Land of Enchantment: New Mexico as Cultural Crossroads

This exhibition foregrounds Sheldon Museum of Art’s collecting strength in fine and decorative arts with connections to New Mexico, and, more broadly, to the desert Southwest. For thousands of years this corner of the United States, situated on the north-south trade route between Colorado and Mexico and at the western edge of the Great Plains, has hosted human habitations, each with its own distinctive material culture. The area’s diverse topography and population have inspired countless visual responses, from petroglyphs to photographs. The state’s relative isolation—at least before the mid-twentieth century—provided a backdrop upon which the movement of goods, practices, ideas, and iconography could be traced readily. In terms of aesthetic production and economic benefit, Santa Fe, the state’s capital city, is currently the country’s third largest art market. Employing a Western linear chronological model, Land of Enchantment highlights several of the region’s outstanding geographical and meteorological features before presenting the successive waves of settlement that occurred over the course of the Common Era’s second millennium, from the Anasazi to Spanish Catholics, from Sephardic Jews to Anglo-Saxon Protestants. How these peoples encountered and responded to each other remains an important part of the state’s history. The objects they produced reflect the region’s allure, substantiating Georgia O’Keeffe’s claim that “If you ever go to New Mexico, it will itch you for the rest of your life.

Performing the New Face of Modernism: Anti-Mimetic Portraiture and the American Avant-Garde, 1912-1927

At the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession in 1912, Alfred Stieglitz received the final proofs for Gertrude Stein's experimental text portraits "Henri Matisse" and "Pablo Picasso" and subsequently published these poems in the journal Camera Work. Soon afterward a number of visual artists working in the United States began grappling with the implications of such hermetic depictions. Entering into a trans-Atlantic conversation, this fledgling modernist community created radical images that bear witness to the evolving nature of subjectivity and to an extensive culture of experimentation in portraying the individual in the first quarter of the twentieth century. One of the most salient aspects of the modernist worldview was the desire to break with the past. Earlier styles, exhibition standards, subject matter, and teaching methods all came under attack, but none more basic - and symbolic - than the ancient Greek (via the Renaissance) idea of mimesis. Freed from the expectation to replicate reality "impartially," painters and sculptors began instead to emphasize more and more their own subjective experiences through expressive color choices or formal exaggerations. Portraiture, previously so closely linked to flattering transcription and bourgeois values, became the genre par excellence for testing modernist ideals and practices. This doctoral thesis examines the small group of artists working in the United States who advanced an extreme, anti-mimetic approach to portraiture through the dissociation of the sitter from his or her likeness. Drawing on performance theory, this dissertation re-imagines the portrait as a series of events within a social nexus. It also aims to reaffirm the agency of the United States avant-garde in the 1910s and 1920s as its members sought to establish, and then maintain, their status on the American cultural scene specifically through the employment of unconventional portraiture. Through the contextualization of particular objects, the consideration of period poetry, and the incorporation of newly available archival sources, the research presented here illuminates the complex intersections of modernity, representation, and subjectivity, and charts the changes in a specific mode of visual production during the fifteen-year span of 1912 - 1927, thereby demonstrating Charles Demuth's dictum that "In portraiture...likeness is a means not an end.

Advanced Conducting Project

Hallelujah (from Mount of Olives ) by Ludwig van Beethoven -- Lo! How a Rose E\u27er Blooming by Hugo Distler -- O Praise the Lord of Heaven by William Billings -- If Ye Love Me, Keep My Commandments by Thomas Tallis -- Cantate Domino by Giovanni Croce -- Ave Verum by Charles Gounod -- Domine Feli Unigenite (from Gloria ) by Antonio Vivaldi -- Bogoroditse Devo by Serge Rachmaninoff -- I\u27ve Been in the Storm So Long by Jeffrey L. Ames -- Ain\u27t That Good News by Moses Hogan -- O Magnum Mysterium by Morten Lauridsen -- Hallelujah Chorus (from The Messiah ) by George Frideric Handel

Using lead market factors to assess the potential for a sustainability transition

AbstractThis paper considers how the lead market concept can contribute towards analysing system transformation as described by the multi-level perspective (MLP). Lead market arguments for the export potential of eco-innovations can provide an argument for policy support for environmental niches. International policy diffusion and learning across countries on the level of niche–regime interaction can improve the legitimacy of supporting policies. We propose how eco-innovation can be framed within an integrated MLP-lead market approach. Eco-innovations address two classes of regimes (infrastructure and eco-efficiency), which are likely to follow different transition pathways. The use of indicators for lead market factors for empirically analysing the opportunities for system transformation in the MLP framework is assessed. Indicators for the lead market factors can be attributed to the MLP. However, some of the indicators are more general in nature and do only indirectly point towards system transformation towards eco-innovations

Trends in urban planning, climate adaptation and resilience in Zanzibar, Tanzania

Over recent decades, there has been substantial change in Zanzibar, due to, among others, global climate change impacts. The semi-autonomous polity faces challenges to foster resilient urban communities and planning for mitigation and adaptation to climate change, not least because of its island nature and rapid urbanization. This article addresses urban and environmental planning measures from 2010 to 2020 aimed at confronting the impacts of climate change and working toward resilience and adaptation in urban Zanzibar. The study was conducted between June and August 2020, and primarily involved a combination of desktop studies, online discussions, and virtual meetings with key actors in the land, climate, and disaster risk policy and governance aspects in Zanzibar. The review provides information on the current responses to policy, legal and institutional setup in terms of the key issues related to land use, climate and disaster risk reduction in Zanzibar. Thematic analysis was used to connect land-use planning, climate adaptation, and disaster risk reduction documentation of the situational assessment, determination and respective recommendations concerning land use and climate adaptation. It is argued that planning for climate change requires greater social will, financial investment, and the conversion of science to policy than currently exists in Zanzibar. Dynamic individual and governmental efforts and select community engagement are likely insufficient to produce resilience, as large-scale donor-funded climate adaptation interventions are largely top-down in orientation and often miss out on local community-oriented climate solutions. Smaller NGOs are more practical for understanding and addressing community-oriented priorities to support climate-resilient initiatives and enhance local livelihood priorities and participation against climate impacts, including natural disasters and everyday degradation. The article concludes with policy recommendations both specific to Zanzibar and relevant across the region

Towards modelling of innovation systems: An integrated TIS-MLP approach for wind turbines

Meeting sustainability challenges requires not only innovations but also transitions towards sustainability paths. Studies which use technological innovation systems and multi-level-perspective approaches show that the development of innovation systems is a complex process, with many direct and indirect interdependencies of the different variables. The paper looks into the feasibility to support such analysis with system dynamics models. It is analysed how a combined TIS-MLP approach could form the conceptual basis for analysing the dynamics which drives the development of the system to be modelled. The feasibility of such a concept is further investigated by implementing it for China and Germany using wind energy as a case study. In order to develop a perspective how to build the model in technical terms, the dynamics of the innovation systems is translated in software based causal loop diagrams. In addition to methodological insights about the feasibility of modelling, the paper also yields insights into differences and similarities in the drivers of system dynamics in both countries. Furthermore, general conclusions for the potential of regime shift in countries catching up and the relation to leapfrogging are drawn. Thus, the paper augments more general conceptual advances with an evidence based case study and extends theoretical analysis towards empirical modelling

The Riddle of the Sphinx or "It Must Be Said": Charles Demuth's My Egypt Reconsidered

My Egypt, 1927, is one of the largest, best known, and arguably most misunderstood works by American modernist Charles Demuth. Past interpretations of the painting have focused on the visual similarity of the depicted grain elevators to architectural wonders of the ancient world and/or on the ironic juxtaposition of image and title. Building upon these analyses, this thesis proposes three nexuses of inquiry that illuminate My Egypt. Deriving from recent critical theory on gender and phenomenology, the first section of the thesis reads the image as a performative self-portrait. The second section considers the underexamined religious tradition of the artist as important to elucidating the picture's meaning. Finally, the third section investigates the artist's relationship to Egypt and the early twentieth-century phenomenon of Egyptomania, using seven associative connotations for the African country to explain the complexity of Demuth's masterpiece

The dynamic simulation of TIS functions in transitions pathways

[Introduction] This paper has the objective of extending the System of Innovation (Kuhlmann and Arnold 2001; figure 1) and Technological Innovation System (TIS) (Bergek et al. 2008) approaches to include pathways of development over time and to include considerations of interactions between niches and the regime from the Multi-Level perspective framework on sustainability transitions (Grin et al. 2010). This should include consideration of consumers and the demand side, which is less comprehensively discussed in the SSI and TIS literature than in the sustainability transitions literature. The reason for this paper is that the SSI has no explanation of dynamics. It is really a typology of actor types which are assumed to be necessary for innovation. TIS is an application of SSI to individual technologies and a more detailed analysis of how successful the innovation system is, using the concept of functions of the innovation systems. These functions then have to be performed successfully for the technology to be taken up. However, there is still no analysis of the interactions between the functions or how interaction determines the evolution of the innovation system through time and its success or failure. Also, a critical aspect of the evolution of technologies and the associated social systems is missing: the feedbacks between the dominant design or regime and the new, alternative technology. The current institutional and market setting is taken as exogenous to the innovation system analysis in the TIS. The analysis is limited to identifying those innovation functions which are being successfully undertaken and those which are weak, together with barriers to the uptake of the new technology and proposing measures to overcome these barriers. Here, the MLP on transitions offers an explicit treatment of niche-regime interactions. [...

Fresque de changements environnementaux induits par l’homme et le climat dans l’ouest de l’Ouganda : la région des lacs du cratère de Ndali

Recent archaeological and paleoenvironmental research in the Ndali Crater Lakes Region (NCLR) of western Uganda provide important new insights into anthropogenic impacts on moist forests to the East of the Rwenzori Mountains. This research significantly changes previous interpretations of paleoenvironmental records in western Uganda and helps to distinguish climate change from human impacts. By drawing on multiple sources such as historical linguistics, archaeological evidence, and environmental proxies for change, a new picture emerges for a region that was a cultural crossroads for early Bantu-speakers and Central Sudanic-speakers between 400 BCE and 1000 CE. Detailed archaeological data and well-dated sites provide fine-grained evidence that closely fits episodes of significant environmental change, including a later and separate phase of forest clearance, soil degradation, and lake pollution caused by the saturation of the landscape by Bigo-related populations between 1300 and 1650 CE.De récentes recherches archéologiques et paléoenvironnementales dans la région des lacs du cratère de Ndali (NCLR), dans l’ouest de l’Ouganda, donnent de nouvelles indications importantes sur les impacts anthropogéniques sur les forêts humides à l’est des Monts Rwenzori. Ces recherches modifient de manière significative les interprétations précédentes des traces paléoenvironnementales dans l’ouest de l’Ouganda et aide à distinguer changements climatiques et impacts humains. En s’appuyant sur des sources telles que la linguistique historique, les preuves archéologiques et les indices de changements environnementaux, une nouvelle image émerge pour une région qui a été un carrefour culturel pour les utilisateurs des premières langues bantoues et soudaniques centrales entre 400 avant notre ère et 1000 de notre ère. Des données archéologiques détaillées et des sites bien datés fournissent des preuves fines qui correspondent étroitement à des épisodes de changements environnementaux importants, y compris une phase ultérieure et distincte de défrichement des forêts, de dégradation des sols et de pollution des lacs causée par la saturation du paysage par des populations liées à Bigo entre 1300 et 1650 de notre ère.The University of Florida, the National Science Foundation, PAST, and the National Geographic Society.https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/history-in-africahj2024Anthropology and ArchaeologyNon