American Tradition Research Articles

Mendax v Verax Images of Snowden and Assange in Fiction and Documentary Films

This paper deals with depictions of the whistleblower Edward Snowden and publisher/activist Julian Assange in fiction and documentary Films and aims to compare and contrast the images of the two whistleblowers in the media: one the “good patriot”, the other an “egotistical” outsider. Whereas a film like Snowden (2016) tries to locate Snowden in the tradition of American whistleblowing as a righteous critique of power and depict him as a “good” individual, films about WikiLeaks/Assange tend to focus on his problematic personality, as in The Fifth Estate (2013). Is it possible to think Snowden and Assange together, even when they appear radically different: Mendax, the (noble) “liar” and Verax, the truth teller? At the same time, whistleblowing can be read through critique of ideology as put forth by Slavoj Žižek, a critique that is perhaps only possible through the “naive” gaze of the whistleblower and can help us discern the act of whistleblowing as such from the individualistic approach often deployed by the media.

A hovering ghost from the future: the posthuman gothic landscape of Bangalore in Appupen’s ‘Bangaloids’

ABSTRACT The academic discussion surrounding the Gothic is dominated by British and American traditions. The globalgothic, concerned with gothic discourses outside the canonical traditions, is a developing arena, and gothic voices from other parts of the globe need to be studied. Appupen’s ‘Bangaloids’ is a dystopian short story that represents the gothic voice from India. Part of Bangalore: A Graphic Novel (2017), a city-centric graphic storytelling initiative, the story responds to the social trauma caused by fast-paced urbanism and questions some of the deepest fears about the human condition. This paper argues that ‘Bangaloids’ presents Bangalore’s fictitious posthuman gothic landscape to make readers contemplate a dystopian future. It analyses the gothic matrix of the metropolis; theories on modern gothic are used to comprehend Bangalore’s gothic character. It also studies the formal qualities of the graphic medium that highlight the gothic themes and facilitate storytelling.

NEW JOURNALISM AND TRUMAN CAPOTE’S IN COLD BLOOD

New Journalism was a response to the new competitive situation brought about by the new forms of narration in the postwar era introduced by the mass media besides being the successor of a long-term American tradition in literature. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966) is often considered to be a magnum opus of New Journalism, which attracted considerable attention in terms of the aesthetic and theoretical questions it raised. This article mainly scrutinizes the possibilities of fictionalizing the reality and of the capability of the author to offer a new form of writing reconciling the mass-mediated forms of narration and aesthetics of conventional fiction with references to the Capote’s efforts to transform literary aesthetics.

Environmental Responsibility and Ethics in Hindu and Native American Traditions

Environmental Responsibility and Ethics in Hindu and Native American Traditions

The Formation of American Historiography of the New Deal (1930s – early 1960s)

The article analyzes the formation of American historiography of the New Deal based on a comprehensive study of scientific and journalistic literature. The initial assessments of the New Deal date back to the presidential campaign of 1932 when it was still a preliminary theoretical reform program. During the political debates of the 1930s, opponents of F. Roosevelt criticized the New Deal because, in their opinion, it did not align with American traditions, operated with un-American approaches to public administration, etc. These assessments were significantly influenced by the international situation related to the crisis of capitalism and democratic governance in Europe. Political opponents, referring to experience overseas, unjustly regarded the New Deal as a manifestation of one of the European radical “isms”. The author of the article found that such assessments did not find a wide response in society, and the scientific works of researchers who defended similar theses were on the margins of historical debates around the New Deal.
 The publication of their memoirs by most members of F. Roosevelt’s cabinet and his advisers, as well as the opening of access to the President’s library in Hyde Park, contributed to the formation of the first scientific assessments of the New Deal in the late 1940s. The historiography of the New Course had its “founding fathers”, to whom the author of this article includes – Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., B. Rauch, R. Hofstadter, F. Freidel, J. Burns, and W. Leuchtenburg. These researchers established a scientific basis that remains valid to this day, despite various attempts to revise it. They established certain historiographical trends and approaches to research and interpretation of this period in the 1950s. The author determined that the 1950s were marked by a debate between two schools of historical thought – Progressive and Consensus, regarding what the New Deal was – a continuation of the reform movement of previous decades, a turning point, or a revolution in American life and politics. In the research, the author considered and analyzed the main arguments and counterarguments of each of the schools.

Phenology

Flowers blooming, fungi fruiting, insects biting, fish spawning, geese migrating, deer calving; our consciousness is steeped in a seasonal calendar of nature's events. Phenology is the study of these recurring, seasonal life-history events, though nowadays this term is widely applied to the events themselves. From Shakespeare's sonnet 98, "From you I have been absent in the spring", to the appearance of seasonal events and migratory species in the oral traditions of Native Americans, interest in phenology is long-standing and transcends cultures. In this primer we introduce the study of phenology, trace the development of the field, and examine the prominent role phenology has played in evidencing the widespread impacts of anthropogenic climate change on life on Earth. We will consider the potential implications of climatic change for the ability of populations to persist and the stability of species interactions.

Humboldt’s Individualism: Theorizing Social Individuality

This article retraces in the thought of Wilhelm von Humboldt an account of the ideal of individuality which I propose to call ‘social individuality’. Against readings of Humboldt’s individualism as atomist, asocial and apolitical, I show how his conceptualization attends expressly to the social origins and the inherent interindividual and even collective dimension of individuality, while nevertheless insisting on the irreducible uniqueness of each human being. I show how this inherent sociability is anchored in his ideal of self-cultivation and, importantly, in his linguistic thought, which is often neglected in interpretations of Humboldt’s political theory. In concentrating on the social dimension of individual self-formation, I argue, we can discern a different ideal of individuality that emphasizes interindividual communicative processes over the stress on nonconformity as found for instance in Mill’s defence of eccentricity or the ideal of ‘democratic individuality’ in the American tradition.

Passing and Intergenerational Trauma in Ladivine and The Vanishing Half

This essay presents two structurally similar novels that tell stories of racial passing: Marie Ndiaye’s Ladivine and Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half. Both novels follow a light-skinned woman of African descent who leaves home and passes as White, getting married and having a family from whom she keeps the secret of her origins. Ndiaye’s novel, despite being set in France — where there is not the same tradition of the « passing novel » as it has existed for nearly 200 years in the (African-)American tradition — bears many similarities to what has historically been one of the best-known examples of the genre: Douglas Sirk’s film Imitation of Life. The emotional and psychological experience portrayed is very different in the American context versus the French based on the historical, social, and demographic contrast between the two countries. What is unique about these two novels, however, is that they focus not only on the person passing, but on the effect of that action on their children, even though they are unaware of what is being kept from them. Both novels portray passing as a decision that has intergenerational consequences, but through those consequences we see the distinct understandings of the nature of racialized identity by both authors.

The Phenomenon of Romanization in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Collection of Short Stories «Unaccustomed Earth»

The aim of this article is to analyze the genre form of a short story on the example of Jhumpa Lahiri’s short prose in the aspect of the phenomenon of romanization. The subject of the study is the determination of the features of romanization disclosed in the genre structure of the second part of short stories’s collection «Unaccustomed Earth» entitled «Hema and Kaushik». As an object of research the three stories («Once in a Lifetime», «Year’s End», «Going Ashore») united by a common plot were chosen which form the second part of the collection. The relevance of the work is explained by the fact that the study of works of modern multicultural and postcolonial literature in the genre aspect allows us to reveal the features of the functioning and modification of stable genre forms in the literary process. The method of structural analysis and the comparative method have made it possible to examine the process of romanization on the compositional, subjective and spatial–temporal levels of the text and reveal the correlation of the short story form with the American tradition of the genre. The scientific novelty consists in applying the new approach to the analysis of the genre form of this collection within the framework of the concept of romanization. The study concludes that the romanization of a short story is based on the complication of compositional, subjective and spatial–temporal organizations. This leads to the integration of the stories into a cohesive narration united by the several main characters whose names gave the title to the second part of the collection. Besides, the genre strategies of a short story including a narrator’ figure, covering a single event of the past are putting in the front which is expressed in the use of the ending like in a novella.

“Racial Greatness” Reconsidered: Race Theory, Masking, and Pragmatism in Sutton Griggs’s Imperium in Imperio

Abstract: This essay situates Sutton Griggs’s Imperium in Imperio (1899) as a pragmatic intervention in Jim Crow-era discourses around Black Nationalism. Highlighting Griggs’s instrumentalist relationship to race theory in both Imperium and Guide to Racial Greatness (1923), this essay argues that his works are fertile sites for examining a distinctly African American tradition of philosophical pragmatism that sought to conceptualize racial solidarity in nonessentialist ways. It further suggests that Griggs’s pragmatism, responding to the unique pressures of the Jim Crow period, emphasized the need for emancipatory efforts to be masked and embedded within the very structures they sought to dismantle.

Do Black Fintechs Matter? The Long and Winding Road to Develop Inclusive Algorithms for Social Justice

Racism in the financial sector is a complex global phenomenon involving intertwined social, economic and digital systems. Credit denial rates for black applicants suggest that financial systems have assimilated racial discrimination into their algorithms and credit scoring tools. Considering that digital tools incorporate their developers' life experiences and perspectives, and in view of the low representation of the black community in the digital startup universe, it is evident that even well-meaning fintechs are reproducing racial bias in their technology-intensive business models. In this paper, we investigate how three black-owned Brazilian fintechs design and use inclusive algorithms to decrease persistent social injustice involving racial financial inclusion. We combine the concept of socio-technical reconfiguration, taken from the South American tradition of social technology, with the three core concepts of Nancy Fraser’s theory of social justice – representation, recognition and redistribution – to analyze the process by which black-owned fintechs develop their particular solutions for combating racial bias. We found that, pressured by the need to be profitable, the lack of capital to develop their own credit scoring tools, and the low profile maintained by the black community ecosystem, black-owned fintechs focus on a sort of affirmative experimentation to gradually create original digital solutions aimed at achieving social justice in the financial system.

COMPARATIVE COMMUNICATIVE AND SEMANTIC DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURAL SPEECHES OF EARLY 21ST CENTURY

The article develops the traditional rhetorical “issues” contained in inaugural speeches of American presidents as macrotopical entities which are applied to construct communicative semantic structures of those speeches consisting of macrotopics and respective topics in the realm of discourse linguistics. We propose a major rhetorical macrotopical cycle (MRMC) as a basic structure of those speeches. Most general repeated topics (macrotopics) in the Inaugural Speeches are Domestic Issues, International Issues, American Traditions and Other (Reference to the Audience, Reference to God, Application to Himself). Research of communicative semantic peculiarities of the use of such macrotopics in the Inaugural Speeches of the US Presidents of the beginning of the 21st century and their comparison constitute the subject matter of this article. Analyzing MRMCs within each of the Inaugural Speeches produces communicative semantic discourse description of them and gives the possibility to compare them. A tendency to use certain macrotopics in repeated orders in the speeches is found out. To a certain extent in all Inaugural Speeches of the US presidents we singled out the phenomenon which can be called major rhetorical macrotopical cycle which most frequently consists of the following macrotopics: Reference to the Audience – American Traditions – Domestic / International Issues and Reference to God. Communicative semantic structures of those speeches differ between themselves in the of such cycles, forms and subtypes of MRMCs. The peculiarities of the use of MRMCs by American presidents of the beginning of the 21st century are analysed and compared.

African American Redemption in the Pan-African Metropolis: Africanized Identities, Pan-African Lives and the African World Festival in Detroit

The article is situated within the conceptual lineage of St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton’s groundbreaking Black Metropolis model. However, it provides a new way of considering this intellectual heritage. The analysis suggests that African American traditions of Pan-Africanism have not been expansively addressed in their magnitude on Black urban sociology. Drake and Cayton’s theorization is reconfigured as it exists within a Pan-African value system for the contemporary Black (Diasporic) city. The research presents “unsung” Pan-African tropes that are central to the maintenance of the Black city’s identity and psychological cohesion. If the mind is the “primary battlefield” as Garvey insists, then it is important to note the (beneficial) psychological impact that African American redemption and the Pan- African Metropolis can bestow on African Americans. The discussion locates Pan-Africanism as a tangible operating mechanism on African Americans’ lifestyle, mental health, and (Africanized) identities within Detroit’s Black community. Field observations of Detroit’s African World Festival connect these festival spaces as they characterize and drive the city’s identity, psychology, economic considerations, and ultimately, Pan-African groundings. The sustainability of an Afrocentric philosophy and psychology has enhanced the Black city in the manifestation of a distinctive cultural political economy. The Pan African Metropolis emerged during Detroit’s Black Arts Movement (the 1970s of my youth). To this end, the article pushes back against “the lie” which overgeneralizes African Americans in a Black deficit homogeneity, whereas the “alleged Black American monolith” is not connected to any operating African continuum in their daily lives.

New Public Management and Internationalization in Latin American Top-Tier Universities: A Multiple Case Study

The internationalization of universities has become increasingly important in recent decades. A dominant internationalization model, influenced by principles of new public management, has emerged. Latin American universities have undergone significant changes as a result of this trend. This paper takes inspiration from the sociology of translation to examine how leading Latin American institutions are addressing these challenges at both organizational and cultural levels. The findings indicate that cultural transformation is prevalent, strongly influenced by the Latin American tradition of extension. However, at the organizational level, imitation is more relevant, as evidenced by the adoption of new public management principles to devise strategies, plans, and programs that prioritize professionalization and the widespread use of indicators. This development gives rise to a distinct cultural internationalization model for Latin American universities.

Translocal interconnections of the Chilean student movement: widening socio-political imaginaries, strengthening organisations

ABSTRACT This article examines the translocal relations of the Chilean Student Movement. While existing research has primarily focused on the movement's national context, this study explores its broader global interactions. Drawing on life stories and secondary sources, the article examines three pivotal scenes of translocal relations that shaped the movement's socio-political imaginary and organisational strategies. The Chilean Student Movement's translocal relationships, integrating narratives from the Latin American tradition and global organisations like the United Nations and OECD, deepened the movement's understanding of educational inequality and enhanced its mobilisation power. Furthermore, the connections with the Colombian student movement, highlighting the production of solidarity networks and collaborative knowledge efforts, raised awareness about neoliberal educational agendas and developed effective strategies against repressive measures. In the long term, the translocal connections between political collectives and former activists emerging from the Chilean student movement and the Spanish Indignados broadened the movement's political strategy beyond university campuses to institutional politics. To conclude, the article discusses the significance of translocal relations, stressing the importance of evaluating long-term consequences and addressing methodological challenges in such projects.

Ghost-Stitching American Politics

Ghost-Stitching American Politics

I’m Angry! Disability Protests in Post-Communist Poland

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to analyse the disability protests that took place in Poland in the 2010s in relation to the American tradition of disability protest as a reference point in the global history of disability. The similarity of means and the difference of outcomes between American and Polish protests reveal the role of social, political and economic contexts of post-communist states in the use of disability protest strategies. This paper also explores how the hidden transcript of deaf and disabled resilience was transformed into a public one, reshaping the general public’s mental framework in relation to disability.

Ritual Sweat Bath in a Cross-Cultural Perspective

AbstractThis article traces differences and similarities in the ritual sweat bath usage through a comparative perspective that includes contemporary practice in Poland and the central and the north American traditions that inform it. I argue that there exist continuity and consistency of representations related to sweat bathing across time and space, which can be identified by the metaphors designating certain elements of the ritual. The bathhouse from a cross-cultural perspective can be considered a sacred and liminal space, a gateway that enables the transcending of ordinary space–time dimension and interaction with primordial creation–destruction forces. Fertility appears as only one aspect of these ambivalent forces. It manifests itself in the main metaphors of the Mother Earth’s womb and death–rebirth process in ritual’s contemporary descriptions in Poland. The similarities in the way the sweat bath experience is conceptualised reveal the influence of particulr elements of the ritual that induce specific bodily sensations, intrinsically related to the human organism conditions.

Valeria Luiselli's Desierto sonoro and the Sonic Registers of the Novel

Abstract: Desierto sonoro (2019), Valeria Luiselli's first novel written in English and published both in English and Spanish translation, has been read by critics as an anglophone novel of "sentimental activism" (David James), with focus on the literary representation of an ongoing refugee crisis of children migrating across the southern border of the United States. This essay argues that the multiple archival registers of the novel—listening and recording devices as well as books, notes, photographs—suggest a hemispheric dimension, enabling a reading of the novel situated both in the Latin American tradition of archival fictions as well as the Anglo-American modernist tradition. As a modernist novel written in a densely poetic style, Desierto sonoro is concerned with inhabiting a past always already mediated by other texts, music, and images; as a Latin American novel, its concern is with the critique and retelling of foundational myths, embodied in storytelling and the realist tradition of Latin American writing. As such, through a deployment of different registers of experience, this novel challenges readers to think of archives as depositories of both written history and oral storytelling.

What's in a Name? Archives and Special Collections at American Research Institutions in the Middle East: Repositories at the American University of Beirut, the American University in Cairo, the American Center of Research in Jordan, and New York University Abu Dhabi

ABSTRACT In today's Middle East, a number of institutions of research and higher education have American origins, and several maintain archives and special collections. This article offers case studies of repositories at four of these institutions: the American University of Beirut (AUB), the American University in Cairo (AUC), the American Center of Research (ACOR) in Jordan, and New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). The article traces the origins of these archives and how those were shaped by the development of each one's parent organization as an American-inspired institution, as well as by the historical, social, and cultural framework of their host countries. The authors also consider the landscape of archives in the nations where these institutions are based: Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. The evolution of the collecting program of each repository is outlined, with strategies and key acquisitions and collections mentioned. Access and dissemination methods, including digitization initiatives, are also covered. In presenting such activities, the ways in which American traditions and standards of archival practice contrast with or complement those of local archival traditions are examined. A central theme is the way that the archives at AUB, AUC, ACOR, and NYUAD go about documenting not only institutional history but also the heritage of their host countries and the challenges and opportunities inherent in that work.