The Anatomy of Resistance: Jewish Life, Struggle, and Revolt in the Vilna and Warsaw Ghettos

On September 1, 1939, the Germans invaded Poland, marking the start of WWII. In the following months, the Nazis established an inconceivable array of ghettos meant to concentrate the Jewish population and facilitate their deportation to killing centers across continental Europe. Of the over 1,000 ghettos set up throughout Nazi-occupied territory, this paper focuses on two, Vilna and Warsaw. Despite the hellish conditions imposed on the Jews in the Vilna and Warsaw ghettos—conditions rivaled only by the killing centers that awaited most of their inhabitants—an important phenomenon took form: the Jews of the ghettos resisted. How, it must be contended, could Jewish victims of ghettoization have resisted Nazi cruelty in the context of such dehumanizing conditions? This paper explores the history of Jewish life and resistance in the Vilna and Warsaw ghettos, with particular emphasis on the factors that allowed or disallowed resistance to occur. By carefully constructing their stories of resistance, it aims to answer why the Jews of Warsaw were able and willing to fight back in a violent uprising, while the Jews in Vilna were not

A Public Statement On Our Surveillance Culture: Virtual Bodies, Virtual Worlds (ENGL 093A) Midterm

For your midterm assignment you will design a critical/creative art piece that makes a public statement about our surveillance culture inspired by the materials we have engaged with in this course, including the fictional stories, theoretical texts, and the items from special collections. The piece you make must be created using the resources available through the Makerspace, for example, the laser cutters, sewing material, 3D printers, or crafting materials. Aside from the workshop we will have together, you are encouraged to revisit the Makerspace and book time with the experts available to support your design. Please be respectful of their time and contact them early in the process

Labor and Beet Sugar, a Modern Commodity in the United States Between 1890 and 1920

The turn of the twentieth century saw a booming American beet sugar industry. For the first time beet sugar rivaled cane sugar in feeding growing domestic demand. Examined here are numerous factors considered significant in the sudden explosion of an industry which had previously failed to establish itself on the continent, including trade policy, monopolization, and advancements in industrial technology. However, in returning to contemporaneous primary literature on the subject, including grower’s manuals, histories of the plant, and economic analysis, I locate labor as a significant and often overlooked base of growth in the industry. Thus it was through innovations in mobilizing large, itinerant labor forces that the industry surged in the United States and accounted for increasingly large proportions of total sugar production

Gone with the Wind: The Confederacy\u27s Trojan Horse

This paper analyzes the film Gone with the Wind as a piece of Southern nationalist propaganda. This includes an exploration of the earlier Southern nationalist film Birth of a Nation, as well as a comparison to Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel Gone with the Wind. In my analysis of Gone with the Wind’s production process, including memos between producer David O. Selznick and other members of the production team, I find that Selznick maintained tight control over the film’s production and was extremely concerned with maintaining positive publicity for his film. This led him to allow a few seemingly progressive deviations from the novel, including the elimination of the Ku Klux Klan and the removal of the novel’s most racist language. Selznick, in an attempt to avoid controversy, created a benign and engaging vehicle for promulgating Lost Cause mythology. I argue that, instead of undermining its effectiveness, efforts to temper the film allowed it to become a more durable fixture of American cinema. Stripped of the novel’s ugliest expressions of racism, Gone with the Wind became free to enter the mainstream of American culture, becoming the highest-grossing film ever made

Digital Preservation Expertise And Labour Throughout The Project Lifecycle

Institutional power imbalances result in a devaluation of the labour and expertise of digital preservation professionals, including librarians, archivists, information technology staff, developers, and data stewards who work towards the long-term storage of and access to digital products. There are significant roadblocks to a successful digital project, especially in the long term, that are well-known to digital preservation professionals. By failing to recognise and include these experts in project planning from the beginning, digital scholars risk more than their research outputs; in a research landscape that validates publication quality through longevity, better sustainability and preservation practices are crucial to both practitioner and scholar. This chapter discusses strategies for mitigating this risk and collaborating more fruitfully with digital preservation professionals

Virtual Bodies, Virtual Worlds (ENGL 093A) Final Project

For your final project you will use all of the readings and discussions we have had throughout this semester to inspire your own creation: a virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) experience intended to teach one of the fictional texts we’ve read. The goal is to educate your audience, particularly to explain or enhance the reading experience through immersive content. You should draw on your own personal experience, criticism of the novel, and other reliable, scholarly sources to write a pitch – and ultimately a formal proposal – for this short extended reality (XR) application. Again, your immersive experience must be both educational and engaging. You will design this simulation as an entry to the competition being held by the NEH

Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice: Sweets as a Communicator of Power and Wealth in Early Modern Spain

What makes a luxury good so valued among the elite? How is luxury defined? This paper examines sugar and the value placed on sweet treats in early 17th-century Spain when sugar was a prized, expensive good among the elite. The 1611 cookbook by royal chef Francisco Martínez Montiño draws attention to this through the popularity of sweet goods, the portion sizes of the recipes, and the emphasis on sweet treats being served at gatherings, and the 1747 recipe book written by the head pastry chef for the Spanish crown Juan de la Mata provides an interesting contrast as sugar’s availability increased and the definition of its value as a luxury item changed. This paper employs these items written by agents of the crown to ascertain how the elite used sugar as a communicator of power and later redefined its value as a luxury good, as scarcity could no longer serve as the sole indicator. The separation in time between the two works allows for an analysis of the role of sugar in elite circles during an alteration of the value of sugar and the creation and self-fashioning of a new professional craft of pastry makers as savory separates from sweet

Suburbanization as a Post-Industrial Essentiality: Revisiting Sweden\u27s Miljonprogrammet

Definitively speaking, suburbanization does not equate to post-industrialism in the same limelight as would urbanization and industrialism. However, anomalous cases, such as the one being discussed in this paper, tangentially interlink on a socioeconomic basis. In 1965, Sweden began construction of the Miljonprogrammet (Million Programme), where over the next ten years, over one million domiciles were built in a suburban setting leading to a mass diaspora of ‘slum living’ Swedish industrial workers. The nation’s renowned welfare state, built on a collaborative system between public and private sectors as well as federal and municipal actors, overlooked housing in its social policy framework for nearly six decades. Consequently, the gargantuan spatial and social ubiquity of the program resulted in cracks in the system’s carapace as these actors became divided on policy. Arguably, these fissures created an outlet for Sweden to ease into a post-industrial society during the financial crises of the 1970s and 1980s; with notable examples including the rise of the working woman, urban renewal projects based in the service sector, and an increase in social conformity. Revisiting the Miljonprogrammet as a physical representation of social change in a deindustrializing West displays the undervalued part suburbanization played in defining this period

Khrushchevka: A Historical and Economic Analysis of Russian Housing, Privatization, and Urban Renewal in Putin’s Russia

The Moscow Urban Renewal Initiative (Инициатива обновления городов Москвы, 2017-) is the joint project of President Vladimir Putin (1999-2008, 2012-) and Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin (2010-) to remove dilapidated housing structures in Moscow. Since 2017, the programme has already displaced about 20,000 Muscovites, with plans to displace 1.5 million more by its completion goal of 2032. These displacements have revealed significant economic deficiencies in the post-Soviet market economy of the Russian Federation. Delays in the programme due to the COVID-19 pandemic have only escalated issues further – as has the War on Ukraine. Understanding the importance of the Moscow Urban Renewal Initiative requires a formed understanding of the financial development of the new Russian Federation. The regenerative goals of the Moscow Urban Renewal Initiative have forced a fundamental reconciliation of how all Russians experience housing and the market, well beyond the scope of the initial privatization sweep of 1991. By piecing together the history of the initial privatization of 1991, both major wars, and the three financial crises thereafter this essay ties the goals of initial privatization with those of the Moscow Urban Renewal Initiative, this essay creates a narrative between these events and Russian economic life while opening a debate regarding the Initiative’s future