David Wojnarowicz and the Surge of Nuances

ABSTRACT   When looking at two paintings, ostensibly by Rembrandt, is there an aesthetic difference in how these paintings are perceived if we know that one of the two paintings is a forgery? Most certainly, declared Nelson Goodman (1976). Knowledge of the difference would modify the aesthetic experience. When looking at Michelangelo’s Christ on the Cross, the result is arguably similar. What we see depends on what we know about Christ’s story. The same might also be said more generally about tragic narratives and their accompanying indicia. Awareness impacts viewers acutely. This is especially evident in curated Holocaust memorials, where the ghastly artifacts, and the unfathomable story lines, are intrinsic to their aesthetic force. This insight however is by no means limited to curated monuments. Learning that an artist, David Wojnarowicz for example, was a victim of inconceivable torment is no less critical to how their artworks are perceived. Our argument, in its totality, is that being informed is preferable to unknowing, and that knowing, however manifested, has the capacity of modifying visual perception. &nbsp

Terror, War, and the Economy in George W. Bush’s Approval Ratings: The Importance of Salience in Presidential Approval

George W. Bush\u27s presidency provides a fertile ground to further develop the standard model of presidential approval. In contrast to the vast presidential approval literature, early studies of Bush conclude economic conditions had no effect once the war in Iraq began. Rather than require a fundamental rethinking of presidential approval theories, we argue that approval models must take into account issue salience. When a factor is salient, it has a stronger effect. During the Bush presidency, with considerable over-time variation in the salience of the economy, terrorism, and the war in Iraq, each, in turn, powerfully affected Bush\u27s approval

The Japanese-American: A cross-cultural, cross-sectional study of sex guilt

The purpose of the present investigation is to examine cultural differences in sexual standards and the process of acculturation, using three generations of Japanese-Americans and matched Caucasian-American controls. Japanese-Americans were selected for study because of their generational, ethnic, and social structure. The present study hypothesized a change in sex guilt across the three generations of Japanese-Americans, approximating a bicultural adaptation. The results indicated that although the Japanese-American is a highly acculturated ethnic group, significant cross-cultural differences continue to emerge, especially among Japanese-American women. Furthermore, where gender differences do occur, they favor greater flexibility for men, in general, and for Japanese-American men in comparison to Japanese-American women. Finally, the results suggest that pronounced cultural changes in sexual standards have occurred over the past 70 years.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/23966/1/0000215.pd

Research in Context: Measuring Value Change

Abramson and Inglehart find a significant trend toward postmaterialist values in Western Europe, which they argue is largely driven by the gradual processes of generational replacement. Clarke, Dutt, and Rapkin argue that this trend is a methodological artifact of the wording of Inglehart's four-item measure of materialist/ postmaterialist values. They claim that because this battery does not include a question about unemployment, in periods of high unemployment respondents tend to choose postmaterialist goals. The long-term trend toward postmaterialism in Western Europe, they argue, results from rising levels of unemployment during the past two decades. Abramson and Inglehart point out that increases in inflation have a short-term impact on decreasing postmaterialism, but maintain that the positive relationship between unemployment and postmaterialism is spurious. As this analysis shows, Clarke, Dutt, and Rapkin find a positive relationship between unemployment and postmaterialism by building a model that has little theoretical justification and that is not robust to changes in specification. As this analysis demonstrates, unemployment is actually linked with support for materialist goals, and the trend toward post-materialism is robust in the face of alternative time frames, models, and specifications. The weight of the evidence demonstrates that the long-term trend toward postmaterialism in Western Europe is driven by generational replacement.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45487/1/11109_2004_Article_423943.pd

The effect of national and constituency level expectations on tactical voting in the British general election of 2010

The 2010 elections in the United Kingdom provided voters with numerous and diverse opportunities to reason strategically. The Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems)-traditionally finishing a distant third in terms of seats in Parliament-vied with labour to be the principal competition to the Conservatives, who failed to win a majority of seats, creating a rare case of what the British call a hung parliament. These conditions varied across constituencies at the district level, and we exploit this variation to study the incidence of "tactical" voting. But the national outcome also presented strategic considerations for voters, and the conditions varied to some extent over the course of the campaign, giving voters interviewed at different times different sets of national considerations for tactical voting. This presents us with the opportunity to investigate how both local and national considerations may shape strategic reasoning among voters and relate to each other and to the final choices of voters on Election Day

High-resolution imaging follow-up of doubly imaged quasars

We report upon three years of follow-up and confirmation of doubly imaged quasar lenses through imaging campaigns from 2016-2018 with the Near-Infrared Camera2 (NIRC2) on the W. M. Keck Observatory. A sample of 57 quasar lens candidates are imaged in adaptive-optics-assisted or seeing-limited $K^\prime$-band observations. Out of these 57 candidates, 15 are confirmed as lenses. We form a sample of 20 lenses adding in a number of previously-known lenses that were imaged with NIRC2 in 2013-14 as part of a pilot study. By modelling these 20 lenses, we obtain $K^\prime$-band relative photometry and astrometry of the quasar images and the lens galaxy. We also provide the lens properties and predicted time delays to aid planning of follow-up observations necessary for various astrophysical applications, e.g., spectroscopic follow-up to obtain the deflector redshifts for the newly confirmed systems. We compare the departure of the observed flux ratios from the smooth-model predictions between doubly and quadruply imaged quasar systems. We find that the departure is consistent between these two types of lenses if the modelling uncertainty is comparable.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, 5 tables. This version: accepted to MNRA

Evaluation Research and Institutional Pressures: Challenges in Public-Nonprofit Contracting

This article examines the connection between program evaluation research and decision-making by public managers. Drawing on neo-institutional theory, a framework is presented for diagnosing the pressures and conditions that lead alternatively toward or away the rational use of evaluation research. Three cases of public-nonprofit contracting for the delivery of major programs are presented to clarify the way coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures interfere with a sound connection being made between research and implementation. The article concludes by considering how public managers can respond to the isomorphic pressures in their environment that make it hard to act on data relating to program performance.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 23. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers