Provoking Intimacies: Staging Las relaciones de Clara in Havana

This article examines the blurring of distinctions between audience and actor in Cuban director Carlos Díaz’s creative 2007 staging of Las relaciones de Clara (written by Dea Loher, 1999) in the musty rooms of a colonial home. Using queer theorist Leo Bersani and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips’ theories, I investigate how a proliferation of intimacies creates a sense of sameness that is rooted in physical proximity and discomfort. This essay shows how re-imagining the possibility of physical intimacies can produce a shared hopefulness between audience, play troupe and the nation. What makes these theatrical intimacies relevant in a contemporary Cuban context is how they resist the state’s persistent attempts to fabricate its own version of a unified society. (BW, Article in English

How Scenarios Became Corporate Strategies: Alternative Futures and Uncertainty in Strategic Management

How Scenarios Became Corporate Strategies tracks the transformation of scenario planning, a non-calculative technique for imagining alternative futures, from postwar American thermonuclear defence projects to corporate planning efforts beginning in the late 1960s. Drawing on archival research, the dissertation tells a history of how different corporate strategists in the second half of the twentieth century attempted to engage with future uncertainties by drawing heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory rational and intuitive techniques together in their developments of corporate scenario planning. By tracing the heterogeneity of methodologies and intellectual influences in three case studies from corporate scenario planning efforts in the United States and Britain, the dissertation demonstrates how critical and countercultural philosophies that emphasized irrational human capacities like imagination, consciousness, and intuitionoften assumed to be antithetical to the rule-bound, quantitative rationalities of corporate planning effortsbecame crucial tools, rather than enemies, of corporate strategy under uncertainty after 1960. The central argument of the dissertation is that corporate scenario planning projects were non-calculative speculative attempts to augment the calculative techniques of traditional mid-century strategic decision-making with diverse human reasoning tools in order to explore and understand future uncertainties. Consequently, these projects were intertwined with an array of sometimes contradictory genealogies, from technical postwar military planning practices to countercultural intellectual resources that questioned the technological imperatives of modern life. Yet, by the mid-1980s, corporate scenario planning efforts transformed from contemplative strategies for exploring uncertainties into a method associated with the capacities of thought leaders. It was through the rising thought leadership industry of the late-twentieth-century that scenarios gained legitimacy, enabling multinational corporations to rely upon the charismatic authority of scenario practitioners in the face of unknowable futures. In making this argument, the dissertation revises assumptions in the history of postwar science and technology and science studies that pivot on the importance of impersonal, calculative strategies and technical capacities in uncertain conditions

GREEN ware: Low-temperature ceramics incorporating recycled waste

This project investigates vitrified studio ceramics below 1000oC, incorporating industrial and agricultural wastes from New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Ceramic firing practices are placed within the socio-political context of the climate change debate. A survey of environmental art includes a discussion of material and process choices, and leads to definitions of sustainability, green chemistry and green engineering. Desirable characteristics of clay bodies are explained: workability, low shrinkage during drying, dry strength, fired strength, resistance to abrasion and lack of permeability. Approaches for lowering sintering temperature are reviewed, as is literature on the inclusion in clay and glaze of industrial, municipal and agricultural waste. The selection and collection of waste materials for tests is documented, microscopy provides information about their morphology, and quarry tailings are compared with other proprietary materials known to have a fine particle size. Further characterisation of the waste materials is achieved by X-ray diffraction and percentage analysis. The process of triaxial blending is adapted to apply to clay bodies, with flux materials chosen to extend the temperature range within which a sample would not slump, achieve an acceptable level of vitrification and low porosity, influence the expansion of body and glaze to counteract crazing, introduce control over salt migration, and reduce hazard profiles. Fired strength is tested, and a novel method of displaying shrinkage and absorption trends is presented and utilised. Low-fire ceramic articles are made from the clays and glazes developed. Additives and procedural changes successfully counteract thixotropy and efflorescence resulting from flux inclusion, and proprietary clay is blended with low-fire clays to achieve a compromise between workability and vitrification

Compounding the Sacred and the Profane: How Economic Theory Brings New Insight to the Growth and Decline of American Protestantism

In this thesis, economic theory and models will be used to analyze trends of religious growth and decline within the United States. These theories and models, such as Rational Choice Theory, will be applied in order to better understand and gain new insight into shifts and changes within the religious landscape of the United States. Recent trends of growth and decline within Protestantism, the most prominent Christian tradition in America, will be the focus of the investigation. As its main focus, this thesis will ultimately demonstrate that the trends of decline in the mainline Protestant tradition opposed to the trends of growth in the evangelical Protestant tradition can be best understood by focusing on the unique relationship between a religious organization’s degree of tension with society and that organization’s congregational attendance

Soaring to green heights: The current sustainable initiatives in the commercial airline industry

The air travel industry is changing. The needs of the environment are being considered and research into ways of improving the industry is being explored. This paper explores the current climate in the commercial airline industry, paying special attention to the ways in which Boeing and Airbus are ensuring the developments of greener technologies. Included is an examination of a diverse range of the research and literature available on the aviation industry and the impacts it poses on the environment in its current state. With that, the question of corporate social responsibility is acknowledged along with a deeper look into the sustainable practices in the industry. Additionally, the paper compares the Boeing 787 Dreamliner to the Airbus A380, two of the most eco-friendly commercial wide-body aircrafts on the market. Ways in which the industry utilizes the PRME principles are also mentioned

ALFRED GROSSER and others. Administration et politique en Allemagne occidentale. Pp. xxi, 247. Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1954. No price

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66910/2/10.1177_000271625529900176.pd

Berlin—Pivot of German Destiny. Trans lated and edited by Charles B. Robson. Pp. vi, 233, xvi. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960. $5.00

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68147/2/10.1177_000271626133800136.pd

Hidden landscapes of the ancient Maya: transect excavations at Arvin\u27s Landing southern Belize

Transect excavations at Arvin’s Landing in southern Belize revealed evidence of ancient Maya settlement indiscernible from surface inspection. The synthesis of archaeology and geography in field and laboratory methods and analysis provided the framework for this thesis. This study involves a transect survey with systematic shovel tests. Artifacts were recovered and recorded in the field and analyzed in the LSU archaeology laboratory in Punta Gorda, Belize. The entire survey area was mapped by transit and measurements and coordinates were combined with artifact data in a GIS. Prior research at Arvin’s Landing had revealed a Postclassic mound on the bank of Joe Taylor creek at Arvin’s Landing. The present surrounding landscape is forested with secondary growth devoid of artifacts mounds or other surface features indicative of settlement. In this transect survey extending away from the creek and mound a rich artifact assemblage of obsidian, chert and ceramics was recovered. The presence of such an expansive artifact assemblage suggests a much larger settlement area than previously known. Analysis of artifact densities in GIS revealed hotspots in the data set indicative of concentrated cultural activity and settlement locations. In addition to the single mound, evidence suggests up to two more households and a lithic tool production area are located within the survey area. This research serves as a point of departure for future research exploring the extent and patterns of hidden ancient Maya settlement. Future research including mobile GIS technology will increase efficiency of research in the field and allow better use of time and resources during limited field seasons