Book Review: Statesmen, Scoundrels, and Eccentrics: A Gallery of Amazing Arkansans

Review of the book Statesmen, Scoundrels, and Eccentrics: A Gallery of Amazing Arkansans, by Tom Dillard. Fayetteville: TheUniversity of Arkansas Press, 2010

Mechanical Neuroscience: Emil du Bois-Reymond’s Innovations in Theory and Practice

Summary of the major innovations of Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896

A Little Unwell: Madness in the World of Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams is a prolific playwright and an American literary icon. He is second only to Shakespeare in the amount of scholarly analyses of his work. Although I am writing my thesis in a crowded field, I am pursuing a fresh topic by studying madness in Williams\u27 works, specifically the subcategories of Eccentrics/Acutes and Chronics - a construct put forth in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u27s Nest by Ken Kesey. By applying Cuckoo\u27s Nest and other texts involving madness to Tennessee Williams’ plays, I will explore the character of the mad individual, the impact of society upon the mad individual, and the mad individual\u27s impact upon society

COSMOLOGY AND SOCIETY: HOUSEHOLD RITUAL AMONG THE TERMINAL CLASSIC MAYA PEOPLE OF YAXHA (ca. A.D. 850-950), GUATEMALA

This study of domestic ritual and symbolism centers on the ancient Maya kingdom of Yaxha in northeastern Guatemala, during the last part of the Classic period (A.D. 850-950/1000). Classic Maya high-culture functioned within a dynastic cosmology that framed royalty’s power. The central question in this dissertation is ‘how did the non-royal population participate and interact with this dynastic cosmology?’ Exploring some possible ways in which ancient Yaxhaeans participated and interacted with the local dynastic cosmology, I have hypothesized three possible behaviors derived from ethnographic studies: active engagement, resistance, and passive compliance. A comparative study of ritual practices and symbolism in ten residences of different social ranks provides the grounds for the discussion. This sample of residences includes the royal palace, a noble palace, two high-end commoner residences, and six low-end commoner residences. While the data from the eight commoner residences was obtained through original research, the information from the royal and noble palaces was recovered from previous research and salvage archaeology projects at Yaxha. The same ritual and symbolic aspects were investigated: symbolism in architectural layouts, ritual feasting, funerary rituals, dedication and termination rituals, and ritual paraphernalia. I have concluded that while nobles and high-end commoners were actively engaged with the ruling dynastic cosmology, low-end commoners were more reluctant. A certain degree of disconnection in the ritual practices of the higher and lower ranks has been detected, suggesting that low-end commoners might have been more passively compliant than actively engaged with the ruling cosmology. No evidence for overt resistance has been found. Although passive compliance is not a behavior usually associated with social change, ethnographic observations suggest that as a form of passive resistance, it might be a symptom of social unrest

Kingship, structures and access patterns on the Royal Plaza at the ancient Maya city of Altun Ha, Belize: the construction of a Maya GIS

The GIS of Plaza B represents the application of GIS in the analysis of buildings. The GIS contains information on six structures and recreates the development of the royal residential plaza at the ancient Maya site of Altun Ha, in northern Belize. Altun Ha is a small site with a long history of occupation, rich in architectural and artifactual forms. The major site expansion and development started in the end of the Early Classic (A. D. 400) with the emergence of the institution of kingship at the site. Two adjunct plazas, A and B, formed the largest ceremonial –residential complex in the center of the site. This thesis analyzed the layout of the residential plaza and the dynamics of change in the access patterns within the structures. The study of the layout revealed that in spite of the seeming informality, the layout of Plaza B was carefully planned. The access patterns and shape of residential structures showed that one of them was used as a residential- administrative building, and another most likely have been strictly residential. The architecture of the plaza’s funerary shrine recreated stories from Maya mythology and symbolized the connection between ancestors and descendants. The changes in the access patterns within the structures of Plaza B, around A. D. 700, paralleled by the changes in tomb and cache placement practices, supported the hypothesis about the change in the succession line of the ruling family that led to the gradual degradation of the central power at Altun Ha and eventual abandonment of the site. The GIS of Plaza B proved to be an excellent information base and valuable tool for data analysis. It allowed representation of the plaza structures as a complex of interconnected dynamic entities. This unified representation, in turn, allowed formulation of the hypothesis about social changes that triggered changes in architecture

Archaeology as a media experience

En los últimos años ha surgido un gran interés hacia la arqueología, promovido, en gran medida, por la abundancia de programas sobre este tema que son emitidos por todo tipo de canales televisivos. En este texto se examinará el trasfondo de esta explosión de interés y, mediante el abanico de nuevos formatos televisivos, explorar de qué forma se ha desarrollado esta especial relación. Se examinará el potencial de los medios televisivos tanto para educar como para entretener, así como la necesidad de animar el interés público más allá de la televisión. Finalmente, se presentarán algunas opiniones personales sobre la forma que puede adoptar en el futuro la relación entre la arqueología y los medios audiovisuales

Heavenly Animation as the Foundation for Fracastoro’s Homocentrism: Aristotelian-Platonic Eclecticism beyond the School of Padua

This essay deals with the ensouled cosmology propounded by the physician and philosopher Girolamo Fracastoro. His Homocentrica sive de stellis (1538), which propounded an astronomy of concentric spheres, was received and discussed by scholars who belonged to the cultural environment of the Padua School. Paduan Aristotelians generally explained heavenly motions in physical terms as the effect of heavenly souls and intelligences. Since the time of the polemics over the immortality of the human soul, which had famously opposed Pomponazzi to Nifo, all psychological discussions—including those about heavenly spheres’ souls—raised heated controversies. In the wake of these controversies, Fracastoro discussed the foundations of his homocentric planetary theory in a dialogue on the immortality of the soul entitled Fracastorius, sive de anima (1555). This work also included a cosmogonic myth which was, however, not published in early-modern editions of the dialogues in order to avoid theological censorship. Fracastoro had already discussed problems of celestial physics and the physical problems linked with mathematical modeling in relation to physical causation in an exchange with Gasparo Contarini which took place in 1531. In this exchange Contarini expressed his doubts over Fracastoro’s lack of consideration of the Aristotelian viewpoints on heavenly souls and intelligences. Fracastoro offered a full account of cosmic animation in his later dialogue ‘on the soul’ by taking a different path than his Paduan teachers and philosophical interlocutors. He picked up the Platonic idea of the world soul, which animates the whole, and freely connected it with Aristotelian views about the ensouled cosmos of concentric spheres. Thus, his cosmology resulted from an eclectic composition of Platonic, Aristotelian and Averroistic elements. He aimed to create a renewed mathematical astronomy that would explain planetary motions as the result of the movements of concentric spheres. Fracastoro grounded this renewed astronomy on an understanding of the cosmos as a living whole. Such an animated homocentric cosmos represented, at the same time, both a development based on Aristotelian premises and a step beyond this legacy

The survival of the eccentric in a hyperreal culture: Media consumption and the public sphere in George Orwell’s 1984 and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

This thesis explores eccentricity, media consumption, totalitarianism, capitalism, and the public sphere through George Orwell’s 1984 and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. I present the concept of the eccentric to showcase how to strengthen the public sphere and resist both totalitarianism and mindless capitalist consumption. By exploring these topics, I seek to shed light on how the novels in question predict threats to discourse, diversity of thought, and democracy. Both of the novels, through totalitarianism in 1984 and mindless consumerism in Fahrenheit 451, emphasize the deterioration of the liberal humanist tradition that revolves around the thinking individual who remains a necessary foundation for true democracy and its democratic culture. This thesis further asserts that establishing a genuine public sphere, by allowing the masses of people who have no direct power to wield influence over governments or other sectional interests, will create a more democratic equilibrium through the conflict of ideas and ideologies. These conflicts of ideas will enable a society to better reflect on itself and subsequently improve. This societal self-reflection induced by eccentrics aids societies in resisting aspects of oppressive ideologies by utilizing critical thinking to point out the flaws an orthodoxy cannot or will not see