British Ships in the Confederate Navy

A Look at Great Britain’s Role in Building the Confederate Navy In 1860, the United States had the second largest merchant fleet in the world, and was well on the road to assume dominance. By the end of the Civil War, America barely had a merchant navy. This was the direct and indirec...

The Influence of Manga on the Graphic Novel

This material has been published in The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel edited by Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey, Stephen E. Tabachnick. This version is free to view and download for personal use only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works. © Cambridge University PressProviding a range of cogent examples, this chapter describes the influences of the Manga genre of comics strip on the Graphic Novel genre, over the last 35 years, considering the functions of domestication, foreignisation and transmedia on readers, markets and forms

Blighted Ambitions: Federal Policy, Public Housing, and Redevelopment on the West Coast, 1937-1954

In 1937, the U.S. Congress passed the Wagner-Steagall Housing Act, authorizing federal funds for the development of public housing. Twelve years later, Congress reauthorized this legislation with the American Housing Act of 1949. In the process,Congress converted a federal housing program into a redevelopment program that only sometimes funded housing.Key to understanding this change is the rise of a planning concept called “blight.” In the first half of the 20th century, planners, public officials, scholars, and intellectuals struggled to reshape the word “blight” into a description of urban conditions, with little resulting consensus. Despite this, Congress included no legislative definition for “blight,” allowing local leaders great discretion about where and what parts of the city were suitable for clearance and replacement. While previous legislation had restricted federally funded intervention to addressing “slum” conditions, “blight” freed cities from this requirement.This dissertation has two components. First, at the national scale, it examines struggles to define “blight,” how this term came to be excluded from the Housing Act of 1937, and how pressure from the real estate industry placed it into the Housing Act of 1949. Second, it examines two case studies from the U.S. West Coast: Oakland, California’s efforts to map “blight” citywide from 1949-1951, and Portland, Oregon’s first attempt to create an urban redevelopment program from 1950-1953. Both show how cities without “slum” conditions attempted to leverage the logic of “blight”--seemingly empirical, but actually political--to achieve goals that had little or nothing to do with public housing.This, then, is the twin story told in this dissertation—first, of how the term “blight” appeared to have empirical meaning without in fact having empirical dimensions, and second how the real estate industry made use of the slipperiness of “blight” to justify projects that largely supplanted public housing

A Study of the Knowledge and Skills Required of Draftsmen in the Dallas-Fort Worth Area

This study was designed to identify the knowledge and skills that draftsmen employed in the greater Dallas-Forth Worth, Texas metropolitan area should posses. This study was conducted to identify the following as related to draftsmen in the Dallas-Forth Worth, Texas area: What kind of education and experience is required to prospective draftsmen? What are the general duties of draftsmen? How much emphasis is placed upon knowledge of and skill in the use of drafting equipment? How important are the basic concepts and principles of drafting usually taught in drafting courses? What methods are used to reproduce drawings

HUMBOLDT HOLDING UP: Pumpkin Carving Master Mike Craghead On His Passion for Slashin’ Gourds and Other Produce

If you’re someone who lives for the month of October, Halloween is your holy day, you love covering your house in fake spiderwebs and you shriek with glee whenever those big, orange gourds start to appear on grocery store shelves, then this very special Halloween episode of Humboldt Holding Up — the Lost Coat Outpost’s spooky podcast — is for you! And if you’re not one of those people, then get out of here! Go twiddle your thumbs until it’s time to put up Christmas decorations, ya’ filthy animal! Possibly no one in Humboldt looks forward to the Halloween season as much as expert pumpkin carver Mike Craghead, who joins us on this week’s episode to discuss his particular style of pumpkin sculpture (he doesn’t make just your usual jack-o-lanterns), how he developed a love for this unusual hobby and how it landed him a spot competing on season seven of Food Network television series Halloween Wars. You can see more about Craghead’s journey in the video below. Craghead also talks a little bit about his book Pumpkin Skulls and Other Silly Things, which provides instructions and tips on how to carve pumpkins and even a few other types of produce! If you’re into it, you can find Craghead’s book on his website or in some local bookstores. So, get into the spooky spirit by clicking the audio player above to hear Craghead chat with LoCO’s Andrew Goff and Stephanie McGeary about all things pumpkins! Happy Halloween