316 research outputs found
The Mask Strikes Back: Blackness as Aporia in Moby-Dick and Benito Cereno
What is the American Gothic a reaction to? Whereas other thinkers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne locates the building blocks of the American Gothic in Puritan Christianity or Amerindian Genocide, I argue that Melville posits the genesis of chattel slavery and the construction of racial category as the repressed events that haunt the Americas and return uninvited. By using the Gothic motif of the living corpse, the famed writer of Moby-Dick addresses the social bereavement which Blackness comes to represent in the Americas. By looking for truth on the skin and flesh, the main characters of Moby-Dick and âBenito Cerenoâ represent the Enlightenment precept that truth can be arrested via observation and interpretation. Melville presents two Black characters as impasses in this project of interpretation: Moby-Dickâs drowned boy, Pip, and âBenito Cerenoâsâ undead leader, Babo
Respiration: Breathing Between the Stacks
How rare are we, who brandish Black and Male identity, in Academia?
In the past two weeks, I have been reminded of my Black maleness in a multitude of ways. I sat alone, subordinate in number, in a dialogue about Internalized Oppression at Diaspora House. Strong women of color discuss this issue while I work to stay respectful and non-oppressive in this space. I sat alone, subordinate in number, in each of my classes, where I am often the only one of my race and class. My race-gender circumstance is a matter of fact to me. How does this Black maleness play out on college campuses nationwide? [excerpt
Poetic Witness in a Networked Age
When online videos mobilize protestors to occupy public spaces, and those protestors incorporate hashtags in their chants and markered placards, deliberative democratic theory must no longer dismiss technology and peoples historically excluded from the arena of politics. Specifically, political models must account for the role of repetition in paving the way for unheard and unseen messages and people to appear in the political arena. Drawing on Judith Butlerâs theory of the Performative and Hannah Arendtâs Space of Appearance, this paper assesses that critical and generative role of iteration. Repeating unheeded acts performs the capacity for those acts to be entered into discourse. The World Wide Web evidently augments such performativity with features such as accessibility, potential for âviralâ proliferation, and an endurance unlike non-networked acts. This paper eventually grapples with the hazards and risks of networked repetition (e.g. desensitization, trivialization, etc.) in order to propose a poetics of repetition to mitigate those dangers. Such poetics ultimately distinguishes the witness from the spectator
Black Praxis: The Trace of Jamesian Pragmatism in DuBoisian Scholar Activism
Philosophy and activism formed a mutualist relationship in regards to 20th-century Black American politics. Emancipatory theories undergirded the civil disobedience and reformist action of the entire century. W.E.B. DuBois, renowned African-American academic at the forefront of American and Pan-Africanist liberation movements, is often divorced from his originary philosophical roots. As he became the first Black PhD graduate of Harvard University, his mentor was philosopher and psychologist William James. James is the forefather of American Pragmatism, a school of thought still alive and dynamic in this day. DuBoisian scholars tend however to stress the German Idealist influences on DuBoisâs thought. Informed by protracted and ongoing theoretical and journalistic research, my project aims to locate the trace of Jamesian Pragmatism in DuBoisâs scholar activism. I argue that DuBoisâs struggles with Pragmatism engendered a way of thinking that resembles Marxist thought before DuBois ever went to Berlin. Further, DuBoisâs idealist revision of Jamesian logic informs his pre-NAACP activism with the Niagara Movement. All in all, my research shows how, despite his disagreements with his mentor, DuBois does not quite disavow pragmatism throughout this very political academic career.
This research was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and was guided by Dr. Scott Hancock of Gettysburg College\u27s History Department
On Rage
âHonestly [Flight] was written out of rage. I wrote it immediately after Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, in a matter of months. It was in the aftermath of 9/11. I was upset with the way people were acting, People on the Left and the Right, Muslims and Christians were justifying violence towards the other side. And everyone believed they were correct. I was thinking âWhat if Everybody is wrong?âââââSherman Alexie in The Gettysburgian. [excerpt
Reflection Positivity and Monotonicity
We prove general reflection positivity results for both scalar fields and
Dirac fields on a Riemannian manifold, and comment on applications to quantum
field theory. As another application, we prove the inequality
between Dirichlet and Neumann covariance operators on a manifold with a
reflection.Comment: 11 page
Hall effect and conduction anisotropy in the organic conductor TMTSF2PF6
Long missing basic experiments in the normal phase of the anisotropic
electron system of TMTSF2PF6 were performed. Both the Hall effect and the
ab'-plane conduction anisotropy are directly addressing the unconventional
electrical properties of this Bechgaard salt. We found that the dramatic
reduction of the carrier density deduced from recent optical data is not
reflected in an enhanced Hall-resistance. The pressure- and temperature
dependence of the b'-direction resitivity reveal isotropic relaxation time and
do not require explanations beyond the Fermi liquid theory. Our results allow a
coherent-diffusive transition in the interchain carrier propagation, however
the possible crossover to Luttinger liquid behavior is placed to an energy
scale above room temperature.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. Let
Bond and charge density waves in the isotropic interacting two-dimensional quarter-filled band and the insulating state proximate to organic superconductivity
We report two surprising results regarding the nature of the spatial broken
symmetries in the two-dimensional (2D), quarter-filled band with strong
electron-electron interactions. First, in direct contradiction to the
predictions of one-electron theory, we find a coexisting ``bond-order and
charge density wave'' (BCDW) insulating ground state in the 2D rectangular
lattice for all anisotropies, including the isotropic limit. Second, we find
that the BCDW further coexists with a spin-density wave (SDW) in the range of
large anisotropy. Further, in contrast to the interacting half-filled band, in
the interacting quarter-filled band there are two transitions: first, a similar
singlet-to-AFM/SDW transition for large anisotropy and second, an
AFM/SDW-to-singlet transition at smaller anisotropy. We discuss how these
theoretical results apply to the insulating states that are proximate to the
superconducting states of 2:1 cationic charge-transfer solids (CTS).
An important consequence of this work is the suggestion that organic
superconductivity is related to the proximate Coulomb-induced BCDW, with the
SDW that coexists for large anisotropies being also a consequence of the BCDW,
rather than the driver of superconductivity.Comment: 29 pages, 18 eps figures. Revised with new appendices; to appear in
Phys. Rev. B 62, Nov 15, 200
Discovery and Rossiter-McLaughlin Effect of Exoplanet Kepler-8b
We report the discovery and the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect of Kepler-8b, a
transiting planet identified by the NASA Kepler Mission. Kepler photometry and
Keck-HIRES radial velocities yield the radius and mass of the planet around
this F8IV subgiant host star. The planet has a radius RP = 1.419 RJ and a mass,
MP = 0.60 MJ, yielding a density of 0.26 g cm^-3, among the lowest density
planets known. The orbital period is P = 3.523 days and orbital semima jor axis
is 0.0483+0.0006/-0.0012 AU. The star has a large rotational v sin i of 10.5
+/- 0.7 km s^-1 and is relatively faint (V = 13.89 mag), both properties
deleterious to precise Doppler measurements. The velocities are indeed noisy,
with scatter of 30 m s^-1, but exhibit a period and phase consistent with the
planet implied by the photometry. We securely detect the Rossiter-McLaughlin
effect, confirming the planet's existence and establishing its orbit as
prograde. We measure an inclination between the projected planetary orbital
axis and the projected stellar rotation axis of lambda = -26.9 +/- 4.6 deg,
indicating a moderate inclination of the planetary orbit. Rossiter-McLaughlin
measurements of a large sample of transiting planets from Kepler will provide a
statistically robust measure of the true distribution of spin-orbit
orientations for hot jupiters in general.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables; In preparation for submission to the
Astrophysical Journa
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