Archival Record Research Articles

Music & Poetry

The following conversations with contemporary classical composers demonstrate how music and poetry speak much the same language, and even understand themselves in each other's terms regarding rhythm and sound, time and structure, address and listeners, recitals and recitation. Kate Soper, Matthew Aucoin, and Seth Parker Woods are three very different American composers working today. Soper also writes her own libretti—syncretic texts that engage classical and medieval verse and contemporary literature. An excerpt of her recent work, Romance of the Rose, is included here. Aucoin, an erstwhile poet, whose Eurydice was performed this season at the Metropolitan Opera, has set to music poems and other writings by Walt Whitman, Paul Celan, and Jorie Graham. Woods, a cellist and performance artist, often interweaves archival recordings and live poetry recitation on stage, while also engaging visual arts. The work of all three composers is set to be featured this year at the 76th Ojai Music Festival in Ojai, California. (American Modern Opera Company, or AMOC, co-founded by Aucoin, is the first collective to be chosen as the festival's music director.) These discussions consider the spoken word, voice types, and silence; lecture-performance, the academy, canons, and avant-gardes; the interplay between history, material texts, and graphic notation; in addition to the creative cycle of dreaming, composition, and decay.Geoffrey Lokke

The Same in All but Name? The Intersections of Marriage and Slavery in Sierra Leone, 1890–1930

ABSTRACT In the historical records of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Sierra Leone, there is uncertainty regarding the classification of women as either wives or enslaved people. This was not simply a product of colonial biases and misconceptions. Colonial agents strategically invoked distinctions between marriage and slavery to mask the continued legality of slavery which was only abolished in 1928. In the archival record, the uncertainty over the relationship between marriage and slavery also points to tensions over reproductive and productive labour control. Slavery was not necessarily a separate identity from other forms of servitude, but instead needs to be understood in terms of household dynamics which saw marriage and slavery intersect in different ways. The ‘household’ was more than a physical space where individuals lived and are critical to analysing how gender relationships were reinforced and challenged as colonial rule expanded. While it is possible to draw a conceptual distinction between marriage and slavery, relationships viewed in a historical context often fell along a continuum, making differences harder to discern for external observers. Different actors and institutions would attempt to manipulate these areas of overlap and uncertainty between slavery and marriage to advance their interests.

Reconstructing the Uncertain Past: Cracked Docudramas That Question Their Own Authority

Reconstructing the Uncertain Past: Cracked Docudramas That Question Their Own Authority

The Dance Company Film

The Dance Company Film

Assessing intra-individual consistency in humpback whale song production using animal-borne acoustic recorders

Studying individual variation in vocal behavior can provide insight into its functions, stability, and mechanisms. Collecting such data at the scale of the individual can be facilitated using animal-borne tags. Here, we use archival suction-cup acoustic recording tags to investigate intra-individual variation in male humpback whale song production. Humpback whale song is a complex and hierarchically structured vocal sequence of 4-7 repeated phrases that are comprised of different units. Repeated songs are termed song sessions. To investigate how consistent song production is within the song session of an individual whale, we deployed suction cup-attached acoustic recording tags on humpback whales in the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary during the 2018–2022 breeding seasons. We analyzed tag data from nine whales to assess intra-individual variation in song structure and syntax as well as differences in the acoustic properties of song units across each song iteration. Each tag contained between 4 and 24 song iterations, and song session recordings varied between 45 minutes and 5 hours. Across individuals, the most variable song iterations occurred at the beginning of a song session. All individuals showed variation in syntax and unit production throughout a session; however, some singers were more consistent than others.

Review: The “Other” Dixwells: Commerce and Conscience in an American Family, by Thomas N. Layton

In 1984, San Jose State archaeologist Thomas Layton and his team combed through a site near Point Cabrillo, north of Mendocino, for remains of a Pomo Indian village. Uncovering shards of porcelain led Layton to the wreckage of a New England-China trading vessel, The Frolic. A book series ensued: The Voyage of the Frolic (1997), Gifts from the Celestial Kingdom (2002), and now, The “Other” Dixwells,. In this final addition to the series, Layton turns to a subject near and dear to my heart: family history.To be clear, The “Other” Dixwells is not a monograph. It is a fictionalized intergenerational account of George Basil Dixwell, a China trader employed by Augustine Heard & Co., his wife Hu Ts’ai-shun, and their son T’ien-sheng/Charles Sargent Dixwell. The story of this family is fascinating. Jacques Downs’s canonical look at the pre-1842 U.S.-China trade, The Golden Ghetto, mentions several American merchants who formed relationships with Tanka women and had children abroad. But with the exception of Emma Teng’s Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the United States, China, and Hong Kong, 1842–1943, scholars have spent little concentrated attention on these families. Given the immense research evident in the more than one-hundred pages of endnotes and appendices, The “Other” Dixwells is a noteworthy contribution to the field.The story thus starts in 1806 at the Sargent residence on Boston’s Newbury Street with a question of conscience. George’s aunt, Henrietta Sargent, was an ardent abolitionist, and her aunt was proto-feminist writer Judith Sargent Murray. By Chapter 3, in 1841, George departed for China to partake in the world of commerce and, as Layton notes, the traffic in opium. He came under fire (figuratively) from Aunt Henrietta and (literally) during the Opium War. George left Augustine Heard & Co. in 1847, traveled to Boston and New York where he faced a failed courtship, to California, and back to China in 1857. While his domestic investments with friend James Dorr failed, George’s interest in engineering and invention solidified. Sometime between 1867 and early 1868, while working in Shanghai, Dixwell married Hu Ts’ai-shun, a woman of Manchu birth. It is in these final four chapters that the focus turns to these “‘other’ Dixwells.”Poignant details emerge directly from the archival record, from Hu’s adoption of another son after she returns to China to Charles’s reclamation of his father’s name, Dixwell, in 1889, to his switch of birthplace on his passport from Shanghai to Nagasaki in 1901. The pilot’s license for Bazil Dixwell, Charlie’s son, offers tangible evidence of the genealogical line’s triumph. But the bulk of the text is rooted in Layton’s embrace of “the techniques of the novelist.” The narrative recounts what could have happened. Chapters are composed of vignettes of imagined conversations. Endnotes buttress the plausibility of the vignettes with extensive sources and consultations with field experts. Boxes of text at points within chapters reveal a metahistory of personal anecdotes of how Layton discovered particular sources, visits to relevant sites, and connections with modern kin. My personal favorite: each chapter culminates in images of paintings, photographs, and objects that help readers visualize the history.Thus, is this book of interest to readers of the Pacific Historical Review? I argue yes. The endnotes are rife with documentation. Sources range from archival and genealogical records, oral histories of family lore, paintings and photographs as well as images of germane material culture. As long as the reader’s expectations are clear, enjoy.

Defining the Songs of Incarceration: The Lomax Prison Project at a Critical Juncture

AbstractThis article illuminates an underexplored moment in the formation of the well-known archive of recordings of incarcerated people collected by the folklorists John and Alan Lomax. In 1934, John Lomax wrote to 350 correctional institutions across the country, asking officials to transcribe the texts of songs “current and popular among prisoners or ‘made up’ by them.” Despite contacting institutions incarcerating people of many races, ethnicities, genders, and ages, however, the Lomaxes ultimately continued to center on music performed by Black men in Southern prisons. Because of this, I position the letter as a critical juncture in the formation of the Lomaxes’ prison work. Choices made by prison officials (whether to respond to the letter and in what manner to respond) and by the Lomaxes themselves (whether to express interest in songs addressed by correspondents) were influenced by perceptions of the role of music in relation to criminality, imprisonment, reform, and race. These perceptions in turn defined the boundaries of the Lomax prison project. The correspondence considered in this article therefore offers a counternarrative to popular representations of music and incarceration and suggests the limits of the well-known Lomax prison song collection.

“The interpreter of horrors”: The interpreter Wera Kapkajew at the First Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (1963–1965)

The three trials of SS camp personnel, held in Frankfurt am Main in the mid-1960s, represent a key moment in the development of public awareness of and attitudes towards the Holocaust in West and East Germany. The involvement of several hundred witnesses, many of whom were survivors, from across the world and collectively speaking 11 different languages, brought home the international scale of the genocide and drew attention to the individual quality of the witnesses’ voices as they told their stories. The only interpreter at the trial who attracted public attention for her work and who left a substantial trace in the archival record was the Polish-Russian-German interpreter Wera Kapkajew, who also accompanied the court on its visit to the Auschwitz complex. In contrast to the other interpreters, her work and biography attracted journalistic interest and she was singled out for praise by court personnel and witnesses: in particular, she is praised for conveying the nuances of the witness’ voices, rather than just the content of their testimony. This article explores Kapkajew’s contribution to the trial proceedings and what happens when an interpreter’s work becomes visible in a Holocaust trial.

Paul Hobson: ‘The Odour of Unsanctity’?

ABSTRACT In 1939, Whitley wrote a paper in the Baptist Quarterly which began ‘Paul Hobson came to the surface for a score of years, then vanished in the odour of unsanctity’. 1 This damning overview results from the fact that in 1665 two women at Devonshire Square Church, were disciplined for wanton conduct with him. Whitley also condemned Hobson for betraying his friends to save his own life. 2 In this paper, I will explore Hobson’s life history, his writings and the archival recordings about imprisonment in the Tower of London between 1663 and 1665, to shed light on his personality, spirituality and vision. The evidence shows that he was a civil war soldier who made an outstanding contribution to the early baptising congregationalist movement. His resistance to the Restoration and subsequent long imprisonment without trial, broke his health and he died soon after his release

Krishna kee bansi bhajay

Nachania (नचंनिया), translated as ‘female dancer’, refers to both a traditional Indo-Jamaican folk dance that has local origins in indentureship, and to those who perform it. The dance is characterized by flamboyant flailing hands, counterbalanced by acrobatic feats and yogic moments synchronous with beat drops. Its unbound choreography salvages important religio-cultural and historical narratives through ecstatic paroxysmal dance often with sexual overtones. This performance is important in ritualized and celebratory spaces to entertain crowds. While performing, Nachanias would have money launched at them, and they would sometimes engage men in dance. The performers were, and still are, frequently men who assume a different gendered role garbed in conscious ‘feminizing’ technologies such as make-up, jewellery and a frock. Especially during indentureship and the period immediately after, it was ‘vulgar’ for women to dance publicly or perform at religious ceremonies. Early women Nachanias were read as tainted spectacles, some of whom the archives record as professional ‘entertainers’. Inspired by the author’s curiosity, Indo-Jamaican identity, observations of Nachania and discourses with Ghanesh Maragh (one of the few contemporary performers of this artform), this article casts Indo-Jamaicans into the unbound erotic gendered tradition of Jamaica and indentureship by (a) tracing the (inter)religious, gendered, and historical anatomy of the lauded folk performance from the period of indentureship to the present in Jamaica and the Indo-Jamaican diaspora; (b) exploring themes of bidesia; and (c) examining possible problems with situating Nachania within categories of queer.

NEW CMOS PHOTOMETRY AND ARCHIVAL PHOTOGRAPHIC OBSERVATIONS OF THE W UMA STAR V752 CEN: EXTENDING THE O-C RECORD OF PERIOD CHANGES

We present new CMOS Bayer g-band photometry of the southern W UMa star V752 Cen, presenting two new times of primary minimum, and use archival photographic photometry from the Bamberg Sky Survey (mid 1960s) and the Harvard plate collection (∼1890 to 1990) to extend the O-C diagram back in time to ∼1900. Earlier authors have reported a constant period from the earliest published photometry in 1970 to about the year 2000, when a sudden change occurred to an increasing period. The archival photographic record presented here indicates the period was effectively constant back to 1900. Our 2020 data are also consistent with reported period increase. The V752 Cen system is known from earlier work to be a W UMa binary orbiting a lower mass spectroscopic binary. Our preliminary calculations, based on the reported centre-of-mass velocity change of the W UMa binary, suggest the wide orbit may have a period near 245 d, and could give rise to a light-travel time-effect of order 0.02 d. This does not however appear to be consistent with the SuperWASP photometric O-C results. Hence we suggest that considerable uncertainty exists concerning the properties of the wide orbit.

KGB Agents in the Illegal Evangelical Communities of the Late USSR: the Experience of Microhistoric Research

This study analyzes the experience of KGB agents among unregistered evangelical Christians-Baptists. The article systematically examines the materials formed as a result of the activity of “Topsy” female agent who lived in Kiev and collaborated with the KGB from 1963 to 1981. In the study, based on a specific agent case, the algorithm of work of KGB representatives with an agent recruited in an illegal religious community was described, the types of documents that were postponed as a result of this cooperation were analyzed from the point of view of their potential as a historical source, the management of clerical documentation when working with the agency was clarified. The article showed the family circle and the directions of the agent's activity: she reported on preachers and guests of illegal worship services in the forest near Kiev, watched the family Vins — leaders of the illegal movement, about work in the community with children and youth, internal conflicts of the community. The materials of the archival record the participation of “Topsy” in the identification of print outlets of the ECB, meetings of the leaders of the movement, the “exposure” of emissaries of foreign religious centers. The study concluded that the KGB’s task was to control and monitor the ongoing processes in the religious community, conducting local operations to temporarily suppress the activity of individual activists, while the initiative and strategy were in the hands of religious activists. The analyzed activity of the “Topsy” agent was not aimed at eliminating the illegal movement — she herself was an important element of the social structuring of the community: she created a “musical space” for young people and children — but at “exposing” individual actions and characters.

Å male i blått – om måling av intonasjon på hardingfele

This article investigates and discusses possible explanations for unconventional intonation practices in Norwegian Hardanger fiddle tunes. Software measurements of archive recordings, mainly of the Telemark fiddler Johannes Dahle (1890–1980), have given access to relevant visual and numerical data. The results show that the conventional diatonic system is not suitable as an analytical tool for intonation practices within this genre. The article presents examples of intonation patterns linked to a genre-specific tolerance and suggest that such patterns, which involves variability and step sizes between the whole step and the semitone, are governed both by the idiomatic left-hand technique, acoustic factors and by choices made possible by a normative and aesthetic framework, including expressive freedom.

The melodic beat: exploring asymmetry in polska performance

Some triple-beat forms in Scandinavian Folk Music are characterized by non-isochronous beat durations: asymmetric beats. Theorists of folk music have suggested that the variability of rhythmic figures and asymmetric metre are fundamental to these forms. The aim of this study is to obtain a deeper understanding of the relationship between melodic structure and asymmetric metre by analysing semi-automatically annotated performances. Our study considers archive and contemporary recordings of fiddlers' different versions of the same musical pieces: polska tunes in a local Swedish tradition. Results show that asymmetric beat patterns are consistent between performances and that they correspond with structural features of rhythmic figures, such as the note density within beats. The present study goes beyond previous work by exploring the use of a state-of-the-art automatic music notation tool in a corpus study of Swedish traditional music, and by employing statistical methods for a comparative analysis of performances across different players.

Prevalence of Hypodontia in Saudi Arabia: A Retrospective Digital Orthopantomographic Study

Introduction: Hypodontia or Dental agenesis; is defined as a developmental missing of any teeth, excluding the last molars. It may befall as a genetic syndrome or as a non-syndromic isolated trait. However, there is no prevalence available in our city.
 Aim and Objectives: The tenacity of this research is to assess the frequency of hypodontia among the population who received dental care at King Abdul Aziz University Dental Hospital in the city of Jeddah.
 Study Design: Retrospective digital orthopantomographic: cross-sectional study.
 Place and Duration of Study: Oral & Maxillofacial Prosthodontic Department, King Abdulaziz University, between January 2019 and July 2020.
 Methodology: This research is a retrospective cross-sectional study based on the examination of an archival dental record and 2D panoramic radiographs of patients who are presented at King Abdulaziz University Dental Hospital, Jeddah. A total of 2045 records were reviewed and included in this study. Two general practitioners reviewed patient’s dental charts looking for congenital missing tooth/teeth in a dark room by the method that the practitioners use. Careful reviews of each patient’s record were done to ensure that the cause of the missing tooth/teeth were congenital and not surgical or traumatic. Data were gathered from dental records of patients’ age period 6-9 years since most of the dental follicle of the permanent teeth should be completed or the tooth just erupts, radiographic findings were always compared to the patients’ file and progress notes to ensure the causative factors of missing teeth. The data were recorded in an excel sheet which included gender, age, the type, area and counting of the missing teeth.
 Results: After collecting the data, the total number of patients after exclusion were 1984. The prevalence of hypodontia in our tested population was %5.39. Statistical analysis were done by using SPSS software to correlate between variables. Varices grades.
 Conclusion: Within the limitations of this study our data shows that the most common congenitally tooth agenesis is the second premolar %47.6 and the second most common congenitally missing tooth is lateral incisor %18.6.

The Nature of the Future: Agriculture, Science, and Capitalism in the Antebellum North

The Nature of the Future: Agriculture, Science, and Capitalism in the Antebellum North

Accessibility of Archival Records in Croatian and Slovenian Archival Legislation – a Comparison

This paper deals with the issue of availability of archival material prescribed by the provisions in Croatian and Slovenian archival legislation comparing similarities and differences regarding the regulation of the problem of availability of archival material in both countries.

PROGRAM OF DEVELOPMENT OF BRANCH SCIENCE IN THE FIELD OF ARCHIVAL AFFAIRS OF UKRAINE FOR 2021-2025: PROBLEMS OF DEVELOPMENT AND PROSPECTS OF THE IMPLEMENTATION

Purpose of the Article. Multidimensional realities of the information society, dynamics and strengthening of the role of informatization and digitalization processes, radically influence the modern directions of development of archival business in Ukraine, actualize the urgent need to ensure its innovative genesis and, accordingly, improve the quality of research, the efficiency of implementation in archival practice. The study involves a comprehensive analysis of the stages of development and prospects for implementation of the «Program for the development of branch science for 2021-2025» into the archival sphere. Methodology. In terms of preparing the research, methods of analysis, comparison, generalization, structuring were used. The scientific novelty of the work is that for the first time, based on a comprehensive analysis of the content of the main outlines of the «Program of development of branch science for 2021-2025», demonstrated the need and importance of promoting the role of branch science in planning promising areas of archival affairs. In the further research, study and comprehensive analysis of global trends in the scientific vector of archival systems of the world, generalization of their positive experience in this process and based on the results - development of proposals for the adoption of advanced technologies and their implementation in the practice of research in Ukraine. Conclusions. Developed by leading experts of the Ukrainian Research Institute of Archival Affairs and Records Management «Program for the development of branch science for 2021-2025» is appropriate and important for scientific institutions dealing with the creation of high-tech conditions for the provision of archival information resources, the development of theoretical and applied research in the field of archives, research on improving the state of archival science in Ukraine. The text of the Program was formed by a group of specialists of the Ukrainian Research Institute of Archival Affairs and Records Management while taking into account all the recommendations, suggestions, and comments of representatives of archival institutions, research institutions, and institutions of higher education. The branch science development program is a system of interrelated tasks and activities that ensure the achievement of the ultimate goal of the Program and cover all its stages - from planning research to their practical implementation with monitoring of the effect achieved in practice. Keywords: program, archival institution, branch science, archival branch, archival sphere, scientific research, research work, URIAARK.

Accurate tracking of forest activity key to multi-jurisdictional management goals: A case study in California

An essential component of sustainable forest management is accurate monitoring of forest activities. Although monitoring efforts have generally increased for many forests throughout the world, in practice, effective monitoring is complex. Determining the magnitude and location of progress towards sustainability targets can be challenging due to diverse forest operations across multiple jurisdictions, the lack of data standardization, and discrepancies between field inspections and remotely-sensed records. In this work, we used California as a multijurisdictional case study to explore these problems and develop an approach that broadly informs forest monitoring strategies. The State of California recently entered into a shared stewardship agreement with the US Forest Service (USFS) and set a goal to jointly treat one million acres of forest and rangeland annually by 2025. Currently, however, federal and state forest management datasets are disjoint. This work addresses three barriers stymying the use of federal and state archival records to assess management goals. These barriers are: 1) current databases from different jurisdictions have not been combined due to their distinct data collection processes and internal structures; 2) datasets have not been comprehensively analyzed, despite the need to understand the extent of previous treatments as well as the rate of current activity; and 3) the spatial accuracy of archival datasets has not been evaluated against remotely-sensed data. To reduce these barriers, we first aggregated existing archival forest management records between 1984 and 2019 from the USFS′ Forest Activity Tracking System (FACTS) and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) using a qualitative scalar of treatment intensity. Combined FACTS and CAL FIRE completed footprint acres – defined as unique areas of land where a treatment was completed at any time since 1984 – have decreased since a peak in 2008. At most, 300,000 footprint acres are completed each year, 30% of the million-acre goal. Prescribed fires – defined as direct burning operations – have risen over time, according to the FACTS hazardous fuels dataset but prescribed fire records in CAL FIRE's dataset have rapidly increased since 2016. We also refined the spatial and temporal detail of the aggregated management record using the Continuous Change Detection and Classification algorithm on satellite remote sensing data to produce a state-wide time series map of harvest disturbances. A comparison of the algorithm's refined data to the archival record potentially suggests over-reporting in both FACTS and CAL FIRE's archival datasets. Our integrated dataset provides a better assessment of current treatments and the path towards the 1-million-acre a year goal. The refined dataset leverages the strengths of complementary, albeit imperfect, monitoring strategies from archives and remotely-sensed detection.

The Archive and the Square: Access to Archival Records Surrounding Privatized Public Space

Since the late twentieth century, the governance of many public spaces in U.S. cities has shifted from municipal control to a variety of public–private partnerships (PPPs). Today, parks conservancies and other PPPs drive operational decisions, including siting, management, and budgets. They function as extrastate actors, working on behalf of the state, in place of the state. Whereas many scholars have written about the effects of this change on spatial access and inclusion in public life, this article examines how the archival records practices of public space PPPs affect popular data access and, in turn, the transparency and accountability attributed to the democratic state. I propose that when extrastate agencies are not required to make their records publicly available or to persistently contribute to the state archive, as state agencies are, the absence diminishes the long-term memory-making function of the state. This dynamic lessens the ability of stakeholders to make claims or to intervene in the democratic governance of public spaces and normalizes the structures of privatization. I use the case of Pioneer Courthouse Square (PCS) in Portland, Oregon, and its adjunct conservancy, Pioneer Courthouse Square, Inc. (PCSI), to illustrate this dynamic.