Farmer's rights: What is fair?

We need to take responsibility for the long-term problems following shortsighted decisions on patenting life forms and intellectual property rights. Farmers in this country and around the world are being pushed off their land in record numbers. A serious problem is the growing sentiment to cut funding for public research. Legislators are responding by proposing deep cuts in public funding while our country needs more public funding for research, not less

A Sketch of the Affective Classroom: Abject Art

Abject art is highly affective, meaning that it generates strong sensations and feelings in viewers. In a classroom, high affect art demands that these reactions be integrated into the relationships between instructor, students and artwork. The affective classroom is then a classroom which summons high affects and walks a careful line between non-dialogic shock and a group therapy session, in order to understand affective relationships as proper material for learning. Affect is interactive and communicative by definition, but is unpredictable and uneven. Using my 2012 seminar in Abject Art, I outline the development and experience of teaching a semester of high affect art

Populists and patriarches: The transformation of the captaincy at Griqua Town, 1804-1822

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 3 September 1964The purpose of this essay is to trace, as far as is possible, the development of the agricultural faction at Griqua Town in the 1810s and 1820s and to illuminate its efforts to transform the settlement's administration. To do so, I shall first examine the origins of the Griqua community and describe the nature of the political system it evolved north of the Orange River. Next, I shall attempt to outline the development of agriculture at Griqua Town and various outstations, the growth of a agriculturalist faction, and the increasing efforts of this group to secure an administration which catered to its needs. Finally, I shall study how, although the new regime under Waterboer generated staunch and even violent opposition, it was able to shift its focus to encouraging agricultural production

Substance Abuse: The Impact of Maternal Drug Use on Families

This research study was conducted through interviews at Liberty Place in Richmond, Kentucky, a rehabilitation center for women. The women who volunteered to participate in this study at Liberty Place had to have at least one child. The six participants were asked eight questions regarding their experiences as a mother at Liberty Place. They were also invited to do a painting activity to create a canvas to honor mothers like them seeking treatment at Liberty Place. This honors thesis highlights issues that arise when a mother is abusing substances. There are countless problems that family members may face when someone is abusing drugs in the household. The participants brought to light concerns they had as a mother who has had substance abuse problems and is focusing on sobriety currently. These difficulties include custody issues, family support, parenting, communication, forgiveness, guilt, and other issues as well. Several participants talked about the continued support and guidance needed for a mother who is in a rehabilitation program. This research also focuses on the lives of the specific mothers who volunteered to participate who are seeking to become sober adults and parents. The findings reveal the participants struggles, hopes, and stories as mothers and also individuals at Liberty Place

The prints of David Hockney : their cultural, autobiographical and artistic contexts

David Hockney is a leading figure in contemporary printmaking. Since 1954 making prints has been an integral part of Hockney's art practice. It is a field of art in which he is truly gifted and, over five decades, he has created a significant body of prints. He has constantly pushed the boundaries of printmaking in terms of style, subject matter and technique. This is almost without parallel in recent art history. Printmaking has also provided Hockney with a diversion when other forms of his art, notably painting, were in a stylistic and iconographic cul de sac. The history of Hockney's involvement in making prints has formed a critical path in his overall artistic development in all its variety of forms. For much of his life as an artist, David Hockney has been freer, more experimental and less inhibited in his approach to creating art, when making prints than when painting. A successful career in painting often eluded him during much of his early career particularly after he adopted the use of acrylic paint and Hockney would often find himself in an artistic dead end in his painting style. In contrast, making prints often provided a way forward for Hockney. This modus operandi continued for much of his artistic life until his more recent embrace of digital processes in art using an iPhone or iPad. Hockney's development from an emerging artist to a mature and successful one lay in his constant searching for new ways of depiction, other than those belonging to new modernist canons. He was constantly posing pictorial problems and then trying to solve them. To this end, Hockney developed a hybrid art in his printmaking, one of wide ranging eclecticism. He then turned to naturalism, only to find he needed to explore further choices. As a mature artist Hockney achieved a fusion of the abstract and formal elements in his work and to tackle age-old issues - how to portray someone, how to depict a landscape and a season, a time of day and under certain weather conditions and how to indicate space and time in two-dimensional art form. For Hockney, printmaking has been an integral part of this search and discovery. Now entering the second decade of the 21st century, Hockney has finally achieved his ambition to become a landscape painter of consequence and now the focus for Hockney lies there. The significant purpose and role that prints played in his artistic career in the twentieth century have ceased to exist - at least for the present. -- provided by Candidate