Romanticizing decolonization and Asian epistemology:Reflections on identity and space

Recent calls for the decolonization of the academy demand recognition for diverse canons of knowledge . Asia’s economic ascent also imparts rising confidence among Asian scholars and institutions to promote indigenous knowledge. While these global calls for emancipation are invigorating, decolonial scholarship is prone to sterile theorization, historical fixity, and an overt romanticization of the Global South. Drawing on my lived experiences as an Asian academic, I reflect on decolonization and Asian epistemology from five different spaces in my life: (1) Northern Europe, (2) Toronto, (3) Southeast Asia, (4) Kazakhstan and (5) the United Kingdom. I analyze these spaces by using the concepts of intellectual captivity and decolonization from Syed Hussein Alatas and Kuan-Hsing Chen. Specifically, the tendency for decolonization movements to descend into nationalism, nativism, and civilizationalism provides provocative insights on epistemic justice (Chen, 2010). I demonstrate how epistemology as practice can reveal a colonial mindset even among academics who engage in social justice discourse and international work. I also highlight examples of indigenous knowledge that reinforce inequality based on race, gender, sexual orientation and religion. As more individuals with hybrid identities (race, culture, and nationality) enter academe and pursue careers that require international mobility, it is imperative that decolonization moves beyond reductive categories of identity that reproduce stereotypes. I conclude with reflections on the role of comparative and international education research in decolonization movements

Fluctuation-dissipation ratios in the dynamics of self-assembly

We consider two seemingly very different self-assembly processes: formation of viral capsids, and crystallization of sticky discs. At low temperatures, assembly is ineffective, since there are many metastable disordered states, which are a source of kinetic frustration. We use fluctuation-dissipation ratios to extract information about the degree of this frustration. We show that our analysis is a useful indicator of the long term fate of the system, based on the early stages of assembly.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

An Infusion of Eastern and Western Music Styles into Art Song: Introducing Two Sets of Art Song for Mezzo-Soprano by Chen Yi

Chinese-American composer Chen Yi has been praised as the most internationally renowned female Asian composer of contemporary music today, and she has in particular become a prominent figure in music circles in the United States and China. Besides her successes in writing orchestral and chamber music, Chen Yi has also written numerous vocal compositions including some art songs. This document aims to introduce two sets of Chen\u27s art songs written for mezzo-soprano voice, Meditation and Bright Moonlight, and study the features of these compositions that represent the unique style of her music, which is influenced by Chinese folk music idioms and Western modern music elements. Chen Yi grew up in both the traditional China before the mid-1960s and the reformed China after the mid-1970s. She took her journey of music study a long way from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing to Columbia University in New York City. She is a Western-trained musician and has launched a successful career of teaching Western music in higher education in America. This document reveals Chen\u27s bicultural background, strengthens the link between her cultural uniqueness and her musical creativity, and elaborates on how her bicultural background has influenced her compositional style. Ancient Chinese poetry and Peking Opera singing style have inspired Chen\u27s art songwriting tremendously. By reviewing the poetic literature of Tang Shi and Song Ci and the performing practice of Peking Opera, this document will give comprehensive interpretations of Chen\u27s musical approaches for her Meditation and Bright Moonlight that use the two sources effectively. The scope of this document covers a wide collection of Chen\u27s biographical and educational information, as well as her published vocal compositions and the reviews of her works. Some relevant references are gathered from research articles to support the thesis of this document. The theoretical approaches to analyzing Chen\u27s art songs emphasize her music expressions that mirror her poetic choices and compositional methods, paying attention to her creative ways of combining Chinese music practices with Western compositional devices. The purpose of this research is to promote Chen\u27s solo vocal works and spark contemporary women composers\u27 musical creativities. It is hoped that professional singers and voice teachers will consider including Chen\u27s art songs in their contemporary repertoires, making substantial contributions to the tradition of art song within their teaching and performing practices

A Metric for Gradient RG Flow of the Worldsheet Sigma Model Beyond First Order

Tseytlin has recently proposed that an action functional exists whose gradient generates to all orders in perturbation theory the Renormalization Group (RG) flow of the target space metric in the worldsheet sigma model. The gradient is defined with respect to a metric on the space of coupling constants which is explicitly known only to leading order in perturbation theory, but at that order is positive semi-definite, as follows from Perelman's work on the Ricci flow. This gives rise to a monotonicity formula for the flow which is expected to fail only if the beta function perturbation series fails to converge, which can happen if curvatures or their derivatives grow large. We test the validity of the monotonicity formula at next-to-leading order in perturbation theory by explicitly computing the second-order terms in the metric on the space of coupling constants. At this order, this metric is found not to be positive semi-definite. In situations where this might spoil monotonicity, derivatives of curvature become large enough for higher order perturbative corrections to be significant.Comment: 15 pages; Erroneous sentence in footnote 14 removed; this version therefore supersedes the published version (our thanks to Dezhong Chen for the correction

Shouldn’t snowpacks be sources of monocarboxylic acids?

We report the first measurements of the mixing ratios of acetic (CH3COOH) and formic (HCOOH) acids in the air filling the pore spaces of the snowpacks (firn air) at Summit, Greenland and South Pole. Both monocarboxylic acids were present at levels well above 1 ppbv throughout the upper 35 cm of the snowpack at Summit. Maximum mixing ratios in Summit firn air reached nearly 8 ppbv CH3COOH and 6 ppbv HCOOH. At South Pole the mixing ratios of these acids in the top 35 cm of firn air were also generally \u3e1 ppbv, though their maximums barely exceeded 2.5 ppbv of CH3COOH and 2.0 ppbv of HCOOH. Mixing ratios of the monocarboxylic acids in firn air did not consistently respond to diel and experimental (fast) variations in light intensity, unlike the case for N oxides in the same experiments. Air-to-snow fluxes of CH3COOH and HCOOH apparently support high mixing ratios (means of (CH3COOH/HCOOH) 445/460 and 310/159 pptv at Summit and South Pole, respectively) in air just above the snow during the summer sampling seasons at these sites. We hypothesize that oxidation of carbonyls and alkenes (that are produced by photo- and OH-oxidation of ubiquitous organic compounds) within the snowpack is the source of the monocarboxylic acids

Knotted Defects in Nematic Liquid Crystals

We show that the number of distinct topological states associated to a given knotted defect, $L$, in a nematic liquid crystal is equal to the determinant of the link $L$. We give an interpretation of these states, demonstrate how they may be identified in experiments and describe the consequences for material behaviour and interactions between multiple knots. We show that stable knots can be created in a bulk cholesteric and illustrate the topology by classifying a simulated Hopf link. In addition we give a topological heuristic for the resolution of strand crossings in defect coarsening processes which allows us to distinguish topological classes of a given link and to make predictions about defect crossings in nematic liquid crystals.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Respecting and Protecting Transgender and Gender-Nonconforming Children in Family Courts

Family court judges are increasingly being asked to resolve parenting disputes involving conflict over a child’s gender expression or identity. These disputes ask whether it is in the best interests of children to support their gender nonconformity, including any decision to transition to a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth. Despite more of these cases coming before family courts, judges have little guidance on how to resolve these cases in the best interests of children. Drawing on medical and social science literature and reported decisions, and applying a robust theory of children’s participation rights, this article offers a number of suggestions for resolving parental conflicts over a child’s gender, including hearing and placing significant weight on the views and preferences of the child, and presuming that supporting a child’s gender nonconformity is in the child’s best interests