Extending architectural vocabulary

A discussion of the role of metaphor and reinterpretation in extending architectural vocabularies

The political dimension of animal ethics in the context of bioethics: problems of integration and future challenges

Animal ethics has reached a new phase with the development of animal ethical thinking. Topics and problems previously discussed in terms of moral theories and ethical concepts are now being reformulated in terms of political theory and political action. This constitutes a paradigm shift for Animal Ethics. It indicates the transition from a field focused on relations between individuals (humans and animals) to a new viewpoint that incorporates the political dimensions of the relationships between human communities and non-human animals. Animals are no longer seen as a heterogeneous group of sentient beings or simply as species, but as part of a common good that is simultaneously human and animal. In order to participate in this new phase, bioethics will have to face a series of challenges that have hindered the integration of animal ethics within its field. It will also need the development of a new theoretical framework based on relations between communities of individuals. This framework will be able to highlight the ethical and political dimensions that arise from interactions between human communities, non-human animals and the ecosystem

Menorah Review (No. 39, Winter, 1997)

An Interpretive Methodology With Supersessionist Forebodings -- Through a Glass Brightly: Seeing the Unseeable -- The 12th Annual Selma and Jacob Brown Lecture -- Controversy and the Dead Sea Scrolls -- Book Listing -- Jewish Civics -- Leah -- Book Briefing

The Results of Locomotion: Bayard Taylor and the Travel Lecture in Nineteenth-Century America

During the mid-nineteenth century, appearances by returning travellers were a ubiquitous feature of the American popular lecture circuit. Attending such talks was one of the few means by which the majority of citizens acquired an insight into distant cultures. These ‘travel lectures’ became an idiom of an emerging mass entertainment culture, one of the period’s more under-appreciated and idiosyn- cratic cultural practices. Drawing upon a range of archival materials, this essay explores the scope of the phenomenon during the period 1840–70, and argues that these oratorical events represented interpretive performances or ‘dramas of appraisal’ through which performers brought reformist themes to the platform. Focusing on the career of the poet, writer and diplomat Bayard Taylor – the archetypal ‘travel lecturer’ of the period – it reveals the ways in which he used the form to advance a moral vision of mid-century American cosmopolitanism

A Village Comes to Life: The Interpretation of Henry Ford\u27s Greenfield Village

Of all American living history sites, Greenfield Village, in Dearborn, Michigan, is one of the most interesting. Founded by Henry Ford and opened in 1929, Greenfield Village consists of 90 acres of nearly 100 historic buildings, all moved to the site from around the country and reassembled in a vague village formation. Unlike Colonial Williamsburg, the site is not historically significant and represents no one geographic location or time period. While in keeping with Ford’s vision of celebrating small-town life and the humble origins of many great thinkers and innovators, this structure has presented challenges for both the staff and the public to settle on a particular interpretive theme. When combined with the more universal criticisms regarding training, equipment, and messaging, these challenges make Greenfield Village a veritable microcosm of the strengths and weaknesses of living history interpretation. The history of interpretive programming at Greenfield Village demonstrates that weaknesses commonly criticized by academic historians are not inherent in living history programming. In fact, well-educated and trained park staffers saw living history as the solution to these problems and to finally find a way to unify Greenfield Village’s unique structure under a cohesive and effective interpretive theme. The 1982 implementation of the Edison/Saltbox project was a direct response to the most current scholarship on museum education and represented a continued dialogue with other open-air history museums. More recent attempts to improve the interpretation of African American history at Greenfield Village echo similar strategies at Colonial Williamsburg and respond directly to calls within the academy to address the prevalence of nostalgia in presentations of the past. While Greenfield Village’s programming continues to face the funding and staffing problems that plague living history programs nationwide, its story should remind scholars that nostalgia and antiquarianism are not problems inherent to living history

IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 4, Issue 2, Summer 2015

Impact: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning is a peer-reviewed, biannual online journal that publishes scholarly and creative non-fiction essays about the theory, practice and assessment of interdisciplinary education. Impact is produced by the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning at the College of General Studies, Boston University (www.bu.edu/cgs/citl)

“some kind of thing it aint us but yet its in us”: David Mitchell, Russell Hoban, and metafiction after the millennium

This article appraises the debt that David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas owes to the novels of Russell Hoban, including, but not limited to, Riddley Walker. After clearly mapping a history of Hoban’s philosophical perspectives and Mitchell’s inter-textual genre-impersonation practice, the article assesses the degree to which Mitchell’s metatextual methods indicate a nostalgia for by-gone radical aesthetics rather than reaching for new modes of its own. The article not only proposes several new backdrops against which Mitchell’s novel can be read but also conducts the first in-depth appraisal of Mitchell’s formal linguistic replication of Riddley Walker