Southern Town Research Articles

A Study of the Master-Slave Dialectic Relationship of the "Other" in "The Ballad of the Sad Café"

"The Ballad of the Sad Café" is one of the representative works of American writer Carson McCullers, which deeply explores the master-slave dialectic relationship of the "Other" under existentialism by depicting the complex relationships among three protagonists in a southern town. In the novel, the protagonists show both a longing for and a resistance to the "Other." Marvin Macy's obsession with Amelia and his manipulation of Cousin Lymon, as well as Amelia's dependence on Cousin Lymon and her disgust towards Marvin, reflect the complex and distorted relationship between them. This relationship is not only a master-slave relationship in emotions but also a dialectical process of self-awareness and other-awareness under existentialism. The novel reveals the eternal master-slave relationship between people by showing the power struggles and psychological changes between love and being loved, control and being controlled. In this relationship, the "Other" is both the object of love and control, while the protagonists constantly seek self-identity and freedom in their relationship with the "Other." Through an in-depth study of the master-slave dialectic relationship of the "Other" in "The Ballad of the Sad Café," we can better understand the complexity of interpersonal relationships under existentialism and the eternal exploration of self and the "Other" in the depths of the human heart.

The Comprehensive Management Zoning of Mountains, Rivers, Forests, and Farmlands Based on Element Recognition

Land subsidence, soil erosion, and landscape fragmentation frequently occur in regions of backward production capacity. Therefore, it is imperative to carry out efforts for ecological restoration in these mine-closed regions. The proposal of holistic conservation of mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grasslands, and deserts provides important guidance for ecological restoration. To support the governance of regional ecology, this paper aims to discuss the layout of element governance zoning in four southern towns of Qijiang District, Chongqing. SBAS-InSAR technology, vulnerability assessment, linear trend analysis, and suitability evaluation were used to divide the mountain, water, forest, and farmland management areas. Regional comprehensive management work was implemented according to the severity of each element’s existing ecological questions. Eventually, a comprehensive management pattern of mountains, rivers, forests, and farmlands can be obtained. The results show that the mountain management area is 8.03 km2 (3.24% of the total management area), the hydrological management area is 212.07 km2 (85.80% of the total management area), the forest management area is 7.04 km2 (2.84% of the total management area), and the farmland management area is 20.07 km2 (8.12% of the total management area). In light of the current circumstances, this study advocates for the implementation of three integrated governance approaches, with a focus on managing hydrological factors. These approaches include ridge-based mountain, water, and forest governance, valley-based mountain, water, and farmland governance, and undergrowth economy-based water, forest, and farmland governance. This study explores the spatial layout and priority of the governance areas from the perspective of elements, which provides a new development direction for the current research on the life community based on policy analysis.

H - 29 Delivering Culturally Sensitive Neuropsychological Assessment Feedback: a Case Study of Atypical Neurosyphilis.

To demonstrate the neuropsychological correlates of atypical neurosyphilis and the importance of delivering assessment results in a culturally sensitive manner. The patient was a 52-year-old African American male with 12years of education who was raised in a rural, southern town and worked as a delivery driver. He was hospitalized after three weeks of altered mental status, memory loss, and seizures. Electroencephalography (EEG) showed left lateralized periodic discharges. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed hyperintensities in the left hippocampus and amygdala consistent with limbic encephalitis. Cerebrospinal fluid studies revealed lymphocytic pleocytosis and hypoglycorrhachia. Rapid plasma regain and venereal disease tests were positive for syphilis in serum and CSF. He was initially treated with empiric antibiotics and antiseizures medications with modest improvement. His mental status improved after penicillin treatment, and he was discharged after 14days. Repeat MRI showed cortical atrophy in the left medial frontal lobe and left hippocampus. The patient demonstrated executive dysfunction (e.g., set-loss and source memory errors) and poor performance across verbal and visual memory tasks. He also demonstrated an inaccurate understanding of the possible causes of his illness. Feedback was delivered across two sessions: one session to discuss test results and a second session with the patient and his wife to discuss syphilis as a sexually transmitted infection and address the historical context of syphilis among African American men. Neurosyphilis can present as limbic encephalitis and can mimic autoimmune encephalitis and other infectious diseases. Tailoring assessment feedback to a patient's sociocultural context is vital for encouraging continued treatment.

The Anthropology of Bioenergy: Forests and Communities in The Southeastern United States

Abstract Bioenergy companies have proposed and constructed numerous industrial plants for wood-based bioenergy production; while they envision and plan these facilities in distant locales, they build the plants at a commercial scale in specific communities in the southeastern United States. Ethnographic research can improve understanding of how people in these communities, often rural, heavily forested, and economically impoverished Southern towns, view and experience bioenergy initiatives. It can also elucidate various, often competing, worldviews and ways of discussing an interconnected web of social issues related to bioenergy development. Further, ethnography in these local communities sheds light on ways that some actors strategically deploy certain narratives to promote their own objectives. Through multi-sited fieldwork in Georgia and Mississippi and event ethnography at regional conferences and national webinars, we have found that four main issues are intertwined on a local level in communities where bioenergy facilities are located: energy, landscape, climate, and race. These rural, forested communities grappling with deep racial divides, socioeconomic vulnerabilities, and skepticism about climate change will continue to be sought as sites for wood-based bioenergy, making understanding the cultural context a paramount concern.

Searching the early lives of the Soong sisters in Macon, Georgia: three Chinese overseas students in the American South

AbstractThis article uses local history approaches to reconstruct the early lives of the Soong sisters at Wesleyan Female College in Macon, Georgia at the beginning of the twentieth century. The sisters' experiences as Chinese overseas students were situated in the histories of American South and of Asian Americans. By examining the sisters' transition to Wesleyan, their everyday lives on campus, and their occasional off-campus encounters with Maconites, the article argues that the “Southernness” of Wesleyan and Macon distinguished the sisters' experiences from other Chinese overseas students that are more familiar to Chinese historians. Because of the relative absence of Chinese residents in this small Southern town, the girls were rarely categorized with Chinese laborers and hardly felt the strong anti-Chinese sentiments that were experienced by students who went to Western states and large cities. Similarly, the slow adoption of new utilitarian courses at this elite Southern female college also meant the sisters were neither trained as qualified homemakers nor as career women like many other American-educated Chinese women in their generation. They were taught to become housewives that played important, unpaid social roles – a path that they would later follow.

Soybean allergen Gly m 1 in the atmosphere of a Brazilian Southern town

The allergen from soybean dust (Gly m 1) was described as possible cause of asthma in predisposed individuals, particularly in soy unloading port areas and soy workers. Concentrations that can cause sensitization and symptoms are unknown. We hypothise that the levels are high, considering Brazil a major soybean producer.

The Making and Unmaking of San Luis, an Apalachee-Spanish Town in Florida

The Spanish archival record is, perhaps unsurprisingly, relatively silent about the lives, experiences, and interactions of women in colonial San Luis and Apalachee. The gendered silence in the colonial archive is in part due to the lack of baptismal, marriage, and death records from Apalachee—in other words, the documents in which women are most likely to appear in Spanish colonial archives are missing for Apalachee. The archaeological and material records tell a different story. The ongoing archaeological excavations in Mission San Luis have uncovered a wealth of artifacts to help us reconstruct everyday life in the southern town. Although the European sites have been far more explored than the Apalachee ones, the archaeological findings help fill out, as well as complicate, a historical narrative focused on Spanish men. Correcting a male-centered focus requires not only writing stories of and about women, but also questioning the narratives and limitations produced by androcentric and un-gendered constructions of the past. This essay combines both historical documents and archaeological findings to offer a gendered reading of San Luis, its structures, and its everyday operations. It centers the life and experiences of women to explore the everyday contours of power in this early southern town.

The Bunker, the Barracks, the Base, and the Border: Preservation as Resistance in South Lebanon

Abstract: About six kilometers from the Blue Line and twelve from the Syrian border, the southern town of Khiam sits at a frontline traversing constant regional turmoil. Its existence in Lebanon entirely was determined by the colonial nation-state division of the area following the end of World War II, a critical period in the establishment of Lebanon's independence and a time during which British control oversaw the construction of a series of defensive architectural fortifications within the town's landscape. These structures include a bunker, a barracks, and an airbase—all three of which were built in Khiam during World War II, given its strategic border location and the overlooking conditions of its mountain ranges. Their functions have since been transformed by events within Lebanon's regional and local history, including two Israeli invasions, and a neighboring civil war in Syria. This article, through a telling of encounters based on fieldwork within and around the sites, reanimates the collective history of intergenerational cycles of occupation, displacement, violence, and return in South Lebanon. It situates the ephemeral lifespans of each of these structures and their embodied narratives as distinct reconstructions of time and place. Over the years, these reconstructions have been imposed by a diversity of actors and transgressors ranging from the imagination of a child to the strategic vision of a colonizer. Through a biographical quality inspired by personal experiences of the sites, it also takes a contextual approach situated in the geopolitics of the South as a contested borderland constantly being transgressed, and the intimacies of living under such precarious conditions.

Merging Historical Archives with Remote Sensing Data: A Methodology to Improve Rockfall Mitigation Strategy for Small Communities

Both in the literature and in practical applications, several works have dealt with rockfall analysis and the planning of mitigation measures. It is also possible to find inventories and papers that describe historical events. However, it is challenging to find methodologies or studies about inventorying rockfall mitigation or their efficiency over time. In Italy, many rockfall barriers and other mitigation solutions have been built in the last decades, and one of the most urgent problems is their correct management and maintenance. Lauria, a small town in southern Italy, can be considered an example of this common condition exacerbated by a wildfire in 2017. This work presents a methodology for assessing rockfall risk and creating a geodatabase of mitigation structures focused on small communities. We used digitalization of archival sources to reconstruct and geocode the record of mitigation works. An available database of historical landslides was used to reconstruct the most relevant rockfall events. Moreover, we coupled this with Sentinel-2 images and high-resolution orthophotos to map the wildfire area. Data obtained from the UAV-LiDAR survey were used to map the mitigation structures. The aim was to create a reliable state-of-the-art method, described in an operational monograph, to be used by experts for the design of new rockfall mitigation structures in both an affordable and efficient way. Moreover, we created a simple webGIS and a 3-D interactive view, helpful in disseminating rockfall hazards and mitigation strategies among the population at risk.

Empire and Catastrophe: Decolonization and Environmental Disaster in North Africa and Mediterranean France Since 1954

Empire and Catastrophe: Decolonization and Environmental Disaster in North Africa and Mediterranean France Since 1954

Brain Magnet: Research Triangle Park and the Idea of the Idea Economy

Brain Magnet: Research Triangle Park and the Idea of the Idea Economy

Trajal Harrell: The Anxiety of Autobiography

Trajal Harrell: The Anxiety of Autobiography

Recasting the Global South

Recasting the Global South

Pricing risk-based catastrophe bonds for earthquakes at an urban scale

Catastrophe risk-based bonds are used by governments, financial institutions and (re)insurers to transfer the financial risk associated to the occurrence of catastrophic events, such as earthquakes, to the capital market. In this study, we show how municipalities prone to earthquakes can use this type of insurance-linked security to protect their building stock and communities from economic losses, and ultimately increase their earthquake resilience. We consider Benevento, a middle-sized historical town in southern Italy, as a case study, although the same approach is applicable to other urban areas in seismically active regions. One of the crucial steps in pricing catastrophe bonds is the computation of aggregate losses. We compute direct economic losses for each exposed asset based on high spatial resolution hazard and exposure models. Finally, we use the simulated loss data to price two types of catastrophe bonds (zero-coupon and coupon bonds) for different thresholds and maturity times. Although the present application focuses on earthquakes, the framework can potentially be applied to other natural disasters, such as hurricanes, floods, and other extreme weather events.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent

Optimization and Integration of Water Resources and Guarantee of Water Supply Safety in Southern Cities and Towns of Huangshan City

Optimization and Integration of Water Resources and Guarantee of Water Supply Safety in Southern Cities and Towns of Huangshan City

Howl by Shaun David Hutchinson

Reviewed by: Howl by Shaun David Hutchinson April Spisak Hutchinson , Shaun David Howl . Simon , 2022 [ 432 p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781534470927 $19.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781534470941 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 9-12 Yanked from his life in Seattle, where he had a fantastic boyfriend, a great best friend, and still-married parents, Virgil now must deal with being the new kid in the small southern town of Merritt with his workaholic father. It does not begin well: while attending a party he is sexually assaulted by Jarrett, a boy who lures Virgil into an empty room, and that same night on his way home Virgil is brutally attacked by a monster—though everyone assures him it was a gator, bear, badger, or wild cat. Virgil stumbles through the next few months, haunted by scenes from Jarrett's assault and the party as well as memories of the monster's attack. Unfortunately, any support he had is crashing spectacularly: his long-distance boyfriend dumps him, his father retreats into his own depression, his strict grandparents offer little comfort, and his classmates torment him with cruel pranks, all too happy to riff on his trauma. There is strength to be found in hitting rock bottom, though, and Virgil eventually emerges scathed but newly aware of his own power, deciding to plumb those depths for tenacity and endurance rather than allowing the trauma to define him. If that seems a bit rosy and optimistic, particularly for Hutchinson, who brilliantly revels in unreliable narrators and tortured protagonists, rest assured [End Page 191] that Virgil's path to this new version of himself is a compelling one that readers will find authentic and insightful. Copyright © 2022 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Book Review - Greetings from New Nashville: How a Sleepy Southern Town Became "It" City

Book Review - Greetings from New Nashville: How a Sleepy Southern Town Became "It" City

Ghost trains: past and future mobilities haunting a Southern Town

ABSTRACT This article juxtaposes two transportation projects in the town of Ashland, Virginia, one a short-lived electric rail network from the early 20th century and the other part of a planned expansion of high-speed rail along the southeast corridor of the US. Both are ‘ghost trains,’ trains that either no longer exist or have not yet been built but still give shape to anxieties about the past and future. As a satellite of the nearby state capital Richmond, Virginia, the town’s debates about future development speak to mobilities studies scholarship about the relationship between suburbs and the city in terms of high-speed rail. The contribution of this article is to use Avery Gordon’s theory of haunting to look for overlooked histories revealed by transportation projects, principal among them the history of segregation and slavery that have so informed the American South. Disruptions of everyday routines, minor traffic accidents and catastrophes big and small, provide opportunities to see histories often rendered invisible by privilege, speed and indifference. Folklore about trains, small-town gossip and the author’s own anecdotes about growing up in the town will be used to convey the experience of witnessing these ghosts.

Structural Violence of Schooling: A Genealogy of a Critical Family History of Three Generations of African American Women in a Rural Community in Florida

Through the lens of structural violence, Black feminism and critical family history, this paper explores how societal structures informed by white supremacy shaped the lives of three generations of rural African American women in a family in Florida during the middle to the late twentieth century. Specifically, this study investigates how disparate funding, segregation, desegregation, poverty and post-desegregation policies shaped and limited the achievement trajectories among these women. Further, an oral historical examination of their lives reveals the strategies they employed despite their under-resourced and sometimes alienating schooling. The paper highlights the experiences of the Newman family, descendants of captive Africans in the United States that produced three college-educated daughters and a granddaughter despite structural barriers that threatened their progress. Using oral history interviews, archival resources and first-person accounts, this family’s story reveals a genealogy of educational achievement, barriers and agency despite racial and gendered limitations in a Southern town. The findings imply that their schooling mirrors many of the barriers that other Blacks face. However, this study shows that community investment in African American children, plus teachers that affirm students, and programs such as Upward Bound, help to advance Black students in marginalized communities. Further, these women’s lives suggest that school curriculums need to be anti-racist and public policies that affirm each person regardless of the color of their skin. A simple solution that requires the structural violence of whiteness be eliminated from the schooling spheres.