Marching in Step: USCT Veterans and the Grand Army of the Republic

For many United States Colored Troops, remembering the Civil War and their comrades who fell in it became an important part of their post-war life. One of the primary opportunities for public expression of remembrance was Decoration Day, now known as Memorial Day. African Americans played a critical part in the creation of this holiday. On May 1, 1865, the newly-freed black residents of Charleston asserted their place in Civil War memory by leading a parade to a recently constructed cemetery for Union prisoners at the city’s horseracing course. The procession heaped flowers upon the graves of the honored dead, after which ministers from the town’s black congregations gave dedicatory speeches. This event, known among some in the North as the “First Decoration Day,” exemplified African American interest in perpetuating the memory of the Civil War. However, the resentment of white Southerners at the time towards this instance of black agency led to the marginalization and eventual forgetting of the event in the mind of the public at large

The Powerful

History is written by the powerful. It is true that since the 1960s and the beginnings of the democratization of history, less powerful minorities have taken up the pen and more profusely expressed their views of history, but to a great extent, white males have engrained their view of history into people’s minds. Perhaps for this reason, perhaps because of its appealing nature, or perhaps for both reasons, the Renaissance stands out in people’s minds as a definitive period in history—a period during which, arguably, intellectual and cultural progress swept across Europe. The driving force behind much of the intellectual and cultural changes was the humanist movement; focusing on a devotion to and re-analysis of the classics, humanism arose between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Through their devotion to the studia humanitatis (the study of rhetoric, grammar, history, poetry, and ethics), humanists strove to improve the human condition. These developments, most frequently identified in the cultural, intellectual, and social realms, altered many people’s lives for the better. These same developments, however, were also gender-biased

Re-Coopering anti-psychiatry: David Cooper, revolutionary critic of psychiatry

This article offers an introduction to David Cooper (1931–86), who coined the term ‘anti-psychiatry’, and, it is argued here, has not so far received the scholarly attention that he deserves. The first section presents his life in context. The second section presents his work in detail. There follows a section on the critical reception of Cooper, and, finally, a conclusion that sets out ways in which he might be interesting and useful today

Right to Serve, Right to Lead: Lives and Legacies of the USCT

This is a catalog for an exhibit that follows the evolution of African-American participation in the Civil War, from slaves, to contrabands, to soldiers of the United States Colored Troops (USCT), as well as the lives of black veterans beyond the war, and their ultimate military and social legacy. Using a variety of period items, it creates a narrative that stretches from the Antebellum Period to the current day. In doing so, the exhibit shows how black sacrifice on the battlefield redefined the war\u27s purpose throughout the divided nation, how Jim Crowe suppressed the memory of black participation after Reconstruction, and how the illustrious African-American military tradition left by the USCT endures to this day in their modern heirs

Music and Islamic Reform

Music in the Islamic world is being used as a tool for change. Islam is going though a period of major reform, and music is a way to get people all over the world to listen. Though music is prohibited among conservative groups, the Sufis and Islamic youth are spreading ideas of nonviolence and love both to audiences within the religion and to outsiders. The introduction of music has been met with heavy resistance by orthodox members of the religious community, but it has also brought change and success

Selective Sampling for Example-based Word Sense Disambiguation

This paper proposes an efficient example sampling method for example-based word sense disambiguation systems. To construct a database of practical size, a considerable overhead for manual sense disambiguation (overhead for supervision) is required. In addition, the time complexity of searching a large-sized database poses a considerable problem (overhead for search). To counter these problems, our method selectively samples a smaller-sized effective subset from a given example set for use in word sense disambiguation. Our method is characterized by the reliance on the notion of training utility: the degree to which each example is informative for future example sampling when used for the training of the system. The system progressively collects examples by selecting those with greatest utility. The paper reports the effectiveness of our method through experiments on about one thousand sentences. Compared to experiments with other example sampling methods, our method reduced both the overhead for supervision and the overhead for search, without the degeneration of the performance of the system.Comment: 25 pages, 14 Postscript figure

The Necessary Right of Choice for Physician-Assisted Suicide

Research-based paper on the importance of the right for terminally ill patients facing a painful death to be able to choose how they end their lif

How "Chicagoan" are Gary Becker's Economic Models of Marriage?

This paper describes Gary Becker’s theoretical models of marriage. At the micro-level, these are all rational choice models. At the market level, Becker offers two major types of models: partial equilibrium models based on Price Theory as taught by Marshall and Friedman and optimal sorting models based on optimal assignment models. The paper examines some of the possible intellectual influences on Becker’s theory of marriage, compares Becker’s research on marriage with that of some scholars interested in intra-marriage distribution, and documents that Becker’s students at Chicago were more interested in Becker’s Friedmanian models of marriage than in his optimal assignment models.