You Must Be a Duet in Everything: An Examination of the Body in Wyndham Lewis\u27s Tarr

Wyndham Lewis is a much-ignored Canadian born British artist who alongside Ezra Pound, TS Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce (all of whom he was friends with at various points in his life) helped form what we now call English High Modernism. Along with Ezra Pound in 1914, he founded the only avant-garde English art movement: Vorticism. Lewis was in his early thirties by that time, and had already joined and left the Bloomsbury Group. Although Vorticism is Lewis\u27s creation that gets him the most attention, his work defies classification: the list of his writings contains literature, philosophy, sociology, political science, journalism, short stories, art critiques, two autobiographies, travel essays, drama, and poetry, and he edited numerous journals, while he painted dozens upon dozens of paintings and drew feverishly before he went blind in the early 1950s. His visual style in his paintings ranges from \u27normal\u27 representational portraits, to cubist, futurist, Vorticist, and various non-representational styles

Globalizing Nature on the Shakespearean Stage

As the far-reaching consequences of human-generated climate change continue to threaten the earth, an evaluation of the historical narrative of the Anthropocene has never been more important. Globalizing Nature revises the anthropocentric narrative of early globalization from the perspective of the non-human world on the early modern stage, which showcases Nature’s agency in determining ecological, economic, and colonial outcomes. Overturning the popular narrative that European technology and military might determined the outcome of settler colonialism in ancient Britain and colonial Virginia, John Fletcher’s Bonduca suggests that the floral and microbial grafts attending colonial exchange could make or break an invader’s attempt to plant themselves on foreign soil. I show how the English stage modeled strategies for confronting ecological crises during the supposed final “Age of Man”—strategies which can be useful to modern audiences confronting a changing global environment today. King Lear, for example, demonstrates how a human alliance with Nature’s capacity for balance provides a more equitable model for wealth distribution in a kingdom fraught by economic disparity. The history of Shakespearean performance in the British colonies—where weather events and other unpredictable ecological agents often played a role in a given performance—offers a similar strategy for provincializing the narrative of the Anthropocene. The agency humans now exert on the global climate, this performance history suggests, is not shared equally across the globe. Furthermore, by focusing on the materials of the stage, Globalizing Nature traces the distributive agency of natural commodities from their use in performance to their role in building an empire, or in changing the climate. I show how natural commodities used on stage derived from and facilitated British colonial expansion. Corkwood and galls, for example, which were used as cosmetic ingredients in representing African Moors in plays like Titus Andronicus and Lust’s Dominion, connect an emergent racial discourse to the environmental violence of early English colonialism. During a moment when the effects of human behaviors are blurring the distinction between human and nature, Globalizing Nature seeks to recover an early modern ethos of alliance between humans and nature from an otherwise violent human narrative of ecological imperialism and the Anthropocene

The radical integration of science, religion, and poetry in the writings of Loren Eiseley and Richard Wilbur

In a postmodern world turning away from the rigid categories of the past and "the univocal literalism" (Tarnas) of the modern mind, Loren Eiseley and Richard Wilbur bridge the schism between religion and science. Their essays and poems reinvigorate the romantic reconciliation between the mind and nature, subject and object, because, like Goethe, Wilbur and Eiseley see the human mind as a product of nature and the agent of nature's self revelation

The Essential Science Fiction Television Reader

Once confined solely to literature and film, science fiction has emerged to become a firmly established, and wildly popular, television genre over the last half century. The Essential Science Fiction Television Reader provides insight into and analyses of the most important programs in the history of the genre and explores the breadth of science fiction programming. Editor J. P. Telotte and the contributors explain the gradual transformation of the genre from low-budget cinematic knockoffs to an independent and distinct televisual identity. Their essays track the dramatic evolution of early hits such as The Twilight Zone and Star Trek into the science fiction programming of today with its more recent successes such as Lost and Heroes. They highlight the history, narrative approaches, and themes of the genre with an inviting and accessible style. In essays that are as varied as the shows themselves, the contributors address the full scope of the genre. In his essay “The Politics of Star Trek: The Original Series,” M. Keith Booker examines the ways in which Star Trek promoted cultural diversity and commented on the pioneering attitude of the American West. Susan George takes on the refurbished Battlestar Galactica series, examining how the show reframes questions of gender. Other essays explore the very attributes that constitute science fiction television: David Lavery’s essay “The Island’s Greatest Mystery: Is Lost Science Fiction?”calls into question the defining characteristics of the genre. From anime to action, every form of science fiction television is given thoughtful analysis enriched with historical perspective. Placing the genre in a broad context, The Essential Science Fiction Television Reader outlines where the genre has been, where it is today, and where it may travel in the future. No longer relegated to the periphery of television, science fiction now commands a viewership vast enough to sustain a cable channel devoted to the genre. J. P. Telotte, professor of literature, communication, and culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is the author or editor of numerous books. “This well-edited collection offers a richly detailed and critically penetrating overview of science fiction television, from the plucky adventures of Captain Video to the postmodern paradoxes of The X-Files and Lost. Sixteen essays by major scholars in the field address topics ranging from the politics of Star Trek to the mythic resonances of The Twilight Zone, from the complexities of adapting material from other media to the science-fictionality of television itself. Teachers, students, and fans of SFTV will learn much from this engaging, indispensible volume.”--Rob Latham, coeditor of Science Fiction Studies “Telotte’s volume makes clear how much science fiction is on television (and how much television has been the subject of science fiction). The contributors to this volume demonstrate how much this matters. These are well-written, accessible, and informative essays that cover the subject in depth, from Captain Video to Star Trek; from The X-Files to Firefly.”—Robert Kolker, University of Virginia “Recommended for academic libraries with an interest in communication, media, and culture.” --Rosalind Dayen, Library Journal J. P. Telotte, a leading authority in the field of media studies, has compiled an impressive and qualified list of contributors to provide a synthesis of insight and analysis of the most important programs in the history of the genre’s progress. --Paintsville Herald The huge increase in the number of complex, culturally significant series in the last twenty years makes the genre a vital one for close study. --Joe Milicia, The New York Review of Science Fiction Renowned scholar J. P. Telotte explores how animation has confronted the blank template, and how responses to that confrontation have changed. --thebookstallblog.blogspot.com Provides a provocative glimpse into cultural perspectives of space as a method for understanding both a technological and aesthetic history of animation and the evolution from a modern to postmodern mind-set. --Humanitieshttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_american_popular_culture/1007/thumbnail.jp

Using Chaos in Articulating the Relationship of God and Creation in God\u27s Creative Activity

Out of dialogue with Old Testament studies and the sciences, there has been a rise in recent years in the use of chaos language by theologians in their articulation of a theology of creation. There has been little uniformity in how the word is used among the fields, or even within some fields—especially by biblical scholars doing ancient Near East comparative studies. Under the umbrella of this popular terminology, some ideas have found refuge whose theological implications warrant evaluation. Within this dissertation the range of ideas that fall under chaos within the physical sciences, Old Testament studies, and theology is identified and evaluated. However, the more focused evaluation is on the appropriateness of the choice to apply the term to particular circumstances, whether that is entropy or unpredictability in science or the tohu wabohu and tehom of Genesis 1:2 in biblical studies. Choosing the term chaos as a label reflects an interpretation of the data and shapes subsequent thinking and speaking about the data. As much as reflect the world (the facts), it construes a world/worldview in which scholars work in their fields. The implications of the ideas that have been developed under chaos are evaluated herein, but it is the initial application of the term to the data that is the root issue which receives the greater focus. After critiquing the current uses of chaos in the physical sciences, in interpretations of Genesis 1 by scholars such as Jon D. Levenson, and in the creation theologies of contemporary theologians like Catherine Keller, an alternative grammar of creatio ex nihilo and God\u27s relationship to creation is proposed. This framework builds upon the pneumatology of Lyle Dabney—in which he develops the language of possibility and the Spirit operating trans –creation—by developing the idea of the Word operating transcarnate to creation. It is within this framework that it is suggested that chaos be used as a label for circumstances where any part of creation expresses itself discordantly with God and neighbor, both with whom God makes possible for it to participate in loving community

The Cultural Contradictions of Cryptography

This dissertation examines the origins of political and scientific commitments that currently frame cryptography, the study of secret codes, arguing that these commitments took shape over the course of the twentieth century. Looking back to the nineteenth century, cryptography was rarely practiced systematically, let alone scientifically, nor was it the contentious political subject it has become in the digital age. Beginning with the rise of computational cryptography in the first half of the twentieth century, this history identifies a quarter-century gap beginning in the late 1940s, when cryptography research was classified and tightly controlled in the US. Observing the reemergence of open research in cryptography in the early 1970s, a course of events that was directly opposed by many members of the US intelligence community, a wave of political scandals unrelated to cryptography during the Nixon years also made the secrecy surrounding cryptography appear untenable, weakening the official capacity to enforce this classification. Today, the subject of cryptography remains highly political and adversarial, with many proponents gripped by the conviction that widespread access to strong cryptography is necessary for a free society in the digital age, while opponents contend that strong cryptography in fact presents a danger to society and the rule of law. I argue that cryptography would not have become invested with these deep political commitments if it had not been suppressed in research and the media during the postwar years. The greater the force exerted to dissuade writers and scientists from studying cryptography, the more the subject became wrapped in an aura of civil disobedience and public need. These positive political investments in cryptography have since become widely accepted among many civil libertarians, transparency activists, journalists, and computer scientists who treat cryptography as an essential instrument for maintaining a free and open society in the digital age. Likewise, even as opponents of widespread access to strong cryptography have conceded considerable ground in recent decades, their opposition is grounded in many of the same principles that defined their stance during cryptography’s public reemergence in the 1970s. Studying this critical historical moment reveals not only the origins of cryptography’s current politics, but also the political origins of modern cryptography

Dread: The Literary History of a Political Affect, 1750-1900

This dissertation analyzes the cultural urgency of dread—a profound feeling of fear about the future—in a range of canonical and popular British novels, poems, periodicals, and philosophical treatises. In our own time, we tend to think of dread as a negative, paralyzing affect. Yet I elucidate the many ways in which nineteenth-century authors, philosophers, political reformers, and theologians regarded this feeling as an impetus for bringing about a better future. The anticipatory qualities of dread served as a catalyst for ethical and political transformations in the Enlightenment all the way through the Victorian era. Beginning with David Hume and ending with H. G. Wells, I examine the ways in which dread entered into and shaped philosophical thought, popular culture, and political life, especially radicalism, through shifting literary forms, many of which stemmed from the Gothic mode. While numerous studies have investigated fearful affects such as terror, horror, and anxiety, my dissertation is the first sustained examination of dread, which reconceptualizes the Gothic’s literary and political significance. While it is a critical commonplace that Gothic fiction stages encounters with the past, I show how the Gothic stimulates dread in order to orient its readers toward future possibilities.Part I presents an intellectual and aesthetic genealogy of dread, disclosing how this feeling animated philosophical discussions and literary depictions of sympathy, the moral sentiments, and conscience from Adam Smith to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Victorian psychologist Alexander Bain. Part II explores shifting understandings of dread from early Gothic novels to Victorian penny dreadfuls, Bram Stoker’s fiction and journal articles, and Wells’s scientific romances and essays. These chapters show how the slow-paced and expansive nature of dread precipitated deep reflection for fictional characters and real-world thinkers alike. Because of its galvanizing properties, dread was instrumental in mobilizing thoughtful, non-violent, and progressive political reform during three pivotal historical moments. Gothic dread counteracted political alarmism during the revolutionary 1790s, united Chartists advocating for working-class enfranchisement in the 1840s, and informed critiques of settler-colonialism, including the Irish Home Rule movement, in the 1890s.A brief coda attempts to reconcile the historical sense of dread’s rousing and progressive potential with the dominant present-day belief that dread makes people passive, intolerant, or reactionary. Although this emotion is largely viewed in a negative light today, I explore several alternative artistic and political attempts to represent dread as a vital and productive aspect of the human condition

Romantic Anarche: The Philosophical and Literary Anarchism of William Godwin

This study examines the philosophical and literary anarchism of William Godwin. Through an analysis of several of Godwin’s major texts, including Political Justice (1793, 1796, 1798), “Of History and Romance” (1798), and his novels Caleb Williams (1794), St. Leon (1799) and Mandeville (1817), I argue that Godwin’s relationship both to the intellectual history of anarchism and its literary expression in the form of the historical romance is more complex than has been recognized. In order to tease out this complexity, I approach Godwin from the perspective of recent critics who reread the ideals of classical anarchism through post-structuralist theory. Rather than reduce Godwin to contemporary approaches to anarchism, however, this study demonstrates that Godwin’s texts anticipate and participate in a continuing dialogue with, and deconstruction of, the Enlightenment suppositions of his own anarchism. This questioning leads to a conception of anarchy in Godwin that comes to mean something quite different from “anarchism.” Anarchy, rather, designates something closer to its root sense in the term anarchē, an existence without archē: principle or origin. Anarchē less names a political ideology so much as a “negativity” in the heart archē that refuses any sanctioning of things as they are, embracing an idea of history and subjectivity predicated on contingency. The anarchē evidenced within Godwin’s corpus unworks the possibility of any rational politics from within, showing rationality itself to be interminably afflicted by its own “groundlessness.” In this respect, Godwin can be read alongside a broader shift in the history of ideas, beginning in Romanticism, which traces a growing skepticism towards the projects of Enlightenment. One of the tributary goals is therefore to make a case for Godwin as a romantic writer, if by “romantic” we refer to a “literature involved in the restless process of self-examination” (Rajan, Dark Interpreter 25). By examining this “restless process” in several of Godwin’s works, this study contributes both to the fields of contemporary anarchist theory as well as Romantic studies by extending a conceptual bridge between the political and literary histories’ of ideas in which Godwin himself participates, but is often marginalized

Recollecting Turbulence: Catastrophe and Sacrifice in the History of My Life by Henry Darger

This study of The History of My Life the 5,086 page autobiographical text by the outsider artist/author Henry Darger, uses non-linear modes of analysis, such as chaos and complexity theory, to explore the meaning of Darger\u27s epic narrative. Beginning with the idea that turbulence, seemingly chaotic, actually comes about as a compensatory restructuring of inadequate or unstable system dynamics, this study goes on to show that, as both influence and effect, turbulence is found at every level of Darger\u27s life and art, both in theme and structure. My Life is a prime example: an extended narrative describing a cataclysmic tornado, in which the text itself manifests turbulent properties of the storm it describes. Darger\u27s particular narrative madness is, in fact, an attempt to put turbulence into service as an alternative system of meaning, in contrast to failed social and religious systems of which he was the product. Henry Darger\u27s work provides us with the challenge of exploring new ways of finding meaning in narrative. This study uses traditional literary criticism coupled with a pattern analysis of redundancy to explore some of Darger\u27s primary themes

On the Problem of Dependent People: hyperbolic discounting in Atlantic Canadian island jurisdictions

Prince Edward Island's Economics, Statistics and Federal Fiscal Relations Division's 33rd Annual Statistical Review reports the total value of 2006 fish landings was CAD $166.6 MM. This paper discloses a preliminary finding that the actual total value of fish landings for 2006 was approximately CAD 416.5 MM. Furthermore, this discourse submits that this entrenched systemic error has been consistently generated for all 33 years that the Annual Statistical Review has been published. Moreover, this systemic error creates a ripple-effect and promotes bias through all relative natural resource valuations. This significant conjecture is presented within an institutional context which serves as the foundation for this error generation, including other errors associated with The Problem of Induction and The Tragedy of the Commons. Within this broad context, this paper focuses upon deficient resource valuation methods, especially as they relate to dependency and valuation errors. Our analysis contrasts the failure of fishery management amongst dependent Canadian islanders,and the relative success of fishery management amongst independent Icelandic islanders. The possibilities that independent people enjoy higher levels of rationality, efficiency, happiness, economic sustainability, Darwinian fitness, resource holding power, and, are thus, ceteris paribus, less likely to commit errors associated with The Problem of Induction are taken into consideration. Likewise, consideration is given to the notion that dependent people are more likely to exhibit irrational behaviour, develop deeper dependencies, and to contribute to a wide array of maladaptive behaviours, such as those which exacerbate The Tragedy of the Commons.tragedy of the commons; insularity; problem of induction; methodology; sub-national island jurisdiction; prince edward island; cancer; bravo; potato production; Chlorothalonil Carcinogenicity; prince edward island development plan; confederation bridge; prince edward island tourism