Original Essays Research Articles

Of primary importance: applying the new literacy guidelines

PurposeWritten by a librarian and history professor, the purpose of this paper is to describe a collaborative, primary source literacy project and report its effectiveness in teaching undergraduates to critically analyze information and develop primary source literacy.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology used included a research project with 24 undergraduates and a pre- and post-survey. The research project and student survey incorporated principles from the “Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy”, published in 2017 by the ACRL’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Section and the Society of American Archivists. The paper offers research and practical implications for librarians and instructors interested in strategies to teach information literacy. For instance, the paper includes a review of literature on “archival intelligence” or “primary source literacy” and describes the 2017 Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy.FindingsSocially, the paper includes implications for how to create an inclusive learning experience for students with mechanisms such as a scaffolded assignment, hands-on instruction, imposter syndrome awareness and a no-Google policy.Originality/valueGiven that this is one of the first articles to document how practitioners are incorporating the new 2017 Guidelines, this is sure to be an original and valuable essay.

Editor's Letter

Editor's Letter

Aristotelian Interpretations by Fran O’Rourke (review)

after the 1921 Treaty and retired from politics to take up a judicial position. While he was a brilliant leader in promoting opposition to the government by all means, including treason, in at attempt to defeat Home Rule, he was a dismal failure as a minister in the war time coalition governments. He was essentially more a rabble-rouser than a statesman. Given his lack of real affection for the Northern Irish state, there is something deeply ironic about the fact that the larger than life-size statue of him, erected in his own lifetime in front of the parliament building at Stormont, symbolises the fact that Northern Ireland is essentially Carson’s creation. By contrast, Redmond remains an almost forgotten man in nationalist Ireland, despite the fact that the parliamentary democracy that emerged in Dublin is far closer to his dream of an independent, tolerant, Ireland than the visions of the 1916 leaders. It is also arguable that Redmond would be far happier with the way history turned out for what is now the Irish Republic, than Carson was with his creation. Redmond’s big regret would be that partition has divided the island for a century and is likely to do so for many years to come. Augustine Birrell, Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1906 to 1916, who worked so closely with Redmond to try and deliver Home Rule, noted in his memoirs published in the 1920s how the young men who formed the government of the Free State did not appreciate ‘how they had entered into their inheritance by the efforts and great personal sacrifice and risks of that Irish Parliamentary Party which they have since flung upon the scrap-heap of history. Politicians seldom desire gratitude and never get it’. In Redmond’s case that is certainly true. Stephen Collins has recently retired as political editor of The Irish Times, to which he continues to contribute on a regular basis. Aristotelian Interpretations, Fran O’Rourke (Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2016), 366 pages. Who is the greatest philosopher who ever lived? Many might hesitate to answer such a question, Fran O’Rourke does not. For him Aristotle is, without any doubt, the holder of that title. This book substantiates the claim. Summer 2018: Book Reviews Studies • volume 107 • number 426 234 The magnanimity and comprehensiveness of Aristotle’s dictum that ‘every realm of nature is marvellous’ sums up O’Rourke’s conviction and describes also his own connaturality with his hero. The maxim also serves as an underlying and unifying motif for this volume of original essays. Aristotelian Interpretations considers themes of perennial interest, offering new avenues of interpretation, illustrating how Aristotle’s thought may be creatively applied to a variety of timeless and contemporary questions. Each chapter concerns itself with central themes of metaphysics, aesthetics, political anthropology, ethics and epistemology. The result is a panoramic survey of Aristotle’s philosophy showing that, far from being just a figure of historical interest living over two thousand years ago, this remarkable thinker provides us with a vision which is applicable and relevant. While many of Aristotle’s empirical presuppositions are obviously out of date, science having taken such gigantic strides in the meantime, his deeper intuitions and unrivalled wisdom have perennial validity. Aristotle’s philosophy, as well as being comprehensive and profound, is noted for its common sense, its belief in and reverence for nature, and its overall confidence in the human mind’s capacity to discover and to formulate truth. Those who might find it somewhat flat, dull and forbidding might risk a preliminary glance through Aristotle’s Ethics; reminding themselves that such an apparent banality is the result of the total absorption of such thought into our cultural bloodstream. Aristotle’s books have become the warp and woof of life as we were born into it. They formed the shape and fabric of the cultural shelter woven around us. That is why this book by Fran O’Rourke is such a godsend. ‘We are the only animals who can be happy . . . Morality and virtue are personal . . . and virtue depends upon ourselves’, this author tells us in his introduction, echoing the master he has been studying all...

Intimate Navigations, Refracted Perspectives

Intimate Navigations, Refracted Perspectives

Sacred in Modern Abstract Art

The abstract painting of the early 20th century was based on the creation of new structural art forms represented in non-mimetic, non-demonstrative, uniconic painting. However, regardless of the fact that the avant-garde art of the early 20th century with its artistic processes and theoretical postulates advocated the autonomy of art, some modern abstract artists did not abandon the realms of spirituality, religion and spirituality. Based on studies of heterodox religious movements of the mid and late 19th century (mainly the Theosophy of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Annie Besant, and Anthroposophy of Rudolph Steiner, as starting points for creation of abstract painting of the early 20th century) Wassily Kandinsky creates organic abstraction, Piet Mondrian develops geometric abstraction - Neo-Plasticism, Kazimir Malevich establishes the most radical form of modern abstract painting - Suprematism. We deal here with original self-reflective essays and theories of art of Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich, which serve as theories of abstract art (theories of Lyrical abstraction, Neo-Plasticism and Suprematism), and based on theories of these artists, this paper aims to explore the influence of Theosophy and Anthroposophy on the development of Kandinsky’s Lyrical abstraction, Mondrian’s Neo-Plasticism and Malevich’s Suprematism.

Мистицизм и теология в наследии Анри де Любака

The review is devoted to recently published B. Dumas’s book “On the Ways into the Inner Silence with Henri de Lubac, a Man of Spiritual Life and Theologian”. Author proposes an original essay containing twelve special points, a kind of theological facets of de Lubac’s thought, that have to show a diversity of his ideas, as well as a genuine centricism, concern-ing a close interaction between thought and contemplation, theology and mysticism

Like a Letter, You

Like a Letter, You is a collaborative investigation focused on the concept of ‘conversation as an object’. Originally recorded as part of a larger self-produced project titled hEar Pixels, this track manifests as an experimental soundbased reconfiguration of an original essay about handwritten correspondence: How might an analog essay be performed as a digital assemblage of sound? In what ways are the methods of a DJ tied to speech, literature, and dialog? The track is composed using a cut-and-paste process of ‘utterances’, which may be described as units of speech distinct from language that may be oral or written and are inevitably completed by a response[1] which inevitably forms a dialog. Further, these speech units may manifest through gestures associated with digital tools as a form of cultural production[2]. Like a Letter, You includes a reading of the essay aloud, snippets of informal spoken conversations between the authors, and musical bits generated with a touch-based audio mixing platform. In effect, Like a Letter, You embodies the concepts of writing, dialog, and gesture within the genre of sound literature, and it also speaks to the unpredictable nature of collaboration and human interaction.
 [1] BAKHTIN, Mikhail (1986). Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.[2] NOLAND, Carrie (2009). Agency and Embodiment: Performing Gestures/Producing Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

The Politicians and the Egalitarians: The Hidden History of American Politics

Sean Wilentz's latest book, like his others, is erudite, expansive, and argumentative. The Politicians and the Egalitarians contends that the histories of partisanship and egalitarianism allow for a fuller understanding of American political history. Two original essays on these topics headline the book, yet the work is ultimately a showcase of Wilentz's high-profile essays first published in the New Republic and the New York Review of Books. Chapter 1 is a brief history of “The Postpartisan Style in American Politics” from George Washington's Farewell Address of 1796 to Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 denying the existence of “a liberal America and a conservative America” and instead emphasizing “a United States of America.” Wilentz convincingly argues that postpartisanship is either a naïve dream of those who fear getting their hands dirty or a cynical posture by those with partisan goals. He judges that the “antiparty current is by definition antidemocratic, as political parties have been the only reliable electoral vehicles for advancing the ideas and interests of ordinary voters” (p. 28).

Nietzsche's Therapeutic Teaching: For Individuals and Culture

Nietzsche's Therapeutic Teaching: For Individuals and Culture

Review: Food & Architecture

James Edward Malin reviews Samantha L. Martin-McAuliffe’s edited volume of thirteen original essays, which examine the intersection of food and architecture through relationships of regionalism, sustainability, craft, and authenticity.

Editor's Letter

Editor-in-Chief Max J. Skidmore announces a forthcoming book and discusses an anticipated special issue of the journal, with the theme of childhood poverty in the Middle East. He also describes this current issue, Volume 9, Issue 3, of Poverty and Public Policy, the third quarterly issue of 2017, which continues the ninth year of the journal's publication. I am pleased to announce a forthcoming book that presents original essays by scholars from around the world, each from a different country, examining the first 100 days of the administration of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. The volume will be co-edited by Dr. John Dixon, and by me. Dr. Dixon is familiar to readers of Poverty and Public Policy, both as a contributor and as Board member/Editor-at-Large. The Dixon-Skidmore volume should be in print early in 2018, and the publisher will be Westphalia Press, the publishing arm of the Policy Studies Organization. We also anticipate that we soon will be issuing a special issue of Poverty and Public Policy on the subject of “Child Poverty and Youth Unemployment in the Middle East.” Dr. Dixon will be the Special Editor for that issue. This current issue, volume 9, issue 3, begins with a Public Policy Report that I prepared with regard to the issuance on 13 July of the 2017 Report of the Trustees of the Social Security Administration. Poverty and Public Policy presents this as a public service to facilitate better understanding of the Social Security system in the United States. Next comes an article from Ethiopia, by Bekele Melese of the University of Gondar, who studies “Micro and Small Enterprises as an Anti-Poverty and Employment Generation Strategy in Bahir Dar City, North-Western Ethiopia.” Consistent with our conviction that education is among the most important anti-poverty factors, our next article, by Laura D. Ullrich of Winthrop University, considers “Differing Responses to School Finance Reform: The Haves Versus the Have-Nots.” This issue's next article also deals with children. Diana Rosales Mitte of the University of Wisconsin–Madison contributes “The Effects on Children's Well-Being of Ecuador's Conditional Cash Transfer ‘Bono de Desarrollo Humano’.” Yet another important article, “Poverty in Europe: Sociodemographics, Portfolios, and Consumption of Wealth Poor Households,” by Philip Müller of the University of Göttingen in Germany, analyzes microdata from three European studies to look at wealth-poor as opposed to income-poor households. In recognition of the importance of family planning to broad issues of poverty, we are proud to present as the final article in this issue, “The Relational Experience of Poverty: Challenges for Family Planning and Autonomy in Rural Areas,” by Elizabeth Seale of the State University of New York Oneonta. Book Reviews— This issue has three book reviews, each coming from the University of South Dakota. Sarah R. Deming reviews Intersectional Inequality: Race, Class, Test Scores, and Poverty, by Charles C. Ragin and Peer C. Fiss. Peter A. Kindle and Elena Delavega review Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Victoria Varland reviews Richard Schweid's Invisible Nation: Homeless Families in America. We welcome their contributions. Reviews of relevant books are vital to the scholarly process. Thus, as always, we seek thoughtful reviews of such books, and we invite those who are interested in becoming reviewers to communicate with our Book Review Editor, Dr. Virginia Beard, at [email protected]. Max J. Skidmore Editor-in-Chief University of Missouri-Kansas City

Book review

This book presents a coherent view of evolution which is organismal and historical, one that feeds from and respects tradition but looks forward in aiming at providing a documentation of patterns in which scenarios are presented and integration of anatomy, physiology and behavior is attempted. Not bad. It is a peculiar book, because it is in some details and formalities a little outdated, and yet it is quite timely in others. The latter does not come from the topicality of the subjects but because the approach and the historical take on problems are timeless—relevant today and hopefully in the future.This book is very personal as it is tied to the biography of its author, Wolfgang Maier. W. Maier (b. 1942) was Professor of Systematic Zoology at the University of Tu¨bingen from 1988 until his retirement in 2007, although he is still actively publishing academic research papers (Fig. 1). His previous work had been in Frankfurt, first as PhD student under the direction of the late Dietrich Starck (1908–2001), an anatomist who wielded substantial influence via his textbooks (e.g., Vergleichende Anatomie der Wirbeltiere) and his students, such as W. Maier. The academic history of W. Maier is recapitulated in a series of essays, and in fact the book presents modified versions of previously original research papers or essays along the career of its author. Many of the chapters are based on talks given in the context of ‘Ringvorlesungen’ at the University of Tu¨bingen, evening lectures for the general public. This book is organized in five sections, with several chapters in each: (1) methodology and science history, (2) phylogeny of animals, (3) origin and diversification of mammals, (4) selected aspect of head morphology, and (5) primatology and anthropology.

Response to Tanja Aho and Leland Tabares: Madness and Parainstitutionality

Response to Tanja Aho and Leland Tabares on original essay by Jodi Melamed, "Proceduralism, Predisposing, Poesis: Forms of Institutionality," In the Making, published in Lateral 5.1.

Response to Michelle N. Huang and Chad Shomura

Response to Michelle N Huang and Chad Shomura on original essay by Kyla Wazana Tompkins, "On the Limits and Promise of New Materialist Philosophy," published in Lateral 5.1.

Thinking with Jina B. Kim and Sami Schalk

Response to Jina B. Kim and Sami Schalk on original essay by Julie Avril Minich, "Enabling Whom? Critical Disability Studies Now," published in Lateral 5.1.

Thinking with Melissa Gniadek and Beenash Jafri

Response to Melissa Gniadek and Beenash Jafri on original essay by J Kēhaulani Kauanui, "A Structure, Not an Event: Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity," published in Lateral 5.1.

Betwixt fiction and documentary

Abstract ‘Betwixt fiction and documentary’ is Imamura Shōhei’s most cohesive articulation of his quest for a cinema-truth, where fiction and documentary crossover. This short essay situates Imamura’s development as a filmmaker via reference to historical events that variously impacted on the style and form of his work. The original Japanese essay can be found in: S. Imamura (ed.) (2001), Toru: Kannu kara Yamiichi e, Tokyo: Kōsakusha, pp. 234–38.

How bodies matter

The article takes its cue from the statement in the original essay, “Trump’s body matters,” and considers examples of how different kinds of bodies were demonstrated to matter in candidate Trump’s campaign discourse. With his “Make America Great Again” slogan in mind, the article tacks back and forth between Trump’s campaign discourse on black, brown, and female bodies and various forms of violence and discipline exercised in America’s racialized past, which threaten to return under the new administration. It is argued that questions of racialization and belonging are central to defining how bodies matter in the America that Trump proposes.

“The Word for Mercy” in the Church Slavonic Translation of the Second Half of the 17th Century and Its Polish Original: Realia Interpretation

“The Word for Mercy” was considered to be an original essay, written by Epiphanius Slavinetsky or Euthymius Chudovsky. In fact, it is a translation of Piotr Skarga’s cognominal sermon. The Church Slavonic translation is an example of the so-called inter-confessional rendering of the Polish original that shows its adaptation to the Orthodox tradition and to Russian historical and cultural specificity. The present paper analyses the problems of realia interpretation in the Church Slavonic translation of the Polish source. A distinctive feature of the translation is the elimination of specific signs of the Polish origin of the text. The translator pretends that a translated text is an original composition. To achieve this goal, he changes or omits the names of the Western saints. As markers indicating its place within the Byzantine tradition, he uses Greek lexical borrowings. Making a choice between lexical equivalents for transmission of the foreign realia, the translator probably uses multilingual lexicons such as the Thesaurus Polono-Latino-Graecus by Grzegorz Knapiusz and the Trilingual Lexicon by Epiphanius Slavinetsky. Very similar methods characterize the works of Simeon of Polotsk. Thus, it was not only the practice of the Chudov Monastery bookmen, but also Muscovite prevailing practice. “The Word for Mercy” is a unique example of adaptation of the Western ideas of state charity to the Russian situation in the second half of the 17th century. The ideological changes in the translation give this sermon features of the socio-legal project that is the hallmark of Early Modern times.

Perpetual anarchy: From economic security to financial insecurity

This forum contribution addresses two major themes in de Goede's original essay on ‘Financial security’: (1) the relationship between stable markets and the proverbial ‘security dilemma’; and (2) the development of new decision-technologies to address risk in the post-World War II period. Its argument is that the confluence of these two themes through rational choice theory represents a fundamental re-evaluation of the security dilemma and its relationship to the rule of law governing market relations, ushering in an era of perpetual physical and financial insecurity.