moving laborers from far away as necessary to ensure productivity and discipline. This required U.S. government and corporate leaders to experiment with labor management in ways that shaped the “long twentieth century” of U.S. history. Mobility was not only central to the logic of the U.S. Empire; when possible, workers also deployed it for their own ends. Therefore migration became a terrain of struggle between workers and government officials. This paper looks in particular at documents generated by two migrating groups important in the making of U.S. global power. Afro-Caribbeans who traveled to construct the Panama Canal; and soldiers who served in the War of 1898 and the Philippine-American War.

The United States Colored Troops (USCT) were a collection of racially segregated, as mandated by the US War Department, Black US Army military units that served during the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. Their collective military service is widely known for playing critical roles in ending slavery, protecting freedpeople, defeating the Confederate military, enforcing multiple US government policies, and reframing gender ideology while making explicit demands for more racially inclusive conceptions of citizenship. Black men, from a wide range of backgrounds and ages, comprised the 179,000 individuals that served in a USCT regiment. For instance, some soldiers were formerly bondsmen from Confederate states, while others (who were freeborn) came from free states and even internationally (including Canada). USCT regiments were never solely male-exclusive domains. Numerous Black women supported the US war effort, in and outside of the military spaces, in many ways. For example, Susie King Taylor served as a laundress and nurse in the Thirty-Third United States Colored Infantry. Thus, Black women are important figures in understanding Black Civil War–era military service. Ultimately, USCT regiments, and their supporters, fought for racial and social justice (during and long after USCT soldiering ended). Their service also provided avenues for prominent abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, William Still, and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, who used Black military service to make clear demands for slavery and racial discrimination to end. Meanwhile, various Black communities (especially Black women) lobbied to protect their civil rights (while attempting to support USCT soldiers’ training). Additionally, the families of USCT soldiers vocalized to the Bureau of Pensions (a branch of the US government) to remember their collective wartime sacrifices through Civil War pensions. Their collective actions highlight that the history of USCT regiments requires an understanding of Black families and communities whose lived experiences remain relevant today.

Based on the entire population of Nobel laureates in science from 1901 to 2017, we show that North America’s rise as global power in science started in the 1920s. Following a transition period (1940s to 1960s), its scientific hegemony was consolidated in the 1970s. Yet since the 2000s, North America’s global leadership in science has come under pressure. In that time, its share of laureates across disciplines dropped, although it has retained its attractiveness as a destination for future laureates from Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, we find that North America has become apparently less effective since 2010 in transferring capacities for conducting ground-breaking research from one generation of scientists to another. Furthermore, both Europe and the Asia-Pacific region have similarly high shares of newcomer organizations with regard to where prize-winning work is conducted, indicating that these two regions are very active in the inter-organizational competition for scientific talent. Despite this competition, however, we find no support for the rise of a new global center of science.

Introduction: Black Laughs Matter

Geography, insolation, and vitamin D in nineteenth century US African-American and white statures

The movement away from US-centered approaches to America enables scholars to cross disciplinary boundaries and delineate the global forces operating in literary texts. Specifically, as Caroline Levander and Robert Levine put it in special issue of this journal, hemispheric considerations of American literature “excavat[e] the intricate and complex politics, histories, and discourses of spatial encounter that have been generally obscured in US nation-based inquiries” (399). The work of Ifeoma Nwankwo, Keith Cartwright, Martyn Bone, and others has recently demonstrated that such a critical methodology is especially appropriate for African-American literature. This is particularly the case in connection with those texts published in the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century when the country aggressively pursued an imperialist agenda and acquired an overseas empire. For US blacks, the Spanish-American War had significant implications. First, it served as a vehicle of reconciliation between the North and the South because it was the first conflict fought against a foreign nation since the Civil War. Although the southern-led campaign to rewrite the war between the states as a misguided conflict that had little or nothing to do with the abolition of slavery had been underway for some time, the Spanish-American War came to be seen as a defining moment of heroic cooperation between the two sections, and African Americans did not fit easily into this picture. Second, because the war appeared to present opportunities for African Americans to demonstrate their patriotism and bravery by directly participating in the conflict, blacks in the US took a keen interest in the actions of these “Smoked Yankees,” their portrayal in the mainstream

Regional hegemony is a realist concept explaining how great powers deal with each other and with their immediate surroundings. Realism's competing strands disagree on whether regional hegemony is a feasible objective, and on whether states should actively pursue this goal. For offensive realists, the international system's anarchic structure and the impossibility of gauging others' intentions compel states to maximize relative power and try to become the only great power in their region. They predict that a great power war is more likely because China will try to establish hegemony in Asia and the United States will try to prevent it from doing so. By contrast, defensive realists maintain that bids for hegemony are usually thwarted by powerful balancing coalitions. Defensive realists have the stronger case: In modern times, the United States is the only great power whose bid for hegemony was not thwarted by a powerful balancing coalition. The United States succeeded because conditions in North America were unusually favorable; China does not enjoy similar advantages. A Chinese bid for hegemony in Asia is likely to fail and Beijing would be unwise to attempt it. U.S. leaders can therefore adopt a measured approach to this danger, facilitating balancing behavior by the United States' Asian partners while working with China to create a more stable regional order.

It is not difficult to find assertions that China is already a global power. Though some examples can be found from the mid-2000s,1 China’s global power status has become much more commonly sighted and asserted in the years following the global financial crisis. While considerations of what the world will look like with China as a global superpower tend to still be exercises in forecasting the future, some suggest that we are already there.2 And if not yet the predominant global power in all issue areas, the 2013 Pew survey of global attitudes found that China is now popularly thought of as the world’s leading economic power in North America and Europe.3

Examines the reception of black US writing in Spain in order to contextualize and defamiliarize it as literatura negra norte-americana. By studying the translations, anthologies, and bilingual Spanish-English texts in which works by Hughes and Claude McKay appeared alongside works by leading figures of the Afro-Caribbean negrismo movement (Nicolás Guillén and Emilio Ballagas), this chapter reveals the ways in which black diasporic writing was given a unique new genealogy. Moving away from the Francophone négritude movement and reducing Africa to a source of a remote cultural past, figures like Ballagas collaborated with Spanish critics like Guillermo de Torre to reinterpret contemporary black writing as produced distinctly by the crossings of the US and Spanish empires. US black writing thus illuminated and complicated Spain’s racial past. Hughes, in turn, became for Spaniards and Spanish Americans alike the poet of an uncertain vision of blackness and leftist revolution. This vision was adopted by the Spanish Republicans during the civil war, just as they were paradoxically purging any notion of Moorish “blackness” or Africanism from their own political identity—something that Hughes himself engaged when he translated their poems on “Moorish traitors.”