Smith's Article Research Articles

Counterstory and Representation Through Media

This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Critical Analysis assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"

Mi Mamá, La que Llora

This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Counterstory Seminar Project assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"

How Alice Walker Shaped Derrick Bell’s Counterstory

This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Critical Analysis assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"

Intersectionality in South Park

This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Counterstory Seminar Project assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"

Williams’s Polar Bears

This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Critical Analysis assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"

Flesh, Blood, and Counterstory

This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Counterstory Seminar Project assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"

New Trek, 90s Trek, & the Permanence of Racism

This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Counterstory Seminar Project assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"

Waiting for History

This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Critical Analysis assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"

Policing the Black Experience and Critical Race Theory

This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Critical Analysis assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"

Critical Essay 1

This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Critical Analysis assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"

Beloved

This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Counterstory Seminar Project assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"

A Counterstory

This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Counterstory Seminar Project assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"

Model M

This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Counterstory Seminar Project assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"

In the Shadow of the Palms: The Selected Works of David Eugene Smith

In the Shadow of the Palms: The Selected Works of David Eugene Smith

Editor's Page

Editor's Page Daniel J. Burge One of the first things that I realized upon moving to Kentucky was how difficult it can be to define the state from a regional perspective. Although many signs welcomed me to the "front porch of the South," I was quickly struck by the wide variety of differences found within the commonwealth's border. Perhaps because it shares a border with seven states, occupies a liminal position between North and South, and sits just outside of the Midwest, Kentucky has never fit comfortably into the broad categories historians like to devise. It can be challenging, after all, to extrapolate broad conclusions from a state that somehow managed to produce both Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln in the years leading up to the Civil War. As this issue of the Register illustrates, however, studying Kentucky as part of a broader region can inform how we understand American history. Keith Harris focuses his attention on the years immediately after Kentucky achieved statehood, in "Demanding a Market at Home: Stability, Independence, and Protection in the Trans-Appalachian West, 1792–1816." Placing Kentucky within the region of the early West, Harris shows how Kentuckians and other westerners looked to the government to protect their economic interests. Harris challenges the frequently made assertion that Kentuckians were early proponents of free trade and demonstrates that even prior to the War of 1812, many westerners looked to the federal government to secure land and to help provide a home market for their increasingly diverse economic needs. Harris' article forms a natural segue to Laura Ellyn Smith's examination of perennial presidential candidate Henry Clay, a politician known for his embrace of protective tariffs. Smith's article, "A Clash [End Page 215] of Ideas: Presidential Election Policy Debates in 1832 Kentucky," examines the contest that pitted Henry Clay against Andrew Jackson. Historians have traditionally dismissed the election of 1832 as un-important, especially considering that Clay captured a mere six states and under 40 percent of the popular vote. Smith challenges this traditional interpretation by digging into Kentucky newspapers and a trove of personal letters. In doing so, Smith shows Kentuckians were drawn to Clay's ambitious policy proposals, including protectionism, and believed that his American System would improve Kentucky's economy. Yet the Union Henry Clay fought so hard to preserve was eventually rent asunder by the Civil War, causing a particular dilemma for Kentuckians. Christina Adkins's article "Josie Underwood's Union Blues: A Kentucky Diarist's Civil War" examines how one woman handled the splintering. Josie Underwood came from a prominent family in Bowling Green that owned a large plantation called Mt. Air. Fortunately, Underwood decided to keep a diary, which provides a window into the perspective of a loyal Kentucky woman. As Adkins observes, many published diaries were kept by southern women who saw Union troops as invaders. In contrast, Underwood denounced Confederates and rejected suitors who embraced secession. Underwood also firmly believed in the institution of slavery and despised those whom she felt threatened the institution. Through the Civil War, Underwood refused to accept that Kentuckians were somehow better off outside of the Union, even after her beloved home went up in flames. The three authors in this issue effectively use stories centered on Kentucky to illustrate larger points. In the years leading up to the War of 1812, for example, many Kentuckians, and others west of the Appalachian Mountains, were more interested in cementing their ties to the federal government than they were in sundering them. As the years passed, and as Henry Clay rose to national prominence, Kentuckians continued to turn to the federal government for economic aid and protection. While it might be easy to write off Kentucky's [End Page 216] vote in 1832 as insignificant, Kentucky was not so much an outlier as it was a harbinger of the broad appeal that Clay's policies would soon have across the nation. Similarly, Underwood's story helps us understand those who perceived the Civil War primarily as a war for the Union. Unconcerned over the plight of the enslaved, these Americans nevertheless saw secessionists as traitors who had abandoned the Constitution. By examining...

Adam Smith on schooling: A classical liberal rereading

Adam Smith's article “Of the Expence of the Institutions for the Education of Youth” in The Wealth of Nations provides a series of passages that have contributed to the seemingly unassailable interpretation that Smith argued for the government subsidization of education for youth. But a nuanced passage stands in tension and has largely been neglected in the scholarship. The current article pursues whether this nuanced passage better characterizes Smith's policy inclinations on schooling. The article rereads Smith relative to the discourses, debates, and expectations that occurred on the topic of education in his time. Such late-eighteenth century contextualization reveals the weaknesses of the traditional inferences and suggests an alternative interpretation. Smith considers several policy measures, but it is wrong to conclude that he favors government subsidization. Attention to his complex rhetoric reveals that he deprecates Montesquieu's reasoning for government provision, and he censures warm sentiments when they urge the same conclusion. Besides treating the issue of policy, this article addresses the claim that Smith favored compulsory schooling. Written for the Smith, Hume, Liberalism, and Esotericism project.

“Most Lives Make No Sense”: Interro(r)gating the Postmodern Subject in 9/11 Fiction

As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.—Wallace Stevens, “Adagia”In a frequently discussed scene in Don DeLillo's Falling Man, a physician tells the novel's protagonist abo...

Reality and Illusion in La celosa de sí misma : The Doubling of Identity

With the words Devoto salgo, Ventura, / pero a lo humano. iAy, que bella / imagen vi, si es imagen / quien a si se representa! (289-92), Tirso de Molina begins his scrutiny of the nature of identity and the power of imagination in celosa de si misma. In Celosa, Tirso de Molina presents the reader with a woman who is forcibly split into secondary and, later, tertiary identities, with a resulting battle for control of the created self. As we consider the play in depth, it is apparent that the female protagonist, Magdalena, is a victim of disguise and assumes a mostly passive role throughout the play, an occurrence uncommon in similar plays by Tirso. Since her disguise is inadvertently thrust upon her, she is faced with a phantom self, an idealized version that she can neither control nor surpass. Magdalena's woes are linked to the question of who really creates and controls disguise, and consequently identity, within the play. Ultimately, it becomes clear that identity is an unstable construct that is subject to changes in perception as well as to deliberate manipulation.Anthony Cascardi, one of the few critics to discuss this play in recent years, briefly addresses this work in the context of his 1984 study on Pedro Calderon de la Barca. When he does so, he dismisses it as lacking the quality of such plays as El burlador de Sevilla or dama duende. It is not until more than a decade later, in Anita K. Stoll's article Do Clothes Make the Man? Gender and Identity Fluidity in Tirso's Plays, that the question of identity in the play is addressed. As part of her larger study of gender presentation in Tirso, Stoll focuses on the confusion caused by the cloak that Magdalena wears to mass. Stoll argues that Tirso, through his characters and language suggests a confusing of visual realities and identities (833). Unfortunately, since hers is a multiwork study, she does not have the space to further develop how this multiplicity is constructed, manipulated, and controlled in this particular work. It is Dawn Smith's article, La celosa de si misma: A Comedy in Spite of Itself, which most closely approximates the focus of this study. Smith elaborates on the characteristics of Tirso's comedias de enredo and includes an explanation of the plot. She concludes that the play, in addition to being a comedia de enredo, is full of pervasive irony (831) and astute observations about the foibles of humanity. However, none of these efforts specifically concerns itself with the production and use of disguise and identity in this play. I wish to expand upon previous scholarship by illuminating how identity is unwittingly constructed in this play and the consequences of said creation.The work opens as Don Melchor, a poor young noble who has come to Madrid to marry a family friend's daughter, comes out of mass proclaiming to his servant, Ventura, his love for and devotion to a woman he glimpsed during the service (289-92). When Melchor admits that all he saw of the woman was her hand, the gracioso's response is a well-deserved deconstruction of courtly love and baroque figures (353-60). Ventura's emphasis on the partial body highlights the expansive power of Don Melchor's imagination while simultaneously deconstructing the female body. Where Melchor creates a whole body from a hand, Ventura separates the female body into component parts: a division reflective of the differing world views held by the two. Melchor sees the world as a holistic realm in which his synecdochal imaginations are always validated. He is an idealistic adherent to a standard of love that exists only in a literary world, as his statement [Y]o no tengo de casarme, / si no fuere con belleza / y virtud (104-06) indicates. Although poor, he is willing to abandon a dowry of sixty thousand ducats rather than marry a woman he does not want (97). Ventura, his practical counterpart, sees only the advantage to be gained by such a marriage (94-98). …

Editor's Note

Editor's Note

Book Review: Calendars and Chronological Tables, Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World

CALENDARS AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World. Edited by John M. Steele (Oxbow Books, Oxford, 201 1). Pp. iv + 179. $60. ISBN 978-1-84217-987-1.As stated in the editor's preface, the present book is a collection of six articles aimed at enhancing our current understanding of calendars and of chronological tables as essential auxiliary tools in the writing of history. Devoted to the Chinese, Indian, Jewish, Islamic and Mesoamerican worlds during the ancient and medieval periods, it complements a first volume limited to the Ancient Near East.These articles fall into the following three heterogeneous categories: (1) a critical examination of the state of the art in a particular domain (the Chinese Sexagenary Cycle and the ritual foundations of the Chinese calendar by A. Smith; the correlation between historical Maya and Christian dates by G. Adana); (2) an analysis of the calendrical aspect of particular historical sources (the 364-Day Year in the Dead Sea scrolls by J. Ben Dov; the Zij al-Sanjari, an Arabic treatise composed c. 1 1 15 by C. Montelle); and (3) an overview of the subject in a particular region over several millennia (K. Plofker and T. L. Knudsen on the Indian calendar; N. Sivin on mathematical astronomy and the Chinese calendar).This heterogeneity probably reflects the different modes of approach to a difficult subject involving small scholarly communities, Western and non- Western, interconnected or not. Consequently, the most recent findings have often been published in not-widely accessible languages. In this respect, the fact that Ben Dov's outstanding article, for example, which was originally only available in Hebrew, has been here translated into English is much appreciated. On the other hand, the two articles on China rely essentially on first-order but untranslated Chinese works, even a Ph.D. dissertation (p. 50).The first of these, A. Smith's article, is a critical presentation of questions concerning early China (the Shang king list, late Shang divination records, dates on late Shang bronzes, the cyclical sacrificial roster). In a domain that is fraught with difficulties and where implicit assumptions are often taken for granted without warning, even in works considered as authoritative, the clarity of Smith's approach makes it, henceforth, an indispensable reference tool. But since the author mentions the enigmatic terms 'heavenly stems' (or trunks) tiangan ^c^P and 'terrestrial branches' dizhi %3^ (p. 29), referring to the components of the Sexagenary Cycle, we might add here that these two terms evoke in fact the image of an inverted cosmic tree belonging also to the Indian culture since the Vedic period and to many other traditions, Arabic, Hebrew, European and Siberian.1The second article, by N. …