Historical GIS Materials for South Asia Studies in The University of Tokyo

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the historical GIS-related materials in TINDAS1 and to provide access to the basic materials to those who intend to incorporate GIS into their research. In addition, this paper intends to promote the use of GIS in various research fields by introducing a method of converting data into GIS by referring to historical research now underway

Inescapable prints: panoptic surveillance and violence in João Paulo Cuenca’s O único final feliz para uma história de amor é um acidente

Brazilian writer João Paulo Cuenca uses futuristic Tokyo as a venue for his antithetical love story that portrays a father ensnaring his adult son through a city-wide surveillance network. Foucault’s panopticism in Discipline and Punish (1975) reflects the wire taps and hidden cameras in Cuenca’s dystopic novel, revealing how technology intensifies the scale ranging from virtual invasion to physical brutality. Much as social media has changed the definition of “friend” and blurred the division between public and private life, the protagonist’s social web reveals that alliances are deceiving. Cuenca’s work exhibits the alarming reality in which concepts like identity and friendship are manipulated by society’s most powerful members. Cuenca’s dystopic society permits and encourages the multifaceted dehumanization of women’s bodies and analogizes media presence as a tool for personal freedom, illicit surveillance, and violence

Normal Bulletin, November, 1914

Includes catalog of courses, 1909-1918/19 (title varies), announcements, summer session, and The Normal Bulletin Magazine (bound separately). Published 1909-1914 by the State Normal and Industrial School for Women (Harrisonburg, Va.): 1915-1919 by State Normal School for Women at Harrisonburg (Harrisonburg, Va.

Seeking the Self in Pigment and Pixels: Postmodernism, Art, and the Subject

In this study, I examine how works of art become vehicles for the postmodern inquiry into the nature of subjectivity. My thesis narrows the focus to those characters who attempt to ground themselves in works of art, especially representational paintings. I argue that, to cope with what they see as the chaos of a decentered postmodern world, these figures try to anchor their confused identities in what they wrongfully interpret as stable and mimetic artworks. Nostalgic for an imagined past when representation was transparent and corresponded to reality, they believe that traditional figurative art offers the promise of cohesive meaning otherwise lacking under postmodernism. Their views of art, therefore, underwrite a desire and nostalgia for absolutes that are non-existent. In their failure to ground themselves in images, we see the fundamental instability of both the subject and of art. The wayward individuals that I examine yearn for art objects to come to life in order to confirm their own selfhood. What they seek, then, is to transform art-objects into art-subjects; this Pygmalionesque project is grounded in the futile hope that the art-object can reciprocate their desires. We find literary examples of this trend in the characters I analyze in my first two chapters: notably the narrator(s) of John Banville’s Frames Trilogy and the gay spies of the fictionalized Cambridge Five. In my final chapter, I look to the clones and androids of popular culture and explore the real life example of Japanese love-doll owners. In each of these instances, artworks are strategically positioned as sites of ontological anchorage, but this foundation can never be secure under postmodernism. Despite their fervent hopes, these characters have misplaced their trust in a form of representation that is no more stable than any other aspect of the postmodern condition. I argue that Freddie, Victor, Tommy, and Tavo, among others, are particularly good examples of the vexed relationship between the image and the self

Privacy and Geospatial Technologies

This research examines the role of geospatial and ancillary technologies in the erosion of privacy in contemporary society. The development of Remote Sensing, GIS, and GPS technologies are explored as a means of understanding both their current and predicted uses and capabilities. Examination is also made of the legal basis and current status of privacy rights in the United States. Finally, current and predicted uses and capabilities of geospatial and ancillary technologies are critically examined in light of existing privacy protections as a means of determining the ways in which these technologies are impacting privacy currently and what their effects may be in the future