Abstraction’s ecologies : post-industrialization, waste and the commodity form in Prunella Clough’s paintings of the 1980s and 1990s

This article’s aims are twofold: firstly, it argues that Prunella Clough’s engagement with consumer items in her paintings of the 1980s and 1990s constitute a sustained engagement with the fluctuating nature of the commodity form, moving beyond the established critical narrative whereby these works are understood as simply redeeming “everyday” materials. Secondly, in order to do this, it proposes new artistic frameworks for Clough’s work, moving away from her early association with Neo-Romanticism to foreground her relationship with Pop and Minimalism, and with Post-Conceptual painting. Clough’s late works, it finds, powerfully condense histories of industrial production and painting in Britain.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Fees and Surcharging in automatic teller machine networks: Non-bank ATM providers versus large banks

This paper develops a spacial model of ATM networks to explore the implications for banks and non-banks of interchange fees, foreign fees and surcharges applied to transactions by customers at other than an own-bank ATM. Surcharging raises the price (foreign fee plus surcharge) paid by customers above the joint profit-maximizing level achieved by setting the interchange fee at marginal cost and not surcharging. Similar size banks would agree not to surcharge, but such an agreement is typically not possible between a bank and a non-bank. A high cost of teller transactions modifies the tendency towards high ATM fees.

The Nazi Youth Organization

From the introduction: For a student of Group Work in the United States to write a thesis on the youth organization in Nazi Germany may seem, on first thought, to be a rather far-fetched and imprac­tical study. However, given the present world crisis, and given the significance of the Nazi youth organization in this crisis, and given the to-be-presumed Allied victory with its implications of re-eduction and re-construction---a study of the Nazi youth seems bien apropos. For it may be postulated that only in proportion as the Nazi youth organization is understood---in its antecedents, its development, and in being--­in that proportion will a basis be laid for constructive work with Nazi youth after the war. The writer does not presume to discover a panacea for the problems of Nazi youth; she does believe that to have made a beginning of study on the subject is a worthwhile contribution to the field of Group Work and to thought on post-war problems

Minnesota: Individual State Report - State Level Field Network Study of the Implementation of the Affordable Care Act

This report is part of a series of 21 state and regional studies examining the rollout of the ACA. The national network -- with 36 states and 61 researchers -- is led by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York, the Brookings Institution, and the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.By the end of the second enrollment period in 2015, MNsure (the insurance marketplace) reported that more than 300,000 individuals had enrolled in health insurance coverage through the marketplace since its launch. Eighty percent of this new coverage is due to growth in public program enrollment, with the remaining coverage due to QHP (qualified health plans) enrollment. Between September 30, 2013, and May 1, 2014, the number of uninsured Minnesotans fell by 180,500 -- a reduction of 40.6 percent. Minnesotans saved $30 million on their insurance premiums through tax credits in 2014.While the increase in health insurance coverage was driven particularly by an increase in the number of Minnesotans enrolled in public health insurance programs, enrollment in private health insurance plans has also increased. As MNsure moves forward, it is important to maintain a strong private QHP market, as those premiums significantly contribute to the marketplace's revenues

Performing Pop : Marta Minujín and the ‘Argentine Image-Makers’

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The Regional Impact on Medieval Text and Image: Exploring Representations of Anti-Semitism in English and Northern French Medieval Bestiaries

This thesis endeavors to explain the variations in representations of anti-Semitism between medieval bestiaries. Medieval bestiaries, compilations concerning animals and their moralized characteristics, were a type of medieval literature commonly produced throughout Western Europe.[1] In order to make a more concrete analysis, this study focuses on two particular medieval bestiaries comparable in both date and style – The Aberdeen Bestiary from England and Le Bestiaire from northern France. Both date from the early 13th century and are classified as Second-family moralizing bestiaries, that is, they both derive from the Latin text Physiologus.[2] The analysis of these two bestiaries will focus specifically on how they reflect medieval stereotypes of Jews and anti-Semitic themes. First, both bestiaries are individually examined for depictions of medieval anti-Semitism. The Aberdeen Bestiary focuses on the medieval perception of Jews as potentially dangerous and terrifying “others,” who allegedly prey upon Christians, while Le Bestiaire focuses on the perception of Jews as a religious threat in need of conversion.[3] As these two bestiaries are comparable in both date and format, the question arises, why do they vary so significantly with regard to anti-Semitic representations? While both The Aberdeen Bestiary and Le Bestiaire originate in northwestern Europe shortly before the period of mass Jewish expulsion, the particular regions of medieval England and northern France differed significantly in political, economic, and societal environments.[4] Therefore, by analyzing the regional character of anti-Semitism in medieval England and in northern France the variations in the anti-Semitic representations appearing in The Aberdeen Bestiary and Le Bestiaire become comprehensible. Consequently, this thesis argues that there is a strong regional impact on medieval text and image, as understood through an analysis of representations of anti-Semitism in medieval bestiaries. [1] Willene B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-family Bestiary (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), 10, 14. [2] Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-family Bestiary, 10, 14. [3] Ibid; Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews (Princeton: Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003), 95-96. [4] Raphael Langham, The Jews in Britain: A Chronology (Houndsmill: Basingstoke: Hampshire: New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 8-9, 22-23; Robert Chazan, The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom: 1000-1500 (Cambridge: New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 146

Community College Responses to Calls for Higher Completion Rates: The Cases of Three Community Colleges

The primary purpose of this study was to understand how three diverse community colleges are interpreting and acting on federal initiatives to increase completion rates. The study attempted to answer four main research questions: (1) How do a selection of Kansas community colleges, as organizations, interpret the initiative to increase completion rates? (2) How are community colleges responding to how they understand the latest initiative? (3) What are obstacles to responding? (4) How are interpretation and response affected by Kansas Board of Regents, U.S. Board of Education, accreditation, or local policies? We have yet to understand how continuing calls for higher completion numbers, better student success, and more accountability affect morale, work environments, or public relations for personnel at community colleges. This dissertation attempted to address this deficiency through a multi-case study of three community colleges in Kansas. Administrators, faculty, and staff were interviewed to learn their perceptions, views, and beliefs about completion, the community college missions and values, and the latest initiative to increase completion rates. Almost no discrepancy between colleges was found, although a wide variety of views were discussed by participants. In general, interviewees believe that this latest initiative is a good goal, but without better definitions for completion and without better funding, the largest benefit of the current initiative is in its promotion of community colleges as viable providers of education, whether as bridges between K-12 education and four-year colleges or as contributors to the economic security of both graduates and communities through vocational programs