Harsh Poetry and Art's Address: Romare Bearden and Hans-Georg Gadamer in Conversation

In this essay, I analyze Romare Bearden’s art, methodology, and thinking about art, as well as his attempt to harmonize his personal aesthetic goals with his sociopolitical concerns. I then turn to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s reflections on art and our experience (Erfahrung) of art. I show how Bearden’s approach to art and the artworks themselves resonate with Gadamer’s critique of aesthetic consciousness and his contention that artworks address us, make claims upon us, and even reveal truth. Lastly, I discuss Gadamer’s emphasis on the spectator’s active yet non-mastering role in the event of art’s address—an event that implicates the spectator and has the potential to transform him or her. This leads to a discussion of Gadamer’s notion of the type of self-(and world) understanding that occurs through aesthetic experience. I close by returning to Bearden in order to discuss how his art unearths a crucial feature of our being-in-the-world. I call this feature “world-unmasking” and show how it expands and enriches Gadamer’s account

Spartan Daily, February 13, 1991

Volume 96, Issue 11https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/8079/thumbnail.jp

In The Days of My Youth : Frances Fulton Cunningham Harper

My niece Janet suggests that I write the memories of my youth. It will not be an exciting or adventurous story. The older children of our family could have told more stirring tales, for they lived through the Civil War, and the momentous days of the Battle of Gettysburg. I came along towards the close of 1864 when hoopskirts had passed their greatest rotundity, and pantalettes were on the wane. I remember seeing my sister Maggie, in embroidered pantalettes, but I never wore them. I did have a hoopskirt. It was bought by my sister Jennie, somewhat against my mother’s will. It was to be worn under a very pretty apricot “wool delaine,” one of the few dresses bought directly for me; for most of my frocks were hand-me-downs from my older sisters. In those days cloth was made to last. One of mother’s wedding dresses was a striped gold and brown changeable taffeta. Doubtless mother wore it for two or three years, then it was remade for Maggie in turn. I had an enduring hate for these made over frocks, and was glad that by the time Maggie was through with the silk dress, it was too far gone to be remade for me. My dislike for my older sister’s clothes was a needless self-torture, for both mother and sister Jennie were exquisite needlewomen; they knew how to fashion very nice garments; and while the material might be long in the public eye, it was always good in quality, and made up according to the mode. [excerpt

The participle form of causative verbs in Dangme

 AbstractThis paper presents a descriptive analysis of verbs with the participle marking affixes in expressing causatives in Dangme, a language that belongs to the Kwa group of the Niger-Congo family of languages.  The paper examines the syntax and the semantic perspectives of the participialized form of causative verbs in the Role and Reference Grammar’s (RRG) theory in Dangme. The participle is an affix which expresses the completion at the final stage of a process. As a verbal affix, it can take objects and have tense or aspect in languages. They also indicate active agency (actor) and an agency receiving an action (sufferer). Generally affixes that express participial are in two forms: the finite and non-finite categories. Unlike Akan and other languages that have both forms, Dangme has just the non-finite category which of two forms. The two non-finite forms of the verb in Dangme are the participle and the gerund. The gerund affix {-mi} denotes a new word class from verbs in Dangme, (noun). The participle on the other hand has adjective-like characteristics and it is expressed mostly with the front vowels of Dangme: /i, e, ԑ/. It is to be noted that to form the participle in Dangme, two processes are required. Firstly, the verb stem is reduplicated either partially or totally depending on the shape of the verb stem. The reduplicant then selects a front vowel of the same tongue height of the vowel of the verb stem. The words formed imply a process of change caused by a causer. For the purpose of this paper, my focus is on the participial affix used in expressing causative meaning in Dangme.

Spartan Daily, January 6, 1960

Volume 47, Issue 58https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/3974/thumbnail.jp

Spartan Daily, February 2, 1955

Volume 42, Issue 79https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/12129/thumbnail.jp

The Cowl - v.79 - n.7 - Oct 23, 2014

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Vol 79 - No. 7 - October 23, 2014. 32 pages

The Cowl - v.79 - n.10 - Nov 13, 2014

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Vol 79 - No. 10 - November 13, 2014. 20 pages

Reappraising Always

Steven Spielberg's 1989 film Always represents one of the director's few critical and commercial disappointments. This paper examines the extent to which the film's failures are attributable to its formal, stylistic, and narrative features. The paper offers a defence of Always against specific reproaches. It also pursues more positive aims. Following Warren Buckland, the paper pinpoints organic unity as Spielberg's primary compositional principle; it tracks the development of motifs, tactics of foreshadowing, and other internal norms to demonstrate the formation of a structurally unified text; and it posits contrasts with a pertinent antecedent, A Guy Named Joe (Victor Fleming, 1943), so as to set Spielberg's artistic achievements in relief. The paper goes on to isolate some putatively troublesome manoeuvres at the film's internal level. Certain of these problematic aspects, I argue, force us to recognise that important narrative effects can be yielded by modulated deviations from organic unity. The collective aim of these arguments is to suggest that Always is apt for critical revaluation. Over this hovers a secondary objective. The paper seeks to disclaim two interrelated faults ascribed to Spielberg: a characteristic supplanting of narrative coherence by spectacle; and an indifference to subtlety and sophistication